‘Where did you find him?’ Blue asked. Thankfully, they’d left the former dungeons and were now sitting together in the garden, shaded from the merciless sun by an enormous spreading tree of a type she’d never seen before.
‘Wandering in the desert,’ the Abbot said. ‘One of our monks happened on him, otherwise he would have been dead within a few hours. As it was, he was nearly dead.’
‘And was he in that state – ’ even talking about Brimstone, she shied from using the word mad ‘- when you found him? I mean, was he – ?’
The Abbot nodded. ‘Yes. He is very old. We thought he might die. We tended to his body – we have healers in the monastery – and he recovered. But we could do nothing for his mind.’
‘Forgive me,’ the Purlisa put in. He was seated beside her on the bench and she noticed his sandaled feet didn’t quite reach the ground. ‘But you know who he is?’
‘He is one of my subjects,’ Blue said. ‘His name is Silas Brimstone. He is a Faerie of the Night who once ran a manufacturing business in the capital.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘He is not a good man.’
‘That would accord with my visions,’ said the Purlisa.
There was something about him that made her feel they had been friends throughout her entire life. Blue said quietly, ‘I think you’d better tell me about your visions.’
‘Since I was little,’ the Purlisa said (and Blue somehow refrained from smiling), ‘there have been times when God granted me revelations of certain matters past and present, sometimes, although not often, future. I fear what you say is correct. This Silas Brimstone is not a good man. He has raised the Midgard Serpent.’
Blue looked at him blankly. ‘What’s the Midgard Serpent?’
‘This is where it gets hard to believe,’ the Abbot muttered.
The Purlisa glanced at him crossly, then turned back to smile at Blue. ‘Do you know of the Old Gods, Queen Blue?’
‘Oh yes,’ Blue said without elaboration. It wasn’t so long ago since she’d been face to face with one of the Old Gods herself.
‘Before the dawn of our history, one of them – his name was Loki – married a giant and fathered three children by her. The middle one was a sea serpent -’
The Abbot snorted derisively.
‘It’s a whole other reality!’ the Purlisa snapped. ‘I’ve told you that before, Jamides.’
‘You’ve told me, but I don’t believe you.’
‘Please don’t quarrel,’ Blue said, ‘I ‘d really like to hear this story.’
‘Yes, stop quarrelling, Jamides.’
‘I wasn’t quarrelling.’
‘Well, stop snorting then.’ The Purlisa turned back to Blue, ‘I don’t suppose for a minute it was a natural birth. The father was very tricky and may have used magic to transform the poor little mite. But in any case the Emperor of the Old Gods got to hear about the business and decided that the birth was an abomination -’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ put in the Abbot.
The Purlisa ignored him. ’ – and threw the serpent into the great ocean that encircles Midgard.’
‘Where luckily it discovered it was a sea serpent,’ the Abbot said, casting his eyes heavenwards.
‘Where it began to grow and grow until it was so large it was able to surround the whole of Midgard.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Blue. ‘You saw all this in a vision?’
The Purlisa shook his head. ‘No, no, I saw none of this in a vision. It’s recorded in the Annals of the Old Gods.’
‘Which some of us don’t take literally,’ the Abbot said.
The Purlisa closed his eyes. ‘Which Jamides is too modern to take literally.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘But we won’t worry too much what Jamides thinks, will we, Queen Blue?’ While Blue was searching for a diplomatic response, he went on. ‘The creature began to squeeze the boundaries of Midgard, causing earthquakes and tidal waves and hurricanes and the like, and eventually it became obvious that if something wasn’t done the whole of Midgard would be destroyed. All life would be wiped out.’ He shivered. ‘Dreadful thought. So the Emperor appointed a series of heroes to tackle the problem. The serpent ate most of them, but one discovered the only effective weapon against it was a hammer – swords or projectiles or anything of that sort simply wouldn’t work. So he used his war hammer and the serpent shrank to manageable proportions. It ceased to give trouble and things settled down in Midgard for several thousand years.’
‘Where exactly is Midgard, Purlisa?’ Blue asked.
‘It’s our present reality,’ the Purlisa said. ‘The whole of the Faerie Realm and the Analogue World – all of it. It takes in Hael as well, I believe. It’s all the dimensions of reality we can experience.’
‘Oh,’ Blue said.
‘Now the Purlisa thinks the trouble will be starting up again.’ The Abbot smiled.
‘I know it will be starting up again,’ the Purlisa said soberly. ‘Your friend Brimstone -’
‘No friend of mine,’ Blue murmured.
‘- has called up the Serpent. Called it into our reality: into Midgard, that is. I saw it clearly in my vision. This will start the cycle again. The beast can only grow and grow. Unless we find a hero to stop it, our reality will eventually be destroyed.’
There was a long moment’s silence. Eventually Blue said hesitantly, ‘But, Purlisa, surely the story of the Midgard Serpent is a myth?’
‘Of course it is!’ the Abbot snorted.
‘Perhaps it is,’ the Purlisa told her calmly, ‘but my vision shows that Mr Brimstone called up a serpent of some sort before he went insane.’ He blinked benignly. ‘And the earthquakes have already started.’
Blue glanced at the Abbot, who nodded reluctantly, then said, ‘But, of course, Buthner has always had earthquakes from time to time.’
‘So far,’ the Purlisa said briskly, ‘the quakes have been confined to the deep desert. But they will get worse until a hero slays the serpent.’ He smiled with great warmth at Blue. ‘Which is where you come in.’
Blue stared at him without speaking. She liked the Purlisa hugely, but that didn’t mean she necessarily believed him. The Midgard story did sound like a myth even the Abbot thought so. Perhaps Brimstone really had called up some sort of serpent – he’d called up enough demons before she put a stop to that nonsense, and he might well have discovered some other source of nasty creatures. Perhaps what he’d been doing caused an earthquake. But that hardly mattered. Because none of this was her affair. She wasn’t the hero they needed. She wasn’t even the heroine they needed. And she had other things to do. Henry could be dying somewhere while the Purlisa had her off chasing serpents. She opened her mouth to speak, but the Purlisa beat her to it.
‘Your love Henry will perish if you do not do this thing,’ he said.