They did what they often did in times of crisis: went into private conference in the high-security conservatory Blue’s father had built behind the Throne Room. Henry went at once to pull out the Charaxes ark from underneath one of the benches.
‘He’s not going to like this,’ Blue murmured.
‘It’s an emergency,’ Henry told her firmly. ‘He’ll just have to lump it.’
The Charaxes ark was closely modelled on the Ark of Euphrosyne, an ancient artifact Henry had discovered years ago in the care of the Luchti, a desert tribe in far-off Buthner. But it was nowhere near identical. The Luchti Ark had to be triggered by a full ceremonial and even then only operated under certain limited planetary positions. Although the core technology was identical, Henry’s Charaxes ark was more like an old-fashioned two-way radio: you extended an aerial, cranked a handle and asked the built-in microphone if anybody was there. The call sign, though traditional, was a little off-key. It was never just anybody who was there: the box was attuned to a single consciousness, who either answered or didn’t as he saw fit. Which in recent times was less and less often. Henry prayed he would allow the contact now.
The box emitted the familiar high-pitched whine as he turned the handle, vibrated a little, then beeped twice to indicate readiness. Henry took a deep breath. ‘Is anybody there?’ he asked.
‘I thought I told you not to call me at the office.’ Mr Fogarty’s growl came through at once, distorted somewhat by the tinny speaker, but instantly recognisable.
Not for the first time, Henry had trouble believing Mr Fogarty was dead. He’d sacrificed his life for the sake of the Realm some seventeen years ago now, but the Ark of Euphrosyne and later the Charaxes ark had allowed Henry to keep in touch, albeit reluctantly on Mr Fogarty’s part. The business about the office was a silly joke between them, but the sentiment behind it was serious enough.
‘I need your advice,’ Henry said, cutting through any further preliminaries.
‘She’s not pregnant again?’
Henry flushed a little. ‘No she’s not; and she’s here with me.’ He meant So mind your manners, but alive or dead he was still a bit afraid of Mr Fogarty, so he didn’t say it.
‘Hello, Blue,’ Fogarty called. He seemed cheerful enough, which was unusual. Since his death, he’d made it quite clear he did not like to be disturbed and was often downright rude when Henry managed to make contact. It was something Henry never really understood. He’d have imagined that when you died, you would be only too happy to chat with somebody still living.
‘Hello, Gatekeeper,’ Blue said warmly. Even now she still used the title Mr Fogarty had held while he was still alive. ‘Are you well?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Fogarty responded. There was a audible sniff across the speaker, then he said, ‘I suppose there’s a crisis on?’ Somehow he always sounded more sympathetic to Blue than he did to Henry.
‘We’re facing an invasion,’ Henry said.
‘Haleklind?’
It brought Henry up short. ‘How did you know?’
‘Those clowns were spoiling for a fight long before I moved on. It was only a matter of time.’ A pause. ‘How much time has it been, incidentally?’
‘Since you died? Sixteen, seventeen years – something like that.’ Precision didn’t matter. Henry knew Mr Fogarty wouldn’t retain the information. He’d asked the question before; at least once during every contact. The answer meant little to him. Apparently time ran differently on the other side.
‘How’s Cynthia? She’s not with you?’
Mr Fogarty asked about her every contact as well. Henry pushed down his impatience. Mr Fogarty had been a difficult man while he was alive and death had not improved him. ‘She’s busy,’ he said bluntly. ‘But well. Very well. She asked after you.’ He’d made up the last bit, but he knew it would please Mr Fogarty and possibly stop him diverting any more. ‘About Haleklind…?’
‘Uppity clowns, wizards,’ Fogarty said. ‘Comes of having too much power. They were bound to give you trouble eventually. What is it? Some sort of magical weapon?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Henry said. ‘They’re breeding manticores.’
To give him his due, Mr Fogarty got it at once. ‘A manticore army?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t think that was possible.’
‘Neither did we,’ Blue put in. She hesitated, then added, ‘There’s something else – they have Mella.’
There was a pause so long that Henry wondered if the connection had gone down. Although she hadn’t been born until after his death, Mr Fogarty had a soft spot for Mella. It dated from the day when Mella, aged six, had stolen the Charaxes ark and called him.
‘Ransom?’
‘Not yet. No demands. No contact of any sort.’
‘But your intelligence is they have her and are preparing for war with a manticore army?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Henry said.
‘Timing?’
‘Not sure. Days, maybe? A week if we’re lucky. Soon, anyway.’
‘What’s our state of preparation?’
Henry liked that our – it meant Mr Fogarty still thought of himself as on their side. It was by no means a foregone conclusion. During some of his more recent contacts, the old boy seemed to be withdrawing not just from the affairs of the Realm, but from the living world in general. Henry glanced at Blue, who said, ‘The standing army is one third the size it was when you were with us, Gatekeeper. Enough for local emergencies, but we were not expecting all-out war.’
‘How long to bring it up to full strength?’
‘Ten days. But even at full strength we can’t hope to beat a manticore army.’
‘What about demons?’ Fogarty asked. ‘I know you don’t want to use them, but…’
… But Blue was still Queen of Hael, a position she had held, despite several challenges, since she’d slit the throat of Beleth, Prince of Darkness. Henry felt himself shudder slightly. He’d married one tough lady.
Blue said, ‘I’ll use them, Gatekeeper, if it means saving the Realm. They will take longer to mobilise, perhaps as much as fifteen, perhaps twenty, days. I -’
‘Give the order to mobilise,’ Mr Fogarty interrupted.
‘I already have,’ Blue said calmly. ‘But my generals advise me that even with demonic back-up, we could not hope to defeat a manticore army of more than a few thousand.’
‘How many can the Haleklinders field?’
‘More than that, possibly much more than that.’
Henry said, ‘We were wondering, Mr Fogarty, if you could help.’
Fogarty’s voice gave a tinny sigh. ‘We’ve been through this before, Henry. Even if I could raise an army here, you know how dangerous that would be.’
The trouble was Henry didn’t. They had been down this road before, ever since the time Mr Fogarty had let slip his discovery that Emperor Scolitandes the Weedy once raised a battalion of the dead to help in a skirmish against the Ancient Theclinae. He’d lost, as it happened, but that was the result of bad leadership – the dead had fought brilliantly, so much so that the Theclinae never really recovered and went into decline as a culture to disappear from faerie history within a century or so. Admittedly a skirmish fell short of a war and a battalion was a far cry from an army, but if Mr Fogarty was prepared to bring across even a few thousand troops, it was bound to stop the Haleklinders in their tracks. Not even manticores could prevail against death.
Henry said, ‘I realise there’s a risk involved, but not half as great a risk as facing the manticores without help. If we don’t do something -’ He nearly said, If you don’t do something, but stopped himself just in time, ‘- the Haleklind Table of Seven will rule the entire Realm before the year is out.’
‘I want to talk to you about something, Henry,’ Fogarty said; and there was a note in his voice that made Henry instantly uneasy. His unease increased as Mr Fogarty hesitated. Mr Fogarty never hesitated about anything. He was the most decisive, straightforward man Henry had ever known.
‘What?’ Henry asked, when he could stand it no longer. He glanced at Blue, who was frowning.
Eventually Mr Fogarty said, ‘I’m leaving.’
Henry found himself staring at the Charaxes ark. ‘Leaving?’ he echoed. He wanted to ask where. He wanted to ask why. But he was afraid to ask either.
In a tone that was almost conversational, Mr Fogarty asked, ‘You ever wondered, Henry, why your grandfather didn’t come back to give you help and advice after he died.’
‘I never knew my grandfather,’ Henry said. ‘Neither of them. They were both dead years before I was born.’
‘Bad example,’ Mr Fogarty muttered. ‘All right. Have you ever wondered why kind, loving parents who die never come back to help the children they leave behind? Or hardly ever? Don’t even pop in for a word of reassurance? I’m all right, even if I’m dead… I still think about you… You’ll find a few quid in the biscuit tin… that sort of thing?’
‘Because the dead can’t come back?’ Henry ventured.
‘Are you stupid or what, Henry?’ Mr Fogarty asked crossly. ‘You’re talking to me now. You’re asking me to raise a bloody army. You’ve read the ghost stories. Of course the dead can come back. It’s not even all that difficult. Look how many seances go on back home. There’s a spiritualist church in every city – mightn’t be very big, but they’re there.’
A little stung by the stupid remark, Henry said, ‘Then they do come back – communicate anyway – through mediums.’ He was increasingly confused about what Mr Fogarty was getting at.
‘That’s the children getting in touch with them! The dead aren’t making the first move,’ Mr Fogarty told him impatiently. ‘How many people die in our worlds every day? Millions and millions. And how many pop back for a quick word with the loved one they left behind? A handful. A tiny handful. And you never wondered why that was?’
‘Actually -’ Henry began.
But Mr Fogarty cut him short. ‘I’ll tell you why it is. Life’s a lot different when you’re dead. You see things differently. I don’t just mean you change your opinions about things – although you definitely do that all right – I mean your perception of the world is different. You can see time, for heaven’s sake. That was my biggest surprise: took some getting used to, I can tell you.’
That meant he could see the future, Henry thought with a sudden surge of excitement. He could tell what was going to happen, how they might get Mella back, exactly when the Haleklinders were going to invade. He opened his mouth to ask a string of questions, but Mr Fogarty cut him short again.
‘And before you start wittering at me with all sorts of stupid questions, that doesn’t mean I can tell you the future,’ Mr Fogarty said. ‘When you’re dead, you see time like a huge field. People go wandering all over it. You can see where they’ve been, but they decide where they’re going, so everybody’s future changes all the time depending on where you decide to go. I can tell you what might happen, not what definitely will, but I could do that before I died. You could do it for yourself if you ever bothered to think.’ He coughed, as if clearing the throat he no longer possessed. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to get sidetracked. The point is things change when you die. You change. Things that used to be important just aren’t important any more. Don’t get me wrong: people are important – you still love them or hate them – but what happens to them isn’t as important as they think it is because you see where they’ve been and where they could be going and how they could double back and so forth.’
Henry glanced at Blue again. This wasn’t making very much sense to him. ‘Mr Fogarty,’ he said, ‘this isn’t making very much sense to me.