The last few gurgling sounds were almost unintelligible. Her body lost all shape and definition, washed away by falling waters, and her face sank back into the waterfall and was gone. The steam disappeared as the waters cooled, and the hazy mist slowly reestablished itself. Molly sniffed loudly.
Demon lady wailing for her human lover. Your family really does have a gift for messing up lives. Doesn t it?
You women always stick together, I said.
The conversation with the undine having proved rather less helpful than I d hoped for, Molly and I walked on across the grounds, leaving the lake behind us and heading towards the small copse of beech trees. Not an area I d ever approached by choice before. The grassy lawns blazed a brilliant green under our feet, and the sky was almost painfully blue. A perfect summer s day. No clouds, no birds, not even the buzz of insects going about their business. The grounds were as still and silent as a graveyard. Someone or something had reached out and stripped the grounds of every living thing that should have been there.
Why didn t our outer defences kick in automatically? I said to distract myself. I mean, this whole place is lousy with built-in protections. Robot guns, sonic weapons, nerve gasses, stroboscopic lights and hallucinogenic mists, and a whole bunch of things the Geneva Convention s never even heard of. Not to mention all the magical protections, the shaped curses and invisible flying hexes They couldn t have been off-line; they weren t linked to the other Hall s Operations and War rooms.
You re not thinking it through, said Molly. The Hall, your Hall, disappeared the moment Alpha Red Alpha was activated. There was no detectable attack from outside, so your protections never knew anything was wrong till it was all over.
All right, then, clever boots. What has happened to all the local wildlife? The gryphons and the unicorns? The birds and the bees?
Your enemy must have boosted Alpha Red Alpha s field when they activated it by remote control, said Molly.
To make sure they didn t miss any Droods who might be out and about in the grounds. So everything living here went where the Hall went. It s what I would have done.
I had to smile, just a little. You don t miss a trick, do you, when it comes to death and destruction?
Years of practice, Molly said blithely. Eddie why have we stopped here? I am looking around me and all I see is trees. Really quite boring trees.
I looked carefully around me. We re not alone here. It s just I haven t called them yet. I m going to have to ask you to trust me here, Molly. Trust me to know what I m doing.
Oh, that s always dangerous, said Molly.
Why are you looking so upset, Eddie?
You don t remember this part of the grounds, do you? I said carefully. We have been here before, in these trees.
No, said Molly, scowling around her. Should I remember?
Yes, I said. We came through here when we broke into the grounds together. This is where the family keeps its scarecrows.
I called to them silently, reaching out through the authority still built into my torc, and one by one they materialised out of nowhere, appearing all around us. I knew some of them. Laura Lye, the water elemental assassin, also known as the Liquidator. She drowned three Drood children before we brought her down. Mad Frankie Phantasm, who drifted through bedroom doors to murder innocents in their sleep. Roland the Headless Gunner, who should have stayed dead in Africa. And many more infamous names. One by one they blinked into existence, acknowledging the power I had over them as a Drood. Scarecrows, all of them, made from the bodies of our fallen enemies. Held back from the release of death to guard our grounds for us, forever and a day, or until they wore out.
They formed circles and then rows around us, filling the copse of trees. They wore battered clothes from many periods of history. Dead but not departed, because my family wouldn t let them go. Just enough life left in them to torment them. Because no one threatens us where we live and gets away with it.
Molly moved in close beside me. She remembered the scarecrows now.
My family makes scarecrows out of the bodies of our most hated enemies. Because we can, and because we believe in making the punishment fit the crime. Their faces are weather-beaten skin, stretched taut as parchment and just as brittle, cracked here and there by exposure to the elements. Thick tufts of straw protrude from their ears and mouths, but we leave their eyes. So we can see their suffering. Our enemies may hate us, but my family hates harder and longer. If you listen in on the right supernatural frequency, you can hear the scarecrows screaming.
I thought we destroyed them said Molly. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
They can t be destroyed, I said. That s the point. Tear them to pieces, burn them up; they just come back again. For as long as they re needed. They ll endure for as long as their scarecrow bodies last, and my family makes them well, to last centuries.
Where are they? said Molly. When they aren t here?
Close by, I said. Hanging on their scarecrow crosses, waiting to be called. Don t look at me like that, Molly. These are my family s worst and most vicious enemies. They deserve this.
Do they? What about him?
She stabbed a hand shaking with emotion at one of the more recent scarecrows. The straw-stuffed thing we d made out of the Blue Fairy s body.
Half elf, half Druid, we took him in and made him part of the family. Even though we knew what he was and what he d done in the past. I vouched for him. And then we went to war together, against the Loathly Ones, and he struck down a Drood in the middle of battle, from behind, and stole his torc. I trusted him, and he betrayed me. I forgave him eventually. Just before he died in the great spy game of the Independent Agent, Alexander King.
He isn t in there, I said to Molly.
He was already dead when I sent him back to the Hall. That s just his body.
But why is he here? He was your friend! How could you allow your family to make him over into that?
Because he stole a torc, I said steadily.
There is no greater crime against the Droods. Punishment, like justice, must be seen to be done. The scarecrows aren t just our defenders; they re a warning to our enemies.
He was your friend, Molly said coldly.
I wouldn t have brought him back alive, I said. But there are many kinds of duty and responsibility when you re a Drood. Why do you think I ran away first chance I got?
Sometimes your family frightens me, said Molly.
Sometimes they frighten me, I said. But we frighten our enemies more.
I turned slowly round in a circle, looking the scarecrows over carefully. More and more of them were still blinking into existence, answering my call. Dozens and dozens of them, maybe hundreds I hadn t realised there were so many. All of them standing unnaturally still, waiting for orders. Watching me with the eyes my family left them, hating and suffering and Apparently there was a limit to what the Alpha Red Alpha field could affect. Or maybe they just weren t alive enough. At least now I could make sure the Hall and grounds would be protected while I was gone.
Eddie, said Molly. I have seen and done bad things in my time, but never anything as cold-blooded as this. Enemies forced into half-life, denied the release of death, held as slaves until they wear out This isn t right, Eddie.
No, it isn t, I said. But it s necessary. There has to be someone here to fight for the Hall and the family on the few occasions, like this, when we can t fight for ourselves. There has to be something here awful enough to frighten off those who aren t frightened enough of Droods. Remember when the grounds were overrun by the army of Accelerated Men? Suicide soldiers sent in to kill us all, men and women and children? We used the scarecrows to guard the perimeter while we went out in our armour to meet the Accelerated Men head-to-head and hand-to-hand. They came to slaughter us, to wipe us out, and we killed them all. But that wasn t enough. A message had to be sent to those watching from a distance.
So we took the bodies of the Accelerated Men, all of them, and made them into scarecrows. Stuffed with straw, hanging on their crosses, waiting to be called. Because that s what you get for threatening our children.
