Destroyer of Worlds Page 15

  ‘It’s some kind of viewing thing, like the Wish-Post in the Great Courts,’ Mallory said. He paused. ‘Where’s Hunter and Jack?’

  The scene shifted to reveal the cavern of bones. ‘Now why are they not with the others?’ Caitlin asked.

  The scene shifted again, this time unprompted. Mallory looking younger, happier, standing in Salisbury Cathedral. Caitlin standing in the rain, crying, covered in clay. Stonehenge in the morning sun, Blue Fire flickering above each trilithon. Church on his knees before the Libertarian, covered in blood. Someone reading a book, looking directly at Mallory and Caitlin.

  A bolt of pain struck Mallory between the eyes, and instead of looking into the egg, something was looking out at him. He had the overwhelming sensation of a crushing consciousness focusing the full extent of its power upon him. It sizzled into his brain, crawling into his thoughts, turning over every aspect of who he was and what he wanted. Flames flickered around his perception and the image of the Burning Man began to fall into relief around them.

  Caitlin grabbed Mallory and propelled him out of the active zone around the egg. He cried out as the consciousness was painfully torn from his mind. ‘The Void,’ he gasped. ‘It was looking into me. It recognised me.’ He sucked in a breath of air. ‘It knows who all of us are, every human. It knows our strengths, and our weaknesses. Our desires.’

  ‘I think we make a vow not to touch anything else in this world,’ Caitlin said, helping Mallory to his feet. ‘Nothing good’s going to come out of anything here.’

  As Mallory recovered, they heard a noise coming from the direction of the two Rebirth Boxes. Creeping back to the chamber, they saw an arm of twisted blackthorn rise from one of the boxes, and then another. The Hortha rose up and turned its crumpled-paper face towards them.

  In that briefest contact, Mallory had a premonition of his own death. Chilled, he guided Caitlin quickly away. While the Hortha adjusted to the transition to the Grim Lands, they moved quickly through the dark chambers until they found the exit tunnel that Veitch had described. It led out into a fissure in the rock in which the temple had been carved. Overhead, a slate-grey sky was occasionally revealed by gaps in the constantly drifting mist. Black shapes moved across it; birds, they guessed, although the perspective suggested something much larger. Every sound was dampened, the rattle of a kicked stone so muffled it could barely be heard six feet away.

  They scrambled up a scree-slope onto a bleak, featureless terrain of hard rock and shale, though the mist made it impossible to see too far ahead. Although there was no breeze, the mist continued to fold and twist, licking at them, enswathing them until they moved on rapidly to leave it behind.

  ‘Nice place,’ Mallory said. ‘Reminds me of a day I spent in Harlow.’

  ‘I guess the dead don’t need much in the way of scenery.’

  The timbre of Caitlin’s voice had changed subtly. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, but Mallory was always struck by the slight physical alterations that came over her when one of her personalities took over. This one he recognised as the Morrigan, not in full control, but far back in her head, slackly taking the reins.

  ‘We got out of that temple just in time,’ he said. ‘We’re not leaving a trail here. That should make it difficult for the Hortha to follow us.’

  ‘No trail you can see,’ Caitlin corrected.

  ‘You’re not going to let me hide away in my all-is-right-with-the-world fantasies, are you?’

  ‘That won’t benefit us. We need to be aware, to keep moving. If that thing crossed the barrier into the Grim Lands, it’s not going to give up easily.’

  ‘The worst thing about that lantern is that it gives no indication of distance. What happens if we’ve got to follow that flame for thousands of miles?’

  ‘I’m not sure distance or time mean much here. It just . . . is . . .’

  Caitlin’s voice dried up as the first feature emerged from the mist: a pair of iron gates in a Victorian style, one of them hanging askew from a broken hinge. They were supported by two stone columns on which black gargoyles perched. In the centre of the wrought-iron arch above the gate was a skull resting on crossed bones. On either side, rusted iron railings stretched out until they were lost in the shifting mist. Beyond sprawled a graveyard: markers, mausoleums, tombs, statues of weeping angels, some of them sagging at angles or broken, suggesting great age. The lichen-covered stone glowed spectrally in the strange, diffuse light. Ivy grew up some of the monuments, obscuring their meaning, and long, yellowing grass grew amongst the graves, along with wild flowers that were splashes of queasy colour in the grey.

  Apprehensively, Mallory and Caitlin halted at the gate, but the Wayfinder continued to point directly ahead.

  ‘You’re just asking for trouble going through a place like that in a place like this,’ Mallory said.

  Caitlin followed the line of the railings into the mist. ‘I have a horrible feeling this graveyard goes on a long, long way. I don’t think we’ll be able to go around it.’

  Mallory sighed. ‘Yep. Makes perfect sense.’

  Standing before the gate, he glanced up at the arch and briefly thought he saw his own face on the skull. The illusion passed quickly and he took hold of the sagging gate, which emitted a protesting, resonant scream from its rusted, long-unused hinges. It was the only sound that carried any distance, and seemed to go on and on and on into the mist.

  ‘I’m living in a really bad horror movie,’ he said, his palms unbearably sweaty. If the Hortha was on the move, it would have heard that metallic wrenching.

  Once again they came to a halt, on the threshold. Every sense told them not to enter the graveyard, but the Wayfinder continued to urge them on.

  ‘Come on - don’t be scared!’

  The voice startled them. Mallory exchanged a glance with Caitlin and then drew his sword. The Blue Fire around the blade was barely evident. Caitlin reached behind and removed her axe from its harness.

  ‘What fine weapons! What a sword! What an axe! But that sword . . . yes! One of the Three Great Swords of Existence, if I am not mistaken. And I am rarely mistaken, unless I am in my cups, which, admittedly, has not been much of an option in recent times.’

  The deeply theatrical voice hid any true emotion. Mallory had an impression of some old stage ham, living on past glories. ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  ‘A friend. Nothing more.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt that.’

  As Mallory and Caitlin crossed the threshold, they felt a sudden tingle of uneasiness as if the barrier had been real and not just imaginary. Whoever was there was hidden amongst the clutter of mausoleums and grave markers.

  ‘Don’t worry! I won’t bite! Indeed, I am utterly desperate for invigorating human conversation. Why, we are social beings. We are not meant for this dreary, unstimulating place - where, I might add, I should not be. But enough about that travesty for now, lest I find myself carried away on a wave of bitterness, which will only wash me up on the bleak shores of despair.’

  Mallory pushed through the long grass, searching all around. The mist hid objects, then revealed them, then hid them again, so they quickly lost all sense of direction. They could no longer see the gate, although they had not gone far.

  ‘But as the great Shelley said,’ the speaker continued, ‘ “Some say that gleams of a remoter world visit the soul in sleep - that death is slumber.” So perhaps I . . . perhaps all of us happy breed . . . are only sleeping.’

  As Mallory and Caitlin rounded an ivy-clustered mausoleum they finally found the speaker, sitting cross-legged on a tomb. He was a strange figure. Though in his mid-forties, he had long, silver hair and a gaunt face. He wore a black suit, shiny from wear, offset by a flamboyant red brocade waistcoat. His boots were worn and holed on the soles.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Caitlin asked.

  ‘Just resting my old bones.’ He chuckled, revealing a gap between nicotine-stained teeth.

  ‘Who are you?’ Mallory asked.
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  ‘Who am I? The great existential question. Who. Am. I. There are many possible answers—’

  ‘Who are you?’ Mallory repeated fiercely.

  ‘I am the bard of the hedgerows, the king of the open road, alley sloper, gourmand and wit.’ He held his arms wide. ‘My name is Callow.’

  Chapter Four

  DEATH AT THE GROGHAAN GATE

  1

  The Halls of the Drakusa were endless, and silent. The tip of the Spear of Lugh burning with Blue Fire to light her path, Ruth led the way through chamber after chamber where the shadows pressed hard against them and the oppressive sense of threat grew by the moment. More energy burned at the rear of the column where Church and Veitch had their swords drawn to defend the group from any attack.

  ‘This place is a bleedin’ maze,’ Veitch hissed. ‘We could be going round and round in circles.’

  ‘Shavi seems to have his bearings, or at least his eye does.’ Church paused to listen intently as he had done so many times since Virginia had warned them that they were being pursued.

  ‘Anything?’ Veitch asked.

  Church shook his head.

  ‘Maybe she was just spooked by the dark. She’s only a kid.’

  ‘The noise—’

  ‘Echoes. Stones.’ He wasn’t even convincing himself. ‘Let’s close the door on this room. Barricade it. If there is anything behind us, it might slow them down.’

  Church agreed, and they called on Ruth to stop the column while they ran the length of the huge chamber. The doors closed easily and quietly, and there was a heavy oaken bar to lock them in place. Then they dragged numerous chunks of shattered masonry against the doors to add to the barricade.

  Veitch wasn’t impressed. ‘Wish we could booby trap it as well. Blow the bastards up.’

  Church laughed. ‘I don’t know how I survived without you, Ryan.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ He grinned to himself before growing serious once more. ‘We’re doing all right, aren’t we?’

  ‘We’ve not killed each other yet.’

  ‘Yeah. After recent times, that’s a definite success story.’

  Halfway across the chamber, Church’s eye was caught by a disturbance in the dust off to one side of the path they had taken. They’d been careful to obscure their tracks as much as possible, but here an arrow had been drawn with a symbol he didn’t understand, and a serpentine squiggle that he guessed was meant to signify a dragon.

  ‘Ryan,’ he called quietly.

  Veitch skidded to a halt and ran back. When he saw the mark in the dust, he snarled, ‘We’ve got a snake in the group. Or a spider.’

  Church nodded. ‘They’re marking the way for whatever’s coming up behind. I didn’t see anybody do this, but then we were always looking back.’ He glanced towards the group, who were all looking his way. ‘And now they know we’re on to them.’

  Veitch scrubbed out the sign. ‘Bollocks. I’m going to carve it out of them.’

  ‘We can’t torture everyone until we find out who it is.’

  Veitch still appeared to consider this a viable option.

  ‘We might be able to use it in our favour,’ Church said.

  ‘Play it cool, screw with their heads a bit?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Veitch nodded. ‘Works for me.’

  Church looked back at his friends’ faces. ‘I know we were warned there was a traitor in the group. I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s the girl - Virginia,’ Veitch whispered. ‘Got to be. Look at it logically. How the hell did someone that young get away from the Enemy Fortress? Come on - millions of the worst things there are all around and she manages to wriggle out, travel God knows how many miles and then just hooks up with Decebalus?’

  Church eyed the fragile girl. ‘They let her out?’

  ‘Sent her back, primed to explode right in the middle of us.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to her, Ryan. I believe what she’s saying.’

  ‘She believes it - that’s the point. You know how clever all these bastards are at manipulating us poor humans. She doesn’t know she’s set up to do us all in.’ He paused. ‘Same as I didn’t know back in the Battle of London.’

  A moment of tension passed quickly, dismissed by Veitch with a quick smile. ‘Don’t blame you, though. Not any more. Nobody could have known.’ A pause. ‘You couldn’t have saved me.’

  When they returned to the group, Ruth asked what they had been inspecting, but they brushed her off with a comment about feeling for vibrations of pursuit in the floor. She didn’t believe them, but said nothing. Church carefully watched the others’ faces, but no one showed any suspicious sign.

  Two chambers on and Shavi brought them to a halt. He was rubbing his eye as if it was causing him some discomfort. ‘There is something around here,’ he said hesitantly, before pointing tentatively to a room off to their left that they had all missed.

  ‘What’s in there?’ Laura asked.

  ‘I see . . . connections,’ Shavi began. ‘Places where the Invisible World interacts with our own. Something in that room calls to me.’

  They all hesitated until Ruth pushed her way through them to the chamber’s door. ‘We can’t ignore anything that might help us,’ she said.

  ‘And we can’t ignore anything that might, like, kill us,’ Laura added tartly.

  The chamber was more intimate than the others, with a series of runic symbols painted on the walls in an oily black that had not become obscured by dust like the many murals they had passed. As Shavi ventured into the chamber, one of the symbols began to glow faintly. Virginia buried her face in Miller’s chest. Shavi looked back and forth with urgency, seeing things that no one else could.

  ‘Shadows,’ he whispered. ‘Rising from the stones. Locked here for an age.’

  Suddenly he grew stock still, his eyes fixed on a place far beyond the four walls. A droplet of blood trickled from his nose. His mouth opened and his lips moved, but no sound issued for a full five seconds, and then it came with a boom that made their ears ring: a word of power.

  Gradually, the shadows became visible, faint smudges in the air coalescing on one form standing in a proscribed circle etched into the stone flags. In the shimmering air, a bearded, long-haired man appeared, more than six feet tall, wearing furs and chain mail, a shield strapped to his back, swords and axes hanging from him, and a spear with a silver tip clutched in his right hand. He wore a horned helmet of black and silver that protected his cheekbones and nose, so that his eyes lay deep in shadow. He appeared grainy, not wholly there, like a bad hologram.

  ‘The Age of Warriors has passed,’ he said in a deep, rasping voice that did not sound human. Behind him, in the air itself, images of what he described played out in vivid colour. ‘Since time before time, the Drakusa have been the greatest race. Our forges produced weapons that could bring the stars down from the heavens. Our armies scourged the Far Lands and the fields and hills ran red with blood. No one could stand before us, and our battles became legends, sung over fires in the long nights, reducing the women to tears at the wonder of our courage. And yet the Drakusa are no more.

  ‘From our victories we forged a peace based on blood and iron - a warrior’s peace, in which no man or woman lived in fear, a golden age of prosperity for all. And yet the Drakusa are no more.

  ‘How could we fall so far, so hard? Here, then, is a cautionary tale, people-yet-to-come. Here is our gift to you, the race of warriors that lies beyond the sun. Know your enemies. Do not look for the iron raised against you, the sword or the axe or the spear. Do not seek out eyes that promise hatred and death. The true enemies are cleverer. They pose as friends. They pretend to be part of your dreams, and to offer you your heart’s desire. They stand at your side, and then move to your back when the time comes.’

  In the air around him, the shifting scenes of carnage and warfare became mellower. Autumnal hues painted deep forests and a low sun behind mountaintops.

  ‘Se
asons turn. Nothing abides for ever. Even the greatest can be laid low in the blink of an eye.’

  Across the image, shadows flitted, their shape changing as they moved. Familiar glints of silver flashed like the sun.

  ‘Caraprix,’ Church said.

  ‘The Drakusa were torn down by the ones we raised highest,’ the warrior continued. ‘Know this: the Caraprix cannot be trusted. They are the enemy of all there is. Their purpose is to wipe clean, like the maggots in a corpse leaving only bones behind. When they turned on us, we could do nothing. Our weapons meant nothing. Our courage meant nothing. One thing we created in the final days to prevent our destruction, but time slipped through our fingers like the sands of Far-el-Quah. It waits here still. In the end, everything we had achieved in our great age was wiped away. Nothing remains. Know the terrible sadness of the Drakusa, warriors-yet-to-be, and despair.’