Destroyer of Worlds kots-3 Page 3

  An accusing finger points at Mallory. 'Stay back!' she says, and then to Decebalus, 'He tried to kill me!'

  'When?' the barbarian asks.

  'Not five minutes ago, during the attack.'

  'Impossible. Mallory was at my side then, up on the roof.'

  Marie wavers, her eyes flashing from side to side. 'He tried to kill me, I tell you!'

  Decebalus motions for Mallory to step back as he attends to the young woman. 'This is not the truth, Marie. Either you are mistaken, or it is some kind of magic.'

  'Magic, then!' She stares at Mallory accusingly. 'His face, Decebalus. He came at me as the fire rained down, in the dark of the upper floors. Instinct made me turn at the last. Good fortune was all I had, but it was enough. I did not see his weapon, but I felt it as it tore through my flesh. I did see his face.' She points again. 'And I ran… here-'

  'Think, Marie,' Decebalus says sharply. 'You ran into us — Mallory was not pursuing you. He was ahead.'

  The woman wavers, tries to make sense. 'Then who…?'

  'The one who's already killed two Brothers and Sisters of Dragons,' Mallory says. 'The Enemy's sent an assassin to pick us off one by one.'

  'If it uses your face, then it attempts to undermine our spirit,' Decebalus says gravely. 'If it can use any face, then who can we trust?'

  Troubled, Mallory and Decebalus deliver Marie to a healer and then seek out comfort and the sun in the herb garden, which lies beyond a maze of lavender in a walled area at the rear of the palace. The air is heavy with rich perfumes. Decebalus and Mallory find Aula tending her herbs, as she does at that time every day. At first Mallory does not recognise her. Her blond hair shimmering in the sun, the Roman Briton's face is strikingly peaceful as she immerses herself in the garden's atmosphere, a far cry from the fierce looks that usually accompany her caustic tones. Her mask returns when she sees them both.

  'So little to do you must trouble me here?' she says tartly. 'No wonder we face disaster.'

  'Your day would be bereft without a visit from the one who gives your life meaning,' Decebalus replies with a broad grin.

  Aula snorts unconvincingly then turns to Mallory. 'She plays in the maze,' she says.

  Past clouds of honeybees, Mallory weaves through the heavily scented bushes and eventually sees the top of a young girl's head in the centre of the maze. Virginia Dare never smiles. Occasionally, a heartbreaking, haunted look will appear in the depths of her eyes. In that moment it is possible to comprehend the many atrocities she has witnessed since the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders kidnapped her and her fellow settlers from Roanoke in the New World almost five hundred years ago. She has spent her formative years in the heart of horrors, the Void's Fortress on the edge of the Far Lands, until her escape. Though only eight years old, her eyes say she is a hundred.

  'Is it time?' She cradles a doll made for her by one of the kitchen staff who had hoped it would bring back some aspect of childhood.

  'Not yet. But soon. I need to ask you if you are prepared to do it.'

  'You have asked me twice already.'

  'Now I'm asking you a third time.'

  'Yes,' she says without hesitation. 'I will travel with you to the Enemy Fortress, and show you the secret way I discovered under the walls.'

  'You know what it will mean?'

  'You want to protect me, Mallory,' she replies in too-old tones, 'but it is too late for that. I am ruined.'

  Mallory cannot look in her face; it makes him too desperately sad.

  'She'll be fine.'

  Frequently, these days, he never hears Caitlin come up on him. She stands at the entrance to the maze's central rest zone, still slick with sweat, holding her axe loosely. Mallory searches her eyes to see who is in control this time. He doesn't know why he tries, for even when he sees the bright innocence of Amy, there is always the dark of the Morrigan just behind.

  'It's me, Mallory. Caitlin. The one, the only, the original.' She smiles, kisses him on the cheek.

  Virginia hugs Caitlin tightly, the first time she has looked like a little girl. 'Have you come to play with me?'

  'I said I would, didn't I?'

  With a whisper of desperate thanks, Virginia buries her face in Caitlin's midriff. 'No hide and seek,' she says. 'I don't like that.'

  When Virginia has raced away to fetch a board game from her room, Mallory observes, 'She likes you.'

  'We have an understanding.'

  'I still don't want to take her to that place.'

  'She's tougher than you think, Mallory. When it comes down to it, we all are.'

  He watches the bees, and the clouds scudding across the blue sky. 'Do you think it's enough?' he enquires. 'Wanting to do the right thing?'

  'No, it's not enough,' she replies. 'But we do it anyway.'

  6

  And so you move again through the twisting, ever-multiplying branches of the World-Tree, and now you watch the walls of Asgard crumble. From out of the swirling blizzard, blazing rocks crash with a steady beat of destruction. The Enemy's siege machines never rest. The monstrous troops wash out of the snow in a black tide that Hunter wills to ebb but which never does. They swirl around the foot of the walls, throwing up ladders as quickly as the Aesir can despatch those who scurry like insects to the ramparts. But their greatest weapon is insubstantial: a potent atmosphere of despair radiating from every fibre of their being, infecting any who allow their defences to slip; a moment's doubt is all that's needed. Hunter sees shoulders sag, heads bow, weapons fall to their sides.

  'It is only a matter of time before we are overrun,' Baldur mutters in a daze of abject disbelief.

  'This is a taste of what's to come,' Hunter intones above the din of battle cries, clashing weapons, the screams of the dying and the constant howl of the icy gale. 'Nobody survives on their own.'

  Amidst peals of deafening thunder, a storm cloud races along the ramparts towards them, lightning bolts flying in all directions. Only when it nears does Hunter recognise Thor, his face consumed by volcanic fury. Swinging Mjolnir with the devastating force of a hurricane, he shatters the face of a Redcap attempting to climb over the wall. The god grips the siege ladder and thrusts it back out into the blizzard. Howls rise up from those falling below.

  'Asgard shall not fall!' he bellows to the wind.

  At intermittent points along the walls, the lie is being given to his words. Hordes of decaying Lament-Brood haul themselves over the ramparts, losing an arm here, even a head there, but continuing relentlessly. Aesir warriors run to confront them at the points where they have broken through the defences, but the Lament-Brood attack the moment their feet touch the walkway.

  An Aesir warrior is impaled on a rusty sword embedded in the handless wrist of one of the Lament-Brood. The sword is roughly twisted and the warrior explodes in a cloud of golden moths gleaming against the white snow, a single moment of beauty at the instant of his death.

  All along the walls, the Aesir stop what they are doing and watch, aghast, disbelieving, fixated on each individual moth as it struggles to pick a path through the gusting snowflakes.

  A single teardrop rolls slowly over Thor's cheek.

  And then along the ramparts bursts of golden moths rise up here and there, the interval between each explosion growing shorter, like bursts of smoke and light in a magician's stage show.

  'No!' Thor thunders, and renews his furious hammer-attack.

  The Aesir return to action, blades and axes flashing, but Hunter can see something has gone out of them. Their attacks are less sure; they glance at each other, seeking reassurance, finding none.

  Forseti, one of the younger gods who had been responsible for justice in the city, is surrounded by six Redcaps. Before Hunter can react, the god is hacked to pieces.

  As the moths soar, Baldur cries out, 'My son!' Consumed by grief, he races towards the Redcaps.

  'We must leave.' At Hunter's shoulder, Math's four-fold mask turns implacably. 'There is no hope left here.'

  F
rom his backpack, Hunter removes a silver-scaled gauntlet with brass talons. 'It would be impolite to leave at the height of the party.'

  'What is that?' Math asks suspiciously. 'A weapon?'

  'The Court of the Final Word called it the Balor Claw.' Gritting his teeth, Hunter slips on the gauntlet. 'And now it's mine.'

  He arrives at the fray as the Redcaps surround Baldur, as they had done his son. One sweep of the Balor Claw takes the first Redcap apart. Another falls as he turns, the Claw breaking the bonds of his body at the molecular level. After his slaughter in the Court of the Final Word, Hunter has grown used to the sight of bodies unfurling, but the other Redcaps are, for the first time in their existence, rooted. In a frenzy of despair, Baldur despatches three with his sword and Hunter kills the last. Catching his breath, the god represses his grief and looks Hunter deep in the eyes. In that one moment, he accepts everything Hunter has attempted to communicate to the council.

  'The age of gods and men is passing,' Baldur admits. 'It is time to make the final stand.'

  The Aesir fight furiously, but the Enemy keep coming, devoid of fear, wave after wave with no purpose save destruction. Their atmosphere of despair is corrosive. The clouds of golden moths are now indistinguishable from the snow.

  'Fall back!' Baldur yells. 'To the Groerland Square!' Piercing the crackling lightning, he grips Thor's arm. 'This is no place to make a stand. We must leave with the Brother of Dragons.'

  'But the Golden City will fall!'

  'Stone and wood, brother. It can be rebuilt. The true glory of the Aesir is a light that must never be extinguished.'

  Thor weighs the words for only a second and then roars, 'Fall back! Do as the Bleeding God says!' He grins at Baldur. 'Lead the way, brother. I will protect your back.'

  Baldur snatches the horn from his side and blows one blast, loud and clear, rising up above the howling gale and the thunder of battle. Along the walls, the gods retreat, down the steps to the avenues of Asgard radiating out from the Groerland Square.

  'You've made the right choice,' Hunter says as he and Math follow Baldur into the streaming mass of warriors.

  'Asgard is surrounded. You can free us from this place?'

  'As long as your man with the hammer can keep the Enemy off our tails for a little longer.'

  'He does not stand alone.' Baldur indicates a balcony on a tall tower where Freyja stands, arms raised to the sky. 'She uses her seior in the city's defence.' The direction of the wind changes suddenly, hurling many of the Enemy to their deaths from the walls.

  The Aesir will make good allies, Hunter thinks, but will even they be enough?

  In the Groerland Square, a large public space centred on a statue of the World-Tree, Yggdrasil, the axis mundi around which all reality turns, the gods silently look towards Hunter, the unfamiliar expression of confusion etched in their faces. The only sound is the heartbeat of the Enemy's missiles against the walls.

  'Are you sure you can take them all?' Hunter asks.

  'We shall go by Winter-side,' Math replies. 'There will be no Enemy there yet.'

  At the foot of the Yggdrasil statue, the sorcerer utters an incantation in a language Hunter does not recognise. Amidst a sound like rending metal, a section of air as big as a barn door shimmers and appears to become a two-dimensional sketch of what had previously been there. Math pulls it open to reveal a cavernous darkness.

  'We go into the World-Tree, to follow the branches to other worlds,' Math explains.

  'It's just a statue,' Hunter replies.

  'The depiction of the reality is the reality. Have you not learned anything?' As Math beckons, Baldur hesitantly leads the Aesir into the dark.

  Hunter waits until Thor and Freyja come running from the battle-lines. Tears stream down the thunder god's face.

  'The Eternal City is falling,' he says. 'How can this be?'

  'You'll get your chance to make amends,' Hunter replies. 'This isn't the end.'

  Along the western wall, a sheet of flames rises up. They watch it for a moment and then step into the dark. The door that is not a door closes behind them, and the snow fills their footprints, and for the first time there is silence within the walls of the Eternal City.

  7

  In your dreams, you see these things. Across the worlds, there is a sense of winter approaching, of the dying of the light. The steady rhythm in the ground and behind the sky now sounds less like a heartbeat and more like the ticking of a clock, growing imperceptibly slower.

  You see all this. You know. You are now a part of it.

  8

  You travel across the infinite Far Lands to a point that is neither here nor there, that anomalous place on the distant edge, where the Otherworld breaks up and opens onto another infinity.

  Words mean nothing here. Ideas have more substance than things. But you see as you move that numbers underpin everything. Repeating patterns that form the basis of a greater pattern. At a distance, the mathematical complexity creates the illusion of chaos. It is all random, you would have said in another time, under other circumstances.

  Move closer and you see the truth. The structure. The plan. You understand the mechanics of Chaos Theory, without needing to know the name, that within seemingly chaotic systems there is a hidden order, masked by a complexity so great our brains cannot comprehend it.

  Five, you say. That is one of the numbers. It is familiar by now. Comforting. You know it well.

  But there is another important number, too. Hidden till now, waiting to be called into the Light.

  Odin, the great god of the Nordic lands, hanged himself on the cosmic ash tree Yggdrasil for nine nights in order to learn the wisdom of the dead. That great tree of life, around which all reality revolves, sheltered nine worlds beneath its branches.

  Nine books of wisdom tell a story that is more than a story, in which you now play a part. Nine symbolises completeness in the Baha'i faith. To the Celts, the ninth wave is the boundary between our world and the Otherworld. King Arthur was brought in on the ninth wave. The Chinese consider nine to be lucky because, in their language, it sounds the same as the word for 'long-lasting'. The Japanese consider nine to be unlucky because it sounds like the Japanese word for 'distress' or 'pain'. The cat is believed to have nine lives.

  The Forbidden City in Beijing is filled with the number nine. It is linked with the Chinese dragon, a symbol of power and magic. There are nine forms of the dragon. It has nine attributes, and nine children.

  There are secrets here, you realise, if only you could divine them.

  But you are distracted by a terrible sight. The Fortress of the Void sprawls across a blasted, desolate terrain of rocks and dust. It is bigger than any city you have ever seen, as big as a country, and from a distance it resembles a gigantic squatting insect. Indeed, part of the city appears to be organic. Amongst the walls of fused volcanic glass and the detritus of failed civilisations are areas that appear to be constructed from spoiled meat. It continues to grow by the day, new wings, new towers spreading in all directions, consuming the land.

  The Fortress swarms with the worst that the universe has to offer, not just the Lament-Brood, the Redcaps, the Gehennis and Baobhan Sith, but things worse still, things you cannot bear to examine for fear you would be driven insane.

  And above it all towers the Burning Man, so close you can feel the heat from its blazing outline. Here is the place where it was born. Within the Burning Man you can see writhing figures being consumed. These are gods, or ones who consider themselves gods, providing the fuel that gives the Burning Man shape, and allowing it to shine like an infernal beacon across all worlds. You cannot hear their screams, but you can see their mouths fixed in a continual 'O'.

  On a balcony overlooking the suffering stands a man living a new life of perpetual cruelty, a mirror-image man who still sees echoes of his former existence; but he can discard them, for he is better, at peace now, unlike before. He emphasises his flamboyance, wearing all black like a silent-movie vil
lain, or all white, however the mood takes him. His eyes are blood-red, with no lids, so he can never shut out the horror he sees, the horror he causes. He is wedded to the idea of peace and stability through control, not the torments that come from the uncertainty of free will. He believes hope is a debilitating virus, and love, and that contentment only comes from not looking to the distant horizon. It is a simple philosophy, but many things spin from it.

  'They may be the most efficient warriors in all the worlds, but they could do with a few tips on interior design,' the Libertarian says. He takes a deep draught of sour air and turns back to the austere chamber where fires rage continually in the braziers, a futile attempt to bring warmth to bodies that can feel none.

  Niamh, former queen of the Court of the Soaring Spirit, now truly queen of the Waste Lands, wears a black headdress with six horns, like the arms of Shiva, and ebony armour etched with silver. She is filled with spiders. She considers a geometric design that resembles a mandala, or a Mandelbrot set, revolving slowly in mid-air. It glows gently with a rich, white light. Though you only see three dimensions, she sees more. It is a map of the worlds, and the trail they make through time. Her brow knits, for what she sees changes continually. Nothing is fixed; everything is fluid. She finds that puzzling.

  The Libertarian takes her hand and pulls her away from the map and into his arms. 'Don't you find that all this power and destruction make the sap rise?' he says, pressing his groin into hers.

  She smiles, not without affection. 'I find the patterns of Existence a mystery. My heart yearned for you from the earliest times, in your past life, and we danced back and forth across the ages, until it appeared we would never share the same space. Yet here we are.'

  'All good things come to those who wait.'

  'Together now, and always, and in all time before this moment.'

  A headache stabs briefly at the Libertarian, a nagging thought, hardening by the moment, of troubled times ahead, sights, disturbingly, that he cannot see, an area of insecurity, of disconnection.