Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  Hmm. Well, he’s out to lunch right now. You’ll have to make do with me.

  The summit of Snowdon shone pink in the deepening dusk, as old and as mystical-looking as the surrounding countryside, a maze of velveteen valleys dotted with bracken and gorse, adorned with rivers and lakes, silvery in the sunlight. Here, he could detect the vestiges of the Old Lands, untouched by urbanisation, the wilds holding dominance yet over the looping roads and the march of pylons, the smoke coiling from the occasional hostel and the Day-Glo flash of hikers’ jackets, sparse on the paths at this hour. This, the golden hour, where the sun slipped between the gates of night and nothing looked quite solid or sure. Snowdon, Yr Wyddfa, loomed like a giant spindle of myth, an axis between the now and then, drawing Ben down to its snow-dusted slopes.

  At first, he saw nothing out of sorts, scanning the rock face with keen eyes. Then, some residual glow, a familiar shade of blue, drew his gaze to the eastern precipice, the narrow ledge and the small dark crack in the rock face there. He didn’t need to squint too hard to recognise it as a door of some kind and he dropped towards it even as he shrivelled, his tail coiling up into his spine, his wings folding, his snout retracting into his skull. Human-shaped and grim-faced, he landed on the ledge with a thump, dust and scree showering from his bare feet down into the valley below.

  “Hello? If you’re gonna jump me, make it quick. I’ve got a war to attend.”

  Echoes alone answered him. Cautiously, in the faint light that illuminated the roughly hewn tunnel beyond the door, Ben took a few steps forward. He could see well enough, his extraordinary senses on high alert. The hand he trailed along the wall was to steady his nerves rather than his feet. He paused when his fingers ran over a series of ridges and he peered at the wall on his right, seeing the symbol etched there.

  It was old, but human in design. Pictish, he thought. The Picts remained shadowy, enigmatic figures. Down through the winding vines of history, people had come to see the ancient race as half mythical, even fairies themselves. Ben, long-lived and half mythical himself, knew that wasn’t entirely untrue, according to the stories anyway. The Picts were one of the earliest tribes of Britain, a Celtic people that hailed from the Iron Age. Back in the Old Lands, the tales claimed that the tribe had been the result of the Fay interbreeding with humans, investing them with power, a power that eventually led to their decline, as magic had a nasty habit of doing. Some claimed that a line had survived and continued, however, culminating in the birth of Arthur Pendragon, the storied king of the Britons, who was half Celt and half Roman by the most credible accounts. But, of course, all legend.

  Ben had seen the symbol on the wall before. It was a spiral, representing a labyrinth. The pictograph symbolised life, if he remembered correctly, the path that one took from birth and out into the unknown, out into the cosmos. Into death. With a shiver, he recalled that in occult mysticism, the reverse might also be true, that the spirit might return, reborn from darkness, reincarnated in flesh. Or resurrected.

  Ben knew just how much fun the latter could be.

  The symbol reminded him of another myth, another legend linked to this place.

  Of course …

  “And the harp,” he muttered under his breath, picturing the cobwebbed paintings that had hung in du Sang’s tomb under Paris. The faded legends that all Remnants knew. “The Lady tried to give it to you, didn’t she? At the Battle of Camlann, she wanted you to put Mordred’s armies to sleep. The Cwyth was known as yours.”

  He was speculating, still connecting the dots, mustering his courage as he traipsed further down the tunnel. The Pact and the Sleep had all started with the fairy. Now the envoy’s words rang in his skull, as stark, as shocking as when he’d first heard them, months ago in the nether.

  I made a mistake. Times change. So do hearts. I have found another way.

  As Ben made his way through the gloom, drawn to the faint blue radiance at the end of the tunnel, he swallowed a lump in his throat as another revelation struck him. This hadn’t started with Von Hart at all. It went further back, back into the hazy days of myth. Back into the Old Lands. It had started with a battle and a shattered harp. It had started with the departure of the Fay, a severing of worlds, a schism between history and myth.

  It had started with a king.

  “Arthur …”

  Ben entered the cavern with the name upon his lips, a breath that felt somehow sacred even as it confirmed his suspicions. Slack-jawed, he took in the circle of tombs, the shields and the runes on the walls, all lit by the weird radiance. Hairs bristled on the nape of his neck, but the sight of the domed space shouldn’t have surprised him. Because this was all part of the same tale, wasn’t it? A tale that had spanned fifteen hundred years, springing from that last legendary battle and a desperate fairy gift. Arthur, or so the story went, had lifted his magical sword, Caliburn, and brought it down upon the harp, shattering the relic, and with it, the hope of peace. In return, Queen Nimue, Our Lady of the Barrow, had spurned humanity for its weakness, its unshakeable folly and greed. She had led her court from the earth and damned them all in the process. Damned the humans to a world devoid of magic, to a world ravaged by unchecked ambition and technological advancement. And damned the Remnants to ages of abandonment, centuries of oppression and strife until the coming of the compromise, the founding of the Pact.

  Arthur had been centuries in his grave …

  “‘Yet some say in parts of England that the king is not dead, but had by the will of our Lady into another place,’” Ben frowned, summoning up the timeworn words, “‘and some say that he shall come again, when the realm faces its direst threat …’”

  Any hope, any longing that Ben might’ve felt at this evidence of awakening, the seven tombs empty and bare, shrivelled up in his breast at the smell. The dry, sour and faintly sweet stench of rot hung in the air along with the dust. Recently, he had grown too familiar with the scent to mistake it. It was death. It was darkness. Whatever had risen here, it hadn’t been in the best of health. Again, he experienced the same pang of misgiving he’d felt last year, wondering why this apparent end to the Pact, this chance of freedom, should make him so afraid. Wasn’t it what the Remnants wanted? The Queen’s Troth coming true? The Long Sleep over? The chance of peace restored?

  Something is wrong. I can feel it in my balls.

  A flash of silver caught his eye. He made his way through the ring of tombs, heading towards the central plinth in the middle of the chamber. As he went, he noticed the piles of rusted armour and the bones heaped on a couple of the tombs. He wiped a hand through the dust and wrinkled his nose, wondering whose remains he touched. The tattered banners on the walls, washed out and unidentifiable, were only serving to cement his fears. The carved crest of a stag, bordered by leaves, took up the flank of one tomb. And the stone dragon that coiled on the ceiling, its scales circling out to make up the walls—all of these things related the regal function of the chamber. Yeah. He remembered the legend, all right. What Remnant wouldn’t? Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, weaving one last enchantment before stepping into the nether, that being the return of a certain magic sword and the internment of Arthur and his knights deep in the mountain, slumbering for centuries on the threshold of death.

  Sounds familiar …

  The last nail in the coffin—and curse him for thinking such a phrase in this dusty place—came when he reached the central tomb and bent to read the inscription carved on its side.

  HIC JACET ARTURUS, QUONDAM REX QUE FUTURUS

  Here lies Arthur, the once and future king.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Ben breathed.

  He said this, then started as someone, not too far away, answered him.

  “You took your time.”

  He scuttled in retreat, away from the tomb. Scales, slick and hand-sized, flickered up and down his suit, black to red. Then his back met the ring of stone around him, dislodging the bones heaped on the slab with a rattle and a cloud of dust. Coughing, h
is eyes flared, golden beams spearing the haze as he searched the chamber for the intruder.

  “Who the fuck is that? Show yourself!”

  “Are you blind? I’m right here.” There was a tut, hollow in the gloom. And then, after a pause, the voice said, “You’re not the envoy.”

  “I guess you’re not blind either,” Ben growled, straightening up. He peered into the shadows, detecting no entrance to the chamber other than the tunnel he’d taken, the one that led to the mountainside outside. There were no archways, no alcoves, no stairs, only the curving walls. Even the shadows weren’t particularly deep, shrunken as they were by the strange spectral light. Whoever was in here with him was either hiding behind a tomb or invisible. “What are you? A ghost?” He’d read that sometimes a spirit would guard an old tomb, attending the ancient dead. Or a wight. Not a pleasant thought. “Dead or not, it won’t stop me from kicking your—”

  “Please.” The voice was cold, male and sounded educated, cutting in its confidence. “Let’s not waste time on bravado. Tell me, where is the envoy? After all, he was the one that the Lady appointed to attend this place in the event of the king’s …” a cough, “revival.”

  “I’ll bet. But it’s news to me, sweetheart. And I’m not giving you a thing until you step out and face me.”

  “Impossible, I’m afraid. You see, for all my gifts, I lack even the most basic motor skills.”

  “Dead then. Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Oh, I assure you I’m very much alive. Forged in lunewrought and star-studded, tempered in the ice of Avalon and spun across worlds to the hand of a king. And I’m right in front of you, numbskull.”

  Ben let the insult pass, his eyes growing wide as realisation dawned. The flash of silver that he’d noticed before originated here by the tomb, sparkling in the uncanny glow. Propped up by the foundations of the plinth, a sword rested against the stone. But not just any sword. An idiot could see that. And Ben knew lunewrought when he saw it too, having seen the fragments of the harp and their eventual destruction. Besides, he’d felt the touch of the Fay metal for himself, an encounter that was too close for comfort, a collar locked around his throat.

  The sword bore a resemblance to the harp, all liquid, shimmering silver. The blade was broad, a mirrorlike length of sharpened metal tapering towards the business end. Glyphs, indecipherable, ran along the fuller—the groove in the middle of the blade—perhaps etched by an alien hand. Thick leather straps bound the grip, but that was the only mundane part of the weapon. The pommel echoed the sculpture on the ceiling, moulded to look like a dragon’s head, its fangs wide, leaving Ben in no doubt about the sword’s ownership. At either end, the crossguard bulged out in gem-studded balls, tiny diamonds and mounted pearls bordering the two large and gleaming sapphires set there.

  To Ben, the jewels looked very much like eyes.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “You’re—”

  “Yes. And you’re not the envoy, Lord Blaise of the Leaping White Hart.”

  Ben took a step forward, tipping his head. “The who?” He spoke slowly, distractedly, his voice thick with awe. Then he snorted. “He’d find that a little old-fashioned these days.”

  “Where is the envoy?” the sword asked again. “Why isn’t he here? As I said, he was the one charged with the task.”

  “What task?”

  “Why, to welcome the return of the king, of course. Or rather, the return of the Fay, imminent as it is. To prepare these lands for a new golden age. Is it just me? I thought there was only one fairy left in this world. And therefore, only one who could receive the ravens. Instead—”

  “You got me,” Ben said, disliking the sword’s tone. Disliking that it had a tone. At the same time, a lead weight sank in his belly, the sword confirming what should’ve come as a relief to him, a delight even, but only seemed to sum up his fears.

  The return of the Fay …

  “And who are you, exactly? If I’m going to get out of here, I’d at least like to know who bears me.”

  “Bears …?” Ben came to a halt, his feet scudding in the dust. He hadn’t even noticed his hand stretching out, reaching for the pommel beside the tomb. Those sapphires. So pretty. So watchful. “I thought … I thought that Arthur alone could … you know.”

  “Yes. Well. Needs must and all that,” the sword said. “It wouldn’t be the first time either. Gawain carried me once, that proud defender of maidens.” A steely chuckle in the gloom. “And Bedwyr, most faithful of the knights of the Round Table.” The sword gave a sigh. “I suppose you’ll just have to do.”

  Ben retracted his hand, stung by his own curiosity.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said. “I know your game. You can cut that luring shit out for starters. I’ll keep my freedom, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Don’t be an ass,” the sword said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, things have … changed. Arthur and his knights shuffled out of this chamber hours ago. At least, something that passes for them. And why do you think I’m still here? You can’t really be that stupid, can you? If you’re here, then you must have a shred of wits about you. Not that I’m seeing any evidence of that, but—”

  “Shut up.” Ben sneered, shrugging off his entrancement. “Did your king put up with that lip?”

  “I’m a sword, not a subject. What was he going to do? Throw me in a lake?”

  “You’re hilarious, you know that? Personally, I don’t see anything to joke about.”

  “Neither do I, which is why I’ll ask you again—politely—to stop standing there like a rusty mallet and take me up. Time is of the essence.”

  Rusty? Despite himself, Ben’s hand climbed to his ruffled head.

  He scowled, remembering. “Fairy gifts tend to come with a price. A high one.”

  “Do I look like a gift to you? Some yuletide token lying under a tree? At this point, I’m not even a choice.”

  “That’s what you say,” Ben said with a grunt. “You know, I didn’t hatch yesterday. Lunewrought and me … well, we don’t mix well. Pick you up and I’ll find myself stuck in human form. Won’t I?”

  “So you’re of the bestiary.” The sword sounded vaguely sad. Ben didn’t need to ask why. “The erlscion.”

  “The what now? Is that French? You’re not making any sense.”

  “Beastkind. The children of the Fay.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That.” Ben rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m … Ben Garston. Red Ben, to my friends. If I had any. I’m the Sola Ignis. Or I was.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Anyway,” the sword said. “Rest assured. All lunewrought is one metal, true, but binding was never my purpose. All the same, I wouldn’t advise holding me by the blade, that’s if you’re fond of fingers.” The sword coughed again, aiming for an encouraging tone. “But there are certain perks. For one thing, I’m unbreakable. For another, I can slice through most things as if they were paper.” The sword sniffed. “It’s such a shame that Morgan threw my scabbard away. It bestowed swift healing to the gravest of wounds.”

  Ben grunted. “Trust me. I’ve got that.”

  “You’re beginning to get on my nerves.” The sword shone a little brighter, obviously piqued. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Arthur has awoken. Except that he isn’t Arthur, not in the truest sense of the word. The magic is sour, corroded. I heard the song ringing through the cavern, the echoes of a great enchantment, recently broken and fading. But I’m not the one to blame this time.”

  Ben nodded, catching the thread. “The mnemonic harp.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Cwyth. You’ll know it as the Cwyth,” Ben said. “If you’re Caliburn, then the king used you to shatter the harp in the first place, all those centuries ago. Hate to break it to you, but your precious Lord Blaise went and reforged the blasted thing.”

  Silence. Then:

  “That wasn’t very bright.”

  “And
then he dismantled it. This was centuries ago, after … after Camlann. And then he reforged it again, recently. Then he destroyed it completely. Out in the nether.” Ben puffed out his cheeks. “It’s kind of a long story. You know, a lot has happened in fifteen hundred years.”

  “Oh dear. Well, that explains it. I can’t see the High House taking the news of his meddling very well. I imagine that’s what caught their attention.”

  Ben pictured Von Hart lying in his arms outside the temple on the Fan Lau peninsula, his voice weary, but holding satisfaction.

  Time enough for the echoes to travel through the nether. My work here is done.

  Since that dark, disastrous day, Ben had been putting the pieces together, closing in on the thrust of the envoy’s plan. The sword before him sliced through the last of his doubt. Because attention was exactly what the fairy had wanted.

  He swallowed. “The Fay. You mean the Fay, don’t you?”

  “The harp was of their making, as am I,” the sword told him, not without pride. “The song may be over, but I’m afraid that our king dances to a different tune. Something is wrong. You know it and I know it. Whatever sat up and stretched on this tomb wasn’t exactly wholesome, if you take my meaning. Maybe I’m reaching here, but I’m guessing our best bet is to try and stop him.”

  Ben rolled his shoulders, bristling at the sword’s acid-sweet tone.