Christ knew that many of them had. Even in the murk, he could see for himself their dwindled numbers, along with the wounded state of them. A dwarf, struggling to stay upright. An ettin, chipped and blackened by fire. A green man with a sword protruding from his neck. His army. And, taking in the sea of upturned faces, expressionless, expectant in the glow, he knew, with a pain in his chest, that he couldn’t really think of them as his. Like Arthur’s horde, few of these creatures would’ve fought by his side of their own volition, whatever the peril befalling Britain. That was why he’d spared them the speeches. He was no general. Nor even a soldier. If anything, he was a mercenary, throwing in his lot with a medieval king for the simple profit of survival. Most of these Remnants would view him as such and worse, turning their minds to justice, even recompense, instead of allegiance. Few would see him as the Lone Fire, that was for sure, standing guard over their beds. Some might try to kill him. No one would thank him for his leadership, not when he’d escaped the Long Sleep, remaining awake and free upon the earth.
And these Remnants weren’t free, having simply exchanged one prison for another. Here he stood, holding the key.
In his mind, ghosts stirred, whispering over old scars.
A witch on a bridge. A bard’s song to bind the bestiary. It could never contain the likes of us.
A goddess on a mountain. The Pact is no truce at all, merely a cell where you wait for extinction …
A warrior in the dark. My master chose me for that very purpose … To pave the road to our freedom.
Prophets, all.
Annis said, “They aren’t many, I know. But enough to—”
“No.”
Ben turned to face her, the flames at his back. She probably couldn’t see his face, but his voice checked any argument she might’ve made, her mouth closing, chewing on an unspoken retort.
A little more gently, he said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for your sword.”
“Eh?” Caliburn said, stirring at her belt with a jolt. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Never a moment’s peace.”
They both ignored it, caught up in the question between them. Annis screwed up her lips, conviction and doubt warring inside her. For a breath, she merely stared at his outstretched hand. Then she seemed to sense that she was never going to persuade him otherwise, her shoulders falling. After all they’d been through in the past few days, she wasn’t about to refuse him. With a sigh that let him know exactly what she thought about it, she drew the sword from her belt and, gingerly, turned it pommel first towards him. The jewels glittered, irate.
Ben took the weapon, testing its weight. It was a big decision. A dangerous choice. His actions now could easily make matters worse, but the heat washing off the water, the charcoal sky and the heaped bodies along the bridge told him that the time for such doubts was over. A choice, yes—but then, he knew he had one. The Remnants in his thrall did not. And, with a breath that held a fair share of regret, he accepted that his long service was done, his duty defunct, an oath built on sand. He was the Sola Ignis no more. As such, he had no right to lead them, this wounded, sorry host. To drag them into further peril, further suffering, bound by the horn. He shrugged off the responsibility. The choice must be their own. They must face the end like him, free to meet death on their own terms.
With a degree of ceremony, he placed the Horn of Twrch Trwyth on the flat top of the bridge railings. Tensing his shoulders, he raised the sword, the inferno dancing in silver. Caliburn thrummed in his grip, the cold sensation of hunger.
Annis, fidgeting behind him, seemed to think better of it.
“Wait—!”
The sword cut her off, its descent scaling into a scream. In a burst of light, lunewrought met ivory and gold, the gilded tusk of the ancient boar splintering into shards.
In the echoes, in the afterglow, Ben lowered the blade and faced her again, the last slayer, speaking low and deliberately into her shock. He found that he could put a name to it now, what he saw in her face, her expression wrestling with resentment and alarm. The time has come. He could pass on the burden, at last. It saddened him to realise that was all it was. All it had ever been.
“You’re the future now. Do you understand?” Lord, but he was damning her. For all her passion, she wouldn’t thank him for it. “Your father was right, in his own way. There has to be order. A compromise of some kind. When the fire dies down—and it will—when only embers remain, you’re going to have to talk to them, Remnants and humans both.” But no Pact, he might’ve told her, no Lore, is going to make the world forget this. Still … “It’s the only way out of this mess. If there’s a mess left to get out of. Tell me you understand.”
Unlikely as it was, he had to try. For all their sakes.
Annis bowed her head. Then this scarred young woman, who was really no fool at all, nodded to herself, accepting the weight of it. When she looked back up at him, however, her lips trembled and tears shone in her eyes.
“You’re leaving again, aren’t you?” she said. “And you’re not coming back.”
Awkwardly, he reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze. What more could he tell her? It was too late to explain, the hours running short. Let her face the end with a shred of hope, at least … Every second he tarried here, the Fay drew closer, riding through the nether … If the Lady wasn’t already here, that was, bringing her promised pain, her promised doom. There was nothing left to do but bring her the sword, although not in the way she was probably expecting. This had started with the Fay and with the Fay it would end. Von Hart was waiting for him, he believed, somewhere up ahead.
Annis was right. This was a farewell. To this city. To Britain. To the past. He was going to seek redemption, if he could, even if it meant going down in flames. He was heading to a place where she couldn’t follow.
We must all make sacrifices.
He offered her a smile, kind in its way. Bearing the sword, he moved off down the bridge, away from the bodies and the bikes and the sorrow on her face.
At some unseen signal, du Sang slipped after him, dwarfed by his flourishing shadow.
TWENTY-TWO
Into the north. Into ice …
Wings spread, the Vicomte saddled high in his withers, Red Ben Garston soared across the North Sea, heading ever onwards. By dawn, he’d left the Scottish coast behind, reluctant, yet thankful, to depart the land he’d loved and lost. That he’d salvage, if he could. The green lawns of Logres, once again blazing with war … He saw no aeroplanes and the ships down there looked scarce, most of them called to shore by the catastrophe. Or sunk. He tried not to think about it, but it did no good. Wrapped in tentacles, dragged into the depths … With a shudder, he took his bearings from the strewn steppingstones of Shetland and veered east for Norway, the aerial pathway etched in his head. Cloaked by clouds, he kept the hills and the fjords in the corner of his eye, grey and misty in the distance. There were memories down there. Of broken bridges. Harpsong and drinking. The long months of his wandering, when he should’ve been seeking the Guild, warning them, helping them resist the rise of the Chapter. Well, that’s hindsight for you. Always 20/20 … It was only out over the open sea, a golden expanse below, that the last dregs of smoke seemed to trail from him, chased away by the wind and the cold, if not by actual relief. What good would it have done?
Reading the compass of the sun, a milky orb low to the horizon, he drew on the restless heat in his belly, spearing into the blue. The air rushed through his gills, skirling with frost. Fangs locked, his snout cut through the sky, leaves of flame fanning from his nostrils, melting the ice that formed on his flanks. In his claw, Caliburn tingled with a force that his warmth couldn’t touch, pulsing stronger with each passing hour, the brief day dawning and dwindling, swallowed by the miles. He spared no concern for du Sang. The Vicomte had little to fear from the altitude, his veins long since cooled, his breath a redundant affair. Likely frozen, du Sang sat silent and still, a fact that Ben was grateful for. With only his
pounding heart and the wind for company, he could focus on the task at hand, following the route his passenger had given him.
Up there.
All the same, as Norway gave way to the Barents Sea (which, Ben recalled, used to be known as the Murman Sea, on account of the creatures that once swam here, along the shallow coral shelf), it became clear that he no longer needed the Vicomte’s guidance, regardless of their bargain. In his grip, the sword practically sang with energy, rattling against the scales of his palm, silver rays beaming between his claws. He’d felt this before, this magnetism, lunewrought calling to lunewrought. But the envoy extraordinary had broken the harp and the manacles lay two thousand miles behind him, in the care of the Last Pavilion. He sensed, somehow, that Caliburn wasn’t responding to the Fay metal, not exactly, but something larger, some unseen beacon up ahead.
Only one gate leads to your world, dragon.
The Eight Hand Mirror, or whatever was left of it. It had to be. The glass may have shattered, the door unlocked, and a temple may have fallen, burying the artefact, but despite all that, the hole in the world remained intact. Judging by the scale of Von Hart’s scheme, the web he’d woven, Ben knew that it wouldn’t have taken much for him to move it, relocating the mirror to these chilly climes. Together, we’ll go into the dark … Ben feared that the envoy’s words would become a prophecy in their own right. And he didn’t kid himself that Von Hart needed him for such an endeavour. If a dragon refused to play packhorse, there were plenty of Remnants who would, beguiled by the fairy, in cahoots with him or otherwise. No, Von Hart, he suspected, had used him in another way entirely—was probably using him now. A wild card hidden up his star-spangled sleeve.
This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Ben cursed his wits, even as he shivered with the prospect of pain. Why did you save me? Why did you spare me? I could’ve stopped you before. In Egypt. In China … But no. The envoy might’ve played him for a fool, but he wasn’t stupid enough to believe his own bravado, leaving him only with questions. Why did you forget the sword? If you didn’t want me to follow you here … Presumably, the envoy had brought the gate north to greet the Lady, welcome his people back to the Earth, heedless of their decline, their debasement.
Or refusing to see it, more like. The harp, the lunewrought, has it driven you mad?
The north spread out before him, filled with ice and silence. In his grip, Caliburn, thrumming with power, eager, anxious, leading him on. This, of course, raised another question. Like the ocean ahead, jewelled with icebergs and the ever-rising headland of Svalbard. The island, with its glacial cliffs, its mountains streaked with cold black rock, was a fist holding mystery. Holding threat.
Along with the light, the temperature was falling, sinking into perpetual dusk, the grip of the Arctic winter. Any further and du Sang might freeze completely, his old bones cracking apart, splintered by the wind. Would he tumble from his back, Ben wondered, shrugged off like a sloughed scale and sinking into the depths? Even that, he realised, probably wouldn’t be enough. You rot, but you endure. That’s what du Sang had told him. Years might pass, centuries even, the tides shifting the vampire’s remains, flotsam on the waves. But if Ben knew him at all, du Sang would eventually wash up somewhere, the worst of all bad pennies, hungry and grey on some luckless shore.
He was thinking this, his jaw clenched, when the throbbing of the sword merged with the atmosphere. A strange condensation, a thickening pressure pooled out around him, eddying under his wings. In his peripheral vision, a flicker of light drew his gaze down to the sea, to the phosphorescence dancing there. An aurora lit the whitecaps from beneath, the foam forming patterns. Catching his breath, he traced the arc, the sapphire band glimmering through the water. East to west he traced it, the sight a mile wide or more, alive with the swirl of arcane symbols.
One of the circles, triggered by the sword …
But no, he wasn’t sure about that. Taking in the breadth of the vision, he suspected a phenomenon he’d strayed upon rather than sparked.
This isn’t like London. This circle was alight before, ignited by …
Yeah. Take a lucky guess.
From this height, he could almost describe the entire circle of protection. A good half of it curved out across the waves, stretching into the Greenland Sea and off, off into the north. Into the Arctic Ocean, hazy and dark on the horizon. The circles, he’d learned, were nothing less than the brandings of the Fay, the Fallen Ones, their power, their wisdom lost. Designed to shield the Earth, the circles were heading the same way, their magic souring, failing, leaving Creation—or at least this corner of it—doomed and undefended. He watched, expecting to see the circle waver as the others had done before, the sigils fading, fizzling out one by one. Yet this one didn’t, retaining its gleam, fuelled by some uncanny source below …
The sight pricked Ben with unbidden sadness. If the Fay had wanted to ward off the ghosts of the nether, using the earth for their precious Example, then they had only courted disaster. In time, the Fallen Ones had met the same fate, the souring magic gnawing on their essence, a plague spreading across worlds. In the end, the dreams of Avalon had made no difference. The Lurkers had come to sup on the stuff of the real.
It’s a circle, all right. Ben grasped the nub of it now. From the stars right down to the gutter.
And here he was where the circle met, the spindle of time coming around, crushing all that it had spun. It didn’t take a genius to see that Svalbard, the shattered islands below, rested in the middle of the circle. A forsaken, frozen heart.
There was a darkness down there between the peaks, radiating menace. An area where the dusk ran out, as though sucked in on itself. A space at odds with the mountains around it. One less substantial, less real. Ben had encountered that blackness before, had come to know it well, the kiss of the nether. Even though he couldn’t make out any details from above, he could feel the subtle pulling in the air, the lodestone to which the sword responded, humming in his grip.
Are you here, old friend? He slowed on the airstream, shadowing the coast. Waiting for the end?
With this cheery thought, Ben folded his wings, drew in a breath and descended towards the crumbling cliffs, his nebulous destination. Down there, who knew what horrors he’d face, pitched against the fairy and his spells? But he had no choice. Not if he wanted to make good on his oath, die with a shred of honour. He’d come full circle himself, a lone sentinel standing guard. The only one who stood between the world and ruin.
But first, he had made a promise.
“You’re not the same creature that I found in that hole. Under the cemetery in Paris.”
It had taken some time—time that Ben didn’t have—for the Vicomte to thaw, held gently in an open claw, the heat of his breath washing over him. Then, as old bones creaked and pale flesh stretched, du Sang had blinked up at him with sleepy eyes. Ben had set the youth-who-was-far-from-young down on the escarpment, a snowy rise overlooking the tundra. A mile or so ahead, the lake stretched, a broad plain of ice in the twilight, up to the mountains that fanged the far shore.
Between the peaks, the darkness loomed. A slice of night, cupped by rock. There was light down there too, vague through the drifting snow. A radiance that Ben might’ve taken for an outpost or a town if not for its cold blue shade. Framed by the glow, the Vicomte stood with back turned, searching the half-light, awed by the scale of the abyss ahead.
“Non. Perhaps not,” he said. “Nevertheless, I wish I could say it had given me reason to live.”
“Du Sang—”
“Please, Ben. Don’t. I know what you’re going to say.” He turned then, and even in the gloom, Ben made out the glimmer of tears, cold as dew on a grave. “My mind was made up a century ago. I … I mourn for the boy I used to be, long ago in the Age of Light. If only I could reach back then and cuff myself around the head. Turn my eyes from those old occult books. My promises to the dark … To be forever young!” He sighed. “Oh, and how the dark answered me. The Fa
milies …” He seemed to run out of breath, weighed down by the memory. “For a while, we had fun. Didn’t we?”
Ben tipped his snout, implying that this was a questionable point. He found that he had little to say. He couldn’t say that they had all made mistakes, when the creature before him had betrayed him and worse. Still, du Sang was a Remnant. Even though the friendship between them had long since drowned in the wine fogs of Versailles, serial murder and the passing of ages, he had to respect the Vicomte’s help, no matter the price of it. In the end, he settled on the same words he’d uttered months ago, in the shadows of the tombs.
“The past is the past.”
Du Sang was quick to challenge him. “Are you sure about that?” he said. And then, more softly, “You know, I meant what I said. Before. I could tell you where she is, even now. Call it … a parting gift.”
Ben looked away at the towering cliffs. The sweeps of snow, ashen in the dark. This time, he took no offence, hearing the vampire’s sincerity. To find Rose. Find my child … Tell them I’m sorry … But Rose had asked him one last thing. Another promise, of sorts. He had nothing to indicate she’d changed her mind and the truth was he’d only ever brought her trouble. What made him think that would change? Besides, the Lady had played the worst kind of oracle, damning him with the truth. Words that he couldn’t refute, that he’d somehow known all along. You’ll never see Rose McBriar again. Not while you live. All he could do was focus on the present, the threat to the world entire, and hope, in this way, he could save them.
After a while, he looked back at du Sang.
“No. I’m … grateful. It’s enough to know that they’re alive.”
The Vicomte nodded, expecting this answer, and then he flung out his arms.
Burning Ashes Page 30
