Always Forever taom-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  "Summoned?" Church's head was thundering; connections were lining up, but not quite linking. "What's going on here?"

  Before the matter could be pursued further, a long, low mournful sound reverberated throughout the ship. It drew an overwhelmingly dismal feeling from deep within them; Ruth found tears springing to her eyes involuntarily.

  "The Master is summoning." Baccharus looked oddly distracted, almost dazed. When he realised they were still seated, he said, "You must come."

  The sun was unbearably bright as they stepped out on to the deck, blinking. "Tell me," Church hissed to Baccharus in response to the silence that lay heavy over everything, "when you were in trouble on deck last night, why didn't anyone save you?"

  On the surface Baccharus's face appeared emotionless, but Church could tell there were deep but unreadable emotions running beneath. "There is no recognition that we might not exist. Therefore there is no need to aid one in dire straits."

  "I thought you lot always stuck together."

  "You do not understand our ways." It was a cold statement; Church knew there was no point pursuing the matter. By that time they had arrived in the midst of a crowd filling every foot of the ship's boards, some of the freakish travellers even clambering up into the rigging. Others were arriving behind them. Amidst the reek of alien scents, the pressing of skin that felt like carbonised rubber or gelatine, Church fought to focus his attention on the tableau unfolding on the raised area preserved for the captain of the vessel.

  His face like an ocean tempest, Manannan overlooked the crowd, hands behind his back, flanked by other members of the Tuatha De Danann. Niamh was close by his right arm, her beautiful face troubled too. She stared across the waves, lost to whatever dark scenarios were playing in her mind.

  A low muttering had risen in the crowd like wind over the water, but when Manannan raised his left arm, everyone felt silent. His gaze slowly moved across the masses; even at that distance Church was sure his eyes were burning. His face held an odd quality too, as though it were about to become fluid, transform.

  "A crime has been committed against the very fabric of existence." He appeared to be whispering, but his voice boomed over the throng, which grew visibly cowed. "Something more valuable than the stars above you, more important than the entire weight of all your races, from the beginning to the end, has been torn away. This will not go unpunished."

  Church felt a pang of fear. Ruth's skin was unnaturally pale.

  "The one who committed this atrocity is known to us, and though not yet within our grasp, know this: there is no escape from our unflinching eye. No hope. We will peel back the lies, strip away the moment and the mile, never rest, until we have it." He paused, letting his words fall like stones. "And know this also: our gaze will be turned on you, all of you, individually, even in your most private moments. And if we find any who have aided or abetted the committal of this monstrous crime, they will be punished." Another pause. "With the full weight of our wrath."

  He surveyed the crowd one final time, with many flinching from his eyes, and then slowly descended to his quarters, the other members of the Tuatha De Danann trailing behind.

  Even when they had all departed and the door had closed, no one on deck moved, no one spoke, there was not even a rustle of clothing. Church smelled fear in the air and more than that, an awful dread that events were rapidly deteriorating. There was darkness on the horizon and none of them knew which way the wind was blowing.

  "He's in here?"

  Baccharus motioned towards the heavy wooden door with the black sigil. It was two decks down, at the heart of the ship so no wall was next to the cool, green water. Church moved his palm gently a quarter-inch above the surface of the door, testing the sensitivity that had grown in him since Tom had introduced him to the Blue Fire. His skin prickled. Inside the room he felt an unpleasant coldness that was the antithesis of that spirit energy. He didn't know why he had asked Baccharus to take him there while Ruth rested-or hid-in her cabin, but the urge had been insistent. He pushed his palm forward and the door swung open at his touch.

  The chamber was in complete darkness. It smelled of some zoo cage littered with dirty straw, reminding him uncomfortably of his imprisonment in the mine deep beneath Dartmoor. He couldn't help but think a cruelty was being inflicted, despite everything his rational mind told him of deserving punishment.

  Baccharus stepped past him holding one of the torches from the corridor and lit an extinct one fixed to the wall close to the door. Unlike the torches without, it cast only a dull, ruddy glare, barely causing the shadows to retreat. Baccharus nodded to him curtly, then stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  "So you've found it in your heart to visit another soldier of the road, now sadly down on his luck." The voice was infused with scorn.

  At the far end of the room was an iron cage, barely large enough for a man to stretch out in. Straw was indeed scattered on the floor within, along with what resembled an animal's feeding trough. Callow squatted at the back of it, his peeled white eyes staring like sickly lamps. There was something about that unflinching gaze that made Church's stomach squirm: human yet not human. The parchment skin was a muddy red in the flickering glow of the torch, but the black veins still stood out starkly, a roadmap of hell.

  "Don't get smart with me. You've brought everything on yourself."

  "Well, that's a fine attitude for such a noble man to take. Filled with Christian values. Do I hear the sweet tinkling notes of forgiveness? The vibrato of salvation? The teasing choir of redemption? Or perhaps we truly are brothers of the byway. When the ditch is your billet, you see life with a different perspective, is that not true? Not so noble then, is it? Means to an end is the phrase on every good man's lips."

  "Shut up, Callow. I haven't got the energy." Church eyed the heavy padlocks on the cage door. The Tuatha De Danann were taking no chances with him. Perhaps he should be more cautious.

  "And how is the lovely Miz Gallagher?" Callow began oleaginously.

  Church's glare stopped him dead; it left Callow in no doubt that here was a topic where he could never trespass. Callow scrabbled around in the straw for a distraction like he was looking for a stray piece of corn from his meal; a chicken waiting to be harvested. But then he looked up with a cold confidence and said, "Things have turned a little sour, have they not?" His thin lips peeled back from his blackened teeth in a sly smirk.

  He knows why I've come, Church thought.

  Callow's eyes were a vortex in the gloom. "You're here to beg for my help. Oh, Glory be! My time has truly come!"

  "Your time has long gone, Callow. But you might still be able to rescue a thin chance of saving yourself if you start acting like you don't want to see the whole of humanity eradicated."

  "Look after number one, my boy. You know that well."

  The jibe hurt Church even though he had managed to put his own selfish interests to one side. "This is a new age, didn't you know? These days we look after each other." Callow looked away. "I may be wasting my time here in more ways than one," Church continued, "but I have to ignore my personal feelings if there's a chance everyone might benefit. And make no mistake, Callow, I loathe you. For what you did to Laura, and Ruth. For turning your back on the human race simply to achieve your own ends. You truly are a grotesque person. But it's still wrong the way the Tuatha De Danann are treating you like some animal."

  "We are all animals to them."

  "I know. They use us for their own ends, but this time we're using them." Church felt uncomfortable trying to play Callow. A streak of madness that ran through him made him impossible to predict; Church still didn't really know what the Fomorii had done to him inside. "I've got a feeling you know something that might help us. Where the Fomorii main nest is, where Balor is hidden, building up his strength. Some weakness-"

  "Oh, you really are a prime example of hope over reality," Callow snapped bitterly. "I should give up my hard-won knowledge? For what? A chance to be seen as g
ood?" He waggled his fingers to show the gap where he had sliced the one off himself. "You forget, my little pet, the only reason I would want to take your hand is to harvest your digits."

  "So you don't know anything, then." Church made to go.

  "I know a great many things that would shock and surprise you," Callow replied sharply, stung by the dismissal. "I know what makes your eyes light up. And where the Luck of the Land lies. And I know what happened on this Ship of Fools last night."

  "How?"

  "I can hear things through the walls. Through many walls."

  "I know what happened last night. That's not important to me-'

  "You would think, wouldn't you?" Callow smirked again; Church couldn't tell if it was more petty tormenting or if he truly did know something of import. "Now be off with you, and leave me to my peace and quiet," Callow snapped, "and don't return unless you have the key to release me from this foul den."

  When he reached the door, Callow called out to him again, "Are you missing your friends? Do you feel lost without them? Too weak and inexperienced? What is it like to know they are all dead, dead, dead…

  Church stepped out and slammed the door hard so he wouldn't have to hear any more.

  The first thought was like a candle in a room that had remained dark for an age. It flickered, dangerously close to extinction, but then caught. Slowly, the heat and the light returned.

  For Laura, memories pieced together gradually and chaotically, sparing her the full horror of revelation in one devastating blow. Making love to Church. The joy she felt at finally finding someone to whom she could open up the dark chambers of her soul. Making love to Shavi, a friend who defied any insipid meaning she had given to the word in the past. Her hated mother, her pathetic father. Her friends. Her work: computer screens and mobile phones. One image returning in force: trees. The things she had fought for so many times with her environmental activism.

  They gathered pace, memories clinging together, forming patterns in the chaos. The quest. The Quincunx, the five who are one. Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. Talismans and Blue Fire. Standing stones and old religion. Tuatha De Danann and Fomorii. And Balor.

  And Balor.

  Electricity jolted her body into convulsions. She recalled with crystal clarity the night on Mam Tor when she had taken the potion from Cernunnos and made the sacrifice that would end her life; for Ruth, for everyone. When she took Balor into her own body.

  Another shock, dragging her from the recesses of her head. How could she still be alive, thinking? When Balor emerged from her it would have rended her body apart.

  Gradually details of her surroundings broke through her confusion. She was lying on her back in a dark place; as her eyes adjusted she realised there was a thin light source filtering in from somewhere. The air was thick with the stench of decomposition. She choked, gagged, tried to breathe in small gasps that went straight to the back of her throat. She made the mistake of turning her head and looked into a pair of glassy eyes only inches from her. It was a woman, not much older than her. Beyond she could just make out irregular shapes heaped all around. They resembled bags of discarded clothing.

  Closing her eyes, she took refuge once more in her head, but even there no safety lay. Her body was racked with pain. Slowly she let her hands move down her torso towards her belly, dreading the end of their journey. They were halted by sharpness and void almost before they had started.

  Initially she couldn't work out what she was feeling, and then when she did, she refused to believe it. But there was no doubt. Her ribs were protruding on both sides like jagged teeth around the hollow from which Balor had erupted.

  It couldn't be. She was dead. Dead and dreaming. Her arms collapsed to her side and her thoughts fragmented once more.

  The next time she was aware, she let her hands investigate once more, praying it had been a hallucination. And this time there were no broken ribs and gaping wound, although her clothes around that area were shredded.

  Her relief left her sobbing silently for several minutes.

  Finally she found the strength to lever herself up on her elbows. From the air currents she could tell she was in some cavernous room, the ceiling and walls lost to the shadows. All around were corpses, piled in rolling dunes. Faces and hands and feet were pressing into her back and legs. So many dead. Hundreds. Thousands. Amidst the horror she was thankful for the small mercy that she was on the top and not drowning beneath the sea of bodies. And she was alive. Amazingly, astonishingly alive.

  Then she cried some more.

  In the Court of the Yearning Heart, laughter often sounds like the cries of the insane. The walls are never quite thick enough to prevent the noises coming through from adjoining rooms; whimpers of pleasure and pain, others a combination of both. Scents continually tease, each one subtle and complex so the passerby dwells on them for minutes, perhaps hours. Every surface has a pleasing texture; it is impossible to touch anything once without wanting immediately to touch it again. Addiction can spring from the merest taste of the food to the tongue.

  In comparison, the chamber designated for Tom was almost unpleasantly ascetic. He had stripped everything from it to minimise the sensory overload so that his life was, if not acceptable, then bearable. At least he no longer had to worry about accepting the food or drink of Otherworld; there was little hope he would be leaving the Court any time in the near future. Prisoner by his own hand, or theirs, it made no matter.

  He sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, smoking a joint to dull his searing emotions: wishing he could smoke enough to shut down his thoughts completely. Despite the clothes that had been offered to him by the Tuatha De Danann, he still resembled an ageing hippie: his greying hair was fastened into a ponytail with an elastic band, the wire-rimmed spectacles had been fashionable in the late sixties, his too-washed T-shirt and old army jacket: they all grounded him in the experiences of the world he had left behind. And for the first time he felt the hundreds of years piled high on his shoulders. He had thought himself immune to the rigours of passing time, but now it felt as raw as it had in the first century or so of his transformation.

  They had taken Veitch four hours ago. How long before they spat him out of the inner recesses of the Court where the miracles and atrocities occurred, torn apart and rebuilt into something else? Decades, as it had been in Tom's own case? Or longer? He winced, unable to stop the razored parade of memories of his own early experiences at their hands. After so long, they were still just beneath the surface, torturing every second of his life. He had already shed tears for the suffering Veitch would face in the times ahead, and he did so again, briefly and silently. Would Veitch grow to love his tormentors even as he hated them, just as Tom had? He thought he probably would.

  Then Tom, grown emotional through the drugs, battled a wave of damp emotion, this time for himself. For the first time he had found kindred spirits, friends even, although he had never told them that, and all he had done was witness their appalling suffering. Now he might never see any of them again, not even Veitch, who would no longer be Veitch when he returned, in the same way that he was no longer Thomas Learmont. Against all that, even the destruction about to be instigated by the Fomorii was meaningless.

  He took a deep draught of the joint, trying to decide if that thought was selfishness or some deep psychological insight; not really caring.

  The door was flung open some hours later and Veitch tumbled into the room. Dazed and winded, he came to rest in a heap against the far wall. It took Tom a second or two to realise what he was seeing; even then, he barely dared believe it.

  "So soon?" he said, puzzled.

  "Don't just sit there, you old hippie," Veitch snapped.

  Tom scrambled over to help him to his feet. "You're fine?"

  Veitch examined his hands, then stretched the kinks out of his arm muscles, unable to believe it himself. His long hair was lank with the sweat of fear, his tough, good-looking features drawn with apprehension.


  "What happened?"

  Veitch was surprised at the bald relief in the hippie's voice after weeks of his curt, dismissive manner. "I don't know what happened. When they took me from here I was brought before Her Majesty." There was a sneer in Veitch's voice, but Tom knew it was there only to mask the fear of the Queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart, architect of all desire and suffering. "She gave me some spiel about how I was setting off a new phase of existence. Didn't really know what she was talking about, to be honest." He examined his hands closely. "Wasn't really listening."

  Tom remembered the same response: the fear of what lay ahead driving all rational thought down to its lowest level; not thinking, just reacting. He reached out a supportive hand; surprisingly, Veitch allowed it to rest briefly on his forearm; a small thing, but a sign of how deeply he had been affected.

  "They took me through these red curtains into a room that was hung with tapestries. There was a wooden bench in the middle. They tied me to it. Up on the ceiling, there was something, a light of some kind. Only it wasn't a real light. It was like it had a life of its own, you know?" His description faltered under the limitations of his vocabulary and his unstructured thought processes, but Tom nodded in recognition. Veitch appeared relieved he wouldn't have to go into it further.

  "And then whatever the light was, it made me black out. Next thing I knew I was looking up at the Queen and she was…" He searched for the right word. "Furious."

  A tremor crossed Tom's face.

  "Her face sort of… changed. Kept changing. Like… like…"

  "Like it wasn't fixed."

  "Exactly. Like she was breaking up. Turning into something else. Lots of things. I dunno why. I mean, it wasn't like I'd done anything. I'd been out like a light. Next thing I know those jackboot bastards who always follow her around dragged me back here."

  Tom dropped back on to the floor, slipping easily into his cross-legged stance, his face locked in an expression of deep rumination; it didn't make sense, whichever way it was examined. The Queen would not have given up the opportunity to spend decades tantalising and tormenting a mortal for anything. He eyed Veitch suspiciously. "Are you sure it wasn't some trick? Offering you the chance of hope, only to snatch it away. The pain is more acute that way." The note of bitter experience rang in his voice.