The dead body had been real enough, but anyone can fake horse sounds. It bothered me that I hadn’t seen anything.
“If it is the White Horse, can you take it down with your armour?” said Molly, casually.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I’d bet the strange matter in my armour against anything with four legs and hooves. Maybe we could offer it some sugar lumps.”
“A concept, made manifest, and then buried for centuries because its own priests grew frightened of what they’d created,” said Molly. “What do you want to bet, Shaman, that when the Horse woke up, it woke up angry?”
“But how powerful can it be after being asleep for so long?” I said. “That must have weakened it.”
“Unless,” said Molly, “it’s been quietly rebuilding its strength, all this time. I’m more concerned with its state of mind. Finally released from its prison, after so many years, and immediately someone tries to break it to their will, to make it their slave. . . .”
I looked at her steadily. “You were there, at the meeting, after they called it up. How much of that do you remember, now?”
“Still only bits and pieces.” Molly scowled fiercely. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t there at the Working. My parents would never have allowed that . . . I can’t believe I forgot so much!”
“You were in shock,” I said. “You didn’t want to remember.”
“My past isn’t what I thought it was,” said Molly. “I’m not what I thought I was.”
“Yes, you are,” I said firmly. “You’re the wild witch, the laughter in the woods, kicking arse in the name of the good and the true. And I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
And then we both looked round sharply as we heard a scream. It sounded like a man, facing something truly horrible, and then the sound broke off, and stopped. Molly and I were already off and running. It didn’t take us long to find Joe Morrison, lying dead on the rucked-up, bloody carpeting. Torn and broken, his ruined flesh was stamped with hoof-marks. There was no sign of Troy or Coll anywhere. I checked the body, shook my head at Molly, and then studied the surroundings carefully.
“Odd,” I said. “I don’t see any hoof-marks in the carpeting, the whole length of this corridor. Or in the spilled blood around the body. Nothing to show anything else was ever here.”
“Apart from the very thoroughly trampled body,” said Molly.
“Well, apart from that, yes,” I said. “I suppose . . . if the White Horse is a supernatural creature, it wouldn’t have to make impressions on its surroundings if it didn’t want to.”
“Try the Merlin Glass again,” said Molly. “I really don’t like this place.”
“You could always teleport us out of here yourself,” I pointed out.
She shook her head quickly. “I already tried. This whole island is set inside a mystical null, remember? I can’t get my bearings. . . . The only way off Trammell Island that doesn’t involve a boat or a hell of a long swim are the established dimensional doors, like the Fae Gate. The Merlin Glass was powerful enough to get us in; I’m hoping it can get us out.”
I shrugged, and tried the Glass again. I murmured the activating Words, and the image in the looking glass changed immediately to reveal the Horse’s huge white head, filling the Glass. It shone out of the mirror like a spotlight, supernaturally bright. The long bony face glared at me, and then surged forward, as though trying to reach out through the Glass. The crimson eyes were wide and wild, and full of a terrible old knowledge. Great blocky teeth showed in its snarling mouth. Molly cried out. I shut down the Glass, shouting the words at the mirror, and the image disappeared. The hand mirror was just a mirror again. I put it away, in my pocket dimension.
“It was coming through,” said Molly. She sounded shaken. “And it felt . . . so much bigger than any living thing has any right to be.”
“Okay,” I said. My voice didn’t sound quite as steady as I would have liked, but I pressed on. “We are facing a very determined living god. It’s already killed two people, for reasons that aren’t clear yet. What does it want with us?”
“Not us, Eddie,” said Molly. “With me. It wants me, because I was part of the group that tried to tame it, and break it to their will.”
“But you weren’t a part of the Working! You didn’t know anything about it until it was all over!”
“I don’t think the White Horse cares,” said Molly. “You saw it, in the Glass. Did that look like a rational Being to you? No, it saw me. It’s marked me. And soon it will come for me. . . .”
“Well, tough,” I said. “It can’t have you. You’re mine.”
She smiled at me, and put a hand on my chest. “Am I?”
“Forever and a day,” I said, putting my hand over hers. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Molly, but you have to get a grip on yourself. It’s just a horse.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is. And I have faced far worse, in my time.” She seemed to straighten up, and her gaze sharpened. “Time to get back in the saddle . . .”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s track the bloody thing down. I’ve got my armour, and you’ve got your magics; we can do this. Bloody horse isn’t going to know what’s hit it.”
“Damn right,” said Molly. “Been a while since I’ve punched out a living god.” And then she stopped, and frowned. “But I can’t help feeling . . . that just maybe the White Horse is the innocent party in all this. It didn’t ask to be buried, called forth, and used.”
“It’s killing people,” I said flatly. “And that crosses the line. My family exists to keep things like living gods from killing people.”
There was another scream. It sounded like a woman, this time. Horrified, hysterical, and once again cut off, abruptly. Molly and I ran through the narrow corridors, to find the next body lying crumpled in a doorway. Stephanie Troy, who only ever wanted to do good and protect people, had been trampled to a bloody pulp. Broken bones protruded in splinters through the torn flesh, and one side of her face had been completely smashed in, a single great hoof-mark obliterating half her features. Her one remaining eye stared helplessly out, at the world that had betrayed her.
I knelt down beside her, but didn’t try for a pulse this time. I couldn’t see the point. They were all gone now; three good-natured and good-intentioned young people, who would have been the next-generation leaders of the White Horse Faction. They had such great dreams; I should have taken them more seriously.
“I let them down,” I said to Molly. “I was right here, and I couldn’t even keep them alive.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Molly. “Blame the mission. We weren’t briefed for any of this. There’s no way we could have anticipated . . . what’s happened here. There’s nothing you could have done for any of them. We got here too late.”
“We’ve been too late all along,” I said angrily. “Always one step behind, while something else has been leading us around by the nose. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this, Molly. I don’t think we understand what’s really going on here.”
I subvocalised my activating Words, and my armour spilled out of the torc to cover my face in a golden mask. And through the expanded senses of my mask, I studied every detail of Stephanie Troy’s corpse. Every wound, every impact, every impression of a great hoof. I zoomed in on every detail, using the mask like a magnifying glass and a microscope; checking and collating and comparing every last little bit of evidence.
Until quite suddenly, I spotted something interesting. All the hoof-prints were exactly the same. Same shape, same depth, same details. If this body had been trampled by a Horse, I would have expected four different and quite distinct hoof-prints. It might be a living god, but it was still a quadruped. Instead, there was the same single hoof-mark, over and over again. I called up several of the imprints on the inside of my mask, and superimposed them, one on top of the other . . . and they were all exactly alike. I dismissed my mask, stood up, and quietly explained my findings to Molly.
“The
White Horse wouldn’t take the trouble to trample its victims to death one hoof at a time,” I said.
“So it’s not the Horse that’s been killing people,” said Molly.
“No,” I said. “Whatever else is going on with the White Horse, I don’t think it gives a damn about the next generation of the White Horse Faction. I think . . . we have ourselves a very human murderer, in Monkton Manse. And unless someone else has been hiding here all along, which doesn’t seem likely . . . we know who the killer is.”
“Hadrian Coll was my parents’ best friend,” said Molly. “It can’t be him. He taught me how to be a free agent!”
“He was a double agent, working for my family,” I said. “He betrayed people to the Droods, over and over again. He never was who you thought he was.”
“That was the job, all right,” said Coll.
We looked quickly round, and there he was, standing in a doorway, half hidden in shadows, smiling at us. I had no idea how long he’d been there. He looked entirely relaxed, even calm. Didn’t even glance at Troy’s body. He nodded to me. “I should have known you’d be the one to find me out, Drood.”
“How long have you known?” I said.
“From the moment I met you. Your torc is well hidden, but I am half Drood, after all. I inherited the Sight from your uncle James, the legendary Grey Fox. Who was always quick enough to father a child, but never wanted to hang around to see how they turned out. I take it you are his nephew, the equally legendary Eddie Drood? Molly’s fellow. What happened to the real Shaman Bond?”
“I took his place,” I said smoothly. “He doesn’t even know I’m here, using his name. But even with the Sight, you shouldn’t . . .”
Coll shrugged, almost angrily. “You can’t spend as long on the run as I have, with learning to See all kinds of things that you’re not supposed to be able to.” He looked at Molly. “You, with a Drood. Never thought I’d see the day. . . .”
“You don’t know me,” said Molly. “You don’t know anything about me. How could you, when you kept so much from me? How could you do this, Hadrian? How could you just murder these people, after they went to all the trouble of tracking you down, to give you a second chance?”
“It’s all about survival,” said Coll, entirely unmoved. “I never asked for their help, or their second chance. And I certainly never wanted to be found. Bloody fools. Survival always comes first, Molly. I taught you that.”
He stepped forward, out of the shadows of the doorway, into the light. Like the Regent had, so many years before. Coll carried a huge wooden club, with a steel hoof attached to the heavy end. The hoof, and much of the club, was soaked with blood and hair and gore. Thick crimson drops fell steadily from the club’s end to the carpet. A terrible, brutal weapon.
“I arrived on the Island first,” said Coll, smugly. “Long before you two, never mind the Faction. I watched you from the Manse, while I decided how to play this. It gave me quite a turn to see you, Molly, all grown up. I almost gave it up then . . . almost. Survival has no room in it for sentiment, or pity. I’d brought this nasty little toy with me, carefully designed to confuse the issue. I hid it here, in the house. I still hoped I wouldn’t have to use it . . . if the White Horse didn’t show up. But it did. I knew it would. The new Faction leaders had to die, in a sufficiently brutal manner that no one would even try to reassemble the White Horse Faction again.”
“But . . . why?” said Molly. “Why did they have to die? What did they do that was so much of a threat to you, that you had to bludgeon them to death?”
“They found me,” said Coll. “And I didn’t want to be found. Couldn’t afford to be found. It’s the Horse, you see. It’s been chasing me, all these years. Because I’m the last survivor of the Working that called the White Horse forth, and then tried to control it. Because I’m the only one who might be able to put it down, and put it back under its barrow mound again. That’s why I disappeared so thoroughly, ten years ago. Why I’ve been on the run ever since. Always on the run, never able to stop and rest for long, running from one bolt-hole to another, so it could never find me. Until those three young fools tracked me down.
“I still don’t know how they managed it. Someone must have talked. Someone always talks, eventually. But Troy and Adams and Morrison found me, and knocked on my door . . . when even the Droods didn’t know where I was.”
“My family stopped looking for you years ago,” I said. “You were never that important to us.”
Coll flinched, and then laughed. Briefly, and perhaps a little bitterly. “Oh, but I was important. . . . When the White Horse finally finds me, and has its revenge upon me, it will turn its hatred on all Humanity. For burying it under that mound for centuries. For the sin of not worshipping it any more. I’ve kept the world alive, all these years, by keeping the Horse’s attention fixed on me!”
“You do fancy yourself, don’t you?” I said. “It’s just a horse! My family will deal with it. We’ve dealt with worse.”
Coll laughed again, and shook his head stubbornly. He’d been the hero of his own story far too long to give it up now. Even with a murder weapon in his hand, dripping blood and brains from people who had wanted so badly to be his friend.
“I had to kill them,” he said, patiently. “Because if they could find me, then the White Horse could use them to find me. It wasn’t difficult. All I had to do was wait for one to go off on their own, and then just pick them off, one at a time. They never saw it coming. . . . Now I can just disappear again. Escape to somewhere else, become someone else . . . after I’ve killed you two. Sorry, Molly. I don’t have any choice. No witnesses left behind . . . so no one will ever know what happened here. Just a few more dead bodies, in a house with a bad reputation. One more mystery, in mad old Monkton Manse.”
“You’d kill me, Hadrian?” said Molly stepping forward. “You’d really kill me?”
“That’s close enough, Molly,” said Hadrian. “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten what I taught you. I am still fond of you, and very proud of what you’ve made of yourself. You’re . . . important to me; but not more important than me. It’s always all about survival.”
“You betrayed my parents to the Droods,” said Molly, and her voice was cold, so cold. “They were your friends!”
“I’ve had many friends, in many groups,” said Coll. “And left them all behind when I moved on. That was the job. I was only ever in it for the money. After all, you can’t hope to survive, and protect yourself properly, without money. So that always has to come first.” He turned his empty eyes on me. “The Droods promised me they’d take me in. Make me one of them, part of the family. I’d have been safe, as one of the family. Like my father. But they kept putting me off, saying, ‘just one more mission’ . . . until I finally realised they never had any intention of making good on their promises. Not while I could still be useful to them. So really, this is all your fault, Drood.”
“You actually think you can take me, Hadrian?” I said. “Your club with a bit of metal on it, against my strange-matter armour?”
“Oh, this is so much more than just a club,” Coll said earnestly. “I’ve invested a lot of really nasty magics in this old wood, soaked it in vicious aptitudes and powerful qualities, down the long years. . . .”
“Powerful enough to stand against my magics?” said Molly. And just like that, she no longer sounded like the girl who idealised her old tutor. She sounded calm and cold and very dangerous. Her old self again.
Coll didn’t look impressed. He held the club out before him. “You have no idea of what you’re dealing with.”
“Right,” I said.
I stepped forward to distract him, and when he turned the club in my direction, Molly stepped briskly forward and kicked Coll square in the groin. His face squeezed up, and all the breath went out of him. I hit him hard in the arm muscle with my fist, and his hand leapt open, dropping the club. Game over.
And that was when we all stopped abruptly, and turned our hea
ds, to look around. Suddenly, we were back in the entrance hallway again. Even though we’d left it far behind, ages ago. We were half-way across the house, standing before the closed front door. Because something had called us there. And once again, we heard the sound of hooves approaching, outside. Coll forced his eyes open, past the tears streaming down his cheeks. He stared at the door with horrid fascination.
“No . . .” he said, almost pleadingly, like a child. “It can’t do that . . . it can’t!”
“It’s found you,” I said. “It’s not too late, Hadrian. I suppose my family does owe you a debt. Come with me, agree to accept what punishment and penance my family decides on . . . and I’ll stand between you and the Horse. Because I think there are still some things you’re hiding from Molly that she needs to know.”
But he wasn’t listening to me. All his attention was fixed on the closed front door, and the terrible purposeful sounds outside. Drawing steadily closer. The noises were very loud, very heavy, very close now.
“You can’t take me!” Coll screamed defiantly at the door. “You’ll never have me!”
“I told you it was here,” I said. “Molly and I heard it, down on the beach. Funny that it didn’t try to attack us . . .”
“It’s found me again,” said Coll. His eyes were bright, almost fey. “It always finds me. . . .”
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