Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  Church bowed his head, waiting for the strike. But the wave seemed to hang there interminably. In hesitant disbelief, he looked up just as it trembled, then twisted and finally broke apart in a wild thrashing. Dark, frantic motion erupted all around him, and he suddenly felt he had instead been sucked into a sable whirlpool. There was that strange rending metal noise he had heard earlier, faces that were alien, yet still filled with a recognisable fear, the rapid movement of fleeing forms.

  And suddenly the whole night was lit in gold.

  “Finally,” Church said, barely able to believe what was happening. “The cavalry. “

  The still-thrashing, dismembered body of a Fomor crashed into the ground in front of him, spraying foul gunk all around.

  Another Fomor sent him flying several feet, and for a few seconds he blacked out. When he came round, chaos had erupted everywhere. The Fomorii were scrambling back and forth and the air was suffused with a high-pitched squealing like pigs in an abattoir. Church had to keep on the move to dodge the rampaging beasts, now oblivious to him. The ground had grown slick with the ichor that served as the creatures’ blood and he was slipping and sliding, feeling his skin burn where it splashed up on him. Body parts rained from the sky, bouncing off him as he ran. In disarray and shock he had the awful impression he was looking at a vista from hell.

  And then the blackness of the Fomorii parted and suddenly everywhere there was golden light, and before him was Maponus, moving through the scurrying forms like the righteous wrath of God, dealing out death and punishment on either side. Bodies burst into flames or just fell apart. Others were crushed by his powerful hands. His face was beautiful and serene, as if he were doling out salvation instead of carnage, but his clothes and his golden skin were covered in the black muck that sprayed out of his victims. As he advanced, his wide, innocent eyes staring out of a now-black dripping face, Church knew it truly was Hell. He fell to his knees in the face of such power, not strong enough to run any more. Maponus bore down on him relentlessly.

  Before the Good Son reached him, a blur shot out of the corner of Church’s vision, yanked at his shirt and dragged him across the grass out of the insane god’s path. Church crashed, gasping, on to the ground and rolled over to look up into the face of the Bone Inspector.

  “Nearly didn’t make it.” The old man’s eyes rolled with a hint of madness at the terrors he had experienced. “Trying to drive him up here … get him to follow me …”

  “You did good.” Church gripped the old man’s forearm in gratitude. “To be honest, I’d started to give up hope.”

  “Never do that.” The Bone Inspector slumped down wearily, clutching his staff for support.

  No longer able to talk, they both turned to watch the retreating darkness as the Fomorii swept down the tor like oil running off glass. Behind them the Good Son followed, wreaking his crazed vengeance for a spoiled existence; light flashed off him, wondrous and terrifying to see.

  But when Maponus reached the foot of the tor, Church was surprised to see an odd effect in the sky, as if it were folding back on itself. And through it came riding members of the Tuatha De Danann, swathed in a diffuse golden light. At their head Church recognised Nuada Airgitlamh, who had helped bring him back from the dead on Skye. He was wielding the sword of power, Caledfwlch, which they had liberated from its hiding place. The five or six gods behind him were not known to Church, until he saw the final rider on a white horse with glaring red eyes. It was Niamh.

  She couldn’t shirk her responsibilities either, Church thought.

  The Tuatha De Danann rounded on Maponus, herding him towards the rift in the air. At first he was reluctant, but then it seemed as if a small acorn of sanity in his mind recognised his brethren and he moved speedily and willingly towards the rift. A second later it closed behind them and the Golden Ones were gone.

  Despite all the suffering he had caused, Church hoped the Tuatha De Danann would be able to find some kind of peace for Maponus after all his centuries in Purgatory. The Fomorii didn’t appear to notice that their harrower had departed, or if they did, they were consumed with too much fear to give up their fleeing. The streams of shadows disappeared into the greater darkness of the night.

  And then they were alone on the tor, a small island in a sea of carnage, as a sudden stillness descended over everything.

  It was a moment that should have been savoured, but Church could no longer turn away from the horrors of his responsibility; there was nothing to distract him any more. He stood up, looking back and forth. Tears sprang from nowhere to brim his eyes.

  “I wish I’d died,” he said honestly.

  The Bone Inspector stared at him, uncomprehending. “Where are you going?”

  “To face up to my responsibilities.” Church looked along the bleak, millionmile walk to the house.

  He flexed his fingers, wondering if he had it in him, knowing he had no choice. He sighed, brushed the tears from his eyes. He took the first step.

  He was halfway across the distance, feeling his legs grow more leaden with each yard, when the door of the house swung open.

  Oh God, not Laura now. He couldn’t help a sweep of dismay at having to deal with her acid tone and cheap mockery.

  But the figure that lurched out in a daze had a pale, beautiful face and long, dark hair. Church felt a swell in his chest that he thought would tear him apart.

  And then he was running crazily, not knowing where the reserve of energy had come from, and he swept Ruth up in his arms and crushed her to him like some fool in a stupid romantic film. But it was honest, raw emotion: relief, and joy, and most of all, love. It filled every fibre of him to such a degree it was as if he were feeling the emotions for the first time.

  He looked up into her face, afraid the features would change in some last, cruel blow, but it was definitely her. When he began to speak she silenced him with her fingers on his lips.

  “No,” she cautioned. A panic seemed to be growing deep in her eyes. “No. It’s not like that. It’s still bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head, unable to find the right words. Instead she made him put her down, then took his hand and led him back into the house. He looked round for Laura to join in the celebrations, but the place was empty.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ruth said in a small voice.

  chapter twenty-one

  lughnasadh

  t was like I was floating above myself. I could see and hear everything that was going on around me, and some things that were happening even further afield.” Ruth stared bleakly at the makeshift bed where she had lain for so long.

  Church slumped in the corner, eyes fixed on the middle distance, too weary to attempt to rationalise anything. There was no sound apart from Ruth’s voice and the occasional gust of wind battering against the aged walls.

  “It was near the end … I know it was near the end because my consciousness was starting to break up like some radio station on the edge of its frequency. I could see what was happening to my … my shell.” She looked down at her belly, now returned to its normal size and shape. There was no sign of the disfiguring blemishes, and her skin had regained its usual colour. In fact, apart from the intense weariness that afflicted her spiritually as well as physically, there was no way of telling she had been through anything.

  “You know, she wasn’t as bad as we all thought,” she said, glancing up at Church.

  “I never thought she was bad.”

  “You didn’t think she was good. I didn’t. Especially me. And the worst thing was, she didn’t even think it herself.”

  Church let the exhaustion pull his head down. He could feel each breath going in and out of his lungs. “What happened to her?”

  “But she was good, you see. She deserved to be one of us.”

  Church looked up sharply. “What happened?”

  “While you were out there facing up to the Fomorii there was a sound like an animal snuffling and scrabbling around the
house. Laura got frightened by it. She looked round for anything that might make a weapon to defend me. You know, she was pretty close to the edge by then, and not just because of what was going on outside.”

  “You’re pretty good with that perception.” It sounded a little more sour than he had intended.

  Ruth ignored him. “I think she was about to barricade the door when it suddenly burst in. It was Cernunnos.”

  Church’s brow furrowed. “He came here? What about Shavi?”

  Ruth shook her head. “It wasn’t his Wild Hunt persona. It was the pleasing side of him … the Green side. He had a bottle.” She was staring blankly at the wall of unintelligible writing as if the images were playing out like a movie. “Small, smoky-coloured. He spoke to Laura-“

  “What did he say?” Church snapped. His inability to understand her was grating on him; he could sense some mystery behind it all that he didn’t want revealed.

  “I didn’t hear it all. But the bottle held some kind of … potion, I suppose … something that Shavi had been after-“

  “And he didn’t say anything about Shavi?”

  “No, I told you. The potion was supposed to save me. It wouldn’t destroy Balor. It would …” She struggled for the correct words.

  “What?” Church said in exasperation.

  Ruth took a deep breath to compose herself. “He explained it all to Laura so she could make the right choice. He kept saying it was important she knew what she was doing. She didn’t have to, there was no pressure, she could walk away-I remember him saying that, not quite in those words. But it was there if she wanted to use it. He wanted to help us, Church. He’d marked Laura and me-“

  “A sacrifice. There always has to be a sacrifice.”

  “With magic, yes.” She paused. “I suppose there’s a price to pay for everything.”

  He put a hand over his eyes. “What was it?”

  “It wouldn’t destroy Balor, but it could transfer him-“

  “What?” He felt something cold and hard start to grow inside him.

  “Cernunnos left the bottle on the floor and went. Laura stared at it for a while. I could see her face, all the emotions so raw on it … I wish I’d been nicer to her. I was a bitch.”

  “She was a bitch. Don’t start eulogising her.” What did he feel? Anger? Bitterness? He was surprised he felt anything.

  “She took the bottle. I don’t think she knew whether she was supposed to drink it or pour it on me or what. But when she pulled out the stopper this smoke licked up, and it moved like it had a life of its own. And suddenly I was in agony, I mean real pain, worse than anything the Fomorii did to me. It was like wrenching, like …” She covered her eyes briefly. “And the next thing I knew, Laura was face-down on the floor. Out of it. Completely. Mercifully. And Balor was inside her, or wherever he-“

  “Christ!” Church chewed on a knuckle, staring at the floor, picturing the scene, wishing he couldn’t.

  “She transferred it from me to inside herself.”

  “Christ.”

  “She did it for me, Church. For all of us.”

  “Christ.”

  Ruth wandered over to the window. The Bone Inspector sat forlornly on the lip of the ridge, exhausted, but she didn’t seem to see him.

  Church looked round. “Where is she, then?”

  Ruth turned to him and her expression said it all. “The Fomorii took her. While you were out there fighting Calatin, a few of them came in here. One of them was-“

  “Mollecht.”

  She nodded.

  “He gave me what I needed to kill Calatin so he could seize control. And he took her?”

  She nodded again. Then she came over and squatted next to him. He rested his head on her shoulder, acceptance crushing him down.

  “So they have Balor. They’ve won.”

  They drifted outside in silence. From their vantage point they could see civilisation lit clearly in sodium, the cities glowing orange in the distance, the village oases, the ribbons of lights connecting them, mapping out humanity’s hegemony. Church checked his watch, waited. A moment later every light winked out as one.

  “It’s time,” he said bleakly.

  From the south came a distant howling, growing louder. A wind tore across the countryside, bending the trees, ripping at the hedgerows, screaming up to them like lost souls en route to hell. The clouds tumbled before it, spreading out across the sky, obscuring the stars one by one until there wasn’t even the light of the heavens to see by: only complete darkness, impenetrable, claustrophobic, too terrible for life. And in that awful howling wind Church could almost hear Laura’s death-scream. It was all over. Balor had been reborn. The End of Everything had begun.

  So this is the way the world ends, he thought.

  Except it didn’t. Things carried on the same, though sapped of hope, and everything he could pick out in the dark was dismally grey. There was the wind, quieter now, and Ruth beside him, unmoving. Or perhaps it was just an illusion, random flashes on his mind’s eye. But it smelled the same, and it sounded the same, and that was worse than a sudden ending.

  “I can’t believe she’s dead.” Church stared into the heart of the blazing fire, remembering Skye at Beltane when they thought they had suffered a terrible defeat; not really knowing what the word meant. Behind him, Mam Tor loomed up against the sky; he couldn’t bear to stay on it any longer. But at least the initial shock and dissolution had finally subsided. Now there was only a sickening numbness as he tried to come to terms with what the future held.

  “We all knew there was a chance we were going to get it at some point.” Ruth threw more wood on the blaze, enjoying the feel of the heat on her skin; despite everything, enjoying just being alive. “I’m sorry, Church, that sounded really harsh and I didn’t mean it like that-“

  “I know, I know. We were all aware our lives were hanging by a thread. But however much you think about people dying, it never really prepares you.”

  “It’s a shock at the moment, more than anything because she was the last one you would have thought would have put her neck on the line. She never gave any sign-“

  “That’s because it was all going on inside.”

  Ruth eyed him incisively. “Did you know what she was really like?”

  He shook his head. “I knew she had depths, but I don’t think anybody in the world really knew what was going on inside her head.”

  “Did you love her?”

  There was a long pause. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I cared for her. This sounds like some stupid sixth-form conversation!” He stood up and paced angrily around the perimeter of the firelight.

  Ruth waited till he’d calmed a little before continuing, “I wonder what’s happened to the others.”

  “I can’t believe they’re dead. I’m not even going to think it until I see the evidence in front of me.”

  “You have changed, you know.”

  He nodded. “We both have. We’ve been to the lowest, darkest points of our lives and we’ve come out the other side. And I think we’re both better for it.”

  Ruth let his words sink in, then asked, “Would you have killed me?”

  He looked at her suspiciously across the fire, the dancing flames throwing curious shadows across his face. “I don’t know. I knew I ought to.”

  “You were right. Of course you were. I would have done it to you. We have to think of the big picture-“

  His look stopped her in her tracks; there was too much emotion in it, the backed-up excess of weeks of agonising deliberation. “There is no big picture. The only one that counts is this one here.” He drew a small rectangle in the air in front of his eyes. “Reality exists inside us, not out here.” He gestured towards the dark countryside. “And sometimes one life is more important than millions.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment, neither of them sure what to say next. They were saved from having to say anything in the too-charged atmosphere by the Bone Inspector, who s
trode out of the night with an armful of food. “There are some houses down the ways. Nobody left alive in them.” He threw the provisions next to the fire and leaned on his staff for support; he looked hundreds of years old in the firelight.

  “Are you sticking around?” Church asked him.

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “None of your business.” He paused, then relented. “There’s a lot to do.”

  “What’s to do? We lost. It’s over.”

  The Bone Inspector snorted derisively. “I was right. You are a pathetic little runt.” He was swaying backwards and forwards on his staff, obviously on the verge of collapse.

  “What do you mean?” Ruth asked curiously. “Balor’s back. You saw the sky. You could feel it. At least I could, here, in the pit of my belly, like vibrations from a drill going off just under my feet.”

  Church nodded. “I felt it too, only for me it was a queasy feeling as if I’d eaten something rotten.”

  “Everybody felt it, even the animals,” the Bone Inspector snapped. “Something that big shakes the foundation of life.” He gave a hacking cough. “Look around you,” he continued with watering eyes. “Is it over? Has the world folded up and been put away? Are we dead and not realising it?” He dropped to his haunches, still holding the staff between his legs as if it were a rudder steering the world. “Never give up hope. That’s the message of life.”

  Church noted how like Tom he sounded. He was surprised by how much he suddenly missed his old companion; he wanted the benefit of Tom’s wisdom, and his incisive overview of any situation, however bad-tempered he always was.

  “We could still do something,” Church suggested hopefully.

  “You, not me. Of course you can still do something. That’s what you’re here for. In England’s darkest hour-“

  “I know, I know, a hero shall arise.”

  “And if this isn’t the darkest of all darkest hours, what is?”

  Sighing, Church stared pensively into the fire. “I wonder how long we’ve got before he starts wiping everything out.”