‘Turned out cold again!’ he joked brightly before investigating the heap of bird bones for any that had not already been picked clean. He was not rewarded.
Lying down next to the fire, he added, ‘I’ll just grab forty winks before I head out again. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.’
10
For Ruth, only one horizon now existed in the Court of Endless Horizons and that was in the dimension of pain. It had gone on for so long, with such intensity, that it had become the medium in which her body existed, as much a part of life as the air she breathed. She occasionally found herself examining it with a Zen-like detachment, although she knew that was a response to the natural analgesics her brain was flooding through her system. Occasionally, she found herself looking down on her body from high above, seeing her arms yanked over her head and back so that the joints were in permanent agony as she lay stretched across an oaken table, now puddled with her sweat and the blood that had flowed from the thousand tiny cuts made by the obsidian knife. Some went deeply into the muscle tissue, and though she knew the Pendragon Spirit would heal them rapidly, she also realised that Tezcatlipoca would not give her that opportunity. Death would be coming soon.
From her vantage point, she saw Tom, tearful at her suffering, held with a knife at his throat in one corner of the large hall near the top of one of the city’s highest buildings, and Laura beside him, her face pale and blank, a spear levelled at her side.
Don’t be sad for me, she thought, obliquely. I can survive this. I can survive anything.
Vast windows ran along all four walls, which would once have offered a great vista across the entire city and captured every sunrise and sunset. Now only black lay without. The hall was filled with ranks of the Aztec warriors, their spears banging against the stone flags with each beat of the drum. Ruth knew the beat matched that of her heart, steady, but soon it would be slowing. Soon it would stop.
Where’s Church? The notion floated up, detached from any context, and then, Where’s Ryan?
In a rare moment of clarity, she realised her instinctive use of the Craft had pulled the essential part of her from her body. A flash of pride came and went: she had never before achieved that state without her ritual and her herbs.
Is this what I’m capable of? From thought to action in the blink of an eye? Is this what we all could do? All that potential in every person. It’s a shame I’ll never find out.
It didn’t matter; in her spirit-form she always had a different perception of what was important, of life and death, and the part all the elements played in what she had heard described as the Great Mystery.
This is what Shavi meant about the patterns, she realised. Rise above it and it all makes a different kind of sense.
Beneath her, Tezcatlipoca raised the obsidian knife again. Ruth was pleased she could no longer smell his decomposing flesh, and she had no desire to witness her body put under more duress so she took her previous thought literally: Rise.
Up to the ceiling, she floated, and then through it into the chamber above, and up until she was inside the dense darkness that enveloped everything. Part of her wanted to keep rising, up past the darkness, past the sky, to search for that welcoming tunnel of light she had heard of so many times, and to see again all those people she missed so dearly.
But she couldn’t allow herself to do it, and instead she swooped down so fast that the buildings passed in a blur. When she reached street level, she moved along inches above the cobbles, enjoying the familiar exhilaration. At speed, she ranged through the city, seeing Tezcatlipoca’s warriors prowling the deserted streets, slipping into buildings where their victims lay in a jumble and feeling a surge of guilt that she had been indirectly responsible for their deaths; then investigating the other homes and shops, towers, halls and warehouses still packed with the trembling, fearful mass of people who had no idea what was happening around them, but who knew that death was creeping closer. Their faces burned through her dreamlike state and ignited a fierce desire to protect them. She could never give up while a single one remained alive.
The others, she thought. Where are they?
And then the streets and buildings of the Court of Endless Horizons passed in a blur as she searched every corner at speed. Finally she came across Veitch, Shavi, Bearskin, Shadow John and Rachel weaving through an alley to avoid an Aztec patrol as they made their way back to the café where they had arranged to meet Church.
As she floated above them, her hazy mind accepted the futility of what she was doing, for in that state she could neither touch nor be heard or seen. Yet to her surprise, Shavi’s head snapped up when she came lower and he stared into her face with a shocked expression.
‘Ruth?’
Veitch looked at him askance. ‘Are you on the mushrooms again?’ ‘You can see me?’ Ruth asked.
Holding off Veitch, who was urging him to move on quietly, Shavi smiled and pointed to his eye. ‘This thing is proving a better investment than I ever hoped. What are you doing?’
‘You have to come quickly,’ she said. ‘He’s killing me.’
‘Who is?’
‘The god who’s taken control of the city. He’s been trying to flush us out.’ She glanced at Rachel. ‘And, I think, find her. He said he used to be known as . . . Tezcatlipoca?’
Worry underlined the recognition in Shavi’s face. ‘One of the most important gods to the Aztecs. This darkness makes sense now - he ruled the night, and death, and he loved tempting people to do great evil.’
‘He’s got me, and Laura and Tom in one of the tall buildings in the middle of the city. If you can follow me, I can take you straight there.’
11
With every beat of the drum reverberating through the walls and floor, Church felt his anger ratcheting up. From the moment it started, he knew it was counting out the remaining moments of Ruth’s life, each thoom bringing a flash of the woman he loved in pain; he saw each cut, each beating, each agonised expression as if he were standing next to her. The images seared into his mind and pushed him towards the brink of madness.
With his exertion in the heat of the rows of lamps and candles, he had sweated himself dry. He could no longer feel his wrists. The constant drip-drip-drip into the puddle on the floor matched the drum’s steady rhythm.
Occasionally his dread for Ruth shifted into blind, red hatred for the Libertarian, who swayed before his mind’s eye with his sickeningly mocking grin, and his lies and his contempt, the architect of all his misery. Church knew he could kill the Libertarian without a second thought, the realisation no less troubling than the conundrum of whether it would be murder or suicide.
Thoom. Ruth. Thoom. Ruth. Thoom.
Finally the combustible mixture of dread and hatred exploded in uncontrollable rage. He half-stood, the chair rising with him, and raced backwards, crashing the seat against the wall. The force of the impact jarred every bone in his body, the wood of the upright smashing into his back, but still the rage did not diminish. In a fury, he did it again, and again, falling to the ground, struggling to pick himself up, once knocking himself unconscious.
When he was in the kind of pain he imagined Ruth was experiencing, he heard a loud crack. Barely able to think straight, he slammed into the wall one more time and the chair shattered into several pieces. Stepping through his bonds, he ignored the tattered mess of his wrists and tried the door. It was open. Caledfwlch stood outside.
Stupid, he thought. Do you really think that little of me?
Working the rope against the blade, he was free within a moment and lurching quickly down the corridor towards the drum-beat. His head spun and every fibre of his body ached, but his hatred kept him going.
A maze of stairs and corridors passed in a blur until he found himself stepping out into a small gallery overlooking a great hall filled with several ranks of Aztec warriors. All else faded into a mist when his gaze fell on Ruth, bound to a table on the other side of the hall, either unconscious or dead, h
er body leaking blood from numerous wounds. The boom of the drum reverberating in the pit of his stomach only added to his queasy despair.
A twitch of Ruth’s hand allowed his rage to surface once more, and though the Libertarian was nowhere to be seen - Coward, he thought - his attention fell on what appeared to be a decomposing corpse now looming over Ruth with a black knife.
At the same time, the door into the hall burst open. With a fierce yell, Veitch began to chop and hack at the Aztec Warriors.
Without a thought for his own safety, Church threw himself from the gallery into the midst of the warriors. Several fell beneath Caledfwlch before the warriors realised they were being attacked from behind, and by then Church was cutting a path through them towards Ruth.
In the enclosed space, the warriors’ obsidian-tipped spears were useless, and their wooden swords were no match for Caledfwlch. The Blue Fire blazed around the blade with more ferocity than Church had ever seen before, filling his gaze, his mind.
In the chaos of battle, he caught only glimpses of the grotesque grey figure holding the knife above Ruth. His feverish prayers appeared to work, for the knife did not fall. Instead he caught sight of a mirror that appeared to smoke, and then the figure was gone and the Libertarian stood in his place, mocking Church silently.
The sight of the one he hated most in the world drove the last of his rational thoughts away, and then there was only a red haze of blood and bone and flesh as he cut through the final warriors and leaped onto the small dais where the table stood.
Despite the extent of her wounds, Ruth had already come round. She mouthed his name, other words he could no longer hear, and he had no idea why the concern in her face became fear. Slicing through her bonds, he lurched past the table towards the Libertarian.
‘You’re not going to hurt anybody any more!’ he roared.
With a devilish grin, the Libertarian held the smoking mirror towards him, and as the smoke cleared, Church saw what could only have been the reflection of another world. In it, a hellish figure covered from head to toe in blood stared back at him, wild-eyed, in its hands a sword of Black Fire, remarkably like his own. The truth of the reflection did not touch him, or if it did, he did not care, for he advanced on the Libertarian with a renewed rage.
Behind him, he heard one of Ruth’s words of power. A flash of lightning and a furious gale assailed the remaining warriors.
Oblivious to the turmoil behind him, Church advanced on the Libertarian. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ he snarled.
Someone called his name. He ignored it.
From the side of the room, another Libertarian appeared to knock the mirror from the hands of his twin where it shattered on the floor. A look of abject betrayal filled the face of the first Libertarian, but then his features began to swim.
Church was too consumed by his passions to comprehend what was happening or to wait for an outcome. As the second Libertarian darted towards the window, Church attacked his prey, even as his features began to alter back to those of Tezcatlipoca. An inhuman shriek made his head ring as the blade bit deep, the blue flames a consuming inferno. No cries for mercy would make him relent.
A troubling calm came over him, so he did not hear the thud of the sword that matched the beat of the now-silent drum. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. The Libertarian was gone, but still Church did not stop. Whatever was before him was now an unidentifiable mass that had to be reduced to the smallest parts possible. So he continued, chopping and hacking and slicing, even when there was only a slurry spread across the dais, and a voice told him that he would never stop, because he could never be sure he could eradicate the foulness he would become. He could never change things, or make them better. He could only destroy.
Rough hands grabbed him, and by then he was too weak to resist. Caledfwlch clattered to the floor and he turned to face Shavi and Tom. Shavi was crying openly, and for some reason Tom would not meet his eyes.
Reeling, his gaze was drawn past them to Ruth, finally worried about her now that his rage had burned itself out. Suddenly he wondered if it was too late, for him, for them, for everything. Veitch held Ruth tightly, comforting her, and they were both looking at him as if he were the monster he had seen reflected in the smoking mirror.
Chapter Eight
THE WARP ZONE
1
In the ample shade of the roof garden, the ferns, olive trees and date palms swayed in the hot desert wind and the shocking pink and electric-blue tropical blooms released a luxuriant perfume that attracted bees and enormous butterflies. A sense of peace enveloped Church for the first time in weeks. Sipping the hot, spicy tea the grateful citizens brought him, he turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes.
‘It’s so good to have it back.’ Rachel sat opposite him, sheltering beneath a large parasol. She, too, had found her first degree of peace in the Far Lands.
‘We take too many things for granted until they’re gone.’
The darkness had risen from the Court of Endless Horizons the moment Tezcatlipoca had been defeated. Church wasn’t wholly sure that the god was dead - the vile slurry remaining after he had hacked the body to pieces had vanished shortly after, along with the fragments of the smoking mirror - but it was clear they had bought themselves some breathing space.
The city’s diverse inhabitants had gradually emerged blinking into the light, barely able to believe that the immediate crisis had passed, while recognising that the larger one remained; at least the dark had hidden the Burning Man’s fiery glare. Soon the streets were packed to the brim once again, despite the numbers slaughtered by Tezcatlipoca’s followers.
While the city had quickly returned to the chaos that passed for normal, the tensions amongst the Five had not gone away. Church had found his equilibrium quickly, but Ruth was understandably taking longer to recover from her ordeal, and had insisted on resting alone in a room, refusing all Church’s attempts to talk with her. Veitch, Shavi and Laura had been caught in numerous intense discussions, the conversation drying up whenever Church approached, and he had felt their eyes on him wherever he went, as if he would somehow pick up his sword and attack them all with the fury he had shown Tezcatlipoca.
‘I am not the Libertarian!’ he had shouted at one point, but that only appeared to make them more unsettled, and his inability to show any regret for his brutality or to temper his desire to kill the Libertarian only compounded their suspicions.
Tom had attempted to offer advice and guidance, but Church was not in the mood; time was running out and he was more intent on departing the city and completing his plan as soon as possible.
‘This place is unbelievable,’ Rachel said, her face set, her eyes hard; a great deal of anger was locked inside her. ‘It’s like a dream and a nightmare wrapped up in one. All this beauty, and so much horror at the same time.’ She focused on a flower, which moved slowly before lunging for a passing bird. ‘I keep feeling I’ve been here before, when I was a child.’
‘Everyone feels that way when they come here for the first time. I don’t know why that is - maybe children dream of this place, or they’ve got some innate connection to it that we lose as we get older.’
‘Thank you for helping me.’ Askance, she eyed him, weighing his nature, still not wholly sure. ‘The elderly man . . . Tom? . . . he told me all about you. I’m not sure how much I believe. But thank you anyway.’
‘No problem. The next thing we need to do is get you home.’
‘You can do that? I was afraid I’d be stuck here for ever.’
‘We can try. How did you get here?’
‘I don’t know where to start.’ She tugged at the fibres of her dirty jeans for a moment, and then said, ‘I’m twenty-eight. I’ve had more jobs than you’d possibly believe - dog groomer, checkout girl, waitress. I’m just one of those people who doesn’t feel at home in anything. Always out of sorts. An outsider. Do you know?’
He nodded.
Deep in thought, she remained silent for an uncomfort
able amount of time, and then pointed to a scar near her eye. ‘You see that? I was living in London with this guy. Scott. He used to knock me around, usually when he’d had a bad time at work, or when the car broke down. Or when his team lost. I kept making all these elaborate plans to leave him. Sometimes that’s all I’d do - dream up different scenarios, night and day. And I never went anywhere. How pathetic is that?’
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