World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1)

by Mark Chadbourn

  They crashed across a roundabout, narrowly avoiding another car, and then Tom ordered Church to take the next right. For the first stretch it was a dual carriageway, allowing Church to floor the accelerator; the car complained under the sudden pull. But then the road narrowed to a single carriageway and Church feared the worst. At Tom's instruction he took a right fork on the wrong side of the road, his shirt wet with sweat.

  "Turn right when I say!" Tom yelled. Church's eyes were constantly drawn to the sky, but he steeled himself for the order. "Now!"

  Church swung the wheel, clipping the curb as another pillar of fire erupted from the heavens. Behind them the tarmac exploded in molten gouts. They swung round in a massive car park, the plain rolling off flatly ahead of them.

  "Where do we go from here?" Church shouted, suddenly confronted by a huddle of low buildings and a barrier with a turnstile.

  "Out of the car," Tom ordered, wrenching the door open.

  Before Church could protest, Tom was moving rapidly for someone in his late fifties. He vaulted the barrier, and by the time they had caught up with him he was turning into a tunnel which cut back under the road. Overhead, the slow beat of the creature's wings was almost deafening. They felt the surge of air currents as it swooped by, but by the time it had rounded to emit another blast of fire they were already deep in the tunnel.

  Ruth slumped against the wall to catch her breath. "Thank God," she gasped.

  "Not here," Tom stressed, grabbing her arm and pulling her on. A few seconds later, a wall of flame roared along the tunnel to the point where she had been standing, the wave of scorching air knocking them to the ground.

  Coughing and choking, with lungs that seemed to burn from the inside, they scrambled forward and emerged into the cool night. Church was instantly transfixed by a view of black megaliths crowded squat and ancient beneath the light of the moon.

  "Stonehenge?" Ruth gasped.

  They ran forward and clawed their way over the perimeter fence, only pausing once they were amongst the stones.

  "It can see us here as easily as anywhere else," Ruth protested as she watched the creature soar and turn high overhead, a black shape blocking out the stars as it passed.

  "I told you, she senses." Tom knelt and patted the scrubby grass affectionately. "The land is filled with power. Earth Magic. Tremendous alchemical energy that flows among the old places and sacred spots. The Fabulous Beasts feed on it, use the lines for guidance when they are flying. We can't see it, but to them it appears like a network of blue fire on the land. And here, in a powerful nexus of that energy, we're lost in the glare."

  There was a moment of silence as Ruth gaped at Tom, then she turned to Church; he shook his head dismissively.

  Tom shrugged and turned away. "Believe what you will. You have seen one of the Fabulous Beasts. You cannot wish your way back to your old life." He wandered off amongst the stones and was soon lost in the shadows.

  Ruth and Church watched the sky, ready to run at any second.

  "Well, he's right about one thing," Ruth said after a tense few moments. "It's not attacking." She watched it circling, the arc growing wider and wider.

  Church followed her gaze. "What the hell's going on?"

  Gradually the creature disappeared from view. The wind picked up, blustering over the sweeping plain, driving the few remaining clouds ahead of it until the night sky was clear and burning with the beacons of a thousand stars. Church couldn't remember the last time he had seen the sweep of the heavens in such a virginal, breathtaking state.

  "Beautiful," Ruth whispered in a state of dazed incomprehension. "I knew there was a reason to move out of the city."

  The enormity of their experience made it almost impossible to consider so Church focused on the mundane. "What do you make of him?"

  Ruth thought for a while, her face hidden in shadows. "I think he could help us."

  "But you don't trust him."

  "No." She chewed on her lip thoughtfully, then said, "I don't like the way he's not telling us what's happening. You can see he knows more. But it's like he's using it to control us."

  The wind that had been rushing around the henge died down and for a second there was just peace and quiet. "Who is he, Church? How can he know these things?"

  "I've given up trying to make any sense of it," he replied morosely. "I'll just be happy getting out the other end in one piece."

  They found a spot on one of the fallen stones where they could lie without getting damp and simply watched the stars, almost touching, aware only of their presence in the universe, the noise of their chaotic thoughts shut down for a brief moment of tranquillity. A shooting star streaked brightly across the arc of the sky, and the last thought Church remembered having was, "That's an omen."

  The tramp of Tom's boots disturbed them some time later as they floated half in and out of sleep.

  "I feel like I've slept for hours," Church said, scrubbing his face to wake himself. "Must be the stress."

  "The blue fire," Tom corrected. "It heals and invigorates if you open yourself up to it." Something landed on the ground before them. "Dinner," he said. A rabbit lay there, its tufts of white fur ghostly in the dark.

  "How did you catch that?" Ruth asked.

  "You pick up a few tricks when you're hungry on the road."

  "We're going to eat it raw?" Church said in disgust.

  "You can if you like. I'ni lighting a fire."

  "And have every security guard in the county here in five minutes. I'm surprised they haven't picked us up already," Church said.

  "Their technology is blind to us. And there's no need to worry about the fire, either. I'll make sure of that."

  Church lay back and closed his eyes again. "I'm not even going to ask."

  Tom looked around for some fuel; the land was just grassy scrub in all directions so he tore up a walkway of wooden pallets that kept the tourists out of the mud in wet weather. It was enough to build a decent fire, and even though the kindling was damp he was able to get it alight with relative ease. He skinned, gutted, trimmed and jointed the rabbit with a Swiss Army knife, then stuffed the various pieces in packets of turf and placed them in the embers around the edge of the fire.

  "It will not be long," he said when he'd finished. "A hedgehog would have been quicker, but I could not find one."

  "Mmmm," Church said acidly. "Vermin."

  "It's a tasty dish. You're soft."

  "That's why God invented pizza parlours."

  Tom smiled wryly. "And what will you do when all the pizza parlours have gone?"

  "More doom and gloom. The end of the world is nigh."

  "You're starting to sound like an idiot who can't count the fingers held in front of his face," Tom countered.

  Tom and Church glared at each other until Ruth interjected. "Don't argue-I haven't got the energy." Her face seemed too pale in the firelight and her eyes brimmed with tears. "I keep thinking of all those people who died on the motorway. Everywhere there was something horrible-somebody's face screaming. I can't get it out of my head."

  Compassion lit Tom's face, softening the lines and the set of his jaw that gave a hardness to his appearance.

  "And we caused it!" Ruth continued.

  "You didn't cause it," Tom said flatly. "What you saw this evening is just the first of many outrages. Some you will be at the heart of, many will happen without your involvement."

  Church had reached his limit. "You're driving me mad, saying things like, `Oh, that's because of the blue fire,' whatever that means, or pretending you have intimate knowledge of the habits of mythical creatures. Why should we believe anything you say?"

  There was no outburst in response. Tom merely stared into the middle distance thoughtfully as he gently rubbed his chin. "How can I explain things to you when you have no frame of reference to understand them?" Then: "Unfortunately I don't have any credentials to show you. All I can say is that I've seen unmistakable evidence of what's occurring. You'll have to a
ccept me on trust until we know each other well enough to discuss the past." He held up his hand to silence Church's protests. "But if you're looking for some kind of proof, there is something I can show you." He dipped into a hidden pocket and pulled out his tobacco tin and a small block of hash which he used to roll a joint.

  "I don't think this is the time to get off your face," Church said.

  "This isn't for pleasure," Tom replied. He lit the joint and inhaled deeply. "Before the Christian era, psychoactive substances were used by most cultures to put them in touch with the sacred. And that's what I'm about to do now, to show you so you understand what lies behind it all." He closed his eyes in meditation for a short while, then said, in a gentle voice barely audible over the wind and the fire, "The people who put up these stones were smoking as they sat here, looking at the stars. In the fougous and under the barrows, beneath the cromlechs, in the circles and the chambered cairns, they were eating sacred mush rooms and ingesting hallucinogens thousands of years before the so-called Summer of Love. It helped man touch the heart of the universe." He blew a fragrant cloud into the breeze. Then he said in a strong, powerful voice: "You have to understand that magic works."

  "Magic as in spells and funny hand movements and all that mumbo jumbo," Church said tartly. "Sure, why not? A few hits on that and I'll believe in anything."

  "Magic as in influencing people and events without having any obvious direct contact with them," Tom said, calmly but forcefully. "Magic as in beings with abilities you can only dream of. An old word for something that may lie just beyond science, that has its own strict rules, that operates with subtle energy flows and fields. A completely different way of looking at how the world works." Church's expression remained unchanged, so Tom walked over to the nearest standing stone. "Science says this is just a lump of rock stuck in the earth. Magic says it's something more. Look at it closely, along the edge silhouetted against the sky."

  "What am I supposed to be looking for?" Church said.

  "Look close and look hard. Dismiss nothing as a trick of your eyes. Believe."

  Ruth and Church stared at the point Tom was indicating and after a few minutes Ruth said, "I think I can see a light."

  "Keep looking," Tom pressed.

  Church shook his head dismissively, but then he squinted and after a second or two he seemed to make out a faint blue glow limning the edge of the menhir. The more he stared, the more it came into focus, until tiny azure flames appeared to be flickering all around the ancient stone. "What is that?" he asked in amazement.

  "Magic," Tom replied softly. He slowly held out his right index finger to the stone and an enormous blue spark jumped from the rock to his hand; a second later the force, whatever it was, was running to him directly, infusing him with a soft sapphire glow. Still smiling, he raised his left hand palm upwards; shimmering shapes danced in the air above it. Church thought he glimpsed faces and bodies, but nothing stayed in focus.

  "Static electricity," Church ventured without believing it himself. "An electromagnetic field given off by geological stresses."

  Tom simply smiled.

  "Does it hurt?" Ruth asked.

  "I feel like I could run a hundred miles." He drew in a deep, peaceful breath. "This is the power in the land. Earth Magic. The Fiery Network. Science can't measure it so science says it doesn't exist. But you see it."

  Church felt his mood altering in proximity to the crackling display; he was overcome with an exuberation that made him want to shout and jump around. Negative thoughts sloughed off him like mud in the rain; he couldn't stop himself from grinning like an idiot.

  Tom broke off the display and returned to his seat by the fire. "Belief in a new way-the true way-won't happen in a night, but all things flow from this and once you accept it you'll truly understand."

  "But what is it exactly?" Church's intellectual curiosity had been piqued alongside the buzz his emotions had received.

  "The vital force of the world, the thing that binds humanity and the planet together. An energy unlike any other, spiritual in essence. If you look closely enough you'll find it within you as well as within the earth."

  "The New Agers always said there was something like this." Church felt a shiver wash through him; he felt deeply affected in a way he couldn't understand.

  "The ancients knew about it. The Chinese call it chi, the dragon energy, for it's always been linked with the Fabulous Beasts who are both its symbol and its guardians. That's why the standing stones were raised, the old stone chambers, the earliest churches. To mark the sacred sites where the energy was strongest, to channel it, to keep it flowing freely. But when the so-called Age of Reason came, it was discounted by the new generation of thinkers-it couldn't be quantified, bottled, replicated in a laboratory. And as that new way of seeing the world took hold, the people forgot it too. Over time it became dormant. For centuries no one could have stirred it, however hard they tried. But with the change that came over the world at the turn of the year, it awoke again. Now a few of us know how to raise it briefly, but it still needs to be woken completely, to become the vital force once more. And this," he added, "is the first sign that the world is now a very different place."

  "How do you know all this?" Ruth asked.

  "I was called. Informed-"

  "Called by whom?"

  He smiled at the insistence in her voice. "If you must know, by a gentleman called the Bone Inspector. Any the wiser?"

  "That's an odd name."

  "He's an odd man. His people have been linked to the land for millennia, the custodians of secret knowledge and ancient ritual. He guards the old places where the blue fire burns the brightest. He felt the changes first. Perhaps you'll meet him one day and then you can ask him all these questions yourself."

  "This is making my head hurt," Church said. "People who guard the old places?"

  "The best way to approach this is to forget everything you thought you knew," Tom said bluntly.

  "Okay," Church said, "you've convinced me you've got some sort of insight, but there are still a lot of questions to be answered-"

  "At least I have your attention now," Tom said acidly.

  "Then what is going on?" Ruth asked. Beyond the ruddy glow cast by the fire, the night seemed too dark; past the comforting bulk of the stones the shadows seemed to rise up from the plain. "Why are all these things happening now?"

  Tom crimped out the joint. "Everything changed, suddenly, dramatically, sometime around the New Year." He prodded the fire with a broken branch, sending a shower of sparks skyward. "The world's turning away from the light. History is cyclical, you should know that. Empires rise and fall, knowledge is learned then lost, and sometimes things that seem gone forever return unannounced. There's a basis for all legends, folklore, fairytales-"

  "Symbolism, rites of passage, religion," Church interrupted. "A way to pass important wisdom down the generations so it can be easily understood by those learning it."

  "All true, of course. How very erudite of you. But some of it is literal. As I understand it, the world used to be a very different place. You saw the Fabulous Beast so this is undeniable-creatures of myth once walked this land, old gods, ancient races, things you would think existed only in the imagination. And the old stories are our way of remembering this time of wonder and miracles."

  Church glanced at Ruth; Tom's words were an echo of what Kraicow had begun to say. "There's no archaeological record-" he began, but Tom waved him silent.

  "Somehow, for some reason, all these things were swept away to"-he made an expansive gesture-"some other place. But now-"

  "They're back." Ruth shivered. Somewhere nearby an owl's forlorn hoot keened over the wind. She searched the darkness, but it was impossible to see anything beyond the circle of the fire. "And this man you called the Bone Inspector told you all this?"

  "Some of it."

  "And you believed him straight away?" Church put his head in his hands and closed his eyes for a moment. But having seen
what Tom called the Fabulous Beast, he knew there was no rational explanation for it. "So where did all these creatures of myth go for the last millennia or so?"

  Church couldn't tell if Tom's silence was because he didn't know or because he didn't want to tell them.

  "And what we saw under the bridge and at the service station were some of the things from those days?" Ruth asked hesitantly.

  Tom searched for the right words. "This is how it was told to me: long ago, long before mankind had established itself, there were old races. Beings of tremendous power, understanding of all the secret forces in the universe. They were so incomprehensible to us in their appearance and their actions they could have been gods. They were the source of all our legends. In the Celtic stories, in the sacred traditions of other races and cultures. Even in the Christian heritage."

  "Demons," Ruth ventured.

  "And angels," Tom continued. "Folklore is the secret history of this land. There's a bright truth in every story. Look at mediaeval wood carvings. Illustrated religious texts. The stone creatures on some of the churches. Once seen, never forgotten. Over time the old races went into decline and soon the season came for them to move on. They disappeared beyond the veil, supposedly forever. There have been echoes of them down the years-some of the old gods could not leave well alone. Other times their power leaked through, into the ancient places, the sacred places. In all but that they were gone, and the world breathed again, and mankind prospered." He stared deep into the heart of the flames. "But now their season has come round again."

  The wind picked up as if in response to his words; Church shivered and pulled his jacket tightly around him. "If what you're saying is true, and I'm not saying it is, why have they returned now?"

  Tom shrugged. "As I said, everything is cyclical. Perhaps it is simply their time. And perhaps the time of mankind has now passed. Who knows? The rules remain hidden; life is a mystery."