Order of Britain: Stone of Madness

by Myatt, Ben

  Some of them held knives.

  He turned back as the madam locked the door. Reaching behind the bar, she drew out a long carving knife.

  ***

  Callum took one look inside the brothel, and wanted to vomit. The main room was a tableau of blood. It stained the walls, the floor, and the furniture with a crimson sheen.

  And at the centre of it all were the bodies. Two of them had been strung upside down from the ceiling by their feet. Their throats had been cut – eventually. They had once been men, but by the time their suffering had finished, that was no longer the case.

  Beneath them lay the bodies of the brothel's workers. All their throats were marked by a long gash.

  Callum stepped inside the room, trying not to breathe too deeply. The smell of blood and evacuated waste was overwhelming. Behind him, Elizabeth walked into the room and stopped in horror.

  “Fucking hell...” she murmured.

  “I'd say that's fairly succinct,” said Nathaniel. “Do we know who the victims were yet?”

  A police inspector stepped forward, his face mildly disapproving above his bushy moustache. He didn't like his crime scene being invaded by outsiders.

  “Privates Reynolds and Cobb, fourth battalion of foot,” he said smartly. “Both were on leave, and had clearly decided to... entertain themselves.”

  “Drinking and debauchery?” Elizabeth suggested. The inspector didn't look amused.

  “Something like that, miss. We were called when the night manager got here and found the door locked. When he got in, he found this.”

  “I imagine that gave him a fright. How long ago did they die?”

  “We estimate around four hours.”

  “And no-one heard anything?” Callum asked.

  The inspector fixed him with a flat look.

  “This is Whitechapel, sir. People make a habit of not hearing things.”

  “Point taken.”

  He looked over at the arranged bodies, and grimaced.

  “I'm going to need you and your men to give us a minute, inspector.”

  The policeman looked as if he was about to object, then thought better of it. The room cleared quickly, leaving the agents alone.

  He glanced over at Nathaniel, who was walking around the bodies.

  “Anything?”

  “A lot of background, but nothing remaining. Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth was crouched down by the bodies, her face set. She examined the wounds in their necks.

  “These look self inflicted. That makes it two murder-suicides at the centre of magical confluxes. Somehow I don't thing that's a coincidence.”

  A buzzing sounded in each of their ears, and they reached up and pinched their earlobes.

  “You need to return to the Guild. Clarence has called a meeting.” Daltrey said into their ears.

  “Any idea what for?” Nathaniel asked.

  “No, but a lot of the council members have also been summoned.”

  The three agents shared a glance, and headed for the door.

  ***

  Wallace Cameron had the bearing of a man bred for power. The descendant of some of the oldest mage families in the Guild, he had been on the council since he was twenty-one, and now at the age of fifty, he felt that he was the pre-eminent authority on the council. Tall, stately and with a close cropped mane of steel grey hair, Cameron walked into the star chamber as if he owned it.

  The very presence of the man irritated Callum. He'd only encountered Cameron once, but had come away with an intense desire to punch the pompous man in the face.

  Cameron was a traditionalist, and he felt that Callum's presence in the Guild was a betrayal of everything the Guild of Mages stood for. He was a half-blood, a blend of human and dragon physiology – with a voidstone bonded with him to boot. Callum had access to levels of magical power that Cameron could only dream of, and he didn't like that.

  He also wasn't fond of the fact that Clarence had reactivated the Order of Britain. Two centuries before, the original Order had been disbanded – at a hundred members strong, it had been a major force in the Guild of the day, and the head of the council at the time had feared that the agents of the Order would rebel against him. Cameron appreciated history, and with a Dragon-Blood and two of the Guilds brightest and best forming the basis of a new Order, those fears were at the forefront of his mind.

  And he wanted Clarence's seat at the head of the council. The portly mage sat calmly as Cameron berated him.

  “And when, pray tell, were you going to inform the council that the lattice had been compromised?”

  “When it became necessary for the council to know, Mr Cameron. And the lattice has not, to our knowledge, been compromised.”

  “That's not what my agents have informed me, Clarence! They've told me that several events have taken place.”

  “'Events' is one term for it. They were murders, Mr Cameron, plain and simple.”

  “Magically induced murders!”

  “That is yet to be determined.”

  “My agents say...”

  “Have any of your agents been to the crime scenes? Have they looked at the evidence? Have they analysed the available information?” Clarence snapped.

  Cameron looked momentarily taken aback, his face flustered.

  “I didn't think so. Meanwhile, the Order of Britain has been at every event so far, looking at all the angles.”

  Clarence got to his feet. Despite his bulk, Callum could see that he intimidated his fellow council member. In a Guild based around magical ability, power talks, and Clarence had plenty to spare. The air seemed to crackle around him as he stared down Cameron. Finally, the other councilman sat. Clarence remained standing, staring at him for a few moments, then he too seated himself.

  “Investigations are ongoing, Mr Cameron, and will continue to be so. However, I have every confidence in the members of the Order. You're already aware of their recent successes.

  “Ah yes, the bogeyman incident...” Cameron sneered.

  “And the events out in India,” Clarence said evenly. “The Order consists of some of our best and brightest...”

  “And a half-blood.”

  The room went silent. Whilst the general bigotry of the Guild towards Callum was one thing, saying it outright, as Cameron had done, was quite another. There was such a thing as manners after all.

  Callum merely smiled at the councilman.

  “Mr Cameron is right. I am indeed a half-blood. And that makes me uniquely suited to deal with investigations and problems such as these events. Isn't that the whole idea behind the Order? Now, as pleasant as this little exchange has been, I need to get back to work.”

  He stood, and headed for the door as a rumble of approval came from the seated members of the Guild. He didn't dare look back – that would have given Cameron an opening.

  He took a deep breath as he stepped into the hallway, as if to clear his lungs of some foul smell. Behind him, Nathaniel, Elizabeth and Gordon followed, closing the door quietly behind them.

  “That might not have been prudent,” Gordon said. “Mr Cameron is a powerful man to have as an enemy.”

  “So am I. But I think what I did there was buy us some time,” Callum said. His three colleagues looked at him questioningly. He smiled.

  “My father once slipped me into a meeting of the dragons in their space in the void. I was much younger, but I remember it having the same atmosphere as that. Have you ever heard of Trovski?”

  Nathaniel and Elizabeth shook their heads, but Gordon's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “The Dragon king?”

  “King is an overused term. He's more of a leader. But just about every meeting, he gets challenged by someone for his place of leadership.” Callum glanced back at the door to the council chamber.

  “That's what it felt like in there. We need to figure out what's going to happen next.”

  ***

  They sat around the wide table in their cellar office, a map of L
ondon spread out on the table. Callum took a couple of pins, and stuck them into the locations of the two events. He tied a string between them.

  “Alright, Gordon, can you overlay the lattice on the map?”

  The researcher nodded, and cast the spell. Golden lines spread across the map, stuttered for a moment, then held. Gordon released the spell, and the lines burnt into the map, superimposing it like paint.

  “Alright, so we've had two definite events thus far,” Callum said. “So what do we know?”

  “Both murder-suicides, both took place at night,” Elizabeth said.

  “Both extremely violent,” Nathaniel added.

  Callum frowned.

  “It's not enough. There's just not enough information to form a conclusion.”

  “There is the fact that they were magically influenced,” Gordon said. “Those spikes in the lattice – the lines bending in that way – that should be something we can use to track it.”

  “Not without more deaths,” Nathaniel said, “And I'm not sure how many more we can afford.”

  “They were both north of the river,” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “But two very different districts,” Nathaniel said. “The park was a fairly middle class area, and Whitechapel was, well, Whitechapel.”

  “There isn't a damn connection!” Callum burst out. “The two incidents are completely different methods, completely different areas, there's no damn commonality!”

  “If I may interject?” Gordon said.

  The three field agents looked at him. Under their gaze, he seemed to shrink slightly.

  “Go on, Gordon,” Nathaniel said calmly.

  “We're coming at this from the wrong direction. We're looking for a connection between the events that doesn't exist – the one, common factor between them is magic. We need to focus on the root cause, not the effects.”

  “Alright,” Elizabeth said. “So what do you suggest?”

  “We analyse the spell itself. Callum, you found residue of some kind at the scene in the park, didn't you?”

  Callum nodded, and went to his desk. He opened a draw, and took out the piece of bark he'd chipped off the tree in the park. Walking back over, he handed it to Gordon, who took it gingerly.

  “Nathaniel, would you create a lith-globe, please?”

  “Certainly.”

  Nathaniel raised his hand, and a globe of purest crystal appeared above his palm. Gordon touched the piece of bark to the globe, and it slipped through the surface like water.

  “Elizabeth, could you apply lightning to it please?” Gordon said, peering through his glasses at the wood chip.

  She glanced at Nathaniel, shrugged, and cast the spell. Electricity crackled around the inside of the globe, then suddenly vanished.

  “As I suspected,” Gordon murmured. He reached into the globe, and withdrew the wood chip, holding it up to the dingy light.

  “Callum, could you summon your sword, please?” he said. His eyes remaining focussed on the woodchip, Callum flicked his wrist, and the sword appeared in his hands. Carefully, Gordon moved the woodchip closer to the blade.

  It leapt from his hand, and attached itself to the sword. Gordon reached forward and, with some effort, pulled it away. He let it go again and the same action occurred, the chip leaping from his palm and attaching itself to the sword.

  “Opposites attract,” he said, smiling to himself.

  “Alright, now can you explain what that means?” Callum asked.

  “There are multiple types of void energy, allowing magic users to channel it into different types of power. There's combustible energy, lightning energy, all those different types. Your sword, Callum, is composed of positive void energy.”

  Gordon sat back, and pushed his spectacles up his nose.

  “Positive void energy is one of the six base types – Earth, air, fire, water, positive and negative. The reason the woodchip is attaching to your sword is because it's coated in negative void energy residue.”

  “By negative do you mean... evil?” Nathaniel said, his eyebrow raising.

  “No. Nothing that simple. Void energy reflects the nature of its user. Whoever is behind this is clearly a disturbed individual.”

  “Alright, so what do we do with this information?” Elizabeth asked. “It's a start, but where do we go from here.”

  Gordon's smile broadened.

  “The lattice is composed of positive energy. We can use it to track negative energy specifically.”

  He laid his hands on the table, and squinted at the map. Slowly, blotches of black began to spread out across the city. Two especially dark ones appeared beneath the pins Callum had pushed into the map, flowering out like bloodstains from a wound.

  “These are the negative energy areas in the city. Most of them have been there for quite some time – perfect normal background magic, but these intense spots are new. Now, if we tune the lattice in...” the golden threads on the map pulsed slightly, “we should be able to see any fresh buildup.”

  Elizabeth was staring at the map.

  “You mean like that one?” she asked.

  A fresh black blotch was spreading north of the river. The three field agents leapt to their feet.

  “Go, quickly!” Gordon said, “you might be able to head it off!”

  ***

  The Guild was known to keep several hansom cabs on contract, and it was one of these that the three agents took across the city. The drivers had been thoroughly briefed on the unusual nature of their regulars – and more specifically, were paid enough not to take too much notice.

  Callum sat impatiently in his seat as the cab moved through the city, and touched his hand to his ear.

  “Anything new, Gordon?”

  “I'm narrowing it down. I think it's a theatre.”

  “I think I know the one. Small place? Off Norman Street?” Nathaniel asked.

  Elizabeth and Callum looked at him in surprise. He returned their gaze coolly.

  “I have a life outside work you know.”

  The cab rolled onto Norman Street, and into a scene of chaos. Panicked theatre-goers were streaming from the doors of the theatre, and running down the street. Callum leapt from the cab, and grabbed a passer-by.

  “What's going on?”

  “There's some kind of creature in there – a monster!” The man pulled his arm free of Callum's grip, and ran down the street. Elizabeth gripped her ear, and called through to Gordon.

  “It sounds like we've got something different here. We'll investigate.”

  “Keep me notified.”

  The three barged their way through the tide of humanity towards the theatre doors, and stepped inside.

  ***

  Ten minutes earlier, theatre manager Anthony Sempford had watched in astonishment as his lead actor had stepped onto the stage, raised a loaded revolver, and shot his leading lady in the head. As his jaw had dropped, Anthony had begun to push his way to the stage as the actor turned the gun round, put it to his own head, and pulled the trigger.

  The audience had remained seated, shocked by the scene in front of them – or believing that this was part of the performance. They had begun to scream, however, as the two bodies on stage began to jerk and slide towards each other, their flesh melding into a glutinous new form. The two heads slid up the body to the shoulders, but limbs, torsos... all became one malformed body.

  The creature had stepped forward and roared, and the panic had begun.

  Now, Anthony was cowering behind the stage booth, watching the thing pace back and forth on the stage. Some of his customers, crushed in the rush for the exits, lay motionless by the doors, dead or unconscious, he didn't know which. He began to edge towards the rear door door, hoping to escape out the back of the theatre.

  His arm brushed against the bell used to announce the second half of the show, sending it falling to the floor with a metallic clatter.

  The dual heads of the creature on the stage snapped round, its four eyes fixing on the manag
er. A low growl escaped from its throats, and long claws slid from its fleshy wrists.

  Anthony dived down into the aisle, running for the front door, but the creature moved with astounding speed to block his path. In its chest, a massive mouth opened, the teeth the pointed ends of his former actor's ribs.

  A clawed arm leapt outwards, slicing into his shoulder. Anthony screamed in pain as he was cut to the bone. He slumped back as the mouth came closer.

  “Back off!”

  The shout came from the front of the theatre. Weakly, Anthony turned to look at the three newcomers. Each of them held a revolver, the barrels pointed at the creature as it turned to face them. The monster took a step towards them, and the three fired as one. The bullets slammed into the creature, and it stumbled to its knees. The tall, hairless man in the middle of the three glanced at his colleague.

  “Nathaniel?”

  The shorter man nodded,and held up his hand. A lance of ice sprang from his palm, flying at the creature and impaling it. The monster roared in frustration,and tried to get to its feet. The tall man flicked his wrist, and a long silver blade appeared in his hand.

  “Elizabeth?” he said.

  The pretty, black-haired girl standing next to him smiled grimly,and raised her hands. A ball of lightning formed between her palms, and she threw it towards the shard of ice sticking from the creature's chest. The monster screamed as the electricity arced through its form. It swayed unsteadily on its feet as the tall man ran towards it. Leaping up onto the back of the seats, he launched himself spinning into the air, the silver sword coming round in a massive cut. The blade bit into the double neck of the monster, and sent its heads flying. The young man landed, cat-like on his feet, and kicked the creature over onto its back, where it lay still. He turned to Anthony, and smiled.

  “Are you alright?”

  Anthony looked at the blood spreading from the decapitated creature, and passed out.

  “I'll take that as a no, then,” Callum said. He glanced at Elizabeth.

  “Can you call in a cleanup crew from the Guild? I don't think we should leave this thing here.”

  She nodded, and raised her hand to her ear.