No. Scratch that. Hoped.
Something large, silver and round gleamed on the woman’s back, a shield of some kind, catching the early light. He watched her draw a sickle from her belt as she approached. A sickle? Might as well come at me with a toothpick. Ben snorted, flame fluttering inside his nostrils, but he was quick to realise that the helipad rippled with more than just the ensuing heat haze. He plucked at the dart in his throat, but he was already having trouble, his claws scrabbling on concrete, clumsy and slow. Whatever the agents had packed in the thing, the dope was doing its work, the toxins pumping into his veins. He shook his head, the drifting smoke clouding his vision, the oil rig around him blurring, swimming in and out.
Got to … get the hell out of here …
As he swayed back and forth, his tail thumped down on the platform. A wing unfolded, a tangled sail flapping along the ground, and he lost balance, staggering to the left. His shoulder crashed into the base of the crane, the girders screaming.
Grinning, confident of his intoxicated state, the assassin, the True Name, came striding towards him, her boots splashing through the puddles.
Mustering the last of his strength, Ben reared up, a serpent ready to strike. The assassin drew to a halt a few feet before him and the look on her face, an undaunted web of scars, gave Ben pause. His breath caught in his throat, choking back a barrage of flame. Planting her boots firmly apart, the woman raised her sickle and brought it down, slashing at something on the helipad before her.
Snick.
Ben heard a rope whip across the platform, trailing a jumble of hissing metal pegs. In the rain and confusion, he hadn’t noticed the taut lines stretched across the concrete, the tightly woven steel mesh that he was standing on. In a matter of seconds, the snare leapt upward all around him, the connecting wires released from their fastenings and whistling up to the arm of the crane over his head. Ben found all seven tons of his red-scaled bulk wrenched up off the helipad in a snarl of claws, tail and wings. He roared, but only spirals of smoke emerged from his throat, his inner gases doused by the tranqs, his muscles too numb to respond. Above him, the sky wheeled, a blurred carousel of grey. Distantly he heard cheering and, he thought, an approaching judder, the chop chop of rotors through the air.
Idiot.
That was his last thought before everything went black.
TWO
In the darkness, Ben drifted, remembering. After Africa, after witches and mummies and the destruction of the East Katameya Oil Refinery, he’d had his fill of dust and death. That was why he’d drifted, into the ice. With the funds in his bottomless bank account and official-looking papers mailed to him by Delvin Blain (his dwarf accountant in Knightsbridge moaning down the phone about Ben’s recent financial arrangements), he had flown to Finland. First class. Direct. Donning a vinterjakker lined with goose feathers, he had headed inland, letting the snow cool his inner heat, his inner pain. He’d spent the winter trudging across the tundra, heading up to the Gulf of Bothnia, helping to mend roofs, load trucks and haul fishing nets in nowhere places like Pooskeri, Kristenstad and Vaasa. He drank whiskey and thought about Rose, his lost love.
Stay away, she’d told him. From me. From us.
Wherever she was, she’d taken herself and the baby in her belly far away, and Ben knew better than to pull too hard on that particular string. He wanted to see her. Didn’t want another knockback. He wanted to hold her. Had learnt that affairs with humans were futile. Destructive, even. Over the weeks, his hair and his beard had grown long, a crimson mane curling between his shoulder blades. He had become a wild man, a stranger from the hills, his troubled gaze piercing the blizzards. The stares of the locals bothered him no more than the short days, the long nights, the endless dusk of the Arctic Circle. He found himself numb, too numb for fear. The weak light couldn’t hurt him. Kamenwati, the undead priest who had almost dragged the world into hell a few months ago, had shown him darkness, darkness everlasting, deeper than death. Ben trudged on, steeled against the north and the sinking sun …
Then, two weeks ago, he had realised he wasn’t alone. At first, he’d caught sight of his shadows in bars, the men and women in drab clothes, watching him over their drinks, waiting. Later, the odd fisherman or trucker told him that people were asking after him. Where was he heading? Had they noticed anything strange about him? Ben understood that he was a hunted man—or rather, a creature in the guise of a man. Tracked by agents. The Guild or the Chapter. He wasn’t sure.
Around this time, the music had started up, the tinkling of the harp. He hadn’t wanted to trust his instincts, preferring to believe that the faint strain he heard in the air was simply his imagination, a memory, a ghost. Something he could easily dismiss and get back to his drinking. But the music had only grown louder, invading his dreams and then his waking life, drawing him across Norway, tugging him like a magnet. Sometimes the song, the summons, was just out of hearing range, then it became clear again, stark, leading him onward, an unshakeable leash. Each time, his tracks would change course in the snow, dragging his feet to the coast.
And this morning, on the Stavanger docks, the song had grown louder than ever, dragging him out to sea …
He had fled into the ice and darkness, seeking solace in the northern wilds. But now it seemed that he had found only light. Or perhaps the light had found him. Silver shards, glimmering in his mind like hooks, hauling him back to consciousness.
“Good afternoon, Signor Garston. I trust you had pleasant dreams.”
Ben moaned. Then he grunted and spat. His profanity earned him a swift kick in the ribs from the shaven-headed assassin who, through the pervasive and needling glare, Ben squinted up to see standing to one side of him. He grimaced, his complaint for the other figure standing over him, the source of the silvery light. And the music. The music was back, drilling into his ears, sweeter, sicklier than before.
“People are always … waking me up.”
He found himself sprawled on his back on the helipad, the rain still hammering down, the slap of a chilly hand. Taking a second to mentally probe for any broken bones, he found himself whole and in human form, his skin-tight suit, a meshed costume of tiny black scales, stretched over his leaden muscles. Rain slicked the symbol on his chest, the red wyrm tongue sigil encircled by yellow. Sola Ignis. The lone fire.
With his extraordinary healing abilities working to sweat out the toxins in his blood, he tried to sit up, the weight of the loosened net around him keeping him down. His crimson hair straggled in his face, his beard dripping. A flash of will, the urge to sprout horns and wings, met a flash of silver in his mind, a harsh white wall resisting his efforts. Binding him. The reason for his hindered transformation shone like a baleful star above him—the harp, a fragment of the harp, cradled in his summoner’s arms. The radiance thrown by the thing hid her expression, but he could make out a bony broom handle of a woman, standing in a plain grey dress a few feet away. She’d scraped her hair back in a strict ponytail, the ashen strands rendering her nondescript, a rainy smear in the fluttering light. Behind her spectacles her eyes gleamed, hawkish with the scorn of the old.
“You should thank us. Saints alive, we have prayed for you. And there is only one reason why you’re still breathing.”
“Let me guess. You fancied yourself a dragon-skin jacket.”
“Look at you,” the woman said, her fingers caressing the strings—the ghostly suggestion of strings anyway, the harp unmade, one of three pieces, a fragment of a greater power. “Nothing more than a myth. Once formidable, now merely a story to frighten children. The great Benjurigan. The great beast. Fallen at our feet.”
“You flatter yourself. It isn’t like I came here willingly.” With a sneer, he nodded at the two-foot-long spar of wrought silver resting in her arms. He had never seen the legendary Cwyth, the mnemonic harp, up close before; he’d only seen the instrument depicted in woodcuts, tapestries and paintings, or read about it in books. Anyone else might have taken the moulded
and embossed spar, broken as it was, for a piece of a statue. Its flat triangular length suggested some beast or other, perhaps a griffin or a lion. An experienced eye like Ben’s knew the object for what it was—the soundboard of a harp, shaped to resemble a prancing horse’s back. Or a creature much like a horse … “King John granted the Chapter a piece of the harp for safe keeping,” he said. “You’re not supposed to use the damn thing.”
His derision wasn’t just down to bravado. Although the harp exerted a certain power over him—as it would over all Remnant kind—an individual fragment, once strummed, could only lure him and lull him into human form. He was one of the chosen, the Sola Ignis, guardian of the west. Eight hundred years ago, the envoy extraordinary, Blaise Von Hart, had sung his name into the Fay enchantment, rendering him immune to the spell that had sent all his kind, most Remnantkind, into an enchanted slumber. There was no way that the woman with the harp could send him into the Sleep. All the same, she could hurt him. All the same, he was afraid.
“Who will we answer to?” the woman said. “Look at this storm.” She cricked her neck, indicating the barrage around them, a slight shiver in the gesture. Excitement? Dread? “Global warming. The shifting Gulf Stream. Giant waves battering the coast. The end comes, Benjurigan. The end of all ends. It’s only a matter of time before we all get swept away. Still, one can pray, yes?”
“If that’s your poison.” Yeah. Excitement all right. The woman sounded European—Italian, of course—her voice snappy and cultured, a prima donna berating the forces of nature. Or inviting them in. A slight slur softened her words and he wondered whether maybe she’d had too much to drink. Christ knew he hadn’t. “Does the Guild know about this?” Again he nodded at the harp. The slack steel mesh around him. “How about the Cardinal? What does your boss think about you breaking the Lore?”
The Guild and the Chapter were different, of course. The former remained tolerant of Remnants, respectful of the knightly code bestowed upon them by King John, and each successive chairman had sworn to uphold the Pact. The Whispering Chapter had been less … enthusiastic, to put it mildly. It was sheer luck that the administration of the Pact hadn’t fallen into those zealous hands. If it had, Ben doubted he’d have made it as far as 1218, let alone Norway. But the Chapter still lived under the Lore, as they all did. His capture, this wielding of the harp, was supposedly illegal. Except …
“The rules have changed,” the woman told him. “The Guild is in disarray. Compromised. As I’m sure you’re aware.”
“I might’ve heard something.”
“As for our Cardinal. Well, he was old. Ineffective. Let’s just say it was time for him to step down.”
“Sure. I bet the Chapter offers a great retirement package.”
“Our new Cardinal favours the old ways. The old values,” she said, strumming, strumming the strings. Bright pins stabbed his eyes, his head. “We’ve been tracing your movements since Cairo, the Sister and I.” The old woman tipped her head at the shaven-headed brute standing next to her, the assassin with the scythe. “Our agents have told us much. Several illegal manifestations. Damage untold. Rumours of relations with humans.” Her inflection on the word told Ben exactly what she thought about it. “You’ve been busy, old dragon.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
But he wondered how much she did know. For ages, he’d taken so much care to stay in the shadows. Out of sight. Out of mind. Last year had put an end to all that and he’d been on the run ever since. He wished he could say that running was a new thing. In his eight hundred and sixty-one years, there’d been more bastards than he could recall who had seen him as the Holy Grail of all turkey shoots, and that didn’t just mean the vengeful Fitzwarren family. Now it seemed that the Chapter wanted a turn.
This was bad. Very bad.
“Ben Garston, you are under arrest.” The woman drew herself up, spitting the formality with obvious relish. “In your absence, we held a council. It was imperative that we got to the bottom of the breach in the Lore last year. The Chapter deemed it the Guild’s responsibility, a lapse in security that saw a goddess rise from the grave and dragons battling in public. Not to mention the collateral damage. Have I forgotten anything?”
Rose. You forgot Rose.
He counted this as a small mercy. “I think that just about covers it.”
“Buono. Then you can see why we had reason to challenge the Guild’s authority. With no elected Chairman of the Guild, our new Cardinal declared a state of emergency. All agents are now subject to the one remaining functional branch of the Curia Occultus. The Lore rests in our hands.”
“Wonderful. Why doesn’t this sound good for my health?”
“You, my friend?” Her spectacles were lamps, boring into his skull. “Our verdict in absentia was execution.”
Holy fuck.
Ben went slack, the steel mesh clanking around him. His breath came out in a groan, his limbs straining against the light.
The woman intoned, “It is the King’s command that henceforth no Remnant in the land shall assume True Shape nor apply abilities wyrd without the permission of the Curia Occultus. His Grace, the barons, the cardinals and the white mage have all sworn that this shall be observed in good faith, lest a Remnant face the penalty of trial and the fitting punishment of—”
Ben spat, his lungs full of damp air. “Sounds like the same old bullshit to me.”
He chewed his lip, glaring up at the woman with the harp. The quoted passage mentioned a trial. Did I blink and miss it?
The woman gave him no time to protest. Stepping back, she nodded at the Sister. At first Ben thought the assassin was reaching for her scythe, preparing to pass sentence there and then, leaving his head to rot out here in the middle of the sea. Instead, she dipped into her pocket and brought out a thin circular object. Silver flashed under the clouds, joining the glow thrown by the harp.
Ben glared at the shimmering horror. Lunewrought. The ore of Avalon. When the harp originally shattered way back in the Old Lands, its unmaking had left the three fragments along with several splinters. All lunewrought was one metal, the alien substance of the Fay, an alloy of mineral and magic. As shards of the harp, the metal retained the power to trap and bind him in human form, in a weakened state, vulnerable to harm. Around the time of the great council in London that had resulted in the Pact, the Curia Occultus had smelted the splinters into a handful of shackles for the sole purpose of restraining Remnants, should the need ever arise.
It appeared that the woman above him had a journey in mind. Judging by the throbbing in the air, the whoomph whoomph of approaching choppers, his head wasn’t going to rot out here after all. Another small mercy. Kind of.
“Keep that thing away from me,” he growled at the approaching assassin, the manacle in her hand. “Unless you want to dry off real quick.”
The old woman, the broom handle, laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Signor Garston. There really is no need for aggression. As I said, there is only one reason why you’re still alive. Tell me what I want to know and I promise that your death will be swift.”
“Since we’re trading advice, why don’t you shove that trinket where the sun don’t shine?”
“A shame. I was hoping for your cooperation.” The old woman sighed, disappointed. “Von Hart keeps his own fragment of the harp. The envoy plays a part in all this. And you will tell us where to find him, I assure you.”
“Von Hart? What’s he got to do with—”
He cut himself short. In his confusion, he hadn’t noticed the assassin kneeling at his side. The manacle snapped shut around his wrist, the chill of the metal, a burning sensation akin to frostbite, tingling on his skin.
At once, the old woman’s fingers stilled, the fragment in her arms falling blessedly silent. Its restricting magic was no longer needed, replaced by the lunewrought cuff. As the light faded, Ben looked up at her, growling under the sting of his restraint. He noticed that the left sid
e of her face was askew, her eyelid, cheek and lower lip like melted candle wax. The result, he guessed, of a former stroke and the reason for her noticeable slur. Her dead nerves sat at odds with her sharp, aquiline nose, her fine bone structure. And her eyes, those opals, never leaving his face.
“We’ll just have to persuade you,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s going to hurt.”
The assassin reached forward and yanked at the net around him, dragging the mesh away from his body. She grabbed his shoulders, intending to haul him to his feet, carry his sorry arse off to the chopper awaiting him. Christ knew she had the muscles for it. Even with the shield on her back, she could probably sling him over her shoulder, a sack of wet cement, and deliver him to whatever unholy torture chamber the Chapter had in mind.
He couldn’t let that happen. Gathering his strength, he kicked out, aiming for the Sister’s stomach. With a gasp, she stumbled back, clutching her gut—but not before Ben had grabbed the hilt of the sickle hanging on her belt and ripped it free. The old woman shouted something, her warning lost in the storm, and the assassin, snarling, came lurching towards him for another try. A clumsy slash of the blade and she pulled back, cautious, measuring him with hard eyes.
I’m still a meathead like you. I won’t make this easy …
Ben used the gap between them to stagger upright, the sickle slashing out as he swayed drunkenly on the platform. The steel mesh, fine as it was, slipped against the wet concrete, threatening to tangle his feet. Taking small steps, he shuffled backwards, retreating to the edge of the platform, the Sister coming after him, slowly, her arms held wide.
Raising Fire Page 2
