Raising Fire

by James Bennett

  The first painting depicted a battle. A snowy valley, stained by the light of a dying sun. By smoke. By blood. In the fray, Ben made out men and women in shining armour, lances set against all manner of beasts—goblins, dwarves, witches, trolls. Giants loomed over the clash, dull flecks of red representing the mess left by their clubs as the weapons swung through the rabble, flinging handfuls of knights into the air. Overhead, dragons raked the skies with flame, some of them mounted, some of them strapped with empty saddles. It was an idealistic image, Ben supposed; he had heard that some Remnants fought against King Arthur too, choosing the side of the Usurper, Mordred. Either way, when a pavilion at the edge of the battlefield drew his eye, it was clear that he was looking at a portrayal of the Battle of Camlann, back in the sixth century. A pennant flapped gaily from the top of the tent. From its place on the wooded hill, all who fought below would see the crimson symbol of the Pendragon.

  Where all this shit started …

  In the next image, Ben found himself peering at the inside of the pavilion. A sad tableau spread out before him, the paint as timeworn and dreary as the scene. A grey-bearded man in armour sat with his head in his hands at a round wooden table. He had liked round tables, this man, and Ben didn’t need the obvious symbolism to place the figure as Arthur, the legendary King of the Britons. At his belt hung a sword with a jewelled pommel, another giveaway. Caliburn, the Sword of Albion. Next to the King, a dwarf wearing a cap with bells was bringing Arthur a foaming jug, no doubt one of a few judging by his pose. But it was the woman on the other side of the tent who caught the whole of Ben’s attention. Earth-skinned and snow-haired, her braids coiled high upon her head, her eyes the typical violet shade. He recognised her from a hundred legends, a hundred tales known only to Remnants and the few humans privy to the secret history of Britain, a land once known as Logres, the Old Lands. He recognised her with an ache in his breast and a lump in his throat, an unbidden longing. Those same legends referred to her as the Lady of the Lake. Nimue. Our Lady of the Barrow. Queen of the Fay.

  In her arms, the Lady bore a harp. The harp resembled a unicorn, the silver and ivory column crowned by an equine head and a tapering conch-like horn. It was the Cwyth, forged from lunewrought, the ore of Avalon. The story went that during the final battle between the King and Mordred, Nimue had offered Arthur the magical relic. Eager to turn the tide of the war, to preserve the shining Example of Camelot, the Queen had told the King that by strumming the ancient instrument, he could put Mordred and his army into an enchanted sleep until the cavalry arrived in the form of Sir Lancelot, the White Knight.

  It hadn’t gone down well.

  Ben moved on, his breaths slow, his feet shuffling through dust. In the third painting, the King was on his feet, his sword in hand. The blade was slicing down on the Cwyth, the harp flying apart in three fragments, silvery splinters showering the scene. The dwarf was falling back in horror, tankards of mead splattering around him. The Lady, however, stood with her spine straight and her arms folded, her proud stature betrayed by the sorrow in her eyes. Ben remembered that in the tale, Arthur had refused her gift. Mistrustful of the Fay and believing that the Queen was offering him a coward’s way out, he had shattered the harp. And, in his pride, he had damned them all.

  The fourth and final painting, more faded than the others, as though touched by many hands, depicted the outcome. The scene was outside the pavilion again, its pennant limp now, the sun setting on the Pendragon banner. Between the trees, figures moved, or perhaps ghosts, a scattered crowd of slender men and women drifting up the hill. Ben could see through many of the figures, their transparent dresses and cloaks like gossamer thrown over the snow-laden branches and the pristine ground. But he knew that he wasn’t looking at men and women, not really, nor any earthly creatures. The figures, the Fay, each with backs turned, moved up the rise towards what appeared to be a blazing black sun, a broad dark circle on the summit. Some were vanishing into that darkness, winking out like stars.

  The Fay. Leaving …

  Disgusted by human weakness, the Lady Nimue had led the Fay from the earth, abandoning both Remnants and humans to the dark days ahead, to days of blood and war and centuries of bitterness …

  Ben wiped dust from his face, grunting at the unexpected moisture on his fingers. Shaking himself from his awe, he made to turn away when a figure in one corner of the painting grabbed his attention, drawing him back to the frame. He swallowed, then frowned. The man—who was, of course, no man at all—stood watching the Fay depart. The thin figure also had his back turned, his white-gold hair tumbling between his slumped shoulders and spilling onto his robe, the red silk patterned with stars. At his feet, in a silvery pile, rested the fragments of the harp.

  Oh man …

  With a sigh, Ben turned away, shaking his head. Yeah, it was the myth of the Lady, all right. A fairy tale for fairy tales. Some Remnants saw the ancient sorceress in a nigh-on messianic light. Others saw her as the worst kind of traitor, a villain who had left them to die. Ben couldn’t call that one. The Fay had fucked off into the nether six hundred years before he had hatched, leaving them all to their fate—all Remnants knew the tale. After all, it was their provenance, the reason why they were Remnants. And most Remnants hoped that one day, when pigs flew and trees sang and the moon married the sun, the Fay would return as the Queen had promised …

  One shining day, when Remnants and humans learn to live in peace, and magic blossoms anew in the world, then shall the Fay return and commence a new golden age.

  Ben shared his feelings with a snort.

  Dragons and unicorns. And fairy ladies singing lullabies. Right.

  Shrugging off the ache in his chest, he found his way to a narrow stairway that wound around the walls, spiralling into the heart of a well. For all he knew, the pit might stretch to the bowels of the earth. Here and there, in the nooks and crannies, skulls grinned, their eyeless sockets somehow watchful. Claws slipped from his feet to grip the steps, one hand tracing the crumbling brickwork. He drew his hand back as something fat and hairy skittered over it, his cry resounding down into darkness, then back up at him, a distorted echo. Frowning, he balled a fist to squash the offending bug—and then realised that the wall was covered in spiders, crawling out of socket and jaw of the surounding skulls, a black surging mass clicking and rustling beside him as he made his way down.

  By the time he came across du Sang, Ben was peeling webs off his cheeks and out of his hair. The spiders followed and watched, a million shiny eyes upon him. He was thinking of drawing a breath, incinerating the lot of them, when du Sang spoke.

  “Bonsoir, Monsieur Garston. To what do I owe this uninvited pleasure?”

  FIVE

  Le Vicomte Lambert du Sang reclined in the middle of the pit. It took Ben a second for his eyes to adjust, to see that du Sang lay on a tangled net of cobwebs sagging from the surrounding walls. The web bowed slightly under his weight, the lightless depths showing through the gaps.

  Ben halted, looking down at his quarry from a cautious distance.

  “Let’s not pretend,” he said, nodding at the walls, the spiders halted along with him, an army of shiny eyes. “You always were a nosy bugger.”

  “Oh, don’t mind my little spies. It is in their nature to gossip.” Du Sang stretched and yawned, a sound like leather drawn over gravel. “From New York to Cairo, how they like to chatter. And how I like to listen.”

  “Then you know damn well why I’m here. You’re looking …” Well? No, he couldn’t say that. He changed tack. “It’s been a while. How is life—death, whatever—treating you?”

  Du Sang made a sound in his throat. It might have been a chuckle.

  “I thought your kind had fabulous vision. How does it look like it’s treating me?”

  The creature below looked like a boy to Ben, young, sinewy and pale, but a boy who had gone to his grave several years ago and perhaps after a horrible accident. Du Sang was so grey that he blended with the web around
him. Bones lay under his wrinkled flesh and not all of them matched up, an elbow, a shoulder jutting in the wrong direction. The rags he wore couldn’t hide the mess. Worst of all was his face, which was simply a skull, upholstered in fly-blown skin. A tuft on his brow, curling and brown, only highlighted his wasted condition. His eyes, however, remained bright. Raked-up rubies on a bed of ash.

  Ben shrugged. Du Sang didn’t seem to expect a compliment.

  “Speaking of things owed,” he said, “I seem to recall a certain necklace. One of a set, commissioned by Louis the Fifteenth for his mistress, Madame du Barry. The Queen wasn’t happy about it. There was that whole scandalous affair. I’m sure you remember. You were there. Oh, what fun we had! All those orgies in Versailles! Then the Queen lost her head and I lost track of the diamonds. And … well, wasn’t that around the last time I saw you? Quelle coincidence, non?”

  Ben glowered. It was a chapter in history he’d like to forget, the days he’d spent on the banks of the Seine, attending la tavern and la bordel, relishing the rich scent of buxom duchesses and the earthier one of servant girls. He had spent a decade drunk, as far as he could recall, with the once charming Lambert at his side, a friendship born from longevity and boredom. Their friendship had taken them tottering on high-heeled shoes to the palace of the Ancien Régime and all the decadence that waited inside—some of it his.

  He was reminded of a gift he’d presented to Rose a couple of years back and which she had politely declined. He would prefer to forget about that too.

  “The past is the past. We all make mistakes. I’m interested in the present.”

  Le Vicomte du Sang—a title that was surely self-appointed or stolen—gave that same husky laugh. “We’ve all lost our sense of humour since the signing of the Pact. The Lore leaves no room for rigolade. Very well. To business. But there is a price …”

  “I know what you want, du Sang.” It sure as hell isn’t diamonds. “What you always want. And by the looks of you, what you haven’t been getting much of lately.”

  Du Sang drew his lips into a pout, waving a hand for Ben to continue.

  “This morning, the Whispering Chapter tried to trap me on an oil rig. The agents were using a fragment of the harp.” The touch of the silver relic smarted still, a memory of his bondage. “And they were looking for Blaise Von Hart.”

  “So I suppose you are too. Well, let’s face it, where would you be without him?”

  Ben was about to protest, but du Sang was on the move, crawling towards him over the web. Ben swore that he could hear the boy’s bones, the creak of his crooked limbs.

  What the fuck happened to you?

  “Now, let’s see …” Du Sang reached out a trembling hand and plucked at one of the strands, bending his ear to the vibration, catching a sound beyond Ben’s hearing. He looked up and shook his head. “Nothing from your old foe, House Fitzwarren,” he said. The strand thrummed across the well, shivering up to the wall by Ben’s shoulder. “The family is still sweeping up the ashes. Doubtless the patriarchs will train another in due course. Fulk Fitzwarren the …” Du Sang cocked his head, counting. “Mon Dieu! You have to admit, they never give up.”

  “Tell me about it.” The vengeful attentions of House Fitzwarren had been the bane of Ben’s life, son upon son determined to claim his head and win back the deeds to Whittington Castle, a crumbling ruin in Shropshire. Last year the latest Fulk had tried and failed. Badly. “But I’m asking after Von—”

  Du Sang was already tweaking at the web. Again he lowered himself to listen. Something in the way he sat back and pursed his lips told Ben that he was enjoying himself.

  “Hmm. The Coven Royal won’t be cooking up any more trouble. Those kinds of spells have a way of coming back on a person. Well, that and a ten-ton dragon landing on your head. The witches are gone from this world.”

  The creature below him looked oddly regretful. Ben was getting annoyed.

  “If I wanted to go through my enemies, I’d grab a telephone book.”

  Du Sang tutted. Again he bent his ear to the web. Then he leant in even closer, frowning. After what seemed like a goodly long while, he sat back scratching his head. He looked up at Ben with puzzled eyes.

  “Silence,” he said.

  “Silence? What do you mean by—”

  “All I hear are whispers. Whispers from the past. I hear nothing in the present.”

  Ben let this sink in, a cold fist closing around his heart.

  “You’re saying that the envoy is dead?”

  “Non. I’m saying he isn’t in the world at all. I’m sure I would’ve marked his ending. He simply isn’t … there.”

  “That’s impossible.” But Ben knew that it wasn’t. Hadn’t he gazed into the darkness last year, the endless gulf of the nether? Goosebumps prickled on his skin. “He must be travelling. Travelling along the Silver Leys.” But to where? And why? “I can’t blame him for hiding.”

  Du Sang ignored him, his face to the web once more, straining for something that Ben couldn’t hear.

  “An old mistake,” the boy muttered. “A thorn in the lullaby. A stain in the fabric of things, spreading, growing sour …”

  “Give me the good news first.” The envoy’s absence stirred anger in Ben’s breast, the paintings in the gallery and du Sang’s mention of the lullaby like a finger in an old wound. “That fucking song. The Pact. All of it.” He struggled to find the words, uncomfortable with the idea. “There were, what? A few thousand of us left? We were hardly a threat.”

  Du Sang stopped babbling and looked up.

  “Oh come now. London Bridge, 1212. Don’t you remember?”

  Ben scowled. He didn’t much like to recall those days. The withering crops, the spreading plague, the ships wrecked upon the shore—all these disasters, the astrologers had said, signified that the land was crying out at the devils in their midst. The strange moon, the “bloodstained light,” had already foretold King Richard’s defeat in the Crusades, proof of the Remnant curse. And as the sages pored over their charts, they said there was worse to come.

  They were right. In 1206, appalled by King John’s laxity in dealing with the Remnants—which Rome deemed infernal, a blight on Creation—Pope Innocent III placed England under an interdict. No church bells rang, their steeples falling silent from Dover to Berwick. Canon law forbade all communal rites until King John recognised a new Archbishop, one hell-bent on ridding the land of fabulous beings and beasts. Dispatched from the Eternal City, a conclave of priests arrived on English shores to observe and report on the ongoing struggle, the long war between Remnants and humans. And to press the Pope’s will upon the King. A King who found himself with no choice but to entertain them, these grey clerics, this Whispering Chapter that lingered in every corner of his palace, their ears bent to the throne. Still John hesitated. He was neither the wisest nor the bravest of kings and he feared that an all-out attack on Remnants would have grave consequences, graver than the scorn of Rome.

  But Ben knew that du Sang was right. There had been several … troubles, he recalled. A witch making off with an entire village shoved into her bag, the tiny residents screaming in the windows. Goblins raiding a wagon in Sherwood, stealing chests filled with gold, a fat share of the King’s taxes. Giants trampling over planted fields, gobbling up cows and sitting on farmsteads … King John had reluctantly borne all these things as long as his backside stayed warm on the English throne. And besides, he’d argued, the Remnants were hardly climbing the palace walls. The troubles were out there in the country, in the mountains and fens, and who was going to mourn a few peasants? Now and again he made a show of suppression, sending this or that knight into the Marches, sword in hand. On the whole, he played a more cowardly game. Let the Remnants nibble at the edges of his realm. Let sleeping dragons lie and all that …

  Then, in 1212, Rakegoyle had come to London.

  “Yeah.” Ben looked down, murmuring at his feet. “I wish I could forget it.”

  “All those
knights, charging about, currying favour. Hanging witches from trees. Poking lances into barrow and cave. All for a damsel’s kiss and lands from the King. Well, they poked about in the wrong one, didn’t they?” Du Sang looked happy to relate the event. “She was old, Rakegoyle. The last surviving spawn of Scawgramal, the legendary mount of Sir Mordred himself. You couldn’t blame Rakegoyle for her air of nobility, nor her surprise when the knights came calling. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten what she did to them. Only bones came rattling out of that cave. She ripped those men right out of their skins.”

  Ben wrinkled his nose, but not in sympathy. He was all too familiar with knights. When King John had sent Fulk to Mordiford all those years ago, the outcome had cost him dearly …

  “They should’ve left her alone,” he said. “She was in her last season anyway.”

  “Yes. Old, mad Rakegoyle took to the skies and flew off to London. Our Lady of the Canons lay in rubble by the time King John beseeched you for aid. He sent out riders into the Royal Forest, to the Hedgehog and Viper, that shithole of a tavern where you used to drink. Perhaps you had downed a tankard too many, because you decided to answer the call. And when you reached the city, the winds had blown the flames south from the cathedral. The houses on London Bridge were ablaze.”

  Ben closed his eyes. It did him no good. The shards of that day were in his heart. Sure, he’d been bitter, but he had also been sick of the fighting. Sick of war and death. With Von Hart’s guidance, he had chosen a different path, seeking to heal the rift between Remnants and humans. A tragedy like Mordiford would never happen again, not to anyone, not on his watch. Or so he’d thought at the time.