Raising Fire

by James Bennett

  Could the Chapter have got here from Norway so fast? In two days? Well, it’s just about possible. And why does the Chapter want the harp anyway? To put the last of the Remnants into the Sleep? It would explain why the Cardinal was after Von Hart …

  But this, this was an awakening. Nausea churned in Ben’s guts. Looking up at the broken hill, his memory eclipsed all other thought, curdling with a deeper emotion that he didn’t want to name but recognised as guilt.

  “To hell with it,” he said into the maw. “We did what we had to do.”

  He tried to focus on the mystery before him. The Guild, the Chapter, the envoy extraordinary … three possible suspects and one of them supposedly an ally. Or someone else, someone who had come to possess a fragment of the harp, via theft or otherwise … Suspicions aside, he had to find Von Hart. That was painfully clear. This wasn’t just bad news for humans; it was dangerous for Remnants as well. The harp held the power to lull them all. And the monster that had broken free from Zhoukoudian wouldn’t spare those he felt had betrayed him, least of all Ben.

  Ben surveyed the valley around him, the trees snapped like cocktail sticks, the fallen branches, the strewn stones. Did the hillside ring with echoes, silvery and bright? The kind of echoes that gripped your heart, squeezing out every last drop? The kind that crawled into your skull, chiming until your eyeballs popped? Ben thought so.

  And as for the envoy …

  It seems that our envoy extraordinary gave the suit to the Fitzwarrens as a gift of some kind …

  Despite the apparent chicanery, the knowledge of Von Hart’s hand in matters, assisting, manipulating Remnant sedition (and almost costing Ben his life), he found it hard to see the fairy opening the vault in Dragon Bone Hill, causing the destruction before him.

  And setting the nightmare free …

  Nonetheless, the fact remained that Blaise Von Hart was one of three bodies on earth with the means at his disposal. With the power. The envoy had a habit of making odd comments, but at this moment, only one stuck out in Ben’s mind. In Club Zauber last year, when Ben was caught up in the evils of the CROWS, Von Hart had said, “Perhaps this change in regime is inevitable. Perhaps it is our turn again …” Looking at the shattered hillside, Ben found it hard to allay his suspicions, however reluctant they were.

  Never trust the Fay, Ben.

  “The thing is,” and he realised that it was true even as he said it, “I’ve never trusted you.”

  There was only the sky to answer him. Even the birds had fled. And there was more in the air than echoes. Ben breathed in, catching a scent he hadn’t known in centuries, a combination of cinders and sweat, of scaly, protean flesh. Eau de wyrm. It was the scent of the fiery past and the terror of the future.

  First things first.

  Swallowing fear, he spread his wings, preparing to trace the source.

  Sixty miles north, skirting the western edge of Beijing, Ben reached the Juyong Pass. Snow clung to the peaks and layered the valley, the monuments and the buildings down there draped with ice, resembling elaborate cakes. The Great Wall of China snaked up from the pass, an ancient brickwork marvel climbing into the peaks. The battlements zigzagged across the wooded crests, climbing up to the watchtower on the summit, a squat, square turret. How many hands had carried blocks up these slopes, prisoners in the sun and rain, lending their bones to the barrier? Hundreds, thousands … and in the end, this whim of emperors, this colossal scheme that verged on both genius and madness, hadn’t exactly worked. The Middle Kingdom had fallen to Mongol invaders, to the horse lord Genghis Khan.

  Ben snapped out his wings, slowing his descent towards the watchtower. The creature he sought stood on the parapet, man-shaped, naked and gazing to the south. This creature, Ben knew, had been the first to breach the wall during that long-ago battle, his wings a blade crashing through stone, the might of his draconic form. He also knew that he wouldn’t give a shit about dead slaves, especially if they were human.

  Ben landed as gently as possible, shrivelling to man size out of courtesy. If he could avoid a fight, he would do so, though he realised this was wishful thinking. His quarry would sense he was here, of course, had probably smelled him coming from miles away. But the man at the battlements didn’t turn around. His bare back and buttocks, dark, muscled and riddled with scars, remained another wall to the one who pursued him.

  “I was wondering at the stench in the air,” Mauntgraul said. “Smoke? I thought. Or shit? Now I have my answer.”

  “Hello, Maunt.” Ben managed to keep his voice steady. “Got out the wrong side of bed, I see.”

  “Yes. Such a deep sleep.” Mauntgraul sighed at the treetops below him, perhaps not grasping the saying. “The sights I have seen since my rousing suggest that I dreamt for longer than hours. Days? Months? God’s bones, Benjurigan, pray don’t say it was years!”

  “You know damn well it was.” And no one says God’s bones any more, he thought but didn’t say, biting down on the taunt. “A lot has changed.”

  “In truth? Forgive me. I left Albion in the ashes of the Anarchy, flying east to these lands. Much was changing in my homeland as it was and I had no stomach to embrace it. Soon, I found a new sport. A great leader and a tribe that worshipped me like a god. Unbound, unchecked, I agreed to help them take an empire. And yet some would deny me my freedom.” He continued, brightening. “Why, this meeting reminds me of another one not far from here—what? Three, four centuries ago?”

  “Eight.” Ben was not fooled by the White Dog’s conversational tone, nor did he miss the slight slump of Mauntgraul’s shoulders at his admission. “And the last time we met, there wasn’t shit in the air, but screams. We came here to silence them. To silence you.”

  “You bent the knee to King John,” Mauntgraul said. “You and that ridiculous fairy came riding across the skies to Zhongdu and threw salt all over my game.”

  “Game?” Ben said. “You turned the plains out there into a blood marsh, ravaging crops, poisoning rivers, reducing villages to ash. For over a year, Genghis Khan laid siege to the city, his hordes surrounding the walls. He let the million-odd people trapped inside them slowly starve to death.”

  “Granted, Genghis was less merciful than I. I asked him several times to let me put Zhongdu to the flame.” Mauntgraul shook his head. “Later, the Jin themselves begged me, crying out from the towers where their dragon bows sat unused. And then, one morning, the city offered me a sacrifice, appealing to my heart. Oh, you should have seen them, Benjurigan. The white ladies of Zhongdu. Thousands upon thousands of women lined the battlements. Together they leapt, falling like petals into the moat. And still the Khan waited.”

  Ben had no words for this, his hands trembling at his sides.

  “Only when the emperor opened the gates, the city falling to the tribes, did Genghis invite me to show my compassion.”

  “You razed the fucking city to the ground!”

  The words flew off Ben’s tongue before he could stop them. How could he forget the charred, skeletal bones of the city when he and Von Hart had arrived, sweeping east across the Yellow River? Weary and fraught, they had seen the wasteland for the first time. The rotting cattle. The mounds of corpses. The circling vultures and the wolves. The Hebei Plains might have been the Fields of Hell, the war machines left abandoned in the muck when the Khan had moved on, already bored with his conquest and hungry for the next.

  But Mauntgraul, having smelled their approach, had turned back to greet them …

  “A new beginning.” Mauntgraul spread his arms, encompassing the snowy vista. “Many great things rise from the ashes, wouldn’t you say? Am I not one of them?”

  “You don’t know this world, Maunt. You haven’t seen—”

  “Then show me, brother wyrm. Let’s fly together, you and I. You can show me the worth of enslavement. And I will show you destruction.”

  Mauntgraul turned, revealing the grim set of his jaw. Despite his tone, Ben could see that he wasn’t joking. The White
Dog had lost none of his physique, none of his presence. He was a tightly bound knot of dark wood, his limbs a model of strength. Veins braided his arms, his neck, the generous member between his legs, all speaking of vitality. His draconic blood pumped through his frame, the way he held himself, his vigour coiling inside. His midnight eyes made a proud bust of his head, his human form passed down from the hands of the Fay, seeded through dragon’s egg and dragon’s egg. Only at his temples did his great age show, streaks of silver through his close-cropped hair.

  Ben remembered this mask, this guise of the Wandering Moor. He remembered the terrors hiding behind it. He held out a hand, palm flat and facing upward, and in wyrm tongue he made his appeal.

  “The old war is over. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “Have we known any other?” As Mauntgraul’s shadow fell across him, a chill crawled into Ben’s bones. “This is our destiny. Why we first hatched. Even when Scawgramal and Pennydrake fought tooth and claw under Dinas Emrys, this was our fate. And when Myrddin released them from the pit, the two dragons symbolised our struggle, the Red and the White. Our enmity runs through our bloodlines, reborn with every snout that breaks a shell. It is blood on snow, Benjurigan. Old as dust. And it will last until the end of time.”

  “No,” Ben said. “You’re in love with your own legend. You choose to rend and destroy.”

  “I am all that you are not,” Mauntgraul told him. “Vengeful where you forgive. Strong where you are weak. Free while you are a slave.”

  “I am my own man!”

  “Man? Man?” The White Dog laughed, throwing back his head. Collecting himself, he drew even closer, his lips curled back in a snarl. “Who gave you birth? You have forgotten her, haven’t you? Jynnyflamme, the spawn of Pennydrake. Your mother, who wheeled in the skies above Grasmere like a teardrop from the sun. Who abandoned her egg in the habit of our kind, hoping that you would grow strong and find her. Instead, you suckled on a human teat. Isn’t that so, milk drinker?”

  “That isn’t what happened. She—”

  “Even in your youth you turned your back on us. One by one you watched us fall. And that was not the worst of it.” Mauntgraul’s nose was level with Ben’s now, so close that his next word crisped the hairs on Ben’s cheeks. “Traitor.”

  Ben roared. With all his strength, he raised his fists and brought them down on Mauntgraul’s chest, pummelling his flesh. Through his rage, he was aware that it would do him no good. The dragon knew just what buttons to push. And he was a fool to respond.

  Mauntgraul staggered back a pace, a sneer crawling over his face.

  “What will you do?” he said. “Where is your family now? Where is your greedy king and all his rapacious knights? Where is your envoy with his little harp, to make the earth sing and close around me, the darkness dragging me deep? Where?”

  Ben stumbled back to the battlements, the questions like mallets thudding on his skull. The horror of his situation was sinking in, icy fangs biting deep. The White Dog’s resentment, his anger, his blame was a wall of heat he struggled to withstand.

  “Leave me be. Let them be. Please.”

  “No.” Mauntgraul gripped his shoulder. His hand had become a claw, the black talons dragging Ben upright, drawing him close. “You and I are alone, are we not? The last of our kind. I can feel it. Your love for humans has murdered us all. You will not turn away from me now.”

  Ben tried to shrug him off, but the White Dog gripped him fast. In response, Ben was changing, crimson scales slipping over his skin. But Mauntgraul was not dissuaded, his wings and tail folding out, twelve tons of scarred white flesh reducing the ramparts behind him to rubble. Black claws spread across the turret roof, gouging the stone like chisels. Together they rose, Mauntgraul and Ben, carried skyward by their thrashing wings. Ben kicked and wriggled, forcing all that he had left against the vice around his shoulder and neck.

  “The kindest thing would be to kill you,” Mauntgraul said. “Instead, I will make you watch.”

  With that, he slammed Ben into stone, the watchtower flying apart.

  EIGHT

  Minutes passed in stunned orbits of pain. Then, growling, Ben shrugged off the rubble, the broken blocks booming into the treetops below. Nursing his shattered ribs, he scanned the skies, locating Mauntgraul between two peaks, a pale shape sweeping south. The sight drew bile into his throat.

  Adrenalin kicked him onto his feet. He winced and cursed, haranguing his healing abilities to greater speed. Bloody, bruised, he had somehow survived, but the dragon’s parting words left no room for relief. Dread eclipsed all other concerns. He couldn’t see Beijing from here, but he could picture it—the city rising from the northern plain, her skyscrapers hazy in the smog. Unsuspecting. Undefended.

  Deadly and true, Mauntgraul levelled his wings, gliding towards the buildings on the horizon.

  And the people. The millions of people.

  Fuck.

  Ben sped in pursuit. Death, his old friend, was grinning again, and this time his skull bore fangs. Motorway bridges, smokestacks and cars went blurring past under his wings. Too soon, the pan-flat fields gave way to high-rises and cranes, smoky slums crouching in their shadow, the northern fringes of Beijing.

  Down a canyon of tower blocks Mauntgraul swept, his scaly length reflected in a thousand windows. Cries rose from the round-the-clock traffic, the curses of drivers and cyclists. After the mountains, their alarm felt like a punch in Ben’s guts. The people below had seen the dragon. Seen him. They looked up at the sky open-mouthed as the beasts came hurtling towards them, a wall of fangs rushing out of myth. Out of nightmare.

  All he could do was shoot through the smog, the pollution thicker here, stinging his eyes and coating his throat. If he could catch up, bring the White Dog crashing to the ground, then maybe dust would cover the scene. Let disbelief do all the rest …

  Dread pushed Ben into the city proper. He’d been getting away with this for far too long, and seeing Mauntgraul up ahead, he could sense his luck running out.

  The White Dog slowed to circle the Bell Tower, the ancient stone building rising from the low rooftops of Dongcheng. Seeing the tourists on the broad balcony edging the building, Ben grasped the reason for the dragon’s distraction. A scent, after eight hundred years, that would surely prove irresistible. Today, the huge belfry was silent, the giant bell still, but Mauntgraul swept down, lashing out his tail, come to strike the hour of destruction.

  Tiles, brick and wood flew. A sculpture took flight from the eaves, sending plaster and stone spinning down to the square below. The people on the balcony broke into a panicked chorus as the structure gave way, sagging under a barrage of debris. Lurching from dislodged beams, the balcony peeled off the face of the edifice, spilling people into the air. By the time Ben reached the tower, Mauntgraul was thrusting further into the city. All that remained was a mess of rubble and broken bones. People wailing, calling for help, their anguish drowned out by the tolling of the bell.

  This isn’t happening.

  Death had come to Beijing. Fresh screams rose from the hutongs, the riddle of alleyways around the site. A sleek red missile, Ben flung himself in that direction, following the thrashing trees and telephone lines, chasing terror and chaos.

  Mauntgraul shot over the urban grid, over the streets and the flat-roofed houses huddling under his claws like prey. He veered to avoid a hotel, smashing through the neon sign on the roof, the Chinese letters reduced to shrapnel. He spun down on the other side of the building, a barrel roll sweeping him into the city centre.

  An uproar announced his arrival on Wangfujing plaza. The shoppers milling along the mall forgot all about shopping as the shadow of wings fell over them. At once, the crowds scattered into a babbling mass, stampeding for the nearest subway station or Jianguomen Street beyond, the traffic there screeching to a halt. Fenders met fenders with a crunch. Metal thudded into flesh.

  Ben drew a breath, preparing to spew fire, but his lungs shrank as he realis
ed that he would only roast the fleeing people alive. The White Dog would resist his heat anyway, his hide as tough, as durable as armour. He was left to watch, helpless, as the older dragon dropped into another dive. Wingtips skimming storefronts, snapping awnings and sparking off the huge neon advertising screens, he arrowed down the street, his claws extending, daggers made of night. Ben winced as he scooped up people from the crowd, one or two flying free from his grip—a policeman, a tramp, a wailing girl—falling to smack on the concrete below. The rest of his catch Mauntgraul shoved into his maw, a clutch of flailing limbs between his fangs.

  With a roar, Ben gave chase, the blood mist of the carnage peppering his snout.

  Gunshot snapped from the streets below, guards outside the high red walls of the Forbidden City putting rifle to shoulder and firing at the threat blasting overhead. The moment he saw them, Ben knew that the guards would make no distinction between the White Dog and himself. Metal zipped off his scales, hot pinpricks that did nothing to slow him.

  Ahead, an open space spread out before him. Tiananmen Square, the largest square in the world, at least offered a safer battleground. With a snap of his wings, he pushed himself after the dragon, flying beyond firing range. A moment of grace that he knew wouldn’t last. He was already too late.

  The crowds were scattering, a sea of umbrellas and dropped cameras, whipped into frenzy by the monsters above. Screams struck off polished stone, but Ben barely heard them. Fangs bared, he drove his weight down, down into Mauntgraul’s back, his talons raking flesh. Together the dragons tumbled through the air, smashing into the flagstones below.