Head bowed, Jia stood before the Eight Hand Mirror. Or perhaps it was a door. A door ready to open, punching a hole in the world.
“Jia …” Carefully, Von Hart took a step towards her.
Her head swung around, fixing him with eyes as bright as the Nine Hells. And she saw he was burning, yes, a candle in the dark. White flames curled up around his sleeves, rolling up his back, playing in his hair. His flesh, as waxen as ever, glowed as if fed by his personal inferno, by the force of the harp in his hands, his gathering power, his gathering song. Whatever essence comprised his body, the ancient magic couldn’t consume him, this last scion of a vanished race.
Her face grew hard, her heart breaking along with the mirror. The blasting cold of the void beyond, opening as the glass shattered inward, tossed her hair into spitting serpents.
“Tell me, master. What must I do?”
EIGHTEEN
Five hundred feet above the mountains, Ben flew without wings. Even in human shape, he could withstand the high altitude, the limited oxygen, the punishing cold. At first, he’d struggled, cursing, his fists beating on white scales. Then, his adrenalin burning out, he had simply fallen into a daze, allowing his cuts and bruises to heal. His near-miss execution and the fall from the monastery pummelled his system with shock; for all his draconic strength, he wasn’t immune to it.
But he hadn’t fallen far. The air screamed blue murder in his ears, reminiscent of the Cornutus Quiritor that gripped him. Mauntgraul, the White Dog, had plucked him from the sky like a raptor catching prey, snatching him from the rubble cascading from the Invisible Church. Wings beating a drum on the wind, the dragon had risen over the Alps and turned his snout to the east.
In intermittent flashes of clarity, Ben came to learn of their pursuit.
For something like a day and a half, without stopping to rest, Jia had galloped south from the Alps and across the Balkans, a living land rocket trailing dust. High above, Mauntgraul followed the trail, his keen eyes scouring the earth. Ben reckoned that the sin-you must’ve been moving at a speed of around two hundred miles per hour, slowing now and then to avoid obstacles, take detours, choose the quickest path. Istanbul passed in a zoetrope of minarets, domes and cobbled streets, Jia racing across the Bosphorus Bridge from Europe into Asia, the suspension cables shuddering. Anyone watching would have seen a dust storm, a freak weather phenomenon, a green-gold missile too swift to register.
No mobile phone snaps for you.
Surfacing again, squinting at the land below, he marvelled at her dexterity. She displayed abilities to rival his own, outpacing the dragon mile after mile. Coupled to this was envy—he was the original green-eyed monster, after all—but mostly there was discomfort, and most of it concerned his wounded pride. It wasn’t just his feet dangling in the airstreams or the giant claw closed around him, clutching tightly but giving him enough room to breathe. Stuck in human form, the lunewrought collar around his throat, Ben had no choice but to play the captive, a situation that was fast growing old.
Where was Jia heading? Back to China, he guessed. Back to … her master? He tried to put the pieces together, stitching suspicion to suspicion, but coming up with little concrete, little he could put his finger on. Had Von Hart really awoken Mauntgraul? Was the sin-you really working for him, a secret mission to recover the harp? Did the fairy mean to undo the lullaby, rouse the Sleepers? His rattled brain noted the fact that Jia hadn’t denied any of these things. She had used him as a stepping stone to get to the Chapter, that much was clear, and for some reason, the envoy had sent him a message, a warning, an instruction of some kind. Let me fall. With a sensation akin to vertigo, Ben realised that he didn’t know the first thing about the why of this imagined conspiracy.
All he could do was pick at the threads, tracing them back to the start and disliking the taste of them. Why would Von Hart have wanted the Lambton armour? Why had he given the suit to House Fitzwarren? This implied that the fairy had had his lily-white hand in the Bardolfe conspiracy last year, inspiring, abetting Remnant sedition. This unpleasant thought brought the same old echo from those days last summer, Von Hart in his club.
Perhaps this change in regime is inevitable. Perhaps it is our turn again.
Inevitable. That was the telltale word. If the envoy was complicit in rebellion, it seemed clear that he had his own agenda. He’d rescued Ben, after all, and on two occasions.
He was trying to tell you something, dummkopf. Whatever it is, he still wants you in the game.
Was it possible that Von Hart had been working towards the downfall of the Guild all along, feeding the fire that put the Chapter in power? To deliberately place the Lore on shifting ground, throwing up confusion and, of course, the fragments of the harp?
In the spirit of that, wouldn’t it make sense if the envoy had awoken Mauntgraul for a similar reason? Had he been so desperate, so determined, that he was willing to risk unleashing a dragon that would certainly want to kill him? Yes, Ben thought so. It would certainly explain his going into hiding. Perhaps the times called for such measures. In the short space of time since the White Dog’s awakening, hundreds had died, scooped up from the Wangfujing plaza or caught in the bullet train disaster. The dragon had reduced both Paladin’s Court and the Invisible Church to rubble. He wished he could tell himself that concern for humans, those who would fall to the beast, might have stayed the fairy’s hand—but no, he had seen too much over the years to trust the compassion of the Fay.
Following this train of thought, he could see how the envoy might’ve wanted to create a fiery distraction, a twelve-ton venomous smokescreen, while Jia made her play for the harp. It all led back to the same pale source. The same missing player. Von Hart must’ve known that Ben, as Sola Ignis, would fly to Beijing to face his ancient foe. The Red and the White. Of all creatures, he must’ve known that. And while Ben had been preoccupied with Mauntgraul, Jia had used him to get to the Chapter and the other fragments of the harp.
But something had gone wrong. In such a risky venture, something had been bound to go wrong.
The White Dog had paid a visit to Paladin’s Court and stolen a fragment of the harp. Then someone—a Remnant with nothing to lose, a million spies and a penchant for jugular veins, Ben reckoned—must have led Mauntgraul to the Invisible Church. The fragments of the harp called to each other, the Fay enchantment all of a piece. Lambert du Sang would have known that, surely. And the harp, it seemed, was drawing the lot of them together, fusing them in chaos and fire in the same way that the relic longed to be whole.
If all this was true—and Ben could only go by his gut, forcing himself to face the worst—then he wondered where that left him.
Smoke and mirrors. You know the truth as well as I do. It’s just too hard to swallow.
What had driven Jia Jing, Guardian of the East, Keeper of the Lore, to go against her oaths? What had frightened her so?
I have no choice.
The Ghost Emperor.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realised that her insistence on the Pact, reminding him of his honour, had all been a ruse.
Truth and justice, my arse. She lied to you, birdbrain. Just because she can see the truth doesn’t mean she can’t lie.
Jia had stolen the fragments of the harp. Dangling five hundred feet above the mountains, it didn’t take a genius to realise why Mauntgraul had stolen him: the lunewrought collar around his throat.
The harp exerted an arcane pull, magical and magnetic. Responding to the pieces in the sin-you’s clutches, Ben’s collar was buzzing and tingling against his skin, a cold, wavering compass point. And touched by the harp, the White Dog could sense it, sense its pull and follow, the dragon hungry for the harp, desperate to recover his stolen piece. Jia could’ve lost Mauntgraul easily enough otherwise. The sureness of his direction, his growing desperation was there in his ragged breaths, the speed at which they flew. As for Ben, he was serving his purpose. The collar waned if they fell too far behind
and waxed to an uncomfortable degree when they were following true once more, miles above the sin-you on the ground.
A lodestone. He’s using you as a living lodestone. Could this day get any better?
He didn’t want to think about what would happen when Mauntgraul managed to catch up with Jia—as he knew he must—and he himself outlived his usefulness. The harp was a restless chatter in his head, a tinkling of chimes emanating need. He could only imagine the scale of the music in Mauntgraul’s skull, luring him on through the sky, across the mountains and rivers, into the east.
As soon as he thought it, he experienced another tingle, another painful tug at his throat.
Below, the dust trail was fading out, a settling cloud of grit.
“She’s stopping,” he shouted up at the beast above him. “Set me down, you bloodless bastard.”
He couldn’t tell whether Mauntgraul heard him or not. Probably not, judging by the wind. Nevertheless, the dragon could see the dust plume fading for himself, probably heard the stolen fragments coming to a standstill. He banked, Ben’s stomach lurching, and dived for the snowbound peaks.
A few feet off the ground, he released Ben. He dropped like a stone to the earth, his body slamming into rock, and all he knew was silence.
When he came to, the White Dog spoke.
“Mount Aragats,” he said as Ben sat up, spitting out dust. “That’s what they call this place. The name means ‘Ara’s throne,’ after Ara the Beautiful, a hero of Byzantine legend. He was so handsome, so strong, that Queen Shamiram waged a war just to have him. In the ensuing battle, Ara was slain and Shamiram, heartbroken and mad, spent the rest of her days trying to raise him from the dead. To no avail.”
Ben wasn’t in the mood for a story. The view, however, couldn’t fail to take his breath away—breath he was surprised to find he had on the summit, retaining a shred of his inherent warmth and stamina. The collar, he knew, restricted transformation and curbed his strength. But it couldn’t change his nature.
Mauntgraul, of course, remained unfettered. There was nothing to stop him ripping off Ben’s head and tossing it down the slope.
Heart thudding, fists clenched, Ben swallowed his fear.
“You old romantic,” he said to the dragon’s shoulders. Mauntgraul sat, in human form, on a snowy outcrop that hung thousands of feet over the landscape. The White Dog surveyed that landscape with all the scorn of a descended god. Looking for a dust trail, perhaps. Watching. Waiting. “Let’s not forget all the innocent people you’ve killed.”
“Humans!” The White Dog spat the word, echoes bouncing off the surrounding cliffs. “Humans destroy what they love and mourn by the graveside, wishing that their tears could wash away time.”
“That doesn’t mean they deserve to die.”
“Doesn’t it?” he said. “Seems to me they threw down the gauntlet when they sealed their murderous Pact.”
“That isn’t—”
“Fair, Benjurigan?” Mauntgraul stood and turned now, looking down from his advantage on the bluff. Ben’s argument shrivelled up in his throat as he saw the tears rolling down the dragon’s cheeks, the slight trembling of his shoulders. His physique was an undeniable model of strength, but the black holes of his eyes only spoke of his anguish. This show of emotion was so unfamiliar, so alien to his character, that Ben let out an astonished breath. “Nothing is fair. This world does not change.”
Ben didn’t know what to say. There was no enmity in the White Dog’s expression, no sign of a legacy of violence, the Red and the White. Mauntgraul, who stood before him in the guise of the Wandering Moor, appeared to have forgotten all about Rakegoyle, his mother. He looked inward, contemplating, watching the progress of some inner war.
It’s the harp. The harp has screwed with his head.
The subliminal tinkling, the thrum of Ben’s collar, had taken on a palpable presence, emanating from the distant fragments. And the harp was working on him too, he realised, his throat thick with emotion, the hint of memories just out of reach, inviting him to dance … At the same time, he wanted to throw up on the snow, sickened by the melody.
The magic of the Fay is growing old. The circles of protection are souring.
He recalled Jia’s exact words, silently answering them with his own.
Yeah. Sour enough to poison the mind.
Something was wrong with the magic, that much was clear. Back at the monastery, the Cardinal should’ve been able to overpower Mauntgraul easily, the strumming of those ghostly strings binding him in human form, peeling back the earth and sending him into the Sleep. Instead, the White Dog had managed to resist, fighting against the song, but the struggle had cost him dearly, Ben saw; the music had driven him mad.
Thinking this, Ben tugged at the collar around his throat, humming against his skin. Somehow, he had to get the damn thing off. He had little to fear from the Sleep himself … didn’t he? Unlike Mauntgraul, Von Hart had sung his name into the lullaby and secured his place upon the earth. But he couldn’t help but wonder how long the magic would take to corrode completely, and what that might mean for the other waking Remnants. Things were falling apart. He’d like the collar to go the same way before he joined the White Dog in bedlam.
The harp was his only hope. In the monastery, he had seen it for himself, the way in which Jia had freed herself. Lunewrought answers to lunewrought. If he could just get close enough to the fragments …
The collar answered. A cold sting, a solar flare exploding in his mind. Music rose, shrill and bright, threatening to liquefy his brain. He clapped his hands to his ears, his skin crawling, his feet slipping on snow and scree. And into the surge of melody, that voice again, thin, insistent, stabbing his wheeling thoughts.
Ben.
Huh?
Ben. Catch her. Please.
A moment and the voice was gone, an echo that had never been. The radiance receded, the music dwindling to a background hum.
Mauntgraul hardly blinked. Perhaps he was immune to the harp, having grown accustomed to its hunger.
To suppress the urge to vomit, Ben growled.
“You’re wrong. Everything has changed.”
“Do you imagine so?” Mauntgraul said. He swung out his arms, framing the horizon. “Tell me they don’t still squabble over land and money. Crave power over others. Fight with each other over long-dead gods. And what of us, the Remnants? Tell me that they finally accept us. Tell me they no longer fear us. Tell me what has changed from my day to this.”
Ben shook his head, but he fell silent. Crazed by the harp or no, Mauntgraul had spoken to the crux of his fear, the creeping despair that had dogged him since Beijing. This creature before him was a monster in every sense of the word, a mass murderer who revelled in gore. But like it or not, the White Dog was speaking the truth.
“This is your progress, Benjurigan. Can you not see? This is why you signed the Pact. Why you sacrificed all. Yet here we are, racing towards extinction. We died out centuries ago, did we not? You. Me. All of us. We are as dead as dreams. Dead as dust.”
Ben studied the ground. If his doubts had been subtly skulking in the shadows, his visit to Père Lachaise cemetery had dragged them out into the light, the withering state of the Remnants plain for him to see. So many of them had fallen, both the noble and the debauched. All of them Remnants, regardless. And he’d been warned, hadn’t he? The Pact is no truce at all, merely a cell where you wait for extinction … How could he forget Queen Atiya’s words? Typical of a goddess, they had taken on a prophetic quality. Denial was absurd. The Pact hadn’t saved them at all.
Still …
“I can’t … I won’t accept that. I swore to protect them.”
“From the truth?” the White Dog said.
“From destruction.”
Mind wheeling, he recalled the sin-you’s words from the mountains outside Beijing, the hint of a larger scheme taking shape in his mind.
The Lurkers are merging in the nether, she’d said. Something
is drawing them to the earth. Something has caught their attention. Something big.
Or someone.
“Why do you think Jia wants the harp?” he asked the dragon before him. “Can you take a wild guess? I … I think Von Hart is planning a rebellion. Summoning an army. Some kind of—”
“Yes. The Pale One. The Lord of Nothing. The King of Emptiness.”
Ben’s flesh went cold. “The Ghost Emperor.”
“Yesss,” Mauntgraul hissed, his eyes darting around, taking in the rock face as if fearing the phantom’s sudden appearance, the giant beast slicing the sky apart to join them on the mountain. “I hear him, you know. I hear him calling to the harp, hungry for its magic. He calls to the Cwyth from beyond the world.”
“No shit. The harp is what drew him here. Perhaps the envoy—”
“Oh, such music!” Foam bubbled at the corners of Mauntgraul’s mouth, his mania taking over. “The hiss of a blade under a fingernail. The last beat of a bursting heart—” The White Dog choked himself off. “The bells. I hear him in the bells. But he will not have the harp. Not as long as I live and breathe. It is mine. Mine!”
“Maunt.” Ben took a cautious step forward. “We have to stop her.”
Despite this attempt at partnership, he would never see the dragon as an ally. History was history. From the old days to these, Mauntgraul’s victims must scale into the thousands, Remnant and human alike. The dragon longed for the harp. The souring of magic had pushed him to the brink, a kind of draconic breakdown exacerbated by the modern age. Ben could see it in his eyes, a glimmer of uncertainty, even loneliness. And the harp’s absence, plainly, was about to push him over the edge.
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