Raising Fire

by James Bennett

  In the furnace of his rage, he felt a small shiver of satisfaction as he watched the envoy raise his hands, cringing away from him. His fringe, a mess of white gold, would easily turn crisp and brown in one blast of Ben’s fiery breath, and at this thought, Ben forced his anger into a growl, a deep rumble of threat.

  “You better start talking. Or I’ll drop-kick your bony arse over the cliffs out there.”

  In response, Von Hart closed his eyes. Playing a sorcerous piece of bait inside the Ghost Emperor and his struggle with the harp had clearly taken its toll on him. He lay here a wasted creature, a fallen creature, a creature of betrayal and deceit. No. Of rebellion. Of war. Tears trickled down his cheeks, thin lines through the smears of dust. When he opened his eyes again, he looked up at Ben, regarding him with foggy slits of violet. His gaze said it all. As things stood, he obviously didn’t care what happened to him, whether Ben roasted him alive or not.

  And the next moment, the envoy extraordinary managed to name the source of his pain.

  “Jia …”

  “She’s dead, fairy. Dead or worse.” Ben choked on the words, unable to shake off the look on the sin-you’s face, her calm acceptance as she’d fallen, tumbling into the nether. Forcing himself to focus on the matter at hand, he shoved his face closer to the envoy’s, determined to prise an answer from his lips. “If you’re so hell-bent on starting a war, why … why did you even bother to contact me? Why send me that message in Paris? Why drag me into this shit?”

  When the time comes, let me fall.

  Well, fallen they had. Just like the world around them. Everything was falling apart.

  In tortured flashes, Ben recalled the strange invitations that had echoed in his skull throughout his journey, a voice he’d been unable to place at first, which had then become horribly clear. Clipped and Germanic. Pained, insistent and familiar, a plea from beyond. And had Von Hart—this murderer, this trickster, this arch-traitor—steered the Ghost Emperor’s vaporous bulk to press against the skein of reality, reaching out to Ben in Barrow Hill Road? Drawing him to an appointment on the edge of the nether, the edge of reality itself?

  “Talk! You knew that I was too late to stop any of this. What the fuck did you want from me?”

  And Von Hart gave him his answer.

  “I thought … I thought you could save her.”

  The dragon glared at the fairy for a moment. Von Hart’s face had become a blur, washed out by grief. The swell of sorrow in Ben’s breast doused his rage. With a heavy sigh, the fight went out of him, his inner heat fading, extinguished by fatigue, a solid block settling on his shoulders. Blinking away tears, he looked again at the empty mirror on the altar, the crumbling temple walls, the floor, counting the cost of his failure.

  I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t stop her.

  Jia had sucked him down into her maelstrom of lies, her private struggle to undo the lullaby, her longing to see her parents again, yet another Remnant losing the plot. He should’ve seen it from the start. Should’ve taken du Sang at his word in Paris. The Remnants were dying out, one by one. And why, suspecting that Von Hart was hiding in the nether, hadn’t he hit upon the truth sooner?

  I’m saying he isn’t in the world at all … He simply isn’t … there.

  Like a ghost.

  A Ghost Emperor.

  Under his chagrin, he realised then that his first impressions of the sin-you had been right.

  Because you did know, didn’t you? You know despair like the back of your hand and you could smell it all over her.

  Jia had doubted herself, he reckoned, desperately wanting to see or hear something that would turn her back from her perilous raid of the fragments, her devastating course of action. But when the chips were down, you finally managed to change her mind. After centuries of living under the Lore and upholding the Pact—even after all of that—Ben had struggled to tell Jia that she was wrong, but he sure as hell knew there had to be a better way.

  But that hope was gone now. No point wishing for it. He couldn’t change the past.

  Flowers in a mirror and the moon in water.

  In the end, he’d reached her too late. And so she had paid the ultimate price.

  This was a cruel game, he thought. A crooked hand laid out by the creature beneath him, this last earthly son of Avalon with all his riddles and machinations. All the same, with the depth of the sin-you’s tragedy weighing on his soul, Ben had no energy to hate him. At least not yet. For now, all he felt was loss, a fathomless hollow in his breast as though a cold pale hand had reached inside him and crushed his heart. Like the music, the echoing song around him, Ben was gathering his breath, trying to get his head around the latter-day collapse of the Curia Occultus, the treachery of his so-called friend, the cataclysm of the shattered harp—quite literally, the ending of his world.

  “Look,” Von Hart gasped as Ben leant forward, reaching for him. “Look around you. The circles of protection have broken.”

  “Yeah. I got that,” Ben snapped, recalling his vision of the shimmering blue arc that had stretched under the sea to Lantau Island, leading him to the sin-you and this godforsaken place. “And you can shove your riddles where the sun don’t shine.”

  So saying, he pushed his arms—none too gently—under the envoy’s frail body and lifted him from the littered ground. In a trailing cloud of dust, he carried Von Hart through the double doors and started down the many steps. He’d have to leave the mirror here for now, pray that nobody found it. He wanted to find shelter somewhere, perhaps even a ride, a road leading off the peninsula. He wanted to go home. Work this out in his lair.

  Chain this bastard up and throw away the key. Just like he threw Jia away.

  London was a long way away and Ben would need to rest, heal and gather his strength before returning through the Asian and European skies, the envoy clutched in one claw. That was if Von Hart didn’t escape or kill him first. Because the envoy, he knew, would heal quickly enough, and honestly? Ben didn’t fancy his chances. He knew he was living on borrowed time.

  No. You always have been. She showed you that, at least.

  A rumble at his back arrested him, swinging him around on the steps, the envoy groaning in his arms. Looking up, Ben watched the solitary spire above him collapse, a shroud of rubble and dust crashing through the tiers of the ruined pagoda, a cascade of bricks pouring into the chamber below. In no time at all, where a temple had once stood, there was only a smoking mound of bricks, a set of steep stone steps leading up to it.

  To nowhere. A dead and forgotten place.

  Von Hart put his thoughts into words.

  “Good,” he muttered, in a pained wheeze. “That’ll keep the Eight Hand Mirror buried for a time. Time enough for the echoes to travel through the nether. My work here is done.”

  Ben bristled at the hint of weary satisfaction in the envoy’s voice.

  “What are you up to, Von Hart?” he asked, his lip curling, his disgust plain. “Tell me what she died for and maybe I’ll let you live.”

  But when he looked down at the fairy again, he could see that his condition was worsening, his face turning paler, his eyes rolling up in his skull as some kind of seizure took hold. Shivering and clutching his limbs, Von Hart was convulsing in Ben’s arms, foam bubbling from his lips. What the hell? Appalled, Ben tried to draw back, to set him down, but Von Hart grabbed at him, his long fingers scrabbling at his chest, slipping off the glossy black scales of his suit, the redundant wyrm tongue symbol.

  “Broken! Broken!” he cried, spittle flying from his lips. “The circles are broken! Alles ist kaput!”

  Ben gripped him tighter, trying to shake some sense into him.

  “No shit, fairy. What in God’s name did you think would happ—”

  Then the envoy’s eyes flew wide, violet orbs of alarm. Or triumph.

  “The Fay are coming!”

  With that, he slumped, his bony limbs falling still. Only the slight rise and fall of his chest informed Ben that h
e still lived, unconsciousness claiming him.

  Terrific.

  Under his scorn, Ben shuddered, gripped by a grim epiphany. Reluctantly he recalled the Fay prophecy, uttered years ago by the queen of the vanished race, the false promise that had hoodwinked the Remnants into the Sleep.

  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.

  The shattering of the harp. The envoy’s talk of echoes through the nether. It struck Ben that perhaps Von Hart had intended to give that prophecy a little push. Had that been his purpose all along? To summon the Fay back to earth?

  Muscles aching, eyes raw, Ben continued to make his way down the steps. His questions, it seemed, would have to wait. Whatever Von Hart had meant by his feverish words, it struck Ben that he experienced no joy in them, no pang of longing, only a shiver of fear. He noticed that the music was fading too, the echoes of the lullaby travelling beyond his hearing, spilling out across the river, into China, into the world beyond …

  Ben gazed into the wilderness dawn, the grassy hills of the island spread out before him. He took a deep breath, considering his next move. London. And then what? No one could help him now. And he knew, in a way as deep and as long as his own history, that he would never trust anyone again. The Pact was over. The Lore undone. As for the Sleep … well, it didn’t look good. For the first time in centuries, he stood in uncharted territory, with no map to guide him. No boundaries. No codes.

  Is this what Jia meant by freedom? If she had, he wondered why his sense of doom—and he alone standing in the way of it—felt so much like a cage. Letting out a troubled breath, he accepted that he had indeed been right, although the knowledge brought him no joy.

  A war is coming. I can smell it.

  And in his mind, the grim understanding. His last real trinket. The only thing he had left.

  I’m alive. I survived.

  For now.

  The sun rose over the Pearl River estuary, shining on a new age.

  It wasn’t much.

  Acknowledgements

  I wrote Raising Fire through a storm. This book couldn’t have happened without the lighthouse keepers and I’d like to thank them here.

  Thanks to John Jarrold, my agent, for all his advice and support during the writing of this novel, and for bailing me out when needed.

  Thanks to my editors James Long, Lindsey Hall, Joanna Kramer and all of the team at Orbit UK and US for helping me to see the story inside the story and for bringing this book to fruition.

  Thanks again to Tracey Winwood for another fabulous cover.

  To all at Fox Spirit, fearless genre warriors, you have my depthless gratitude.

  Thanks go out to a whole host of reviewers who embraced Chasing Embers and hosted the book on my blog tour. To Kevin Hearne, author of the Iron Druid series, for the generous cover quote. To John Gilbert at FEAR Magazine for featuring a relative newbie. To Theresa Darwin at Terror Tree and to the Eloquent Page. To Djibril at the FutureFire. To Danie Ware and everyone at Forbidden Planet for arranging my launch. To everyone at FantasyCon 2016, in particular Lee Harrison, author of The Bastard Wonderland, for looking after me at the event and to Georgina Bruce for getting my shoe back. You all made the process of unleashing a dragon into the wild that much more fun.

  On a research tip, thanks to the staff at the Beijing Feelinn for letting me stay in their hutong home. Thanks to the Wangfujing Bookstore. To my guides at the Great Wall and in Xi’an. Thanks to all the informative staff at the temples in Pingyao (which you should visit if you get the chance!). Thanks to Lee who got me to the Yellow Mountains. And to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

  Special thanks to Joyce Chng, author of Wolf at the Door and Dragon Dancer (https://awolfstale.wordpress.com/) for checking my Chinese characters and for her insightful advice on Asian representation.

  On a personal note, I can’t thank Liz and Khalid enough for helping me out when things went adrift. Likewise, thanks to Ben and Karl for giving me the necessary shelter to finish this novel. Thanks to my family for their love and support. It meant a lot.

  And to all the readers and writers that I’ve met on this journey.

  Thank you.

  Look out for

  BURNING ASHES

  by

  James Bennett

  The Lore is over. For Ben Garston, the fight is just beginning.

  The uneasy truce between the human and the mythical world has shattered. Betrayed by his oldest friend, with a tragic death on his hands, there isn’t enough whiskey in England to wash away the taste of Ben’s guilt. But for a one-time guardian dragon, there’s no time to sit and sulk in the ruins.

  Because the Long Sleep has come undone. Slowly but surely, Remnants are stirring under the earth, unleashing chaos and terror on an unsuspecting modern world. Worse still, the Fay are returning, travelling across the gulfs of the nether to bring a final reckoning to Remnants and humans alike.

  A war is coming. A war to end all wars. And only Ben Garston stands in the way…

  extras

  about the author

  James Bennett is a British writer raised in Sussex and South Africa. His travels have furnished him with an abiding love of different cultures, history and mythology. His short fiction has appeared internationally and the acclaimed Chasing Embers was his debut fantasy novel. James lives in London and sees dragon bones in the Thames whenever he crosses a bridge.

  Find out more about James Bennett and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  if you enjoyed

  RAISING FIRE

  look out for

  THE LAST DAYS OF JACK SPARKS

  by

  Jason Arnopp

  Jack Sparks died while writing this book.

  It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he’d already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed.

  Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.

  Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed—until now.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Before we vanish into Satan’s gaping mouth, Bex wants to get something straight.

  Sitting beside me in a very small car, she says, “So your new book’s going to be about the supernatural. Which you don’t believe in. At all.”

  “It’s already riling people,” I tell her. “Did you see the bust-up yesterday?”

  She scrunches her face. “Why can’t you accept that social media isn’t a part of my life?”

  “Because I don’t believe you.”

  “Last time I looked, in about 2009, social media was one big room full of people not listening to each other, shouting, ‘My life’s great!’ I doubt this has changed.”

  “So why are you still on there?”1

  Bex makes her frustrated, dismissive noise: the sound of a brief, chaotic catfight. “I have profiles, Jack, so old friends can catch up, but I don’t read anything. Social media makes me think less of people. I’d rather not know all the self-obsessed shit in their heads.”

  “How selfish of you.”

  “Won’t this book be kind of short? Just a great big atheist travelling round the world saying ‘Bullshit’ a lot?”

  I frown at her underestimation of the concept. “Obviously I’m going to keep it rational. But I’ll also keep a completely open mind. Social media’s full of people who think ghosts are real, so I’ll give them a chance to guide me in the right direction. I’ve got this ongoing list of hypotheses for paranormal phenomena, which I’m calling SPOOKS. That’s short for—”

  “I think I can do without knowing.”

  “And when the book’s done, I can at least tell all the mad believers, ‘Look, you had your chance to convince
me and you blew it.’”

  “How very magnanimous of you.”

  My hopeless love for Bex intensifies when she employs long words and sarcasm together. Long-time readers will recall her as the late-twenties fitness instructor I’ve known and shared a flat with too long for anything to happen between us. They’ll also know I’ve found it challenging to listen to her banging men in an adjacent bedroom. This may explain why my books tend to involve travel. (By the way, she doesn’t bang loads of men. She’s not like that. She’s been seeing a guy called Lawrence for six months, even if he is a smarmy, chinless loser. And he is.)

  I can openly discuss this love of mine because Bex doesn’t actually read my books. “Jack, I live with you,” she once said while we half watched EastEnders and fully ate Chinese food on our big fat yellow sofa. “I don’t actually need to read these books. Why would I want to relive you overdosing on coke in our toilet?”

  Apart from making the mistake of not reading my books, Bex is the most sensible person I know. In truth, I always seek her approval on my book ideas. Which makes me want to win her around on this one.

  A burst of power makes our very small car rattle and hum. We roll forwards with a creak.

  “So,” she says. “How was Greece?”

  “Italy,” I say, forced to raise my voice as people start squealing behind us. “It caused the big bust-up. I did a bad thing and got yelled at by an exorcist.”

  “On Halloween. Perfect.”

  “Then I saw this weird YouTube video.”

  Bex processes all this information. As our car gains speed, she settles on a question: “What video?”

  “I’ll tell you after this.”

  And into the mouth we go.

  So I’m deep in rural Italy, over twenty-four hours ago. The first stop on my epic journey into the supernatural world, which will see me visit a combat magician in Hong Kong, a ??? in ??? and a ??? in ???, not to mention a ??? in ??? (Eleanor: I’ll fill these in later, once I know who I’m actually meeting and where I’m going. If I forget, you can do the honours.)