Always Forever (16 page)

"We are all animals to them."

"I know. They use us for their own ends, but this time we're using them."
Church felt uncomfortable trying to play Callow. A streak of madness that ran
through him made him impossible to predict; Church still didn't really know
what the Fomorii had done to him inside. "I've got a feeling you know something that might help us. Where the Fomorii main nest is, where Balor is
hidden, building up his strength. Some weakness-"

"Oh, you really are a prime example of hope over reality," Callow snapped
bitterly. "I should give up my hard-won knowledge? For what? A chance to be
seen as good?" He waggled his fingers to show the gap where he had sliced the
one off himself. "You forget, my little pet, the only reason I would want to take
your hand is to harvest your digits."

"So you don't know anything, then." Church made to go.

"I know a great many things that would shock and surprise you," Callow
replied sharply, stung by the dismissal. "I know what makes your eyes light up.
And where the Luck of the Land lies. And I know what happened on this Ship
of Fools last night."

"How?"

"I can hear things through the walls. Through many walls."

"I know what happened last night. That's not important to me-'

"You would think, wouldn't you?" Callow smirked again; Church couldn't
tell if it was more petty tormenting or if he truly did know something of import.
"Now be off with you, and leave me to my peace and quiet," Callow snapped,
"and don't return unless you have the key to release me from this foul den."

When he reached the door, Callow called out to him again, "Are you
missing your friends? Do you feel lost without them? Too weak and inexperienced? What is it like to know they are all dead, dead, dead ...

Church stepped out and slammed the door hard so he wouldn't have to hear
any more.

The first thought was like a candle in a room that had remained dark for an age.
It flickered, dangerously close to extinction, but then caught. Slowly, the heat
and the light returned.

For Laura, memories pieced together gradually and chaotically, sparing her the
full horror of revelation in one devastating blow. Making love to Church. The joy
she felt at finally finding someone to whom she could open up the dark chambers of
her soul. Making love to Shavi, a friend who defied any insipid meaning she had given to the word in the past. Her hated mother, her pathetic father. Her friends.
Her work: computer screens and mobile phones. One image returning in force: trees.
The things she had fought for so many times with her environmental activism.

They gathered pace, memories clinging together, forming patterns in the
chaos. The quest. The Quincunx, the five who are one. Brothers and Sisters of
Dragons. Talismans and Blue Fire. Standing stones and old religion. Tuatha De
Danann and Fomorii. And Balor.

And Balor.

Electricity jolted her body into convulsions. She recalled with crystal clarity
the night on Mam Tor when she had taken the potion from Cernunnos and made
the sacrifice that would end her life; for Ruth, for everyone. When she took
Balor into her own body.

Another shock, dragging her from the recesses of her head. How could she
still be alive, thinking? When Balor emerged from her it would have rended her
body apart.

Gradually details of her surroundings broke through her confusion. She was
lying on her back in a dark place; as her eyes adjusted she realised there was a
thin light source filtering in from somewhere. The air was thick with the stench
of decomposition. She choked, gagged, tried to breathe in small gasps that went
straight to the back of her throat. She made the mistake of turning her head and
looked into a pair of glassy eyes only inches from her. It was a woman, not much
older than her. Beyond she could just make out irregular shapes heaped all
around. They resembled bags of discarded clothing.

Closing her eyes, she took refuge once more in her head, but even there no
safety lay. Her body was racked with pain. Slowly she let her hands move down
her torso towards her belly, dreading the end of their journey. They were halted
by sharpness and void almost before they had started.

Initially she couldn't work out what she was feeling, and then when she did,
she refused to believe it. But there was no doubt. Her ribs were protruding on
both sides like jagged teeth around the hollow from which Balor had erupted.

It couldn't be. She was dead. Dead and dreaming. Her arms collapsed to her
side and her thoughts fragmented once more.

The next time she was aware, she let her hands investigate once more, praying
it had been a hallucination. And this time there were no broken ribs and gaping
wound, although her clothes around that area were shredded.

Her relief left her sobbing silently for several minutes.

Finally she found the strength to lever herself up on her elbows. From the
air currents she could tell she was in some cavernous room, the ceiling and walls lost to the shadows. All around were corpses, piled in rolling dunes. Faces and
hands and feet were pressing into her back and legs. So many dead. Hundreds.
Thousands. Amidst the horror she was thankful for the small mercy that she was
on the top and not drowning beneath the sea of bodies. And she was alive.
Amazingly, astonishingly alive.

Then she cried some more.

In the Court of the Yearning Heart, laughter often sounds like the cries of the
insane. The walls are never quite thick enough to prevent the noises coming
through from adjoining rooms; whimpers of pleasure and pain, others a combination of both. Scents continually tease, each one subtle and complex so the passerby
dwells on them for minutes, perhaps hours. Every surface has a pleasing texture;
it is impossible to touch anything once without wanting immediately to touch it
again. Addiction can spring from the merest taste of the food to the tongue.

In comparison, the chamber designated for Tom was almost unpleasantly
ascetic. He had stripped everything from it to minimise the sensory overload so
that his life was, if not acceptable, then bearable. At least he no longer had to
worry about accepting the food or drink of Otherworld; there was little hope he
would be leaving the Court any time in the near future. Prisoner by his own
hand, or theirs, it made no matter.

He sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, smoking a joint to dull his
searing emotions: wishing he could smoke enough to shut down his thoughts
completely. Despite the clothes that had been offered to him by the Tuatha De
Danann, he still resembled an ageing hippie: his greying hair was fastened into
a ponytail with an elastic band, the wire-rimmed spectacles had been fashionable in the late sixties, his too-washed T-shirt and old army jacket: they all
grounded him in the experiences of the world he had left behind. And for the
first time he felt the hundreds of years piled high on his shoulders. He had
thought himself immune to the rigours of passing time, but now it felt as raw
as it had in the first century or so of his transformation.

They had taken Veitch four hours ago. How long before they spat him out
of the inner recesses of the Court where the miracles and atrocities occurred, torn
apart and rebuilt into something else? Decades, as it had been in Tom's own case?
Or longer? He winced, unable to stop the razored parade of memories of his own
early experiences at their hands. After so long, they were still just beneath the
surface, torturing every second of his life. He had already shed tears for the suffering Veitch would face in the times ahead, and he did so again, briefly and
silently. Would Veitch grow to love his tormentors even as he hated them, just
as Tom had? He thought he probably would.

Then Tom, grown emotional through the drugs, battled a wave of damp
emotion, this time for himself. For the first time he had found kindred spirits,
friends even, although he had never told them that, and all he had done was witness their appalling suffering. Now he might never see any of them again, not
even Veitch, who would no longer be Veitch when he returned, in the same way
that he was no longer Thomas Learmont. Against all that, even the destruction
about to be instigated by the Fomorii was meaningless.

He took a deep draught of the joint, trying to decide if that thought was
selfishness or some deep psychological insight; not really caring.

The door was flung open some hours later and Veitch tumbled into the room.
Dazed and winded, he came to rest in a heap against the far wall. It took Tom a
second or two to realise what he was seeing; even then, he barely dared believe it.

"So soon?" he said, puzzled.

"Don't just sit there, you old hippie," Veitch snapped.

Tom scrambled over to help him to his feet. "You're fine?"

Veitch examined his hands, then stretched the kinks out of his arm muscles,
unable to believe it himself. His long hair was lank with the sweat of fear, his
tough, good-looking features drawn with apprehension.

"What happened?"

Veitch was surprised at the bald relief in the hippie's voice after weeks of his
curt, dismissive manner. "I don't know what happened. When they took me from
here I was brought before Her Majesty." There was a sneer in Veitch's voice, but Tom
knew it was there only to mask the fear of the Queen of the Court of the Yearning
Heart, architect of all desire and suffering. "She gave me some spiel about how I was
setting off a new phase of existence. Didn't really know what she was talking about, to
be honest." He examined his hands closely. "Wasn't really listening."

Tom remembered the same response: the fear of what lay ahead driving all
rational thought down to its lowest level; not thinking, just reacting. He
reached out a supportive hand; surprisingly, Veitch allowed it to rest briefly on
his forearm; a small thing, but a sign of how deeply he had been affected.

"They took me through these red curtains into a room that was hung with
tapestries. There was a wooden bench in the middle. They tied me to it. Up on
the ceiling, there was something, a light of some kind. Only it wasn't a real
light. It was like it had a life of its own, you know?" His description faltered
under the limitations of his vocabulary and his unstructured thought processes,
but Tom nodded in recognition. Veitch appeared relieved he wouldn't have to
go into it further.

"And then whatever the light was, it made me black out. Next thing I knew I was looking up at the Queen and she was ..." He searched for the right word.
"Furious."

A tremor crossed Tom's face.

"Her face sort of ... changed. Kept changing. Like ... like ..."

"Like it wasn't fixed."

"Exactly. Like she was breaking up. Turning into something else. Lots of
things. I dunno why. I mean, it wasn't like I'd done anything. I'd been out like
a light. Next thing I know those jackboot bastards who always follow her
around dragged me back here."

Tom dropped back on to the floor, slipping easily into his cross-legged
stance, his face locked in an expression of deep rumination; it didn't make sense,
whichever way it was examined. The Queen would not have given up the opportunity to spend decades tantalising and tormenting a mortal for anything. He
eyed Veitch suspiciously. "Are you sure it wasn't some trick? Offering you the
chance of hope, only to snatch it away. The pain is more acute that way." The
note of bitter experience rang in his voice.

"No, you should have seen her, mate. It was real. Scared the shit out of me."
Veitch grinned broadly, then cracked his knuckles. "Fuck it. Who cares? Maybe
there's a chance we'll get out of here."

"The Queen will never let you go."

"Don't be so bleedin' negative. You didn't see them. They were all like ..."
He made a dismissive hand gesture. "Like I was something on the bottom of
their shoe."

Before Tom could consider the matter further, the door rattled open. Melliflor and the Queen's Honour Guard stood without, dressed in the freakish
golden armour that resembled a mix of sea shells and spiderwebs, offset by silk
the colour of blood; armour worn only for the most important occasions. Recognising the signs, Tom struggled to his feet. Veitch stepped in front of him protectively, the tendons on his arms growing taut.

Devoid of its usual mockery, Melliflor's face was contemptuous, hacked from
cold granite. "Our Lady of Light demands your presence."

Demands, Tom noted. Not requests. All pretence of politeness had been
dropped; they were no longer favoured guests, nor even figures of fun. "How
could we deny her?" Tom saw the dangerous glint in Melliflor's eye and knew
he could afford not even the slightest mockery. He bowed his head and, with
Veitch at his heel, followed the guard out of the room.

The Queen of Heart's Desire sat in the centre of a room where twenty braziers
roared like blast furnaces. The air was unbearably thick with heat and smoke. Despite the light from the flames, gloom still clung to the periphery, beyond the
thick tapestries in scarlet and gold that swathed the stone walls. It was oppressively unpleasant, yet still seared with sensation.

The first time Veitch had seen the Queen, she had been the embodiment of
sexual craving, sucking at every part of him that needed; naked, splayed, prostrate, for him alone, yet still somehow above him, still in control. Even though
he knew she was manipulating every pump of his blood, he couldn't help
wanting her; even though the rational part of him had only contempt for her, he
would have given himself to her immediately, done anything asked of him.

Now, though, she was enveloped in a brocaded gown and cloak that covered
her from neck to toes; a headdress left only the smallest heart of face visible, and
that was glacial. She wouldn't even meet his eyes. Despite himself, he felt
brokenhearted, unwanted. He looked at Tom and saw the Rhymer felt the same.

Tom bowed his head. "Have we offended you in some way, my Queen?"