The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (49 page)

‘If the authorities investigate, they’ll close me down for certain.’

‘The authorities have more important things on their minds,’ Shavi reassured her soothingly. He leaned on the mantelpiece next to the roaring fire, occasionally tipping back his head and closing his eyes as he smelled the perfume that wafted through the room.

‘I’ll expect to be well paid for this. Well paid,’ she repeated, glaring at Mallory as she flounced out.

‘Humanity’s on the brink of extinction and only the privileged few know,’ Mallory noted.

‘What would it benefit the rest to know?’ Shavi said. ‘There is nothing they could do. Better they enjoy some normality in their final hours, if final hours they be.’

The ornate clock ticking away on the wall showed that it was just after one a.m. Mallory swigged back his brandy. ‘I’m going out to look for Sophie.’

‘This is a big city. I would think she has probably already sought shelter somewhere.’

‘I know. But I need to see her again before everything blows up.’

Mallory acted blasé, but Shavi could see the emotion coursing
through him. ‘I understand,’ Shavi said. ‘But take care in those dark streets—’

The door swung open and Lugh and Ceridwen marched in, their mood intense. ‘Brother of Dragons, please come with us,’ Lugh said to Mallory. ‘Time is short.’

‘What’s up?’ Mallory looked from one god to the other.

It was Ceridwen who answered. ‘There are many of our kind already here in the Fixed Lands. They can help us in the coming battle. Indeed, their presence may be vital, for they count amongst their number some of the most powerful of the Golden Ones. We must contact them. But we need your help.’

‘How can we help?’ Shavi asked.

‘There is a ritual,’ Lugh said, ‘known only to our kind. It calls to the ties that bind us, however far apart we may be. Now that there are so few of us left …’ He paused, letting the words sink into his own mind. ‘Now that there are so few of us, those ties may be stronger. And our own brothers and sisters may be summoned to fight for the cause.’

‘Why do you need me?’ Mallory asked, with one eye on the clock.

‘The fire that burns inside you will give strength to our call,’ Ceridwen said.

‘The Pendragon Spirit is the key,’ Shavi said to Mallory. ‘The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are like batteries. Sometimes that power heals them; on other occasions, others may tap into it – if you so allow.’

‘All right,’ Mallory said, not attempting to mask his irritation. ‘Get on with it.’

They collected the items they needed from Mrs Damask and then Lugh and Ceridwen led the way up a back staircase to a vast, dark attic room that had been knocked through into the houses on either side. Mallory shivered, pulling his cloak around him. Ceridwen marked a circle on the dusty wooden floor with a piece of dressmaker’s chalk and then lit candles at the four cardinal points. Mallory was intrigued by how closely the gods’ ritual resembled Sophie’s work with the Craft.

‘Is all this necessary?’ he said to Shavi. ‘They’re gods. Can’t they just snap their fingers or something?’

‘Magic,’ Shavi said with a strange smile, ‘is the cheat code of
reality. We are in a vast program of repeating patterns, a superstructure of encoded rules. Reality has been constructed, and once you know the code that underlies that construction you can change it.’

‘And thereby change reality?’

‘Reality is not fixed, Mallory, even here in what the gods call the Fixed Lands. It is less changeable than their home, but it is still possible to unpick the construction. Sound and symbol are the keys. Words of power. Arcane marks. In our literalist, rationalist society, we see those sounds and symbols only as what they are on the surface, but their true power to break through the inherent programming of reality is hidden behind them.’

Mallory shook his head dismissively. ‘If reality can be altered, what’s the point?’

‘That is the point, exactly: that the world out there is not important. That it is what is inside us that truly matters. What we do. Who we are. The Chinese call it
chi
, spirit. It cannot be altered. It is the bedrock of everything.’

Ceridwen summoned Mallory and Shavi into the circle. They all sat cross-legged facing the centre, where another candle flickered. Lugh’s face was determined, and Mallory had the strange impression that the god had altered his appearance, had somehow grown more heroic; something about his features, his bearing. Ceridwen, her dark hair falling about her beautiful face, forced a smile to put Shavi and Mallory at ease, but a deep sadness was etched into every aspect of her being at the devastation of her people.

‘If only the Extinction Shears had not been lost,’ Lugh said. ‘They would have cut through the warp and the weft and the Devourer of All Things would have been destroyed.’ He bowed his head in contemplation.

And then Lugh and Ceridwen began to speak quietly, the words passing back and forth, interweaving, overlaying, the rhythms and cadences gradually forming a complex chant-song.

Mallory couldn’t understand any of what they said, but the words had a strange effect on him nonetheless; in that instant he understood exactly what Shavi had been saying.

Still chanting quietly, Ceridwen and Lugh put their heads back, their eyes rolling under the upper lids so that only the whites were visible. Within seconds, Mallory was disturbed to see a clasp at
Ceridwen’s shoulder begin to move of its own accord, echoed by the shifting of an ornate dagger on Lugh’s belt. The two items ran like water, becoming silvery, then white and finally forming into eggs, which then sprouted legs and scurried to the candle at the centre of the circle.

Mallory was fascinated but repulsed. Shavi saw his reaction and whispered, ‘They are known as caraprix. All the gods have one. They are living creatures, but infinitely mutable.’

‘Pets?’

‘Much, much more than that. They appear to have some kind of symbiotic relationship with the gods.’

In the flickering glow of the candle, the caraprix altered shape once more, stretching and entwining, forming themselves into one object, a globe that slowly raised off the boards and began to spin.

Ceridwen’s brow furrowed, her voice becoming more intense, and though Mallory still didn’t recognise the language, this time he understood. ‘I call to you, my brothers and sisters, here in the Fixed Lands. This is a time of crisis. You are needed to stand with us against a power that would wipe us all from Existence. Come now.’

In Mallory’s mind, images began to appear, so richly textured that it was as if he was watching them on a movie screen, his emotions linked to what he was seeing. Before he was swallowed up by the evocative experience, he saw from Shavi’s face that his friend was experiencing it, too. And then he was lost to the rush of visions and sensations as though carried along in the flow of a swollen river: he felt deep, abiding peace as he saw Cernunnos, his body a hybrid of flora and fauna, stag’s horns protruding from his head. Mallory’s emotions shifted to unease, then fear as the nature-god strode out from a grove of oak trees, altering his form as he moved, growing bony ridges on his head and greenish scales, becoming the Erl-King of myth. Somewhere a horn sounded eerily.

‘The Wild Hunt has already been summoned by an ally,’ he said. ‘We, of all our brethren, are close enough to do battle.’

A black dog appeared from the undergrowth, accompanied by the sounds of horses and finally other hounds, smaller, red and white in colour. Mallory remembered the old stories of the Hunt tearing across lonely moors hunting lost souls and he hoped he would be nowhere near when the riders descended on the Lament-Brood.

There were other gods he didn’t recognise – one that appeared to be made wholly of water, breaking through the ice of a deep, dark pool, another one soaring through the clouds with a face like a human hawk – but there weren’t many of them and they all announced that they were too far away to be of help.

He was shocked out of his vision by a sudden sharp query from Lugh. ‘He is here? In the Fixed Lands?’

Mallory had an image of a man in long red robes, his face half-covered by what appeared to be a surgeon’s mask. With it came a spike of unease, perhaps fear.

‘He resists,’ Ceridwen said. Then: ‘Gone.’

Any further discussion was disrupted by a sharp intake of breath from Lugh and Ceridwen together, at a vision of a thousand crows flying chaotically.

‘She is here, too!’ Ceridwen said. This time the note of dread was much stronger; so the gods were not equal, Mallory thought. Some were even feared by their own.

He had no idea what the birds meant, but then Shavi was tugging at his sleeve anxiously, his eyes rolled upwards, watching his inner visions.

‘It is the Morrigan!’ he hissed. ‘And see … see! She hunts!’

Mallory slipped back into his own trance-state and saw more clearly: the birds were now transposed over a woman, somehow occupying the same space. The woman was carrying an axe and had another strapped on her back. She was rushing through a snowy street – Oxford, he guessed – pursuing three figures, a woman and two men.

The Morrigan, so dreaded by the others, was drawing closer to her prey, moving in for the kill. Mallory’s attention was drawn to the hunted, instinctively concerned for their safety. He realised why a second later. The woman was Sophie.

Thackeray and Harvey were yelling something, but Sophie couldn’t tell what it was. All she knew was that her lungs were filled with acid and her legs were on fire; her mind, pummelled by exhaustion, wandered back and forth, her vision snatching single images like a slow parade of still photographs: a piece of ornate stonework; a silhouetted tree, twisted like a praying mantis; a wide expanse of crisp snow bisected by a row of footprints. The part of
her that still clutched on to consciousness didn’t know how much longer she could keep going.

When they had first emerged through the portal from the Watchtower, she had thought that they would have some respite. But it wasn’t long before Caitlin had burst through in their wake. Sophie recalled the chill she had felt when she had first heard those familiar footsteps crashing like hammer blows into the crisp snow somewhere behind them.

And so they had run, through bleak woods, across frozen fields, making their way towards Oxford. But the Morrigan never slowed, never deviated. And Sophie knew she never would. It was all simply a matter of time and the depth of the reserves Sophie had inside her.

It seemed so unfair. She wasn’t the warrior; she wasn’t supposed to engage in brutal hand-to-hand combat just to survive. Her skill was the Craft, manipulating from afar, perception, wisdom. She hadn’t even done anything wrong. All she had tried to do was help, selflessly, and she had been punished again and again.

She skidded down a snowy bank and found herself on a hard surface. As she tried to run, her feet went from under her and she came down hard, stunning herself for a few seconds.

When she came round, her cheek was burning where it was pressed against ice. Sophie pushed herself up, slipping and sliding. Through her daze, she realised she was on a frozen river; that was why Thackeray and Harvey had been calling out to her. It was the Cherwell.

She couldn’t go back, so she pressed forward across the ice, hoping to get to the other side where she could lose herself in the city centre, find a place to barricade herself in. Not that it would do any good.

In the centre of the frozen watercourse, she slipped again, and when she looked back a dark figure was coming down the bank. It slowed when it saw Sophie defenceless, but still advanced, now with measured, intense paces, an axe at its side.

It might have been an illusion in the gleam of the streetlights off the snow, but in that instant there was no sign of Caitlin at all. Sophie saw a woman of terrible beauty, long black hair streaming in the wind, white, white skin and lips as red as blood. Her eyes
burned. They said:
I will hack and slash and drench myself in your blood and even then I will not be done with your body
.

Sophie had a shift of perception and it was Caitlin again, but this Caitlin still bore traits of the Morrigan, was still as terrible and elemental and filled with an insatiable lust for blood. The axe beat out a steady rhythm against her leg.

On the other bank, Thackeray and Harvey jumped up and down, urging Sophie to get up and run. Desperately, Harvey had begun to make snowballs to hurl at Caitlin, the only weapons he had left to drive her away.

Sophie dug in her heels, forcing herself backwards, away from Caitlin, with the last vestiges of her strength. She slid across the ice for a few feet, then came to a halt.

‘Caitlin. Remember who you are,’ Sophie said feebly. ‘Why you’re doing this.’

Caitlin marched forward, head bowed, eyes glowering.

‘You’re a good person, Caitlin. Don’t let yourself be corrupted. This isn’t you. This—’ But Sophie didn’t have the energy to continue. It was too late. The end. She lay back on the ice and looked at the vast sweep of stars in the dark vault of the sky. So beautiful. Warmth enveloped her at the knowledge that she could finally rest.

Caitlin loomed over her, blocking out the stars. She raised her axe high.

In a last act of defiance, Sophie closed her eyes.

In the dark of her head as she waited for the blow, somehow she sensed movement. A sudden jarring clang of metal on metal made her snap her eyes open. Caitlin was sprawling across the ice. A figure in black was moving with balletic grace and strength, swinging a sword that left a trail of blue flames searing through the icy air. It looked like some hero from myth, larger than life, filled with epic determination and uncanny bravery. It took a second or two before his real identity registered.