The Thirteen Hallows (31 page)

Ahriman was putting the key in the lock when Vyvienne pulled the door open and almost dragged him inside. He was disappointed to see that she was still wearing her loose robe and hadn’t bothered to get undressed. “They’re close,” she whispered, face ashen with excitement.

“Who?” he asked.

“Miller and the boy. They’re close, so close. I’ve felt them—flashes, vague impressions, nothing more—but each time they were closer to the house. I think they’re coming here.”

Ahriman rubbed his hands together briskly as he followed the woman up the stairs to the bedroom. Usually, he would have admired the sway of her buttocks beneath the thin cloth and fondled her as a token of his appreciation, but not today. Today, he needed all his energy for the ritual.

“Do you want me to contact the police?” Vyvienne asked.

Ahriman barked a laugh. “No. I had hoped they would capture Miller, but this is even better.”

Vyvienne stood in the doorway and watched her master pull off his clothing, buttons popping in his eagerness. “I think there’s a third person with them,” she said quietly.

He stopped and turned to look at her. “A third person?”

“I’m not sure. It’s just the way they wink in and out of the Astral, and the way the Astral itself is opaque and twisted, making it impossible to travel through, impossible to see anything in it.”

Ahriman sat on the bed as he pulled off his trousers. There couldn’t be anyone with them; they were strangers in a foreign land. There was no one to help them. “They are both carrying Hallows. Perhaps the combination of artifacts is shielding them from us.”

“Perhaps,” Vyvienne said doubtfully.

Naked, Ahriman stood and spread his arms wide, muscles creaking as he stretched, then he smiled at Vyvienne and allowed her to step into his arms. He kissed the top of her head in a rare gesture of affection. “Do you know what day this is?” he murmured.

“October thirty-first, All Hallows’ Eve.”

Ahriman Saurin shook his head. “This is the last day of the modern age. Soon this world will belong to me.”

Ambrose lifted the horn to his lips.

He knew all the Hallows by heart—their names had changed through the years, but he had handled them all…indeed, he supposed he had chosen them all. In a more innocent time, for a more innocent reason. Quirky pieces for mercenary gain. Innocent objects, now imbued with a terrible power.

They had been created to do good, but through the ages they had always ended up touched and tainted by evil. The Sword of Dyrnwyn had been used to kill, the Knife of the Horse man used to wound, the Spear of the Dolorous Blow used to maim, the Crimson Cloak used by butchers and torturers to terrify.

It was not that the objects themselves were evil: They were merely powerful, and the powerful attracted the curious, and so many of those who set out on this path of discovery were ultimately seduced by the attractions of evil. He turned the horn over in his gnarled hands.

He would use the Horn of Bran to call the five elements. Once it would have been used in ceremonies to welcome the coming of spring or to drive off a particularly harsh winter.

He was going to use it to kill.

Many lives were about to be lost. Hundreds, possibly thousands. He could rationalize it by pretending that they had given their lives to save so many others.

The old man bent his head. If he had tears, he would have wept them, but he’d long ago forgotten how to weep. Instead, he looked at the Horn of Bran as he turned it in his hands, relishing these last few moments of the—his lips twisted at the thought—the calm before the storm.

Once, the horn had had another name, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He’d bought it from an Egyptian…or Greek…No, he’d bought it from the Nubian trader who specialized in carved bones. Ambrose smiled as he remembered: That would have been two thousand years ago, and the memory of that day was as fresh as if it had just happened. He could still smell the sweat from the man, the peculiar odor of exotic spices that clung to his skin, the distinctive stink of camel that clung to his ornate robe.

Ambrose had simply admired the hunting horn for itself, a unique and beautiful piece of craftsmanship, unusual enough for him to be able to ask a good price for it. There was a Greek merchant in Tyre who had a passion for bone carvings; he would buy it, especially when Josea had spun him a suitably exotic yarn. He had intended to introduce Yeshu’a to the Greek on the return voyage from the Tin Lands, though he would have to watch the merchant, for he preferred the company of boys…though on reflection, he remembered that the Greek preferred his boys beautiful, and Yeshu’a could never be called that.

But Yeshu’a had taken the horn, along with all his other trade goods, and imbued them with an ancient magic. He had made them into what they were now: the Thirteen Hallows.

And now Yeshu’a was worshipped as a God, or the Son of God.

Josea wasn’t sure if Yeshu’a was a god; certainly he was more than a man. Yet there was a magic in the world at that time, elder magic, powerful magic.

It had been a time of wonder.

There was little wonder left in the world in these modern times. Perhaps that was a good thing.

Lifting the horn to his lips, Ambrose drew a deep breath and blew.

One newspaper would later call it a freak storm.

Another claimed it was the storm of the century.

But those who were there, those who survived it, would claim that it was unnatural, as the dusky landscape radiating beautiful golds and reds changed dramatically in a matter of seconds.

Unlike the usual rumble of thunder that generally precedes a storm, there was a low, dull sound…almost like a trumpet or a tuba.

Or a horn.

The clouds rolled in quickly, boiling up from the south and west, flowing over the mountains in a tumbling sheet. Shadows raced across the ground, chilling everything they touched, huge drops of icy rain spattering onto the dry earth, popping off the leather tents and cloth awnings over stalls and stands. Almost as one, the festival-goers groaned aloud; it had looked as if it were going to be such a nice evening.

PADRAIG CARROLL
of the Irish folk group Dandelion was climbing onstage when the sun vanished behind tumbling gray black clouds. He swore silently. This was just his luck: His first big break—he knew there were at least two record scouts in the crowd, and the BBC was recording it—and right now the concert was going to be a washout. He glanced at Shea Mason, the drummer, and raised his eyebrows in a silent question: Do we go on?

Mason nodded and grinned. He was sitting at the back of the stage under the awning. If it rained, Padraig and Maura, the lead singer, would be soaked. He would be safe.

The crowd was shifting impatiently, turning to watch the gathering storm clouds as Padraig picked up the guitar. Static howled, drowning out Maura’s greeting in Irish. The guitarist stepped up to the mike and repeated the greeting in carefully rehearsed Welsh. There were whistles and cheers, and in the distance a dog howled.

“We’d like to welcome—,” he began, and the lightning bolt struck him through the top of the head.

The incredible surge of power shredded his body, boiling flesh exploding, spraying slivers of cooked meat onto the front row, the guitar bursting into molten metal. The electrical charge rippled through the power lines, and the speakers erupted in balls of flames, red-hot cinders spinning out into the audience. All over the stage, power cables started to burn.

Those nearest the stage screamed, but their cries were misinterpreted by those at the back, unable to see clearly, who started to shout appreciatively and cheer for the pyrotechnics.

A second lightning strike danced over the drummer’s metal kit and landed on Mason’s studded leather belt, fusing it to his body. He tumbled backward into the heavy black curtain decorated with the Celtic festival logo. It wrapped itself around his body and immediately started to burn. Mason was still alive, but his screams were lost as a series of rattling lightning detonations rippled across the field, destroying people at random, blue white balls of light dancing from metal chairs and tables.

In the sudden gloom, the lightning flashes were incredibly white and intense, blinding everyone in the vicinity. The crowd panicked and ran. Then the heavens opened, and a solid deluge of rain—some of it electrically charged—immediately turned the field into a quagmire.

A three-hundred-year-old oak split down the middle, burying twenty people beneath its branches. A silver jewelry stall exploded, shards of red-hot metal hissing out into the crowd. A falafel stand took a direct hit, the gas cylinder detonating in a solid ball of flame, spraying long streamers of grease and hot fat in every direction.

Those who fell were crushed underfoot.

And above the screams of pain and terror, the lightning cracks and the rolling continuous thunder, no one heard the sound of a hunting horn and the triumphant howling of savage beasts.

TONY FOWLER
watched lightning dance down Madoc’s main street, skipping from metal to metal, reducing cars to blackened ruin, wrapping ancient lampposts in writhing fiery worms. A man-hole melted to smoldering slag, and Fowler turned away as a young man ran straight into the seething mess.

“Everything’s dead,” Victoria Heath said numbly. “Phones, radio, power.”

The detective turned back to the window. “Dear God, what’s happening?” he whispered. The street was a heaving mass of humanity. He saw two men kick open the door of a house opposite and push their way past the old woman who appeared in the hallway. A score of people ran into the hall, trampling the woman underfoot in a desperate attempt to escape the lightning. Thunder boomed directly overhead, shaking the entire building, lead tiles sliding off the roof to shatter in the street. A young woman went down, a rectangular tile protruding from her throat; the youth who tried to help her collapsed as another dozen tiles rained down on top of him.

In his long career in the police force, Tony Fowler had known fear on many occasions: his first night on the beat, the first time he had faced an armed assailant, the first time he had stood at a murder scene, the first time he had stared into the pitiless eyes of a killer. But time had dulled that emotion, and lately he had been feeling only the terrible anger of the victims. That anger had driven him to hunt down evil people like Miller who could kill and maim without compunction. In the last few years, Fowler had found he had been able to strike back at these people without reservation, treating them as they had treated their victims.

But Tony Fowler felt fear now, the cold, empty fear the rational mind experiences when faced by the unnatural. He was turning away from the window to face Victoria Heath when light blossomed in the street directly outside the window. The glass exploded inward. There was no pain, only an incredible noise and heat, followed by complete silence. He caught a brief glimpse of a tiny red-speckled pattern appearing on Victoria Heath’s white blouse…funny, he couldn’t remember a pattern. The pattern appeared on her face…bloodred slivers of torn flesh. He watched her fall…and then the pain and the noise came.

Vyvienne jerked and twitched with every peal of thunder, every lightning flash. The room was in almost total darkness, but the white light silhouetted Ahriman Saurin against the window, naked flesh white and stark. In the distance they could hear screams and explosions, and the fields below the house were speckled with fires. “What time is it?” Ahriman asked numbly.

“Five, six…I’m not sure.” She was standing close enough to feel the chill radiating from his body.

“Looks like twilight,” he said absently. “It can’t be natural.”

“I don’t know. I can feel the Hallows buzzing below us, flooding the Astral with light. I’m blind there.”

Ahriman watched as one of the carefully prepared pyres in the distance burst into flame, long streamers of light flowing up off the oil-soaked wood. Burning figures whirled away from it. Spinning away from the window, he caught Vyvienne by the arm. “We can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to use the Hallows now!”

“But the missing two—”

“We don’t have a choice,” he said savagely. “We have eleven of the thirteen. If we break enough of the locks, then the Demonkind may be able to force their way through.”

“It’s too risky,” Vyvienne said. “The storm isn’t natural. Someone—someone powerful—has called it. And that sort of magic, elemental magic, is one of the oldest in the world. Something’s out there, something old.”

“I’ve waited too long for this.” Lightning washed his face bone white and shadow. “The bonfires will burn, taking the last of the Hallowed Keepers, while the people—the sacrifices—are fleeing. We will never have this chance again. I’m using the Hallows now!”

Vyvienne bowed her head. And because she loved him, she put her hand in Ahriman Saurin’s and allowed him to lead her down the stairs.

She allowed him to lay her down on the pentagram in the middle of the sacred Hallows.

And she allowed herself to enjoy one last kiss before he sliced her body open and peeled back her skin.

What the fuck does he think he’s doing?” Sarah’s voice was high and shrill. “It sounds like a war zone.”

Owen ignored her. His eyes were fixed on the farm house directly in front of them. With the sword clutched in both hands, he felt so confident, so assured. He was aware of the thunder and lightning booming and crashing over the village—and only over the village. The fields below were awash beneath a torrential downpour, but the effect was particularly localized, and although they were less than two hundred yards away, there was no rain here.

Moving stealthily forward, Owen could actually feel the presence of the Hallows buzzing in the air around him. There were whispers that were almost words, snatches of what might have been song, but faint, indistinct, ethereal. But he could tell that they were calling, calling, calling. The Hallows were alive: They were trapped and in pain.

“They’re here,” he said simply. “Belowground.”

Sarah didn’t ask how he knew; she was feeling the loss of the sword like a missing limb. While she’d held it, she’d felt so confident, so assured…but now…now she wasn’t sure what she felt anymore.

The farm house was in darkness, no lights showing within. The couple crept across a cobbled courtyard, keeping to the shadows, looking for an open window, but the house was locked up tight, and heavy drapes covered the lower windows. They completed a circuit around the house and returned to the kitchen door.

The thunder and lightning had stopped booming and crashing over the village, and now the screams of the injured echoed across the still air. Car and house alarms were ringing everywhere, and the stench of bitter smoke was replacing the acrid ozone in the air. The air smelled of burned meat.

Owen reached out and touched the door handle. Green fire spat, and he snatched his hand back with a hiss of pain. In the gloom, they could see the blisters forming on his fingertips.

“Ambrose said that the place would be guarded by more than human wards,” Sarah reminded him. “Some sort of magical protection.”

Holding the sword in his left hand, Owen stretched out and pressed the broken end against the door. Green fire danced over the blade, which came alive with cold white light. Then the light flowed out of the sword and raced across the door, outlining it in a tracery of white. Glass exploded inward, and the handle started bubbling, the metal running liquid down the scarred wood. Sarah caught Owen’s arm and dragged him away as the door went crashing inward, liquid metal from the hinges puddling on the tiled kitchen floor.

“I have a feeling they know we’re here.”

SITTING NAKED
in the center of the perfect circle, Ahriman gradually opened himself up to the power of the Hallows, first absorbing the trickle of power, allowing it to seep into his flesh, settle into his bones. Images flickered and twisted behind his closed eyes. Power from the burning bonfires flowed into him, the last tendrils of life of the original Hallowed Keepers floating through the air in billows of smoke. Touching him.

He was unaware of the couple upstairs. He was conscious only of the ritual he had practiced every day for ten years, only this time he was doing it for real.

Ahriman Saurin’s hands worked on the floor, brushing back the light dusting of earth to reveal a metal door set into the ground. The door was circular, of old metal, studded with great square-headed rivets set into a frame of massive rough stone blocks. The rust-stained doorway was inset with thirteen huge keyholes. Shapes flickered behind the keyholes. Two thousand years previously, Yeshu’a had banished the Demonkind and sealed their doorway. Yeshu’a and his world were long gone, but the demons remained.

Ahriman Saurin reached for the first lead box.

A solid beam of cold white light lanced upward, blinding him, flooding the room with the scents of a thousand Thoroughbred horses. He reached in and lifted out the Halter of Clyno Eiddyn, allowing the leather to fold open, the rich skin hissing and whispering softly. He picked up the first Hallow—in the Astral, the darkness folded over the light—and began to rip apart the ancient material, destroying it.

A gossamer key appeared in the topmost lock—and turned with a rasping click.

IN HIS
green cave, Ambrose staggered, pressing his hand to the center of his chest. He felt as if he’d been stabbed. One of the Hallows had just been destroyed. But there was nothing he could do except wait…and listen to the screams of the dying and injured.

“Hurry,” he whispered in the lost language of his youth. “Hurry.”

SARAH STOOD
at the bottom of the stairs and looked up into the gloom. She was freezing—the building radiated a greasy chill—and she wanted to turn and run but knew that she could not. The house was silent and empty. Arcane symbols had been carved into the wood above the doorways, and the windowsills were also incised with the curious designs.

She had felt an almost overpowering desire to stretch out and trace one of the twisting patterns, and she had actually been reaching for it when Owen had touched the flesh of her hand with the flat of the sword. The snap of cold metal brought her alert again, and she realized that she’d been mesmerized by the twisting Celtic spiral, tracing it to a non ex is tent center.

“More of the Dark Man’s wards,” Owen said, “designed to ensnare.”

He had changed since he’d taken the sword, subtle, almost imperceptible changes in both posture and attitude. He looked taller, the skin on his cheeks was tighter, emphasizing the bones, and he acted with absolute confidence. Remembering how she had felt, Sarah found herself envying him. She wanted the sword—
her
sword. “Down here,” he said, reaching out to touch the handle of the cellar door with the tip of the Broken Sword. The door frame came alive with a tracery of fire, scorching the wood, searing away the symbols.

“I don’t think we should—” Sarah began.

“They’re down there,” Owen said simply. The sword was trembling in his hands, vibrating softly as he pushed at the door. It fell off its hinges and clattered down the steps.

AHRIMAN WAS
deaf to the world.

He was deeply engrossed in the ritual, transferring the energy from the Hallows, now augmented by the burning flesh of the Hallowed Keepers, into the locks of the metal door.

His hands reached blindly for a second box and opened it.

Again the white light flowed up but was almost immediately extinguished as Ahriman’s large hands closed over it. The Pan of Rhygenydd, perpetually filled with dark blood, crumpled beneath his powerful grip, spraying his naked flesh with crimson. He folded its companion piece, the Platter of Rhygenydd, over and over in his fingers, finally snapping it into four quarters.

Another key formed and turned in the lock. Something hit the metal door, a single blow from below, the sound deep and booming, echoing around the small chamber.

THE SMELL
at the bottom of the stairs was indescribable. Old and long dead, the ripe foulness hung in the air in a solid miasma. Sarah and Owen knew it was a body—or bodies—and both were suddenly glad that the light didn’t work. With Sarah’s hand on his shoulder, Owen walked forward. He felt as if he were leaning into an unfelt breeze; he could feel the Hallows’ power washing over him, his clothes heavy and irritating where they rested against his flesh. The air itself had become thick, soupy, making every breath an effort, drying the moisture in his eyes, mouth, and throat until he felt as if he were breathing sand.

And then the Broken Sword flashed alight, burning away the stale air, blue white light bathing the corridor in harsh shadows, illuminating the iron-studded wooden door directly ahead.

Owen darted forward, his grin feral.

FIVE LOCKS
were broken now.

Ahriman concentrated on opening the sixth seal, but the pounding of the demons on the far side was incredible, the noise deafening as they hammered on the metal, howling and screeching, rocking the door on its hinges, disturbing his concentration. Hooked claws kept appearing in the openings, and the door was visibly straining upward, metal bulging where the locks had been turned.

The Dark Man was tiring.

The incredible effort of will was draining him, leeching the energy from his body, and the arcane occult formula that he needed to keep crisp and clear was beginning to shift and blur in his head. He was aware that the Demonkind were trying frantically to push open the door and that the ancient metal was shivering in its stone frame…but he knew that he should be aware of nothing. Any lapse of concentration would be worse than fatal, for Ahriman knew that death was not the end, and this close to the demon realm there was every possibility that his spirit would be sucked into that place, to suffer an eternity of suffering.

Holding the sixth Hallow—The Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd—in his hands, he squeezed it. The ancient granite stone should have snapped and burst, but nothing happened. Leaning forward, he pressed his left hand, palm down, on the shivering metal door. “Give me strength,” he prayed. “Give me strength.”

Noise and movement on the other side of the door ceased…and then the answer flowed up his arm.

AMBROSE WAS
dying; he knew that now. With every Hallow the Dark Man destroyed, he killed a little more of the one-eyed old man. There was blood on his lips, a tracery of veins visible in his eye. He had felt the destruction of the five Hallows as physical blows, had seen the shadows swallow the light, and for the first time in two thousand years he felt the terrible despair of the truly lost. So it had all been for nothing, all those deaths he had caused, and now Sarah and Owen were probably dead, too.

He had a sudden flash of the whetstone crumbling in Ahriman’s fingers, turning to powder and grit, and saw the key turn in the sixth lock.