Destroyer of Worlds

3

From the parting of ways in the lower levels of the Fortress, Church, Ruth, Veitch, Shavi and Tom were guided by the hooded giant's whispering directions to take the most direct route to the location of the Burning Man at the heart of the sprawling complex. They stayed in the network of sewer-like tunnels, vaults and natural caverns that formed the base of the Fortress, where they were sure they would meet no resistance.

'All right,' Veitch said, 'they're going to send their reinforcements to the walls to hold back our forces, but that doesn't mean they're stupid. They're not going to leave an open channel right into the most sensitive part of their operation.'

'They don't know we're coming,' Ruth argued. 'Why waste troops when they could be putting them to good use? Church, what do you think?'

'I agree with Ryan.' Caledfwlch's flames provided Church with just enough illumination to pick his way through the oppressive gloom. He was distracted, increasingly brooding the deeper they progressed into the Fortress. 'At the very least the Libertarian is going to be shadowing us. He might not remember everything that led up to his transformation, but there's a chance he recalls how we got into the Fortress.'

Tom, too, was increasingly introspective, and he compulsively twisted the ring given to him by Freyja.

When the corridor led into another cavern in the bedrock beneath the Fortress's foundations, they came to a slow halt, unnerved by what lay ahead. The previous caverns had been bare rock, but this one resembled a cemetery, with jumbled mausoleums and crypts, and graves in the grey dust floor. Lanterns hung from some of the houses of the dead, the pinpoints of illumination stretching out far into the dark ahead. An autumnal chill hung in the air and there was an odour of damp vegetation, although none was visible.

'Now this is… strange.' Church scanned the cemetery for any sign of movement; it was still and silent.

'It's like the Grim Lands,' Ruth whispered. 'This is just how Mallory and Caitlin described it.'

'What's with all this death stuff?' Veitch asked. 'Grim isn't the word. We become Brothers and Sisters of Dragons when we experience death. We keep getting topped, then coming back — some more than others. And people keep telling us it's in the air and all about us.'

'Death is the key to everything,' Shavi said. 'It always has been; it is just that we have been unable to see it, because of the way we have been brought up to consider it. We think of death as grim, terrible, the ultimate harsh reality, but anyone who has experienced death knows there is magic circling around it. It is almost as if death clears a space, in reality, in the mind, and allows magic to enter. Because death is not mundane, anything but. It is the opposite of mundane. It is, quite definitely, the key to everything. Change. Transformation. We only fear death because we think of it as the end. But if it is only a doorway… the entrance to another room, another house, another street, another town, what then? What then?'

After searching the entrance to the cavern, Church said, 'No way around it. We'll have to go through it.'

'What is this? We're all Going on a Bear Hunt?' Ruth said.

Cautiously, Church led them into the cemetery, the dust soft underfoot, the air growing damper the further they advanced.

'Try telling that to someone who's just lost a loved one,' Veitch said to Shavi. 'Magic? No chance.'

'Of course we feel grief at those times,' Shavi replied, 'and that emotion is so potent it often crushes our senses so much that we fail to appreciate what else is happening. Before I left home, I had to drive my aunt on an emergency trip to the specialist spinal unit at a hospital in Sheffield. My uncle was dying. He had fallen downstairs a few years earlier and paralysed himself from the chest down. From that moment on, it was a constant fight against infection, one that he was losing. The antibiotics were not working. My aunt received a call at midnight to say he did not have long left.'

Shavi's calm voice soothed them, and though Veitch knew it was one of Shavi's kindly acts to keep them at ease during a time of tension, he still appreciated it.

'The M1 was deserted,' Shavi continued. 'The hospital was immense, but completely empty too, when we arrived at two-thirty a.m. And I could tell the moment I stepped out of the car that there was something special in the air. A stillness, a sense of the infinite peering in to see us in our glass tank. I swear there was magic there. And in the ward too, devoid of the usual bustle of waiting relatives, there was a completely different feel. It was buzzing with a power that made my heart beat faster. The occasion was so desperate, so sad, so grim, but yet so different from the life we knew. I loved my uncle. My heart went out to my aunt, who had not been separated from him for forty years. But in that moment we touched an aspect of life we never experienced in our normal days. It had a charge, like electricity, and we felt so strongly — not just emotions, but the quality of the light, and the sound, and the stillness, and there was meaning all around us, so powerful we could touch it.'

Shavi grew animated. 'There was magic, Ryan. Magic is meaning. A lack of meaning is mundane. Once you have the meaning, anything is possible. You can change the world, yourself, those around you. You can make things better. If there is no meaning, you are locked in a world without feeling where everything is as it is. Nothing can be changed. Those who advocate no meaning are sealing themselves inside their own cell, locking the door and throwing away the key.'

He fell silent, but his eyes gleamed. Veitch dwelled on his words; they had touched something deep inside him, although he still could not work out exactly what. 'So you're saying we shouldn't fear death?'

The deep, rumbling laughter may have been in response to Veitch's question, but it made goosebumps rise on all of their arms.

'I just knew it,' Tom muttered.

'Who is that?' Ruth whispered.

The laughter came from just beyond the large mausoleum ahead of them. Two figures waited in the warm, yellow light of a lantern. On a tomb sat a Caribbean man in a black tailcoat, shiny top hat and sunglasses, and carrying a silver-skull-topped cane, his face painted white to resemble a skull. He clutched a cigar between two knuckles, and blue smoke drifted from his pearly-white grin. The one behind him had more of the grave about him than elegance: grey, desiccated skin, baleful red eyes, a necklace of human finger-bones and grey hair tufting from a scalp showing patches of the yellow bone beneath. Bearing the taint of the Anubis Box, they were both under the Void's control.

Church and Veitch advanced, swords drawn.

The one in the top hat laughed louder. 'No worries, boys! We are no threat to you. That lies ahead. We just watchin' over our domain, makin' a little place for you, a-while from now.'

'Who are you?' Church asked.

'We got names and names, boys, but on the island they called me Baron Samedi and my silent partner is Baron Cimetie're. He is me and I am he. I am head of the Guede family of the Loa. We stand at the crossroads to watch the souls of dead humans pass.'

Church shivered. 'Is this the crossroads, then?'

Baron Samedi grinned wider.

'We're not dead yet,' Veitch said defiantly.

'Maybe you are and maybe you not. I am a wise judge, boy, even with these marks upon me. I say you pass now. And so says he.'

Baron Cimetie're leaned across the tomb to inspect each of them in turn. When his gaze fell upon them, they each felt a cold breeze.

Tapping his nose, Baron Samedi added, 'I am also Loa of sex and resurrection. Ring any bells?'

'Time is slipping away, Brothers and Sisters,' Baron Cimetie're said in a whispery voice. 'The Devourer of All Things is nearly come. Any moment now… any moment-'

'Don't let them distract you!' Tom shouted. 'Move on!'

Amongst the mausoleums and the crypts, something — someone? — drew near.

'Don't look at it!' Tom cautioned, too late.

Church was caught by the sight of a familiar face, and was suddenly flooded with recollections, the smell of her hair, the softness of her skin, lying in bed on a Sunday morning, slick with sweat after sex. 'Marianne?' he said.

'I deserved to live, Church,' his long-dead girlfriend said. 'And I would have, if you hadn't been chosen to be some stupid hero. Why couldn't someone else do it? Why did I have to die to set you on this path? It's not fair.'

Her words resonated with his own doubts. So many people had suffered because of the manipulation of the Great Powers in their sprawling millennia-long campaign.

'We're all just pawns, Church. The gods manipulated Veitch to kill me. The Void manipulated the gods and Veitch. Existence manipulated everyone. None of them can be trusted, so why play their game? Why follow their rules? You have the power to walk away. Do it, and save someone else from having to go through what we both suffered.'

She was right. It wasn't fair; he could see fault on both sides, and strength on both sides, and it was always humanity caught in the middle. If he walked away, what would the Powers do then? Only dimly did he feel the Blue Fire when his hand went to his sword; he could throw it away, a symbolic gesture-

'Church!' Tom was shaking him roughly.

Where Marianne had stood, there was now a hideous yellowing skeleton with staring eyes, its claw-like hands clutching long tendrils of mist that reached to the heads of Ruth, Shavi and Veitch. The one that had been fastened to him was now breaking up and drifting away.

'Lee…' Shavi mouthed.

Ruth muttered the name of her dead uncle, tears streaming down her face.

A queasy guilt was carved into Veitch's features at the memory of all the people he had killed.

'I am Mictlantecuhtli, God of Death, and all who walk the cemeteries are my servants. In your arrogance, you raised a sword against my little brother Tezcatlipoca, and now a balance must be struck,' the skeleton intoned. 'Choose one of your comrades to join me here for all time, in service to the Devourer of All Things.'

As Church made to draw his sword, Baron Samedi laughed heartily. With a flick of his wrist, Mictlantecuhtli drew the tendrils taut and Shavi, Ruth and Veitch crumpled to their knees, their faces drawn as if the life was being sucked out of them.

'Your grief for your lost loved ones traps you,' Mictlantecuhtli said. 'You cannot see that they are inside you and around you for ever. You cannot break this thing. It sucks the life from you.'

Church continued drawing his sword until Tom stopped him. 'They'll be dead before you can do anything,' the Rhymer whispered.

'You want me to choose one of them to die? I can't do that. And they'd never let us go anyway.'

'Stay calm. Think. This is the land of death. What has power here?'

'Choose now!' Mictlantecuhtli ordered.

'Why don't you just tell me what you're thinking?' Church snapped.

'Because I can't — don't you understand!' He showed Church his ring. 'The deal I did with Freyja was that I would not help you at any turn. As my power of prophecy returned after you dragged me back to this life, I could have helped you so many times. Lives have been lost… lives will be lost… and I could have prevented it. I see them so clearly. And I have had to live with that knowledge.' Tears sparked in his eyes. 'But that witch didn't want me to aid my friends… the only people I have ever cared about… because that way you'd be truly tested.'

'Why?'

'If you were weak, the Void would have won easily. She wanted to know you were strong so she could decide if she should side with you.'

'Now!' Mictlantecuhtli drew the tendrils tighter.

'Wait,' Church said. 'Give me time.' His mind raced as he turned over Tom's words. 'Why didn't you tell us this before?'

'You would have spent all your time wondering what I knew.' He looked away. 'I would have been even more alone.'

'Power in the land of death,' Church repeated. He looked around, examining the symbols of death on every mausoleum and crypt in the cemetery; and then he had it.

Closing his eyes, he whispered, 'I am the Raven King. I can do anything. '

It sounded like a storm approaching across a great plain. The thunder rolled closer, magnified by the echoes along the network of tunnels and caverns through which they had walked. Within moments, a black cloud rushed into the cemetery, the swirling tempest of black wings bringing darkness and chaos. The Morvren attacked with one mind, tied to Church's consciousness as strongly as the Fabulous Beast.

In the confusion, Church and Tom managed to drag Shavi, Ruth and Veitch free, and they scrambled across the cemetery beneath the cloud of swirling birds.

Fighting to repress the memories that had been torn free, Veitch turned in a rage, sword drawn. 'I'm going to cut that bastard to bits!'

'Forget it — we'd never beat three of them,' Church said. 'We'd be lucky to overpower that Aztec one on his own. The Morvren won't hurt them, but it should keep them distracted until we get away.'

Ruth, too, was altered by her experience. The dredged-up memories of her grief, and whatever lies her dead uncle had told her, had left a deep-seated anger rooted in her eyes. Spits and crackles of Blue Fire flashed around her, and Church could see she was struggling to maintain control. He went to comfort her, but she turned away.

He noticed Tom hanging back, and said quietly, 'You took on a huge burden to help us. I won't forget that.'

Tom nodded sullenly, but his relief was apparent.

'They said the Void was nearly here. Have we run out of time?' Ruth wiped away stinging tears.

'I don't know,' Church replied. 'But I do know that now we've been discovered every rogue god the Void has under its control will be trying to stop us reaching the Burning Man. And probably every single warrior in this entire Fortress.'

'Bring 'em on,' Veitch growled. 'They got me mad, messing with my head like that. They're the ones who should be scared.'