Destroyer of Worlds

9

Surfacing from disturbing dreams, Church found himself lying out in the wastelands, surrounded by his friends. On the horizon, there was a smudge of scarlet, gold and black where the Fortress of the Enemy burned and above it the Fabulous Beasts swooped majestically, caught in the rosy light of the setting sun.

'We did it?' he asked, still dazed.

'I don't know what you did exactly, but the Enemy's army lost all heart for the fight.' Squatting beside him, Tom looked more at peace than Church had ever seen him. He pulled off the ring Freyja had given him and tossed it down a dune into the ochre dust.

Looking up into the darkening sky, Church said, 'The stars are coming out.'

Ruth brushed a hair from his forehead. 'I never thought I'd see that again.'

Levering himself onto his elbows, Church asked, 'Are we all here?'

'Yes,' Ruth replied. 'You, me, Tom, Shavi, Laura and Hunter. Five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, one hanger-on.' She smiled at Tom, but it was gradually replaced by a puzzled, sad expression.

Church understood. 'Strange — it feels as if somebody's missing.' Shrugging off a sharp pang of grief, he clambered to his feet.

Nearby the Army of Dragons and the gods celebrated loudly. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons moved amongst the knots of strange beings, surprised by the camaraderie and the hugs and back-slaps from ones who may well have tormented them only a few days earlier. Not far away, Virginia and the other refugees stared at the sky in mute disbelief.

Lugh saw that Church had recovered and made his way up the dune with Rhiannon close behind. 'Brother of Dragons, you have the thanks of all of the Golden Ones, indeed of all living things in all the lands.' He shook Church's hand warmly.

'The Void isn't gone for good,' Church said.

'Yes and no,' Lugh said enigmatically. 'This is the dawn of a new age. A golden age. You will soon understand.'

'It is a new age, too, for the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons,' Rhiannon added. 'You were forged to prevent the victory of the Void this day. You will have a new role now, and in that spirit we, the Golden Ones, have a request, equals to equals.'

'Go on,' Church said.

'The great sadness that lies at the heart of our people is the loss of our homes — Gorias, Finias, Falias and Murias,' Lugh continued. His eyes blazed with a hopeful excitement. 'Help us find them. Help the Tuatha De Danaan return to their ancestral homes and bring joy to our hearts again. It would be a quest that would live up to the great legend of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons! The filid would sing songs of such an achievement until the stars came down!'

Church glanced around the others and saw the silent answer. 'We owe you for your help and sacrifice,' he said. 'Once we've rested, we'll start to plan.'

Lugh and Rhiannon could barely contain their joy. They thanked the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons profusely and then hurried back to the ranks of their people to spread the news. Soon their celebration dwarfed even that of the Army of Dragons and the other gods.

In the growing gloom, a blue light gleamed across the wastelands. 'Wait here,' Church said to the others. 'I'll be back in a while.'

As he set out towards the light, he was distracted by the strange but familiar sight of a puppeteer standing alone on the blasted terrain. Eight feet tall, wearing black robes and a white mask with a nose that arched like a bird's beak, he looked just as Church had seen him in Venice in the sixteenth century. His hands moved rapidly above five dancing puppets, though there were no strings. The puppets' lifelike faces were exactly as Church had guessed.

Church approached him and for long moments watched the silent show. Then he reached up and removed the puppeteer's mask, without any resistance. His own face looked back at him, though that too resembled a mask.

'It's true, then?' Church asked.

The puppeteer only gave an enigmatic smile.

Realising he would get nothing more, Church headed once again towards the light, and when he glanced back briefly the puppeteer was gone, no marks in the dust to suggest he had ever been there.

Soon all thoughts of what he had seen faded, to be replaced by the unexpected sensation of a great weight lifting from his shoulders. Could it be all over? After so long, he scarcely dared believe it.

Night came down quickly in the desert. Hal waited for him, the Wayfinder a blue beacon of hope in the desolate landscape. His cloak was wrapped about him against the plummeting temperatures.

'You're the new Caretaker? How did that happen?' Church asked.

'Long story. It's a big job, an important job. Someone needs to do it, and I guess I passed the entrance exam.'

'Don't do yourself down. You deserve it.'

'Walk with me.' Hal held the lantern high to guide their way across the wastelands.

'It's not over, is it?'

'No. I'm sorry, Church. It's never over.'

'Never?'

'Never.'

Church's heart sank.

'On the bright side, you get to spend eternity with the best friends you could ever wish for. You get to be a tremendous force for good in the universe, shaping the lives of untold millions. And you get to be king, now and always.'

'So we didn't win today. Despite all the deaths and the pain, we didn't win,' Church said wearily.

'Oh, you won.' The Wayfinder's sapphire glow gave Hal's smile a strange, transcendental quality. 'You won bigger and better than you ever dreamed.'

Hal's words resonated with what Lugh had said about the Void and the new age, and Church had a strange sensation of something of incomprehensible magnitude drawing around him. He shivered, although he had no idea why.

On the crest of a rise, Hal indicated the shifting colours of the Warp Zone ahead. 'That's still here?' Church said. 'I thought it was some bizarre side effect of the Void.'

'It's going to stay here. And it'll be your new home.' Hal laughed when he saw Church's baffled expression. 'In a way. It's time I told you everything.'

They sat together on the ridge in the chill desert night under the lamp of the full moon. Across the heavens, the glorious sweep of stars brought a shiver of magic and a feeling that anything could happen.

Hal set the Wayfinder in the dust and watched the blue flame dance. 'Destroying the Burning Man weakened the Void immensely. If there'd been time to use the Extinction Shears, the Void would have been cut from this reality for ever.'

'I don't know if that would have been such a good thing. Everything needs two sides, two faces. One to define the other and to give it value. We need the Void and Existence. It's just a matter of balance.'

Hal nodded slowly. 'They said you were wise.'

'So is this how it was meant to have turned out? All part of the pattern?'

'Who knows? I don't. What I do know is the spiders took the Void to safety in the past. That dark force can reappear at any time in Earth's history to try to change things so that what happened today… never happened.'

Watching the drifting colours of the Warp Zone, Church thought he understood.

'It's the job of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons to oppose the Void wherever it appears,' Hal said. 'In the Renaissance, the seventies, the Norman Conquest, the Jurassic era, for all I know. Whenever the Void starts to exert its influence, calling on new allies, creating new threats, trying to shift the pattern, you and your Brothers and Sisters will be there to stop it.'

'Through the Warp Zone, we can reach any time and any place.'

'Exactly. It was always going to be this way. You read all the legends, the old stories. The king, waiting across the water… the ocean — of time and space — at the darkest hour when the call would go out and he would return with his knights to vanquish evil and save the land. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons become the ur-myth.'

'Yes, I know that story.' Church drew the sword he had picked up near the shattered bridge. After Caledfwlch, it had a strange feel, but it felt right, as though it had been held by good people, despite the way the blue and black flames appeared to fight along the length of the blade. 'So we don't get to rest.'

'You get to live for ever with the people you love the most because time never passes here in the Far Lands, or there in the Warp Zone. Always young, always strong, the greatest hero Existence has, fighting the true fight for all time. Does that not feel good?'

Church considered it for a moment and realised it did. It felt, in a strange way, like heaven. The best reward of all.

'Lugh and the Tuatha De Danaan have asked for our help,' he said.

'You'll have time for that. After all, you've got an Army of Dragons to help you out. And more gods than you can shake a stick at. If you really need them.' He laughed quietly.

'So we keep repelling the Void at every turn. But we can't destroy it, because without the Void we would never have been challenged enough to grow and become what we are today. We needed that dark side to learn how to be good. That was part of the plan too, right? Existence needed the Void to achieve its ends. There's irony in there somewhere.'

Hal began to say something about the Caraprix, but then caught himself and would only shake his head enigmatically when Church pressed him.

'But something happened when I used the Extinction Shears. I felt it,' Church said.

'Something amazing. You severed the Void's connection to the warp and the weft. It escaped into the pattern of the past, but from this day on it has no connection.'

'The Void can't exist in the future?'

'You freed all the worlds, Church. The Void's influence will always be felt through the infinite connections, but it can have no control. There is no Mundane Spell. What lies ahead is the Kingdom of the Serpent. Existence will rule the balance for the first time since time began. It really will be a golden age.'

The possibilities were too vast for Church to comprehend.

'The future hasn't been written yet,' Hal said. 'There's still a very important job to do. But that's for tomorrow. Right now, enjoy the knowledge that every sacrifice has been worthwhile. You won, Church.'

They sat in silence, watching the moon make shadows across the desert, and the stars glinting like jewels in the vast chamber of the night, and Church felt at peace. For the first time.

He felt at peace.