Destroyer of Worlds

7

Claustrophobic darkness, and hard stone all around. The ragged heat of his breath. Pain, fading quickly, flashes of images in his memory so terrifying that his consciousness recoiled at their touch. Thankfully, the images subsided as Mallory came round.

He choked back bile at the abiding recollection of the touch of hard steel at his throat, the sensation of what followed and the scream of his mind as it wound down into darkness, and knew that it would haunt him for as long as he lived.

But he was alive. The ritual had worked. Everything was subsumed beneath the rush of wonder and relief, and he began frantically to feel around his environment. He was in a stone box, as Veitch had told him to expect.

Pressing his hands against the lid, he lifted. The lid ground to one side and flickering torchlight added another level of relief. Dank air rushed into the dry, dusty interior of the box.

Once he had clambered out, he found another stone box on a plinth next to him. Scuffling sounds came from within. He eased the lid off and helped Caitlin out. She clutched the Wayfinder to her chest, the blue flame providing welcome relief in that gloomy place.

'Look after me,' Caitlin said in the fragile voice of her Amy personality.

Mallory hugged her to him. 'Course I will.'

He held her until she released herself. 'It's okay — she's gone back to Brigid and Briony now.' She forced a wan smile, her eyes dark and limpid.

'The Morrigan?'

'Is waiting.' She stared into his eyes for a moment longer, and her gaze was briefly filled with all the powerful emotions she kept repressed. She broke off when she realised what she was revealing, although she knew he understood. 'Come on — we've got a job to do.'

When she held the lantern aloft, it revealed a huge chamber built from cyclopean stone blocks beyond the ability of any human to carve or move. Wall paintings also beyond human scale soared up into the shadows, incomprehensible and troubling, and here and there were effigies of squat, misshapen figures or tall, spindly beings. Not human.

'A temple,' Mallory said.

'Here? What do the dead worship?'

Mallory couldn't answer.

With a shudder, Caitlin turned her attention to the lamp's flame, which was bending unnaturally to point away from them. 'So Hal's in there somewhere? How do we talk to him?'

'If we call on him, he'll come,' Mallory said. 'But we've got to protect that lamp with our lives. Hal can die here, though die might not be the right word.'

'He'll be fine. We just put our heads down, follow the flame and we'll be at the Market in no time.'

'I like your optimism.'

As they searched for an exit, they found an area where a foot-high egg of swirling sapphire and emerald stood on a waist-high stone column. Every instinct told them to move on, but it drew them in nonetheless.

'What is that?' Caitlin said. 'It feels electric. Is it pulsing?'

Mesmerised, they stepped onto the dais surrounding the column; when they got within three feet of the egg they passed through some invisible boundary where everything became green-tinged and all sounds from the chamber beyond were muffled.

Cautiously, Caitlin reached out towards the egg, every warning instinct suppressed. When her fingers came within an inch of its surface, there was a shimmer and they found themselves standing in a three-dimensional view of a dark hall where Church and the others stood around Virginia.

'It's some kind of viewing thing, like the Wish-Post in the Great Courts,' Mallory said. He paused. 'Where's Hunter and Jack?'

The scene shifted to reveal the cavern of bones. 'Now why are they not with the others?' Caitlin asked.

The scene shifted again, this time unprompted. Mallory looking younger, happier, standing in Salisbury Cathedral. Caitlin standing in the rain, crying, covered in clay. Stonehenge in the morning sun, Blue Fire flickering above each trilithon. Church on his knees before the Libertarian, covered in blood. Someone reading a book, looking directly at Mallory and Caitlin.

A bolt of pain struck Mallory between the eyes, and instead of looking into the egg, something was looking out at him. He had the overwhelming sensation of a crushing consciousness focusing the full extent of its power upon him. It sizzled into his brain, crawling into his thoughts, turning over every aspect of who he was and what he wanted. Flames flickered around his perception and the image of the Burning Man began to fall into relief around them.

Caitlin grabbed Mallory and propelled him out of the active zone around the egg. He cried out as the consciousness was painfully torn from his mind. 'The Void,' he gasped. 'It was looking into me. It recognised me.' He sucked in a breath of air. 'It knows who all of us are, every human. It knows our strengths, and our weaknesses. Our desires.'

'I think we make a vow not to touch anything else in this world,' Caitlin said, helping Mallory to his feet. 'Nothing good's going to come out of anything here.'

As Mallory recovered, they heard a noise coming from the direction of the two Rebirth Boxes. Creeping back to the chamber, they saw an arm of twisted blackthorn rise from one of the boxes, and then another. The Hortha rose up and turned its crumpled-paper face towards them.

In that briefest contact, Mallory had a premonition of his own death. Chilled, he guided Caitlin quickly away. While the Hortha adjusted to the transition to the Grim Lands, they moved quickly through the dark chambers until they found the exit tunnel that Veitch had described. It led out into a fissure in the rock in which the temple had been carved. Overhead, a slate-grey sky was occasionally revealed by gaps in the constantly drifting mist. Black shapes moved across it; birds, they guessed, although the perspective suggested something much larger. Every sound was dampened, the rattle of a kicked stone so muffled it could barely be heard six feet away.

They scrambled up a scree-slope onto a bleak, featureless terrain of hard rock and shale, though the mist made it impossible to see too far ahead. Although there was no breeze, the mist continued to fold and twist, licking at them, enswathing them until they moved on rapidly to leave it behind.

'Nice place,' Mallory said. 'Reminds me of a day I spent in Harlow.'

'I guess the dead don't need much in the way of scenery.'

The timbre of Caitlin's voice had changed subtly. Most people wouldn't have noticed, but Mallory was always struck by the slight physical alterations that came over her when one of her personalities took over. This one he recognised as the Morrigan, not in full control, but far back in her head, slackly taking the reins.

'We got out of that temple just in time,' he said. 'We're not leaving a trail here. That should make it difficult for the Hortha to follow us.'

'No trail you can see,' Caitlin corrected.

'You're not going to let me hide away in my all-is-right-with-the-world fantasies, are you?'

'That won't benefit us. We need to be aware, to keep moving. If that thing crossed the barrier into the Grim Lands, it's not going to give up easily.'

'The worst thing about that lantern is that it gives no indication of distance. What happens if we've got to follow that flame for thousands of miles?'

'I'm not sure distance or time mean much here. It just… is…'

Caitlin's voice dried up as the first feature emerged from the mist: a pair of iron gates in a Victorian style, one of them hanging askew from a broken hinge. They were supported by two stone columns on which black gargoyles perched. In the centre of the wrought-iron arch above the gate was a skull resting on crossed bones. On either side, rusted iron railings stretched out until they were lost in the shifting mist. Beyond sprawled a graveyard: markers, mausoleums, tombs, statues of weeping angels, some of them sagging at angles or broken, suggesting great age. The lichen-covered stone glowed spectrally in the strange, diffuse light. Ivy grew up some of the monuments, obscuring their meaning, and long, yellowing grass grew amongst the graves, along with wild flowers that were splashes of queasy colour in the grey.

Apprehensively, Mallory and Caitlin halted at the gate, but the Wayfinder continued to point directly ahead.

'You're just asking for trouble going through a place like that in a place like this,' Mallory said.

Caitlin followed the line of the railings into the mist. 'I have a horrible feeling this graveyard goes on a long, long way. I don't think we'll be able to go around it.'

Mallory sighed. 'Yep. Makes perfect sense.'

Standing before the gate, he glanced up at the arch and briefly thought he saw his own face on the skull. The illusion passed quickly and he took hold of the sagging gate, which emitted a protesting, resonant scream from its rusted, long-unused hinges. It was the only sound that carried any distance, and seemed to go on and on and on into the mist.

'I'm living in a really bad horror movie,' he said, his palms unbearably sweaty. If the Hortha was on the move, it would have heard that metallic wrenching.

Once again they came to a halt, on the threshold. Every sense told them not to enter the graveyard, but the Wayfinder continued to urge them on.

'Come on — don't be scared!'

The voice startled them. Mallory exchanged a glance with Caitlin and then drew his sword. The Blue Fire around the blade was barely evident. Caitlin reached behind and removed her axe from its harness.

'What fine weapons! What a sword! What an axe! But that sword… yes! One of the Three Great Swords of Existence, if I am not mistaken. And I am rarely mistaken, unless I am in my cups, which, admittedly, has not been much of an option in recent times.'

The deeply theatrical voice hid any true emotion. Mallory had an impression of some old stage ham, living on past glories. 'Who's there?' he called.

'A friend. Nothing more.'

'Somehow I doubt that.'

As Mallory and Caitlin crossed the threshold, they felt a sudden tingle of uneasiness as if the barrier had been real and not just imaginary. Whoever was there was hidden amongst the clutter of mausoleums and grave markers.

'Don't worry! I won't bite! Indeed, I am utterly desperate for invigorating human conversation. Why, we are social beings. We are not meant for this dreary, unstimulating place — where, I might add, I should not be. But enough about that travesty for now, lest I find myself carried away on a wave of bitterness, which will only wash me up on the bleak shores of despair.'

Mallory pushed through the long grass, searching all around. The mist hid objects, then revealed them, then hid them again, so they quickly lost all sense of direction. They could no longer see the gate, although they had not gone far.

'But as the great Shelley said,' the speaker continued, ' "Some say that gleams of a remoter world visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber." So perhaps I… perhaps all of us happy breed… are only sleeping.'

As Mallory and Caitlin rounded an ivy-clustered mausoleum they finally found the speaker, sitting cross-legged on a tomb. He was a strange figure. Though in his mid-forties, he had long, silver hair and a gaunt face. He wore a black suit, shiny from wear, offset by a flamboyant red brocade waistcoat. His boots were worn and holed on the soles.

'What are you doing here?' Caitlin asked.

'Just resting my old bones.' He chuckled, revealing a gap between nicotine-stained teeth.

'Who are you?' Mallory asked.

'Who am I? The great existential question. Who. Am. I. There are many possible answers-'

'Who are you?' Mallory repeated fiercely.

'I am the bard of the hedgerows, the king of the open road, alley sloper, gourmand and wit.' He held his arms wide. 'My name is Callow.'