Destroyer of Worlds

6

On a day hotter than any they had experienced so far, the Court of Endless Horizons reflected a brassy light that made eyes ache and turned the streets into furnaces. The sluggish diaspora sought out the shade of alleys and porches, fanning themselves with the fronds of jungle trees, praying for dusk to fall but dreading it just as much. In the inns and markets, there had been talk of several slayings during the course of the night, beyond the usual bloody results of arguments caused by too many people with too little in too hot a place. Some of the bodies looked as if they had been mauled by a jungle beast; others wore expressions of outright terror frozen into their features at the final moment. Most agreed that something had arrived in the city that would only heap more misery on their suffering.

Aware of the rising tension, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons moved efficiently from group to clump, beggar to prince, quietly asking about the female Fragile Creature who had last been seen racing through the streets in fear.

In the marketplace, amidst the smell of dried fish and charcoal-grilled meat and the din of people haggling for supplies from dawn to twilight, Church and Ruth debated leaving a note on the enormous wooden post where refugees separated from their loved ones tacked pleas for information regarding their whereabouts, or notes for clandestine meetings that were rarely attended.

'We could search this city for weeks and never stumble across this woman,' Ruth said. She was uncomfortable in the heat and wore a white cotton scarf on her head fastened in a Middle Eastern style with a gold band, which served the dual purpose of keeping her cool and obscuring her identity to casual eyes. 'If you really want to find her, we have to make some waves.'

'If we do that, we're going to draw the Enemy straight to us.'

'I don't understand why they haven't just descended on the city in force, anyway, if they know we're here.'

'This has the Libertarian's fingerprints all over it. He has to play a careful game. He can't risk me getting killed, or badly hurt, but he has to stop us doing anything that might change the established pattern.'

'He's not going to be so concerned about killing the rest of us.'

'No.'

'You know, it's weird how you talk about the Libertarian as if he's a completely different person.'

'He is.' The fleeting disbelief in Ruth's face stung him. 'All right,' he accepted, 'there's a continuity. But something's broken in him, and until I know what it is I can't do anything to prevent it.'

'But you think it's something to do with you and me.'

'In that flash of precognition I had in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Libertarian suggested I threw everything away because of my "pathetic, doomed love".'

'Why would you do that?'

'If you died-'

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm tightly. 'Sometimes you need a shaking. All this is bigger than you and me-'

'I'm not so sure it is.'

'It is. Love is a weakness, Church… all right, maybe not a weakness, but a luxury for people like us. We've got a terrifying responsibility. Everybody, literally everybody, is depending on us.' She saw the touch of hurt in his face and softened. 'You know how much I love you. You and me… we were always meant to be together. But we're expected to make sacrifices.'

'That's all we do. Sacrifice our lives, our homes, our friends who die. We deserve something.'

'No, we don't,' she said gently. 'And that's the awful thing. We have to do the job we've been given without the hope of any reward.' She kissed him, and that made her words feel even harsher. 'Everybody says men are tougher than women, but they're not, certainly not when it comes to emotions. Men spend all their lives putting them on one side and when they rear their ugly heads, men can't cope with them. They sting you harder than us. We're used to the pain. We can feel it and put the emotion to one side, get on with the job we've got to do. I'm sorry. I know how this must feel to you. But you've got to listen to me: if I die, you've got to carry on and finish this. If we're torn apart, like we were before, you mustn't give in to despair. All right?'

He gave a convincing nod, but he couldn't tell her his biggest fear: that the failure of their love was a fait accompli. As Ruth searched for the roots of the Libertarian within him, her fears of what he would become would drive her away from him and towards Veitch, thus pushing Church further down the path towards becoming the Libertarian. How could he break that cycle?

'I've seen things inside myself I'm not happy about,' he admitted. 'There's a darkness.'

'There is in all of us.' A shadow crossed Ruth's face.

'That's one of the reasons why I accepted Ryan back so readily. I understand him more now. I'm not sure that's a good thing.'

'We're not pure,' she pressed. 'We're not heroes. We're just trying to do the best we can. It's because we're all friends that we can count on each other to get past our flaws.' She hesitated, then added, 'If people start going off on their own, we're lost. We're Five for a reason — a whole that's bigger and better than the individual parts.'

The market suddenly felt too crowded and too noisy, and Church longed for the intimacy that had been missing since they had left Earth behind; longer; it felt like an age since he and Ruth had been alone in the hotel room in Norway.

But the moment had passed, and Ruth was already moving to question a likely stallholder who was gossiping with every person within feet of his pitch. The explosion hit a second later. Deep in the centre of the sprawling marketplace, a column of black flame sent stalls, produce and bodies hurtling upwards with a boom that would have been heard across the entire city.

Thrown wildly by the blast wave, his head ringing and his hearing momentarily gone, Church was buried beneath a rain of vegetables, jewellery, votive ornaments and the heavy tarpaulin stall covers. His first thoughts were for Ruth and he quickly clawed his way out, only to find her helping badly injured survivors; some had lost limbs, others were so severely burned it was clear they would not last long. But Ruth moved quickly amongst them, helping to staunch the blood, bowing her head and muttering words of her Craft where they would help, offering a simple prayer where nothing would.

Church joined in, but the trickle of victims from the centre of the market had become a torrent, and the latest arrivals were consumed by a more immediate panic, glancing over their shoulders in fear as they staggered away from the blast zone.

Behind them lurched survivors who had been transformed by whatever magic lay within the explosion. The flesh had been ripped from their heads to leave bloodstained skulls, the eyes still intact and roving crazily as they attacked anyone who came near them, snapping and snarling with the ferocity of cornered wolves. One badly wounded man moved too slowly, his throat torn open by the bite of one of the skull-faced pursuers.

As others fell and the panic spiralled out of control, Church rushed to help. Blue Fire sizzled from Caledfwlch as he attacked. He could see there was no hope of the skull-faced victims recovering; indeed, there appeared to be nothing left of their personalities in their insane eyes. They had been turned into weapons and Church had no choice but to meet them head on to save the lives of others.

The primal savagery of the skull-faces slowed him a little, but his athleticism and skill with the sword served him in cutting them down before they could harm anyone else. When the last one had fallen, he ran back to Ruth and pulled her away from the survivors. She resisted, insisting on helping the wounded until Church said forcefully, 'The Enemy did this to draw us out. They'll be here soon, and if we hang around more innocent people are going to get hurt.'

Reluctantly, Ruth allowed him to lead her into the maze of alleys that led away from the market. When they were sure they had put enough space behind them, they rested and allowed themselves to contemplate the horror of the blast.

'They killed and injured all those people to get at us?' Ruth said.

'Come on — are you surprised? They know we're not going to sit back while innocents get hurt, so they'll keep attacking them until we act. And then they've got us.'

'Terror, pure and simple. And if we try to resist, the people will give us up sooner or later. This is the Libertarian, isn't it?'

Church nodded uncomfortably. Ruth wouldn't meet his eye.

'And you're convinced we need to find this woman?'

'Yes.'

'So we can run away?'

'Do you really think I want to run away?'

'No,' she replied, unconvincingly. 'It's just hard to see where this is going.'

Another blast punctured the silence that followed her comment, somewhere on the far side of the city. Screams followed, distant but not diminished, followed by the shrill, dismal cries of the Morvren as they took flight, the portents of death they carried with them now inescapable.