Jack of Ravens

22

Church and Will retrieved their weapons from where the Spaniards had left them and found a good vantage point at the side of one of the huts. Salazar and Don Alanzo had finished marking out a large circle with torches burning at the four cardinal points. But it was what stood beside it that caught Church and Will’s attention. It appeared to be a doorway rising up nine feet or more with a frame constructed of some substance that resembled meat — the same substance that had formed the enemy fortress in the Far Lands. Looking at the abandoned clothes scattered nearby, Church wondered if it really was made from flesh. Within the frame the air shimmered, making it impossible to see through to the other side. Church sensed that passing through that doorway would take one much further than a mere step across the fort.

His fears were confirmed when Don Alanzo ordered his guards to make the colonists line up before the doorway. Some fell in easily, controlled by the spiders, but others had to be prodded sharply. Eleanor was near the rear of the line, holding Virginia.

‘Where do you send them?’ Balfour said uneasily.

‘To a fortress in a land beyond the sunset.’ Don Alanzo’s voice was strained. ‘They will not be alone.’

Church understood: the spiders had been stealing people for centuries and taking them back to their fortress in the Far Lands where they would march alongside the Ninth Legion and all the others who had mysteriously disappeared. He saw Eleanor rocking her baby and forced himself not to consider what horrors waited on the other side of the door.

‘Do you have a plan, Master Churchill?’ Will hissed. ‘For I must confess I am bereft.’

‘There are two of us with swords and we’re surrounded by a small army of Spanish soldiers and about a million supernatural creatures. Who needs a plan?’

Will laughed. ‘I will miss fighting at your side, Good Jack.’

The first of the colonists were prodded through the doorway. It looked as though they passed through a gelatinous membrane — one moment of clinging, then gone.

Salazar was at work in the circle, drawing patterns in the air with one gloved hand. He had barely finished when there was a distant sound of rending, then another, drawing closer. To Church it sounded like a series of doors opening one after the other.

In the air over the circle the final doorway opened with a deafening crash and the smell of burned iron. An oblong of darkness obscured the night sky. Into it stepped a figure that made Church’s blood run cold: Janus, the dual-faced god of doorways, radiating a primal dread that made men blanch and turn away.

‘The preparations have been made?’ The voice was like a funeral bell.

‘Our power will rest in the dark beneath the earth until the season is right.’ The words came from Don Alanzo, but they were clipped and mechanical, and his eyes were glazed. Church had the impression Salazar was speaking through him. ‘Our power will rest beneath an island named Croatoan. And the word of power that will summon it is Croatoan.’

‘Then call them from their prison. Open the Anubis Box, and let the long-closed doors be thrown wide.’ Janus disappeared from view as a gust of icy wind blew through the camp.

Salazar took the crystal skull from its velvet wrapping and set it in the centre of the circle. Church and Will were transfixed as Salazar bent over it and made another strange gesture with his gloved hand. The skull began to glow with a faint purple light. A sound emanated from it, high-pitched and reedy, growing louder by the second until everyone present clutched at their eyes and ears. The crystal skull was screaming.

At Don Alanzo’s summoning, two guards escorted a woman from one of the huts. Despite the hood placed over her head, Church could tell it was Niamh. She walked proud and erect; Church wondered what power Salazar had over her that she offered no resistance.

From the floating doorway, two golden-skinned angels emerged. One had the same refined, beautiful features as Niamh. Church guessed it was Lugh. At first the other’s features swam, but when they settled Church could see he was slightly rougher in appearance, though still beautiful by human standards, his nose straight, his hair curly; he looked like a distant cousin of Niamh’s branch of the family.

They dropped slowly down until they stood before Salazar and Don Alanzo. There was something in their sagging-shouldered, bowed-headed posture that suggested they had been broken by their experience. Church saw none of the arrogance he had witnessed in other Golden Ones.

Niamh tore off her hood. She looked frightened, and Church saw her mouth the words, ‘My brother …’

Salazar took the Anubis Box from a bag and held it before him. An unnatural silence fell across the camp; even the tramp of the colonists’ boots as they walked through the doorway could not be heard.

‘With this power, we bind you, known on this world by your worshippers as Apollo,’ Don Alanzo/Salazar said.

He held the box before the second god and raised the lid slightly. Black tendrils rose out like smoke, curling through the air until they suddenly lashed into Apollo’s face. The tendrils spread out, driving his head back, forcing their way into his nose, his mouth, ears and eyes; and it seemed to Church that along those tendrils surged tiny creatures, pouring into the god’s body.

Finally the tendrils retreated back into the box. They left Apollo’s face with a malignant cast; the whites of his eyes were now black. Hesitantly, he opened his mouth and said, ‘We are one.’ It sounded to Church like a thousand voices speaking at once.

Church suddenly became aware he had been mesmerised by the strange ritual taking place. As he looked around, he saw everyone else had been affected the same way. He shook Will who said, dazed, ‘The box … it allows them to bend angels to their will.’

Church launched himself forward. He was past the Spanish guards before they even saw him coming, drawing his sword as he leaped into the circle. With a powerful swing, he cleaved Salazar in half. There was a flash of blue molten sparks, and a terrible shrieking echoed through Church’s head. Spiders of all sizes flew from Salazar’s body and scurried into the vast mass of arachnids that covered the fort.

Church was too dazed to put up a defence as Don Alanzo drew his sword. Will threw himself in between them and engaged the Spanish aristocrat.

Niamh grabbed Church as he staggered and slowly came back to his senses. He looked around for the skull and the Anubis Box, but they were already disappearing beneath the sea of spiders.

‘We must leave,’ she hissed. ‘There is no more that can be done here.’

‘They can’t have the box …’ His attention was drawn to the dwindling line of colonists and Eleanor and Virginia Dare near the back.

Before he could move to help her, he was grabbed and lifted into the air. Slowly he was turned to face Apollo; the sun god was now transformed into a malignant engine of destruction. Black spiders swirled around the edges of his eyes and crawled in the depths of his mouth. Church could feel a brutish power rolling off the god; it felt like the furious burning of a nuclear core. Church could feel it searing through his skin, driving into his centre, cooking him from within. He gripped the sword tightly, but couldn’t lift it. Consciousness began to leak out of him.

Something wrenched him from Apollo’s grasp and hurled him across the fort like a toy. He crashed to the ground near one of the huts. As he finally slipped into the deep black, he saw two things.

It was Lugh who had saved him, and now the god fought furiously with Apollo. Bolts of golden and black lightning lashed across the camp accompanied by peals of deafening thunder. At their core, Lugh and Apollo were two suns, their shapes indistinguishable in the burning incandescence of their fury.

The final thing Church saw was Eleanor Dare turn to look at him. Behind the sadness, her pale face still registered hope as she clutched her child tightly to her and stepped through the doorway into hell.