The Burning Man

2

Back on Summer-side, the rain still sheeted down and ran in torrents along the winding, cobbled streets. The Court of the Soaring Spirit cowered in the face of the storm. Mallory led a small army towards the Palace of Glorious Light, just a hulk lurking in the darkness.

Axe in hand and ready for battle, Decebalus strode beside him, and at their backs were the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons plucked from hundreds of years of Earth’s history. They were still coming to terms with their freedom, but Mallory could tell the Pendragon Spirit was alive in their hearts.

With Lugh and Rhiannon at their head, the Tuatha De Danann were grim-faced. They, too, were trying to come to terms with the new status quo, but their task was more difficult. Their race was built upon the mythology that they were special, perfect, above all other creatures. To be told their survival depended on fighting and defeating one of their own destroyed the very foundations of their existence.

Lightning flaring overhead, Mallory brought them to a halt on the approach to the palace. ‘Go back to the Hunter’s Moon and look after Virginia,’ he told Jerzy. ‘If we don’t survive, get her out of the city. Try to find Church. Just keep her safe.’

The Mocker grasped Mallory’s hand fervently. ‘I see you are a great man, as great as my good friend Jack Churchill. My life has been better for having known you.’

‘Just get the drinks in. And look after yourself.’

When Jerzy had scampered away, Mallory turned to Lugh. ‘Are you ready?’

‘It is my sister.’ Lugh’s voice trembled, though his face remained emotionless. ‘I am not ready. I will never be ready.’

‘That place is a fortress,’ Mallory said. ‘Our only option is a frontal assault. If we can take Niamh by surprise-’

‘She will be ready for us,’ Rhiannon said. ‘She already knows that the Watchtower has been breached and that the prisoners are free.’

‘You should go back with Jerzy …’ Mallory began until he saw her affronted expression.

She held up her stump. ‘One missing hand does not make me lesser. It does not amount to one fraction of the scars I have borne throughout all my time.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

‘Your instinct is to protect. I understand that. It is why you make a good battle leader.’

‘I just want to finish the job here and get back to my life.’

‘And I will say again,’ Lugh began, ‘this is a turning point in the relationship between Golden Ones and Fragile Creatures. Now there is hope for my people — because of you. We will not forget that.’

Mallory looked out over the wet rooftops of the jumbled city, rolling down towards the main gate.

‘What do you seek?’ Rhiannon asked.

‘I thought Sophie would be here. That old Craft business usually makes her sensitive to what’s going on.’ He shrugged. ‘She’ll probably be along when we need her most, just like the cavalry.’

‘You should speak to our troops,’ Rhiannon said.

‘They’re not my troops.’

‘Do it. They expect it. They deserve it.’

Reluctantly, Mallory climbed onto the crumbling stone base of a rune-carved obelisk and looked out over the ranks. Concentrated in one place, he could finally see what the Pendragon Spirit meant. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had the rough faces of country stock and the educated features of city dwellers, the formalised styling of the Reformation and the austerity of the nineteen-fifties; their expressions revealed their fears and bravery, doubts and arrogance; but all of them to a person exuded a quality of hope and a strength of character that suggested they would do what was right, whatever the personal cost.

Mallory drew Llyrwyn. The blue flames licked hungrily towards the looming, oppressive figure of the Burning Man. Everyone fell silent, watching him.

‘You don’t know me,’ he began, ‘and that’s probably how it should be. I’m a nobody. But I’m one of you. And that’s what it means to be a Brother or Sister of Dragons. Individually, we’re a mess. We’re filled with doubts and flaws and guilt and shame and personal failures. We can barely get through our own lives. But when we come together, when we support each other and contribute our strengths to one single, good end — watch out. Because that’s when we work magic.

‘This flame, this blazing Blue Fire, gives us our strength. But it also symbolises who we are when we unite. A beacon in the dark. A light that will never be extinguished.

‘Some of you haven’t had the chance to discover who you are, or what you’re capable of. You’re going to get that chance now. It’ll be scary and tough. But you’ll always have a Brother or Sister beside you, picking you up when you fall, protecting you when your guard is down, carrying you when you’re too tired to take another step. You’ll never be alone. Let’s enter this fight not as individuals, but as Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. And let’s come out of it winners.’

For one moment there was only the sound of the wind and the lashing rain, and then a cheer rose up. Mallory shivered at what he heard in that sound. Surprised that he had found the words to express his feelings, he stepped down; Decebalus clapped him on the back, and even the Tuatha De Danann regarded him with respect.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Under cover of the storm, they approached along the narrow street that led to the square in front of the palace. Mallory still held out hope that they would be able to gain access undetected. But as they crossed the square, roaring oil fires ignited along the ramparts and on the towers, and the gloomy building was instantly transformed into a hellish fortress.

The gates were closed, and although they had not been designed to resist a major assault, Mallory could see it would take a long time to batter them down.

Yet as they surged around the base of the palace, a cry rose up. Running furiously and determinedly from the narrow street were many of the strange characters from the Hunter’s Moon, with more of the court’s residents joining them by the second. Living in fear of Niamh’s secret brutality and the enforcement of her guard, they now felt empowered.

Shadow John, tall and thin in his stovepipe hat and black suit, was transformed from his urbane geniality into a terrible sight, eyes ablaze with fury. He leaped to the gate and with one sweep of his long fingers tore open the lock.

With the doors flung open, the ragtag army surged into the suffocating maze of long, low corridors and tiny rooms. The lower ranks of Niamh’s guard rushed from secret passages in guerrilla strikes or attempted to hold the winding staircases leading to the upper floors. At first, Lugh, Rhian-non and the other Tuatha De Danann were hesitant at attacking their own, but when they saw the guards’ uncaring ferocity, they began to respond in kind. Soon the small passageways were filled with clouds of fluttering golden moths from both sides. As Mallory fought his way through to the upper floors, he caught sight of Lugh, his face grim and now wet with tears. Every blow he struck left him shaking.

While the battle raged below, Mallory, Decebalus and one of the new Brothers of Dragons, a sallow-faced Victorian wearing a long, black coat, moved swiftly through the upper floors.

‘What’s your name?’ Mallory asked the newcomer.

‘Charles Granger.’ He carried a short sword awkwardly. ‘I wish I had a good pistol.’

‘Okay, Charlie, you drop back and keep your eyes open for anything we miss. They’re sly bastards and they won’t be averse to popping out and stabbing us in the back.’

‘Let them try it,’ Decebalus growled. ‘I’ll have their heads from their shoulders before they’ve even taken a step.’

They came to a long, low corridor leading to the main staircase to the next floor. Heavy tapestries lined both walls and the only light came from a solitary torch at the far end.

‘I’d have thought we’d have encountered the elite guard by now,’ Mallory said.

‘You are right,’ Decebalus acknowledged. ‘Something is amiss.’

‘I do hope we get through this without too much fuss,’ Charles noted. ‘I’m looking forward to spending some time with my girl.’

‘You and me both.’ Cautiously, Mallory moved along the corridor, keeping his eyes fixed on the opening to the staircase. The silence was broken by a faint, brief sound behind them, like air escaping from a pipe.

Mallory halted. ‘What was that?’

‘I know not.’ Decebalus scanned the corridor.

‘Probably nothing. Let’s keep going,’ Charles prompted.

‘Everything’s something in this place. That’s the rule.’ Mallory edged forward.

Another burst of air, still behind them but louder than the last.

‘Again!’ Decebalus said with irritation.

‘From the ceiling.’ Mallory indicated a series of holes barely visible in the gloom.

Behind them, Charles began to cough. The coughing soon became choking, and they turned to see him clutching at his throat.

‘He can’t breathe!’ Mallory caught him as he fell to his knees. The panic in Charles’s face became horrified realisation as blood oozed from the corners of his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Blisters erupted all over his skin, bursting to reveal thick yellow pus that turned to blood as it dripped away. Within seconds, he pitched forward, dead.

‘Witchcraft!’ Decebalus exclaimed.

‘Poison, more like.’ Mallory felt a pang of grief and turned it on its axis into cold rage. ‘Poor bastard. She’s going to pay for this.’

‘She will pay,’ Decebalus agreed. ‘Threefold. Pain upon suffering upon hell on Earth.’

Mallory tore a tapestry off the wall and held it aloft so Decebalus could get under it. Shielded from the blasts of poisonous air, they ran down the corridor.

At the stairwell, they threw the tapestry off and prepared to climb to the next floor until what sounded like the roars of jungle beasts rose up beneath them. Feet thundered up the stairs from the floor below, accompanied by an abattoir stink.

Rounding a turn in the stairs came a score or more of squat, brutish Redcaps clothed in the remnants of their human victims. Mallory braced himself for the fight, but Decebalus said firmly, ‘Go. I will hold them off.’

‘You can’t. They’re killing machines.’

‘Go!’ Decebalus roared. ‘If we both fall here, there will be no one to avenge our dead. Besides, I fight better alone.’

Mallory hesitated for only a second before he clapped the barbarian on the shoulder. ‘You’re a hero. I’m not going to forget this.’

‘Then you buy all the ale when next we meet in the Hunter’s Moon.’

Mallory ran up the stairs. Glancing back, he saw Decebalus crash his axe into the skull of the first Redcap and then kick the body back down onto the ravening horde. His insane laughter boomed up the stairwell. ‘To hell!’

Mallory sprinted up the stairs to the very top of the palace where he knew Niamh would be preparing her defence, or her escape. In the annexe that led into the queen’s suite of state rooms, he found Evgen and five members of the elite guard dressed in black and silver armour and full helmets. They brandished broad, curved swords.

‘One Brother of Dragons,’ Evgen sneered. ‘How disappointing. Pray to your God. You will be with him soon.’

‘I don’t have a god,’ Mallory replied. ‘This is what I believe in.’

He swung Llyrwyn and as he attacked, the Blue Fire became an inferno, fed by his Pendragon Spirit and feeding it in turn. The first two guards exploded into moths before they had even taken a step. The third was more of a challenge, but Mallory would not be contained. The Blue Fire filled him until there was no Mallory, just a righteous weapon that struck with all the strength and skill he had learned as a Knight Templar.

Another guard fell, then another, until Evgen faced him, alone. The captain threw back the mask of his helmet, revealing an expression of incomprehension.

‘You can leave,’ Mallory said.

‘My duty is to my queen. I have neither will nor desire beyond that.’

Mallory felt briefly sorry for him. But then Evgen raised his sword and for five minutes they battled ferociously until Evgen misjudged a strike and Mallory ran through his open defence.

Dropping his weapon, Evgen crashed back against the wall. ‘How can Fragile Creatures defeat the Golden Ones?’ he said in disbelief.

‘This is a new age.’

Once the moths had dissipated, Mallory entered the reception hall. The stifling heat made him choke. The fire in the great hearth roared as if driven by bellows, and all around the room braziers glowed. There was no other light source, and a claustrophobic gloom clustered in the corners.

Niamh stood before the fire. She wore tight-fitting ebony armour etched with silver filigree and a black ceremonial headdress with six horns that resembled the arms of Shiva.

‘Dressed for a funeral?’ Mallory said.

Niamh smiled. ‘Dressed for victory.’

The flames of Llyrwyn licked towards her hungrily. ‘What happened to you? Church told us how you-’

‘How I loved him? Jack Churchill taught me many things. He ignited a fire inside me, and then chose the love of another. A Fragile Creature,’ she added contemptuously.

‘You can’t always get what you want. So is that it — you’ve caused all this misery just because of a broken heart?’

Niamh laughed. ‘How dismissive you are of the signifying quality of Fragile Creatures! Everything you do is because of love! I have observed your kind for an age. If you seek money or power, it is in a pitiful attempt to fill the gap left by an absence of love. Adult lives are corrupted and distorted by the search for love denied them as children. Love drives Fragile Creatures to achieve astonishing things, and love lies behind murder and betrayal and cruelty. Love destroys confidence and creates doubt and self-loathing. Love turns Fragile Creatures into gods. It is all and everything. To dismiss it so only shows your ignorance.’

‘So now you’ve signed up with the Void because you didn’t get the kisses you wanted.’

‘This is the twilight of the gods, foretold in all your stories since your first days. The old ways are passing, for every living being. I choose my path accordingly.’

‘It makes no sense. How can you give in to control? To a universe that denies freedom, belief, magic? You had that spider removed to escape control-’

She laughed. ‘Yes, I had the spider removed.’ She raised her arms wide. ‘And then I chose to be filled with spiders.’

Under her skin, lumps of varying sizes began to move across her hands, her face, distorting her features. She opened her mouth wide and the spiders swarmed out and over her body.

Mallory had hoped he could talk her into giving up. Now he saw there was no hope. He raised Llyrwyn and prepared to attack.

A ferocious wind blasted from a corner of the room, throwing him hard against the wall. Niamh hadn’t moved. The spiders still crawled over her, but now she wore a cruel smile.

From out of the shadows walked another woman in the same black armour and headdress as Niamh. It was Sophie, her cheeks wet with tears. ‘You bastard. You betrayed me,’ she said with devastating bitterness.

Mallory gaped. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘This.’ She gestured and the wind rushed around the room. From the corner behind her came Caitlin, strapped to a wooden frame with barbed wire, barely conscious, badly beaten and bleeding from numerous wounds. Sophie raised her hand and the torture frame floated forward, a foot above the floor.

‘What have you done?’ Mallory could barely believe what he was seeing.

‘She paid the price for being a duplicitous bitch.’

‘You did that to her?’

Sophie shifted uneasily. There was a faint glassy quality to her eyes that gave him some hope. ‘Of course not! I don’t agree with it-’

‘But you didn’t stop it-’

‘She deserved it! You and her — behind my back!’

‘What? Caitlin and me? That’s ridiculous.’

‘I saw you!’ The wind raged, tossing Mallory across the room.

His head ringing, Mallory struggled to his feet. The wind continued to rush around Sophie and there was lightning in her eyes. He’d had no idea she was capable of wielding such power, and it scared him.

He approached her cautiously, but couldn’t help glancing at Caitlin.

‘See?’ Sophie snapped. ‘You care about her.’

‘Of course I do — she’s hurt. Anybody with any compassion would care.’

His words stung her. She allowed her anger to rise up so she could ignore them. ‘I’m sick of being betrayed by everybody I ever trust!’

‘I’m not going to betray you.’

‘Shut up!’ The wind whisked around him, but this time didn’t punish him. Tears filled her eyes. ‘My mother and father betrayed me, and now you. The only people I’ve ever loved.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They killed themselves when I was nine. A suicide pact. They said they loved me and they left me all alone.’

‘You never told me that-’

‘Didn’t you ever wonder?’ she sneered. ‘The Pendragon Spirit only comes alive in us when we’ve experienced death. Didn’t you think to ask who’d died around me?’

Mallory saw her desperate hurt and suddenly so many things about her became clear. ‘I’m sorry.’

She looked away, her tears running freely.

Niamh watched with detached amusement.

‘You manipulated her,’ Mallory accused. If she had been close enough he would have killed her in an instant.

‘I only allowed what was in her to take form,’ Niamh said. ‘Now she has chosen to be with me. I will not betray her.’

‘Soph, don’t fall for this,’ he pleaded.

Sophie tore at her hair. The wind around her rushed wildly in random directions. A brazier crashed over, the glowing coals igniting a tapestry. Flames rushed up the wall.

‘Soph, this isn’t you!’

Tormented, Sophie threw her head back and screamed till her throat was raw. In the face of the gale, Mallory couldn’t even get to his feet.

‘Look at that woman!’ Niamh pointed towards Caitlin. ‘She didn’t care about you. She is made of lies and deceit. She doesn’t deserve your friendship.’

‘Sophie!’ Mallory called. ‘She’s trying to get you to do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life. She’s trying to damn you.’

‘She deserves to be eradicated!’ Niamh’s voice rose above the gale.

Sophie cast a pitiful look at Mallory. ‘Why couldn’t you have saved me?’

‘Hold him back,’ Niamh insisted.

‘You can kill her,’ Mallory said, ‘but she’ll come back. That’s what we do. Death can’t hold us.’

‘This is beyond death,’ Niamh said. ‘The Devourer of All Things has allowed the universe to create a handful of weapons of power that can strike at the very heart of Existence. They are scattered, unknown, lost. They can be used only once, because of their power.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘They can wipe a being out of Existence. Not just so they are dead, but so they never existed in the first place. No one will remember them ever having been. Their words, their gestures, their caresses, their kisses — all forgotten, because they never happened. Removed from the cycle of rebirth. It is worse than the worst thing you could ever imagine for yourself, for it means that you amounted to nothing.’ From her pocket, she removed a crystal in the shape of a snowflake. It spun slowly of its own accord an inch above her palm. ‘And I have such a weapon here.’

She held her hand higher and the snowflake spun faster. Shards of light blinked off it.

‘Stop her!’ Mallory shouted at Sophie. ‘Caitlin’s one of us!’

Sophie closed her eyes, sobbing silently. The wind continued to pin Mallory against the floor.

The snowflake pulsed. Like all the other objects of power Mallory had witnessed, he knew he was not seeing its true shape. He had the sense of some enormous machine grinding into life behind the illusion of the world he saw before him. Caitlin lolled on the torture frame, defenceless, broken.

And then the wind dropped and all was still. Mallory only had a second to register this before he heard a small voice.

‘You should have saved me.’

A dagger of white light burst from the spinning snowflake towards Caitlin. Before it reached her, Sophie took the full force of the weapon in her breast, a halo of white light burning around her.

For a second, Mallory felt as if the weapon had hit him and he had winked out of existence. Desperate to hold on to the last of her, he scrambled to where Sophie had sunk to the ground.

The white light sparked and fizzed around her as it unstitched her from reality. Her skin was freezing to the touch, as though she had lain in the snow for hours, as though she was already dead.

Mallory tried to say something, but the words died in his throat.

Sophie smiled weakly, already a ghost of the smile he remembered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a real mess of things.’

‘It wasn’t true … about Caitlin and me. I’d never do anything like that.’

She looked into his face and saw it was true.

‘I love you.’ He gripped her hands tightly. ‘You saved me. I was worthless before, and … and-’

‘Ssh. Don’t say it.’ The light gave her skin a translucent quality. ‘I love you, too.’

Her eyes flickered and closed.

Mallory closed his own eyes and thought hard. The pub in Salisbury where he had first seen her came to mind as clearly as if he was there. Sophie, with her traveller friends, wearing a faded hippie dress beneath a pink mohair sweater, a clutter of beads and necklaces around her neck, her sharp, questioning intelligence, the knowing quality around her eyes that he instantly found deeply sexy. Though he hadn’t realised it until much later, that first moment was when she had trapped him in her gravity.

He recalled the first time they kissed, every detail of the surroundings, the temperature of the air, the smell of her hair. He recalled the first time they made love. Watching her in the dealers’ room of Steelguard Securities, when he knew she was special even though the context had been stolen from him.

So many memories, every sensation, every word spoken, mundane and unique. He wanted them all, but there were too many. Desperately, he tried to hold on to her.

Then, from somewhere far away, a cold wind blew and she was gone. His hands clutched thin air. Broken, he sagged until his forehead touched the floor.

Niamh had moved to a window that had been hidden behind one of the tapestries, now flung wide open to the night. From outside came the sound of wings.

Mallory turned to her, filled with a residual hatred that was fading fast. In a second she went from the woman he would have travelled to the ends of Existence to destroy to just another enemy. There would be no revenge.

He saw in her face some kind of secret knowledge that pleased her, and then there was movement behind her. Standing on the back of a flying, bat-winged beast was the Libertarian. He held out his hand for Niamh to join him.

Grasping Llyrwyn, Mallory ran to the window, but he was too late. The beast was already moving away. The Libertarian had his arms around Niamh’s shoulders, like old lovers reunited.

‘Your new life is yours to enjoy,’ Niamh said sardonically, ‘in what little time remains.’

The leathery wings beat faster and the creature turned towards the Burning Man, soaring on thermals, out of the court and away.

Mallory raced back to where Caitlin hung on the torture frame. Her wounds were all superficial and already healing. As he cut through the barbed wire, her eyes flickered open.

‘Oh,’ she said weakly. ‘Why are you crying?’

Mallory touched his damp cheek. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.