The Burning Man

2

Two days later, at Rostock, Hunter bribed a sailor to stow them in crates of machine tools, who in turn bribed the customs official to let the container lorry through without scrutiny. Ten miles inland they were freed to buy a van from an unscrupulous backstreet dealer unconcerned about paperwork. They picked up the autobahn east of Hamburg and headed south.

Tom sat silently in the front, feeling the gentle tug of his ring. At the wheel, Hunter watched faces, seeing the scars of a world without magic, feeling the slow, black suffocation of the Void pressing in on all sides. He was sure it would only be a matter of time before that desolation enveloped them all and they rejoined the non-people with their non-lives. He started to beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel, but it sounded like the ticking of a clock, counting out the seconds of hope that remained.

‘There’s still hope,’ Tom said quietly, as if he could read Hunter’s mind. ‘There’s always hope. That is what the secret Gnostic knowledge tells us.’

‘Somehow that doesn’t feel like enough,’ Hunter said.

‘Ah, but it is. To understand that is to win. This world is about the base and the material. It is about struggling for money and power, about fighting for people like you against people like them. You can see it engrained in every aspect of our culture, locked in so tightly that there is no room for the opposite point of view to gain a foothold. Innocence, love, hope — these things are derided and their power diminished. And yet there is a place where they can survive even the most tumultuous attack.’

Shavi leaned forward between the two of them. ‘The human heart,’ he said.

In the back, Laura yawned loudly and pointedly. ‘Here come the hippies.’

‘The Gnostic secrets tell us that fragments of the true power of Existence, the Blue Fire, are lodged in every human, waiting to be fanned from a spark into a flame,’ Tom continued. ‘Those fragments are the basis of the Pendragon Spirit. And if that knowledge tells us one thing, it is this: that every person can make a difference. That by looking within, the outside can be altered.’

‘That’s a nice little story,’ Hunter said, ‘but nobody’s going to wake up of their own accord. They’ve got too much to keep them occupied — cash, drink, drugs, sex.’ He paused. ‘Not to be knocked, of course.’

‘That is how the Void wins,’ Shavi said. ‘It has built a prison that we love.’

‘Still doesn’t get away from my point: who’s going to start making people fan those sparks?’

‘You,’ Tom snapped. ‘Do I have to spell it out? Why am I cursed to be surrounded by thick-heads?’

While Laura launched a caustic attack on Tom, Church sat silently in the back, turning over Tom’s words, convinced they were directed at him. As always, Tom cut through to the heart of him, slicing past the encysted negativity that had grown around Ruth’s disappearance.

‘We wake them by shattering the Mundane Spell,’ he said. ‘We show them the magic that exists behind the scenes.’

As they passed Frankfurt a few hours later, they realised his words had more than metaphorical meaning. Cars veered wildly across the autobahn and came to a halt on the hard shoulder as people jumped out to stare into the sky. Overhead, a winged horse dipped and soared in the morning light. Hunter pulled the van to the side and wound down the window. The cries of the observers were filled with wonder that suggested they had been changed for ever.

‘This Great Dominion is awake,’ Tom said, ‘and the magic it contains is now unfettered. You did that, simply by passing through.’

‘So all we’ve got to do,’ Laura said, watching the horse dreamily, ‘is to wake each Great Dominion. Simple. We open the box, the weird stuff pours out and the Mundane Spell shatters.’

Tom sighed. ‘First, you have to survive each Great Dominion.’