The Hounds of Avalon

Oxford felt like Christmas Eve as Hunter, Mallory and Caitlin ran through the deserted streets. Preternaturally quiet, with the snow lying heavy on the rooftops and roads, there was something uncannily magical about the city. Occasionally, they glimpsed shimmering buildings, ghostly in blue, hovering just behind the familiar ancient landmarks. Just a trick of the light, they told themselves.

Somewhere, Ruth Gallagher was harrying the remnants of the Lament-Brood to destruction. It was in all their minds: once she had been like them, someone struggling to do the right thing against impossible odds, and now she had risen to the status of legend. A human become god. And so it was for all the Five who had fought at the Fall: gods and demi-gods, angels — and even, in Veitch, a devil to haunt the nightmares of the people. Great, greater, greatest.

Yet this time it was down to the three of them, and Sophie wherever she was, and the mysterious fifth, to defeat something of such magnitude that it was defined as the opposite of life. It didn’t seem right; it certainly wasn’t fair.

Only Hunter had reached any kind of accommodation with the dilemma. For him, it was simply a matter of acceptance. Samantha’s death had removed any link he had with the rest of the world. He had no need of softness or any care for his own survival. Now it was simply death or glory.

And so they arrived at Brasenose. At first glance it appeared deserted, though lights glared from the windows. No sounds of life greeted them as they ventured into the echoing corridors.

‘Maybe they all evacuated when the Lament-Brood came,’ Mallory hissed.

Hunter shook his head. ‘When the Government first moved here, they restructured this place for high security. It wouldn’t make sense for them to leave — they’d be safer here than anywhere else.’

Caitlin stopped moving and sniffed the air. ‘There are people here. Down below.’

‘You can smell them?’ Mallory said incredulously. ‘You know what, sometimes you are an extremely creepy woman.’

Her smile was a challenge. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Then we should proceed with extreme caution,’ Hunter said. ‘Either they’re gathered for the execution, or they’re barricaded in waiting to blow the heads off anyone who turns up.’ He crept stealthily to the end of the corridor and sneaked a glimpse around the corner.

‘You’ve done this kind of thing before, haven’t you?’ Mallory said wearily.

‘Once or twice. Luckily for you.’

‘Me, I’d just charge in with sword swinging.’

‘Like I said, luckily for you one of us knows what they’re doing.’

Hunter led the way down a short flight of stairs to the lower level. At the bottom step, Caitlin caught his arm. ‘Someone’s nearby,’ she mouthed. She paused, raised her head slightly. ‘It’s-’

‘Over here.’ Sophie beckoned them urgently. At the end of the corridor, she was staggering under Shavi’s weight, who was pale and a little delirious. The others ran up to relieve her.

Mallory grabbed her by the shoulders, unable to restrain his joy. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’ She forced a smile, but Mallory could see that she was lying.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You don’t fool me. Spit it out.’

She pulled him towards her and kissed him with a surprising passion that spoke of desperation and loss. When she broke off, she said quietly, ‘Don’t ask me any more. I can’t tell you. Not now.’

‘Later?’

She nodded, but there was a deep sadness shadowing her smile that Mallory didn’t notice. He was distracted by Hunter gently slapping Shavi’s cheeks to bring him round.

‘He’s been in a trance,’ Sophie said. ‘There were some things he needed to find out. But then he started raving, as if… as if what he saw was too terrible to believe. And then he ended up like this.’

‘Have you found anyone down here?’ Hunter asked her as he continued to try to bring Shavi back to consciousness.

‘There was a lot of commotion along that way.’ She motioned in the direction of the high-security wing. ‘We found some guards dead… butchered. That’s when we decided to come back to look for you. If there’s anyone left alive, they must have locked themselves in somewhere secure.’

Caitlin nodded. ‘That’s what we thought, too.’

‘Then maybe they haven’t had time to carry out the execution,’ Hunter said with some relief.

Hunter’s insistent efforts finally brought Shavi round, his eyes gradually focusing. He tried to support his own weight, staggered, then succeeded in propping himself against the wall.

‘The things I saw,’ he said, shuddering at the memory. The horror in his voice chilled them all.

‘What’s up, Shavi?’ Mallory clapped the arm of the man he had come to consider a good friend.

Shavi managed a wan smile. ‘I saw the Cailleach Bheur filling the universe with ice and snow. The White Walker has failed. The Fimbulwinter…’ He gasped, took a deep breath. ‘The prophecy of the Fimbulwinter at the end of the world, the coming of the Void — both are linked. The End-Winter comes because the final days are near… and the final days are near because the Void has come. But the Void needs the extreme cold to exist. It can’t abide heat. It comes from beyond the edge of the universe where there is no light or warmth. It has been here, gestating in the cold, waiting until the moment is right-’

‘Here?’ Hunter grabbed Shavi’s arm. ‘Where?’

Shavi shook his head. ‘I saw so many things… I saw the followers of Veitch prepare a ritual of such magnitude that it sent ripples through the world. Black T-shirts, red V, faces like rainy city nights.’ His eyes were glazing over again as the images paraded across his mind. ‘They were drawing on the dark energy the Void brought in its wake, trying to bring him back, calling to his wandering spirit, corrupting it with the blackness, sucking all hope and chance of redemption from it.’

‘Veitch is coming back?’ Mallory asked. ‘Are you saying he’s becoming part of the Void?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know…’ Shavi was slipping away again.

Hunter shook him roughly. ‘Come on. Focus. We need to know what’s going on.’

‘And I saw… I saw…’ Shavi looked at Sophie and fell silent at the expression in her eyes. ‘There is no more I can tell you. The Void is here. It is ready to do what its nature has prepared it to do. The rest is not important.’

Hunter turned to the others, his face grim. ‘We need to find the fifth quickly. Then get out of here and locate the Void… before it gets us first.’

‘Bloody hell! Can’t you say the name yet?’ Mallory said.

‘No!’ Sophie gripped his wrist so tightly that her nails raised blood.

It was clear to Mallory that she knew more than she was saying; he accepted her plea with a silent nod.

‘Leave me here,’ Shavi insisted. ‘This is no longer my business. It is the time of the new Five now. Only you can save… everything.’

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ Mallory said, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice, ‘there’s only four of us.’

Shavi slumped into a cross-legged position, his back against the wall, and lapsed into unconsciousness once more. That was the way they left him, a faint transcendental smile on his face, like a saint about to be led to his death.

The four of them made their way towards the high-security wing. All the cells were silent, their once-noisy occupants either dead or stilled in the gloom. They came across the corpses of many guards in various states of butchery, but whatever had slaughtered them appeared long gone.

‘Is it me or is it colder in here?’ Mallory said.

Caitlin exhaled heavily; a white cloud bloomed from her lips. ‘It’s colder,’ she said.

Hunter drew his sword; Mallory followed suit, the flames of Llyrwyn painting the walls and ceiling a brilliant blue. Caitlin balanced an axe carefully in each hand; the light of the Morrigan began to come on in her eyes. Sophie followed behind, head slightly bowed, her hands at her sides.

They turned into another corridor and were shocked to see the walls glistening with a rime of frost; it was as if they’d stepped into a butcher’s meat locker. The lights here were eerily dimmer, and further on the corridor progressed into darkness.

‘Looks like this is it,’ Hunter said redundantly.

The words had barely left his lips when a security door crashed shut behind them. They started in shock, but it was too late: their exit had been cut off. As they turned back, another security door, this time barred like a jail cell, slid into place ahead of them.

Hunter took point as doors further along the corridor opened slowly. Reid was one of the first to emerge, but behind him Hunter could just make out the shadowy figures of Government officials, the Cabinet, senior advisors who had once been the captains of industry, the aristocrats, the financial sector’s biggest players.

‘Open the doors,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re here to protect you.’

Reid stood before them, carefully surveying Mallory, Caitlin and Sophie before moving his attention to Hunter. ‘Still only four of you?’

‘Reid, time is running out.’ Hunter attempted to moderate his voice against the urgency that was straining every fibre of his being. ‘The thing that’s behind the invasion is already here. We need to find it — destroy it — before it wipes everything out.’

‘I know exactly where it is.’

Hunter was struck dumb by the quiet confidence in Reid’s voice.

Reid motioned further down the corridor. On the edge of the crepuscular zone, Hunter saw the frozen door that he had noticed when freeing Mallory. ‘It’s been here for a long time, Mister Hunter.’

Realisation crept up on Hunter, but not comprehension or acceptance.

Mallory, a man who mistrusted all authority, grasped the situation instantly. ‘You’re working for it.’ His eyes blazed as brightly as his sword.

‘In a way.’

‘It’s controlling you,’ Caitlin ventured. ‘It’s a very seductive power-’

Reid silenced her with a simple shake of his head. ‘People who deal with power on a daily basis are pragmatic. That is the most vital quality for any political leader-’

‘What about honour?’ Mallory interrupted, his voice cold and hard. ‘Integrity, ethics?’

‘Unnecessary,’ Reid replied. ‘Oh, lovely, lovely qualities, of course. No one would disagree with that. But completely useless for the job of leadership. The traits you mentioned are useful for winning one great battle. But then you have to retire. Politics is about winning battles every day, little ones, mundane ones. You need to be pragmatic to retain power so that you can continue to do that.’

‘Politics,’ Mallory sneered. Behind him, Caitlin was checking the security door for a way out.

‘Oh, politics is the most important thing of all, because it’s about the way we live our lives. Every decision is a political decision. Most of us who work to keep things running can’t afford the luxury of fighting for a cause, like you, however worthy that cause might be. We need to make sure that we stay in power so that we continue to live our lives the right way.’

‘Which implies that your way is the right way.’ Hunter was trying to buy the others time to find a way to break free; it was a clumsy attempt, but Reid didn’t appear to mind.

‘It is the right way. It’s been proven by time. It’s been accepted by the majority of the people, and consequently it is, by definition, normal. Any opposing view is therefore aberrant, and something to be resisted.’ The most chilling aspect about Reid was his calm expression of his views. There was no hatred there, no contempt or anger, not even any superiority. He was like someone patiently explaining a scientific fact to the uneducated.

In a display of impotent anger, Mallory crashed his sword against the bars. The flames surged at the impact, but the blade left no mark. ‘You’re thinking you can use the Void to maintain power?’ he raged. ‘You’re insane! It’s Anti-Life. You can’t control it. It wants to wipe out us, the world, the universe!’

‘Not in the way you suggest.’ Reid summoned two guards and motioned for them to train their guns on Caitlin, who was clearly considering throwing one of her axes through the bars. She reluctantly lowered her weapon. ‘The Anti-Life it represents is not an absence of life. It’s more abstract than that. I suppose I could wallow in the depths of philosophy, but to put it simply, you have to consider what life actually means. As a concept. This is all profoundly pretentious, is it not?’ He gave a small laugh.

‘You’ve communicated with it?’ Hunter said incredulously.

‘I wouldn’t say we exactly sat down over beer and sandwiches, but yes, after it sent its advance guard to prepare the way, we found it a place to wait. And then we entered into negotiations.’ He shook his head. ‘If you knew what we went through, you would find that almost laughable. Negotiations. The Void, as you call it, is not a thing. It’s not a life form. It doesn’t exist in any physical way you or I could comprehend. But even so, it connected with us, and we with it. And… ’ He held out his hands and gave a small shrug that made Mallory even angrier.

‘So you gave in to it?’ Caitlin said.

‘You have to understand, we couldn’t win. That was never on the agenda. It’s too powerful. It’s like trying…’ He searched for the words to describe the magnitude of what he was attempting to say. ‘Like trying to punch the universe. No point even beginning to fight. So… pragmatism, you see. We found out that what it wanted wasn’t actually very far from what we wanted. Certainly it was something we could live with. And that’s when we decided on the most beneficial course of action. If you can’t win everything, you should at least try to win something.’

Hunter looked past Reid to the shadowy figures hovering in the background. ‘You betrayed the whole of humanity just to save yourselves?’

‘You’re missing the point,’ Reid said. ‘Our aims are the aims of society. What’s best for us is best for you. It’s the same. We did the right thing.’

Hunter could see that Reid completely believed what he was saying, and that all those waiting behind him believed it, too. Flickers of dread rose in his heart. They’d lost the fight the minute they started; the seeds of that defeat were buried in the heart of what they were fighting to save. The enemy — the true enemy — was all around them. But they didn’t look like the enemy, and didn’t believe they were the enemy. How could anyone fight that?

‘We went to the PM with our plan,’ Reid continued, ‘but he refused to reach an accommodation. He had to be… removed.’ He saw the looks on Hunter and Mallory’s faces and added with annoyance, ‘If he’d been allowed to do what he wanted, the human race would have been extinct. How could that be right?’ He loosened his tie, took a deep breath. ‘You were the only real threat to everything. You Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.’

‘There’s no logic in what you’re saying,’ Hunter stated. ‘If we defeat the Void, you won’t have to reach any accommodation.’

‘We weighed up that option, and for a while it was certainly a possibility. But in the end we decided that the risks were too great. The chances of outright victory seemed extremely thin, and anything less would likely result in complete eradication. So-’

‘So you decided to get us out of the way.’ Hunter tried to ignore Mallory, who was pacing the confines of their prison like a tiger, occasionally rattling the bars or attempting to prise open the security gates with his sword.

‘There was no attempt at violence.’ Reid looked horrified at Hunter’s implication, completely ignoring the irony that he was complicit in the assassination of the country’s leader. ‘Your young friend, Mister Campbell — Hal, wasn’t that his first name? I feel quite sorry for the way we had to use him. He’s a rather naive chap. Not cut out for any of this business.’

Hunter’s temper flared. ‘What have you done with him?’

Reid chewed his lip for a second, and it appeared that he wasn’t going to answer. Then he changed his mind. ‘Once we realised you were a Brother of Dragons, our route to controlling you was easy. Your long friendship with young Hal was obvious. We were able to use him to direct you to where we needed you to be.’

‘Here,’ Hunter said. ‘So you could trap us.’

‘Exactly. We framed him for the assassination in a very clumsy way, knowing that he would realise I had organised the plot. When we allowed him to escape from custody, we knew he’d go directly to your hiding place, and that once he met up with you, he would identify me or someone in the Government as the chief suspect. Then when we let his young female friend accidentally discover information about his impending execution, we knew you’d realise that I would do anything to hide my complicity. Kill him even sooner to silence him. And so you would rush here to save him, even though all sense would tell you to stay away from my base of power and concentrate on the more pressing task of locating the Void. You’re very easy to manipulate, Mister Hunter.’

‘Not as easy as you think.’ Hunter was relieved to discover that Reid still hadn’t found out that Hal was the fifth, the real reason all of them had rushed to Brasenose. ‘Is Hal dead?’

‘The execution was set to take place half an hour ago.’

‘Have you seen the body?’

‘Two men with guns. One young, frightened, bookish man. Do I really need to?’

Hunter turned to the others and said quietly, ‘There’s still hope. Don’t give up.’

Reid must have guessed what Hunter was saying, for he added, ‘I’m sorry, but you really mustn’t think you stand a chance. I don’t know what it is about the Pendragon Spirit that makes you a threat to such a vast, unknowable force as the Void, but here you are close enough for it to work its ways on you, yet, unfortunately for you, not close enough to harm it.’

‘That was always the plan,’ Hunter noted.

‘That was always the plan,’ Reid confirmed.

Kirkham emerged from the grey background. With a cough to gain Reid’s attention, the chief scientist said, ‘It’s time.’

Reid nodded to him. Pulling a torch from his pocket and shining it ahead of him, Kirkham proceeded towards the growing gloom emanating from the door behind which the Void existed. As he drew closer, he began to shake from the extreme cold. Frost began to form down his front.

‘What are you expecting to get out of this?’ Mallory shouted. ‘What do you think the Void’s going to give you?’

‘A new world,’ Reid said. ‘The Void’s world.’

‘A world ruled by the opposite of life?’ Mallory was incredulous. ‘How could anyone exist in that?’

‘You think this one is any better?’ Reid said. ‘The country’s falling apart-’

‘People still have their lives, their freedom,’ Mallory replied, urging Reid to change his mind.

‘There’s magic everywhere,’ Caitlin continued. ‘Wonder. Endless possibilities. All the things people hoped for before the Fall-’

Reid cut her dead with a cold stare. ‘It’s unpredictable, uncontrollable. We can’t govern. None of the things we had before the Fall can thrive here. You can’t work hard to better yourself. You can’t have rules and regulations. You can’t have a strong society producing for the common good. No one’s going to get rich here, or fat, or live out their lives in luxury. This isn’t the world we spent thousands of years of human civilisation trying to form.’

‘What’s the Void’s world going to be like?’ Mallory shouted. ‘Constant night? Blood? War? Death? Hopelessness?’

Reid merely gave a faint smile, then a shrug. ‘Do it,’ he said to Kirkham.

‘There’s still hope,’ Hunter said to the others.

From the back of the faceless crowd of politicians and civil servants, the General made his way forward. He had a gun. ‘Time to stop this,’ he said.

Reid turned just as the General raised the pistol and fired. The bullet hit Reid directly between the eyes. His body slammed against the bars and then slumped down in an awkward jumble of limbs.

‘Come on,’ Hunter said under his breath.

‘I’m in charge now,’ the General said to the others. ‘Stop this nonsense immediately. Free these people.’

Hunter, Caitlin and Mallory watched, silently urging the crowd to obey the General. No one moved.

The General brandished his gun at the crowd. ‘I said-’

‘Kill him.’ The voice may have come from the deputy prime minister, or one of the Cabinet members, but it didn’t really matter which. The guards responded instantly, turning their weapons on the General and cutting him down.

‘Look at them,’ Mallory said sickened. ‘Like animals, fighting amongst themselves.’ The General’s blood flowed into Reid’s, mingled with it, formed an ocean that separated the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons from the small crowd huddled together against the gloom.

Mallory glanced at Hunter. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? All over.’

Shaking violently, Kirkham continued towards the frozen door that was now leaking darkness rapidly.

Hunter repeated his mantra, now a wish, a prayer: ‘There’s still hope.’

Kirkham’s palsied hand grasped the handle. Hunter guessed that the ice must be burning his flesh, but the scientist didn’t flinch; he almost appeared to be in a trance.

From somewhere that could have been far, far away or in the next corridor, an awful sound rose up that made all of them feel sick to their stomachs. It resonated deep into their bones, stabbing into their brains. They wanted to scratch at their ears, make themselves deaf. The howls of dogs joining together to form one note, one ringing chime of despair.

The blood drained from Caitlin’s face. ‘The Hounds of Avalon,’ she whispered.

For all the time they had been imprisoned, Sophie had stood silently, observing. Mallory stepped back to take her in his arms and when he saw her face, he realised the truth. ‘You knew. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I couldn’t take the risk that the Void might discover the fifth.’ There were tears in her eyes, but no despair. She smiled. Mallory pulled her to him and they held each other tightly.

Caitlin closed her eyes and bowed her head, resting it gently against the bars.

Hunter couldn’t believe it. He’d put his trust in Existence and he’d been wrong. They’d failed in the worst way possible. There was no hope.

Kirkham opened the door. The obscene howling grew deafening, subsuming every other sound. Between one tick of a clock and the next, the moment appeared to drag on for ever as all eyes focused on the gaping door. Kirkham stared into its depths, frozen. And then darkness began to seep out, slowly at first, then faster, rapidly becoming a torrent. Everything it touched became fluid, began to alter, twist out of shape, the very molecules of the fabric becoming something else. With it came an awful wave of despair, a million times more potent than anything sent out by the Lament-Brood, and everyone it touched fell to their knees, devastated at what was to come.

Hunter gripped the bars, tears burning the corners of his eyes, still unable to accept that humanity had betrayed itself, that the basest elements had won out over all that was noble in mankind.

Reality began to warp and as it rushed towards him, he had a glimmer of what it was becoming. It looked very much like the worst of all possible worlds. It looked very much like hell.

Jagged static jumped across Sophie Tallent’s mind. It startled her so badly that she almost knocked her polystyrene cup of coffee across the keyboard. She guessed she had been daydreaming. It must have been a particularly deep one, for it took her a moment to orient herself, and though she couldn’t recall the details, it must have been satisfying, for she felt a great wistfulness at having left it behind.

She was sitting at her desk at Steelguard Securities, the screen in front of her flickering with the constant updating of currency information from all over the world. Beyond her was the window, offering views from high over Canary Wharf across London’s financial district, sitting smug and bloated beneath the thick blanket of pollution from car exhausts and the jets flying into Heathrow or London City Airport every few seconds.

Something hit her across the back of the head and this time she did spill her coffee. It was Kane, his chubby face looking like a side of ham above his salmon pinstriped shirt, and he was clutching the file with which he had clipped her. ‘You’re useless, Tallent. How do you expect to get any bonuses? Watch the screen.’ He tapped it with a fat forefinger. ‘Never take your eyes off it. If anything interesting happens, get on the phone.’ He snorted with disgust. ‘You’re a waste of space. You know they only keep you on here because you’re decorative? Mister Rowe likes to look at your tits in that nice white blouse. So if you want to hang on to your job, take your jacket off.’ He stalked off to abuse some other unfortunate labouring for ten to twelve hours a day in front of one of the rows and rows of screens on the Steelguard floor.

In the corner, the TV came alive as someone turned up the sound for the morning news. More deaths after the rebels shelled a market in Najaf in Iraq. A Western businessman had been taken hostage somewhere else in the Middle East. His captors had released a video of him, staring beaten and humiliated at the camera, a knife at his throat. The prime minister and the president of the United States shook hands; another successful summit, another announcement of millions poured into a new joint weapons project. Inflation holding steady. (A cheer ran around the room.) The poverty gap had widened again. (Another cheer.)

Sophie’s attention was caught by a cleaner making his way slowly across the floor, unnoticed by anyone else. He had a handsome face, though he occasionally let his long hair fall across it, as if embarrassed. He looked beaten and dejected, like a badly fitting shoe.

Mallory briefly met Sophie’s gaze. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his subconscious, something stirred: a hint of recognition so vague that it was almost a shiver across his synapses, there then gone. Crazy, he thought. No details surfaced because there weren’t any. His kind and hers would never meet. It just wasn’t done; better keep his mind on the work if he wanted to hold on to his job. There were the toilets on this floor to clean, then the two floors above, then back to this floor. An endless cycle, never to be broken.

The dying part of Mallory knew that he would see Sophie every day as he crossed that room; their eyes would meet in vague, uncomfortable recognition, but it would never be reconciled. They would never meet. They would never speak.

Five burgers sizzled in pools of grease. Laura DuSantiago watched them, oddly captivated by something she didn’t quite comprehend. How many had she cooked that day in the fast-food joint stinking of stale fat down a dingy side street not far from Northampton’s main drag? How many tomorrow and the endless days after? Why was she so unaccountably queasy? It was a job; she should be thankful.

On the other side of the counter, a queue of dead-eyed people shuffled and waited, most of them overweight, heading for a heart attack sooner rather than later, clad in ugly, cheap leisurewear and knock-off trainers from the market.

Laura flipped the burgers. Five, she thought. Why was she so ill at ease? Get a grip. This is it, this is your life.

Caitlin sat in a traffic jam, listening to a Radio I DJ trying to get listeners excited about some kind of event that weekend. The cars snaked on for eight miles ahead of her and another four behind. They hadn’t moved for the last five minutes; she knew because she’d watched the clock tick around on the dashboard.

She should have been at the beautician’s in Gateshead fifteen minutes ago. In the boot, the boxes of samples sat, pretty pinks and russets, hair products that had been ‘scientifically tested’, that could make you into someone else. Really. Truly.

And of course, if she was late for the Gateshead appointment, how was she supposed to get down to Middlesbrough on time?

She thought about this for a second, then shrugged. Who cared? Who cared about anything, really? The thought made a lot of sense to her, but she still couldn’t explain the grating feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach. She turned up the radio so that she didn’t have to think.

Shavi sat at his desk in the accountancy office of Gibson and Layton and wondered why he’d absently doodled the number five on his pad. He didn’t have time to spend daydreaming. Mr Gibson had just brought in the file for some property developer, ‘a personal friend’, and Shavi had a few hours to locate every possible loophole and find every creative way to lie, cheat and deceive so that the income-tax liability was as close to zero as possible.

As Shavi opened the box file, he wondered why he felt such an abiding sense of despair.

Ruth Gallagher broke off from her shift in the old people’s home to sneak outside for a little cry. The owners salted away most of the vast amounts of cash paid by the loving relatives and left the poor occupants to survive — or not — on a subsistence diet, drugged up with Valium, staring vacantly at daytime TV.

Another one had died that morning, and it had been Ruth’s job to clean the bedroom. She was always cleaning bedrooms. They came and went with remarkable regularity, a production line shipping them to the afterlife. No point getting to know them; they were too drugged for any conversation. The relatives didn’t really care; it made the visits so much easier.

Ruth dried her eyes. No point being miserable. It was a life, wasn’t it?

And Hunter sat in the briefing, overcome with a strange feeling of deja vu. The map on the wall showed the former Yugoslavia, little flags signifying the rebel forces threatening to break the fragile peace.

‘OK,’ he said wearily, ‘who do you want me to kill this time?’ while entertaining an odd thought of a world where he was a force for life, not death.

In a quiet, dusty room in Brasenose, Hal huddled against a door, wondering why he was such a failure. He grew tense as footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, then rigid when they stopped at the door.

‘Open up.’ A familiar woman’s voice.

Hal flinched. He could pretend that the room was empty, but what good would it do? She’d come in anyway. He’d been caught, might as well own up. After all, there was nowhere left to run.

When he opened the door, Catherine Manning stood there, swathed in her expensive furs. ‘Ms Manning,’ Hal stuttered. ‘Were you looking for me?’ He caught himself when he saw Manning’s glassy eyes and the disturbing waxy sheen across her face; she looked oddly like a marionette.

Her mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, and when a sound finally did come out it was no longer her voice. ‘The strain has been too much for this form. It cannot hold.’

Hal took a step backwards at the eeriness of a man’s voice emanating from Manning’s full, feminine lips.

Suddenly Manning collapsed, and as she fell to the floor she wasn’t like a flesh and blood woman at all. Her body appeared to be made of paper, or perhaps just skin, folding up on itself. What was left of her lay on the floor, flat and wrinkled and twisted, like a discarded set of clothes.

And where she had been, someone else now stood. At first, the face appeared to swim before Hal’s eyes and he had fleeting images of people he thought he knew and probably disliked, before the visage settled down to that of a stern-faced man dressed in flowing scarlet robes.

‘Who are you?’ Hal gasped.

‘In the time of the tribes, I was known as Dian Cecht of the Court of the Final Word, wise man, healer, now the last of the Tuatha De Danann.’ The bitterness in his voice made Hal wince.

‘Ms Manning-’

‘She thought she could use me for her ends. I was using her for mine. I rode her body and her mind through these Fixed Lands, avoiding the notice of the Devourer of All Things, preparing for this moment.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Hal knew that he sounded like an idiot, but he didn’t know what else to say.

‘Your kind have long been an interest of mine,’ Dian Cecht said in a manner that on the surface appeared quite unassuming, but Hal found distinctly menacing. ‘I know how you work. Inside and out. Down to the smallest particle. Though many of my kind had a strange affection for Fragile Creatures, I was not one of them. I saw in you something else: a chance for the Golden Ones to survive in a place that had grown tired of them.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ Hal said weakly.

‘In you lies the last hope of my people, and the last hope of your own. Are you ready for the task that lies before you?’

Hal stared blankly at Dian Cecht for a moment, then nodded.

‘Then come.’ Dian Cecht led Hal out into the corridor. ‘You are a strange people,’ Dian Cecht continued. ‘I told a Sister of Dragons what was planned. I needed her to be there, at the end, so that the Devourer of All Things would not suspect. And she kept the secret well, even though it meant her suffering.’ Dian Cecht clearly could not understand Sophie’s sacrifice.

Several feet away, a shimmering wall of blue ran from wall to wall.

‘What’s that?’ Hal asked.

‘Though it took all my abilities, I have closed this small space off from Existence. It lies beyond the world on the other side of the wall, yet is still a part of it. But only for a short while. And here the Devourer of All Things has no power to see.’ Dian Cecht strode ahead, so that Hal had to skip to keep up.

The god led Hal to the research rooms where Kirkham had carried out most of his experiments into finding a way to cross over to T’ir n’a n’Og. They came to the Plexiglas window that looked on to the lab where Glenning had turned to a pile of dust after returning from his trip to the other side, and Hal was surprised to see it awash with a brilliant blue light. The stately bluestone that had been brutally ripped from Stonehenge was glowing with the sapphire radiance.

‘It never stopped working,’ Hal said in amazement. After Glenning’s death, no one had felt the need to return to the labs down here. It was considered a failed experiment and everyone had more important things on their minds.

The sheer power coming off the megalith gave Hal pause. ‘That’s why,’ he said to himself. Then to Dian Cecht: ‘Oxford was flitting in and out of the Otherworld because of this stone! The power must have been infusing the whole city!’

The door opened of its own accord and Dian Cecht stepped into the blue world. Hal followed.

‘He is here,’ Dian Cecht said. ‘He is in your hands now.’

Standing nearby was the giant who had appeared to Hal in the Grove behind Magdalen what seemed like so long ago. The Caretaker held the Wayfinder lantern aloft, and when he smiled warmly, Hal felt all the tension leave his muscles. ‘I knew you would be here, now, Brother of Dragons,’ the Caretaker said warmly. ‘This lantern will light your way, as it has done for many of your kind before you.’

As Hal’s eyes adjusted to the megalith’s flooding light, he realised that there was something else in the room. Coiled around the walls was an enormous Fabulous Beast that appeared to be made of the blue energy, yet which had solidity and weight. Its sapphire eyes were fixed firmly on him, and to Hal they appeared not like those of a beast at all, but wise and calm and wonderful. Hal had no idea how it could have entered that enclosed space.

And standing in the sinuous loops of its tail was a woman, her own eyes as blue as the Fabulous Beast’s; skin pale, hair black. ‘This is your time, Brother of Dragons.’ It was the woman who had spoken, but the voice was deep, male and slightly sibilant.

All eyes were on him. Hal looked from one to the other and realised that he was being asked something of great importance.

‘Do you understand your responsibilities, Brother of Dragons?’ the Caretaker asked.

‘Yes. I haven’t lived up to them,’ Hal admitted. ‘I’m sorry…’ He caught himself and then added honestly, ‘I think I’m too much of a coward for this job.’

‘Everyone has a different strength,’ the woman said. ‘You have used yours effectively.’

Energy arced across the room. The power emanating from the bluestone was growing more intense. Hal stood entranced by the light show for a moment before adding, ‘You’re talking about the code, in the painting.’ He sighed. ‘I know who the king is now. But it’s too late.’

‘It is never too late,’ the Caretaker said firmly. ‘The signs were left for you, and you alone, to prepare you for this moment.’

‘Me?’ Hal said, puzzled.

‘You have a choice,’ the woman added. ‘You may turn away now and give all of Existence up to the Devourer of All Things. Or you must find the king and bring him back here, but the sacrifice you make will be great indeed.’

‘You’re saying I have to die,’ Hal said. Not far from the megalith, the Blue Fire had begun to take on some kind of shape.

The Caretaker stepped forward and, for a second, Hal felt as if he was in the presence of his father. ‘Nothing dies. Nothing new is created, nothing is destroyed. It is simply transformed.’

‘And he’s not dead? The king?’

The Caretaker smiled once more, reassuringly. ‘Nothing dies.’

‘He is lost,’ the woman said, as if she could read Hal’s mind. ‘In distant times, in a faraway place, his memory fading. He will not find his way home without your guidance.’

‘How can I do that?’

The Blue Fire had now formed itself into a rectangle, like a burning doorway in the air. The Caretaker stood next to it, holding the Wayfinder as if to light the way through; the lantern’s flame surged and flickered and tugged towards the door.

‘You must give up your mortal form,’ the woman answered. ‘Become one with the Pendragon Spirit.’

‘In that way,’ the Caretaker continued, ‘you may pass through this door to the source of all things. You will become a part of Existence. You will reach through all time, all space. And for the briefest of moments you will have subtle influence. A mere tug, but it may be enough to direct the king towards this place.’

‘You’re saying it’s like becoming… part of God?’ Hal’s mind spun.

‘Everything rests with you, Brother of Dragons.’ Dian Cecht was grim-faced. ‘Only the king can defeat the Devourer of All Things. Only he can save my people and guide your own race back to the upward path. And only you can call him.’

In a moment of utter clarity, Hal understood exactly what his sacrifice would mean: he would be converted into energy, a wavelength, a thought, a message to the past and the future. And then he would be gone, absorbed into the background energy of the universe. It was the ultimate sacrifice. Yet for the briefest time, he would be a conscious part of the underlying intelligence of Existence, and he would be able to search the twists and turns of reality for the man who would be the ultimate representation of the Pendragon Spirit. The Champion of Life, the only one who could defeat the embodiment of Anti-Life. And Hal would be a part of that champion, and a part of all the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who had ever existed across the millennia.

After all his failures and his weaknesses, here was his chance to redeem himself, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find the true strength inside him. Briefly, he had a vision of himself flashing back across time, appearing to Poussin to plant the message that he would eventually find in his real life, manifesting to the Dilettante Society and all the others he would guide so that at this point in time he would have already assimilated the information he needed to make his choice.

In truth, he had made the decision long ago.

The doorway was crystal clear now, manifested and held in place by the combined power of the Caretaker and the Fabulous Beast.

‘Will you accept this quest, Brother of Dragons?’ the Caretaker asked.

Hal smiled and stepped towards the light.

‘ We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.’ Martin Luther King, Jr.