The Hounds of Avalon tda-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  ‘There are people here who could help.’ Caitlin’s face was filled with desperation. ‘Will you at least try?’

  Sophie couldn’t refuse her. ‘All right, I’ll do what I can. But there could be risks. There’s always a price to pay, and the more you’re after, the bigger the price.’

  ‘I’ll do anything,’ Caitlin said. ‘I’ll pay any price.’

  Sophie hoped those words wouldn’t come back to haunt Caitlin.

  During her stay in the Court of Soul’s Ease, Caitlin had kept her ears open to the whispers that washed back and forth through the city like a tide. She had learned of the many wonders that existed there, some obvious, some hidden behind the scenes, suggested but never discussed. One such was the Tower of the Four Winds.

  Night had fallen by the time they located the mysterious tower in the section of the court that resembled the Moorish quarter of a Spanish city: white stone, minarets, ornate awnings and fragrant smoke blowing in the warm breeze. It lay high up the hillside, and when Sophie turned to look back over the court spread out below her, the sight took her breath away. Tiny white lights had sprung up everywhere, like fireflies in the dark; there were candles in windows and lanterns hanging over shops along the streets, tiny suns holding back the night. It was magical. If the circumstances had been different, Sophie knew she could have whiled away many days in a place of so many wonders, large and small.

  The tower stood in a walled garden filled with palms and orange trees and small, spiky shrubs. A white-stone path wound through the vegetation. More lanterns hung from the trees, attracting moths in clouds. The gate was unlocked.

  Caitlin caught Sophie’s arm. ‘Let’s go carefully.’

  ‘Why? Guard dogs?’

  ‘I’ve heard some strange things. The one who lives here might be dangerous. There are stories about him…’ She caught herself. ‘Let’s just be careful.’

  ‘Do you want me to go first?’

  ‘I’m not a complete invalid,’ Caitlin snapped, instantly regretting her tone. ‘I’m sorry. All this… I’m on edge.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Sophie smiled, but she was growing increasingly concerned about Caitlin’s desire to make amends for her perceived mistakes.

  The tower was constructed from ivory, glass and gold, each element merging into the other with a delicate architectural sensibility that instilled a quiet wonder. The path led to a mahogany door covered with iron studs. A bell-pull hung beside it. Caitlin hesitated and then grabbed the pull to announce their presence.

  For a long minute there was no reply. Then, gradually, a rhythmic hissing rose up from the vegetation on either side of the path. As Sophie and Caitlin waited with thumping hearts, snakes slithered on to the path and headed towards them. The serpents glowed so brightly that the women couldn’t be sure if they really existed or if they were constructed of green and red light.

  Sophie removed her spear from the harness on her back, though she wasn’t at all sure it would have much effect on the snakes if it came to it.

  The snakes moved quickly along the path and then split into two groups, curving around on either side of Caitlin and Sophie. They continued up the sheer, slick walls of the tower and came together over the top of the door, where they began to crawl into each other’s mouths. The serpents merged, becoming larger, until finally one huge snake undulated down to bring its eyes on a level with Caitlin and Sophie’s. They glittered red with a disturbing intelligence.

  ‘Speak your business,’ the snake said with a soft sibilance.

  ‘A Sister of Dragons and a Fragile Creature are seeking the wisdom of Math,’ Caitlin said.

  There was a brief pause before the serpent replied, ‘That name has not been heard since the days of the tribes.’

  ‘But it still holds, does it not?’ Caitlin persisted. ‘Math, great magician, brother of the goddess Don. He was a friend to Fragile Creatures in times past.’

  ‘There are no times past,’ the snake hissed. Another pause. Then: ‘Enter, and prove yourself worthy to stand before the Seer of the Seven Worlds.’

  With a fizz, the snake dissolved into tiny balls of light that drifted away on the breeze. A second later, the studded door swung open, releasing a heady aroma of incense.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Sophie whispered.

  ‘Nor me. When they’re not being pompous, these gods are more than a little sneaky.’

  Caitlin stepped over the threshold and made her way to a staircase that wound upwards around the inside of the walls. It was lit intermittently by tiny lanterns, but there were still many troubling pools of shadows. The silence that filled the tower was not peaceful; it felt as if some loud bell was just about to toll.

  Caitlin and Sophie moved hesitantly up the stairs, each trailing a hand along the cool wall for support. When they had reached what they guessed was the halfway mark, the atmosphere became oppressive.

  ‘Can you feel it?’ Sophie asked. ‘Something’s coming.’

  A sound like the wind through leaves echoed softly at first from further up the tower, drawing closer. Caitlin and Sophie waited with mounting apprehension, until the first signs of something approaching were indicated by undulating shadows cast by the flickering lanterns.

  ‘More snakes,’ Caitlin said. ‘Lots of them.’

  As they rounded the next bend in the stairway, Caitlin and Sophie saw that these weren’t the light-snakes they had encountered at the foot of the tower, but hard-scaled, sharp-fanged serpents that were undoubtedly real. Yet they had an otherworldly ambience that made them even more menacing. Several were as broad as Sophie’s body, their tails lost in the dim recesses of the upper tower, but the majority ranged from the width of an arm to barely larger than a finger, shimmering greens and scarlets and golds, with strange black patterns along their skin that resembled runes. There were so many snakes that they filled the stairway up to Sophie’s waist, a slow-moving tidal wave that would easily engulf the two women.

  Sophie grabbed Caitlin’s arm. ‘Come on. We have to go down.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Caitlin said desperately. ‘This is our one chance. If we go down, he’ll never let us back up again.’ She turned to Sophie, her face hard and determined. ‘You go. You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘You’re insane! Look at them.’

  The nearest snake had the hood of a cobra, but strange alien growths like mushrooms lined its back. It reared up to bare its fangs, venom sizzling where it splashed on the steps.

  ‘You’ll never survive one bite,’ Sophie pressed.

  Caitlin surveyed the mass of writhing bodies, almost close enough to touch now. Then she said firmly, ‘It’s a test. Math wants to see if we’re up to the honour of meeting him.’

  ‘Yes, dead or alive, it would seem.’

  The nearest snake moved within striking range. Caitlin made her decision and then lay flat on the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sophie said incredulously.

  ‘He said we had to prove we’re worthy. He wants us on our bellies, supplicating.’

  ‘You’re mad.’ Sophie looked from Caitlin to the snakes and then back down the stairs. Then she recalled what she and Mallory had had to go through in the temple beneath Cadbury Hill and knew that Caitlin was right. Cursing under her breath, she threw herself down. ‘If I survive I’m never going to forgive you for this.’ She closed her eyes and pressed her face hard into the cold ivory of the steps.

  The serpents reached her a second later, a writhing mass pressing down so hard that Sophie felt she might suffocate. The sensation of constant movement above her made the bile rise in her throat. Their skin was dry against her face, forcing their way through her hair, wriggling past her cheeks, under her nose, forcing her lips apart with their tiny bodies, pressing against her eyes.

  A minute later she was drowning beneath a sea of serpents, her face crushed into the hard steps, blood on her lips, in her mouth. In a desperate attempt to distract herself from the horror of what was happening,
she grunted rhythms in her throat, made up tunes in her head, anything that might take her mind away.

  And then the claustrophobia set in and she began to choke, but the weight above her was so great that she couldn’t have lifted herself up from the steps if she tried. Panic rammed rational thoughts aside and she knew, in that instant, how easy it would be to go insane.

  The snakes continued to come for what felt like hours, until Sophie couldn’t believe there were so many snakes in all the worlds. Just when she thought her last breath was about to give out, the mass above her grew lighter, and then quickly receded.

  Finally, she was on her knees, choking and spitting, unable to believe that she hadn’t received one bite. Caitlin was beside her in the same state, yet strangely smiling. She grabbed Sophie’s arm and indicated down the stairs in the direction the serpents had gone. Sophie looked around, but there were no snakes to be seen anywhere.

  ‘You’re not telling me that was all in my mind,’ Sophie choked.

  ‘It was real all right,’ Caitlin said. ‘And we survived.’

  After a moment gathering themselves, they started back up the winding stairway. The aroma of incense grew stronger, and eventually the stairway opened out into a room that covered the whole floor at the very top of the tower. Four windows at the cardinal points looked out over the glittering lights of the dreaming city. In front of each sat a creature that resembled an animal, but had the same otherworldly quality as the snakes — a gleam of intelligence in the eye, or an odd movement of the mouth as if it was muttering to itself, or an unusual size.

  There was an enormous boar, fat and bristling, its piggy eyes green and furious; a hawk that was almost as big as Sophie; a salmon, again as big as a person, sitting in a large wooden chair, its tail flapping against the wooden floorboards; and a bear, watching them contemptuously. All were fastened in place by an iron chain attached to a ring bolted to the floor. The four beasts radiated an air of menace that made Sophie and Caitlin wary of venturing too close.

  Purple drapes covered with gold and silver magical symbols lined the walls between each window, and the floorboards were marked with similar magical symbols. A brazier gave off the heavy incense, while other mystical objects stood around. Several lanterns burning with a dull red light hung on chains from the ceiling; a brass telescope, maps and charts lay on a table, flanked by books and flasks of philtres.

  And in the centre of the room, nearly seven feet tall, stood Math. Long black robes covered his entire body and on his head, protruding from a four-holed cowl, was a brass mask with a different face in each of the holes: a boar, a falcon, a salmon and a bear.

  ‘You survived the test,’ he said from the mask of the boar, with a voice that was strangely gruff. ‘I would have expected no less from a Sister of Dragons. But from a Fragile Creature?’ He tilted the mask towards Caitlin. It would have been easy to wilt under the cold eyes just visible behind it, but Caitlin held her head proudly.

  ‘We have come to ask a favour of you,’ Caitlin said.

  ‘A boon?’ Math was clearly intrigued by this. ‘For you — the Fragile Creature?’

  ‘For my friend,’ Sophie interjected, ‘who was once a Sister of Dragons, too.’

  ‘Ah.’ The brass mask nodded and Sophie was disturbed to see the real boar at its window nodding in time. Math’s hands protruded from the voluminous sleeves as he brought his fingertips together; they were brown and scabrous, as if they had been severely burned. ‘And what would this boon be?’

  ‘I wish…’ Caitlin took a breath before steeling herself to continue. ‘I wish to have the Pendragon Spirit within me once again.’

  Math grew rigid. With a soft whisper, the mask rotated so that the salmon’s features faced them. When he spoke, his voice had changed, too, and was now soft and liquid, somehow. ‘You ask me to make you a Sister of Dragons again? Impossible! That is a gift that can only come from Existence.’

  ‘You have to!’ Caitlin’s voice cracked.

  The eerie mask turned again until the face of the bear appeared. ‘You dare raise your voice to me!’ Math roared. Caitlin took a step back. Behind Math, the bear was straining at his chain, eager to break free to tear Caitlin to pieces.

  Caitlin, though, was undeterred. She looked to Sophie with tears in her eyes. ‘Please.’

  ‘We’re sorry if we’ve offended you,’ Sophie said. ‘My friend didn’t mean it. She came here because she heard you were the greatest magician in the Court of Soul’s Ease, and if you can’t help her, no one else can.’

  There was a long period of silence that ended with the appearance of the falcon’s face. ‘I can petition Existence on your behalf. But there are dangers, even for one such as me. I will demand a fine price to take such a step.’ There was a subtle slyness to his words.

  ‘Anything,’ Caitlin said before Sophie could stop her.

  If she could penetrate the mask, Sophie knew she would see Math smiling. He turned his head in her direction. ‘I ask for very little,’ he said, ‘but it is this: a simple memory from a Sister of Dragons. A precious memory, a rare and unique thing. But it will not be missed.’

  Caitlin could now see the danger, but it was too late. ‘I’m the one who should be-’ she began, but Math waved her silent with a burned hand.

  He pointed a long, scarred finger at Sophie and said, ‘You must agree. One simple memory.’

  ‘What does it mean if I give it to you?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘It will be gone from you for ever, nevermore to be recalled. But what is a memory? An ephemeral thing.’

  Sophie’s heart was pounding. ‘Which memory?’ Sophie asked hesitantly.

  ‘The memory of your first meeting with the one you love.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Caitlin moaned.

  Sophie felt sick. The image of Mallory sitting with her in a camp in Salisbury flashed through her mind, the smells, the sounds, his expression, the way she had felt disoriented and happy and sexy, realising the near-instant attraction. All that, gone for good; it would be like losing a physical part of her. But then she looked at Caitlin and saw her desolation, and thought of what good they both could do; of the chance they had to save the human race. She didn’t really have a choice.

  ‘All right,’ she said. She was aware of another secret smile beneath the mask, and then Math reached out his fingers and brushed her forehead. It felt like a steel hook was squirming in her brain. As he pulled back his fingers, there was a flash of intense pain and she screamed. A blue spark followed his fingers. Math guided it to the table where he uncorked a flask. He directed the spark inside before re-corking it hastily.

  ‘Sophie, thank you,’ Caitlin said. Her face was filled with guilt, but beneath it lay a desperate hope.

  Sophie didn’t hear. She was trying to recall her first meeting with Mallory, but there was a horrible black hole in her mind that refused to budge however much she poked and prodded it. And she realised with a note of panic that she no longer knew why she loved Mallory, just that she did; it felt like coming into a movie twenty minutes after the start.

  Math made them gather near to him within a protective circle. Candles guttered on the circumference in front of each of the windows. The animals all strained at their chains. Slowly, and with a voice that didn’t appear to come from any of the faces, Math began a chant in a language Sophie and Caitlin didn’t recognise. It hurt their ears when they attempted to focus on any of the words. The god continued for five minutes, his voice rising and falling but growing continually louder. By the end he was shouting so loudly that Sophie and Caitlin covered their ears. A great wind blew into the room, snuffing out the candles’ flames one by one. Each of the beasts began to make a terrible howling sound that could not have come from any animal. The noise rose up to the roof until it seemed to have a life of its own and rushed around the room with the wind. The beasts tore at their chains and threw themselves back and forth in a furious desire to break free.

  Math stopped his chanting and pointed out of
the western window. ‘Look!’ he roared above the cacophony.

  Sophie and Caitlin both turned and, a second later, not knowing what they had seen, they plunged into unconsciousness.

  When they awoke, an uncommon stillness lay across the room. The four beasts cowered against the windows and Math was slumped in a chair at the table as if he had no strength left within him.

  ‘It is as I said: the Pendragon Spirit cannot be brought into this Fragile Creature,’ he said flatly through the falcon mask.

  ‘That’s it?’ Caitlin said. ‘Then this was all for nothing?’

  ‘No.’ Math levered himself to his feet, his power slowly returning. ‘There is still hope for you. You are a child of Existence, and like all of your kind you have the potential to be greater. The Pendragon Spirit shall come to you again.’

  Sophie thought Caitlin might faint at this news. ‘When?’ she said desperately. ‘Soon?’

  ‘When you have proved yourself ready,’ Math replied.

  Caitlin thought about this for a second, then turned to Sophie. ‘I have to do what I can to prove I’m worthy. Don’t stop me doing this, all right?’

  Not knowing what Caitlin was planning, Sophie agreed, but had a suspicion that she was not going to like it.

  ‘I know it’s possible for the gods to become a part of Fragile Creatures,’ Caitlin began. ‘You can enter us. Possess us.’

  ‘Some can,’ Math said.

  ‘I know this,’ Caitlin said. ‘And I know which one I want inside me. I have a bond with her. I know her power and I can use it in what we’ve got coming.’ She took a deep breath and then said, ‘I want you to contact the Morrigan, and I want you to make her become part of me.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ Sophie said. ‘You can’t seriously be asking for that.’

  ‘I can, and I am,’ Caitlin said defiantly.

  ‘Don’t you understand? She’s the goddess of death, war, bloodshed-’

  ‘And sex, creativity, new life,’ Caitlin countered impatiently.

  ‘You won’t be able to control her — she’ll control you. She’s the most unpredictable, the most dangerous… I’m very skilled in the Craft, but even I’m careful about calling on the Morrigan.’