The Hounds of Avalon tda-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  ‘Trust me, Sophie, we’ve got a bond, her and me. I’ve been to hell and back in my life. I know exactly what the Morrigan is about, believe me. This is my only chance to do something that might help. As some weak, Fragile Creature, I’m worthless-’

  ‘Not true.’

  ‘It is in the context of what’s coming up. You know that’s right. You know it. You’re going to need all the help you can get.’

  Sophie relented a little. ‘I still think it’s a mistake.’

  ‘You’ll change your mind. We’re going to make a good team — a witch and a warrior.’ Caitlin turned to Math. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘The Dark Sister might choose a host who has the Pendragon Spirit inside her. But why should she bond with a Fragile Creature?’ At its window, the boar snorted and stamped its hooves impatiently.

  ‘Tell her there’ll be blood and death on an epic scale. There’ll be a war to end all wars, and I’ll be in the thick of it.’

  Math raised one twisted hand to the mouth of his boar mask in silent consideration and then turned to his table. He selected two phials, one filled with red dust, the other with a granular black powder. He took a pinch of each and flung them on to the brazier.

  The stench of the smoke made Sophie grip her nose in disgust; it smelled of charnel houses, of bonfires after the battle, of iron and bone. Math turned to the west once again and uttered a word of power that left Sophie staggering. An instant later, an unearthly silence fell on the tower, dead air, no echoes even when she dragged her boot over the floorboards.

  An overpowering sense that something was coming gripped Sophie, but this was not the anticipation she had felt when Math had called for the Pendragon Spirit. This time she felt dread, every fibre urging her to flee.

  A cloud, blacker even than the night sky, was visible through the western window. It surged towards the tower with a rising sound like thunder, swept around it, then rushed in through all four windows at once with a deafening, wild movement. Crows, hundreds, thousands of them. Sophie threw herself backwards, almost falling down the stairs. The crows filled the room in a dense wall of black, flapping wings.

  From the floor, her hands covering her head, Sophie caught occasional glimpses of Caitlin. It looked as if the birds were attacking her, pecking at her eyes, her face, trying to batter their way into her stomach. Sophie called out to her, but her voice was nothing beside the tumult.

  After barely more than a minute, the crows departed. As she pulled herself to her feet, Sophie expected to see Caitlin’s ragged corpse lying broken on the floor. Instead, her friend stood erect and unharmed, radiating a fierce beauty and a dark power that made her almost impossible to look upon. On her shoulder sat the biggest crow Sophie had ever seen, its black, beady gaze heavy upon her.

  ‘Are you… are you OK?’ Sophie ventured.

  Caitlin answered with a cold glint in her eyes and an even colder smile.

  Night had transformed Oxford into a magical city as Hal made his way into the centre. Candlelight flickered in many windows and the street lamps made the snow glitter on the roads and rooftops, occasionally illuminating stray snowflakes drifting down.

  One hour ago, he had met with Samantha. Hal had kept a brave face while she handed over notes on the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons that she had copied from Reid’s files. They spoke of links to the Arthurian myths and to a greater mystery that intrigued Hal immensely.

  Samantha had risked everything to get the information and Hal knew she had expected a greater show of gratitude from him. But if he had released even a hint of emotion, everything inside him would have come out in a deluge that he would have regretted for the rest of his life. Instead, he had simply promised to hand the notes over to Hunter as soon as he returned, and then took his leave.

  He couldn’t go back to a room that now felt so small and cold, so he had decided to walk off his sadness, and now he was glad he had. There was something magical in every aspect of the city, and he felt as if he had been allowed a glimpse of the secret spark at the heart of the mundane.

  He kicked up flurries of snow as he walked, wishing Hunter was there to experience it with him. He couldn’t blame Hunter for Samantha’s action; they were the two most important people in his life and if he was completely objective they probably deserved each other. Hal missed his friend; for all his licentiousness, there was a poetry to Hunter that Hal admired because he knew he lacked it himself. He had the sneaking feeling that Hunter always saw the secret spark, while Hal only ever saw the mundane.

  He was worried for Hunter’s safety. There had been no official news from the front line, but rumours had started to circulate that things had gone badly. There were always rumours running wild in the incestuous Government community, and most of them usually turned out to be false, but this one gelled with expectation. Some said that the General and the top brass had flown back from the front early and were now sequestered in the War Room ensconced in the bowels of Magdalen’s New Library. Others said that the General had already shot himself with a silver bullet and the enemy was only ten miles from the city limits. There was talk of mass casualties, of a fifth column within the city itself, even that the enemy’s commander had already agreed terms with the Government and was preparing to take over.

  His thoughts were disrupted by a sparkling trail that gleamed across the sky from one row of rooftops to another. It looked at first like a jet’s vapour trail, and as he watched the sparkles broke up and drifted away. A second or two later, another trail appeared further down the street, and at the head of it was a glowing golden light, moving slowly. It turned sharply and moved towards Hal, yet Hal felt no fear, only an incipient wonder.

  As it neared, Hal was amazed to see a figure about the size of a ten-year-old boy at the centre of the golden light, flying gracefully. The boy swooped down and circled Hal at a distance of a few feet, examining him curiously. He wore what appeared to be a baggy golden romper suit, gloves and boots that looked to be as soft as socks with long toes that flapped as he flew. Over his head was a mask that looked like a nightcap that had been pulled down too far, with eye-holes cut into it.

  ‘Well I never,’ the boy said in amazement. ‘A Brother of Dragons.’ Then: ‘Please. You must help me.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Hal was amazed that he had reached such a state that nothing surprised him any more.

  ‘I have many names, like all who live in the Land of Always Summer, and, as you are no doubt aware, my Name of Names must never be revealed. But you may call me Petronus.’ He bobbed on the currents, growing more anxious. ‘Come.’ He gestured for Hal to follow. ‘Help me.’

  Hal didn’t sense any threat from the strange boy and so reluctantly followed him into a tiny alley between two shops. At the far end was a tiny golden glow in the snow.

  ‘Help her. Please,’ Petronus said desperately.

  The fading light was coming from a tiny winged woman. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow.

  ‘A Fragile Creature attacked her,’ Petronus said desperately. ‘Fired its weapon at her as she flew on the night winds.’

  One of the guards, Hal guessed; they always had been trigger-happy. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You are a Brother of Dragons,’ Petronus said.

  Hal was on the brink of brushing the boy away, but the tiny woman’s fragile state called out to him. Hesitantly, he scooped her up to try to warm her in his hands. As he did so, a blue spark burst from him and crackled into the frail body. Instantly, the golden light began to grow stronger.

  ‘You have saved her!’ Petronus sounded on the brink of tears.

  The woman recovered quickly, and soon she was standing on Hal’s palm, blowing him a kiss. Then she waved a cautionary finger at Petronus, and with a twirl shot up into the sky, trailing stardust behind her.

  Hal was at first struck dumb by what had happened, but then he quickly grew irritated. ‘Look, what are you?’ he said.

  ‘How rude!’ Petronus swooped high into the ai
r before drifting back down from side to side like a leaf falling from a tree.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hal said, stamping his feet to keep warm. The memory of the blue spark troubled him greatly. ‘But why are you here?’

  ‘Why? Why not? This is my home!’

  ‘Oxford?’

  ‘No, silly! I live beyond the furthest star, on the other side of the mirror, in the misty vale where the golden apples grow. If you want to be poetic.’

  Hal considered this comment for a moment, sieving through the little he had gleaned of mythology. ‘The Otherworld?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘That is another name for it, as is T’ir n’a n’Og. There are names and names and names, and when you are as old as I am you’ll realise that names are meaningless, for they never really capture what a thing is.’

  ‘But this isn’t Otherworld,’ Hal protested. ‘This is… the world.’

  Petronus laughed. ‘How ridiculous! I am here, so it must be the Land of Always Summer.’

  Hal looked around. ‘But it’s winter.’

  ‘Then that proves the matter, for the Otherworld is a land of contradictions.’ Petronus spotted the tiny woman’s glimmer of golden light high over the rooftops. ‘My friend! I must go!’

  ‘Wait! How do you know I’m a Brother of Dragons?’ Hal asked.

  ‘So many questions! How does anyone know? It’s as plain as the nose on your face. You’re a blazing Blue Fire, like a little star come down to earth.’ Petronus pulled up his mask to reveal slanted eyes filled with the wildness of nature, and pointed pixie ears. He gave Hal a wink, pulled down the mask and then soared high into the sky and was gone.

  Though he felt as if he was walking through a dream, Hal’s mind was racing. What Petronus had said about being in Otherworld gelled with what he had been told by the little people he had heard singing the other night. What could it possibly mean?

  It wasn’t the only matter preying on his mind. Every time he heard someone or something call him a Brother of Dragons, it filled him with an unaccountable panic. Those words hinted at a future where he would have to give up the quiet, thoughtful life he had made for himself. It was a future where chaos ruled and anything could happen, where there were no certainties, no breakfast at seven-thirty, no lunch at one, no dinner at seven, no Sundays off, or sitting back with a good book as twilight fell. The name spoke of sacrifice and bloodshed and death and upheaval and all manner of unpleasantness, of the kind of life in which Hunter would probably revel, and which consequently was anathema to Hal. If it was true that he had somehow been selected by a Higher Power to be a defender of humanity, then that Higher Power had certainly got it wrong, for he had nothing whatsoever to offer.

  Lost to his thoughts, Hal wandered down a side street off St Aldate’s to cut through to one of his regular haunts. It was a familiar route, but this time he was confronted by a pub he had never seen before. It looked oddly quaint and historical in a slightly unrealistic way, as though it had been prepared for a film set. Through bottle-glass windows filtered the ruddy glow of a fire and the gleam of lanterns, with a great many deep shadows in the areas between them. The warped glass did not allow a clear view inside, though there were clearly many drinkers within. Their hubbub leaked out through the ancient, scarred oak door. The second storey overhung the first in a Tudor style, complete with the requisite black beams and white paint, and from it hung a sign that said ‘The Hunter’s Moon’, with a picture of a full moon partially obscured by cloud and what appeared to be a man with a wolf’s head.

  It looked surprisingly inviting, and so Hal ventured in without a second thought. It was only when the door had banged to behind him that he realised his mistake. The occupants of the pub were a strange, otherworldly group. There was a man as thin as a needle, nearly seven feet tall, wearing a stovepipe hat that made him even taller, his fingers so long and thin that they looked as if they were made of stretched toffee; a woman with long blonde hair that moved with a life of its own — she had a seductive look about her, but mad, dangerous eyes; a giant of a man wearing furs and a battered wide-brimmed hat, a string of conies around his neck and a blunderbuss hanging from his belt; another woman as bent, twisted and wrinkled as a crone from a fairy story, black shawl and white cap, a black cat perched on her shoulder, her cackle like the rattle of stones on a coffin; and more, all odd and out of place. Further towards the back, the revellers were even more bizarre; Hal glimpsed horns and scales and forked tails.

  ‘Bless my soul, it’s a Brother of Dragons!’ the tall, thin man said.

  Before Hal could back out, he was grabbed by numerous hands and dragged to the bar where the landlord loomed, overweight and black-bearded, his arms as thick as telegraph poles, both of them covered with tattoos of disturbing symbols.

  ‘Pour the lad a drink, Drogoff!’ someone called. Another agreed raucously, and the landlord reluctantly served up a tankard of foaming ale that was almost as big as Hal’s head.

  ‘Ooo, it ain’t often we get someone like a Brother of Dragons in here,’ the crone cackled. ‘We’s honoured.’

  ‘What is this place?’ Despite the dreamlike sensation that gripped him, Hal was beginning to feel the first pangs of incipient panic.

  The big bear of a man with the blunderbuss levered himself out of his chair and loomed over Hal. ‘Why, it’s The Hunter’s Moon, good brother. Best inn in all of the Far Lands.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s real or not any more,’ Hal said. His route to the door was blocked by more strange characters crowding around to see the new arrival. They were curious, but there was also unmistakable good will towards him, which made Hal feel a little more at ease.

  ‘The only real stuff’s in ’ere,’ the crone said, tapping the side of her head. ‘We make the rest of it ’ow we want it to be. Everybody knows that.’ With shaking hands, she grabbed a tiny goblet from the bar and knocked the contents back with gusto.

  ‘Steady on, Mother,’ the man in the stovepipe said. ‘The poor lad’s a bit disoriented. You know how it is when they first venture into the Far Lands. Give him room to breathe.’

  The woman with the snaking hair glided forward, her hypnotic eyes burning into Hal. ‘Even Jack, Giant Killer, was adrift in his first days in Faerie,’ she said sibilantly. She moved a rotating finger slowly towards Hal’s temple, until the blunderbuss man gripped her wrist tightly. The woman hissed at him like a serpent, then pushed her way to the back of the bar.

  ‘Have to watch yourself round here, good brother. You’re not at home any more. There are many dangers, if you don’t know what you’re doing.’ The blunderbuss man clapped Hal heartily on the back. ‘Come on, drink up!’ he roared. ‘Join in the fun! I’m Bearskin. The fellow in the hat is Shadow John and this is Mother Mary.’

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ Hal said. ‘I was walking through my home town, and then somehow I ended up here.’

  ‘That happens sometimes,’ Shadow John said, resting his long-fingered hands on a silver-topped cane. ‘There are thin places between the Fixed Lands and Faerie. Sometimes Fragile Creatures can just fall through, without even making the transition-’

  ‘Not just Fragile Creatures.’ A new person had appeared on the fringes of the group who resembled nothing so much as a medieval woodcut of the devil, complete with red-tinted skin, horns, a goatee beard, furry animal legs and cloven hooves. ‘One day I dropped right out of the Far Lands. I had to walk halfway across the Fixed Lands before I found my way back. It was a close call, I tell you. They can be a savage lot when their ire is raised. Followed my footprints up hill and down dale, they did, before I managed to slip back.’

  Bearskin thrust the tankard into Hal’s hand and encouraged him to drink with the exhortation, ‘All given freely and without obligation.’ Everyone laughed raucously, though Hal didn’t get the joke.

  The beer was the best he had ever tasted, with a vast complexity of subtle flavours and delicate aromas, but after less than a quarter of the tankard he was alrea
dy feeling heady. Yet while his conscious mind flirted with drunkenness, it unleashed his subconscious to work overtime making connections that began to unveil a hidden picture. Hal decided that here was an opportunity he should seize to glean as much information as he could. So much time and energy had been expended by several ministries in the search for the nature of the Otherworld and what had happened in the days before and after the Fall, and they had found next to nothing. All the knowledge Hal gathered would be vital in the war effort; and perhaps, Hal thought, it would move him a few rungs further up the ladder; he had languished at his current level for far too long.

  ‘So,’ he began, ‘your world exists alongside my own — the Fixed Lands, is that right? Side by side?’

  ‘Beside it, behind it and right in amongst it,’ Mother Mary said. ‘Didn’t you listen to any of the old stories when yer were a kid? We was always there, amongst you, sometimes seen, more often than not, not.’

  ‘You’ve always exerted an influence?’ Hal said.

  ‘There were some who felt the need to shape and guide,’ Shadow John said.

  ‘And some who just liked mischief and menace,’ Bearskin added. ‘But make no mistake, we’ve always been around. Played a bigger part in your affairs than you could guess.’

  ‘Invisible,’ Hal mused, ‘but always there.’ That thought set an alarm bell ringing in Hal’s mind, but the reason why remained irritatingly elusive.

  For the next hour, Hal asked many questions, about Otherworld, the Caretaker, the invasion, and while he received some answers of note, many were couched in riddles that left his head aching. Then, as he sipped on his beer, a twinkle of light passed quickly behind the bar. Hal glimpsed Drogoff the barman stooping low, his face puzzled, but after a moment he gave a resounding cheer.

  ‘What is it now?’ the Devil said with irritation.

  ‘A hero!’ Drogoff said with arms raised. ‘Our young friend is a hero!’