Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  An ordinary man would’ve found himself sprawled at the bottom in a heap of broken bones, unable to move. Ben only had to wait a minute or so for his limbs to straighten, his bruises to fade, restored by the magic in his physique. Wincing, he sprang to his feet, a hand held out to the shuddering wall, the light fixtures flickering over his head. Often, his deep knowledge of the city, a shifting map of streets imprinted on his mind, came in handy. For example, when one had to flee from rampaging giants. In the early twentieth century, the foot tunnel had replaced an unreliable ferry service to ensure that labourers could reach the docks and shipyards on time—anything in the name of industry—and a similar expedience would work for Ben here. Peering into the gloom, he understood the risk he was taking. Bearing such a tremendous weight, the river bed was shifting, punching pipes, bridges, banks and perhaps tunnels out of true. But if he could make it safely to the other side, emerge behind Cormoran unexpected, he might just stand a chance …

  He was pounding down the remaining steps before he’d finished making the decision. At the bottom of the staircase, he found himself looking down a long, round, white-tiled tunnel, the passage sloping slightly in the middle. Cracks had appeared in the walls, rank black water, grit and mud frothing through the fissures, breaches caused by the giant’s feet. Cricking his neck, Ben made his way forward, wading as fast as he could through the slop, his inner heat, retained even in human form, resisting the flooding cold.

  By the time he’d reached the halfway point, he was up to his knees, his bare feet thumping on the concrete under him. A few yards further on and the water was boiling around his waist, the scales of his suit wet and slick. The lights overhead gave up the ghost, plunging him into darkness. He was near the staircase on the opposite bank when the waters rushed over the wyrm tongue sigil on his chest—the envoy’s symbol months redundant—then the flood was covering his chin, his nose and eyes. The tunnel was buckling, caving in.

  Lungs aching, Ben thrashed in a swirl of bricks and filth, his hands splayed, blindly thrusting himself forward. Brackish water filled his nose and throat; the metropolitan river was anything but fresh. Mentally, he toasted himself for his smart move, with an imagined glass of Château d’Yuck. A creature of the sky, death by drowning was probably the worst thing that could happen to him. Sure, his kind found the proximity of water soothing, some long-lost primal echo, but that wouldn’t serve him here. Here, the deluge would simply extinguish him, snuff him out.

  With a roar that only he could hear, Ben spun in the chaos, the water pushing him halfway up the staircase at the end of the tunnel, his skull and shoulder cracking against the wall. Gasping, he broke the surface, sucking air into his lungs. Coughing, cursing, he swept his sodden fringe from his face and climbed the steps hand over hand, trying to drag himself out of the muck. It was no good. Shaped as an ordinary man—one stupid enough to take this route—there was no way he’d escape the collapsing foot tunnel, the daylight filtering through the dome above a false beacon of hope.

  Ordinary. Please.

  Seconds later, Ben burst from the entrance to the foot tunnel, emerging on the opposite bank in a scatter of bricks. Wings shaking off glass, tail dripping filth, he hurled himself upwards in full dragon form, regaining the advantage of the heights.

  A quick glance down revealed the state of the stricken wharf, the decimated Cutty Sark and the gushing market, the stalls carried off by the flood like brightly striped, ridiculous boats. The thoroughfare of the Royal Naval College had become a swirling morass of debris, of toppled statues, litter and the odd boat that had snapped free of its moorings. And there were bodies. Floating bodies. The grand old building was no longer a museum; it was a mausoleum. A dog shivered on a half-submerged plinth, whining for its owner. In the distance, the survivors clambered in droves up the slope of Greenwich Park, but considering the scale of the threat, the landscape of brawn and forest of beard above, no hilltop was going to offer a safe haven.

  Snarling between his fangs, Ben soared up the two-hundred-foot cliff of legs, loincloth and back to the hirsute horizon of Cormoran’s shoulders. He snapped out his wings to slow his ascent, coming up behind the giant’s formidable head. The giant turned away from him, scanning the Thames for the red-scaled nuisance, his grunts and breaths—breaths that stripped leaves from the trees below—revealing his annoyance.

  Before Cormoran grew bored and returned to his stampede through London, Ben made his move. Levelling his wings, he caught an air current that swung him around the giant’s skull and vented a roar of his own into his cavernous ear.

  “Give it up, ugly. I don’t see a beanstalk around here, do you? The only place you’re going is down.”

  The insult had the desired effect. Bellowing, the giant turned in the river, waves thrashing around his shins. He pummelled the sky with his fists, forcing Ben to make a manoeuvre worthy of the Red Arrows as he zipped through the gap between the giant’s elbow and torso. The London skyline smeared across the horizon, the Shard glittering in the sun, a sword rising from a lake of industry. Upside down, Ben crested the crown of the giant’s head, riding gravity as he fell back towards his intended destination, the yellow brick smokestacks below him.

  Greenwich Power Station rose from the bank of the Thames, its four chimneys pointing at the sky. Despite the weatherworn look of the building, Ben knew that a fire still rumbled in its belly. Once, the place had been a boiler house and an engine room, housing great steam engines that had pumped power to the newly electrified London Underground. Generators had long since replaced the antiquated machinery, fuelling the Tube as the trains rattled through the veins of the city. Ben had never found the building below attractive, the massive brick warehouse designed as functional rather than architectural. All the same, the power station appealed today, representing as it did his last and only chance.

  Glancing over his shoulder, it relieved him to find that Cormoran had followed him, the giant wading through the river, his face a moon of grinding teeth. Ben coasted further inland, over the riddle of streets that sprawled around the power station. He only hoped that the people in the houses below had caught the morning news and, taking the hint, run for the hills. It was too late to turn back now. It was a question of survival. Fight or flight.

  Ben intended to do both.

  With a crunch that shuddered through the borough, Cormoran dragged himself out of the river and stamped down on the power station, the roof caving in. Nearby, the spire of Trinity Hospital and the Star and Garter pub exploded in brick dust, plaster and glass under the giant’s boot. Standing in the crater where the warehouse had stood but moments before, Cormoran swung his club, taking out three of the station’s chimneys in one fell swoop. Like skittles, the smokestacks toppled, a smouldering blanket of debris and dust billowing into the surrounding streets. Parked cars flipped over like toys. Trees thrashed and lampposts snapped.

  Rubble ricocheted off Ben’s snout, thumping on his horns and breast. He paid it no mind, dismissing the pain. His nostrils flared, smoking and twitching, picking up the bitter, sulphuric smell that was wafting its way into the day. The breath of the earth, raw and foul, mixed with some chemical compound. Gas. Natural gas. With the fall of a mighty boot, Cormoran had ruptured the huge turbines and the tanks inside the shell of the building, reducing them to crackling, hissing jags of steel.

  Bullseye.

  With no time to spare, Ben swooped in low over the collapsing roof, his wings spread. He breathed in deep, then exhaled in a plume of fire. Flame blustered from his belly, venting from the chambers in his guts and sparked by his back teeth. Speeding through the gauntlet of the shattered building, he strafed the machinery under him, licking the wreckage with heat. Reaching the far wall, he skated upwards on a blazing cloak, past the tip of the giant’s club and out over the Thames.

  The next second, the sky throbbed, the air above the power station drawing in tight, a fleeting moment of compression. Ben heard Cormoran grunt, the giant puzzled by the bonfire fla
ring between his legs. He lifted a boot, intending to stamp it out, when—

  The world shattered. The ruptured gas tanks welcomed the untold heat of dragon fire, and Greenwich Power Station—foundations, walls, chimneys and all—took to the sky.

  The explosion slammed into Ben, the fire overtaking him, a blast like a kick in the rump. Wings buckling, tail over snout, he went tumbling out over the river, the London skyline lost in the heat haze, the Shard rippling in the distance. Fighting for consciousness, he let the impact carry him and sailed over the Isle of Dogs, Canary Wharf shimmering at his back. The moment he slowed, he snapped out his wings, his neck twisting towards Greenwich.

  Cormoran, Bane of the Summer Country, was burning. In a pillar of flame, he stood, caught in the shattered bowels of the power station. Echoes smacked against the sky; the giant was howling to bring down the sun. His boots had become great stubs of ember and ash, indistinguishable from the blaze around him. His loincloth and hair, having kept out centuries of subterranean cold, had gone up like haystacks in a bushfire. Blisters, red and weeping, spread in angry pools across his skin. With a whoosh, the giant’s beard went up, his howl scaling into a deafening scream.

  Head a burning crown, Cormoran managed to crash his way out of the ruins of the power station. Ben wanted to look away, but looking away was a privilege he couldn’t afford. He was hypnotised by the fire, riding on the winds of destruction and observing his handiwork. An idol towered over Greenwich Park, old as the hills, two hundred feet high. Cormoran had become an effigy, a blazing wicker man of flesh and bone. The giant berated the sky, his flailing arms stirring up thunder and smoke, setting fire to the bushes and the trees below. A scorched ring of grass, the width of a football pitch, spread out from the giant’s feet. Burning ashes shrouded the sky, a curtain falling on an age of secrets.

  The power station had done its work. High overhead, Ben could see that Cormoran wouldn’t survive.

  He wished he could say he was sorry.

  Fee fi fo fum, motherfucker.

  With a boom to shatter the earth, Cormoran fell. The giant dropped to his knees and then slumped face forward, collapsing across Greenwich Park.

  TWO

  “Home sweet home.”

  The echoes scattered along with Ben’s sarcasm as he entered his lair. Well, the cavern next to his lair. With an innate sense of covetousness, he’d decided that he’d rather face the adjoining caves than let his prisoner into his treasure trove. But it was more than that, he recognised. He was also afraid, wary of the power he’d caged. And these tunnels and grottoes comprised more than just caverns. No, the whole place was a barrow, long sunken under the earth. In truth, a mausoleum. As uncomfortable as the thought made him—he hadn’t had much luck when it came to tombs—it was best to confront the reality. He’d been telling himself fairy tales for years. If he’d learnt anything from the events in China, it was that the time for comforting lies was over.

  Deep, deep in the earth, the chamber, with its smooth alabaster walls and floor, was unmistakably a crypt. Crystalline spindles loomed in the gloom, some of the stalactites and stalagmites joining in the middle. The rock around him held a faint and inexplicable glimmer, illuminating a broad and airy cage that always made Ben think of the bones of a whale, buried half a mile underground. For all its splendour, Ben knew that he stood in a barrow for the alien dead, a forgotten crypt of the Fay.

  The tombs, vast, pale, soared up into the shadowed vaults. Magic had touched this space, hollowing out the raw rock, bleaching the earth into white stone, polishing it like glass. Time had touched the cavern too, the imposing sepulchres around him not quite as grand as he imagined they once were, the edifices corroded by the endless drip of water, worn away by dust and cracked by the shifting of the earth. Earth that grew ever more restless, he knew that too. Soon the tombs might crumble completely or fall into some chasm or other, carrying down the last traces of their eldritch design.

  Each tomb resembled a miniature castle, oriel, portcullis and spire rising from the carved foundations of seas and clouds, great orchards of stone that bore fat and unidentifiable fruit. The twining sculptures knew no modesty. Satyrs and nymphs frolicked naked in marble cascades. Men-who-were-not-men and women-who-were-not-women lay brazenly locked in carnal pleasure. The crypt, he thought, had to be the most indecent of resting places, devoid of gravitas, brimming with debauch. Here, the dead slept not, but fondled and fucked each other, copulating beyond death in an architectural mockery of life.

  The sight made Ben ache, his bruises tingling as they healed, though his pangs for the most part remained a mix of loss and revulsion. As a Remnant, Ben felt little sympathy for the Fay. But he realised that they must have suffered too. Forever sensing that they had a higher purpose, belonged to a higher plane of existence, yet finding themselves brought low, left to wade through a world of blood, sweat and shit. To watch mortal after mortal wither and die as their pale flesh remained untouched, their eyes undimmed by time. To see oceans rise and forests fall. To witness war after war.

  “Is that why you fucked with the humans?” Ben wondered aloud, muttering to limit the echoes. “So you got to act like gods again?”

  It was one reason, that was for sure. One murmured among Remnants. Because once upon a time the Fay had been gods, some said, or as good as gods. Millenia ago, an unrecorded cataclysm had seen the First-Born become the Fallen Ones, the Fay. Legend claimed that those early fairies had lain down the circles of protection, great spells branded in the earth to shield Creation from the nether, hold the dark at bay and thus allow the High House of Avalon their golden age, the Old Lands, King Arthur—all of it. One could be forgiven for thinking that the Fay had wanted to re-establish themselves as deities, as overlords, however diminished and earthbound.

  Well, that went well. Long-lived or no, the Fay sure as hell weren’t immortal; for all their otherworldly arts, those first pioneers had withered and died. Shit, looking around at the marble debauchery, Ben realised that he could even be standing on their graves.

  Who knew? Nor could he say why they’d spawned the fabulous beings and beasts (himself included) that still haunted the earth; foreign, unnatural, yet primal creatures who these days only endured as survivors, magical refugees, since the alien race had departed.

  Ancient history …

  Like all Remnants, Ben knew the story well. Unable to prevent a catastrophic war, the Fay had left the Earth in disgust from Camlann Field, the last battle of the legendary King Arthur. That battle hadn’t just seen the end of a golden age, but a schism in history, a severing of worlds. The Great Example had failed and peace on earth was not possible. Between men. Between monsters. The Fay had returned to the nether, leaving their lost children to their fate.

  And that’s where the trouble had started. That’s where the battle truly began.

  Abandoned, adrift, it soon became clear that there was no place for Remnants in the tireless drive for human advancement. In the Fay’s absence, magic was on the wane, no longer the pure and shining stream of cosmic energy that threaded through all things, but a stain, an unknown quantity, a power, a danger, something to be feared.

  Ben snorted, remembering his history. The real history. Come the reign of King John, magic had become a constant source of irritation—and sometimes more than that, bubbling up into bloody chaos and unrest. The Remnants, forsaken and feared, were, for the most part, throwing a tantrum of historic proportions. Trolls smashed bridges. Giants trampled crops. Witches beguiled queens. And dragons … well, dragons, of course, reduced entire towns to ash.

  In turn, humans were trying to stamp out the monsters in their midst, dispatching knight after knight to dragon’s cave. To goblin’s mine and griffin’s nest. It soon became painfully clear that the progress of civilisation was facing something of an uphill struggle. For every city wall built, one crumbled and fell. For every new road, a spellbound marsh sprang up to swallow travellers. For every new invention, there was one superseded or warpe
d by magic.

  Something had to give.

  Under pressure from Rome, King John founded the Curia Occultus, a great council set up with the intention of ending the long war between Remnants and humans. One day in London, the king issued a momentous decree. An envoy had come to him with an extraordinary harp, a broken relic of the long-vanished Fay. Reforged, the envoy claimed that the harp held the power to lure and lull all of the Remnants to sleep, conjuring a song that would circle the globe from Westminster Palace to the distant walls of Xanadu. Every fabulous being and beast who heard the music would fall into an enchanted slumber, sinking into caverns deep under the earth, there to rest until the Fay prophecy came to pass. Some of the Remnants had even believed in the prophecy, the Queen’s Troth—spoken in whispers, in long sighs—that one day the Fay would return, arriving in some shining, sorcerous Second Coming when Remnants and humans had learned to live in peace. La la de la. Others, however, had not. Either way, the envoy had strummed his little harp and the Remnants—most of them, anyway—had fallen into the Long Sleep.

  As with all fairy gifts, there was but one condition. A great compromise.

  This was the Pact. John’s secret charter of 1215.

  With the goodwill of His Majesty and all future monarchs, and to secure the peace, but one of each Remnant may endure, awake and unfettered under the Lore, governed, protected and guided by the Guild of the Broken Lance, hereby appointed wardship of this bond for all the time to come.

  In short, as long as no fabulous being or beast should breed, make known their presence, employ magic or otherwise interfere in the progress of civilisation, then the king would permit one leader of each Remnant group to remain, alive and unharmed, upon the earth.