Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  “Kill me if you want,” she spat. “Your doom is upon you either way, snake.” Then she dropped the traditional scorn, seething at him with typically teenage vitriol. “You don’t know what it was like. The chance, taken from me. And why? Arlen drowned and I should’ve taken his place. Father should’ve sent me out on the hunt. Your head should’ve been mine! So instead I stole the helmet. So what? I took Fulk’s sword and the manacle from the chapel. I was going to show them.” She took a breath and, despite her position, corrected herself. “I’m going to show them all.”

  Ben rolled his eyes.

  This is turning out to be a very long day.

  Growling, he grabbed the girl’s shoulder.

  “I don’t have time for this shit,” he said.

  An hour later, sixty miles to the east, Ben swept over the border into England. In full dragon form, he flew over the hills and fields, horses and sheep fleeing below, leaping paddock gates or bleating in briars. Dogs barked, straining at the limits of chains. The odd car wound through the Marches, headlights beaming, unaware of his presence. Trees thrashed in his wake.

  In his front claw, he gripped Caliburn. Gently. Despite its assurances, he’d wrapped the sword in a leather jacket, the arms tied tightly over the blade. For one thing, he didn’t want to find himself forcibly transformed into human shape three hundred feet over Shropshire. For another, he reckoned that he had enough scars.

  In his other claw, he held the would-be Black Knight, Annis Cade. At first, she had struggled, punching and kicking against the scales around her. But she’d soon worn herself out, settling into a sulky silence for the rest of the journey. Part of him, while vexed by the delay, admired her spirit, not that it was going to stop him teaching her a lesson.

  Down below, a village spread out, the streetlights illuminating the tiny houses, the odd pub and the fish and chip shop. Water glittered in the sodium glow, a narrow lake running beside the main road. On the shore, a castle stood, the restored ruins of a thirteenth-century gatehouse and bailey, a relic of tumbledown stone with an inner and outer wall. Trees sprouted from the place where the hall had once stood, the courtyard a trimly mowed lawn. There was a booth beside the drawbridge, closed at this hour, to sell tickets to tourists.

  “Whittington Castle,” Ben said, naming their location. “Back in the day, King John snatched the deeds to the place, keeping hold of them until your house managed to meet a certain provision. That being, that as long as this head sits on these shoulders, the castle will remain in trust, in the care of the Guild of the Broken Lance. Sure, things got complicated when the Pact came along in 1215, protecting the Remnant leaders from harm, including yours truly. Not that it stopped a shedload of Fulks from having a go.”

  Since one tragic day in Mordiford, the Black Knight had tried—and failed—for over eight centuries.

  Annis said something, muffled and hot.

  “Maybe it’s time that your lot woke up,” Ben told her. “No Guild, no Pact. No Pact, no provision. Whittington Castle is all yours.”

  Fifty feet above the village, Ben released the girl. Screaming, sans jacket, she tumbled through the sky and splashed down into the moat.

  “And you’re welcome to it,” Ben said and flew on into the night.

  FIVE

  Through wisps of cloud, Ben doubled back, sweeping west towards Snowdonia. The Black Knight niggled him, however. The old grudge was a minor inconvenience and one he’d grown used to; it should’ve been easy to put it out of his mind. Had he honestly thought that the Fitzwarrens would leave him alone after Cairo? After the Pact went up in smoke? Maybe. Even so, it seemed yet another generation was after his head.

  They’re getting younger every time. Or I’m getting older.

  Eight hundred and sixty-two years old, to be precise. His birthday had passed in April, unmarked as usual (there wasn’t really anyone who’d celebrate his continued existence). Shit. I feel it. Eight hundred and sixty-two years since he’d hatched under a girl’s bed in Mordiford and drank his first saucer of milk. He’d seen so many things, from the signing of Magna Carta (and its no less important, but secret, twin) to the “discovery” of America to the dropping of the atomic bomb. In modern times, these seismic events gave him the impression of time speeding up: space travel, the internet, the Twin Towers and global warming. There was less and less room for creatures like him, rare and unique as they were. In a shower of mobile phones and selfie sticks, the human race was about to plunge over the edge of a waterfall, civilisation shattering on the rocks.

  Shattering just like the harp. And taking the Remnants with them …

  Shooting over the darkened hills, he wished he could believe that his view was down to pessimism, a doom-and-gloom outlook born from centuries of loneliness and the resulting cynicism. It was the fire that tears couldn’t quench, his pain soused by bottles of Jack. Still, the end was coming. That was a fact. The bitterest truth. Shuddering, he focused on the matter at hand.

  How far a dead king and a handful of knights could travel on foot at night in the mountains was anyone’s guess, but he was guessing it wasn’t far. In this, it turned out that he was wrong. And he should’ve known better. The elements at play, ominous, perplexing as they were, were far from earthly. According to Caliburn—and judging from his vision—the Fay had a hand in all this, the warped awakening, the coming of the king. It didn’t take a genius to realise that the shockwave of the harp’s destruction was more than just musical; somewhere, alarm bells were ringing, likely to bring about consequences. Ben didn’t know what Arthur’s return to London would mean for either Remnants or humans, but experience told him he shouldn’t expect a party.

  Seven tons of red-scaled flesh rushed through the air into Denbighshire, or Edeyrnion, as he’d once known it, the commote of medieval Wales. His wingspan, forty feet of slender metacarpals supporting a web of leathery skin, flowed over the fields and farms, the moon casting his shadow on lands that hadn’t much changed, a fact that gave him a little comfort. In a creak of trees and a howl of dogs, all sixty feet of him was gone, horned snout to the tip of his tail vanishing into the dark. Into the ancient hills.

  As Ben made to veer north, retracing his steps to the mountain, Caliburn thrummed in his claw, an icy shiver running up his foreleg. When the sword spoke, he could hear its voice clearly through the wind, informing him that its words echoed in his skull, rather than his ears. A revelation he didn’t like. He was sick to the back teeth of magic.

  “Whoa. You’ll want to keep flying west. I can sense the king up ahead. Ten miles or so.”

  Whoa? Ben bristled, fighting the urge to drop the sword, hopefully into a bog below. Instead, he drew in a breath and replied between his fangs.

  “Did Arthur steal a car? There’s no way he could reach Penmelesmere this quickly.”

  Penmelesmere—or Lake Bala, on a modern map—spread out below, a four-mile-long body of water stretching smooth and black between the hills. It was as though someone had poured the night into the valley, the moon and the stars glimmering on the surface. The sight prompted Ben to recall the old legend, how Bald Tegid, the husband of the sorceress Ceridwen, had once held court here back in the Old Lands. Tegid, or so the story went, had been a wicked prince, visiting many a cruelty upon the villagers who lived around his palace. One night, a harper, pale and pointy-eared, came to the court, and after one thing and another, the entire palace sank into a lake, a fitting fairy punishment. On moonlit nights like this one, some said that one could still see the lights of the drowned palace shining under the waves.

  Thoughts of fairies didn’t allay Ben’s unease, dousing the romance of the tale. People had died here. Lots of them. This kind of wanton slaughter tended to happen a lot when the Fay were involved, it seemed. February in Beijing hadn’t been any different …

  We must all make sacrifices …

  Ben curled his lip, the moonlight glinting on his teeth. Only a fool would trust the Fay. He’d learnt that at his peril.

&nb
sp; Caliburn was talking again. “… think he’d get here by earthly means, you oaf? He bears the horn of summoning. Look!”

  Horn of … well, that sounds perfect.

  Ben scowled. The sword’s tone was bad enough, but he liked the sight below even less. Halfway down the road on the north side of the lake, Arthur and his knights were riding through the gloom. Besides the king, there were two knights, Ben saw, sat high in the saddle. He recalled the bones and the dust in the mountain tomb, realising that some of the Sleepers hadn’t made it. Rotten spells and all that. As he drew closer, the faint blue glow, cold and somehow rancid-looking, resolved into the figure of the bearded, skeletal king of old, a golden crown, dragon-shaped, upon his head. His armour shone with magic and moonlight, while his knights, no more than corpses in breastplates and greaves, rode a pace or two behind him. Their hollow eye sockets burned with the strange, revivifying light, scouring the darkness ahead. Ben caught the glint of an axe, the gleam of a mace. A couple of hounds, frost-eyed and stripped of flesh, clacked at speed alongside them. The ghoulish troop was galloping down the road, dry crests and white hair waving, shields clanging against desiccated flesh and naked bone. Their mounts were comprised only of darkness, tendrils of smoke wafting from their manes and hooves, the latter striking the tarmac of the A494 with a weird, whispering rumble.

  “Shagfoal,” Ben muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the sword.

  “Never mind.” He wasn’t in the mood to explain the phantom horses to a weapon, of all things, however magical it was. The vaporous beasts had frightened many a traveller back in the day, haunting the byways of Britain. If the shagfoal galloped here, that could only mean one thing. Christ. “He’s dragged them out of the Sleep.”

  “Oh, the Remnants are stirring anyway,” Caliburn said. “Arthur merely hurries them along, summoning them to his cause.”

  “Now tell me the bad news.”

  “Well, he’s only summoning the Remnants that will serve his purpose. I’m sure he’ll leave the nymphs, fauns and brownies to wake up in their own time. No doubt he’ll want Mordred’s brood, judging by the state of him. You know, Remnants with a mind to violence. Destruction, pillage and murder. That kind of thing.”

  “Wonderful. Forget I asked.”

  Ben dropped down from the heights, shrinking in size as he approached a gorse-clad hillside on the south side of the lake. The night air hushed as he slowed, sending ripples across the lake. He landed with a thump on soft earth, rolling through the tangled bushes, thorns snapping against his suit. Then, spitting out a clump of moss, he crawled on his belly to a nearby rock, peering down for a closer look.

  It wasn’t good. Arthur held up a hand—no more than a twisted, mortified claw—and, in silence, his knights obeyed, their features pale and withered masks, their spectral mounts drawing to a halt. As they did so, Ben noticed the shadowed forms scrabbling down the road several yards behind them, a mass of horned helmets, clubs and mallets bristling under the moon. With a sharp intake of breath, he made out the broken teeth in the swamp-green faces, each one covered in warts. He made out the rags that hung from their small and sinewy limbs, and their slitted eyes hunting the dark, their hunger unmistakable.

  Goblins. I’d know that smell anywhere …

  Larger shapes rose from the mass, bull-shouldered and hunched. Here, at least, he could see that some of the creatures had made an effort in terms of appearance. Richly furred cloaks that dragged along the ground, striped tunics and silken hose, all tailored to grotesque size. Despite the powdered faces, fake beauty spots and braided wigs, nothing could disguise the drooping lips that revealed their stubby fangs. Under beetling brows, their piggy eyes squinted down the road, glinting with the promise of a hundred evils. Ben counted three or four of the ogres in the mob, and ogres, he knew, weren’t known for their kindness. He spared a thought for Bala, the town at the eastern end of the lake. Somehow he had to warn them, before half the population wound up in a pie.

  He was making a move to do so when Arthur blew his horn.

  The echoes, sonorous in the dark, shuddered up and down the length of the valley. On his horse, the king sat, the gilded ivory instrument pressed to his peeled and permanent grin. He was staring at the lake, Ben realised, the reverberations of the horn travelling across it, the surface alive with ripples and bubbles, something stirring beneath. His Adam’s apple rose in his throat as he saw a limb, long-fingered, hook-nailed, emerge from the waters to clutch at the bank. Others followed, reaching from the weeds and anchoring on land, dragging their boil-ridden bodies behind them. As one, the hags rose from the lake, their long green hair straggling in their faces, unable to hide their hideousness. Bent spines supported birdcage backs and bony shoulders, the hags looking slick and amphibian in the gloom. There must’ve been thirty or more of the creatures; Remnants that Ben knew as greenteeth, river hags, as cruel and as cannibalistic as the rest of the summoned throng. Marsh lights danced between their legs, illuminating sagging bosoms and bellies as the greenteeth joined with the goblins and the ogres, gathering behind the king.

  Half swollen to dragon size, Ben faltered as the echoes rang off the hillside behind him and the ground shook under his feet. Boulders came rolling down the slope, one shattering apart on his shoulder, others, larger, thundering downward and splashing into the lake. With a snarl, he could see that the disturbance had drawn the king’s attention, his ensorcelled gaze scanning the valley across the lake. Heart frozen, he thought that Arthur was staring directly at him, but the next moment a roar of sundering threw him from his feet and into the gorse. Caliburn flew out of his claw, a jewelled Catherine wheel spinning to land point-first in the earth, the blade shuddering. He made a lunge to reclaim the weapon, the ground buckling under him in great clods of turf, rendered molten by the sounding of the horn. The scene struck him as horribly familiar. Was the instrument picking up the strains of the lullaby, he wondered, amplifying the wake of the broken enchantment, focusing the spell on this specific point? A reluctant expert on the subject, he reckoned so, because the ground under him was slowly parting, the maw growing wider, and even in the darkness, he could see the tell-tale glimmer of obsidian, the sheen of some subterranean cavern like an egg sunken into the earth, now rising to the troubled surface.

  Something—someone—was breaking free.

  Ben yelled, rolling and covering his head. In an explosion of rocks and dirt, a large shape burst from the hillside, roaring into the moonlight. The beast landed, claws splayed, further down the slope, the impact sending a tremor through the earth. Grimacing at the stench issuing from the chasm, the pall of eight centuries’ sleep, Ben clambered to his feet, looking down at the Remnant below him.

  The night didn’t spare him the sight of her, her crimson-furred flanks markedly feline, her four paws planted on the earth, claws unsheathed. Any resemblance to a lion ended with her size, however, which easily doubled that of a rhino. The muscles sliding under her pelt revealed a greater agility, promising danger and death. A pair of bat-like wings protruded from her spine, flapping in apparent confusion as she took in her surroundings, drawing her first breath of fresh air in eight hundred years. Smaller than his as they were, her wings looked nimble and strong, more than able to get her airborne for battle, and that didn’t bode well. Nor did her tail, which swished back and forth, hissing with more than displaced air. Her tail, in fact, was a snake, a living threat affixed by some perversion of nature to the beast’s rump. One bite and he’d find himself paralysed, at the mercy of a monster who had no reason to show him any.

  We’re all monsters here, honey.

  His blood cooled with an unwanted realisation. There was no way he could face down the horde single-handedly. Even a battle-hardened dragon like himself would be up against it, considering the beast on the hillside below him, the mob of goblins and ogres and the hags beside the lake, not to mention the corpse king and his knights and whatever sorcery they happened to conjure up. He couldn’t suppres
s a surge of excitement at the sight, some warped sense of liberation, despite his sense of doom. How strange it was to see more than one creature of the same kind after all these years. There were what—a hundred-odd Remnants down there? Perhaps not the world’s greatest army, true, but his heart sank as he remembered that this war had never been a numbers game. Humans might remain the earth’s dominant species. Lord knows, populations had risen to hazardous levels since the rabble below him had gone into the Long Sleep and Remnants had been dwindling even then, facing eventual extinction. Or so the envoy said. In this case, discretion really was the better part of valour. His mind took a quick, panicked series of snapshots, saving them for later reference as he contemplated his next move.

  Fight or flight? I think the sword already answered that one.

  He had to get out of here. Recover Caliburn and warn the town, make the residents of Bala take to the hills. Then back to London, take the sword to Von Hart, try to shake the envoy out of his coma. He was in way over his head—this time by leagues—and if nothing else, he’d make the fairy pay for his deceit before the end.

  For Jia …

  Under this, a doubt nagged him. His aggression was a mask, he knew, hiding a deeper, uncomfortable truth. In the past, he’d always had the envoy to turn to when matters got out of hand, a regrettable but necessary ally. That was over now, any sham of a friendship gone up in smoke. In shattered lunewrought. It pained him to acknowledge the fact. Even though the times had drastically changed, the age-old requirement hadn’t. When it came down to confronting an undead king and an army of Remnants, Von Hart was his first and only hope. He needed help. And fast.

  Keeping low, his dragon form coiling within, Ben made to leave, creeping across the hillside. The snake, alerted by the movement, reared up on the beast’s rump, noticing him. Hood flaring, fangs bared, it hissed, ready to strike. Whatever signal passed from the tail to the Remnant’s mind, Ben couldn’t know, but he froze in the spotlight of her yellow eyes as she spun around and saw him.