Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  “Benjurigan,” the manticore said, a hiss between her fangs. Then, “Turncoat.”

  “Hello, Jinx,” Ben said. “It’s been a long time.”

  He hadn’t expected any other kind of greeting. Any other greeting would’ve been strange.

  Jinx, the manticore, glowered up at him. Apart from her shaggy mane and her teeth, her face was human, resembling a woman with high cheekbones and full lips. He might’ve found her attractive if not for the mess surrounding it, the claws, the bat wings and deadly tail. Manticores were hostile creatures, given to cruelty and violence, with a penchant for taunting and playing with their prey. Back in the Old Lands, many a traveller had never returned from the mountains where the creatures liked to roam, their flayed hides later found by family and friends, sometimes hanging in a tree, fluttering like a flag. And often on the rocks nearby, a poem would accompany these finds, describing the flavour of the victim, scrawled in human blood. There were solid reasons why the Pact hadn’t spared a manticore the Sleep, not that the beast below him was likely to agree with them.

  Her tail reared up again, peering over her shoulder as she lowered her body, preparing to pounce.

  “Too long,” she said.

  In a shower of stones and shrubs, dragon and manticore tumbled down the hillside. Her tail darted back and forth, snapping at his body, but the scales of his suit prevented her teeth from sinking home, from spiking venom into his veins. Likewise, her claws, ripping at him, scoring his crimson carapace, so recently shaped from his thoughts, the trick he’d learnt from Jia. Saving my bacon yet again … As he locked a hand around the manticore’s throat—a hand swelling into a plated claw—Jinx laughed, a not-quite-sane burst of amusement, causing him to doubt her reasons for taking him on. Overconfident or no, it wasn’t exactly advisable. She’d only just woken up, hadn’t she? And, in an avalanche of meat, wings and fangs thundering down the slope, his newly fledged dragon form rendered her half his size.

  There was no way that she could win this fight. Unlike her, he’d been walking the earth for the duration of her sleep, confronting a host of enemies, from vengeful knights to battle dragons. Stupid beast. Did she even want to win? Or simply ensure her own ending? Oh, he could see the same old glint in her eyes, all right. The confusion, the hate—and the madness bubbling under it. Most of the Remnants had already had a screw loose long before the envoy strummed his little harp, striking up the lullaby and binding them all in enchantment. If Jinx had gone to her temporary grave as a half-crazed thing, she had clearly risen as an outright maniac. He didn’t feel too bad about landing a heavy punch on her skull.

  More Remnant blood on your hands. But who’s counting, right?

  Locked, growling, the beasts struck off the hill and took to the air, their wings thrashing, their passage carving a v of froth across the surface of the lake. Distantly, Ben could hear the racket of the horde, the dead king leading the rabble on towards Bala, but whether the creatures roared and cried at his appearance or not, he couldn’t say. Blood pounded in his skull. In his ears, the manticore squealed and hissed, her claws scrabbling for his belly, unable to reach the softer parts of him. Still, she was a handful, slippery in his grip—and fast, just as he remembered. If he released her, he’d be facing a time-consuming and tiring chase over half of Wales. God knows the damage she’d do on the way, not to mention Arthur, riding on into the interior.

  No. Better make this quick.

  Despite her recent rousing, the manticore was horribly strong, and her wings, small yet nippy, were managing to throw him off course, his intention to slam her into the opposite bank, break her on the rocks. Grimacing, he tried to lift her to his jaws. Maybe he could bite off her head and spit it out into the water. Or roast it, turn her glee into gobbets of melted flesh and ash. But she thrashed in his grip, a sleek, wild thing. Slowly but surely, she was dragging him towards the town, determined to force him into chaos, into harm. All he could do was vent a bellow, a resounding warning through the night, loud enough to rattle the windows and the streetlights. A few seconds later, a chorus of screams and shouts rose from the buildings below. Lights flicked on. Doors slammed open. As he descended, Ben watched the people run, abandoning dinners and computers and TV shows to take to the night, a pale-faced mess spilling in all directions through the adjacent streets. Some stared up at the sky, frozen by the horrors roaring out of the moonlight. The knowledge made him groan, a weight pressing down on him, squeezing his heart. He was drowning in a sea of failure, helpless against the turning tide. The times hurled him towards Bala like driftwood in a deluge.

  Jinx, perhaps sensing his despair, went limp in his grasp. He might’ve taken this as defeat if not for the chuckle in her throat, her wings snapping in, surrendering to gravity, pulling him down. Too weary to carry her further, he closed his eyes and turned his snout, bracing for impact. The next moment, roof tiles went flying around him, the houses shattering (he only hoped that the tenants had managed to get clear; couldn’t think about that now), and in a cloud of bricks and glass, dragon and manticore rolled, booming, snarling, along the high street.

  Car alarms went off, silenced a moment later in a crunch of flattened metal. Tarmac cracked and shopfronts exploded, decimated by Ben’s flailing tail. A pub sign fell, the image of a ship breaking apart on the shuddering ground. As his breath flew from his lungs, Jinx flew from his grip, rolling away from him up the road. With a crash, the manticore came to a halt by the entrance to a supermarket, a mangled security mesh and a display of cut-price goods collapsing around her.

  Wincing at his cuts and bruises, Ben shrugged off the wreckage and rose to his feet. Through the smoke and the dust, the wail of alarms, he could hear Jinx laughing, laughing fit to burst. But moving towards her, his fangs parted, a claw outstretched, he realised his mistake, his talons closing like a wilting rose. She kept her face turned from him, her body sprawled in the debris, her breaths misting the air. Still, he could hear the tears in her voice.

  “Kill me, then,” she said. “Even if you tear me limb from limb, it will seem quick in comparison.”

  To the Sleep? He cocked his head, surprised by her outburst, her grief leaden between them. In that moment, even his own shadow struck him as unfair, looming over her broken, huddled shape, her shoulders, trembling, letting him know that this battle was over. Was there some way to reason with her? No. He doubted that. Bind her, perhaps? Chain her up somewhere? Unlikely. A memory of flayed skin and bloody poems suggested otherwise …

  The fact that he was staring coldblooded murder in the face doused his fire somewhat. A flicker of will, a burst of his breath. That’s all it would take, he knew. Like he’d done for Gard, for a handful of other Remnants in the past. Lord, I’m tired … Before he knew it, he was man-shaped again, tousle-haired and striding towards her through the rubble.

  “I’m not some monster,” he said, then snorted at the irony. “I swore to protect them. I’m damage limitation, that’s all. You know how this has to end.”

  “End?” she said, sniffing. “It’s already over. You made your choice. The Remnants are dying because of it.”

  “The Remnants are asleep.” Or they were. “I did what I had to—”

  “Fool! You may have shut us up in a prison, nice and safe, but you cannot stop the flood that seeps through the walls. Poison, it is. Dark and sour. You can taste it even here, in these blasted hills.”

  Ben swallowed, then spat out blood, the bitterness she spoke of. He took a step closer, shuffling through guilt. He wished he could refute what she was saying, but he’d seen the truth for himself.

  “Dodge. Ruse. Gambit. All dead,” she told him. “My entire family, rotting under the earth.” She struggled to hold back a sob. “Asleep, you say, Benjurigan? No. You mean buried.”

  That hurt him. It hurt him far more than her claws had, scratching at his scales. Damn her. He came up around her rump, a finger pointed at the back of her head.

  “The Lore—”

  “Spare m
e,” she spat at him. Then, softer, “Yet don’t.” She sighed, her head bowed. “Do what you must. I am finished.”

  He hesitated. Under his skin, muscles slid and throbbed, yearning for transformation, to bloom to draconic proportions and get this over with. Fire and ash. But she’d asked him to consider the blood on his hands, the death all around him, and although such a beast, with all her cruelty, could never say anything to stay his hand, the sight of her in the rubble brought home the awfulness of his position. That the ages had made a killer of him. That he’d lost even the luxury of mercy. And self-pity. It was his choice.

  He didn’t bother to invoke the Pact. No By the grace of God. The gods were over. No King’s wish and command. The king in question was long dead. And he no longer held any authority, no official role. This would be a death at his own discretion. For the good of the—

  As he took another step, he sensed movement behind him, a flicker in the smoke. He spun on his heel, but it was too late. Too late to prevent the trap into which he’d fallen. Damn fool. Distracted by the manticore’s grief, he’d forgotten all about her tail, its serpentine menace shooting up now, fangs bared and dripping, to snap at his neck.

  Pain, sharp and bright, went racing through his system. As his nerves exploded, so did his bulk, his shadow dwarfing Jinx on the ground, his wings covering her like a shroud. Any empathy he’d felt burned up in the oven of his jaws, incinerated by a torrent of fire.

  The manticore screamed, a brief, shrill peal of agony, carrying, Ben thought, a trace of relief.

  He had no time to savour the sound. The serpent’s teeth, sharp as steel, had managed to pierce his humanoid flesh, pouring mud and then stone into his veins. Blearily, he looked down, grimacing at the blackened patch on the ground before him, the cracked tarmac, the melted shopfront, all that remained of Jinx.

  Then the weight of the venom bore him down and he rolled, crashing onto his back. He lay there staring, golden-eyed and rigid, up at the passionless stars.

  SIX

  Daybreak. Ben came to in the rosy-grey light creeping into the valley, rays slipping through the trees. Wind played across the lake, but the surface stretched otherwise undisturbed, its murky denizens either stirring in the deeps or prematurely risen, following their king. A cheery waking thought. Somewhere, he heard the trill of a bird, but no lowing of cattle, no bleating of sheep. Even the farm dogs hereabouts had fallen silent. The people, of course, had fled hours ago.

  He lay on his back in the rubble, a broad ring of shattered brick, collapsed timber and broken glass that he foggily recalled as a row of shops along the high street. A litter of goods, tinned food, vegetables and crushed shopping trolleys, told him as much. Above him leaned a streetlight, bent out of true, its bulb fizzling out. Parked cars, crushed beneath him, bit into his spine. Further vehicles lay strewn along the road, most on their sides or with wheels in the air like dead mechanical dogs. Smoke wreathed the morning mist, bringing to mind the fight that had rocked the town during the night, ending in a blast of dragon fire. He heard no sirens. No planes overhead. The heavy silence told him that he’d made the area a no-go zone.

  He sprawled, wings spread in the debris, tail snaking down the road, in the middle of the town. The last of his cuts and bruises were healing, restored by his inherent magic, but the pain inside him lingered.

  Ouch.

  Shame hauled him back to consciousness, a chain around his neck. As if skulking from his part in the destruction, having crushed chimney pots and toppled trees, he pulled himself back into human form like a thief throwing on a cloak. His wings drew in, great red fans zigzagging closed. His tail went wriggling through the wreckage, dislodging bricks and gouging gardens. His snout melted inward, forming a face that held tears behind emerald eyes. Alone in the ruins, he turned his gaze to the road beside the lake, empty now, the reefs of mist wafting across the valley. The lack of noise struck him like a harbinger, a battle drum of absence. A promise of death.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  He rubbed his neck, the muscles cramped and sore. Despite his aches and pains, he realised that his paralysis had probably saved him. The king, the horde, had taken him for dead, marching past his vast, recumbent body without so much as a backward glance. Unblinking, barely breathing, he’d watched them go, the cadaverous Arthur and his knights on their shadowy steeds. The goblins in their dented helmets. The preening ogres and the greenteeth. A cackling, revelling mass snaking off into the hills. Rigid, he’d focused on the horn that hung around the king’s neck, a gilded ivory relic that nudged at his memory, prompting an image of some bristly beast or other … No. It was gone. The horn blared on in his skull, the remembered echoes eclipsing his thoughts. And to think I used to love music … Then the horde was gone, leaving him to unconsciousness, a thankful absence of dreams.

  He had no such comfort now. Hours had passed. How many miles had the army marched in that time? What foul things had the king summoned from the earth, ushering on the broken enchantment, the scattered echoes of the lullaby? It didn’t bear thinking about, but he forced himself to, dragging himself to his feet.

  People had died here. In flames, in screams. He’d lost the right to look away.

  He found the sword where he’d left it, sticking point-first in the ground.

  “We have to get back to London,” he said, his fingers closing around the hilt. Any admiration of the jewels left him at once, a familiar tingle running up his arm, the icy touch of lunewrought. A threat of visions making him tense. “Much as I hate to admit it, we need to wake up Von Hart.”

  Caliburn sniffed. “Is there no end to your wisdom? Are you quite sure you can’t face this on your own? After all, it’s only a Remnant army and—”

  “Shut up,” he growled between his teeth. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Well, excuse me. I wasn’t in the mood to spend the night covered in mud. You know, I’m a legendary sword, Benjurigan. Not a toothpick. There are better ways of doing things.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Now its pommel, gem-studded, appeared to regard him in disbelief.

  “It means, halfwit, that you might want to think about using me next time. You know, to hurry things along.”

  Smoke coiled from Ben’s nostrils in a sardonic snort.

  “I’ve managed just fine up to now.”

  The sword barked a laugh. “Oh, do tell.”

  Ben glowered, but considering the current state of affairs, the broken Lore and the shattered Sleep, he didn’t really have grounds to argue. And that didn’t take into account the mess below him, the sight of the ruined town. Bala met the morning sun with tendrils of smoke like reaching arms, begging for mercy. The entire place was little more than a circle of rubble. Wincing, he thought about all the cities, towns and villages lying between here and the capital. Shrewsbury. Birmingham. Oxford. The roads, choked with traffic. By now, the panic in London would’ve spread across the nation, surely. Could he count on that? A media storm of red alerts and warnings, shaky camera clips that no one could deny, that no one would try to—perhaps even a declaration of war. Because it was a war, he knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. The disaster he’d tried so hard to prevent was upon them, a clear and present danger. As of yesterday, the human race had become united in its fate. Every living person was now a refugee.

  “When …” The words rose raw in his throat, scraping on smoke and grief. “When is it going to end?”

  The sword, when it answered, sounded oddly subdued. But blunt, all the same.

  “Once upon a time, you stood a chance. The Example failed, Benjurigan. Perhaps war is inevitable.”

  “I don’t want to believe that. I can’t.”

  Otherwise I couldn’t go on, he thought, but didn’t say. The idea that the Pact had only held off an inescapable doom, and endangered the Remnants along the way, filled him with a despair so deep … well, he couldn’t face it.

  “Hope too, granted,” Caliburn said, as if reading hi
s mind. “In the end, it’s all we have.”

  Ben grunted, then gave a melancholy nod. All he could do was return to the city, try to rouse the damn fairy. If anyone could avert this disaster, stand against the dead king’s army, then it was Von Hart. Or at least he can explain himself … The thought made him sick to his stomach, the necessity to turn to his old acquaintance, a known traitor who’d cost him so dearly. And cost Jia Jing her life. Nevertheless, his choices were thin on the ground.

  Yes. He’d get back to London and he’d fly low. The time for hiding was over; it wouldn’t serve any purpose now. Let the people below see him. Let them look up and see. Let the age-old fear take them, a primal chill in their hearts. And once they’d seen him, let them flee. Into the hills. The forest. The night.

  Just like the old days.

  How small his hope had become.

  Like a squire in a cathedral square, long ago and far from here, Ben pulled the sword free.

  It was time to go home.

  SEVEN

  “The Fay are returning. I felt her … hand, cool on my brow.”

  Ben had waited so long (six months!) for Von Hart to wake up that when he came marching into the crypt, the sight of the envoy muttering in the cupped stone hands only served to fill him with shock. He halted in the gloom, his feet scudding on polished stone, the sword in his grip drooping, scraping on the ground. It only lasted a moment. He flinched as the echoes skittered around the chamber, off the monstrous tombs. Goosebumps prickled up on his skin.

  Not so long ago, a strange blue light had crept into this chamber, the earth shuddering, shaking the stalactites. That had been the omen of awakening, the precursor to the ravens, the flock of birds blustering into the cavern to find the envoy, to warn him, Ben reckoned, wherever he might be. An unkindness. A conspiracy. Isn’t that the collective noun for those birds? Both belong in this place. He’d seen the same eerie radiance in Arthur’s tomb, hadn’t he? The glow of magic, responding to some unseen hand, an ancient spell of summoning. Why shouldn’t the light rouse the fairy too? In the mountain, Caliburn had been expecting him, the envoy meant to arrive to attend on Arthur—the real Arthur—restored, no doubt, to the peak of health to aid Britain in her darkest hour.