Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  Arthur was up there. Arthur and his knights. The king had chosen his throne room.

  Down below, in the streets around the Shard, Ben could hear the roar of the horde. Judging by the scattered fires, Arthur’s army had encamped in a loose circle that encompassed St. Thomas Street and London Bridge station. Presumably, whatever hideous captains commanded the king’s rabble, they had made good use of the buildings hereabouts, turning the abandoned spaces into makeshift headquarters. Ben could picture the scene easily enough, much as it pained him. Ogres guzzling from the taps in the Bunch of Grapes. Goblins playing dice in the post office. The little wyverns squawking and shitting on the railway tracks. The Remnant battalions at ease.

  But for how long? he wondered. This invasion won’t go unchallenged …

  He knew it was true. Arthur might’ve enjoyed the element of surprise, putting the city to flight, but human shock and incredulity wouldn’t last forever. Ben knew that from bitter experience. And he had the scars to prove it. How long before one of those choppers ventured out on a recce over Westminster and jets arrived to strafe the streets with bombs? How long before a submarine slid up the Thames, loaded with nuclear missiles? Because in among the noise, the drunken cries, roars, hisses and grunts of Remnant triumph, Ben could hear the screams too, faint but unmistakably human. And for all his draconic bulk, all his fury and fire, there was nothing he could do about it. Not here. Not now.

  You’re outnumbered. Outfanged. And you can’t even trust the cavalry.

  Ben gripped the stonework under him, threatening to crush it to dust in his claws. He had lost the city. He’d failed. The Lore was over. The Guild and the Chapter had collapsed. The Long Sleep had come undone. And Von Hart, the instigator of all these things, had betrayed him. Regardless of the fairy’s intention, summoning the Fay to save the world from destruction—or so he said—the envoy had neglected to tell Ben the truth. As a result, Ben had nearly lost his life and he hadn’t been the only one to pay the price. Wherever she was, Rose would always bear her scars. Jia had tumbled into the nether. Hundreds of humans had died. And Von Hart had started a war.

  Find him … will you refuse us in our darkest hour?

  That was the question, wasn’t it? And Ben had made up his mind.

  The sword, of course, didn’t like the idea.

  “Of all the thick-headed, ill-advised, self-serving, perilous plans,” it said, thrumming in his grip. “The Lady charged you to find Von Hart and bring me to the gate. Are you honestly going to defy her?”

  Ben scowled. It hadn’t been an easy decision. He was tired of feeling like the dice in a game of craps, thrown up the table to land wherever Von Hart wanted him. It was time to take a gamble of his own.

  “I’ve been listening to fairies for years. Guess where it got me.” Nowhere fast. “You saw the look on Von Hart’s face. Like a puppy awaiting its mistress. And you’ve seen the state of Arthur.” He shuddered, and not from the October wind. “That’s down to Fay magic, sword. Let’s just say that your Lady didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

  “But—”

  “Look. She told me that the breaking of the harp had reminded her. Of the earth. Us …” He trailed off, unable to put his dejection into words, the understanding that for all the Remnants’ hope, their faith in a dubious prophecy, the Lady had confessed that she’d forgotten all about them. “That says something. Something bad.”

  “You don’t trust her.”

  “You weren’t lying when you said you were sharp,” Ben said, and he heard the sword tsk softly below him.

  The truth was he didn’t trust Nimue any more than he trusted Von Hart. Loath as he was to let the Fay come through the Eight Hand Mirror on the envoy’s terms, he was less enamoured of the thought of chasing him down, perhaps making the same mistake twice. Not after Jia. No way. It was clear that the envoy was using him too. If he’d fashioned the sin-you as a throwaway tool, then why not a down-at-heel dragon? Was Ben finally seeing a pattern here? Could he predict the envoy’s next move? Von Hart liked to make others do his dirty work for him. Like rousing Ben to shut down rebellious witches, neatly covering his tracks. And dispatching Jia to steal the fragments of the harp, the sin-you serving as a key to the road through the nether. Shit, finding the fairy would probably play right into his lily-white hands. He guessed that Von Hart had gone to Lantau Island to recover the mirror and repair the bridge for the Fay. Did the envoy expect him to follow? Ben reckoned so. And he thought he knew why.

  Together, we’ll go into the dark.

  It was the sword, wasn’t it? In his elation, Von Hart had forgotten the sword. Elation. Madness. What’s the difference? Ben recalled the way that the envoy’s face had lit up in the cavern, the way he’d reached out for Caliburn, his fingers trembling …

  The Lady, of course, had been more forthright.

  “Why are you so damn important?” he asked, growling down at the blade. “Why does she want you so badly?” If only I could reach out, across this gulf, and take it, she’d said. Her admission told him that while she may have access to his dreaming self, her reach remained incorporeal, limited, much like the reach of the Ghost Emperor. Nimue might have healed him, using whatever spells she could, and doubtless understanding the fabric of him, Remnant as he was. But the Lady herself stood beyond the world, behind the walls, he guessed, of reality. This stuff was becoming familiar now, not that the knowledge eased him much. She could reach him, beseech him, sure, but she couldn’t steer him, that much was clear. And she couldn’t reach the sword on the material plane either, prise it out of his happenstance hands. When Von Hart had neglected the sword, he’d placed the task squarely on Ben’s shoulders. Now, Ben wondered at that, in the same way he wondered at Nimue’s offhand comment about his position. She needed him. For all her fancy words, and in typical Fay fashion, she’d let that slip too. He was a means to an end, nothing more. “She more or less said I’d be toast without you.”

  “I wish I knew,” Caliburn said. “Aside from being a magnificent example of a magical weapon, famed in countless legends and essentially determining the fate of this country, if not the world, I cannot fathom her plans. The Lady charged Von Hart with the task of attending the king should he ever awaken. Presumably, to await her return, bring me to her. After all, Nimue has played custodian before.” The sword gave a tut. “Beyond that, I haven’t a clue. I must have missed that particular meeting.”

  Deep in Ben’s chest, fire rumbled. Rubble skittered between his claws. The sense of mysteries just out of reach grated on him. He was getting tired of waiting for answers. Meanwhile, the world around him was burning.

  “It’s the same old game,” he said. “The only difference is I’m not playing blind. Not any more. And it seems to me I’ve got the world’s biggest bargaining chip.”

  If the Lady bound the fate of the earth to the sword, then I guess that it rests in my hands now. You can’t do a worse job than the envoy. Can you …?

  Caliburn buzzed. “Excuse me? Bargaining chip? Need I remind you that I was forged in lunewrought and star-studded, tempered in the ice of Avalon and spun across—”

  “Why should the envoy hold all the cards?” Ben cut the sword off, muttering to himself. “I’m sick of him yanking my chain as if I’m some … some glorified guard dog. Well, maybe it’s time I acted like one.”

  “Guard what, exactly? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s nothing left to guard.”

  “Whichever way I turn, there’s trouble,” Ben went on. “I’m not about to just hand the Fay what they want. If the Lady wants her ‘World-cleaver,’ then she can bloody well come and get it.”

  “You’re going to rebel against the High House of Avalon,” the sword said. “And I thought you were merely a dunce. You’ve got a death wish as well.”

  “Why the hell not?” Ben spoke more fiercely than intended, flames fluttering between his fangs. “The Fay turned their backs on us and we’ve been dying ever since. The Lore turned out to be a lie.
Von Hart’s big mistake. Don’t you see? All of this shit starts and ends with fucking fairies. Well, enough is enough. Sometimes you have to stand on your own two feet.” Or four. Whatever. “I can’t do any worse than them.”

  Caliburn sighed. When the sword spoke again, it sounded softer, choosing its words with care.

  “Come now. That’s not the whole truth, is it?”

  Ben exhaled, hanging his head. The fire in his belly dwindled to embers, a white-hot shame at his core.

  “I can’t leave them like this,” he said. “The humans. I swore to protect them. That was my purpose, the whole point of … of everything.” He swallowed, tasting ash in his throat. The old oath has to count for something. Or what was it worth? “I won’t abandon them now.”

  For a moment, the sword fell silent. Ben closed his eyes, thinking of Maud, of Jia and Rose. The Pact might’ve gone up in smoke, his world torn to shreds, but the dragon who’d made a promise, back in Uffington, in 1215, was still here. He hadn’t forgotten the reasons he’d made it either. To preserve the Remnants. To protect the humans. And in the end, his word was all he had, the only rock left to cling to. If he was to die, then he wouldn’t go down chasing fairies, a pawn in some ancient game. He’d die with honour, for what he believed in. The choice that he’d made. Hope of atonement hung in the air, an unspoken need behind his every word.

  Then Caliburn told him, “There’s an army out there. A thousand strong and growing by the hour. You might be a dragon and I might be a legendary sword, but there’s still only two of us. You won’t vanquish Arthur with a valiant speech.”

  “There are other Remnants,” Ben said, more boldly than he felt. Up there, around the tip of the Shard, the blue light flickered and danced. “A handful of us left …”

  It sounded foolish and he knew it. But not every Remnant was a hateful creature, hungry for human flesh and dominion. They were out there, all right, all around the world, hiding in forest and cavern and lake. In pub cellars and penthouses. In supermarkets and saunas. In tower blocks and tombs. The Lore had broken. The times had thrust the Remnants out of the shadows, blinking in the harsh light of day. A war was coming. And perched upon the broken bridge, Ben knew that it was the same war, the same old struggle between the Old Lands and the new. The war had never ended. Not really. It had only … waited.

  If he could somehow reach them. Rouse them. Rally them to his cause …

  Caliburn sniffed.

  “This is folly. The Remnants are far and wide. You don’t even know where to find them.”

  “True,” Ben said, spreading his wings. “But I know where to start looking.”

  TEN

  Paris

  In under an hour, Ben had crossed the English Channel and swept down into the tree-lined avenues of Père Lachaise Cemetery. As he dwindled into human form, he frowned, concentrating, once again recalling Jia’s trick with the suit, visualising a thin, crimson layer of scales encasing his limbs, as tight and slick as neoprene. At first, the notion wavered, uncertain, his bestial self resisting the image of the hominid attire. Then the illusion, modern as it was, took hold, his magical flesh simulating the memory of the envoy’s suit, albeit one as red as his scales and sans the wyrm tongue sigil. Once fixed in mind, the suit settled around him, a new skill, learned from necessity and sparing the world the sight of his arse.

  Hey presto!

  Without ceremony, he landed before the Monument Aux Morts, sword in claw translating to sword in hand. Statues toppled in his wake, urns splintering on gravel, scattering dried flowers and dust. Unlike the last time he’d come here, Ben paid no mind to the mess. The dragon was out of the bag now. Who knew what monsters roamed the City of Light? Or, for that matter, this city of tombs? Time was short. And discretion was a ball and chain that he happily shook off.

  In the darkness, the pale, naked sculptures of the man and the woman edged the rhomboid entrance to the tomb. Ben had learnt that this was in fact a tunnel that led down into the catacombs under the city. Into the lair of a supposed Vicomte and his eight-legged army of spies.

  Back for more punishment, mon ami …

  Ben wasn’t sure if the thought was a threat to the Remnant or himself. The truth was he had little to fear from the vampyr, for all du Sang’s taste for dragon blood. A pair of fangs, however long, weren’t much cop against rock-hard scales. It was the memory of du Sang’s desolation and thirst for fire that made Ben feel like an ant before the grand mastaba, the faux Egyptian tomb. Because the Vicomte had been right.

  A stain in the fabric of things, spreading, growing sour …

  Du Sang had warned him that the Remnants were done for, that the Lore under which they all lived was nothing more than a boot, crushing them out like used cigarettes. He’d told him that there was nothing left to live for, no reason to go on. To accept that was death, surely. It was the bitter truth that had driven Jia into its maw, made desperate and mad, like so many of the Remnants, by time, longing and loss.

  And as for me? Am I mad too? Lord knows I’ve touched my fair share of lunewrought.

  The Fay metal had changed him, that was certain. For one thing, it had granted him the insight to see the circles of protection, see their widespread decay. For another, the breaking of the harp had taken his world along with it, throwing his whole purpose into chaos. Lunewrought had a habit of bringing a Remnant’s pain to the surface, he’d found, amplifying desperation to a maniacal pitch. But Lambert du Sang hadn’t needed any help on that score and he reckoned that there were others like him, the old fabulous beings and beasts that Ben was skipping off to meet, a hulking Red Riding Hood with a blade made from the stuff.

  Caliburn was different from the Cwyth, however. Binding was never my purpose, the sword had said, and Ben had yet to find reason to doubt it. Whatever otherworldly smiths had forged the weapon had obviously designed it for another purpose, that being slicing and dicing. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if the ache in his chest, stoking the rage that had pushed him into this hare-brained course, wasn’t due to his contact with the alien ore.

  On either side of the wall before him, a bas-relief ascended to the tomb entrance. In the moonlight, he picked out the carved stone figures. A man crouching in grief. A kneeling woman with arms crossed, hiding her face. Other figures, stumbling, kissing and weeping, formed the marble tableau, all drawn towards that black, inevitable door. The monument, a memorial to those fallen in some war or other, portrayed the fragility of man, the pain and the preciousness of life. Too precious to squander on fighting, Ben reckoned. On prejudice and violence. Why did bloodshed thread through the course of history like barbed wire through mud, entwining Remnant and human alike in mindless and mundane horror? Was the nature of life inherently destructive, as the Lady had suggested? His life had been a battle from the moment he’d hatched, birthing vendettas and powder keg comprises. Could any of them hope for something better, something more?

  Once upon a time, perhaps. The Example had failed, she’d told him. Humanity couldn’t overcome its primal urges, evolve into … Into what? The notion troubled him, in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He frowned at the sculptures above him, up at that shadowed mouth. When all was said and done, when the last city had fallen, when the last child had choked under skies of ash, was a cataclysm on a global scale the only way to put an end to war?

  I don’t have the answer to that. I don’t think I want one.

  The tomb plucked at his sorrow, a reminder that the last time he’d come here, he’d yet to meet the sin-you or learn of the envoy’s treachery. On some level, he was mourning the loss of his ignorance too—and with it the greater part of his hope. So much had changed in the past year. Standing here, with death all around him, it had never been plainer to him that he wasn’t the same dragon.

  He stole a breath, steeling himself against the gloom ahead (the memory of spiders and skulls running ice up his spine), and leapt up onto the ledge. He took in the mangled gate, the etched symbol of th
e Five Families on the wall next to it, but again, he gave no thought to the ancient custom, entering uninvited with a snarl. Last winter, someone had told the White Dog the whereabouts of the Invisible Church and Ben could only think of one Remnant with access to that kind of knowledge. Wasn’t that the reason he was here? If there hadn’t been time for manners before, then there sure as hell wasn’t now.

  You’ll tell me what I want to know. And then, maybe, I’ll kill you …

  Ben traipsed through archways and down stairs and entered the gallery, the cobwebbed paintings lit by the moonlight spilling through embrasures in the vaults above. He paused by the last painting, staring at the portrayal of the Fay departing the earth at the Battle of Camlann. Rendered in faded paint, the ghostly figures in gowns and cloaks were walking up a wintery hillside, leaving no footprints in the snow. On the rise, a broad black circle yawned like a solar eclipse, the Fay vanishing into the nether … Yeah, Ben recognised the circle now. After all, he’d leapt through the damn thing, hadn’t he? Months ago, in China. It was the portal, the last gate. Legend had come to know it as the Eight Hand Mirror, the doorway framed in wood by some unknown hand, the spellbound surface begrimed with age, resembling the blackest glass.

  In a corner of the painting, Von Hart stood in his star-spangled robes, the silk like blood on the snow. His white-gold hair tumbled between his shoulder blades, both slumped with the weight of a silent burden. At his feet lay the fragments of the harp. Ben rubbed his neck, swallowing an unbidden lump in his throat, something that tasted oddly like sympathy. Having learnt of the Fay’s abandonment second-hand, a tale passed down through Remnant generations, he could only imagine what it must’ve felt like to witness it in person, Von Hart watching his people depart. He alone had remained, appointed by the High House of Avalon to serve as an ambassador, an envoy between the Remnant and the human world. Well, he did a lot more than that. Ben could understand the fairy’s pain, festering over the long years, even if he couldn’t forgive his methods, his riddles and manipulations, the conspiracy that had cost him so dearly, unleashing witches and mummies and dragons. Breaking the Lore. The painting depicted the spark that had lit the fuse to all of Ben’s troubles, and as he turned his back, he only wished he could do the same on the war blazing around him.