Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  Ben screamed. Pain tore through him, drowning all thought. All he could see was the corpse king straddling the wyvern below, his palm raised, his skull turned to the wall of thorns and the great red dragon impaled upon it.

  And his eyes, those burning blue hells.

  Arthur, the Once and Future King.

  Arthur, dragon-slayer.

  FOURTEEN

  Dusk. All Hallows’ Eve.

  At an unspoken signal from the king, the goblins climbed the thorn wall. In a tide as thick as ivy, the creatures made short work of the briar, hacking with axe and sword. By the time the wyverns plucked Ben free, from where he’d hung mounted on the branches like some fabulous trophy in a feasting hall, he was slipping in and out of consciousness. Loss of blood and fatigue conspired to weigh him down like lead. The thorns, each one a yard long, remained lodged in his body, pinning any chance of recovery. Heat tingled around his wounds, his flesh slick, raw and feverish in countless places, but the thorns neither withered nor withdrew once severed from the thicket and, unable to move, he had no way to eject them. Nor could he risk changing into human form, using his dwindling size to slip out of the snare. For one thing, he’d seen the king manipulate the briar for himself (hawthorn, a sprig in his hand) and he suspected that his bonds would shrink along with him if he made the attempt. For another, his present bulk stood a better chance of keeping the thorns away from his heart. Arthur meant to slay him—he didn’t kid himself otherwise—but if he’d learnt anything at all about knightly conquests, then the king would want to make a show of it, dead or no.

  What residual instinct echoes in your brain? Ben mused as the wyverns clutched his horns, drawing his heavy-lidded gaze up to the bearded skull above him, the king sat high in the saddle. Do the worms chew on your chivalry, Arthur? You’d weep to see yourself. There’s nothing left of you but blue light and ruin …

  The Dead and Buried King had no answer. Six or more wyverns had borne Ben aloft and, wings flapping overtime, carried his limp and bleeding body up and over the top of the barrier, rudely depositing him on the other side, onto the flagstones of Trafalgar Square. The square lay in shadow, dwarfed by the wall of thorns, but it was far from empty. A mighty roar went up at the sight of him, clubbing his stunned and wheeling brain. Filth and sweat stung his nostrils. Some of it, he noted, human.

  Groaning, he looked down on the rabble, his gathered audience, welcoming him to the arena of his defeat. From the steps of the National Gallery to the four bronze lions crouched around the base of Nelson’s Column, the horde spread out in a bristling carpet. Goblins hollered and bashed their swords against wooden shields. Greenteeth cackled, dragging their hunched, bony forms up to the inside edge of the fountains, the grand Victorian cascades silent, the waters stagnant, black with weeds, blood and shit. Bugbears looked up with round yellow eyes and open beaks, their ursine bodies aquiver. Ghouls, gargoyles and shucks slinked at the eastern limits of the square, eyes glinting from the shadows of the wall. A pair of hounds, skeletal, frost-eyed, barked and howled to see their master return. The throng parted, a jubilant sea, as the king descended with his prize.

  For a time, there was darkness, but no dreams.

  When Ben opened his eyes again, he found himself sprawled between the fountains, bound in thorns. The first thing he heard were the screams, a shrill reminder that no one was coming to help him. It wasn’t the most pleasant of waking thoughts, but there it was, grim and undeniable. Pain shuddered through him, his wounds pricking him to semi alertness. Where were the other Remnants? The chosen leaders of the British tribes, untouched by the Sleep and protected by the Pact? Delvin Blain and Bolgoth Clave, for starters, though he realised that the former was an accountant and the latter a racketeer. Both would’ve fled if they had any sense.

  Just like the Old Lands, you’re over.

  He knew it was true. The Old Lands were precisely that. Old. A polite way of saying dead and gone. As for Von Hart … Well, it seemed that the envoy had been right all along. Magic was souring and so was the Sleep. He couldn’t afford to doubt it any more, afford the luxury of denial. Even as Arthur sounded his horn to summon forth the Remnants from their disenchanted graves, how many others lay grey and rotting beneath the earth? Dragons. Unicorns. Dwarves. How many fabulous beings and beasts would this world never see the likes of again?

  A worm gnaws at the heart of things …

  What was that worm? he wondered. Betrayal? Grief? Time?

  No …

  For a moment, it felt as though the thorns had reached his heart, piercing the core of him, because an unexpected sadness gripped him. Here, at the end, he was on his own.

  Aren’t we all?

  A deeper notion followed this, like a chiming clock in a cold hall.

  I’m dying. And he didn’t just mean from blood loss, his extraordinary healing abilities checked by the cage around him. I’ve been dying for a very long time.

  Yes. Fulk had told him two years ago. The modern age held no place for him. For a while, he’d been able to pretend. Maud. Rose. A thousand women in between. He’d sought comfort in their arms, hiding from the truth. And the Lore had given him structure, a vital role as the Sola Ignis, some kind of code to live by. These ingredients had nourished him over the years, given him a reason to go on. But time had stripped him of his illusions, dispelling the fairy tales he’d once held so dear. Lying here, with blood in his mouth and his breath running short, reality didn’t feel like a happy ending.

  Another chorus of screams drew his eyes up to the plinth before him, flanked by the figures of four black lions. From the great pedestal, the Corinthian pillar loomed, 160 feet high. Cast in stone, Lord Nelson stood at the top, surveying a battle two hundred years gone.

  How humans love to celebrate bloodshed. His sluggish brain had no room for compassion. Monuments in place of sunken ships, cannon fire and thousands dead …

  Judging by the effigy above him, the wooden giant propped against Nelson’s Column, he couldn’t think any better of the Remnants. The looming structure, constructed entirely from timber and lashed rope, hid a full two thirds of the pillar from view. It resembled the figure of a man, his latticed arms parallel to his body, his stubby legs parted on the plinth. The effigy—which Ben recognised as a god, recalling tales of the Old Lands—had a boxy torso and square shoulders, the structure crowned by a head of tightly meshed branches and leaves. As he focused, his flesh prickling, he could see the ogres in their fur-trimmed cloaks and powdered wigs hacking and sawing at the logs piled up at the foot of the steps, the trees presumably felled along the Mall and dragged here for construction. Chunks of wood clopped to the flagstones, the sawdust at odds with the creatures’ fine buckled shoes, their hooked nails bursting from the leather toes. But the wicker man was complete, Ben saw, and the ogres weren’t chopping wood to build him any higher.

  Oh, Jesus Christ! No!

  He’d heard about such things before. Back in the Old Lands, when the era that the humans would call the Iron Age had mingled freely with the magic of another world, the druids had held many a ceremony on hilltop and in forest glade, making offerings to the gods like the one above him. Taranis, the Celtic god of thunder, if memory served. Taranis, the fire in the skies. With flowers of flame, the tree priests had appeased the Great Forest that had covered most of Albion in those days, begging for protection from wolves, witches and worse. Holding to an oral tradition, the druids had never written down their secrets, and the whispers about the nature of their offerings came solely from the Romans, who’d looked on British shores with jealous eyes. And along those shores, the druids had fought to repel the legions time and again, raising mist and sea winds, summoning storms to wreck trireme and skiff, frustrating Julius Caesar himself. But eventually, Albion—Britannia—had fallen. In revenge, a succession of emperors had struck the druids from the annals of history and Ben didn’t know whether he was seeing a historical reenactment or a mocking defilement. So much around him stank of corruption, he suspe
cted the latter.

  It didn’t matter. What mattered was the people. Humans, a thousand or more, crammed into the towering effigy. The sight stung him like no thorn ever could, row upon row of ragged, filthy people. Men, women and children packed into the prison so tightly that their arms and legs stuck out between the bars and their faces pressed, dull and fearful, against the lashed branches. Amid the press, Ben realised, some squirmed and struggled for air, crushed by the surrounding people. Screams and shouts issued from the captives, a ceaseless chorus in the dusk, the sun heedless, low and red as it sank behind the thorn wall. But the noise struck him as oddly muted, an exhausted, melancholy blare, and the silence beneath it seemed louder. Up and up Taranis soared, his bones hard and unyielding, his body stuffed with flesh. Sweat and shit sullied the air, the pervasive odour of terror. Of certain doom. Here, Ben made out a fair-haired child clutching a ragged doll, the both of them black with soot. There, an elderly woman stared down with wet, milky eyes, taking in the rabble with a look he recognised as weary belief. Like himself, these poor souls had had incredulity ripped from them. In horn, claw and fang, the humans above him had come to see the truth of the world, rudely unveiled with goblin whips that cracked back and forth, driving them back to the city to fuel the dead king’s hecatomb.

  Ben couldn’t know the purpose of such a massacre. He didn’t want to know. The wooden god struck him as a manifestation of everything that had gone wrong, the long oppression of the Pact hiding the truth of the world, a wound that had festered over centuries, finally exposed to the harsh light of day. Arthur was the embodiment of the chaos, he knew, a living symbol reborn, albeit one perverted and sour. How long does the fruit stay ripe when cut from the branch? Small wonder that the king should command such a ritual, beseeching long-dead gods in the destruction.

  Gods. Or …

  Alas, we are not what we were …

  Like it or not, he couldn’t shake the fact that he was looking at the result of magic. The king with his wintry gaze. The harp and the broken Sleep. The decaying circles and the Remnants gathered in the square … All of it had one source.

  The Fallen Ones. The Fay.

  And where there was a king, there was often a queen. Arthur and the Lady had history, didn’t they? A history woven on the loom of time, the very fabric of Britain. Why should now be any different? The Lady wanted the sword. And how Ben empathised, itching for the weapon. Caliburn, he reckoned, would make short work of his bonds.

  He was thinking this when the smell of smoke spiralled to his nostrils, joining the pall of jubilation and despair. This was a ritual, all right, and he was part of it. He looked up and saw the ogres chucking torches onto the pyre stacked around the wicker man’s feet and it was painfully clear that one of the last things he was going to see was a human inferno. Hell, he’d probably wind up on the barbecue himself, ending his days as a draconic version of filet mignon for Arthur’s army.

  That’s why you’re not dead yet. He wants you to see this.

  Arthur. Or … whatever force drove him.

  He heard a shout, carrying his name, and craning his neck, he noticed the leather-clad figures locked in the effigy’s head. Black knights. The few who survived the battle, anyway. Squinting, he located the source of the cry, the girl stretching her arms out between the bars, looking down and begging him to help her, to help them. Annis Cade. The last Fulk. Considering the scene around him, the conquered state of London, he had a feeling he was right about that—at least, she was the last slayer he’d ever face. But she looked anything but triumphant. Taking in her expression, he let out a groan, his snout sinking to the flagstones. Her desperation was as futile as his own, his cage spellbound, invulnerable. Still, he acknowledged a grudging pang of respect as the reason for her presence here dawned on him.

  The gun placements in the park. It was a rescue mission, wasn’t it? You wanted to save the captives. Instead, you’ve ended up joining them …

  Annis was a fool. They had that much in common. But the last thing he wanted was to see her pay the price for her attack, her cropped hair and scrawny frame going up in flames. For all that, the would-be slayer had brought this on herself. There was nothing he could do for her.

  You and the rest of Logres, honey.

  His thoughts were sluggish, addled by pain. A fresh chorus of screams snapped him back to alertness, letting him know that the humans in the lower part of the effigy’s torso had seen the smoke too—and felt the flames licking up around its legs. How many minutes did he have until the fire took hold, crisping an old woman’s hair, devouring a ragged doll? Ben could feel time slipping through the hourglass of his fear. He struggled in his bonds, his tail thumping against the side of a fountain, but it was no use. The thorns gripped him, sinking further into his flesh. He only succeeded in smearing blood across the flagstones. His head swam as the branches grew tighter around his neck, preventing the chance of mustering his own inferno. Did he even have the energy?

  Straining against his bonds, he noticed Arthur emerge from around the plinth, standing below the bronze lion to Ben’s right. The king appeared to have no fear of the flames at his back, even as the ogres withdrew, their task complete, one or two patting embers from their cloaks. Armour rippling in the rising heat, Arthur merely gazed at Ben, his eyes a cold mirror to the flames. His grin related blind triumph.

  Catching Ben’s gaze, the king raised his hand, opening his palm as if to say, Look. Look upon my works … He was close enough for Ben to see the sprig of hawthorn, black against his enervated flesh. His serpentine vision spared him nothing. He could even see the beads of blood on Arthur’s skin, congealed and dull. And he felt the thorns around him pulse in response to the gesture, loosening a small degree, enough to draw the stakes that pierced him inches out of his body, his anguished roar joining the orchestra of dread above him. Such a little sprig, the evident fetish to a spell that had bound London and brought down its guardian dragon.

  He wants you to know that you’ve failed …

  Ben didn’t need a reminder. He glared at the king, defiant. Then he blinked, some mote flickering across his eye. At first, he thought he was looking at a flake of ash, drifting from the effigy. Those screams. The soundtrack to my downfall. But the flake moved too erratically for that, jerking its way across Taranis’s knees and dipping in a series of aerial steps toward the lion where Arthur stood. Squinting, Ben made out wings, tiny and black, and heard faint squeaks as the creature made its awkward dive. He realised then that he was looking at a bat—a fucking bat—come flapping out of the dusk from gods knew where. He groaned again, this time inwardly, even as his heart thumped with renewed hope.

  Seriously?

  The dead king hadn’t noticed the bat. Maybe it was the roar of the flames or his pride over the vanquished dragon in the square, but his reaction came too late. Sailing on a hot draught, the bat made its final approach, fluttering down into Arthur’s face. Caught off guard, Arthur staggered back, his eyes flaring, but when he made a grab for the creature, his fingers only closed on air. And the bat, squeaking in an oddly sardonic manner, twitched upwards and away, once again flapping towards the wicker man’s legs. Ben watched as the creature dropped something from its claws, a small black object falling into the flames at the foot of the effigy. The next moment, pain went searing through him from snout to tail, a heat that had nothing to do with his inner gases and everything, he guessed, to do with the sprig of hawthorn that the bat had snatched from the dead king’s hand.

  Snatched and burned.

  Hissing as the yard-long thorns in his body shrivelled and disintegrated, Ben looked up to see the bat change. There was no ripple of transformation, no muscular expansion from chiropteran to human form. A pop of air, a puff of dust, and the Vicomte Lambert du Sang was standing on the plinth between the two lions. The young man was naked, balls and all, his grin revealing his sharp white teeth and exactly how pleased he was with himself. Gone was the withered half-corpse of before. Du Sang appeared
in the peak of health, his brown locks curling, his lips full, pursed with pride. In his eyes, malachite glinted, a hue that continued into his skin, Ben noticed, his face and body tinged a shade of green.

  Goblins. It’s the goblin blood.

  Ben grunted, smoke spilling from his snout at the sight of his unlikely saviour.

  “Get up!” du Sang said, wheeling an arm as the ogres, seeing him on the plinth, came lumbering up the steps toward him. “Get up, you witless wyrm!”

  Easier said than done. With an effort worthy of Samson, Ben hauled himself up on his forelegs and haunches, his wounds screaming. Smoke plumed from his nostrils, wreathing the square. Blood splashed the flagstones, but it ran slower than before, he reckoned, his healing abilities kicking in, eager to restore him now that the pyre had dispelled his cage. Nevertheless, he was weak. It took a great deal to lash out his tail, swiping an approaching babble of goblins from the ground, their helmets and weapons clanging off stone. His wings sagged like peeling billboards, sweeping over the fountains, raking through muck and slime, the greenteeth hissing in retreat. Above, he heard wyverns shriek, responding to some unseen signal from the king. He had no time, no time, the flames roaring up before him. But du Sang hadn’t risked all this for his health. Ben had to get out of here and recover the sword. If he failed, then everything was lost.

  But first things first.