Again, he looked over at Ben, this time with narrow eyes. It only took Ben a moment to realise that Von Hart wasn’t interested in him.
“Caliburn,” the envoy said, and he couldn’t hide his satisfaction, drinking in the length of the blade. “World-cleaver. Demon-slayer. Harp-breaker.”
And the sword said, “My king.”
Ben curled his lip, its obeisance, for all its weary scorn, sinking in.
Of course. The insight should’ve shocked him more than it did, coming as it did on the heels of his suspicions. I’m a sword, not a subject. That’s what Caliburn had told him, back in the chamber under the mountain, all jewelled and steely arrogance. And in the cavern under London, the sword had sounded anything but, chastising the envoy for his meddling. You’ve been busy, hexenmeister … It struck him now that the blade, forged long ago in Avalon and bestowed upon an earthly ruler, had aimed its disdain at Arthur. Perhaps at all humans, its provenance springing from other hands entirely, alien and afar. The harp. The horn. The sword. The Fay had made all these things, hadn’t they? Shaping their magic in lunewrought and placing them in mortal hands. Tools with which to toy with the world, advance the cause of the Example. Sleep, enchanted. Binding. And severance. A trinity of intervention, left discarded on the earth. Relics of failure. Of doom …
The knowledge shuddered through him, an ache in his skull.
And what of love, Benjurigan? He remembered the Orchard of Worlds, the blossoms in the air, forming a figure, pale and tall. The hint of hair, white as snow. Arms spread. The vision drifting apart in the Lady’s embrace.
Once, I walked here with my consort, the King of all the Fay. What dreams we conjured in the garden!
Ben gasped, the memory hitting home. He hadn’t just interrupted a reunion, the envoy summoning his people. He’d interrupted an aeons-long tryst.
“You think I’m stupid,” he said to Von Hart, forcing his words through the storm, thin and razor-sharp. “Dummkopf, wasn’t it? But all this …” He nodded at the blazing circle. At the breach in the Lore. The shattered mirror. Absent ghosts. “The lengths you’ve gone to … Fairy, you’ve shown your hand. You loved her, didn’t you? The Lady. Nimue. You were the one who started all this, back in the … God knows. You were her fucking king.”
Von Hart straightened at this, unable to hide his surprise. Perhaps he’d imagined himself so clever, hiding the crux of his plans, the desire that had driven him to risk all. I made a mistake … Betraying the Lore he’d founded. The Sleep he’d brought about. Sacrificing his student. His friend. I asked you to catch her. To let me fall. But there was a deeper devotion here. A deeper need. Ben had seen it in the envoy’s eyes, back in the crypt under London. And he was seeing it again as Von Hart sighed and hung his head, his hands falling limp at his sides. At once, the light flickered out completely. The rainbow faded, swallowed by the dark. Up on the shore, the ice stopped flowing, the bridge, for the moment, arrested. Its glistening arc had stalled in the mouth of the gate.
Even in the gloom, Ben couldn’t mistake it. The envoy looked sick, he thought. His cheekbones were gaunt, holding a sallow sheen. Threads of gold clung to his brow, plastered by cold and sweat. The effort of the spell reeked on him, that was plain. As was his fatigue, perhaps the weight of his ages-long scheme. It was coming to fruition here, out on the ice. Ben’s chest grew tight as he took in the envoy’s expression, the sorrow in his eyes. He’d known enough of it himself, a burden that he’d carried for years, to recognise it on sight.
The wound of a long-lost love.
“We believed once,” Von Hart told him, simply. “We struck a sword into stone and challenged this world to aspire. To reach its highest expression. We believed that we could shine our light upon all. Climb our way back to the stars. Back to …” Godhood. Ben had heard this part. It didn’t surprise him that the envoy left the thought hanging, a silent admission of guilt. “We believed that we could make them believe. The humans. With magic. With dreams made flesh. Remnants, Ben. The erlscion.” He smiled, as though seeing a younger version of himself in the surface of the lake. “And on their belief, the power of it, we believed that we could build a ladder, restoring us to glory.”
“Things didn’t work out that way,” Ben said. Understatement of the year.
“No,” Von Hart said. Then he gave a tut, frowning. “The Example failed. We remained Fallen. The Fay turned their backs on this world, marching off into the nether. Yet she promised to return …”
One shining day, when Remnants and humans learn to live in blah blah …
“I hate to break it to you, but the Queen’s Troth …” Ben hesitated. Why was his voice trembling, the words like thorns in his heart? He’d looked forward to this moment, avenging himself on the envoy with the truth. Instead, all he felt was pain. “That’s all bullshit. Whatever state the Fay were in when they left the earth, all shiny and whatever, that doesn’t describe them now. I’ve seen her, Von Hart. The Lady. In visions. In dreams.” Or something much like them. “The Fay are dying like we are. The souring of magic has spread across the leys, polluting Avalon. They’re not just Fallen. They’re fucked. Your precious people are corrupted. Twisted. They’re turning into Lurkers.”
The envoy shot him a look, a stab of violet in the dark.
“You have to put an end to all this,” Ben went on, waving an arm at the circle. The gate. “You have to shut this shit down.”
Von Hart held his gaze, desire and shock warring in his eyes. Then his face resolved into a pleading look. Ben caught his breath, realising what he was seeing. The fairy wanted him to say it wasn’t so. He wanted to reject the revelation, cling on to hope. But the grip of lunewrought, of longing, clearly wasn’t strong enough to thwart the truth, now that the envoy heard it. Ben had expected denial. Fire, even, blasting him away across the ice. He’d expected death.
Instead, Von Hart sank to his knees, his robes spilling around him, dark as blood.
“Ja. Typical,” he said in a murmur. “Here we stand at the heart of all belief, watching the last hope fade.”
Ben wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but there was no time.
“Von Hart. Damn you—”
To his surprise, the envoy gave a sob. The sound skittered away across the lake, rebounding between the mountains. Cradling himself, his head sank towards the frozen surface, and when he spoke, it was through bitter teeth.
“It was all for nothing. Nothing.” He shivered like a leaf in the chill. In that moment, he looked old and frail, a sight that shocked Ben more than his grief. “I thought that we could go on. I thought I could find a way. I thought—”
“A decent master looks after his pets,” Ben said, summing up the maths of his doubt, the penny dropping. He could see it now. The full scope of the envoy’s scheme, fraught with danger and stretching back years. Centuries. Back into the Old Lands. And beyond …“That’s what you told me, back in Berlin.” And recently, under London. “Is that …” He could barely bring himself to say it. “Is that why you stayed behind?”
All along, the envoy had been trying to tell him, his riddles threaded with the seeds of a greater truth. Perhaps it was the magic in the air, or the fairy’s sorrow, that pricked the realisation from him, the puzzle at last clicking together. Clicking together like the fragments of a harp, shattered by the sword at the Battle of Camlann, the pieces left lying in the snow. In du Sang’s tomb, Ben had seen the painting on the wall, the blazing black sun on the rise. And the envoy, watching his people depart …
Until now, it had never occurred to him that Von Hart’s role of ambassador, of envoy, wasn’t a position appointed by the Fay, the High House, but one that he had chosen himself.
His mistake.
“I was tired, Ben,” the envoy said. “Tired of the endeavour. The harvesting of worlds. And with the Remnants, we had come so close.” He looked up then, tears crystallising on his cheeks. “I had … changed. You’re not the only one who feels kinship with humans. Who learnt to love
their fragility. Their fleeting nature. The power of their dreams. And you were our children. Our greatest achievement. How could I leave you? Leave you to die. Alone in the dark. When the moment came, I found that I could not.”
Ben sagged, his shoulders falling. Steam eddied from his mouth, swirling with hurt. The sword tip sank to the ice. It was all he could do to stay on his feet. For the past two years, from conspiracy to catastrophe, he’d come to see Von Hart as a traitor. A knife in the back. His worst enemy. A creature of deceit, his cruelty unfolding in innocent blood and the end of the world. And while this was true, after a fashion, he realised then that he’d misjudged the fairy. That really, here at the end, he was simply seeing the envoy’s despair, a surrender to an inevitable doom, and a longing to see his people again. His queen again. His love.
And then, another echo. Another memory.
Oh, we were younger then. Foolish … Can a queen not love her king?
Yeah. The Lady had told him. This ancient romance—treacherous, disastrous as it had proven to be—had cut both ways.
“The Eight Hand Mirror,” Ben said. “The last gate. She …” He recalled Nimue’s sadness in the garden, the memory stinging his eyes. In our pain, we did not see … One by one, we destroyed the gates, closing the roads through the nether. One alone, we left intact, although locked and bound by a charm, because …“She couldn’t bring herself to do it either, could she? To leave you behind forever. Like you, she thought there was still a chance. Because—”
And above him, in the wound of the world, a voice echoed from the darkness.
“Yes. Because we didn’t have the Hart.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Nimue, Our Lady of the Barrows, stood on the brink of the broken bridge. When Ben turned, her words resounding in his skull, the perspective clawed at him, his guts churning. It was as though he stood on the lip of a chasm, albeit one that had cracked the heavens apart. Ice prickled up his spine, a chill that had nothing to do with the surface he was standing on. The gate was wider now, he saw, its fraying edges lapping against the mountains. The snowbound slopes were losing solidity, swallowed by an abject, insatiable darkness. By Lurkers, who swarmed on all sides, nibbling, pecking, gorging on reality, the fabric of the material plane. The arrested spell hadn’t stalled them; the guests were already at the feast. Even the stars seemed to quail, unable to withstand the onslaught, winking out like candles. Looking at the gate, Ben knew only too well that to fall into the nether was to fall forever, spinning and spinning until his breath ran out, and then spinning still. But if he had to follow Jia to stop this disaster—this invasion—then so be it. What did he have to live for, anyway? Everything was gone.
But I’ll go down in flames like I promised. The Lone Fire. Snuffed out.
The Lady, however, didn’t look bothered either way. Summoned by the breaking of the harp, she had followed the road through the void, back to this forgotten place. This long ago rejected fruit. Rotten. Sour. Left hanging on a withering branch in some nowhere corner of the cosmos.
And she hasn’t come alone. Dear God.
At her back, beyond her slender, blue-gowned figure, Ben took in the length of the ley, wide as a highway where it reached the gate. It was a silver beam that dwindled into the distance, devoured by the deep. The cloud out there was closer now, as was the rumbling in his ears, the tidings of a coming storm. A company of riders, the Lady had told him. But fresh from the Battle of London (not to mention the trials of the past), it didn’t take a genius to see that it was an army. A narrow vanguard roared and creaked down the last road, out of the Dark Frontier. The High House of Avalon, brought low. Cursing his extraordinary vision, he was sure he could make out the flash of swords. The flurry of hooves. The gleam of strange and alien machinery. Siege engines, towering, bristling with spikes. Great mangonels, armoured like seashells, their flanks a silvery whorl. Jewelled cannons, no doubt loaded with munitions, blasting all in a magical barrage … And reluctant as the insight was, he couldn’t mistake the aura around the galloping ranks. A cold, milky glow enveloped the vanguard, trailing scum and ghost-light. If he looked closer, he reckoned he’d see a claw here, an antenna there. An array of blank, compound eyes, all wrestling inside elegant armour, squirming to get out … To feed. Instead, he looked away, the view too much for him, threatening to usurp his reason, turn his fire into stone.
Safer to look at the Lady. Nimue on the edge of the bridge. How she’d got here so fast, he couldn’t know, although she had said something about the nature of time, how it moved differently in the nether, if at all. In a way, she had always been here, carried in his head, in his heart, in the dreams of all Remnants, merely waiting for her moment. Or an invitation. A way back to the lands she’d sown, ripe with ruin and regret …
For all her debasement, she showed none of it now. She’d restored her mask, her glamour, the illusion shimmering in silk and long brown limbs, her hair coiled high on her head, white as the mountains she stood between. With eyes as violet as dusk, she peered across the gulf, the ice clawing from the lakeshore into the maw. Then, with obvious disdain, she looked down at the edge of the broken span, tapering out a few yards from her toes.
Ben found himself thankful for that gulf, although he couldn’t quite trust it—couldn’t trust a thing about these creatures. He disliked the smile that haunted her lips, faint, yet darkly amused. In the poise of her neck, her folded hands, he could read her scorn for this paltry latter-day summons. In her eyes, there lingered the gleam of a greater art. A half-remembered power. A lost divinity. All of it eclipsed by hunger.
Nevertheless, Von Hart said, “My queen.” And then, softer, through tears, “My love.”
Across the distance, the Lady frowned, troubled. She blinked and gave a twitch of her head, as if to shake off a discomforting thought. And when she replied, a gentleness threaded through her voice, at odds with the fathomless dark. The reason for her arrival.
“My Lord Blaise,” she said, and bobbed in the shadow of a curtsey. “The Leaping White Hart of Camelot. Consort of the High House. How long has it been since we walked in the garden? Arm and arm and dreaming of the future? Dreaming these worlds anew? Tell us.”
“Many, many years, Your Majesty.” In the centre of the circle, the envoy bowed his head. “Too many. Beyond count.”
“And Merlin,” the Lady said. “Your student. How do our subjects fare?”
Merlin? As Nimue’s eyes settled upon him, Ben didn’t know what to expect. Her usual greeting, ambiguous, teasing, or a show of drooling fangs, rendering him a morsel in eight eyes, a tool that had served its purpose. Bring us the sword. But he realised then that he was less than that, a minor presence in her regard. A Remnant. A failed experiment. A beast and nothing more.
Did you honestly imagine that you were so special?
No. When all was said and done, he accepted that he wasn’t. To some, he may have played guardian. To others a pet. Or a lie, an illusion of human love. But she hadn’t directed her question at him, only at the weapon he held.
Caliburn.
“My lady,” the sword said, thrumming. “I’m afraid I remain exactly where you put me, all those years ago. In a prison that is sometimes a blasted oak and sometimes a tower of glass. And sometimes, of late, a sword, forged in lunewrought and star-studded, tempered in the ice of Avalon and spun across worlds to the hand of a king.”
“What the hell?” Ben growled, his breath steaming. “You kept that quiet.”
But Caliburn—Merlin—ignored him and the Lady was speaking again.
“As it should be, old cambion,” she said. “As it will always be. Ah, how you inspired us, wizard. The son of a devil and a nun. And how you failed us. With your temptation. Your lust. How mortal, how weak, you remained.”
“In my soul, you bound the fate of this world, great lady,” the sword replied. “Yet that was my choice, was it not? In the end, there were some who refused you. Arthur. Even your consort, Lord—”
“Fools al
l,” the Lady said, her smile fading. “And that choice was your last. The sealing of your tomb. Indeed, you remain our prisoner. Your fate in our hands. And you will not refuse us now.”
So saying, Nimue raised a hand, a delicate twist of fingers in the dark. Instinctively, Ben tightened his grip on the weapon, feeling the force eddying around it, tugging at the blade. But it was no use. A burst of silver, pokers in his head, rewarded him for his efforts. A bolt of energy shot through him, arching his spine, locking his teeth in pain. Through screwed-up eyes, he looked down at the sword, the dragon-shaped hilt, the graven, indecipherable runes. On the crossguard, the jewelled quillons sparkled in the glare, appearing to stare up at him. And with that gleaming, pointed look, images scattered, refracting in his skull.
A blazing black sun on a rise. A woman—no, the Lady—turning. Turning her back on the battle below, on human folly and weakness. On the one who stood there in star-spangled robes, his hair like milk poured down his back. And then the envoy, running, running and weeping up the slope, leaving no footprints in the snow. His hand reaching out, reaching for her shoulder … And his fingertips meeting glass …
It was only a moment. Then it was gone. Gone like the fire, dispersing around him. Gone like the sword in his hand.
Cursing, Ben staggered backwards, shaking off its sting. Fuck. He spat on the ice, the surface hissing. With wounded eyes, he looked up at the bridge where the Lady stood, suspended, waiting, over nothing. But she wasn’t looking at him, his presence already forgotten. With open triumph, her gaze rested solely on the sword.
She held it up, admiring the blade, and then she looked down at the envoy, Von Hart.
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