There were three of the servants waiting for her in the hall. The magic of the armour apparently worked to reveal them. Equally obviously, they were unaware they could be seen. Pretending she did not know they were there, Lily headed for the stairs as they surrounded her. She was not used to a sword, but this one seemed to lend skill she did not have. The nearest of them was beheaded before he even knew she was attacking. The others faltered, which gave her an opening to run the second right through his chest. The last clawed at her throat and she heard a sound like nails on metal even as she felt the dull pressure on her skin. Yanking her blade free, she turned, slashing through the creature’s stomach, and then turned back to the stairs leaving it to die in a pool of its own blood.
There were no more of them, but Lily wanted to be out of the house as quickly as she could manage. The place she called home felt wrong, sick. It was as if, because its Mistress was not in her right mind, the house was suffering. She wished Twill was there. The fairy could have at least made the house feel right. But Twill was probably in the fae Otherworld now, wasting her freedom. Lily hoped that Ceri could somehow do something to help Twill once this was over, but for now there was nothing to be done.
The necklace was where Ceri had left it, on the bedside table. Lily lifted it by its chain, looking at the silver-metal rectangle suspended from it. Embossed into the surface was a stylised image of a dragon; a sort of tribal-style creature curled around, nose to tail. Ceri had the same image on the back of her right hip. It looked like a tattoo, but it had formed under her skin apparently of its own volition. This was the symbol of Brenin and Brenhines, Ceri’s draconic ancestors, and the pendant had been given to Ceri by Brenhines. The dragon had said it would bring insight and Lily hoped that it would work now. Tucking it away inside her dress, she turned and headed back the way she had come.
She walked out of the house into a scene of chaos. Molech was standing over the neck of a dragon, his clawed hands gripping its horns as he struggled to hold it down. He looked at her as she emerged and started toward them, his eyes glowing red. ‘Get to the power station,’ he growled. ‘You must drive the sword into the ground beside the central pillar. It will do the rest. Now go! Leave this to me.’
Lily’s fist clenched around the hilt of her sword, then she nodded and ran off toward Saint Agnes Place and the road to Battersea.
Vauxhall
Lily ducked into the shadows of an office doorway as an armoured car turned onto Nine Elms Lane from Vauxhall Bridge. She recognised the model, an Archmage like the one she had rode through Germany in with Ceri. This one, however, had a large launcher system mounted on it behind the upper hatch. She saw it swivel toward the river as the vehicle came to a halt, and then there was a deafening roar of exhaust as a missile blasted into the sky trailing a pair of thin wires.
Looking upward, she saw the reason for the attack as a dragon twisted in the air, dodging the wire-guided missile by a few inches, but a few inches was enough. The huge creature dropped quickly toward the road, fire roaring from its mouth. It could not penetrate the vehicle’s armour, but the wash of flame set the tires alight and stopped the people inside from reacting quickly enough. When Wächter had landed beside her in Germany, Lily had felt fear verging on terror, even though she suspected the dragon was holding back the aura the creatures wrapped themselves in. Now she felt nothing. A second dragon landed behind the Archmage, boxing it in, and the two creatures raised their heads and roared. Lily had no idea what they were doing until the rear door of the armoured vehicle burst open and the gunner staggered out, gasping and choking. Smoke of some sort followed him; the vehicle was supposed to be screened against magic, but somehow the dragons had breached its defences with a poison gas spell.
Lily saw the dragon at the rear raise one clawed forelimb, and then she was bolting forward, her sword rising. She was not fast enough. The dragon’s claws slammed through the man’s body, right through his armoured vest. Lily let out a scream of anger and brought her sword down on the dragon’s leg. There was a flare of bluish light and the dragon reared backward letting out a roar of pain.
Fire enveloped Lily, wrapping around her like a hot cloud. She barely felt it; the warmth was even pleasant. Turning, her hair swinging, she saw the first dragon charging at her. Ducking under its snapping jaws, she rammed her sword upward. Light flared again along the blade as it burned up through the creature’s throat. There was no resistance as it breached the base of the skull and slammed into the brain above. She twisted the sword free as the dead dragon staggered reflexively and fell.
She felt the wind of the second dragon’s wings as it beat into the air. Fire enveloped her again, but it was clear that the dragon knew it could not harm her. Rising higher, it flapped away toward the power station. Damn! Stupid… They would know she was coming now.
As she ran on, heading for the riverside walk to avoid the main road, Lily reflected that there was every chance that they had known anyway.
Battersea
The area near the power station was a war zone. Army and police rapid reaction forces were trying to get to the power station, and the dragons were quite determined to keep them away from it. Dragons looped through the sky and stood guard at ground level. There had to be hundreds of them already and more were coming in.
Streaming from the top of the station building was the bridge, a coruscating column of magical energy which seemed to stretch up into space, though Lily suspected it topped out in the upper atmosphere. Up above the city the aurora was shining brilliant green with sparks of yellow and red radiating out from the bridge. As Lily watched she could see a few dark spots amid the colours, each one falling and resolving into a dragon which arced away from the bright light and joined its fellows. There were enough of them now that they were beginning to spread out, widening the cordon around Battersea and spreading the destruction further afield.
It was not going all their way. The missiles did not always miss and Lily had run past at least one dragon who would not be celebrating their dominion over the Earth if she failed. There were also a number of serpentine drakes plunging toward the park and, from the way they flew back up and dropped again, fire tearing through the air as they went, Lily was pretty sure that Alexandra was holding them back from the pack. Another reason to hurry this up. I don’t know how long they’ll hold against that.
It looked as though someone in the army had called in heavy ordnance; the waste ground to the south of the station had some huge craters in it. Even so, crossing that ground was going to be impossible without being spotted, so Lily had edged around the site to the railway line running along its eastern edge. Around three hundred yards up from the main road past the station, the track was as close to the station walls as any other access point around it.
Her sword made easy work of the chain fence at the edge of the site and she dashed across the gap between the bushes at the side of the track and the wall. The huge walls loomed above her; concrete and steel stretching up into the sky like a living beast themselves. The dragons were busy with the human forces and failed to notice the single woman edging along the wall to one of the service doors. She found herself in the transformer hall, the section of the station which was converting electricity from the transducers into a suitable form to feed the national grid. The machines were still humming; the system continuing to provide power even though the generator was being used to fuel the bridge and the local substations had been taken out, plunging the area into darkness.
With the generator running at full power, the station’s interior was ablaze with light. Sneaking about was going to be largely impossible, but then again, it also seemed to be unnecessary. Whether through arrogance or lack of forces, there were no dragons in the room. They would have been easy to spot, and probably would have found it difficult to operate amid the bulky machines with their sharp edges and protrusions. From what Lily knew of the generator room itself, there was far more room to manoeuver in there, so perhaps that was where
she would run into trouble.
She was running down the side of the hall toward the north section where the huge circle of transducers was located when the voice brought her to a halt. ‘Little Lily Carpenter, all dressed up and come to save her Mistress.’ It was resonant, obviously Chinese, easily audible despite being quite low, and she turned to see the tall figure of Huanglong standing down one of the aisles between the machinery. He was dressed in a long, straight, black coat, and he stood there, quite still, with his hands folded behind his back. ‘To think a simple pet could stop our grand purpose is beyond presumptuous, but tell me, what makes you think she wants you to save her.’
‘That’s really beside the point, isn’t it?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You didn’t come here in some misguided attempt to rescue her from her destiny?’
‘Of course I did, but it doesn’t matter whether she wants it or not.’ She turned, swinging her sword in an arc which sliced through the neck of a servant coming up behind her. When she turned back to face Huanglong he was glowering at her. ‘I can’t let you succeed, no matter what.’
‘We just want to survive,’ he said. ‘Is that too much to ask?’
‘Grow up. If that was what you wanted you could have asked nicely. There are plenty of places you could have been accommodated without mounting a full-scale invasion.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s what the problem was, wasn’t it? Back when Brenin allowed himself to die to thwart the original plot. You had a whole world you could have lived in without bothering humanity, but your kind wanted slaves. That’s what caused the split. That’s why Brenhines has been trying to keep Ceri out of your clutches. That’s why Mei Long has vanished. You’re nothing but a bunch of petty tyrants.’
His right arm swung around from behind his back, hand raised and fingers spread. Fire roared toward Lily, wrapping around her. She felt the heat, but there was no pain, no burning. She stepped into the jet, her sword swinging upward, and Huanglong let out a scream as his hand was tossed into the air.
Clutching his bleeding stump to his chest, the dragon-man ran back down the aisle. Lily ignored him, turning to carry on the way she had been going. She had more important things to do; in the next room, Ceri would be waiting.
The generator chamber was full of even brighter light than the rest of the building. Bands of colour twisted up from the centre of the circle, vanishing up through the ceiling far above. Wind roared around Lily as she walked in through one of the doors, pulling at her hair and whipping her dress’ skirt around her legs. She kept walking toward the huge outer circle of transducer poles, her eyes scanning around for any sign of dragons, or Ceri. Her senses screamed; the magic field within the circle had increased to truly dangerous levels with the rise in level outside. There was a pile of bodies in overalls in one corner of the room, but there was no sign of Ceri.
The wind died away as she stepped through the outer ring, becoming little more than a breeze, but the sense of intense magic was even stronger here. Something dark was visible inside the inner circle and Lily knew that this was Ceri. The sorceress did not move as Lily walked toward her. She remained standing in the blazing light from the central column, her arms raised. As Lily closed the distance she could hear chanting. The language was nothing she had ever heard before, but it had the same quality as the few words of draconic she had heard. Ceri probably did not understand what she was saying; she had been programmed with the spell necessary to open the rift between the two worlds. Now she was chanting it, repeating the same set of sounds over and over, with each repetition adding to the power in the bridge.
‘Ceri,’ Lily called out from just within the inner circle. ‘Ceri, stop.’
Somewhat to Lily’s surprise, she did. Ceri turned and smiled at Lily. Her eyes were blazing a bright blue, pupils shrunk to pinpricks, and the smile did not reach them. She was dressed in a black gown, or something like one, with a high collar. It was like something out of a fairy tale, the kind of thing worn by the wicked queen. The material flowed like liquid latex around her legs, hugging her hips as it rose up into a corset which stopped under her breasts. Indeed, the lower slopes of her breasts were exposed along with the space between them and most of her collarbones. Lily swallowed; her mistress was every bit the divine, dark Mistress. Hellishly sexy. Can I do this?
‘My pet! You’ve returned to me, and you’re still wearing my collar. We’re going to have such fun. I’ll have to punish you for running away, of course. You understand that, don’t you?’
Lily looked at Ceri, feeling an ache in her chest. She felt… empty. And there was her Mistress, waiting to fill that void. ‘I understand, Mistress.’
‘The bridge is almost complete,’ Ceri said, her voice soft. ‘Soon they’ll come, all of them, and I’ll be the queen humanity deserves. The mother they need. The bringer of the toughest love they’ve ever known.’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘Come closer, pet,’ Ceri said, her voice soft, almost loving. Lily moved closer, until there was barely a foot between them. ‘Kneel.’ The word was almost a whisper. Lily dropped to her knees on the bare concrete floor. ‘Do you love me, my beautiful pet?’
Lily looked up and saw the pain in Ceri’s eyes. There was still some of the girl Lily knew and loved in there, looking out and knowing what was happening to her. ‘Yes, Mistress, more than life.’
The wind rose, pulling at Lily’s hair. Ceri drew her arm back, hand held out flat, ready to strike. ‘Then why are you letting this happen?’
Lily moved, twisting around on one knee, pushing up with the other leg. Her sword swung around as she turned, arcing through the air as a blaze of silver light. Ceri’s eyes widened, but there was nothing she could do as the blade swung at her head. At the last instant, Lily twisted the sword and the flat of it smashed into the side of Ceri’s skull. There was a flash of bright, blue light and Ceri was thrown over, tumbling to the concrete to lie still.
Ceri’s pulse was still strong in her throat. Lily heaved a sigh of relief, and then pulled the necklace from her bodice, placing it around Ceri’s neck before climbing to her feet and almost stumbling over to the central column. Here the wind rushed upward, following the stream of energy toward the bridge. She raised her sword, gripping the hilt in both hands and let out a sob. ‘I’m sorry, Ceri,’ she said, and then drove the sword into the ground at the foot of the pillar. The concrete cracked as the blade passed through it and a shudder ran through the coloured stream of light.
Lily turned to look back at Ceri’s fallen body. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, and then her world became nothing but blinding, white light.
###
About the Author
I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.
Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.
I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was
playing City of Heroes. I still loved the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.
Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.
For More Information
The Thaumatology Blog: http://thaumatology.wordpress.com
Other Books in the Series
Thaumatology 101 – ASIN: B006IYIESW
Demon’s Moon – ASIN: B006JPN7A0
Legacy – ASIN: B006OKR8PK
Dragon’s Blood – ASIN: B0072S1DOU
Disturbia – ASIN: B007GNICZO
Hammer of Witches – ASIN: B007YG2I44
Eagle’s Shadow – ASIN: B008E17TYW
Ancient – ASIN: B00923F8AS
The Other Side of Hell – Coming December 22nd 2012
Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe
Tales from High Towers’ Study – ASIN: B006ZAJ7TY
Tales from the Dubh Linn – ASIN: B0080XPD88
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One: The Containment Issue
Part Two: Science!
Part Three: Lines of Power
Part Four: Friends and Family
Part Five: Power Politics
Part Six: Draconis Cadit
Part Seven: Lilith
Thaumatology 09 - Dragonfall Page 19