Colm glanced at his father. “I think he’s saying we’re ungrateful sods.”
“No,” Lloyd said. “He’s saying that we’re naturally religious. Other species aren’t, as far as I can tell. Against all reason, we keep on believing in the impossible, and worse yet, doing the impossible. That’s it, isn’t it, you old devil?”
“I don’t know,” the Gray Emperor said. “I don’t know.” He lay down on the grass. “That is why I did not initiate the extinction protocol thousands of Earth years ago. I wanted to know how you did it.”
“Same old story,” Lloyd said. “The God-botherers from the middle of nowhere are interesting, until they’re knocking your empire over.”
“When the Ghosts appeared, it was agreed that your species had to be terminated. But it was already too late.” The emperor smiled at the darkening ceiling. “Now I have the experience of unknowing everything I thought I once knew.”
Lloyd chortled. “Turn about is fair play, you bastard.” He seized Colm’s wrist in one hand and curled his other hand through Mickle’s collar.
The Gray Emperor’s optical membranes retracted. His faceted eyes glittered. “I wonder,” he mused, “what it would be like to experience the state of consciousness known as death?”
A rumble shook the grove. A flash of light blinded Colm, and then everything vanished.
CHAPTER 54
WHERE AM I?
The nerve-shredding agony of the flit abated. Colm opened his eyes. He was sitting on a flat rock in a sort of Zen garden that seemed to stretch away to the horizon. His leathers were in shreds. Overhead, the sun of Elphame shone in a pale blue sky. It was chilly. He moved his arms and legs. He was in one piece.
“Your Walking Guns blew up the whole fucking planet,” Lloyd said. He stood on the gravel near Colm’s rock. Mickle clung to his shoulder, her tail a bottle-brush, her back fur hackling. “I think this heimdall’s fairly far out from the star. Should be a while before the pieces of Elphame hit it.”
“Don’t you know where we are?”
“I just followed him.”
Lloyd’s duster hung in torn flaps. He pointed at some more rocks in the distance.
Colm heard a child crying. Nicky. He jogged towards the rocks, and the largest of them spoke. “Will you keep following me forever?”
Colm could still hear Nicky crying but he couldn’t see him. Beyond the big rock, the rocky ground sloped down to a lake or sea. Little waves lapped on a pebbly shore.
“Earth is mine,” the Magus said. “It is my home.”
Lloyd caught up with Colm. “What’ve you done with Nicky, you bastard?”
The largest rock moved. For a mere instant, it took on the shape of an enormous man, his head hidden in shadows, holding Nicky on his knee. His fingers had far too many joints. Some of them were wrapped around the boy’s tummy and some around his neck.
“He is no use to me anymore. What will you give me for him?”
Colm had no authority, nothing to bargain with. He had used it all up. “Damn you,” he sobbed.
The Magus chuckled coldly. “I am already damned.”
The long fingers tightened on Nicky’s neck. Nicky began to thrash. The Magus was going to kill him for sheer spite. Something snapped in Colm’s mind. He threw himself at the rock. He would be the Magus’s doom. He would hang onto him and flit with him wherever he fled until they both died of old age, just so long as the Magus died first.
He collided with tough, age-burnished leather. He kicked and punched and found flesh and bit. The Magus’s skin tasted like dirt. Colm was fighting in the pitch dark. All he could see was the Magus’s cold blue eyes. He shouted Nicky’s name into the darkness, and suddenly the child’s face brushed against his, sticky and cold. Colm frantically bent back the long fingers from around Nicky’s neck and gathered the child into his arms.
An enormous fist knocked him sideways. He landed on his back, still in the dark, with Nicky on his chest. The blue eyes hovered above him.
“I lost my son!” the Magus thundered. “Why should you not lose yours?”
Winded, Colm could not reply. He rolled over to shield Nicky with his body from the blow that had to be coming.
“Here’s your son, Magus,” shouted a new voice.
A voice Colm knew.
Dhjerga.
The darkness drew back. Colm sat up with Nicky on his lap. Nicky began to sob. It was the best sound Colm had ever heard. Alive, alive!
The Magus towered over them, a sea stack of shadow.
Dhjerga was down on the desolate beach. He crunched up the incline towards them, carrying a gun in one hand. His other hand supported the elbow of a man-monster with a huge body and a small head. The creature looked around in fear and confusion.
The Magus stood up and doffed his glamor.
Like a cloak, the shadows fell to the ground, and like water they melted away. Revealed, the Magus was doughty in appearance, with Viking-style mustaches and a braided beard that reached his knees. His long hair glinted silver in the sun, but his mustaches and beard were still flecked with orange. His heavy jaw jutted like a shovel. He wore a vast leather coat, tight britches like the men of Kisperet favored, and those outsized leather boots that had given Colm nightmares as a child.
His feet really were that big. But so was the rest of him.
Holding Nicky, Colm stood up and backed away, anticipating a disastrous meeting between the two giants.
“Drest,” the Magus whispered.
The smaller giant, guided by Dhjerga, tottered up to the Magus. He whimpered, “Daddy?”
“Drest!” The Magus wrapped him in his enormous arms, leather creaking. “Look at you, my lad. Ah, what have they done to you?”
Dhjerga stumbled up to Colm. He was in a crap state, wet and dirty, as if he’d been crawling through a sewer. He smelled like it, too. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered furiously.
“Is that really the Magus’s son?”
“Yes. He was supposed to kill him, not hug him!”
“You could kill him yourself now he’s distracted,” Colm said, stroking Nicky’s hair.
Dhjerga rubbed his face with his hands. “I’m not a monster,” he said.
“Of course you’re not. You’re a goddamn hero. You just saved all of us.”
Lloyd was talking to the giants. He looked very small and frail beside them, in his torn duster, with his cat in his arms.
“Drest’s not a mage,” Dhjerga said. “I mean, I knew that. If he was a mage, he’d have flitted a thousand years ago, wouldn’t he?”
“So that’s a copy?”
“Yes.”
“So what?”
“The real Drest wanted to kill his dad. But the copy doesn’t, does he? Look at him! He’s happy!”
The smaller giant, Drest, snuggled against the Magus’s bulk. Bliss radiated from his face.
“Well,” Colm said, “I suppose even black magic can have good results, occasionally.”
Lloyd beckoned them. “I’ve just heard the strangest tale in the universe,” he said. “I think you should hear it, too.”
CHAPTER 55
THE MAGUS SAT IN the sunlight with Drest at his side. Everyone else sat around the giants, listening. Colm knew they should get out of here. They were all tired and hungry. Elphame was disintegrating into a cloud of lethal planetary fragments. His Walking Guns were chewing their way through the rest of the heimdalls in the system. But Nicky had gone to sleep on his knee. And he couldn’t drag himself away just yet. Here, at last, were the answers they had sought so long. Here was the truth of the Ghosts.
“When I was young,” the Magus said, “we were always fighting. When we were not fighting each other, we were fighting the Romans. They came from beyond the wall in the south. They were better trained, better equipped, they were better fighters than our folk. Our only advantage was magic. I was chief druid to Queen Scota of the Caledonii. I called the lightning upon them, I cursed their horses and their feet, and when the
thunder was in the sky, I even fetched fighters into their rear and lions into their baggage trains. That was black magic, but we were desperate.
“Then one summer they came in greater numbers than ever before, marching behind their standard of the two-headed eagle. I took that standard later and made it my own, to spite them. They pursued us deeper and deeper into the north. We fled with our children and our animals, knowing the Romans would slaughter or enslave anyone left behind. The weather continued dry and clear; I was powerless. On the banks of the Long Loch, my dear Scota announced that we would stand and fight. The Ridge of the Bridge had always been a place of power for us. I and the other druids could work magic there, even when the sky was clear. On that holy ground, we might have a chance.”
“The Ridge of the Bridge?” Colm could hear a familiar echo behind the words. “Drumnadrochit. Dad, he’s talking about Drumnadrochit.”
It was awe-inspiring to think that epochal battles had been fought, thousands of years ago, on the very same land where he had biked and played as a kid.
“The battle waxed bloody. They had dispatched scouts, unseen by us, to learn our position, so they were ready for us, and although I drew on the power of the ground and multiplied our fighters, sacrificing righteousness for the hope of victory, the Roman legionaries multiplied, too. Now I knew why we could not prevail against them: they had a druid or two in their ranks, as well! Our dead choked the bridge. The river ran red with blood. As sunset drew near, we lost the bridge, and retreated towards the loch.
“Then the miracle happened.
“The ground opened up. A door in the hillside, wide enough for ten men to walk abreast, spilled white light over us. A faerie stood there, radiant, with her eyes shining and her hair flowing like liquid gold. ‘Men and women of Caledon,’ she said, ‘men of Rome, lay down your swords. Enough blood has been spilled. Follow me.’”
“Wonder-struck, we followed her into the hill. It was a maze of marvels: trees, grass, and sky, all underground. Dogs made of metal nosed around us. There was more metal in that place than our smiths could forge in a lifetime! The faeries offered us food and drink, and tended to our wounded. In our amazement we forgot our enmity, and I spoke to the Roman mage, expressing my regret that our peoples were at war. He was a good man. His name was Rufus of Spain. He is long dead now.
“When we were fed and rested, the faeries came to talk to me and Scota. Our little son was with us.”
“I remember that,” Drest said, leaning against his father. His huge body wobbled beneath the cloak Dhjerga had fetched for him.
“They said they had been watching the battle, and they were very taken with the magic that Rufus and myself were working. They said they would like us to show them more magic. It was something they could not do, faeries though they were, and they wanted to learn how it was done. Scota told them that it was none of their business and that they should let us out of there immediately. She did not like or trust them, and I should have hearkened to her judgement. She was the queen. But I was tired and sick of fighting. And after talking to Rufus, I knew that we could not win. Magic was our only advantage and now I knew that the Romans had it, too. Sooner or later they would crush us entirely. I could not see any future for our people in Caledon.”
Lloyd coughed. “The Romans never conquered Scotland,” he said. “But they conquered England, and then the English conquered us. So you foretold it correctly. But we won back our independence a couple of hundred years ago.”
Colm smiled bleakly. The druids of Caledon could’ve just held on until the 21st century. Right.
The Magus stared at Lloyd. “I have fought your people. I have seen your metal war cars and your flying machines and your legionaries in their metal armor, all organized by their tens and hundreds, serving your imperial dreams. And you say you were not conquered by the Romans?”
Dhjerga nudged Colm. “He’s got you there …”
“So the faeries offered us a new place to live,” the Magus resumed. “They said that they would take us all to Faerieland, a rich country where we could raise our children in peace. They would have to take the Romans, too, they said. They could not let them go now that they had seen the marvels of the faerie mound. There were about three hundred legionaries, but there were five hundred of us, counting the women and children, and many of us had druid’s blood. I was content. But Scota balked. She said she would rather perish than leave Caledon.
“The Roman commanders had made the opposite decision. They and their men were eager to travel to Faerieland and live a life of ease. This, too, inclined Scota against the idea. And we argued fiercely, but neither of us could sway the other.”
“I wanted to go,” Drest whispered. Two big tears leaked out of his eyes.
“That night,” the Magus said, “Scota assembled our people, in the grove where they had let us camp, beneath the ground. She told them that the faeries wanted to take us away to their own land, but that she would not go. She asked the people to remain with her. She was a great queen, but the promise of Faerieland was stronger than her words. The people stood up and said that they were going. She could stay behind if she liked. And she said, ‘Then I will, and be damned to all of you!’
“Now the faeries were around us listening. And they said to me: ‘Is this your decision, too? You will die with your queen, rather than accept our offer?’ I could hardly speak for anger, but I told them yes. I had to stay with Scota, even to the death. She was my queen and the mother of my child.
“Then they said that this would not do. They wanted me in particular, as I was the chief druid of the Caledonii and the strongest magic-worker they had ever seen. I do not boast: this is what they said. And they said that the offer would be withdrawn. All our people should die, unless I agreed to come to Faerieland.
“Oh, then I grieved greatly. I was torn between Scota and our people. The faeries saw this and they sweetened their offer. They would give me the greatest gift in their possession: the gift of eternal life. I should live forever, if I would come to Faerieland.
“I accepted.
“But I set one condition on our bargain: they should give the gift of eternal life to my little boy, as well. They agreed, and they took us both into a metal room and made us go to sleep, and when we awoke we were immortal.”
Colm tried not to stare at the two giants, with their hideously bloated bodies and long fingers. The Magus, he assumed, had kept a more human appearance by staying active. But he, too, had paid a high price for immortality.
“We did not look any different—at first,” the Magus said. “This happened gradually, over the years.”
Colm muttered, “I suppose they didn’t know how it would work on humans, or even if it would work. It was just another of their experiments.”
“They were not honest about anything. They do not lie, and yet they deceive,” the Magus said. “The next day we all got onto the ship that would take us across the sea to Faerieland. They did not tell us it was really a sky ship that would take us across the stars. It was like a huge metal barge floating on the loch. I was busy all day, overseeing the loading of the animals and the seeds and the herbs and the tools. The Romans, as usual, had brought an entire city with them on the war trail. They were set on taking everything, and our people, not to be outdone, rounded up all our sheep and goats and horses … it was complete chaos. When they finally closed the doors of the ship, the faeries told me Drest was safely on board.
“But he was not.
“I thought they had kept him on Earth as a hostage, and I was ready to jump off the ship and swim back, if I could only find the doors, but then my people told me the truth. Drest had decided to stay behind with his mother. He, alone, had remained loyal to her.”
Drest said, “I was ready to die at my mother’s side.” He scrunched up his huge face, seemingly embarrassed by the memory. “I was only eleven.”
“Jesus,” Lloyd muttered. “They don’t make eleven-year-olds like they used to.”
“The faeries did not kill us. But, as they had threatened, they did not let us go. They kept us with them, like pets. After a while my mother died. We buried her at the bottom of the mound.” His voice cracked. “Time passed and more time passed, and one day the faeries packed up all their machinery and went away. But they did not take me with them. I think I was an embarrassment to them. They left me there in the mound, with a dragon to guard me and bring me food.”
“A dragon?!” Colm whispered to Dhjerga.
“The Loch Ness Monster,” Dhjerga whispered back. “We killed it.”
“Why do I always miss out on all the fun?”
The Magus took up the story again. “So we travelled to Faerieland. It was a good land, as they had promised. It was covered in forest, and we felt light. We could jump higher and run further without getting tired. And there was power under the ground. So much power! I could have worked magic all day if I felt like it.”
“It was a heimdall,” Colm guessed. “Magus … could you see the sun?”
“Yes, although it looked smaller than it had at home, and it did not seem to give as much heat. It was always winter in Faerieland.”
“I bet they had a heimdall set up right in Sol system,” Colm said. “An observation platform. The fuckers.” But where was that heimdall now? he wondered.
“I did some magic for the people, fetching things we had forgotten, things we needed for our new farms. But I would not do any magic for the faeries. I was angry with them, and as time went on they got angrier and angrier with me.
“Rufus of Spain died at a ripe old age. By then most of our people could not remember Earth. There were many new druids and mages among us, for Rufus had many children, and I had other children, too. None of them were as dear to me as Drest had been, but all the same, I refused to let the faeries take any of them away for their experiments. I did not think we owed them anything. Yet they insisted that we must repay them for their generosity in finding us a new home.
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