Once the group had mounted their horses and were looking towards the horizon, Ruth said, 'Decebalus introduced them to us because he thinks there's a good chance they're not coming back.'
'They looked like a strong team. If any can get back, it's them.'
'How many of these people are going to die, Church?' Ruth pressed. 'You saved them all from being killed in their own times…' She flashed a glance at Veitch, who didn't meet her gaze. 'Only for them to die now.'
Veitch studied the groups as they put on their armour and inspected their weapons, a jarring combination of strength and innocence. 'Nobody lives for ever.'
'That's a cliche.'
'It's true. All of us, we're privileged. For a short space of time, we've been given something that no one else gets to have. That connection with something big. Knowing that we've got a part to play. That we mean something. That we're not just here to work and earn and eat and drink and die. That's a big thing.' His eyes blazed. 'There's a price for everything. That's one of those hidden rules you lot keep banging on about. And if the price for that is you give up your life, I reckon it's worth paying. And I bet that lot do too. Once you've tasted it, nothing else compares.'
Tom waited on the edge of the Army of Dragons' camp, smoking furtively. 'If you've finished with your morning constitutional, there's something you ought to see,' he said. He gestured towards a vast expanse of rolling grassland.
'What?' Church said.
'Why isn't Shavi here?' Tom snapped. 'He's the only one of you with any sense. Look!'
Church, Ruth and Veitch looked again, and this time they saw a faint wavering in the air over the plain, like a heat haze.
'More glamour?' Church said.
'Break out the cakes and ale.' Tom strode ahead. 'An additional layer of camouflage, as much to protect the delicate sensibilities of mortals as anything. Follow me.'
The sensation of the heavy curtain passed again before they emerged into a cacophony of song and music, bellows, roaring laughter, incessant chatter and the clatter of weapons, followed a split second later by an exhilarating blaze of colour and movement.
Sprawling for several miles was a tent city comprising numerous camps merging into one chaotic mess. Banners flew above the largest tents, marked with runes or symbols — dragons, birds, lightning bolts.
Ruth involuntarily put her hands to her ears at the volume. They were all mesmerised by the sensory assault: the rich aromas of roasting meat and campfire smoke, spices and perfumes, the sulphurous blast of furnaces, oiled leather, mead.
Everywhere people surged, talking, wrestling, arguing, fighting, having sex, drinking, laughing, barking orders, calling for aid.
Not people, Church thought. Gods.
The camp nearest to them belonged to the Aesir. Now recovered from the wounds he had received in Norway, Tyr engaged Freyja in sexual banter before winking and moving on through a cascade of sparks where a blacksmith worked an axe-blade on an anvil in the entrance to a smoky tent.
'These are all the gods who've joined the fight?' Ruth asked.
'From every Great Dominion bar one — the Egyptians, which you appear to have decimated,' Tom replied. 'That Hunter has an annoyingly flamboyant personality, but he makes a convincing argument. These gods have barely communed since the beginning of this cycle of Existence, yet here they are, cheek by jowl. And more importantly, they are not killing each other, as one would expect. What you have achieved here is huge, and only the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons could have done it.'
'I don't understand why they listened to us,' Veitch said.
'That's because you're an idiot. They respect you, God knows why. They see things in you that you don't see yourself. They see in you themselves as infants.'
'You mean humanity is going to end up like them?' Ruth said. 'How depressing.'
'No, you'll be better, because you've got the Pendragon Spirit. You're Existence's new, refined model.'
A tremendous clamour drew them to a large tent filled with Aesir swigging from flagons of mead as they cheered and argued around a large oaken table where two men arm-wrestled, the veins on their foreheads standing out, faces like stone from the concentration, sinews bulging. Most were so drunk they could barely stand.
'They have been locked in struggle for two hours, neither of them gaining the slightest advantage.' Freyja appeared beside them, her potent sexuality making their heads spin.
One of the men was Thor, his wild mane of hair a fiery red, his eyes as grey as the skies over the northern wastes. The other was Chinese, his body just as strong, his features marred by a ragged scar that necessitated a patch over his left eye. He was bald with a long, black ponytail. A silver axe etched with red Chinese characters rested against the table next to Thor's hammer, Mjolnir.
'Lei-Gong.' Church recognised the figure from the assemblage of gods beneath the Forbidden Palace in Beijing.
'Stop now!' Freyja called. 'We have honoured guests. Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.'
Reluctantly, Thor and Lei-Gong broke their grip.
'This pretender lays claim to control of the storm and the lightning and the thunder,' Thor bellowed.
'You are the pretender,' Lei-Gong said.
'And so it begins.' Tom sighed.
'Do not heed those two,' Freyja said. 'They are both hot-headed. The rest of my brothers and sisters, and my cousins, have experienced a revelation during our brief time here-'
'A rude awakening,' Tom interjected.
'Do not diminish us, True Thomas. During all our time, we have — each family group — believed ourselves to be the pinnacle of Existence. To accept that we have equals is…' A shadow crossed her face. 'Crushing.'
'Tough,' Veitch said sardonically.
'Yet also liberating,' Freyja continued. 'I have found much in common with my cousins, and a greater understanding of our place within Existence. We all, ultimately, seek wisdom, do we not, and that is its own reward?'
'Will that make you any less manipulative?' Church asked.
Freyja smiled. 'It is the nature of all living things to have their own agenda. And to have their own flaws.' She gently took Tom's hand, and the others were all surprised to see him flinch. 'How I admire your ring, True Thomas. Andvarinaut. Why, is that not cursed to bring destruction to all who possess it?' Her smile felt like the wind across a frozen plain. She gave a slight, ironic bow, and left.
'What's going on with you two?' Church said. 'When you said Freyja gave you that ring to help us find what we were looking for, you didn't say it was cursed.'
'Though your arrogance tells you otherwise, I do not answer to you.'
'What's the curse? What have you done, Tom?'
A terrible, haunted quality sparked briefly in Tom's eyes, and then he almost ran from the tent and lost himself in the throng outside.
4
Entranced, Church, Veitch and Ruth moved amongst the camps of the tent city, each one with its own particular flavour, each wild and untamed.
They avoided the gaze of a snake-haired woman and were mesmerised for almost half an hour by the mercurial tongue of Hermes, speaking what at first appeared to be nonsense as he addressed a small crowd. More snakes slithered in streams from a black tent where Damballah watched them with burning eyes. Birds flocked around the beak-faced Tangata-Manu. Ishtar ignited barely controllable erotic desires as she attempted to summon the three of them to her tent, and the Shichi-Fuku-Jin travelled in a boat that floated a foot above the ground, offering Church good fortune for the coming battle.
Finally, they could take no more. In the midst of the gods, every sense was forced to operate at its most heightened, and they began to feel queasy from the power that radiated off each of the beings. Despite the status of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, the sense of threat from many quarters was palpable, and on more than one occasion they remained unsure about the virtue of having the gods at their backs.
Emerging from the bubble of glamour, it felt as if they had escaped into
a quiet room where they could finally catch their breath.
In the shadow of the walls, Etain and the other Brothers and Sisters of Spiders waited on their mounts, dead, unblinking eyes fixed on Veitch.
'Look, I'll catch you later,' he said to Church and Ruth uncomfortably. 'I'm just… you know… going to say a quick word.' He went over to the group and, for the briefest moment, Etain's eyes snapped onto Church, and then Ruth.
'I don't trust her,' Church said.
'I thought she was an old girlfriend of yours,' Ruth said tartly. 'Oh, wait… and what about Niamh, psychotic bitch and arch-manipulator? A lack of trustworthiness seems to be the defining factor. You certainly know how to pick the rotten apples in every barrel.'
'I picked you, didn't I?'
'A brief lapse in your bad taste.'
Acutely aware of the time for their departure drawing closer, Church led the way back to the city gates. 'So, are things all right with us?' he asked hesitantly.
'This isn't the time to have that kind of conversation,' Ruth replied, before adding, 'We're fine.'
'What about Veitch?'
'It's complicated.'
'How?'
'He needs me. And I've got to help him, because we all need him.'
Church set his jaw.
'I know that's not what you want to hear,' Ruth continued. 'Church, I don't want anyone else but you in my life. But I meant what I said to you in Norway.'
'Is this where you give me the Casablanca talk?'
'We don't amount to anything compared to what's going on around us.'
'I disagree with you so profoundly I can barely put it into words. You and me, what we have, is the entire reason why we do what we do. It's a symbol-'
'Don't start intellectualising just to win your argument.'
'I can't help who I am, Ruth. I think deeply about everything. Including you and me… and Veitch. I know he's trying to win you over, and I'm not going to stand back and let it happen.'
Her eyes flashed and Church felt as if he was looking into a deep well of Blue Fire. 'Okay, let's get one thing straight,' she said. 'I am not a ball that bounces back and forth between you and Ryan. I am not here to be fought over. It is not my role to be "the girlfriend". You love your archetypes, but I'm not playing that one.'
'I didn't mean that-'
'Accept that I love you. Deeply. And then give me space to find my own path to where you want me to be.' She didn't wait for a reply, marching through the gates and up the winding, cobbled street towards the Palace of Glorious Light. In every word and every movement, he saw the strength and sensitivity that had first attracted him to her, undiminished.
She was right, he knew that. And he hated his own insecurity, but he was more afraid of losing her than anything else. He wanted to claim that he'd accepted the hero's role for the sake of humanity, and Existence, and all the good, decent reasons that the storybooks liked to claim. But it was for Ruth. Always Ruth. And while he could rise above that for most of the time and do the right thing, if he didn't have Ruth he was afraid of what he would do.
The depth of his feelings was not only the source of his strength, but also his greatest weakness, and in them he could hear the first seductive whispers of the Libertarian. Sickened and afraid, he hurried into the city.
5
The sun was at its height when Mallory slipped into the room in the most secluded part of the castle. In a mood of intense, brooding silence, Veitch, Laura, Shavi, Hunter and Caitlin waited. There were no windows, and the only light came from two small lanterns in opposite corners.
'All here, then,' Mallory said, clearly expecting there to have been some non-arrivals.
'Ruth's a frosty cow, but I don't like it that she's not here. I feel like a back-stabber. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not that,' Laura said.
'It would not be fair to place this burden on Ruth,' Shavi said. 'She cannot be expected to make rational choices.'
'You're just afraid she might stop you before you go insane,' Laura muttered.
'So you're opposed to it?' Caitlin pressed.
'Nobody's opposed to anything yet, because we haven't come to any conclusion.' Mallory took a chair in one corner where he could keep an eye on the door.
'I've got an entire book of cliches just for this occasion.' Hunter remained standing, arms folded. Laura was convinced he had chosen the position so the lamplight would illuminate the best aspect of his features. 'But I'll select one or two choice ones to start us off. War demands that people do unpalatable things because war is all about winning, especially this one where the stakes are higher than anything I ever dreamed of back in my not-so-glory days.'
'What about moral purity?' Shavi argued. 'Our fight is meaningless if we are as bad as the Enemy.'
'You think the moral high ground will look so pretty when your family and friends and… everybody… have been raped and slaughtered, and the bad guys win for all time?' Hunter responded. 'If you don't win, nothing matters.'
'The Morrigan is telling me this is the right thing to do, and not to be sentimental,' Caitlin said, 'but as a doctor, and having sworn the Hippocratic Oath, I can't condone hurting anyone.'
'Which is rich coming from the psycho with the axe,' Laura said. 'But we're on the same side.'
'You know why a lot of military and Security Service people haven't got any time for the protesters back home? Because they're like people who eat sausages, but don't want to know what goes into them,' Hunter said firmly. 'People have the luxury of arguing about the moral high ground because they don't have to make any of the hard choices at the sharp end. They pay people to do that, so they can sleep in their beds and put it all out of their pretty, civilised minds. But let's understand some of the realities of war here. It's nasty and brutish and thrives on the worst of human nature. Nobody loves it, nobody wants it, but we have to do it, or we die, and everything we believe in dies. Once again: are we prepared to say that we sacrificed all of humanity, but we played fair?'
'This isn't some hypothetical Officer Training debating point,' Laura snapped. 'It's personal. That makes it different.'
'No, it doesn't,' Hunter said.
'Okay, you seem to be arguing a very clear point here-' Mallory began.
'This goes against everything we stand for,' Shavi pressed. His voice cracked and he was close to tears of frustration. In someone so placid, the sight was shocking.
'There's no black and white,' Hunter said. 'No good and evil choices, whatever thoughts you might like to comfort yourselves with. It's grey, it's messy. And that's my final cliche of the day.'
'Moral relativism underpinned the Holocaust, and Apartheid,' Shavi said sharply.
Hunter bristled, and Mallory stepped in before he lost his temper, a first that would have been just as shocking as Shavi's desperation. 'Reviewing: events in the coming days are going to turn Church into the Libertarian. If that happens, Existence loses its champion and the Void wins. We all know that time, reality — everything is fluid. It shifts. New presents, subtle alterations to the past, anything to maintain the Void's control. If we can prevent the sequence of events that turns Church into our worst enemy, we stop the Libertarian existing and maybe… maybe… we win.'
'Maybe!' Shavi interjected bitterly.
'And if we can't prevent it happening, we kill Church. The Libertarian doesn't exist. The Void loses its prime agent.' Mallory looked around the faces slowly. 'You know we don't have a choice. We can't let Church become the Libertarian.'
Shavi looked away. Caitlin remained impassive. Laura nodded reluctantly.
'One of us has to be prepared to do it,' Hunter said. 'There's no point waiting until the crucial moment and then finding nobody is prepared to pull the trigger. So it looks like it's me. I've done it before. I can do it again.' A brief glimmer of self-loathing burned in Hunter's mind.
'No.' Veitch had remained so silent until now that the others had forgotten he was there, in the darkest part of the room between the two lamps. 'It's no
t right you should have to live with it, however much it needs to be done,' he said, stepping into the light. 'You know it has to be me. I've got nothing to lose. I'll kill Church.'
6
Mallory spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for that evening's ritual. An oppressive apprehension mounted with the fading of the light, and by the time night fell the feeling was so potent it appeared to have spread across the entire city. Fewer lights burned in the windows of the houses, and none of the familiar songs rose up from the inns and public squares. Beyond the walls, the war camps were silent. The Burning Man hung over all.
As Mallory looked out across the city from the window of his chamber, his attention was drawn by one particular light in the winding streets below. It was blue and moving from side to side in a manner that suggested it was signalling. After a moment or two, he became convinced it was signalling to him, although he knew how ridiculous that would have seemed to anyone else.
With little else to do until the ritual, he made his way down to the approach to the palace. To his surprise, the light still wavered gently in the street ahead. Intrigued, he headed towards it, only for the light to move away. He followed for a while, but when he stopped, the light stopped too, and that was when he realised it was leading him on. Remembering the Hortha in the palace loft, he let one hand fall to his sword and proceeded with caution.
Along winding streets, down alleys and across deserted courtyards, he pursued the light, always the same distance ahead. Just when he thought he really was taking an indiscriminate risk, he came to a part of the city he had never visited before, and an overgrown area in the centre of a square, fenced off by rusted, sagging iron railings. Stone monuments engulfed by ivy rose from the long, yellowing grass. It reminded Mallory of an abandoned Victorian cemetery. The gate hung open, and the blue light flickered amongst the statues and mausoleums.
'I've played the game this far. Time to own up,' Mallory said as he stepped through the gate.
'Brother of Dragons. Draw nearer.'
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