Destroyer of Worlds kots-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  Church and Veitch faced them, drawing their swords so that blue and black energy sparked between them. Ruth joined them, Blue Fire crackling around the tip of the Spear of Lugh.

  Laura brushed away her tears to take a flank, but when she saw Shavi joining them, she urged him back. 'Let's face it, Shavster, you're about as useful as a wet towel in a fight like this. Go help Team Loser find a way out of here.'

  'We have travelled the worlds together and you are all more dear to me than anyone else in my life. We have truly lived together and we should die together,' he replied.

  She set her jaw. 'We're not about to die, because Hunter's going to come over that hill with the cavalry and crush these bastards dead. Now, go!'

  In Shavi's look of sad fondness, they both accepted the lie in Laura's words, and then he turned and hurried to Tom and Miller who were scrambling around the foot of the cliffs. Virginia watched them blankly.

  An oily flow of Fomorii washed into the horseshoe area until they stood ranged from cliff to cliff. It was like looking into a haze as their edges blurred with the constant shape-changing: armour plates snapping into place, human forms becoming insectile, cruel spikes and horns bursting from the hard skin.

  'I've not missed them,' Church said.

  'You know what makes me sick?' Veitch said. 'There's nobody here to write about how bleedin' brilliant we'll be when we go down fighting.'

  Ruth smiled to herself. 'That's all you've ever wanted, isn't it? To be seen as one of the heroes.'

  'Yeah, I want my name up in lights, why not?'

  'Not going to happen, you tattooed psycho.' Laura crouched down and buried one hand in the snow until she was touching the ground. Concentration darkened her face, and after a second a row of bramble crawled slowly from the frozen ground along the ranks of Fomorii. With a gasp, Laura sagged back onto her behind. 'God, this place is too frozen. I'm as useless as Shavi.'

  'You tried,' Church said. 'Drop back with the others.'

  The Fomorii held back for a second, and then they broke like a wave at the shore.

  'No,' Ruth whispered defiantly.

  A sound thundered at the base of Church and Veitch's skulls. Ruth had uttered a word of power, her eyes rolling back to reveal the whites. She appeared greater than the mere dimensions of her form, magnificent, and with each passing second, more terrifying.

  The wind roiled into a fist and slammed into the approaching line of Fomorii, smashing them back. Bullets of snow and ice tore into them and lightning crashed from the sky, leaving charred circles in the snow and the twisted remnants of bodies. In a trance, she levelled the Spear of Lugh, and Blue Fire surged from the tip. The Fomorii recoiled from contact with it.

  Only one of the creatures made it through Ruth's assault, but Church and Veitch were ready for it. They attacked from either side, hacking and thrusting. Screeching, the Fomor lashed out, its limbs changing shape as it moved to find the most lethal aspect. One glancing blow sent Church sprawling, but Veitch was already in the space Church had occupied before he hit the ground, preventing the Fomor from delivering a killing blow.

  At the cliff wall, Miller and Shavi were drawn by the furious battle, but Tom continued to search furiously, Virginia observing him. With angry frustration, he took a step back and shouted at Shavi, 'Something's here. You're supposed to be a saviour of the universe. Find it.'

  'I see nothing,' Shavi responded. 'No hidden door or path-'

  'Wait.' Miller pointed hesitantly to the lifeless tree. 'That stands in such a perfect position in this space… is it natural?'

  Shavi ran his hands over the bark.

  'Yes,' Tom said. 'Yes! Symbolic. It's a sign. A message-'

  'Here, in this desolate, frozen, rocky place,' Shavi continued with a smile, 'is life.'

  As he moved his hands over the rough bark, he felt the faintest pulse deep within. Resting his forehead against the trunk, eyes closed, he held it, fanned it, drew it out from the sleeping core. Miller's hand went to his stomach where he felt an involuntary connective warmth.

  A faint blue light appeared on the trunk. Breathing in the smell of burned iron, Shavi concentrated, forcing the long-dormant power to grow stronger. The light became a single flame that appeared to die in the cold breeze, until suddenly it erupted along the length of the trunk and the entire tree blazed with the Blue Fire, each shimmering finger now a leaf on the once-dead branches.

  At the foot of the tree, the earth energy crackled into the snow, moving in a rapid, dizzying spiral until it sizzled in a direct line towards the cliff wall and up the rock face where it illuminated the sign of a dragon eating its tail.

  'Here!' Tom yelled. 'Here, now!'

  Shavi raced towards it and slammed his hand into the centre of the symbol. A flash dazzled them all for a second, and then with a judder that threw them from their feet, the rock tore itself open to reveal a door into a dark space.

  'Church! Ryan! Ruth! Come, now!' Shavi called.

  Church and Veitch continued to whirl around the remaining Fomor, their swords leaving fiery trails in the air. They were both covered with cuts that spattered blood onto the snow. But Ruth was almost unrecognisable. She hovered six inches above the ground, arms outstretched, head back, the blue light from the Spear washing around before driving out intermittently at the storm-tossed ranks of Fomorii still closing in. She held them back, though just barely. To Shavi, she looked like one of the gods, as frightening and enigmatic as a force of nature.

  He ran to her, but when he placed his hand on her side, her head snapped around, her face filled with fury and he was thrown ten feet back with a blast that left him close to unconsciousness.

  Church's cry shocked Ruth from her trance, and she crashed to the ground. Still dazed, she was at first unable to comprehend Shavi's smoking form as he staggered to his feet, but gradually realisation dawned on her. Her devastation was clear in her face.

  'Ruth!' Church called urgently.

  The lines of Fomorii gradually recovered and prepared to attack. Although they held their enemy at bay, Church and Veitch could not find an opening to escape towards Shavi. Gathering herself, Ruth dived beneath the attacking beast and rammed the Spear of Lugh up into the creature's belly. Amidst a burst of blue light, the Fomor exploded. As the body parts rained down, Church and Veitch grabbed Ruth and half-dragged her towards the gaping hole in the cliff-face where Shavi beckoned urgently. Behind them, the howls of the approaching Fomorii echoed.

  Diving through the open doorway, they had one last look at the horde of shape-shifting beasts bearing down on them before the door slid shut and they were plunged into darkness.

  As they caught their breath, Tom struck his flint and found a cobweb-festooned lantern hanging on a hook next to the door. The flame guttered, then leaped. They stood in a vast entrance hall amidst blocks of fallen masonry and discarded swords, spears and shields as if a final battle had been fought there. Columns soared up into the dark and ahead of them a few cracked steps led up to a towering archway beyond which lay only shadows.

  Tearfully, Ruth hugged Shavi. 'I'm so sorry. I could have killed you.'

  'A slight singe here and there, but I am fine.'

  'We'd all be dead if not for you,' Church said.

  'You're a scary woman,' Veitch added. 'Where did all that come from?'

  'The power's been growing in me for a long time.' She ran a shaking hand through her hair. 'Back on our world, I could feel it, but didn't really know how to get to it. Here…' She chewed her lip. 'I'm afraid I might not be able to control it.'

  'It's always about you,' Laura snapped. 'Hunter's still out there. And Jack. We can't leave them.'

  'We can't go back out,' Veitch said sharply.

  Sensing the mounting tension, Church stepped between the two of them. 'Hunter's one of us and we don't abandon anyone. And we can't go on without Jack. We need him. Maybe if we wait until the Fomorii have dispersed-'

  Shavi shook his head. 'I can find no way to open this door from the i
nside.'

  'There's got to be,' Laura insisted.

  'You are right,' Shavi replied, 'but there is no source of Blue Fire in here. There must be a different mechanism for opening it.'

  Cursing loudly, Laura booted a rock furiously into the shadows where it bounced off walls with a series of echoes that was unnerving in the stillness.

  'What is this place?' Miller scraped his boot through the thick, white dust on the floor. 'It doesn't look like anyone's been here in centuries.'

  'These,' Tom replied, 'are the Halls of the Drakusa.'

  5

  In the narrow view of snowy ground from the crevice, Hunter counted the passing Fomorii as they ranged by, their resonant call and response rumbling through the rock itself. He estimated at least twenty were still hunting for him and Jack, and they were drawing close to their hiding place. Even with the Balor Claw, he guessed he wouldn't last more than a moment or two out there. Beside him, Jack shook violently from the cold and Hunter could barely feel his own feet. As far as he could assess, he had only two options: freeze to death or get torn apart by the beasts.

  As he turned his head away from the opening to whisper more words of encouragement to Jack, he felt a current of air move across his face. Instantly, he registered that it had come from within the crevice.

  He urged Jack to move to one side so he could crawl to the back of the crevice, where he found a dark hole leading in and down, barely big enough for him to squeeze inside. He motioned to Jack and said quietly, 'There's a draught. That means it leads to a cave system with some kind of egress.'

  'You're insane,' Jack hissed. 'Look how small it is! We'll get stuck in there and die. Horribly.'

  'We're going to die horribly if we stay here and that's the truth. You need to take my lead on this, Jack.'

  Jack examined the hole anxiously. 'Look at it, Hunter. If we get in there and find it's too small to go on, we're not going to be able to back out. We'll be trapped in a space about as big as a coffin. I think I might go mad.'

  'I know I'm asking a lot of you, Jack, but this whole business is asking a lot of all of us. We've got to rise above our fears, because everyone is depending on us. If you die here, the hope that Church is fighting for dies with you.'

  'Have you done anything like this before?'

  Without missing a beat, Hunter replied, 'In the former Yugoslavia, I was buried alive in a mass grave. About one hundred dead Muslim villagers on top of me. I had to work my way through the bodies and then dig myself out with my bare hands. I rate this as slightly better odds.'

  Jack's terrible fears fought on his face. After one brief glance back at the Fomorii, he nodded. 'All right.'

  'Good lad. I'll go first. It's going to be pitch black in there, but if you can feel my boots ahead of you, you'll be okay.'

  Hunter manoeuvred himself and then wriggled his head into the hole. The air smelled of deep, wet places. He forced his shoulders in. The granite above dug deep into his back, and for a moment he feared he was wedged. Jack was right: there would be no coming back out the same way. Pressing hard, he constricted his breathing and ignored the burning compression in his back and chest. After a second, he had forced his way under the lip of rock into an area that allowed him little more than an inch on every side. Jack wriggled in close behind him, occasionally reaching out to his boot-heel for reassurance. Hunter was overwhelmed by the boy's bravery; few others would have been able to suppress such a basic human fear for the greater good.

  There was only room to reach out ahead and use his fingers to drag him down the slight incline, with a gentle push from his boot-tips for a little extra thrust; it was going to take a long time to get wherever they were going — and he refused to entertain any other thought than that there was a definite destination ahead.

  Breathing was difficult and increasingly painful. He had to take small, regulated gasps to prevent hyperventilation; in between gulps, he instructed Jack to do the same. His fingers were numb, but he was convinced they were tearing from the exertion against the hard rock; he was sure he could smell blood.

  The fissure continued down a little steeper. Their body heat in the confined space eased the freezing temperatures, but water regularly dripped and ran under their fingers. Another fear: drowning in an enclosed space.

  Hunter came to a halt at a sharp right turn. Jack called out in a panicked voice, worrying that Hunter had reached a dead end. It took several moments to calm him, and then a further fifteen minutes for Hunter to edge, squeeze and twist halfway around the bend. Once again he was convinced he was wedged in place, twisted at right angles, in complete darkness, with barely a chance to breathe and listening to the whimpering of a traumatised boy behind him. Heart pounding, the blood thundering through his head, he closed his eyes, thinking of Laura and the last night they had spent together. Gradually, his breathing regulated and he eased and pressed forwards a fraction of an inch at a time.

  Once around the turn, the fissure broadened and the incline became steeper so he could drag himself faster, which eased Jack's anxiety. Ten minutes later it became steeper still, and before he had time to think the slope was so sheer he began to slide. He called out to Jack to hold fast, but by that time he was speeding out of control, cracking bones and tearing skin. He went over an edge and into free fall for a split second before hitting icy water. It was barely five feet deep, and his arms protected him from the worst of the impact, but he sucked in a mouthful of water before he managed to surface.

  Feeling around, he discovered that the fissure continued horizontally again, but most of it was filled with water. Only a tiny air space remained, and he had no idea how long that continued in any useable form.

  Jack was calling his name frantically. 'It's all right — I'm here,' he called back. 'It's only a short drop, and there's water at the bottom. Yell when you're coming and I'll try to catch you — or at least try to stop getting brained.'

  When Jack was next to him, relieved at the prospect of standing upright with room to breathe, Hunter broached the news about the almost-submerged tunnel. Jack's mood changed instantly and he released a couple of wracking sobs before he calmed.

  'I can't do it,' he whimpered.

  'You said that about the crawling and the squeezing, but look at what you did there.'

  Distantly, but unmistakably within the fissure, came the teeth-jarring rumble of the Fomorii.

  'Sounds like they've found out where we went,' Hunter said. 'We can't hang around here.'

  Echoes of scrabbling in the fissure, drawing rapidly closer. Hunter was unnerved by how speedily the Fomorii moved.

  'You've got to trust me, Jack. We'll get through this.'

  'I do trust you, Hunter.'

  Hunter flinched, unsettled yet oddly moved by this new experience. 'Hold on to my jacket, and give a tug if anything's wrong.'

  Taking a deep breath, he ducked under the water. Jack followed closely. In the floating dark, the claustrophobia and fear of suffocation were even more intense. Hunter measured his pace to Jack's endurance, pausing regularly to grab a breath from the tiny gap against the tunnel roof.

  At one point Jack began to thrash as if he were drowning, and Hunter was forced to grab him and hold his head up tightly. In Hunter's arms, Jack relaxed, still trusting.

  The journey felt as if it was taking an age, and just at the point when Hunter started to fear hypothermia would set in, they emerged from the tunnel into what felt from the air currents and echoes like a large cavern. Hunter dragged Jack from the water onto a flat rock surface and held him tightly until he had warmed.

  'I never knew my father,' Jack said after a moment.

  Hunter didn't know how to respond.

  'The Tuatha De Danaan stole me from my mother when I was a baby and took me to the Court of the Final Word where they put the Wish-Hex inside me. They made me into a weapon. Then they kept me prisoner till Caitlin and Mahalia set me free.' He wiped the snot from his dripping nose with the back of his hand.

 
'Doesn't sound like you've had much of a life, mate.'

  'That just makes me want to fight for it even more.'

  Hunter was impressed by the determination in Jack's voice; it reminded him of himself, before the sourness took hold of his life. 'Keep hold of that thought, kid, because now we need to find a way out of here before those things pop up out of the water.'

  Following the air current, they moved tentatively away from their resting place, feeling into the dark ahead of them in case there were any gaping pits or more sudden inclines. Hunter put out of his head the possibility that the breeze came from a tiny fissure and that there might be no way out of the cavern.

  Progress was slow and the fear of the Fomorii emerging from the water behind them grew. But then the texture underfoot changed from hard rock to smaller items that rolled and crunched, in some areas several inches deep. Harder objects lay amongst them.

  'What is that? Dry wood?' Jack asked.

  'Down here?' Hunter knelt to investigate. His fingers ran over dry, fragile things, some tubular, some sharp, some curved, and what were clearly metal artefacts scattered amongst them. 'I think there's a sword here. And a… shield?' he ventured. 'A helmet?'

  They continued treading tentatively over the cracking, shifting surface for several more minutes until Jack's foot caught something that clanged and bounced. He felt around for it in the dark and raised it, letting his fingers see the surface. 'A lantern!' he said.

  With his flint, Hunter lit the wick. The flame was weak, but held on to life. The shadows rushed away, dancing back menacingly with each flicker of the light.

  'Oh,' Jack said as he looked around with mounting uneasiness.

  Hunter followed his gaze in a wide arc across the cavern. 'You can say that again.'

  Human bones lay everywhere. The vast sea of dirty yellow and brown was a civilisation in essence, skulls smashed, limbs torn apart, ribs broken, the clothes that had contained them long since rotted away with only the metal remnants of weapons and armour still remaining.