Destroyer of Worlds kots-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  The hunter clapped a hand on Shavi's shoulder. 'I knew it! Even in the middle of a crowd I can recognise a Brother of Dragons. What do you say, Shadow John?'

  Leaning down to examine Shavi and Veitch, the man in the stovepipe hat exclaimed, 'Bless my soul, you're right, Bearskin.' He pumped their hands furiously. 'How very wonderful to meet you both. We had the honour of making the acquaintance of one of your colleagues, young Hal of Oxford. A fine, upstanding fellow in the long tradition of your line. Mallory and Caitlin, too. The legend lives on.'

  'All right, all right, nice to meet you and all that. Now clear off. We're actually trying to be incognito,' Veitch said.

  'Very wise,' Bearskin noted, ignoring Veitch's urgings. 'This is not a time to be a Brother of Dragons. The Enemy must be hunting and harrying you.'

  'We are hunting and harrying the Enemy,' Shavi said.

  The clap of Bearskin's arm across Shavi's shoulders almost pitched him into the bar. 'That's the spirit, good Brother!'

  Shadow John grew lachrymose. 'This is not a good time to be any living thing. How I regret fleeing the Court of the Soaring Spirit to seek sanctuary in a safer part of the Far Lands.'

  'There is no safety anywhere,' Bearskin agreed.

  'How I miss the Hunter's Moon.' Deep in maudlin recollection, Shadow John rested his hands on his silver-topped cane, rocking gently from side to side.

  'Best inn in all of the Far Lands.'

  'I miss that place like the Golden Ones miss their long-lost homeland,' Shadow John cried.

  Veitch saw Shavi scrutinising the new arrivals closely and recognised the light of an idea appear in his face. 'You are a hunter?' Shavi said to Bearskin.

  Bearskin tapped the edge of his right eye. 'Never miss a thing. I track through the thickest parts of the Forest of the Night, or across the desert out there. I can see a blade of grass move on a hillside on the distant horizon.'

  'Then you could perhaps help us locate someone, in the heaving mass of this city? A woman?'

  'A Fragile Creature?' Bearskin laughed heartily. 'Fragile Creatures are the easiest to locate. Why, I have tracked them across…' His words dried up when he caught Shadow John's anxious expression. 'Well, enough to say that I could sniff out a Fragile Creature anywhere in this forsaken place.'

  As the barman laid a tankard of ale on the bar, Veitch eyed it longingly and sighed. 'Okay, let's go.'

  8

  Along the western wall of the city — though directions meant little in the Far Lands where west could become north in the blink of an eye — lay a walled-off garden containing rows of monuments: statues commemorating some great moment from the long history of the Tuatha De Danaan, pyramids and spires of less-obvious meaning, sculptures that contained some unobtrusive element that was alien to the human sense of proportion and which caused an involuntary increase in anxiety and flutter of the heartbeat, gargoyles, beasts, spheres that glowed with an inner light though made of stone, and other, more abstract designs. Some areas of the garden would have been a peaceful oasis in the crowded city, with works of great beauty dappled by the sun through a canvas of willow or yew. Tropical plants with long, spiky leaves grew here and there, some sporting strong, sweetly perfumed pink flowers, and stone benches were placed intermittently in the cool shade along the gravelled paths.

  Laura scrambled over the spike-topped wall only to discover that she was not the first to gain access. Several men, women and children had managed to haul themselves in, hoping to find a cool refuge from the seething madness of the city. They had all died where they sat, huddled in blankets against the chill of the night, or fiercely protecting a morsel of food with a knife. Under the shade of one tree, a mother and two children lay as if asleep, their faces peaceful, no marks on their bodies.

  Laura was not deterred by this macabre sight. She gave the bodies a cursory glance as she crunched along the path, her well-honed ability not to accept anything with which she did not agree coming into play; her ego defined her world-view specifically, a pleasant place that was always Laura-centric. She didn't even think of Hunter when she saw the images of death all around; she couldn't, for that left her mind recoiling and placed her at risk from the rising tide of guilt and self-loathing.

  The sun was high overhead when she came to a quiet grove at the heart of the garden where she had been summoned. The trees were densely packed and it was impossible to see into their dark heart, but she knew instinctively that a presence waited there. Her heart beat faster as she approached, and a deep dread enveloped her so that she had to fight not to flee back to the comfort of people in the crowded streets.

  Ten feet from the grove, she realised she could barely hear the once-deafening sounds of the city that droned constantly in the background from morning to night. It was as if an invisible cloak had been thrown over that part of the garden. The silence was so intense in her mind that it had a texture, soft and gluey, almost liquid. It was unpleasant and unnerving, and felt, in its own unnatural way, as if it was waiting to be filled by something terrible.

  'All right,' she said, forcing the bravado into her voice as she had so many times, 'I'm here.'

  There was no response. She could feel the pulse of her blood, so strong she was sure she could hear her own heartbeat growing steadily faster. Her stomach flipped queasily, the instinctive response to a hidden gaze moving slowly across her. The presence was so powerful it felt even larger than the grove hiding it, the electrical cloud of its inhuman intellect enveloping her, holding her fast. She had a mental flash of teeth, of talons, of being consumed, and she couldn't prevent a shudder.

  For a long moment, she waited, too afraid to run away for fear it would pursue her, too scared to take a step closer in case it dragged her into the grove to a fate that she feared would be worse than anything she could imagine. And then, with such unbearable slowness that she felt she would faint with the dread of anticipation, a hand extended from the trees. At first she thought it was the paw of a big cat, sleek with black spots on white and orange fur, but within a flicker of her eye it changed to a desiccated, grey-skinned human hand clutching a rectangular hand mirror edged in silver with horns on each corner.

  For some reason she couldn't explain, the mirror increased Laura's feelings of dread, pulling in her gaze until she couldn't tear her eyes away from it. The mirror glass didn't appear to be glass at all, but rather some kind of liquid with the silvery quality of mercury turning slowly to black as she watched; she was convinced she could plunge her hand into its depths. After a second, the mirror began to smoke.

  'Sister of Dragons.' The voice rang clearly in the zone of silence, but it sounded unused to human words, each syllable ending with a hint of an animalistic growl.

  Laura forced herself not to faint; hidden within the voice were hints of blood and torn, decomposing flesh, of graveyards and inhuman savagery. 'What do you want me to do?' she asked haltingly.

  'The time has come for another to die,' the voice growled.

  After the presence in the grove had issued its order, Laura muttered a feeble response, but her thoughts screamed in the echoing halls of her head. Before she knew it she was running back through the garden in blind terror, throwing herself at the wall, kicking and scrambling over and losing herself in the sweaty throng, desperate for human contact, devastated by what she had given up, appalled by what she would do next.

  9

  Whistling a jaunty tune, the Libertarian wiped the blood from his fingers on the clothes of the young man who had offered him a hand of friendship and the promise of shelter, and then slowly climbed the steps in the tallest tower of the Court of Endless Horizons.

  Through his lidless eyes, the world always looked blood-red. He wore sunglasses as an affectation, one of the many he had adopted for the theatrical style he had chosen to present to the world, but they had increasingly become a necessity to prevent the unpleasant psychological side effects engendered by the constantly swimming colour. At times it was almost hallucinogenic, plunderin
g half-memories from the never-touched depths of his mind, twisting them into what-might-have-beens, conjuring distorted faces of old friends, long-slaughtered, old emotions, long-crushed. He could not be the person he was if he was reminded of the person he had been. That was why he had created such a ludicrous public persona, pieced together from silent movies, vaudeville and comic books. He had never been theatrical in his old life, and now he was somebody else, somebody so completely different that he could believe in it implicitly.

  But still the fragmentary locked-off recollections haunted him.

  When they became too intense, he killed, for that was the ultimate denial of his past-life; enemies, random strangers, even those who dwelled in the daily sphere of his existence; he couldn't really call them friends for there was no room for warm emotions in his sleek, secure, granite world.

  And he loved who he was with a manic desperation. There were no circumstances in which he would choose to go back. In the restrictions of his life, he was free, as were all who believed in what he believed. There was not the tyranny of choice, the sickening insecurity of hope, all the striving and failing, the never-being-content. The world under the Void was the best possible world under the circumstances of existence. Everyone had the peace to live out their brief lives as best they could, slotting into a familiar mundane rhythm that asked nothing of them; and so they too were free. And when death finally came, it made them freer still. He couldn't understand how the person he once was had never recognised the stark, comforting simplicity of that life.

  Throwing open the door at the top of the tower, he stepped out into the baking midday heat. A small balcony ran around the tower providing him with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vista of the entire city. The noise and the stink rose up from below in a sickening wave, but he found it rather comforting. Distress was part of the Void's way of letting people know they were alive. How could they possibly appreciate the tiny jewels they were allowed to discover if they were not surrounded by a field of ordure?

  Yet for all the reassuring things he told himself, he felt increasingly uneasy, and he hated his old self for ruining the clean lines of his existence. As the time neared the point of transformation when he — and the Void — would finally be secure for ever, there were too many potential vagaries, shifting nodes of possibilities and blank spots in his memory. Events were reaching a point of flux. It was a desperate time, and as he always told himself, desperate times bred desperate men.

  He'd waited long enough, a touch on the rudder here, another there, subtle manipulations and nuance to guide his sheep to the place he needed them to be. Now it was time for grandiose actions, hardness, brutality and blood. He could not risk any further deviation from the true line. It was time to be bold.

  Gripping the rail, he peered into the dizzying drop, hawked up a glob of phlegm and spat before looking out across the gleaming city. His heart beat harder with anticipation.

  And then it came, at first feeling like a brief shadow across the eye, growing more intense by the second. The high sun, brilliant white, dimmed as though a cloud was passing before it. The temperature dropped a degree, and a wind rushed across the rooftops.

  Down below, the din reduced a level, and as the city darkened, it faded to an eerie silence, stark and unsettling. How long had it been since this vile place was quiet? he wondered. In every street, heads turned up to examine the dimming sun. People hung from windows, craning their necks to search for clouds or flocks of birds. There were none.

  Darker and darker still, until finally a deep, abiding gloom settled across the entire city. No sun was visible, no moon or stars. Fearful cries rose up as the inhabitants tried to make sense of the night coming down at noon. Frantically, torches and lamps were lit, but the quality of the dark was strange and intense, and their illumination only reached a fraction of its usual distance.

  Then the shadows moved, and all across the great city, people began to die. Screams rose up. Panic swept through the streets as vast crowds stampeded for safety, crushing underfoot all who fell, desperately forcing their way into buildings to barricade the doors, killing anyone who impeded them.

  The Libertarian smiled and nodded.

  There was terror and there was blood and there was a night that would never end.

  Chapter Six

  Night Comes Down

  1

  In the alleys and winding streets of the Court of Endless Horizons, the dark was impenetrable. Ruth and Tom were en route from a false lead of a distressed Fragile Creature hiding in the grand marble interior of the Hall of Records when the gloom descended on the city. As the temperature plunged and the sun disappeared from view, Tom dragged Ruth into one of the deserted side alleys that, from the vile stench, had clearly been used as a toilet. His quick thinking saved them both from the frenzied crush that thundered down the street. People crashed through windows or had the life squeezed from them against the walls or underfoot.

  Ruth covered her ears to block out the agonised screams and dying calls of the victims, which somehow stood out from the panicked roar of the crowd.

  Although Tom stood next to her, she couldn't see him until she brought up her spear — the Blue Fire limning the head was just enough to illuminate the Rhymer's worried features.

  'What have they done?' she said.

  'The Enemy decided killing the Caretaker and blowing up huge chunks of the city wasn't enough. They've made it their place now.'

  Faint lights appeared in the main street, but they were so dim it took Ruth and Tom a moment to realise that their illumination was being smothered almost as much as the sun's rays. Figures felt their way hesitantly along the now-deserted street, searching for the path back to the place where they laid their heads. As the thin lights passed, Ruth occasionally glimpsed the outlines of those who had fallen.

  'We should get back to Church,' Ruth began. 'Regroup, decide what we're going to do now-'

  Tom silenced her with a sharp squeeze on her arm. 'Do you hear something?'

  Feeling along the wall, they came to the end of the alley. Across the way someone was trying to light one of the streetlamps. In the silence that had not existed in the street for many months, the hiss of the oil resonated, but from beyond it came the measured step of several feet on the cobbles and the ring of metal catching against walls.

  Unable to pierce the darkness that lay at the end of the street, Ruth and Tom watched, neither realising they were holding their breath in anticipation. In the distance, tiny lights bobbed like fireflies, the dim torches of people stumbling home. When one winked out, Ruth thought her eyes were tricking her. But then a second and a third disappeared, and when the fourth extinguished it was accompanied by a faint cry.

  'The Enemy is coming,' Tom said redundantly.

  He tried to pull Ruth back into the alley, but she resisted. 'I want to see what we're up against.'

  The soupy darkness didn't give up its ghosts until they were almost upon Ruth and Tom's hiding place. Emerging from the unfolding black were figures that echoed the transformed victims of the blast Ruth had seen in the marketplace: the flesh had been stripped from their skulls, though the roving eyes remained, and into the bone had been embedded studs that created a mosaic effect; red and green feathers tufted from the back of a simple circlet headdress. They wore only a metal band across their shoulders that ended in a gold amulet, and a scarlet and orange cloth bound around their loins and fastened by a thick gold belt. A round shield fringed with feathers was strapped to their left forearm and in that hand they carried a wooden club. In their right hand they gripped a wooden spear with an obsidian blade.

  'What are they — Aztec? Mayan? Incan?' Ruth whispered.

  Though her voice was barely audible, the head of the nearest warrior cranked around in her direction. Tom pulled her back into the alley. Pressed against the wall and listening, Ruth could tell the warrior was poised to investigate. Before it could make any move, however, it was distracted by a man staggering towards the sing
le flickering streetlamp. Instantly, the warrior ran forwards, driving his spear into the man's gut and up so that the shocked victim didn't even have time to cry out as he was lifted aloft. Thrashing wildly, he expired within a moment. The warrior dumped the body and continued after his comrades, the tip of his spear rattling across the cobbles.

  Across the street others from the small band entered the buildings and brought screams within seconds. Though the warriors' numbers were small, their slaughter was systematic.

  Levelling her spear, Ruth prepared to run across the street until Tom grabbed her forcefully. 'Take a break from being an idiot,' he snapped. 'There's one of you, and however good you are with that spear and your Craft, you won't last long out there.'

  Ruth hesitated, then nodded. 'Let's find the others.'

  As they set off down the alley, Ruth glanced back once, but the dark had already swallowed the street. The screams lingered, though, joining together to become one devastating cry of terror.

  2

  Church jerked awake from another searing image of himself lying on a table, as pale as death, ghostly faces moving around him. He had started to believe that the recurring dream was not a dream at all, but he refused to examine his nascent suspicions of what it really was. Every time he skirted it, he felt sick to the pit of his stomach; a part of him knew the truth, he was convinced. A part of him was truly afraid.

  Exhaustion had left his head nodding as he waited in the rooftop cafe, but now he could see that the planned rendezvous would not be happening. He was alone in the chill dark with only the poor light from his sword for comfort. The sticky jungle smells and the dry desert wind still reached him, but he could see nothing beyond the edge of the roof. The constant screams and panicked cries rising up from the street made him feel queasy. All he could think of was Ruth still out there, trapped in the dark with the mob and, he feared from some of the sounds he heard, something deadlier.