Destroyer of Worlds kots-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  Veitch's vision was filled by the rows of teeth. Suddenly the Manticore convulsed and turned on Shadow John, whose fingers were hooked into cruel claws. The Manticore's side had been raked open.

  Stepping in front of Shadow John, Veitch said, 'Thanks for the help, mate, but stay back. Protect the girl.'

  'I see it!' Shavi called.

  Veitch only had a brief impression of Shavi wrestling on the floor with something he couldn't see before he was surrounded by the Manticore's snapping jaws and rending claws. Rolling to one side, he let the sword dance instinctively, the flames painting a sizzling blue mandala in the dark.

  The Manticore's laughter turned to shrieks, and it fell to the floor in a frenzy. Veitch hacked until it was dead.

  Shavi continued to roll around the floor, welts and scratches mysteriously appearing across his face and hands. Shaking the daze from his head, Bearskin lifted Shavi with one hand and with the other wrenched out whatever invisible thing was clutched in Shavi's grasp. One snap of his wrist brought the struggle to an end. In his hand materialised a lifeless thing that resembled a small ape.

  'The queen of the Court of Endless Horizons needs a lesson in fairness, ' Bearskin growled. 'Two beasts instead of the one she told her contestants they faced. And invisible to boot.'

  Attempting to staunch his wounds, Shavi said, 'So, this eye does have its uses.'

  Veitch clapped an arm around his friend's shoulders. 'Good bit of teamwork there, pal.'

  'Just like the old days.'

  Rachel's cries ebbed away, and she looked on Veitch with the wonder only reserved for a true saviour. As he helped her to her feet, she asked with breathless respect, 'Who are you?'

  'South London's finest, darlin',' he replied.

  Within fifteen minutes they were out of the Labyrinth. The city was still gripped by the darkness and the intermittent screams had not diminished, but now there was a new element: a slow drum-beat rolling out across the rooftops. It felt like a call to ceremony, but there was something in the quality of it that left them all inexplicably chilled.

  9

  After long moments of circling with not a hint of prey, the bird swooped down from the grey sky to land on a slab of granite jutting from the white slopes. The bitter wind ruffled the bird's feathers and whipped up a whirlwind of recently fallen snowflakes that was the only sign of movement on the lonely wastes.

  From the niche in the rocks where he had waited with inordinate patience for the better part of half an hour, Miller made a desperate lunge. His fingers almost closed on the bird before it took frenzied flight amidst the high-pitched koo-koo-koo call that Miller had come to know so well during the last few weeks.

  It had been there! His fingertips had brushed the grey feathers! And now it was gone.

  He collapsed onto the granite slab, sobbing silently, his frozen fingers blue, his eyebrows and hair encrusted with snow. Miller allowed himself one moment to wallow in the despair of his failure, and then he picked himself up, brushed the snow from his trousers and trudged back up the hard-packed track to the cave. It lay on the leeward side of the mountain, protected from the worst knives of the wind, the interior contracting into a tight tunnel before opening out into a larger rock womb. The refuge served the dual purpose of containing the warmth from the small fire he kept alight with kindling from the leafless trees that scattered the lower slopes, and providing protection from the Fomorii that relentlessly prowled the entire mountain range, their oily black forms always visible against the white background.

  'Sorry, guys, we'll have to delay dinner,' he said breezily, warming his hands near the embers.

  There was no response; Miller had only heard his own voice since the terrible plunge from the shattered bridge leading to the Groghaan Gate. Hunter, Jack and Virginia lay around the edge of the cave, their broken bones and burst organs now healed by the ministrations of Miller's hands, but still only a whisper away from death. The rise and fall of their chests was barely visible. Their eyes didn't move. Their skin felt as cold as the rock.

  Once the life had returned to his fingers, he moved from one to the other, checking their vitals and, where necessary, placing a hand on their heart to let some of the thin blue glow leak out of him and into them. The healing energy was diminishing as his own strength flagged. A lack of food, the ever-present chill and the constant need to offer up the regenerative force was taking its toll. How long could he keep it up? Death tugged at Hunter, Jack and Virginia and he fought daily to keep them on the right side of life, but he only had enough energy to keep all their hearts beating, not enough to give them vitality; unless he let one of them die. Only then would he have the reserves to save the remaining two. But how could he choose? Who should he choose? If he didn't make a decision soon, his abilities would be depleted and they would all die.

  'Turned out cold again!' he joked brightly before investigating the heap of bird bones for any that had not already been picked clean. He was not rewarded.

  Lying down next to the fire, he added, 'I'll just grab forty winks before I head out again. Don't worry. Everything is going to be fine.'

  10

  For Ruth, only one horizon now existed in the Court of Endless Horizons and that was in the dimension of pain. It had gone on for so long, with such intensity, that it had become the medium in which her body existed, as much a part of life as the air she breathed. She occasionally found herself examining it with a Zen-like detachment, although she knew that was a response to the natural analgesics her brain was flooding through her system. Occasionally, she found herself looking down on her body from high above, seeing her arms yanked over her head and back so that the joints were in permanent agony as she lay stretched across an oaken table, now puddled with her sweat and the blood that had flowed from the thousand tiny cuts made by the obsidian knife. Some went deeply into the muscle tissue, and though she knew the Pendragon Spirit would heal them rapidly, she also realised that Tezcatlipoca would not give her that opportunity. Death would be coming soon.

  From her vantage point, she saw Tom, tearful at her suffering, held with a knife at his throat in one corner of the large hall near the top of one of the city's highest buildings, and Laura beside him, her face pale and blank, a spear levelled at her side.

  Don't be sad for me, she thought, obliquely. I can survive this. I can survive anything.

  Vast windows ran along all four walls, which would once have offered a great vista across the entire city and captured every sunrise and sunset. Now only black lay without. The hall was filled with ranks of the Aztec warriors, their spears banging against the stone flags with each beat of the drum. Ruth knew the beat matched that of her heart, steady, but soon it would be slowing. Soon it would stop.

  Where's Church? The notion floated up, detached from any context, and then, Where's Ryan?

  In a rare moment of clarity, she realised her instinctive use of the Craft had pulled the essential part of her from her body. A flash of pride came and went: she had never before achieved that state without her ritual and her herbs.

  Is this what I'm capable of? From thought to action in the blink of an eye? Is this what we all could do? All that potential in every person. It's a shame I'll never find out.

  It didn't matter; in her spirit-form she always had a different perception of what was important, of life and death, and the part all the elements played in what she had heard described as the Great Mystery.

  This is what Shavi meant about the patterns, she realised. Rise above it and it all makes a different kind of sense.

  Beneath her, Tezcatlipoca raised the obsidian knife again. Ruth was pleased she could no longer smell his decomposing flesh, and she had no desire to witness her body put under more duress so she took her previous thought literally: Rise.

  Up to the ceiling, she floated, and then through it into the chamber above, and up until she was inside the dense darkness that enveloped everything. Part of her wanted to keep rising, up past the darkness, past the sky, to sea
rch for that welcoming tunnel of light she had heard of so many times, and to see again all those people she missed so dearly.

  But she couldn't allow herself to do it, and instead she swooped down so fast that the buildings passed in a blur. When she reached street level, she moved along inches above the cobbles, enjoying the familiar exhilaration. At speed, she ranged through the city, seeing Tezcatlipoca's warriors prowling the deserted streets, slipping into buildings where their victims lay in a jumble and feeling a surge of guilt that she had been indirectly responsible for their deaths; then investigating the other homes and shops, towers, halls and warehouses still packed with the trembling, fearful mass of people who had no idea what was happening around them, but who knew that death was creeping closer. Their faces burned through her dreamlike state and ignited a fierce desire to protect them. She could never give up while a single one remained alive.

  The others, she thought. Where are they?

  And then the streets and buildings of the Court of Endless Horizons passed in a blur as she searched every corner at speed. Finally she came across Veitch, Shavi, Bearskin, Shadow John and Rachel weaving through an alley to avoid an Aztec patrol as they made their way back to the cafe where they had arranged to meet Church.

  As she floated above them, her hazy mind accepted the futility of what she was doing, for in that state she could neither touch nor be heard or seen. Yet to her surprise, Shavi's head snapped up when she came lower and he stared into her face with a shocked expression.

  'Ruth?'

  Veitch looked at him askance. 'Are you on the mushrooms again?' 'You can see me?' Ruth asked.

  Holding off Veitch, who was urging him to move on quietly, Shavi smiled and pointed to his eye. 'This thing is proving a better investment than I ever hoped. What are you doing?'

  'You have to come quickly,' she said. 'He's killing me.'

  'Who is?'

  'The god who's taken control of the city. He's been trying to flush us out.' She glanced at Rachel. 'And, I think, find her. He said he used to be known as… Tezcatlipoca?'

  Worry underlined the recognition in Shavi's face. 'One of the most important gods to the Aztecs. This darkness makes sense now — he ruled the night, and death, and he loved tempting people to do great evil.'

  'He's got me, and Laura and Tom in one of the tall buildings in the middle of the city. If you can follow me, I can take you straight there.'

  11

  With every beat of the drum reverberating through the walls and floor, Church felt his anger ratcheting up. From the moment it started, he knew it was counting out the remaining moments of Ruth's life, each thoom bringing a flash of the woman he loved in pain; he saw each cut, each beating, each agonised expression as if he were standing next to her. The images seared into his mind and pushed him towards the brink of madness.

  With his exertion in the heat of the rows of lamps and candles, he had sweated himself dry. He could no longer feel his wrists. The constant drip-drip-drip into the puddle on the floor matched the drum's steady rhythm.

  Occasionally his dread for Ruth shifted into blind, red hatred for the Libertarian, who swayed before his mind's eye with his sickeningly mocking grin, and his lies and his contempt, the architect of all his misery. Church knew he could kill the Libertarian without a second thought, the realisation no less troubling than the conundrum of whether it would be murder or suicide.

  Thoom. Ruth. Thoom. Ruth. Thoom.

  Finally the combustible mixture of dread and hatred exploded in uncontrollable rage. He half-stood, the chair rising with him, and raced backwards, crashing the seat against the wall. The force of the impact jarred every bone in his body, the wood of the upright smashing into his back, but still the rage did not diminish. In a fury, he did it again, and again, falling to the ground, struggling to pick himself up, once knocking himself unconscious.

  When he was in the kind of pain he imagined Ruth was experiencing, he heard a loud crack. Barely able to think straight, he slammed into the wall one more time and the chair shattered into several pieces. Stepping through his bonds, he ignored the tattered mess of his wrists and tried the door. It was open. Caledfwlch stood outside.

  Stupid, he thought. Do you really think that little of me?

  Working the rope against the blade, he was free within a moment and lurching quickly down the corridor towards the drum-beat. His head spun and every fibre of his body ached, but his hatred kept him going.

  A maze of stairs and corridors passed in a blur until he found himself stepping out into a small gallery overlooking a great hall filled with several ranks of Aztec warriors. All else faded into a mist when his gaze fell on Ruth, bound to a table on the other side of the hall, either unconscious or dead, her body leaking blood from numerous wounds. The boom of the drum reverberating in the pit of his stomach only added to his queasy despair.

  A twitch of Ruth's hand allowed his rage to surface once more, and though the Libertarian was nowhere to be seen — Coward, he thought — his attention fell on what appeared to be a decomposing corpse now looming over Ruth with a black knife.

  At the same time, the door into the hall burst open. With a fierce yell, Veitch began to chop and hack at the Aztec Warriors.

  Without a thought for his own safety, Church threw himself from the gallery into the midst of the warriors. Several fell beneath Caledfwlch before the warriors realised they were being attacked from behind, and by then Church was cutting a path through them towards Ruth.

  In the enclosed space, the warriors' obsidian-tipped spears were useless, and their wooden swords were no match for Caledfwlch. The Blue Fire blazed around the blade with more ferocity than Church had ever seen before, filling his gaze, his mind.

  In the chaos of battle, he caught only glimpses of the grotesque grey figure holding the knife above Ruth. His feverish prayers appeared to work, for the knife did not fall. Instead he caught sight of a mirror that appeared to smoke, and then the figure was gone and the Libertarian stood in his place, mocking Church silently.

  The sight of the one he hated most in the world drove the last of his rational thoughts away, and then there was only a red haze of blood and bone and flesh as he cut through the final warriors and leaped onto the small dais where the table stood.

  Despite the extent of her wounds, Ruth had already come round. She mouthed his name, other words he could no longer hear, and he had no idea why the concern in her face became fear. Slicing through her bonds, he lurched past the table towards the Libertarian.

  'You're not going to hurt anybody any more!' he roared.

  With a devilish grin, the Libertarian held the smoking mirror towards him, and as the smoke cleared, Church saw what could only have been the reflection of another world. In it, a hellish figure covered from head to toe in blood stared back at him, wild-eyed, in its hands a sword of Black Fire, remarkably like his own. The truth of the reflection did not touch him, or if it did, he did not care, for he advanced on the Libertarian with a renewed rage.

  Behind him, he heard one of Ruth's words of power. A flash of lightning and a furious gale assailed the remaining warriors.

  Oblivious to the turmoil behind him, Church advanced on the Libertarian. 'I'm going to kill you,' he snarled.

  Someone called his name. He ignored it.

  From the side of the room, another Libertarian appeared to knock the mirror from the hands of his twin where it shattered on the floor. A look of abject betrayal filled the face of the first Libertarian, but then his features began to swim.

  Church was too consumed by his passions to comprehend what was happening or to wait for an outcome. As the second Libertarian darted towards the window, Church attacked his prey, even as his features began to alter back to those of Tezcatlipoca. An inhuman shriek made his head ring as the blade bit deep, the blue flames a consuming inferno. No cries for mercy would make him relent.

  A troubling calm came over him, so he did not hear the thud of the sword that matched the beat of the now-silent
drum. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. The Libertarian was gone, but still Church did not stop. Whatever was before him was now an unidentifiable mass that had to be reduced to the smallest parts possible. So he continued, chopping and hacking and slicing, even when there was only a slurry spread across the dais, and a voice told him that he would never stop, because he could never be sure he could eradicate the foulness he would become. He could never change things, or make them better. He could only destroy.

  Rough hands grabbed him, and by then he was too weak to resist. Caledfwlch clattered to the floor and he turned to face Shavi and Tom. Shavi was crying openly, and for some reason Tom would not meet his eyes.

  Reeling, his gaze was drawn past them to Ruth, finally worried about her now that his rage had burned itself out. Suddenly he wondered if it was too late, for him, for them, for everything. Veitch held Ruth tightly, comforting her, and they were both looking at him as if he were the monster he had seen reflected in the smoking mirror.

  Chapter Eight

  The Warp Zone

  1

  In the ample shade of the roof garden, the ferns, olive trees and date palms swayed in the hot desert wind and the shocking pink and electric-blue tropical blooms released a luxuriant perfume that attracted bees and enormous butterflies. A sense of peace enveloped Church for the first time in weeks. Sipping the hot, spicy tea the grateful citizens brought him, he turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes.

  'It's so good to have it back.' Rachel sat opposite him, sheltering beneath a large parasol. She, too, had found her first degree of peace in the Far Lands.

  'We take too many things for granted until they're gone.'

  The darkness had risen from the Court of Endless Horizons the moment Tezcatlipoca had been defeated. Church wasn't wholly sure that the god was dead — the vile slurry remaining after he had hacked the body to pieces had vanished shortly after, along with the fragments of the smoking mirror — but it was clear they had bought themselves some breathing space.