Destroyer of Worlds kots-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  The city's diverse inhabitants had gradually emerged blinking into the light, barely able to believe that the immediate crisis had passed, while recognising that the larger one remained; at least the dark had hidden the Burning Man's fiery glare. Soon the streets were packed to the brim once again, despite the numbers slaughtered by Tezcatlipoca's followers.

  While the city had quickly returned to the chaos that passed for normal, the tensions amongst the Five had not gone away. Church had found his equilibrium quickly, but Ruth was understandably taking longer to recover from her ordeal, and had insisted on resting alone in a room, refusing all Church's attempts to talk with her. Veitch, Shavi and Laura had been caught in numerous intense discussions, the conversation drying up whenever Church approached, and he had felt their eyes on him wherever he went, as if he would somehow pick up his sword and attack them all with the fury he had shown Tezcatlipoca.

  'I am not the Libertarian!' he had shouted at one point, but that only appeared to make them more unsettled, and his inability to show any regret for his brutality or to temper his desire to kill the Libertarian only compounded their suspicions.

  Tom had attempted to offer advice and guidance, but Church was not in the mood; time was running out and he was more intent on departing the city and completing his plan as soon as possible.

  'This place is unbelievable,' Rachel said, her face set, her eyes hard; a great deal of anger was locked inside her. 'It's like a dream and a nightmare wrapped up in one. All this beauty, and so much horror at the same time.' She focused on a flower, which moved slowly before lunging for a passing bird. 'I keep feeling I've been here before, when I was a child.'

  'Everyone feels that way when they come here for the first time. I don't know why that is — maybe children dream of this place, or they've got some innate connection to it that we lose as we get older.'

  'Thank you for helping me.' Askance, she eyed him, weighing his nature, still not wholly sure. 'The elderly man… Tom?… he told me all about you. I'm not sure how much I believe. But thank you anyway.'

  'No problem. The next thing we need to do is get you home.'

  'You can do that? I was afraid I'd be stuck here for ever.'

  'We can try. How did you get here?'

  'I don't know where to start.' She tugged at the fibres of her dirty jeans for a moment, and then said, 'I'm twenty-eight. I've had more jobs than you'd possibly believe — dog groomer, checkout girl, waitress. I'm just one of those people who doesn't feel at home in anything. Always out of sorts. An outsider. Do you know?'

  He nodded.

  Deep in thought, she remained silent for an uncomfortable amount of time, and then pointed to a scar near her eye. 'You see that? I was living in London with this guy. Scott. He used to knock me around, usually when he'd had a bad time at work, or when the car broke down. Or when his team lost. I kept making all these elaborate plans to leave him. Sometimes that's all I'd do — dream up different scenarios, night and day. And I never went anywhere. How pathetic is that?'

  'It's more complex than that.'

  'Maybe I deserve this place,' she said to herself.

  Church leaned towards her sympathetically. 'Please-'

  She pointed a finger at him aggressively. 'Don't patronise me or pity me.'

  'Okay.' He sat back.

  'One day I started to notice all these weird things happening. Spiders everywhere.' She shuddered. 'It was like I couldn't turn around without seeing them. I started to think I was going crazy. All the stress with Scott and the worry had pushed me over the edge. Then this homeless guy came up to me in the street. Filthy, like he was covered in engine oil. And he reeked! He started to rant at me. I can't remember what he said…' A hand involuntarily went to her forehead. 'It's all foggy. Whether it was that, or the spiders, I just flipped. I went back to the flat, packed a bag and ran out, there and then. All that time planning and I did it on the spur of the moment.'

  'Where did you go?'

  'Salisbury.'

  'Why Salisbury?'

  She laughed bitterly. 'More proof that I'd gone nuts. Do you believe in coincidences?'

  'Not really.'

  'For days, everywhere I went, Salisbury kept popping up, along with the spiders. Turn on the TV — something about Stonehenge, an archaeologist being interviewed in Salisbury. Somebody stops me in the street, asks which station for trains to Salisbury. I get a pamphlet through the door for double-glazing — the head office is in Salisbury. This is going to sound stupid, but at the time it felt like-'

  'The universe was giving you a message.'

  'Yeah.'

  'Some people are receptive to that, some aren't.'

  'So, you're saying the universe was giving me a message?' she said mockingly.

  Church recognised the flicker of uneasiness he saw behind her facade, and recalled the mounting panic that had risen on the day he realised the universe was not at all as he had imagined. 'Something else strange happened to you in Salisbury?'

  She shook her head, embarrassed now she was verbalising things that had made a half-sense in her head. 'Dreams… some exactly the same, some with the same sort of feel. There was always a little Afro-Caribbean boy in there. He never spoke, but he always acted like he knew me. Then, one day, I saw him in the middle of town. It was like he was watching me. Yeah, it spooked me. I looked away, and when I looked back he was gone. I was already on edge in case Scott rolled in looking for me, though there was no real way he could have found me.

  'After that, the boy kept turning up everywhere, and the dreams kept on going too, and I was starting to feel really creepy. It was in my mind all day, and I was worrying about going to sleep every night. So I decided to confront him — get it out of my system once and for all, and prove there was nothing supernatural about it.'

  The realisation of what that decision had cost her brought a queasy expression. Church poured her another hot drink.

  'Turned out he was a nice kid, told me his name was Carlton. He didn't know anything about the dreams. Pretended he didn't. But he knew lots of things about me that he couldn't possibly have known, and he said he needed to show me something. I gave him a grilling, said I wasn't going to go, but he was just a kid, you know?' She looked out across the desert where the Morvren were circling. 'God, it feels like all that happened to a different person, and it was only a day or so ago. I drove him a little way out of town to this place… Woodhenge? Not the stones. It was just a few concrete posts in a field as far as I could see.'

  Church nodded. 'It doesn't look like much, but it's one of a series of pointers that the entire area around Stonehenge and Woodhenge was a massive ritual site, one of the largest in the world.'

  'I never had much interest in that kind of thing.'

  'There's a theory that Stonehenge was a place where people conducted rituals of death, and then processed along the river to Woodhenge for a celebration of life. An archaeologist called Mike Parker Pearson from Sheffield University led a massive study there called the Stonehenge Riverside Project. He found evidence of a huge temporary living area not far from Woodhenge and lots of animal bones that suggested feasting. It's an important place.'

  She shrugged, dismissively. 'You an archaeologist, then?'

  'Once. In a past life.' He wondered briefly if the patterns Shavi was always considering extended to everyone, and if, for some unseen reason, everyone was led towards the jobs they were meant to do. He loved archaeology, but after Marianne's death it had felt so unimportant. Yet many of the things he had learned during his studies had helped him in his struggles as a Brother of Dragons. Random or pattern? Meaningless or meaningful?

  'I admit, I had a bit of an odd feeling when I got out of the car. The sky looked funny, and there was this sort of swirly mist away over the fields. Carlton pointed to where I should be going and I set off… only he didn't come with me. I called him over, but he told me to keep going — that I'd find it soon. So I walked a bit further, and when I looked back he was gone. And so
was the car. And the car park. And all those concrete posts. Except, you know, the landscape looked exactly the same, all the hills and fields.' The memory was still potent, and she unconsciously hugged her arms around her. 'It looked like it would have done hundreds of years ago. I totally lost it, running around and screaming like an idiot. And then all the fields went too, and I was in that mist I'd noticed. And then…' Her glass fell and shattered on the floor as she started to hyperventilate. Church gave what comfort he could, but the tears still burned in her eyes. 'I don't know what I saw! I don't know how long I was there! I just remember being aware that this thing was after me… this thing with a big grin, and horrible eyes, and it was moving low along the ground, and it had this sort of brown skin like a seal…' She caught herself, and took a deep breath. 'It chased me out of the mist, and suddenly I was standing in the heat out there.' She pointed into the desert where the haze shimmered. 'It kept coming after me, and I ran as fast as I could. I thought I was going to die. And then I ended up here.' She started to pick up the pieces of broken glass, and then hurled them across the roof terrace.

  'Do you think you can find your way back to where you first appeared in the desert?' he asked.

  'I don't know. Maybe. Do you think there's a way back?'

  'Could be.' He didn't want to raise her hopes, but his own heart was beating faster.

  Leaving her there recovering in the sun, he found Tom and Ruth sitting quietly on another, smaller terrace. Ruth looked paler than he had ever seen her.

  'How are you feeling?' he asked her. He hated the uncomfortable space that lay between them, and the way her eyes didn't quite meet his.

  'Better, thanks. The Pendragon Spirit works wonders if you let it.'

  'So what wisdom have you discovered now?' Tom said acidly.

  'That boy you saw on the train, Carlton, is working with the Oldest Things in the Land. Maybe he's one of them.'

  Tom sucked on his roll-up thoughtfully for a moment, then said simply, 'Interesting.'

  'The Oldest Things in the Land conspired to get her here. The Puck chased her into the city. They wanted us to find her, because she can lead us back home. There's some kind of way that isn't one of the regular doors that the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders blocked.'

  'You're sure you're not reading into this exactly what you want?' Ruth asked.

  'With her, we can find our way home!'

  Ruth flashed a brief, disappointed look that stung him. 'You still want to run away?'

  'It's not like that… oh, forget it. Why don't you just trust me?'

  Tom exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. 'It's a good job I'm not embarrassed by your pathetic domestic issues-'

  Ruth and Church turned and snapped at him at the same time: 'Shut up!' He shrugged, unmoved.

  'Let's get the others together,' Church said. 'We're moving out within the hour.'

  2

  In the dead heat of the morning, they departed the Court of Endless Horizons, past the steady stream of refugees seeking shelter in the city. After the packed, sweltering, noisy streets, the blank, rolling wastes were a welcome relief, stilling the tense chatter of the mind and allowing them all to breathe a little easier.

  Casting a threatening shadow across the ochre sands, the black cloud of the Morvren followed them, their cawing a jarring sound in the stillness that lay all around whenever the wind dropped. Lest they be lulled into a false state of overconfidence by the peace of the desolation, the scarlet, orange and gold shape of the Burning Man loomed up ahead of them against the silver-blue skyline, the outline now smudged black with greasy smoke. The closer they got to it, the more charged with dread the atmosphere became.

  'What do you think it will look like when the Void fills the space?' Ruth was surprised to realise she was whispering.

  'I do not think we should worry about that,' Shavi replied. 'Once the Void materialises, everything is over.'

  Soon the gleaming towers of the court and the dark line of jungle disappeared from view, and there was only the rolling dunes scarred with the line of their footprints. They sipped sparingly from their water bottles, all of them aware of the dangers of getting lost.

  Leading the way, Rachel pointed to a formation of glassy volcanic rock rising from the sands about three miles distant. 'I remember seeing that. I came through somewhere near there. I think.'

  Laura sighed loudly, eliciting a cautionary glare from Church.

  Veitch joined Church shortly after, his gaze fixed firmly on the horizon. 'You sure this is the best plan?'

  'Have you been talking to Ruth?'

  'It's just, none of us can see where this is going.'

  'You could trust me.'

  A pause. 'I do. Course I do. But everything that's happened since we got here has pushed us all to the limit. I know I'm not thinking straight.'

  'I hear what you're saying, Ryan. So did you draw the short straw to come and get me back on the rails?'

  'It's not like that.'

  'Because that's a little funny. Not so long ago they were all afraid you'd kill them in their sleep. Now you're the voice of reason, and I'm the bad guy.'

  'That's not fair.'

  Church regretted his words instantly. Veitch had been trying his best to make up for his past actions when he had been destabilised by the Void; he deserved better than that, and Church had to do better if he was to be the leader they needed.

  'You're right, I'm sorry,' he said. 'I don't want to tell any of you what I'm planning. In the Halls of the Drakusa, when we discovered that one of us is helping the enemy, that really hit hard. Once we got back together, I never thought we'd have to deal with a traitor in the group again, even after Tom got his warning from the boy on the train. Now I'm not taking any chances.'

  'Even though Virginia's dead?'

  'I'm not sure it was her.' Veitch's silence was pointed. 'I'm not saying it was you. I'm not saying it's anybody. I'm just thinking it's wise not to allow any opportunities for our plans to leak out to the enemy.' He added, 'I don't like to think this way. Mistrust is corrosive. Maybe that's all part of the Enemy's plan — letting it eat away at our relationships and the ties that make us stronger as a group. But I can't see another way to deal with it.'

  Veitch appeared satisfied with this, and they fell silent again as the heat began to take its toll. Skidding down deep dunes and then climbing up through the shifting sands on the other side made their leg muscles burn and for a long while the rock formation appeared to be drawing no closer. But then they crested a steep incline onto a hardpan plateau scattered with boulders where a stronger wind blew and they saw colours shimmering in the sky like the aurora borealis. Here and there drifted strands of the pearly mist that Rachel had described.

  'This is it,' Rachel said, turning slowly.

  'What now?' Laura asked. Everyone looked to Church.

  'We go home,' he replied.

  3

  From a distant dune, the Libertarian watched them make their way across the plateau into the mist. With the Morvren swirling overhead, they had been easy to follow, but with each step his anxiety had grown. More than anything he didn't want them to pass through those mists, although he did not know why: another of those annoying blank spots in his memory. He had been so sure that his manipulation of Tezcatlipoca and Church would reap the final rewards he desired, but now his control of events was slipping through his fingers like sand.

  When the heat haze shimmered and Church and the others disappeared from view, he broke into a desperate run, stumbling and sliding down the dunes. Cursing, he vowed to let them know that the more desperate they made him, the more he would make them pay.

  On the plateau, he didn't slow his pace and plunged into the mists after them.

  4

  'Stay close together,' Church ordered as they moved through an area of bright, swirling colours.

  'Wow, trippy,' Laura said. 'This reminds me of… okay, you had to be there.'

  Aware of the fear in Rachel's eyes, Shavi took
her arm reassuringly. 'Is this how you remember it?'

  'I don't remember much at all, but it feels familiar.'

  'Do not fight the sensations you are experiencing,' Shavi said. 'If you allow yourself to go with them, it is not unpleasant.'

  'That's easy for you to say.'

  'Tom, what are you thinking?' Ruth asked, seeing Tom's serious expression.

  'I'm finding this both familiar and unfamiliar too,' he replied, anxiously twisting the ring Freyja had given him. 'I have moved through the medium of the Blue Fire many times, across our own world between nodes of power, and between the worlds, but this is different. Yet the same.'

  'Yep, you lived through the sixties, old man,' Laura said.

  For once, Tom ignored her. 'I've heard talk of this. Somewhere that bleeds around reality, around all the worlds and the connective tissue of the Blue Fire that joins them. Some occultists I encountered in San Francisco believed if you could find a way to this place you could access all places and all times.'

  'You could run away for ever,' Ruth said, eyeing Church askance.

  'Or you could fight a constant guerrilla war,' Church countered. 'No one would know when or where you'd pop up.'

  'What's that?' Veitch pointed to a place where the colours appeared to have thinned so that it felt as if they were looking through a gauze onto the world. The sun was just disappearing below the horizon, casting its dying golden rays on a stone circle surrounded by trees. Beyond were well-tended fields. Figures moved in the circle, hazily coming into view.

  'That's Caitlin!' Ruth exclaimed. 'But she looks younger. More… innocent?'

  'And that teenage thug Mahalia,' Veitch noted. 'And Crowther.'

  'The past,' Shavi said. 'Perhaps when she was just beginning as a Sister of Dragons?'

  Tom and Rachel hung back, but he flinched and stepped forward when he glimpsed the young boy he had encountered on the Last Train who Mahalia had sworn was dead. Eerily, the boy appeared to be looking directly at him, and smiling knowingly, as if he was aware of all that was to transpire.