Destroyer of Worlds kots-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  'Why is it so quiet?' Caitlin whispered.

  'Deserted?' Mallory suggested, but as they reached the first stall he could see he was wrong. Skulls, crystals, candles, mirrors and other magickal items were loaded onto the table under a dark-green awning. Behind it stood the owner, a man in a broad-brimmed black hat and dark coat. He wasn't moving. Pearly, glistening trails of spider webs covered him, reaching from the brim of his hat down to the table.

  Mallory edged closer to him and touched his hand. 'Still alive,' he said. 'Sleeping.'

  'Give him a kiss. See if he wakes up.'

  'Sure. And if we come across a spinning wheel, you get to play with it first.'

  The scene was the same at the next stall, where books and maps were loaded on the creaking table. The dusty, web-covered owner was a squat old woman with a warty nose and a scarf holding back her grey hair. Hesitantly, they advanced through the market, but everywhere the owners were locked in a deep sleep that appeared to have struck them where they stood.

  'At least it keeps resistance to a minimum,' Mallory said. 'We just have to search through all this weird shit, try not to get our hands blown off by stuff that looks perfectly normal but is totally lethal, find the Extinction Shears-'

  'And do it before the Hortha gets here.'

  'Okay, ticking clock — I get it. You look over there, I'll do here.' He glanced at the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders watching them, unmoving. 'No point asking them. You keep guard!' he added with a shout. He was surprised when Etain and the others obeyed him and shuffled back along the path.

  Mallory moved quickly along the stalls. He had no idea if the Extinction Shears would be out in the open or hidden away, although his knowledge of the Market suggested the owners had scant regard for the dangerous nature of the items they sold. Caveat emptor was the sole motto.

  The wonders on display were so dazzling that he had to fight not to be seduced by them. Some, he guessed, were entrancing him magickally on some level beyond conscious thought, and he kept his attention skittering across the objects to prevent them from hooking him in.

  Everything he could imagine was available. Sometimes, when he returned to a stall for a second look, the objects on it had changed, adding another disconcerting twist to his search. There were weapons of all kinds — swords, magic axes, hammers, daggers; poisons and potions to achieve any outcome; maps of every place he'd heard of, and many he was convinced only existed in stories; stuffed animals; statues whose eyes followed him as he passed; musical instruments — flutes made from human bone, lyres, skin-covered drums; medical instruments; implements of torture; mysterious creatures in cages that slept just like their owners; Tarot cards, playing cards, talking greeting cards, curse cards; hats, cloaks, belts — some magic, some perfectly normal; and, in the main, a host of artefacts that Mallory couldn't begin to comprehend.

  Behind one stall, a beautiful, voluptuous woman stood with one hand on a cobweb-festooned cat. At the front of her stall was a crystal ball. Mallory gave it only a cursory glance, but it snared him instantly. Mesmerised, he peered into its depths where he saw not the distorted reflection of his face, but the skull beneath his skin. The more he stared, the more it drew him in, whispering, 'This is who you are.'

  He was thrown roughly to the ground. Caitlin hauled him to his feet and shook him until his sense returned.

  'Sorry, but I've been trying to rouse you for ten minutes,' she said. 'You were gone. That's not all — it was as if you were trying to pull the flesh from your face.'

  The skin around Mallory's jaw was sore to the touch. Even so, he found himself irresistibly drawn back to the crystal ball, until Caitlin shook him again and dragged him, half-stumbling, across the path to the stalls she had been inspecting.

  'I've found them,' she said. 'At least, I think I have. This is the only thing that comes close.'

  Tucked away incongruously behind a pile of rags was a pair of shears with ornate gold handles, and though they appeared to radiate no light, Mallory saw a white glow wash over Caitlin and himself. As he examined them, Mallory had the impression that he wasn't looking at a pair of shears at all, but something infinitely larger and more mysterious; several potential images — an intricate clockwork machine, a crystal — skittered across his mind, but it always came back to a pair of shears.

  'What do you think?' Caitlin asked.

  Mallory had the strange impression that he had seen the shears before, as though in a dream. He decided it was instinct, but he was much surer than he ought to have been. 'That's them.'

  As he reached for them, a silver candlestick on the table in front of his fingers moved. He cried out and leaped back. 'What the fu-!'

  The candlestick flowed like mercury, rolling itself into a silver egg and then, sprouting legs, it scurried across the table to the edge and dropped to the ground.

  'A Caraprix!' Caitlin exclaimed. 'I thought they were all in that room at the court with Jerzy.'

  'Not all of them, apparently.' All across the market, the tables became alive with objects moving, changing shape, glowing with a silvery light. As the Caraprix scuttled to the ground and streamed towards the far side of the Market, Mallory saw in them an eerie reflection of the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders.

  Delicately plucking the Extinction Shears from the table, Mallory was unsettled by how warm and yielding they felt under his fingers. Hastily, he slipped them into the bag at his belt, then turned his attention back to the Caraprix.

  The stream of shape-shifting creatures led to a point where the forest came to an end, and only rock walls lay beyond. A glassy quality to the air right along the boundary gave the impression that they were standing in a bubble.

  The Caraprix spread out along the boundary and came to a halt, exuding a bright white light that slowly spread upwards into a ten-foot-high rectangle. As the quality of the light changed, Mallory and Caitlin realised they were looking through a window onto the terrain of another world, where steaming jungle came up hard against a vast golden desert.

  'The Far Lands,' Caitlin said in the hard-edged voice of the Morrigan.

  'A doorway back,' Mallory noted. 'So we don't have to go through that ritual Math forced us to learn. I'm not even convinced he was sure it would work.'

  'So the Caraprix brought the Market here?' Caitlin said.

  'Looks like it. The perfect hiding place.'

  Caitlin slipped her hand into Mallory's and gave it a squeeze. He was troubled by how quickly she appeared to be flipping back and forth between her true self and the part corrupted by the Morrigan, as if she was assimilating the goddess into her being. 'Then that's mission accomplished, ' she said. 'Let's go-'

  Caitlin was interrupted by the sounds of fighting behind them. Racing back the way they had come, they found the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders in fierce combat with the Hortha, which was just inserting one extended, thorny finger through Tannis's forehead. With a dry, cracking noise, it burst through the rear of his skull and Tannis crumpled to the ground, the dim light in those dead eyes finally extinguished.

  Instantly, it turned its rustling, papery face towards Mallory and Caitlin. 'Nowhere to run now,' it called drily.

  Owein and Branwen attacked it with their swords, hacking through the dense blackthorn body only for it to sprout and grow back almost instantly.

  Etain glanced back, questioningly, and Mallory shouted, 'Can you hold it off till we get away?' For the first time, Mallory saw deep in her eyes the merest hint of the Sister of Dragons she had once been. It brought a pang of conscience, but he reminded himself that her time had passed.

  Yet she continued to stare at him with a hint of desperation, and he realised she was trying to communicate with him. He knew instinctively what she wanted to say. 'I'll tell him,' he called.

  Branwen fell as the Hortha avoided her strike and punched the twisted spike into her forehead. As Mallory and Caitlin ran, they glimpsed Owein dropping too, and then Etain was fighting alone, sacrificing herself for the people she h
ad once been driven to destroy.

  The atmospheric conditions of the forest setting were altering fast; it was warmer, and Mallory and Caitlin felt as if they were running through treacle. Spatial dimensions distorted, and time itself came in stuttering fits and starts so it felt as if they were speeding towards their destination, then frozen as the world around them moved. Trails of light flowed from the Chinese lanterns swinging wildly in the branches. The Market began to compress and stretch towards the door created by the Caraprix.

  The view across the Far Lands was now much clearer, and they could feel the tropical heat of the jungle and the dry wind blowing across the desert.

  Pausing, Mallory grabbed Caitlin's hand. 'You ready?' he asked.

  'We've come this far together. Why stop now?' She gave him a warm smile of deep affection.

  'Back to life,' he said. 'Back to reality. Of sorts.'

  They took the great leap together.

  2

  Though the small campfire burned continually in the cave, it couldn't dispel the bitterness of the unending winter outside, nor the chill in Miller's heart. He had tended to Hunter, Jack and Virginia night and day, but had now reached the point of ultimate despair: their decline had accelerated and he was forced to accept the impossibility of keeping them all alive.

  Surviving on occasional birds and rabbits he trapped in the snow while constantly evading the roaming Fomorii had taken its toll, both physically and emotionally; drawing on his healing force so often was also sapping his own powers of recuperation. The futility of it ate into his bones much more deeply than the aching cold. While there was life he had to keep on trying, but now he had to make the choice he had dreaded: sacrifice one in the hope that it would leave him strong enough to save the other two.

  Tears froze on his cheeks. He'd been crying on and off for most of the afternoon while he wrestled with the arguments and his own corrosive guilt, but finally he had made the decision he'd known he would have to make all along.

  Crawling over to where Hunter lay, eyes closed as if he were sleeping, Miller laid one hand on his friend's barely beating heart. Choking on the words, he whispered, 'I don't know if you can hear me… I hope you can. I'm so sorry, Hunter.' He took a deep breath. 'I've thought long and hard… I've prayed. I can't see another way out. Every life is equal to me, Hunter, but not every life is equal for what Church wants us to do.

  'You're a Brother of Dragons… you're important, but Jack is one of the Two Keys. Him and me, we're needed somehow if we're ever going to stop the Void. And Virginia… if I can ever get her back to Church… she knows a way into the Fortress. She's vital to us striking right at the heart of the Enemy. And that leaves you. We need you, of course we do. But not as much as we need the other two.'

  Laying his head on Hunter's chest, he whispered, 'Why do I have to make this choice? It's not fair.' After a moment, he sat up and dried his eyes. 'No, I'm up to this. That's what's expected of me. Hunter, I'm going to have to stop keeping you alive, and transfer all the power I've got left to the other two in the hope that I can cure them completely. If you can hear me, please forgive me.'

  There. It was done.

  Taking a moment to steady himself, he went to Virginia and drew up the searing blue light inside him. Once that was done, he moved on to Jack, and then flopped, exhausted, against the foot of the cave wall, and cried some more.

  His eyes had barely dried when he noticed blood trickling from his nose. It was accompanied by the sickening sensation of a heaviness in his head as if something was moving around inside his skull. Faces of departed friends and family flashed across his mind, but it was Hunter's that came back repeatedly, looming larger each time.

  'Leave me alone,' he whispered, scared now.

  The death-images came harder, threatening to destroy his sanity.

  'Bring him out.' The voice rolled in from the wilderness beyond the cave mouth, colder than the winds of Winter-side.

  'No,' Miller whispered defiantly.

  'My brother. My death-brother. Bring him out.'

  Miller was too weak to fight. With a last, great effort, Miller dragged Hunter into the swirling snow.

  Further down the slope stood the giant that Hunter had freed from its prison far beneath the Halls of the Drakusa. He still wore his hood, but although Miller had never seen him before, his brain crackled with images of the devastated, melted-wax face that lay beneath, as the cold, alien intellect teased and probed. Dread consumed him so deeply, he thought he would die from the weight of it, but the giant would not let him; his thoughts were too weak to resist its control.

  'I am El-Di-Gah-Wis-Lor, the final judgement of the Drakusa, the dark at the end, the breath of the grave,' the giant said. 'I am death, and I bring death. Brought to being for one purpose, to end the plague of the Caraprix, I was not allowed to fulfil my destiny. But now, in that one, I see another purpose.'

  'You can't have him,' Miller croaked futilely.

  'He whispers on the edge of death. I hear him now, when I could not hear him before. His whispers ring out across the mountains of this place, and deep into the darkest places beneath the mountains. He is death, and I am death, and we share a destiny. He can teach me. He can give me purpose.'

  Miller realised that a connection had been forged between the giant and Hunter once the healing had been withdrawn.

  'Give him to me.'

  'No.'

  'Give him to me, and I will give him life, so he can join me in the pursuit of death.'

  'You… you can save him?'

  'That I cannot do. But I can give him life.'

  Hesitating for just a moment, Miller stumbled through the thick snow to the giant without a thought for his own safety. The giant took Hunter from his arms with surprising tenderness and turned back down the slope. Miller followed.

  In the lee of some rocks, there was a large cave entrance that Miller had not come across before in his random searches for food. Striding into the dark, the giant continued into a tunnel large enough to accommodate his height. It drove deep into the heart of the mountain through a series of forgotten chambers once occupied by the Drakusa, their floors now covered with shattered masonry and discarded weapons.

  For what felt like miles, the tunnel sloped down sharply until Miller became convinced they were going to the core of the world. Finally, they entered a chamber in the deepest part of the complex. It stretched far into the dark on all sides, the echoes so dim it could well have gone on for ever.

  Fear gripped Miller when he saw that the chamber was filled with an army of Fomorii warriors, waiting silently in ranks, their black skin gleaming over shields and weapons grown from their own bodies. They could have been glorious obsidian statues except for the humming waves of power that washed off them.

  Miller trembled as he followed the giant amongst the horde, but they never even acknowledged his presence. Can the giant control so many ferocious beings? he wondered. How powerful is he?

  The giant came to a halt before a large stone well more than twenty feet across. Blue light radiated from the depths, shimmering like the sun off water. Miller could feel the rejuvenating force of the Blue Fire long before he neared the lip.

  'What is this?' he asked in awe.

  'The Well Between Worlds.' Standing with his head bowed and his body tense, the giant remained in the shadows just beyond the pool of light. 'This was the last desperate act of the Drakusa. Their last great act. While they created me to destroy the Caraprix, they also constructed this conduit to the very heart of Existence itself.'

  'Why?'

  'They thought if they could not destroy the Caraprix, they could return them to the Source.'

  'The Caraprix come from Existence?'

  'The Caraprix are Existence.'

  'But I… I thought they were a danger. They destroyed the Drakusa, didn't they? How can they belong to Existence if they go against Life?'

  After a moment of humming silence, the giant said, 'The well shows that the Drakusa we
re capable of miraculous things, yet they were given over to war and destruction. This… To reach into the very heart of all there is… How great is that achievement? So many have tried to touch Existence, even to begin to approach it, and in their last desperate hours the Drakusa did what no other had.' An odd note of regret laced his voice.

  'Bring Hunter here, then,' Miller said excitedly. 'I can use this to heal him.'

  'I cannot approach. The Blue Fire is anathema to me. I am death.'

  Miller took Hunter from the giant's arms and staggered towards the well, his head reeling from the tremendous sense of well-being that rose up from it. As he rested Hunter on the small stone wall, he had a moment to reflect on the irony of the situation — death giving life to the dying — and then he placed one hand on Hunter's chest and thrust the other into the aurora of sapphire light. His instant invigoration was overcome by the sensation of the currents of power moving through him. The cold touch of the giant in his head disappeared, and in its place he heard warm whispers; though he couldn't make out the words, he felt reassured and at peace. He looked down into the brilliant light and thought he saw things swimming there, deep down; whatever they were, they uplifted him too.

  Hunter spasmed and coughed, and slowly the pale-blue tinge of his skin flushed a healthy pink. His eyes flickering open, he looked into Miller's face.

  'Hunter — you're going to be okay.'

  Hunter's lips moved so weakly that Miller couldn't hear what he was saying. He pressed his ear close.

  'I said, "Bring me wine and a woman. I've got some catching up to do." '

  3

  The warm midsummer night was filled with the exuberance of the feast, but Ruth pushed her way through the revellers with mounting frustration. 'We're never going to find Rachel in this chaos,' she said. The campfires blazing amongst the makeshift huts only illuminated the milling bodies, and beyond their light the shadows were deep.