The Bone Inspector returned from the toilet, his lank hair now wet and slicked back after his cursory wash. Shavi had insisted it was a necessity after they had been refused entry to two cafes because of the Bone Inspector’s heavy odour of sweat and loam from the nights they had spent beneath hedges or in ditches. He slipped into the booth and hunched over his mug of tea. Shavi was pleased to see that much of his stress-induced psychosis had faded; company in his misery had helped share the burden.
‘We’re in bloody trouble,’ the Bone Inspector muttered darkly.
‘We do not know that.’
‘You want to stop with that optimism before I slap you. It’s irritating.’
‘We can leave now-’
‘No point. We’ll never be there by dawn. If we hadn’t run out of fuel this afternoon-’
‘It could not be helped. You know we had to go fifty miles out of our way to avoid the roadblock.’
The Bone Inspector slurped his tea noisily. One foot rattled in unconscious anxiety against the seat. ‘No point crying over it now. We’ll just have to keep our eyes open.’ He glanced out of the window, but it was difficult to see much beyond the light shining through the cafe’s windows.
‘How long are we supposed to keep running like this?’
‘Till you come up with a plan. I’ve spent months doing this — legging it at night from one old site to the next, burrowing under stones to get some shuteye during the day, bawling out curious tourists till they’d leave me alone. I can keep doing it, but it doesn’t solve anything.’
‘How can I come up with a plan when I have no idea what is going on?’
‘They’ve done their damnedest to run me to ground, but nothing like how they’ve gone after you. I never saw any men filled with spiders before now. They think you’re important. So it’s your bloody job. I’m just along for the ride.’
Shavi had listened intently to the Bone Inspector’s talk of the mythic Brothers and Sisters of Dragons during their long hours together in the van. The Bone Inspector professed never to have met any of the fabled heroes, asserting instead that it was information passed down through the Culture, the secret society of which he claimed to be the last living member. Shavi couldn’t see himself as some legendary warrior, but there were elements of the story with which he felt a deep connection.
Headlight beams sprayed around the walls of the cafe as a car swung into the car park with a crunch of gravel. Shavi and the Bone Inspector watched intently.
‘How are they going to come?’ Shavi said. ‘Looking as normal as Rourke, so they can sneak up on us unawares? Or like the spiders, eating their way through everything?’
‘It’ll be whatever will do the job.’
A man got out of the car and stumbled wearily towards the cafe door.
‘Looks normal. But who can tell?’ the Bone Inspector said.
‘Do you think we are taking a gamble waiting here in plain sight?’
‘What choice do we have? Would you rather face those things out there in the lanes and fields and woods where there’s no light? And I’m betting they still don’t want to draw too much attention to themselves or they wouldn’t have gone to the bother of disguising those spiders as a man.’
‘I need to refresh myself,’ Shavi said. He’d walked a few paces before he added, ‘I cannot help but think I have met you before.’
‘You think if you’d met me before there’d be any doubt about it?’ the Bone Inspector said. ‘Go on. Refresh yourself.’
In the toilets, Shavi filled the sink with cold water and soaked his face. The jolt took the edge off his creeping weariness. He had decided that he liked the Bone Inspector, despite his curmudgeonly manner. There was something inherently decent about him, but he buried it as deep as the secrets of the stones that he protected.
As he stretched, cat-like, and performed a t’ai chi manoeuvre to centre himself, his attention was drawn to the graffiti on the wall next to the mirror. It read: The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders wants you!
There were other pieces of spider-related graffiti that had been scribbled out or hastily painted over, the ghost of their intent showing through the strokes. He felt a frisson. Was it a coincidence?
There was one other piece of graffiti that puzzled him: The answer lies at Stonehenge: Heel Stone 45 pcs SW. It was scrawled in every cubicle and on the back of the main door.
Intrigued, Shavi returned to the cafe to discuss the matter with the Bone Inspector, but found their table empty. Shavi scanned the room: nothing was out of the ordinary. The three other diners sat at their seats peacefully and the new arrival was carrying a mug of tea from the counter. He was a bohemian with a black greatcoat, long black hair and a pair of sunglasses despite the fact that he had driven through the night.
Shavi could only presume the Bone Inspector had gone to fetch something from the van. As he returned to his seat, the new arrival materialised at his side.
‘May I join you?’ His voice was wry and urbane. Before Shavi could respond, the stranger had sat down. He put six sugars into his tea and stirred noisily. ‘Nice night.’
‘It is,’ Shavi replied, ‘but I am just waiting for my friend. We must be on our way soon.’
The man nodded and sipped his sickly-sweet brew. ‘Where is he, then?’
‘He will be here soon.’
‘I’ve been on the road for hours and frankly I’m exhausted.’ The stranger stretched.
Shavi was distracted by a faint, rhythmic splashing. A spilled mug of tea?
‘It’s nice to find someone to talk to after so long behind the wheel with only the radio for company,’ the stranger continued.
Shavi smiled politely. ‘I am sorry. I am not very good company tonight.’
The stranger laughed. ‘I suppose it’s not really the hour for chitchat.’
Shavi glanced out of the window. There was no sign of movement at the van, or anywhere around the car park that he could see.
Drip-drip-drip. The noise caught his attention again and this time he identified the source. A dark pool was slowly spreading over the recently mopped floor in one of the aisles. One of the diners sat over it, the entire sleeve of his jacket sodden. It was blood and Shavi could now see that the man was dead.
His heart thundering, Shavi quickly took in the rest of the cafe: the other two diners were also dead, propped up in the position they had been in when they were alive, or simply murdered so quickly with a flash of a knife across their throats that they had not had the chance even to register their own passing. On the floor, a hand was just visible reaching out from behind the counter.
‘I’m sorry. We’ve not been properly introduced,’ the stranger said. Shavi thought he could see red coals glowing fiercely behind the sunglasses. ‘My name is the Libertarian.’
‘Why did you kill those men? They had nothing to do with this.’
‘I killed them because I could. To show you that in this world everything now falls before my will.’
‘Then you are the one behind everything that has happened.’
The Libertarian laughed coldly. ‘I am the strong right arm. Nothing more.’
‘Then who-?’
‘Don’t waste your breath asking me.’ The Libertarian took another noisy sip of tea. ‘It’s much bigger than your tiny little brain can deal with.’
‘Are you made of spiders, too?’
‘I’m made of flesh and bone like you, only better.’
Had the Libertarian already killed the Bone Inspector and was simply toying with him? ‘Why?’
‘That’s a good question. One of the big ones. Why are we here? Why does anything happen? Why do fools fall in love? Ah, I see. Why are we tormenting you? Why are we hunting you up hill and down dale? And why are we going to wipe you out of Existence as if you never were? Actually, we never intended to take this course. If you had kept on sleeping with your eyes open, and doing the silly, pointless things that mundane people do, like going to work for most of your waking hour
s, shifting things from here to there, picking up a few extra quid that might buy you a drink at the weekend or a shiny new piece of useless technology, and then repeating it over and over again until the day you died, none the wiser for having lived, then we could happily have left you well alone. But no, you chose to make trouble. You chose to give up your job. You fool. You chose to ask questions, and you chose to break the rules. Our rules. And make no mistake, we set the rules, all of them. And if we find a troublemaker, we take him or her out of the game. We don’t allow anybody to ruin things for everyone else.’
Shavi listened to the Libertarian’s gently threatening mockery and realised that something unspoken lay behind it. ‘You are hunting me down because I am a threat to you.’
The Libertarian’s laugh was harsh but unconvincing.
‘You let me “sleep with my eyes open” because it was safer than taking the risk of trying to destroy me,’ Shavi continued. ‘For by doing so you might have brought about that very same awakening. And then …?’ Shavi let the words hang in the air, and in his mind. And then what?
‘Let’s get things straight.’ The Libertarian put another two spoons of sugar into the remnants of his tea. ‘There’s as much point to you racing back and forth now as there was to your existence before. That Blue Fire you love so much? Gone. All those pretty little ley lines fizzing with energy, that hippie-shit network of love and power? Gone. All those Fabulous Beasts who are symbols of the power, who are the power, who feed on the power, or whatever …’ He yawned theatrically. ‘All long gone. There’s nothing here for you at all. You’re an anomaly in a world that’s moved on. Different things matter now. There are different rules. There’s no point wishing, or praying, or carrying out little rituals and spells.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘My job.’ He smiled. ‘What anyone would do with an anomaly — take it out of the system and pretend it never existed.’
‘And then your world of work and money and power and consumption can carry on turning smoothly.’
‘Exactly.’ The Libertarian finished his tea. ‘All gone. Time to die.’
The cafe was suddenly flooded with light. In the car park, one of the lorries had come to life with a loud growl. It began to move, slowly picking up speed, rushing directly towards where Shavi and the Libertarian were seated.
The Libertarian was rooted, uncomprehending. Shavi realised what was happening just in time to scramble over the back of the seat and throw himself down an aisle as the lorry ploughed straight into the side of the cafe. The deafening explosion of shattering glass and bursting brick brought the roof down around the point of impact.
Shavi crawled through clouds of dust and debris until he reached the door. In the car park, he saw the extent of his lucky escape. The lorry had rammed right across where he had been sitting. Flashing gold sparks of electricity arcing from torn cables lit up the night.
The Bone Inspector wriggled out of the lorry’s side window and limped quickly towards Shavi, blood streaming from numerous cuts.
‘I thought you could not drive.’ Shavi said.
‘It’s a bloody good job I paid attention to what you were doing all that time in the van.’
‘How did you get the keys-?’
‘All right, all right, I picked up a few things in my long, miserable life,’ the Bone Inspector snapped. ‘Now stop your stupid talk. We need to get away from here before any more bastards turn up.’
As they ran to the van, the Bone Inspector said, ‘I think we should head north. Maybe get over to Callanish, lie low for a while-’
‘No,’ Shavi said firmly. ‘We are going to Stonehenge.’
6
Church reeled as he withdrew from the images the Wish-Post had been imprinting on his mind. His shock at seeing the Libertarian was profound, but he was confused: had the Libertarian survived until the twenty-first century, or had he started his journey in modern times and moved into the past? With time and space and all of reality so fluid, it was difficult for him to get a handle on the truth.
One thing was apparent: the threat against the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons was as potent in the twenty-first century as in the earlier periods of human history Church had visited. The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders was already attempting to kill Shavi; how long before it turned its attention to Laura and Ruth?
What could he do? He needed to know more, and so he immersed himself in the Wish-Post again, desperately hoping it would lead him to Ruth.
Instead he found himself watching Laura in a park, transfixed by the flowers and the bushes. Church couldn’t begin to understand what she was attempting to do, though she appeared to be alternating between talking to the plants and concentrating on them, growing more distressed by the moment.
Finally she stalked away in disgust, but behind her back Church saw a section of vegetation grow rapidly. It was clear to him that Laura had caused it in some way.
As she walked off, a figure separated from the nearby tree line and followed her. It was Rourke, the man who had been associating with Shavi, Laura and Ruth.
When Laura left the park, Church saw road signs identifying the area as Northampton. He began to devise a plan.
He made one more attempt to utilise the Wish-Post, and this time it did take him to Ruth. He was outside her flat, but as he attempted to use his ghost-like abilities to enter he became acutely aware of the same dark presence inside the wardrobe that he had experienced before, and it was aware of him.
Church felt a mounting sense of dread coming off whatever lay inside, and a sense that it would destroy him, Ruth and everything in an instant. However much he tried to force himself in, it pressed back harder, and eventually it drove him off.
He circled the premises, aware of it squatting inside, watching him with loathing. It would never let him across the threshold.
Fearful for Ruth’s safety, he emerged from the reality of the Wish-Post in a cold sweat.
7
Church hurried back to find Jerzy and Rhiannon. During his two brief sessions at the Wish-Post, he felt he had come to understand the essential nature of his fellow Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, however deeply it had been buried so that the three of them could survive in the illusory situation in which they had been imprisoned. Shavi: calm, insightful, spiritual. Laura: prickly, iconoclastic, passionate. Ruth: empathic and introspective, someone who felt too much and was forced to pay the price for it.
They didn’t recall their heritage as Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, and they didn’t remember Church. Yet the truth was trying to break through. Church liked to think that the Pendragon Spirit was so strong that it couldn’t be contained for long, but perhaps it was also that the bonds they had shared were so powerful that they resonated across time and even the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders could not break them.
How terribly must Veitch have suffered to turn his back on that bond? Something as terrible as being murdered by his closest friend over a woman they both loved?
With that disturbing thought pressing at his mind, Church found Rhiannon and Jerzy in a tranquil room subtly scented with rose petals. Jerzy lay on a thick blanket thrown over a table. He appeared to be either sedated or in a deep trance.
‘Will you assist?’ Rhiannon asked. Church nodded. ‘Then take his hand. The procedure is invasive and he shall need the support of a friend. The Caraprix will have nestled itself within his hopes and dreams. It will be difficult to remove.’
She gently caressed the side of Jerzy’s head. Gradually a soft white light like mist began to appear at the point where her fingers touched his temple. As the light increased, it was clear that Rhiannon’s fingers were moving through flesh and bone and into the Mocker’s head.
The atmosphere grew tense. Rhiannon probed for ten long minutes, and Church could see from her increasingly concerned expression that it was not going well.
Finally she withdrew. ‘I cannot help him,’ she said. ‘The Caraprix is resisting my call.’ S
he appeared deeply troubled by this discovery, as though something fundamental had been radically altered. ‘I fear only the one who placed it there may remove it without damaging this one’s essence.’
Afterwards, Jerzy took the result with equanimity. ‘My existence has been one of suffering,’ he said. ‘I have my life and my freedom, in so far as these things are possible. And I have a good friend, and that is more valuable than anything.’
‘We’ll find a way to remove it, Jerzy,’ Church vowed, ‘even if it means we have to storm the gates of the Court of the Final Word to get it done.’
Jerzy was both touched and disturbed by this. Yet as they left the Court of Peaceful Days another thought struck Church. He had dismissed the Caraprix as just another of the strange things that existed in the Far Lands, but perhaps the creatures were much more important than that.
He had been told that the more fluid things were, the closer they were to the heart of Existence, and the Caraprix appeared to be endlessly mutable. What, then, did that mean?
8
Niamh pored over her cards laid out on a small, exquisitely carved table, with only the light of the crackling fire for illumination. She was lost to whatever the cards were telling her and was startled by Church’s approach.
‘Did you see your love?’ she asked.
He shook his head.
‘I am sorry. It must be a great burden to yearn so deeply and yet not be able to touch or speak of what lies in the heart.’
Church couldn’t begin to express his fears for Ruth and so turned his attention to the cards. ‘What do you see?’
‘The cards are confusing. They change constantly, as if what lies ahead and behind and all around is in a state of flux.’ Church could see the uncertainty scared her.
‘I can’t get my head around gods having gods.’
She shrugged. ‘The rules of Existence are plain to see. Seasons turn in a continuous cycle. Existence stretches out for ever. There is no beginning and no end. That is the rule. And there is no smallest and no largest. No boundaries anywhere. As the Golden Ones are above Fragile Creatures, so there are others above us. There is always something higher.’
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