Stefan cowered before them, terrified, as if he knew why they were there for him. ‘I have nothing to fear from you!’ he cried out, his voice reverberating insanely up to the vaulted roof. As one, the clerics each raised an arm and pointed at him. Their silent accusation gave Stefan added impetus and he bowed his head and hurried past them.
Mallory ignored the figures in the water around him and followed quickly, allowing just one glance back. Hipgrave was on the walkway, shifting back to his human form from something that had wings like a bat.
Mallory realised there probably wouldn’t be an escape for any of them.
‘I’d do anything for Sylvie.’ Mallory blinked away tears of frustration and pain.
‘You think she’d be happy with you, knowing what you’d done?’ Mueller was incredulous. ‘Stevens has won. Whichever way you turn, you’re damned.’
‘She doesn’t have to know—’
‘She already knows. One of Stevens’ monkeys told her this morning. He’s just turning the knife—’
‘How do you know?’ Mallory leaned back against his bookcase for support, as if gravity was suddenly too strong for him to keep standing.
‘She called me up … wanted to know if it was true.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I didn’t know!’ Mueller paced about the lounge, rubbing his fingers through his hair anxiously. ‘But she knows Stevens wouldn’t make something like that up …’
Mallory covered his face; everything was fracturing. ‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘You had a choice two weeks ago … if you hadn’t let your pride and your arrogance—’
‘Oh, shut up, Mueller.’
There was such desolation in his voice that Mueller was briefly stung into silence. ‘I’m sorry. That doesn’t help.’ He swallowed, ordered his thoughts. ‘You can’t do it, Mallory. Not something like that—’
‘I can’t let Sylvie die, can I? It would be as if I’d killed her myself.’
‘If you do it, Stevens will probably kill you and Sylvie anyway Mueller’s voice faded out.
‘You always manage to find the silver lining, don’t you, Mueller?’ He took a deep breath, but it failed to calm him. ‘No, I believe him. He’s a fucking psychotic thug, but he thinks if he sticks by some personal perverse code of ethics it makes everything he does all right.’
Mueller chewed on a fingernail; he looked on the verge of tears. ‘You can’t do it, Mallory. No decent human being could do a thing like that and not be destroyed.’
Mallory slumped on to the sofa, looked at the records and the books, all the trappings that made up his life. ‘I love her, Mueller. I love her so much, nothing else matters. I’m a cynical bastard and I tried to pretend it was just infatuation or sex, but it isn’t. I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to her.’
Mueller fell silent, staring blankly at the spines of some CDs. When the pressure in the room finally became too great, he said, ‘You know this won’t be the end of it. Stevens might not hurt her this time, but sooner or later he’ll come back at her to get at you … to punish you even more, just because he can. He’s going to kill her sooner or later, Mallory.’
‘I know.’ The desolation he felt was painful.
‘What are you going to do, Mallory?’
Doors and rooms, and rooms and doors, stretching off into infinity. After the reservoir there was another series of corridors and indistinguishable halls where no feet appeared to have trod for hundreds of years. But he had indeed closed on Stefan. The only drawback was that Hipgrave had drawn nearer to him; he could now hear each transformation, like a silk sheet being torn by a knife. Things were converging.
Out of the gloom loomed an enormous trilithon that reminded him of the ages-old monuments at Stonehenge. As he passed through its massive portal, he fell into deepest shadow, and when he emerged on the other side he was in the strangest place he had seen so far. It was a vast underground cemetery: crypts and mausoleums, obelisks and gravestones, crosses modern and Celtic and old markers that were little more than crumbling lumps of rock. Instead of the usual flagstones, there was dusty, water- starved soil beneath his feet. All around, torches blazed on the houses of the dead, creating stark pools of light and shade.
A veil appeared to lift from his mind, and with it came a clarity of who he was and what he was doing.
Stefan was nowhere to be seen. He had obviously taken the opportunity to lose himself amongst the jumbled layout. Just before Mallory threw himself into the network of byways that ran through the necropolis, he checked back on his own pursuer; the Hipgrave-thing writhed on the other side of the trilithon, seemingly unable to pass through it. Mallory’s relief edged into a cold focus on the matter at hand. He set off in silent pursuit of the bishop.
The cat-and-mouse game continued for an age. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of Stefan’s robes against the bare white bones of a mausoleum. Mallory would run and hide, dash and squat, all emotion driven from him by the long, wearying chase. The only thing that gave him comfort was the sword singing gently against his leg, its blue light seeping into the very fibre of his being.
After a while, he realised the energy was coming in soothing pulses, but there was a pattern to it, as though it was calling out - or guiding him. Through trial and error, he matched his directional changes to the strong pulses until the flow of energy was constant. And that was when he saw Stefan creeping along the next byway.
Moving as quietly as he could, he used a stone cross to lever himself up on to the roof of a mausoleum and wriggled out to the edge. As Stefan edged beneath him, Mallory threw himself off, knocking the bishop to the ground and sending the box flying. A cloud of white dust billowed into the air.
When it finally cleared, Mallory was standing over Stefan, his blade resting against the bishop’s throat.
‘Kill me,’ Stefan said calmly, ‘and I know I will find peace with my God. Can you say the same?’
‘After all you’ve done … after all the misery and suffering you’ve caused … you’re going straight to hell, matey.’
Stefan only laughed; he was so locked in his world-view that he would never understand, Mallory realised. And for the first time, Mallory felt dismal that there was no hell; Stefan would go unpunished in this world and the next, while Daniels, Gardener and all the others would carry their hell with them. And what of Miller and those who had died? Somehow it didn’t seem fair.
‘You never had God with you, Mallory.’ Stefan was looking up at him with bright, passionate eyes; Mallory was surprised to see almost a hint of pity there. ‘For you, life is an empty parade of sensation with no meaning … no reason even to shuffle through it.’
Mallory smiled. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Stefan.’
The bishop was puzzled by this clear display of confidence. As if to distract himself, he bowed his head and muttered a short prayer. ‘There. I have made my peace. Now you may kill me.’
‘I’m not going to kill you.’ Mallory sheathed his sword.
This puzzled Stefan further, then began to trouble him.
‘I don’t hold a grudge. I can’t hate you. I should do - for Miller and all the others - but I can’t,’ Mallory said, emotion making his voice crack. ‘I just think you’re wrong, but you’re not alone there. You simply took it a few more steps down the line than anyone else, but it’s the same pig- ignorance … blindness … stupid-simple understanding of a complex theology—’
Stefan laughed. ‘Someone like you could never understand the love of God … the light… it’s beyond you.’
Mallory looked around, distracted.
‘You’re afraid to kill me because you’re weak in the face of God’s power.’ Stefan sounded as if he was trying to convince himself, and Mallory realised it was because he thought he had such a clear view of who Mallory was, of how the world worked; but he was wrong on both counts.
Mallory spotted the box and picked it up. ‘This is what I want.’ It felt warm to h
is touch.
‘That belongs to God.’ Stefan’s voice trembled.
‘Everything belongs to God, Stefan.’ He opened the lid.
A brilliant blue light flooded out, painting the entire area. Mallory felt swamped with vitality, with warmth, and love, and goodness, and in that instant he realised how its power had unbalanced so many of those who had walked on the charged land of the cathedral. In the familiar blue glow, he understood that this was the thing that had been used to summon the Fabulous Beast to its death; somehow they had known the creature would come once the box had been opened.
Gradually, his eyes cleared and he could see into the depths of the box. Something small and dark lay at the bottom; something alive. It squirmed, tried to scramble over the edge. Mallory almost dropped the box in shock.
‘The Devil can do God’s work,’ Stefan intoned gravely. ‘Indeed, there is a delicious irony in bending Satan to His will.’ The thing appeared over the lip. ‘Beware the Serpent, Mallory,’ Stefan warned.
And then Mallory could see what it was. It was small, almost foetal in shape, and although the glittering sheen of scales had not yet appeared, its wings were perfectly formed.
‘It is the first one born to this world for many an age.’ Mallory looked up at the booming voice. The Caretaker stood next to the mausoleum with Stefan cowering at his feet.
‘That was why the Fabulous Beast came,’ Mallory said. ‘They killed it, but all it wanted was its young.’ Suddenly he knew why the glorious creature had been flying back and forth across the countryside, why it hadn’t used its cataclysmic flame to destroy the cathedral in its final attack. There was something so desperately sad in it all.
‘How can you justify this?’ Mallory said in disbelief. ‘It’s a living creature.’
‘The Devil can take many forms,’ Stefan replied, and, because he clearly believed a supporting argument was necessary, ‘God’s will overrules all.’
‘It was a crime,’ the Caretaker said dispassionately, ‘against Existence.’
‘A crime against nature … the world … everything,’ Mallory added. ‘That’s why the Green Man threw everything into getting it back.’ He turned incredulously to Stefan. ‘Don’t you understand - these things represent life?’
‘It’s the Serpent,’ Stefan said, unmoved. ‘This is the thing that corrupted humanity. In the very first times it led to the expulsion from paradise. It is knowledge—’
‘Yes,’ Mallory interrupted, ‘knowledge … meaning … the force that holds everything together. You’ve made this the enemy, but you know in your heart it’s the same thing you want, the same power that fuels your prayer … the same path to—’
Stefan shook his head vehemently. ‘The Bible tells us what this thing is.’
‘You idiot,’ Mallory snapped, his emotions running away from him. ‘You put all your faith in a book when you had salvation in your hands!’
Stefan was unmoved. ‘The only important thing was to save our religion - that was our sole motivation. We understood full well what this … thing could do. It’s a generator, providing an energy that those of a devout mind could shape to their will … to God’s will. With this charge, the force of our faith could enable the Church to thrive, to spread out rapidly. We would have saved Christianity from extinction! That was a prize worth any sacrifice.’
‘Tyrants always think the ends justify the means, Stefan.’ Mallory watched the tiny creature wriggle around, enjoying its freedom. It was not yet able to fly, but the awe it generated was palpable, and came from some place beyond its form. ‘There’s no logic to any of your arguments,’ he continued. ‘A central tenet of Christianity is the power of faith - if you believed that, wouldn’t it have done the job on its own? If you believe in the omnipotent power of your God, would He allow His own religion to die?’
‘He did not. We were his instruments—’
Mallory sighed; there was no point in arguing - Stefan could justify anything through his belief system. ‘What do I do with it?’ Mallory asked the Caretaker. ‘We can’t just let it free, can we? It won’t survive on its own.’
The Caretaker smiled with what Mallory thought was a hint of sadness. ‘It is not a creature as you imagine it, Brother of Dragons. It is more … it is an idea, a convergence of hope and belief and symbolism of something greater, given form. But it is still only partly formed, and without the care and guidance of its guardian it will not survive.’
‘It’s dying?’ As Mallory watched the tiny Fabulous Beast, he gradually realised the true tragedy of what had happened: the first glimmer of hope in a very dark world had been extinguished.
The Caretaker watched Mallory intently. ‘If its guardian had not been slain, this new one may well have given up its power to the Fragile Creatures,’ he added. ‘The forces aligned against them would not have been able to stand—’
‘So if they hadn’t killed the Beast, they might have got everything they wanted?’ Mallory looked back at Stefan. ‘Well, there’s irony for you.’
The acceptance of his monumental error slowly dawned on Stefan’s face. Mallory wanted to rub more salt in the wound, but he knew it was a childish impulse and, after all that had happened, quite insignificant. Instead, he bent down and picked up the tiny Fabulous Beast, which was enjoying itself wriggling in the dust. It was velvety soft and warm to the touch; the blue light appeared to be radiating from the very pores of its skin. Mallory experienced another surge of transcendental emotion at the contact before he dropped it into the box and closed the lid. The light snapped out. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, a simple word filled with the depth of his heart’s emotion. He turned to the Caretaker. ‘Isn’t there anything we can do to save it?’
Before the giant could respond, Mallory caught sight of movement amongst the mausoleums and stones. He drew his sword and pressed his back against a wall, at first thinking that the Hipgrave-thing had somehow found its way into the mysterious cemetery.
It was Stefan’s fearful reaction that made Mallory realise what was happening. The cowled figures of the clerics emerged from every side with slow, purposeful steps, the gravity of their intention creeping oppressively over all. Their approach was silent and eerie; they were like an execution party. Mallory guessed that they had followed with the same slow insistence from the reservoir; and now they had what they had always wanted: the man who symbolised, they felt, the betrayal of the devout traditions to which they had dedicated their lives.
Stefan had left it too late to run. The clerics were on every side, pressing him back against the mausoleum. His eyes ranged with an awful awareness, not because of the fate that awaited him but because he finally appeared to recognise his shortcomings; his own kind had judged him and found him wanting.
Even after everything, Mallory still considered rescuing him. He gripped his sword and took a step forwards, but by then Stefan was lost behind a wall of black. There was one final cry, quickly muffled, and then the haunting figures began to drift slowly away, like shadows fading in the morning light. When they had departed, of Stefan there was no sign; Mallory couldn’t tell if they had dragged him off in their midst, or if he had been consumed by them. Whatever the answer, Mallory had an instinctive understanding that there had been some kind of justice.
As the tension dissipated, Mallory felt suddenly deflated. ‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Now,’ the Caretaker replied, ‘there will come an ending.’
‘Yeah, I can dump this box and get back to Sophie,’ Mallory said, brightening; still not quite accepting his triumph. ‘And then it’s just me and her—’
‘No,’ the Caretaker said. ‘That is not how it will be.’
Mallory couldn’t meet his eyes; although he shouldn’t have had any inkling, he somehow knew what lay ahead, and it left him with a desolation that made him tremble.
‘There is one more door to pass through, Brother of Dragons.’ The Caretaker motioned behind Mallory. The mysterious door with the carved surround through which he h
ad first passed now stood behind him. He could feel the weight of it, as if it would suck him through.
‘I can’t,’ Mallory said. ‘I need to get back to Sophie.’
He sheathed his sword and broke into a run, zigzagging randomly through the grave markers. When he was finally exhausted, the Caretaker was waiting. ‘Take me back to Sophie,’ Mallory pleaded.
The Caretaker led him to the trilithon and then through the corridors and halls beyond, though they never passed through the reservoir or anywhere else that Mallory recalled. Finally, they came to a halt at a blank wall. Mallory waited patiently until he realised that the Caretaker was staring at him.
‘What?’ he said a little too sharply.
The Caretaker appeared to be choosing his words carefully; though his face was held rigid, some deep emotion shifted behind it. ‘Existence is fluid, Brother of Dragons,’ he began. ‘It is what we make it. Each of us, individually. Nothing is real. Everything is real. Worlds spiral out of mind, disappear into the void, split in two, and then again, into infinity. The only world that truly matters is the one inside because that is the one that affects everything else.’
Mallory couldn’t quite tell if the Caretaker was apologising for something, or warning him, or trying to offer some kind of guidance. The blank wall opened out to reveal the rolling snow-covered lawns beneath a dawn of majestic pink and purple.
Mallory made to step out, but the Caretaker’s heavy hand fell on his shoulder to hold him back for a second. ‘When you pass through this door, you can never come back to this point again,’ he said. ‘When you pass through this door, everything changes.’
Mallory nodded, not understanding, and stepped over the threshold.
Mallory sprinted through the foot-deep snow, clutching the box to his chest. In the rosy wash of first light he saw Sophie huddling inside a blanket. More blankets had been heaped over the still form of Miller. Her head was bowed, her hair falling across her face so that he couldn’t tell if she was asleep or watching her charge intently. Emotions frozen within him for so long now moved easily: hope that finally everything was going to be all right for them in an idyllic, well-dreamed future; a warm, unfocused joy at the perfect resolution when all had seemed hopeless; and, most of all, love, as sharp as sunlight on snow.
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