Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  The voice: in his head, or somewhere outside? Then, like treacle flowing into his mind, the realisation that he was hearing; how could that be? When Witch’s eyes finally responded he saw through a haze the stables in the Court of the Yearning Heart. His blood stained the dirty straw. Thunder stood nearby, stamping its hooves.

  With the return of consciousness, agony exploded throughout his body. He was slumped against the wall in the mangled remnants of his armour, now coloured browny-purple with his dried blood. The deep gash across his chest was still ragged, but it didn’t look quite as deep; even so, Veitch couldn’t understand how he was still alive. From the way he had started to shiver, his death still seemed a definite possibility. But he could hear again, although he knew his drums had burst at the lochside.

  Tom hove into view, dropping down on to his haunches; it was his familiar Scottish brogue Veitch had heard earlier. “What happened?” Witch’s voice a feeble croak.

  “The Queen saw-“

  “I saw your tremendous victory.” Tom stood up and walked over to the other side of the stables as the Queen knelt down next to Veitch. She was wearing flowing, diaphanous white robes that were startlingly out of place in the bloody grime of the stables. “You proved yourself a great champion. My champion.” There was great pride in her voice. “I had you brought here, for in my court nothing truly dies if I so wish it. Here your wounds will have time to heal. You will be well again, Ryan Veitch.” Melliflor laid a crystal bowl of water next to her. She took a white cloth from him, dipped it in the water and began to dab gently at his forehead, slowly wiping away the splatters of his blood.

  “I can’t believe it,” he muttered deliriously. “A Queen … tending to me . .

  “Even Queens must recognise great bravery. Your name will be exalted, even among the Tuatha De Danann. And that bravery was carried out in my name, a fitting tribute to the Queen of the Yearning Heart. The Questing Beast is back in its chamber-“

  “It survived?”

  “It exists, as always.”

  Witch had the sudden feeling the Beast had been released merely for him to hunt it down, a perverse sport for the Tuatha De Danann so they could see what depths existed within him; and on that front he had even surprised himself. “Will you help Ruth?”

  The Queen continued to dab at his forehead. Some of the water ran into his eyes and she wiped it away softly. A drop trickled down the bridge of his nose. “I will be as good as my word, Ryan Veitch.” A smile he couldn’t quite read.

  Veitch could feel himself starting to black out again. The Queen’s ministrations were so soothing, her touch so gentle; the coolness of her fingers seemed to ease his pain wherever they touched.

  She wiped down his cheeks, brushed the drips from his chin. He had lost so much liquid his body felt like sand inside.

  She dabbed at his brow, smiled enigmatically. Then she held the cloth before his face and squeezed tightly. A single droplet eked out of the bottom, hung for a second, then dropped. He stuck out the tip of his tongue.

  “No!” Tom’s voice, filled with the most indescribable anguish.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the Rhymer rushing forward. Melliflor and another guard restraining him harshly. The droplet hitting his tongue, so cool and refreshing, belying its size. Slowly seeing the Queen’s expression change, from gentle care to something much darker, like a shadow falling across the face of the moon. Still not grasping what had happened. Hearing Tom shouting his pain to the heavens.

  The Queen put the bowl to one side sharply, stood up and swirled her robes around her as she strode to the door; there she turned and flashed a smile that was both triumphant and proud, the expression of someone who always gets her way. Veitch, in his befuddled state, still tried to grasp why the ministrations had stopped. The break had been so harsh; he wanted to feel that cool touch of her fingers.

  And hearing Tom’s words for the first time and feeling instantly cold and hopeless: “You took a drink, you fool! You took a drink and you’re in her power now! She’ll never you let go!”

  Then she was gone, and Melliflor and the guards trailed out behind her, each of them smirking in turn at Veitch and Tom, knowing there was no longer any need to guard them.

  Witch’s thoughts turned instantly to Ruth and the three days she had left. An awful emptiness opened up within him at the knowledge that he had failed her; he might as well have killed her himself. His part in everything was over. He was scum; when it all came down to it, that was all he was and all he could ever be.

  “I can’t leave you here,” Tom croaked. “Not on your own. I’m going to stay with you.”

  “The others need you.”

  “You need me more.” Tom’s face was filled with the all the terror and suffering that lay ahead for Veitch; that stretched out for years and decades and centuries.

  Veitch looked through him, two thoughts turning over and over in his mind: that he wouldn’t have the resilience that Tom had exhibited to survive the relentless tearing apart of his body and mind; and that he would never see the world, and Church, and Ruth, ever again.

  Tom dropped to his knees and took Veitch in his arms. Veitch could feel vibration running through him, felt moisture splash on his face, and realised Tom was sobbing. And somehow that was more terrifying than everything, for all it said about what the future held for him there, in the Queen’s incisive power.

  chapter nineteen

  gifts freely given

  t was a perfect summer’s day, echoing warm memories of half-remembered childhoods, infused with the scent of grass and trees and heated tarmac; and it was only two days before Lughnasadh. Church sat on his favourite rock with the sun hot on the back of his neck and thought of how he would kill his closest, dearest friend. He’d weighed up the problem, on and off, for three hours, between checks on Ruth’s condition, and he could still barely comprehend it.

  “You going to sit out here until you turn into a crispy piece of bacon?” Laura had come up behind him quietly and had spent almost a full minute watching him silently, wishing more than anything she could connect with him on a level deep enough to help.

  When he looked up at her, her heart went out to him at the desolation that lay in his eyes. Her first reaction was some asinine comment just to get a cheap laugh, but the weight on him was too great. “What’s the big deal?” she said, pretending to look distracted.

  He shook his head, barely able to bring himself to talk to her, but when he started it all came flooding out. “How do people deal with these kinds of decisions? You know, the big-shots, the leaders of countries, the people who make the world turn? You reckon they’ve got some kind of equation to make everything square in their minds? Because otherwise how can they live with themselves? On paper it looks great. You sacrifice this nameless, faceless person here and save this many lives. Simple maths. Any kid can do it. But when it’s someone you know and care for, it doesn’t balance out the same any more. The rational side of your brain tells you one thing. The other side says this person is too valuable to sacrifice, whatever the outcome.” A long pause. “And that’s the truth, isn’t it? Everybody is too valuable. Life is too important. This isn’t a decision for people. It’s for God.”

  Her sunglasses stripped the emotion from her stare. “So what are you going to do?”

  He cursed loudly, looked round as if searching for something to lash out at. “I’m going to kill her. Of course I am, and I’m going to damn myself for all eternity and I’m probably going to kill myself straight after.”

  Laura snorted derisively. “You know, I’m appalled you’re even considering that.” She grasped for the words to express the unfocused dismay she was feeling.

  “Can’t you get real? We’re talking the End of Everything. The life of one person-” he made an overstated weighing act with his hands “-it doesn’t balance. Any idiot can see it doesn’t balance.”

  “I thought this New Age was supposed to be a good time for women more than anything e
lse. Feminine values and all that shit after hundreds of years of testosterone stupidity. Look at her, in that house, what she’s been through. You could at least have hoped it would be Veitch or the old git-“

  “We’ve all suffered.” He knew he was only arguing as a distraction; it wasn’t even relevant. “I was tortured-“

  “Yeah? How bad? That bad?”

  “All right. What do you think we do? Wish upon a star? She’s going to die anyway, when Balor comes through.”

  “Oh, fuck off. I don’t know. But I know she’s one of the good guys and it shouldn’t be her.” She walked off a few paces angrily, then turned and said, “Don’t ever, ever tell her I said that, even when she’s acting like she’s got a bug in her head.”

  He had a sudden vision of when he and Ruth first met, when everything had seemed confounding, but the choices simpler. “What the hell am I supposed to be doing?” he muttered.

  “You’re the leader, Church-dude. Why are you asking me?” She picked up a handful of stones and began to hurl them out into the void without a thought for where they might land. “I’m just along for sarcastic comments and pithy asides. Go with your instinct or whatever you leaders do.”

  She threw the last pebble then turned and sauntered back to the house as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  The dawn of the final day broke through the ragged cottage window in pink and gold, but when Church went to get a little sun on his face he saw the sky was painted red along the horizon; the folklore warning of bad weather ahead wasn’t wasted on him.

  At least the faint warmth refreshed him after the dismal night. He hadn’t slept at all. Ruth had spent the long, dark hours in the grip of a delusion that had left her screaming and clawing at her face and belly until blood flowed. It had been almost unbearable to see, the cracking screech of her voice so dismaying he’d wanted to cover his ears and run from the place rather than listen to the magnitude of her pain or face the extent of her decline. But he’d stayed by her side for all that harrowing time, caring for her, doing his best to prevent her harming herself, and now he felt drained of every last emotion. Laura was huddled in a corner like a child, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted now that Ruth’s ravings had subsided with the coming of the light. Several times during the night she’d had to leave the room, crying, unable to cope with what she was seeing. Church had pretended he hadn’t noticed.

  The faint breeze that came with the dawn stirred the stagnant air with a hint of freshness. He stretched the kinks out, then walked back to look over Ruth. Her sleeping face gave no signs of the terrible things he had seen during the night. Her chest rose and fell with an incongruous peace. She was beautiful, he thought, inside and out; it wasn’t fair that she was suffering. For a moment he drank in that innocence and then a jarring thought crept into his mind: he could do it there and then. Smother her with the sleeping bag. Strangle her, gently at first so she didn’t wake. It would be perfect; he wouldn’t have to look into her eyes; he could remember her this way instead of twisted by the torments that were sure to come. It wouldn’t really seem like murder at all, would it?

  The thought hovered for a second and then he felt a twist in his gut so sharp he thought he was going to vomit. He couldn’t do it now-he was too tired. But later, certainly; he had, at last, accepted it was an inevitability.

  As he turned away so he wouldn’t have to look at her, his eyes fell on the insane scribbling that covered the wall. From a distance the minute writing resembled some intricate pattern; swirls and waves like a Middle Eastern carpet. Only up close were the hidden messages revealed, incomprehensible, but with some sort of intelligence behind them. There was something in this observation which tugged at him, but he didn’t have the energy to start getting philosophical. Instead he blanked his mind and allowed himself to be drawn in by the mesmerising scrawl, a Zen meditation where obvious meaning was discarded for an overall sense. He stayed in that state where all the words blurred into one mass for what must have been minutes, feeling the stresses of the night begin to slough off him, until he gradually realised he was becoming aware of certain words rising out of the morass. It was almost as if the wall was speaking to him. And what was it saying?

  I love you.

  A nice sentiment, he thought ironically. Perhaps Ruth had been wrong about something bad happening there. The house may have been a place where forbidden lovers trysted, or was that his stupid, sentimental, romantic side coming out? He thought he’d finally eradicated that on the hilltop overlooking Skye.

  Church.

  His breath stung the back of his throat, hung there, suspended. The word seemed to glow, then fade, so that he couldn’t quite be sure it was his name he’d seen.

  Marianne.

  This time he felt sick. His head began to whirl and he thought he might pitch forward. Marianne, speaking to him. A tingle ran along his spine, warning him not to analyse what he was seeing too much or the spell might be broken. Just wait, he told himself. Be open to it.

  For a moment or two he saw nothing else. His eyes started to burn from the effort of not concentrating on what was before him. He had that queasy feeling he always got when he looked at Magic Eye pictures.

  Then: Be brave.

  Be wary.

  The end is

  coming soon.

  There was a cold sweat stinging the back of his neck. He wanted to ask questions, make some kind of direct contact, but he was afraid it would break the moment.

  You have it

  within

  you, I always knew

  that.

  Don’t fear for me. Don’t

  hold on to me.

  Face the future.

  Go forward.

  Church wondered how long the words had been there, hidden in the garbled, idiot pattern, and he had never seen them till now; by accident. At the moment he needed them most. He knew what Tom would say: no accidents, no coincidences; there was meaning in every little thing. But if only he had seen it before, how much strength he might have drawn from it during the long, painful days they had waited there.

  I

  can see you even

  when you

  can’t see me. We all

  can.

  There’s a

  reason

  for everything, Church.

  You just

  have to see

  it.

  In that moment he wanted to break down and sob, all the repressed feelings of the years since she died, all the strangled emotions of the last few months, ready to burst out in one rush. But all he managed were a few, brief tears that burned his eyes and were easily blinked away.

  I may be

  trapped,

  but they can’t

  hurt me.

  And I’m happy now

  they can’t

  use me to control

  you.

  Don’t worry, Church.

  I love you.

  The message began to repeat like one of those tickertape electronic messages that run around buildings in New York. He stayed a few minutes longer, just to be sure, and then walked out into the pale sunlight, his cheeks still wet.

  Her words had been few, but there was so much to take in; an entire worldview. He was overjoyed that she wasn’t suffering, that the resilience he had admired was still there, but more than anything that she was still around, like an old friend, keeping an eye on him. And not just her; she had said.

  We all can.

  What did we all mean? He walked towards the edge and looked down at the flickering shadows moving across the landscape. For him, right there, at that particular moment, it meant the world. Never give up.

  There’s meaning in everything.

  There’s a reason for everything.

  He only had to see it.

  Church skidded over the grass and rock down the tor. He felt consumed by a renewed sense of purpose, almost courage, although he had never considered himself brave. Risking your life meant nothing w
hen everything was meaningless; but now there was meaning. The clues had been around him from the start-even before-but he had never pieced them all together to accept the sublime patterns. Even the Fomorii, the antithesis of it, proved its existence. Tom had subtly attempted to guide him towards that illumination, Church realised, and now he had it, he realised why: the world looked different.

  Now they couldn’t afford to lose; not just for humanity, or life as they knew it, but for something so big it made even that seem insignificant. An awareness of that responsibility would have crushed most people; Church felt enlivened by a new sense of direction.

  Halfway down the tor he paused at a huge boulder and slowly crawled out on top of it so he could survey the countryside beneath. To most eyes, the rolling fields would have looked a little darker than usual. Strange shadows flickered on the edge of vision, but beyond that everything appeared normal. Church’s heightened perception, however, picked out the Fomorii’s half-seen shapes for almost as far as the eye could see. It was as if an army had massed at the foot of the tor, ready for a siege on some mediaeval castle. For a moment he blanched at the prospect of what lay ahead; then he drove all thoughts from his mind and hurried down the tor.

  His target was relatively easy to find in the stillness of the countryside where no cars moved, no birds sang. Waves of golden light washed upwards like some strange aurora borealis, gilding the surrounding trees; occasionally strange booming noises echoed among the hillsides as if a jet had passed over. Church kept beneath the level of the hedgerows as he progressed along the lanes towards the epicentre. He had judged rightly that there would be little or no Fomorii activity in that area. The fact that even they were scared should have given him pause, but he kept driving forward, working at the plan that had started to form in the back of his head. The risks were great-even being there was ridiculously dangerous-but at that stage bold action was the only thing that could work.

  Close to the golden light the air was filled with an unpleasant charred taste. He dropped to his belly and wriggled forward until he could peer through a break in the hedge, every muscle tensed to flee in case he was seen.