Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  “Callow,” he hissed. Ice water washed through him at the thought of what monstrous things must have been perpetrated on the itinerant to transform him into such a thing.

  But once the initial shock had dissipated, Shavi was overcome with a deep loathing. Normally he tried to maintain an equilibrium for all living things, but here was the man who had slashed Laura’s face, sliced off Ruth’s finger and delivered her into the hands of the Fomorii to be tortured; who had tried to sell humanity to the beasts for his own gain.

  Shavi clapped his hand on his wound to staunch the blood flow; it didn’t seem too bad. “What have they done to you, Callow?” he asked, biding his time while he looked for a way out.

  “What have they done?” Callow rolled his eyes insanely. “Look at me! They’ve ruined me! Calatin’s punishment for my involvement in the farrago which you and your pathetic colleagues brought about in the Lake District. Punishing me more for his own failures. The indescribable bastard!” He made a strange noise in the corner of his mouth which could have been a laugh or a curse; the insanity brought on by his suffering was writ large in every movement he made. “And once he had tormented me, he didn’t even keep me around. He threw me out into the world to make my own way.”

  “You paid a terrible price-“

  “Not fair!” He wiped his mouth feverishly with the back of his hand. “It was your fault! All of you! You are the ones who should have suffered! That was why I sought you out. To make you pay.” He waggled his filthy fingers in front of Shavi’s face. One was missing; the first severed finger they had found next to Loch Maree had been his own. “Each one of you, a little pinkie!” He chuckled. “The five fingers that held my fate in their grasp. I will sever each of you until I am free. And any other one who dares to hold me back.”

  Cautiously, Shavi dug his heels in the ground and shifted his weight, ready to throw himself at his attacker if Callow dropped his guard. “If all you wanted was revenge, why then did you deliver Ruth to the Fomorii?” Desperately he tried to keep the conversation going.

  Callow’s expression grew rueful. “I thought she might buy my way back into the Midnight Court. She is the most powerful of all of you, you see. More powerful even than you. I explained to Calatin that this would make her the perfect vehicle for the return of their Dark Lord. The delicious irony! The champion of this world bringing about its demise! Calatin had no sense of irony, but he realised her strength would make her more likely to withstand the rigours of the pregnancy.” He chuckled crazily to himself. “Pregnant! A virgin birth! They were going to use one of their own up to that point. So he took her, and then he threw me out again! But once I have eliminated the rest of you, he will take me back. I know he will.”

  “Why do you want to return when they have done this to you?” Shavi could not keep the disgust out of his voice.

  Callow did not seem to notice. “He loves me. He shaped me with his own hands. I hate him and I love him too. There is nowhere else in this world for me now, unless it’s by his side.”

  In his words Shavi heard echoes of Tom’s twisted relationship with the Tuatha De Danann. What was it in the psyche of humankind that made them complicit in the actions of their tormentors, he wondered?

  Callow wiped his knife on Shavi’s trousers, leaving a thin trail of blood. “You have to give in to them, you see,” he continued, almost to himself. “They’re our gods. They control our lives.”

  Shavi eyed the sinking sun nervously. He had to break free from Callow soon or all would be lost. “We give in to no one. If humanity is to rise again, it will not come from kowtowing to any earthly power. We must seize control-“

  Callow’s painful laugh cut him short. “You think they can be beaten?”

  “Not easily. Not without a great struggle. But I believe it is man’s destiny to rise, not to kneel in servitude.” The pain and the wetness in Shavi’s back was starting to spread. The wound might not have been deep, but it still needed treatment or he’d bleed to death there, in conversation with a lunatic.

  “You’ll be the first to die. Then I’ll take your finger. Or perhaps I’ll take the finger first.” Callow watched him slyly with those permanently uncovered orbs like twin moons, glowing unnaturally white. He started to turn the knife slowly in his filthy fingers. Shavi watched his muscles tense, preparing to strike.

  “We may be able to help you,” Shavi said with a comforting smile. “The Tuatha De Danann have remarkable abilities and their opposition to the Fomorii may induce them to find a cure for you.”

  “Really?” Callow’s muscles untensed.

  Shavi felt the relief creep into his chest. Now was the time to act. “Yes. We can—

  Callow lunged forward like a cobra. The knife plunged into Shavi’s chest with the force of a hammer, knocking him back on the ground. And again. And again. For an instant his thoughts flashed out and he was left in infinite darkness. When he came down he seemed to be buried deep in his head with only a tiny window to look out on to the world. There was an unbearable pain in his left hand, but he couldn’t move to drag his arm away, couldn’t even move to see what was happening. A receding part of him knew, but what remained of his conscious mind wouldn’t accept the knowledge. It couldn’t make sense of any thing; there were just random impressions: the comforting feel of the grass against his cheek, the summery aroma of woodland, the feel of the heat slowly fading as the sun slipped down the sky, an overwhelming but fleeting grief that he had failed everybody, a snapshot of Ruth, Church, Laura, Veitch, Tom, Lee, his mother and father.

  And then he heard Callow’s voice as if from across a desolate pain: “There is no cure. This is all there is-pain and suffering.”

  The sounds of Callow shuffling away. Silence. Another face moving in towards him, familiar, but insubstantial; and it wasn’t even dark. The guilt and regret. The voice that tormented him on a nightly basis, softly, so softly. “You’ll be with nae soon, Shavi.” Lee bending closer to tell him terrible things that would stay with him in the Grey Lands forever.

  And then there was nothing.

  The sun was low on the horizon and long shadows ran across the Windsor parkland. Darkness had started to gather among the trees. From somewhere nearby came the forlorn baying of hounds. One shadow separated from the others and moved across the grass until it found Shavi lying in a pool of his blood. There was a brief snuffling around the recumbent form and then Cernunnos raised his antlered head and howled at the sky. It merged with the questing of the dogs into a sound that would have broken the heart of anyone who heard it.

  Complete silence followed; no bird called, no insect chirruped; it was as if a blanket had been lain across the parkland, and that was somehow as unbearable as the noise that preceded it. Finally, Cernunnos groped inside Shavi’s jacket and removed the smoky bottle he had handed over earlier. The god held it delicately for a moment, his head moving slowly from side to side, and then he loped back into the undergrowth.

  Church sat on his favourite rock, watching the sunset. The sky had turned an angry red, almost apocalyptic in its intensity. His body felt like it belonged to someone else, a mass of aches and bruises highlighted by the throbbing in his hand, which had receded from its initial agony to a dull pain that made him feel sick. He had passed out briefly as Laura bound it tightly for him and she had chided him for that, although there wasn’t much heart in her mockery.

  The sword felt uncomfortable in his good hand, the strange, cold, metal more like the skin of a snake; sometimes he was even convinced it moved beneath his palm. The way he felt, though, he doubted if he would have the strength to use it.

  He couldn’t help continually checking his watch as he counted off the min utes until midnight. More than anything, he thought of Ruth. He recalled when they first met how he had the overwhelming feeling they were kindred spirits. Lying together beneath the sheets in her Salisbury hotel room when one of the Baobhan Sith was stalking only feet away. Sitting beside the campfire on Skye when she told him, “We
’re not all going to come out of it alive.”

  He bolstered himself with the thought that until Lughnasadh rose there was still a chance of the cavalry riding in to save all of them from damnation. Yet in his heart he knew a little piece of hope went with each glimmer of light that ebbed out of the sky.

  Could he kill the woman he felt closer to than anyone, even though she was going to die anyway? Could he drive that last piece of life out of her, and watch as her face returned to innocence? For the first time in many years, he covered his eyes and prayed.

  Laura sat in the corner of the room where Ruth slept, hugging her knees, watching the tremors that ran through the sleeping form. Seeing Ruth’s suffering played out before her had been agonising, as much for what it made her think about herself as the effect it had on the woman she had professed to dislike. For so long she hadn’t even been able to look at Ruth; now she could do little else. She didn’t know if she was punishing herself, some subconscious reflex instilled by her parents’ religious education, or if she was merely waiting for something to happen.

  And she could sense they were on the cusp of something monumental. There was a feeling in the stale atmosphere of the room of unpleasant tension, as if a storm were about to break.

  “Don’t die,” she whispered. She told herself it wasn’t a prayer, but then added, “Bring Ryan or Shavi back with good news.”

  She felt useless sitting around doing nothing, while heroic events were being played out around her. Was that why she’d been pulled into the whole damn mess-to act as little more than a cheerleader for others who had greater depths and more significant abilities? In fact, if she admitted it to herself, she had no skills, nothing to contribute at all; not even any homely wisdom to guide them out of a sticky situation. She’d been a coward, a fuck-up, jealous, divisive, manipulative, while secretly hoping some of the others’ strengths would rub off on her. But all she’d got was some hideous blood disorder that was doing God knows what to her insides.

  Why had she been marked as a Sister of Dragons? What did she have to offer?

  She covered her eyes, then regretted it when Church walked in because it made her look weak. He was too distracted to notice. His face was pale and drawn from the pain of the day; in the queasy, fading light he looked ten years older.

  The deep currents of affection she felt for him began moving, as they always did when he was around, and her biggest regret was that she had never let him know how she really felt. Now it was too late. She could barely believe how, only a few weeks earlier, it had seemed perfect. She’d finally found someone she felt in tune with after a lifetime of searching; someone who was decent, hopeful, everything she wasn’t. And, true to form, it had fallen apart almost the moment it had started.

  “‘s up?” she said blandly.

  His features grew dark and she knew the answer even before he spoke. “I think it’s starting.”

  They crawled out on to the overhanging boulder and looked down at the pooling blackness far below. It took Laura a second or two to realise it was moving.

  “They know where we are,” Church said. “They’re coming up.”

  Laura shrugged. “So, it’s Alamo time. Well, it’s not like it’s a surprise or anything.”

  Church looked at that fat, red sun hanging on the horizon. “It’s too soon.”

  Laura followed his gaze, couldn’t see anything. “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t expect them to make their move till after dark.” He gnawed on a knuckle, even more worried than he had been a few moments earlier. “I’ve got to try to hold them off for a bit.”

  Laura snorted with mocking laughter. “Throw stones at them! That’ll do some good.”

  He rounded on her bitterly. “I’m sick of your carping. Couldn’t you say anything useful, even here at the end?”

  “Sorry to be such an irritant, shithead.” She looked away so he couldn’t see her face.

  The black tide was rising quickly. Church was transfixed as it swallowed grass and stone, lapping ever upwards. At that distance Church couldn’t make out any shapes within the greater mass, adding to the illusion of an ocean stretching out around the island of the tor; and with the sun so low it was impossible to guess how far it did reach, the night and the Fomorii merged into one. He guessed, from the average size of them, there must have been thousands gathered round the tor, ready to celebrate the rebirth of their own dark god and bear him back to whatever burrow they had made their own. And there he sat with a sword, nearly crippled by his injuries. If the situation wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable.

  The bitterness had drained out of him by the time he turned back to Laura. “I want you to go back and sit with Ruth,” he said tenderly.

  “Well, aren’t you the big macho bastard. Send the womenfolk back to the homestead while you do men things.”

  “It’s not like that. Ruth deserves to have someone sitting with her, you know-“

  “Up to the end?” She seemed to understand this. She stared back at the house impassively, and after a long pause, she said, “You’re not expecting me to do it, are you?”

  “No. Don’t do anything. That’s my job.”

  `But what happens if. ..” She struggled to find words that wouldn’t hurt too much to say them.

  “I’ll find some way to get back in there to do what needs to be done before it’s all over.”

  She nodded slowly. “This is it then. The fuck-ups fuck up big time.” Still nodding, she began to walk back to the house. She hadn’t gone far when she turned and came striding back to him. The last rays of the sun highlighted the glimmering wetness in her eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand, then threw her arms round his neck and hugged him tightly. “I’d like to say it was fun, Church-dude. Bits of it even were. But I can say this-I’ll never forget it until my dying day.” She kissed him passionately on the lips and then she was gone.

  Church’s thoughts turned to what lay ahead. He desperately tried to think of some delaying strategy to give him the added time he needed, but there were so many, whatever he did, they’d keep going right over the top of him towards the house. The building wasn’t even protected enough for him to make any kind of stand. A pass in the mountains, that’s where he needed to be, or at a bridge. Instead he was on a flattened ridge on a bleak mountaintop where they could come at him from every direction at once. Clever.

  “Shavi. Tom. Ryan,” he said out loud. “If you’re going to make a move, now’s the time to do it.” His words were picked up by the evening breeze and flung out over the countryside.

  He sat on the boulder, his stomach muscles knotting, his heart beating faster and faster until he thought it would explode with anxiety. They were moving slowly, staying together in one tight corpus. It allowed him time to consider their nature. The times he had seen them en masse they had moved almost like one creature. He remembered the Lake District and how he felt like he was being borne along on a river of darkness. Perhaps that was the way to perceive them, as the embodiment of evil, one mind, one form, which could break itself down into smaller parts when called for. That line of thinking made his head spin. The Fomorii, and the Tuatha De Danann too, were so alien the only yardsticks he could apply to measure them were human ones which made no sense. There was a whole new set of rules and regulations out there which mapped the existence inhabited by those two races.

  He wondered, with a note of dark humour, how the scientists were coping right then. Madly trying to apply their laboratory conditions to something which could not be measured or categorised? Going crazy trying to force all those square pegs into the round holes which comprised their intellectual life?

  Yet, strangely, there were some parts of the Fomorii that were parallel to human experience, as if people had learned the baser part of their existence from the Night Walkers long ago. Or perhaps, he mused, everyone was cut from the same cloth. That thought was so depressing he wiped it from his mind immediately.

  They certainly had a hi
erarchical structure, tribal in nature, with the different factions constantly rivalling. He guessed only the iron rule of Balor could keep them united, in fear and in the promise of ultimate victory over all existence. But while the Fomorii were like the barbarians in the outer darkness, the Tuatha De Danann reminded him of some emperor’s court structure, but one that had passed its peak and was winding down into decadence and decay. How could they be gods when aspects of them were so human?

  And so he waited. Halfway up the tor he began to hear those horrible animal cries and grunts that tormented his sleep. Then came the zoo smell, thick and stomach turning. And then, finally, he could see them, no longer as one dark mass, but as swarming black insects, thousands upon thousands of bodies, scrambling upwards, clambering over each other, their shapes flickering in and out of his perception so that sometimes they seemed to have bony shells and wings, other times gleaming black armour, sometimes wielding twisted limbs with scorpion stings and lobster claws, other times brandishing cruelly deformed battle axes and those terrifying swords with the serrated edge along one side. It was too much. He had to withdraw from the edge as he felt the nausea rise to the point where he was almost blacking out.

  He retreated until he was a few yards from the house door and then he took his stand again.

  Laura watched the impending confrontation from the house with a mounting sense of desolation. All the suffering and heartache had come down to this: more failure. Behind her, Ruth had started to buck and writhe once more. Getting ready to give birth, Laura thought.

  She wondered what it would be like to die, almost welcomed it in a way. But in contrast the thought of Church or Ruth passing filled her with an overwhelming sickness; it brought tears to her eyes.

  As she blinked them away, she caught sight of a movement close to the house. Her stomach turned. The Fomorii had outflanked Church and were coming. It was an obvious ploy; they wouldn’t leave their god in the hands of others for longer than they had to, she thought. She glanced round frantically for some kind of weapon. She’d go down fighting if she had to, protecting Ruth to the last. If only she could have had time to say sorry for all the terrible things she had done; for being so weak and pathetic and twisted when confronted by someone so unselfish.