Destroyer of Worlds

by Mark Chadbourn

  ‘Except I can never tell which is the pet - the Caraprix or the god,’ Church said.

  2

  Laura kept one eye on her reflection in the window of the adjoining carriage as she teased her white-blond hair. ‘The end of the world is no excuse for looking less than perfect,’ she hummed.

  Further down the carriage, a piper played a heart-wrenching lament to the four lost cities of the homeland of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. The king of the Seelie Court maintained a cold dignity, but the queen’s head was raised, eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Do you miss Hunter?’ Shavi sat cross-legged on the opposite seat.

  Laura noted the tinge of rawness around his left eye where the stolen alien orb had been inserted, but it only emphasised the beauty of his bone structure, the gleam of his black hair, his flawless skin. ‘Like I miss crabs.’

  His smile revealed he recognised the truth behind her words.

  ‘All right, so he’s not a complete loser. And trust me, I’ve shagged enough of those in my life to tell one at fifty paces.’

  Shavi continued to smile.

  ‘Will you stop that?’ She sighed. ‘He’s not had the experience we’ve had. I mean, we’ve all died and come back, for a start.’

  ‘He is a strong and capable man. There is little in the Far Lands that would give him pause.’

  ‘I’m going to be really pissed off if he goes and dies on me. At least before I’ve managed to suck the life out of him.’

  ‘You deserve a little happiness.’

  ‘Yeah. Tell that to her.’ Laura nodded towards Ruth, who stood apart from the strange members of the Seelie Court, lost to the music and her thoughts. She leaned on the Spear of Lugh as if it was a crutch.

  ‘Ruth does not think badly of you.’

  ‘She doesn’t like it that I’m not a frosty, miserable moaner. And she envies my beauty, wit and charm.’

  ‘You know, you do not have to be afraid to be honest about your feelings.’

  ‘I’ve never been honest in my life. Why start now?’ She fixed him with a telling gaze, but for once Shavi did not notice the subtle signs.

  ‘When are you going to tell us your real name?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s DuSantiago.’

  Shavi nodded; another faint smile.

  ‘So how’s the new eye? Causing you a great deal of pain?’

  ‘It appears to have settled in remarkably well. For an eye stolen from an otherworldly construct to replace the one it stole from me.’

  ‘Shame.’ She saw the briefest shadow cross Shavi’s face. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The eye doesn’t always show him things he wants to see.’ Ruth stood in the aisle. Laura felt a charge in the air, as if Ruth were some kind of generator. It was both comforting and unsettling at the same time.

  ‘So what are you seeing, Shavster? Or should I cross your palm with silver?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Laura grew serious. ‘I’m going to throw back at you all that shit you tell me about friends. You shouldn’t keep all this stuff inside you. It’ll eat away at you and drive you mad. Trust me, I know.’

  ‘She’s right, Shavi,’ Ruth prompted.

  ‘I do not see specifics, just fleeting images, impressions.’ He shrugged.

  ‘He sees death,’ Ruth said.

  Shavi flinched.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Laura asked.

  ‘It’s circling all around us. Can’t you feel it?’ Ruth hugged herself. ‘A coldness, that brief feeling of a shadow passing over you?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘What do I know? Thanks to Cernunnos I’m more plant than human. A beautiful little nature sprite.’

  ‘Maybe it’s my Craft,’ Ruth accepted. ‘Come on, Shavi - share your burden.’

  Reluctantly, he replied, ‘Yes, death is all around. As it comes closer, symbols of its presence will arise, as they always have done, but we are usually oblivious to their presence.’

  ‘You’re creeping me out now.’ Laura said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘In life, death is an anomaly. It is like a weight dropped onto a taut rubber sheet, bending the patterns all around, throwing up indicators of its presence. In the midst of them, we discount them as coincidences, randomness. Only after death has passed do we see those things for what they are.’

  ‘Patterns,’ Ruth said. ‘Symbols. That’s where the true magic lies.’

  ‘Who dies, Shavi?’ Laura said sharply.

  ‘The Pendragon Spirit responds to the gravity that lies ahead.’

  ‘So if I can cut through all your verbal wankery,’ Laura said, ‘you’re saying Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. Us. One? More?’

  ‘The details are not clear.’

  Laura couldn’t tell if he was lying.

  The musician came to an abrupt end of his piece, and with silent awe the Seelie Court moved to one side of the carriage. The Last Train emerged from the gulf into a crepuscular zone and then rapidly burst into a blaze of colour and detail. They had arrived at the distant edge of the Far Lands.

  But the members of the travelling court were not entranced by their return to the land the Golden Ones now called home. Their apprehensive attention was fixed on the Fortress that sprawled to the lip of T’ir n’a n’Og, as big as several cities and growing with every moment as armies of labourers relentlessly scurried with ant-like organisation to erect annexes, walls, towers, courtyards, keeps. From one angle, it didn’t resemble a fortress at all, but an enormous insect squatting on the land. All around was blasted, dry and dusty, and devoid of life. And over it all loomed the Burning Man.

  Everyone remained silent until the Fortress had passed from view, and then they returned to their seats, muttering darkly to those beside them.

  3

  The Last Train moved rapidly across the blasted zone, past the long columns of monstrous beings marching out from the Enemy’s Fortress. Their great war machines shook the ground as they rumbled towards the centres of habitation. Soon the train passed onto rolling downs, where the breeze-blown grass looked like waves on a green sea, and then to misty valleys and tree-covered slopes.

  In the carriage beyond the one occupied by the Seelie Court, Tom perched on a seat, studiously constructing a roll-up from the small tin he carried in his haversack. With his silver hair tied back in a ponytail, he still carried with him the spirit of Woodstock. ‘Scared?’ he said.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Crowther watched the passing scenery intently. He was a big-boned man, wrapped in a voluminous overcoat topped with a wide-brimmed hat that made him appear even larger. ‘I have been here many times. In my dreams—’

  ‘Nightmares.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. Our world is a place of low horizons. Here, anything is possible.’

  ‘Yes, death from nowhere, torture, the dismantling and rebuilding of the body in infinite, agonising variations. It’s one long, fun-filled holiday of the mind.’

  ‘If you don’t have the intellectual capacity to see the possibilities,’ Crowther sniffed, ‘there’s little point in discussing it further.’

  Tom eyed him coldly. ‘Intellect is a poor substitute for experience.’

  ‘As people without intellect always say.’

  ‘Oh look, the old folk are arguing again. This journey is like one never-ending visit to a rest home. You’ll be fighting over the Rich Tea biscuits next.’ At sixteen, Mahalia had the cut-glass tones of an expensive private education, but her eyes suggested easy violence and a much greater age.

  ‘Oh yes, the teenage delinquent,’ Tom said. ‘Move along. No mobile phones to steal here.’

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t engage her.’ Crowther sighed. ‘You’ll only find ground glass in your food.’

  Mahalia snorted. ‘I can be much more inventive than that.’ Her hardness fractured briefly as she glanced back along the carriage to where her boyfriend, Jack, sat in gloomy conversation with Miller. At seventeen, with his shock of blond hair and healthy farm-boy
appearance, Jack was a stark contrast to the older Miller’s sickly pallor, only emphasised by the lank brown hair falling around his ghostly face. ‘You need to do something about those two. They’ve got some kind of death wish,’ Mahalia added.

  Realising they were the subject of the conversation, Jack and Miller approached.

  ‘Tell them!’ Mahalia pleaded with Tom and Crowther. ‘Just because they’ve been given these special abilities doesn’t mean they have to go out fighting.’

  ‘Don’t, Mahalia.’ Jack had a world-weariness that belied his age. ‘Everyone can see how this is going to turn out.’

  ‘No, they can’t!’ Refusing any sign of weakness, she quickly brushed away a tear.

  Jack took her hand. ‘My memory’s back now. I know what happened. Snatched from my mum when I was a baby and taken to the Court of the Final Word where they worked on me.’

  Tom winced.

  ‘They made me into a weapon,’ Jack continued. ‘The ultimate weapon. The Wish-Hex that they buried inside me is like . . .’ He fumbled for words to describe a concept he could barely comprehend.

  ‘Like a nuclear bomb that can devastate the very fabric of reality,’ Crowther interrupted.

  ‘So it’s there,’ Mahalia said. ‘So what? That doesn’t mean it has to be used. You can have a normal life—’

  Jack silenced her with an affectionate squeeze of her hand. ‘You know I’ve got a part to play.’

  ‘All right!’ she snapped. ‘So you release the Wish-Hex. There has to be a way you can do that without destroying yourself.’

  Jack’s sad smile stung more than any words could have.

  ‘We all want a little happiness, but sometimes we have to give that up so everybody else can have a chance to be happy,’ Miller said. Tom saw in him an echo of Shavi’s inner peace.

  ‘Shut up, you simpleton.’ Mahalia sighed.

  Refusing to be deterred, Miller took a seat across the aisle. ‘I’ve got something inside me too, but mine heals. You don’t know what it’s like to have these gifts, Mahalia—’

  ‘Gifts!’ she snorted.

  ‘They are! Jack’s too, though it’s hard to see it at the moment. They speak to us in a way I can’t explain and they tell us we’ve got a job to do. If there’s a chance we might be able to stop the Void—’

  ‘Might, might, might!’

  ‘We’ve got to try! To have an ability and not use it . . . and everybody suffers because of it - how could you live with that?’

  ‘I could,’ she said.

  ‘We’re the Keys,’ Jack said. ‘Miller . . . me . . . there’s no chance of winning without us.’

  ‘There’s no chance with you!’ Mahalia stormed down the carriage so no one could see her tears. Jack and Miller followed, trying to comfort her. Crowther watched Tom’s face and saw an echo of Mahalia’s desire for peace and happiness after a long period of responsibility.

  ‘They say you have the Second Sight,’ Crowther said.

  ‘One of my many wonderful attributes.’

  ‘And the tongue that never lies?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But that doesn’t mean I have to answer.’

  ‘Can you see how all this plays out?’ Crowther asked hesitantly. ‘Victory or defeat? Who lives, who dies?’

  Tom smiled tightly, rose and made his way to the opposite end of the carriage where he sat with his back to the others and closed his eyes. The gentle rocking of the train should have calmed him, but nothing did any more. Instinctively, his fingers went to the gold ring in the shape of a dragon eating its tail that the goddess Freyja had given to him in Norway. Known as Andvarinaut, it was cursed to bring misery to anyone who owned it. He had bartered away his future to help Church, Laura and the rest, and soon enough he would be forced to pay the price.

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  Jerked alert by the voice, Tom saw a boy of about nine or ten sitting opposite him. He was black, his hair shorn to a bristle, and a little overweight, but he had the most expressive eyes Tom had ever seen.

  ‘Who are you?’ Tom growled.

  ‘My name’s Carlton.’

  Tom glanced back at Crowther and the others.

  ‘They can’t see me,’ Carlton said. Tom searched the boy for any suspicious signs. ‘You don’t look like one of those damnable fairy folk.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Then you’re with the Enemy.’

  ‘I’m a friend. I’ve come to help you.’

  Carlton’s face was open and honest, but Tom wasn’t going to be fooled. He smoked, and waited.

  ‘Time is running out. The Devourer of All Things is almost here. His army sweeps across the Far Lands. His assassins are abroad, attempting to kill or disrupt key elements of your opposition.’

  ‘You know, little children do not talk like that,’ Tom noted acidly.

  ‘But there is one important thing you must know: in the battle to come, there will be people you can trust, and people you can’t.’

  ‘And you’re going to tell me which is which, I suppose.’

  ‘Even those closest to you are not above suspicion.’

  Tom snorted.

  ‘I want to help—’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust you.’ Tom returned to Crowther and the others, and when he glanced back, the boy was gone. When he described his encounter, Mahalia’s face filled with sadness, and then anger.

  ‘You’re lying.’ Her voice broke. ‘That can’t have been Carlton. Carlton’s dead!’

  4

  In the great debating hall in the Palace of Glorious Light, Mallory and Decebalus were distracted from their strategy meeting by cries coming from the direction of the city gates. A crowd of excited Tuatha Dé Danaan flooded into the courtyard outside the palace where Lugh and an anxious cadre of the city guard waited uneasily for a caravan speeding up the winding streets. The golden-skinned outriders wore heavy armour, their faces grim, but several of the horses had empty saddles. Behind them, the royal carriage clattered so wildly over the cobbles that it was in danger of careering into the surrounding buildings.

  ‘The first of them,’ Lugh said when Mallory arrived at his side. The god stood tall and handsome and was filled with the burning power of the sun, but since he had discovered the true extent of his sister Niamh’s betrayal, it was as if a dark cloud had gathered within him. ‘The twenty great courts of the Golden Ones are answering our call.’

  ‘All of them?’

  Lugh still barely believed he had gained the support of his unruly people. ‘We have received responses from all, save three,’ he replied. ‘The Seelie Court, who wander the worlds eternally; their dark brethren, the Unseelie Court, but they will never follow our path; and the Court of the Final Word.’ As Lugh watched the gathering riders, the weight of his leadership lay heavy on him. ‘I am concerned. We sent a messenger to the Court of the Final Word, but he reported it sealed and silent and cold. I fear the worst.’

  Reining-in their mounts, the outriders leaped down as the royal carriage skidded to a halt. With a resounding crack, the rear axle shattered, the carriage sagging, the horses rearing up. Guards ran to help the occupants. The remainder of the caravan trailed through the palace gates and down the steep hill to where they had entered the court from the Great Plain, aristocracy and soldiers, merchants, musicians and magicians.

  ‘Who are they?’ Mallory asked.

  ‘The Court of the Yearning Heart. Beware them, Brother of Dragons. Though they are my people, they are sly, untrustworthy and dangerous.’

  From the carriage climbed the queen, exuding a supernaturally charged eroticism so powerful that a tense silence fell over all those present, of either sex. She wore a transparent gown that only served to draw attention to her breasts and pubis.

  Accompanied by two young women-in-waiting, she approached Lugh. No love was lost in the curt bow they exchanged, but she found time to cast a curious, sexually predatory gaze towards Mallory.

  ‘I trust your journey was safe,’ Lugh enqu
ired.

  ‘It was not. We left as my court was overrun, and from there to here we were harried continually. Many of my subjects were slaughtered in the process,’ she noted without a hint of sadness. ‘Imagine - Golden Ones eradicated! How can this abomination come to pass?’