Destroyer of Worlds

by Mark Chadbourn

  Mallory rounded on Callow, but by then he had one arm around Caitlin’s throat and a razor blade plucked from the turn-up of his dirty trousers gripped between the fingers of his other hand.

  Deep in her head, Caitlin felt the Morrigan unfurl her wings and a surge of darkness sweep forwards. Caitlin elbowed Callow in his gut. He let out a pained gasp of air, but instantly slashed her cheek with the razor and then pressed it to her jugular.

  Caitlin cried out as blood washed down from the wound, but Callow only dug the razor deeper. ‘You’ll be dead before you can release what’s inside you,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I cut one of your kind before, and I am quite prepared to do so again. My shiny friend here can conduct a nice dance across your face and still slit that white throat before you have time to move. You will die ugly, and that thought will eat away at you in this dismal afterlife.’

  ‘Let her go.’ Mallory ignored the dead gathering at his back. He raised the sword towards Callow’s throat.

  ‘Oh, the bravado of the heroic man. So false. What can you do? I am already dead. Make me more dead? It is the fault of your sickening brotherhood that I am here, and I have nurtured the desire for the dish best served cold for a long, long time. Give me the lantern.’

  ‘Don’t, Mallory!’ Caitlin cried. She saw him waver. ‘You need it to carry on. You don’t need me.’

  ‘Oh, but he does,’ Callow said slyly. ‘I’ve seen it in his eyes as we journeyed together, knights of the road, shoulder to shoulder. He loves you. Perhaps not with the romance of a sexual partner, but with the deeper love of a kindred spirit, a friend you would support to the end. And this, most certainly, is the end.’

  ‘Mallory, no!’ Caitlin could now see in his eyes the same thing as Callow, and she recognised the same rich depth of feeling in herself. A friend to the end. A deep and complex love. Why did that have to be the weapon that ruined them?

  Mallory slowly held out the Wayfinder for Callow to snatch with his free hand. ‘My little ears hear all sorts of things,’ he said. ‘About the genie inside this thing, for one. A vulnerable genie, whose destruction would strike to the heart of the sickening Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.’

  Caitlin winced at the devastation in Mallory’s face. In a cold, murderous tone, Mallory said: ‘If you hurt him I’ll find some way to make you suffer.’

  ‘Of course you will.’ He smiled mockingly. ‘Now, I know how sly you people are, and I see that pigsticker you’re waving around, so . . .’ With a flourish, he slashed Caitlin again, missing the vein more by accident than design, but cutting her deeply enough that the blood gushed. Thrusting her towards Mallory, he gripped the handle of the lantern between his teeth and leaped up the wall, clutching on to barely visible handholds before propelling himself through a tunnel that lay half-hidden in the mists just above their heads.

  Catching Caitlin in his arms, Mallory desperately tried to staunch the flow of blood. ‘Not again,’ he muttered, without really knowing why.

  The dead shuffled forwards, their eyes gleaming at the sight of Caitlin’s lifeblood. Mallory levelled Llyrwyn at them. ‘I’ll cut you to pieces,’ he said, trying to keep the emotion from his voice. ‘Do you understand that? I’ll cut you to pieces!’

  ‘I understand.’

  The voice echoed from further along the floor of the chasm, though Mallory knew who it was before the mist unfurled. A wall of the dead separated the two of them, but the Hortha simply grabbed the one nearest to him, extended his finger of blackthorn and rammed it through the temple into whatever remained of the brain. The dead man slumped to his knees, and the Hortha moved on to the next.

  Caitlin found herself slipping to the edge of consciousness as the Morrigan fell back into the dark, but she could see Mallory fighting with his dilemma: the Hortha was unbeatable, but too close for them to make an adequate escape in her severely wounded condition.

  ‘Leave me,’ she croaked.

  ‘No. Never, ever again.’

  As he searched around for a solution while trying to hold the dead back and keep Caitlin from bleeding out, his eyes gleamed with a dawning notion. ‘See him - he’s destroying you!’ he yelled at the dead. ‘He hates you. He laughs at what you’ve lost. He’s going to make you suffer even more than you already have. Is that fair? You have to stop him.’

  The dead paused and turned as one, fixing their unblinking stare on the Hortha as he punctured another head and discarded what remained, not caring whether they saw him.

  ‘He wants to make you suffer more!’ Mallory shouted.

  The dead moved, tentatively at first but with gathering speed as Mallory’s words lit up their sluggish minds. With grasping hands, they pressed towards the Hortha and although the creature tried to drive through the flow, there were too many of them. They began to tear at his form, ripping away the blackthorn as fast as it could regrow, searching for the mystery of his life. Finally, the Hortha went down under a frenzy of tearing.

  Mallory tied a handkerchief across Caitlin’s wounds and slung her over his shoulder. Grunting with strain and exhaustion, he clambered up the rock wall and stepped into the tunnel, sparing one quick backward glance at the churning pool of grey, dead flesh.

  The tunnel was only short, the pearly mist gleaming at the end.

  ‘You love me, and I love you,’ Caitlin said dreamily. ‘Platonic. Deep. You’re a sensitive soul, Mallory, a good man—’

  ‘Save your strength,’ he said, embarrassed.

  ‘That’s why I love you.’

  He shifted her weight into his arms to carry her more easily, and she could see the worry in his face. ‘Am I dying?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m going to sort out that wound when we get out of here. But after that . . .’ Shaking his head, he looked away. She knew what he was thinking: how could they find Callow and save Hal in this terrible, bleak land? How could they find the Extinction Shears?

  Stumbling out of the tunnel mouth, Mallory came to a sudden halt. Her head spinning, Caitlin craned her neck to see what had brought him up so sharply. Waiting a little way down the slope on the backs of their strange mounts were the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders, their dead expressions grim.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ Etain said coldly.

  Chapter Seven

  THE LABYRINTH

  1

  Caitlin had slipped into unconsciousness. Laying her still form on the rocky ground in the tunnel mouth, Mallory prepared for what he fully expected to be his last fight. He had heard enough about the ferocity of the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders to know he stood little chance of defeating the four of them on horseback.

  ‘Sheathe your sword,’ Etain said in a low, grating voice. ‘Ryan Veitch sent us back to this dismal place to give you whatever aid we could.’

  Mallory tried to read her dead face, but even looking beneath two thousand years of scars and burning it was impossible to read any emotion in her features. ‘I thought you couldn’t talk,’ he said.

  ‘Here, in the Grim Lands, amongst our own kind, we are at home.’ Her voice suddenly came alive with a shocking bitterness. ‘We are allowed some small comforts to endure this place.’

  Branwen climbed down from her mount and approached in a jerky manner, as if consciously forcing her limbs to move. ‘Let me help the Sister of Dragons.’

  Reluctant at first, Mallory eventually allowed her to treat Caitlin’s wounds with herbal creams from a bag at her waist, which she applied liberally until the blood flow stopped. ‘I tended Ryan Veitch’s wounds many times across the great gulf of the years,’ she said. ‘He cared for us when we were abandoned by all, and we cared for him.’ She swivelled her head creakily towards Etain. ‘Some more than others.’

  ‘I don’t trust you,’ Mallory said. ‘I heard how you helped Veitch kill all those Brothers and Sisters of Dragons—’

  ‘We were Brothers and Sisters of Dragons before we sided with the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders,’ Etain interrupted. ‘Indeed, we were the very first to carr
y the Pendragon Spirit into your lineage.’

  ‘We followed Ryan Veitch wherever he led, even into the ranks of the Devourer of All Things,’ said Owein, his muscular, thick-set frame badly scarred. ‘He would have died for us. We were his only friends.’

  Mallory didn’t think it wise to point out how tragically pathetic it was that a man could only count a bunch of dead things as friends. Instead, he searched for some sign of the direction Callow had taken. ‘If you’re here to help, we need, firstly, to get away from here as quickly as possible because I have this sickening feeling that even a collection of George Romero extras are not going to be able to stop the thing on our trail. And secondly, to find the bastard who did that to Caitlin and took the Wayfinder. ’

  How long would Callow wait before he decided to destroy the lamp and Hal? A while, he guessed. Callow was cowardly and would want to put a lot of distance between himself and Mallory in case the dead were only a temporary setback.

  Tannis, who had a warrior’s build and a leader’s demeanour, said chillingly, ‘Nothing escapes us.’

  ‘Then let’s get moving. I want my hands around Callow’s throat and I want it now.’

  With Caitlin’s arms tied around Tannis’s chest to prevent her slipping, and with Mallory behind Etain, they set off into the mist. After a mile or so, a gentle, stony incline gave way to a steaming, foul-smelling marsh, the brackish water gleaming with oily rainbows. Here Etain slowed her mount to pick a careful course along grassy ridges bordered by thick yellow reeds. Occasionally lights glimmered briefly away in the mists.

  ‘What are they?’ Mallory asked. The mood had become even more oppressive.

  ‘Ignore them,’ Etain responded. ‘Trapped here are the spirits of those who dedicated themselves to work instead of humanity. They are as jealous and bitter as anything else in the Grim Lands, and they would like nothing more than to entice you into the sucking bog.’

  Bubbles burst intermittently on the surface of the pools. ‘Deep?’

  ‘Bottomless. And filled with razor-worms that will feed on your flesh and bones for eternity.’

  Mallory studied her for a while and tried to imagine what she had been like when she was alive. ‘I’m betting you’d rather be with Veitch than here with me.’

  ‘His affections have turned to another. And why should he not find interest in one of his own rather than a dead thing?’ she added pointedly.

  ‘Here he was king, worshipped by the inhabitants of the Grim Lands because he understood them. And he cared. Because he has died, and returned.’

  ‘That’s not as rare as you might think.’

  ‘He understands what it is like to be an outsider.’

  ‘You’re saying that’s a good enough motivation to follow him into a life . . .’ He paused, couldn’t think of a better phrase: ‘Of mass-murder?’

  ‘I would follow him to the end of the world.’

  ‘Which is pretty much where we are.’

  ‘He is a good man, whatever you might think of him. But he is as flawed as all mortal beings, and sometimes flaws get the better of us. Of you. It is a constant battle, and judgement should not come easy.’

  ‘We judge ourselves. And we do what we can to make amends for our failings, even when there isn’t a hope in hell of righting the balance.’

  ‘You speak from experience.’

  Mallory didn’t respond.

  Pointing to the path ahead, Etain said, ‘The one you call Callow has passed this way, and recently. We will soon be upon him.’

  ‘Good.’ Mallory glanced back, half-expecting to see the Hortha close behind. ‘Sometimes you can run as much as you want and never get away,’ he said to himself.

  They rode in silence for another fifteen minutes while Mallory cast an uneasy eye towards the swamp. Every now and then he thought he saw things moving in the black water.

  Eventually, they came to a halt. For several minutes Tannis searched the narrow paths amongst the pools before returning to the group. ‘The trail has faded,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you said you could track anything,’ Mallory protested.

  ‘We can, given time. Sometimes the trail can be lost, but by careful scrutiny of the surrounding area it can be located again.’

  ‘We haven’t got that kind of time.’ Frustrated, Mallory jumped down and paced the area of solid ground until Caitlin summoned him over.

  ‘We’ll find him,’ she said hoarsely. Some of her strength had already returned.

  ‘Before he destroys Hal? This is all my fault. Why did I trust him?’

  ‘We both trusted him. Don’t blame yourself.’

  ‘He hurt you—’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Your face . . .’ Mallory traced the line of the wound across her cheek beneath the dressing Branwen had applied.

  Caitlin grabbed his hand and held it tight. ‘A battle scar. There’s a part of me that will enjoy having that.’

  In her eyes, Mallory saw a deep shadow start to grow.

  ‘She’s coming, Mallory,’ Caitlin said quietly. ‘And she’s not going to see a sister treated so badly. There’ll be a price to pay, trust me on that.’

  The shadow filled Caitlin’s eyes and moved out into her face. The Morrigan smiled.

  2

  Deep in the heart of the forbidding swamplands, Callow finally paused and removed the lantern from inside his jacket. He was afraid of retribution - his knowledge of the persistence of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons was extensive - but he was filled with an eager glee for his own retribution.

  Sitting cross-legged next to the soupy water, he examined the Wayfinder’s blue flame. ‘Oh, the wonder of it all - a genie in the lamp, and a Brother of Dragons to boot. Can you hear me, little man?’ He roughly rattled the lantern in front of his face. ‘Sadly, I am a mortal like any other, and prone to the melancholies of all men. And yes, the desire for a touch of revenge for being so badly treated. And I have been, oh, how I have been! During that terrible Age of Misrule I was manipulated . . . possibly brutally coerced . . . into helping those misshapen monsters, the Fomorii.

  ‘And did the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons forgive and forget? Did they respond to my plight, and offer a friendly hand in answer to my humble admission of my wrongs and my plaintive desire for redemption? No. They punished me, and brutalised me, and eventually took my sad, sad life. And these are Champions of Existence! How ironic. It is through their cruel machinations that events have conspired to keep me trapped in this hideous place.’ He paused slyly. ‘Or should I say your machinations? It is unfortunate that you will have to pay the price for their sins.’

  Callow did an excited jig before calming himself. ‘Now how should I do it? Fling the lantern into one of these sucking pools and watch it disappear for ever? Then you would understand the kind of purgatory I have experienced for so long. Or should I smash it and watch the flame flicker and die?’ He considered this for a moment, and smiled triumphantly. ‘I think that would set my world alight.’

  Drawing one of the many razor blades he had secreted about his person, he attempted to carve his name into the lantern, but he could make no mark on the shiny surface and the razor blunted within seconds. He tossed it angrily into the water where something snapped and spat.

  ‘I was just a humble knight of the road when I met that overinflated Pecksniff Jack Churchill,’ he muttered to himself. ‘No harm to man nor beast. Lover of the byways, lover of people, a helping hand to all I met on my way. And look what he did to me.’

  Callow laid the Wayfinder on the ground, took a running jump and slammed both booted feet upon it. A peal of thunder was accompanied by a fizz of blue sparks. He repeated the assault three times before examining it again. The lantern was dented and the glass on one side was cracked.

  ‘Once more,’ he muttered. ‘This may well look like a lantern, but I know its true shape is different from what I see. Yet here in the Grim Lands it is as vulnerable as anything from the places where the living roam
. Yes, I think once more will do. I’ll say goodbye to you now, oh genie. Enjoy the great hereafter.’

  Laying the lantern down once again, he paced out a long run-up and then, with a grim smile, hurled himself at the Wayfinder. At the point when Callow hung above the lantern, a column of Blue Fire engulfed him and hurled him back to the edge of the swamp water. Callow let out a high-pitched, shocked scream.

  It was only when he picked himself up that he realised the flames were cold, and had done little more than propel him away.

  ‘So it’s a fight you want,’ he said, drawing up his sleeves. ‘We’ll see how long you can keep that up in this place.’