Raising Fire

by James Bennett

  Mauntgraul roared again, bellowing flame, green heat blustering in a trail behind them as they rose. Ben squeezed harder, choking off his air, restricting any chance of the White Dog’s devastating scream. The Cornutus Quiritor would do no more harm, not if he could help it.

  “Then it’s time I repaid your kindness,” Ben said. “Like your mother, I will give you … a good death.”

  With this, he snapped in his wings, straightening his tail, moulding himself to the rushing airstream. For a second the wind carried them, the two of them arching through the dark. Then the beasts slowed and fell, their tangled bulk dropping like a stone towards the bay.

  Mauntgraul screamed, a curse, a plea, the wind stealing his words away.

  With a crash, a mighty hiss of steam, the water closed over Ben’s head. The White Dog thrashed under him, an explosion of bubbles and frantic claws, the tide claiming him, snuffing out his heat. Into the dark of the bay they sank, Ben tightening his grip. He heard a muffled roar, submerged rage, as he forced the White Dog down, down into the deep.

  Soon enough, the dragon gave up the fight, his mind set on a new battle—to prevent himself from drowning. His limbs opened, thrashing in the waters, trying to saddle the current, pull himself up. Away.

  Ben held on fast. Talons out, he tore at Mauntgraul’s exposed belly, ripping through scale and flesh, the water darkening around him, a flower of blood and guts.

  It didn’t have to be this way. You left me no choice.

  Ben’s lungs were fit to burst as the depths sucked at them, dragging them down, wreathed by spirals of black.

  In the dark, he met Mauntgraul’s gaze. The dragon’s eyes were dimming, growing dull. Hatred replaced by something else, usurped by what Ben could only read as relief. A silencing of the bells, perhaps. An end to days of madness and rage. The last breath of vengeance. Something like that.

  At last the White Dog went limp in his grasp, his blood gushing out. His fire quenched.

  Ben closed his eyes. Behind them, the butterflies were swarming again, threatening to claim him, seal his fate to the dragon’s beneath him.

  The dead and the white.

  When he opened them again, the White Dog was drifting away from him, released from his claws. He floated, a pale wreck, his long neck and tail weaving, empty of life. His weight was carrying him down, down into the mud and silt, joining Rakegoyle in a watery grave.

  And it was a kindness, Ben knew, the darkness crowding in close.

  Yes. A kindness.

  A kindness for all.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Gasping, the air filling his lungs, Red Ben Garston burst from the depths of Victoria Harbour. Water fanned off his wings in a sheet, twisting into pearls as he climbed, fighting for altitude. He was weary, his muscles leaden, but what choice did he have but to go on? He was the only one left who could stop the sin-you. Stop the re-forging of the harp. Prevent a war between Remnants and humans. Desperation flung him into the sky, dread gnawing at his heart.

  The Hong Kong skyline shimmered below, smoke billowing from the damaged flank of the Two IFC Tower, fire engines pumping arcs of water onto the fire. With a pang of guilt, Ben watched the crater in the road and the crushed buildings dwindling under him, further destruction left in his wake. Beijing, London and now here. The chaos seemed like a taste of things to come.

  And you swore to protect them. That was your oath.

  As he speared through straggling clouds, the neon grid dimming below, he met the stratosphere with a mix of panic and relief—he still lived, still had a chance—his heart thumping as he searched the hills around the city.

  She’s gone. Gone.

  All he saw was darkness, the night threaded by the sodium riddle of roads and the towns of the New Territories. Above him, planes roared, taking off and landing. Stars winked through the smog, as faint as his hope. A great weight settled on his mind, threatening to force him earthward. Doubt. Despair. Failure. He had seen the sin-you’s speed for himself. In Beijing, racing beside the train. In London, shooting down the road from the Heath. And from above, Mauntgraul chasing a trail of dust from the Alps into China, a nigh-on tireless pursuit of days. In the time it had taken him to bring down the White Dog, Jia could’ve fled anywhere, bearing the re-forged fragments of the harp miles from here, their complete reunion assured.

  No. He had lost her. For all his extraordinary eyesight, his own dexterity, there was no way he could find her in such a broad area, the rugged expanse of Hong Kong Island.

  As his wounds began to heal, his pain receding, he was left with the sting of self-reproach. He chastised himself for his foolishness. A beautiful stranger from the Far East had crashed into his life with a tale of an ancient and noble purpose, one spurring her into a desperate mission: to alert the descendants of the Curia Occultus to the coming of the Ghost Emperor. On the surface, Ben had had little reason to doubt her, this Jia Jing, a creature that, despite her objections, amounted to the Chinese equivalent of a unicorn. Or vice versa. Purity. Innocence. Truth and justice.

  Yeah, right. More like judgement …

  But doubt her he had. Her true intentions had been there from the start, unravelling in the things she’d said, her barely veiled sorrow, the secret that was driving her on. I can save them. Her arrival in his life had been a little too neat, her saving him from the White Dog’s venom obviously meant to secure his alliance and thus lead her to the harp. Everyone and their cat was grasping for the artefact. Why not her? All of this, this frantic gamble, had been planned out beforehand. He knew it in his guts. And no prizes for guessing its architect.

  Show me. Show me as the envoy showed me …

  Yeah. She’d confessed as much. After centuries of living in the shadows, even Von Hart didn’t know the whereabouts of the Invisible Church, it seemed—but he would have known that the Chapter was looking for Ben all right. Last year he had told him so on the desert sands. There is going to be a council. Perhaps even a trial … It made a wild kind of sense, typical of the Fay, a race known for its wiles and caprices. Find Ben. Find the Chapter. Recover the harp. It stood to reason that the Chapter would have confiscated the Guild’s fragment, didn’t it? Usurping the order of knights from power, securing the relic in their keeping … Von Hart must’ve counted on that, some ancient procedure, some clause in the Pact. One way or the other, Jia had meant to steal them both.

  If Jia could convince Ben of her mission, draw him out into the open … well, with a surge of resentment, he knew that she had managed to do exactly that. Despite his mistrust, his refusal to team up with her, she had played him for a fool.

  The plan was a desperate one, yes, a raising of fire to pluck the harp from the blaze, but at the end of the day, the sin-you had succeeded.

  Jia had followed him to England. Like most Remnants, she must’ve known the location of Paladin’s Court. Or the envoy would’ve told her. Ben scowled. Had she banked on him returning to the mansion? With her penetrating insight, had she read the purpose in him even as she reminded him of his duty? A cynical move, at best. At worst, hypocrisy.

  And Mauntgraul? One big white distraction. Chaos, confusion to draw the eyes of the Guild and the Chapter, keep them busy. A smokescreen to cover her tracks.

  Or did it go deeper than that? Ben wondered. A way to bring him charging into the fray, honour-bound to face his ancient foe, and into the palm of the sin-you? If this was the case, then the plan had backfired somewhat. The Chapter hadn’t managed to secure the Guild’s fragment of the harp. The White Dog had stolen it himself, ultimately forcing Jia to show her hand, her treachery in the Invisible Church. Lunewrought had called to lunewrought, drawing them all into the heart of the fire, an inferno that threatened to destroy the very foundations of the Remnant world.

  And Ben had been touched by the harp, had only recently been released from its binding. Thinking this, he experienced a shred of hope. Could he rely on its magic now? Could he use its taint to his advantage?

  High above the
city, he closed his eyes.

  Yes. A vestige of silver, burning in his mind. A trace of coldness around his throat. Slowing, he spun in the air five hundred feet up, letting the memory, the stain, pull him around, dragging his snout towards the west.

  When he opened his eyes, a rough gasp escaped him. Senses prickling, he took in the vision below, a sight that struck him as oddly familiar, despite its new and uncanny nature. An arc of blue light was gleaming under the water, spanning the darkened bay. Vast it was, a broad beam of eldritch radiance stretching under the waves to the distant shore, the hills of an island rising miles ahead, rugged against the stars. Symbols glimmered down there, each one the size of a village, viewed from this height. Some ancient and long-lost power had branded sigils into the earth, each one massive, aglow and indecipherable, bound by the borders of a great wheel, a circle marching off into the horizon.

  Even as he watched, the symbols were fading. Corroding. Winking out. Lost in the moonlight.

  Not too long ago, Ben had seen a similar vision over the North Sea, the arc stretching off into the European hinterland. He had heard enough since to guess at what it was, recalling Jia’s words from the hills outside Beijing.

  The magic of the Fay is growing old. The circles of protection are souring … And the stench of their corruption draws the Lurkers to its source.

  But the circle, it seemed, was also drawing Ben. Tracing the fading curve of the arc, his eyes came to rest on the hills again, the island to the west. Even as his skull jangled, responding to the stolen artefact, he made out the faint line of dust rising between the peaks. The trail moved too fast for him to think it a cloud, a familiar streak of grey smeared across the night, left by a creature galloping at incredible speed from the northernmost tip of the island.

  He pictured the partly formed harp wound into a flowing green mane or hooked on a curving horn, borne on impossible winds. Jia Jing was racing for the finish line.

  There was a bridge up there, shining in the distance, and he realised that the sin-you couldn’t have crossed the waters on hooves alone. First she must’ve headed inland to reach this place, circumventing the bay. That gave him time. Not much, he reckoned. Hopefully enough.

  The circle was fading, vanishing beneath the waves, but by its light, he had found her.

  With renewed hope, he spread his wings, shooting west across the waters.

  Half an hour later, reaching the far shore and veering south, Ben came to the southernmost tip of the island. A narrow rocky peninsula stretched out into the Pearl River estuary, the waters dark, ships glimmering out there in the distance, the sleepless cargoes of Hong Kong. The moon shone down, gilding the slopes of a cape ahead, the surrounding area wild, deserted. A sea of wind-blown grass and sand.

  A good place to hide.

  Far below, the ocean pounded against the foot of the cliffs, matching the drumming in his ears, part fear, part a subtle tension in the air.

  The temple atop the cape wasn’t much to look at. Many steps, crooked and worn, rose up to the ruined building, the great wooden doors thrown wide, the sign of recent entry. Dust still eddied in the air, not quite settled from the sin-you’s arrival. The arched entrance was a shadowed mouth, emanating patience. And music, he thought, a faint tinkling from the gloom beyond, betraying the presence of the harp. Above the doors, the tiers of the pagoda, crumbling, adorned with the mossy statues of dragons, rose in unsteady stacks to a single remaining spire, pointing at the heavens like an accusatory finger, or perhaps a plea to forgotten gods who had long since abandoned the shrine.

  Ben alighted at the bottom of the steps, his draconic form rippling inward, wings folding and compressing, wreathing into the dark scales of his suit. His tail, arrowhead-tipped, shrank and coiled up into his spine. His snout rolled back, resolving into a human face, his eyes bright, his jaw a grim line. Man-shaped, he could see the evidence of a similar transformation—one that had taken place only minutes before, he guessed—the imprint of hooves on the gritty steps, replaced by the marks of bare feet, leading upward.

  He had taken several of the steps, leaping them two at a time, when he realised that something was wrong, an increasing strain in the atmosphere. The night was cold, a chill that he didn’t think was entirely due to winter, the way it crept into his bones, his breath frosting the space in front of his nose. Likewise, he heard the rush of the ocean, swirling around the rocks hundreds of feet below, but he felt no wind on his cheeks, on his shaven head, the air around the temple a dead weight pressing down on his shoulders as if to warn him away. He knew this cold, had felt it before. He wasn’t likely to forget it. It was the chill of the boundary, a place between the earth and elsewhere, the natural laws relinquishing hold.

  Gritting his teeth, he shivered, sensing the touch of the nether.

  As he drew closer to the doors, the façade above him confirmed his fears. There were gaps in the bricks, he saw, holes that wouldn’t be out of place in any ruin except that some of the blocks weren’t completely touching each other, suspended by some supernatural force. Something in the temple was pulling at them, a magnetism that confused their nature, troubling the gravity around him. Skull tingling, Ben let the tide carry him, the air snagging at his chest, his limbs, drawing him on through the doors.

  In shafts of moonlight and shadow, he paused on the threshold, fists raised, taking in the scene. Plaster gods, chipped and worn, lined either side of the chamber, glaring at him in the dusty gloom. He ignored the judgement in their painted eyes as he made his way down the nave, heading for the dais at the far end, the darkness waiting there. Above him, directly ahead, there was a place where the moonlight failed, the shadows condensed around what appeared to be a vast octagon, darker than the night outside, the murk in the temple.

  He came closer—close enough to feel the currents flowing towards that mouth, that huge lightless maw. In a steady stream, dust trickled past his ears, the hole above him sucking at the shadows, at the night. And it was a hole, wasn’t it? Punched in the wall of the world. Tentatively he drew himself to the foot of the dais, frowning up at the bulky object. Close up, its dimensions grew clearer, the octagon resting on a stand, what he could only determine as a breach framed in wood. Leading nowhere.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. Leading into nothing.

  Jia’s words came back to haunt him.

  I remember when I first heard the Ghost Emperor … A new god approaching the earth, pressing his eye against a hole in the world, looking in, hungry. And then reaching out …

  He recalled du Sang’s parting words in Paris.

  A shattering of glass. The turn of a key. A black door opening.

  He shuddered, sensing that he was looking at the door in question. The door of Creation. What else could it be? Only months ago, Ben had found himself on a similar boundary. Lurkers, scenting a build-up of magical force, had been drawn to the oil refinery in Cairo, ready to pull him into the dark—the space between the formed and the unformed—the phantoms reaching out from the endless gulfs that bordered Creation in the hope of feasting on the conjuring source. Looking at the present darkness, Ben felt the same coldness, the same emptiness, with reluctant familiarity. Sure, he was no expert on magic—the fairy was welcome to it—but he had encountered enough hey presto! in his time to dislike the taste of it and he could taste its residue here.

  The mnemonic harp. Its music was somewhere beyond this place, chiming in the depths ahead. Chiming in his skull. Apart from himself, the temple was empty, a chamber of echoes and dust.

  Jia must’ve stepped through the black door, carrying the fragments into the nether.

  Is that where you’re hiding, old friend?

  Ben had no time to hesitate, to mull over his terror and scars. Squaring his shoulders, he pounded up the steps and leapt into the darkness.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Into the nether. The Dark Frontier.

  For a second or two, his heart in his mouth, Ben sailed into the lightless void. Thankfully, he
thumped down on a solid surface, sparks flying from his feet. It took him a moment to realise what he was standing on, recognising the surface from his adventures last year and more recently from his venom-drenched dream. Under him, one of the Silver Leys, forming a narrow shimmering bridge that stretched from the octagonal door at his back into the darkness. He had seen the leys before, sure, how Von Hart possessed the power to direct the residual Fay byways. To steer them within certain terrestrial limits, according to the envoy. And as before, he could sense the fairy’s hand in things, dragging him into this madness. If he could trust one damn word from the envoy’s lips, he guessed that the surface under him, if not exactly physical, held enough strength to support him. At least for now. Still, his relief—the fact that he wasn’t falling into the depths forever—wasn’t enough to allay his fear.

  Stealing a breath, frost fluttering around him, he moved cautiously forward. He determined to look neither left nor right—and especially not down. If he fell, could he fly in dragon form back to the doorway? Would he be able to find it again? If not, then next stop eternity. Falling and falling until he starved. Or until the cold claimed him. Or perhaps a Lurker. Take your pick. It was a risk he had no choice but to take, spurring his feet into motion. Heels shedding sparks, he loped along the ley, the bridge into nothingness.

  Seconds could have passed, or hours. Each step made him more aware of his size in the immensity, a red-haired mote in the gulf. The ley stretched on, a glimmering tightrope over an endless drop. The earthly laws fell short in this place, unable to assert their physical grip. At times, Ben thought he was moving backwards, the silver road sliding under him, a conveyer belt rotating on nothing. At others, he was sure he was walking sideways or upside down. The width of the ley changed too, sometimes expanding to resemble a highway, then shrinking in a way he couldn’t quite trace to the size of a forest path. Sweat rimed his skin. His breath steamed in pale feathers. He looked ahead—always ahead—into the impossible distance. In time or out of it, he eventually noticed the glow up ahead, the orb of a small white sun drawing ever closer.