Josh nodded, though the fact that the old man had said hand not “hands” jarred. Looking down, he saw again the nub of bone where he’d carved away his finger in the fight against Seth. It served as a permanent reminder of all that he had sacrificed already. And through the space where that little finger should have been, he saw the ground. He realized that his companion left no footprints in the blanket of ash.
The stone circle faded away in a flurry of gray, erasing it from the air. When the wind dropped and the ash cloud cleared he found himself back in the empty landscape.
“Do you know where you are?”
“No. Is this Hell?”
The old man smiled kindly at that. “No. Not Hell. Think of it more as the waiting room. You’re not dead yet.”
“Are you?”
“No. I’m not dead yet, but I’m closer to the end. I will die soon. It is my time. Again. I can see the light over your shoulder. All I need to do is walk toward it, and then I’ll get to wherever I’m going and be done with this life. We aren’t going to the same place. You’ve got stuff to do yet. There are people counting on you. This is your fight. That makes you an intruder here.”
“How long until—?”
“It happened a long time ago, I suspect, and my soul is just wising up to the fact that it must say farewell to the flesh.”
“Will you help me fight this war?”
The old stage magician shook his head. “It isn’t my fight. Now, listen, we don’t have long and there is still so much you need to understand,” he turned, casting a fretful glance back toward some distant nowhere within the ash. “I can sense his approach. I need you to listen to me, Josh. He is coming for you. He understands that you are key to everything. I didn’t see it at first. Now that it is too late, I see everything. I was always a stubborn old fool. I know I told you it was all on you. It never was, lad. I shouldn’t have said that, but I needed to make you angry, to make you want to fight. I’m sorry. This is on me. All of it. I opened the door when I helped Seth steal Eleanor away. That was my mistake, and my greatest regret in life. I let them through. But I need you to be clever. I need you to find a way to beat him. And when he’s on this side, find a way to close the dimgate and keep him here, because these hands,” he held them up, then making as though to lock his fingers together, passed one through the other, “aren’t going to be closing anything. Promise me.”
Before Josh could say a word, an icy chill stole in. The ash thickened noticeably. In seconds it became almost impossible to distinguish any of the old man’s features, as though the process of forgetting him had already kicked in, and the world around him shimmered into darkness.
“I promise,” he said, but the old man was already gone.
He walked on, trying to find his way back to wherever he had come from, but with no landmarks to orientate himself it was an impossible task. So, he simply walked, haunted by the baleful cries out there in the ash.
In the distance he saw someone waiting.
The man was tall, imposingly so.
Josh walked toward him.
Through the swirling ash, he saw the shadow of antlers begin to take shape around the man’s head.
Arawn towered over him.
The cold wind blew a flurry of ash around them, turning Josh’s skin gray where it settled.
He glimpsed more shadows through the swirl of ash, slowly resolving into the skeletal limbs of trees. He didn’t recognize them this time. There were no leaves on any of the limbs. The Horned God stood in the middle of the sacred grove, dwarfing Josh by a full foot and a few inches more. His cloak of leaves was shot through with the rust of autumn, despite the season in the world they’d left behind. “You are dying,” Arawn said. There was no joy in the words, no sense of victory. It was simply the truth.
Josh said, “I know.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. I feel like I know you. I feel like we should be friends, you and I.”
“Why would I want to be friends with you?”
Arawn smiled forlornly. There was more sadness in that smile than in all the tears Josh had ever shed. “I am not the monster here. Like you, I am fighting for what I believe in: to preserve the land where I was born. This place is my birthright, it is in my blood, and it is in your blood, too. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t have been able to find you here. It may be weak, diluted by the generations between us, but you are the son of my son, and my blood flows in your veins.”
In the distance, Josh saw the looming presence of a dark tower. It was one of the four, he thought. Murias in the north; Findias to the south; Gorias in the east; Falias in the west. He didn’t know how he knew the names, or which one he was looking at.
“They are part of who you are,” Arawn said. “They are part of all of us. It is the blood.”
“Kill me if that’s what you’ve come here to do,” Josh said.
“Why would I want to do that? I will not lie to you here. I have nothing to gain from lies and everything to lose. I am not the enemy. This is my land. I love it with all of my heart. I am sworn to protect it at all costs, both to me, and to those that do her harm. I was given a chance at redemption, to save myself, for her. She is so much more than us. We are ants on her flesh. Irritants. We come and we will go and she will abide. That is the nature of truth. I have no interest in your death. As I said, I think you and I should become friends in this.”
“I don’t need any more friends,” Josh said. “Besides, like you said, I’m dying.”
“Indeed you are, but rather than see you rot, I can restore you.”
Josh recalled Damiola’s warning, but even in that simple promise there was such strong allure he wasn’t sure he’d be able to resist. “Why would you do that?”
“Do I need a motive beyond kinship?”
“Yes.”
“Would you believe me if I said it was because you have something I want.”
Josh thought about it. He did believe the Horned God. “Why would I give anything to you?”
“Because I can give you something you want,” Arawn said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What can you give me?”
“Life,” Arawn said. “I am a god, after all. It is in my power. Here I have dominion over death. I am lord of this place.”
“And the catch? Because right now that sounds far too good to be true.”
“I am dying in your world. I have been gone too long, my flesh is crumbling.”
“You want my body?”
“You would be my vessel, yes. And together we will save the world.”
“So you are going to kill me?”
“No, you will give your body to me willingly.”
Josh shook his head. “No.”
“It is your fate. You will give yourself to me, and in doing so will live for a very, very long time; longer than any man has a right to,” Arawn reached out, touching his palm to Josh’s forehead and in that moment he saw the land as he had never seen it—vibrant, full of life, full of magic—and he wept tears for what had been lost. Arawn shared the world with him, “This is my land. This is what I would return it to, with your help. Without you, all is lost.”
It was beautiful in ways that his London could never be.
But the world had changed. Moved on. This wasn’t a London capable of supporting 8.5 million people.
“Then why come with your armies to tear it down?”
“They aren’t my armies. They are the young; those who can still believe that our land can be saved; that we owe it to the fields and the streams to listen.”
“But they aren’t fighting by themselves,” Josh objected.
“Indeed not, they run with the Hunt, my followers. As I said, I won’t lie to you here. Should I fail, the land fails and we all lose. That is my curse. There is a greater threat on the horizon, a threat the land is not strong enough to face without the magic that it lost. If the Bain Shee break through to my home—and make no mistake, that city of yours w
as, is, and always will be my home—it will fall. Without the old ways all is lost. That trace of magic still lingering in your blood will be wiped out, making it harder and harder to reach out to the essence of the land and tap into its richness. The soil will sour, the flowers will cease to bloom, the forests will cease to grow, and all will become dust. The children of Albion must rise up; answer the call, to save her. That is what is happening here. It may appear that everything is being torn down, but out of that chaos comes hope. Rebirth. My land will survive.”
“But if I’m gone, why should I care if my body lives a thousand years? It won’t be mine. It won’t be me in it, I’ll be gone.”
“That is true.”
“So, I might as well die here, now, just surrender to it and be gone anyway.”
“Because there will be a moment of transition, where you still live as I begin to take control. It isn’t instantaneous, you do not simply cease to be, there is a moment of overlap in which you will possess all of the gifts of a god, and with them the power to save your friends, even if you can’t save yourself. That is why you will give yourself to me willingly, because your sacrifice will save their lives. Your sister, her lover, you could even save your beloved magus. The flesh I inhabit now cannot last. Out there, back in Albion, I can feel it aging into dust already. I need a body that will live in that world without decay owning it. And we have the connection of blood. We are bonded. Help me.”
The inference was clear—Help me and help yourself—but he couldn’t exactly seal the pact in blood, so how could he ever trust the antlered man?
“Because I promised you,” Arawn said, and in that moment Josh understood that the god had the power to simply slip into his mind and sift through his thoughts. Of course he did, gods were omniscient, weren’t they? Omnipresent, omnipotent. Meaning there was no way he could hide anything from the deity before him, no matter how desperately he tried to. “You are here for the children. You came to save them,” Arawn said. “I’m giving you the chance to do just that. All of the Sleepers; all of the old blood kin borrowed by my Hunters. If you let me in, you can close the gate and return the Sleepers to themselves. You can bring them back. Think about it. You win. You get what you came here to do. You can save the children. It’s the only way that happens.”
“Is that a threat?”
The Horned God shook his head slightly, the effect exaggerated by the huge crown of antlers. The motion cast deep shadows across the blanket of ash.
“No. It is just reality. If you do not give yourself to me, everything we both love dies. Albion cannot stand. The Bain Shee will devour everything and everyone. Not immediately. But slowly, their deaths will be labored and drawn out to the point of agony. You can stop this. The power is in your hands.”
“And if I agree—”
“I will know everything in your mind,” the old god said. “Should you try to cheat me, I will know even as the impulse occurs, and it will occur, I am not a fool. It’s only natural to try and improve your lot, but the deal I offer is the deal you will accept, believe me. It is your fate, and your fate was sealed before your first breath.”
Josh looked down at his hands again, making an effort not to think about anything beyond the offer he had been made and Damiola’s warning that the god making the offer couldn’t and shouldn’t be trusted.
“What would I have to do? Do I have to say a prayer or something to let you in? Some sort of sacrifice?”
“All that is required of you is that you take hold of my staff; it will serve as a conduit for my soul to pass from one vessel to the next.”
“Will it hurt?” Josh asked.
“I promised you that there would be no lies here. Yes, the pain will be excruciating, but short-lived. Your soul will essentially be purged from existence; there will be nothing of Joshua Raines left inside the shell. That cannot be done without suffering. I am sorry.”
“And I will do this willingly?”
“You will come and seek me out when you return to the world.”
“And before then? Will you be watching me? Will you be in my head?”
“Do you want me there?”
“No. Not if these are my last few hours. I want to spend them alone. I don’t want some stranger inside me, spying on my every thought.”
“You won’t be able to cheat me,” the old god said, sadly.
“I won’t try,” Josh said.
“You will,” Arawn told him. “But I will honor your wishes. I won’t violate your thoughts. You are free to spend your last few hours alone, saying your farewells to your loved ones. Come, find me; I will be waiting for you, son of my blood.”
And with that promise, the ash whipped up in a gyre, swirling faster and faster around him. He lost sight of the Horned God within the vortex of ash, and when finally it began to subside, the antlered stranger was nowhere to be seen.
Josh opened his eyes.
46
Alex watched the wyrd Sisters perform their benediction around her fallen brother. He lay on a bare mattress on a wooden bed in a room that was barely big enough for the women to gather around the bedside. The walls were bare stone, though a tapestry hung on one: the subject of the woven threads appeared to be a glorious white stag. The Sisters’ song didn’t falter, even for a second. One tended to the fever sweats on Josh’s brow with a wet rag, another to the soles of his bare feet while Sister Mazoe slowly stripped him out of his ruined clothes.
He looked so helpless lying there, broken. It was hard to simply stand back and do nothing, to trust these strange women with their ululating song, but they had little choice in the matter. Sister Mazoe peeled away the makeshift compress Alex had fashioned, exposing the deep wounds with their charred flaps of skin. They looked worse now than they had when they’d bound the wound up. The flesh smelled putrid. Rot had set in. It was happening too quickly, as though the chant was accelerating the sickness, drawing it out. Beads of perspiration clung to Josh’s skin.
He wasn’t breathing.
It took too long to realize that, to see what was missing: there was no shallow rise and fall of his chest. It was caught between one and the other, empty of life, or full of it, it was impossible to say which.
She grabbed Julie’s arm, willing herself to be wrong.
She squeezed his hand.
He looked at her, and understood.
Without another word, he led her down the winding stair and out of the strange tower. They walked through the graveyard at its foot, leaving the weird song behind them, and into the Orchard that took up vast swathes of the Isle, and giving the place its name. Twice, she thought she caught a glimpse of the emerald dog, the Cù Sìth, lurking between the trees, but it never stayed in one place long enough for her to get a proper sighting of it. But didn’t the fact it still lurked rather than bounded brazenly into the tower mean that Josh was still alive—or at least not dead yet? She wanted so desperately to believe that somehow the strange Sisters had succeeded in holding back death if only to delay the inevitable a little while longer. Wasn’t that what Mazoe had promised, to trap him in the kingdom of the last breath, waiting to exhale into the afterlife?
She wasn’t ready to lose her brother yet.
Julie understood that. He didn’t offer sympathy or understanding; he just offered his hand and companionship while she wrestled with it all. It wasn’t the most romantic of strolls. Josh’s fate hung heavy between them. She wanted to say something. He wanted to say something. But nothing either of them could say would offer any sort of comfort or direction. In the end it was Ellie Taylor, coming up behind them, who said what needed to be said; no preamble, no skirting around the issue, she didn’t even wait for them to turn around. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but we’re here, wherever here is, and we can’t give up now, even without him. I know you want to mourn, but we need to do what we came here to do, and that was find a way to win and bring those kids home if we can. That hasn’t changed. And to do that we need to find that sword y
ou were talking about, the one you said could kill this thing.” She stopped short of saying god. “So, let’s find it while the Sisters do their thing. That’s got to be better than standing around worrying about Josh. We can’t help him.”
“You’re right,” Alex said. But before Ellie could bask in how right she was, Alex said, “I don’t want to hear it.”
“We’ve got to believe the Sisters when they say they can save him.”
“Do we? Really?”
“Yes. I know it’s tough. And it’s trite for me to try and pretend to understand, or ask you what Josh would want, but as far as those kids go, we’re their only hope. And if you’re not going to help me, I guess I’ll go it alone. Just tell me where I start looking? What did the old woman tell you?”
“The sword is called Freagarthach. The blade of Manannan. It was forged in the furnaces of the earth by the Mother Goddess, Danu. She showed it to me. I saw it. It was lying on the chest of a dead man. I saw a ruined temple.”
“The chapel outside?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“It’s not like there can be many ruined temples around here,” Julie said.
“Okay, so we’re looking for a grave or some sort of stone sarcophagus?” Ellie said, turning back to look up the slope in the direction of the graveyard at the foot of the tower, and off in the distance the ruined chapel that had served it once upon a time. “I say we go and check it out.”
Alex nodded, and despite herself, followed Ellie back up the slope toward the ruin. Again, Alex caught a fleeting glimpse of the emerald dog ghosting through the Orchard’s trees, circling them. She did her best to ignore it.
The keystone of the chapel’s arch had crumbled, leaving half of the doorway on the ground. They picked a path through the stones. Nature had begun the slow process of reclaiming the place, with weeds growing up through the cracks in the stone floor of what would have been the knave. There was a stone bier in place of an altar. Alex walked down the aisle, raising her head to the gray sky. She caught strains of song as the Sisters offered up their beautiful voices in honor of the fallen. She understood the song, if not the words. It was in her blood.
Coldfall Wood Page 28