“I’m not sure I do,” Alex told her.
“Do you want to say some kind of goodbye to Julie? I can help you. Make sure that he hears.”
“Oh, God … Julie…” Alex turned her head, and saw, properly saw, what had happened to him, for the first time and sagged a little against Ellie. “I…”
“Come on,” Sara said.
She led Alex over to where the love of her life lay broken on the ground. Looking down at him, Alex realized she would never be whole again. That all of the miracles of the world had achieved one thing and one thing alone: they had succeeded where Seth Lockwood had failed; they’d robbed her of everything.
Ellie took hold of Julie’s hand; then with her other hand, tangled her fingers with Alex’s, making a bridge between the living and the dead.
“Can you hear me, Julie?” the woman asked.
Alex bit back on a scream when she heard him answer, “That bastard broke a lot of things, but my ears are still pretty good.”
Ellie smiled. “She wanted to talk to you. You don’t have a lot of time.” Mel Banks was no more than three hundred feet away, and running fast. Tenaka, too. He moved like he had the devil on his heels. “So, make it count.”
“I can’t beat what Josh said,” the ghost joked.
“I can,” Alex said. “If there’s a way to save you, a way to bring you back, I’ll find it. I love you, Julius Gennaro. You were supposed to be my happily ever after.”
“I love you, too,” the ghost said. “And because of that, I’m going to ask one thing of you, just the one. Promise me you’ll do it for me.”
“Anything.”
“Please don’t. Let me go,” and those were the last words the ghost of Julie Gennaro said.
He said one thing, but she heard something quite different.
“I promise,” she said.
EPILOGUE
Across the endless age of mortals
The distant sound of thunder resonated
Drumming, drumming, drumming
Carrying from shore to mountain and back to shore
While the ancient enemy searched for a way to pierce the veil
He waited
It was his curse
The Summer King stood in the long shadow of the wall that was not a wall; his queen at his side.
He felt whole.
Seasons came and seasons went, as seasons are wont.
And still they waited as the leaves turned from green to gold to brown to green again.
All the while, a sound deeper than thunder rumbled the length of the immense structure, seeming to come from within the stones themselves. They could not hold. Again and again the thunder came, amplified by the peculiar acoustics of the endless curve, each rhythmic clash of sound rolling out across the great gray plains of the Annwyn, through the first trees of the wildwood all the way to the calm oceans and beyond to the Isles and the four sacred towers: Murias in the north, Findias to the south, Gorias in the east, Falias in the west. It was the sound of the world’s pain.
The antlered warrior stood impassively, waiting for the first inevitable crack to undermine the wall.
It was coming.
He had seen it already: a thin line of black running through the bricks pitted with thorns and climbing plants that clung to the imposing structure to lend it the illusion of life, when of course it promised anything but that. The wall was a manifestation of the veil, the divide between the realms, and it was failing and no amount of magic could prevent it.
Now it was all about sacrifice.
He held the rowan staff in his left hand. Death held no great fear for him; he had experienced it more times than any mortal man had the right to. He reached out with his free hand for his queen. Her hand felt so small and delicate inside his, but there was more strength in it than in the wall they faced. Summer King and Queen, they would fall before the blades of the Bain Shee together, the last children of the Aos Shee.
The wind whistled through the long grass.
Birdsong filled the air.
Fallen leaves—turned to gold already—crunched underfoot, as their kin gathered at the foot of the wall, the tension in their muscles palpable. Every spirit animal joined them—waiting, watching, unmoving—as another deep blow shivered through the wall.
The chalk giants, Gogmagot and Corenius, stood with him at the last, along with nature’s tiniest warriors, the bees and wasps that had killed them in that last short life of theirs back in the Summerland. At his side, the ever-faithful Robin had amassed the smallest creatures of the forest—the rats and foxes, the voles and weasels and badgers, rabbits and mice—to fight at their side along with the elemental spirits and the sprites of the ancient wood, the Children of the Forest. They emerged from the trees with their leafy faces gaunt and fashioned by fear, unable to take their gaze from the crumbling wall and knowing what it would mean when that first brick fell. The black dogs and emerald hounds at their sides, prowling as the Wild Hunt assembled. The mud people came next, clawing their way up out of the stuff of the battlefield, lacking bones or faces, these raw golems stood side by side with the wooden warriors of the trees. Frost-rimed warriors and ocean serpents came next, the mightiest of them, the Knucker, adding to nature’s song as the great beast flew, untethered, unfettered, free, spreading her incredible wings wide and casting shadows long that blocked out both sun and moon in those great gray heavens.
It was not alone up there. The owls gathered in their parliament, a murmuration of starlings muttered their discontent as a boil of hawks spiraled. Shoals and squalls and nests emptied to watch.
The echoes of crashing waves came to them next, carried across the continent of lost souls all the way to the wall to join in with the great song. Mother was afraid, and her fear ran deep. It was infectious, spreading through each and every one of her children as they waited.
The breeze ceded to a great wind, and the great wind did howl adding its voice to the Song of Albion.
They didn’t have a single weapon between them, these brave children, but they would fight to the death when the time came.
And come it would.
Then, when it did, when the dying was done, their blood and the blood of their enemies would soak deep into the soil of this place, into the root of every tree and every flower, into the bellies of the worms that churned up the dirt, and then antlered king’s love would draw on it, reaching into the shimmering pathways of the ancient leys, drawing deep of Mother’s reserves, all the way to the mighty stone henges, and fight back.
The antlered king knelt and laid his rowan staff on the ground. He closed his eyes, drawing on his love of the land, and whispered a word of changing as he ran his fingers across the grains of the wood and feeling out the nature that resided within. The wood slowly returned to the stuff of magic it was fashioned from, and in that moment could have become anything, but he knew what the situation required, and summoned forth the great green serpent. The snake licked at the air with a flick of its bright-red forked tongue and slithered away from him toward the giant fissure that opened up, as another hammer blow struck on the other side. The land screamed her protest and pain as the huge stones crumbled and fell, opening the way to the void.
More of Albion’s sons and daughters answered the call: polecats and bats, squirrels and shrews, boar and stoats and deer joining the throng. Adders and slowworms and spiders followed, filling the land.
The ley lines and earth nodes hummed with life; the stone circles and chalk men and horses were ready to fight.
The bean nighe who foretold the death of mortals joined their number. The black dogs of the fae—who barked once as a warning, twice as a threat, and a third time to doom their foe—prowled through the long grass. The Alp-luachra, that crawled down its victims’ throats while they slept to feast on their last meal, and the Dearg-Due, that once beautiful woman who killed herself to escape hell, crawled free of their graves to join the hunt. The church grims and the Nuckelavee, that twisted creature wi
th the torso of a man sewn onto the back of a rotting horse, brought its blight to the coming war. The boggarts, brownies, corn dollies, ettins, green men, hag stones and redcaps, Black Annis and Jack o’Kent, Barghest, witches and giant killers came to fill the swelling ranks, leaving their drowning pools to take up arms against their immortal foe, remembering all that had gone before; all that had been lost.
The Summer King was that memory.
This was his land.
And still they came, answering his call.
A figure, tinged with an ethereal blue light emerged from the mists and walked across what would become the field of battle. He held the ancient blade Freagarthach in his hands. The runes along its length shimmered, alive with the magic of this place. The blade was ready to taste Bain Shee blood.
Julius Gennaro struck an imposing figure, more so than he ever had in life, as the animals parted to allow his passage to his rightful place at the side of their lord. He had changed beyond recognition, carrying the scars of life into death, but in so many ways he was still the same, just like the man he fought for. Men of both worlds. Men of none.
“You took your time,” the Summer King said, without turning to face the most recent sacrifice to join the swelling ranks of the ghosts of Albion.
“Dying took a little bit out of me,” the warrior said, offering the antlered man a wry smile.
Beside him, the rapturous light on Macha’s upturned face left her creatures in no doubt that she was the embodiment of the season, their queen. She had garlands of beautiful summer blooms tangled in her hair and the white cotton skirts of her flowing summer dress lapped around her legs. Her gaze was haunting. She was so much stronger than all of them. But even she was not strong enough to face what waited in the void. She never had been.
Deep tremors shivered along the wall as the Bain Shee hammered away at the very stuff of existence, determined to tear down the veil between the ancient realms.
That there was any color in this place was one tiny victory; the first glimmers of magic returned, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
The fissure widened.
Within it, the antlered king saw the gaunt ghosts with their lava-pit eyes tore at the veil, clawing their way through into life even as the stones on the edge of the fissure crumbled and fell.
The snake slithered up the wall, coiling around the vines that climbed all the way up to the gaping black smile of the fissure, striking with venomous fangs at the first face that appeared, its deadly poison claiming the first victim of the woruldgewinn. His mistake had been in believing that the earthly war would be fought in that other place. It wouldn’t. It would be fought here. It would end there. The snake slithered away from the wall, returning to its master’s hand where its forked tongue once more became the glistening red berries of the rowan’s fruit.
More stones fell as the great wall bowed and buckled.
And still the thunder rolled on, booming out across the land.
“Are you ready, my love?” his queen asked of him.
He was.
He closed his eyes to let the Song fill him, drawing on every sound that together made up the music of life, and soul swell, bursting with everything that made the land at once the most beautiful and perilous place.
“We do this together,” he promised, still holding the hand of the woman who owned him body and soul.
“Always,” the tripartite goddess agreed.
“And so it begins,” Julie said, lifting the great blade.
As they came, more and more of them with their vile aspects, clawing their way into his realm, the lord of this place raised his hand. His Hunters fell silent; hungry, eager to hear whatever rousing words passed his lips.
But he offered none; instead he said simply, “Let’s get this over with.” It was an utterly Joshua Raines thing to say in the face of death.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Okay, right up front let’s start this one with a huge “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I spelled one of my best mate’s names wrong in the back of Glass Town’s confession.” So, to Thomas Allwin, I am mortified. Obviously, all the nice stuff I said in the back of the last book about coffee and friendship was for a damned imposter. Still, this time you get a paragraph all to yourself, and you’re ahead of the editors and agents. So, score!
Right, where were we? Coldfall Wood. Let’s face it; it’s bonkers. So, I have to apologize to Peter Wolverton, my long-suffering editor, who seemed quite happy when I pitched him a book about the return of the Once and Future King that had absolutely nothing to do with the Rothery, Glass Town, Josh, Julie, any of it. The two weren’t linked at all until they were. I won’t mention now that there’s a line in this one that has my subconscious screaming, I know what happens next!, because sometimes you need to go out leaving ’em wanting more. And frankly what’s better than a Butch and Sundance last page? Nothing. Ever. So, I promise, Pete, no more mad ideas that take over two whole years of my life. The same apology goes to Jennifer Donovan, who gets to do all the fun stuff like wrangle the fragile egos of us writers as we stare into the pit of despair that is the internet, convinced that everything we try and say is in fact shite and doesn’t need to be said. Jen’s great. Pete’s lucky to have her on his side. If you read this, Pete, she deserves a pay raise for putting up with us. The rest of the team at St. Martin’s, notably my cover artist, Ervin Serrano, who with Glass Town, happened upon the greatest moment of serendipity ever—assuming you have Glass Town close at hand, take a look at the cover. See the cobbled street and the sign above Eleanor’s head? That street is Yxsmedsgränd. It’s in Stockholm where I live, and the sign is for Grändens Café. My old office when I was working for a gaming company in Stockholm was on that street and that sign was my view. Ervin had no idea. He just found a street he thought looked cool. And the true unsung hero of Glass Town and Coldfall Wood is Su Wu, my copy editor, who is the reason there aren’t a thousand continuity errors in these two very elaborate books, and who caught every instance of me changing the mythology on myself and saved me from looking very stupid. But that’s what you want. That’s why you surround yourself with brilliant people.
Then there’s my agent, Judith Murray, at Greene and Heaton in the UK, who has probably forgotten what I look like by now, as it’s been so long getting from our first chats about the future to here.
Unsurprisingly, the wife hasn’t noticed the offer in the back of Glass Town, so we’ll keep that as our little secret.
I’m lucky. I know I am. I’m surrounded by good friends who make the loneliness of my chosen career a little less lonely, and by new friends that blow me away with their generosity. So, to the new: I owe so much more than a glass of decent whiskey to Jan Smedh, the man behind The English Bookshop in Uppsala, which only went and won the London Book Fair’s Bookstore of the Year in 2018—I like to think it was because of the events we’ve done together. Shhh, don’t ruin it. People like me can’t survive doing what we do without champions like Jan, Stina, Christer, and the gang. There isn’t a better bookshop in the world. It’s official. You’ve got the plaque to prove it.
And, the old: Mike, Stefan, Stephen, Andy, who probably think I’m a figment of their imaginations since I’ve been gone so long, and, of course, to my family, all of them, scattered across the world. Well, Europe at least. Well, England and Sweden. That counts as Europe. It should. Well, until next year when the politicians drag us kicking and screaming back into the 1970s with their stupidity.
That’s about it this time of asking, apart from to use these last couple of lines to put out an advert to anyone who’s read this far: Steven Savile will write for food. Doesn’t even have to be great food. As long as it’s not McDonald’s. So, editors, publishers, fools with lots of money they want to transform into little money … you know where to find me.
And to readers, the folks we do this stuff for, the last thank you is for you. Please, if you’re of a mind, drop by Facebook and say “hel
lo,” hit my website and say “wotcha,” hit Twitter and say “hi”—got to be mindful of the character count on Twitter after all. Honestly, just thanks for taking this adventure with me. It’s been two years of my life, and a lot more from the first moment the idea of Seth and Josh and their twisted little family came to life in my mind. Without you, I’d just be sitting in a small room talking to myself: What do you mean there’s no one there…?
—Steven Savile
Sala, Sweden
ALSO BY STEVEN SAVILE
Glass Town
Parallel Lines
Sunfail
AND THE OGMIOS DIRECTIVE SERIES
Silver
Gold
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN SAVILE has written for popular franchises including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Stargate, and Sherlock Holmes. He was a finalist in the People’s Book Prize in the UK and has won the Lifeboat Foundation’s Lifeboat to the Stars Award and the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers Scribe Award. He wrote the storyline for the bestselling computer game Battlefield 3, and his novel Silver was one of the top thirty bestselling novels of 2011 in the UK. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Coldfall Wood Page 37