The chamber beyond was on a scale grander than anything Silus had ever seen. The engine room was bigger even than the nave of Scholten Cathedral, and though it shared some of that edifice’s architectural sensibilities, here there was no order and calm sanctuary but cluttered, noisy chaos. Before them, a procession of arches marched away into darkness, leading deep into the heart of the ship, towering over irregular mounds of machinery alive with movement and light. Far above, the ceiling was lost within a confusion of cables and wires, some of which swung free, sparking and filling the air with a smell like singed hair. Others dropped down to disappear into the machines or the black, corrugated floor. Amidst all this, dwarfed by the arches and shuddering metal devices, several members of the Order of the Swords of Dawn stood in a circle, stripped to the waist and holding hands as they maintained their chant.
“Once Brother Sebastian is ready,” Ignacio said, gesturing to the elderly man at the centre of the group, “the ritual can begin and we will return to Scholten. For the moment, stay exactly where you are.”
Ignacio and his comrades drew close around them, their naked blades a statement of exactly what would happen if any of them attempted to escape.
“Ignacio, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Kelos said, “but how do you expect this ritual to work when there is no magic to draw on? You can dress up sorcery in whatever fancy chants and arcane gestures you want, but without the threads we’re not going to get very far.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ignacio laughed (and was it Silus’s imagination or, even behind that cold sound, was there not the slightest remnant of the ex-smuggler left, the merest hint of his humanity?) “We’re surrounded by power. Here we have all we need.”
“This is not magic,” Illiun said. “What you call sorcery, we call technology. However, I must admit that what you have done here is impressive. How did you restart the engines?”
“Engines?” Ignacio said. “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”
“Look. I know that this may sound strange,” Illiun continued. “But if the engines are working, it’s of paramount importance that we leave this world right away. Something dreadful is coming, and it will be the end of us all.”
“Oh, you’ll leave this world, alright. Wait until Makennon hears of what a godless, blasphemous bunch you are.”
“Ignacio, listen to me. You can interrogate us, do whatever you like to us, later, but if we have the chance, we should leave now. Don’t you understand, all of us will die!”
The chanting came to an end. The elderly man within the circle of celebrants stepped forward and said in a voice that belied his frail frame, “Brother Ignacio. The preparation is complete. When you are ready, we shall begin.”
Ignacio and his comrades ushered the party forward.
Silus gripped Katya’s hand. Zac struggled in her arms, his squeal seeming to pierce through to every corner of the vast room. Silus tried to soothe his son, but when he saw the intense fear that filled the small boy’s eyes, he realised that any gesture he could make would be futile. A similar tired fear lined the faces of Dunsany and Kelos as they, too, joined hands, walking towards whatever doom awaited them, united in defiance and acceptance. Bestion was quietly praying to himself, searching one last time for his god in this godless world, his fingers entangling the wooden beads hanging around his neck. Illiun looked frantically about him, as though searching for an escape route, while Shalim, Rosalind and Hannah brought up the rear, silent and pale with shock.
The ritual circle parted and they were ushered within, along with Ignacio and several soldiers of the Swords. Brother Sebastian took a small bottle of oil from a pocket and uncorked it. The stench that rose from the vessel was stomach-churning.
“Gods,” Kelos said. “I’ve encountered Chadassa with a more pleasing odour.”
“Silence!” Ignacio shouted, prodding Kelos with the point of his sword.
Brother Sebastian gestured for Kelos to step forward, before drawing a circle on his forehead in the pungent oil. He did the same for the rest of the party, the ritual circle closing behind them once he had made the last mark.
“Brother Sebastian, this is pointless,” Kelos said. “Trust me on this. Reach for the threads. Go on, see what you find.”
“I do not need to reach for the threads,” the Final Faith sorcerer said, throwing up his arms to encompass the room. “We are surrounded by power. I, Brother Sebastian, will be the first person to channel raw magic. The power of this ritual will make me amongst the most favoured of Katherine Makennon’s mages.”
“Really, this so-called power is not what you think. Brother Sebastian, there is no magic on this world. Your spell will fail.”
“Silence him,” the mage said, and one of the Faith’s soldiers held his sword to Kelos’s throat. “Ignacio, are we ready?”
“We are ready, Brother Sebastian. Take us home.”
The sorcerer took hold of one of the cables running into the floor and tugged with all his might. For a moment it appeared that his strength wouldn’t be up to the task, but eventually, with a fizzing pop, the cable came free, sparks cascading from its end, filling the chamber with the smell of ozone.
“Behold, my children. Raw magic. The very clay the Lord of All moulded in shaping the universe.”
Silus didn’t know a great deal about the workings of sorcery, but he was fairly sure that whatever was running through the cable in Brother Sebastian’s hand, it wasn’t magic. What the sorcerer planned to do with such energy, he dreaded to think.
Brother Sebastian took his place in the ritual circle, holding onto the left hand of the man to his right, while the woman to the sorcerer’s left laid her hand on his shoulder.
“The circle is complete. The ritual can begin.”
Brother Sebastian threw back his head as the rest of the circle bowed theirs. “Lord of All, channel through me your eternal glory, so that we may return home and bring these heretics, criminals and usurpers into your just and merciful care. Lord, I am your vessel. Fill me with your power!”
And with that, Brother Sebastian pushed the sparking cable against the exposed flesh of his chest.
There was a blinding flash and the lights in the vast chamber went out, only for the scene before them to be illuminated by a strange, ethereal glow. Silus blinked away the purple blotches swimming in his vision as he tried to understand what he was seeing.
The ritual circle twitched and danced as tongues of lightning sparked between them. The shock of hair rising from each celebrant’s head would have been comical were they not quite clearly dead, their flesh cooking where they stood. The only thing that prevented them from falling to the floor was the brilliant energy that bound them together, encasing each of them in a fine web of living fire. More sickening than this strange sight was the smell rising from the bodies. If you closed your eyes it could be mistaken for roasting pork, and Silus was appalled to find his stomach responding with a hungry gurgle.
“Zac, don’t look,” he shouted. But it was too late, and there was worse to come.
They cried out in horror as one of the women in the circle was suddenly consumed by flames, great black clouds rolling from her body as it burned. Silus flinched when her eyes burst in the heat, showering him with boiling vitreous humour. And then the whole circle succumbed to the conflagration, enclosing those within in a ring of fire. They started to choke as smoke enveloped them. Silus tried to shield Zac and Katya from the intense heat, but it was no use, his shirt was already smouldering on his back. If they didn’t break out of the circle, they’d cook along with the ring of corpses.
With a snap, Brother Sebastian’s left arm fell from his body — the burnt charcoal of his limb shattering as it hit the floor — followed by the cable, its power now spent.
Seeing their chance, Silus grabbed hold of Katya and shouted, “Everybody with me. Quickly!”
Shielding his head with his arm, Silus charged, colliding with one of the burning bodies,
barging out of the circle in a shower of flames and sparks. He looked down and, seeing that the ends of his trousers had caught fire, batted out the flames before turning to check that they had all made it through.
Fifteen soot-stained faces stared back at him. Behind them, the bodies in the ritual circle were beginning to gutter out, the human candles that had burnt so brilliantly crumbling to ash as they watched.
“I told you,” Kelos cried, rounding on Ignacio. “I told you there was no magic. Are you going to continue with this charade, or can we have the real Ignacio back now?”
“I suggest that we keep this argument for later,” Silus said. “Right now, I think that we should be tending to the wounded of the settlement. Ignacio, perhaps you and your remaining men can help try and clear up some of the damage you’ve done?”
Ignacio looked about him like a man emerging from a dream. His shaking hand ventured to his sword before falling away. Behind him, one of the surviving members of the Swords whispered into his ear, a woman with jet-black hair and striking features. Ignacio’s gaze cleared as she spoke, and Silus was appalled to see something of his earlier fanaticism and hatred return.
“We will not sully our hands attending to the heathens,” he said, straightening. “We will see to our own dead.”
“Then we’ll leave you to them,” Silus said, leading the way out of the crippled engine room, followed by his weary companions.
They headed for the exit from the ship, but before they could reach it there was a terrific bang and a metal stanchion swung free from the ceiling, smashing into the wall just inches from where they stood. All around them the ship was beginning to creak and shudder, groaning like a galleon caught in a maelstrom. The floor shook and buckled, rivets popping free from the metal plating of the deck.
“What’s happening?” Silus shouted.
“We have to get off the ship,” Illiun said, forcing his way past the broken stanchion.
Outside, things were no better. Great cracks raced across the ground, zigzagging across the settlement, swallowing up houses and people. Clouds of dust shot out of the rents in the earth, obscuring the scene before them, but doing nothing to hide the screams of the people caught up in the chaos. Above them, the sky darkened and there was a rumble of thunder; a vicious wind whipped up seemingly out of nowhere, to tug at their clothes and steal the breath from their lungs.
“Illiun,” Silus shouted. “What is it? An earthquake?”
“It’s the entity,” he said. “It’s found us. I knew that it was too late. I’m sorry, so sorry. I tried, really I did.” He fell to his knees and began to sob, his grief consuming him more wholly than the desire to preserve his own life.
And then there was silence.
The cloud obscuring the settlement slowly dispersed. People wandered out of the mists, pale as phantoms, powdered from head to foot in dust. There was no sign of the storm now. It has dissipated as quickly as it had rolled in. Above them was a brilliant blue sky, but there, on the edge of the horizon, was a smudge, a smear of darker colour as though dusk had come early.
“Dunsany, do you still carry your telescope?” Silus said.
“Yes, why?”
“Hand it to me, please.”
Silus trained the telescope on the horizon.
It wasn’t dusk that he saw there, however, but the upper edge of a great azure disk.
Bestion knew exactly what it was. “Allfather! Allfather, you have returned to us. Lord, I knew that you would hear my call.”
And indeed it was the Allfather. Rising above the desert plain, casting its shadow across the whole settlement, was the god they all knew intimately.
“It has come,” Illiun wailed. “Our end has arrived. The entity is here.”
Silus realised that this was the threat Illiun had been talking about all along; this was the entity that had made exiles of his people.
Kerberos.
CHAPTER TEN
Calabash dropped to its haunches and Emuel rolled from the creature’s back, tumbling to the ground, rudely awakened as he came up hard against a boulder.
“Can you not give me more warning next time?” the eunuch said, brushing the dust from his clothes.
But Calabash didn’t respond. Instead, it sat stock still, staring at the horizon.
It was then that Emuel realised just how quiet it was. He couldn’t hear the usual hisses and groans of the following herd. He turned to see that the other dragons were mimicking their leader: sitting back on their haunches, wings folded against their flanks, silently watching the horizon as though waiting for something.
Dragons.
There was no other word for them. Emuel had been able to deny the evidence before him when the creatures had been no bigger than ponies, but they had grown at an alarming rate over the last few days, until he finally had to admit that he was indeed surrounded by the creatures of legend.
In all the stories of dragons he had encountered, they were always either on the verge of extinction or the last of their kind, ensconced in some mountain eyrie, occasionally venturing forth to terrify the populace of a village and devour their livestock. Emuel knew that some magical catastrophe had done for Twilight’s dragons, but he had no real idea as to the nature of the apocalypse. Was this world, he wondered, the true home of the dragons? Had they never been native to Twilight in the first place? Emuel reflected what a privilege it was to be amongst such creatures.
Calabash shifted and gave a soft bark, and Emuel looked up to see a deep azure band edging over the mountains. Several days earlier they had left the last of the desert behind; the terrain they now found themselves in was no less forbidding or lifeless, yet something was now breathing life into the ragged peaks, washing them in a colour that reminded Emuel of dusk on Twilight. There was a tingling sensation in his arms, as the tattoos there started moving. The flowers inked amongst the elven runics slowly opened, lines of script in a language Emuel didn’t recognise snaking out from amongst the black petals. Where they wrote their story onto his flesh, it burned.
Calabash sang. It began with a deep, repetitive rhythm, like a heartbeat. At first it was just Calabash’s voice, but as the mountains took on the colour of the huge disk rising over them, the rest of the dragons added their own voices to the song. Some took the base rhythm and kept it going — the thuds and clicks resonating deep within their throats — while others wove delicate melodies into the music, the harmonies seeming to rise not just from the dragons, but the very earth itself.
As one, with a sound like a great whipcrack, the dragons snapped their wings open. They were swaying to the song now, their eyes alight with the twilight glow. Their feet began to move, lightly at first — the soft padding of their claws on the ground barely audible — but soon they weren’t just swaying, they were dancing, pounding out the rhythm of the music into the dusty earth.
Emuel wept, as he hadn’t since the death of his parents. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks and his chest hitched. He could barely breathe, but he didn’t care, because it felt so wonderful; the song had released something in him.
He cried for the way he had been used. He cried for the loss of his manhood, and all that had been denied him with that one vile act. He cried with joy that he, not much more than a boy from Drakengrat, had been gifted with such sights as were revealed to him now. He cried for a faith that had been shattered, and which he had rebuilt himself, painfully and slowly, on his own terms. He cried for the loss of his friends, and the thought that he would never see them again. He cried for the destruction of the Llothriall and the realisation that he would no more guide that majestic vessel through the storm.
But most of all he cried because, looming large over the arid mountains, looking down on him, was the face of his god.
As Kerberos cleared the range, Emuel went to stand beside Calabash. The ground shook under the force of the dragons’ dance and he stumbled, but Calabash nudged him back on his feet with the tip of its snout, without losing its rhythm. Emuel l
aughed and began to move in time with Calabash, delighting in the music rolling from the creature as it led the song.
The ancient texts, the stories, the songs, the plays — not one of them had ever talked about this; this act of sheer creativity, of beauty, of pure, unmediated joy. In the legends, dragons were killers, jealous recluses guarding hoards of treasure that they couldn’t possibly ever spend. Like most things he had been taught, Emuel was coming to realise the legends were wrong.
“What are you?” he cried.
Calabash’s voice changed, the clicks and deep thumps coming from its chest now giving way to something more breathy, less frantic. Each new element added to the song’s power. Emuel found himself swaying in time with the dragon, matching its movements exactly, like a snake caught by the gaze of a charmer. Calabash’s wings slowly flapped, fanning Emuel with a cool breeze that dusted the last of the desert from him. When the dragon brought its head low, Emuel leaned forward to look deep into its eyes, and it was then that Calabash let the song tell the dragons’ story.
Deep within the heart of Kerberos, beyond the storms that give voice to its wrath, lies a place of absolute silence, quieter than death, yet it is here that creation begins.
They are tiny at first, no bigger than a thought, because that is what they are; a god’s will. But soon they flicker into true being, a heartbeat clothed in flesh. They hang in the darkness, tiny pulsing lights strung like stars throughout the deity’s firmament. Even now they are calling to one another, the song growing in strength as cells divide and consciousness awakes.
Though these creatures are part of the deity itself, Kerberos marvels at the life within it, at the complexity of thought that develops as the creatures sing themselves into being.
When they are fully formed, the god begins to gather certain minerals from its atmosphere, weaving these around each dragon foetus, until they are encased in rock impervious to all but the mightiest of forces.
It is time to let its children go. Beneath Kerberos’s gaze a whole new world turns, one that has not yet heard the song of its creation. And so, the god sends its children out into the void. Hundreds upon hundreds of eggs hurtle out into space, the vast azure sphere of Kerberos quickly spiralling away from them, only for the larger planet below to gather them into its embrace. With a quick succession of terrific bangs, they hit the upper atmosphere, but it is not this that awakens the dragons, but the heat of the flames that engulfs each egg as it falls, incubating them, completing the life begun by Kerberos.
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