Chasing Embers

by James Bennet

  “That isn’t the point,” he shot back. “There are…consequences. To everything you do.”

  “And the fear of them binds you. As does their feeble Lore.”

  He would have asked how she had found him, how she had come to learn of the Lore, but he already knew. Something about her presence, her divinity, had joined them, a delicate thread. Even back in London, before he’d clashed with her at the museum, Atiya had been able to sense him, sniff him out. Hadn’t she come waltzing into his lair? Unannounced. Uninvited. It seemed that this unwelcome union worked over great distances too, turning them into a scaled yin and yang. Eyes on the road, fearful for Rose, Ben had acknowledged the bond too late. A thousand feet above the Alps, the hunter had become the hunted.

  “As for your love of mortals…” The Queen made a soft, but no less harsh, sound between her lips and her teeth.

  “That opinion is starting to bore me.” But her scorn was getting under his skin. And he responded in kind. “What would you know about love? All I’ve seen you manage is destruction.”

  “Nacas! You see nothing.” The Queen looked away, and Ben believed that his words had stung. He had also noticed that her lips weren’t moving in time with her words. She spoke like a foreign actress in a badly dubbed film. It occurred to him that the tongue she used was not the one he heard, the link between them allowing a kind of makeshift communion, his mind deciphering a language long lost. Could things get any weirder? “You see nothing at all.”

  “Then educate me. You obviously haven’t killed me for a reason.”

  “We are serpents, are we not? I merely honour the accord between our kind,” she said. “But you are determined to give me a reason. I have turned back to warn you. Do the same. Do not try to stop me.”

  “Stop you from what? Stealing half the world’s treasures? You know, when it comes to theft, you’re not exactly discreet.”

  A blur and she was before him, her eyes ablaze, a fist shaking in his face.

  “You dare to call me a thief? You dare?”

  She trailed smoke as she moved, her flesh a curtain on to darkness. In the miasma, Ben caught sight of a little girl again. She was skinny, this creature, a bundle of twigs in a filthy T-shirt and football shorts. Cornrows wove neatly across her skull, the face below them sad and gaunt. The image wavered, a wraith clinging to the Queen’s body. In the Queen’s body. He’d seen the same thing up on the stage in the British Museum, a faint visage set behind the other, youth caged by untold age gazing out at him with wasted eyes.

  He took a step backwards.

  “Tell me. Who is the girl?”

  Alarm swam across the Queen’s face. Her body was a gate, banging shut. Ben blinked and the girl was gone, sinking under a lightless sea.

  “She is nothing. Something that was and is no more. Innocence, perhaps. Or hope.”

  “She’s a little girl. A…foothold, isn’t that right?” Von Hart spoke up to remind him. Once summoned, the Queen anchored herself in human flesh, but she isn’t quite…corporeal. Ben was still getting his head around it. “So I guess I do see some things.”

  She let him have that. She slid away again, over the snow. The stars travelled across her skin, twinkling in her nebulous depths. When she spoke, her voice was low, drifting over her shoulder.

  “You know your woman will die, don’t you?”

  “Not if I can help it.” But she had stung him in return. “The syzygy—”

  “I am not talking about the witches and their foolish spells.” She turned again, frosting him with a look. “I am talking about…the rose, yes?”

  O Rose thou art sick…

  Ben scowled. “Don’t do that. Stay the fuck out of my head.”

  Atiya snorted. “Your love of humans. Do you never grow tired of it? You might as well love a sunbeam that flickers through a cloud. This world was not meant to hold them. Time will take them all so quickly. A blink in the life of a god.”

  “So what do you want? Servitude? A world on its knees?”

  “This world is already on its knees. Its golden age not even a memory.” The Queen arched her neck, a proud swan. “I have seen your world, little beast. I have drunk of its terror and hope. Humans fear the darkness that gave them birth and harness the light to outshine the stars. They build machines that cough with smoke and poison the very air. They suck up the blood of the earth and pour filth into the seas. They speak boldly of freedom and peace and think they can buy them with war. Money is their temple and greed their god. They stand in defiance of all that is real, turning magic into myth, myth into Remnants, choosing to live in a cold dead dream.” She turned, fixing him with her piercing gaze. “What use do I have for dominion? Humans have made their own cage, their own tyranny. And they will bring about their own end.”

  “Yeah. You get to wondering who the monsters are.” There was no point denying it; he had thought the same things himself. “But we live in hope. There is every chance that they’ll come through. If we’ve survived, so can they.”

  “You call your existence survival? It is exile. It is death. None of your kind will live for ever. Will you breed? No. A handful of centuries from now, and tales alone will remain.”

  “Call me optimistic.” He fended off the bitter truth, clutching at the only straws he had left. “Maybe they’ll learn. Maybe with the right guidance, they’ll fear less, know more. Maybe one day we’ll all live in peace again.”

  Laughter ricocheted off the rock face.

  “That is your dream?” Atiya peered at him, and again Ben had the uncomfortable sensation of her peering into him, reading his thoughts. “Yes, I have seen the chains that bind you. The cage in which you stand. The Guild sent most of you into the Sleep, no? The Pact is no truce at all, merely a cell where you wait for extinction.” She clicked her tongue, her annoyance sounding harsh in the still. “You might share the humans’ blindness, but you will never be like them.”

  “I said maybe.”

  “That is your dream.” The Queen cocked her head, sympathetic. “You long for a normal life. A normal life with the woman you love. The Pact tastes like ash in your mouth, yet you suffer it because you hope. The Guild does not need to hide you. You already hide from yourself.”

  These words didn’t sting. They burned. Ben broke the staring contest, looking down at the snowbound slopes. The wind carried sirens to his ears and he pictured the panic down there, police cars and ambulances struggling to cope with the rescued tourists, listening to their tales of monsters on the mountain, winged beasts at war. Beasts that could not, should not be. Only days ago, he would have drawn comfort from the fact that tales like that would fall on deaf ears, dismissed as shock and hysteria. Perhaps in this case as hypothermia and altitude sickness. Sceptical minds didn’t need much of an excuse to stay that way. He had seen it a thousand times.

  Now he wasn’t so sure. This week had shattered the walls of his torpor, awakening him to his uniqueness, his vulnerability and isolation. The truth was all around him. Freezing air that would kill a man. Heights that no human could endure. Since his flight from the Brooklyn Bridge, who knew how many people had seen him? How many strange but similar reports were already zipping around the world, sailing on awestruck radio waves? The Queen was right: he was nothing like them. He was a stranger, an oddity. He would stand out in their mundane midst like a fox in a chicken coop.

  And of course, they would treat him as such.

  “You are lonely.” Atiya was drawing close again; close enough to make his skin prickle, his skull and nipples ache. She reached out a hand and traced the sigil on his chest, the wyrm tongue in red circled by yellow. “Sola Ignis. Lone fire. I can see the words burning in your soul. Is that why you love them so much?” And then, softly, “Is that why you follow me?”

  He grabbed her wrist, ignoring how much it hurt him, her heat scalding his palm.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I signed the Pact. Might not mean a damn to some folks, but it still means something to me.”
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  “You lie!” Atiya wrenched her arm from his grip. “And your honour makes a feeble shield.”

  “I believe we were talking about you. If you don’t want dominion, what do you want? Why did you steal those relics?”

  “I stole nothing! I took what was rightfully mine.”

  “Why are you here? Who dug you out of your grave?”

  “Silence, addoon. You will demand nothing of me.”

  “Then go ahead and kill me. Cut off my head. Leave my carcass to the birds.” Ben’s anger surprised him. The truth was she had cut him deep, despite his casual pretence. Her insights were an undeniable blade, opening a wound of doubt that bled with vindictive fire. He breathed in, letting ice fill his lungs, then hissed into her face. “If the CROWS kill Rose, then I’d rather be dead.”

  She stared at him for a moment, blue heat boring into his head. In her steady gaze, Ben caught his own impressions. A great temple in the desert. A raging storm at sea. Then white light. Light to blind the land. Whether she didn’t want him to see or flinched from his passion, the Queen dropped her eyes and turned away, the night coming between them again.

  But Ben wasn’t ready to let it go.

  “Not so fast.” He grabbed her arm again, preventing her retreat, static dancing through his fingers. “I’ve chased you halfway around the world and you still haven’t answered my questions.”

  He spun her to face him. Whatever the cause of her sorrow, the emotion weakened her, allowing him to pull her close. She sizzled in his grip, glaring.

  “You are chasing your doom.” Their words wrestled for dominance as their claws had on the mountaintop. “And this is my last warning. Let me go. I fly south to reclaim my crown.”

  “Why did you come here?” He all but shook her. “Why wait for me in the mountains?”

  “You think I will risk your interference?” The Queen barked a laugh, another bitter knife. “Once the Pschent is in my hands, I will take my revenge. I will look my traitor in the eyes before I…” Fervour or pain prevented her from vocalising her violence. “Turn back. Turn back now. Do not make me destroy you.”

  “You know, I have a feeling you don’t have a choice.”

  A frown split her forehead, her reluctance plain. “We are serpents. Would you spurn the mercy of a queen?”

  “You’re nothing like me. You’re a ghost. A figment. A dream.” He tightened his grip on her arm. “And I won’t leave Rose.”

  “Then you risk all for one mortal life. Your woman means nothing. Your woman will die.”

  “No!”

  “Go back to your slumber, mas. Go back to your drink and foolish dreams. I am Atiya, Queen of Punt. Go back. I command you!”

  Energy was building between them, crackling from her body to his. Blue streams crawled over her skin and writhed up his arms, climbing his neck and into his hair. The strands stood on end, trembling as her power shot through him, heat sinking into his bones, threatening to tear his body apart, paint the ledge with his mutable flesh.

  A burning stench filled his nostrils. Blisters bubbled up on his hands. He refused to release her. The mystery had led him from New York to London, from London to Berlin and up to these heights, chasing a goddess whose age and strength made him feel like a child. Something told him that this was his last chance to get to the truth, and a thought came to him through his pain, tangled up with all the others, Atiya’s and his own. Lightning linked them, fusing them as one. And Ben had caught impressions of his own. He clenched his teeth and tightened his grip, pushing his mind towards her, trying to penetrate her secrets.

  Atiya struggled, catching his intent. She shouted something, a dazzling roar. Smoke coiled from her, enfolding them in a smothering cloak. Ben pushed forward and embraced her, pressing his heat against her cold. Atiya screamed, jarring the seams in his skull, and then he was falling. Falling into…

  Darkness. Deeper than death. The deep darkness of time.

  A chill enveloped him, dousing his heat. The atmosphere clung to his body, an oily substance slowing his movements, rippling off his flailing arms. No boundaries curbed his surroundings. No ground lay under his feet. His sense of up and down was confused, rendered irrelevant by the gulf. One moment, he was falling, and the next, rising. Drifting. Lost in the endless stuff of her soul.

  That was when he realised where he was.

  Inside her. The Queen had absorbed him. Just like she’d absorbed the Star of Eebe and the Jackal’s Crook. Absorbed him like she had the little girl.

  Khadra. The name came to him the second he saw her, a fragile figure in the gloom. She sat with her knees drawn up, her head down on crossed arms. Her prison was a small one, a collection of shadows forming some kind of shack, a vague, shifting vision, blurred skulls hanging on the walls, the sketch of a fire blazing in a hearth. Inklings drenched the atmosphere, like the girl’s name, entering his mind like an echo, a shred of alien thought. Fragments of the Queen’s consciousness.

  But I am the ghost here. A figment. A dream.

  He floated towards the girl and she looked up. If he had expected joy at his presence, Khadra surprised him. She didn’t greet him like a saviour, didn’t seem to care about rescue. Instead, she scowled and scuttled backwards, clutching the objects in her lap. One was a gem, fist-sized, glassy and clear. The other a length of ivory, looped at the top and carved with hieroglyphics.

  The Star and the Crook. Stolen goods.

  He reached out, and the girl spat something. She raised the Star in one hand. In the other, she waved the Crook, a sharp warning gesture. Stay back. It was all Ben needed to know that she was not a prisoner. She wanted to be here. She was complicit with the Queen. Fuck, she was a partner in crime.

  It was you. You summoned Atiya. You did this to yourself.

  In answer, the girl opened her mouth. A river of dust poured out. Dust to cover the world, dust on dust on dust. Dust on hunger. Dust on bones. The relentless dust of death.

  And through the dust, the girl’s thoughts.

  The Queen will bring barwaaqo to us. The Queen will bring the rains.

  Somewhere, a bird screeched. Ben had come so far to find the truth, but now he didn’t want to see: a flood of images in the haze. Images he recognised from TV. Technicolor death that he knew so well. Flat pans of brown earth, yellow plants pushing through the cracks. Dry gullies with stones at the bottom, red trickles winding through the mud. Bony cattle slumped on the rise, seeking the shade under leafless trees. A white sun blazed overhead, merciless through the mirage. The sky rippled like laughter, mocking the corrugated shacks and low stone buildings that huddled below in a restless mosaic. With an awareness not his own, he understood that the buildings lay empty. Their occupants, the few remaining, languished around the village well, a tangled mass of leather and bone, too weak to blink away flies. Eyes watched Ben without seeing. Mouths opened and breathed in dust. He was another ghost in a land of ghosts. Another presence that could not help.

  Dhuroob in jilal. The girl’s mind met his, her desperation translating into words. Home.

  A breeze came up, hissing through the withered corn. A baby wailed. Wailed no more.

  This is home. This is death.

  Ben recoiled from the sight. Disgusted, and appalled by his disgust. No screen stood between him and the vision. He couldn’t change the channel, pretend it wasn’t there. This was real and now. The hard skin of the Western world could not protect him here. The girl – Khadra – her need was his need. Her grief, his grief. Her hunger…

  How trivial his fears seemed now.

  Grit eddied on the road to the village. An old woman was shuffling down it, where there was only dust a moment before. She was a hunchbacked thing, withered as the crops, her left ear long and drooping. Her claws were strange and inhuman, granting her the look of a fairy-tale hag.

  Dhegdheer came. Khadra was opening a door to the past. Dhegdheer came with promises. Secrets. She came with a map and a shard.

  The hag stood on the step of a
filthy shack, speaking to another woman, younger, taller, but no less starved, beads and bones dangling around her neck. The one called Dhegdheer pressed a little bag of stitched grey fur into the woman’s hand, her eyes bright with purpose. Ben couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see the fear in the younger woman’s face, the thin, impossible hope.

  She told my mother where to find the Queen. She told us how to raise her.

  You…turned to your past. The cloud of flies buzzed in Ben’s skull. To your myths. To your gods.

  Yes.

  You broke the Lore. The…Pact…

  Yes.

  He shook off the flies, trying to reject her pain, remember the task at hand. He didn’t know how to tell her that the Queen had other ideas.

  That wasn’t…very smart…

  He had to get out of here. If he could wrench the girl with him from her limbo inside the Queen, surely it would shake Atiya’s foothold in the real world, extract the fuel from her spiritual engine. He doubted that the Queen’s undoing would cancel out the chaos of the week, restore the Pact, reinstate the Lore – not if the Guild was conspiring with the CROWS – but still, he had to try. All that mattered right now was Khadra’s infraction, her raising of a goddess, and the dire consequences. Consequences that had almost cost him his life. Consequences that, if the CROWS had their way, would cost them all a whole lot more. Anarchy. Bloodshed. Revolution. Atiya’s summoning had broken more than a magically binding treaty. It had broken open Pandora’s box.

  There’s a balance to things. He tried to reach the girl with his mind, press his urgency upon her. If you screw with it, you—

  He didn’t get to finish. His assurances meant nothing. She had taken his approach as an attack. With a deft, impulsive motion, she touched the end of the Crook to the Star and the gulf around them exploded in light.

  Ben cried out, throwing up his arms. A tide of energy caught him, enfolding him in luminance. The Star of Eebe shrieked in his head, a song that was beyond ancient, beyond earthbound. It was the song of the void, primordial, endless, cold. A song that signalled the end of worlds and perhaps their beginning. White fire claimed him, closing around him like a cage. A brief, blinding fulmination and he was in the heart of the Star.