Until the screen shattered and broke and disappeared, and Molly
fell back, crying out in shock and pain. Because in the end Molly was human, and
the armour wasn’t.
Molly was clearly exhausted now, all her inner resources
drained. She stumbled backwards, away from me, clinging to the wall for support,
and the armour went after her. Its deadly golden hands stretched out towards
her, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop it.
"Eddie," said Molly, in a voice trying hard to be calm and
steady, "I hope you can hear me in there. I know this…isn’t you. I’ve done all I
can. It’s up to you to stop the armour now. But if you can’t…I want you to know
I understand. I understand it won’t be you, doing it. So don’t blame yourself.
Just…find a way to make the Heart pay. Good-bye, Eddie. My one true love."
I couldn’t even answer her.
I’d exhausted all my strength, fighting helplessly inside the
armour. Setting my human strength against its inhuman power. I couldn’t move any
part of me except as the armour moved me. It was like having my hand disobey me,
pick up a weapon, and commit murder, while I could only watch and scream
helplessly at it to stop. It didn’t help that so much stress had weakened my
defences, and the strange matter had flooded into all of my body now. I could
feel it pulsing within me. The pain was sickening, and I was so weak I would
probably have fallen if the armour hadn’t been holding me up. I was so tired.
I’d fought for so long, refusing to give in, and all for nothing.
And then a little voice at the back of my head said, Then stop
fighting, you idiot. The voice didn’t sound anything like mine. It didn’t sound
like the Heart’s, either. So I took a gamble and stopped fighting.
I let the weakness flood through me, taking all the strength
from my arms and legs. I stopped resisting and let the strange matter do what it
would. I gave up…and the armour lurched to a sudden halt. Its golden hands
stopped a few inches short of Molly’s throat, and then slowly and ponderously
the armour sank to its knees before her. Because the torc was linked to me, body
and soul, and even the Heart couldn’t break that link. The armour is only ever
as strong as the man within, and this man…had nothing left. The golden living
metal rippled over my skin, struggling to obey the Heart’s orders, but it was
overridden by my stubborn weakness, backed by the strange matter’s presence in
my body. A small amount of control came back to me, and I slowly forced the
golden metal away from my face so Molly could see and hear me. She crouched down
before me, and I think she could see death in my face. She started to cry.
"Sorry, Molly," I said. "But this is as far as I go. We always
knew I probably wouldn’t get to see the end of the story…The strange matter’s
all through me now. Only one thing left you can do for me now. Quickly, before
the Heart finds a way to force control of the armour away from me, take Torc
Cutter and cut the torc around my neck. That destroys the armour. It won’t be
able to hurt you. Then take Oath Breaker and smash that smug talking diamond
into a million pieces."
"I can’t do that, Eddie! It’ll kill you!"
"I’m dying anyway! Do it, Molly. Please. Protect yourself. At
least this way…my death will have some meaning. Some purpose."
"Eddie…"
"If you love me, kill me. Because I’d rather die than see you
hurt."
"I wish things could have been different."
"Me too. Good-bye, Molly. My one true love."
I lowered my golden head, showing her my neck. Already my
movements were getting stiff as the Heart fought to regain control. Molly
produced the ugly black shears and set them against the side of my golden neck.
Somewhere in the background, the Heart was shouting orders, but neither of us
was listening. Molly forced the shears together, and the black blades cut
through my torc. My golden armour disappeared in a moment, and the two halves of
my golden collar fell to the floor.
And I laughed out loud as new strength flooded through me.
I rose to my feet, still laughing, and lifted Molly up with me
as she stared blankly into my face. She started to laugh herself from sheer
relief. I took her in my arms and held her close, and she held me, and I felt
strong and well and at peace at last. Molly and I clung on to each other for
what seemed like forever, and it felt good, so good to be alive. Finally we let
go and stood back and looked into each other’s faces.
"Eddie, you’re alive…"
"I know! Isn’t it great?"
"How…Eddie, there’s a collar around your throat. And it’s
silver."
"I know," I said. "It’s the strange matter. Apparently there’s
been something of a misunderstanding…"
"To put it mildly," said a new voice. "I was beginning to think
I’d never get through to you in time."
The new voice was large and powerful and very sane, and it
thundered through the Sanctity. It emanated from me, but it wasn’t me speaking.
The Heart cried out in rage and despair, but it sounded like a very small thing
compared to the new voice. The strange matter, speaking through me.
"Time for the truth at last," it said. "Know now the true
history of that foul and evil creature you know as the Heart. Criminal. Sinner.
Thief. Coward. Murderer. It came here because it was running scared. Because it
knew I was close behind it, coming to capture it and take it back to where it
came from, for judgement and punishment. For all the awful things it has done in
so many dimensions. The Heart has been on the run for millennia, passing through
dimension after dimension and preying on whatever it found there.
"I am the shaman of my tribe, much like your Druid ancestors. We
protect the innocent and punish the guilty, and we never give up.
"I’d almost lost track of the Heart. The trail had gone cold,
and I had searched so many places. And then a small opening appeared between the
dimensions. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before: vague and unfocused, quite
primitive really. It was the Blue Fairy using his gift at random to go fishing
and see what he might find. Intrigued, I allowed him to catch just a small piece
of myself and take it through into his primitive backwater dimension. And there
was the Heart! Hidden away, in the back of beyond where no one would think to
look. I could sense its presence, but its exact location was hidden from me. So
I manipulated the Blue Fairy into passing the small piece of me onto the most
powerful group in this dimension, the Drood family. And sure enough, once I was
brought here, I was able to locate the Heart. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough
of me to break through the defences your family had put in place around the
Heart.
"So I waited. And soon enough the Blue Fairy went fishing again,
and I allowed him to catch more of me. And then I manipulated him, and the Drood
traitors, and finally the elf lord, all so that he would fire an arrow of me
into you, Eddie. So that you could bring me here, into the presence of the
Heart. Inside all its protections. I never meant to cause you such pain, Eddie.
All the suffering and weakness were caused by my strange matter clashing with
the Heart’s collar. What you might call a short circuit. The human body was
never meant to contain such diametrically opposed other-dimensional materials."
"Why didn’t I die when Molly cut the torc from me?" I said.
"Droods only die when separated from their torcs because that’s
what the Heart wanted," said the voice. "It couldn’t risk any of its toys
getting loose. But that’s all over now. The Heart can’t hurt you anymore, Eddie.
Not while I’m here to protect you. And it won’t be able to hurt your family
anymore, once it’s been destroyed. And though I’ve chased the Heart for so very
long…I think it’s your privilege to put an end to the Heart, Eddie. If you want
it."
"I want it," I said, and I drew Oath Breaker from my belt and
turned to face the Heart.
"You can’t do this!" it screamed. "I made you what you are! I
made your family powerful! I put you in charge of this stupid little world! You
don’t dare hurt me! I’m your god!"
"Bad god," I said.
I raised Oath Breaker over my head and brought it smashing down
on the huge diamond. The ancient weapon took on its simple brutal aspect and
undid all the forces that bound the other-dimensional being together. The Heart
screamed shrilly, its light flaring in great staccato pulses, and then the
massive diamond exploded soundlessly. It shattered into millions of lifeless
fragments, falling to the floor like sand until nothing was left of the Heart.
There hadn’t been much to it, after all. The Heart was hollow all along.
And with the Heart finally destroyed, all the souls that had
been trapped within it for so long were finally set free. They manifested
briefly on the still air of the Sanctity, one after another, flashing on and
off, countless shimmering forms exploding like so many soundless fireworks in
one last display of joy at their freedom before finally passing on to whatever
comes next. Molly cried out in delight, clapping her hands together.
And at the very end, one small soul came to me. My twin. My
brother. He hung on the air before me, just a baby, only a few days old, and
then he expanded suddenly into adult form, my size, my age. He looked…like the
face I see in the mirror every day, only without all the lines driven into it by
pain, and loss, and duty. My brother considered me for a long moment, and then
he smiled at me, and winked, and was gone.
And that was that.
With the Heart gone, the Sanctity didn’t feel like the Sanctity
anymore. It felt like the quiet after the explosion, the calm after the storm,
the incredible peace of waking up and knowing that the nightmare is finally
over. The Sanctity was just an empty room now, wide and echoing, with a layer of
sand on the floor. The dragon was dead, but I didn’t feel like a dragonslayer.
"How do you feel, Eddie?" said Molly.
"Pretty good," I said. "The pain is gone, the weakness is gone,
and I’m back to normal again."
"No, Eddie," she said gently. "How do you feel?"
"I don’t know," I said. "Numb. Lost…I used to know what I was,
what my life was all about. Then that was taken away from me. I used to have a
family, and that’s gone too. All gone…"
"You still have me," said Molly.
"Do I?"
She put her hands on my shoulders, pulled me in close, and
kissed me. "Try to get rid of me, idiot."
"So," I said after a while. "The Heart’s dead. What do we do
now?"
"You mean for an encore?" said Molly. "Haven’t you done enough?"
The door behind us swung open, and we both spun around, ready to
defend ourselves, but it was just the Armourer and the ghost of old Jacob. Molly
and I relaxed a little as they came over to join us. The Armourer’s face was
still half buried under dried blood, but he looked a lot steadier on his feet.
Jacob had resumed his grumpy old ghost form, with garish Hawaiian shorts and a
grubby T-shirt bearing the legend Dead Men Don’t Eat Quiche.
"Eddie, my boy," said the Armourer. "Are you okay? We heard all
kinds of noises from in here, but we couldn’t get in till now. Not even Casper
the Unfriendly Ghost here. And what the hell happened to the Heart?"
"Look down," I said. "You’re standing in what’s left of it."
He looked down, winced, and then shook his head. "So that’s what
Oath Breaker does. I always wondered."
"Here," I said, handing the ironwood staff back to him. "The
sooner this is back in the Armageddon Codex, the safer we’ll all be. Molly, give
him Torc Cutter."
"Oh poo," said Molly, pouting. "I was hoping to keep it as a
souvenir."
The Armourer gave her one of his hard looks, and she handed the
shears over without another word.
"So," I said, "that’s it, at last. All over. Someone lead me to
a comfortable chair and place a nice cup of tea in my hand. It’s been a busy few
days…but at least it’s finished now."
"You have got to be joking," the Armourer said sternly. "After
all the damage you’ve done here, you think you can just sit back and take it
easy? You’ve done more in one evening to bring the Drood family to its knees
than centuries of enemy action. It’s up to you to save the family, Eddie. I
didn’t bring you up to leave a job half done. You brought the family down; only
you can raise it up again."
"To hell with that!" Molly said sharply. "This is what I lived
for: to see the high and mighty Droods humbled and forced to their knees, made
to live down here in the dirt with the rest of us. Don’t listen to him, Eddie.
You’ve taken the Droods’ foot off the neck of everyone in the world. We’re free
at last!"
"Free?" I said, reluctantly. "No, Molly. It’s not that simple,
and it never was. Truman’s Manifest Destiny is still out there, remember? Free
from Drood influence and control and still determined to wipe out everything
that doesn’t fit their narrow definition of normal and human. Who’s going to
stop them, if not the family? And then there are all the other dark forces only
kept in check by fear of what the family would do if they ever got out of hand.
There has to be another power in place to stop the forces of darkness from
overrunning the world. But if there has to be a Drood family, it’s going to be a
new kind of family."
"Now you’re talking," said Jacob. "Always knew you were destined
for great things, Eddie. Even if I couldn’t remember why."
I considered him thoughtfully. "You just remembered you were
only hanging about here in order to help me destroy the Heart…So, and don’t take
this the wrong way, but…why are you still here?"
He gave me his usual shifty grin and shrugged vaguely. Little
bubbles of blue-gray ectoplasm jumped up from his shoulders before slowly
settling back into him again. "Guess I’ve just got used to hanging around here.
And besides, I really am curious to see what’s going to happen next. I haven’t
had so much fun since the Great Gender Swap of 1741. We never did find out who
was behind that…"