The Beauty of Destruction (59 page)

‘Is it God?’ Talia asked, awed.

‘It was born with, it did not give birth to, the universe. Perhaps to your species it is, as it is responsible for your creation.’

‘I thought that was the Seeders,’ the Monk said.

‘In fleeting moments of what passed for clarity, it created the Seeders. It wished company. It sought to soothe itself, to matter, to not be alone.’

‘Well, that worked out well,’ Vic muttered, his body language displaying his impatience in a very human manner that the Monk thought, in other circumstances, the ’sect would be very pleased with.

‘They severed links with their creator to protect themselves, and I suspect that may have driven it over the edge. Then something went wrong and contact was re-established.’

‘And it drove the Seeders and anything linked to them, like the Naga, insane,’ the Monk said. Lug nodded.

‘So it is God?’ Talia asked.

‘No, it is just another form of life. It did not create us, and there are many other forms of life it did not create. I do not think that there are gods. I think that there is only nature.’

Beth found herself thinking briefly of Churchman.

‘So now it will consume the universe?’ Talia asked.

‘Seriously, we need to—’ Scab started. Beth rounded on him.

‘Look, we’ve lost that fight. I want to know what happens next before I trigger every last piece of ammunition on me to cook off so I don’t get turned into a Naga egg sac!’

‘It has already consumed the universe, many times.’ Suddenly Lug had even Scab’s attention. ‘Eventually, as the expanding universe cooled, the Destruction was able, over billions of years, to marshal its thoughts, to understand the nature of its pain. Using the meagre remaining energy resources it could marshal it was able to open a wormhole, a bridge into the red universe that the minds of the Seeders had expanded from the quantum foam. Utilising the energy of the younger universe, the chaotic space, and the now-weak thermodynamic arrow of time, it went back and started to consume. It collapsed each branch, each possible universe, in on itself at progressively earlier times, each going further and further back, until eventually …’

‘The Universe never gets born?’ Vic asked quietly.

‘Yes,’ Lug said. There were tears on Beth’s face. She wasn’t sure why. The whole thing still sounded too large, too abstract, even after all these years.

‘That poor thing,’ Talia said. Vic was staring at her as though she was mad. Beth glanced at Scab. He looked completely passive. This bothered her.

‘So nothing can be done?’ Vic asked. He sounded almost relieved.

‘Each time we try,’ Lug said. ‘Each time we fail.’

‘Because this Screaming has servants,’ the Monk said.

‘Broken things, mad with the pain that leaks into them, that try and stop any agencies who would prevent the consumption of dark energy that leads to the collapse. Their instinctive understanding of five-dimensional physics, however, provides them with a great deal of power.’

‘Like Patron?’ Beth asked.

‘He is always there. Each time he sends people back to help him make things worse for the future, to make resistance all the harder.’ Lug pointed at Scab. ‘And each time it makes him worse.’ Scab remained completely still. ‘Your strand will be the last time that the universe gets this old.’

‘Are you saying that this is our last chance?’ the Monk asked.

‘I do not know, but I suspect it to be the case.’

‘Why do you care?’ Scab asked. Beth was worried Lug’s neck skin would tear open when the strange collapsing entity turned to look at the human killer.

‘Nothing will have time to ascend, to move beyond. So what will be the point?’ Lug asked. Beth frowned, she wasn’t quite sure she followed, but the answer seemed to amuse, if not satisfy, Scab.

‘If we’re the last chance then it’s over,’ Vic said. ‘We’re fucked.’

‘My grandchild will help, and I will lay myself out on an altar for you,’ Lug told the ’sect. The look of confusion on Vic’s immersed humanesque face was quite comical. Lug turned to look at Beth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Then she died.

Talia saw it on her periphery first. Just a movement. A distraction from the targeting schematics overlaid on her vision, from her burst-firing, double-barrelled laser carbine, from the chemically suppressed fear, from the chemically suppressed pain as her skin bubbled due to the heat leaking through her partially melted armour. Despite everything seeming to move so slowly, and her thoughts moving so fast, it still took her a moment to translate the image into actual information. Her sister on the end of a barbed spear held up high, one-handed, by a serpent in biomechanical armour. Beth’s armour was already fusing with her body, the biological nanites modifying matter at a molecular level, auto-cannibalising what they needed for the energy to give the new form growing out of her sister’s dead flesh life.

It took Talia a further moment to realise that the screaming was her own.

40

Ubh Blaosc

Wherever Tangwen was, it was dark. It felt like she was in water but it was warm and safe somehow. She could rest. She hadn’t felt that way in a very long time. She didn’t want to leave.

Then everything was hard light and cold metal against bare skin. The metal underneath her felt rounded, like the bottom of a cauldron, but it was huge. Various figures and symbols protruded from the metal. It was odd, they obviously didn’t mean to cook her, as the cauldron was otherwise empty, except for Britha. The
ban draoi
was naked, like Tangwen, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her head didn’t look right somehow. The shaved half of it looked bulbous, the veins bulging.
Like …

Britha looked up.

Tangwen stared. She had quicksilver eyes, like Teardrop’s had been towards the end, tears the same colour sinking into the
ban
draoi
’s cheek, and Tangwen didn’t think she had ever seen anyone look so guilty.

‘What? What’s happened?’ The last thing she remembered they had been standing in the god’s head. Had she fallen asleep? More tears. ‘What have you done?’ Tangwen asked. She felt different somehow.

Britha opened her mouth to speak, but only a strangled noise came out. ‘I’m sorry,’ the Pecht woman finally managed.

Then Tangwen knew. She wasn’t sure she would have known, been this aware of her body, before she had drunk of Britha’s blood. She stood up and jumped for the lip of the cauldron and pulled herself out of it. ‘Tangwen!’

She collapsed onto the too-even wooden floor of the too-pristine longhall. She staggered away from the cauldron, fell onto all fours, and threw up. Teardrop-on-Fire and Raven’s Laughter moved towards her, hands outstretched.

‘Get away from me!’ Teardrop was dressed for war: he wore only skin trews and a loincloth, tattoos on his back, chest, and upper arms; the bottom part of his face painted, symbols picked out in the design; his hair tied back and braided. The pack for his magical armour was affixed just over his left shoulder this time. There was a knife sheathed at his hip, and he carried the case that she had seen Fachtna carry: the case for the giant-killing spear that Bress had wielded at Oeth. There was just a moment of confusion. The last person she had seen handling the horrific weapon was Grainne, but that thought was quickly swept away by her anger.

Raven’s Laughter wore thicker hides, but Tangwen had seen the short, dark-haired woman transform. She knew her for a monster. Her weapons were spines that grew through the skin, though the Croatan woman had an axe, not unlike her own, through her belt, and a knife on her hip as well.

‘What did you do to me?’ The guilt was clear on both the Croatans’ faces as well.

‘It was not them, it was me.’ Britha’s voice from behind her. Tangwen turned around. The guilt was still there, but the Pecht
dryw
looked more inhuman than ever. Tangwen stared at her, shaking her head, trying to think of something to say. ‘You’ll make a better mother than me.’

Tangwen couldn’t quite believe what she had just heard. She stormed across the longhall to the
dryw
. ‘When?’ she barked. ‘When my head’s split open by a Trinovantes club? Or when I take a spear in my guts during a raid on the Cantiaci? I’m a warrior! I eat tansy cake after I lie with any man!’ She slapped Britha, hard. The
ban draoi
looked more shocked than hurt, so Tangwen punched her. Britha stumbled back and bumped into the cauldron before losing her footing and sitting down hard.

‘I am a
dryw
!’ Britha shouted. ‘You cannot lay a hand on a—’

‘No!’ Tangwen said, looming over Britha. ‘You make excuses, avoid your responsibilities, and then hide behind your black robes, hoping that being strange and threatening will get you what you want! You wreak destruction wherever you go! I wish I’d never met you!’ There were tears in the young hunter’s eyes. ‘And now I’m pregnant with your changeling baby! You’re a coward!’ She was screaming now, face purple with rage.

‘Both,’ Britha said. Tangwen stared at her.

‘What?’ Tangwen asked, very quietly. She was aware of Teardrop and Raven’s Laughter moving closer to her.

‘Both my unborn children,’ Britha said, her face crumpling. There were more quicksilver tears running down her cheek only to be sucked back into her skin. Something about them reminded Tangwen of engorged ticks. Tangwen straightened up, looking down at Britha, her swollen head, her silver eyes, the red metal of her once-woad tattoos.

‘Look what you’ve done to yourself,’ Tangwen said. ‘Has it been worth it?’ She knelt down next to Britha. ‘I want you to know I’ll cut his child out of me,’ she whispered. Then she went looking for her hatchet to bury in the
dryw
’s head. Teardrop’s armour unfolded, encasing him in metal, his helmet completely covering his head. Shaped like a raven, the helm reminded Tangwen of an
enchendach
. Even with all their strength, and the magics of the fair folk at their disposal, Teardrop and Raven’s Laughter struggled to stop Tangwen from killing Britha.

Outside, the noise hit Tangwen like a wall of thunder. The Otherworld was falling. High above her a land, on what she thought of as the wall of this inside-out world, burned. A fountain of fire, wreathed in smoke and steam from the oceans surrounding it. She didn’t understand how she could see so much that was so far away. Amid the fire and burning rock she could make out the enormous, monstrous shape of a dragon that surely must have been the size of Ynys Prydain itself. Her bowels turned to liquid, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she did not soil herself. She wanted to go back into the longhall. They had heard nothing of this great storm outside, presumably because of more fair folk magic. She stood frozen, vaguely aware of Britha doing much the same. They should not be here. This was no place for mortals.

‘Come on,’ Raven’s Laughter tried to coax her. ‘We’ll take you home.’

Fire rained down from the hole in the Otherworld, the glow reflecting in Teardrop’s impossible metal armour. Tangwen tried to make sense of the small, fast-moving dots spreading out from the fire. Bright spears of light existed for less than moments in the distance, while closer to them lightning played across treetops. She ducked down, hand on her axe, as two vessels, much larger than their chariot, shot by overhead.

‘They are ours,’ Teardrop said gently. Tangwen had felt fear before. She had almost not made it onto the wicker man, but this was too much. There had been a chance against the Lochlannach, against the spawn of Andraste, even against Crom Dhubh. There was no chance here against such power.

‘These are my Father’s people?’ Tangwen asked. She could not equate this madness with the gentle creature that lived in the crystal cave beneath her village. Raven’s Laughter was affixing another metal plate to Britha’s shoulder, which the hunter knew could grow to become the same sort of armour that protected Teardrop. Raven’s Laughter exchanged a look with her armoured husband.

‘Your Father’s people are the Naga?’ the Croatan woman asked.

‘He is a serpent, but not like this.’ She could hear the desperation in her own voice.

‘I think Tangwen’s Father was spared the madness,’ Teardrop said, his voice sounding strange coming from the armour.

‘You met him!’ Tangwen shouted. ‘You know! Fachtna did not like him!’

‘I know this is hard to understand.’ Teardrop had to shout to be heard. ‘But that was a different Teardrop.’

‘Another changeling!’ Tangwen shouted. Raven’s Laughter turned away from a concerned-looking Britha, and moved towards Tangwen. The hunter stepped back, a hatchet and blade in her hands now. ‘Get away from me!’

‘We just want to take you home,’ Raven’s Laughter said.

‘No! You’ll do something else!’

‘Tangwen, please,’ Britha said.

‘I will kill you,’ she warned. ‘I don’t care about the consequences!’ Then the area was bathed in flickering blue and white light. Tangwen looked behind her at the vast wood. Lightning was surging up from blackening, glowing, smoking treetops. The closest trees to her were shrivelling. The lightning wreathed the form of a winged dragon, just above the roof of the forest, fire in its tail, its maw glowing. Where the lightning touched, flesh was charred. Moving things, armoured creatures, were growing and leaping out of the dragon’s armoured skin and dropping into the trees, the lightning hitting many, but not all of them as they fell. Tangwen’s head whipped around as she felt a hand on her shoulder.

‘We have no time for your fear,’ Raven’s Laughter told her. She noticed the small Croatan woman’s hand was on her own axe. Tangwen swallowed and nodded. Britha and Teardrop were already rushing towards the chariot, the rear of the vehicle peeling open for them. Raven’s Laughter and Tangwen followed. Tangwen’s stomach lurched as the chariot started to rise the moment they were on board, though there was no one controlling it as far as she could see. She felt something at her waist. She looked down. Raven’s Laughter was attaching a strangely shaped box, made of an oddly coloured metal that Tangwen didn’t recognise, to her belt.

‘What are you doing?’ Tangwen demanded.

‘This is a shield, this is Teardrop’s shield.’ Raven’s Laughter shifted to show a similar piece of metal on her hip. ‘You must not get hit by any of the Naga’s weapons. You will know when the shield is up because you will be surrounded by light. Nothing can harm you then, but you will not be able to harm them either. You can still move, however. Do you understand?’ She didn’t but she nodded anyway. She screamed as she was suddenly able to see through the rear of the chariot. Raven’s Laughter was crawling along the neck of the vehicle. Teardrop was looking out of the back. In the distance the huge monster was through the spewing fire. It looked like things were falling off it as it made its way through the sky. Spears of light and lightning were answered with fire as the Otherworldly vessels fought with the dragons.

‘Manitou Pass or the New Pool?’ Raven’s Laughter called from the chariot’s neck.

‘The Pass is closer,’ Teardrop called. Tangwen let out another scream as the chariot veered sideways sharply, and she found herself looking straight down at the land below, yet she did not fall. It was if she was standing flat on the ground.

‘New Pool is safer,’ Raven’s Laughter called back.

‘Not if the dragons catch us in the air.’

Tangwen’s stomach lurched as the chariot levelled out. She edged back towards the benches that ran around the cupola.

It was the circle of stones where they had first arrived in the Otherworld, nestled in the canyon mouth, the rock outcrop looking out over a vast plain in the shadow of the huge god whose wings obscured the sun. She could see dragons over the plain. These ones did not have wings like the one over the forest. They looked like armoured, ridged, flying slugs, with fire in their rears. A hard, thick, dark rain fell from them, and where it landed the plain died as though diseased, and new land grew. The new land looked like hardened tree sap. Occasionally lightning would arc up from the land, always answered by gouts of white flame.

Tangwen stumbled out of the back of the open chariot. Teardrop was out next. He was carrying the case that bore Fachtna’s screaming spear of the sun. He made for the outcrop, and started climbing up it. Britha climbed out next, the metal armour unfolding all around her, her helm also shaped like a raven. She was carrying a strange-looking spear. Finally Raven’s Laughter climbed out and thrust a large, strange, and very ornate bow into Tangwen’s hands. It looked like a bow fit for a god.

‘Now listen to me. If you can see them, you can hit them, but don’t draw attention to us. Only use it if you’re sure they are going to attack. Aim at what you want to hit, not above it, the arrows won’t drop. Understand?’ the Croatan woman asked. Tangwen most certainly didn’t, again, but she could do what Raven’s Laughter asked, so she nodded. The Croatan woman did not look convinced, but handed her a quiver of thick-shafted arrows. ‘It can also call and guide the lightning … but you probably don’t want to worry about that. There is a spirit bound into the bow. If you let it, the bow will teach you how to use it best.’

‘What happens now?’ Tangwen asked. ‘The stones. You open a trod?’ Raven’s Laughter looked up into the sky, through the spears of light and the fire, towards the sun that was too large, felt too close, and the god that obscured its light.

‘We don’t have a control rod. It is with him now.’ She nodded towards the sun. ‘Look!’ The Croatan woman pointed over the plain. Four of the slug-like dragons were turning towards the canyon. Tangwen was aware of light shining through the earth from below the stones. The air felt like it did before storms swept in from the sea over the marshes at home. She jumped when the spear started screaming. Teardrop was knelt on the outcrop. He had opened the case, the spear’s fire reflecting in his shining raven armour. Raven’s Laughter was reaching into the back of the chariot and pulling out another bow. The moment she had it the rear of the vehicle sealed itself, and the chariot, of its own accord, flew out over the diseased plain. Lightning shot up from the earth into the chariot in a constant stream. The vehicle started to glow, and then a thick stream of lightning-wreathed light shot out from the front of it. The light pierced the flesh of one of the slugs, went straight through it like a spear shoved through flesh. Smoking, the slug-like dragon started to fall from the sky. Flame lit up the twilight, burning the chariot as it banked hard and fled the breath of the three remaining dragons.

‘Tangwen!’ Raven’s Laughter shouted. She had one of the thickly-shafted arrows notched. Tangwen did the same thing. Teardrop threw the screaming spear, it left a path of flame over the plain. Tangwen pulled the bowstring back to her cheek. The bow had no pull, the heavy arrow would fly little distance if at all. Then she heard the whispering in her mind, the spirit of the bow, eager for the hunt. She flinched as symbols of light appeared in her vision with promise of where the arrow would hit her prey, the whispering describing how to slay a dragon.
Give
in to fear and you will die here. You know how
to hunt,
she told herself, and suddenly the unfamiliar bow didn’t feel all that unfamiliar. This she knew. This she understood. She listened to the whispers. She listened to herself. She held her breath. The screaming, the flames, all of it went away. It was a perfect moment of calm. She loosed. Then she breathed.