The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (28 page)

‘I’ve no idea. What are you getting at?’

‘There were five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who fought at the Fall. Everyone knows the story – they’ve become part of modern mythology. They’re the reason the Government expended so much energy looking for you.’

Mallory made a dismissive gesture. ‘So? Two of them died. Jack Churchill, the leader, and Ryan Veitch, the one who’s supposed to have betrayed them. At least, that’s how the stories go. These days you can’t tell what’s truth and what’s been made up.’

Hunter smiled like a cat. ‘Two of them are dead. Three are still alive. And we’re going to find them.’

Sophie watched Caitlin stride out along the battlements in the pre-dawn dark, thunder and lightning given flesh. Though the gods lined the ramparts, golden-skinned and beautiful, tall and powerful, Caitlin was above them, god and mortal combined, greater than the sum of the parts. As she passed, a ripple ran through the gods in their shining armour: eyes turned her way, body language shifted, whispers passed from mouths to ears.

‘How long is this going to last?’ Thackeray’s eyes were deep pools of concern.

‘Until she gets back what she feels she’s lost,’ Sophie said.

‘Then let’s hope she gets it back quickly.’

Harvey hovered uncomfortably behind his friend. ‘She scares me. When you look in her face, it’s like she could do anything. But there’s something about her that’s a bit horny, too.’ Thackeray glared at Harvey, who shifted awkwardly. ‘Sorry. Just stating a fact.’

‘Do you think she’s done the right thing?’ Thackeray asked Sophie.

Sophie could see that he felt he was losing the woman he loved, at a time when she hadn’t even decided if she loved him back. What could she say? No – this is the worst decision she’s ever made? The Morrigan will eat her up and spit her out? Nothing
human can hope to contain the Morrigan’s ravenous desires and epic emotions?

‘Caitlin’s strong. If anybody can do this, she can,’ she said, and it was true. Sophie wondered if she could match Caitlin’s drive to sacrifice anything for the common good. She thought of Mallory – could she sacrifice him? But whenever his face came up in her mind now, it was misty, and a weight of uncertainty hung around it. The price she had paid to Math was proving bigger with each passing day. She missed Mallory deeply, and loved him immensely, but increasingly it felt as if she was experiencing those emotions second-hand.

As Caitlin returned from her walk along the battlements, it felt as though an enormous battery was drawing near to them, so charged was the air in her presence. She was now dressed in the colours of her mistress: a scarlet silk shirt was a blaze of bloody colour against the black of her trousers and boots, the leather weapons belts that crossed over her chest and hung at her hips, the black leather gauntlets; her hair hung loose and that, too, appeared to have turned almost black. But it was her eyes that struck everyone the most: they now appeared to be almost all pupil, as if two black holes led into the depths of her head.

‘They’re going to attack later. No mistake.’ It was Caitlin’s voice, but it was laced with a frostiness that made them all shiver.

Sophie peered over the battlements into the sea of shadows that washed away across the plain from the walls. In it, numerous bonfires burned as far as the eye could see; it gave the illusion of stars blazing in the inky night sky.

‘How many of them are there?’ Harvey asked fearfully.

‘So many that we’re never going to get out of here again,’ Thackeray replied with a quiet desolation.

Sophie had seen the extent of the army the previous evening, just before the sun had set: thousands of little people, dark and hairy like rats, swarming over one another in anticipation of the feast ahead. It was impossible to believe they had once been like the stately gods of the Court of Soul’s Ease, before their base desires had devolved them.

Amongst them were huge weapons, many of which Sophie didn’t recognise; others resembled medieval siege machines, though on a grander scale. They had been brought from their own
former courts, or looted from the courts that had fallen before them.

‘This is all so pointless,’ Sophie said with frustration. ‘They’re fighting over the evolution of humanity. Meanwhile, we’re getting wiped out by something they could help us defeat.’

‘This is
our
destiny.’ Lugh had walked up silently behind them. ‘We must decide the future of our own kind before we turn to yours.’

Thackeray leaned on the ramparts to peer at the massed ranks. ‘I think it’s already been decided, don’t you?’

‘You’re still sure they’re going to attack today?’ Sophie asked Lugh.

‘They have the weapons they need. They have the forces. There is no reason for them to wait any longer. And if the Court of Soul’s Ease falls, our remaining allies will swiftly follow – perhaps even the Court of the Final Word.’

Sophie conjured up an image of Dian Cecht in his scarlet robes and his mysterious words to her in a dream:
The next time you see me, you shall not see me
. ‘Why didn’t Dian Cecht come here?’ she asked. ‘Surely it’s safer.’

‘As always, he has his own business to unfold. Great things take place in the Court of the Final Word, greater than you or I could ever imagine. And it is said that Dian Cecht now undertakes the greatest work of all.’

Sophie was impressed by Lugh’s nobility in the face of what many in the court secretly considered an impending disaster. She turned back to the enemy and listened to the slow beat of drums that had risen up in their midst. ‘You have the resources to repel them?’

‘We have a formidable armoury. And we have her.’ Lugh nodded towards Caitlin before walking away to inspect his troops.

Thackeray approached Caitlin hesitantly. ‘How are you?’ he asked, as though talking to a stranger.

‘I am the Nightmare,’ Caitlin replied dreamily, looking past him towards the star-sprinkled sky. ‘She is the rider … I am the horse … and we bring with us the dark.’ A jolt ran through her and she turned to Sophie, Thackeray and Harvey. ‘You don’t have to worry about me. I’m still the person you know. But now I feel as if I’ve got electricity ripping through my veins. I can see further than I
ever could before, in the tiniest detail. I think I could run for ever without taking a break. It’s like being some kind of superhuman.’

There was a gleam in Caitlin’s eyes that made Sophie uneasy. ‘There’s got to be some other way back to our own world, aside from getting involved in this fight,’ she said.

‘If there is, I don’t know it,’ Caitlin said. ‘There are only certain places where it’s easy to cross over, and there’s no such place in this court. Fighting our way out is the best chance we have.’

Thackeray gave voice to the fatalism they all felt. ‘Fighting our way past that lot? That’s no chance at all.’

Caitlin was dismissive of his tone. ‘We have to do what we can.’ She returned to the battlements in a manner that suggested they were all irrelevant.

‘I tell you, she’s going to go psycho,’ Harvey said. ‘She’ll turn on us next.’

‘She won’t,’ Thackeray said defiantly.

Sophie wasn’t so sure; everything she had heard about the Morrigan warned that the goddess was unpredictable, her rhythms chaotic, her agenda her own.

‘Can’t you do something?’ Thackeray said to her desperately. ‘Get us out of this madhouse? You’ve got all these wacky powers. The shit’s going to hit the fan later and I’d rather not be around when it does.’ He paused, then added, ‘And I don’t want Caitlin here, either.’

‘I don’t know what I can do. This is a different landscape, with different rules.’ Thackeray looked at her with such fierce hope in his eyes that she couldn’t turn away. ‘I’ll find something,’ she said, moving away quickly before they saw her confident smile fade.

The winding streets were ablaze with lanterns and candles in the early-morning darkness as Sophie hurried over the cobbles, asking every passer-by if they had seen Ceridwen. Eventually she was directed to a large white building resembling a mosque, with minarets and slit windows. Inside, lilting music played quietly. In stark contrast to the mood at the walls, the serenity inside was so potent that Sophie calmed quickly.

A hallway led into a maze of rooms, all of them filled with vegetation – tall, sharp-leafed plants in huge round pots, others in beds set into the floor itself. Clematis and ivy entwined around
pillars, hanging like cobwebs overhead. A path wound amongst the plants, with a Celtic spiral pattern in mosaic swirling along its centre.

Sophie followed it until she came to a vast hall filled with oaks that had pushed up through the stone flags to fill the roof space with their canopy. Everywhere, paper lanterns hung from the branches so that it appeared as if the upper reaches were alive with fireflies. With the music and the incense and the lights, there was an atmosphere of subtle magics; Sophie felt at home.

Somewhere nearby, a mellifluous voice was singing.

‘Ceridwen?’ Sophie called out.

The singing stopped. ‘Above your head, good sister.’

Sophie looked up to see Ceridwen reclining on a platform in the branches with lanterns hung all around its edge so that she was bathed in light. Ceridwen motioned for Sophie to climb a rope ladder to join her. The platform was covered with sumptuous cushions on which Ceridwen lay, occasionally sucking on a bubbling hookah.

‘Has the battle started, Sister of Dragons?’ Ceridwen asked lazily.

‘Not yet, but they’ll be at it soon. Shouldn’t you be there?’

‘There is nothing I can do. My world is green and living, not dead and blood-stained. That place belongs to your new companion, my dark sister.’ She was plainly concerned about Caitlin’s bond with the Morrigan.

Sophie sat on one of the cushions as the dreamy atmosphere closed around her. ‘You’ve helped me a great deal so far, but I need your help again.’

Ceridwen nodded slowly, her eyes huge and dark.

‘We have to find a way back to our world. We’re needed there.’

‘You know there are no doorways to the Fixed Lands in the Court of Soul’s Ease, sister.’

‘I know. But is there another way? Is there anything I can do?’

As Ceridwen silently read Sophie’s face, Sophie knew there was something. She waited patiently while Ceridwen sucked on the hookah again. Finally the goddess said, ‘You have great power, Sister of Dragons, and even you do not know the extent of it. You can manipulate the spirit-energy as well as your predecessor,
though you have yet to learn to control it. Use your Craft. Let the Blue Fire burn through you, and it may yet show you a way home.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Ritual, sister. Unleash the serpent-energy, let it rise up through you. You know how.’ And Sophie did, and she knew what a terrible thing she would have to do to achieve it. ‘There is a place between the Far Lands and the Fixed Lands,’ Ceridwen continued, ‘a Watchtower from which all of Existence can be viewed, all can be reached. It was a haven for some of my kind in times past, a place where we could not be seen by hungry eyes. Let the Blue Fire light your path to the Watchtower and then seek your way home. But there will be dangers. Other things have taken refuge in the Watchtower in these troubled times, and they may resent your presence.’

‘Thank you,’ Sophie said.

She made her way to the rope ladder, but as she put her foot on the first rung, Ceridwen said, ‘You must beware, sister. Not all dangers will come from expected quarters.’

As Sophie climbed down into the shadows, she knew exactly what Ceridwen’s warning meant, and she feared what was to come.

‘I think you’ve got a suicidal streak.’ Hunter led the way down a darkened corridor in the heart of Queen’s College. They’d made their way there after slipping out of the Brasenose/Lincoln underground complex. Behind him, Mallory paused regularly to gather his strength. ‘After escaping a high-security cell, most people would have been jumping the last train to Freeville.’

‘I’m not most people.’ Mallory was wearing a thick parka with the hood pulled up to obscure his identity; Hunter had lifted it from a cloakroom. One of the guards would be going home cold.