Wrath of Kerberos (20 page)

“Tell us of the entity,” Dunsany said. “What did Kerberos do?”

“The first signs of its approach to our world was the rise of a new faith; an insidious church that promised much but gave little, all the while instilling its hateful theologies within its growing flock. A new god was coming – the priests of this religion said – a new deity, stronger than the one who looked down upon them, who would guide them all to a golden age of prosperity and spiritual discovery. The one everyone thought of as their god was nothing of the kind, merely a spiritual leech, feeding on souls to sate its own greed. There was no heaven. There was no better life to come. Those who gave themselves to this old, redundant god were giving themselves to oblivion. But those who dedicated their prayers and worship to the coming god would see life eternal.

“This new church made people afraid, and in their fear they gave themselves over to the new faith entirely.”

“We know another faith which operates along very similar lines, don’t we, Silus?” Dunsany flicked the stub of his cigarillo into the fire. “Fear seems to be a very good way to get people to believe.”

“Indeed,” Illiun said. “But there was nothing we could do for our creators. It was not our place, as their servants, to draw attention to the mistakes they were making. All we could do was continue in our allotted tasks, managing the environment that their new god would soon destroy.

“Almost nothing of the old religion was left when the entity, Kerberos, showed its face. At first it was just a blue smudge out on the edge of the void, far from our own sun, but year by year it grew, as did the new church. The astronomers observing its approach said that it moved like no heavenly body they had ever seen, ignoring all laws of physics as it fell into an erratic orbit around our planet. The adherents of the new faith greeted its arrival with a religious fervour that, more than once, threatened to spill over into violence. The few remaining disciples of the old faith looked on in dread, yet dared not raise their voice against the new order.”

“And you’re sure that this new god was Kerberos?” Silus said.

“There is no doubt that the entity that brought such destruction to my home is the same that now hangs above our heads.”

“But you’re wrong about Kerberos. You must be. Don’t you see th–”

“Silus. Hush! Let Illiun finish his story.”

“I’m sorry. Please, go on.”

“There is no need to apologise,” Illiun said. “It took a long time for the entity to show its hand. For years it hung beside the pearlescent sphere that was the old god, the clouds that wreathed its form showing nothing but the occasional flicker of lightning. But then, on the anniversary of the fifth year of its arrival, Kerberos began to eclipse the old god, the great blue disk moving slowly across its face. The clouds of Kerberos darkened as it moved into full eclipse and then it blazed with a light many times the magnitude of our own sun. Those who had been watching the eclipse were instantly blinded. In the Royal Observatory, the head astronomer was said to have had his eyes cooked in their sockets as he watched through the great telescope.

“Across the face of our world raged many storms: the seas rising up all around the coasts and washing away cities that had stood for thousands of years in one violent deluge; hurricanes tearing into the sturdiest of structures and scattering the people sheltered within like dandelion seeds; torrential rains putting whole lands under water within moments.

“When Kerberos moved once more, the god that it had eclipsed was gone. It was as though it had been consumed by the usurper.

“Those of the new faith who had survived the maelstrom sang the praises of their god with renewed fervour, reasoning that as survivors of the storm they were truly of the elect. And they were indeed chosen, but not in the way they had hoped.

“The adherents of the new faith were the first to die. There was no warning, no prelude to this mass cull; they simply expired where they stood, each with his or her eyes raised to the heavens and a look of abject horror on their faces.”

“Wait a minute,” Dunsany said. “Are you saying that Kerberos killed your creators?”

Again, Silus wondered whether Illiun was lying, perhaps to hide the crime of which Kerberos had told him his people were guilty. But then there was still that doubt – what if Kerberos Himself were deceiving Silus? After all, as Dunsany had pointed out to him many a time, who truly knew the mind of a god?

“That is indeed what I am saying.”

“Then how did you escape?” Silus said.

“Not all of us
did
escape. However, as Kerberos had been approaching our world, some of us had been working on a project that would enable us to leave it. Those who had created us had tasked us with turning our minds to the exploration of the void. They had observed other bodies out in the darkness, so they set us to building a vessel that would enable us to reach them. In the thousands of years it took for Kerberos to reach our planet we’d built a ship, though instead of being used for exploration as intended, it was used to escape the wrath of the entity.

“When it became clear that Kerberos was going to harvest the planet of the lives that populated it, I gathered together those I could and herded them onto the ship. Even as we took to the skies, the planet was dying all around us, food for the vile leech that had come to feed upon us. The entity was not expecting anybody to escape, and once it realised what we had done it came after us. And we have been running from it ever since.”

And now I’m to complete what Kerberos began
, Silus thought.

No matter the truth of Illiun’s story, it did not change the facts. If he and his people were allowed to remain here – to breed, to grow into a new civilisation on this young world that was destined to become Twilight – then everything they knew would never be; they would tumble into oblivion as their future history unravelled.

“Dunsany! Dunsany!”

Kelos came running towards them, kicking up great plumes of sand in his haste. Silus unsheathed his sword and stood, ready to face whatever threat was now coming their way. However, as Kelos stumbled and slid down the dune towards them, it was not an expression of fear he wore on his face, but one of anticipation, excitement even.

“It’s here!” the mage said, gripping Dunsany’s arms.

“What’s here, Kelos?”

“Magic. I can finally sense magic. This world isn’t completely dead after all.”

“Where?” Silus said.

“Not far, perhaps a day’s travel in the direction the star is leading us. Gods, I never thought I’d find the threads again. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am.”

Silus looked towards the star burning low on the horizon. Kerberos had said that Silus was to guide Illiun and his people towards a certain creature. Was it this that Kelos had sensed?

As Silus prepared to gather together the camp, he thought that he heard a low, distant keening.

E
MUEL BARELY HAD
time to scrabble onto Calabash’s back before the dragon took to the air. Below them, Piotr sniffed at the ground where the last of the orcs had been destroyed, before following them. The dragon kept its distance, however, as though not wanting to intrude on Calabash’s grief. And was this what the dragon was feeling, Emuel wondered? Was this why the creature did not respond to his touch? He felt sure that he couldn’t know the mind of a being so alien, but he thought that he sensed a certain tension in Calabash, a certain heaviness in the way it held its head.

They followed the light of the setting sun as it retreated before them, and Calabash put on an extra burst of speed, as though trying to outrace the night. The temperature quickly tumbled as the stars wheeled above them and Emuel tried to pull his cloak closer about his shoulders. The wind that tore at him made this a far from easy task, and at length he had to sacrifice his cloak to the wind, lest he also lose himself. In shirtsleeves and tunic the cold bit deep, but though he shouted at Calabash to land, to seek shelter, the dragon flew on.

Emuel could see nothing below them now; there was only the dark, featureless plain. Kerberos hung low to their right and Emuel offered up a prayer to the god to intervene: to remind its creature of the passenger that clung on even against the gales and the cold that assailed him.

When Emuel lost the feeling in his hands, he gripped even harder with his knees. He found himself reminiscing about the mines he had worked in as a boy. How absolute and shocking the darkness had been the one time his lamp had run out of oil as he’d been operating a trap; the stink of guano and the small soft sounds of movement close by; the tickle of insects as they crawled across his exposed flesh...

Only when a brilliant flash shone through his eyelids did Emuel realise that he had fallen asleep. He snapped open his eyes and jerked upright, almost losing his hold on his mount.

Ahead of them a burning ball of rock was spiralling towards the earth, a tail of black smoke trailing from its rear to entwine the dragon and the eunuch. Emuel gagged on the stench of sulphur as the smoke rushed against his face. Calabash wheeled to follow the meteor, dipping its wings as it went into a dive, calling out to Piotr as it went.

The roar of the meteor grew louder as they followed it into a steep-sided valley, violet and emerald flames erupting from fissures in the rock, washing the scene below them in a strange, frenetic light.

Emuel could well guess at what lay within the heart of the burning stone, and Calabash and Piotr sang it down to the earth as it streaked low over a desert landscape. They landed almost at the same time as the meteor, the sand thrown into the air by the great rock’s impact falling around them in a glittering rain. Emuel slid from Calabash’s back and tumbled to the ground, where he waited for sensation to return to his limbs.

Ahead of him, the egg that lay in the centre of the glowing pit was bigger than any Emuel had yet seen. It rose over the dragons, its surface a pure obsidian that reflected their questing forms. Calabash moved in close, only to skitter back as the egg cracked with a sound like the breaking of a great slab. A single claw emerged through the rent, dripping with a pale viscous fluid, and Emuel was shocked by its sheer size. It withdraw as the egg shuddered again, the fractures marbling its surface multiplying in number as the creature within battered against its confinement.

Emuel and the dragons flinched as the egg shattered. There was a powerful downdraft as the creature within unfurled its wings, and they looked up as the stars were eclipsed by the dragon’s vast form.

The dragon howled, and the deep, bass sound of its call resonated in Emuel’s skull, bringing on a dizzying wave of nausea that threatened to take him to the edge of consciousness. He stumbled against Calabash, whose own voice harmonised with the monster; Piotr joined in, adding further depth to the song. The creature that now stood before them was more than twice the size of Emuel’s companions, its scaled flesh the same azure as the deity whose face seemed to race through the clouds above them, and indeed the dragon’s flesh appeared to move with the same urgency, the blue scales darkening and lightening in tandem with the god that looked down on them all.

The dragon brought the song to an abrupt end and looked down. Calabash and Piotr bowed their heads, and when Emuel didn’t do the same the azure dragon’s head snaked down – the graceful curve of its long neck reminding Emuel of a swan’s – until it was face-to-face with the eunuch. Emuel looked to either side of him, mentally urging his companions to give him a sign as to what he should do. He was about to reach out his hand and lay his palm against the dragon’s head in a gesture of friendship when – with a great intake of breath that sounded like the wind whistling in a deep cavern – the giant lizard roared.

A foetid wind blasted against Emuel’s face, seeming to sink into his flesh and insinuate itself throughout his body. The eunuch felt his bladder and bowels loosen. He cowered, expecting to be devoured at any moment. Instead, the dragon rose on its haunches, its head held to one side as though it was listening for something.

Hot piss trickling down his leg, Emuel heard it.

From every direction came the response as the dragons spreading across the globe raised their voices, joined by Calabash and Piotr, revelling in the call of their fraternity. The blue dragon grunted and took to the air. Emuel watched it go, amazed that something so vast, so obviously heavy, could fly. He was still watching it snake through the skies when Calabash nudged Emuel onto its back and, followed by Piotr, took off after their new master.