The Burning Man, page 15
part #2 of Kingdom of the Serpent Series
‘Something between the two of them,’ Hunter replied. ‘Don’t ask me – I don’t do all that relationship shit. But you’re right – it’s not like her, given the little I know of her, which leaves me thinking she’s still alive. Can you see anything?’ he said to Tom.
Concern briefly softened Tom’s harsh expression. ‘Nothing of her.’
‘But you are starting to see snatches of the future now?’ Shavi asked.
‘I’ve had a few flashes in the last half hour. As events happen, more and more falls into place. The future is becoming solid.’
‘And not good, by the look on your face,’ Hunter noted. ‘What happened here to make a bad outcome more likely?’ He brushed the question off instantly. ‘No point thinking about what might be. We need to find our target. Are you ready to locate him?’
‘I am ready to try,’ Shavi replied.
‘Not going to lose any more body parts, are you?’
Shavi smiled tightly. ‘I have the upper hand now.’
2
Dawn was breaking when they left the hotel in a four-wheel-drive. They had found several other people sacrificed to Tyr, hanging in their rooms. Hunter had been keen to burn the hotel to the ground to cover their tracks in what would be seen as another terrorist outrage, but Church was adamant that the bodies needed to be left intact for their relatives to claim.
‘You recovered now?’ Laura lounged in Shavi’s lap in the back. ‘You looked like shit when you came out of your little ritual room.’
‘It is becoming easier, but never easy. At least we now know where we are going.’
Church brooded in the front. His eyes flicked continually across the landscape, always searching. ‘Interpol’s going to be looking for us,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’
‘I know a few tricks,’ Hunter said as he steered onto the deserted main road.
Church allowed himself one last look for Ruth. Even after everything that had happened, he still had hope.
Behind them, the Morvren blackened the sky.
3
In the Court of the Soaring Spirit, the night was white with lightning flashes. The storm whirled ferociously around the foothills, bringing with it rain as hard as bullets and thunder so loud it shook the glass in the windows.
Mallory sat beside the bed in the room at the top of the tallest tower, where he had sat for most of the day. Rhiannon barely stirred. Occasionally her eyes would flicker as if she was in the throes of dramatic dreams, but she showed no sign of waking from the Sleep Like Death.
Caitlin slipped in. ‘Still nothing?’
‘Maybe I’m wasting my time. I keep hoping she might come round long enough to give us a hint as to what’s going on here.’
‘Sophie’s been in the ritual for hours. She looks exhausted.’
‘She found nothing?’
‘The Market of Wishful Spirit might as well have fallen off the edge of the world. That’s what she said.’
Mallory cursed under his breath. ‘Everyone’s counting on us.’
‘She’s doing her best. We all are.’
Mallory gently mopped Rhiannon’s forehead with a damp cloth; it appeared to soothe her. ‘I keep thinking there’s something staring me in the face and I can’t see it. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons that Church rescued are missing. Lugh and Math and some of the other Tuatha Dé Danann are missing. The whole population’s terrified. And the Market of Wishful Spirit has gone into hiding. We just need to find the pattern that links it all together and then we’ll start getting somewhere.’
‘You think the Enemy’s already here in the court, undercover?’
‘I’m certain of it.’
Caitlin thoughtfully fingered the axe she now carried at her waist. Mallory was impressed by the transformation that had come over her; she appeared more together than at any time since he had met her.
‘I think we should start questioning people,’ she said. ‘They know something. We just have to find a way to make them talk.’
Mallory was acutely aware of her standing beside him. She had an odd but appealing musk, a hint of lime, which he guessed might be a byproduct of her troubled mental state affecting her body chemistry.
‘You holding it together okay?’ he asked
‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘Give me an axe and the chance to chop something into bloody chunks and I’m a picture of mental health. How dysfunctional is that?’
‘I wouldn’t say any of us are pictures of stability.’
‘You seem okay.’
‘Yeah, I thought I was, until …’ He dried up. He could feel Caitlin’s eyes on him but she was too polite to prompt. ‘I did something really bad,’ he continued. ‘Killed somebody.’
‘They deserved it?’
‘No. The exact opposite. At the time I felt I didn’t have a choice. I was forced into it by some nasty people. But I wonder … if I’d been stronger … smarter …’
She rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ve all been through so much. Death is the catalyst that transforms normal people into what we are now.’
‘Whoever thought up that idea was a real sadist. So I murdered an innocent, and you lost your husband and son.’
Her voice grew unbearably fragile. ‘I’m glad my memory’s back so I can think about them again, but it also means I have to remember them passing. Is that one of the lessons we’re supposed to be learning: you can’t have the good without the bad?’
Another flash of lightning filled the room with white.
‘More like the value of things is defined by the loss of them. No potential loss, no value.’
‘You’re a bit of a philosopher, aren’t you, Mallory?’ she said wryly. Her hand was still on his shoulder.
‘Not me. I’m a man’s man. None of that thinking stuff.’
‘Before the Void got to me, I’d started to come to terms with my loss. I’d even begun to see someone else. Thackeray, that was his name. I wonder where he is now. I wish I could see him again.’
‘Maybe you will—’
The door burst open with a crash and Caitlin took a sharp and unconscious side-step away from Mallory. It was Jerzy.
‘Good friends, come quickly!’
They followed him down the winding stairs and out into the driving rain where the storm was so loud it was impossible to hear what Jerzy was saying. At the main gates there was a group of guards in a circle of torches, their capes swirling as they surrounded a large man on horseback clutching a bundle to his chest. The guards brandished spears and swords threateningly.
Jerzy grabbed Mallory’s arm tightly. ‘You must help her!’ he shouted.
Mallory thrust his way through the guards. They rounded on him, swords pointed at his chest, but backed off when he half-drew Llyrwyn.
Evgen, the captain of the guard, blocked Mallory’s way. ‘You are not required here. Leave now.’
‘Who is that?’
‘It is none of your business, Brother of Dragons—’
‘Ho!’ The rider threw back his hood to reveal a mane of black hair and glowering features. A ragged scar ran above and below his left eye. ‘A Brother of Dragons, you say!’
Mallory pushed past Evgen. He could feel the captain’s hateful eyes on his back.
The rider peered into Mallory’s face. ‘Yes, I can see it now. Soft features, but it is there.’ He half-fell from the horse and caught himself at the last. ‘I have ridden for five days and nights to escape the Enemy. I need a bed, ale and a woman, not necessarily in that order.’
‘Who are you?’ Mallory asked.
The rider grinned. ‘My name is Decebalus, once of Dacia, then a bastard of Rome, now a Freeman of Existence.’
Mallory recalled Church’s description of fighting alongside Decebalus centuries ago in the earliest days of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.
Decebalus raised the bundle cradled in his arms. ‘I return with a great prize.’ He pulled back the blanket to reveal a girl of about eight, blonde ringlets framing a dirty, tear-stained face and wide, frightened eyes. ‘Give greeting to Virginia Dare, first child of the New World.’
4
Wary of returning to the Palace of Glorious Light, Mallory, Caitlin and Decebalus slipped off to the Hunter’s Moon, the barbarian carrying Virginia tenderly beneath his heavy cloak. Evgen set a guard on their trail, but Decebalus knew the dark, winding lanes intimately and they lost him within five minutes.
In a tiny, low-ceilinged backroom before a fire, Decebalus steadied himself with three flagons of ale in quick succession.
‘I have been away from the court for many, many moons, tracking the frontier of the Enemy’s territory,’ he said. ‘I have seen some bastards in my time, but they are the worst. The devastation … the slaughter … But that is not the most awful thing. It is the feeling they leave in their wake. Hopelessness. The end of it all.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes haunted and faraway.
‘What happened to the other Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who were here?’ Caitlin asked.
Decebalus looked at her, puzzled. ‘They are gone?’
‘Missing. No one knows where.’
‘I left to spy on the Enemy’s weaknesses. It was a long and dangerous mission, hiding and running, living off the land. Most of the others were soft, like you. I was best-suited.’ He ground his teeth. ‘I thought the risk was mine, not theirs.’
In his lap, Virginia stirred, lulled asleep by the warmth of the fire after the chill of the night.
‘Where did you find her?’ Mallory asked.
‘In the blasted lands, not far from the Enemy’s fortress. She had discovered a secret way out of their damnable captivity.’ He paused. ‘And she knows a secret way back in.’
Mallory instantly saw the tactical significance, but Caitlin was overcome with sympathy for the child. ‘Poor girl. She’s the one the spiders stole from Roanoke with all the other settlers.’
‘Four hundred years ago.’ Mallory couldn’t forget Church’s expression when he had recounted his failure to save Virginia and the others.
‘She was a baby then,’ Caitlin said. ‘She’s spent eight years of her life with those things. What she must have been through—’
‘Children are hardy,’ Decebalus said. ‘She will recover, given time.’
‘Evgen was keen to stop me getting to you,’ Mallory mused. ‘Perhaps he is the Enemy’s spy. Or,’ he added, ‘perhaps Niamh didn’t really have that spider removed after all.’
‘She sounded honest,’ Caitlin protested. ‘And if she is working with the Enemy, why hasn’t she sent us the way of the other Brothers and Sisters of Dragons? Or killed us in our sleep?’
Decebalus finished his ale. ‘Because she wants something?’
‘Could be the Extinction Shears,’ Mallory said. ‘The spiders can’t find them. They might think we have more information.’
‘We can be away from here within the hour,’ Decebalus said.
‘No. Everything we need is here,’ said Mallory.
‘We stay,’ Caitlin agreed. ‘You hide here with Virginia. We’ll remain at the palace, try to pick up some information about what might have happened to the others.’
‘A risky, some would say foolish strategy,’ Decebalus noted. ‘I like it.’
5
Sophie emerged from the ritual so weary she could barely stand. Using the Craft in the Far Lands was a rush, all her senses on fire, her mind experiencing things that would change her for ever. But even abilities that had been a wild dream a few days earlier could not uncover any sign of the Market of Wishful Spirit. It was as if it had never existed.
Niamh waited in the anteroom, hands clasped behind her back as she stared into a mirror with a sunburst design. She gave a troubled smile.
‘Have you had good fortune in your search?’
‘Not yet, but I’m not going to give up.’ Sophie flopped onto a sumptuous couch, feeling as if she could fall asleep in seconds. ‘Can I help you with something?’ she asked wearily.
‘Counsel.’ Niamh sat beside her. She curled her legs under her and stretched, cat-like. The movement revealed a striking vulnerability that Sophie had not seen before. ‘I cannot discuss my doubts and fears with my own people. It would be seen as a sign of weakness. If Church were here, I know he would help, but he … abandoned me.’ The final words were barely audible, but Sophie could hear the longing in them.
‘He’s got a big responsibility.’
‘I know. We all have. There is no room for the personal in our lives.’
‘But we have to have that. It’s what keeps us going through all the hard times. Everyone who knows me says I’m strong, able to cope with anything. And I am strong. But if I didn’t have Mallory, I’d be … lost. I love him so much.’
‘And he loves you?’
‘He says so. I … I believe him. Our relationship is weird. We never really tell each other our feelings. We just sort of know. Although … I don’t think he knows exactly how much I need him.’
‘Then you should tell him.’
‘It’s not that easy. I don’t want to appear weak – or desperate. And when you love somebody that much it makes you weak on some level. It makes you scared, because you have something to lose.’ Long-suppressed memories of the heartache that Mallory had healed threatened to rise. She fought to hold them back, knowing they would tear her apart again. She closed her eyes, and gradually calmed herself. Sleepiness crept up on her.
‘I understand what you say. We all fear abandonment. We need that love. For me, there are times of great loneliness … at night … during the stillness after dawn. I have grown fond of your people. I miss your companionship.’
Sophie was aware of Niamh’s closeness, the arm trailing behind her, gently touching her hair. An atmosphere of honeyed warmth enveloped her. It appeared to be exuding from Niamh, and it brought a fluttering deep in Sophie’s belly. ‘How can we help you?’ she asked lazily.
‘Advise me in my negotiations with the other courts, and in my preparation for the coming battle.’
‘Of course we’ll do what we can.’
‘Fragile Creatures … so beautiful,’ Niamh said gently.
Sophie smiled. ‘Oh, that’s good, coming from you.’
‘The Golden Ones do not see the surface. We look deep inside. And that is where the beauty lies in all you Fragile Creatures.’
Sophie felt Niamh’s fingers gently play with her hair. She almost jumped when the fingertips brushed her scalp.
‘Church opened my eyes to the beauty of your people,’ Niamh continued. ‘Each of you shines like a star. So far beyond us … rising so fast.’
Sophie lost herself in Niamh’s ethereal eyes.
‘It takes my breath away,’ Niamh whispered. ‘All of you. You.’
Niamh’s fingers exerted a slight pressure on the back of Sophie’s head, easing her forward. Niamh’s eyes pulled her in with the depth of her yearning.
‘I am so lonely,’ Niamh whispered.
Sophie felt the bloom of Niamh’s breath on her cheek, then on her lips. The shimmer of golden light blinded her. A touch on her lips, an electric jolt, pressing harder. Heat rose inside her. Slowly her mouth responded, warm and soft.
6
Dombas was a small town almost lost in the folding snow of the majestic Norwegian highlands, about an hour’s drive from the hotel. At five a.m. it was deserted, but the tiny railway station was open for business, though equally devoid of life. In the warm waiting room, Hunter continued to swig Jack Daniel’s while keeping watch. The others huddled by the fire.
‘We could call the Last Train,’ Shavi mused. ‘Perhaps it would help us reach our destination quicker.’
‘What?’ Tom said with angry disbelief. ‘You have ridden the Last Train?’
‘It wasn’t exactly the Orient Express.’ Laura’s face was lost in the hood of her parka. ‘More like a cattle carriage for freaks. And it smelled just as bad.’
‘Stay away from it!’ Tom shouted. ‘Do you know where it has come from? Do you know where it is going?’
‘No,’ Laura said in a couldn’t-care-less tone.
‘Be thankful you don’t.’ Tom delved into his pocket for the tin that contained his roll-up materials. ‘Bloody know-nothing idiots,’ he muttered.
‘Oslo’s going to be a problem,’ Hunter said. ‘Big city like that, we’ll have to be careful wandering around.’
The sound of the approaching train rumbled through the walls. Church stirred himself from his brooding and went to the door for one final look out. ‘She’s not dead,’ he said. ‘She can’t be dead.’
7
Veitch made his way down Karl Johans Gate, dodging the artists lining Oslo’s main street. It was late morning and the bars, cafés and restaurants along the route were already beginning to fill.
There was a bright optimism to the city that dovetailed with his own mood. It was a strange feeling. The only other time in his life when he’d felt even vaguely hopeful was when he had discovered his heritage as a Brother of Dragons alongside Church, Ruth, Shavi and Laura. Good people striving to be better. It had given him a sense of purpose that had always been missing.
But then he had been manipulated by higher powers, forced to betray the only people in the world he cared about, and his reason for living was exposed as the sham it truly was. He blamed the gods, he blamed Church. But in his darker moments he knew the truth: he was a loser who had brought it all on himself. When the Void had originally brought him back into the world, he had considered suicide; there was no way to fill the emptiness inside him.
But now things were different.
On the edge of Vigeland Park, he paused and took a deep breath of the cold, crystal air. He thought he could smell juniper berries and a hint of the fjord beyond. So many experiences since he had returned, so many new sights and thoughts that it was difficult to process it all. He remembered Church telling him once that every new experience turned you into a new person. So who was he now? That was the question.
