The Burning Man, page 29
part #2 of Kingdom of the Serpent Series
‘We’re only human, too,’ Church said.
‘Perhaps you were once. But your experiences have changed you. You stand against the gods with impunity. You wield weapons that were not meant for men. You are as far beyond me now as the gods are beyond you.’
He turned without another word and trudged towards Cairo. Church watched him go, desperately afraid that what he had said was true, for if it was, the lives they knew, and to which they hoped to return, were over.
8
The cauldron of the southern Sahara was beginning to heat up. The first curve of the sun wavered in the haze on the horizon, but the moon and a scattering of stars still glowed ghostly in the lightening sky.
‘Hard drive.’ Church was swathed in a scarf wrapped tightly around his head to keep the biting sand at bay.
‘I do not know how Laura continues to hang on, neither alive nor dead,’ Shavi said.
‘I hope you’re both satisfied,’ Tom said harshly. ‘Three days we’ve wasted on this wild-goose chase. Veitch must be halfway to China by now.’
‘You really think we could just let her die?’ Church replied.
Before them lay a complex of standing stones that stretched for miles: a circle of flat stones surrounded by four pairs of tall stones, and further afield megaliths that rose up ten feet above the desolate landscape.
Shavi indicated some of the stones. ‘You can still see the solstice and cardinal alignments. Here in Nabta, this circle was used six thousand years ago, and probably earlier. At least a millennium before Stonehenge. Is that not amazing?’
‘Wonderful,’ Tom said tartly.
‘Religion, science and human society, all coming together at one point. The Egyptian civilization started here.’
‘Is there enough Blue Fire left in the sand?’ Church asked.
Shavi scanned the ground. ‘Thin currents, but I believe it will do.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘The Blue Fire is starting to dry up now that it has been cut off from the source. Soon we will not be able to travel between here and Tir n’a n’Og. We will be trapped on Earth.’
‘That’s what the Enemy wants,’ Church said. ‘To cut us off from the universe.’
Hunter emerged from the truck with Laura in his arms. ‘Are we ready to do this?’
‘Are you?’
‘Why haven’t I got a sword like yours? That would make things so much easier.’
‘You think?’
‘A warrior without a weapon? Not good.’
‘Stop moaning and find something,’ Tom snapped. ‘You’ve been complaining about that ever since I met you. Anyone would think you didn’t want a weapon.’
Hunter laughed quietly, and then made his way into the centre of the circle. ‘All right, throw the switch. Press the button. Say the magic word. A whole new world in which to indulge myself. I like the sound of that. And nobody knows my reputation.’
‘Good luck,’ Church called.
Tom and Shavi moved to the tall menhirs on either side of the circle. When the rising sun clipped the top of the stones, they placed their right hands firmly on the rock. The earth energy pulsed beneath their fingertips, increasing in force with each beat of their hearts until it rushed upwards to form a blazing azure structure high over the circle. Discharges crackled amongst the stones.
Church had one last sight of Hunter, cocky and grinning, with Laura in his arms, and then there was a flash of blue light and they were gone.
9
Even in the first light the interior of the truck baked as they drove north along the empty desert road. Shavi had remained silent ever since they had set off, staring through the open passenger window across the bleak expanse of sand. Without any warning his head pitched forward and then back, and he gave a low moan.
‘You all right?’ Church asked.
After a moment, Shavi replied weakly, ‘I saw … I saw …’ One hand made a claw over his alien eye, as if he was about to pluck it out. ‘I saw death.’
‘No surprise there.’ Tom sniffed. He turned the ring on his finger with repressed anxiety.
‘For the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. It follows us closely, like your ravens, Church, and not all of us will survive what is to come.’ He sighed. ‘One of us will die soon.’
‘Laura?’ Shavi was only confirming what Church had felt instinctively since the ravens had started to follow him.
‘I do not know. It is not clear. But I fear for her, Church, and for Hunter.’ Tears rimmed his eyes. He looked back out through the window, and no one spoke for the next hour.
Chapter Ten
THE WAY
1
What is the Burning Man? The question was whispered throughout the claustrophobic, labyrinthine streets and alleys of the Court of the Soaring Spirit, and in the back rooms of the Hunter’s Moon, and in the coffee houses and grocery stores and anywhere people passed, quickly, for no one gathered long in a place. It was as if every resident instinctively felt they were being pursued by forces unknown. There was no rest in the courts and little hope, for the distant sound of the Enemy’s war drums never ceased, and there were ashes in the wind, and whenever they raised their eyes from the gutter, the Burning Man was there, in the sky on the horizon, hanging over them, a mystery and a threat.
In the secret network of rooms tucked away at the back of the Hunter’s Moon, the goddess Rhiannon still lay in the Sleep Like Death. Decebalus cared for her around the clock, with assistance from the young Virginia Dare, but it was not work for a barbarian and he was growing irritable with the constraints of his small existence.
‘She’s not improving?’ Mallory paced by the fire. He had barely rested since they had returned from Ogma’s library.
‘She muttered one word in the throes of a fever dream, but it made no sense to me.’ Decebalus slurped noisily on mutton broth. ‘How much longer must I wait here? She will not awaken.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘She has been like this for days. What will change?’
‘Stay positive. She’s all we’ve got. She knows who did this to her, and probably why.’
Grunting, Decebalus pushed back the empty bowl, eyeing Virginia who was curled up asleep in one corner. ‘So your trip to the library was a waste of time.’
‘You need to kick back, Decebalus. Those veins on your neck are starting to pulse.’ Mallory ignored Decebalus’s glare. ‘For some reason, Math implanted in our minds the image of a calendar split between the good months and the bad. MAT and ANM. Summer and winter.’
‘So it was a waste of time.’
‘Only till we crack the code. Math probably expected one of his own kind to find it, and that they’d know what he was getting at. We’re in the dark.’
‘Until you find the light. You are not going to ask one of those golden-skinned bastards?’
‘We don’t know who we can trust.’
‘You cannot trust any of them, ever.’
Mallory looked to Rhiannon. ‘I could trust her. She was good to me once.’
‘Then you find yourself in a difficult situation. Where next?’
They both started at a knock at the door; Decebalus went for his axe, Mallory for his sword. Another coded knock followed. It was Caitlin, her features delicate against the coarse hood and cloak that swathed her.
‘You made sure you weren’t followed?’ Decebalus said.
‘Of course.’ She marched in and flopped onto a large wooden chair before the fire. ‘I looked all over for Sophie.’
‘She said she was going to use her Craft to try to find something,’ Mallory said.
‘She wasn’t in her room, so where’s she doing it?’ She kicked off her boots and curled her legs under her. ‘She seems to have a real downer on me at the moment. What’s wrong with her?’
Decebalus sighed loudly. ‘I need a drink. Find me in the bar when you are done prattling.’
After he had gone, Mallory said, ‘I think we make him uncomfortable.’
‘Why would that be?’ Caitlin didn’t look at him when she spoke.
Mallory steeled himself and drew up a chair. ‘We’ve been stuck with this Pendragon Spirit and none of us knows what it really means.’
‘You like your non sequiturs.’
‘We do know it creates a bond between us,’ Mallory forced himself to continue. ‘The kind of bond you rarely find in life.’
Caitlin grew serious. ‘That’s true. I feel as though I know you … all of you … better than anyone. Like the friends you always wished for as a kid, but never found.’
‘That’s it exactly. It’s a spiritual thing, if that doesn’t sound all hippie and girly.’ He let the words hang for a moment, aware that Cardin was watching him intently. ‘That connection is on a spectrum. Friendship merges into—’
‘Love?’
He nodded. ‘Church and Ruth. Me and Sophie. Patterns repeating. Always patterns.’
‘I know what you’re trying to say.’
Her words brought him up sharp. ‘There’s that connection again.’
‘Or maybe I’m just really smart.’ She smiled, but it didn’t ring true. ‘I loved my husband more than anything. Yes, we had our problems, mainly down to me, but that love never went away. I miss him every day. I met someone else a while after Grant died, Thackeray was his name, and I started to grow fond of him. Until the Void turned the world upside down and now I’ve got no idea where he is. And then there’s you.’
Her words still hit Mallory hard despite long knowing the unspoken emotions that lay between them.
‘You’re telling me the Pendragon Spirit may be causing the feelings between us, or it may be magnifying what would already be there,’ she continued. ‘The why doesn’t matter, just that those feelings are there. But recognising doesn’t mean acting on them. I know what I feel, and I know you feel something, too, and it’s beating you up because you love Sophie. And I know you do because I see it so clearly whenever the two of you are together.’
He nodded, now entranced even more by the depths of her empathy.
‘And I recognise what you two have, and I’m not going to go against that. Do you really think I would? The friendship that’s the basis of my feelings means I don’t want to see you or Sophie hurt, whatever that means for me.’ She took a breath. ‘I love you, Mallory. That’s the first and last time I’ll ever say it.’
Her words brought both relief and regret. ‘You’re a good person.’
‘I know. And life would be so much easier if I wasn’t.’
‘And life would be a little less confusing if good things couldn’t be bad, and vice versa. It’s all MAT and ANM and ANM and MAT.’
‘MAT … ANM.’
The words were so quiet they were almost an exhalation. It took Mallory a second to realise they had come from Rhiannon. He raced Caitlin to her side.
Rhiannon was still in a coma, but now her lips moved soundlessly. Mallory put his ear close to her mouth. ‘What about MAT and ANM?’ he asked quietly.
After a moment he withdrew, lifting one of Rhiannon’s eyelids to check her pupil. ‘Still gone.’
‘Did she make any sense?’
‘She said, “Turn the seasons to find the Gateway to Winter.” ‘
2
Sophie and Niamh sprawled on the queen’s sumptuous bed in her private chamber. It was hot from the roaring fire and the air was filled with a heavy perfume. Sophie stretched dreamily while Niamh combed her hair with long, soothing strokes.
‘You seem troubled,’ Niamh said.
‘It’s that witch. And my boyfriend. I saw her stalking around the palace checking I wasn’t around before she crept off to be with him.’
‘I fail to understand such betrayal. I had come to believe that Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were noble, honourable beings. To find they are like other Fragile Creatures is dispiriting.’
‘Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions—’
‘But you saw the way she looked at him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your instinct reveals the truth. We discussed that, did we not?’
‘I know—’
‘Perhaps you should observe them. Now. Then you will be sure of the truth.’
‘Spy on them? I couldn’t.’
Niamh slipped an arm around Sophie and pulled her head down onto her breast. ‘In these dangerous times, would it not be wise to know whom you can trust? Is that not of the utmost importance to the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons? Is that not what Church would want?’
‘I suppose. But how should I—’
‘You have your Craft.’
Sophie paused. ‘I shouldn’t really use it for personal gain.’
Niamh stroked Sophie’s hair, caressing her ear, her cheek. ‘But this is for the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, not for you.’
Sophie wavered.
‘I have the herbs to make the balm. In fact, I shall help you in the preparation. Sisters together!’
Niamh slid from the bed and unlocked an ornate cabinet containing an array of jars and phials. Sophie browsed them for a moment before removing the necessary ones, and a cream to provide a base. As she ground them with a mortar and pestle, the leaves released the bittersweet aroma she recalled so clearly from her studies. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘If not for you, I’d feel so alone.’
Niamh traced her fingers down the nape of Sophie’s neck, releasing a shiver of pleasure. ‘I told you,’ Niamh breathed into her ear, ‘I am here for you, always.’
Once the balm was complete, they returned to the bed. There was a moment of shyness as Sophie eyed Niamh, but the goddess simply leaned forward and kissed Sophie gently on the lips. Slowly, she undid Sophie’s dress and eased it over her head. When Sophie was naked, Niamh pressed her to the bed, easing a pillow under the small of her back.
‘People talk of witches riding broomsticks.’ Sophie’s breaths were short, her eyes closed. ‘They don’t realise it’s just a misunderstanding of the word “riding”.’ She giggled, embarrassment and anticipation stirring her feelings. ‘The wise women used their broomsticks to apply the balm to the vaginal walls so it was absorbed into the bloodstream quickly. But the flight part, that wasn’t a metaphor. It was true.’
Niamh traced circles on Sophie’s belly, bringing shivers of satisfaction. From the bedside cabinet, Sophie removed a spindle used to wrap parchment. Niamh whispered, ‘Let me.’
Sophie acquiesced without a second thought. Niamh applied the balm to the spindle and then with her free hand stroked Sophie’s pubic hair. Barely touching at all, she continued down between Sophie’s legs, along her lips and back.
‘Are you ready?’ she breathed.
‘Yes,’ Sophie moaned.
Niamh kissed Sophie’s pubic mound before easing one finger in to open her up. Sophie moaned louder and arched her back. Once she was lubricated, Niamh gently inserted the tip of the spindle and applied the balm.
Sophie was overcome with the most intense sexual desires. She had always found the ritual stimulating, but there was something in the atmosphere in the room, or in Niamh’s company, or in the oddly heady wine that Niamh had encouraged Sophie to drink, that drove her instantly to the brink of orgasm.
As the balm entered her blood, the erotic charge retreated. Sophie felt her consciousness falling back into her head, into the soothing dark where the trapdoor of reality lay.
There was a rush like the most exciting fairground ride, and then she was out of her body and soaring up to the ornate ceiling. Looking down, she saw herself writhing in pleasure as Niamh ran a finger around her clitoris, still barely touching. In her pure state, a pang of guilt ran through her. It was ritual, but from her new perspective it appeared to be so much more.
Without a backward glance, she rose through the ceiling and the rooms above until she emerged from the blue-tiled roof into the smell of ashes and the night breeze, and to the sight of the Burning Man high on the horizon.
Exhilarated, she took a deep breath. She was a ghost. Nothing could touch her, but she could see, smell and hear as clearly as if she had substance.
Arching her back, she flew down the side of the palace and across the jumbled rooftops, faster and faster still. And then she dived down into the streets and alleys, flying inches above the cobbles at breakneck speed, shrieking with wild laughter before rising up sharply across a roof and down again. The court passed in a blur. Through windows, she fleetingly saw the occupants going about their private business. She flew with the owls and the bats, and drifted with the smoke rising from the chimneys, and then floated on her back to watch the stars. And then, finally, she was at the Hunter’s Moon.
Her exhilaration faded rapidly. Slow-burning anger rose up from the fire that Niamh had stoked, and she knew that she couldn’t rest until she had discovered if her suspicions were true. She eased through the tiles into an attic room where a man with scales and a forked tongue and a woman covered with fur were engaged in rough sex; down winding stairs, along twisting, claustrophobic corridors to the room that lay behind a door that resembled a painting of a door.
The instant she saw Caitlin and Mallory a jolt struck her heart, for everything she feared was laid bare in the subtlest of details: the arch of the neck, a look held a fraction of a second too long, the brushing of bodies standing slightly too close. They stood over Rhiannon with their arms almost touching, at an angle so they could look into each other’s faces, occasionally glancing down at Rhiannon when she moaned and writhed feverishly.
Sophie ignored the possibility that the goddess might finally be waking. Her attention was held by Mallory and Caitlin; they may as well have been making love before her. Her anger flared as Caitlin touched Mallory’s arm to point out some detail of Rhiannon’s state. Her anger roared as Mallory whispered a response in Caitlin’s ear, his cheek brushing her hair. Her anger became a conflagration as words broke through the dense fury surrounding her brain: ‘We …’, ‘… together …’, ‘… nobody must know …’ The rest of it didn’t matter; the truth was plain: she had been betrayed by the two people closest to her. She was alone. Except for Niamh, who had been right all along but had never come out and said it for fear of hurting Sophie’s feelings.
