Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘Don’t worry about that. Scandinavia, eh? Can we try to narrow it down to at least a thousand square miles?’

‘I’m working on it.’

Hunter thought for a moment. ‘Maybe we need to cause our own terrorist outrage. Blow somewhere up. Distract the security services.’

‘That’s not what we stand for,’ Church said.

‘I thought we stood for winning.’ Hunter eyed Church with faint bemusement.

‘We’re symbols, too. You know that?’

A thoughtful pause; a nod.

‘We have to be true to what we represent or we’re nothing.’

Hunter didn’t reply, but a faint smile teased his lips all the way to Membury Services where the early afternoon sun was starting to break through a bank of grey clouds. Hunter pulled in next to another identical white van. ‘There’s someone waiting to see you,’ he said to Church.

In the restaurant, Tom was sitting in a corner drinking coffee. He was older than the last time Church had encountered him in the flesh, but he still had the same unmistakable aura of intensity.

Overcome with joy at seeing his old friend again, Church walked quickly to the table. But instead of an emotional reunion, Tom surveyed him with cold eyes flecked with tears.

‘What’s wrong?’ Church asked, shocked.

‘Sit down.’

As Church pulled up a chair, Tom leaned in, his voice trembling with restrained passion. ‘What in heaven’s name have you done?’

Deep in Tom’s eyes there was a haunted intensity that shook Church. ‘I don’t understand-’

Tom gripped Church’s wrist. ‘I should be dead,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘I know it … I can see it with the cursed vision that witch from under the hill gave me. I see two lives running parallel: one here, another where I’m moving across the Grim Lands and into the beyond. I ask you again: what have you done?’

‘I changed reality. To save you, and Niamh and all of the Tuatha De Danann.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know if I can explain it. At the time it was like a dream. When I lay in the casket in the Far Lands in the Sleep Like Death, it felt as if I went to another place … where there was a Caretaker … and two other beings who claimed they were close to some higher power.’ The memories were hazy, and the more Church tried to recall them, the more they slipped from his grasp. ‘The Caretaker took me to something he called the Axis of Existence, and he told me that if I shifted it I could change what had happened-’

‘You bloody idiot.’ Tom covered his face, shaking silently. ‘Do you know what it’s like to feel alive and dead at the same time?’

‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to sacrifice yourself-’

‘It’s not just me!’ Tom snapped. ‘You’re not a god. To do such a thing, with no concept of the repercussions-’ He caught himself. ‘Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed. There is only what is, all connected. To change one thing changes everything.’

Church weighed Tom’s words, the burden of his distress. ‘What have I done?’

‘I don’t know. That’s just it! There is a puzzle on sale in the city — a glass ball encased in a network of string tied to wooden rods. The aim is to remove the glass ball by shifting the rods until a large enough hole appears in the network. But every time you move one rod, the string attached to it shifts another rod, and so on, so that the network continually shifts, confounding any attempts to create a hole. Do you see?’

‘So by altering events to save your life-’

‘The network shifted in other places. Perhaps someone lost their life who never should have. Perhaps something terrible has happened, or is happening now. Perhaps …’ He flapped a weary hand and covered his face again.

‘I only wanted to save you, Tom.’

‘Good intentions in the hands of an idiot are a dangerous weapon.’ He looked deep into Church’s eyes. ‘Nothing else to do now but deal with the situation you’ve given us. Are you up to it?’

‘I’ve kept my head above water so far.’

‘Just. Remarkable, considering you didn’t have me to act as your common sense.’

Church was distracted by the sudden darkening of the sky through the window. The ravens descended on the service station, briefly blotting out the sun.

‘The Morvren,’ Tom said. ‘They follow death and destruction, and supernatural terror.’

‘They appear to be following me.’ Church recalled what he had been told two thousand years earlier about the ravens, symbols of death, following in his wake.

‘I think,’ Tom said, ‘we should not be sitting around debating any longer.’

Shavi was oblivious to the cacophonous bird calls that now drowned out the deep drone of the motorway traffic. He had left Hunter and Laura to their flirtatious insulting of each other, and Ruth to a quiet brooding that appeared to have been consuming her since she had left St Paul’s, and made his way beyond the service station perimeter to where he had a view of the tranquil Berkshire countryside.

The struggle Church had set for them was vast and victory unimaginable, but he was convinced of its rightness. He was prepared to risk anything, even his own life, in pursuit of that victory.

At the bottom of a slope that hid him from the service station, he sat cross-legged, no longer feeling the warmth of the sun on his face, or hearing the wind in the copse nearby. Every part of him was focused internally.

A hint of fear, a remembrance of the price he had already paid, and then the familiar taste of iron filings in his mouth. Ahead of him, six feet above the ground, the air grew opaque and then began to steam and bubble. A hole opened up, and after a minute a figure forced its head and shoulders through, a mewling monstrosity being born. Its face was blank, but indentations revealed the location of its eyes and mouth; Shavi was convinced he could see the eyes moving just beneath the silvery caul.

‘Who calls?’ it said with wrenching jaw movements.

‘I do. Shavi, Brother of Dragons.’

‘Again you draw me from the Invisible World?’

‘I need information.’

There was a short pause before it replied, ‘You know the price, Brother of Dragons. A small thing. Only a small thing.’

Shavi remained calm, but inside he felt a ghost of the pain he had suffered the last time he had paid this being with ‘a small thing’. Through his contact with the earth, he reached deeply within himself, feeling for the thin residue of the Blue Fire. It echoed in the darkness of his mind, spoke to him without words.

‘A small thing?’ he said.

‘Just a small thing,’ the construct said nonchalantly.

‘No,’ Shavi said. ‘I am a Brother of Dragons. I am awakening to what that means, despite all the efforts of greater powers to keep me in a deep sleep.’

The construct shrank back. ‘Then there can be no answers for you. The rules-’

‘The rules have changed.’

Shavi quickly caught the construct at the back of its silvery head. The skin moved like mercury beneath his fingers.

‘Stay back!’ it said sharply. ‘This cannot be-’

The words died in its throat as Shavi drove his fingers into one eye socket beneath the caul. The thing shrieked so loudly that Shavi’s ears rang. Blood began to drip from his nose.

The skin split. Beneath it, an eye popped from the construct’s socket. Shavi closed his hand around the gelatinous orb and tore it free.

The construct’s shattering howl threw Shavi back several feet. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I will have answers. But first …’

He examined the eye, weighing up what the voice in the Blue Fire had told him. Then he tore off his eye patch and forced the shiny orb into his own gaping socket.