Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘Spies are everywhere,’ Shadow John said through a fixed grin.

‘You can talk to me,’ Caitlin said sweetly. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’

Only us , Amy, Brigid and Briony said together.

Shadow John shook his head slowly, barely able to form the words: ‘All is seen and heard.’

‘By whom? The Enemy has infiltrated the court?’

But Shadow John would say no more.

‘All right, those are questions for another time,’ Caitlin continued. ‘What I need to know now is, where is the Morrigan?’

Shadow John cried out and ran from the room.

A gust of wind down the chimney made the fire roar. ‘I don’t think we’re safe here at all,’ Caitlin said.

‘Are you sure we should be doing this, master?’ Jerzy’s chalk-white face was hidden in the folds of his sodden cowl as he bowed his head against the torrential rain. The white horse he had borrowed from Niamh’s stables made its way slowly through the treacly mud of the lane. ‘This land is dangerous now. We are at risk of attack anywhere outside the court’s walls.’

The rain reminded Mallory of trekking on horseback across Salisbury Plain. It had been a similarly difficult time with threats on every side, yet the simple fact that he could recall it filled him with elation. His love-making with Sophie the previous night had unleashed a flood of memories, and it was a struggle to assimilate them into the life he thought he had. It had affected Sophie the same way. Unsettled, she’d been sad to see him go, but they both knew there was no choice in the matter.

‘I’d be an idiot to be sure about anything in these times,’ he said, ‘but I do know we’re going to need all the help we can get.’

‘There are swords in the court-’

‘Not like this one. There are three great swords of Existence, filled with the power of the Pendragon Spirit. This one is Llyrwyn. I carried it for a while before the Void took everything away from me. Church has another of the swords, Caledfwlch. And it sounds like that bastard Veitch has the third, only somewhere down the line that one has become corrupted.’

‘But you don’t know where the sword is now. It was lost when the Devourer of All Things made its changes.’

‘I’m making an educated guess. The sword had a keeper. I’m betting she found it and brought it back here until it was needed again.’

The landscape was suffused with rain, dripping from the trees, pooling in the meadows where the grass glistened a damp October green, spattering off the brown hedgerows. They came over a ridge to find the Court of Peaceful Days, still and brooding. The martial banners hung limply and the gates were shattered. The once well-tended grounds were overgrown with long grass and willow herb pressing hard against the sprawling low buildings. An oppressive air of desolation lay upon it.

‘The Enemy must have struck!’ Jerzy whined. ‘Oh, how this court has fallen! Once it rang with war drums and the clash of metal, with songs for the lives given to battle for the sake of glory and honour. But then its forces were decimated in the war with the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders and a great sadness fell upon the place. And now this!’

‘The sword might still be here,’ Mallory said. ‘Let’s go.’

No birds sang as they made their way through the gates to the great front door, which hung open, unattended; the only sound was the constant hammering of the rain on the buildings.

They tethered their horses and Mallory led the way into the atrium. It was cold and silent. Jerzy made intermittent whimpering noises until Mallory glared at him to stop.

They passed through room after room, all deserted. In some, they found an upturned table or chair, occasional shattered glass, enough to hint at trouble, but nothing that indicated an invasion by overwhelming force.

‘I do not understand,’ Jerzy whispered. ‘Queen Rhiannon’s warriors had renounced violence, but they still would have defended the court with their lives.’

‘Maybe they were surprised.’ Even as Mallory said it, it didn’t ring true.

Eventually they came to the iron-studded oaken doors of the great hall. They had been sealed shut with chains, and warning sigils were scrawled all over them. The carcass of a gutted dog lay before it, now just fur and bone.

‘Can you read those?’ Mallory nodded towards the sigils.

Jerzy cowered. ‘They are marks of great power, warning of destruction to anyone who crosses the barrier to this room.’

‘Looks like this is where we need to go.’

Jerzy moaned, but Mallory was already in search of the armoury. In the dripping darkness of a stone sub-cellar, he located several barrels of gunpowder. He forced Jerzy to help him carry two barrels to the door of the great hall, leaving a trail of the black powder along the corridor.

‘Master, are you not scared of bringing destruction upon your head?’ Jerzy asked as Mallory prepared to strike a flint.

‘Firstly, I’m not anybody’s master and you really need to stop calling me that. Secondly, I don’t think I’m coming out of this whole business in one piece so there’s no point being timid.’

‘You remind me of my good friend Church.’

‘Insult me, why don’t you. I’m a party guy. He’s got the world on his shoulders, and we all know what all work and no play lead to.’ Mallory struck the flint and the gunpowder fizzed into life.

They dashed around the corner before the deafening explosion sent a flare of heat that scorched the walls of the corridor. Smoke and stone dust clouded the air as they clambered over the rubble to where the doors had been. The rain now fell through a large hole in the roof, and part of the wall had been demolished.

The hall was dark and windowless. Mallory lit a torch and progressed cautiously into the gloom. Halfway across the hall, amidst the echoes of his footsteps, the torchlight illuminated something glowing at the far side.

Jerzy tugged at Mallory’s sleeve. ‘Master … good friend, let us be away now. I am scared.’

‘What is that?’ Mallory tried to pierce the enfolding dark. He continued to advance. The golden glow came and went as the torch flickered, and finally he realised it was one of the Tuatha De Danann.

‘Who’s there?’ he called out.

The figure made limited movements and a high-pitched whine that set his teeth on edge.

The torch finally revealed Rhiannon, the queen of the court, encased to her neck in an iron sheath, her arms pulled into a crucifix position by chains suspended from the ceiling. Hooks on wires kept her eyes permanently open. Her mouth had been sewn shut.

‘God, how long has she been like this?’ Mallory rushed forward to free her, but her whining increased insistently. As he struggled to release the iron sheath he saw why: tiny needles on the underside of the sheath dug deeper into her flesh with every attempt to remove it.

Jerzy fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face at the queen’s suffering. ‘What evil could do such a thing?’

‘We know what evil.’ Mallory looked into Rhiannon’s eyes briefly, but what he saw there was too much to bear. His gaze fell on a long iron box on a stone plinth nearby. A thin blue light leaked from it. As Mallory examined it, soothing whispers filled his head.

‘The sword’s in here,’ he said. But as he went to open the box, Rhiannon’s muffled cries rose up urgently. Mallory backed away. ‘Makes sense they’d booby trap it.’ He returned to Rhiannon. ‘There’s got to be a way to free her.’

‘Only the Enemy would make release cause more pain than imprisonment,’ Jerzy said.

Mallory forced himself to look into Rhiannon’s eyes again to let her know he would help. But she repeatedly rolled her eyes down and to the left. Mallory followed the direction she was indicating.