Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘Now you’re talking bollocks,’ Veitch snapped. He caught himself. ‘And just to prove you wrong, I’ll give you a choice. Come with me of your own free will, ’cause I reckon you’re a nice bloke and I’d really like you to think good things about me. Or I’ll make you come with me.’

Once again Miller tried to read Veitch. ‘Well … okay,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But I’ll yell if you try something.’

‘Like a girl, I bet. All right, shut the fuck up and follow me.’

Veitch marched along the network of paths with Miller constantly asking hesitant questions that got no answers. In the car park, Veitch motioned for Miller to get in the front of a four-by-four, while he went to the rear and checked all around before opening the boot.

Ruth lay inside, hands and feet tied together, tape across her mouth. She glared at Veitch hatefully.

‘How you doin’, darlin’?’ he said chirpily. ‘I hate treating you like this, but I needed to get our man in the bag before we sat down and had our little heart-to-heart. Won’t be much longer now.’

Just as the boot swung shut, Veitch had the vague impression that Ruth was mouthing something behind the insulating tape. He shrugged. She had a lot of fire in her, and he expected a broadside when they finally did sit down and talk.

As he climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled away, he didn’t notice a couple of stones in the car park begin to roll slowly of their own accord. They came together, then another, and another.

Cabs from Oslo’s railway station took Church, Hunter, Shavi, Laura and Tom into the centre of town. Burying themselves in their seats, they watched the flash of police cars passing regularly.

‘How many spiders?’ Laura said from the depths of her parka hood.

‘Impossible to tell.’ Church’s attention never left the street scene. ‘It only takes one or two at the top. People are good at obeying orders without question.’

Arriving at Vigeland Park in the early afternoon, they separated to lose themselves amongst the trees and duck ponds, eventually coming together again at The Monolith .

Shavi paced around for a few minutes, then said uneasily, ‘I do not understand. He should be here.’

‘Maybe he’s gone to feed the ducks,’ Laura said.

Shavi unconsciously rubbed the skin around his alien eye. ‘No. He should be here. But he is not.’

Tom had been scanning the park while they spoke. ‘Something is happening,’ he said.

What they had taken to be one of Vigeland’s sculptures was moving. It resembled a brutish man with a low brow and long, muscular arms, built from rocks and stones. A dull amber light leaked from its eyes. With each step, tremors ran through the ground.

Laura and Tom edged away.

‘Hang on,’ Church said.

‘Crazy leader,’ Laura muttered under her breath.

As the rock-thing approached, the park underwent a rapid change. Ponds and lawns faded away to be replaced by a wilder landscape of rock, gnarled trees and drifting mist. Bonfires were just visible in the distance.

The craggy Neanderthal lumbered up to them and levelled its burning gaze on each in turn. ‘Heroes all,’ it said in a voice like cracking granite. It nodded slowly as if this fulfilled a requirement. Gesturing with one heavy arm, it added, ‘This is the land as it was in time past when the warriors ground bone and blood into the soil. And this is how the land is now beyond Bifrost: timeless and wild where the true powers live in every rock and tree.’

‘What do you want with us?’ Church asked.

‘I bring a message from one of your kind. She summoned me from the dark place beneath the earth where I live with my people.’

‘Ruth?’

‘A Sister of Dragons who knows the practice of seior as only the great and wise Freyja knows it. She has been taken by another of your kind, he who carries the blade of black fire.’

Church grew cold. ‘Veitch? He’s alive?’

‘He lives. The Sister of Dragons wants you to know that he has the Creator Key and now he hunts the Destroyer.’

Hunter clapped a reassuring hand on Church’s shoulder. ‘We’ll find him before he hurts Ruth.’

‘How? We have no idea where he’s going or where this Destroyer is.’

‘The Shavster could ask his spooky friends again,’ Laura suggested.

‘I have already exhausted any advantage I might have over the Invisible World,’ Shavi replied. ‘I must wait a while before I contact it again.’

Tom pushed past the others to face the rock-creature. ‘Freyja brought the practice of seior to the Vanir and Aesir, did she not?’

‘She did.’

‘And Ruth is the greatest practitioner of seior in the Fixed Lands. The two are bound by the principles of the Craft. Freyja must help us.’

‘It is unwise to be so forward,’ the creature rumbled. ‘But should you wish to petition the goddess, travel to yonder hill and the grove where the golden apples grow.’ And with that, the creature shambled away, losing form as it went, disintegrating into rocks and stones.

‘Is that a wise course?’ Shavi asked. ‘You saw how Freyja was at the hotel.’

‘We can’t trust any of the blasted lot of them!’ Tom snapped. ‘But we do what we have to.’ He strode out for the hill without looking to see whether any of the others were following him.

The air was chill at the top of the hill and autumnal mists floated amongst the trees where the apples glittered in the wan light.

‘I’m going to have me one of those,’ Laura said. Tom called out for her to stop, but she had already plucked the golden fruit. In her eyes, Tom could see the gleam of a strange attraction overcoming rational thought.

‘Chill out, Grandpa,’ she said, until she saw Tom’s horrified expression. A second later blood began to speckle the apple’s shimmering surface. Laura threw it away in disgust. ‘Jesus. It’s bleeding.’

‘The blood of the gods,’ Tom whispered.

As Laura tried to wipe the gore from her hand, it began to spread, sticky and wet. Soon her entire arm was dripping. Blood continued to run from the apple, across the floor towards the others; the faster they moved away, the faster it ran.

Tom sprinted into the trees, which now formed a dark, dense forest. He allowed himself one backward glance and wished he hadn’t. Laura, Shavi, Church and Hunter were covered in blood from head to foot, fighting for their lives as it flooded into their mouths.

Tom felt the full weight of his age as he ran. His knees protested, his chest burned, his heart pounded so hard he thought it would burst. He felt as if he had lived with fear from the moment the queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart had taken him from the world. Always running, always scared of the past, the present, the future. He hated himself, but he couldn’t stop running.

The blood continued to drip from the fruit overhead. He had avoided every splash so far, but it was only a matter of time before he was tainted. Behind him, his friends were dying, like the others he had left behind to their fate at the Court of the Final Word.

The irony made him sick. Across his homeland he was known as a great hero: Thomas the Rhymer, who would return to save the land in its time of greatest need. In truth, he was selfish and weak and scared. Worthless.

Tears stung his eyes. He tried not to think of Church, who had befriended him and shown him so many valuable lessons, and of the others who each in their own small way had made his dark life a little brighter.

He drove himself on, but after nearly eight hundred years of sickness and self-loathing he had finally reached his limits. He crashed onto the soft loam and cried out, ‘Take me, damn you! Take me and let them go!’