Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘Who are you?’

The figure held its head as if it was having difficulty recalling. ‘I am the Good One,’ he said after a moment. ‘Onnophris.’

‘Doesn’t ring any bells, dude.’

‘I have another name …’ He struggled. ‘Osiris.’ An unsettling smile crept across his face.

‘You’re some kind of nature god. Like Cernunnos.’ She held up her hand to show the brand of interlocking leaves. ‘So that makes you my uncle, right? Same family, another branch?’

‘That is one aspect. Only one. You are in a different place now. Things are not the same here.’

‘All right, you’re feeling a bit out of it. You’ve been away for a long time so I’ll give you the catch-up: there’s a war going on. Spiders versus snakes. No sitting on the fence allowed. And because you’re the “Good One” you’re with us.’

‘Good is a matter of perspective. It is the quality of one who obeys the main directive of the ruling power.’ Osiris was changing; Laura watched with a queasy fascination as the vegetation and animal characteristics fell from his face to reveal yellowing bone.

‘You’re obviously going to be busy now you’re back in the world. Mummies to wrap and all that. I’ll leave you-’

‘This is my greater aspect.’ A pair of bloodshot eyes now watched Laura out of a cracked skull. ‘I am the King of the Dead.’

‘You’re missing a few clues. Here’s one: I’m not dead.’

‘You are dead. All you mortals. You simply do not realise it.’

His words touched something deep in Laura that she couldn’t and wouldn’t recognise, and it made her shudder.

‘Come with me.’

‘If you think I’m taking one step out of this lake, you’ve got your bandages wound too tight.’

‘Laura.’

It chilled her to hear her name coming from the skull. ‘All right, you know my name. Big whoop.’

‘A lost child. Unloved. Beaten and scarred by her mother. Unprotected by her father. A sense of worthlessness. Self-hatred. What value could you have, then?’

Laura felt sick to hear the deeply protected secrets of her life unfolding. ‘Stop it.’

Osiris appeared to be reading something just above her head. ‘Driven, as all mortals are, by circumstances beyond your control. Choosing a path of self-destruction and succeeding — until you were saved. By four others, Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. For the first time you were accepted, with all your flaws and your burden of troubles and your desperation. For the first time you had a home, and friends, and love.’

‘You know I’m going to keep standing here? Even when you get down to what shoes I wore on my first day at school?’

A moment of silent calculation and then Osiris said, ‘You have a choice, as all the dead do. Come with me or I will take another, and what will happen to them will be worse than anything you can imagine.’

‘I can imagine a lot.’

‘Every culture established by mortals in this world has shared one belief — that life continues in some way after death. It is known by peoples that have no contact with any beyond themselves, from the dawn of your ages, from the darkening west to the gleaming east. Because it is the One Truth embedded in the deepest recesses of your construct. The gift you were given when you were made.’

‘Yeah, I always knew I was going to live forever.’

‘The greatest threat to any being is that the endless cycle of death and rebirth could be ended. Complete termination. Never to exist again. More — never to have existed at all. Wiped from Existence.’

‘Except you’re making one big mistake. I’m a coward. In a world of cowards, I’m queen. Saving my own skin is my number-one priority in any situation. So whoever you choose, I’m going to be sick and sad, and hate myself, but I’m still not coming out of this fire.’

‘And still you lie to yourself.’

An image of Hunter flashed before her eyes. Laura felt a corresponding twist in her gut that shocked her. ‘You really picked the wrong one there.’

‘A lost child. Unloved. Ignored by his parents. Dragged into a friendless world of deceit and cold hearts. A man who loves, and loves love, but can never be allowed, and can never speak of it. Who must hide his loneliness and his sadness and his suffering. Who is honourable, and trustworthy, and who would give up his own life for others, but who is punished every second of his life by being forced to bring death, and to know all of the deaths he has brought. A man who loves you more than any man has loved you, and who cannot himself believe that he has found this depth of feeling.’

In the silence that followed his words, Osiris’s bloodshot eyes stared at Laura with uncompromising harshness. She hesitated, and then said, ‘You’re wasting your time. Run along now.’

‘I will take him.’ Osiris began to retreat into the dense vegetation.

‘Wait.’ Laura thought she was going to be sick. Every fibre of her demanded self-preservation, yet still she was torn. She had no control over the deep, oceanic swell of her response. ‘I won’t be wiped from Existence?’

‘No.’

‘But it’s not going to be nice, right?’

Osiris did not answer.

She barely knew Hunter. Of all the people Osiris could have chosen, he was the least likely to be important to her. Yes, they had made a connection, but it was nothing, not really. Everything for them lay in the future, unborn. She could resist.

She took a step towards the edge, hesitated. Osiris waited.

The sun hung fat and red over the West Bank where the dead had been taken for centuries. The great pyramid of Khufu rose in silhouette as the lights of the Sharia al-Haram began to flicker on, and the air was filled with the ethereal, soaring sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.

Not long ago, Church would have drifted into the mystical atmosphere that had transformed Cairo into a city of wonders for millennia, but his fears for Ruth and his hatred for Veitch isolated him. He sat on the terrace of the rooftop apartment they had rented in an old boarding house, with the shadows growing long around him, waiting for some sign.

As the stink of the day’s traffic fumes gradually gave way to charcoal smoke and the aroma of barbecuing lamb from the street sellers, Shavi entered with an armful of books and pamphlets.

‘Research,’ he said brightly. ‘I thought it wise to know what magic might have awakened in Cairo before it descends on our doorstep.’

When Church didn’t respond, he pulled up a chair next to him and opened a bottle of mineral water. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte said that from the top of the pyramids, forty centuries look down on you. How many thousands of people, if not millions, have looked back at them during that time?’

‘You’re trying to make me feel insignificant?’

Shavi smiled. ‘Oh, that would be far too simplistic for me. On the one hand, I could be suggesting that all our lives, and our problems, are like the sand out there — tiny grains lost to the great, sweeping grandeur of the desert. Or I could be implying that as Brothers and Sisters of Dragons we are not insignificant. Of all the generations that have looked up at the pyramids, we are the first to be tasked with a destiny that could change everything.’

‘Or both.’

‘Or both.’

‘Insignificant in the ups and downs of our lives, the loves, and betrayals, and suffering. And uniquely important in the job we forgettable, pitiful people have been given to do.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Nobody likes a smart-arse, Shavi.’

They both smiled and watched in silence as the sun finally set and night fell across the Victorious City.

‘What have you found?’ Church asked.