Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

‘How did Jack and Ryan die?’ he probed gently.

‘We were steered to a tower that had risen up on the banks of the Thames. There was something inside…’ An expression of distaste sprang to her face. ‘A power… evil, yeah, definitely evil. If we hadn’t stopped it, that would have been it, game over.’

‘Did it have anything to do with the Void?’

‘I don’t know. There’s nothing to say it did… but maybe all these things are linked together, you know? Everything that wants to stop us getting a foothold on the ladder. I used to think good and evil were ideas for kids. Too simple. Fairy-tale stuff. But now… on the big scale, the universal scale, I think good and evil are what it’s all about. A constant war from the beginning of time to the end. And we’re just little troops, cannon fodder, there to make sure things don’t go belly-up for our side.’

Hunter moved closer to the brazier. He felt as if he couldn’t get enough warmth.

‘We confronted this thing at the top of the tower,’ Laura said. ‘We’d got the right tools, magic shit, a sword, a spear… Church was about to deliver the killing blow. Then Ryan stepped in.’

‘Why did he do it?’

‘He didn’t mean to,’ Laura said wearily. She’d obviously spent long hours turning the tragedy over in her head. ‘Ryan was just that little bit weaker than the rest of us. He was manipulated, by the gods, the evil things. All those so-called Higher Powers just manipulate us all the time. And Ryan paid the price. There was a fight. He died. Church managed to kill the thing that had been waiting for us, but Ryan had thrown everything off-balance. Some kind of hole opened up in the air… like a hole into space. The thing went into it with its last dying gasp, and Church got sucked in after it. So we won and we lost. Story over.’

‘You’ve been through the mill-’

‘I don’t want your sympathy.’

‘And you’re not going to get it. You had a job to do and you did it. There’s always a price to pay in situations like that… like this. No point crying over it. So after that you came here?’

‘Not at first.’ Laura rubbed her fingers together and a rose grew magically out of the floor, its bud bursting, blossoming into black petals. She stared at it thoughtfully. ‘Ruth wanted to pass on all her witchy skills, so we travelled the country for a while with her doing her Hogwarts bit to a load of wannabes. But her heart wasn’t in it. When we reached this place she decided she wasn’t going any farther.’

‘And you stuck with her.’

‘Somebody had to. She didn’t have anybody else.’ She snapped her fingers and the black rose shrivelled and died.

Hunter cracked his knuckles, then put his feet up on a small table; he’d found out all he needed to know for now. ‘Must be boring here for you.’

‘I’m not getting any, if that’s what you mean.’ She gave him a challenging smile.

‘Fancy some?’

Laura thought for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Why not?’

The sex was the first physical contact either of them had enjoyed for a while, and was passionate and unguarded. Hunter discovered that Laura smelled of lime and roses, but afterwards she told him that she could manipulate her scent at will. ‘That’s probably my greatest power,’ she added, ‘now that we live in a world without deodorant.’

When they were both dressed again, Laura reluctantly agreed to take Hunter to see Ruth, who Laura said would be ‘brooding in her batcave’. They moved through the fantastic ice tunnels and chambers, a crystal world within the very heart of the cathedral, their breath trailing behind them in clouds.

Finally they came to a cavern so large that it dwarfed all the others. It was a work of art, with icicles hanging ten feet or more from the ceiling and reflecting surfaces designed to catch and distribute the light of many candles. At the far side was a throne made entirely from ice and sitting in it was the saddest woman Hunter had ever seen.

She was swathed in black fur, her fragile features as pale as hoarfrost. Her hair was long, dark brown and curly, and black rings beneath her eyes emphasised the painful grief in her face. Those eyes, too, were dark, filled with a surfeit of shattered emotion. A black and white woman in a frozen world.

‘There she is, the Witch-Queen of the world,’ Laura said quietly to Hunter. ‘We’ve got a guest,’ she added loudly. ‘Get out the best china.’

Ruth had been lost to her thoughts and unaware they had entered. Her eyes flickered to Hunter, then moved away.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Laura whispered in his ear before departing.

Hunter marched up to the throne. ‘Are you expecting me to kneel and kiss your ring?’

‘Who are you?’ Ruth said coldly.

‘My name’s Hunter. I’m a Brother of Dragons. And I still haven’t quite come to terms with that as an introduction.’

‘You never will. What do you want?’

Hunter was surprised by her brusque, uninterested nature after Laura’s curiosity. ‘I’ve come a long way to see you, and Laura. You’re needed, both of you.’

‘I’ve done my bit.’ Ruth’s gaze was as cold as her demeanour.

‘Actually, I don’t think you get to resign. The way I see it, it’s a job for life.’

‘The Pendragon Spirit isn’t as strong in me as it used to be.’

‘Still there, though. A little, right?’

‘I’ll ask again, what do you want?’

‘There’s a crisis… actually, that’s too mild a word for it.’ He held out his right hand. ‘You have God here, not representing any particular religion, but some higher force that stands for life-’

‘Existence.’

‘All right, if you want to call it that.’ He held out his left hand. ‘And here you have the opposite of Existence, and all that stands for. The opposite of life, an absence of being, negativity. Not death — worse… not existing…’ He floundered, not sure he was making sense even to himself. He extended his left hand. ‘That’s what’s here, now, and pretty soon none of us will be existing unless we do something. You might say, “We’re only human — what can we do against something like that?” and to be honest I don’t have an answer for you. But I do know that the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were created to oppose this. We’re the champions of life… of Existence. Maybe there’s something we don’t know that we can do, all working together. Maybe we can’t do anything. But we have to try.’

‘The magic number is five,’ she said icily. ‘Don’t you know that? The old Five is broken. You need a new Five.’

Hunter could see that he wasn’t persuading her and renewed his argument. ‘I know that. One of the new Five is dead. Two haven’t been found yet. That makes three vacancies. The two of us left could either hold up our hands and say we’ve failed… and that word just doesn’t do it justice, since this failure means the end of all human existence. Who could cope with that? So we could say we’ve failed… or we could seek out substitutes, who might not be able to do anything. Or who might make all the difference in the world. My partner has gone to get Shavi. I’m here for you and Laura. So, will you come back? Not for me, but for everybody. For Existence.’

There was a long period of silence when the only sound was the howling wind beyond the cathedral walls. Then Ruth leaned forward and turned the full force of those dark, devastated eyes on Hunter. ‘Let me tell you something. I loved Jack Churchill. More than I love myself. He was everything to me, and when he died it felt as if everything inside me shattered into a million pieces. Nothing, trust me, nothing comes even close to the pain I feel inside, and I’ve been through a lot of suffering in my short, unhappy life. Church had everything going for him. He was filled with the Blue Fire. All the prophecies spoke about how important he was to the future. He was going to lead us into some golden age. And still he died. You want to know what it means to be a Brother of Dragons? That’s what it means: hope, strife, failure. Not even the best can win. You just hold the line.’