Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

After ten minutes, the sparks stopped arcing from her fingertips and she pitched forward into the snow. Hunter ran forward and lifted her up in his arms. Her eyelids fluttered; she was completely drained. ‘Match that, soldier-boy,’ she said hoarsely.

Hunter knew what had to be done. As Laura slipped into unconsciousness, he sat her on her horse and did his best to lash her to the saddle so that she wouldn’t slip off. Setting her mount off ahead of his, he urged the horses into the dark avenue and then forced them to gallop as fast as they could manage. He didn’t know whether the trees would soon start to wither and die or disappear as magically as they had grown. The last thing they needed was suddenly to find themselves stranded in the middle of the Lament-Brood army.

But Existence hadn’t let him down yet. Oxford beckoned and the last stand was only hours away.

The Damask brothel on St Michael’s Street was packed to the brim. In the ground-floor office space, in the sprawling first-floor lounge and the many bedrooms on the two floors above, the Tuatha De Danann moved like golden ghosts, aloof, introspective, silent as the night, while the girls gaped in awe or ran giggling to discuss the new arrivals in the confines of their changing rooms or the torture dungeon.

Mrs Damask wrung her hands, repeatedly dashing to the velvet-curtained windows to peek out into the deserted street. ‘I would never have agreed to this if Jeffrey had told me what he was planning,’ she wittered in her Scottish accent.

Mallory smirked. ‘So Hunter has a first name.’ He was sitting back in a plush armchair, boots up on an antique table, a crystal goblet of brandy in his hand. Washed, fed and dressed in clean clothes, he felt renewed.

‘If the authorities investigate, they’ll close me down for certain.’

‘The authorities have more important things on their minds,’ Shavi reassured her soothingly. He leaned on the mantelpiece next to the roaring fire, occasionally tipping back his head and closing his eyes as he smelled the perfume that wafted through the room.

‘I’ll expect to be well paid for this. Well paid,’ she repeated, glaring at Mallory as she flounced out.

‘Humanity’s on the brink of extinction and only the privileged few know,’ Mallory noted.

‘What would it benefit the rest to know?’ Shavi said. ‘There is nothing they could do. Better they enjoy some normality in their final hours, if final hours they be.’

The ornate clock ticking away on the wall showed that it was just after one a.m. Mallory swigged back his brandy. ‘I’m going out to look for Sophie.’

‘This is a big city. I would think she has probably already sought shelter somewhere.’

‘I know. But I need to see her again before everything blows up.’

Mallory acted blase, but Shavi could see the emotion coursing through him. ‘I understand,’ Shavi said. ‘But take care in those dark streets-’

The door swung open and Lugh and Ceridwen marched in, their mood intense. ‘Brother of Dragons, please come with us,’ Lugh said to Mallory. ‘Time is short.’

‘What’s up?’ Mallory looked from one god to the other.

It was Ceridwen who answered. ‘There are many of our kind already here in the Fixed Lands. They can help us in the coming battle. Indeed, their presence may be vital, for they count amongst their number some of the most powerful of the Golden Ones. We must contact them. But we need your help.’

‘How can we help?’ Shavi asked.

‘There is a ritual,’ Lugh said, ‘known only to our kind. It calls to the ties that bind us, however far apart we may be. Now that there are so few of us left…’ He paused, letting the words sink into his own mind. ‘Now that there are so few of us, those ties may be stronger. And our own brothers and sisters may be summoned to fight for the cause.’

‘Why do you need me?’ Mallory asked, with one eye on the clock.

‘The fire that burns inside you will give strength to our call,’ Ceridwen said.

‘The Pendragon Spirit is the key,’ Shavi said to Mallory. ‘The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are like batteries. Sometimes that power heals them; on other occasions, others may tap into it — if you so allow.’

‘All right,’ Mallory said, not attempting to mask his irritation. ‘Get on with it.’

They collected the items they needed from Mrs Damask and then Lugh and Ceridwen led the way up a back staircase to a vast, dark attic room that had been knocked through into the houses on either side. Mallory shivered, pulling his cloak around him. Ceridwen marked a circle on the dusty wooden floor with a piece of dressmaker’s chalk and then lit candles at the four cardinal points. Mallory was intrigued by how closely the gods’ ritual resembled Sophie’s work with the Craft.

‘Is all this necessary?’ he said to Shavi. ‘They’re gods. Can’t they just snap their fingers or something?’

‘Magic,’ Shavi said with a strange smile, ‘is the cheat code of reality. We are in a vast program of repeating patterns, a superstructure of encoded rules. Reality has been constructed, and once you know the code that underlies that construction you can change it.’

‘And thereby change reality?’

‘Reality is not fixed, Mallory, even here in what the gods call the Fixed Lands. It is less changeable than their home, but it is still possible to unpick the construction. Sound and symbol are the keys. Words of power. Arcane marks. In our literalist, rationalist society, we see those sounds and symbols only as what they are on the surface, but their true power to break through the inherent programming of reality is hidden behind them.’

Mallory shook his head dismissively. ‘If reality can be altered, what’s the point?’

‘That is the point, exactly: that the world out there is not important. That it is what is inside us that truly matters. What we do. Who we are. The Chinese call it chi, spirit. It cannot be altered. It is the bedrock of everything.’

Ceridwen summoned Mallory and Shavi into the circle. They all sat cross-legged facing the centre, where another candle flickered. Lugh’s face was determined, and Mallory had the strange impression that the god had altered his appearance, had somehow grown more heroic; something about his features, his bearing. Ceridwen, her dark hair falling about her beautiful face, forced a smile to put Shavi and Mallory at ease, but a deep sadness was etched into every aspect of her being at the devastation of her people.

‘If only the Extinction Shears had not been lost,’ Lugh said. ‘They would have cut through the warp and the weft and the Devourer of All Things would have been destroyed.’ He bowed his head in contemplation.

And then Lugh and Ceridwen began to speak quietly, the words passing back and forth, interweaving, overlaying, the rhythms and cadences gradually forming a complex chant-song.

Mallory couldn’t understand any of what they said, but the words had a strange effect on him nonetheless; in that instant he understood exactly what Shavi had been saying.

Still chanting quietly, Ceridwen and Lugh put their heads back, their eyes rolling under the upper lids so that only the whites were visible. Within seconds, Mallory was disturbed to see a clasp at Ceridwen’s shoulder begin to move of its own accord, echoed by the shifting of an ornate dagger on Lugh’s belt. The two items ran like water, becoming silvery, then white and finally forming into eggs, which then sprouted legs and scurried to the candle at the centre of the circle.

Mallory was fascinated but repulsed. Shavi saw his reaction and whispered, ‘They are known as caraprix. All the gods have one. They are living creatures, but infinitely mutable.’

‘Pets?’