Mark Chadbourn - Destroyer of Worlds

After a pause to take in the new arrivals, the clientele returned to their drinks, as sullen and dispirited as the crowds filling the streets. A few surveyed Veitch and Shavi as potential opportunities, but the glint in Veitch's eye and the hand on his sword deterred any advance.

Veitch looked around at the array of bizarre figures. 'Used to drink in a boozer in Camberwell just like this,' he muttered. 'Still, better than being out there with all those bombs going off. What do you want?'

'Fruit juice.'

'There's an old joke there somewhere.' Veitch grinned. 'God, I've missed winding you up.'

'You have missed trying.'

As Veitch ordered the drinks, the door crashed open and a voice boomed, 'There! I told you. Brothers of Dragons!'

'Not a-bleedin'-gain.' Veitch sighed.

Striding next to the bar was a man wearing furs despite the heat, with a wide-brimmed hat that had seen better days and a string of lizards round his neck. A blunderbuss hung from his belt. Behind him strode a painfully thin, extremely tall man in a dark suit, a huge stovepipe hat threatening to topple from his head, with darting eyes that had a silvery glint.

The hunter clapped a hand on Shavi's shoulder. 'I knew it! Even in the middle of a crowd I can recognise a Brother of Dragons. What do you say, Shadow John?'

Leaning down to examine Shavi and Veitch, the man in the stovepipe hat exclaimed, 'Bless my soul, you're right, Bearskin.' He pumped their hands furiously. 'How very wonderful to meet you both. We had the honour of making the acquaintance of one of your colleagues, young Hal of Oxford. A fine, upstanding fellow in the long tradition of your line. Mallory and Caitlin, too. The legend lives on.'

'All right, all right, nice to meet you and all that. Now clear off. We're actually trying to be incognito,' Veitch said.

'Very wise,' Bearskin noted, ignoring Veitch's urgings. 'This is not a time to be a Brother of Dragons. The Enemy must be hunting and harrying you.'

'We are hunting and harrying the Enemy,' Shavi said.

The clap of Bearskin's arm across Shavi's shoulders almost pitched him into the bar. 'That's the spirit, good Brother!'

Shadow John grew lachrymose. 'This is not a good time to be any living thing. How I regret fleeing the Court of the Soaring Spirit to seek sanctuary in a safer part of the Far Lands.'

'There is no safety anywhere,' Bearskin agreed.

'How I miss the Hunter's Moon.' Deep in maudlin recollection, Shadow John rested his hands on his silver-topped cane, rocking gently from side to side.

'Best inn in all of the Far Lands.'

'I miss that place like the Golden Ones miss their long-lost homeland,' Shadow John cried.

Veitch saw Shavi scrutinising the new arrivals closely and recognised the light of an idea appear in his face. 'You are a hunter?' Shavi said to Bearskin.

Bearskin tapped the edge of his right eye. 'Never miss a thing. I track through the thickest parts of the Forest of the Night, or across the desert out there. I can see a blade of grass move on a hillside on the distant horizon.'

'Then you could perhaps help us locate someone, in the heaving mass of this city? A woman?'

'A Fragile Creature?' Bearskin laughed heartily. 'Fragile Creatures are the easiest to locate. Why, I have tracked them across…' His words dried up when he caught Shadow John's anxious expression. 'Well, enough to say that I could sniff out a Fragile Creature anywhere in this forsaken place.'

As the barman laid a tankard of ale on the bar, Veitch eyed it longingly and sighed. 'Okay, let's go.'

Along the western wall of the city — though directions meant little in the Far Lands where west could become north in the blink of an eye — lay a walled-off garden containing rows of monuments: statues commemorating some great moment from the long history of the Tuatha De Danaan, pyramids and spires of less-obvious meaning, sculptures that contained some unobtrusive element that was alien to the human sense of proportion and which caused an involuntary increase in anxiety and flutter of the heartbeat, gargoyles, beasts, spheres that glowed with an inner light though made of stone, and other, more abstract designs. Some areas of the garden would have been a peaceful oasis in the crowded city, with works of great beauty dappled by the sun through a canvas of willow or yew. Tropical plants with long, spiky leaves grew here and there, some sporting strong, sweetly perfumed pink flowers, and stone benches were placed intermittently in the cool shade along the gravelled paths.

Laura scrambled over the spike-topped wall only to discover that she was not the first to gain access. Several men, women and children had managed to haul themselves in, hoping to find a cool refuge from the seething madness of the city. They had all died where they sat, huddled in blankets against the chill of the night, or fiercely protecting a morsel of food with a knife. Under the shade of one tree, a mother and two children lay as if asleep, their faces peaceful, no marks on their bodies.

Laura was not deterred by this macabre sight. She gave the bodies a cursory glance as she crunched along the path, her well-honed ability not to accept anything with which she did not agree coming into play; her ego defined her world-view specifically, a pleasant place that was always Laura-centric. She didn't even think of Hunter when she saw the images of death all around; she couldn't, for that left her mind recoiling and placed her at risk from the rising tide of guilt and self-loathing.

The sun was high overhead when she came to a quiet grove at the heart of the garden where she had been summoned. The trees were densely packed and it was impossible to see into their dark heart, but she knew instinctively that a presence waited there. Her heart beat faster as she approached, and a deep dread enveloped her so that she had to fight not to flee back to the comfort of people in the crowded streets.

Ten feet from the grove, she realised she could barely hear the once-deafening sounds of the city that droned constantly in the background from morning to night. It was as if an invisible cloak had been thrown over that part of the garden. The silence was so intense in her mind that it had a texture, soft and gluey, almost liquid. It was unpleasant and unnerving, and felt, in its own unnatural way, as if it was waiting to be filled by something terrible.

'All right,' she said, forcing the bravado into her voice as she had so many times, 'I'm here.'

There was no response. She could feel the pulse of her blood, so strong she was sure she could hear her own heartbeat growing steadily faster. Her stomach flipped queasily, the instinctive response to a hidden gaze moving slowly across her. The presence was so powerful it felt even larger than the grove hiding it, the electrical cloud of its inhuman intellect enveloping her, holding her fast. She had a mental flash of teeth, of talons, of being consumed, and she couldn't prevent a shudder.

For a long moment, she waited, too afraid to run away for fear it would pursue her, too scared to take a step closer in case it dragged her into the grove to a fate that she feared would be worse than anything she could imagine. And then, with such unbearable slowness that she felt she would faint with the dread of anticipation, a hand extended from the trees. At first she thought it was the paw of a big cat, sleek with black spots on white and orange fur, but within a flicker of her eye it changed to a desiccated, grey-skinned human hand clutching a rectangular hand mirror edged in silver with horns on each corner.

For some reason she couldn't explain, the mirror increased Laura's feelings of dread, pulling in her gaze until she couldn't tear her eyes away from it. The mirror glass didn't appear to be glass at all, but rather some kind of liquid with the silvery quality of mercury turning slowly to black as she watched; she was convinced she could plunge her hand into its depths. After a second, the mirror began to smoke.