Simon Green - Casino Infernale

“Hold it,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You were close enough to see a nuclear power plant you were planning to blow up?”

“I know!” said Coll. “We were young, we were stupid, and intoxicated with the possibilities for our cause. And we truly believed the Ruby would protect us. Perhaps fortunately, things never got that far. When the Sleeper awoke, and burst forth from its barrow mound, we saw at once that it wasn’t at all what we’d expected. It wasn’t some ancient Celtic chief, or magician, or some powerful remnant of Times Past. No. It was a Horse. A great White Horse. It came ghosting up through the nuclear power plant without even touching it, invisible to their scientific mindsets, growing larger and larger. Filling the sky. We only saw it because we were connected through the Red King’s Ruby. The White Horse was huge, massive, overwhelming to merely human senses. A brilliant, dazzling white too terrible to look at directly. The embodiment of all horses, and the power they gave the Celts over their enemies.

“That’s why there are carvings of white horses on hills and cliffs all over England. Because our ancestors worshipped the White Horse. What we’d awoken, and called forth, was a living god. Not the god of horses, but the idea of a Horse, worshipped as a god. Worshipped by so many, and for so long, that the sheer concentrated belief was enough to create what they believed in. We never had a hope in hell of controlling such a thing. An idea, with the power of a god. Once it was out and free again, it shrugged us off like we were nothing. After so long asleep, imprisoned under the barrow mound by priests who’d grown afraid of what they worshipped, all it wanted to do was run free.

“Scared out of our minds by what we’d unleashed, we tried so hard to rein it in, to break the White Horse to our will, and control it. But the Red King’s Ruby just faded away, driven out of reality and back into the world of dreams by the sheer power of the living god. Because the Ruby was only ever a dream of a thing, made solid by its dreamer’s faith . . . and it was no match for the certainty of a living idea. We’d brought other things with us, other Objects of Power, I’d insisted on that . . . but none of it did any good. Just the backlash was enough to weaken us all, rob us of our strength and certainty. So we ran away.

“We used a preprogrammed teleport spell to transport us back here, to Trammell Island. Our oldest and most secret bolt-hole, where no one could see us. We thought we’d be safe here.”

“You ran away?” I said, so angry I could hardly speak. “Leaving the White Horse to run free? You didn’t even try to warn anyone?”

“There was nothing we could do!” said Coll.

“You could have told the Droods!” I said. “You were their agent. They’ve handled worse things than living gods in their time!”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly, all right!” said Coll. “None of us were. We were all in shock. Some of us thought we should try to control it again, later. Some just wanted to hide, somewhere the White Horse could never find us. We would have found some way to warn the world, I’m sure, but that was when the Drood’s chosen agent turned up. Because I’d already told the Droods about Trammell Island. They might not be able to see in, but they could still get in. And you all saw . . . what their agent did.”

Coll held up his memory crystal again, and the vision of yesterday returned. We all watched as the shadowy figure stepped forward into the light, looking calmly and dispassionately around him at the dead bodies sprawled across and around the long dining table. There was no mistaking that old man, with his iron grey hair and military moustache. The Regent of Shadows. My grandfather Arthur Drood. The man Molly and I now worked for.

“Of course,” said Molly, in a dangerously calm and far-away voice. “That’s why none of their weapons could touch him. Even though he didn’t wear the golden torc. The Regent had Kayleigh’s Eye—that ancient amulet. Nothing can touch him while he’s wearing it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Adams. The beginnings of anger were stirring in his soft voice. “Who . . . who is that?”

“That is the Regent of Shadows,” I said. “A rogue Drood, who left the family to set up his own organisation. These days, he runs the Department of the Uncanny. Presumably . . . the Droods learned what the White Horse Faction had done, and decided they were too dangerous to be allowed to continue. They were to be an object lesson; pour discourager les autres . And they sent the Regent, as an independent contractor, so they could have deniability. Just in case it ever came back to bite them on the arse. Perhaps the Drood Matriarch wanted other underground groups to see this . . . slaughter, as the cost of endangering the world. Martha always was ready to do the hard, necessary thing.”

“Yes,” said Coll. “Only I was left alive to spread the word . . . of the consequences of defying the Droods.”

He turned the memory crystal in his hand, and the vision continued. We all watched the Regent of Shadows move steadily through the dining hall, making sure everyone was dead. And then he left the room, and Monkton Manse, in pursuit of the fleeing teenage Molly Metcalf. It broke my heart to see her, running blindly across the black rocks, her face still stained with the blood of her murdered mother. The Regent emerged from the rear of the house just in time to see Molly run through the Fae Gate and disappear. He stopped, and shrugged, and went back inside.

But the vision continued, following Molly through the dimensional gate and into the wild woods . . . where she finally collapsed, to lie on a grassy bank, weeping for all she had lost, surrounded by tall trees. Animals and spirits of the wild woods slowly emerged from among the trees and the bushes, to protect and comfort her. A huge brown bear slowly turned his great shaggy head to look right at us, as though he could see us, watching him. He lunged forward, and the vision disappeared.

Coll made his memory crystal disappear. “I survived, because I turned and ran the moment I saw the Regent of Shadows in the doorway. A Drood field agent would have been under orders to let me go, but seeing the Regent changed everything. The warning and slapped wrist I expected had been replaced by a hired killer. The Regent of Shadows did have something of a reputation for such work, back then.”

“I never knew that,” I said. “But then, the Droods got up to a lot of things that I never knew about.”

Coll shrugged. “No reason why you should. Even the infamous Shaman Bond can’t be expected to know everything. I’m told the Regent has . . . mellowed, in recent years. Getting old will do that to you.”

“How did you escape, Hadrian?” said Molly.

“I fled through the Fae Gate, long before you reached it,” said Coll. “I know; I should have taken you with me. Made sure you were safe. But what can I say; I panicked. I was convinced the Droods wanted me dead, because I’d taken part in the Working. So I disappeared through the Fae Gate and just kept on going—jumping in and out of a dozen more dimensional portals, across the world. Until I was sure I’d muddied my trail sufficiently. I finally went to ground in Shanghai, crawled into a hole, and pulled it in after me. I didn’t come out again until I’d arranged for a new identity and a new face. And then I moved on . . . from city to city, country to country, always moving so no one could find me, or track me down.” He smiled briefly at Molly. “This is the first time I’ve looked like me in ten years. All for you, Molly.” He turned to Troy and Adams and Morrison. “I thought the world had forgotten all about me until you came and found me and invited me here. And I saw a chance to redeem myself, at last. By helping create a new White Horse Faction, completely different from the old.”