Simon Green - A Hard Day's Knight

Everyone looked round, startled at their sudden arrival. They hadn’t known I could do that, and until I tried, neither had I. I was deathly tired, all the energy gone out of me, and my head pulsed with a sick pain. Overusing my gift has its price. Suzie was quickly at my side, so I could lean on her if I needed to, without anyone else noticing. I forced myself to stand upright and smile unconcernedly about me. I couldn’t be weak now, not when so much depended on me. Not when I still had so much left to do.

Arthur and Kae moved instinctively to stand back-to-back, staring wildly about them. Oberon and Titania and Mab had also moved together, perhaps for mutual support. And while they towered over us mere mortals, the stark and terrible setting they found themselves in made the elves seem smaller. There’s nothing like the end of the world for putting things in perspective.

I had brought them to a dark place, where the Moon was gone from the night sky, and only a handful of stars still gleamed dully. For as far as any of us could see, the Nightside lay in ruins, broken buildings and scattered rubble, endless silence and a bone-piercing cold. Smashed and abandoned vehicles littered the empty streets, but there were no bodies, anywhere. I could have told them why, told them what happened to all the bodies; but they wouldn’t have thanked me for the knowledge. What light there was came from distant glares and strange lights out in the ruins. The night had a purple cast, as though it were bruised. We all looked round sharply, as some great shape raised itself briefly on the horizon, then it was gone again.

“What the hell was that?” said Arthur. “John, what is this place? Where in God’s name have you brought us?”

“Not so much where, as when,” I said. “This is the future of the Nightside, and London, and Earth. Or, at least, one of its many possible futures. I’ve done everything I can to make this future as unlikely as possible; but the fact that it’s still here suggests it’s not utterly impossible. Nothing lives here now, except the insects. This ... is the end of everything.”

I let them look round some more, let the cold seep into their bones and into their souls. Arthur and Kae were clearly horrified, and even the elves couldn’t help looking impressed. Oberon and Titania held each other’s hands, Mab drew herself up to her full height, and even the Puck had stopped smiling. I could have told them that I was responsible for all this: that this was the world I murdered, in one future time-line. But I didn’t. I didn’t want them distracted from the main issue.

“Welcome to the future,” I said, harshly, and they all looked back at me. “This is what the world will look like when all the wars are over.”

“Am I back in Hell?” said Mab. “Such desolation of the spirit ...”

“This is a dead world,” said Puck. “There is no life here, only ... things like life.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “When we’ve all finished killing each other, the monsters will still remain. Listen.”

From far off in the distance came the sound of living things as big as houses, moving slowly and dragging themselves through the purple twilight. Enormous silhouettes appeared briefly upon the broken horizon, and something far too huge went stalking between the nearby buildings, tottering on great stilt-like legs, pulling down stonework where it brushed against decaying structures. Something impossibly large rose suddenly, blocking off our view of the horizon. It made a series of loud, wet, sucking noises, and lurched towards us.

“You’d better do something about that,” I said. “It sounds hungry.”

Oberon and Titania and Mab raised their hands and chanted together, and immediately a shimmering protective circle rose, spreading out to fill all the open space round us. A pale blue-white glare from the screens replaced the bruised purple, and the advancing shape slammed to a halt, some distance from the shimmering screen. It stayed where it was, utterly still, watching from the shadows. It gave the impression that it could wait forever, or at least until the screen went down. Out in the darkness, other great shapes were heading our way, attracted by the light.

“Nice work,” I said to the elves. “You see what you can do, when you work together? I do love these simple life lessons. Of course, the screens won’t last. Nothing lasts, here. And there are things out there that can break through anything, eventually.”

Even as I spoke, a great dark shape slammed up against the shield, on our blind side. What details of the thing I could see made no sense at all. All the shapes were monsters, things left behind because they were too big to be killed by anything except each other. More of them came forward, slapping and grating against the shimmering fields, desperate to get in, to get at us. Driven by many appetites, of which hunger was only one. They wanted to do awful things to us, simply because we were sane and normal and alive. Because we made them remember when the world was not as it had become.

I didn’t have to tell any of the others this. They could feel it. I could see it in their faces.

“This is what the world will look like,” I said, “when all the wars are over and done with. This is what you would inherit after your civil war, Your Elven Majesties. But this is only one possible future, one possible Earth. There are many others, a whole infinity of possibilities. Tell them, Arthur.”

King Arthur had to swallow hard before he could speak, but when he finally did, his voice was calm and reasonable.

“I can offer you another Earth, a new Earth, where Man and Elf never happened. A whole new start, for all the elves. Why fight over our Earth, already overrun by Man and his civilisation, and risk ending up in this future, when you could move to this new world I offer, and never have to see Humanity again? It is a wild fine place I offer you, rich with beasts and birds and possibilities. You could flourish there.”

Oberon and Titania nodded slowly. “For all that elves do love a feud and delight in slaughter, in the name of honour ... the needs of the race come first. We are suffocating at Shadows Fall, and it is known to us that the elves are dying out in the Sundered Lands. There is something in us that is bound to the Earth and will not let us thrive anywhere else. We will forgo our ancient enmity and make peace among our kind, in return for a new Earth. What say you, Mab?”

We all looked at her. She smiled slowly. “You tore me from my Throne and threw me down into Hell. I had to claw my way back, through many sacrifices. You expect me to forget all that?”

“Yes,” said Titania. “In the name of the race. Mab, in this new world ... there could be children again.”

“I will not give up my hate,” said Mab. “It’s all I have.”

“Still clinging to the past, Mab?” said Titania. “That always was your failing. That’s why you lost the war against Humanity and why we had to replace you. Because you cared nothing for the future.”

“Because you never got over what happened in the past,” said Oberon. “Will you risk the continuation of our race over the memory of one dead man?”

“He loved me! He truly loved me!” Mab towered over us, radiant with rage. “The only one who ever did; and the elves killed him for it. Let them all suffer, as I have suffered.”

“You could have children again, on this new Earth,” said Titania. “Have you forgotten how sweet it is, to bear a child?”

“I would sacrifice any elf that ever was, or might be, before I will give up my righteous anger,” said Mab. “Nothing else matters.”

“All this, for revenge?” said Oberon.

“For honour!” Mab sneered at him openly. “I am the last of the first-born elves. All who came after were smaller things, with smaller emotions. You were never worthy of us. Let the war come. Those who survive will have been made pure again, through blood and sacrifice. And I will rule them.”