Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"I am the shaman of my tribe, much like your Druid ancestors. We protect the innocent and punish the guilty, and we never give up.

"I’d almost lost track of the Heart. The trail had gone cold, and I had searched so many places. And then a small opening appeared between the dimensions. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before: vague and unfocused, quite primitive really. It was the Blue Fairy using his gift at random to go fishing and see what he might find. Intrigued, I allowed him to catch just a small piece of myself and take it through into his primitive backwater dimension. And there was the Heart! Hidden away, in the back of beyond where no one would think to look. I could sense its presence, but its exact location was hidden from me. So I manipulated the Blue Fairy into passing the small piece of me onto the most powerful group in this dimension, the Drood family. And sure enough, once I was brought here, I was able to locate the Heart. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough of me to break through the defences your family had put in place around the Heart.

"So I waited. And soon enough the Blue Fairy went fishing again, and I allowed him to catch more of me. And then I manipulated him, and the Drood traitors, and finally the elf lord, all so that he would fire an arrow of me into you, Eddie. So that you could bring me here, into the presence of the Heart. Inside all its protections. I never meant to cause you such pain, Eddie. All the suffering and weakness were caused by my strange matter clashing with the Heart’s collar. What you might call a short circuit. The human body was never meant to contain such diametrically opposed other-dimensional materials."

"Why didn’t I die when Molly cut the torc from me?" I said.

"Droods only die when separated from their torcs because that’s what the Heart wanted," said the voice. "It couldn’t risk any of its toys getting loose. But that’s all over now. The Heart can’t hurt you anymore, Eddie. Not while I’m here to protect you. And it won’t be able to hurt your family anymore, once it’s been destroyed. And though I’ve chased the Heart for so very long…I think it’s your privilege to put an end to the Heart, Eddie. If you want it."

"I want it," I said, and I drew Oath Breaker from my belt and turned to face the Heart.

"You can’t do this!" it screamed. "I made you what you are! I made your family powerful! I put you in charge of this stupid little world! You don’t dare hurt me! I’m your god!"

"Bad god," I said.

I raised Oath Breaker over my head and brought it smashing down on the huge diamond. The ancient weapon took on its simple brutal aspect and undid all the forces that bound the other-dimensional being together. The Heart screamed shrilly, its light flaring in great staccato pulses, and then the massive diamond exploded soundlessly. It shattered into millions of lifeless fragments, falling to the floor like sand until nothing was left of the Heart. There hadn’t been much to it, after all. The Heart was hollow all along.

And with the Heart finally destroyed, all the souls that had been trapped within it for so long were finally set free. They manifested briefly on the still air of the Sanctity, one after another, flashing on and off, countless shimmering forms exploding like so many soundless fireworks in one last display of joy at their freedom before finally passing on to whatever comes next. Molly cried out in delight, clapping her hands together.

And at the very end, one small soul came to me. My twin. My brother. He hung on the air before me, just a baby, only a few days old, and then he expanded suddenly into adult form, my size, my age. He looked…like the face I see in the mirror every day, only without all the lines driven into it by pain, and loss, and duty. My brother considered me for a long moment, and then he smiled at me, and winked, and was gone.

And that was that.

With the Heart gone, the Sanctity didn’t feel like the Sanctity anymore. It felt like the quiet after the explosion, the calm after the storm, the incredible peace of waking up and knowing that the nightmare is finally over. The Sanctity was just an empty room now, wide and echoing, with a layer of sand on the floor. The dragon was dead, but I didn’t feel like a dragonslayer.

"How do you feel, Eddie?" said Molly.

"Pretty good," I said. "The pain is gone, the weakness is gone, and I’m back to normal again."

"No, Eddie," she said gently. "How do you feel?"

"I don’t know," I said. "Numb. Lost…I used to know what I was, what my life was all about. Then that was taken away from me. I used to have a family, and that’s gone too. All gone…"

"You still have me," said Molly.

"Do I?"

She put her hands on my shoulders, pulled me in close, and kissed me. "Try to get rid of me, idiot."

"So," I said after a while. "The Heart’s dead. What do we do now?"

"You mean for an encore?" said Molly. "Haven’t you done enough?"

The door behind us swung open, and we both spun around, ready to defend ourselves, but it was just the Armourer and the ghost of old Jacob. Molly and I relaxed a little as they came over to join us. The Armourer’s face was still half buried under dried blood, but he looked a lot steadier on his feet. Jacob had resumed his grumpy old ghost form, with garish Hawaiian shorts and a grubby T-shirt bearing the legend Dead Men Don’t Eat Quiche.

"Eddie, my boy," said the Armourer. "Are you okay? We heard all kinds of noises from in here, but we couldn’t get in till now. Not even Casper the Unfriendly Ghost here. And what the hell happened to the Heart?"

"Look down," I said. "You’re standing in what’s left of it."

He looked down, winced, and then shook his head. "So that’s what Oath Breaker does. I always wondered."

"Here," I said, handing the ironwood staff back to him. "The sooner this is back in the Armageddon Codex, the safer we’ll all be. Molly, give him Torc Cutter."

"Oh poo," said Molly, pouting. "I was hoping to keep it as a souvenir."

The Armourer gave her one of his hard looks, and she handed the shears over without another word.

"So," I said, "that’s it, at last. All over. Someone lead me to a comfortable chair and place a nice cup of tea in my hand. It’s been a busy few days…but at least it’s finished now."

"You have got to be joking," the Armourer said sternly. "After all the damage you’ve done here, you think you can just sit back and take it easy? You’ve done more in one evening to bring the Drood family to its knees than centuries of enemy action. It’s up to you to save the family, Eddie. I didn’t bring you up to leave a job half done. You brought the family down; only you can raise it up again."

"To hell with that!" Molly said sharply. "This is what I lived for: to see the high and mighty Droods humbled and forced to their knees, made to live down here in the dirt with the rest of us. Don’t listen to him, Eddie. You’ve taken the Droods’ foot off the neck of everyone in the world. We’re free at last!"

"Free?" I said, reluctantly. "No, Molly. It’s not that simple, and it never was. Truman’s Manifest Destiny is still out there, remember? Free from Drood influence and control and still determined to wipe out everything that doesn’t fit their narrow definition of normal and human. Who’s going to stop them, if not the family? And then there are all the other dark forces only kept in check by fear of what the family would do if they ever got out of hand. There has to be another power in place to stop the forces of darkness from overrunning the world. But if there has to be a Drood family, it’s going to be a new kind of family."

"Now you’re talking," said Jacob. "Always knew you were destined for great things, Eddie. Even if I couldn’t remember why."