Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (76 page)

Close to the golden light the air was filled with an unpleasant charred taste. He dropped to his belly and wriggled forward until he could peer through a break in the hedge, every muscle tensed to flee in case he was seen.

Maponus roamed around the field, his path apparently random, but, on closer inspection, forming strange geometric shapes. A scattering of bloody bones radiated out from him in what looked like a blast zone. Church guessed when Niamh had plucked up the Good Son and deposited him here she had brought some of his victims in the backwash. Church watched intently. Sometimes Maponus dropped to his knees and scrabbled wildly at the turf. Other times he stopped to throw his head back and howl soundlessly. The chaotic rhythms of his madness were eerie to see: oblivious to the outside world, trapped in a repeating loop of thoughts. Occasionally they became so intense his face would dissolve into a swirl of wild activity in which Church saw snapping jaws, writhing things, razor-sharp blades glinting in the sunlight, then just a globule of unbearable light.

He looked away, suddenly queasy. Maponus’ insanity was destabilising; it sucked at him, threatening to drag him in.

Cautiously he began to move around the perimeter of the field. How long would he have to search before he found what he was looking for? Could he have guessed wrongly?

He needn’t have worried. Something hit him with the force of a wild animal, knocking him painfully across the road, pinning him beneath its weight. Stars flashed across his vision, but when he looked he felt a wave of relief. Yet the Bone Inspector’s features spoke of a madness waiting to break out: he looked anxious, hunted, a man driven to the edge of survival.

Despite his age, his strength was almost superhuman. Church couldn’t begin to wriggle out from beneath the wiry arms that held him tight. The Bone Inspector’s eyes ranged crazily, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a feral grimace. For one moment, Church thought the custodian of the old places was going to dip down and tear out his throat.

“It’s me!” Church gasped. “A Brother of Dragons!”

The Bone Inspector’s eyes cleared gradually. A long drool of spittle dripped on to Church’s cheek. “I know who you are, you bloody idiot!” he hissed. Cursing beneath his breath, he rolled off Church, instantly adopting the posture of a cornered animal, ready to fight or run. “What are you doing here, you fool? Do you want to throw your life away?” His voice was strained with tension, but it barely rose above the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the hedgerow.

He gave a sharp nod with his head, directing Church to a field on the other side of the lane. They scurried through an open gate and rested against a metal trough filled with stagnant water. The Bone Inspector closed his eyes for a moment, his lined face suddenly looking a hundred years old. His shirt was in tatters and a filthy, bloodstained rag had been tied roughly around his left hand. There were numerous gashes across his lithe, suntanned torso. A brief shiver ran through him and then his eyes filled with his old clarity. “I’ve followed him up mountains and across rivers. I’ve waded through a swamp of blood, seen whole villages burning. I’ve lived on raw squirrel meat and drunk stagnant ditchwater. I’ve seen the kind of pain and suffering you can only imagine.” His voice was filled with a passion that bowed Church. “And why? Because your idiot brethren dabbled with something they shouldn’t! What did they think they were doing?”

“It had to be done-“

“Had to be done?” The Bone Inspector’s eyes blazed furiously; Church thought the old man was going to hit him. “All that death and grief was a decent price to pay?”

“That’s not what I meant.” His anger grew hard. He thought of Ruth and the decision he had to make, of the world he used to inhabit where there was a clear distinction between right and wrong, and then came a sudden rush and tumble of regrets and bitterness. “You can’t criticise me.”

The Bone Inspector seemed taken aback by what he saw in Church’s face.

“We’re all wading through shit trying to put this nightmare right. Nobody has the higher ground. Nobody,” Church said coldly.

The Bone Inspector looked away at the waves of golden light. “Pretty, ain’t it? I can’t see how we’re going to put it right. When he was first bound under Rosslyn there was a whole load of my people carrying out the ritual. There’s no way I can do it myself. I thought it was all sorted when those golden bastards came for him-“

“What happened?”

“There were six of them. Some of the big-shots, all light and thunder and faces you couldn’t see. You could tell they were desperate to get him back. `Finally,’ I thought, `they’re going to start sorting out their own shit.’ They’d got him cornered up near Aberdeen in what was left of a village. I was down among the ruins, trying to pull out some kid, but the poor bastard was already dead. And he’d seen me, and he was coming for me.” The Bone Inspector looked down at his hands; they were trembling. “They’d opened up some kind of doorway in the air and they were going to drive him through. And then that bitch came out of nowhere. Crazy. As mad as he is.” He jerked a thumb towards the wash of light. “There was a big flash, felt like I’d been hit by a shovel, next thing I knew I’m here.”

Church felt a pang of guilt; he wondered if the Tuatha De Danann would punish Niamh for her actions.

The Bone Inspector looked up at him piercingly. “So what are you doing here?”

“Looking for You.” The Bone Inspector’s brow furrowed; Church smiled. “Listen, this is what’s going to happen.”

As Church moved speedily along the lanes back to the tor he was gripped with fear that in his absence the Fomorii would have swept up the mountain and taken Ruth and Laura. But as he neared he could see the slopes were still clear.

The hardest part of the return journey was a wide-open space at the foot of the tor and the lower reaches of the climb. Even though the power in the mountain kept them hidden from the Fomorii senses, plain sight was still a problem. He couldn’t believe he had made it to the Bone Inspector and back without discovery; it left him wondering how powerful those Fomorii senses truly were. Perhaps they didn’t need to hide on the mountain at all. Was it possible that they could creep away under cover of darkness and find another hiding place far away?

The blow came from somewhere behind him, lifting him high into the air. His body exploded in excruciating pain; there didn’t seem to be any oxygen left in his lungs. He slammed down on to the grass verge and bounced into a barbed wire fence. The twisted talons snagged his flesh and tore. For a second he hung there suspended like a scarecrow, thought processes fragmented, aware only of the agony that fried through him. His awareness came back in jerking fragments. A deep, dark shadow was moving across the road. He looked up for the cloud, the low-flying plane.

It hit him so hard the barbed wire burst as it yanked out of his flesh. He skidded into a cornfield. The sharp stalks stabbed his back, the dust clouded round him. Next to his face on the ground a large black beetle scurried away from the disturbance.

Full realisation only came when he rolled on his back, trying to scrabble to his feet. The Fomorii warrior loomed over him. At first there was no sense of solidity, just an impression of an immense, sucking void about to enclose him. A perception shift came as if someone had grabbed his mind and twisted it through forty-five degrees. Suddenly there was bulk, the sound of armour plates clanking into place as if they were a part of it, that familiar, sickening zoo-cage smell. Still couldn’t quite get a full fix on it. It was an enormous insect with dripping mandibles and multiple legs, something that was covered with fur, with glaring red eyes, talons poised. And at times chillingly human-shaped, though as big as a tank, with the blackest armour.

Church jumped to his feet, started to run. What could have been a powerful arm lashed out, catching him full in the stomach. The pain was so great it felt like his internal organs were rupturing. He came down hard again, deep in the swaying corn. He had been so arrogant, thinking he had escaped detection. It must have been stalking him, checking he was defenceless.

His thoughts fizzed out as he suddenly found the energy to roll and run. The beast thundered like a bull, missing him by an inch. And then he was away, leaping wildly through the corn, knowing that he couldn’t outrun it for an instant. The vibrations from its pounding feet felt like a mini-earthquake beneath him, but at least it allowed him to tell when it was almost on him. He threw himself to the side, and it crashed past; its size and momentum prevented it turning easily.

Anxiously, he glanced up at Mam Tor. It was close enough for him to sprint towards it. The beast was so big he might be able to lose it on the slopes where a sure foot was more necessary than strength. But if the Fomorii hadn’t already established where they had been hiding, he couldn’t lead the creatures back to Ruth and Laura.

He leapt out of the way again. This time he cut it too fine and the beast clipped his foot, spinning him round like a top. Dazed, he glanced across the field. If he didn’t go to the tor he didn’t stand any chance at all. He only had a second to make up his mind; it was no choice. He headed for the centre of the field, accepting his sacrifice with an equanimity that surprised him, gloomy that his great plan would never come to fruition, afraid of what the future held for the others. But all this was wiped from his mind in an instant when the beast smashed into his back.

He went down, blacked out for the merest instant, and then came to with the sensation of being lifted into the air. The beast’s grasp was biting into his flesh; he felt the skin around his waist burst and blood trickle down his legs.

Where’s Ryan when you need him? he thought ridiculously.

And then a strange thing happened. It was suddenly as if he could look directly into the creature’s mind, understand fleeting thoughts and emotions that were so alien they could barely be described as such. He knew as surely as he was aware of his own name that the creature hadn’t alerted the other Fomorii, that it had no idea where Ruth and Laura were. The sensation both sickened him and fascinated him. But he knew what caused it: the reviving essence of the Tuatha lle Danann and the corruption of the Fomorii mingling within him had made him something more, something closer to them.

The creature seemed to be surveying his face; perhaps it was reading his thoughts too. Slowly it raised what at that time seemed an enormous gauntleted fist and took his left hand. Then with a sudden flick of its wrist it snapped back all his fingers at right angles, a sign of strength to show how frail he was in comparison. The cracking vibrated through Church’s body and he cried out in agony. It threw him to one side just as he blacked out again.

When he came round a few seconds later it was advancing towards him for what he knew would be the killing blow. It stopped a foot away and he waited, almost relieved that the pain that racked his body would finally be over.

At that moment there was a smell like burning oil. The creature threw its arms in the air and let out a howl that sounded like rending metal. Church covered his ears from the shockwave. Desperately he tried to understand. Was it some kind of bestial roar of triumph? It sounded like pain.

The Fomor’s body was more insubstantial than those of its brethren, suggesting, he guessed, its particular power. But at that moment it seemed to harden into the armoured shape, now seen more clearly than he had done before. Its black helmet gleamed in the sun. In the eyelets, white staring orbs ranged with such an expression he was left in no doubt that it was in the throes of some terrible torment. Pustules erupted all over it, even on the armour, and began to burst and release a foul-smelling ichor that sizzled where it hit the ground. The warrior’s hands went to the side of its head and for a second it stayed in that position, its eyes still rolling madly. And then, like an overinflated balloon, it burst open. Globules of black flesh streaming with ichor shot across the field in all directions; somehow most of them missed Church. He had a glimpse of a twisted skeleton that bore no relation to the creature’s outward shape. Then the bones became like candle wax, melting and flowing until there were just indescribable heaps scattered across flattened patches of corn.

Church didn’t have to guess what had happened. A few feet away, previously hidden by the warrior, a flock of birds whirled madly. Gradually they flew tighter and tighter, reclaiming their true pattern. They fluttered in a formation so concentrated it was unnatural that they didn’t crash into one another. And finally they settled into something that resembled the shape of a man, still flying round wildly like a whirlpool of feathers, beaks and talons.

“Mollecht,” he muttered through the haze of his pain.

The powerful Fomorii tribal leader stood silently; Church didn’t even know if he could speak. Whatever hideous experiment had transformed him into primal energy that could only be contained by the continuous ritual flightpaths of a murder of crows had pushed him even further beyond the boundaries of his already unknowable race. The Fomor had destroyed the warrior by opening it up to release his essence, the terrible power that seemed to mimic the effects of contagion. Church recalled their confrontation at Tintagel and his blood seeping through his pores; the only escape had been to plunge into the sea.

But why had Mollecht destroyed the warrior? They were of the same people; Mollecht had the same contempt for humanity as the rest of the Fomorii. The pain from his broken fingers was washing in waves up his arms. He leaned forward and vomited. All that had happened was that he’d swapped one form of death for another, and he guessed Mollecht would be infinitely more cruel than the brutish warrior. On the verge of blacking out again, he glanced around for other Fomorii coming to help capture him, but the surrounding fields were empty.

And when he looked back at Mollecht, the dark cloud of birds was already moving off through the corn. Where the creature had stood, a large, black sword stood embedded in the earth.

Church’s head swam; he blinked away the tears of pain. Mollecht was setting him free? He limped forward to examine the sword, without actually touching it. It was definitely Fomorii; one edge featured the cruel serrated teeth that would inflict maximum damage in a fight. There was also an intricate pattern on the blade, scored so finely it was hard to make out unless the light was in the right place, but it appeared to be a pattern of magical symbols of some kind.