World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) (72 page)

Tom held out the bowl they had found under Glastonbury Tor. Ruth looked at him blankly. "The Cauldron of Dagda is the cornucopia, the Horn of Plenty," he said softly. "It is the Grail, the source of spiritual renewal. The taker of life and the giver of life. The crucible of rebirth." He smiled. "Take it."

Ruth's hands trembled as she took it, barely able to believe what he was saying. The moment her fingers closed around it, she felt a subtle heat deep in her stomach, rising up through her arms to her hands. The moment it hit the bowl, it seemed to weep droplets of gold, which collected in the bottom. When it had partially filled, Tom motioned to Church.

Though uncomprehending, Veitch jumped from the bridge and dragged Church from the water, resting the body in his lap and the head in the crook of his arm. He looked up at Ruth with the simple belief of a child.

Ruth glanced at the golden liquid, which moved almost with a life of its own. A part of her could not bring herself to accept what was being suggested: the dead were dead, a machine switched off never to be restarted; there was no subtle spirit, no beyond or Happy Home fairytale for the religiously naive; everything she had seen could not shake that part of her. But still there was another part of her that accepted wonder and hope, that believed in the World Where Anything Can Happen. There was a time for cynicism and the restraining lessons of adulthood, but this was a time to be a child. She knelt down and placed the bowl to Church's lips, while Veitch manipulated his mouth so the liquid would flow in. And then the world seemed to hang in space.

There was darkness and warmth and a vertiginous, queasy plummet into something unpleasant. And then Church opened his eyes. Briefly, Veitch and Tom had to restrain him as he was overcome with convulsions; images of Calatin's attack, the agony of the serrated sword biting into his flesh, the smell of his own fear, passed through his uncomprehending mind in an instant. But the sensations of the changes coming over his body drove the disturbing thoughts from him; the golden liquid seemed to be seeping into every part of him, transforming him as it passed, although he had no idea what he was becoming; yet beneath it there was the numb antagonism of the Fomorii Kiss of Frost still within him; heat and cold, light and dark, battling for supremacy.

"You have been reborn."

Church looked up into the face of Nuada. It took a second or two to recognise who he was and what he was doing there. Slowly he looked round at the vision of gold and silver, faces almost too beautiful, presences too divine, and the transcendental wonder he felt brought a shiver of deep emotion. Tears sprang to his eyes in relief at the miracle. "The Danann!" His voice sounded like it was being ground out. "The others freed you ... you drove away the Fomorii ..."

"The Night Walkers departed rather than face our anger at their betrayal of the Covenant."

Church closed his eyes in relief, resting back against Veitch's arm. "But you came. We won. Now you can face up to them ... drag them back ..."

In the long silence that followed, Church knew there was something wrong. He opened his eyes to see Nuada smiling dangerously. "Now we are back," he said, "we will not be leaving."

"What do you mean?" Church levered himself upright, suddenly afraid.

"We always coveted a return to this place. We staked our claim upon it in the time before your race. But the pact prevented it and the doors remained closed. Now the Night Walkers have broken the pact. And the doors are open."

"But the Fomorii are your enemy!" Church protested.

"The fruits of this land are too succulent to ignore for unnecessary confrontation. We have co-existed before. Uneasily, certainly, but the pursuit of our will overrides all other concerns."

"But they are going to bring back Balor!" There were tears of frustration in Ruth's eyes.

"Perhaps they will succeed," he mused superciliously.

Tom knelt before Nuada and bowed his head in supplication. "The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons sacrificed a great deal to free you from your place of banishment, my Lord."

"And they have our thanks, True Thomas. But their work was not all as it seemed." Tom looked up at him quizzically. "We are not without foresight. The Fomorii betrayal was anticipated-after all, it was in their nature. We had our preparations. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were guided to this moment from the beginning."

"How?" Church thought he was going to be sick; suddenly he could see all the answers, but he was afraid to examine them.

"The alchemy of death was necessary to change you, to spark the Pendragon Spirit, to start you down the road that would lead to this moment."

They all looked blank. Tom turned to them, troubled, disorientated. "In all your lives, someone had to die-"

"You killed Marianne!" Church raged suddenly.

Nuada fixed such a dark expression on him Church was shocked into silence. "Our own hands were never raised. We set events in motion. We removed checks, moved balances." He pointed at Veitch. "He turned and used his weapon at the perfect moment, against his will. Other fragile creatures followed our guidance-"

"Then who killed her?" Church asked dismally.

Nuada turned from him; his smile was both patronising and frightening. "There are many games we can play with this world." Tom blanched at his words. "The prize has been well worth the rigours."

He began to walk back to the shimmering golden horde massed beyond the bridge. Church tried to scramble to his feet, but had to be helped up by Veitch. He choked back his emotion and said, as forcefully as he could muster, "At least help us remove the Fomorii. We need you."

Nuada turned coldly. "Your voice might have carried more weight if it were not polluted by the taint of the Night Walkers. In times before, the Pendragon Spirit would not have occupied such a weak host."

And then he had joined the rest of the Tuatha De Danann, and Church, Veitch, Tom and Ruth could only watch as the shining host swept out across the countryside like a tidal wave of terrifying, alien force.

ight fell quickly. Perhaps it was their mood, or the events of the day, but it seemed more preternatural than any they had so far experienced, alive with ancient terrors. They built a fire in the shelter of a grove on the top of a hill where they could see Skye spread out beneath the arc of stars. Ruth remarked they could easily have gone back in time to the Neolithic era. Church replied that in a way they had.

Before the sun set they had fetched Shavi from the boat. He had regained some of his equilibrium, but although he attempted to put on a brave face, they could all see that when his smile dropped, he had a look about him like something had been damaged inside; he was haunted, detached. He refused to talk about what had happened when he had linked with the serpent, but he was no longer the man he had been.

Since their individual journeys began, they had all gained new scars, some within, some external, but as their conversation slowly emerged from the atmosphere of desolation they were all secretly surprised to discover bonds of friendship had been forged among them which would not have been there in other circumstances. As Church looked at their faces around the fire, he found a surprising burst of hope at that revelation; it was such a tiny thing in the face of all that had happened, but somehow it seemed important.

Without it, he mused, the realisation that their lives had been manipulated and ruined by higher powers could have destroyed them. Even so, each of them, in their own way, felt broken. Veitch, who had been ruined by the guilt of the murder he had committed; Ruth, who had lost her uncle and father; Shavi, who had lost his boyfriend; and Laura, whose mother had died while she lay unconscious. And there he was, two years of his life wasted by a suffering that need never have happened, the one thing he valued most destroyed, his entire existence spoiled; Marianne had been so important to him, life itself, and she had been treated as if she mattered less than a weed in the garden. All of that misery had been carried out purely on a whim, by a race of beings who thought so little about humanity they couldn't even bring themselves to act with contempt. He would have felt rage if it hadn't been so terrible; instead there was just despair at the senselessness of it all.

He sat in silence with Laura for the first hour after twilight, both of them lost to their thoughts. "Still, it could have been worse, right?" she said eventually. "If the Danann hadn't returned, we wouldn't have been sitting here now. The Fomorii would have wiped the world clean. You did that."

"We did it," he corrected.

"So we live to fight another day. We don't give up, right? Right?" She wasn't going to back down until he agreed, and when he did, she smiled and kissed him gently on the cheek. "Sinatra would be proud of you, boy." She slipped away, trailing her hand across his shoulders and the back of his neck. It was a simple touch, but it filled him with strength.

The Danann's involvement in their tragedies had at least helped Ruth begin to come to terms with Witch's murder of her uncle. The kind of person he had been prevented her absolving him of all guilt, but they were talking. As the fire began to die down, the two of them, together with Laura and Shavi, went in search of more wood while Tom and Church sat watching the glowing embers.

"We were supposed to be some kind of heroes," Church began disconsolately. "The defenders of humanity, of the world itself. What a laugh! Talk about fooling ourselves. We were so insignificant to the Danann they ran us like mice through a maze. We did all their dirty work for them and we suffered for it. And what did we get in return? Nothing."

"You're blinding yourself to your achievements." Tom rolled a joint and lit it. "The Danann may still help us. They simply need to be won over. If you'd failed to release them by Beltane, everything truly would be lost. The Fomorii would have had no opposition." He echoed Laura's words and Church wondered why he was the only one who failed to see anything positive. He began to protest, but Tom silenced him with a hand. "No. This has been a setback, but your victory in freeing the Danann has bought us more time. And the recovery of the talismans was a remarkable thing-something that has never been achieved since the Danann hid them away."

Church shook his head, unconvinced. "You know the worst thing? We've brought about exactly what we were trying to stop. If the Danann are as dangerously unpredictable ... as alien ... as you described, if they can devastate our lives without a second thought in the way that they did, I'm afraid of what they're going to do now they're here."

In Tom's silence, Church heard his worst fears confirmed.

"That's something to tell the grandchildren I'll probably never have," he said with a bitter laugh. "I was the man who helped bring about the end of the world."

A shooting star rocketed breathtakingly across a sky unspoiled by light pollution. Tom followed its arc while taking the smoke deep into his lungs. "When all this began I thought we were without hope," he began quietly. "You'll forgive me when I say, but when I looked at all of you I saw failure writ large. But you've torn the scales from my eyes. Through hardship you persevered and the Pendragon Spirit has truly awoken in you, in all of you. You carry within you the manifestation of all that is good in humanity, the strength, the true power, perhaps, of the highest force." He nodded to himself thoughtfully. "We must have faith."

"Faith, right. I tell you what I've got faith in: that I'm going to find out who or what the Danann used to kill Marianne and the others and I'm going to make them pay. And if I had the power within me, I'd make the Danann pay too."

Tom said nothing.

Church watched the others approaching through the gloom, laughing amongst themselves, despite everything. Slowly, deep within him, he began to feel the stirrings of that affirmation to which Tom had given voice. He was the one who had ruined everything; his weakness; but he could change. It would have been easy to give in to it, but that wasn't the kind of person he was. Somehow he had to dig down deep, learn from his terrible failure and move on. And hope that redemption lay somewhere in the future.

"What have you done with the Roisin Dubh?" Tom asked.

Church dipped in his pocket and pulled out the rose; it was withered and desiccated. Wrapped around the stem was Marianne's locket. "We're living in strange times," he began. "Look at this-a little girl's piece of cheap jewellery. And now it's a thing of wonder." As he carefully untangled the chain, he explained about the white light that had infused him during his battle with Calatin. "We've seen a lot of terrible things, but this ... this fills me with hope. I still don't know what it means, but I know what I'd like it to mean." He flicked open the locket and glanced at the photo inside. "A time of miracles," he said under his breath. As his words disappeared in the wind, the rose finally crumbled into dust and was whisked away from his palm.

"Gone," Tom said.

"But not completely. I can still feel some of its taint inside me. I don't know what that will mean."