Burning Ashes Page 5

  Get in line.

  Spine straightening, he stood up, searching the feathery fracas above him for an answer. As if his attention was a cue, the flock blustered as one around the crypt, a slick black wave washing over stone, and shot back into the entrance to the cavern, sucked into the tunnel mouth like oil down a plughole.

  In a matter of seconds, the birds were gone. Ben cocked his head, alarmed and puzzled, listening to their retreating cries.

  The echoes sounded oddly like a summons.

  Or a warning.

  Mount Snowdon, Wales

  Fifteen hundred years had passed and the ravens still circled the summit of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. The black-winged birds cawed above the tumulus, the great peak snow-draped and white, heralding this crisp October morning. The sun slanted through the teeth of the range, these grey guardians of the northern coast, refracting in rainbows and mist on the surface of the tarns that glimmered like mirrors in their laps. Pine trees creaked and sighed in the wind, the echoes carried down gullies like the tick of some huge, invisible clock, measuring out the slumbering centuries. Somewhere, bells tinkled—or perhaps it was harpsong—a lullaby whispering between the rocks, between the trees. Between the past and the future. Both met here in this breath, this moment, to break the chains of time with the ghost of a melody.

  At the sound, the ravens, cawing, fluttered away, mere dots in the haze, leaving the mountain behind. The song was over. The task, having passed down countless black-winged generations, done.

  The days grew short as they drew close to Samhain, the pagan festival of old. Long ago, the tribes of Logres had lit fires and danced naked around them to celebrate the end of the harvest, the coming of the dark half of the year, on a night that folks now called All Hallows’ Eve. And others, more devout, had burned a virgin or two in the pyre, hoping to stave off the omens of plague, famine and war. These days, those who observed the ancient date did so as a passing curio. The ravens of Snowdon were in sharp decline and most had smoke and tar in their wings, the residue of urban pollution. Logres was now called Britain, the United Kingdom, and most would agree that quite a lot had happened in fifteen hundred years. These were no longer the Old Lands.

  But the bones remained. And deep in the mountain, in the heart of Yr Wyddfa, some said those bones still wore flesh.

  On the eastern flank of Snowdon, craggy and sheer, there stood an unseen door. There was also a ledge, of sorts, no more remarkable than the surrounding rock face, but no handle, keyhole, knocker or bell betrayed an entrance of any kind. A long time ago, according to folklore, a man had once come calling and found a secret cavern behind the door. Sometimes, depending on who was telling the tale, the man was a herdsman and sometimes a thief, but never a knight or a prince. And sometimes, this lowborn man found an empty cave and sometimes he found one filled with gold. Sometimes the herdsman stole a cup or a crown (and if he did, both later served to prove that his tale wasn’t a dream), but mostly he just ran away. He ran away from the people he found sleeping in the cavern, and in particular, he ran away from the man with the beard that had grown so long it trailed down between his boots, who would always wake up and ask, bleary yet hopeful, whether the ravens still circled the mountaintop. The herdsman, thief, or sometimes even a mysterious voice, would reply, “Yes, the ravens still circle the mountaintop.” Then the man with the unfeasibly long beard would grow angry and shout, “Begone! Begone! For my time has not yet come!”

  Folklore is given to change and unreliable, full of fancy and wild ideas.

  But there has always been a king in the mountain.

  He slept here still, this ancient thane of Logres. Behind the door, down a tunnel, in a large and echoing cavern. The chamber, roughly circular and domed, stretched out from a raised rectangular plinth in the middle of the floor. A tomb, of sorts, or a stone bed, its single occupant lying upon it in regal repose. In full armour, a jewelled sword positioned beside him and a shield upon his chest, the king slept. He slept as he had always slept, since the Lady came stepping out of the lake, turning back from her farewell at the battle, and bade her servants bear his body here, into this waiting place.

  Fade not, but sleep, she’d told him, stroking a hand over his cold face, her long brown fingers coming away wet with blood. When the ravens no longer circle the mountaintop, when Logres has need of you again, you will awake. Awake and reclaim your destiny.

  That was fifteen hundred years ago. The Battle of Camlann Field had ended in blood, fire and tears. And a schism, a severing of worlds. The end of a golden age. The king, however, recalled from death to linger here for centuries on the doorstep, had not aged a day. His hair fell around his face in thick grey curls, framing a nose that spoke of both Roman and Celt. His beard, shot with silver, straggled down to the middle of his chest (and not to his boots as some liked to claim). Wrinkles and scars crisscrossed his brow, relating the trials of a glorious life, of maidens won and giants bested. Of lost love and pain. Yet his features still held a trace of the boy, a gangling squire who’d dropped plates in the castle kitchens and fallen headfirst out of trees. Both man and boy—the One True King—slumbered on in silence, his dreams unknowable, his presence long sunken into myth. The Lady’s servants had cleansed the blood from him and his skin was white, white as snow in the not-quite darkness, the soft blue glow emanating from the plinth on which he lay, creeping into the cavern.

  The light, somewhere between sapphire and frost, rippled out into the cavern greater, illuminating a circle of other tombs placed around the king. The ground shuddered, rock dust raining down, and many a sword and gauntlet clanked, many a helmet rang on stone as the tremors ran through the chamber. The knights on the tombs around the king, heroes all, numbered six. Aside from Lancelot, the White Knight, who had not been interred here, these warriors were the best of them, the champions of the Round Table that the Lady had shaped this circle to portray.

  There was Gawain, who had once lopped off a green knight’s head. There was Bors the Younger, who had slain three dragons with a single stroke. And Kay the Seneschal, who had bossed the king about as a boy and then served him as a man. Tristan, the greatest archer in the realm and, some said, the greatest lover. Fierce Bedwyr, the only woman in the company, who had cradled her king at the last and thrown his sword, Caliburn, into the waters of Llyn Llydaw. And there was Galahad in his blood-red armour, who had once gone in search of a holy cup and perhaps even found it.

  Six knights and their king, Arthur. Arthur, son of Uther. Arthur Pendragon, the Bear of Logres, who stood with his feet planted firmly in two worlds, that of history and that of myth. Arthur, the Once and Future King.

  And this day, at this hour, as the ravens fled, and the bells tinkled, and the cavern shook, that future had arrived.

  The first sign of movement was the hounds, Caval and Gast, that curled at the foot of the great king’s tomb. The beasts twitched in the brightening light, an ear flicking, a muffled whine, a paw stretching out. The next sign was the sword, dislodged from its place on the plinth and clattering to the floor in a flash of silver and gems.

  “Fuck,” said a voice. “Not again.”

  The tremors met the cavern wall, dispersing with a boom. Not far away, there was a loud crack, the unseen door sundering, stale air and a plume of grit billowing from the mountainside. The sunlight in the cavern winked out, the shaft swallowed up by the murky light, a radiance that pooled and shone in the king’s eyes as, slowly, he sat up.

  Arthur’s shield slid off his chest as he did so, revealing his gilded horn, carved from the tusk of the monstrous boar, Twrch Trwyth, he of the poisonous bristles, that legend claimed had long ago been a prince of Powys. The king blinked, the blue light trailing from his head, and looked down at his hands. Then he looked up, wonderingly, facing his knights, who also sat, drowsy and confused, yet awaiting his command.

  “How long …?” Arthur managed, but then his words became a meaningless croak.

  He watched, his eyes
blazing with frost, as a shadow fell over the knights around him. It was as though a vast wing passed over the cavern, although the seven of them were deep underground. A breath, a whisper, eddied through the air, carrying the hint of a woman’s voice, familiar and soft, husky as autumn leaves, sonorous as a forest well. In a heartbeat, it was clear what magic touched the cavern, this ancient waiting place. A spell of awakening, faded, yes, and tainted by the touch of a more powerful force.

  Time.

  Gawain crumbled first, a hale-looking man in his early forties reduced to a pile of dust. Bors the Younger had never looked older, his face shrivelling to resemble a dried fig, his grimace of shock caving inward along with the rest of his skull, the insides pouring out in a steady stream of grit. Kay the Seneschal slumped, one of his arms—rendered skeletal in a matter of seconds—falling from his shoulder and rattling to the floor, the rest of his body sinking inside his breastplate like a crab withdrawing into a shell. Tristan simply exploded in a shower of bones, a grey cap of hair left spinning on his tomb.

  Bedwyr cried out, her short-cropped hair bleaching to white, her eyes sinking into her skull. Teeth dropped out of her mouth like pegs and her hands withered to bony claws, and yet she somehow maintained her form, sitting upright in the cavern. Likewise, Galahad, wormy and decayed in his blood-red armour, sat ravaged but whole, the blight of time reeling in, its hungry touch checked by the spell, the charmed suspension reasserted. As one, the two knights looked up from their stalled deterioration, tendons creaking, to attend to their king.

  Arthur greeted them with a grin through his bearded skull. In his hollow eye sockets, the light raged, washing away every trace of his character, replacing it with a cold intent, as bright as it was fierce.

  His two remaining knights, as enthralled, as wasted as he, followed the king as he slid off his bed of stone, his boots thumping on the cavern floor. With a wheeze of escaping gas, Bedwyr raised her mace, silently swearing fealty. Galahad lifted his double-headed axe, his tongue twisting in a habitual oath—his brain was rotten, devoid of thought—but he only succeeded in dislodging maggots between his teeth.

  In turn, Arthur reached for his sword. The fabled Caliburn, lying on stone.

  “I don’t think so,” the sword said.

  There was a flash—perhaps of sunlight on silver, perhaps not—and the king in the mountain retracted his hand, his gauntlet crunching with brittle bones. For a moment, he glared at the fabulous weapon, as though recalling some distant memory. His tongue, dry and grey, wormed in his mouth, trying to form the words once carved into rock.

  Whoso Pulleth Out this Sword of this Stone is Rightwise King Born of all England.

  But no, the Old Lands were over. That destiny done. He was Arthur of Logres and yet he was not. He was something else, a corpse king, a foul echo, animated by a mouldering spell and steered by another’s will. And thus, Caliburn spurned his touch.

  Hissing between blackened teeth, the king turned away, shuffling towards the unseen door and the future promised to him.

  The hounds, frost-eyed and skeletal, growled and clacked across stone to his side.

  The dead knights followed.

  THREE

  A long time ago, according to folklore, a man had come calling to the mountain. Sometimes the man was a herdsman and sometimes a thief, but never a knight or a prince. And certainly, never a dragon.

  Wings spread to catch the wind, Red Ben Garston soared above the English plain, chasing a flock of birds. Ravens, to be precise. He’d burst from the Hampstead railway tunnel and banked over the cowed city, trying to ignore the flattened buildings and the spirals of smoke rising from Shoreditch and Greenwich, the evidence of fires still burning below. Pools, grimy, glimmered along the Thames, the foundations of the London Eye, Cleopatra’s Needle and the Globe all submerged in the displaced water and muck. In the still, he could make out the distant wail of fire engines and the honk of cars, line upon line of vehicles choking the motorways out of London, grim proof of his fears.

  The people were abandoning the city. To what, he found hard to think about.

  Tail weaving, its arrowhead tip slicing the bellies of the autumn clouds, he made sure to keep a low altitude, the black riddle of birds flapping ahead. The air through his underwing gills was cool and slow as he kept pace with the flock, which, if pressed, he could easily outdistance. Cruising at a thousand feet, the birds led his snout northwest, soaring over Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds, and into the Marches beyond. The land below, a patchwork of fields and farms, scattered towns, rivers and roads, related his own story as he went. Down there, in the Vale of the White Horse, he’d first signed the secret charter, the Pact, that had secured the peace between Remnants and humans. Down there, in a border village, he had fallen in love with a maiden called Maud and walked into history and legend. Or rather, into centuries of pain …

  It occurred to him then that for all his travels, he was as bound to this country as if he’d been chained to it. From forest tavern to underground cave, he’d found himself in every corner of Britain, its greatest secret and, at times, its keeper. Hadn’t the Curia Occultus charged him with the task, back in 1215? To protect the humans from the Remnant world. To police his own kind as the Sola Ignis, the Lone Fire, Guardian of the West. And he had done so—reluctantly, granted—but faithfully. Well, up to a point. His affairs with humans hadn’t exactly been Loreful (breeding, particularly so) and his transformations into dragon form weren’t either. What could he do? He was himself, guided and ruled by his nature. Rose McBriar, his long-suffering ex-girlfriend, and the child she carried—his child—had made it clear that he was out of their lives. Wherever they are … That aside, surely the cost of his long service, the sacrifices he’d made and the trials he’d faced, outweighed the rest of his misdemeanours. He had plunged an old wyrm into the Thames and incinerated a troll in the name of the Lore. Witches, a mummy, a goddess, another dragon and yes, a sin-you—all had come to a sticky end on his watch, not that he felt a shred of regret about anyone other than Jia.

  But all that was over now. He was the Sola Ignis no longer. He had failed the humans. So many had died. Many more faced certain doom. And he knew in his heart of hearts that he wasn’t following the birds into Wales out of a lingering sense of duty either, but simply one of shame.

  You’ll die protecting them. And they won’t even know …

  The sun was setting by the time that Ben drew near the mountain, the flock of ravens spiralling around its distant peak. Perhaps it was the half-light that dragged his gaze to the earth, his nostrils flaring as he noticed the radiance there, fainter than when he’d seen it before, over the North Sea and the Pearl River. The great arc ran under the earth like a vein, a mile wide or more, curving from the south through the hills ahead of him, across the forests of Gwydir, under the tarns and over the rockbound slopes. The Fay circle of protection—by now, Ben understood what he was looking at—shimmered and gleamed with indecipherable runes, the arcane sigils of the long-vanished race who had branded these wards deep in the earth. The circles were vast, spanning continents, and Ben wondered if this was part of the same ring that he’d seen before, the one stretching east into the Netherlands a few months ago. Judging from the size of the thing, its radius must encompass the Scottish Lowlands, the Irish Sea and North Wales. Perhaps London too, threading through the caverns that he’d chosen for his lair, the forgotten barrows of the Fay. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? The reason for the disturbance earlier today, the strange radiance in the crypt and the coming of the birds, spurred by some event further along the circle. The notion didn’t bode well. The enormous brands served to shield the earth from the nether, the ravenous ghosts of the outer dark. Jia had told him as much.

  The magic of the Fay is growing old. The circles of protection are souring.

  Gods only knew what the failing wards might attract. Six months ago, the Lurkers had gathered at the door to Creation. Von Hart had managed to head them off by using himself a
s bait, a “living source of magic,” according to the fairy. In doing so, he had turned the phantoms to his own ends. The harp, of course, had shattered into pieces and Ben had seen the menace fly apart, the Ghost Emperor scattered—but he didn’t know if that had bought him any time. What was to stop the Lurkers returning, hungrier than ever? He didn’t know how long they had. Not much, if his luck was anything to go by.

  Looking down, he watched as the shimmering circle faded. Could he see the brands because he’d touched the fragments of the harp, forever stained by lunewrought? He thought so. That shit kind of sticks. The Fay metal, the ore of Avalon, was both perilous and rare, able to summon Remnants, to bind them in human form and limit their abilities. Had any slivers of the alien metal survived the destruction of the harp? Somehow, he doubted it. But how strange that the lunewrought should change him too, granting him this heightened vision. Well, it was a gift that gave him no ease, the sight of these immense sigils, the borders of the spell corroding, flickering out. It only confirmed the fact that he was up to his neck in it.

  Thinking this, he turned his attention to the mountain ahead, rising from the arc of the dimming circle. The ravens, cawing louder than before, circled the peak in a great black gyre, once, twice, three times, before scattering off in all directions, released by the dregs of some binding spell, or so Ben reckoned. A spell to bring someone to the mountain. The creatures swept down into the valley, heading for the forests and the sea. Just ordinary birds, as far as he could tell. Someone. But not anyone, surely.

  Despite his inner heat, a chill crept into his bones as he tried to connect the dots. The harp, the circles … well, all of it was Fay business, wasn’t it? As uncomfortable as the thought made him, he could only assume that he wasn’t the mountain’s visitor of choice. Would the ravens have flown all the way to London to summon a washed-up dragon in a cave? Even if the flock was following the arc of the circle, why enter the barrows? Don’t flatter yourself. If lunewrought spoke to lunewrought, as he’d learnt, then it followed that Fay spoke to Fay. And there was only one creature who went by such a description on this side of the nether. Had he come here on another’s journey, fulfilling some unknown task? The task of the envoy Blaise Von Hart …?