Burning Ashes Read online

  “And I suppose you’re going to tell me what happens if we don’t?”

  The sword whined, its hilt clanking against stone.

  “Why isn’t the envoy here? Look what I have to work with.” Before Ben could protest or utter a retort, the sword, lofty and cold, continued. “Do you honestly think you can face this alone? A single beast against the horde? Listen to me. The corpse that shuffled out of this cavern thinks he’s the One True King. What would you do in his position, hmm? He’s going to raise himself an army. He’s heading to London to reclaim the throne.”

  FOUR

  Worlds. Spinning. A shining necklace of worlds scattered across the cosmos. As Ben gripped the hilt of the sword, the vision exploded in his skull, even as a familiar frost crept through his palm and into his bones. White fire shuddered through him, as bright, as burning as when he’d gripped the mnemonic harp, rendering his mind naked, his soul bare. Was he back in the nether? The darkness wheeled around him, depthless, cold, but neither silent nor empty. Time roared, monstrous in his ears. He heard the grinding of stars, a ceaseless beat that echoed his heart. Adrift, unmoored from flesh, he found himself soaring above a cracked moon, the shrapnel of rock and dust forming rings around it. Squinting, he looked down, saw the silver spilling from the moon’s molten core, tendrils weaving into the gulf. The blazing rivers met and fused, spiralling out in a vast web, a mesh that he somehow grasped went stretching out, bright, infinite, joining world to world. Lost highways. Uncharted roads. Silver leys riddling the nether. The Dark Frontier.

  At the heart of the web, the leys met in a knot like a star, a braided world of helixes, spirals and threads. Arcs of light speared through the riddle, each beam miles wide and strewn with symbols, arcane glyphs beyond his understanding. And in among the thousandfold layers, the twists and turns of the blazing knot-world, Ben made out the glint of mountains and fields, green, gold and grey, cloaked in flowers unlike any he’d known. He saw rivers cascading over impossible edges, a spray of diamonds washing out into eternity. He saw deserts of bone sweep to the horizon, the terrain curving like a giant wheel, descending into the light or looping over his head. He saw oceans glimmer in the maze, the waters rolling as red as blood, and winged ships flying over the waves, their keels throwing up spume. Islands dotted the weave, seemingly afloat on the radiance. Storms flashed in the purple bellies of the clouds.

  He peered into the warp and weft, his dreaming gaze lifting from the glittering roots—and he realised then that was exactly what he was looking at: the roots of a tremendous tree, gnarled, burnished and spectral, all pulsating with power. The roots drank from the moon, he saw, sucking up the shining ore, the source of the pervasive light. Lunewrought, surely. A closer look revealed skiffs, borne aloft by balloons and strange engines, laden with the luminous rock. Lunewrought, yes. Factories, spindly and black, peppered the rim of the chasm, rippling in the argent haze.

  Ben traced the roots to the trunk that rose above the shattered moon. As he took in the branches, leafless and silver, he grasped the vast scale of the tree, growing here for countless epochs in the fathomless dark.

  Far above, in the upper reaches, he saw a palace perched on the highest branch. Every battlement, turret and buttress rose as though carved from a single block of crystal. The foundations of the structure overhung the branch—which must have been a hundred feet in breadth, if not more—like spindles of melted wax, bulbous and tapering. Resting upon this massive bole, the palace stood. A moat surrounded the edifice, swans trailing across the polished surface. A drawbridge ran under the central keep, a tongue sliding into the face of the building, all high white walls, windows of sunset pink, parapets and pinnacles with silken flags. Here and there, Ben spied the hint of courtyards and follies, patches of lawn for reflection and games. There was a dome, which he took for a chapel, though what gods the denizens of such a place worshipped he found hard to imagine. The palace loomed, a medley of glass shot with blue, a spear thrust into the dark. This was the spindle on which the worlds spun, Ben knew, his senses stretched beyond earthly comprehension, his heart leaping at the sight. Bodiless, breathless, he took in the High House of Avalon, built aeons upon aeons ago in the uppermost branches of the Great Tree, which legend knew as the Isle of the Apples, the Font of All Worlds. Its roots went sprawling out into the cosmos, silver veins weaving through the darkness, across an ocean of unformed space. Of possibility.

  At least one of those veins, Ben suspected, still reached the Earth. A bridge, or so he’d thought at the time, as he’d leapt from the nameless temple in China and into the nether. In truth, it was a road. He got that now. A road that stretched to the Eight Hand Mirror. A door into Creation.

  But the bridge fell with the breaking of the harp, didn’t it? Evaporated in sparks and mist …

  Ben grasped at this hope, wondering why this proof of the Fay’s endurance should only fill him with dread. He was a creature of instinct; his guts had been his guide for many a year. And when his gaze fell once more on the palace, his heart shrank with a nameless fear.

  Up there, on a balcony, a woman stood. Dark, she was, both in skin and mystery. She wore a gown of pale blue silk, gossamer-sheer, the fabric moulded to her bosom and hips, her limbs left slender and bare. Her hair, as white as the palace walls, resembled a serpent coiled high on her head. Below her piled braid, her face was noble and proud, cut by angles of bone that fitted together in beauty despite their severity—or perhaps because of it. Her lips, brown and full, seemed forever poised on the verge of a kiss. Her nose was the dive of a hawk and her eyes, a soft yet penetrating violet, fixed on him in evident surprise.

  Then she frowned, a thin shadow slashed in her brow. He caught the flash of teeth, tiny pearls, and then the woman cast out a hand, a swift, sharp motion in the gulf.

  A dismissal.

  Ben found himself tumbling head over heels, into the nether. The palace, the tree, the cracked, bleeding moon all fell away from him, a shooting star. Dizziness claimed him, the emptiness filling his eyes. There was a sudden weight in his hands, an anchor bearing him down, but it was nothing compared to the weight of his heart. It was laden by the hope of thousands, tugging at a hilt embedded in stone. It was the lust of battle, of singing steel and severed flesh. It was a sigh of sorrow, the surface of a lake closing over his head.

  And in the end, it was darkness. The darkness that comes at the end of all dreams.

  He came to himself leaning against the wall of the tunnel, the last minutes of daylight winking up ahead. In his hand, the legendary sword, Caliburn.

  “What … what did I just see?”

  The blade glinted in the half-light. “Oh, I think you know.”

  Ben hawked up, spat and curled his lip. “I saw a painting once. The Lady …”

  He’d heard stories too. Stories beyond number. The painting in du Sang’s tomb had only confirmed an image that he’d held in his mind, a precious secret, a jewel. But he knew he probably shared that sense of wonder with all Remnantkind. Even the thought of it made him jealous, his covetous nature coiling around the memory. Still, he was afraid.

  “Yes. Nimue. Our Lady of the Barrow,” the sword said. “She looks out from the High House, searching the leys for the source of the disturbance.”

  My work here is done …

  “Yeah. And I’m guessing she wasn’t expecting me.” Ben growled down at the sword. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “What should I do? Turn the volume down from ‘king’ level? I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. We are all the creations of the Fay, Mr. Ignis. And we must answer as such.”

  Great.

  “Don’t call me that either.” He shook his head, then vented a sigh at the fading vision. “She looked …” He swallowed. “She looked like a goddess.”

  As far as gods were concerned, he wasn’t exactly a fan.

  The sword made a snorting sound. “Once, perhaps. The First-Born had their day. Now she is merely a queen.”

  “Eve
n better.”

  With this, he lifted the blade and staggered up the tunnel, navigating the rubble of the door to clamber out onto the narrow ledge. Grit trickled into the valley below. Windows flickered, fireflies in the distance. He leant against the rock face and breathed, sucking the evening into his lungs. There wasn’t time to gawp at the first stars, twinkling in the darkening blue. Somehow, he had to find something to wrap the sword in. He’d seen the effects of lunewrought up close and personal, a crazed light in a battle dragon’s eyes. He wasn’t about to bear the blade in his claws all the way back to London. Again, he was keenly aware that he was standing here in borrowed shoes. The cavern, the sword, the Lady—all of these things had been meant for Von Hart, the envoy extraordinary. The Lord of the Leaping White Stag, whatever. The sword had said so. Instead, the task rested on his shoulders, that for all their shame also bore a weight of cynicism. He’d hate to break it to Caliburn, but under the circumstances, the chance of a new golden age looked pretty slim. So where to start his latest bungling attempt at heroism this time? Face down a dead king with a magical sword? Or shake the fairy awake?

  As ideas went, he kind of preferred the latter.

  He was thinking this, shoving himself off the rocks and starting to make his way down the track, when a figure leapt from a boulder above him, a sword swinging out. In the gloom, Ben made out the sheen of a leather jacket, ripped jeans and a helmet of some kind. His eyes grew wide as his fist came up—he didn’t think to use Caliburn—and his assailant’s weapon clanged against his thickening scales, parried by his forearm.

  As his serpentine vision kicked in, Ben took in the figure staggering back, arms wheeling, desperately clutching the sword. That sword, broad-bladed, was instantly recognisable as a claymore, the edge notched like the teeth of a saw. It was also burnt, he noticed, fifty-five familiar inches of charred black steel, toasted a couple of years back in an underground car park in London. And recovered, no doubt, from the equally charred ruins of an oil refinery in Cairo.

  Not this again.

  The slayer was dressed in black too. Typical. Black leather jacket. Black motorcycle boots. Black helmet—the visor, he noted, charred like the sword. Evil-looking spikes covered the helmet from its crest to its vulturine beak. Ben laughed, a humourless bark. The scrap pointing up at him belonged to the Lambton armour, of course, the antique vessel that had delivered the Guild’s downfall, the death of the chairman Bardolfe and Ben’s initial suspicion of Von Hart. The last time he’d seen the helmet—miles, oceans away from here—it’d been rolling across a factory floor with a decapitated head inside it.

  “You guys need to get a new act,” Ben said.

  The Black Knight recovered his footing, gripping the claymore with both hands and swinging it out before him.

  “Red Ben Garston.” The slayer’s voice sounded hollow and tinny encased in metal. “I have some business with you!”

  Ben was busy counting his fingers, his free hand raised before his face.

  “So you’re what? Fulk Fitzwarren CDXIII?” He spat out the Roman numerals. “Is that right? I forget.”

  “Yield, knave!” Caliburn cried.

  “It’s OK, really,” Ben told the sword. “I’ve got this.”

  The Black Knight yelled, “Milk-drinker! Snake! Prepare to meet your doom!”

  The narrow track made a headlong charge difficult, but the slayer gave it a shot. Holding the claymore out before him like a lance, he came at Ben, obviously intending to run him through. Nice. Caliburn thrummed in Ben’s grip, eager to engage, but he held the sword point downward, sending a silent message of restraint.

  When the claymore was inches from him, Ben swung out his arm, simply batting the blade away. This time, he couldn’t detect any charms around the antique, and besides, the person holding it, for all his apparent skill, didn’t have much in the way of room. The assault was clumsy, guided by temper, and quite rightfully, the claymore flew into the air, clanging off the rock face and spinning down into the valley. Boots skidding on grit, the knight hollered and tried to veer away, abandon the attack. Ben’s hand snapped into a claw, grabbing the man as he fell, his talons closing around his throat.

  Feet wriggling, the Black Knight gasped and spluttered as Ben lifted him up off the ground.

  “‘Prepare to meet your doom.’ Seriously?” He jutted out his jaw, glaring up at the absurdly spiked helmet. “How did you find me?” he asked. “I’m halfway up a bloody Welsh mountain.”

  “The prophet …” the knight croaked, struggling. “The prophet came to us … at the Last Pavilion. Told us … to follow …”

  The Last Pavilion. He’d heard of the place, naturally. Or rather, unfortunately. The knight was talking about the Fitzwarren stronghold, a ramshackle mansion somewhere in Shropshire where the family elders, the patriarchs, had trained generation upon generation of Fulks for a singular and violent purpose: to chop off Ben Garston’s head and win back the deeds to their ancient seat, the crumbling ruin of Whittington Castle. He recalled the house motto with a sneer.

  Spei est Vindicta. Hope is Vengeance.

  Well. About that …

  “Don’t you people watch the news?”

  But prophet, he’d said? He didn’t know what to make of that, but he knew that it sounded religious. Something to do with the Chapter, had to be. That led to another idea, just as unpleasant as the first.

  “Lunewrought. You’ve got one of those damn manacles, haven’t you?” He rattled the slayer in his grip as if to shake loose the suspected restraint. “Come on. Out with it. Or I’ll chuck you down there after your sword.”

  Truth be told, he wasn’t sure whether he was going to do that anyway. These encounters, ancient, tedious as they were, tended to wind up with a dead Fulk at the end of them. Nevertheless, if the knight did have lunewrought in his possession, Ben would happily take it from him. It didn’t surprise him that the Whispering Chapter was still hot on his heels, tracking him down with the alien metal. In the Cardinal’s eyes, he was guilty of breaking the Lore on several counts and he didn’t think that the destruction of the harp, not to mention the Chapter’s plan to annihilate all Remnants in the Long Sleep, would’ve changed matters. Fanaticism was fanaticism, after all. If House Fitzwarren had thrown in with the CROWS a couple of years ago, then what was to stop them jumping into bed with the Chapter? These days, nothing surprised him.

  Seems I’m more popular than ever.

  With a trembling hand, the Black Knight fumbled in the pocket of his jacket and brought out the manacle in question, a thin silver circlet sparkling under the stars.

  Ben grunted and lifted Caliburn, nodding at the Fulk in his grip. Fulk, choking, obliged him, sliding the manacle over the tip of the sword. Like a game of ring toss, the manacle spun down the length of the blade, tinkling against the jewelled hilt and then liquidising in the air, silvery beads dancing around the crossguard, slowly melting into the sword. All lunewrought was one metal, or so folks said. And to lunewrought the manacle returned.

  “Toothsome,” the sword said.

  “Now,” Ben said, ignoring it. “Get out of my face.”

  Without ceremony, he released Fulk, dropping him onto the track. The knight’s helmet fell off with the impact, bouncing off a rock and over the cliff edge, joining his fallen sword. Mindless of the spikes, Fulk cried out and made a lunge for it, his fingertips missing the helmet by inches. Ben might’ve gone after him, delivered a swift kick to his butt, if surprise hadn’t arrested him. Eyebrows raised, he took in the slayer’s scrawny figure and bobbed black hair, cropped short in an evidently rough and hurried fashion. A smooth, unscarred face shot in his direction, dark eyes aflame.

  Just a … boy?

  “You bastard! Have you any idea what they’ll do to me for that?”

  “Who? Your patriarchs?” Ben said. “They should’ve known better. Antiques like that belong in display cases. Admittedly, that piece of junk doesn’t come with a ‘keep away from children’ sticker.”


  “I’m not a child. The dragon slaying was mine by right. Mine!”

  Ben laughed. “Is House Fitzwarren so desperate these days that they’re sending kids out on the hunt? You know, there’s an old saying. Play with fire and …”

  He left the phrase hanging, a threat in the air.

  The girl crouching on the track—and she was a girl, he saw, with a snort—screwed up her face. Even in the gloom, he could make out her light brown skin and dark lashes, revealing a trace of Asian blood. Indian, he thought, mixed with English, like many of the immigrants that had sailed to these shores—that had always sailed to these shores, for as long as he could remember—enriching the country’s culture with their own. Sensing his scrutiny, the girl looked away, down at the ground.

  Ben read something telling in the gesture.

  “Wait a minute. No one sent you, did they? The vendetta for the Mordiford Shame falls to Fitzwarren sons, as far as I’m aware. And I’m pretty well versed in the custom, trust me.” He crunched over to where the girl sat, growling down at her. “You fancied a shot at the cherry, right? You’re what—all of sixteen?”

  “Seventeen.” The girl exhaled, letting him know that this was a common and incredibly boring mistake. “So what?”

  The sword gave a chiding tut.

  “And you’re no Fulk, that’s for sure.” He made it sound like an insult, but it wasn’t. Not really. “What’s your real name? Tell me and I might even let you walk out of here.”

  “Annis,” she said through her teeth, proud all the same. “Annis Cade.”

  “Wrong. You’re raw meat. Only one thing to do with raw meat.”

  Ben drew himself up, his suit rippling, his chest and limbs expanding in a shield of scales. Horns danced up on his shoulders, yellow and curved. He conjured the furnace in his belly into his eyes, and when he opened his mouth to speak again, fangs glistened behind his lips.

  He only meant to scare the girl, send her running down the mountainside and, hopefully, back home. But unlike her attack, she caught him off guard, leaping to her feet and facing him with a snarl.