The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (51 page)

While Laura and Shavi spoke quietly, Hunter and Hal gathered by the fire with Mallory and Sophie.

‘You look very fit for someone who’s supposed to be dead,’ Hunter said to Sophie, with a hint of flirtation.

‘You’re wasting your time turning it on with me, Hunter. Mallory’s already warned me about you,’ she replied, in a not unfriendly manner.

Hunter feigned a hurt expression. ‘Well, then. Down to business.’

‘It’s a bit late in the day to start talking,’ Hal said.

‘Who’s this misery goat?’ Sophie shucked off the cloak Mallory had wrapped her in; her skin, so pale and deathly less than an hour ago, now bloomed with vitality.

‘Don’t go saying anything against my chum.’ Hunter clapped an arm around Hal’s shoulders and crushed Hal to him. ‘This is Hal Campbell, damned intellectual, the brains to my brawn, the brains to my beauty—’ Hal fought his way free.

Sophie’s eyes narrowed as if she was peering through skin and bone into Hal’s very heart. ‘There’s something about you—’

‘There’s nothing about me!’ Hal snapped.

‘Stop picking on him.’ Hunter edged Hal away from Sophie’s probing stare. Hal wandered into a corner where he observed the proceedings sullenly.

‘This is better than I thought,’ Hunter continued. ‘With Sabrina here back in the land of the living, we should be up to speed.’ He glanced at Shavi and Laura, still locked in deep, quiet conversation. ‘If you count our two substitutes.’

Quickly, they began to exchange information. Hunter explained
Ruth’s absence – Sophie could barely hide her disappointment. ‘I wouldn’t be here today if not for the trail Ruth walked before me,’ she said, before telling everyone how Caitlin had lost her Pendragon Spirit and become possessed by the Morrigan. Caitlin was locked up downstairs under the guard of Thackeray and Harvey in case the Morrigan reasserted herself.

‘We stand a chance, then,’ Mallory said. ‘But I’d be happier if we had the true number instead of trying to pad it out with Laura and Shavi. Still, even if we had the proper number, five of us against a couple of million—’

Hal came forward and said passionately, ‘You’re missing the point.’

Hunter stepped in before Hal’s brusque attitude could offend anyone in the tense atmosphere that lay across the gathering. ‘Spit it out.’

‘There’s no point just lining up alongside the troops to fight the Lament-Brood. You can help, sure, but that’s not what you’re here for.’

‘Go on,’ Hunter said.

‘You’ve been brought together to fight the Void, not its agents. That’s what the Brothers and Sisters were designed for—’

‘How would you know?’ Mallory said sharply.

Hunter held up a silencing hand. ‘Hal’s got a brain the size of a planet. I trust him. Think about it – he’s right. We need to focus on finding the real enemy, not waste our time fighting his pawns.’

‘But we don’t know where the Void is,’ Mallory said. ‘We can’t just sit back and wait until we’re overrun.’

‘No, you can’t,’ Hal said, ‘but sure as anything, the Void is going to be here. The Lament-Brood … his generals … will bring it into the city with them.’ Hal felt uncomfortable when he noticed that everyone was now hanging on his words.

‘I always thought it would be bigger than some physical presence,’ Sophie said. ‘Something that could be all around us.’

‘Maybe it is. I don’t know,’ Hal back-tracked. ‘But this is the place where the last battle will be fought. The Void is going to be here, and you need to be ready to face off against it. That’s where whatever skills the Pendragon Spirit has given you will come into play.’

‘See,’ Hunter said, ‘I told you he’s not just an ugly face.’

‘Then I say we do what we can on the front line,’ Mallory said, ‘to make sure that the city doesn’t get swamped while we try to find out where the Void is.’

‘Or what it is,’ Sophie said. ‘For all we know, it could be a little glass bottle of nothing. Or a ten-foot teddy bear.’

‘I can help,’ Shavi said. ‘I can contact the spirits for more information. But it takes a great deal out of me, so I should not attempt it until I really need to.’

‘Enough jawing,’ Laura said. ‘All you lot do is talk, talk, talk. It wasn’t like that in our day.’ She gave Shavi a wink. ‘Let’s hit that front line.’

As they trooped out, Hal called Hunter back. Hal had been fighting with what he had to say ever since they had entered the brothel. But when he saw the bravery the others were exhibiting by putting their lives on the line for a greater cause, the guilt consumed him. He had to speak out.

‘That was smart talking there,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m proud of you.’

‘You won’t be in a minute,’ Hal began. He steeled himself, then blurted, ‘I’m a Brother of Dragons. I’ve known it for a long time, but I hid it away … I lied to you because … I was afraid.’

Hunter searched Hal’s face. Hal couldn’t read what was going on in his head, but knew that if Hunter condemned him, it would tear him apart.

‘You know, now that you say it, I can see it,’ Hunter mused.

It certainly wasn’t the reaction Hal had expected. ‘Aren’t you angry with me?’

‘Everybody does what they have to. You don’t need to be fighting at the front to play your part – that’s not why you were chosen. I’m betting you’re doing your own thing, secretly, away from the limelight, which is just so very Hal.’

Hal was deeply moved by Hunter’s complete belief in him. For the first time, he realised the true depth of their friendship and how much it meant to him.

Hunter clasped Hal’s arm in a powerful gesture of support. ‘You decide where you need to be, and what you have to do. If you don’t want to come to the front line, that’s fine.’

‘Don’t let me off the hook,’ Hal said. ‘Make me come! I’m a coward!’

‘No, you’re not.’ Hunter glanced towards the open door: he had
to go. ‘I bet you haven’t been hiding out in a bunker since you found out what you are. You’ve been doing something to help, haven’t you?’

‘Well …’

‘See? You’re playing your part, Hal. You’ll be where you need to be. I trust you.’

‘How can you say that? I’ve betrayed you, and what it means to be a Brother of Dragons. I’m not up to it.’

‘Stop talking such bollocks. Now, I need to go before someone nicks my horse, but I’ll see you again soon, all right?’

Hal nodded reluctantly. ‘Come back. For Samantha. I think she’s in love with you.’

Hunter gave him a curious look, then one more smile and he was gone, to death or glory. Hal wanted to hate himself, but Hunter’s words were still flying around in his head: perhaps he hadn’t been fooling himself that his investigation into the mystery of the Wish Stone was vital. Was that really his role as a Brother of Dragons? If so, he had to find the solution quickly.

Hunter reined in his mount next to Mallory, who was just climbing into the saddle of Laura’s horse. Sophie, Shavi and Laura waited next to one of the patrol jeeps that had been fitted with a snow plough; Laura claimed that she had ‘found it’ in the next street.

‘There’ll be hotspots at three main barricades,’ Hunter began. ‘On Saint Giles, Saint Aldate’s beyond Thames Street and the High Street beyond Magdalen. There’ll be another couple of barricades to the west, and on the smaller roads to the north-east, but those routes won’t present easy attack routes, so I’m betting that the main forces will come in from the north, south and east.’

‘We can’t be everywhere,’ Mallory said. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I’ll take the High Street, you head south down Saint Aldate’s.’ Hunter turned to Laura. ‘Think you can grow something strong enough to form a barrier across Saint Giles? It’s a big road.’

‘No problem.’ Her smile unnerved Sophie, who hadn’t taken to Laura at all. ‘Looking forward to it.’

‘Sophie, you need to stay in the jeep with Shavi,’ Hunter went on. ‘Move back and forth between the main battle areas and do
what you can with your thing. Storms, rats … ferocious rabbits, if you’ve got any hats you can pull them out of.’

Sophie felt excited at the prospect of using her Craft to the extent of her abilities. It would be a massive release after all the stress and suffering of the preceding weeks.

‘Shavi, we’re counting on you to find our primary target,’ Hunter continued. ‘Do whatever you have to do. If Sophie stays by your side, she can protect you if you get into a weakened state.’

Shavi smiled enigmatically.

‘What?’ Hunter said.

‘You remind me of my good friend, Church.’

Silenced by the comment, Hunter urged the others to leave. They didn’t say goodbye, didn’t consider the future for a second. Surviving the present situation was the only thing that mattered.

Alone in the room, Hal watched the crackling flames as he sank deep into thoughts of King Arthur, a raging Blue Fire and the secret language of symbols. The solution was so close that he could almost touch it, and this time he was going to succeed.

Carefully, he laid out the evidence in his mind. It was complex, but he was sure he had all the information he required; the only thing he needed was the key that would unlock the code.

The underlying pattern of the mystery was the legend of King Arthur. From everything Hal had learned, it was clear that the story had been devised at some point in ancient times as a symbolic means of passing information down the years. That was a standard way of operating for cultures without the written word. In the distant past, memory skills had been developed far beyond what modern man was used to. Greek storytellers could recite by heart every word of Homer’s
Iliad
. The Celtic bards had vast, detailed story banks recorded in their heads, passed down from father to son. Those stories were a secret language: locked in their accounts of gods and heroes and men were rules for living life, as well as tracts of knowledge about the stars and animals and plants. Most importantly, the stories preserved for all eternity the vast mysteries held by the wise men and women in the only way their culture knew.

It was an elegant solution. Lists of facts and figures, rules and regulations, could be corrupted by memory or easily forgotten. But
stories went on for ever. With the vital information stitched into the fabric of a tale, it would always be there to be discovered by anyone who understood the secret language of symbolism.

The true story, the important story, was not the one on the surface; it was the one hidden beneath. And that’s what Hal knew he had to do: cut through the surface story to find the real message.

The Arthurian legends spoke of places where the power of the king was concentrated, of Camelot and Avalon and the lake where Excalibur was found. Many of these places, the stories said, were pathways to another world. But Hal knew that the power of the king in the legends was not meant to be the temporal power of an earthly ruler. It was real power: the Blue Fire, the energy that coursed through the Earth and every living thing upon it. That was the first, and greatest, of the hidden messages.

Ley lines, spirit paths, the dragon lines of the Chinese. King Arthur, who was a force for good against evil and the defender of the land against the darkness, was a code for this power. Any place linked to Arthur was a spot where the Earth Power was strongest. And these power nodes could be used to cross over to the Otherworld, the place he had witnessed with awe when he had gazed through the reversed monument at Shugborough.

As Hal turned these things over in his mind, he found himself becoming increasingly excited, for instinctively he knew that he was nearing some point of revelation. When a log crackled and spat, another connection leaped forward: he suddenly realised that like the Shugborough monument, the symbols coded into the stories had two faces, dual strands of information operating one on top of the other. In fact, the more he considered it, the more he knew this to be true. Duality was everywhere. Two worlds, side by side, reflecting each other yet different, both influencing the other. Good and evil. Humans and gods. Life and Anti-Life.

So if there were double meanings in the legends, what did that suggest? Certainly, on one level, that King Arthur was a symbol of the Blue Fire.

But on another, also that there was a king
. A king who embodied the Earth Power. A defender waiting to be called back in Britain’s darkest hour – that was what the legends said. And surely this was the darkest hour of all, when life was about to be subsumed by Anti-Life.

His heart beat faster.

Et in Arcadia Ego
. And in Arcadia – the Otherworld – I wait. But ‘I’ was not death. It was the king, and the tomb in Poussin’s painting was where he lay, waiting to be awoken.

And the flipside of that was the anagram of the inscription on the tomb:
I Tego Arcana Dei
. Begone! I conceal the secrets of God. The king was infused with the power of God, the Blue Fire. The power of life that could throw back the Void.

That was why the secrets had been waiting until this moment to be revealed, to be discovered by Hal: so that he could bring the defender back. Hal felt a frisson as the pattern surfaced. It suggested the influence of a hidden intelligence, and a vast, unimaginable master plan with connections stretching across millennia.

Almost there now. One final question: who was the king?