In the cauldron, I watched events unfolding in the real world — the return of the Celtic gods and the Fomorii during the Age of Misrule that my younger self had experienced; the deaths of Niamh and Tom, sacrificing themselves for the greater good; and the events that had awoken the Void.
Afterwards, the Caretaker led me past a cavern where the three Daughters of the Night unravelled, measured and cut the threads of human life, and then to another cave containing the Axis of Existence. By shifting what I perceived to be a lever, but which was truly something incomprehensible, I could alter reality, as Dian Cecht had hinted. Still believing it to be a dream, I moved the lever and thus saved Tom, Niamh and the Tuatha De Danann, unaware that there would be repercussions for my action.
While I slept my restless sleep, Ruth, Laura and Shavi escaped Veitch and made their way to the Far Lands, where Ruth woke me with a kiss. After more than two thousand years, I was finally reunited with the woman I loved, and with my friends and comrades. The reunion kindled the embers of hope I needed to pick up the fight.
I knew we had to relocate the Extinction Shears, the only thing with enough power to destroy the Void. But first we paid a visit to the Eden Project, the environmental site in Cornwall, where the Seelie Court waited, and where I knew a great Fabulous Beast was hidden. If we could awaken it, we could release into the land what meagre Blue Fire still existed.
The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders did everything in its power to stop us reaching the Eden Project. Once there, we faced one final battle with Veitch and the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders. At the last, Veitch threw himself onto his sword, which he’d thrust into my hands. It looked like a last, desperate act of suicide when he knew he was beaten, but at the moment he died, mysterious black lightning flashed between him, me and Ruth, all of us joined in one moment of searing cold.
I had no idea what that had done to us, if anything, and in the midst of victory gave it little thought. The Fabulous Beast was awakened. Magic returned to the land. As Veitch’s body was reclaimed by Etain, Hal manifested in the resurgent Blue Fire, my own genie in a bottle, offering me guidance regarding the way forward. The first thing he suggested was that we free Mallory, Sophie, Caitlin and Hunter from their fake lives so that we would have a strong force of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.
And after that? A long, hard road lay ahead …
A Prologue
1
London sleeps, London dreams.
In the quiet hour before dawn, the city breathes steadily. The river drifts, dark and slow. The trains have stopped, the traffic has slowed. Listen. You can almost hear each exhalation, and the whispers rising from the subterranean unconscious.
In Ealing and Richmond and Clapham, children wake, crying about a fire, a terrible fire, and their parents cannot calm them. In Battersea, a disconsolate mother sits alone in a dark lounge, sobbing.
Along the Strand, a policeman stops, troubled. Every night an old homeless man everyone knows as Glasgow Tom sits on his patch and babbles relentlessly from dusk till dawn. Tonight, for the first night the policeman can remember in three years, Glasgow Tom is silent. He sits against the wall, reeking of strong, cheap beer and urine, and traces an outline of a man against the dark sky, over and over again.
In the zoo, to the north, beyond the green expanse of Regent’s Park, the silence is shattered as animals howl and chatter and scream in a way their keepers have never heard before. The beasts look to the sky as if seeing things no human can see. In every cage and pen, animals looking to the sky. With jokes and shrugs, the keepers try to believe there is some rational explanation. There is not.
At the insect house, in the glass case of
The city dreams strange dreams.
To the east, in the commercial district bleeding out of the City and into the old Docklands, the rich and privileged dream of hard things, of their monumental buildings, and expensive cars, and well-tailored suits: of money and what money makes. Sleep here is easy.
But there are those who do not have the luxury of rest. High up in the tallest tower in Canary Wharf are the offices of Steelguard Securities, which prides itself on being the hardest, most driven, most morally ambivalent — and therefore most successful — company in the quarter. Here two employees still toil despite the lateness of the hour.
Mallory is beneath notice, in his blue overalls, his dark hair fastened back with an elastic band, with his vacuum and his cleaning products, maintaining his ironic disposition despite the relentless routine of emptying bins and cleaning phones night after night after night. When he is asleep, Mallory is not allowed to dream. His dreams come when he is awake, in flashes that are almost like memories, rich in detail and clarity of purpose. Yet they could not be real in any way, and so he is troubled by them. In his dreams, he is a hero with a magical sword, battling in a fallen world. One of five great heroes struggling to prevent life from slipping into endless shadow.
Yet here he is with his vacuum and cleaning products. No sword; no hero by any measure.
In the main dealing room, beyond the glass partition wall that Mallory cleans every night, sits another employee. Like Mallory, she is in her late twenties, with an intelligent and knowing face that Mallory finds intriguing. Sophie Tallent is not allowed to dream while she sleeps either. She watches the figures on her screen as the Nikkei 225 index rises and falls in minute increments. Like Mallory, Sophie has lucid flashes of another life that she fervently wishes was real. A life filled with meaning, the soothing pulse of nature, swelling emotions and deeds that help make the world a better place. In contrast, her existence at Steelguard is a ghost-life, where the dead perpetuate the meaningless rituals they followed when they were alive.
Sometimes she glances at Mallory, and sometimes he casts a furtive glance at her, but their eyes never meet. It has been that way for as long as they have worked there, which feels like for ever. Occasionally they wonder what they would see in those depths if their gazes did coincide.
On this particular night, Mallory was so engrossed in the woman that he did not hear any footsteps approach through the echoing annexe. Perhaps there had not been any. Startled by a cough, he turned to find the kind of man who could appear in any situation and leave no impression whatsoever: bland features, neither handsome nor unattractive; dark hair, cut short but not too severely; dark suit, not too expensive, not too cheap. Mallory even had difficulty estimating his age.
‘I’m Mr Rourke, the night manager,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you finished here yet? Stop dragging your feet.’
Mallory thought he knew everyone on the night staff, but he had never seen Rourke before. ‘Nearly done.’ Sullenly, he returned to his cleaning products. Something about the manager set his teeth on edge.
When he had retrieved the window cleaner, he was surprised to see that another person had arrived silently behind Rourke. Mallory had a second to take in the man’s determined face before a fiery crackle severed Rourke’s head from his shoulders.
At first Mallory had difficulty perceiving the assassin’s weapon. His mind told him it was some kind of clockwork machine, much too large for him to hold, then a crystal glowing a brilliant white. Finally he realised it was an ancient sword with a thin blue flame flickering along its edges.
And suddenly he was no longer the Mallory who cleaned the toilets five times a day. Instinctively, he whisked his mop handle to the stranger’s throat like a sword. The stranger simply smiled.
‘You killed him,’ Mallory said incredulously.
‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time. They hid you well,’ the stranger said. ‘My name’s Church. I’m here
