this. We never stood a chance.'
Matt's face was filled with the realisation of their failure. He looked back at the Plain of Cairns and then over the Lament-Brood. 'He's right — it's all over. We can't go back, and if we go forward we'll be wiped out in seconds… and any minute now they're going to come and get us.' He bowed his head, attempting to come to terms with his impending death. Taking a deep breath, he looked up and forced a smile. 'No point crying about it. This is it.'
'Then we should go out in style,' Mahalia stressed. 'I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want to be some nameless loser, or if people do remember me, I don't want them calling me some selfish, spoilt little girl. I want everyone to remember me like the Culture talked about those five who stood up against the gods when they came back. They're like some myth now… like King Arthur and his knights or something. That's what I want.' She bit her lip hard, holding back her emotions so that she could appear defiant.
Matt shrugged. 'I don't think there's going to be anybody reporting back-'
'You don't know! Maybe the Void or whatever you want to call it will see us taking a stand here and think, If all the human race is like that, I don't stand a chance. I'm going back where I came from…'
Matt grinned, then shook his head dismissively.
'Don't laugh! You don't know. Sometimes when you do things, they take on a life of their own. Actions have energy.' She waved him away and went to cross the rise to the downward slope.
Matt caught her arm. 'You're right — we need to do this together. It's Roarke's Drift time.' He looked from Mahalia to Jack. 'You'd better say your goodbyes.'
His words brought home to them the awful truth of what was about to happen. Jack and Mahalia fell into each other's arms with a desperation that brought tears to their eyes. Their kisses were just as hard and before they pulled apart they whispered into each other's ears the promise of what might have been.
Once Mahalia broke away, she instantly became unemotional, didn't even cast another look at Jack. 'OK,' she said. 'Let's do it.'
Before they began, she hurried back to Crowther. 'Professor, you helped us on the Plain of Cairns and we're eternally grateful for that — you saved our lives. But we need you again. And this is even worse. If there's anything you can do… anything…' There was no response, but Mahalia was convinced that he had heard her. Against all her natural reservations, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, just briefly, before returning to the others.
'All set?' Matt asked, as if they were going for a stroll.
As they moved down the rise, the whispering grew more intense and the urge to lie down and give up became overwhelming. 'Fight it for as long as you can,' Matt said. He glanced over at Jack. 'You're going to do the business?'
'As much as I can. Till I burn out — or blow the universe to kingdom come.'
Facing the Lament-Brood, they were struck by the eeriness of the scene. The Whisperers stood like statues, facing the four of them, with only the rusding sound of their despairing voices to indicate that they were alive. There was a sea of them, all monsters that had once had living shapes but were now twisted and broken, with bones protruding, skulls gleaming, unnatural but perversely improved, turned into killing machines. The purple mist blew back and forth in a light breeze, leaking from the orifices and the ruptures in their bodies. And as the mist hid and revealed and hid again, Matt had the impression that there was only one beast waiting for them, a massive organism with one mind and one terrible purpose.
Mahalia saw the weapons — the swords and spears and axes — and wondered how long the four of them would last: three minutes? One? Thirty seconds?
She expected Matt to give a signal, but he just pulled out the scimitar he had brought from the Court of Soul's Ease and charged down the slope. She followed, her Fomorii blade rusted and bloodstained, ready to take as many of them with her as she could manage.
Jack was at her side, but then he flexed himself and let out a small burst of the white light he kept coiled within him. It wasn't the full destructive force she had witnessed at the entrance to the Court of the Dreaming Song, but it was enough to blast five of the Lament-Brood into pieces. He was trying to eke his power out before he was struck down by the debilitating exhaustion it always left in its wake. The old, familiar Mahalia wished he would go for broke and take out the whole of Existence; she didn't want to think of it going on without her.
And then they were at the foot of the slope and into the first rank of Whisperers. Matt took a head off at the shoulders, then brought his sword down sharply to cleave another skull from temple to chin. The Lament-Brood didn't wait to be attacked. They surged forward, wielding their weapons like automata. The only thing that saved Matt from being overwhelmed was that the Whisperers were packed so tightly they could barely swing their swords.
Matt parried, ducked, tried to counter-attack, but they already had him on the back foot. Though she fought wildly herself, Mahalia was aware of what a good fighter he was, striking and defending with all the skills of a professional.
The thought was gone in an instant as the sickening whispering rose up around her and the purple mist washed into her mouth and nostrils. All she could see was a wall of bodies pressing against her. She put her weight behind her sword and drove it into a belly; the cruelty of the Fomorii design allowed the serrated edge to rip through the skin and entrails with ease. She pulled it out, soaking herself in a spout of cold blood, and rammed it up into a bared throat.
Two were down, yet already her arms were ringing from the force of her attack and her muscles stung. She wasn't strong enough to keep it up for long. She wished she'd trained more, not been so arrogant, thought ahead, but she'd always considered that in the event of any crisis she'd be away, leaving some other sucker to stand and fight. Her concentration slipped and one of the Lament- Brood broke through to ram a spear towards her chest. Jack came in from nowhere, deflecting the weapon with his arm before releasing a concentrated blast of his explosive power that reduced the attacker to atoms. Mahalia was half-aware that Jack's eyes were smoking as if a mighty fire raged within him.
Time stretched out for ever, every second packed with cut and parry, ducking and striking, feeling every ache and pain, every scratch racked up on their bodies. But they had made hardly any inroad into the ranks.
And then an enormous roaring rose up behind them, like a jet taking off. Mahalia had a half-impression of something scarlet and gold rushing past her shoulder and then a fifty-foot square of Lament-Brood exploded ahead of them, showering body parts over a wide area and smelling like a bonfire at a landfill.
The shockwave knocked her on to her back. When her head had stopped ringing, she looked back to see Crowther striding from the slope on to the plain. From her perspective, it looked as if he had grown in size, was still growing, filling with a terrible power. Walls of light shimmered off the silver mask — red, blue, green, yellow. Things formed in the air all around him, seemingly out of the very air itself. She saw a rose fold in on itself, becoming a spectral face in agony, becoming a hawk; and nearby, a lizard, more haunting faces in various stages of torment, lightning, cloud-forms, fire. The emotional aspect of the mask made him even more terrible, and it seemed that every step shook the ground.
A Whisperer who ventured too close was taken apart, the skin, muscles, organs, bones all unpeeling to scatter on the ground. And Crowther didn't even give him an instant's attention. Mahalia rolled away to get out of his path. He strode by, another blast of energy roaring out to devastate another section of the army. The Lament- Brood were rooted, not really understanding what they were facing. For a second, Mahalia entertained the fantasy that they might win; that Crowther could just keep walking right up to the House ofPain, blasting anything that came near him, with Mahalia, Jack and Matt hurrying in his gore-soaked wake.
But two things made her realise this would never happen. As Crowther marched on, a bolt of scarlet lightning roared from his head, twisted and crackled in the air and then rushed towards Matt. It was only his battle- heightened reactions that allowed him to throw himself out of the way at the last instant, and even then the blast threw him head over heels, the soles of his boots smoking with heat from the explosion. Crowther could no longer control the mask.
The second thing happened at the same time. The Lament-Brood regrouped and drove forward. With the luxury of the space around her, Mahalia had a better view across the plain, and there, in the midst of it all, she was overwhelmed by the weight of numbers ranged against them. A hundred thousand didn't do it justice; it was just a number. The Lament-Brood reached to hell and back. Even Crowther, with all his elemental fury, could not get through them.
And so they battled, for fifteen minutes or more, with Crowther laying waste to vast numbers of the Lament-
