But Mallory couldn't resist one final glance at the silent mausoleum, and at the others that lay all around, and wondered what other threats lay hidden in the mist.
8
The blizzard continued to tear its bitter path between the mountain peaks as Laura became the final surviving member of their band to make the precarious journey from the last section of the shattered bridge to the terrace that lay before the Groghaan Gate. The mood was desperate. Church, Veitch, Ruth and Shavi stared into the middle distance, while Tom sat in a nook in the rocks, smoking.
Veitch extended a hand to help Laura up onto the terrace. 'I know we've given each other a hard time,' he said awkwardly, 'but you saved us here. And I wanted to say, you know, thanks.'
'All right, tattoo-boy — don't get all misty on me. Just doing my job.'
They exchanged a moment of silent communication before Shavi came over. 'I am concerned about Church,' he whispered. 'The loss of the Two Keys, Virginia and Hunter has hit him hard.' He glanced back at Church, who had one hand on his forehead, deep in thought. 'I am afraid that despair might be setting in. He fears the mission is already lost. And-'
'And you're worried this might be the point when he stops being Church and starts becoming the Libertarian,' Veitch continued.
Shavi nodded.
'That's awful,' Laura said. 'I mean, if one thing had to tip him over the edge, it would be this, right? But still… God.' She looked away, chewing a lip.
'I'll keep an eye on him,' Veitch said, 'and if I see anything dodgy…' He steeled himself. 'I'll do what I have to do.'
Hugging her arms around her for warmth, Ruth called them over. 'We can't stand around here talking — we'll freeze to death.'
'Mate, you want to carry on?' Veitch said to Church.
Church inspected the Groghaan Gate arching up at least twenty feet above their heads, the top lost in the snowstorm. It was constructed of some unknown material that sparkled like the sun, and from it came a feeling of electricity. 'What else can we do? Go back and die? Go on and die?'
Behind him, Shavi, Veitch and Laura looked at each other uneasily.
Church reached out to the shimmering arch, his fingers tingling as they brushed the warm surface. 'This is marvellous. The Drakusa must have passed through here every day, between Winter-side and Summer-side. Such an amazing thing to do, moving between worlds. They must have thought they owned everything. Kings of the world. And now they're gone.' He turned back to the others defiantly. 'We might not be able to win, but that doesn't mean we give up. We're going to make life a misery for the Enemy. We're going to show it what it means to stand for Existence. What it means to have the Pendragon Spirit. What it means to be a Fragile Creature. We're going to tear the whole damned thing down. From this point on, this is a suicide mission. As long as we know that, we're not going to be disappointed how it turns out.'
The others nodded without a moment's thought.
'No happy endings,' he said, before turning back to the gate. 'Let's go.' He stepped through the arch and with a shimmer he was gone.
Chapter Five
1
In the blistering morning sun, the sands beyond the jungle's edge shimmered in a heat haze that gave an illusory quality to the rolling, golden world. From the shade of a canopy on the terrace, Church watched the barrens, deep in thought, smelling the dry desert wind as he sipped the hot, spicy drink brought to him by the scaled cafe owner.
Through the haze, the figure of the Burning Man glowed like coals in smoke, still there, always there, but closer now, looming so large Church was convinced he would soon be able to feel the heat.
From the moment they had stepped through the Groghaan Gate, the journey had been hard, but at least the exhaustion and the strife had left little space for black thoughts. The Halls of the Drakusa on Summer-side had been reclaimed by the landscape an age ago. They rested beneath a grassy mound in the northlands beyond the foothills of the mountains, a few crumbling stones all that remained on the surface to mark the glory of the once-mighty Drakusa, and even they were so weathered that they were easily mistaken for an outcropping of natural rock.
They spent an hour in the halls mourning their dead. Though she tried to hide it behind her flinty exterior, Laura's devastation at the loss of Hunter was clear, and she had to be persuaded by all to continue, in Hunter's name. Never once did she cry, though for a while she disappeared into an antechamber to be alone with her emotions; she sat silently in the centre of the room, her head bowed, her features hidden.
All of them felt grief for the deaths of Miller, Jack and Virginia, far beyond what their loss meant for the mission. The others were surprised to see that even Veitch was touched, particularly by the passing of Miller, whom he considered a friend, he said, even though he had never expressed it. At the end of the hour, their hearts were still heavy, but they found the strength to go on.
Following the deep, lush river valleys that offered dense tree-cover and deep shadow, they moved steadily north, across the stinking, haunted marshlands where the insects were bigger than fists and carried a poisonous punch that could paralyse and kill; into the tropical jungle where the night was filled with drums and the howls of hunting beasts. They avoided the mysterious tribes who worshipped brutish idols and came and went from the dense interior like ghosts, just as they had avoided the war-bands of the Enemy that roamed across every part of the land, harrying and slaughtering. After the death of the Iron Slaughterman, they knew Janus would have despatched others with the specific task of tracking them down and destroying them, and on one occasion they had seen something terrible silhouetted against the moon on a ridge, but nothing had located them. It was only a matter of time.
And finally they had come to the Court of Endless Horizons, abandoned by the Tuatha De Danaan as they raced towards sanctuary at the Court of the Soaring Spirit. Now it was filled with hundreds of thousands of refugees from every part of the Far Lands, dwarfish mountain-dwellers and the willowy, silver-eyed hunters of the western plains, the lizard-skinned people from the river deltas, and other, stranger beings that rarely ventured from the shadows. All swarmed on the streets, or crammed into buildings in the sweltering heat, race upon race sharing the same space, begging for food, sweating, fighting, haggling for transport or the promise of safe passage; all of them united by their fear of an Enemy that was alien to them in every aspect, a threat that exhibited no compassion, not even the slightest empathy, who could not be cajoled, or pleaded with, or flattered; who slaughtered with a devastating dispassion. Even in the Far Lands with its extremes of emotion and distorted motivations, this was an anomaly.
The city itself was a gleaming monument to the glory of the Tuatha De Danaan. Soaring towers of brass and gold reached far above the steaming jungle that surrounded it on three sides, kept at bay by walls of beaten copper and steel, a sculpture of grace and beauty in the heart of a primal setting. A sleek futurism in the materials and design of the buildings was set against an almost medieval confusion of tiny, twisting streets and alleys leading off the broad, leafy main thoroughfares, yet somehow the incongruity worked. The quarter nearest the gate through which they had entered was still rich with the scents of the spices that used to be stored in the warehouses along the wall, and the heavy, ornate incense-burners that swung from the lamps along the streets suggested the entire
