join with the Wild Hunt, pursuing lost Fragile Creatures through the night. At other times, they roam between the worlds, questing for who knows what. Some say they hunt the answer to a question that could shatter Existence. But they are most active at times of greatest threat to your world, the Fixed Lands. Our stories say that at the end of all Existence, they will be all that remains, baying for what has been lost. Their howls will join together into one shattering note of despair.’
‘So when the Hounds of Avalon come, that’s it? Game over?’ Ceridwen’s story made Sophie feel sad and troubled, but eventually the howling of the dogs faded away and Sophie gradually forgot them.
Twilight began to draw in, though in the mist the only way to tell was by a subtle shifting of the quality of the grey. By this time, Sophie was chilled to the bone and felt a deep urge for a warming campfire.
‘Should we make camp for the night?’ she asked.
Ceridwen, who had been distracted for a while, shook her head. ‘There are dangerous things loose in these parts. Better to be on horseback ready to flee than trapped on the ground and forced to fight a battle we would certainly lose.’
Sophie did not like the feeling of powerlessness that had descended on her since she had awoken in the Court of the Final Word. The realisation that she had been transported somewhere else while she hovered between life and death had been destabilising, and everything that had happened since only underlined that feeling; she was operating in an alien world where all the rules were hidden from her, surrounded by beings that had the power to eradicate her in the blink of an eye. Yet in her own world she had never felt powerless, not before the Fall, and certainly not since, when her use of the Craft had become supercharged in whatever new state now existed. Silently, she urged herself to take control.
The truth was, her use of the Craft had grown stronger by the day. Where once it had taken hours of ritualistic preparation, she could now control and direct the subtle energies of the Blue Fire with a visualisation of sigils and words of power, simple keys that operated in the secret language of the unconscious. She wanted to know what was out there that was making Ceridwen so uneasy, sure that the simple act of knowing would give her a feeling of control over her environment.
But when she muttered the word that would trigger a shift in her perception, she was surprised by the result. There was the familiar sensation of her consciousness creeping out of a door at the back of her head, the feeling of taking a step aside from her corporeal form and becoming like the mist that swathed them. But as she drifted out from the horses amongst the ghostly trees, it felt as though a drill was being driven into her skull. She knew the sensation — a warning — but this was more heightened than anything she had felt before.
As she rushed back into her body, she jolted with such a sharp intake of breath that Ceridwen looked around. ‘What is wrong?’ the god asked with concern.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Sophie replied breathlessly. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
‘I feel… something.’ Ceridwen looked around hesitantly, then whispered, ‘They are masking themselves from me. They know we are here.’
As if in answer to Ceridwen’s words, all the alarm bells in Sophie’s mind rang at once. The mist along the brook began to thin out enough to allow her a view deep into the woods, and then it retreated further still. It was like a thing alive, swirling around the boles, rising up and over shrubs to pause briefly on the other side as if waiting.
But then, just when it appeared it was going for good, the fog stopped for a moment, wavering as if breathing, before beginning to creep back towards Sophie and Ceridwen. This time, though, the mist was not empty.
Here and there, where it thinned and twisted around obstacles in its path, Sophie could glimpse small, dark figures. At first they kept low to the ground, using the mist as a cloak, but as they neared they stood erect.
Sophie initially thought they were children, then wondered if they were just tricks of her imagination, for she would focus on one and it would seem to fade as the mist shifted.
Something whistled past Sophie’s cheek. She looked around to see a crude arrow embedded in a nearby tree.
That must have been a signal, for suddenly hundreds of little figures were swarming like insects towards the brook. They were still partially obscured by the mist, but Sophie could see enough of them to realise they were ugly, deformed little men, near-naked apart from ragged loin cloths, their skin the dirty grey colour of things that lived much of their lives underground. Their hair and beards were long, filthy and matted and they clutched primitive weapons — stone axes, lumps of wood with chips of flint embedded in them, tiny bows. The attackers were filled with a primal savagery that made Sophie think of lost tribes devolving through years of interbreeding. A smell of peat and urine rolled off them.
‘Ride!’ Ceridwen shouted as the little men washed out of the woods towards them.
Sophie spurred her horse, raising a cloud of spray and a clatter of hooves on the pebbled river bed. But it would be impossible to gain any real speed along the tiny, meandering watercourse and the attackers were sweeping down upon them like a deluge.
Ahead, Ceridwen’s mount moved with power and grace. Sophie pressed herself down along her horse’s neck, urging it on ever faster. The movement on either side seen through her peripheral vision filled her with a dread that harked back to the most ancient parts of her subconscious; the men moved too quickly, their smell too revolting and bestial.
Arrows whizzed through the air all around, but Sophie could see that was not the enemy’s main thrust of attack. Sheer force of numbers was the way they would undoubtedly bring Sophie and Ceridwen down. That thought made Sophie consider what would happen immediately after, when the razor-sharp flint knives started dipping and diving. She thought of skins and meat and the instinctive fear drove her to urge her mount on with even greater force.
An arrow slammed into her saddlebag but didn’t break through to the horse’s flesh. Another missed Sophie’s face by a hair’s breadth. By that stage, the little men were almost at the edge of the bank, and Sophie had a clear view of their feral nature.
And then she was aware of movement as some of the nearest leaped. Several missed and fell under the thundering hooves of her horse, but one timed it just right. It hit her, sinking long, broken nails into her clothes. The stink of it — sour apples and raw meat — filled Sophie’s nose as it started to haul its way up her body so that it could attack her with the knife it was clutching between its broken teeth. Sophie tried to elbow it off while clinging on to the reins with one hand, but it had the agility of a monkey.
Those jagged nails clamped on to her thigh, tearing through the material of her dress, raising bubbles of blood from her pale flesh. Still weak from the gunshot wound, Sophie cried out as her flesh tore. The little man dug deep to lever itself up further.
Sophie shook herself furiously, but the man would not be dislodged. Another hand snaked up to grab the saddle. From the licks of flame that rose in its eyes, Sophie knew it now had enough of a grip to go for its knife.
Yet strangely there was no panic. An abiding calmness slowly descended on her, and when she closed her eyes briefly, the sensation was accompanied by a blue colour. Increasingly, when she used her Craft, this was how it was: as if some power was visiting her from without, not arising from within.
Through closed eyelids, she experienced a sapphire flash. Every nerve in her body felt electrified and there was a smell of burned iron in her nostrils. And when she looked around, the little men had halted their advance; a dark smudge of charred material ran down the saddle and across the material of her dress, the attacker gone, destroyed or fallen by the wayside.
With a feeling of exultation, she leaned along the horse’s neck once more, the wind whipping at her hair as her steed galloped onwards. Ahead, Ceridwen glanced back at her, surprise turning to respect in her dark eyes.
The little men only fell back for a moment before the arrows started flying again, but Sophie’s defence had provided enough of a breathing space for the horses to gain some yards on the attackers.
The banks of the stream grew higher as they progressed, until eventually the brook was running along the bottom of a gully. At the top of the banks, the vegetation was thick and overgrowing the edge so that it almost closed over the top; it became as dark as twilight as they rode. The obscured view meant that if the little men made it up to the top of the gully, they would have trouble timing their drop on to Sophie and Ceridwen.
The sides became even higher, the bottom broader and rockier as the stream grew in size, but Ceridwen
