and took Sophie’s hand warmly. ‘You don’t have to tell me — you’re a Sister of Dragons. Are you here to have a go at me for letting the side down?’
‘I just turned up here by accident.’
‘There aren’t any accidents,’ the woman said. ‘Rule number one of the new age. I’d better introduce myself, then. Caitlin Shepherd. I used to be one of you.’
‘Sophie Tallent.’ Sophie went to shake Caitlin’s hand, then felt an overwhelming urge to hug her, two kindred spirits in a frightening land. After a moment, Sophie pulled back and said, ‘You used to be a Sister of Dragons?’
Caitlin stepped away and leaned over the marble rail to survey the swarming citadel below. ‘One of the great defenders of humanity. Our last, best hope. And I threw it all away to try to save my husband and son. For nothing. They died. The Blue Fire deserted me and I think I probably doomed the human race with that same decision.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m only really just getting my head around it myself,’ Caitlin said. ‘But the abridged version is this: the universe or whatever lies behind it — Existence, as the gods call it — has a lot of hidden rules and one of them is this: there need to be five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons at any one time. Numbers seem vital to the whole underlying plan. On the one hand you could see it as a spell, on the other an equation — all the principal elements have to be there to make it work.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.’
‘So without five, we can’t-’
‘Act as prophecy or legend or myth intended. We either don’t have the same power, or maybe we don’t have the weight… the gravity… to oppose what’s coming. So when it all goes pear-shaped, you’ll know who to blame.’
Her profound sadness was so affecting that Sophie knew she would never be able to blame Caitlin for anything. Anyone who felt so acutely could not have wilfully brought about the disaster she professed was about to happen.
Sophie insisted on hearing everything, and so they moved to the nearest chamber, where the high breezes from over the citadel gently swept in through the open balcony doors, cooling them in the heat of the day. Caitlin recounted how she had been working as a doctor in the south of England when a mysterious plague swept across Britain; Sophie had seen signs of it, but nothing on the scale Caitlin had experienced. The disease had taken Caitlin’s husband and son, and Caitlin’s mind had shattered under the extreme stress of the situation. Gradually, though, she had come to some kind of sense, and with a small group of friends had travelled to T’ir n’a n’Og in search of a cure, for not only was the plague mystical, but it had its origin in the Celtic Otherworld.
She had fought her way through hardship after hardship to a living structure called the House of Pain on the edge of the Far Lands where she had discovered the reason for the plague: it had been created as a weapon of the Void. But to be sure of success, the Void had to destroy the defenders of humanity, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, by breaking their mystical number. One would do, just one, and Caitlin was it.
The House of Pain had offered Caitlin a choice: to remain there as a queen — in effect giving up her right to be a Sister of Dragons — and in return her husband and son would live. But it had been a trick, and after giving up the Pendragon Spirit that made her a Sister of Dragons, she had realised that she couldn’t have her family either.
‘So, I blew it — in the worst way possible,’ Caitlin concluded. ‘I’ve doomed everybody.’
The more Sophie listened, the more she felt a bond growing with Caitlin. They were true sisters. ‘Anyone would have done the same in your situation. Anyone,’ Sophie insisted.
Caitlin shook her head, staring out of the window at the blue sky.
‘Listen to me,’ Sophie said. ‘We’re supposed to be defenders of humanity. To turn your back on your love for your husband and child would have been to give up on that very humanity. You couldn’t win whatever you did.’
Caitlin thought about this for a moment. ‘You’re very wise,’ she said, a little brighter. ‘I wish you’d been there with me.’
‘Lugh mentioned that there were other Fragile Creatures here, after he told me about you,’ Sophie said, changing the subject; that detail had initially been lost in the excitement of meeting another Sister of Dragons.
‘Two friends who followed me from our world to this one. They think they’re my protectors.’ Caitlin smiled. ‘I reckon it’s probably the other way around.’ Caitlin described how she had made her way from the House of Pain to the Court of Soul’s Ease in the company of the two young men, Thackeray and Harvey. Sophie sensed that there was a bond between Caitlin and one of them, but she didn’t pursue it.
‘Do you want to meet them?’ Caitlin asked. ‘They’re probably foraging for food and beer.’
‘That would be fantastic. And to be honest, so would some food and beer.’ Sophie suddenly realised how hungry she really was.
Halfway to the door, Caitlin paused and looked at Sophie with a grave face. ‘What are we going to do now? Just wait for the end?’
‘I’m not the kind of person who does that,’ Sophie said with a clear note of hope. It was enough to keep Caitlin happy, but if Sophie had been asked what possible course of action they could take, she would not have had an answer.
Chapter Five
‘ Desperate diseases require desperate remedies.’
Hal had spent the day filing reports: waste-collection targets; guidelines for the establishment of a Primary Healthcare Trust; monitoring of food production targets and the local economy; a request for extra funding from the local police. At times he could pretend to himself that the Fall had never happened and that the world of mundane things continued as it always had: people’s lives ticking over, no lows, no highs, just maintenance of a steady state of production and consumption.
But occasionally some document would leap out at him to shatter the illusion. Perimeter-defence evaluation reports, for instance, itemising the steps being taken to ensure that no supernatural creature made it into the city to terrorise the population. And, of course, the ever-present energy-creation management report, detailing the current state of the local power grid. It was the single thing that underpinned the slow clawback from the Fall. In those early days when technology had failed in the face of the resurgent supernatural, they had all realised that electricity was the one thing that separated them as civilised beings from some relict man cowering in fear around a campfire. One light bulb was the difference between home comforts and the Dark Ages. So, with one eye on politics and one on survival, electricity had been the first thing the Government had restored when it transferred to Oxford after the Battle of London. The residents of the city had been almost pathetically grateful.
Prosperity certainly flowed to the power base. The Government had access to the national oil reserves stored in some top-secret reservoir in the south, plus experts in every field and a weight of employees to get the job done. Hal had heard how bad things were in other parts of the country; Oxford was a paradise in comparison. No wonder strict laws had been imposed to prevent inward migration from day one.
When the last file slid into place in the cabinet and the trolley was empty, Hal knew he should have felt a sense of achievement, but he didn’t. It was a job he’d done all his life and at one time he’d felt happy and secure in its mundaneness, but it no longer seemed important. That simple thought instigated a panic response — if he didn’t have his job, what did he have?
He jumped as the door swung open with a crash. Hunter darted in, wincing at his unintentionally noisy entrance, and closed the door quietly behind him.
‘What’s wrong?’ Hal said with irritation.
Hunter stared at him. ‘What’s got your goat?’
