to show willing in the current atmosphere. I'll see you later.'
He headed off in the growing gloom, shoulders bowed. Mallory watched him go, sympathetic but not surprised. Daniels had been right: winter was going to be hard.
'What are you doing, Mallory?'
Miller's whisper floated out of the dark, startling Mallory who was lying in his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. Further down the room, Gardener was snoring as loudly as a chain saw. Daniels had been tossing and turning for an hour, but now seemed to have drifted off.
'Thinking.' He'd actually been tracing the pattern of the dragons on the hilt of his sword in the scabbard that hung from the bed-head. Its response to the Blue Fire barrier in the tunnels that afternoon had brought to a head his growing concerns about it. He recalled what Rhiannon had said about its importance when he had picked it up at the Court of Peaceful Days, but he still couldn't guess its true significance. Sometimes it felt alive in his grasp; when at rest in the scabbard it often appeared to be singing to him, the faint vibration he felt in his leg oddly comforting.
'You're always thinking, Mallory. I watch you, you know.'
'You're starting to scare me now, Miller.'
'All the people around here drift through what's happening, but you pay attention to everything and everybody.' In the dark, Miller's voice sounded small, like a child's. 'You try to pretend you don't care about anything, but I can tell you care a lot… even if you don't see it yourself.'
'You sound like a bad self-help book.' Mallory wondered if he could throw the sword away. At first it had seemed like a valuable, powerful form of protection, but increasingly it was just a reminder of the obligations Rhiannon had attempted to thrust on him: to be a hero, to fight for humanity as some kind of mythical knight, a Brother of Dragons. That had sounded pathetic at the time. Now it was simply irritating him, although he didn't quite know why he felt that way.
'We need you, Mallory.'
The honesty in Miller's voice was affecting; Mallory couldn't come back with a joke. 'You don't need me.'
'You think that because you're strong, everyone else is strong, too, but that's not true. Some people need others to help them along. The strong help the weak — that's how it should be. Things are falling apart here, Mallory. We need you.'
Miller's words were an uncomfortable piece of synchronicity with
Mallory's own thoughts. He usually managed to keep his many doubts locked away behind a patina of arrogance, but at that moment he could barely contain them. 'I was given this sword by someone who felt I should be a hero,' he mused aloud. 'I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were acting as though I was meant to be there.'
'Maybe it's true what they say — there aren't any coincidences. Everything that happens is meant to happen.'
'Or maybe they just got the wrong bloke.'
Silence consumed them for ten minutes until Miller said, 'What do you see when you close your eyes at night, Mallory?'
A burst of fire in the dark, cleansing, like the flame of a Fabulous Beast. He didn't answer.
'Something bad happened to you before you came here, didn't it?'
Mallory tensed. 'What makes you say that?'
'Like I said, I watch you. Little things you've said… the way you act… the way you won't talk about the life you had before.'
'In this world we've got now, something bad has happened to everyone.'
'It's not healthy to bottle these things up. It affects the way you act… stops you moving on… makes you give up on die life God has planned for you-'
'There you go with that evangelical crap again.'
'You don't have to act with me, Mallory. You can tell me anything, get it off your chest. I'm your friend.' A long pause. 'Aren't I?'
Mallory sighed wearily. 'I'm only saying this because the other two are asleep and it's dark. Yes, I like you, Miller, because you haven't let yourself get eaten up by cynicism like everyone else.'
'Is that it?' Miller sounded disappointed. He covered himself hastily with, 'Look, tell me what happened to you and I'll tell you something bad that happened to me. That's fair. That way we both benefit.'
And Mallory almost did; the feeling that the awful burden that had crushed him for so long was about to be lifted was exhilarating. If he admitted it to himself, Miller was probably the only reason he had decided to stick around after his first beating at Blaine's hands. Whatever Blaine had said, he could have found some way to get out. But he saw in Miller something of himself, before all the misery. It gave him an odd sort of hope, but he didn't want to analyse it too closely. And that was the reason why he couldn't tell him: he couldn't spoil him.
'Go to sleep, Miller,' he said.
He guessed from the silence that he'd hurt Miller's feelings, but he put it out of his mind; he was good at that these days. Gardener and Daniels were silent. The moon broke through the curtains in a band illuminating the far wall. It made him think, oddly, of Sophie. And then he fell asleep.
She was waiting for him in the silvery glade, filled with mysteries and cool, dark depths.
'How do you do this?' he asked. A summery breeze rustled the leaves above his head. 'And, for that matter, where is this?'
'There are more worlds than the one you see around you, Mallory,' she said, walking slowly around the ring of fungi that marked the perimeter of the clearing. 'This one is at the same time in your head and encompassing everything… the universe… everything.'
'Well, that's the kind of mystical bollocks I expect from you.'
'You've learned a little sassiness since our last meeting, I see.' She wasn't offended by his comment and that made him like her even more. 'How do I come here? A few herbs, a little incense, some candle smoke, a small ritual… easy when you know how.'
Recalling their previous meeting when his every emotion had been untrammelled, he struggled to keep control while maintaining a superficially blase appearance. 'And why do you come here to see me?' he said, leaning against a tree as nonchalantly as he could manage. But it was difficult; every fibre of him wanted to feel the sensation of her pressed against his body, forced inside him so he could consume all parts of her.
'It passes the time.' She flashed him a sideways glance, quickly obscured by her hair.
'You said we should stop playing games.' He tried to analyse why he felt so strongly about her, but it escaped all examination: too complex, too deep-seated, too many interrelated subtleties of intellect, emotion and physical appearance. It was simply the way it was, and he had to accept it on those terms.
'I'm not. But,' she added thoughtfully, 'the travelling is half the fun of getting here.'
'Then you haven't been doing it right.'
The glade was filled with a crackling tension, both emotional and sexual. Mallory realised his breathing had become shallow, could see the same quick rise and fall in Sophie's chest. She kept her face turned away from him so he couldn't see her reactions. 'And you've actually had a relationship before? Amazing.'
He was hypnotised by the way she moved, in and out of the circle now, light and supple. 'You've forgiven me, then?' he asked.
'Just about.'
'We're trying to dig a tunnel into your camp.'
She flashed him another look, more suspicious this time. 'We heard the digging. What's going on?'
'We're starting to starve in there… you know those things won't let us in or out. Pretty soon people are going to start dying.'
'And you expect… what? Sympathy? For the people who killed Melanie and Scab?'
Mallory walked into the centre of the circle, turning slowly to follow her. He could barely contain the electric charge in his limbs. 'You're talking about prejudice now… the kind of thing you said your own people face. Yes, there are some unpleasant types in the cathedral… same as everywhere. But a lot of them are good, decent, possibly misguided, but-'
'And what are you asking?'
'For your help.' She didn't show whether she had heard him. 'You can trust me.'
