Always Forever
Authors: Mark Chadbourn
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
Always ForeverAlso by Mark Chadbourn
The Kingdom of the Serpent:
Jack of Ravens
The Dark Age:
The Devil In Green
The Queen of Sinister
The Hounds of Avalon
The Age of Misrule:
World's End
Darkest Hour
Always Forever
Underground
Nocturne
The Eternal
Testimony
Scissorman
Always ForeverBook three of
The Age Of Misrule
MANN CHADBOURN
an imprint at Prometheus Books
Amherst, NY
Published 2009 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books Always Forever. Copyright © 2009 by Mark Chadbourn. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Inquiries should be addressed to
Pyr
59 John Glenn Drive Amherst, New York 14228-2119 VOICE: 716-691-0133, ext. 210 FAX: 716-691-0137 WWW.PYRSF.COM
13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chadbourn, Mark.
Always forever
by Mark Chadbourn. p. cm. - (The age of misrule ; bk. 3) First published: London : Gollancz, an imprint of Orion Publishing Group, 2001. ISBN 978-1-59102-741-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Title.
PR6053.H23A79 2009 823'.914-dc22 2009013236 Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
THREE On the Wings of Golden Moths
62
FOUR Empty Cisterns, Exhausted Wells
78
FIVE In League with the Stones of the Field
103
EIGHT The Sickness at the Heart
165
TEN Below
208
ELEVEN Grim Lands, Grey Hearts
231
FOURTEEN Like a Serpent Play'd before Them
299
FIFTEEN War Is Declared and Battle Come Down
321
SEVENTEEN (Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below
361
EIGHTEEN Down to the River to Pray
381
NINETEEN In the Belly of the Beast
405
TWENTY The Place Where All Things Converge
429
Bibliography
467
by Max Michaels
e're a cynical race. With remarkable ease we manage to find the worst in
everyone we meet. Charity workers selflessly slave amongst the poor in
a disease-ridden quarter of some stinking tropical city. They get spotted kicking
a dog or yelling at some unfortunate on a bad day that has somehow surpassed
all the other bad days and instantly we're tearing them apart for being less than
worthy. Where does that come from? Is it some kind of repressive religious
thing slammed into us during schooling, where everyone is a sinner unless
they're a saint? Look around-the world out there is a nightmare; the same as
before, I suppose, only different. It's a struggle for anyone to get through it, but
we carry on, trying to do the best we can under the circumstances. We're all
deeply flawed-that's our nature. But if we fight to overcome those flaws, surely
that's worth some praise, isn't it? The only time to make any judgment-and
maybe not even then-is at the end of someone's life, when you can stand and
look back, weighing all the good things and the bad things and the overwhelming majority of thoroughly mundane things, and decide whether it was a
life well lived. Let me tell you now, you won't find many saints. I bet you won't
find any at all. But you will find a preponderance of fundamentally good people
striving to be the best they can. And isn't that the kind of thing we should be
celebrating: not that someone is good, but that they're fighting to be better.
So let's talk about heroes.
The worst always brings out the best in people when they're pushed to the
edge and find reserves they never realized existed in their day-to-day lives. And
these are, indeed, the worst of times, so it's hardly surprising that in the midst
of them we found the best of heroes. Just normal folk, like you and me, with the
usual bundle of neuroses and weaknesses, but they've proved themselves to be
champions. (Excuse the gushing language: it's not
modern
, and it's not
British
,
and it's not cynical. But then, that's the point I'm making.) I'm writing this so
the record of their deeds is preserved to inspire future generations. Is that a pretentious hope? I don't know, but it's important to me that I do it.
If you'd met them on the street in the time before the Big Change, you probably wouldn't have given them the time of day. Jack Churchill, Church to
his friends, was moody and introspective, driven to the edge of despair by the
suicide of his girlfriend, Marianne, two years earlier. That act had thrown his
entire life off course. He'd been an archaeologist and a writer with massive
potential, but he ended up going nowhere, losing his friends, his hope. Ruth
Gallagher was a lawyer for some big-shot firm-sharply intelligent, as you
would expect, but a little repressed, with a problem finding any relationship to
match her exacting standards. Although she'd achieved a great deal for someone
in her late twenties, she didn't feel fulfilled. She'd only taken on her career to
please her beloved father, who'd died of a heart attack after learning his brother
had been murdered in a bungled building society robbery. Laura DuSantiago
was probably the most complex and misunderstood of all of them. By all counts,
she was a sociopath and misanthrope with a past blighted by drugs and petty
crime. Her acid tongue and sarcastic manner made it almost impossible to like
her. At the same time she was brilliant with technology, and once you broke
through the unpleasant exterior you found reasons for her attitude and the constant confusion that obscured her true nature: as a child she'd been to hell and
back at the hands of a mother who used religious obsession to mask her growing
psychoses; Laura's body and mind were left scarred in the process. And in a
struggle with her mother in the family home she had woken from unconsciousness to find her mother dead, seemingly by Laura's hand.