The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (59 page)

In a display of impotent anger, Mallory crashed his sword against the bars. The flames surged at the impact, but the blade left no mark. ‘You’re thinking you can use the Void to maintain
power?’ he raged. ‘You’re insane! It’s Anti-Life. You can’t control it. It wants to wipe out us, the world, the universe!’

‘Not in the way you suggest.’ Reid summoned two guards and motioned for them to train their guns on Caitlin, who was clearly considering throwing one of her axes through the bars. She reluctantly lowered her weapon. ‘The Anti-Life it represents is not an absence of life. It’s more abstract than that. I suppose I could wallow in the depths of philosophy, but to put it simply, you have to consider what
life
actually means. As a concept. This is all profoundly pretentious, is it not?’ He gave a small laugh.

‘You’ve communicated with it?’ Hunter said incredulously.

‘I wouldn’t say we exactly sat down over beer and sandwiches, but yes, after it sent its advance guard to prepare the way, we found it a place to wait. And then we entered into negotiations.’ He shook his head. ‘If you knew what we went through, you would find that almost laughable. Negotiations. The Void, as you call it, is not a
thing
. It’s not a life form. It doesn’t exist in any physical way you or I could comprehend. But even so, it connected with us, and we with it. And … ’ He held out his hands and gave a small shrug that made Mallory even angrier.

‘So you gave in to it?’ Caitlin said.

‘You have to understand, we couldn’t win. That was never on the agenda. It’s too powerful. It’s like trying …’ He searched for the words to describe the magnitude of what he was attempting to say. ‘Like trying to punch the universe. No point even beginning to fight. So … pragmatism, you see. We found out that what it wanted wasn’t actually very far from what we wanted. Certainly it was something we could live with. And that’s when we decided on the most beneficial course of action. If you can’t win everything, you should at least try to win something.’

Hunter looked past Reid to the shadowy figures hovering in the background. ‘You betrayed the whole of humanity just to save yourselves?’

‘You’re missing the point,’ Reid said. ‘Our aims are the aims of society. What’s best for us is best for you. It’s the same. We did the right thing.’

Hunter could see that Reid completely believed what he was saying, and that all those waiting behind him believed it, too. Flickers of dread rose in his heart. They’d lost the fight the minute
they started; the seeds of that defeat were buried in the heart of what they were fighting to save. The enemy – the true enemy – was all around them. But they didn’t look like the enemy, and didn’t believe they were the enemy. How could anyone fight that?

‘We went to the PM with our plan,’ Reid continued, ‘but he refused to reach an accommodation. He had to be … removed.’ He saw the looks on Hunter and Mallory’s faces and added with annoyance, ‘If he’d been allowed to do what he wanted, the human race would have been extinct. How could that be right?’ He loosened his tie, took a deep breath. ‘You were the only real threat to everything. You Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.’

‘There’s no logic in what you’re saying,’ Hunter stated. ‘If we defeat the Void, you won’t have to reach any
accommodation
.’

‘We weighed up that option, and for a while it was certainly a possibility. But in the end we decided that the risks were too great. The chances of outright victory seemed extremely thin, and anything less would likely result in complete eradication. So—’

‘So you decided to get us out of the way.’ Hunter tried to ignore Mallory, who was pacing the confines of their prison like a tiger, occasionally rattling the bars or attempting to prise open the security gates with his sword.

‘There was no attempt at violence.’ Reid looked horrified at Hunter’s implication, completely ignoring the irony that he was complicit in the assassination of the country’s leader. ‘Your young friend, Mister Campbell – Hal, wasn’t that his first name? I feel quite sorry for the way we had to use him. He’s a rather naïve chap. Not cut out for any of this business.’

Hunter’s temper flared. ‘What have you done with him?’

Reid chewed his lip for a second, and it appeared that he wasn’t going to answer. Then he changed his mind. ‘Once we realised you were a Brother of Dragons, our route to controlling you was easy. Your long friendship with young Hal was obvious. We were able to use him to direct you to where we needed you to be.’

‘Here,’ Hunter said. ‘So you could trap us.’

‘Exactly. We framed him for the assassination in a very clumsy way, knowing that he would realise I had organised the plot. When we allowed him to escape from custody, we knew he’d go directly to your hiding place, and that once he met up with you, he would identify me or someone in the Government as the chief suspect.
Then when we let his young female friend
accidentally
discover information about his impending execution, we knew you’d realise that I would do anything to hide my complicity. Kill him even sooner to silence him. And so you would rush here to save him, even though all sense would tell you to stay away from my base of power and concentrate on the more pressing task of locating the Void. You’re very easy to manipulate, Mister Hunter.’

‘Not as easy as you think.’ Hunter was relieved to discover that Reid still hadn’t found out that Hal was the fifth, the real reason all of them had rushed to Brasenose. ‘Is Hal dead?’

‘The execution was set to take place half an hour ago.’

‘Have you seen the body?’

‘Two men with guns. One young, frightened, bookish man. Do I really need to?’

Hunter turned to the others and said quietly, ‘There’s still hope. Don’t give up.’

Reid must have guessed what Hunter was saying, for he added, ‘I’m sorry, but you really mustn’t think you stand a chance. I don’t know what it is about the Pendragon Spirit that makes you a threat to such a vast, unknowable force as the Void, but here you are close enough for it to work its ways on you, yet, unfortunately for you, not close enough to harm it.’

‘That was always the plan,’ Hunter noted.

‘That was always the plan,’ Reid confirmed.

Kirkham emerged from the grey background. With a cough to gain Reid’s attention, the chief scientist said, ‘It’s time.’

Reid nodded to him. Pulling a torch from his pocket and shining it ahead of him, Kirkham proceeded towards the growing gloom emanating from the door behind which the Void existed. As he drew closer, he began to shake from the extreme cold. Frost began to form down his front.

‘What are you expecting to get out of this?’ Mallory shouted. ‘What do you think the Void’s going to give you?’

‘A new world,’ Reid said. ‘The Void’s world.’

‘A world ruled by the opposite of life?’ Mallory was incredulous. ‘How could anyone exist in that?’

‘You think this one is any better?’ Reid said. ‘The country’s falling apart—’

‘People still have their lives, their freedom,’ Mallory replied, urging Reid to change his mind.

‘There’s magic everywhere,’ Caitlin continued. ‘Wonder. Endless possibilities. All the things people hoped for before the Fall—’

Reid cut her dead with a cold stare. ‘It’s unpredictable, uncontrollable. We can’t govern. None of the things we had before the Fall can thrive here. You can’t work hard to better yourself. You can’t have rules and regulations. You can’t have a strong society producing for the common good. No one’s going to get rich here, or fat, or live out their lives in luxury. This isn’t the world we spent thousands of years of human civilisation trying to form.’

‘What’s the Void’s world going to be like?’ Mallory shouted. ‘Constant night? Blood? War? Death? Hopelessness?’

Reid merely gave a faint smile, then a shrug. ‘Do it,’ he said to Kirkham.

‘There’s still hope,’ Hunter said to the others.

From the back of the faceless crowd of politicians and civil servants, the General made his way forward. He had a gun. ‘Time to stop this,’ he said.

Reid turned just as the General raised the pistol and fired. The bullet hit Reid directly between the eyes. His body slammed against the bars and then slumped down in an awkward jumble of limbs.

‘Come on,’ Hunter said under his breath.

‘I’m in charge now,’ the General said to the others. ‘Stop this nonsense immediately. Free these people.’

Hunter, Caitlin and Mallory watched, silently urging the crowd to obey the General. No one moved.

The General brandished his gun at the crowd. ‘I said—’

‘Kill him.’ The voice may have come from the deputy prime minister, or one of the Cabinet members, but it didn’t really matter which. The guards responded instantly, turning their weapons on the General and cutting him down.

‘Look at them,’ Mallory said sickened. ‘Like animals, fighting amongst themselves.’ The General’s blood flowed into Reid’s, mingled with it, formed an ocean that separated the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons from the small crowd huddled together against the gloom.

Mallory glanced at Hunter. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? All over.’

Shaking violently, Kirkham continued towards the frozen door that was now leaking darkness rapidly.

Hunter repeated his mantra, now a wish, a prayer: ‘There’s still hope.’

Kirkham’s palsied hand grasped the handle. Hunter guessed that the ice must be burning his flesh, but the scientist didn’t flinch; he almost appeared to be in a trance.

From somewhere that could have been far, far away or in the next corridor, an awful sound rose up that made all of them feel sick to their stomachs. It resonated deep into their bones, stabbing into their brains. They wanted to scratch at their ears, make themselves deaf. The howls of dogs joining together to form one note, one ringing chime of despair.

The blood drained from Caitlin’s face. ‘The Hounds of Avalon,’ she whispered.

For all the time they had been imprisoned, Sophie had stood silently, observing. Mallory stepped back to take her in his arms and when he saw her face, he realised the truth. ‘You knew. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I couldn’t take the risk that the Void might discover the fifth.’ There were tears in her eyes, but no despair. She smiled. Mallory pulled her to him and they held each other tightly.

Caitlin closed her eyes and bowed her head, resting it gently against the bars.

Hunter couldn’t believe it. He’d put his trust in Existence and he’d been wrong. They’d failed in the worst way possible. There was no hope.

Kirkham opened the door. The obscene howling grew deafening, subsuming every other sound. Between one tick of a clock and the next, the moment appeared to drag on for ever as all eyes focused on the gaping door. Kirkham stared into its depths, frozen. And then darkness began to seep out, slowly at first, then faster, rapidly becoming a torrent. Everything it touched became fluid, began to alter, twist out of shape, the very molecules of the fabric becoming something else. With it came an awful wave of despair, a million times more potent than anything sent out by the Lament-Brood, and everyone it touched fell to their knees, devastated at what was to come.

Hunter gripped the bars, tears burning the corners of his eyes,
still unable to accept that humanity had betrayed itself, that the basest elements had won out over all that was noble in mankind.

Reality began to warp and as it rushed towards him, he had a glimmer of what it was becoming. It looked very much like the worst of all possible worlds. It looked very much like hell.

Jagged static jumped across Sophie Tallent’s mind. It startled her so badly that she almost knocked her polystyrene cup of coffee across the keyboard. She guessed she had been daydreaming. It must have been a particularly deep one, for it took her a moment to orient herself, and though she couldn’t recall the details, it must have been satisfying, for she felt a great wistfulness at having left it behind.

She was sitting at her desk at Steelguard Securities, the screen in front of her flickering with the constant updating of currency information from all over the world. Beyond her was the window, offering views from high over Canary Wharf across London’s financial district, sitting smug and bloated beneath the thick blanket of pollution from car exhausts and the jets flying into Heathrow or London City Airport every few seconds.

Something hit her across the back of the head and this time she did spill her coffee. It was Kane, his chubby face looking like a side of ham above his salmon pinstriped shirt, and he was clutching the file with which he had clipped her. ‘You’re useless, Tallent. How do you expect to get any bonuses? Watch the screen.’ He tapped it with a fat forefinger. ‘Never take your eyes off it. If anything interesting happens, get on the phone.’ He snorted with disgust. ‘You’re a waste of space. You know they only keep you on here because you’re decorative? Mister Rowe likes to look at your tits in that nice white blouse. So if you want to hang on to your job, take your jacket off.’ He stalked off to abuse some other unfortunate labouring for ten to twelve hours a day in front of one of the rows and rows of screens on the Steelguard floor.

In the corner, the TV came alive as someone turned up the sound for the morning news. More deaths after the rebels shelled a market in Najaf in Iraq. A Western businessman had been taken hostage somewhere else in the Middle East. His captors had released a video of him, staring beaten and humiliated at the camera, a knife at his throat. The prime minister and the president
of the United States shook hands; another successful summit, another announcement of millions poured into a new joint weapons project. Inflation holding steady. (A cheer ran around the room.) The poverty gap had widened again. (Another cheer.)