‘It is also the way of Existence that our races are tested to the extreme. Crisis heaped upon crisis. And the threat from without is the greatest crisis of all.’ Ceridwen’s horse carefully picked its way down a tricky bit of the slope where rocks and stones protruded from the grass. At the bottom of the incline, the stream trickled soothingly. ‘Something has crawled up from the very edge of Existence; it is the opposite of everything that lives — and it has noticed you Fragile Creatures. It sees your potential and it does not want you to shake off your shackles and become something greater, for to do so would make you a threat to its very reason for being.’
A dark shadow fell over them both, but when Sophie looked up, the sun still shone brightly. ‘What is it?’ she asked uneasily.
‘It is an idea, a notion of negativity. Where we see a threat, some would see nothing at all, for it is only defined by what it is not. Darkness and despair enfold it.’
‘Does it have a name?’
‘Many names, but none capture its essence, for how can you describe something that is not? Legends call it the Void. Even now it exerts its subtle influence on the Fixed Lands, attempting to eradicate all Fragile Creatures like an infestation. It is greater than anything you can imagine, yet smaller; more powerful, yet in the true and blinding light of the Blue Fire, completely powerless.’
‘And it was controlling those warriors who attacked us at Cadbury Hill?’
‘The Void’s very nature is to corrupt, to strip life and hope from a being and to control it. The act of giving up personal freedom is to surrender to Anti-Life. Even the gods are not immune.’
Sophie was lulled into a deep introspection by the motion of riding. She knew how powerful the gods were, had heard tales of them destroying entire army units with a wave of a hand. If the Void could take control of them, what chance did Fragile Creatures stand?
‘But if it’s so… vague, how are we supposed to fight it?’ Sophie asked.
‘Only the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons may repel it. The Quincunx, the Five Who Are One. But therein lies the problem.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The answer to that question lies ahead of us, and you will discover the truth for yourself. But for now, enough talk of dark things. Let us celebrate the life and the green that surround us.’
They moved into a thickly wooded area, the trees pressing hard along the banks of the brook, their branches crossing overhead to form a cathedral roof of leaf cover beneath which Sophie could feel the sanctity with every echoing splash of her horse’s hooves. Once the reverberations died away, there remained an abiding silence too sacred to shatter.
And so they rode quietly, with Ceridwen leading the way, and after a while Sophie began to wonder if she had indeed come to heaven.
The journey along the winding course of the stream continued for more than an hour. After the initial stretch where the trees bustled tightly against the banks, the wood thinned enough to allow Sophie a brief glimpse of a green world where fantastic fungi swarmed in ochre patterns over fallen trees and tiny, gleaming purple flowers sprang up in a carpet of colour that shimmered in the filtering light.
But after a while, the mist that had occasionally drifted across their path grew more constant until a heavy greyness lay over everything, sapping echoes and distorting birdcalls. The trees presented themselves like dark spectral figures before they were swallowed up again in the passing.
Sophie shivered in the damp air and wished she had brought some warmer clothes with her. ‘How much further?’ she asked. She instinctively lowered her voice to a whisper that was lost in the mist.
‘A while,’ Ceridwen replied. ‘We will follow the course of the stream through the Winding Wood to the great plain. And there, beyond it, we shall find the Court of Soul’s Ease.’
‘Is that like the place we’ve just visited?’
‘Each of the twenty great courts has an atmosphere that is peculiarly its own, but even so, nowhere else is like the Court of the Final Word.’ Ceridwen’s hesitant voice made Sophie think this was perhaps a good thing. ‘The Court of Soul’s Ease has been through a great many changes. Now, though, its destiny has been made plain.’
The low, mournful baying of a hound rose up somewhere away in the mist. The sound made Sophie shiver, but she couldn’t tell if it was near or far.
‘Should we be worried about that?’ Sophie asked. As soon as the words had left her lips, another howl arose, and then another, until soon there were several dogs baying.
‘They are the Hounds of Avalon,’ Ceridwen replied. ‘Also known as the Hounds of Annwn. Sometimes they 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.