'What was that?' Mahalia asked uneasily.
Matthias looked directly at her. 'In Britain's darkest hour, a hero shall arise… The return of the gods and the war between them was only the first part of the prophecy. The struggle brought about changes in Existence… and humanity was noticed.'
Mahalia shivered at the strange choice of words.
'On the edge of the universe, something has stirred. It moves this way… the Void!'
'What is the Void?' Mahalia whispered.
'It is said that in the true place of the dead — the Grey Lands — there is a temple. What do the dissolute dead worship?' Matthias nodded gravely. 'It exists beyond the light of the farthest star. It has abided, in dreamless sleep. But now it has awoken, and we have been noticed. It is unfathomable, immeasurable. It is nothing… and everything. The greatest, and the least. Power, and the absence of power. It is the opposite of life. The absence of all that is and could ever be.'
Mahalia had the impression of something as big as a galaxy rushing towards her, but her mind couldn't begin to encompass its form. She felt utter emptiness, a sensation of not having existed and never existing; nothing existing.
'Anti-Life,' Matt said under his breath. 'Is the Void responsible for the plague back home?'
'There are things that prepare the way for the coming of the Void… outriders, I suppose you could call them,' Matthias said. 'They will do anything to destroy the Blue Fire — and its champions.'
There was movement beyond the wall of trees. Something large was circling the island; occasionally Mahalia glimpsed its bulk flashing past through gaps in the vegetation.
In her dream-state, Mahalia saw a black, misshapen monstrosity attempt to kill a man with a sword in front of a gothic cathedral. And then the Lament-Brood appeared in their purple mist, looking so real that Mahalia threw herself back involuntarily. 'They are despair incarnate,' Matthias continued. 'They are life without hope. If the Void eats the world, humanity will never reach the answer that waits beyond the edge of the prophecy: the Golden Age, the time when we can prepare to take our place alongside the gods.'
'How could anyone stop something like that?' Mahalia was crushed by what she had seen.
Matthias strode up to her so forcefully that Mahalia was sure he knew she had tried to kill Caitlin, but at the last he softened. 'There are secret rules that lie behind the structure of Existence. We all know them in our hearts, but we never trust ourselves. There are universal rules — morality is embedded into the very stuff of reality. And so is love. And with those two things we can find hope. We must place our faith in the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, as we did all those ages ago, for they represent the most wonderful, most powerful force of all. See!'
He raised his arm and gestured beyond the island. Now the thing that was circling had risen above the tree-tops and Mahalia could see it for the first time. It moved on heavy leathern wings, serpentine, its tail lashing the air, its jewelled scales glinting. It was like a comet blazing across the night sky, with the Blue Fire trailing behind it. To Mahalia, it appeared as if it were made completely of the spirit-energy, for she thought she could see through the skin to the bones and organs beneath, and through them, too; it was the Blue Fire given form, not a living thing at all.
'The First,' Matthias said. 'The closest to the Source. It came with us, to hide here, too, so that if all the other Fabulous Beasts were slain, if the Blue Fire itself was close to extinction, there would still be hope.'
'But if Caitlin is dead…' Mahalia began desperately.
Matthias placed a loving hand on her forehead. 'Failure will come if we allow despair into our hearts, if humanity once again fights against itself. What I said earlier, I say again: we are our own enemies. We have stopped ourselves from rising in the past. Shall we do it again?'
Mahalia felt sick. A prophecy as old as time. Pieces of a puzzle falling into place across millennia, leading up to the next stage of evolution of humanity; the greatest stage of all. And she had destroyed it in one instant, through her own terrible weakness. She didn't deserve to live.
Matthias watched the Fabulous Beast with a beatific expression. 'The Fabulous Beast has been wakened by our ritual here tonight. He flies for the first time in millennia. We shall send him back to our world, to prepare for what is to come.'
'Don't do that!' Mahalia pleaded. 'What if everything goes wrong? He'll be lost. Something so wonderful will be lost!' She blinked away tears, the blue trail becoming a rainbow of glittering sapphires.
'If everything goes wrong,' Matthias said, 'it does not matter where he is, for all Existence will be gone.'
Chapter Fifteen
'Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.'
After two hours beneath the blasting heat, a scrubby oasis rose up from the rolling dunes. Caitlin had come like a storm sweeping across the landscape, but now she decided to break her journey to refresh herself with water, though she felt as if she could walk without sustenance or rest for ever. Beneath the cool shade of the palms, she scooped several handfuls of the clear water to her mouth, then immersed her face and soaked her lank, greasy hair, already gritty with the wind-borne sand that was insinuating its way into her nostrils and ears.
She was only minutes out of the oasis on the path the Morrigan had chosen for her when she became dimly aware that she was not alone.
As the sand shifted beneath the wind, it uncovered two mounds on either side of her that gradually revealed themselves to be figures lying buried just beneath the surface. Shaking the streaming gold from them, they stood up quickly and threateningly. They wore armour that brought to mind Japanese samurai: black enamel with delicate gold line-work of swirls and scrolls, helmets with broad cantilevered panels at the sides and back, long swords that curved into a broad blade. Yet within each helmet, the faces appeared to be nothing but sand.
Caitlin waited for it to slough off, but it didn't; it just shifted constantly into an approximation of faces, mouths yelling or pensive, eye hollows, noses long and thin or hooked.
'What are you?' she asked defiantly.
'We serve the Djazeem,' they said together, their voices like the rush of granules through an egg timer. 'You drank their water. It was not given freely-'
'I do what I will,' Caitlin said, 'and no one tells me otherwise.'
'There are rules-'
'I make my own rules.' Caitlin notched an arrow, but wondered how she could possibly harm the oasis guards if their forms truly were made of sand. 'Don't stand in my way — I haven't got time.'
The guards stepped towards her with the unnerving rhythm of mechanical men; their swords sliced the air, then poised ready to strike. 'The Djazeem demand an offering in return for the theft of this most precious resource. You must pay-'
Caitlin loosed the arrow. It hit the right-hand guard in the middle of his face and punched through the back of his helmet. As she anticipated, it didn't affect him in the slightest. He continued to advance, pulling out the shaft as he did so and tossing it to one side with a gauntleted hand.
'So who are the Djazeem?' Caitlin said, attempting to buy time while she considered her options. But she had already placed the name the White Walker had mentioned when she had first entered the Far Lands.
'They are Lords of the Weeping Wastes,' the guards said in unison, still advancing. 'You are a visitor in their territory. You must obey their rules.'
'I've already answered that one.' Caitlin moved quickly to reclaim the discarded arrow.
The guards moved rapidly and balletically, spinning and striking so fast that their blades were a blur. Yet the instant they attacked, Caitlin's entire perception changed: it was as if time moved so slowly that her attackers were like statues. She projected the slow arc of their swords, considered several tactics and then danced athletically out of their way. The blades slashed through the space where she had stood, the guards spinning in surprise that she had evaded their attack so easily.