That’s Not Playing the Game
Everything disappeared. As though the whole world had been taken away. I couldn’t see or hear anything, couldn’t even feel whatever it was I was standing on. I waved my hands back and forth in front of me, and there wasn’t even the pressure of resisting air on my palms. I called out to Molly. My voice sounded flat, diminished. It didn’t carry and it didn’t echo. There was no reply. My hands clenched into fists. I was almost out of my mind with rage. I couldn’t have lost Molly again, so soon after finding her.
Light rose up around me, slowly and uncertainly. Details of a new world appeared, fading in and out of the gloom. I was standing somewhere in the midst of a desolate empty moor, bathed in a foul leprous moonlight. Just the look of it made me feel unclean, and I almost flinched as the light touched my bare face and hands. I looked quickly around me. The moor was a dim, deserted setting, nothing moving, not a sound anywhere. Nothing to suggest there was a single living thing present apart from me. A cold wind blew from no direction in particular, hardly disturbing the air, but enough to chill me to the bone in a moment. I hugged myself tightly, and stamped my feet hard on thick, glutinous mud. The moor stretched away in every direction. A whole world of mud and dirty water, bubbling bogs, and the occasional tuft of unhealthy-looking vegetation.
This was no real, material setting. I could tell. Someone had made this place, brought it into being through an act of will imposed upon the chimerical nature of the Shifting Lands. And then, that same someone had dropped me in it.
It all seemed solid enough. I could even smell the mire. A ripe stench of fermenting gases, oozing and bubbling up through the thick, viscous mud. And when I crouched down to study a stunted tuft of grasses close up, I could make out each individual blade of grass in the blue-white moonlight. At least this time, all the details had been filled in. A living world. Real enough to die in . . .
The ground beneath my feet collapsed without warning, the solid earth becoming saturated mud, a sucking bog, pulling me under. I yanked my feet free of the mud with an effort and lurched forward, forcing my way across the mire. But I just sank in deeper with every step. I struggled on, mud already lapping up around my thighs, but I couldn’t seem to find my way to solid ground. There didn’t seem to be any, anywhere. Or at least nothing strong enough to support my weight.
I was soon waist deep and sinking fast. The harsh, urgent noises I was making as I fought my way forward sounded clearly on the quiet. I didn’t like the sound of them. They sounded dangerously close to panic. With my next step I plunged down even further, almost falling forward onto my face. I fought fiercely to regain my balance, but I was quickly chest deep in the mud; and it took all the strength I had just to keep moving forward, pressing against the resisting mire with all its slow strength and tenacity. I didn’t dare stop; I couldn’t feel anything solid under my feet.
I was breathing hard now, my heart hammering in my chest. The stench of gasses bubbling up grew even worse, disturbed by my progress through the bog. It filled my head till I couldn’t seem to think straight. I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, and breathed through my fingers. That seemed to help. I made myself concentrate on my situation.
I was sure I’d read somewhere that you could actually swim through quicksand, if you took it slowly and carefully and kept your wits about you. I eased myself slowly forward, spreading my weight out across the surface of the mud, but it didn’t help. Within moments my whole body was submerged, and the mud was lapping up against my chin. My neck ached from holding my head up. I could hear myself making harsh animal noises as I struggled. My arms and legs thrashed helplessly, unable to gain any traction in the enveloping mud. I was still sinking, if only a little more slowly, and I’d stopped making any forward progress.
I didn’t want to armour up. I was pretty sure the weight of it would drag me under. And while my armoured mask would let me breathe under the mud, there was no telling how deep the mire was. I might just sink and sink and sink . . . But as the mud crept up over my chin, and lapped against the underside of my bottom lip with its cold, clammy touch, I didn’t see what other choice I had.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and the golden strange matter swept over me in a moment. Sealing me in, protecting me from this awful, sucking world. And the moment I took on my armour the mud suddenly became hard as concrete, solid and implacable, holding me in place. As though it had just been waiting for its chance. I fought it with all my strength, yet couldn’t move at all. I had nothing to push against; no traction, no leverage. But I was still sinking, very slowly. Going down, into the mud, into the dark.
I stopped fighting and lay still. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer, but I concentrated on slowing my breathing as I made myself think. Walker had said something to me . . . about the Shifting Lands. That the psychegeography of the world responded to the wishes and the needs of the people in it. That it didn’t matter who created whatever world you ended up in; you could still affect or change your environment through an effort of will. Make it be what you needed it to be. So I closed my eyes, focusing my mind on just one thing, one definite objective. I needed something to stand on. I needed to stand up.
And just like that, I wasn’t lying flat in the mud any more. I was still buried up to my chin, but now I was standing bolt upright; and there was something wonderfully solid under my feet. I might not be able to see it, but I could definitely feel it. Thinking hard, I visualised another step, just like the first; and slowly I raised my left foot through the thick mud and stepped onto it. The mud still resisted my every move, but it wasn’t strong enough or solid enough to hold me. Not now. I visualised more steps, and one step at a time I rose up out of the clinging mud, until I was standing on the surface of the mire once again.
Thick, dark foulness dripped off my gleaming armour, falling away in sudden slurps and rushes. I shook myself hard, and more of it flew away. I cried out, in triumph and relief, and thrust both my arms up, into the shimmering moonlight. It felt so good to be able to move again.
I glowered about me, my hands clenched into fists, ready to lash out at anyone. This had been a deliberate attack. A world designed to kill me, slowly and horribly. If my willpower hadn’t been up to the job . . . But I was a Drood. And self-control is one of the first things my family teaches its children, from a really early age. Self-control is vital if you’re going to live with your armour. One of my competitors in the Big Game must have made this place just for me, one of the few kinds of death trap that might just work against a man in armour.
I frowned. A place like this couldn’t have come from anywhere inside me, could it? Not even subconsciously . . . Walker said the Shifting Lands took their shape and direction from conscious and subconscious needs and wishes, but even so . . . I shook my head firmly. In my current circumstances, in the middle of the Game, self-doubt was just a distraction. I made myself concentrate again, on the one thing that really mattered to me.
“Molly!” I said loudly. “I want Molly! Where is she?”
A door appeared before me. A perfectly ordinary-looking wooden door, standing alone and unsupported, about a dozen feet away. It seemed almost to hover on top of the mud, barely touching the surface, but it didn’t have the look or the feel of a dimensional Door. I studied the slowly heaving mud, bubbling away between me and the door, and didn’t trust it. I visualised a series of steps, lying on the mud in a straight line between me and the door, and immediately there they were, gleaming golden in the unhealthy moonlight. Like so many stepping-stones. Solid and firm, as though they’d always been there. I walked steadily forward across the stones, trusting my weight to them one step at a time, and they didn’t give at all.
The moment I drew near the door, it swung open before me, and bright, healthy sunlight spilled through, pouring into the gloomy moor from the world beyond the door. I laughed aloud. The sunlight spoke of a sane and normal world, and I wanted it. I strode forward, though a small part of me was still thinking, Another damned door that could lead absolutely anywhere. Getting really tired of that . . . I stepped through the door, and fell into an ocean.
* * *
I dropped into the waters like a lead weight, plunging under the surface in a moment, sinking deeper and deeper. I thrashed helplessly as the weight of my armour pulled me down, and the bright light from the surface quickly faded away, becoming a dull green haze. I swam with all my armoured strength, kicking for all I was worth, but it did no good. The sheer weight of my armour worked against me, overcoming all my best efforts.
The green light became steadily darker, the deeper I went. I soon lost all sense of direction, even which way was up. Panic burst inside me, at being so lost, and helpless. I had nothing to orientate me, nothing to see or hear or touch in the cold, empty dark. It was like a bottomless sensory deprivation tank. I could feel my heart racing, hear my ragged breathing, because they were inside my armour. I felt so alone . . . it was actually peaceful. Such a relief, to have nothing to fight any more. Nothing to disturb me, nothing I needed to do . . . But there was. I couldn’t rest, couldn’t give in, not while Molly still needed me. My thoughts snapped back into focus, and I grinned despite myself, under my golden mask. Whenever I weakened, whenever I lost my way, I could always rely on Molly to rescue me.
My armour was the problem. It was allowing me to breathe, but it was dragging me down. It couldn’t help me, so it had to go. I armoured down, and immediately the terrible freezing cold of the dark waters hit me like a hammer blow. The shock of it was nearly enough to kill me. I thrashed my arms and legs, trying to swim, but the cold was inside my head, numbing my thoughts, and I couldn’t think what to do. I tried to concentrate, to make something solid under my feet, solid enough to stop my descent, as I had in the mire . . . But the cold was so awful, so overwhelming, it dominated my thoughts. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything else. My thoughts raced in a dozen different directions, and got nowhere. And I had only a little breath left in my lungs, to get me back to the surface.
I seized on that thought. Keep it simple, keep it practical . . . I let a little air seep out of my mouth, and felt the bubbles bump against my face as they rose past it, heading for the surface. Now I knew which way was up. I forced the last of my strength into my legs, and kicked hard. I felt my descent slow, and stop; and then I began to rise up through the waters. New confidence forced more strength into my arms. I could barely feel them through the freezing cold, but I made them work through sheer willpower.
I swam up, and up, and the green light returned. It seemed to take forever, fighting my way up out of the dark and back into the light, my heart slamming painfully in my chest, my lungs fighting me, demanding I open my mouth and take in a breath I knew wasn’t there . . . but once again Drood self-control kept me going. I shot up through the brightening green light, and then my head burst through the surface of the ocean, and I could breathe again.
Bright sunlight dazzled me as I drew in air, and for a while all I could do was just bob there, struggling to keep my head above water, breathing in that glorious air. Still half dead from the awful cold, frozen to the bone, my body was wracked with terrible shakes and shudders, enough to endanger my attempts to stay afloat. But soon enough my vision cleared and I looked around me. I was floating in the middle of an ocean that seemed to stretch away forever. The sun beat down on the peaceful waters, out of what seemed like a clear Summer sky. Though if there was any warmth in the sunlight, I couldn’t feel it on my numb face.
A voice called my name. It seemed to me that it might have been calling to me for some time. I slowly turned around in the water to look—and there was Molly, standing precariously in a small rowing boat, some distance away. She waved vigorously at me, once she saw she had my attention, and then had to stop and fight for balance as her boat rocked dangerously. She didn’t seem to have any oars, or any way of moving her boat closer to me. Which was typical of the situation I’d found myself in so far. I sighed heavily. Tired, exhausted, and frozen to the bone as I was, I would have to go to her.
I swam steadily towards the rowing boat, carefully doling out the last of my strength. There had better not be any sharks in this ocean, I thought. Because the mood I’m in right now, I’d eat them. I lumbered slowly through the water, fighting to keep my head up, and finally got to the boat. I clamped one hand onto the side, and then just hung there. I looked closely at my fingers, to make sure they were holding on tightly, because I couldn’t feel them. I was so damned tired . . . Molly knelt down in the boat, talking to me, but her words made no sense. I couldn’t even answer her. In the end, she had to haul me out of the water and over the side.
I collapsed in the bottom of the boat, as it rocked uneasily back and forth from the violence of our movements. I tried to say something to Molly, but couldn’t force it past the chattering of my teeth. She lay down in the bottom of the boat with me, saying my name over and over, and hugged me fiercely to her; pressing the whole length of her body up against mine, so she could share her body warmth with me. I was so cold I must have hurt her, but she never said a word. And slowly, blessedly, the cold left me. The shakes stopped, and feeling returned. I grimaced at the pins and needles, but I welcomed them too; they were a sign of life returning. After a while, I got my breathing under control again, and was able to sit up in the boat, with Molly’s assistance. She sat back and looked me over carefully. I managed a small smile for her.
“We have got to stop meeting like this.”
“Ho ho ho. Where the hell have you been?”
“Sinking, mostly. Where is this place? Did you make it? Why did you choose an ocean?”
“Of course I didn’t make this!” said Molly. “I don’t even like the seaside. The Cathedral disappeared on me, everything went dark . . . I tried to call on my woods, but when the light returned I was here. I suppose I should be grateful I appeared in a boat. Even if the bloody thing doesn’t have a sail or a motor.”
I remembered Walker saying that the Shifting Lands responded more to mood and emotion than to willpower. I also remembered, now that it was far too late, strolling along the bottom of the ocean floor with Walker and the Somnambulist, and being able to breathe perfectly normally. I should have concentrated on that while I was underwater, but the cold had been so bad, so overwhelming . . . Just because the world you’re in isn’t real doesn’t mean it can’t kill you if you let your guard down. Worth remembering.
“Still!” Molly said cheerfully, “At least we’re back together again. I knew if I just concentrated hard enough, I could fashion a door that would find you and bring you here.”
“Hold on,” I said. “I made that door!”
“Yeah, right,” said Molly. “Pull the other one; it plays the Bells of St Mary’s. Maybe we could use the door to get out of here!”
But when we looked there was no sign of the door anywhere. While we were distracted, it had softly and silently vanished. First rule of the Shifting Lands: if you don’t keep concentrating on things, they disappear.
“I could call it back,” said Molly.
“I rather doubt it,” I said. “And even if we did, I’m not sure we could trust it. A door like that . . . there’s no telling where it might take us. We need to do better than that.”
“Like what?” said Molly. “Wish up a motor for the boat? I’ve already tried, and got nowhere. It would probably help if I had some idea how an outboard motor works . . .”
“No,” I said. “We need to think bigger. We need to change this world for a better one.”
I’d stopped shivering almost completely now, and it suddenly occurred to me that there was no need for me to be soaking wet any longer if I didn’t choose to be. One hard thought later, I was bone-dry. Molly saw me do it, swore briefly, and made all the damp disappear from her clothes, from where she’d hugged me. She grinned at me.
“There are advantages to being stuck in an artificial world,” she said brightly. “I wonder if I could call up a whole new wardrobe . . .”
“Let’s concentrate on what’s right in front of us for the moment,” I said carefully. “This is a Game, and the other people playing in it will kill us, given half a chance. Now, I am looking around and I don’t see land anywhere. I intend to change that. I shall start by calling for an island.”
I sat cross-legged at the bottom of the boat and concentrated, focusing all my thoughts on the one idea. There was a sudden disturbance in the waters under the boat, and it rocked crazily from side to side. Molly and I had to cling to the sides to keep from being thrown overboard. Molly peered over the side, and made a startled sound.
“Take a look, Eddie. You really need to see this.”
I looked over my side, to help balance the boat. Something from far below was rising up through the dark waters, something really big. And it was heading straight for us. I tried to think of some way to move the boat, but it was so hard to concentrate with that huge shape sweeping up out of the depths . . . It slowed at the very last moment, to press hard against the underside of the boat. Lifting it up out of the waters. And then it stopped. The boat grew still. It was clear I’d called something from inside my mind, and brought it into this world, but what? I looked at Molly.
“You need to hold my legs.”
“I do? Why?”
“Because I need to lean right over the side of this boat, to see what it’s currently resting on. And I don’t want to take any chance of falling out until I knew what’s what.”
Molly grumbled under her breath, but took a firm hold of my legs as I leaned out over the side and looked down. And then, back and forth, taking in the familiar and very suggestive shape of what had risen up beneath us.
“Ah,” I said.
“Ah?” Molly said suspiciously. “What do you mean, ah?”
“It’s . . . a whale,” I said. “Very large, and very white. I have an awful feeling . . . it’s Moby Dick.”
“What? You’re kidding!”
“Apparently not,” I said. “I can see the shape of it quite clearly. It would appear my subconscious mind moves in mysterious and only slightly helpful ways . . .”
“How is this going to help us?” said Molly, just a bit dangerously. “What is a whale going to do? Swim us to land somewhere? Except there isn’t any land that I can see!”
“Good point,” I said. “I want an island, dammit!”
I concentrated again, taking a firm hold on my thoughts. I frowned until my forehead ached, and when I opened my eyes the waters were receding, rushing away in every direction. And when I looked over the side of the boat again, the white skin of Moby Dick was gone, replaced by what gave every appearance of being a sandy white beach. The boat was now resting on a small tropical island. Not a very big island; more the kind you see in a cartoon, just big enough for the two people necessary for the joke. White sand, and a handful of coconut trees. The ocean had pulled back, but it looked to me like it would just love to sweep straight back in again if I let it. I gave it a stern look, told it to behave itself, and then turned to Molly.
“Welcome to my island!” I said grandly. “Take a walk; stretch your legs.”
I lifted her up and put her over the side of the boat, lowering her carefully onto the white sands. She kicked at the ground suspiciously, and then glared about her.
“It’s not much of an island, is it?” she said. “I mean, I could walk around the thing in under a minute.”
“Well,” I said, “it is my first island. It’s . . . traditional.”
“Underachiever,” said Molly.
She walked over to the nearest coconut tree and looked up. A dozen or so nuts were clustered under the broad leaves, all of them well out of reach. Molly kicked the tree trunk, hard. A single nut broke free, and dropped obligingly into her waiting hands. She then realised she didn’t have anything to cut it open with, so she smashed the nut against the side of the tree. The nut obligingly broke open, to reveal that it was empty. Hollow, with not a scrap of meat or a drop of water. Molly gave me a disgusted look and threw the nut away.
“I guess I didn’t imagine the place clearly enough,” I said. “It’s all in the details . . . Come on, though; be honest! It’s still an island. And islands have one very useful advantage over boats.”
“Oh yes?” said Molly. “Like what?”
“Islands very rarely sink.”
“All right, you’ve got a point there.” She looked around her, hands on her hips. “We still need something more . . . useful. This whole world feels like a trap to me. I say we get the hell out of here. Go somewhere else completely!”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “All right, brace yourself. I think I may be getting the hang of this.”
I concentrated again, and felt the world move under me. It was like flexing a muscle I hadn’t known I had. And when I looked again, the boat and the island were gone, and Molly and I were standing in a London street.
* * *
And not just any street; we were standing on Oxford Street, with all its familiar shops and settings . . . not far from where I’d left it earlier. I allowed myself to relax a little, happy at being in a place I not only recognised but one that gave every indication of being entirely unthreatening. I did stamp my feet on the pavement a few times, surreptitiously, just to check that it wasn’t going to suck me down. I’d had enough of that. Molly slipped her arm through mine to show I was forgiven, and grinned at me.
“I know this! Oxford Street, right? Have you transported us back there? Out of the Shifting Lands?”
“No,” I said. “I’m pretty sure this is just another fake. Something that only looks like Oxford Street. Pretty damn close, though. All the details seem right.”
“It’ll do,” said Molly. “But why did you choose this street, in particular? Did you want to go shopping?”
“I was just here,” I said. “I’d been visiting Castle Inconnu.”
Molly gave me a hard look. “What the hell were you doing there, with those stuck-up little prigs?”
“A story for another day,” I said.
My voice trailed away, as I realised something was wrong after all. Something was very wrong with Oxford Street. There were no people, no traffic, no noise or movement or signs of life anywhere. Why hadn’t I noticed that immediately? The whole street was horribly still and silent. Like a stage setting before the play has begun. Molly’s grip on my arm tightened as she realised it too. She looked quickly about her, and then took a deep breath, regaining control of herself. She gave me an encouraging smile. It looked cheerful, but strained.
“You’re starting to get the hang of this, Eddie. It just needs . . . a little more work.” And then she stopped, and frowned. “Actually, you know . . . this does sort of remind me of something. Do you remember Casino Infernale, when I played the game of World War with the Bones Man? We created familiar backgrounds for us to fight in. This is the same sort of thing, but on a much larger scale. We can do this, Eddie! We just need to practise . . .”
I shook my head. “I’m not playing any Game for the Powers That Be. Where they get to decide what the rules are, and change them when they feel like it. That gives them far too much of an advantage for my liking.”
“But there isn’t any way out,” said Molly. “The only way to leave the Game is to win it. And that means . . .”
“I know what it means,” I said. “And I don’t do that any more.”
“Then what . . .”
“I’m still working on it, okay?” I looked up and down the long, empty street. “Where is everyone? Where are the other competitors?”
“I thought you didn’t want to play the Game?” said Molly, amused.
“I don’t,” I said. “I’m mostly concerned with finding Charles and Emily . . . But I do think we need to locate the other three players. Before they find us. If they can force their way into this world, who knows what control they might have over it? Change the setting, change the rules, find new ways to attack us . . . Can you use your magic to find any of them?”
Molly scowled, looked down at her feet, and then shook her head reluctantly. “My magic’s gone. I’ve been trying to access it ever since I arrived in the Cathedral, but nothing works. I think the Powers That Be did something to me, the bastards!”
“They took your magic away?” I said. “Why would they do that?”
“Perhaps to give you more of a reason to fight,” said Molly. “If I can’t defend myself in the Game, you would have to get involved. To protect me.”
“Damn,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Well, I’m sorry to be such a burden to you!”
“You know I didn’t mean it that way . . .”
But she just turned her back on me and folded her arms tightly, sulking. Molly can take the strangest things personally.
Trees shot up out of the pavement and the road, hundreds of them, blasting up all around us. Huge, towering trees, soaring into the air, until Oxford Street was gone, overgrown and replaced by a dark, brooding forest. Broad-boled trees with wide-stretching leafless branches, set unnaturally close together. Nothing between them but patches of forest gloom.
At first I thought this might be Molly’s doing, that because she was upset she’d summoned a setting she could feel more comfortable in. But it quickly became clear we weren’t anywhere in Molly’s familiar wild woods. This was a darker, far more threatening place. The light falling in heavy shafts through the overhead canopy of intertwined branches was trying to be golden sunlight, but it was curdled, spoiled. As though the whole forest setting was somehow corrupt. No wildlife anywhere, not even the smallest living thing moving among the trees. Not even any shrubs or grass, and the dark earth at my feet looked more like mud and ashes. As though the trees were growing out of dead matter. Molly and I moved quickly to stand close together, ready for any attack.
The trees seemed to crush in around us, with no obvious path or way out. The air was thick with the stench of rotting mulch. Wrinkled bark on the trees looked like the faces of mad old men, with staring eyes and hungry mouths. Long, gnarled branches reached out incredibly far, their curling ends seeming to clutch and grasp. They moved restlessly, though there wasn’t a breath of wind in the forest to disturb them. Roots churned slowly in the dark earth, like great dreaming worms.
We were surrounded.
“Really don’t like the feel of this,” said Molly. Her voice was hushed, little more than a murmur. As though the trees might be listening. “Can you get us out of here, Eddie? Maybe back to Oxford Street?”
“I’m not even sure how we got here,” I said. “I didn’t call these woods. Did you?”
“Of course not!” Molly turned up her nose at the surrounding trees. “Wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this. Could you summon another door?”
“Can’t you?”
“I can’t think straight!” Molly scowled unhappily, avoiding my gaze. “Something about these trees just . . . gets to me.”
I could hear a definite note of fear in her voice. And that worried me. I wasn’t used to seeing Molly afraid, or this close to panic. I had to wonder whether the Powers That Be might have . . . damaged her when they took her magic away. It was so much a part of who and what she was . . . Unless this was what she was really like, without her magics . . . No. I couldn’t believe that. I tried to concentrate on a door, to get us out of the forest . . . but I just couldn’t seem to visualise a door in this setting. It didn’t belong here, didn’t seem right. And if I couldn’t believe in it . . . I turned to Molly.
“This is more your kind of world than mine. Can’t you reshape it, turn it into something more pleasant?”
“This is nothing to do with me!” said Molly. “It’s not my woods, not my world.”
“No,” said Tarot Jones. “It’s mine.”
We both looked round sharply, and there he was, lounging at his ease between two tall and twisted trees. He was smiling at us, with his big, horsey grin, and not in a good way. Tarot Jones, the Tatterdemalion, the Totem of the Travellers. A raggedy man, with an air of the wild things about him, he looked perfectly at home in the dark forest. As though this was where he belonged. I wondered if this was how he saw all wild places, all the time.
He looked down his long nose at Molly. “You know nothing of the true wildness of the woods. The sleeping power of the dark face of Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw and loving every moment of it. There was a time I didn’t; but I had to give up my innocence, put it aside and leave it behind so I could become wise enough, and strong enough, to protect my people. To defend my Tribe from all those who threatened them.”
“We’re no threat to your people,” I said carefully.
“Of course you are. You’re a Drood.”
“Try not to be so literal in your thinking,” I said. “You’re the hero of your story, and I’m the hero of mine.”
He looked suddenly older, and oddly sad, for a moment. “I’m no hero. Not any more. I wanted to be, but I had to give all that up to become the guardian and protector my Tribe needed. When they come with weapons to move us on, I have to face them with worse things than weapons. I stand between my people and a cruel and vicious world, and they must never know, never find out, all the awful things I’ve had to do on their behalf. To keep them safe. I am teeth and claws in the night, the fever that burns in dark places, the terror and horror of abandoned places. There is blood on my hands, but I do not regret one drop of it. You’d understand that, being a Drood.”
I nodded slowly. “Like I said, we have some things in common. So why don’t we put our differences aside, just for the moment, and work together to get out from under the hands of the Powers That Be? You can go back to your Tribe, and I can go back to my family. We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to fight and kill, play the Game, for the amusement of others.”
He cocked his head on one side, studying me with bright eyes. “Fine words, for a Drood. When did you ever turn away from violence? You kill for your family. I kill for my Tribe.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t do that any more.”
“Good,” said Tarot Jones. “That will make this so much easier.”
He gestured with his left hand, and all the trees around us tore themselves free of the dark earth. They rose up on their roots, lurching and swaying, and plunged towards us, thrashing branches reaching out with clawed and clutching fingers, to rend and tear. A savage power moved in the trees, ancient and unstoppable. There was a harsh anger in their movements, as though this was what trees dreamed of all the time, in their long, deep sleep. Of revenge on men, for what they did with saws and axes and fire . . . The trees advanced from every side, with deafeningly loud creaks and cracks, their roots churning up the dead earth. I looked quickly about me, but there was still no way out.
“I have had enough of this!” said Molly. “I am never defenceless! Never!”
She produced an aboriginal pointing bone from somewhere about her person. That nasty old night magic that can kill with a gesture. She stabbed the discoloured bone at the nearest tree. Anywhere else, the kind of curse magic bound into that bone would have been enough to blast the tree into kindling, but nothing happened. Molly swore briefly, and threw the bone aside. Her left hand was immediately full of an ancient arthame, a witch dagger. The leaf-shaped blade was deeply scored with old runes and sigils. Molly spoke a Word of Power over it, but the blade didn’t burst into flames as it should have. Molly looked shocked. She shook the blade hard, as though that might help, and tried again, but it remained just a knife. Molly threw that away too, and pulled a leather pouch out of her pocket. She poured a purple powder out into her hand and scattered it on the air before her, but it didn’t glow, or scintillate, or do terrible things. It just fell harmlessly to the ground and lay there. The pouch fell from Molly’s trembling hand. She looked at me, and her eyes were full of frustrated tears she wouldn’t give in to.
“I can’t even command my armoury any more! What have they done to me?”
“Take it easy,” I said. “And stay back. I’ve got this.”
“Of course you have,” she said, smiling slightly. “You’re a Drood.”
I armoured up and went to meet the trees. Wrapped in my golden armour, I felt strong and fast and sharp, more than a match for a bunch of trees with bad attitude. I laughed aloud as they reached for me with their long, gnarled hands, because their woody strength was nothing compared to my armour. I snapped off branches and threw them aside, stamped on roots until they broke, punched great holes in tree trunks until they split from end to end. I kicked trees out of the way and pushed them over, tore them to pieces with my golden hands. Heavy branches closed around me, snapping tight with inhuman strength, crushing me. But they couldn’t hurt me, and they couldn’t hold me. I shrugged and the branches broke; I ripped them from me and threw the pieces away, and went on. I grabbed one tree with both hands, tore it out of the dead earth, and upended it, swinging it effortlessly like a great club, striking down all the other trees and smashing them apart, until I’d opened up a great clearing all around me.
Trees toppled silently, and thrashed helplessly on the ground. Branches broke and roots snapped, none of them of any use against me. I knocked over trees and shattered others, and when I finally stopped, not even breathing hard, I had opened up a great wound in the heart of the forest. I looked around and the remaining trees stood back. Afraid to approach me. I dropped the tree I was holding, and looked at Tarot Jones. Standing on his own.
“I knew it,” he said. His voice was flat and cold, not from lack of emotion but because what he was feeling was too big to put into words. “Just another Drood bully-boy. The despoilers of the forest, destroyers of the wild. But I have more than trees to set against you. I command the elements.”
He drew himself up and raised both hands to the heavens. He spoke Words I didn’t understand, older than any language I knew, and massive storm winds blasted into the clearing I’d made from a dozen different directions at once. They hit me hard, battering and bludgeoning me, but I stood my ground in my armour, and they couldn’t move me. Broken and fallen trees were lifted up and thrown around, and many of them slammed into me, but they couldn’t knock me off my feet. I didn’t even bother to slap or shoulder them aside; I just stood there and took it, staring implacably at Tarot Jones from behind my featureless golden mask. Molly crouched behind me, for shelter from the storm, both arms wrapped around my golden legs to keep her from being carried away.
The winds died down, and lightning struck. Long, jagged lines of elemental power, fierce and vivid, blasting sharp electric illumination through the forest gloom. Lightning bolts hit me again and again, but my armour just soaked them up. Scraps of lightning crawled over and around my armour, crackling and spitting, trying to force a way in, only to fall away, defeated. I glanced down, to make sure Molly had retreated out of range, and of course she had.
Tarot Jones actually danced on the dark earth, out of his mind with rage, and then he stopped abruptly and made a series of gestures. Heavy roots burst out of the dark earth, white as corpses, and wrapped themselves around me, trying to pull me down. I tore them apart with my golden hands and let the pieces fall back to the ground.
Tarot Jones turned his back on me to show off the stick figures that clung there. And one by one they turned their shapeless heads to look at me, before dropping down from his back and landing lightly on the forest floor. Strange twisted shapes, just twigs bound together into almost human things. Full of dark malignant passions. They scampered across the broken earth towards me, and then changed direction at the last moment and went for Molly. Because if they couldn’t hurt me, they could still hurt the thing I cared for most. They saw her as an easier target. They should have known better.
Molly grabbed up the stick figures and wrenched them apart with her bare hands, dismantling their knotted shapes, and scattering the pieces around her. She stamped them under her feet; smiling nastily all the while. Even without her magics, Molly Metcalf was still a very dangerous person. A few of the figures escaped her, and I ground them to pieces under my armoured feet. They broke easily.
I don’t know whether they were really alive, in any way. I hope not.
Rain slammed down, thick and cold and heavy, soaking Molly immediately. I moved quickly to stand over her, sheltering her as best I could. The ground beneath our feet was quickly waterlogged, becoming deep mud in moments. My armoured feet sank into it, but I had been there before. I visualised a solid surface underneath Molly and me, to hold us up, and it was there in a moment. And all the rain in the world couldn’t affect it.
The rain cut off. Molly crouched beside me, gasping for breath, soaked from top to bottom and looking like a drowned rat. I made the moisture disappear from her with a single hard thought, and she grinned at me, gave me a thumbs-up, and then glowered fiercely at Tarot Jones, who was still standing alone in his rags and tatters, among the ruins of his forest. I started towards him. I’d had enough of being reasonable and holding back. He really shouldn’t have attacked Molly. Tarot Jones held his ground as I advanced on him, and shot me his best arrogant grin.
“I am the Totem of the Travellers, and the Spirit of the Woods! I am the Green Man!”
“That’s nice,” I said. “I’m Eddie Drood, and I’m mad as hell.”
He reached out to two trees still somehow standing on either side of him. Their branches dropped down and wrapped around him again and again, like a cocoon, and then lifted him up into the air, until he was lost to view. The two trees slammed together, fusing themselves into one great living thing. A tree forty or fifty feet high, with a roughly human shape and powerful arms and legs. A face appeared in the wrinkled bark that was very like Tarot Jones. A massive tree with the face of a man and all the strength of the forest, driven on by one man’s fury. It stomped heavily towards me, and the ground jumped and shook under the weight and impact of every step.
I concentrated on my armour, and turned my golden gloves into buzz saws. The vicious blades roared loudly as they spun, and I walked forward to meet the Green Man. My howling blades dug deep into his wooden body, ripping and tearing, sending splinters flying. The great face in the bark screamed. The huge wooden hands beat at me, and I didn’t even feel them inside my armour. One hand tried to pick me up, and I cut it off with my saws. I dug deep into the wide trunk, splitting it open and carving it out, and all the ancient strength of the wood was nothing, set against my armour. I opened up the heart of the Green Man, and there was Tarot Jones, nestled within. I turned my saws back into gloves, and tore him out of the wood. I clubbed him down with a single blow, and he fell unconscious to the ground before me. The Green Man fell backwards, stiff and unwieldy, no longer animated by one man’s will, to ponderously measure its great length on the forest floor. The sound of the impact carried on and on, but the massive shape did not move again.
I armoured down, and stood over Tarot Jones’ motionless body. I looked at him for a while, and then I raised my head and addressed the unseen watching audience.
“I won’t kill him! Do you hear me, you Powers? I don’t kill! Not for you, or anyone!”
I waited, but there was no response. I didn’t think there would be. I just wanted to make a point. Presumably, as long as I was playing the Game, for whatever reasons, the Powers That Be were happy. As long as I was providing a show . . . Molly came forward to join me.
“He would have killed you,” she said finally. “And me.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“Not dancing to someone else’s tune. I did what I had to, but I don’t feel good about it. You know, Molly . . . it’s not enough, just to escape from the Shifting Lands. I am going to put a stop to this Game, hunt down the Powers That Be and bring them down. Hard.”
“Of course you are,” said Molly. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from Eddie Drood. But can we at least try to get out of this Game alive first?”
“Perfectionist,” I said.
Molly looked at the unconscious form on the ground before us. She gave it a good hard nudge with her boot, just in case.
“What about him?”
“He’ll keep,” I said.
The light darkened as the forest shut down all around us. Wood cracked and creaked loudly, as the remaining trees slumped and sagged forward, rotting and decaying, falling apart. The forest was dying without the will of Tarot Jones to sustain it. What golden light remained shrank in on itself, darkening like spoiled treacle. Somewhere up above the forest, the sun was going out. It was already growing cold, as the life bled out of Tarot Jones’ world. Molly shot me a concerned look.
“What happens to us if we’re still a part of this world when it dies?”
“I think we’re probably better off not knowing,” I said. “We need to move on. Replace this world with one of our own choosing. Something we decide on.”
“We?”
“I think we’ll stand a better chance of getting what we want if we both concentrate on the same thing.”
“Too late,” said Molly. “I’ve already thought of something.”
The forest disappeared in a moment, swept away like a passing fancy. I expected Molly to replace the dark forest with her own preferred wild woods, but instead, we were suddenly standing on a street that could only have been part of the Nightside. Hot neon, night sky, good and evil rubbing shoulders and stabbing each other in the back. Business as usual, in the night that never ends. I looked reproachfully at Molly, and she shrugged briefly, not even a little bit embarrassed.
“It’s what came to mind . . .”
A thought struck me. I looked down at my feet, but Tarot Jones’ unconscious form hadn’t made the transition with us. We’d left him behind, in his dying world. I hoped he’d get out okay.
I looked around me, trying not to appear too openly disapproving. All kinds of people, and some things not even pretending to be people, hurried up and down the rain-slick pavement, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. All in search of the driving passions that might not have a name in polite company, but most certainly had a price list. The night sky was still crammed full of unfamiliar stars, and the huge, overbearing full moon. Traffic rushed by without ever stopping, or even noticeably slowing down. Not everything on the road looked like a vehicle; in fact, some of them were eating each other. I was pretty sure this wasn’t the same street I’d walked down with Walker and the Somnambulist earlier, but it looked pretty damned similar.
Something large flapped slowly across the night sky, so huge the moon actually disappeared from view for a moment as the creature passed in front of it. I looked away. Nothing in the material world should be that big. A shuddering bass beat caught my attention, blasting out of the open door of a nearby nightclub. Music reduced to its most basic, seductive and compelling. A barker in a chequered suit strode back and forth before the open door, loudly proclaiming the joys to be found inside. I really hoped he was exaggerating. Molly noticed my interest, and grinned.
“We could pop in for a moment, if you like. It’s been ages since we went dancing.”
“No thank you,” I said. “I’ve heard of what goes on in Nightside clubs. Where the drinks may be free, but the cover charge is your soul. Or someone else’s. Where the band never stops playing because the Management have a lifetime contract. Put on the red shoes and dance till you bleed . . .”
“You can be such a stuffed shirt sometimes,” said Molly.
I remembered Walker saying that whatever you end up with in the Shifting Lands could be the result of conscious or subconscious desires. I had to wonder what it said about Molly that we’d ended up here.
An old woman dressed as the Lone Ranger, complete with black silk mask, tottered up to me from out of the crowd and grabbed one of my hands. She held on to it with impressive strength, despite my efforts to pull it free, and cackled loudly.
“Cross my palm with a silver bullet, dearie, and I’ll tell you your future!”
I wrested my hand free of hers with an effort. “Do I look like a tourist?”
“Oh, come on,” she said, dropping me a roguish wink. “Live a little!”
“Not today,” I said.
She spat on the ground between us, turned her back, and tottered away. At the last moment, she turned to glare back at me. “You don’t have a future! He’s coming for you, from the other side of the mirror, and oh he’s so angry! Doctor DOA is coming for you!”
And then she was gone. I looked at Molly.
“Haven’t a clue,” she said.
You hear the damnedest things in the Nightside.
I looked around me, hoping to spot either the Sin Eater or the magician Chandarru, but there was no sign of either contestant. Given how easily Tarot Jones had found us, I didn’t think it would be long before one or the other, or even both, turned up here. But there was nothing in the street to present an obvious threat; it was just another disturbing scene from the Nightside. I really wanted to armour up, if only to keep from catching something nasty . . . but that would attract attention. This might or might not be the real Nightside, but I was pretty sure Droods would still be banned here. And the one thing absolutely guaranteed to bring all the disparate elements of the long night together would be the chance to gang up on a Drood.
Something that might have been a Yeti, with heavy eye makeup and false eyelashes, stomped past, hauling along several naked old men on leather leashes. Half a dozen nuns had hiked up their skirts in order to give a street mime a really good kicking. And a pack of small children tottered past, their bulging oversized heads tattooed with demonic script and their eyes blazing with hellfire. They saw me watching, and chattered among themselves in harsh inhuman voices. I wanted to do . . . something, but I knew there was no point. I couldn’t hope to change anything for the better—not here. Molly patted me comfortingly on the arm.
“Leave it, Eddie. It’s the Nightside.”
And you chose it, I thought, but had the good sense not to say out loud.
“We can’t just stand around here, doing nothing,” Molly said briskly. “That would make us conspicuous, and it’s never a good idea to stand out in the Nightside.”
“I’m almost sure this isn’t the real Nightside,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“It might be,” said Molly. “You’d be surprised how many places are attached to the long night, one way or another.”
“But we haven’t finished playing the Game,” I said. “I don’t think the Powers That Be would let us go anywhere we might escape from. So if this is another fake . . . there might not be anywhere else for us to go. This street could be all there is to this world, this setting.”
“All right,” said Molly. “Maybe I could summon one of my favourite watering holes here, if I put my mind to it. Strangefellows, say; or the Hawk’s Wind Bar and Grill.”
I knew both of those appalling locations by reputation, and suppressed a shudder. “They still wouldn’t be the real deal. And I have a strong feeling that any place here could be full of nasty surprises, courtesy of our subconscious.”
“How right you are,” said Crow Lee.
And there he was, standing before me, grinning unpleasantly. The Most Evil Man in the World, by popular consent. A large, broad-faced, powerfully built man, perfectly at ease in a long white Egyptian gown with gold trimmings. He had a shaven head, dark piercing eyes under bushy black eyebrows, and enough sheer presence for a dozen men. He gave me his best hypnotic stare, and I glared right back at him.
“You’re dead!”
Crow Lee shrugged easily. “You should know, you killed me. But you should also know by now that’s no drawback here. One of you called me back. I wonder who, and why?”
I drew my Colt Repeater, and shot him between the eyes. His bald head snapped back in a flurry of blood, and he crumpled to the pavement and lay still. I shot him twice more, in the chest, just to be on the safe side. None of the people passing by so much as glanced down at the body, even when they had to step over him. I put my Colt away again, and realised Molly was staring at me.
“I thought you’d decided you weren’t going to kill any more . . . ,” she said carefully.
“Some shit I just won’t put up with,” I said. “Even if it does comes from my subconscious. Perhaps especially from there . . .”
“But . . .”
“I won’t kill people. He was just . . . scenery.”
“Quite right,” said Crow Lee, from the pavement. But by the time I’d looked down, he’d disappeared.
And then, quite suddenly, all of the people hurrying up and down the street slammed to an abrupt halt. They stood still and silent for a long moment, and then they all turned their heads to look at me, and Molly. Hellfire burned in all their eyes, infernal flames dancing in their eye sockets. They were all wearing exactly the same smile. As though they were looking forward to something. I didn’t need to look around me to know we were surrounded. Hundreds of men and women, and some that might have been both or neither, were staring at me and Molly . . . with Hell’s eyes and bad intent.
“They’re possessed,” Molly said quietly. “Every damned one of them.”
“I had spotted that, yes,” I said.
“But who could possess that many people all at the same time?”
“Him,” I said, pointing.
The Sin Eater was hanging on the air above us, in his shining white preacher’s suit. Arms outstretched as though crucified, nailed to the night, blood dripping thickly from the stigmata in his wrists and ankles. He smiled down at us, looking very pleased with himself.
“Don’t make a fuss, please,” he said. “There’s no need for this to get unpleasant. Just admit you’re beaten, and it will all be over very quickly. I can’t promise it will be painless, but I can make it quick. You should have known you couldn’t win, not against me. I walk in Heaven’s sight, with Heaven’s strength. I have released all the demons contained within me and sent them out to occupy these passing sinners. My own little army. And since they aren’t really people, but as you have already pointed out, merely animated scraps of scenery . . . the demons can’t do any real damage, or hope to escape my control. I can have them do my bidding and then just call them home again. Where they belong. After they’ve dealt with you two. Why should I get my hands dirty when I already have so many burdens weighing down my poor benighted soul?”
“Just once,” said Molly, “I really would like to meet a villain who doesn’t feel the need to lecture us, or impress us with how clever they’re being.”
“Never happen,” I said. I looked thoughtfully at the Sin Eater. “All . . . of your demons?”
He smiled. “Well, perhaps I kept a few back. To keep me warm inside.”
The possessed army surged forward, lurching and staggering, as though the things inside them were still getting used to their new bodies. Bitter yellow flames rose from their staring eyes, and their hands had clawed fingers. Many of them tore at their own flesh, giggling as they disfigured their helpless hosts. Blood fell from their wounds, to hiss and steam on the pavement. Many of them produced weapons; it was the Nightside, after all.
“Leave it to me,” said Molly. “I’ve got this.”
She stepped forward and carefully pronounced several disturbing Words of Power, but nothing happened. Molly scowled, and tried a whole series of impressive gestures, some of which I’d seen tear the material world apart before . . . But to no avail. She called down the elements, as she had so many times in the past, but nothing answered her. Molly stamped a foot in sheer frustration and looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“They’ve left me nothing!”
A man stepped up to her and pointed a gun at her head. Molly leapt on him, punched him out, and grabbed the gun from his hand as he fell to the ground. A woman with cat’s eyes and long, curving fingernails jumped at her, and Molly shot the woman dead. She shot three more of the nearest possessed before the cat woman hit the ground, and then turned to smile happily at me.
“Now that’s more like it. Good to know there are some things you can still depend on. Oh, don’t look so disapproving, Eddie. None of these people are real! Half of them probably wouldn’t be even if this was the real Nightside!”
“They’re real enough to kill us,” I said. “But I take your point.”
“Definitely stuffy,” said Molly. “What do I see in you?”
I armoured up, and once again altered its configuration to suit the situation. My golden gloves morphed into two oversized machine guns, and I opened up on the ranks of possessed before me, mowing them down. Without hesitation or mercy. The golden guns fired strange matter bullets, and even the possessed had no defence against them. Their bodies blew apart in messy explosions, thrown this way and that by the impacts, and bodies hit the pavement faster than the crowd could advance on me. I turned around in a slow circle, raking my guns back and forth, shooting everything I could see. Molly moved quickly to keep behind me, picking off the odd target herself, just to keep busy. I could hear her laughing.
“Hardcore, Eddie! This is more like it!”
They’re not real, I told myself. I’m just destroying scenery.
But when I’d finally finished, and ran out of possessed people to shoot, the dead bodies piled up around me still looked real enough. With their gaping wounds and shredded flesh and so much blood, pooling thickly. Some of the bodies were still twitching, as though the demons within were still trying to manipulate them, but they were all clearly dead, and one by one they stopped moving. I let my guns turn back into gloves and then called out to the strange matter bullets to return. They ripped themselves free of the bodies, and shot back through the air to sink into my armour. I wasn’t leaving any strange matter behind for someone else to get their hands on.
With their hosts fallen, destroyed past the point of usefulness, the demons abandoned the bodies. They rose up, like so many blood-coloured ghosts or spectres, and streaked through the air to re-enter the hanging body of the Sin Eater. His face twisted and grimaced as his hellish children came home, but whether from pain or pleasure I couldn’t tell. I was genuinely shocked that there were so many of them, contained within one man, who still claimed to serve the Good.
I walked over to him. Molly hung back. I looked up at the cruciform figure, hanging on the air above me. He stared down coldly.
“You haven’t won,” he said. “I haven’t even started yet.”
“You have to stop this,” I said steadily. “Now. While you still can. Before it’s too late.”
“It was too late long ago,” said the Sin Eater. “Don’t you think I know that? So many demons; it’s like I’m full of razor wire, scraping against my soul . . . What I’ve done to myself, for what seemed like good reasons at the time . . . Fight fire with hellfire . . . I’m damned. I know that. Unless I can win this Game, and have all my sins forgiven. Or at least, adjusted. It won’t bother me to kill you, to sacrifice two more innocents for my holy cause. Especially since you aren’t really innocents, are you? A Drood and a witch? I’ve no doubt you deserve everything that’s coming to you. So there’s some comfort in that. I’ll just be sending you where you were bound to end up anyway.”
The ground in front of me cracked open, and I stepped quickly back. A jagged split shot across the street, from side to side. And it was only then that I realised all the traffic on the road had disappeared. Not needed any more to set the scene. A deep crevice opened up, full of blood and fire and heaving molten lava. With darks shadows moving in it. The Sin Eater laughed briefly.
“There you are, Drood! An express route to Hell, just for you and your little witch!”
Terrible things came crawling up out of the flames and the lava, hauling themselves out of the crevice. Awful distorted shapes, sickening to look at. Sins given shape and form, sculpted in flesh and blood and bone. Foul things from out of the Pit, all of them smiling with anticipation as they headed for me, and for Molly. She moved quickly forward to stand beside me.
“They aren’t the real thing,” she said.
“You’d know,” I said.
“And if they’re not really hellspawn . . .”
“Then they’re just more scenery.”
My gloves became guns again, and I opened fire. The demons looked startled, even shocked, as my strange matter bullets tore into them and blew them apart. The sheer firepower I generated stopped them in their tracks, and then drove them back. I wasn’t sure I was really hurting them, but I was causing more damage to their material forms than they could hope to repair. I raked my guns up and down the length of the crevice, forcing the creatures back into the flames. Molly danced delightedly beside me, whooping and howling with glee. The Sin Eater cried out in frustration. I finally stopped, lowered my guns, and looked down into the crevice. Foul things stared back at me, unwilling to leave the flames, afraid to face me.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said to them. “Whether you’re real or not.”
I walked forward, across the crevice, defying the fall. I walked across the wide gap as though it wasn’t there, and didn’t even feel the heat from the flames. The demons flinched back from me, cringing away from my act of faith. The crevice slammed shut, shutting off the light from the leaping flames in a moment. And every strange matter bullet I’d fired returned to my armour.
The Sin Eater glared down at me, his face full of rage and fear and desperation.
“Take him!” he said loudly. “All you demons within; I give him to you! Possess the Drood!”
They oozed out of his flesh, seeping through his white suit like so much congealed blood, forming into twisted demonic shapes in mid-air. More and more of them boiled out of the Sin Eater to hang on the night, before and around him, snarling and hissing, but not one of them moved forward to possess me. They preferred to stay where they were, forming a protective barrier around their host. He raged and roared at them, ordering them to obey his instructions, but they wouldn’t. They waited for me to come to them. So I walked slowly, steadily forward, until I was standing directly before the Sin Eater. He was breathing hard now, his ragged voice silenced by sheer frustration. The demons stared silently at me.
“You think your precious armour will protect you, Drood?” said the Sin Eater. “After everything you’ve done?”
I thought about it, and then armoured down. The demons murmured uneasily among themselves. I stood there before them, in nothing but my bare flesh, and stared steadily back at them. Real or not, they still scared the crap out of me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. They looked away from me, unwilling to meet my gaze. I turned to the Sin Eater and held his gaze with my own.
“I have faith in me,” I said. “Because my uncle Jack had faith in me. And I have always valued his opinion and his judgement. While I may not always be sure about me, I have no doubt he was a good man. I have done my duty, to my family and to Humanity. And to the cause I have always believed in, to be a shepherd to the world. I have fought the good fight, and done my best not to stain my honour too much in the process. I have tried to do the right thing, even in the worst situations. Judge me, you demons. If you dare.”
And one by one they turned away and forced themselves back into the Sin Eater. Even as he raged and ranted, cursing and screaming at them. They ignored him, choosing to go home, where they felt safe. Where they belonged. And as he finally realised that, the Sin Eater fell silent.
Molly moved in beside me. “Hardcore, Eddie,” she said respectfully.
The Sin Eater looked down on me, his eyes full of spite and desperation. “You can’t stop me! I have Hell’s strength on my side!”
“Shouldn’t that be Heaven’s strength?” I said. “For someone who claims to walk in Heaven’s sight?”
The Sin Eater tried to say something and couldn’t. Caught and held by an insight he couldn’t deny any longer. Caught in the terrible contradiction of the life he’d made for himself. The demons within sensed him wavering and tried to seize control. His face writhed and contorted, as other faces tried to take its place. Hellfire shot up from his staring eyes, and disappeared just as quickly. He shouted, and screamed, and spoke in tongues. A blasphemous halo of buzzing flies formed around his head . . . but only for a moment, before they fell silent and dropped dying to the ground. As the Sin Eater fought the forces within him. One last battle—to be the man he’d always meant to be. His own face re-emerged, and the demons fell quiet. Cowed, for now. The Sin Eater looked down on me.
“It was all my doing. All my fault. Everything . . . I take full responsibility for all my actions. For my pride, and arrogance. All my sins. I was such a fool . . . such a damned fool.”
His eyes closed and he collapsed, falling out of the night sky like a wounded bird. He hit the ground hard and lay still. I hurried forward to kneel beside him. I called his name, but he didn’t respond. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing. He’d gone inside, to face his demons, and now he was trapped in his own thoughts, struggling to resolve his contradictions. I wondered how long it would be, before he came out again, if he ever did. Molly knelt down beside me and pressed the barrel of her gun against the Sin Eater’s head. I grabbed her wrist, and forced the gun aside. Molly fought me for a moment, and then pulled her hand free. We stood up, facing each other. For a moment I thought she would aim the gun at me, but she didn’t.
“Why not?” she said harshly. “Why not kill him? After what he would have done to us?”
“Because that would mean playing the Game,” I said steadily. “I won’t kill, Molly. And I won’t see anyone killed. Not for them.”
“Not even for me?”
“He’s no danger to us now,” I said.
She sniffed loudly and lowered her gun. “Odds are he’ll try to kill us again, the moment he wakes up.”
“Then we’ll just have to beat the Game before he wakes up.”
We both looked up sharply as a great shadow fell across us, blocking out the street lights and the blazing neon signs. The shadow kept spreading, covering the whole street. Because up in the night sky, the huge full moon was growing steadily larger. Falling at last, crashing towards us, descending with increasing speed to destroy everything beneath it.
“Oh, come on!” said Molly. “Who’s doing that? I’m not doing that!”
“I think the Powers That Be are annoyed with us,” I said.
“Sore losers!” Molly screamed at the rapidly descending moon.
“It’s time to go,” I said. “You’d better let go of this world so we can move on to a new one.”
“I can’t!” she said. “I don’t know how! I’m trying, I’m concentrating, but nothing’s happening!”
I tried too, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything but the huge moon dropping out of the sky onto me. Which was probably the point. So I looked up at the massive white pock-marked face and met its gaze steadily.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll do it the hard way. Pay attention. I don’t believe in you.”
And the falling moon exploded into an incredible fireworks display. Bright burning colours, shining and sparkling, shot across the night sky. I braced myself, expecting a shower of burning meteors, or crashing moon fragments, but it was all just lights in the sky. Putting on a good show for the Powers That Be. Molly oohed and aahed, and clapped her hands delightedly. And when the last of the lights died down, I looked around and discovered that the world had changed again while I wasn’t looking.
* * *
Molly and I were standing together, side by side, in a place that made no sense at all. I couldn’t even be sure what we were standing on. There were shapes and structures and surfaces all around us that made me think of some freakish three-dimensional maze, or maybe even four or five dimensions. I couldn’t tell what anything was, or even how it all connected. Just looking at the shapes that made up this new world made my head hurt. Nothing stayed the same from one moment to the next. It was all shifting, changing . . . There were huge floating objects that seemed to turn themselves inside out as I looked at them. There were things that might have been buildings, or at least structures, with too many sides and too many angles. Things came and went, without any clear purpose or meaning. It was like being caught in a nightmare, trying to force yourself awake, and finding you can’t.
Whose world was this? Who made this? Who would want to make something like this? I was sure none of it came from anywhere inside my head. I was less sure about Molly, but it seemed unlikely. She’d always been very practical and level-headed, for a witch. And then I made myself pay more attention to my immediate surroundings, as I realised there were living things, or things that looked like they might be alive, crawling over some of the nearer surfaces. Things that might have been creatures, or people, or people becoming creatures . . . that I could only see out of the corners of my eyes. When I looked at them directly, they weren’t there. But they did seem to be sneaking closer.
Great Voices boomed from Above, and terrible sounds rose from Below, while flaring colours exploded around strange structures I couldn’t even put a name to. This ever-changing world threatened to take my mental breath away, but I could cope. I’d had Drood training, and I’d been around. I’d visited other worlds, other dimensions, even other realities. If all of this was supposed to throw me, they didn’t know anything about my family. I’d survived growing up in Drood Hall, and if you could cope with that, you could cope with anything.
I thought about armouring up, but decided not yet. It might look like an admission of weakness, or even fear. And while this new world was quite definitely as weird as all get-out, I hadn’t seen anything yet that struck me as a real threat.
Molly clutched at my arm, and I jumped, just a little. When I looked at her, I was surprised to see real distress in her face.
“Eddie, I don’t like this. Do something . . . I’m scared!”
For the first time, I was really worried. Because this wasn’t like Molly. Unless she was Seeing something I wasn’t. I put a comforting arm across her shoulders and held her close. She felt reassuringly real and solid, in this place of ever-changing things. And then someone said my name, and I looked up.
And there he was. Chandarru; dressed in flowing and highly decorated Oriental robes, to accompany his traditional Chinese look of long moustaches and pigtail. The look an old-time theatrical audience would have expected from a Chinese stage magician.
He floated effortlessly before us, sitting perfectly at ease on a throne made of monstrous bones held together by rotting threads of flesh. Some of them were still steaming, as though only recently pulled from the insides of dying things. It was hard to tell how far away Chandarru was. Hard to judge any distance in this place. He could have been close at hand or far away, both or neither.
He smiled benignly down at us, in a really irritating way.
“This is where I came in search of enlightenment. To this place between places, where nothing comes from and everything returns. I journeyed here to study with the Hidden Masters, in their spiritual redoubt. You might say this is what Space and Time look like when seen from the other side. This is where I learned many amazing truths and much secret knowledge. Most of it not in the least what I was expecting. The true nature of reality isn’t at all what I was hoping for. Came as something of a shock, in fact. I’m afraid it is necessary that you die now, Drood. And your little friend. I can’t let you stop me. Not when I still have so much more to learn.”
“And then what?” I said, cutting across what promised to be another long explanatory lecture. “What will you do? When you’ve finally learned all you can, all that the human mind can encompass? What then?”
“That is one of the things I have yet to learn,” Chandarru said serenely. “Maybe I’ll just take a good look at the way our world is going, and then wipe everything clean and start over, with something better.”
“You haven’t learned a damned thing,” I said.
Chandarru looked startled, even shocked, by the hard certainty and judgement he heard in my voice. For the first time he looked uncertain. He sat up straight on his throne, as though challenged. He glared at me, pulling his dignity about him, and I ignored him to look at Molly.
“How are you doing?”
“Better, thanks.” She grinned at me cheerfully. “Sorry. Something about this place just got to me, for a moment. I’m back. What do you need, Eddie?”
“You have more experience with the odder realms of magic than I do. Does this place seem . . . I hesitate to use the word real, but I suppose it will have to do for want of anything better . . . Does all of this look real to you? Are we where we appear to be; or are we still in the Game?”
“Hard to tell,” said Molly, peering dubiously about her. “It seems authentic enough, but then it would, wouldn’t it? But the bottom line is . . . I can’t believe a second-rate conjurer like Chandarru has the power to take us out of a world created by the Powers That Be. So this is almost certainly just some place he’s called into being because he feels important and powerful here. We’re still in the Game. Still being watched by the Powers That Be . . . no doubt waiting eagerly to see what we’ll do next. If I knew which direction they were in, I’d flash them.”
“Have any of your magics returned?” I said carefully.
“Not yet,” said Molly, scowling fiercely. “Right now I couldn’t pull a hat out of a rabbit.”
“Enough muttering!” snapped Chandarru. He sounded peeved that we weren’t paying any attention to him. “It’s time for both of you to die! There can only be one survivor, one winner, in this Game.”
I turned unhurriedly back to face him. “You really think you can take down a Drood? We don’t die easily. That’s the point.”
Chandarru gave me his best smug smile. “But you’re in my world now. And that makes all the difference.”
“No, we’re not,” I said.
“What?” said Chandarru.
“If you were half the sorcerer you claimed, you’d know that,” I said. “Except you do know that, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t still be concerned with winning the Game. Nice bluff, conjurer, but we have to deal with reality. What really matters.”
“What?” said Chandarru. “What?”
“Look, we don’t have to do this,” I said. “We don’t have to fight and die to entertain the Powers That Be. We can work together. Find our own way out of this mess.”
“No,” said Chandarru. “We can’t. You’re a Drood, you see. I could never trust you. Or, for that matter, the infamous Molly Metcalf. After everything I had to promise, all I had to swear myself to, to pay for my terrible learning . . . I really can’t afford not to win this Game.”
I did my best to remain calm and reasonable. “Listen to me, Chandarru . . .”
“No! No more talking! I am the amazing Chandarru, Master of the Occult and Lord of the Abyss! And you are in my power!”
“Knock it off!” I said. “No you aren’t, and no we aren’t. This is all just another trick.”
“What?” said Chandarru.
“All you ever are is a collection of tricks,” I said. “A stage magician who desperately wanted to be something more. So you reinvented yourself. Went on the road, talked to all the right people, immersed yourself in weird shit like this . . . But even after everything you claim to have learned, you’re still just running tricks in front of an audience. All of this . . . is just another stage setting. None of it’s real. So the powers you claim to derive from this place can’t be real either. But this armour I wear, it’s real.”
I armoured up, and concentrated . . . and a set of steps appeared before me, floating on the air, leading all the way up to Chandarru on his bony throne. The steps glowed golden, just like my armour. Chandarru gestured frantically at them, trying to make them disappear, but his willpower was no match for mine. I ascended the steps towards him. He stood up abruptly, and threw handfuls of his crackling green lightning at me. They flickered and flared all around me, spitting and sparking as they sank into my armour and were absorbed without trace. I never felt a thing. Chandarru drew himself up, and threw change spells, disappear spells, and distortion spells at me . . . and they all just detonated harmlessly against my armour. Chandarru hesitated as I kept heading straight for him, and then he hit me with the strongest curse magic he had. It rebounded from my armour and struck him down.
The throne disappeared, leaving Chandarru floating unconscious in mid-air. His Oriental costume disappeared, and he was back in his formal stage outfit. He looked smaller, less impressive—and strangely peaceful now he wasn’t having to pretend all the time. I stood over him and armoured down. Molly hurried up the steps to join me.
“I suppose you won’t let me kill him either?”
“No,” I said. “Does this mean we’ve won the Game? I mean, we’ve run out of competitors.”
“No,” said Molly. “It’s not over yet.”
* * *
The world snapped off, and for a long moment there was nothing but an impenetrable darkness. I reached out blindly for Molly, and her hand found mine. We held on to each other tightly, until light flared up again, dazzlingly bright. When I could see clearly again, we were standing in the main entrance hall of Drood Hall. I think it’s fair to say, it was the very last place I was expecting to see. Molly gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, let go, and looked quickly about her.
“We’re back in Drood Hall? Does that mean we’re out of the Game? Out of the Shifting Lands, at last? Eddie! Have your family intervened and brought us home?”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” I said. I stood very still, carefully studying my new surroundings. “I’m not in contact with my current handler, so there’s no way anyone in my family could know where I am. The whole point of the Shifting Lands is that they’re out of the Droods’ reach, remember? And anyway, even if my family had somehow tracked me down . . . they wouldn’t override a field agent in the middle of a mission and just yank him out of trouble. It’s not the way we do things. No, Molly, this isn’t real. It’s a fake Hall, like the fake grounds I originally appeared in. I think the main clue is it’s far too quiet. Listen . . . there’s not a sound anywhere. The Hall is many things, but it’s never quiet. There’s always people around, hurrying back and forth on family business. And by now the Serjeant-at-Arms would have burst out of his private office, demanding to know how we got in here without setting off all the security alarms. And probably challenging my very right to be here, because that’s what he does.”
I walked over to a nearby table, picked up a heavy silver platter, and slammed it down hard on the tabletop. It made a hell of a racket. The sound carried loudly in the quiet, echoing on and on. But there was no response anywhere. I waited till the last echoes had died away, and then turned to Molly.
“Told you. Nobody home.”
I glanced at the silver platter, prior to replacing it on the table, and then I stopped and looked at it more closely.
“What’s wrong?” said Molly.
“It’s just an ordinary platter,” I said slowly, turning it back and forth. “No engravings, no decoration, nothing to suggest a significant history . . . It’s just . . . ordinary. And Droods don’t bother with ordinary things. This is blank, unfinished. As though the details haven’t been filled in. Like a stage prop.”
“Right . . .”
I put the platter down on the table. Molly looked it over.
“It’s still silver,” she said brightly. “If I had a big enough pocket, I’d take it with me.”
I had to smile. “You must be feeling better.”
Molly shrugged, and looked quickly about her. “It all seems real enough. Familiar, in all the right ways. But then I suppose it would, if it’s come from your memories.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t think I was responsible for this setting. I hadn’t called for it. But I supposed it could have come in answer to some subconscious need to replace the dark void left by the removal of Chandarru’s world.
“Maybe we’re here because you felt the need to be somewhere safe,” said Molly.
“Safe? Here? In Drood Hall?” I said. “You must be joking. You should know better than that, Molly.”
“Well, this isn’t going to be coming from my mind, is it?” Molly said sharply. “You know I can’t stand this place! So what do we do now? If you don’t like it here, I suppose we could take a look outside.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve already seen the fake grounds, and they aren’t up to much. I think we were brought here by someone else. For a reason. And almost certainly one we’re not going to like. There must be something here that matters, something significant to the Game.”
“All right,” Molly said resignedly. “Let’s take a look around, see what there is to see. Maybe I can find a few useful items small enough to fit into my pockets.”
I suddenly realised Molly was holding the gun she’d acquired in the Nightside. “Why have you still got that gun, Molly?”
“They took away my magics,” she said, not looking at me. “I have to have something.”
I felt as though I should say something, but I couldn’t think what. In the end, I just nodded. She had a point.
I strode off down the hallway, Molly trotting along beside me. Taking a close look at everything that seemed as though it might be valuable. I thought about fairy gold, which turns to leaves when returned to the real world, but I said nothing. The more I saw, the less the Hall felt right. I checked to see that we both had shadows, and that our feet were making the right kind of sounds on the waxed and polished wooden floor. Everything was as it should be . . . but I couldn’t escape the feeling that something wasn’t right.
When you know you’re in a trap, the Devil is always going to be in the details.
And while I knew this wasn’t the real Hall, there was no getting away from the fact that part of me wanted it to be real. To put all this madness behind me, and be home again.
I glanced at the line of portraits of old, dead Droods, the honoured departed, that stretched all the way down the long wall, from our oldest paintings to the most recent photographs. When seen out of the corner of my eye, they all seemed strangely blurred, only to snap into sharp focus whenever I looked at one directly. And sometimes it seemed to me that a face here and there would turn to follow me as I passed. Everything else seemed dependably real and solid, and properly detailed. But I couldn’t shake the suspicion that something important was missing.
On a sudden impulse, I moved quickly over to a side door and slammed it open, and there on the other side was the room I’d been heading for. But it shouldn’t have been there, behind that door. I ran down the hallway, with Molly hurrying to keep up, loudly demanding to know what was wrong. I kicked open the door at the end of the hallway, and there was the room again. Only this time, it was where it should have been. Molly looked back down the hall, and then back at the end room, and shuddered briefly.
“Okay, that is spooky. Someone is playing games with us, Eddie.”
“Of course they are!” I said. “That’s the point!”
“Well, pardon me for breathing! Don’t you snap at me, Eddie Drood, or I will slap you one and it will hurt!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I really don’t like being messed with, in what looks like my own home. It’s like someone is meddling with my memories. Sniping at me from behind the scenes.”
I looked out the window opposite, and for a moment I saw faces looking in. Strangely familiar faces, though they were come and gone so quickly I couldn’t place them or put a name to them. I hurried over to the window and looked out, but nobody was there. Molly quickly forced her way in beside me and studied the sweeping green lawns.
“What? What did you see, Eddie?”
“You didn’t see them?”
“See who? I wasn’t looking.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
I turned my back on the window and scowled at the room around us. The almost exact familiarity of the Hall was giving me the creeps. Like a monster hiding behind the mask of a friendly face.
“We didn’t choose this setting,” I said. “Someone else did. Which means this is a trap. I think we need to get the hell out of here.”
“Are you sure?” said Molly. “If we keep going, we might flush out our hidden enemy, force him to reveal himself.”
“We’re going,” I said. “I won’t play their Game.”
But of course it was never going to be that easy. Whichever way I went, whichever route I chose, it never led us outside. When I strode back down the hallway and out the main entrance, I found myself walking back into the hallway through the end door. I tried a dozen different ways out, running up and down side corridors and kicking open side doors, but somehow Molly and I always ended up back in the hallway. And when I finally lost my temper and tried to dismiss the whole setting by shouting I don’t believe in you! at it . . . Nothing happened. It’s hard to really concentrate when you’re feeling that angry.
Which was almost certainly the point.
It was actually a relief when someone opened fire on us from hiding. Out of the corner of one eye I caught a brief glimpse of movement, and armoured up immediately. Bullets slammed into my chest in a steady tattoo, and my armour absorbed them as fast as they arrived. Molly ducked behind me in a moment and used me as cover to return fire. Whoever our attackers were, they were really well hidden. I couldn’t even see the muzzle flashes, let alone movement. And with my mask in place I should have been able to see . . . something.
“We can’t stay here, Eddie!” said Molly, shouting to be heard over the staccato bursts of gunfire. “We’re too exposed!”
“Where are they shooting from?” I said.
“Can’t you see?”
“No!”
“Then how do you expect me to be able to?”
“They’re very good,” I said. “Professionals.”
“We need to move, Eddie! Now!”
“All right!” I peered quickly around. “Do you see that alcove to my left, with the really ugly statue of Bacchus in it? I’m going there. Right now. Try to keep up.”
I sprinted for the alcove, though still careful to keep my armoured body between Molly and the gunfire. Bullets followed me all the way, and every single one hit me somewhere, tracking back and forth and up and down as though searching for a weak spot. I didn’t feel any of it, of course, but it was starting to get on my nerves. I reached the alcove, grabbed Bacchus and threw him out, and then Molly and I squeezed into the narrow space, pressed close together. More bullets slammed into the walls on either side of us, chewing up the wood panelling . . . But they couldn’t reach us, and that would do, for the moment.
We couldn’t stay in the alcove. All the enemy had to do was change position, and he’d have a clear shot. I had hoped he would reveal himself, doing just that, but I still couldn’t see anything. I needed to take the fight to the enemy, but I couldn’t just run off and abandon Molly. She was almost defenceless without her magics. Without me. I had to protect her, even though I knew she’d deny needing it. There was a sudden pause, a worrying hush.
“Must be reloading,” said Molly. “Quick, where can we go next? We need more room to move, and better protection. And preferably someplace where we can launch our own attack.”
I peered down the hallway, and spotted an ironwood table. “There. That’s our best bet.”
Molly looked. “That’s a table!”
“Ironwood. Trust me.”
“You’d better be right about this, Eddie.”
I charged out of the alcove and sprinted down the hallway to the table, with Molly pounding along and crowding my heels all the way. The gunfire started up again, a deafening fusillade of bullets. It was like running into horizontal steel rain. I got to the table, overturned it, and then grabbed Molly and pulled her down so we could both shelter behind the heavy wood. Massed firepower slammed into the table, and the ironwood absorbed it all, quite complacently. It didn’t even budge under the repeated impacts. Molly grinned at me.
“Some table! I love this table! Where did you get it?”
“From the future,” I said. “A present from the Deathstalker.”
Molly shook her head. “You and your family.”
As though annoyed they couldn’t blast their way through the ironwood, the heavy stream of bullets turned its attention to the portraits of my ancestors on the walls. Old photographs and older paintings were chewed up and shredded, centuries of family history destroyed in moments. Scraps of old canvas floated on the air. I knew they weren’t real, weren’t the real thing, but I was still mad as hell. This was a cold act of contempt, against my family. Molly put a hand on my golden arm.
“You stay put, Eddie. They’re doing this deliberately, to get to you. To upset you enough that you’ll break cover, so they can get a clear shot at you.”
“Let them,” I said. “I have my armour.”
“And they must know that,” said Molly, doggedly patient. “Which suggests they have even nastier weapons, held in reserve. Something they think can get to you.”
And while I was considering that, a large, chunky grenade came rolling down the floor towards us, from out of nowhere. I saw it coming, grabbed Molly, and wrapped myself around her as completely as I could. The grenade rolled to a halt just on the other side of the table, and exploded with a roar so loud it actually deafened me inside my armour. The ironwood tabletop absorbed a lot of the blast, but the sheer impact was enough to send the table skidding down the hallway, pushing Molly and me ahead of it. Black smoke filled the hallway. I approved of that; it should hide us from the enemy, for a while. I grabbed Molly by the arm and hauled her up onto her feet. She clung to me for a moment, half dazed by the explosion, so I picked her up and ran for the far end of the hallway.
I pushed my armour’s speed to its limit, till I was just a golden blur hammering through the black smoke, my armoured feet punching holes in the wooden floor. The smoke was already clearing as I approached the end door. Bullets followed me down the last part of the hallway, but couldn’t catch up. Other statues in alcoves blew to pieces, shattered by gunfire; furniture was destroyed; and priceless antiques were smashed and shattered. Even though I was sure my surroundings weren’t real, I still felt hot flushes of real anger, and guilt at seeing such familiar objects lost because of me. I reached the far end of the hallway and skidded to a halt before the door. I put Molly down, though she still clung to one of my arms. I was worried she might have been hit and wounded, but she didn’t seem to be. Just shocked. Which wasn’t like Molly. What had the Powers That Be done to her? I tried the door; it was locked. I lowered one golden shoulder and slammed it open. It sprang back, accompanied by the sounds of rending wood and a broken lock. I plunged through into the next room, turning all the while to protect Molly with my armour from the continuing hail of bullets. How much ammunition did the bastard have? I grabbed the door, and forced it back into place. The heavy wood immediately jumped and shuddered, as gunfire slammed into it.
“Whoever our attackers are,” I said, just a bit breathlessly, “they are really well armed. Guns and grenades, and an apparently endless supply of ammo . . .”
“Could be worse,” said Molly. “They might have incendiaries.”
“Hush,” I said. “Don’t give them ideas.”
She was standing on her own now. I looked her over. The colour had come back into her face, and her eyes were tracking again. She glared at the door, then stepped smartly to one side, just as the first bullets punched right through it. Our enemy had found some heavier ammunition.
“Speaking of ammo,” said Molly, “I’m almost out. Hey, why don’t you morph your hands back into machine guns? Give the bastard something to think about.”
“I’ve been trying,” I said. “But I’m getting nothing. It’s hard to concentrate, with everything that’s happening. And it might be because I’m back at Drood Hall, where I was always taught that such adaptations were unacceptable inside the house.”
“But it’s not really the Hall!”
“I know! But I’m having a really hard time convincing my subconscious of that!”
“Terrific . . . ,” said Molly. “All right, let’s go down to the Armoury. Where your family keeps all the really powerful weapons and nasty devices. There’s bound to be something there we can use. Something to let us turn the tables and take the fight to the enemy.”
“Would those weapons really be there?” I said, frowning. “Assuming this fake Hall has a fake Armoury?”
“It’ll all be there, if you believe it will,” Molly said firmly. “Just because you didn’t summon this place it doesn’t mean you don’t have any influence over it. Okay, that sentence got a bit out of control, but you know what I mean! Whoever it is out there, you must know the Hall better than they do. Your certainty should override whatever they’re thinking.”
I didn’t want to go down to the Armoury, though I wasn’t prepared to admit that to Molly. I was afraid I might meet a fake Uncle Jack there. And I didn’t think I could cope with that, so soon after our recent encounter. But since I couldn’t say that to Molly, I just nodded brusquely.
“The only problem is, the entrance to the Armoury is right over on the other side of the Hall.”
“Not necessarily,” said Molly. “Not if you don’t want it to be. Concentrate on a short cut.”
I looked at the closed door. There were almost more jagged holes in it now than there was wood holding it together. I concentrated hard, screwing up my face till sweat ran down it, and a door appeared in the wall opposite. A sign on it said simply, To the Armoury. I relaxed, shaking just a bit from the exertions.
“I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. If I wasn’t so annoyed with absolutely everyone involved, I could get to like this Game.”
“Famous last words,” said Molly. “Move!”
I opened the door, and we went straight through into my family’s Armoury.
It looked exactly as it should. A huge stone cavern, full of work-benches and computer stations, assorted high tech, shooting ranges, and testing grounds. But all of it was unnaturally still, and silent. Utterly deserted. It felt eerie, with no Armourer and none of his lab assistants working away. Nothing dangerous or explosive or worryingly unwise going on. But before Molly and I even had a chance to look for new weapons, gunfire opened up on us again. The attack came from the far end of the Armoury, a concentrated firepower that tore through the computers and workstations to get to Molly and me. Experimental tech exploded, things caught on fire, and delicate equipment simply vanished in sudden bursts of shattered silicon and shrapnel. I grabbed Molly and hauled her behind a tall piece of standing machinery. It rocked and shook under the repeated impacts of the heavy-duty bullets, but did good work as a shield.
“Don’t grab me!” said Molly, pulling free.
“Sorry!” I said. “How the hell did our enemy get here first? How is that even possible?”
“It’s the Game,” said Molly. “Whoever creates the setting has control over the setting. They can be wherever they need to be.”
“Really?” I said.
“I don’t know!” said Molly, her voice rising sharply. “I’m just guessing! Do I look like I’ve got a copy of the rule book on me?”
The tall standing machinery rocked dangerously on its base, as our attacker concentrated his fire. Molly and I knelt down and put our shoulders against the machinery to steady it. The sheer rate of firepower slamming into our only protection was impressive, and just a bit worrying. We couldn’t stay where we were, but I couldn’t think where else to go. I could go—I hadn’t seen anything yet that looked like it could damage my armour—but I couldn’t leave Molly behind. Which was almost certainly what our attacker was counting on.
“Look,” said Molly, “you must have some control over the environment here, because you know this Armoury like the back of your hand. And he doesn’t. So work with that.”
“All right,” I said. “If I concentrate on certain things being where I want them to be . . . If I decide, for example, that this drawer right here contains a personal force shield . . .”
I glared at the drawer in front of me, which I was almost sure hadn’t been there a moment before, then hauled it open and looked inside. And sure enough, there was a personal force shield. Score one for lateral thinking under pressure. I took the chunky metal bracelet out of the drawer and handed it to Molly. She slipped it on, worked the controls, and a six-foot-by-three-foot shield of crackling energy appeared on her arm. A force screen that would serve as an actual shield. Another present the Deathstalker had left us. Molly grinned widely, then stepped out from behind the tall piece of tech. Heavy gunfire immediately targeted her, hundreds of rounds slamming into the force shield. Molly grinned delightedly, as not one bullet got through. She fired her gun around the edge of the shield a few times, just to make a point, and then ducked quickly behind the standing piece of machinery again. She dropped me a wink.
“I feel so much better now.”
“Thought you might,” I said.
A second burst of gunfire opened up, joining the first, hitting the standing machinery from a different direction. Confirmation, for the first time, that we were facing more than one attacker. The standing tech was taking a hell of a pounding. I didn’t know how much longer we could depend on it. And our enemies weren’t sparing the rest of the Armoury either. Whole sections were being demolished by the continuous firepower. Great jagged holes appeared in the stone walls of the cavern, and lengths of chopped short electrical cable hung down from the ceiling, jumping and sparking. I was just relieved that the bullets hadn’t found anything explosive or really dangerous yet. It was only a matter of time, though. Whoever our enemies were, they had really powerful weapons. And hiding from them wasn’t getting me anywhere. Now that Molly was safe behind her force shield, it was time for me to show our attackers what a man in Drood armour could really do.
I stepped out from behind the standing machinery, and it seemed like every gun the enemy had opened up on me. I stood there, letting my armour soak up the bullets and hoping I might at last catch a glimpse of who our attackers were, or where they were. I could see muzzle flashes now, from the far end of the Armoury, but they kept changing position. I still couldn’t see the enemy themselves. I concentrated on my armour, forcing a change in it through sheer willpower. My golden gloves became machine guns again. It probably helped that I was in the Armoury now, where such weapons were not only allowed but actively encouraged.
I opened fire, raking the far end of the Armoury with pulverising firepower, blasting apart absolutely everything in front of me. Everything that stood between me and my enemies. Workstations blew up, equipment was blasted apart, and the rest was just blown away in all directions. It still disturbed me to see such familiar sights destroyed, but I hardened my heart and kept firing.
And then an energy beam hit me square in the chest. It came out of nowhere, catching me completely by surprise, almost blasting me off my feet. I fell back several steps, but still kept my balance. The impact had been so great I actually felt it, inside my armour. I looked down, and was relieved to see that my armour had held—but only just. There was a great dent in my golden chest, right over my heart. It slowly straightened itself out. But while I was still gathering my wits about me, another energy beam hit me dead on—and another. My armour rang loudly, like a wounded gong, and great golden ripples spread out across my chest, as though a stone had been thrown into a pool.
I was sent staggering backwards, and very nearly did fall this time. I had to fight to stay on my feet. Whatever this new weapon was, it had to be incredibly powerful to almost breach my armour. So powerful as to be almost unheard of. There shouldn’t have been anything like it in the Armoury. The Droods had never made such a weapon, strong enough to destroy Ethel’s work . . . as far as I knew. A lot goes on down in the Armoury that no one else ever knows about. For the good of the family. I looked up and saw another energy beam heading my way. I seemed to have all the time in the world to watch it coming towards me, and no time at all to evade it. I wondered if this would be the one that killed me.
And then a tall black woman appeared out of nowhere, to stand between me and the energy beam, with her own personal force shield on her arm. The crackling energy field soaked up the energy beam as though it was nothing. And the woman who’d just saved my life turned to smile at me. She was taller than me, Amazonian, with dark coffee skin and close-cropped blonde hair. She wore a tight-fitting white jumpsuit under a long white fur coat, with thigh-high white leather boots. She looked impressive as all hell—but then, she always did.
“Come on, Eddie,” said Honey Lake. “Shape up! You want to live forever?”
We both jumped back behind the tall piece of standing machinery, as more energy beams came howling our way. The tech took a hell of a battering, but stood firm. Perhaps because I had faith in it. I patted it fondly, like a good dog. Molly gave Honey Lake a long, hard look and then gave me an even harder one.
“Who . . . is this?”
“Oh, Eddie,” said Honey, still smiling broadly. “You mean to say you never told her about me? Honey Lake, superspy for the CIA? About the special work we did together, and how close we became, on our shared mission to take down the Independent Agent? That short but action-filled time when we played the great spy game? You never told her about all the things we might have been to each other, might have meant to each other . . . if only you hadn’t got me killed . . .”
“That’s not what happened,” I said.
“Hold it,” said Molly, looking Honey over carefully. “You’re dead?”
“As a doornail, darling,” said Honey Lake. “I’m only here because Eddie called me up to save him. Subconsciously, I’m sure. He needed someone to save him from certain death, and he knew he could depend on me.”
“He has me for that,” said Molly coldly.
“If he’d really believed that, I wouldn’t be here,” said Honey.
The firepower from the energy weapons was becoming utterly savage now, blasting away at the sides of the standing machinery, whittling the tech away as it rocked dangerously back and forth. Honey Lake stepped out from behind the machine, using her personal force shield for cover as she reached for a gun on her hip. An energy beam punched right through the force shield, through her chest and out her back. She made a shocked, surprised sound and sat down suddenly, like a small child who’s just run out of steam. Her force shield flickered and went out. I grabbed her and pulled her back behind the shelter.
There wasn’t any blood. The great wound had been cauterised by the energy beam. A little steam rose from it, but that was all. And a smell of burned meat. Honey’s eyes were wide, and she tried to say something to me, but all that came out of her mouth was a dribble of blood. I held her in my arms. She felt very real. She shook and shuddered, as though she was cold, and then she smiled shakily up at me.
“Here I go again . . .”
Honey Lake lay dead in my arms. Again. I expected her to disappear, but she didn’t. I cradled her in my arms for a while, her head resting on my armoured chest like that of a sleeping child. And then I laid her gently down on the floor. I knew she wasn’t real, that her second death wasn’t real, but the anger I felt was real enough. Molly started to reach out to me, to say something, but she must have seen something in my body language through my armour, because she pulled back her hand and said nothing.
“She was an old friend,” I said. “A respected colleague. She might . . . have meant something to me if things had been different. But they weren’t. I don’t believe I summoned her here. Someone else did it, to mess with my mind. I will make them pay for that. This world we’re in responds to my thoughts, my beliefs . . . and I believe my armour is better than anything they’ve got.”
I stood up and stepped out from behind the standing machinery. The enemy’s energy guns targeted me in a moment and hit me with everything they had. Beam after beam slammed into me, but I stood firm. My armour remained untouched, and I was unaffected. I had faith in my armour. I could feel it changing, taking on a new shape and design as it responded to the rage boiling within me. It became . . . something monstrous, perhaps even demonic. And I didn’t give a damn. I heard Molly gasp behind me. I didn’t look back. Didn’t look down to see what my armour had become. I just strode forward, into the energy beams.
I walked in a straight line, smashing through everything in my path as though it was nothing more than cardboard. Workstations and heavy equipment crumpled and fell apart, and none of it slowed me down for a moment. The world can be a very fragile thing, to a Drood in his armour.
I raked my machine guns back and forth, strange matter bullets ploughing through everything in my way. I completely destroyed one side of the Armoury, and then the other, and my rage was a cold, cold thing. I kept firing, maintaining a steady pressure, forcing my enemies back and back. Denying them any cover they could use to make a stand. I drove them back the whole length of the Armoury, until finally I could see the two of them moving, retreating from one blown-away protection to another. But I still couldn’t see who they were. Finally I came to a halt.
“I know this Armoury better than you ever could,” I said, my voice carrying clearly in the hush left by neither of us firing. “And I say that there’s nowhere left for you to go. The Armoury ends here. So come out. Or I’ll just destroy everything that’s left, and you with it. Come out! Now!”
My parents stepped out from behind their place of shelter and stood together facing me. Charles and Emily Drood had been my attackers, trying to kill me and Molly, all along. They didn’t look guilty, or ashamed, or afraid. They kept their energy weapons pointed at the floor, but didn’t actually drop them until I ordered them to. I was so shocked, so full of contradictory emotions, that I could barely speak. Even after they’d dropped their weapons, they didn’t take their eyes off me for a moment. They didn’t look like beaten opponents, or cornered animals; they looked like professionals experiencing a temporary setback. Just waiting for me to make a mistake, or have a lapse in judgement, so they could jump me. I didn’t know what to say. I heard Molly come forward to stand beside me, picking her way carefully through the wreckage I’d made of the Armoury. I didn’t look at her.
“Oh, Eddie,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
“You tried to kill me,” I said to Charles and Emily.
“And me!” said Molly.
“Why?” I said. Not quite shouting it.
“It’s the Game,” said Charles.
“You have to play the Game, to win,” said Emily.
“And we needed to win,” said Charles. “With what we owe . . .”
“I knew we couldn’t trust them,” said Molly. “They abandoned you as a child. Hid from you for years. Traded away your soul, at Casino Infernale! Remember?”
“Yes,” I said. “But . . .”
“Look at them!” said Molly. “They’ve made up their minds! They’ll still kill you, first chance they get. There’s only one way this can end, Eddie. Only one way you and I can be safe. You have to kill them. Right here, right now. While you’ve got the upper hand.”
I was so shocked that I actually took my eyes off my parents for a moment. “I can’t kill them! I can’t kill my mother and my father!”
“You have to!” said Molly.
“No,” I said. “I won’t play the Game. And I won’t kill. I don’t do that any more.”
“You have to,” said Molly. “If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me to do this! And I don’t believe my parents would do this . . .”
That was when the insight hit me. I stepped back, so I could watch Molly as well as Charles and Emily. So I could cover all of them with my machine guns. I looked from Molly, to Charles and Emily, and then back again. So shocked and sickened now that I could barely get my breath.
“You’re not my parents,” I said. “And you; you’re not Molly. You’re all just . . . parts of the environment, brought to life. But why?”
Charles and Emily stood very still, looking at me with blank faces and empty eyes. Like actors who couldn’t be bothered to play their parts any longer. Molly looked puzzled, as though I’d just cracked a joke and she didn’t get it.
“That’s why you don’t have any magic,” I said to her. “Because an animated scrap of scenery couldn’t fake that. It’s why you’ve been acting so out of character, needing me to protect you. The real Molly never needed to be protected by anyone. And she would never have tried to pressure me into murdering my own parents.”
“Eddie, come on . . . ,” said Molly. “This is me! Really! Stop this. You’re scaring me.”
I glared at Charles and Emily. “I don’t believe in you. I don’t believe in any of this!”
And the wrecked Armoury just faded away, like a bad dream. Taking Emily and Charles, or the things that looked just like them, with it. All that remained was a featureless grey plain, stretching away forever. It didn’t even try to feel like a real location. It was just a place for Molly and me to be, as we stood facing each other. I did wonder, briefly, if this was what the Shifting Lands really looked like when there was no one around to give them shape and purpose and meaning. I looked at Molly, and she looked back at me.
“Stop it, Eddie!” she said. “It’s not funny. Stop it right now. I’m Molly. Your Molly. You know that!”
“Stop pretending,” I said.
“I’m not pretending! I’m Molly Metcalf!”
I remembered Walker saying how the people made from the Shifting Lands could sometimes actually believe they were what they’d been made to resemble. But this wasn’t Molly. This thing might look like her, but it didn’t act like her. Not really. So even though it broke my heart, I looked her right in the eye, and denied her.
“I don’t believe in you,” I said.
She screamed something at me, but she was already disappearing, fading away. Her scream vanished along with her, leaving me standing alone, in the middle of nowhere. And the rage in my heart, for what had been done to me, and for what they’d tried to make me do . . . was a very cold thing indeed.
* * *
I could feel my armour returning to its normal shape and configuration as I regained control of myself. I looked at my hands, and they were just gloves. I had sworn never to kill again, but it had been close, so close. Killing things that looked like people, that I had been sure weren’t people, had weakened my conviction. Which was, of course, the point. I armoured down. I didn’t want any distractions from what I was about to do. I lifted my head and addressed the grey and empty space around me.
“I know who you are, now. Who you have to be. Walker was right; the clue was in the title you gave yourselves. The Powers That Be . . . Only one people I know of would be that arrogant. I encountered a setting like this before, not so long ago. On a smaller scale, but . . . A soft world, out in the subtle realms, inhabited by elves. The only people who would feel at home in such a place. The only people arrogant enough to want a whole world that would do what it was told. So come forth, you Powers. Come forth and face me, King Oberon and Queen Titania.”
A new world appeared around me, sinking into place with a cold and cheerless authority. An elven setting, with ancient stone and coral buildings whose long sweeping lines seemed more organic than functional. I was standing in a rose garden, but I knew better than to try to touch the blood-coloured flowers. I knew from experience that the dark, bitter green leaves would have razor-sharp serrated edges. The thick, pulpy flowers pouted and pulsed rhythmically, as though they were breathing. Gathering up their venom, to spit at anyone foolish enough to come within range. Statues stood scattered about the garden, in alarmingly naturalistic poses, elves caught in mid-motion, as though transfixed by a Gorgon’s gaze.
The grass was a faded green, as though the life had been sucked out of it. The sky was almost unnaturally blue, flat and featureless, without a single cloud. The sun blazed fiercely, but shed little warmth. A great circle of massive standing stones surrounded the rose garden, sealing it off from the rest of the world. The stone henges looked oddly new, as though they’d only recently been hauled into position. But then, everyone knows the elves are far older than anything mankind has to offer.
King Oberon and Queen Titania stood before me, tall and regal and imposing. Oberon was a good ten feet tall, bulging with muscles, wrapped in a long blood-red cloak and leggings, the better to show off his milk-white skin. His hair was a colourless blonde, hanging loose around his long angular face, which was dominated by golden eyes with no pupils. He smiled a smile with no humour in it. His bone structure was subtly inhuman, and he had sharp pointed ears. He looked effortlessly noble, and regal, but worn thin, by age and hard times. He had taken his throne from Queen Mab through intrigue and violence, and it showed.
Titania wore a long black robe with outré silver patterns, and wore it with a casual, brooding elegance. She was lovelier than any mere mortal woman could ever hope to be, and she knew it, and didn’t give a damn. She was a few inches taller than Oberon, though her musculature was leaner and more aesthetic. But still inhumanly powerful. Her skin was so pale that blue veins showed clearly at her temples. She wore her blonde hair cropped severely short, and her dark gaze was cold and calculating.
They both wore simple crowns of beaten gold, and held themselves like the immortal royalty they were, and always would be. Because they had nothing else.
Walker stepped out from behind them. He leaned casually on his furled umbrella and tipped his bowler hat to me, mockingly. And then the glamour he was wearing dropped away, and there was Puck. A shorter, sturdy figure, almost human-sized, though the sheer looming scale of Oberon and Titania made him seem smaller. His body was as smooth and supple as a dancer’s, but the hump on his back pushed one shoulder forward and down, and the hand on that arm had withered into a claw. His hair was grey, and his skin was the colour of old yellowed bone. He had two raised nubs on his forehead that might have been horns. He wore a pelt of animal fur, which blended seamlessly into his own hairy lower body. His legs ended in cloven hooves.
Puck—fool and trickster, spy and thief and joyful killer. The only elf who was not perfect.
He smiled at me. “Lord, what fools these mortals be . . .”
“Get a new line,” I said.
I looked away from the elves. There were others present in the rose garden. The Somnambulist stood to one side, along with Charles and Emily, and Molly. I only had to look at them once, to know they were the real thing. And faced with the real Molly, I had to wonder how I could ever have been fooled by her colourless replacement. In my defence, the Game had done its best to keep me distracted . . . The four of them stood crammed together, inside a circle burned into the grass. It was clear from the way they held themselves that they couldn’t leave the circle.
I nodded and smiled to them, and then turned back to the elves. “I’ve had enough of your Game. It’s over! It’s time now to tell the truth.”
“The truth?” said Puck. “Well, there’s a time for everything, I suppose. Why not? With your majesties’ permission . . . Good, good. The truth is, dear little Drood, that you were on your own from the moment you left the Cathedral. Everyone you encountered was just a part of the environment you were dropped into. You never met any of the other competitors; they were all busy fighting their own separate Games. I regret to inform you that Tarot Jones, Chandarru, and the Sin Eater are all dead. They died at the hands of illusions generated by their own minds. At least they can take comfort from knowing they died entertainingly.”
“What about Molly? And my parents?” I said.
Puck shrugged. “They refused to play.”
“The Game is not over,” said Oberon, and there was still enough strength and majesty in his voice that everyone immediately looked to him. “The rules are clear. The Drood has to kill everyone else in order to win.”
“We control the only way out of the Shifting Lands,” said Titania, in her cold and effortlessly commanding voice. “And we alone decide whose obligations will be excused, and wiped clean. If you want our favour, Drood, you must earn it.”
“Screw your rules,” I said. “And stuff your favour.”
I turned my back on them again and went over to the circle burned into the grass. Molly put up a warning hand.
“Don’t get too close, Eddie! And don’t touch the circle; the magic running through it is strong enough to rip the soul right out of you and enslave it to the elves forever.”
“You know what?” I said. “Like everything else in this Game, I don’t believe it.”
I armoured up my right hand, reached down, grabbed hold of the circle, and tore it easily off the grass. It immediately broke under my rough handling, twisting and writhing in my grasp like a petulant snake. It tried to curl around my arm, but I crushed it in my armoured grasp. It fell apart into a hundred pieces, falling to the faded grass like hundreds of dead petals. I armoured down and smiled at the others.
“Time to go home,” I said.
“Loving the confidence,” said Molly. “But how?”
“I think,” I said, “that if we all put our minds together, we could break any hold the elves have over us. The Shifting Lands have no loyalty to anyone.” I turned back to Oberon and Titania. “What do you think?”
“You Droods,” said Oberon. “Always more trouble than you’re worth. Very well. We agree.”
“The Game is at an end,” said Titania.
“It’s been fun, but that’s all, folks,” said Puck.
Molly whooped, punched the air, and hugged me tightly. She felt very real in my arms. Charles and Emily took it in turns to clap me approvingly on the shoulder. The Somnambulist snored lightly. I didn’t take my eyes off the elves. This wasn’t over yet.
“I thought you were bound to Shadows Fall these days,” I said. “By your own need and wishes?”
“We are,” said Oberon. “But Shadows Fall is large, and touches many places.”
“Are the Shifting Lands then a part of Shadows Fall?” I said.
“No,” said Titania. “We told you. This is a place we made, long ago, for our own amusement. Where we could play, unobserved and uninterrupted.”
“Elves just want to have fun,” said Puck.
“How did you get Carrys Galloway to be your Somnambulist?” said Molly, moving in beside me to show that she wasn’t going to be left out of anything.
“Their Majesties knew all about her pact with Mab,” said Puck. “Elven magic made it possible, so of course they knew immediately the pact was broken. And they took advantage of her. It’s what they do.”
“They?” I said.
Puck shrugged. “Family. You know how it is . . .”
“Well,” I said, “now she’s free of you, and your Game. She’s coming home with us.”
“You presume . . . ,” said Titania.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
Oberon smiled briefly. “And we admire that. But don’t push your luck, Drood.”
“How could you pay off debts owed to Heaven and to Hell, and other Principalities?” I said.
“Because elves are old,” said Oberon. “We have Pacts and Agreements that go back further than anyone else.”
“It is a small thing,” said Titania, “to barter what we owe, and are owed.”
“All this?” I said. “For a Game?”
“We’re easily bored,” said Puck.
“How long have you being running this Game?” said Molly, scowling. “Playing with people’s lives?”
“What is Time to an immortal?” said Titania.
“Enough fun and games,” I said. “The Big Game ends here, and now.”
“This Game,” said Oberon.
“All Games,” I said.
“You lack the power or authority to enforce such a thing, little Drood,” said Titania. “We are ready to indulge you over this Game, because you have brought something new into it, and we do so love to be entertained. But you do not dictate to us, Drood.”
“You think I’m afraid of you?” I said. “I faced down Mab once, in her own Court!”
“Yes,” said Puck, “but she was crazy. You can’t hope to stand against us.”
“Perhaps not,” I said. “But I think I know someone who can.”
I reached out through my torc, calling out to my family . . . but not to my handler, Kate.
Ethel! I said. Come to me! I need you!
And she came, drawn to my torc. She manifested in the rose garden in her usual soft red glow, suffusing the whole world with a new, invigorating sense of life and good humour. Oberon and Titania cried out together, shocked and outraged.
“You dare?” said Oberon.
“How can you be here, in this place?” said Titania.
My Drood’s torc is made of strange matter, Ethel said calmly. And that is my physical presence, in this reality. Where it is, I am! Nice pocket dimension; love what you’ve done with the place . . .
“I will see you destroyed for this intrusion!” said Oberon.
Really don’t think so, said Ethel. Eddie, I need your armour.
I armoured up, and she concentrated her presence around me, her red glow sinking into my armour until it shone like a ruby. It glowed so brightly that everyone had to turn their heads away, including the elves. Oberon and Titania were the first to turn back, forcing themselves to face me. Puck hid behind them. Or perhaps he was just getting out of the line of fire. The King and Queen of the elves spoke a single Word together, and all the huge standing stones surrounding the rose garden went shooting round and round in a great circle, speeding faster and faster.
“This is our world,” said Oberon and Titania, speaking together. “Our Game . . . The rules are what we say they are. Do your worst, Outsider. You cannot fight a whole world.”
Oh, stop showing off, said Ethel.
I raised my ruby-red arms, and her power surged through me. I glared at the stones, and they slammed to a sudden halt. And then they disappeared. And then the old buildings, and the elven statues, and the rosebushes . . . and King Oberon and Queen Titania and Puck began to fade away too.
“Stop!” said Oberon. “We surrender!”
“We defer to you, and your power,” said Titania. “Restore us and we agree that the Games are at an end.”
“Even immortals must bend the knee to a living god,” said Puck.
They stopped fading and became clear and solid again. I armoured down, the ruby glow already fading from my armour. Ethel’s rose-red light disappeared too, as she returned to Drood Hall. She wasn’t one to wait around and crow over her victory; she’d made her point. Oberon looked at me thoughtfully.
“You win the Game, Drood. In the only way that matters. Your obligations, and those of your companions, will be taken care of. Because the elves, at least, understand honour.”
“Though if you ever do find out who and what your Ethel really is,” said Titania, “and why she’s staying with your family . . . you may come to feel differently about her.”
“What a terrible thing it is,” said Puck, “for mortals to fall into the hands of a living god.”
“We return to Shadows Fall,” said Oberon. “Do not trouble us again.”
“My lords and ladies, our revels now are ended,” said Puck. He dropped me a quick wink. “Be seeing you . . .”
And just like that, they were gone. And the rest of us were standing in the open grounds of Drood Hall.
* * *
They were definitely the real thing this time. Full of life and energy and happy, familiar noise. I hugged Molly to me, picking her up off her feet and swinging her around. She laughed and kicked her heels merrily. Charles and Emily looked about them, smiling. The Somnambulist was still snoring quietly. I set Molly down again and she clung to me happily.
“What happens to the Shifting Lands now?” she said. “Who’s to stop the elves, or anyone else, from making use of them again?”
“The Shifting Lands are gone,” said Ethel. “I’ve taken care of them.”
“How?” said Molly.
“I ate them,” said Ethel.
“Never ask her questions,” I said to Molly. “Even when you do understand the answers, they’ll only upset you. Right, Ethel? Ethel?”
But she was gone, not even the faintest trace of her red glow remaining. Molly frowned.
“That’s it?” she said. “No one’s going to punish Oberon and Titania and Puck for everything they did? For all the people who died in their Game?”
“We put a stop to the Game and sent them home humiliated,” I said. “For elves, that’s a real punishment. Sometimes you have to settle for what you can get.”
Emily and Charles were looking at Drood Hall. Standing close together, arm-in-arm. It was hard to work out the expressions on their faces.
“Home again . . . ,” said Emily. “It’s been a while.”
“Wonder what they’ll have to say to us after all this time,” said Charles.
I couldn’t help but grin. “I can’t wait to find out.”
Carrys Galloway’s head came up with a snap, and her eyes shot open. “Oh! Hello! I’ve just had the strangest dream . . .”
“Me too,” I said.