“We’re not going anywhere,” Scarlett cried.
“Wait…!”
Lohan was pointing. Scarlett looked into the cave.
There were three figures in the darkness, moving out of the shadows. They were coming towards her.
FIFTY-FIVE
In their own way, they were beautiful.
They might have been designed only to bring death and devastation but the Trident missiles, fired from the submarine twelve minutes before, had an undoubted magnificence as they grouped together and began their descent.
Not all the boats carrying the survivors of the World Army were far enough away from Oblivion and many of them would be caught up in the blast and the inevitable tsunami that would follow. But innocent people must die in every war and they would be serving a greater good. Surely even the power of the Old Ones could not stand up to the blast wave generated by twelve nuclear warheads. The fortress would be vaporized. In fact the entire ice shelf for miles around would disappear.
And there they were, silver needles in the sky. They were like a flock of birds, each one with a separate intelligence and yet coming together in a single, unified whole. The target was ahead of them. The fortress was still tiny but with every second it seemed to grow as the missiles closed in.
Nobody saw them. They were still covered by the clouds, and anyway, they were moving too fast. By the time anyone looked up, it would be too late.
Pedro was the first one to emerge from the cave, still dressed in the thin clothes he had been wearing in Rome, and he was hit at once by the full force of the Antarctic cold. Maybe the shock of it did him good because it was as if he had finally left the poison behind him, and as he continued forward his steps became stronger and more confident until he was almost running, ready for whatever else he had to face.
Scarlett saw him and was shocked by the change in his appearance. She had only seen him once, briefly in Hong Kong, and she was unsure if that had been a few weeks or ten years ago. He was so much thinner, hollow-eyed and pale. But then he recognized her and smiled, and suddenly she knew that he had survived and he was here and that everything was going to be all right.
“Pedro!” she exclaimed.
“Scarlett!” Pedro looked around him, unable to take everything in. Something had happened to the sky. There were flames stretching as far as he could see, an ocean of them reflecting in the real ocean below. He was in some kind of fortress, in the snow. A great mountain rose up behind him. To one side there was a figure hanging from a scaffold. He had thought that Naples was a terrible place but this was much, much worse.
And then he saw the broken body of Scott, with Lohan standing helplessly beside him. At once, everything that had happened in the past weeks was forgotten. It didn’t matter what Scott had done. He was one of the Five and he was hurt. Pedro went over to him, stretched out his hands and prepared to do what he had always done, to bring the power of healing.
Meanwhile, Scarlett was standing in front of the cave, the broken chain resting on either side of her. Two more people had emerged. One of them was a girl she had never seen before, round-faced and pretty with freckles over her nose, and fair hair. She was cradling one hand in the other and she looked shocked. The other was a boy. Even if he hadn’t been identical to Scott, she would have known him instantly. It was Jamie.
Finally, there were four of them here together. But where was Matt? And what had happened to Richard Cole?
Jamie had escaped unhurt from St Meredith’s. He didn’t know if he had been right to bring Holly with him, but everything had happened so quickly and he had decided it was the only way to save her. He couldn’t have left her behind. Like Pedro before him, he felt the extreme cold almost like a hammer blow. He took in the fortress walls, the towers, the mountain and the sky. So the whole world was on fire! He saw Lohan looking up at him, read the pain in his eyes and finally realized that the figure lying stretched out on the snow in front of him was his brother, Scott, and he had arrived too late.
Forgetting everything else, Jamie ran over to him, dropping onto his knees. Pedro was already with him but one glance told him that there was nothing that even a healer could do.
“Scott!” Jamie swept his brother into his arms. “I’m here, Scott!” he shouted, and for the first time since this whole thing had begun, he felt a sense of overwhelming grief that came with the knowledge that whatever had happened, it was his fault, that he should never have left Scott on his own. “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I shouldn’t have left you behind. I should have stayed with you. We were always together, you and me. You always looked after me. Please tell me you’re not angry with me, Scott. I was only doing what I thought was best …”
Scott’s eyes flickered open. He smiled.
“Jamie…” he said.
“What happened here, Scott? What have they done to you?”
“It’s been bad. But it’s OK now. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Scott…”
“Tell Matt…”
Scott’s eyes closed. Jamie waited for him to say more but no more words came. He glanced at Pedro, who was staring at him with shock in his eyes. Both of them knew.
Scott had died.
Scarlett saw what had happened and all the strength drained out of her. Scott had sacrificed himself. But his death meant that the Five could never come together. The Old Ones had won.
The ground began to shake.
All of them – Jamie, Pedro, Scarlett, Lohan and Holly – felt the sudden, intense lurching, the sense that the world was tearing itself apart beneath their feet. The clouds seemed to be burning more brightly than ever and the walls were vibrating, huge cracks appearing, rock and ice beginning to tumble down. There was a rumble of what sounded like thunder, only deeper and a thousand times louder. Lohan looked up and felt pure terror as the entire mountain began to break open. The noise was deafening, pounding at his ears and eyes. Huge boulders rolled down, smashing into the ground below. A wind had sprung up, sending snow and dust whipping into his face, blinding him.
At the same time, the forces of the Old Ones began to appear, swarming out of the far tower. They poured out of the doors, over the battlements, down the stairs, across the courtyard … shape-changers, fire-riders, fly-soldiers, slaves. They were coming from every direction, gaining speed, while outside the fortress, the giant monkey bounded across the ice, the condor and the humming bird swooping down behind. Still on his knees, cradling Scott, with the tears freezing on his cheeks, Jamie knew that the end had arrived – but he no longer cared. His brother had died in his arms. He had arrived too late. Everything he had endured had been for nothing.
Chaos, the King of the Old Ones, finally appeared, bursting into the sky, black rubble cascading around him. To Scarlett and the others, it was as if the mountain had turned into a volcano with molten lava and smoke pouring out. At first, Chaos was nothing more than an enormous fog, dark and shapeless. There was the glimpse of an eye, yellow and lizard-like. Something like a claw seemed to take hold of the edge of the crater, pushing him free, as if he were being born. He might have had horns, the skin of a snake. It was impossible to say. Chaos was too huge, too unfathomable. He could take any shape he wanted and even now he was changing…
In front of their eyes, all the different pieces were drawn together and formed the perfect figure of a man, human-sized, walking down the side of the mountain towards them. Except he wasn’t a man. He was a black cut-out of a man, a silhouette. Scarlett was reminded of the paper figures she had once made as a child. But it was as if Chaos had been cut out of the very fabric of the world. He was a black hole. He was nothing. The mountain and the sky rippled around him but he was pure energy, pure evil, faceless and lifeless, sucking everything into him.
“The Five…” he whispered and his voice seemed to belong to the beginning of time, before light had first come to the world. The flames twisted and writhed above him. His army stood back, waiting for his command.
But he
was going to finish this himself. He continued to walk down.
Scarlett closed her eyes and prepared to die.
Richard Cole had also expected to die.
He knew that he had cheated the chairman and the Old Ones, taking their greatest prize from them. Matt was slumped in front of him, still on his feet – the frame that he was tied to kept him upright – but Richard could see that he was at peace. His head had dropped forward, his eyes were closed and he wasn’t breathing. Richard felt as if he was being torn in half. Right then, he was consumed by more grief than he had ever known in his life. But at the same time he was glad that, at least for Matt, it was over.
He had fully expected the chairman to kill him. The entire arena had gone silent, the spectators – row after row of them – staring at him in shocked silence like children who had just had a toy snatched away. The guards who had brought him here and the two torturers whose work he had seen were holding back, waiting to be told what to do. And the chairman himself was furious and frightened at the same time. This was his fault. He had brought the journalist here and somehow, inexplicably, he had failed to see that he was carrying some sort of antique knife. He had allowed him to kill the boy – the one thing that couldn’t happen. What would the Old Ones do now. What would they do to him?
All the blood had drained out of his face. There was a pulse beating at the front of his bald head and a hollow had formed in his throat as he struggled for breath. His arm shot out and he pointed a trembling finger in Richard’s direction.
“Kill him!” he screamed, in a high-pitched voice. “Kill him now!”
Nobody moved. Who was the order aimed at? Richard thought of fighting back, of trying to escape, but he was too exhausted. He didn’t care any more. After what he had been forced to do, it didn’t matter to him if he lived or died. Matt still hung in front him, his head shaved, his almost naked body covered with injuries that would cause him no more pain. Richard just wanted to stay here with him. He wasn’t going to run any more.
He was aware of something moving under his feet and fought for balance. He thought he was imagining it, until one of the guards tumbled against the other. It wasn’t the platform. The entire cavern had begun to tremble. The audience was feeling it too. Some of them stood up. Panic began to spread even as the first rocks and stones came loose. The vibrations were getting worse, more severe. The blue light was flickering on and off so that there were moments when everyone was plunged into darkness. Richard’s vision was blurred. He had the extraordinary sensation of being sucked into a hole that didn’t exist.
“Kill him!” the chairman shouted again but the guards weren’t listening, afraid that the ceiling was about to collapse in on them. The audience was panicking, staggering in every direction, making for the exits. To Richard, they were invisible one moment and then seemed frozen in panic and desperation when the light returned. Larger boulders had begun to fall. At the very back of the auditorium, one of the ledges suddenly gave way, sending twenty people plunging to their deaths in a cascade of rubble. The side wall had cracked and, impossibly, Richard saw fire on the other side. But it wasn’t the building that was ablaze. It was the very sky.
The chairman didn’t seem to have noticed what was happening. All he cared about was Richard. He glanced at the trolley with its array of knives and scalpels and snatched one up, then lumbered forward, meaning to do the job himself. Richard reacted instinctively. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be at the hands of this madman. As the chairman swung the knife towards him, he reached up and caught hold of the old man’s wrist, wrenching it aside. He heard the bone break. The chairman howled and reeled back, dropping the knife.
The two of them stood face-to-face. The lines of spectators had become a sprawling, fighting mass. Richard heard a cracking sound and looked up just as one of the stalactites separated from the ceiling. He saw it shoot down. The chairman looked up and at that same moment the stalactite hit him, the sharpened point piercing his throat just under his chin and continuing all the way through his body, finally pinning him to the boxing ring. The chairman’s hands flailed. His legs kicked out. Then he went still.
Nobody cared about Richard any more. The walls were falling in, the floor heaving. Everywhere, people were dying, crushed by falling rocks, or trampled, slashed and battered by other people trying to get past them. He ignored them. Somehow he managed to force all the noise out of his head and found himself alone, in a quiet place. He stepped forward and took hold of Matt, trying not to look at the golden tumi that still protruded from his chest. Very gently, he untangled the barbed wire from around his neck. Then he released him from the frame. Matt’s body tumbled forward into his arms. Richard laid him on the ground and, reaching out with one hand, closed his eyes one final time.
Outside, he heard two words whispered. They seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
“The Five…”
And suddenly he got the sense, without knowing how or why, that this was what Matt had wanted and indeed that he had expected it and that somehow, despite everything, they had won after all.
Pedro could only watch as the black emptiness that was Chaos walked towards them, one step at a time, the whole world shifting around him. Jamie was kneeling on the snow, holding his brother, with Lohan standing over them. Scarlett was beside the cave. And all around them the human and non-human forces of the Old Ones were poised, waiting for the order that would finally end it all.
It happened with no warning.
The two doors at the front of the fortress disintegrated. It wasn’t quite an explosion. It was as if they had somehow chosen to tear themselves apart, turning in an instant from solid planks of wood into a vaporous cloud of splinters. Scarlett opened her eyes and saw a single, open-top vehicle speeding towards them across the ice shelf, one figure driving, another standing beside him.
Matt and Scott.
Except it couldn’t be Scott because Scott was here. And how had Matt escaped from the fortress? But even as the jeep burst into the courtyard and skidded to a halt, she saw that it was them. And it seemed to her that the army of the Old Ones hesitated and drew back, and that there was suddenly a sense of uncertainty that began with Chaos and rapidly spread throughout his forces.
Jamie knew at once. He had met Flint when he had gone back in time to replace Flint’s twin brother, Sapling, who had been killed at the battle of Scathack Hill. Sapling was the earlier version of himself, because – as he had learnt – he had lived twice, ten thousand years apart. Now he realized that, at the very moment Scott had died, Flint had travelled forward in time, repaying the debt. And Matt – the old Matt – had come with him.
So the Matt he knew in the modern world was dead. Jamie understood that but he wasn’t sad. Perhaps it was because he was beyond sadness, that there was nothing more he could feel. At the same time, he was certain that all this was meant to happen. Impossibly, after being separated and flung all over the world, after enduring so much, the Five had come together again, here, at Oblivion. And it didn’t matter that they were outnumbered by a factor of a thousand to one. There was nothing anyone could do.
Matt was driving. Both the boys were dressed in the grey tunics with the blue star that was the insignia of the first rebel army that had defeated the Old Ones. As Flint leapt down, Jamie saw that he had two swords – one in his belt, the other in his hand.
He saw Jamie and hailed him. “Jamie … this is yours!” he shouted and, turning the first sword around, he threw it towards him, the thin blade glittering as it travelled the short distance through the air. Jamie caught it by the hilt and recognized the five-pointed star in the middle of the crosspiece, made out of precious stones. Once again he felt the weight and fine balance of the blade, tapering to a point.
It was Frost, the sword he had fought with at that first battle. It had been returned to him.
There was a series of gunshots.
Everyone had forgotten Holly. But she had been standing at the entr
ance to the cave, trying to make sense of the insanity around her. She had seen Chaos as he reached the foot of the mountain and swept towards her, and without knowing who he was, without understanding anything really, she had finally found the strength to use her gun and had emptied it into him.
The bullets passed straight through him. He ignored her. But it was as if the noise of the detonations were a signal for everything to happen at once.
Matt and Flint ran forward from the jeep. As they went, one of the fire-riders galloped forward, trying to intercept them. Matt swung his sword and the blade sliced through the fluttering black robes, cutting the creature in half. A great cry went up from the battlements as a tangled mass of shape-changers, fly-soldiers and hideous deformities that had once been people surged towards them. Scarlett turned and faced them and at once a blast of wind rushed into them with such force that they were thrown off their feet, sent spinning away. She had never felt like this before and knew that it was because they were all there together. Her powers had multiplied by five.
Jamie felt the same. It was wonderful having Frost in his hand again, the return of an old friend, but he almost didn’t need it. Nobody could come near him. He only had to think a command and it happened. Two of the knights who were utterly covered in black spikes, fell back, their horses panicking, and collided with a fire rider. All three of them disappeared in flames. A shape-changer with two lizard heads turned its sword on itself. Jamie couldn’t bring himself to look at the body of his brother. As long as he was close to Flint, it was almost as if Scott had come back to him again.
Pedro snatched up the swords dropped by the two knights that Jamie had just killed. He passed one of them to Scarlett and kept the other himself. He no longer felt the cold. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Everything he had been through, the suffering of his whole life, was worth it for this moment.