“I had worked that out for myself, actually,” said Gold. “I’ve got eyes in my head. How long before the Games start?”
“Any moment now. We’re just waiting for Oberon and Titania to signal their readiness. That’s their private box, up there on the left.”
Gold looked across, and saw the two rulers sitting at their ease in a private stadium three times the size of the one he was sitting in. It had to be that large, to hold the two ivory thrones. Garlands of unfamiliar flowers decorated the stadium, with gold and silver scrollwork surrounding jewels of an impossible size and hue. Oberon raised his hand, and the murmur of sound from the packed ranks of Faerie was suddenly stilled. Oberon lowered his hand, and a tall elf appeared out of nowhere in the royal stadium. He was naked, and blood dripped down his back from a recent whipping. He knelt before Titania, who handed him a silver chalice. He held it steady at his collarbone, and Titania produced a knife from her sleeve and cut his throat. Golden blood pulsed thickly from the wound, spilling down into the chalice. The elf’s hands held it perfectly steady. Titania waited till the chalice was almost full, and then dipped a finger into the blood and smeared it in a line across her throat. Oberon leaned forward, and Titania traced a line across his throat too. The naked elf swayed slightly on his knees, but still held the chalice steady. Oberon gestured sharply, and the air swallowed up the kneeling elf. Gold turned to Morrison.
“All right. What the hell was that all about? Is the elf going to die?”
“Hardly; they’ve been using the same elf to open the Games for centuries. He’s being punished, but I’m not sure if anyone remembers why. That’s the Faerie for you; tradition is what matters.”
Oberon made a sweeping gesture with his hand. The air heaved and crackled, and the burning sky seemed to blaze more brightly. Oberon and Titania sat back in their thrones, and the Games began.
The sharks came first. Appearing between one moment and the next, a pack of sharks were suddenly swimming idly above the bare sands, whirling and gliding eerily in mid-air, as though buoyed up by some unseen ocean. They were huge beasts, some thirty feet long, their slack mouths studded with jagged teeth. They were a dull grey, with darker fins, curling around each other like drifting shadows. They swam back and forth in the middle of the Arena, as though testing the limits of a cage only they could see. Gold hoped the bars were strong. He’d encountered a few sharks in his time, but these were bigger and meaner-looking than anything he’d ever come up against. They should have seemed smaller at such a distance, but some magic inherent in the Arena made it seem as though they were only a few yards away. As though he could reach out a hand and touch them. Just the thought was enough to make Gold wince, and he kept his arms determinedly folded against his chest. One of the sharks rolled over slowly, so that it seemed to be staring at him with one black, emotionless eye. A chill ran through Gold that was at least partly instinct. There were no thoughts or feelings in the cold unblinking glare, only an endless, ravening hunger.
The crowd broke out into what seemed like spontaneous cheers, and Gold looked round in time to see the elves enter the Arena. There were seven of them, one for each shark. They were tall and spindly creatures, with a long elongated skull like a horse. They had no skin on any part of their body, so that the muscles and traceries of veins glistened wetly in the scarlet light. They marched out into the Arena as though to a silent band, and halted together some distance from the circling sharks. They bowed to the crowd, and then burst out into different shapes, stretching and swelling and contracting with insane speed and elasticity. They shrank to the size of children and ballooned up to twenty feet high, trading size and shape with dizzying ease. The crowd roared their approval. The sharks watched, unimpressed, and waited for their prey to come to them.
“What the hell are they?” said Gold.
“Spriggans,” said Morrison, unable to tear his gaze away. “Guards, bully-boys, enforcers. They get all the dirty work, because they love it. Perfect match for the sharks. Now shut up and watch. And brace yourself. This is going to be bloody.”
The Spriggans started forward as one, as though in response to an unheard bell, and the crowd went quiet, eyes wide in anticipation. The sharks turned to face the elves, and the two sides fell upon each other. The sharks snapped viciously at trailing limbs, but somehow the arms and legs were always that little bit out of reach. The sharks whirled and pounced with breathtaking speed, but the Spriggans were never there, growing or shrinking at just the right moment. They danced among the sharks with contemptuous ease, slashing at the blunt heads and pale bellies with their clawed hands. They had no weapons, but their claws dug deep, and blood spilled out on to the sand that waited for it. The sharks became frantic, maddened at the scent of blood and the elusiveness of the prey. Four sharks suddenly turned on the same Spriggan, boxing him in and then tearing at him with savage precision. More blood spilled out on to the sand, golden blood, and the injured elf grew and shrank in rapid spurts, as though trying to find some shape or size where the wounds wouldn’t exist. The other Spriggans tore viciously at the sharks, forcing them away from the wounded elf. They backed off reluctantly, blinded by their own pain and blood. The elf’s wounds were already closing, and within seconds he was back with the others, dancing round the sharks and taunting them.
The fight, or dance, couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes, but to Gold it seemed to go on for ever. It hadn’t taken him long to realize the sharks stood no more chance than the bulls in a Spanish bullfight. The whole thing was a ritual, no doubt shaped by tradition, and the question was not if or when the sharks would die, but how. The elves killed them slowly, by the numbers, one after another, and though the crowd applauded the Spriggans’ courage, Gold saw only the cruelty. Even sharks deserved better than this. He would have liked to look away, but he knew the Faerie would see that as weakness, or an insult, so he sat and watched and felt a slow anger build within him.
The last dying shark drifted to the sand, belly up, leaking blood from a dozen gut-deep wounds. The Spriggans tore at the bodies of the sharks, ripping off ragged chunks of flesh and eating them, and the watching crowd laughed and applauded. Morrison joined in politely, and after a moment Gold did too. The Spriggans and the sharks vanished, and the next Game began.
Seven Faerie in delicate golden armour took on three times as many walking corpses. It took Gold a while to realize this was a comedy turn. The liches were armed with swords and axes, and could take any amount of punishment, but you only had to behead them to stop them. Without a head, the bodies would wander aimlessly until their legs were sliced through, and then the bodies would just lie twitching on the sands, reaching out vaguely with their weapons. The skill lay in seeing how much an elf could cut away from a dead body without first beheading it, and without getting caught himself. The liches couldn’t really hurt the undying Faerie, but to take a wound from a lich was clearly a disgrace. The battle, if you could call it that, seemed to drag on endlessly. Gold didn’t appreciate the humour or the skill, but knew better than to look away. Eventually it was over, and the Faerie marched out of the Arena to riotous applause.
After that came skeletons bound together with copper wire, alive and screaming, and creatures of dancing flame. The Faerie dismantled the first, and pissed on the second. The werewolves did best. They were vulnerable only to silver, and fought with unmatchable ferocity, but in the end even they died. The Faerie ate their flesh too. Gold found the whole thing sickening, and yet still some deep primal part of him responded to the fighting and the blood, and he found himself wondering what it would be like to go head to head with a shark or a lich or a werewolf, just for the hell of it. He’d fought monsters in his time, but only through necessity, never for sport. And he’d killed only rarely, to save others; never for the joy of it. And anyway, he wasn’t unkillable, like the Faerie. The Games might look impressive, but in the end none of the things the Faerie had faced had been a real threat. He said as much to Morrison, quietly, a
nd the bard nodded briefly.
“This is just a warm up, Lester. The real challenges are yet to come. But you’re right, it is rigged. The Faerie don’t like to lose.”
A vast roar went up from the crowd, a howling baying from a thousand throats. Gold looked round sharply, and then stared open-mouthed at what had appeared in the middle of the Arena. He’d never seen such a thing before in the flesh, but he knew what it was. He’d seen its image all his life, in books and in films; the huge, towering figure with a wedge-shaped head that had stalked across an ancient landscape long before the birth of man, a merciless killer, unopposed and unstoppable. The two front limbs looked ludicrously small, set against the huge chest, but the strength of this beast lay in its terrible jaws, the great mouth filled with teeth. The massive legs stomped heavily on the bloody sands as the creature whirled and spun in the centre of the Arena, its long tail whipping back and forth behind it. It didn’t seem possible that anything so huge could move so quickly. Gold stared at it in awe, sharp chills of instinctive, atavistic fear crawling in his gut. It was the devil out of ancient times. The great lizard, the tyrant king. Tyrannosaurus Rex.
It tilted back its great head and roared defiance at the baying crowd. Its teeth were like knives, the inside of its mouth bright pink, like cheap candy. Its gleaming scales were a swirling mixture of purples and greens, and dried blood caked its shrunken forelimbs. It stomped back and forth in the middle of the Arena, snapping its great jaws like a steel trap and screaming out its challenge, somehow held back from the crowds by unseen magics. It shook its wedge head angrily, tiny eyes glaring about for some weakness in the trap it had fallen into. And then it sensed something, and the great head turned slowly to stare at Oberon and Titania in their stadium. The beast stepped towards them, the huge mouth closed in a mirthless grin, and nothing happened to stop it. It picked up speed, and Oberon and Titania were on their feet in a moment as they realized the magic wards weren’t protecting them any more. The elves in the seats below the royal stadium fought each other to get out of its way. Titania drew a sword. Oberon made a magical gesture, but nothing happened. He drew his sword, and the two rulers stood side by side and waited for the Tyrannosaurus to come to them. It halted before the royal stadium and turned its head this way and that, studying them first with one eye and then the other, as though deciding how best to devour them.
“How much danger are they actually in?” said Gold. “I mean, they’re unkillable, right?”
“Technically speaking, yes,” said Morrison. “But being torn apart, eaten and digested by something that big might be too much to come back from, even for an elf.”
“Why don’t they teleport it back where it came from?”
“I imagine they already tried that, and it didn’t work. Something’s happening here…”
“All right, why don’t they teleport out?”
“They can’t. It would be a sign of cowardice, a stain on their honour.”
“They’ll be a stain on the floor of that stadium if they don’t do something soon. Why isn’t anyone helping them?”
“Because,” Morrison said patiently, “the wards didn’t just happen to fail. Someone sabotaged them. This is an assassination attempt. Some faction in the Unseeli Court has decided the present rulers are in the way. Either because they’re too soft, or not hard enough. Oberon and Titania have to defeat the beast, to prove themselves worthy to rule. No one will help them, for fear of being associated with a losing side. And from the look of it, they’re going to have to kill it without resource to magic. The assassins must be blocking Oberon’s magic with their own, or he would have melted that thing down to a puddle by now. No, they’re going to have to kill it the hard way, or die trying.”
“Can they kill it? Without magic?” said Gold, staring incredulously at the living mountain of muscle and scales.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t put money on it. Normally the elves take on something like that in batches of a dozen or more, all armed to the teeth with magical weapons and devices. And even then someone always gets hurt. Oberon and Titania need a champion, but no one’s that crazy. Lester; they’re going to die. They’re my friends, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to save them.”
“Oh hell,” said Lester Gold, the Man of Action, the Mystery Avenger. “Can’t let that happen, can I?”
He climbed up on to the edge of the stadium, and Morrison looked at him blankly. “You can’t be serious. Get the hell down from there. This is a bloody Tyrannosaurus Rex we’re talking about. Something our size is just a light snack as far as it’s concerned. It’s got a brain the size of your fist in a head the size of your car, and a heart protected by acres of muscle and hide. You could shoot it in the head with a Magnum 45, and it probably wouldn’t even notice. Get down from there, Lester, please. I don’t want to lose you as well.”
“Don’t worry,” said Gold. “It may be big, but I’m tricky.”
He jumped over the edge of the stadium, and ran quickly through the empty seats between him and the royal stadium. A man in his seventies, with grey hair and the body of a much younger man, a lot of heart, and the biggest handgun Morrison had ever seen. Going to do battle with certain death for two people he didn’t even know, because it was the right thing to do. Because he was a hero.
“Who knows,” said Morrison quietly. “He might just bring it off after all.”
Gold ran up through the ranks of seating, shouting at the top of his voice to try and draw the beast’s attention. It ignored him, dipping its great head towards the royal stadium and its inhabitants. Oberon and Titania cut at its mouth with their swords, but though the blades bit deep enough to jar on solid bone the creature barely seemed to notice the pain. Its anger, and possibly something else, drove it on. Gold lurched to a halt beside the royal stadium, and had to rest for a moment to get his breath back. He wasn’t as young as he once was. He straightened up, pushing back the passing weakness by force of will, and aimed his gun at the Tyrannosaurus’s head. He was so close now he could hear the elves grunt with effort as they swung their swords, and the solid chunking of steel biting through scales into flesh. The beast stank too, of rotting meat and other things. Gold pushed it all out of his mind, aimed carefully, and shot the Tyrannosaurus twice in the head.
The scaled flesh exploded as the high calibre bullets hit the thick skull and rebounded. The beast roared deafeningly, as much in rage as in pain, and swung its great head round to look at its new enemy. Its breath was foul beyond belief. Gold held his breath, leaned over the edge of the stadium, and shot the Tyrannosaurus carefully in the foot. One clawed toe was blasted clean away. Blood spurted out on to the sand. The creature paused a moment, as though unable to believe what had just happened, and then opened its mouth wide to scream its fury. Gold had already put away his gun, and had the grenade waiting in his hand. One of the things he’d put in his pocket before they left, just in case. He pulled the pin, tossed the grenade into the gaping mouth before him, and ducked down behind the royal stadium, yelling for Oberon and Titania to take cover. The huge mouth snapped shut on the grenade automatically, and the head reared back. Gold grabbed for his gun again, just in case. And then the beast’s head exploded in a fountain of blood and bone and brains. It took the Tyrannosaurus a long moment to realize how badly it was hurt, and then the huge body lurched to one side, and fell heavily on the bloody sand. The legs still kicked, and the body still twitched, but it was already dead in every way that mattered. Gold straightened up slowly, and looked down at the body below. Eighty foot from head to tail. Had to be the biggest thing he’d ever bagged. Maybe he could have it stuffed and mounted… only, where would he display it? He heard movement beside him, and looked quickly round in time to see Oberon and Titania sheath their swords and incline their heads respectfully to him. On all sides of the Arena the crowds were going mad, shouting and cheering.
The Faerie do love a hero…
Gold smiled modestly. “Glad to be of service, your majesties.
I used to do this sort of thing all the time, when I was younger. Of course, I wasn’t real then.”
CHAPTER SIX
Memories
On the outskirts of Shadows Fall stood two houses, a respectable distance apart. One empty, the other occupied, both haunted by remnants of a past that would not be forgotten or dismissed. The house on the right was a small and modest place, a little neglected and run down perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be put right with a little care and effort. It wasn’t far out of town, but no one visited the house who didn’t have to. Three women and a young girl took it in turns to stare out of windows on the first floor, but only one woman lived there. Her name was Polly Cousins, and something awful happened to her when she was a child. She couldn’t remember what, but the house had not forgotten. Polly lived on the ground floor, but sometimes she would go up to the first floor and walk from room to room, looking out of the windows, sometimes pursuing a memory and sometimes trying to hide from one. In the room without a window, something breathed slowly and steadily.
Polly stood in the Spring room, looking out of the window at the first signs of leaves on a nearby oak tree. The air was bright and sharp and full of promise of the year to come. Polly, eight years old, had to stand on tiptoe to see out of the window. She was a pleasant enough child, with a blunt, handsome face and long blonde hair carefully brushed back and plaited into two long pigtails. She was wearing her best dress, which was also her favourite dress. She was eight years old, and something horrible had come into her life. She looked out of the window, but no one came up the road from the town, no matter how long she watched and waited.
She was alone in the house. (Only that wasn’t true, not really.) The view from the Spring room was the most promising, but it was also the most boring after a while, and eight-year-olds have a very low boredom threshold. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that she could open the window, and find her way out into the Spring scene before her. But she never did. There was something (in the house) that held her back. Polly Cousins, eight years old, sighed and kicked the wall briefly with a smart but sensible shoe, then turned her back on Spring and left the room.