“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 g
et 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.”