‘I understand why the last knowing Immortal – the man, Marik – I know why he said: I cannot. No. No, to the world, and no, to humankind. Humankind is not worth the horror we inflict on ourselves. I say: I will not care. I say: I will look away. I say: no.

  ‘I have seen the dark: dark stacked upon dark. I have seen such purposeless sorrow. I have seen fear, and dread. I have seen death. Oh, Christopher, the death!’

  Her whole body, next to him, shook.

  ‘I have lost children.

  ‘But I have seen red dragons fly over mountains in the falling sun. And I have seen people offer up their lives to save another, as if it were as natural as breathing. I’ve known lovers find each other in war and famine. I have seen promises made and kept for entire lifetimes, unswervingly, as if it was easy. I’ve seen lions at midnight. I have seen wonder on wonder on wonder. I have seen how the world shines.

  ‘I have seen people struggle to learn – painting, gardens, language, hand-skills, foot-skills – and I have seen them triumph. I have seen kindnesses large and wild enough to transform you. I have heard the best jokes in the world and music so sweet I thought I might fall down because of it. I have seen so much done for love, over and over. I have seen people die for love and live for love. I have seen birth, and birth again. I have known such joy. The joy, Christopher.’

  He watched her, breathing in the warmth, and the dust of the island, and the restless beauty of the sea.

  He was about to speak when there was a sudden shout.

  It was a shriek of terror and of despair, so loud and anguished it froze Christopher’s body. It was the jaculus.

  ‘Look out!’ cried Jacques. ‘The man!’

  FLIGHT

  It was the most terrible thing he had ever seen. At the foot of the thorn tree, where they had tied him, the man had risen, still bound, to his knees. His face was full of dark concentration, and from all around him came a mist: a grey mist, carried on a high and furious wind. It was the same mist as in the maze: it had the same smell, of power and dread.

  Christopher felt it in his ears, roaring. The wind was blowing away from the island, away from them, carrying the mist out over the sea: across the Archipelago, and beyond.

  ‘Stop him!’ cried Jacques.

  The crouching man – barely human now – turned, and looked at them, and there was triumph in the look.

  ‘Stand back!’ cried Jacques. ‘Children, get behind me!’ They ran backwards, as the dragon gulped air and breathed a great bout of flame.

  Christopher had not understood, until then, what is truly meant by fire. It was a fireball, an explosion of blue-red, and the heat of it singed the tips of his hair and scorched his eyes, so that both he and Mal had to cover their faces.

  When the smoke cleared, the tree was burned to a pile of ashes. The sand, in patches, had melted into glass.

  Sforza stood unscathed. He smiled; a gleeful smile. He called out to them. ‘I have consumed too much for that. Your little blade will not hurt me. Dragon fire will not burn me. I am here, and the power is here, and it is mine.’

  He breathed out, a great Ha! of conquest, and with that Ha! the wind grew, and with it the grey mist.

  Mal looked up at the sky: up at the Somnulum. Her lips moved, and her small face, with its badly cut fringe, was vivid with unspoken thought. The scar on her cheek, from Gelifen, stood out white on her skin.

  Mal’s face contorted. Too much passed over it for him to read it.

  But then she set her jaw, and clenched her fists, and that he recognised: he knew that gesture so well.

  ‘Christopher! Come here. You have to listen to me.’ Her voice was low and scratched and urgent.

  He went to her, and bent low to hear her.

  ‘Listen. I wanted to tell you – I don’t know, a million things. I thought we had time. I thought we had years, the two of us. I thought –’ A pause full of pain, a snort of breath, and she went on, faster. ‘It is so difficult, to be alive. It is so difficult, and it is so beautiful.’ She looked full at him, and her face was blazing. ‘Listen. I need you to tell people this; I need you, when you get back, to tell them: the brutality is terrible. And yes: the chaos is very great. But tell them: greater than the world’s chaos are its miracles.’

  She gave a smile; a new smile. She bent, and with the glamry blade she sliced the stitches from the coat’s hem, and the cloth unfurled. She dropped the blade and the casapasaran at his feet. She pulled him down to her and kissed him on the cheek, hard, almost as hard as a bite.

  She whispered into his ear, one final sentence.

  And then she spread her arms in the old coat. The wind lifted her, six feet in the air. She flew straight at the small, white, bone-thin man, carried on the wind of his own making.

  She barrelled towards him. The man turned, scrambling to the left, then right, his mouth suddenly open with fear, but she had the agility of a child and the nerves of all eternity.

  She seized the evil, crouching thing in one arm, the other still outstretched, and as he lifted off the ground he struggled, but instantly they were ten, twenty, fifty feet in the air, and the girl flew them straight upwards, towards the Somnulum.

  As they soared upwards, Christopher heard the flying girl let out a great shout. It rang against the rocks as they disappeared into the burn of the great ball of light.

  It might have been fear; but it sounded, as he stood watching, exactly like triumph – like joy – like love.

  THE FUNERAL MARCH

  Christopher told it all, later, to the sphinxes.

  There had been a great burning flash – he had been knocked to the ground by it, sand in his eyes and mouth – and a single moment’s pause; and then the whole earth shook. The wind screamed one last time around his ears, and dropped.

  Everything was still. He did not have a grasp on time to know how long he lay there. And then from the ocean, from its depths, from the nereids, or mermaids, or, he thought, from the sea itself, there came a great thrum of music, high and sharp and joyful.

  The scent he had smelt first at the lochan, the scent of something wild and pure growing, living and bursting forth, came in a great rush from the mouth of the maze. It dizzied him in its sweetness.

  Slowly he got to his feet. His vision was blurred, and he saw swathes of colour that could not be there.

  Haltingly, his body aching, he had returned to the boat. Jacques had been waiting. He was surrounded by a cloud of steam, where his own tears met his hot body: like a tiny kettle in the wilderness.

  Christopher had climbed into the boat, and told it where to go, and lain down under the sky to sleep. As dark fell, Jacques kept his small and furious watch – but the dark did not trouble Christopher now. He had seen so much of it, and had walked through it to the other side.

  He was still asleep when the boat butted against the rocks of the sphinxes’ peninsula. Naravirala herself lifted him out of the boat in her jaws and carried him like a cub up the rocks, to a cave set in the ridge.

  He was filthy when they found him, sand and blood in his nails and hair. They cleaned him, as best they could, by dipping him into a pool, each shoulder held between the teeth of two young sphinxes. They laid him in the cave, on a bed of straw. Naravirala visited him. She licked, with her great rough tongue, his wounds. He watched as his bruises, his cuts, the raw places where he had bled and scabbed and bled again, began to fade at the pressure of her tongue. For a full day and a night he slept.

  When he woke, sometimes he stared mutely at the ground; sometimes he tried to eat; occasionally he cried, wiping water with his fists. Some of the sphinxes came and tried to ask him questions, but Naravirala stopped them, with her teeth.

  ‘The journey has taken a bite out of part of him he could not easily spare,’ said the sphinx. ‘Let him be.’

  Meanwhile, across the Archipelago, the news went out, from ratatoska to dryad to centaur. The word spread swiftly: of who Mal was, and of what she had done, and of what, in her great flight, she had saved. The creatures made ready. There would be a funeral march.

  It began at dawn. There were no humans except Christopher. It was the greatest honour of his life that he was permitted to attend, though he did not know enough to know it.

  Naravirala led the march. She carried him on her great back to the stretch of sandy ground where it was to take place: a place where land met water in beauty and stillness.

  The entire clan of the sphinxes followed behind, walking four abreast, padding on vast lion feet across the sand. They moved like a silent grieving army, and all who saw them drew back in fear and awe at the looks on their leonine faces.

  Behind them the nereids came, walking, their silver hair flowing down on to the sand like wedding trains. Nereids do not walk on dry land, except in cases of necessity – except now to honour the loved lost. They sang as they came, a song in their own language, so high and sweet that Christopher felt it would knock him from the sphinx’s back; and behind them in the water rose mermaids, three clans, playing on their instruments an ancient tune to the fallen.

  The dryads came from the wood at the edge of the sands. Erato led the way. Her tears were of sap, running down her face. They joined the song, and their voices, lower and deeper, made the earth shiver. It cut into Christopher’s chest, into his lungs.

  Centaurs followed, marching as one, dressed in black breastplates. They had sent their full number of trumpeters, male and female, the finest in the islands. They did not yet play. They waited for their signal.

  Behind them walked a hundred ratatoskas, on silent paws, their small voices raised in song, and behind them a troop of al-mirajes, silent, their golden horns dipped low. A cluster of kankos followed. Tears shone like fireflies against their furred cheeks.

  At last, from the woods came the unicorns. They came in their hundreds, silver and white and pearl. They did not come nearer, but stood at the edge of the trees, tossing their manes and sending up high whinnies to the air.

  The procession came to a stop. Christopher had Mal’s blade at his belt. He held her casapasaran in his palm, so tightly it bit into his skin. Naravirala dropped to the sand, and he dismounted. She bent, touched her muzzle to his face. ‘Courage,’ she said. ‘You must bear it, for there is no other option. Courage, valiant boy.’

  Then she turned, and spoke to the creatures on the sands.

  ‘Malum Arvorian is dead, and is not dead. She is Immortal: her death is instant birth. And so we do not weep for her but for ourselves; for the sadness that is the child of our love. We weep because we will not see her face again. We sing for the bravery of her glorious heart. We will eat grief for dinner; but tomorrow, we will dine on joy for what she did.’ The sphinx turned to the centaurs, and raised her head. ‘Sound out, trumpets, for the flying girl.’

  The trumpets sounded once, twice, a third time. Christopher felt tears run down his face as the creatures, ranged in their rows and multitudes, let out a great shout, each in their own language. They shouted out in loss and in gratitude, in grief and glory, and the sound rose up into the air and filled the ocean, and miles away a Berserker and a woman with nereid blood heard it, and wept, and rejoiced, and wept again.

  THE KINDNESS OF SPHINXES

  The day after the funeral march, Naravirala visited Christopher in the sphinxes’ cave. He sat with his back to the mountain wall, and told her about the man in the maze, and his vicious hunger: his furious desire not to be exposed to the world’s indignities, to chance and to other human people.

  She nodded. ‘That is why great power must never reside in only one person. It must be shared.’ Her rough voice was rougher than before. ‘It must be spread, among as many good women and men as can be found; not because it is kind or polite or fair, but because it is the only way to beat back against horror.’

  Later, she returned, with cooked indeterminable meat, which she left at his feet. ‘Do you know why she did what she did?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Could you tell me why?’

  He shook his head. ‘But I do know.’

  ‘So do I, I believe. It was an act of insistence: it was insistence that the world is worth loving. The sphinxes are making songs of her already. They will sing them of you too. They will cut them into the stone across the mountainside.’

  Christopher looked up at the cragged old face. It is possible to wound a sphinx, it turned out: you do it by breaking their heart.

  On the day he first woke without the feeling of ache in his whole body, it was to see a green face pressed close up against his, upside down. It was Ratwin.

  He yelled, and she dismounted from his head and dipped her nose to his hand, in fealty.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘For you.’ And she spat something into his hand.

  ‘Thanks.’ He sat up. ‘Next time, though, it would be nice not to wake up wearing your bottom as an eye mask.’

  In his hand was a tiny parcel, of brown paper and thin green thread. Inside was soft white cloth, and inside that a single golden earring. His heart dropped. He felt the blood drain from his face.

  ‘What? Nighthand! Is he … ?’

  ‘No! No. It’s a gesture of thanks.’

  ‘Bloody hell! He could have chosen some other gesture! I mean, he literally calls it his coffin fund.’

  ‘Irian did say it would startle you up and annoy you down, but he insisteds.’ Her sharp little voice grew slower than usual. ‘He lives. They took him to the centauride – a healer called Kentavir. She understoods the poison of karkadanns. Kentavir made him a liniment. She made it three times from the soil; the third time was in those moments after the earths shook. Had you and the little Immortal miniature not restored the glimourie, he would be dead now, I’m thinksing.’

  ‘How’s his arm?’

  ‘It has a greenish scrofulous-meats look to it, but he says it has a certain chic.’

  ‘And what happened to you?’

  The ratatoska’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, I made life bleak for the murdering centaur! I nudged his supplies overboard, and I rip-tore at the sails with my teeth. I bites him as he slept. He tried to throw me into the waves, but couldn’t catch me – I climbed to the top of the mast, where he couldn’t follows. When we came near land, I leaped into the water, and swam to land. I don’t know where his ugly face is now. But he can’t stay hidden from the ratatoskas.’

  ‘And how’s Irian?’

  ‘She is well.’ A pause. ‘She is in love – which is not an easy thing, but is I thinks perhaps very fine.’

  ‘With Nighthand?’

  Ratwin nodded. ‘Not an easy propositionate, but not a thin or unjoyful or dullish one.’

  She brought other news: of young saplings springing forth, and the krakens returning to their rich and silty deeps. And a nereid called Galatia sent greetings and a message to him: ‘She said to say: The water is rich again. The water is full.’

  ‘And … is that true? Is all this true?’

  The ratatoska raised her small, sculpted head. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s true.’

  Later, Naravirala took him for a walk, riding on her muscular back, Jacques flapping alongside, up the mountain to where a stream sprang. ‘It is our finest water. Drink, and it will last you.’

  Together, they drank from the stream.

  ‘Where is she?’ asked Christopher. ‘Mal? When she comes back …’

  Naravirala shook her great head. ‘We cannot know yet. But she is already here, somewhere: of that I’m sure. And we will find out where; I imagine the ratatoskas will tell me. I know that the time will come when the new Immortal will find you. Remember, boy: everything that Mal knew and saw and loved, the new Immortal knows and saw and loved. They will know and love you, Christopher. Mal hasn’t truly gone: she is part of an infinite soul. One day the Immortal will come for you: they will run to you and joyfully call you by name. And that will be a very great day. But for now, for you – it is time to go home.’

  ‘Is there an opening?’

  ‘There is. We have had lookouts posted, since first you came to the mountain with your friends. One opened: we think it opened at the moment the creature died. But it is halfway around the Archipelago, past corals and rocks that a boat cannot reach.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘But then, how do I get there? I’m not Mal – I can’t fly.’

  ‘You can,’ said Jacques. ‘You will fly on the back of a dragon.’

  Christopher looked hesitantly at the jaculus: it would be like attempting to commute on the back of a hummingbird. ‘No offence, but … I mean, it’s very kind – but I’m just not sure that would be comfortable for you. Or scientifically possible.’

  Jacques gave an insulted huff, which set fire to a nearby bush. ‘Not me! I have sent word to a far-off cousin.’

  The dragon, when it came, was the size of a small castle; and it was familiar. It was crow-coloured – black, but with petrol sheens of green and purple and deep blue – but the underside of its wings was red.

  ‘I’ve seen you before!’

  ‘She speaks only her own language,’ said Jacques. ‘It’s a language more ancient than any invented by humans.’

  The sphinx did something so unexpected that he flinched backwards from her. She opened her jaw, set her teeth around a shard of rock, and gave a great thrust downwards. There was a crack like a revolver shot and a shard of her tooth – the tip, as large as the top of his thumb – fell on to the ground.

  ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Wash it well.’

  He did so. ‘Like that?’ He held it up to her.

  ‘Put it in your mouth.’

  ‘In my mouth? I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘A sphinx’s tooth holds language in it.’

  The jaculus looked grudgingly impressed. ‘It will allow you to understand any language, if you hold it in your cheek. Murder between humans has been done, for a sphinx tooth.’

  Gingerly, Christopher placed the sphinx tooth in his mouth. To his relief, it tasted of very little – certainly not of sphinx breath.

  ‘You know of a passageway?’ He said to the red dragon. It was his own voice, but the words were new sounds. It came out harsher, rougher.

 

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