After everything that had happened that evening, Hal felt distinctly out of sorts. Glenning’s death had shaken him profoundly, and the random numerical manifestations of five minus one still haunted him. He tried to pretend that his mind had only noticed the similar numbers because it was already troubled, but he couldn’t shake an overwhelming feeling that it meant something, although he couldn’t begin to divine what.
Yet he found no ease in the moon-shadows of the Deer Park. The night was too hot and appeared to be growing warmer by the minute; his sweat-sodden shirt clung to his back. But it wasn’t the temperature that continued to turn the screw on his psyche. With mounting disorientation, he looked around at the cityscape visible beyond the ancient rooftops. It was like looking at the city through a heat haze: a transparent curtain of shimmering sapphire light rippled back and forth, and through it Oxford appeared transformed. The medieval buildings and their modern counterparts merged and flowed into more fantastic structures: towers reached up into the night, some constructed from gleaming blue-white stone, others seemingly of brass and gold; lofty-roofed halls and gargoyle-riven battlements; arching bridges; steeples and spires and domes.
The illusion came and went with every eye-blink, fantasy and reality, reality and fantasy, so that in the end he couldn’t tell on which side of the line he stood. With it came a tingling in his fingers and toes, energy drawn from the ground itself, curling up his spine like the snake that slithered across Hunter’s back. Hal’s breath was taken away with wonder, while his rational mind ran wild in search of understanding.
Yet he was distracted after only a few seconds by a figure emerging from the haze as if it was slowly gaining solidity from a phantom existence. It was a giant of a man at least eight feet tall. His long black hair and beard and the dark coals of his eyes reminded Hal oddly of the disfigured tramp he had seen earlier that evening. Though his height was daunting, it was the man’s clothes that instantly set him apart. He wore a rough brown shift fastened at the waist by a broad belt. His left forearm was bound with a thong, from which several malicious-looking hooks gleamed.
Hal thought it prudent to retreat to the safety of the buildings as quickly as possible, but was sickened to discover that his legs wouldn’t obey his thoughts. Yet despite the stranger’s foreboding appearance, Hal felt no sense of threat. Instead, it was almost as if he was in a dream, watching the scene through someone else’s eyes.
‘I have searched for you across the worlds, for time upon time upon time,’ the giant began, ‘and now I find myself summoned to the place where you stand. Existence weaves a pattern that none of us can see.’
‘Who are you?’ Hal asked. The taste of iron filings numbed his mouth.
‘I am the Caretaker. I am the lamplighter. In the darkest of the dark, I ensure that a single flame burns. In the midst of chaos, I ensure that the home is kept safe and secure.’
Something supernatural, Hal’s sluggish brain thought. One of the gods?
‘Are you causing all this?’ Hal gestured towards the shimmering phantom city that kept overlaying itself on the Oxford skyline.
‘No. But it is serendipitous.’
Slowly, the Caretaker’s words wormed their way into Hal’s consciousness. ‘You’re looking for me?’
‘I come with a warning of greatest import: something has noticed you.’
‘What?’ Hal’s mind fumbled for meaning.
The Caretaker raised one huge hand and pointed up to the sprinkling of stars. ‘Out there, on the edge of Existence. It has seen you… and it is coming.’
Hal stared dumbly into the deep black depths of space. ‘What’s coming?’
The blue haze began to fade and the true outline of Oxford started to emerge into sharp relief once more. When Hal looked back at the Caretaker, the giant had retreated several paces, though Hal had not been aware of him walking away.
‘It will be here soon now… very soon,’ the Caretaker continued in a low, echoing voice. ‘It may even be here already. You must be prepared. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons must be united. But know this: one of the Five has already fallen. And without the correct number their effectiveness is dimmed.’ He stared towards the few lamps still burning in the windows of Magdalen. ‘There is little hope. Soon even the last light may be extinguished. And then my job shall be done.’
The Caretaker continued to fade, drifting across the grass, becoming more insubstantial the further from Hal he got.
‘War…’ The giant’s words were breaking up. ‘There will come an ending.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Hal called.
The Caretaker’s response was lost to the night breeze. A second later, he vanished and the blue haze along with him. Reality was hard and fast all around. But inside Hal the dread that had been mounting all night had now crystallised.
He had been noticed. And something was coming.
Chapter Two
‘ The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’
‘Give us the sword.’
The skinhead wore a fixed, dead stare, but it was the shotgun the thug was pointing casually that held Mallory’s attention. In the distance, smoke from the burning village clouded the blue sky.
‘It’s not very fair, is it?’ Mallory said. ‘Sword… shotgun…’
‘You should have thought of that when you were choosing your weapon.’ The skinhead let out a gurgling laugh, then looked around at his gang as if he had said something clever. The gang clustered closer, smelling blood.
Physically, Mallory and the thug couldn’t have been more different: Mallory, with his shoulder-length brown hair and calm, intelligent eyes; the skinhead, clearly unintelligent, his arms a mass of tattoos — the flag of St George, a skull and crossbones, the names of girls who had long since faded from his memory. But Mallory’s attention was drawn by the one thing he shared with his opponent: a uniform. Mallory still wore his distinctive Knight Templar garb of a black shirt with the red Templar cross against a white square on the breast and right shoulder. The skinhead’s black shirt had a large red ‘V’ running from shoulders to waist.
‘What is that?’ Mallory said, nodding at the T-shirt. ‘I’m seeing it all over.’ And the insignia wasn’t just on the clothing of the gang members who were increasingly visible around the countryside; it was also painted on walls, abandoned cars, doors — graffiti with an odd air of menace.
‘He’s killing time,’ one of the other gang members said. ‘Just kill him instead.’ More laughter ensued, but Mallory’s calm in the face of his impending death was clearly destabilising the group.
A strange expression briefly obscured the brutality in the skinhead’s face; Mallory decided it was almost like awe. ‘We’re followers of the Lost One,’ the thug said. The others grew sombre, nodding in agreement.
Mallory considered a glib response, then decided it probably wouldn’t be in his best interests. ‘Who’s that, then?’
‘The Lost One,’ the leader said again, vehemently this time. ‘He disappeared in the Battle of London. His name is Veitch… Ryan Veitch.’
Mallory recognised the name instantly. ‘The traitor.’ One of the five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who preceded him. They hadn’t been heard from since the Fall, but their presence still loomed large over the population; Mallory heard their names wherever he went.
The leader ignored the implication in Mallory’s words — denial or acceptance, Mallory wasn’t sure which. ‘He was the one who saved us, not the other four. When he comes back to us, he’ll lead us out of this mess we’re in.’