'There you go.'
Daniels rubbed his eyes wearily. 'I was trying to explain it to Lewis. I
said if we didn't flaunt it we could carry on. He said if God is love and we
love each other, what's wrong with that?'
'He's got a point.'
'The Bible says—'
'The Bible says a lot of nonsense amongst all the good stuff. You can
justify any point of view with it. Same with the Koran. Look what
happened out in Afghanistan.'
'If we haven't got the Bible, Mallory, we haven't got anything.'
'Yeah, I hear that all the time, and you know what? I don't believe it.
When you come down to it, it's a book. Any religion has to be bigger than
that.'
'I'll try that one on Stefan the next time I see him,' Daniels said
sarcastically. 'Look, I'm off to compline. Got to show willing in the current
atmosphere. I'll see you later.'
He headed off in the growing gloom, shoulders bowed. Mallory
watched him go, sympathetic but not surprised. Daniels had been right:
winter was going to be hard.
'What are you doing, Mallory?'
Miller's whisper floated out of the dark, startling Mallory who was lying
in his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. Further down the room, Gardener
was snoring as loudly as a chain saw. Daniels had been tossing and turning
for an hour, but now seemed to have drifted off.
'Thinking.' He'd actually been tracing the pattern of the dragons on the
hilt of his sword in the scabbard that hung from the bed-head. Its response
to the Blue Fire barrier in the tunnels that afternoon had brought to a head
his growing concerns about it. He recalled what Rhiannon had said about
its importance when he had picked it up at the Court of Peaceful Days, but
he still couldn't guess its true significance. Sometimes it felt alive in his
grasp; when at rest in the scabbard it often appeared to be singing to him,
the faint vibration he felt in his leg oddly comforting.
'You're always thinking, Mallory. I watch you, you know.'
'You're starting to scare me now, Miller.'
'All the people around here drift through what's happening, but you pay
attention to everything and everybody.' In the dark, Miller's voice
sounded small, like a child's. 'You try to pretend you don't care about
anything, but I can tell you care a lot . . . even if you don't see it yourself.'
'You sound like a bad self-help book.' Mallory wondered if he could
throw the sword away. At first it had seemed like a valuable, powerful
form of protection, but increasingly it was just a reminder of the
obligations Rhiannon had attempted to thrust on him: to be a hero, to
fight for humanity as some kind of mythical knight, a
Brother of Dragons.
That had sounded pathetic at the time. Now it was simply irritating him,
although he didn't quite know why he felt that way.
'We need you, Mallory.'
The honesty in Miller's voice was affecting; Mallory couldn't come back
with a joke. 'You don't need me.'
'You think that because you're strong, everyone else is strong, too, but
that's not true. Some people need others to help them along. The strong
help the weak - that's how it should be. Things are falling apart here,
Mallory. We
need
you.'
Miller's words were an uncomfortable piece of synchronicity with
Mallory's own thoughts. He usually managed to keep his many doubts
locked away behind a patina of arrogance, but at that moment he could
barely contain them. 'I was given this sword by someone who felt I should
be a hero,' he mused aloud. 'I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,
and they were acting as though I was meant to be there.'
'Maybe it's true what they say - there aren't any coincidences. Everything that happens is meant to happen.'
'Or maybe they just got the wrong bloke.'
Silence consumed them for ten minutes until Miller said, 'What do you
see when you close your eyes at night, Mallory?'
A burst of fire in the dark, cleansing, like the flame of a Fabulous Beast.
He
didn't answer.
'Something bad happened to you before you came here, didn't it?'
Mallory tensed. 'What makes you say that?'
'Like I said, I watch you. Little things you've
said ...
the way you
act . . . the way you won't talk about the life you had before.'
'In this world we've got now, something bad has happened to
everyone.'
'It's not healthy to bottle these things up. It affects the way you act . .
.
stops you moving on
. .
. makes you give up on die life God has planned
for you—'
'There you go with that evangelical crap again.'
'You don't have to act with me, Mallory. You can tell me anything, get it
off your chest. I'm your friend.' A long pause. 'Aren't I?'
Mallory sighed wearily. 'I'm only saying this because the other two are
asleep and it's dark. Yes, I like you, Miller, because you haven't let yourself
get eaten up by cynicism like everyone else.'
'Is that it?' Miller sounded disappointed. He covered himself hastily
with, 'Look, tell me what happened to you and I'll tell you something bad
that happened to me. That's fair. That way we both benefit.'
And Mallory almost did; the feeling that the awful burden that had
crushed him for so long was about to be lifted was exhilarating. If he
admitted it to himself, Miller was probably the only reason he had decided
to stick around after his first beating at Blaine's hands. Whatever Blaine
had said, he could have found some way to get out. But he saw in Miller
something of himself, before all the misery. It gave him an odd sort of
hope, but he didn't want to analyse it too closely. And that was the reason
why he couldn't tell him: he couldn't spoil him.
'Go to sleep, Miller,' he said.
He guessed from the silence that he'd hurt Miller's feelings, but he put it
out of his mind; he was good at that these days. Gardener and Daniels
were silent. The moon broke through the curtains in a band illuminating
the far wall. It made him think, oddly, of Sophie. And then he fell asleep.
She was waiting for him in the silvery glade, filled with mysteries and cool,
dark depths.
'How do you do this?' he asked. A summery breeze rustled the leaves
above his head. 'And, for that matter, where is this?'
'There are more worlds than the one you see around you, Mallory,' she
said, walking slowly around the ring of fungi that marked the perimeter of
the clearing. 'This one is at the same time in your head and encompassing
everything ...
the universe . . . everything.'
'Well, that's the kind of mystical bollocks I expect from you.'
'You've learned a little sassiness since our last meeting, I see.' She
wasn't offended by his comment and that made him like her even more.
'How do I come here? A few herbs, a little incense, some candle smoke, a
small ritual
.
.
.
easy when you know how.'