Stefan cowered before them, terrified, as if he knew why they were there for him. 'I have nothing to fear from you!' he cried out, his voice reverberating insanely up to the vaulted roof. As one, the clerics each raised an arm and pointed at him. Their silent accusation gave Stefan added impetus and he bowed his head and hurried past them.
Mallory ignored the figures in the water around him and followed quickly, allowing just one glance back. Hipgrave was on the walkway, shifting back to his human form from something that had wings like a bat.
Mallory realised there probably wouldn't be an escape for any of them.
'I'd do anything for Sylvie.' Mallory blinked away tears of frustration and pain.
'You think she'd be happy with you, knowing what you'd done?' Mueller was incredulous. 'Stevens has won. Whichever way you turn, you're damned.'
'She doesn't have to know—'
'She already knows. One of Stevens' monkeys told her this morning. He's just turning the knife—'
'How do you know?' Mallory leaned back against his bookcase for support, as if gravity was suddenly too strong for him to keep standing.
'She called me up . . . wanted to know if it was true.'
'What did you say?'
'I said I didn't know!' Mueller paced about the lounge, rubbing his fingers through his hair anxiously. 'But she knows Stevens wouldn't make something like that up . . .'
Mallory covered his face; everything was fracturing. 'I don't have a choice.'
'You had a choice two weeks ago . . . if you hadn't let your pride and your arrogance—'
'Oh, shut up, Mueller.'
There was such desolation in his voice that Mueller was briefly stung into silence. 'I'm sorry. That doesn't help.' He swallowed, ordered his thoughts. 'You can't do it, Mallory. Not something like that—'
'I can't let Sylvie die, can I? It would be as if I'd killed her myself.'
'If you do it, Stevens will probably kill you and Sylvie anyway Mueller's voice faded out.
'You always manage to find the silver lining, don't you, Mueller?' He took a deep breath, but it failed to calm him. 'No, I believe him. He's a fucking psychotic thug, but he thinks if he sticks by some personal perverse code of ethics it makes everything he does all right.'
Mueller chewed on a fingernail; he looked on the verge of tears. 'You can't do it, Mallory. No decent human being could do a thing like that and not be destroyed.'
Mallory slumped on to the sofa, looked at the records and the books, all the trappings that made up his life. 'I love her, Mueller. I love her so much, nothing else matters. I'm a cynical bastard and I tried to pretend it was just infatuation or sex, but it isn't. I couldn't bear for anything to happen to her.'
Mueller fell silent, staring blankly at the spines of some CDs. When the pressure in the room finally became too great, he said, 'You know this won't be the end of it. Stevens might not hurt her this time, but sooner or later he'll come back at her to get at
you ...
to punish you even more, just because he can. He's going to kill her sooner or later, Mallory.'
'I know.' The desolation he felt was painful.
'What are you going to do, Mallory?'
Doors and rooms, and rooms and doors, stretching off into infinity. After the reservoir there was another series of corridors and indistinguishable halls where no feet appeared to have trod for hundreds of years. But he had indeed closed on Stefan. The only drawback was that Hipgrave had drawn nearer to him; he could now hear each transformation, like a silk sheet being torn by a knife. Things were converging.
Out of the gloom loomed an enormous trilithon that reminded him of the ages-old monuments at Stonehenge. As he passed through its massive portal, he fell into deepest shadow, and when he emerged on the other side he was in the strangest place he had seen so far. It was a vast underground cemetery: crypts and mausoleums, obelisks and gravestones, crosses modern and Celtic and old markers that were little more than crumbling lumps of rock. Instead of the usual flagstones, there was dusty, water- starved soil beneath his feet. All around, torches blazed on the houses of the dead, creating stark pools of light and shade.
A veil appeared to lift from his mind, and with it came a clarity of who he was and what he was doing.
Stefan was nowhere to be seen. He had obviously taken the opportunity to lose himself amongst the jumbled layout. Just before Mallory threw himself into the network of byways that ran through the necropolis, he checked back on his own pursuer; the Hipgrave-thing writhed on the other side of the trilithon, seemingly unable to pass through it. Mallory's relief edged into a cold focus on the matter at hand. He set off in silent pursuit of the bishop.
The cat-and-mouse game continued for an age. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of Stefan's robes against the bare white bones of a mausoleum. Mallory would run and hide, dash and squat, all emotion driven from him by the long, wearying chase. The only thing that gave him comfort was the sword singing gently against his leg, its blue light seeping into the very fibre of his being.
After a while, he realised the energy was coming in soothing pulses, but there was a pattern to it, as though it was calling out - or guiding him. Through trial and error, he matched his directional changes to the strong pulses until the flow of energy was constant. And that was when he saw Stefan creeping along the next byway.
Moving as quietly as he could, he used a stone cross to lever himself up on to the roof of a mausoleum and wriggled out to the edge. As Stefan edged beneath him, Mallory threw himself off, knocking the bishop to the ground and sending the box flying. A cloud of white dust billowed into the air.
When it finally cleared, Mallory was standing over Stefan, his blade resting against the bishop's throat.
'Kill me,' Stefan said calmly, 'and I know I will find peace with my God. Can you say the same?'
'After all you've done . . . after all the misery and suffering you've caused . . . you're going straight to hell, matey.'
Stefan only laughed; he was so locked in his world-view that he would never understand, Mallory realised. And for the first time, Mallory felt dismal that there was no hell; Stefan would go unpunished in this world and the next, while Daniels, Gardener and all the others would carry their hell with them. And what of Miller and those who had died? Somehow it didn't seem fair.
'You never had God with you, Mallory.' Stefan was looking up at him with bright, passionate eyes; Mallory was surprised to see almost a hint of pity there. 'For you, life is an empty parade of sensation with no
meaning ...
no reason even to shuffle through it.'
Mallory smiled. 'That's where you're wrong, Stefan.'
The bishop was puzzled by this clear display of confidence. As if to distract himself, he bowed his head and muttered a short prayer. 'There. I have made my peace. Now you may kill me.'
'I'm not going to kill you.' Mallory sheathed his sword.
This puzzled Stefan further, then began to trouble him.
'I don't hold a grudge. I can't hate you. I should do - for Miller and all the others - but I can't,' Mallory said, emotion making his voice crack. 'I just think you're wrong, but you're not alone there. You simply took it a few more steps down the line than anyone else, but it's the same pig- ignorance . . . blindness . . . stupid-simple understanding of a complex theology—'
Stefan laughed. 'Someone like you could never understand the love of
God ...
the light. . . it's beyond you.'
Mallory looked around, distracted.
'You're afraid to kill me because you're weak in the face of God's power.' Stefan sounded as if he was trying to convince himself, and Mallory realised it was because he thought he had such a clear view of who Mallory was, of how the world worked; but he was wrong on both counts.
Mallory spotted the box and picked it up. 'This is what I want.' It felt warm to his touch.
'That belongs to God.' Stefan's voice trembled.
'Everything belongs to God, Stefan.' He opened the lid.
A brilliant blue light flooded out, painting the entire area. Mallory felt swamped with vitality, with warmth, and love, and goodness, and in that instant he realised how its power had unbalanced so many of those who had walked on the charged land of the cathedral. In the familiar blue glow, he understood that this was the thing that had been used to summon the Fabulous Beast to its death; somehow they had known the creature would come once the box had been opened.
Gradually, his eyes cleared and he could see into the depths of the box. Something small and dark lay at the bottom; something alive. It squirmed, tried to scramble over the edge. Mallory almost dropped the box in shock.
'The Devil can do God's work,' Stefan intoned gravely. 'Indeed, there is a delicious irony in bending Satan to His will.' The thing appeared over the lip. 'Beware the Serpent, Mallory,' Stefan warned.
And then Mallory could see what it was. It was small, almost foetal in shape, and although the glittering sheen of scales had not yet appeared, its wings were perfecdy formed.
'It is the first one born to this world for many an age.' Mallory looked up at the booming voice. The Caretaker stood next to the mausoleum with Stefan cowering at his feet.
'That was why the Fabulous Beast came,' Mallory said. 'They killed it, but all it wanted was its young.' Suddenly he knew why the glorious creature had been flying back and forth across the countryside, why it hadn't used its cataclysmic flame to destroy the cathedral in its final attack. There was something so desperately sad in it all.
'How can you justify this?' Mallory said in disbelief. 'It's a living creature.'
'The Devil can take many forms,' Stefan replied, and, because he clearly believed a supporting argument was necessary, 'God's will overrules all.'
'It was a crime,' the Caretaker said dispassionately, 'against Existence.'
'A crime against
nature ...
the world . . . everything,' Mallory added. 'That's why the Green Man threw everything into getting it back.' He turned incredulously to Stefan. 'Don't you understand - these things represent life?'
'It's the Serpent,' Stefan said, unmoved. 'This is the thing that corrupted humanity. In the very first times it led to the expulsion from paradise. It is knowledge—'
'Yes,' Mallory interrupted, 'knowledge . . .
meaning ...
the force that holds everything together. You've made this the enemy, but you know in your heart it's the same thing you want, the same power that fuels your
prayer ...
the same path to—'