Fisher put her fingertips against his lips to hush him. “I knew them anyway.”
“Love you, Isobel.”
“Love you, Hawk.”
They clasped each other’s hands and smiled tenderly. A kind of peace came over them, not unlike the relief one feels after finally putting down a heavy burden.
“How shall we do it?” said Hawk. His mouth was dry, but his voice was more or less steady. “I couldn’t stand to see you suffer. I could ... kill you quickly, and then throw myself on your sword.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” said Fisher, her eyes gleaming with tears she wouldn’t let go. “Let the sorcerer do it. He probably knows all kinds of ways to kill from a distance.”
“Yeah. He strikes me as that type.” They shared a small smile. Hawk looked out into the darkness. “Spirit land of the animals ... Never occurred to me that all animals would have souls.”
“Makes sense, when you think about it. I had a dog once, when I was a kid. Died in an accident, when I was twelve. He was never what you’d call bright, but I was always convinced I’d meet him again, after I died. He had too much personality to just disappear.”
Hawk nodded slowly. “So; one last adventure together, then.”
They both jumped as Saxon turned suddenly and glared at them. “You were just going to go and leave me behind, I suppose?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Hawk. “You don’t have to die. Storm said it only needed two willing sacrifices. And that’s us.”
“He also said the beasts have to be comforted, and from the way they’ve been acting, they’re going to take a hell of a lot of persuading. Which is where I come in. No offense, but you two aren’t exactly known for your diplomatic skills. I, on the other hand, have years of experience as a politician and con man. I could persuade a blue whale it could fly, and teach it to loop the loop while it was up there. I’m coming too. You need me.”
“Think about what you’re saying,” said Fisher. “It’s one thing for us to die; we’re not leaving anyone behind. But what about you? Don’t you have any friends, family?”
“My family are all dead,” said Saxon. “And I don’t know my friends anymore. There’s no one and nothing I’ll regret leaving behind. This city isn’t the one I remember. Haven was always a cesspit, but it was never this bad.”
“It’s still worth saving,” said Hawk. “There are villains and bastards beyond counting, but most of the people in Haven are good people, just trying to get through their lives as best they can, protecting their family and friends, and looking for what love and comfort they can find along the way.”
“I know,” said Saxon. “That’s why I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to do this,” said Fisher. “Hawk and I ... It’s our job. Our duty.”
“This is my city,” said Saxon. “My home. Much as I loathe it sometimes, it’s still my home, and I couldn’t bear to see it destroyed. I’m really not afraid of dying. I was dead for twenty-three years anyway. At least this time, I’ll have died for something that mattered. Now let’s get on with it. While our nerve still holds out.”
“Sure,” said Hawk.
Have you been listening, sorcerer?
Yes. I’m here.
Then do it.
Goodbye, my friends. You will not be forgotten.
Elsewhere in the city the sorcerer Storm spoke a Word of Power, and Hawk and Fisher and Saxon slumped forward. They sprawled limply on the cold stone floor, and their breathing slowed and then stopped as the life went out of them. They died together, and the blue lights of the pentacle flickered and collapsed, until there was only darkness in the cellar.
There were fields and meadows that stretched away into an endless horizon. A forest stood to one side, full of sunlit glades and dark, comforting shadows. A river ran, bright and sparkling, and the riverbanks were honeycombed with holes and warrens. The summer sky was soft and blue, with gray-tinged clouds that promised soothing rain for the evening. The sun was fat and warm, and the air lay heavily upon the earth like the height of summer, when the heat warms your bones and makes all thoughts calm and drowsy, and winter seems so far away it may never come again. Insects murmured on the quiet, and butterflies fluttered by like animated scraps of color. A gentle breeze stirred the long grass, rich with the scent of earth and grass and living things. And everywhere, the beasts at play, running and hiding, jumping and tumbling, chasing and being chased with never a care or worry for predators or the fall of night. The land was theirs, and nothing could hurt them ever again.
Hawk and Fisher and Saxon stood together on the bank of the river, and felt no need to move. They were where they were, and for a long time in that timeless summer morning, that was enough. Hawk’s face bore no scars, and he had both his eyes again. Fisher’s scars were gone too, and they both stood a little taller, as though no longer bowed down by the weight of years and memories. Saxon looked like a different man, his face at peace for the first time since they’d met.
“It’s like coming home,” said Hawk finally. “Everyone’s home.”
“It reminds me of Hillsdown, and the Forest Kingdom,” said Fisher. “Only more so. This is where we began, in the days before cities, when we all lived in the woods.”
“I’d never pictured the afterlife as being so rural,” said Saxon. “But then, I’m a city boy at heart.”
“This is the animals’ heaven,” said Hawk. “It’s shaped by their needs and natures, not ours.”
“Heaven,” said Fisher slowly. “Are we really dead? I don’t feel dead....”
“I remember dying,” said Hawk, and for a long moment no one said anything.
“All right,” said Saxon. “We’re in animal heaven. What do we do now?”
Hawk smiled and shrugged. “Talk to the animals, I suppose. That’s why we came here. All we have to do is find some that look as though they might listen.”
He broke off as a lion walked slowly out of the wood towards them. Even at a distance it looked huge and majestic, the father of every lion that ever was. It walked unhurriedly among the gamboling animals and they gave way before it, but none of them seemed to fear the lion, or be alarmed by its presence. Hawk and Fisher and Saxon watched it approach, but felt no need to run or fight. It finally came to a halt before them, and the warm, sharp smell of cat washed over them. It stood a good five feet tall at the shoulder, its broad, massive head on a level with theirs. It sheer presence was almost overwhelming. Its eyes were a tawny gold, and full of all the understanding in the world. When it spoke, its breath was warm and sweet.
You can’t stay here, growled a voice in their minds, low and soft like the wind that has within it the promise of a storm. This is not your place. You don’t belong here.
“Where is here?” said Hawk tentatively. “Is this ... the animals’ spirit lands? The Fields of the Lord?”
No, said the lion, and there was amusement in the deep, calm voice.
You have not traveled that far. This is the place the slaughtered beasts made for themselves. Dying in pain and horror, they drew on the power in the place they came from, the magic that had been invested in that place long before the slaughterhouse was built over it. As more and more blood was spilled, so the many deaths awakened the ancient magic and made it strong again, and the beasts used it to build this place. Their bodies died in the slaughterhouse, but their spirits lived on, here. And here they stayed, down all the many years, nursing their fears and hatreds and planning their revenge, until finally the Unknown Door was opened in the only way it could be; from the other side.
The lion paused, and looked briefly around him before returning his ancient, discomforting gaze to the humans before him.
Not all the animals have gone, despite the opening of the Door. The small and the timid have stayed, happy in their rest from the cares of the world. And some beasts with greater hearts would not go, having put aside thoughts of vengeance. Hatred has never come easily to the animal kind. It is not in their nature, though some have learned it from humans.
“The ones who did go are killing people,” said Hawk, his voice seeming small and insignificant after the restrained thunder of the lion. “We came here to try and put a stop to the hatred. If we can.”
Why should they stop? They are only doing what you did to them.
“That doesn’t make it right,” said Saxon. “You can’t put right a wrong by doing wrong yourself. I found that out. Vengeance feels really good while you’re planning it, but in the end you’ve achieved nothing, and all you feel is empty.”
“The soulstorm must stop,” said Fisher. “They’re killing the good along with the bad, the innocent along with the guilty, the caring along with the uncaring.”
“And if they don’t stop,” said Hawk, “they’ll become exactly what they’ve hated all these years, and then they’ll never know peace.”
The lion nodded its great head slowly.
You’re right. The soulstorm has stopped.
The three humans looked at each other. “Just like that?” said Fisher.
Just like that. Through me the beasts have heard your words and seen the colors of your hearts, and they have listened. You have shown them the darkness in their own hearts, and they are ashamed. The soulstorm is over, and the beasts are returning. They wanted blood and vengeance for so long, but having tasted its cold cruelty, they found it sickened them. Beasts may kill and even torture in the heat of their blood, but vengeance is a human trait, and they have turned their hack on it.
“So, what happens now?” said Hawk.
The beasts will leave this place. It has served its purpose, and they are now free to go on to what awaits them. And you must go back to your own world.
“We can’t,” said Fisher. “We gave up our lives to get here.”
And the beasts give them back to you, and all the other lives they took. Goodbye, my children. Until we meet again.
The lion turned, and walked back towards the woods. Hawk stumbled a step or two after it. He felt deep within him that he was saying goodbye to something great and wonderful, and part of him didn’t want to go.
“Wait! Who are you?”
The lion looked back over its shoulder and smiled.
Don’t you know?
The spirit lands faded away and were gone.
Back in the cellar under Champion House, Hawk sat up slowly and looked around him. Fisher and Saxon lay beside him in a scuffed chalk pentacle, and as he watched, they began to stir and sit up. Hawk rose awkwardly to his feet and stretched slowly, feeling the muscles reluctantly unkink. The blood and the chains and the dark presences were gone, and the cellar was just an old stone chamber again. Fisher and Saxon got to their feet and looked around them. Hawk chuckled. They looked just as bewildered as he felt. He grabbed Fisher and hugged her to him, and she hugged back with a strength that threatened to force all the breath out of him.
“We’re alive!” yelled Hawk. “We’re alive again!”
Hawk and Fisher whooped and shrieked and staggered round in circles, still clinging tightly to each other, as though afraid that one might vanish if the other let go. Saxon moved quietly away, and crouched down beside Horn’s body, still lying on the floor. He examined it carefully, and then moved over to Eleanour Todd’s body. Hawk and Fisher finally broke apart, and went to see what he was doing. Saxon rose to his feet again, and there was a knife in his hand, dripping blood. Hawk looked quickly at the bodies. Both Horn and Todd had had their throats cut. Saxon met Hawk and Fisher’s gaze calmly.
“I just wanted to make sure they stayed dead. Unlike Madigan and Ritenour and Glen, they didn’t have a mark on them, and since the beasts are supposed to be returning all the life forces Ritenour stole ...”
Fisher suddenly froze, and clutched at Hawk’s arm. “Listen ... can you hear movement up above?”
Hawk looked at Fisher, and then they both bolted for the stairs, with Saxon close behind. They ran through the House with broad, disbelieving grins on their faces, passing bewildered mercenaries who’d also apparently just risen from the dead. Hawk and Fisher knocked them unconscious again, just to be on the safe side, and then pounded up the stairs to the fourth floor, with Saxon right there at their side. They heard the clamour of voices from the main parlour long before they got there. Finally they stood in the doorway and watched as the two Kings and their fellow hostages milled round the room, talking excitedly and trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Apparently some of the hostages had shaken off their daze faster than the mercenaries, and had taken advantage of their captors’ dazed state to get in the first blow. As result of which, the hostages were now in charge of a rather battered-looking group of disarmed mercenaries.
Take it easy,
said Storm’s voice in their heads suddenly.
I’ve alerted the Council as to what’s happened, and they’re sending men in to secure the House. And maybe then you’d care to explain exactly what the bloody hell has been going on, and how come you’ve all come back from the dead!
Hawk grinned.
You’d never believe me....