The World to Come

by Eildon Rhymer

What if the Dark had won at the end of Silver on the Tree? The world is sliding into darkness, and only tattered remnants of the Light remain. Will, Bran and the Drews grow to adulthood, and each to their own destiny in this World to Come.

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Part two picks up the story some six years after the end of part one.

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Part two: chapter one

The letter

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"Letter for you." The boy swallowed anxiously. "Sir," he added, later than he should have, but earlier than some managed.

Bran took it without looking at it. "Dismissed." There were no thanks, not any more.

He walked to the small barred window, made, of course, from bullet-proof glass. He wondered how old the boy had been. Eighteen, perhaps. Bran remembered being eighteen, fresh from school, determined to tread his own path and free himself from expectations. Some paths, it seemed, were dug too deep. They were like chasms, and climbing out was impossible. All you could do was come to like it.

He ran his fingers over the glass. It was cold, and thick enough that the courtyard outside looked as if it was in another world. Sometimes, in winter, he went for weeks without being outside in daytime. There was skin on his face that had not been touched by sunlight for half a dozen years.

The letter slipped to the floor. Bran bent to pick it up, and saw his name on the envelope, hand-written in black. "Pendragon," it read, and nothing more. He pressed his lips together. This was the name he had chosen to go by, but sometimes he still felt a little jolt when he saw it. He still thought of himself as Bran, although he could not understand why. Bran was the name of a weak child, lied to by everyone he loved.

He tossed it on the desk. There was a knock at the door, and a woman entered, bearing his morning coffee. He did not know her name, and did not ask. He took it, looked at it, and said, face impassive, "I prefer it stronger."

"I'm sorry, sir." She flapped and flustered, visibly afraid. Pendragon despised her. Bran, not quite dead inside her, pitied her. "I'll get you another one."

He let out a breath. "Leave it," he said, his voice flat. "You can go."

He was twenty-four years old, and feared by someone old enough to be his… He stopped that thought just in time, because she was backing out, and might still be able to see his face.

When the door was safely closed, Bran sat down stiffly at his desk. He did not open the letter. He did nothing at all, just for a moment. When he sipped the coffee, though, it had gone completely cold. That happened quite often. Moments became hours, and he had no idea where they went.

The door opened again, this time without the warning of a knock. Bran snapped his head up. "I thought I told you…"

"You tell me nothing, Bran." The voice was mild, almost pleasant, but in this man, such a tone could be a weapon, as harsh as any shouting.

He shuttered himself, masks upon masks. "What are you doing here?"

His guardian sat down in the chair that had become "his" chair. No-one else used it. Bran sometimes wondered if they knew. "Rude, Bran?" his guardian said, arching an eyebrow. He was the only one who still called him "Bran." "I thought you'd got over this little rebellious patch of yours."

Bran shook his head. He moved his hand from the desk, so he could clench it on his lap, unseen. He had refused all his guardian's offers upon leaving school, and had set out to do… something. All he had found was doors that closed in his face. The world was not like school. People were scared or hostile. He tried to start at the bottom, but found that he did not like it.

Then someone had laughed at his appearance… His guardian himself had come to collect Bran from jail.

The day after that, Bran had said yes.

"I've told you lots of times," Bran said now, to the ageless man in the chair before him, "I didn't choose the Dark. I still haven't. I despise what you stand for. I just despise the Light more."

"Despise us, do you?" His guardian's blue eyes glittered like chips of ice. "May I remind you, Bran, how much I paid for your education? How many strings I had to pull to get you this job?"

Something twisted inside him, and made him reckless. "You didn't pay anything," he spat. "It was all stolen or extorted anyway."

"Come now, Bran." His guardian spread his hands. "Not stolen. All of mankind is ours. They are merely stewards of our riches. They give us gifts and tribute because…"

"You've tricked your way into power," Bran said. "No-one out there knows that the Dark exists. They think this is all the work of men. Even the general on the throne. He doesn't know what you are. Only I know, and I…"

"Will not tell." His guardian leant forward in his chair, and Bran felt the breath stop in his throat. "What we are, you are. You threw your lot in with us. If we fall, you fall." He steepled his fingers together, and Bran felt the breath flood into his lungs again. He tried not to gasp. "Besides, we both know that you will never tell. You whine and rail like the spoiled child you are, but deep down you like it. We both know that you like it."

"I don't," Bran tried to protest, because he had to. But he remembered the boys at school. He remembered standing over the man who had laughed at him, declaring that no-one would ever dare taunt him ever again.

If you were powerful enough, no-one dared betray you.

"Well…" His guardian brushed his hands together briskly. "On to other business. Your friends of the Light…"

"They're not my friends!" Bran said hotly, then flushed, realising that he had let his guardian bait him yet again.

"They are troublesome." All smiles died on Bran's guardian's face. "They are persistent and troublesome. Stronger measures are called for. The general has decided to set up a new body within the security services specifically to hunt down the last agents of the Light, and all who sympathise with them."

"He's decided that, has he?" Bran said, to cover his racing thoughts. The general decided nothing, although he still thought that he decided everything. The Dark ruled mankind, though men did not know it.

"You're wasted in this job," his guardian said, studying his nails.

Bran pictured himself confronting Merriman, and spitting in his face as he hurled every one of his lies back at him. He imagined seeing all hope die in Will Stanton's face. He imagined them cowering before him, humbled and pleading and broken.

"I'll do it," he blurted out. "I want to be part of it."

His guardian did not respond. Instead, he said softly, "I see you didn't open my letter."

"Letter?" Bran echoed. His hand moved unconsciously for the white envelope. "Why write when…?"

"Maybe it was a test." His guardian's face gave nothing away. "Maybe I changed my mind, and decided that I wanted to see your reaction with my own eyes."

Bran's stomach clenched, and his heart started to beat very fast. "I… I'll open it after you've gone, then."

"Very well." His guardian stood up. "You will receive intructions soon about your new assignment." He nodded slightly, a mocking bow. "Pendragon."

Bran watched him go. He picked up the letter, then glanced at the bin, wondering if he dared. His hand was trembling, as if he was just a weak and unloved child, and not the person he had become.

I can face it, he told himself. Whatever it is.

He tore open the envelope, and read the words within.

For a minute, he sat very still, his eyes closed. He blinked. His eyes felt wet, but that wetness burnt like flames, and flames turned into fury.

"Why did you think I'd care?" He strode across the room and flung open the door. His guardian was outside, just as he had known he would be. "He wasn't my father!" he cried. "He was nothing to me."

"So now I know." His guardian smiled.

"He was nothing," Bran repeated. "No, not nothing. He lied. I hate him. You can't hate nothing."

"No." Still that smile. Bran felt a sudden overwhelming urge to tear it off with his nails.

"And why should I care when the funeral is?" Bran demanded. "Why tell me that? Did you actually think I might want to go?"

"Certain… others might expect you to go."

"They all think I'm dead." It was a strange thing to say it. It felt like a cold breeze whistling through the chambers of his heart.

"Not all." His guardian's eyes gleamed like steel. "Some know. Some might be there, to claim you back. To lie. To get revenge."

Will, he thought. He pictured Will Stanton standing there on the mountain, watching a tiny procession of mourners issue from Own Davies' small cottage. He saw him leaning forward, waiting for Bran, watching… But it was a child Will that he saw. It was a child Bran that he imagined following Owen's coffin disconsolately, tears pouring unseen behind his dark glasses. It was a child Bran who brightened as he saw Will, and was comforted, knowing that he would never entirely be alone.

It was all lies. If Will was there, he went there armed with lies and armoured with trickery and magic. If Will was there, he was there with a trap.

"But the hunter," smiled his guardian, "can oft become the hunted. The trapper can be trapped."

Bran whirled away from him, and stumbled into his office. He slammed the door, and locked it, and then he stood. He just stood.

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Part two: chapter two

Dust to dust

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Merriman was far away.

Owen Davies is dead, Will thought. That means…

He paced to the window, and back again; ran his hands through his longish hair.

Surely he wouldn't… he thought. Surely he would…

Merriman was far away. Merriman had gone north, and had been away for months, though messages still came through. Will and Merriman were closer than they had ever been. If was as if all the links that had always bound the Circle together were now focused on the few who remained. They were stronger and closer than ever. At the same time, though, they had never been further apart. Just because two people could communicate, it did not mean that they did.

Will pressed his hand to his brow. Merriman had made him promise not to seek out Bran. Merriman had hinted of terrible consequences. But maybe terrible only to me, Will thought. He had stopped visiting his family long ago. They were untouched by his visits, but to him they were still agony. They were suffering, and he could not help them, but at least they were together, while he had no-one but a cold master.

He returned to the window, with its view of nothing but darkness. No-one could see in. No-one could find him. If he needed to contact people, he went out to find them. Only Merriman knew his real name, and the world thought him dead.

But Owen is dead. Owen dead now, and John Rowlands two years before him, both of them dying prematurely. They had both died in spirit years before. So much had died, that day when Bran and Will could have slipped into the ocean and gone forever.

Will wondered if there would be anyone there to mourn the man. "Bran won't be there," he said aloud, as if the echo of his words would linger in the room, and be there to defend him from Merriman's wrath. "I'd be going for Owen's sake, because he served the Light, and deserves this goodbye."

And thus, so easily, could decisions be made.

******

The Dark was there.

The Dark was there, but Bran was not, or, at least, if Bran was there, he was hidden and Will could not see him.

Will edged forward. He did not mean to do it, but his feet started moving, one tiny step, then another.

A small group stood around the grave, looking awkward and uncomfortable at the new funeral rites. It was three years since religious services had been outlawed, but it took longer for strict enforcement to reach the remotest rural places. The chapel looked as if it had only recently been boarded up. The officer conducting the terse funeral was English. Will wondered if the minister had gone into hiding, or if his body lay beneath the other recently-dug mound.

He frowned, peering into the distance, trying to identify faces. David and Jen Evans were there, but not their sons. The other mourners were people Will did not know. They all had the pinched, closed-off look of people who did not wish to be here, but felt that they ought to be. There was discomfort, but no grief. Too many tears had been shed for the world, for true tears to fall for a man they hardly knew.

A man was standing in the shadow of a building. Will inched forward, as if drawn by an invisible string. Was it…? Could it be…? He could not express the thought. Here to mourn Owen, he told himself. That's all.

The last words were said. The mourners started to depart. Rest in peace, Owen Davies, Will thought, wrenching his thoughts back to where they were supposed to be. You were a good man. You served the Light. You didn't deserve this.

He thought of his own father, and all fathers like him. Roger Stanton and Owen Davies had both lost a son on the same day. Countless other fathers had lost their sons to death over the years, but Owen and Roger had lost theirs to lies. Comfort could have been given at any time, but had been withheld, and now, for Owen, it was too late. He had died alone, in a world that no sane man would choose to inhabit.

Will blinked. The graveyard was empty, except for the stiff-backed officer by the grave, and the figure in the shadows. As Will watched, the figure moved. Its face was in shadow, but Will shivered, suddenly sure that it was watching him.

He was not shielded in any way. Just as he could sense the Dark, agents of the Dark could sense the Light. He could not openly use his powers, in case that drew their attention. Merriman could unleash the full might of his magic on agents of the Dark, but Will had to be more covert. Unlike Merriman, Will was dead in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of the Dark as well.

His only disguise was the natural disguise of years. At twenty-four, there was nothing left of the boy of twelve who had witnessed the end of the world. He was not tall, but he was as lean as Merriman, after years of living in hiding on the fringes of society. His hair was down to his shoulders, and was often in need of a comb, raked through by anxious fingers. The Light had lost too much, and pain and loss was etched into all their faces. They were fully part of the world, bound to mankind by shared pain.

If that is Bran, Will thought, then this is surely a trap.

Yet still he edged forward. Maybe it wasn't a trap after all. Death changed things. When Owen was alive, Bran had kept away, but people often felt more charitably towards those who had died. Perhaps Bran was standing there in the shadows, weeping behind his dark glasses, crying tears that his Dark masters would never see or understand.

I could do it, Will it. Try it. Risk it. Hazard everything.

He half-closed his eyes, imagining it. Bran would look up warily, perhaps not even recognising him at first. But then Will would speak his name, an Englishman saying his name in the Welsh way, and Bran would know him. There would be no welcome, but perhaps there would be no hatred, either. Grief could make the most passionate man numb.

"I came…" Will would say.

"For Owen?" Bran's voice was harsh in Will's imagination.

Will shook his head. "For you."

"To bring me back?" Bran laughed harshly. "Drag me back to Merriman for punishment? Lock me in a room and try to turn me back to the Light Side?"

"No." Will shook his head. "I came in case you were here, grieving. I came in case you needed someone. We can go back afterwards, each to our own places. It doesn't have to change anything. But for now, today…"

His lips started moving, and he spoke the words aloud. "I am here, Bran."

The Darkness shifted, like a large beast lumbering to its feet. Will's eyes snapped open as he returned to the present. The figure was still there in the shadows, but other shapes had appeared behind him and around him. Will was too close to them. He had crept far too close.

He clenched both fists at his sides. Choices raced through his mind. He could unveil himself in all the glory of his power, and fight the Dark in open confrontation. He had grown greatly in power over the years, so victory was possible. Even failure only meant going out of Time, and there was peace and rest in that. At least he would be fighting, after a dozen years of skulking and hiding, dead to all who knew him.

He raised his hand, felt the possibility of power tingling with him, ready to break out.

The figure in the shadows was utterly still.

Or walk forward, Will thought, and do nothing at all. Surrender to Bran. Show him that I trust him, and he will give me trust in return. He will not let them hurt me.

He saw the midsummer tree, and a crystal sword, and pure hatred in the eyes of the one who wielded it. The hatred had been directed at all the Old Ones, but to Will most of all. Most of all, to Will.

Will took a slow step back, and another. The low figures edged forward into the light, and became creatures that smiled, with small, sharp teeth.

I cannot, Will thought, making a sound that was close to a sob. The world was sinking ever deeper into the darkness. The people were small and lost and afraid, staring into an abyss of hopelessness. Loved ones died, because of a ruler's caprice. Freedoms were snatched away, and behind it all lurked the Dark, laughing as it pushed mankind ever closer to the brink of doom.

Against all that stood the Old Ones, tired and dwindling, but still with power. Will had once been the youngest of many; now he was the youngest of oh so few. If he was defeated, the Circle would be weaker, the Dark would be stronger. He could not do this – could not. He could not show himself. He could not fight. All he could do was walk away.

He breathed in, and drew his magic back inside him, cherishing it like a secret hoard. As he did so, the squat shapes in the cemetery shimmered and became men, their forms grey and ordinary. Only an Old One could see through their glamour to their true forms beneath, and Will no longer saw things as an Old One. He was an ordinary man, a labourer from one of the farms, who had paused to watch a funeral, and was now walking away, having seen nothing unusual whatsoever.

The sense of Darkness reached for him, groped at him. Will emptied his mind, and walked on. He did not even shiver, though its touch sickened him. He did not let out a shuddering breath when it moved on past him, and he did not falter at all when it withdrew.

Just an ordinary man, he thought, who has seen a man buried, and is now returning to the hollow shell that is his life.

No tears showed upon his face.

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Part two: chapter three

Just words

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Today, thought Simon, not for the first time, I will do something to change this.

He thrust his hands into his pockets, pressing his jacket tightly to his body. The wind was chill, racing across the barren wilderness that had once been houses. A hotbed of dissent, the authorities had deemed it. When a fugitive had gone to ground, and no-one would divulge any information, the whole estate had been burnt. Most of the inhabitants had got out in time, but not all. People whispered in the shadows, saying that those who died had been the lucky ones.

A clock sounded from behind him. He counted the hours, tensing up a little, as everyone always did, in case he had accidentally missed the curfew. It reached six, and then stopped. It was a gloomy day, and looked dark enough for an hour later. The winter curfew was seven, unless a special pass was obtained to travel to a government-sanctioned talk or rally in the evening.

An old man approached him, shuffling along with a hungry-looking dog. Simon did not make eye contact. As their steps brought them closer and closer to each other, he looked over the rubble, blinked, and looked at the ground.

"Afternoon," the old man mumbled.

Simon swallowed, and fought the urge to look around him anxiously. The flesh on the back of his neck crept, as if with unseen eyes. "Good afternoon," he said eventually, in reply, but the man was past him now.

Simon almost called after him. What a fool he was, to still speak so to strangers. People had learned to keep their head down and touch nobody. The whole world had eyes and ears, and innocent words were twisted and turned into admissions of treachery.

He walked on. A woman passed him, and then a child. Neither of them said a word. They were like ships on their own little course, encased in a shell of metal, keeping them from others.

It wasn't like this when I was young, Simon thought, but memory was painful. He tried not to remember any more than he could help. Not everything could be suppressed, though. He remembered old ladies smiling and talking to him, ruffling Barney's hair, telling Simon how tall he was, and, oh, what a pretty little girl Jane was. He remembered his mother stopping to chat half a dozen times before she reached the local shop, and his father hailing people from the garden, or waving from the car.

It was as if the pool of words had dried up. People now said only what they had to say, and only to those they could trust. People had flown apart, the bonds between them broken. The only people who reached out were the bullies and the rulers and the lords, and they reached out to dominate, not to greet.

A car drew up beside him. Simon's heart sped up, beating audibly in his ears. "Show me your papers," a voice commanded. Simon remembered when such a voice would have been placatory, and orders phrased as requests, with a "sir" at the end.

Simon reached into his inner pocket, and pulled them out. His hands only trembled a little. He knew his papers were in order. He was heading to the shop to get some milk, and there was nothing illegal in that.

The man in the car looked at his papers. If he was disappointed to find them in order, he did not show it. "Your purpose for being out?"

"I'm going to the shops." Simon kept his head down. "I've run out of milk." He was not walking the most direct route, but the man clearly did not know the area, for he did not comment. He handed Simon his papers back, and continued on his way.

Simon let out a shaky breath. It happened often. "If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear." That's what the government said. Simon knew it was true. "The trouble is," Barney had said once, "the government defines "wrong" according to their own whims and their own purposes." Jane had turned white, hissing at Barney to be quiet, even though they were huddled in their mother's kitchen, watched by no-one. Simon had said nothing, but he had wished that he had been the one to say it, not Barney.

He hurried towards the shop. I will do something, he thought again. It was a shaky thought, almost comforting in its familiarity. Because I keep on saying it, he thought, with a sick feeling inside him, and it's become just words. I never do anything.

For six years, he had drifted. He had started at a good university, but after only a few months, all universities had closed down, replaced with training colleges designed to churn out government loyalists and enforcers. Simon had joined hundreds of thousands of students on the streets, where little work was available. He had found work eventually, but it was manual labour, and nothing he dared tell his mother about. It allowed him to share a house with three other young men. The rest he could lie about, on those occasions when he could not avoid a family visit.

He had thought of Pendragon surprisingly often. He thought of him again, as he scurried through the dusk, past the wreckage of a place that had once been full of life.

Pendragon had been a bully, but he had protected Simon, too, in his way. Pendragon had contacts high up in the government, and he was doubtless in a position of power and influence by now. He was the sort of person who could not be anything else. On the last day of school, Pendragon had as good as offered Simon a job, and Simon had turned it down, still suffused with the naivete of youth. He had wanted to strike out for himself, making something of himself, prove that the bullies had not won.

Instead, he had this. It was a shadow of a life. He was on the fringes, eking out an existence, keeping his head down, dying a little inside with every day that passed.

"I really will change things," he whispered out loud. "If not today, then soon." Hidden in his pocket, his fist clenched in secret resolution.

This was no life for him. He was made for more. He would have been more, if school had not derailed him and forced him to become something else. Perhaps he would seek out Pendragon and accept his offer after all. At least then he could be someone. He would be in a position to make a difference. He could exercise his power to make life easier for the people he cared about. He would never again have to cower in the twilight, heart pounding in terror, just because a man in a car asked to see his papers. He would be the man in the car. He would be in control.

Something surged towards him, scraping and scratching. He gasped, leaping out of its way, before he realised that it was a sheet of plastic, blown by the wind across the wasteland. He tried to smile, tried to ease his fear. See? he told himself. That's what I meant. You can't live always in fear.

He just wanted a day when he did not awaken with an ache in his chest. He just wanted a morning when he did not drag himself out of bed, knowing that nothing stretched before him but uselessness.

"Good evening," a voice said.

Simon swung round. A young man around his own age had emerged from a side road. He was wearing a scuffed leather jacket, and his fair hair looked as if it needed a cut. He was smiling, and Simon almost smiled back. He liked the look of this man. Then, when the man drew closer, Simon saw that the smile did not reach his eyes. He knew what wariness looked like. It stared back at him whenever he looked in the mirror.

"I need to get on," Simon mumbled, making his excuses before the man could ask him anything. "Shop's closing soon."

"I know," the man said, still smiling. "I've often seen you walk this way. You always seem so preoccupied. And sometimes…" The smile faded. Simon thought he was supposed to understand the meaning in the man's expression, but he did not. "Sometimes you speak to yourself…"

Simon turned cold all over. He thought the end would come in a black car, and stern men with steely eyes. He had never looked for it on a wind-torn street corner, from a man who, in another world, could perhaps be his friend.

The man leant so close that Simo could feel the warmth of his breath on the side of his neck. "You want to change things." It was clipped and urgent, completely at odds with the relaxed tone of his greeting. "Why don't we walk for a while."

Simon did not know if it was a request or a command. He nodded. It was the only thing he could do.

___

Part two: chapter four

Left behind

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Her mother was fretting again. "Jane!" she called, her voice querulous. "Make sure there's enough sugar. Is the bathroom clean enough?"

Jane scrubbed fiercely at a stain on the working surface. She did not like the bitterness that she so often felt. It bubbled inside her until it felt as if her chest was going to explode. When she smoothed her clothes down, ready to return to her mother, she often smoothed her face, too, and carried the movement down across her body, pressing down on those things that she could not show.

"Jane!"

Jane let out a long breath. "Coming." She smoothed nothing away this time, but when she picked up the small tray, with its tea and biscuits, she clutched it tight enough to turn her knuckles white. The surface of the tea quivered as if with a coming storm.

Her mother was hunched on the couch, knees covered with a thin blanket. She looked twenty years older than she had looked when her husband was still alive. She had not painted a single thing since he had disappeared. Drained of life and energy, she spent her days watching television, and worrying.

"Anything on?" Jane still tried to be bright. She tried to talk. She tried to pretend. She did not think she could bear it, otherwise.

Her mother bunched the blanket in her hand, then let it go. "More about those sorcerers."

Jane set the tray down, and put the cup and saucer into her mother's outstretched hand. "Do you think they're real? It's hard to believe, the things the government's saying about them."

"Don't say that!" Tea slopped over the edge of the cup, spilling into the saucer. Her mother's head darted from side to side, in case government enforcers were hiding behind the couch or lurking behind the curtains, listening to everything.

Jane sat down, perching on the edge of the couch, hands clasped on her knees. "It is hard to believe, though, isn't it, mother? I mean, magic, in this day and age… But, then, a dozen years ago, the idea that Britain could become a police state was as laughable as magic. Once people accept one impossible thing…"

"I don't want you to talk like this." Her mother put the tea cup down. "I've already lost my husband. I couldn't bear it if I lost you, too."

The television flickered darkly, with its dramatised scenes of dark sorcerers cackling as they struck down innocents. The acting was bad, but sometimes the television showed fuzzy films showing distant views of real so-called sorcerers. The sorcerers could be anywhere and everywhere, the television constantly told them. All loyal citizens were to denounce anyone who showed the slightest signs of sympathising with such a one.

"They killed your father, Jane!" her mother shouted, suddenly vehement. "It makes sense. They're behind everything."

But they aren't, Jane thought, the thought coming into her mind so clear and certain that it was as if someone else had spoken it. They're trying to stop it. The government was behind the sorry state that the world was in. The sorcerers were opposing the government, and that meant that they were on the side of good. We should help them, Jane thought. I should help them.

She bit her lip, frowning anxiously at the tenor of her thoughts. The sorcerers were just an invention of the government. They were probably laughing even now, vying with each other to invent an even more ridiculous lie for the sheep-like people to believe. How it must amuse them to watch the country torn apart with suspicion and paranoia because of something that did not even exist. They could not be real. But they are, her heart told her.

She got up and stamped back towards the kitchen, leaving her mother to her lies. Jane had spent ten years suppressing her heart. While her mother lived, that was all she could ever do.

The doorbell rang before she had left the room. "Is that Simon, early?" her mother trilled. "Or is it…?" She pressed her hand to her chest.

Jane could not entirely suppress the fear that coursed through her. She was only human, after all. An unexpected knock on the door could lead to many things, few of them good.

Once, she had dreamed that they came to take her away. They had cold, silver eyes, and black gloves, and faces that did not know how to smile. They led her to a car with blackened windows, and she was terrified, but she was excited, too. At least when she was terrified, she was also alive. She was feeling. She was so tired of bleakness and emptiness, trapped in the same four walls.

She edged quietly to the door. "Who is it?"

"Simon."

It was her brother's voice, but it sounded different from normal, though she could not tell how. Sometimes she still started with surprise to hear her brothers speak with the voices of men. She had been the adult in the house since she was fifteen, but sometimes she wondered if she would ever stop thinking of herself as a child.

She unbolted the door, and Simon came in. His eyes were shining. She could almost see the thoughts and feelings churning beneath his skin, like parasites desperate to burst out.

She stifled a burst of jealousy. "You're early," she told him. "You're never early. I'm not ready."

"Jane?" her mother called. "Is that Simon?"

"Go through," Jane urged Simon. "Talk to her, while I work on dinner."

"I'd rather talk to you," Simon said. "I've got something to…"

"Talk to her." Jane surprised herself with her vehemence. The nameless feelings were still there, so close to the surface on Simon's face. She wanted to claw them out. It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair! She smoothed all thoughts away. "You visit so seldom," she said. "She looks forward to it so."

"But it's so hard," Simon said. He looked resentful, those bubbling emotions quenched a little by her words. "She makes things so hard. She brings me down, and things have been hard enough..."

I have it every day. Jane dug her nails into her palms, into the well-worn grooves there. Every day for ten years.

Simon sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm being selfish." His voice was flat, as if he was saying it for form's sake, and did not really mean it. He stiffened his shoulders and headed for the living room, like a martyr destined for the sake.

Was it possible to hate someone, even as you loved them, Jane wondered. But the word "love" felt cold in her mind. It was like a ghost city, seen in dreams, always far away, always for someone else.

She heard Simon greet their mother, and heard her mother's reply. The television went off. It never went off for Jane.

She retreated into the kitchen, closed the door. She could no longer hear their words. Her hands shook as she busied herself with plates and cutlery. She cleaned a cup that was already clean, and stirred a sauce that was not yet on the heat.

The door opened, and she tensed, clutching the spoon, then dropping it. Simon came in. "She wants more tea. It wasn't strong enough last time."

"You pour it, then." Jane jabbed her finger towards the pot, though she kept her voice quiet. "There's still some in the pot."

Simon made no move to do so. He put the tea cup down on the kitchen table, and stood beside it, clutching the back of a chair. "I wanted to talk to you." His voice was bubbling again. "Something's happened."

She felt herself turn cold, even though his tone was not at all grim. She did not ask him what. She knew he wanted her to.

"I met someone a few months ago," Simon said.

A girlfriend, then. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Even in this terrible and uncertain world, people still met and fell in love. Children were born, and life was passed on. She saw then through her windows, sometimes – couples walking hand in hand, still foolish enough to smile.

"I can't tell you his real name," Simon said, "but he goes by the name of Phil. He's in the Resistance."

Love would be better, she thought. She turned her back on Simon, and thrust the spoon into the sauce. It scraped horribly on the bottom of the pan. "Then he'll be captured soon," she said, "if he tells that to strangers."

"He didn't tell me that at first, of course." Simon spoke as if she was ridiculously stupid, not really worth bothering with. "It was weeks before he trusted me. He had to see if I was worthy. It was like a test, I suppose."

"And you passed." She closed her eyes. Things spun away from her in her mind, fleeing and leaving her. She was alone at the centre, unable even to call. "How you must have liked that."

"I've joined the Resistance, Jane," Simon blurted out. He sounded impossibly pleased with himself. "At last I'm doing something. I've been sitting around for far too long, moping and complaining, but never doing anything. Everyone has. Well, let them carry on moping, but I'm out there doing something. I'm fighting for them, even if they're too afraid to fight for themselves."

Not everyone can fight, she thought. She wanted to hurl that that him, confront him with the reality of living with their mother. Or sometimes people have to fight so hard just to get through one day without screaming, that nothing else is possible.

She did not say that. Her life was built on never saying what she felt. "You shouldn't be telling me this," she said, instead.

"I had to tell someone," Simon said. "Jane, I feel so alive. I feel like I used to feel years ago, before that awful school. See? I can even talk about that now. It can't hurt me. Nothing can hurt me. I'm alive again. I'm going to change the world."

"Or die," she whispered. "Or get us all killed. They do that, you know. They strike at the families of people who are known to be in the Resistance. Ignorance might have been a defence, but probably not. Still, you shouldn't have told me. You shouldn't tell anyone."

"I thought I could trust you." She had finally succeeded in killing the excitement in Simon's voice. She took no joy in it. "I haven't told anyone else, just you."

"I'm sorry." She passed her hand across her face, and through her tangled hair. I'm just jealous, she thought. I want to slap you for your naivete. I want to be you. I want you to live as I do, just for a month. "I'm just afraid," she said. "It would break mother's heart if anything happened to you."

"It won't," Simon assured her. "And, if it does, I am not afraid."

A child, she thought. He was a boy in the badly-fitting body of a man. Perhaps their whole generation was like that. They had lost their childhoods to despair and darkness, but part of them would forever remain a forlorn child, wishing that the world would come back for them.

"Take mother her tea," she said wearily. "Don't breathe a word of this to her."

Simon nodded. Only when he was safely away did she cry.

___

Part two: chapter five

Like strangers in the night

___

When the door opened, Merriman opened his eyes, but did not move. He was sitting in the battered leather armchair in the corner, still wrapped in the dark coat he wore outside. The fire had burnt down to almost nothing, and the candles remained unlit in their wall sconces. The room was cold enough for his breath to turn to steam, wreathing around his face.

Will entered quietly, closing the door behind him. He did not see Merriman. Merriman’s shoulders slumped a little when he noticed that. He was not deliberately hiding. Will ought to have been instantly aware of him. The fact that he remained unaware spoke of a truth that Merriman wished was not true.

Will leant back against the door for over a minute, his eyes closed, head leaning back against the scarred wood. When he finally walked to the fire, his steps were weary. He was limping, and his right arm was pressed to his side, guarding an injury either in the limb, or on the side itself.

He knelt down in front of the fire. Merriman heard him suck in a sharp breath as the movement pained him, but no pain showed on his face. Even when he thinks himself unwatched… There was too much sorrow in that thought.

There was a crate of chopped logs beside the fire, and Will reached into it with his left hand, and threw one log into the fire, and then another. The fire darkened for a moment, then brightened, throwing its flickering light onto Will’s weary face. It made the shadows seem deeper, or maybe Will had lost more weight since Merriman had last seen him. Maybe the shadows would be there even in the brightest sunlight.

Will held his left hand out to the fire, palm outwards. It was not a gesture of power, but the gesture of a freezing man who needed warmth. His face visibly tightened with pain as he brought the right hand out to join it. There was no blood on it. That at least was something.

He thought himself alone. Merriman felt a sudden stab of guilt at watching him like this, although it was his right. He had spent thousands of years watching unseen. People showed things when they thought no-one was watching. If he knew I was here, Merriman thought, would he show even this much pain? He thought the answer was no.

He was not aware of moving, but the chair creaked gently beneath him. Will whirled round, his hands outstretched in warding. "It's me, Will," Merriman said softly. "It's only me."

Will lowered his hands. Merriman could see the breath painted in the air, shallow and fast.

"I startled you," Merriman said. "I'm sorry. I should have used mind-speech first." The sense of an Old One, mind to mind, could not be replicated even by the Dark. Everything else could.

"I shouldn't have been startled." Will did not move from the fire. His back was half turned to Merriman, his face slightly shielded.

"Yes," Merriman said. "Yes, you should have. With the things we are facing, and the things our enemies are capable of, it is better to err on the side of over-caution."

Will gave a bark of bitter laughter, hastily cut short. He threw another log onto the fire, still using his left hand.

"You're hurt," Merriman said, when Will was still again.

"Nothing that won't heal." Will used the tone of polite finality that Merriman had used so often on prying mortals.

"Sit down." Merriman stood up, offering Will his chair. "I'll get you something to eat."

"I'm not hungry," Will said, but he took the chair. He lowered himself stiffly, but relaxed back into it with a sigh. "A difficult few days," he said, in useless explanation, "but I did what I meant to do."

Merriman did not ask what it was. They worked independently, and had done so for years. Will had been an Old One since he was a child, but the human part of him was now fully adult, too. They both worked for the same purpose, but they seldom met. Will had his secrets. More than I had realised, Merriman thought.

Merriman, though, had the greatest secret of all, and one that could never be told.

"A drink, then," Merriman offered. He poured Will some water from the pitcher in the corner. "It's somewhat cold, but pure, and that's something."

Will took it, but did not drink. "Why are you here?"

A memory came to Merriman then. It felt like a lifetime ago, although in the endless years of his immortal life, it was but yesterday. Merriman had driven up to Will's parents' house, ready to take him to Cornwall. Will had been outwardly polite, a stranger greeting a stranger, but inside his mind, he had been over-joyed. It's marvellous to see you, he had told Merriman, meaning it with everything that he was.

Now it had come to this. There was no-one to watch them, but they hedged around each other like the strangers they had once pretended to be. Neither of them had smiled since meeting tonight.

"I had time," Merriman said. "The Resistance is flourishing in the north now. Their leader's a good man. He needs to make his own choices. We have to play a more active role in man's affairs than we used to, but we are not like those of the Dark. We step back when we can."

"Yes." Will pushed his head back into the high armchair, and closed his eyes.

Merriman knew how to read his expression, but he did not say anything. It was harder for Will to step back than it was for Merriman. Merriman was insulated by the years. For millennia, he had watched men rise and fall. He had watched friends die, and flame and battle consume places that had once been beautiful. He had lived through the darkness that followed the loss of Arthur, and he seen the harshest winter finally give way to spring.

Will had none of Merriman's armour. Will had been separated from his family at twelve, and brought up by Merriman, who by necessity had treated him entirely as an Old One, and never as a boy, but that changed nothing. Will had been born into this world, and was still tied to it. He had family and friends here, and he had known no other world. Merriman watched, but Will was part of it. As the world crumbled, he crumbled, like all who were born on the earth, and lived to see such a thing.

Merriman had not wept for more than a thousand years. He did not weep now, but he knew that the tears were there, just a thought away.

"I came to see you, Will," he said softly. Will's eyes snapped open, but his face stiffened like stone. "No, not to hear any reports from you. I trust you. Just to… see you."

"Oh." It was the slightest little breath of a sound. Will closed his eyes again, leaning his head against the wing of the chair.

Merriman opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. When he took the glass from Will's hand, Will made no move to stop him. "Sleep," Merriman whispered. "I'll watch over you."

Will made an indistinct sound. Within a few minutes, he was asleep.

How long had it been, Merriman wondered, since Will had been able to relax in sleep, knowing that there was no need to stay on guard? The Dark could attack in sleep and dreams, and an Old One was as vulnerable as any mortal if attacked when unconscious.

I am so sorry, Will, he thought. There was never going to be a good ending for you.

If the Light had triumphed, Will would have been left alone, the last Old One remaining in the world. It would have been a cold path, but a necessary one, and the world would have been full of love and light and freedom. Instead, the Dark had triumphed, and Will was faced with this.

I could have eased it for you, Merriman thought. I could have been less harsh. I could have pushed less. I could have given you more. I could tell you what I have seen.

He let out a breath, moved his hand above Will's sleeping face, as if to stroke the cheek that he would never touch in the flesh. But I cannot. I could not. I never can.

___

Part two: chapter six

A walk in the park

___

Barney stood beside a weed-choked patch of land, that had once been a glorious flower bed. He did not even have to close his eyes to imagine what it had once looked like. Stuffed into his pocket, his hand itched to paint it. He would fill the painting with sunlight and flowers, but most of all, he would fill it with people.

There were still people out in the park. Boys still played, kicking footballs at make-shift goals. Young families brought their children out to play on their bikes, or just to practice running free, in a place where the air was relatively free of smoke. There were times in the summer when you could even pretend that nothing had changed, as long as you did not look up or left or right; as long as you did not blink.

Barney was here in the park to meet someone. He did not know who it would be. That was how it always was. Safer that way, they told him, and he supposed he agreed. Still, sometimes it would be nice to meet the same person a second time, and perhaps, in due course, to build up a friendship. Strangers were safer than friends, but less satisfying. He missed friendship most of all, more even than the art. At least the paintings lived on unhindered in his mind. No-one could take that away, or ever would.

He started to stroll along the path. There were few eyes in the park, and no ears, but it did not do to stay still for too long, not without a clear purpose. His course took him close to the boys who were playing football, and he stopped to watch them for a while.

He heard the footsteps come up behind him, of course. He did not turn round, did not alter his stance in any way, but he was aware of them. He was ready for anything, except for what he got. "You!" hissed a voice. "What are you doing here?"

Only at the end of it did he recognise his brother. Barney turned round slowly, but inside he was thinking furiously. Was it better to play this as a family encounter, or to feign indifference? He could think of advantages to both. If They were watching… If They knew…

He made up his mind. "Simon!" He hugged his brother, and continued to hold him by the upper arms, shaking his head incredulously as he looked him full in the face.

Simon frowned. He looked cold, or perhaps even hurt.

"You can at least pretend this is a happy reunion," Barney whispered, his smiled never faltering. "Just in case someone's watching. Just in case someone's been wondering why I've been hanging around in the park for so long."

Simon hesitated for too long. When he finally hugged Barney back, it was stiff and awkward. Oh well, Barney thought, it will just look as if we've had an argument. Countless families have. At least it will give us an excuse if we talk intensely in whispers. We're English. Can't be washing our dirty linen in public, after all.

"What are you doing here?" Simon demanded, when he had released Barney. "You should go. I'm supposed to be meeting…"

"Me," Barney told him placidly. Simon was wearing the pre-arranged sign, as was he. There was no mistaking it, though Simon evidently wanted to.

"You." Simon frowned, shaking his head. "You're in the…"

Barney hushed him with an urgent hand on his arm. There were no ears here, but there were some things that you never said out loud, even when alone.

"How long?" Simon's arms were hanging limply at his sides. He looks as if I've punched him, Barney thought. I wonder why.

"Six years," Barney said. "Not long after they killed Mr Thomas."

"Six years." One of Simon's hands slowly clenched into a fist. "You were only a child. You didn't tell me. You didn't tell any of us."

"Of course not. Only a fool tells anyone about something like this." Barney shook his head. "Is that what you're upset about, Simon? Because I didn't tell you?"

"I'm not upset," Simon said stiffly. Barney had never realised how bad his brother was at lying. Or maybe it was just that Barney had become so good at it. He had been playing a man's role since the age of sixteen, working in a role that could get him tortured and killed if he made a single slip. It had been so hard at first not to tell his family. Part of him had still been a child, but he was a child no longer.

But Simon still is. The thought was strange, and he did not know where it came from. He's older than me, but younger, too.

Perhaps the years had made him cold, too, for all he said was, "There's no time for this. You came here with a message for me."

"For you?" Simon echoed. "Are you the…"

"Of course not." Barney was amused, rather than irritated. "I'm just a messenger, like you. I'll pass it on to the person I need to pass it on to, and what happens after that, I cannot wonder. No-one knows names. No-one knows the leaders. That's how it is. We're just minor cogs in the wheel, and we never see the rest of the wheel, but…"

"And you're happy with that?" Simon had both fists clenched now. "After six years, you're still a messenger boy? I'm not like you, then. I want to make a difference."

Amusement warred with resentment. For Simon to stand here, preaching… But this is his first job, Barney realised. He'd seen others like him over the years. Sometimes people joined the Resistance because they dreamed of glory and heroism. Most of them soon realised that even the smallest, most unsung job served the cause, and buckled down. The few who did not were dead.

This last thought killed both laughed and anger. "You can't carry on thinking like that," Barney whispered fervently. "It will get you killed."

"If I die," Simon declared, "then so be it."

Barney could have shaken him. There were so many things he needed to say to him, but there was so little time. Even here in the park they had to guard their words, and keep things short. There were some things that could never be said.

"Simon…" He raked his hand through his hair, sighing. "Simon, please. You can't let it matter. You can't let any of it matter. So I joined before you did. So I kept it secret. That's how it is. You have to keep your head down, and do whatever task is asked of you, however small. It's not a competition. The cause matters. The cause is all that matters. I'm just one of the many, and so are you."

"I don't want to be…"

"No," Barney commanded him. "What you want doesn't matter. You said you're willing to die for this. Better, though, to live. Show your devotion to the cause not by embracing a heroic but senseless death, but by enduring small, boring tasks, by enduring loneliness, by doing what is needed, even if no-one ever knows it was you who did it."

"You make me sound so petty." Simon sounded crushed.

"You are." Barney felt no remorse. It was better to crush Simon now, than to see him killed. If Simon was captured, the whole family would tumble like cards, and the cause would be worse off by two men.

"I wanted it to be different," Simon whispered. "I wanted…"

"I know," Barney said gently. "Now tell me your message, and go back and tell your captain that you did the task as asked, and that you did it well."

Simon told him. His voice was low and defeated, but by the end there was anger in his eyes. He turned and left without a goodbye.

I have lost him, Barney thought. Such things mattered. He could not act on them, but they still mattered.

___

Part two: chapter seven

Laughter

___

They did not often laugh, these men who were fast becoming the most feared men in Britain. They smiled, though. With such men, a tiny smile could carry more meaning that another man's laughter.

They smiled in the van, but Bran was not meant to see it. He was sitting at the front, his body turned towards the window, his chin resting on his hand. Everything about him shouted that he did not want to be here. He was staring outside, pretending that these men did not exist. That was what they thought, anyway. In reality, his eyes missed nothing, hidden behind their dark glasses. Reflections in the windows brought him their smiles. The mirror brought him their smirks.

I will show them, he thought. He could not ignore this. He never had been able to. He still bore the scars from the fight that had landed him in prison, years before. Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life was scars.

They reached their destination. The men trooped out, and formed up, armed and professional. There were no smiles now. These men were good; Bran knew that. Sometimes he was proud of them, and sometimes he was almost scared by them. It was not good to enjoy inflicting pain.

Bran took his place at their head. He was their superior officer, but he had never gone out in the field. He gave orders, and he received the reports afterwards. He saw the prisoners, but he had never seen a capture. People under his command had killed, but he had never seen it happen.

He had dreamed about this the night before; dreamed about blood on his hands, and screaming. In his dreams, the dying man had gazed at him with enormous sorrow, and his eyes had been Will's.

"You will do your duty as you always do," he told them. His own gun was heavy and awkward at his hip. "This changes nothing, except that I am here to watch it."

A spy had reported that a Resistance group was due to meet in this builders' yard tonight. Three of them, he said, and one of them either a sorcerer, or a close companion of them. Because he disappeared into nothing, I swear to you, the spy had protested. All such reports had to be investigated. Traps had to be set, even if they caught nothing.

His men fanned out, their black uniforms blending into the semi-darkness. Bran followed them, but stayed behind. No-one was watching him, so he was able to take his glasses off. With them removed, he could see a little better, but not much. Everything was shades of grey, even the sky. When the moon rose, it, too, would be sheeted with grey. There was always something burning; always smoke in the air.

Something twisted painfully inside him. A memory filled his mind, so strong that he could smell it. A clean mountainside, a crisp sky, and the air so fresh that it went right through you and washed everything else away. Coming home, breathless, skin tingling, and…

No. He pushed it aside, and strode quietly after his men. They had taken up positions behind crates, and were readying themselves for action, communicating with hand signals. They knew their jobs well. How many raids had they gone on, Bran wondered. This was nothing out of the ordinary for them, and they all knew exactly what to do.

These were the men that he was commanding. Why am I here? he wondered, as pure panic shot through him. What can I say to them?

That, too, he pushed aside. He was here because he wanted to exterminate the Light and all its works. His guardian had procured him this position, but he deserved it, too. He had ruled his school by sheer force of personality. No-one had helped him to that position but himself alone. He had ruled boys then, and these were men, but he had been a boy at school, and now he, too, was a man.

He had the right to be here. They would obey him.

"Anything, lieutenant?" he said coldly, kneeling down behind the man.

The lieutenant shook his head. "Nothing yet. We need to go further in. Too obvious here. We must secure our positions and wait. Sir." It was added too late, and thus became an insult.

Bran took a deep breath against the fury that was bubbling inside him. Not yet, he told himself. Not with everything at stake.

"Do that," he ordered them. "Remember, if anyone comes, you are the capture them, rather than kill them. They must be questioned."

He said it too loudly. All these men knew it already. He caught another smile, almost hidden in the darkness. Too late, he remembered that he had not put his glasses back on. He did not like anyone to see his eyes. It made him feel almost afraid.

His men moved on, slinking like shadows into their hiding places. Bran went with the lieutenant, following as silently as he could. His skin prickled, as if someone was watching him from behind, their gaze boring into the back of his neck. Will? he thought. He changed it to a challenge. These sorcerers could steal a man's thoughts, and plunder all their secrets. If you are here, Stanton, then we have you. You will die.

He blinked, clenched his fists at his side. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself entirely alone. His men had slithered into their hiding places, and had melted into the night. Bran was entirely exposed. He imagined his pale skin shining like a beacon in the night, a target to all enemies.

Calm, he thought. Don't show it. Never show it. He carried on walking, and there was the lieutenant, crouched low between two piles of pallets. Some silent message was passing between him and the two men with him, but all faces were wiped clean when Bran crouched down beside him. They were laughing at me, Bran thought. He started trembling inside.

They waited in silence. Minutes passed. The sky darkened noticeably, and Bran started to get pins and needles in his legs. He wanted to stand up, but could not. He wanted to ask questions, but that was impossible. He was the commander there, even though he had never been out in the field before. Even commands would sound weak, he thought, because they would imply that he had been questioning. Take your positions, and wait all night, if necessary. He had written that command so many times. Now he had to live it.

No-one came. Bran had questioned the spy himself, and he had been most insistent. Maybe the spy had been deliberately supplied with false information. Maybe the spy himself had been spied upon, and the Resistance had changed their plans, knowing that this meeting was compromised.

Or maybe they had come, and the sorcerer amongst them had sensed the trap. There was nothing these minions of the Light could not do. Maybe they had come. Maybe they were still here…

Bran's shoulders itched again. It was all he could do not to whirl around, not to jump to his feet and shout his hatred and challenge into the night. Quiet, he thought. Still. He caught one of his men looking sideways at him, just the briefest glance. He tried to calm himself. He tried not to fidget or shift in the slightest.

A gunshot sounded, and Bran jumped. Something tore past his face, hot and loud, and he heard a thud and a cracking sound in front of him. "Down!" someone shouted, and Bran obeyed, throwing himself onto his face. Feet were moving all around him, and there was answering fire. A rain of dust and splinters fell down in front of Bran's eyes, and he wrinkled his nose, and gave a faint cough.

I was almost shot, he thought. His mind was busy processing what he had seen. If I hadn't jumped…He bit his lip. Saved by weakness.

People were shouting; no stealth now. And here was their commander, face down in the dirt.

Bran stood up, and very deliberately pushed his shoulders back, standing as tall and as implacable as he could. He still itched at the base of his neck, as if someone was watching him, watching him through sights on a sniper rifle, readying to kill… Guns sounded. How many bullets were criss-crossing the air?

He swallowed, but he walked on, and drew his own gun. He did not wear his glasses, and he was protected only by his long coat. Let them try, he thought, but it came out less defiant than he had wanted it to, and more like a plea. Let them try, because…

"We have him!" someone shouted. The gunshots stopped. Not too far away, Bran heard kicks and cries of pain. "Stop that," he heard the lieutenant say, a hiss of command. "Take him to the commander."

"Wherever he is," someone muttered. The lieutenant must have heard it, but he made no rebuke.

Bran stood tall and still, halting in the middle of an open area, gun still in his hand. Let them see him there, and know that their commander was not afraid. He had been there with them, not grovelling in the dust where they had pushed him.

They saw him, and dragged their prisoner before him. "This is the man, sir." This time the lieutenant spoke respectfully enough.

"There may be accomplices," Bran told him, not yet looking down at the prisoner. "Continue the search." The lieutenant nodded, but gave no orders. Of course, Bran thought, the orders had already been given, and the search was already underway.

Bran took a deep breath, and looked down at the man who had tried to kill him. Him! he gasped, but he said it coldly, hiding the trembling within. "You."

The spy spat bloodily at Bran's feet. So the whole thing had been a trap, of course. There had been no sorcerer, and no meeting. The spy had met with Bran several times before, enough to know how much Bran hated sorcerers. This had all been a deliberate trap for Bran, designed to draw him out.

Bran started trembling inside, and his fists clenched with fury. This man had manipulated him. He had reached into Bran's heart, found its weakness, and cruelly played upon it. The Light had done exactly the same. The Light, that this man served and followed…

"I should kill you for this," Bran swore.

The spy nodded. "I expected no less."

Why? Bran wanted to cry. Why me? Why do you hate me? He felt personally betrayed by this, as if he was standing at the tree again, and the Old Ones were… No! He bit his lip, forcing all that back in. He kept the fury, though. He could not lose the fury.

"Why do you serve them?" he demanded, hands trembling at his sides. "They're evil. They lie. They lie about everything, and they trick you and they pretend…"

"No, that's your lot," the spy said. He got a kick for that, from one of Bran's men. Bran winced inside, but loved it, too.

Bran grasped the spy's chin. "Why me?" he hissed.

"Because you were in my reach," the traitor said. "You were mine. I took the chance. I saw your weakness. I tried…" He shrugged, but Bran could see the terror racing behind his mask of unconcern. "I failed. Now I die."

"No." Bran released him. His hand felt dirty, tainted, but he resisted the urge to wipe it. "Now we take you away and question you."

Again he saw a look flicker between two of his men. He knew what it meant. A desk-officer only. He lacks the stomach to kill. He's a joke. A freak. Just look at him.

The prisoner's head sagged forward, but then he was on his feet, in a sudden whirl of motion. He tore himself out of his captors' grip, and hurled himself bodily at the lieutenant, knocking him down. He almost fell himself, but then was up again, running wildly, dodging, head bent down and cushioned by his arm.

Bran raised his gun. Lacks the stomach to kill… The lieutenant was fumbling for his gun. Betrayed me. Tricked me - me personally. His heart was trembling; his hand was steady. Offered me everything and snatched it away…

He pulled the trigger, and the spy fell. He struggled for a moment to get to his feet again, then slumped down, hand outstretched.

Bran shot him again. This time, nobody was laughing. No-one would laugh at him ever again.

___

Part two: chapter eight

Secrets

___

The sea was calm and grey. Waves broke gently on the shore, and pulled away, making the shingle chatter like distant voices. Children played on the thin stretch of sand beneath the sea wall, their parents hovering anxiously. Even the play was muted. Even the sea air was marred ever so slightly by smoke.

Will was sitting on a rusty bench on the promenade, watching the waves rise and fall. He had been there for over an hour. Sometimes he watched the scene before him, and sometimes he closed his eyes.

His eyes were closed when the man came. Will felt him at first only as a touch of cold on his face, from a figure walking between him and the sun. He opened his eyes in time to see a young man settling down beside him, arranging his jacket carefully so it would not crumple unnecessarily.

Will did not look at him, and no words were said. They looked at the waves together for a while, in silence. A helicopter passed low above them, and a car roared down the esplanade, chased by the police. Not far away, a gunshot sounded. The children playing on the sand did not react in any way.

"Sorry I'm late," the man said at last. He was fair-haired, and probably older than Will, though Will constantly forgot that he was only twenty-seven. His name was Anthony, or maybe that was just the name he went by. Will went by his real name, but no surname had ever been given, or asked for.

"It doesn't matter," Will lied. He remembered reading once that immortals did not feel the passage of time like ordinary people, but it was not true for him. He felt every minute, and endured every hour. The past fifteen years felt like a lifetime, not like the twinkling of an eye.

"Has anyone noticed you?" Anthony asked.

Will shook his head. "Or, if they have, they don't think it's suspicious."

Anthony gestured with his chin at the half-naked children playing in the sand. "Probably think you're a child-molester, or something innocent like that." There were barbs in his voice. Such behaviour was all-but condoned by the government. The truth - that they were two men meeting as part of a struggle for light and freedom - was far more dirty than any lie.

Will sighed. "Or that I was planning to kill myself." A solitary man, staring sadly out to sea… It had happened many times. He had felt that pull.

Anthony chuckled. "Must have been disappointed when I appeared, then."

They did not normally banter. They should not. Very occasionally, Will wondered if they could be friends, of a sort. Usually, he knew that they could not.

Anthony was his principal voice in the Resistance, his second-in-command. Merriman had left Will in command of the whole south-east. He was slowly learning what that meant. He hardly ever saw Merriman now, and sometimes he went a whole day without wondering what Merriman would do or say in a particular situation.

Anthony stood up, and lurched to the railing. "Do you ever think about it, though?" His voice was almost lost in the breeze. "I do."

Will thought of two boys, swimming together out into a starlit ocean, and never coming back. He still dreamed of that. He still dreamed of Bran, and of a world in which he could die. He still dreamed of paths beyond the furthest ocean, that led to happiness and light, in a place without tomorrows.

"No," he said, his voice husky.

"Of course not." Anthony returned to his seat. For a moment, Will thought he saw resentment in his eyes. "You're not one to give in. That's why you started all this. We were all sitting around moaning and complaining, but too afraid to do anything, but you…"

"No," Will rasped. "No."

"And you're never bothered by things," Anthony continued, as if Will had not spoken. "You're always so sure of everything, and it keeps me going, but sometimes I wish…" He stopped, shaking his head, and Will was grateful. He lived too many lies. It was even worse, hearing them.

Will pressed his hands together on his lap. "We need to talk about the solstice."

The midwinter solstice was the night when ancient man was celebrated the gradual return of the light, and the ending of night's suzerainty. Will was not the one who had come up with the idea of choosing that night for a special performance by the Resistance, but he approved of it. It was a good day to strike a blow. It was also his birthday.

"What are people proposing?" he prompted Anthony, when no reply came.

Will was their leader, but he seldom led. An Old One existed to guide, not to command. Merriman had forced them to take on a more active role, but it was the ordinary people whose world was at stake. Will allowed them as much freedom as he could. He had the power of veto, however, over all plans. Only he knew what was really at stake. Only he knew when an easy, tempting target was actually guarded by a lord of the Dark.

"Several promising strategies…" Anthony sounded distracted. He sucked in a breath, and said in a rush, "Will, are you a sorcerer?"

Will stopped breathing. A wave broke on the shore, and then another. He breathed in again, and out. "I am," he admitted.

Anthony said nothing.

There were too many things Will could have said. He could have asked Anthony how he had found out, or what he was going to do about it, now he knew. He could have launched into an apology, explaining that the Old Ones were a world away from the dark sorcerers of government propaganda. He could even have raised his hand, spread his fingers, and made Anthony forget.

Instead, he sat there, completely still. Two boys entered the sea, paddling first, and then wading. They went further out, and soon they were swimming. One head was fair, and one was brown. Will blinked, but they were still there. Not a dream, he thought. This is real.

"I…" Anthony smoothed the creases from his sleeves. Will knew him enough to know that he did it the way other men might wring their hands. "I'm glad you said yes," he said. "Glad that you are one? I don't know. Glad you said yes, though, and didn't try to lie, or deflect the question."

"You're deflecting now, aren't you?" Will said softly.

"Yes." Anthony smiled. "It's just… It's like something out of a story, Will. It's not real life. Sorcerers, real? It's absurd. But…" He pressed his hands together, brought them to his mouth. "But everything's absurd. I would never have dreamed that Britain would fall like this. I never thought to see prison camps in English villages. I never thought to see people shot in public parks. Really, magic seems less absurd than that."

"Yes," Will said, but it was a lie. There was nothing absurd about the Dark. Everything Anthony talked about had long been a possibility. It was what the Light had strived against for so long. "Don't call me a sorcerer, though," he said. "None of those things they say about us are true."

"Well, I knew that." Anthony shook his head incredulously. "Nothing they say is true. If they say something's black, then I know it's white. If they say left, then I know it's right."

Too simple, Will thought, but he did not say it. "Was it really obvious?" he asked. "I don't want others…"

Anthony shook his head. "Not obvious at all, to be honest. I was just watching one of those broadcasts, disbelieving it like everyone else does, when I started thinking. Why would they say something so ridiculous, I thought, if it wasn't true? Then I started wondering where these sorcerers are. If they're working with us, surely I'd have met one by now. And as soon as I thought that, I knew that if anyone I knew was a sorcerer, it was you. You're not like anyone else."

No, Will thought, but that was something he had mourned long ago, and it was useless to be hurt by it. "I've been wondering whether to tell people," he confessed, "once the broadcasts started."

Anthony thought about it for a while. "Not yet, perhaps," he said. "Most people don't believe it yet. They'd think you were deluded or mad. That wouldn't be good."

"I was thinking that it might be best to tell people sooner, rather than later," Will said, "before the propaganda has properly taken root."

"Lynch mobs in the street, and burnings at the stake, you mean?" Anthony grimaced. "Nothing to worry about. Our people are too clever for that. If they've joined us, then they know how to see through the propaganda. They won't fall for any of the lies."

Will found himself feeling lighter, all of a sudden. It was as if the sun had appeared through a gap in the clouds, and everything sparkled just a little. To have someone to talk to about this... He had borne this secret for so long. Not since Bran…

"There's something else," he blurted out. "The reason they know about us… They have sorcerers, too. True Dark sorcerers, like in the worst children's nightmares. We've been opposing them on earth for as long as man has existed, and they won. Lords of Darkness lurk behind every government. Creatures with magic masquerade as men, and march with the police or the army, or just on corners or in fields on in gardens, beneath the window."

Anthony swallowed hard. He looked paler than Will had ever seen him. "You're joking?" He raked his hand through his thick hair. "No, you're not joking, are you? That's why…"

"Why I've forbidden things that you thought were easy," Will finished for him, "because I knew they were not. I've always known the true face of your enemies. You see only masks."

Anthony brought his fist up, as if to strike. "Then you should have told us…!"

Will met his glare placidly. "Would you have believed me?"

Very slowly, Anthony lowered his fist. "No." He shook his head. "No."

Will studied the backs of his hands. "Will the others believe yet, do you think?" He said it very quietly.

Anthony let out a breath. "No," he whispered. He sounded strangely broken. "Some of them, maybe. We can tell a few. More, as time passes. But go public with it? Tell the world? We'd be a laughing stock. People secretly disbelieve it when the government talks about sorcerers, but they daren't laugh out loud. If we start up with the same talk… We're safe to laugh at. We're beginning to become heroes. That's what the whispers say, when people don't think anyone's listening. If we started to tell this tale, we'd become idiots, the lunatic fringe."

"Yes." Will stared out at sea. He did not know why he felt as if another little piece of himself had just died.

Several times, Anthony seemed to be about to speak. At length, he said, "Are you upset?"

Will started.

"That I guessed," Anthony said. "That it's not a secret any more."

"I've known since I was eleven," Will found himself saying. The words came from somewhere within him, and he did not try to stop them. "I've known since then that I'd spend my life alone, that no-one would ever know. Someone did, for a while, but that ended. My family… They think I'm dead. I died at twelve, and this is all just a dream."

"At twelve," Anthony echoed. He spoke as if the words hurt his throat. He half reached towards Will, almost touching his hand, then withdrew. His hands clasped together, then parted. "And you've never… Will, you should…"

Will thought he knew what was coming. He stood up, and went to the railing. It was cold beneath his hands, almost shockingly so. The sun was behind its clouds again, and the beach was clearing. Soon only the waves would remain, and then the night would claim even them.

"I think," he said, "that we should meet again in a week. There have been too many revelations. We need to talk about the things that we do with a heart untrammelled with emotion."

His voice was completely level. But Anthony touched him briefly on his back before departing, and the touch went through him like cold fire, promising friendship, but offering none.

___

Part two: chapter nine

The garden of lies

___

Jane lied to her mother all the time. Sometimes, she felt that she uttered not a single word of truth from first thing in the morning, to last thing at night.

She lied about herself, and she lied about others. "Of course I haven't been crying," she would say. "Yes, I'm sure Simon's fine. I know he's not been in touch for a while, but he's not doing anything dangerous." She lied about hope. "This will all pass one day, mother, I'm sure of it." She lied about disappointment, smiling with blank eyes when talk turned to education, and lost opportunities. She lied about the future, and she lied about the past.

This world has made a liar of me, she thought, brushing her hair with slow and listless strokes. It's poison at the core, and I have caught that poison, and now I am affected, too.

Her mother fretted on the couch, and knew nothing about what really lay inside her daughter's heart. The lies wove together, and became a solid framework. Soon they would be more real than any truth.

Soon Jane would believe them herself. Sometimes she almost did.

There was one thing that started with a lie, but ended with truth. "I'm going out to the shops," Jane told her mother. "Not the corner shop, but right into town. I'll be all morning, if not longer."

That was the lie. She uttered it about once a month, and had done so for over a year. It won her hours just to spend by herself, out of the house. She wandered beneath trees, and trailed her fingers through the waters of a stream. Sometimes she just sat, and emptied her mind, so it was full of nothing at all. Sometimes she ran, but mostly she strolled.

It was time for herself. It was a tiny little glimmer of truth. It did not undo a thing, and it did not change anything about her life, but it was like a drop of shining water, or a single gleam of sunlight.

She did not think she could survive without it.

Three months before, she had found a small garden, locked behind walls. She had peered through the gates, and seen beds of flowers, as glorious as gardens had ever been in her youth. She wanted to enter it, but knew she could not. Life was one long story of things being denied and snatched away. Those who wanted things too badly tended to end up dead. You had to content yourself with nothing, because at least then you lived.

Still, she had returned. Two months ago, she had wandered back past its walls, and again a month after that. She had watched the flowers turn from spring to high summer. Today, she would see them beginning to fade into autumn.

Today, the gate was open.

Jane paused on the threshold. I shouldn't, she thought. This garden was the property of someone else. It was beautiful and locked, and that meant that it belonged to someone in power. The door was only open by accident. She was not allowed in.

Coward. She imagined Simon standing behind her, berating her. The door is open! Take this chance. His eyes blazed with all the stupid bravery of the cause he had naively embraced. The people were like sheep, he told her, and complicit in their own oppression. She was a symbol of everything that was wrong with the populace. To see a door, wide open, and yet walk on by… To see a place of beauty, and turn away, murmuring that it was not for you…

The wrought iron gate swung gently in the breeze. Through the entrance, she could see a fountain cascading from a stone dolphin, its droplets falling like sweet rain. I'll show him, she thought. I'll show him that I'm not a sheep.

Her feet edged forward, one step, and two.

She thought of her mother, waiting anxiously on the couch at home, depending on her utterly. The gate was open, yes, but she knew it was only by accident. If she went in, and they caught her in there, they could punish her severely. The open gate would be no defence.

She shook her head, surprised to find that there were tears in her eyes. She had given up so many things in her life. This was nothing, just few stolen moments in a garden. She could not risk everything just for that.

As she walked away, she could not help thinking that she had failed some sort of test. Her morning alone now lacked its lustre. Simon would have gone in, she thought. Simon would have called it a symbolic gesture against the government. Sheep bowed their heads on walked on by an open door, but the truly brave ventured in, and took the forbidden fruits within.

"Then Simon is an idiot," she muttered to herself. It was stupid to risk everything for something so trivial. Simon might have dashed in, but she was sure that the leaders of the Resistance would have walked on by. If you fought the meaningless battles, then you left nothing for the battles that really mattered.

"You didn't go in," a voice said quietly from behind her.

Jane whirled round, heart pounding, excepting to see soliders in black, with guns trained on her face. Instead, she saw a man in a pale suit. He was older than her by at least ten years, with brown hair, and a smile that was almost tentative. His clothes were clearly expensive. That alone was enough to show that he had the favour of the government.

"I'm sorry," she stammered. "I knew it was forbidden. I didn't… I was only tempted for a second." Her fear felt sharp and real. For years, she had muted such things, until whole weeks went by without her feeling anything that was not grey.

"Don't be afraid." He raised his hand, spreading it to show his empty palm. "I left it open for you."

"I don't understand." She wanted to back away, but was scared he would see it as an admission of guilt. "You don't know me."

"I saw you looking in a few months ago," he said. "I was inside. Then I saw you again on the camera. I could tell that you loved it."

She looked down at the ground. "So you tried to trap me. But I didn't do anything. I never would."

"No," he said, "and that's why I let you in. You will come in, won't you?"

She stood very still, barely even breathing, not sure what he was asking of her. Meanings lurked beneath his words. If this was a test, she did not know how to win it. If this was not a test, then she did not know what it was at all.

He must have seen the hesitation in her eyes. "I am a powerful man, Jane. It is not advisable to refuse my gifts."

He said it quite calmly, as if he was commenting on the weather, not issuing threats. She was chilled by that alone. She did not immediately notice that he had used her name. When she did, she could have fallen to the ground in horror. "You know…"

"I can know anything, Jane," he said gently, and he reached towards her, but refrained from touching her. If he had been anyone else, she would almost have thought that he was shy.

"Why me?" she whispered, her hands rising to her face. "I haven't done anything. I'm not…"

"You're beautiful, Jane," he told her. No-one had ever told her that before. She knew it was a lie, designed to entrap her, but something cold and grey inside her raised its head, as it touched by a distant sun. "I saw that right away, when I saw you looking at my flowers, but trapped outside, in shadow. I appreciate beautiful things, Jane. That's why I have my garden. Come, Jane. Let me show it to you."

She shook her head, but it was slowly done. "I can’t. I need to get back. My mother…"

"I am not accustomed to being refused, Jane." His voice turned cold. His outstretched hand clenched slowly into a claw. She was about to turn and flee, when he laughed. "Now, Jane, look what you almost made me do. I don't intend to hurt you. I just want you to come into my garden. Come whenever you like. I won't even be there myself, if that's what you want."

She thought of hours alone in that beauty, locked away from the rest of the world, protected from everyone by strong gates. Her mother, Simon, noise, and rushing… News on the television, and sobs suppressed in supermarket queues. Instead of that, she would have leaves and flowers. There was something about leaves…

She hardened her heart to it. "I want to," she admitted, "but I have never been able to do what I want. It's not you. It's me. Find someone else, someone who can give. I lost all ability to feel things years ago. You say I'm pretty, but I'm not inside. I'm dead inside. I'd kill the flowers. It's not right, a place like that, for me. I can't…"

She walked away, and he did not stop her. She waited until she was almost home before she let the tears fall, and for the first time in years, she was not able to stop them.

___

Part two: chapter ten

Flight

__

Simon was running. It felt as if he had been running for hours. His chest was heaving; his palms were scraped raw from when he had fallen. There was too little cover. Once he had thrown himself onto his face, rolling round and staggering up again, as a bullet had shot high above him. Others had scattered near him, spouting up dust.

There was no shouting, not any more. That had come first. "Stop right now." Running on, biting his lip, half of his mind floating above his body, amazed at what he was doing… Stop, it said. Turn around. Surrender. Talk about it. "Stop!" The shout had come again, further away, yet seeming louder. "Stop or I shoot."

There had been no stopping. Feet pounding at the ground, hands clenched across his chest, making him small, even though it slowed him down. A gun! his mind gibbered. If I don't stop, he'll shoot me. I'm going to die.

No stopping. No stopping. The floating part of his mind was still there. This isn't real. This isn't happening. People didn't shoot at you in real life, not in Britain. It happened in stories, or in far parts of the world.

Another shot. He cowered, a sob wrenching its way out of his breathless throat. His chest hurt. Had he been hit? How long did it take for a bullet to reach you? His mouth tasted horrible; was that blood? He ran on, and his legs still supported him. He thought he was still alive.

Think. Another part of his mind detached itself and looked down on him sternly. It's only one man. He's not very fit, and obviously not a very good shot. You just have to outlast him and use whatever cover you can.

But streaks of colour danced in front of his eyes whenever he blinked. There was green and black and lurid red. Exhaustion and panic made the trees run like paint in the rain. Fear had a colour. He never knew that before.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, the colours wailed. The red saw him dead in a ditch and forgotten. The green saw him panicking and running away. The black saw a world that was lost, a world in which all this was possible.

Simple. It should have been simple. Something large was being built out in the countryside, and the Resistance wanted to know what it was. Others had been given the most dangerous jobs, and Simon had complained about that, arguing that he had been a member for long enough now that it was time he was allowed to do something big, not just run messages like any stupid errand boy. He would do what he was told, they had said, and without message carriers nothing would happen at all, and for want of a nail the shoe was lost, and stupid things like that. Worse than the government, he sometimes thought darkly. Not the noble thing he had been expecting, and sometimes he hated Barney for saying…

His pursuer shouted. It sounded further away than Simon had expected. There were no bullets. I'm getting away! he thought. I've outrun him. He's run out of ammunition. Only a matter of time now. Just got to keep going.

He dodged left, heading for a gap in a hedge. The field on the far side was rough and bumpy, and he feared for his ankles, but still he ran.

Investigate the timings of their deliveries, then, he had been told. He had been given a cover story. This place was not yet out of bounds. Better not to be spotted, but if they did spot him, he was doing nothing wrong, as long as he had kept his distance. Brazen it out, they had told him. Watch their faces, and learn what you can.

A single guard, that was all it had been. A single guard, asking, not even shouting, for his papers. They had all been ready in his pocket, and his story on his lips. He had stood before the guard, and seen the gun. He had seen the eyes and the uniform and the power that lay in both. His voice had dried up; his hands had started to tremble.

And he had run.

But I'm getting away, he told himself. I was right to run away. I was right.

An exposed root tangled itself around his foot, and he fell, his foot twisting painfully beneath him. He tried to get up, but it pulled him down again. He clawed at it, ripping it apart. "You ran," a voice said, racked with breathlessness, but chilling. Simon cowered into the sunlight, into the barrel of a gun. "You will come with me."

"No," Simon whispered. His hands skittered in the dust. Roots and grass tangled in his fingers. "No. Please no."

He tried to get up, slipping, sliding. "Or I will shoot you," his pursuer said coldly. "Resisting arrest."

I can't! his mind cried. I don't want to die. I can't go with him, I can't.

The gun was level, not trembling, though this man had run as far as Simon had run, and Simon was shaking, heaving with lack of breath. Simon saw the man's finger on the trigger. He saw it move, and then stop. He saw the man's face, frozen. He pushed himself backwards, still half sprawled on his back, scraping against the earth. The man did not move. He was still, not blinking…

Not breathing.

Simon scrambled to his feet. His ankle hurt, but it took his weight. He bit his lip. Should run, he thought. He reached towards the man. "Are you…?" It had to be a trick, he thought. But he could feel the wind stirring his own clothes, but the man's were utterly still. It was a stillness beyond anything he had ever seen. He had never realised before how much movement there was even to a man at rest, until he saw it now, gone.

"Don't," a voice said softly, as Simon moved to touch the gun. Then, even softer, "You can't."

Simon snatched at the gun, and came away without it. For a moment, he had felt it there against his fingers, but he had been unable to grasp it. Even that touch left his fingers numbed, as if this stillness was catching, spread by touch.

"I'm not one of them," the voice said. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid!" Simon cried. He turned round, tried to still the savage heaving of his chest. His hands felt empty, without a weapon, and he was caught between two strangers, and the world was not what he had always thought it was.

The newcomer stood in front of him, placid in the long grass. He cast a shadow. The man with the gun, Simon remembered, did not. He was about the same age as Simon, but he did not look like anyone remarkable. Something about him looked faintly familiar, but when Simon looked more closely for it, it was gone.

"You weren't there a minute ago," Simon said, because the field ahead of him had been empty, and the grass was long, but not long enough to hide a man. Then he cursed himself for saying such a thing, because it sounded weak.

"I was nearby," the man said. "I saw you. You needed help."

It was him, Simon thought. He did this. It was bizarre, ridiculous, but it slotted into his mind like a jigsaw puzzle piece that had long been lost. This stranger had done something to the man with the gun, something that should not be able to happen. But they don't exist! he tried to protest. The government spread its stupid lies about sorcerers, but Simon had never seen one, and whenever anyone asked one of the captains in the Resistance, they just smiled and shook their heads.

"It's true," he said. He brought both hands up to his mouth, and let them fall. "It's true."

"Yes." The man nodded. His hands were folded neatly in front of him, and he was not dressed for war.

"What did you do to him?" Simon was getting his breath back now, but his throat felt scraped raw, and words hurt him. "What did you do to him?" he rasped.

"What was needed," the man said. "It won't hurt him. When he… returns, I will make it so he doesn't remember you. A false alarm, he will call it. You will be safe."

Before, when he had been running, the whole world had been made of lurid colours. Now it faded all to white. He was standing in the middle of a world made of mist, and nothing was real but this strange and impossible thing. "I don't…" he stammed. "I don't…" He brought his hands to his face again. I hate this, he whispered. I ran, and he… And he…

"How can you stand there?" he shouted, bunching his trembling fists at his sides. "How can you stand there like this, and talk like this, and do things like this? I didn't need saving. I was getting away, and you… and no-one should be able to do this. It isn't right."

The man shook his head, smiling slightly. Simon despised the smile. It looked superior, inhuman.

"I didn't need rescuing." Simon jabbed his hand towards the man's chest. "If you're really a sorcerer, why aren't you off doing something more important? Why don't you stop all this from happening? Why don't you make things go back the way they used to be?"

He was almost screaming now, he realised. Behind him, the man with the gun stood silent and unmoving, like a statue, but even more still.

"We are doing what we can," the man said. "Their power is greater than ours, because they are many. We strike where we can, but we always must stay hidden. I must stay hidden. That's why you couldn't know. None of you could know. That's the only reason, Simon. It wasn't because we didn't trust you."

"I'm fed up with not being trusted," Simon cried. "I never get to do anything important. I didn't need rescuing." He realised something then, and it darted through him, cold horror, followed by scarlet fury. "How do you know my name?" He took a step back. "How did you know my name?"

"I knew you once," the man said, "when we were boys, before. We were… not quite friends. You were never entirely comfortable with me. I stepped onto your territory. You felt… Well, there's no need for that. I just… take an interest. Something to cling to. Sentiment, I suppose. There's so little else."

His voice was vague and distracted. Simon wanted to stay angry, but bizarrely he also wanted to laugh. This could not be happening. This was a dream. He had died to his pursuer's bullet, and this was some warped form of afterlife.

The man have a smile that seemed full of sorrow, but was doubtless full of lies. "Of course, I can only speak like this, because you won't remember it. I have no choice. You and him both. Walk away and forget this, and I…"

"Forget…" Simon echoed. He brought his hands up to his brow as if to hoard his memories there.

"It was done to you before," the man said, "though not by me, and I sorrowed for it. I hate to do it to you again. But I have to, Simon. I'm sorry. I have secrets, and too much rests on them. I don't think you would keep them."

"I'd keep them," Simon shouted, hating this man. "Why doesn't anyone trust me? I've served my time in the cause. I've been loyal."

"But you are angry," the man said quietly, almost as if he was apologising for it, "and you ran. I cannot. I am sorry, Simon. I am glad to have met you again, and I am glad that you are well, but I cannot let this pass. Not you. Not today. You have to walk away, and then you will forget."

"I don't…" Simon whispered. It was all the sound he could produce. The mist welled up and consumed him. His feet started moving him forward, and there was nothing around him but greyness, and a half-remembered dream. Don't… he thought. It was like gripping the edge of a cliff with his fingertips, struggling hopelessly to hold on. Don't take…

He blinked. The sun faded in around him, like sound welling up from silence. His ankle hurt, which was a nuisance, but he could see the road ahead. His car was not much further beyond that. He had done his job, keeping watch on the secret place in the countryside, and now he was on his way back, with nothing to report but silence.

Nothing had happened at all. But I wish it would, he thought, curling his hand into a fist inside his pocket. I wish it would.

It made him feel faintly sad, for some reason.

___

Part two: chapter eleven

Ruined

___

Shadows clung thickly in the ruined church, but shadows could only survive where there was also light. Faith had its own power. For centuries, people had worshipped here, and their faith had seeped into the stone. It still remained, as strong as it had ever been, even though darkness had outlawed that faith and tumbled that stone.

It was warm. Will's breath turned to steam in the cold, but the presence of power warmed him in the places that really mattered. He liked to meet in churches. They were not watched in the way that the ancient places of the Light were watched. The Dark dismissed the power of human faith. They thought they had triumphed by turning such places into empty shells of rubble and shadows. They did not see how thoroughly the power in those places defied them.

Anthony waited beside him, sitting neatly on the step that led to the choir. Will preferred to stand. The pews and the rood screen had been ripped out, taken for fuel or perhaps just for trophies. There was nowhere to sit, but that also meant that there was nowhere for the enemy to hide.

"They're late," Anthony said, glancing at his watch.

Will said nothing. He walked across the nave and looked up at a window. A saint raised his hand in fierce benediction, while angels looked on with distant eyes. He looks like Merriman, Will thought. He wondered if that meant something, but he knew it did not.

Anthony pushed himself painfully to his feet. He had almost died in a raid a few months before, and would never be free from pain. Will had not been there. If he had been, things might have ended differently, but if he had been there, then he would not have been elsewhere. Someone else, somewhere else, would have died or suffered or been hurt. Will could only save a few. It was something he still found so hard to live with and accept.

The side door opened silently, bringing in a wave of colder air and a swelling of the faint sounds of evening. Will and Anthony both whirled round, instinctively ready to fight, but it was one of their own. "Sorry I'm late," Phil said, when the door was safely closed again. He walked towards them with the silence that had become second nature to everyone in the Resistance.

"You're not the last." Anthony's voice was soft, but Will could sense how taut he still was. His near death had shaken him. He was quick to react to possible threats, but slow to calm down afterwards. Will could hear the pounding of his heart, and see it, pulsing in the air around him.

Phil walked to the empty space that had once been the Lady Chapel, where a pillar obscured him from Will's view. There was a soft grating sound. When Phil came back, he was carrying a gun. "That's better," he said. "I know it would be suicide for us to carry them outside, but still…" He grimaced. "It's the last few yards that are the worst. Approaching the meeting place, knowing that they could be watching, and without any way to fight back."

Anthony nodded with feeling. Will, who had his weapons with him always as part of himself, said nothing. He could not remember what it felt like to be fragile and mortal. People like Anthony and Phil, he thought, were far braver than him. Will was doing the thing he was made for, but they had made a choice. Will had already lost everything, but they could still lose.

"Who else is coming?" Phil asked.

"A good man," Anthony said. "He's been one of my seconds for a few years, but he's capable of a lot more. He has knowledge of the target, though, which is why he's coming tonight."

Will nodded distractedly. He had personally met so few of the people who were out there risking their life, under his ultimate command. Most of them now knew that their commanders possessed magic, but it was told as a secret, not to be passed on. The public still quietly laughed at such talk. No-one had publicly breathed a word about the true nature of the power that lurked behind all thrones.

Anthony and Phil carried on talking, exchanging news about this and that, sometimes even chuckling. Will found himself drifting away from them. He took one step towards the door, and then another. Something's coming. The thought tickled against his mind. Something I used to know.

"Something's coming."

He was not aware of saying it aloud, but Anthony and Phil stopped talking, and flanked him, guns ready.

"But not a threat," Will murmured. But, if that was so, why was his heart pounding so? Why was he fighting the sudden urge to turn and run? Walk away while you still can.

The main door opened. "It's him," Anthony gasped, his voice cracking with relief. He lowered his gun, laughing with the nervous relief of tension. Phil stood ready, still cautious.

The newcomer approached, moving from shadow to twilight, but Will would have known him even in the dark. He breathed his name, the sound hidden by Anthony's louder calling of the same name. Will's hand fluttered uselessly almost to his face, as if he could create a mask and hide behind it, then fell to his side again.

James walked briskly down the nave. He nodded at Anthony, and looked more warily at Phil. Will received the same look. There was no recognition there at all. It was ridiculous, but that hurt.

Anthony introduced them quickly. "James, this is Phil. And here's the boss."

James looked at Will more closely. Will looked back. He tried to keep it cool and level. He tried not to give in to the urge to look away. He tried not to give into the urge to devour James with his gaze. He wanted James to know him. He wanted James not to recognise him. He wanted this to go on, and he wanted this to be over.

"Good." Will nodded, and looked away. "We can start…"

"You…" James rasped. Will had missed the moment of recognition. Maybe it was something in the way he turned his head, or the way he stressed his words. Maybe it was the way the light had fallen on his face when he moved. When he looked at James again, his brother's eyes were wide with doubt and horror. "You're a sorcerer," he breathed.

"I told you that." Anthony sounded impatient.

"You…" James staggered back, almost falling. He reached for the support of something that was not there, and snatched his hand back to his chest. "You look like… No, it's magic. Don't. Please…"

"James," Will begged. He could not help himself.

"So cruel." James made a visible effort to collect himself. He stood tall, face wiped of emotion, and cold. "Was that a test?"

"What are you talking about?" Anthony strode to James' side, plainly embarrassed by him. "Stop it," he hissed. "You're making a fool of yourself."

No, Will thought sadly. I'm making a fool of him. I shouldn't have…

The door burst open again. The air tore apart with the sound of a gunshot, hollow, harsh, echoing. James fell forward onto his face.

"They followed him!" Phil shouted. He dropped to one knee, and started returning fire. Anthony threw himself to the ground, and reached for James. He was only able to touch his arm.

I didn't hear them, Will thought. I should have…

He plunged forward, hurling himself to his knees, scrabbling for James' body. "Keep them off us!" he shouted, commanding the air and the stone and the men beside him. "Keep them away from him!"

Anthony's face was a bleached mask, but he pushed himself up to his knees, and raised his gun. There were only three attackers, and one was already down. Will saw that much. After that, all he could see was James.

His brother was still breathing, but the breaths were horrible and tortured. His pulse fluttered weakly. Blood was bubbling from his mouth, pooling on the stone floor. His outstretched hand looked white and frail, and the fingers twitched as if searching blindly for help.

Will turned him on his back, supporting his head on his lap. His hands turned red with his brother's blood.

"Stop…" James whispered. "Them…" His dimming eyes were not focused on Will, but beyond him. Will could not turn his head, but he knew that Phil was wounded, blood spilling in drops from his right arm. Anthony was crying out wordlessly, a sound that could have been fury, but could have been terror and pain.

Will heaved a wrenching breath, and raised his blood-stained hand. The air responded, and joined with sound and light and memories of flame. With the tearing sound of an explosion, fire erupted through the middle of the church, forming a solid wall that separated Will's friends from the enemy. "Burn," he willed it. "Keep us safe. Keep him safe."

"Really a sorcerer, then," James whispered. "I never saw…"

"Don't speak," Will urged him. He tried to seek the wound, but James cried out, grasping his wrist hard enough to hurt.

"Is he…?" That was Anthony, his face lurid in the light of the flames. "Can you…?"

He could not. Against death, Will had no more power than any man. He could not heal another's wounds, and he could not save the life of any living thing. Death was necessary for life, and life was necessary for death. The Light was beyond and apart from the domain of living things.

The grip of Will's wrist tightened, then went slack. "Is it really you?" James whispered.

"It is," Will told him, smiling, weeping, holding him back.

James turned his face away. "Can't be." His lips moved, barely a whisper of sound coming out. "Will would never have been so cruel."

His eyes slipped shut. Will felt the moment of his death. It tore through him like a hurricane. It exploded in fire in his back and his chest, and someone was shouting, and someone was screaming. He heard his name called, and gunshots sounding. He saw fire, and James' face so close to his, and an outstretched hand on the stone floor, blood smearing on the tiles.

"They came through!" Anthony screamed. "Will! Will!"

Will pushed himself up on his hands and knees. I've been shot, some distant part of his mind registered, but that did not matter at all. He blinked, and there were no tears now, only clarity. James was dead, and Phil was down. Another of the enemy lay dying on the ground, but the final one remained, his gun raised.

Anthony stood defenceless before him, fumbling desperately to reload. "Will!" he pleased. "Kill him. Please…"

Will shook his head. He could not kill with magic. The power of the Light could not be used to end a life. Instead, he pointed his figure, and froze the man out of Time. "Shoot him," he told Anthony. He made his voice cold. He had to make his heart cold, too.

Anthony finished reloading, and raised the gun. He did not question, and did not hesitate. The moment he pulled the trigger, Will released the man from his spell. He returned to life only to die.

It seemed like the most unforgivable thing of all.

Anthony holstered his gun. "We have to get out." He looked wildly at the fire.

Will shook his head. "No." The fire vanished as if it had never been there. It left no scars on the fabric of the church. Everything else remained. There were scars from tonight that would never heal, and death could not be erased by a word.

He returned to James' body. Anthony tugged at his arm, trying to pull him back. "We do need to go," he insisted. "What if they reported this?"

Will pulled himself free. He huddled over James' body, his hand ghosting over his face. Cruel, James had called him. He supposed it was true. He wanted to blame Merriman, but he could not. If Will had not been distracted, James would still be alive.

"I have to see to them," Anthony said, "to make sure they're really dead, and if they're not..." Will only vaguely glanced up as he walked away. He was only dimly aware of the killing shots, and the silence that came from dying men ceasing their struggles. He was more aware of Anthony's return, but only because he felt the urge to grab hold of James and hold him defensively, against this stranger who would steal his family from him a second time.

"They're all dead." Anthony's face was cold, but Will knew it was just a mask of hide his guilt and disgust. Anthony hated killing. The Resistance only recruited people who could kill when they had to, but took no joy in it. "I had to do it," Anthony said, his voice cracking a little. "They'd seen you. They would have told."

"Yes." Will nodded. This, too, was true.

"You're hurt, Will." Anthony knelt beside him, and started worrying at him with his hands. "Come on…"

"No." Will shook his head. "I'll heal. I can't die. Everyone else can, and they keep on…"

He snapped his mouth shut. His wound hurt horribly, but not as much as grief. He was trying to claw himself back up to the high and lonely path that he walked, but he had fallen too far. He was not an Old One tonight, but a child who had been torn from his family. He hurt, and he wanted his mother to kiss things better. He wanted her to soothe him and tell him that it wasn't his fault, that he'd done everything he could. He wanted to curl up to sleep, secure in the knowledge that his big brothers would make everything alright. He just wanted to sleep.

Phil shuffled up to them, a tall shape against the dappled twilight of the windows. He was bleeding from his arm, and clutching a lump on his forehead. "Hit my head on the step," he slurred. "We've got to go."

Will shook his head. "I can't leave him." The authorities would identify the body. When they captured someone from the Resistance, they made their whole family pay.

"No." Anthony sighed. "I know he's got family. He talked about them a lot. He said once that he wasn't afraid of dying himself, as long as they…"

"They will not find him," Will vowed. He tried to pick James up, but although he was an Old One, who was still bound by the limits of his human body. Scarlet pain flared through his body, from a fiery sun in the middle of his back. He staggered, but Anthony was there, half supporting him, half holding James. Anthony's face was twisted with pain, but he was surprisingly strong.

"Where?" Phil asked.

Will moistened his dry lips. "I've got a room nearby." It was not his home. He did not have a home. There were half a dozen places where he regularly slept, and this was one of them. No-one else had ever been inside it.

He remembered little of the long walk from the church. He remembered pausing at the door, and whispering the command that would wipe all blood and traces from the church. He remembered arms beneath his, and the way James' head sagged forward, and how he was no longer bleeding, and that was the most terrible thing of all, because it meant that James was dead.

He remembered turns and pauses, and how the sound of a helicopter had gone through him like a spear. He remembered how fast Anthony's heart had been beating, as their bodies were pressed together, side by side. He remembered Phil muttering words that made no sense, but Anthony groaning only once, when they jolted down a kerb.

He kept them hidden all the way with magic, because there was no choice. His magic was a beacon if the right people were watching, but unshielded, they would be a beacon to all. Out a every thousand men in uniform, only one could see him as he truly was.

He tried to explain a little of this to Anthony – how he could be dooming them all. Anthony just grunted, but later he laughed in wonder when they met a young woman, scurrying anxiously home to beat the curfew. She passed within inches of them without even seeing them. "I never grow tired of your marvels," Anthony said, eyes shining despite the pain.

But then the blankness of grief and exertion, and the next he knew it was almost dark, and they were stumbling through a doorway he had walked through so many times before, always alone. Anthony took James from him, and he cried out, but Anthony did not falter. Will leant against the wall, and watched Anthony lay James on the floor. "That might be concussion," Anthony said to Phil. "Stay here where we can watch you."

Will blinked. When he opened his eyes again, Phil had gone, and the room was lit with flickering candlelight. Anthony was standing in front of him. When he saw Will looking at him, Anthony started, and looked away, his face shuttering over. Will wondered dimly what expression it had worn a moment before, when his eyes had been shut.

"You need to sit down, Will," Anthony said. "I would have made you tea, but you don't seem to have any electricity, and I wasn't sure if it was safe to light a fire."

Will let himself be led to the couch. He reminded himself again that he could not die from this, no matter how badly it hurt. It would get better in time. He had to ignore it and carry on. There was no other choice.

"Phil's asleep in the other room," Anthony said. He lowered himself onto the couch beside Will, his careful breathing betraying how much it hurt him. "What are we going to do now?"

Will looked at James' face. It looked like the face of a stranger. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw instead the face of the bright and vibrant thirteen year old boy James had once been. It seemed impossible and absurd that he had turned into this adult lying dead on the floor.

He passed his hand across his face, and shivered at the damp feel of smearing blood. "Destroy this place," he said. "Destroy all trace of me here. There's too much of a trail now." It was not what Anthony had meant, and he knew it. He raked his hand again across his brow. "We'll have to…" He swallowed. "Destroy his body. If they find him with a government-issue bullet in him, they'll know."

"And go after his family," Anthony finished for him. He touched Will briefly on the back of his hand. Will did not know which of them was trembling, and which one was still.

Will nodded. "But better for them… Better for his family if they know. He can't just disappear."

Anthony leant back against the couch. "He had a brother. He told me that once. A younger brother. He disappeared when James was thirteen. They had to assume he was dead, but they never really knew for sure. It was bad enough that he was gone, James said, but the thing that really tore the family apart was that little seed of hope that perhaps he was alive after all."

Will turned his face to the side, so Anthony could not see it. He had to keep his hands entirely still. He could not betray the slightest emotion.

"That's what James was most afraid of." It sounded to Will as if Anthony's voice was coming from a very long way away, but there was no other sound in the world, so it was as loud as a shout. "That his family would be targeted because of him. That was part of it. But even more than that, I think, it was the fear that he would become one of the disappeared, and they would never know. But he still joined us. Even with the risk to them, he said, he couldn't sit back and do nothing. His family would understand that, he said."

Oh, James… Will blinked back the tears that could not be allowed fall. You were braver than me. You were braver by far.

"His brother was called Will," Anthony said. It was said so casually that Will knew beyond all doubt that Anthony knew. He tried to prepare something to say, tried to decide how his face would look when he turned round. He tried for denial, and struggled for truth. Seconds passed, and he remained frozen.

Anthony touched his hand, and this time he lingered. "You've been alone since you were twelve."

Will nodded. Even that movement hurt, as if it was wrenched from his soul. "I didn't want to, but everyone was just beginning. If the enemy had had any inkling that I was still alive, they would have…"

Anthony silenced him with a finger to his lips. "We don't have to be alone, Will."

He touch was fire and ice. The look in his eyes held Will pinned, unable to move towards it, unable to move away.

"It's comfort in the darkness, Will," Anthony whispered. "Everyone needs to know that they're not alone."

Will wanted to close his eyes and sink into arms that understood him and forgave everything. He struggled for speech. "I'm not…"

"Neither am I," Anthony said with a smile. "But that's not what it's about. Soldiers share blankets in the valley of the shadow of death. Comrades give comfort. There's girls where I live and sometimes I… but it's nothing. It doesn't mean anything. They don't know what I do, and I can't tell them anything. Everything that matters is locked away. Comfort comes from sharing and trust. Without that, it's nothing – just tawdry bodies in the dark."

He moved his hand to Will's face, caressing his cheek. It was the closest human contact Will had enjoyed since he was a child. Part of him craved it with a hunger that defied all thought. James was dead, and he was hurting so badly, and Anthony knew so little of him, but at least he knew enough.

Enough… The word caught, like a feather plucked from the wind. Enough, he echoed to himself. It was not enough. Anthony had seen a little beneath the surface of him, but he would never understand his heart. A snatch of comfort in the dark was no substitute for total trust. It would not bring James back. It would not change a thing.

Will took hold of Anthony's wrist, and gently pushed him away. "No," he said softly. "I can't do that."

Anthony did not snatch his hand back, or recoil in anger. He twisted his hand so he could briefly grasp Will's fingers. "You should," he said. "If not with me, then with someone."

Will looked away. He saw a figure, dark against the sun, turning towards him, smiling… He blinked, and saw only his small bleak room, that had never been a sanctuary, and now was only a prison.

He passed his hands across his face, as if scraping away all emotion. "I need you to do something for me," he said.

___

Part two: chapter twelve

Ashes

___

The tree above him had shed the last of its leaves. They lay on the ground as fading skeletons, and the branches were no shelter from the winter sun.

I have been here before, Will thought. I have watched this before.

But it had never been like this before. Over the years, he had watched his family from the hidden darkness. He had watched tears and anger, grief and pain. Only sometimes had he seen smiles. For ten years, he had seen nothing at all. He was shocked by how old his parents were looking, and how slowly they walked.

The breeze stirred his hair. A robin sang on a gatepost. Mary saw it, and turned. For a moment, both Mary and Will were staring intensely at the same thing. Will shivered at the thought, but Mary turned away.

The family gathered close. Will could not hear what they were saying. He could have listened effortlessly, of course, but he chose not to. He was no longer part of them. He would be a stranger, intruding on their grief.

He did not think he could bear it.

Five years before, Will had stood on another, greener hill, and watched a funeral. For a wild moment, he had almost thought that that funeral could be a beginning. This one was an ending. Nothing would be the same after this.

They stood so close to each other, hand clasping shoulders, arms around arms. There were tears. All the terrible things in the world had still not inured mankind to grief. It never should. This was the third son Will's mother had lost. Only one, the baby, had left behind a body to mourn, to hold, to stroke his face. Will had been taken away forever, and of James, all they had was ashes.

That had been Anthony's task. Will himself had set the fire that had consumed James' body, but Anthony had been the one to deliver the ashes to his parents. It had been a dreadful thing to ask, but Anthony had done so without demur. Will knew Anthony would be discreet. Some secrets had to be told, to ensure his family's silence. On the other secret, Will had implored Anthony to stay silent. He could have forbidden it, but instead he had called on trust and friendship. "Not even a hint," he had said. "Not even a hope."

He did not know what Anthony had said on that dreadful morning. He did not know if his mother had screamed, or if she had stood there in silence, pressing her hand to her mouth and closing her eyes. He did not know if his father had shouted, screaming that Anthony was lying, that it was a trick. He did not know how they had contacted his brothers and sisters, and what lies they had told over the phone.

All he knew was that they were here now, mourning a son and a brother who was gone. They had no body, but they had ashes, and the day was a beautiful as days had been before the fall.

Robin and Steven were dragging a cart laden with firewood. That seemed to Will to be the saddest thing of all. James could not be mourned openly, because his death was a secret. The authorities could not watch everywhere, but if they watched this, there was a pretext. A family walk in the sunshine, to gather wood.

What a terrible world it is, Will thought, when a father cannot be seen to bury his son. He heard the echo of it on the wind, and realised that the words had been his father's, and not his own thought after all.

He wondered how much they knew. They had to know that James had been killed while opposing the government, because that was the only way the explain the secrecy. They knew they could not grieve while spying eyes could see. They had to speak of him as if he was still alive, and carry on unchanged. Any lapse would see them punished for aiding the Resistance. They had colluded in a cover-up, and Will had given them no choice about it.

No, he thought, he was the one who had had no choice. If his family had been given the choice, this was what they would have chosen. It was better to live in danger, than not to know.

Better, he thought. He clenched his fist. Better…

A tall figure came up beside him. "I am sorry, Will."

Will had not seen Merriman for over a year. He had told Merriman about James' death, but in his darker dreams, Merriman had flapped his hand, dismissing it as nothing important. Outside dreams, he had heard nothing.

Will wrapped his arms around his body, looking up at the sun. "They didn't even have this much, with me."

As a child, he had always been so glad to see Merriman. Now he only wanted him to be gone. There were people he wanted to be with, but they were on the hillside before him, and out of reach forever. Merriman was not them.

"Will…" Merriman began.

"Don't," Will begged him. "Don't tell me that things like this is the lot of an Old One. I know you've watched thousands of loved ones die. I know you think this is nothing at all, but to me it's not. Don't tell me that I shouldn't be thinking like this. Don't tell me I need to be an Old One, focused only on the Light. I know all this. I know everything you could tell me. It's just…"

"I wasn't going to say those things," Merriman said softly.

"It's just…" He turned his head away, unable to say the rest of it. It's just that, deep down, I'm a little jealous. At least they've got each other.

Below him, his father opened the simple wooden box, and scattered James' ashes to the wind. The wind took them, taking them away to the south, to open fields and slumbering trees and places where animals waited for spring. As he did so, the robin sang again, and this time they all turned towards it. Will saw his mother smile through her tears. He hoped they thought that James was singing, too.

"Goodbye, James," Will whispered. He knew that a part of his brother would seep into the ground, and that plants would grow from where he had fallen, and would flower in glory beneath the sun. The Old One was consoled by this; the brother only knew that James was gone.

His parents clasped hands, and Steven put his arm around Mary. Slowly, heavily, they started the walk back home. They talked as they went, and sometimes they even laughed. They seem lighter, Will thought. Happier.

Stray strands of thought came together into a sudden whole. He had never been in any doubt that his parents needed to know about James, even though it burdened them with dangerous secrets. They would keep that secret. And they would keep Will's, too. All he had to do was show himself.

There would be disbelief, but he had explanations. There was enough talk of sorcerers that he could broach the subject of his true nature, without it seeming impossible to them. James had called him cruel, so perhaps they would hate him for a while, but he could live with that. It was better for them to hate a living son, than the grieve for one who had disappeared.

He drifted forward. "Don't." Merriman grasped his wrist. His voice was soft, but there was command in it, too.

"But I can tell them now." Will turned to him with shining eyes. "They've already got secrets. They won't give anything away. Everything will be all right."

"No." Merriman shook his head. There was a terrible apology in his eyes.

Will strained against his grip. "It was different when it first happened, I know," he said. "The Dark was watching them like a hawk. But they're just another ordinary family now. There's no risk to them. Or, if there is a risk, it's the same risk they face just by living."

"Is it for their sake, that you would do this," Merriman said, "or for yours?"

"Theirs," Will cried, but he could not lie. "Mine, too. Please, Merriman, I was only twelve. I've done everything you've asked. You look at the people in the world and you just see children, but I grew up with them. They're mine, and I've been so lonely, and I know it's necessary, and I'd do it again if I had to, and I am not falling, not wavering. I am still of the Light. I'll do what I have to, but I just… I just wish…"

"Will," Merriman said, softly, terribly. "You cannot. You did what you had to do, and it cannot be undone. You must shed these attachments like a snake shedding its skin. You are an Old One, Will. You know this."

Will gave a sobbing moan. "Why are you so cruel?"

Merriman stood as tall as the sky, and as terrible as stone. "The Light is a harsh master, Old One." He let out a breath, and his face turned soft, his eyes full of gentle sorrow. "But it is my master, Will, as well as yours."

Will stopped fighting. His hands fell limply to his sides, and his head sagged. He let out a breath, and it felt like dying.

Merriman just looked at him. Above him, dead branches scored at a pure blue sky, but beyond that, not far away, people died in the streets. Men were dying in cells or wasting away in prison camps, and freedom was trampled beneath the feet of the lords of the Dark. That was what Will had to fight, and he knew it. He would never falter.

His family moved out of sight, and was gone. It felt as if they were taking his last chance away with them, and it was gone forever, and he was dead again, killed a second time.

Will raised his head. "I know," he said, but when he moved off, he walked alone.

___

Part two: chapter thirteen

All things change

___

Something's going to change today, Barney thought, as he stood on the ornamental bridge overlooking the dried-up stream. He had woken with that feeling. It had not shifted as he had walked to the park, to the latest of many meetings. It was still with him now.

He did not let it affect him. He knew people who anticipated doom every time they went on a simple mission, and they were still alive. He had known others who had departed with smiles and plans for the future, and were now dead. This world had changed everyone. Some clung to superstition, and some were ruthlessly practical. Some believed in fate, and some thought that there was nothing in a man's future that could not be changed, if you tried hard enough.

And which one am I? Barney wondered. He ran his finger up and down the rusty railing, slivers of paint chipping off against his skin. Which one am I?

He watched the figure approach, heard the steps on the bridge. A long-ago memory raised its head, of stamping over a bridge just like that, pretending to be the billy goats gruff. "Who's that trit-trotting over my bridge?" he muttered.

"What?" Simon took his place beside him. "Oh. Childish games. It's hardly the time for that."

"I was just remembering," Barney said softly. "I think it's good to remember that we used to be happy. It reminds us what we're fighting for."

Simon snorted. His hand curled around the railing, his knuckles white.

"I paint them, sometimes," Barney said. "Happy memories. Places we went on holiday. Cornwall. Wales. Mum and Dad. Children on a beach…"

"Don't," Simon rasped. He drew himself up, all stern older brother. "We're here to do our job, and nothing else," he said sternly. "There's no time to chat."

There's time, Barney thought. It's going to happen anyway. We might as well talk before then. We might as well remember.

He did not say it, though. He shook his head. "No," he said. "I'm sorry. You're right."

It was more important than ever to be friends, he thought. If something was really going to happen… No, even if it wasn't. For years, he had only occasionally seen Simon, and most of those meetings had been like this one, when their roles in the Resistance brought them together. There seemed to be an enormous barrier between them now. They were both engaged in the same dangerous work, but that had only pushed them apart.

"But we should meet up sometime," he said, "apart from this."

"It would be dangerous," Simon said. "Wouldn't it?" He sounded sarcastic and biting. It was five years since Simon had first discovered that Barney had joined the Resistance, but Barney knew he was still not forgiven. Simon wanted glory; Barney just wanted to serve.

Simon could be dangerous, he thought. If something really is going to happen today, it will be because of him.

He tried to ignore that thought, too, but he could not do so entirely. They had been taught to act on intuition, and follow up on any hunch of danger, however small. "Could someone know about this meeting?" he asked. "Could someone have followed you?"

Simon looked over his shoulder, and back again. "Of course not."

Barney breathed in, and out. He wondered whether to tell Simon the truth, and decided that he had to. Always pass on your hunches about danger, they had been told. If you did not, and then someone died…

"I've just had a strange feeling all day," he said. "A… warning, perhaps. A feeling that something's going to change."

"You believe in things like that?" Simon laughed.

Barney moved his finger up and down the railing. Almost all the paint had now gone, speckling the ground at his feet. "I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe."

"I don't," Simon scoffed. "Superstition is for cowards. I believe that individual people can change the world. Our fate's in our own hands. That's why I joined. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing."

"I believe that too," Barney said, "but…"

"If you believe in fate," Simon said, "then you're saying that all this was meant to be. That we can't fight it. That we shouldn't fight it."

"I didn't say it was fate," Barney tried to explain. "It's just a feeling…"

"Besides," Simon interrupted, "it doesn't even mean anything. Something's going to change." His voice was high and mocking. "How vague is that? It could be a good change. Maybe someone's going to assassinate…"

"Don't," Barney cried. He let out a breath. "No, it felt like a bad change. I don't know if I believe it, but…"

He believed in magic. The government spoke of sorcerers in the Resistance, and everyone denied it, but Barney was sure it was true. He had no idea why he was sure. All he knew was that all talk of magic resonated inside him, and made him think of green mountains and golden sand. Sometimes, when he was painting his old memories, he felt the same way, as if he could fall into a picture and walk in a place of magic, with a guardian at his side.

He believed in magic, then, but he also believed in the power of every man. Mr Thomas had shown him that. Mr Thomas had shown him that a single artist could change the world, and a single man's death could change a boy and shape the man he would become. Barney had joined the Resistance to help change the world, by actions big or small. If sorcerers were working alongside them, then they would do their part, but every ordinary mortal still had to play their part.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I just don't know."

"Well, I don't believe it," Simon said. "Stop babbling. We've got a job to do."

Barney nodded. He was still nodding when the men emerged from the trees, armed with guns, and shouting.

So I was right, Barney thought.

The end, when it came, was almost gentle.

___

Part two: chapter fourteen

The price

___

The doorbell rang. Jane's mother froze with the fork half way to her lips. Jane put her cutlery carefully down, so her hands could tremble safely, without her mother knowing.

"Who could it be?" her mother wondered, worrying at her lip.

Jane could not remember what it had been like to live in a world where a doorbell ringing unexpectedly had been a cause for mild curiosity, rather than dread.

It would fall to her to answer it, of course. It always did. She pushed her chair away from the kitchen table, wincing at the screech it made on the tile floor. As she walked to the door, she brushed against the edge of a newspaper, lying on the kitchen surface. It slid to the floor, taking a glass with it. Her mother screamed as it shattered.

Jane walked past it. The bell rang again, but quieter. If I don't answer, she thought, perhaps they'll go away. She thought of a door left forever locked. She thought of earth closing over a mound, and the dead sleeping within in, undisturbed forever.

Still she walked on. She fumbled with the lock, but only a little. She did not recognise the man on the doorstep at first, not until he spoke. "Hello, Jane."

It was two years since she had turned down his offer of a place in his garden, but she had never forgotten him. She had never gone back to the part of town where his garden was. Glimpses of flowers sometimes made her want to cry, and there were times when she thought she had been offered a piece of paradise, but had turned it down. At other, darker times, when the news on television was too heartbreaking, she thought she had almost been tempted into hell, but had resisted. In her dreams, he was both serpent and angel.

"Who is it, Jane?" her mother was calling nervously.

Jane turned away from the door. "Someone. Someone I… met… once. A man."

"More than that, I hope," the man said, with a grim smile. "I will not ask to come in. I have things to say that your mother should not hear, with her health being what it is."

"Bad things?" It was cold outside, heading towards the middle of winter. A tendril of ice reached in from the dark and coiled around her heart.

"Bad, yes," he said, when she was outside with him on the step, and the door had closed, barring her from light. "But not, perhaps, the worst, if you… co-operate."

She reached for the support of the wall, hand closing on rough brick. "Is that a threat?"

Over the road, a curtain twitched. The darkness hid all else. She wondered if there were soldiers there. She wondered how many neighbours would watch her being marched away, and if anyone would try to save her. She thought they would not. In times of danger, even neighbours became strangers. You kept your head down, and pretended that you did not hear the screams in the darkness, and did not see the armed men passing in the night.

"I will not lie to you, Jane," the man said. "Your brothers have been captured. It seems that they were in the Resistance."

A slow release of breath was the only sign she gave of the scream that tore her apart inside. She did not even blink. "My brothers aren't…"

"You didn't know this?" The man was looking at her with something that could have been compassion, but she was sure it hid only traps. "No, these hardened criminals keep it even from their family, I've heard. You are innocent in all this, and so is your mother. I will tell them so…"

His tone suggested that he had not finished. Jane waited for the rest, but it did not come. If, her mind gibbered at her. There's an if. It is a threat. He wants me to…

"How…" She swallowed. "How do I know you're not lying?"

"You want me to prove it by bringing their fingers, or their ears, perhaps?" He smiled. "Or do you want to see pictures of their tortured bodies?" He gave an exaggerated sigh. "I do not have such things, Jane. I thought it would be a comfort to you to have only my word, and not something more grisly. But I give you my word. This is true."

I can't take the risk. She dug her nails into her palms to stop herself sobbing. Simon was a member. I knew that. I've been expecting this for years. And Barney… I didn't know, but he's… No, he could be. And everyone gets captured in the end. It always ends in death.

She raised her head, covering her face with a mask as hard and emotionless as stone. She would not give him the pleasure of knowing that he had broken her. In that moment, she thought, she was more courageous than anyone in the Resistance would ever be. They launched their futile little struggles because they could not bear to endure. If Jane knew anything, it was how to endure. She had been doing nothing else for more than half her life.

"What do you want from me?" she asked him, her voice utterly level.

Her calm seemed to leave him flustered. "I risked a lot coming to you, Jane," he said. "You're not supposed to know anything about this until the police come. I'm not supposed to be helping…"

"Are you helping?" She folded her hands in front of her.

"I haven't been able to forget you," he said. "So beautiful. So crushed. I collect beautiful things. You're like a work of art languishing in a junk yard. You need to be taken to a place where you can shine. I have power, Jane. I can pull strings. By rights, you and your mother should be interned for this, but I intend to save you."

"If…?" she asked. She clasped her hands tight, and tried to banish all thoughts of Simon and Barney from her mind. She could not think of them in pain. She could not.

She thought he was about to lose his temper, but instead he passed his hand across his brow. When he lowered it again, he looked almost defeated. "I came with threats, Jane, but now that I see you, I won't… I can't… I can't let them take you. You can spit in my face, but I won't let them take you."

She wanted to sag with relief. I should take it and run, she thought. I warned Simon. He knew what the risks were. Barney, too. Anyone who joins the Resistance is prepared to die. They took their chances, while I…

It was no good. She could not think it. She could not do it. She had spent her lifetime keeping her head down, but she was no coward.

"No," she said, taking his gaze and holding it. "That isn't enough. I want you to save my brothers, too."

He clenched his fist. "You ungrateful little…"

"Please." She touched his arm, pressed her body to his side. "Please. If they die, then I'd rather be taken. You won't have saved me at all."

He tore himself away, and paced a few steps along the path, and back. "If they're guilty, I can't… I've got power, Jane, but not that much. I'm not one of the inner circle" He breathed in, and out again. "I could maybe get them sentenced to the camps, rather than anything worse."

"Do that." She felt as if the whole world was trembling, centred on this moment, on this choice. She was teetering on the edge of a cliff. After this, nothing would be the same again. "Please. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything."

He looked at her, and slowly smiled, his eyes glittering like frost in winter. And there, in the silent darkness, he told her what the price would be.

And she accepted it.

___

Part two: chapter fifteen

Footsteps

___

"Simon?" Barney touched his brother's shoulder. "Simon?"

There was no answer. Simon had been unconscious for several hours. Barney had called for help, but no-one had come. Long ago, or so he had been told, questions were asked if people died in police custody, but now nobody cared.

"I'll try again, Simon," he said. He limped the few paces to the door, and tried to peer through the tiny grille. He could see nothing but the blank face of the door opposite, but just as he began to move away, he thought he heard shouting.

"Nothing." He settled down again beside his brother. Simon's lips looked dry and bloodless, but Barney had already used up their scant allocation of water, gently coaxing it down Simon's throat. They had not been fed. It was over twenty-four hours, Barney thought, since they had been brought in, and they had been left alone for the whole time.

He did not yet want them to come. Soon, though, he would become so desperate from hunger and solitude that he would be begging for them to come, even though their coming meant torture. That was how the secret police worked, he knew. First the solitude, then the attention. Both were as bad as the other. It was a terrible thing to be so lonely that you were crying out for the coming of one who would hurt you.

But I can take it, he thought. I will face it, as long as they come before Simon dies.

He had no idea how badly Simon was hurt. Simon had once intended to be a doctor, but Barney's thoughts had always been on art, once he had grown past childish things. He did not know how much abuse the body could take before it gave up and died. He did not know how close Simon was to that point.

"You shouldn't have fought them," he murmured, stroking his brother's blood-caked hair away from his brow. "It was obvious they were going to win."

Barney had yielded instantly, recognising impossible odds. Perhaps it had been cowardly; perhaps he had just given up. It had already felt half like a dream, and he had been drifting into the reality of his premonition, moving towards it almost with a sense that this was right. Simon, though, had struggled, and tried to run. They had fought to take him. Throughout the terrible journey to their cell, Barney feared that Simon was dead.

Simon's eyes began to flutter. "Where…?" his cracked lips muttered. "What…?"

"Don't try to move," Barney told him gently. "You're hurt. We've been arrested. Remember?"

Simon's face crumpled. "Yes." It was a sob, a whimper of pain. "You let them. You didn't fight. You…" He bit his lip against the pain. "Coward," he whispered.

Barney did not contradict him. He was afraid – terribly afraid. He was terrified of the silence, and he dreaded the sound of footsteps at the door. He didn't want to be hurt, and he didn't want to die. A simple death was terrible enough, but to be captured was the worst thing of all. What if he broke under torture, and talked? What if he betrayed…?

"Your fault," Simon muttered. "Yours."

Barney sat very still. It would have happened anyway, he thought, but he did not say it. He did now know which of them had been followed. He did now know which of them had been indiscreet or unlucky, and betrayed their meeting to the enemy. He did not know whose fault it was, but he also knew that it did not matter. There could be no reproaches when you played a game of life and death. There could be no blame when death stalked them all every day.

"It's all over now." Simon's face twisted in a sob. "Nothing left."

"Try to sleep," Barney told him uselessly. "Your body needs to heal."

"What?" Simon gave a bitter bark of laughter, closer to tears. "So they can kill me or torture me? Best to die here, isn't it, now you've ruined everything."

Barney thought of the footsteps that would approach their door, sooner or later, inescapable. Everyone who joined the Resistance knew that this day might come for them, and they all claimed that they could live with that risk, because the cause was good. But it was one thing to say it, and another thing entirely to live it. He thought about all those others who had been captured before them, and wondered how they had faced their end, alone and afraid. Did they regret making the choices they had made? Did the fear unman them all in the end?

There was no comfort he could give. Words of comfort would be a lie, and he thought he was beyond words now. Simon turned his head away, and drifted into sleep, or unconsciousness, or the last drift into death.

Barney was alone, hearing only the scraping sound of his own breath. The silence trembled. No footsteps came, and every second without them was a reprieve, and every second without them was a curse.

His fingers were bloody, black behind his nails. He wondered if they would take his fingernails, if they would…

"No," he moaned to himself. Be strong. Be strong for Simon. He wanted to sob and tremble and scream. But I…

He shuffled to the edge of the cell, and pressed his face against the cold stone. This could not be the end. They were in England! He had seen so many terrible things. He had watched the world fall into tyranny and despair, and he had fought it. Since he was barely more than a child, he had fought it, and surely you could only fight a thing if you believe that it was real. But now, at the end of things, it seemed absurd. This could not be happening. This could not be true.

He had spent his childhood laughing and painting and playing games in the sun. He could not end it here, screaming in a cell.

Simon moaned. Barney's head snapped up. "No!" he gasped, because sound meant footsteps, and footsteps meant the end. Simon moaned again, and then was silent, and Barney crawled over to him, to touch his throat and find him still breathing.

It was only then that he realised that the footsteps had come after all. They were fast and loud, and someone was scratching at the door of their cell, clanking and turning and scraping, and…

The door opened. "Please," Barney said. "My brother's badly hurt. Please don't hurt him any more." And that was a surprise, the words coming as if someone else was saying them, because until the moment the door opened, he had thought he was going to collapse and grovel and beg.

"Come on," the person at the door urged him. "Quickly."

Barney blinked. The light from the corridor hurt his eyes after hours of gloom. It pulsed on and off, as people ran past in the corridor, and he could hear shouts in the distance, and the sound of guns.

"Come on!" the person shouted. "It's a rescue. Come on!"

Barney looked at the light, then back at Simon. "He can't walk…"

"We haven't got time." The man at the door peered desperately over his shoulder. "Got to go."

Barney looked at the door again, at the light, at the hope. Out there was freedom and sunlight. He would have to hide, of course, and live forever under an assumed name, but he would be alive. Here there was nothing but fear and pain and death. It was footsteps in the darkness, and a hand with a knife. It was torment and despair, and then it all ended in dark and nothingness.

"Go," he said, flapping his hand. "I can't leave him here. I'm staying."

The man at the door nodded once, and left.

Barney knelt there in his cell, and stared at the light outside. He did not move.

He was still there when the soldiers came with guns.

___

Part two: chapter sixteen

Equal night

___

The man beside him tilted his head, as if listening. "There is power here."

"Good." Bran jammed his hands deeper into his coat pockets. The rain had been growing heavier all evening, and the tree offered only scant protection. He was soaked through, and very cold.

He would endure far worse, of course, if it meant the capture of one of the Light.

"Power," the man said again. He grimaced, as if he had tasted something unpleasant. "But hidden. More like an echo."

He was called Hedges, and Bran did not like him. He was of the Dark, but not a great lord. The Dark, it seemed, were less jealous of their magic than the Light. The Old Ones kept all the power for themselves, inhuman, immortal, and cold. The Dark also had its immortal lords, but also had its minor minions, who possessed a part of the magic of the Dark, but would live a normal mortal life. Hedges was one such man, and Bran did not like him.

He had no choice but to use him. He would use all weapons, and ally with all manner of men, if it helped bring down the Light. Nothing was truly evil, if it was used to extirpate a greater evil.

"We do not pay you to talk about echoes," Bran said harshly. "You are here to lead us to the Light."

Hedges glowered at him, hatred glittering in his narrowed eyes. Bran did not need to possess magic to know that his dislike was returned. Most of the Dark hated him because of who his father had been, and they were jealous, and thought that Bran should have been killed. It did not matter. Bran could cope with being hated. It was better to be hated than to be deceived. It was better to be feared than to be mocked.

Hedges stalked out into the open, and peered into the distance, towards the castle. Bran's men had melted into the darkness long before, and had joined all the other units and divisions. Something big was expected tonight, and intelligence had suggested that it would be here, at Windsor. Once a royal castle, it was now a government outpost, but there were many of the old trappings of royalty still in the castle, there for the taking. The Resistance liked to strike at symbolic places, and Windsor was one of the greatest symbols of all.

Bran pushed down his dislike. The task was more important than emotion. It always was. "Anything?" he asked, moving up beside Hedges.

"Power." Hedges shivered. "But not of the Light."

Bran remembered Will telling him about Herne. They had been sitting side by side on the hillside, legs stretched out in front of them, and the sky so blue and vast above them. They had been talking about this and that, mostly normal things, but then Will had been telling him about the Wild Magic, and hunter that had scattered the dark and the cold of winter. He rode on the eve of Twelfth Night, Will had told him, and today was only the autumn equinox, but…

"The Hunt," Bran murmured. "Could it be the Hunt?" For the equinox was also a day of power in the old calendar, and perhaps a being like Herne could ride a second time, if there was cause.

Hedges recoiled in fear, hissing low in his throat. "Yes. Yes…"

"A trap." Bran felt strangely calm about it all. "They brought us here to…"

"No," Hedges said. "No. Not tonight. Once a year. They are bound. I was there. I saw it. I was there. We all were, seeing with eyes, even if our bodies were far away. We were all part of it, hunted and hounded like vermin, when your friend the Sign-seeker…"

"He's not my friend!" Bran cried. "He never was my friend." He breathed in and out, struggling for control. The rain helped, cold and relentless, washing away anything he did not want to be there. "Is Herne here, Hedges?" he demanded. "Is this a trap?"

"Not here." Hedges shook his head. "An echo. It tastes different. Not like it was then, but still unpleasant." He spat. "We should wipe all such things from the earth."

"But not tonight," Bran said. "Tonight we strike at the Light, and the Resistance that dangles from their strings like puppets."

Can't you see? he wanted to bellow at his prisoners, when they were brought before him. Can't you see how the sorcerers force you to dance to their tune? You are the ones who pay the price, while they sit behind and laugh. Cold face, cold voice, but inside he would be whispering, Like they did with me. But all the prisoners were blind and unrepentant, and declared that they had acted of their own free will. They died still believing that they had been free.

His radio buzzed quietly, and Bran unhooked it from his belt. "Pendragon," he said quietly into it.

"McKenzie, sir," came the reply. "The men are in position, but we have taken a prisoner, sir. An old man, a vagrant. Reeks of drink, and worse."

"It could be a disguise." Bran thought for a moment, weighing up the risks. "Have someone bring him to me. The rest of you keep your positions."

"Very good, sir."

He wondered if Hedges was looking at him. Anyone could disguise themselves as a vagrant, but with magic a man could take on a completely different face. A young man could become old. A whole man could become broken. That was why Hedges was here. He could sense the presence of the Light, and he could sniff out sorceries. He could unmask traitors, and bring them crashing down.

Can you sense anything? he wanted to ask Hedges, but he did not like to be beholden to such a man. Then he realised how selfish and stupid he was to feel like that. The cause was more important than any mere pride. He would humble himself if it meant the capture of a foul creature of the Light. To get his revenge on Will Stanton, he would even endure laughter.

"Anything?" he asked, keeping his voice level, but Hedges shook his head. "Tell me if you notice anything…" Bran began.

"You do not command me, Pendragon," Hedges interrupted him, sneering the title. "We share common purpose, but mine is more pure."

Bran chose not to fight it. He moved a few steps away, back to the paltry protection of the tree, and waited. After a few minutes, he saw the dark shape of one of his men, returning through the trees. The prisoner he was dragging seemed placid, as if broken already. Or pretending, Bran thought. Playing a part.

He glanced at Hedges, but Hedges was quite obviously not looking at him. The prisoner was Bran's, then. Bran went forward to receive him. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Harry," the old man said. His captor threw him down before Bran, where he grovelled on hands and knees. "Please don't hurt me. I sleep here, that's all. I haven't got a house. I like a bit of drink every now and then, you see. Wife left me, and they took my house, but I sleep in the woods, and that's not a crime, is it?"

Bran looked down at him. "Yes." He kept his voice low and cold. He knew from experience that such a voice induced more terror than a shout. "All citizens should live in proper registered accommodation. Sleeping rough is a crime." He bent down, just a little. "Being a member of the Resistance is a worse crime."

"Resistance?" the man echoed. "I'm not in the Resistance. They wouldn't have me," he laughed. "Too drunk."

"Ah, so you tried to join them?" Bran demanded.

"No. No." The man was pathetic in his grovelling. "A joke, sir. I'm sorry. I don't know anything about the Resistance."

Bran straightened up, made to turn away. "Of course," he said, "someone in the Resistance would say just that, too. They might even dress up as a vagrant and spin a story just like yours…" He let his voice trail off, and counted to ten, tuning out the prisoner's squawks and denials. "But if you are who you say you are," he said, turning back, "then perhaps you have seen people passing tonight. Not us, but others. Perhaps a little word about them…"

"I didn't see anything," the prisoner protested. "Nothing at all. Nobody, until the soldiers came."

Perhaps it was the truth. The Resistance was tricksy and knew how to move unseen, especially if they had foul magic on their side. This man could be just what he seemed, in which case he needed to be arrested for vagrancy and put to work in a prison camp, but not by Bran. Bran aimed at far higher targets, and dealt with the worst of crimes.

"I think you're lying." Bran started to pace around the prisoner. This, too, had broken many a man. He lingered at the man's back, knowing that the man would be trembling at the thought of a knife at his back, and death in a single word. "I think you're a member of the Resistance in disguise. Perhaps you even let yourself be captured deliberately, so you could strike…"

"No," the man gabbled. "No. It's not true. I'm not…"

Bran grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head up. "You could be a sorcerer," he hissed. He stared at the man's eyes, suddenly desperate to see Will Stanton's eyes staring back at him. "I could have you in my hands, the chief viper of them all."

"No," the man sobbed. "No, please, let me go. You're hurting me. Let me go. Please…"

His radio sounded. A distraction, Bran thought. He did not let the man go. "I will have the truth out of you," he vowed.

The radio sounded again, louder this time. Bran cast the prisoner away. "Hold him," he commanded to the soldier, as he snatched the radio from his belt. "What?" he snapped.

It was not McKenzie. The voice at the other end was high with fear and fury. It told its tale, and Bran felt as if he was standing on the edge of a precipice, and it was crumbling beneath him, and he was falling, falling…

"What?" Hedges demanded. "You see!" the prisoner cried. "I said I wasn't… I said…"

Bran hated them for hearing. He switched the radio off, and turned away. The rain had stopped, he realised. He wondered when that had happened. If felt like a new day, as if time had stopped when the message had come in, and only now was starting again.

"There is no attack," Bran said, still not looking at anyone else. "There is no trap. This whole thing was a trick, a diversion." A thousand men were stationed at Windsor, and hardly anyone left behind. His home, his office, all his possessions… The pride of it, and the shame. "We withdraw," he said wearily. Withdraw, and go back, and face the wrath and retribution that was to come.

"The prisoner, sir?" the soldier asked.

Just a vagrant. Nothing more than he appeared to be. "Let him go," Bran commanded, as he walked away into the darkness. "Someone else will find him soon. They always do."

___

Part two: chapter seventeen

Doors close

___

The sun turned bloody in the smoky autumn sky. The lurid light flooded Bran's devastated office, and made it look as if he was standing ankle-deep in blood.

"He has been punished, of course," his guardian was telling him. "Only a fool falls for a trick like that."

The head of the secret police had committed everything to thwart the expected attack on Windsor, leaving nothing behind to defend their own base. The prisoners in the holding cells had been released, papers and possessions had been stolen, and those that could not be taken away had been destroyed.

Bran felt violated. Mine, he thought, imagining them stamping through his office and rifling through his desk. Foul Resistance creatures, tainted with sorcery... "I will make them pay," he swore.

"Of course," his guardian said, with a quick and chilling smile. "You are taking his position. The secret police is yours now." He smiled again. "See that you do not fail as he did."

He strode out, splashing through blood, wading through it, drowning in it.

Far below, in the only cell that was still occupied, Barney shivered. "Something…" he whispered to Simon, who could not hear him. "Something… evil." It was a strong word to use, but it felt right. He did not know what had prompted it.

The bloody sun did not penetrate the place where Simon and Barney were. There had been no light since the cell door had been slammed shut by the soldiers. Barney had no idea how many had escaped, or who had organised it. As far as he had been aware, a big operation was planned for Windsor, and not here. He could only assume that the Windsor plans had been a distraction, and he had not been trusted enough to know the truth.

Which is good, he thought, because that means there are fewer people for me to betray when they break me.

He no longer feared the footsteps. He could have run, and he had stayed. When they came, they came. He could not fear it and he could not regret it. He had made this choice, and that was that.

When the footsteps came, he took his place at Simon's side, and held his brother's hand.

On the far side of London, Jane imagined how it would be. They were not hurt in her imagination, though, and Simon was the strong one, shielding his younger brother as the door opened. She wondered if they had been afraid when the time came. She wondered if they had been afraid, just for a moment, that this meant death.

"It's done?" she asked him.

He nodded. "It is done. They are on their way to the camp." He took her hand and squeezed it. "It's all I could do, Jane. I couldn't free them, not for this. At least they're alive. They'll have to work, but they won't be ill-treated. I promise you that."

"Yes," she said. She wished she could have seen them. She wished she could have talked to them. A tiny, terrible part of her wanted them to know. I paid the price, she wanted to cry to them. I paid it so you can be free.

"Come on, Jane," he said, picking up a wine bottle and heading for the bedroom. "There are better things to do on our wedding night than talk."

She followed, walking slowly, and painted a smile on her face. The bedroom door closed on the last of the sunlight…

And then there was night.

"So close." Will paced up and down in front of the shattered window. "I didn't know. I could have…"

"No," Merriman told him. "You could not. You should not. You must forget it."

Bran was at Windsor; he had known that much. He had found Bran's office, with "Pendragon" on the door, but he had not entered, had not touched a thing. He had shielded their flight, and they had escaped without casualties, their objectives achieved.

It was only afterwards that he had learned that Simon and Barney had been there, and had been left behind.

"We are fighting to save the world, Will," Merriman said sternly. "We cannot throw that away because of one person we used to know."

I don't like him any more, Will thought, and he felt a stab of pain worse than he had felt at James' death. Merriman was his only friend. He had been father and mentor to him. As a child, Will had longed for him. It was the most dreadful thing of all, to find that worship turned to this.

"I knew them longer than you did, Will," Merriman said softly. "I grieve, too, but…"

But you cursed Hawkin, Will thought, whom you loved.

"I don't want to be cold," Will cried, almost sobbing it.

"You have no choice, Old One," Merriman said, and he closed the door and left Will alone with the night.

*******

End of part two

Part three will resume six years in the future. Part three is the final part, and has 21 chapters.