The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(72)
The Dire King chuckled darkly from behind the panel. That was why his voice had been so familiar. It was deeper, rumbling like an echo caught in a tunnel—but that voice was Arawn’s. The Dire King and the Fair King were one and the same! “I didn’t know about the gem back then,” he snarled.
“In your memory, Grafton asked you to honor your side of the agreement. You nodded. What was that agreement, I wonder?”
“I promised him that I would leave him in peace for as long as he lived,” the king answered. “He cheated, obviously. He wasn’t supposed to have the gem. Wasn’t supposed to survive so long. But I couldn’t kill him, so I made life interesting for the people all around him. He didn’t like that. I lost track of him, to be honest, around the seventeenth century. He resurfaced a couple hundred years later in New Fiddleham, and by then I had found humankind a bit of a fascination.”
“You don’t deny it?”
“What should I deny?” Arawn said. “I am in the right. When humanity split from the otherworld, you left magic behind. But humans are good at surviving. Humankind had to get creative in ways the fair folk didn’t fully understand. Look around you! Nothing like this device exists in the magical world—it doesn’t need to. No one in the Annwyn could have dreamed it up. I do not hate humanity; I want to bring out its full potential. Idle, you humans become complacent. Threatened, you become vital. You bring order to chaos, and the process is beautiful. But you have no concept of true chaos. You are like children born in a desert who can only dream of the ocean. You are thirsty for it, and you do not even know it. What you need is a ruler who will bring the chaos to you.”
Lights flashed to life on the machine, and Lord Arawn’s face was fully illuminated at last, maniacal and proud.
“The ocean,” Jackaby said, “is salt water. It isn’t fit to drink.”
“What?” said Arawn.
“We don’t want your new world order, and neither do your own kind. You know that already, though. You’ve lied to make it happen. Your people all believe Hafgan was trying to destroy the veil. The opposite is true, isn’t it? He was the one protecting it.”
“Not exactly. He wanted to punch a few holes,” Arawn replied. “Create rifts in the veil to mend the rifts between our people. Bridges. He wanted to allow easier passage between the worlds. Hafgan wanted us to live among mankind as equals. Can you imagine it? He talked of laws, endless rules to protect his impossible harmony. His oppressively regulated coexistence would not have been peace; it would have been prison. I am not the villain here, Seer. I am giving my people freedom, not tyranny. I will give them chaos—real, natural freedom—and I will rule over this chaos as my forefathers once did. This is the natural order.”
The device was vibrating now, and the hum was getting louder. Arawn stood in the center of the control stage, his arms spread out, welcoming the burst.
“There’s nothing natural about this,” Jackaby said. “If you do this—if you become this—there will be no going back.”
“Alina,” said Arawn. “Throw the switch.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Energy cracked out of all three channels like whips of golden light. Arawn took the blast full in the chest. He bellowed as the bolts surged into him, sparkling tendrils of light writhing around his arms and legs like snakes.
Arawn grew. His features did not warp or stretch. He was not replaced by some grotesque version of himself, as his warriors had been. He simply grew. He was eight feet tall. Ten. Fifteen.
I tore my eyes away from the transformation and pulled myself up, hastening to loosen Jackaby’s bindings. “Sir!” I said. “I’m here.”
“We’ve failed,” Jackaby said.
“Maybe if we can keep him distracted, slow him down. You said yourself, the armies of the Annwyn—”
“Aren’t coming. It was Arawn who promised to send for them.”
“It isn’t over, sir!”
“It’s over. The veil is like a great big lock. Arawn had a clumsy hammer—and I’ve made it into a key for him. He has all the power he needs, thanks to me. The crown affords him the focus to control it. The gem ensures he has the strength to survive it.”
“So jam the lock!” I said, pulling off the strap around his wrist.
“What?” Jackaby said.
“You’ve given him a key, fine. How do we stop him from turning it?”
The machine above us whirred louder and louder, until its hum became more like the deafening absence of noise. My ears rang terribly in the ensuing silence.
Arawn raised his arms and the power burst through them.
The hovering stones orbiting the tower keep flew in all directions, hammering into the walls of the hold like cannon fire. The torn places in the veil swelled and stretched, meeting each other to form great gaping clefts. A sound crept slowly back to my ears. Cries. Growls. The clang of steel. The clamor of battle was seeping through the thinning barrier as a muffled echo. Down in the courtyard, I could see shapes—clusters of fighters here and there, like shadows behind an oilcloth. Arawn gave a broad wave of his arms and my vision rippled. The courtyard and churchyard were suddenly one. There were no gaps, no holes—Grafton’s Parish and Hafgan’s Hold were now the same space. The earth and Annwyn were one, and the din of the fight was all around us.