Read Online More Than Mortal by Mick Farren - Free Book Online Page B

birds. His or her flesh could tolerate heat that scorched grass in an instant. Columbine also realized she was now freely assuming this observer was also the thing asleep in the mound; a long-jump of faith and connection to say the least.
    The vision of the Fire in the West may only have shown itself a single time, but what followed was barely an improvement. Instead of peasants and sunshine, the rain and confusion of the battlefield, or the dank and bloody carrion plain that remained in its wake, she found herself in a twilight place of murky desolation where only the closest objects were visible in a choking finegrain haze, chill but at the same time parched and gritty. Trees had been reduced to naked skeletons, with their bark chewed away, while the hillsides were bare of grass, and hedgerows were naked barbed-wire entanglements of dead brambles. Pale grey ash fell like dusty snow. Birds and animals seemed to be no more, save for hungry and combative rats and wolves. Haggard human survivors, mostly former warriors, with rust on their swords and mail, hollow-skull staring eyes, and weary
leather falling away from their shields and helmets, tottered on the final cadaver legs of terminal starvation. Knights whose prized horses had been long since eaten, bowmen for whom no target presented itself, wagoners whose oxen had dropped beneath the yoke, and deserted kings of burned dominions; they all moved aimlessly through an occluded landscape where nothing was to be found except inevitable death. Only her host/observer manifested any real sense of purpose, and he or she seemed only to be seeking some specific if hard to find place of concealment in which to hide or maybe die like everyone else.
    “This has to be stopped.”
    Unintelligible peasants and endless waterlogged battles were one thing, but Columbine drew the line at visions of an unknown apocalypse. As soon as the sun was below the horizon, she had assembled the others in the formal drawing room. “I’m not exaggerating. It was as though the world was ending.”
    Marieko thought about this, a single furrow appearing in her porcelain neo-geisha brow. “But it was still a vision of the past?”
    “I think so.”
    “Not the present or the future?”
    “It looked like the same period as all the other dreams except everything was dead or dying.”
    “So you don’t think it was some kind of warning?”
    “If you’re asking me if I’ve suddenly turned into Edgar Cayce or Saint John the Divine, the answer is no. I don’t think I’m having prophetic visions.”
    Destry was growing a little impatient. “Really, Columbine, are you telling us you have no idea what this might mean?”
    “All I really know is that I didn’t like it at all.”
    “So what do you want us to do? We decided we should wait.”
    Destry was absolutely correct. They had talked almost through the dawn, finally agreeing that their only option
was to let Campion proceed with his excavation until more was revealed. After almost twelve hours of nonstop nightmare, Columbine had been more than ready for a radical revision of that idea. “If I have to keep seeing this shit every time I try to sleep, I’m going to lose my mind. I know you two don’t have a high regard for it, but it’s the only mind I’ve got, and I need it for thinking and getting me around.”
    “I still believe we should wait, and not do anything precipitate.”
    “But it’s not you having the blasted dreams, is it, Destry? If I were human I could wash down a handful of Seconal with a shot of gin and sleep like a weary dog, but I’m not, and I’ve never encountered any drug or potion that could knock out one of us.”
    It had been Marieko who had given the very first momentum to what would become their plan. “I think we need the help of an expert.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “We would appear to have stumbled across something that is not only well beyond the sum total of our own collective knowledge and