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.

Part three: chapter seven

Blood

He moved as if in a dream, wrapped in the unreality of the thing. He drifted up the steps, intending to… what? Summon his men to grab the sorcerer and secure him? Send a message to his dark guardian himself? Or maybe just to tell his men that they should finish up on their own, that he was going home.

His hand closed on the door handle. Was Stanton still there? He turned round, suddenly terrified that he was gone, but the sorcerer was still standing there, silent and placid on the edge of a pool of light. Bran half turned away again, almost turned the handle…

He could not do it. He could not leave him, even for a moment. It was a trick, an illusion. If he turned his back, Will Stanton would vanish, leaving only the echo of his mocking laughter. He was a shadow slipping through the fingers, a dream, a trick of the light.

"No," he said. "I am not letting you go."

They walked off together, side by side. Bran fought the urge to grab hold of him and never let him go, but he knew such things were useless in the face of magic. Only the lord of the Dark could secure such a one as this. The only right thing for Bran to do was to send for them.

"Where are we going?" Stanton asked.

Bran shot a glance at him sideways, hidden by his glasses. Stanton had changed a lot over the years, but Bran would still have known him anywhere. He would have recognised him even in the distance through a crowd. "Do you really expect me to tell you?" he demanded.

"I was just wondering," Stanton said, "if it was somewhere where we could talk, just the two of us, or if this is all the time we have, and I should say what I need to say now, even though anyone could hear us."

He sounded so calm, so emotionless, that Bran felt the veil of unreality begin to tear, revealing the hatred and anger beneath it. "I should hand you over to the Dark," he hissed.

"Yes," Stanton said, "but I need to talk to you first."

"More tricks," Bran spat, but still they walked onwards, side by side, not touching. "More lies."

"No." Stanton sounded very tired. "Just the truth. There was only ever the truth. Perhaps it was never said aloud, though, or not said enough."

Bran clenched his first, forcing himself not to lose control, where people could be watching from behind curtains, hidden by the darkness. His apartment was very close to the house they had been investigating. They would be there within minutes. He would hold off until they arrived, he decided. Once he had lured Stanton inside, then he would contact his guardian and let things unfold as they had to unfold.

They walked in silence. He's too far gone even for lies, he thought. He still felt half in a dream, but anger was there now, and something else, too. He felt confused, almost scared, his heart fluttering in his chest, and his hands ready to tremble if he did not clench them tight.

Why had Will Stanton come to him? For he had come to him. He had not been captured and dragged here against his will. He had chosen to show himself to Bran, just as he was choosing to walk with him now. Why? It's a trick, he thought, but he could not work out what sort of a trick it was.

"I wish you were in chains," he told Will Stanton harshly, "hanging broken in the hands of the lords of the Dark, just like your master."

Will said nothing. Bran searched for signs of emotion on his face, but saw only a mask. It reminded him of the man he saw in the mirror.

He speeded up, suddenly desperate to get home. As he walked, he thought of all the ways he had dreamed of this moment. He had lived for revenge. He had been sustained for years by his hatred of this man. He had imagined a thousand ways of watching Will Stanton broken, and a thousand more of him grovelling, saying that he was wrong, begging for a forgiveness that Bran would never give.

It was not supposed to be like this. This ruined everything. How could you hate someone who came so quietly and so willingly? But, at the same time, Bran hated Will, for robbing him of his hate.

In a few minutes, he reached the outer door of his building, and pushed the door open. Will Stanton followed him. The guard in the lobby said a few words, and Bran said a few words back, but a moment later he could not remember what was said, or what he had answered.

The lift came. They rode side by side, and then side by side walked down the corridor, feet silent on the blood-red carpet. Bran opened his door, and Will went in.

There, Bran thought, as he locked the door. He wanted to bolt it, to lock it again and again. He would wrap it in chains and lock it a thousand times, if that would stop his enemy slipping away. Mine, he thought. In here, and all mine.

Will remained standing in the middle of the apartment. It occurred to Bran that this was the first visitor he had ever had, although he had lived here alone for four years. No-one but him had ever sat in his couch. No-one had ever shared the food that he occasionally cooked. No-one had seen his bed, or asked about the painting that hung above it, showing mountains, and a stretch of sand half-revealed by the retreating tide.

He could almost have laughed. He fought an absurd urge to ask Will to sit down, to bring him tea and biscuits and chat about whatever it was that normal people talked about, when they had someone round to stay.

"Bran," Will said. The sound of his voice was like a fist twisting on Bran's heart. No-one had called him that name for years. Will said it in the Welsh way, but with an English accent, in the way that no-one but Will had ever said his name, and it made him…

"Don't," he rasped. "Don't."

Will blinked mildly. "Don't what, Bran?"

"Say my name like that," Bran shouted, "as if we were friends."

"I was always your friend, Bran."

Bran punched Will in the jaw, sending him backwards. He landed on the edge of the coffee table, and slid off it, crumpled on the floor. There was blood on his mouth, and blood elsewhere, too, Bran saw now. He had been hurt already, and, Good! Bran thought. He deserves it. Good! His first hurt, and the pain fuelled the anger, and the anger was good, too. Anger was simple and plain, not like the strange dream-reality of the walk.

"You're my prisoner, sorcerer," Bran spat. "You're only here until the lords of the Dark arrive and take you away." He stalked to a drawer, where he kept handcuffs and weapons and worse. He pulled out the cuffs first, and then a knife. "Not much use to chain a sorcerer, is it? But you bleed just like normal men. If you were made to bleed enough, I'm sure you couldn't escape."

"No need for that." Will was kneeling now, evidently in pain from his back. "I'm powerless before you, Bran. I daren't use any of my powers here. They're watching you. If I used magic in here, they would know. They would be here in an instant, and then I wouldn't…"

"Watching me?" Bran raised his fist again, but Will did not cower. "You're lying. They trust me."

"I can feel them," Will said. "I can feel their eyes, although they're turned away now. But they're close. If I did anything, they would come."

"So you are powerless." Bran smiled. He grabbed Will by the throat, and hauled him to his feet, rejoicing in the moan of pain that he dragged forth. He searched around for a place to tie him, then remembered the high cupboards in the kitchen. He marched Will there, and cuffed his hands together, then raised them up, securing them to the handle above his head.

Will endured it all without a struggle. Once again, Bran felt the hot jet of his anger lessening, replaced by the confusion and the sense of unreality. He wanted the anger back, and so he punched Will in the stomach, to hear him moan. Then he picked up the knife, and held it to Will's throat. "Tell me why you came," he demanded.

"To see you," Will replied.

Bran hit him again. The blow jolted him to the side, so his neck scraped against the knife, drawing a thin line of blood. Bran drew the knife away a little.

"Why did you come?" he demanded. "I will get the truth," he promised. "This is my job."

"Torture?" Will said. "I know. But, oh, Bran… I wish you hadn't. You were so good, so pure, so…"

"Stop it!" Bran threw the knife away, and slapped him across the face. "Is that it? You came here to play the virtuous saint, telling me how far I've fallen? I know that. I'm not proud of the things I do, but it's all I had. It's all you left me. You wouldn't let me do anything else."

"I'm sorry," Will whispered, through bloody lips. "I…"

"No, you're not!" Bran screamed. He groped for the knife again, and found it. With the other hand he punched the light switch. For a moment, the kitchen was completely dark, before the lights from outside seeped in and turned it grey.

Bran never liked to see the blood of prisoners. He asked the questions, but he did so in the dark, and he never looked down.

"I came because I had to see you, before the end." Will sounded as if he, too, was freed by the darkness. "They took Merriman. I'm the only one left. I cannot survive long. But, if the end is going to come, I wanted to see you first before I went, to talk, to explain, to understand…"

Bran passed his left hand over his face. It was smeared with specks of Will's blood, and he tasted it, and it was iron, just like any normal man's blood. "I knew," he said, drawing back a step. "I always knew you were still alive. They said you weren't. They said Merriman was the last one. But I knew. Two boys died that day, drowning in the sea, but you didn't die any more than I did."

"No," Will whispered. "I didn't want pretend like that. Merriman…"

"Why didn't you come back for me, then?" Bran screamed. He grasped the knife, thrust it as hard as he could into Will's stomach. "Why didn't you come?" He twisted the knife. "Why didn't you come?" He was almost sobbing. He pulled the knife out, and let it fall from his nerveless fingers, and heard it thud and clatter on the tile floor. "Why didn't you come?" he whispered.

He had never realised, never known. For so many years, he had lived with this hatred. Will Stanton had pretended to be his friend. He had lied to him and used him, wanting him to become a tool for the false cause of the Light. But first, before that, hadn't there been need? In those early days, hadn't he felt trapped by his decision, and lonely? He had stood at the window for hours, watching for Will to come and fight for him. Even if everything he said was a lie, at least he would be saying it in person. At least Bran would not be alone.

"You stayed away," Bran said, his voice broken and hoarse, "and so I knew it was true."

"I wanted to come," Will gasped, strangled with pain. His blood fell on the floor in audible drips. "I begged Merriman to let me, but he wouldn't… He never would… Again and again I asked him, but he… It's only now… now he's gone, that I can…"

"I thought you were my friend." Bran backed away, and crouched down in the darkness, in a place that was clean and cold and free of blood. "I was so lonely as a child. I'd never had a friend. And then you came… I know it was the quest that brought us together, but I thought there was something more. It meant so much to me, but I was wrong. It was all a lie."

"It wasn't, Bran." Will's voice was hardly audible. "None of it was a lie. It's a lie that it was a lie."

"No," Bran cried, for he had based his life on this, had made his choices because of this, had fallen so far because of this, and it could not be false, it could not.

"I don't know what they told you," Will whispered, in a fading thread of a voice. "I don't know what they showed you, but it wasn't true. None of it was true."

"No," Bran moaned.

"I mourned for the world, but I mourned you even more."

Bran flailed for the knife, and caught it by the blade, scoring a deep line in his palm. I want… He tried to pick it up, tried to surge to his feet, to bring the knife across Will Stanton's lying throat, to silence him forever. He'd call for the Dark, and let them take him away. He'd keep Will hidden here for weeks, and kill him piece by piece, and then kill him again, because he could not die.

"Whatever you saw then wasn't true." Will's voice came to him like soft feathers falling from the air. "Remember, Bran. Remember…"

And, with a sob and a cry of anger, Bran did.

End of part three: chapter seven