Devastation

by Jane Dougherty

  “I’ll shut up if you’d rather,” he said, feeling slightly embarrassed.

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Carla said apologetically. “Don’t be so spiky!”

  “Prickly.”

  “Prickly. It’s just that you never showed much of an aptitude for music before. It’s funny, and very enjoyable,” she added hastily, “to hear you singing. I mean it, Tully.” Tully had trouble believing her. “I’m not twisting your leg.”

  “Pulling.” He smiled. Whatever.

  “Carla’s right, you know.” Kat broke off her conversation with Eirian and turned in the saddle. “You have an extremely attractive voice. And it seems to me that it’s getting stronger and firmer. Maybe you’ll make your mum’s dream come true after all.”

  “Here. Have a go with this.” Jim handed him the flute he’d made that morning. “And get off Tom Jones’ back for a bit.”

  For the rest of the afternoon they carried on moving west, in a wide sweep that would gradually bring them north. Where the beech forest thinned and the valley of the Sequana broadened into a rich plain, they came upon the first human settlement since leaving Lutecia. The sun had been obscured for most of the day, and by seven o’clock, the light was beginning to fade. They halted at the edge of the trees and looked down the meadows that ran to a village on the banks of the river. Cows wandered, swishing their tails and lowing, to the fields closest to the farmhouses. The day was drawing to a close.

  “Looks peaceful enough,” Jack said. “Maybe they could put us up for the night?”

  Yvain raised his eyebrows, and Tancred shook his head.

  “Too risky. Word was sent to all the settlements within two day’s ride of Lutecia to herd their stock west. These people have ignored the order.”

  “Perhaps they’re the kind of people who make up their own minds about what’s best for them,” Jack said, his chin jutting aggressively.

  “And perhaps they are just waiting for Eblis and the traitors from the dead lands to fall into their hands.” Tancred’s reply was equally testy.

  “Listen here, wack. You wouldn’t be making more of a mystery about this than is strictly necessary, would you?” Jack’s unsmiling face was inches from Tancred’s.

  “Please!” Kat laid a restraining hand on Jack’s arm, a look of confused distress in her eyes.

  “Dad! Tancred is doing his best to keep us out of trouble,” Tully said, embarrassed.

  Tancred recovered his composure and continued. “As Yvain explained before we left, the risk is too great. A few miles ahead, the woods thicken again. Few people have occasion to pass through them at this point, so we should find a safe campsite.” Tancred waited for the others to give a sign of agreement, then turned his horse back into the trees, but not before Tully had seen how he caught Kat’s eye and held her gaze for a moment. They each lowered their eyes at the same moment, and, though the shadows hid the expression on their faces, Tully was sure both of them were blushing furiously.

  Dusty was prowling along the edge of the meadow, her muzzle raised to sniff some strangeness in the air. A growl followed by a low whine drew Tully’s attention. He whistled and the hound came bounding over, eager to join the line of horses. He peered into the gathering dusk that filled the quiet lane with shadows. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought he saw a solitary figure duck behind the low wall of the closest farmyard. Dusty stopped and watched him, her ears raised questioningly.

  “Let’s get out of here, girl,” he whispered softly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Golem

  Tancred led the way along the path that only he could see, through the deepening forest. The silence was complete, except for the thud of the horses’ hooves and the sharp snap of dry branches breaking. No birds sang. No rustle of dead leaves betrayed the presence of small animals. Tully was beginning to find the atmosphere unnerving by the time Tancred called a halt beneath a giant beech. The earth below the low branches was bone dry and carpeted in dead leaves. While Tancred took charge of pitching the tents, and Eirian and Jack saw to the horses, Tully helped Carla dig a fire pit.

  Tancred and Jack still circled one another like two dogs unwilling to risk an outright confrontation, and their irritable outburst at the farm had destroyed the innocence of first friendships. Apart from the short requests concerning the preparation of the meal, not much was said. Tully longed to break the icy atmosphere, but apart from making sure his dad was kept out of Tancred’s way, he didn’t know what to do.

  The Gauls were used to fending for themselves outdoors, but for the others, it was a new and unsettling experience. Every sound startled them—the wind in the branches, the horses settling down, the scurrying of small animals through the dry leaves. Kat helped Eirian forage for onions and garlic, and Tully was amused to hear her yelp.

  “What’s up, Kat? You getting electric shocks from veggies now?”

  Kat mumbled something about sap that Tully didn’t understand. He was about to make some other smart remark but Eirian silenced him with a stern look. Eating real food again was playing havoc with their digestive systems, and they were all sore and tired from the day’s ride. By the time the meal was ready—a fricassee of thick strips of smoked ham, mushrooms and wild onions, and a sort of polenta made from a mixture of boiled grains—the atmosphere was heavy and strained.

  Tully broke the uneasy silence.

  “How about a story, Jeff? For a sage, you’ve been pretty tight-lipped so far.”

  “What story do you want?”

  “How about starting at the beginning, just to be original,” Jack said.

  Jeff grinned. “Okay, here goes for the beginning.”

  He launched into the story of the creation of the worlds, and the tension finally began to ease. Yvain listened with his usual smile, nodding his head in places. Tancred cast shy glances at Kat from beneath his lashes, and Tully glanced quickly at his dad, but he appeared to have decided against picking another argument. Kat seemed engrossed in her own thoughts and Tully wondered why she kept staring at her hands. Whatever talent was making itself felt was obviously making her fingers itch.

  Tully sat close to Carla and wished that the others were a million miles away. Sitting next to her beneath the stars, surrounded by wilderness and feeling the heat from her body when they touched, was almost more than he could bear. They had so much to say, perhaps a lifetime wouldn’t be long enough, and yet they sat in silence. What had happened to them over the last weeks had changed them utterly, and Tully wanted to be sure that beneath the changes—or despite them—Carla was the same. He couldn’t stifle a deep sigh. Carla took his hand and squeezed it.

  “When I find Mamma, perhaps tonight, everything will be all right.” And such a radiant smile lit up her face that Tully believed her.

  As he drifted off to sleep, clutching Carla’s hand so tightly that they would not be separated even in the emptiness of space, Tully was filled with hope. They would find Carla’s mother and bring her out of the dying world. He had no idea how, but his faith in Carla was boundless. In his half-sleep his eyelids fluttered and he frowned slightly. He shook his head and gradually the frown disappeared. Tully refused to consider the alternative—that Garance was dead.

  Yvain volunteered for the first watch, and the others drifted off quickly into an exhausted sleep. He settled his back against a tree trunk, a pile of kindling within easy reach to keep the fire fed. The hound was restless. Yvain watched her as she lay down first in one spot then another. She had wandered off earlier in the evening, hunting, no doubt, and whatever she had caught had not been enough to satisfy her hunger. Unwilling to settle, she turned around and around on the edge of Jeff’s blanket until he pushed her off with an impatient foot.

  “Go, Dusty,” Yvain whispered. “Do your job. Seek, sniff, warn us of trouble.”

  As if she understood, the hound sat up, scratched and loped off again into the night. Yvain smiled to himself.

  A noble gazehound in the making.
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br />   Within a matter of minutes, she was back, ears flattened against her skull, belly to the ground, she lay down at Yvain’s feet, making a low whining sound in the back of her throat, her eyes rolling in fear. Yvain laid a hand on the hound’s head and felt the nervous quivering. Dusty whined again and Yvain got slowly to his feet.

  With one hand placed firmly over Tancred’s mouth, Yvain shook him by the shoulder. Tancred sat up in surprise. Yvain placed a finger to his lips and woke up Jim and Eirian in the same way.

  “Keep watch here until we return,” he whispered to Eirian. “Jim will place a barrier around the camp, but keep the others quiet, just in case.”

  Eirian nodded and moved her blanket into the center of the clearing.

  “Jim will place a barrier, will he?” The moonlight hid the pallor of Jim’s face, but his voice betrayed his tension.

  Yvain nodded. “You can do it. Just repeat the patterns you saw the other modelers make. Think of the barrier like a net, then make those knots in the air.”

  Jim took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  “Just imagine a vast net, Jim,” Yvain said encouragingly. There was no visible change, but Dusty pricked her ears with curiosity and sniffed, her tongue lolling as if she could taste a difference in the texture of the air. Yvain watched the hound, and a slow smile spread across his face. He reached out a hand and touched…a wall as smooth and solid as steel.

  “Good. Now…” He placed a warning finger to his lips and moved stealthily along the path behind the reluctant hound. Dusty halted every few yards, her head hanging low and disconsolately, turning to see that they were following.

  They were about a quarter of a mile from the camp, when Yvain raised a hand, and they stopped. Dusty quivered but Yvain silenced the whine that started in her throat with a sharp gesture. The others strained their ears after the sound that Yvain had heard, but the night was still. Not even a nocturnal breeze stirred the leaves. They held their breath. Then it came again, the flabby, sloppy sound that an animal makes as it tears into the belly of its prey. Yvain pointed to the oak tree that barred their path up ahead and the quivering shadows at its foot.

  “Light. Low,” he whispered. Jim nodded and stared fixedly at the lowest branches of the oak. The leaves began to give out a faint glow no stronger than a pale moonbeam, too faint to disturb the creature intent upon its meal, but more than enough to make Jim’s eyes open wide with horror.

  In the grass at the tree’s base, a humanoid creature about four feet tall was pulling apart the soft body of a doe. The animal’s head hung limp, with a red hole where its throat had been. Squatting on the doe’s flank, the creature, pale and ungainly, was feeding, its head inside the doe’s belly. With a disgusting sucking sound, the creature left its meal and stood upright. Its head, red with blood, turned in their direction. They froze. The creature sniffed the air and suddenly the tree shadows seemed a paltry hiding place.

  The creature turned its head and sniffed the air again suspiciously before going back to its grisly business. Jim looked from Yvain to Tancred, his eyes wide in consternation.

  “We have to destroy it before it grows,” Yvain whispered, his words covered by the sounds of feasting. “Bind its hands and feet.”

  Jim began to raise his hands in a gesture of helplessness then bit his lip. The thing had pulled itself out of the doe’s belly and got to its feet. Terror gripped Jim in the pit of the stomach. The creature was at least five feet tall now, maybe more! It turned its small pebble-like eyes in their direction and raised its head, black pits of nostrils quivering, its mouth an open bloody gash. Jim stifled a cry and desperately twisted the air into ropes and tresses, sending them snaking around the creature that, alerted at last to their presence, leapt toward them. The air ropes pulled tight, and the creature stumbled, its arms pinned to its sides. Then with a howl of rage, it fell forward as the ropes caught around its ankles.

  Yvain pulled out what looked like a handkerchief from his pocket and sprang forward, Tancred at his side. Jim stood trembling in disbelief as Tancred hurled himself on the creature that rolled from side to side, and held his staff across the thing’s neck. The creature roared now—a deep-bellied roar—and tried to pluck away the burning staff that was eating deep into its clay-like flesh and the irritating human holding it. Jim ran to help Tancred, who was visibly in difficulty, weaving more ropes to bind the thing’s arms. Gorged on the fresh meat, the humanoid was still growing. Jim registered that it was now taller than he and built like an all-in wrestler. Despite the festoons of ropes, it heaved and thrashed, its thick, blunt fingers scoring ragged gashes in the soil and dislodging rocks, its heels digging a deep hole and throwing up a hail of pebbles and small rocks. Jim threw his weight onto one end of Tancred’s staff. Between them, they pinned down the head that lashed from side to side, snapping with jaws stained with the hind’s blood.

  Jim was still wondering how Yvain intended to kill the thing with a hankie when Tancred shouted, “Now! Before it breaks the staff!” and Yvain plunged at the creature’s forehead from behind. The humanoid threshed wildly to avoid contact with the cloth, but Yvain grabbed its head between his knees and stilled it for the second it took to wipe the blood and filth from the forehead, reveal three characters written there and wipe one of them away. Tancred and Jim fell forward as Tancred’s staff suddenly met with no more resistance and went through the creature’s thick neck. Jim leapt to his feet with a cry of fear and disgust as the monster’s body crumbled into gray dust.

  Yvain rose painfully, looked at his handkerchief, found a clean corner then wiped the sweat from his face. “That was close,” he whispered. “Another hour and it would have been too strong for your bonds to hold it at all—not that they weren’t very good bonds and very welcome.” He patted Jim on the back. “Not bad at all for a novice.” Yvain wiped his hands, balled the handkerchief and threw it into the bushes. “Not much to be done with that, I’m afraid.”

  “But what was it?” Jim asked, unable to keep the tremor from his voice.

  “Deer’s blood. You can never get it out properly.”

  “Not the blood!” Jim was on the verge of hysteria. “What was that…that thing?”

  “Golem. A little trick Wormwood taught you people. But where your sages could only create one at a time, and never control it for very long, Wormwood can create thousands. And, believe me, he has no trouble making them do exactly what he wants.”

  “A golem,” Jim whispered to himself. “So, it’s like…in the stories. They keep on growing and getting stronger and more uncontrollable, until you wipe out whatever it was written on their forehead. Incredible!”

  “Frightening, more like,” Yvain said. “Imagine trying to get close enough to one of those things to wipe its forehead once it’s twelve feet tall, weighs half a ton and is mad as a bear with a sore head.”

  He wiped the dirt from his hands and took the staff that Tancred handed back to him. Jim had increased the power of the luminescence of the leaves and in the light they shed, the older man’s face was drawn and tense. He pointed to a spot on the far edge of the small clearing, a spot of deeper darkness that seemed to be in motion. “That’s where it came from. Another wormhole. Jim, do you think you could try to block it?”

  “Would a barrier work?”

  Yvain nodded. “It was a good barrier you made back there. It might do the trick.”

  Jim breathed deeply to calm his racing heart and began to move his arms in a graceful pattern, as if he was drawing invisible strands and working them together. He caught Yvain’s amused expression and flushed, slightly embarrassed.

  “It helps if I imagine the air as something I can catch hold of. I know it must look peculiar.”

  “Not at all. I would imagine it gives strength to your creation. I only ever saw one other modeler work like that. He created our most treasured monument, the one you call the Eiffel Tower.”

  “There.” Jim let out his breath in a sigh of relief. “I think that should d
o it.”

  Tancred took a step toward the darkness, but Yvain laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Wait.”

  He reached forward with his staff, carefully bringing the end up to the hole. It stopped. Yvain slid it sideways. The staff moved across the surface of the hole but could not be forced into it.

  “Good. That should hold up the golems for a while. Now, let’s be getting back. Eirian will be worried.”

  “Where’s the dog? Dusty! Dusty, come here,” Jim called in a low voice. For a moment nothing happened, then there was a slight rustling in the undergrowth and the hound crept out from a hazel thicket. She slunk over to Yvain, her eyes rolling as she strained to look in every direction at once. Yvain fondled her ears and said soothingly, “It’s all right. The evil creature has gone now.”

  Dusty poked her nose into the heap of gray ash and sneezed.

  “Some fine guard dog you make,” Jim said in disgust. Dusty gave him a reproachful look. Yvain patted her on the head. “She is not a guard dog, master modeler, any more than you are a traveler. Each to his own talent, hey, Dusty?” The hound wagged her long sickle-shaped tail slowly from side to side then trotted back down the path toward the camp.

  * * * *

  In the ruins of Paris, darkness was slowly enveloping the world. The sun no longer pierced the heavy clouds of ash and dust. Perhaps it no longer existed. The two brothers in a solemn ritual shared out the last edible scraps they possessed into three equal portions then waited for Erelah to return. Rajeev ran his fingers through his thick, unkempt hair and scratched his scalp vigorously. His younger brother Sanjay looked away.

  “Sometimes I think it would have been better if the crane had crushed us all those years ago,” he said in a low voice. “At least it would be all over now, and we wouldn’t be waiting for the lice and the rats and the black slime to finish us off.”