Devastation

by Jane Dougherty

  “Here! It’s down here.”

  Erelah closed the wooden trap at the top of the stone staircase and helped Rajeev lay Sanjay down on a bed made from their belongings. Gently, they eased him into the military-style sleeping bag Erelah had pillaged from a sports equipment shop. The boy was burning with fever and he shivered uncontrollably. His lips moved, but the words were just incoherent sounds.

  An Arctic wind howled around the ruined building and spat ice crystals, diadems of frozen rain, against the tumbled walls. But the cellar was dry, at least, and now that they were out of the wind, it felt relatively warm. The room they occupied was the smaller of the two they had discovered that were not entirely filled with rubble from the collapsed apartment block. It housed the boiler and what looked like the janitor’s den. The dustbin in the corner was overflowing with pizza cartons, and there was a lingering, homely smell of soap powder, beer and cats that brought Rajeev close to tears in his overwrought state. They barricaded the door with a heavy workbench dragged in from the larger room. It was useless against the slime, but it would keep other things out, and perhaps the slime wouldn’t look for them there.

  While Rajeev settled Sanjay, Erelah inspected their new home.

  “We’ve found it, Raj,” she said excitedly. “This is the place. I only have to find the path.”

  Rajeev raised his head and looked around. He wanted to believe, but the place looked so like any of the other hideouts they’d squatted in and had to leave because the black slime had got too close. Erelah came back and crouched down beside him.

  “Let’s eat. I’ll be able to concentrate better.”

  Rajeev admired Erelah. He really did. She just needed to refuel from time to time, then she was ready to go again. Looking. Always looking. He watched as she rummaged in her backpack and pulled out a tin of cassoulet and a can opener. He blew on his frozen hands and wriggled his fingers to get the circulation going, then lit the spirit stove. The comforting smell made him feel faint. He opened the can then placed it over the flame.

  Erelah had gone again, poking around the small room, looking for anything that might be remotely useful. When she let out a small cry, Rajeev swung around.

  “Listen,” Erelah whispered.

  He listened, grasping at every tiny sound, not knowing what he was supposed to be listening for. Then he heard it too, a faint humming, like a small generator, coming from behind the boiler. Erelah was already on her feet, standing in front of the place. Rajeev peered. It was hard to see it in the dark, it was just a zone of deeper darkness. But it was there. The hairs at the back of Rajeev’s neck slowly stood on end.

  * * * *

  Ice crystals hung in the air, and breath turned to hoar frost in scarves and at the edges of hoods and bonnets. Alinor’s hands shook slightly as she grasped the weapon through thickly gloved hands. The section of the city defended by a barrier had shrunk to the area around the Assembly, including the islands in the river Sequana. The museums and public buildings, cellars and warehouses along the riverfront were crammed with refugees, anywhere that could be defended by modelers and controlled by the guardians of the peace. The original barrier around the city had collapsed long ago, attacked at too many points from the interior by creatures possessed by Wormwood and his demons. Too many modelers and healers were dead. Too many sages, dreamcatchers and warriors eliminated to hope that they could hold out for much longer against the flood of souleaters and the army of dead souls that followed in their wake.

  Even here, in the center of government, surrounded by her oldest, most trusted friends and colleagues, Alinor knew that evil was seeping into the minds of all those who lowered their guard, even for an instant. She had not seen Amaury for days, not since she’d sent him to repair the boundary. She was certain that the fiercely idealistic young man had done his duty, but the travelers could send no messages in the air, thick with black slime. She had no way of communicating with him and refused to give herself the false hope that he was still alive. She had no more tears, but the grief was real all the same. And fatigue was getting the better of them all.

  She peered with sore eyes at the army of dead souls that clustered at the gates of the park, and she watched helplessly as they surged forward, twittering and moaning. The dark slime of the souleaters sent black tentacles through the railings. The modelers who were left were using their last reserves of strength, and it wasn’t enough. The last barrier was failing!

  Alinor shouldered her weapon and trained it on the widening fissure in the barrier, though she had little hope that any weapon in the small arsenal of Lutecia would be able to stop the souleaters. The small group with her did the same. She heard the click of safety catches. They were ready. She watched the slime gathering, but all she could hear was the sound of her friends’ breathing. It sounded so fragile, so sweet that she wanted to cry.

  A sudden noise, a faint, mouse-like rustling made Alinor turn her head away from the window. Behind her, in the dim shadows of the assembly rooms, a group of ragged, gray-faced men and women were creeping stealthily across the parquet.

  Alinor sent out a brief, silent plea to Yvain, then she opened fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Walking the Dreampaths

  The chill of the starlit air as it rushed into his lungs woke Tully with a start. He opened his eyes wide and stared. Stars were all around him, gemstone bright and so close that he felt their heat searing the skin of his outstretched hand. Another hand clasped his tightly, and he turned to find Carla floating, falling or gliding, he wasn’t sure which, beside him. He smiled. He and Carla, alone in the night sky, close, just the two of them surrounded by eternity. Tully’s heart soared. He heard the song of the stars.

  Below them, in the darkness, there were no stars, no lights, and he knew from the thickening of the air that there was nothing below but the black slime, the eaters of souls. Clutching Carla’s hand, he soared higher into the heat of the stars and farther. Together, they followed the course of a great river over an immense plain then hit the lower slopes of a mountain range. Time passed and the first hesitant, isolated lights appeared. Mountaintops. Carla pointed. A ring of wavering lights, flames, beacons maybe, encircled what looked like a valley. The valley was dark, but it vibrated with heat and life. Carla turned to him, her brow furrowed, then her face lit up with hope. She pointed again. The valley was full of trees! A dense forest covered the valley floor. Any life below would be invisible from above, except where the tree canopy broke…and an isolated hilltop settlement appeared.

  Carla plunged lower. Tully held tightly to her hand and followed. The freezing night air burned his lungs and set his nose tingling painfully. His fingers numbed and he could no longer feel Carla’s hand. But she seemed oblivious to everything but the pinpoints of light below. Then Tully heard the music, rising up from the valley, from the trees and the houses nestled beneath. A courageous music defied the encroaching darkness that was more than just the night shadows.

  They skimmed the treetops. Leaves shivered and parted. A troop of monkeys cowered among the topmost branches, hugging their thin chests with finger-like paws. They made no sound as the humans passed in a dream, but Tully looked into their bright black eyes, filled with curiosity. If they were afraid, their fear was reserved for something else.

  The music soared and swelled as they sped toward the tremulous lights that blinked through the leafy canopy as they passed. Tully stole a look at Carla and saw that her expression of intense concentration had changed to one of ecstatic joy. She turned to him and beamed.

  “Mamma!”

  The single silent word echoed in Tully’s head and he grinned back, grinned so hard it hurt. Only now, gripped by the elation of relief, did he realize how terrified he had been that Garance was dead.

  They circled, Carla reaching out to the darting fragments of light that emanated from the clearing. Dreams, but only one dreamer. A beam, stronger than the rest, caught them in its spotlight and held them both. Tully felt the imm
ensely powerful tug through Carla’s fingers as she locked onto the source. The tension eased and they both saw a star-like shape hovering low over the hilltop, over a vast fortress that gave out a throbbing warmth. The star struggled to rise, as if reluctant to leave the warmth below. Tully had no idea what it was, but he sensed that Carla desperately wanted it to let go.

  Then Tully saw the blackness, thicker and blacker than night that engulfed the forest. The hysterical jabber of the monkeys filled his ears, and the sad song of the dying Earth became a crashing, agonizingly discordant cacophony of sound. The blackness was a huge wave on an ocean of darkness. He turned swiftly to Carla and pointed. She nodded, but her gaze didn’t shift from the star riding at anchor above the fortress.

  They were hovering low, low enough to see the trees sagging and falling beneath the onslaught of the dark wave, low enough to smell the stink of carrion and putrefaction. Suddenly the silent forest was full of bounding shapes that trampled the fallen branches, snapping and growling at the monkeys that raced, screaming in panic before them, at the small forest deer, wild pigs and even a big spotted cat. And drax! But the drax were not hunting. They ignored the leaping prey animals, racing with them, faster than them in a terrified race.

  Carla still watched the star, and Tully realized she was guiding its path upward, out of reach of the slime.

  Garance! She’s caught her!

  In his joy, Tully began to sing, a song that rose out of the silence of space. He turned to Carla and smiled, and he became lips, tongue, mouth opening and closing, a throat rising and falling as the music poured from him. The star glowed brighter, pulsing in time to the song’s rhythm. Carla smiled back at him, transfixed by the music. Suddenly, her expression changed from joy to black, bitter terror.

  ‘Tully! No, stop!’

  Tully hadn’t understood the danger, and now it was too late. The blackness had heard. It had found Tully, the singer, and faster than galloping horses, it surged into the sky with a bestial roar. The rising star faltered in its course, and a mass of black tentacles reached out around it, almost quenching its brilliance.

  “Mamma!”

  Carla dived so suddenly that Tully’s hand slipped from her grip. He half turned, dragged out of his dream and saw Carla’s panic-stricken eyes fixed upon him. The song died in his throat as a black tendril shot out from the approaching blackness and wrapped itself around his wrist.

  Carla stopped in her dive toward the failing star. Tully mouthed a wordless cry and saw the distress in her eyes. The black tendril became a wave that swirled about him, plucking him out of the sky. He fell, Carla’s scream ringing inside his head, and the blackness dragged him from her sight.

  * * * *

  Jim looked out over the sea from the lighthouse gallery. The sky at the far horizon was a luminous, unsullied blue, but closer to the shore, wispy mares’ tails threshed orange and ochre patterns across it. Battalions of gray and white cirrus pushed behind like foam on a boiling tide, a tide as black as pitch. The land was gradually disappearing beneath a dense blanket of thunder cloud that hung so low as to drape every treetop and rocky outcrop in funereal shrouds that banked so mountainously high as to obscure the sky and take sustenance from the black depths of empty space beyond. The unbroken darkness was lit from within by the flickering yellow light, so familiar from the last days of Jim’s world. He felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle, either with static or fear.

  The door opened at his back, and he started. Eirian’s voice asked, “Do you mind a bit of company? I think if I have to listen to Jack yelling at Yvain any more, I’ll hit him.”

  Jim turned and scraped wind-blown curls out of his eyes. “Company would be fine. It’ll take my mind off the Apocalypse that’s preparing out there.” He nodded in the direction of the furious sky. Eirian leaned on the rail beside him, her hair blowing wildly too. She pulled it back out her eyes, and her breath whistled between her teeth.

  “I don’t know which idea is worse, going into the thick of it or waiting for it to hit the lighthouse.”

  “You’d really go out there, wouldn’t you?” Jim was filled with admiration. “Even knowing it’s full of black slime, zombies and God knows what else?”

  Eirian shrugged. “That’s rather the point of the exercise, isn’t it? We’re meant to be leading that darkness to its doom, not hiding from it on a desert island.”

  Jim looked into the wild ocean and back at Eirian. “I’d be keener if I didn’t have to go it alone.”

  Eirian gave him a curious look. “Who said you’d be on your own? Where do you think the rest of us will be?”

  Jim took her hand, still looking out to sea. “You know what I mean. Don’t leave me.”

  Eirian let him hold her hand, but he sensed that she wasn’t holding his hand. Instead she sighed. “You don’t need me, you know. You can cope with your demons on your own.”

  “Maybe I can.” Jim turned, pouring all the tenderness he felt into his words. “But maybe I don’t want to.”

  Eirian smiled. “What you don’t want is a crutch. Walk by yourself for a while, then we’ll have this conversation again. All right?”

  Jim hesitated then managed a smile. “Fine.”

  * * * *

  Erelah stared at the humming blackness, listening to the voices it contained, watching the worlds turning and shifting in its depths. Silently, Rajeev crouched down beside her and tucked her arm under his. Erelah could feel that he was trembling, either with fear or excitement.

  “Raj? Are you okay?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on the black hole. “Is this the way? You’re sure?”

  Erelah took a deep breath. “Sure.”

  “What about Sanjay?”

  Erelah let her excitement burst out in a brilliant smile. “We’ll carry him! When the time comes, we’ll carry him.”

  “When, Relah? It has to be now. Sanjay’s… I don’t know if he can wait many more hours. Can you make it soon?”

  Erelah turned to where Sanjay lay. Such a slight hump he made in the sleeping bag. There was hardly anything left of him. She refused to think about his death. It wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t part of her plan.

  “Just as soon as I work out how the tunnel operates.”

  “I thought you knew.” Rajeev’s voice was dead, not even disappointed. “I thought once we found the path, we’d be able to…you know, just leave.”

  “We will!” Erelah would not let Rajeev’s doubt drag her spirits down. He was worried about Sanjay. That was all. “The tunnel will take us out of this place into a world without black slime and cold, where the dead are truly dead, and the living have real lives, not living deaths.”

  She gave Rajeev’s arm a squeeze and turned to him. His dark eyes were wide, sunless pools, and in them Erelah could see the doubt struggling with hope.

  “Another world,” he said dreamily. “I can’t imagine it.” Rajeev lowered his gaze, and Erelah knew it was because he didn’t want her to see that he didn’t believe her.

  She longed to be able to share some of her hope with him.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it. This is the secret—the surprise I was keeping for you. I’ve seen what comes after the end!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Garance, the Dzong and the Abomination

  Four years earlier…

  On a late spring morning, in the last hours of calm before the Abomination began, Garance Bellini stood on the roof of the world. The great white walls of the Dzong rose up behind her, dominating a thickly forested valley of pines, junipers and oaks. It was a massive building, both monastery and fortress, housing temples, administrative buildings and accommodation for the monks. This was Garance’s third visit, and restoration of the paintings in the main temple was almost complete. She tore her eyes away from the breathtaking view, filled with the fluttering of hundreds of butterflies, thinking how much Carla would love it, except maybe for the food. She drew in a few deep breaths of the spring mounta
in air then went back to work.

  She passed through the great gates of solid oak bound with iron and climbed a stair to a broad, stone-flagged courtyard filled with light reflected from its pure white walls. In one of the rooms off this courtyard, a room they referred to as the lab, her students, Danny and Helen, were analyzing fragments of four-hundred-year-old pigments to reproduce perfect matches. Their quiet English voices floated through the open door, strange and exotic against the Dzongkha that Garance was so used to hearing almost exclusively when she was in Bhutan. They both turned as she passed the doorway. Helen, her overalls dusty and paint-spotted as usual, gave her a quick, warm grin, and Danny waved enthusiastically.

  “We’ve cracked it,” he called out in his thick northern accent. “The luminous pink… We can copy it. Come and have a look!”

  “In a second,” she replied. “I just want to see how Barry’s getting on.”

  Helen gave her a thumbs-up sign and turned to say something to Danny that Garance didn’t catch. She did hear the laughter though and raised her eyebrows.

  “I’ll put the kettle on, then,” Helen called out, her grin spreading even wider. Garance smiled to herself. Barry had probably been complaining to them about being parched for hours. The two students turned back to the computer screen, blond and chestnut brown heads bent together. It was the last sight Garance had of them.