“No,” Maude said.
“What?” Inna asked.
Everything was frozen except Maude. She flexed the slightest muscles in her legs, ankles and feet, her body and mind juggled formulas of mass and gravity, tension and friction, like an equation to be solved, to rise effortlessly to her feet, almost as if she were immune to gravity’s will. Inna reacted a fraction of a second slower than Itzel, who began to swing her dread macuahuitl, her obsidian-bladed war club, toward Maude. Maude could see, through Itzel’s eyes, exactly where she was aiming, and the intent behind the attack. Maude could read in her muscles where she would be moving to as she swung the club. Maude was Itzel in that second, Maude’s muscles screamed to catch up with her senses, and the new blood within her gave them the fortitude to comply.
Maude was up. She grabbed the still-reacting Inna by the neck and applied exactly the proper pressure to render her unconscious instantly. She simultaneously wheeled a crescent kick into the spot where Itzel’s body was going to move to avoid the kick Maude was launching. Itzel moved directly into Maude’s kick, a look of stunned surprise frozen on her face the instant before it connected full-force. Itzel spilled backward twenty feet and lay unmoving. Inna crumpled at Maude’s feet.
The distortions in reality, like angry, rising ocean waves, were getting worse as the sandstorm grew in fury. The Sahara and Carcosa were in battle and the wasteland was fighting to swallow the City of Monsters once again. Rivers of sand began to pour over the edges of the arena’s wall.
Maude knew what was coming, knew the plan, but felt no reassurance in it. Lesya turned at the sound of her mother’s gasp. “Don’t you hurt her!” she screamed at Maude. Constance tried to reach for her friend, tried to explain.
“He’s using the part of him, of his father, that’s in my blood…” Constance whispered as she struggled and then collapsed.
The black column of Constance’s undulating blood began to take on form and shape. It became a tall, lanky man in an old suit the color of blood, his too-long arms crossed across his chest, like a corpse in repose. Fingers with too many knuckle joints began to wiggle, as if his hands had fallen asleep. He stretched like someone loosening up their body after a long coach trip. One of his outstretched arms struck Lesya. The force of it made a grisly snapping sound when he connected with the girl’s neck. Lesya’s body flew back to the distant bone wall at the edge of the vast arena, where it landed with a wet thud and lay unmoving. Lesya’s head lolled at an unnatural angle, her eyes open but empty.
“No!” Maude screamed.
Ya and Amadia, both bloody, bruised and battered, paused and looked over, through the swimming, swirling spatial distortions and the stinging rain of falling sand, to the tableau unfolding on the other side of the arena.
“Oh, no,” Amadia said, “it’s him.”
“Who?” Ya said.
The pale, gaunt face of the man in the blood-colored suit looked up. The face was an ill-fitting mask of human flesh hiding something too big, too awful, to be confined to skin.
“It’s so nice to finally be back in the old hometown,” Typhon said.
34
The Fool
Somewhere in the Sahara Desert, North Africa
July 21, 1871
Maude felt the collective voice of the Mother, of the Record in her mind fracture into multiple voices, each with a different motivation and desire upon seeing Typhon here, in Carcosa, a city sealed to him and his creations.
The Father of Monsters looked up at the golden statue of Lilith. He raised his hands and tried to frame the statue with his too-long fingers and thumbs spread into an “L.”
“Umm, no,” Typhon said. “I just don’t see the resemblance, Lilutu, and all that gold and jewelry, a bit tawdry if you ask me.” He turned to Maude. “Thank you ever-so-much for saving your poor, dear Constance a few years back, Maude. By mixing our two bloods in her, you gave me a way to enter here, the most sacred of places … at least to your lot.”
“The ritual … was a lie,” Ya whispered. Typhon looked across the arena.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “but based on some fact. The best lies always are. There is a ritual of blood sacrifice that this room was designed for, but apparently my ex-wife didn’t bother to give too many details before she hid herself away.” He pointed to the golden statue. “In there. A rather morbid and gaudy sarcophagus, in my opinion.
“The Mother is in there?” Amadia said. Typhon laughed. Inna was getting to her feet. She saw Lesya slumped at the far end of the arena, through the veil of desert sand raining down. She ran to her daughter’s side.
“Oh yes, Amadia Ibori,” Typhon said. “She knew I would never stop trying to free our children, knew I would keep the vow she forsook, to end this farcical joke of existence, to burn down order with chaos and leave pure emptiness in its place. So she wanted to stay close to her adopted children—you—Oya. You and all of the other misguided puppets that have followed in her path, fighting against oblivion, seeking to bring peace, justice and wisdom to a world that was not crafted to sustain any of that.
“So on the sacred nights, on the nights of the full moon, the black moon, the solstice, the equinox, or when someone with the potential to become a member of your futile little sisterhood makes their way into this chamber, ‘the Mother’”—Typhon laughed, and it sounded like a knife blade on glass—“sheds a tear of her purest blood in the hopes that your order will endure the grindstone of history. That hope dies tonight. Thanks to all of you.”
Inna held Lesya’s lifeless body. She brushed the blond hair from her baby’s dead eyes, brushed the gathering sand away from her face. She wanted to vomit, she wanted to scream and tear her skin off. The pain, the fury and the sadness were too large to be contained in a human heart. Her body, which she had spent a lifetime mastering, began to shake as it all rolled through her. She closed her daughter’s eyes, kissed them and rocked her, gently singing the lullaby she had sung to her when she was a baby.
Streamers of sand was spilling over the arena walls now. The moon and the desert sky was obscured by the storm. Carcosa was being buried again. The city’s foundations groaned under the Earth’s assault.
Ya and Amadia had joined Maude. The sand from the storm was starting to fill the floor and the Daughters moved across it deftly. Maude knelt by Constance. Her breathing was erratic; she was almost blue from blood loss. For the briefest of seconds, they were back in the silver-floored room under Argent Mountain, but that had been two years ago. She tore the sleeve from her blouse and tied a tourniquet about the arm wound as best she could. The blood flow became a trickle.
The plan screamed in her mind; the fractious voices of the Record had unified again, spurred on by Typhon’s words. Maude screamed out into the blood nebula, praying a silent prayer to the two people who had always been there for her, knowing neither of them could hear or help her. She kissed Constance and slipped several red rubies between her daughter’s lips. “Remember how much I love you,” she said. “I told you nothing would keep us apart.”
Maude rose. Typhon had been watching them with what she could only assume was amusement. Inna joined them, her eyes hooded and dead, but dry. Itzel, her face a map of bruises, also stood with her sisters.
“Listen to me,” Maude said, and her voice seemed to echo and she knew it was not her own voice but that of the Record as well. “Each of you, take the rubies, place them on your tongue. It is Lilith’s blood in its purest form. It will give you strength for what we must all do. The Mother planed this before any of us were ever born. This open well is made to hold Typhon, to seal him within and never let him escape. We must drag him in and hold him until it is sealed, no matter the cost to us. If we fail, he will free his children tonight and tonight the world will suffer and bleed. They will go on to free Typhon’s master, and then the world, all the worlds, will die.”
Typhon began to walk toward the statue of the Mother, speaking as he walked. “You seek to grapple with death, little Lilutu
s? To stop that which first created the monsters that freeze your tiny humans’ minds?” As he walked through the trembling distortions in reality, his form shifted with every other step to one of an incomprehensible bulk, vast like the graveyard between the stars, a shambling mass of writhing tentacles, gibbering fanged, drooling mouths and wet, gleaming chitin. “Your humans court oblivion,” Typhon said, part of the sentence spoken through multiple mouths and part of it with but a single human-seeming orifice, “they long for it as much as they try to avoid it. This was a poorly conceived trap, my love, and now you, and your children, will truly meet your end.”
“Tonight,” Maude said, “we cannot fail.”
“Stop a god?” Ya said. “Stop that? It’s not possible, Stapleton.”
Maude wanted to reply, but she remembered how helpless she had been trying to fight Typhon at Grande Folly. Even the Record was silent within her. The floor was rising, filling with desert sand, some of it was pushing its way into the empty well that had been created to hold the Father of Monsters, that would now just be part of a tomb, a monument to their failure. Typhon reached the bone base of the statue, his physical form fluttering, tattered at its edges, in excitement.
“Good-bye, my hated love,” Typhon said.
There was laughter. Echoing across the arena, loud enough and strong enough to pierce the bellowing of the sandstorm, to rise above the shaking of the earth. It was almost … a cackle? Maude’s eyes widened as she realized what she was hearing.
The figure dropped from the top of the statue, tumbled and landed on her feet, crouched like a cat. Anne Bonny stood between Typhon and the statue, young and in her prime.
“I got no truck with gods or monsters,” Anne said, “and you, you’re not even a real boggart, are you? Just some nonsense dreamed up by a real monster, hidin’ in his hole. You’re nothing.”
The Father of Monsters swung with all his might. Maude anticipated the bone-powdering force of the impact on Gran’s skinny, red-headed younger self. Anne caught Typhon’s fist with a two-handed block, and locked her hands about his fist and forearm. Typhon’s face tried its best to approximate surprise, and it melted a bit in the process.
Anne shifted sideways and threw Typhon’s incalculable mass through the air as if he weighed nothing. He landed with a thud that shook the room, and desert sand sprayed everywhere. The assembled Daughters looked at Anne, dumbfounded.
“There is no power in this world,” she said, and Maude heard the words echo in her memory, spoken long ago on a beach, “no man, no king, no god that can lay me low, except me,” she said, “not tonight.”
“Is that—?” Amadia asked Maude. Maude nodded.
“It is,” Maude said, “as full of piss and vinegar as she ever was. Come on, let’s go help her!” The other Daughters took the rubies. They placed handfuls in their mouths. They shuddered and gasped as the Mother’s pure blood branded them in mind and spirit.
Maude picked up another ruby, opened the Grail and dropped the blood stone inside. The old iron flask became very warm, almost hot, then cooled, and when Maude shook it there was a sloshing sound inside. It was full again. She sealed the flask and laid it with Constance, who was no longer looking blue, but was actually flush now that she had been fed some of the rubies. Typhon was rising, anger rippling across his false face.
“You are all dead,” he bellowed. “Dead, and then that bitch that birthed you!”
“Ah,” Anne said, dusting off her hands, “so it goes from ‘farewell, my love,’ to ‘die, you bitch.’ Ain’t that always the way?” Anne looked to the assembled Daughters, “Well, you waiting for a peggin’ invite from the bloody king! Come on with ya! Faugh a Ballagh!”
Anne charged at Typhon from one side, Maude, Ya, Amadia, Inna and Itzel from the other. The Daughters charged through the biting, stinging clouds of sand. Typhon barely stopped the clumsy roundhouse punch Anne threw, but he was struck by a wall of violent attacks from the assembled Daughters on the other side. The combined fury staggered the Father of Monsters. How could this be? He was eternal, immutable. No mortal weapon could harm him, and yet he felt pain, and then Typhon felt fear.
“How can you be here now,” Typhon demanded of Anne as he was knocked about by the rain of deadly attacks from the Daughters, “and younger than when you first dared to interfere with me?” Anne struck him another painful punch, as she ducked under his punch. “You and that Daemon, Biqua, you’re the ones who sealed me beneath the earth where Golgotha now stands. Surely you remember, pirate queen?” Typhon swung again but Anne danced away from his clumsy punch and popped back in to drive an uppercut into his chin.
“Actually, I don’t,” Anne said, “but I drink a lot. I black out.”
The arena was filling up near the walls with sand; the shaking of Carcosa did not stop now as the world began to slam the doors closed on all the other worlds aligned with the city.
The Daughters formed into a circle around Typhon, moving in seamless harmony, their minds as one in the ruby glow of the Record. The sandstorm tore at their flesh, its mournful howl drowning out the sounds of combat. It was if the world and the Daughters were striking against the abomination as one. Maude vaguely recalled how hitting Typhon before had been like hitting a mountain. Now it felt like hitting any other person, perhaps even less so. Typhon felt more insubstantial.
Inna drove a high knee into Typhon’s chest and a downward punch to the side of his head with a shriek of pure fury which put him off balance. Ya followed up immediately with a propping ankle throw that sent him to the ground. Itzel drove her obsidian macuahuitl down to connect with Typhon’s barely human face, and Amadia grabbed him by both ankles and hurled him with all her might into the yawning open pit of the central vault. Typhon shed his human guise, ripping it off like a torn coat, as he plummeted into the darkness, with a roar from a million inhuman mouths.
“Close it!” Maude shouted. Sand was already up to her ankles and rising quickly. Anne was beside her. They looked at each other.
“Nice outfit,” Anne said. “Gone to raiding my knickers, have you?”
“Gran, is it really you?” Maude asked. Anne winked and cackled.
“That’s a tough one,” she said. “I know you, Maudie, but I don’t exactly recall a lot of specific detail on the how I got here or where I was before. It was your voice, Maude, calling to me, your voice I heard telling me you needed me here in Carcosa to divert a disaster. Even though I’m dead here and you haven’t been born yet there, I heard you calling for help and I had to come running, luv.”
“I … I must have called out to you through the Record,” Maude said. “Whatever the source of this providence is, I’m glad you’re with us now!”
Barbed tentacles, covered with fanged, gaping maws, shot up from the darkness of the vault and latched onto the edges of the pit. They were the thickness of railroad ties, the color of blood mixed with bile. Below, in the darkness, Typhon released a roar of terrible rage. The Daughters fanned out, trying to climb atop the rising, shifting floor of sand, and to see through the storm that blinded and ripped at their eyes and throats. They scrambled to attack the monstrous appendages before Typhon could climb free.
“How do we close it?” Ya shouted. Maude moved as quickly as the whirlwind would allow to the opposite side of the silver vault door. She knelt and focused all her preternatural strength on pushing the circular seal back onto place. It rumbled slowly and moved a few inches.
“We need more people to push!” she called, fighting to be heard over the storm, and to keep the grit from filling her mouth and nose.
“We can’t, or else he’ll get back out!” Amadia shouted to her from across the seal, where she was hacking a tentacle in two with an axe-hand maneuver, like she was chopping down a tree. Another tentacle snaked its way up out of the darkness to replace it and struck the African Daughter. She fell as another tentacle grabbed her ankle. Amadia chopped at the obscenity and sliced herself free, scrambling back and to her feet again, even a
s the rising sand was trying to bury her.
“Where’s a bloody army of African Amazons when you need one,” Anne said, suddenly beside Maude. “Give me that cutlass,” she said, nodding toward the machete at Maude’s belt. “It’s mine anyway.”
Maude stopped long enough to hand her the blade. “It won’t help cut those damn tentacles any faster,” she said. Anne looked at her sword. She saw the tell-tale traces of wear and age on the blade and the hilt, but it still felt perfect in her hand.
“God, this really is the future, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” Maude said, “I think. I’m honestly not sure how this all works. Time seems broken here. Anne, I know what the plan is or was. Constance was the bait to get Typhon here and then she was to be the Mother’s vessel. Once they cut her and bled her Typhon would use his taint in her blood to manifest here physically. Lilith would then use the remainder of Constance’s blood to manifest inside Constance, killing my little girl in the process. Lilith was supposed to hold Typhon in the vault until we could seal it. It didn’t work that way, because I refused to go along, to let Constance be sacrificed, and now it … the Mother, wants me to go into the vault and hold Typhon down there. Something about the strength of our bloodline will help her channel through me. I have to go. I’m glad I got to see you again. Please make sure Constance is…”
Anne looked over to where Constance lay.
“Constance … that’s your little girl, Maudie. Ah, she’s a sight. A beauty, like her ma,” Anne said.
“I actually noticed how much she looks like you,” Maude said.
A strange look crossed Anne’s face. The pirate queen looked at Constance again. “We got to take care of our snappers, don’t we, Maudie? They don’t ask for this world, any more than we did, and we’re all they got.”
“Aye,” Maude said, with her best Irish brogue and grin. “Come on, help me get down in there now.”
“I’m gonna go have a bit of a row with that beastie down below,” Anne said. “Should buy you all the time you lot need.” The smile dropped from Maude’s face.
The Queen of Swords Page 40