by Clive Barker
“You should be careful with your affections, Finnegan Hob. There is a greater wickedness close to you than the crimes any of the beasts whose bones we stand among may have committed. Some of them were weak. Some of them were stupid. And some had masters who demanded they do terrible things. But there were innocents here too. You know that, Finnegan.”
“You’re right. I concede it. I killed in anger. I killed in loneliness. I will make my peace with the spirits here. But not now. We have other problems right now.”
“By other problems, you mean Midnight’s Empire?” Maas said.
“Since when did it become an Empire?” he said.
Maas shrugged.
“I don’t know that it ever did. That’s just the way Mater Motley spoke of it. The darkness that’s gathering. It’s her work. She will see herself Empress of the islands if she has her way.”
“Is darkness so terrible?”
“This darkness, yes. And it’s spreading like the plague. I think a woman with your skills might know a thing or two, Princess,” Maas said, turning to Boa.
“Don’t listen, Finn. He’s doing exactly what I told you he’d do. He’s trying to poison our happiness.”
“What skills, Maas?” Finnegan said. “What are you talking about? If you have something to say—”
“He has nothing to say,” Boa said quickly. “It’s all dragon slime he means to coat me with. I’ve been in their jaws before, Finn. I know how they stink. The closest he gets to having any real humanity in him is when he dines on it.”
“Nicely done, Princess,” Maas said with sour appreciation. “Inflame his rage with talk of dragons and maybe he’ll forget that he really doesn’t trust you.”
“Enough, Maas,” Finnegan said sharply. “Just because the stars have gone out, and the world is likely to go with them, it doesn’t mean I’ll simply forgive every utterance that spills out of you. An insult is an insult. And trust me, Maas, one more word spoken against my Princess and your head will fall farther than any star.”
Whether out of fear for his life or from a genuine sense of contrition, Maas laid his clawed hands, right over left, across his heart.
“Forgive me, Finnegan Hob,” he said inclining that burdensome head, “I have been too long in the company of the dead. I have forgotten simple courtesies.”
“Not good enough,” Boa said.
She took hold of Finnegan’s hand, and he felt a surge of cold power move down her arm and through her palm into his. It felt as though his arm was actually gaining muscle mass, and he was glad of it. There would be enemies out there in Midnight’s Empire that had only risen up now because the circumstances were propitious: he would need all the strength he owned to protect Boa from their assaults. It wouldn’t be easy, but with her help he would find a way to get them to a place of safety, assuming such a place existed.
“How do you feel?” Boa asked him.
“Good,” he said. He shook the arm she’d touched as though it had been asleep all his life and was now waking up.
“It feels a lot stronger than it did before you . . . what did you do?”
“Just rolled away a stone,” Boa said, “that had been between you and what was always in you. Take out your sword.”
He did so, the blade making a sound like the chiming of a perfect bell as it slid from the sheath.
“It’s never felt so light before.”
“Nor has it ever been so sharp,” Boa said, making a pass over the sword with her hand. A gleam of light ran up along the blade. “Now,” she said softly, “use it.”
“Use it to do what?”
“What it was meant to do. Kill.”
“Maas?”
“Of course.”
“He has no harm in him, my lady.”
“I say he does, Finnegan. Trust me. Kill him. Then we need never to think of him again.”
Maas made no attempt to move while his fate was considered. He simply waited, his hands still pressed to his chest.
“Do it!” Boa said.
“He has nothing left, Princess. Look at him.”
“I’d forgotten how much hard work you can be,” she said. “You never could see what was right in front of you.”
“You’re right in front of me, Princess. And right now you’re very hard to see. I’m trying. I really am. But there’s something . . .”
“Of course,” she said with weary irritation. “There’s always going to be more of me to find. Or it would all get boring very quickly, wouldn’t it?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she was there before him.
“You’re going to tell me this isn’t the time for games, because ‘very soon the world’s going to end’ and I’m here to say if it really is going to end then we may as well have some fun before it’s all over.”
“Agreed.”
“Good. So let me have my fun.”
“Doing what?”
“Finishing the job!”
“You’re both crazy . . .” Maas said, the words passing around the boneyard like a rumor, gathering force with every echo.
“Very likely,” Finnegan said.
“You think?” Boa said. “All those years locked away. All those years grieving. Making me crazy. Oh, I know crazy. I’ve had more than my share of crazy.”
“It’s over.”
“Almost . . .”
“No, it is. Whatever’s out there, we’ll deal with it together.”
“Finn, you’ve got to finish what we’re doing here.”
“It’s done.”
“But the dragon still has a head on his shoulders.”
“I’m not killing him, Boa.”
“Fine. Then I will.”
“You don’t want his blood on your hands.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” she said.
“These are powerful spirits, Boa.”
“You’re afraid of ghosts now?” she said, her contempt diseasing the air between them.
“Not fear. Respect.”
“For what? For Maas?” She glanced toward the place where Deetha Maas had last been standing, but he’d moved.
“Come here, worm!” she said. There wasn’t a great deal of volume in her voice but there was immense power there, and it instantly carried to every corner of the boneyard. “I! Will! Have! Your! Lying! Head!”
Maas had disappeared.
With every syllable Boa spoke her utterances grew in power, so that by the time she’d reached the fifth word the sound was causing the smaller bones on the slopes to shake themselves loose and tumble down the inclines like mobs of bones assembling in every part of the ossuary. The bones didn’t just slide down the slopes. They skipped, they tumbled, they leaped and somersaulted. Nor did their motion cease when they reached the bottom of the slope.
Instead, they cavorted among the shards and the bone dust, conferring upon the agitation they had carried down the slopes. As the clouds of dust rose into the darkness, they started to create unmistakable shapes, made from the dust’s memory of the beasts it had once been. The dragons were returning! No matter how large they had looked or how complex their forms and colors had been, it was all encoded in every mote of dust. Each beast in every grain remembered; they were waiting in every particle of dust in their entirety. Their majestic shapes sprang up from death throughout the caverns—the iridescence of their scales, the gilded beauty of their eyes, and the purples and reds and greens of their massive wings.
“Maas!” Boa yelled. “Why are you doing this? I demand you kill these things right now.”
“He can’t kill what’s already dead, Princess,” Finnegan said.
“This is dragon magic. I don’t like it. Maas!”
“I’m here,” the priest said, though now it was harder to be sure the direction from which his voice was coming.
“Show yourself, Maas. Finnegan’s not going to hurt you.” In the same breath she dropped her voice to the lowest of whispers and to Finnegan: “Slice off the top half of his head. He
’s dangerous.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“If you’re too weak to do what has to be done—”
She raised her left hand, in which she was holding a brilliant blade.
“Maas!” she called out. “Where are you?”
She stopped in mid-syllable, and her eyes lost their hold on Finnegan. Her mouth couldn’t hold the words she had yet to say, nor could her hand hold the knife. It fell from her fingers and as it did so Finnegan caught a smeared glimpse of Deetha Maas, standing behind and a little to the right of the Princess. He had his hand at the back of her neck, touching some vital place, injecting his magical Order of Silence into her.
“Please! Don’t—” Finnegan said.
“Don’t what? Gut her the way she was about to gut me? She fully intended to do it, you know. You were too weak. She wanted it done fast, didn’t she? ‘He’s dangerous.’ That’s what she said about me. Doesn’t that make you wonder? Why am I so dangerous?”
“Just let her go, Maas. I won’t hurt you—”
“Don’t you want to know her secrets, Finnegan?”
“Not from you I don’t. Just let her go.”
“You’re going to have to see for yourself, then.”
“See what?”
“Her little hideaway on Huffaker.”
“Huffaker? She doesn’t even like—”
“You can both go, courtesy of the powers of this place.” The ghost dragons continued to roil around, their images rising up on all sides. “I think the dead must want to forgive you. They look at you with pity, Finnegan, for what you have to suffer. I know you think the suffering is over now that she’s come back but you’re wrong. It’s just begun.”
“Let her go, Maas.”
“To Huffaker, both of you!”
Finnegan felt the air throb around him, and the forms of the ghosts became remote.
“Maas!” Finnegan yelled.
Then the cavern was gone, and he was standing out in the darkness of another island, another Hour. In that darkness there was only one source of light: it was coming from the crack of a door, a little way from where Finnegan stood.
Again, the air throbbed. And his Princess was suddenly beside him.
“The knife,” she said, looking down. “It was in my hand!”
“Boa. We’re on Huffaker. He said you used to come here.” He glanced back at her, but there was too much darkness for him to see her. “Is that true?”
Boa looked and realized Finnegan was right. She sighed.
“Yes, love. It’s true. And I suppose you had to see sooner or later, didn’t you? Come. Let me show you my secrets.”
They walked together through the darkness to the threshold of the door, where the light fell. There was no sound around them. Nothing moved. Nothing sang. It was just the two of them as they approached the door.
“Touch nothing,” she said, and led the way inside.
Chapter 42
The Fiends
IN THE MAP-MOSAICKED ROOM at the top of the Needle Tower, Mater Motley surveyed her creation, and was satisfied. The Midnight Empire she had planned for, labored for, lived for, now owned the Abarat from horizon to horizon, with the exception of the Twenty-Fifth Hour; though it was only a matter of time, she was sure, until that most perverse of Hours fell to her. Everywhere Mater Motley sent her remote gaze, it was the same triumphantly desolate story. Where there had been calm there was now chaos and violence. Where there had been celebration there was panic and terror.
On several islands she observed desperate attempts being made to provide some light to cure this darkness. Many, much to her satisfaction, ended in disaster.
On Hobarookus, for instance, she witnessed the tribal wizard of the Amurruz attempt to propel himself, accompanied by a number of warriors, into the smothering darkness overhead with the apparent intention of hacking a hole through to the stars. But the sacbrood were formidably violent, despite the fact that they were imprisoned in a jigsaw of their own interlocked bodies and their solidified excretions. After a brief, noisy encounter, a rain of body parts fell upon the upturned faces of the Amurruz, marking the brutal end of that foolish act of bravery.
On the Isle of the Black Egg, the Chief of the Jalapemoto nation ordered the igniting of a pool of highly combustible kaizaph oil—which offered a comforting source of warmth and light for several hours, until the fuel in the shallow pool had been entirely consumed. Then the hungry flames followed the path of the oil into the seam that fed the pool, which divided and divided as it spread out across the plateau. Within half an hour cracks began to appear in the ground, followed quickly by sinkholes, gouting flame, which claimed the lives of thousands of Jalapemotian inhabitants.
And while these exquisite follies played out, the fiends came out of hiding. Mater Motley couldn’t possibly have witnessed all of their reappearances, but she saw plenty. Creatures of every kind—bestial, grotesque, crazed and infernal—they all came out of hiding. Some she knew by name from her grimoires: monstrous descendants of the Eight Evils who had first walked the Abaratian stage. The devourers of ruins called the Waikami; the phantom, Lord Hoath; the many-tongued beast, Morrowain; the death’s head creature know as the Depotic; the raging, gape-mouthed monster simply called the Overlord.
And for every one beast she could name there were twenty she could not: abominations that had passed the ages hiding in the intricate systems of caves and passageways that lay beneath the Hours, or in barrows and pits where they had been buried permanently by those who had fought them and believed them dead. Many had lived out the ages in solitude and darkness, nurturing their rage, emerging only when hunger drove them to risk being exposed and hunted down; others had procreated over the centuries, and emerged from their sanctuaries with immense families, their grotesqueries multiplying over the generations. A few had lived well: worshipped in secret temples by Abaratians who considered them to be the raw stuff from which divinities were made. These fiends, made arrogant by years of worship, rose with their legions of believers all around them: ordinary men and women of the islands who had secretly been paying homage to these bleak-hearted deities over the years.
Almost everywhere Mater Motley’s roving eye traveled it fell upon sights that would have sickened and appalled a compassionate spirit, but that filled her with a venomous joy. It wasn’t only for herself that she felt this joy. There were other eyes watching how her plan to unknit the order of the Abarat proceeded: the eyes of beings ancient and insatiable, whose presence she had only glimpsed as a monumental, limitless shadow thrown across or beyond what was neither space nor substance, presence nor absence. At some time not far from now they would show themselves, she knew. They would descend out of their mystery and be seen, here in the Abarat. And on that day she would be elevated to the highest throne for the services she had done them.
Meanwhile, she had another order of business to observe: the arrests. Her stitchling legions had already reached many of the islands. Already Mater Motley had seen the arrests of hundreds of individuals who would have caused, had they not been arrested, conflict and rebellion in the future. She’d seen the possibility in the visions the Powers That Be had allowed her to witness, and it was a future she had vowed to keep from coming into being. On the dark side of Scoriae she had, many weeks ago, ordered a camp to be built where all these agitators and troublemakers would be kept. It was a rudimentary place. The huts that had been hastily built to have the arrestees stripped of their personal belongings—jewelry, wallets, expensive shoes—and their presence recorded did not keep out the cold wind that incessantly blew so close to the Edge of the World. The camp had very little healthy drinking water, and the supplies the inmates had been given to make soup with were laughably inadequate, but Mater Motley saw no purpose in giving comfort and nourishment to people she was going to have executed within hours.
Meanwhile, the number of arrests continued to grow. Every outsider, every radical, every dealer in visions and hope—in short, anyone
who had ever stood against her in word or deed, or that she suspected of one day doing so—was taken from their homes and family without explanation, and interned in the camp at Scoriae.
The Old Mother was well pleased.
Chapter 43
Dark Waters
THE TASK OF RESCUING the survivors from the turbulent waters around The Great Head had quickly degenerated into chaos, as people struggling in the water converged on The Piper from all directions and attempted to clamber aboard. Within two or three minutes of arriving at the scene The Piper was carrying more than its limit of passengers, and listing badly to starboard.
“We have to get out of here, Candy!” Eddie said. “We’re over the limit for passengers, Candy. They’re going to sink us! Are you listening to me?”
Candy stood frozen in place.
“Okay, fine. Then I’ll just go tell some drowned people we’ll be joining them soon.”
Candy continued staring off into the starless, moonless, cloudless sky, her body convulsed by little spasms.
“Malingo?” Eddie hollered. “I think there’s something wrong with Candy. She’s having a vision or a fit or something! Get over here, will you?” As he yelled he shoved his diminutive foot into the middle of the same brutish face of a man he’d shoved back into the water just a few moments before. “Can’t you take a hint, mate?” he bawled, “There! Is! No! More! Room!” He put all the strength in his body into making sure that this time the man stayed down. “Who’s at the wheel?”
“We are!” came a chorus of Johns from the wheelhouse.
“We have to get out of here!” Eddie yelled.
“He’s right!” Gazza shouted. “Much more of this and we’re going to be flipped over.”
“Just get this crawfiddlin’ thing moving,” Eddie said.
“There’s people in the water right in front of us,” Mischief said.
“They’ll get out of the way when they see us coming!” Eddie yelled back.
“We can’t just—”
“Gazza! Get to the wheelhouse and take over from that gaggle of idiot heads that some gene-deficient woman had the misfortune to carry to the tragedy of birth.”