The End of Time

by P. W. Catanese

  “I collected some of the pieces of the wreck and lashed them together,” Burrell said.

  “That will do,” said Tyrian.

  “The cat and I drifted for days, getting weaker by the hour,” Burrell said.

  Tyrian waved his hand in the air. “You there! We’ve heard enough!”

  “A storm arose, and I thought I was done for.”

  Tattersall stepped forward and put his hand on Burrell’s shoulder. Burrell’s mouth snapped shut when he saw Tattersall with a finger to his lips. The king waved his hand toward the door, and Tattersall ushered the carpenter’s mate out.

  Umber watched him go with a sympathetic twist to his mouth. “A carpenter without ears is still a good carpenter. He can work for my shipbuilders if you—”

  Tyrian interrupted, which seemed to be his habit. “You’re not the only one who can treat people kindly, Umber. Our navy has a place for him.” Umber bowed his head.

  “So you have the story now,” the king said. “He floated for days, but then a foreign trader picked him up, and he made his way back here. Umber, we have heard strange tales about the Far Continent—a new secrecy, foreign ships utterly destroyed near their waters, vast columns of black smoke over a hidden harbor. Loden proposed that we send a ship there, to land some spies. And now you’ve heard what happened to the Gabrielle—a ship of your design, I might add, and one of the fastest afloat. Tell me, Umber. There seems to be some terrible magic at work here. Do you know what this might be—this fire monster?”

  Umber paused with his hand sliding down the side of his face. Hap was sure that the room had suddenly grown cooler. He shivered and felt the hair on his arms stand at attention.

  Umber shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t, Your Highness.”

  The king grunted as he raised his hand to point at Umber. “We have asked you many times, Umber, to use your talents to improve the defense of our kingdom. Give us weapons to keep us safe. And over and over you refused. Now this strange threat has appeared . . .”

  Tyrian went on, his voice rising as his temper flared, but Hap’s attention was distracted. His eyes suddenly felt warm, and the chill left his body. Filaments appeared, flowing from the chest of every person in the room: the king, Umber, and himself. They were sharper and better defined than he’d seen before, as if he’d seen all the others through cloudy glass. And they glowed steadily, without the flickering of his earlier visions. Umber’s thread swirled in tight circles before passing through the tall doors, and his did the same. Those threads were bright and filled with color, while the king’s was thin and weak. And it was riddled with spots where its pale light dimmed into a black nothing. Hap had never seen anything like it. The opposite of sparkling, his mind suggested.

  The thread reached from the desk to the bed, passing just an arm’s length from where Hap stood. It was easy enough to slide over and raise his hand so that the thread passed through his palm.

  As soon as he touched it, he heard the song of the filament. He had learned that each one had its own sound, ethereal and indefinable. There was a meaning locked inside, which he knew he must learn to interpret. What are you telling me? he wondered. A vague feeling was all he could gather, and he struggled to match words to the feeling: Loss. Anguish. Regret. Despair. Acceptance.

  He focused his mind, concentrating, but a voice pierced through, and his head jolted up.

  “I said, what are you doing there, boy? What’s the matter with you!” Tyrian glared at him with his eyebrows fiercely angled. Umber covered his mouth with his hand, but the wrinkled corners of his eyes gave away his amused expression.

  Hap’s hand was still suspended chest-high. He let it flop to his side. “I am terribly sorry, Your Majesty. I felt a draft.”

  Tyrian stared, narrow-eyed. “Lord Umber, you keep the oddest company.”

  Umber smiled back, but his smile faded as he saw the king slump low in his chair, with his beard crumpled against his chest. His breath came out in a wheeze.

  “That’s enough,” the king said, waving them off. “Leave me now.”

  “Are you feeling all right?” Umber asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

  The king shook his head. “Tattersall should be waiting outside. Send him back in.”

  Umber bowed, and Hap bowed alongside him, and they walked to the door.

  “One thing more, Umber,” the king called after them.

  Umber turned with his arms clasped behind him. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  Tyrian had the feathered pen in his hand, and he drew the feather between two fingers. “Is there a problem between you and my only living son?”

  Umber hesitated, and his lips twitched. Hap’s breath was trapped inside his lungs. He wondered if Umber was on the verge of blurting out his suspicions: that Loden was a murderer, consumed with a lust for power, and unworthy of the crown.

  “None at all, Your Highness,” Umber replied at last. “Or is there something I should know?”

  The king’s energy was fading, and his head wobbled. He jabbed the pen’s tip in Umber’s direction. “Loden will wear my crown, sooner than later. That must be obvious. It is to me, at any rate.”

  Umber raised his chin a fraction of an inch, and bowed again. “May you stay strong and healthy, King Tyrian, and rule Celador wisely for years to come.”

  The king wheezed and waved Umber away once more.

  “You saw the filaments again, didn’t you?” Umber asked as they stepped outside the palace.

  “Until a moment ago,” Hap said.

  Dodd was waiting beside Umber’s carriage, across the circular courtyard. He saw them coming and climbed onto the driver’s perch.

  “Was it different this time?” Umber asked.

  “Clearer than before,” Hap replied. He looked back at the palace. “I saw King Tyrian’s thread.”

  Umber arched an eyebrow. “And did it tell you anything?”

  Hap stared at his palm. “Sort of. I still can’t understand them . . . but I can sense things now.”

  Umber bent to look Hap in the eye. “What did you sense?”

  Hap chewed on the corner of his thumbnail. He blinked and felt warmth pooling in his eyes. “I think the king will die very soon.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Umber held his black ring high and uttered the foreign command: Hurkhor.

  The inky stone door parted in the center and swung silently open, and they stepped into the Aerie, welcomed as usual by the rush of water that flowed through the bottom floor. This time they were greeted as well by the urgent voice of Lady Truden, standing at the top of the stairs engraved into the rock. “I thought you’d never get back!”

  Umber raised his face. “Something the matter, Tru?”

  Lady Truden’s hands were clasped at her waist, but Hap noticed her thumbs tapping together at a frantic rate. “She is awake.”

  “She?”

  “The guest!”

  Hap’s shoulders jolted. Umber’s mouth formed a circle.

  “What is she doing?” Umber asked her.

  “Chanting.”

  “Chanting what, Tru?”

  “Some horrid tongue that I don’t understand! I just went down to check on her, as my duty requires, and she was out of her chair, standing in the middle of her cell. It nearly scared the life out of me.”

  Umber blew air from his cheeks and turned to Hap. “Er . . . Happenstance . . .”

  Hap whipped his head from side to side. “Don’t make me. Please don’t make me.”

  “You have to come with me. For the usual reason, of course. But also . . . if you can understand that language . . .”

  Hap hung his head, deflated. The last time he saw the sorceress, she tried to trick him into setting her free, and taunted him by informing him that he was dead. “Right. I guess you need me, don’t you.”

  They paused in the stone corridor deep under the Aerie. The door before them was black iron, a little taller than it was wide, with burly hinges to hol
d its weight. Beyond that was Umber’s prisoner, in a comfortable chamber behind sturdy bars.

  “I can feel the cold out here,” Hap whispered.

  Umber nodded, staring at the door. “Me too.” He exhaled into his palms and rubbed his hands together. The tunnels and caves were always cool, but there was a harsher, unnatural chill inside the sorceress’s chamber that now penetrated the door and infected the corridor. Hap’s muscles already ached from the cold.

  Five cloaks lined with wool hung from pegs on the wall. Umber took two, passed the smaller one to Hap, and exhaled deeply when both had put them on. “Ready for this?”

  “No.”

  Umber somehow managed a smile. “Me neither.” He used his key to unlock the door, and heaved it open.

  The cold struck Hap like a slap across the face. He squeezed his eyes nearly shut and drew his hands inside the sleeves. He pulled the hood up and pinched it under his chin, while Umber did the same. “Remember, the cold isn’t real,” Umber reminded him.

  Umber stepped into the room, leaning as if into a stiff breeze, and Hap followed. The air seemed to push back, and the chill passed through the fabric as if he wore nothing at all. His fingers went numb, and then his toes.

  She’s gotten stronger, Hap thought. And there she was, a skeletal figure standing in the middle of her cell, amid the splendid furniture that Umber had provided. She faced away from them—Thankfully, Hap thought—toward a corner of the room, with her head tilted back. Her arms were extended, her hands shoulder-high. Her bony wrists emerged from the draping sleeves of her gown, and the thin, knobby-knuckled fingers twitched, each to its own jerky rhythm. The fingers ended in overgrown nails that looked like ragged, twisted talons.

  Little black spiders lived in the folds of her garments. When Hap saw her for the first time, the spiders had woven a veil that covered her face. Now her head and shoulders were shrouded in a silky membrane. Flies had been trapped and mummified in the silk, lined in rows like beading. Hap remembered that terrible face, with streams of dark blood coursing under translucent skin, and he was glad it was out of sight.

  She was chanting, as Lady Truden said, in that silky, beautiful voice that was so ill-matched with the horror that produced it. Vocturas timias, vocturas timias, ildrum tal runia . . . Hap couldn’t have named the language, but with his Meddler’s ability to understand any tongue, he effortlessly translated: Almost time, almost time, hear me, children, and know what must be done. . . .

  The chanting ceased, abruptly. Turiana’s fingers fell still and the angle of her head changed, swiveling a fraction toward them. Umber looked at Hap with an eyebrow lifted high. “Turiana. You’re awake,” he said, quite loud.

  A blast of cold washed over them, frigid to the point of pain. Hap’s teeth chattered, and he blinked his eyes, afraid that they might freeze solid.

  Turiana turned. Slowly. Her gown reached the floor, hiding her legs, but Hap had the terrible impression that she spun in place without moving her feet at all.

  “This chill is not polite,” Umber said. “Can you do something about that?”

  The sorceress did not reply, but Hap felt the cold diminish, just a fraction.

  Umber shifted from foot to foot. “A little better. Tell me, Turi. What’s that you’re saying? What are you up to?”

  She lowered her arms and glided toward them until she was near the bars. Hap felt a powerful urge to bolt, like a rabbit from a wolf, but he pressed his trembling teeth together and willed himself to stay.

  Through the partly transparent shroud, Hap saw her tiny shriveled eyes, deep in the twin craters of her skull. “Something approaches,” the sorceress said. The silk across her jaw stretched and relaxed as she spoke.

  Umber’s fidgeting stopped. “Don’t tease us, Turi. What do you mean? What approaches?”

  “A menace. Something unknown to me. I cannot define it.” She lifted her chin, and Hap heard the whispery sound of air drawn into the gaping holes where her nose once was. “But its eyes are here already. And the thing itself draws near.”

  Umber stared at her, and Hap could see his mistrust. “A menace to you, or to us?” Umber asked.

  “A threat to all we know.”

  Umber’s jaw tensed. “What are you up to, Turi? What is this chanting?”

  Turiana wrapped her spindly fingers around a bar. Hap felt his stomach convulse as he looked at the translucent skin that barely concealed the bones and tendons of the fingers. It was unthinkable that this creature had once been, with the help of her talismans, a legendary beauty.

  “You think I deceive you,” she whispered. Her shrouded face drifted toward Hap. “Ask the little one, Umber. A Meddler knows what lies ahead.”

  “I . . . d-don’t,” Hap said, stammering from cold and terror together.

  “Pity,” she replied. She reached out, extending her arms between the bars. Hap knew that he and Umber were out of reach, but his blood ran colder still. “Release me, Umber. I have spent time enough in this dungeon.”

  “You know I cannot,” Umber said.

  Turiana opened her hand, palm out, with fingers spread wide. Umber stared at the hand, and then at her face. His eyes widened, and he stepped back. “Get out of my head, Turiana. I can feel you prodding around in there!”

  The silk at Turiana’s cheeks bulged, and Hap pictured the toothy skeletal grin underneath. Umber’s hand clamped on his shoulder, and he almost shrieked. “We have to go,” Umber said, and he pushed Hap ahead of him, out the door.

  Umber slammed the door and slumped against the wall. “I don’t know how, but her powers have grown. . . . Maybe she’s been resting up. Or whatever she’s sensed out there has given her this urgency.” He thumped his temple with the heel of his hand. “She was searching my mind, looking for something. Feels like ants wandering across your brain.” He wriggled out of the cloak and hung it from the peg. Hap did the same, and they hurried down the subterranean passage until the sensation of cold was gone.

  “The chanting . . . did you understand any of that?” Umber asked.

  Hap told Umber what he’d heard. Umber plucked at an eyebrow and stared back toward the iron door. “Is she plotting against us? Trying to warn us? I don’t know—but it worries me, her digging into my mind like that.”

  Hap jumped from foot to foot to drive away the chill. “She can’t get out, can she?” He was thinking about the king’s warning, that Umber’s life depended on her remaining a prisoner.

  “The bars are strong. It would take a battering ram to knock that door in. And I have the key. So no, I don’t think she’ll be getting out.”

  Hap nodded, eager to believe it. But her words haunted his brain: Almost time, almost time. “That menace she was talking about . . . I wonder if she meant the troll we saw in the caverns.”

  Umber’s head rocked back. “Troll? What troll?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Hap led Umber through the blackness. It was Umber’s idea to approach this way, to take advantage of Hap’s ability to see in the dark. Umber carried a jar of glimmer-worms, but he’d thrown a cloth over it to hide their light.

  As they approached the portcullis, Hap caught a whiff of decay and pinched his nose. “Smell that?” Umber whispered, squeezing Hap’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” Hap said nasally. He led Umber behind one of the pillars of rock that stood before the gate. “We’re here,” he whispered.

  Umber stared blindly. “Can you see anything? Is it there?”

  Hap leaned sideways to peer at the portcullis and had to stifle a gasp. The troll was sitting in the open, with its broad back against the iron bars. “It’s there.”

  “What does it look like?”

  Hap took a longer look. The troll wore a shredded hide around its waist. It held a broken piece of tapered stone in one hand, and it lifted it and let it drop, stabbing lazily at the cavern floor. It didn’t seem to hear their whispers.

  “It’s sitting against the bars, so I can only see its back,” he t
old Umber in a hush. “It’s huge—maybe nine feet tall and six wide. The skin’s gray and lumpy, with scars all over.”

  “Old or fresh?”

  Hap took another peek. “Fresh, I think.”

  A low growl issued from the troll’s throat, and it sounded like charrrrr. Umber smiled and sucked in air. He bounced on his heels as his excitement mounted. “Fresh scars! Do you suppose it fought another troll and was cast out from its pack?” He reached for the cloth that covered the jar of glimmer-worms. “I have to see it!”

  As soon as the soft light of the glimmer-worms appeared, Hap heard the troll’s great bulk scrape against the stout bars of the portcullis. He leaned out and saw that it had whirled around and was grasping a bar with one enormous, clawed hand and wielding the stone dagger with the other. Its legs were short and bowed, its arms thick and long with knotty muscles. The face was brutal, with a twisted nose and a wide mouth with ragged teeth slanting in all directions. The eyes were tiny pools of quicksilver with black dots in the centers, and those specks moved to follow Umber as he stepped into the open.

  The troll edged back. It looked ready to turn and run, but Umber spoke in a soothing, encouraging voice. “Wait—don’t go away. Nobody will harm you.”

  The troll lowered its head, and its lip arched high on one side of its mouth. It spoke again, a rumble that turned to a growling purr: Charrrrrr.

  “Maybe we should call you Charrly,” Umber said in a hush. He advanced in dreamy, gentle steps, holding the jar high. “What a specimen you are! What brings you here, Charrly? Are you lost? Are you hungry?”

  The troll angled its head to one side and then the other. It sank into a crouch as Umber approached. Umber was entranced by the enormous creature, eyeing it from head to toe as he cooed. When Umber was barely two strides away, Hap saw the muscles in the troll’s legs go taut. Before he could shout a warning, the troll sprang up and thrust its long arm between the bars.

  CHAPTER

  15

  The troll’s claws raked the air in front of Umber’s face. Umber barely moved. He had sized up the troll’s arms, and seemed sure that he was out of reach. The troll snorted and grunted as it struggled in vain to grasp him.