The End of Time

by P. W. Catanese

  The Executioner’s lips pulled back farther still. His breath hissed in and out.

  Hap pointed and laughed. “Look at your face. What is that eye on your forehead, a simple hawk’s eye? And that one—a dog? Wouldn’t you rather have mine?”

  The Executioner blundered toward Hap with his arms out, grasping. Hap stepped off the ledge, dropping from sight, and slipped away once more into the icy netherworld.

  Hap fell onto his stomach. He’d drawn out the chase as long as he could, with his enemy’s thread in pursuit, screaming with agony and malice.

  How fitting if the chase ends here, he thought, as he stared up at the simmering peak of the volcano, Mount Ignis. The place where Happenstance was born.

  He was on a wide flow of volcanic rock. Underneath the looming mountain was Alzumar: a city that was lost once, buried under ash, and was now lost again, its entrance sealed by a fresh river of lava.

  The signs told him the Executioner was coming. Hap braced himself, in case he had to spring away, but his pursuer appeared farther up the flow, where the slope was not so gentle. The Executioner toppled, and rolled senselessly down. His elbows, knees, and skull thumped against the stone, leaving splotches of blood. He finally stopped halfway down the slope, staring at the sky. His ugly, sharklike mouth opened, and an animal screech of agony rang in the air.

  Hap stood and steadied himself. Only one of the Executioner’s eyes rolled toward him. The others wandered in their sockets.

  “I want you to leave me alone,” Hap said.

  “N-n-never,” said the Executioner.

  Hap shook his head and laughed bitterly. “Can’t you see what folly this is? You won’t catch me.”

  “You were c-c-clever,” the Executioner said. “L-lured me into a chase. . . . W-won’t make that mistake again.” With a great effort he raised a quivering arm off the ground. He tried to point at Hap, but half the finger was gone. His shoulder was torn like a garment, with tattered skin hanging. Hap wrinkled his nose; he could smell the flesh that was seared by dragon fire. “These wounds will heal,” the Executioner said. “My k-k-kind always heals. And then . . . you will forget to be wary . . . like the others . . . I will have your eyes . . .” The arm fell limp. A leg jerked. And then the Executioner was still.

  Hap watched him for a while and saw the creature’s chest rise and fall. He crept closer—careful to stay out of reach of those long, clutching arms—and passed his hand through the Executioner’s filament. With the cold of the Neither still gripping his brain like a frozen fist, he found the song of the thread foggy and hard to interpret. He concentrated, searching for meaning. He hoped to learn that the Executioner had seen enough of his prey and would give up the chase. Or at least that the wounds would take a long time to heal. But the only things he sensed were a terrible, unquenchable hunger, a pure unbridled hate, and a lust for revenge.

  The restless volcano rumbled, deep and low. Hap looked up its headless summit. There was a scuffling noise behind him, and he turned to see the Executioner lunging. He leaped, but the clawed fingers curled tight around his ankle and he slammed to the ground.

  Drool poured from the creature’s mouth, even as the charred face contorted with pain. “Now,” the Executioner said, crawling up and over Hap’s legs. Hap grunted through clenched teeth and kicked at the hand around his ankle, driving his foot into the stump of the missing finger. The creature howled and swatted the foot away with his free hand. He crawled up and gripped the front of Hap’s shirt. Hap kicked again, with all the desperate strength his frozen muscles could muster, and planted his foot in the Executioner’s chest. The Executioner twisted sideways, lost his balance, and started to roll farther down the slope, pulling Hap along by the shirt.

  The world spun as the rock battered Hap over and over again, hammering his limbs and spine. The back of his head struck the stone, and sparks filled his vision. He heard the Executioner grunting with the same pain as they tumbled together, arms and legs flailing, until they reached the bottom of the flow and sprawled on the beach.

  The Executioner’s elbow fell across Hap’s chest, pinning him down. The awful face loomed overhead, grinning madly with every eye, animal and Meddler, bulging and quivering with anticipation. “You can’t leave now. I’m watching you,” the Executioner said, as a line of drool dangled from the corner of his mouth. He plucked a pair of dripping animal eyes out of their sockets and let them fall to the sand. And then the hand came for Hap’s face, with the long scoop of a claw extended, aiming for his right eye. Hap seized the wrist with both of his hands, trying to ward it off.

  The Executioner’s strength was failing, but still the claw came closer. Hap turned his face to the side, pressing into the sand, but still the claw drew near, until it touched the corner of his left eye. Hap’s cheek pressed into the sand, trying to escape another inch. Sand, he thought, and with one hand he clutched at the beach and flung a handful into the Executioner’s face. The wrinkled lids flapped shut as the grit struck it, but the sand stuck to the wounded, lidless eyes, and the Executioner turned his face away, spitting grains.

  With no eyes to watch him, Hap slipped into the Neither. And to his shock, the Executioner was with him, his physical form intact. Because I carried him here, Hap realized. He was still gripping the hand that meant to pluck his eye.

  They floated in the emptiness. Hap kicked away, holding the Executioner at arm’s length. His enemy’s filament passed through him, and he felt a change in the song. This time there was fear. The Executioner tried to shake him off, but the effort was weak.

  “Now I’m watching you,” Hap said, hearing the words dimly. He flew across the Neither, pulling the Executioner with him.

  The creature’s crescent mouth moved, shaping words that might have been let me go. Spasms shook his arms and legs.

  “You’ll j-just come after me again,” Hap said. He knew what the Executioner was feeling. The cold was harsher than ever. His skin felt like leather, his teeth like slabs of ice. The numbness was in his brain, slowing his thoughts.

  The Executioner’s limbs jerked violently. Hap nearly lost his grip, but doubled it with the other hand. “I’m . . . s-stronger than you . . . ,” he told the creature.

  The spasms slowed and stopped. And then all the stolen eyes stared lifelessly. Hap released the arm, and the Executioner drifted in the void, stiff and motionless, gently spinning. His filament faded from sight, like the smoke of a snuffed candle.

  Spasms jolted Hap’s body from head to toe. His enemy was finished. But he wondered, thickly, if he had left himself with strength enough to return from the Neither.

  CHAPTER

  33

  Umber wandered over the ruined terrace, picking through the blackened, blasted remains of his tower. A stack of charred books rested on a fallen block of stone. The Molton wriggled out from a pile of rocks, limping on his iron peg, with an armful of tattered and half-burnt parchments in his stony arms.

  “Put ’em with the others, Shale,” Umber said quietly. He glanced at the sky, which had suddenly dimmed. Then his body snapped up straight, and he whirled around. When he saw Hap, he barked out a curious sound, part laugh, part cry of surprise. He rushed forward, stumbling over the wreckage, and wrapped his arms around Hap’s head.

  “You’re still alive, my little Hap, you’re still here, and just look at you!” Umber held Hap at arm’s length. He was a man who smiled frequently, and broadly, but this was the most elated grin of them all. “Hap—your hair. It’s all . . . it’s completely . . .”

  “I know,” Hap said. “It’s part of what I’ve become.”

  Umber wobbled and sat abruptly on a fallen stone. He covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders trembled. “It’s a shock seeing you. No—a miracle. We thought you died. I was holding on to the tiniest hope that you’d suddenly gotten a grip on your abilities and vanished in time. I mean . . . that is what happened, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Hap said.

  Umber brushed his ha
ir back from his eyes with quaking hands. “We made it, Hap. Just barely. Sophie, Balfour, Oates, Smudge, the guardsmen . . . we all got to safety in time, before the explosions.”

  “I know,” Hap said brightly. “Even little Thimble survived.”

  Umber chuckled and wiped away a tear. “I guess you know a lot of things now.”

  True, Hap thought. He knew, for example, that Fay and Sable were downstairs as well, and that Fay held Sable cradled in her arms, consoling her over the loss of young Happenstance. And he knew that Fay kept looking toward the stairs, waiting for this strange and unpredictable Lord Umber to come down again so she might speak to him, and take his hand, and ask him if everything would be all right.

  “The computer was crushed, by the way,” Umber said. “It’ll never share its secrets again. Shale found it in the ruins.”

  “But the elatia lives,” Hap said, pointing at the plant, charred but still half-green, in a cracked pot.

  “Small victory,” Umber said. His chest swelled, and he exhaled long and slow. “We were lucky, Hap. Half the Aerie was destroyed. We might’ve been killed if the Vanquisher hadn’t exploded. We’re still wondering how . . .” Umber’s eyes narrowed. The side of the terrace closest to the harbor had been blown away, offering a clear view of where a few blackened ribs of the Vanquisher stuck out of the water. He gestured with his thumb. “Er, I don’t suppose you had something to do with that.”

  Hap glanced at the wreckage, and his eyes gleamed. “The possibility exists.”

  Umber lowered his head. “It was a terrible thing, but it was for the best. I hope it’s not haunting you.”

  “Not at all,” Hap said. There was something in the tone of his own voice that surprised him: a hint of mirth and mischief.

  Umber heard it too, and his face paled. “You really have changed, Happenstance.”

  Hap sat on his own block of stone and folded his hands atop one knee. “But I had to, didn’t I? It couldn’t be avoided.”

  Umber rested his chin on his hands. “And now a lot of things can’t be avoided. The Vanquisher is gone, but people have seen it. They know such a thing is possible.”

  “And that makes it inevitable?” Hap asked, echoing words Umber once had spoken.

  “Right. I even convinced those men on the causeway to surrender and give up their rifles. The guns are at the bottom of the sea, and the men will be banished to an island. But you can’t kill an idea. Not even a bad idea.”

  “Still, we’ve bought time,” Hap said. “Delayed the inevitable.”

  “I doubt it. You’re forgetting the Far Continent. Doane had factories there. . . . They were building another warship.”

  Hap stood up. “Yes. About that. I was curious and did a little exploring before I came back here.” He extended a hand. “There’s something you need to see. I will take you.”

  Umber’s eyebrows flew up. “Take me? Meddler-style, you mean?”

  Hap smiled.

  “Wait,” Umber said. “It won’t make me any crazier than I am now, will it?”

  “No,” Hap said. “Only the trip between worlds does that, I think. To regular folk like you.”

  Umber took a deep breath, and then took Hap’s hand and closed his eyes. “All right. Then, show me!”

  When they winked back into the world, Umber gave an exhilarated shout, even as he shivered. “Ha! Is that what it’s like to fly with a Meddler? That was the most—” The elated look vanished instantly when he saw what lay before them.

  They stood on a rock that jutted from a narrow inlet of the sea. “It’s the Far Continent,” Umber said. “Doane’s shipyard.”

  The blue sky was corrupted by filthy black smoke. The shipyard and the industry that surrounded it were in ruins. And there, prowling among the broken structures and demolishing the few that still stood, were the sea-giants.

  “They’ve awoken,” Umber said.

  “Yes,” Hap replied. “A hundred years ago, when the old king of Kurahaven declared himself master of the world, they destroyed his kingdom. Now they have been roused again from their slumber, to prove that there are limits to man’s dominion.”

  The sister ship of the Vanquisher was lying on its side in shallow water, and the greatest of the sea-giants, the one named Bulrock, clawed the boards off its sides and hurled them into the sea.

  There were long, low buildings that might have been used to manufacture Doane’s guns and artillery, and other giants were stomping them into dust. Hap could feel the crushing strides even this far away. Other buildings were afire, and a refinery had been reduced to smoldering coals. As they watched, a she-giant lifted a broken chunk of a building, and three men scurried out like mice. The she-giant roared and crushed them under a single foot.

  Umber made a choking, strangled sound, and he covered his mouth with his hand. “All this death,” he mumbled.

  “They’re destroying it all,” Hap said. “But do you see the wall that Doane spoke of, the wall that kept his secrets from escaping? It still stands.”

  Umber rubbed his eyes, as if he could wipe away what he’d seen. “It’s just . . . terrible, that’s all. And who knows how much time we’ve really bought?”

  When the voice spoke up beside them, Umber nearly stumbled off the rock into the sea.

  It was the voice of the sorceress. “More time than you know, Umber.”

  CHAPTER

  34

  The rock where they stood was not the only one that rose from the water. Turiana stood on another, with only a short band of water between them. The wind made her long dark hair and the sleeves of her dress flow behind her like pennants. It would have been the portrait of perfect beauty, except for the last of the thorn imps huddled at her feet, shriveled and parched, near the end of its short life.

  “I summoned the sea-giants, Umber,” the sorceress said, touching a pendant around her neck. It was one of the talismans retrieved by the thorn imps. “Those weapons, those ships of war, they were abominations. They would have been the end of creatures such as them. And such as me. This danger must be extinguished, before it spreads.”

  Umber stared at her with his lips pressed tight and his arms rigid at his sides.

  “I told you to release me, Umber,” she said. “I warned you about this threat. I might have put an end to it sooner. But you kept me in that cell, out of fear.”

  Umber didn’t reply for a while. Other sounds filled the air: splintering wood, screeching metal. In a burning building something exploded. Men screamed, and their cries were snuffed out. “And will you rule here now, Turiana?” Umber asked bitterly. “The way you ruled Kurahaven after the sea-giants ruined that city?”

  Turiana’s red lips curled up at the corners. “Perhaps. I know what you are thinking, Umber. You presume the worst of me. But don’t you see that I could have sent these giants to the Aerie first? Don’t you understand that I could bewitch you and force you to love me? Isn’t that proof enough that my works of evil are behind me?”

  Umber’s mouth twisted, and his voice was hoarse with sorrow. “Someone I cared about died in your escape. Thanks to your helpers.” He jabbed a finger toward the miserable, shriveled creature at Turiana’s feet.

  The sorceress lifted her chin. “You mean my keeper, Lady Truden? Blame yourself for her fate. You should have set me free.”

  Umber closed his eyes and whispered, “Take me home, Hap. Get me out of here.”

  Hap waited until the sorceress turned to watch the destruction. And then he and Umber slipped back into the Neither.

  “This isn’t home. Where are we?” Umber said, shivering from the cold passage. “Wait—I know! It’s where I started—where I first came to this world!”

  “That’s right,” Hap said.

  They were on the road that led down the long slope of farmland toward the great coastal city of Kurahaven, sprawled below. Umber paced around the spot and pointed. “I woke up right here. And then—over there! Balfour rode up with his horse and cart!” Umber’s expres
sion was still haunted by the encounter with the sorceress and the rampage of the sea-giants, but he mustered a nostalgic grin. “But why are we here, Hap?”

  “This is where I depart,” Hap said.

  The words rocked Umber like a physical blow. “Depart? Now?” He sank down to sit on the grass by the side of the road, with his knees tucked against his chest. “I suppose there’s a reason it has to be now.”

  “There are a billion lives at stake in another world. I promised to save them for you.”

  “A billion and one,” Umber reminded him.

  “I will keep both my promises. It is the way of Meddlers.”

  “That’s one good quality at least,” Umber said. “Will you add one more promise? To stay another day and say good-bye to your other friends?”

  Hap shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “What—is it that Executioner? Is he after you?”

  “He’s not the reason,” Hap said. “It’s you, Lord Umber. And Sophie. And Balfour. And the rest.”

  Umber gaped back at him, shaking his head.

  “Don’t you see?” Hap asked. “It was friendship that tied me to this world and kept me from becoming what I had to be. I can still feel the tug of those bonds on my heart. I sense them, reaching for me again.”

  “Ah. I understand.” Umber sniffed and rubbed the corners of his eyes with his thumb. His voice was raw. “Happenstance. I meant to do so much more to prepare you. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You could say nothing, and still I would understand.”

  “Why here, though? Why is this where you leave us?”

  Hap looked at something that Umber could not see. “When my powers came to me I still didn’t know how to travel to the other world. There was nothing in the Neither that I could see. I learned the answer the first time I went to the Far Continent. I saw it there, in the physical world: a passageway.”

  “Invisible to the rest of us, I assume. What does the passage look like?”

  “A handful of filaments, funneling into nothing, where only a few have passed. When I saw it there I knew it was how your friend Doane was brought to this world. And that meant there would be another passageway here, where you appeared.”