Follow the rules, even if it got him killed? Only he couldn't think what rules to follow. And these damn nightmares on his chest were so heavy, so disgustingly real. Clammy, hard-fingered hands, and really grotesque odor: Urine and sweat, and that wasn't even the bad part.
Light grew in the room, a nacreous rotten light. Ed had kindled something, part of his shirt, and was flapping it around like a flimsy weapon. The old man was grey.
Then there was the Gypsy, doing something to the gunman, but it was all happening in silence. Durand saw the knife, even saw it go in, but then one of the things began clawing at Durand's face, and chittering. He pulled away from it. None of this was real.
So he wasn't surprised when she burst from a dark corner like a dancer leaping onto a stage. Old Madam Moria, her canes gone, flourishing her iron kettle,spun in a swirl of splashing tea. She yelled something in a language Durand didn't recognize. Probably "Begone Demons!" or something like that. Whatever the threat, she backed it with iron and water and flapping skirts, and the things on his chest cowered, and the one drew its arms in close to its bony ribs.
They flinched. That made them real.
"Real," said Durand, and the revulsion that swept him gave him strength to roll from beneath them. He rolled over cold iron of his own, his gun, dropped when they'd fallen into this place. His good hand groped for it, closed on the grips, and brought it up as he came to his knees. Two hands, he reminded himself, and hissed at the pain it cost him to steady the pistol.
Ed was advancing on the things that Madam Moria had spooked off him. As he did so, there came a shrill laugh, young and old, delightful as a girl's, evil as the devil's, and suddenly the things weren't retreating anymore. Madam Moria was gasping for breath and staggering, her curses and strength running down together like the clockwork in an old toy, until she sighed and fell over between the Gypsy and the fireplace. Ed flapped his smoldering shirt at them, but none of them seemed impressed. The two creatures that had clutched and grappled at him now clustered around Stepovich's body. There was also a woman with them, a thin old thing with stringy hair and deep lines in her face. She hissed at Ed, and slapped his smoking shirt aside with the flat of her hand. She stepped toward Ed, and in her grey hands with its filthy broken nails was what seemed to be a thin knife. She raised it.
Durand stopped them. Stopped them with his mind. Didn't think about being a hero. Just made them into silhouettes, paper things, just like on the range. Lift the gun. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Bang,bang, bang. And they all fell down. Not hard, not easy. Not a particularly glorious or brave thing to do.One finger work, just like subtracting numbers on his checkbook calculator. And they all fell down.
SOMETIME
Raymond felt himself falling; his wings unable to grasp the air. His strength, returning so slowly, was now draining away in Luci's presence. She loomed over him; he looked up.
Like looking up at Heaven and Hell. Face too perfect to describe. Eyes too hellish to bear meeting, but he had no choice. Voice smoother than honey. "Bagoly," she said pleasantly, plucking at him with his own name,
Her eyes gleamed down on him. "No," he said,gasping. "You cannot have the Dove." Where was his brother, Daniel, the Raven? He could help. He had the strength. "Leave us. Leave this world. You cannot have my brothers."
Empty words. He knew it. She knew it. Worst of all, Csucskari knew it; Raymond could feel that. Raymond's strength was gone; he couldn't even threaten her. Her cold fingers fastened to his shoulder, flung him contemptuously aside. He hurtled through the air, struck a wall and slid down it. In the flickering light, he saw the big man who held the fire rush toward Luci, but She knocked him effortlessly aside.Somewhere, sometime, he heard explosions. Now he smelt the powder, saw where Her servants sprawled and bled. But it wasn't enough. "Hollo!" he cried,and the name was black and bitter as the odor of burnt feathers. Why didn't he answer? Raymond knew that he would never find out.
He watched Luci set Her hands to Csucskari's throat. She had long, slender hands; white fingers. They would be cool as a maiden's touch. He saw them close, saw the flesh of his brother's throat bulge up between them. White against red. "Hollo!" he cried,and his hand found the strength to lift, to fall against his heart and the tambourine that rested against it. He took it into his hand, and it dropped onto his lap,jarring in a tiny death rattle.
SOMETIME
Madam Moria lay on the floor, unable to rise without her canes, watching as Luci bent over the Dove,strangling the life out of him. The hem of Her gown,white as snow, brushed against Madam Moria. Luci was as graceful as She was evil, and Her eyes, fastened on her prey, had no thought for the old woman,or for the Wolf who lay dying on her other side. A beautiful gown, all of white, the only dark thing, the thin black belt at her waist. And from the belt, a lock of grey hair.Madam Moria smiled. This was not the first time she had picked a pocket, but it might well be the easiest. When she had it in her hand, she rolled over twice, and threw it into the coals of the smoldering fare.
SOMETIME
Somewhere, in another room, a comb snagged suddenly, and a long lock of greying hair came free in an old woman's hand. Like a veil lifted from her eyes,Cynthia saw how it had blinded her, had made her a part of Luci's trap. "So!" she shrieked, and "No!"Leaping up, she lashed at the young couple who nestled like birds in the bower of sweet music they plaited together. The lock of hair struck the young man across the face. "You play for yourselves!" she shrieked at them. "That is not what the music is for. Play for the world, for life. Not safety and blindness and complacency. Play danger and vision and striving. Play evil vanquished, and survival. Play life!"
And for Laurie-
Laurie cried out as Daniel's hand tightened suddenly on hers. The sweet music stopped, and for an instant they stood frozen together, like plastic dolls atop a wedding cake. Laurie twisted her head to stare up into Daniel's face. A sudden anger was there; not at her, but at what he must do. She could almost feel him being torn apart. "There is no way!" he cried aloud. "No way to keep faith with my brothers and also with you." For a moment longer, he stood transfixed with agony. Then he shook his head, as if to clear it. "Forgive me," he said, and she wondered why. But then suddenly he wrenched fiddle and bow from her hands, and turned aside from her. He turned away from her, put his back to her, and bowed his head over his music.
His bow swept down sudden as a knife slash. Music ripped from the fiddle; it ripped the darkness and quiet of the room like a curtain being shredded. Uneasy light spilled in as the music gushed out, and suddenly Laurie could see. The chamber walls blew away like tatters in a wind of song. There was her father lying on the floor, a spreading red stain on his chest. There were other people, a motley mix of those she knew slightly and those she knew not at all nor would ever wish to. But her father was suddenly the only one she could see. She leaped to go to him, but the old gypsy woman caught her and pulled her back."No! Stay back! It is not over, but only begun. And all, all of us lose something here." The woman's hard fingers closed tight on Laurie's shoulder and held her fast.
SOMETIME
Stepovich wished the dying would happen faster. There was so much going on around him, so much that agonized him but he could do nothing about. He wished it were over. If he must be helpless, let him be dead as well.
The most beautiful woman he had ever seen was strangling the Gypsy. Her eyes were bright and clear,and She was laughing with a lover's joy as She choked the life out of him. The Gypsy, limp as a rag doll, was shaken in Her grip. The man was dying,and Stepovich sensed some greater Death waiting in the wings, waiting to make its entrance when the Gypsy was gone. For a moment, too, he thought he saw Laurie beyond the locked figures, thought he saw her young face horrified, stripped of all innocence.But a grey ness fluttered across his vision, and he knew it for the illusion it was. He was getting so cold,but the blood wetting his chest felt so warm.
More shots. The beautiful strangler was startled; She turned to find their source. With a major effo
rt, Stepovich scraped his head on the cold paving stones. There, at the corner of his vision, was Durand. He was walking toward them, his pistol held out in both his hands, wavering like a dowser's stick. He was firing at Her from point-blank range. The woman laughed Her wonderful laugh, and the ringing shout of it smashed against Durand and flung him like a toy.
A distraction. There was a cop inside Stepovich's head, yelling at him. She's distracted. Use the time,Protect your partner. You're going to die anyway, draw her attention to yourself, give Durand a chance. Die like a cop, you damn well lived like one, and it ruined everything you ever thought you wanted.
Stepovich wanted to lay still and die quietly. There was nothing more he could do here. But someone,somewhere, was playing music, fiddle music. The notes plucked at him like fingers at his sleeve, scraped his nerves raw. He couldn't die. Not while that music was playing. But another man was dying nearby. One of the gypsies. The body next to him was Timmy's. Damn, who got him? Stepovich wondered for an instant. And then remembered. The knife still lay where it had fallen. It pointed at Stepovich like an accusing finger.
The knife. The goddamned knife. All this time, the same fucking knife. Cut my life to ribbons.
She was choking the Gypsy still, but he could almost feel the hands squeezing his own windpipe. He couldn't pay attention to it. All he could think of was how much he hated that knife.
It was with a curious sense of inevitability that he felt it under his hand. The touch of it was like a shot of whiskey, only in his blood instead of his stomach.Galvanizing. He closed his hand on it, then pushed down on the hand that clenched the weapon, forcing himself up from the floor and to his knees. His other arm and hand were a dangling weight that bumped against him as he moved. There was pain, too, incredible pain somewhere, but he wasn't sure it was his. He didn't have the strength to stand, but he didn't need to. His vision was going fuzzy and useless. He blinked, trying to clear it, imagined he saw Ed's grinning face behind the Lady, egging him on. Stepovich scraped forward, a crawling step, and the rasp of his shoes on the stone floor turned Her eyes to him, even as he raised the knife. Beautiful eyes. They burned into his, and froze him to stillness.
He would have fought Her if he could, but he had no strength of will-not when She looked at him. His peripheral vision tried to tell him that Ed's hands were lifting, falling on the Lady's shoulders. Ed clutched her, whispered, "Gotcha!"
In one startled instant, Her power wavered. She struck Ed aside as if he were made of straw and newspaper. Stepovich thought he heard the crack of ribs.It didn't matter. Ed had known what it would cost him, to buy Stepovich that instant. It would not be wasted.
He sheathed the knife in the beautiful woman's breast.
SOMETIME
A scream; a woman's or a fiddle's, he could not tell. But he could pull cold air into his hot lungs, and he could lift his head. The scream again, so sweet it could only be Luci dying-sent back to where She belonged, there to wait for him, ah, not now. There was Raven, waltzing into the room as he played Her death on his fiddle strings, while Owl on the floor feebly tapped out the staggering beats of Her failing heart.Csucskari rolled his head and saw Her on the floor,thrashing with a knife, his knife, transfixing Her white gown to a red growing stain. The Wolf lay discarded,his eyes open in slits, but he seemed to feel Csucskari staring at him, because, for an instant, his eyes widened. Their gazes met, and the nods they exchanged cost them the world in pain. Then the Wolf's eyes closed tightly and he turned his head away.
It made no sense. The task had been his, and his alone. It made no sense at all. Csucskari felt something sting his eyes.
There was an old woman, and he found he knew her name- Cynthia. Cynthia Kacmarcik. She had been gripping the Wolf's cub by the shoulder, but now that it was all over, she released her. Cynthia turned her eyes to another old woman. Madam Moria. They opened their arms to one another, crossed the room like dancers treading a measure. "I found it, sister,"said Madam Moria. "The lock of hair. I destroyed it."
"I know, sister," said the other. "It set me free."
They met without touching. They held each other in a gaze that would probably last forever. What passed between them not even the Gypsy could know, but at last Cynthia Kacmarcik gave a barely audible sigh and fell apart. She became bits of white bone china and a bundle of straw, a scrap of burlap and a tangle of string. For one instant the simulacrum stood, a mocking scarecrow of the soul it had held trapped. Then it tumbled to the floor, a scatter of junk.Moria spurned it with her foot as she turned aside."It is over," she said to no one and everyone. "We must go quickly now."
The fiddle spoke a single phrase, sliding down the scale and into stillness.
As if in reply, cracks of yellow light appeared soundlessly in the walls like curtains parting. A pale blue wind whispered through them, and the freshness of it made him realize how bad the stench of the chambers had been. There was a groan, as of two worlds parting, deeper than sound.
Daniel lowered his bow. Csucskari lifted his head,fixed him with a look. Almost, almost he had been too late. But in the final count, blood had told, and the Raven had flown with his brothers. Daniel lowered the fiddle from his throat, let it ease down to his side. "Lore lei," he said, but the young woman he addressed did not turn. Step by slow step, she was advancing on the Wolf's body. Daniel lifted a hand,reached after her, but he could not touch her, not in a room lit by flickering fire and wan daylight, not where the dead lay grouped with the wounded, the demons with the men.
Luci still twitched and thrashed on Her back in an obscene dance, a parody of a woman in passion, the knife still in Her chest as She gnashed Her teeth.Blood spurted from the knife wound, then slowed as Her movements slowed, as the Owl's hesitant fingers tapped out the last beats of Her heart: Teckadum, teckadum, teckadum.
Hollo turned away from the young woman, back to his brother. Csucskari bled for what was dying in his eyes, but Hollo knelt down, and lifted his brother by the shoulders. Csucskari felt his strength returning."It's over, brother," Hollo told him.
Csucskari nodded and shuddered. Gently he freed himself from his brother's grasp, managed to stand on his own. Managed to walk to Luci's body, to crouch down beside it. He put his hand to the knife."I'll need this," he said.
"Probably," Hollo sighed.
Csucskari drew the knife from the body. He felt the last of Her life go with it. "Help our brother," he said.
"Owl can help himself," Raymond said gruffly. He heaved himself to his feet. For a long moment he and Daniel looked at one another as if they were strangers.Then he lifted his shoulders in a long, slow shrug."In the end, you came," he said.
"Yes," said Daniel. "I did." But his eyes followed Laurie as she sank to her knees by her father, and there was a hollowness in his voice. "How many times, though, my brothers? If there is another time,another chance to escape all of this, do you think I will not take it? I don't know."
The ground gave a bare tremble beneath them.
The two policeman, young and old, were supporting one another. The young one bled from his arm,and from the bites of the Fair Lady's minions. The old one just looked very old as they gathered around the fallen Wolf.
"Laurie," said the old one gently. But she knelt by her father, gripping his good hand in both of hers.
"Laurie," he said weakly, almost inaudibly. "You can't be here. You can't be here."
The young policeman looked a fearful question at the old one, who shrugged.
The old Badger gently moved the girl, pushing her into Durand's arms. "All right," he said grimly,"Let's see what you've done to yourself." He gingerly knelt next to the Wolf and touched two fingers to the man's neck. "You'll be pleased to know that you have a pulse," he said. He moved his hand and deliberately pressed his thumb over the wound. The Wolf twitched once and his eyes closed. The girl cried out and struggled, but the young policeman held her,and spoke to her quietly.
The Gypsy put his arm around Daniel. Then he staggered and caught
his balance as the whole world trembled. Cracks widened in the floor, in the walls,and the winds between the world blew through with the force of a gale, showing half a moon and half a sun.
"Gather close together," Csucskari shouted over the noise. "The Fair Lady is gone, and Her domain cannot stand without Her."
"What happens now?" asked Daniel. "Where do we go? How do we return?"
The Gypsy shrugged. "I don't know. Our task is done for this place. Of what comes after, I know nothing."
There was a sudden crack of sound that licked through the air like lightning. All, even the girl, lifted their eyes.
He was in black, but his eyes gleamed blacker. The cloak at his shoulders fluttered in the wind. His clever fingers played with the whip as a sardonic smile curved his lips.
"This way, if you please," he said, as if they had all the time in the world. "The coach awaits outside."
SEVENTEEN
How They Came Back Home
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
I gave you every chance to choose,
Mr. DeCruz.
"BACK IN TOWN"
He laughs into the wind.
Below him the coach clatters with all the right sounds,shakes in all the right ways. There are six horses pulling the coach, in rows of four and two; four of them he has conjured from the past, uncertain he'd be able to do so again,and two are new ones: the dark trace-horse and the fair off-wheeler. The new ones are uncertain, untrained, but he has four experienced horses to guide them. Twice, no more, he has cracked the whip over their heads, and now they run,knowing the hand upon the reins is sure. The six heads are stretched forth upon their necks as they charge into the gloom of the impossible place where all is possible, while he, the Coachman, guides them along paths of memory,chance, and choice.
The Gypsy Page 28