Gav’s nudging him: Look! He opens his eyes and kneels beside the man to peer forwards over the cabin, through the whirling corona and towards the land.
The Mount is on fire.
It’s like a giant’s torch thrust up from the water of the bay. The waist of the cone of rock is a complete circle of flame. A huge plume of smoke pours up from it, swallowing the castle at the top except when something flares through the black billows as it catches and burns. They can almost feel the heat of it now as well as smelling it.
Now Rory’s frightened. They’re being driven straight towards the maw of fire. Could he throw himself overboard? They could try. But Gav’s still holding Rory’s hand, and he’s not looking for any kind of escape. As far as Rory can tell he’s just waiting.
It won’t be a long wait. Already Rory can make out the huge wrecks stranded along the rim of the beach. He can see individual buildings in Penzance, the decaying seafront shopping centers and car parks Silvia led him past, not so long ago though it feels like ages. A blur of small movement catches his eye despite the raging phantoms and the tossing of the boat; it looked for a moment as if there were people among the low hills behind the Mount. People on horseback. But it’s hard to look at anything other than the gigantic fire. It’s so bright now it makes the bottom of the clouds look like they’re burning too, except where the column of smoke is obliterating all light. The smoke’s like a living thing, a weeping black tree growing from the ruin of the Mount, bending wispy twigs towards the ground. The noise is like the earth being torn and crumpled up, brittle in a giant fist. Just as the whole scene is about to loom fatally huge, their headlong motion slows.
Rory can see two figures standing on the causeway.
They’re near its landward end, hardly more than specks above the debris of the beach, but Rory knows them both straightaway. The man is Per. He’s found his staff again. He’s holding it high, exactly as he did before. Even as a distant speck he’s too big, larger than life. The same goes for the dog prowling around his legs, which is how Rory knows it’s not really a dog at all but the beast whose savagery slaughtered the Black Pack, the beast the thin-faced foreign man turned into when he put the mask on and the god appeared and pointed at him.
Both man and dog are watching as the boat’s propelled towards them.
“That’s—” Rory yells to Gav.
“I know,” Gav says.
With a chorusing hiss like hot metal in water, the fiery phantoms all sweep upwards, spiraling around the mast and then arching into the sky. The dry wind fades. The boat drifts on towards the beach, then scrapes, stalls, tips. The keel’s run aground. Rory grabs at the cabin roof as the tipping becomes listing, leaning, toppling. His fingers aren’t strong enough. He slips and the deck pitches him down, crashing him into a rail. Shallow water seethes beneath him, lit by the fire. Terrified that the boat’s going to capsize on top of him, he looks around and sees that Gav’s already slid into the sea and is half wading half swimming ashore. “Wait!” Rory croaks. What’s the idiot doing? Why isn’t he trying to get away while he can? Gav won’t wait, though. He doesn’t even look back. Rory holds his breath and drops himself between the rails into the sea. It’s brutally cold. The oversized fleece becomes quickly waterlogged. He kicks and splashes and splutters after Gav. A wave picks him up and breaks over him; when he rights himself, coughing, wiping salt from his eyes, his feet can touch. He stumbles up the beach. “Wait!”
Gav still won’t wait. He’s just walking on, the wrong way, towards the causeway, towards Per and the beast. In the marshy mud-colored sand of low tide each of his footprints fills straightaway with water and becomes a miniature pool reflecting the blaze on the Mount, so it looks like he’s leaving a trail of wet fire behind him, like he’s burning the land as he goes. He must be insane. Rory’s seen what that dog can do. Even thinking about it for an unwanted heartbeat—the screams, the men running and falling and not getting back up, the indescribably horrible snapping and tearing—is enough to make sick rise in his throat. “Stop!”
Gav doesn’t stop.
So Rory goes running after him, as best he can. There are other people heading towards the causeway too, he can see them appearing and disappearing through gaps between the abandoned buildings of the town behind the beach. Smoke drifts around, stinging his eyes. His sodden clothes slap heavily against him. It’s hard enough trying to run on wet sand without their weight as well. Gav seems like he’s almost gliding across the beach, not hurrying or running but always staying ahead no matter how much Rory shouts. “Wait! Wait for me!” The fire’s a constant thrum and crackle, like the massed feet and hooves of an approaching army.
By the time he finally catches up with Gav they’re almost to the tumble of barnacled black stones flanking the raised causeway.
There’s Per. He’s supposed to be dead. He looks dead. His crazy hair’s limp and damp all over his face. He’s acquired a long overcoat which flaps like seaweed. He hulks under it, heavy and cold. His eyes are burning. Actually burning. Not reflecting the fire, but fire themselves, shimmering circles. They’re the only part of him that looks alive.
The dog faces Gav and Rory. It bristles, then howls.
Rory’s out of breath and can barely open his mouth for terror anyway, but he clutches Gav’s arm and tries to say something about turning around, now, before it’s too late. To his complete astonishment Gav puts an arm around his shoulders, gives him a small hug, and guides them up onto the rocks.
Three or four mounted people appear above the sea wall. They’re struggling to control their horses, and Rory can’t see anything well enough to recognize them for sure, but they’re definitely Riders. Their homemade armor glints like it’s been dipped in blood. For a moment he thinks one of them might have pointed in his direction.
Rory’s main thought as he scrambles up among the chunks of mussel-sharp rocks, Gav still guiding and steadying him, is that he needn’t have been here at all. He could have stayed in that big and endlessly quiet old house, eternally comfortable and safe and at rest. But he’s not. It seems to be his own special favorite mistake, this thing of forgetting to stay put when he can and voluntarily exposing himself instead to the most ridiculous danger. He’s pretty sure he’s not going to get the chance to make it again.
“Third time’s the charm,” says a voice in Per’s dead mouth, as Gav and Rory climb at last onto the cracked causeway stones.
His fist around the staff is the sickly color of the polluted froth left by the retreating tide. The staff itself is writhing with light, a kind of red smoke slithering up and down and around it. It’s impossible to tell what the flaming circles in Per’s eye sockets are looking at, but if he sees Rory he doesn’t know him anymore, or doesn’t care.
The blaze at the other end of the causeway feels like hot breath on the back of Rory’s neck. It’s so huge it casts shadows, multiple dusty shadows, melting into each other and into the dark slabs they’re standing on. It’s roaring like a wave about to break.
“Have you at last brought me what is mine,” the voice says. It’s an old voice, throaty and dry, like fire talking. It makes the question sound not at all like a question.
“No,” Gav answers.
The monstrous dog snarls. Its head is as high as Rory’s chest.
Far behind Per and the dog, by the sea wall, a woman’s voice shouts, “Rory? That’s Rory!”
“Why, then, are you here,” says the thing Per’s turned into. “What do you have to bring me, except the gift you wrongly took.”
“I’m here to tell you,” Gav says, “that the world’s finished with you. And with me. Time’s up. For both of us.”
Per steps forward. Four shambling steps, like an automaton. He raises a hand towards Gav’s neck. Rory can’t help himself; he squirms out of Gav’s grip and backs away.
Gav’s only reaction is to take hold of the hem of his navy blue sweater and pull it over his head. He doesn’t have a shirt on underneath. His back is a mess
of nasty scars, but Rory barely notices them, because Per grabs at the thin silver chain around Gav’s neck.
The massive dog crouches, bares its teeth, and whines.
“It’s gone,” Gav says. How he can stand there, let alone speak, with that thing looming in his face, actually touching him, Rory can’t imagine; but he does. “Lost again. Forgotten.”
Per tears the chain off Gav’s neck, making Gav wince and stagger, though only for a moment. Per steps back. The slender silver chain dangles from his corpse fingers, glittering like a stream of tiny sparks.
A horse whinnies in panic.
“You let it go,” the old voice says. “The door to all the knowledge that runs in the veins of the earth and blows around the stars, and you let it go. You. A boy.”
“We don’t need to know everything,” Gav says. “I have a feeling it’s better if we don’t, actually.”
“You are a child.” With a clumsy swing of his huge arm Per tosses the chain away. “You think knowledge is the first of sins, like all the other children. You would rather live and die with your eyes sewn shut.”
“Maybe I would,” Gav says. “Maybe you would too. You knew the prophetess when you were a man. She didn’t want her gift. All she wanted was to sleep.”
A horrible grimace disfigures Per’s slackened face. “I gave her that wish. I’ll do the same for you. Boy.”
Gav shrugs. “You might as well not bother threatening. It’s not like I can stop you this time.”
“Who do you imagine will save you? The harridans on their horses. The spirits I command will madden their steeds until they run headlong into that fire.”
“I told you,” Gav says. “I don’t imagine anyone saving me. I’ve made my end. I don’t belong in this world either.”
Despite the fact that his blood’s pounding in his ears so violently he can scarcely make out what anyone’s saying, let alone attend to it, Rory finds himself staring openmouthed at Gav’s back. Does he actually mean that? Is he trying to commit suicide?
“You don’t deserve life. Boy. You are the rankest of cowards. Afraid to keep what you were entrusted with. The prophetess had lost her wits when she chose you.”
“I wouldn’t call what you have life, exactly,” Gav says mildly.
“You dare taunt me. Don’t presume to mock me because I did not fear to become immortal.”
“I wasn’t taunting.”
“This flesh welcomed me. These spirits sustain and obey me. I am not hindered by the frailties of man. I will find the ring.”
“No,” Gav says. “You won’t.”
“But first,” the voice says, as if Gav hadn’t spoken, “you must die, to cancel the prophetess’s choice.”
Beyond the end of the causeway, in the gap where the ramp breaks through the sea wall, Rory can now see the Riders gathering. Their horses are twisting and shying but they’re trying to force them into a line. He thinks—perhaps it’s just desperation—he can spot Soph among them, that bit taller and straighter in the saddle. Can he wave to them? Can he get them to charge? Is there even time? The monstrous dog’s up out of its crouch. It’s lowering its head and growling, a horrible rumble almost like a tremor in the stones.
Gav turns around. “I’m really sorry,” he says. “If you see Marina, tell her—”
Then he stops.
Everything stops. It’s the weirdest thing. Nothing’s actually changed but all at once the mad terrified thudding of Rory’s heart goes calm, the fury of malice around him drains away. Even the cacophony of the fire suddenly sounds like music.
Gav’s looking at a point somewhere over Rory’s right shoulder. He’s so utterly still Rory’s wondering if the Per thing has killed him, just like that, without anyone noticing.
A clear voice behind Rory says, “Hello, Gawain.”
In a whisper hoarse with longing, Per’s mouth says, “The ring.”
Rory turns around.
Even when he’s looking the right way he’s never been able to see how she does it. She’s appeared without a sound. Behind her the Mount is a pyramid of fire and smoke. Its upper gardens are burning now, and the walls and windows overlooking them have begun to pop, coughing out balloons of flame. She’s shining all over with that terrible light.
“And hello, Rory,” she says.
The plain brown ring is on the fourth finger of her left hand, where it fits perfectly.
“I didn’t think I’d see either of you ever again,” she says.
“Fetch it,” groans the dead man’s voice. “Slay it.”
The beast moves so fast Rory doesn’t even have time to be frightened. It bounds past him in a silent blur and leaps up. Someone far away shouts a useless warning: “Rory!” He’s flinching as it reaches him.
“Stop,” She says quietly.
The beast twitches and curls up in midair. It drops onto the causeway stones like a sack. It presses itself flat. All this has happened in less time than it takes Gav to finish his one step towards her.
There’s a rising commotion behind, back where the Riders are. Hoofbeats are scraping on the ramp, and more than one voice is shouting now. “It’s Rory! It’s that kid!”
Marina squats down beside the prone and quivering dog and touches it, almost curiously.
“Careful—” begins Gav, but something’s happened again, too fast or blurry for Rory to follow. He thought it was the dog lying there, stretched out like it had been skinned and turned into a rug, but it isn’t anymore, it’s a man draped in filthy black furs, flattened and gasping at Marina’s feet as if she’s just floored him with a punch. What a moment ago was the huge animal’s head is now just the dead eyes and ears and muzzle of a dog’s hide over his shoulders. A blunt black mask is lying face-up on the stone beside him. He’s pale and sweating. His hands claw weakly at the causeway.
“It’s all right,” Marina says to Gav. “It was just a man, you see. Men do what we want them to. Get up.”
The man hauls himself weakly to his feet. It’s the leader of the Pack, the same man Rory saw with the mask before, when the bad god turned him into the beast; the sharp-faced one with the foreign accent. He sways as he stands up. He looks ill.
“You,” he says, staring at Marina. His face fills with something that could be dread or could be guilt. He stumbles, turns, and runs towards the beach, dodging past Gav and Per.
Per roars and raises his staff. The aura wreathing around it surges brighter, like embers when you blow on them. He grasps it in both hands and swings it to point at Marina, a gesture of unmistakable malevolence. Rory looks at Gav in panic: Do something! Someone’s got to do something. Should he do it himself? Rush forward and knock the staff out of Per’s leprous fists?
Gav’s smiling. Properly smiling. Rory’s never seen him do anything like it before.
Per begins to growl a strange word.
“No,” Marina says. “Quiet.”
The word chokes in the dead man’s throat.
“Let them go,” she says. “Actually, no. I’ll do it.”
The staff drops with a startling clatter onto the causeway. Per stands there with his arms out. Suddenly he looks as if the fires have consumed him inside. He’s wasted, hollow.
“He was a man too, you see,” Marina says. She comes forward to pick up the staff. “All of them were. Except poor Gwen, but she’s not part of this anymore.”
Gav finds his voice at last. “Marina,” he says. “You’ve grown.”
The clamor among the Riders becomes whoops and yells. A group of them are pushing down the ramp onto the beach. They’re hurrying. He can definitely see Soph now, taller than the rest, wearing her patchwork armor. She survived; she’s alive. She’s near the front but horses are slipping and squeezing past each other. The man running along the causeway sees his way blocked by the tide of mounted women and skids to a stop, but it’s already too late for him. There’s Ellie at the front now, alive too. She couldn’t look more alive, in fact, lifting herself out of the saddle as she driv
es her horse into a gallop, outpacing the others. She’s not bothering with the whooping and shouting, she’s all business. Even Marina stops to watch for a moment as Ellie brings her horse up onto the causeway and rides the man down. He crumples under the charge. Rory can hear the air go out of him and the crunch of his bones. Ellie reins the horse in and turns it with amazing speed. It rears up, front hooves pawing, and drops on the man again, and then the mass of Riders catch up with her and they’re all on him, screaming, stamping, stabbing.
Ignoring the carnage now, Marina picks up the staff. Per’s arms drop. His whole body shivers and goes slack. He falls to his knees. The voice in his mouth emits a kind of strangled sigh.
“You,” Gav says, and he’s grinning from ear to ear now, “are amazing.”
“Do you remember that time in the woods?” Marina says. “The day Daddy drowned? You made these spirits leave the mask. I understand what you did now. This ring makes everything open, doesn’t it? Come out.” She addresses the last words to no one Rory can see. She might even be talking to the staff. “Come out and be seen.”
Light flares. Horses whinny. Rory has to shield his eyes. When he rubs them clear a moment later, Per’s fallen face-first on the stone, dead as the rusting ships on the beach. A man-shaped ghost of flame is hovering in the air in front of Marina. It’s twice her size. It shimmers and burns with silent glory, flickering, restless, consuming and re-forming itself. Its head is the image of an old tired man.
“We would not have our freedom,” it whispers. The Riders have fallen quiet, transfixed by the phantom’s appearance, watching from the end of the causeway, so Rory can hear the whisper quite clearly, though it’s as dry as the cackle of the blaze behind.
“You wanted to stay a man,” Marina says. She’s completely unafraid. She’s exactly as Rory’s always known her, implacable and beautiful as the sea. “You still want that, don’t you? Even now.”
“We know the secrets of heaven and the lightless places,” it says. It’s the hiss of a broom across a slate floor. “We will serve you without question. Only let us have life still.”
Arcadia Page 49