by A. Attanasio
The heavenly mood she had brought back from the dead vanished. The cold penetrated her once again, and she hugged herself for warmth as they barged through the undergrowth.
She felt groggy, as if woken from a profound sleep. Memory stood apart and watched her like a separate self, and she wondered if she was dreaming. Then, the horrid thought occurred to her that Reece had died at the same moment she had crashed onto the Dark Shore. She felt half her self, because he was dead. She reminded herself that she stood charmless on the Dark Shore and knew nothing for sure about Reece.
Asofel leaned against the cowl of the car, watching cat's-paw clouds pad across the blue sky. Despite the imminent danger he sensed all around them, the fidelity of light struck him. Even here on the Dark Shore, this universal radiance cast the shadows of each life. Each individual possessed light, no differently than himself or the nameless lady or the greater beings who dreamed her.
They were all equals in the fateful shine of their lives. Some simply shone brighter than others. Their fatefulness remained the same. Their awareness, their sensitivity, and their very lives held together with frayed hopes no different—no different than his own.
"Jyoti is cold." The eldern gnome opened the back door and ushered her into the car. "Asofel—did you hear me? Let's start the car and get going. I've seen dwarves nearby."
"They've come to destroy the serpent sword," the Radiant One said. "We will have to hurry."
Tropical warmth filled the car when Asofel got behind the wheel, and clarity fit itself more snugly inside Jyoti. "The serpent sword could be a useful weapon against Duppy Hob."
"It was made by Blue Tipoo," the gnome said, slamming the door behind him as the car sped away. He angled his body in the seat so that acceleration did not jar the arrow, "The sword may turn his own magic back on him."
As they sped along, Old Ric held the Necklace of Souls in both hands so that Jyoti could search with him for dwarves ajog in the woods, hacking bramble out of their way with their hatchets. They converged on a log tavern in a grove of giant firs. Hatchets pounded windshields in the parking lot, and the shattering glass summoned patrons from the tavern.
Asofel swung the car through a fast, tight turn, and the Necklace of Souls flopped against Old Ric's chest. When Jyoti grasped it again, they glimpsed horrified faces in the windows of the tavern.
A man with a shotgun strode out the door, and a hatchet struck him solidly in the thigh, evoking a bellow of pain. A blast of smoke and flame streaked from the twin barrels of the gun and ripped a dozen dwarves into a hundred flying parts.
Before the man could reload, more dwarves banged over the hoods and roofs of cars, flinging their hatchets through the windows of the tavern. The gunman retreated, and the dwarf warriors charged after him, shrieking with battle frenzy.
The cries lifted Jyoti's and Ric's eyes from the Necklace in time to see the log tavern swing into view around a curve in the road. Dwarves by the score darted among surrounding firs, and a side window burst to glass pebbles, struck by a hatchet.
Asofel pulled the speeding car off the road and barreled through a wave of dwarves, thwacking aside the agile and crushing the slower ones underwheel. The jolting car accelerated toward the dwarves that packed the front door. The collision ruptured timbers inward and shattered the windshield as the car heaved itself inside the tavern.
Old Ric could only sit stunned. The car rocked to a stop with Broydo's dented, cross-eyed face an arm's reach away, hanging in the space where the windshield had been.
Jyoti moved before the car actually stopped: Flinging open her door hard and bowling over three dwarves, she rolled out. The plank floor slammed her with bruising force, and she groaned for Charm, wishing she still had her amulet-vest. Yet even without Charm, she moved crisply, overturning a table before two barreling dwarves and smashing a chair against the helmet of a third.
Trained by her grandfather to fight without Charm, she advanced aggessively into the room, swinging a barstool like a weapon. Panicked customers clawed past her, rushing for the luminous daylight in the smashed doorway. To get out of their way, she jumped up on a table and watched more armored dwarves erupt through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
"Margravine!" Asofel's shining voice cut through the noise of screaming people and squawking dwarves. "The serpent sword!"
She looked where he pointed and spotted the weapon on a barstool. A knot of men had clustered there, unwittingly defending the dwarf-killing blade with pocketknives and smashed bottles, desperately fending off the fierce, little warriors. With the limb of a broken chair in one hand and a dwarvish hatchet in the other, she clubbed her way toward the sword.
The men at the bar jumped for cover at the approach of the furious woman. She seized the serpent sword from the barstool and swung it in a tight circle. Helmets and plate armor clattered among the tables and chairs, and maggots thick as trout skittered across the floor.
Old Ric jumped from the car and climbed atop the hood to disentangle Broydo's body from the chains. He lowered his dead companion into the car through the vacant windshield. After Jyoti dove into the backseat, Asofel threw the car into reverse, and Ric clung to the dash, legs flapping behind as the machine yanked him out of the tavern in a squeal of tires.
Rooster tails of gravel flared behind when Asofel turned the car back toward the road. Fleeing customers leaped out of his way. Dwarves jumped from the tavern's debris, sprinting onto the road, chasing the battered car until it dwindled away.
The eldern gnome, fallen headfirst to the floor of the car, found himself staring at Broydo's pushed-in face. A stewed odor enclosed him, and a fly from the tavern mizzled in his green hair.
Before Old Ric could shove away in disgust, the fly flitted out the window on a slipstream of jasmine vapors. With a melancholy bong, the dent in the elf's forehead popped back into place.
"By the gods, Asofel! What are you doing?" Old Ric pulled himself upright into the passenger seat. The car swerved violently, and he whacked his head hard against the side window. "Drake's blood! You'll kill us all!"
Asofel's hands grappled with the steering wheel, and the car weaved wildly, grinding onto the shoulder. He lifted his foot from the accelerator and pulled the car back onto the road, jerking everyone out of their seats.
Broydo popped upright, frosted blue eyes bulging. "I dreamt I was dead!"
"By the gods!" the gnome cried. "By the very gods, Asofel! What have you done?"
Noticing the serpent sword in the back, Broydo clambered over Old Ric to reclaim his weapon. Jyoti returned the blade and told him what had happened.
"Then I was dead!" The elf trembled, and a cold hand closed around him. "Radiant One—I owe you my life."
"Do you have the strength to confront Duppy Hob?" the gnome pressed.
Asofel made no reply. What he had done he accepted as just, and tranquillity accompanied his fatigue. He smiled out at the road, the destinal path, that led him deeper into this new world. Fear had departed. Like an antelope that lifts its head and watches hyenas chewing its slippery viscera, he succumbed to voluptuous fatigue. Simply holding on to the wheel, he knew the road would lead where he had to go.
"If you have the strength to step out of the dream, go," the eldern gnome counseled.
Asofel's barb of a smile answered the gnome. The Radiant One had lost his luminosity. He had become wholly corporeal. His pale hair hung lankly over shoulders that appeared strong yet not shining.
"At least we have the serpent sword." Broydo poked the blade at Old Ric's headrest.
"And each other," Jyoti reminded. "We have to make the difference—do whatever it takes—"
"Where I come from," Asofel spoke up, "there is no death. So there it is easy to believe that God is light, radiant everywhere—and there is no evil. All the shadow things in our lives are simply darkness in the pupils of God."
At that moment, many leagues south, on the island of Manhattan, Duppy Hob lifted from his al
tar a slender glass blade, clear as air, sharper than a razor. In the gloom of the cellar, it shone like molten metal. He held it up to the congregation of chanting dead. Their voices had dimmed to whispers over the droning hours, and at the sight of the glass knife, they fell to silence.
Ripcat sat stupefied in the dark alcove. His eyes star-webbed reflections from the blade. Entranced by the power of the long ritual night, he did not move when Duppy Hob stood over him. Nor did he flinch when the tip of the ceremonial blade pricked the top of his skull. So strong was the demonic paralysis that he remained still as the fine edge sliced under his scalp and slid cleanly along the cope of his skull.
Pain tore through the trance, and Reece jumped upright while the blade continued cutting the length of his neck, across his shoulder, and down the breastbone. At the soft underbelly, Duppy Hob seized the flayed pelt in both hands and rent it.
Reece Morgan screamed. His human head, shoulders, and chest emerged from the peeled hide syrupy with the blood of Ripcat's stripped flesh. At the end of that curling cry, he collapsed, and Duppy Hob yanked the whole of Ripcat's skin from him, tugging the fur from legs and arms.
Naked, glossed in blood and curds of mucus, Reece's body shimmered in the aqueous light. The small ritual scars, arcane tattoos, and magic cicatrix that marked his power points held the light longer and burned coolly in the dark, where he lay like the dead.
Duppy Hob wrapped the hide of Ripcat around himself, knotting the claws at his throat, the legs around his waist, and the fanged mask atop his head as a bestial cowl. Triumphant, he strode to the back of the cellar, mounted the bellied steps, and shoved open the hatchway.
A smoldering beam of sunlight annihilated the cellar's darkness and basked the kneeling chanters in golden fire. Their scrawny figures bleached to silhouettes and shambled clumsily up the stairs and into the alley, dismissed by their master.
"Wake up, Reece Morgan!" Duppy Hob called into the crypt sternly as the cry to Lazarus. "Come out from that stinking hole. A new day awaits!"
Reece staggered naked and squinting into the light. Slowly, he mounted the rock steps, sun rays steaming away the oils, clots, and frayed integuments of Ripcat's shorn skin. In the alley, he stood cleansed of all gore, breath smoking in the cold.
Duppy Hob opened the side entrance to Empire of Darkness and exposed the debris of last night's revelry—torn garments, stomped cups and cans, crumpled posters strewn across planks stained with human effluvia. At the center of the sunstruck room, Lara stood, naked, sheathed in her long, black hair, transparent as fire.
Dark Song of the Soul
Flies, iridescent and crawling frankly over the windows inside Empire of Darkness, droned like an electric current. They sensed the abrupt tension, the surge of taut stillness that signaled the onset of something calamitous. Their green bodies whined against the sunny glass, frantic with a vicious need to escape.
Reece Morgan entered the littered room and advanced among spears of sunlight toward the apparition of Lara. Mindless of the eerie silence that had driven the flies mad, he crossed the dance hall as in a dream—naked, muscles heavy, cold outlining his breaths in the yellow air.
Lara and Reece faced each other with stupefied recognition. Both hung stunned and wordless, entranced by Duppy Hob. He had placed Lara in the building to draw Reece inside. With that accomplished, the ghost shivered like a cooked mirage and faded away.
Reece groped at the empty space where Lara had watched him. While he groggily mulled what had happened to her, Duppy Hob selected a black, ceremonial robe from a back closet.
He pulled it over Reece's head and helped him slip his arms into the wide sleeves.
"You've served me well, Reece Morgan." Duppy Hob smiled, his unsmiling eyes drillholes to a crater of hell. "Your usefulness to me is presently at an end. Now that the child's soul is in my hands, you are free to go. But we don't want you wandering around the world searching for your identity naked, do we?"
Reece gazed vapidly at the flayed pelt of Ripcat, his mind a cloud, a wing with nowhere to fly.
"Now you look the role." Duppy Hob adjusted the collar of Reece's black robes and slapped his shoulder with satisfaction. "A prophet of doom. You can roam the planet warning everyone about the end of the universe as we know it. You will herald my coming. Go." He pointed out the open door to the dingy alley, where the sounds of the city squeaked unnaturally small and far away. "Go wander the streets of Manhattan. Tell everyone of the doom that is coming when Duppy Hob becomes master of this dream!"
Laughter like crackling fire followed Reece into the alley. Barefoot, the dazed man limped to the street, and his deranged aspect sent pedestrians veering.
Behind him, the laughter continued, cascading even after Duppy Hob slewed downstairs to his cellar and the charmway. The alcove shone with luminous blue daylight and sparkling motes of snow crystals. Before crossing the threshold to a distant room of the world, the demon withdrew all his power from the building. He would not need Empire of Darkness again.
Blisters boiled along walls and rafters, blackening to scales of ash. Chancres of rust gnawed the metal loft, and its girders groaned and sagged, pulling down veils of dissolved plaster from the ceiling. With a loud popping noise, windows cracked, and flies swarming across the panes drizzled to black dust. Moments later, the building shriveled to an empty shell, its interior hung in rotted draperies of sloughed paint and chewed wiring.
Duppy Hob closed the charmway behind him and sauntered onto a country road. The sky's blue dome enclosed snow-patched hills and pine forest. Out of the dark doorways of the forest, dwarves scuttled. The demon drew his creatures to himself, and the hosts descended in their thousands. The hillsides trembled with white and metallic shapes as though the snow itself rose up armored.
"Bring me the Necklace of Souls, children." His voice rose straight into the empty sky, big with power, and billowed to stately thunderheads. A purple wall of malevolent force assembled, crested silver with the sun's horizontal rays.
At the sight of the empurpled storm front stacking clouds out of a clear sky some leagues ahead, Old Ric sat up taller in the passenger seat. "Where is that coming from?"
"Duppy Hob." Asofel's curved eyes narrowed, and he pressed the accelerator to the floor, fishtailing into a curve. "He's come for the Necklace of Souls."
Straddling the center line, a young man in a black tunic and animal skin blocked the road like some errant god of myth. At his back, tempest clouds towered.
Asofel held the accelerator down and pulled the car into the center of the straightaway, aiming for the youth.
With a braying cough, the engine died, and the car rolled to a stop close enough for all to see the dimpled youth in Ripcat's skin. Fiery spirochetes crawled through space around him. The wind gusted, and he broke apart into a black glitter of nothingness.
"He wears Ripcat's hide!" Broydo groaned and clutched the headrest behind Old Ric. "Where did he go?"
"Duppy Hob was never there," Asofel answered and peeled his fingers from the steering wheel. "He won't get too close. He's afraid I'll eat him."
"He sent his dwarves instead!" Jyoti twisted in her seat to check the side and rear windows. "We're surrounded by them."
Asofel hung his head. He listened to the dwarvish marchers climbing down the dream through the thousand narrow charmways bored into spacetime by the demon Hob in his six thousand years of exile. All converged on this site—the arena he had selected long ago. "There are too many. One sword cannot hold off these legions."
"Can you start the engine?" Jyoti asked, nose pressed to the side window, watching glittery ranks of dwarves spill down the hillsides.
Asofel banged a frustrated fist on the steering wheel. "He's trapped us."
Hoping to spare the others, Old Ric climbed out the open windshield, and Asofel pulled him back in. "Let me go, Asofel. Let me return the Necklace I stole."
"What good will that serve?" Asofel strapped the gnome into the passen
ger seat. "We must not submit. Not to this evil."
"The devil worshipper is too powerful here on the Dark Shore." Broydo peered from behind the bone blade. "Let's cut our way out of here—as we did on Gabagalus."
"Duppy Hob has called down upon us all his dwarves." Asofel directed their attention to the higher ridges, where sunlight glinted like a star field off the helmets of emerging hordes. "If we try to hack our way through them, we will be overcome."
"You should have gotten out when you could." Misery wrung Old Ric, because he knew from what he witnessed in the Necklace of Souls that there would be no escape: every facet showed packed multitudes of dwarf warriors bursting from caves and sinkholes, helmets masking all but the bloodglow of their red eyespots. "I'm sorry I brought you into this."
"I don't like when you talk that way, Ric." Asofel's complexion of blue star ash darkened, flushed with anger. "You sound like you have given up."
The others sat silently, their eyes held by the wave of dwarves sweeping down the brown fields.
"We must not give up." Asofel pulled around in his seat, large face clenched with determination. "No matter what happens, we must fight. That is why I gave you my light when I found you dead on the Dark Shore—to defy Duppy Hob."
"You're weaker because of us," Jyoti observed dismally. Without Charm to bolster her, she lacked all hope they could survive the dwarf assault, and she sunk lower in the backseat. "Now we have to die a second time."
"Margravine, listen to me." Asofel reached for the words that could replace the Charm she craved. "I do not possess the power to defeat Duppy Hob by myself, because I gave some of my light to each of you. I was reluctant to do that at first. I thought Ric foolish for suggesting it. But I'm glad now that I gave you my light, because we are stronger together. That is what I've learned from Ric—from all of you. Power is strongest when shared."