The words stood proud on the wall in the raking light of the lantern, and Kay read them evenly, as if brushing them like paint on paper, with a steady hand. But something about them troubled her, like a persistent bell ringing at a distance.
‘The horn of the Primary Fury,’ said Flip. ‘The single most sonorous instrument in a world deafened by harmonies. It has gone by many names. The Battle Breaker. The Great Breath of Parnassus. The Pure Noise. The Flower of the Ten Thousand. It has mystical and mathematical properties, of course, but in the end all anyone really needs to understand is its beauty, its power. It is said that the Bride cannot truly be called, can never be commanded. She goes where she will. But in the voice of the horn of the Primary Fury we may, as it were, speak to her in her own language.’ And then, in a gentler tone, as if cupping his words in cotton wool, ‘It’s the partner of the shuttle, whose voice knits up those threads which the horn has scattered to the winds. The one is to the other as sun to moon, as shore to sea, as knowing is to doing.’
He picked up the horn with both hands. It caught the light of the lantern where he had set it on the last course of the wall’s rough blocks. Even in this tomb of death it shone.
‘It belongs to her,’ said Flip, ‘as it once did to Rex. I think the time has come to wake the dreamer and give her the horn that is hers.’ He handed it to Kay.
Kay put the horn to her lips and closed her eyes. Taking the deepest breath, her lips pursed tightly against the mouthpiece, she blew a peal that seemed to shake the stone around them. The very air as she blew seemed to condense like dew out of itself, and to run down the face of the world in heavy dark drops. In Kay’s ears the rupture burst like a dam breaking, and she felt suddenly that all her life she had been waiting to wake at this call, waiting for a summons to break into her with just such an imperious, irresistible, deafening noise.
As her breath gave out and she lowered the horn, Ell sat up, pushing herself up, rising up, her arms up, her face turned up to the ceiling, like a flower thrusting from the grass at dawn, and then she was in Kay’s arms, and the two of them in Flip’s, and in the centre of the tight embrace Ell shivered and cried, and laughed and was held, and the glow of the light held them together as long as their arms could last, and that was a long time.
To Kay’s relief, Ell remembered almost nothing of the long ordeal that had begun in the mountain. Lulled into a trance by murmuring left-wraiths, she could recall since then only snatches of scenes, seen as if through a dream, until the moment Oidos brought her to ‘this little room with a hard bed’. There they had shared a cup of chocolate, and Oidos had shown her the horn.
‘She promised me that you would come for me, Kay,’ said Ell. ‘And she told me that the horn would be mine. Is it?’
Kay wrapped it in the wool blanket and gave the parcel to her sister.
‘We need to get out of here,’ said Flip. He was adjusting the wick on the lantern. ‘It will be day soon.’
Dawn. When Razzio will launch his balloons for the mountain.
Kay’s heart lurched.
‘Flip, before Oidos – before I came down here, we had a kind of council of war. Will and Phantastes brought me here because they said that Razzio could help me find Ell, that he could help me find my father. But that’s not what he wants to do. He said he was going back to the mountain. He’s taking Will and Phantastes, and Oidos and Ontos, and all the causes. They’re going to launch a hundred balloons from the garden at dawn. Razzio is angry with Ghast, and he wants to fight.’
At that last word Flip tangled his fingers in the flame. Swearing a hot oath, he dropped the lantern and it went out. The darkness fell on them instantly, totally.
‘Kay,’ said Ell. ‘I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be,’ she answered, squeezing her sister’s hand again. ‘Flip, what’s wrong?’
‘We can’t let him launch the balloons. It’s a trap. This entire house is surrounded by wispers. It took me the better part of a day to find a way through the cordon and slip into the catacombs – and even then I only got through by a fluke. I didn’t understand why they were dug in, but now it’s only too obvious: Ghast knows what Razzio means to do, and he intends to stop him. But we can’t get out the way I got in – all four exits from the catacombs will be heavily guarded.’ Flip was fiddling with the lamp as he spoke, but it was no use – he set it down slowly, with a quiet emphasis that all three of them understood.
‘I see a way out,’ said Ell. ‘Follow the star.’
She was probably pointing, but in the darkness it took Kay a moment to see what she meant. On the wall opposite, out in the passage, a faint patch of light had appeared. It was no bigger than a hand’s breadth, and it seemed to be in the shape of a five-pointed star. Flip, in the passage, saw it right away, and immediately got to his feet. He began to walk down towards the near end of the tunnel. The girls, scrambling cautiously over the low wall, weren’t far behind.
‘This hole wasn’t here twenty minutes ago,’ he said. He was running his fingers over the edges of a well-defined, star-shaped opening in the thin rock wall above the altar.
‘Maybe it was the sound of the horn?’ Kay asked. ‘It was so loud – it shook powder off the ceiling down the tunnel – I saw it.’
‘The star will show in the morn,’ Flip recited. ‘Maybe.’
Kay had frozen. It was there, in the air – she could feel it – the star – the morn –
Dad. ‘Tell your mother we’ll always have Paris.’
But Flip had another idea. Now he swung a leg up on to the stone altar, crouched, and put two or three fingers through the hole, feeling for something. ‘There’s a door like this in the mountain – it’s thousands of years old, and you open it like –’
Whatever had required doing, he did it. Part of the wall behind the altar swung open on a huge pair of iron hinges. Wind rushed through the gap into a little room, where in low light a set of circular steps rose into the ceiling. Flip turned back and held out his hands.
‘Leap, hearts,’ he said, smiling.
They climbed. Kay’s heart felt as if it would hammer a path straight out of her ribs. Paris. She felt in her pocket for the little red book. You’ll know where to find me. At the top of the steps they would have hit a trapdoor, had it not already been open. Ontos was peering down into it, his huge eyes, dark with opiate dilation, surveying the darkness through which they had risen. As they emerged from the stairs into the very centre of his dais, in the middle of the garden, he touched the horn in Ell’s arms and, from the distant recesses of his oceanic eyes, he smiled.
He had heard it, too.
Given what was going on around him, Kay quickly realized, this was altogether remarkable. Every one of the hundred rooms running around the interior wall of the garden had a glass door. Before every one of these glass doors a paved square, floored with brick or cobbles, led into the building. On each of these hundred plots the causes had tethered a giant hot-air balloon. Every one of them was the same: a small square basket, capable of holding two or three passengers, all of wicker; a small ring of metal equipment; and a huge, swelling envelope – each one a rich, dark blue, the colour of a sapphire at evening. Around them the causes swarmed, checking the tethers and halyards, loading supplies, making ready to depart – for the sky above was paling, and dawn could not be more than minutes away.
Just then there was a loud cry from one side of the garden. An answering cry rose from the opposite side. Kay searched first for the one and then the other, her eyes rocketing from side to side, even as her arms fixed on her sister and drew her close before her. Dead centre behind the main entrance of the House of the Two Modes, one of the balloons began to lift from the ground. The causes aboard – two – were waving as they rose. Opposite them, in the corresponding place at the back, another balloon was also rising.
‘We’re too late,’ Kay said.
‘Perhaps we were wrong,’ said Flip. ‘Maybe everything will be fine.’
‘How can everything be fine when
Razzio and all the wraiths in the Society are returning to the mountain?’ said Kay. It wasn’t really a question. She searched the faces in the garden for any sign of Razzio, of Will, of Phantastes. At last, in one of the corners, she saw all three of them. They were standing together, watching the ascending balloons.
Kay took Ell’s hand, and together they ran through the garden. There was no one to block her way this time. She and Ell dodged the chairs and tables, ran through the complicated plantings of shrubs and small trees, and reached the corner as Razzio was about to turn in through one of the doors.
‘Our young friend,’ he said to Will and Phantastes. ‘I told you she would return when she was hungry.’
Kay made no time for his jibe. ‘Razzio,’ she said. Her tone was serious enough to make him pause on the threshold. ‘Will. Phantastes. Stop. Call the balloons back. It’s a trap. Ghast has laid a trap.’
‘Kay,’ said Will. ‘It’s not what we want but –’
‘No,’ she insisted. She pulled Ell by the hand, yanking her into view. It was all too fast; they hadn’t yet registered.
Now. Pay attention to me now.
They stared at Ell. Kay stared at them.
‘Hi,’ said Ell. ‘I’m back. This is a really giant garden.’
‘Ghast knows what you’re planning. There are left-wraiths on every side of the house. They’re guarding the exits from the catacombs.’
‘The cata–’ Will was stammering breaths. ‘Kay, where have you been?’
‘Call back the balloons!’ She was shouting now. Surely they could hear the fury, the desperation in her voice. Razzio stepped forward off the sill and let go of the door handle. Behind him, Oidos appeared, ashen, at the window. From her expression Kay knew that Flip had stepped up behind her.
‘You,’ said Will. ‘How –?’
‘She’s right,’ said Flip. ‘She’s telling the truth. I came in through the catacombs, and they’re heavily guarded. If someone hadn’t knocked out one of the patrols, I’d never have made it myself.’
‘He saved Ell,’ said Kay. Will was stepping forward towards Flip. As was Phantastes. ‘He saved me.’
But there was nothing to fear. The three wraiths fell upon one another in an embrace that testified beyond doubt the affection that they had always had, and would always have, for one another. Their arms were still entangled when the dawn sky burst into flame.
It was the first of the balloons. It had risen four or five hundred metres into the air. Now the two wraiths aboard the basket were waving their arms and screaming. The basket was dropping fast as fire tore through the envelope. The balloon disappeared over the far edge of the building.
Dead.
‘Call back the other balloon,’ said Kay. She hurled her voice at Razzio, level and commanding. ‘Make them land.’
It was too late. A loud shot rang in the silent air over the garden, and the other balloon burst into flame. Two hundred wraiths and more watched as the basket drifted for a moment, suspended in the burning orange air, then plummeted behind the house.
‘He dares!’ shouted Razzio. ‘He dares!’
‘We’re not going to the mountain,’ said Will. ‘Ground the balloons. If we launch them, every cause in the garden will die.’
Oidos had come to the door and opened it. ‘There is no other way to escape,’ she said. ‘Will we live as prisoners in our own house?’
‘Would you rather die?’ Kay shot back. ‘Which future don’t you want for us now?’
‘If we can find a way past the guards in the catacombs,’ said Flip, ‘I can get us out.’
Razzio, Phantastes and Will turned towards Flip, as one. Oidos slammed the door and disappeared into the house. Kay knew that Ontos must have been watching intently from his dais in the centre of the garden, because every one of the causes had paused and turned towards Flip.
‘It’s risky. We’d need a few things from the house to set up a diversion. But we can leave the causes here, for now, and the four of us –’
‘The six of us,’ said Kay.
‘– the six of us could maybe thread through the guards at the southern exit. The tunnel ends near a stand of ash and pine trees there – there’s cover.’
‘And what would we do once we escaped?’ snarled Razzio.
‘I know where my father is,’ said Kay. ‘Take me to Paris. All of you. Take me there. Flip will get us out and I will find my father.’
Kay stepped into the middle of the little group of stunned wraiths, pulling Ell tightly by the hand. She knew that this was her moment, the moment in which she could seize or lose her chance, once and for all. ‘This isn’t your story, Razzio. It was never your story, and it isn’t mine, either. Maybe it doesn’t belong to any of us. But I know one thing for certain, and that is, we must never, never, never let it be Ghast’s story. I know my father is in Paris. I know it’s where they left him, as surely as you know yourselves when you go into your rooms in that house.’
Kay held up her sister’s hand, and Flip smiled. He reached into his pocket, took out the jack and placed it there.
Ell almost laughed – an impish, powerful grin – and then she flicked the jack high into the air so that it spun in a circle, and then caught it with a flourish in her coat pocket. She stood up smartly, the horn still tucked in the crook of her other elbow, as if she were reporting for duty.
‘This little girl is the third form of the Primary Fury,’ said Kay. ‘I’d say she’s wearing it pretty well. My father is the Builder. I’d say he knows a thing or two about Bithynia. Help me find him. We’ll call a Weave. We’ll all go to the Shuttle Hall. If Ghast wants a battle, fine, we’ll meet him in the field. And we’ll beat him.’
‘We’ll never get past the wispers in the woods,’ said Will.
‘Never,’ agreed Phantastes.
‘Yes we will,’ said Flip. He had turned towards the garden. His tone was as tired and torn as anything Kay had ever heard in her life.
While she had been speaking, everything across the garden had changed. All ninety-eight blue balloons had slipped their tethers and were rising into the still morning air. Every last one of the causes had boarded a basket and was sailing into the sky.
No.
‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ cried Razzio, running towards Ontos. The mode was circling in the place of pure being, his arms extended level from his shoulders, his feet tight together, his head bowed. His palms he had turned up to the sky as he fanned the causes airwards.
‘He’s sending them to their deaths,’ said Will. ‘Why would Ontos do that?’
Flip was studying the balloons as they lifted, a ring of blue giants rubbing shoulders as they caught the southerly wind over the house and drifted, always gaining height, into the lightening sky. He looked at the ground before he answered. ‘They’re all giving their lives for us.’ His voice had lost its colour, and was little more than a whisper. ‘It’s a diversion.’
‘It’s a sacrifice.’ Will and Kay spoke the same words in the same moment.
‘And one we must honour,’ answered Flip. ‘Follow me. Quickly.’
Stuffing food and blankets into loose sacks, they sprinted to the centre of the garden. Every footstep shot through Kay’s heart like a knife. Phantastes tackled Razzio along the way, and dragged him to the dais. Within a minute they were all standing on the platform, heaving for breath beside Ontos, shouldering their bags, twitching, nervous – and yet somehow lingering there to watch the slow agony of dawn break like a blue wave over the House of the Two Modes.
‘I’m staying another minute,’ said Will.
‘And I.’ Phantastes.
And I. Kay took their hands.
Flip’s chest heaved as if he were about to argue. But he didn’t.
‘Fine.’ He took Ell by the shoulders and began to guide her down the stairs. ‘But I’m taking this one below. Don’t be long. The south tunnel. You know the route. Stay low, and for the love of the muses, run.’
A few seconds later, the explosion
s began. This time there was no screaming; even at this distance they could feel the resoluteness, the calm, the steady purpose of nearly two hundred wraiths sailing for the last time off the board. The balloons were still so close to one another that the fire, kindled in several places, seemed to leap from envelope to envelope, and the whole fleet suddenly erupted into a single giant fireball – a huge orange flame of a star blazing across the morning sky.
‘By the air, through the air,’ whispered Will. He squeezed Kay’s hand so hard she thought it might break.
Leap, heart. For the love of the muses.
And they ran.
‘I gave you strict instructions to wake me.’
Ghast glared up at the tall wraith who stood before him. He had woken to the hard rattle of wooden shutters clacking against their frames, wresting wildly against their hinges. Fumbling into consciousness, he had groped with his eyelids for the light of morning, trying to force them open against the wrong dark. It should have been dawn. Light ought to have been streaming into the old stone room from a thousand cracks and slits. But there was nothing – only a storm of wind and occasional waves of what sounded like pelting rain that swept against the outside walls. He had slowly recognized the truth: that it was still night, that it was darkest night, a raging, merciless night. He had bellowed, not in agony but in command, and the door to the chamber had at last swung open. This fawning servant had come to his bedside, handing him a little lamp, then waiting.
‘Will you eat?’ the wraith had asked.
A heaviness in his arms, in his head, had perplexed him as he swung his body round to sit on the edge of the bed. He had known then that the lethargy in his limbs, the wrongness of the dark, the meekness of the servant had meaning. He had felt the bedclothes against his skin: wet, matted, sour.
‘I gave you strict instructions to wake me.’
‘We tried to wake you,’ said the wraith. ‘You were not yourself.’
Ghast dared not frown. He knew then that he was still not himself, and snatches of what had seemed like an awful nightmare stirred from his memory like monsters surging from a deep ocean. He looked down at a hand that was rising where it seemed he had raised it. It was trembling. He placed it on the lamp, which was hot to the touch. He left it there, burning.
Twelve Nights Page 26