by Robin Jarvis
Inside that tunnel, the single shot that followed thundered like a cannon blast.
Evelyn’s eyelids fluttered as the pain registered. Uttering a small cry, she let the rifle fall and slid to the ground. A large bloodstain was already soaking through the gold silk of her bodice.
The mould flowed thickly over Maggie’s features and Austerly Fellows chuckled softly. There was a smoking hole in the girl’s shepherd robes. He removed Eun-mi’s pistol from the pocket.
“Neither you nor my erstwhile Jack of Clubs saw me lift this from the grass,” he chided Evelyn as she lay dying. “Most remiss of you both. Do you think it would be wittier to shoot him and the Chung girl with it, or with the rifle?”
“Go back to Hell,” Evelyn whispered, her eyes dimming as they stared up at him.
“Look around you!” he answered, laughing. “We’re already here. Every creature and comfort of home and, any moment now, your angry young friend Lee is going to kill the Bad Shepherd for me in Mooncaster – if your other friend, Martin, doesn’t drive a dagger into his sleeping body here first. I’d prefer Lee to succeed, ideally, but either way I win. They’re both damned.”
Evelyn shook her head feebly. “They… they’re better than that,” she said, her voice growing weaker.
“Given the right inducement, humans are capable of the most depraved, corrupt and cruel acts. You’re just beasts, chasing a mythical respectability you don’t really want, not deep down. You think you’re civilised, but every one of you cries out to be tempted back to your default factory settings. I rather think Dancing Jax proved that conclusively.”
“It didn’t work on Lee or Martin – or Maggie.”
“Defectives, that’s all you were. I knew there’d be some and incorporated you into my design.”
Evelyn was fighting to keep conscious. “No,” she said. “They’re marvellous. Your dirt can’t touch them, your shadow… won’t darken them. Oh, yes, we’re… we’re weak, but we can also shine with such goodness it would dazzle you. Lee and Martin – they’ll blind you yet, Austerly Fellows. That’s… that’s my faith – I believe in them – in their goodness.”
Her breaths were quick and shallow. Her time was almost over.
“You’re an imbecile,” Austerly said caustically. “Now excuse me, I must run and tell those two out there about your most tragic accident, just before I kill them. No, I think I’ll just kill the boy. Miss Chung’s suffering is too delicious to extinguish quite so soon.”
The mould receded from the face and Maggie’s flesh was clear once more. The girl turned to leave the tunnel.
“There was… was one more,” Evelyn said.
“One more what?”
“Reason why I knew… knew you weren’t my Maggie. You see… almost the first thing M… Maggie would have asked… the fir… the first thing she’d have said…”
The girl returned and lifted the pistol a second time.
“Trouble with you third-rate music-hall types,” Austerly Fellows complained, “you never know when to leave the stage.”
A faint, victorious laugh left Evelyn’s lips.
“Maggie would have asked… would have asked… where Spencer was…”
And her head fell forward.
Instead of firing, the girl pulled the gun up sharply. What did that mean? The dark eyes glared down, but it was too late. Evelyn and Gerald were dead and the wig had slipped forward. Yet there was a mysterious smile on that old face. Then, as the splinter of Austerly Fellows searched Maggie’s memory, something rolled out of Evelyn’s hand.
It was a grenade.
Austerly tried to escape, but, an instant later, the explosion brought the tunnel crashing down and that section of the castle wall caved in.
27
BY THE TIME Martin reached the top of the spiral stairs within the South Tower, he was totally out of breath. Resting against the curved wall, he put his head on the cold stone and wheezed down deep gulps of air.
A torch burned above him and the golden dagger in his hand gleamed in its flaring light. Martin kept repeating to himself he had to do this. For the sake of humanity, he couldn’t shrink from this grisly responsibility. Lee had to die. The violent Peckham yob couldn’t be allowed to kill the Bad Shepherd.
“Come on,” the ex-teacher told himself. “Everything depends on this. You can do it. Just go out there and… It’ll be quick. He won’t even feel anything.”
He tried to picture in his mind a character from his favourite movies, someone he could draw strength from. But it didn’t help; his mind was a blank. There was no room for fantasy now. This one unbearably real moment was all that mattered.
Stepping out on to the roof of the tower, he wished desperately for it to be over. Then he saw the hospital bed, the medical equipment nearby – and Lee.
Overhead the cranes were bristling with electricity and lightning forked across the castle.
Martin approached the bed with leaden steps. His heart quailed. The dagger seemed to grow heavier in his hand as his sense of dread and horror mounted. And then he was looking down at Lee.
The boy appeared to be fast asleep – or dead. There wasn’t even any movement beneath the eyelids. His face had lost the hard belligerence it displayed during his waking hours. Right now he looked like any other sixteen-year-old, someone with a whole life ahead of him. A life that Martin had to take.
Gazing down at that vulnerable face, Martin’s resolve faltered. Could he seriously do this?
Around the castle the arc lights were exploding. At that moment the Christmas tree burst into flames. Martin raised his eyes. Across the battlements he saw it burning and wondered what it portended. Then he witnessed the harrowing sight of Lucifer rising through the fire, to scale the Keep. Martin watched the Harlequin Priests combust and the shining figure ascend the throne in a rippling heat haze. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen or imagined. He felt his spirit shrivel inside him. Nothing in any of his large collection of fantasy movies could ever have prepared him for this. The dagger almost fell from his fingers. He wanted to turn and run, to hide or hurl himself from the tower – anything to escape the tide of horror beating from that shimmering shape upon the throne. It was all he could do to remain standing, and he prayed that those pitiless, blazing eyes did not turn his way.
But the new lord of the earth was staring out, beyond the castle walls, at the world that was now his. Where his perilous gaze rested and he raised his left hand, pillars of flame leaped from the ground and soon the surrounding countryside was fenced with towering fires.
Martin heard the screams and dismal howling of the vast audience and, somehow, he gathered up the fragments of his courage to accomplish what he had come here to do. Those sounds of suffering swept aside any doubts, any anxieties. His fear and hesitation had already wasted too much time and probably cost countless lives.
But, when he raised the dagger over Lee’s chest, his hands were still shaking, still sweating. “One forceful downward strike will be enough,” he told himself. Two at the most. Martin tensed his shoulders and squeezed his eyes shut. Although he had to do it, he didn’t have to look.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
“Martin!” a voice shouted suddenly. “Martin Baxter! Stay your hand!”
Martin stopped himself just in time and caught his breath. Opening his eyes, he turned stiffly and saw the Jockey skip out on to the roof behind him.
“Get away!” Martin yelled furiously. “Whatever trick you’re playing, just go. Don’t come any closer or I’ll stick this in you as well.”
“No trick, no game,” the Jockey promised, holding up his hands. “Not against you, not this time.”
“You’d say that anyway. Stand still! I mean it. I’ll use this if you take another step. Why aren’t you off reading Fighting Pax? Or have you finished it already?”
The Jockey gazed beyond Martin, towards the glorious spectacle of the Dawn Prince. He ached to go and worship Him. But first of all…
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“One last naughtiness, Martin,” he explained. “The Jockey must ride everyone of the Court, including the Ismus. That is why I am here, that is why I sent Nosy Posy to the Great Hall alone. I must play one final trick on the Holy Enchanter before I leave this dreary place for good.”
Martin didn’t understand.
“’Tis the way I am,” the Jockey said simply. “’Tis the part I must play. I can be no otherwise. I am tasked to hinder and needle, thwart, upset and confound and now, at the very brink of the Ismus’s triumph, I am compelled to meddle.”
“Do it somewhere else!”
“The Ismus wishes the Castle Creeper’s dreaming self to die here, and I must foil him if I may. But there is another reason, one that paws at me and that I strive to comprehend. Earlier this day, when I led you from the dungeons… those young aberrants, how they cheered. I had never heard such acclaim, save at the joust when a champion’s praise is loud yet brief. Those children, Martin. They adored you, you were their king, their idol.”
“Shut up.”
“I confess I felt naught but envy. To be held in such esteem. ’Twas a thing new and excellent to me. Answer me truthfully: would those aberrants hold you in such high regard if they could see you now?”
“Don’t you try that one on me!” Martin snapped. “There’s no other choice! I’m doing it for the sake of everyone!”
The Jockey chortled. “Haw haw haw – is that so?”
“What do you mean? Of course it is! If Lee kills the Bad Shepherd then—”
“‘If’?” the Jockey flung the word back at him. “Tell me, Martin, are you really going to murder the Creeper on the strength of such a meagre word as ‘if’? Is there any doubt he will do what you fear so much?”
Martin struggled to answer. “Gerald thought he wouldn’t do it,” he said grudgingly.
“Ah, and you reckon his opinion so low? His judgement was not to be trusted?”
“No – just the opposite.”
“Then what was his doubt founded upon?”
Martin frowned in annoyance. It sounded so stupid.
“Gerald believed in Lee,” he muttered. “Because… a girl loved him. A dead girl called Charm. The one everyone cared so much for. Gerald said Lee couldn’t be the scum I think he is because he’d won her love.”
“Is love then so blind?”
“I… I don’t know. It might be. She didn’t sound very bright.”
“So love is a measure of intellect?”
“No, but…”
“Art thou loved, Martin?”
Martin glanced over at the West Tower, where Carol and Paul were crouched down, protecting the baby from the intensity of Lucifer’s infernal light. His pulse quickened and he wanted to charge across to them.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am.”
“And do you return that love?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
“With thy brain or with thine heart?”
“With everything. Absolutely everything – and more if I had it.”
“Then answer me this, Martin,” the Jockey asked curiously. “Why are you here, atop this tower? This is not the place for you, at this ultimate moment when your grey world is ending. Why is there a dagger in your hand? Why are you so impatient to plunge it into a defenceless boy’s heart? Why are you not with your beloved? What keeps you from her – from them?”
Martin stared at him, guilty and ashamed. “The Ismus told me they’d be spared, and I could go to them if…”
“If you did this foul murder. Such a price, Martin, such a scarlet price. And would they still love you after that?”
“I… I don’t know. Stop messing with my head! You’re trying to confuse me, stopping me from what I should do.”
“I am merely trying to make you see clearly.”
“You? You’ve already fooled me twice. Last year, at school, when you pretended the book hadn’t worked on you, then this week in North Korea. You don’t get to do it a third time!”
“Did my easy teasings bruise your pride so much?” the Jockey asked. “If so then set that aside. It matters not that you believe me. Accept the words of the Ismus if you would rather, but ask yourself, which of us, he or I, placed that blade in your hand?”
Martin looked at the golden dagger and the fear and panic that clouded his reason drew aside. Finally his mind was crystal clear. Stripped of the horror and desperation, this was a simple choice between right and wrong. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a violent sense of repulsion and he threw the weapon down. He was appalled by what he had almost done. Disgusted with himself, he held his head in his hands.
“I can’t murder Lee!” he uttered. “I just can’t. But what can I do? What about the people out there? What if Lee does kill the Bad Shepherd? What hope is there then?”
“I say to you, have faith in your friend’s doubt and pay no heed to that mischievous ‘if’.”
“Entrust the lives of billions to the love of a dead girl I never even met? That’s not faith, it’s madness.”
“Is it wisdom then to entrust the fate of your family to the mendacity of the Ismus?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Know this, Martin Baxter: the Holy Enchanter has no intention of keeping his promise to you. There will be no reunion. In this wretched existence there can never be a happy ever after, especially for you and Carol. The Jockey uncloaks all perfidy and lays it bare. All this long night, the Ismus has played the world false. The votes shown during the entertainment were a deception. It was rigged. Mauger won every instance, but my Lord Ismus was determined to deny him and hold him back, till the very end.”
“But the broadcast is over.”
“The entertainment is not. The Ismus is going to release Mauger and send him to the West Tower – to slay and devour your family, for his own amusement.”
“What?” Martin cried, bolting to the top of the stairs. “Why didn’t you tell me that straight away?”
“Ho ho ho. As I have said, ’tis my nature. Do not forget your dagger, Martin Baxter. You have better cause to use it now.”
Martin rushed back for it. He glanced quickly at Lee’s unconscious form and his guts clenched when he thought how close he had come to killing him.
“Thank you… Barry,” he told the Jockey. “You saved me from making a horrible mistake.”
“Haw haw haw, there is no Barry,” the Jockey replied.
“Yeah, right,” Martin shouted as he dashed down the stairs.
Alone with Lee, the Jockey chuckled to himself. He had made his last mischief here. Now it was time to enter the pages of Fighting Pax and commence the uninterrupted life in Mooncaster. Bowing to the Keep, he offered up praise to the fiery radiance of the Dawn Prince and reflected that, from now on, he would have to be extra cautious with his japes and tricks. It would not do to incur His wrath.
Singing softly, he began skipping down the stairs, passing empty chambers that, in the true Realm, belonged to the House of Clubs. Here, in this unfinished reconstruction, the rooms and apartments were bare and darkness filled the doorless doorways.
Suddenly a figure sprang from those shadows. With a demented yell, a wild-eyed Kate Kryzewski leaped on his back and looped a camera cable round his neck. Dropping down, she pulled it tight. Arching backwards, the Jockey choked and clawed at his throat.
“That’s for your ‘sport’!” she screamed, tying a knot in the cable. “Die gasping and in terror, the same as you left me.”
With that, she shoved him away from her. Black in the face, the Jockey went crashing down the spiral stairs and was dead before he hit the bottom.
“I, Columbine,” the woman boasted, “a lowly Two of Hearts, have rid the Court of your cruel trickery and care not what their Lordships do to me!”
Throwing back her head, she laughed madly She was dressed in only her costume rags. The tambourine was at her hip. Hearing the metal discs rattle, she clutched it and the deranged laughter gave way to groggy confusion.
Her eyes wandered, misting over and swimming in and out of focus. Then, abruptly, she stumbled back and screamed.
“What have I done?” Kate shrieked, as the memory of who she really was purged her mind of the Columbine delusion. “Oh, sweet God, what have I just done? No! No!”
Sick with fear and shock, she stared, aghast, down the spiral stairway and shook her head, refusing to accept it. Breathing hard, she descended, apprehensive and dreading what she might discover. With every step, she kept telling herself it couldn’t possibly be true, it had to be part of the sick Mooncaster hallucination, she wasn’t capable of such a brutal and abhorrent act. And then, when she reached the bottom, she saw the monstrous reality of what she had done.
The reporter stumbled away, running blindly back up the stairs. Overcome with remorse and despair, she rushed out on to the roof. Out there the sight of that shining being, high on the Keep, unleashed a scream from her lips that would not stop. Then those pitiless eyes turned to gaze at her and her mind collapsed.
Impelled by terror, Kate flung herself forward. She blundered against the hospital bed and knocked over Lee’s saline drip, pulling the tube from his arm. Then she staggered to the edge of the tower and, without hesitation, threw herself off.
Martin didn’t see her fall. He was already racing across plank bridges suspended between the concentric walls, cutting the corners to reach the West Tower as fast as he could.
From the front of the castle, he heard a bestial roar and recognised the voice of Mauger. He wondered if the demon was loose yet, if it too was speeding towards the West Tower.
On the gatehouse roof, the Ismus had watched the Jockey’s intervention on the monitor and he cursed under his breath. It had been too much to expect that character to behave himself the whole night long. Still, it had been enjoyable to observe how close Martin had come to using the dagger on the Castle Creeper.
But now the final, and most gratifying, round of Flee the Beast was due to commence. The Ismus turned to the Black Face Dames, still grovelling on the floor, and ordered them to release Mauger.