Devastation Page 14

  “Never being at home, even for birthdays, always poggling about in some Greek temple, or Chinese pagoda or Welsh chapel or Bhutanese monastery!” Carla hid her face in her hands and sobbed, but with relief as much as shame. In a few seconds she was over it. She held her head high as she felt determination surging through her, taking the place of distress. “Tonight, I just need to skim over Bhutan, locate that monastery in the forest with all the monkeys and butterflies, catch her dreaming, and… Everything will be hunky-dunky!”

  “Hunky-dory.”

  “Oh, go and get yourself buggered!” Carla shouted, laughing, and threw her arms around Tully’s neck.

  “Here, listen to this.” Tully reached down the flute Jim had given him from a saddlebag. “It’s the tune I heard last night.”

  Carla rested her chin in her hands and listened, every fiber concentrated on Tully and his music. The tune was soft, lilting and melancholy, hanging on the high notes, then dropping back down into a tragic low register, and it brought tears to her eyes. When it was finished, she shook her head sadly.

  “It sounds like a peasant song, but not one I know. It sounds Eastern to me, Arab or maybe Hebrew.”

  Tully sighed. “It came from out there, where we were last night. It came from somebody’s dream.”

  “Ahem,” Jack coughed dramatically. “Sorry to interrupt the recital, maestro, but we lesser mortals can’t live on our art alone. Some of us need breakfast if we’re to face Tancred’s herd of ferocious Jerseys. I told him, you take on Daisy and Buttercup, and I’ll see off the rest of the girls with Yvain’s walking stick—”

  “Master traveler”—Yvain for once was not smiling—“this is no joking matter.”

  “Who’s joking? Have you had a look at those cows? Nothing intimidates them. They just stand there, staring and chewing, like Al Capone’s mob.”

  “Who?”

  “And those violin cases don’t fool me.”

  “Wha’?”

  “Jeff, don’t pay any attention to him!” Yvain was white with anger. “Master traveler, I am here to lead you, because you are strangers here. Tancred is here to show us the way to your destination, because you could never find it alone, and even I would not know the best route. You must learn to listen to those who know what you do not, and learn from them.”

  “I’ll listen to common sense. I’ll not listen to that big girl’s blouse!”

  Carla almost laughed aloud at the strange expression, but the issue was too serious.

  “I think Yvain’s right,” she said, laying a hand on Jack’s arm. “If Tancred thinks there might be a danger lurking in that hamlet, we ought to listen.”

  “Yeah,” Tully added. “Just stop butting in, Dad. Tancred knows what he’s doing. It’s his world, after all.”

  Jack gave Tully a look that wrenched Carla’s heart. “And you’re turning into a right little gobshite too,” he said quietly and turned away. Tully blushed and opened his mouth to answer back. Carla glared at him, and he let it go. Jack threw his saddlebags onto the black gelding and hoisted himself after them. “Well? Anybody else coming on this rodeo, or do I do it on me own?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Barrier Is Breached

  Rorik was dead. The arrow had entered too close to the heart and the healers had not been able to save him. The barrier had drawn in to protect the city center, leaving the outer suburbs to the darkness. Alinor’s guards had an almost permanent job moving families, cramming them into even less room, as the safe zone grew smaller and smaller. The healers passed from villa to villa to comfort the terrorized people and cast out the demons that some of them had brought inside the barrier with them. Guards accompanied them for protection as they made their visits. Too many healers had been attacked by those they tried to help.

  The orderly green lanes of Lutecia were blocked now with refugees and their hastily gathered possessions, including livestock and pets. Apart from the anxious cries of animals, the extra population was surprisingly silent. An oppressive atmosphere of distrust and fear filled the lanes. Alinor watched in anguish the sidelong, suspicious glances her fellow Gauls thrown at one another, as neighbor spied on neighbor for the telltale signs of possession. It was no secret that that was how Wormwood infiltrated the city—not by physical force, but through the minds of the inhabitants. The most susceptible were the unstable minds, those who had witnessed the advance of the armies from the dead lands and the eaters of souls, and those who would stop that advance…at any price.

  Alinor called an emergency assembly of those not actively engaged in maintaining the barrier or tending to the sick. She called it in the cellars of the Assembly, rooms bound about with the strongest symbols from the most ancient magic. Dreamcatchers watched over the cellars to intercept any psychic signals, and fifty gazehounds blessed with the gift of sensing evil, each with its personal guard, patrolled the perimeter of the building.

  It was a depleted assembly that she addressed. Many seats were empty. Many faces were absent—and not only because they were called to other duties. But she stood tall and straight, her hands held calmly before her, her voice as strong as ever.

  “My friends, the menace predicted by the sages is upon us. Wormwood, the outcast of Paradisio, has broken his bonds and seeks revenge for his captivity. His ultimate goal, as you know, is Paradisio, which he intends to rule. The worlds between mean nothing to him, except as pasture for the eaters of souls. The sages tell us that the darkness that accompanies him, the formless, mindless beings of mist and smoke and black slime, take their power from the souls they consume. The dead shells rise up from the dead lands and follow in the wake of the eaters of souls, drawn to a place where Wormwood’s lies whisper they will find peace. He does not yet control the eaters of souls. They graze where they will. But the day the four scourges are reunited, the day Wormwood finds Eblis-Azazel… That is the day we are lost. That will be the day of the Apocalypse, when Wormwood, the Light-Bringer, will command his diabolical host to drain the oceans, grind the mountains into dust and pull down the stars from the sky. Even Paradisio will not prevail.”

  A tall, thin man, slightly unkempt in a scholarly sort of way, rose to his feet. “With respect, friend Alinor,” he said with a slight bow of the head, “these things are all known to us. The question is not who is pouring into our world and suffocating it, but how do we fight it?”

  “Some of the sages say Wormwood will spare all the worlds except Paradisio, once he has Eblis,” a short, plump woman suggested in a hesitant voice. “He was a star, after all, and some of their wisdom and compassion must still cling to him. Perhaps if we were to hand Eblis over…”

  “No!” Only the whitening of her knuckles betrayed Alinor’s anger, and a slight tensing of the voice, an inflexibility that had not been there before. “Wormwood is a demon now, a fallen star with nothing in his heart but revenge. How can you even think of trusting anything he says? How can you even consider listening to his demands?”

  The scholarly-looking man had remained on his feet. He held out his hands now in a gesture of supplication. “Then what should we do? We have no arms to combat this evil. All we can do is hold a wavering line that retreats a little every hour as our modelers tire.”

  Alinor cast her eyes about the room, at the upturned faces filled with a silent plea to be reassured, to hear from her lips the plan they desperately hoped would avert disaster. She longed to be able to give them what they sought, but it was impossible. She stood a little straighter and strengthened her voice.

  “Friends, I called you here today to ask for your trust. There is a way in which Wormwood can be defeated, but you cannot be told what it is.”

  There followed a murmur of astonishment that gradually rose to anger. Alinor didn’t flinch as the shouting began, simply raised a hand for silence. The shouting faded and died away as curiosity got the better of the assembly.

  “The survivors of the dying world that we dream-caught and brought here are the seven stars. The
y will be our saviors—ours and all the worlds’. How they will do it, I am not at liberty to explain.”

  Cries of “Why not?” broke out.

  “Because to reveal their plan would be to put its execution in jeopardy. It must remain secret, for the very good reason that no one is immune from the wiles of the fallen star.” Alinor let her gaze wander around the room, and every person in it felt directly targeted by the insinuation of possible betrayal. The slightest acceptance of Wormwood’s whisperings opened a breach that he could exploit. “All I ask of you is to trust me, that this is the only possible plan. We cannot defeat Wormwood by force, but there is a chance that we can do so by…other means.”

  A brief silence greeted Alinor’s speech as the assembly members considered her words, before the first mutterings of disagreement were heard. Then all dissent was drowned in the clamor raised by the gazehound patrols. A guard, his padded jacket soaked in blood, burst into the cellar.

  “Mistress Alinor, the eaters of souls are inside the city! A mob attacked the modelers. The barrier is broken!”

  Alinor gathered Carloman, Adelle, the sages Jehane and Amaury, and hurried up from the cellar, took the stairs to the roof at a run and stared out in horror over the city. Down below, the gazehounds barked in a frenzy, straining at their leashes as the darkness billowed and flowed toward the park. She watched helplessly as a crowd of men, women and children fled before it, screaming in terror. She hid her face when the eaters of souls—the formless, pitiless, creatures that the fallen star had dragged in his wake—engulfed them, and the screaming changed in tone as fear was drowned in a red wave of agony.

  The shrieking stopped, and the darkness flowed back upon itself.

  Amaury clenched his jaw and cursed, bringing his fist down hard on the window ledge. Alinor looked at him with fondness. Amaury was her favorite among the young sages. Quick to anger and to laugh, he was a man of high principle, but he bore his integrity lightly. People liked Amaury. They would follow him. Alinor laid a hand that trembled only slightly on his arm.

  “Find out how far the darkness has spread. Get the modelers to form a second barrier around the breach.” She sighed. “It is a huge undertaking—they are already exhausted, and you will have to wake those who are already resting, but it must be done. Take some of the hounds with you. The mob…”

  Amaury nodded silently. He still looked out across the park where the darkness had caught up with the unfortunates. The ground swirled with black mist, heaving and boiling like a beast in convulsions. Shapes rose awkwardly from the mist that still clung greasily around their ankles and shambled off, following the trail of desolation left by the soul eaters. Human shapes, broken and twisted, limbs askew and torn, dangling, useless, shambled after the eaters of souls, wearing black fog-like garments.

  “Husks,” Amaury whispered, “shells, following their death even beyond their death, forever.” He shivered and, without another word, went to do his duty.

  Alinor sent a silent message to Yvain. The end was approaching, fast.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dead, Not Dead

  “Well? Are we going to find out what’s lurking in the cowshed, or not?”

  Jack’s eyes were hard. There was no laughter in them. Carla followed Jack’s gaze and noticed the way Kat glanced at Tancred from beneath her lashes, and how Tancred replied with an almost imperceptible flicker of a smile.

  “Your dad certainly got out of bed on the wrong foot this morning,” she said.

  “Side.” Tully frowned. “It’s not like him.” He shook his head. “Not like him at all.”

  Carla shrugged. “It’s getting to all of us. Look at Jeff. He was crying again this morning. Thinking about his family, I guess. And Kat! She’s convinced herself she’s just a dead weight on this trip, that she has nothing to contribute. Jim takes it bad every time he makes a mistake, or Yvain asks him to do things he’s frightened that are beyond him. I know I must look like a real misery most of the time. Even the hound spends most of her time hiding in the bushes. In fact,” Carla looked pointedly at Tully, “you’re the only one of us who isn’t down in the pits.”

  “Dumps,” Tully corrected and smiled weakly. “Is that a complaint? Would you rather I went around giving out at everybody like Dad? Or I went and gave Tancred a poke in the gob?”

  “I’d like you to sing me a song.” Carla beamed, feeling some of her old carefree happiness, rippling through the sticky glue of anxiety.

  Tully snorted. “How about if I gave you a poke in the gob?” But his eyes too were shining, and she knew that he shared her newfound confidence.

  Jack forced the black gelding to a trot, despite the animal’s obvious reluctance to go anywhere near the field where the cows were lowing plaintively.

  “What are these muck savages thinking of,” Jack snapped as they got close to the herd. “Look at the udders on the poor creatures! They can’t have been milked at all yesterday.”

  Kat winced in sympathy. “Poor things! Maybe the farmers went over west as Alinor advised, but they left the cows to fend for themselves.”

  “Just a bunch of muck savages if they did,” Jack muttered under his breath.

  Kat’s white mare was the first to slow to a halt, stamping her hooves. Kat flicked the reins but the mare shook her head and refused to budge. Kat slithered to the ground as the others drew level. The other horses shied and refused to go any farther either, so they all dismounted, leaving Jeff to hold the packhorses and watch that the others didn’t stray.

  “Is he going to be all right on his own?” Kat wanted to know.

  “He’s got the blessed hound with him, hasn’t he?” Jack replied with something like his former good humor. “She’ll nip ’em in the ankles if they try any funny business.”

  “I don’t think she was worried about the horses,” Carla said, looking around apprehensively.

  “What else is there to be worried about? That he’ll be attacked by a bunch of mad dandelions?”

  Kat looked across the deserted meadow and the quiet woods behind. She sighed.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “If there is danger, it will be in the farmstead.” Yvain gripped his staff and led the way. “Jack, please pay attention, and be on the lookout for any movement inside.”

  “If I’m not too busy watching where I put me feet,” he replied with a quick grin.

  Carla walked carefully, bent low, a long knife in her right hand. Tully walked beside her, a knife held in his left hand. Tancred and Eirian, both armed with short hunting bows, moved out to the side, keeping the outhouses covered. Yvain made for the farmhouse door and motioned to Jack to take up position on the other side. Jack held a staff in both hands like a baseball bat, ready to pound the daylights out of anything untoward. Yvain waved his hand at him to move farther away. To get out of range of his stick, Carla suspected. Tully’s dad was enthusiastic, but he couldn’t hit a cow with a banjo. Jim asked Kat and Eirian to stay well behind him, as he moved his arms in broad, graceful gestures, practicing making ropes and nets of air.

  The morning light was gray and misty, casting uncertain shadows in every doorway and unshuttered window. The outhouses were dark and abandoned-looking, though the yards were clear of fallen debris, and no weeds crept across the hard-packed earth. No chickens scratched in the dirt, no skinny cat stalked mice around the barns, yet the silence was full, expectant—the silence of withheld breath.

  Tully watched Yvain crouch by the farmhouse door, then kick at it, a surprisingly hefty kick for a man of his age. The door swung open with a crash that echoed in the ensuing silence. The shutters had all been closed, as if the inhabitants had left, leaving the interior plunged in darkness. As the light entered, something spilled out that made Yvain cover his nose and mouth with his hand. Jack pulled a terrible face and signaled to the others to keep back before stepping warily through the open door behind Yvain.

  Tully peered in from the doorway, Carla looking over his shoulder and Jim right
behind. The stench of decomposition hit him, overpowering and sickening, swelling out into the brisk morning air and corrupting its purity. Before his eyes could adjust to the gloom, he was pushed out of the way as Jack stormed back outside to retch by the wall. Carla handed him a Kleenex, a relic from another age, and Jack nodded his thanks, his face still green. Yvain reappeared, his face furrowed with sorrow and anxiety.

  “What happened?” Tully asked, his nose wrinkled against the smell.

  “Murder, that’s what happened,” Jack said, snapping out the words. “A bloody massacre!” He reached out to grab Tully as he made a move to go inside. “You never saw the butcher’s back yard when Uncle Dinny took in the last of his pigs, did you?” Tully shook his head. “Gave me nightmares for months. That… What’s in there will give me insomnia for years.”

  Tully watched him walk slowly away from the farmhouse and back toward Kat and Eirian. He had only gone a few paces when a scream rang out. Tully swung around and saw a ragged figure leap from one of the outbuildings armed with a pitchfork. Jim hurled one of his air ropes and caught the attacker around the ankles. The pitchfork planted itself in the ground, and Tully threw himself onto the back of the prostrate figure.

  “Look out, you great brute,” Jack shouted. “You’ll squash her! Can’t you see she’s just a child?”

  Tully suddenly became aware of his quarry, the thin, fragile-looking neck, the bony shoulders sticking through the torn and dirty garments. The girl had blood on her face and her hair was wild and full of hay stalks. She panted heavily, as if the short run from the outbuilding had sapped all her strength. Jim picked up the pitchfork to keep it out of harm’s way and Tully, feeling his face grow hot and red with embarrassment, scrambled to his feet. Relieved of Tully’s dead weight, the girl half crawled, half scuttled, crab-like, in the direction of the barn.

  “Whoa, there!” Jack grabbed her arm, and gently, but firmly, hoisted her to her feet. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Why not tell us what happened here over a bit of breakfast?”