Devastation

by Jane Dougherty

  The long, dark days had been too silent, but Erelah persisted in saying there was hope. There were others, she said, in another world. She said she heard their voices. It was just a question of finding out how to reach them. Still… Rajeev and his younger brother Sanjay looked about with wild, empty eyes. It was so easy to believe that nothing was left. There was no movement, no sound besides the moaning of the wind and the strange grinding that Erelah said was the rocks, the bones of the earth.

  When they curled up together, exhausted by hunger and fear, Erelah whispered stories that she said weren’t stories. She said she saw crystal towers glinting in the sun, heard the birdsong and music from a hundred different musical instruments. There was grass, there were trees and flowers, warmth and food. And there was no fear. Her eyes glittered feverishly. Her voice was warm and fervent. She believed in this place beyond the stars. Rajeev tried to believe too, but the grinding stones and the chittering of the souleaters filled his head, leaving no room for hope.

  Chapter Four

  On the Road to Lutecia

  They stepped out of the hole, which Yvain reassured them was not a wormhole but a simple, quite anodyne tunnel in space, on top of Bre Iarth, one of the several green hills that dominated the city. They could have traveled all the way to Lutecia, but Yvain had wanted them to see the city in its context and in its entirety. The walk down from Bre Iarth, Yvain had said, would give them time to get over their surprise at what they saw and hopefully to believe it. As far as Tully was concerned, there was nothing he wanted more than to believe that Lutecia was real.

  In many ways the scene was comfortingly familiar, an image from an old picture book, an idyllic representation of the earth as it had existed in folk memories. Along the horizon behind them, a chain of hills billowed, covered in unbroken forest, where not a road, not a single luxury villa, entertainment complex or commercial center scarred the wilderness. Bre Iarth was on the rim of a dappled landscape of rolling green hills, fields checkering their flanks, wooded valleys and hilltops and sinuous ribbons of brooks. The low hills tumbled into a valley bottom, carved by the lazy meanderings of a broad river, and in a crook of a river bend lay Lutecia, a neat, well-established city set out in a rough grid system of habitation interspersed with magnificent public buildings. Several graceful stone bridges spanned the river that ran through the middle of the city, and smaller constructions of elaborate workmanship linked the two inhabited islands with one another and with either bank. Boats, barges and sailboats plied up and down the river or discharged cargo, tied up along the busy quays, and everywhere, even from their vantage point a few miles distant, the spellbound visitors could feel the hum of activity.

  But what took their breath away, at least those who had known the old Paris, was the city’s familiarity. The Louvre was there, and the Tuileries gardens. The Pompidou Centre was where it should have been and so were the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. But they were not the same, as if the cold stone and steel had been given a soul and a beating heart.

  “The Pompidou Centre… It’s amazing,” Jim shouted. “What a brilliant idea to chuck those great rusty metal tubes and hang plants all over it, and the roof garden, like a park, with sculptures and mosaics.”

  “The spire over there,” Carla pointed, “with the little spires around it, all connected by tiny bridges, that was the Eiffel Tower, wasn’t it?”

  “Look at the houses,” Kat whispered. “All built around gardens or courtyards, the roofs planted with turf and flowers. Some of them even have sheep grazing on them!”

  “I can hear music,” Tully said quietly. “The city’s humming with music.”

  Jack scratched his ear. “I used to love Paris,” he said. “Couldn’t stand to live there—far too noisy and dirty, though you had to admit it was beautiful. But this? This is brilliant! Who’d ever have believed you could have a capital city without roads and cars?”

  “Lutecia is how Paris would have been, if we’d not been what we are.”

  They all looked at Jeff, who blushed in confusion.

  “Jesus, but that was profound,” Jack said. “What’s it mean?”

  Jeff looked at his feet, then explained, his cheeks still pink with embarrassment, “When we decided to base our society on wars, defense, exploitation and superstition, our cities grew with high walls, great churches and palaces. But we also tolerated the filthy hovels that spread like fungus, roads that ran first with sewage then with traffic, the infernal stink and the din. We let them spread unchecked until the only open land was farmland, bleak and sterile. We killed the wilderness, and the magic of the earth died with it. Lutecia is a city where people have always lived without fear of attack, where they have gone to school, cultivated their gardens, built their galleries and museums and theatres, written books and plays, in a harmonious movement in tune with the earth and all living things. Lutecia grew like this, out of the earth, and it is still one with the earth, not fighting against it.”

  “That was quite a speech for a little boy who was brought up by mindless thugs in a crummy supermarket,” Kat said in astonishment.

  Yvain’s good-humored grin broadened. “As I said before, traveling changes people. The dreamcatchers did a good job. This child will make a sage before he even becomes a man. You all have great qualities. Time will tell what they are, but I am confident the dreamcatchers made a wise choice.”

  Tully grinned proudly at Carla and she replied with one of her radiant smiles. He was at a loss to know why, but Yvain’s praise was worth more than any diploma or earthly recognition he could think of.

  “Come along.” Yvain strode down the hillside at an energetic pace. “It is barely five miles to the city from here. We will be there in time for lunch.”

  Tully took Carla’s hand and followed, his eyes fixed on the glittering river and the city that nestled along its banks. Only Jeff hung back and looked about with a worried frown. The drac was nowhere to be seen.

  “Did anybody see Dusty?” Jeff called after them anxiously.

  “It’s a wild animal, Jeff. It’s probably gone off to look for its own kind.” Kat sounded hopeful.

  Jeff frowned. “Dusty,” he called. “Dusty!”

  Jack had two fingers up to his lips about to whistle, when the hedge beside them shook and the great puppy leapt through with a frightened yelp. Jeff put his arms around the trembling animal that blotted herself against him, her head turned back the way she had come, her eyes rolling in fear. Yvain peered back into the beech wood, his hand placed in a visor over his eyes. Tully looked too and, though he saw nothing, he felt the hairs rise at the back of his neck.

  “Quick,” Jeff said in a commanding tone. “We should go.”

  “What is it?” Tully peered into the green shadows, drawn by a macabre fascination to see what was making his skin crawl. Jeff’s expression hardened, and he looked years older than his age.

  “Evil.”

  Without another word, they picked up their packs and followed Yvain on the hedge-bordered track down the grassy hillside.

  Tully’s dad walked beside Yvain, deep in conversation, one hand in his pocket, the other gesticulating broadly. He was wearing too-large beige chinos pulled in with a military web belt, and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, all from the supermarket stock. Yvain wore an ample white linen shirt, loose tobacco-colored trousers held up by a broad leather belt and stout sandals. The sandals were hideously unstylish, but looked extremely comfortable. With his hair tied back loosely with a black ribbon, he looked like an eighteenth-century gentleman—or one of Dad’s mates from the Community, Tully thought with amusement. He could have been one of the philosophers who sat up all night over a bottle of whiskey, arguing the toss about whether it was ethical to keep pigs without an oak forest for them to forage in. Part of him wanted to join them to find out what Yvain was saying about the social organization of Lutecia and the country of Gaul. The other part, though, preferred dawdling behind with Carla, to stare like a tourist at the stra
ngeness of the soft landscape.

  They were walking along a grassy track that ran between low banks topped with fruit trees. At the other side of the banks lay fields of unripe grain, bordered with poppies and cornflowers. Swallows and swifts twittered and shrieked. Kestrels hung poised on arrow-shaped wings. A buzzard circled far away, and high above, almost out of sight, a skylark poured down its celestial music.

  Tully was transfixed. Never had he heard such music. Even out at the Community, the throb of traffic had been ever present. He had rarely heard the singing of birds or the humming of bees because there had been too little to attract them in the arid, pesticide-filled fields. Birdsong had been the croaking of crows and magpies after carrion and the desperate cooing of maimed pigeons, but the music of nature had been stilled long before Tully had been born.

  In this enchanted world, Tully’s ears were assailed by birdsong, the joyous barking of terriers after a rat, the trilling of streams and the splashing of moorhens in the river. The others heard it all too, but to them they were sounds, part of the landscape. To Tully they were music, and he could feel the music transforming him, filling him up so full that he knew it would overflow. When that happened, he would become an instrument. All he had to do was wait. Tully’s heart was bursting as they approached the city, through scented fields and to the sound of happy voices. He’d started his journey. At the end lay what he was destined to be.

  In the woodland on the hill, a small deer crept timidly into the sunlight. Its mother was with the rest of the herd in the dappled shadows. The young animal was curious about the unnatural slant of the sunlight and the way the grass was flattened and withered in the middle of the glade. It approached with trepidation the place in the center of the glade where the sunlight seemed to bend away, leaving a shimmering pool of darkness. It bent its head and sniffed, drawing back suddenly as if stung. The smell was all wrong!

  The deer drew back on its haunches to spring, away from the smell that was wrong, the strangeness of the place. But the ground exploded beneath its aborted leap, sending dying grass and earth flying skyward. A pair of dirty gray mandibles lunged out of the dark pool, caught the panic-stricken animal and closed around it. The worm dragged the struggling fawn beneath the earth, into the vortex of the spinning, twittering darkness that had opened up in the green hill.

  Chapter Five

  The Seven Stars

  The city proper began with an outer rim of horse paddocks, cow and sheep pastures and market gardens. Then came the first houses, mostly built like Roman villas, looking inward to courtyards or gardens, depending on the whim of the inhabitants. Neat grassy lanes, bordered by hollyhocks and cornflowers, separated the villas in a grid system. Broader, tree-lined lanes served as main arteries and led straight to the main buildings and the heart of the city. Garden birds flitted in the shade, and dogs and children—along with the odd pig or sheep—scampered everywhere.

  “I always wanted us to keep a few pigs,” Jack said, staring in admiration at a splendid black and white specimen nosing through a compost heap. “The other eejits would never see the sense.”

  “Be fair, Dad,” Tully said trying to keep his face straight. “You’d already foisted chickens on them, and the stink they made was terrible. Then there were the ducks, and that disastrous pond that turned into a quagmire and nearly drowned the Mercier’s youngest—”

  “Yeah, right. Don’t remind me. But here it would be different. I’d get one of those places on the boundary with a paddock and a small orchard, and I’d—”

  Tully rolled his eyes, and Carla burst out laughing, the most melodious laugh that Tully had heard in what seemed an eternity. Everything was going to be all right. He was sure of it.

  The morning was coming to an end as they reached the river, the broad, lazy Sequana that became wild and joyous as it tumbled over itself in a narrower stream around its two islands. They crossed over a low, arched bridge, set with benches in niches in the parapet from where they could admire the view, the hanging gardens and the vast library with its fabulously colored glass windows that occupied the entire point of the larger island.

  A short walk on the other side of the bridge brought them to the Assembly building, an imposing colonnaded edifice of sun-bleached stone. They approached it through a public park, a scattering of lakes and islands, ponds and fountains, ancient trees in wild grassy meadows and neater flower gardens. Beyond the heavy double doors, the air was refreshingly cool and reminded Tully of how hot and thirsty he was. As his eyes grew accustomed to the relative dimness, he noticed a table spread with a white cloth and a selection of drinks, salads, cheese and fruits, all temptingly chilled. There were even basins of cool water, chunks of lavender-scented soap and a pile of fluffy white towels for them to rinse off the dust of their journey. A large basin of water was set on the floor next to a second dish of rice, mixed vegetables and pieces of chicken.

  Their footsteps echoed on the cool flagstones, and the window shutters kept out the brilliant light and the heat of midday. They plunged their arms into the water and splashed it over their faces. Tully stared at the grit that sank to the bottom of the basin, and the black dust that floated on the surface of the water. He looked at his hands and the filth that still lurked beneath his fingernails—mud, blood, drac and human hairs, charred clothing. He grabbed a chunk of soap and scrubbed vigorously, then ran his damp hands through his hair. The water was disgustingly filthy. He gave an involuntary shudder. They had come so close to oblivion.

  Then Yvain handed around the plates, and the pangs of hunger returned as he served himself bread and salami, olives and cheese, and a handful of cherries. Dusty had already wolfed down her share and was lying, head on paws, under the table asleep.

  It was as they sat and ate, admiring the frescos that ran around the columned room, that Tully began to take stock of their situation. Unlike the violence and darkness of their time in the mall, this world, full of light and peace, was vast and unknown. Somehow the horrors of the mall had seemed familiar, easy to understand. It was the world gone to Hell, but it was his world. This world seemed untainted by the human failings that had caused the downfall of the world that was lost, but it too was threatened. They were the heroes snatched from the ruins of the world to ensure that its sister did not suffer the same fate. They were perfectly ordinary human beings back home, but here… Well, as the man said, traveling changes you. Here, they were heroes. Cold shivers of apprehension ran down Tully’s spine.

  Yvain got to his feet and, beckoning them to follow, led the way from the frescoed room to a cloistered courtyard set about with flowering plants and trees in terracotta pots. Dusty stretched, yawned and padded along behind Jeff. This was where the tough stuff started, Tully figured, just when it looked as though life was getting sweet again. On the benches of the shaded side of the cloister, a group of perhaps a hundred men and women of all ages waited in silence. Their clothing, the colors of the earth and wild flowers, was ample and crisp, their faces expectant.

  “My friends,” Yvain called out in a joyous voice, “our salvation is here!”

  The members of the Assembly rose in a single movement and clapped and cheered. Tully’s dad looked over his shoulder to see who had just come in behind them. Then the penny dropped. “He’s a dry old sod, though,” he said. “He means us!”

  Tully gave a strained smile but felt the color drain from his face. Carla, though, was radiant.

  “At last, we’re going to find out how we can be useful.”

  Jim looked at her incredulously. “You mean like fighting those…that…horror that got Matt? Where’s your nuclear warheads, then? And your People’s Revolutionary Army? Because without them, you haven’t got a hope in Hell.”

  Carla beamed at him. “But this isn’t Hell. So maybe there is a hope.”

  Yvain put an arm around her shoulder. “Bravo,” he whispered, then turned to the others. “No, this is not Hell, and Wormwood is not in his place here. Listen, and we will explain how he
came to escape from his chains, and what you must do to banish him again.”

  There was an embarrassed shuffling and hand wringing as they all looked at one another, like people in a case of mistaken identity who find themselves pushed up to a microphone to address the United Nations or expected to crash-land a plane or perform open heart surgery.

  Yvain seemed not to notice their unease and beckoned to the little group to approach, as a slender, middle-aged woman stepped forward with a broad smile, holding out her hands to each of them in turn. Her graying blonde hair was piled in a chignon. She wore a white linen blouse, a dark blue skirt, and at her waist was a sky-blue sash, the color of her eyes.

  “Welcome, my heroes. This is the Assembly of Sages of the country of Gaul. My name is Alinor Nolwensdaughter, and I am its present head. Please accept the profoundest gratitude of all of our people, for undertaking this hazardous task.”

  “Pleased to meet you too, missus, but, about this, er…task. I don’t remember us agreeing to take on anything too…you know, dangerous. Did we, you lot? Much as we’d like to help, you know? My Grandma Quinn always used to say—”

  “Dad, be quiet.” Tully glared at him. “What Mr. Keane means, ma’am, is that we are a bit confused. We don’t know where we are or how we got here. We’ve seen so much that was bizarre, horrific and just plain bloody awful that all this peace and…harmony doesn’t seem real.”