From the far bank, a canine clamor started as Dusty broke into a deep-throated baying. The gazehound crashed back across the river and barked furiously at the recalcitrant horses. The horses whinnied louder and backed away. Dusty growled and got behind them, snapping at their hocks, nipping their hindquarters. The horses skipped about, but Dusty worried at them until they moved into the river. Tully dug in his heels and his horse leaped forward, dragging Carla’s mare with him. Floundering chest-deep in water, the horses plowed their way across the river to the far bank where Tancred was waiting. With a nod of greeting, and a last admiring glance at the wild, fighting horses, Carla pulled her mare’s head around and dashed after Tancred into the trees—the trees that marked the edge of the forest of Retz.
* * * *
The cold streamed past his twisted face, streams and tunnels of cold darkness. From his vantage point on one of the broken teeth of what had been an imposing mountain range, Wormwood heard the mutterings and hissings, the scrape of crawling chitinous bodies and the rasp of mandibles, as the worms returned from the outer depths between the worlds. He could feel the hollowing out of the universe, as they ate their way through space and behind them, pouring into the howling tunnels, the souleaters.
He had left the flattened plain of destruction that was the western part of the temperate land, left the souleaters to finish picking through the ruins. Impatience to be done drove him now, almost certain that Eblis had left the blue world and had fled to the next. There was certainly scouring still to be done, but he was anxious for the way to be open, and the sound of giant mandibles opening tunnels into the next world was the sound of victory.
This was the order of things. First would come the souleaters, to suck the last life out of the worlds, to leave nothing alive, nowhere for Eblis to hide. Then, when the scourges were reunited and the last trumpet sounded, his companions would rise from their prison, their chains fallen, to follow the passages through time and space, across the empty dead lands to take their revenge on Paradiso itself.
Every moment, Wormwood, the fallen star, felt his power growing. Every soul dragged into the ranks of the dead, sucked dry by the souleaters, brought him closer to the one who would end it all. He could still hear the pathetic cries of his companions left behind in Pandemonium, and the agony of it, the injustice of it, filled him with a terrible rage. He drew himself up, fighting with the puny body he had borrowed, and he spewed lightning around, reducing forests of dead husks to ash and splitting mountains into avalanches of dust. Again he listened then heard the first slopping of black slime through the first of the wormholes. Soon the next world would be riddled with them, and the army would move onward.
The blue Earth was nine-tenths gray now, dead and barren. Dagon still romped among the smoldering remains of great cities, Belial still tracked his quarry mercilessly through the rotting stumps of old rainforests, where broad rivers had become sucking swamps to cover the bright glitter and poverty of the human sprawl. Mountains of concrete had sunk without trace. Roads and rail tracks were no more resilient than the mangroves and lianas long since rotted away to a dark slime. Soon nothing would be left to distinguish Earth from a hunk of dead stone floating in space.
Wormwood listened, and a sound—not the triumphal creeping of the worms, not the slither and slop of the black slime in movement—turned his thoughts from the next world. Far away in the east, beyond Dagon’s assaults and the pasturing of the vast army of souleaters, where there was still a spark of life cradled in Earth’s dead arms, he heard a song. The song was faint and uncertain, but it was growing in strength. Wormwood frowned, and lightning glowed at his fingertips. He knew how he would fill the last of his time on Earth, and, pulling on the reins, he dragged his mount’s head around, and urged it to a furious gallop—eastward.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bayard
The three golems were man high, built like wrestlers. Their legs—solid as rocks—seemed to have grown out of the ground itself. They plodded down the meadow, and as they approached, the inarticulate rasping that emerged from their clay throats became a single intelligible word—Eblis!
Bayard reared and pawed the air. Then he charged. He pulled up in front of the ragged line of golems and reared again. This time, his hooves threshed with the intention of making contact. He neighed in fury and pounded the rock-like body of a golem. The golem lashed out with a heavy fist, but Bayard was far quicker and smashed the arm with a one-two series of blows from both hooves. The stallion crashed to the ground and kicked with his back legs, catching a second golem in the chest. The creature shuddered but held its ground. Then Jack’s horse joined in, skipping about to kick the third golem from behind. Jack was horrified to see how little damage the pounding from the horses’ wild hooves inflicted. And the creatures were growing.
“If we could grab the horses, we could disappear down a tunnel,” he yelled at Yvain.
“You’re welcome to try,” Yvain said, his face glowing with pride, as Bayard, in a battle frenzy, bit and kicked the golem with the broken arm. “Why not offer him a lump of sugar?”
“I was thinking more of a kick up his hole,” Jack shouted back.
Yvain shrugged. “I don’t advise it.”
Jim’s mare suddenly reared and shook herself free of his grip, charging toward Bayard, her eyes rolling in terror, then cut away, making for the woods beyond the meadow. The third golem lurched into her path, grabbed the mare’s front legs as she reared in fright, snapping them both. The animal screamed and fell. The screaming continued until the golem grabbed her head and twisted it. The screaming of the stricken animal was replaced by the sound of tearing flesh as the golem attacked its meal. Bayard whinnied now in a fury, his hooves flying in all directions, catching the ungainly golems before they could touch him. But he was tiring, inevitably, and bleeding from wounds all over his flanks inflicted by the sharp rocks the golems clutched as weapons.
The mob of corpses hurled itself against Jim’s barrier, scratching at it with broken nails and pounding it with their weapons. In their frenzy to pass, they lashed and tore at the bodies around them, and within minutes the barrier had become visible, smeared with a disgusting mess of brown blood and matter. Jack dragged his attention away from the horses and cringed at the sight. The idea that the barrier might not hold sent shivers up and down his spine. He caught Jim’s eye. His face was drawn and close to panic.
“I can’t deal with the golems.” Jim’s voice was almost a whisper with weariness. “I’ve had to extend the barrier all around the area to keep the dead things back, and if I lose my concentration, I’m afraid they’ll break through.”
“Yvain, we’re going to have to leave the horses here.” Jack’s voice was strained with emotion. “We’ll never get that animal to give over. Look at him! He’s having a ball.”
Yvain frowned sadly and shook his head. “You’re right, I think. He won’t leave. His place is to protect his herd. As long as there is an enemy, Bayard will fight, until it’s all over.”
“I know,” Jack murmured. “I just wanted to feel not so bad about leaving him here to die.”
“I’ll open a tunnel, but you will have to close it behind us, or the golems and the undead creatures will follow us. I know it’s difficult,” Yvain said.
“Difficult! You’ve never shown me that one. I don’t know how to do it,” Jack blustered, but he was genuinely terrified. He was being given a task nobody else could do. His friends were relying on him, and he didn’t know that he was up to the job.
“You’ll have to try,” Yvain insisted. “It’s beyond my powers. I know that. The difficulty is closing it behind us gradually, as we travel along it. Otherwise our atoms will be dispersed, and we will be annihilated.”
“Why is it I don’t find that reassuring?”
Yvain tossed him a cheery smile that looked more like a grimace. “Jim, Eirian, we’re going to have to leave, fast. Follow me into the tunnel. Jack will come last to close it up.”
“Where exactly are we going, then?”
Yvain hesitated, and Jack heard a hint of embarrassment in his voice. “It’s a bit out of the way, on the coast, but I’ll explain when we get there.”
“The seaside!” Jack’s sadness about leaving the horses behind triggered an explosion of anger. “There’s an apocalypse going on—or haven’t you heard?”
“Oh, just do what I ask for once, without the comic commentary!”
Fuming with anger and sorrow, Jack turned. His last sight was of the gelding dropping to his knees, head hanging in weariness, and a golem, twelve feet tall now, smashing the bowed head to pulp with a single blow. He refused to watch as Bayard, staggering from loss of blood reared one last time and took a golem fist in the right flank that caved in half a dozen ribs. Jack swallowed hard and blinked back the budding tears.
“You were a great horse, lad. The best,” he murmured in a broken voice, as the meadow dissolved in a revolving spiral of green and red.
* * * *
Rajeev stumbled through a blur of tears, carrying Sanjay on his back. The boy weighed so little that even in his undernourished state, Rajeev was able to keep up with Erelah. The tears were because he knew that his brother would not last much longer. The girl jogged ahead, their few belongings slung over her shoulder. Rajeev followed blindly in the utter darkness, slipping and stumbling on the treacherous ground that was gradually covering with a film of ice, but never letting go of his hold on Sanjay.
The cold was bitter and he could hear no living thing, only strange sighs and raspings, almost like words that escaped intermittently from the tumbled and tortured Earth. Erelah said the rocks were changing, absorbing the remnants of living matter. Soon there would only be rocks… Until the things began to come out of them.
Rajeev broke into a sweat when he thought about the things. No one had ever seen them. Even Erelah could not be certain what form they would take. But Earth would be theirs, she’d said, as long as it rotated in space, on the outer boundary of the universe.
“How much farther?” he whispered. They had not seen the dark slime for what must have been days, but they could still be there, crouching like crabs in a rock pool, waiting for survivors to track and chase.
“Not far.” Erelah touched Rajeev’s hand. He couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t move his hands at all. His hands and arms had frozen into position, a cradle for his brother. His numb fingers had scarcely any sensation despite the thick mittens. “Hold on, just a bit longer,” Erelah whispered.
“Will it be there, though?” Rajeev couldn’t prevent the desperate question slipping out. “How can you be sure?”
Erelah didn’t look at him, but he could tell from the tightening of her jaw that she was shutting out even the possibility of doubt. “It’s there. It has to be.”
Once, that would have been enough for Rajeev. He relied on Erelah to always be right. Her willpower carried him along, buoyed him up with her unflinching hopefulness. But now he was tired, his sinews, tendons, nerves worn to the thinnest of frayed cords. He didn’t know how he still managed to put one foot in front of the other. He wasn’t even certain Sanjay was still alive. He knew nothing anymore.
“There’s still hope, Rajeev. I’ve seen the place, the path through the stars. We’ll find it here. I’m certain.”
Erelah finally turned her head and her face was illuminated by a broad smile, a smile so bright he could almost see it glowing. His frozen face muscles strained, and he managed to smile back. He fixed his gaze on the way ahead, trying to see what Erelah saw, some kind of shining light that marked the magical place where the way out began. His foot slipped on the ice, and as he struggled to regain his balance, a distant howl broke the awful silence. He stopped, filled with an almost irresistible urge to run toward the howl and make an end of it. Erelah, as if she read his thought, grabbed his arm.
“Hurry! We’re almost there. Look.” She pointed into the darkness ahead.
It could have been an illusion, but Rajeev seemed to see a jagged silhouette cut out against the starless sky, the silhouette of a giant tree. Curious, he turned with the question on his lips, but Erelah was already jogging ahead. Perhaps it was nothing after all. Perhaps. But his heart suddenly filled with a lightness, the stirrings of hope, and he jogged in her wake, toward escape.
Chapter Twenty-Three
On the Edge of the Wilderness
Yvain screwed his eyes tightly closed. His jaw worked spasmodically. Alinor, he shouted silently. Hold on, just a little longer. We are so close to our goal.
He was lying, of course. They were days away, even if they had stuck together. But with their band dispersed, they would lose time trying to meet up again, and if something happened to Tancred, they would lose contact altogether. Without Tancred, their mission would fail. Yvain refused to think about what would happen to the young people from the dying world, wandering lost and helpless through the Briga Mór. He refused to think about what would happen to the world—his world—when Wormwood tracked them down.
Yvain shivered on the brink of despair, but he would not give up, despite the scenes of horror he had witnessed through Alinor’s eyes. How could they keep that…those…things at bay for even another twenty-four hours? But they would! Carla would find her mother tonight and bring her to Mount Ardar. He thought over what Jeff had said, about the possibility that Eblis was not with them at all but was still in the dying world. The only thing the sages had agreed about was Eblis’ ambivalent role. He was both Azazel, the demon of despair, and Israfel, the angel of music. Or perhaps he was simply not what Wormwood thought he was. Who he was and why he was were mysteries, but it seemed that if he was still caught in the dying world, he was hiding from the fallen star, and if he was one of the dream-caught strangers, he was hiding from himself.
Jeff was certainly right about one thing—either way, they were running out of time.
* * * *
“The key is in the name—Despair.” Jeff’s voice was excited. They had let the horses slow to a trot once they were deep into the forest, and Tully was trying to ride by his side. “Despair is the demon, waiting to possess a soul and an incarnation. Someone, somewhere is the vessel for Eblis, and when he or she gives in to absolute despair, Eblis will take control.”
“So it doesn’t have to be one of us?”
“I suppose not, though we are obviously receptive, and Wormwood seems to think he will find Eblis among us,” Jeff said thoughtfully. “Let’s just hope he’s right.”
“I still don’t see why we’re supposed to be so thrilled that one of us might be the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse,” Tully said.
Jeff sighed and said shortly, “Think about it. Use your imagination.”
“Okay, Rambo! Keep your hair on. You’re not in Ace’s army now, you know.”
Jeff grinned. “First scenario—Eblis is back in our dying world. Wormwood finds him. Apocalypse begins.”
“Yeah, I might not be a sage, but I’m not dumb! I know that.”
“Well, think about the second scenario, then. Eblis is one of us. Wormwood tracks him to the edge of Poll Ifrinn. Carla’s mum pushes him over.”
Jeff’s eyes were alight, but Tully wasn’t convinced. “If Wormwood isn’t following Carla and the rest of us, Carla’s mum’s not going to get a chance to do it, though, is she?”
“How about this for scenario number three?” said Carla from behind. “Mamma orders this Wormwood ghoul to jump into the pit, and he just tells her to go get herself buggered.”
Jeff’s didn’t seem perturbed. “No, o’ course Wormwood won’t listen to her. But your dad will.”
Tully just couldn’t see it. “But Wormwood’s pinched Lucio’s body! Carla’s dad’s stuck with Wormwood at the commands.”
“Wormwood will take orders from Israfel,” Jeff insisted. “The story says so. Between the three of them, Carla’s mum, Carla’s dad and Israfel, Wormwood won’t have a chance.”
“Great!” Tully punched the air. “All we have to do is find this Israfel fella, then.”
“Angel,” Jeff corrected.
“This Israfel angel. And he’s just going to be hanging around the Poll Ifrinn, waiting for a bit of action? Like for a gang of demons to happen along so he can push them over the edge?”
Jeff frowned. “When you put it like that, it does seem a bit unlikely.”
“Maybe we could call him up.” Carla’s eyes were full of laughter. “Go on, Tully. Give us a tune.”
Tully felt himself blushing. “I need both hands for driving.”
“A song then. Please, Tully!”
Tully was about to protest, then realized that what he wanted more than anything else was to sing. He filled his lungs with air and threw back his head.
“No!” Jeff’s voice was sharp and commanding. “Not here.”
Tully looked around, puzzled. “Why not? There’s nobody about, not even any birds. Don’t tell me. I’d be disturbing the trees, right?”
“Sorry. I’m not sure why,” Jeff muttered apologetically. “It just doesn’t seem…right. Save it. Save it for…a better time.”
Jeff’s reminder that they were not on a picnic damped even Tully’s spirits. They rode in silence until the light was almost too dim to see by, and Tully strained to make out Kat and Tancred up ahead.
“Hey, Tancred,” he called. “Isn’t it about time we stopped for the night?”
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