Devastation

by Jane Dougherty

  “I told you not to worry.” Jeff gave her withering look. “Anybody would think you enjoyed making yourself sick.”

  Kat turned away quickly and kissed the white mare on the nose. Jeff sighed. A couple of minutes later Dusty burst into the shelter and shook herself, showering everybody with cold water. While Jeff rummaged for something for her to eat, Tancred’s gelding clattered to a halt and Tancred led the trembling animal into the shelter where the other horses nosed around him in comfort. He grabbed a handful of dried grass and rubbed the horse down while Kat whispered soothing words into the twitching ears.

  Tancred looked around at the expectant faces and related what he had seen. His usually calm face was lined with anxiety, and he spoke quickly and quietly, never taking his eyes off the path to the ridge. “The wilderness is black with evil. There are no more Northlands. They are swallowed by the darkness. Armies of the dead roam in the wake of the eaters of dead souls, and they have destroyed everything as far as the eye can see. Wormholes have opened everywhere. The wilderness is riddled with them! And demons continue to spew out like black bile, crawling everywhere like maggot flies, like…cockroaches!” He licked dry lips and swallowed hard.

  “Thank you, Tancred. That was pretty graphic.” Garance’s face had gone a shade paler.

  “What about the World Tree?” Tully asked. “Is…anybody there?”

  Tancred stared at him without seeing. “Mount Ardar is an island in a sea of blackness. The earth moves like maggots on a corpse, and I can make out nothing in the darkness. Except”—he finally looked into Tully’s eyes—“except for the flaming brands. It looks…” He took a deep breath. “It looks as if the World Tree is the center of a funeral pyre.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  On the Crystal Battlements

  “Did you think I would not know you would try to escape through the World Tree?”

  Nobody answered the Burnt Man. Jim guessed they were all as shit scared as he.

  “But the Tree will not open a path, will it? Paradisio has closed its doors to you too.”

  Jim hadn’t got a clue what he was talking about, but he wanted the voice to stop. It was corrupt, evil—like what putrefaction would sound like if it could talk. He raised his hands and began to make the weaving movements that accompanied his barrier-building. The Burnt Man gave a coarse laugh and Jim’s arms were forced back to his sides, and a sensation like flames licking his flesh made him cry out in pain.

  “Dagon, Belial! Tie them to the tree.”

  Dagon, an invisible mass behind his closed visor and heavy black armor, thundered toward them. His mount skittered and almost fell as the demon gave a brutal jerk to the reins and leaped from the saddle, his weight shaking the earth and making the trunk of the ash tree groan and complain. Jim slumped backward, only half-conscious with the pain. Eirian put her arms around him but Dagon threw her to one side. Belial, the angel of Death, his face skinless and pale as bone, pushed Yvain and Jack between them. Jack raised his stave, but it exploded with a noise like gunshot before it touched its mark. Yvain hit out at Dagon and received a gauntleted fist below the eye that shattered his cheekbone. Invisible ropes that felt to Jim like barbed wire lashed them to the tree, the slightest movement driving invisible barbs into his skin.

  Jack turned his head toward him. “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!”

  But Jim just shook his head slowly, trying to focus his eyes and keep concentrated. Jack gritted his teeth and shouted, “Just take these ropes offa me, and I’ll show you who’s Eblis, yah ugly hoor!”

  Belial slapped Jack in the face, and blood splattered from his burst lip.

  “I would kill you now,” Wormwood hissed, “but there is such an aura of Eblis about you all, that I cannot say which one of you is he. Eblis! Speak! When the flames consume the World Ash you will speak, despair will consume your soul, and you will cry out to me.”

  Wormwood grinned and Jim felt sick.

  “You cannot burn the World Tree.” Yvain’s voice was strained to the point of screaming. “The World Tree cannot be destroyed. All the worlds would die—past, present and to come. Creation would come to an end.”

  “Your creation, yes,” Wormwood spat out the words. “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. Remember?”

  Jim closed his eyes and frowned. Like a bee buzzing, words filled his head, words that meant nothing to him, someone else’s words traveling years and miles to reach him. The words echoed back and forth, building pictures behind his eyes. ‘Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky…lay vanquished rolling in the fiery gulf…on all sides around as one great furnace flamed…no light but darkness visible…regions of sorrow, doleful shades where peace and rest can never dwell…’

  “Silence,” Dagon shouted and smashed his fist into Jim’s stomach. With a gasp of pain, Jim slumped forward. He gagged, struggling to remain conscious.

  “You cannot bring about the Apocalypse,” Yvain persisted. “You have not found Eblis!”

  “A mere detail, don’t you think?” Wormwood flung out a hand to encompass the seething mass of evil that covered the earth as far as the eye could see. “And about to be resolved.” The Burnt Man grinned, snatched a flaming torch from a dead hand and dug his spurs into the wasted flanks of his mount. With flailing mane and tail and dead eyes, the beast bared long yellow teeth and cantered around the tree. Jim’s mind started to wander slightly, and he wondered what had happened to the giant drax. He shrugged. It was obvious.

  You can’t be a Horseman of the Apocalypse riding a dog.

  “Eblis-Azazel,” the cavernous voice rang out in the quivering silence. “Eblis Despair, fulfill your destiny and join the Horsemen! Then the end of days will be done!”

  Tancred was the first to leap from the green tunnel, his eyes fixed on the torch that menaced the World Tree. A howl went up from a thousand dead throats and Dagon turned to charge at the intruders, his cruel lance lowered, ready to rip them to shreds.

  “No!” Wormwood raised the torch high, and his valid eye went from one to the other of the newcomers. He hissed, “I smell the scent of Eblis, like a putrid shroud. He is here. But which one?” The eye shot across each new face, weighing them up—the tall, determined Gaul, the furious red-haired woman, the small, calmly arrogant dark one, the child fighting desperately to conceal his terror. It came to rest finally on the young couple, tall as towers and with cold anger in their eyes. The mouth curled in a smile of victory.

  “Reveal yourself, Eblis, before the suffering without end begins and this world too is consumed in an orgy of flame and blood!”

  Tully stepped forward. In the flickering glare of the torches, he towered above the cringing mass of dead souls. Matching Dagon in height, he fixed the eyeless visor with icy disdain.

  “I am the one you are looking for.”

  “In me arse you are,” Jack spluttered. “You’re my boy, Tully, you stupid, little gobshite!”

  Tully stood in front of his father and looked down at him. “I am the one. The others are…nothing.”

  Jack flinched. Tully was a full half a head taller than his father. His face seemed to glow in the darkness and his eyes glittered with a wild light. Wormwood felt a surge of triumph sweep through his rotting human carcass as he turned his gaze from the towering angel he recognized as Eblis, to the earthman’s face, distorted with the struggle to recognize his son in a celestial being.

  Tully looked into Wormwood’s half-blind face, and his voice had a brazen ring to it that carried across the seething hillside.

  “I am the end of your quest, Light-Bringer.”

  With a cry, Dagon raised his left hand and a wild black stallion galloped from out of the darkness, its eyes rolling and its head tossing in fury. Dagon snatched at the animal’s bridle and gave it a vicious yank. The horse screamed with pain, but no blood poured from the tear at the corner of its mouth. Dagon dragged the furious animal toward Tully and beat its head to calm it.

 
; “Join us,” he shouted in a rasping voice that no human vocal chords produced, and the terrified horse danced around to present its flanks to Tully. “Mount,” Dagon ordered, pointing his saw-bladed spear at Tully’s throat.

  Tully drew himself up to his full height, his face glittering in the darkness. He stretched out his hand and in his turn, pointed.

  “Get it, Dusty,” he yelled and the gazehound leaped, in the demon light as massive as a drac, snatching at Dagon’s spear, wrenching it from his hand. Tully reached out and in a single movement caught up the lance and thrust it up through the narrow gap between Dagon’s helmet and the gorget that protected his neck. Dagon staggered backward as the saw-toothed blade entered the weak spot. Tully advanced, forcing the mass of the demon back up against the rim of Poll Ifrinn. With an almost effortless gesture, he pushed, pulling his arm back to release the spear, as Dagon’s weight toppled him over the edge and into the hole to Hell.

  Tully spun around as the Angel of Death drew a black sword and raised it above his head. Black slime dripped from Dagon’s saw-blade and Tully jabbed it into the hindquarters of the black stallion. The beast reared with an unearthly scream and pawed the air with flailing hooves before falling back on Belial. Seizing the momentary distraction of the scourge as he tried to avoid the hooves of the maddened animal, Tancred swung at him with his stave.

  “Don’t touch him!” Tully shouted, as the stave met the skull and exploded, breaking Tancred’s arm. Carla reached for the kitchen knife she still carried in her left boot. Tully was about to shout a warning, but the words died in his throat. As Carla drew the knife, it grew and lengthened and became a spear, glowing with a fiery white light. The light reflected in her eyes as a brilliant glitter. With both hands she thrust, and the blade cut through the tendons of Belial’s neck and lodged in the bone. But the angel’s skull face continued to grin at her as he pulled out the spear and turned it to strike back. It was still grinning when Dagon’s lance swept the skull head from its shoulders, and Tully’s foot kicked it into Poll Ifrinn.

  “Eblis, no! This was not meant to be!” Wormwood urged his starveling mount at the group around the tree, the lighted brand still in his hand. At his back, the dead muttered and roared and lurched forward in a body. Behind them, the black slime of the eaters of souls rose up, higher than the World Tree, with a sound like suction and a stench of the grave, poised to fall upon their prey at the fallen star’s signal.

  “Jim,” Tully yelled. “Wake up. I need you!”

  Carla picked up Belial’s sword to cut the demon bonds that bound her friends to the World Tree. Jim rubbed his wrists and shook his head to clear it of the last dregs of pain.

  Garance turned to face the Burnt Man, the Light-Bringer, Wormwood, and she fixed the staring red eye in a gaze that did not flinch. Tully, with the understanding that linked him to Wormwood, felt her probing the depths of the demon, reaching through the charred casing of the body to the soul of the man trapped inside. Wormwood’s eyes filled with horror as the probing stirred something inside him that was fighting to be released. Tully knew what it was.

  “Lucio! Fight, man!”

  Wormwood hesitated, the flaming torch held high, while confusion and hatred chased each other across the ruins of his face. The ravaged features contorted and sweat stood out on his brow,

  “Go, Lucio! You can do it!”

  The man within the demon was growing stronger, fighting to regain control of his body, and Wormwood stared at Tully in confusion as Carla came to stand by his side. The phantom horse reared and plunged with rage then backed away from the tall young couple and the light, brilliant as starlight, that radiated from them. It backed away in fear into the growling, despairing mob of dead faces that shrank from the unbearable brightness.

  “Jim,” Tully commanded, and Jim leapt to his feet.

  “Aye, sir!”

  Tully pulled the flute from his jacket pocket and tossed it to him.

  “I need a trumpet.”

  Jim ran his hands along the flute, bending and remodeling the metal. Tully rolled his eyes.

  “An ancient trumpet, dummy! As in trumpets of Jericho. I’m not going to play him a Louis Armstrong number!”

  In an instant the form elongated and the valves disappeared.

  “This do?”

  Tully took up the heavy bronze instrument, weighed it in both hands and placed it to his lips.

  Wormwood, straining to control his mount, stared in fascination. He watched as Tully raised the bronze trumpet, and a cry of triumph broke from his lips. The fallen star held his breath in expectation, waiting to hear the braying of martial music that once echoed from the coping of the vaults of Hell, the harsh, metallic chords that this time would sound the start of the Apocalypse.

  In a moment he would see the scorpion-tailed monsters plunge from the cloud to spread death by sword and plague. The stars would fall from the sky, and the seabeasts would rise from the depths and swallow all life in the oceans. He waited with bated breath for the sweet sound that would release the demons still captive in the bowels of Hell. He waited for the notes that would restore him to his former splendor, brilliant and unbearably bright—the first, the last, the only star in the firmament.

  The eaters of souls were immobile, the horde of the dead waited, cringing, and Wormwood beat the head of his wild horse with his fist to stop its retreat. He had truly found Eblis!

  Tully, tall and straight, looked from Wormwood to his father. Jack groaned and clapped his freed hands over his ears.

  “No, Tully! Don’t do it!”

  Tancred fixed anxious eyes on Yvain, but the old man was absorbed by the changing expressions on Wormwood’s face. Garance’s eyes never left the Burnt Man, like a cat watching a mouse. Tully took a deep breath. Then he blew.

  The sound, when it emerged, was not the brazen braying of the music of Hell. It was sweet and melodious, the song of Earth that was no more. Infinitely sad, it recalled the songs of all the birds now dead, the babbling of streams now dry gullies, the ebb and flow of the tides that had long ceased to obey a moon whose light was extinguished. It sang the sighing of ash leaves in a summer breeze, the howl of winter wolves, the honking of geese in the wild March sky. Tears ran unchecked down Tully’s cheeks as the memories of all that was lost came crowding back.

  Garance too wiped the tears from her eyes and advanced toward the Burnt Man with Carla at her side. Tully knew he had him as he felt Wormwood’s power falter. His wild mount screamed as the demon struggled to keep control. In confusion, he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

  “Lucio, come back!” Garance held out a hand. The Burnt Man turned first one way then the other, his horse tore at the bit and reared. From the ruined face, a cavernous voice ground out obscenities in a language so ancient that it had never been spoken by men, but still the horse retreated. The face turned slightly to hide the scars. A flood of words filled Tully’s head. ‘His face deep scars of thunder had entrenched…’

  “Lucio!” Garance pleaded.

  “Babbo!” Carla reached out her hands.

  ‘Care sat on his faded cheek…’

  The phantom horse, mad with terror, trampled the rim of the Poll Ifrinn, slipping and stumbling as it backed up against the rocky parapet, and Tully blew the sweetest, saddest note of all.

  “Israfel!” Wormwood screamed in horror.

  ‘Farewell, happy fields, where joy forever dwells…’

  Tully advanced, the final trumpet note still ringing out across the desolation as he marched, tall as a tower and unafraid, and Wormwood’s mount, with a final scream, plunged over the jagged rocks and into the chasm. Garance held out a hand as the demon turned his face to hers one last time, and the sun pierced the black cloud, turning the sinister rocks to gemstones.

  ‘O’er the crystal battlements, from morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, a summer’s day.’

  “Lucio, I love you. Come back!”

  And the eye that met hers was not the
mad eye of a demon.

  “Israfel!” the man, once a star, called out in a voice that was softer, almost a cry of joy, then the horse and rider disappeared from view.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  A Star Falls a Second Time

  They disappeared, plunging into the fathomless darkness that led to Pandemonium. A shriek of anger and despair rose from the unseen depths, and Carla grabbed Tully’s hand, her eyes wide with disbelief. Only Garance didn’t flinch but, still peering after the fallen star, reached out into the darkness. A brown hand, the back sprinkled with black hairs, grasped the outstretched hand of salvation. A filthy white cuff appeared, a gold cufflink, a torn dark sleeve. Tully and Carla leapt to Garance’s side, pulling the struggling, gasping man back from the pit.

  ‘And tears such as angels weep burst forth.’

  * * * *

  The sun battled valiantly with the shrouds of darkness, beating them back across the wilderness, flapping and screaming as the power of the demon faded and died. Lucio lay sleeping in the shadow of the World Ash, his head in Garance’s lap. Eirian and Kat sat by his side, beginning the long task of healing his wounds, moral and physical. The others stood about the Poll Ifrinn, fringed with rocks that gleamed in the new sun, and they peered into its depths.

  “Where did he go?” Carla asked Yvain, as if she expected to see the ghostly horse scrambling its way back up the sheer rock walls of the chasm.

  “He has gone to a place so far away in time that it has no name. Later, it will appear in a book called Genesis.”

  “What about the lake of fire and the adamantine chains?” Jeff asked. “Isn’t he going to be locked up properly this time?”

  Yvain tapped the side of his nose. “Who knows? The powers that sort out these things will see to it, I’m sure. In any case, his story is finished for us. Watch.”

  Yvain pointed to a root of the World Ash that ran to the edge of the Poll Ifrinn and crept down the crevices in the rocky walls of the chasm where it was lost to sight in the invisible depths. Yvain watched in satisfaction as the root blackened and smoked, and the part that was visible withered and died. A trail of smoke ran up the chasm like a lighted fuse and seeped up through the earth as far as the base of the World Tree, where it stopped. In a few moments the smoke had dispersed and a slight indentation appeared in the ground where the root had been.