by Garth Nix
“It’s there,” said Robert. “On the other side, about two feet in…”
Drum was already feeling for the lever with his Change Talent, eyes closed, sweat springing out on his forehead despite the cold wind. His hand moved, fingers clasping something that wasn’t there…. Dimly he felt Ella slide the pinch bar out of his belt…. Then his arm jerked down, and he felt his mind move the lever down.
His eyes flashed open to see the door sliding up, lights coming on inside. At the same time, the lead Winger attacked.
Salt burned Gold-Eye’s mouth and nose, water filling them as he went under for the third time. This time he stopped struggling immediately, and just let the Myrmidon hold him down. He’d got a good mouthful of air—and was just concentrating on holding that breath. Focusing on that, trying not to think of anything else—even Ninde. But he couldn’t help thinking of her, and tears fled his eyes to mix with the already salty sea.
Thinking of Ninde made him think of Ella and Drum as well. Still alive and obviously at Mount Silverstone. If Shade hadn’t lied, they would be trying to destroy the Grand Projector. So humanity still had a chance…even if he and Ninde didn’t.
Ninde was thinking similar thoughts, the bubbles flying out of her mouth, taking with them her last desperate gulp of air. For a second she was tempted to just breathe out, to finish it quickly—but she didn’t do it. Instead she reached again to drag her nails across the Myrmidon’s gauntlets.
It responded by pushing her still deeper, grinding sand against her face. Panicking, kicking and scratching, she finally lost her battle not to breathe—and sucked in. Water filled her lungs with a terrible rush that was totally and terrifyingly at odds with all the myths about the peacefulness of death by drowning.
Ella smacked the pinch bar across the neck of the lead Winger as it dove past her, but its claws raked across her forearm as she did, opening deep wounds and knocking the bar from her grasp.
It seemed unharmed, looping back to attack again—only to fly headlong into a large stone cast by the furious hand of Drum. Shrieking, right eye crushed and clouded with spewing ichor, it turned too quickly, wing crashing into a corner of the tower with a crack like a dry branch snapping. Lopsided, it cartwheeled into the ground, striking the silver-shot rocks of the mountain many times as it bounced down toward the valley below.
Drum yanked Ella into the building in the next second, slapping the lever to close the door—just as the second Winger dove in. For a few seconds door machinery struggled against Winger strength. Then it closed like a guillotine, cutting off the Winger’s head. This snapped its teeth at Drum’s feet several times, then lay still.
“Can they open it?” snapped Drum, asking the Robert hologram, which had just rematerialized inside.
“No…I don’t think so…requires an Overlord,” said Robert, looking down with shocked eyes at Ella, who was busy rolling out a bandage from her pouch. With one end in her mouth and the other in her weakened right hand, she was busy trying to put direct pressure on her wounds.
“But there are two on the way,” he added worriedly. “They’ll be here very…very soon.”
“So what do we do?” asked Ella. She handed one end of the bandage to Drum so he could wrap it around the long cuts in her forearm, her left thumb still pressed firmly on the pressure point inside her elbow. As soon as the bandage was firmly on, she let go—and the cloth immediately turned red, blood spreading like ink spilled on paper.
“Well, the whole Grand Projector is controlled by a dedicated Thinker,” said Robert. “I had considered turning it off somehow, but it is well protected from the likes of me, and in fact may not be able to be turned off at all….”
“Where is it?” screamed Ella, getting to her feet. “Just tell us where it is!”
“Up the ladder…up the ladder,” Robert repeated, pointing to the second of two steel ladders. It stood in a corner of the featureless room and extended through a square access hole in the ceiling.
Ella ran to it, jumping up to the third rung, ignoring the pain in her injured arm as she climbed. Blood ran out from under the bandage, and Drum steadied her as she almost fell back.
“But you should know that…” Robert was saying from down below—and then from in front of her as he reappeared on the next floor.
“You should know that if you destroy it,” he shouted, pointing up to the large conch-shell Thinker on a plinth well above Ella’s head. “If you destroy it, the Grand Projector will overload, delivering enormous amounts of Change energy—lethal radiation! It will kill you both in minutes. Please, please let me see if there’s some way of shutting…oh dear…the Overlords!”
The sound of the door opening below was enough for Ella—and Drum, too. She drew the pistol and aimed it up at the Thinker. Drum moved up close to steady her hand, cupping it gently in his own huge palm.
Then she pulled the trigger, time and time again, laughing and weeping, till the magazine was empty and the Thinker lay in broken shards upon the floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Gold-Eye was just about to give up and breathe in water when the Myrmidon holding him down suddenly let go.
Arching backward, Gold-Eye exploded from the water, coughing and spluttering, expecting to be plunged back down at any moment. Then he saw the Myrmidon was kneeling in the water at his side. It had its visor up, but its eyes somehow looked past him out to the blue water beyond.
Then it spoke, in English, not in Battlespeech.
A child is caught
A torment of terror
To know no kindness
Laid down at last
Dream no more death
Forsaken at fourteen
Foul prisoned flesh
Battle the burden
Sleep now Sam
Fall to freedom
Then he did look at Gold-Eye. “I was Sam Allen once,” he said, and fell facedown into the water.
Gold-Eye looked away and saw the other Myrmidon, sunken by its armor—and a smaller shape, floating head down, the waves tugging it out toward the open sea.
“Ninde!” screamed Gold-Eye, splashing through the waves. Grabbing her limp form, he carried her desperately to the beach, so desperately he didn’t even notice that Silver Sun was no longer there.
Laying her down, he thought her dead, and panic and fear stabbed him in the guts. Then Shade’s training gripped him like one of his own visions. One of the first lessons he’d done—one of the few he’d had time for. Essential knowledge for people who lived in a Submarine.
Mechanically he checked her pulse, cleared her airway, and began CPR.
“Very well done…my children,” said Robert, the hologram brightening and becoming more solid as they watched. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “You were all I ever hoped for…and more. I am sorry I was less. Good-bye.”
The hologram brightened still further, the tears shining like lights upon his skin. Then he was gone.
“I feel strange,” whispered Ella, holding on to Drum. “Sort of powerful…as if I could conjure anything…anything at all…. We have a few minutes, I think he said?”
“Yes,” replied Drum, his eyes also wet with tears. “Let’s go out—out into the sun.”
He picked her up but didn’t carry her down the ladder.
He could feel the Change energy flowing in him. It was so strong he simply used his Talent to rise up in the air and descend gently down through the trapdoor, then to float across to the main door.
There were no Overlords there. Just a strange metal tube on the floor, glittering in the shaft of sunlight coming through the door. All the interior lights had gone out.
Dead Wingers littered the ground outside and down the tumbled rocks, so Drum carried Ella around a little way, almost to the shade. They sat down with their backs to the wall, looking out at the blue sky, the sun warm on their faces, the wind cold.
“The power’s ebbing now,” said Ella. “And I can’t think of a single thing I want to conjure. All t
he things I want aren’t objects you can hold, or even name….”
She held out her hand, and Drum took it, surprised at the effort, as if all his strength was just running out of him.
Hand in hand, they waited for the end.
Ninde came to as Gold-Eye bent down for another breath. He quickly drew back as she coughed and spat out seawater. At the same time, he felt the grip of the soon-to-be-now, stronger than it had ever been.
“No, not now!” he said, veins in his forehead standing out as he tried to fight it off.
“What?” Ninde coughed, and her consciousness rushed back. Obviously they were safe, and Gold-Eye was about to have a vision…and she felt her knuckle in her mouth…and her mind expanding, leaping out over miles and miles. She saw the beginnings of Gold-Eye’s vision and heard fifty thousand children cheering as they climbed over the fallen bodies of Watchwards at the gates of the Dorms; heard the waking thoughts of the survivors in the Meat Factory; and then she felt Ella and Drum, so close that she knew she could speak to them, show them Gold-Eye’s vision, give them something in the seconds before they died.
“It’s Ninde,” murmured Ella sleepily, just moving one finger in Drum’s palm. “She wants us to see…Gold-Eye’s soon-to-be-now….”
“I see it,” whispered Drum. He smiled, a full-hearted smile. Ella smiled too, and for a second his hand tightened on hers.
Then they were dead, and the sun moved around, bringing the shade to wrap around their bodies like a shroud.
GOLD-EYE’S VISION
It was autumn and the red-and-yellow leaves were piled high around the trees in the park. Two small children—a boy of about five and a girl of three or so—were kicking through the leaves. Another half dozen children were playing on the swings and merry-go-rounds as various parents watched them with obvious pride.
A stylishly dressed woman—perhaps in her late twenties—was reading a hefty textbook, perhaps a medical tome, on a bench nearby. She kept glancing up at the children in the leaves, watching them laugh and giggle as they played.
Then she saw a man coming toward them, a man whose eyes caught the afternoon light and glinted strangely gold. He walked up to the woman and bent down to kiss her lovingly on the ear. She smiled and called out to the children.
“Ella! Drum! Daddy’s here!” said Ninde. “It’s time to go home.”
About the Author
GARTH NIX grew up in Canberra, Australia. Besides being a full-time writer, he has worked as a sales rep, publicist, editor, marketing communications consultant, and as a part-time literary agent. He is the author of THE RAGWITCH, as well as the Abhorsen trilogy: SABRIEL, LIRAEL, and the New York Times best-selling ABHORSEN. Mr. Nix lives in Sydney, a five-minute walk from Coogee Beach, with his wife, Anna, son, Thomas, and lots of books.
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ALSO BY GARTH NIX
THE ABHORSEN TRILOGY:
SABRIEL
LIRAEL
ABHORSEN
THE RAGWITCH
Copyright
SHADE’S CHILDREN. Copyright © 1997 by Garth Nix. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nix, Garth.
Shade's children / Garth Nix
p. cm.
Summary: In a savage postnuclear world, four young fugitives attempt to overthrow the blood-thirsty rule of the Overlords with the help of Shade, their mysterious mentor.
ISBN 0-06-027324-0
ISBN 0-06-447196-9 (pbk.)
[1. Fantasy.] I. Title
PZ7.N647Sh 1997 97-3841
[Fic]—dc21 CIP
AC
EPub Edition © January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200317-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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