Abarat: Absolute Midnight a-3

by Clive Barker

  Parrdar went on talking as though nobody had spoken, but Candy could tell from the renewed force with which he went on speaking that his congregation’s cries had been heard.

  “The Reverend listens to our cries. The Reverend suffers as we suffer!”

  Candy couldn’t take it anymore.

  “There is no Reverend,” Candy said loudly.

  “You be quiet,” said a female who was sitting close by. She had more than a touch of Sea-Skipper in her blood, which gave her eyes the same silvery gleam that Candy had first seen in Izarith’s gaze. “That’s Father Parrdar talkin’!”

  “I don’t care who it is,” Candy said, pushing herself up out of her dozy slouch. “A lie is a lie, whoever says it.”

  “He’s not lying,” another of the prisoners said, somewhere in the gloom.

  “All right then, he’s mistaken,” Candy said. “But either way what he’s saying isn’t true.”

  “How do you know?” came a third voice.

  The speaker was a large male; that was all Candy could see. But that was enough to make her very cautious. She had to be careful. She was tired, weak, and vulnerable. This wasn’t the time to get into an argument with anyone. Besides, they were all in this together, weren’t they? All of them were prisoners on a dark ship under what was surely still a starless sky.

  She made a small conciliatory gesture, raising her hands palms out to signify that she was letting the argument go. But the man in the darkness who had, Candy saw, a little question mark of hair rising from the middle of his head, wasn’t willing to let go of the disagreement.

  “I asked you a question,” Question Mark said.

  “Yes, and I heard you,” Candy said, doing her best to remain calm and polite.

  “So answer me.”

  “The pastor has every right to his opinion,” Candy replied. She should have stopped right there. But no. She had to keep going. “Even when he’s wrong.”

  She’d thought that willful, would-not-be-silenced part of her had probably been one of Boa’s contributions; but no, it was pure Candy.

  “He’s not wrong,” Question Mark replied.

  He was getting up now, and Candy was starting to see just how big an argument she had got herself into. The man kept getting up and getting up and getting up, unfolding like an enormous accordion. He seemed almost as broad as he was tall. And as he rose, and spread, and rose and spread, he recited the Gospel According to Question Mark.

  It was really very simple.

  “The Father is Right. Always. He knows the Truth and He speaks it in words we understand. Accept His wisdom and beg His Forgiveness.”

  At this point Parrdar himself entered the exchange.

  “I’m certain she will—” he began.

  “ACCEPT HIS WISDOM AND BEG HIS FORGIVENSS!” Question Mark said again.

  Candy was standing up now. She could feel the rolling motion of the ship, not just as a passenger, but as an empath, sharing the ship’s state of being just as her magic had allowed her to share the feelings of other human beings. She could feel the sea breaking against the prison-ship’s bows just as Question Mark’s bullying words were breaking against her face. She could feel the rhythm of the waves rolling against her ribs as the stares from all the people around her pressed against her. She could hear the murmur of their thoughts, foaming up like the waters.

  “We’re in this together,” she said, shrugging. “We’re all Mater Motley’s prisoners. I don’t want to get into an argument with anyone.” She took a deep breath, swallowed her pride, and said, “I accept Father Parrdar’s wisdom and I beg his forgiveness.”

  Even so, she couldn’t keep from having her hands behind her back as she spoke, with her fingers crossed. It was a silly playground trick, to make a promise with your fingers crossed so that the promise carried no weight, but she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t truly accept Parrdar’s wisdom or beg his forgiveness, but she was practical about things. That was also pure Candy.

  “I forgive you, child,” the Father said.

  “Oh that’s nice of you,” Candy said, and for an instant she thought she’d overacted, and the Pastor would realize her sweetness was a mask covering a very different Candy.

  But he was too in love with the power she’d given him to doubt that it was real.

  He simply said: “The light.”

  “Do you want me to put it out?” she asked him.

  “Not necessarily,” he replied. “Do you have any control over it?”

  “A little,” she said.

  “Then send it where it can do some good.”

  It took Candy a moment to work out what he meant, but only a moment. Then, being sure to make the task look as difficult as possible, she gathered up the light, which had spread around her, and willed it to go where Father Parrdar felt it could be most useful: illuminating him.

  “That’s better,” he said as it bathed him. “I think we’re going to get on quite well, child.”

  Candy started to say something by way of reply. But the pastor was already talking again, about how their Father in the Hereafter, who, along with his church, was coming to wake them from this terrible dream.

  “Even now . . .” he was saying, “. . . he is coming to wake us. Even now.”

  Chapter 54

  The Empress in her Glory

  MATER MOTLEY HAD BEEN known by many names in her long, bloodstained life. She had been the Visage, the Hag of Gorgossium, the Old Mother, and much else besides. But she had not fought her fate. She’d endured the time, knowing that there would come a Midnight when she would bestow upon her own head the only title that she had ever cared to possess: Thant Yeyla Carrion, Empress of the Abarat. Her first edict was to revenge herself upon Commexo City for the troubles its disobedience had caused her.

  She was merciless.

  The executions were a spectacle no one who survived that dark time would ever forget. For the first two hours following the dissemination of her edict, and its attendant death sentences, the Empress remained in the Circular Room, recovering those energies that had been depleted by her struggle with the Pixler-Requiax. After dispatching with her seamstresses, the Pixler-Requiax retreated to the depths of the Izabella, leaving the Old Hag to her Empire. And when she wearied of watching the sights on Pixler’s shiny screens (What was the use of inspiring fear if you couldn’t smell the sour stink of the terrorized?), she perched herself atop the blue-gray mummified hand on which she always traveled and took to the streets.

  This tour of the surrendered city was the first and last time most of Commexo City’s residents would ever see, in the flesh, the woman who had so very nearly destroyed their world. The people of Commexo thought of themselves as sophisticated, not without reason, and to their eyes the sight of this Empress, about which they had heard so many chilling stories, was surprisingly reassuring. To their well-bred gaze, the woman looked like a relic from some antiquated book of nursery tales. She looked ridiculously laughable, so they whispered behind their hands. She was old and unkempt, like a madwoman.

  On this last point, they were not mistaken. The Old Mother was indeed insane. But it was not a powerless madness. Even her meditations on the scenes of destruction, which were caught by Rumor Spirals that moved around her, carried wisdom. At one scene of destruction she paused to study the ruins, and saw an orphaned infant lying blank-eyed amid the rubble.

  “Oh, my pieties!” she murmured. “At every turn despair is new. Happiness is of a piece, yet was heard by all. And every hurt is its own world.” Then, finished with her unrehearsed elegy, she turned to a nearby skullier and addressed him: “Soldier!”

  “Me, Empress?”

  “Yes, you. What’s your name?”

  “Hemosh, stitched by the seamstress Mezbadee, lady.”

  “And where is your mother?”

  “Dead, Empress. She perished on the Wormwood.”

  “Ah. Well, Hemosh son of Mezbadee, do you see that poor little thing in the doorway there?”
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  “The babe, lady?”

  “Yes. Bring it to me, will you? It pains me to see its distress.”

  “Do you wish to . . . hold the babe, m’lady?”

  “Why do you sound so surprised? I was a mother before I was an Empress, Hemosh. And I will be a mother after I am dead, for there will be worms in my womb, will there not?”

  “I do not care to think of life without you, m’lady. It breaks my heart—”

  “You have no heart, Hemosh. You are just mud, living mud.”

  Hemosh looked conflicted.

  “I don’t understand, Empress. If I have no heart, why does the sound of the child’s crying trouble me so?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care, Hemosh. I am an Empress and you are nothing. Obey me.”

  Hemosh nodded and put his spear down on the ground. He took five backward steps, his head bowed, before turning and scrambling up over the rubble to the doorway where the infant still sobbed.

  The sound it made was so very like a human voice. But it didn’t look human. Its eyes were set above one another, its mouth also set on its side. As a result its head was long and narrow, and made to look longer still by the infant’s ears, which were tall and pricked, like those of an alerted rabbit.

  “Hush, little one,” Hemosh said, reaching down to pick the infant up. Its wails faltered once Hemosh had gathered it into his arms. He rocked it gently, and its wailing ceased. “There.”

  Then he turned and was about to start back over the debris when the Empress spoke: “Don’t bother to bring it back. Kill it where you’re standing.”

  “Kill it?” Hemosh said.

  “Yes, soldier. Kill it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I told you to?”

  “But it’s quiet now.”

  “Are you arguing with me, soldier?”

  “No. I just wanted—”

  “You are! You’re arguing!”

  A sudden fury seized the Empress.

  In her rage the Empress stepped down from her hand, her skirts so laden with doll, that when she did so the high-backed throne in which she’d been sitting was knocked over. She glanced down at Hemosh’s spear, which responded instantly to her unspoken instruction. It rose up and turned in the air, so that it was pointing both at the stitchling and the infant who was still weeping in his shadow.

  “M’lady, please. I meant no disrespect. I only—”

  He got no further. The spear flew at him and the child, quickly silencing them both.

  The death of the stitchling called Hemosh and the nameless infant didn’t go unwitnessed. There were eleven other stitchlings surrounding the hand, eight of whom witnessed the scene. But so did many other citizens of Commexo who had come to this spot in order to see their destroyer for themselves. And as the account spread, the number of those who claimed to have seen the two creatures, infant and soldier, run through with the same spear, also increased. Some of these new “witnesses” also embellished the cruelty and vileness that the Empress had demonstrated. One claimed that the Empress had called the baby’s soul to her and imprisoned it in one of the dolls sewn to her gown. These early additions to the account were within the bounds of believability. But as the story spread, and the additions proliferated, they became more and more outrageous. There were tales of the Empress’s legions rising up against the Empress. Rumors that the dead soldier had reappeared, swollen to gigantic size. There were never any witnesses to these marvels, of course.

  These rumors simply bred further enemies of the Empress. There were enemies everywhere now. And she needed to be rid of them. So it was time, she decided, to stage the execution of the several thousand individuals whom she had already had arrested. With those enemies silenced, once and for all, she might reasonably expect Those Who Walk Behind the Stars to proclaim themselves happy. After all, had she not achieved all that she had set out to achieve? She was now the Empress of All the Hours, the Abarat beneath the thumb of her nail.

  Standing next to her cherished hand in the ruined streets of Commexo City, the Empress unbent the first and last fingers of her left hand an inch, a tiny gesture that was nevertheless seen and understood by some observer in the death-ship far overhead. A hexagonal door opened in the belly of the vast machine and an immense light rained down upon her. She felt the power in the elevation beam pull on her, lifting her up. Though she very seldom took pleasure in relinquishing power to anyone, this was an exception. Being in the grip of the elevation beam was immensely pleasurable. She was perfectly content to let it have custody of her body for a few seconds, opening her arms and turning her palms skyward as the beam lifted her toward the Stormwalker.

  When she was no more than her own body’s length from the underbelly of the ship, she heard a cry rise to find her. It was intended for her attention, she had no doubt of it. Nothing so singular, so strange, was loosed without distinction or purpose. It quickly became more than a single cry; it turned into a litany of cries strung together, a churning murmur of lamentation, which in turn became a raw shriek of rage.

  It wasn’t difficult to decode the meaning of this. Commexo’s citizens wanted her to be reminded that, although their city was now in darkness, its inhabitants were going to survive this dark time with their memories and their rage still very much alive. And they would find her, their cries promised, and finish the grim business she had begun.

  Just in case their cries were not enough, they began to demonstrate one last proof of their fury. Some two hundred Commexians appeared from the darkness, converging on the small circle of light where the mummified hand waited for its turn to be raised up. But before the elevation beam could do its work, the Commexians descended upon the hand, fully intending to slay what was already a piece of something dead.

  Chapter 55

  Below

  CANDY DRIFTED OFF TO sleep. She let out a long, slow breath and let her dream-self slide out upon it and through the layers of timber and tar into the ship’s skin of paint. It was red, of course, what a fine thing it was, to be red! To be the color of fire and blood and poppies and the setting sun.

  She flowed from the prison-ship with dreamy ease, freed of all bodily concerns, yet in that freedom reconnected to all that was essential in her. All that was true and real and right.

  She glanced back one last time at the prison-ship, where her second prison, that of her body, awaited her return. The nearest island was plainly visible to her dream sight, the waves blazing white as they met its shore.

  The prison-ship was not far from its destination. A makeshift harbor had been built on the northeastern corner of Scoriae, lit by banks of acidic lights that were being buffeted by the gusting winds. There were two prison-ships identical to the one Candy had just left already using the primitive facilities the harbor provided. She could see lines of prisoners, all exhibiting signs of mistreatment, hobbling, some of them, others carried by stronger

  companions, as the Empress’s stitchlings beat them with bludgeons to keep them moving; cruelty heaped upon cruelty, prisoners begging for a judgment from some Higher Power Candy no longer believed would intervene.

  She threw her rage high into the air, where it tumbled over like brawling birds, then dropped back into the Izabella to carry her down. It was dark here, yes, but her presence drew luminosities to her in the billions; tiny motes of life attended upon her anatomy, formless though it was, and made of her a bright cloak that sank, bejeweled into the lightless deeps.

  Now she had to put some force into her descent, but that was not so hard when the alternative was what she’d seen on Scoriae. Yes, she would have to go back there, of course. But not yet . . . Not quite yet.

  Another ten minutes, Mama, please, before you bid me leave. Just ten.

  The sea indulged her, and so on down and down she took her gown of light.

  Such illumination was rare here, and drew curious eyes. She’d seen many of their species on her plate or for sale in a market stall. But the species she’d made meals
of gave way very soon to others that would happily have made a meal of her, many were relatives of species she knew from the Hereafter, albeit much changed by the waters in which they swam. The hammerhead shark had become less hammer and more ax; the whale that moved with solitary grandeur below her housed a bright globe of much smaller fish, which seemed to propel it.

  And still she descended, increasingly mindful of how soon she would have to return to the ship and her body.

  Just another minute or two, she begged.

  There were coral cliffs down here, though they seemed dead: their faces white with ash from the chimneys that vented volcanic fires, outposts of Mount Galigali’s Empire. And then—seconds before she knew she must return to the ship—she was blessed with a vision. A tree appeared in her head, driving away the gloom: a living tree with lemon-white blossoms and a canopy so perfectly blue . . . She’d heard a poem once about that very thing.

  Life was . . . something

  And dead the crew.

  And sinking the ship—

  No, no!

  And holed the ship,

  And drowned the crew.

  But o! But o!

  How very blue

  The sea is!

  She was tempted to dive on, deeper still. And she wondered how far would she have to propel her thoughts before she had sight of the legendary Requiax?

  Diamanda, Candy remembered, had called them: the “enemies of love, the enemies of life. Wicked beyond words.”

  Candy had asked where they resided, and Joephi had told her that they were deep in the Izabella, where she hoped they’d stay. Diamanda had doubted that things would be so simple. She’d heard rumors that they were on the move.

  “. . . there are those who say that when they surface, it will be the end of the world as we know it.”

  Well, that had come true, already. So did this mean the creatures below her were now going to be walking the islands? She had to see them for herself. Just once, a quick peek. What did the enemy of life and love look like? She might never get another chance to find out for herself.