Abarat: Absolute Midnight a-3

by Clive Barker

  She willed her thoughts down into a darkness beyond all darknesses she had ever witnessed before.

  Something down there knew she was coming. She could feel its vastness unfolding, its limbs or tongues or both, reaching up toward her thoughts, and touching them with a beguiling gentility. And as they touched her she remembered, for no reason she could fathom, something else she’d been told. Except that the subject hadn’t been the Requiax. It had been a remark about the fact that magic seemed to be just about everywhere nowadays.

  “It’s going to take time to root out all the magic in these islands,” she once heard somebody saying. “We’ve got a lot of books to burn, a lot of spirits to break—”

  Then very slowly, the tentacles unknotted themselves, and there below her was the man who’d spoken those words, though he’d changed much since their last encounter.

  “Hello again,” said Rojo Pixler.

  Chapter 56

  The Hand in Fire

  “UP!” THE EMPRESS YELLED to the doorkeeper and his staff. “Quickly, quickly. They mean to harm the hand!”

  The doorkeeper, Mister Drummadian, was already coming to greet his Empress on the broad walkway, which was automatically moving into position. She stepped off the air and onto the walkway. He had wiped the grin of welcome off his face at the first glimpse of his Empress’s expression. Before he could even murmur a word of welcome she said: “Get your soldiers down there, Drummadian! Right now!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He yelled an order to the Captain of the Guard. “You heard the order, Flayshak!”

  Captain Flayshak, a gargantuan skullier stitchling with a uniform that barely constrained his six-armed torso, was on the task.

  “I did indeed, sir!”

  He summoned three of his stitchlings to his side with a few sharp syllables in the old voice, and then simply plunged into the Elevation Beam with his fellow soldiers following behind.

  “Who’s doing the attacking?” Drummadian asked.

  “Insurgents! Radicals! Working to undermine the Throne! I want them alive, Drummadian. I want to take my time with them to get the truth.”

  “I have every faith in Captain Flayshak, ma’am. He knows—”

  There was a soft whoomp from the ground below, and a bloom of jaundiced light around the base of the hand.

  “No, damn them!” the Empress shrieked. “I don’t lose him too!”

  Drummadian didn’t understand what she meant by that, but he understood perfectly well the wisdom of silence. Besides, the Empress needed no further prompting from him to speak out. She seemed, to the doorkeeper’s respectful eyes, to be a woman on the edge of insanity. Though her head was directed so as to allow her to look down at the ground, her eyes darted everywhere rather than look at the sight below. But then given that she seemed to feel some affection for the hand on which she was so often perched, it was little wonder she avoided sight of it. Drummadian turned his head away, and didn’t even realize his Empress was demanding he act until her words began to slap him on the face like blows from a thorny stick.

  “Bring the thing up!” she was screaming.

  “Into the ship?” the doorkeeper said, plainly appalled at the notion.

  “Yes! Of course into the ship! Quickly! Do you understand, you cretins! If he dies, so do you. You burn up the way he’s burning!”

  “Oh, lady, no—”

  “Then save him, you idiot!”

  The doorkeeper became a blur of action, first slamming his fist against a large yellow alarm button, which caused panicking alarms to whoop throughout the vessel. Drummadian had very specific orders.

  “All firefighters to the receiving bay. We have an emergency!” He then yelled down to Flayshak. “Extinguish the fires by any means possible, Flayshak! You hear me?”

  Flayshak yelled something by way of reply, but it wasn’t audible over the sound of the crackling fire from below.

  “BRING HIM UP!” the Empress again demanded. “Did you not hear my order, Mr. Drummadian?”

  “I heard, m’lady,” the doorkeeper replied. “And your . . . the . . . he’s on his way up to you, m’lady.”

  The engines of the Stormwalker were indeed already at their churning labors, empowering the Elevation Beam to lift the blazing hand up off the ground into the belly of the Stormwalker. Waves of stinking heat rose up off the hand as it threw itself around within the confines of the beam. Drummadian’s alarms had by now brought responses from all directions. Pumps had been primed, and numberless hoses directed at the massive burning form.

  “Get the water flowing!” Drummadian yelled.

  He’d no sooner spoken than the hoses bucked and spat, and foaming waters poured out of them. There was a tremendous hissing sound, and clouds of steam rose up from the Elevation Beam as the flames were dowsed. Once the hand was within the confines of the vessel, Doorkeeper Drummadian ordered the aperture closed and the beam shut off, which allowed the firefighters to concentrate their hoses on the hand with even greater force. The flames were quickly subdued. But the damage that had been done to the hand was horrendous. It was so weakened by the flames that it could barely stay upright on its fingertips. It tottered like a vast infant as the waters buffeted it.

  “Enough!” Mater Motley yelled. “Do you hear me, Drummadian?”

  “It’s done, m’lady,” the doorkeeper replied.

  The hoses were shut off. The flow of water dwindled and died completely. Even without the water beating against it, the hand had difficulty standing upright. Its dead flesh blistered and in places burned away completely, leaving only blackened bone.

  “Leave us,” the Old Mother said very quietly.

  The doorkeeper was plainly uncomfortable with the notion of leaving his Empress in such unpredictable company.

  “Perhaps if I just stayed at the door.”

  “Out!” the Old Mother yelled. Then more quietly: “I won’t have it watched while it suffers. You understand?”

  “Of course,” Drummadian replied. “Captain Flayshak, you and your men—”

  “Understood, sir,” the Captain replied. At a nod from their Captain the firefighters departed. Flayshak waited at the door for the doorkeeper to join him, then they too left.

  “I’ll make this quick,” Mater Motley said. “You’ve served me well. I’m sorry I failed to do the same. Be free.”

  She walked around the hand, counterclockwise. The crude circle her feet drew on the ground unleashed a wave of black energy, which converged on the hand. It knew what work it had to do, and summarily did it.

  “Go,” the Hag said.

  The hand took the comfort it was granted. Its fingers folded up beneath it as it toppled sideways, collapsing in the filthy water. Pieces of burned matter broke off the thing, and struck the walls of the chamber. The hand twitched where it had fallen, and then the unnatural life force that owned it for so many centuries went out of it, and was gone.

  The Empress did not linger to keep the company of the twice dead. She went directly to the bridge so that she could speed the vessel on its way to Scoriae. The enemies of her Empire were there, awaiting their executions.

  Chapter 57

  A Knife for Every Heart

  CANDY’S EYES SHOT OPEN. She was on dry land; for that she was thankful. The last thing she’d seen was a glimpse of Rojo Pixler, or something that had once been Pixler, lurking in the depths of the Izabella. It had smiled at her hungrily and then reached for her with vast, tentacle limbs.

  She was glad to be delivered from that vision.

  “What island is this?” she murmured, hoping there would be someone close by to answer.

  There was. Beaming with happiness, Malingo’s face came into her field of vision.

  “Malingo?”

  “You’re awake! I thought you’d really got away this time.”

  Candy offered a smile, back up at him; or at least she tried her best to do so. But she felt so dislocated from her body she wasn’t entirely sure it was doing what she thought
it was doing. All she knew with any certainty was that her eyelids still felt very leaden, and that despite the pleasure of seeing Malingo again, all that she really wanted to do was to feel sleep gather her up into its arms again and carry her away to some kinder time and place.

  “No,” Malingo protested. “Please don’t leave again. I need you. We all need you.”

  “All?”

  He looked away from her, and curious to see what Malingo was seeing, Candy pushed herself up into a sitting position.

  “Lordy Lou . . .” she murmured.

  They weren’t alone. There was an immense crowd here, sitting or standing, most of them silent and seemingly alone, the whole assembly contained within a long rectangle of razor wire.

  “From what I gather, there are about seven thousand of us,” Gazza said from somewhere behind her.

  She looked around at him. He was climbing up onto the top of the boulder followed by, much to Candy’s surprise, Betty Thunder. Candy took a good look around.

  “How come we get to sit on the only rock?” she asked.

  “You’re famous,” Gazza said. “So we get the rock.”

  “Who are all these people?”

  “We’re all the Empress’s prisoners.”

  “Is it just the four of us?”

  “No. Eddie and the Johns are here too,” Gazza said.

  “What about Geneva? Tom? Clyde?”

  Betty gave a sad shrug.

  “We might find them, though,” said Malingo. “Eddie and the Johns are out there looking for them and trying to find out why we’re here. What we’ve all got in common.”

  “She doesn’t like us,” Candy said. “What more reason does she need? She’s the Empress now. She doesn’t answer to anyone.”

  “Everybody answers to somebody,” said Gazza.

  Candy shrugged and stood up to survey the crowd. Bonfires were blazing in dozens of places around the camp. By their light, Candy saw that the crowd here was just as diverse as it had been on the boardwalks of Babilonium. Though these were prisoners, not pleasure seekers, the familiar exuberance of Abaratian life was visible: the same dream-bright colors that had no name; the same elaborate configurations of feathered crests and fanning tails; eyes that looked like smoking embers and rings that were decorated with constellations of golden eyes. The only real difference was in the noise the crowd made, or rather its absence. The pleasure seekers at Babilonium had whooped and shouted and howled at the dusky sky as if to call it down to join in the fun. But there were no whoops nor shouts here. Nor were there tears. Just whispered exchanges, and perhaps here and there some murmured prayers.

  “They’re all watching the sky,” Candy said. “Seeing the cracks opening up.”

  “Well, that is a good thing, isn’t it?” Malingo said. “I saw a star just a little while ago. See it? Oh, and there!”

  “She knew this would happen,” Candy said.

  “She knew the darkness wouldn’t stay?”

  “Of course,” Candy said, momentarily forgetting she’d kept her conversation with Carrion a secret. She quickly added a defensive, “I mean, how could she not? She had to know that whatever creatures she put up there wouldn’t live forever. Otherwise why would she have all the troublemakers locked up? It just makes sense.”

  “What’s going to happen to us now?” Malingo said.

  “We’re going to get out of here,” Candy said. “Before Mater Motley gets here.”

  “What makes you think she’s going to come here?” Gazza asked.

  “She’s worked a long time to get all her enemies in one place. She can take us all out at the same time.”

  “What? There are thousands of us!” said Malingo.

  “Yes. And we’re hidden behind a volcano at the end of the world! Nobody will ever know if we’re murdered here. But she’ll want it soon, before some order is put back into things.”

  “How can you be so sure?” said Betty.

  “I just am. I think I have come to understand her . . . a little.”

  “Well, I don’t see how we get the six of us out of here,” Betty said. “Maybe you and Malingo . . .”

  “No,” Candy said.

  “What do you mean no? Is six too many?”

  “When I say all of us,” Candy said, glancing back toward the compound and all the souls imprisoned within it, “I mean: All. Of. Us.”

  “There are stitchlings in every direction, Candy,” Gazza said.

  “Yes, and no doubt she’ll bring more with her when she comes.”

  “Lordy Lou . . .” Malingo murmured.

  “How many more?” Gazza wanted to know.

  “What does it matter?” Candy said.

  “I need to know what we’re going to face,” he said to her.

  “I don’t have precise numbers, Gaz. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t. All I can say I know she’s coming, and that she’ll have a knife for every heart.”

  She’d no sooner given her grim answer to his question than a commotion started running through the crowd. Candy tore her gaze away from her friends.

  “What now?” she asked.

  Candy walked to the edge of the boulder in time to see a blind man emerge in front of the crowd.

  “Candy Quackenbush?” he said.

  “Do I know you?”

  “No,” said the blind man. “I’m Zephario Carrion. I believe you know my son.”

  Chapter 58

  Now, Because

  CANDY SLID DOWN OFF the rock. Her visitor was standing with his back to one of the fires, so he was almost entirely in silhouette, except for his eyes, which despite their sightlessness had somehow drawn into them all the light being shed by the peeping stars. Either the cold, or simply fatigue, filled the old man’s body with tremors. Only the starlight remained constant.

  “I don’t understand,” Candy said. “What do you want?”

  Zephario reached into the pocket of his baggy jacket.

  “I used to make money by reading these.”

  Candy accepted whatever he was handing over to her.

  “These are tarot cards, aren’t they?”

  “An Abaratian deck. I lost my old deck to the wind a long time ago. But I found another.”

  “These look different from the ones I saw in Chickentown.”

  “They are. There are eighty-eight cards in an Abaratian deck, not seventy-eight. And of course the images are different. Not all of them. Some faces are ever present.”

  Candy couldn’t see the designs on the cards clearly from where she was standing; there wasn’t sufficient light. But she could feel the visions on them, their vibrations moving through her fingertips, and they made her want to get a better look at them. So she moved out of the blind man’s shadow, turning the cards down and out, so they were lit by the flames. Now she saw them, it was no wonder her fingers had felt their power. Such visions! Some of the images were beautiful, some were terrifying, some of them made melancholy music in her head, like the lost songs of things that would never come into this world or any other.

  She was unable to take her eyes off the flow of images long enough to look back at the blind man, but he didn’t mind.

  “Lost forever,” she said to herself.

  “I didn’t quite catch—”

  “I’ve just always believed that nothing was really lost.”

  “Ah. If only . . .”

  “So . . . you saw me here? In one of the cards?”

  “It wasn’t just one of them. You will wear many faces.”

  “I don’t see me anywhere.”

  “Good. Only a fool thinks he sees.”

  “You’re Christopher’s father?”

  “Quite so,” he said with a strange calm. “Christopher . . . oh, my sweet Christopher . . . he was so small once.”

  Zephario lifted his hands, cupped side by side to show how small his beloved son had been. Candy took the opportunity to take hold of one of his hands.

  “Here,” she said. “Your cards.�
��

  “Please. You keep them. Use them. They are already mapped with what I’ve learned. Now you add your own journeys to mine and it’s all part of the Thread.”

  “What?”

  “The Thread. Do you not know of it?”

  “No. But I do believe there is a pattern in the Hours; a hidden connection, which will show the greater order of things when the time is right.”

  “Ah,” said Zephario, “you are wise. I want you to live, Candy. I want you to know the greater order, and if you wish to, pass it back to me, so that those among the dead who are lost—and there are many—find their way to the Embrace of Everything.”

  “Everything . . . that’s in the air a lot, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that or Nothing at All. It’s an Age of Absolutes.”

  “What comes after this Age?”

  “I’ve no idea. Why would I?”

  “You must have asked the cards how this is all going to end.”

  “The cards don’t tell the future. It hasn’t happened yet. We hope that certain things will happen. But none of it’s guaranteed. We may want one kind of future and get another kind entirely. My daughters used to sing a rhyme. All these years later I still hear it.

  “There is no tomorrow,

  There never—”

  “Was,” Candy said, picking up the rhyme immediately.

  “Beg, steal or borrow,

  Now, because—

  There is no tomorrow

  There never was.

  Beg, steal or borrow

  Now, because—

  “We used to sing it too,” Candy said. “Why tell me this now?

  “Because now is all there is. And because you sense her too,” he said.

  “Oh,” Candy said.

  “She’s not alone, is she?”

  “No, of course not. She must have at least seven thousand stitchlings with her. That’s what Christopher told me.”

  “Is he with her now?”

  “I doubt it. She thinks he’s dead. Drowned in the streets of Chickentown.”

  “But he isn’t, is he? I came here to find you so that you could help make peace between us. I want to see my son, one last time before I die. He’s all I have, lady. He’s all that I have left to love.”