Abarat: Absolute Midnight a-3

by Clive Barker

  “Who’s with her?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whoever he was, he shouldn’t have gotten so close to her. It will be the death of him. I need a gunner!” she demanded.

  No sooner had she uttered the words, than one stitchling called out: “Empress. I have the gunner ready at the bows. She has acquired your target.”

  “Gunner?” the Empress yelled.

  The gunner’s image appeared.

  “Here, my Empress,” she said.

  “Targets,” Christopher said.

  “Ah, there you are,” the Empress said. “Two stupid animals standing in our way. Thank you, Christopher.”

  “My pleasure, Empress. And my duty. Shall I have them killed?”

  The image of Candy Quackenbush and her traveling companion came up on the Window. The latter had been extensively scarred—his face little more than a rigid mask of disfigured tissue; out of which he gazed blindly. Despite his maiming there was something in the man’s bearing that caused Mater Motley to hold back for a few moments.

  “I have the target in my sights, Empress. Shall I fire?”

  “Wait . . .”

  She brought the Window closer to her so as to better study the mask of scar tissue for some clue as to the face it had been, before its destruction by—

  “Fire,” she murmured.

  It was a simple, stupid mistake. Gunner Gh’niemattah had been trained to respond to an order without hesitation. The syllable her Empress uttered was barely audible, but she responded to the sound of that one syllable by simply pulling the trigger.

  It was impossible not to be astonished by the speed with which the girl from the Hereafter and the blind man beside her were erased by bursts of brilliance as each rocket found its target.

  Chapter 62

  The Volcano and the Void

  CANDY, SITTING ATOP THE higher slopes of Mount Galigali, stared up at the immense expanse of the Stormwalker’s underbelly as it slowly passed over her. The immense machine seemed almost close enough for her to reach up and touch. The guttural drone of the vessel’s massive engines made the scree on the slope dance a lunatic dance.

  “It’s time. Take me to my son,” were the words Mater Motley had watched Zephario say to her.

  He was right, Candy knew: this was the moment. The Prince of Midnight was inside the Stormwalker with his grandmother—and was there any place he was more likely to be on this night of nights, when old allegiances became clear, than with her? She had to get them both up into the great lightning machine before the Stormwalker destroyed them both.

  And then, up out of the unsifted memories in her head, a word sprang onto her tongue: a word in Old Abaratian. It had a flawless provenance. Candy had taken it from the sleeping mind of Princess Boa, back in the days when she’d used Boa as a living repository of magic. Boa had in turn learned the word from the same source she’d used for the wieldings and invocations, prayers and necromancing—her devoted Christopher Carrion. And who was Carrion’s source? Of that, Candy had not the slightest doubt. Carrion had learned the word from his grandmother, Mater Motley, who was riding high in the Stormwalker over their heads.

  Somehow that confirmed the rightness of the word she was about to utter. She had tracked it around in a circle, back to the Hag of Gorgossium.

  She didn’t even know what the word meant. But she knew this was the right moment to say it. It had four syllables:

  Yet—

  -ha—

  -si—

  -ha.

  “Are you ready?” she said to Zephario.

  “For what?” he said.

  “I can’t be sure, but I think there’s going to be a staircase, made of smoke, and we’re just going to climb it.”

  “Then I’m ready.”

  At that moment, though Candy didn’t know it, the Empress of the Abarat was studying them in the Window—no, not them: Zephario—trying to work out what it was about the burned face that puzzled her.

  “Yet—” Candy said.

  Words of magic had to be spoken very cautiously, Malingo had once told her he’d read in Wolfswinkel’s books. They had to be pronounced clearly so that the forces that were being summoned into activity knew exactly what they were being instructed to do.

  As Candy spoke the second syllable—“ha”—the Empress looked up from the Window, suddenly realizing what element had worked such a terrible transformation upon the face on the slope below.

  “Fire,” she’d said.

  Gunner Gh’niemattah had thought she’d heard her Empress’s instruction. She had not aimed for one figure or the other, but for the rock between them. The rocket would blow a hole in the rock between them, causing the ground they were standing on to fold in on itself, carrying both of them down to their deaths.

  “si—”

  Gunner Gh’niemattah pulled the trigger. The charge in the gunner’s launcher exploded.

  “ha—”

  The explosive charge slammed against the expulsion plate at the base of the rocket.

  The phenomenal power of the weapon, which had been mounted on the Stormwalker so recently that the gunner had never had an opportunity to test it, completely blindsided her. The whole launcher kicked so violently that the gunner was thrown back across the gunnery tower, her neck snapping at the same moment the rocket struck the flank of Mount Galigali.

  Such was the power of the rocket’s release that a ripple of its force passed through the entire Stormwalker. It juddered and rolled. As its motion settled, the Empress called forth five more windows to study the aftereffects of the rockets.

  “What do you see?” Christopher asked her.

  “A hole in the side of Galigali, and a lot of dust and dead rock.”

  “So they’re dead?”

  “Of course they’re dead. The ground opened up beneath both of them. And down they went into the fire.”

  “What fire?” Christopher said, looking toward the window. “There’s nothing left burning in Galigali, surely.”

  “I might have killed Candy Quackenbush, but I’ve resurrected Galigali.” Mater Motley turned and walked back to look at the volcano. “So many resurrections. First Boa, then you, now Galigali.”

  “I was never dead, lady,” he replied. “If I had been, I would have remained that way. Happily.”

  He didn’t look back at her. He just kept staring at the ever-multiplying streams of magma as they coursed down over the volcano’s flank.

  “Stop obsessing on the girl! Did she really mean something to you?”

  “Yes. She reminded me I’d been in love once. And that maybe I had deserved to be loved in return.” He stared past his grandmother at the wasteland visible through the battle-deck windows behind her. “She was quite a creature. Look! There! Her last miracle. She made them a glyph. That’s how they got away. She made a glyph big enough to carry all of the prisoners.”

  “Impossible,” the Empress told him.

  “I’m looking at it,” Christopher replied, pointing past her.

  The Empress turned, following the direction of his finger, out through the battle-deck window.

  Beyond the empty camp was a stretch of boulder-strewn wasteland, and beyond that, the Void. An empty darkness, into which was headed the immense glyph that Candy helped create.

  “They’ve gone over the Edge of the World,” one of the stitchling Commanders remarked.

  “Indeed they have,” the Empress replied.

  “That’s the end of them then,” a second Commander said. “There’s nothing to hold them up out there. They’ll fall forever.”

  “How did she do that?” Mater Motley said to herself.

  “Does it matter?” Carrion said. “She’s dead. She won’t be doing it again.”

  The Empress responded as though he hadn’t spoken.

  “The amount of power that takes. Where did she get it?” She talked very quietly, almost to herself.

  “They don’t seem to be falling,” Carrion said. “Are you sure that’s the Ed
ge of the World?”

  A copy of the Almenak had already been brought out, and the map in it carefully studied. Christopher went over to the Commanders and snatched the copy away to scrutinize for himself.

  “Of course none of the information in these wretched Almenaks are reliable,” he said. To the north of Scoriae, the Sea of Izabella fell away into a featureless darkness, along the edge of which was written: This is the Edge of the World. Beyond the edge, etched in white letters against the blackness were four letters, widely sprawled:

  VOID

  “They will fall,” one of the Commanders said.

  “Forever and ever,” said Motley.

  “We should go to the very edge then,” Carrion said. He was smiling now, genuinely pleased at the prospect. “I want to see what this Void looks like.”

  “I already gave the order,” the Empress said. “We’ll be waiting for them if they attempt to turn around.”

  The Stormwalker had taken one lightning stride, and was about to take a second, moving the two-mile-long vehicle over the deserted camp toward the Edge of the Abarat with extraordinary speed.

  “I see no sign of her glyph falling,” Carrion said.

  “It will,” his grandmother said. “There’s nothing out there to hold it up. See for yourself.” She directed Christopher’s attention to the port side of the Stormwalker. There, beyond a stretch of solidified lava, the Izabella rushed on toward the edge of the world, where it fell away, throwing up churning clouds of spray.

  “Impressive,” Carrion said.

  “Yet her glyph still flies,” the Old Hag groaned. “How? Where does power like that come from?” She glanced at her grandson. “Did she ever talk to you about these powers?”

  “The girl? No. But I have a theory. . . .” he said coyly.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The blind man who was with her. I knew him. Not the face, of course. There’s nothing left there, but . . . the eyes. Something about the eyes . . .”

  “Don’t be coy. Talk!”

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said, “but . . . I remember them from a dream. I was just a boy, and they looked down at me. Then he whispered something to me . . .”

  “What did the man say?”

  Carrion’s gaze slid in his grandmother’s direction for a second or two. Then he looked away.

  “He looked down at me and he said, ‘I love you, Little One.’”

  Chapter 63

  Pigs

  “. . . Y ETHASIHA.”

  The stairway of fog had understood very well the urgency of Candy and Zephario’s situation. It had formed beneath their feet, and instantly closed up like an accordion, lifting them up into the belly of the Stormwalker through an open door that then closed very quickly, protecting its passengers from the explosion that peppered the hull on which they were sprawled with a number of projectiles that struck it like bullets.

  They were alive. The breath had been knocked out of them, and they were a lot closer to the Hag of Gorgossium than either of them would have wished, but they were alive.

  “That was quite a word,” Candy said. “I’ve never wielded something that moved so quickly—”

  She stopped, silenced by the sound of two low-ranking stitchling soldiers engaged in a fierce exchange as they opened an iron door that brought them into this portion of the hold. Judging by their banter, the Old Hag’s seamstresses had devoted considerably little time to their mental capacities.

  “There’s Quagmites on this vessel. I swears.”

  “You and your Quagmites, Shaveos,” the other stitchling said as it sniffed the air. The sound of its voice changed suddenly. “Huh. You right. You right.”

  “See! You smells it too?” said Shaveos excitedly. “That’s a Uman Been. I told you I knows it, Lummuk!”

  “How’d you know what a Uman Been smells likes?” Lummuk wanted to know.

  “I were on the Wormwood, whens it went the Hereafter.”

  “You saw that Chickumtomb?”

  “I did. I saw all that drownsd.”

  “Were it horrible?”

  “Oya. It were Viley!” Shaveos said gravely. “I was trown out the ship. I ended up in . . . I forgets. I still got the paper!” Candy heard the sound of the stitchling rummaging for something. “Here. Hold my knife,” he said.

  This probably wasn’t a bad time to snatch a look at the enemy, Candy thought. She peered out from behind the tarpaulin-covered crates where she and Zephario had hidden and got a clearer look at stitchlings than she’d ever had before. There was an intelligence in their behavior, though not in their speech, that she hadn’t expected to see in the sacks of walking mud. And she noticed that the mud didn’t simply fill the sack, the way dirt might, rather it pushed out of little holes, as though it was constantly in the process of reinventing itself. There was something in the weave of the sack that then crawled all over the stitchlings’ forms, repairing any larger tears by crudely restitching the thread. They were, quite obviously, as she had been, Two In One: the thing occupied, and the occupying thing.

  These two stitchlings in particular were chaotic, asymmetrical beings. One had an arm that ended in something more like a lobster claw than fingers, while the other, thanks to some seamstress’s whim, had no less than four hands at the end of one arm, two pairs set palm to palm, and no hand at all on the other arm.

  Lobster Arm was apparently Shaveos, because it was he who now brought a tattered piece of folded paper out of the jacket of his mud-and-blood-splattered uniform. He pulled out a pair of spectacles with both lenses cracked, and peered at the map.

  “This ams the place,” he said proudly. “The place I fell from Wormwood.”

  “Whoaya now!” said Lummuk, obviously skeptical. “How’s that certain? What that sign sayings?”

  “Sign? It sayings ‘Fort Com’!”

  In less stressful circumstances, Candy might have found some humor in the stitchling’s error. He had an advertisement for the Comfort Tree Hotel in his hand.

  “Was there battles?” Lummuk wanted to know.

  “Was there battles? Was there battles? Nine Peep-Holes was killed just from by frights! And it was all the Uman Beens that was doin’ the crazies. I din’t do nuffin! I was just . . . smellin’ ’em.”

  “And you smell ’em here now. That’s how comes you knows, huh?”

  “Yeps.”

  They both inhaled.

  “Oh yes,” Lummuk said. “I smells it.”

  “Give me my knife back,” Shaveos demanded. “I’ll cutsem!”

  His knife was, in fact, a machete. He felt the heft of it, and even in the shadows Candy could see the sick smile of pleasure that came onto his face as he did so. This was a weapon he’d used. She knew it. The evidence was there in his lipless smile.

  “Ready?” he said to Lummuk.

  “I was stitched ready,” Lummuk said smugly.

  “We gotta be ready for thems to come at us all at once. They’s vicious, these—”

  His remark was interrupted by what was unmistakably the grunting of a pig. A very large pig, its grunting encouraging more noise from pigs in its vicinity.

  “Oh! Piggie wiggies!” said Shaveos. “Look a’ ’em!” He pushed Lummuk aside. “I sees me some piggie wiggies, I does, I does.”

  “What ams you doing?” Lummuk wanted to know.

  “I wants to hug a piggie wiggie. And then maybe takes a bite. Just one bites.”

  “Fooly fool! Thems not your piggie wiggies to hug and bites. Thems the Empress’s piggie wiggies!”

  “She don’ts gives care how many piggie wiggies she’s has. What you think, she come up down every morning to countsem?” Shaveos replied, pulling open the cage door. He reached in. “Come on, you. You looks delish!” He talked to the pig as though he might have spoken to a baby, in a singsong voice. “Come come, piggie wiggie. Pretty piggie wiggie.” The charm didn’t last very long. When the pig failed to respond to his request, he quickly lost his temper. “Come, you vilely porku
nd!” he yelled, throwing the cage door open. “I needs my belly filled all up! Wally on, porkund! Wally on!”

  He reached in to grab the hog with both hands. The creature squealed as it was hauled out by the stitchling and lifted up into the light. It was a big beast, its body striped orange and blue, except for its head, which was that of an albino, its flesh stark white, its eyes bloodred with long white lashes. Though it retained some porcine snout, its features were flatter than those of an ordinary pig, making the animal look almost human.

  “Oh, yous is a gorgeous. Yous is! I could . . . I could—”

  Apparently besieged by his own appetite, Shaveos opened his mouth, which was lined with rows of daggerlike teeth—and bit down on the animal’s neck. The pig’s squeal became even shriller. Candy kept her eyes fixed on the struggle between the diner and his dinner. It was seconds away from catastrophe, she sensed. The pig was too strong, and the stitchling too concerned about his empty belly to notice. Keeping her eyes locked on the two devourers, she caught hold of Zephario, tugging on his arm to let him know the moment of departure was near.

  But before Candy could say a word, the pigs broke free, all of them squealing now.

  “Backs! Backs! Dumdum poogoos!” said the fooly fool.

  “Aw. Now lookee what youms done!” hollered Lummuk.

  “We should move. Now,” Candy said.

  “Good plan,” said Zephario.

  Pigs were jumping and scrambling under them and scrambling to free themselves of two stitchlings’ grips. The chaos was good news. It distracted the stitchlings long enough for Candy and Zephario to reach the door. Their luck, however, quickly ran out. At the last minute, Shaveos flung his claw about wildly and accidentally entangled itself in Candy’s hair. The stitchling turned to see what it had snagged. Its face went slack.

  “Uman Been!” the stitchling said.

  He turned Candy toward him, and she was treated to her first close-up view of a stitchling’s face. It was a mixture of genius and crudity: the stitches were large and uneven, but there was an uncanny realism in the way it moved. This was no simple brute. The Todo mud that gleamed in his eyeholes, forming his shiny-wet eyes, had intelligence in it.