by Caro King
He climbed for a long time up the pitted, ice-cold face of the rock until finally he made it to the ridge that led through the heart of the Heart. From there he went on, hurrying across the terrible nothing, trying not to notice the way the silence was so utterly silent.
At last he reached the other side, where the Raw thickened again and other ridges reared up on either side, spiralling away across the scarred and pitted Land. On this side of the nothing, he could hear the eerie voice of the river and suddenly he remembered. When they had been travelling through the Raw on their rafts, they had passed something that loomed over the banks of the river.
Something amazing.
Something that reached the sky.
Looking up, Jibbit saw it, rearing through the mist in a tower of towers, light grey against the white and most definitely there. Although he had conquered his fear of the ground, it didn’t mean he wasn’t longing to be high again. And what was ahead was most certainly high.
Jibbit’s heart leapt with joy and he hurried on towards it.
34
Before the Sky Turns Black
Nin had woken up feeling well, but as fragile as glass. Her memory of the last day was back too, and although it was painful and frightening to think about Seth, Vispilio and the skinkin, sleep had put some distance between her and the events and that helped to keep the horrors at bay.
As soon as she had told about seeing Morgan Crow and about his prediction, Taggit had bundled them all into a cart belonging to one of the townsfolk. The cart was harnessed to an ancient horse that seemed to Nin to be all bone structure and nostrils topped off with a worn-down ridge of mane. It set off at a brisk pace, taking them to find Simeon Dark.
The Dancing Circle was high on a range of hills that lay between Hilfian and the remains of the Savage Forest. They had long ago rattled through a narrow pass in the lower hills to the north of the town, curved around the wall of Raw and headed east. For some time the land had been rising steadily, although the slope was gentle enough not to slow the cart down by more than a little. It was getting steeper though.
‘Accordin’ to Crow, the last sorcerer will arrive at the Circle before the sky turns black,’ said Taggit. ‘But that don’t mean Dark will be himself. He’ll still be in disguise.’
‘But we’ll know him because he’s there, right? And once we know him, the spell will break and it will all work out.’ Nin frowned. ‘I suppose the sky turning black means night falling?’ she went on doubtfully, adding a sharp ‘ow’ as the cart rattled over an extra bumpy bit.
She sent a glance up at the sky, currently a soft-looking blue spotted here and there with patches of cloud like becalmed ships, then touched the shadow spell around her arm, feeling its cool and silky spiral shift restlessly. Ever since she had woken up it had been edgy, as if it knew the search might be coming to an end.
Taggit gave her a questioning look. ‘What else could it be?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s a prediction isn’t it? And predictions shouldn’t be that tidy.’
‘She’s got a point,’ said Jonas. He looked pale and Nin guessed that the wound in his side – mostly healed by Galig’s magic, but still tender – was not responding well to being thrown about in a wooden-wheeled cart.
‘After all,’ he went on, ‘look at “a tide of golden darkness”. Hardly clear, and yet it was perfect for Strood’s tiger-man army.’
‘Dik fikik tik skikik.’
‘Eh? Oh yeah. The skinkin. I guess “carrying death to one” about covers that, right?’ Nin looked thoughtful. ‘And wasn’t there something about “when there is life again in the Heart, so shall the lost be found and the ruined made whole”. No wait! That was Azork just trying it out.’
‘Erm, guys,’ said Jonas suddenly. His voice had an edge to it. ‘Call me daft, but I think the sky is due to turn black sooner than tonight. Look, on the horizon and headed this way!’
Jonas was right. Along the eastern skyline, in the direction they were travelling stretched a thin band of inky darkness.
‘It doesn’t look like normal rain clouds,’ said Nin, ‘but I can’t put my finger on why.’
‘It’s not the Storm.’ Jonas spoke firmly.
‘Whatever it is, it’s comin’ this way fast,’ said Taggit softly, ‘and when it gets here the sky is gonna turn black all right.’ He pulled the horse to a standstill. ‘Thank Galig, we’re nearly at the Dancing Circle, but we can’t take the cart up this last slope, it’s too rough. We’ll have to hurry if we want to make it before that does!’
‘What I wanna know,’ muttered Stanley, ‘is what Strood’s gonna do next? Somefin’ nasty, o’ course, but what?’
He was studying the wheel ruts cut into the grass in front of them. He and Dunvice had survived the long night after the battle by hiding out in a hut on the edge of town. Now they were following the tracks of the cart carrying the Redstone girl and her friends.
Dunvice snorted irritably, as if she didn’t care.
‘Yore just as scared of ‘im as the rest of us,’ grumbled Stanley – recklessly in view of her current mood.
‘You’re an idiot, Stanley,’ Dunvice snarled. ‘I’m not scared of him. He’s back at the House. What I’m scared of is the thing right behind us.’
Stanley blinked as chunks of thought began to shift about in his brain. The feeling of despair that had dogged him all morning, the way Dunvice kept glancing nervously over her shoulder, the rustles in the undergrowth that he had thought was the breeze.
‘Great Galig help us,’ he muttered. His blood froze in his veins. The chill didn’t so much run down his spine as settle in and start a family. ‘The … the …’
‘Skinkin,’ hissed Dunvice. ‘It’s after us. Or me more like. I’m the fool who kept it in a cage.’
‘But it’s meant to kill the girl?’
‘It failed. Didn’t you hear that hideous scream last night? Somehow it failed and now it’s grown a will of its own. Strood’s made a new Dread Fabulous to terrorise what’s left of the Drift.’ She snarled again, froth dribbling at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were the eyes of a wolf at bay. ‘I’ll bet the evil-hearted son of a gutterdog knew what he was doing too. The skinkin was a sick, hellish experiment. And now the thing KNOWS WHO I AM. We’re following the girl for me, not for Strood. Finding her may be my only hope. Maybe if it sees her again it will forget about me.’ She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes were like wild fires, hot and yellow with fear and rage all mixed up.
Behind them the long grass waved and rustled. Stanley stood for a moment, taking in the world. He was taking it in because with the skinkin on their trail it had dawned on him that this might be the last chance he got to look at it.
Around them, the grass was spotted with buttercups that shone like drops of melted gold. There was another, shaggy-headed bloom too, as bright a blue as a summer sky, and suddenly Stanley wanted more than anything to know what that bloom was called. The grass and the flowers bent in the breeze and he could hear the soft rustle of their movement. The meadow was hemmed on one side by a wood of dark trees, and from its centre rose a wall of Raw that sent misty snakes reaching into the sky. Stanley could smell its cold iron scent on the air. Along the skyline he could see other stretches too, white smudges as if someone had rubbed out part of the landscape. Even so the Land was beautiful. So beautiful that he thought his heart would break with the loss of it. With the knowledge of all the time he had wasted not noticing.
I joined the wrong side, he thought, and regret filled him up to overflowing.
‘What’s that,’ muttered Dunvice suddenly, ‘that horrible cloud coming this way?’
Looking east, Stanley saw a strip of blackness racing across the sky, casting a shadow over the Land as it sped towards them. He had seen the Maug close up many times and as soon as he saw the way the inky mass coiled and moved, he knew exactly what it was. Not clouds. Death. Strood’s Death to be precise.
At the same time he was aware of steal
thy movement behind them. Or rather, behind him because Dunvice had taken off and was running. He felt a chill flow over him, like misery made liquid. He dropped to his knees.
Something leapt past him. It moved in great springs, seeming to fly when it was off the ground, and barely touching the earth where it landed before it was off again. It was shrouded in shadows, but he got a sense of its thin, skeletal body and of eyes …
Dunvice was screaming as she ran, directionless, just heading for anywhere that wasn’t here. The wolf was all gone from her now and she was a blubbering wreck, stumbling, falling, picking herself up to run a little further. She kept turning to run backwards, as if facing it would help, as if she couldn’t bear to have it behind her. And then she fell and didn’t get up and the thing … Skinkin … landed on top of her and sat on her chest, its eyes that weren’t eyes pinned to hers, crushing her heart with loneliness and fear.
Stanley staggered to his feet and ran, half backwards because he couldn’t bear the thought that the thing might be behind him and he had to keep looking to see. Something caught at his foot and he tripped. His vast Grimm bulk crashed to the ground, face first, arms spreadeagled. Shuddering, he lay there, waiting for death at the merciless stare of the skinkin. It was all up for him, he was sure of it.
‘Oy! Stanley,’ yelled a voice.
A hand grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and hauled him up. Hauled him so up that his feet dangled for a moment before whoever it was planted him back on the ground.
Half-sobbing, Stanley looked up into the Halloween face of the ex-gravedigger.
‘Taggit? Taggit Sepplekrum?’
Behind Taggit were other shapes. Stanley could see the pony and trap now. It had been hidden by an outcrop of shrubs. A whole gaggle of people were running away from the trap, heading off up the steeper slope of the hill and over its top. He could see the girl and the boy and the mudman and a great knobble shape that had to be Floyd. At the sight of his old friend, Stanley felt something bubble up in his chest.
Without thinking, he joined in, following Taggit and the others as they thundered towards the Dancing Circle, determined to get there before the flood of darkness overtook the sky.
Nin was running hard to keep up with the others. The shadow spell was a ribbon of purple fire on her arm, constantly moving, twisting with energy. Dark will be there, she told herself, he has to be there.
Over the crest of the hill the land dipped sharply and then levelled out to a wide stretch of green grass. Ahead of them, on the plateau, she could see a ring of trees. All dead, that much was obvious from their bone-white trunks and naked branches. Against a background of faded blue, the pale forms reached up to the sky. Their shapes were so strange she had a horrible moment where she didn’t recognise them as trees, but saw them as if they were the skeletons of people, struck suddenly dead in the middle of a complicated dance. Each one had a twisted look – some bending, some reaching – and their branches were like arms flung out and up. As she drew closer she thought she could see the shapes of faces in their trunks.
They were Fabulous, once, she thought. Alive and Fabulous.
‘Tree Lords,’ panted Floyd in her ear. ‘Kings of the Forest. ‘Ullo, Stanley.’
‘’Ullo, mate,’ said Stanley falling in beside him. He looked bloody and battered and his eyes had sunk so far into his face they were barely visible, but he was grinning away as if something heavy had been taken off him. ‘Wha’s up then?’
‘We’re gonna find Simeon Dark, see. Stop Strood.’
‘Right-oh,’ said Stanley, humbly but happily. ‘Count me in.’
He glanced nervously at Taggit and Jonas, but they were too busy running to worry about the past. It was gone now, wiped away by this last mad dash to save the Drift, if not forever, then at least for another day.
Coming to a breathless halt inside the circle of trees, they watched the mass of inky cloud racing towards them. The table of land on which the Dancing Circle stood was halfway down the steep plunge of the hill and Nin could see the Drift laid out before her, rolling away to the east. The Savage Forest was a brown scar cutting across the landscape, but before and beyond it were meadows and woods and the sparkling strip of the river to the south. A white smudge on the horizon was probably the Heart.
Over it all, the strange cloud flowed across the sky in a tidal wave of liquid black, casting shadows as it came. Far on the skyline, a thin band of blue showed where the mass of cloud ended.
‘There’s something familiar about the way it moves,’ she said.
Stanley cleared his throat. ‘Strood’s Deff,’ he offered. ‘Dunno ‘ow, but it’s the Maug. See ‘ow the shadows seem t’ drip off it? ‘Ow it swirls in the air like a great flood o’ spilled ink?’
‘Of course,’ said Jonas softly, stepping towards Nin.
Floyd and Taggit did the same. They didn’t know that Strood had sent the flock to Hilfian with no stops on the way, and they thought it was looking for Nin. They gathered around her protectively, overshadowing her with their bulk as if they could hide her. There was no point in running because the Maug would be faster, and besides, they were here to find Simeon Dark, their last and only hope.
‘It won’t see ‘er,’ muttered Taggit suddenly. ‘It’s flyin’ too ‘igh.’
Outside the Dancing Circle, something rustled in the long grass. Stanley heard it and flinched. It’s watching, he thought. Skinkin is here and it’s watching. He realised that this was the creature’s last chance to die. If Nin failed, then the Drift would be dead in a day or so and, as everything died with it, Skinkin would get the death it longed for. But if she succeeded … if she found Simeon Dark and he put a stop to Strood, and the Drift lived on for a little longer, then there really would be a new Dread Fabulous to roam the dying landscape, chilling the hearts of all who heard it scream.
Skerridge sent a glance around the circle at Nin, Jonas, Jik, Floyd, Taggit, and Stanley as they stood anxiously waiting for Simeon Dark to arrive before Strood’s flying Death did. It dawned on him that, including himself, there were seven of them, an echo of the Seven Sorcerers and the Final Gathering that had changed the world and given it Arafin Strood. The thought made his bones tingle. It seemed right, somehow, that this group of seven players in the great game of Ending Strood should be here. Even Stanley, though he had been so long on the other side.
As the chill shadow swept relentlessly towards them, Skerridge shivered. But it wasn’t only because of the Death Flock. The sorcerer would be in the Dancing Circle, Crow had said, before the sky turned black. The seven people currently in the circle had all arrived before the Death Flock filled the heavens with its inky darkness and there wasn’t a lot of time left for anyone else to show up. The conclusion was inescapable.
‘Dark’s one of us, ain’t ‘e?’ he said. ‘’E’s already ‘ere an’ we just ‘ave t’ work out which of us it is!’
He sent a penetrating look at Jonas. He’d been wondering about the boy ever since the Galig’s sword incident. So did Taggit and Nin. Stanley took a surreptitious glance at Floyd, who was watching Nin. Jonas shot a look at Jik who was staring thoughtfully at the sky.
‘There’s still a moment yet,’ said Taggit calmly.
Now, the flock was almost overhead, its great mass eating up the sky and its shadow tearing over the last stretch of land towards them. Watching it, Jonas frowned.
‘Taggit’s right. It’s too high up! The Maug can’t be after Nin. If it was coming to the Circle it would be flying lower by now.’
‘I’m bettin’ it’ll fly right over our ‘eads,’ said Skerridge suddenly. ‘I’m bettin’ the evil git ‘as sent it to ‘Ilfian to finish off the survivors!’
Jonas paled. ‘Hen, Hilary!’
‘Right,’ said Nin firmly. She touched the spell on her wrist, trying to will the last sorcerer into view. Hilfian wasn’t far away, the Death Flock would be there in no time.
‘We need Simeon Dark, NOW. At least it can’t be Strood, because he’s n
ot …’
Through the pillars of the dancing trees, something blurred in the distance, heading towards the hill. It made Nin’s eyes hurt, as if she were trying to focus on two different places at once. She winced and blinked.
‘… here,’ she finished.
And suddenly, Strood was there, neatly dressed in a black silk suit that didn’t go at all with the leather boots strapped around his legs. He was standing an arm’sreach away from Nin, smiling at the circle of shocked faces. Everyone froze.
Overhead, the Death cloud swarmed on, spilling its chill shadow over the Circle and its occupants.
Turning the sky black.
35
Any One of Us
Strood glanced up at the inky flood as it swept over their heads. From it, shadows fell like rain. ‘I see my Maug flock is making good time,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Should be at Hilfian in minutes, I believe. That’s one thing sorted, anyway. I have other plans for all of you.’ He beamed at the stunned group. Nin backed away, her mind churning. Skerridge was right, one of the people in the Circle was really Dark in disguise.
It could be any one of us, she thought, even Strood.
And the awful thing was, Crow had said that Dark’s character wouldn’t have changed, not deep down. So if Dark was a sorcerer, and sorcerers loved power, then Strood had to be top of the list of possibilities.
Her heart turned to stone at the thought.
‘Well, now,’ Strood was saying. ‘I didn’t expect such an excellent turnout for my grand finale. Seven, I see. How … meaningful.’
Even as he spoke, he swung the crowsmorte rope from his neck in one easy movement, twirled it around his head and threw. It spun through the air, its stalks already alive and twisting, and hit Skerridge before anyone had a chance to register what was going on. The stalks twined, swiftly pinning the bogeyman’s arms to his sides as it began to put out shoots.
