Jacob was now wearing an old-fashioned bottle green engine driver’s uniform, complete with peaked cap, with the front of his silver-buttoned jacket hanging open to reveal a T-shirt bearing the legend Engineers Get You There Quicker. He looked very sharp and focused, with hardly any blue-gray trails of ectoplasm following him when he moved. Jay was back in the full finery of his original period and looked almost as excited as his future ghostly self, but there was something in his eyes … I folded my arms across my chest and gave them both my best hard stare.
“Nice trick,” I said coldly. “I’ll bear it in mind for if we ever need to give someone a coronary. I didn’t know you could do that, Jacob.”
“You’d be surprised at what you can do when you’re dead, boy,” Jacob said cheerfully. “It’s really very liberating.”
Jay looked severely at his future self. “I’m boasting again and I do wish I wouldn’t. We have a plan to save the day, Eddie.”
“Of course,” I said. “Doesn’t everyone? Does your plan by any chance involve blowing up the whole damned universe?”
“Well, no,” said Jay. “Not as such.”
“I like it already,” I said.
“Oh, you tell him, Jacob,” said Jay. “You know you’re dying to, and you’ll only butt in and interrupt if I try. I apparently become very grumpy after my death.”
“Try hanging around this family for centuries,” Jacob growled. “They could make a pope swear and throw things. Listen, Eddie, we have a way to stop the Invaders in their tracks. We’re going to use the Time Train.”
“You’ve only just started describing your plan, and already I hate it,” I said. “Going back in time to undo present events never works. Never never never. It always ends up causing more problems than it solves.”
“Do calm down, Eddie,” said Jay. “Your face has gone a very funny colour, and it really can’t be good for you.”
“We are not going back in time to stop the Invaders before they start their plans against us,” Jacob said patiently. “I know enough about time travel to know that wouldn’t work. I watch television. No, we’ve got a much better idea. We’re going to use the Time Train to sneak up on the Invaders’ home dimension, and attack them from the one direction they won’t be expecting: the past!”
“Run that by me again,” I said. “I think I fell off at the corner.”
“It’s really very simple,” said Jay.
“No it isn’t,” I said. “No explanation that begins that way ever is.”
“Look,” said Jacob, prodding me firmly in the chest with a surprisingly solid finger. “The Invaders come from a higher dimension than ours, right? That means to them, time is just another direction to move in. We can use the Time Train to access their dimension and attack their homeworld from the past! They’ll never see us coming!”
“They’re bound to have hidden their homeworld,” said Jay, “inside some pocket universe or dimensional fold, confident no lesser beings from some lower dimension could ever find it. But Jacob is dead, while I’m still alive, and together we can see things no one else can.”
“Only we could hope to survive the stresses of a time journey like this,” said Jacob. “Because we’re the same person in two different states of existence. It has to be us, Eddie. Tony’s already reworked the engine so it will soak up time energies as it travels. So that when we finally get to the Invaders’ homeworld… we can drive the Train into it at full speed and release all the time energies at once, blowing the whole nasty place apart like a firecracker in a rotten apple!”
“End of homeworld, end of Invaders!” said Jay.
“An interesting plan,” I had to admit. “Even if my mind does seem to just slide off the edges when I try to grasp it. But are you sure you can find the Hungry Gods’ homeworld?”
“You can’t hide things from the dead,” said Jacob. He looked at Molly and then at me, and didn’t say anything.
“You have to let us try,” said Jay. “This… is how I die. Jacob finally remembered. I don’t mind, really. It’s… a good death. Spitting in the face of the enemy, saving the innocent; for the family. A Drood’s death.”
“And this is what I’ve waited for, all this time,” said Jacob. “This is my end, at last. None of you here could hope to do this. Only me, and me. Jay dies striking down our enemies, and somehow ends up here, in the past, as the family ghost, waiting to do it again. And I… finally get to go on, to whatever’s next. I’m quite looking forward to it. I’ve grown awfully thin, down the centuries, and I’m really very tired.”
“Go for it,” I said. “The Time Train is all yours.”
“You still have to keep the Invaders occupied, distracted, so they won’t think to look for us coming,” said Jay.
“I think we can do that,” I said.
Martha surprised me then, by stepping forward to face Jacob. “Go with God, Jacob,” she said. “I shall miss you.”
He grinned crookedly. “Then you should aim better. Good-bye, great-great-great-great-granddaughter.” He looked around the War Room. “You are all my children, my descendents, and I have always been so very proud of you.”
He and Jay turned as one and strode back into the reflection in the Merlin Glass. For a moment they moved eerily among our watching reflections, and then the image in the Glass changed to show them walking through the old hangar at the back of the Hall. They climbed up into the gleaming black cab of the Time Engine and waved good-bye to Tony, who waved back with tears in his eyes, knowing he’d never see his beloved Ivor again. Jacob manipulated the controls with professional skill, while Jay shovelled crystallised tachyons into the boiler with fierce nervous energy. He was going to his death, and he knew it; and knowing he was coming back as Jacob probably didn’t help.
Ivor lurched suddenly forward. The time pressure peaked and Jacob put the hammer down. The Time Train accelerated forward, disappearing at speed in a direction no human eye could follow; and just like that, they were gone.
I waited for a moment, looking around me, but nothing changed. So I just got on with my own plan. What else could I do?
Molly and Subway Sue took my small group off to a relatively quiet corner of the War Room so they could explain the Damnation Way to us. There was a certain amount of disagreement between them over details, the two of them almost coming to blows over certain obscure references and sources until I separated them, but they seemed firm enough on the main outline. They started at the beginning, which turned out not to be the Damnation Way itself.
“You see,” said Subway Sue, “in order to understand that, you have to understand the Rainbow Run.”
“The Rainbow Run is an expression, or manifestation, of the old Wild Magic,” said Molly. “A race against time and destiny, to save the day. It’s not given to many to attempt it, and even fewer survive to see it through successfully to the end. I don’t know anyone who’s even tried since Arthurian times. But it is said…that anyone who can run the hidden way, follow the Rainbow to its End, will find their heart’s desire. If they’re strong enough, in heart and soul and will.”
“It’s not how fast you run,” said Subway Sue. “It’s how badly you need it. How much you’re prepared to endure … to run down the Rainbow is not given to everyone. And there are those who say that what you find at the Rainbow’s End isn’t necessarily what you want, but what you need.”
“The Rainbow Run is an ancient ritual,” said Molly. “Older than history.”
“Older than the family?” I said.
“Older than humanity, probably,” said Molly. “It’s … an archetype, a primal thing, spanning realities. A thing of dreams and glories, grail quests and honour satisfied. One last chance to defy the Dark, and snatch victory for the Light. Or so they say.”
“Who created it?” I said.
“Who knows?” said Subway Sue. “This is the old Wild Magic we’re talking about. Some things… just are. Because they’re needed.”
“So…why can’t we use the
Rainbow Run, instead of the Damnation Way?” I said.
Molly and Subway Sue looked at each other. “Because we don’t know how to find it,” Molly said quietly. “We’re not…good enough, pure enough.”
“The Damnation Way is the underside, the dark reflection of the Rainbow Run,” said Subway Sue. “The other face of some unimaginable coin.”
“Look,” said Molly. “Forget the spiritual crap, and keep it simple. The Many-Angled Ones, the Hungry Gods, come from a higher dimension, right? Well, if there are higher dimensions than ours, then it stands to reason that there must also be lesser, lower dimensions. The broken universes, where natural laws never really got their act together. The Damnation Way can take us through one such world. And you don’t run there, you walk. For as long as it takes. This isn’t about speed, it’s about stamina.”
I could feel myself scowling. No one else was saying anything. They were all looking at me. “We really don’t have a lot of time,” I said. “Truman’s tower is pretty much complete, and probably activating even as we speak. The Hungry Gods could come through any time now.”
“And you have no other means of getting into Truman’s base,” said Molly. “His defences will keep out anything, except the Damnation Way.”
“Time means something different in the lower universes,” said Subway Sue. “Theoretically, we should emerge inside Truman’s base at exactly the same moment as we leave here.”
I could feel my scowl deepening. “Yeah, that worked out really well with the Time Train…”
“That was science; this is magic,” Molly said quickly. “The Damnation Way follows ancient laws, written into the bedrock of reality itself.”
“Oh…what the hell,” I said. I had to stop scowling because it was making my head hurt. “We have to get to the tower, and I don’t see any other way.” I looked at the others: Mr. Stab and the Sarjeant-at-Arms and Giles Deathstalker. “Given the… uncertain nature of what we’re about to do, I don’t feel right about ordering you to join me. I wouldn’t be going if I didn’t think I had to. So this is strictly volunteers only. Anyone wants to say no, or even Hell no, I quite understand.” I looked from face to face, but they all stared calmly back. Giles looked ready for action, as always, the Sarjeant looked ready for a fight, and Mr. Stab…looked like he always looked.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Time to save the world, again.”
To enter the Damnation Way, it turned out, you have to go down. All the way down. Molly and Subway Sue worked old magic together, swaying and chanting in tongues inside a chalked circle. The Armourer watched closely, fascinated. Giles Deathstalker watched with a curled lip, as though he didn’t really expect anything to happen. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but even so I was startled when a standard, very ordinary elevator rose calmly up out of the floor in front of Sue and Molly. The thing pinged importantly to announce its arrival, and then the doors slid open, revealing a standard elevator interior. I walked around the door a few times. From the front; a waiting elevator. From the back; it wasn’t there. Giles walked around it a few times too, muttering about subspace engineering and pocket dimensions. Whatever kept him happy.
Martha glared at the elevator that had just appeared inside her nice normal War Room. “Why didn’t that…thing set off any of our alarms?”
“Because it’s not really here, as such,” said Molly. “I mean, it’s a magical construct that just looks like an elevator because that’s a concept our limited minds can cope with.”
“Your senses aren’t equipped to recognise things like this,” said Subway Sue. “So they show you…the nearest equivalent.”
“Right!” said Molly. “This is really old magic, remember, Wild Magic, from when we all lived in the forest.”
“I still don’t see why it has to look like an elevator,” I said, just a bit sulkily, feeling way out of my depth.
“Group mind consensus,” Molly said briskly. “Be grateful. It could have come as an escalator. Hate those things.”
I sighed, deeply and meaningfully, and stepped cautiously inside the elevator. The steel floor was firm under my feet, and the mirrored walls showed I was scowling again. I tried hard not to, in case it upset the troops. They followed me in, with various amounts of confidence, and when we were all in we filled the damn thing from wall to wall, with hardly any room to move, unless one of us breathed in to make a bit of space. Molly made a point of pressing her breasts against my chest, for which I was quietly grateful. The doors closed unhurriedly, and without any instruction or warning, the elevator started down.
We seemed to descend for a long, long time. I could feel the movement, sense it in my bones and in my water, even though the elevator made no sound and had no controls or indicators. It grew slowly hotter inside the elevator, until we were all sweating profusely and trying unsuccessfully to back away from each other. And then the heat just vanished, gone in a moment, and the temperature in the confined space plummeted, growing colder and colder, until our breath steamed on the air and we all huddled together to share our body warmth. And then that was gone too, and I felt neither hot nor cold, as though we had left such things behind us.
Then, the sounds. From outside the steel walls came noises, from far away at first, then drawing inexorably closer. Roars of rage, howls and screams, and something very like laughter, but not quite. Basic, primal emotions given voice, without the burden or restraint of conscious thought. The horrid empty voices we hear in childhood nightmares, from things we know would hurt us, if they could only find us… The voices sank into words, and that was worse, as though plague or fate or evil had learned to talk. They circled the descending elevator, coming at us from this side and that, rushing in and falling back, threatening and pleading, mocking and begging, trying to persuade us to open the elevator doors and let them in. I can’t remember exactly what they said, and I’m glad.
Some of us tried putting our hands over our ears, to keep the voices out, but it didn’t work. We weren’t hearing them with our ears.
We left the voices behind, their cheated screams receding into the distance, and after that there was only silence, and the descent, and the feeling of something really bad drawing slowly closer. At the end, there was no sensation of stopping. The elevator doors just slid open, without cause or warning, and the standard colourless light spilled out onto a terrible darkling plain. None of us moved. It didn’t feel safe. What we could see of the world outside was dark and dismal, the only light a deep dull purple, like a bruise. I moved reluctantly forward, stepping out of the elevator, and one by one the others followed me. A terrible, grinding oppression fell across me the moment I left the comfortingly normal light of the elevator, as though I was suddenly carrying all the troubles of the world on my shoulders. There was no sound anywhere, as such, but something like an unending roll of thunder growled in the air, like a long bass note you could only hear with your soul, like a threatened storm you somehow knew had been on its way forever.
We all stood together, keeping close just for the comfort of living company in the face of this dead or dying world. We didn’t belong in a place like this, and we all knew it. And then the elevator doors slid shut, cutting off the bright, healthy light, and we all spun around just in time to see the elevator disappearing down into the cracked stone ground; leaving us alone in the awful place it had brought us to. A purple stained plain that seemed to stretch away forever in whatever direction I looked.
It felt…like the end of the world. A darkling plain under an endless night. Up above, a bloodred moon hung low in the sky, where one by one the stars were going out. Already there were great dark gaps in the unfamiliar constellations. The endless plain was bare stone, marked here and there with huge craters, long jagged cracks, and deep crevices. Like the bottom of the ocean, after all the seas have boiled away. There was a crevice nearby, a long jagged line with crumbling edges. I moved over to it and stared down into the gap. It seemed to just fall away forever. I made some kind of sound, and Molly w
as quickly there to take my arm and pull me back from the edge. As though the sound of my voice had triggered something, strange twisting vegetation, rough creepers with huge dark leaves covered with pulsing red veins, curled slowly up out of the crevice. Molly and I backed away, and the twitching plants tried to follow us, but already they were rotting and falling apart. Alive and dying at the same time, as though they hadn’t developed enough to hold a form properly.
Other cracks and crevices held crimson magma, seething sluggishly, but even though they weren’t that deep, the magma’s heat didn’t rise up to the surface, as though the heat lacked the strength to travel that far. The air itself was thin, and disturbingly lacking in any smell. I clapped my hands sharply, and there was no echo. I was pretty sure the sound wouldn’t travel far either. We all stuck close together, looking around us, because we were the only living things in this running-down world.
“This is the place where quests fail,” Subway Sue said quietly. “Where love is always unrequited, promises are broken, and only bad dreams come true.”
“Then how the hell are we supposed to succeed in our mission?” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. He sounded like he wanted to be angry, but it was just too much of an effort.
“We brought something of our own universe with us,” said Molly. “Enough to give us a fighting chance. But the longer we stay here, the sooner that insulation will wear away. We really need to get moving.”
“This is the broken world,” said Subway Sue, almost hypnotised. “The shoddy lands, the abandoned territory…”
“All right,” I said. “You’re starting to get on my nerves now, Sue. This is a bad place; got it. Now get over it, and tell me where the hell we’re supposed to head for.”
She looked at me with big, unfocused eyes. “Say the name, Eddie Drood. Say the name of where you want to get to.”
“Just do it, Eddie,” Molly murmured in my ear. “She’s more in tune with this place than I am. She understands the hidden ways; they talk to her.”
Daemons Are Forever sh-2 Page 43
