Halfway down the stairs, he turned and looked back. Jambres was looking at him with a look that spanned thousands of years. Tom thought Jambres said, “Little Jannes,” or maybe it was “Hyndopheres,” but he could not be sure.
Billy Sea-Hen nodded, and said in the most conversational manner, as if they were strolling on the heath together, “Goodbye but only for now, Tommy Two-Fingers. Don’t you worry, me and Tat’head and the others, we’re like that old dumbledore, you’ll see — we’ll be back again safe as houses.”
Tom raised his hand, the one with only three fingers, then turned and stumbled down the rest of the stairs.
He hugged his uncle very hard, and then embraced his sister. The pendant around her neck glowed bright red.
“It is time,” intoned the Arch-Dean. He spoke in Yountish, too much and too fast for Sally to understand, especially with the echoes. The green-uniformed soldiers along the walls moved in towards the row of pillars. The Learned Doctors led by the Arch-Dean came to Barnabas, and then walked behind Barnabas as the merchant from Mincing Lane ascended the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, they confronted the Cretched Man and the Minders.
“I beg you one last time,” said the Cretched Man. “Do not do this thing. Use the key to close the two locks you have opened without permission, then return the key to me. I am the rightful possessor. Go no further with your desire to unlock the third lock. You will not succeed.”
The Arch-Dean laughed. “Your time is over. We have found a third and final Key-bearer. You yourself brought him to us. Think of that — such an irony has not been felt for ages.”
“I brought him to close the first two locks, not to open the third lock.”
“You claim to have the power to stop us, yet you hesitate.”
“You have grown wise in your captivity, but not so wise as to be blind in this final step,” answered the Cretched Man. “I can stop the Key-bearer from opening the final lock but only through persuasion, at which I have not succeeded. Stopping him by other means would break him.”
Barnabas stamped his foot, and said in his best clarifying tone, “Quatsch! Look here, the both of you. I don’t like being talked about while I am standing right in front of you, for one thing. For another, I hate being made to feel the ingot between the hammer and the anvil.”
The Cretched Man and the Arch-Dean both pulled up short. They had, in fact, almost forgotten Barnabas and the key in their mutual enmity.
“See here,” Barnabas said. “I am a man of business, and reckoned a good one where I come from, and I don’t think that will be any different here. So, a deal’s a deal. Pacta sunt servanda, as the old Tully said someplace. I came to be exchanged for Tom, which this Cretched fellow has done fair and square. My transaction, I might add, was with him. I don’t recall any third parties to the contract, no Learned Doctor specifically affixed thereto in any event.”
The Arch-Dean looked nonplussed.
“So,” continued Barnabas. “Much as I dislike the Cretched Man, frankly I don’t much trust him, but, sir Bishop, I trust you even less. But in business you only got to do the deal — doesn’t much matter if you like the fellow or not. The only claim on me is by the man in the funny coat. I will do what he asks me, since he did what I asked of him.”
How like his nephew, thought Jambres. Surely one day, I will be allowed to break bread with him.
“This is not a piece of business,” the Arch-Dean spat out the word. “The fate of our world is in your hands, you fool. If you insist on using business terms, then consider your acceptance of our first letter and the key itself as a binding contract between us. And there we explicitly told you not to deal with the Wurm or any of his agents, of which the Cretched Man is one.”
Jambres reared his sculpted head at this last characterization but said nothing.
Figs and farthings, thought Barnabas. Snakey bastard has a point. Damn it, how I wish Sedgewick were here to help us out. Friends aren’t acting so friendly, and foes might be friends, or at least not enemies.
“By the Mother,” said the Arch-Dean. “Key-bearer, do your duty, perform under your contract, and open the third lock — there, on the door!”
Barnabas took out the key. All eyes were on it. He went to the door. The Arch-Dean pointed to the top lock. Barnabas put the key in the lock.
“For the last time,” said the Cretched Man. “Do not turn the key. It is not the Nurturing Mother who will appear. She will slumber still. It is not time. The door must remain shut.”
Thought fragments raced through Barnabas’s mind: Cretched fellow seems sincere . . . but what about that dog with human hands, hey? And kidnapping Tom? . . . Tom? He tells me to heed his kidnapper . . . Bedlam! . . . But Tom is only a lad, what can he know? . . . Of course, so was I when I went out to Bombay, and then I thought myself a man. . . .
“Bah!” yelled the Arch-Dean. “Turn the key! Fulfill your contract!”
Contract, thought Barnabas. A sacred thing is a contract. Man’s word is his bond, and I gave mine, and I have never reneged before . . . no, once I did . . . and she must have cursed me forever for doing so, and I do not blame her . . . Oh Rehana, what I did was without excuse . . . I cannot fail again, with people who trust me as my Rehana did. . . .
Barnabas turned the key in the lock. “Click,” went the key, as if he were merely opening a drawer in the partners’ office.
“The doorknob,” said the Arch-Dean. A sigh, hoarse like winter wind and pointed like obsidian arrowheads, went up from all the Sacerdotes. Barnabas put his hand on the doorknob. It was very cold. He sensed a presence on the other side, something huge, ancient, and cruel, an immanity that had not been there until he turned the key. He took his hand off the knob.
“Don’t do it,” said the Cretched Man.
“The knob!” cried the Arch-Dean.
Barnabas saw a red sun and the lithe brown body of Rehana and smelled her rich, black hair — and he saw himself bowing down to his uncle’s threats.
He grasped the doorknob. The humming he’d heard when he took the key out of the box at Mincing Lane was in his head, but faintly. The notes were undermined and overwhelmed by a bass “whooooming” sound that seeped through the door from whatever was on the other side. Barnabas fought the sound and turned the knob.
The Arch-Dean and several of his colleagues shouldered their way past Barnabas and the Cretched Man, and began pushing the door into the moon. The door opened one foot, two feet, three feet. With each foot, the deep thrumming from within the moon on the other side grew louder. A cold wind flowed from the doorway. It raced out into the temple, scurried through the debris on the floor, tossed soldiers’ hats off, made the clocks chime for the first time in over a century. The Learned Doctors heaved on the door. It flew open. Wind roared out, knocking everyone but Jambres to their feet. The wind subsided but something else came out of the moon, a darkness that looked like Original Night. The doorway was entirely dark now, black with an absence of light. The wind died abruptly. The temple was silent except for the distant sound of wind and surf outside.
In the blackness that was the door in the temple-moon something moved, a dot of blazing white that sped towards the onlookers. As if coming from an immense distance yet covering that distance in seconds, the shape flew at the door, its whiteness shearing the darkness, not illuminating it. Out of the doorway flew a white owl with two streaming pendant-tails. Its eyes flamed yellow, with endlessly black pupils. Its beak was sharper than any sword ever forged in Damascus. The owl flew out of the doorway, growing larger once it crossed the threshold until it was ten feet tall. It circled the dome once and then hovered in the middle of the temple. Above its head was a bit of the darkness from beyond the door, a halo of Old Night.
“HOOOOOOOOOooooooo!!!!” it boomed, so that dust fell from the roof and the clock-chimes echoed. Everyone but Jambres and Sally shielded their eyes, cowered on the floor. Jambres’s ventricular coat pulsed. His face was frozen. Sally struggled against
her fear (“Sankt Jakobi, Sankt Nicolae . . .”) and forced herself to stand. James did it for me on the Essex, she thought. I can do this for Tom.
Without realizing it, she also had in mind Reglum throwing himself on the carkodrillos.
“NO!” screamed the owl, making itself heard in their native tongues in every head in the temple. The soldiers posted outside dropped their weapons and stood rooted to the ground, arms slack, with their minds filled by the image of themselves as small furry creatures hopelessly fleeing death from above.
“No,” said the owl, its vast wings effortlessly milling to and fro, wingtips sweeping the row of pillars around the moon on the pedestal. The wind had ceased to flow from the doorway but the wind created by the owl’s wings washed over them all. It smelled of offal.
The Arch-Dean raised his head to see the creature. “By . . . by the Mother,” he whispered.
“No,” said the owl. “She sleeps until her time of waking comes. That has not come because you have not completed your obligations. This you know yet you elected to pursue folly.”
The owl laughed, then boomed, “You try to break your yoke and tear off your bonds. You declare, ‘We will not serve!’”
Jambres stirred for the first time, and said in a low, controlled voice, “Someone else said that in another time and place.”
The owl, seeming to take notice of the Cretched Man for the first time, turned its sulfurous eyes on Jambres.
“YOOOOOOoooouuuu!” it hooted.
It laughed again its laughter of scythes, and said, “Of all mortals, you should know better than to quote these words back to me, who was there to first hear them spoken.”
Jambres did not shrink but said, “Yet my observation holds.”
“BAAAAAAHHHH!” boomed the owl. “Do not bandy words with me, gatekeeper! Once more you have failed. You have neither educated these sinners to their penance nor kept them sequestered until they have grown enough to reach enlightenment. I fault them less than you, warden, since they only act within the ambit of their limitations, while you . . . you have had far longer to reach the maturity of reflection necessary for your redemption.”
Jambres’s coat flared but he said naught.
“The fajet-tindo,” whispered the Arch-Dean, not sure if he meant the Cretched Man or the owl. “The Serpent of Rebellion.”
The owl swept the temple with his gaze.
“HEEEEED me,” it said. “You have not fully repented. Your flowers are ungathered in the grass. Your books are not yet written in full. Do not attempt to open the door again.”
The owl flew backwards, like a bee leaving a flower, floating back to the doorway.
“You, warden,” the owl said to Jambres. “Come with me. You need another lesson in how to execute your duties.”
Tom looked up at those words, looked right at the Cretched Man. The Cretched Man’s coat rippled, as if being annealed. Rigidly beautiful, Jambres walked towards the door. Behind him Billy Sea-Hen and Tat’head and the other Minders stood up and walked in the same direction. Jambres stopped, turned and shook his head. Billy Sea-Hen just smiled (Tom saw that plainly), shrugged, and walked forward. When all five Minders had reached Jambres, the Cretched Man turned and together they strode beneath the owl’s whirring wings and one by one passed through the door.
“No!” shouted Tom, lurching to his feet, staggering to the base of the pedestal.
Billy was the last in the line. He turned at the sound of Tom’s voice, winked, tipped his hat and then was obliterated by the darkness. For one second, Tom thought he saw a small glowing coal out beyond the door, but then it too was extinguished by the dark.
Sally ran to Tom. Behind them, Barnabas hobbled to his feet. Below them, Sanford and Fraulein Reimer yelled. The owl looked down. Sally thought she saw surprise in its eyes but, she added to herself, Who can tell with such beings? Sally, Tom, and Barnabas held hands and stared at the owl above them, an owl that filled a temple, its banner-tails dancing on the floor, its wings like a hundred-gyre of eagles. The owl stared back.
Sally heard the other voice first, caressing her heart. The voice was as deep as the deepest ocean, as old as the oldest rocks, yet as young as the newest chire of grass that springs up after the rain. It had no words of English, but the voice was vast, soothing, lush, each word like a garden blooming in an instant. An owl, even one as large as a ship, would be gently lost in that voice, would be just one small white speck in an endless green field.
“Not yet,” the voice said. “Wait. But soon, very soon. Make haste slowly.”
Sally understood. She knew who spoke to her. She knew that Tom and Uncle Barnabas heard the voice too. She knew that even though Tom and Barnabas heard the voice without understanding the words, it was enough.
The owl narrowed its eyes, like an eclipse of two suns. It too had heard. Sally wondered if it was surprised to hear that voice, or if it was surprised that Sally heard it too.
Sally said in a small but powerful voice that was heard throughout the Temple: “Go now, Owl, Serpent, Half-Fallen, Moon-Eater, Wurm. Close the door this one last time. But know that the next time the door opens, the door will remain open. And know that the time for the final opening comes soon. You know I speak the truth.”
The owl beat its wings. Frieze-work fell off the walls, the clocks rang crazily, an abattoir smell poured over everyone. It glared at Sally and snapped its beak, the sound of swords being whetted.
“DO NOT PRESUME!” it hooted so that all the men and women on the floor had to stop their ears, and those outside reeled backwards.
Sally, holding Tom’s injured hand on one side and holding Barnabas’s hand on the other, stared back. She smiled. The owl flapped its wings once, twice, taking itself to the top of the dome. Down it swooped, pounced on Sally, Tom, and Barnabas. Sally felt her uncle and her brother flinch but she would not let them go. Hold fast! she shouted into their minds. The owl’s talons came down upon them.
Sally opened her mouth and a note of pure music flew from it, a child of the wind that runs through the eternally green meadows at the beginning of our memories. One note the wind gave her, and the Mother laughed, and Sally laughed — and the owl’s talons were stopped a foot from their faces, rebuffed. The owl swept its wings backwards, its eyes like comets under a dark halo. Its beak was opening and closing as it lurched back up towards the dome. One of its swallowtails slashed the air in front of Sally, feathers like silken razors. It hovered for a moment. Sally saw the doubt in its eyes, the anger . . . and the fear.
“YOOOOUUUU!?!” the owl said. But its brazen tone was shivered into shards within the still-echoing note that Sally had sung. The owl circled the dome again, passed directly over Sally, hissing. It turned in mid-air, and shrunk until it was no larger than an owl that hunts in a deserted barn. It swooped to the door, pinnet-tail streaming and whistling. As it passed the threshold, the owl roared with the voice of a lion. It drew the darkness from the door mouth with it, back into the infinite space beyond. The door slammed shut.
Sally, Tom, and Barnabas stood hand in hand facing the doorway. They trembled but they laughed, looking at each other with eyes bright as stars.
“You handled ’im, Sally!” said Barnabas, shaking. Somewhere in the back of his mind, or at the roots of his heart, he felt his mother’s touch. He had heard before the note Sally sang, known it as a zephyr in Edinburgh lullabies. “Figs and feathers, you handled ’im, girl!”
Tom fell to his knees. Sally knelt down and put her arms around him. “Do not cry, brother,” she said. “Today we were three and that was enough to withstand the Wurm. I think we are supposed to be five, and, when we are, we will be strong enough to defeat him.”
Nexius and Reglum were with them now, followed by Dorentius Bunce and Noreous Minicate. Looking over Reglum’s shoulder, Sally saw Sanford and Fraulein Reimer standing side by side, each pointing a pistol at the doorway. Sally heard yelling and running throughout the temple as the Learned Doctors and the soldiers recovered
from the onslaught. Above the din was the voice of the Arch-Bishop, arguing with Nexius. Blue-clad Marines were running to support Nexius. From outside the temple came the sound of shots. Inside the Temple all went still for a second and then blue and green uniforms scrambled for positions among the pillars. One shot rang out, then another. Muzzle flashes were seen in the dimness. The McDoons stood rooted, unable to comprehend what was happening. Sally had no more notes to sing today, and felt naked against this unexpected threat. She saw a Marine spin and fall, and saw green soldiers lying motionless on the floor.
The Learned Doctor with the rusty streak in her hair ran towards them. She held the tube that caused the Cretched Man to yield. The tube glowed a faint purple at the end facing the McDoons. Sally could not move. She was vaguely aware of Tom and Barnabas at her side. Her mind was a blank, drained after the confrontation with Wurm. She scrabbled for her St. Morgaine but that was all she could manage. The Learned Doctor pointed the tube at Sally, raised her other hand to work a lever on top of the tube. Sally dove for the floor but it was too late. As she did so, two things happened: Reglum darted in front of her, sword drawn, yelling at the top of his lungs, desperately lunging at the woman with the tube; and there was a loud cracking sound behind Sally, followed by a hot searing sensation just over her head. As Sally hit the floor, she had a blurry image of Reglum smashing into the Learned Doctor, and the woman crumpling.
Sally looked up from the floor. Behind her stood Fraulein Reimer, holding a smoking pistol. She followed the probable trajectory of the fraulein’s shot, and found herself looking at two bodies on the floor: Reglum and the woman with the tube. Neither moved. The tube lay a few feet from the woman’s outstretched hand. Reglum’s sword, unbloodied, lay on the other side of their bodies.
The Choir Boats Page 26
