by Neil Gaiman
“Hello, Scarabus,” I shouted, trying to sound confident, although my skin felt like it was crawling just as much as his. “Enjoying the cruise? There’s gonna be shuffleboard and bingo later.”
“I felt from the start that Neville and the Lady Indigo underestimated you, boy,” he called back up to me. “I would have been happy to have been proven wrong.” He put his hand on the small image of a scimitar tattooed on his left bicep, and suddenly there was a real scimitar, the oiled blade gleaming wickedly, in his right hand.
“You’ve destroyed the Malefic,” he said. “The conquest of the Lorimare worlds has failed. Lord Dogknife intends to deal with you all personally. Believe me, every one of you will wish you had gone in the pot instead.”
Good, I thought. Lord Dogknife was still on the ship.
Jai tapped me on the shoulder. I moved out of the way. Jai looked down at Scarabus and said, without raising his voice, but clearly audible across the whole huge hall, “We have a deal to offer you. To all of you.”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to make deals.” Scarabus slashed his scimitar through the air.
“But we are,” said Jai. “One of us will fight you. If our champion wins, you alone will escort us up to Lord Dogknife as free folk. If our champion loses, you may march us to Lord Dogknife as your prisoners.”
Scarabus stared at Jai for a heartbeat, and then he began to laugh. It was obvious why. From his point of view, whether we won or lost, we wound up in Lord Dogknife’s clutches. I couldn’t see that it made much difference either. One could call Lord Dogknife a lot of things, most of them uncomplimentary and none in his presence, but “stupid” wasn’t one of them.
“Bring on your champion!” Scarabus shouted.
Jai shook his head. “I need you, and all your men to swear not to harm us, if our champion wins.”
The soldiers looked at Scarabus. He nodded. “I so swear!” he shouted. “And I!” “And I!” repeated the soldiers one by one. They looked vastly entertained.
“I’m ready,” I said to Jai. I knew he had a plan, and I just hoped I’d learn what it was in time.
“You?” said Jakon with scorn in her voice. “Let me take him on. I’ll rip out his throat.”
“Excuse me?” said Josef. “Biggest? Strongest? Come on, guys, do the multidimensional math.”
“It’s not a matter of strength,” said J/O. “It’s a matter of swordsmanship. Has anyone here ever gone up against a scimitar?” None of us answered. “Well,” he continued, “I was an Olympic level fencer. And I’ve done historical reenactment sword fighting, with broadswords and short swords—and scimitars.”
“This is a magical location,” said Jai. “Strong magic. You are already weakened, and you are the smallest of us, J/O. This world does not recognize your abilities.”
“It’s not a matter of nanocircuitry and augmented reflexes,” said J/O. “It’s a matter of skill. I can do it.”
They all looked at me, and I looked at Jai. He nodded.
J/O looked as smug as a cyborg face can look. “Jo, can you fly me down there?”
She nodded.
“Ask them for a sword, then.”
I shrugged. “Hey!” I called. “Have you got a spare sword, for our champion?”
One of the soldiers produced a sword, took a few steps forward, put it down on the floor, stepped back again. The laughter increased.
“Thank you,” I said. “Enjoy the show. Remember to tip your waiter.”
Jo picked J/O up then, and she flew him down to the floor. He picked up the sword—which was almost as long as he was—and bowed low to Scarabus.
The soldiers laughed louder still. If it were possible to laugh oneself to death, we would have already won. Scarabus looked up at us. “What?” he asked. “Are you sending me the smallest child in the hope that I’ll be merciful?” He grinned widely. “I shall not be merciful!” he said. And then he raised his scimitar and charged.
He was good. He was very, very good.
Trouble was, it was obvious to all of us—even him, even the soldiers—that J/O was better. From the first moment their blades crossed, he was faster. Way faster. He seemed to know exactly where Scarabus’s scimitar was at any point in the fight, and he was always somewhere else.
The main thing I remember is just how loud the fight was. Every time the blades clashed, the room rang with the sound of metal banging metal. I can still hear it.
Pretty soon Scarabus seemed to abandon the whole idea of clever sword fighting and tried to win by taking advantage of his size and strength, slamming J/O with great blows that cyber-me barely seemed able to parry or block.
Then J/O tripped, and Scarabus lunged, bringing down the blade with all his might, shouting in triumph—and J/O moved, quick as thought, to one side, raising his sword as he did so.
The tattooed man impaled himself on J/O’s sword.
Scarabus’s victory cry was cut off. He didn’t scream—he didn’t make a sound. He just gripped the metal shaft and stared at J/O in amazement.
Then he fell to the floor—and all hell really broke loose.
His skin boiled. It was as if all the tattoos had been imprisoned there in his flesh somehow, and were released by his death. Monsters, demons, things for which I had no name—they all rose up and away from him, expanding and solidifying—
And then they shuddered and froze in mid-flight for an instant.
Then—it was like watching a film run backward. The tats were sucked back down in a whirlpool of ink and form, and in seconds were safely in his skin once more. Scarabus pushed himself up to his elbow, coughed red blood and wiped it away with one illustrated hand. “You just cost me a life,” he said to J/O. “A life! You little monster.”
From his place beside me, Jai asked calmly, “Will you accompany us to Lord Dogknife’s presence without harming us?”
“I have no choice,” said Scarabus. “I swore an oath. There’s too much raw magic in the air to go back on it now.”
Two soldiers helped him to his feet as Jai, Josef, Jakon and I joined J/O and Scarabus on the floor of the engine room.
“Good job,” I said to J/O. I meant it.
He shrugged, but his eyes shone with pleasure.
We started to run, as best we could, up a set of narrow wooden stairs. Every deck we passed showed chaos—people, and things that weren’t people, were panicking, running, screaming.
Scarabus cursed us, demanding that we slow down. He was somewhere behind us. We ignored him. The Malefic wouldn’t hold together much longer.
“More like the Titanic than the Malefic,” I said to Jo, trying to catch my breath. There were a lot of stairs.
“Titanic?”
“Big ship, from my Earth. Hit an iceberg. Went down. nineteen twelve, thereabouts.”
“Oh right,” she said. “Like the King John disaster.”
“Whatever,” I said, as a huge chunk of ship fell apart to one side of us, and went tumbling off into the Nowhere-at-All.
We kept running up steps and along corridors and up more steps. And then we were there, outside the auditorium, the place where I had seen Lord Dogknife last, an hour or so earlier.
And I stopped.
The others stopped, too. “Hey,” said Josef. “Something wrong?”
“He’s in there,” I said. “Don’t ask me how I know.”
Jai nodded. “Good enough,” he said.
Josef kicked down the door and we all went in.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE ROOM WAS DARK, the only source of light a firefly-green glow on the other side of the hall. We waited near the door, none of us willing to go farther in, letting our eyes adjust to the blackness.
And then a honeyed snarl whispered from the gloom. “Hello, children,” said Lord Dogknife. “Come to gloat, have we?”
We edged into the room. There was a black shape, outlined against the green glow.
“No,” said Jo. “We don’t gloat. We’re the good guys.”
There was a grunt. The glow light grew slightly brighter.
Now I could see what it was. The Walker souls, the ones from the jars, were hanging in the air, pressed together like an enormous swarm of bees. And facing them, with his hands plunged deep into the center of the swarm, was Lord Dogknife. He seemed to be holding the souls in place, but the effort was obviously costing him energy and effort. He was wheezing even more than usual, and he did not turn to look at us as we came closer.
“You creatures have caused me a great deal of trouble,” gasped Lord Dogknife. “Freeing these ghosts has cost me my ship, and the Lorimare invasion.”
“And FrostNight?” I asked.
He turned and looked at us then, and the swarm pulsed more brightly. One tiny light parted from the whole and skimmed toward Dogknife’s face, raking down his cheek. Dogknife almost seemed to stumble, and then pulled himself back to his feet and growled, “No. FrostNight will continue on schedule, whatever happens to me.”
There was a shudder and a crash as something below us fell apart. That was happening more and more lately.
“Why are you here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be in a lifeboat or something by now?”
It was like the bellow of a bull or the growl of a tiger. “Cannot you see, boy? This ridiculous simmered-up ball of spirits has me caught.” He groaned and heaved, trying, vainly, to pull away. The firefly-green light burned more brightly. It began to spread up his arms, oozing like slow green oil. It made sense. If he’d had me imprisoned in a glass bottle for years—having first had mind-mashing amounts of pain inflicted upon me, to help me “focus”—I know what I would have wanted to do. I would have wanted to hurt him, just like he hurt me. I would have kept him on the ship until it blew or crashed or did whatever sabotaged ships did in the Nowhere-at-All.
Josef touched my shoulder. “Joey? This is your deal. Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it fast.”
I nodded. Took a deep breath and walked forward. I faced those eyes, eyes that were the color of cancer, of bile, of venom. I looked into them, even though every cell of my body was telling me to run, and I said, “I want my mudluff back.”
His huge hyena face twisted briefly into an expression of amusement. I could see him calculating, realizing that he had something I wanted.
“Ahhhh. You didn’t come all the way back here just to witness my death. You want the creature, then?”
“Yes.”
A light flashed brightly in the swarm of souls, and Lord Dogknife flinched. “Then get me out of here, and I’ll give you your little friend back. But you must free me. Right now I couldn’t even get the prism if I wanted to. My hands are somewhat occupied.”
“Why should we trust you?” called Jakon.
“You can’t trust me. Nor should you—” He paused then, grunted and seemed to concentrate. Then he moaned. It was the closest I ever heard Lord Dogknife come to making a sound of weakness, of pain. I had to admit, it didn’t give me as much satisfaction as I might have hoped. Still, I was a long way from feeling sorry for him.
“If you want your pet back, then for the sake of all you hold holy,” he said, “help me. I will not last much longer. The pain is more than I can bear. And I can bear much pain . . .”
I hesitated. “I don’t even know if I can help. What if we just took back the prism?”
“Then,” he panted, “you would have a prism with an ouroboros imprisoned in it. You need me to open it.”
The ship gave a sudden lurch, and suddenly everything was at forty-five degrees. I lost my footing on the slippery wooden floor and slammed against the wall. I rolled out of the way barely in time to avoid Lord Dogknife, who hit the same spot, only a lot harder. He groaned and pulled himself back to his feet.
Tentatively, I put out my hand and pushed into the glowing light.
Hate.
Hate filled my mind.
The desire for revenge.
Each of the spirits, and there were hundreds of them in that swarm, still roiled and reeled and writhed in pain. They were full of hate; hate for the ship, hate for HEX, hate for Lord Dogknife, hate for Lady Indigo; hate was the only thing they had to distract them from the pain.
It was horrible. All over my mind, hundreds of versions of me were screaming.
I had to stop it.
“It’s over,” I told them, hardly knowing what I was saying. “No one’s going to hurt you again. You’re free. Let go. Move on.” I tried to think of good things to back up the thoughts I was sending them. Hot summer days. Warm winter nights by the fire. Thunderstorms. After a while I ran out of commonplace touchy-feely things and concentrated on family memories. The smell of Dad’s pipe. The squid’s smile. The stone around my neck, the one that my mother gave me before I left.
The stone . . .
For no reason I could name, I reached in my shirt and pulled it out. It hung in my hand, reflecting the flickers and pulses of the souls. And then I noticed something peculiar: The stone wasn’t just echoing the lights; it was resonating with them, harmonizing with the flickering colors, somehow. And I could see the firefly lights were changing; beginning to pulse and flare in sync. If it had been sound instead of light, I would have been hearing two contrapuntal melodies that were slowly merging.
They were almost ready to believe me. I knew it, somehow. Almost, but not quite.
“Stop fighting them,” I told Dogknife.
“What?”
“As long as you’re fighting them, they’ll keep trying to destroy you. Just stop fighting them and they’ll let you go.”
“Why”—he gasped—“why should I trust you?”
“We’ve just been over all that. Now stop fighting them.”
And he did. He relaxed every muscle, and I could almost hear the tension fade. See? I told the sparks in my head, barely realizing I wasn’t speaking out loud. Now let it go.
The light began to glow more and more brightly, filling the room with a blinding radiance. I closed my eyes, screwed them up tightly, but the light filled my head and my mind. I thought I heard something say good-bye, but I might have just imagined it. Then the light faded, and Mom’s stone went out as well.
The whole room went dark.
“Take it,” said Lord Dogknife’s voice. Something sharp and cold was pressed into my hand.
“Thanks,” I gasped, without thinking.
Something flickered and a nearby candelabra erupted into flames. Lord Dogknife stood next to me. His breath was a pestilence, and the pure hatred gleaming from his eyes could have put the sun out. He bared his teeth, so close that I could see things, like tiny, almost microscopic maggots, crawling on them.
“Do not thank me, boy,” that ruined snout whispered. “The next time we meet, I shall chew your face from your skull. I’ll floss with your guts. You have cost me so much. So do not—ever—thank me.”
He put his head on one side, as if he were listening for something, and then he howled loudly, like a maddened wolf.
“My associates are coming,” he said.
“Open Hue’s prism,” I told him, “or I’m calling back the spirits.”
His sharp teeth glinted in the candlelight. “You are lying. You cannot do that.”
He was right, of course. I couldn’t, but he couldn’t be sure of that. I cupped the stone pendant in my free hand. “Let’s find out,” I said.
His red eyes burned into mine, but he was the first to flinch. The prism began to feel ice-cold, like the hull of a space shuttle must. “It will not open completely in my presence,” growled Lord Dogknife. He grabbed me then, lifted me off my feet. “So, sadly, you must take your leave, Walker.”
He threw me, like an Olympic javelin thrower might casually toss a twig. I flew the length of that huge room, hard enough to break half the bones in my body when I hit the far wall. Which, fortunately, didn’t happen, because Jo threw herself across my path, using her wings to slow us down. We landed softly on the deck, and an instant later the rest of my team had
surrounded me. I got to my feet, and would have fallen again when the deck lurched suddenly, if Jakon hadn’t grabbed me. Everything was shuddering now. I could see rivets cracking, and sections of the hull warping.
Dogknife howled again, and the far wall erupted into wood fragments. Something was hanging in the not-space alongside the ship, something that looked like a magic carpet upgraded to a modern day life raft. I could make out Lady Indigo, Scarabus, Neville and a number of other creatures who might have been HEX bigwigs on it.
Lord Dogknife growled and leapt for the raft, landing on it hard enough to catapult a creature on the edge of the raft screaming, out into the Nowhere-at-All.
And then, like a bad memory, the raft was gone, and the Malefic was tearing itself to pieces around us.
“Where’s the portal?” shouted Jai.
I was going to tell him it was below us, but then I realized it wasn’t below us anymore. It was somewhere to my right, a few hundred yards away. “It’s somewhere over there!” I shouted back, pointing.
Around about then, the ceiling started to come down.
We ran.
“Out!” bellowed Josef. “Let’s head for the deck! It’s our only chance!”
“Less talk, more running,” said Jakon.
The prism in my hand felt colder. Then it felt wet. It was a strange feeling, familiar, but I couldn’t stop to open my hand and look at it. I was running, trying to keep up with the rest of the team.
The prism began to drip from my hand as a liquid. It was ice, I realized with a shock. Nothing more than melting ice. I hoped it hadn’t been some kind of trick on Lord Dogknife’s part.
A section of the floor started to crumble beneath us. J/O, Jakon, Jai and Jo made it across to the nearby staircase. Josef and I didn’t. Now there was a gap, easily ten feet wide, with flames erupting from it. Flames were spreading along the floor behind us.
“We’re never going to get out of here alive,” said someone. I think it was me.
The planks beneath me started tumbling away. I stepped back onto what I hoped was more solid footing. It wasn’t.
There was nothing but fire beneath me. But before I could fall into it, somebody picked me up, grabbing me by the belt as the deck vanished completely. “Hey,” said Jo. “Relax, or I might drop you.”
