by Greg Keyes
“There,” he said. “Down there.”
He waited until the last of them was in the corridor and then threw himself at the portal. It was substantial, but not heavy enough to be solid gold. He guessed it was just plated. Still, it was bulky enough that he almost didn’t get it closed in time; one of the boys yelped as he slammed into it.
David turned the key and felt the tumbler click. Then he pulled it out and ran toward where Aster really was.
“Mine,” he muttered under his breath. “Not yours, Sheriff. Mine.”
He knew he couldn’t beat Aster and her friends in a fight. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was convince them he wanted to help. The Sheriff wouldn’t stay locked up long, but it might give them time to escape. He would deal with Aster’s friends at his leisure.
He raced up a series of passages and stairs. It seemed Aster was making for the highest point of the castle. Did she have a means of escape? Did the silver ship fly as well as sail on invisible seas?
Did she know about Melzheyas?
He broke into a huge room with four tall Ogee arches open to the sky and a fountain in the center. Like the rest of the castle, it reminded him a little of medieval Spanish architecture.
Aster wasn’t far, now. He could see her shining above.
“Wow. This is more than I hoped for,” a soft voice said.
He froze and turned, and saw her, a shadow with glowing green eyes, half-submerged in the fountain.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Think you’re going to come to her rescue, do you? And then what, I wonder?”
He saw now she had a light in her, too, encased in shadow but present, nonetheless. And familiar, so familiar, like an old friend.
“I was expecting a crowd,” she went on. “I thought I might be lucky enough to get my hands on you when you went past. As long as the Sheriff has you, Aster can’t ever really escape, can she?”
David was torn. He wanted to follow Aster, but here was something that also belonged to him. He remembered now.
“Veronica?” he murmured.
“Hello, Mr. Robertson.”
He felt a little dizzy.
“You had new tennis shoes,” he remembered. “You were really proud of them. You were running around everywhere.”
“Yes,” she said. “I was. But you put a stop to that, didn’t you, Mr. Robertson? Why don’t you come here?”
He took a step forward. It was too dark to see well, but he remembered her golden hair.
“I watched you grow up,” he told her. “Such a little thing at first. The light got so bright in you. I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Girls like you,” he said. “They begin to fade, at a certain age. They diminish and become common. I couldn’t let that happen to you. I wanted to keep you always like you were that day you wore your tennis shoes. Keep you safe in here, like the others.” He tapped his temple.
“How many others, Mr. Robertson?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You were special.”
“Well, of course,” Veronica said.
He was close to her now, almost touching. He remembered kissing her, back in the desert. The Sheriff stopped him then, but now they were alone.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I know you did,” she said. “I didn’t die quickly enough. The Creek Man got me instead. You must have been so disappointed.”
He touched her cheek.
Aster, he thought. I can’t . . .
But then she wrapped her arms around him.
“Come on, Mr. Robertson,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
Come out,” the dead dragon said. “You have nothing to fear from me, at least not at the moment. It isn’t you I want.”
Aster peeked out and saw him reared against the sky, grey with approaching dawn. His shape seemed so familiar . . .
“I know you!” she said. “You chased us across the Hollow Sea. My father and I. You tried to kill us.”
“Kill you? No. Apprehend you, yes. Your father committed a terrible crime. We were charged with setting things right. We are still.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Seven of us began the hunt, but in the end only two remained—the man you call the Sheriff and me. Your father killed me, but the Sheriff continued. The curse caught him, and his mind was damaged, I think. He’s forgotten a lot.”
“You want me in order to get to my father?”
“Obviously none of us was a match for him,” the beast said. “Doubtless it is still the case. But with you to bargain with, things might go differently. I make you this condition. I will not harm you. Your friends may go free.”
Aster thought of Errol, hobbling down the stairs. Of Veronica and Billy.
“I am my father’s daughter,” she said. “I have power of my own. I bet I can take you.”
“Possibly. Possibly not. I am—after all—already dead. But if you attack me and I win, your friends will die. Even if you succeed, they will likely perish in the battle. And there is still the Sheriff to consider.”
Aster gritted her teeth. She knew she didn’t have much time. The sheriff must be close, now. If Errol went against him, Errol wasn’t coming back. That didn’t mean he would die, just that he would be in a coma again. But she remembered how much that scared him. If she could save him . . .
“Okay,” she said. “I agree. But my friends must live.”
“No,” Billy said.
She pulled him close. “If I’m alive and you’re alive, we have a chance,” she whispered. “Maybe I can escape or you can rescue me or my father will destroy them anyway. If we fight here, my gut tells me it won’t turn out okay.”
Billy kissed her, and nodded. She thought he was agreeing with her.
Then he stepped out onto the roof and began to grow. “Billy!” she screamed, as the dragon’s head darted at him.
When Errol got to the bottom of the stairs, he heard the sheriff and his dogs, close. He didn’t see any sign of Veronica, and after calling her name a couple of times, he took a seat on the lowest step and examined Billy’s gun. His fingers had thinned out, become much more human, although they remained alternating black and white. Little nails had even begun growing on them.
The rifle was lever action, like the ones in the old westerns. It held seven bullets at a time.
He sat on the stair, listening to them come, remembering his father’s Scotch and pain pills and he finally faced it down.
“I did want to die,” he murmured aloud. “I wanted to die, and I mucked it up. Now I want to live, and I’ve mucked that up, too.”
He sighed and aimed the rifle at the head of the stairwell, and realized something else.
Something was happening up top. A loud crackle and heavy thudding like a giant’s feet on stone.
Exactly like that, maybe, he hoped.
The first of the boys appeared, sticking his head from out of the landing. Errol fired the gun and heard the bullet spang against gold. He scooted back up a few steps, until he couldn’t see the room anymore, except for the bottom step and a bit of floor.
“Next one I see gets it in the head,” he shouted.
He was lying. The thing he had realized was this—as much as he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to kill anybody, either.
He could hear them clustered below, baying. Crazy things were happening upstairs. He couldn’t save Veronica now, even if she needed saving.
One of the boys bolted toward the bottom stair. Errol fired again, aiming in front of him. The boy yowled and backed off. Errol thought he’d just hit him on the foot.
Suddenly they all quieted.
“Stand down and live,” a hard voice said.
“Sheriff?” Errol said. He scooted back another couple of steps.
“Yes. My word. I’ve lost interest in you. You can go.”
“What about Aster?”
“She’s mine,” the Sheriff said, “but I won’t hurt her.
”
“No? Then why are you trying so hard to catch her?”
“My reasons don’t concern you. Surrender. You go free; I’ll take her unharmed if I can.”
“Yeah, it’s that ‘if I can’ that worries me,” he said. He kept working up the stairs a little at a time, but he still had a long way to go. If he could keep stalling . . .
“If that’s how you want it,” the Sheriff said. “Boys.”
So much for stalling. Here they came.
None of them were in view yet, but he fired anyway. He went up another stair and shot again, and twice more. Then they were there, coming shoulder to shoulder. He put one of their heads in his sights. It was an easy shot, and at least one of them would be sorry.
“Screw this,” he said. He threw the gun at them, jerked himself up on his one leg and dove down the stairs, arms swinging.
The monster clamped its jaws on Billy’s shoulder, and blood spurted. Aster said the Utterance of the Heart of Lighting, and both the dragon and Billy lit up like roman candles. It bothered Billy no more than it had the last giant, but the dragon twisted away and thrashed on the ground.
Aster brought a whirlwind and sent it spinning out into the air. Billy grew.
The dragon fought off her wind and dove at Billy. It hit him, hard, pushing him off-balance and back. He stepped to compensate, but there was nothing to step on, and he toppled over the edge, carrying the dragon with him.
Aster watched it all happen as if it were in slow motion. Then they were gone.
“Billy!” she whispered.
She heard gunfire, and the boys-turned dogs coming up the stairs. She looked to where Billy had vanished, then back at the stairs.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, here we go.”
She backed up across the roof until she had her spine against the wall and watched them come pouring into the yard.
When she thought most of them were out, she spoke a Profound Recondite Utterance.
Not the whirlwind she had brought against Shecky or the boys back near the Hollow Sea or even the dragon just now, but something more ancient and far more dangerous.
The boys looked up as the cyclone descended and its grey-black walls sucked them in. She stood in an eye that was no more than a yard wide and felt the tremendous force an all sides threatening to crush her. She held it as long as she could, but after a few moments she felt her control slipping, and then the wild wind began to turn on her, lifting her from the ground. Almost too late she commanded it away; it made a try for her before it went and failed, though it sent her spinning across the stone.
As she tried dizzily to get up, she saw him, the Sheriff. His two hounds were by him. She didn’t see any of the boys.
“You are your father’s daughter,” he said.
Aster began a Recondite Utterance, but the Sheriff pointed at her.
“Keidi,” he snapped.
Something in her throat closed, and she gagged.
“You defeated Melzheyas,” he said. “Impressive. But it only makes it more difficult for us to get back home. I will find a way.”
Aster managed to climb to her feet. She clutched at her throat, trying to somehow loosen it up so she could say something, but it was if her vocal cords were tied in knots. She gripped at the spell with her will, and met the Sheriff’s resolve. She pushed back, hard, and managed to gasp a little. He frowned, and her throat went even tighter.
The white and black dogs prowled closer.
Veronica left the body at the bottom of the pool and rose up, feeling sick. When she broke from the water her belly heaved as if trying to throw up, although she had nothing in her stomach.
Something came out, anyway, a black, oily gas with little orange lights flickering inside. She reached after it, but it thinned away before her eyes.
And as it vanished, she felt better.
“I should have known he wouldn’t agree with me,” she murmured to herself.
Only then did she take in her surroundings.
The room was empty, but she could hear some sort of commotion up the stairs. She started up them.
She didn’t get very far before she found Errol. Or the parts of what had been Errol.
“Oh, Errol, what did they do to you?” she sighed. She found his head, shattered, and for a moment felt a little hope. But the little bone doll was broken, too. Weeping a little, she gathered up the tiny pieces and put them in her pocket.
Billy’s rifle lay abandoned on the stair. She picked it up and kept walking, tears streaming down her face.
When she got to the top, she didn’t see anyone but the Sheriff and his two dogs—and Aster. Aster was backing toward the edge of the roof top.
Veronica pointed the gun, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle kicked her in the shoulder way harder than she thought it would. She stumbled back and saw the Sheriff jerk and stagger too. Then he spun and stalked toward her, pulling a saber from a sheath at his side. He was bleeding, but he didn’t act like he was hurt.
“Enough of you, nov,” he said. “I’ll chop you up into so many pieces no one will ever put you together again.”
Veronica pulled the trigger again.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Behind the Sheriff, the first slice of the sun appeared on the horizon, and Veronica’s lungs suddenly billowed inside of her, filled like balloons. The breath went in and sighed out. It was the most beautiful feeling imaginable, and she remembered it all, the smell of peaches and honeysuckle and catfish frying. Her heart thumped in her chest. She dropped the gun, hardly noticing the Sheriff anymore as he raised his vicious-looking weapon.
But then the wind came, and sent him whirling over the edge of the tower. Aster was a few feet away, staring at her.
“Veronica?” she asked.
She looked into Aster’s eyes. “I’m alive,” she said. “Actually alive.”
Aster at first didn’t understand, but then her mouth made a little “o.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s . . . huge.”
“Yeah, it is,” Veronica said. “Thanks, by the way.”
“Sure,” Aster said. “Did you see Errol?”
Her joy faded away, and for a long moment she said nothing, as tears formed in her eyes.
“They got him,” she said. “They smashed up his little body.”
For a moment, Aster just stood watching her, but then she took a step, and another, and took Veronica in her arms. Veronica accepted the embrace.
“There is hope,” Aster said. “If we can get back, I can build another automaton—”
“Where’s Billy?” Veronica interrupted.
“Billy!” Aster cried. She ran to the side of the tower. Veronica followed.
Billy was standing in the sea, looking up at them. Down around his feet a mess of some kind was slowly sinking.
“Well, there has to be a story there,” Veronica guessed.
Aster didn’t say anything at first, but the look of relief on her face was a statement in itself.
“At least we have a ride home,” Veronica said. “At least as far as the Hollow Sea. Then I say we steal your ship back—”
“No,” Aster said. “Billy can take us all the way back.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
Aster nodded, but she was crying.
“Nothing’s left for us here,” Veronica said. “We can go back, you can build Errol a new body. We can try again.”
“Right,” Aster said. She sounded tired, and sad, which she had every right too. Then she touched Veronica on the arm.
“We’d better go. While he still remembers.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just—we had better go. Thanks for saving me, Veronica. If you hadn’t distracted the Sheriff, I wouldn’t have got my voice back.”
“He was going to chop me in half,” Veronica said. “I think I probably still owe you one.”
She looked at the rising sun, and thought it
was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She felt the pulse in her wrist.
Alive.
Aster picked up her backpack at the head of the stairs and started down. Veronica followed. She tried not to look at what had once been Errol.
When the sun set and they were very far away from the golden castle, riding in the palm of a giant, Veronica’s heart stopped beating again.
“Well,” she sighed. “It’s like that, is it?”
He remembered dying and being born, many times, and he remembered the frustration of always having to start again in an infant’s body, the years spent helpless, knowing what he needed but with no way to obtain it.
But that was in the Land of the Departed, the grey, lightless place he had been consigned for more millennia than he cared to remember. Here, where light shone in everything, he saw other possibilities.
He found the Sheriff in the marshes below the floating mountain. He was broken, but not dead. His body would heal, given time. But part of him had leaked out through the wound in his head. That too, might return in time; the Sheriff was a patchwork of ancient enchantments.
But that was not what David wanted. He burrowed into the man like the larva he was, and began to incubate. Plenty remained of the sheriff that he could use; memories, Utterances and Whimsies, all the things denied him in the frail bodies he had traveled in since before he could remember.
He lay in the marsh, and healed, and became himself—but as always, something new as well.
And this time better. Much, much better.
SIX
THE REIGN OF THE DEPARTED
Delia wasn’t sure who she was expecting when she answered the door. The police, hopefully, or maybe a mailman with a package.
What she didn’t expect was a young woman dressed in knight’s armor. A horse stood attentively at her shoulder.
“Ah, yes?” she asked. She noticed the girl had a star on her forehead.
“I’m here to see Kostye Dvesene,” she said, in accented but understandable English. She sounded, in fact, very much like Aster.
“Oh, I’m afraid he’s unavailable.”
The woman cocked her head, and a sort of dangerous expression went across it, but then she seemed to notice something.
