Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  "No! Noooo!"

  Within seconds she had reached the spot where he had stood. There was no sign of him, only the strange ferment of light in motion.

  He told me he was so scared of the water. But he jumped into . . . this. . . . She went cold from her feet to her head. He must have been so afraid. . . !

  She knew that if she considered for another second her better sense would take charge—she would turn and walk back to the Gypsy camp with a hole right through the middle of herself. Lost Orlando, she thought wildly. And Renie. Not !Xabbu, too! She tottered on the edge for an instant, then flung herself after him.

  It was not water that rose up to claim her but something far more strange—a vibrant, fizzing, electrical wash that seemed to flow right through her. Her eyes popped open as if yanked by strings but there was no depth or breadth, nothing at all to see but an impossible simultaneity of blackness and blinding light.

  How can I find him. . . ? she wondered, but only for a second. The scintillant ocean contracted around her, squeezing her up and out like a bar of wet soap from a fist. Orlando said . . . it didn't want me. . . . Then she was lying stunned and twitching on the bank, unable to do anything but stare at the Well as lazy bubbles of light formed and burst beneath the surface. She watched them with a strange detachment, wondering if this was what it felt like to die. Voices were coming closer, Florimel's and Martine's and others, all shouting something that must be her name, but she could feel nothing except the uncommon sensation of having been tasted and then spat out again.

  Paul knelt down beside Florimel. "Is Fredericks all right? What's wrong with her?"

  Despite all that had happened, Florimel had not lost her distinctive bedside manner. "How in the devil's name should I know? She is breathing. She is semiconscious. God alone knows what caused this."

  "Jumped," T4b said. "Just jumped in, all sayee lo. Saw it, me."

  "But why?" Paul asked.

  Martine was squinting out toward the pulsating lights with the expression of someone leaning into a terrible windstorm. "She was searching for !Xabbu. . . ."

  "Jesus, does that mean. . . ?" Paul's stomach lurched—to find them both after all this time, then to lose one of them so quickly, maybe both of them. . . .

  Martine abruptly swung around, putting her back to the unstable sea. Her face was haggard. "We have a greater problem now," she said.

  "What?" Paul stared at the Well, but saw nothing different. He turned until he was facing the same direction as Martine, looking out across the plain. "Oh. Oh, damn."

  It was only a distant speck and should have been invisible in the deep twilight, but the man-shape had a disturbing negative radiance of its own, as if it were not entirely part of the world through which it passed.

  "He's not a giant anymore," Paul said. That startling change should have given him hope, but there was something so horridly fascinating about the thing named Dread walking toward them across the dead gray land, stride after measured stride, that it seemed to make no difference. Fear washed through Paul, a sick, paralyzing terror as powerful as the aura around the Twins, but somehow even worse: where those two were cruel and destructive, this lightless specter seemed a thing of pure, focused evil.

  "He has shed what was unnecessary," Martine said. "He has been burned and battered until he has hardened like a black diamond. But it is him." Her voice was listless with horror. "The Other could not keep him out."

  Their companions had seen it, too, and stood staring in drop-jawed surprise, mesmerized by the advancing figure. Voices cried out all around them, wails of despair that proved the refugees could sense what was coming. As the invisible cloud of fear swept over them the fairy-tale folk at the outer edge of the encampment turned and fled from the distant stranger, shoving their way toward the Well. Their flight set off a mass panic; hundreds more joined them, shrieking down the slope towards the edge of the great pit like a herd of deer running before a wildfire. Paul and the others had to make a wall around Sam Fredericks, linking arms to keep themselves from being swept over the edge by the crush of maddened refugees.

  "Where is Nandi?" Martine shouted. "And the Simpkins woman and the little boy?"

  "Somewhere in the crowd!" Paul held on to T4b's arm for dear life as a trio of weeping goats backed into them. Even when Paul smacked at the nearest with his fist, the goats paid no attention, bleating, "Troll, troll, troll!" in tones of helpless horror as they stared out at the approaching shadow.

  I just hope he kills that bastard Jongleur first, was Paul's only coherent thought.

  The crush of terrified creatures was shoving hard now, pushing them back despite their best efforts, until Paul could see the Well just behind them. Some of the other refugees were forced screaming over the edge of the pit; they disappeared into the silent wash of light and did not come up. T4b's elbow was locked in Paul's; the youth was murmuring what seemed to be a prayer. Florimel screamed at them all to move closer together to keep Fredericks from being stepped on. Paul felt another arm slip through his and a body push close against him. It was Martine. Something of a child's unalloyed fright was in her face. Paul hooked her arm more tightly.

  Dread had reached the edge of the encampment. He stopped on ground that had been torn and churned by fleeing refugees and lifted his hands as though he would take the entire huge throng in his arms. His face was a thing of shadows, the human features plain but somehow inconstant, the eyes blank white crescents. Only the teeth were clear—a huge, avid grin. The shape radiated such triumphant, heedless, blood-smeared power that the nearest refugees, untouched, fell down shrieking and writhing.

  Martine was not even looking. She had shoved her face against Paul's arm. "This must be . . . the terror the Other feels," she moaned.

  Paul thought it seemed pointless to analyze anything. It was the end, after all.

  "Oh, you're all so clever." Dread's laughing voice was in every ear. "But I know you're here somewhere." The dead white eyes swept across the whimpering throng.

  He's looking for us. Paul's heart was skipping, staggering. He knows we're here, but he's not sure where.

  The shadow-man and everything around him suddenly grew dim.

  And I'm going blind like Martine. . . .

  Blind?

  The air was growing thick, foggy. Paul tried to blink it away but the fog was not in him but before him, a sticky density forming above the shimmering pit and around them all. At first he thought it was something of Dread's doing, the metaphorical air being sucked from an entire world, but the dark figure seemed disconcerted, lifting his hands in front of his face, fingers twitching as if to tear away a curtain.

  "But I crushed you!" Dread snarled. "You can't stop me now!"

  There was a curtain, Paul saw in astonishment—a wall of rapidly thickening mist forming between Dread and his victims. The gossamer-thin, translucent barrier rapidly grew thicker, a hemispherical wall of cloud coagulating all over the Well, transparent enough that the carbon-black figure of Dread could still be seen through it, thick enough to reflect some of the dull shimmer from the pit. The shadow-man lunged forward, scrabbling at the solidifying fog, and the cloud strands stretched to what seemed the breaking point . . . but they did not break.

  Dread's scream of frustration rattled in Paul's skull, made him crouch shivering on the ground. All around him refugees were running mad, knocking each other down, trying to escape something that was in their heads. The cry rose until Paul thought his brains would boil, until he felt sure there must be blood running from his nose and ears, then it trailed off like storm winds passing.

  For a moment there was silence. Inside the dome of cloud it was the silence not just of pain but of astonishment, of a last-minute reprieve beyond all hope.

  Martine's voice was faint with agony and shock. "I . . . I can feel such . . . oh, my God! The Other has put up a last-ditch defense, but it has . . . little strength left."

  The figure behind the wall of cloud had grown very still.

 
; This can't last, The icy words pricked at Paul's ears. He could hear children sobbing all around him, unable to escape the voice of the bogeyman. "It's only a matter of time."

  The dark figure spread his hands again, pressed them against the barrier. The nearest refugees wept and tried to force themselves farther away, but Dread was making no attempt to break through this time. "I know you're there—all of you." He paused. "You, Martine. We've shared something, sweetness. You know what I mean."

  She had fallen on her face. Paul put his hand on her back, felt the convulsive shudders.

  "It's going to be very bad if you make me wait," Dread murmured. "Pain. And not just for you, little Martine. Screaming—oh, there will plenty of screaming. Why don't you just come to me now and save the innocent ones?"

  "No," she said, but it was a hollow whisper that even Paul could barely hear.

  "Come out," said the dark shape. "I'll show you those secret places again. Those places in you that you didn't think anyone could find. You know it's going to happen. Why wait? The fear will only get worse." The voice deepened, turned horribly seductive. "Just come to me now, sweet Martine. I'll release you. You won't have to be afraid any more."

  To Paul's horror she began to squirm toward the barrier on her stomach. He grabbed her waist to hold her back, but whatever pulled at her was strong, horribly strong. Flailing, sobbing, she fought him until he had to wrap both his arms and legs around her. T4b shoved his way through the crush of bodies and grabbed her shoulders and at last Martine stopped struggling. She wept harder now, her body shivering convulsively. Paul put his face against her cheek and held her tightly, murmured meaningless assurances in her ear.

  "Well," said Dread. "Then we'll have to play it a different way," He moved sideways along the barrier, swift as a spider on a web, then stopped. "Just because I'm on the outside doesn't mean I can't touch you at all. Doesn't mean I can't make it . . . interesting. This little wall the operating system threw together may keep me out for a few minutes—but it also means you're locked in with some old friends of yours." He pressed his fingers against the barrier, tenting the net of mists inward. "They're everywhere, aren't they? The whole network is rotten with the things. Harmless enough, this lot." He chuckled. "Until I wake them up."

  In the puzzled hush that followed, Paul pulled Martine up into a sitting position but kept her wrapped firmly in his arms. A thin scream floated up from farther down the shoreline, then another and another until a chorus of shrieking filled the air. That part of the crowd began to shove outward in all directions, a frenzied rush like rats off a burning ship. Something was growing at the center of the disturbance, a bizarre and complicated shape swelling up and out as if unfolding out of the dry dust.

  No, Paul saw, and his guts twisted. Two shapes. He could hear Dread laughing inside his head, T4b cursing helplessly behind him. Martine hung in his arms like an empty sack.

  Jack Sprat and his wife blossomed outward in a sprawling explosion of flesh until they towered over the other refugees. Sprat's bony fingers twisted and stretched like fast-growing twigs. His legs lengthened, his toes humped and clawed, even his face stretched and distorted until he was as tall and gnarl-limbed as an old tree. He reached out his skeletal claws and snatched up a squealing shape covered in fur and wearing a pink ribbon, then tore it to pieces, raining bits down on the refugees struggling to escape.

  Sprat's wife was expanding like a fairground balloon, her arms and legs remaining doll-tiny while the great gross body spread and crushed the helpless creatures packed in around her. The head began to disappear in the humped inflation of shoulders, until all that could be seen was a huge hippopotamus mouth full of crooked teeth, gaping on the lumpy bosom. She leaned, folding like a great pudding, then came back up with a dozen more fairy-tale, figures in her maw. She swallowed slowly. Her neck distended, small shapes still moving inside it.

  "Where is the princess?" Jack Sprat had no eyes now, only a crease across the narrowest part of his head.

  "The princess!" his wife belched out. A small, sodden creature tried to escape her mouth but was sucked back in and vigorously chewed. "Our pretty, tasty princess!"

  They began to wade through the crowd, Jack Sprat tangle-fingered and five meters tall, his wife humping along beside him like a massive jellyfish, killing as they went. The refugees, trapped between the wall of fog and the pit and unable to scatter, trampled each other in mindless terror. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew through the air. The screams rose to an unbroken chorus of wailing.

  Forced backward by the crush Paul could only clutch Martine and struggle to keep her sagging form upright. Light strobed and flashed from the pit behind them as though some kind of terrible conflagration was building, but Paul was hemmed so tightly now he could not look around, could barely breathe.

  "Give us the princess!" Jack Sprat had something in his twiggy fingers that might once have been a living being. He was using it as a club. "Bring her to us!"

  They were only meters away from Paul and the others now. The light leaped and burned on them, making them even more grotesque.

  "Stop!" The voice was thin, but it cut through the chaos like a razor. "Stop!" it cried again. "You are hurting them—killing them!"

  The huge, deformed shapes paused, eyeless and rapt, facing out toward the pit.

  "Our princess." Jack Sprat's wife almost groaned it, a ravening hunger finally introduced to the ultimate feast. "Princess!"

  The shrieks of the wounded and dying still drifted to the skies, but even the refugees had slowed and stopped as if under compulsion, turning from their murderers to stare out at the pit.

  She hung above the agitated sea of light with her arms spread wide, hung on some invisible cross of misery, flickering in and out of existence like an image on ancient celluloid film. It had been so long since he had seen her that Paul had forgotten the beauty of her presence, the great light that could shine through even this corrupted incarnation.

  "Ava." His voice was choked, no more than a murmur. "Avialle."

  She did not see him, or did not care that he was there. In the sudden stillness she flickered and grew even more insubstantial, her ghostly face full of pain and horror.

  "Let . . . them be. She was beginning to smear like dirt on a rain-spattered window. "You . . . are . . . hurting us. . . ."

  "We eat you, princess bellowed Jack Sprat's monstrous wife. "Come home!" The Twins began to shuffle toward the edge of the pit, sweeping bodies from their path or crushing them into the dead gray earth.

  She moaned, a sound that swept across the shore, then brought her arms together in front of her face in helpless resignation.

  "Avialle! Avialle!"

  It was not Paul's voice this time. A man was shoving his way through the press of refugees toward the hovering apparition. It was Felix Jongleur.

  "Avialle!" the bald man screamed, and this time Paul could hear the rage beneath the desperation. Jongleur's face, pale and full of crazed intensity, seemed to grow so bright that Paul could see nothing else, not even the shimmering angel shape that had haunted him for so long. "Come to me! Avialle!"

  His words echoed in Paul's head, growing instead of diminishing, until all he could hear was her name sounding over and over, tumbling through his brain like a bullet, smashing his mind into fragments so that the blackness beneath came up and swallowed him whole.

  Oh Ho!" someone said.

  Ava shrieked and threw herself backward out of Paul's arms. He turned to see the grinning, misshapen face of Mudd peering through the trees.

  "Naughty, naughty," said the fat man. "What have we here?" But despite the mockery, Mudd seemed a little uncertain, as though he too had been caught by surprise.

  "Leave us alone!" cried Ava.

  "Oh, I don't think so." Mudd shook his large head. "I think Mr. Jonas has overstepped his privileges." He gave Paul a look of gleeful malice. "I think some punishment is in order." Now he turned his leer on Ava. "For both of you, perhaps."

  "No
!" Ava leaped to her feet but stumbled, tangled in her long nightgown. Mudd stretched out a heavy hand to seize her, or perhaps just to steady her. Seeing that great paw reach toward her, Paul snatched up the first heavy thing he could find, a rock the size of a fist, and flung it into Mudd's face. The big man bellowed in pain and fell backward, when his hands came away from his forehead they were covered in blood.

  "I'll kill you, you little shit," he rasped. "I'll pull your bones out!" Paul yanked Ava to her feet and ran. Behind him, Mudd was talking to someone, talking to the air. "Attention! Security to Conservatory Level. Now!"

  Branches slapped Paul's face as he pushed Ava before him, running blindly through the tangle of trees. Where could they go? This was not a true forest, it was a park on top of a skyscraper. Security would be coming up in the elevators. There was no way down.

  He slowed to a walk. "This is pointless, Ava. We can't escape, and you might be hurt." And they're going to hurt me no matter what, he thought but did not say. "Is there some way you can contact your father directly?"

  "I don't know! I only speak to him when he . . . calls me." Her eyes were wide, feverish, as though she were the one who had drunk too much. Paul felt himself growing cold and distant, everything happening at a great distance. "I can't let them hurt you," she said, tears welling up. "I love you, Paul."

  "It was all foolish," he said. "We should never have let it happen. I'll give up."

  "No!"

  "Yes." They had him and they could do what they wanted to him. He had a sudden thought, an unlikely glimmer of hope. "Can you talk to your helper—the one you call the ghost? Can you contact him now?" It was perhaps the only insurance he could provide against simply being swatted and disposed of like a troublesome insect. If the intruder could enter the communication lines, perhaps it could contact his friend Niles Peneddyn. At the very least he could construct a message for Niles, tell him something of what was happening. It would make it much harder for Jongleur's men to make him disappear—perhaps he could even use it as a bargaining chip. "Can you contact him?" he asked Ava again.