“To what? A forest full of Smrt’s men?”
He has a point, but this, this is ludicrous, just as I said. This path is leading nowhere.
“You stay here.” He steadies me against the escarpment wall. “I’ll go on ahead and see if it’s there—”
“And if it isn’t?”
“It has to be here.” His eyes are stern.
“Urlick!” I say, when he turns to go. “I don’t think we should separate.”
My lips start to quiver.
He looks at me, his eyes soft. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
I lay my head against the rock and concentrate on his steps. Short and hollow, they ring out—the only sound in the ravine—reverberating through the dense and eerily quiet fog. The stillness shudders through me.
He rounds a corner and I can no longer hear him. My heart jerks in my chest. The air rolls bitter as absinthe in my throat. I close my mouth and breath through my nose but it pinches. It tastes sour, sourer than before.
Something’s wrong. I feel it in my skin.
A slow, cold howl ripens overhead, dropping down around my shoulders from a strange, writhing cloud.
My head snaps, tracking it. “Urlick?”
The howl swoops past us again, splitting into several haunting voices then circles back. “URLICK!” I scream.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” He appears through the grey misty mass now hanging over the ledge.
“Listen.”
A low groan slithers up behind him, coiling about his legs. Urlick bolts forward, pulling me tight to his chest.
“Is it what I think it is?” I say.
“I’m afraid it is, yes.”
“The Turned?”
“I’m afraid so.”
The groan breaks into a chorus of maniacal laughter.
All the nerves in my body stand on end.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Urlick looks to me. “We can’t waste any time. If they surround us, we’re finished.”
“Where are going to go?”
“The bridge. I saw it. It’s just up ahead. We can make it, if we run.”
The howls swoop past us again, poking us, prodding us, crooning in our ears. I throw my hands to my ears to block out the sound, my eyes tracking their every movement.
“No!” Urlick shouts, taking my face in his hand. “Whatever you do, don’t look at them. Don’t let them in your head. They’ll steal your mind if you do.”
Throaty cackles break out overhead and my chin swings up.
“Listen to me!” Urlick yanks my chin back down. “The Turned create illusions out of your dreams and desires and present them back to you as a mirage. That’s how they lure you close enough to feed off your brains. Don’t look at them. Don’t listen to them. That’s how they confuse you.” Urlick stares in my eyes. “Concentrate only on me.”
“I will, I am, I promise,” I say. I pinch my eyes shut, trying to force their sardonic howls from my head. Their moans gnaw at my spine.
Urlick grabs my hand and yanks me forward, around the corner, up the narrow slope, his feet moving at an incredible speed. I stagger along behind, unsure of my footing, my breath quickening as I slam into his back.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Shhhhhhhh…” He throws a hand out in front of me, pasting my back to the side of the escarpment.
Shadows roll in front of us, intertwined with the mist, swirling inside curls of grey smoke. Their shimmering silver faces appear one moment and disappear the next, as unpredictable as the Vapours themselves. A group of at least twenty Turned hover across the path in front of us. Their white flame eyes burn holes through the mist.
Urlick swallows so loudly I hear it inside my head. Or maybe it’s me; I can’t be sure.
They swirl toward us, twisting and turning snake-like through the air. Ghastly mouths open—yowling—others laughing, filling the canyon with their demonic sounds.
“We’re going to have to make a run for it.”
“What?”
“Straight through them.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“It’s the only way. We’ve got to get to the bridge.”
“But—”
“They don’t like sound. So we need to make a lot of noise. And whatever you do, don’t let go of me.” Urlick squeezes my hand.
“Not a chance.”
Without Urlick’s hand in mine I swear I’d have turned to stone from fright by now. I couldn’t let go of him if I wanted.
“Ready?” He braces his feet. “Let’s go!” He barrels forward, screaming and shouting. I follow, doing the same, shrieking so loudly I nearly go hoarse.
The Turned swoop in circles around us, faces darting in and out of the mist. Urlick bats at them and they disintegrate into ash, only to float up and reform again.
“They come back!” I shout.
“Don’t look at them!” Urlick screams. “Just run!”
I tuck my chin and pour on the speed, the rock face crumbling beneath me.
“We’re almost there!” Urlick shouts.
We round another corner and I see the bridge, waffling into view through the cloud cover. Two pillars of stone tower over a long expanse of the same. On the other side is the slice of escarpment we’ve been searching for.
My heart pounds as hard as my boots as they hit the log path leading onto the bridge, our boots snapping against stone as we race to the other side.
“They’re gone,” I say, twisting back, as we pour from the bridge out into the forest. “They’ve left us alone.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Urlick breathes.
I track his gaze and gasp. Turned plummet from the treetops, their wraith-like bodies twisting and coiling all around us. There must be a hundred of them. Their chants vibrate inside my ribs. “What do we do now?”
“We’re going to have to take a stand, that’s what.” Urlick drops to a knee. He rifles through his pack, pulling weapon after weapon out.
“I thought you said they were spirits. Apparitions. How do you expect to kill something that’s already dead?!”
“I don’t,” Urlick shouts.” The Turned hate light. The only chance we have of surviving this is to try and frighten them away. Take this!” He tosses me the envelope sealer, which I know is not just an envelope sealer—
“And deploy it now!”
Spirits whistle past, their misty shroud-like clothing dragging over my back. My gaze dashes about the forest, tracking their stealth-like movements.
“Throw the bloody thing, will you?”
I turn and launch it in the direction of the voices, handle spinning turbine-like through the air. It hits the ground and explodes, embedding shrapnel into the trunks of the surrounding trees, but has little effect on our attackers.
“It’s not working,” I shout.
Urlick tosses me the flamethrower. “Try again.”
I turn to launch it and an old man’s face appears in front of me, glowing a translucent white. He snaps his chin toward me, mouth open wide.
“NO!” I scream.
Urlick whirls around, snatches the flamethrower from me and launches it at him like a spear. The face screeches then evaporates, turning to dust in midair.
“You all right?” Urlick reaches for me.
“Yes,” I nod my head.
“Good. Take this.” He tosses me an ornate-looking doorstop before stepping forward to launch another bomb. A piano finger stretcher sails through the air, which of course is not just a stretcher. It illuminates the skies—along with several gruesome faces of the Turned—as it explodes.
I fall back against a tree, sucking in a petrified breath, paralyzed by the prospect of having our brains sucked out, the sight of their faces having made it so real.
“Eyelet!” Urlick shouts, snapping me back to reality. I step up, ready to lob the doorstep underarm like a cricket player would a ball when Urlick snags my arm.
“Not like that, like this!” H
e twists my arm up over my head. “Like a sword thrower intent on beheading his assistant!”
I let it go, and am astonished when, mid-flight, a flap pops open, revealing a fire-cracking pinwheel of knives.
The apparitions scatter.
“Sound and light, the perfect combination,” Urlick says. “Too bad I haven’t another. Quick.” He yanks me closer to him. “Prepare to run.” He scoops up my pack and tosses it to me. “You have the journals?”
I check. “Yes.”
“Good. When I throw this, I want you to lose yourself in those trees, you hear me? Follow the path of the light.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be close behind. Ready?”
I’m not really, but I guess I have to be. I clutch my pack to my chest.
Urlick steps forward, releasing the cigarette-holder-a.k.a.-flamethrower like a javelin through the trees. It bursts into flames, lighting up a clear path for me to follow.
“Go!” he shoves me forward. “Go go go go go!”
I burst forward, the fog abuzz with chants overhead, dashing this way and that through the trees. A cold hand falls on my back.
“Urlick?” I turn. Severed heads float in front of me, their eyes white-hot and shifting. Their centers spinning, like ever-changing kaleidoscopes, hypnotizing my mind.
“You can’t escape.” The creatures hiss. “You belong to us now.”
“No!” I shriek, and race on through the trees.
They swoop and circle, their laughter rumbling through me like the tail of a thunderstorm. “Urlick!” I shout. “Urlick, where are you?”
“Urlick! Urlick!” They chant. “He can’t help you now!”
I cover my ears and push deeper and deeper into the woods. The air is thick with the stench of Vapours. It wends a toxic path to my brain. My mind becomes muddled. My gait falters. I stumble. Lost. Surrounded. Staggering…
“Urlick? Where are you, please…”
“EYELET!” I hear Urlick’s voice.
“URLICK!” I scream.
“EYELET!” The voice comes again, only this time clearer. He sounds frantic. “EYELET! Come QUICK!”
I charge toward the voice, breaking through the trees into the clearing. “Urlick!” I shriek.
He lies at the bottom of a heap of criminals, barbed wire wound about their necks. Hands pummel him, broken chain hanging from their wrists. “URLICK!” I shoot forward, leaping onto the back of the top brute and pound at his back with my fists. The criminal rears up, shocked to see I’m a girl, before dumping me to the ground. I fall, dizzied from the blow.
A second criminal pulls himself from the heap, holding Urlick’s pack. He reaches in and tears out a gasmask.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I scramble to my feet, jumping and snapping a branch from the tree over his head. It falls, cracking hard over his back. The criminal grunts and melts to his knees. The gasmask drops from his hand.
“Eyelet!” Urlick calls.
Before I’ve had the chance to catch my breath, the criminal’s on me. He knocks me to the ground, his hands around my throat, choking me. I gasp and gag, trying to pry his bony fingers from my neck, but it’s no use. He’s much bigger than I am.
“Eyelet!” I hear Urlick scream, the criminal drooling over me like a rabies-stricken dog.
Then I remember.
The darts.
I plunge a hand into my pocket, fingers forming a tight grip around a dart. There’s only one. I must have lost the others in the struggle. This better count. I thrust my arm up in a surge of determination and stab the dart into the side of the criminal’s neck.
The criminal hollers. His eyes flash. They roll to the back of his head.
I gasp at the air as he scrambles to his feet, staggering off into the bushes, disappearing among the foliage.
“Eyelet!” Urlick chokes.
I roll to see him still pinned to the ground, a makeshift knife made of stone at his throat, about to break the skin. “A little help here!” he gurgles.
I stand, lurch forward, grab a handful of the criminal’s hair, yank back his head, and draw the blade of the nail file across his throat, tearing open the skin. Blood gushes from the wound, pooling around my feet. The criminal gags and collapses to his knees.
“Good Lord,” I gasp, bringing a hand to my mouth, watching the life drain from his eyes. “What have I done?”
“What you had to.” Urlick draws in a badly needed breath. “Now come on,” Urlick crawls to me, clawing his way to a stand. “Let’s get out of here before the one you stuck with the dart comes back.” He scoops up a journal that’s fallen from his pack. His face morphs into a blur.
“Eyelet?” He looks at me. “What is it?”
The forest floor spins. Trees turn themselves on end. I reach up to swipe my brow and my arm falls away.
“Eyelet!”
I melt backward into Urlick’s arms. “I can’t move,” I say.
Grass prickles against my cheeks, replacing the warmth of his skin. Treetops swim above me. Perhaps the silver is rising again, or perhaps it’s already risen. I’m shaking so badly it’s hard to tell. My head feels stuffed with cotton and it hurts to breathe. Yet I smell no burning bread.
The Vapours. It must be the Vapours. The silver doesn’t sting.
“Eyelet!” Urlick falls to his knees beside me. “Eyelet, can you hear me?” He presses his mouth to my lips. “Breathe!” he shouts. His voice sounds muffled, distant. His face is a whirlwind of spiraling features funneling away from me.
I gasp and my lungs seize, stilled by the sharp, breath-stealing stench.
“Come on, Eyelet, breathe for me, please.” Urlick presses his cool lips to mine again and again. Something canvas falls over my face. “Breathe! Blast it! Breathe!” I hear him say.
I’m trying, Urlick. Honest, I’m trying.
“Again!” he shouts. “And again!” He pounds my chest. I wince under the pain.
“Concentrate!” he shouts.
I suck in a breath. It burns. I suck in another. Slowly the black veil begins to lift from my eyes, the stinging pressure lifts from my chest—until at last Urlick’s face appears again before me, that glorious chalky white skin of his, those sweet mulberry lips. He stares at me through eyes as pink as cotton candy.
“Hi,” I say, pushing the mask from my face.
“Hi, yourself.” He grins, brushing a dead leaf from my cheek. “You just scared the shite out of me. You know that, right?”
“Good. You’ll be lighter to travel then.”
He grins. He whisks me up into his arms and tosses me over his back. “I wish I could say the same for you.”
I slap him, and break out into another coughing fit. Urlick glances back at me, worried. “Come on,” he launches forward, adjusting me on his shoulder. ”Best get you to the Core, before anything else happens.”
Forty six
Urlick
I race toward the Core—or at least where I think the Core is supposed to be—carrying Eyelet on my back, weaving through heavy, rolling fog and a forest of half-dead trees. I stop only to buddy-breathe air from the gasmask from time to time. Eyelet is fading fast.
I’m frantic to find the pathway leading to the door. It’s made of white stones, I remember, white stones. It doesn’t seem to be here anywhere. I circle around then double back. Nothing seems to be here.
I stop, heave in a breath, and lay Eyelet gently in the soft grasses at the edge of the path, up against the side of the rock for cover. I pull out the gasmask and secure it over her face, rummaging desperately through Eyelet’s pack for the second.
It’s gone.
The criminal must have made off with it before Eyelet could stop him. We’ve only this one left to share. I tap the gauge. It’s running low. In fact, it’s almost out. We can’t stay out here too much longer in the Vapours without oxygen. We won’t last.
I roll a hand through my hair, feeling the pressure of the Vapours in my own head—a sharp, gnawing pinch
above my temples. I yank a handkerchief from my pocket, and tie it around my mouth to breathe through. It’s not oxygen, but it’ll filter some of the toxins away.
Where is the path?
I check on Eyelet to see if she’s all right. She isn’t. I can tell. Her breathing is irregular. I remove the mask and am stunned to see her lips are blue. Her skin is turning grey. The Vapours are getting the best of her, despite the oxygen. If I don’t get her to the Core soon, I’m afraid I’m going to lose her.
I drop my head. Please Eyelet, don’t leave me.
I stand and suck in an icy breath. It shivers through me like a storm. What have I done? What’s wrong with me? Leading us all the way out here on a whim? So far away from the Compound, so far away from everything, without even being sure the Core still exists. It could have perished the Night of the Great Illumination for all I know. In the explosion that destroyed so much of our landscape—creating crevasses where there were none, toppling trees, burning forests. Leaving us teetering on the brink of an ominous, frothing, pit dividing our world from all others.
What made me think anything out here could have survived that? I drop my face in my hands. How could I have believed the Core could withstand such a thing? How could I have been so stupid?
Eyelet gasps and I drop to my knees, brushing the hair from her face and replacing the gasmask. Please don’t let me have dragged us all this way just to surrender us to the Vapours.
I look up into the coiling mist. “The Core has to be here somewhere,” I gasp. The bitter tinge of Vapours blisters in the back of my throat.
I launch to my feet and pace the pathway, squinting through the fog, looking for any kind of sign. The building was white, that much I remember, made of white stone—alabaster. The curtain of fog parts for a second and across a clearing I see the crevasse. Black mist rises from its belly. I had no idea we were wandering blindly so close to the brink of Embers. I swallow, imagining our fate if I’d taken one misstep. I draw in another uneasy breath. Desperation rattles my bones. Something flickers to the far left of me, high on the ridge, glowing alabaster through a charred stand of trees.
Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) Page 28
