[Abhorsen 03a] - Across the Wall

by Garth Nix

  Alice May flung the rifle aside and drew a revolver, a movement so fast that to the shocked Servants, the rifle appeared to transform in her hands. Six more Servants died as their nemesis fanned the hammer with her left hand, the shots sounding together in one terrible instant.

  Alice May holstered one revolver and drew the other, right hand and left hand in perfect, opposite motion. But there was no one left to shoot. Gun smoke mixed with cigar and pipe smoke, swirling up into the ceiling fans. Servants coughed out their final bloody breaths, and the last screams died away.

  So this is what they mean by a charnel house, thought Alice May as she surveyed the room, calmly watching from somewhere deep inside herself as some other part of her watched the final shudders and convulsions of dying men and women, amidst the blood and brains and urine that spread and soaked into the once-blue carpet.

  Her hands—but not her hands, because surely hers would be shaking—reloaded her revolvers as she watched. Then they picked up the rifle and reloaded that.

  The door opened at the far end of the smoking room. Alice May caught a brief glimpse of the Master’s back, caught a few of his shouted words, all of them tinged with the hint of a scream.

  Her rifle came up as a young woman in black and red entered the room.

  It was Jane. Alice May knew it was Jane, and still her finger tightened around the trigger.

  “Hello, Alice May,” said Jane. She didn’t look at the newly dead around her, or bother to step back from the spreading pool of blood. “The Master said you would come. I’m to stop you, he said, because you won’t shoot your own sister.”

  She smiled and picked up a pistol from the table. Its previous owner had slid underneath, leaving a wet trail of blood and skin and guts against the back of his chair.

  Alice May’s finger pulled the trigger and she shot Jane. Only a last desperate exertion of will twitched her aim away from her sister’s chest to her right arm.

  “The Master is always right,” said Jane. Her right arm hung at her side, her black sleeve torn apart, chips of white bone strewn along it.

  “No,” said Alice May, as Jane stepped across the room and picked up another pistol with her left hand. “The Master’s wrong, Jane. I have shot you. I will shoot you again. I…I can’t help it. Don’t—”

  “The Master is always right,” repeated Jane, with serene confidence. She started to raise the pistol.

  This time, Alice May wasn’t strong enough to resist the inexorable pull of the rifle. It swung steadily to point at Jane’s chest, and it could not be turned aside.

  The shot sounded louder than any of the others, and its effect was more terrible. Jane was knocked off her feet. She was dead before she even joined the piled-up bodies on the floor.

  Alice May stepped over the corpses and knelt by Jane. Tears slid from her dress like rain from glass. The white cloth could not be stained. It turned the blood and broken flesh aside, just as it had the dust.

  But her hands were different, thought Alice May. Her hands would never be clean.

  “Nothing ever happens in Denilburg,” whispered Alice May.

  She stood up and opened the door to the rear balcony. To the gathered town, and the Master.

  He was shouting as she came out, his arms high above his head, coming down to pound the railing so hard that it shivered under his fists.

  Alice May didn’t listen to what he said. She pointed her rifle at the back of his head and pulled the trigger.

  A dry, pathetic click was the only result. Alice May worked the lever. A round ejected, brass tinkling and rolling off the balcony onto the rails below. She pulled the trigger again, still with no result.

  The Master stopped speaking and turned to face her.

  Alice May’s star burst into light. She had to shield her eyes with the rifle so she could see.

  The Master didn’t look like much, up close. He was shorter than Alice May, and his goatee was ridiculous. He was just a funny little man. Till you looked into his eyes.

  Alice May wished she hadn’t. His eyes were like the endless corridor, stretching back to some nameless place, a void where nothing human could possibly exist.

  “So you killed your sister,” said the Master. His voice was almost a purr, the screaming and shouting gone. There was no doubt that everyone outside the train could still hear him. He had a voice that carried when he wanted it to, without effort. “You killed Jane Elizabeth Suky Hopkins. Just like you killed Everett Kale, Jim Bushby, Rosco O’Faln, Hubert Jenks, and Old Man Lacker. Not to mention my people inside. You’d kill the whole town to get to me, wouldn’t you?”

  Alice May didn’t answer, though she heard the crowd shuffle and gasp. She dropped the rifle and drew a revolver. Or tried to. It stayed stuck fast in its holster. She tried the left-hand gun, but it was stuck too.

  “Not that easy, is it?” whispered the Master, leaning across to speak to her alone. His breath smelled like the room she had left behind. Of blood and shit and terror. “There are rules, you know, between your kind and mine. You can’t draw until I do. And fast as you are, you can’t be as fast as me. It’ll all be for nothing. All the deaths. All the blood on your hands.”

  Alice May stepped back to give him room. She didn’t dare look at the crowd, or at the Master’s eyes again. She looked at his hands instead.

  “You can give in, you know,” whispered the Master.

  “Take your sister’s place, in my service. Even in my bed. She enjoyed that, you know. You would too.”

  The Master licked his lips. Alice May didn’t look at his long, pointed, leathery tongue. She watched his hands.

  He edged back a little, still whispering.

  “No? This is your last chance, Alice May. Join me, and everything will turn out for the best. No one will blame you for killing Jane or the others. Why, I’ll give you a—”

  His hand flickered. Alice May drew.

  Both of them fired at the same time. Alice May didn’t even know where his gun had come from. She felt something strike her chest a savage blow and she was rammed back into the balcony rail. But she kept her revolver trained dead-center on the Master, and her left hand fanned the hammer as she pulled the trigger one…two…three…four…five times.

  Then the revolver was empty. Alice May let it fall, and she fell herself, clutching her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart hammered with the knowledge that she’d been shot, that these were her last few seconds of life.

  Something fell into her hand. It was hot, scorching hot. She gazed at it stupidly as it burned into her palm. Eventually she saw it was a bullet, a misshapen projectile that was not lead but some sort of white and pallid stone.

  Alice May dropped it, though not quickly enough to avoid a burn deep enough to scar. She tried to breathe again, and could, though there was a sharp, stabbing pain in her lungs.

  She looked at her chest, expecting to see blood. But her waistcoat was as clean as ever, save for a small round hole on the right-hand side, exactly parallel with the dimming silver star on the left. Gingerly, Alice May reached in. But her hands felt only the woven hair. There was no hole in her undershirt, and no blood.

  Alice May sat up. The Master was lying on his back on the far side of the balcony. He looked just like a small, dead man now. The dread that Alice May had felt before was gone.

  She crawled over, but before she could touch him, his flesh began to quiver and move. It crawled and shivered, his face changing color from a reddish pink to a dull silver. Then the Master’s flesh began to liquefy, to become quicksilver in fact as well as color. The liquid splashed out of his clothes and dribbled across the floor into a six-spoked bronze drain hole in the corner. Soon there was nothing left of him but a small automatic pistol, a pile of clothing, and a pair of empty boots.

  Alice May looked out on the crowd. It was already breaking up. People were taking off their Servants’ uniforms, even down to their underwear. Others were simply walking away. All had their heads downcast, and no one was t
alking.

  Alice May stood up, her hands pressed against her ribs to ease the pain. She looked out on the crowd for her foster parents, for her surviving uncle Bill.

  She saw them, but like everybody else, they would not look toward her. Their backs were turned, and they had their eyes set firmly toward the town.

  Jake and Stella held each other tightly and walked down the main street. They did not look back. Uncle Bill sidled toward the platform. For a moment Alice May thought he was going to look at her. But he didn’t.

  Alice May watched them walk away and felt them take whoever she had been with them.

  The fourth Hopkins girl, like the third, was dead to Denilburg.

  Listlessly, she picked up her rifle and revolver and reloaded them. Her bullet belt was almost empty now.

  She was surprised when the engine whistled, but only for a moment. She had entered this life on a train. It seemed only fitting to leave it the same way.

  The train gave a stuttering lurch. Smoke billowed over-head, and the wheels screeched for a grip. Alice May opened the balcony door and went inside. The smoking room had disappeared, taking Jane and all the other bodies with it. There was the endless corridor again, and at her feet the steamer trunk.

  Alice May picked up one end of the trunk, opened the first compartment door she came to, and dragged it in.

  From the platform Uncle Bill the stationmaster watched the train slowly pull away. Before its got to the cutting, it veered off to a branch line that wasn’t there and disappeared into the mouth of a tunnel that faded away as the private car passed into its darkness.

  Bill wiped a tear from his eye, for a friend who had borne the same name, for a town that had lost its innocence, and for his almost-daughter, who had paid the price for saving them all.

  INTRODUCTION TO MY NEW REALLY EPIC FANTASY SERIES

  So I wrote this piece, notionally about the new epic fantasy series I’m going to write. Given that it would be delivered to extremely well-read fantasy readers, I thought they would appreciate some gentle fun being poked at some of the stereotypes and peculiarities of the genre. I took the added precaution of apologizing in advance to some of the authors whose titles I had playfully manipulated, just in case any rabid fans took exception. Or the authors themselves, as at least one was there.

  The piece went over well at Worldcon, so I have repeated it a few times here and there and eventually put it up on my website. I never expected that this would prompt a few readers to e-mail me, one suggesting that I shouldn’t write such a long series of books because it would take too long and I should be writing more stories set in the Old Kingdom; and another wanting to know when the first of the forty-seven novels would be coming out as they wanted to know what happened to the boy with eyes the color of mud who swam with dolphins.

  Somehow, e-mailing to explain that the article is a joke took some of the fun out of it. I trust I will not need to do so again….

  MY NEW REALLY EPIC FANTASY SERIES

  i’m going to read the prologue from my new forty-seven-book epic fantasy series, which is currently titled The Garbeliad. The titles of the individual books include:

  Book One: A TIME OF WHEELS

  Book Two: A THRONE OF GAMES

  Book Three: THE DRAGON WHO DIED YOUNG

  Book Four: THE SORCERER'S THIRTY-SEVEN APPRENTICES

  Book Five: THE WITCH WARDROBE OF LYON

  Book Six: THE DARK IS FALLING

  Book Seven: THE SEVENTH BOOK

  Book Eight: THE RETURN OF THE MISTAKENLY PURCHASED KING

  To tell the truth, I’m not entirely sure about the other thirty-nine books yet, though I’m toying with The Book Whose Title Must Not Be Spoken for Book 26. You know, to keep the series sort of atmospheric and spooky.

  Anyway, I decided that before I wrote this series, I’d analyze the components of successful epic fantasy. Like when to have the ultimate evil first be mentioned and so on—should it be page forty-two or page sixty-seven? And one thing I discovered pretty early on is that you need to have a prologue and preferably a prophecy as well. A bird’s-eye view of something is a bonus, and you can add that in if you like, but it’s not essential.

  So this is the prologue and prophecy from the first book of my new fifty-eight-book series—I just decided I’d need another eleven books to do it properly; forty-seven isn’t enough.

  Prologue:

  From the Secret Ledger of the Accountant

  high above the dusty plains, an eagle whose wings stretched from side to side soared and soared and…soared. Its eagle eyes focused on the ground below, seeking out tasty viharvihar rabbits.

  Then a glitter caught its eye. Not the glitter of dull viharvihar rabbits. No, this was metal, not fur.

  The eagle folded the wings that went from side to side and dropped like an eagle that has stopped flying. Down and down and down it plummeted, until two hundred three feet and seven inches above the ground its wings snapped out. The eagle stopped in midair.

  When it recovered from the shock of stopping so suddenly, the great bird of prey, the raptor of the skies, the lord of the birds, saw that the glitter came from a metal badge. A metal badge that was fastened to a brim. The brim of a hat. A hat that was on a head. A head that was connected to a body. The body of a man who was a traveler. This was not a viharvihar rabbit. This was not food. Still, the eagle circled in a soaring sort of way, watching and listening. For this eagle had not always been an eagle. It had once been an egg. But even so, it had the gift of tongues and could understand human speech. It could speak it too, though badly. It had a stutter because its beak was bent.

  This is what the eagle heard when the man with the metal badge on the brim of his hat began to speak to the other men who didn’t have metal badges and thus didn’t glitter in a way that attracted the attention of eagles that soar.

  WHAT THE MAN WITH THE METAL BADGE ON THE BRIM OF HIS HAT SAID:

  Gather round, unpleasant acquaintances, and partly listen to a tale of our knuckle-dragging forebears and the battles they ran away from. Our recorded history goes back some three weeks to the time that Sogren the Extremely Drunk burned down the museum. But I remember tales older still…going back almost ten years, to the time when Amoss the Stupidly Generous gave the Midwinter Party with the ice-skating accident.

  Know that this is a story before even that—back to the almost legendary but still quite believable times of twenty years ago. The time when rumor reached the Lower Kingdoms of a new, dark power growing without aid of fertilizer in the north. The name of the “Overlord” was spoken softly for the first time in secret and troubled councils. In many dark corners lips whispered it, and then trembled with the effort of not laughing.

  For the Overlord’s name was Cecil and he was known to have a lisp. Naturally enough, he preferred to be referred to as “Overlord,” and whenever his agents heard his true name spoken, dire retribution would swiftly follow. No one was safe. The merest innocent mention of the word Cecil would result in hideous and usually magical destruction of everyone within hearing distance.

  Within days of the first outbreak, the town of Cecil was completely vaporized, and poor unfortunates who had been baptized Cecil were forced to change their names to Ardraven or Belochnazar or other wimpish monikers lacking the macho virility of their own true names.

  How is it that I dare to mention the word Cecil to you now? I have this amulet, which magically erases the word Cecil from the minds of listeners after ten minutes have passed. Instead, you will remember a conversation littered with small chiming sounds where the word CECIL has been erased.

  But I digress. Where was I? Yes. Frantic messages from the Dwarves went unanswered, as their messenger service took so long to walk over the mountains that they weren’t actually received until three years after the dire warnings they contained were sent. In any case, Falanor and Eminholme were unprepared to send men to war. Instead, they offered a troop of armored monkeys and the entire population of a reform school for small c
hildren.

  This elite force went into the mountains and never returned alive. However, they did come back dead, even more horrible than before and in the service of Cecil…I mean the Overlord.

  Shocked, the kingdoms ordered a massive mobilization, and the kings had extra horses harnessed to their personal escape chariots. Yet even as they extracted the most valuable items from their treasuries, many feared it would be too late.

  The forces of Cecil were on the march. Slowly, it is true, for dead Dwarves march even slower than live ones. Yet it became clear to the minds of the Wise that within the next seventeen years something must be done.

  But it seemed that there was no power in the south that could resist the Overlord. For he was the mightiest sorcerer in his age bracket, the winner of all the gold medals in the Games of the Seventeenth Magiad. He was also a champion shotputter, who practiced with the skulls of his enemies filled with lead. And his teams of goblin synchronized swimmers could cross any moat, could emerge at any time in private swimming pools, or even infiltrate via the drains, dressed in clown suits. No one was safe.

  It was then that the Wise remembered the words written on the silver salad bowl they had been using for official luncheons the last hundred years. It was brought from the kitchens, and despite the scratches and dents from serving utensils, the Wise could still make out the runes that said “Sibyl Prophecy Plate. Made in Swychborgen-orgen-sorgen-lorgen exclusively for aeki.”

  The other side appeared completely blank. But when olive oil was drizzled upon it, strange runes appeared around the rim. Slowly, letter by letter, the Wise began to spell it out.

  “A s-a-i-l-o-r w-e-n-t t-o s-e-a s-e-a s-e-a t-o s-e-e w-h-a-t h-e c-o-u-l-d s-e-e s-e-e s-e-e.”

  Days went by, then weeks, then months, as you would expect. If it was the other way around, it would be a sign that the Overlord had already triumphed. Finally the Wise puzzled out the entire prophecy.