The Forever Man
Page 20
Riley, my only true friend. Come and deliver me from this evil.
And the contradiction:
Riley, my sweet boy. Get away, far away from here. Or he will kill you too.
And Chevie could not honestly tell which wish she would prefer to come true.
Garrick settled his cloak round his shoulders and patted the silver at his neck, wrists and belt, as he did habitually dozens of times each day to ensure the protective jewelleries had not somehow been magicked away. The cold touch of the metal comforted him in a way that nothing on earth had for a long while.
Tomorrow, he told himself, I will have no need of silver.
He stood in the square of Mandrake’s Groan with the residents ranged before him, the zealots to the front, their eyes red with eagerness and the reflected crimson of the quantum rift, which they believed to be the gates of hell. The sensible stood back, close to the walls of their modest houses or shop fronts. The children of course were eager to be in the square itself – they would be poking the witch with sticks if given leave – but their mothers held them close and tight enough to stifle their breath, for there was not one woman in this place who was not in mortal fear of the Witchfinder and his accusations. And who would dare challenge him with the gates to hell yawning overhead?
Who indeed would dare accuse me? thought Garrick. Except perhaps Miss Savano, but conveniently she is a witch and has no right to speak here.
Garrick waved a dismissive hand at the militiamen who guarded Chevie.
‘Move ye back. All must bear witness to the events of this day.’
The men moved aside so that Garrick was visible to all. Even the jail and almshouse had disgorged their residents on to the main street so that all could behold the Witchfinder’s glorious achievement.
Garrick had adopted his speechifying pose: legs manfully apart and hands on hips, when Jeronimo Woulfe stepped forward.
‘Master Witchfinder, I feel it most imprudent to gather for ceremonies when danger hovers above. We must be gone from this place and seek refuge to the south.’ This suggestion sent murmurs rippling through the good folk of Mandrake. After all, it was a fool indeed who courted the devil’s wrath.
But Woulfe was not finished. He had some imagery up his sleeve. ‘At this moment, good Master Garrick, we are as ants in a boar pit waiting for the boar to fall on our poor heads. Tell me why we should not at least remove the womenfolk and children?’
It was an easy argument for Garrick to refute. ‘Refuge, you say? To the south, says you, Master Woulfe? Be my guest, says I, but know this: the fens are crawling with abominations and they converge on this town where their mistress is held captive. Anyone setting a single toe outside the border of Mandrake’s wall will surely be consumed or, worse, infected.’ Here Garrick’s tone became threatening. ‘And any person suspected of infection must of course be tried.’
Almost as one, the townsfolk reared back and a tumult of shrieks and terrified roars issued forth from the crowd.
For a moment Garrick was impressed by his own powers of oration, then he apprehended that the horror was directed not at him but rather above.
The rift, he realized. Something has issued forth.
Garrick whirled, his cloak whipping round with the speed of the turning and his silver-buckled hat toppling from his head, and he saw descending a formation of dark flecks that clung together initially, then ranged apart and grew larger as they fell.
Diverse creatures, he thought, squinting for details.
The rift belched forth another flock of creatures, one large enough to be distinguished as a tusked boar of mammoth proportions.
Jeronimo Woulfe is to blame for that, thought Garrick, with his talk of boars.
The creatures separated, most being sucked immediately back inside the rift like minnows dragged along with the undertow, but a few seemed to be on course for the town itself, including the giant boar.
Garrick pointed a rigid finger at it. ‘Now what say you, Jeronimo Woulfe? Are you for leaving now? By all means, take your family and go. Or stay by my side and watch your Witchfinder defend the faithful.’
He then turned to the militia. ‘Form a ring round the witch and, no matter what manner of creature drops from the sky, be certain that nothing gets close to the girl, or you will answer to me for it.’
Garrick had no choice but to deal with what the wormhole threw at him. However, he would not allow Riley to take advantage of his distraction.
Garrick was in two minds about the descending creatures. He had little time for these distractions, with the rift growing in power, but to defeat this monster in full view of everyone would be the ultimate proof of his own strength.
Down came the boar, howling all the way, its proportions that of a fully grown elephant, a fact only Garrick and Chevie would appreciate, and with horrifying swiftness it crashed into the chapel, sending masonry and lumber flying and spinning. For a moment all hoped that the creature was dead but Garrick knew better. He could see its aura shrugging away the impact, and he set off running in its direction before the creature could regain its senses.
Off went every musket, and the watch and the militia peppered the dazed beast with their lead shot, but the projectiles bounced like pebbles from its hide.
‘Desist! In the name of God!’ shouted Garrick to the men as he ran. ‘Do you wish to hamper my efforts?’
The shaggy boar rose, masonry dropping in chunks from its coarse hair, and Garrick could see through the creature to the man it used to be. It was there standing like a ghost inside its host: a hugely muscled warrior in a full-face helmet, wielding an axe.
A Viking, or the like. Olaf was his name. I feel it.
‘Olaf,’ he called. ‘Steady now.’
The boar was in no mood for Steady now. He kicked his hooves free of the rubble and attacked, his thundering run shaking the very ground, and Garrick thought, This will be a sight for the cheap seats. This ain’t one bit boring.
The boar opened its maw and roared, ‘ Jag kommer att doda dig!’
Which Garrick rightly interpreted as a crazed death threat and not an invitation for tea with the queen. He steeled himself for the impact, knowing it was going to smart quite a lot before his quantum foam fizzed and rushed to make him whole.
I will endeavour to grasp the tusks, he resolved. And then suck this savage dry, just as I did with the giant squid. And there won’t be a soul in this town who will dare speak of quitting the place.
Garrick laughed then for, even in a life as extraordinary as his, to fight giant squids and boars was undeniably a distraction from the humdrum day-to-day dreariness of existence. For him nothing else existed but the moment. He was child-like in his investment in the now. Immortal he may well have been, but Albert Garrick was no lover of physical excruciation and would appreciate a few less broken bones or ruptured organs on this outing.
Olaf the boar charged and the folk of Mandrake howled and fled his path, all except the brave, stupid or petrified. Jeronimo Woulfe gathered his lovely Lizzie under one arm and his dear wife, Anne, under the other and shepherded them inside his house, then took down the musket above the mantel, which he had vowed never to use again unless his ladies were in peril.
And they were in dire peril now.
Woulfe’s musket was long barrelled and rifled, and Pointer was fortunate that Woulfe did not have it with him while on the wall. It had the range to put a leaden ball in his haunch, and Woulfe had an eye for shooting too, having served his time in the militia. He’d never had occasion to wound a man, but he had once knocked the helmet from a renegade Roundhead who’d tried to scale the wall. And he had been aiming for the helmet.
‘Dearest wife and treasured daughter,’ he said to his family, ‘stay ye both inside our home and see to your prayers. I will defend the door to my last breath.’
Good Anna clung to her husband. ‘Jeronimo. Stay with us, in the name of heaven, for surely this is Judgement Day and God will spare the faithful.’
The house trembled as the giant boar thundered past, shaking their walls with his mighty blunderings.
‘Oh, will you stay with us, Father?’ begged Lizzie, who loved her father dearly and would not see him outdoors with these creatures, though in her heart she feared the Witchfinder more than the beasts from hell.
Woulfe pulled away from his wife gently. ‘Lock the door,’ he said. ‘Admit no one but me.’ He paused to make sure he was understood. ‘No one. Church nor state. For I believe everything is not what it seems on this weird night.’
And with that Woulfe was gone into Mandrake’s thoroughfare, firmly pulling the door behind him. His wife and daughter wept bitter tears at the idea that never again would they feel his loving embrace, for surely no mere man could survive the madness of the open air.
Albert Garrick snarled at Olaf in response to the boar’s own snarl; Garrick planted his boots solidly in the earth, all the better to meet the creature’s charge. The thoroughfare vibrated with each drumroll of his enormous hooves. Garrick was possibly the only man alive who would not quake with fear at being run down by such a creature.
Truth be told, he felt a little giddy at the prospect of the coming tussle. In the case of the giant squid there had been little time for preparations or decisions, but now he had several moments before impact and really he didn’t have time for these shenanigans. His place was by the silversmith, who would doubtless bolt given half the chance.
As it happened, what seemed inevitable turned out to be avoidable, as another shape fell howling from the sky, landing square on the Viking boar, the impact instantaneously excavating a crater in Mandrake’s main thoroughfare. Mud and shale flew in great jetting plumes into the sky.
Both are dead surely, thought Garrick, even as all around him wailed and shrieked.
He stepped forward and peeked into the pit. The boar was dazed but recovering, and there was also a humanoid figure of massive proportions, clad only in a loincloth and a strange crystal helmet, laying about the boar with a short sword made of the same transparent crystal.
Garrick stared at the man, using his gift of rift sight to divine what class of creature this thing was. He discovered, to his shock, that the giant man had come through the wormhole unchanged from some other reality.
One such as him could challenge my reign, he realized, and resolved on the spot to put his own plan into motion there and then.
No more time for dallying.
Garrick turned from the otherworldly conflict to the men of the watch on the walls. ‘Cannon!’ he roared. ‘Destroy these abominations.’
Here now was something the men understood in this day of confusions. Unprecedented it might be to fire shot into the town, and yet it seemed the sensible, even prudent, option to pursue.
Only two of the guns, the north and the south, had lines of sight along the main street, the east and west guns being obscured by the remains of the chapel and a row of dwellings. But north and south were primed on well-greased carriages and it took a matter of seconds for the small crews to swivel their guns, captains shouting encouragement, but even then they looked once more to the Witchfinder for confirmation of his command.
‘Fire, damn your eyes,’ said Garrick, running down the thoroughfare towards the town square. ‘Fire.’
The chief gunners made their final adjustments, then ordered their sparks to set embers to the touch holes, and seconds later the smooth-bore cannons spewed forth dragon’s breath and their deadly projectiles, which could hardly fail to miss their targets at such short range, unless the bombardiers be total duffers, which they were not, both having served with the Parliament forces in the civil war. The recoil, however, proved more powerful than anticipated and the north cannon reversed off the wall entirely into the fens, while the south crushed the life from an unfortunate powder monkey who had forgotten to step aside.
The cannonballs sped faster than eyes could follow and threw up a further spume of mud from the crater, but on this occasion there was blood and bone in the spume, and crystal too. The dust and smoke dissipated with the echoes of cannon fire, but the particles did not. They hung suspended in the air: large sections of trunk and limb, mingled with eyeballs and rows of teeth – all that was left of the decimated combatants. And the people of Mandrake watched, for how could they not, so horrible and unprecedented was the sight?
Even Albert Garrick could not help but raise an eyebrow, but his bemusement turned to resolve once the lumps of bone and gristle ceased hovering and instead sped to the mouth of the rift, which loomed large now, fiery lips crackling. Garrick felt his own person rise so that his heels barely scuffed the earth as he ran.
She would have me now if not for the silver.
The moment had come for his ploy.
Mandrake was spared more attacks by the wormhole’s inhalation of those creatures, but the residents were more than willing to do whatever Garrick ordered at this point, for was it not clear that their town was under attack from hell itself? And all because of this witch.
Garrick mounted the stone dais in the town square, keeping towards the edge and away from Chevie in case her Timekey activated and sucked him to his doom. Already he could see its electronic lights twinkling and he knew that she must drink the molten silver now before the wormhole ripped her right out of the chains.
‘Silversmith!’ he roared, beckoning with his crab-leg fingers. ‘Now is your moment. Bring the Devil’s Brew!’
The silversmith, Master Baldwin Sherry, felt his stomach churn with even more acidic violence than it had when the creatures fell from the sky. He had always believed his trade an honourable one and occasionally sacred. Now, though the Witchfinder had told him what he must do, and though he believed the rightness of it, he hated this perversion of his art and wished cravenly that the blacksmith could have taken his place at the smelter. But silver was a delicate metal and must be handled properly, and Mandrake’s blacksmith could barely nail on a horseshoe without hobbling the poor beast, so it was Baldwin Sherry’s duty to God and county to force down his misgivings and prepare the so-named Devil’s Brew as commanded. He swabbed his glistening scalp with a work rag and tilted the smelter on its trundle to check the viscosity.
The crucible sat atop a small furnace, which had been moved in its entirety from Sherry’s workshop, and the fire burned bright – or merrily, as the silversmith generally thought of it. But not today. He imagined that after today he might never think of the furnace flames as merry ever again. In fact, he might even go so far as to seek out a new profession. It occurred to him that as a thatcher or the like he might have less occasion to be called upon to execute witches.
All that remained was for Sherry to carry the heated crucible, using long-handled tongs of his own construction, and pour the molten silver down the witch’s throat. The crucible was in the shape of a squat vase but would serve perfectly to pour silver into the girl’s mouth, as though made for the job. Baldwin Sherry had heard that once upon a time there were moulds made specifically for this job. Not moulds really, but containers, as it were, but he had never foreseen the need for one.
The silversmith peered again into the crucible and saw a shining bubble pop. Previously that sight had never failed to cheer him and remind him of his good fortune in these harsh times; now, however, all he saw in the pot was hissing death.
Sherry felt almost stupefied by the gleaming molten silver.
Could he do this deed?
Should he?
Sherry felt his forearms break out in goose pimples in spite of the long leather gloves that covered them, and he turned to find Master Garrick’s eyes upon him, the Witchfinder’s veins clear in his milk-white face.
‘Bring the silver,’ said Garrick in a voice of cold thunder that would not stand for hesitation, never mind defiance. ‘This witch has a mighty thirst.’
Heaven help me, thought Sherry, and said, ‘It is almost there, Master Witchfinder. One minute more and the brew will be ready for pouring.’
Albert Garrick had orchestrated some feats in his days as the Great Lombardi. And though most tricks were simple when you stripped back the layers and got right down to the nub, as it were, some required delicate timing or wires, pulleys, smoke and mirrors, contortion, escapism and showmanship to sell them successfully to Johnny Punter. But, no matter how well thought out his plans, there was often the blasted unexpected intrusion, which Garrick referred to as earthly intervention, which could set his stratagems toppling like dominoes. A sharp-eyed punter perhaps, or a competitor catcalling in the stalls, or some other interference that could set the trick on its ear.
And here he was smack bang in the middle of the most complicated illusion he had ever attempted. He’d set himself up as some fashion of holy man and convinced good people to murder a mere girl and all the while cobbled together a plot to save himself from the wormhole, which he had sold to the bumpkins as the gates of hell.
It was a pity that Riley was not here to witness this latest and final trick, a great pity indeed, but very soon there would be nowhere on earth for Riley to survive. If indeed he survived at all, which Garrick fervently hoped he would, due to the quantum foam in his bones.
Perhaps he will live on as some form of twisted ghoul, Garrick thought maliciously. Then I may keep him on a leash as a pet. He can be my familiar.
This notion almost made him laugh aloud, but that would be unseemly at this moment, and he would not allow any unprofessionalism in his performance.
After all, what does a man have if not his art?
He glanced up and saw the rift loom overhead, casting its crimson light laced with orange sparks like dancing fairies. And he could feel the same sparks dancing in his own self and knew that, silver or not, the wormhole would have him at any moment.
It wants me too, thought Garrick. I can feel it. But you shall not have Albert Garrick, you damned creature. Albert Garrick shall put an end to you. Whatever the cost to mankind.