The mirror chronicles th.., p.16
The Mirror Chronicles: The Last Night, page 16
He stepped out of the pavilion on to the hillside and was buffeted by a chill wind. His personal guard parted before him, bowing and drawing a claw across their chests in salute and, as the way opened, he sighted his army. A clamorous roar thundered up the hillside, so loud and terrifying that many of the guard retreated, but Hakka strode boldly forward, his movements fluent and athletic, despite his great size. He raised his arms in greeting.
Before him was an army of beasts. Legions shifted and rippled, ebbed and flowed like a tide, enclosed within an immense oblong of giant standing stones. These mighty plinths were as great as the skyscrapers upon which they were modelled, and they cast enormous rectangular shadows over the thousands of creatures that milled between them. Shafts of sunlight glinted on the steel of ten thousand weapons, making the dark surface shimmer.
The general licked his ebony lips with a long tongue and, satisfied that all was ready, he turned and looked expectantly at a pavilion not far from where he stood. Canvas flaps parted and something moved from within. As the apparition stepped forth, the army fell silent. It was something real and living, but it had no definite form. It was a blur more than a figure, made up of muddled and distorted light, which gave the impression of a torso and limbs. The spectre walked on towards the general and, as it drew near, Hakka bowed low to the ground. All under his command followed suit so that a great wave seemed to spread out across the tide.
The Ray Reaper paused and looked down, as though weighing the worth of this tribute, and then it walked far out on to the hillside until it was quite alone. There it lifted its ghostly arms and the semblance of a head up to the heavens. Almost at once some part of the sky morphed in a way that made those watching blink and turn to their companions. Sunbeams twisted and bent in the air, light shifted and gathered, and in moments the vast span of blue became a disorder of light and dark.
But what at first seemed chaotic became a design. Light folded into light, beams poured into beams until a single column of radiance robbed the rest of the sky of its light. This bright pillar began high above the world and fell directly upon the vast rectangle of standing stones so that, as the world grew dark, the cordon of stones, and the army within them, grew brighter and brighter, until one was indistinguishable from the other.
“Now come the beasts and the creatures of the dark; now come the devils and demons, the sprites and goblins, marching from the chambers like an army of folklore and legend.”
DRESCH ROLLED HER SHOULDERS and arched her spine, trying to relieve some of the stiffness in her back. She picked up another Petri dish and, with a weary sigh, slid it on to the stage of her microscope. She rotated the turret to the maximum magnification, then bent low over the eyepieces.
There it was again: the stain of black, pure and absolute. No texture, no pigment: just the same elemental slick of darkness. And yet, despite the absence of cells or particles, it behaved like a living thing, spreading before her eyes until it had consumed the culture. It was as though it was feeding.
“It has to be alive,” she murmured.
She had used every scientific technique she knew, every piece of equipment in her arsenal, but still she could find nothing to explain the behaviour of the Black. Neither could she explain the pain that it brought, the markings beneath the skin, the confusion. The Black was as much a mystery to her now as it had been forty-eight hours and sixty-two Petri dishes ago.
She threw herself back in her chair and cursed. She stared at the smear of Black in the Petri dish with an intense loathing, drumming her heel on the linoleum floor.
Slowly her eyes rose to the shelf above her head. Her eyes scanned a row of stoppered bottles.
On impulse, she reached out and grabbed one labelled OLEUM – Fuming Sulphuric Acid. Beneath that label was another, emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and the words EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS. Dresch took some thick red gloves from the drawer in her desk and slipped them on.
She looked at the Petri dish. “Let’s see how you like a taste of your own medicine,” she said quietly.
She glanced about to check that no one was in the lab, then she opened a cabinet on the wall and took out a gas mask. She pulled it expertly over her head and yanked the stopper from the bottle. She took a long breath through the mask and, using a clean pipette, she carefully dripped three drops of oleum into the dish.
Almost instantly it erupted with froth and fumes. A grey vapour pooled across her desk and she watched with some pleasure as the dish fizzed and spluttered. She waited for the reaction to subside, then she placed the Petri dish back on the stage of the microscope and bent down to the eyepieces.
She sat bolt upright.
For a moment she stared blankly at the wall ahead of her, breathing deeply. Then, very slowly, she reached up and pulled off her mask. Wincing at the acrid fumes, she slid the Petri dish off the stage of the microscope and placed it on the bench, watching as the last of the vapour cleared.
As she saw the entire dish clearly for the first time, she began to tremble.
The Black was no longer a streak across the centre of the culture; it almost filled the dish. It had doubled in volume and, even as she looked, it grew before her eyes. She leaned closer, watching in morbid fascination.
Suddenly there was a bang across the lab and she nearly fell out of her seat.
“Dresch!”
She whirled about to see Lucien striding through the double doors. She opened her mouth to shout at him for making her start, but then she saw his face. His features were taut, and she sensed at once that he was frightened.
“You need to see this!” he said, grabbing a remote control from a bench and pointing it at one of the televisions.
He came and stood next to her as the screen bloomed into life. The picture was of a newsreader, which was not surprising – there had been little but news on any of the channels for days. But already Dresch could see that something had happened. The image behind the newsreader was not the usual river, or pond, or swimming pool streaked with Black. It was a picture of a stone circle and it was crowded with figures – so many figures that they had flooded out on to the surrounding plain.
Lucien turned up the sound so that they could hear the newsreader’s rushed commentary:
“… similar reports from across Europe and North America. At present we have no formal statements from the authorities, but we have ourselves received confirmation of many thousands of people or … creatures of some description pouring from the sites of recent disturbances. There have been sightings at stone circles in the south of England and Wales, Scotland, France, Germany. We are hearing that the military is mobilising in parts of …”
Suddenly the screen was filled with a succession of images. There was an aerial view of Stonehenge, which showed hundreds of creatures fanning out from the standing stones, sending the cordon of light military vehicles into swift retreat. Then there was another aerial image of some buildings near the Houses of Parliament in London – a grand circular courtyard bordered on all sides by austere Edwardian frontages. The caption at the bottom of the picture read Disturbances at Her Majesty’s Treasury, Horse Guards Road. The entire courtyard was seething with bodies and, as Dresch watched, they swept up the walls, climbing swiftly like apes, spilling out over the rooftops.
She stared, wide-eyed, as the image changed again, this time to an aerial view of a modern city at night, with wide roads lit by streetlamps and gigantic skyscrapers glowing bright against the night sky. At the centre of the image was a sweeping rectangle of darkness: an oblong park bordered on all sides by giant buildings. The caption read: Central Park, New York City. Her eyes travelled over the picture for some moments before she understood what she was seeing. The park was criss-crossed by the frantic searchlights of helicopters and by their light she could see that the trees, grassland, bridges and pathways were all in motion. The entire park was teeming with the same dark figures that the pictures had shown in Stonehenge and London. They were jostling to reach the edges of the park where they emptied into the streets, running over abandoned cars, sprinting along deserted roads.
“They’re everywhere!” exclaimed Dresch breathlessly.
“It’s an invasion,” said Lucien, his eyes fixed on the screen. He glanced at her. “It’ll be all right,” he said unconvincingly. “There has to be a plan for something like this. I’m sure they’ll have a plan.”
Dresch stared at him in disbelief. “A plan?” she said incredulously. “Just like ‘they’ had a plan for the Black, I suppose?” She shook her head and turned back to the screen. “How can anyone plan for this?”
Lucien opened his mouth to answer, but then chose to say nothing. Together they stared at the television, and perhaps unconsciously, Martha took his hand. As the television droned on, they leaned a little closer together.
After a while Lucien riffled in his pocket and brought out a paper bag. He cleared his throat.
“Lemon sherbet?” he asked.
At first Martha stared at him as though he had lost his senses, then she reached out and took one.
So intent were they on everything happening on screen that they did not notice the Petri dish on the workbench behind them. The acrid fumes had long since died away but, as the television droned on, the Black welled up to the brim of the dish and overflowed.
“I am far from sure that there is any part of this world that is safe for the Suhl. But if there is such a place, it is the Valley of Outs.”
SYLAS LAY ON HIS bed, the Samarok propped on his chest, writing quickly but carefully with his quill. He finished his sentence, yawned, then put the quill back in its box.
He traced his finger absently along the S-shaped groove on the front cover of the Samarok, thinking back to when he had first seen it, with the Merisi Band still in place. How long had it been since that meeting with Mr Zhi in the Shop of Things? It seemed distant and dreamlike, as though years had passed, but it could have been no more than a couple of weeks. And yet everything had changed. Everything, for everyone. The whole world had turned upside down. This world and that.
There was a movement in the corner of his eye. He turned to see his mother standing at the door of the Bow Room. He was about to say hello, but she quickly put a finger to her lips and pointed past him at Simia, who was asleep in a crouch, her head resting on her arms. She had simply slumped forward where she sat and drifted off.
How Sylas wished he could do that.
He pushed himself up and silently made his way over to his mum. She smiled and gave him a hug, then they walked quietly along the corridor to the nearest ladder and climbed into the pink light of sunset.
The chill, salt air was bracing, and the drowsiness left Sylas almost at once. The seas were bright and calm, glistening in the evening light, and the shoreline was now a distant smudge, low on the horizon. Ash was keeping the Windrush at a good speed, skipping lightly over the gentle waves, but he looked tired, and Sylas knew that he or Naeo would have to take their turn before long.
For now he walked with his mum alongside the railing, looking out at the setting sun. She slid her arm through his like she used to when he was little, and smiled in that way that made her the most beautiful and the safest person in the world. She gave his arm a squeeze.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, I suppose,” he said. “Tired. You OK?”
Amelie chuckled gently. “Still trying to get used to all this. But I’m fine.”
He pulled back, his eyes tracing her face. “Are you, though?”
She laughed. “Only my Sylas would be worried about me, with all this going on!”
He held her gaze. “Well, I wish you didn’t have to be here. I mean, it’s great to have you here, but—”
“I want to be here, Sylas. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.” Her smile skewed a little. “I want to be near you, and – and I can’t pretend I don’t worry about you, my love.” She sighed and winked. “You worry about me, I worry about you. That’s how it is.”
They walked on round the ship, passing the many crew members hunched over frayed ropes of silver-gold, hammering at gleaming timbers and reshaping the railings. Amelie asked questions as they went: How did it feel to be with Naeo? What had it been like steering the ship? What was the Quintessence? How did it work?
Sylas answered as best he could, which was not always well at all, but his replies led to another question, and another, until at last their conversation turned to Simia’s list of Things and Merimaat’s writings about the Passing Bell.
“So the bell is important, you think?” asked his mother.
Sylas shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps. It might just have been meant to bring me and Naeo together. But then Quintessence has been with me right from the start, and it sounds like the bell is the most powerful thing anyone’s made out of it. And when you think about what Naeo and I are supposed to do – bring the worlds together – it makes sense that—”
“Are you?” interrupted his mother.
“Am I … what?”
“Well, are you really meant to bring the worlds together?”
Sylas blinked at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I mean are you sure that’s what you’re supposed to do?”
Sylas was perplexed. “You know all about the Glimmer Myth, about Merisu’s message,” he said. “And I told you about Isia – everything she told us about our bloodline. The fact that she was there when the world was broken, and that—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Amelie, putting a hand on his shoulder. She smiled. “But that doesn’t mean I understand it. I’ve known about all this for a long time, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. I marvel at you, I really do, not just because of these things that you’re able to do, but … but how you manage to accept it all.”
Sylas frowned. “I’m not sure I have accepted it,” he said, a little defensively. “It’s all pretty difficult to accept. But I can’t see how anything else makes sense.”
“But you have, Sylas! You’ve had to accept the Glimmer Myth and everything Isia told you just to keep going, to find Naeo –” Amelie gestured about her at the golden ship – “to do all the amazing things you and Naeo do. But it’s different for me, Sylas. I struggle to accept any of this. I don’t know how to be part of this world, and I’m not sure I want to be. I’m a scientist. I believe in the rules that bind our universe. I believe in what has been carefully reasoned and – and tested and proven. The things I see here …” She sighed. “Well, they go against everything I know to be true.”
“But things here are like – like a mirror of things back home,” protested Sylas. “I’m not sure they’re supposed to make sense.”
“There are no exceptions in science, Sylas. Everything makes sense once you’ve worked out the rules. You don’t pick and choose. Do you remember that book I gave you? The Book of Science?”
Sylas’s mouth fell open and he stared at her. “Of course I remember!” he snapped. “That book was all I had of you when you went away! I know every page of it!”
He looked down, surprised by his own outburst.
“I’m sorry, Sylas,” said Amelie.
He swallowed a wave of emotion and blurted: “It’s just – just you don’t need to tell me about science. And you definitely don’t need to tell me about that book.”
She reached for him, but he turned away.
“I wasn’t saying you don’t understand,” Amelie said. “Of course I wasn’t.”
Sylas kept his face to the dipping sun. Once again he had that gut-wrenching feeling that his mum was behind a sheet of glass, that although she was here with him, she was as far from him as ever. Surely she could see that he had no choice? That this journey was his whether he liked it or not? That everything had led him to Naeo, to Essenfayle, to the Glimmer Myth, to the deck of this ship. He hadn’t asked for it, but neither could he change it. All this was as real and true to him as anything he had read in that Book of Science.
“All I was trying to say, Sylas,” said his mum, “really badly is that I don’t understand how this world and our world are supposed to come together. They’re just so … different. And what I have no idea about – not the faintest clue – is how we’re supposed to come together with – with another part of ourselves. Because, if the worlds are so different, then our Glimmer must be too. And surely it’s … well, unnatural to bring two such distinct, different parts together?”
Sylas turned and stared at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Unnatural?” he said. “You mean like me and Naeo?”
For a terrible moment she hesitated. “No, Sylas,” she said at last, “that’s not what I meant! I just meant that—”
“I know what you meant!” he snapped.
“Sylas!” she exclaimed, reaching for him. “I didn’t mean you and Naeo at all! You and Naeo aren’t—”
But he was already stalking away, heart thumping, blood roaring in his ears. By the time she called his name again, he had reached the hatchway. He heard her, but he did not look back. He plunged down into the darkness below.
Naeo stood alone in the bow, watching the sun slip beneath the waves. The sea breeze chilled her, despite the last warming rays, and she was dimly aware that the pain in her back was growing worse again.
Her thoughts were far away. They were back beyond the trailing wake of the ship, across the plains cleaved by its keel, through Thoth’s army and over the hills of the Valley of Outs. Her thoughts reached even beyond the valley – where her father was surely fighting for his life – across the borderlands, to the distant grey of the Barrens.
And that was where she found him. Not in desperate battle, not sickly and weary, but young, bold and strong. That was where her father was now, at sunset: where he had said he would be, back in their treehouse at Grail, before any of this had begun. He was laughing, like he used to. He was helping her up the last rungs of the ladder and lifting her so she could see far out across the bright orange and yellow canopy of Grail forest – out to the wide greens of Salsimaine. And, as she wondered at the beauty of it, she felt his strong arms round her, and his warmth, and his permanence. And then he was looking up at her with that all-seeing, all-knowing face, in the way that made him the most beautiful and the safest person in the world.
