Читать книгу Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War - Clive Barker, Clive Barker - Страница 21

IT HAD TAKEN A great deal of organization—and more than a little bribery—to arrange Carrion’s visit to the great Pyramids of the Xuxux. They were, after all, sacred places: the tombs of Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses; and in their humbler chambers, the servants and animals belonging to the mighty. The royal dead had ceased to be laid there several generations ago, because all six Pyramids had been filled with the deceased and their belongings. But the Pyramids had continued to be carefully guarded by soldiers working for the Church of Xuxux. They circled the Pyramids on a fleet of vessels elaborately decorated with religious insignia, and they were armed with weapons of fearsome firepower. Furthermore, they had the complete freedom to use their weaponry in defense of the Pyramids and the royal remains that were contained therein. But Carrion had arranged to have the patrol interrupted for a time so that his funeral barge could slip in, unnoticed, to the steps of the Great Pyramid.

As he approached his destination, however, his thoughts were not upon the difficulties of arranging this journey, nor on what lay inside the Pyramid to which he had spent so much trouble getting the Key. They were upon the girl whose presence in the Abarat had come about because she had accidentally interrupted the thief of the Key and his pursuer. In other words, on Candy Quackenbush.

Candy Quackenbush!

Even the name was ludicrous, he told himself. Why did he obsess about her the way he did? She was here because of a fluke of circumstance, nothing more. Why then could he not get her wretched name out of his head? She was a girl from some forsaken little town in the Hereafter, nothing more. Why then did she haunt his thoughts the way she did? And why—when thoughts of her did arise—were there other images following on after her? Images that troubled him deeply; that sickened and shamed him. Images of a bright Afternoon on the Nonce, and bells ringing in jubilation, and every flower, as if by some unspoken understanding of the Hour’s flora, becoming white for a marriage ceremony…

“Sickening,” he said to himself as he ascended the Pyramid steps. “She’s nothing. Nothing.”

Shape overheard his master’s mutterings.

“Lord?” he said. “Are you well?”

Carrion glanced back at his servant. “I have bad dreams, Shape,” Carrion told him. “That’s all. Bad dreams.”

“But why, my Lord?” Shape said. “You’re the most powerful man in the Abarat. What is there in this world that could possibly be troubling to you? As you yourself said: She’s nothing.”

“How do you know what I was talking about?”

“I just assumed it was the girl. Was I wrong?”

“No…” Carrion growled. “You weren’t wrong.”

“Mater Motley could surely deal with her for you,” Shape went on, “if you don’t care to. Perhaps you could share your fears with her?”

“I have no desire to share anything with that woman.”

“But surely, Lord, she’s your grandmother. She loves you.”

Carrion was becoming irritated now. “My grandmother loves nothing and nobody except herself,” he said.

“Maybe if I told her—”

“Told her?”

“About your dreams. She would prepare something to help you sleep.”

At this, Carrion let out a raw noise of rage and caught Shape by the windpipe, drawing him so close that his face was pressed against the sweaty surface of Carrion’s collar. The nightmares seething in the fluid on the other side came to peer at him, tapping their bright snouts against the glass.

“I warn you, Shape,” he said. “If you ever say anything to my grandmother about my bad dreams…your life will become one.”

Mendelson scrambled to be free of his master’s hold, his good leg pushing Carrion away from him, while his peg leg shook rhythmically in the air.

“I—I—I am loyal to you, Lord,” Shape sobbed. “I swear, liege, by all that’s dark.”

As quickly as Carrion had picked Shape up, he let the terrified man go. Shape dropped from his hands like a sack filled with stones and lay splayed on the step, his terror giving off an unmistakable smell.

“I wouldn’t have killed you,” Carrion remarked lightly.

“Thank…thank you…Prince,” Shape said, still watching his Lord from the corner of his eye as though at any moment the coup de grâce might still fall and his unhappy life be summarily ended.

“Come on now,” Carrion said with a brittle brightness in his voice. “Let me show you how much trust I have in you. Get up! Get up!”

Shape got to his feet. “I’m going to give you the Key to the Pyramids,” Carrion said. “So that you can have the honor of opening the door for me.”

“The door?”

“The door.”

“Me?”

“You.”

Shape still looked queasy about all this. After all, who knew what lay on the other side of that door? But he could scarcely refuse an invitation from his Prince. Especially when the Key was there in front of him, shimmering and seductive.

“Take it,” Carrion said.

Shape glanced over Carrion’s shoulder at Leeman Vol, who was staring at the Key. He wanted it badly, Shape could see. If he’d dared, he would have snatched it out of Carrion’s hand, run to the door and opened it up, just to say that he’d been the first to see what lay inside.

“Good luck,” Vol said sourly.

Shape made an attempt at a smile—which failed—and then went to the door, drew a deep breath, and slid the Key into the lock.

“Now?” he said to Carrion.

“The Key is in your hand,” Carrion replied. “Choose your own moment.”

Shape took a second deep breath and turned the Key, or at least made an attempt to do so. But it would not move. He leaned against the door, grunting as he attempted to force the Key to turn.

“No! No! No!” Carrion ordered him. “You’ll bruise the Key, imbecile. Step away from the door! Now!”

Mendelson obeyed instantly.

“Now calm yourself,” Carrion instructed him. “Let the Key do the work.”

Shape nodded and limped back to the door. Again he put his hand on the Key, and this time—though he was barely pressing upon it—the Key turned in the lock all on its own. Astonished, and not a little terrified, Shape retreated from the door, his work done. The Key was not only turning in the lock, it was slipping deeper into the door as it did so, as if to deny anyone a change of heart. In response to the turning of the Key, an entire area of the door around the lock—perhaps a foot square—began to grind and move. This was no ordinary mechanism: as its effect spread, waves of energy came off the Pyramid like heat from a boiling pot. The door was opening, and its shape echoed that of the building itself: an immense triangle.

A stench came out from the darkness on the other side. It wasn’t the smell of the long dead or the spices in which they had been preserved. Nor was it the smell of antiquity; the dull dry fragrance of a time that had been and would not come again. It was the stink of something very much alive. But whatever the life-form that was sweating out this odor, drooling it, weeping it, it was nothing any of the three had ever encountered. Even Carrion, who had a weary familiarity with the world in all its corruptions, had never smelled anything quite like this before. He stared into the darkness beyond the door with an odd little smile on his face. Mendelson, on the other hand, had decided that he’d had enough.

“I’ll wait in the barge,” he said hurriedly.

“No, you don’t,” said Carrion, grabbing hold of his collar. “I want them to meet you.”

“Them?” said Leeman Vol. “Are…are there many of them?”

“That’s one of the things we’re here to find out,” the Lord of Midnight replied. “You can count, can’t you, Shape?”

“Yes.”

“Then go in there, and bring out a number!” Carrion said, and pressing Shape in the direction of the door, he gave his servant a shove.

“Wait!” Shape protested, his voice shrill with fear. “I don’t want to go alone!”

But it was too late. He was already over the threshold. There was an immediate response from the interior; the din of an infinite number of carapaced things roused from invertebrate dreams, rubbing their hard, spiny legs together, unfurling their stalked eyes…

“What have you got in there?” Vol wanted to know. “Hobarookian scorpions? A huge nest of needle flies?”

“He’ll find out!” Carrion said, nodding in Shape’s direction.

“A light, Lord!” Shape begged. “Please. At least a light so I can find my way.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Carrion seemed to soften, and smiling at Shape, he reached into his robes, as if he intended to produce a lamp of some sort. But what came out appeared to be a small top, which he set on the back of his left hand.

There it began to spin, and in spinning threw off waves of flickering light, which grew in brightness.

“Catch!” Carrion said, and flipped the top in Shape’s direction.

Shape made an ungainly attempt to catch hold of it, but the thing outwitted him, spinning off between his fingers and hitting the ground. Then it spun off into the Pyramid, its luminescence growing.

Shape looked away from the top and up into the space that its ambitious light was filling. He let out a little sob of terror.

“Wait,” Leeman Vol said. “There can only be one insect that gives off a stench such as this.”

“And what would that be?” Carrion said.

“Sacbrood,” Vol replied, his voice ripe with awe.

Carrion nodded.

“Oh, Gods…” Vol murmured, advancing a few steps toward the door to get a better view of the multitudes within. “Did you put them in here?”

“I sowed the seeds, yes,” Carrion replied. “Countless years ago. I knew we would come to be in need of them in time. I have a great purpose to put them to.”

“What purpose is that?”

Carrion smiled into the soup of his nightmares. “Something mighty,” he replied. “Believe me. Something mighty.”

“Oh, I can imagine,” Vol said. “Mighty, yes…”

As he spoke, a limb perhaps eight feet long, and divided into a number of thorny segments, appeared from the shadows.

Leeman loosed a cry of alarm and backed away from the door. But Carrion was too quick for him. He caught hold of Vol’s arm, stopping him in his stride.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.

In his panic Vol’s three voices trod on one another’s tails. “They’re moving—oving—ving.”

“So?” said Carrion. “We’re the masters here, Vol, not them. And if they forget, then we have to remind them. We have to control them.”

Vol looked at Carrion as though the Lord of Midnight was crazy. “Control them?” he said. “There are tens of thousands of them.”

“I will need a million for the work I want them to do,” Carrion said. He pulled Vol closer to him, holding him so tight Vol had to fight for breath. “And believe me, there are millions. These creatures are not just in the Pyramids. They’ve dug down into the earth beneath the Pyramids and made hives for themselves. Hives the size of cities. Every one of them lined with cells, and each one of those cells filled with eggs, all ready to be born at a single command.”

“From you?”

“From us, Vol. From us. You need me and my power to protect you from being slaughtered when the Last Day comes, and I need your mouths to communicate with the sacbrood. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

“Y—y—yes.”

“Good. Then we understand each other. Now you listen, Vol: I’m going to let you go. But don’t try running off. If you do I won’t take kindly to it. You understand?”

“I—I—I understand.”

“Good. So…let’s see what our allies look like up close, shall we?” he said. He let Leeman Vol go. Vol didn’t attempt to make a run for it, even though his soles itched to do so.

“Shield your eyes, Leeman,” Carrion instructed him. “This is going to be very bright.”

He reached into the folds of his robes and took out perhaps a dozen of the luminous tops. They flew in all directions, spinning and blazing brightly. Some rose up into the heights of the Pyramid, others dropped away through holes that had been opened in the floor of the Pyramid, still others flew off left and right, illuminating other chambers and antechambers. Of the Kings and Queens who had been laid to rest here in the Pyramids with such panoply, there was nothing left. The sarcophagi that had housed their revered remains had gone, as had the holy books and scrolls that contained the prayers that were written to soothe them to paradise; nothing was left. The slaves, horses and sacred birds slaughtered so that their spirits might escort the royal souls on the Eternal Highway had also gone. The sacbrood’s appetite had devoured everything: gold, flesh, bone. The great devouring tribe had taken it all. Chewed it up, digested it.

“Look!” Carrion said as he surveyed the occupants of the Pyramid.

“I see,” Vol said. “Believe me, I see.”

Even Vol, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the world of insects, was not prepared for the horror of these creatures’ forms; nor for the limitless variety of those forms. Some of the sacbrood were the size of maggots and surrounded by great puddles of stinking life, their bodies hissing as they writhed against one another. Some seemed to have a hundred limbs and scuttled in hordes over the ceilings, occasionally turning on one of their number and sacrificing it to their appetite. Some were flat as sheets of paper and slid over the ground on a film of slime.

But these were the least. There were sacbrood here the size of obese wrestlers, others as huge as elephants. And in the shadows behind these enormities there were greater enormities still, things that could not be comprehended by a single glance of the eye, because their vastness defied even the most ambitious gaze. None seemed afraid of the lights burning in their midst, even after being so long in darkness. Rather they sought out the brightness with a kind of hunger, so that it seemed as though the entire contents of the Pyramid was moving toward the door, revealing their terrible anatomies with more and more clarity. Limbs snapping like scissors, teeth chattering like maddened monkeys, claws rubbing together like the tools of a knife sharpener. There was nothing in their shapes that suggested kindness or compassion: they were evildoers, pure and simple.

“This is greater than I imagined,” Carrion said with a perverse pride. “What terrors they are.”

As he spoke, a creature the size of ten men emerged from the great mass. Numberless parasitic forms, like lice, crawled over its restless body.

“Do they want to kill us?” Vol wondered aloud. The insects on his head had taken refuge in his collar. He looked strangely vulnerable without their darting company.

“It will tell us, I daresay, when it has a mind to,” Carrion said, watching the great creature with a mingling of respect and caution.

Finally it spoke. The language it used, however, was not one that Carrion knew. He listened carefully, and then turned to Leeman Vol for assistance; Vol, whom the Brood-beast seemed to recognize as one who would comprehend it. Indeed he did. He began to translate, a little cautiously at first.

“They…it…welcomes you. Then it tells you: We are growing impatient.”

“Does it indeed?” Carrion said. “Then tell it from me: soon, very soon.”

Vol replied to the Brood-beast, which went on immediately to speak again, its voice thick and undulating.

“It says that it’s heard there are trespassers among the islands.”

“There are one or two,” Carrion said. Vol’s three mouths provided a translation of this. “But nobody will get between us and our Great Plan.”

Again the Brood-beast spoke. Again, Vol translated.

“It says: Do you swear?”

“Yes,” said Carrion, plainly a little irritated that his honesty was being called into question by this monster. “I swear.” He looked defiantly at the creature. “What we have planned will come to pass,” he said. “No question of it.”

At that moment the Brood-beast revealed that it knew more about the craft of communication than it had been displaying, because the creature now spoke again, but in a recognizable fashion. It spoke slowly, as though piecing the words together like the fragments of a jigsaw; but there was no doubting what it said.

“You…will…not…cheat…us, Car-ri-on,”

it said. “Cheat you? Of course not!”

“Many…years…in…dark-ness…we…have…waited.”

“Yes, I—”

“Hungry!”

“Yes.”

“HUNGRY! HUNGRY!”

The chorus was taken up from every corner of the Pyramid, and from the tunnels and hives many thousands of feet below, and even from the other Pyramids of the six where sacbrood had also bred over the years, and awaited their moment.

“I understand,” Carrion said, raising his voice above the din. “You’re tired of waiting. And you’re hungry. Believe me, I do understand.”

His words failed to placate them, however. They moved toward the door from all directions, the horrid details of their shapes more apparent by the moment. Carrion was no stranger to the monstrous—the pits and forests and vermin fields of Gorgossium boasted countless forms of the ghastly and the misbegotten—but there was nothing, even there, that was quite as foul as this loathsome clan, with their fat, wet clusters of eyes and their endless rows of limbs clawing at the rot-thickened air.

“Lord, we should take care,” Vol murmured to Carrion. “They’re getting closer.”

Vol was right. The sacbrood were getting far too close for comfort.

Those overhead were moving the fastest, skittering over one another’s bodies in their unholy haste and shedding living fragments of their bodies as they did so, which twitched on the ground where they’d fallen.

“They do seem very hungry,” Mendelson observed.

“What do you suppose we should do about that, Mr. Shape?” Carrion wondered.

Shape shrugged. “Feed them!” he said.

Carrion reached out suddenly and caught hold of Shape by the nape of his neck. “If you’re so concerned about their well-being, Mr. Shape, maybe you should sacrifice your own sorry flesh to their appetite, huh? What do you say?”

“No!” said Shape, trying to wriggle free.

“You say no?”

“Yes, Lord, please, Lord. I’d be more use to you alive, I swear.”

“In truth, Shape, I can’t imagine any state in which you’d be of use to me.”

So saying, Carrion shoved Shape away. The man stumbled on his stump and fell to his knees in the shadow of the Brood-beast that had been talking to Carrion. For a fleeting moment the thing looked down at him with something close to pity on its misshapen face. Shape turned from it, and getting up, he fled across the littered ground, not caring that he was going deeper into the Pyramid, only determined to avoid both Carrion and the creature. As he hobbled away, he heard a sound above him. He froze on the spot, and in that instant a barbed, ragged form—wet and sinewy, and attached by a knotty length of matter to the ceiling—dropped on top of him. Shape cried out as it eclipsed him; then the living cord by which the thing was attached to the roof hauled on its freight, and the creature was taken back into the shadows, with Shape in its grip. He called out to his master one last time, his voice muted by the beast in whose maw he was caught. There was a final series of pitiful little kicks. Then both cries and kicks stopped, and Shape’s life ceased.

“They’re feeling murderous,” Leeman Vol said to Carrion. “I think we should go.”

“Maybe we should.”

“Do you have anything else you need to speak with them about?”

“I’ve said and seen all I need to,” Carrion replied. “Besides, there will be other times.” He went back to the door, calling to Vol as he did so. “Come away.”

Even now Vol watched the creatures with the fascination of a true obsessive, his head twitching left and right, up and down, in his eagerness to see every last detail.

“Away, Vol, away!” Carrion urged him.

Finally Vol made a dash for the door, but even now he paused to glance back.

“Go!” Carrion yelled to him, pulling the door shut. “Quickly, before they get out!”

Several of the brood, who were within a few yards of the threshold, made a last desperate attempt to reach the door and block it before it closed, but Carrion was too quick. The Pyramid door closed in the same bizarre fashion that it had opened, and he quickly turned the Key in the lock, sealing the sacbrood in their prison hive. They shook the stones of the Pyramid’s walls in their frustration and loosed such a din of rage that the stone steps on which Carrion and Leeman Vol stood vibrated beneath their feet. Still, it was done. Carrion reverentially removed the Key from the lock and slipped it into the deepest recesses of his robes.

“You’re shaking,” he said to Vol, with a little smile.

“I—I—I—never saw such things before,” Vol conceded.

“Nobody has,” the Lord of Midnight replied. “Which is why when I choose my moment and set them free, there will be chaos and terror in every corner of the Abarat.”

“It’ll be like the end of the world,” Leeman said, retreating down the steps to the funeral barge.

“No,” Carrion said as he followed Leeman down. “There you’re wrong. It will be the beginning.”