Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (39 page)

“Don’t worry. We’ll find it.” I bite my lip.

“We
have
to.” He drags a hand through his hair. “There’s no other way in.”

I gulp down the thought, scanning the ridge through dotted clouds. “Perhaps it’s just a little farther up?”

“It better be.” He shields his eyes and squints. “By the looks of things, we haven’t much ledge left.”

He takes my hand and we lunge forward through the coiling mist, my heart a drum in my chest. I heave in a breath and choke on it. Urlick’s head jerks around. “It’s all right,” I say. “Carry on.”

His eyes linger on me a while before he turns. The ledge becomes narrower and narrower with every one of his steps. Mine are shaky at best. I focus hard on where to place my feet as Urlick urges me onward. I can tell by the way he’s glancing back at me he’s worried, both about me and about where we’re headed. What are we to do if there’s no bridge?

My foot connects with a rock and it breaks away, pulling me down with it. I sink to my knee over the side of the cliff before Urlick yanks me back onto the path. My pulse gallops in my wrists. My hands are cold and clammy. “Perhaps we should go back,” I say.

“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!” He 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.