Nightmare’s Edge (37 page)

“So what do we do?” Nathan asked.

“We must continue to follow my plan to restore the foundation, heal the cosmic wounds, and draw the three worlds back to their anchor points.” He looked up, his brow deeply furrowed. “With much of the floor beneath us crumbling, we will ascend to the great violin, though I have no idea how long it will take. Once there, we will attempt to call everything back into order. It could well be too late, but we must try.”

“I can understand why we’re not falling,” Nathan said, “but what makes us ascend?”

“Just as we drew together around Cerulean’s natural aura, we will drift toward the light in my world. At some point gravity will come into play again, likely somewhere still out of reach of the violin, so we will have to devise a way to continue when our upward movement ceases.”

Nathan gazed into the darkness above, searching for any sign of Amber’s glow. Since she and the others lifted off first, they were likely somewhere up there. He blinked. For a moment it seemed that a yellow light flickered, but it was only a pinpoint if anything.

A low moan sounded from somewhere below, a stretched-out lament, almost like a song. Nathan looked down and saw nothing. Those three stalkers likely were ascending, too, but would they cause trouble? Would they dare do anything with Patar and Cerulean around?

Daryl Red reached out and clutched Nathan’s sleeve. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready to go psycho. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel had better show up soon.”

“I know the feeling,” Daryl Blue said. “Dropping like that was . . .” Her voice suddenly fell to silence.

Nathan looked into her sad eyes, two glistening orbs barely visible in the blue glow, squeezed half closed by her fear-tightened features.

He set a hand on Daryl Blue’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I have to tell you something.”

As he took in a breath, every eye turned toward him. The silence seemed to thicken the air. Even the moaning quieted. “I . . . uh . . . I misjudged you, Daryl, and I said some pretty bad things about you to Kelly.”

Without a blink, Daryl’s eyes stayed focused on his. Cerulean’s glow strengthened, shining a brighter light over her pain-streaked face.

“So,” Nathan continued, “I apologize for my stupidity. You’re a true hero, and I hope you’ll forgive me and help me finish what we started.”

Gentle laughter drifted again through a freshening breeze. Daryl’s red bangs brushed back. The lines in her forehead slackened. She threw her arms around Nathan’s neck and pulled him close. “Of course I forgive you!” she cried as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I was worried you wouldn’t forgive me for being such a coward.”

The aroma of roses returned, this time in his own breath as well as in the surrounding air. Words streamed to his mind, but they were much too eloquent, way beyond his normal ability. He had to speak them in his own way. “You faced your worst fear and forestalled a world disaster. I don’t call that cowardice, Daryl. You suffered a lot more than I did. I really owe you everything.”

Daryl hugged him closer. “Paid in full!”

He breathed in deeply, enjoying the aroma as well as the warmth of her embrace. Now he couldn’t stop the words from slipping through. “If there is any debt between us, it is cancelled. We now owe nothing to each other but love.”

She pulled back, sniffing as she stared at him. “You . . . you love me?”

He glanced at the other Daryl, then met Daryl Blue’s stare. “Of course I love you. You’re like the sister I never had, a really cool sister. I’d do anything for you.” As he let a smile break through, he pointed at himself with his thumb. “Next time, though, let me take the fall. I’ll play the part of the guy in
Vertigo
.”

“You and your movies!” Daryl kissed him on the cheek and whispered into his ear. “You’ve got yourself a sister, buddy, for better or for worse.”

Daryl Red piped up. “Well, if that goes for me, too, then your big sister says we need to figure out a way to get this freight elevator moving faster. I mean, it smells nice, but the Spartan décor makes the Flintstones look stylish.”

Nathan turned toward her. “Any ideas? With the smartest girls from two Earths putting their heads together, you ought to be able to come up with something.”

Daryl Red leaned her head against Daryl Blue’s. “My brain sprang a leak. How about yours?”

“Drained dry. I think my IQ dropped to single digits.”

“There is a way to accelerate our ascension,” Patar said. “One of our songs carries such power, but it is obscure, and I have not sung it in a long time. It left my memory ages ago.”

Cerulean nodded. “I have heard you speak of it, but I have never heard the song itself.”

“Can you remember the tune?” Nathan asked Patar. “Maybe the words will come back to you. I mean, we can’t just wait until doomsday to get up there, or doomsday will come too soon.”

Patar lowered his head. “My mind is not like yours. Once a memory has been purged, it will not come back. I am not as human as I appear to be. I am — ”

The moaning voice returned, this time carrying a cadence, the familiar vowel sounds that marked a stalker’s song.

Keeping his voice low, Patar translated. “I see you, you vile supplicant. Are you drawing me into your clutches to slay me?”

Nathan stared down again. A tall, slender figure floated slowly closer. With Cerulean’s glow washing over his upward-turned face, his identity became clear. It was Tsayad.

Cerulean sang a string of vowels, similar to the stalker’s, yet far more beautiful in tone.

Patar continued providing the translations. “If you bring evil intent, I will surely sing you into ashes.”

Tsayad held up a book, the same music book he carried when Nathan first met him, and spat out a barrage of vowels.

“I heard you mention the song of ascent. It is in this book, and since I also desire to safely rise to my home, I offer it to you in exchange for safe passage.”

Tsayad slowed to a stop, now only a few feet below them.

Cerulean extended his hand. “Give it to me. Otherwise I cannot be sure it is really there.”

Tsayad hugged the book against his chest. “Do you think me fool enough to come near you? I would have used it earlier, but my ascent would have taken me past your destroying hands. You have grown far too powerful. That is one of the reasons I was hoping for replacement supplicants. They would have been easier to control.”

“You are wise to fear my touch,” Cerulean said. “Do you have a suggestion that will break the impasse?”

“The boy has a violin bow. Have him extend it toward me, and I will lay the book over it. Then he can raise it to your level.”

“When I sing it,” Cerulean said, his sounds still translated by Patar, “will everyone rise along with me?”

“While we were trapped in the void, it worked for the two who were with me, and they were no closer to me than I am to you. After a few seconds, we fell back, but I assume with the lack of gravity we will not experience that problem.”

Cerulean turned to Nathan and nodded. Nathan lowered the tip of the bow to the stalker’s level. Leaving the book open, Tsayad turned it over and laid it face down.

Without gravity, Nathan had no trouble lifting the laden bow. Cerulean slid the book off, then, turning away from the stalker, he began to study the two facing pages in the light of his own aura.

As two other stalkers joined Tsayad, he sang again. “I trust you to complete the words you have spoken,” he said. “We have heard that a supplicant cannot lie.”

“You have heard correctly.” Cerulean kept his stare riveted on the book.

Nathan leaned toward Cerulean, but the page was too dark to read. The musical notes looked like vague smudges on blurry lines, and extra marks, like hieroglyphics with wild swirls, filled the gaps between the staffs.

After a few seconds, Cerulean looked at him. “You would not understand this music, Nathan. It is more than mere notes; it carries meanings that transcend simple sounds in the air. As a supplicant, I can give it poetic voice in your language, so we will not require an interpreter.”

“What should the rest of us do? Just watch and listen?”

Cerulean’s smile dressed his face in a mysterious aspect. “For the power of heaven to pull you upward, all you have to do is surrender to its call.”

While Daryl Blue looped her arm around Nathan’s, Daryl Red locked arms on his other side, and Nathan held the bow upright in front of them. Letting the songbook float in their midst, Cerulean completed the circle, and Patar stood on the outside of their gathering, looking as somber as ever.

Cerulean tilted his head upward and, glancing at the book every few seconds, crooned in a strong baritone.

O let the winds arise and bear
The faithful ones who heed the song.
With hearts of love we draw the breath
That gives us wings and makes us strong.

As soon as the last note died away, a fragrant breeze kicked up from below. Nathan breathed in the aroma, expecting the usual touch of roses, but it carried a blend of wonderful smells — vanilla, sage, horsehide, jasmine — just about every scent he had ever loved.

With the wind blowing through his clothes, his sweat dried, cooling his body, but he couldn’t tell which way they were going. Were they falling? The rising air seemed to indicate that, but the slightest feeling of weight said otherwise. Apparently this rush lifted them higher and higher.

About ten feet below, three white-topped heads were the only clue that the stalkers ascended as well. Above, a golden light came into view, getting bigger and brighter by the second. Soon, Amber’s form clarified, and in her glow, Nathan’s parents quickly took shape. Kelly was still cradled in his father’s arms. His mother and Amber had bent their knees fully, keeping their dresses in place as they rose.

When Nathan’s group caught up, the breeze strengthened, lifting everyone at the same rate. Nathan handed Daryl Red the bow and extended his arms. “Mind if I take her again?”

“Not at all.” His father transferred Kelly to him. “She’s breathing fine. She’s been talking in her sleep, but I can’t understand what she’s saying. Something about Scarlet.”

“I’ll bet Scarlet’s talking to her in her dreams. I’ll try to — ” Something slid down Nathan’s arm, like a snake slithering from shoulder to hand.

Daryl Blue cried out, “The rope!” She wrapped her fingers loosely around the line and let it slide through her hand. “We must be getting close.”

Light appeared above. Soon, the golden strings of Sarah’s violin shimmered in the glow, and the upper chamber materialized, including the ceiling’s rocky promontory that held the staircase leading down from the stalkers’ world.

When they reached the rim, they slowed to a stop and bobbed on the rising wind, which bubbled around them and spread out to the sides, as if the Womb had become a boiling pot. Nathan glanced around. On one side of the core he spotted Mictar, standing only a foot or so to the right of the strings that spanned the void. As the wind brushed against them, a faint sound emanated, a sweet hum, barely audible in the midst of the noise coming from the upper reaches.

The flow pushed Nathan toward the opposite edge of the hole, but with his body floating just high enough to keep his torso elevated above the rim and with Kelly in his arms, he couldn’t reach for the side.

A hefty tug jerked him upward, then plopped him down on his bottom at the edge of the hole, leaving his legs dangling. He twisted and found Daryl Blue hanging on to the rope and the back of his sweatshirt.

“Tarzan’s got nothing on me,” she said, grinning.

With the ground vibrating beneath him, Nathan laid Kelly down, and Daryl helped him scoot her safely away from the edge. The others swam with the current, Daryl Red still clutching the huge bow. When they all reached the edge and climbed to solid ground, the three stalkers bubbled to the surface and body-surfed the breeze to the side on which Mictar stood.

As Nathan helped his father to his feet, his mother knelt at Kelly’s side and dabbed her grimy cheeks with the hem of her dress. The low hum from above grew louder. Now it carried a thrumming beat that drilled into Nathan’s body and made his heart quiver.

Across the void, Tsayad lifted his head and sang out a stream of vowel sounds, wretched notes that seemed to burn in the air.

“He calls my people,” Patar said. “They have no basket by which to descend, but they could create problems with their voices. If the healer plays the violin, they are sure to try to corrupt the music.”

Nathan searched for a hidden door but saw nothing. “I heard there’s a secret passage. Can they get down here that way?”

“I created that for Abodah and my children. No one else knows of its existence.”

“What’s shaking the ground?”

“I deduce that two influences are at work — Sarah’s violin is being brushed by the wind, and Lucifer’s engine is being stirred by Mictar and his allies. You must play the strings before Lucifer is fully awakened.”

Nathan looked at the opposite bank. Mictar, tall and pale, walked to the edge of the void; then, as though wading into a pond, he stepped into the bubbling current. While the upwelling breezes filled out his clothes and swung his ponytail, he lifted his violin and began to play. The strings squealed. The hum from above strengthened and rose in pitch. The door in the upper promontory opened, revealing a pair of stalkers, one man and one woman. As if conducted by the sway of Mictar’s bow, they sang along with the horrible noise.

Glass shattered and fell to the ground. Nathan looked up. Barely visible through a gap near the upper walls, he could see the image of one of the three Earths. Wide cracks shot out from it, breaking the crystalline wall and sending shards down through the gap.

As the ground continued to shake, Patar took the bow from Daryl and propped it in front of Nathan. “It is time to do battle.”

Cerulean stepped to the edge. “Amber and I can end this conflict. Mictar is no match for us.”

“He has gained great power from Kelly’s life forces,” Patar said, “and his violin is far more powerful than you know. If, however, you wish to try, then go. Even if you are killed, you will sink into the Womb and join Scarlet in healing the wounds.”