The Black North (36 page)

‘You have endured worse, Oona Kavanagh. What is the simple pain of the flesh, after what you have witnessed?'

And Oona found she could suffer it.

‘Quick,' she told Morris. ‘We don't have long left. He's waiting for us.' And Oona settled sight on the horizon, and started to walk across the sea.

Last time: see Oona, in a place not near broken shore but nearer to where she must go. On her journey she had walked many roads: White, Blackened, and now Silver. A moonlit way leading to the edge of the everything. In her hands she held the Loam Stone, its single shred of white light unmoving. Dark sea was spread calm on either side, a surface so cold she had to go along on tip toe. But not alone – see Morris, walking two-steps-and-a-bit behind.

Together, the twins were crossing the sea.

And not for the first (or second or even umpteenth) time, Morris in shivering words asked her, ‘How far now?'

‘Not much longer,' said Oona.

‘How do you know?' asked Morris.

‘Just do,' said Oona, truthfully.

Not a minute had passed and as though Oona's certainty had summoned it, she saw something pale against the sky, like frost clinging with brittle fingers to the dark in the distance. Oona felt the Loam Stone warm her hand for a moment – acknowledgement, or warning?

She paused and pointed ahead, breathing, ‘The City of Echoes.' Morris swore under his breath.

They watched, and the City spread, wanting to encompass the whole horizon. It was crowned with sharp needles of rock. But Oona blinked and the needles appeared softer, rounder, announcing a place more grand – elegant turrets and spires, soaring towers of cold white.

‘You are almost here,'
the voice of the King told Oona.
‘So far, so much pain in your mind. But you have not yet seen the worst.'

‘Ready?' asked Morris. Oona nodded, then began again. The twins hadn't walked far when they reached out in the same moment, wordless, and took each other's hand.

Oona kept her eyes on the City, unable to ignore the rising warmth of the Stone … and as she watched, she saw the City rise further, widening. Too soon it was all she could see. Too soon, they were there.

‘Which way is the way in?' asked Morris.

Oona searched but didn't see any place to enter: the City's surface was pock-marked, so many dark places where things could be lost. And for a moment it looked to Oona like somewhere unspeakably ancient: sunken and then hauled to the surface, broken and rebuilt, enduring. But then not: another moment, another blink, and things looked better – not wounds at all but narrow windows, sculpted arches, broad balconies …

Oona was glad to hear Morris say, ‘It changes.'

Oona nodded and said, ‘Wants to fool us. Wants us in.'

‘But where do we –?' began Morris.

Summoned by their asking – the City allowed a new dark to form, only feet from the twins: their wished-for entrance.

They looked at one another, tried for a deep breath each, and in they walked.

Narrow passage, no part of it even. Oona had the same sense of unknown nightmares and pernicious magic as on her journey down into the Briar-Witch nest. Same feeling: this was a place they were't meant to be, and they were moving towards something that shouldn't ever be seen.

‘Move faster, Oona Kavanagh.'

And the walls twitched. And the twins hurried on, still hand-in-hand, Morris ahead and at the end both of them stumbled and fell onto their knees as the entrance squeezed shut behind them.

Oona was first on her feet, asking Morris, ‘You all right?'

‘Fine,' he said, but stayed where he was. He was watching the slow crumble of his own hand.

‘You're not all right,' she said. ‘It's the Echoes. You're starting to –'

‘Don't bloody fuss,' he said, and summoned the effort to stand, eyes shut tight. ‘Need to keep going. Don't worry about me.'

Oona said nothing more as they moved on. But they'd taken hardly a shuffling step each before they were stopped by a sight, and both swore to themselves –

A city made of cities – a magpie place, ruins gathered and stacked, so many palaces and temples and Worshipping Houses and mansions and cottages and all homes gathered in hoard, and all broken and shattered, teetering or already toppled. Oona saw pillars reaching high and others only stumps; archways that reminded her of the entrance to the Burren, some the right size for a child to wander through and others tall enough for a Muddglogg to pass comfortably beneath; staircases spiralling high, to nowhere sensible, and then stopping … And it was black. After the pale exterior (the lie, Oona realised) of the City, and everything inside was burned, decimated. And so cold. And something else – everywhere around them stood dark statues.

Morris leaned close and whispered, ‘They look just like people.'

Oona knew he was right. Not statues at all. And more than this – she knew why they had come to be that way.

‘Do you hear them, Oona? Do you hear the desperation of Echoes?'

‘I do,' said Oona, aloud.

Morris looked at her.

‘Listen,' she told him.

And the air was filled with low whisper –
the Echoes.

The twins were drawn onwards, hearing –

‘I will not give in, not ever! My father was a great man and I was his son!'

‘I'll not let my family down by relenting! I was born in this Isle and I'll die here!'

‘I'd rather be turned to dust than die with dishonour! I will not surrender!'

Hundreds (or thousands!) of figures populated the King's City, but Oona knew if she'd decided to look and examine each, she wouldn't have discovered one that wasn't a boy. Like the men of the Cause she'd encountered in the Melancholy Mountains, she saw so many frozen attitudes – of fright, of defiance, but all open-mouthed, hands lingering in half-raised poses. And still their fervent whispers, the abiding echoes –

‘
We'll fight on till the end!
'

‘We'll do our fathers proud!'

‘Nothing better than an honourable death!'

‘For country and not for King – we'll fight till the end!'

‘Come on,' said Morris. ‘We'll not end up like these ones. We'll not fail.'

Oona's eyes went to her brother's hand, to the grey canker that had gotten rid of two fingers already. It was still managing to hold their grandfather's rifle.

‘Come on,' he said again. ‘We need to find the centre of things. That's where this King will be hiding.'

And Oona only nodded.

Such a distance they wandered through – felt like lost miles, long years, generations wasted. And everywhere the black. Or, thought Oona, Black? Things more made sense – this was the King's home, and he wished to have everywhere look like it. She remembered from what seemed like another time: ‘
I am what this Isle will become: it will be remade in my image.
'

But finally Morris pointed with his rifle and said, ‘Look there.'

A forest. Familiar sight, almost comforting – as though it had been chosen just for them. But not – it was the forest Oona recognised from her nightmares, and from the nightmare of every Invader.

‘This is it,' said Oona. She held the Stone tighter.

On Oona's eyelashes and toes – against lips and fingertips – she felt a wintry feather-brush, like slow snowfall. Ash. The forest was slowly burning, soundlessly, silent white fire devouring.

They stopped on the fringes and waited for entry.

‘Don't be afraid,' Morris told her.

‘Too late for that,' said Oona.

‘Good,' said Morris. ‘Because I'm bloody terrified.'

And with sickening sounds of crunch and snap and groan – and the Echoes of the boys growing to such a cacophony of vow and assurance and affirmation that Oona couldn't think her own thoughts – the trees parted, and the Kavanagh twins stepped into the forest.

Only in, and the trees knotted closed behind. The whispers died. They were surrounded by silence, standing in a clearing with a floor of scorched stone.

‘Where is he?' asked Morris.

All around the forest continued to burn without protest.

‘Hiding probably,' said Morris.

Something moved. Or perhaps everything: branches were squirming, roots leaving the ground to waver and crackle and Morris pointed his rifle high and low, higher, Oona holding the Loam Stone close, both turning on the spot, spine-to-spine, watching.

‘See anything?' asked Morris.

‘No,' said Oona. And then she whispered, ‘He won't let us see him. Not till he wants it.' And standing there in the centre of the King's City, Oona felt so closely examined. As though she was being stripped of her tougher self and left like a fluid denied its jar: the longer she stood, the more vulnerable she became.

Then the voice that Oona knew well decided to speak, but not only for her –

‘You come to confront me, Kavanagh twins? Or have you come to learn?'

Not a moment and Morris shouted back, ‘We've come to destroy you! Same way as you've been destroying our Blessed Isle!'

A sound like breathing.

‘Come out and fight, you bloody coward!' shouted Morris.

And as her brother's words died, Oona saw the Echoes take stronger hold of Morris – his hand crumbling, the rifle slipping no matter how strong he tried to hold it.

‘You have come to confront your King?' said the voice of the forest.

Morris opened his mouth but Oona took his hand, whispering, ‘Don't say anything. Look at your hand – you're making it worse.'

But he pulled himself free, telling her in a hiss: ‘We have to stop him! And I'd rather die anyway than let this creature take our Isle! Da and Granda wouldn't have allowed it if they were here!'

‘A boy of large ambition,' said the King. ‘Who wishes only to walk the footsteps of his father and grandfather, to speak their rotten words. But so simple a child too, so base – like so many I have met on this Isle, you have nothing in your head but Echoes.'

‘Don't play games with me!' called Morris, breathless. ‘Show yourself!' More silence.

Oona watched the slow squirm of branches, the waver of white fire.

‘Your brother,' said the King, addressing Oona, ‘will soon be no more. He sees the rot, the thing that is destroying him, but yet he cannot resist it.'

‘If I have to be destroyed then I will be!' shouted Morris. ‘I'll happily go the same way as this Isle that you've Blackened!'

‘I have done nothing more than what is natural,' said the voice of the King, from beside them, from above: from everywhere, even inside their own heads. ‘What is more inevitable than destruction? What else does a forest long for than to burn? Or a mountain to fall? Or a heart to be broken?'

‘Shut up!' called Morris. ‘Stop trying to fool us and bloody-well show yourself!' A pause. And then the King spoke: ‘Very well.'

Oona's eyes were drawn at once to a single tree – its trunk massive, dark, starting to shudder.

‘Stay behind me,' said Morris, trying to position himself in front of his sister.

‘No,' said Oona. ‘Side-by-side.' So together they faced things.

The tree split. The bark began to flake, peeling away like the tenderest skin against flame. And within was an uneasy darkness. It breathed, shivered, wheezed, and Oona had the sense of something as ancient as the City that surrounded them.

‘Be ready,' Morris whispered to Oona. ‘Don't think – just fight.'

‘Thoughtless boy,' spoke the King, spoke the dark within the tree. ‘It is what will be your undoing.'

A final pause.

Then the Loam Stone burned so hot in Oona's hand she would've any other time released it.

‘You cannot see what dark you move towards,' said the King. ‘Now – see me.' And the forest gave up the King of the North –

A figure as tall as any tree surrounding. Looking sculpted from the same charred and pitted wood too, the King trailed leaves still alight – a mantel of white fire. He took small steps forward and the twins took larger steps back. Oona saw what she decided was a head – rough block bitten with faint features, hollows gouged for eyes, a rough gash for a mouth. Long needle-sharp splinters were the King's soaring crown. As the King moved, stumbled, one gnarled hand was held close and one leg trailed long after like a withered root.

‘He's nothing,' said Morris, almost smiling. ‘Nothing powerful at all. Too old.'

And with any similar sight, Oona might've felt pity. But Morris wouldn't ever have been prepared to relent –

‘In the name of the noble Cause,' he said, raising the Kavanagh rifle, finger sneaking around the trigger, ‘and for the people of Drumbroken and for my father and grandfather and all in this Blessed Isle that you've destroyed, I will –'