The Color of Darkness (26 page)

“What?” Tom threw up his hands and tried to laugh. “Not this again! How'd you get here? Did you follow me all this way?”

“There's no time to explain,” said Danny. “You've got to come with us and leave the book behind. Please!”

“No way!” said Tom. “I've only got one more page to go. And he's starting to show me even better things—we came here through all these crazy secret tunnels left from the war. Miles of them! Nobody even knows they exist! No way am I stopping now. You're just jealous.”

“Jealous?”
Danny gaped. “Of what? You think I couldn't have made a bargain with him a thousand times over if I'd wanted to?”

“Probably not,” said Tom. “There's nothing you want, is there? You haven't got the imagination to want anything worth having.”

“Oh, for God's sake!” shouted Danny. “It's nothing to do with jealousy! He's going to kill you, and use your sand—”

“Yeah, yeah, you already said that,” said Tom evenly. “Because my sand's so special, isn't it? So different from
everyone
else's?”

“But it is! Because of the moon—you know, when those black dogs bit you, they changed you. Your sand
is
different. But I can't explain it all now—we've got to get out of here!”

“It's nonsense,” said Tom, staring at Barshin. “You're making it up.”

A breeze picked up. Was it the stirrings of Chromos, about to belch out a furious Sammael?

The air began to shake.

“Quickly!” begged Danny. “Come on!”

Tom shook his head slowly. The golden eagle spread its wings.

“We've got to go,” said Cath. “We don't know what he'll do. Use that stick. Call up something. Just get us out of here.”

Danny looked around the valley, his heart beginning to pound.

“Please, Tom,” he said again. “Please … we'll take you into Chromos. When we've gotten away from Sammael, I'll take you in. You'll see it all, in there.”

Tom snorted. “Maybe I wasn't giving you enough credit,” he said. “You do seem to have developed a bit of imagination. But I think it's probably just lunacy.”

“Tell him to call the wind,” said Barshin to Cath. “Tell him to call it up and have it take us away.”

“Can't we get Zadoc?” tried Cath.

But Barshin snapped, “Zadoc isn't an omnibus. You won't all fit on his back. Do as I say.”

“The wind!” Cath said. “Barshin says—”

Danny remembered, for one terrible second, what had happened to his parents, and then he forced himself to shut everything else out of his mind, and gripped the stick in his pocket.

“Wind!” he shouted, loud inside his head. “We've got to get away! Please take us!”

The golden eagle held out its wings and launched itself off the rock, soaring into the wide sky, feathers beating strongly against the air.

If only it was going to be that easy for us, thought Danny.

“Are you sure?” hissed the wind, whispering and scuttling into his ears. “Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes,” said Danny, holding every single muscle tight. “It's the only way, isn't it? Please don't kill us.”

“Can't be sure of that,” rattled the wind.

“Hey!”

Danny swung around at Tom's shout to see Cath dodging away, holding something.

“Give that back, you little cow!”

It was the book. Danny's heart soared. Good old Cath. While he'd been busy worrying, she'd crept up and stolen the book out of Tom's pocket while he was watching the flight of the golden eagle.

“Brilliant!” he shouted across to Cath. “Don't let him get it!”

“No fear!” She grinned at him, and shoved the little book into the waistband of her jeans. And then the wind picked her up off her feet.

Cath wheeled out her arms and legs, fighting against the punching gust, spinning and struggling up into the air. Danny had only a moment to think that he really didn't want to go the same way himself, before the wind caught him, too, and he was sucked into the air, reaching out to hold on to anything he could touch, feeling the world under his toes and fingertips vanish away. He tried to get his hand into his pocket, to take hold of the stick and beg the wind to stop, but his arms wanted only to stretch themselves out and flap, as though somehow his sticklike bones might steer him with the same grace as the golden eagle's feathers.

Below, he saw Barshin leap into Tom's strong arms, and then Tom was yanked off his feet, too far away to shout to over the whining moan of the wind.

I should have talked to the wind first, Danny thought. I should have made sure I was holding on to the stick. I should have known what I wanted and asked for it.

But whatever he had done, it was too late to worry about it now. For the first time in months, he felt both terrified and full of fight. He struggled to keep his head higher than his body. Blood rushed to his toes, then surged back to his ears, filling his vision with tiny spots. Far below him, he faintly made out the lake that they had left, and then the wind rolled him over to hang on his belly for a second, just long enough to see a lone figure reappear on the lake's shore.

Even from this distance, he could see how still Sammael stood, and how that stillness made the air around him grow darker, full of tightly restrained hate.

Sammael raised his face to the sky. Danny caught the narrowness of that black-eyed face for a single moment before the wind flipped him over again, then spun him and spun him until he began to feel so sick that he was sure he was going to vomit.

And then he heard a cracking, spitting sound above the grating sighs of the wind, and he felt a breath of warmth against his shoulder. He couldn't turn to see it but he smelled pine resin and ashes and toast all mingled together, all climbing into the sky behind him, and he knew it was fire.

Fire. But a fire of Sammael's making, surely? Then he was safe from it. Cath was safe. Barshin and Tom were safe. They were all their own people; not even Tom belonged to Sammael yet. No fire made by Sammael could hurt them. Besides, they were so high in the air that they must be beyond the reach of any flames.

Then the wind turned him over again and pulled his head back and his shoulders back, as though forcing him to look at something outrageous he had just done. It held him still and rigid, and he could not turn his face away.

Below, the sheet of flame bristled. On the ground, he saw Isbjin al-Orr and Teilin fleeing for their lives, heading away from the burning scrub and up to the high hills. For a second his heart choked him, for that was surely the last time he'd ever see them—how would he know where to find them again, so far from home? But at least Cath was safe, well away in the sky to his right, hanging upside down and flapping about like a puppet. And Tom, a little farther away, clutching Barshin up to his face, keeping the hare tucked away from the currents of wind.

Then Tom's arms opened and Barshin was dragged free, the hare's light little body spinning away in a mess of limbs and ears and bony feet.

Tom's arms spread wide and his legs kicked out so quickly that he looked like he was dancing. But he wasn't dancing. He was trying to kick away the flames, whose soft orange tongues lapped toward his feet. He was trying to lift himself into the air, to swim higher, to push away, but orange fingers were catching at his ankles now, poking up toward his knees.

The fire can't get him, thought Danny. It can't get him. That isn't how it works. I know it can't get him. Sammael can't kill him, not yet—that's what everything's told me. They can't all have been lying. It must be true. He must be safe—

And then Tom's legs stopped dancing and he threw back his head in a choke of fear, and he was trying to say something to Danny, trying to shout out against the fire and the wind and the vast space of air between them, but whatever the words were, they were too faint for Danny to hear.

Tom stopped moving. The wind released its hold on him and he dropped through the clear air and fell into the sheet of flames.

He must be safe, thought Danny. Sammael can't kill him. He must be safe …

From the flames rose a streak of dark fire, purplish-black, with streams of green edging its pointed leaves, and Danny heard the last call of Tom's deep voice, roaring out a terrible scream of pain and fear and sadness.

Away to the east, a figure stood on the crest of the hill. For a second, Danny thought it was Isbjin al-Orr, and then he saw that it was a human shape: the old woman with straggly gray hair and red eyes he'd seen in Chromos. “What did I give you?” she'd asked him. He hadn't understood. But here, now, he recognized her for who she was. She'd given him life, a year ago, although he hadn't been aware of it at the time. That had been a one-off though. She wasn't a mysterious creature with strange and fantastical powers.

She was Death.

And she was here for Tom.

 

CHAPTER 25

DEATH

Danny's heart stopped beating. Oblivious to the rages of the wind, he hung in space and stared into the flames below. He thought over and over on that sight of Tom vanishing into the flames. Couldn't he have reached down and pulled him out? Couldn't he have got his hand to the stick and begged the wind to carry Tom upward?

The terrible knowledge came to him that if he hadn't used Kalia, then Sammael wouldn't have been so angry. He might not have tried to kill Tom.

But he shouldn't have been able to kill any living creature that didn't belong to him: Death would refuse to take them.

And yet she was here.

“I don't understand…,” said Danny, letting the words dribble out of his mouth. “I don't understand.”

And he couldn't even put his hands up to his face to hide the shame of his tears. He was crying—a soundless gape of horror because Tom was dead, marvelous, brilliant Tom—and he would have to tell Aunt Kathleen that Tom was never coming home, and she would die of sadness, and his parents would never speak to him again. The world was over.

Then the wind was still and the old woman was walking toward Danny, up a broad beam of air that had laid itself flat underneath her feet. Her gray hair lifted gently about her tired face and her red eyes shone as softly as the embers of a dying fire.

“Hello,” she said. “You saw me. I generally avoid talking to you lot, but since you saw me, I thought it would be less frightening if I said hello.”

Danny gulped. “You've come for Tom,” he managed. “Please don't take him.”

“I'm not going to. I can't. He belongs to Sammael, and Sammael will take him now. I came here because I thought Sammael was making a mistake, but alas, he isn't.”

She smiled regretfully and held out a hand to Danny.

“B-b-but he is. He must be. Tom didn't learn all that stuff, he said he hadn't finished—”

“Take my hand,” Death said. “Don't worry, I've no business with you. I saved you, remember?”

Danny took her hand. It was warm and dry and it felt like his grandma's hand, old and wrinkled and rough from work.

“I don't remember,” he said. “But I know you did. If you saved me, can't you save Tom?”

Death squeezed his hand with both of hers. “I can't,” she said. “He chose Sammael—it was his own wish. It's possible that you'll never understand that—to you, Sammael must seem like an evil, cheating destroyer of light. But I can't take Tom from the death he chose.”

“No!” Danny pulled his hand away. “You've got to! He can't die! Sammael's cheated him—it isn't how it works. You've got to stop him!”

Death put her hands up to the breast of her worn old cloak and fiddled with the pin.

“I don't like how he goes about things,” she muttered. “But I did come here, and now I see that there's nothing I can do. I'm sorry.”

“Why not?” Danny wanted to grab her, shake her until her red eyes rolled.

“I just can't. Some things are beyond the understanding of humans. I am Death—I have one job, and I can't interfere with the schemes of other creatures. If you want an answer, you'll have to ask Sammael.”

She half turned to leave.

“I'm not going to ask him anything!” Danny yelled. “I'm going to kill him!”

Death turned back. “I doubt it,” she said. “But listen. I dislike Sammael's kind of unfairness. I presume you have some plan in mind. For you, I'll pretend I haven't understood about Tom. I'll go and argue with Sammael over him for a short while. If that helps you with anything, then all to the good. If not—I am sorry for it. Sammael has indeed been unfair, but it is not my job to redress the balance. Farewell, Danny. I hope we do not meet again for a long time.”

She turned and walked swiftly back along the air to the hilltop. As soon as her feet touched the wiry heather, the wind sprang back into life.