The Queen of Sinister (21 page)

'Oh, God,' Mahalia gulped. 'We're standing in the air!'

'We think we're standing in the air,' Carlton said. 'We think a lot of things that aren't true. But this is the important thing now. Look.'

Ahead of them, the primal forest swarmed with darkness, but slicing through it was a ribbon of silver: the river. It meandered past a swamp, where a brilliant blue something lay partially hidden. The river continued through fields of green and gold and more clustering forest until it swung around on the edge of a small desert. On the rolling sands, they could make out strange piles of rocks - cairns - as if they were next to it. And beyond the desolate plain, the land itself appeared to fall away.

There was mist, and colours fragmenting, before the inky-blue void of space scattered with a million stars. And right on the edge between what was solid and what was for ever stood an indistinct black shape: the House of Pain.

'You will find the cure for the plague in the heart of that place,' Carlton said. 'It's a dangerous journey. It takes us from the hard here-and-now through the changing climes to a place where everything we know starts to fall apart. There, on the edge, we will face true darkness; and we will look deep into ourselves. We will face death.' He took Caitlin's arm. 'If you want to find your son, that's where he'll be. The dead pass through that place, to the Grim Lands or other places.'

'My husband?'

'Already gone. I'm sorry.'

Caitlin's heart fell, but it rose again quickly when she thought of Liam and the chance that she might be able to bring him back.

'How can you speak?' Mahalia asked Carlton with tears in her eyes, yet as she said it, she was troubled that this wasn't how Carlton should sound. His words and tone made him appear much older, wiser; not a boy at all.

'Look over there.' The grim note in Matt's voice made them turn.

The purple haze brought an instant frisson of anxiety to them all. Bigger than they would have anticipated, it billowed close to the Court of Soul's Ease, but was unmistakably moving in their direction. Through gaps in the mist they could just make out the Lament-Brood, driving forward on their reptilian mounts, their numbers swelled.

'If we hesitate for a minute, they'll catch us,' Matt said.

'We're not going to waste any time.' Caitlin was defiant.

'Be brave,' Carlton said genially. 'Be true. The best of us can defeat the worst.'

'Wait,' Caitlin said, suddenly tense. 'Something's happening...'

They returned their attention to the House of Pain, and now they could sense in it a presence, skittering like an insect running from the light. It wasn't afraid; rather, it had seen them and was now sizing them up, moving this way, then that, looking at them from all angles.

In a twinkling the benign atmosphere changed. A ripple moved out through the scenery, gentle at first, but building until it was a tidal wave of destruction, distorting everything they could see. Finally it hit them and they were thrown off their feet, spinning through a world of broken shards and flickering colours, spinning round and round uncontrollably until...

The storm crashed overhead as Caitlin swam through liquid clay. She was in a deep hole and as she rolled on to her back she saw an oblong of night sky, immeasurably distant and desolate. She knew where she was before the hands erupted from the earth on either side of her and folded across her waist in a mockery of a love-hug.

'You made me die,' the husky voice whispered through a mouthful of clay into her ear. 'If you'd been there to care for me, and love me, I wouldn't have suffered. The disease wouldn't have eaten its way through me and my final hours wouldn't have been filled with pain ... and your son wouldn't have died. But you didn't love us. You only loved yourself. Your fault ... all your fault...'

And the hands slowly began to pull Caitlin down into the slurping clay. She didn't resist, because the voice was right.

In the confines of a sweltering attic, with only a thin shaft of sunlight for illumination, Mahalia huddled on an old sack, knees tucked into her chest, and stared into the blue face of a dead baby. Its voice sounded like pebbles on stone. 'No one will ever love you. This is a world where mothers give up their children to save their own lives, where everybody looks after themselves. Don't expect comfort, or security, or sacrifice, or tenderness. The only rule is to survive at any cost. You're on your own. You'll always be on your own.'

And though Mahalia cried and plugged her fingers in her ears, the rattling, sickening baby voice never stopped.

Matt stood alone. A cold wind blew across a landscape devoid of all humanity.

Every fibre of Jack's being was alive with pain as the inhuman surgeons of the Court of the Final Word cut and peeled and flayed and took him apart down to the smallest atom, and then built him back up again, in their image. Seeing how he worked. Seeing how he could work. And he had no memories of his mother to protect him, apart from what he had glimpsed from the watchtower, and he had no connection with anything soft and human at all. He was completely and devastatingly alone.

And he knew what plans they had for him, coded into the very structure of his genes.

In the oppressive darkness behind the mask, Crowther saw all that was happening to his fellow travellers, felt what they were feeling, succumbed to the same terrors and suffered his own magnified four-fold: the self-loathing, the loss of his family, the loneliness. The emotions were so acute, so sickening, it felt as if his mind was being ripped away.

And behind all of them was the chaotic buzzing of the mad god Maponus. His powerful consciousness extended out from the Court of the Final Word, through the medium of the mask, to taint them all, to show them the despair and the dread and the hideous confusion of his own fractured existence.

There was no escape for any of them. Insanity and suffering prevailed.

And then the strangest thing happened, just as the clay began to flow into Caitlin's mouth, as Mahalia brought blood to her ears in an attempt to shut out the sound. Carlton was there, with all of them, at the same time, and in the same way that Maponus had been. He said, simply, 'This is what it means to be human.'

His words unfolded in their minds to reveal a hidden message of universal support: they weren't alone. And as soon as they accepted that unmistakable concept, the suffering and madness fell away. Caitlin gulped and choked and found herself sucking in fresh night air, grass beneath her back. The others were scattered around, dazed and shaking, propelled back into reality but with their suffering still close.

The Mask of Maponus lay in Crowther's hands. He stared at it blankly, chest juddering with a silent sob, thin trickles of blood running from the holes in the sides of his head; he looked like an old, old man. Caitlin felt a wave of guilt at what she had put him through, but she could say nothing to comfort him, for she knew she might have to ask the same of him again.

Carlton stood nearby, smiling benignly, and Caitlin shakily went over to give him a hug. 'Thank you,' she whispered. She knelt down so she was on a level with him. 'You are the special one.'

Carlton continued to smile, gave nothing away.

Mahalia roughly shoved Caitlin aside. 'Can't speak again, mate?' Carlton shook his head. She put a protective arm around Carlton's shoulder and led him away.

'He's a weird kid,' Matt said. 'The things he was saying, the way he was acting ... he seemed—'

'More than us?' Caitlin finished. 'I think Carlton's going to be more help getting us through this than we thought.' She grew sad. 'He's a lovely boy.'

'He reminds you of your son.'

Caitlin was surprised by Matt's empathy, and the fact that he had noticed something she had only been vaguely aware of herself made her warm to him even more. 'He's nothing like Liam in so many ways, but there's a quality ... a calmness ... that is so Liam. We have to look after him, Matt. Life's so cruel these days...'

'I'll keep an eye on him, don't worry. Besides, it looks as though he's got his own personal minder.' He nodded towards Mahalia, who sat with her arm around Carlton, talking gently about what they had just experienced.

'Do you trust her?' Caitlin asked.

'God, no,' he replied, without a second thought.

As Mary continued her journey eastwards across the South Downs, she felt herself growing fitter. Her craving for alcohol was driven out of her by the simple fact that there was none to be had, although it never completely disappeared. She travelled by day, keeping to the high ground, as far removed as she could manage from human habitation. First and foremost, she didn't want to risk coming in contact with any centres of the plague, but she was also aware that a woman travelling alone was a tempting target for some of the forces of anarchy that had risen up since the collapse of the country's governance.

Her thoughts were never far from Caitlin. What worried Mary the most were the marks of subtle machinations and sinister manipulation on everything that had happened since the plague had appeared.

For the first few days, she grew increasingly hungry and even the herbs and edible plants she foraged from the bursting spring countryside did little to assuage her pangs. While Arthur Lee foraged for himself, catching shrews and birds, Mary experimented with a discarded piece of netting and some sticks, and one night managed to catch a rabbit, which kept her going for a couple of days. Over time she perfected her technique and even managed to net a few of the game birds now thriving along the south coast since the Fall.

Most astonishingly, each morning that she woke - secure in an abandoned ruin or camouflaged in the depths of a ditch - she felt as if another year or two had fallen from her. She had anticipated that the travails of the journey would make her feel old and weak, but her limbs were stronger than they had been in a long time and her mind was clear. The breathtaking views from the Downs across to the sea made her feel even more alive. Every aspect of the countryside exhilarated her, from the overgrown fields to the leafing trees, from the morning mist and the glorious spring sunshine to the afternoon drizzle, the birds and rabbits and squirrels.

Part of that sense of wonder was her realisation that she walked in the footprints of history. She was following the South Downs Way, an age-old track that ran from Winchester to Eastbourne, and in more ancient times was linked to other paths that ran to Stonehenge. She felt herself to be a part of something great, and strange, and wonderful.

And on the second week she realised something had started to follow her.

At first she only glimpsed it from the corner of her eye, a flicker that could have been a dust mote on an eyelash, but the more she saw it, the more real it became, as if the act of noticing it had given it substance. In those early times it kept its distance, tracking her along the lowlands but holding back a mile or two, sometimes lost in the greenery and ruined buildings.

Gradually it became more solid, though still too distant for her to define its form. Yet it scared her, as if she was sensing something on another level that spoke darkly of its true nature, and so she hurried her step, afraid to pause even to sleep. The pace began to take its toll; sooner or later she would have to lose it, or face up to it.

At the close of the third day after she had noticed her pursuer, with exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her, she came to a large village. It was in the early stages of the plague. As night fell she watched sobbing relatives gathering in the flickering light of candles, saw village elders struggling to make sense of what was happening, anticipating what lay ahead, but never for a minute grasping the true horror.

It was as good a place as any to make a stand. Her knowledge of the Craft, while not as deep or wide-ranging as some, was still enough to afford her use of some simple trickery that she hoped would be enough to throw her pursuer off the scent.

Wearily, she made her way along the dark high street, a plan slowly taking shape in her mind. The charnel house was a large four-bedroom executive property. Its new occupants were laid out with respect in the lounge, old bed-sheets thrown over them, the hint of body shapes in the fold-shadows somehow worse than if what was covered had been laid bare.

But it didn't scare her - death never had, and that was one of the things that had convinced her to accept the Craft, where the dead are as much a part of Existence as the living. Old friends, fondly remembered family; sometimes, a little more worryingly, old enemies.

Mary remembered the first time she had seen a dead body. It was in the clinical care wing of the hospital where she had just started her career as a psychiatric nurse. Some poor girl, arms like bones, disproportionately large head giving her the distended doll-form of the bulimic, had gone missing. They found her in the grounds, on a hard winter's night, frozen like a fallen bird amongst the chiaroscuro trees. Her eyes were wide, staring at the spray of stars visible through the branches, her expression oddly optimistic. Mary found it sad, but not scary. Worse things were out there, and she'd come across a few of them in her life.

She made her way up the stairs and chose one of the smaller bedrooms; bare boards, Winnie the Pooh wallpaper, the smell of abandonment, not yet tainted by the corruption rising from the lounge. Moonshadows fell across the floor; the house was silent. In her pack, Arthur Lee lay still, remarkably calm.