Days of Magic, Nights of War

  “Yes, they’re not animals. They’re Beasts of Efreet. Monsters.”

  “That’s right. There’s a difference.”

  “I’m sure you’ll explain it to me if we get out of this alive.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “What does a Waztrill look like?”

  “Their heads are usually bright red. Their bodies are mottled and their tails—”

  “—have black spines?”

  “That’s right. How do you know?”

  “Because there’s one of them standing about fifty yards away,” she said, nodding past Letheo’s left shoulder.

  “Oh. My. Lordy. Lou.”

  Very, very slowly Letheo followed the direction of her gaze. The Waztrill in question was a mighty specimen of its breed. It stood ten feet tall to its belly, and seventeen or eighteen to the crown of its head. Its breath erupted from its nostrils in clouds of gray air. On its back several sharp-billed birds were digging under the scaly plates of its armor for the edible parasites that thrived there.

  “It’s looking at us,” Candy said. The monster’s eyes were tiny white pinpricks in the grotesque scarlet mask of its head. But Candy had no doubt that its look was fixed upon them.

  “Do we run, or climb?” she asked Letheo.

  “It’s no use climbing. It’ll shake us out of a tree. And if we run it’ll catch up with us in a few bounds.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I suggest we very slowly walk in the opposite direction. It’s probably going to come after us, but maybe—just maybe—if it thinks we don’t believe we’re dinner, then it won’t think we’re dinner either.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Keep looking at it. Don’t take your eyes off it for a moment.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Candy. “I have no intention of looking the other way.”

  “Would you . . . do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Take my hand?”

  “Oh . . .” She couldn’t help smiling, despite everything. “Sure.”

  They began their very cautious retreat, their clammy hands locked together. The snowfall had started to thicken in the last few minutes, making the Waztrill look like a ghost of itself.

  Very slowly it began to come in steady pursuit of them, its motion causing the birds on its back to give up their search for parasites and rise into the icy air.

  “I wish we had some place to go,” Candy murmured softly.

  She’d no sooner spoken than there was a deep resonant boom in the air, which shook the snow down from all the branches and blossoms in the vicinity.

  “There!” said Letheo, pointing up into the air. “I told you!”

  Overhead a large, elaborate geometrical shape appeared in the sky, illuminated by what little light was thrown up from the snow-covered ground.

  “The house,” Candy said.

  “The Dead Man’s House,” Letheo said.

  The shape kept falling, getting clearer and clearer as it tumbled out of the air. It was immense, and it was clearly going to fall perilously close to them.

  “It’s going to crash,” she said, her fear of the pursuant Waztrill forgotten in the shadow of this almighty descent. And still it was falling, its size more and more breathtaking.

  “It’s not going to crash,” Letheo said. “It does this all the time.”

  He was right. As the house reached a point about a hundred feet above the treetops, it seemed to discover its equilibrium. Its velocity slowed, and it rolled over so that its foundation was turned earthward. Then it began a controlled descent the rest of the way. Only now could Candy get any real sense of the size and the strangeness of the house. There was no building in Chickentown that it faintly resembled; nor any, she thought, in the state of Minnesota. Everything about it was extreme. Its windows were tall and narrow, like the windows of a church almost, only taller still, and narrower. The doors were even more emaciated and the vast roof absurdly steep. She was not surprised in the least that this was called the Dead Man’s House. It was like a vast mausoleum that was coming down in the forest, its weight smashing to tinder those unlucky trees that lay where it had decided to put itself down. As it settled, its ancient beams creaked and a sigh came from its ancient stones. Then it was at rest, and the snow covered it as it fell on the entire scene. After a few seconds it seemed the house had been there forever.

  “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Candy remarked.

  “We should go,” Letheo said. “Mister Masper will be expecting us.”

  “Oh yes. And you need your eleven paterzem,” Candy said, claiming her hand from his.

  She glanced back at the Waztrill. The beast seemed to have been just as unnerved by the descent of the Dead Man’s House as she had. Any interest it might have had in Candy and Letheo had been postponed, at least temporarily. She’d no sooner shaped this thought than the beast threw back its head and let out a terrible din. It echoed back and forth between the trees and off the walls of the Dead Man’s House.

  “What’s that all about?”

  “At a guess it’s summoning some of its friends,” Letheo said.

  Candy was in no mood to wait around and see what the rest of the clan looked like.

  “If it comes after us we’ll split up, right? That way, maybe we’ll confuse it.

  “You go to the front door and get Masper to open up. I don’t want to be out here with that thing. Or its friends.” She nudged Letheo, who was staring at the Dead Man’s House, his teeth chattering.

  “Do you understand what we’re going to do?”

  “Yes. I’m not stupid.”

  At that moment somebody inside the house began to light the lamps; and through window after window a warm light came, falling in amber pools on the snow. “Well, it looks welcoming enough,” Candy said to herself, and she and Letheo headed toward it, keeping a wary eye on the Waztrill as they progressed.

  The beast followed them with its piggy gaze, and several times it looked as though it intended to make a move in their direction but then changed its mind. The reason soon became apparent. From several other directions there came the cries of other beasts, which the Waztrill answered with a bellowing of its own.

  “We’ve got company,” Candy said, nodding toward the creatures that were appearing between the trees. She might have expected the Waztrill’s cry to have summoned creatures from the same clan, but no. Each of the four creatures that appeared was of a different species. Letheo, the monster expert, had a name for each. The purple beast with a small head and huge bugeyes was a Thrak, he said, while the serpentine creature with a head like a mech-anical shovel was a Vexile. The shaggy beast whose hide was seething with red parasites was called a Sanguinius; and finally the fat beast that walked on its hind legs, its head opening and closing like an enormous fan, was a Fever Gibe.

  Here they were, all assembled: the Beasts of Efreet.

  Keeping her eyes fixed on the quintet as best she could, Candy started to retreat toward the Dead Man’s House. The snow was coming down more heavily now. Her feet were numb with the cold, and they weren’t obeying her very well. Letheo was no better; he winced with every step he took. Surely the beasts would come after them at any moment. But no. Step by freezing step she and Letheo got closer to the house, and still the beasts didn’t move. Were they afraid of the house; was that it? Whatever the reason, they were keeping their distance.

  “Can I . . . lean on you?” Letheo said, his voice slurred.

  “Of course,” Candy told him, and murmuring gentle words of encouragement, she led him toward the door.

  They were within perhaps thirty yards of the house when the Sanguinius, which, of the five beasts, had seemed the least interested in Candy and Letheo, suddenly unleashed a titanic bellowing. It didn’t wait for a response from the other creatures. It had apparently overcome its fear of the Dead Man’s House, because it now lowered its head and proceeded to charge.

  Candy caught hold of Letheo’s arm.

/>   “Run!” she yelled.

  The Sanguinius had obviously been watching them surreptitiously, because it now charged directly at them like a speeding truck, cutting a swathe through the trees. Letheo attempted to put on a burst of speed, but he slipped and fell heavily on the frozen dirt, sliding fully ten yards over the ice and into a thicket.

  The Sanguinius instantly understood its victim’s distress. It came to a quick halt—its huge hooves kicking up fans of snow as it did so—and turned its horned head toward the spot where Letheo had fallen. He was making a desperate attempt to get up, but the thicket was barbed, its thorns catching on his clothes, hooking themselves through his jacket and trousers; even his hair. The more he struggled to free himself, the more they pricked and hooked him.

  “Candy!” he yelled. “I can’t move!”

  She half ran, half slid over the icy ground to help him. “Stop struggling,” she said. “You’re just making it worse.”

  She reached the thicket and began to unhook him from the thorns, one by one. It was a painful and difficult process. The barbs were serrated, which made them doubly hard to separate from the weave of Letheo’s clothes. Candy’s fingers were soon bleeding.

  “Wait,” Letheo said. “Listen. It’s stopped.”

  The Sanguinius had not stopped, but it certainly slowed its approach, as though it knew its prey had no hope of escape and it could afford to take its time. With its eye fixed on Letheo, it began a final advance toward him, planting its huge hooves hard and heavy in the snow. Poor Letheo couldn’t see the beast; the knotted thicket was too dense. He was almost delirious with fear and pain, his whole body shaking.

  “Don’t leave me here,” he begged Candy. “Please, please, stay with me.”

  “Shush,” Candy said gently. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  “No?” he said, his voice suddenly growing calm.

  She glanced up from the labor of freeing him to find that he was looking down at her with a strange, almost puzzled, expression in his golden eyes.

  “No,” he said. “You’re not, are you?”

  “No I’m not. I’m going to stay.”

  “Most people would leave; just run.”

  “I told you: shush.”

  “They’d save themselves.”

  “And watch the beast eat you? No, thanks. Now pull on your left arm. Go on. Pull!” His arm came free. He laughed weakly.

  Candy looked back at the Sanguinius. The beast was getting closer and closer.

  “Okay, you’re more or less free. Are you ready to run?”

  “Yes. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to distract it.”

  He caught hold of her hand. “Don’t. It’ll kill you.”

  “You just get to the house. I’ll see you there.”

  “No.”

  “Wish me luck.”

  Before he had a chance to say anything, she made a dash from the thicket, yelling as she went.

  “Hey, lunkhead!” It was an insult her father used when talking to Ricky and Don, and why it would spring to her lips now she didn’t know, but it did. “You hear me, lunk-head?”

  The creature stopped in midstride and looked up at her, a frown knitting its thuggish brow.

  “Yeah, I’m talking to you!” she said, pointing at the beast. “Lordy Lou, you are so ugly.”

  The beast seemed to know it was being insulted and drew down the corners of its immense maw and uttered a low irritated growl.

  “Well, come on then,” she said, beckoning to it. “I’m right here.”

  She quickly glanced at Letheo, who was up and out of the thicket. Then she ran. The Sanguinius instantly came in pursuit of her, the weight of its vast body making the ground shake beneath her. She zigzagged through the trees in the hope of confusing the thing, which seemed to work, because she gained a few yards of ground. She chanced another look toward Letheo, but she’d lost sight of him. Hoping he’d already reached the house, she raced toward the door, putting every last drop of strength into outrunning the beast behind her.

  The closer she got to the house, the more encrusted it looked: every window frame elaborately carved, every stone busy with lichens and mosses. Even the smell that came off the place—the cloud of antiquity in which the house sat—was complicated. Sweet like summer smoke, but with some bitterness beneath.

  As she got within ten yards of the house, the Sanguinius roared again, and she looked back over her shoulder to see the creature come powering around the corner, moving so fast the parasites flew off its matted hide. It clipped the edge of the house with its shoulder as it came, and several shards of stone flew off. Candy put on a spurt of speed and raced on to the back of the house. There were two doors, she saw. She tried the first of them: it was locked. She rattled the handle anyway, and was sure she heard somebody moving around inside. But nobody opened the door. She glanced back toward the corner. The beast had not yet appeared. So rather than run on to the next door, and risk that being locked also, she beat her fist on the door.

  “Open up! Quick! Quick!”

  She could hear the Sanguinius just around the corner; it would be upon her in a matter of seconds.

  “Please!” she yelled. “PLEASE!”

  “I gave up saying please a long time ago!” said a voice behind her.

  She turned.

  And there was Diamanda, of all people, dressed in blue and smiling at her through the snow.

  Chapter 31

  News in Nonce

  THE LITTLE COMPANY OF adventurers from the good ship Belbelo had been wandering the Nonce for several weeks now, in search of Finnegan Hob. So far they had little reason for optimism. Though all reports had said he was here at Three in the Afternoon, hunting down the last of the dragons, they had caught no sight of him. The weather was uncommonly hot for the Hour, humid and oppressive, and it was beginning to take its toll on everyone. Perpetual Afternoon could be exhausting; it left folks panting like tired dogs, their tongues hanging out. Right now they were all sitting under the enormous leaves of the jackoline tree, while the monsoonal rain—which came regularly but did very little to clear the air—pelted down. The jackoline tree was in full blossom (what, in the Nonce, was not in blossom? Stones gave forth flowers here), and the rain, when it struck the blooms, made them ring like chimes. To those in a happier state of mind, the sound might have been welcomed as pretty. But nobody in the company was in any mood to get up and dance along to the jackoline’s unpredictable melody.

  “Damnable flowers,” said John Moot, who was usually one of the better-tempered of the brothers John. “And this brain-bruising rain! I am sick to death of rain and flowers!”

  “Not to mention the fecundity!” said John Drowze.

  “Oh yes,” said John Serpent. “The endless fecundity!”

  “Can you shut your kin up?” Geneva said to John Mischief. “They’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  “They might live on my head,” Mischief said, “but I’m not their master. They have their opinions—”

  “And the right to speak them,” said John Fillet.

  “Peace, peace,” said Two-Toed Tom. “It’s no use arguing. It just makes everybody sweat more. We may as well get along with one another because we’re not leaving here until we find the man we came looking for. Finnegan’s here somewhere. This”—he lifted up the short stabbing sword they had found wedged between two rocks—“is proof of that.”

  “It could have belonged to anybody,” John Serpent said.

  “But it didn’t,” said Tria without a trace of doubt. “It was his.”

  “Far be it from me to agree with John Serpent,” Captain McBean said, “but we really have no proof. And you know what? This place is starting to take its toll on me too.”

  “What’s wrong with this place?” John Mischief said. “I think it’s paradise.”

  “You can have too much of anything,” McBean replied. “Even paradise.”

  “And the way the flora changes every
half hour,” said John Moot. “It’s bewildering. The rain comes down, washes half the plants away, and something completely new pops up. You know I saw a fruit hanging from a tree that looked like a face? That’s just not natural.”

  “Who are we to say what’s natural?” Two-Toed Tom remarked.

  “Well, I might have known you’d be saying that,” John Serpent snapped back. “You with your weird little household. Talk about unnatural!”

  Thomas said nothing. He simply leaped, his thick muscular legs carrying him high into the air above the company.

  John Serpent squealed in terror. “Don’t let him hit me!”

  But Tom didn’t have fisticuffs in mind. Instead he caught hold of three of the giant leaves above the Johns and tipped them. They were like jugs filled to brimming with water. It came pouring down on the brothers, soaking them all.

  “Typical! Typical!” John Serpent said, spitting out the rainwater. “The man can’t take a simple little remark about his—”

  “Other half,” said Tom, still swinging from the thick stalks of the jackoline leaves. “His name’s Tidal Jim, by the way. He’s an oyster harvester. And he has my heart and I have his, and it will be that way to the end of the world.”

  “Well, now we know,” said McBean.

  “Will we meet him one day?” Tria said.

  “You’re all invited, as of this moment, to come and eat with Jim and me and our pets.”

  “You’ve got a lot of animals?” Tria said.

  “Nineteen on the last count. A coyne bird we call Lord Egg. A wise old hog hound called Saint Bartholomeus, who is the worst-tempered dog in creation. An old tarrie-cat who wandered in one day. All kinds.”

  “Sounds like a madhouse,” Serpent remarked.

  “Well, we’ll all go in and eat with Jim and Tom and their animals,” said John Mischief. “And you can wait outside.”

  “Ha. Ha,” said Serpent sourly. “I am convulsed with laughter.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Tria.

  “That was irony, little girl,” Serpent snapped.

  “Tria, take no notice of him,” said Geneva. “He’s—”

  “Just a miserable bad-tempered and completely unpleasant man,” Tria said, her plain speech leaving everybody astonished. “I’m not afraid of you, John Serpent. I may still be a ‘little girl,’ but I know the difference between a man who has something real in his heart, that I should listen to, and a phony like you, who just says the first poisonous thing that comes into his head. By the way, you look silly with your mouth open like that. I’d close it if I were you.”