—
William Royce stalked through the Gallery of Bone, staring straight ahead. The portraits on the walls were full of sound and fury, and sometimes people or creatures raged inside the polished wooden frames, trying desperately to break free. Royce paid them no attention. He had a purpose and a destiny to fulfil, and the wonders of the Gallery were nothing to him. He realized he was responsible for most of the scenes of destruction and suffering, but he felt no guilt. He had done what was necessary to bring him to this place, at this time. Nothing else mattered. He’d been here before many times, in his dreams. He’d dreamed of the Gallery since he was a child, though it was a long time before he was able to discover what the place was. The size and extent had frightened him as a child, but it held no terrors for him now. This was just a place he had to walk through on his way to the Forever Door, and direct access to the Godhead itself. His pulse jumped, and he quickened his pace in spite of himself. He was almost there. Soon he would stand before the Door, open it and ask his question, the question he’d waited a lifetime to ask.
He made his way unhesitatingly through the corridors his dreams had revealed to him, and finally they ended and he came to the Gallery of Frost. He stopped at the entrance to the Gallery, and gazed in awe at a sight he’d always been denied in his dreams. For all his discipline and single-mindedness, he still stopped to look and wonder, for there were some things almost too beautiful for human eyes to bear. The Gallery of Frost had been constructed from delicate traceries of curling ice and strands of shimmering moonlight. It was a vast dome of frosty spiderwebs, intricate beyond measure, towering high above him. Royce took a deep breath and stepped out on to the floor of shining glass. There was a feeling to the Gallery of immense, subtle tension, as though the whole giant structure was balanced so exactly that were even one key thread to break, that would be enough to bring the whole place down. Without knowing why, Royce knew beyond doubt that the Gallery of Frost was barely real, only just tangible, and even he hesitated a moment before striding out across the floor of glass.
He didn’t know how long he walked under the delicate shimmering strands of ice, but finally he came to the heart of the web, and the Forever Door. The sight of it stopped him in his tracks. It was just a door. An ordinary, everyday door, standing upright and alone. Royce stared at it speechlessly. He’d done so much, sacrificed so much, and come all this way just for this? He’d never seen the Forever Door in his dreams, but he’d imagined… everything but this. Disappointment came close to crushing him, and then anger thrust it away. He was used to anger. He could deal with that. It never occurred to him to doubt that this really was the Forever Door; he knew, on some basic level that could not be questioned. It was one of the true Great Wonders of the World, and he stood before it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said a quiet voice beside him. “You thought it would be bigger, more impressive. Everyone does.”
Royce spun round, startled; he hadn’t heard anyone approach him. Standing beside him, close enough to touch, was a tall, dignified figure in a spotlessly white suit, carrying a large and ornate Bible. But though the gaunt, forbidding face was familiar to him, the eyes were older, much older, and Royce had no doubt who he was really looking at.
“Old Father Time, I assume. I’ve come a long way to meet you. Why do you look like my foster-father?”
Time shrugged. “Don’t ask me; it’s your subconscious. Everyone sees me differently. You see me as an authority figure, which is fair enough; your unconscious mind supplies the details. The Forever Door and I are of the same unique nature, shaped by the viewer. The Door takes its shape from a real door in your past; one that was important or significant to you at some vital moment of your life. Do you recognize it?”
Royce looked at the Forever Door for a long time, and then nodded slowly. He did know it. He hadn’t seen or thought of it in years, but he remembered it. It was the front door of the house he’d been taken to live in as a child, after his parents died in the car crash, and his foster-parents took him in. There hadn’t been much love, but his foster-father had set him firmly on the path of the Lord, so Royce tried to think kindly of him. When he thought of him at all. He remembered this door. When he’d walked through it, his life had changed for ever.
“I remember it,” he said finally. “Interesting symbolism. Open it.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” said Time. “There’s someone else here who’s been waiting for you.”
There was a sudden blast of heat from Royce’s other side, and he flinched away from it instinctively. The stench of brimstone and burning meat was suddenly heavy on the air, and even before he turned to look, Royce knew who it was; who it had to be. The demon he’d struck a bargain with so many years ago had finally come to stake its claim. He lifted his chin and turned unhurriedly round to study his enemy. It took all his courage and resolution not to fall back a step. Eight feet tall, and radiating heat almost beyond bearing, the demon had come as a patchwork figure of sliding metal plates, in roughly human form; a steel construction that only mimicked humanity in order to mock it. The steel plates slipped and slid as it moved, glowing red with heat, and metal spikes protruded from its brow like horns, above two deepset eyes of molten crimson.
“You are mine,” it said, its voice like rusty steel bars grating together. “The dreams I sent brought you here, and me, to the place I could not come uncalled. Now you will open the Door for me, and I shall have my long-awaited revenge on He who cast me down.”
“Sorry,” said Time. “As long as Shadows Fall still stands, you have no power over the Door. That’s the way it is. And despite this gentleman’s best efforts, the town still stands.”
The demon looked at Royce. “It was worth a try. Something still is left to me. All wards are forfeit here, and you have no protection from me. I granted you power in return for the many deaths you promised me in Shadows Fall, but you must have known there’d be a further price to pay. By your actions are you damned, and I shall take you to your damnation. We’re going to have such fun together, you and I.”
“Not necessarily,” said Time. “You know the rules.”
The demon hissed at Time, but fell silent, and Royce realized that the demon was afraid of Time. He filed the thought away. It might prove useful. He stared commandingly at Old Father Time, who looked calmly back at him, unmoved.
“This Door leads to God,” said Royce. “I have come here to open the Forever Door, and nothing you can say or do will stop me. You’re powerful, but I have power too, more than you’d imagine. I have men standing guard to see that we won’t be disturbed.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Time. “The men you left in my entrance Hall are dead, unfortunately.”
Royce stared at Time. It never occurred to him to doubt Time’s word. If he said they were dead, then they were. The casualness of it shook him, but he held it in, controlled it. This was no place to appear weak. Time nodded understandingly.
“I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you, William. The Forever Door is here for everyone. If you’re really determined to speak with God, all you have to do is open that Door and walk through. Of course if you do, you can’t come back. Don’t look at me like that, William. I don’t make the rules. I just work here.”
“What lies beyond the Door?” said Royce. His mouth was dry but he kept his voice steady.
“I don’t know,” said Time. “It’s the only place in Shadows Fall I can’t see. It’s the last great mystery, the final answer to all the questions you ever had. And isn’t that why you came here? To ask a question?”
“Yes,” said Royce. “A question. Quite a simple one really, but it’s driven me all my life. Is there really a God?”
The demon hissed, but didn’t move. Time smiled.
“I have to know,” said Royce. “I built my whole life around God and his word. Gave up every chance of a normal life, all hope of earthly love and family, to dedicate myself to the Lord. I trained as a W
arrior, built my army and brought it here, because in the end faith isn’t enough. Not as long as proof exists. If God exists, then everything I’ve done, and I’ve done terrible things, can be justified. If not, then my life has been a lie, and it was all for nothing. All the deaths, all the suffering… everything I gave up to be Leader.
“Ironic, isn’t it; an army of Christian fanatics who never doubted, led by a man who lost his faith.
“I’ve dreamed of this place for so long. Of the Forever Door, beyond which all truths can be found, all questions answered. I had to come here, whatever the price, to know, beyond all shadow of doubt. To know.”
He stepped forward and opened the Forever Door. Light spilled out, bright and warm and comforting. He strode unhesitatingly into the glow, and the Door closed behind him, cutting off the light. The world was a darker place without it. Old Father Time looked at the steel demon.
“Some day there may come a time when no one believes in you any more. What will you do then?”
“It’s not time yet,” said the demon, in its voice like grating rust. “And many things may happen before then.”
It vanished, leaving behind only a fleeting stench of sulphur, and two flaming footsteps where it had been standing. Time stamped them out. He looked at the closed Door, and sighed quietly. It wasn’t his time to go through either, but one day even he would have to pass through and see what lay on the other side. He was quite looking forward to it. He turned away from the Forever Door and walked back through the Gallery of Frost. Hopefully by now Mad would have finished her work and tidied up the mess. He hoped so. He felt very much that he could use a good strong cup of tea, and he hated having to make it for himself.
Time walked away through the shimmering traceries of ice, and the Door waited patiently behind him for all those yet to come.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Endgame
Rhea Frazier drove the Warrior jeep through the empty streets at more than sufficient speed to make Ash grab surreptitiously at his seatbelt. He might be dead, but there was no point in taking chances. Rhea had found the jeep abandoned by retreating Warriors outside the Library, and commandeered it on the spot. Ash wasn’t entirely sure she had the authority to do that, but knew better than to raise the point. Rhea was not in the mood to listen to details. The Warriors turned out to have been inconsiderate enough not to leave the keys in the ignition, but Ash gave the motor a stern look and it obligingly coughed into life. Rhea drove the jeep through the devastated streets at increasing speed, staring grimly straight ahead. It was as though she couldn’t bear to see what had been done to her town, and thought that if she could just get through it fast enough, she’d break through into a part of town that had somehow survived undamaged. But no matter how fast she drove, there was always more destruction, more smouldering fires, more bodies lying in the street. The Warriors had come to Shadows Fall, and it would never be the same again.
The jeep roared on and the town passed by, and it was the things that were missing that bothered Ash the most. No one walked the streets or came to mourn the dead. The few survivors watched nervously from behind barricaded windows. There was no traffic on the roads apart from the jeep. The traffic lights all showed red, but Rhea paid them no attention. The Warriors had been defeated, but the town still felt under siege, as though the hostilities had only ended for a moment, and the uneasy peace was just a pause before the next onslaught. Ash scowled. He had a bad feeling himself, though he couldn’t put a finger on anything specific. He thrust the feeling away and looked again at Rhea. Her face was bruised, and some bastard had split her lower lip, but she looked as tough and uncompromising as ever. And that worried Ash most of all. It couldn’t be healthy to be so rigid, so controlled. Sooner or later she was going to have to stop and mourn all the things she’d lost in the invasion, and the longer she left it, the harder it was going to be for her. That was why she was keeping herself so busy; so she wouldn’t have time to stop and think. But the town was still there, no matter how fast she drove through it. Ash rocked in his seat as the jeep took a corner at speed, and looked about him. Presumably Rhea had some destination in mind, but Ash hadn’t a clue what it might be. He wasn’t even that sure where he was. One shelled and burnt-out street looked much like another.
“Where exactly are we going?” he said finally, raising his voice to be heard above the roar of the engine, and then tried not to wince as Rhea steered the jeep through a series of potholes without slowing.
“To see Richard Erikson,” said Rhea shortly. “Hopefully we’ll find him at his office. The town’s going to need a centre of communications and authority if we’re going to start putting things back together again. There’s so much to do… we have to find out what our resources are now, and how best to put them to work. People, skills, supplies… We can’t ask the outside world for help, so everything we need is going to have to come from us. The Councillors are all dead, so we have to do something to recreate authority, and the chain of command. Otherwise everyone will just be dashing around, getting in everyone’s way and overlooking the things that really need doing. We’ve got to get organized, Leonard, and for that we need the Sheriff and his people.”
She slowed the jeep a little, and looked around as though noticing for the first time just what she was driving through. Everywhere had taken some kind of damage, and here and there smoke still rose into the early morning sky. There were overturned and burnt-out cars, smashed windows and shattered street lights, and bodies everywhere. They lay carelessly, in grotesque positions, as though they didn’t have to care any more. Rhea sighed, and concentrated on the road ahead. For the first time she looked tired, beaten down, as though the long night’s events were finally catching up with her.
“The Warriors must have been the size of a regular army to have done so much damage,” she said finally. “I keep thinking there must be some part of town they didn’t reach, some piece still untouched, but no… No matter what we do, the town will never be the same again. Shadows Fall was supposed to be a sanctuary from the world, a place where even dreams and legends could come to find peace and comfort before passing on. But the world found us anyway. I keep coming up with plans for rebuilding, for putting things back together again, and then I look around me and think, what’s the point? With so many dead, so much destroyed; maybe it would be kinder just to leave, and let the town die in peace.”
“No,” said Ash. “We have to rebuild Shadows Fall and make it work again. Or the Warriors will have won after all.”
Rhea sniffed once, and then concentrated on her driving, for which Ash was grateful. Rhea had never taken advice easily, even when he’d been alive. But she’d never talked about giving up before, either. The invasion had changed everyone. They drove on in silence, until finally they reached the Sheriff’s centre of operations. The building was part of a civil service block, and looked pretty much unscathed by the fighting. Rhea eased the jeep to a halt, and then sat there for a while, frowning. The Warriors had to have known the location of the Sheriff’s office, and taking out someone of his authority should have been one of their first objectives. She shrugged, but the thought wouldn’t go away, and she was still scowling as she parked the jeep in a space marked Reserved, and jumped out of the jeep while the engine was still turning itself off.
She hurried up the steps of the building with Ash right behind her, feeling the pressure build almost unbearably within her, only to find there was no one there to take it out on. The place was empty, and eerily quiet. There should have been Deputies and office staff bustling back and forth, answering queries and dealing with problems, but the corridors were deserted, and unoccupied offices stood with open doors whichever way they looked. Rhea and Ash walked on, their footsteps echoing loudly in the quiet, and no one came to stop them. Finally they came to the Sheriff’s inner offices, and there they found two Deputies, sitting slumped in easy chairs, drinking coffee. They looked up as Rhea and Ash strode in, and then rose to their feet as they reco
gnized Rhea. One of the Deputies was blond, and the other was dark, but they were both pretty much of a type; tall, muscular and running a little wide in the beam from spending too much time sitting in cars. They both looked tired, and they both had blood on their uniforms that didn’t seem to be theirs. They both glanced briefly at the closed door of the Sheriff’s inner office, but neither said anything.
“All right,” said Rhea coldly, “what the hell is going on here? There had better be a good answer, because I am really not in the mood for a bad one. I have had a really bad day and yours could be about to get a hell of a lot worse. Talk to me.”
The two Deputies looked at each other. “I’m Collins,” said the one with the blond hair. “This is Lewis. For the moment, we’re the law in Shadows Fall. Which only goes to show how desperate things have got. The rest of us are either dead, or missing, presumed dead, and the Sheriff is… incommunicado. The radio system’s out. No one left to operate it. Apparently the Warriors got here early on, marched everyone out at gunpoint, stood them in a line against a wall at the back of the station, and shot them all. The bodies are still there, if you want to take a look. The Warriors probably meant to take this place over and run it themselves, but there was no one here when Lewis and I got back. We’ve been up all night, dashing here and there like mad things, helping where we could. Now we’re tired, and we’re taking a break. And if that doesn’t suit you, madam Mayor; tough. We’re all used up.”