Beyond the Blue Moon (Forest Kingdom Novels) (63 page)

Hawk and Fisher looked around quickly. Bloody Bones was still watching them, grinning his crimson grin, and they could feel new presences closing in around them. Something was moving through the dead trees, just beyond the limits of the clearing’s light. Huge shapes, lumbering on all sides, no longer bothering to conceal themselves. Hawk and Fisher hefted their weapons. They were surrounded now, and some of the new arrivals began to reveal glimpses of themselves. Lament cried out softly. There were worse things than demons. Concepts so hideous, so abstract, they should never have been permitted physical shapes. Madness, walking in bare flesh, nightmares from the darkest depths of the human mind.

The Magus glared at the creatures. “Stay back! I have learned much while I sojourned in the world of men, and I will not permit—”

The Demon Prince knocked him to the ground with a single blow and slammed a heavy foot down on his chest. The black cloak squirmed helplessly, trapped under the Magus’ weight.

“You’ve been gone too long, Magus,” said the Demon Prince, and there was a thunderous growl of approval from the presences out in the dark. “This is
our
place, and we are as strong as we believe ourselves to be. We’re going to take turns tearing you to pieces, Magus, over and over again. And when we all go through into reality, we’ll take what’s left of you with us, so you can watch all the terrible things we’re going to do to your precious humanity and their world.”

The awful presences around the clearing began to press forward, horrors and fancies beyond bearing. Hawk and Fisher raised their weapons. The Magus called out desperately for them to kill each other while there was still time. And Jericho Lament, the Walking Man, turned his gaze inward.

The box. Remember the box.

Lament reached into the pocket of his long coat and took out the small wooden casket he’d found in the Inverted Cathedral’s Ossuary. Inside the box crafted by Christ’s own hands still burned the original spark, the very beginnings of all creation. If he were to open that box, as perhaps only he could, and let the holy light out, he had no doubt it would sweep away all the threatening shadows of Reverie, and undo all the Transient Beings and their disturbing ephemeral realm. And he would die, of course, and Hawk and Fisher, but that had ceased to matter long ago. No, if he destroyed Reverie, the source of all magic, would he also be destroying the religion he had served and believed in for so long? Would a world of cold remorseless logic and science have any room in it for the miracles and majesty of God? Would he be responsible for destroying angels and devils, heaven and hell, and all the imponderable glories he had given his life to? To save humanity, could he murder God?

He took a slow deep breath and settled himself. God was more than magic, more than miracles. It all came down to one last terrible act of faith. His hand moved to the lid of the wooden casket.

“No!” the Magus cried out desperately, struggling under the Demon Prince’s heavy tread. “That light would destroy Reverie and reality! The spark of creation would sweep
everything
away, wipe it all clean and start over!”

“Let him open his little box,” said the Demon Prince. “This is my place, and I will set my darkness against any light.”

Darkness closed in around them, sweeping forward like a black tide, heavy and threatening, enveloping the surrounding trees and the uneasy presences there, until there was only the clearing, and those in it, like principal players picked out by the ghastly spotlight of the Blue Moon. And Hawk suddenly smiled.

“Damn, I’m slow,” he said wonderingly. “I’d forgotten. I’ve been here before. Lost in the darkness, facing the end of the world, and all the time the answer was right there with me.”

“Yes!” said Fisher. “The Rainbow sword!”

Hawk dropped his axe and his hand went to the sword at his hip, the sword the Seneschal had brought to him in case he had to save the Land again. And the Demon Prince laughed in his face.

“That only worked in the real world. This is Reverie, where I belong. You can’t banish me twice, little Prince.”

“The Rainbow isn’t the answer,” Lament said slowly, following the surety of his feelings, of his belief. “Neither is the Source. But put them together, the Source to give the Rainbow power, the Rainbow to give the Source direction and purpose. You were wrong, Magus; I was meant to be here. We all were. Have faith, Rupert and Julia. In the end, in the dark, that’s all there is.”

The Demon Prince and Bloody Bones and all the Transient Beings howled with rage and horror as Hawk, who was once and always would be Prince Rupert, drew the Rainbow sword from its scabbard. He raised the ordinary-looking blade above his head, and Fisher’s hand joined his on the long hilt, as together they called down the Rainbow; not for themselves, but for all humanity and all the fragile treasures of the real world. And as they did, Jericho Lament, the Walking Man, who had always been so much more than the Wrath of God in the world of men, opened the casket just a crack and whispered in a voice not entirely his own,
Let there be light!

The Rainbow slammed down into the dark heart of the Darkwood, a thundering waterfall of shades and hues and colors, sharp and vivid and beautiful almost beyond bearing. And a brilliant light flared out from the small wooden box, to join and merge with the Rainbow, in a primal elemental force that could not be denied. Hawk and Fisher clung together, fighting to hold on to the sword as the Rainbow’s holy light buffeted them like a raging storm that might sweep them away at any moment. The Demon Prince, Bloody Bones, the Magus, and all the other Transient Beings cried out in a single loud voice, and then they were gone, dissolved in the inexorable power of the falling Rainbow; mere shadows of reality swept away by a greater clarity. Reverie and the Blue Moon were no more.

And only Jericho Lament, God’s chosen, had the strength of will to force the wooden box shut again, holding the Source within.

The Rainbow faded away, and with it went Hawk and Fisher and Lament. The long, dark night of the Blue Moon had come to an end at last, in a single glorious moment of light.

CHAPTER TEN

Redemptions

Through an open window in a golden room the Rainbow came home again. Shouldering aside the darkness, the Rainbow plunged horizontally across the room, hammering forward like a living battering ram of colors. It shot between the startled Seneschal and Burning Man, and they fell back from its thundering elemental presence. The Burning Man cried out and turned away, pressing his flaming hands over his screwed-shut eyes, unable to face the glory of the Rainbow. The Seneschal stood and stared, dazzled and delighted. He’d always wondered what the Rainbow looked like up close. The vivid hues burned in his eyes, suffusing his whole body and wiping away all hurts and pains. And then the Rainbow faded away, and there in the middle of the suddenly tawdry golden room stood Hawk and Fisher and Jericho Lament.

Hawk looked slowly around him as though surfacing from a dream whose hold had temporarily been greater than reality. “Damn,” he said finally. “We’re still alive. How about that.”

“I thought we were finished for sure when the whole of Reverie gave up the ghost,” said Fisher. “Lament, why aren’t we dead?”

“The Rainbow brought us back because we belong here,” explained Lament. “We were never a part of Reverie, so we escaped its doom.”

“Is it really gone?” asked Hawk. “I mean, forever?”

“Who knows?” said Lament. “What matters is that we are cut off from it forever. No more magic … what will the world be like without it?”

“Quieter, probably,” said Fisher. “Do you suppose the Magus knew he was going to die with all the other Transient Beings? Was that part of his plan all along?”

“He knew his time was over,” said Hawk. “What place could he have had in the world that’s coming?”

“Excuse me,” said the Seneschal. “I mean, welcome back and all that, but would it be too much trouble for just one of you to explain what the bloody hell you’re talking about? Where have you been? What happened? What did you find? And how come Hawk’s got both his eyes again?”

Hawk grinned. “Sorry, Seneschal, it’s all been a bit overwhelming. What did we find? The stuff that dreams are made of. Including all the bad ones. And then we watched them all die. Including the Magus.” He sighed. “What matters is that the threat to the Land is over. We’re all safe again. And it will be up to generations to come to decide whether the price we paid was too high. So, did the Burning Man give you any trouble while we were gone?”

The Seneschal blinked a few times. “You’ve only been gone a few seconds. How long did it seem to you?”

Hawk and Fisher looked at each other. “Days,” Fisher said finally. “Years. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The Blue Moon isn’t a threat anymore and never will be again. We’ll give you the full story later, Seneschal.”

“In the meantime,” said Lament, “what are we going to do with the Burning Man?”

They all looked thoughtfully at the dead man wrapped in his own flames, and he glared defiantly back at them. Something had changed in those who had gone through the Gateway and returned. He could feel it. They weren’t afraid of him anymore.

“He’s guilty of mass murder, blasphemy, and desecration, and God alone knows what else,” said Lament. “But he’s already been judged more harshly and more terribly than anything we might do to him. I don’t want to hurt him anymore, even if I could. I’ve seen too much judgment, too much destruction. And yet the Cathedral can never be clean while he’s still here.”

“You’ll never be rid of me!” the Burning Man said spitefully. “This is my greatest achievement and my greatest crime. The first Forest King bound me here, and only another Forest King could release me. And unfortunately for you, the King is dead. I’ll always be here to foul the waters of your holy place and stain its lousy sanctity.”

“Not necessarily,” said Hawk, and there was a weary reluctance in his voice that made them all look at him, as though he was about to pick up some terribly heavy but necessary burden. “You all know who I am. Who I really am. I was, am, and always will be Prince Rupert of the Forest Kingdom. As Harald’s younger brother, the Throne and crown are rightfully mine if I wish. I am King Rupert if I choose to be. So, for my first and only order as King, I release you, Tomas Chadbourne. Go back to the place appointed for you. Go now.”

The Burning Man made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “I should have known. They always find a way to cheat you. All right, send me back to the pit. But you can’t take away what I did here. I did terrible, awful things, and would have done far worse, and I’m still proud of it! I was a monster and I loved it! Damn you all …”

And all the time he was fading away, screaming his spite and hatred and defiance, until finally there was nothing left of him in the room but a faint waft of brimstone and black scorch marks on the floor where he’d been standing. For a long time nobody said anything.

“I sent a lot of people to Hell,” Lament said finally. “For what seemed good and just reasons at the time. But I never really thought about what that meant. How can anyone look upon such torment and not feel pity, even for such as he? But there are texts, very old texts, that say the damned are only held in Hell until they have realized the true horror of their sins. Once they truly understand, and repent, they are free to go.”

“Do you believe that?” asked the Seneschal.

“I have to,” said Lament. “I have to.”

Fisher looked away rather than see the turmoil in his face. She cried out in amazement and ran over to the open window, and the others came to join her. The darkness beyond the shutters was gone, replaced by a breathtaking view of the Forest Land, from the highest point any of them had ever known. The Forest and the Land spread out for countless miles in all directions. There were great swathes of woodland, checkerboards of huge open fields, shining rivers and stone and timbered towns. The Forest Kingdom, in all its majesty. And all around the miraculously re-Inverted Cathedral, the Forest Castle spread out in a great sprawl of halls and rooms and courtyards, like waves of stone in a great gray sea.

“Where did all this come from?” Hawk said.

“The Cathedral has resumed its proper place in the sun,” said Lament. “It soars up into the sky, as it was always meant to do.”

“And the Castle’s expanded to its original size,
around
the Cathedral!” said the Seneschal excitedly. “I can feel it! This is what the Castle was originally meant to look like before its interior collapsed into the mess we’re all used to! A place where rooms stand still, and passageways go where they’re meant to, and doors always open onto the same location.” The Seneschal grinned happily. “For the first time in centuries, the Castle makes sense. This is going to make my job so much easier. No more shifting rooms, no more seasonal migrations. A place for everything and everything in its place. Permanently. I may cry.”

“You can see all the way to the Forest boundaries,” said Fisher in amazement. “This place is higher than Dragonslair Mountain.”

“It’s not all good news,” said Hawk. He pointed, and everyone saw the dark patch in the depths of the Forest, like a black stain in the greenery, a shadow on the Land. “The Darkwood’s still with us.”

Fisher took his arm and hugged it to her. “The Demon Prince is gone forever. And with no Gateway to anchor it here, and no more Wild Magic to sustain it, the Darkwood will probably just fade away over the years. No more long nights of the soul, Rupert. For any of us.”

They all looked out over the Forest and the Land, and with the Cathedral returned, the sky seemed bluer, the sun seemed brighter, and the air seemed fresher, as though an ancient burden had finally been lifted from the Forest Kingdom.

“All the sacrificed dead have been released from the Cathedral,” said Lament, almost dreamily. “I felt them go. Free at last to go to their rest and their reward.”

“All the blood is gone from the Castle interior,” said the Seneschal. “God, my powers are sharp right now. I could see a pin drop. All the art and statues are whole again. I feel like I could read the contents of the prayer books if I wanted to. And I could point to every room in the Castle …” He broke off suddenly and looked at Lament. “The Ossuary. The Museum of Bones—it’s still there. I suppose because it was constructed by human hands rather than magic.”

“It must be dismantled,” Lament told him. “Bone from bone until they can all be identified and returned to their proper graves and their proper rest. If only for the peace of mind of the families involved.”

“There are bound to be some old records, if I dig deep enough,” said the Seneschal. “I’ll do everything I can.”

Hawk looked at Lament. “You’ve still got the box. The Source. What are you going to do with it?”

Lament considered for a moment. “Only the four of us know the significance of the box. And since it cannot easily be opened, I think I’ll take it back to the Ossuary and leave it there, hidden in plain sight among all the other relics. Just a small wooden box with a dubious provenance. And when the Ossuary is finally gone, let the box go to some small country church and be forgotten. Disappeared from history until it’s needed again.”

“You were meant to be there in Reverie,” said Hawk. “Only you could have opened the box … and closed it again. That light …” He stopped and shuddered briefly. “It was like looking God in the eye.”

“Part of my job,” said Lament. “Part of being the Walking Man. But I don’t think I want to be the Wrath of God anymore. I don’t think I could ever be happy sentencing even the most evil of men to Hell, not after what I’ve seen. I’m only a man, after all, with a man’s fallible judgment and temper. But I’m not sure I can stop being the Walking Man. The compact I made doesn’t allow—”

“Compacts are drafted by men, for men,” Fisher broke in. “I think God knew you needed to be the Walking Man after what happened at your monastery, so he let you hold the post for as long as you needed it. Now you don’t anymore; maybe it’s time for someone else to be the Walking Man. Someone who needs it more than you.”

“But how can I be sure?” asked Lament.

“Ask your voice,” said Hawk. “Nothing to stop you from hearing it now, is there?”

Lament listened, and knew immediately that the voice was gone. God had freed him to be just a man again, with all a man’s weaknesses and limitations. His life no longer had a purpose and a destiny, and Jericho Lament thought he’d never been happier.

They all looked out over the glorious view, and it felt like the morning of the first day.

Hawk and Fisher went straight to their rooms, collapsed into bed, and slept around the clock. At ten o’clock the next morning, after repeated attempts to awaken them by knocking loudly, shouting even more loudly, kicking the door with steel-tipped boots, and then all three together, the Queen’s messenger finally summoned one of the Seneschal’s people, and had him unlock the door with his passkey. The Queen’s messenger then stormed into the room, nose stuck firmly in the air, and Hawk and Fisher snapped out of their deep sleep in a moment.

Alert to the presence of a possible enemy, they tossed back the bed covers, snatched up their swords, and threw themselves at the startled messenger. In a moment they had him slammed back against the nearest wall, with two swordpoints at his throat. The messenger started to scream for help, and then swallowed it immediately as two swordpoints dug deep enough into his throat to draw blood. He whimpered feebly, and would have fainted if he dared. Not least because Hawk and Fisher never bothered with nightshirts, and were in fact both stark naked. The messenger stared determinedly at the ceiling, averting his eyes so fiercely, they almost rolled back to the whites, and shouted the word
Messenger!
so loudly, he hurt his throat.

“A likely story,” said Fisher. “Probably a peeping tom. He looks like a peeping tom.”

“Be fair,” said Hawk. “That is a messenger’s uniform he’s wearing, now I look closely. And no one else would wear an outfit that garish unless absolutely forced to. You couldn’t get me into it on a bet.”

“It had better be a bloody important message,” said Fisher. “Or I am going to makes sausages out of you, messenger. I was right in the middle of a really nice dream, and now I’ll never know how it ends.”

“Was I in it?” asked Hawk.

Fisher grinned. “Tell you later.”

“Messenger, why are you doing that thing with your eyes?” asked Hawk. “It looks really painful.”

“You’re not wearing any clothes!” yelled the messenger. “So I’m averting my gaze. I can’t look upon honored guests unclothed. It wouldn’t be at all proper. And by the way, that’s a really unfortunate place to have a mole.”

“You looked!” accused Fisher.

“I’ve never liked nightshirts,” said Hawk. “They creep up on you in the night. If it got cold in Haven, we just threw another blanket on the bed. Now, what do you want, messenger?”

“The Queen is holding a special Court,” said the messenger. “Right now. She wants to see both of you there, as soon as possible. Though probably not quite as much of you as this. Could you please put me down? I think I’m going to have one of my funny turns.”

Hawk and Fisher lowered their swords, and let him go. The messenger edged away from the wall, trying to locate the door while still averting his eyes.

“Never burst in on us again,” said Hawk.

“Absolutely not,” agreed the messenger. “Can I go now, please? I’d really like to change these trousers and put them in to soak before the stain sets.”

“The door’s right in front of you,” said Fisher. “Tell Felicity we’ll be there in a while.”

“I’m sure she’s counting the moments,” said the messenger. He found the door and left the room, walking just a little stiff-leggedly.

Hawk and Fisher dropped their swords on the bed and got dressed, picking up their clothes from where they’ddropped them the night before. They didn’t bother hurrying. It was only the Queen.

“It’s probably all over the Castle by now,” said Hawk.

“What, about my mole?”

“No, that we’ve saved the Land one more time. The Seneschal never could hold on to a good piece of gossip.”

“So what does Felicity want to see us for?” asked Fisher, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull on her boots. “It’s a bit late for a progress report.”