City of Time (20 page)

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Johnston's truck rattled off in the direction of his scrap-yard. The lights were still off He tried the door and found it open, so he ran upstairs, calling, "Martha!" He found her in Owen's room, sitting on the bed and staring at the spot where the chest had been.

"Are you hurt?" he gasped, out of breath.

"No." The face she raised to him was full of dread.

"What is it?" Wesley asked.

"I remembered what it was, Wesley--the Mortmain, and what the chest was built to contain. I remembered it in a dream and then I came in here and found it gone. I don't know what happened to it."

"I know where it's gone," Wesley said, his voice troubled. "Johnston's got it."

Silkie was also awake. All evening she had watched people flock to the camp on the cliffs, convinced that the world was about to end. Wesley had told her how people did very strange things in times of crisis. As it got dark, the lights of fires had sprung up in the fields around the camp. Then she noticed a crowd gathering on the beach below them. A figure dressed in red stood in the water. One by one the crowd came forward and the red-clad figure took them by the hands, then quickly ducked them under the water. Silkie could hear a raised voice carrying across the water, clear and cold like a bell: "I baptize you."

Silkie looked up. The moon was growing bigger. The people on the beach were evidently not seafarers. The

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tide was always strong in that part of the beach, but with the moon coming closer, it had turned into a tidal bore that raged up the shoreline at lightning speed, sweeping all before it. There must be a thousand people gathered, Silkie thought, and they would all be lost. She could see white foam at the end of the beach as the powerful tide started to build. She ran inside and grabbed one of the magno bows from the chest. Perhaps they would notice if she fired a warning shot close by.

Her hands trembling, she rested the bow on the window sill of the big room. She had never fired it before. What if she hit some of the people on the beach? And yet if she didn't find some way of warning them, they would all be swept away. If she fired at the beach, it would be hard not to hit someone. The cliff. It had to be the cliff face. And it had to be now.

Silkie could hear the roar of the water as the tidal surge built. She bent her eye to the bow's sight and aimed at a bush that was growing out of the cliff halfway down. As she aimed her mind became cold and clear, and her hands stopped shaking. She had the bush dead center in the sights and squeezed the trigger gently. With a kick that knocked her backward and bruised her shoulder, the magno bolt shot from the bow. Silkie pulled herself upright and watched the missile arc across the night sky. It looked as if her aim was true. Then, just as it was about to strike, she saw there was a small figure dressed in white standing at the top of the cliff!

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Silkie watched in horror as the bolt struck the rock face. There was a blue flash and the sound of the explosion echoed across the water. The white-clad figure threw up its arms. Slowly the cliff face started to collapse and topple into the sea. Silkie saw the white figure stumble and fall forward helplessly. For what seemed like an eternity the figure hung in the air; then it struck the water and was gone.

The people on the beach looked up, startled. One of them turned and pointed. They started to run, in ones and twos at first, then in scores, some toward the harbor and safety, others scaling unbroken parts of the cliffs. The tidal surge had started, slowly at first, then gaining in speed and ferocity as it swept down the beach. Silkie watched it numbly. She put her hand to her face and felt tears streaming down her cheeks. The tide reached the beach, but the magno bolt had done its job. The people were gone and the tide thundered over emptiness.

Silkie sat at the upper window of the warehouse staring at the cliff. Her hands and feet were frozen through. The magno bow lay forgotten at her feet. For the rest of her life, she thought, she would not be able to shut her eyes without seeing that white figure plummet toward the sea. She wondered if it had been a boy or girl, man or woman. She wondered if the person's family and friends were searching, growing more desperate.

She got up. She knew that she had responsibilities and couldn't stay moping at the window forever. The

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Raggies were depending on her. She dried her tears with her sleeve and put the bow carefully back in the box. Then she checked on the sleeping children, still tossing and turning uneasily. Silkie was exhausted, though she didn't know if she could ever sleep soundly again. But she had to try.

There was one more thing to do before she lay down. She went outside. A cold wind cut through her thin clothes but she did not feel it. She walked around the warehouse, checking the doors and windows, and looked across the open water for signs of enemies. As she turned back to the warehouse, something in the water caught her eye, a flash of white. A floating seabird perhaps, or the curling foam at the top of a wave. She walked as far as the warehouse door, then frowned and went back to the edge of the dock. Nothing.

She leaned out. At the foot of the dock, where the edge had collapsed, there was an object in the water. As fast as she could, Silkie clambered down the broken concrete, slipping and gashing her knee. A white shape was drifting in the water--a person a little smaller than Silkie, floating faceup.

She reached the water's edge. There was something strange about the water. Her foot slipped in and it made a crackling noise. A film of ice had formed. Reaching out as far as she could, she caught hold of the white shirt and pulled it toward her. The body and shirt were icy cold and she felt the hope that had grown in her die again. No one could have survived the fall from the cliff,

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and even if the person had, he or she would not have lasted long in the water.

But the least that she could do was get the person out of the sea. Silkie pulled at the clothing until the body, stiff with frost, was out of the water.

It was a boy with blond hair and fine, handsome features, but a deathly pallor. She looked up at the broken dock above her. There was no way she could carry the body to the top. She would have to get rope from the warehouse and rig up some kind of pulley.

Silkie got to her feet and looked down at the boy. His face was perfect, not even bruised by the fall. She wondered who he was and what he had been like, what that pale face had looked like when he smiled. And then the boy's eyes opened.

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Chapter 24

For all that night and the next day the boy sat in the warehouse room where Silkie had brought him. She put food and water in front of him, but he ignored it. Instead he stared out of the window toward the camp on top of the cliffs, which continued to swell and grow.

"Will someone not miss you?" Silkie asked him, but he merely turned his pale eyes on her and did not answer.

The tides were getting bigger, now flooding low-lying areas of the town. Soon the bottom stories of the warehouse would be underwater. Now when Silkie looked up at the moon, every crater and mountain range was visible. Most of the time she tried not to look; it was too frightening.

That evening at low tide, Silkie heard the sound of

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oars. She looked down and her heart leapt to see Wesley rowing out from the harbor. The wind was getting up and he was having great difficulty making headway. Silkie ran to get a rope. She threw it to him, took a turn of the rope around a bollard, and hauled on it. Between them they got the vessel to the little landing place beside the warehouse.

Wesley clambered onto the dock. He was soaked through, but it didn't seem to worry him. "I borrowed me a boat," he said with a grin. "The owner's gone inland, I think. Don't know if you noticed, but we're in the same time as the townspeople now. They can see us and all."

"Have you heard from Owen?" Silkie asked.

He shook his head. "Not yet." He told her quickly about the events of the previous night. "Pieta's not best pleased that the Mortmain's gone missing, along with that old trunk."

"I have some news too." She told him about what had happened at the cliff, about the figure she had seen falling and the boy that had washed up.

"Give us a look then," Wesley said.

She took him to the room where the boy sat. He glanced around as they came in, then returned his gaze to the window.

"Hello," Wesley said gruffly. "What's your name?" The boy didn't answer or move.

"He wouldn't answer me either," Silkie whispered.

"Where are you from?" Wesley asked, but again there

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was no reply. He asked a few more questions, but the boy did not even look at him.

Wesley nodded to Silkie, and she followed him out. "He's not one of the townsfolk, that's for sure. I never seen the like of him around here. You all right having him here?"

Silkie nodded. She had never felt any threat from the boy. He just seemed very far away.

"Let's have a look at the Raggies, then," Wesley said.

The sleeping children's condition had not changed and Wesley and Silkie spent the next few hours trying to make them comfortable, plumping up their pillows and arranging blankets. Then they came downstairs and made fish and chips. Silkie put out a plate for the boy.

"Waste of grub, that," Wesley said, but Silkie insisted on leaving it beside the boy anyway.

They ate in front of the driftwood fire, the sweet smell of the burning timber mingling with the smell of the food. For a long time they sat in companionable silence, then Wesley rose to go. "I better get back," he said reluctantly.

They went outside. The wind was blowing violently by now.

"It's rough for crossing," Silkie said, worried.

"The tide is going my way, and the wind. I'll be across in no time."

But Silkie frowned. "What is it?" Wesley said.

"I thought I heard something," she said. "A rumbling noise."

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"Could be anything," Wesley said. "Hold the rope till I get into the boat."

"I'm afraid, Wesley," Silkie said.

"We're all afeard, lass," Wesley said. "We must hope Owen and Dr. Diamond and Cati can save us."

In his high window, the boy in white had heard the rumble as well, and seen what happened. Another part of the cliff had started to crumble and a huge section had collapsed into the ocean. The camp folk had moved away from the edge of the cliff and were safe, but the force and weight of the earth had created a massive wave that now swept toward the unsuspecting Wesley and Silkie.

The boy watched Wesley climb into the boat. The great wave picked up speed and height, then struck the edge of the dock. Silkie and Wesley were directly in line. The boy saw their mouths open in horror as the dark wall of water advanced on them out of the darkness, white foam flickering high above their heads.

At the last moment, Wesley pulled Silkie into the boat and held her close as if he could protect her against the malignant power that was upon them. As he did so the boy raised his hand.

Silkie opened her eyes. She thought that she must be dead. The roar of water had been replaced with a dead silence. She started to feel her body to see if she was still there and realized that Wesley still held her protectively. She looked up at his face. Wesley was staring toward where the wave had been thundering toward them. In its place was a towering wall of black ice, bent menacingly over them.

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"He froze it," Wesley said quietly, and Silkie realized that he was talking about the boy in white. "I seen the power come from his hands. Just as the wave was about to hit us, he froze it."

"He saved us," Silkie said in wonder.

"Yes," Wesley said, "but that's not all there is to it. There's only one sort with the power to do something like that, and that's the Harsh. Looks like you fished yourself a Harsh child out of the sea, Silkie."

They ran back to the warehouse and climbed the staircase to the boy's room, but he was gone.

"Look!" Silkie said.

A long white bridge of ice led from the broken dock to the bottom of the cliffs. Halfway up the cliffs, a small white figure was moving.

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Chapter 25

The next day Cati went raiding with the Dogs again. Using the abandoned underground system and the sewers, they could disappear and pop up in any part of the City. According to Mo, the daylight raid on the Speedway and the attack on the expensive neighborhood had caused a lot of bad feeling and extra patrols of Specials had been sent out. Patchie was pushing for more daring raids, but Clancy was cautious. He was worried they might antagonize the Terminus to such an extent that the Specials would be sent down to the tunnels to catch them. "Clancy says that the strong would get away, but what about the sick and the young?" Mo said.

Cati was getting used to being part of a pack, of