Crossroads (34 page)

"The others?" asked the Elder, quickly.

"The Grigs were many, and they were not just chasing us. We did not discover until almost too late that they had planned a trap-"

"Grigs can’t plan," insisted the Elder.

Stomper shrugged. "Then I do not know how to explain it, but the Grigs behind ran us into the Grigs waiting ahead. We were surrounded. Weasel, Gulper, Laughing Girl... many-"

He began to quiver, fighting back sobs, and the Elder knelt and drew him to her. The other children rushed into her embrace as well nearly knocking the old woman over in their grief. Kira watched the tears rolling down all their cheeks. They had lost friends as she had lost her parents and everyone who had tried to help her but Sheila and Jen. Inside she raged against an evil so corrupt that there could be no last drop of good within it, that could revel in such pain. She wanted to hurt it back, to stomp it out, to end it, but she still didn’t know how.

Frustration drove her to the edge of a wrath so powerful it roiled and flamed within her. She felt light, as though the heat were lifting her off her feet, threatening to float her away over the tops of the fern trees where she could smite down at the monsters of this world with lightning bolts like some kind of fourteen-year-old female Thor. And she sensed a power growing within her, a frightening, terrifying power that she knew might be worse than anything the
Empty-eyed-man
used against them.

"The Mama and Papa live," said Stomper, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

The Elder’s chin rested on her breast. "You know this?"

Stomper nodded. "We fought the Grigs to the death, keeping the Mama and the Papa always in the center of the band, but as we fell... as our numbers dwindled I saw an opening. I shouted to Climber and Plink. They grabbed the Mama and the Papa, and they broke through into the forest. The trees helped them."

"They are not dead," mused the Elder.

"No," said Stomper, his eyes hard as diamonds. "I would know."

"What do you mean
the trees helped them?"
asked Sheila .

Kira pictured the giant fern that had bridged the gap at the ravine. She had thought at the time that the Elder was using some kind of magic to bend it to her will, but she knew now what the Elder would say before she spoke.

"We have some friends left," repeated the Elder, turning to Kira. "Even within the Encroachment I believe we have some friends still."

A distant clicking in the forest behind Stomper silenced all of them. He glanced past Kira toward the thinning trees that marked the edge of the Encroachment. When Kira turned in that direction Jen slipped up beside her.

"It is almost time," whispered Jen.

"Time for what?" asked Kira, still warmed by the rage that roiled within.

"For the final reckoning," said Jen, turning her back toward the Encroachment.

Kira nodded. She sensed it, too. All the time they had been running they had been coming here, headed toward some final end in which she was destined to play her part. She had denied it, she had feared it, she had tried to reason it away, but there was no denying it now. She had been born to pay a penance for something she didn’t do. Others had been as well, but she was different. Her penance would be somehow worse, but-just maybe-hers would make a difference.

"What are we going to run into in there?" asked Sheila, nodding toward the Encroachment.

"Once the stuff of dreams," said the Elder. "Now the stuff of nightmares."

"It isn’t real?"

The Elder frowned. "It is real enough to the entities who experience it. Just as your dreams are real when to you when you dream them."

"Entities?" said Kira.

"Your world is one of myriad worlds with sentient creatures who dream."

"But it’s still just an illusion," insisted Sheila.

"Only to the dreamers," said the Elder. "To living, breathing people on this side it is very real. What you experience within what the Dreamtime has become can harm you. It may very well kill you."

She turned back to Stomper, nodding at the other children. "Can you get these of the Lost back to where the Mama and the Papa are hiding safely?"

Stomper frowned, then nodded, but it was clear that he did not want to leave the Elder again. "I think so."

"You will be safer here in what is left of the forest," said the Elder, "than inside the Encroachment with us."

"Swell," muttered Sheila. "So, we go?"

The Elder nodded toward Kira. "I think you must now make that decision."

Kira started to turn to Jen, but then stopped and instead stared straight through the fern trees toward the strange amorphous mist that marked the edge of the Encroachment. The nightmare the Dreamtime had become. She didn’t want to go in there anymore than she wanted to stay here and get eaten up by Grigs, but she knew better than ever that she rode upon powerful winds of fate. She might make a difference in some manner she had not yet discovered, but fate-not she-would decide whether or not she got the chance.

"Let me see the mirror," she said.

The Elder hesitated, handing it to her reluctantly.

Kira stared into the glass that was as misty as the border of the Encroachment. The mirror felt strangely heavy, and she could feel the power in it as a dull buzzing in her palm. She tried to will the image to clear, but it would not, and she thought she knew why. The Elder was right. It wasn’t time. She tucked it into her back pocket.

"Go now," the Elder told Stomper, as she hugged each of the Lost one last time.

The kids each gave her a longing look before slipping away into what was left of the trees.

"We have to go in there, now," said Kira, staring toward the Encroachment.

"Swell," said Sheila again.

But she and Jen and the Elder followed Kira through the trees.

Chapter 45

The Mogul stood amid the dank darkness of the shoddy cellar pressing his fists into his narrow hips and glaring about like one of his Grigs, searching for prey. The gloom was no impediment to his empty sockets because his
eyes
did not require light to see.
He strode over to the mirror that appeared even more solid than the granite block against which it leaned and rested one hand on its flat, cool surface, willing his fingers to pass through. Instead he felt another palm against his own, resisting his will.

"I feel you weakening, my old friend," he said, his voice echoing like thunder within the confined basement. "Your time grows short."

But strive as he might, the force warding him from the mirror would not yield. Shandan would die before allowing him entry into the Hall. Frustration filled the Mogul with an explosive rage that blasted out, shaking the foundations of the house, rumbling through the very core of the island, fueling the storm outside. He jerked his hand away and screamed.

The sound was the incarnate clamor of insane wrath, a cacophony so powerful that a mortal man within the penumbra of its power might well have been destroyed by it. The Mogul lashed out with it again, and the torn beams and flooring overhead lifted-as though a charge had been set off-then dropped back into place, raising a thick cloud of dust. But neither the Mogul nor the mirror were affected by the furor.

"You are trapped here," said a soft voice from within the mirror, freezing the air as though time stood still.

"You are the one who is trapped," growled the Mogul.

But he knew Shandan was correct. Impossibly a mistake had been made.

He was a divided god. Because he had never learned the true secrets of the mirrors the best he could do was to pass his shade into this world, seeking the last Oculets that he hoped would grant him the ultimate power for which he hungered. But now his body and his shade were sundered, and-in his lust to reach the mirror here-he had crossed water and allowed himself to become trapped on this pitiful island. His body was still safely locked within the Citadel, aware of itself and his doppelganger here at the same time. But there was only one mirror on this island, the one leading to the Hall of Mirrors, and now he could not get back to the Citadel, he could not get his hands on the other Oculets that he sensed had now passed into Otherworld, and he could not gain admittance to the Hall.

"So, we are still at a standoff," he said.

The mirror’s silence was taunting.

He fought down the rage, chilling it to a cold, murderous wrath, and slowly a frigid reason returned. He would not be beaten in this way.

"The totality of Otherworld is nearly within my grasp. Soon your beloved and your grandchild will die at my minions’ hands, or you will open this door. Why do you stand against me? You could be my general. I would give you worlds."

Still silence mocked him.

Another blast of power escaped him, and he had to take a moment to settle what was left of the building again with an effort of will to keep from being buried beneath the rubble.

This was getting nowhere. He had allowed himself to be drawn to this impasse by his own overweening rage. That one man could frustrate him so was unconscionable. He was the Mogul, the greatest of all the great, the master of all he surveyed. Or he would be once the Hall of Mirrors fell to him.

"You opened the door to your world. You let me in. Why will you not join me?"

"You lied to me," said the soft voice.

Laughter louder than the wind and thunder roared out of him, mingling with the storm outside.

"Lies are simply instruments of power. I am your master. Your God. And my will is your fate."

"You are not a Creator."

This time the blast carried the remains of the house away into the swirling, battering storm where it disappeared like sparks in smoke. Wind and rain beat down around the Mogul and the mirror, but neither were touched by it as though both stood somehow
outside
the storm.

"I am all there is! I am the Destroyer of Worlds, while you... you are all that stands between me and the infinite."

Somehow the soft words from within the mirror transported themselves over the roar like a gentle melody that rides on the thunderous beat of drums.

"No. There is another."

Chapter 46

Clem swayed with the heavy pitch in the prow of the boat while Silky gripped the wheel in the pilothouse and glared out into the night as though he could see things within its invisible depths that no man ever should. The golden glow through the thick, square windscreens created a welcome cavern of light around Clem, a tenuous sense of-if not safety at least-
solidity
amid the chaos of the screaming wind, the pelting rain, and the heavy rolling surf. The only other light in the storm had been one tiny star off the port bow that Clem knew was really Silky’s kitchen window, but moments before that feeble gleam had died, and now that last point of reference-the only way of knowing whether they had dragged anchor and were drifting toward the rocks and shoals of the mainland or the wind had turned and they were about to be beaten to death against the island itself-had disappeared.

He signaled Silky to give the boat more throttle and to head the bow off a little to starboard. The Danforth anchor, with it daggerlike, pivoting flukes, gripped well in the sandy bottom, but if the wind or waves picked up much more-as he expected them to from the smell of the air and the taste of the spray-it wasn’t going to hold them alone. And the Danforth’s flukes weren’t nearly as strong as the one piece Bruce. He wanted to set the second hook and let the
Mary O
ride at the end of a long V of heavy chain rode. Between the two that should be enough to hold them in place so they could weather the storm. If they dragged
two
anchors... Well, he’d heard
of boats doing that, but he’d never been unlucky or stupid enough to be out on the water in a storm that could do such a thing.

As the boat swept in a slow half circle toward the invisible shore he could barely hear the waves pounding against the rocks below Silky’s cabin. He signaled for Silky to ease off the throttle as he lifted the heavy Bruce anchor in both hands, riding the swell with practiced sea legs. Anchoring in a safe harbor was no big deal, easy enough to accomplish alone. Doing it on what might turn out to be a lee shore in the teeth of a gale with waves reaching twenty feet already was a death-defying insanity. The
Mary O
dove into a trough sooner than he expected, and he lurched toward the gunnel-tossing the anchor over before he ended up following it into the sea-and dropped painfully to his knees to slide hard up against the bow rail. He clutched the frigid, seawater-greased gunnel in aching fingers, a stabbing pain ripping through his heart.

Just a twinge. That’s all it is. Just a twinge.

He hung there, staring into the face of the wave as the boat climbed the back of another mountain of black water, and suddenly he was certain that-insane as it sounded-he could see faces within it, but they weren’t human faces. They were dark and had giant gaping mouths filled with gleaming white teeth and huge red eyes. He shoved himself off the rail and back to his feet to the deadly tune of the heavy chain rode clattering along the deck between his feet. When the rode turned to nylon rope he felt it slap his calf hard enough to send a bolt of pain up through his thigh, but he remained frozen. Better to chance falling overboard when the boat crested the wave and dove again than to lift his foot and get tangled up in the line. Swimming he might have a one-in-one-hundred chance of getting back aboard. Tangled in the anchor rode.... He tried to will the image out of his mind, but it was worsened by the thought that he might meet things down there before he drowned, things that didn’t belong there, things that didn’t even bear imagining.

He sliced the back edge of his hand across his throat, signaling Silky to cut the throttle, and the
Mary O
began to drift back along the arc of the rode attached to the Danforth anchor until it hit the end of the line on the Bruce and sank the flukes deep in the sand. She held there, and Clem balanced in the prow, checking the lay, letting out a little more rode through the bow wench until the boat had a better angle on most of the waves. The seas were confused as hell, so they were still going to get hit by the occasional cross wave, but there was no help for that. As he turned back toward the pilothouse Silky was shielding his eyes against the reflected glare of the wheelhouse lights, staring toward the point, and Clem glanced over his shoulder.