Crossroads (38 page)

The corridor took on a rotting stench it had not had before, and the farther they went the more nauseating it became. The odor of urine, excrement, of decaying flesh and bodies too long away from a bath to even remember one swathed the very air. Kira wrinkled her nose, and Sheila did the same. Jen-still slouched in a semi-trance-seemed unaffected.

Finally they came to a heavy door constructed of oak panels with ornate, black iron hinges and a large brass handle surrounded by an intricate escutcheon plate that portrayed what looked like Grigs devouring people. Kira placed her palm on the handle and tried to force it down. It would not budge.

Sheila tried her hand at it, but shook her head.

"Locked," she said, glancing one more time over her shoulder and squinting again back down the corridor.

"Try," Kira told Jen.

Jen shrugged, but leaned into the effort. After a moment she shook her head and backed away from the door.

Kira had expected as much. She wasn’t a wizard, and she wasn’t a genius, either, but she wasn’t stupid. Everything that had happened to her had happened for a reason. Jen had been sent to protect her so that she could live long enough to reach this place. They had found Sheila because Sheila wore the Oculet, and Kira suspected that even Marguerite had been part of some larger plan. Burney Bright had been drawn to Marguerite because of her native talents for soothsaying. She carried Earth-magic which the Elder said was stronger than on any other world, and because of that Sheila carried some of it, too. Shandan’s guiding hand had been at work there, too. Kira didn’t know if that meant that they were destined to beat the
Empty-eyed-man
or whether fate-and Shandan-were simply giving them the ghost of a chance, but she understood what to do next.

She reached into her pocket and withdrew the key, slipping it into the lock. As she expected, it turned easily, and this time when she grasped the handle the door swung inward of its own accord. The room inside made the corridor seem small. It was more like a vast, stone-sided cavern with heavy brass chandeliers-holding torches-hung on thick black-iron chains, high overhead, and it was filled to bursting with people. Living people.

Originals.

She had expected them to be held in dank, dark cells, chained and abused, like the Count of Monte Cristo, or something, but the horde of them crowded into the huge space roamed freely, although none seemed to know where they were going, most staring at the grimy stone floor or their own feet as they shuffled around. Some were muttering to themselves, others were wailing or crying loudly, tears streaming down their soiled faces, a few convulsed on the floor. The stench of so many filthy bodies was nearly enough to knock Kira out.

"It’s a madhouse," groaned Sheila.

The shock in her eyes mirrored Kira’s own, but Kira sensed something else in Sheila. She wasn’t just afraid of the
Empty-eyed-man
now or shaken by the condition of the survivors here.

"What is it?" asked Kira.

"My dream," whispered Sheila, so low that Kira had to lean to hear.

"You’ve dreamed about this place?"

Sheila nodded, nudging her to keep walking. "Over and over, but I thought it was on earth. I thought that I had been locked up for being crazy, that this image in my dream was a madhouse, an insane asylum. Because the authorities found out that I thought I could talk to dead people."

"You do talk to dead people."

"You know that, and I know that..."

A tall, stately woman, who would have been beautiful if not for her matted hair and crazed eyes grabbed Kira by the shoulder and pointed up toward the ceiling.

"Do you see them?" she screamed.

Kira stared at the beam-work high overhead lit by the torchlight.

"See what?" she asked.

"The eagles! See what he’s done to my eagles"

Sheila gently removed the woman’s hand and nudged her away. When she turned back her face registered concern as she stopped in front of Jen.

"You look like you can barely stay on your feet," she said, gripping Jen’s arms.

Jen shook her head, her eyes half closed, teeth clenched.

"What’s wrong with her?" Sheila asked Kira.

Kira stared at all the Originals, screaming, crying, wailing, muttering, stumbling, and she herself could feel the evil that seeped right out of the walls to cause the madness.

"It’s this place," she said, seeing confirmation wink in Jen’s good eye. "It robs all the Originals of their reason, but it draws power from them, too. The power to create nightmares. They’re seeing the things that are driving them mad, but those things are actually happening out in the Dreamtime. I think maybe they know that, too, and it’s a horror to them."

"So?" said Sheila, staring around the vast room. "What’s that got to do with Jen?"

"She's not an original," said Kira. "She's a pooka, created by my grandfather."

Sheila nodded slowly in understanding. "She’s protecting us from this place."

"Yes, but I don’t know how much longer she can do it."

"Then let’s do what it is we need to do and get out of here," said Sheila, taking Jen’s elbow this time to shepherd her through the wandering horde.

Chapter 52

Shandan stood in the center of the Hall of Mirrors, broad shoulders slumped beneath his robe, his great head bowed in concentration. He could feel the last of his power dwindling like chaff blowing off wheat, but he used every trick he had learned over the millennia to channel what was left, to pass it where it needed to be. The game was almost over, and the outcome was looking less and less in doubt and more and more ill-omened. Forty earth years was a tick of the clock to an Original, but any time was long alone, and there had never been a second in which he could relax his guard. Now he felt the battle drawing to a close, but he had played this match to a temporary stalemate at least and perhaps-just perhaps-to the point at which the tide might turn.

The Mogul had finally made a mistake. In his haste and his overweening certainty in his own power, he had thought to find his way into the Hall of Mirrors from the earth side. To enter there, but he was not strong enough to translate himself whole. So on earth he was still only a wraith. A mighty wraith, but a wraith, nonetheless. He had divided himself to become the earthly
Empty-eyed-man
, and for now he was not strong enough either there or on Otherworld to break through into the Hall, and if Shandan could hold him thus long enough the plan that he had set in motion might yet succeed.

His granddaughter was still unsure of her talents, and the guardian that he had sent to her was weakening with each second inside the confines of the desecrated Citadel, but there was yet hope. Shandan had been living on hope for so long that it had become flesh and blood. Hope was not just an emotion, or an idea. Hope could live and breathe, and added to the feeble faith to which he had clung the past forty years was something else. Sometimes he sensed another’s hand at work, and he welcomed it in all humility. A Creator’s greatest gift was knowing that he, too, was clay.

Even as that thought passed he felt the hand of the Mogul, pressing, testing once more, and he lifted his own hands as though holding up two great, invisible pillars.

"Will you let us fall, thus?" he asked, quietly, head still bowed, "because of the ennui of one feeble man such as myself?"

There was no answer, just as he expected none. The answer would be in the doing, in the final end. Soon Kira would reach her destination, and with Silky’s help the Mogul would reach his. He could see Silky as clearly as he could see Kira and the others, all playing their parts like many pieces moving at once. But to win the game they had to fall into place in the proper sequence.

Come on, Silky old friend. Just stride steadily forward through the storm. Return to me one last time, comrade, and perhaps then you can have your own dream at last.

All that was required was the proper timing.

Everything that mattered was always about time.

The
Empty-eyed-man
stood in the open foundation now devoid of everything but himself and the mirror. He allowed the whipping rain to slap against his leather garments, and water poured down his face, pooling in his blank sockets and trickling across black, razor-thin lips. Flashes of lightning strobed the ragged remains of the shivering trees, and thunder rumbled, rattling the stones beneath his boots. His handl rested upon the mirror, and he could still feel Shandan’s palm resisting. There was an odd sense of rightness to it, as though two old friends were joined at last. Only this was two old enemies, linked in the final battle.

"I am here," he said, quietly. "Upon the threshold."

He could feel this world around him changing, as he willed. Even in his wraithdom, even with only the powers he was able to draw here through the imperfect looking glass that
he
had created, his vision held sway more and more. It had begun with dreams, but now those dreams were wielding fruit. Now the denizens of this world were becoming his, as the inhabitants of all worlds must eventually be. In a place called New York City mobs ran wild in the streets, overturning cabs and attacking the unwary occupants. In Moscow the Kremlin was now a mighty torch, signaling the Bacchanal that enervated nation had been preparing for so many centuries. In London heads once more topped spikes upon the New London Bridge, and those were only a few of the images that raced through his mind. Nightmare and reality were becoming one tonight here on this backwater planet. Soon there would be nothing but nightmare anywhere.

The Oculet dangling from his neck glowed and throbbed against his chest. Every Oculet of every Original would presently be melded into this one, and then there would be no power in the universe that could stand against him. He pictured Shandan, locked all this time inside the Hall of Mirrors. To an Original forty earth years was not long. To an elemental, such as himself, it was the briefest of breaths, but the frustration had made it seem an eternity. He hoped it had been worse for his enemy. He longed to have Shandan Graves quivering at his feet, to feel the man’s throat beneath his hand as he ripped the last Oculet from around his neck and then crushed him beneath his heel.

"Your time is almost done," he said.

But he wasn’t speaking to Shandan. His head was thrown back, and his empty sockets glared up into the raging heavens.

"Why don’t you face me?" he screamed, raising his hands skyward as though he might grip the clouds and drag them down to him. "Do you fear me so?"

The only answer was the pattering of giant raindrops across his skeletal face.

Silky strode into the dark face of the storm, doubt and fear enfeebling every muscle. The Mogul was here, now. He could feel the bastard in every stinging droplet, in every flaying gust of wind. He might not have managed to break through in all his evil glory. Shandan had said that he would never be able to do that until he held
all
the Oculets, and one still dangled from Silky’s own neck, but the mere thought of the creature being on his island was enough to send ribbons of terror raging through him. They had escaped the Mogul once, and it had cost so much more than Silky had ever imagined. They had left most of the Originals dead and the living remnants on Otherworld in the Mogul’s power, and what had the flight gained them? Forty agonizing years of hiding here like rats in a hole. For what? A few more heartbeats of life? And all that time spent in guilt and fear?

Shandan must have had a plan for more than that. For forty years Silky had been trying to convince himself that Shandan had a way out, a way of winning. For an eternity Shandan Graves had been
the
Original,
the
Creator on Otherworld. He had always known the right thing to do. Always. Then he had made the fatal mistake of letting the Mogul in. He had trusted the creature that appeared to him in the final mirror in the Hall and begged to be let in, and as Shandan had trusted him they
all
had trusted him and taken him in. Until it was too late. Until the Mogul’s powers had grown so great that even all the Originals and Shandan together could not stand against him.

Silky recalled that final stand within the new Citadel, as they all felt the evil growing around them. They'd huddled together within the small room in the center of the vast complex, feeling the Mogul’s powers crushing down on them like a terrible weight, the screams echoing all around them, and they all turned as they always had to Shandan for guidance.

"We must go," he said, quietly.

Silky had said nothing, although a few of the others argued. Silky knew what that decision had cost Shandan. He could see the terrible sadness in his old friend’s eyes. He knew that Shandan’s beloved had chosen to stay, to hide in the Forest, the last place still clinging to sanity on the vast ball of Otherworld. She had watched as the first passed through Shandan’s mirror there and the Lost passed into Otherworld. She and Shandan had argued, but in the end, they all knew what her decision would be.

"You must pass to a place where you will all be safe," Shandan had warned Silky and the others, holding out another mirror that would take them to their future.

"For how long?" they'd shouted in unison.

Shandan sighed, his powerful shoulders holding up the weight of the world.

"Long enough, I hope."

And so they had all passed through the Hall of Mirrors, away from their eternal home, into this world, but Silky had been the last. And Shandan had held him back from the mirror.

"Old friend, you have supported me long," he said, quietly.  

Silky grunted. He had been there in the beginning, when light appeared from the darkness, and he arose from the vast waters to greet Shandan upon the shore. From that primordial sea and land Shandan had created the Dreamtime long before the first dreamers came.