Authors: Tony Richards
Saruak peered around at them slowly. And if he was taken off-guard, then he didn’t show it. Because his next act was to stoop down, drop the bulldog from his grasp. It ran around in small circles on the church’s rooftop, growling furiously at the approaching shapes.
Then the ragged figure straightened. And spread both his arms out to the sides, for all the world like some enormous scarecrow. These weren’t crows though, and did not slow down. He was in silhouette again, and I still couldn’t see his face.
But he yelled out something, a single guttural word. In some
Iroquois tongue? There was no way of telling. But the beginning of a spell of his own, I was pretty certain.
I began to slow the Porsche down, about fifty yards away. And without any warning, Kurt van Friesling stood up in his seat.
His hands shot toward the roof. A massive net of sparks, far larger than before, leapt out at it. They moved faster than they had done last time, wrapping themselves around the man up there.
He didn’t have the chance to lash at them, this time. Saruak began struggling in their grasp.
There was a solid beating noise. A shadow slid across the roof. The great eagle reared its body back and struck at him with its massive talons.
One
of them took purchase. And the judge began to lift the figure up into the air. Saruak writhed abruptly and broke free, dropping to the roof again. But the bright web still surrounded him, he could not get away.
The eagle was turning for its next attack.
Saruak was on his hands and knees, still trying to get up, when both buzzards hit him at the exact same time.
For the first time since I’d met him, he let out a yell of pain. These two weren’t trying to grab hold of him. They were mauling him like enraged Harpies, their wings churning the air with a furious clattering sound.
My gaze went tight. Had they finally got him? When I looked round at van Friesling, his face was all lit up.
The buzzards were screeching, their bills agape. And the eagle had rejoined the attack, adding its great curving talons to the onslaught. Saruak couldn’t even get back to his feet. He’d managed to work one of his arms loose, and had a hand clasped to his head, trying to protect it. But the howls that he was letting out were wild, agonized ones.
I think I smiled, when I heard that.
But I’d forgotten about the Dralleg. One moment, it was barking at them helplessly. The next, it swelled to its full size, a pale gray mound of flesh and muscle, something of the wolf about it, rearing up and then stooping forward against the backdrop of the brightening sky. Its green eyes flared. It roared.
“Good God!” van Friesling whispered.
I thought I saw its claws come out. And then the monster lurched into the fray, swinging at the birds around it. The eagle flapped up out of reach. But one of the buzzards wasn’t so lucky. The Dralleg managed to catch hold of its right wing, and there was a big explosion of shattered plumes before the huge scavenger got free again.
It soared away, but flying oddly, listing to one side. Lord, I hoped that wasn’t Dido.
The second of the pair kept coming at the creature, trying to attack its glowing eyeballs. The Dralleg just hissed back and swiped at it defiantly. The buzzard continued circling, but could not get close enough.
The creature’s master was still down on all fours, still in the grip of the shimmering net. But the Dralleg stooped toward him, next, and swiped at the strands. They parted, blinking out of existence. Beside me, van Friesling cursed.
If he’d been hurt, there was not any lasting damage. Or even, apparently, lasting pain. Saruak stood up and laughed.
How could that be? I felt staggered. Maybe agony was just a fleeting thing for him, a sensation felt like a gust of air against the skin and then forgotten. He was nothing like a human, I reminded myself.
Both the figures vanished as I watched.
I wiped a hand across my face and peered down at the black stone disc.
The needle, again, was pointing due east. And I squinted in that direction, puzzled. It was the district of Greenwood that was being indicated. There were just poorer suburbs that way, single-level houses for as far as your eye took you. Not a single taller building. Why the hell would he go there?
A shaft of pale yellow light sprang up at the far horizon. The sun was finally rising. And, as a few birds started singing in the trees nearby, my stomach tightened. A terrible suspicion had begun to grow in me.
I pulled back onto Greenwood Terrace all the same, and got us on the move once more.
It was a long road, dead straight, traversing the town west to east. The needle kept pointing relentlessly ahead of us as we went down along it. Not a flicker. Not a waver. He was right in front of us.
We went past sleeping houses and the shadowy windows of stores. A couple of lights had come on by this hour, but there was still no one around. A scruffy dog yapped at us from behind a chain link fence. It was the only living thing in sight.
The last few intersections went by. And the last few rows of homes. Then there was only an untidy stretch of waste ground and some bushes, a low heap of rusty, scattered motor parts.
And beyond that …
I stopped the car.
We were on the very edge of town. Its farthest limit.
Regan’s Curse took over, if you went any further than this.
And the needle was still pointing directly ahead.
The Porsche’s engine made a clicking sound as it began to cool. It was the only noise I was aware of for a while. I just gazed out toward the edge of the horizon. Kurt van Friesling, beside me, was silent and stunned too. This was something he’d not been expecting.
More yellow rays were lancing up ahead of us, brighter than the first. And finally, the top edge of the sun came boiling up. Its edges seemed to ripple. Everything looked pitch-black against it. I shielded my eyes with one hand, still peering out ahead.
As night fell away, the view out there got clearer. Most of our town is surrounded by forest, coming right up to the borders like an army of stern, wordless giants. But in this particular spot, there were rolling green fields stretching for several miles before the tree line swallowed them again. The woods were an aquamarine blur in the distance. A few wild poppies dotted the landscape in between, but little else.
Except that a fair way ahead, perhaps the best part of a mile off, the grasses rose and formed a hillock. At the top of it stood the remains of a lightning-blasted elm. It looked fossilized, against the morning sky. You could paste its photograph against the word ‘unmoving’ in your dictionary.
But I could just make out a tiny shape sitting in one of its branches. Guess who. I was surprised I could see him at all, from that far off. Perhaps he wanted it that way.
His voice came rolling across the green sward toward us, much louder than it should have been, considering the gap between us.
“Me and Dralleg sitting in a tree, savoring our victory!”
The kind of thing a child might say. That was the first thought that came to me. This guy was capable of being so violent. Where he’d cast his shadow, there’d been death not far behind. But now, he was chortling about the whole affair, the way a schoolboy might.
There were different sides to his nature, apparently. And none of them very good.
We got out of the car. I did it slightly warily. But Kurt van Friesling looked, in equal measures, infuriated and amazed. He couldn’t quite seem to understand how easily he had been bested. His pale eyes glittered, his wan complexion deepening a notch. And he had taken several steps forward before he remembered himself.
None of us, not even the most powerful, were immune to Regan’s Curse.
Large shadows were passing over us. There were sounds like the air being funneled inward. And the four who’d taken to the skies came back to earth, around us.
Levin had his judge’s robes on. He always wore them when he practiced magic. Dido McGinley was clutching at her right arm, which was bleeding, and her sister went across to help her. They all looked frustrated and I couldn’t blame them. Some of the most skillful sorcerers in town and – even when they’d worked as a team – this new enemy of ours had slipped through their fingers like water.
Another hoarse laugh came from Saruak’s direction.
“Are we finished, ladies, gentlemen? Oh, but we were having so much
fun
! What seems to be the problem?”
All their faces swung toward him and their gazes burned.
And I could see what was happening to them, by this stage.
We had well and truly fallen into his trap. Because
they
were becoming obsessed with him as well. He was filling up their every thought. A matter of perception, as the Little Girl had said. He had only worked his spell on ordinary folk, till now. But once that he had captured the attention of the adepts …
How much stronger would that make him? How much vaster would his power grow?
The sun was more than halfway up. It looked like the open doorway to a furnace. Saruak was a tight black figure at the center of the growing disc. I couldn’t look in that direction very long. But I could see that, from his high perch, he was swinging his legs idly. Again, just like a little boy. And all of this had to be some kind of idle entertainment, to his mind.
My eyeballs were smarting, and I turned my head away.
“Can’t bear to look me in the face, Mr. Devries?”
I swore under my breath, but didn’t move a muscle.
“Do I remind you of your numerous failures, perhaps?”
My pulse started thudding in my temples. He had almost made a new profession out of taunting me.
“You couldn’t even save your family. How do you expect to save this whole town?”
He thought that he could do just anything he wanted. Thought that he could toy with us and play his spiteful tricks, and we’d just sit there helplessly, allowing him to do it. But the same few words were pounding in my head.
The hell with that.
“And what about that
friend
of yours?” he was crowing.
He was really laying it on thickly. Showed no inclination to give me a break. Perhaps he was trying to affect my mind, like all the others. His voice seemed to echo in my skull.
“Oh, she looked so
sexy
when she needed your help!”
That finally made me snap. I’d had enough. That was
it
!
My fists clenched and I marched toward him with my head tucked slightly down.
“Devries?” I could head Gaspar Vernon yelling after me. “What do you think you’re doing, man?”
The truth was, I was barely thinking at all anymore. I just wanted to wrap my fingers around Saruak’s throat. Squeeze and watch his eyes bug out. Keep on squeezing till his lips turned blue. But the moment I crossed the town limits, the inevitable happened.
The grasses up ahead of me had been stirring very gently in the morning breeze. But now they slowed and stilled.
There’d been a few bees and other insects ambling around. I could not see or hear them any longer.
No birds flew overhead. All their song had disappeared. And the color had started bleeding from my surroundings, becoming fainter with every step I took. The field around me was no longer such a vivid green. It was more the kind of shade that you’d see underwater. And the bright red poppies went a far duller hue. The sky absorbed some gray into its blueness until it looked dull and overcast, despite the fact that there were hardly any clouds.
Even the sun no longer blinded me, when I glanced up at it. It was reduced to a pale primrose disc. I could stare right into it. Saruak was still in front of it, his outline as dark as ever.
I left the paved road, the grasses crackling underneath my tread. It was the only noise that came to me at all, apart from my own breathing. As if the rest of the world had faded away.
I must have kept on at it for a good five minutes, trying to reach the figure in the tree. I even tried running at one point. It was useless effort. Got me no closer to Saruak at all. My legs were aching slightly by the end of it, my lungs heaving up against my ribs.
His silhouette remained at the exact same distance. His dangling legs kicked the air with glee, and I could see the bulldog shift position in his lap, as though to get a better look at me.
“Catch me if you can, Mr. Devries!” he bellowed. “But it seems a rather hard task for you. Why
is
that?”
The simple truth of it bore down on me. He’d had the upper hand on us all along, and had doubtless known it.
None of us could leave the Landing, ever. But
he
could, any time he liked.
In the end, reason gave way completely and I pulled my handgun out. Fired at him, once, then twice.
The shots rang out across the grass. They echoed and then quickly faded.
And the only sound, once they were gone.
Saruak’s mocking laughter, beating at my ears.