Authors: Tony Richards
There was a double scar below her left ear, too, that looked as if it had been carved into the flesh deliberately. And she wore large earrings. They seemed to be made of bone.
All of her features were faintly realized. Just a phantom image, superimposed over the more solid one. But the lips appeared to be mumbling gently, in perfect time with Regan Farrow’s.
And as soon as the curse was out, the older face disappeared. I had not been expecting anything like that. A profound sense of shock rushed through me.
Regan’s hand was still inside her cloak. I stepped a little further round, the doctor following me.
He let out a puzzled sound. But I bent in and just stared harder.
She was wearing a gemstone pendant in there, on a narrow silver chain.
The same pendant that Jason Goad had been wearing, on the day my family had disappeared.
The same one that had stayed behind, when they were gone.
And was now sitting in the living room of my own house.
I pounded back along the driveway. Cassie came in sight. She wasn’t looking in my direction, in spite of the fact that she had to be able to hear me coming. No, she had her back to me instead. She was facing out across the town. A quick glance beyond her told me why.
The daylight was almost completely gone, only a few faint glimmers of it remaining. And directly over Union Square, a huge cloud had begun to form.
First, it simply drew in the smaller clouds around it, merging them into a greater whole. But then it started taking on a life of its own, churning and expanding.
The darkness below it grew even thicker. The torches seemed to shine even more brightly in it. How much longer until Saruak snuffed them out?
Cass swung round sharply as I made the last few yards.
“What now?”
“My place!” I yelled at her.
She peered at me cockeyed. But we both got on the bike.
Normally, we would have headed through the middle of the Landing, but that was impossible. We peeled back down the hill, the tall hedgerows and high walls melting to blurs around us. And then, hitting Sandhurst Avenue, we started heading north.
The shrieking of the engine was a sharp physical presence round me. The air battered at my face so hard that I could barely breathe. I tucked my head down and hung onto Cassie’s waist. And tried desperately to figure all this out.
A gemstone. A material object. Could it be the Changer we’d been looking for? But I’d been told that couldn’t happen. How about the woman that I’d seen?
There was a blue glow, deep inside my head. And the Little Girl reappeared there, a floating, childlike image.
She was not rotating anymore. And it was hard to tell with her eyes closed, but she seemed to be exactly as surprised as I was.
“Is the pendant it?” I asked her breathlessly. “The Changer of Worlds that Willets talked about?”
She seemed to be concentrating intently, as though she were trying to study something very far away. Then her mouth dropped open a little and her tiny white teeth gleamed.
“I think it might be, Mr. Ross.”
“But you told me it cannot
be
an object. That it has to
want
to change things. Has to have a will, you said.”
There was so much noise around us, Cassie didn’t even notice that I was talking to anyone. She was peering straight ahead, concentrating on covering the distances as rapidly as she could. The Little Girl had my complete attention, and was pondering the matter, her whole face slightly twisted.
Then her narrow eyebrows lifted. And amazement spread across her features. I wondered what exactly she was seeing, the closer she looked.
“It seems … the crystal is aware. It has a consciousness.”
And then she almost drew back in the air.
And cried out, “Oh, Mr. Ross!”
“Yes?”
“There’s the soul of a
lady
in it! She is trapped in there, I think!”
I tried to get my head around that.
“Regan Farrow?”
“No.”
Her tiny head shook. She looked pretty breathless now.
“It’s someone from an earlier time, a good deal further back. She is sorry for what happened to your family. And, ever since they disappeared …”
Even she seemed to be having trouble taking all this in.
“I think she’s been watching over you, Mr. Ross! I think she’s been trying to protect you! You must fetch her now!”
“I’m doing that!”
“She will try and help you,” the Girl told me. “I am sure of that. And I wish you the best of luck.”
And with those words, her image vanished. My surroundings came flooding back.
Trapped in her room as she seemed to be, the Girl could only point me in the right direction. Although I felt very grateful that she had.
We were turning onto Colver Street, and heading east.
Below us, to our right, the cloud was spreading even wider. It was black as tar, an amorphous hole cut in reality. And as I watched, a few thin strands of lightning began flashing deep within it. So the Manitou’s endgame was well underway, precisely as the jewel had predicted.
When this had been shown to me before, it had been all sped up. So I had no idea what the genuine timeframe might be. How long was it before Saruak appeared – before Union Square began to shake and fall apart, taking a load of people with it?
Cassie didn’t need any encouraging. She already had the throttle to its limit, gunning the Harley onward as hard as she could. Its engine let out a bone-vibrating shudder. The houses going by us seemed to merge into each other, like they had been drawn in wet paint and it had started raining.
My head was still tucked down. And I was still thinking about everything the Little Girl had said.
Someone in the crystal, trying to protect me. Why?
Cass’s words came back to me, after the fight at her place. How she believed that I had changed, post Goad. The ways that I seemed different
from the person I had been.
And then there was the way that Saruak had kept returning to me. Peering at me curiously, almost every time. I’d been wondering why he did that, ever since I’d met him.
Had he sensed something about me, from the very start? Had he seen that I was different from most humans that he encountered?
All of it seemed to fit. But another question raised its ugly head.
Why me?
Cassie slowed again, the needle dropping to seventy. We both leaned over to the side as she went around another corner. And then we were heading up my own street. I remembered – it felt like a lifetime ago – standing out here, talking idly with one of my neighbors. Only a few days back. Ancient history, by this stage of the game.
This district was as deserted as the rest of town. A curious bleakness overcame me, as I peered along it. I was trying to imagine if it could ever be put back the way it once had been.
But then we were screeching up outside my house. And, leaving Cassie behind, I was off the pillion again and running.
It was dark inside. All the drapes were still pulled shut, the way I’d left them. But I didn’t waste time switching on the light
s. I simply went into my living room and flung open the cabinet.
The gemstone sparkled gently when I stared at it, as though it could create illumination all by itself. For the first time since I’d brought it here, I put my fingers to the chain and picked it up.
Something like a freezing blast of air went through me. Maybe I was just imagining that, I told myself.
The pendant swung in front of me, the clear, bright facets of the jewel glistening. I could see the small black flaw inside, and the tiny markings round the setting. There were plenty of magical devices more impressive to the eye than this – I’d had some of them shown to me, the past couple of days. But sometimes it was the simplest looking ones that were really the strongest.
Regan Farrow had worn the thing, and so had Jason Goad. And look what they had done. I peered at it a moment longer and then, steeling myself, grasped it in my palm.
“No!”
The voice came out of nowhere, hissing through my skull. But it wasn’t the Little Girl this time. I looked around, and could see no one.
“You must not do that!”
it told me, sounding extremely insistent.
It was old and husky, with the strangest accent to it. Very flat, for all its urgency. It echoed in my head. It had to belong to the woman I’d seen, I had no doubt of that. But there were more questions than answers here.
Despite the fact that it was what I’d come here for, it still alarmed me badly. And my first reaction was an instinctive one, devoid of any common sense. I shook my head fiercely, like I was trying to rid myself of the voice or weaken it a little. But it turned out to be no use. It would not quiet down or go away.
“You must not use magic. You are the Defender. It is prophesied.”
I forced myself to calm down. It had to be coming from inside the pendant, that much I was certain of. But it was using words that had no meaning in the slightest to me. Defender? And a prophecy? What in Christ’s name was this about?
I opened my hand again and peered at the jewel uncertainly.
Without any warning, changes started to come over me. My temples began pounding badly. Pressure was building behind them. And the details of the room around me became vague, then actually began to fade away.
I thought I could smell a wood fire somewhere, and hear a distant murmuring on the air. Almost as if there were others, watching us from somewhere that I could not even see.
My whole body appeared to sway. It was a struggle just to keep my footing. Or was I imagining that too?
“Who are you?” I managed to ask.
“I am Amashta,”
the voice replied.
Which didn’t even help a little bit. I couldn’t seem to get a grasp on anything that was happening.
“
What
are you?”
“A leader, in my day.”
And when had that been?
“I’ve had this pendant two years! Why am I only hearing you now?”
“It is time.”
More riddles. I felt so dizzy I could barely think.
“What does that mean?”
“It is time for action. The world has turned sufficiently. The Final Hour is drawing near.”
What was she referring to? The threat imposed by Saruak? My skull began to ache severely and I clutched my free hand to it. God, it felt like someone had gone at it with a power drill. I couldn’t make out my surroundings at all anymore. A blurry haze had filled my vision.
Then it cleared a little. But the room was gone.
A shudder ran down my spine. I seemed to be out in the open air, and on a plain of some kind. I thought that I could make out the outline of vast rocks, off in the distance. Where exactly had I traveled to?
The scene remained there a short while. Then the details of the room came back. It tried to let go of the pendant, but couldn’t seem to manage it. It seemed to be clinging to my hand, even when my fingers let it go. The chain swung below it, quivering, letting out a tiny rattling noise. The tiny jewel glowed brighter still.
There was a rumble from the distance, off in the direction of the square. I hoped that it was only thunder. All those people, still in danger. That consumed my thoughts now, driving out all the bewilderment.
I managed to get my head straight, finally. I was trying to save this town and all the people in it. Anything else was a distraction. And I wasn’t about to be told what I could and couldn’t do, not even by this strange being.
“If I can’t use magic, where the hell am I supposed to take this?”
“Release me,”
she replied.
“What?”
“Release me, while we still have time.”
But could I even trust her, if I went that route? Look at what she’d brought down on us so far.
Except … it wasn’t any worse than what the Manitou was bringing, I managed to tell myself.
I wasn’t even sure that I could do what she was asking. Surely such a thing had to involve some kind of spell?
“How do I do that?” I asked.
But the voice did not come back to me. There was only silence in my head, backed up by a faint rushing sound, like something had been in there. The pain had stopped at least, which was something I guessed I was grateful for.
This woman, this Amashta, had told me what she wanted. But apparently, it was up to me to figure out the rest for myself. And I couldn’t see the sense in that. I got the feeling, all over again, that I was being toyed with.
There was nothing else that I could think of, though. So I lifted the gemstone closer to my face. It looked as solid as a diamond. Would it even break, if I smashed it against something? But that seemed a rather crude approach. I held it between my forefinger and thumb, and turned it over.
And it started to become a little clearer in my frantic thoughts. Trapped, the Little Girl had said. And surely, trapped by sorcery. The setting was oversized, and
did
look like a grasping claw. I’d noticed that several times already. And all those crude little markings round it … might they form some kind of spell that was holding the woman prisoner in there?
I didn’t even have my pocketknife left. The only tools remaining were my own bare hands. So I started pushing at the silver with my thumbnail, trying to work the gemstone loose.
It should have been easy for a man of my size, but it proved to be anything but. At first, it wouldn’t budge the tiniest fraction. All I got for my efforts was a drop of blood springing up under my nail.
Something happened that was so bizarre I almost dropped the pendant. The bead of red touched the gemstone’s setting. And was absorbed by it, soaking in and vanishing.
I halted nervously for a long moment. Then I got to work again.
There was the faintest crunching sound, and I pushed even harder. It felt like I was trying to drive the jewel in through the surface of my skin.
The gemstone shifted, glinting wildly. And then dropped into my palm.
Next moment, there was a white flash, so intense it seared right through my eyelids, even when I closed them. And accompanying it, a massive cracking sound. Something warm spilled out across my palm, like water. But when I looked down, there was nothing there.
The jewel had split in two halves, right across the flaw I’d seen.
Despite the fact I was indoors, the newspapers on the couch started to rustle, moving gently, and the corners of my drapes began to flap. It was no longer dark in here. A yellow glow was spreading out directly above my head. It seemed to have sparks of other colors in it, like some unworldly kaleidoscope.
Amashta’s voice filled up my head once more.
“I must use you now, Defender.”
At which I stumbled back, afraid I really had been tricked. But her voice was reassuring.
“There needs to be a physical presence to do w
hat I must, and I have none anymore. You may not cast spells yourself, but you can be my conduit.”
I took that in as quickly as I could. And acknowledged that I’d come this far unharmed. More thunder was erupting from the center of town. So I was simply going to have to trust her, I could see.
I stood straight, ready for whatever happened next. When the glow started to descend across me, I kept myself entirely still, not even flinching.
I felt the light pour into me. And there was warmth accompanying it again, filling up my whole body and making it seem to expand. All my tiredness dropped away, and all my doubt at the same time. Don’t ask me how, but I now
knew
she wasn’t going to harm me.
I flexed my fingers, raised my arms. There was brand-new strength in them, like in the river, but more powerful.
“Are you ready?”
the voice asked.
As ready as I’d ever be.
The room began to whirl around me, growing dark again.
Then becoming almost black.
Then it was gone.