Harvey slipped quietly through the concourse, desperately afraid. He was sure they could hole up in one of the warren-like office buildings on Colmore Row, but it would only be a temporary measure. After that, he had no idea. He wasn't a thinker like Thackeray and he really couldn't see himself surviving on his own, especially now he had the added responsibility of the girl. But he couldn't abandon her. How could he?
He slipped into their former home, expecting to see Caitlin still sitting where he had left her. Instead she stood in the centre of the room. He could see instantly that there was something different about her. She stood erect, her body taut, ready for action, and for the first time there was fire in her eyes and intensity in her face.
'Oh, you're up,' he ventured. 'I'm going to take you to—'
'You're going to take me to Thackeray.'
He jumped back in shock at the sound of her voice. 'You ... you're all right now?'
Caitlin fingered the ornate carvings on her bow, looking past Harvey into the darkened concourse. 'We're going to get Thackeray back.'
Harvey held up his hands. 'OK, I'm glad you're feeling better, and Thackeray was right that you were paying attention while you were ... you know ... doolally. Sorry. But you don't know what you're asking. We can't—'
Caitlin stepped forward quickly and gripped his shoulders with fingers that felt like iron. 'We're going to get him out—'
'He's probably already dead!'
'—and you're going to show me the way.' She spun him round and shoved him towards the exit, lost to the thunder of blood in her head.
chapter twelve
Different Paths
'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.'
Elizabeth I
After what seemed like hours, Crowther emerged from the trees on to a shimmering path. Relief flooded through him. In the timeless Forest of the Night, he had begun to think he might be wandering in the green world for ever, lulled into a dream state by its peculiar haunting qualities. He had even lost consciousness for a while, he was sure, and was worried that he might have put on the mask. Was it controlling him so easily now?
Many things moved through the trees just out of sight, but they didn't scare him, and he had come to accept that he was no longer afraid of death; more and more it felt like a way out. There had been no sign of the Gehennis, but at one point curiously he had heard horses and baying hounds, a hunt pursuing its prey. However, on occasion he had glimpsed the drifting purple light that signified the Lament-Brood and that did frighten him: to become part of that zombie army, to think and feel inside, perhaps, but to be controlled by another intelligence was his greatest nightmare.
Resting on his staff to catch his breath, he was surprised to feel his weariness easing the longer he stood on the path. As he scraped his fingers along its surface, they tingled and an easy feeling of wellbeing rose through him. The Blue Fire really was the fuel that drove everything, just as everyone had been taught at the college in Glastonbury. Might he actually have found peace if he'd stayed there
and devoted himself to studying? The search for knowledge had always been the thing that had made him feel complete in the old days. Without finding an answer, he set off along the path.
It wasn't long before he spotted a small dark figure sitting cross-legged. It was Mahalia, unmoving, head bowed so that her black hair covered her face like a hood. She didn't even stir when he came within three feet of her.
'You got out, then,' he said.
'Looks like it.' She didn't look up at him.
'Have you seen any of the others?'
She began to shake her head, then caught herself.
'What is it?'
This time she did look up and Crowther was shocked by the devastation he saw in her face.
'Carlton's dead,' she said bluntly.
'Dead? The boy?'
'I ... I saw the body.' She motioned further along the path. Every fibre of her being was directed towards suppressing her emotions. 'His throat's been cut. He's lying across the path ...'
Crowther tried to make sense of what he was hearing. 'Across the path? That can't be. The dangerous things that live in this forest shouldn't be able to touch us on here.'
'Well, he is dead,' she said sharply. 'No mistaking that.'
'Show me,' Crowther said with irritated disbelief. Realisation of what he was asking came a second later and tenderness crept into his voice. 'I am sorry. That was very ... thoughtless of me. I know how close you two were.' He rested one comforting hand on her head, but she felt as rigid as stone beneath his fingers and he withdrew it quickly. 'I'll check.'
He hurried along the path and found the boy's body round a bend, as she had described. The cut had been made skilfully. This was no attack by wild beast or some haunted forest thing.
For a moment he was honestly overwhelmed with emotion. He had seen a lot of brutally upsetting things in recent times, but he couldn't understand how anyone could kill a young boy.
He shed a few tears before another thought struck. Caitlin had been convinced that the boy was vitally important to the great scheme that was being played out around them. What did his death mean for that?
After taking a moment to recover, he picked up Carlton and carried him a few feet into the forest. The loam was soft and he managed to clear enough of it to make a shallow grave in which he laid the body. It wasn't enough, but it would have to do. He scooped up handfuls of the loam to cover it, and then picked up as many fallen branches as he could to rest along the surface, so that in the end it resembled a wooden tomb. He forced one of the branches into the ground at the head as a marker.
Then he returned to Mahalia and brought her back to show her his work. 'I think we should say a few words,' he said.
'No point. He's gone.'
Crowther winced. 'Even if you don't believe in anything spiritual, the ritual would be good, to help you adjust to his passing.'
'I don't need to adjust. I can see he's gone. Come on, let's get out of this creepy forest.' She set off along the path before he had time to reply.
Her state troubled Crowther immensely. He had seen how angry and upset she had been when anyone had tried, however innocentiy, to come between her and Carlton. The boy appeared to mean more to her than life itself. And now she was acting as if she didn't care at all.
'Look at this, Matt.' Jack motioned to an area off to the right of the path. The trees seeped an oily black ichor and all the leaves were shrivelled and mottled with black spots.
It had affected at least twenty trees that Jack could see and was spreading to the ground vegetation.
Matt examined it from the path, then moved closer. 'It's the same thing that was on that flower you found earlier.'
'I wouldn't get too near to it,' Jack warned.
'Wait.' Matt held out an arm, his attention gripped by something on the ground among the affected trees. Cautiously, he motioned for Jack to join him.
Jack had to blink a few times until he was sure of what he was seeing. Where the forest floor should have been, there was what he could only describe as a rip, as if he were looking at a painting and the canvas had been torn to reveal what lay behind it. In the centre of the rip was a deep black emptiness, like space, with the same endless quality. It made him feel queasy staring into it, for there was no sense that it was a hole in the ground. He felt that he could fall through it and into ... nothing. 'What is it?' he asked in a hushed, uneasy voice.
'I don't know.' Matt stared at it for a moment and then guided Jack back to the path.
'You know what it looked like?' Jack said as they continued on their way. 'It looked like whatever was attacking the trees had eaten that hole away, too ... but a hole right through everything.' He thought for a moment, and then grew uneasy. 'What could do that?'
'I have no idea. You know more about this place than I do. As far as I can tell, anything can happen here. It's like a dream ... or a nightmare. No point getting concerned about it.' He clapped a hand across Jack's shoulders. 'If we're going to start worrying, we've got more important things to worry about.'
'I hope the others got out.'
'You hope Mahalia got out.'
Jack blushed.
'I've seen the way you've been with her.'
'She's nice. I like her.'
Matt shrugged. 'Personally I think you've got a tiger by the tail, but it's your life. Just be careful.' He shook his head with mock-weariness. 'What is wrong with me? I sound like a dad.'
Jack laughed. 'I never knew my father. You'll do for the moment.'
'Don't you go putting that on me. I've got quite enough on my plate without getting all paternal too.' He stretched aching shoulder muscles and adjusted the bow and quiver. 'I feel like we've been walking for weeks.'
'Perhaps we have. You can never quite tell here. I still think we should have waited—'
'We talked about this.' Matt stood in front of him and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. 'We all got turned around in the dark. It was blind luck that I ran into you. The others, if they did get out, could be way ahead of us. The best thing we can do is get to that place Triathus mentioned and wait for the others there.'
They set back off on their way, but it wasn't long before the boy was talking again. 'You know, I like this.'
'What? Getting lost in a forest with no provisions and no idea if you're going to get slaughtered when you go round the next bend?'
'No. Being with you ... with people. I've never known humans all my life. Just the Golden Ones.' Anger rose but was quickly suppressed. 'Can you understand what it's like? Not to be with any of your own kind, just to hear stories about them, or sometimes see them across the barrier between the worlds, but never talk to them. Never be with them.'
'Yeah, and look at what your first experience of it was - us lot. Of all the people in all the world you ended up palling around with a bunch of psychos, liars and losers.'
'No, that's not true!' Jack said. 'I can see a lot more than you think - because I've been apart.' Matt eyed him curiously. 'I can tell what people are really like,' Jack continued. 'Everyone puts up barriers, and some people put up thicker walls than others. Take Professor Crowther. He can act very unpleasantly to everyone, but he's scared ... of everything. He pretends he can cope, but he really can't cope at all.'
'So, you're a part-time psychoanalyst, too.' Matt laughed.
'And Mahalia, she's scared, too, but trying to appear strong. In fact, everybody's scared, but nobody wants to appear weak.'
'What about Caitlin? I bet you'd have a field day there.'
'I can tell you like her.'
Matt looked away. 'All right. Let's not have any of that.'
'And you
'Wait!' Matt silenced him with a raised hand. 'Can you hear that?'
Dimly, through the rustling of the leaves, a dull roaring was audible. 'Water,' Jack said. 'That must be the gorge.'
They hurried along the path until the heavy greenery of the trees gave way sharply to brilliant blue sky. An instant of rushing vertigo hit both of them, for they stood on the lip of a dizzying drop down a sheer granite face to rushing white water far below. The ravine was barely wider than the length of a football pitch, the Forest of the Night pressing up against the very edge so that ancient oaks and twisted yews overhung the chasm. Anyone not following the path would come out of the trees and over the lip with no warning.
'That,' Matt said, gripping a branch tightly, 'is a long way down.'
The path went down a flight of rough-hewn steps to a ledge ten feet below the edge and continued hugging the wall of the ravine until it disappeared around a bend. Barely two feet wide, there was nothing between whoever was walking the path and the sickening drop.
'We could wait here,' Jack said hopefully.
'I think the least we should do is see what's round the corner,' Matt replied. He winked at Jack. 'Don't forget - it's not the fall that kills you.'
'Huh?' Jack said, but Matt was already edging his way down the steps.
In the gorge, the crashing water was deafening. They made their way slowly, gripping on to cracks and crevices in the cliff face for protection against the eddying wind that threatened to pluck them off if their guard dropped. At times, Jack grew rigid with fear and had to stop. Matt urged him on, yelling to be heard above the water and the wind. And then they rounded the bend, and what they saw took away all thoughts of the drop.
Set into the cliff face was a city, stretching almost from the water's edge to the very top. Monolithic blocks of stone formed the basis of the structure, protruding in balconies and terraces, buttresses and gargoyles, so that it was impossible even to begin to guess how it had been constructed in such a precarious position.
Set against it was a different style of architecture, more graceful and delicate, with glass, silver and bronze, designed in sweeping arcs, with huge multi-panelled windows that would allow sunlight deep into the heart of the construction, which, it appeared, burrowed deep into the cliff.
The two styles, brutalist and cultured, worked strangely well together so that the overall appearance was quite stunning; both welcoming and a little frightening in its magnitude.
'Is that it?' Matt asked, trying to take in the full sweep of the magnificent city.
'Yes.' Even Jack was awed. 'The Court of the Dreaming Song.'
As Thackeray descended the frozen escalator steps into New Street Station, the light of a hundred torches came up out of the gloom. They burned along the length of the huge concourse, where travellers had once stared up at the rows of electronic timetables, filling the lofty roof with acrid smoke. Behind it lay the familiar smell of engine oil, hanging around like the ghost of better times. At that moment it felt as if he was entering the jungle compound of some Stone-Age tribe, where brutality and ritual still ruled, and in a way he was right.
The plague wardens flanked him, their heavy boots clanking on the metal steps. He was desperately aware of the guns and knives and axes they carried, but it was their fists that had put the pain into his ribs, arms and jaw. He could almost feel the bruises forcing their way to the surface.
Approaching the ticket gates, he saw that they had been all but obscured by a wall of razor wire. One heavily fortified gate lay in the centre. The lead plague warden hammered on it three times and then stepped back so that it could swing out to reveal two shaven-headed bruisers nursing shotguns. One wore a St George flag on his T- shirt. The other had a cheap leather jacket pulled tightly across his beer belly. Thackeray's heart fell even more at the realisation that the people he would leave a pub to avoid had now taken over the world.