Mary covered her face for a long minute.
'What I did back then broke me. It turned me into a different person. That was the price I paid for my actions. I did miss her. I missed her more and more with each passing year, and if I could go back and make amends I'd give up everything, even my life. But I can't, so I have to live with it, knowing I'm a terrible person, knowing what I lost by being so stupid and selfish and cruel ... and worthless. I missed a few hours with a person who loved me in a way I would never be loved again, someone who sacrificed everything, who devoted her whole life to raising me. And that's the most valuable thing in the world ... the Holy Grail ... and I threw it away. I deserve every terrible thing that's ever happened to me. I deserve to be lonely and unloved in my old age.' She drew herself up to her full height and looked into the shadows of the old woman's hood. 'That's my darkest secret. And now I've admitted it I don't care if I live or die. I don't care if you condemn me to some eternal damnation. Could it be any worse than my life now? I don't think so.'
The hooded woman remained silent for a full minute, her head turned towards Mary, swaying a little from side to side. Then she said in a voice so gentle it was shocking, 'Welcome, sister. You have proved yourself to be a true and good person, filled with faith and humility, able to shine the light of truth into the darkest part of her heart. You have no secrets before what lies ahead. And she loves you, as your mother loved you. And she will care for you.'
Tears sprang to Mary's eyes. She felt like a child, unable to control herself, not knowing what she really wanted any more.
'Come, sister,' the hooded woman said, drifting slowly backwards down the corridor without any visible contact with the floor. 'You are filled with pain. Your journey has been long and your spirit is weary. Now is the time to rest. All is open to you.'
She gestured down the corridor. The sound of the spring was louder now, and Mary could feel the sticky heat in the air from the hot water forced up from deep beneath the ground. As she looked ahead, she could see a faint blue
light. The corridor was fading away, and a warmer and more enticing place was appearing.
Mary blinked away the tears and walked towards it.
chapter seventeen
The Queen of Sinister
'Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.'
Julia Ward Howe
Madness and despair leaked from the black walls of the House of Pain as Caitlin, Matt and Jack moved cautiously along the corridor leading away from the entrance. The building was filled with an oppressive gloom and a suffocating tropical heat, without even the slightest air current to give respite.
Despite appearances, they couldn't shake the feeling that they were inside a vast, living creature. Odd vibrations ran through the floor and walls as though a vascular system was at work, and on the very edge of their hearing was a faint lub-dub that could have been the beating of a massive heart.
'We've got to be careful we don't get lost,' Matt cautioned.
Caitlin's voice floated back to him. 'I shouldn't worry. The chances of any of us getting out of here alive are pretty slim.'
'Yep. Let's all look on the bright side,' Matt muttered.
Jack hurried to pass Matt so that he was walking between the two of them. 'This place,' he began queasily, 'it's even worse than the Court of the Final Word.'
'Do you have any idea where we're going?' Matt asked. 'This place is enormous. We could wander here all day... except I've got this feeling we won't be allowed to roam for long.'
'Maybe there won't be any guards,' Jack said hopefully. 'Whoever's in charge couldn't have expected us to get past the Lament-Brood, so they might not have set up any second line of defence.'
'You see, why can't you take lessons off him?' Matt called after Caitlin. 'He always looks on the bright side.'
In Caitlin's head, their voices became the buzzing of flies. Feeling herself slipping away again, she managed two last words of warning: 'Something's coming.' Then her vision shifted to red, the shadows sucked back and the interior of the House of Pain fell into sharp relief.
Matt gripped Jack's shoulder to prevent him from advancing.
'What is it?' Jack said fearfully. 'What can she see?'
'Look at her!' Matt said.
Caitlin's outline was hazy, as though swathed in fog. Shadows formed on her skin, slowly separated, growing fast as they flapped and swirled all round her.
'Crows!' Matt said in quiet awe. 'There are crows coming out of her.' The birds emerged in a frenzy of wings until Caitlin was almost obscured.
The truth dawned on Jack with horror. 'The Morrigan! We have to get away from here! The Morrigan has her!'
Matt spun Jack round to peer into his face. 'What are you talking about? Tell me!'
'The Morrigan is one of the gods!' Jack said. 'But she's worse than all of them ... much worse. Her thing is war, and blood ... and ... and other things, too! But it's the killing! They say nothing can stop her ...'
Matt looked back at the furious murder of crows moving forcefully up the corridor with Caitlin's tiny figure the heart of them. 'Then it's a good job she's on our side.' A pause for thought. 'She is on our side, right?'
What Matt and Jack couldn't see, but which was as clear as daylight to Caitlin, was the thing taking shape further down the corridor. To Caitlin, it looked as if it was pushing itself out through the wall in a hideous mockery of birth, dripping with mucus and contorted by natal pangs. But as she drew closer, it became clear that it was being formed from the stuff of the wall itself. And that's when Caitlin realised that the entire House of Pain really was some kind of entity and that they were working their way into its belly.
The thing shuddered, growing larger as it added to itself, its skin the shiny black of vinyl. Finally it unfolded, rising up on two legs in the shape of a man; but it was a shape created by something that did not really know what a man was or how one worked. It staggered away from the wall, leaving a trail of dripping slime, and stepped towards Caitlin. When it looked at her, the whiteness of its eyes was piercing in contrast with its face.
Caitlin felt a shadow move across her mind as it probed her consciousness. It sickened her, but the Morrigan was unmoved. Her muscles flexed, ready to attack.
'Youuuuuu ... drag-onnnnnnnn ...' Though the thing's mouth didn't move, the sibilant words came into Caitlin's head like beetles swarming through her brain.
Seeing only death through the red haze, the Morrigan attacked.
'Boyyyyyyyyyy...'
Caitlin came to an abrupt halt. One word, but she knew what it was saying to her. And in that instant the Morrigan was gone, consigned to the desolate lands in the shadows of Caitlin's consciousness by Caitlin's love for her son, perhaps the only thing that could have defeated the Morrigan's control.
'Is he here?' Caitlin asked in a fragile voice. Her chest was so tight that she barely dared ask the question for fear that her heart would burst.
'Don't let it trick you!' Matt came running up and grabbed her, but she threw him off.
'Is he here?' Her voice cracked with anguish.
With an awkward movement, the creature gestured further down the corridor. In the shadows waited a small figure with a pale face. His features were too indistinct in the half-light, but Caitlin was convinced it was Liam. All her beaten-down emotion gushed out with such force she thought she was going mad.
'Liam?' she said in a tiny voice.
The shiny black thing reached out a hand. Caitlin knew what was expected of her, and though every fibre of her being was filled with revulsion, she could not resist. Matt knew too, and tried to drag her back.
Caitlin broke free and clutched at the monstrous hand, which felt like warm steak in her fingers. In an instant she was moving down the corridor, though her feet did not appear to be touching the ground.
'Do something!' Jack pleaded. Caitlin rapidly receded into the shadows in the grasp of the thing's unpleasantly long fingers. There was nothing they could do.
The journey was a haze. Caitlin had the impression that she was not only moving through the House of Pain, but above it and around it; and she sensed that it was accurately named. The enormous creature was filled with the darkest emotions of human suffering. Empty rooms echoed with the cries of torture. Another chamber was potent with the familiar cutting edge of all-consuming grief. A further room was bitter with abandonment, then loss, abuse, agony, hopelessness; and finally she came upon the sickening reek of despair, and she knew instantly that this was where the Lament-Brood originated. Each room could produce something real and palpable from its empty, echoing chambers and send it out into the world. In the end it proved too much and she blacked out.
She woke in a room that at first glance looked and smelled like black meat, but which quickly reshaped itself into something with which she could cope. The floor became obsidian flags, the walls gleaming black, too, the stones rising to a vaulted roof that reminded her of a cathedral, though it had no warmth or hope within it.
From an annexe beyond an arch came the sound of tiny running feet. Caitlin's breath caught in her throat, the anticipation almost painful.
And then he appeared, and she knew instantly, as any mother would know, that it was him, not some construct created to tempt her; really, truly Liam, as vital and joyous as the last time she had seen him alive.
He wandered towards Caitlin as if awakening from a long sleep. Recognition came seconds after his eyes fell on her, and then his face broke with the light of an exuberant, loving smile. Her heart thundered and tears rushed to her eyes.
'Mummy!' His voice brought brilliant life to that sickening place. He ran, arms thrown wide, and she scooped him up, pressing him into her, as if she could force him back into her womb where he would be safe for evermore. His body felt so warm and wonderful; and she couldn't believe it, after all the grief and the pain, and the acceptance of his passing on. Her hope that he really would be there at the end of the quest was barely realised, a child's wish for heaven. Sobs racked her, becoming even worse when his muffled voice said, 'Mummy, why are you crying?'
'I love you, Liam.' She smothered him with kisses. 'I love you so much. You're the only thing that matters to me.'
The moment the words left her lips his body went rigid. She pulled away, terrified that this was the cruel sting in the House of Pain's scheme, and he stood there like a statue, staring blindly, still him, still real, but frozen in time. Panic burst free so hard she clawed at his clothes like an animal.
The barely human thing that was the voice of the House of Pain had crept up on them unawares. It pointed one wavering finger at Liam and said, 'Choooooooooosse ...' in that soundless voice that made her feel sick.
One word, but as before she knew exactly what it meant. The thing made a strange, spastic movement with its hand and the wall ahead of her became transparent. In the room beyond she could see something that resembled a giant egg made of the brown meat that appeared to be the stuff of the building. From the rear of the egg, small forms were issuing with a grotesque sucking sound. They writhed on contact with the air but quickly found their feet and then scampered away. They were the plague demons she had become aware of once the Morrigan had emerged to control her consciousness, and this was the place where they were made - she refused to think 'born'. Hundreds of them swarmed around the egg, dancing and tormenting each other, ready to be thrust into the human world, where they would infect their corruption into the spiritual energy that infused everything.
'Anti-life,' she whispered to herself. Here was the power to pave the way for the arrival of the Void. And she could stop it. All she had to do was renounce Liam, and the world and everything in it would be saved, for now.
How clever were the forces ranged against life, she thought; how could the Void know the workings of the human mind so well? If she chose Liam, the Void would win. If she rejected Liam to take the cure, she would destroy herself, she would be unable to act as a champion of the Blue Fire in the coming battle ... and the Void would win.
Not so long ago she might have found it in her to overcome the second loss of her son for the sake of the greater good. But the death of Carlton had been the final twist in her destruction. Before that, she had fought her way through grief to see some kind of hope; but after that there was none, and never would be again, if she didn't take her chance here with Liam. Nothing else mattered. Not the cure, not the world, nothing.
In that instant, Caitlin looked at the thing and through it into the House of Pain itself and saw something of herself in the Void. They were all joined by the despair at the heart of human existence.
'No,' she said. 'I'm not giving him up. He's going to live. He's going to live!'
She didn't waste a second thinking about what she had done. She felt his body become warm and alive again, and she hugged him to her, and buried her face in his hair.
Her choice had been made.
Outside in the dusty, sweltering heat, Mahalia sensed a change. She looked up from tending the professor to see the warriors of the Djazeem break from their defensive position and start to drift away down the corridor through the army of the Lament-Brood.
Mahalia watched them with incomprehension, followed by mounting dismay. Soon there would be nothing to hold the Lament-Brood at bay. As she gazed over the disappearing column, she had the impression of a tiny figure or two moving in the opposite direction through the heat haze. Before she could decide if it was a trick of the light or her eyes, the professor coughed up a gout of blood.
Mahalia slipped a comforting arm around his shoulders. Anyone could see that he didn't have long left. She'd tried to stem the blood that now soaked all the way through his overcoat, but it was like trying to hold back the rain.
His head lolled on to his chest, and she thought that he had already gone, but then his hands went shakily up to the mask, and it fell limply into his palms. He tossed it to one side and looked up at her with eyes so haunted that she was truly shocked. His face looked like a skull, the skin drawn tight and as white as snow, everything vital sucked out of him.
'He doesn't want me now.' Mahalia was stunned by the bitterness in his voice. 'He's drained me dry and now he's ready to move on to the next victim,' Crowther continued.
'How are you feeling?'
'Like death. How do you think I'm feeling?' He caught himself and forced a wan smile. 'I'm sorry, Mahalia. Thank you for staying with me. I didn't expect anyone would. I've not made much good of myself.'
'That's not true! You saved us - twice.'
He accepted her point. 'But still, I could have done so much more, couldn't I? If I hadn't been so weak. I suppose we're not all cut out to be heroes.'
Honest tears burned her eyes at the self-loathing that consumed him. She didn't want him to die that way, thinking his life was without value, but every time she tried to find the words they caught in her throat and she had to fight to stop herself crying.
He understood what she was trying to do, for his smile became more natural. 'Don't worry about me, young 'un. I had my chances. I made my choices and I've got no one else to blame - I'm quite at ease with it all.' A twitch around his mouth showed the lie.