Limbo's Child (83 page)

“Chamberlain!” Nephys implored as the Chamberlain and Father of All Vampires slowly approached him threateningly. “Stop this! You’re not yourself!! You’re
Ba
is here, but your
Yib
, your heart is still in Limbo!”

Hokharty paused, but only so long as to retort back.

“I
am
myself, Nefer. I am Hokharty-Ra. The Father of All Vampires. I swore an oath to defend life at all costs and that is what I am here to do.”

“But you’re going to kill billions of people!!”

“Only to save the world for as long as time will suffer it to exist.”

“But…” Nephys stammered but Hokharty cut him off.

“Enough of this, Nefer. I have no wish to kill you, but if you must die, you should meet the end with dignity, which is the most anyone can hope for. Stop this foolish opposition to what is inevitable.”

Hokharty lunged at the boy with an open hand, but Nephys clawed his way back to the far edge of the larder out of the way of the slowly advancing vampire. Hokharty didn’t hurry, he didn’t have to, there was nowhere for Nephys to go. Nephys thought desperately of what to say. What might change Hokharty’s mind.

“But back in the Halls of Death, you said we had to protect life as long as we could!!”

“By saving the Great Master, we will be preserving life. We will be preserving it for those yet to live in the future. And they will have a future, as soon as the earth’s population is reduced to sustainable levels.”

“Sustainable?!!” Nephys yelped, “You’re going to kill six billion people!! You talk about them like they are cattle! But they are not cattle, they are people with lives and families!”

“I do not expect you to understand, young Nefer,” Hokharty said tonelessly as if speaking to a little child. “The Great Master
must
survive, or everything will end. The burden is too great for him. If the numbers of dying continue as they have, Death will falter, and the whole afterlife will empty out into the land of the living.
All
will perish. So, Death must survive. The only answer is to reduce the numbers of the dying to a more manageable pace. Only then can Death last the ages as he was meant to. Those who die today, die to ensure that the world will continue for millennia to come. Six billion may die now, but how many billions yet to be born will never live if they are not sacrificed? By killing them, we will guarantee that humanity will survive.”

Hokharty had cornered Nephys against the back wall and slowly extended his right hand as if to grab him by the neck in one final, crushing grip.

“Humanity may survive but what about all the people! What about them?! You can talk about saving humanity all you want, but it matters a whole lot more when you’re the person being eliminated. You can’t just move persons around like numbers in columns on a ledger or weights on a scale! THEY MATTER!” Nephys spoke out abruptly and wildly, cringing against the terror of his impending death or re-death. “They aren’t just numbers to be arranged until the columns on the left add up with the columns on the right! People aren’t like numbers, they’re…they’re…” Nephys thought frantically what to say and reached for the only experience he really had, copying all those books in the scriptorium. “They’re like stories!”

“Stories?” Hokharty paused, his hand just inches from grabbing Nephys’ throat.

“YES! Stories!! People are like stories!” Nephys was thrilled he had managed to get Hokharty to pause long enough to think. He kept going, “You can’t just rearrange the words to fit the pages. The
order
of the words matter. You can’t rearrange the chapters from shortest to longest, or however you like, you have to hear the whole story the way it was written. And you’re cutting the stories short, Chamberlain. You’re cutting them off before they even have a chance to finish!”

Hokharty paused but looked as if he were about to reach out again. Nephys thought furiously of how he could explain it to him when he blurted the first thing that came to his mind.

“Think of Egypt…I mean Kemet, the black land!” Nephys corrected himself, knowing that Hokharty wouldn’t appreciate the Greek name of his native land. Hokharty paused again, uncertain. Nephys kept going, “Think of our country! Think of our stories! The restoration of Osiris...ASARI, the triumph of Horus…I mean HARU!...over Set! All the great and glorious legends of our people!”

“Myths and legends long forgotten,” Hokharty mumbled, “Useless tales that had no meaning.”

“They are
not
forgotten!” Nephys insisted, thinking of his grandmother. “Think of the black land and all those thousands of years of history! Even though I came near the end of her glory, I am glad that I saw it. Think of its grandeur, its temples! Those temples were built on those stories. What if someone had decided to cut it off years or centuries before its time?! What if those stories had been lost?! That’s what you are doing now.”

Hokharty paused and looked down for a moment. His outreached hand fell slowly to his side.

“Kemet is ruined and desolate,” he said in a melancholy voice, “The black land is but a memory. Her story is finished.”

“Ruined or not I would rather walk the pillars of a ruined Karnak and know that once men could do such things than to never have lived to see them, but at least it ran its own course. Right now, you are dictating the end to others. Why don’t they get at least as much a chance as our own land for glory and honor? Why don’t those stories get to be told?!”

Hokharty paused again and looked away. Nephys could see that his eyes were clouded, just as everyone’s were in the afterlife. Hokharty looked to the wall and then up, staring as if he could see straight through it to the rooms above, which of course, Nephys realized, he probably could, since he had the Death Sight. Was he thinking about the gate and the terrified girl so desperate to have her mother back she was willing to risk the end of the world? Was he looking at her right now?

“I’ve remembered things here, Chamberlain, things I thought I had forgotten. Tastes! Sounds! People! Such wonders as life offers I had forced from my mind. I had become numb. I had become blind. I had lived so long in darkness I thought it was easier to live not remembering what life was really like, rather than to live in pain of their memory. Then I came here and I realized that everything, even the bad things, even a stubbed toe has a certain sweetness impossible to explain.”

Hokharty looked up at him with clouded eyes. Was he really seeing him? Or was he just using his Death Sight with its numbing clarity? Nephys went on, hoping he was really seeing him, really listening.

“As hard as it is to watch others suffer, the sweetness of life is bound up with the sorrow and they go together, but even together they are better than the nothingness of non-being. The stone brought that all back to me, Chamberlain. You remember the stone don’t you? Not just how it felt or looked or how rough it was and all its imperfections but how it made you
feel
? Like all the glorious joys of life had meaning and could go on forever? Think about that feeling, Chamberlain, and think how many people you are going to deprive of that feeling forever. Think about how many stories you are about to cut off before their time! Not finished because their authors stopped telling them but finished because
you
finished them.”

Nephys looked up at the Chamberlain and Father of All Vampires. Hokharty looked dazed and confused. He seemed to be considering the matter intently. He brought his fingers close to his face and rolled them together. Nephys had seen him do this before. He only realized now what it meant. Hokharty was trying to remember the stone and how it felt, and something passed over the vampire’s face. It was as if he were realizing there was a difference between knowing which stone amongst all those glassy pebbles was
the
stone, and actually
knowing
the stone – knowing its warmth and light and power. He was looking back towards the ceiling but was he looking at the ceiling or at something beyond? Was he looking at ballroom and the girl who right now was bringing about the destruction of the world with that very same stone? Was he reconsidering?! Nephys even dared to hope that Hokharty would change his mind, but then the dead eyes of the vampire abruptly snapped back to him.

“Everyone’s story is cut off eventually, Nefer, many before they have written the ending, even our own. Yours ends today.”

The iron coffin began rocking violently and emitting all sorts of horrific, discordant notes. Hiero was nearly knocking it over from the inside but the chains weren’t shaking loose fast enough.

Hokharty’s hand reached out towards Nephys’ throat. Nephys closed his eyes, but even through his eyelids he could see, with his Death Sight, the glass-like outline of Hokharty’s hand coming for him, but behind the hand was a swirling mass of shadow forming into something larger.

A massive dog-like head with crocodile-sized jaws erupted out of the swirling mass of black smoke. The gaping maw turned sideways so as to take an enormous bite, a bite big enough to cut Hokharty in half mid-torso. Hokharty turned in time to face the attack just as the jaws clamped shut on him with a horrifying crunch. He didn’t even wince but immediately began grabbing the jaws, pulling them apart. Miles didn’t wait long enough to let him try. He knew how this had ended for Wallach when he held onto Hokharty for too long, so instead, he thrashed the ancient vampire back and forth violently, before flinging him out of the narrow larder and back up the stone steps where he crashed through door and into the kitchen.

Nephys stood panting as the dog reformed into Miles. It was only as the smoke gathered into the red-haired vampire’s form that Nephys realized Miles was screaming at him.

“What?”

“I SAID GET THAT THING OUT OF ITS BOX!!”

Nephys instantly turned to the rocking iron casket and began pulling the chains off the box. Miles jumped in to help. The chains seared Miles’ flesh as he pulled it hand over hand. They tore off yard after yard of thick, heavy, silver chain. It must have cost Wallach a fortune. Whatever he was keeping down there he
never
wanted it to get out.

Miles was scrambling over the last several yards, his hands smoking when a gigantic hand made entirely of golden locusts reached out of the smashed doorway and grabbed him yanking him back into the cloud of ravenous insects. Miles instantly turned into smoke and then his dog form and tried to claw his way out of the swarm, but soon he completely disappeared into the massive fist made up of the cloud of glittering grasshoppers.

Nephys screamed and closed his eyes and the world descended into crystalline iciness.

“KhaaaraPOONNT!” The imp burst forth out of the casket, breaking the last of the silver chains. It leaped forth and, with an enormous honk, swept the large butcher blade through the air. Nephys saw the whole thing from the perspective of a child of Limbo who could see the unseen with this Death Sight. Any ordinary blade would have passed clean through the swarm of insects, leaving them unharmed, however the blade was not shaped in any mortal forge, but in the depths of hell where it existed to torture the dead and not the living. Forged of shadow, it sliced clean through Hokharty’s shadow essence animating the insects.

A blood-curdling scream erupted from the cloud, the severed stub of the shadow arm animating them retreated and the insects that formed the fist of the great arm fell dead, dropping to the floor like dried leaves. As they fell they revealed the body of Miles, back in human form now, lying crumpled on the floor. He was tattered, but whole. Then all the insects dissolved into thick, red smoke, which retreated out the cracks of the door and out of the fissures in the walls in every direction.

Nephys opened his eyes and stood still and wondered to himself. Was he gone? Was Hokharty dead? It didn’t seem like it could be that easy. Even Hiero was silent and turning one way and then the next, prepared for another sudden ambush, but no one could tell from where. Then Nephys noticed the already dim room began to grow even darker, until there was virtually no light left. Nephys closed his eyes, but even with the Death Sight the room was getting darker and he could no longer see through the walls. It was Hokharty’s shadow. He was smothering the room in darkness. He was drowning them in his own shadow! Hiero flailed with the blade. It cut the shadow and pushed it back in wide swaths like a scythe against the grain, but everywhere he didn’t swing, the shadow pressed in closer, like a rising tide. Soon it had him and swallowed him up. The bagpipe went limp and hooted out one last “Parnt!” before collapsing.

Nephys himself was plunged into icy darkness and cowered, but he didn’t fade. His own
Yib
, his heart, was still burning brightly. Fed on just these last few hours of life, it refused to go out. Soon, the shadow gathered all together into a familiar human form. Hokharty reached down and picked up Hiero by his goose leg. He ignored Nephys, who was shivering, huddled on the floor.

The poor little bagpipe was deflated and looked dead and forlorn, with one back pipe already snapped.

“Is he…dead?” Nephys asked shivering.

“No…not yet.” Hokharty replied coldly, “Creatures of shadow are not completely invulnerable, Nefer. They can die, but only by being consumed by another being’s shadow. This imp is a tough little one, though I wonder…whose heart did he eat out?” With that Hokharty’s hand turned into a long tentacle of shadow, and he plunged this into the poor little imp’s body like a dagger. Hiero’s body shuddered for a while, as if Hokharty was fishing around his empty innards and then slowly the imp began to dissolve, as if being disintegrated into Hokharty’s essence.