The End of Time (25 page)

 
CHAPTER
32

Hap sprawled on the sand of Desolas,
the island of the bidmis, and let the volcanic heat that poured from the surrounding fissures warm his body. It was another unpleasant spot with terrible memories, but again it was a place that he knew and his pursuer might not.

The last trip through the Neither had nearly finished him. His mind had been befogged almost instantly, and he’d barely mustered the will to reemerge into the world. His bones felt like icicles, and there was a pain in his heart, as if it had nearly frozen solid. “Think,” he muttered aloud, and his cold lips barely articulated the word.

The Executioner was badly burned and had at least one gruesome wound on his foot. Hap wondered if the creature would break off the pursuit, to rest. “Probably not,” he decided. The look in the Executioner’s eyes spoke of an all-consuming hunger. Like Occo before him, this thing was relentless.

The world dimmed, and the Executioner appeared, up to his waist in the water. He saw Hap and tried to take a step toward him, but he stumbled and fell into the shallows.

His aim is getting worse,
Hap thought.
Like mine.
He’d learned that it was impossible to appear precisely where you intended. There was guesswork involved, and you might pop up a few strides away from the mind’s target. And with the senses impaired by the icy void, the aim suffered even more.

The Executioner rose up again, dripping. He spat seawater and stared with his eyes swiveling in all directions at the bizarre sights of Desolas: the mile-high wall of boiling steam that encircled the island; the lofty obsidian palace; a half-finished staircase to nowhere, spiraling high; and the titanic statue in the likeness of Caspar, the last fellow who’d fallen victim to the island’s curse.

Those strange sights didn’t hold the Executioner’s attention for long. He turned every eye toward Hap again, and limped onto the sand. Hap noticed that one of the long, birdlike toes was missing.

“G-give up yet?” Hap asked. The Executioner hissed back, baring tooth and gum.

Hap turned and ran as fast as his frozen legs could take him, into the tunnel that plunged under the island’s surface. He ran until a wall blocked the passage. There was a short, wide door in the middle of the wall. It was made of dark metal and looked as old as the world itself. A brass ring in the center of the door could be used to knock, and words were etched in an ancient language:
Knock thrice and master you shall be
. Another message was scrawled in chalk, in Umber’s hand:
Beware the curse. Do not touch this door.

Hap heard the Executioner advancing down the tunnel with one foot dragging. “Hope I know what I’m doing,” Hap whispered, as a vivid memory of Caspar’s tormented face arose. He grabbed the ring and slammed it once, twice, three times against the metal door.

When Hap turned around, the Executioner was almost upon him, crouched inside the low tunnel, with his hands spread wide, sharp nails screeching against the opposing walls. The eyes that still had lids narrowed with pleasure when he saw the wall behind Hap, preventing escape. “You run b-because you are too cold to fly.” He chuckled darkly and slurped his own drool.

With a dreadful screech of ancient metal, the ancient door swung open. Thousands of small feet pattered toward them. The Executioner’s eyes goggled as he looked past Hap into the dark space behind.

As the footfalls swelled like an approaching storm, a single pale, naked creature stepped across the threshold, as tall as Hap’s knee. “Who has knocked?” it asked.

“I am your master now,” Hap said. “But look: Do you see the intruder?”

The Executioner’s cruel crescent mouth opened in a scream. Somehow he found the energy to bound away in long, awkward strides as thousands of bidmis rushed out of the doorway. They flowed around Hap like water with their white teeth gnashing, filling the tunnel.

Hap knew he had to depart before the bidmis came back and asked him for tasks to perform—he might never escape their sight otherwise, and manage to slip away. But he couldn’t bring himself to enter the icy void yet. A warm gust of air flowed out from the threshold, and he trotted through, hoping to drive away his chill.

The passage sloped into an enormous round room with a ceiling so low his head nearly scraped it. A pool of molten rock roiled at the center. The walls were pocked with thousands of niches where the bidmis must have lain dormant when there was no master to drive insane. “You would have enjoyed this, Lord Umber,” Hap whispered. It wasn’t wise to linger, he knew. The warmth had helped him recover enough, and so he slipped back into the Neither.

As he flew through the frozen nothing, tethered to the dim filament that traced his past, he was startled to see the thread in pursuit once more.
So you got away from the bidmis after all,
he thought.
I wonder how much more you can take. Where shall we go next, then? Someplace not so warm, I think. No comfort for you.

Hap reappeared with his heels teetering over the ledge of the sea-cave. His arms pinwheeled, and he bent at the waist and lunged forward. When he caught his balance and looked up, he thought for a moment he’d come to the wrong place.

“No,” he said aloud. “This was it—I was here.”

It was the den of the sea-giants. Many weeks before, Umber had brought Hap and the others here, and they had seen the terrible giants dozing on the rock, in a century-long hibernation. But now the ledge was barren, with only a trace of enormous footsteps in the sand and dust. Hap scratched the back of his neck, staring at the empty cave. “Where have you gone?” He was sure they weren’t heading back to Kurahaven; he would have sensed the impending doom. The giants, like most creatures, had left no filaments behind for him to read, so he was left to wonder.

The thought of the threads made him think of the Executioner, just as the warning signs came. The darkness fell over him like a shadow, and the whispery sound was as close as someone blowing in his ear. The Executioner blinked into the world, and he could have reached out and seized Hap, except that he was grappling with a pair of bidmis that had latched their jaws onto his shoulder and leg. He had covered their eyes with his hands, to allow his escape. Water poured off of him, and he coughed and sputtered as he pulled one bidmi off his shoulder and hurled it away. The bidmi took a mouthful of flesh with it, and dark blood oozed from the wound. The little creature struck the cavern wall, fell to the ground, and sprang back to its feet, unharmed.

The other bidmi leaped off the Executioner before he could pry it away, and both stared at their surroundings. They raced to the brink of the ledge, leaped into the water, and swam out of the sea-cave.

“Going home, I suppose,” Hap said, backing away. “It’ll b-be a long swim.”

The Executioner snarled at him and staggered. He stared at his wounds with his chest heaving. His body was racked by wild, convulsive shivers.

Are you done yet?
Hap wondered.
Maybe not. One more trip might do it.
“You’re soooo close,” he said, drawing out the words to taunt his foe. The myriad eyes swiveled and stared, boiling with pain, hunger, and hate.

“Come on,” Hap said. “Don’t you see how powerful these eyes make me? They’re grander than yours. You
need
these eyes.”

The Executioner’s lips pulled back farther still. His breath hissed in and out.

Hap pointed and laughed. “Look at your face. What is that eye on your forehead, a simple hawk’s eye? And that one—a dog? Wouldn’t you rather have mine?”

The Executioner blundered toward Hap with his arms out, grasping. Hap stepped off the ledge, dropping from sight, and slipped away once more into the icy netherworld.

Hap fell onto his stomach. He’d drawn out the chase as long as he could, with his enemy’s thread in pursuit, screaming with agony and malice.

How fitting if the chase ends here,
he thought, as he stared up at the simmering peak of the volcano, Mount Ignis.
The place where Happenstance was born
.

He was on a wide flow of volcanic rock. Underneath the looming mountain was Alzumar: a city that was lost once, buried under ash, and was now lost again, its entrance sealed by a fresh river of lava.

The signs told him the Executioner was coming. Hap braced himself, in case he had to spring away, but his pursuer appeared farther up the flow, where the slope was not so gentle. The Executioner toppled, and rolled senselessly down. His elbows, knees, and skull thumped against the stone, leaving splotches of blood. He finally stopped halfway down the slope, staring at the sky. His ugly, sharklike mouth opened, and an animal screech of agony rang in the air.

Hap stood and steadied himself. Only one of the Executioner’s eyes rolled toward him. The others wandered in their sockets.

“I want you to leave me alone,” Hap said.

“N-n-never,” said the Executioner.

Hap shook his head and laughed bitterly. “Can’t you see what folly this is? You won’t catch me.”

“You were c-c-clever,” the Executioner said. “L-lured me into a chase. . . . W-won’t make that mistake again.” With a great effort he raised a quivering arm off the ground. He tried to point at Hap, but half the finger was gone. His shoulder was torn like a garment, with tattered skin hanging. Hap wrinkled his nose; he could smell the flesh that was seared by dragon fire. “These wounds will heal,” the Executioner said. “My k-k-kind always heals. And then . . . you will forget to be wary . . . like the others . . . I will have your eyes . . .” The arm fell limp. A leg jerked. And then the Executioner was still.

Hap watched him for a while and saw the creature’s chest rise and fall. He crept closer—careful to stay out of reach of those long, clutching arms—and passed his hand through the Executioner’s filament. With the cold of the Neither still gripping his brain like a frozen fist, he found the song of the thread foggy and hard to interpret. He concentrated, searching for meaning. He hoped to learn that the Executioner had seen enough of his prey and would give up the chase. Or at least that the wounds would take a long time to heal. But the only things he sensed were a terrible, unquenchable hunger, a pure unbridled hate, and a lust for revenge.

The restless volcano rumbled, deep and low. Hap looked up its headless summit. There was a scuffling noise behind him, and he turned to see the Executioner lunging. He leaped, but the clawed fingers curled tight around his ankle and he slammed to the ground.

Drool poured from the creature’s mouth, even as the charred face contorted with pain. “Now,” the Executioner said, crawling up and over Hap’s legs. Hap grunted through clenched teeth and kicked at the hand around his ankle, driving his foot into the stump of the missing finger. The creature howled and swatted the foot away with his free hand. He crawled up and gripped the front of Hap’s shirt. Hap kicked again, with all the desperate strength his frozen muscles could muster, and planted his foot in the Executioner’s chest. The Executioner twisted sideways, lost his balance, and started to roll farther down the slope, pulling Hap along by the shirt.

The world spun as the rock battered Hap over and over again, hammering his limbs and spine. The back of his head struck the stone, and sparks filled his vision. He heard the Executioner grunting with the same pain as they tumbled together, arms and legs flailing, until they reached the bottom of the flow and sprawled on the beach.

The Executioner’s elbow fell across Hap’s chest, pinning him down. The awful face loomed overhead, grinning madly with every eye, animal and Meddler, bulging and quivering with anticipation. “You can’t leave now. I’m watching you,” the Executioner said, as a line of drool dangled from the corner of his mouth. He plucked a pair of dripping animal eyes out of their sockets and let them fall to the sand. And then the hand came for Hap’s face, with the long scoop of a claw extended, aiming for his right eye. Hap seized the wrist with both of his hands, trying to ward it off.

The Executioner’s strength was failing, but still the claw came closer. Hap turned his face to the side, pressing into the sand, but still the claw drew near, until it touched the corner of his left eye. Hap’s cheek pressed into the sand, trying to escape another inch.
Sand,
he thought, and with one hand he clutched at the beach and flung a handful into the Executioner’s face. The wrinkled lids flapped shut as the grit struck it, but the sand stuck to the wounded, lidless eyes, and the Executioner turned his face away, spitting grains.