The Resuurection Fields (18 page)

In another hut, lying on the hard stony ground, her father wondered what on earth he had done, then reminded himself that
it was too late for such thoughts. Whatever Bea had in mind, he was a part of it now, whether he liked it or not.

Even Moon seemed touched by the Púca’s troubles. As he slept in his basket, his legs twitched and he whined quietly to himself, as if he sensed that out there in the night something dangerous was lurking and getting steadily closer with every passing hour.

Night had also fallen upon the mountain of the satsumballa, but not one bird moved so much as a feather. For the Great Flock, time had ceased entirely. All that mattered was that they had been granted a vision of the Hidden Path.

Soon they would set forth on their last great migration; soon they would return to a world in which they truly belonged. For many of them, belief and hope had almost died. They had begun to whisper that perhaps there really was no Hidden Path, that perhaps it was just a story told to chicks as they lay curled up in their nest. But now the evidence was there before them. Amid the rolling billows of the Sky Beyond the Sky lay the start of the Hidden Path, and the giddim had led them there.

Now the Great Flock was ready, its mind made up. Let us go, it sang. Let us delay no longer. The giddim consented. The last flight of the zimbir had begun.

But suddenly everything changed. The Hidden Path grew dim and the music of the Great Flock ceased as a dark figure stepped out of the rolling clouds. It was in the shape of a man but its body was composed of nothing but symbols of enormous power and pitiless cruelty.

“Dante Cazabon!” said the voice of Orobas. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to disappear altogether when you and I have so much unfinished business to complete!”

Frustration and fury replaced the excitement Dante had been feeling. He wanted to leave his past behind him and take the Hidden Path with the rest of the flock. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” he demanded. “You’ve got my body. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“There is never enough for me,” Orobas told him. “You must know that by now. I want everything, Dante. Your mind as well as your body. That’s the most interesting part, after all. There’s so much pleasure to be got from it.”

With these words he stretched out his arm and pointed at Kidu’s chest. Immediately Dante felt the bird grow cold and he realized that the same corrupt symbols that made up Orobas’s phantom had infected Kidu. As the bird watched helplessly, the symbols grew bigger—and it was clear that before long they would overwhelm him completely.

“Help me, Giddim!” Kidu urged.

Dante struggled to fight the corruption, but it was far too strong for him. It was as though he were trapped in a narrow cavern deep underground and cold water was rising all around him. It seemed that Orobas had finally succeeded in defeating him.

Then suddenly he felt a slackening of the creature’s will.

“No!” Orobas whispered. “It cannot be!”

“What cannot be?” Dante wondered. Something of enormous significance must be taking place, something that Orobas had not counted upon.

“I will not allow it!” Orobas roared, and his proclamation seemed to drown out everything else.

A moment later the Great Flock was back upon the slopes of the mountain, Kidu and Dante with them. They had been cast out of the Odyll and thrown back to earth as carelessly as one might toss a pebble. Relief filled Dante, but in his mind an image remained, confused yet urgent, like the remnants of a dream.

During those last moments he had spent within the Odylic realm, his mind had been so nearly joined to Orobas’s mind that he had shared his enemy’s last thought. What had caused his enemy such distress? Dante struggled to bring the vision into focus. Something to do with a bell?

Meanwhile, the Chief Buzzard stared fixedly at Kidu with his one bloodshot eye, and every other bird in the Great Flock waited to see what he would say.

“Kidu Kekkaka,” he began at last. “Though many here doubted you, myself included, your giddim did indeed show us the Hidden Path as you promised. We will always wish in our hearts that he did not turn back from the brink. Yet perhaps there was no other choice. For what we have seen, we thank you.”

He bowed slightly and Kidu bowed in reply.

“It is the decision of the satsumballa, therefore,” the Chief Buzzard continued, “that you be allowed to go free. But more than that, I declare that you are the Zimbir That Is Not Zimbir. The Great Flock is yours to command.”

As Kidu looked around in astonishment, a great chorus of squawks and chirps and whistles and bird cries of every kind greeted the announcement.

“We great now,” the bird said delightedly, speaking inside his mind. “We in charge. We heroes, Kidu and Giddim.”

But there was no time for congratulations. The chaotic set of impressions with which Orobas had left Dante had finally resolved into a clear picture, and he understood at last that Bea was in terrible danger.

“What we do next, Giddim?” Kidu demanded.

“Fly, Kidu,” Dante urged him. “Fly like you never flew before!”

It was still dark when Bea woke, but she could tell by the stars that dawn was not far away. She dressed quickly and, with the bell clutched tightly in her hand, stepped outside, taking care not to wake Maeve.

She had not gone very far when the night was suddenly illuminated. Blinded by the light, she stopped in her tracks.

“Stay where you are!” a voice ordered.

The huts were surrounded by security guards. They had trained a spotlight on her, and one of them was speaking through a megaphone. Squinting against the light, Bea saw that there were dozens of them holding guns pointed directly at her, while others were dragging the sleeping Púca from their huts.

“Albigen was right,” Bea thought. “I led them straight here.”

Two of the guards stepped forward and seized her arms. Then out of the shadows stepped Dante—or Sigmundus the Second, as he now appeared to be.

Even with the light shining directly in her eyes, Bea could see that there was something terribly wrong with him. His face looked as though it were covered with tattoos, but as Bea stared more closely, she saw that the tattoos were alive, that they moved across his face as though they were insects that lived beneath his skin.

“What has happened to you, Dante?” she cried out.

He lifted his arm and pointed to the bell. “Take the Summoner from her and bring it to me,” he ordered in a voice entirely devoid of any emotion.

Bea held on as firmly as she could, kicking at the guard’s legs as he began prying the bell from her fingers. One by one, he peeled her fingers back.

Suddenly, without warning, the sky above them thronged with shadowy forms and the air was full of the sound of birdcalls. Birds dropped down upon the beehive huts in their thousands as if the sky were raining feathers. Straight at Sigmundus the Second and the security guards they came, tearing at their faces with razor-sharp claws, stabbing at their eyes with beaks like knives. In a moment their victims disappeared under swarms of feathered attackers, and still more came all the time.

Free of her captors and still clutching the bell, Bea raced across the stony ground towards the pillar. The dawn was already knocking on the door of the world.

Panting, she reached the base of the pillar only to find that her way was blocked. Standing in front of her was a young man whom she recognized, yet did not recognize. A memory that had been buried deep within a dream began to surface.

“I see you were not expecting me,” the young man said with a smile of unspeakable cruelty. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your promise.”

“Set!” she said, as her recollection of the dream finally crystallized.

He nodded. “You may call me that.”

“I have to climb this pillar,” she told him, glancing skyward. Surely it was beginning to grow perceptibly lighter in the east?

“You needn’t worry about that anymore,” Set said. “You’re mine now. I will make you queen of the Nakara. Just think of that!”

“I don’t want to be queen of anywhere!” Bea told him.

“Too late! Remember your promise—when the sky is full of
feathers and the moon sleeps in a basket. A girl should always keep her promises, you know.”

“But if I don’t…,” Bea began.

“If you don’t ring the bell, Orobas will be victorious.” Set finished the sentence for her. “Of course. But that is no longer your concern.”

“But why?” Bea asked. “Why do you want to stop me?”

“Because this is my world,” Set replied, “and I am its lord. You didn’t know that, did you? Your ancestors believed in me but that was long ago, and as the years went by, you all forgot my name. The birds did not forget, however. They called me Shurruppak and they never ceased to fear me. Orobas, too, was careful to respect me. He placed himself under my protection and he was wise to do so. For I am all that stands in the way of his destruction. But I
do
stand in the way. For if I let you ring that bell, it would mean my destruction, too. So I will not allow it.”

He reached out his hand. “Give me the Summoner,” he ordered.

But then another voice spoke, a voice like the sound of bells ringing out across a landscape of snow and ice. “Step aside, brother,” it said.

Bea turned and saw that Tzavinyah was standing beside her. Her heart was filled with a wild joy, even as anger flashed from Set’s eyes. “You have no business interfering!” he cried.

“I have every business,” Tzavinyah told him. “I am here to ensure that the summons is issued.”

Set raised his left hand in the air with the palm facing outwards, and a ray of light shot out towards Tzavinyah. The air around Bea grew so hot that she felt as if her hair might burn up, but immediately Tzavinyah raised his right arm in a similar gesture. From his palm there came a similar beam of power, though
this one seemed to chill the air so that Bea shivered as she watched. The twin forces met in the middle and locked so that for a time the two brothers stood there, arms raised above their heads in a duel, until at last Set lowered his arm and his beam vanished.

Tzavinyah followed suit. “There is no difference in strength between us,” he conceded. “Only Bea can decide which of us will prevail.”

Bea was about to open her mouth and say that she would choose Tzavinyah when Set spoke first. “Consider this before you make your decision,” he said. “If you give me the bell and come with me, all of this will be like a dream. In its place I will conjure up a world that is tailor-made for you, a world that contains every pleasure and diversion you can possibly imagine. But if you choose Tzavinyah, you choose death.”

“What do you mean?” Bea asked.

“When you ring the bell, it will not just be the end for Orobas,” Set continued. “You, too, will die. And death will mean the end of everything. For make no mistake, by ringing that bell you will wake the Odyll—and once that has happened, there will be no Resurrection Fields for those who have died.”

Bea hesitated. She had not thought about what might happen if she rang the bell, at least not beyond the notion that it might somehow bring about the defeat of Orobas. But she had always assumed she would survive, along with all her friends.

She looked at Tzavinyah. “Is it true?” she asked.

But Tzavinyah only looked back at her without speaking. His expression was unfathomable.

“He does not know,” Set told her. “The answer is hidden from him, like so much else. But I have looked in places he will not contemplate. I have turned every page in every forbidden book that was ever written. I have sifted through the ruin that time has made of the world, lifted every stone and gazed underneath. That is why
I know what comes after the ringing of the bell, and I promise you it is the end of everything.”

Bea glanced up at the sky. There could be no mistake now. It was definitely growing brighter in the east. “And if I do not ring it?” she asked.

“Then Orobas will triumph,” Tzavinyah replied quietly.

It was all very well to pretend you were not afraid of death, Bea thought, but people only said that because they had not truly looked death in the eye. They had not understood that it meant everything you had always taken for granted and loved without even knowing it—the world around you, the memories you carry with you, your hopes for the future—all of this being extinguished like a candle flame that is blown out. And afterwards, there would be nothing. Not even emptiness. Not even loneliness. Not even pain.

Bea didn’t want that. She couldn’t bear it. “I am still so young,” she thought, and a single tear ran down her cheek.

But then she took a deep breath and began to climb the steps. At the top of the pillar she gazed out at the edge of the world, where the yellow lip of the sun was just beginning to emerge above the horizon. Slowly she held out her arm, and with a trembling hand, she rang the bell.

The sound started off very small, so that she wondered if she had made some sort of mistake. But instead of dying away, the peal of the bell grew louder and louder still until it seemed as if it would drown the whole world in sound. At the same time, Bea saw her own life played out before her mind’s eye, unwinding like a film playing backwards, slowly at first, then faster and faster until it was a kaleidoscope of images and then finally a blur that faded into white light.