The Tower of Bones (11 page)

‘Then please do it now, Qwenqwo. You must use your talisman to help me communicate with a mind that doesn’t think in words.’

Qwenqwo sighed, settling himself cross-legged before the blank ivory face on the foredeck, inviting Mo to do the same. ‘Put both your hands on the runestone I place here on the deck before you. I will put my hands over yours. Think only of your fears – your concern for Alan and Kate.’

She did so, closing her eyes. Mo’s hands folded around
the oval of jade, her fingers numbed by the cold, yet she held it tightly, feeling the intricate carving that covered every inch of the ancient surface, sensing the power and mystery that brooded there. Her nostrils felt congested, as if she couldn’t easily breathe through them. When she parted her lips her mouth felt unusually dry, and then the briny taste of the sea arrived onto her tongue, a taste that also reminded her of iron – of blood. With a start she opened her eyes again and saw that Qwenqwo had sliced open his right palm, allowing the blood to flow over her hands.

‘I don’t have the time to invoke the mysteries in the age-old way, so it must be thus, brutally direct.’

Mo watched how the blood ran through her fingers and over the deeply patterned surface of the Soul Eye that had once borne her own image in an urgent message to Alan, at the time she was prisoner of the false Mage of Dreams. She shivered as the blood of the true Mage of Dreams empowered the runestone on the ivory deck, uniting his talisman to the Ship through the living bond of his blood.

She closed her eyes again, waited a minute – two minutes – but nothing happened.

‘Why won’t it respond?’

Qwenqwo patted her hands, as if to encourage her to be patient. She heard the Mage of Dreams chanting, a whispered incantation, hymnal and powerful.

Still nothing happened.

Against the continuing murmur of the dwarf mage’s incantations, she brought pictures into her mind. The moment she, Mark, Alan and Kate had first met at Padraig’s sawmill in Clonmel. The summer of sandcastles and adventures that had followed. The growing bond of friendship that had united them then, and forever afterwards. Slievenamon … That feeling of seduction …

She felt the enchantment again, so powerfully her eyes sprang open. In the great blank face, under the twin horns of the great ray, a circle of golden luminescence shimmered, grew stronger, solidified into being.

Once more Mo focused her mind on the forebodings she felt in her heart and spirit, for Alan, and through him, also for Kate.

She stared at the golden circle, observing how shadows invaded its liquid metal shimmer. The shadows swirled and metamorphosed, as if on the verge of becoming the shapes of living things, creatures she might recognise. A single shadow condensed to the figure of a very old man with thinning white hair falling about his shoulders, sitting behind an antique desk, its corners decorated with gargoyles’ heads; the figure and desk floated in mid-air, hovering weightless over a featureless white plain that ran in all directions to infinity. The eyes of the old man were inhuman, all black, as if the absence of light were a tangible property of whatever mind resided there. The figure laughed, an old man’s gentle cackle, but it chilled Mo’s heart. His voice, when he spoke, was gentle. But Mo
could only watch in horror as the words emerging from his mouth changed to a stream of insects, blue flies, wasps, locusts – a buzzing conversation exuding from the jaws and the nostrils of what now appeared little more than flaky skin stretched over a skull. Yet still she heard that dreadful voice inside her mind, and she understood every word:

You struggle to evoke the paltry power of the bauble on your brow. You cannot understand its extinguishing by my power. Even then you seek to find comfort in the fact that it confers a debased immortality, not of the carnal flesh but of the spirit alone. Be warned that the spirit is even more vulnerable than mere flesh. It can be tormented in ways more grievous than any rending of skin and bone. The anguish of the spirit can be extended to eternity …

Only then did Mo see Alan. He stood on the strange-patterned ground of lines and curves, unmoving, as if he had been turned to stone. He was staring, his eyes fixed far into the distance, to where something awkward and golden was twinkling against the uniform sea of white.

The horribly buzzing yet incongruously calm voice continued, the words oozing and swarming out of the skull-like face:

A poor adversary, indeed, have you proved to be, your imagination limited to that of a mechanical world. So have I created a fitting execution. A sage of your world, venerated for his wisdom, imagined a machine. For my amusement, I made real his creation. Behold the instrument of your fate.

Mo realised that the golden object was moving closer, however slowly, however jerkily and erratically. The sense of dread was overpowering. Mo felt her mouth open to scream but no sound emerged from her throat. The sound, when it did come, came not from her but from the hateful skull as the twinkling object drew nearer.

Yet still would I save you in both flesh and spirit if only you would go down on your knees and pay homage to me.

Mo heard Alan’s determined mutter, ‘Never!’

Perhaps you should take a little more time to consider.

Mo heard a distracting sound: a loud ticking, as if a thousand clocks had invaded her mind.

‘Qwenqwo – that monster is toying with him.’

Mo felt the hands of the dwarf mage press upon her own as if urging her to preserve her observation yet keep it hidden. With a shrill anxiety she saw that the object approaching was a clockwork figure, a robot, made out of gold. In less than a minute of her watching it had quadrupled in size, and it was still growing rapidly.

You craved to confront the Fáil. But that council of shaven-headed foppery refused to lead you to it. I will so indulge you. I will allow you a glimpse so that you may be allowed to reconsider your position. But first, a warning!

The ticking grew louder. But throughout all Mo heard a slower, more powerful beat, the implacable footsteps of the robot. By now she could make out every detail of its construction, even at a distance: the glassy unblinking stare of the eyes, the pulleys and wheels, the swivelling
mechanical joints, the great feet, rising and falling in the unstoppable mechanical rhythm, and held high above its glittering breastwork, an enormous spiked ball and chain. So ponderous were its footfalls that the white background shuddered with every tread.

Mo’s heart faltered as the white landscape turned to utter dark. For a moment she thought she was gazing into a vision of death. But then she saw a speck of trembling at the heart of it, like the faintest star in the first pallid sky of night.

‘Kate?’ She heard Alan gasp the name. ‘Kate – is it you?’

Mo wept openly as the speck grew closer. It was hard to believe this scratch in the dark was anything human, yet human it was, curled tight into a ball, the lank hair bedraggled and tangled, the flesh filthy and shrunken, the eyes tightly clenched, lost to a despair as total as the dark that enclosed her.

She heard Alan’s anguished roar:
‘Kate!’

Her fate is of the flesh alone. For eternity will your spirit be damned. Even now it is not too late. Yet still would I be merciful. I would save her, as well as you. All I ask is that you yield to me.

Mo heard Alan’s answering whisper, trembling, though not she sensed with fear but with utter loathing.

‘I’d rather we both died.’

Mo screamed: ‘Temple Ship – if you really are a friend, help him!’

Suddenly the shimmering gold circle in the Temple
Ship was invaded by a different darkness: the inky background of the night sky in which pinpoints of starlight flickered and changed, as if constantly remaking themselves. Mo recognised the matrix of Mark’s crystal, given to him by Granny Dew. She recalled a game she had played with Mark, a shared secret, when Grimstone had locked them in the cellar all night for punishment. In her mind she heard the rhyme:

Take you

Take me

Altogether make three

Who are we?

Mo whispered, softly: ‘The Lost Children!’

It was the Peter Pan game – the game they would escape into when their adoptive father had locked them away in the dark. In their imaginations they could travel anywhere they wanted, have the greatest adventures …

Only Mark and she knew the game. Mo stared, speechless, as the shimmering circle on the face of the Ship became a screen in which a hand was imprinted, as if pressing towards her from the other side.

Qwenqwo embraced her, then moved forward to place his hand against the impression in the shimmering circle.

‘Is it truly you, young Ironheart?’ he exclaimed.

Qwenqwo!

‘Then it is you!’

I’m here – but I’m not sure I’m real.

‘Be assured – you live.’

How do you know that?

‘I climbed to the top of the Rath of the Dark Queen. The Mage Lord and I, we both observed there was nobody at the summit.’

But what does that mean?

‘Your destiny you fulfilled, and more. You were subsumed, in the flesh and in the spirit, by the Third Power.’

If so – where am I?

‘If I judge it right, you have entered Dromenon.’

Instinctively Mo ran forward, to place her hand against the impression of that other welcoming hand. The sense of communication was instantaneous.

‘Mark –
Mark!
Is it really you?’

Mo – I can sense you!

Was it her imagination or did she feel Mark’s hand hold her own, the way he would comfort her when, after Grimstone or Bethel had locked her in the cellar, he would sneak down to keep her company in the dark.

‘You’re really here?’

I’m one with the Temple Ship.

‘I can’t bear to think of you so alone.’

I’m not alone. But I don’t have time for explanations. We’re going to have to do something to save Alan. You can’t stay here. You and Qwenqwo – you must leave the Ship.’

‘I won’t leave you. I won’t. Not now I’ve found you again.’

Mo – listen to me. It’s been so wonderful to be able to talk to you, and to Qwenqwo. But it’s too dangerous for you to stay. You really have to get away. There’s no more time to explain. You’ve got to trust me.

‘Please, no!’

You must leave the Temple Ship immediately!

The sense of doom was like blood filling Alan’s mouth. The golden robot was about sixty yards away and yet already it appeared as tall as a house. Above its head, held tight in the gauntlets of its two gigantic arms, was the enormous spiked ball and chain, ready to strike. He saw the tension in the cables, the strain increasing as the mechanical wheels turned, the ratchets, cogwheels, cables and hawsers, the gyroscopes that gave it balance, the irredeemable focus of those flat, glassy eyes, the sheer unstoppable ferocity of its purpose.

Thus have you determined your own fate! I have programmed the machine so it will strike, again and again, tirelessly and endlessly. You will no longer have any presence – any physical being – in this exalted place.

With all of his might Alan tried to turn the power of the oraculum against it, but there wasn’t even a flicker of a response.

Resist as you will. But it will be to no avail. Your flesh will be scattered to dribbets and flecks, forever to remain rooted in this unforgiving place. Your soul spirit will become one of the ghosts that abide within for eternity, bewailing its fate.

The ground shivered and shook, as if each ponderous step of the monster’s approach caused a quake in the fabric of Dromenon.

‘You killed my mom and dad. Why – why did you do it?’

Such loyalty is touching. But individual lives are so brief as to be meaningless. What matters if two such candles have burnt out prematurely?

‘Their deaths matter to me. I know you killed them. And I loathe you for it.’

Hate me then – I am no witch goddess that would cherish love. But at least let me open your eyes onto a broader vision. Unshackle your mind to consider what might yet become your destiny. Behold the power you so desperately wished to confront!

Alan was overwhelmed by a shockwave so awesome that even the eye of the oraculum seemed to blink and close before opening again onto a vision that stopped his breath. At the heart of the void an explosion of light came into being and expanded within the same moment, bursting through the darkness in an incandescent swirl of rainbow hues. In the eerie absence of sound, he saw a giant sun come into being from the expanding maelstrom, only to explode again before condensing into what appeared to be a galaxy. The scale of change, of successive
being and unbeing, was so gargantuan he could only stare at what was happening in wonder.

‘I don’t understand.’

How could you possibly understand? You can but witness its glory shackled by the mechanical vision of your world.

Alan forced himself to ignore the continuing approach of the robot, which must by now be no more than thirty yards away, the ground underneath his feet heaving as if he were riding a turbulent ocean.

‘What does it mean?’

The Tyrant was silent.

It was as if Alan’s being had contracted to a mote of dust, against which he beheld a proliferation of galaxies and nebulas that eddied and spiralled about him, gigantic explosions of supernovae, whirling oceans of gaseous energy more brilliant than any rainbow. He was gazing into one of the stellar furnaces where a new universe was coming into being.

‘What are you implying? This is some kind of … of revelation?’

The witches saw fit to criticise the harnessing of such a wonder. Small minds terrified of the ultimate ambition – infinite power!

Alan’s voice fell to a whisper, husky with uncertainty. ‘You’re talking about the Arinn?’

Such power! Of all the beings on all the worlds, the Arinn alone had the knowledge and the courage to harness it. Such was their vision – they discovered how to control the very root of being. They became one with it.

The robot was so close that Alan could feet the radiating heat from its engines. He slithered down onto his knees, his bewildered head dropping.