Waking the Moon (21 page)

“Please,
Balthazar.”

Warnick took a step closer to her.
“You
broke the charter, Magda. A long, long time ago, it seems.”

Even in the darkness I could see how his face was twisted, not with lust or hatred or anything else I had expected but with longing, the purest distillation of desire and sorrow I had ever seen. “You found it and never told us. You never told
me.”

“Only part of it,” Kurtz whispered. “It’s still incomplete, I only found part—”

For the first time the other man spoke. “You
stole
it! How else could you have—”

“Shut up, Francis!” Warnick’s voice cracked. Looking at Magda Kurtz he suddenly cried out, “I wish you’d left yesterday. Why didn’t you just
leave?”

At the sound of his anguished voice I trembled. Beside me Angelica was absolutely rigid, her eyes huge and horrified. Professor Warnick pulled away from Magda Kurtz, pushing her toward the other man. Warnick’s hand made a slashing motion as he turned and took two quick steps that brought him within inches of the door in the passageway.

“You should have told me,” he whispered, and bowed his head.

I had thought the door was ajar. In fact it was tightly shut. Whatever light it held leaked from its seams, grey-blue, dull as ashes—not sunlight or even moonlight but some other kind of glow, with no warmth and scarcely any color to it at all.

“Balthazar.” Magda Kurtz’s voice died. Slowly she drew her hands to her throat.

Warnick traced his fingers across the wood, murmuring. I couldn’t understand the words, they were in a strange language, not Latin, not anything I recognized. As he spoke I began to feel a dull buzzing in my ears. An overpowering drowsiness filled me. It was like the hottest longest afternoon of summer, like falling asleep on the screened porch while the cicadas droned outside. I could hear their persistent burr, soft at first but growing louder and louder. The sound filled my ears, filled me until my bones rang with it and I could hear nothing else, not Professor Warnick’s voice, not Angelica’s breathing, not my own heart. The locusts’ cries rose to a mindless shrieking that wasn’t the sound of any insect or machine or human I could imagine. It wasn’t the sound of anything I had ever heard at all.

And then came another noise—an echoing rattle and thump, the sound of countless large objects being thrown against the door. In front of us the wall shuddered. The door bulged outward as the shrieking grew to a howl, a clamor nearly drowned by furious scratching. I could hear wood creaking and splintering. The steely light grew brighter, but there was no warmth in it, nothing of sun or candle glow or embers. It was utterly cold, grey-blue and stark as bone. The three figures standing before it were like people trapped in a video screen. The tumult became a roar, the howl of metal grinding against stone.

“Balthazar,
no
!”

Professor Warnick stepped back. The door flew open. I started to scream, but Angelica’s hand closed over my mouth. She pulled me to her breast, trying to shield me so I wouldn’t see what was there. But I tore away from her, and I did see.

There was a world beyond the door. It was the world that went with that howling, mindless noise, with that blinding leaden glow. An endless expanse of dead plain, colorless, treeless, a horrible lifeless steppe pocked with shadowy hollows and spurs of jagged stone. Overhead stretched the sky, purplish black and starless. On the horizon monstrous shadows rose and ebbed like clouds, and smaller blackened objects fell like hail or a rain of stone. It was a landscape bereft as the moon: no stars to light it, no aqueous Earth casting its blue glow upon the horizon. Only bare ground and stones and freezing air, and a faint foul smell like gasoline. Above it all the deafening roar continued, relentless, as those bulbous black shapes dropped from the sky onto the ravaged plain.

I moaned. In front of us the three others stood, their faces bluish white, their shadows stretching across the floorboards. Angelica’s hand tightened over mine, and as it did the horrifying clamor seemed to die. A sudden vast silence engulfed us, and a darkness more profound than any I have known.

“Angelica,”
I wanted to whisper. But the name would not come.

Then out of nowhere I heard a thin monotonous voice; a voice chanting inside my head from a million years before.

Shape without, form, shade without color …

Scratched and faint: an old man’s voice that struggled with the words even as I struggled to recall where I had heard them.

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

as …

And I remembered. I was slumped in a chair in a darkened auditorium, a dim spotlight fixed on the stage where a horrible grey-faced rector chanted.

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

—or no, I was crouched before a leaping flame, fighting to keep my eyes open as a small figure clad in furs and leather tapped out a monotonous rhythm on a skin tabor.

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning. …

Abruptly the voice rose to a scream and faded into a chittering wail. Once again I heard that buzzing roar, softer now though more distinct, a sound punctuated by thumps, the hollow impact of empty pods on gravel. And I almost laughed—
would
have laughed, deliriously, if Angelica hadn’t caught me and held me close.

Because when I first saw that charred landscape I thought that there could be nothing more horrible than that utterly barren place where nothing had ever grown or died, not scarab nor vulture nor thorn tree nor worm. But now I knew there was something infinitely worse.

Because in all that colorless formless desert, something was alive.
Many
things. What I had at first perceived as monstrous shadows, as clouds or mountains or fog, were not shadows at all.
They were the monstrous things themselves.
Huge, at least twice man-high and skeletally thin, with the outlines of ribs and thorax and skull gleaming in the silvery light.

But they were not skeletons, or cadavers. They were not even remotely human. They were immense arthropods, like praying mantids or walkingsticks or leaf insects. Many-jointed, silvery grey as the scar they danced across, their long, jointed legs trailing behind them like matches spilling from a box. They had huge round eyes, smooth and curved as glass, with a tiny black spot marking the pupil. Some of them had wings that retracted when they struck the ground. They filled the black sky of the world beyond the door, a vast horde growing nearer and nearer. I saw a blurred flutter as one fell to earth and then exploded into the air again, wings beating furiously as it propelled itself toward us. Above its twitching mandibles its eyes glittered like steel bearings.

“Balthazar! Balthazar, no
—”

Magda Kurtz’s scream was silenced as, with a single thrust, her captors pushed her through the door. I struggled in Angelica’s arms, then pulled free.

For a final instant I glimpsed Magda Kurtz. She was on the other side of the door now, and she staggered as though blinded, arms flailing, before falling to the ground. Grey dust puffed up around her knees. I heard pebbles rattling against the wooden portal, wind buffeting the wall behind us. The air pouring from the doorway was so cold my teeth chattered. The smell of gasoline choked me. I could no longer feel Angelica’s hands clasping mine. I could no longer see anything, except what lay beyond the door.

Above Magda Kurtz hovered an immense black shape. Its dangling limbs moved slowly up and down, its huge witless eyes were fixed on what lay beneath it. For perhaps a minute it hung there, wings beating in silent rhythm. Then without warning it dropped to the ground. A cloud of glittering dust rose as it extended one long, jointed leg like the metal shank of a tripod.

In its shadow crouched Magda Kurtz. She looked impossibly small, a doll-woman or the spindly figure from a cave painting. She drew her arm up to shield her face and turned to look back at the doorway. But I could tell by her blank expression and gaping mouth, by the way her head weaved back and forth, that she could no longer see the door or what lay beyond it, that our world had closed upon her forever. The last thing I heard was her scream, a rising wail sliced off as the door slammed shut.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!”

Before Angelica could grab me I was gone, stumbling out into the main passage. From behind me came shouts; then Angelica’s desperate voice.

“Sweeney, no!—the stairs—!”

She pointed and I sprinted down the hall to where that horrible back stairway yawned. Behind me footsteps clattered like hooves; I heard Professor Warnick’s deceptively calm voice echoing through the darkness.

“Kids, it’s some students, that’s all
—”

Then Angelica’s scream.

“No!—let go of me—
Swee-nee
!—”

I whirled. Francis Connelly had her by the wrist. He twisted it as he pulled her toward him and Balthazar watched impassively.

“Let
go
, you bastard, let me
go
—”

I could hear Angelica panting, could see the dark welts where he gripped her cruelly. An arm’s length from them, Professor Warnick crouched against the wall like a goblin fearing sunlight. And then Francis began to drag Angelica toward the alcove where they had taken Magda Kurtz.

“NO!”
Angelica shouted, scratching at his face.

“God
damn
it, you stupid—”

Francis’s voice broke off as I darted toward him. I grabbed Angelica, then, with all my strength, kicked him in the shin. A satisfying instant when I felt my boot’s worn metal toe smash into bone. With an anguished howl Francis collapsed onto the rug.

“Oh dear,” murmured Balthazar Warnick.

“Come on!” I gasped, and pulled the half-sobbing Angelica after me.

Around us all was a blur of scarlet and black and gold. I thought I heard voices, the muted sound of vast wings. Then we were at the end of the corridor. Below us the staircase unfurled. From behind us came the rattle of bone, a shrieking wind rank with the smell of gasoline and burning leaves. I couldn’t think, couldn’t move…

“Sweeney,
go
!
”

Angelica shoved me. I grabbed the railing and lunged down, two and three and five steps at a time. When I saw the floor only a few feet below I clambered over the banister and jumped. Then I bolted, toward a screen door gaping open onto the night. Beyond it lay the comforting yellow glow of the campus crimelights, a few half-shadowed figures gathered atop the Mound. When I reached the door I slammed my fists against the screen and, gasping, looked around for my friend.

“Angelica?”

She stood at the foot of the stairs, her hair wild, her breast heaving as she steadied herself against the rail. Her dress was torn, so that I could see her skin dead white against black lace and satin. In one hand she brandished a high-heeled shoe like a club. She was staring up to where the others gazed down: Francis, white-faced with rage; Professor Warnick, tight-lipped, his gaze steady as he stared back at her disheveled hair and blazing green eyes. She looked like a wolf brought to bay, like a maenad unrepentant on the mountaintop. No longer frightened but nearly incandescent with rage: if you held a match to her she would burst into flame.

“Angelica,” I whispered.

Around her neck the silver crescent was glowing. Not with any reflected light but with a hard cold brilliance, brighter than any star I had ever seen, so bright that I had to shield my eyes. As I stared Angelica’s hand crept to her throat, until it touched the edge of the pendant. Light streamed around her fingers in spectral rays, blue and white and silver. Her expression changed from fury to wonder as Professor Warnick’s voice rang out, clear and bitter as gin.

“She has the lunula.”

“The lunula?”
shouted Francis. “How did
she
—”

With a cry Angelica turned and fled. An instant later she flung herself at me and together we stumbled outside. Professor Warnick’s soft voice drifted down behind us.

“It’s too late, Francis.”

I looked back to see the two men trapped in the banister’s curve as in an embrace. Francis looked sick with fury, but Professor Warnick’s expression was subdued, almost tranquil—except for his eyes, which were the deep burning blue of the winter sky showing through a storm. A hungry, almost expectant, expression, but also somewhat dazed, like a fierce well-fed dog that has had its supper snatched away.

“Swee-ney!”

Angelica’s nails dug into my arm. With a very slight, ironic smile, Balthazar Warnick waggled his finger at me scoldingly. Then I lost sight of him. Angelica and I were running, running down the hillside, stones flying up around us and branches slashing at our cheeks. There was the sound of distant traffic and sulfurous light everywhere, light and drunken laughter and people crying out as we raced like mad things away from Garvey House.

I
SLEPT WITH ANGELICA
that night. Lying in her bed with my arms tight around her, not saying anything, hardly even moving except when a bolt of fear would tear her from some feverish half dream. Then I would gently stroke her hair, and let my tongue linger upon the sweet-scented arch of her neck. Once I felt the curved amulet that lay there against her skin, its smooth curve icy beneath my lips, and cried out softly as its keen edge bit into me. At last I must have dozed off. Much later I woke to Angelica’s muttering in her sleep. Nonsense words, or perhaps not, perhaps only something I could not understand. I kissed her, my hands cradling her face. Her pale eyes opened, widening in fear, then grew soft as the mumbled words became my name.

Near dawn I woke again, to find that she had slipped from my arms. On the other side of the narrow bed she sat with her back to me, her tangled hair massed about her shoulders. Violet light from the room’s high arched window made her look like a woman made of amethyst. In the night sky hung the new moon, its crescent distorted by the window’s greenish panes so that it appeared to be a globe floating in deep water, one of those bubbles of rainbow-colored glass escaped from a fishing boat a thousand miles away and tossed about like a stray thought by the waves. Angelica had a globe like that on her desk, alongside an erubescent sea urchin twice the size of my fist and a small wooden
garuda
with a lizard’s crest and baleful onyx eyes. Her room’s guardians, she told me, to keep her safe from demons.