Wormwood Gate (19 page)

The Ferryman nodded.

‘Well, what if I found a way to cross without taking the ferry? What would happen then?'

The Ferryman's mouth twitched and his eyes grew distant. It had the effect of shifting his expression entirely from ‘sour and distrustful' to ‘childishly afraid', which was almost enough to melt away Aisling's dislike of him.

‘I am the Ferryman,' he said after a long pause. ‘I carry the dead to that which lies after death. I have done this for as long as I have been. I have done this for as long as the River has been.'

It had the air of a recitation from memory, chanted now more as a way of reassuring himself than because it was relevant or true, and Aisling would have ignored it if the River hadn't suddenly surged up around the ferry and slopped over onto his feet, wetting the hem of his cloak. The Ferryman blinked, looking even more afraid than before, but he did not look down.

Aisling did, and in the swirling of the River she saw what looked like faces, their eyes and mouths wide open, terrified – screaming? They made no sound, and every eddy of the water would break up one face and form another, no two of the faces looking alike.

‘What's going on?' she said. ‘What's up with the River?'

‘The River has always been, since there have been living things on the earth,' chanted the Ferryman, still not looking down at the water that was up around his ankles now. ‘The River is the threshold, and I am the one who carries those who must cross. The River is –'

‘The River is full of screaming faces!' Aisling said, interrupting him. ‘Is that normal?'

‘The dead!' said the Ferryman in a hoarse whisper. ‘It is the dead!'

‘But – don't you carry the dead across?'

‘I carry only those who have the fare,' said the Ferryman. ‘For those with no fare –'

‘They try to swim, but they never make it across, do they?' said Aisling, taking a step back from the water as she spoke. ‘They get trapped in the water.'

The Ferryman said nothing in reply, but he closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Aisling shook her head in disbelief.

‘You send them into the River if they don't have two coins? So the poorest people end up as watery ghosts?'

‘It is their choice!' the Ferryman said through gritted teeth. ‘I have the power to deny a crossing. I have no power to force a soul into the River.'

‘And if they can't take the ferry, and they don't go into the River, what other choice do they have?'

‘I cannot say,' said the Ferryman, his eyes still squeezed tight shut.

‘Oh, bullshit!' said Aisling, longing for a stick to hit him with, since she was too far away to slap him. ‘Look at me! What happens to them? Where do they go?'

The Ferryman opened his eyes and stared at her, once again giving her that uncomfortable itching sensation. ‘Grant me a boon and I will give you what you want,' he said.

‘That's more like it,' said Aisling. ‘Not that I want to do you a favour, but … All right. What do you want?'

‘All that I ask in exchange for the knowledge you seek is this: release the River.'

‘Release the River?'

The Ferryman nodded.

‘I can't agree to that! I don't even know what it means. How am I supposed to release a river? How does a river get un-released in the first place?'

‘
Look!
' the Ferryman hissed. ‘Look at the River! Look where it once was and where it now is! It dwindles to nothing!'

‘And why is that? Is that because there aren't any more souls getting trapped in it?'

The Ferryman shook his head with a wince, as if Aisling was so wrong it pained him. ‘If never another soul entered the River from this day on, it would still be deeper and wider than any river that flows through mortal lands.'

‘Then why –'

‘The Queen of Crows!' the Ferryman whispered. ‘She would block off every path the Lord of Shadows might travel to do his work. She has quenched the lights in the labyrinth, so that there are no shadows for him to travel through, and dammed up the River upstream of the crossing. Even I, her most loyal servant –' He glanced down at the River, where its waters lapped around the edge of the ferry, and swallowed audibly. ‘I have ever been loyal to the Queen of Crows. She does not repay that loyalty.'

He screwed his mouth up tight at that, as if he had said too much. Aisling pondered for a moment, finally saying, ‘OK, so … how do I un-dam the River, then? I don't like my chances if I go up against this Queen of Crows.'

‘I cannot tell you.'

‘Then I can't promise you anything.'

‘There are those who know. Likely, the queens of the City know. Likely, Molly Red knows,' said the Ferryman.

‘Molly Red doesn't tell what she knows unless she thinks it'll do her some good,' retorted Aisling. ‘I can ask her, but that doesn't mean anything will come of it.'

The Ferryman fixed her with a glare that made her stomach churn.

‘There are ways to compel even her, the wild one,' he said. ‘There are ways to force her hand and ways to persuade her. You can use those ways. If you do not swear to release the River, I will tell you no more.'

‘But even if she tells me how to free the River from the dam, how am I supposed to actually do it? Am I supposed to tell you I will, without even knowing what it is?'

‘Do you agree or not?'

‘I didn't say I didn't agree. I'm thinking.' Aisling frowned and turned her back on the Ferryman, wanting to think without that unnerving glare to distract her. A moment later, she turned back around. ‘All right,' she said, ‘here's the deal. You let me know what I want to know, and I'll swear to
ask
Molly Red how to release the River, and if it's something I feel I can do, I'll do it. But no guarantees! And you have to pony up the information before I make the promise. Agreed?'

The Ferryman's lips twitched, and his expression regained some of its previous sourness. ‘Agreed,' he said.

‘Well?' said Aisling. ‘I'm waiting. What's the third choice? Or, I should say, the fourth. People who have the fare cross over on your ferry. People who walk into the mists don't come back. People who swim the River end up as ghosts. What else can you do if you don't have the fare for the crossing?'

‘I cannot
say
what happens to the dead who do not cross the River,' said the Ferryman, and for a moment Aisling thought he was messing with her, but the emphasis on ‘say' was strong enough to make her look for some other clue. He wasn't looking straight at her any more but staring over her shoulder. She followed his gaze, all the way to the stone doorway in the side of the hill.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘You have got to be kidding me.'

‘I never kid,' said the Ferryman.

‘I believe you,' said Aisling grimly. ‘All right. I swear that I'll ask Molly Red how to release the River, and if it seems like something I can do, I'll do it. Now, do you have a torch, by any chance?'

The Ferryman shook his head.

‘No, of course not,' Aisling muttered. ‘Oh, well.'

She set off towards the hill and the dark stone doorway.

10

Julie's mind was blank as she ascended the stairs. She could hear Aisling's voice in her head saying
No, you can't touch it; it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye
, which was something she'd overheard her saying in class once. At the time she hadn't cared enough to turn around, but now she thought Aisling must have been showing off her multitool.

At the top of the stairs, she took the multitool out of her bag and unfolded the largest of its blades. She held it behind her back as she and Molly Red approached the door.

At her knock, there was the same series of clattering, clicking noises she had heard the last time, and the same guard as before opened the door and peered suspiciously at her. ‘I have a prisoner for the queen,' she said. ‘None other than Molly Red herself.'

‘The notorious rebel, eh?' he said. He smirked and flung the door open.

As Julie escorted Molly Red towards the second set of doors, she thought about the things she'd seen and heard while she was in the City. The guards opened the doors for them and she pushed Molly Red through, and passed through herself. The queen's chair was turned so that the back was facing the doors.

‘Your Majesty,' she said, ‘I've brought you a prisoner.'

The queen spun round in her chair and grinned, her one eye fixing on Molly Red. ‘Marvellous,' she breathed. ‘I understand, now, why the Lord of Shadows uses mortals to do his work. You go the extra mile!'

The queen's obvious glee made Julie feel dirty. ‘Yeah, well,' she muttered, glancing past the queen at the cage that was hanging from the Tower's top floor. She could barely see it from here, just a suggestion of metal bars swinging in the breeze.

The queen rose from her chair and strode slowly over to Molly Red. ‘I wonder what punishment I should devise for you,' she murmured to her prisoner, rubbing her hands together. ‘Cut your tongue out, perhaps, so that you can tell no more lies with it? Or would that be too crude? Perhaps I should cover it with a fiery pepper that never loses its strength, so that your mouth will burn every time you try to speak?'

‘Oh, shut up!' said Julie.

Both the queen and Molly Red turned to look at her, the queen shocked, Molly Red, apparently, amused.

‘You got everything wrong, you know,' said Julie. ‘Well, not everything, I guess, but enough. You think you're saving the City from invaders, but you're killing it.'

‘Hold your tongue, child,' said the queen, ‘or I'll do the same to you as I do to her!'

Julie rolled her eyes. ‘That's the problem, right there. You won't listen to anyone who challenges you! You wouldn't listen to me when I told you the truth because you were convinced I was lying, so then I
did
lie, and I don't know why you believed me then, because I was making it up as I went along. You're cynical and gullible at the same time. I don't know how you manage it, but it's messed everything up.'

‘I told you to hold your tongue,' said the queen, her eyes narrowing.

‘Right,' said Julie, ‘because this is your territory, isn't it? And that's where you're most powerful? But I'm not so sure of that. Do you think you can change the way things work just by wanting them to be different? You never killed the Queen-that-was. Doesn't that make you the Queen-that-will-be, not the Queen-that-is?'

The queen's eyes gaped and her jaw fell.

‘You know, that never occurred to me,' said Molly Red thoughtfully. ‘But the mortal girl has got a point. You may have crippled your older sister so that she couldn't rule, but you're not actually queen yourself. Maybe that's why the City is in such a bad way.'

‘It's not true!' the queen growled. ‘It is not true! I am queen! I, and I alone!'

‘I suppose if you say that often enough, it'll become true,' said Julie. There was a light, fizzing feeling in her stomach, and her head felt light too, as if she were very slightly drunk. ‘But that doesn't mean it's true now. So tell me: why
should
I hold my tongue? Why should I be afraid of you?'

‘I'll show you why!' the queen snarled, and she strode over to one wall of the chamber where there was a giant switch, the kind used for generators or to turn on a town's Christmas lights. ‘Hand me that knife you're pretending not to carry.'

Julie hesitated, looking at Molly Red, who shrugged, smiling lopsidedly. The fizzing feeling came back, and though she couldn't think of a single reason to trust either of them, she felt very strongly that handing the multitool over was the right thing to do.

‘All right,' she said, and held it out, handle first.

The queen took it, then threw the switch. The lights flickered and there was a humming noise and a muffled clanking, and the floor-to-ceiling window that surrounded the room started to retract and rise, as if it were being pulled up on invisible ropes, and on the outside of the Tower something started coming up and rising over the floor of the chamber.

It was the cage, and inside it the defeated Queen-that-was.

Julie felt a certain tightness on her skull fade away, and the lightness in her head and stomach vanished too. As the defeated queen rose to stand on shaky feet, she thought
The oath. I've fulfilled it. I swore I'd find a way to kill her, and I found one
.

Two down, one to go
.

‘I should have done this to begin with,' said the reigning queen, sniffing disdainfully. ‘I should not have let you live. I will find another way to stop the cycle, be sure of that.'

‘You will not,' said the ragged queen, her voice thin and croaky. ‘The City will die from your foolishness before you do.'

‘Silence!' The reigning queen strode towards the cage and flung its door open. ‘Come!' she said, beckoning. ‘Come to your execution.'

The ragged queen glanced at Julie, and though she didn't smile or move her lips, Julie thought she looked grateful. Julie nodded, and the ragged queen walked towards her sister – raggedness and all, emaciation and all, it was astonishing how similar they looked, down to the missing eye – and stood still at the threshold of the cage.

The queen raised her right hand and thrust the knife between her sister-self's ribs. The frail, ragged queen was still for a moment, then she crumpled, like a marionette whose strings had been cut; then she vanished into nothingness.

*

The light ran out ten paces into the stone-lined corridor, and Aisling stopped after the next step brought her into darkness, her heart trembling and her hands shaky. She knew her eyes would get used to it, as long as there was any light at all, and that since she had already died (a thought her brain seemed to skip over slightly every time it came up), there was nothing to be afraid of; and yet she
was
afraid, and no amount of rational thought would help. She tried to find that cool, logical self she had been when Molly Red had leapt onto the horse's back and spurred her into a gallop, but every attempt left her grasping at nothing and turning round and round in circles.

Aisling took a step forward, not knowing how, barely even knowing that she'd done it, as if her feet were moving of their own accord. Her hands too rose up to touch the walls at either side, feeling along the stones and wandering into the cracks between them.

Another step. Another. The darkness was no less thick, now; thicker, if anything, and her eyes were not adapting to it at all. Despite that, she could feel her brain thawing a little, the paralysis that had taken over beginning to recede.

If I keep my hand on the stone. If I take small steps
.

More steps, now, still slow and small, but coming one after the other, without hesitations in between. Then the stone beneath her left hand fell away, and her heart dropped down as if it had fallen a hundred feet below her chest.

It's just a turning. A corner. It's not –

She stepped back, shuffled sideways so that she was right up against the left-hand wall, and crept forward with even smaller steps than before, so that the turning didn't take her by surprise, and so that she stuck to the left-hand wall when it came.

Keep your left hand on the left-hand wall. If you reach a dead end, keep your left hand on the wall and keep going, into the dead end and around again. That's the way to get out of a maze
.

She'd read that years ago, and she'd never had a chance to test it, but her brain clung to it now just as her hand was clinging to the wall.

Logic. Logic and reason. I'm dead. I'm dead. I died. I – mind you, that was a pretty good death. I didn't think I had it in me. I hope Julie's all right
.

She was calming down a little now. She had never thought of herself as being afraid of the dark, but then she had never been in a darkness as thick and impenetrable as this one. Deep in a cave in a hill shrouded in fog, in a land that probably never saw sunlight –

The Lands of the Dead. That's where it is. I woke up in the Lands of the Dead. So there is an afterlife after all
.

She could feel the ground beneath her feet sloping downwards. The labyrinth twisted and turned more often than she could keep track of, and she had lost all sense of time long before entering it, so she had no idea how long it had been or how far she might have come when she took a step – a small, modest step, just like all the steps she had taken into the darkness – and had to jerk back suddenly to keep from falling into the nothing that opened up underneath her feet. She did fall, but backwards, onto the floor behind her, her coat cushioning her fall and her right hand instinctively scrabbling for purchase on the air.

She let her heart slow down a little before cautiously pushing herself to sit upright. She slid her hand forward and sideways across the stones beneath her, her heart sinking as she realised that there was a pit in the floor in front of her that spanned the width of the corridor.

Her first thought was that it might not be so deep as to be dangerous. Her second thought was that that wasn't something to take chances on, even if she was dead; to spend eternity with a broken leg would not be fun. She felt through her pockets for something heavy enough to make a sound when it hit stone, and settled on a pencil; when she dropped it down into the pit, she held her breath and counted.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand. Four-one-thousand. Five-one-thousand –

There: a muted clattering. Well. It wasn't a bottomless pit, but it was still deep enough to be dangerous.

Aisling sighed. She suddenly felt weary to the marrow of her bones. She couldn't give up. She wasn't going to give up. But there was nothing she could do. She wanted to weep from sheer frustration; she wanted to throw something, but all the things she had to throw were things she might need. She wanted to scream,
I'm here, I'm not dead, not really dead!

Then the words of Abayomiolorunkoje came to her:
If I can help you, in any way that is in my power, I will come if you call for me. That is a promise!

‘Do I have to call you by name?' she said out loud. ‘Because, firstly, I'm pretty sure that wasn't your real name you told me, and secondly, I'm very sure that I can't pronounce it. Which is why you chose it, isn't it? So that people would remember your explanation for it, not the name itself? That people tried to humiliate you, but God would not let them.'

‘You are clever,' said a voice out of nowhere. There was a ticklish feeling on the back of her left hand that felt like an insect walking over it. ‘And you are right. Abayomiolorunkoje is not my true name, and you do not need to call it to have my help. But let me be sure of one thing, little friend: do you need my help now? I owe you one favour and one favour only. Call for me again and I will not come, unless it pleases me.'

The voice was not the warm, genial Nigerian-accented voice Aisling remembered. This voice was a little higher, a little sharper, and the accent was subtly different in a way she couldn't have named.

‘I don't think I'll ever need your help more than I do now,' said Aisling fervently. ‘I'm – I have to get out of this labyrinth, and this pit is in my way.'

‘Well, then,' said the voice, ‘I can help you with that. Or I can get you help, which is almost the same thing.'

The ticklish feeling on the back of her hand went away, and from a distance she heard a rushing, swirling sound, like water, or leaves, or beating wings. The sound grew louder and louder until she knew it to be wings for certain, and there were gull cries along the wingbeats, sounding eerie and loud in the enclosed space of the tunnel.

‘This is the last time, spider,' said a croaky voice. ‘You've kept us in these tunnels for far too long already. Now you've summoned us a third time, and when we've done what you ask, we'll never dance to your tune again, be sure of that!'

Spider?
Aisling thought with a jolt, puzzle pieces clicking together in her mind.
No wonder his eyes looked weird. ‘A fine place to sit and spin a web,' indeed!

‘Of course,' said the spider, ‘or at least, unless I catch you again the way I caught you before.'

‘That won't happen!' said the gull. ‘We're wise to your ways now. We won't be fooled again!'

‘Be that as it may,' said the spider, ‘you have one favour still to do for me.'

‘Yes, yes. What is it?'

‘Take this girl to the other end of the labyrinth. Gently.'

‘Can you all see in the dark or what?' said Aisling, who was conscious of a change in the atmosphere since the seagulls had arrived, a constant low-volume shuffling and scraping and a kind of pressure against the air that suggested she shouldn't make any sudden movements lest she accidentally punch one of them in the wing, but still she couldn't actually
see
anything.

‘Of course,' said the spider. ‘Can't you?'