And yet, for all her rage towards them, the phrase they had repeated over and over kept returning, and would, she supposed, until death deafened her.
What next? That was the eternal inquiry. What next? What next? What next?
"Are they planning to crucify you, D'Amour?"
Harry turned from the crosses in front of which he stood, and looked at the monkish fellow who was emerging from the mist. He was a study in simplicity, his dark clothes without a single concession to vanity, his hair cropped until it barely shadowed his scalp, his wide, plain face almost colorless. And yet, there was something here Harry knew, something in the eyes.
"Kissoon?" The man's blank expression soured. "It is, isn't it?"
"How did you know?"
"Untether me and I'll tell you," Harry said. He'd been tied to a stake driven into the ground.
"I'm not that interested," Kissoon replied. "Did I ever tell you how much I like your name? Not Harold; Harold's ridiculous. But D'Amour. I may take it, when you're up there." He nodded towards the middle cross. Gamaliel and Bartho were in the midst of taking down the woman's body.
"Maybe I'll have a hundred names," Kissoon went on. Then, dropping his voice to a whisper: "And maybe none at all." This seemed to please him.
"Yes, that's for the best. to be nameless." His hands went up to his cheek. "Maybe faceless too.You think the lad's going to make you King of the World'?" Harry said.
"You've been talking to Tesla."
"It's not oing to happen, Kissoon."
"Are you familiar with the works of Filip the Chantiac? No? He was a hermit. Lived on an island, a tiny island, close to the coast of Almoth's Saw. Very few people dared go there- they feared the currents carrying them past the Chantiac's island and washing them up on the lad's shore-but those who did came back with fragments of his wisdom-"
"Which were?"
"I'll get to that. The thing is, Filip the Chantiac had been the ruler of the city of b'Kether Sabbat in his time, and he'd been all the things we pray for our leaders to be. But even so there was dissension and violence and hatred in his city. So one day he said, 'I can't deal with the taint of Sapas Humana any longer,' and took himself off to his island. And at the end of his life, when somebody asked him what he wished for the world, he said, 'I dream only of an end to courage and compassion and devotion. An end to human strength, and to human endurance. An end to brotherhood. An end to sisterhood. An end to defiance in grief, and consolation in laughter. An end to hope. Then we may all return to fishes, and be content."'
"And that's what you want?" Harry said.
"Oh yes. I want an end-"
"to what?" "to that damn city for one," Kissoon replied, nodding down the mountain in the direction of Everville. He came a little closer. Harry scrutinized his face, looking for some crack in the mask, but he could see none. "I spent a lot of time sealing up neirica across the continent," he said. "Making sure that when the lad finally came through it would be over thiv threshold they came."
"You don't even know what they are-"
"It doesn't really matter. They're bringing the end of things. That's what's important."
"And what'll happen to you?"
"I'll have this hill," Kissoon said, "and I'll look down from it on a world of fishes."
"Suppose you're wrong?" "About what?"
"About the lad. Suppose they're pussycats?"
"They're everything that's rotted in us, D'Amour. They're every fetid, fucked-up thing that feeds on our sbit, and waits to be loosed when nobody's looking." He came closer still, until he was just out of Harry's range. His hand had gone to his chest. "Have you looked into the human heart recently?" he said.
"Not in the last couple of days, no."
"Unspeakable, the things in there-"
"In you, maybe."
"Everyone, D'Amour, everyone! Rage and hatred an' d appetite!" He pointed back towards the door. "That's what coming, D'Amour. It won't have a human face, but it')] have a human heart. I guarantee it."
Behind Harry, the body of Kate O'Farrell was dropped to the ground. He glanced back at her, the agony of her last moments fixed upon her face.
"A terrible thing, the human heart," Kissoon was saying. "A very terrible thing."
It took Harry a moment to persuade his eyes from the dead woman's face, as though some idiot part of him thought he might learn some way to avoid her suffering by studying it. When he looked back at Kissoon, the man had turned away, and was heading up the slope again. "Enjoy the view, D'Amour," he said, then was gone.
As Joe left the city streets to follow the lad along the shoreto witness, if nothing more, to witness-the ground began to shudder. to his left, the dream-sea threw itself into a greater frenzy than ever. to his right, the highway that ran along the edge of the beach cracked and buckled, falling away in places. The mass of lad, which was now within two hundred yards of' the door, was apparently indifferent to the tremors. It had resembled many things to Joe in his brief time knowing it. A wall, a cloud, a diseased body. Now it looked to him like a swarm of minute insects so dense it kept every speck of light and comprehension out as it seethed towards its destination, The door had grown considerably in the hours since 'd first stepped through it. Though its lower regions were till wreathed in mist, its highest point was now several hundred yards above the beach, and rising even as he watched, cracking the heavens. If there were angels on the other side, he thought, this would be the time for them to show their faces; to swoop and drive the lad back with their glory. But the crack went on growing, and the lad advancing, and the only response was not from heaven, but from the earth on which his spirit stood The rock's convulsions did not go unfelt on Harmon's Heights. The tremors ran through ground and mist alike, causing some measure of alarm amongst Zury's faction. Harry couldn't see them, but he could hear them well enough, their songs of welcome-which they had only recently begun@ecaying into sobs of fearful expectation as the violence in the rock escalated.
"Something's happening on the shore," Coker said to Erwin. "We should stay away," the lawyer counseled, casting i fearful look up at the crosses. "This is worse than I thought."
"Yes it is,,' Coker said. "But that doesn't mean wt, should be cowards!"
He hurried on, past the crosses and the tethered D'Amour, up the slope, which was rolling in mounting waves. Reluctantly, Erwin followed, more out of a fear that he would lose his one companion in this insanity than from any genuine urge to know what lay ahead. He wished-ah, how he wished-for the life he'd led before he'd found McPherson's confession. For pettiness, for triviality; for all the little things that had vexed him. Digging through hi,; fridge for something that smelled bad; finding a stain on hi,, favorite tie; standing in front of the mirror wishing he hat] more hair and less belly. Perhaps it had been a bland life. puttering on without purpose or direction, but he'd liked its banality, now that he was denied it. Better that than the crosses, and the door, and the whatever was coming through it.
"Do you see?" said Coker, once Erwin had caught up with him.
He saw. How could he not? The door, stretching up through the mist as if eager to pierce the stars. The shore on the far side of it, every rock and pebble upon it rising in a solid wave. And worst of all, the swarming wall of energies approaching across that shore "Is that it?" he said to Coker. He'd expected a more pal-, pable manifestation of the hann it brought. A devourer's tools, a torturer's smm, a lunatic's frenzy: something to advertise its evil. But instead, here was a thing he could have discovered by closing his eyes. The busy darkness behind his lids.