There was a sudden flurry of activity in the vicinity as the creatures-including Harry's informant-moved off towards the edge of the Borealis. Harry was torn between the desire to see whoever this was, coming to bless them, and the urge to see Quiddity's shore. He chose the latter. Turning on his heel he took two quick strides towards the sliver of darkness, his momentum speeded by the force it exercised. He felt the ground grow uncertain beneath him, felt a gust of rainy wind against his face, fresh and cold. The darkness opened before him, as though the gust had blown open a door, and for an instant his sight seemed to race ahead of him, his lumpen flesh stumbling after, out, out across a benighted shore.
Above him the sky was spired with clouds, and creatures trailing dusty light swooped and soared in lieu of stars. On the stones below, crabs made war or love, claws locked as they clattered towards the surf. And in that surf, shoals leapt the waves as though aspiring to sky or stones, or both.
All this he saw in a single hungry glance.
Then he heard a cry behind him, and with the greatest reluctance looked back over his shoulder towards the chamber. There was some consternation there, he saw. The cradle was shaking, the veils that circled the crack, like bandages wrapped around a wound, torn here and there. He tried to focus his eyes to better see the cause, but they were slow to shake off the wonders they'd just witnessed, and while they did so screams erupted to right and left of him. Their din was sufficient to slap him from his reverie. Suddenly fearful for his life he took off from his place beside the sliver, though its claim on him was powerful, and it took all his strength to do so.
As he ran he caught sight of the creature who had so recently addressed him, stumbling through the veils with a wound in its chest the size of a fist. As it fell to its knees its glistening eyes fixed on Harry for a moment, and it opened its bony mouth as to beg some explanation. Blood came instead, black as squid's ink, and the creature toppled forward, dead before it hit the ground. Harry searched for its killer among the shaking veils, but all he found were victims: creatures reeling and failing, their wounds atrocious. A lopped head rolled at his feet; a creature with half its body blown away took hold of him in its agony, and expired sobbing in his arms.
As to the cradle, which had so suddenly become a grave, it shook from one end to the other, the veils shaken down by the violence in their midst, and bringing the filaMents with them. they spat and spasmed on the ground, the light they'd lent the veils dying now, and steadily delivering the chamber into darkness.
Shielding his head against the failing cradle, Harry gained the outer limit of the circle, and now-finally-had sight of the creature that had visited these horrors on the scene.
It was a man. No more, no less. He had the beard of a patriarch, and the robes of a prophet. Blue robes once, but now so stained with blood he looked like a butcher. As to his weapon, it was a short staff, from which spurts of pallid fire broke, going from it almost languidly. Harry saw one go, snaking through the air to catch a victim who had so far avoided harm. It struck the creature (one of the blur-and-firefly couple) above her buttocks and ran up her back, gouging out the flesh to either side of her spine. Despite the appalling scale of her wounding, she was not felled, but swung round to face her wounder.
"Why?" she sobbed, extending her flabby arms in his direction. "Why?" He made no answer. Simply raised his staff a second time, and let another burst of energy go from it, striking his victim in the mouth.
Her pleas ceased on the instant, and the fire climbed up over her skull, turning it to ruin in a heartbeat. Even then she didn't fall. Her body shook as it stood, her bowels and bladder voiding. Wearing a look close to amusement, the prophet stepped over the bloody litter that lay between them and with one backhanded swipe struck the seared face with the staff, the blow so hard her head was separated from her neck.
Harry let out an involuntary cry, more of rage than of horror. The killer, who was already striding past the beheaded woman towards the crack, stopped in mid-step, and stared through the blood-flecked air. Harry froze. The prophet stared on, a look of puzzlement on his face.
He doesn't see me, Harry thought.
That was perhaps overly optimistic. The man continued to look, as though he glimpsed some trace of a presence in the deepening darkness, but could not quite decide whether his eyes were deceiving him. He wasn't about to take any chances. Even as he stared on in puzzlement he raised his staff.
Harry didn't wait for the fire to come. He made a dash for the stairs, hoping to God that Ted had escaped ahead of him. The killing fire sighed past him, close enough for Harry to feel its sickly heat, then burst against the opposite wall, its energies tracing the cracks as it dispersed. Harry looked back towards the prophet, who had already forgotten about the phantom and had turned towards the dark crack that let on to Quiddity.
Harry's gaze went to the sliver. In the diminishing light of the chamber the shore and sea were more visible than they had been, and for a moment it was all he could do not to turn back; to race the prophet to the threshold and be out under that steepled sky. Then, from the murk off to his left, a pained and weary voice.
"I'm sorry, Harry... please... I'm sorry-"
With a sickening lurch in his stomach Harry turned and sought out the source of the voice. Ted lay seven or eight yards from the bottom of the stairs, his arms open wide, his chest the same. Such a wound, wet and deep, it was a wonder he had life enough to breathe, much less to speak. Harry went down at his side.
"Grab my hand, will you?" Ted said.
I'll ve got it," Harry said.
"I can't feel anything."
"Maybe that's for the best," Harry said. "I'm going to have to pick you up."
"He came out of nowhere
"Don't worry about it." "I was keepin' out of the way, like you said, but then he just came out of nowhere."
"Hush, will you?" Harry slid his arms under Ted's body. 'Okay, now, are you ready for this?"
Ted only moaned. Harry drew a deep breath, stood up, and without pausing began to carry the wounded man towards the stairs. It was harder to see the flight by the moment, as the last of the light in the filaments died away. But he stumbled on towards it, while little spasms passed through Ted's body.
"Hold on," Harry said. "Hold on." @
they had reached the bottom of the flight now, and Harry began to climb. He glanced back towards the center of the chamber just once, and saw that the prophet was standing at the threshold between Cosm and Metacosm. No doubt he would step through it presently. No doubt that was what he had come here to do. Why had it been necessary to slaughter so many souls in the process was a mystery Harry did not expect to solve any time soon.
"It's late, Harry," Norma said. She was sitting in the same chair beside the window, with the televisions burbling around her.
Hour-before-dawn shows.
"Can I get a drink?" Harry said. "Help yourself."
His passage lit only by the flickering screens, Harry crossed to the table at Norma's side and poured himself a brandy.
"You've got blood on you," Norma said. Her nose was as keen as her eyes were blind.
"It's not mine. It's Ted Dusseldorf's."
"What happened?"
"He died about an hour ago."
Norma was silent for a few seconds. Then she said, "The Order?"
"Not exactly," Harry sat on the hard, plain chair set opposite Norma's cushioned throne, and told her what he'd witnessed.
"So the tattoos were a good investment after all," she said when he'd finished the account.
"Either that, or I was lucky."
"I don't believe in luck," Norma said. "I believe in destiny." She made the word sound almost sexy, the way she shaped it.