Days of Magic, Nights of War Read online

  CLIVE BARKER

  ABARAT

  DAYS OF MAGIC,

  NIGHTS OF WAR

  Dedication

  For my mother, Joan

  Epigraph

  I dreamed I spoke in another’s language,

  I dreamed I lived in another’s skin,

  I dreamed I was my own beloved,

  I dreamed I was a tiger’s kin.

  I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,

  And when I breathed a garden came,

  I dreamed I knew all of Creation,

  I dreamed I knew the Creator’s name.

  I dreamed—and this dream was the finest—

  That all I dreamed was real and true,

  And we would live in joy forever,

  You in me, and me in you.

  C. B.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue - Hunger

  PART ONE - FREAKS, FOOLS AND FUGITIVES

  Chapter 1 - Portrait of Girl and Geshrat

  Chapter 2 - What There Is To See

  Chapter 3 - On the Parroto Parroto

  Chapter 4 - The Scavengers

  Chapter 5 - The Speaking of a Word

  Chapter 6 - Two Conversations

  Chapter 7 - Something of Babilonium

  Chapter 8 - A Life in the Theatre

  Chapter 9 - Again, the Criss-Cross Man

  Chapter 10 - “The Freaks Are Out! The Freaks Are Out!”

  PART TWO - THINGS NEGLECTED, THINGS FORGOTTEN

  Chapter 11 - Traveling North

  Chapter 12 - Darkness and Anticipation

  Chapter 13 - The Sacbrood

  Chapter 14 - Lament (The Munkee’s Tale)

  Chapter 15 - The Pursuer

  Chapter 16 - The Wunderkammen

  Chapter 17 - The Star-Striker

  Chapter 18 - Departure

  Chapter 19 - Life and Death in Chickentown

  Chapter 20 - Malingo Alone

  Chapter 21 - Night Conversations

  Chapter 22 - A Death Sentence

  Chapter 23 - Dreamer to Dreamer

  Chapter 24 - Husband and Wife

  Chapter 25 - Fates

  Chapter 26 - Kaspar Is Visited

  Chapter 27 - Abduction

  Chapter 28 - A Summoning

  PART THREE - A TIME OF MONSTERS

  Chapter 29 - The Captain Converses

  Chapter 30 - The Beasts of Efreet

  Chapter 31 - News in Nonce

  Chapter 32 - Events at the Threshold

  Chapter 33 - A Visit to Marapozsa Street

  Chapter 34 - Secrets and Meat Loaf

  Chapter 35 - Two in Nineteen

  Chapter 36 - The Bridegroom Unearthed

  Chapter 37 - The Owner of the Dead Man’s House

  Chapter 38 - Midnight’s Heart

  Chapter 39 - Dragon Bones

  Chapter 40 - A Tale of Endless Partings

  Chapter 41 - An Ambitious Conjuration

  Chapter 42 - The High Maze

  Chapter 43 - The Dark Denied

  Chapter 44 - The Prince and the Beast-Boy

  Chapter 45 - A Decision

  PART FOUR - THE SEA COMES TO CHICKENTOWN

  Chapter 46 - Departures

  Chapter 47 - Something in the Wind

  Chapter 48 - Stirring the Waters

  Chapter 49 - Into the Hereafter

  Chapter 50 - Father and Daughter

  Chapter 51 - Into the Wormwood

  Chapter 52 - The Secret of Secrets

  Chapter 53 - The Warship Unmade

  Chapter 54 - The Living and the Dead

  Chapter 55 - The Beginning of the End

  Chapter 56 - Down and Down

  Chapter 57 - “Never Fear . . .”

  Chapter 58 - The Return of the Sea

  READ AN EXCERPT FROM BOOK THREE

  PROLOGUE - WHAT THE BLIND MAN SAW

  PART ONE - THE DARK HOURS

  Chapter 1 - Toward Twilight

  Chapter 2 - The Council Speaks Its Minds

  About the Author

  Praise for - Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

  Back-Ad

  Also by Clive Barker

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Hunger

  Here is a list of fearful things:

  The jaws of sharks, a vulture’s wings,

  The rabid bite of the dogs of war,

  The voice of one who went before.

  But most of all the mirror’s gaze,

  Which counts us out our numbered days.

  —Righteous Bandy,

  the nomad Poet of Abarat

  OTTO HOULIHAN SAT IN the dark room and listened to the two creatures who had brought him here—a three-eyed thing by the name of Lazaru and its sidekick, Baby Pink-Eye—playing Knock the Devil Down in the corner. After their twenty-second game his nervousness and irritation began to get the better of him.

  “How much longer am I going to have to wait?” he asked them.

  Baby Pink-Eye, who had large reptilian claws and the face of a demented infant, puffed on a blue cigar and blew a cloud of acrid smoke in Houlihan’s direction.

  “They call you the Criss-Cross Man, don’t they?” he said.

  Houlihan nodded, giving Pink-Eye his coldest gaze, the kind of gaze that usually made men weak with fear. The creature was unimpressed.

  “Think you’re scary, do you?” he said. “Ha! This is Gorgossium, Criss-Cross Man. This is the island of the Midnight Hour. Every dark, unthinkable thing that has ever happened at the dead of night has happened right here. So don’t try scaring me. You’re wasting your time.”

  “I just asked—”

  “Yes, yes, we heard you,” said Lazaru, the eye in the middle of her forehead rolling back and forth in a very unsettling fashion. “You’ll have to be patient. The Lord of Midnight will see you when he’s ready to see you.”

  “Got some urgent news for him, have you?” said Baby Pink-Eye.

  “That’s between him and me.”

  “I warn you, he doesn’t like bad news,” said Lazaru. “He gets in a fury, doesn’t he, Pink-Eye?”

  “Crazy is what he gets! Tears people apart with his bare hands.”

  They glanced conspiratorially at each other. Houlihan said nothing. They were just trying to frighten him, and it wouldn’t work. He got up and went to the narrow window, looking out onto the tumorous landscape of the Midnight Island, phosphorescent with corruption. This much of what Baby Pink-Eye had said was true: Gorgossium was a place of terrors. He could see the glistening forms of countless monsters as they moved through the littered landscape; he could smell spicy-sweet incense rising from the mausoleums in the mist-shrouded cemetery; he could hear the shrill din of drills from the mines where the mud that filled Midnight’s armies of stitchlings was produced. Though he wasn’t going to let Lazaru or Pink-Eye see his unease, he would be glad when he’d made his report and he could leave for less terrifying places.

  There was some murmuring behind him, and a moment later Lazaru announced: “The Prince of Midnight is ready to see you.”

  Houlihan turned from the window to see that the door on the far side of the chamber was open and Baby Pink-Eye was gesturing for him to step through it.

  “Hurry, hurry,” the infant said.

  Houlihan went to the door and stood on the threshold. Out of the darkness of the room came the voice of Christopher Carrion, deep and joyless.

  “Enter, enter. You’re just in time to watch the feeding.”

  Houlihan followed the sound of Carrion’s voice. There was a flickering in the dar
kness, which grew more intense by degrees, and as it brightened he saw the Lord of Midnight standing perhaps ten yards from him. He was dressed in gray robes and was wearing gloves that looked as though they were made of fine chain mail.

  “Not many people get to see this, Criss-Cross Man. My nightmares are hungry, so I’m going to feed them.” Houlihan shuddered. “Watch, man! Don’t stare at the floor.”

  Reluctantly, the Criss-Cross Man raised his eyes. The nightmares Carrion had spoken of were swimming in a blue fluid, which all but filled a high transparent collar around Carrion’s head. Two pipes emerged from the base of the Lord of Midnight’s skull, and it was through these that the nightmares had emerged, swimming directly out of Carrion’s skull. They were barely more than long threads of light; but there was something about their restless motion, the way they roved the collar, sometimes touching Carrion’s face, more often pressing against the glass, that spoke of their hunger.

  Carrion reached up into the collar. One of the nightmares made a quick motion, like a striking snake, and delivered itself into its creator’s hand. Carrion lifted it out of the fluid and studied it with a curious tenderness.

  “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Carrion said. Houlihan didn’t comment. He just wanted Carrion to keep the thing away from him. “But when these things are coiled in my brain they show me such delicious horrors.” The nightmare writhed around in Carrion’s hand, letting out a thin, high-pitched squeal. “So every now and then I reward them with a nice fat meal of fear. They love fear. And it’s hard for me to feel much of it these days. I’ve seen too many horrors in my time. So I provide them with someone who will feel fear.”

  So saying, he let the nightmare go. It slithered out of his grip, hitting the stone floor. It knew exactly where it was going. It wove across the ground, flickering with excitement, the light out of its thin form illuminating its victim: a large, bearded man squatted against the wall.

  “Mercy, my Lord . . .” he sobbed. “I’m just a Todo miner.”

  “Oh, now be quiet,” Carrion said as though he were speaking to a troublesome child. “Look, you have a visitor.”

  He turned and pointed to the ground where the night-mare slithered. Then, without waiting to see what happened next, he turned and approached Houlihan.

  “So, now,” he said. “Tell me about the girl.”

  Thoroughly unnerved by the fact that the nightmare was loose and might at any moment turn on him, Houlihan fumbled for words: “Oh yes . . . yes . . . the girl. She escaped me in Ninnyhammer. Along with a geshrat called Malingo. Now they’re traveling together. And I got close to them again on Soma Plume. But she slipped away among some pilgrim monks.”

  “So she’s escaped you twice? I expect better.”

  “She has power in her,” Houlihan said by way of self-justification.

  “Does she indeed?” Carrion said. As he spoke he carefully lifted a second nightmare out of his collar. It spat and hissed. Directing it toward the man in the corner, he let the creature go from his hands, and it wove away to be with its companion. “She must at all costs be apprehended, Otto,” Carrion went on. “Do you understand me? At all costs. I want to meet her. More than that. I want to understand her.”

  “How will you do that, Lord?”

  “By finding out what’s ticking away in that human head of hers. By reading her dreams, for one thing. Which reminds me . . . Lazaru!”

  While he waited for his servant to appear at the door, Carrion brought out yet another nightmare from his collar and loosed it. Houlihan watched as it went to join the others. They had come very close to the man, but had not yet struck. They seemed to be waiting for a word from their master.

  The miner was still begging. Indeed he had not ceased begging throughout the entire conversation between Carrion and Houlihan. “Please, Lord,” he kept saying. “What have I done to deserve this?”

  Carrion finally replied to him. “You’ve done nothing,” he said. “I just picked you out of the crowd today because you were bullying one of your brother miners.” He glanced back at his victim. “There’s always fear in men who are cruel to other men.” Then he looked away again, while the nightmares waited, their tails lashing in anticipation. “Where’s Lazaru?” Carrion said.

  “Here.”

  “Find me the dreaming device. You know the one.”

  “Of course.”

  “Clean it up. I’m going to need it when the Criss-Cross Man has done his work.” His gaze shifted toward Houlihan. “As for you,” he said. “Get the chase over with.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Capture Candy Quackenbush and bring her to me. Alive.”

  “I won’t fail you.”

  “You’d better not. If you do, Houlihan, then the next man sitting in that corner will be you.” He whispered some words in Old Abaratian. “Thakram noosa rah. Haaas!”

  This was the instruction the nightmares had been waiting for. In a heartbeat they attacked. The man struggled to keep them from climbing up his body, but it was a lost cause. Once they reached his neck they proceeded to wrap their flickering lengths around his head, as though to mummify him. They partially muffled his cries a little, but he could still be heard, his appeals for mercy from Carrion deteriorating into shrieks and screams. As his terror mounted the nightmares grew fatter, giving off brighter and brighter flashes of sickly luminescence as they were nourished. The man continued to kick and struggle for a while, but soon his shrieks declined into sobs and finally even the sobs ceased. So, at last, did his struggle.

  “Oh, that’s a disappointment,” Carrion said, kicking the man’s foot to confirm that fear had indeed killed him. “I thought he’d last longer than that.”

  He spoke again in the old language, and—nourished, now, and slothful—the nightmares unknotted themselves from around their victim’s head and began to return to Carrion. Houlihan couldn’t help but retreat a step or two in case the nightmares mistook him for another source of food.

  “Go on, then,” Carrion said to him. “You’ve got work to do. Find me Candy Quackenbush!”

  “It’s as good as done,” Houlihan replied, and without looking back, even a glance, he hurried away from the chamber of terrors and down the stairs of the Twelfth Tower.

  PART ONE

  FREAKS, FOOLS AND FUGITIVES

  Nothing

  After a battle lasting many ages,

  The Devil won,

  And he said to God

  (who had been his Maker):

  “Lord,

  We are about to witness the unmaking of Creation

  By my hand.

  I would not wish you

  to think me cruel,

  So I beg you, take three things

  From this world before I destroy it.

  Three things, and then the rest will be

  wiped away.”

  God thought for a little time.

  And at last He said:

  “No, there is nothing.”

  The Devil was surprised.

  “Not even you, Lord?” he said.

  And God said:

  “No. Not even me.”

  —From Memories of the World’s End

  Author unknown

  (Christopher Carrion’s favorite poem)

  Chapter 1

  Portrait of Girl and Geshrat

  “LET’S GET OUR PHOTOGRAPH taken,” Candy said to Malingo. They were walking down a street in Tazmagor, where—this being on the island of Qualm Hah—it was Nine O’clock in the Morning. The Tazmag-orian market was in full swing, and in the middle of all this buying and selling a photographer called Guumat had set up a makeshift studio. He’d hung a crudely painted backcloth from a couple of poles and set his camera, a massive device mounted on a polished wood tripod, in front of it. His assistant, a youth who shared his father’s coxcomb hair and lightly striped blue-and-black skin, was parading a board on which examples of Guumat the Elder’s photos were pinned.

  “You like to be pictured b
y the great Guumat?” the youth said to Malingo. “He make you look real good.”

  Malingo grinned. “How much?”

  “Two paterzem,” said the father, gently pressing his offspring aside so as to close the sale.

  “For both of us?” Candy said.

  “One picture, same price. Two paterzem.”

  “We can afford that,” Candy said to Malingo.

  “Maybe you like costumes. Hats?” Guumat asked them, glancing at them up and down. “No extra cost.”

  “He’s politely telling us we look like vagabonds,” Malingo said.

  “Well, we are vagabonds,” Candy replied.

  Hearing this, Guumat looked suspicious. “You can pay?” he said.

  “Yes, of course,” said Candy, and dug in the pocket of her brightly patterned trousers, held up with a belt of woven biffel-reeds, and pulled out some coins, sorting through them to give Guumat the paterzem.