Days of Magic, Nights of War Page 36

  Malingo had taken too many blows in his life to take even one more.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said very quietly.

  The woman laughed and raised her hand to strike him again. But before she could do so, a rope snaked down from above and wrapped itself around her wrist. She let out a shriek of anger.

  “What is this?” she screamed. “Undo this, geshrat!”

  Malingo shook his head.

  “Up,” he said to the rope.

  It obeyed on the instant, hauling the seamstress up above his head. She shrieked and slashed at him with her needle, but the rigging was alive to her malice. A second rope snaked down from among the sails and caught her hand, turning the needle against her and sinking it deep into her throat. For a few seconds she struggled. Then the struggles decayed into twitches, and the twitches ceased.

  Seeing their sister dead, the women raised a vengeful chorus of shrieks.

  “Death to the geshrat!”

  “Tear him apart!”

  “Eat his eyes!”

  Needles glittering, they came at him from all directions. But the spell Malingo had breathed into the ropes and sails was only just starting its work. There was a great splintering of wood overhead, and the creaking of ropes being pulled taut; then a series of loud cracks and ripping sounds as the sheared timbers sliced through the sails. The women looked up, more puzzled than enraged, as the ropes snaked and wove and knotted and the canvas folded itself around the lengths of wood.

  “What’s happening?” one of the women demanded.

  “It’s him! He’s doing it!” said another.

  “Kill him, quickly!”

  She’d no sooner spoken than there was a great din of snapping ropes above and a kind of makeshift creature—strange even in the company of the many strangenesses that littered the Wormwood’s deck—dropped into view. It had fingers of timber shards and its body was a toga of torn canvas, while its head looked like a nest of rope snakes, which rose up like cobras, flicking their frayed tongues at the sisters.

  “Don’t be scared of it!” came a voice behind the women. “It’s nothing!” With a sudden rush of bitter air, Mater Motley swept into view. “It’s just some nonsense this geshrat called up! Kill him, and it dies too!”

  But the thing had already unnerved the women. It was half their height again, and the wind filled its sailcloth anatomy so that it swelled and snapped.

  “Say your prayers, geshrat!” Mater Motley said, and slid two six-inch needles out of the folds of her soul-haunted dress. She wielded them like an assassin, striking to the left and right as she came at Malingo. He ducked and dove as she advanced, her needles getting closer and closer to his flesh. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the creature he had summoned from overhead was causing chaos among the Hag’s sisters. Indifferent to their needles, it drove them to the railings and casually threw them over the edge into the sea.

  “Damn you, geshrat!” Mater Motley spat. “I swear I’ll make you bleed from a thousand wounds.”

  She stabbed at him again, but at the last moment he threw himself aside and the needles flashed past him, embedding their points in one of the two demonic figureheads that guarded the stern of the Wormwood. The old woman cursed ripely and worked her needles back and forth to try and free them from the painted timber. But even as she loosened them, there was a rumbling growl from the carving, and the great chiseled demon raised its horned head.

  “That,” it said, “hurt.”

  For an instant Malingo had the immeasurable satisfaction of seeing a flicker of fear cross Mater Motley’s furrowed face. Then she governed herself, and the fear was replaced by a look of contempt.

  “Idiot thing,” she said, and turned on Malingo to finish him off. “Wood and paint don’t scare me.”

  It was a mistake.

  The pricked figurehead lifted a crudely carved fist from its barrel chest, and with a casual flick of its hand it swatted the old woman across the deck.

  Malingo didn’t wait to see what damage the demon had done. He just offered up a silent prayer of thanks for his salvation, and—tempting fate to throw worse his way—he went in search of Candy.

  Chapter 52

  The Secret of Secrets

  THE DEEPER WOLFSWINKEL DRAGGED Candy into the bowels of the Wormwood, the more terrifying his threats became.

  “I bet you thought you’d never see me again, did you? He’ll never do me any harm, you thought. He’s locked up forever. Well, you were wrong. Don’t they say that everything comes to those who wait? And I have been waiting—oh yes, waiting patiently—for the chance to pay you back for my . . . humiliation. And when you’ve gone, I’ll find my slave and I will make him pay. Oh yes. I will beat him till he has no more tears to shed.”

  Candy didn’t say anything. She just let Wolfswinkel rant. “I’m not a prisoner anymore, you see. Oh no. I’m a free man. She saw my importance, and she came to get me personally.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Mater Motley. She realized that of all people, I’d be the one who knew how to deal with you. How to find out all your little secrets.”

  “I don’t have any little secrets.”

  “Oh, really.” He laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, you really don’t.”

  As he spoke, there was a terrible din of screams and sobs from the deck overhead.

  “You hear that yelling?” Wolfswinkel said. “That’s your gang getting finished off. We’re not going to waste time on anything fancy. We’re just going to hang them all.”

  This was too much. Candy turned on him.

  “You really are the scum of the earth, aren’t you?” she said. “I thought you were just a nasty old drunk when I first met you. But the more I got to know you, the more I realized what a hater you are.”

  “A hater, am I?” said Wolfswinkel. “Well, listen to you! A few weeks in the Abarat and you’ve suddenly come over all high and mighty. I guess you think you’ve got the right, being a Princess and all.”

  “I’m no Princess.”

  Wolfswinkel turned to look at Candy with a puzzled expression on his face. “Didn’t they tell you?” he said. Then, after a moment: “No, they didn’t, did they? Well, isn’t that something? I get to be the one to tell you. Ha! How perfect is that?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I had a lot of time to listen while I was locked up in that damn house.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “Whatever came my way. Like I said to Mater Motley, scraps, mainly. But if you’re patient, you learn to thread them together.”

  “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

  “I’m not surprised they didn’t tell you. What they did was against all the rules. And it was probably sacrilegious. You should never put power in the hands of women. It’s asking for trouble.” He grinned. “Especially those three.”

  “Diamanda and—”

  “Joephi and Mespa. Yes.”

  “What have they got to do with me?”

  “Think about it. Why do you think you’re here?”

  “It was an accident.”

  Wolfswinkel shook his head. “You know that’s not true.”

  “What then?”

  “I’m going to tell you this because of how much it’s going to hurt you.”

  “Oh. That’s nice.”

  “After what you did to me, girl, it’s the least I can do.” He looked at his nails, taking his time before he went on. “Do you know who Princess Boa was?” he said finally.

  “Of course.”

  “So you also knew that she was murdered.”

  “On her wedding day, yes. By a dragon.”

  “By a dragon sent by Christopher Carrion, actually.” Wolfswinkel looked up from his nails and studied Candy’s face. “Are you surprised?”

  “Not really,” said Candy. “Why did he want her dead?”

  “Oh, love, I suppose. At least that’s the short answer. He loved her and
she didn’t love him. Not even a little. Instead she was getting married to Finnegan Hob, and Carrion couldn’t bear the thought that he was going to lose his beloved to a half-breed.”

  “So it was better to kill her than to see her happy?” Candy said.

  “Well, of course,” Wolfswinkel replied, as though the logic of that was self-evident. “You don’t believe me?”

  She thought on it a moment.

  “No. I believe you.”

  She’d seen the hatred that burned in Carrion’s eyes. And the sorrow, and the anger. He was perfectly capable of destroying what he loved.

  “Shall I go on?” Wolfswinkel said. “There’s more.”

  “Yes . . . yes . . . go on.”

  “So the Princess Boa perished. And of course it was a terrible shock because she was supposedly this great force for good, and everybody thought that when she married Finnegan Hob there would be a new Age of Light and Love. In fact there were some stupid people who weren’t willing to give up on that hope, even though she was dead.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They thought that if they broke a few rules, they might still be able to save the soul of their beloved Princess.”

  “You’re talking about Diamanda—” Candy said.

  “—and Joephi and Mespa. Yes. The Sisters of the Fantomaya. Powerful, powerful women. Willing to risk—well, who knows what?—to undo the harm that had been done. They performed their magic over the body, and they brought forth the soul of Princess Boa.”

  “Who knew about this?”

  “Just them. Like I told you, this was forbidden magic. Sacriligious. And the less people who knew, the less likely that whoever had ordered the murder of the Princess would hear that her soul had survived and attempt to finish the job. So the women worked their magic in the greatest secrecy. And when they were done, they took the soul of the Princess away from the Abarat.”

  “Where to?”

  “Oh . . . I think you already know,” Wolfswinkel replied.

  “They took it to the Hereafter,” Candy said softly.

  The wizard smiled. “Indeed they did. They carried the soul of the Princess across the Izabella to the shores of the Hereafter. There was a terrible storm that night—which I suppose is only right and proper, given that such a massive crime against nature had been committed. The women’s little boat was almost sunk. But they somehow got across to the other side. And do you know who they found when they got there?”

  Candy already knew the answer. Knew it in her heart.

  “My mother,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Wolfswinkel. “Your mother: Melissa Quackenbush. She’d been sitting in a truck on an empty road. And of course she was very, very close to giving birth . . .”

  “. . . to me.”

  “Yes indeed. It was quite a night. And of course the women of the Fantomaya assumed that all this was in the stars. It was meant to be this way, that they’d come ashore and find your mother sitting there in a broken-down vehicle.”

  “So what did they do?”

  “What do you think?” Wolfswinkel said. “They gave Boa’s soul to your mother for safekeeping so you and she would be brought up together.”

  “But I don’t have a sister.”

  “She isn’t your sister, Candy. Her soul is inside you. Sharing the same body.”

  “What?”

  Candy’s breath grew quick and shallow, almost panicky. She opened her hands and stared down at them, remembering as she did so how they’d looked in the Wunderkammen, when the Totemix were being freed. The golden light that had flowed through her skin and bone.

  “In me?” she said. “The Princess is in me?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, so much that she’d experienced in the Abarat made sense. The countless moments when she’d had a feeling of familiarity; or when she’d known something she’d never learned in Chickentown (how to light a lamp that called a sea; how to say a Word of Power; how to speak to somebody in their dreams). It wasn’t Candy who’d been doing all these things: it had been the Princess inside her.

  “How did you find out,” she said, “if it was all so secret?”

  “You can’t do anything so momentous in complete secrecy,” the wizard replied. “The earth hears. The wind hears. Rumors begin, and rumors beget rumors. Sooner or later somebody puts two and two together. There were you, appearing on my doorstep with more power in you than any child from the Hereafter should rightly have. What was I to make of that, huh?”

  “So you worked it out?”

  “It took a while, but yes, I threaded it all together. You, and the rumors I’d heard. Soon I was thinking the unthinkable.”

  “Who did you tell?”

  “Nobody. Until now. Knowledge is power. I’m going to use what I know to get a lot of things.”

  “Suppose you’re wrong?”

  “But I’m not, am I? You see, I’ve followed your progress, Candy. I know what you’ve done. Battled zetheks. Unleashed Totemix. Killed the Criss-Cross Man. You’re not an ordinary girl. Not remotely. In a way, I feel very honored to have some minor part in your undoing. You were the last hope of goodness in a darkening world. And when you’re gone, there will be such a wonderful Night. Such a terrible, wonderful Night.”

  The speech seemed to drain him, spilling out—as it did—so much that was poisonous and hateful.

  “You pathetic little man,” Candy said.

  “Very possibly,” he said. “But I am also your executioner.”

  “Shut your mouth, fool,” said a voice out of the darkness.

  Wolfswinkel took his eyes off Candy and squinted into the shadows. “Who calls me a fool?”

  “I do” came the reply. And out of the darkness stepped a creature Candy would not have recognized as Letheo but for the fact that he was wearing the same dark uniform she’d seen him wearing in the Dead Man’s House. Otherwise he was completely transformed, his eyes huge and luminous, his mouth misshapen by teeth like needles. His body was covered with a fine coat of silver-gray scales. He was shaking from head to foot.

  “What do you want, beast-boy?” Wolfswinkel said. “You’ve no business down here, you know that.”

  “I came for the girl.”

  “Well, you can’t have her,” said Wolfswinkel, moving toward Candy. “She stays with me.”

  Letheo stepped in the wizard’s path, but Wolfswinkel moved with surprising speed for one of his weight. He caught Letheo a backhanded swipe that threw the changeling boy back against the wall of the passageway. The breath rushed out of him, and for a moment it seemed he would slide down the wall. Then a brightness flared in his eyes, and he leaped up off the wall as though something had pushed him from behind. The look in his eyes was suddenly crazed, like a rabid animal.

  Wolfswinkel seemed to understand that he was in jeopardy. He began to issue a garbled spell—

  “Agrez monnifoe,

  Psych eye,

  Dremu dramu,

  Phorthigre!”

  —the words creating a cage of spiraling energies around Letheo.

  But the boy wasn’t about to be made a captive so easily. He reached through the bars of his cage and caught hold of Wolfswinkel’s throat.

  “Let go of me, you freak!” Wolfswinkel shrieked, shaking Letheo violently.

  “No!” Letheo hollered. “I don’t think so.”

  Furious, Wolfswinkel reached up through the bars of Letheo’s cage and clawed at his arm, opening wounds. Letheo yelled and struggled to hold on to his enemy, but finally Wolfswinkel’s bulk carried the day. Wolfswinkel freed himself and retreated from the cage.

  “You really have the most peculiar friends, girl,” he said to Candy. “This one needs to be put out of his misery—right now!”

  He spoke another word or two, and the energies that contained Letheo suddenly blazed like lightning. The boy threw himself back and forth in the cage to escape the pain.

  “Stop this!” Candy said. “Please! Please!”

/>   “It’s over,” Wolfswinkel said. He uttered a word, and the cage flickered out of existence, leaving Letheo to drop to the ground, his face knotted up in agony. Candy went to where he lay and stroked his face.

  “I’d be careful,” Wolfswinkel said. “He bites.”

  Letheo’s eyes flickered open. “I won’t . . .” he murmured. “. . . not you.”

  As she looked into Letheo’s eyes, Candy saw Kaspar’s reflection there—he was reaching down to grab hold of her. She was quick. She dropped onto her stomach and rolled over, kicking the wizard in his belly. He tottered backward against the wall. She was up in a heartbeat, and on him a heartbeat later, pulling at the buckle that secured his six miraculous hats to his head and knocking them off.

  Wolfswinkel was not happy. Not. Remotely. Happy.

  “NO!” he yelled, his face turning bright red in his fury. “NO! NO! NO!”

  Letheo, meanwhile, had managed to get to his feet.

  “Destroy the hats!” Candy yelled to Letheo. “Quickly!”

  The beast-boy did as he was instructed, and with gusto. He seized the hats and tore at them with claws and teeth. Barbed spikes of power leaped from the torn material and burst against the walls and ceiling. The air smelled of fireworks. Wolfswinkel continued to holler his grief at the unmaking of his glorious millinery as pieces of headgear floated down like rainbow snowflakes. Even then Letheo wasn’t finished. He seized the pieces out of the air and ripped them into even tinier pieces till there was nothing left but lifeless confetti scattered on the boards.

  The destruction of the hats had somehow reduced Wolfswinkel too. He looked suddenly frailer. Even his clothes hung badly on his once well-fed frame, as though Letheo’s attack upon his magic had made him a shadow of himself.

  But it wasn’t the beast-boy he was furious with. It was Candy.

  “You,” he said, pointing at her with a trembling finger. “Right from the beginning you’ve tried to bring me to my knees. You . . . you . . . HELLSPAWN!” Flecks of thick white spittle erupted from his mouth as he worked himself up into a greater and greater fury. “All my finest plans! All my dearest dreams! YOU DESTROYED EVERYTHING!”

  As he shrieked at her, a pained expression darted onto his face.