Days of Magic, Nights of War Read online

  Finally, when the threat of unconsciousness passed, she hauled herself to her feet.

  She could hear screams from the bowels of the vessel, the din of wholesale destruction. The lower compartments were flooding, and the slave giants who had worked the Wormwood’s oars were tearing up their prison in order to escape being drowned by the invading waters. Fires raged unchecked on the deck, columns of acrid smoke rising from the conflagrations. And everywhere she glimpsed, between the smoke and the flames, the litter of battle: stitchlings sprawled in pools of their life mud; a few of Mater Motley’s seamstresses, killed either by blade or by fallen debris.

  And in one place, a heartbreaking sight: side by side, Captain McBean and little Tria lay, their eyes open and empty.

  “Oh no . . . no . . .” Candy murmured.

  She picked her way over and through the chaos toward the place where they lay, not wanting to believe what she already knew. Twice she lost sight of them: once when a column of fire erupted from the fractured deck in front of her, the other when—with a deafening crack—the deck opened so wide in front of her she had to run at it to make the jump to the other side. But finally, breathless and besmirched, she reached the bodies.

  She saw immediately who the death bringer had been: the deck around Tria and the Captain was stained by a blast of energies that had surely emanated from Mater Motley. The Hag’s hand was on this slaughter, no question of it.

  She knelt beside the bodies, tears burning in her eyes. Gently she laid her hands on her friends’ faces, and some voice in her (not entirely her own) quietly said thank you to them for being with her on this voyage, and wished them safe travels on the journey that they had now begun.

  Then she stood up and returned the way she’d come— over the fissure, through the fire—to the hole in the deck through which the blast had first thrown her. The murderess was still below, to judge by the shock waves that continued to shake the deck. She quickly thought about what she was planning to do, and its possible consequences. One of them was that she would end up another victim of Mater Motley’s power. But then why had the old incantatrix gone to such trouble to track Candy down and attempt to destroy her if Candy didn’t pose some genuine threat to her?

  There’s power in me, Candy thought.

  Maybe it was because of Boa; maybe it would have been in her anyway. Whatever its origins, it was real. She’d felt it inside her; heard its words from her own mouth; witnessed its effects. It was time now to accept it as her own. To possess it. To wield it.

  She looked back through the smoke at the bodies of Tria and Captain McBean, to give force to her will, to empower whatever it was that was coiled in her.

  As she fixed her eyes on them, the deck beneath her feet shook, buckled, and broke open, throwing her backward. A hail of dried tar and wood splinters came down on her. And up out of the bowels of the Wormwood came Carrion and the Hag, locked together in a spiraling column of black flame. They screamed furies as they rose, unleashing waves of raw sound that broke against each other’s faces like blows.

  In a matter of seconds they rose high above the deck, out of Candy’s reach. All she could do was watch while they battled, Carrion’s nightmares arranged around him in a network of sickly pale monstrosities, Mater Motley’s needles of dark venom spitting from her fingertips and from a slit in the middle of her forehead. They were a perfect match for each other. Mater Motley piercing, Carrion smothering; Mater Motley wounding, Carrion strangling; back and forth, and around and around, and up and up, in an ever more vicious exchange of hurts and hatred.

  Scraps of wounded nightmares and shards of toxic needles came down like an apocalyptic rain, some piercing the deck, some falling away into the gaping hole from which the two warring forces had emerged.

  Candy was so intent on watching this grotesque spectacle (learning from it, even) that she didn’t notice Malingo’s approach till he caught hold of her arm.

  “We have to get away from here!”

  She tore her eyes from the locked warriors and glanced at him. He appeared from the smoke looking like a veteran not of one battle but of many: spattered with Todo mud that had spurted from wounded stitchlings, his clothes singed by fire, and here and there running with blood from the wounds he’d taken in the battle. But he didn’t seem to care. Not about his own state, nor about the great struggle that was going on above them. All he cared about was Candy.

  “The Wormwood’s sinking—” he said to her.

  “I know,” she said, her eyes going back to the battle.

  “If we don’t get off it soon, we’ll go down with the ship! Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So come on. Right now!”

  “Wait—”

  “Forget them, Candy.”

  “I want to watch!”

  “What’s to look at? Let them murder each other!”

  “Could I have had that much power, do you think?” she said, half to herself. “If I’d stayed, I mean. Back in the Abarat.”

  “Would you want it?” Malingo replied.

  Candy kept looking, almost afraid to answer the question truthfully. But then, if not to Malingo, then to whom? Hadn’t he been there at the beginning of her self-discovery, in Wolfswinkel’s house? And outside, in the wilds of Ninnyhammer, when she’d miraculously known how to call a glyph? She owed him an honest answer.

  “I guess . . . if I knew I could use it properly . . .” she said. She looked his way again. “Why not have all the power you can get?”

  “Well, you won’t get it here,” he said. “You’ll just get death.” He pulled on her arm. “Please, Candy. Come.”

  “But that damn woman killed—”

  “I know. I saw.”

  “She deserves—”

  “—to be judged. Yes! I agree. But not now. Not here. And not by you.”

  Malingo had never spoken to Candy like this before: he’d always been aware, it seemed, of the debt of liberty he had owed her. But right now was not the time for niceties, and they both knew it. The ship was coming apart around them, its mighty structure unknitted by fire and battle and magic.

  “All right,” she said, finally allowing Malingo to coax her away from watching Carrion and the Hag. “I’m coming! I’m coming!”

  They ran to the railings, and Malingo directed Candy’s attention over the side. The Lud Limbo had been brought about by Deaux-Deaux and now scraped hulls with the listing bulk of the Wormwood.

  “Do we jump?”

  “We don’t have much choice. See that pile of canvas and rope?”

  “I see it!”

  “Then let’s go!”

  He caught hold of her hand and grasped it hard. And together they jumped, landing heavily but safely on the heap of canvas. The breath was knocked out of her for a moment. She barely had time to catch it again before the Lud Limbo pitched sideways, and the canvas on which she and Malingo had landed slid to the edge of the deck.

  The waters around the two vessels were filled with the fish that had accompanied the Wormwood here. They were now in a frenzy of hunger and anticipation. Candy and Malingo would have been delivered into the needle-lined jaws of these creatures had Candy not caught hold of a length of rigging with her left hand and kept tight hold of Malingo with her right. For a few terrifying seconds they swung back and forth while the monstrosities below snapped at their feet. Then the Lud Limbo tipped back in the opposite direction, and they slid back into the middle of the deck.

  “We have to get away from here!” Malingo yelled to Deaux-Deaux, who was at the wheel of the Lud Limbo.

  As the battle between grandmother and grandson escalated and death shudders passed through the Wormwood, the hull of the larger ship was striking the smaller, causing it to tip. This time Candy and Malingo were ready. They held on while the Lud Limbo rolled, then righted itself.

  “The sooner we get everybody safely on board and get away from here—” Malingo began to say.

  “Where’re Tom and Mis
chief and Geneva and Finnegan?”

  Malingo looked grim. “Bringing our dead,” he said.

  Candy sighed, nodded and glanced up at the Wormwood. In fact, she could see Geneva and Tom now, with a sad bundle in their arms, preparing to lower it over onto the deck of the Lud Limbo. She looked away, turning her gaze toward the roof of 34 Followell Street. Her father, she saw, was among the little cluster of people perched on the roof. They were safe for now, but their safety was by no means certain. The same fish that had surrounded the little rowboat could sense that their meal was now on the roof. The more ambitious of them were actually attempting to throw themselves up toward their victims. A few, possessed of rudimentary limbs, had even secured a tenuous hold on the eaves and had their shiny, wet eyes fixed on their intended victims.

  Candy’s family weren’t the only people who were in trouble. Nearby were the remains of another small boat; this one overturned, its hull (which was white) holed in several places. Its occupants were perched on its barnacled hull. A huge mantizac circled the wreckage, occasionally sticking its snout out of the water either to sniff at or terrorize its victims.

  “How many people can the Lud Limbo carry?” Candy asked Deaux-Deaux.

  “I don’t know,” said the Sea-Skipper. “Not that many.”

  “Well, we need to get my family off the roof. And the folks off that boat. And pick up any people in the water.”

  “Agreed. Enough people have died today.”

  Candy couldn’t help but glance back up at the Wormwood again. Not at the removal of the bodies, but at Mater Motley and the Lord of Midnight, still high above the deck, locked in battle.

  “Two too few in my opinion,” she said coldly.

  “Will you look at her?” Diamanda said softly to Melissa.

  “I’m looking,” Melissa said. “Believe me, I’m looking. She’s changed. I mean, that’s not the Candy who left here.”

  “That’s truer than you know,” Diamanda said.

  “She doesn’t seem to have any fear,” Melissa said, watching in amazement as Candy, who was standing at the bow of the Lud Limbo, which was now halfway between the hull of the Wormwood and the roof of the Quackenbush house, supervised the picking up of the survivors from the overturned boat. The mantizac swam backward and forward in front of the rescue ship in frustration, staring up at Candy as though it knew that she was responsible for the removal of its dinner.

  “I hope you’re proud of her,” Diamanda said.

  “I am,” Melissa replied.

  Bill, who’d been listening to Melissa’s half of the conversation, scowled at his wife.

  “You are talking to somebody,” he said. “Who is it?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Melissa replied.

  Bill shook his head and turned away, muttering something under his breath.

  “Was he ever charming?” Diamanda asked Melissa.

  “Oh yes. He was charming. Good looking. Funny. I loved him. I still do.” She saw Bill almost turn, as though he had something to say. But plainly he thought better of it, because he kept his silence.

  “I should be going,” Diamanda said.

  “Must you?”

  “Yes. There’s work to be done. Souls to guide away to better places.”

  “The Abarat.”

  Diamanda smiled. “What, you think it’s Heaven?” she said. “I’m afraid not. Maybe once it was . . . at least a kind of Heaven. But times change.” She smiled. “Even there.”

  Reaching out, she touched Melissa’s face with her phantom fingers. “Be strong, little mother,” she said to Melissa. “I know you can be.”

  “Yes?” Melissa said a little doubtfully.

  “Of course. Remember, I’ve seen you in her. And it’s wonderful.” She looked back toward Candy, and murmuring a good-bye, she left the roof and walked off purposefully across the water.

  Chapter 55

  The Beginning of the End

  IT TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES for the Lud Limbo to pick up everybody in the vicinity of 34 Followell Street, and eventually get the people who were perched on the roof (Mrs. Hagen, from Number 37, and her dog, Rose-Marie, old Tom Shay from the corner house and the widowed sisters Lucy and Ruth McGinn, in addition to Candy’s family) aboard the Lud Limbo. By the time everybody was safely on board and drying off in the afternoon sun, which was still warm, events on the Wormwood were reaching their grim conclusion.

  To those watching the battle, it was unclear as to whether it was Carrion’s nightmares or his grandmother’s dark powers that were carrying the day. The fire had spread from bow to stern by now, and the ship was so wreathed in flame and smoke that all but a few glimpses were granted the spectators. But there was no doubting that the two forces were still colliding, catastrophically. Sometimes the vessel would erupt with blazing energies, as though a stray spark had gotten into a fireworks factory and everything was going off at the same moment. Then there’d be a curious moment of stillness as the sparks cleared away, and the folks on the Lud Limbo would see—or think they saw—two figures locked together as though only death would separate them. Then the flames and smoke would rise up again, to obscure the scene.

  “Mater Motley’s old,” Malingo said. “Brittle bones.”

  “Yes,” said Candy. “But I bet she’s got more tricks up her sleeve.”

  By degrees it became apparent that she was right: Mater Motley was carrying the day. Though Carrion’s nightmares seemed capable of re-creating themselves in fouler forms, the old woman was steadily laying them low. The once mighty Lord of Midnight seemed painfully exposed now that his collar had been destroyed and its fluids poured away. It was his skeletal features that looked brittle, not his grandmother. Though his monstrosities repeatedly put themselves between their master and Mater Motley’s conjurations, the wounding spells broke through over and over again, steadily weakening and exhausting him.

  Once in a while, he would launch a sudden sideswipe and catch the old woman a devastating blow, but she was uncannily resilient. She’d go down, howling, and Carrion would dispatch his nightmares to finish off the job, only to find that she was faking. She’d be up in an instant, tearing open her grandchild’s creatures without mercy, spattering their vile matter in all directions.

  “Surely he can’t last much longer,” Malingo murmured as Carrion appeared momentarily in the chaos, his whole body torn and broken.

  “Maybe he wants to go down with the ship,” Candy said.

  “And take her with him?”

  “Why not?”

  “Couldn’t happen to two nicer people.”

  “Oh, wait,” Candy said.

  “What?”

  “There!”

  As she spoke, she saw the Hag raise her hands, and a burst of power flowed from them toward Carrion. Candy saw him lift his own hands in a pitiful attempt to ward off the attack, but his defenses were extinct. As the assault came against him, he pulled his robes up in front of his head to shield himself. But it was useless. As Mater Motley’s flow of power continued to strike him, she added words to her attack, calling out to him.

  “I should have left you in the fire,” she said to him. “It would have saved a lot of wasted time.”

  Her words seemed to mark Carrion’s undoing. He let the robe drop from his fingers, and the assault strike him down. He dropped to the deck and for a few seconds lay there unmoving. Then, at a summons from their mistress, a horde of Mater Motley’s stitchlings came out of the filthy smoke and picked him up. Doubtless at the old woman’s instruction, they made certain that these last moments were as distressing and humiliating as possible. They vomited mud upon him as they tore off the last vestiges of his fine robes, uncovering his wretched, wounded body. Then they threw him up in the air like a plaything, dropping him and picking him up to do it again.

  Candy watched all this with profound revulsion. Though Carrion had been her chief tormentor during her time in the Abarat, she still felt some residue of pity for him. She didn’t kno
w whether it was the Princess’ heart that felt this surprising tenderness toward him, or her own. But in the end, she thought, did it really matter? A feeling was a feeling wherever it was born.

  “Why can’t they just get it over with?” she growled. “I hate stitchlings! And that woman. Most of all I hate that woman.”

  The creatures were bored with their tormenting now. They looked up at Mater Motley, who still hovered in the stained air on a column of churning motes, and she pointed to the railing. Hauling him like a sack of garbage, they carried their plaything to the side of the vessel and tossed him overboard. He sank quickly, and the water where his body disappeared became foamy and scarlet for a while as fishes converged on the spot to pick at the remains. But perhaps he was too toxic a meal even for the mantizac, because the feeding frenzy quickly died away.

  “Was that who I think it was?” said John Serpent, looking toward the Wormwood.

  “Not Carrion, surely?” said John Drowze, sounding quite scandalized.

  “Like a piece of spoiled meat,” John Slop said.

  “Well, isn’t that what he was?” said Deaux-Deaux. “What else is Carrion?”

  Candy wanted to contradict Deaux-Deaux, but she knew any protest she made now would not be understood. Later, perhaps, when all these horrors were over and done with, she would confess to somebody that what little she had known of the Midnight Prince had suggested a man far more complicated than anything she’d ever heard said about him. But now was not the time for the truth to be told. People needed a villain today, pure and simple: and he was an ideal candidate. So she kept her silence.

  Besides, there were other things to occupy everybody’s attention. One fact in particular was now of pressing impor-tance. The Izabella was starting to recede.

  It began slowly at first. The flotsam and jetsam that was floating on the surface of the water turned around and was carried away. Mischief was the first to notice what was going on.

  “All those who are going ashore ought to get going,” he said. “Because after this, the next stop’s the Abarat!”