The Slanted Worlds (21 page)

His whole being screamed out against it, but it was fate, it carried him along, and there was nothing he could do about it except rage.

And in an instant he lay on the floor of a vast hall, snow slopping from him, with Gideon gasping on hands and knees and Wharton sliding far over the tiles, coming to rest with his face flat against the wall.

Venn felt as if his rib cage was crushed. It was a feeling he knew. He sat up, slowly, and looked around.

A hundred images of himself sat up around him.

Gideon stared. He stood, and all the other Gideons stood too, an endless replication of tall pale boys in green frock coats that made him turn and stare and laugh in delight. “What is this place?”

“A hall of mirrors.” Sour, Venn scrambled over to Wharton, turning the big man over. “George. Are you hurt?”

Wharton groaned and opened his eyes. “One bloody great bruise, that's all I am.” Venn helped him to sit up, and his eyes widened as he looked around. For a moment the multiplicity of people astonished him; he thought there was a great crowd there, crouched, standing, sprawled. And then he saw it was just the three of them, over and over, going on forever in the opposing mirrored walls.

He took a breath. “Where is this? Is this Summer's doing?”

Venn stared around, then stood, tall and icy among the tilted glass. There were mirrors of all shapes and sizes, elegantly framed, fixed to every part of the wall, even the ceiling, Gideon realized, looking up at his own crazily foreshortened head and feet.

“This is Summer's doing,” Venn murmured.

Wharton spread his hands. “Then where's Sarah?”

As soon as the box opened, a bird popped up. It was a tiny wooden bird with bright green and yellow feathers; it spun around and opened its beak and piped a high twittering song, so loud in the stillness she almost jumped.

“Ssh . . . shut up. Go down.”

She tried to close the lid, but it seemed locked open.

She flung a desperate glance at the door, the curtained windows, but no one came in.

As suddenly as it began, the song ended. The bird stopped twirling and fixed her with a beady black eye.

All around it, the interior of the box was lined with scarlet satin. It seemed empty, but there was one tiny loop of ribbon that showed where a secret compartment lay.

Sarah took a breath. Then she reached in and her fingers lifted the ribbon loop, careful with the delicate sliver.

She stared into the black hole. It was space, eternal and endless. It was dusted with tiny stars and distant galaxies. Or were they strands of gold and diamonds and rubies?

The bird said, “Nice, isn't it? It goes on forever and ever.”

She stared.

“I can't tell you how good it is to be back, though.” It spread its tiny wooden wings and waggled them. “I am so bored! Centuries of silence.” It whistled again, joyful, flew around the room and came back to perch on the box rim.

Sarah took a breath. “This belongs to Summer?”

“Her treasure box.”

Hope was dawning in her like pain. She said, “I'm looking for something that belongs to me. A coin—well, half a coin. It's been cut in two. It hangs on a gold chain and . . .”

“Know the very thing.” The bird nodded, self-important. “Just you wait there.” It spread its wings, then looked at her again, oddly anxious. “You won't go away, will you?”

“NO! . . . No.”

It flew into the box. And as she watched, it was lost among the distant stars.

He could not lie, he could not sleep.

She stole his dreams away.

She locked them in her darkest hall

with fiend and ghost and fey.

He said, “I will not mercy beg,

I will not bow the knee.”

But she smiled and thawed the snow

And set the flowers free.

Ballad of Lady Summer and Lord Winter

P
IERS SWUNG THE
casement wide and hung out. Rain spattered his face.

“There! See it!”

Over his shoulder, Maskelyne stared. From every window, a cat gazed.

This corridor was at the back of the Abbey, where the building crouched under the great crag called Winter Tor, a range of slate that jutted through the Wood. Far below, in its hidden ravine, the Wintercombe roared in flooded spate. Above, on that steep wooded slope, Piers could see movement.

It was slow. A trickle here, a slither there. A bush would snap, a scatter of earth fall into the river below. But he could feel its threat in the very stillness of the air, the persistent drizzle of the rain. The whole hillside was slipping, inch by inch, shallow roots straining and tugging up in the saturated soil, until the weight tore them away. Already, a tree opposite the window was leaning against its neighbor, the trunk creaking as if in pain.

“The whole lot could come down on us any minute,” Piers breathed.

He jerked back inside. “What do we do?”

Maskelyne did not seem too concerned. “If it falls, it damages the house. But the mirror is safe in the Monk's Walk. That part is more ancient and built of stone. It would survive.”

Piers gaped. “It might, but I won't! Have you any
idea
what Venn will do when he comes back and finds his house flattened! Have you any notion of the utter misery . . .”

Maskelyne shrugged gracefully and walked away down the uncarpeted corridor. A trail of cats followed at his feet. “What can I do?”

“Plenty.” Piers pattered along behind him. “You have . . . means.”

Maskelyne stopped.

“Means?”

“Abilities. Oh, I don't know for sure who you are, Mr. Scarface, but I know what you are. Nobody bottles me up in a jar unless they have magic stored up right to their fingertips. I never felt a spell as strong as that, and I've been around some sorcerers, let me tell you. So maybe a moving forest would be easy-peasy.”

Maskelyne smiled, shaking his head. “Piers! I think you must have me mixed up with someone else. I can't stop the rain.”

Piers folded his arms, stubborn. “Maybe, maybe not. But if the house is flattened, what's to stop the Shee picking the place clean, mirror and all. Think on that, Mr. Ghost.”

Maskelyne slid him a dark glance and then resumed his stride toward the stairs.

Piers watched him go, smug. That was telling him. No pulling the wool over Piers's eyes.

He puffed his chest out and grinned, and then saw the cats watching him and the grin went.

“Well? If I don't guard the place, who will? You lot?”

They slunk away, except for Primo, who rubbed against Piers's ankles. The little man scratched him fondly; the cat arched, then sauntered to a bedroom door and sat outside it, giving one piercing mew.

This wasn't a corridor Piers got to often in the rambling house—he could tell that from the dust. Now he opened the door and saw the attic room he had given Sarah.

“What?” he whispered.

The black cat advanced graciously in and padded across the worn rug. Just under the window it stopped. Its paw creaked a loose plank.

Then it leaped up onto the windowsill and began to wash.

Piers came and crouched. The plank was completely loose; he pried it out and found a dark space beneath the boards.

He looked up at Primo. “She hides her treasures here then, does she? Should we be looking?”

The cat licked on. Piers leaned in, groping.

He pulled out a small notebook and a black pen held tight to it by an elastic band.

The pen was from the future. He could tell that by its smell, and the big
Z,
as if for Zeus, on its clip. The notebook was gray. When he opened it he saw it was full of messages, written by Sarah and someone else, someone who wrote in capitals, a jerky, amused, bitter handwriting.

Who signed himself
JANUS
.

He read the last one.

I HAVE SENT YOU MY CHILDREN.

Piers put his lips into a whistle shape but no sound came.

“Oh that's bad,” he whispered instead.

David sat on the narrow bed, the baby in his arms. He said, “There was a woman. She was pretty and young and . . . we started as friends. She was . . . the only one I felt safe with. Then . . .”

“I don't want to hear the whole sordid story,” Jake growled.

He had gone back to the window and was standing in the shade. Gazing out.

Rebecca said, “Jake.”

“Stay out of this. This is not your business.”

His arrogance infuriated her, but she could hear the raw pain too, so she just reached out to David. After a moment he handed her the baby; she was surprised at his warm weight. Then he went over to Jake and stood behind him.

“Don't hate me, son.”

“I don't hate you. But . . .”

“It just happened. She told me she was pregnant. We got married.”

“You're already married! You're married to my mother!”

“She's a thousand years in the future in a country not even discovered yet.” He tried to smile. “She never need know.”

Jake spun. “This is not some joke!”

“No.” His father's tired eyes held him. “No. It's not. Not when Gabriella was carried home from the market and I saw the first black lesion on her neck. Twenty-four hours, Jake, that's all it took. Twenty-four hours of agony from a healthy woman to a corpse suppurating with dark sores.”

He gripped Jake's arms. “I couldn't save her.”

Jake said, “The mirror. You could have . . .”

“And spread the pestilence to some other age? Not even for her.”

They were silent. Outside, a church bell began to clang for Mass, somewhere far across the city.

Rebecca shifted the weight in her arms; the baby made a small contented noise.

Jake took a step back. He said, “Okay. Look. Whatever happened. Whatever you did, doesn't matter. We have to go. Now.”

“The baby comes. He has no one else.”

They stared at him; Rebecca said, “Can we . . . ?”

“Two bracelets. Together. We can try.”

Jake breathed out, hard. Then he nodded. “Right. All right. Let's go.”

Ten minutes later they raced down the stairs. David had replaced his doctor's mask, Jake wore an old apprentice robe. Rebecca had a cloak swathed around her and the baby was tied in it. “You'll have to carry him,” David had breathed, fastening the swaddling. “It will look more natural.”

“Will it?”

She had felt ridiculous, but as if he knew, he said, “You would have been married here for years, Becky. You'd almost be old.”

It scared her now. Running down the dark stairs, she wanted to flee, suddenly afraid that the life she had always thought was in front of her was over. The thought of that other girl, who had gone from beauty to corruption in a day, terrified her.

At the street door, David peered out. Then he said, “Walk behind me. Close. Don't speak. Put your arm around her, Jake, as if she's sick. Everyone will stay clear.”

The streets were deserted. They hurried, but the heat was like a great hand on their chests, a film of sweat on their faces.

Above them the narrow tawny buildings rose, castellated houses and towers, each with a barred wooden door at the base, the windows fixed tight against contagion. The city stank of its own dying, as if it was already a silent graveyard. With a sudden shock Jake recognized it—these were the scribbled towers on the manuscript Sarah had brought—turning a corner he came face-to-face with a statue of a man on horseback.

“Dee,” he whispered

Rebecca was desperately trying to remember all she could about the disease that had wiped out a third of the population of Europe. Had it been spread by fleas? She held the baby tight and slipped between the pools of ordure and tried not even to breathe.

Like a knife-edge of darkness, the shade ended. They came to a small piazza, shimmering in the heat. Opposite it was a gray stone building with a narrow tower. It looked ominous and heavy. Two guards leaned wearily at its single door.

David glanced out, then drew back.

“That's it. The Bargello. Town prison. Take a look up there.”

Jake looked. Two masses of bone and clothing that might once have been bodies hung from a window on the second floor. They turned, slowly, in the rancid air.

“God,” he muttered.

“Il signore's holed up here while the plague is running.” David wiped sweat from his face. He managed a weak grin. “Visited it in 1986 on holiday once. Had an ice cream in a café just about here.” For a moment bewilderment seemed to flicker through him as if he no longer knew where he was. Then he turned back, and stepped out.

They climbed the steps slowly. The guards straightened. “Dottore . . . ?”

“New patient.” He waved at them. “Stand back, well back.”

They couldn't do it fast enough.

Jake, his arms around Becky and the baby, hurried past. He had hoped it would be cooler inside, but the stone chamber led to an open courtyard, with a stair running up the side. David puffed up. “First floor. Hurry.”

They pattered around an open loggia stacked with stores and chests, as if the signore had had all his riches dragged in here too. Ignoring them, David ran into a stone flagged hall, its high windows wide so that the sun made slants of burning molten light across the floor.

“There,” he gasped.

At first Jake didn't see it. Only sculptures. Gods and angels. Great painted chests. A table laden with an unfinished meal.

Then, in a shadowy corner against the marble wall, it leaned like a dark doorway.

The obsidian mirror.

The bird was a speck. It grew slowly, circling toward her, and when it came out with a rush of speed, she drew back with a gasp.

In its beak it held the broken coin.

Sarah held out her hand. The coin was in her palm.

“Now,” the bird said, “don't make the mistake of running off with that. All I have to do is screech and the whole host of the Shee will come crashing in down the chimney and through the walls. I wouldn't like to think what will happen to you afterward.”

She swallowed. “So you threaten as well.”

“If I need to.” It preened a small yellow feather back into place.

Sarah looked at the broken coin. The halved face of the Greek god stared out past her, and she felt a stab of guilt, because she was forgetting them, forgetting the whole horror of that distant bleak future, all that the group had planned, all their sworn friendship, forgetting Cara and Max.