Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) Read online

  They set off after Billy.

  “You still don’t think I can do this, do you?” Richard said.

  “No.”

  Richard was silent a moment. Then he said, low and hurting, “You’ll see.”

  “Quiet,” Norman whispered.

  To his distant surprise, they fell silent immediately.

  They sense it too.

  It? Or them?

  The four men hurried to catch up, lest the sucking darkness consume them again.

  They all moved awkwardly, especially Robert, their backs bent and backsides thrusting out behind them, shuffling at a half crouch along the rough-hewn walls of the warren. Billy’s head fell short a full foot of the ceiling and walked unheeded, striding with inhuman lack of fear. Norman noticed a paring knife held in her grip, not thrust out before her against the darkness, but there, ready.

  Who is this kid? he thought. What could have happened that messed her up this bad?

  His mind turned to the kids back in New Canterbury whom he had schooled. It had been one of the few things he had really enjoyed; none of the kids had expected anything of him. Those children were the first in forty years to be brought up in the safe embrace of community, sheltered by the Alliance from the naked hostility of the wilds.

  What will they think when James and his army show up? When the city is surrounded by ten thousand people looking to kill them and their families? They don’t know what things are really like out there. And that’s where we went wrong: we all forgot. That’s why we’re in this mess.

  Will the kids sense danger? Even when the burning and killing starts, will they even run?

  The thought spurred him to settle a mere step behind Billy. No matter what kind of airy-faerie weirdness they had to endure, he would get back there. Even if only to die alongside them.

  The tunnel walls hardened as they descended the gentle gradient. Overhanging tendrils of milky plant roots withdrew, crumbling soil grew compacted and gravelly, and eventually became solid stone, black as obsidian. By Billy’s light they soon passed yet more torches. Taking one each and feeding off Billy’s flame, they soon had enough light to push back the darkness.

  A little of the gnawing unease receded, fingers of shadow withdrawing from Norman’s flesh and cowering back beyond the halo of their bubble of orange flame, just out of sight. Yet for all the flame’s warmth and the hot stale air down here, the chill nestled in his chest refused to thaw one degree. Instead it grew only stronger with every step they descended, extending down his arms, to the very tips of his fingers.

  All trace of earth vanished and rock took over entirely. The clacking of their footsteps receded away into nothing, consumed by the darkness along with the light.

  Norman abandoned all pretence about grown-ups not believing in monsters. Though he might not have seen them, he felt them out there, drawn to them like moths to a flame, old and strange things waking, semi-conscious, from long slumber to watch them pass by. All the while, they chattered to one another, in tongues inaudible to human ears.

  Norman jerked in fright when a sharp whistle rang out behind him.

  He whirled to see Richard blowing air between his teeth, frozen in a forty-five-degree list to his right. He ignored almost falling when Robert’s bulk collided with him, his lips peeling back.

  Something painted the wall, colour and form plastered over the rough surface of the black rock. Norman squinted and together they leaned in, heads almost pressing together. By their combined light, Norman made out a pair of stick figures drawn in chalk. The eight-legged form of a black spider hanging from a swinging bob—

  A raging thought rocketed through Norman’s head like a siren: Pendulum.

  —and below it, wrapped in chains, the winged form of an angel. No halo, but an angel.

  Norman span in a circle, pressing his torch flush against the ceiling. Jumping and animated by shadow, he caught sight of dozens of similar figures strung out along the length of the tunnel.

  Silhouettes of humanoid forms. Great courts of robed figures, feasting on strange creatures, cheering on fools who danced and capered in their midst. Great armies clashing before castles and fiery chasms. Titans laying waste to Lilliputian micro-cities. Stick figures in death duels, their faces frozen in unending screams of rage and pain.

  They were everywhere.

  “Well, that’s just bloody terrifying,” Lucian growled.

  “Just like the hieroglyphics in the great pyramids,” Richard muttered, his voice threaded with academic fascination.

  You can take the nerd out of the classroom… Norman thought idly, then noticed Billy standing ahead of them, waiting, her eyes expressionless.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  They ceased inspecting the pictographs and turned to her.

  “Don’t ever stop. You’ll start asking questions.” An irritated hitch infected her lip. “And questions always lead to more questions.”

  She turned and left them behind once again, not even glancing at the cave drawings as she descended still farther into the earth.

  Norman decided that was as good advice as any. No more questions. Just get it done.

  They followed the little Irish girl down for another few minutes until Norman began to wonder how deep the tunnel could possibly go. When forks began to appear, leading off into the darkness like a branching artery, his feet screamed for him to stop.

  If we get lost, we’ll never get out. Not if we keep going. Once the torches go out…

  But he kept walking. They all kept walking. Billy’s unhesitating advance drew him on. She didn’t even seem to notice the forks in her path, oblivious to the catacombs under Radden Moor.

  Norman was getting a feel for the connection between them now. Not telepathy nor any other kind of archetypal power of Old World fantasy. It was altogether subtler, a kind of empathy. He couldn’t read her mind any more than he could have moved objects with his thoughts, but he felt her unflinching certainty, coupled with her undercurrent of eternal bafflement.

  She knew the way but had no idea how she knew. She trusted as he trusted.

  They walked in silence, half-choked by air that might not have stirred for centuries, until at last the roof sloped upwards and the men could walk unimpeded. Things seemed to grow fresher, the dark more diffuse. The inaudible chattering in the shadows receded, and the paintings were replaced instead by symbols, or letters—perhaps runes, all painted in vibrant colours. Nothing Norman recognised, nor any picture of ancients’ artistic perfection, but instead the sprawling finger-paint splashes of some manic child.

  Norman blew a long sigh, surprised by a dizzy spell. He felt as though some great pressure had just lifted off his shoulders, one he had been unaware of carrying. They had passed through something not meant for them and come out the other side.

  Norman got his biggest fright yet when Billy stopped in her tracks.

  “What?” he said, unnerved by how thin his voice sounded. “What is it?”

  “Get back if there’s somebody, kid,” Lucian said. “Get behind us.”

  “No.” Billy sounded unsure for a moment, a little distant. Then she cocked her head, turning her ear toward the ceiling.

  Robert made to speak, but she held up a finger sharply.

  They fell silent and still and waited. They shared uncertain glances, their hands braced upon the butts of their precious few guns.

  Then Norman heard it: music.

  Billy turned on her heel to face them and rolled her eyes. “It’s just the Panda Man,” she said. “He’s silly.”

  Then she made off again, striding with purpose, sighing as though a mother on her way to the certain mess of some petulant child.

  “What is that?” Norman said. It was no instrument he could recognise, over which sang a young man’s voice in an accent he couldn’t place, backed by strange electronic screeches and thrums.

  It was like nothing he’d ever heard.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Robert muttered.
“I was five when the End hit, but…”

  “Yes,” Lucian said. “Yes, it is.” A queer grin had spread onto his cheeks. It was strange to see Lucian smile at any time, but this wasn’t even a smile, not quite. It was the face of somebody dredging up something from a place in their mind so hidden and buried that it pushed all their faculties aside as it surfaced. “Never thought I’d hear that again.”

  Then he started laughing, a horrible grating sound that loaned his eyes a half-crazed sheen.

  “What?” Richard said. “What is it?”

  “That,” Lucian said, his gaze lost somewhere in distant memories of the Old World, “is Jimi Hendrix.”

  *

  The tunnel brightened as they made their way. Billy had disappeared ahead, striding off into the darkness, unheeding. Norman hissed her name a few times, but she didn’t stop. Only the receding clack of her footsteps told him she hadn’t simply become one with the void.

  The music grew louder with each step.

  What kind of music is that, anyway? It sounds like… It’s actually pretty good, Norman thought.

  “This… Hendricks, he was a musician Before?” Richard said.

  “Hendrix, with an X,” Lucian whispered. “Before even Agatha’s time. The old Old World.” He gave an odd grunt. “Crap. My dad used to love this song.”

  “Quiet,” Robert said. “There’s light up ahead.”

  He was right. Norman inched forwards, a rusty pistol raised. He had found it amongst the deflated remains of the camp James had vacated; it had most probably only been left because of its poor condition. He doubted it would ever fire.

  But it was all they had.

  Torn between chasing Billy and approaching stealthily, he executed an absurd tiptoed crab-march, advancing with the others bunched up right behind him. The light grew brighter in step with the music until the shadow had all but vanished and Norman’s ears throbbed to the tune’s beat. The tunnel bent at ninety degrees directly ahead; beyond that, he sensed open space, and something else.

  Billy was nowhere in sight. She had already turned the corner.

  “Damn it,” Norman said. If he stopped now, he would only find excuses to keep stalling.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Ready?”

  The others looked anything but, yet they nodded as one, their own unreliable firearms at the ready.

  Norman took a deep breath, over a hundred feet underground with the voice of an Old World rock star drumming in his ears, and stepped around the corner.

  At once, the pistol dropped to his side. Billy stood only a few paces ahead, turned half to him and half to the small cavern that lay spread out before them. She gave a small, wry smile and nodded as though to say It’s okay. He’s with me.

  That certain he stood close to the opposite wall of the rotunda-like cavern. A wiry man jigged back and forth, his back to them, a tall figure with jagged jet-black hair that seemed to defy gravity. Light-footed and animated, he hopped to and fro to the beat. With a theatrical twirl he turned around to face them, revealing alabaster skin, a beautiful young face, and a pair of glowering eyes—the hungry eyes of a man one step removed from humanity. Limber as a newborn, he bounced over the obsidian floor, by the light of a roaring fire at the cavern’s edge, his bottom lip wedged between his incisors. All the while, he jammed away at an imaginary guitar.

  “Who’s this idiot?” Lucian grunted.

  “Looks pale. His eyes… What’s wrong with him?” Richard said.

  Robert said nothing but moved to stand a little in front of Billy, eyes wary in his boulder-like head.

  Norman noted their reactions only subconsciously. His vision had narrowed down to total blackness bar the dancing figure before them; one he recognised as the man who had appeared in his dreams. Dreams of a city, a storm; the night he lost his parents and received the scar upon his head. The man with dark streaks under his eyes. “You,” he muttered.

  Mr Hendrix’s voice faded, going out on a long hanging vocal, and the man dropped to his knees, strumming his imaginary guitar, his eyes closed in bliss and his head bobbing. On the final violent note he gave an equally violent jerk, using its momentum to ascend to his feet and spread his arms. “Man, that boy could sing!” he cried.

  His voice died down in a cascade of returning echoes from the myriad tunnel forks, descending into a ringing silence so loud Norman thought he might have gone deaf.

  Then the man with the dark streaks under his eyes laughed, cutting through Norman to the cold in his chest, which shivered like a well-trained pet. “Friends, welcome,” the man cried. He turned to Billy and gave a small, ironic bow. “Madam.”

  Billy stared at him with eyes like shards of ice. “Don’t play games,” she said.

  He regarded her a moment, still half-bent. His eyes flicked away from Billy to the rest of them. A hint of amusement lurked behind his wolfish gaze. “She’s a card, isn’t she?”

  None of them replied.

  “Billy?” Norman said without taking his gaze away from their host.

  “This is the Panda Man,” she said.

  The man’s lip curled a tad, a chink in his polished exterior.

  Norman frowned, this time looking at Billy. She shrugged in reply, running her fingers under her own eyes to signify the streaks.

  Behind Norman, Richard laughed, the high unstable twitter of a man who accepts what he sees on the express understanding that he stands at insanity’s door.

  The stranger cleared his throat. “My name is Fol, of Highcourt,” he said. “I come at the behest of some rather powerful characters.”

  Norman sensed the others stiffen. Lucian’s hand locked around his upper arm. Hammers being cocked back flashed on the edge of audibility. Norman turned his head a little, shook it minutely, and after a pause the hand fell away. “Just wait, let’s hear him out,” he muttered.

  The man waited politely, then straightened and gestured to the fireside where enough chairs for them—exactly the right number—sat arranged around a partner’s desk. How anybody could have lumbered the great slab of mahogany down through the tunnel was anybody’s guess. Emblazoned upon it, cast-iron and ancient, was the seal of a swinging pendulum.

  Fol, of Highcourt, waggled his eyebrows. “Please, won’t you join me for a little chinwag? I think some answers are long overdue.”

  III

  New Canterbury lay in shadow. High above, pigeons wheeled in flocks belittling anything the city’s inhabitants had ever seen—since the day of the End when the skies had been thick with every winged being. Circling the city in undulating formation, the birds were joined by yet more from all directions. Throbbing and wheeling, the flock cast dancing shadows down onto one of the last standing cities of the Old World. Below, many of its people watched, mesmerised, from their rooftop hides; others kept their eyes resolutely on the ground, their faces drawn into masks of doom.

  Sarah Strong spied them all, perched atop her house’s roof, curled like a gargoyle with one hand clutching the open window frame.

  A distant remnant of her old self, from before all this—the gawky librarian who had laid down for everything and hid from the world behind her books—gibed, You must look like Quasimodo, hunched up here. Who the hell do you think you are? They look to you? You’re nobody. You can’t do this.

  She silenced the voice with a shrug of her shoulders as though shaking off a fly. “Shut up,” she muttered under her breath and returned to scanning the city.

  The cathedral with all its myriad intricate spires stood to her right, a paragon of Old World might, buzzing with half the city’s populace. Anybody who couldn’t fight had by now either barricaded themselves into their homes like shivering gophers, or they had fled to their place of worship.

  Elder Agatha had taken in hundreds who had seldom visited a pew all their lives. She had defied all expectations by emerging from the depths of dementia. Nobody had expected to see her alert again after Christmas when the famine had hit its peak. But the surge of people c
rawling through her doors had rallied her.

  Sarah thanked her for that, even if her guts twisted at its necessity. Those who had gone north to find help had done so over a week ago. Too long.

  The birds had circled overhead for the past few days, and a definite sense of finality had come with them. They all knew something was coming—and that their only real hope was to throw everything they had at whatever appeared in their midst. Nobody was stupid enough to suggest they could win. But if even some of them were going to survive this, they had to fight.

  “Bastards,” she muttered, watching yet more able-bodied people retreat from the pigeons into the cathedral.

  Two voices warred behind her eyes:

  A few days ago you would have been down there with them.

  But I’m not. I’m here. I’m making a stand.

  Not everyone can fight. Not everybody wants to.

  There’s no room for that in this world. We fight or we die.

  Some prefer death.

  Then that’s exactly what they’ll get.

  She pulled her gaze away from the cathedral and turned to the street to her left. Some semblance of relief came to her as she watched a group of militia heave on a rope looped around a pulley, lifting a motor car into the air. A few beefy men guided the floating chassis out over a barricade already two cars deep. Across the entire northern edge of the portion of the city they occupied, other pockets of militia completed similar blockades.

  My militia, she reminded herself.

  It caught her off-kilter: that she, of all people, could have mustered a guerrilla army in a matter of weeks. It was absurd, and for a moment that very fact sliced a chunk off her confidence, leaving a small hole through which doubt came rushing in like the tide.

  What if I’m the wrong one? What if I’m just giving them false hope?

  A small, younger voice from much deeper down: What if I can’t be brave when the time comes?

  She waited for that other, calloused voice to reply. None came.

  She forced herself not to chew her lip.

  “They moved fast.”

  Sarah whirled whip-like, drawing her pistol from her belt and training it upon the newcomer. It was clumsy and unpolished—she hadn’t so much as held a gun a few weeks ago—but all the intent was there; every mote of willpower trained upon pulling that trigger.