A Dusk of Demons Read online

  I looked for a side street or alley but none was visible, and I remembered thinking how far the dreary facade had stretched on our way in. When a gap did present itself it merely marked a drainage stream, guarded by a low stone parapet. The alarm must have been raised by now. I scrambled over the coping and slid down a slope. The base of the bridge was visible from the backs of the houses, but there was a culvert that offered concealment.

  The stream was rain-swollen but had been higher. I squatted in mud, head pressed against a slimy brick ceiling, and waited for my heart to stop pounding. Minutes after I had taken up my position, it pounded more heavily as hooves hammered the road above me.

  I watched the narrow torrent flooding into the culvert. A twig was carried swiftly toward me, and as swiftly past to whatever destination chance might propose. I wondered if Paddy’s fate, or my own, was any less random or inevitable. I had come a long way from the kitchen on Old Isle and my childish conviction that there was no misfortune Mother Ryan could not put right.

  My earlier complacency in thinking time was on our side mocked me. Although I, for the moment, was free, Paddy was a prisoner, facing an imminent and hideous death. Even if I knew just where she was being held, what hope was there of saving her? What chance did I stand against the General and his guards—still more against the Demons?

  Mordecai had taught me that growing up meant learning things. Some things had to be accepted, but accepting defeat had not been part of his lessons. When I left, he had given me his gun. I remembered how he had instructed me in its use—saw again a flight of duck winging a twilit sky, his body turning in a matching arc, the double crack as he fired . . . and a feathered stone falling to earth. The image stirred something in my mind, at which I clutched desperately. Birds rode the sky. I felt a twitch of hope, and of excitement. And so did Demons!

  I tried to estimate the distance to the spot where I had ditched the gun. It had taken about an hour to reach the camp, less than half that for the journey into town. It should be possible to manage the round trip in under four hours. The Summoning would be at dusk, but the Demons did not come back until some hours later. I had time to do it, if I wasted none.

  • • •

  Despite the best haste I could make, there were delays and setbacks. When I left the road to avoid the camp and its sentries, picking it up again was frustrated by tangles of brush that meant time-consuming backtracking. The sky was rapidly darkening. In the dusk I sought landmarks, and several times imagined I was nearing my objective only to be disappointed. At one stage I took cover from what I thought was an approaching force. It proved to be a herd of wild goats, which stampeded when they scented me and bowled me over as they sped away. I thought I’d broken a leg, or badly sprained it, but the pain eased as I hobbled on.

  I realized I had overshot my mark when the ruined cottage took shape in the gloom. Retracing my steps, I tried to work out how far we had gone before the second lot of horsemen surprised us. It wasn’t easy. I came to the place where the brambles ended, and it occurred to me that I might not have thrust the gun far enough into them to deceive a keen eye. It might not be there any longer.

  I plucked away swags, which swung back stingingly, and peered into the tangle behind. If only there were a moon . . . but the clouds held it prisoner. As Paddy was.

  How long had this quest lasted? It was full dark; the Summoning must be over. The square would be empty, citizens shut up in their houses, only Paddy left, bound, to await the Demons’ return. Despondency overwhelmed me. Even if I had the gun and got back with it before they came, what in fact could I do to save her? Demons might fly like birds, but that did not mean they could be struck out of the sky. Everyone knew they were creatures of the moon: No earthly power could touch them.

  With a numbed heart I contemplated the folly that had brought me here. There was nothing I could do to save Paddy, and I had been fooling myself in imagining it.

  On the other hand, I was only a few hours from the crossroads where we had left the gypsies. I could catch up with them in a matter of days. Mordecai would ease the pain of thinking about Paddy. He would tell me I had done what I could, and help me bear the misery of failing her. I imagined telling him and tried to imagine his response. But that scene would not come alive. Instead I heard his voice, on a windy day with sun and cloud chasing one another’s tails and a smell of rain: “Everything you do has to be thought through aforehand—careful and clear and honest.”

  And now a question stabbed me like a dagger: What are you really doing here?

  My reasoning had seemed straightforward: The gun would give me a chance to save Paddy from the Demons. But what had I overlooked? The answer came, sharp and bitter. Johnson had told me that people looked for places of safety once the victim was in the Chair. The square was left deserted. So if instead of this futile search I had found a hiding place in the town, I could have simply gone back and cut her free. And in fact I had found one: in the culvert.

  “Careful and clear and honest” . . . I had been none of them, but especially not honest. Even a moment ago I had been looking to Mordecai to ease my conscience. That had been no better than self-pity, and despicable. But there was worse to contemplate. I had run away from the town, telling myself my aim was to return and rescue her. At the back of my mind, had I been thinking all along of heading for Mordecai and safety? Had I been running from something I dared not face, though Paddy must?

  There was blackness inside as well as out. I threw myself into the brambles, arms flailing, not sure if I was looking for the gun or for pain to ease the sharper anguish of remorse. But I scarcely felt the thorns that tore my skin—and then my hand touched something cold and hard.

  I drew out the gun and held it. It would not help, nor could I. But there was only one road I could possibly take. I started running toward the town, with something worse than Demons at my back.

  • • •

  At one point the moon came out and briefly rode a gulf between silvered clouds. Looking up as I ran, I wondered if the Demons were on the way from their cold white home, black wings flapping as they headed for their helpless victim. I almost thought I saw dots moving against the brightness, before the clouds closed up again.

  I tripped and fell, stumbling on the unlit road, and later lost the road altogether and was obliged to trace a hard way back. I did not bother to make a detour of the camp and saw no sign of sentries; perhaps they too had hidden themselves. The town was silent when I reached it, empty apart from a prowling cat, only thin gleams of light showing behind closed shutters.

  The square was quiet also. Approaching the tower I had a numbing fear that the Demons might have already come, and gone. I called Paddy’s name, quietly and then louder. This time she answered weakly. I reached the Chair and saw her hand try to move against her bonds.

  Wasting no time in words I felt for the ropes, which were thick and tightly knotted. I found my knife and sawed at the nearest strand. It was a slow business, and after it had parted she seemed no less securely held. In daylight I could have sought a key rope to sever, but in the dark could only tackle them as I found them. Paddy cried out once, when the blade slipped, but whispered, “No—don’t stop . . .”

  It was a relief when the darkness began to lessen: I could see the strand I was working on more clearly. The moon, I thought, breaking through again. But the light became brighter, and brighter still, and looking up I saw it was not the moon.

  An illumination was spreading out from the top of the tower. It looked beautiful and innocent, a silvery path of wonder, but with cowering heart I knew just what it was, and to what horror that radiance would give birth. Paddy knew too: I heard her moan.

  It started as a single dot of jet in the center of the brightness. The dot swelled, and budded, and opened like a flower, but the flower was a rotting face. Individual features showed clear—jagged bloody tooth, crumbling nose, baleful dripping eye—but the whole was a festering mess of corruption. I had seen it before, or s
omething very like it, at Summonings. But here it was bigger and closer, and the dripping eye was fixed on me.

  Attached to the face was a body of equal foulness, sprouting boneless arms and clawed hands. I shrank away as the talons stabbed down at me, and the knife dropped from my nerveless fingers. Just when I was sure the claws must reach and rip me, the Demon swerved away. But a second had grown behind the first, and a third and fourth.

  The howling had begun too, without words but full of hate and the promise of torment and death. It was many-voiced: The radiance had spawned more monsters than I could count and went on spawning more. They writhed in a snakelike tangle across the sky, weaving ghastly patterns from which individual fiends plunged down, each descent more terrifying than the last. Like cats with mice, it was a dance that must end in death. The patterns narrowed and converged toward the spot where I crouched in terror.

  Brain and breast and bowels seemed on the point of bursting. I was gripped by an urge to run, though knowing I could not outrun them. Paddy moaned again, and I saw her in the stark light, bound and powerless.

  It was not courage which stopped me fleeing, for I had none left. It was despair rather, and the bitter realization that I could not betray her a second time. As the next Demon swooped and its screeching drilled my ears, I fumbled for the gun. Blindly still, I found cartridges, broke open the breech, and pushed them into place. Somehow I got the gun to my shoulder and fired.

  For an instant the explosion blotted out all other sound, but from its echoes the howling rose again . . . and the faces were coming still, and the clawing hands. But how could it have been otherwise—how could anything fashioned by man even touch a creature from the moon? Mordecai had mocked at Demons, but Mordecai had not seen them as I saw them now.

  Looking up at the chimney’s top etched against the light, I recalled the words of his mockery. “I’ve seed a sight of high places but never a Demon’s nest . . . it’s as though they’re reserved special for sassenachs . . .”

  They come out from tops of mills, he had said, or old chimney stacks, or tall masts. “A Demon’s nest . . .” Could it mean such places were their aeries, that it was there they lived and not in the distant moon? It made no difference—if Demons were invulnerable, their nests must be too—but I still had a barrel loaded. Despair and hatred joined hands. Not blindly now but with cold purpose I lifted the gun, took aim on the chimney’s top, and squeezed the trigger.

  A second time the echoes of the explosion died, but this time into an aching silence. I looked at an empty sky, where the only light was from the moon, cruising a quiet sea between coasts of cloud. Sounds followed then, but no more than the clatter of falling fragments of brick and stone.

  “What happened?” Paddy asked faintly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Cut me loose?”

  I retrieved the knife and set to work. It wasn’t long before the last strand parted, and I could help her out of the Demons’ Chair.

  • • •

  We took the road that led most directly north. Our progress was not swift: Paddy was stiff and limped, from having been tied up. We did not speak. There could be ears behind the shutters of the houses we passed, tongues to wag next morning.

  The town seemed to stretch even further in this direction, but at last we reached open country. The only signs of life were reclining cattle, breathing silvery plumes into the moonlight. When something ran across the road in front of us, Paddy asked “What was that?” in curiosity rather than alarm.

  “Charlie Fox,” I said, “looking for breakfast.”

  She said with feeling, “I could do with some. The women said food would only be wasted on Demon fodder.”

  I asked, “Why were you condemned?”

  “You were there.”

  “But before that. You scratched Ramsay, didn’t you? I saw the marks on his face.” Paddy shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” It would be useless to persist, and I did not really want to. I told her about escaping from Johnson and going back for the gun. Knowing her gift for fastening on weak spots, I thought she might ask me why I’d thought that was a sensible idea, and didn’t know what to say if she did. Though in fact, and in a way I still could not understand, the gun had saved us. But she picked on another point.

  “You fired twice. The first shot didn’t work.”

  I explained that I’d aimed the second barrel not at the Demons but at their nest.

  “I don’t see why that should make a difference.” I had no answer. After a pause, she said, “Do you think they’ll come back—the Demons?”

  “No. They’ve gone. They won’t come back.”

  I wished I were as confident as I hoped I sounded. The fact that I had shattered their nest and made them vanish meant they were less omnipotent than the landsmen believed. Had Mordecai and the Master been right about them all along? And yet despite what had happened, I could not credit it. With daylight there was certain to be pursuit and, if we were recaptured, another condemnation. I feared what would happen after that as much as ever. I wondered if they would rope us in the Chair together, or whether one of us would have to wait.

  • • •

  When moonlight faded into the new day, it showed a forest stretching as far as the eye could see. Not long after that, I noticed, to the west of the road, a pattern of lines within the tangle of green. While we were traveling with the gypsies we had encountered traces of the old times, before the Madness: mounds which had been houses, great masses where a town had stood. One area had stretched for several miles; it was hard to comprehend the number of people who must have lived there.

  I had seen this pattern before too, and Mordecai had identified it as the relic of an orchard and pointed to fruits still growing, generations after the people who planted them had vanished.

  “Over there,” I said. “Apples?”

  They were small, but red and crisp and sweet. We forced a way through the brush and ate till we were full. Afterwards I flopped on a patch of grass for a rest and was awakened by Paddy shaking me.

  “I wasn’t asleep,” I lied. “And a minute or two will make no difference.”

  “The sun’s up.” She pointed. “They’ll have found the Chair empty by now.”

  So we trudged on. Later we came on another vestige of the past in a shattered arch that must have been part of a bridge, and then a continuous succession of humps and ridges which told us we were crossing the ruins of a town. A tangle of creepers half concealed a tilting pole, and while I was wondering what purpose it might have served, my eye picked up a dazzle of light ahead. Rain had brought about a slippage, exposing old stone. The reflection was from a window that still held glass, for the most part unbroken: small colored panels forming a design. I remembered the ship in the window of the Master’s house, and stopped to study it.

  The window was in a building more than half buried; this would have been an upper section. Slabs of gray stone were shattered in places, but otherwise fitted close together. I found an opening, clearly the entrance to a badger sett, but the slippage had enlarged it and created a tunnel wide enough to admit me.

  As I edged in, Paddy protested: “There’s no time . . .”

  I called back, hearing my voice echo, “I just want to have a look. And if anyone did come, we’d be out of sight.”

  Inside it was very dark, the only light that filtered by the colored glass. I could see details more clearly from this side—there was a bearded face, an upraised hand, and a woolly lamb which strangely had a ribbon around its neck and a cross hanging from it. I supposed it must have meant something to our ancestors.

  As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I made out stone pillars and panels of crumbling wood. There was a smell of badger, but no other sign: They would be deep inside their burrow at this time. A cloud crossed the sun outside, and the light dimmed.

  When it brightened again, I noticed something else: a carved wooden figure, almost life-size, of a man, the lower part bur
ied in rubble but the upper free. He had a post behind him, and his outstretched arms were fixed to crosspieces. His chest was bare and there was a band of thorns around his head.

  Paddy had followed me in. She whispered, “Who’s that?” I shook my head. “Is he meant to be alive or dead?”

  “Dead.” I looked at the face which looked toward the light. “No, alive.” I looked again. “I’m not sure.”

  “There’s writing on the wall, up there.” It was in gold letters. Paddy read out haltingly, “ ‘God so . . . loved the world . . .’ I can’t make out the rest.”

  “What do you think it means?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. What could it mean? It’s not what the Summoners say. But if they were wrong . . . perhaps there need not be Demons?”

  • • •

  Toward the end of the morning the road became uphill, the gradient slight at first but rapidly turning steeper. We argued about resting: I was for getting off the road, Paddy for continuing. The further we got from the town, the less chance there was of being found. I said we had surely traveled far enough, but she shook her head and we plodded on.

  As the road continued to climb, the woods thinned and finally gave way to heather-covered moorland. The sun was well down from its zenith, but it was hot still. We sweated, and dust from our scuffing feet painted us white. I pointed out that Paddy’s hideous black dress—she said she would never again tolerate even a single black button—was black no longer, but she wasn’t amused. I felt tired but somehow lighthearted. She had been right to insist on pressing on. I had no idea where we would find shelter for the night, but we must be safe by now.

  A pace or two ahead, I was aware of her stopping and looked back. She was looking back herself.

  “It’s them.”

  Her voice was flat. Behind us the chalky ribbon of road led to the distant emerald stain of the forest; ahead it divided the emptiness of the moorland to an even more distant horizon. And about a mile back, white dust rising against the blue sky signified horsemen: a dozen of them, maybe more.