Kill Fish Jones (31 page)

Beyond that he saw the sea, its restless waves boiled to vapour, and the mountains torn down from their
heights, the clouds gone and the deep blue sky turned to fire. He saw the underground cathedral as it crumbled, its columns and shining rocks shaken into dust. And he saw the jungle, its hidden cities torn apart, the monkeys burned to cinders. The tree that he had rested in flaming against the dark sky, and the leopards … the beautiful leopards … cowering as fire found them and stripped their lovely coats from their bones. And last he saw the monster in the lake, no longer vast and dark and powerful, no longer even bone and flesh, just so much ash in a world of ashes.

Watching the destruction, the pain of loss filled Grimshaw up so completely he felt something break inside him. All that incredible beauty, all that fierce and savage grace swept away in a torrent of fire. Beside that pain, the disgrace of the lost chronometer, of having Survivors, all that was nothing. Not worth a tear, let alone the world. And what was the admiration of other demons when he could have the delight of visiting Real Space? Even the memories, the knowledge that the world was there, was worth an eternity of respect from the likes of Hanhut and Tun.

Tears pouring down his face, Grimshaw stared in horror as he saw what the Mighty Curse would do to the Earth he had unknowingly come to love. He saw it as it would soon become. The sky filled with boiling clouds, the sun shrouded from a world without even the smallest, tiniest living thing to stir in its grey dust. He saw the darkest of nights and he was its creator.

Grimshaw opened his eyes again.

‘NO!' he howled. And began to run towards the Mighty Curse.

Alice screamed as the earth shook, the banks of the tarn splitting apart as the force of the Mighty Curse rose beneath them. Stones and earth and the shreds of trees fell like hail around her. There was one last ear-shattering roar and then, suddenly, she felt the shaking grow less violent. She lay for a moment, gasping for breath, her heart hammering and her face smeared with dirt and tears.

But the cracking of wood and the tumble of soil was definitely slowing, and when she was brave enough to peer up at the sky she could see the clouds already growing lighter.

Pulling herself to her feet, Alice didn't try to stop the tears running down her face. She was trembling with fear and misery as she gazed around. The wreckage of trees, shrubs and fallen earth clogged the tarn. Most of the water had boiled away and its banks were no longer steep. Above, the wheeling flocks had broken up and the heavy clouds were dissolving as quickly as they had come. Even as she turned her head to look, the sun appeared, bathing the ruined heath in warmth and light. It made her cry all the harder.

Fish was dead. He had to be. The Mighty Curse had been woken and now it was asleep again, and it would take a life to bring that about. Fish's life.

Alice drew in a shuddering breath and wiped her face on her sleeve. Although she knew he must be gone, somehow she couldn't give up just yet. Going to the very edge of Menga's Tarn, she threw back her head and called his name, putting every ounce of breath she had into the shout.

‘FISH!
FISH!
'

Her voice echoed on the air, and it seemed to her that everything was suddenly still and silent, listening. Overhead, the sun grew stronger and the sky began to turn that particular blue that is the colour of infinity.

‘Fish?' said Alice again, her attention caught by a small sound. ‘FISH!'

She began the scramble down through the rubble of split trunks and torn branches, catching her clothes and hair on their twisted fingers as she went.

All around Fish was absolute darkness. Trembling, he lay in the suffocating heat and dust, unable to see and hearing nothing but the uneven thud of his heart.

The last thing he had seen before the Mighty Curse had stopped its destruction and had sunk back into the pit, dragging its fire and death with it, had been the demon, bounding towards him. He had felt the softness of light paws on his head as it used him for a springboard to leap the fissure, soaring through the air as gracefully as a cat and landing on the edge of the pit. The creature's soft voice echoed around the cavern, cutting through the sounds of destruction, as it cried out, ‘Take me, and let the world live!'

It took one more bound, its twisted shape silhouetted for a second against the fiery light, and then it was gone, plunging into the heart of the abyss.

The demon had done what Fish couldn't do – it had sacrificed itself to the Mighty Curse as Elonia had done all those years ago. It had sent the Mighty Curse back to sleep again.

All Fish remembered after that was a sound like immense stones grinding deep in the heart of the Earth and a roaring wind that howled through the cavern as the Mighty Curse retreated. The gale had nearly taken him too, but he had clung on to anything he could, grazing his fingers to the bone. And then it was over and silence and darkness had swarmed back into the cavern, encasing Fish in a rocky tomb.

He gasped, trying to calm the panic rising inside him. The Mighty Curse was gone and the world was safe, for now at least, but Fish wasn't. He could still die here in the caves under Menga's Tarn. Exhausted and shaken to his core, Fish was too terrified to move in the darkness in case he fell into the torn rock around him. Suddenly, he raised his head and listened, straining every nerve to hear. There had definitely been something. A shout, maybe. It was faint, very faint and muffled, filtering down from the outside world, but it was a shout all right. It was Alice!

Her voice gave him the strength he needed to move and, slowly, Fish began to inch towards the sound, or at least to where he thought the sound was coming from. He hadn't inched far when he felt a soft touch on his skin, cooling his scraped and battered limbs. Air. Now he began to move in earnest, ignoring the pain that gripped every muscle. Eagerly, he started the long crawl up the slope to freedom.

In Limbo, the news was already spreading.

Tun raised his hot-coal eyes to the grey sky. There was madness in them. He breathed in the air, smelling once again the stale aroma of old socks. Below him, the city of London lay spread out like a grey plaster model that nobody could be bothered to paint. The details (such as they were in Limbo) had come back, and the fiddly bits on the Houses of Parliament were all in their proper places. Parts of the last plane remained scattered across the streets, and the traffic was still oddly placed, but otherwise everything looked as dull and useless as normal.

‘This is it, then,' he murmured softly, although there was nobody there to hear. ‘All that is left to me. Forever.' If anyone had been there they would have seen his night-black form tremble.

He stood for a while, thinking about Grimshaw, the Avatar who had done what no Avatar had ever done before and whose name would go down in the long halls of curse-demon history as the One Who Died.

‘Death,' Tun shook his head. ‘How can an Avatar die?!' He gave a deep-throated laugh full of crazy pain, then drew in a long, shuddering breath and pulled himself firmly together.

‘Still, fantastic things do happen. Reminds me of the time I faced Ugrith Ombre, the most terrible of all the House …'

He fell silent and looked around at the emptiness. He frowned. After a long pause, he considered his options.
They were very few. Then, with a huge sigh, he pulled out his chronometer, aligned the carvings for the Lock-Out Club and pressed send.

Far above him and away to the east, so high in the sky that the land below was just a pattern, Lady grabbed Flute by the hands and spun her around in the air, both shrieking with joyful laughter. Rage watched them for a moment, her arms folded and a look of satisfaction on her face. The Sisters' job was to teach the Wanderers to die properly, and that was fine, but a curse demon? That was better than fine, that was a miracle! Right now, the Sisters of Gladness were very glad indeed.

Unlike Lampwick. In the shadowy depths of the crypt, he cleared his throat nervously. Being Grimshaw's Architect, Lampwick had been one of the first to get the news of his Avatar's death. He was still trying to get a grip on it.

‘Dead!' he muttered, filling his voice with scorn. ‘I'll show him dead!'

Nothing said anything by way of reply. The silence went on for a while.

‘Hrmph.' Lampwick drew himself up and projected his voice. ‘I Conjure Thee, Come!' Suddenly, for the first time ever in saying those words, he felt a little silly.

There was silence. Nothing came.

‘Curses don't get broken just like that, you know,' he grumbled.

Again, nothing said anything by way of reply. The silence went on for a while longer.

‘Ahem.' Lampwick looked around into the shadows, noticing for the first time how very shadowy they were. ‘Grimshaw?'

He clambered off his coffin and lurched around the crypt. Then he lurched round again. Then he cocked an ear towards the doorway.

‘Hello? Is … is anybody there? Grimshaw, is that you?' Lampwick's voice wavered.

There was no reply. Lampwick felt a coldness gather in his heart. The silence went on for a long time.

A very long time.

At the bottom of the dip, Alice saw a wide crack in the rocky earth and a hand. The hand groped towards the sound of her voice and she grabbed it, scrabbling in the mud to find more of him. She heaved and pulled Fish through the gap until he slid out, covered in mud and blood and popping from the gluey silt like a cork out of a bottle. Then she hauled him up the slope to a dry bank of earth and let him sit and gasp in the fresh air.

While Fish got his breath back, Alice tried to wipe some of the mud from his face with her sleeve. It wasn't a great success. As well as dirty, he was torn and ragged, and through the rags she could see five pale marks running across his chest and arm, like the trace of scars from a clawed paw. She shivered, knowing that he must have fought the demon hand to hand. It hadn't cut the skin, but it had left its mark just the same.

‘I thought you were dead! How did you stop the Mighty Curse? I mean, you were the only one down there to stop it. Apart from the demon, that is …' She peered at him. ‘Was it the demon? Why? Why would it do that? Why would it go to all those lengths to kill you and then give its life to stop what it had done?'

Fish shook his head.

‘I get it – we'll never know!' Alice scanned his face for a long time, then settled next to him, pulling him over so that he could lean against her and rest. She smiled.

‘We'll sit a while and then go back to the cottage. We can sort you out and you can rest. Then, by tonight, my mum'll be here, and she can get us home tomorrow.'

Fish glanced at her. There was a look on Alice's face that he hadn't seen before, or at least that he had seen shadows of and thought was the real thing, but now knew better. Alice was happy.

‘Mum'll find us, she's good at stuff like that. She can find her way round anything. And she'll bring food and things with her too. She's good at planning.'