The Choir Boats (36 page)

Jambres reared his sculpted head at this last characterization
but said nothing.

Figs and farthings
, thought Barnabas.
Snakey bastard has a point.
Damn it, how I wish Sedgewick were here to help us out. Friends aren’t
acting so friendly, and foes might be friends, or at least not enemies
.

“By the Mother,” said the Arch-Dean. “Key-bearer, do your duty,
perform under your contract, and open the third lock — there, on
the door!”

Barnabas took out the key. All eyes were on it. He went to the
door. The Arch-Dean pointed to the top lock. Barnabas put the key
in the lock.

“For the last time,” said the Cretched Man. “Do not turn the key.
It is not the Nurturing Mother who will appear. She will slumber
still. It is not time. The door must remain shut.”

Thought fragments raced through Barnabas’s mind:
Cretched
fellow seems sincere . . . but what about that dog with human hands, hey?
And kidnapping Tom? . . . Tom? He tells me to heed his kidnapper . . .
Bedlam! . . . But Tom is only a lad, what can he know? . . . Of course, so was
I when I went out to Bombay, and then I thought myself a man. . . .

“Bah!” yelled the Arch-Dean. “Turn the key! Fulfill your
contract!”

Contract
, thought Barnabas.
A sacred thing is a contract. Man’s
word is his bond, and I gave mine, and I have never reneged before . . . no,
once I did . . . and she must have cursed me forever for doing so, and I do
not blame her . . . Oh Rehana, what I did was without excuse . . . I cannot
fail again, with people who trust me as my Rehana did. . . .

Barnabas turned the key in the lock. “Click,” went the key, as if
he were merely opening a drawer in the partners’ office.

“The doorknob,” said the Arch-Dean. A sigh, hoarse like winter
wind and pointed like obsidian arrowheads, went up from all the
Sacerdotes. Barnabas put his hand on the doorknob. It was very cold.
He sensed a presence on the other side, something huge, ancient,
and cruel, an immanity that had not been there until he turned the
key. He took his hand off the knob.

“Don’t do it,” said the Cretched Man.

“The knob!” cried the Arch-Dean.

Barnabas saw a red sun and the lithe brown body of Rehana and
smelled her rich, black hair — and he saw himself bowing down to
his uncle’s threats.

He grasped the doorknob. The humming he’d heard when he took
the key out of the box at Mincing Lane was in his head, but faintly. The
notes were undermined and overwhelmed by a bass “whooooming”
sound that seeped through the door from whatever was on the other
side. Barnabas fought the sound and turned the knob.

The Arch-Dean and several of his colleagues shouldered their way
past Barnabas and the Cretched Man, and began pushing the door
into the moon. The door opened one foot, two feet, three feet. With
each foot, the deep thrumming from within the moon on the other
side grew louder. A cold wind flowed from the doorway. It raced out
into the temple, scurried through the debris on the floor, tossed
soldiers’ hats off, made the clocks chime for the first time in over
a century. The Learned Doctors heaved on the door. It flew open.
Wind roared out, knocking everyone but Jambres to their feet. The
wind subsided but something else came out of the moon, a darkness
that looked like Original Night. The doorway was entirely dark now,
black with an absence of light. The wind died abruptly. The temple
was silent except for the distant sound of wind and surf outside.

In the blackness that was the door in the temple-moon something
moved, a dot of blazing white that sped towards the onlookers. As
if coming from an immense distance yet covering that distance
in seconds, the shape flew at the door, its whiteness shearing the
darkness, not illuminating it. Out of the doorway flew a white owl
with two streaming pendant-tails. Its eyes flamed yellow, with
endlessly black pupils. Its beak was sharper than any sword ever
forged in Damascus. The owl flew out of the doorway, growing larger
once it crossed the threshold until it was ten feet tall. It circled the
dome once and then hovered in the middle of the temple. Above its
head was a bit of the darkness from beyond the door, a halo of Old
Night.

“HOOOOOOOOOooooooo!!!!” it boomed, so that dust fell from
the roof and the clock-chimes echoed. Everyone but Jambres and
Sally shielded their eyes, cowered on the floor. Jambres’s ventricular
coat pulsed. His face was frozen. Sally struggled against her fear
(“Sankt Jakobi, Sankt Nicolae . . .”) and forced herself to stand.
James did it for me on the Essex
, she thought.
I can do this for Tom.

Without realizing it, she also had in mind Reglum throwing himself
on the carkodrillos.

“NO!” screamed the owl, making itself heard in their native
tongues in every head in the temple. The soldiers posted outside
dropped their weapons and stood rooted to the ground, arms slack,
with their minds filled by the image of themselves as small furry
creatures hopelessly fleeing death from above.

“No,” said the owl, its vast wings effortlessly milling to and fro,
wingtips sweeping the row of pillars around the moon on the pedestal.
The wind had ceased to flow from the doorway but the wind created
by the owl’s wings washed over them all. It smelled of offal.

The Arch-Dean raised his head to see the creature. “By . . . by the
Mother,” he whispered.

“No,” said the owl. “She sleeps until her time of waking comes.
That has not come because you have not completed your obligations.
This you know yet you elected to pursue folly.”

The owl laughed, then boomed, “You try to break your yoke and
tear off your bonds. You declare, ‘We will not serve!’”

Jambres stirred for the first time, and said in a low, controlled
voice, “Someone else said that in another time and place.”

The owl, seeming to take notice of the Cretched Man for the first
time, turned its sulfurous eyes on Jambres.

“YOOOOOOoooouuuu!” it hooted.

It laughed again its laughter of scythes, and said, “Of all mortals,
you should know better than to quote these words back to me, who
was there to first hear them spoken.”

Jambres did not shrink but said, “Yet my observation holds.”

“BAAAAAAHHHH!” boomed the owl. “Do not bandy words
with me, gatekeeper! Once more you have failed. You have neither
educated these sinners to their penance nor kept them sequestered
until they have grown enough to reach enlightenment. I fault them
less than you, warden, since they only act within the ambit of their
limitations, while you . . . you have had far longer to reach the
maturity of reflection necessary for your redemption.”

Jambres’s coat flared but he said naught.

“The
fajet-tindo
,” whispered the Arch-Dean, not sure if he meant
the Cretched Man or the owl. “The Serpent of Rebellion.”

The owl swept the temple with his gaze.

“HEEEEED me,” it said. “You have not fully repented. Your
flowers are ungathered in the grass. Your books are not yet written
in full. Do not attempt to open the door again.”

The owl flew backwards, like a bee leaving a flower, floating back
to the doorway.

“You, warden,” the owl said to Jambres. “Come with me. You need
another lesson in how to execute your duties.”

Tom looked up at those words, looked right at the Cretched
Man. The Cretched Man’s coat rippled, as if being annealed. Rigidly
beautiful, Jambres walked towards the door. Behind him Billy Sea-Hen and Tat’head and the other Minders stood up and walked in the
same direction. Jambres stopped, turned and shook his head. Billy
Sea-Hen just smiled (Tom saw that plainly), shrugged, and walked
forward. When all five Minders had reached Jambres, the Cretched
Man turned and together they strode beneath the owl’s whirring
wings and one by one passed through the door.

“No!” shouted Tom, lurching to his feet, staggering to the base
of the pedestal.

Billy was the last in the line. He turned at the sound of Tom’s
voice, winked, tipped his hat and then was obliterated by the
darkness. For one second, Tom thought he saw a small glowing coal
out beyond the door, but then it too was extinguished by the dark.

Sally ran to Tom. Behind them, Barnabas hobbled to his feet.
Below them, Sanford and Fraulein Reimer yelled. The owl looked
down. Sally thought she saw surprise in its eyes but, she added to
herself,
Who can tell with such beings?
Sally, Tom, and Barnabas held
hands and stared at the owl above them, an owl that filled a temple,
its banner-tails dancing on the floor, its wings like a hundred-gyre
of eagles. The owl stared back.

Sally heard the other voice first, caressing her heart. The voice
was as deep as the deepest ocean, as old as the oldest rocks, yet as
young as the newest chire of grass that springs up after the rain. It
had no words of English, but the voice was vast, soothing, lush, each
word like a garden blooming in an instant. An owl, even one as large
as a ship, would be gently lost in that voice, would be just one small
white speck in an endless green field.

“Not yet,” the voice said. “Wait. But soon, very soon. Make haste
slowly.”

Sally understood. She knew who spoke to her. She knew that
Tom and Uncle Barnabas heard the voice too. She knew that even
though Tom and Barnabas heard the voice without understanding
the words, it was enough.

The owl narrowed its eyes, like an eclipse of two suns. It too had
heard. Sally wondered if it was surprised to hear that voice, or if it
was surprised that Sally heard it too.

Sally said in a small but powerful voice that was heard throughout
the Temple: “Go now, Owl, Serpent, Half-Fallen, Moon-Eater, Wurm.
Close the door this one last time. But know that the next time the
door opens, the door will remain open. And know that the time for
the final opening comes soon. You know I speak the truth.”

The owl beat its wings. Frieze-work fell off the walls, the clocks
rang crazily, an abattoir smell poured over everyone. It glared at
Sally and snapped its beak, the sound of swords being whetted.

“DO NOT PRESUME!” it hooted so that all the men and women
on the floor had to stop their ears, and those outside reeled
backwards.

Sally, holding Tom’s injured hand on one side and holding
Barnabas’s hand on the other, stared back. She smiled. The owl
flapped its wings once, twice, taking itself to the top of the dome.
Down it swooped, pounced on Sally, Tom, and Barnabas. Sally felt
her uncle and her brother flinch but she would not let them go.
Hold
fast!
she shouted into their minds. The owl’s talons came down upon
them.

Sally opened her mouth and a note of pure music flew from it, a
child of the wind that runs through the eternally green meadows
at the beginning of our memories. One note the wind gave her, and
the Mother laughed, and Sally laughed — and the owl’s talons were
stopped a foot from their faces, rebuffed. The owl swept its wings
backwards, its eyes like comets under a dark halo. Its beak was
opening and closing as it lurched back up towards the dome. One of
its swallowtails slashed the air in front of Sally, feathers like silken
razors. It hovered for a moment. Sally saw the doubt in its eyes, the
anger . . . and the fear.

“YOOOOUUUU!?!” the owl said. But its brazen tone was shivered
into shards within the still-echoing note that Sally had sung. The owl
circled the dome again, passed directly over Sally, hissing. It turned
in mid-air, and shrunk until it was no larger than an owl that hunts
in a deserted barn. It swooped to the door, pinnet-tail streaming
and whistling. As it passed the threshold, the owl roared with the
voice of a lion. It drew the darkness from the door mouth with it,
back into the infinite space beyond. The door slammed shut.

Sally, Tom, and Barnabas stood hand in hand facing the doorway.
They trembled but they laughed, looking at each other with eyes
bright as stars.

“You handled ’im, Sally!” said Barnabas, shaking. Somewhere in
the back of his mind, or at the roots of his heart, he felt his mother’s
touch. He had heard before the note Sally sang, known it as a zephyr
in Edinburgh lullabies. “Figs and feathers, you handled ’im, girl!”

Tom fell to his knees. Sally knelt down and put her arms around
him. “Do not cry, brother,” she said. “Today we were three and that
was enough to withstand the Wurm. I think we are supposed to be
five, and, when we are, we will be strong enough to defeat him.”

Nexius and Reglum were with them now, followed by Dorentius
Bunce and Noreous Minicate. Looking over Reglum’s shoulder, Sally
saw Sanford and Fraulein Reimer standing side by side, each pointing
a pistol at the doorway. Sally heard yelling and running throughout
the temple as the Learned Doctors and the soldiers recovered from
the onslaught. Above the din was the voice of the Arch-Bishop,
arguing with Nexius. Blue-clad Marines were running to support
Nexius. From outside the temple came the sound of shots. Inside the
Temple all went still for a second and then blue and green uniforms
scrambled for positions among the pillars. One shot rang out, then
another. Muzzle flashes were seen in the dimness. The McDoons
stood rooted, unable to comprehend what was happening. Sally had
no more notes to sing today, and felt naked against this unexpected
threat. She saw a Marine spin and fall, and saw green soldiers lying
motionless on the floor.

The Learned Doctor with the rusty streak in her hair ran
towards them. She held the tube that caused the Cretched Man to
yield. The tube glowed a faint purple at the end facing the McDoons.
Sally could not move. She was vaguely aware of Tom and Barnabas
at her side. Her mind was a blank, drained after the confrontation
with Wurm. She scrabbled for her St. Morgaine but that was all she
could manage. The Learned Doctor pointed the tube at Sally, raised
her other hand to work a lever on top of the tube. Sally dove for
the floor but it was too late. As she did so, two things happened:
Reglum darted in front of her, sword drawn, yelling at the top of his
lungs, desperately lunging at the woman with the tube; and there
was a loud cracking sound behind Sally, followed by a hot searing
sensation just over her head. As Sally hit the floor, she had a blurry
image of Reglum smashing into the Learned Doctor, and the woman
crumpling.