Walkers (32 page)

Tebulot shouted to Kasyx, ‘Give me
some charge! Just a little! I have to go get her!’

Kasyx lifted the visor of his
helmet. ‘Supposing we don’t have enough charge to get us out of this dream?
What then?’

‘I have to go get Samena!’ Tebulot
yelled. ‘For Christ’s sake, give me some charge!’

Kasyx hesitated, but Tebulot said
fiercely, ‘We’re in this together, Kasyx, like the Three Musketeers. One for
all and all for one. If we don’t take Samena with us then we don’t go. We’re
Night Warriors, don’t you understand that? Not just three people playing a
game! This is us, this is real! Night Warriors!’

With a nod of acceptance, Kasyx held
out his hand. Tebulot took it and placed it directly against his breastplate.
‘Now,’ said Tebulot, and Kasyx allowed a subdued flow of power to leave his
body and pour into the machine-carrier’s energy system.

‘More,’
Tebulot
urged him.

Kasyx took a sharp breath, but gave
him more, even though he could feel the power shrinking out of his own body
with every passing second.

Tebulot checked the charge-scale on
his weapon. It glowed up to the halfway mark, and so he took Kasyx’s hand away.
‘That’s enough. Now I’m going after her.’

All around them the walls and
ceiling of the building were closing in, heavy and suffocating and dark. Kasyx
touched the centre of his forehead, and a bright beam of light shone out from
the rim of his visor, narrow, but spreading out 180 degrees. It lit up redness,
and wetness, and ridges of soft flesh.

The courtyard had now been
completely transformed. Between Kasyx and Tebulot and the place where Samena
had disappeared, the tunnel was gradually tightening, closer and closer
together, like a muscular sphincter. As Tebulot struggled towards it, knee-deep
in scarlet flesh, it drew itself together until the aperture was only two feet
across.

‘It’s closing!’ Kasyx shouted at
him.

Tebulot yanked back the T-bar of his
weapon with a slippery hand. He fired a brief burst of energy at the sphincter,
and momentarily it recoiled, and shuddered, as if it were alive. But then it
tightened even harder, until the tunnel was completely occluded.

‘One more burst!’ Kasyx called.

Tebulot fired again, but even though
the sphincter winced, it kept itself tightly closed.

Now Kasyx came running forward,
breathing heavily, panicking at the thought that Samena might be lost. He was
charge-keeper, she was his responsibility; and what would happen to her earthly
body if her soul was irretrievably lost in some strange man’s nightmare?

He had sufficient power left to take
Tebulot and himself out of the dream, but that was not what he was going to use
it for. He was going to release it all – all of it at once – and hope that it
would open the tunnel sufficiently wide for them to be able to rescue Samena.
After that – well, he didn’t know what would happen after that. But he had
understood what Tebulot had said about what it meant to be Night Warriors.

Loyalty was more important than
survival. The cause was greater than those who fought for it. They were
champions; and they would not only have to live like champions, but die like
champions, too.

He had never been so excited in his
life. He had never been so frightened. He reached the tightened-up knot of
muscle, slithering up against the slippery flesh which surrounded it so that he
could lay both hands against it. Tebulot shouted,

‘What are you doing?
Kasyx!’
But Kasyx was now too scared and
exhilarated to answer. He was going to discharge all of his energy in one
shattering explosion: not only the energy which Ashapola had given him, but the
stored-up energy of his own intellect and his own personality. If he was going
to go, then by God he was going to go spectacularly. Nothing left but the
smoking soles of his shoes.

He closed his eyes, and said a
prayer under his breath. But, just as he began to summon up all of the power
inside him, he felt the muscular sphincter relax, and open.

Tebulot scrambled up beside him, and
together they stared into the widening cavern that was gradually revealed to
them. It was dark red, almost black, and so hot that steam was issuing from the
complicated intaglios of flesh. As they looked however, it began to alter
again. The dark claustrophobic walls began to fade into night sky, with
millions of winking stars. A cool wind blew the steam away, and covered the
folds of flesh with dust and grit, and then petrified them, so that they looked
like the edges of fossilised clam-shells. It was night, out on some unknown
desert, some prehistoric sea-bed from which the ocean had long since crept
away, leaving its plants and its molluscs to bake to death under the sun, and
to lie lonely and forgotten under the moon.

In the distance, over the irregular
crusted desert surface, knelt Samena. Kasyx touched his hand to the side of his
helmet and focused on her in close-up. She was bound with ropes, her hands
behind her back, and there was a slip-knot around her neck.

Behind her, the air began to waver
and thicken, and gradually to take on the shape of a standing figure. Kasyx
focused more sharply, and saw that it was a young boy, not much older than
twelve or thirteen, dressed in grey. The boy had a curiously unformed face, as
if a sculptor had not yet decided what expression he should mould into his
clay, or what meaning his creation should have. One meaning, however, was
unmistakable: the boy’s left hand held the end ofthe rope which was fastened in
a slip-knot around Samena’s neck.

Tebulot said, ‘What the hell is
that?’

‘A boy, of a sort,’ Kasyx replied.

‘Sure, but
what
sort?’ asked Tebulot, peering through the night.

‘Let’s go find out,’ Kasyx
suggested, and they began to walk towards him.

The boy watched them approach with
complete calmness. When they were a little less than twenty feet away, however,
he lifted one hand, and at the same time tugged on the rope around Samena’s
neck. The implication was unequivocal, and both Kasyx and Tebulot stopped where
they were.

‘Samena!’ called Kasyx. ‘Are you all
right?’

Samena stayed where she was, silent,
with her head bowed. The boy said, in an oddly gruff voice, ‘She is well, for
the time being, but she cannot speak. She cannot hear, either, nor see.’

‘What have you done to her?’ Kasyx
demanded.

‘You looking to have your brains
blown out or something?’ Tebulot put in, with undisguised aggression, lifting
his machine.

The boy smiled, almost wistfully.
‘Those must have been great days, when the dreams of whole nations were guarded
by Night Warriors, and the Devils were free; and mighty battles were fought
through all the landscapes of the human imagination.

Sad that I should have no more than
three adversaries, and all of those three inexperienced and weak.’
‘Inexperienced, perhaps,’ said Kasyx. ‘But not so weak.’

The boy shook his head. ‘I know how
little power you have left, old man. You have barely enough to return to the
waking world. Even if you were to unleash all of it, here and now, I would
deflect it as easily as you deflected those arrows from the Monks of Shame.’

He tugged at Samena’s rope, and then
he added, ‘You would be powerless; I would be able to snuff you out like a
candle. ‘Who are you?’ Kasyx asked him. ‘What do you want with Samena?’

‘You know me quite well,’ the boy
replied. ‘You saw me on the beach at Del Mar. Not as I appear to you now, but
like this.’

For one single photographic instant,
they saw what the boy really was. They saw the face of a demon, with flaring
eyes; they saw a skeletal ribcage, with a half-developed heart that beat
against the translucent skin like an embryo chick throbbing in its albumen;
they saw clawed hands, and curved thighbones. Then the image of the boy blotted
it out, the demon was gone, and they were standing on this dream desert with
the wind blowing as sorrowful and soft as a funeral lament, wondering if they
had gone to hell, or if hell instead had come to them.

‘You are the spawn of Yaomauitl,’
said Kasyx, thickly.

‘Well, well, my inexperienced
friend, you are more knowledgeable than I thought,’ the boy replied. ‘In that
case, the contest between us will be keener, and much more exciting. There is
no pleasure in destroying the dull witted, or the uninformed.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Tebulot
challenged the demon. ‘What are you doing in this dream?’

‘You really don’t know? You have no
idea who the dreamer is? Why, you are innocents! Ask your friend called
Springer, that’s what I say! Ask your friend called Springer whose dream this
is!’

‘You
tell
us,’ urged Tebulot.

The boy shook his head. ‘That would
spoil the pleasure.’

Kasyx said, ‘What are you going to
do with Samena?’

‘I intend to keep her for a while,
until I am fully grown. A hostage, you might say, to allow me to finish my
gestation, and to reach the height of my powers.’

‘Then you are not as powerful as you
pretend to be,’ said Kasyx, slowly.

The demon’s eyes burned bright in
the boy’s expressionless face. ‘I could still destroy you, old man!’

‘Perhaps you could, but you are not
powerful enough to destroy all three of us. If you were, you would do it. We do
nothing but stand in your way. That is why you need one of us for a hostage, to
keep the other two at bay.’

‘Well, you are perceptive as well as
knowledgeable,’ said the boy.

Kasyx said, ‘I want you to let go of
that rope now, and release Samena. Otherwise, I’m going to give you the energy
flash to end all energy flashes.’

The boy looked up at the night sky.
The stars were beginning to whirl away, as if they were dandelion plumes being
blown of f a creosote-painted fence. The desert was beginning to shift and tilt
beneath their feet.

‘You feel that?’ said the boy. ‘The
dreamer is waking up. His deepest sleep is almost over.’

‘I’m still going to burn you,’ said
Kasyx, and took two or three steps forward.

But it was Tebulot who said, ‘No,
Kasyx. Not now.’ Kasyx turned. ‘Wasn’t it you who said that we were the Three
Musketeers? If one goes, we all go?’

‘That’s exactly why you can’t use
your energy flash now,’ Tebulot told him. ‘If he deflects it, which he says he
can -he’ll kill you and he’ll probably manage to kill me.

But what’s he going to do with
Samena?’

Kasyx slowly lifted the clear visor
of his helmet, and turned back for a moment to look at Samena and the demonic
boy. Tebulot said, ‘It’s too risky. It’s too unpredictable.’ ‘But he has her as
his hostage!’ Kasyx exploded. ‘I know. . .but as long as he keeps her as his
hostage, she’s safe. We can always try to get her back tomorrow night, in
another dream. Come on, Kasyx, it’s too dangerous. You can see that it’s too
dangerous. Back off. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen.’ Kasyx slowly
stepped back. ‘This is unlike you, Tebulot,’ he said.

Tebulot didn’t look at him. ‘Maybe
it is,’ he replied, quietly.’ But before, I thought that Samena was dead. Now,
I can see she’s alive; and as long as she’s alive, she has a chance.’

Kasyx nodded. He understood. The
passions of the young were often wildly uneven, but they were strong; and he
admired strength, even in the pursuit of impossibilities.

He had never had very much strength
himself, and he had never tried to pursue the impossible. Not before tonight,
anyway.

Kasyx said, clearly, ‘We are forced
to leave you here, Samena. For your own safety, as well as ours, we are going
to have to go back to the waking world without you. But I make you this
promise, and I make this same promise to all of the worlds both dreaming and
waking, and all of the inhabitants of those worlds. I will come back, and
Tebulot will be standing by my side, and we shall free you from Yaomauitl’s
bastard offspring,
in the dark and holy
name of the Night Warriors!’

The boy lightly applauded, patting
the fingers of his right hand into the palm of his left, which was the hand in
which he held the rope. ‘Believe me, she didn’t hear a word of that, my poor
old man. But a fine speech, all the same.’

Then, still smiling, he folded his
hands against his chest, and both he and Samena immediately began to recede
into the middle distance. They shrank, faster and faster and faster, until they
reached the desert’s far horizon, and were gone.

Kasyx watched the horizon for a long
time, and then turned back to Tebulot. ‘I’ve lost her,’ he said, and he was
desolate.

Tebulot said, ‘Not you, Kasyx. Us.
We’ve
lost her. But we’re darn well
going to get her back. You can promise yourself that.’

The floor of the desert began to
ripple and waver, like the ocean. ‘It’s time we left,’ said Kasyx. ‘I just hope
to God that Devil does nothing to harm her.’

‘I don’t think it will,’ said
Tebulot. ‘Not until it’s fully grown, and not while you and I are still around.
If you ask me, it was a whole lot more worried about us than it tried to make
out.’