“Again, sir knight,” Brann whispered, pale with exertion. “We must open it wider. Hurry; there is no time left.”
Jarmon leaned with all his strength against the door as well. With a groan that made Hector shudder, the rightmost of the two doors swung farther into the endless darkness.
Hector looked in again. At first he saw nothing, as before. Then, at the most distant edge of his vision, he thought he could make out tiny flames, perhaps remnants of the mine fires that could still be burning thousands of years later. But when those flames began to move, he felt suddenly weak, dizzy, as his head was assaulted from within by the cacophony of a thousand rushing voices, cackling and screeching with delight.
Like fire on pine, the living flames began to sweep down distant ledges within the mammoth pit, some nearer, some farther, all dashing toward the door, churning the air with the destructive chaos of mayhem.
Hector, his head throbbing now with the gleeful screaming that was drawing rapidly closer, could only watch in horror as the fire swelled, burning intensely, a legion of individual flames scrambling down the dark walls toward the doors.
His mind reeled for a moment as the sickening realization of what they had done crashed down on him. Time stood still as the truth thundered around his ears, louder than the tremors from the Sleeping Child.
He had just broken the one barrier that separated life from void, that stood between the earth and its destruction, and more.
That threatened even the existence of the Afterlife.
“My God,” he whispered, his hand slick with sweat. “My sweet God! Jarmon—This is the Vault! We’ve opened the Vault of the Underworld!”
Jarmon’s guttural curse was lost in the sound of oncoming destruction and the orgiastic screaming of the approaching fire demons, long entombed, now rushing toward freedom.
The soldiers seized the door handle and together they pulled on it with all their strength. They succeeded in dragging the door shut most of the way, but they were able to close it only as far as was possible with the obstacle of the fisherman’s body in the way.
Brann had interposed himself in the doorway, straddling the threshold.
Jarmon reached over to shove the old man out of the way. “Move, you fool!” he shouted. And gagged in pain when his arm was crushed against the door, so that it was clasped in a withering grip.
They looked at the old man. His face had hardened, had become an almost translucent mask of undisguised delight. Its wrinkled skin now was tight over a feral smile, above which a pair of dark eyes gleamed, their edges rimmed in the color of blood.
“I,” Brann said softly. “I am what the winds forewarned you of, Sir Hector. I am what comes.”
“No,” Hector whispered raggedly. “You—you—”
The demon in the old man’s body clucked disapprovingly, though his smile sparkled with amusement. “Now, now, Sir Hector,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “This is a historic moment, one to savor! Let us not spoil it with recriminations, shall we?” He let go of Jarmon’s arm.
The soldiers dragged on the heavy door again, but the F’dor only wedged himself in tighter, preventing it from closing with a strength that was growing by the moment. Hector pulled with all his might, but only managed to strip the skin from his sweating palms against the hot metal handles.
Jarmon stepped back angrily and drew his sword, but the fisherman merely gestured at him. Dark fire exploded from his fingers and licked the weapon; the blade grew molten in Jarmon’s hand, melting away in a river of liquid steel. It drew a scream of agony from the guard, who fell heavily away into the sand.
“The scepter—” Hector choked.
“Would help you to discern the truth?” the demon asked solicitously, glancing at his approaching fellows, who were drawing nearer now. “Indeed, you were not wrong. Everything I told you was the truth. My peoplehave lived at the sea’s edge for a very long time; weare frail in body, though we are strong in spirit. Without a host, or someone to give us aid, we could never open the door alone. And I was most sincere when I assured you that none of my people would dream of touching the scepter; for one of our kind to touch an object of Living Stone crowned with a diamond would be certain death. That’s why we needed you; we thank you for your service.”
“Blessed ground,” Hector whispered, pulling futilely at the door and fighting off the screaming voices that swelled inside his head. “The inn is blessed ground—”
“I never broached the inn,” said the F’dor. “Nor the palace, if you recall. No, Sir Hector, I never crossed the threshold of either place; you met me at the crossroads and left me at the foot of the castle. Kind of you.” The demon laughed again. “And what I told you of my life was the truth as well. Long ago I had the chance to leave my birthplace—that was in the old days, during the first cataclysm, when the star first ruptured the Vault. Many of us escaped before it was sealed again, only to have been hunted throughout history, having to flee from host to host, hiding, biding our time. But now, once again, we will be out in the world, thanks to you, Sir Hector. You wished to rescue whomever you could from the cataclysm, and here you are! You have spared an entire race from captivity! And not only have you freed us from the Vault, but our master—the one who has long watched the doors, waiting for this day—you will be his host! What could be more edifying than that?”
The fire in the demon’s eyes matched the intensity of that in the sky.
“When the old fisherman rowed out in his little boat to examine what the retreat of the sea had revealed, I was waiting, formless. I had come home when I heard of the upcoming Awakening, just as I said I had.” The demon sighed. “A younger, stronger host might have been preferable, but one takes what one is offered in the advent of cataclysm. Isn’t truth a marvelous thing? The art is in telling it so that it is interpreted the way one wishes to have it heard.
“Finally, I told you that we would be eternally grateful, sir knight. And we are. We are. Eternally.”
Jarmon rose shakily to his feet and met Hector’s eye.
“Hector,” he said quietly, “open the door.”
In his dizziness, the words rang clear. Hector’s gaze narrowed a moment, then widened slightly with understanding.
With the last of his strength, he threw himself against the rightmost door of the Vault, shoving it open even farther than it had been before. His head all but split from the frenzied screaming of the demonic horde that was virtually within reach of the door; he tried to avert his eyes from the horror of the sight, but found his gaze dragged to the approaching fire that burned black with excitement as it rushed forward to freedom.
At the same moment, Jarmon threw himself into Brann and locked his arms around his knees. The frail form of the demon’s host buckled in the strong arms of the guard and the momentum thrust both of them over the threshold and into the Vault.
Which gave Hector just enough time to drag the mammoth door shut before the multitude of F’dor that had been sealed away since the First Age crossed the threshold into the material world.
He pulled the key from the hole and tossed it behind him. Then he wrapped his arms through the huge brass handles, holding on with all the leverage he could muster as the gleaming doors darkened and settled back into lifeless stone once more.
Hector’s mind buckled under the screaming he could hear and feel beyond those doors. The stone shook terrifyingly as the demons pounded from the other side, causing tremors that shook his entire body. He bowed his head, both to brace the closure and to try to drown out the horrifying sounds that scratched his ears. Within the demonic screeches of fury he thought he could hear Jarmon’s voice rise in similar tone, the unmistakable sound of agony of body and soul ringing harshly in it.
As he clutched at the burning doors that seared the flesh from his chest and face, the sky turned white above him.
With a thundering bellow that cracked the vault of the heavens, the Sleeping Child awoke in the depths of the sea and rose in fiery rage
to the sky.
The sound of the screaming on the other side of the door faded in the roar of the inferno behind him. All he could feel now was searing heat, heat that baked his body to the core from behind, and radiated through the stone doors before him, as molten volcanic fire rained down, sealing him eternally in an ossified shell to the brass handles.
As he passed over the threshold of death, from life to Afterlife, Hector finally saw what his father had told him of, and what he had relayed to Anais. Just beyond his sight, closer than the air of his last breath, and at the same time a half world away, he could see his friend in the branches of the World Tree, could see his father in knee-deep surf, standing vigil, Talthea and Aidan behind him on the shore, the baby in her arms. MacQuieth’s eyes were on him, watching him from the other side of the earth, the other side of Time.
As his spirit fled his body, dissipating and expanding to the farthest reaches of the universe at the same time, Hector willed himself to hold for a moment to the invisible tether, paused long enough to breathe a final kiss on his wife and children, to whisper in his father’s ear across the threshold over which they were bound to each other by love.
It’s done, Father. You can cease waiting; go back to living now.
His last conscious thought was one of ironic amusement. As the sea poured in, sealing the entrance to the Vault once more beneath its depths, his body remained behind, fired into clay, forming the lock that barred the doors, vigilant to the end in death as he had been in life.
The key of living earth lay behind him, buried in the sand of the ocean floor, just out of reach for all eternity.
“Apple, Canfa, peez.”
The daughter of the wind looked down solemnly into the earnest little human face. Then she smiled in spite of herself. She reached easily into the gnarled branches of the stunted tree that were beyond the length of his spindly arms and plucked a hard red fruit, and handed it to the boy.
She glanced to her left, where the woman sat on the ground of the decimated orchard, absently eating the apple she had been given a moment before and staring dully at Cantha’s silver mare grazing on autumn grass nearby.
A deathly stillness fell, like the slamming of a door.
The winds, howling in fury as they had been for weeks uncounted, died down into utter silence.
And Cantha knew.
She stood frozen for a moment in the vast emptiness of a world without moving air, poised on the brink of cataclysm. And just before the winds began to scream, she seized the child by the back of the shirt and lifted him through the heavy air, bearing him to the horse as the apple fell from his hand to the ground.
She was dragging the startled woman to her feet and heaving her onto the horse as well when the sky turned white. She had mounted and was spurring the beast when the horizon to the northwest erupted in a plume of fire that shot into the sky like a spark from a candle caught by the wind, then spread over the bottom of the melting clouds, filling them with light, painful in intensity. Cantha uttered a single guttural command to the horse and galloped off, clutching the woman and the boy before her.
Even at the southern tip of the Island they could feel the tremors, could see the earth shuddering beneath the horse’s hooves. Cantha could feel the child’s sides heave, thought he might be wailing, but whatever sound he made was drowned in the horrifying lament of the winds. She prayed to those winds now to speed her way, to facilitate her path and her pace, but there was no answer.
At the foot of the battlements she pulled the humans from the horse’s back, slashed the saddle girdings, and turned it loose, silently wishing it Godspeed. Then she seized the woman by the hand and tucked the boy beneath her arm as she began the daunting climb up the steps of the rock face.
She was halfway up, her muscles buckling in exertion, when the winds swelled, rampant, heavy with ash and debris. They whipped around her, dragging the air from her lungs, threatening her balance. Finally she had to let go of the woman lest she lose her grip on the boy.
“Climb!” Cantha shouted to the woman, but the woman merely stopped, rigid, where she was. Cantha urged her again, and again, pushing her futilely, finally abandoning her, running blindly up the steps as the sky turned black above her.
Through the dark halls and up the tower steps, two at a time, Cantha carried the child, in her arms now, clinging around her neck. The tower shuddered beneath them, swaying in the gale, the stone walls that had stood for five hundred years, stalwart, unmoving, buffeted by the winds of hurricanes and of war, trembling around them.
Finally they reached the pinnacle of the topmost tower, the dusty room lined with bookshelves and jars that had once been the abode of the royal vizier. Cantha, spent, set the boy down, took his hand, and ran through the study, throwing open the doors that already banged in the wind, running heedlessly through the shards of broken glass scattered across the stone floor, up the final flight of wooden steps, and pushed open the trapdoor to the utmost top of the parapets. She held tight to the boy as they stepped out onto the platform from which the vizier had once communed with the lightning, and stared down at the world below her.
Across the wide meadows and broken forests that surrounded Elysian dust was gathering in great spiral devils, loose earth driven upward by the chaos of the winds. In the distance she could see the silver horse running, galloping free, saddled no more. She looked around for the woman, but could not see the battlement steps.
Beside her she felt the boy move; she looked down to see him pointing north.
A wall of water the height of the tower was coming, dark gray in the distance, sweeping ahead of it a conundrum of debris that had once been towns and cities, bridges and mills.
It was but the forewave.
Behind it the real wave hovered, the crest of which Cantha could not see, rising to meet the dark sky.
Shaking, she reached down and lifted the child to her shoulders, mostly to give him as much height as possible, but also to avoid having to see again the expression in his eyes. Her own gaze was riveted on the vertical sea as it swelled forward across the Island, swallowing the river, the fields, the broken orchard as she watched. Just before it took the tower, sweeping forth to rejoin itself at the southern coast, she thought of the legends of enclaves of Lirin who had lived along the shore at the time of the first cataclysm, whose lands had been subsumed when the Child first fell to earth. The lore told of how they had transformed, once children of the sky, now children of the sea, coming to live in underwater caves and grottoes, building entire civilizations in the sheltering sands of the ocean, hiding in the guardian reefs, breathing beneath the waves.If such a fairy tale be possible, may it be possible for thee, child, she thought, patting the leg that dangled over her shoulder.
All light was blotted out in a roaring rush of gray-blue fury.
“Hold thy breath, child,” Cantha said.
From the aft deck of theStormrider , Sevirym watched the fire rise in the distance. The Island was so far away now, here at the edge of the Icefields at the southern end of the world, that at first he barely noticed; the Awakening resembled little more than a glorious slash of color brought on by the sunset. But as the clouds began to burn at the horizon, and the sea winds died at the same moment, he knew what he was beholding.
He was unable to tear his eyes away as the fire blazed, a white-hot streak in the distance brighter than the sun. And then, oblivious to the crew and passengers around him, staring east as well, he bowed his head and gave in to grief as the fire faded and disappeared into the sea.
The wave swelled to the outer edges of the Island, spilling over the charred land, swallowing the High Reaches in the north all the way down to the southeastern corner. It poured over what had once been great rolling fields and forests, largely blackened now or swollen with gleaming lava, all the way to Yliessan, where it seemed to hover for a moment above Sagia, her boughs adorned with flowers, sheltering the children of the sky who had sought final refuge there. Then it crashed down,
meeting the sea at the land’s edge on all sides.
As the tide rose to an even height, taking in the overflow, the crest of the waves closed above the Island, the first birthplace of Time, swallowing it from sight.
And then peace returned.
Hot vapor covered the sea, making it appear as calm and still as a misty morning.
AMERICANGODS
NEIL GAIMAN
AMERICANGODS(2001)
ANANSIBOYS(forthcoming)
American Godstells the story of a man called Shadow, who, when the story begins, is in prison, having served out his sentence for a crime he did commit.
He’s looking forward to getting out of prison, rejoining his wife, getting his old job back: but his wife’s tragic death in a car accident puts paid to that, and he soon finds himself working as a bodyguard and driver for an elderly grifter who calls himself Mr. Wednesday.
Shadow learns that when people came to America they brought their gods with them. Some gods have done well; most of the gods and mythical creatures have had to eke out a bare living on what scraps of belief they could find. Working for Wednesday, Shadow meets many of them: Czernobog, the Slavic death god; Mr. Nancy, the African trickster-god Anansi; and sundry fates and mythical figures, some remembered and many forgotten.
Wednesday is the American aspect of the old Norse god Odin, and he is apparently attempting to start a war between the old gods and the new ones who are taking up people’s minds and hearts—gods of television, of technology, of money.
Shadow survives, although Wednesday does not. Shadow dies on a tree, and rises again. He even manages to end the war. And then, no longer entirely human, but not a god, he leaves America.
Gaiman says, “I always conceived ofAmerican Gods as a backdrop to tell stories with. The next novel, the one I’m writing now, is calledAnansi Boys , and is the story of Mr. Nancy and his sons, Spider and Fat Charley. Until Robert Silverberg called and asked about anAmerican Gods novella, I had thought of Shadow as someone I would come back to a long time from now, someone I could use to tell a different story about America. But a story started twining in my head: something with Shadow in Northern Scotland, and various old stories and archaeological books I’d read started to twist and shape.