Abarat - Barker Clive - Страница 28

"But you never do?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"So what would happen if you sailed a ship right into the clouds?"

"Oh, people have certainly tried that," Klepp said. "A few came out alive, but happily crazy. And of course completely incapable of describing anything they'd seen, while the rest—"

"—didn't come out at all?"

"You guessed it. One of them was my father…" He let this information hang in the air for a moment. Then he said: "You look cold, my dear."

"It's just the wind."

"Let me get you a jacket."

"No, I'm all right."

"I insist," Klepp said. "I don't want you getting pneumonia. I'll be back in a moment."

He headed for the elevator. Candy didn't protest. The wind was a lot chillier than she'd expected it to be.

"You stay away from the edge now!" Samuel said, and pulling the elevator gate closed, he disappeared from sight.

While he was gone, Candy and Squiller kept up their perusal of the islands. Samuel had named them all for her several times, and Candy now tested her memory by putting the names to the locations. Some she remembered easily, others she had to puzzle over for a while.

The island to the west of the Yebba Dim Day was called Qualm Hah, and its red-roofed city was called… Tazmagor. Yes, that was it: Tazmagor. To the southeast of it was a mountainous island called Spake, which stood at Ten O'clock in the Morning. At Eleven O'clock was the Island of Nully, and at Twelve Noon, the island of Yzil, which was bathed in the warmest, most magical light imaginable.

At One O'clock was either Orlando's Cap or Hobarookus, she couldn't remember which. At Two, conversely, was either Hobarookus or Orlando's Cap.

To the south-southeast lay another sun-drenched island, which was the place, she remembered, where Samuel had said life was supposed to have begun: Three O'clock in the Afternoon, also called the Nonce.

At Four was Gnomon, at Five an island called Soma Plume, in the center of which was a vast Ziggurat. At Six, far to the east of the Yebba Dim Day, though separated by only two hours, was an island called Babilonium, where it looked as though life was fun all the time. There were several huge circus tents pitched in the middle of the island, and colored lights in their tens of thousands flickered in the branches of every tree. I have to go there , Candy thought to herself.

To the north of Babilonium was an island the name of which she could not remember, though she remembered the name of the still-active volcano at its center, which was Mount Galigali. The tide of evening then wound around the archipelago, ending up where she was standing, at Eight in the Evening, looking down on the Straits of Dusk.

And then, in the vicinity of the Yebba Dim Day, lay a second series of islands. At Nine in the Evening was a place called Hap's Vault. (She'd asked Samuel who Hap was, and he'd told her he didn't remember.) At Ten in the Evening lay the island of Ninnyhammer, which had on it a town occupied by a species called tarrie-cats. The town was called High Sladder.

The name of the island at Eleven had skipped her mind, but she remembered the name of the Midnight Isle: Gorgossium. It's the most terrifying place in all the islands , Samuel Klepp had said: avoid it at all costs !

There were six pyramids—some large, some small—at One in the Morning, which was called Xuxux, and at Two, another island, wreathed in darkness, the name of which escaped her. Next door to it, however, lay the island that was the most attractive to her eye, despite all that Samuel had said about its architect.

The island was called Pyon, and covering it from one end to the other (and so bright with light it couldn't have mattered that it was the middle of the night there) was Commexo City. The towers and the domes of Commexo City were completely unlike anything Candy had ever seen before: huge and elaborate configurations that looked as though they'd been conjured from a geometry that didn't exist back home, then raised in defiance of physics.

By contrast, the island beside it was an ominous place, with an impenetrable-looking mountain range. It was called The Isle of the Black Egg, and it was one of the Outer Islands, she remembered, along with Speckle Frew, which was at Five in the Morning. Beside Speckle Frew were the two islands, joined by the Gilholly Bridge that stood at Six and Seven in the Morning. That left only Obadiah, at Eight in the Morning, and she'd come full circle to the little sunlit city of Tazmagor, perched on the eastern flanks of Qualm Hah.

"You're looking rather pleased with yourself," said Klepp, as he emerged from the elevator. In his hand he had a light green jacket, covered with small bright-red designs. She accepted it gratefully and put it on.

"I was just trying to remember the islands," she told him as she pulled the collar of the jacket up. "There were a few I couldn't remember, but I think I made quite a good—"

She stopped talking.

A terrible look had appeared on Klepp's face. His eyes had grown huge, and he was no longer looking at Candy, but instead was staring past her into the sky high above her left shoulder.

"What… is… it?" she said, almost scared to turn, but turning anyway.

"Run !"he yelled.

She heard him, but her feet failed to obey her. She was too astonished, and appalled, at the sight that filled the sky behind her.

There was a moth swooping down on her, a moth with the wingspan of a small plane. And mounted on the back of this stupendous and terrifying insect was her old pursuer, Mendelson Shape.

"There! You! Are!" he yelled at her.

Now, finally, Candy's feet agreed to obey her panic.

She started to run toward the elevator, where Samuel Klepp was waiting to grab her and pull her to safety.

But even as she ran, some instinct deep in her gut told her she wasn't going to make it. The moth was coming down too fast. She could feel the freezing rush of its wings against her back, so fierce it almost threw her over. As she stumbled, the moth's immense and many-jointed legs closed around her body and plucked her up off the roof of the tower.

"Got you !" she heard Shape yelling triumphantly.

Then he spoke some incomprehensible order to his mount, and the moth beat its vast wings and rose up into the air.

Candy caught a smeared glimpse of Klepp's horrified face as he reached up to try and snatch her out of the grip of the moth, but he was inches short of catching her hand.

Then she was carried up and away, over the edge of The Great Head of the Yebba Dim Day. She was terrified. Her heart became like a drum, thumping in her chest, and in her head. A trickle of sweat ran down her spine.

Poor Squiller was still attached to her face, clinging now more fiercely than ever. Candy was curiously thankful for his presence. It was like having a good luck talisman. As long as Squiller was with her, she felt, she would survive whatever lay ahead.

Moving tentatively, so as not to alarm the moth (she was now hundreds of feet above the waters of the Sea of Izabella; to be dropped from such a height would certainly bring her adventures in the Abarat to a quick end), she put her hand up to stroke the squid.

"It's going to be all right," she murmured to the trembling creature. "I promise I won't let anything happen to you."

It helped her to have another life besides her own to protect in this terrible situation. She had made a promise to Squiller. Now it was up to her to make good on that promise and bring them both through the adventures ahead alive, however dangerous the journey became, and however terrible the destination.

U nder more pleasant circumstances, candy might have enjoyed the journey that took her away from the towers of Yebba Dim Day. She had never suffered from vertigo, so she didn't mind the fact that they were a thousand feet up. The view was spectacular: the patchwork of glittering sunlit sea where the Hours of Daylight fell, and the dark waters where the Night Hours held sway.

But she could scarcely play the blithe sightseer in their present precarious position. Though the moth's hold on her was reasonably secure, it was clear to her that she was a burden that the creature's anatomy was not designed to support. Every now and again there would be a breath-snatching moment when its spindly legs scrambled to secure a better hold on her. Whenever this happened, Squiller automatically clamped himself more tightly to her head, like a climber clinging for dear life to a rock face.

Nor was her fear of being dropped her only concern. Worse, in a way, was the threatening chatter of Mendelson Shape.

"I'm sure you thought you'd never see me again, eh?" he said.

She didn't reply.

"Well, you should know," he went on, "I'm not the kind of man who gives up easily. If Lord Carrion wants you, then Lord Carrion will have you. He is my prince. His word is law."

He paused, plainly hoping to get some fearful response from her. When none came, he continued in the same confident vein.

"I daresay he'll reward me for delivering you. He'll probably give me a piece of the Abarat when his Night of Victory comes, and Darkness takes everything under its wing. You realize that's what's going to happen? There's going to be an Absolute Midnight. And everyone in The Sinner's Emporium will be raised up on that Night, you'll see.

Candy had kept her silence thus far, but now her curiosity overcame her.

"What in God's name is The Sinner's Emporium ?" she said.

"A place God's name is not written," Mendelson said, amused by his own joke. "It's a book, penned by my Lord Carrion's grandmother, Mater Motley, in which she lists the seven thousand greatest sinners in the Abarat."

"Seven thousand sinners. And are you one of them?"

"I am."

"It doesn't sound like much to be proud of," Candy commented.

"What would you know?" Mendelson Shape snapped. "You outrun me once and you think you have all the answers! Well, you don't, missy! I could have you dropped in an instant!" He leaned forward, and said: "Cafire !"

In response to this instruction, the moth twitched, and let Candy go .

She loosed a shriek as she slipped out of the creature's grasp and started to fall—

"Jazah !" Shape yelled. "Jazah !"

With a heartbeat to spare, the moth caught hold of her again, though its hold was precarious. Shape seemed to realize this. He barked out a third incomprehensible order, and this time the moth responded by gathering Candy back to its upper body and drawing her closer than ever; so close that the stiff black hairs of its thorax pricked her, despite the padding on the jacket Samuel Klepp had given her.