Abarat - Barker Clive. Страница 48

"Pull !" Malingo yelled.

"I'm doing my best!" Candy yelled back. "I need to go farther over the side."

"I've got hold of you," Malingo reassured her, grabbing her even more tightly.

Candy leaned as far out of the reeling, rocking glyph as her balance would allow. She was now farther out of the vehicle than she was in it. Meanwhile the glyph continued its unchecked ascent, the wind steadily moving it away from the spot where it had been conjured into being. Wolfswinkel's house was coming into view below.

The wizard had apparently witnessed the vehicle's whole gid-dying climb, because his bizarrely magnified head was pressed against the glass dome, his expression demented.

Candy ignored Wolfswinkel's wild stare and concentrated on trying to wrench the spiked hood off. Besides its savage beak, the headpiece had countless tiny barbs on its surfaces, which pricked and stung her palms. But she refused to let go. She was fighting for their lives here. The mire seemed to comprehend this too and was apparently prepared to kill itself in order to bring the glyph down. It thrashed around with incredible violence. But its appetite for destruction was to Candy's purpose. When the mire twisted to the right, she wrenched the headpiece to the left, and "when it pulled left, she wrenched right.

Finally, as the glyph moved directly over Wolfswinkel's house, there was a series of strange noises from the mire's skull. First there came a cracking sound, as though a heavy seal were being broken, then a loud, sharp hissing.

When Candy pulled the spiked head toward her, there was a third sound: a wet, glutinous noise, like a foot being pulled out of a sucking pit. And finally the mire's headgear came away in her hand. It was heavy, and she let go of it instantly. It dropped from her hands and tumbled away toward the roof of Wolfswinkel's house, turning over and over until it struck the glass dome below.

Now Candy was looking at the mire face-to-face. The shape of the creature's head was the same shape as its headpiece: the snout and horns were identical. It had no features, no coloration. It was precisely the same gray as its headpiece, except that it glistened horribly, like a fresh wound.

"Mud," Candy murmured to herself. "It's made of mud."

"What?" Malingo yelled over the din of the wind.

"It's made of mud !" Candy yelled back.

Even as she spoke, the mire's head began to lose the shape of its mold. Clots and globs of mud began to detach themselves and fall back through the air toward the dome.

The mire stopped struggling, as its body—which was entirely made of mud, Candy guessed, all encased in hood, suit, boots and gloves began to lose its coherence. Its head collapsed completely, releasing the vile reek of putrefaction. Gobs of mud spattered the dome of Wolfswinker's house, as though a vast passing bird had defecated on the glass.

Headless now, its body full of little shudders and twitches, the mire had little strength left to resist Candy. She began to pry its talons off the edge of the glyph, one by one, and finally the mire's grip on the vehicle slipped. Candy let out a whoop of triumph as the creature fell away, trailing mud from the open wound of its neck.

In the shiny glass dome below, Kaspar Wolfswinkel saw the mire's body tumbling toward him and began to retreat from the glass, a look of fear crossing his rage-flushed face. He had barely begun his retreat when the great bulk of the mire smashed into the glass. One moment Wolfswinkel was a huge, leering presence, his face massively magnified. Then the leaking body hit, and as the glass shattered, Candy and Malingo saw the tyrant as he truly was: a ridiculous little man in a yellow suit.

Even his voice, which had echoed across the slopes earlier like the voice of a tyrant, was reduced to a petulant shriek as glass rained down on him.

Candy watched as the mire's body hit the tiled floor and broke open, like a watermelon dropped from a tall building. Its swampy contents were splattered in all directions. There was no anatomy to speak of. No blood, no bones, no heart or lungs or liver. As she had guessed, the mire was made of mud from head to foot. And although the fleeing Wolfswinkel had attempted to avoid being hit by the contents of the mire's suit, he hadn't retreated fast enough. His yellow jacket was covered in mud and his long blue shoes were similarly bespattered, their heels slip-sliding under him.

He did his best to keep his balance, but he failed. Down he went, falling hard on his backside, his humiliation complete. There was no further for Kaspar Wolfswinkel to fall.

The last sight Candy had of him, before the glyph carried them away from the shattered dome, was Kaspar Wolfswinkel as the silent comedian, struggling to get to his feet and falling down again, his face now as besmirched as his suit and shoes.

The sight made her laugh, and the wind carried her laughter away over the darkened slopes of Ninnyhammer.

Jimothi Tarrie, who was kneeling in the long grass giving the last rites to one of his dying sisters, heard the girl's triumphant laughter, and despite the fact that he had lost five of his dearest in the battle with Houlihan's monstrous crew, managed to make a little smile.

Otto Houlihan heard the laughter too, as he sent his surviving mires back to their glyphs to give chase. He had left three of his creatures on the battlefield, their hoods clawed off them by the tarrie-cats, the stinking mud running out of their suits. He wasn't optimistic that the mires pursuing the girl and the slave in their makeshift glyph would catch up with them. Mires were fearless fighters, but they didn't have brilliant intellects. They needed close instruction or they rapidly lost their grasp on their purpose. More than likely the clouds over Ninnyhammer would conceal their quarry from them, and after a time they would forget why they were up there and begin circling around. Unless they received fresh directions they would simply continue to circle and circle and circle, until their glyphs ran out of significance and crashed.

But Houlihan—though he was sorely tempted—could not afford to give chase personally. The girl was important to Carrion, and the Key was more important still. His priority was to go back up to the house and get Wolfswinkel to hand the Key over. The girl would have to wait. It wouldn't be difficult to find Candy Quackenbush again. She was noticeable, that one. There was something about the eyes; something about the bearing. She'd find it hard to hide.

He ascended the little hill on which Wolfswinkel had built his domain and stepped into the chaotic ruins, calling the wizard's name. There was no immediate reply so he went through the living room and up the stairs to the dome. He'd seen the glass shattering of course, so he knew what to expect when he got up there. What he didn't anticipate was the sight of Kaspar Wolfswinkel standing in his underwear, socks, and mud-smeared blue shoes, staring up at the star-filled sky through the gaping remains of his precious dome.

His dirtied clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

His near-nakedness was not a pretty sight.

"The Key," Houlihan said.

"Yes, yes," Wolfswinkel said, going to his pile of muddied vestments and searching through the pockets. "I have it here."

"You will be rewarded," Houlihan said to him.

"I should hope so," Wolfswinkel said, handing the Key over to Houlihan. He was trembling, the Criss-Cross Man saw.

"What's troubling you?" Houlihan said.

"Oh, besides all this ?" Wolfswinkel said, spreading his arms and circling on the spot. "Well, I'll tell you what's troubling me. That girl."

"What about her?"

"Her presence here is no accident, Otto. You do realize that?"

"It's occurred to me. But what's your evidence for this?"

"She finds it too easy, Otto."

"Easy?"

"Being here," said Wolfswinkel. "Back in the old days, before the harbors were closed—"

"You weren't even born, Kaspar."

"No, but I can read , Otto. And all the books agree: it took visitors from the Hereafter days, weeks, sometimes months to become acclimatized to being in the Abarat. If you tried to speed up the process, people went crazy. Their fragile imaginations couldn't take it."

"Well, they're weak," Houlihan said.

"You're missing the point, Otto, as usual. I'm talking about the girl. This Candy Quackenbush . For her, being here is nothing. She's doing magic as though she was born to it. Born to it, Houlihan ! What does that tell you?"

"I don't know," Houlihan said.

"I'll tell you what it tells me ."

"What?"

"She's been here before."

"Huh. Well that's something for Carrion to puzzle out," Houlihan said, plainly not interested in debating the subject with Wolfswinkel.

"What about me?" Kaspar said.

"What about you?"

"I found the Key. And the girl."

"Then lost her. You let her slip away."

"It wasn't my fault. That was your damn mires. They could have had her. Anyway, two minutes ago you were telling me I'd be well rewarded."

"That was before I had the Key in my hand."

Wolfswinkel's lip curled. "You—"

"Now, now, Kaspar. No foul language. Accept your error. She was in your charge."

"What could I do? She turned my slave against me. He broke my staff."

"That seems rather careless of you," Otto said. "What was he doing with your staff in the first place?"

"I was outnumbered by them!" Wolfswinkel protested.

"By a girl and a geshrat?"

Wolfswinkel paused. Then, narrowing his eyes, he pointed his fat forefinger at the Criss-Cross Man. "I know what you're doing, Otto," he said.

"And what's that?" Houlihan replied.

"You're going to try and take all the glory for yourself and leave me with all the blame."

"Oh, Kaspar. You are so paranoid."

"That is what you're going to do, isn't it?"

"Very possibly," said Houlihan, with a little smile. "But you can't tell me you wouldn't do the very same thing if you were in a similar situation."

Wolfswinkel was defeated. He drew a deep, anguished breath. "At least tell Carrion I languish here," he said, pitifully. "We used to be friends, Otto. Do something for me. Please."

"I'm afraid our Lord Midnight is a practical man. He has what he needs from you. So now? You're forgotten. It's on to new business."