Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 29

Midnight has Wings

AS MATER MOTLEY ASCENDED the steps of the Great Pyramid at Xuxux, her thoughts turned briefly to her grandson. They had worked for many years devising the plan that was about to come to fruition, and while she’d had no time for sentimentality—it was a spineless, sickly feeling—she couldn’t keep a wave of regret from breaking over her. She’d done her best to warn her grandson about the vicious power of his affections. She’d forced the lesson upon him by sewing up his lips with needle and thread when she’d first heard him use the word love; the scars that her handiwork had left were still upon his face the last time she’d seen him, which had been on the deck of her death-ship, Wormwood. The scars, however, had failed to inspire contrition in him.

She let the regret have its useless moment, then let it go. Carrion had been a fine coconspirator, but once the taint of love had touched him, he’d become a danger to himself and to their great enterprise. So she was alone as she climbed the steps to the doors of the Great Pyramid.

She paused. This was a great moment. She wanted somebody with her to witness.

“Maratien,” she said quietly.

“I’m here, m’lady,” Maratien said behind her, but nearby.

She couldn’t conceal the unease in her voice. The Old Mother sensed it.

“There’s nothing to fear, child,” she said. “The creatures behind this door—they are the sacbrood—and are all in my service.”

“There are many?”

“Numberless, at least.”

“All in this pyramid?”

“They are in all the pyramids, and below all the pyramids, beneath the Izabella, spreading out and down great distances.” Mater Motley waited for all this to register with the girl. Then she reached into the fold so her dress, its fabric weighed down by captive souls, and brought out a key. It was a strange, restless form. “Here,” she said. “You open the door. See for yourself.”

Tentatively, Maratien accepted the key.

“Take courage, child. There are powers waiting upon you. Look back. See for yourself.”

Maratien glanced over her shoulder. In the short time since they’d stepped off the Kreyzu and onto the steps of the pyramid, massive numbers of sea creatures had risen to crowd the surface of the Izabella, many of them giving off luminescence from their scales or shells.

“See how impatient they are?” Mater Motley said, directing Maratien’s attention to the bottom step, where the dozens of monstrous forms were emerging. “You’d better get on with it.”

Maratien needed no further words of encouragement. She returned her gaze to the door, and slid the key into the lock. She didn’t have to do more than that; the key knew its business. It slid out of her fingers and into the lock, disappearing completely.

“Good,” Mater Motley murmured. “Very good.”

There was a noise from within the pyramid now, as the system of counterweights that operated the doors was set in motion. The lock was turning, but so was an entire portion of the door surrounding the lock. And the motion was spreading, forms turning within forms, until the entire triangular door was moving, the design dividing, opening onto the darkness within.

A rank smell came to greet the Old Mother and Maratien, fouler by far than that of excrement or rot, though the worst of both was contained within it. Maratien put her hand up to her face, disgusted by the stench. Mater Motley was indifferent to it.

“How I have waited . . .” she breathed.

The triangular door was completely open now, and from inside, carried on that foul air, was the voices of the sacbrood: clicking, hissing, ticking; its volume steadily rising as news spread from hive to hive that the Hour of Hours had come. Mater Motley reached into the folds of her skirts again, and brought out her slim, black wand. Then quietly instructing Maratien to follow her and stay close, she entered the Pyramid. The only illumination within was the moonlight that had entered with them. It did nothing to define the mysteries of the interior.

“Be ready,” Mater Motley said to Maratien.

Then she lifted the wand above her head and its tip suddenly blazed. It was a tiny source, but it threw off tens, then hundreds, then thousands of beads that flew in all directions, each as bright or brighter than its creator, and each trailing a filament of light that did not diminish, but hung in the air like the threads of a luciferian spider. And as this web of brightness spread, it began to unknit the darkness, and offer Maratien and her guardian a glimpse of what the Pyramid contained. The Old Mother had not remotely prepared the girl for what she now saw.

The sacbrood were everywhere, each its own invention. Were they vast insects, or winged reptiles, or an unholy marriage of both? Some had limbs numbered in the hundreds, and eyes in clusters, like bright black eggs, and bodies that coiled upon themselves like nested snakes. Some were swarming with parasitic creatures whose bodies were in turn leeched upon by bloated mites; some hung in loops from the heights of the Pyramid, their translucent bodies containing jellied spawn; and others skittered over the floor, moving with such speed they left only an impression of their barbed bodies.

But none of these details distracted Mater Motley from the business she had here.

“I know that many of you here have waited years for this Hour,” she said, using that voice that, though it was barely conversational in volume, was somehow heard everywhere. “The waiting is over. Rise, all of you! And give me my Midnight!”

She did not pause for a response from the brood. She simply pointed her black rod at the apex of the Pyramid. One last bend of brightness flew from it, and struck the top of the Pyramid. Unlike those messengers of light she’d previously unleashed, it was, however, instantly extinguished. It had done its work, triggering a mechanism somewhere in the Pyramid’s belly. A profound growl shook the structure, punctuated by something akin to the beating of a vast drum.

“What’s happening?” Maratien said.

“They are being freed to do what they were born to do,” Mater Motley replied. “See?”

She directed the girl’s attention to the spot where she had sent the triggering pulse. Moon-silvered clouds were now visible with a litter of stars between them. The pyramid was opening, its sides no longer touching at the apex, but parting like a three-petaled flower. To move stone walls of such immensity was no easy task, and the blossoming above was slow. But the sacbrood sensed their imminent release.

Waves of agitation passed through their prodigious numbers. A few of those close to the roof fluttered up to the three-pointed aperture and flirted with the moonlight; some even flew up fearlessly into the night. Their escape encouraged other members of the brood that were clinging to the walls lower down the Pyramid to also take flight, so that soon the Pyramid was filled with the clamor of wings.

The shafts of moonlight were broadening as the Pyramid continued to open, but the sight of the sky only caused word to spread into the deeper and deeper hives. The floor of the massive structure, though built by masons who had known how to move blocks of stone the size of mountains, vibrated from the motion of a billion wingbeats, each striking the air with no great violence.

Midnight had arrived.