Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 62

The Volcano and the Void

CANDY, SITTING ATOP THE higher slopes of Mount Galigali, stared up at the immense expanse of the Stormwalker’s underbelly as it slowly passed over her. The immense machine seemed almost close enough for her to reach up and touch. The guttural drone of the vessel’s massive engines made the scree on the slope dance a lunatic dance.

“It’s time. Take me to my son,” were the words Mater Motley had watched Zephario say to her.

He was right, Candy knew: this was the moment. The Prince of Midnight was inside the Stormwalker with his grandmother—and was there any place he was more likely to be on this night of nights, when old allegiances became clear, than with her? She had to get them both up into the great lightning machine before the Stormwalker destroyed them both.

And then, up out of the unsifted memories in her head, a word sprang onto her tongue: a word in Old Abaratian. It had a flawless provenance. Candy had taken it from the sleeping mind of Princess Boa, back in the days when she’d used Boa as a living repository of magic. Boa had in turn learned the word from the same source she’d used for the wieldings and invocations, prayers and necromancing—her devoted Christopher Carrion. And who was Carrion’s source? Of that, Candy had not the slightest doubt. Carrion had learned the word from his grandmother, Mater Motley, who was riding high in the Stormwalker over their heads.

Somehow that confirmed the rightness of the word she was about to utter. She had tracked it around in a circle, back to the Hag of Gorgossium.

She didn’t even know what the word meant. But she knew this was the right moment to say it. It had four syllables:

Yet—

-ha—

-si—

-ha.

“Are you ready?” she said to Zephario.

“For what?” he said.

“I can’t be sure, but I think there’s going to be a staircase, made of smoke, and we’re just going to climb it.”

“Then I’m ready.”

At that moment, though Candy didn’t know it, the Empress of the Abarat was studying them in the Window—no, not them: Zephario—trying to work out what it was about the burned face that puzzled her.

“Yet—” Candy said.

Words of magic had to be spoken very cautiously, Malingo had once told her he’d read in Wolfswinkel’s books. They had to be pronounced clearly so that the forces that were being summoned into activity knew exactly what they were being instructed to do.

As Candy spoke the second syllable—“ha”—the Empress looked up from the Window, suddenly realizing what element had worked such a terrible transformation upon the face on the slope below.

“Fire,” she’d said.

Gunner Gh’niemattah had thought she’d heard her Empress’s instruction. She had not aimed for one figure or the other, but for the rock between them. The rocket would blow a hole in the rock between them, causing the ground they were standing on to fold in on itself, carrying both of them down to their deaths.

“si—”

Gunner Gh’niemattah pulled the trigger. The charge in the gunner’s launcher exploded.

“ha—”

The explosive charge slammed against the expulsion plate at the base of the rocket.

The phenomenal power of the weapon, which had been mounted on the Stormwalker so recently that the gunner had never had an opportunity to test it, completely blindsided her. The whole launcher kicked so violently that the gunner was thrown back across the gunnery tower, her neck snapping at the same moment the rocket struck the flank of Mount Galigali.

Such was the power of the rocket’s release that a ripple of its force passed through the entire Stormwalker. It juddered and rolled. As its motion settled, the Empress called forth five more windows to study the aftereffects of the rockets.

“What do you see?” Christopher asked her.

“A hole in the side of Galigali, and a lot of dust and dead rock.”

“So they’re dead?”

“Of course they’re dead. The ground opened up beneath both of them. And down they went into the fire.”

“What fire?” Christopher said, looking toward the window. “There’s nothing left burning in Galigali, surely.”

“I might have killed Candy Quackenbush, but I’ve resurrected Galigali.” Mater Motley turned and walked back to look at the volcano. “So many resurrections. First Boa, then you, now Galigali.”

“I was never dead, lady,” he replied. “If I had been, I would have remained that way. Happily.”

He didn’t look back at her. He just kept staring at the ever-multiplying streams of magma as they coursed down over the volcano’s flank.

“Stop obsessing on the girl! Did she really mean something to you?”

“Yes. She reminded me I’d been in love once. And that maybe I had deserved to be loved in return.” He stared past his grandmother at the wasteland visible through the battle-deck windows behind her. “She was quite a creature. Look! There! Her last miracle. She made them a glyph. That’s how they got away. She made a glyph big enough to carry all of the prisoners.”

“Impossible,” the Empress told him.

“I’m looking at it,” Christopher replied, pointing past her.

The Empress turned, following the direction of his finger, out through the battle-deck window.

Beyond the empty camp was a stretch of boulder-strewn wasteland, and beyond that, the Void. An empty darkness, into which was headed the immense glyph that Candy helped create.

“They’ve gone over the Edge of the World,” one of the stitchling Commanders remarked.

“Indeed they have,” the Empress replied.

“That’s the end of them then,” a second Commander said. “There’s nothing to hold them up out there. They’ll fall forever.”

“How did she do that?” Mater Motley said to herself.

“Does it matter?” Carrion said. “She’s dead. She won’t be doing it again.”

The Empress responded as though he hadn’t spoken.

“The amount of power that takes. Where did she get it?” She talked very quietly, almost to herself.

“They don’t seem to be falling,” Carrion said. “Are you sure that’s the Edge of the World?”

A copy of the Almenak had already been brought out, and the map in it carefully studied. Christopher went over to the Commanders and snatched the copy away to scrutinize for himself.

“Of course none of the information in these wretched Almenaks are reliable,” he said. To the north of Scoriae, the Sea of Izabella fell away into a featureless darkness, along the edge of which was written: This is the Edge of the World. Beyond the edge, etched in white letters against the blackness were four letters, widely sprawled:

VOID

“They will fall,” one of the Commanders said.

“Forever and ever,” said Motley.

“We should go to the very edge then,” Carrion said. He was smiling now, genuinely pleased at the prospect. “I want to see what this Void looks like.”

“I already gave the order,” the Empress said. “We’ll be waiting for them if they attempt to turn around.”

The Stormwalker had taken one lightning stride, and was about to take a second, moving the two-mile-long vehicle over the deserted camp toward the Edge of the Abarat with extraordinary speed.

“I see no sign of her glyph falling,” Carrion said.

“It will,” his grandmother said. “There’s nothing out there to hold it up. See for yourself.” She directed Christopher’s attention to the port side of the Stormwalker. There, beyond a stretch of solidified lava, the Izabella rushed on toward the edge of the world, where it fell away, throwing up churning clouds of spray.

“Impressive,” Carrion said.

“Yet her glyph still flies,” the Old Hag groaned. “How? Where does power like that come from?” She glanced at her grandson. “Did she ever talk to you about these powers?”

“The girl? No. But I have a theory. . . .” he said coyly.

“I’m listening.”

“The blind man who was with her. I knew him. Not the face, of course. There’s nothing left there, but . . . the eyes. Something about the eyes . . .”

“Don’t be coy. Talk!”

“It’s ridiculous,” he said, “but . . . I remember them from a dream. I was just a boy, and they looked down at me. Then he whispered something to me . . .”

“What did the man say?”

Carrion’s gaze slid in his grandmother’s direction for a second or two. Then he looked away.

“He looked down at me and he said, ‘I love you, Little One.’”