Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks (15 page)

“I see it.”

TAKE YOUR PLACE THERE, Came the Voice. WE SKERRYS WILL FORM A ... YOU HAVE NO SEMANTIC CONSTRUCT FOR IT, IT IS A SHAPE OF POWER ... HERE AROUND THE HOLY WATER. YOU ARE TO SIT BESIDE YOUR SISTER, ON THAT ROCK. SILVERWEB, YOU OF CASTLE MCDANIELS, YOU WILL KNEEL UPON THE SAND, AND YOU WILL CALL DOWN THE LOVE YOU HAVE LEARNED TO DRAW UPON. YOU WILL ASK THAT THE SLEEPER WAKE, SILVERWEB OF MCDANIELS, WHILE WE SKERRYS SING FOR YOU. PLEASE, TAKE YOUR PLACES!

“I’m dreaming this,” said Troublesome, too worried to be anything but cross and rude, but she did as she was bid, and she went and settled herself on the boulder near Responsible’s head. Behind her, she heard the soft hiss of movement, and she looked over her shoulder and saw Silverweb kneeling on the sand with her arms raised to the sky and her eyes already rapt, even in the scalding sunlight and the constant battering of rays struck from the rocks. The Skerrys had taken up positions that looked to her to lack pattern of any kind, but she was willing to believe it was a congruent shape for them. She was willing to believe almost anything. And now they were going to sing.

And Silverweb was going to pray.

“But what am
I
supposed to do?” she asked hoarsely; there was sand in her throat. “Outside of keeping this child from drowning, that is.”

SHE WILL NOT DROWN, came a voice Troublesome felt was new. Not that it mattered. Bells are bells. THE WATER IS NOT DEEP ENOUGH OR SWIFT ENOUGH. THAT IS NOT THE DANGER.

“Tell me, then.”

IF SILVERWEB OF MCDANIELS IS SUCCESSFUL, IF THINGS GO AS WE EXPECT THEM TO GO, THERE WILL BE ... SUDDENLY, WITH NO WARNING ... A KIND OF TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE. AT THAT INSTANT, WE BELIEVE THAT YOUR SISTER WILL WAKE. AND AT THAT SAME INSTANT, THERE WILL BE A CHANCE FOR SOMETHING EVIL TO COME THROUGH THE TEAR WE HAVE MADE, SOMETHING THAT WATTS ALWAYS FOR JUST SUCH AN OPPORTUNITY, THROUGH AGES UPON AGES OF TIME. YOU ARE TO PREVENT THAT.

Troublesome felt terror in her somewhere; she would have sworn there was none left in her. The voice went on, confident, urgent, soothing her.

YOUR ROLE HERE, THE ROLE FOR WHICH YOU HAVE BEEN LEARNING ALL YOUR LIFE LONG, IS TO RECOGNIZE THAT EVIL THING HOWEVER BEAUTIFULLY IT MAY BE DISGUISED, AND TO STOP IT FROM ENTERING THIS SPACE AND THIS TIME. THAT, TROUBLESOME OF BRIGHTWATER, IS WHAT YOU ARE FOR IN THIS WORLD—WE NEED AN
EXPERT
IN EVIL.

Troublesome felt the terror go, and in its place a fragment of knowledge, as of something forgotten long ago and now remembered for a fraction of time. From the breadth of that scrap of remembrance, she straightened and stared at the Skerry she thought was speaking.

“Silverweb!” she cried out, taut as a bowstring. “What about Silverweb? You know what you leave her open to?”

SILVERWEB OF MCDANIELS IS PROTECTED. THERE ARE FEW SHIELDS SO INDESTRUCTIBLE AS PURITY AND VALOR IN COMBINATION. SHOULD ANYTHING GET NEAR HER WITH STRENGTH ENOUGH TO PASS THOSE SHIELDS, WE ARE MORE THAN ABLE TO DEAL WTTH IT—AND IT IS NOT LIKELY. BUT ALL OUR ATTENTION, AND ALL OF HERS, MUST BE FOCUSED ON A SINGLE POINT. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE, TROUBLESOME, WHO CAN PROTECT YOUR SISTER. BE READY, NOW! DON’T WATCH US; WATCH THERE, CLOSE BY HER HEAD, WHERE THE ANCIENT EVIL WILL TRY ITS BEST TO BREAK THROUGH... IT IS WEARY PAST BEARING OF LYING TRAPPED BENEATH THAT SACRED SPRING!

Troublesome understood that well enough; she turned and set her eyes to watch, holding her breath, her lower lip caught between her teeth and her strong hands at the ready for ... whatever might come.

And the Skerrys sang.

It was not precisely music, as Troublesome understood music. Nothing to it of fiddle or dulcimer or guitar, nothing of melody or harmony either; not even rhythm. She could make no sense of it, but it rose over the sand and the rocks with an unmistakable power. It was a call to that same Source that Silverweb called upon, and it supported her call, bore it up and carried it on what must have been notes and chords, focused it as Troublesome strained her eyes for anything.

There it was! Lovely in the water, a rose that rocked gently on the surface of the clear water, a single perfect yellow rose the size of her two cupped hands, with a scent that was as seductive as wickedness ever had been in all of time. Troublesome would have known it anywhere. She had it instantly, before it could drift one inch closer to the sands that were its first goal, crushed between her palms, and all her muscles knotted as she struggled with a loathsome squirming Unknown desperately determined to make the world its territory for a change.

“Nasty piece of work that you are,” shouted Troublesome of Brightwater, laughing and exultant, “begone to wherever you came from, crawl back in your hole, you’re no match for me, nor ever could be! Squirm all you like, and foul me all you care to ... not even
trained
, are you? Ah, you’re a sorry excuse for a Holy Terror, let me tell you; I was expecting more of a challenge!”

Occupied as she was, she had no way of knowing that the long silver hair of the Skerrys, and the tunics they wore, were being whipped and buffeted in a wind against which—for all their lives spent in this desert—they could scarcely stand. Or that their singing was being choked by the clouds of sand that had turned the sky black above them. Or that around Silverweb, like a shield shaped to her body, there was a clear space where no wind blew and no sand whirled, and all was still; and where all was radiant with a clear golden light that was the same color the evilness had chosen as a strategy to deceive them. Even the stench as the thing lost its control of scent-of-rose and began to pour out the smell that was natural to it could not break the concentration that poured through Troublesome’s hands as they gripped her adversary by what might have been its throat.

That adversary did not impress Troublesome, nor could it touch Silverweb; they were the two polarities that served to hold this time-space intact. But the Skerrys were mightily impressed, and they gave a great sigh of relief in Troublesome’s mind, all the bells calling out together, as they saw the golden rose crushed and rubbed to a slime in her hands, and they felt the wind fall and saw the desert sky clear once again.

Troublesome bent to rub her arms clean in the sand—she had no least intention of fouling the sacred water with the vile stuff that covered her to the elbows. Scrupulously, she gathered each grain that might have been contaminated by it into a heap before her, and she scrabbled a hole in the sands and shoved those soiled grains into it and laid a flat heavy rock over the spot to mark it. And still she wondered if that would do it ... might could be there were tiny suckers and cells that would leach out through the sand and make the sacred water a new poison in a Universe already copiously overendowed with poisons. She was hesitating, crouched over the flat rock that seemed a puny barrier against such harm, when she felt Silverweb touch her shoulder, and jumped, startled.

“The Skerrys say,” Silverweb told her, “that it is entirely dead, with nothing left that can exist in this world. They say it is not like other deaths, where a substance will recombine as it goes back to its original elements and enter the cycle of life again—it is too alien. You are not to worry, they say; you did what was required, and it is over.”

“Well, it wasn’t
much
,” said Troublesome. “I could do that every day and twice on Sundays.”

“They would be pleased if you were denied any such opportunity,” said Silverweb dryly. “That’s a direct quote.”

“Direct as you can make it, I expect. Bells ... what kind of language might that be?”

“Troublesome?”

Troublesome looked at her, still shaking the sand off her arms.

“Yes, Silverweb?”

“It worked.”

“What?”

“I said—it worked. Look there, behind you.”

Troublesome whirled, and had she not been careful she might well have cried, and spoiled her image forevermore. In the silver of the water, Responsible’s eyes were open, and she was speaking her sister’s name.

Over Castle Airy, the giant crystal was beginning to take on the color of the small mallows that grew wild along Oklahomah’s seacliffs; a tinge redder than the pale color of peachapple cider well made, but not yet the color of strawberry wine. As the crystal’s pulsing grew stronger, its humming more clearly felt somewhere in the marrow of the bones, the point that aimed toward the sky and the point that aimed straight down toward the Castle itself began to look as if they could pierce both targets. They were darker at the points.

The people of Airy had gone inside their houses, and were huddled with their families. If they were to die, they would at least die together, not alone out in a field or a stable, or back of a counter in some store, some workshop. It was better to wait with your children and your kin and whoever you might love close by you. There was no doubt in their minds that they were going to die.

They only wondered how it would be. Would the thing plunge down toward the ground like a missile and explode in rosy flame or rosy poison? A gas, perhaps, spreading out over the Kingdom and taking them all as it coursed the air? And would it be a merciful poison, one that meant no more than a kind of falling asleep? Or would there be convulsions and agonies and desperate clawing at the throat? Or would it stay there in the air and send out its cargo or death in rays, as the lasers did? Or something else, something completely unknown ... and would it be
merciful
... or would it be the stuff of nightmare? They looked at the tadlings, and especially at the babies, and prayed that it would be merciful, and swift.

At the Castle, Charity of Airy and the three Grannys in residence could feel the terror. It took no telepathic powers to sense an emotion like that, coming from every side of you, and they bit their lips and frowned till their heads ached. It wouldn’t do to take the contagion of that terror; might could be they would be needed later, and in their right minds.

Castle Airy had no Magician of Rank for the Mules to contact; and given that there were three Grannys there to be put up with that was not surprising. But the word had come in from Brightwater by comset almost at once, Veritas Truebreed Motley passing it along just as calm as he would have announced a blizzard. The women of the Castle blessed the fortune that had made them part of that system, and wondered what it was like for the Kingdoms that were neither part of the Alliance of Democratic Republics nor supplied by a Magician of Rank ... they would be completely isolated now.

Granny Forthright didn’t like it a bit.

“That thing up there,” she fussed, waving at the ceiling over her head with one knitting needle, “it scares the bejabbers out of me—and
I
know what it is, not to mention knowing that Airy’s not the only Castle so blessed. Now what do you suppose it must be like for the Families that
don’t
know those things?”

“Well, it won’t
do
,” pronounced Granny Flyswift. “And that’s all there is to it.”

“I agree, it won’t,” said Charity of Airy, “but talk is cheap—I suggest we give it some careful thought before we go doing anything. Is there truly anywhere that there’s neither comset transmission, nor Magician of Rank, nor even a friendly neighbor to pass the word along? Count them off, ladies, and carefully!”

“Brightwater, McDaniels, Clark, and Airy,” said Flyswift. “All on the comset, all brought up to date by Veritas Truebreed. That’s four.”

“Mizzurah’s got no comsets,” put in Granny Heatherknit, “but there’s a Magician of Rank at Castle Motley for the Mules to tell direct, and Granny Scrabble there to see to it they don’t kill him in the process. And seeing as Mizzurah’s not much bigger all told than our back garden, there’ll be somebody on the way to Castle Lewis with a message long since. That’s six. And Tinaseeh ... bad cess to it anyway ... Tinaseeh’s got
four
Magicians of Rank at Castle Traveller, no need to worry about
that
crew.
And
Granny Leeward, which is a shame; I’d of been right pleased to see the four at Traveller get their brains scrambled.”

“Granny,” chided Charity of Airy. “How you talk!”

“That’s seven,” said Granny Heatherknit, ignoring her completely. “Seven of twelve.”

“Castle Guthrie on Arkansaw has a Magician of Rank, and so’s Castle Farson—that’s nine ... oh, law!” Granny Flyswift made a soft and sorrowful noise.

“Oh, law,” she said, counting it up on her fingers, “it’ll be Purdy and Wommack as think they’re all alone in this. No comsets, no Magicians of Rank, no way to know whatever in the world is happening and nobody as would care to make the effort to tell them. I can’t say as I’m specially worried about the Wommacks— “

“You should be,” Granny Forthright interrupted. “They’ll be declaring it’s the Wommack Curse again.”

“Forthright, that slipped my mind entirely! You’re right as right! And wouldn’t you know it, wouldn’t you just
know
it, it’d be the fool Purdys, as don’t know enough to come in out of the rain anyhow, and the Wommacks with their fool
curse
, as are left stranded?” Granny Flyswift raised a finger beside her eyeglasses. “It’s near on enough to make a body think they may
have
something with their curses and their poor-mouthing about bad luck following ‘em everywhere and everywhen!”

“They make their own luck,” Charity of Airy scoffed, “and you know it—don’t talk nonsense at a time like this! Anybody wants a curse bad enough can manage to bring one down; you just have to put your back into it. And there’s nothing we can do about either Wommacks or Purdys—they might as well be back on Old Earth for all we can do.”