The Last Page

MAY THE BENEVOLENCE OF ADUMMIM KEEP HIM IN CLAY FOREVER.

He lay exposed to the air like one of his own freakish experiments.

“He’s come back,” Caliph gurgled. A viscous line strung between his lower lip and the mound where he crouched, looking away.

“Caliph.” She bent down beside him. “It’s only grave robbers. He’s not alive.” Weird glyphs from the Csrym T, however, made her doubt her own words. She had read the necromancer’s notes, seen the secrets in the margins, found the truth behind Cameron’s stories.

“I dreamt it. Can’t you smell it?”

“Smell what?”

“Piss!” For the first time since she had known him, Caliph’s face looked truly pale. His skin was clammy against her fingers. He babbled without sense.

“I did it. I shouldn’t have, he was just . . . gods! Why can’t he just be dead?”

“He’s dead. He’s dead.” She rocked him in her arms, suddenly frightened. “He’s dead.”

The words ran together in a macabre lullaby. Darkness settled in around them. Only faint light ebbed through the black thatch of trees.

“We have to go, Caliph.”

She felt an approaching presence. In her mind’s eye she imagined something stop to sniff the dead horse on the other side of the hill. It tilted its small head to listen.

Caliph wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Cold light had filled his eyes.

“Caliph! Where are you going?”

He had begun crawling quickly, angrily through the leaves, heading for where he had dropped his sword. She tried to stop him but he threw her off. The blade gleamed.

Sena leaned against a marker and watched in rapt fascination, enspelled by his bizarre behavior.

A weird windy cough came from the direction of the dead horse. Something was actually there. It lurched slowly uphill from the body of the animal and supported its weight on one deformed hand. It rested, moved uphill then rested again, something that should not have had corporeal form.

When it stopped, it listened against the wind. Sena could almost hear it pause, eavesdropping above the soft clatter of leaves.

Her fingers gripped the headstone and pulled herself up. Naobi’s eroding face fell apart behind the trees. It didn’t seem possible that night could come so fast.

Caliph was slogging back, oblivious, ignoring his foot, walking toward the grave with sword in hand. He looked monstrous. His black hazy shape hunched over the hole and lunged downward stroke after stroke, stabbing at the corpse. He made horrible noises like a crying animal.

Powerful electric currents flashed in the pit, made the corpse lurch and jolt.

Somewhere, near the crest of the hill, whatever was listening must have both seen and heard. Sena’s horse bolted. It gave a startled high-pitched snarl and left.

No sooner had the animal vanished than a terrible sound echoed off the mountains. It ricocheted through the trees and sank into Sena’s blood like teeth.

Caliph’s body seized in midthrust. He stopped his insane demonstration over the grave and looked around.

Sena stumbled.

She stared blindly toward the origin of the inhuman echo but it was too dark to see.

“Caliph.” Her throat had constricted and his name came out as an exsiccated whisper.

Strangely, the scream seemed to drain Caliph’s fever. He stopped, clicked into motion, cogs running smoothly, measuring, guessing. His voice was quiet and rational again. “Sena, run for the house.”

She continued to stumble for a long moment then she turned and almost bumped into him.

What is the use in running? she thought.

“Run for the house,” he said again.

And then she obeyed. She could hear Caliph close behind her. His feet made shuffling noises in the leaves, painful limping sounds. She wondered if he would fall.

Sena broke from the trees into the overgrown lawn before the house. She could feel the creature coming now. It ran clumsily but with unreal speed. Long spindly limbs flung it with horrific strength over the ground. It tore silently through the graveyard, bearing down through the trees, hardly disturbing the forest through which it sped.

It could see her. It could see them. Its teeth were bared. By daylight it might flee from men and dogs, but when the sun set, it grew bold.

Caliph ran headlong after Sena, his pain swallowed up in the urgency of flight.

He could see her body moving like it had been made only to run. She leapt the front steps in a single bound and vanished into the house.

He almost did the same but the gears clicked out a different course and pushed him into the overgrown bushes instead. Though still afraid, it was a cool fear.

Quickly, efficiently he felt the ground, searching for the thing he knew was there. There was a clink and he pulled a cracked little bowl from the weeds. It was the little bowl he had nearly crushed when Sena and he had ridden up earlier that fall. The same terrible little bowl his uncle had used.

Caliph drew his depleted sword across his palm, letting the metal bite into his flesh. He clenched his fist over the little bowl just like his uncle had shown him so many years ago.

Now Caliph’s life ran into it instead.

“Holomorphy needs blood,” Nathaniel used to say. “Holomorphy is blood. Blood is numbers.” A thin old man seemed to stand on the mansion steps with Caliph, a ghost mumbling in his ear. It reminded him. Prompted him at every step.

“If I am gone and you need to be safe in the house, this is what you must do.”

The bony fingers of the necromancer rested on Caliph’s head, stroking the boy’s hair.

“You must not be afraid.”

Caliph could almost see the silver knife Nathaniel used to cut his hand. One cut deep enough to count as three. The words were coming to him with the same speed as the creature.

“Caliph, come inside!”

Sena’s terrified voice hardly registered behind him. Distantly he heard her moving the broken door. His blood ran into the bowl. He spoke the math.

Whether or not he wanted to be a holomorph, the syllables of the Unknown Tongue had been his nursery rhymes. He slopped his life on the front step and drew in it: the curious three-stroke mark with the toe of his boot.

Then he set the bowl down, a blank expression on his face.

Across the meadow something parted the trees and swung its huge gaunt frame into the grass. Caliph stepped backward into the house; he helped Sena shut the door.

Inside, they could do little but hold the panel in place and wait. Listening. Their labored breathing and the wind pushing through the chinks made it impossible to hear.

Pressed together, they leaned against the thick wood portal and doubted the clawing noises on the walls were only bushes.

The door, hanging from its one hinge, could not even keep the wind out. It took all four hands to keep it in place.

In the blackness, they stared at each other.

A guttural, bestial snort puffed softly through the crack. Whatever it was, it was only inches away.

It scraped on the steps—talons or claws. Slobbery heavy breathing drew the air backward.

A hissing like the release of steam from a kettle made Sena’s breath catch audibly in her throat. Then there was a whimper and the sound of claws dragging off the steps.

“Upstairs,” Caliph gasped.