Drucker spat in the mud. “You’ll need a lot more than this ragtag posse a yourn.”
“Oh, we have more coming,” the vigilante leader replied. “Rest assured. Give up the others and you can save yourselves-and the boy.”
“No!” Lloyd cried, and pushed forward holding the Ambassadors’ box before him like a charm, his other hand still plunged inside his pocket, grasping the artificial eye. These men confronting them now were not Vardogers or Spirosians. They were just brutal, and perhaps as stupid as they looked.
The sight of the box with the luminous engravings startled them, but not as much as Lloyd had hoped, even when the etched symbols seemed to project out across their bodies and covered faces. Deftly, he spun the box around, making the figures whirl about like subtle, intelligent fire. The torch that one of the hooded men held seemed so primitive and clumsy by comparison.
“Eh, what’s this now? Some trick?” one of the sack-hooded men growled.
“Keep back!” Drucker yelled, hoisting his cudgel.
“We’ll take that bauble,” the beekeeper drawled. “Then you’ll take us to the others. They’re not far from here, we know. You can’t save them, but you can save yourselves. There’s tar and feathers and a nice oak tree on the edge of town otherwise. Or maybe we’ll burn ’em out!”
The gang cheered at this, and Lloyd thought the noise might draw some assistance. Then he realized that it was quite possible that these men were not mere outlaws and oafs but prominent local residents, ashamed or afraid in some way, yes, otherwise they would not be hiding their faces, but nevertheless doing the dirty work of the community by some after-midnight agreement.
Shades of Zanesville. Mob scenes from across America. The stories St. Ives and Hattie had told him of lynchings and castrations. The oppression he himself had felt too many times before. Scenes of every intimidation and assault he had ever endured flashed through his mind, swelling the impotent rage within him as he gripped the false eye of Mother Tongue ever tighter. He felt it burning now, so hot had his hand become-surely that was it. But why did it seem to throb, pulsing in time with the juice that slopped in the pit of his stomach and the white-hot hatred that scorched his forehead? He glanced down at his pocket and saw to his disbelief that the eye was shining through his hand, through the cloth, radiating up his arm as if the light and heat could not be contained.
“You’ll get naught out of us, you cur!” Soames snarled, plunging forward to strike the first blow.
The diabolical beekeeper drew one of his pistols and pointed it at Soames’s chest.
“Stop!” Lloyd shouted, and held above his head what was no longer an eye but the Eye. The Eye of his Storm.
The vigilantes gasped, for the brightness was so intense. Hotter and harsher than Greek fire or the silver rush of Chinese rockets. The Ambassadors’ box burned with a pale-green surrounding haze-but Mother Tongue’s Eye could not be looked at, it was so fiercely alight. Some of the men in the gang tried to cover their faces, as the baffled beekeeper man cocked and fired his pistol at Soames, but wide. Drucker ducked, shielding himself from the light the boy had produced from his pocket and trying to skirt the shot from the gun barrel. Soames dived forward, seeking to cudgel the hand that held the firearm, and lost his footing in the mud. Lloyd stood firm, one hand clutching the Ambassadors’ box, the other the Eye, whose rippling green electric flame he could feel racing through his nerves and then out into the dark like a jetted breath of deadly starlight.
The pistol exploded in the gang leader’s grip. The men beside him dropped their weapons and slapped their hands to their heads-their eyes. As one single cornered animal, they clamored in horrible unison and then collapsed, wriggling in the sloshy ground like worms. Only their leader did not fall to the ground. He was too busy dancing. A dreadful dance of unbearable pain that sent a wave of sickening fulfillment through Lloyd as he lowered the Eye and closed his fist around it, finding it cool once more.
The netted hat of the vigilante captain had ignited like a tumbleweed, encasing his face in a blue-green cage of flames, so that not even the stench of burning beard and skin escaped. He darted and weaved for a moment like some crazed new kind of pyrotechnic toy-the image of which might have made children laugh and clap, had the body below been some clever machine, and not a flesh-and-blood man, that could not be rebuilt in time for the next performance. Then he crashed into a wheel-rut puddle. The bloody shattered bone of his pistol hand lay outstretched, the fried black mass of what had been his head half submerged in the narrow ditch of rain, all skull and cobweb now, too hideous to look at.
Which his compatriots would never have to do. To a man, their sight had been seared shut like slits of blank slate-except for the colossus with the pitchfork, whose eyeballs had turned to scalding jelly and had leaked out of their sockets, staining his face and coat like offal flicked with a slotted spoon.
CHAPTER 3. The Quest and Questions of the Quists
WHETHER THE INHABITANTS OF INDEPENDENCE WERE SLEEPING very soundly that night, or whether such trouble had been anticipated in official quarters, after the blinding firestorm that had been released from the Eye, the dark of stars and the dim reflections of the moon in pools and rivulets returned, afterimages dwindling away like fiery leaves turned to ash. A lone stable dog howled at the other end of town, answered by the cry of coyotes or a wild pack in the distance. Soon the morning light would come creeping across the sky, the aroma of breakfasts would begin to rise-steel-cut oats bubbling and freshly laid eggs cracked and popping on buttered grills. Another steamboat would bring wagons and carriageloads of newcomers-barrels and crates of goods, workhorses dragging fresh timber, the smell of smoke, sweat, and the river clinging to their thickening coats. But all was still now, except for the mess of depraved and wounded humanity before them.
“Come quick,” urged Lloyd, pocketing his treasures and trying to raise Soames back up. Drucker kept blinking and batting the air, but it was clear that he had not been permanently debilitated. Both men could see all right again after a few moments, but neither could believe what he had seen. With the exception of the charred leader, the vigilantes lay sprawled on the mushy ground groaning, limbs tangled, fumbling for one another-for help, for answers to what had happened to them. Lloyd took charge and led the two Quist guards between the bodies and back toward the storehouse as fast as they could move, given their stunned, disoriented condition. After his miraculous performance, Soames and Drucker seemed more than willing to be led, boy though he was.
That Lloyd had no idea what sort of power had been unleashed or how he had unleashed it, he vowed he would not reveal. His one objective now was to return his bewildered new comrades to their families and fellows and deliver the warning about reprisals or further action against them.
Once back at the storehouse, Soames and Drucker poured forth a tale that made the Quists tremble and ululate. Even McGitney, practical man of decision that he had become, was distraught-flapping his arms for order and calling for more details all at once. Lloyd let the hoo-ha run its course and then reemphasized the admonition he had offered the moment they returned through the heavy door.
“You must leave town,” he told them. “By the fastest, straightest way you can. Those that waylaid us will not harm anyone again, but they have friends and other fools ready to do the same that they tried. Every moment you stay in this town you run the risk of being hunted down and-”
“We know, lad.” McGitney nodded. “We know too well the trials and risks we face. We have faced and suffered them before. That’s what brings us here and on the path before us. Our plan was always to leave this burg at first light. It was, in fact, your unexpected arrival that has delayed us. And, as fate or divine will would have it, has saved us, too. This is a night we will muddle over in times to come. But what of you and your family? Are you not at risk from these same marauders, too, now?”
“I don’t reckon this boy is at risk from anyone,” Drucker pronounced. “He is the next prophet-the one that Saint Kendrick foresaw. The box he carries is a match to the Headstones, and he can draw lightning down from a clear sky and make it do his bidding.”
This statement, presented so forcibly, offered a concise and unavoidable distillation of his and Soames’s initial attempt at a report. Lloyd dutifully presented Urim and Thummin’s box for inspection by McGitney and the others, and squawks of recognition and befuddlement filled the storehouse. The Eye he would not present, and as neither Drucker nor Soames had seen it clearly or grasped what role it had played in their deliverance, he was not about to stir up more chaos and inquiry now. What was more, of course, he had no idea what made the Eye work. It had been but an interesting if grotesque piece of jewelry minutes before-a souvenir of a lost part of his life that he was both afraid and hopeful of finding again. The real value he had placed on it had to do with Hattie LaCroix. The Eyes
