together, “Look at you, living out the end of your wasted life in fear.”
Still, the deep breath of true belief would not come.
At last the voices became simply his own as he spoke aloud in the dark room, “How did you
The valise with all the original documents, plus the archives materials and the translation key, sat at his side. He fished in its contents for a while, then plucked out a single leather scrap, which he rolled and put in his pocket. Then he sat. He finally picked up a broken yardstick from the debris underfoot. He could just make out the inscription: Holland Hardware 143rd and Broadway. On the back side was etched a calendar for 1948. The year he was born.
He poked the stick in the pool, felt the scratchy rough concrete an inch underneath. Felt it again, confirming the absurdity of the real.
He realized he hadn’t believed in himself, or anything else, for decades.
He had this one last chance, and he couldn’t measure up.
The certainty of his failure angered him. He poked the stick hard. It hesitated, and then it
He stood up, his heart pumping, valise in hand, his stature erect as a novice cliff diver gazing down from a rocky aerie at the wavering dime of blue below, circled by razor-sharp volcanic outcroppings and the relentless pounding surf. Timing the waves.
He took a deep breath and plunged.
Chapter 40
WAKEUP
Consciousness came to Cadence in a rush of disoriented fear. All she could think was that she was in the center of a giant stadium, the Klieg lights suddenly flaring into blinding light and the marching bands sounding a thunderous crescendo.
She blinked. The rush passed, followed by the Rip Van Winkle effect. She felt a sense of precious time having passed and momentous events having occurred. All while she slept. It was a sense of being left behind and catching up, with a yawning hole in the middle.
The room where she had conversed with Barren was the same. She was alone. Her keys lay on the coffee table, the talisman removed.
The keys held down a note on folded stationary similar to that slipped under her hotel door. She looked at it in the same way that people regarded a telegram in the 1930s. Bad News. Yellow Death. Don’t read it.
She read it. It said:
The deal is afoot. Pray that it goes smoothly.
If so you shall never see me again.
If not, perhaps a glimpse as my swift knife falls.
She knew somehow that the other rooms would be different than when she entered. First was the waiting room, perfectly appointed in Victorian furnishings and decor. The skylight was still there, letting down a cascade of soft afternoon luminescence. An adjustable sky curtain in semblance of the aurora borealis spread overhead at the second floor to filter and direct the light. A single thin rope of the material hung downward. She touched it. It felt light to her touch, almost alive with changing color and organic tension.
The display cases and their odd contents were gone. She toed the corner of a distinctive blue-yellow, antique Persian rug that had not been there before. She saw that the fade marks on the wood perfectly matched the shape of the rug, as if it had lain there unmoved for years.
She went to the front door. It was the same wood but a simpler latch and pull assembly. She pushed down on a bar and the latch released. The door opened. It was afternoon, as if she walked in only minutes ago. But she knew that was not the case. Not at all.
She stepped out and smelled the air. Raw and new. The door snicked shut behind her. She jumped and looked at its unyielding closedness.
She pushed and fiddled, but it was locked tight — no budge or latch movement. She felt for Barren’s note, but realized she’d left it on the table.
Both outside signs were gone.
The time vacuum that she knew was there scared her, as if its unfilled potential could suck in all sorts of horrendous possibilities. She began to run toward Broadway, looking to catch the first downtown subway train back to the Algonquin.
As Cadence left the Talisman Store and began to run in sweating desperation, a few translated pages sat alone on Jess’s desk. Those pages gave witness to Ara’s final destiny unfolding in a far distant realm:
Just as Pazal unsheathed his sword for the last time and stepped into the abyss, so the halfling Bearer stood a mere pebble’s toss from another edge, on the far side of Fume.
Thunder coughed up deep within the earth. A rush of steam, scalding and scorching, shot forth.
The Dark Lord was calm, even as he watched the halfling dither.
Beside His Darkness, Lord of the Eye, loomed a tall contraption studiously assembled from glass and wood, and served by hunched minions of a race unlike any she had ever seen. Meticulous piping led here and there from an immense clear bowl in which danced a silvery substance. Lesser vials held churning liquids of different colors, jade green, horse hair yellow, autumnal orange. It was the Source. It was the sum of it all, the ultimate mixing of alchemic fluids, decocted from a special chamber deep in the earth’s heart.
The Bearer stared down, wavering and almost toppling over the edge. His heart seemed compressed, squashed and unable to perform beneath the weight of his burden. He could not catch his breath. His mind cycled in a whirlpool of indecision. His fingers mirrored this, fluttering in a repeated, futile dance. The Object, now fully alive, jumped and pirouetted on its chain entangled within his fingers.
This is my final role, he thought, and now I’ve lost all. Because of that, that Wizard. Bind I shall keep. I shall find Ara. I shall …
“Halfling?” the Dark Lord said, barely loud enough to be heard. The Bearer turned slowly, his body now rigid. His eyes were glazed with exhaustion, and then he saw clearly who was there.
Ara stood at the Dark Lord’s side. She was watching him.
She was dressed in tattered rags, yet wearing a dark crown. A necklace of resplendent black stones encircled her neck, each stone shining forth with a brilliant red spark.
Like spider eyes, thought the Bearer, his mind still defying the plain truth revealed by his senses.
Ara’s eyes glittered, drinking in the conflict laid before her. Oh, the possibilities! She could be a princess of supreme power, ruler of all the lands of her kind. How her people in Frighten had been slighted!
Or she could be wife and Amon to this honest and brave halfling before her.
The Dark Lord enjoyed the dumbstruck look on the Bearer’s face. He feared no resolve in this halfling. Not with Ara, his prize, dangled before him. The Bearer’s servant, his fat companion, hovered at his side. He was a less predictable thing. But the answer there was at hand also.
Behind them arose that slinking gargoyle the Dark Lord had trained to follow them like a jackal to offal.
The Bearer faltered and then fell before the terrible beauty of the Halfling Queen. There he cried out in the pain of his burden and the loss of his beloved. He saw the clinging one who shadowed him always, creep toward him on all fours like a loathsome spider. The power within the Burden had wrung its destruction.
“How does it come to this?” the halfling cried.
The Dark Lord gloated. He felt no humility in his dependence on the Source, of which he was but an imperfect copy of an unnecessary part. His avarice and arrogance in this moment far outstripped his malice, and in
