The Wheel of Darkness

reached a semicircular railing overlooking the vast hexagonal space. Even at this most extreme of times, she could not help but marvel at it: eight levels high, with glass elevators running up two sides, graced with innumerable little balconies and parapets draped with passionflowers. Grasping the railing, she looked out and down into the Atrium. The sight was shocking. The King’s Arms—the elegant restaurant five levels below—was almost unrecognizable. Cutlery, half-eaten food, trampled flowers, and broken glass were strewn across the floor. Overturned tables, spilling their contents, were scattered everywhere. It looked, she thought, as if a tornado had come through. People were everywhere—some running across the Atrium, others circling aimlessly, still others helping themselves to bottles of wine and liquor. Cries and shouts filtered up toward her.

The glass elevators were still operating, and she headed toward the nearest. But even as she did so, a loud rumble filled the vast space: a growl from deep within the bowels of the ship itself.

And then the Atrium began to tilt.

At first, she assumed it was her imagination. But no: looking up at the great chandelier, she saw it was slanting to one side. As the deep growl grew in intensity, the chandelier began to vibrate, tinkling and jangling crazily. Dahlberg quickly backed into the protection of an archway as pieces of cut crystal began raining down, bouncing like hail among the tables, chairs, and railings.

My God

, she thought.

What’s happening?

The heeling grew more acute and she gripped the brass railing fixed to a pillar at one side of the archway. With a scraping noise, chairs and tables in the restaurant below started sliding to one side, slowly at first, then gathering speed. Moments later, she heard the crashing and breaking of glass as the wall of bottles on the elegant bar at one side of the restaurant came down.

She clung to the railing, unable to take her eyes from the carnage occurring below. Now the great Steinway concert grand in the center of the Atrium began to move, sliding on its casters until it careened headlong into the huge statue of Britannia, which shivered into pieces and fell in a ruin of broken marble.

It was as if the ship were caught in the viselike grip of a giant and, despite the groaning, protesting engines, was being forced onto its side. Dahlberg gripped the railing as the slant grew worse and all manner of things— chairs, vases, tables, linens, glassware, cameras, shoes, purses—came tumbling past her from the balconies above to land in the Atrium with staccato thuds and crashes. Over the din of cries and yells she heard a particularly sharp scream from above; a moment later, a short, thickset woman with frizzy blonde hair and wearing a supervisor’s uniform came hurtling past from an upper balcony, still screaming, and careened into the piano below with a horrifying crash, the ivory keys scattering, the strings popping in a bizarre symphony of high- and low-pitched twangs.

With a squeal of metal, the elevator nearest to her shuddered in its vertical housing, and then—with a popping of glass that ripped through the entire Atrium—the entire tube shattered all at once and began to fall in slow motion like a glittering glass curtain. The wreck of the elevator—now nothing more than a steel frame—was jarred out of its channel and swung loose on its steel cable. She could see two people aboard, clinging to brass bars inside the elevator cage and screaming. As she watched in horror, the elevator frame swung crazily across the vast interior of the Atrium, spinning as it went, then slammed into a row of balconies on the far side. The people inside were thrown into the air, tumbling down, down, to at last be lost in the chaotic jumble of furniture and fixtures now jammed up against the lower wall of the King’s Arms.

Dahlberg gripped the brass rail with all her strength as the floor continued to dip. A new sound suddenly erupted from below, loud as a massive waterfall, accompanied by a rush of cold salty air so strong it nearly blew her off her perch; then white water poured into the lowest level of the Atrium and began boiling up, a vicious surge churning with pulverized furniture, fixtures, and broken bodies. At the same time the huge chandelier above her head finally ripped lose with crack of iron and plaster; the huge glittering mass fell at an angle, crashed into the parapet just opposite her, then cartwheeled down the side of the Atrium, throwing off great masses of glittering crystal like pulverized ice.

The cold, dead smell of the sea filled her nostrils. Slowly—as if from far away—she began to realize that, despite the awful destruction taking place all around her, the ship didn’t appear to be sinking; at least not yet. Instead, it was heeling over and shipping water. The engines continued to roar, the ship continued to surge forward.

Dahlberg collected her thoughts, tried to drown out the sounds of crashing glass, roaring water, and screaming. Much as she wanted to, there was nothing she could do to help anybody here. What she could do,had to do, was inform the bridge that the lifeboats were not an option as long as the ship was moving. She looked around and spied a nearby stairwell. Carefully gripping the rail, she half crawled, half clung her way along it until she reached the stairwell, canted at a crazy angle. Gripping the banister with all her might, she began hauling herself upward, one step at a time, heading for the auxiliary bridge.

73

SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST STARED AT THE BIZARRE THING OF MIST and darkness that enveloped him. Simultaneously, he felt the cabin shudder and lean; a deep and powerful vibration hammered up from below. Something violent was happening to the ship. He fell backward, tumbled over an armchair, and slammed into a bookcase. As the ship tilted farther he could hear a sonorous fugue of destruction and despair sounding throughout it: screams and cries, crashing, breaking, the deep thrum of water along the hull. Books came tumbling down around him as the cabin rolled to a desperate angle.

He struck it all from his mind, focusing on the thing—the most bizarre thing. Within the animate smoke, an apparition was faintly visible: rolling red eyes, fanged smile, clawed hands outstretched as it enveloped him, its expression that of need and intense hunger.

Several things flitted almost instantaneously through his mind. He knew what this was, and he knew who had created it, and why. He knew he now faced a fight, not only for his life, but for his very soul. He braced himself mentally as the thing caught him in a clammy embrace, overwhelming his senses with the cloying odor of a damp, rotting cellar, of slippery insects and sagging corpses.

Pendergast abruptly felt calm wash over him—the indifferent, liberating calm he had so recently discovered. He had been taken by surprise; he had little time to prepare; but he could tap into the extraordinary mental powers the Agozyen had set free within his mind and, in so doing, emerge victorious. This contest would be a test for those powers, a baptism by fire.

The thing was trying to enter his mind, probing with damp tendrils of will, of pure desire. He let his mind go blank. He would give it no purchase, nothing to fasten on to. With breathtaking speed, he brought his mind first to the state ofth’an shin gha , the Doorstep to Perfect Emptiness, and thenstong pa nyid —the State of Pure Emptiness. The thing would enter and find the room empty. No—there would not even be a room for it to enter.