Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Do you see? Do you see what your beloved grandmother did?”

Candy couldn’t, of course, share the vision, but she didn’t need to. She knew perfectly well what Carrion the Elder was sharing with the Younger: his mother, in extremis. Carrion had told Candy once that it was the first image he remembered, though at the time he’d no knowledge that it was his own mother he’d been watching die. She’d just been a screaming column of fire.

“I’ve seen enough, Father,” Carrion said.

Weakened by the visions, he blindly struggled to get to his feet, unable to see anything but the horror he was being shown.

“Father,” he said again, more violently this time. “Please. I’ve seen your memory now.” He got to his feet. “I believe you.”

And as he spoke the words, the clouds cleared away. Carrion’s eyes had never looked as blue as they did now, nor his pupils as black.

Chapter 73

Souls

OH, SO SLOWLY, CARRION raised his head. His purified gaze was fixed on Mater Motley.

“I see you now so clearly, Grandmother,” he said.

“The clarity of your eyesight is of no importance to me,” the Empress said.

“My brothers and sisters—”

“Are dead.”

“—should be in paradise.”

“Well, they’re not. Nor will they ever be. They’re part of the power that raised you so high.”

“Let them go.”

“No.”

“I can make you do it.”

“You could try,” the Empress said. “But it would be your last act.”

“So be it,” he said.

As he spoke he came at her, throwing some wielding ahead of him as he did so. It exploded in her face like a ball of spiked darkness. He didn’t give her so much as an instant to recover, but grabbed at her throat, apparently intent on throttling the life out of her. He carried her before him, stumbling back among her stitchlings.

Candy had seen the two of them meet head-to-head like this once before, on the deck of the Wormwood. She had no interest in watching the struggle play out again. Her concern was for poor Zephario. He was still pierced by the Nephauree, but he clung to life. She went to him. The temperature of the air dropped several degrees as she got closer to the Enemy of All Living Things: an unnatural chill that drove ice needles into her ligaments and marrow, making every step she took more difficult than the one before. But she would not be dissuaded.

Sensing her pain, Zephario raised his head. When he spoke his thoughts, it was a whisper of a whisper, the last exhausted murmur of a man using every sliver of strength to hold on to life.

The Abarataraba is still in you, he murmured.

I don’t feel it, Candy replied

It’s there. You would never have gotten so close without it. Not much of it, but—

What does it mean?

What does what mean?

Abarataraba.

. . . roughly translated, it means . . . Pieces of Life.

Then take them back. The Pieces of Life. Finish this. Set them free.

There’s a door in your head that Diamanda made when she put Boa’s soul into you. It’s not wood and hinges. It’s just a way into your being.

I know this door.

Then open it. Quickly.

I did it already.

Lordy Lou, so you did.

Will this hurt?

It won’t be my soul coming into you that will pain you, Zephario said, it will be my coming forth from you again.

Why?

Because I will enter you through a single door, which you opened. But if I am to free all the souls, I must exit through many.

You mean doors that haven’t been made yet.

I’m sure there’s a better way, but we don’t have the time—

Funny that. We live in islands of Hours and we never seem to have time enough for anything . . .

Here I come.

Instantly Candy felt the nerves in her head twitch. And Zephario’s life force came into her. It was strangely comforting, an odd sense of familiarity. Not the same as Boa being there, of course, but close enough. She felt Zephario’s anger turning her strength to its purpose, empowering her to face the monster.

The Hag had not even noticed her short exchange with Zephario. She’d been too busy fighting with her grandson. Unlike their battle on the deck of the Wormwood, in which the two of them had been equally matched, the balance had now plainly shifted in favor of the Hag. She had the wielding powers of the Nephauree at her disposal, and Carrion had nothing in his arsenal that was a match for them. Candy turned just in time to see Carrion drop down upon the ground, which was a chaotic mass of smoking fissures. The nightmares in his collar were writhing insanely, bleeding darkness into the fluid around his head. Whatever she had done to him, he had no fight left. The blow she landed would be the end of him.

“Empress?” Candy said. “I’m still here.”

Motley turned as she spoke. “Don’t worry, girl. My son’s dead, and my grandson’s almost gone. You’re next.”

Candy felt Zephario’s power moving through her as the Hag’s contemptuous gaze settled on her. The power divided as it did so: two becoming four, four becoming eight, eight becoming sixteen. He’d warned Candy it would hurt, and he’d not lied. The pieces of his divided soul coursed through her body in defiance of all anatomical constraints, burning their way like tiny fires through marrow and muscle, nerve and vein. Their passage was rapid, but before they could escape her, the Hag saw something in Candy that made her suspicious.

“What have you done?” she said.

She didn’t wait for an answer. She raised her hand, around which the air was already becoming denser as she summoned up a murdering spell. She would have let it fly a moment later had Carrion not caught hold of her arm. He lacked the strength to hold on to her for more than a few seconds, but that was all the time Zephario’s fragmented soul required to disperse itself throughout Candy’s body.

The instant he was spread, he burst free. The sting of his soul’s departure was almost more than Candy’s consciousness could endure. But she held on, despite the pain, and her anguish was rewarded with an extraordinary vision: the flight of soul-shards.

Seeing the motes speeding toward her, the Hag panicked. She wrestled her hand from Carrion’s grip and directed her murderous spell at the pieces of Zephario’s soul. But Zephario had outmaneuvered her. By dividing himself as he had into so many parts, he presented not one place to strike, but many. And while Mater Motley was still attempting to free herself, Zephario’s soul-pieces found what they’d traveled so far to find: his family.

As each of his children woke to the presence of their father, the filthy little doll in which its soul had been sewn up burst open as though a small explosion had been ignited in each. One by one, the dolls hanging in grim