falling, blazed black against its brightness. The Twenty-Fifth had no intention of allowing the brood to invade its sacred air. Though the forces encircled the island, throwing wave after wave of forces against it, the power that the Hour emanated was too unpredictable to be overwhelmed. Finally, the brood seemed to comprehend that this was not a battle they could win, and left off the attack to move on to new conquests: some breaking north to the Outer Islands, others around the island to follow an easterly course.
The fact that the Twenty-Fifth had not succumbed irritated Mater Motley.
“You hear me make this oath, Maratien,” she said when word reached her that the brood’s attempts to get onto the island had failed. “Before very long, you will follow me as I walk up from the water’s edge into the heart of the Twenty-Fifth. And I will stand there as its owner, and I will sink it if I so choose.”
“And it will be the same with Commexo City?” Maratien said.
Mater Motley made a snort of contempt as she strode toward the mosaic of the island of Pyon, and set her foot upon the spot where Rojo Pixler had built Commexo City.
“The stars no longer shine over Pyon,” she said, “but the city still burns as brightly as ever.”
“Is Pixler there?”
“Why would he not be?”
“He went down into the Izabella.”
“So he did. An odd coincidence. Something vast happens in the heavens, and Pixler is down in the deep . . .”
“I heard a rumor,” Maratien said.
“Go on.”
“That he came back, but he’s not himself.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He supposedly went in search of a Requiax. Those don’t really exist, do they?”
“Everything exists at some depth, Maratien.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. Everything,” the Hag replied. “Perhaps he’s come back suffering from deliriums of the deep.” She took one of the needles from her dress; needles forged in cold fires that Zael Maz’yre itself had called up. She gave the needle to Maratien. “Take this down to General Axietta. You know which of the women she is?”
“She’s the bald one with the birthmark?”
“That’s her.”
“She’s beautiful,” Maratien said.
“Well you take the needle down to her as proof that these orders came from me.”
Maratien took the needle.
“What orders, m’lady?” the girl said.
“She’s to take four warships, with six legions of stitchlings in each vessel. Head straight for Pyon. There’ll be plenty of distraction to keep Mr. Genius Pixler from expecting an attack from the sea. When she gets into the city she’s to take it—destroy it if she’s in the mood. I don’t care. But there are two things I need her to do without fail.”
“Yes, m’lady?”
“Kill every light that burns in that damn city. And make it her personal business to bring me back the heads of Rojo Pixler and the boy.”
“The boy . . . ?”
“The Commexo Kid.”
“Is he a living thing?”
“We won’t know until we have his head in our hands, will we?” Mater Motley said. “Now go. I want Commexo City dark in two hours.”
Chapter 37
Love and War
MATER MOTLEY WASN’T THE only one who had a comprehensive view of the sacbrood’s advance over the Abarat. At the heart of the Commexo Company’s headquarters, in the Circular Room, reports came in from the innumerable mechanical spies, perfect copies of species from the tiny tiger tic to the enormous Rashamass (which resembled a cross between a whale and a millipede). They weren’t programmed to seek out events of any great moment. But there were so many of Pixler’s spies out in the world that at any given Hour one of them would be certain to catch witness of a scene of tragedy or celebration, were it to occur.
But in all the years the cyclopic Dr. Voorzangler, whose genius with Abaratian technologies was responsible for making Rojo Pixler’s visionary dreams into practical realities, had traveled the immense circle on one of the gravity-negating discs that carried him wherever he willed them to take him, he had never witnessed anything as momentous as the events unfolding on the screens now. He had watched as the pyramids at Xuxux had been unsealed, silently awed—though he would never have admitted it—by the sheer power of the hidden engines that had opened the pyramids up. But their opening had only been the first part of the spectacle. What followed had been more incredible still: the outpouring of a life-form Voorzangler was not familiar with, that had been hidden away in the tombs, and now rose like six black rivers flowing heavenward, where they converged to become a sea of darkness that spread over the sky and above the pyramids, blotting out the constellations above Xuxux then moved outwards: east toward Babilonium, south toward Gnomon, west toward Jibarish, and north toward the island of Pyon, at which Hour, of course, Commexo City stood.
Voorzangler surveyed the sight for a few minutes, trying to get a grasp on what he was seeing, then he summoned his assistant, Kattaz to his side.
“What’s Mr. Pixler’s status?” he wanted to know.
“I was just with him,” Kattaz replied. “He says he feels fine after ‘the problem.’ That’s what he calls it, sir. The little problem with the bathyscaphe.”
Voorzangler shook his head. “Really, the man is fearless. We nearly lost him . . .” He stared at the spreading darkness again. “I’m going to start making a report on this . . . this phenomenon. I’d like Mr. Pixler to see it for himself when he’s feeling well enough. Would you inform him that we have a very immediate problem? This . . . darkness is going to cover the city within the next ten minutes.”
“What is it?” Kattaz asked him.
“According to my records this is a species, I believe they are sacbrood. They predate Time, and therefore these islands. But what we know of them from fossil records suggest that they were significantly smaller than these creatures we see now.”
“Genetically altered then?”
“That’s my assumption.”
“By science? Magic?”
“Possibly both. Look at them!”
He directed Kattaz’s attention to the screen behind her. One of the creatures reporting this cataclysm, a balloon fox, had risen dangerously close to the sacbrood, risking its existence in order to report every detail of what it was witnessing. The sacbrood were a study in diversity: no two of them were alike. Their heads were complex arrangements of black, insentient eyes, which were sometimes assembled in glistening bunches like ripe fruit. Some had immense barbed jaws, some complex arrangements of mandibles. Some had heads that almost resembled that of the common Hereafter housefly, which had quickly established itself in the Abarat having come between worlds in the early years of trading.
“Oh by the Kid! Look at this, Doctor Voorzangler! This one . . . the eggs it’s carrying! That’s disgusting. Lordy Lou, look at all those little maggoty . . . oh, that’s horrible.”
“Do you really think so?” Voorzangler said, looking at the image with a detached curiosity. “It’s just more life, isn’t it? We can’t be judgmental. At least I can’t.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Doctor. You’re probably quite right. It’s just another species.”
She was about to say more to him when the door to Rojo Pixler’s private chamber opened and the great architect appeared.
