The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (16 page)

“What?” shouted Darla.

I mouthed the words ‘never mind’ and we forced our way through the crowd.

Darla spotted the black tent first.

“I see it,” she said, squeezing my hand.

“Don’t point,” I replied. “Keep your eyes on it.”

I followed the direction of her gaze. At first I saw nothing but the puppet master Brin’s tent and a row of outhouses. I blinked, and the black tent appeared.

“Got you,” I muttered.

“So we just walk in?”

I shoved my way through the crowd, keeping Darla close. I was a little less genteel than I’d usually be with my pushing, because I was determined not to take my eyes off the tent. A few of the shoved cussed or offered colorful speculation regarding my parentage and upbringing, but we made it to the tent-flap before the black tent could vanish.

People passed right by us, not seeing us, not quite touching us. I wondered briefly what would happen if I started knocking off hats from within the tent’s area of invisibility.

Darla crossed her arms over her chest and shivered.

“I don’t like this place,” she said.

“Neither do I,” I said. “But we won’t be staying long.” I pulled my knife out of my boot.

“There’s the flap,” said Darla.

I started at the ground and cut a slit as tall as I am in the side of the tent. “Going to make my own door,” I said. “Safer this way.”

She pulled a pistol, checked the cylinder. “Whoah there,” I said. “This is as far as you go.” Before she could protest, I shoved my knife back in my boot and fished Mama’s banshee-hair rope out of my belt. “Your job is to stay here and hold one end of this.”

She spoke a word I’m sure she learned from Captain Holder.

“Hon. Love of my life. Buyer of lovely boats. I’m not trying to trick you into staying safe. One, because nowhere in this carnival is safe. Two, holding on to this rope might be the only thing that keeps Mr. Tent here from messing with my space and time. Three, because if I yank hard, it means pull me out in a hurry.”

Her glare softened, but not by much.

“We both go in, it might keep us both lost,” I said.

“You got out before.”

“I did,” I said. “I tricked it. I don’t want to bet my life on that same trick working twice. I need you to do this, hon. Please.”

She took the end of the banshee-hair rope. “All right. I’m not happy, but all right. Kiss me.”

I kissed her.

Then I tied the rope through a belt-loop and stepped through the tear into the dark.

The same eerie silence and sense of vast emptiness greeted me. The floating candles, though, were gone.

I’d anticipated that. A new box of Red Cat matches waited in my right coat pocket.

I lit one, held the match up, let it burn.

The black tent was empty.

No candles. No ranks of mirrors. No rows of monsters. There weren’t even any cobwebs. The place appeared to have been scrubbed clean.

The match burned out. I cussed and lit another.

“This changes nothing,” I said. “I will find her. If it means burning as I go, so be it. I brought lots of matches.”

I laid the burning match against the dry burlap, let the eager flame have a taste.

Thorkel appeared ten long strides away. He looked as he did the last time we’d met, right before I killed him.

“Thought that might get your attention,” I said. “Now we either have some light, or I’ll provide my own.”

Candles appeared, here and there. I blew out my match.

“You are foolish to return,” said Thorkel.

“You’re foolish for not leaving,” I said. “So we’re both fools. Thing is, you’ll soon be a dead fool, and I’ll be a live one.” I took a single stride forward, glad the banshee-hair rope stayed taut. “Where is she?”

“You’ll never find her,” he said. “Burn what you will. She is ours now. Forever.”

“See, that’s foolish, thinking you have forever. You don’t even have tomorrow.”

Thorkel walked toward me, tapping his shiny cane on the ground. I let him come, though the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and tried to march away.

“We are ageless,” he said.
Tap tap tap
went that damned cane. “Older than your Kingdom. Older than the land itself. And you think to cut us down with your crude iron weapon?”

“It worked once,” I said. “Worked well, as I recall.”

“I will not fall again.”

“Suit yourself, sport,” I said. “Not that it matters. You’re nothing but a puppet. Not much different that the ones old Brin out there makes. It’s not you I’m after. The carnival’s heart. That’s what I’ll kill. The heart dies and you all fall down. Nothing left but wigs and sawdust.”

“I will free the mirror-folk,” he said. His painted eyes shone dull in the dim candlelight. “Set them upon you.”

“You would if you could,” I said. “But you can’t do that for hours yet, can you? Until then, you’re stuck with a mob of drunk roustabouts, a few dozen clowns, and Malus the Magnificent. He might be able to confound me with handkerchief tricks, and he might not. So either tell me where the girl is, or I start setting fires.”

He raised his foppish cane. The head of it shone red.

“I have the Hall of Horrors,” he said.

“Indeed you do,” I replied. I struck another match, dropped the open box of matches at the base of the tent, let the lit match fall atop its brethren. “Here’s some light to read by.”

Matches flared. Flames rose up.

Thorkel brought down his cane like a club. I raised Toadsticker, shoved his cane aside, whacked Thorkel’s right cheek with the flat of my blade.

He seemed surprised.

“Saving my crude iron gun for later,” I said with a wink. “Meet Toadsticker, slayer of badly-dressed puppets.”

He swung his cane sideways. The end glowed so bright it cast wild shadows.

I batted the cane aside, snatched his top hat, hurled it away.

He roared. The sound he made wasn’t a scream, wasn’t a growl, wasn’t anything a human throat ever made. He roared and his cane blazed a pure snow white and he loosed that light upon me in a bolt of silent lightning.

Toadsticker caught it up, pulled it from the air. Coils of blinding light wrapped around the blade, and the hilt grew cold as ice, and there was a soundless flash.

I sidestepped, blinded, fearing a blow. Sidestepped and then charged, whirling Toadsticker in a semicircle, hoping to force Thorkel back if he was bearing down upon me.

Toadsticker bit. The howl fell silent. I stabbed and kept stabbing and when I could see again nothing remained but a threadbare coat, skewered neatly on Toadsticker’s blade.

Pants, boots, hair. All lay in a heap on the floor.

Smoke from the fire I’d set burned my eyes. Red flames raced to the top of the tent and flattened out, spreading quickly.

I tugged at the rope. Darla tugged back, and kept pulling, and I followed it out while the black tent burned around me.

“She wasn’t there, was she?” said Darla. “You smell like smoke.”

I coughed. Smoke was all I could smell. “They moved her,” I said. When I turned back, the black tent was gone.

Passersby bumped into us. The crowd suddenly pressed in, forcing us to take shelter between two close-set outhouses.

Above, a few wisps of smoke coiled up, only to vanish into the night.

“Did you see the carnival master?”

I nodded and cleared my throat. “We talked a bit. I killed him again. How long was I in there?”

“Three minutes.” Shouts and laughter rose up from the crowd. People turned and pointed and laughed.

“Honey, did the nice man say anything about monsters before you killed him a second time?”

I pawed at my watering eyes.

“It’s a parade!” someone shouted. “Hey, a parade!”

The Hall of Horrors had disgorged its occupants onto the midway, and they were stretched out in a line, shambling, hopping, crawling, or lurching right toward Darla and me.

The skeletal dragon was out in front, waving its boney head from side to side and snapping its jaws. With each snap, a fang or two flew out, but enough remained to make the thing a threat.

I could only see the taller members of the impromptu parade through the crowd. The cave hydra towered up, heads waving and bleating. Magog the moth-eaten were-bear’s head rose above the crowd. It sniffed the air, its dead unblinking eyes turning this way and that. Engorgia limped along behind him, her horns already drooping and wobbling.

The dragon’s head stopped pivoting. Its empty eye sockets remained fixed on me.

“Time to go,” I said to Darla. I yanked Toadsticker from his sheath. We darted through a break in the crowd.

“Where are we going?” shouted Darla. She had a revolver in her right hand, but was careful to keep the barrel pointed at the ground.

“No damned idea,” I said. “But we’d better get there fast.”

I used Toadsticker to clear the way, and we raced down the midway. A few glances over my shoulder confirmed that the crowd, which was cheering and clapping, kept the assorted horrors from pursuing us at speed.

The smoke I’d inhaled touched off another coughing fit. I judged we had enough of a lead to rest for a moment, so we found a spot by a love potion stand and I hacked until my chest hurt.

A clown charged out of the shadows, menace in his eyes and a cudgel in his hand. Darla felled him with one shot. The crack of her revolver made a few passersby jump and look around, but guns are still so new to the average Rannite that no one associated the noise with danger.

The clown toppled face-down in the dirt. People laughed and stepped over him.

“Oh no,” said Darla.

“You didn’t have a choice,” I said.

“Not him,” she replied, pointing. “That.”

It took me a moment to see what she’d seen, and another split second to understand what the rippling gray bulk just beginning to show an arc of fabric over the top of the carousel was.

I was seeing a balloon being filled with the magical gas that lifts them into the sky.

“You think they’ve taken Buttercup there?” asked Darla.

I wiped my mouth. “Sure I do,” I said. “They knew we were coming. Knew we’d find the black tent. So they scattered the mirrors, let loose the horrors, hoping we’d get distracted.”

More of the net-enclosed sphere rose up, slowly taking shape against the near-dark sky.

“Can’t let them get in the air,” I said. The parade of horrors spotted us and let loose a chorus of howls and screams loud enough to be heard over the jubilant crowd. I watched the dragon bunch and heave, shoving people aside, knocking them to their feet. A few swords fell harmlessly on its moth-eaten flanks.

Of Darla, I will say this. She looked at the swelling balloon and she nodded. She deftly replaced the round she’d expended felling a murderous clown. No word of protest, no query as to how we would prevent the craft from ascending, no expression of doubt or defeat.

“I’ve always wondered what crows see,” she said. “Duck.”

I did so. She shot the clown sneaking up behind me and off we went, to catch the balloon as it rose.

By the time we pushed our way to the carousel, the crowd was turning ugly.

Men who probably hadn’t handled a sword since the War had hilts in hands once again. The ones without swords found clubs or hammers or the like. In keeping with Rannit’s progressive attitudes toward equality of the sexes, women too were arming themselves, with whatever they could find.

The few remaining clowns moved in tight little bands, scurrying here, darting there, managing to avoid most of the blows sent their way. The hastily-armed crowd was heading for the ticket gate, and the road toward home.

I wasn’t sure what had spooked them until we got close enough to hear the music that accompanied the turning of the carousel.

When I’d heard it before, it was the sort of tuneless organ bleating one associates with circuses.

The noise issuing from beneath the carousel now was a deep, angry muttering. The words were long and guttural and they weren’t Kingdom.

The carousel was turning, though no Ogres were present to push the two long handles that protruded from the base. Wild-eyed horses rose and fell on poles as the carousel turned, each one forever pursuing the painted mount ahead of it. Mixed in with the horses were other beasts—lions, a dire wolf, a hound, a hare.

Half a dozen of the poles were empty, wrenched in half as if their wooden carousel mounts had up and fled.

A huge black dire wolf wrenched suddenly against the red-and-white striped pole that impaled it. Snarling, it arched its back and set upon the pole with fangs and claws. Splinters flew.

It turned its mad eyes upon us and tried to leap free. The pole cracked but held, and the painted wolf howled.

The last of the crowd took flight. The motion of the carousel took the dire wolf out of sight, but the sounds of its struggle were only barely abated.

We ran. I took us around the carousel so that we matched its rotation. With every step I dreaded hearing the thud of the dire wolf’s paws hit the ground.

We’d gone maybe ten steps past the carousel when the wolf howled in triumph and came charging after us.

I whirled, Toadsticker at ready. The wolf was a blur in the shadows, legs pumping, back arched, massive jaws snapping.

Motion. There came a great cry, and a second dark mass slammed into the dire wolf. There was a roar, and a howl, and the sound of wet wood snapping against a single wrenching blow.

Slim the runt Troll rose to his feet. The dire wolf lay still.

“More come,” said Slim. Freed from the obstruction of the revelers, the occupants of the Hall appeared, surging around the carousel and hooting in triumph.

Slim hefted his scrap of steel rail. “I sing a second death song!” he cried. “This is a good day!”

He turned and fell upon the monsters. His blunt length of steel flashed like a sword as it rose and fell.

Darla and I made for the balloon. We could see it now, obscured partly by the riding wheel and a line of carnival wagons. It was maybe a quarter of the way inflated, just beginning to strain against the lines and net-like shrouds that held it pinned to the ground.

Beside the balloon the gondola sat, ready to be hauled skyward by thick, oily ropes attached in pairs to each corner. The gondola showed a single door, and it was shut. Shut, and flanked by a dozen grim-faced clowns and a resurrected Thorkel, who leaned on his cane at the edge of a lantern’s faint glow.