Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth Read online

  I made myself walk towards the terrible eye, staring right back into that monstrous gaze, and when I was close enough I punched the eye as hard as I could. There was a scream like an insane steam whistle, and the eye was suddenly gone. Outside the rent in the wall there was only darkness, and an air so cold just a moment’s exposure left hoarfrost on my face. There were no more voices, and no more pounding on the carriage walls.

  The train kept going, and we left that place behind. The new silence had a weight all its own, as though it was but a precursor for something even worse. I didn’t feel like sitting down, so I paced up and down the narrow aisle, peering out of the long rent now and again. A strange unearthly light streamed suddenly into the carriage as we entered another phase, another dimension. The light grew increasingly harsh and bright, until it burned my exposed skin where it touched, and I was forced to retreat from it. Thin shafts of the fierce light stabbed through unsuspected smaller rents in the walls and ceiling, and I was hard put to avoid them all.

  From outside came sounds of a kind I couldn’t place or recognise. They reminded me most of birds made of machinery, and the sound grated on my nerves like fingernails on the blackboard of my soul. The exterior atmosphere began seeping in through the jagged steel rent, driven by the greater pressure outside. It smelled like crushed nettles, thick and choking. It burned inside my mouth and nose, and I backed away from the crack in the wall, fighting an urge to vomit. I yelled for the train to go faster and curled up in a ball on the floor.

  We left that place for somewhere else, and slowly the poison in the air diminished, left behind with the awful trip-hammer songs of mechanical birds. New air built up, flat and stale, from the carriage’s reserves. I gulped it down anyway and slowly uncurled from my protective ball. My hands and face were still smarting from their brief exposure to the fierce light. I sank down onto the nearest seat, slumped and almost boneless. Too much was happening too quickly, even for me, with never a chance to rest. So tired…I think I’d have sold my soul for a good night’s sleep.

  Luckily, no-one was listening.

  I looked up sharply as the quality of air in the carriage suddenly improved. Light from a bright summer’s day came flooding in through the jagged rent in the wall, bringing with it new sweet air, rich in oxygen. It was hot and humid, thick with perfume, like the crushed petals of a thousand different flowers. The extra oxygen made me feel light-headed, and I grinned stupidly as I took in one deep breath after another. I got up and wandered over to the rent in the carriage wall, and that was when a hundred heavy vines with barbed thorns thrust their way into the carriage from outside. Decorated here and there with thick pulpy flowers like sucking mouths, they lashed around, thrashing and coiling with dreadful energy.

  More and more of the vines forced their way in, twisting around each other, flailing back and forth in the confined space, taking up more and more of the carriage while I backed cautiously away. My feet made a scuffing sound on the grilled floor, and immediately every vine reached out in my direction. The flowered mouths screamed shrilly, a vile hungry sound. I cut at the nearest vine with the Kandarian sacrificial dagger Cathy gave me for my last birthday, and the slender blade sheared right through the vine, thorns and all. All the flowered mouths howled with rage and pain. The severed vine bled a clear oozing sap, and the stumpy end just kept coming after me. Half the carriage was full of the roiling, thrashing vines now, and more were forcing their way in, widening the steel rent in the process.

  I slashed open one of the leather seats with my dagger, pulled out a handful of stuffing, and set fire to it with a basic elemental spell I normally only use for lighting friends’ cigarettes. The stuffing flared up eagerly, yellow flames leaping high in the oxygen-rich air. I tossed the blazing mass into the midst of the crashing vines, and a dozen caught alight all at once. The pulpy flower mouths screamed in unison as the fire spread quickly through the vegetable mass. All the untouched vines whipped back out the rent, leaving the others to burn and die. The flowers howled like damned souls as they burned.

  Thick black smoke filled the carriage. The vines and flowers were all dead, but they’d spread the fire to the carriage seats. The train screamed through its hidden speakers as flames took hold of the carriage. I yelled back at the train to keep going, then had to break off as a harsh coughing fit from the smoke took hold of me. I backed away from the growing inferno and crouched on the floor where the air was still clearest. Thick tears ran down my face from my smarting eyes. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the roar of the fire drawing closer.

  And then the whole carriage shook and shuddered as the train ground to a sudden halt. The carriage door cracked itself open, a few inches at a time, while I crawled towards it on my hands and knees. I forced the door open the last of the way with the last of my strength, and half fell out of the carriage, my lungs straining for air, my eyes blurred with tears. I could feel a hard floor underneath me, and I crawled forward, away from the smoke and fire. I heard the carriage door straining to close behind me, then the train sped off, heading for sanctuary. Its roar faded slowly away, along with its telepathic screams in my mind. Poor thing. Still, needs must when your mother drives. I lay there on the hard floor, shaking with reaction, waiting for my lungs and head to clear. Hoping I’d made it all the way to Shadows Fall.

  I finally sat up and looked around me. I wasn’t on any train platform. I got to my feet, a little unsteadily. The train had dropped me off at a huge, old-fashioned Hall, with towering wood-panelled walls and a raftered ceiling uncomfortably high overhead. The Hall stretched away to my left and to my right for as far as my smarting eyes could see, and it was wide enough to hold a football game in. The sheer size and scale of the Hall should have made it seem overpowering, but somehow it wasn’t. If anything, it felt almost…cosy. Like coming home, after too long away from family and loved ones. The light was a cheerful golden glow, though there didn’t seem to be any obvious source for it. And no shadows anywhere. No windows either, or doors, and no portraits or decorations on the walls. Only a single stone fireplace, right in front of me, with a banked and quietly crackling fire, as though it had been set just for me. It seemed to me that I could hear a great wind blowing, outside. Something about that sound made me shudder, though I couldn’t say why.

  I knew where it was. What it had to be. I’d done a lot of reading about Shadows Fall. Most people in the Nightside have, because Shadows Fall is the only place on this earth that’s stranger, more glamorous, and more dangerous than the Nightside. The place where legends go to die, when the world stops believing in them. Or perhaps when they stop believing in themselves…And since the world has believed in some pretty strange things in its time, and because not everything that comes to Shadows Fall is ready to lie down and die just yet, this little town in the back of beyond can be scarier than anything you’ll find in the Nightside. We all read everything we can find about Shadows Fall. If only because we have a sneaking suspicion we might end up here someday.

  I was in the Gallery of Bone, in All Hallows’ Hall. The house at the heart of the world. The place where Time lives.

  On the mantelpiece over the fireplace, there was a simple clock set in the stomach of a big black bakelite cat. As the clock ticked, the cat’s red tongue went in and out, and its eyes went back and forth. It looked like something you’d win at a cheap carnival. Standing on either side of the cat were stylised silver figures of a lion and a unicorn. And on either side of them, a series of small carved figures that made me think of chess pieces, though they clearly weren’t. I moved forward, for a closer look.

  They were carved out of a clear, almost translucent wood, and I had no difficulty in recognising who the figures were. Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, Walker, Shotgun Suzie. I wondered if I kept looking…would I find one of me? I deliberately turned my back on the figures, and found that the centre of the floor was now taken up with a huge old-fashioned hourglass. It was easily a foot taller than I, and two feet in diameter, w
ith sparkling clear glass supported by more of the strange translucent wood. Most of the sand had fallen through, from the upper glass to the lower, and something about that made me feel very sad.

  I walked slowly round the massive hourglass, and met someone coming the other way, even though I was sure no-one else was there when I started. I stopped short, and so did she, and we regarded each other suspiciously for a while. Tall and almost painfully slender, with long cords of muscle on her bare arms, she was a teenage punk, in battered black leathers adorned with studs and chains, over a grubby white T-shirt and faded blue jeans. Her hair was a spiky black Mohawk, shaved high at the sides, and her face was almost hidden behind lashings of black and white makeup. A safety pin pierced one ear, while a rusty razor blade dangled from the other. Her eyes were fierce, her black-lipped mouth a snarl. She glared at me, two large fists resting on her hips. She had HATE tattooed on both sets of knuckles.

  “I’m Mad,” she announced abruptly, in a deep harsh voice.

  “Of course you are,” I said, keeping my voice calm and soothing.

  “It’s short for Madeleine, you divot!” She brought up her right hand, and suddenly there was a flick-blade in it, the blade snapping out with a nasty-sounding click. I think I was supposed to be impressed, but then, I knew Razor Eddie. And Shotgun Suzie. The punk girl snarled at me. “What are you smirking at? You think I won’t use this? This is Time’s house. I look after him, because, well…someone has to. Otherwise, he goes wandering…Look, we don’t like unexpected, uninvited visitors, so you can just turn around and go straight back where you came from. Or there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Actually, I’m afraid I’m stuck here,” I said. “I came by train. From the Nightside.”

  She sniffed loudly. “That shit-hole? I wouldn’t go there on a bet.”

  “Yes, well, a lot of people have been known to feel that way, but…I really do need to speak to Old Father Time.”

  “Well he doesn’t need to see you, so piss off, before I decide to start cutting lumps off you.”

  I thought for a moment. “Is there anyone else I could talk to?”

  “No! I’m Mad!”

  “Yes, we’ve already established that…Is there perhaps someone who looks after you, makes sure you don’t hurt yourself, that sort of thing?”

  “Right! That’s it! You’re going back to the Nightside inside thirty-seven chutney jars!”

  I think we were both about to do something unfortunate at that point, so it’s just as well Old Father Time finally decided to make himself known. He appeared out of nowhere, looking exactly the way I remembered him from our last encounter in the Time Tower. A tall gaunt man in his late fifties, dressed to the height of Victorian fashion. Julien Advent would have loved it. Time wore a long black frock coat of a most severe cut, over severely tailored grey trousers, and, except for the gold watch chain stretched across his waistcoat, the only splash of colour in his outfit was the apricot cravat at his throat. He was handsome enough, in an old-fashioned way, with a determined chin held high, a steely smile, and old old eyes. A thinning mane of long white hair had been brushed back from a noble brow, and left to lie where it fell. An air of quiet authority hung about him like an old comfortable cloak, only slightly undermined by a certain vagueness in his gaze.

  “It’s all right, Madeleine,” he said calmly. “I know who this is. I’ve been expecting him. Now go and find something useful to do, there’s a dear, while I tell this gentleman things he almost certainly doesn’t want to hear.”

  Madeleine sniffed loudly again, and made her flick knife disappear. “Well, that’s something, I suppose. Are you sure you can trust him?”

  “Absolutely not, but it’s been that sort of a day for several centuries now.”

  Madeleine walked around the hourglass and disappeared, leaving Time and me alone in the great Hall. He smiled briefly as he looked down at himself.

  “I really should change this image for something more appropriate. I am a Transient Being, after all…but so many of you seem to find this appearance comforting, these days. I think I know why, and the Travelling Doctor has a lot to answer for…”

  “Quite,” I said, because you have to say something, into pauses like that. “I’m sorry to intrude, but…”

  “Yes, yes, my boy, I know. Lilith has come to the Nightside at last, and it’s all falling apart at the seams. But unfortunately, I can’t intervene. I can’t help you. No-one can.”

  “Ah.” Not what I wanted to hear. “I came here because…”

  “Oh I know why you’re here, John Taylor. I know what you want from me. I’ve got it right here. But you won’t like it.”

  He gestured vaguely with his left hand, and there floating on the air between us was a small black case with a dull matte surface. The lid rose up on its own, revealing the Speaking Gun, lying nestled in bloodred velvet. It lay there quietly, for the moment, the ugliest gun ever made. Just looking at it made me feel as though a mad dog had just entered the Hall. The Gun had been fashioned from meat, from flesh and bone, with dark-veined gristle and shards of cartilage, all held together with strips of colourless skin. Living tissues, shaped into a killing tool. Thin slabs of bone made up the handle, held in place by tightly stretched skin with a hot sweaty look. The trigger was a long canine tooth. The red meat of the barrel gleamed wetly. I wondered just how much of my mother’s body had gone into making this awful thing, this Speaking Gun. Up close, the ancient weapon smelled like an animal in heat. And I could hear it, breathing, in its case.

  “I really don’t care for the thought of such a powerful weapon in the hands of the infamous John Taylor,” Old Father Time said sharply. “Far too much temptation for any mortal. Let alone you. But…I’m going to give it to you anyway.” He looked briefly at the huge hourglass. “Partly because time is running out for the Nightside. Partly because try as I might, I can’t seem to find anyone else more fitting to give it to…But mostly because a future version of myself came back in time to tell me to give it to you, and I really wish I wouldn’t do things like that to myself.”

  The lid of the case snapped shut, and the black box dropped unceremoniously into my hands. Time sighed heavily, shook his head, and snapped his fingers. And all at once, I was somewhere else.

  THIRTEEN

  Mother Love

  I was back in the Nightside, in Time Tower Square, and my first thought was how quiet and peaceful everything was. I looked slowly around me, and no-one looked back. The mobs and monsters had all moved on, probably because there was nothing left in the Square to destroy, and no-one left to kill. The buildings were fire-blackened frameworks, collapsed inwards or outwards, cracked stone and broken bricks. There were bodies lying everywhere, men and women and others so damaged or torn apart it was impossible to tell who or what they might have been originally. They looked like so many broken toys someone had got tired of playing with. Nothing moved, anywhere. There weren’t even any rats nosing among the bodies. Maybe they’d all been killed, too. Out beyond the Square, the War was still going on, in the distance. I could hear faint cries and roars and explosions, and now and again there’d be a sudden surge of light, pushing back the darkness. But the Square was still, and silent.

  I couldn’t help thinking of the devastated future Nightside I’d seen so many times. The dead lands, the broken world, and all because of me. A future that insisted on edging nearer, no matter how hard I worked to push it away, becoming more real, more imminent, detail by detail. Maybe some futures are inevitable, after all.

  I slowly became aware of a soft, repetitive sound, and I looked round to see my mother, Lilith, sitting at her ease on the pile of rubble that was all she’d left of the Time Tower. In her large colourless hands she held a severed human head. Its face had been ripped away, leaving only a bloody mess, but that didn’t seem to bother her. She was pulling out the teeth, one at a time and tossing them aside. And all the time her black mouth was moving silently, saying He loves me, he loves me not
… She looked up abruptly and stared right into my eyes. She smiled brightly and rose to her feet, casually throwing the head to one side.

  “John, darling! My most treasured son…”

  “Don’t move any closer,” I said. “I’m armed. I have the Speaking Gun.”

  “Of course you have, sweetie. That’s why I’m here.”

  She walked towards me. I held the black box up where she could see it, and she stopped just out of reach. She was calm, collected, utterly at her ease, and a slow anger burned within me. I gestured roughly at the bodies, at the wrecked buildings, at the War still going on in the distance.

  “How could you do all this?”

  She shrugged easily. “It’s mine. I made it. I’ll do what I want with it.”

  “Where are your children?” I said. “All your monstrous offspring? Where are your precious followers, your madmen and murderers?”

  “Keeping themselves busy. I don’t need them here. I thought it was time you and I had a nice little chat, in private.”

  I frowned, as something else occurred to me. “How did you know to find me here? Even I didn’t know I was going to be here.”

  She nodded at the flat black case in my hands. “The Speaking Gun called to me. I always know where it is. It is flesh of my flesh, after all, and as such my child, every bit as much as you. It’s your brother, John, in every way that matters. Thank you for bringing it back to me. I have a use for it. Just as I have a use for you.”

  I opened the black box, snatched out the Speaking Gun, and pointed it at Lilith. She didn’t flinch, or back away. I let the box fall to the ground as the Speaking Gun thrust its poisonous presence into my thoughts. It felt hot and sweaty in my hand, and burned like a fever in my mind, vicious and raging, like an attack dog tugging at its leash. It breathed wetly in my hand, wanting to be used. It needed to kill, to destroy, to tear down the whole world and everything that lived in it. The Speaking Gun hated, but it couldn’t operate without someone else to pull its trigger, and it hated that most of all. Its filthy thoughts wormed through my mind, stoking the anger and outrage it found there…but I had felt its corrupting nature before, and I fought it back. I hadn’t come this far to bow down to a spiteful machine.