The Suburb Beyond the Stars Read online

  There were plates on his helm that protected his neck — but he could feel them creaking on their staples. He was trapped, half in, half out the window.

  With a jerk, the cord pulled him up off his feet.

  And others were there now to join in the fun. They crawled all over him. He struggled, stranded in a window.

  Brian sat motionless in the basement. He did not hear the Winnower any longer. Still, he wasn’t going to move.

  The darkness was total. Brian didn’t want to think how far he was beneath the earth. There was a mountain on top of him. Enough dirt and rock to fill his mouth and nose and pack his throat solid fifty thousand times over.

  He had lost Gregory. He couldn’t imagine it. It felt impossible, that Gregory wasn’t here, wisecracking. Brian tried to imagine what Gregory would say if he were there. He himself couldn’t think of anything funny.

  Brian couldn’t believe how badly this whole mission had gone. They never would have even known where Prudence was if they hadn’t run into Kalgrash. And now Kalgrash was gone, too. And families were still being absorbed into their houses. And the Thusser settlement was spreading.

  And here he was, trapped in a cellar of a ruined house deep beneath a mountain, with a nightmare plucking at the air around him to try to find him —

  Where was Kalgrash? Why wasn’t he back yet?

  And then, out of the darkness, Brian heard a voice. It was someone in the house above him. Someone was hissing, “Brian. Brian.”

  It sounded like Kalgrash. But Brian couldn’t hear for sure.

  “Come on,” whispered Kalgrash, above him. Kalgrash, who had said to stay put regardless.

  “Come on, Brian.”

  Uncertain, blind, Brian began slowly to climb the steps on his hands and knees.

  Toward the voice.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Kalgrash, suspended, screamed, “I SHALL SMITE!” — which he thought was really very impressive, very epic poem, very chain-mail-and-broadsword — and swung his ax as hard as he could.

  Several cords snapped, and Kalgrash toppled backward through the window. Several more cords snapped with the sudden shift of his weight.

  Wham! He hit the soil in a long-dead courtyard. His breath was taken away. For a minute, he couldn’t move. The tendrils were already slithering through the window to fetch him again.

  He imagined how many bodies had hung from these willowlike fronds. How many bodies had dangled beneath the Winnower. Gelt was a human gallows.

  Kalgrash, panicky, dragged himself across cobblestones.

  Gelt’s cords were retracting so he could reach the troll more directly, without having to detour through the mansion.

  A great opportunity, thought Kalgrash, to live and smite another day.

  He charged across the courtyard, skirting the lip of a dry old impluvium frilled with lichen.

  His ax! Nicked!

  It was almost out of his hand when he seized it harder. The cords were all around him.

  He turned his head fearfully and saw, through his visor, Gelt suspended just a few feet above the dead mounds of the garden, grinning.

  The troll bounded into a colonnade. The tendrils followed.

  Kalgrash ran slalom. He weaved back and forth between the columns. Gelt’s hideous cords followed, rearing back, jetting forward, seizing upon a shin or an elbow.

  Kalgrash tripped — but didn’t fall. Cords whipped round him.

  He was still on his feet, but raveled in seething silver loops. They were all over him.

  His armor pinged. Cables were tightening. Plates were weakening.

  His helmet wriggled.

  They were pulling off his protective shell.

  No, worse.

  He spluttered — gagged. The tendrils had crawled into the breathing grill. They were prying at his lips.

  They were going to slither inside him and pull him apart like thumbs in an orange.

  He yanked his arm. He still had his ax, but he couldn’t swing it at himself.

  The cables jabbed at his eyes.

  In another second or two, he’d be blinded. The wire would pierce the soft quick of the eye and start stirring.

  And so Kalgrash swung his ax as hard as he could. Not at the cables — he knew he’d never be able to sever so many of them.

  But at the ruins of a half-decayed pillar.

  His ax hit with a clang.

  The pillar collapsed.

  And with it, down came a lot of the roof.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  A huge pile of broken saint and gargoyle lay on top of Gelt’s tendrils. The strands were still looped around the troll, but they were malfunctioning. They were weak and twitching.

  “It’s like we’re holding hands,” said Kalgrash, “but this would be a really bad date.”

  He unwrapped a few cords from around his wrist and threw them to the side. They reared up and then slumped. The weight on them was crushing the life out of them.

  “This is the point,” said Kalgrash, “where I would excuse myself to go to the bathroom and I would start calling my friends to tell them what a jerk you were.”

  There was a rattle. As Kalgrash picked off strands, a few plates of his armor had fallen off.

  He was not looking good. He was covered in dust, bruised, and, he realized, he was sliced in several places on his arms where the cords had wormed through the mail and started to squeeze.

  The troll struggled out of the erratic, flinching loops.

  “You think about what you’ve done, and we’ll talk later,” he said.

  He ran out of the courtyard gate, leaving Gelt trapped and tangled behind him.

  Gelt glowered, but could not follow. The monster began rolling the stones off the pile.

  Kalgrash worked his way through the house where Brian and he had hidden. “Brian!” he hissed. “Brian! Come here! Come on, if you can crawl! We only have about ten minutes!”

  Brian was on his hands and knees, crawling up the stairs.

  Kalgrash said, “Did your ancestors go through the whole trouble of natural selection and struggle up out of the muck just so you could crawl again? What are you doing? What would your mother say?”

  “I can’t see,” Brian complained. “I thought it wasn’t you.”

  “Who else would it be? Have you made other plans?”

  “You told me to stay put.”

  “Eh … no more staying put. Gelt is boiling mad. He’ll be back. We’ve got to get up to the palace.”

  He heaved Brian up onto his feet and shuffled the blinded kid through the rooms and into the street.

  “Back on the shoulders. Alley-oop.”

  “Can’t I just use the light? Gelt is trapped, you said.”

  “Temporarily.” Kalgrash shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”

  Brian held up the magic lantern and said the Cantrip of Activation.

  The street was flooded with light. Grimaces and scowls of stone leaped into relief all around them — furrowed brows and bug eyes and fantastical chins.

  The two began running up the hill.

  There was no reason to stay out of the avenue now — not with the light on and time ticking while Gelt threw aside the rubble.

  The boulevard leading from the cathedral to the quays no longer looked like a dead gala. The rich and intricate facades of the mansions that lined the street could not be seen because of the growths — the gray blobs, propped up with sticks and gutters, that leeched onto the flint and granite.

  The growths were all the way up the boulevard — a forest of fungi.

  Except, Brian suspected, they weren’t fungi at all, but Thusser nests, ready for habitation. These were the luxury units. The cheap suburbs were upstairs, where children hung half devoured by plasterboard walls.

  The nests billowed all along the boulevard.

  “What are we doing when we get to the palace?” Brian asked. “Do you know where the prison cells are? I don’t remember them.”

  “I know. They’re d
own in the basements.”

  “They’re probably guarded,” Brian said. “Maybe by more of those glassy monsters.”

  “Kreslings. I hate them,” Kalgrash said. “They don’t kill easy.”

  They slowed as they approached the belfry of the cathedral and the myriad turrets of the castle. Their breathing came heavily from all the exertion.

  Only faintly could the lantern pick out the high towers of the palace, the serpentine pillars and crowded tympanum of the cathedral.

  Please may Gregory and Prudence and Snig be in here, Brian thought. Please may we all get out alive.

  Brian and Kalgrash prepared to cross the drawbridge into the palace.

  Then they saw the guards.

  The furrowed creatures of smoke and fluid glass stood, waiting, upon the battlements.

  With his lantern, Brian made a perfect target. Suddenly, he looked at Kalgrash and saw how well-armored his friend was, and how soft and vulnerable his own human skin was.

  I have, he thought in the brief lull before the attack, so very many inches of face.

  He whispered, “If I don’t get through this, you’ll free Gregory, right? And try to get those kids out of the walls?”

  Kalgrash looked at him, startled.

  Perhaps the troll would have answered, had the arrows not started flying.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Four of the kreslings knelt between the crenellations, firing longbows. Several more waited inside the portcullis gate.

  Brian threw himself behind the armored troll. He fired his blunderbuss — but missed. The castle’s stone teeth fell into the bottomless moat.

  “So I stand in front and repel the arrows — and you fire, huh?” Kalgrash asked. “Doesn’t that make me, tactically, a wall?”

  Brian didn’t answer, but crouched behind Kalgrash’s knees, speaking the Cantrip of Activation again.

  One of the ghastly archers exploded into shards of glass.

  Brian trained Old Bess on another. Arrows whistled past his head.

  There was a clang from above as one hit the troll’s armor. Kalgrash reeled from the strike. Brian ducked and fired again.

  Brian had taken out three of the four archers when Kalgrash saw that the drawbridge was going up.

  “DRAWBRIDGE!” he yelled. They’d be trapped on the wrong side of the gulf. They’d never be able to get to their friends.

  Just visible in the gatehouse, a kresling cranked on a huge lever. Gears turned, pulleys swiveled, and the drawbridge rose.

  Kalgrash yelled, “I SHALL SMITE THEE!” and hurled himself onto the edge of the drawbridge.

  Brian suddenly found himself exposed, with no troll between him and destruction.

  The troll landed on his knees and started to slide down the drawbridge, flailing. “WITH VALOR!” he added, somewhat after the fact. And then: “VARLET!”

  Brian darted backward to hide behind a buttress of the cathedral.

  The fourth and final archer let fly at Kalgrash as the troll rolled and rattled down the bridge.

  From behind the safety of the buttress, Brian aimed carefully at the battlements. He said the Cantrip of Activation.

  There was a quick blare of blue fire. No dice. He was too far away to aim accurately. The stone was pocked where the fire had hit it, but no permanent damage had been done.

  Kalgrash, meanwhile, faced off with the kresling near the gears. He swung his ax — but the creature thickened when struck. The ax clanged and slid.

  The monster snarled and leaped for Kalgrash.

  The troll blocked with his ax. The kresling fell.

  Kalgrash, smiting left and right, drove the monster back to the edge of the cliff. Below them, the bottomless fissure echoed with their blows.

  The claws swiped Kalgrash’s arm twice: once, a quick blow to harden the kresling’s own hand. By the second strike, the claw was frozen, sharp, and it tore the metal armor to shreds. Kalgrash buckled. His upper arm was deeply gouged. He saw spots. He heard Brian shouting the Cantrip of Activation. Saw blue fire. But Brian could not see him struggle with this monster. The gears were in the way.

  The weights had taken over, and the mechanism now labored with no one to crank. Teeth spun and pulleys groaned and the chain flew along in its course.

  The monster lunged at Kalgrash again. This time, the kresling’s claw knocked Kalgrash to his knees.

  The pain from his arm was overwhelming. Through the oozing troll blood, he could see his own gears and rods. He stared stupidly, transfixed.

  And then he looked up at his assailant.

  And he swung his ax at the monster’s knees.

  The thing leaped.

  But the ax hit the knees.

  The knees calcified, freezing the monster in a cheerleader leap.

  And the blow, which had struck them clangorously, sent the monster flying backward.

  The monster couldn’t compensate without its legs. It couldn’t stop itself from tumbling.

  It ricocheted off the edge. It fell into the chasm, smacking the sides.

  It shattered as it fell.

  Kalgrash stood up. His breathing was labored. He trembled all over. Blood or some hydraulic fluid was swamping his metal sleeve.

  He reached up and, exhausted, hauled on the lever to lower the drawbridge.

  The gears spun in reverse. The wooden bridge fell.

  It was down.

  Brian stood at the end of it, the blunderbuss held at the ready, the lantern swaying beneath it. He had destroyed the other creatures of fluid and glass.

  Kalgrash, wheezing, gestured. “Come on,” he said.

  But Brian just stared.

  “What?” said Kalgrash.

  Brian did not answer, but looked past Kalgrash.

  Into the courtyard.

  Slowly, Kalgrash turned.

  “Hi there, boys,” said Milton Deatley. “You both seem real interested in our three-bedroom units. That’s great. But I’m afraid they’re only for sale to the living. And in a few minutes, I’m afraid that won’t be you.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Brian pointed the blunderbuss at the dead man. He thought of everything that undead Deatley had done: the adults deluded; the children hypnotized; the kids who, terrified, ended up melding into their walls, nothing but fertile ground for the advance of the Thusser Horde. He thought of his friends, stolen from him.

  “Take me to them,” he said. “Or I’ll — I’ll destroy you. I’ll do it. I’ll destroy you.”

  Milton Deatley smiled and held up his hands. “That’s fine. Come with me.”

  He turned and walked away across the courtyard. Brian walked carefully across the drawbridge. He and Kalgrash followed Deatley into the feasting hall. The light from Brian’s lantern dimly gestured at a tapestry on the wall that depicted elfin knights hunting some sniveling, doggish dragon through primeval caverns. Kalgrash groaned with pain. Brian looked at him, alarmed.

  Kalgrash explained, “It’s an ouchy.” He displayed his torn arm. Brian winced in sympathy.

  “Come on,” said Deatley. The undead developer led them through the kitchens where, centuries before, cooks’ boys had hidden nests of fried eels inside whole roast stags, and bakers had painted sweet glaze on confectionary warriors. The spaces were tall, dusty, empty. On the hood of the giant fireplace was carved the Norumbegan coat of arms. Someone more recently had scratched it out.

  Kalgrash and Brian went watchfully with their dead host, suspicious of ambush. He led them to the basement stairs.

  Deatley asked them, “Did you like the units down on the main boulevard? They’re luxury spreads. Really nice. We haven’t spared any expense. You and your friends will supply the human element. Rich, rich inner lives we can live off. I think when I arrive here — actually arrive, instead of just driving this corpse around — I’ll put a bid on one of the places on the boulevard. It’s got all the perks of city living with all the —”

  “Be quiet,” said Brian. “I’ll say the Cantrip of Activation.”


  “Just thought you’d like to know that you and your friends won’t go to waste.”

  They wound their way down deep beneath the castle. The light from Brian’s lantern seemed to huddle in on itself. They walked through vaults where once the collection of imperial wines had been stored, gifts from far-flung duchies, from worlds of fire, from green lands across the sea.

  They came, at last, to the dungeons. Bars had been driven into the stone of the pillars and low vaults. A rusty, padlocked door led into the holding cell.

  “Your friends,” said Milton Deatley, gesturing through the bars. “We’re preparing them for colonization. They’re particularly fertile ground.” He began to undo the heavy locks.

  Brian and Kalgrash stared in horror at the three prisoners on the other side. Sniggleping, Prudence, and Gregory were all lying insensate on the stone floor, helmeted, with flashes of light playing across their faces. Of the three, only Prudence still moved. She twitched. Gregory was motionless. His eyes were unblinking.

  Brian rushed forward.

  Deatley smiled and opened the door for him. Brian stopped short and gestured with the blunderbuss. “You first,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Deatley asked.

  Brian’s hands shook. The blunderbuss quivered. “Go on,” he said.

  Deatley said, “I think you want to step in before me.” Brian protested, “Don’t — don’t try your mind control on me!”

  “All right,” said Deatley, stepping into the cell. He crossed his arms just inside the door. “But I wasn’t trying to use mind control.”

  “Then it was a stupid suggestion,” said Kalgrash. “We weren’t born yesterday.”

  “I just figured that you’d want a little more protection between you and Gelt the Winnower.”

  At these words, silver cords slapped over Brian’s shoulders, wrapped around the blunderbuss, and yanked it from his fingers.

  THIRTY

  Gelt the Winnower was upon them. He had freed himself and followed them up the hill, into the castle, down to the vaults, and now he hung there, just a few feet behind Kalgrash, surrounded by a halo of darting threads.