The Providence Rider by Robert R. McCammon
“Keep moving!” Minx shouted, for shouting was the only way to be heard above this symphony of the cataclysm. She, too, had taken a spill into the soup. Her face and the curls of her hair were darkened by muddy slime. She started off and pulled Matthew along as he fought to find his balance.
He looked back and saw nothing but white flashes and red centers of flame. It appeared as if the main wall of the fort had been blasted down. The Cymbeline’s thunder was deafening; Matthew’s ears rang like seventeen Sabbath bells and he could feel the continuing detonations in the pit of his stomach. He saw something on fire fly up into the air, and then it too exploded with a bone-jarring report and a flash that nearly burned the eyes blind. Another object rose up, burning, and also exploded in the ash-swirled sky. The barrels, he thought. Some were being blown out of the magazine and detonating overhead. A rain of pieces of flaming wood and chunks of scorched stone was falling around them, splashing heavily into the swamp. “Move! Move!” Minx shouted, up against his ear so he could hear her above the din.
He did not have to be told a third time.
He staggered on, as birds flew for their lives from burning branches. Minx slipped and fell and he pulled her up as she had saved him. A flaming barrel came down on the left and blew trees up from their roots and a geyser of water when it exploded. Part of the thicket over on that side was already burning, and still the barrels were coming down to blast their Cymbeline across the tortured landscape. The heated winds blew back and forth and the shockwaves knocked Matthew and Minx hither and yon as if they were made of flimsy paper. Gray smoke whipped across this battlefield. Perhaps twenty yards ahead of the struggling pair they caught sight of something hanging in the upper branches of a burning tree that might have been a human torso, black as a fistful of coal.
More explosions ravaged the night. The barrel bombs were flying, some to blast their flaming innards overhead and others to crash into the swamp and forest before they detonated. The noise was like the collision of three armies using triple-mouthed cannons, firing in confusion to the north, south, east and west. Another massive blast and belch of red fireballs rose up from the wrecked fort, and suddenly part of a burning wagon came crashing down in front of Minx and Matthew so close their eyebrows were singed.
“This way!” Minx shouted, and grasping his arm she guided him at an angle to the left. He realized she was looking for the road to get them out of this fiery morass, and he followed her gladly and yet still a bit woozy in the head.
They sloshed through the muck with flaming comets whirling overhead and the thunder of explosions making the earth shiver. Matthew looked toward the fort and saw nothing but a pall of smoke with red fires burning within. Good, he thought. If the chemical works was not totally destroyed, the next shipment of Cymbeline surely was. And there had to be enough damage in there to make rebuilding a costly and time-consuming task. Good, he thought again, and narrowly missed getting tangled in thornbranches that had a snake coiled amid the stickers.
They came out upon the road after what seemed a trek of fifteen or twenty minutes. Was the first shade of light showing to the east? It was hard to tell, for Matthew’s eyes were still dazzled. Fires growled and crackled here and there amid the thicket, burning underbrush and trees.
“Can you hear me?” Minx shouted at him, and he nodded. Her face was both stained with mud and ruddy with heat. She stared back for a few seconds at the smoke-covered fort, her eyes glittering with wild emotion between terror and exhilaration.
It was Matthew, then, who first saw the two men with torches stagger onto the road before them. One held a cutlass with a chopping blade about fourteen inches in length. Both men were bloodied by scrapes and cuts, their clothes dirty and dishevelled. Matthew’s first thought was that they had been atop a watchtower that the blast’s winds had knocked to the ground; they looked more fearful than fearsome, yet the sword meant business.
“What happened?” the man in the lead demanded. It was a foolish question, so he asked another: “What are you doing here?”
Minx regarded the men with a tight smile. “What do you think, you idiot? We blew the place to pieces.”
“What?”
“You don’t get anymore questions,” she said, as she reached into her waistcoat for the second knife that was hidden there.
The swordsman took a step forward to strike at Minx, who brought the blade out and started to throw it, but in the next instant all thoughts of edged combat were ended.
The ground shook under their feet.
It was not just a tremor. It was a side-to-side motion that made true the name of Pendulum Island. It was so severe both the two men and Matthew and Minx were knocked to their knees, and in the eerie stillness of its aftermath there was a shrill keening of wind whipping through the trees and in the distance the urgent howling of dogs.
With the second agony of the earth, a crack winnowed along the road and engulfed a shower of gravel and crushed oyster shells.
The man with the sword gave a bleat of terror. He struggled up, dropping his cutlass and torch, and ran along the road in the direction of Templeton, perhaps to see to a wife and child. The second man sat on his knees for a moment more, stunned and blinking, and then he too stood up and, following his torchlight, began to shakily walk away from Matthew and Minx as if strolling through a dreamscape. Or rather, a nightmare, for he hadn’t gotten very far where there was a ghastly low rumble of stones grinding together in the troubled guts of the island and he was whipsawed down again as the ground shifted under his boots. This time the shaking went on for perhaps six seconds, an eternity, and when it was over the man stood up again and continued determinedly walking away until his torchlight was only a faint glow.
Minx got to her feet, and so did Matthew. Her voice was choked with tension when she said, “We’ve got to—”
“Yes,” he answered, for the devil’s breakfast was being served early this day. He picked up the swordsman’s fallen torch and cutlass, thinking that both might be useful in the hours ahead.
They reached the end of the road, where the skulls had hung before the earth’s shaking had dislodged them, and they spent some time retracing their path and searching for the horses that had obviously torn loose from their moorings and were no longer there. They had no opportunity to go to Falco’s house; either the captain was already getting the Nightflyer in order, or he was not. Matthew was betting his life, and the lives of others, on Falco being true to his word. They therefore began walking toward Templeton as quickly as they could manage, and both noted the fissures—some the width of a hand—that had opened in the road. From time to time small tremors shook the earth, and it was clear to Matthew that the blast of Cymbeline had awakened the foul spirits of Pendulum’s past.
In Templeton, the town was illuminated by the blaze of torches and the street was crowded with citizens if not fully terrified then well on the way. Here and there a brave soul tried to calm the throng, but there was the sense of entrapment on an island doomed by its own history. Wagons were pulling out, loaded with family belongings, on the way to the local harbor wherever that might be. Minx motioned Matthew over to a wagon that was for the moment abandoned by its owner, and within another thirty seconds she was cracking a whip over the team’s heads and the horses were carrying herself and the providence rider away from Templeton toward the castle of Professor Fell.
The moon sat on the horizon. Early light stained the eastern sky. Minx’s whip was urgent. The castle came into view, also torch-lit. Matthew clutched his own torch and the sword, and he was thinking furiously that he might have to slash some Thacker flesh to get Fancy loose from their grip.
They pulled up in front to find the entry unguarded. The tremors obviously had sent the servants off to tend to their own families. Matthew saw fresh cracks in the white columns of the porte-cochere. Minx dropped the reins and drew her remaining knife, for she had business this morning with Aria Chillany.
Augustus Pons, Toy and Cesar Sabros
“No,” Minx said. “It is definitely not safe. Where is Madam Chillany?”
“Upstairs. All the way to the third floor. She and the Thackers.”
“And Fancy?” Matthew asked.
“With them. They were going to the library’s balcony for a view. Something exploded. Didn’t you hear it?”
“Yes,” Matthew said, his hearing still an issue of bells ringing. “We did hear it.”
“The whole place shook,” said Toy. His eyes were huge. “It was like the end of the world.”
“For some,” Minx said, like a grim promise. With candlelight glinting from the blade of her knife, she started up the stairs two at a time with Matthew at her heels. Matthew saw that a number of fissures had appeared in the staircase wall, and the stained-glass window depicting Temple with his bloody and haunted eyes had collapsed upon the risers as so much meaningless debris. Before they reached the top, another tremor made the castle groan like a sick old man in an uneasy sleep, and somewhere in the walls there was a pistolshot crack of stones breaking under God’s own pressure.
Matthew figured only the Thackers would be stupid enough to get to the highest balcony of Fell’s castle while an earthquake was in progress. Madam Chillany was obviously still addled in the head from the doctor’s loss of head. As Minx pushed open the pair of polished oakwood doors, Matthew found exactly what he knew must be happening: the Thackers in rumpled clothing, drinking from the bottles of wine and spirits that had been replenished on the table, and Fancy in a dark green gown standing between them, staring through the open balcony doors at the somber gray light that advanced upon the sea.
“Oh ho!” said Jack, wavering on his feet with a bottle tipped to his lips.
“Boyo,” Mack added, sitting sprawled upon one of the black leather chairs with a bottle in one hand and another on the floor beside him. Obviously neither brother turned away the opportunity to drink, even at the end of the world.
Matthew noted that the shaking of Castle Fell had dislodged a few dozen volumes from their shelves. The treasures lay underfoot. They had been trampled on by Thacker boots, for ripped pages and torn bindings were in evidence like so many wounded soldiers.
“Where is Aria Chillany?” Minx demanded.
“Was here,” said Mack.
“Ain’t now,” said Jack.
“I have to find her,” she told Matthew. “I have to finish it for him. Do you understand?”
Matthew nodded. “I can handle this. Go. But for God’s sake be—”
“I am always careful,” she interrupted. “For my own sake.” Then she turned and left the library, and he was in company with the two animals and the young woman he must set free from their grasp. “Didn’t you hear that blowup?” Jack asked. “Place shook like a whore with the crabs.” His bleary eyes aimed toward the cutlass. “What the fuck are you up to? No good?”
“Actually,” Matthew replied, “I am up to good. I am leaving this island within the hour, and I’m taking her with me.” He motioned with the torch at the Indian girl, who had turned toward him. She was expressionless, her beautiful face perfectly composed. Her raven’s-black hair moved slightly with the breeze that came through the balcony’s entrance. She was waiting, and she knew he was not leaving without her.
“Damn,” said Jack. He shook his head. His smile was bitter. “You are one piece of work, Spadey.”
“My name is not Nathan Spade. I am Matthew Corbett, and I want you to remember who bested you.”
That statement caused a shock of silence. Then, slowly, Mack stood up one of the bottles in his hand. The flesh seemed to have drawn more tightly over his facial bones and his eyes glittered. “Corbett, ya little shit…I say…you ain’t takin’ Fancy nowhere…”
“…boyo,” Jack finished, with a gritting of his teeth.
“Will you come over here, please?” Matthew asked the girl.
With that, Mack Thacker broke the bottle on the table’s edge. Gripping the back of Fancy’s neck he put the jagged edges to the side of her face. She winced, but otherwise did not move.
“Come take her,” he said. “‘Cause in another minute, she ain’t gonna be good for nobody.”
And so saying, the younger Thacker began to draw the broken glass across the beautiful girl’s cheek and the blood welled up bright and red.
Jack snorted a laugh. The girl shivered, her sad gaze on Matthew; one hand pushed weakly against Mack’s arm, but she had seemingly come to the end of her rope and was all played out.
Matthew gripped torch and cutlass and stepped forward to the fight.
Minx Cutter knew which door belonged to Madam Chillany’s room. She knocked on it, waited for the knob to turn, and then she kicked it as hard as she could kick.
The door flew open and Aria Chillany fell backward into the room, toppling over a white-upholstered chair. Minx walked in, taking note that the other woman was fully dressed in a gray gown and upon the bed was a bag she’d been packing. It appeared Madam Chillany had been about to leave the castle, possibly to find any safer place she could. By the eight tapers of the overhead chandelier cracks had appeared in the walls and chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling.
“What’s wrong with you?” Aria sat up, rubbing a bloodied lip bitten by a tooth. “Are you insane?” Then she caught sight of the knife.
“No, not insane. Just determined. Madam Chillany,” Minx said, “I’m going to kill you.”
“What?”
“Kill you,” Minx repeated. “For murdering my Nathan.”
There was a harsh inrush of breath.
“Yes,” came the reply to that statement. “Nathan was my lover. My love,” she clarified. “You killed him. Matthew told me so.”
“Matthew? What…”
“No more time for lies. Stand up and take this in your black heart.”
Aria Chillany came up off the floor. Her eyes were wild. With a sweeping motion she grasped the leather handle of the bag on the bed and swung it at Minx, who stepped back out of its way. Then Aria’s hand went into the bag and came out with a short but deadly blade of her own, and flinging the bag at Minx she followed it with her body and the knife flailing at the other woman’s face.
“Come on, boyo,” Mack Thacker taunted, as the broken glass sliced Fancy’s cheek. Matthew strode toward him with the sword upraised, and suddenly Jack Thacker threw his bottle at Matthew’s head and instead hit his left shoulder as Matthew dodged aside. Then Jack gave a strangled cry of rage and, his face swollen with blood, rushed across the room at Matthew.
Fancy—the pretty girl who had sat alone for so very long—came to life. She grasped Mack’s arm and sank her teeth into his hand, and he shouted in pain and grabbed a handful of her hair. The broken glass lodged against her throat. She kicked into his shin and tore loose from him, as brother Jack collided with Matthew and fought him for both the sword and the torch. A knee rose to smash into Matthew’s groin and the orange-haired head thrust forward to bust against Matthew’s skull, but Matthew avoided the blows he’d known were coming and swung Jack away from him with the strength of desperation.
“Kill him! Kill him!” Mack hollered, as the Indian girl leaped upon his back and locked an arm around his throat from behind. He flung her off and came at Matthew with the broken bottle.
But before Mack could reach him Pendulum Island, in its agonized throes, shifted once more. This time the library’s planked floor shook beneath their feet like—as Toy had said—the end of the world. There was a cracking noise like the bones of a behemoth being broken to pieces. Something deep in the guts of the castle made a hollow ringing noise like an exotic gong. The balcony windows shattered
And then the truly horrific happened, for in this quaking of tormented earth the very foundation of Fell’s castle was loosened, the seams of broken stone could not hold, and suddenly the entire library room pitched at a twenty-degree angle toward the cliff’s edge and the sea below and the books flew off the shelves like the flapping of paper bats.
Matthew, the Thacker brothers and the fallen Fancy slid along the crooked floor through the battlefield of burning books. The balcony itself began to split away from its stone bindings with the noise of small cannon fire and plummet piece by piece into the ocean. The window curtains were whirled away and downward as if into a vortex, but they snagged in the hanging balustrade. Fell’s castle had become a construction of torn parchment and forgeries, for all its strength against the earthquake. The gray morning became an open mouth ready to swallow Matthew, the Thackers and Fancy. Matthew saw the remaining stone seahorse topple down on its last ride. The library’s furniture and burning books tumbled around the sliding figures, and the problem-solver from New York reached for the bloodied Fancy as she scrabbled for a grip on the splintered planks. He caught her right arm with his left hand, but together they were going over the edge.
When the worst of the earthquake hit, Minx Cutter and Aria Chillany were locked in combat. They staggered around the room, grasping at each other’s knife hands and trying to get their own blades free. As the floor heaved and the walls cracked, their battle did not falter for death had entered the room and must be satisfied.
Madam Chillany spat into Minx’s eyes and tried to trip her but Minx was too nimble for that. They kicked at each other as the deadly blades were checked in stalemate. Then Minx drove her enemy backward against the dresser so hard the breath burst from Aria’s lungs and pain stitched her face. Aria pushed back with frantic strength and tried to wrench her knife hand free, but Minx had it gripped. With a scream of rage Madam Chillany took the risk of releasing Minx’s wrist to scratch at the gold-hued eyes and drew blood across the cheekbone. The knife came at her, a wild and unaimed blow, and grazed Aria’s shoulder.