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"What a dump," the dragon muttered.
Darryl found himself agreeing.
At his side, Minerva whispered, "Oh, no!"
"What?" He looked at her with alarm.
"Murp's gone."
Darryl tried not to snap at Minerva. "Maybe the cat will show up. But Murp is
the least of our worries nght now."
Minerva started toward the city, hurrying, Darryl sus-
pected, so he couldn't see her cry. "I know that," she said, "but it seems
like a bad omen."
"It isn't like you could eat the damned thing," Birkwelch said. "Cats taste
worse than Wheaties."
"Shut up, Birkwelch," Darryl said, and hurried after his wife.
MINERVA WAKES
-^ ^ ^
247
Bamey saw his mother and father coming for him in his dream. They were with a
dragon, and with Murp.
But this time, Bamey knew better. His parents weren't ever coming for him.
They didn't really want him.
So he turned his back on the dream, and drifted into the darker gray places of
sleep, where nothing bothered him at all- And finally, in his dream, a voice
offered him rest, and peace. The voice offered him an escape from all the
hurt.
He listened to the voice, and let go of himself completely.
He joined with the nothingness, and forgot the pain.
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Minerva stepped off the bright, shining road into the battle-broken ruins of
the Unweaver's city. She wished the cat were with her, conversely, she wished
the dragon weren't. She discovered herself incapable of appreciating witty
remarks made while walking into the jaws of death.
She would have preferred the dragon to act as afraid as she felt, but barring
that, she would have found silence accept-
able. Instead
"Ho, puny godling! We three mortals have come to beard you in your lair!" the
dragon beUowed. "Come out, puling fiend, and show your scabby visage!"
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"Shut up, shut up. SHUT UP!" Darryl hissed.
The dragon turned to Darryl in apparent surprise. "He knows we're here. The
least we can do is go into this mas-
sacre looking like heroes." Birkwelch appealed to Minerva.
"Look, if we're going to be stripped atom from atom and fed into the bonfires
of eternity, I at least want it said that we went with a bit of style. Don't
you?"
"No!" Minerva and Darryl said together.
The dragon gave each of them a hurt look and retreated into silence.
Darryl turned to Minerva. "Which way?"
She held the compass in her hand. It pointed down a twisting alley filled with
rubble and overshadowed by shat-
tered, tilted walls. "That way" She frowned. Right at the
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250 Holly Lisle
point where the alley twisted, she could have sworn she saw something move.
Its shadow smeared across one whole wall, grotesque and undefinable. She
glanced at Birkweich. "If what you said before still stands, how are we
supposed to protect ourselves?"
"Think happy thoughts?" The dragon acted like he'd seen that hulking shadow
lurking in the alley, too. He puffed a flame experimentally, then sighed. "I
don't know. I'm not a
Weaver. I do know that it's harder to create than destroy, which is why there
are so many destroyers and so few crea-
tors." The dragon moved into the street, in the direction
Minerva had indicated. "I'll do what I can to protect you."
Minerva and Darryl followed. The stink of filth and sul-
phur was worse in the rums, the air closer and damper and hotter. The ground
rumbled intermittently, and Minerva became aware of a grinding sound, very
low she could not pinpoint its location. Sometimes it seemed nearby, some-
times it came from a point far away. The sound made her uneasy there was about
it something of the giant's rhyme in the Beanstalk fairy tale: "I'll grind
your bones to make my bread."
The alley twisted hard to the left and split into a T. Min-
erva consulted the compass. "Right," she said. The right road was narrower
than the left. The bombed-out buildings over-
hung it further. It figured.
The three of them moved warily onto the new road.
Something keened, off in the distance a shrill, heartrend-
ing, animal cry of anguish.
"Ugh!" Darryl whispered, "I could have done without that."
Shapes and shadows moved near the corners. Minerva pointed to them, and Danyl
nodded.
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Birkwelch's ears swiveled, and he stopped. "Listen," he said.
The grinding sound grew louder and moved closer. Min-
erva shivered in spite of the heat and checked the compass again. The three of
them reached the next intersection; a Y.
Minerva checked the compass. It wavered back and forth between the two
possible roads, spun once in a complete
MINERVA WAKES
251
circle, then settled into place, pointing to the left branch.
Minerva frowned she hadn't seen any sort of uncertainty in the compass's
directions before.
Then the grinding grew louder, and this time it seemed to come from the place
the tno had just left. Birkweich bounced from one hind leg to another, and the
tip of his tail whipped back and forth like an angry cat's. "Can't you do that
any faster?" he asked.
Minerva pointed down the dark, narrow, twisting left alley. The rumbling began
up ahead horrible crushing stone-on-stone noise. They seemed to be heading
straight into it but the arrow on Minerva's kid-compass was unwavering.
Then, from the air around them. Jamie yelled, "Mom!
Mommy! Daddy! Go back! Please go back! Don't let him hurt us!" The child-voice
echoed and re-echoed through die twisting ruins, punctuated at the end by a
scream that left
Minerva's heart in her throat. She broke out in a cold sweat.
Beside her, Darryl went ghost-white.
Carol shrieked, "Mommy, DaddyS No! If you come here, the Unweaver will kill
us"
"Don't hurt me, monster! Don't !" Bamey's cry dis-
solved into a bubbling, wordless howl.
Birkweich snarled and all of them began to run. They came to another
intersection. "Which way?"
The grinding and die rumbling was all around them, con-
stantly growing louder Minerva had to yell to be heard over the steady,
subterranean roar. The needle's still spin-
ning," she shouted, "Wait a second!"
The needle twirled around, while the roar grew thunder-
ous and the ground beneath her feet began to shudder. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
