فصل پنجاه و پنجم

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

London Stone

The Walker’s free hand patted George’s coat pockets. George couldn’t move. The razor-sharp blade brushed his Adam’s apple so closely that he didn’t dare swallow.

“Please,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I just want this all to be over. I just want to go home.” The Walker’s teeth appeared in a humorless snarl.

“No one goes home. No one ever goes home.” Edie’s leg began to shake. She stamped it to stop the tremor. It didn’t work.

It wasn’t just the knife, or the man in the big green coat, or the venom in his voice. All that was bad; all that was very, very bad. But it was as nothing compared to the thing that really terrified her.

What terrified her, what dropped the floor out of her world, was the fact that she’d seen the long burnished knife and the Walker before.

And she knew he was capable of slitting George’s throat without losing his smile, because the last time she’d seen him he had been drowning a little girl in a hole in the ice, at the Frost Fair.

But even that was not the worst thing. The worst thing was too awful to think about, so she stamped down on it by screaming at him.

“Leave him alone!”

The Walker ignored her completely as his hands scrabbled more and more desperately in Georges pockets.

“Where is the thing you broke, boy? Just tell me. All I want is the thing you broke. All I want to do is put it on the Stone. …” He felt the dragon’s head in the side pocket of the coat. George could smell his breath, sweet with decay and hunger as he talked into his ear.

“Here we are. Take it out, boy, and hand it over. I shall make amends. The Stone will smile on me.” Edie felt a tug between her and the Walker. He was so busy watching George pull the broken carving out of his pocket that he had stopped looking at her. She had felt the tug before, but it was usually when something especially nasty was trying to make her touch it. Things with deep sadness exerted this kind of pull. She never went into churchyards, for example, because some headstones yanked at her like magnets. But no human had ever exerted such a tug. And then she saw what it must be.

The stone with the hole in it.

The one on the choker around the Walker’s neck.

“Leave him alone!” she shouted.

The Walker raised his violet eyes and stared at her. Took the blade off George’s throat and waved it at her in fast steely zigzag.

“Shut up, milady, or I’ll open you up like a sack of peas. You’ll spill all over the pavement, and you know what? Nobody will care.” “Yeah, they will,” said George. And while the blade was still waving at Edie, and not brushing his throat, he gripped the stone dragon’s head and smashed it back over his shoulder into the Walker’s face with all the strength that he could put into it.

The Walker staggered back, one hand going to his eye, the other slashing the wicked blade at the space where George was. Only, George wasn’t quite there. He was rolling sideways, out of the Walker’s grip, trying to get free. He nearly managed it.

The blade lightly scraped his ribs, cutting a foot-long slash in his shirt, and jabbed through the tough wool of his jacket. The dagger held fast, and the Walker used it to yank George back toward him. George desperately tried to get his arms out and escape the jacket, but there wasn’t enough time.

“Now you die, boy! You didn’t have to, but now you do—by the Stone I swear it!” screamed the Walker. “And if you have blinded my eye, by the Stone I will make you SUFFER on the way to your quietus!” “NO!” yelled Edie. And she leaped at the Walker like a wildcat, giving in to the tug of his stone, suddenly, intuitively knowing what she was going to do.

The Walker saw the girl spring at him, dark hair swinging, eyes blazing, and though he tried to wrench the dagger around to impale her, he felt not rage or anger, but something he had almost forgotten about, something he had not felt for centuries.

He felt fear.

George smashed the dragon’s head down across the Walker’s knuckles, sending the dagger skittering across the pavement.

Edie’s right hand went for his throat. It closed around the stone on his neck. Her left hand grabbed on to the Walker’s ear and clamped tight. She felt the metal of his earring press painfully into her hand, but she kept holding on like a terrier.

And the past slammed into her in the old familiar juddering slices of pain and nausea.

Her hair blew out in a radius as the shock hit her. The Walker’s head snapped back. His coattails also flew out in a fan, as what she was glinting hit him, too.

George managed to rip out of the sleeve of his jacket just as the first time-sliver sheared into Edie’s brain.

And this is what she saw.

A room in a palace.

Courtiers in doublets and hose, swords at their sides. White ruffs around their necks.

Leaded-glass windows reflecting candles.

A woman in a dress as wide as a galleon sweeping across the floor, hair red as flame, a ruff around her neck. Face above it whiter than the ruff. She said something to a bowing man.

“. . . not fail us, John Dee,” was all Edie heard, as the woman handed him a purse and swept on. The man raised his head and watched her go.

It was the Walker.

Time sliced. Edie rode a wave of nausea. Tried to close her eyes. They jerked open again.

Now she was in a dark workshop.

The only light came from a candle and a brazier.

A skullcapped figure poured liquid fire from a metal pot into a mold.

As the liquid fire cooled, the light dimmed, and in the reddening glow she saw the man turn and shout something angry.

Again it was the Walker.

Time jerked her nightward.

Now she saw a street.

Old London by moonlight.

Half-timbered buildings overhanging the cobbles.

A church.

Beside the church, in the road, a square pillar.

By the pillar, the Walker.

Beneath the pillar a carved sign reading LONDONE STOUNE.

A flash of metal.

London Stone The clink of a hammer.

The Walker chiseling a lump off the stone.

And the wind rose and winnowed the leaves across the cobbles. And there was a rushing noise, like many wings suddenly appearing.

And the Walker froze guiltily.

And then the perspective lurched and tore in toward the back of the Walker’s head, as if about to attack it, and he turned, and his eyes widened in sheer horror and he screamed, “NO!” The past finished, and Edie was back in the present, and the Walker was still screaming, wide-eyed in the here and now.

She released the stone and backed away.

A dark figure slammed in past her shoulder and grabbed the Walker from behind in an immense disabling bear hug. Then turned and looked at them.

It was the Gunner.

“I thought I told you two to keep out of sight!” And even though she was still feeling sick, Edie joined him and George in a grin.

“Now, what’s the time?”