The Last Page

She stood and started walking, quick as her tired legs would move. She wished she could see what might be lurking in the woods. Her eyes ached from studying the Csrym T.

She blinked several times, rubbed her eyes with her palms. A brilliant migraine was exploding at the back of her head. She could see Inti’Drou glyphs when she closed her lids, like someone had stapled the pages to their undersides. Then it dawned on her that there might be a way . . . a way to see them more clearly and still ease the pain.

I’ll carve my eyes.

She marched through the dying wood, thinking of the procedure, still aware of the leaves falling around her, aware that they glowed with velvety redness in the sinking sun, scarlet bodies twinkling like dozens of eyes between the trees. They were there, beyond the geometry of the wood, haunting her steps. The Yillo’tharnah. They squatted. They followed from angles that could not be protracted with instruments made by men.

She could feel them watch her as she topped the low hill and found her horse. They stared while she inspected the creature’s right front leg. It was bleeding and didn’t look good.

Patiently she led the animal back to Caliph. She bandaged and cleaned his wound, continually glancing behind her at the invisibles she felt breathing across her neck.

She rinsed her mouth with brandy and gave Caliph some to drink. “It’s probably not a good idea to walk on it, especially since we don’t have a boot.” She took back the flask and had another hit.

“Are you going to carry me?” he joked. Sena didn’t laugh as he struggled to his feet.

“You can ride my horse,” she said distractedly. “I think it’s starting to founder.” It was a baseless guess. She knew virtually nothing about horses.

Sena sniffed. The cold was making her nose run.

“Caliph? Are we going to go . . . or are you going to stand there and stare at me all night?”

But Caliph didn’t answer. An alarmed expression, blazoned in red light, was crawling over his face. He was talking. But not to her.

“It was just like this,” he whispered. “A cemetery in the woods . . . and I was standing . . . over there.”

He looked around.

“It was right here.” He limped in a circle. “I think.”

“What was?” Sena asked. She had never seen him like this.

He didn’t answer. He hobbled farther into the yard, tracking toward the pile of dirt the sexton had left behind. Sena’s heart quickened.

“Caliph, it’s getting dark. I’m worried.”

But his black eyes were fixed on the marker that leaned above the half-exhumed grave. The sky grew darker by the moment. When Caliph reached it, he sat down heavily on the mound. Sena looked down with him.

Several feet below, the ripped-apart boards of an ill-made coffin made it look like the corpse had forced its own way out. They lay splintered, thrown carelessly aside. The gray shriveled form mocked her with empty eyes partly covered by leaves.

Caliph was sick. Neither of them had eaten much when the party stopped for lunch and his stomach turned up thin, clear bile in substitution of a good vomit.

Sena suddenly understood his reaction. Her eyes grew wide, a pall coming over her face.

The night she opened the Csrym Ta she had not paid any attention, but the sexton had excavated precisely according to her words, one that’s not so old . . .

NATHANIEL HOWL, DIED 545 Y.O.T. WREN.

THE HOLOMORPH ON THE HILL.

MAY THE BENEVOLENCE OF ADUMMIM KEEP HIM IN CLAY FOREVER.

He lay exposed to the air like one of his own freakish experiments.

“He’s come back,” Caliph gurgled. A viscous line strung between his lower lip and the mound where he crouched, looking away.

“Caliph.” She bent down beside him. “It’s only grave robbers. He’s not alive.” Weird glyphs from the Csrym T, however, made her doubt her own words. She had read the necromancer’s notes, seen the secrets in the margins, found the truth behind Cameron’s stories.

“I dreamt it. Can’t you smell it?”

“Smell what?”

“Piss!” For the first time since she had known him, Caliph’s face looked truly pale. His skin was clammy against her fingers. He babbled without sense.

“I did it. I shouldn’t have, he was just . . . gods! Why can’t he just be dead?”

“He’s dead. He’s dead.” She rocked him in her arms, suddenly frightened. “He’s dead.”

The words ran together in a macabre lullaby. Darkness settled in around them. Only faint light ebbed through the black thatch of trees.

“We have to go, Caliph.”

She felt an approaching presence. In her mind’s eye she imagined something stop to sniff the dead horse on the other side of the hill. It tilted its small head to listen.

Caliph wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Cold light had filled his eyes.

“Caliph! Where are you going?”

He had begun crawling quickly, angrily through the leaves, heading for where he had dropped his sword. She tried to stop him but he threw her off. The blade gleamed.

Sena leaned against a marker and watched in rapt fascination, enspelled by his bizarre behavior.

A weird windy cough came from the direction of the dead horse. Something was actually there. It lurched slowly uphill from the body of the animal and supported its weight on one deformed hand. It rested, moved uphill then rested again, something that should not have had corporeal form.

When it stopped, it listened against the wind. Sena could almost hear it pause, eavesdropping above the soft clatter of leaves.

Her fingers gripped the headstone and pulled herself up. Naobi’s eroding face fell apart behind the trees. It didn’t seem possible that night could come so fast.

Caliph was slogging back, oblivious, ignoring his foot, walking toward the grave with sword in hand. He looked monstrous. His black hazy shape hunched over the hole and lunged downward stroke after stroke, stabbing at the corpse. He made horrible noises like a crying animal.

Powerful electric currents flashed in the pit, made the corpse lurch and jolt.

Somewhere, near the crest of the hill, whatever was listening must have both seen and heard. Sena’s horse bolted. It gave a startled high-pitched snarl and left.

No sooner had the animal vanished than a terrible sound echoed off the mountains. It ricocheted through the trees and sank into Sena’s blood like teeth.

Caliph’s body seized in midthrust. He stopped his insane demonstration over the grave and looked around.

Sena stumbled.

She stared blindly toward the origin of the inhuman echo but it was too dark to see.

“Caliph.” Her throat had constricted and his name came out as an exsiccated whisper.

Strangely, the scream seemed to drain Caliph’s fever. He stopped, clicked into motion, cogs running smoothly, measuring, guessing. His voice was quiet and rational again. “Sena, run for the house.”

She continued to stumble for a long moment then she turned and almost bumped into him.

What is the use in running? she thought.

“Run for the house,” he said again.

And then she obeyed. She could hear Caliph close behind her. His feet made shuffling noises in the leaves, painful limping sounds. She wondered if he would fall.

Sena broke from the trees into the overgrown lawn before the house. She could feel the creature coming now. It ran clumsily but with unreal speed. Long spindly limbs flung it with horrific strength over the ground. It tore silently through the graveyard, bearing down through the trees, hardly disturbing the forest through which it sped.