When they reached a jetty opposite the boat, Matt hailed the Golden One. Though Triathus didn't appear on deck, his response came back sharp and clear. Sunchaser drifted slowly towards them. When it was close enough, they splashed into the shallows and clambered up a rope ladder hanging over the side, hauling the professor behind them.
'Where's Triathus?' Mahalia asked warily. The boat moved away from the shore to mid-stream, ready to make its way upriver. After their experience in the Court of the Dreaming Song, none of them moved from the rail.
Triathus eased their worries when his voice floated up from below deck. 'Down here.'
Eager to see a friendly face, they hurried to the hatch, but when they peered down into the galley they were stunned into silence. Triathus sat on the floor against one of the storage units, his golden skin covered in black lines as if he had been tattooed. His breathing was shallow, and he barely had the energy to look up at them. 'God,' Mahalia gasped. 'He's got the plague.' Matt, Mahalia and Jack left Crowther on deck and hurried down to the god's side. 'The first signs appeared shortly after you left.' Triathus' voice was clear despite his state. Matt feebly checked the god's forehead for a temperature, then gave up. 'I wouldn't know where to start-' 'Do not concern yourself.' Triathus gave a faint smile. 'There is nothing you can do.' 'There must be something!' Mahalia protested. Triathus shook his head sadly. 'I am being removed from Existence.' 'Dying,' Jack said with quiet amazement. Sympathy surfaced through his inherent fear of the race that had tormented him for so long. 'I didn't think your kind would be able to catch the plague,' Matt said. Triathus' eyes moved along his limbs, seeing things that were invisible to the rest of them. 'The plague is not a disease as you would perceive it. It attacks the force that binds things together… the energising spirit of all Existence.' 'We've seen things,' Matt recalled. 'Flowers, plants, all being attacked by something like the plague. And there was something else.' He attempted to describe the hole in space that he and Jack had seen shortly before entering the Court of the Dreaming Song. 'The Far Lands themselves are in danger of being destroyed,' Triathus replied. His voice had grown a little weaker. 'We brought it here, didn't we?' Mahalia said. 'You must not blame yourselves.' His eyelids fluttered and he slipped to one side. 'I am sorry. I grow weak.' 'Come on, let's get him to a bunk,' Matt said, 'make him comfortable.'
'No. Take me on deck, where I can watch the sun set.' There was a terrible note of finality in his request.
Jack and Matt carried the god up the steps and found a pleasant spot. He felt unnervingly light, as though there was nothing to him.
Mahalia stood at the rail, watching the darkness slowly coalesce amongst the trees. She didn't look up when Matt came to stand beside her. 'You know, there's a definite feeling of what's the point about all this,' she said.
'Of course there's a point,' Matt chided. 'People are dying like flies back home, you know that.'
'I haven't forgotten. But do you really think we can do anything? Carlton's dead.' The words caught briefly in her throat, but her expression didn't change. 'Caitlin might as well be. Triathus is on his way out. The professor is a zombie. There's just you, me and Jack. We don't know where we're going. We don't know what the cure is, or what to do when we find out. And everything is falling apart around our ears.'
Matt stared into the darkening trees. 'I was wondering if we should go back, try to find Caitlin.'
'Good idea. You'll be able to navigate this tug through the rapids, right? We'll be able to scour the forest, dodge all those Whisperers-'
'All right.' It was the first time she had heard real anger in his voice and it frightened her.
'Look, I know how you feel about her, but she's the kind of person who's going to survive if she can survive. We could always search on the way back…' Her words dried up; they sounded hollow even to her.
She turned her attention to Crowther, who stood, swaying, with the red light of the setting sun gleaming off the eerie mask. Mahalia pushed herself away from the rail and marched over to him. Dragging on his overcoat, she forced him to sit on the deck, and then she pulled out a knife.
Matt started in shock, and rushed over. As she brought the knife to the side of Crowther's face, Matt knocked her hand away, the knife clattering to the deck. 'What do you think you're doing?'
'It's the mask — it's got a life of its own. You remember what he told us-'
'What are you doing?' he repeated. The coldness he saw in her eyes unnerved him, and it was very rare that anything upset his equilibrium.
She picked up the knife, held it easily. 'I'm going to get the point into the side of his head and prise out those bolts. And if it's attached in any other way I'm going to cut it off his face.'
Matt tried to decide whether she was joking or just trying to annoy him, which she seemed to try to do to everyone at one time or another — a control thing — but her face was impossible to divine. 'You'd cut his face?'
'Well, let's look at it this way: what's more important to him — a career on the catwalk or being stuck for ever behind that thing, with it sucking the life out of him?'
'You don't know that's what's happening. The process might just be taking longer this time. It might drop off of its own accord.'
'Might. You like that word, don't you?' She read Matt's eyes carefully, saw that there was no point in pursuing the matter. 'You've got no idea what he's like.'
'And you do?'
'Actually, yes. He doesn't like being controlled-'
'Nobody does.'
'He really doesn't. He feels he's not up to much and he tries to hide away, but all he's really doing is hiding away from the things that he believes control him. He's a free spirit.' She sheathed the knife.
'You really think you're smart, don't you? And tough. But you're a kid. That's all you are. So don't ever forget it.'
Mahalia watched him walk away, the ice in her face gradually giving way to a dull heat beneath. Shortly after, the mask began acting up again. The first sign was beautiful colours shifting in psychedelic patterns over the river, their reflection making it appear as though vast and astonishing alien creatures swam back and forth just beneath the surface. For a while it was entrancing and Matt, Mahalia and Jack watched it from different points around the deck. Then came the sounds, bass rumbles and high-pitched shrieks, invisible fireworks, music fading in and out, some almost familiar, some intriguingly otherworldly; a mystical son et lumiere.
Slowly it became more intense and disturbing. Mahalia sought solace with Jack under a blanket near the aft-rail, kissing and groping, but he came at the touch of her hand with a young teenager's desperation. She didn't know whether to be upset or thankful for the sudden stickiness. She would have made love to him, her first time and not out of love at all, but out of a desperate need for closeness and comfort and some stability in a mad, mad world. Sometime in the small hours, Mahalia and Jack were woken by Matt's exclamation. A tremendous surge of golden light rushed over the boat and exploded with silent but furious illumination beyond the other bank. At first, Mahalia thought it was another of the mask's creations, but when a second blast came over she realised it was too regular. She went over to the rail and saw that some kind of battle was taking place amongst the trees on both sides of the river. Fleeting figures, some golden, some dark and squat, moved swiftly back and forth, attacking each other. Occasionally, strange sounds retorted and someone would fall before a fluttering cloud, either golden or black, moved up into the branches; or there would be a burst of light, white or multi-coloured, or a surging blast of red heat.