He put it into his pocket, next to the small quartz bead, and together they left that place.
The fog had begun to thin. Hunter was pleased. She was confident now that, should it become necessary, she could get the Lady Door away from the friars entirely unharmed and get herself away with only minor flesh wounds.
There was a flurry of movement on the far side of the bridge. “Something’s happening,” said Hunter to Door, under her breath. “Get ready to make a run for it.”
The friars drew back. Richard Mayhew, the Upworlder, came toward them through the fog, walking beside the abbot. Richard looked different, somehow . . . Hunter scrutinized him, trying to work out what had changed. His center of balance had moved lower, become more centered. No . . . it was more than that. He looked less boyish. He looked as if he had begun to grow up.
“Still alive then?” said Hunter. He nodded; put his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a silver key. He tossed it to Door, who caught it, then flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him, squeezing him as tightly as she could.
Then Door let go of Richard and ran to the abbot. “I can’t tell you how much this means to us,” she said to him.
He smiled, weakly but graciously. “May the Temple and the Arch be with you all, on your journey through the Underside,” he said.
Door curtseyed, and then, clutching the key tightly in her hand, she went back to Richard, and to Hunter. The three travelers walked down the bridge, and away. The friars stood on the bridge until they were out of sight, lost in the old fog of the world beneath the world.
“We have lost the key,” said the abbot to himself, as much as to any of them. “God help us all.”
THIRTEEN
The Angel Islington was dreaming A dark and rushing dream.
Huge waves were rising and crashing over the city; the night sky was rent with forks of white lightning from horizon to horizon; the rain fell in sheets, the city trembled; fires started near the great amphitheater and spread, quickly, through the city, defying the storm. Islington was looking down on everything from far above, hovering in the air, as one hovers in dreams, as it had hovered in those long-ago times. There were buildings in that city that were many hundreds of feet high, but they were dwarfed by the gray-green Atlantic waves. And then it heard the people scream. There were four million people in Atlantis, and, in its dream, Islington heard each and every one of their voices, clearly and distinctly, as, one by one, they screamed, and choked, and burned, and drowned, and died. The waves swallowed the city, and, at length, the storm subsided.
When dawn broke, there was nothing to indicate there had ever been a city there at all, let alone an island twice the size of Greece. Nothing of Atlantis remained but the water-bloated bodies of children, of women and of men, floating on the cold morning waves; bodies the seagulls, gray and white, were already beginning to pick with their cruel beaks.
And Islington woke. It was standing in the octagon of iron pillars, beside the great black door, made of flint and tarnished silver. It touched the cold smoothness of the flint, the chill of the metal. It touched the table. It ran its finger lightly along the walls. Then it walked through chambers of its hall, one after another, touching things, as if to reassure itself of their existence, to convince itself it was here, and now. It followed patterns, as it walked, smooth channels its bare feet had worn, over the centuries, in the rock. It stopped when it reached the rock-pool, kneeling down and letting its fingers touch the cold water.
There was a ripple in the water, which began with its fingertips and echoed out to the edges. The reflections in the pool, of the angel itself and the candle flames that framed it, shimmered and transformed. It was looking into a cellar. The angel concentrated for a moment; it could hear a telephone ring, somewhere in the distance.
Mr. Croup walked over to the telephone and picked up the receiver. He looked rather pleased with himself. “Croup and Vandemar,” he barked. “Eyes gouged, noses twisted, tongues pierced, chins cleft, throats slit.”
“Mister Croup,” said the angel. “They now have the key. I want the girl called Door kept safe on her journey back to me.”
“Safe,” repeated Mr. Croup, unimpressed. “Right. We’ll keep her safe. What a marvelous idea—such originality. Positively astounding. Most people would be content with hiring assassins for executions, sly killings, vile murders even. Only you, sir, would hire the two finest cutthroats in the whole of space and time, and then ask them to ensure a little girl remains unharmed.”
“See that she is, Mister Croup. Nothing is to hurt her. Permit her to be harmed in any way and you will displease me deeply. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Croup shifted uncomfortably.
“Is there anything else?” asked Islington.
“Yes, sir.” Croup coughed into his hand. “Do you remember the marquis de Carabas?”
“Of course.”
“I take it that there is no such similar prohibition on extirpating the marquis . . . ?”
“Not any longer,” said the angel. “Just protect the girl.”
It removed its hand from the water. The reflection was now merely candle flames and an angel of astonishing, perfectly androgynous, beauty. The Angel Islington stood up and returned to its inner chambers to await its eventual visitors.
“What did he say?” asked Mr. Vandemar.
“He said, Mister Vandemar, that we should feel free to do whatsoever we wished to the marquis.”
Vandemar nodded. “Did that include killing him painfully?” he asked, a little pedantically.
“Yes, Mister Vandemar, I would say, on reflection, it did.”
“That’s good, Mister Croup. Wouldn’t like another telling-off.” He looked up at the bloody thing hanging above them. “Better get rid of the body, then.”
One of the front wheels on the supermarket shopping cart squeaked, and it had a pronounced tendency to pull to the left. Mr. Vandemar had found the metal cart on a grassed-in traffic island, near the hospital. It was, he had realized on seeing it, just the right size for moving a body. He could have carried the body, of course; but then it could have bled on him, or dripped other fluids. And he only had the one suit. So he pushed the shopping cart with the body of the marquis de Carabas in it through the storm drain, and the cart went squee, squee and pulled to the left. He wished that Mr. Croup would push the shopping cart, for a change. But Mr. Croup was talking. “You know, Mister Vandemar,” he was saying, “I am currently too overjoyed, too delighted, not to mention too utterly and illimitably ecstatic, to grouse, gripe or grumble—having finally been permitted to do what we do best—’”