Free Everville by Clive Barker Page B

exhaustion they didn't stop to rest. they had the sound-and now the glittering sight-of the river to tempt them on; and everywhere, signs of life: ferns and berry bushes and birdsong.
    At last, as they reached level ground, and began to beat a trail to the river, a breeze came up out of nowhere, and the mist that had kept them from seeing any great distance was rolled away.
    they said nothing to one another, but stood a few yards from the white waters and looked in astonishment at the scene beyond. The dark evergreens now gave way to trees in all their autumnal glory, orange and red and brown, their branches busy with birds, the thicket beneath quickened by creatures pelting away at the scent of these interlopers. There would be food aplenty here: fruit and honey and fish and fowl.
    And beyond the trees, where the river took its glittering there was green land. A place to begin.
    On the mountain that would come to be known as Harmon's Heights, the elements were beginning the slow process of erasing the dead and their artifacts. they stripped from the bodies what little flesh the wolves and carrion birds had left. they pounded the bones till they splintered, then pounded the splinters to dust. they shredded the tents and the fine robes; they rusted the blades and the buckles. they removed from the sight of any who might chance upon the battlefield in decades to come, all but the minutest signs of what had happened there.
    But there was one sign the elements could not remove; a sign that would have certainly disappeared had there not been a last living soul upon the Mountainside to preserve it.
    His names were numerous, for he was the son of a great family, but to all who had loved him-and there had been many-be was called by the name of a legendary ancestor: Noah.
    He had come to the mountain with such hopes in his heart he had several times wished aloud for the words to express them better. Now he half-believed he'd called disaster down, wishing for words. After all, hadn't it been words spoken by a child that had undone the ceremony and brought the truce to such a bloody end?
    He had fled the signs of that battle half-insane, fled into the forest where he had sat and sobbed for the wife he'd seen perish in front of him, her heart too tender to survive the trauma of having her spirit-child unknitted. He, on the other hand, was beyond such frailties, coming as he did from a line of incorruptibles. His mind was part of a greater scheme, and though nothing would have pleased him more than to cease thinking, cease living, he could not violate his family's laws against self-slaughter. Nor would his body perish for want of sustenance. He could fatten himself on moonlight if he so chose.
    So at last, when he'd wept himself out, he returned to the sight of the tragedy. The beasts had already done their disfiguring work, for which he was grateful. He could not distinguish one corpse from another; they were all simply meat for this devouring world.
    He climbed the slope and slipped between the rocks, up to the place where the door that had led on to the shores of Quiddity had burned. It was gone, of course; sealed up. Nor could he expect it to be opened again any time soon-if at all-given that most all of the people who had known about the ceremony were on this side of the divide, and dead. Blessedm'n Filigree, who had opened the crack in the first place, was a notable exception (was he a conspirator in this, perhaps?), but given that his opening of the door was a crime punishable by servitude and confinement, he was likely to have fled to the Ephemeris since the tragedy and found a place to lie low until the investigations were over. But as Noah stood on the spot where the threshold between Cosm and Metacosm had been laid, he saw something flickenng close to the ground. He went down on his haunches and peered at it more closely. The door, it seemed, had not entirely closed. A narrow gap, perhaps four or five inches long, remained in