Free The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus by Clive Barker, David Niall Wilson, Richard A. Kirk Page B

at the dome. Astride the Chimera’s back stood a bird-headed creature, holding aloft a silver box. And into it he was putting the fragment of the sun.
    In their panic, the soldiers lining the walls were firing volley after volley of poison arrows at the creature. But they fell far short of his high perch, and the strange bird’s head was thrown back in mockery at their futile efforts.
     

 

    “The sun! He’s stealing the sun!” The soldiers wept and fell to their knees in mortal terror.
    The next moment, the creature snapped close the box lid and the sun disappeared. Darkness fell upon Xanadu for the first time in half a century, and like people struck blind in their sleep, everyone in the palace rose howling from their beds.
    The carved willow-screens in the palace were broken up with axes to be used as torches; branches were hacked from trees in the throne-room and bonfires built, there in the mystical pleasure-dome, to fight off the darkness. But however large it was built, its light was paltry beside that of the sun. The commotion, of course, woke everybody in the caravan.
    “What’s going on?” said Hero.
    “The dome,” said Malachi in prophetic tones, a sheet wrapped around him like a toga. “The dome is architecturally unsound and has cracked like a dropped egg.”
    “No!” said Mr. Bacchus. “It’s not the dome. Look around!
    We lie in darkness! The sun has gone. I suggest we proceed to the throne-room forthwith.”
    They made their way through the crowds of panicking people, trying to discover from one fleeing figure or another who had perpetrated the theft of the sun. But none would answer, for the catastrophe had left them dumb with fear, until in his haste, a serving boy tripped over Malachi’s tail. Before he could be up and away, Hero had him in a vice-like grip.
    “Boy,” he said. “What do you know?”
    “The Princess,” the boy stammered.
    “What about her?” said Hero.
    “Gone,” said the boy. “He stole the sun and in the darkness stole her too.”
    “Who stole them?” demanded Bacchus.
    “Him,” said the boy.
    “Who? Speak up, boy!” boomed Mr. Bacchus.
    “In the caves,” the boy replied. “He lives in the caves, and he’s half-bird and half-man.”
    Then he bit Hero’s hand, and, having been dropped, darted away between Bathsheba’s legs, and was away into the crowd.
    “Half-bird, half-man,” repeated Malachi, drawing his toga higher around him.
    “Anthropomorphic nonsense!”
    Just then a gong sounded in the great dome, and the crowd ceased their hysterical flight, and began instead to make their way towards the throne-room, murmuring.
    There, the Khan addressed them all, his face older and more sorrowful in the flickering torchlight. “Creatures of Xanadu,” he said. “The Princess has been stolen from her room in the night, and the sun from the dome. We all know by whom.”
    “I don’t,” said Malachi.
    “Sssssh,” hissed Bacchus.
    “It’s no use saying I do when I don’t,” replied the crocodile, and made his way through the crowd to the throne. “I’m new here,” he said to Kublai Khan. “You’ll have to tell us about it.”
    “Ah, the leviathan,” said the Khan.
    “Call me Malachi,” said the crocodile.
    “This is the truth of the matter,” said the Khan. “Some years ago, a woman fell in love with my brother, Kuyuk. But he refused to marry her. She swore, being, she said, a woman of power, to summon her familiars to metamorphose my brother into a bird. She lied of course; she had no such power. So she fashioned a mask in the form of a bird’s head, came to my brother in the middle of the night, and placed it upon his sleeping head. That dawn, when he woke and saw himself, he believed himself transformed, and fled into the caves below Xanadu. Tonight, he returned, and stole the sun to light the caves, and his daughter, who believes him dead, to light his heart. We are left doubly in darkness.”
    “Then we must rescue her,” said