Chase the Morning

So much for playing hero; and all this time I could feel my control slipping. I knew something was affecting me – the drums, the cold, the chanting, the foul air, the twisted little parade of cruelties at the altar. That was what I thought at first. Soon I knew better. They helped, yes; they trampled around in my thoughts and muddied them. But it was something else, something behind them, that was at work; something greater than their ghastly sum. With every new waft of presence it grew stronger, like hands tugging at me, light but implacable. They pressured my thoughts this way and that, like loosening a tooth in its socket.

It was no illusion; I was beginning to see things. Figures, many times manheight, that leaped and wheeled and capered behind the dancers, mimicking them like giant shadows cast upon the sky. Every minute I saw them more clearly, whirling over me, and what was around me grew hazier. Voices spoke in my brain, little tickling whispers, deep thunderous tones. I felt flashes of thoughts and memories that weren’t mine, that couldn’t be any man’s, that left only confusion in their wake, so far were they from any experience I could identify.

If I could have been any more terrified than I was, I should have been. It wasn’t like that at all. Every minute now I felt easier, more wondering. A distant door ajar, and coming from behind it warm light, the smell of wholesome cooking, the sound of familiar voices – that, to a child lost and hungry on an icy night, might be some shadow of what I felt. All the trappings of an absolute security, of a happiness I’d never known, of a richness I’d been longing for all my life yet never knew I lacked – the remotest taste of these things came to me, the promise that they lay ahead and were getting nearer. It didn’t bother me at all that my body seemed to be growing light, numb – until suddenly I felt my limbs twitch sharply, once, twice, without my having tried to move them. As if they were coming under the control of some other will –

I jolted awake, shivering and sweating. My head had nodded, my chin sunk down on my chest. It was like struggling to stay awake when I was working late. Except that in the warm blackness behind my eyelids Something was waiting …

I fought desperately to regain control. Somewhere, somewhere far away, there was a new clangour in the drumming, a sharp metallic dinging like the incarnation of a headache. And there were voices – Stryge’s, as harsh and desolate as ever I’d heard it. ‘– beating the ogan iron – can’t you hear? That’s it – that’s the end. The last – the greatest. If they can command Him –’

Something he’d said caught my attention – some memory. Some shreds of my will began to reassert themselves. I concentrated feverishly on whatever still bound me to earth – the pain in my tongue, the dull sting of the burns, the ache in my buttocks from the cold ground, and colder still the iron of the collar and chains. Ogan – that was the word I’d caught; now where had I heard something like that before? I smiled; Frederick, of course. It was good to think of him now. Old Frederick with his muttonchop whiskers, puffing with honest outrage, as belligerent as his picture of St James – ‘Think, man! What will you tell the Invisibles? You can’t argue with Ogoun!’

Courage came late to us both, he and I; well, better late than never. This had to stop here, now. Death, extinction – I had to hold onto something. Better them than fall for that sickly-sweet seduction, that happiness that wouldn’t let me be myself. Stryge had accused me of worshipping nothing; but he’d been wrong. Once before I’d thrown my happiness away – and that was because I worshipped success. Not its trappings – not what it could bring me. Just the satisfaction of achievement, the accomplishment, the abstract thing Itself. And by whatever god it represented, if I could sacrifice myself to it then, I should damn well be able to do the same now. Anything less –

Its opposite. Its ultimate negation, its Antichrist. Failure. The ultimate Failure of all …

You can’t argue with success …

You can’t argue with …

You can’t argue with …

Ogoun …

I drew a breath so deep it howled in my ears, threw my head back and slamming my chin down hard on my chest I bit –

And just for one instant the shadows flew back from me, and left me gasping on the ground, pouring blood from my mouth. My tongue hurt horribly, but all I’d done was bite the side of it. I was in no danger of choking. I saw Jyp staring at me, and Mall’s glazed eyes, and at the line’s end Clare, wide-eyed with horror; that I couldn’t bear.

‘S’okay!’ I mumbled thickly, trying fuzzily to find a reassuring reason for threshing about like that. ‘S’nothing. Just like the bastard said – my balls are freezing! I could …’