“Is that noise really coming from the Pyramids?” Shape said.
Carrion nodded.
“But they’re tombs,” Shape said. “The royal families were laid to rest there.”
“And so were their slaves and their eunuchs and their horses and their cats and their sacred serpents and their basilisk.”
“And they’re dead,” said Shape. “The serpents and the eunuchs and the…whatever. They’re all dead.”
“All dead and mummified,” Carrion replied.
“So…what’s making all that noise?”
“It’s a good question,” said Carrion. “And given that you will be seeing for yourself in a few minutes, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. Think of the dead as flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Yes. What you hear is the noise of insects, drawn to those flowers.”
“Insects? Surely not so loud a noise, Lord, would come out of insects?” Shape made a stumbling laugh, as though he thought this was a joke. “Anyway,” he went on, “what would inspire them to make such a sound?”
“Explain to him, Vol.”
Vol grinned and grinned and grinned.
“They make that noise because they smell us,” he said. “Especially you, Shape.”
“Why me?”
“They sense that you’re close to death. They lick their lips in anticipation.”
Shape grew contemptuous now. “Insects don’t have lips,” he said.
“I doubt…” said Vol, approaching Shape, “…that you’ve ever looked closely enough.”
Vol’s three yellow smiles were too much for Shape. He pushed the man away with such force that many of the insects living on his skull fell off and pattered into the water. Vol let out a sob of quite genuine distress and spun around, leaning over the edge of the barge and reaching down into the water close to the steps, scooping his infestation up.
“Oh, don’t drown, little ones! Where are you? Please, please, please, please don’t drown.” He loosed a low moan, which began in his bowels and climbed up through his wretched body until it escaped his throat as a howl of rage and sorrow. “They’re gone!” he yelled. He swung around on the murderer. “You did this!”
“So?” said Shape. “What if I did? They were lice and worms.”
“They were my children!” Vol howled. “My children.”
Carrion raised his hands. “Silence, gentlemen. You may continue your debate when we have finished our business here. Do you hear me, Vol? Stop sulking! There’ll be other lice, just as adorable.”
Leaving the two men staring at each other in sullen silence, Carrion went to stand in the bow of the barge. During the argument the unmelodious din from inside the Pyramids had ceased. The “bees”—or whatever else had been making the noise—had hushed in order to listen to the exchange between Vol and Shape. Now both the occupants of the Pyramids and their visitors were silent, each listening for some telltale noise, each knowing it was only a matter of time before they laid eyes upon one another.
The barge came alongside the flight of stone steps that led up to the door of the Great Pyramid. The vessel nudged the stone, and without waiting for the stitchlings to secure the barge, Carrion stepped off the deck and began his ascent of the stairs, leaving Mendelson Shape and Leeman Vol to hurry after him.
IT HAD TAKEN A great deal of organization—and more than a little bribery—to arrange Carrion’s visit to the great Pyramids of the Xuxux. They were, after all, sacred places: the tombs of Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses; and in their humbler chambers, the servants and animals belonging to the mighty. The royal dead had ceased to be laid there several generations ago, because all six Pyramids had been filled with the deceased and their belongings. But the Pyramids had continued to be carefully guarded by soldiers working for the Church of Xuxux. They circled the Pyramids on a fleet of vessels elaborately decorated with religious insignia, and they were armed with weapons of fearsome firepower. Furthermore, they had the complete freedom to use their weaponry in defense of the Pyramids and the royal remains that were contained therein. But Carrion had arranged to have the patrol interrupted for a time so that his funeral barge could slip in, unnoticed, to the steps of the Great Pyramid.
As he approached his destination, however, his thoughts were not upon the difficulties of arranging this journey, nor on what lay inside the Pyramid to which he had spent so much trouble getting the Key. They were upon the girl whose presence in the Abarat had come about because she had accidentally interrupted the thief of the Key and his pursuer. In other words, on Candy Quackenbush.
Candy Quackenbush!
Even the name was ludicrous, he told himself. Why did he obsess about her the way he did? She was here because of a fluke of circumstance, nothing more. Why then could he not get her wretched name out of his head? She was a girl from some forsaken little town in the Hereafter, nothing more. Why then did she haunt his thoughts the way she did? And why—when thoughts of her did arise—were there other images following on after her? Images that troubled him deeply; that sickened and shamed him. Images of a bright Afternoon on the Nonce, and bells ringing in jubilation, and every flower, as if by some unspoken understanding of the Hour’s flora, becoming white for a marriage ceremony…
“Sickening,” he said to himself as he ascended the Pyramid steps. “She’s nothing. Nothing.”
Shape overheard his master’s mutterings.
“Lord?” he said. “Are you well?”
Carrion glanced back at his servant. “I have bad dreams, Shape,” Carrion told him. “That’s all. Bad dreams.”
“But why, my Lord?” Shape said. “You’re the most powerful man in the Abarat. What is there in this world that could possibly be troubling to you? As you yourself said: She’s nothing.”
“How do you know what I was talking about?”
“I just assumed it was the girl. Was I wrong?”
“No…” Carrion growled. “You weren’t wrong.”
“Mater Motley could surely deal with her for you,” Shape went on, “if you don’t care to. Perhaps you could share your fears with her?”
“I have no desire to share anything with that woman.”
“But surely, Lord, she’s your grandmother. She loves you.”
Carrion was becoming irritated now. “My grandmother loves nothing and nobody except herself,” he said.
“Maybe if I told her—”
“Told her?”
“About your dreams. She would prepare something to help you sleep.”
At this, Carrion