Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War. Clive Barker

the lament continued to play, its melody as bittersweet as ever. She followed the music through the grandiose rooms, every footfall now echoing off the painted stones. The palace had not been left untouched by the forest that surrounded it. The trees, possessed of a feverish fluidity that gave them greater strength than ordinary trees, had pushed through the walls and the ceiling, the mesh of fruit-laden branches so like the intricately carved and painted panels that it was impossible to see where dead wood ended and living began, where paint gave way to leaf and fruit or vice versa. It almost seemed as if the makers of this place, the carvers and the painters, must have known that the forest would invade at last and had designed the palace so that it would swoon without protest into the arms of nature.

      She could almost bring to mind the people who had worked here. It seemed easy to picture their furrowed faces as they labored at their masterpiece; though of course it was impossible that she could really know who they were. How could she remember something she hadn’t witnessed? And yet the images persisted, growing stronger the deeper she traveled into the palace. She saw in her mind’s eye men and women working by the light of floating orbs like little moons, the smell of newly cut timbers and paint freshly mixed sharpening the air.

      “Impossible,” she told herself aloud, just to be clear about this once and for all.

      After a while she realized somebody was keeping pace with her, nimbly moving from shadow to shadow. Now and again she’d catch a tiny glimpse of her pursuer—a flash of its eyes, a blur of what looked like striped fur. Eventually curiosity overcame her. She called out: “Who are you?”

      Surprisingly, she got an immediate guttural reply.

      “The name’s Filth.”

      “Filth?”

      “Yeah. Filth the munkee.”

      Before she could respond, the creature appeared from between the trees and came to stand, bowlegged, in front of her. He was indeed a monkey, as he had claimed, but he had a decidedly human cast to his crooked face. His eyes were slightly crossed, and his wide, preposterous mouth housed an outrageous assortment of teeth, which he showed whenever he smiled, which was often. He was dressed in what looked to be the remnants of an old circus costume: baggy striped pants held up by a rotting belt, an embroidered waistcoat in red, yellow and blue, and a T-shirt on which was written I’M FILTH. The entire ensemble was caked with mud and pieces of rotted food. The smell he gave off was considerably less than fragrant.

      “How did you find your way in here?” he asked Candy.

      “I—I followed the music.”

      “Who are you, anyhow?”

      “Candy Quackenbush.”

      “Daft name.”

      “No dafter than Filth.”

      The ape-man raised a grimy finger and without any preamble put it in his nose, pressing it into his nostril and hooking it around so that the top came out of the other hole. Candy did her best not to look appalled in case it encouraged him.

      “Well, then we’re both daft, aren’t we?” he said, wiggling his finger.

      Candy was no longer able to disguise her revulsion. “Do I disgust you?” he asked her cheerfully.

      “A little,” she admitted.

      The munkee tittered. “The King used to be most amused when I did that.”

      “The King?”

      “King Claus of Day. This was his Twilight Palace, this place. These are the borderlands of his domain, of course. By the time you get halfway up Galigali, it’s Night.”

      Candy looked around at the remnants of the fine building with new respect.

      “So this was a palace.”

      “It still is,” Filth said. “’Cept it don’t have Kings or Queens in it no more.”

      “What happened to them?”

      “Weren’t you taught no history at school?”

      “Not Abaratian history, no.”

      “What other kind of history is there?” Filth said, giving Candy a strange look from the corner of his eye. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Actually, the palace was really built for Claus’ daughter, Princess Boa. And when she died, her father told everybody—his courtiers, his cooks, his maidservants, his fool—me—to just go our various ways and find happiness any way we could.”

      “But you didn’t go?”

      “Oh, I went for a while. I tried being a nun, but I didn’t like the hats.” Candy laughed at this, but Filth’s expression remained perfectly serious, which somehow made the joke even funnier.

      “So you came back?” Candy said.

      “Where else was I going to go? What’s a fool to do without a King? I was nothing. Nobody. At least here I had the memory of being happy. She’d made us happy, you see. She could do that.”

      “She being—?”

      “Princess Boa, of course.”

      Princess Boa. It was a name Candy had heard spoken several times, but always in whispers.

      “Claus had two children,” Filth said, “Prince Quiffin and Princess Boa. They were both fine, beautiful creatures—that’s Quiffin over there.” He pointed to a portrait of a fine-featured young man, with his dark hair and beard coiffed into delicate curls. “And the girl gathering the arva blossoms, over there? That’s my sweet Princess when she was eleven. She was something special, even then. Another order of being, she was. There was this light in her…in her eyes. No. In her soul. It just shone out of her eyes. And it didn’t matter how grumpy or down in the mouth you were feeling, you only had to be with her for a minute or two and everything was good again.” He fell silent for a few seconds, then very quietly repeated himself: “Everything…was…good.”

      “Was it a sickness that killed her?”

      “No. She was murdered.”

      “Murdered? How horrible.”

      “On the day of her wedding. Right there in the church, standing beside the man she was going to marry, Finnegan Hob.” Tears were brimming in the munkee’s eyes. “I was there. I saw it all. And I never want to see anything so terrible again as long as I live. It was as if all the light went out of the world in one moment.”

      “Who murdered her?” Candy asked.

      Filth’s face was completely motionless, except his eyes, which flickered back and forth like panicked prisoners in the cells of his skull.

      “They said a dragon did it. Well, a dragon did do it; at least the killing part. And Finnegan killed the thing right outside the church, so that was an end to that. But the real villain…” His eyes closed for a moment. When they opened again he was looking directly at Candy. “The Lord of Gorgossium,” he said, very quietly. “That’s who made it happen. Christopher Carrion.”

      “Why wasn’t he arrested?”

      The munkee made a bitter laugh. “Because he’s the Prince of Midnight. Untouchable by the laws of Day. And nobody on the Nightside would bring him to law; how could they? Not when he was the last Carrion! It makes me crazy to think about it! He has her blood on his hands, her light on his hands. And he goes free, to cause more mischief. There’s no justice in this world!”

      “You know this for certain?” Candy said. “That he’s guilty of her murder?”

      After a moment’s musing, Filth said: “Put it this way: if he was standing here right now, and I had the means to do away with him…I would.” The munkee snapped his fingers. “Like that! There are some things you don’t need evidence for. You just know. In your heart. I don’t know why he did