The Nameless Day. Sara Douglass

blinked. The archangel and his companions had gone, as had the incantation on the page before him.

      He was alone again in his cell, and all that was left was to die.

      Or, perhaps, to try and perform his duty one last time.

      Wynkyn set out the next morning just after Matins, shivering in the cold, dawn air. It lacked but a few days until the Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ—although Wynkyn doubted there would be much joy and celebration this year—and winter had central Europe in a tight grip.

      He coughed and spat out a wad of pus- and blood-stained phlegm.

      “I will live yet,” Wynkyn murmured. “Just a few more days.”

      And he grasped his staff the tighter and shuffled onto the almost deserted road beyond the city’s northern gate.

      It had not been shut the previous night. No doubt the gatekeeper’s corpse lay swelling with the gases of putrefaction somewhere within the gatehouse.

      The wind was bitter beyond the shelter of the streets and walls, and Wynkyn had to wrap his cloak tightly about himself. Even so, he could not escape the bone-chilling cold, and he shivered violently as he forced one foot after the other on the deserted road.

      “Pray to God I have the time,” he whispered, and for the next several hours, until the sun was well above the horizon, he muttered prayer after prayer, using them not only for protection against the devilry in the air, but also as an aid in his journey.

      If he concentrated on the prayers, then he might not notice the crippling cold.

      Even the sun rising towards noon did not warm the air, nor impart any cheer to the surrounding countryside.

      The fields were deserted, ploughs standing bogged in frozen earth, and the doors of abandoned hovels creaked to and fro in the wind.

      There was no evidence of life at all: no men, no women, no dogs, no birds.

      Just a barren and dead landscape.

      “Devilry, devilry,” Wynkyn muttered between prayers. “Devilry, devilry!”

      By mid-afternoon Wynkyn was aching in every joint, and shaking with fatigue. His cough had worsened, and pain hammered with insistent and cruel fists behind his forehead.

      “I am so old,” he whispered, halting for a rest beneath a twisted tree stripped bare of all its leaves. “Too old for this. Too old.”

      A fit of coughing made the friar double over in agony, and when Wynkyn raised himself and wiped bleary tears from his eyes, he only stared in resignation at what he saw glistening on the ground between his feet.

      No phlegm at all now. Just blood…and thick yellow pus.

      An hour before dusk, almost frozen yet still shaking with fever, Wynkyn turned onto an all but hidden small track that led north-east. Stands of shadowed trees had sprung up to either side of the road in the last mile, and the track led deeper into the woods.

      The trees had been stripped of leaves by the winter cold, and moisture and fungus crept along their black branches and hung down from knobbly twigs. Boulders reared out of the moss-covered ground, tilting trees on sharp angles. Cold air eddied between trees and boulders, carrying with it a thin fog that tangled among the treetops.

      No one ever ventured into these forbidding woods. Not only was their very appearance more than dismal, but legend had it that demons and sprites lingered among the trees, as did goblins among the rocks, all more than ready to snatch any foolish souls who ventured into their domain.

      Wynkyn would have chuckled if he had had the energy. For hundreds of years the Church had cautioned people away from these woods with their tales of red-eyed demons. Red-eyed demons there were none, but Wynkyn knew the reality was worse than the stories.

      These woods nurtured the Cleft.

      He struggled along the track, stopping every ten or twelve steps to lean against the trunk of a tree and cough.

      Wynkyn knew he was dying, and now the only question left in his mind was whether or not he could open the Cleft and dispose of this year’s crop of horror before he commended his soul to God.

      After another mile the ground began to rise to either side of the path. Yet another half mile and Wynkyn, his legs so weak he had to lean heavily on a staff to keep upright, found himself at the mouth of a gorge. The hills to either side were not over tall—perhaps some six or seven hundred feet—but the gorge floor dropped down into…well, into hell itself.

      This was the Cleft, the earth’s vile equivalent of the suppurating cleft that lay between the legs of every daughter of Eve.

      Wynkyn began to laugh, a harsh yet whispery sound. As loathsomeness would be sunk into the cleft of every one of the daughters of Eve, so he, Wynkyn de Worde, would see to it that loathsomeness would be sunk into this Cleft.

      Every cleft led to hell, one way or the other.

      Wynkyn’s laughter turned into an agonising, wet, bubbling cough, and he sank to his knees and would have fallen completely had it not been for his grip on his staff. The pestilence had run riot in his lungs, and now Wynkyn was very close to drowning in his own pus and blood.

      Time was passing too fast. He did not have long.

      Praise God he knew the incantations by heart!

      Wynkyn forced himself to raise his head. He spat out an amount of pus, hawked, spat again, then wiped his mouth with a shaking arm.

      It was time.

      Slowly he spoke the words, his eyes fixed on the Cleft.

      When he finished, it first appeared that nothing had changed. The gorge spread before him in the twilight, a twisted wasteland of boulders and shadows and the hunched shapes of low, scrubby bushes.

      But in an instant all altered. Flames licked out from behind boulders, and vegetation burst into fire. There was a roaring, rending sound, and clouds of sulphuric effluvium billowed into the air.

      Wails and screams, and even the thin, white, despairing arms of those trapped within, rose and fell from the gate to hell.

      Wynkyn chuckled. The Cleft had opened.

      But his work was not yet done. He turned slightly so that he could see the path behind him.

      “Come,” he said, and clicked his fingers. “Come.”

      There was a momentary stillness, then from the forest lining the path walked forth children, perhaps some thirty or thirty-five, all between the ages of two and six.

      Not one of them was human and all were horribly deformed; the twistings of their bodies reflecting the twistings of their souls.

      Wynkyn bared his teeth. They were abominable! Devilish! And to the Devil they must be sent.

      He lifted his hand, trying to control its shaking, and began to speak the incantation that would force them down into—

      A convulsion racked his body, and his voice wavered and stilled.

      Another convulsion swept over him, and Wynkyn de Worde collapsed to the ground.

      One of the children, a boy of about six, stepped forth to within a few paces of the friar.

      Wynkyn rolled over slightly, his face contorted, and began to whisper again.

      The boy smiled.

      Wynkyn’s voice bubbled to a close. He lifted a hand trying desperately to conjure words out of air, but nothing came of it, and his hand fell back to the ground, failing him as badly as his voice.

      “You’re dying,” said the boy, his voice a mixture of relief and joy.

      He turned and looked at the crowd of his fellows. “The Keeper dies!” he said.

      Behind him Wynkyn writhed and twisted, fighting uselessly against his illness. He tried to