The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(170)
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MURRAY AND DOYLE PUFFED and panted as they ran down the driveway, proving that neither was any longer in the flush of youth. Here, too, the mirrors had shattered, strewing the fallen leaves with shards of glass. Naturally, the servants had all abandoned their posts, leaving a row of empty chairs, many of them upturned. But then, as they got halfway down the path, they saw an army of horsemen appear in the distance. The two men stopped dead in their tracks, transfixed for a few seconds as a troop of cavalry bristling with pennants galloped toward them. As the riders drew closer, they could make out the horses, their flanks protected with engraved barding, their heads in sinister helmets that gave them a grotesque appearance. The riders were strange humanoid creatures with long, angular faces, pointed ears, and white hair, also sheathed in shining armor with spiked shoulder plates. Most were brandishing swords and lances, and three or four of them carried pennants bearing strange symbols. When he finally managed to rouse himself from this mesmerizing sight, Doyle turned and fled back toward the house.
“Run, for your life, Gilliam, or you’ll be trampled!”
Doyle’s booming voice stirred Murray, and he sprinted after Doyle. He gritted his teeth as the horsemen’s fierce battle cries, the clank of armor, the horses’ snorts, and the din of hooves on the trodden earth drew closer. He instantly realized there was no escape: run as hard as they might, the house was too far away. In a few seconds they would be crushed. They would die a ridiculous death, trampled by a ferocious army that wouldn’t even notice as they galloped over them. He prepared to be knocked down by the first horse and then trampled pitilessly by the rest.
“Forgive me, Emma,” he whispered as he felt the horses’ breath on the back of his neck.
However, the expected collision did not happen. Astonished, he looked on as the first rider passed straight through him as if he were made of smoke. First the horse’s forelegs emerged from his stomach, turning him fleetingly into a centaur, then its body carrying the rider, and finally its hindquarters. He felt no pain, only a slight shiver. A second afterward, the same thing occurred with the next rider, and the next. Yet he kept running and, glancing sideways, saw that Doyle did, too. Only when the army had finished going through them did the two men come to a halt, both astonished that they hadn’t fallen under the hooves. Murray’s lips broke into an uneasy smile. To his astonishment, he was still alive. At his side, Doyle was looking at him, his face glowing with a similar expression of bemused relief.
“I can’t believe they went straight through us!” Murray exclaimed. “They are like mirages!”
Doyle nodded, still panting for breath, and they both watched the alien army ride into the distance, leaving a cloud of translucent dust in its wake.
“But who were they?” asked Murray.
“An army from another world, it would appear. A world that at this very moment seems to be superimposing itself on ours,” Doyle reflected. “But I fear this is only the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
Doyle nodded solemnly. “At Brook Manor we glimpsed another world through the mirror. It was close, but not close enough, since our voices couldn’t even reach it.”
“But today I was able to speak to Emma . . .”
“That means the parallel worlds are now brushing against one another. And if that continues, we can assume that those seemingly harmless transparencies . . . will end up becoming flesh and blood.”
“Good God . . . ,” Murray whispered, terrified.
“There’s no time to lose, Gilliam,” said Doyle, striding back toward the main gate. “We must get to the city center as quickly as possible. I fear the whole universe—everything we know and everything we imagine—is about to explode. And only Inspector Clayton can prevent it.”
“Clayton?” Murray raised his eyebrows. “Why him?”
“That is what I have been trying to tell you since I got here. The Map of Chaos contains the key to saving the world, and Clayton has it . . .” Then Doyle remembered the accursed kettle whistling in his study. “Or at least I hope he does.”
36
AT THAT VERY MOMENT, DOCTOR Ramsey, Mrs. Lansbury, and Executioner 2087V were emerging onto the street, which was filled with a throng of people seized with panic and running frantically from something. They did not need to look far to see what the crowd was fleeing from. In the distance, St. Paul’s Cathedral looked as if it had been buried under layers of gauze veils. Ramsey supposed that this meant that other cathedrals from other parallel Londons were superimposing themselves on it. Everything that had occupied that space over the centuries was occupying it once more at that very instant, creating the illusion that the cathedral was encased in a gleaming chrysalis and had become a building with manifold hazy contours. Among the myriad layers, the doctor thought he caught a glimpse of the medieval cathedral that had been consumed by flames in 1666 and even the tiny wooden church built in 604, which was reputed to have been the first in England. The effect seemed to be spreading to the adjacent buildings, which were slowly vanishing beneath a similar misty veil. Amid the panic-stricken crowd, Ramsey also made out a handful of translucent people and carriages, escaped from another world, who were now colliding with their doubles in this frenzied escape. Ramsey sighed. There was no time to lose.
“We must head for Great George Street immediately,” he announced, looking at the Executioner, “to the headquarters of Scotland Yard.”