Page 101 of The Salt King

The pillar of salt light was infernal. It bloomed into the sky, but then it raced outwards and outwards, silhouetting the buildings and the falling snow, and once, an owl, which must have been able to see, because it wheeled away from the light, but too late.

It crumbled to salt fifty feet in the air.

Avelyn could see exactly what was going to happen, and he had no idea what to do to stop it. Nothing: there was nothing.

The salt looked like frost as it surged down the busy road.

The people slowed down, and faded, and then the halite bloomed red, glowing from the inside.

Car engines exploded. Salt smashed through the bonnets, arcs of it gritting eight, ten feet above. Inside a bus, it travelled from front to back at walking pace—slowly enough for the people packed inside to see it, and try to run, and fail. The lights strung between the shops fizzed and cracked, and broke. The streetlamps burst one after the next. The traffic lights. The floodlights at the station. There was a screech from the railway that must have been a moving train losing its engine and skidding along the tracks. The drunk men fused together with the soldiers. Darkness ate everything, and soon, there was nothing left but the salt light.

Avelyn and Jericho were an islet of colour among all the white and grey. Jericho’s coat looked wrong, with its moss-green lining. His dark halo was clearer than ever. When Avelyn shifted, he felt a stiffness across most of himself, and looked down in time to see his own coat fall apart into salt that caked his Hreod clothes underneath. He coughed as he breathed in motes of it, and had to shake it off his shirt, eyes stinging. It didn’t matter. The salt light had made the cold night feel like a summer morning.

Silence. Perfect silence. No roar of traffic, no voices, no distant murmur of the station announcements, no radios or carols or sirens. The only sound was the trickling of water. The snow had all melted, and now it was streaming down the sides of the road, and down the gutters of the roofs. Closer to the blast, the houses were ruined, missing roofs, walls crumbling, all salt.

“Something landed over there,” Avelyn said softly. He felt like it wasn’t safe to speak, but he couldn’t trace why. They were the only things left alive for—it must have been as far as the salt light reached. How far did it reach? All the way to Hreodwater?

All the way to Cambridge?

“Hang on.” Jericho was looking at the shop next to them, which was a souvenir place that sold replica Hreod rubbish for pilgrims. He disappeared inside, and after a minute or so came back out again with a lamp and some spare candles. He lit one with his silver lighter.

For an entire second, Avelyn didn’t understand, and then finally he realized that for Jericho, the whole street was pitch-black.

Avelyn took a photo of the light column and showed it to him. It wasn’t until he was holding it out that he saw his own hands. He was white. Almost as white as Jericho. It was as if he’d plunged his arms into hot water, but instead of going red, the burn was pale.

“We need to get back to An El,” Jericho said, very quiet. “Get as many people inside the abbey as we can. Away from the surface.”

Avelyn stared into the Hellfire of salt light. He could still feel that joy hammering at him. What had just happened . . . he should have been shocked and scared and angry, but he didn’t feel any of that. He was full of unearthly calm, and goodwill towards everyone. The light was beautiful. And . . . was something bright in it coming this way? “Should we see what it is?”

Yes yes yes, his brain said happily, good idea!

“No,” Jericho said, alarm in his voice. “Don’t—”

“I think . . .”

Everything was right in the world. It was a beautiful evening. The way the salt misted off its newly formed arcs from the engines, the way the salt-people sparkled in that gorgeous nuclear glow up ahead, even the way the salt-ruined Christmas lights had broken and draped themselves across the road—it was all magical. Miracles everywhere. The air sang with them. And if he could just go a little closer to that light, he wouldn’t just feel happy: it would be another shot of obliterating joy.

Jericho gripped his shoulders. “It isn’t real! It’s that thing.”

He seemed very urgent, given that it was such a lovely evening.

“Avelyn!” Jericho slapped him.

Avelyn didn’t really feel it. People did odd things sometimes.

Jericho looked into his eyes and seemed not to find whatever he was hoping for. “I’m sorry about this. But—I’m hoping you’re professionally good at forgiving people, and I don’t want to hit you any harder.” He bent and kissed him.

It was gentle and chaste and shocking.

Avelyn stood paralyzed for a full two seconds, then stepped back, into the wall, and knocked his head back against it hard. His normal thinking came back. The insane joy was still there, but he could feel now that it was artificial. It had a nasty afterglow.

“Hreodwater,” he said.

“Yes,” Jericho said. There was dread in his eyes. “Avelyn, I’m so sorry, I . . .”

“Don’t be silly. Come on.” He turned away and pulled his sleeve over his eyes. They were watering because of all the salt in the air. Not anything else. He was shaking.

“Avelyn.” Jericho could sink his voice far lower than usual when he liked. He could have spoken like Redspear did, right across the mine.