17
Anima Urbis: Mount Tam
Lord Dharinel, Magus Major and one-time Warleader of the elven court of Mist-Hold, did not believe in giving up.
However, at the moment, he did not see many alternatives.
They were trapped in this rabbit warren of concrete and Cold Iron, caught between two opposing forces who were armed with the best human weaponry the elvenlord had ever seen. After the initial startled clash, where the elven swords had done quite well at close range against the human guns—one rifle, sliced cleanly in half, was still on the floor near his feet—the humans had withdrawn to use their ranged weapons more efficiently. Dharinel had cast magical wards against the gunfire for as long as he had the strength, while young Korendil organized the others into building a barricade out of office equipment that was heavy enough to withstand bullets.
Now they were trapped within it, as the humans hesitated to approach within range of the swords, and the elves could not venture out beyond it, out of fear of the superior firepower. Their own ranged weapons, the bows, were all but useless in these cramped hallways. They required exposing too much of the bearer—and shots clattered uselessly off the walls and ceiling as often as not.
Dharinel fumed, impatient to end this stalemate. He strode to where Korendil crouched near the open edge of the barricade, ignoring the dizziness that made his steps unsteady—an after-effect of too much magical channeling. “What shall we do now, young knight?” he asked tersely.
Korendil looked up, his eyes bright. “An excellent question, my lord. Perhaps if one of us charged them, to draw them out into the open . . . ”
“I would not wager good odds for that first warrior’s survival,” Dharinel said thoughtfully. “No, we are not ready for a move that desperate yet. Korendil, go attend your human friends. I will watch for any further attacks of poisoned smoke, and deflect them from us.”
“My lord.” Korendil bowed slightly, and went to where the two human women were seated near the wall, very close to each other.
That was something Dharinel still could not understand—he enjoyed living in the human world, for many reasons, but he could not understand how Korendil had woven his life so thoroughly with humans. Humans were so . . . fragile. Such as the human woman with pale skin and dark red hair, who even now shuddered and cried from the effects of some incomprehensible human illness. Claustrophobia, that was the word that the dark-skinned woman had said, but the word meant nothing to him.
Still, it was Korendil’s life, and however he wished to spend his time was his business. Though Dharinel privately wondered how much time any of them had left now, with the bullets singing overhead every few seconds.
He turned back to watch their enemies, around a corner of the barricade, and his eyes widened.
The human guards were walking around the corner, hands raised in the air. He recognized that as a common gesture of surrender from all the movies young Arvin had shown him. Behind them was a roiling mass of darkness, moving toward them.
What . . . It was herding them. None of them wanted to touch it. It wasn’t more poisoned smoke, for it moved with purpose.
Then he saw the individual shapes within the darkness, and he realized in surprised horror that it was an army of shadow-demons.
And beside them, playing music, a faint Irish melody that he now heard over the clattering of arms, was the Bard.
“The Bard!” Dharinel shouted elatedly, then was momentarily annoyed at himself for that display of unseemly emotion. The other elven warriors gathered around the barricade, and Korendil and the two human women joined them, peering around the pile of overturned desks and cabinets.
“The Bard, the Bard!”
The Bard saw them and smiled, though he continued to concentrate on playing the melody. The dark-haired human child walked beside him for a moment, then dashed past, heading toward the others at the barricade. The older human woman caught up the child in a hug, pausing only to wipe tears from her eyes.
Dharinel also saw someone else, and it was a sight that heated his blood with quick anger. Warden Blair, described to him by the human scientist and seen in the memories of young Korendil, walking with the other captured human guards. Warden Blair, the man who was responsible for all of this.
Warden Blair, who alone of his contemporary humans had captured and held an elf—and who might come to realize what he had done. Warden Blair, the most dangerous human to elves to walk the waking earth.
With a start, Dharinel realized that Blair was the target of the Bard’s melody-magic, that Eric was using his music to keep the Nightflyer-possessed human under his control.
Not bad, the elven lord thought grudgingly. Perhaps this Bard is all that Korendil has said he could be, not merely a powerful child gifted with too much magic for his own good. He seems to have overcome this situation easily enough.
Perhaps one of the captured human guards had that same thought at the same moment. Because, before the Bard could react, the human guard broke from the ranks of captured soldiers and leaped at him. Startled, the Bard turned too quickly, and the guard’s closed fist connected with a large darkened bruise on the Bard’s temple.
The Bard fell like a poleaxed horse. A moment later, his flute clattered to the floor, rolling to a stop several feet away.
A stunned silence descended upon the corridor. Dharinel saw the guard blink in surprise at his unexpected success, then turn toward the shadow-demons, as if suddenly realizing that the Bard had been the only one preventing the monsters from harming him.
The demons surged forward, and that guard was the first casualty, caught for a brief moment with his mouth open in a silent scream as the monsters descended upon him.
Dharinel brought up magical wards an instant later, though he knew that he could only hold them for a few minutes. Fighting against a single demon, he might give himself even odds in that kind of battle—against a horde of them, he knew they had no chance. And what of the others? Some of them had only the thinnest of defenses. Had the crisis foretold in all the visions begun?
The demons rose slowly, leaving nothing behind from their first victim, ignoring Warden Blair and the other guards to drift toward the unconscious Bard.
Of course, Dharinel thought, even as he fought to bring up a ward over the Bard’s body as well. The Bard, the only one who can control and banish them, he will be their main target. Only then will they turn to feed upon us.
The Bard braced himself with one hand, painfully levering himself up to glare at the demons.
No wards, no shieldings. Nothing between him and the horde.
“Get lost,” the young man said hoarsely, and Dharinel felt the rush of magic pouring from the human. His jaw dropped in disbelief, and he did not even try to close his mouth.
Like standing in the full desert sun—or beneath a pounding waterfall—now his shields were shunting some of that incredible power away, rather than warding against the demons. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that some of the lesser mages had ducked down behind the barricade to avoid being overwhelmed by the profligate strength of the young human’s magic.
The Bard hadn’t used the crutch of music this time, only focusing his will upon the creatures; his will, and the power that he now controlled, Dharinel sensed, with a sure if heavy-handed touch.
Silently, the mass of demons faded from view.
The young man slumped back against the floor, not moving.
Dharinel let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The other human soldiers, as if recognizing how narrowly they had just escaped death, looked at one another, saw no officers among them, and took off running in the other direction, quickly disappearing around the corner.
Warden Blair stood alone, glancing from the unconscious body of the Bard to the elven warriors behind the barricade.
Korendil was the first over the barricade, vaulting over an overturned desk with a sword in hand.
Blair moved quickly, and even as Korendil ran toward him, placed one hand on the Bard’s unconscious body. Korendil skidded to a halt, sensing that there was more here than met the eye, and poised, sword ready, but posture betraying uncertainty.
“Harm me,” a voice hissed from the human’s mouth, a voice that had the lifeless tones of the demon within it, no longer even pretending to be human, “and I will eat his soul before I die.”
Can’t we ever do something like this according to plan? Beth Kentraine asked herself, still not quite understanding how they’d gotten themselves into this situation.
She was still unsteady on her feet, shaking from the claustrophobia attack. Elizabet had managed to stave off part of it, but just walking down the hallways of this place had brought back all of the living nightmares. Just remembering that the decompression chamber was here, several floors below her . . .
I’m not going to lose it now. I’m not.
She heard the shouts of “The Bard!” and fought her way to her feet—saw Eric leading an army of the shadow-things, and let out a cry of her own. She staggered to the barrier, but by the time she got to the barricade the situation had changed.
The thing in Blair’s body—she didn’t know how she recognized that he wasn’t the same scum she had faced, but she knew it with complete certainty—held Eric’s life beneath his hand. Kory faced him, sword in hand, but too far away to strike before the thing killed Eric. If anyone else moved, she had no doubt that the creature would strike.
Stalemate.
Suddenly she knew what she could do, what only she could do. She was the only one with the contacts, the training, and most importantly, the knowledge. She was the only one that Blair would not see as a threat, because he had already reduced her to nothing. And she greatly doubted that he would understand what she was doing.
The demon within Warden Blair was going to kill Eric in another few seconds, unless she did something, unless she . . .
. . . reached out to the impromptu coven of witches and psychics, reaching for the mind and heart of the woman she related to best: Marge Bailey, who had been made impromptu leader of the circle on Mount Tam.
They were singing and holding hands, those crazy thirteen people—Marge and Chuck and their son, Jeff, and Sister Ruth, a wild long-haired singer who was into more political and religious fringe groups than Beth could count, seven more who Beth only knew as casual acquaintances but who had come through when they were needed. Even Jeff, who was pouring everything he had into this—even Sister Ruth, who was calling up a tower of light and fire. And Beth heard a faint echo of the words, something about Mount Tam, and all of this like being back in Viet Nam, with the battle coming soon . . .
. . . reached further, to the circle of power that they had been building for the last hour, and caught hold of it. The magical energy coiled down to her, making her skin tingle.
Unbelievable. Intoxicating. Riding the whirlwind, roping the lightning.
She wanted to laugh, half-drunk with the power of it, but fought for a last measure of self-control. This must be how Eric feels, when he’s controlling that unwieldy but ridiculously powerful Bardic talent of his. She struggled with it; after a moment it seemed to recognize her and came tamely to her hand, the wild stallion willing to bear her because it pleased him.
She pushed her way past the elves, walking slowly toward Warden Blair. Permitting him to see what a tasty little chocolate eclair of Power she was—but not permitting him to see the trap behind the bait.
“Beth!” Kory called, and she glanced back at him.
He looks terrified. I bet he’s afraid that I’m trying to commit suicide.
Am I?
Good question. Wish I knew the answer.
Something cold pressed against the back of Eric’s neck, a touch of ice. The cold sensation dragged him up from a tangled web of pain and exhaustion, as effective as a sharp slap in the face.
Oh, please, I don’t want anybody else to hit me in the face again today, he thought blearily. I can still taste blood from the last time . . . can’t I just go back to sleep now?
He took a deep breath, about to open his eyes . . . and froze, all senses gone to red-alert.
There was a Nightflyer right next to him. An uncontrolled, full-grown, very hungry—he could sense that without even opening his eyes—and very deadly Nightflyer, not even six inches away from him.
He knew he was closer to death than he had ever been in his life. In fact, he should have been dead, but the thing wasn’t doing anything, other than keeping one hand (hand?) on the back of his neck. That was what he had felt—a human hand with a Nightflyer on the other end, going through that hand to touch . . . something of his. The source of my magic? My soul? Whatever it was, it made him want to scream, that icy touch that cut through him to his most private self. Warden Blair, he realized a split-second later.
Warden Blair, and whatever is inside of him.
Calmly, calmly, he thought. Don’t want the thing to sense that I’m awake, or that I’m going to blast it into Eternity if I get half a chance . . .
Oh bravado.
The problem was that if he gathered any of his Bardic magic, that thing would know it in the same instant, and probably kill him a second later. He knew how fast it could strike, having seen too many Nightflyer killings in his own memory and through Beth’s. Maybe it was only fate, justice, that this be how he died—after having caused so many other deaths, to be served up as the Blue Plate Special to a hungry alien monster.
“Hungry, are you?” someone said, not far away from him. Eric nearly replied, No, it’s the beastie that’s hungry, not me! when he recognized Beth’s voice, strained and tired.
He opened his eyes without even thinking about it.
Beth stood a few feet away, holding out her hands to Warden Blair, aglow with power. Behind her, he saw the pale faces of the elven assault team, Kory in the forefront.
“Come here, you slimy son of a bitch,” Beth coaxed, a wild look in her eyes. “Don’t you want me? I know you do. Here I am, I’m all yours, come and get me. Yummy, yummy, little monster.”
Eric blinked, trying to reconcile the Beth standing in front of him with the Beth that he knew so well. She glittered to his magical senses, inhumanly bright with life energy, more than he’d ever seen in a single person before.
There was no doubt that the Nightflyer/Blair was drawn to that, as irresistibly as a moth to the flame. The monster yearned towards her, most of his attention off Eric.
Too bad his hand wasn’t.
“You thought you’d bury us, didn’t you?” Beth continued. “Bury us down in the dark with the monsters, with the walls screaming and the air too thick to breathe? Everything’s burning, and all my life is on fire because of you. You’re crazy, did you know that? You’re as crazy as the human you took; you’re infected with him, reduced to his level, just a bastard, just a . . . ”
Blair’s hand left Eric’s neck. He straightened and took a step toward Beth as she spoke, and another.
“No, Bethy, don’t!” Eric shouted, calling up his own power and knowing that Blair would strike before he could.
Just before Blair touched her, Beth swung her fist and connected hard on the man’s jaw.
Eric Saw it then, what she’d been hiding behind her glittery, enticing surface: the instantaneous flow of magical energy from Beth, combined with the power gathered by the coven on Mount Tam, slamming down with a rushing magical roar like a triumphant orchestral chord.
Blair staggered back, silhouetted in lightless black, only a dark shape of a man with the tall cloak-like wings of a Nightflyer.
Held for one timeless instant, a moth against an arc-light. A hungry moth, that had met something it couldn’t eat. The Nightflyer tried to separate from Blair to save itself. Too late.
That blackened figure suddenly shattered into a thousand shards, clattering metallically on the floor around Beth with an odd musical ring.
Of Blair, there was nothing left, nothing at all.
The black pieces that had been the Nightflyer dissolved an instant later, a hundred thin trickles of dark smoke that rose slowly and faded away.
“Bastard,” Beth concluded, rubbing the knuckles of her hand. “Damn, that hurt. You’d think I could’ve remembered how to hit somebody from all those Shotokan Karate lessons.” She looked down at Eric. “Hey, Eric, you okay?”
He found his voice. “Oh yeah, sure. How ’bout you?”
“I’m . . . I’m fine . . . ” She staggered, nearly falling; Kory was beside her a half-second later. She gave him a wan smile as he held her for a few seconds until she could stand unaided. “We’re still alive. What a concept.”
Together, they helped Eric stand up—both Eric and Beth leaning on Kory, the only one of the three of them who seemed able to stand on his own two feet without assistance. Eric leaned into their embrace, too wiped out to do anything more than hold onto them, as the elves gathered around them, silent and respectful.
We aren’t done yet. Shit.
“Uh . . . ” He tried to gather his thoughts, which was a remarkably difficult task at the moment. “Listen, guys, we have to get out of here . . . Blair set up the quake before we could stop him, it’s going to hit any second now.”
He saw panic in the human eyes, calculation in the elven, as they tried to figure out how much of the original vision might still come to pass.
“We have to stop it,” Kayla said. “Dr. Susan said it’d be a major quake, very bad. She thought it could collapse this complex; what would it do to the rest of the city?”
“We can’t stop an earthquake,” Beth said, shaking her head. “Do you know how much energy is released in a quake? It makes an atomic weapon look like a bottle bomb. We can’t stop that. Nothing can stop that!”
“Not—not stop it,” Eric said, wishing that his eyes would allow him to focus on his friends. Beth was still a vague blur, and looking at the elves was even worse. “Deflect it. Send part of it south, L.A. can handle a small quake. Send the rest of it out to sea, where there’s nothing for a few thousand miles; a tsunami probably wouldn’t hit the Orient or Hawaii from here. I hope.”
“Even if it did they’d have hours of warning,” Kayla said. “Plenty of time to evacuate.”
“It’s worth a try.” Elizabet looked around at the elves, then back at Eric. “What can we do to help?”
“The Bard can gather all the energy we can give,” Dharinel said firmly. “Ours, and the circle’s.”
Beth closed her eyes for a moment. “They’re still going strong,” she said. “I don’t think they even noticed when I took out Blair.”
“I believe in his abilities now,” Dharinel said, with a nod towards Eric. “Perhaps our power, with the human witches, will be enough.”
Oh God, is it up to me again?
He picked up his flute and sat down unsteadily, Beth and Kory next to him. He closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts, trying to think how in the hell he was going to do this. Not without music, that was for sure.
Next time, I just want to call in the U.S. Cavalry. Or figure out a solution and send it FedEx to Washington D.C. I hurt too much to do this . . .
Like a distant echo, he heard the Mount Tam group singing. The melody was unfamiliar to him, but powerful, and he followed their lead, breaking away after several measures into an improvised counter-melody. He felt the magic brightening around him, and let his mind drift down, following the near-musical resonances of the Poseidon device to where the resonances gathered and built upon each other, far below the city of Hollister, many miles away.
He quailed when he saw what he faced. It was impossible. He saw the weight of the forces at play, far beneath the surface, and knew that there was no way their group could affect those vast pressures. It was completely impossible. In another few seconds, the pressure would build to the breaking point and smash the entire Bay Area with a rippling wave of destruction . . .
And he Saw the devastation that would bring; no Nightflyers this time, but whole neighborhoods flattened, people dead and dying. High-rise buildings breaking out in fires, trapping those who had survived inside the swaying structures.
The face of Warden Blair, laughing. The man and the monster.
No! This is my city, my home. I’m not going to let that bastard win!
He reached out, in a way that he’d never thought to try before, to touch the others in the building around him, not just the elves and his friends, but the few remaining guards and personnel that hadn’t been evacuated. Carefully, not wanting to hurt them, he drew power from them as well, then reached out further, drawing in as many of the people of the city of Dublin as he could reach—
More, farther, the people of the cities along the East Bay, across the Bay to San Francisco, south to San Jose. People, people, the huge sprawling, brawling megacomplex of people, as diverse as any place on the face of the earth.
The city. The city itself was alive, had a soul, the soul of millions of people that lived in it and loved it and wouldn’t live anywhere else. And that soul had power as well. The power was deeper, more akin to the force building within the fault—and perhaps it would touch that force in a way nothing else could.
He cast the power down as quickly as he drew it, forcing the energies in the faultline to dissipate harmlessly outward, gently releasing the pressure from the merging continental plates. It was a fragile balancing act—
And a deadly one; it frightened him, knowing that if he faltered and held onto any of it for more than an instant, it would destroy him, a giant hand swatting a fruitfly. Too much, too quickly . . . he felt caught in a vise, trapped between the pressures of the faultline and the searing magic that he channeled, suspended between the live wires of a million volts of electricity. There was no way to know whether this would work—to pause for a moment, even to check the faultline, would overset him, and he would lose his balance and his life.
Something . . . shifted . . . in the fault, and he felt it in his own bones—the rising wave of energy, the earthquake arcing out in all directions from the epicenter—he cast away the last of the magic that he was channeling, and yelled, “Hang on! Here it comes!”
The floor rippled underneath him, then vibrated sharply. He felt the rumbling turning his insides to water as the floor rolled beneath him, like a boat on stormy seas. He held onto Kory and Beth and waited for his nightmare to become reality, for the walls to crack and tumble down like the houses of San Francisco in his dream.
Suddenly, it was over. The hallway trembled one last time with a faint aftershock, then everything was quiet and calm again.
It’s . . . it’s over? Eric asked himself, looking around. The elves and humans were staring at each other in disbelief.
“That—that was it?” Elizabet asked in an unbelieving tone. “That’s all?”
“I guess so,” Eric said, surprise in his voice.
“It worked.” Kayla grinned at him, and shot her fist ceilingward. “Yes! It worked! We did it! Yeah! Way to go, Eric!”
“Th-thanks,” he said. It was hard to breathe for some weird reason, and every muscle in his body seemed to be twitching. He thought about standing up and decided against it, just as everything tilted around him.
“Eric?” Kayla’s voice sounded very far away. “Eric, you okay?”
“Fine,” he tried to answer, but for some reason his voice didn’t seem to be working right, either.
“What is wrong with him?” he heard Korendil ask in alarm.
Eric felt the magic in Kayla’s hands, though he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes well enough to see the pale blue light that he knew was flickering over her hands. Kayla’s voice sounded closer, stronger. “Yeah. There’s just a hell of a lot of energy running through this guy, and it kind of overloaded his nervous system. At least, that’s what it feels like—touching him felt like sticking my hand in an electrical socket.”
What an image. Eric thought of the commercial possibilities: Bard-O-Matic Fluorescent Light, just add magic. Barderator, take him on your camping trip and bring all your appliances. Compu-Bard, plug in your computer and use him as the backup power source.
Maybe he’d do better just to lie there and not worry about it. He felt terrible, and lying on the floor did seem like the best idea, at least for the next few minutes. This “saving the world” business wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and certainly didn’t seem to be a very survivable hobby.
He lay there, half-awake or half-asleep, the healing energy warm and calming. He could almost breathe easily again, which felt marvelous. Other than that, he hurt too much to move. Next time, he decided, we’ll just call Chuck Norris and the Delta Force. Or maybe Arnie. Or better yet, the IRS.
* * *
Kayla straightened at last, and Korendil breathed a sigh of relief. The Bard was barely conscious, but he was no longer shivering or so deathly pale. The young healer, on the other hand, looked tired and drawn, not much better than her patient. She stood up unsteadily, muttering some human curse under her breath. “Can we go home now?” she asked plaintively, and fainted.
Kory caught her easily, and the older healer was at his side a moment later, pressing fingertips to the young girl’s wrist and checking beneath her closed eyelids a moment later. “Someday she’ll learn,” Elizabet murmured, then spoke louder. “She’s all right, just exhausted.”
“We’d best leave this place before other guards arrive,” Dharinel said. He gestured at two of his warriors, one who lifted Eric easily, the other who took Kayla from Kory’s arms. “Help your other friend, Korendil,” the elven mage said quietly, glancing at Beth.
Kory walked closer to Beth, who was standing very still, her eyes distant. “Milady Beth, please walk with me,” he said, taking her hand. She did not answer, but followed beside him as the group began to retrace their steps out of this underground maze.
They had survived. That was the first and foremost thought in his mind, that though many had been wounded in the battle, either in body or in spirit—he glanced at Beth, who walked woodenly, eyes downcast—they had all survived, against all odds. Healing would come with time, at least for the physical damage. For the wounds of spirit, he had no way of understanding what would happen.
Beth had been hurt that way, as seriously as a sword cut to the vitals, and it was only now something that he was beginning to understand. She had survived; how long until she could be healed?