by Jack Conner
He aimed.
She spun. Waved her arm. A blast of superheated air enveloped him, threw him off balance. He would have fried to a crisp but Gunnerson’s prototype protected him, just as it had against the Prince’s assault.
When he did not burn, Iasolla screamed in rage.
The blast did throw his aim off. A wave of invisible energy shot from the brass gun’s muzzle and beamed harmlessly through the air instead of killing the Queen.
No, he saw, not entirely harmlessly. As Lynch watched, the sapphire crystal -- the last one in the sequence -- was flung from its orbit. The beam of energy had passed near it and dislodged it from whatever stasis field the Queen had gripped it in.
It spun through the air.
A third automaton rounded the console and ran at Lynch. He swiveled, blasted it -- it shattered into glittering fragments -- and wheeled toward Queen Iasolla. She was already leaping at him, faster than any human. She slapped the gun from his fingers.
Another arm drew back to deliver the killing blow. He was not quick or strong enough to escape it.
Suddenly, Queen Iasolla gasped. Her eyes widened. Her face seized up in pain. She turned, and Lynch saw the green jade sword protruding from her back. Blood wept from the wound. Behind the Queen stood Eliza, looking furious but scared.
“Don’t you touch him!” she said.
The Queen howled and lunged at her. Eliza leapt away, visibly surprised that Iasolla hadn’t fallen.
Lynch cast his gaze about for the brass gun. Lit upon the sapphire crystal instead. The Queen needed it to complete the sequence. It glittered amongst a pile of jade fragments that had recently been an automaton.
Lynch snatched it up. Turned back to Eliza and the Queen.
Eliza ducked and wove, and Iasolla hunted her with awkward, staggering strides. Blood trickled down her back, her legs. One of her hands clawed at the sword jutting from her back, trying to remove it.
Two jade automatons approached her.
“Sentinels!” she said, then stabbed a finger at Lynch. “Retrieve the crystal!”
Damn. Lynch flew toward an opening, shoving the crystal through his belt.
Lars Gunnerson blocked him.
Lynch stopped short, breathing hard, and they eyed each other.
“You’re not getting out,” Gunnerson said.
“Are you sure you want to do this? She’s mad!”
“Not as mad as resisting her would be. Just surrender. I beat you once. I will beat you again.”
Lynch charged him. Gunnerson swung a fist, Lynch dodged, offered a feint, swung around, meaning to sneak by and aim for the door. Gunnerson grabbed him, whirled him around and punched him in the cheekbone. Lynch staggered back. Gunnerson tackled him, bearing him to the floor. Echoes of last night.
Lynch recalled what Gunnerson had done that time and waited for him to do it now. He did. Gunnerson’s right hand clamped on Lynch’s left wrist, pinning it to the floor. This nullified the hook, which he obviously saw as the greatest threat. In doing so, he bent his whole body down, applying great pressure to the hook arm.
Lynch reached his right hand up, found purchase on Lars Gunnerson’s skull, and jabbed his thumb into Gunnerson left eye. Gunnerson screamed. Lynch dug deep, destroying the eye, and blood and white tissue welled out. Gunnerson yelled in agony and threw himself backward. Lynch’s thumb made a squelching noise as it yanked from the wound.
The two jade automatons stalked forward.
Lynch climbed to his hands and knees, forced himself to his feet, and ran.
Chapter 30
Eliza felt a blast of hot air and leapt aside, sliding across the ground. The floor trembled beneath her. The air shook. Arcs of energy coursed along the Control Room’s ribs and gathered at the central tube. She rolled as Queen Iasolla stomped down at her, and rolled again to avoid a kick. Once far enough away, she pushed herself to her feet, eyes fixed on the Queen.
Iasolla moved slowly, jerkily, clawing at her back with one hand. At last she paused, straightened. Her hand gripped the sword’s blade. With a moan of pain, she jerked the sword from her back, and let it clatter loudly to the floor. She eyed the blood on her hand, then made a fist, and blood squeezed out onto the floor, smoking when it struck. Blood from her back trickled down her legs.
Eliza, gasping, edged away from the Queen, her gaze sweeping the ground, looking for the brass gun.
There!
Midway between her and Iasolla.
She ran for it. Iasolla screamed and waved a hand. A blast of superheated air melted the floor before Eliza. Eliza only just barely swerved around, feeling the broiling heat. Sweat beaded her skin.
Iasolla waved her arm again, higher this time. Eliza dove. The blast fried the air overhead. Eliza skidded across the floor. Reached out. Grabbed the gun. Queen Iasolla waved her arm again. Eliza rolled. The ground where she’d just been burst into flames.
She fired at Queen Iasolla, but fired it rolling and the shot went wide. How many shots were left in the gun?
Suddenly Iasolla straightened, and her eyes took on a faraway expression. Eliza thought she must be looking through the eyes of her Sentinels. “Damn him,” she said. She could only mean Lynch.
She whirled about and stormed from the room, still moving awkwardly. Blood trickled from the wound in her narrow back and down her slender legs. Eliza fired again, but by this time the Queen was too far away and the shot missed handily. Iasolla did not even seem to notice.
Eliza panted as she mounted to her feet. She took a step after the Queen, who vanished through a doorway, but Lars Gunnerson lurched into her.
“Eliza!” He had a hand shoved over one eye, and blood pumped through the fingers. He staggered, his free hand grabbing for support on the console. “Help me!”
She moved to go around him. He seized her. His face turned angry, and he said, “How could you have betrayed us?”
Eliza struck him over the damaged eye with the butt of the brass gun. He gasped and reeled back, and she pushed him to the floor. Kicked him in the side of the face. Then dragged him, grunting, over to the handcuffs that dangled from a pipe nearby. She snapped it around his left wrist.
He moaned and clutched at her as she walked away. “How could you have betrayed us?”
“I was never with you!”
Clutching the brass gun tightly, she stalked off after the Queen. She had to reach her before she reached Lynch.
***
Lynch fled up the halls, mere meters ahead of the jade automatons. Their heels clicked on the jade floors like the cracks of thunder. His heart beat wildly in his ears.
He rounded a corner and collided with a trooper. The man was doubtless one of those who had gone off to hunt Lynch at Lord Wilhelm’s orders, but he did not seem to recognize Lynch in the confusion of the moment.
“I heard the shooting -- ” the man started.
“No time. We’re being hunted.” Lynch pointed behind him with his hook.
The first of the jade automatons rounded the bend.
The trooper gaped. He drew his pistol and fired at the Sentinel as she stepped forward, her heels ringing -- click-click-click. The gun boomed, and jade chips flew in every direction, but the thing stalked forward, spear cocked and poised to thrust.
Lynch ran.
He heard the gasp of pain and the death gurgle of the trooper but did not look back. He patted the sapphire crystal under his belt, made sure it was secure, and rounded another bend, coming upon the corpse of Prince Jeselri. Flames still crackled from the nexus, throwing weird light on the body. Queen Iasolla had removed the spear and placed it alongside her son, as if he had been holding it, and his head was mounted on his chest. The eyes stared at Lynch accusingly.
Lynch grabbed up the spear and spun, just as the Sentinel crested the bend.
He thrust through the Sentinel’s breast, his arm shuddering with the impact. Cracks spread out from the point of penetration. In slow motion, the automaton fell apart, piece by piece, each on
e shattering on the floor. Never once did the expression change on her face, yet in the end her mouth opened and the Queen’s voice issued, “Damn him.”
Even as the pieces of jade tinkled to the floor, Lynch heard the other Sentinel’s footfalls, moving too fast for him to prepare an ambush. He turned and fled, passing deeper and deeper into the clockwork maze. He ran up stairs and down stairs. Passed through a chamber of smashing brass pistons. Fled over a lacy glass bridge that spanned a river of green fire. Always the Sentinel stayed on his heels, never seeming to exert effort yet always moving swiftly and fluidly, spear poised to thrust through Lynch’s vitals.
How to destroy the jewel? If he could do that, he could prevent the Queen from completing the sequence, and it wouldn’t matter to anyone but him, and maybe Eliza, if the automaton caught him.
The gears grabbed his attention. When he was able to put a little distance between himself and the Sentinel, he placed the jewel on a huge gear and watched it pass beneath the teeth of the next one. Instead of breaking the shard, the jewel’s hardness resisted the gear, and the machine broke apart with the sound of cracking stone, and yellow smoke belched up. Lynch just barely retrieved the jewel before it was spat out the other side.
He ran on, and the automaton followed, close behind. Exhausted, Lynch decided he had just enough room between him and the Sentinel to ambush it. At the next bend, he pressed himself against a corner of grinding clockwork and waited.
When it arrived, however, it rounded the bend closer to the far wall, not the inner. It had learned from its sister’s mistake, or perhaps the Queen guided it.
It marched straight for him, spear poised to skewer his guts. He thrust first, right at its chest. It dashed his blow aside. Struck with such force that it tore the weapon from his fingers.
Before it could coil its arms for another spear-thrust, he slammed his body against it. Drove the Sentinel backward, off the walkway and into the gears.
It lost balance and fell onto an upward-spinning gear. The automaton tried to roll off, but Lynch pinned it down with a foot for the two seconds it took for the automaton to reach the spot where the grooves of the gear it lay across merged with the grooves of the gear above, and the gear crushed the Sentinel’s midsection. Jade fragments exploded outward, and its upper half fell writhing into the clockwork abyss. Lynch released the automaton’s legs, and they fell to the floor, still kicking. Jade fragments tinkled.
He panted, bent over and grabbing a knee for support.
“They better give me a duchy for this,” he wheezed.
He smelled a hint of honey and cloves. His head snapped up. Down the hall stalked Queen Iasolla, her head held high, her perfume swirling invisibly before her. Her emerald eyes found him and flashed heatedly.
“Give me back the jewel,” she said.
He hitched a breath. “You didn’t say please.”
She waved a hand. A blast of superheated air flowed past him, and the bank of gears behind him burst into flames. He remained unharmed, though, if a bit warmer. Thank you, Lars Gunnerson.
“Give it back and I will let you live,” she said.
“Tempting.”
She moved closer. The smell of her perfume grew stronger.
“But I’ll have to decline,” he added.
Where was Eliza? Had the bitch killed her?
Iasolla stalked toward him, and he knew he was no match for her. She moved slower than normal, and she limped, and he knew she must be weak right now, but even so she possessed nearly god-like power. How much would it take to kill her? Even now she seemed to be healing from her injury.
He turned and ran, and she screamed obscenities at him in Atlantan as he did. He heard her light footfalls increase in pace behind him.
She hurled a blast of heat at him, and a bank of gears exploded before him. Then another. He ran, but he was tiring. His heart’s labored pounding filled his ears with roaring blood above the clanking of the clockwork and the thrumming of the doomsday machines. Iasolla would find him soon. He had to destroy the jewel first.
Before him arched a beautiful glass bridge, lacy and glittering, elaborately crafted by ancient Atlantan masons long ago. It spanned a chasm whose sides glowed green, pulsing, pulsing. He reached the bridge and passed over it. As he did, he peered over the side into a deep, abysmal pit. At it very bottom flared green fire. Vris. It flared and faded, flared and faded, like the pumping of a heart. Perhaps --
He thrust the jewel over the glowing chasm, feeling its heat boil up from below. “I’ll drop it!” he warned.
As Queen Iasolla marched toward him, hate and anger gripped her face. She said nothing, only stepped closer. Rage simmered around her. The floor melted as she walked over it, leaving a trail of ruin. She was very beautiful.
“I could make you a king,” she said. “You killed my son in honorable combat. You can take his crown. We can rule the world together.”
“I believe you. I do. Is Eliza alive?”
“She is. If you drop that jewel, her agony will be legend.”
Lynch glared down into the green depths with terrible concentration. It was so fixed he did not at first look up when he heard sounds of a scuffle. Then he heard a scream.
***
Eliza rounded a bend and saw the Queen. She had been following the sounds of destruction. Now Iasolla stormed down a high hallway of grinding gears, hate and rage in her every step. Before her spanned a beautiful bridge and upon it posed a defiant Lynch, hand raised over a pit of green fire. Queen Iasolla raised her arm to hurl a blast at him --
Eliza ran to get closer, brass gun gripped tightly, aiming as she went. Queen Iasolla heard her footsteps and spun. Eliza fired.
Iasolla leapt aside, and the bank of gears behind her broke apart as a narrow channel was carved through it. The path along the channel burst into fragments, destabilizing the whole, and gears and bolts flew off into the machinery, some rolling into the hallway.
Iasolla waved her hand and a blast of superheated air shot toward Eliza. She just barely managed to leap aide. Hit the ground belly-up and skidded.
Iasolla marched over to her. Eliza raised her gun --
The Queen kicked it out of her fingers.
Iasolla grabbed Eliza by the throat and hauled her off the floor. Eliza gave a strangled scream, and then the Jade Queen’s fingers closed tight about her throat. Air shimmered around her. Eliza felt hot. Her skin flushed, and sweat popped out all over her body. The Queen was about to broil her alive.
“No!” Lynch shouted. He shook the sapphire jewel over the glowing green depths. “Release her or I destroy it!”
“Drop . . . it . . .” Eliza wheezed.
Queen Iasolla growled. “I’ll retrieve it from your corpse!” she told Lynch.
She waved her arm and blast of superheated air struck him. It melted the bridge he stood on. It collapsed, and he screamed as he fell into the chasm.
“No!” Eliza choked.
Iasolla hurled her aside, and she struck a spinning gear, bounced off, and hit the floor. The world went dark.
***
Lynch’s stomach flipped as he fell. Desperately, he lashed out with his hook. It caught, jerked him to a stop. He flailed, dangling from the ruined, melting edge of the bridge even as its midsection fell into the endless pit beneath. Green fire flared as it struck. The melting edge solidified.
Queen Iasolla appeared above him.
“Give me the jewel,” she said, almost smiling, “and I’ll help you up.”
His hook slipped, just a bit, and his heart nearly stopped. It caught. He barked a bitter laugh. “A crown a moment ago, now just a hand?” His voice came out strained. He swayed back and forth above the chasm, his hook scraping, his every muscle standing on end. In his right hand he gripped the jewel. Its sapphire depths seemed to glow.
“It’s the best offer you’ll get,” she said. She knelt and stretched out a hand for him. “The jewel. Now.”
He stuck the jewel between his teeth and, with gre
at effort -- the hook scraped and slipped -- swung his arm up so that she could grip his hand.
“I want the jewel,” she snarled. “Not your sweaty hand.”
“You’ll have to take one to get the other,” he mumbled around the shard.
He threw up his hand again. She seized it. With some strain -- she really was weak -- she hauled up him . . . just far enough for her free hand to reach out for the jewel clenched in his teeth.
Lynch had swung up his feet, and he propelled himself up and forward, tackling her to the floor. He pressed her body down with all his weight, lifted himself up, and punched her in the face. She punched him in the gut with one hand, his face the other. The world spun, and she laughed, and he nearly released the jewel from his jaws. He slashed at her with his hook, but she hit his wrist, stilling the arm.
Her legs went round his waist, and with a heave of effort she rolled, reversed their positions, pinning him beneath her. He wrestled with her, but she proved too strong. She smashed him across the cheekbone. His head rang.
She grinned down at him, her face flushed and her eyes shining. He grabbed her about the throat and tried to throttle her.
She struck his head, nearly caving it in. Stars wheeled about him. If she had had her full strength, that one blow would have killed him, he knew. He didn’t have any more time. Another blow would finish him.
She raised her fist . . .
He wrenched the jewel from his mouth, took a firm grip on it and plunged its diamond-hard pointed end into Queen Iasolla’s heart. She cried out and went rigid. Her eyes widened. Both hands flew to the sapphire shard, jutting just above her left breast. A trickle of blood wept from the wound.
“Lynch!” he heard. “Get down!”
He flung himself flat, craned his head around just in time to see Eliza kneeling, one eye closed, both hands gripping the brass gun.
The Queen howled in rage.
Eliza fired.
A bolt of energy hit Iasolla. She did not burst into fragments as had the automatons. Instead it blasted her off Lynch and over the lip of the bridge. It all seemed to happen very slowly. Hands still gripping the shard that pierced her heart, she fell into the gorge. Her eyes locked with Lynch’s one last time, and in her gaze he read such hate that his blood ran cold.