by Faith Hunter
“I don’t have her wheels to give up.” I shifted on the frozen ground. In a single heartbeat, everything changed.
A roar shivered the air. Forcas crashed from the mouth of the pit. The beast had been in pieces last time I saw it. What did it take to kill a Major Darkness?
Forcas was carrying Eli in one clawed hand, Durbarge in the other, and Malashe-el was hooked over its shoulder, impaled on a horn. Neither man looked so good. The daywalker looked dead.
Light blazed. Raziel opened his wings and stepped off the limb, hands throwing. Lightning hit the ground in a brilliant blast. Thunder boomed, eardrum-cracking, deafening. Raziel rocketed toward the Darkness, wings outspread, gathering the lightning. Thunderheads built overhead. The wind roared, buffeting me where I lay.
Light illuminated the cleared area, shining from Raziel’s battle armor. Armor and sword hadn’t been there only a moment before. Electricity crackled along the red-gold plate. His face was set in stern lines, his eyes glowing with battle-lust. Instinctively, I rolled under the overhang of a boulder. Too weak to rise, I curled tight, making myself small.
The seraph and Forcas met in the mouth of the hellhole with a crash. The humans fell and rolled close to me, Eli facedown, Durbarge looking at the sky. His eye was open and didn’t blink. His patch was gone, the empty socket black in the night. Malashe-el rolled down the incline and landed below me in a heap of tangled limbs. The Dark and the Light fought sword to sword, blades ringing.
Checking my weapons, I found the walking stick sword restored to its sheath beside the tanto that I had last seen in Forcas’ jaw. Two throwing blades had been left in the corridor outside the Mistress’ prison. The silver-hilted sword I had worn over my spine now belonged to Barak. I had only my two blades and a single throwing knife, amulets, and a feather, which I may or may not be able to use. Ducky.
I tested the amulets on the necklace tied to my waist and I found them half empty, or worse, drained to uselessness. The seraph stone felt like a null, a stone with potential power, but sealed, locked away. Beyond the ledge, lightning flashed and hit the ground near me. Dissipating energies flayed my body. Eli yelped nearby. If I’d been human I would have been hurt too. Instead, power flowed into my amulets, restoring them. But not enough.
Through the mountain beneath me, I felt familiar tremors, regular and evenly spaced, like footsteps. I remembered the Dragon who had been imprisoned by Mole Man’s sacrifice and blood, remembered the chain drenched with seraph blood, the links made with the blood of Mole Man’s progeny. Made with Lucas’ blood. Raziel had mentioned a war in the heavens. My muzzy brain put it together. Crack the Stone of Ages. Forcas’ boss, the Dragon, is loose.
The last time it was free, it took dozens of seraphs and the self-sacrifice of a human to chain it. I closed my eyes. The Dragon was loose, the Mistress was wounded, and someone seemed to think I had her wheels. I can’t do this. I don’t know how. But I had to.
I gathered myself, seeking my center, that calm place of nothingness in my mind. And I reached down, below me, into the rock heart of the mountain. Ancient energies reached back to me; the might of stone, cold and hard and without remorse. I pulled them in, fast, storing them in my blood, my muscles, my nerves, and bones.
Drawing on the strength of the Trine, I opened the blended scan, feeling a sickening lurch as the otherness caught me up, the world and my stomach surging drunkenly. Through my torn and acid-pocked dobok, light flared, yellow and dark blue. I pushed away the tattered cloth and pulled the pear-shaped citrine nugget and the sapphire owl out, the wild-mage-stones glowing. Through the otherness, they scintillated like small suns. I touched the owl and felt the otherness settle as power trickled into me from the sapphire.
I had a moment, a moment in time, to study the sensation. Finger on the amulet, I saw movement, the river of energy, of Light. It flowed beneath me, through me, picking me up and floating me along the current. It meandered through its flat plain: the river of time, I was pretty sure. Whatever that meant.
In the world, lightning hit the ground again, a huge burst. I felt my body jerk as the power crackled through me. But it wasn’t important. Almost as an afterthought, I directed the energies into the amulets at my waist. I felt Barak’s feather shimmer with power.
Swords clashed, seraph-steel and demon-iron. I smelled fresh seraph blood. The footsteps of the Dragon were growing nearer as his might pounded the mountain I was drawing upon. The earth quaked. Dust rained down from the boulder, covering me. Beside me, the river flowed. In it were stones and boulders and eddies—incidents and people?
From the otherness, I studied the entrance to the hellhole; sickly yellow-orange-reddish light emanated from the rocks and from the ground. The stone of the mountain itself had been polluted, a malevolence much more powerful than the first time I saw it, as if my ability to see it was growing. Or as if it was gaining power. Tears of Taharial, I’m pulling that into me. With a wrench, I cut off the draw of power. Something was coming. Something big. Fear tightened my body.
Relinquish her wheels, Raziel had said. I recalled the huge purple cobra that had entered my conjuring circle, the snake made of eyes, the snake that had filled my lungs. A snake that was part of Amethyst’s wheels, I was sure of it. I concentrated on the purple eyes that had nearly drowned me, remembering their concentrated stare. “Come,” I said.
Overhead, in the otherness, thunder boomed, a concussion that knocked Raziel and Forcas to their knees. Hanging above us was a massive, interconnected ring of lavender stones, faceted amethyst hoops the size of a football field pulsing. It looked like a gyroscope turned on its side, concentric wheels within wheels, each turning its own way, each releasing mists of blue plasma. And on one end, a golden nosecone, its navcone, bursting with Light. It was Amethyst’s wheels, her vast crystalline ship, healed and whole.
The stone sang, a single note of joy and hope and life. And it opened its eyes, eyes on every square inch of its lavender structure, dark purple eyes, hundreds of them, thousands of them, all looking at me. The song of the wheel changed key and hummed a softer tune, an audible caress.
“Crap,” a voice murmured nearby.
Instantly, I was back on the Trine. Smoke, fire, and a ghastly reek of death whipped in the icy wind. A golden rim of sun glanced over the mountains to the east and cast long rays onto the world below. Shadows still gripped the valleys, streambeds, and Mineral City. Below me was a ledge of rock; above me was another. I was still sandwiched between them. I blinked and remembered to breathe, surprised that I still could.
Eli held me, our bodies wedged beneath the boulder edge. In his fist shone the healing amulet I had given him. And in this reality too, hanging in the air before us, was Amethyst’s wheels. As one, the eyes blinked, crooning. “Saints’ balls,” Eli whispered. I laughed brokenly. His arms tightened about me.
In the dawn sky far overhead, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled. A battle was taking place there, in the upper layers of the earth’s atmosphere, in the here-not here. In the small, nearly level space, Raziel and Forcas were locked in combat, bodies writhing and straining as they wrestled. Below us, the earth shook. The big, bad Dragon was dangerously close.
Chapter 29
Two Flames zipped under the ledge and did their little dance along our bodies, whizzing and burning their way through us and back out. “That hurts like heck, but it’s better than being dead,” Eli growled. “Ouch, quit that.” The Flames obeyed and converged together, hovering before me, as if awaiting orders. It hurt my eyes to look at them.
“If I ask you questions, can you answer in English?” I asked them.
“Yessss,” they said, their voices a strange sound, as if bells were being rung by a current of electricity.
“Who fights overhead, and who’s winning?”
“Zzzadkiel and Holy Amethyssst battle the Dragon who wasss chained. Without her wheel, Darknessss winsss.” As they spoke, the sky darkened. Clouds boiled, huge thunderclouds reaching for the heavens.
“The same Dragon I feel coming up from the deeps?” I asked. I looked up at the wheels, and gripped the sapphire owl. Taking a chance that the owl allowed increased communication to the wheels, I said, “Save the Mistress.” And they were gone. The air concussed, rushing to fill the vacuum. A feeling like icicles bored into me. Eli tensed with shared pain. Careful not to look at the remaining Flames straight on, I said, “I don’t guess you could find some more of you guys?” Flames popped away. The icicles in my blood shattered and I shivered hard. Once could be coincidence. Not twice.
“Crap in a bucket,” Eli said into my ear, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and pain. “What the hell are you? Never mind. That can wait. This big evil sucker I can feel coming up from the pit—it can be in two places at once?”
Not knowing how to explain what I didn’t understand, and still dealing with my reactions to having the wheels and the Flames do what I wanted—at least I assumed they were doing it—I said, “I think so. Yeah.”
“Then let’s you and me just sit tight here under this rock until the war is over.” He pulled me closer to his body, jarring my side. I hissed with pain. “What?” he asked.
I eased his arm away from me and wriggled over, pulling up the edge of the dobok top and peering at my side. I expected to see scar tissue or a healing wound. Instead, I found a blackened puncture site, deep enough to bury my finger to the second knuckle. The edges around the cavity were raised and red, and pus trickled from a spot that had broken open.
“That’s gotta hurt,” Eli said. Master of understatement.
“Yeah. It does.” Not far from us, Forcas and Raziel rolled on the ground. I didn’t know what would happen if Forcas completed binding me to him. I looked at the miner, his face so close I was cross-eyed to focus. “Can you get his eyes with your flamethrower?”
Eli ducked his head to see under the ledge, watching the fight, considering. “And you’ll be doing what?”
“Slitting his throat to keep him from completing a binding.” That is, if I can find the energy. But I didn’t say it.
“Binding? You?” He glanced at my wound and I nodded. “How close is it to making you his?”
You are mine. “Three words.”
“Girl, is there any kind of trouble you can’t find?” Sighing, Eli said, “Let’s go then.” I forced my body into motion and together we crawled out from under the ledge. I was so tired, so drained, I had to pull on the Trine for the energy to move, for the energy to breathe. I had to. But I felt the pollution of its power. The mountain was changing. Using it could change me, as using the amethyst power had changed me. Or it could simply kill me. But I couldn’t make it on my own, and my seraph was too busy to help me right now.
Eli spun his flamethrower forward, checked the apparatus with a critical eye, cocked it, and made eye contact with me. “Come in behind me.” In concert, we ran, me barely able to keep up with the human. Eli moved like the wind through trees, like the Gulf over the beach when the tide came in, like sunlight over stone. I pulled my blades and stumbled behind.
Yet, even tired, we fought together as if it were a dance—move forward, spray with flame, back away, move forward, strike, back away—ganging up on the Darkness. Raziel was locked in combat with it; we hit it from behind and the side as the two Powers wrestled on the ground. In two feints, Eli had blinded Forcas, the Darkness roaring his fury and pain, his claws scoring Raziel’s sides, rocking back his head. I raced in mage-fast and slit the beast’s throat, silencing his screams. I’m safe. Tears flooded my eyes, leaving me limp with relief.
Overhead, the wheels reappeared with the same concussive force, the boom throwing Eli and me to the ground. For the first time in long hours, I felt a spark of hope, instantly shattered. Forcas threw off Raziel and rolled at me, demon-fast. Blind, he still knew where I was.
From the side, a hand gripped my leg, bowling me to safety. I landed hard against the sloped rock ground. Before me, my silver-hilted sword glittering in a two-handed grip, his wings partially healed, was Barak. Behind him, in the mouth of the hellhole, stood Joseph Barefoot, breathing hard, Tomas slung over his shoulder fireman-fashion. He eased his friend to the earth and joined the Allied One in hacking at Forcas. Raziel swept back into the fray from overhead, wings buffeting dust into abrading spirals, his blood sprinkling the ground.
Eli pulled me back to safety and left, to reappear pulling Durbarge by both arms. The assey was still breathing, fast and shallow. Blood trickled from his mouth to the ground.
Over the clearing, the wheels rocked gently, humming, its many eyes on me. In the center, the ship secured around her, sat the cherub, her four faces blazing with anger. She pointed at me with one demi-wing. “You have stolen my wheels. Return them to me!”
“You stole something from that big purple mama?” Eli asked.
I dragged myself to my knees, my blades clinking on the cold stone. An icy wind was blowing from the thunder-clouds, turbulent with battle and seraph wings. “I think I bound her wheels to me. And I don’t know how to unbind them.”
“Bound a cherub’s wheels?” he said incredulously. When I didn’t answer, Eli gripped my shoulders and shook me. “You know what that makes you?”
I met his amber eyes, too tired to read what I saw there. “It makes me dead, if I don’t figure out how to unbind them.”
Eli laughed, the sound coarse and disbelieving. “The EIH has been looking for a mage like you for decades. You’re an omega mage.”
“I’m not.” Not that I knew what an omega mage was.
“Tell the wheels to kill Forcas,” he said. “Tell them!”
I looked at the eyes overhead and said, “Kill Forcas.” When nothing happened, I pinched the owl, repeating the command. Again nothing. I looked at the owl, to find it totally drained, an inert, poor-quality semiprecious stone. Despair stole over me. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered. I was a half-trained neomage with pretty baubles.
“The Flames did what you wanted.”
I shrugged. That was different. Wasn’t it? Fatigue caught up with me in a single moment and I collapsed to the ground in a boneless sprawl. Even with the Trine to draw on, I was worn out. On my waist, the amulets shone weakly, nearly depleted, wasting their last energies keeping me alive. From my side, pain radiated, Dark tendrils caressing my heart. Nearby, Forcas hid behind a small shield, its limbs exposed to the blades of attackers, but its throat healing. It met my eyes and . . . pulled . . . at me. My energies flagged again.
Suddenly I knew; if Forcas died, I would die too. He was draining my energies through the wound in my side, using my life force to fight Raziel. I chuckled softly at the irony. After all this, my life was forfeit to a Darkness. Knowing I had no choice, knowing I was about to die, I touched the citrine and the sapphire to the visa and my prime amulet, transferring power between the amulets.
Once again, I fell into the otherness. The world slid sidewise sickeningly. I rolled to the side and retched, throwing up the water I had drunk. In the otherness vision, the wheels overhead pulsed with life. I looked up at them, seeing Amethyst in the center, her lion face staring at me, her mouth wide with shock and fury. “Give me back my wheels,” she roared.
In the place of the otherness, the river of lava flowed beneath me, so close I could feel its heat. In the otherness, I saw the stream of energy flowing from me to the beast, draining me. I reached up with my finger and twisted. “Oh wheels,” I sang softly. “Kill Forcas,” I told them. “And seal the hellhole.”
“Yes,” the wheels sang. “We will drain him to nothingness until the Last Day.”
“No!” Amethyst shouted.
A shaft of rainbow light shot from the wheels. Only as it fired did I understand the cherub’s cry. She too was linked to the beast through a torrent of stolen energy. She too would be drained, following Forcas into nothingness unto the Last Day. “Stop!” I shouted to the wheels as purple light speared down. But the eyes were turned away and didn’t respond.
From the mouth of the lair came a bloodthirsty roar.
Chapter 30
The river of energy and Light flowed beneath me, through me, floating me along the current. In the world of humans, lightning hit the ground again, a huge burst. My body jerked as the power lashed through me. Eli yelped. Almost as an afterthought, I directed the energies passing through the stone beneath me into the amulets at my waist.
“You use the omega-sight.” Amethyst, her eagle face cold, watched me in the otherness. “I have done this. I showed you how. I will be punished.” She bowed her head.
Below her, swords clashed, seraph-steel and demon-iron. Forcas, blinded and bloodied, thrust up through the violet light of the wheels’ weapon and stabbed Raziel. Bright blood gushed. Raziel placed a hand over his wound. Slowly he dropped into the river, landing on his knees, the water-lava chest high. The weapon firing at Forcas ceased. The footsteps of the Dragon shook the ground with an earthquake. Dust rained down, pattering on me, and cracks opened in the earth. But beside me, the river flowed. The river of time? I didn’t care what he called it, Raziel was dying. “You can save them,” the wheels said plaintively. “You can save them all. Join with Raziel.”
Amethyst shrieked in fear. “Punished. I will be punished.”
“Blasphemy. Mages cannot do this,” Raziel said, his voice weak.
“Not blasphemy,” the wheels sang. “Hope. If a seraph and a mage join their prime amulets, they become one spirit, as the seraph and my cherub became one.”
“We mate, I die,” I said.
“Not mate body to body. That you may not do,” the wheels said. “But merge.”
From the entrance to the hellhole, from the rocks and the ground, emanated a suffocating yellow-orange light, the heart of the mountain itself, polluted, malevolent. Death and plagues. Whatever was coming was something big. Fear tightened my body.