by Bill Hiatt
Umbra left us briefly to scout the shadows. When she returned, she verified that she could not get us into the tent itself. However, nearby trees cast shadows right next to the tent.
“You would be placing yourself at risk,” Gwynn reminded us. “There are bound to be guards. If they sound the alarm, you will have the whole English army to deal with.”
Shar smiled. “Surely you know us well enough to know we can succeed, Majesty.”
Gwynn laughed, heartily this time. “That I do, Shahriyar.”
We decided a small party would be better than trying to take all of us in. I went because I could switch to David and take advantage of his unusual abilities. Shar went because he was our best fighter and because Zom made him and anyone who touched it immune to magic. We added Gordy, Dan, Alex, and Carlos for support. Umbra would naturally be in charge of transportation.
As always, the people not selected were unhappy. Eva basically accused me of being a male chauvinist, Khalid whined, and even Michael looked unhappy. However, no one could argue with the fact that more of us going made it more likely we would be spotted and have to fight before we captured Tanaquill. This time even Khalid couldn’t sneak along, either. Umbra had full control of who passed through the shadows with us.
The logistics worked out, we said our good-byes, and Umbra led us into the shadows.
Since she had already explored the possibilities, she was able to bring us out in about a minute. Unfortunately, a guard was passing right by the tree from whose shadow we jumped, so there was no way to avoid being seen. Shar knocked him out with one blow, but not before he had cried out. Now we had to deal with twenty guards and probably more on the way.
A few steps away was a large tent of green and yellow silk, which had to be the queen’s. It might as well have been a mile away, as the guards surged all around us. We did have some element of surprise, though, and we were good, well-equipped fighters, so we made it almost to the back of the tent without serious injury.
Unfortunately, the sound of swords clashing had alerted Tanaquill. A woman looking almost as beautiful as her mother, Titania, emerged from the front of the tent, surrounded by guards. That had to be Tanaquill, but reaching her in time looked impossible; in about a minute, she would be out of reach, even if she didn’t fly.
I didn’t realize that Umbra was a knife thrower, however. Her dagger flew past me and buried itself in Tanaquill’s back. Even if we couldn’t capture her, that shadow-assassin poison was going to wreak havoc, and indeed the faerie princess staggered and almost fell.
The only problem was that the plan hadn’t been to kill Tanaquill, and from what I’d heard, that poison was almost impossible to overcome. If Tanaquill died, the English faeries might feel honor-bound to continue the war in order to avenge her, and my whole plan would go down the drain.
I’d forgotten about Alex’s winged sandals until he flew over the tent, scooped up Tanaquill, and flew back toward the shadow we had entered through. The faeries, who were natural fliers, should have been able to block that kind of move, but they weren’t expecting a human to be able to fly, and again we caught them by surprise.
Unfortunately, flying archers were gathering fast, and one of them hit Umbra in the arm. She lost focus, and the shadow gateway disappeared seconds before Alex could get the queen through it.
The archers must have been using enchanted or drugged arrows of some kind, because Umbra fell, obviously unconscious.
We had the queen, but we also had no way to escape from her troops.
Chapter 29: Desperate Gamble (Tal)
“I am going to have to get myself taken prisoner,” I said as Changó and I drifted along somewhere over the Atlantic.
I could tell he thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. But unless we could find someone who knew where Atlantis was, finding it by chance in the ocean was about as likely as finding a particular preteen girl at a boy-band concert.
I felt White Hilt heat up, after which a little tongue of flame licked out of the scabbard. Then I could hear Changó’s crackling fire voice again.
“Even if you can fool them into thinking you are helpless, there is no guarantee they will take you to the place where the Olympians are held prisoner.”
“They’d have to guess my people would try to return and find me when I don’t show up in Annwn. The false Olympians are going to want me in some secure place, and we’ve already crashed Tartarus once.”
“False Hades could get Erebus to seal that route,” said Changó.
“Even so, I’d say our enemies would want me in a more secure location, just in case—one they can be confident my warriors can’t reach, no matter what.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” asked Changó.
I countered with, “Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” he admitted, “but that does not mean I have to like yours. I have observed enough of your world in recent times to have seen dozens of what you call movies in which someone gets captured to find out where other people are being held prisoner or for some other purpose. Only the naïve think that such a thing could be that easy in reality.”
Changó was nothing if not strong willed. I eventually wore him down, though, if only because there really was no other way, and because I hadn’t grabbed the Zeus blood, so I couldn’t renew the spell. We were definitely on the clock.
My strategy depended on the fact that the Olympians couldn’t be that familiar with Orichas. Unlike the Olympians, who were physical, though much different from ordinary humans, Orichas could take a human form under the right circumstances but also had a natural spirit form; after all, that was how Changó had so easily been able to hide in my sword. In addition, Oricha magic was very different from the powers of the Olympians.
Getting the false Olympians to notice me and attack would be easy. Feigning greater injuries than I had and pretending to pass out would be easy. I could even manipulate my mind to simulate unconsciousness in ways the non-mind-reading Olympians could probably not detect. Unfortunately, some Olympians could cast a spell to keep me out or otherwise incapacitate me.
That was where Changó came in. He could hide within me as he had hidden within White Hilt. He could make himself, well, small, for lack of a better word. Hard to detect, anyway, especially in a powerful weapon or in my Zeusified body.
I’d learned from experience that a spell meant to subdue a mind or body would not generally affect a being or consciousness within that body other than the one in control when the spell was cast. That meant the Olympians could bind me without affecting Changó in any way. Once we were alone, he could undo whatever spells held me, and then we could break everybody else out.
After I had persuaded the Oricha and briefed him on the details, he made sure he was completely hidden in my body, at least beyond any method of detection the Olympians might have. Once he was safely stowed away, I allowed my invisibility to get spotty. I also picked a fight with a very large sea serpent, no doubt one of Poseidon’s pets. I had no problem roasting it with thunderbolts—an act I knew would set off alarms all over this realm and bring the false Olympians out in force.
Sure enough, they were there within the hour. Poseidon led the charge, backed from the air by many of the others flying in chariots and brandishing their fiercest weapons; Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Ares, and Dionysus all showed up. The rest must have been lurking back on Olympus and in the Underworld in case my appearance was some kind of trick.
Changó and I could probably have defeated them, but that would have betrayed the Oricha’s presence and gotten us no closer to finding Atlantis.
However, I had to make the fight look convincing. False Athena in particular would not be easily fooled. I blasted fake Hades out of the sky with an especially powerful thunderbolt. Fake Poseidon hit me with a tidal wave that smashed me into the ocean. Pretending to be more stunned than I was, I threw a weaker thunderbolt at him, and he managed to deflect it with his trident. I kept firing but manag
ed to miss often enough to give Apollo and Artemis time to wound my hands again. By this time I had gotten out of the ocean, but I let Poseidon hit me with another wave.
That was when I pretended to lose consciousness. I would have been in trouble if we’d been wrong, and they were just out to kill me. Fortunately, I felt Poseidon scoop me up in his arms, reassuring me they wanted me alive. I had to go completely unconscious at that point, counting on Changó to do his part when the time came.
***
After what may have been several hours, I began to become aware of my surroundings again. I was lying on a cold marble slab, with my hands chained to the wall and my feet chained to the floor.
I was in my own form again. Naturally, Hecate would have to have changed me back if she wanted to harvest my blood.
“Changó? Is it safe for me to look around?”
“There are no guards in this chamber, if that is what you mean,” he answered.
White Hilt and its scabbard had been tossed aside by the false Olympians when they first imprisoned me, and I felt Changó flow out of me enough to put part of himself in the sword again so that he could speak through the fire.
Enough of him remained in me for me to tell he wasn’t happy, though. Yet when I opened my eyes and raised my head as far as I could, I spotted other marble slabs, with the real Olympians chained to them.
“Why are you so glum? We’re exactly where we wanted to be. The chamber looks new, but it’s somewhere in the ruins of Atlantis, right?”
“Yes,” he crackled from White Hilt, clearly annoyed.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The chains you feel are adamantine, so we cannot break them. Worse, there is a binding spell on them that prevents you from using any kind of magic.”
I tested the power of the chains, but he was right. I could communicate with him, I supposed because he remained partly inside me, but I couldn’t summon up enough magic to move a dust particle outside my body. It was like the chain Dark Me had used to hold me on Hy Brasil, except that one hadn’t been adamantine.
I had expected a spell to keep me unconscious. I hadn’t expected so much other security.
“How do you feel about your great plan now?” he asked, his words spraying sparks of sarcasm.
“It looks as if you can still get out of me,” I pointed out, trying to stay calm.
“I can get out, but how does that advance your plans? I cannot break your chains, nor those of the Olympians, and in any case I need a body in order to manifest any real power in this realm. The only thing I seem to be able to do by anchoring myself to your sword is talk to you.”
“Can you work any magic from inside me?” I asked, keeping my mental fingers crossed. If he couldn’t, I was finished.
“The chain that binds your power does not constrain mine,” he conceded after a minute. “How does that serve us if I cannot break your chains?”
I was starting to panic. I managed to suppress that reaction, though I knew I couldn’t do that indefinitely.
I had to think. No one else was coming to the rescue this time. Even if someone could get onto this plane of existence, they couldn’t find Atlantis any more easily than I could have.
“Changó, what are the walls and floor made of?”
At first he didn’t respond. Finally he thought, “Ah! I see what you are thinking. The walls are some kind of stone…very tough, but not unbreakable.”
“Would your lightning do the job?”
“Perhaps, but it would be hard to aim a bolt in the way that your body is positioned.”
“So we need the lightning to free my arms, but you need my arms free to use the lightning?”
“So it seems. I can fill the air with electricity, but that would not have enough power to shatter stone. I have to be able to aim to really focus it, and for that I need free hands.”
At first I was stumped. Half an hour later, though, I had a thought.
“Changó, are you familiar with shapeshifting?” I asked.
“I have seen Oya become a water buffalo, but I have not practiced that kind of craft myself.”
“Among the Celts it is practiced by virtually everyone who has magic. Could you learn enough of it from my mind to use it?”
“Perhaps,” he said after a pause. “What would you have me do?”
“Shrink me enough to slip out of the chains.”
“Clever!” he said. “Let us try.”
Unfortunately, getting him to use the knowledge he could extract from my mind was easier said than done. I had succeeded in teaching faeries spells that way, but they were used to my kind of magic; Changó was not. Eventually, he succeeded in learning how to manipulate my form in order to make me small enough to slip out of the manacles on my hands and feet, but by that point we had lost hours.
I wasn’t especially concerned about Hecate or somebody else returning right away, but I was very worried about Hecate succeeding in sending an Olympian-based blood double of me into other realms.
I’d spotted a very precise cut on my left arm. That small injury couldn’t have been left over from battle. All of the wounds on my Zeus body would have disappeared as soon as the spell ended.
Unless I was mistaken, Hecate had already taken some of my blood.
At least now I anticipated faster progress. Of course, we immediately hit another roadblock: even Changó and I together couldn’t manage to shrink the Olympians in the same way he had done with me, so we couldn’t free them using that method. Now that Changó could use my arms, he was able to blast the chains loose from the wall and the floor—but the spell that held the Olympians unconscious and powerless remained.
“That power is in the chain itself and is not broken when the chains are freed from the wall,” observed Changó. “In order to remove the chains from the Olympians themselves, I would have to blast away their hands and feet.”
“There has to be a better way than that,” I said. “I could heal them after, but such damage could not be healed quickly, and we need them in fighting condition right away. Besides, I don’t want to inflict that much pain on them if I can help it.”
Then we wasted at least another half hour trying to figure out how to free the Olympians from the chains without maiming them. I could feel time slipping away, and I knew the situation on Olympus and elsewhere would get worse the longer we were stuck here.
“I wish I had Khalid here,” I said. “He seems to be able to pick any lock, so he could probably remove the manacles.”
“Ah,” replied Changó. “Was not Hermes once the god of thieves?”
“That’s a good idea! If at least some of his lock-picking skill is not directly magical, he might still be able to use it even with the chains on himself. Let’s find out.”
Finding Hermes was easy. Waking him up was a whole other problem.
“Perhaps because you are human, they didn’t bother with as heavy a sleep spell on you,” said Changó as he tried to figure out how to break the enchantment. “The one on Hermes is far stronger.”
“Someone is bound to come along eventually,” I said, looking around. “If anyone does, we’re going to be in trouble.”
“There has to be some way to break this spell, but I confess I know not how it can be done,” said Changó, clearly frustrated.
“We don’t have the brute force to literally break it. We need to find a way to finesse it.”
“If only—wait! When I broke the spell on you, I was inside you. Perhaps if I can get inside Hermes, it will be easier.”
That sounded like a good idea, but it, too, failed.
“I was right the first time,” the Oricha lamented after coming back out of Hermes. “The spell is just stronger.”
“I have a thought, but it’s a risky one. You’ve felt this spell, you’ve struggled with it, and you know it better than I can. It suppresses normal waking. Certainly the racket you made freeing the chains would have awakened them all otherwise.”
Changó nodd
ed the fiery little ball from which he spoke. “I would have to agree, but that was obvious, was it not? Of course a sleep spell would prevent someone from waking up.”
“Here is the less obvious part. Does it suppress anything else?”
“I cannot be sure. What do you mean?”
“Does it anesthetize—block pain, I mean—as well?”
“I lack your ability to examine a mental spell in that way,” Changó replied, staring down at Hermes.
“I’m thinking maybe a pain response might wake him,” I suggested.
Changó liked that idea, but after experimenting with both fire and lightning, he decided that method wouldn’t work.
“He does not respond to small injury at all, and inflicting great harm on him would be contrary to our goals and his interests.”
“I wasn’t suggesting torturing him awake,” I said. “It looks as if no safe physical stimulus will wake him. We still need a magical one.”
It took another two hours of wrestling with the problem for me to produce another idea.
“We know the chains prevent the captive from casting spells but not from being affected by magic. You could burn Hermes. That means you could act on him in other ways, as you could with me, even if you can’t outright break or undo the spell he’s under.”
“That is true,” Changó agreed, “though I cannot think of a way in which that helps us. We have already tried and failed to alter his form enough to free him from the chains.”
“How about controlling his body the way you did mine?”
“Let us see,” said Changó. I felt him leave me, but a few seconds later he was back.
“I can control the body to the extent the chains allow,” he told me.
“Can you read his thoughts while you are in him?” I asked. He experimented and found he could, though with greater difficulty than he had with me.
“Let me try,” I said, entering Hermes and discovering quickly that in his sleeping state I could easily access his thoughts and memories—including his lock-picking skills.