The Maelstrom

by Henry H. Neff

  “Don’t nod off!” cried Toby, nestled once again in Max’s hood. “You’ve got to keep riding, boy. There’s medicine and good food and soft beds at Rowan. We’ve got to get that pinlegs to the Director! We’ve come all this way and now we’re going home, so stay with me. Both of you!”

  Max was dangerously dizzy by the time they glimpsed Bholevna. The demon city was a sprawl of Gothic buildings and small palaces that straddled a wide river and was knit together by a series of bridges and causeways. In the moonlight, the river looked like polished silver, but the city itself was dark. No lights peered from windows; no smoke trickled from chimneys. In the path of Yuga, Bholevna had been utterly abandoned.

  Riding down a series of shallow hills, they merged with the main road that fed into the city. There were no guards posted at the western wall. They galloped through the open gates and onto cobbled streets where freezing gusts whipped papers and debris about in little windstorms. The main avenue through the city led directly east toward where Yuga filled the sky like a spreading pool of ink. Her moaning was deafening now; it filled the air and shook the very earth. Max shouted to David, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice. A flock of birds sped past, fleeing the ravenous demon.

  Riding out the opposite gate, they veered off the road, galloping over snowy wheat fields and open country toward several farms that bordered a fir wood. In the east, the landscape had become a churning vortex of dust, soil, and trees that swirled about in gargantuan funnel clouds that rose thousands of feet before disappearing into the demon’s roiling bulk.

  When viewed from a safe distance, Yuga was truly frightening. Up close, her presence simply overwhelmed all sense and sanity. Max had never experienced such terror. Every instinct screamed frantically at him to turn around, to flee, to hide, to pray, to beg, to do anything that might spare him from such a monster.

  It was far too much for the horses. They shied at the same instant, as if they’d crossed some invisible threshold that broke the poor creatures’ minds. Max managed to roll from the saddle, pulling David with him before their mount sidestepped and collapsed. It stared dully ahead, steam rising from its flanks as it lay in the snow. From what Max could tell, the animal wasn’t injured; some insidious force or perhaps sheer horror had compelled the horse to succumb, to lie still and wait for the demon to devour it.

  Madam Petra was huddled on the ground, shielding Katarina as the wind and snow whipped about them. Max yelled to her, but she did not hear him. Lifting David onto his shoulder, Max grabbed the pinlegs tube and stumbled over to the smuggler. He screamed and tugged at her arm, but the woman could hardly respond. She merely gaped at him as he gestured furiously at the distant cabin. The entire earth was shaking. Max feared his eardrums might rupture.

  Pulling the Kosas to their feet, Max seized Madam Petra’s wrist and started running, half dragging the woman and her daughter toward the cabin. Their first steps were mechanical, as if the pair were drugged. But soon they came to and began running on their own, sprinting ahead as Max staggered behind with David and Toby.

  The cabin was some two hundred yards away and set on a little hill. Glancing east, Max saw no stars—only a wall of darkness that stretched to the horizons. He ran harder, tapping every last reserve of energy and will. Petra reached the cabin first and tried the door before using his sword to smash through a nearby window. As her mother scrambled inside, Katarina reached the porch and turned back to look for them. Glancing east, the girl’s knees nearly buckled. She screamed at them to run, but Max could only see her mouth moving, frantically forming the word over and over.

  Max refused to look east or heed any pain as he stumbled along. Petra flung open the door, and soon mother and daughter were exhorting them, pleading for Max to run faster. Spots appeared before his eyes, teasing lights that danced in his peripheral vision. Was he dying? He’d lost so much blood; his entire body felt like ice. Just a little farther … just a little faster.

  Staggering toward the cabin door, Max practically tackled the Kosas, knocking the entire group down to the floor. He was losing consciousness, clutching the pinlegs to his chest. David’s face was anxious but calm as he took Petra’s hand and she took Katarina’s. Max could no longer hear; he stared at the ceiling while the others huddled close. The cabin was shaking violently, but he felt strangely peaceful. When the windows blew in, he closed his eyes and waited for the stinging shards to fall.

  Tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap. The sounds formed a soft, rhythmic melody that cut through the fog in Max’s mind. There were other sounds, too: the squeak of a chair, the crystalline notes of metal striking glass, but always the soft tap, tap, tap returned. Max imagined they were tiny miners, sounding out spaces with their little hammers and digging deep into the earth.

  Wherever he was, it was light. And warm. His whole body was swaddled in warmth, in a smooth coverlet that tickled against his chin. He stirred. A bandage crinkled and there was a low throb of pain throughout his side. Max groaned. To his right, another squeak of a chair followed by a soft swish of fabric. Max felt a welcome coolness upon his forehead, the tender dabbing of a damp cloth tinged with a sweet-smelling herb. Moments later, the melody returned.

  Tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap …

  It was the aroma of coffee that finally woke him. It wafted over, strangely out of place amid the smells of linens and soap and herbs. Opening his eyes a crack, Max glimpsed the blurry form of David Menlo sitting in a bedside chair and sipping from a mug. Slowly, the image came into focus. David was studying the top paper from a pile upon his lap. His brow was furrowed and he rocked slightly as was his tendency when deep in thought. Max made to speak, but his throat was too dry and he merely grunted.

  Glancing up, David urged Max to lie still.

  “Rest easy,” he said gently. “Your injuries were severe. But they’re healing now. The moomenhovens are taking good care of you.”

  Raising his head, Max saw that he was in Rowan’s main healing ward. One of the moomenhovens was sitting in a rocking chair by a table laden with roots and herbs, glass jars, and ceramic bowls. The plump, rosy-cheeked woman was patiently grinding ingredients for medicines, swishing her cow’s tail in time with the soft tapping of the pestle in the mortar.

  “The others—” croaked Max.

  “The others are fine,” David assured him. “The Kosas have settled into an apartment in the township, and Toby’s crowing about his heroics at the roulette tables. Of course, Madam Petra’s already demanding better accommodations, but everyone’s safe and on the mend. As for me, my wounds are healing nicely. Some scars and I’ll be using a cane for a few weeks, but I’ve had much worse.”

  “I owe you my life,” Max muttered hoarsely.

  David instantly dismissed such sentimentality. “And I owe you mine many times over. If you hadn’t pushed yourself beyond the brink, we’d all be in Yuga’s belly. It was a near thing and we scraped by thanks to you, so let’s not speak of debts and honor. I think you and I are well past keeping score.”

  Max smiled weakly and gazed up at the ceiling where sunlight was streaming through gauzy white curtains. “How long have I been here?” he asked.

  “Six days,” David replied. “At first, the healers despaired of saving you, but I assured them that you’re just about unbreakable.”

  Max glanced down at his sling and the many bandages covering his person. “Could have fooled me.”

  “On the contrary,” retorted David. “Do you have any idea how much damage you withstood? The clones’ weapons were coated with Workshop poisons. Very nasty stuff. What we finally leeched from your system was enough to kill hundreds of men, Max. You suffered thirteen wounds, a broken shoulder, a fractured skull, a lacerated kidney, and I’ll still wager that you recover within the week. Unbreakable, indeed.”

  Memories seeped in of the battle in the courtyard, the panic of being hunted and trapped.

  “The Atropos have your compass,” Max rasped. “The one Cooper used to find me in Pru
sias’s dungeons.”

  David’s smile faded. “I suspected as much. They were on our heels too quickly for it to be mere coincidence. With any luck, Yuga has consumed it and them. But it was very careless of me to permit that compass to fall into enemy hands. I should have had Cooper destroy it once it served its purpose.”

  “Did Miss Boon and Grendel find him?” asked Max, trying to sit up.

  Looking down, David took another sip and set his coffee on the nightstand. “They did,” he replied cautiously. “The Cheshirewulf tracked him to an Atropos hideout north along the coast. There was a battle … some casualties. Fortunately, Miss Boon’s unharmed and they managed to rescue Ben Polk. But the Atropos still have Cooper. Miss Boon’s been taking it very hard.”

  “But he’s still alive, then,” said Max, relieved.

  “Yes,” said David. “But …”

  Max grew wary. Ignoring his throbbing shoulder, he propped his back against the headboard. David’s uncharacteristic loss for words was strangely unnerving. The sorcerer abandoned several explanations before settling on something simple and direct.

  “Things started well,” he began. “Apparently, we surprised them and Grendel had cornered the leader when Miss Boon and the others rushed in. We were winning and winning handily until the Atropos set Cooper loose.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Max, puzzled. “Cooper fought for them?”

  “Yes,” said David quietly. “He’d been confined in some chamber. When they let him out, the tide turned. Xiùmĕi is dead. Matheus is badly wounded. He’s over there—behind that curtain near Ben Polk. Fortunately, Agent Polk is coming around. We’re hoping he can give us more information about the Atropos and what they’ve done to Cooper, but it doesn’t look good. Miss Boon’s devastated—says Cooper’s not really human anymore. Every outpost and sentry has been informed. We won’t let him get close to you.”

  Max said nothing for some time. Cooper killed Xiùmĕi? She had been the oldest member of the Red Branch, a wizened woman who had survived countless battles and world wars only to fall at the hands of her own captain. Max would miss her toothless grin and irreverent humor. Sorrow aside, there were practical matters to consider: The Red Branch was growing thin. Only seven of the twelve were now in commission and war was coming. Poor Miss Boon. He grieved for his old Mystics teacher. Hazel Boon was not the sort who loved quickly or easily, but she had loved William Cooper.

  Sitting up, Max gazed about the infirmary at the many beds and patients. Some he recognized, Agents wounded on other missions. Others were hidden behind curtains. Max watched a moomenhoven pull a curtain aside and glimpsed a man whose skin had been burned away. He was suspended by a system of silken nets and pulleys, blinking stoically while the healer applied some salve.

  Despite such grisly sights, the ward was peaceful. It was clean and quiet, sunlight streaming through the high windows as the moomenhovens made their rounds and tended the wounded with herbs and draughts and shy little smiles.

  “Patching us up for the war,” Max reflected.

  Sipping his coffee, David smiled. “Cynical already. You are getting better.”

  “What about the pinlegs?” Max wondered, turning around. “Where is it?”

  “Down in the Archives. The scholars are studying it, as is Peter Varga. We’re hoping he might be able to use his prescience to foresee its full capabilities. I’m giving it some attention, too.” He patted the documents on his lap.

  “What have you figured out?”

  “Let’s see, let’s see,” David muttered, lowering his voice and glancing at the topmost papers where Max glimpsed diagrams of the creature and the various runes and markings that were found on its case. “Strange little creature. It’s some sort of genetically engineered centipede, but it has mechanical elements fused to the organic—sensors, transmitters, cloaking devices. On its own, it’d be a neat little spy or assassin, but that’s not what’s got everyone worried. It’s these.…”

  David held up one of the sheets of paper on which several intricate diagrams had been drawn. Max saw that each was purposefully left incomplete, lest it inadvertently trigger some sort of unintended consequence.

  “These inscriptions were almost invisible,” said David, scooting his chair closer. “They’ve been etched onto the pinlegs’ segments in lines so fine we almost missed them entirely.”

  “Summoning circles,” Max breathed, squinting at the diagrams.

  “That’s right,” David confirmed. “But we don’t know for what kind of spirit. I’ve never seen anything like these diagrams before. They don’t make any sense.”

  “What’s so weird about them?”

  “In some ways, a proper summoning is like a math equation; you’re specifying particular terms and operations according to established principles. One of those principles is that the thing you’re summoning is … a thing. It is whole. It is a complete being—with a truename and a spirit or soul. But these diagrams imply a different sort of operation. They’re designed to call half a being.”

  “Half of what?”

  “I don’t know,” remarked David, frowning and staring at the diagram. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. But I don’t like the idea that the pinlegs could be tethered to something else—something it can summon at a moment’s notice. We don’t yet know what it is, but we know the Workshop and Prusias believe it will tip the balance in their favor.”

  Max remembered back to the vyes he’d overheard by the lake. He told David of their dread of “scuttlers” and what might happen when they’re set loose.

  “Do you remember those strange lights in the skies above Raikos?” said Max. “And that sound … like air-raid horns followed by earthquakes and tremors. We didn’t see or hear anything like that when we floated over Prusias’s army. I’ll bet Prusias unleashed the pinlegs when we were holed up in that palace. I’ll bet those lights and tremors were made by whatever they summoned.”

  David nodded and jotted several notes in the paper’s margins. “I was too out of it,” he lamented. “Did you actually see anything?”

  “No,” replied Max. “The horizon was filled with fire and smoke and lights flashing across the sky. The entire palace shook. Whatever made those sounds and tremors must have been huge.”

  “And arrived instantaneously,” added David. “That’s the real worry. If Prusias can have these pinlegs instantly call in some sort of monstrous cavalry, his army’s nigh invincible. He must have found a way around the energy requirements.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Max.

  “Teleportation requires an ungodly amount of energy,” said David. “Even I can’t teleport on my own. I can only do it if I find a wormhole or construct a tunnel from our room, and those take me months to craft. But summoning achieves much the same effect as teleportation—it instantly transports a being vast distances to a specified place. It just uses a different, more efficient means.”

  “Am I going to get a headache?” Max moaned. “Why do I always get a headache when I talk to you and Mina about these things?”

  “No headaches,” David promised. “This is a simpler concept. In teleportation, the caster has to do all the work himself. He has to metaphysically transport a large mass over a vast distance in a tiny period of time. That requires colossal sums of energy.

  But in summoning, you’re simply teleporting the being’s soul. A soul by itself has almost zero mass and thus the process requires only a tiny fraction of the energy.”

  “But then how does a summoner also transport the body if that’s so hard?” asked Max.

  “He doesn’t,” replied David. “The soul does. You see, the bond between a soul and its body is very strong—atomically strong. They do not like being separated. During a summoning, the connection between the two has not been fundamentally broken, but it has been stretched almost infinitely thin—like the thinnest, strongest rubber band you can imagine. While the soul is anchored in place by the summoning circle, the body is free to
move. And move it does! They reunite almost instantly. But in this scenario, the energy was provided by the bond between soul and body—not the summoner.”

  “But why would the pinlegs want to summon half of something’s body?” Max asked.

  “Why indeed …,” mused David, gazing out the window. He reposed in silence for several minutes, staring off into space with a blank, abstracted expression. At last the sorcerer blinked and clucked his tongue. Glancing at Max, he rose from his chair and bowed. “ ‘Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.’ ”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Forgive me,” said David, smiling. “A quip from Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The truth is that you’ve just given me a very good idea—one I need to investigate right away. I’ll look in on you later. Ms. Richter’s posted guards to the ward entrance, the gae bolga’s beneath your pillow, and you have your ring. Pay attention to it, Max. I don’t want to frighten you, but the Atropos may be close. Until I return, here are some letters that have been piling up. They’ve already been screened for anything insidious.

  You might have your enemies, but it also seems that a few people care about you. Shocking, I know. I promised Mina she could look in after supper, so steel yourself for some highly intelligent and periodically trying company.”

  “You’re good practice,” Max retorted, accepting a stack of letters and bidding David farewell. Taking up a slim wooden cane, David hobbled out of the ward with his mug and papers stuffed into the crook of his free arm. He resembled an absent-minded professor late for a lecture.