by DD Barant
“So you’re a Lyrastoi, huh?” I say. “I learned a little about you when I was trapped in a myth-spell. Your species basically runs this place, right?”
“We are the noble class, yes. It is our responsibility to keep the denizens of Nightshadow safe from harm and govern benevolently.”
“Which includes keeping the place fire-free?”
“Among other things. There are many tribes that live here, both herbivores and carnivores; before the Lyrastoi imposed order, tribal warfare was constant. It still occurs, but now there are treaties in place that prevent a great deal of bloodshed.”
“Yeah, I can just imagine what happens when a tribe of were coyotes moves in next door to a bunch of were-rabbits.”
“It is not as one-sided as you might think. A hunter will only kill as much as he needs to survive, but tribes of plant-eaters are more likely to wipe out packs of carnivores from fear—and when both sides are armed, that’s more than possible. We have a saying here: A poisoned arrow has no stomach.”
“Poison. You supernatural types seem to have a real fondness for it.”
“Poison means something different to weres; perhaps impurity would be a better word to use. They do not tip their darts or arrows with the sap of noxious plants—they use their own blood.”
I thought about that for a second. Lycanthropy can be transmitted through a bite, a scratch, or genetics—but a blood transfusion works, too. “So what happens when a were-lion gets a dose of were-gazelle, or vice versa?”
“The same thing that happens when a true of one blood type is given the blood of one with another. The essential natures of the two beings are incompatible, and a war is waged within the body. The battlefield rarely survives—and when it does, the infected host is usually deformed, insane, or both.”
So a wolf could be assassinated by sheep’s blood. I think about making a Silencer of the Lambs joke, but decide to keep it to myself. It’s kind of strained, and not a cultural reference Nightstorm is likely to get anyway.
Also, note to self: Don’t get scratched, bitten, or cut here, by anything.
FIFTEEN
It’s hard to tell how far underground we are, but judging from the slant of the floor and the richness of the dirt around us, I don’t think we’ve gone that deep. There are bugs of various sizes and degrees of creepiness scuttling on the walls and the occasional puddle of water on the floor, all of which suggests the surface is not far away.
We’ve been traveling for ten minutes or so when there’s a flicker of light from around a bend in the tunnel. When we round the corner, I see that the tunnel empties out into a small room, with a dirt floor and what look like wicker chairs around a crude table. The table holds a larger version of the globe around my neck, and seated on the other side of it is Azura.
“Well, well,” I say. “If it isn’t the Mistress of Disguise and Sudden Exits. How was your vacation?”
“Nice to see you, too,” she says with a grin. “My trip was most productive, though I’ve not slept since I saw you last. Sit, please.”
I take a seat across from her, Nightstorm grabbing the chair to the left. She’s got some kind of papyrus scrolls laid out in front of her, covered with symbols I don’t understand; guess the translator seed I swallowed doesn’t do print. Oh, well, it’s a dying medium anyway.
“How are you, Jace?” she asks gently.
“Peachy. What did your bosses say?”
“She has a memory inducement curse upon her,” Nightstorm says. “She underwent an attack while I was with her.”
“Hey,” I say, vaguely offended. “That’s none of her damn business—”
“How long did it last?” she asks the Lyrastoi.
“Two, three minutes.”
“Ah.” Azura looks thoughtful. “Serious, then. I thought as much.”
“Never mind that,” I say. “What are we going to do about Asher?”
“I’ve consulted with the king,” Azura says. “We agree that the only way to deal with Asher is to confront him here. On your adopted world, he has an army and all of its resources; here, we do.”
“So we lure him here. How?”
“By disrupting the source of his power.” She rolls up the topmost scroll and puts it aside. Beneath it is another, with a large, roughly circular diagram on it.
“This is a map of the stormstalk roots that run beneath Night’s Shining Jewel. The stormstalks were planted by the Lyrastoi centuries ago; they are as much rock as plant, rooted in the granite cliffs of the Clawrock Mountains. They take their sustenance from lightning, drawing it from the storms that hover around the peaks.
“The stormstalks use a process called sorcerosynthesis to transform the lightning into living energy, pure life force; it is this force that flows down the roots like water from a melting ice cap.”
I study the map, tracing the lines that snake down from the mountains. “Tributaries of energy, flowing together like the headwaters of a river.”
“Yes. They come together at these points,” she says, tapping the map. “Forming seven main lines that run fairly close to the surface. All of them angle sharply downward here, near the center of the city; they converge in a central root bundle deep below the earth, one anchored to the very bedrock of Nightshadow itself. It is this root bundle that generates the enchantment that prevents Fyre from existing here, powered by the living energy delivered by the stormstalks.”
“That’s why the city is where it is, right?” I say. “Just like most cities spring up on a river. Only your river carries mystic energy instead of water.”
“Yes. We use the energy of the stormstalk system for many things; any enchantment cast in the city has a natural, abundant source to draw on.”
“A source,” says Nightstorm, “that has now been stolen.”
“That’s not quite accurate,” Azura says. “While it’s true that the root bundle has been physically transported to Jace’s world, its power continues to flow across the dimensional divide, in both directions.”
“For how long?” Nightstorm snaps. “He needs the power from the stormstalks, but for his own ends. Already our shamans say the anti-Fyre enchantment weakens. Soon enough it will break altogether.”
“But therein lies his weakness,” Azura says. “We can disrupt the flow of energy across the divide. Ahaseurus cannot risk his own enchantment being interfered with; the myth-spell he wove allowed him to transpose the cities, but it is the power of the root bundle that allows him to control the golems.”
“You suggest we cut our own throats?” Nightstorm says. “The better to drown our enemy in our very blood?”
“It’s not that bad a strategy,” I say. “He’s going to cut you off sooner or later, anyway. Do it yourself now, and you deprive him of options while increasing your own. How feasible is it to block the flow of energy? Can’t you just sever the roots?”
“It’s not that simple,” Azura says. “Severing the roots would be like cutting open a pipeline. Life force would continue to flow, in much the same direction—it would simply diffuse more into the surrounding environment.”
“Flooding Vegas with magic,” I murmur. I wonder how Penn and Teller would feel about that. Probably thrilled, if they weren’t stuck in a prehistoric city overrun by rogue golems. “But a flood is still better than nothing. The more magic draining into the landscape, the less there is for him to tap into, right?”
“True,” Nightstorm admits. “But the price—Fyre will surely notice—”
“Let’s deal with the problems we have right now,” I snap. “I don’t know how big and bad this Fyre thing is, but he’s not currently trying to take over an entire civilization, is he? No? Then stop whining about maybe getting your fingers burned and focus.”
Nightstorm glares at me—I get the feeling he isn’t used to anyone speaking to him like that. I glare back.
“She’s right,” Azura says. “It’s our only chance. The king and I have already come up with a plan.” She taps the map with
a finger. “We’re going to dig tunnels between each of the seven points, or modify ones that already exist. A Lyrastoi sorcerer will be stationed next to each root. All the roots will be severed simultaneously, and the sorcerers will each attempt to direct the flow of magic down the tunnels to the right. If it works, the flow will form a circle; it will still inevitably swirl toward the center, but we will attempt to force it up instead of down.”
“Creating a gigantic magic hurricane,” I say. “Yeah, no way that can end badly.”
“The danger is enormous,” she says quietly. “But it is our only hope. The sorcerers will try to keep it contained, but should it break free—”
“We’ll all end up wearing ruby slippers and talking to Munchkins,” I say. I see the looks on their faces and sigh. “Never mind. It’ll be bad, I get it. Can things be put back together afterward?”
“The sorcerers will try to sever the roots at the dimensional border itself. If we can return the cities to their proper worlds, the flow should resume its normal course with minimal effort.”
“Great. A little interdimensional plumbing and problem solved. Now all we have to do is figure out how to take down Ahaseurus himself when he shows up in a towel bellowing about how his shower isn’t working. With an army of killer golems behind him.”
“There goes my weekend,” Azura says.
* * *
So it’s back to the original mission: take down the big A. Except this time, instead of an elite NSA strike team, I’ve got an Astonisher, a were-bat, and a bad case of flashbackitis. Oh, and supposedly a whole Magic Kingdom as backup, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Most of them will probably be busy digging, anyway.
One other important thing has changed, too. The best weapon to go into any fight with is information—about your weapons, about the battlefield, and most of all, about your opponent. When I first got to Vegas I didn’t know that much about Ahaseurus—but as it turns out, Azura knows a lot more.
“Ahaseurus is the name he used when he first traveled to your world,” she tells me. We’re sitting alone in the underground room, the zebra-men and Nightstorm on their way back to report to the king. “The world in which you live now, I mean. He did so because the Hidden Clan had banished him forever.”
“The Hidden Clan—that’s your organization of Astonishers, right?”
“Yes. Ahaseurus wanted to create an empire, with Nightshadow as its capital. He was conducting experiments on underdead subjects to transform them into unstoppable soldiers; the experiments used surgery to bond inorganic materials to the subjects in order to make them resistant to injury from weapons or sunlight. Underdead turn to stone when exposed to the rays of the Poisoned Star.”
“I remember. Nightshadow Mythology 101.”
“Ahaseurus had been regarded as one of the most powerful of the Hidden Clan. He was said to be charismatic, brilliant, persuasive, and filled with unlimited ambition. He was also said to be cold, impulsive, cruel, prone to sudden rages and many lovers. In his youth he courted notoriety with his study of Fyre, even going so far as to create a room within Nightshadow itself where Fyre could exist—in a tiny, much-weakened form, of course, but it was still the cause of much controversy. He claimed we could learn more by talking to evil than merely studying it from afar.”
“Classic rationalization,” I murmured. “What was he like when he was a kid?”
“He began life as a true, as we all do. His village—”
“Wait—everybody here starts out human?”
“Yes. Even the Lyrastoi. Most children born to a particular tribe of weres will choose to join that tribe when they become adults—but not all do. Some join other tribes, or remain trues.”
“Why?” I ask. “No offense—I’m a true myself, after all—but it seems like this world offers a lot of inducements to go furry or fangy, and not a lot to stay as you are.”
“There are several reasons, actually. One is the chance to become a sourceling; they are the trues the Lyrastoi use to feed themselves. To be a sourceling is many a young woman’s most treasured dream; they live as the Lyrastoi do, wealthy and pampered and given only the very best food, drink, and clothes. Their lives are a swirl of elaborate parties, entertaining games, and even intellectual stimulation; study hard enough and one day your reward will be immortality, for that’s also how the Lyrastoi replenish their own numbers. I wanted to be one myself, as a child.”
“What happened?”
“I grew up.” She sighs. “Only trues can be sourcelings—but the same holds for Astonishers. I chose the second path—and while it may hold more thorns, it allows me to do more than be an aristocrat’s spoiled cow while waiting to give up daylight.”
“I thought you didn’t have that here.”
“Not in Nightshadow itself, no. But there are lands beyond the Clawrocks, and I have been to many of them. The life of an Astonisher holds many opportunities.”
I see the look in her eyes, that combination of weary acceptance and fierce pride, and for the first time I really see who she is; that cheerful I-believe-in-fairies persona is no more real than my sarcastic armor, though it serves the same purpose. She’s not a striptease bimbo playing at being a secret agent, she’s an intelligence operative who’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
“You were telling me about Ahaseurus’s childhood,” I say.
“Yes. He was born to a small tribe of were-rats, on the northern edge of the Cemetery Sea. When he first applied to the Astonishers’ Guild—that’s the precursor to the Hidden Clan—he claimed to be from a long-lost tribe of were-panthers. That was eventually disproved, but it didn’t disqualify him from membership; deception is our stock-in-trade, after all.”
“Self-aggrandizing claims,” I murmur. “These were-rats—you said they lived near an ocean? Were they fishers?”
“Primarily, yes. But they hunted other game, as well.”
“Was Ahaseurus a hunter?”
“Yes. He bragged about his prowess often. His tribe usually hunted in groups—”
“But he liked to hunt alone, right?”
Azura gives me a puzzled look. “How did you know?”
“He wasn’t hunting for the meat or fur. He was doing it because he enjoyed killing—and probably torturing—small animals. When he got older, he developed a taste for pyromania—even in a place where starting fires is almost impossible. I’m guessing he used to wet his burrow or whatever he slept in, too.”
“I don’t understand.”
I shake my head. “You’ve got your skills, I’ve got mine. You may be an Astonisher, but I’m a profiler. And a damn good one.”
“What does a profiler do? Portraiture?”
“In a way. I analyze how criminals think in order to predict their actions.”
She frowns. “That would be obvious, would it not? A criminal will commit a crime—hardly a relevation.”
“Yeah, but I try to figure out which crime he’ll commit next. As well as important details like where he’s living or working or drinking, what he drives, what his habits are.”
Azura shakes her head. “Forgive me for saying so—but that seems like a great deal of trouble to catch a common thief.”
“I don’t catch thieves, Azura. I catch serial killers.”
“Serial killer—I’ve come across the term while I was in your reality, but never bothered finding out what it meant. I certainly understand what a killer is, but what does cereal have to do with it?”
It takes me a second to realize she’s not just yanking my chain. What’s happened to Azura is the same thing that happened to me all the time when I first got to Thropirelem: I’d trip over some little detail that was obvious to the natives, but not to me. “A serial killer is someone who kills over and over, often raping or torturing the victim first, often with a great deal of rage. Usually targets strangers, frequently takes trophies, derives a great deal of pleasure or satisfaction in the act. The word serial in this context means ‘pertaining
to a series.’ ”
I let her digest that for a moment. It doesn’t shock her, but it does bother her. “And this is a profession that you’ve chosen, hunting down these killers. Meaning there are others who work in the same field.”
“Yes. Hundreds of them, if not thousands.”
“I am no stranger to murder, Jace. I have seen people killed for food, for sex, for revenge, or for personal gain. Now and then someone kills because they have lost the ability to reason. But what you describe—to visit such intimate horrors on a complete stranger, and then repeat that act, on another complete stranger—” She shakes her head. “And there are enough of these monsters in your world that an entire field of study is dedicated to catching them?”
“Not just catching them. Treating them, studying them, imprisoning or executing them. Writing books, TV series, movies about them. As much as we hate and fear them, they’re a big part of our culture.”
“With all that attention, surely such a creature would give himself away before very long.”
“Not always. Some of them do it for years, even decades, before they’re caught. They hide in plain sight, pretending to be normal—but they’re not. Their minds are broken, usually in a very specific way, and I’m trained to figure out which way that is. And then use that information to track them down and stop them.”
She nods. “I understand. Most people think that being an Astonisher is all about skill—that one must have finely developed coordination, reflexes, and speed in order to do what we do. But that is only part of it. An Astonisher must learn to think differently; to redirect our audience’s attention to where we wish it to be. That is why we are advisers to royalty, not because of childish tricks we can play with scarves or cards.”
Yeah. We’re an odd partnership—Azura’s job is to fool the public, while mine is to reveal the truth. And the truth is, I’m starting to see a pretty familiar pattern. “There are three traits that often turn up in the childhood of a serial killer, known as the Macdonald triad: setting fires, abusing animals, and bed-wetting. Ahaseurus has demonstrated the first one and most likely practiced the second. Understand, it’s not these behaviors that cause the disease; they’re just symptoms of something much worse, usually abuse. A child in pain looks for an outlet—fouling his bed, setting a fire, or tormenting a living creature with even less power than himself are what usually manifest.”