Impervia and Pelinor moved faster than me; they were already racing up the sand as I rounded the edge of the jolly-boat for my first glimpse of the situation.
Oberon had got within ten meters of Xavier: coming in from the left, taking cover behind the dockside salting house. I don’t know whether Oberon had already begun his final charge when Xavier saw him, or if Xavier caught sight of Oberon first and the big lobster had no choice but to race in headlong; either way, both sides must have acted almost simultaneously. As Xavier brought round his rifle, Oberon must have shouted, “Assassin!” in the hope that a lobster-demon’s bellow would make the gunman miss.
Oberon’s strategy worked. Xavier fired but the bullet went wild, zinging into the salting house wall. Before Xavier could correct his aim, Oberon had crossed the gap: claws set at a perfect level to disembowel his target. A normal man wouldn’t have dodged in time...but Xavier was the sort who’d been brawling since boyhood, and despite his seventy years, he was still fast and slippery. As Oberon galloped forward, Xavier feinted one way, then leapt the other. The big lobster couldn’t adjust quickly enough; he plowed into the hourglass shrine, knocking it off its supports with a thunderous crash.
Xavier swung his rifle around for another shot. Oberon had plenty of fight left, despite hitting the shrine like a battering ram; but the demon’s pincers had stabbed deep into the shrine’s pine timbers, and he couldn’t pull them out.
Stuck. Trapped.
Xavier laughed as he took half a second to draw a bead on Oberon’s face. Pelinor, running fast in front of me but nowhere near fighting range, hurled his cutlass at Xavier, end over end like an unwieldy throwing knife. He couldn’t have expected it to do damage—just ruin the gun’s aim. No good: Xavier evaded the sword with a casual sidestep. Staring straight into Oberon’s eyes, he tightened his finger on the trigger...at exactly the same instant Oberon thrust his head in Xavier’s direction.
Leading with the spike on his nose.
I doubt if Oberon intended to hit the rifle muzzle. Instead, I think Xavier realized the danger of that nose-spike coming toward him, and he tried to block the spike with his gun. His trigger finger was still squeezing, even as the spike and rifle made contact: exactly as the point of the spike caught the barrel’s mouth and jammed its way into the hole.
Back in OldTech times, guns rarely exploded. Nowadays though, when firearms are built from OldTech blueprints but without OldTech metallurgy—no fancy alloys, no computerized quality control, just a single steelsmith muddling away with hammer and anvil to get something that sort of maybe looks right—these days, a rifle barrel with its end plugged tight by a nose-spike is the next best thing to a pipe-bomb.
As Dreamsinger would say, “Boom.”
The rifle barrel blew itself apart in a shower of shrapnel. Oberon was thrown back, his face a lacerated mess. Chestnut-brown fluid spurted from gashes where steel fragments had sliced through his carapace into the tender flesh beneath. The brown fluid must have been blood; there was a devastating amount of it.
Xavier’s blood was red, but it flowed just as freely. The explosion had slashed the right side of his face where he’d been sighting up the shot...but it had also blown wads of debris into the upper part of his torso, perforating the old man’s leather jacket in a dozen places. The damage was far more extensive than one would expect from a single bullet; the initial charge must have detonated the rest of the gun’s ammunition, blasting apart the breech where Xavier had it nestled under his arm. Slivers of wood and steel stabbed straight into the man’s chest cavity...not to mention flaying his hands to bloody pulps.
When Impervia reached the scene, she kicked the rifle’s shattered remains out of Xavier’s blood-smeared grip...but it was an empty gesture. The gun would never fire again, nor would Xavier pull another trigger. He was wheezing with untold damage to his lungs, and the right half of his face looked like chopped meat. Still, he managed a vicious smile with the half of a face he had left.
“Went out fighting,” he whispered. Impervia crouched beside him, not to offer help but to pat him down for weapons. Xavier went on talking as she roughly pulled a knife from a sheath at his ankle. “And I killed a Spark Lord,” he whispered. “That must be worth something, yes? Tell everyone...” Cough. “I killed a Spark Lord.”
“Which Spark Lord?” Pelinor asked.
“That Dreamsinger.” Another cough, this one bringing up blood. Xavier spat it out and turned proudly toward Pelinor. “Shot her clean between the eyes. You saw, yes?”
Pelinor stared back confused; so did I. Impervia stopped searching for weapons and leaned into Xavier’s face. “Fool. The person you shot wasn’t Dreamsinger—it was Gretchen Kinnderboom. A vain woman, but harmless. Killing her was no great victory.”
“Gretchen?” Xavier’s face puckered with confusion. “I wouldn’t kill Gretchen. She’s...beautiful...”
I groaned, understanding at last. When Xavier had seen Dreamsinger last night, she’d been disguised with Kaylan’s Chameleon; so what had the Spark Lord looked like in his eyes? What sort of woman did he lust for?
One like Gretchen. Whom he’d spied on with his telescope. He fantasized about Gretchen, and when he looked at Dreamsinger, that’s who he saw. Maybe not an exact look-alike—maybe overlaid with features from other women he’d known over the years. But close enough if you were looking at someone a good distance offshore. And when he saw Gretchen wearing sorcerer’s crimson...
He’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. And my clothes were now sphered with the blood and brains of a woman I once (might have) loved.
Bending over, I snarled into Xavier’s face, “You didn’t kill Dreamsinger, you killed the real Gretchen. How does that make you feel?”
I never got an answer. I hope he lived long enough to realize he wasn’t some great Spark killer: just a stupid man who’d murdered a woman he found beautiful. But I’ll never know if my message got through. By the time I’d got out my last word, Xavier was dead.
Oberon was dead too. Pelinor tried to help the big lobster...but there was no way to staunch the bleeding or repair the damage from metal shards gouging Oberon’s brain. His pincers clutched convulsively, clack-clack, clack-clack, in some kind of postmortem reflex; Pelinor had to keep back for fear of getting sliced in two. But Oberon had already stopped breathing, unable to draw air through the mutilated mess of his mouth.
After a minute, the brown blood stopped flowing. It began to cake. The claw-twitching continued but with longer gaps between each clench.
Clack...clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Pelinor looked away, brushing his eyes with his hand. Impervia stepped over Xavier’s corpse and went to kneel beside Oberon. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritae Sanctae...”
If she’d prayed like that when Gretchen died, I hadn’t heard it. Possibly Impervia had been too busy rowing the jolly-boat; or possibly, Magdalenes didn’t pray for rich idle women who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They would pray, however, for anyone—even an alien—who died in righteous battle.
We all have standards for who is worthy of our prayer. I wondered if anyone would ever pray for Warwick Xavier.
17
BEACHHEAD
I made my way back to the jolly-boat. People peered surreptitiously from nearby fishing jacks: peeping over railings or around the corners of deckhouses, wondering if the shooting had stopped. A few slipped out of sight when they saw I’d noticed them—the folk of Crystal Bay had no intention of getting involved with whatever death and lunacy we’d brought to their town.
Inside the jolly-boat, Myoko was still unconscious in the Caryatid’s arms. Blood had dried on Myoko’s upper lip; I don’t know why the Caryatid didn’t wipe it away.
Annah had blood on her face too. Gretchen’s blood. Annah laid Gretchen’s corpse on the sand and began fussing with the arrangement of limbs, clothes, etc. She looked up as I approached.
“Oberon?” Annah asked.
�
�Dead. Xavier too.”
“And he was the only Ring man here?”
“The only one we’ve seen.” I glanced up the beach toward the center of the village. An empty street led from the docks to a muddy square where several horses stood at hitching posts. No people in sight. “We’ll keep our eyes open for bully-boys,” I said, “but if I were Elizabeth Tzekich, I wouldn’t deplete my forces by leaving people in places like this. She knows she might run into Dreamsinger; she’ll need all the troops she can get. Probably she dumped Xavier here because he was getting on her nerves.”
Annah nodded. She spent a moment trying to arrange Gretchen’s hands in the classic “Death is peaceful” pose: folded serenely across her chest. The hands were too limp to stay put; they kept slumping onto the sand. After several attempts, Annah gave up. “So what now?” she asked softly...as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Do we keep going on?”
“Sebastian is still out there. Do we leave him to Dreamsinger? Or the Ring of Knives? Or Jode?”
“If the boy’s such a powerful psychic, maybe he can take care of himself.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Are you suggesting we abandon him?”
She didn’t answer; she was still gazing at Gretchen’s body. Gretchen’s corpse. Finally she said, “It’s not about Sebastian, Phil. You know that. He’s just the excuse we’re using.”
“What do you mean?”
“Impervia thinks this is a holy mission. She’s received a heavenly calling and doesn’t give a damn what it’s about; all she cares is that God has finally given her a job. Pelinor’s the same, but without the divine overtones. He didn’t start pretending he was a knight just because he wanted to teach at the academy—to him, knighthood was a romantic ideal. A way to use his sword for more than forcing people to pay some pointless border tax. Pelinor’s been hungering for a knightly quest the way Impervia’s been hungering for a sacred vocation: to be lifted out of a humdrum existence and into something worthy.”
After a moment, I nodded; Annah must have thought this all through back on Dainty Dinghy. I could imagine her waking early, before those of us who’d stayed up late drinking in The Pot of Gold. She might have gone quietly up to the deck, leaned against the rail, and watched the shoreline drift past as she asked herself why we’d let ourselves come this far. “Go on,” I said.
“The Caryatid’s here because Pelinor is. She loves him, you know; she’d never let him run off alone.”
I tried not to gape. “She loves him?”
Annah laughed. Softly. “Not Romeo and Juliet love—not teenagers who’ll die if they can’t hurl themselves into bed immediately. The Caryatid and Pelinor have something more courtly: fondness rather than passion. Quite possibly they do share a bed from time to time...but it’s not their most urgent priority. They’re comfortable, not torrid; but they’re still in love, and wherever Pelinor goes, the Caryatid will follow.” Annah paused. “Much like Myoko following you.”
“Don’t say that.” I looked over at Myoko. The Caryatid had laid her flat on the sand, feet elevated by propping them on the jolly-boat’s rear thwart. Standard first-aid for clinical shock—slant the body to send blood into the heart and brain.
But Myoko’s face was paler than ever.
“It’s not your fault,” Annah said. “She would have come, even without you—she wouldn’t let Impervia and Pelinor go off on their own. Myoko always has to prove herself.” Annah paused. “You’ve noticed she’s not as weak as she pretends?”
I didn’t want to betray Myoko’s private confession to me. “I noticed she dragged seven people and a jolly-boat several hundred meters at top speed.”
Annah nodded. “She’s strong, Phil—as strong as any psychic I’ve ever heard about. But she pretends otherwise. I think maybe she came on this trip for the chance to cut loose. To use every drop of her power in a meaningful cause.”
“And perhaps to impress me?”
“Perhaps. Or to remind herself what she’s capable of. Pushing the boat across the bay...it hurt her, Phil, but she kept on going. Maybe it felt good to stop pretending.”
“Even if she dies from the strain? I’ve heard of psychics dropping from brain hemorrhage if they push too much.”
Annah dropped her gaze. “We all might die, Phil. We know that, but we’re still here.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Please don’t say you’re following me too.”
She gave a little smile. “Heavens, I’d never do anything foolish just for a man. Women don’t do that, do they?” Annah lifted her eyes to mine. “You tell me why you keep going and I’ll tell you why I do.”
I thought about it. She was right—this wasn’t really about rescuing Sebastian. I wanted to do that, of course; but that was just the job, not my reason for doing it. I’d still have come this far, even if we were chasing a complete stranger.
So why was I here? Why did I intend to pick myself up and keep going to the bitter end?
Loyalty to my friends.
Curiosity about what lay in Niagara Falls.
Anger at the monster that killed Rosalind and a hope we could make it pay for its crime.
The desire not to act like a coward in front of Annah. (How much of everything done in the world is an attempt to impress the opposite sex?)
But above all else...the feeling that I was finally doing something. No longer waiting for life to begin. Like Impervia and Pelinor, I’d always had a secret belief I was destined for something more important than marking tests and trying to keep my students awake until lunch. It was a ridiculous, dangerous fantasy: an adolescent delusion that God would single me out as special. Blame it on my privileged background, my vanity, or a simple lack of common sense; but I’d always assumed I would someday hear the Call to Adventure like some mythological hero.
Trials and tribulations. Physical ordeals. The love of beautiful women. Tragedy and betrayal. Victory and vindication. Heroic joy, heroic pain, heroic life, heroic death.
“I’m here,” I told Annah, “because I’m an ass. There’s a dead woman at my feet, killed in an ugly ignoble way...and I’m still not as afraid of dying as I am of being ordinary.”
She took my hand—my blood-smeared hand—and pressed it to her lips. “Me too,” she whispered. “No more being ordinary. I will drink life to the lees” She paused. “Alfred, Lord Tennyson. ‘Ulysses.’ ” She paused again. “I’ve been a teacher way too long.”
Impervia and Pelinor set off toward the central square, supposedly to scout the town and make sure there were no more Ring thugs waiting in ambush. In truth, Impervia was just too keyed up to stay in one place; Myoko couldn’t be moved in her current condition and Impervia couldn’t bear watching helplessly while our friend looked so pallid and frail. There was nothing anyone could do except keep Myoko warm and hope her blood would soon start circulating normally. That wasn’t enough for Impervia: she went off on the prowl, and Pelinor tagged along to keep her out of trouble.
I too was feeling keyed up. I trotted down to the lake to fill a canteen so we could splash Myoko’s face...then I couldn’t decide if splashing would help or just add to the level of shock. Every teacher at the academy had been trained in first-aid; but our textbooks had been OldTech ones. That meant we learned the best temporizing techniques OldTech experts knew, but most of the write-ups ended with OBTAIN PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL HELP AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
We were four hundred years too late for that.
“She’s waking up,” the Caryatid said. Annah and I knelt beside her; we all saw Myoko’s eyelids flicker. As soon as her eyes opened they closed again, squinting against the sun. We’d laid her in the brightest spot we could find in an effort to keep her warm.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Like shit.” Her voice was a thready whisper. “Who’s...” She couldn’t finish the question.
The Caryatid said, “Oberon died but took Xavier with him. Everyone else is alive—thanks to you.”
“Okay.
..good...”
“Rest,” Annah said. “Don’t waste your strength.”
‘Too late,” Myoko whispered. “Way too late.”
“Don’t say that!” the Caryatid told her. “You’ll be fine.”
“I am fine,” Myoko said. “Did my bit. What I was...here for...”
“Myoko!” The Caryatid’s voice had gone steely. “Goddamn it, don’t you dare surrender. It’s stupid. People don’t just die when it suits them. Don’t give up. Myoko! Myoko!”
The Caryatid shook Myoko by the shoulders. Myoko’s head flopped limply in response. A little more blood trickled from her mouth. Then a bit from one ear.
When the Caryatid let go, Myoko slumped to the sand.
Bright sun. A spring breeze. And death.
Impervia and Pelinor returned. With them came a wagon driven by two sullen teenagers: one boy, one girl, both about sixteen, both with flaming red hair and freckles, both glaring resentfully at Impervia. The wagon held a single coffin.
“I found an undertaker,” Impervia announced, jogging up ahead of the cart. “It was—”
“You only brought one coffin,” the Caryatid said. Her voice was flat and lifeless.
“For Gretchen,” Impervia said. “There was nothing big enough for Oberon, and Xavier can he where he is. Let the crows pick at his...”
She stopped. She’d seen Myoko.
“We need another coffin,” the Caryatid said.
Impervia closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath. When she knelt beside Myoko, she needed almost a full minute before she could speak the first words of a prayer.
The grumpy teenagers were named Vickie and Victor: twin children of the local undertaker. Pelinor prattled on about the whole family having bright red hair, mother, father, all the children who’d been hanging about the shop. No one listened to what he was saying, least of all Pelinor himself—he was just filling the silence, trying not to break down in tears.
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