Trapped

by James Alan Gardner

  They hadn’t noticed us yet. Our group looked no different from other tourist parties, staring blankly into the gorge and wondering where the Falls went. We were also bundled up in coats, hats, and scarves, which would make us difficult to recognize in the dark. Jode was watching for trouble—in between attentive pats and snuggles, the faux Rosalind found excuses to turn her head this way and that, keeping a constant lookout—but even the Lucifer couldn’t have guessed how many forces had converged on Niagara: Dreamsinger, the Ring of Knives, and of course, a small but determined band of teachers.

  Not that we teachers amounted to much. We’d never even discussed a strategy for dealing with this situation. Violence certainly wouldn’t work; if, for example, Impervia attacked Jode, Sebastian would immediately use his powers to protect his “Rosalind.”

  Our best hope was talking sense to the boy—and not just saying, “She isn’t Rosalind.” We had to prove Jode was evil.

  A good place to start would be pointing out how destructive that big dam was. Whatever story Jode had invented, we could make Sebastian realize that his wall across the river would cause severe flooding. Upstream of the dam, water must be accumulating at a fearsome rate, spilling over the banks, deluging inhabited land. We had to make Sebastian care about the possibility of drowning people, animals, houses, farms; but at the moment, he was too busy kissing his beloved “Rosalind” to picture the consequences of what he’d done.

  “I’ll talk to Sebastian,” I told the others in a low voice. “I know him best.” I took a step toward the boy, but Pelinor grabbed my arm.

  “Better let me do this,” he said. “You’re no fighter, Phil, and Jode might try some tricks.”

  “Then I should go,” Impervia said.

  Pelinor smiled. “Sorry, old girl, but you’re not quite the right person for tactful discussion.”

  “And you are the right person?”

  “I’m a knight,” he said. “Fighting the foe and parlaying honorably. What I was born to do.”

  Without giving anyone else a chance to speak, he moved out into the roadway.

  Pelinor planted himself directly in Sebastian’s path. “Fine night, isn’t it?” he said in a hearty voice. “Bit quiet all of a sudden.”

  Sebastian and Jode were ten paces away from the knight: twenty paces from the rest of us. The newlyweds stopped and stared; Sebastian just gaped, astonished that someone from the academy had tracked him down...but the Lucifer’s eyes filled with hatred. Jode obviously knew who Pelinor was. As I’d suspected, the shapeshifter must have spied on our school, getting to know Sebastian and his teachers.

  “We have to talk,” Pelinor said. He kept his eyes on the boy, not even glancing at Jode. “Your girlfriend isn’t—”

  Jode screamed: drowning out the rest of Pelinor’s words. The next moment the Lucifer hurtled forward—faster than the real Rosalind ever ran in her life. Metal flickered in the lamplight and I shouted, “Blade!” Jode had whipped out a sword from a sheath at its hip: a rapier, one of the weapons missing from the case in Sebastian’s room. The weapon’s point came up with inhuman speed, aiming for Pelinor’s heart as the alien sprinted to close the gap.

  If I’d been in Pelinor’s place, I would have been skewered: caught flat-footed, numbly staring at the incoming blade. Even Pelinor didn’t have time to draw a weapon of his own—but knight or border-guard, Pelinor was no stranger to sneak attacks. He twisted aside at the last instant, batting away the lethal tip of the rapier with his arm. Cloth ripped as the sword-point slit his coat-sleeve...but now he was inside the arc of the blade and relatively safe from being stabbed. The rapier was purely a piercing weapon, with no cutting edge to harm opponents close in.

  Unfortunately, Jode wanted to be close in. Perhaps that had been Jode’s plan—the Lucifer might have known Pelinor would evade the thrust and come within reach. Jode’s body blocked Sebastian’s view of its face; therefore, the boy didn’t see the false Rosalind’s features dissolve into a curdled white mess...as if the lips, the nose, the eyes, everything, had putrefied into maggots.

  Pelinor grimaced with revulsion and retreated a step—still keeping up his arm to prevent a rapier strike, but distancing himself from the ooze of Jode’s face. The Lucifer raised its other hand, the one not holding the sword...and I could see its fingers had been replaced by another mass of curds, a soft cream of white chunks. The gooey hand darted toward Pelinor’s nose with a boxer’s punch; but when Pelinor tried to deflect the blow, the alien’s entire forearm spurted out of its coat-sleeve, like slime shot out of a hose.

  It hit Pelinor full in the face: splashing across his cheeks and mustache, then flattening outward to cover every bit of exposed skin. Pelinor’s hands came up, clawing in a frenzy to get the stuff off...but the fat moist chunks evaded his efforts, dodging from his grasp.

  Beneath the damp white coating, Pelinor bellowed in anger and pain. The sound was muffled. Smothered. Choked.

  Jode’s puffy curd face quivered and refocused, once more shaping itself into the likeness of Rosalind. For a moment the alien leered at us as if to say, “You people are fools.” Then it jumped backward, retreating enough that Sebastian finally got a view of Pelinor’s scum-covered face. “I told you!” Jode said in Rosalind’s voice. “It’s not your teacher, it’s a monster made by my mother’s sorcerers. Just a bag of skin filled with pus. When I hit it, you see what happened. It went all gooshy.”

  Pelinor tried to object: to tell Sebastian the truth. The only noise that came out of his mouth was a suffocated mumble, broken off quickly...as if the curds had poured down his throat as soon as he opened his lips.

  “Sebastian,” I said, stepping forward, “you know who we are—”

  “Don’t listen, don’t listen!” Jode-Rosalind screamed. “You can see they aren’t real; they’re just goo!” The Lucifer waved its sword toward Pelinor. It couldn’t gesture with its other hand, because that hand was smeared across Pelinor’s face—Jode’s coat-sleeve dangled empty from the elbow down.

  “Sebastian,” I said again.

  “Shut up!” the boy yelled. “Not another word or you’re dead. Rosalind warned me her mother might try something like this...but it won’t work. It won’t.”

  “Yes,” said Jode, smirking under Rosalind’s face. “We’re married now. Completely married.” She waved the rapier in our direction. “My husband and I are going straight into Ring of Knives headquarters...” She gestured toward the generating station. “...and we’re not going to let you monsters stop us from finding my mother. We’re going to make her give us her blessing and promise to leave us alone.”

  “Ring of Knives headquarters?” Impervia said. “That’s not—”

  Jode cried, “You’re talking. You were told not to talk. Sebastian, make it stop!”

  Impervia flew off the ground, slammed back into the guard railing. For a moment, an invisible force threatened to throw her over the rail—propelling her out above the gorge until she plummeted to the rocks below. But the psionic shove ended as quickly as it began. Impervia slumped forward and dropped to her knees gasping. She was lucky she hadn’t broken her spine when she hit the railing’s metal bars...but she’d only had the wind knocked out of her.

  “That was a warning,” Sebastian said with exaggerated gruffness—a teenage boy, showing off his manliness for his sweetheart. “One more word, and you’re gone.” He glanced at Pelinor, now making strangled noises in his throat. “I know you aren’t people; you’re things. Stay out of our way and I’ll leave you alone...but I won’t let you keep us from confronting Rosalind’s mother.”

  Jode smirked again, angling away from Sebastian so the boy wouldn’t see. “Let’s go,” Jode said, sheathing its rapier. The Lucifer took Sebastian’s arm with its good hand—the other sleeve was still half empty—and led him up the steps of the generating station.

  If there were any booby-traps in the area, they didn’t go off: Sebastian’s nanite friends were on the job, deactivating trip-wires, defusing bo
mbs. As the two reached the darkened entrance, Jode took a moment to look back at us all. The Lucifer’s face was silently laughing.

  Even before Sebastian and Jode disappeared into the station, the Caryatid was on the move: pulling a match from her pocket; striking it on the rusty metal guard rail; exerting her will to make the flame blossom as she hurried toward poor Pelinor. She could see there was no point just trying to scrape off the curds—Pelinor himself was raking his face with his fingers, but the curds had attached themselves as tight as lampreys. If Pelinor couldn’t pluck them off, neither could the Caryatid...but fire might succeed where fingers failed.

  Better to burn the man to blisters than let him suffocate in front of our eyes.

  She reached Pelinor just as he toppled to his knees. Beneath the mask of curds, he was still making throaty noises; but they were growing more feeble and plaintive, no longer bellows but sobs. “Keep your head bent over,” she said. “Lean forward so the stuff can’t get down your throat.”

  I wanted to tell her the curds didn’t just slide into his mouth by gravity—they crawled like hungry grubs wriggling toward his windpipe. Tilting Pelinor’s head forward wouldn’t stop them from climbing into his air passages. But this wasn’t the time to distract the Caryatid with futile objections; she was concentrating hard on her match-flame, as if planting her entire consciousness into the tiny speck of fire. A moment later, the flame hopped off the match, touched down for an instant on Pelinor’s shoulder, then plunged itself into the gelid morass on the man’s face.

  For a few seconds, I lost sight of the flame; its light dimmed and I heard a wet sizzle. The Caryatid made looping gestures with three fingers and muttered under her breath—one of the few times I’d ever seen her resort to actual abracadabra when commanding flame. The glow on Pelinor’s face sputtered, then stabilized. More sizzling and hissing. A few curds fell burning to the roadway, spitting sparks as if they were comets. The choking in Pelinor’s throat continued. An ugly gargle, its volume growing weaker.

  The flame moved across Pelinor’s face like the tip of a hot poker, selectively searing the largest patches of goo. The Caryatid had to crouch on hands and knees so she could see where to move the little fire...and even then, her control wasn’t perfect. With a gush of smoke, Pelinor’s mustache caught fire, blazing bright as it scorched the skin beneath. His lips blackened like charred wood; but neither he nor the Caryatid flinched.

  Burned by the ignited mustache, more curds fell to the ground.

  I’d been paying such close attention to Pelinor, I hadn’t noticed Annah moving toward him. She appeared behind him now, kneeling to match his height and wrapping her arms around his stomach. Her gloved hands locked together at the level of his belt, then pulled in hard, scooping into his stomach: the OldTech maneuver to help choking victims, driving up into the diaphragm to force out air and clear the throat. I felt ashamed I hadn’t thought to do it myself—inadequate Phil, still stupid in a crisis.

  The push of wind up Pelinor’s esophagus forced out a mouthful of maggoty white. I cringed as some of the spill fell on Annah, her arms still around Pelinor’s stomach...but she was protected by her thick coat and gloves, the curds unable to reach her bare skin. I rushed to sweep the wet chunks away, brushing them off with my own gloves, wiping Pelinor’s clothes too, then scraping myself free with a stone from the road. It seemed they couldn’t lock onto our clothing— like leeches, they could attach themselves only to flesh.

  Meanwhile, the Caryatid continued to singe off curds, raising a hideous stink of wet rot. She was doing her best to minimize damage to Pelinor’s skin, but he was still a puckered red. Second-degree burns at least. His mustache was fully incinerated. The hair on his scalp had wizened to a crisp in a dozen places...and still the curds weren’t gone. Gooey white oozed from Pelinor’s nose and gleamed between his blistered lips—just like I’d seen on Rosalind.

  Dead Rosalind.

  Annah yanked up hard again, driving her joined hands into Pelinor’s belly. More curds bulged out of his mouth; but they slithered back inside as soon as Annah released her squeeze. Again and again she went through the prescribed motion, scoop in, relax, scoop in, relax...but her very first compression had forced out as much gunk as she was going to get, and subsequent squeezes ejected no more. Pelinor’s throat remained clogged—the blockage was too big to dislodge.

  When Annah realized that, she let go of Pelinor and gestured at me. “You try.” We traded positions and I jammed my hands into Pelinor’s gut with every gram of strength I possessed. More curds squirted out of Pelinor’s mouth...but not a titanic volley, just a coughing dribble. Not nearly enough to clear his windpipe.

  I could picture a glistening mass of white clotted all the way down to his bronchial tubes. Each time I squeezed, the mass was pushed and the top part spilled into his mouth; but I couldn’t crush in hard enough to push the whole squirming bulk out of his esophagus, and as soon as I let go, everything slid back down again.

  “This isn’t working,” I said. “We have to think of something else.”

  “Get his mouth open,” the Caryatid commanded.

  Annah reached in to pull down Pelinor’s jaw. Pelinor resisted, probably just out of instinct: by now, he couldn’t have been thinking clearly. Beneath the flame-ravaged skin, his face had gone purple with suffocation; when I looked at the whites of his eyes, they were dotted with the same red petechiae pinpricks I’d seen on Rosalind’s corpse. Tiny blood vessels burst by the exertion of trying to draw breath. Pelinor was straining so fiercely, I didn’t think Annah could possibly get his mouth open—but a few seconds after she started to try, the rigidity slumped out of his body as he fell unconscious. Immediately, she flopped his jaw wide...

  ...and the Caryatid plunged the flame into his mouth.

  The tiny ball of fire disappeared inside. From where I was kneeling, I couldn’t see anything but a yellow-orange light shining out between his lips, the flame so bright it lit his cheeks from within. Smoke wisped out of his mouth and nose; I prayed it was only the ash of charred curds, but I was afraid some of the smoke came from Pelinor himself—his tongue and inner cheeks turning to cinder, maybe even the soft tissues of his throat. The Caryatid would be as cautious as possible, focusing the flame’s heat only on the alien chunks that were filling Pelinor’s air passages...but she was, after all, playing with fire, and it was Pelinor getting burned.

  As the Caryatid worked, she talked in a voice I’d heard from time to time as I passed the door of her classroom. A teacher who reflexively explained everything she was doing, the way she’d talk students through a sorcery exercise. “I’ve started burning chunks of alien material in his mouth. The nuggets want to avoid the flame...they’re crawling away from the heat...but after a few seconds’ exposure, they stop moving and drop. Annah, could you sweep out the remains from the bottom of his mouth? Don’t bum your glove on the flame. Good. Now”—she took a deep breath—”we’ll start on the throat. Phil, I’ll need you to squeeze his stomach. As tight as you can and don’t let go. Do it.”

  I dug my grip into Pelinor’s diaphragm. In my mind’s eye, I imagined wet white nuggets being pushed up his esophagus into the flame. Burn, you bastards...every last one. More smoke billowed from Pelinor’s mouth—rank-smelling stuff, like swamp rot. Annah swept out the dead debris. We were making progress.

  As long as we didn’t let ourselves think about what the flame was doing to Pelinor’s windpipe.

  Eventually, the Caryatid had to propel the fire so deep into Pelinor’s throat she lost sight of it. I don’t know if she lost control of the flame at that point; I don’t know if she ever lost control at all. But even if she could direct the cauterizing heat wherever she wanted, she was operating blindly—as she looked into his mouth, all she could possibly see was a dim gleam shining past the blistered epiglottis. Yet she didn’t dare reduce the strength of the flame, for fear it would gutter out amidst the moistness of the alien curds.

  The end came quickly: a sudden
eruption of blood from Pelinor’s mouth, extinguishing the flame, splashing in torrents onto my hands where they were still wrapped around his abdomen. In the light of the streetlamps, the blood was bright red—arterial blood from the carotid. Inside Pelinor’s neck, the Caryatid’s flame had burned through the esophagus and seared into the major artery carrying blood to the brain. There was nothing we could do to stop the gusher; the rupture was deep down, out of sight, out of reach. Even if we could staunch the bleeding, pinch the artery shut, Pelinor’s blood-starved brain would die within minutes.

  So we watched the blood spill. Watched it gradually slow down. Watched Pelinor die in a pool of crimson and white.

  By the time it was over, Impervia was kneeling on the roadway with the rest of us. Her breathing was ragged; being thrown against the guard rail may have broken a few more ribs. But she still had plenty of breath to say prayers for our dying friend. Tears slid down her cheeks as she asked God to have mercy on Pelinor, sword-sworn knight, Christ’s beloved son. A man fallen for a righteous cause, called to this mission by heaven itself.

  Impervia wasn’t the only one weeping. Annah and I had tears in our eyes...but the Caryatid’s face was as hard as a gravestone. I longed to tell her it wasn’t her fault; if she hadn’t tried to burn away the curds, Pelinor would surely have choked to death. What she’d done was the only chance Pelinor had.

  But my mouth refused to speak. None of us seemed able to do more than mumble prayers. The look on the Caryatid’s face said she didn’t want to hear anyone say, “You did your best.”

  She waited only until Impervia said, “Amen.” Then the Caryatid stood up, wiping her hands (damp with Pelinor’s blood) on her crimson gown.

  “We’re going in now,” she said. “We’re going to burn that demon in the fires of hell.”