CrossTown

by Loren W. Cooper

  “That’s torn it,” the White Wolf snarled. “Let’s hit them now, while they’re off balance.”

  As I nodded agreement, Blade whisked away back into the mass of the Legion. They rose out and up, moving like a living rope of smoke. I fled the oubliette through shadow. I perceived the temple barrier as I rose into a stone passageway through a gateway of shadow. The Whitesnakes had apparently kept their prisons not far from the edge of the primary barrier they used to protect their holy ground. That surprised me. I would have kept the prisons near the center of the compound to make escapes more difficult. On the other hand, I wasn’t a religious fanatic. I didn’t have a worship area right in the middle of everything I built.

  Long florescent lights lit the area above the oubliette, which gave me only a few shadow locations to use to my advantage. Two scaly figures ran by in the direction of the barrier, patterned robes flapping.

  I stepped out of the shadows behind them, tripped the first and bound his will, then faced the second as he turned. I felt his own Legion rousing to deal with me, then his buddy (at my internal prompting) reached across and hamstrung him with a large sharp knife.

  The sorcerer flailed and fell back, losing his concentration. Apparently he had held his own Legion less tightly than he should have, for they strained at their bonds as his concentration faltered. I took advantage of that. As his buddy (under my control, of course) lifted the knife high for another stroke, I frayed the bonds holding the Whitesnake sorcerer’s Legion, and they did the rest.

  By the time the knife hit, the sorcerer had already passed beyond feeling it. His roused and newly freed Legion had done him in long before that time. Eyes wide, slit pupils glaring, his hands clenched, his claws stabbing into his palms until red blood trickled out to pool around his fists, his back arched and his muscles locked. It didn’t look as if his Legion had been kind to him.

  Perhaps he should have been kind to them.

  I sent the other cultist off to sleep and dreams. With the dreams I had in mind, he’d be lucky to remember his own name when they found him. Meanwhile, the newly freed Legion joined my old group in their attack on the barrier.

  To my spiritual senses, the barrier seemed to be a living curtain of serpents. It not only held against the assault, it counterattacked. Individual serpents would peel out of the barrier to sink long, dripping fangs into whatever presented itself as a target.

  But I noticed that where the snakes attacked, they weakened the barrier, so I threw the weight of my will into the area most active, where the Whitesnake’s freed Legion had just reinforced my old servants. Aggressive elements of the barrier, representing themselves as snakes, turned their attention toward me, but too slowly. I felt the barrier resist, then give way, snakes peeling back and then dropping out of the net. First one small spirit slipped through, then another, and then the dam broke, and the ether rained smoky snakes as the elements of the two former Legions poured out and through.

  That barrier had been quite a piece of work, because even broken it remained a formidable force. The individual elements of the barrier remained active. Every little herpetologist’s fantasy seemed to be holding me personally responsible for the breach. As the Legions slipped out, I tried to flee beyond and found my way blocked by massing snakes, so I fled inward instead, back into the Whitesnake stronghold.

  I left the barrier behind in something of a hurry. I took to shadow, figuring that the snakes might have a tough time tracking me on those Roads. Once I had enough distance that I didn’t hear psychic slithering around every corner, I paused to assess my situation.

  You’ve heard the expression “bowels of the earth”? All of a sudden I had an entirely new perspective on the term.

  The passageways twisted and turned around me, flowing over and below one another. Circular, about fifteen feet in diameter, they reminded me of intestines, an organic pneumatic tube, or the obvious resemblance to the tunnel of a snake. A very large snake. A fifteen-feet-in-diameter kind of snake. Of the alternatives, I preferred the pneumatic tube analogy. It was the least threatening, not to mention the cleanest.

  The air had a warm, damp, fetid touch to it that made me want to take a bath and change clothes—somewhere else. Since the bottom of the tunnel I had fled had been pockmarked by the open mouths of numerous oubliettes (the taking of prisoners was obviously one of the Whitesnakes’ favorite pastimes) the tunnel there had much the same smell as the dungeons. Further in toward the center, the air held a dusty, sharp smell that reminded me of nothing so much as a nest of reptiles.

  What a surprise.

  I took a quick peek at the spiritual neighborhood. Rather than trying to follow my trail, the ghostly snakes had rather quickly begun to sew the barrier back together with their bodies. I had no chance trying to take that barrier solo, even with it weakened. No escape presented itself that way. I saw no sign of my Legion or the escaped Legion of the sorcerer I had killed.

  I missed them even then. Not just their capabilities, though I could have had the White Wolf scouting, and would have felt more secure with Blade manning the fortress of my spirit. I missed Blade’s steady support, the White Wolf’s acerbic give and take, Rose’s gentle touch, Bright Angel’s voice of reason. I missed their company. I felt nothing but relief that they had escaped, but their absence left a silence in my head like the echoes in an abandoned house.

  Bringing myself back to the task at hand, I extended my senses out along the coiling Way of the cave. Whoever had designed this place had possessed a distinct prejudice against straight lines. The shadows were easier to sweep. I saw cultists in robes shaded from black to patterns of lighter colors. I saw more dark than light robes. I remembered the Hooded Man’s white robe, considering who he must have been.

  I caught urgent movement through the shadows, a dark robe flapping into a room lit by numerous torches. The inconstant shadow there gave me broken images and distorted sounds, but I heard “High Priest” and “escape” in the breathless report to a tall, scaly lad in a robe marked only by light diamonds across the chest.

  I resisted the urge to swear. The Hooded Man had been their High Priest. That would stir them up. At the same time, I had to grin. The Whitesnakes weren’t having much luck with me. First their Avatar, then their High Priest. You’d think that they’d be smart enough to leave well enough alone, but I knew better than that.

  I had never met any cultist who struck me as terribly bright.

  I continued searching the shadowy reaches of the Whitesnake stronghold. I found my awareness blocked from the center by the presence of bright light. Few shadows survived in that place, and the impressions I had through them were scant indeed, but I recognized the gleaming scales of ivory and gold that covered every surface. Whitesnake sanctum sanctorum.

  I had been in a similar place once before, in the company of a number of Knights of the New Temple, busily engaged in the business of thwarting the Whitesnakes’ efforts to incarnate the demon they worshiped and thus vastly increase their cult’s power in CrossTown. The NeoTemplars didn’t want that any more than I did. I had concentrated on banishing the avatar, while they had concentrated on putting as many Whitesnakes as they could find to the sword.

  I had my talents and specialties; the NeoTemplars had theirs.

  Remembering that made me hope that at least some of my old Legion had broken through and reached Vayne. An invasion of NeoTemplars would do wonders for my morale, not to mention brighten my future considerably. In the meantime, I didn’t plan on displaying any hubris in my expectations. The gods help those who help themselves, and then only when they’re in the mood. Considering the current situation, I’d be just as happy if any gods concerned stayed at a safe distance. The gods who showed would most likely not be on my side.

  I explored further along the confines of the labyrinth through my strengthening shadow senses, attempting to discover a Way out not enfolded by the wall of serpents. I didn’t find one, but I did find an area behind the Whitesnake Holy of Holie
s that held something interesting. I counted twelve prisoners chained to wheeled tables in a large room lit by smoky torches. The torches were for atmosphere, evidently, since the cult had florescent lighting elsewhere.

  Trying to reason out Whitesnake motivation would be an exercise in futility from a rationalist perspective. The benefit of those torches, though, looked like a happy circumstance for me. Enough shadows danced in that place for me to see into it intermittently. Fortunately, the torches had been set in sconces to burn above eye level, so under each table stood a large pool of shadow—enough to provide easy doorways.

  I searched through the surrounding areas of shadow, hoping to acquire some solid idea of the layout as well as discover how seriously the Whitesnakes took their internal security. I found only two doorways leading into the room with the prisoners. The first door (a concealed, ornate affair all done up in snake scales of gold, silver, and mother-of-pearl) opened out into the Whitesnake sanctum. The only other exit led to a short corridor blocked by a warded, heavy door and full of entirely too many lowbrows in dark robes laden with weaponry. I expected that the prisoners there were meant to fuel an upcoming ceremony, but I also expected their schedule to change with the demise of their High Priest.

  I considered three things: first, the Whitesnake schedule had to be as thoroughly ruined as only the sudden death of a central participant of a crucial ceremony can ruin a schedule; second, the Whitesnakes seemed to be deliberately isolating the prisoners; and third, I had no intention of leaving any prisoners for the Whitesnakes to butcher for their own amusement. If those people were going to die, they deserved the opportunity to die on their feet, fighting, with the chance to take some of their captors with them.

  If I’m for anything, it’s the ability of the individual to resist the imposition of a collective will—particularly when that collective will happens to be driven by a bunch of robed, snake-loving, demon-worshipping, human-sacrificing power mongers.

  I considered my strategy carefully before making my move. I would have to free the prisoners quickly, organize them, and then we would need to take something valuable enough to the Whitesnakes that they would be forced to deal with us rather than simply overwhelming us. Fortunately, the most likely place to find something like that would be in the sanctum, right next door to the holding room where the prisoners were kept. If we couldn’t find something valuable enough to force them to negotiate, we would at least have the satisfaction of taking out whatever top hierarchy remained in the sanctum and defiling their Holy of Holies. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. The more time I spent thinking about alternatives, the more initiative I would lose. Moving fast and keeping the enemy off balance seemed the most prudent course. I had better odds betting on audacity rather than analysis.

  The largest patches of shadow stretched beneath the tables. I took the time to build a link between the shadow where I stood and the shadow under a table with a good perspective on the guards. I knelt, opened the Way, sank into the pooling shadows of the cave and rose from the shadows pooling under the table.

  One of the guards had good eyes. He glanced in my direction, did a double take, and I trapped his gaze in mine. His mouth, opening to yell a warning when I laid my will upon him, closed with a snap. My will driving his actions, he turned and caught his partner around the neck from behind in a strangle-hold. His partner kicked and struggled as I crabbed sideways, freed myself from the confines of the table, and rose to my feet.

  Unfortunately, I had taken the smaller of the two guards, who looked to be losing his hold on his partner. I stepped around in front of them, caught the second guard’s gaze, and dragged him down into a dreamless sleep after a short, sharp struggle. The first guard I had taken followed more quietly. The followers of madmen and their cults, by nature, tend to be malleable. Cult leaders and other madmen, also by nature, tend to be just the opposite. I wasn’t entirely sure if the second guard had been higher in the ranks or just a little crazier than his partner. By that time it didn’t matter, since he hadn’t been quite crazy enough to stop me from mastering him.

  I focused my gaze on the prisoners. I met apathetic expressions of pure misery, stretched over beautiful, arrogant features never meant to display such pain. They were all Faerie, of the high Faerie kind called the Sidhe.

  I hadn’t expected that particular development. I had more than half suspected that the golden hours put up by the Whitesnakes as bounty on my head were ultimately of Faerie origin. If that were so, what were the Whitesnakes doing with Faerie prisoners? This turn of events played hell with my theory.

  Each prisoner lay on his or her back, spread-eagled by four chains attached to each table and terminating in manacles clamped over wrists and ankles. Those bindings had the dull color of iron. The flesh of the captives around the manacles had swollen and cracked, until a thick, clear fluid suppurated out to smear the iron bindings and the surface of the tables.

  I didn’t see that they would be much help, given the effect of the iron on Faerie flesh. That didn’t matter, though. I had no intention of leaving them bound.

  No longer restricted to glimpses caught through dancing shadow, I saw that the surfaces of the tables were concave and split by deep grooves that radiated out from slightly off center and curved down past the lip of the tables’ concavities. Outrage fought with disgust over the efficiency of the Whitesnakes, who had carefully thought to provide channels for the blood of their sacrifices. Without a doubt, each table would have a place already prepared in the sanctum, complete with receptacles to catch the blood as it spilled.

  I bent to examine the manacles more closely. If they had been hammered on by a smith, or welded, or locked electronically, or something similarly paranoid, I would have had problems. But I figured otherwise. The Whitesnakes were nothing if not efficient. They would want to easily remove the bodies and clean the tables for reuse on another set of prisoners. The prisoner closest to me seemed to be suffering slightly less than the rest. Perhaps he had been stronger; perhaps he had been bound last; perhaps he had blood tainted by nasty human vermin like myself. At any rate, he’d probably be in better shape to give me a hand should we be surprised by an impatient Whitesnake.

  As I hovered over him, he opened lambent eyes and regarded me. “What are you doing here, sorcerer?”

  I glanced at his face. He looked familiar. “Trying to release you.”

  He shuddered against the pain of the iron. He spoke in a whisper. Yet he managed to keep his dignity. “You are no great friend of the Fae.”

  I shrugged. The irony did not escape me. I still couldn’t place him. “I am no great enemy, either. Silverhand and I have had our differences. Titania’s errand boy Fetch is out for my head. But I have never had anything bad to say about Lugh, or the Dagda, or any of the rest, really.”

  I expected locks—I found instead screw clamp quick releases on the back side of the manacles. With a prisoner bound at all four points, the screw clamps would be unreachable. They’d have to use something else if they ever had a prisoner with more than four limbs. I opened the first and moved to his other hand.

  As I freed his second hand, he sat up and cradled his raw wrists in his lap. “What’s between you and Silverhand?”

  I could feel myself flush. “We were drunk. There was a woman. It was all too damned silly, in retrospect.”

  He chuckled as I freed his feet. “Maeve likes to start trouble. It’s her nature. I hadn’t heard that Silverhand had chosen to hold a grudge, though.”

  My head snapped up as I recognized his voice. “Oisin? Damn! You looked more human at Lugh’s place.”

  He grinned ruefully. “I felt more human, too. I’m further along these days. The land has been changing me.”

  I turned to the next table.

  “Wait,” Oisin said. He pointed gingerly at a table further down. “Creyn next. He’s a healer.”

  That made sense. I moved to Creyn’s table, began working on his bi
ndings. As I did so I saw that several of the nearby Sidhe had opened their eyes to regard me—some with hostility, some with surprise, a few with hope.

  Even as I freed Creyn, I watched the wounds on his hands and feet healing, the flesh closing and smoothing. He turned immediately to Oisin. I focused on the nearest table and began working as quickly as I could. The more than mortally beautiful Sidhe woman I freed favored me with a smile of thanks as the last binding fell away. I saw Oisin further down, working at another’s bindings, his teeth set in a snarl of pain. I moved to work with him as Creyn bent to healing the woman I had freed.

  As we moved to the next, I watched the pain on Oisin’s face, though his hands were steady as they came into contact with the iron shackles. He had wrapped his hands in cloth torn from the robe of one of the sleeping Whitesnakes. It didn’t seem to help much.

  “The change is even further along than I thought.”

  “The price I pay,” he said between clenched teeth. “If I hadn’t let the land of the Fae recognize me and enter me, I would have been dust by now. Before, it sustained me only as long as I stayed in the confines of Faerie.”

  “How did you come to be here, Oisin?”

  He took a moment to reply. “I was taken. So were the others.”

  I frowned, helped the Sidhe on the table to sit up. We had freed close to half of them by that time, and Creyn moved behind us tirelessly, the skin of his face stretched tight across the bone as he expended his meager strength on healing the captives as we released them. “Were you traveling?”

  “We were taken in Faerie. It was a raid, pure and simple.”

  “I didn’t think the Whitesnakes had that much chutzpah.”

  He shook his head angrily. “They didn’t wear Whitesnake colors. They wore the old colors of the Red Branch. Someone had to have given them passage. We were deep in Faerie. Without help, no human band could have penetrated so far.”

  “You were on Lugh’s land?”

  “I was visiting Nuada.”