by Jo Clayton
Hampered by the narrow space and nervous about getting too close to Maksim, Amortis struck at them, hit the sled hard enough to slam it into the backwall, hit it again when it rebounded. And again.
The elementals kept trying to crush the shield, pushing that futile attack because Maksim wouldn’t release them. They pressed more substance into their fists and beat on the shield, they grew knife-edged talons on feet and hands, gouged at the shield, they oozed themselves up toward the top of the shield sphere, oozed back down again when they couldn’t get a hold on it, their stony substance stretching and flowing like cold taffy.
The changers went wheeling and whipping through the elementals, they scooped huge gouts of earthfire out of them and flung it at Maksim, flung it with such power it seemed to reach him almost before it left their hands. He deflected it, but he was linked too closely to the elementals to escape their pain, their fury, the heat got at him, the fire raised blisters on his face and arms.
The exchange went on and on, neither side seriously affecting the other. Maksim kept waiting for the mist to act, but nothing seemed to be happening on the sled. It slammed against the wall, bounced against the back of the dais, it groaned and whined, it came close to capsizing, but the shield never faltered. He cast up a deflector of his own to carry the changers’ attack away from him and away from the chair so its stone wouldn’t melt from under him, he slapped his right foot on the stone, slapped his left foot on the stone, yelled a wordless defiance that filled the chamber, set himself firm as stone, set himself for a last throw, unknotting the trap-web about Amortis, dragging it back into himself, dragging an unwilling Amortis down from the dome, holding her shivering on the dais beside him, her mass compacted until she was a mere ten feet tall, a vaguely bipedal shape of red-gold white-gold light. Sullen light. He muttered to himself, pulling from his sorceror’s trickbag the preparatory syllables that would set the points for the wild web he was planning to spin.
Sometime later he happened to glance round, no particular reason for it, it was just something he did; he saw black, dull black shirt and trousers, threadbare, wrinkled, a round graceless form silhouetted against the flare of the deflected earthfire. Tungjii. Watching. It jolted him. What’s that one doing here? Never mind. Concentrate, Maksim, don’t give himmer a crack for hisser thumbs. Forget himmer, you’ve got them in your hands, you can throw them anywhere you want once you’re ready. Ready ready, almost ready…
His voice boomed in a reverberant chant, filling the chamber with sound so powerful it was a tangible THING, the intricately linked syllables weaving a fine gold web about the sled…
SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS
DAK WOLOMENAS WOLOMENAS SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS
DAK AMEGARTAS GARTAS GAR TASSSS
SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS PAGASE PAGASE AMEGARTA GAR
SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS KNUSI AIKHMAN
SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS IDIOS NOMAN
HROUSTITAKA HREOS
SEY NO TAS
HREOS MEGARITAN…
Danny Blue grunted as he slammed into one of the legs, then into Brann; he rolled across the table, contorted his body to avoid the sensor panel, finished for the moment stuffed into the corner where the windbreak curved round one of the front legs. The sled shuddered, scraped against the wall, stone shrieking, as it rubbed against stone. He ignored the battering and focused on water; the shield he’d woven about the sled wasn’t difficult to hold in place, it just required a steady flow of power which Brann and the changers supplied. A tube, that was what he needed, a tube and some molecular pumps. Tithe, hmm, same weave as the shield, don’t want Maksim cutting it…
Brann wrapped one arm about a table leg and reached for Dan’s ankle so she could keep up the feed. It was hot and stuffy and darkly twilight inside the sphere, the sensor panel provided a dim bluish glow and the feed pipe was a soft yellow, neither of them made much impression on the darkness. She and Dan weren’t choking on fouled air because Yaril and Jaril fed them fresh along with the godfire, but that only kept the atmosphere bearable, it didn’t make it pleasant. The godfire feed was spasmodic now (she smoothed it out before sending it on into Dan); the changers were moving too fast and too erratically to maintain a constant flow. They took turns as they’d done that time on the mountain, plowing through the elementals, collecting from them, splashing earthfire at Maksim, snapping the feedpipe down to Brann, pumping her as full as she could hold, doing this over and over. When the earthfire flooded into her, when it sat seething in her, it wasn’t quite as agonizing as godfire, but it was bad enough, it was like gulping down mouthfuls of boiling acid and it never got easier. She endured the pain because she had to, Danny Blue depended on her, young Koti had called in a promise-and most of all she was no longer ready to die, there were too many other promises she had to keep, promises she had made to herself. She endured and grew stronger not weaker as the torment went on.
Her eyes began to burn. She blinked repeatedly, tried to focus, but she could see less and less as the minutes passed. Her skin burned. She touched her face, held her fingertips close to her eyes and saw that they were stained. She touched them to her tongue, tasted warm salty wetness. Blood. Her tongue began to burn. The pain from, the earthfire was hiding… what? She fought to set that internal burning aside and feel about with immaterial fingers for what else was happening.
Smoky rotting vegetation smell, faint but there. A feeling of humidity, swampiness. Hunger. Now that she was listening, it shouted at her, HUNGER. “Dan,” she cried. Her voice was hoarse, her throat felt as if something was scraping it raw. “Dan, there’s something in here with us. What is it? DAN!”
Danny Blue heard Brann saying something, but he had no time nor attention to give her. He Reshaped the Pattern of the spherical shield (maintaining the shield in place and carefully separated from his other activities), and used the new Pattern to construct a closed cylinder; he poured more energy into it, lengthening it. He inserted the lead end into the shield, eased it through, then began the exacting and difficult task of forcing the cylinder through the thick elastic rind of earth elementals.
Brann realized he wasn’t listening and dropped the attempt to reach him. She took her hand from his ankle and clamped it briefly around her own arm, felt something like a greasy film spread around it. Scowling, she wiped her hand on her trousers, then closed it around Dan’s ankle so she could maintain the feed. She’s got a reading from the thing: an intensification of that feral hunger, no sense of intelligence behind it, only will, a predator’s will. Cautiously she reached out, pulled life from the thing, drinking it in as once she’d drunk the life of a black malouch, there was the same sense of wildness, greed, hunger. And fear as the thing felt the danger from her.
It wrenched free of her and Danny, fled toward the top of the sphere. The air curdled up there as it compacted its misty substance, as far from her as it could get.
Brann broke from Danny again. Holding the table leg she struggled to her feet and reached for that mist.
With a kind of silent scream it flowed desperately away from her hand until it managed to ooze down between the windshield and the shieldsphere where she had no way of reaching it. Satisfied for the moment, she dropped back, settled herself as comfortably as she could while the table continued to rock wildly, to judder like a worm with hiccups, to slam between the wall and the dais. Her legs wrapped about the table’s leg, she spared a moment to heal the damage from the mist, Dan first, then herself, then she went back to feeding fire to him. She didn’t know what he was doing, only that it must be important if the intensity of his concentration meant anything.
Danny felt the small pains but ignored them. Sometime later he felt the upheaval when Brann interfered with his body as she healed the skin burns and the eye-damage; he ignored that too. He drove the tube up until it was clear of the elementals, bent it in a quarter circle and expanded it swiftly toward the nearest wall, holding it steady despite the careening of the sled. When it jammed against the sto
ne, he heated the head end hotter than Amortis’ fire and melted the tube through; his Sight was cut off by the elementals, but he could See down the tube and expand that Sight a few degrees as soon as one end was outside the temple. He sent it arching down over the edge of the island, down and down until it reached the gray seawater. When it dippйd below the surface, he felt the cold shock of that water, shouted his triumph, “I’ve got you, Maks, I’ve got you now.” He heard Brann’s exclamation, ignored it and grew side pipes along the tube in an ascending spiral; grinning, he popped in the tiny pumps and started them sucking. “Brann, tell the changers there’s going to be a lot of water in here in just a moment. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but it’ll be wild.”
He reached again, sending an imperious call for water eIementals, felt an immediate, almost frightening surge as they answered him. Answered him in the hundreds. Came compressed, swimming up the tube with the water the pumps were hauling.
Water and water elementals spurted from the side-pipes, sprayed copiously over the earth elementals crawling weak and angry over the shield sphere. Converting them to a slippery mindless sludge that dripped, ropy and viscid, off the sphere.
Light flared through the shield, red light, gold light, light hard and bright as diamond.
Settsimaksimin and Amortis stood together, dais and chair, Maksim half sunk in her shimmering translucent female body. Black sorceror body, Black Heart in that Rose of Light, chant reverberating thunderously through the great chamber…
SEY NO KRISE SEY NO KORON
KATAMOU NO KATAM0000U
Lines of light webbed around the sled, closing on it. They were caught like fish in a tightening purse seine…
SEY NO KATALAM SEY NO PALAPSAM EKHO EKHO PALAPSAM
Dan shuddered under the power of that chant. Amortis and BinYAHtii and Settsimaksimin plaited like a gilded braid, their unstable meld building to a climax that was terrifyingly close. For a moment he sat passive, helpless, Ahzurdan exhausted riding up hill to the Chained God and the trap inside the ship…
SEY NO EKHO SEY SEEY UUHHH EY NO NO NO…
The water elementals flowed up the dais, pressed around Maksim and the Fire, not quite touching either, disturbing him so much it broke into the drive of the chant. Didn’t stop it, but the chant faltered and some of the power went out of it. BinYAHtii’s dull red glow flickered.
A smallish dark figure strolled up the burning air, moved easily and untouched through the ring of water, the shell of fire and stepped onto the half-melted chair arm. Thngjii balanced there a moment, then rested hisser hand on Maksim’s arm near the wrist, that was all, then heesh was somewhere else.
Settsimaksimin’s body jolted, his voice broke; he gave a small aborted cry, crumpled, tumbling off the chair and down the stairs to land sprawled on his face on the floor.
Ball lightning and jagged firelines snapped across and across the Dome Chamber, rebounding from the walls, bouncing from the floor and ceiling as Maksim’s stored magic disrharged from stone and air and his tormented flesh, squeezed its tangible elements into hot threads that braided themselves in a rising rope of fire that went rushing up and up, bursting through the dome, shattering it into shards which fell like glass knives onto the stone, glancing off the shield Dan kept in place about the sled until the worst of the storm was past. Amortis solidified into her thirty meter female form, looking wildly about and fled after the fleeing remnants of Maksim’s magic.
17. The End Of The End.
SCENE: Maksim sprawled on the floor, dead or dying. The changers stood beside him, once more in their bipedal forms. The table settled to the floor. Brann and Danny Blue, bruised, battered, weary, climbed off it and started around the ruined dais.
Danny Blue stood beside the crumpled body. “Looks like his heart quit on him. Old Tungjii found his crack.”
Brann frowned, disturbed as much by the dispassionate dismissing tone of those words as by the words themselves. She touched Maksim’s hand with her toe, feeling manipulated and not liking it very much. She’d helped destroy a man she might have liked a lot if things were other than they were. Before the eidolon appeared (a hollow image, yet with enough of his personality in it to intrigue her) she’d known him mostly through Ahzurdan’s comments, yes, and his attacks on her, which seemed to give her no choice; if she wanted to live she had to stop him, but the rise of the landfolk had shaken her badly. Abandoning a harvest only half-gathered with the winter hunger that might mean? leaving their houses open to plunder, their stock handy for the nearest light-finger? doing it to protect one man, the man that ruled them? In all of her travels, in all of her reading, she’d never heard of a king (not even the generally mild and intelligent kings of her home island Croaldhu), emperor, protector of the realm, whatever the ruler called himself, whose peasantry volunteered (volunteered!)
their bodies and their blood to keep him from harm. Nobles certainly, they had a powerful interest in who sat the local throne. Knights and their like, for gold, for the blood in it, for what they called their honor (being a true son of Phras, Chandro boasted hundreds of those stories about this one and that one among his ancestors and she’d heard them all). Armies had fought legendary battles but not for love of their leaders; they had their pay, their rights to plunder, their friends fighting beside them and the headsman’s axe waiting for the losers. Peasants though! What peasants got from a war was hunger and harder work, ruined crops, dead stock, burnt houses while their landlords refilled war-starved coffers out of peasant sweat and peasant hide. She frowned down at Maksim, caught her breath as the fingers by her foot moved a little. She dropped to her knees beside him. “Dan, help me turn him over.”
“why?,
“Because I damn well refuse to be some miserable meeching god’s pet executioner. If you don’t want to help, get out of the way.”
He shrugged. “It’s your game, Bramble. You take his feet, I’ll get his shoulders.”
When Maksim was on his back, the velvet and linen robes smoothed about him, Brann eased BinYAHtii’s gold chain over his head and tried to lift the talisman away without touching the stone; this close, it seemed to radiate danger. It rocked a little but wouldn’t come free. She laid the chain on his chest, the heavy links clunking with oily opulence; she looked at them with distaste, then used both hands on the broad gold frame fitted around the stone, pulling as hard as she could. The pendant lifted away from his chest with a sucking sound, a smell of burned meat. She swallowed, swallowed again as her stomach threatened to rebel, thew the thing away, not caring where or how it landed. “Yaril,” she said, “take a look inside, will you? I think I’d better not try this blind.”
“Gotcha, Bramble, just a sec.”
Yaril shifted form and flowed into the body, flowed out a moment later. She didn’t bother talking, she leaned against Brann’s side, transferred images to her that
Brann used as she bent over Maksim, planted her hands on his chest and worked to repair the extensive damage inside and out, heart, arteries, brain, every weakness, every lesion, tumor, sign of disease, everything Yaril had seen and passed on to her.
Dan watched her for a while until he grew bored with the tableau whose only change was the slow shifting of Brann’s eyes. He strolled around behind the wreck of the dais, brought the table back, parked it close to Brann’s feet, looked around for something else to kill some time. Jaril was pacing lazily about, sniffing at things, a huge brindle mastiff. Yaril was glued to Brann and didn’t seem likely to move from her. The clouds must have begun breaking up outside because a ray of light came through the jagged hole in the dome and stabbed down at the floor, the edge of it catching the pendant, waking a few glitters in it. He walked across to it and stood looking down at it. The thing made him nervous. That was what the Chained God sent him to fetch, good dog that he was. He didn’t want to touch it, but the compulsion rose in him until he was choking. Furious and helpless, he bent down, took hold of the chain and stood with the pendant dangling at arm
’s length. He looked at it, ran the tip of his tongue over dry lips, remembering all too clearly the hole burned in Malcsim’s chest.
There was a subdued humming, the air seemed to harden about him, the chamber got suddenly dark. “OHHHH…
… SHIIIT!” He stumbled, went to his knees before the control panel in the starship, caught his balance and bounded to his feet. His arm jerked out and up, the talisman was snatched away, the chain nearly breaking two of his fingers. BinYAHtii hung a moment in midair, then it vanished, taken somewhere inside the god. And I hope it gives you what it gave Maksim, he muttered under his breath. “Send me back,” he said aloud. “You don’t need me any more.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” The multiple echoing voice was bland and guileless as a cat with cream on its whiskers. “No, indeed.”
Dan opened his mouth to yell a protest, a demand, something, was snapped to the room where he had lived with Brans and the others. He was conscious just long enough to realize where he was, then the god dumped him on the bed and put him to sleep.
Bran sat on her heels, sighed with weariness. “Done,” she said, “He’ll be under for a while longer.” She rubbed at her back, looked around. “Where’s Dan?”
hut came trotting over, shifted. “He picked up BinYAHtii and something snatched him. If I guessed, I’d say the Chained God got him. The god really wanted that thing.”
“Looks like it didn’t want us.”
“Luck maybe. Old Tungjii wiggling his thumbs in our favor for once. Say the god couldn’t grab us all, we were too scattered.”
“Hmm. If it’s luck, let’s not push it.” She got to her feet. “What about the table? Will it fly again?”