Something pinged on his awareness, and Zhi turned, in his smoke-humanoid form, which he favored as being nowhere near as fragile as a flesh-and-blood body, and scanned the northern horizon. Shadeslore, he said, quietly, touching the bond between them gently. Something comes. Make your people move more quickly.
To physical eyes, it was little more than a dark speck against the endless blue sky. To his Veil senses, however, it was blackness and hunger and rage, a black inversion that sucked at the sky and pulled at the ground, seeking to devour all life around it, and it was huge, arcing black lines spidering away from a central, sphere-like body; even at this distance, the sphere looked the size of the sun in the noon-day sky, and the jagged lines of energy that scratched at the heavens took up a quarter of the sky. It has grown since its birth.
Illa’zhi had never felt fear in his existence. He wasn’t sure if that was the sensation he was experiencing now, or not. Mostly, there was anger. Rage, that this entity existed in this full, rich world, which he was only just beginning to be able to appreciate properly. Illa’zhi had been summoned hundreds of times by magi over the centuries. Every time, it had been to kill. I have an enemy. Kill him. My lord has enemies. Go kill them. Our nation has enemies. Go forth and slaughter them at this time and this location. Always tightly, closely bargained. No one had ever given him more than his due, and Illa’zhi was a creature of punctilious honor. He never took more than he was entitled to, either. Erida had thus, been a surprise, giving more in her first bargain than his services had been worth. At first, he’d assumed it was because she had misjudged his worth, which was . . . somewhat complimentary, but also could have reflected ignorance on her part. He’d expected to be able to run rough-shod over her in their second bargain, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that a soul-bond changed both parties. Go kill my enemies had become help me protect us from our enemies. And that us included him.
Illa’zhi shifted his form, in open challenge to the vast power bearing down upon the city. At least it will be a fight worthy of the name, he thought. And if I die, I will pour all of my energy down the bond and into Shadeslore, lest any drop of me be consumed to make that abomination greater. It is Nameless, I think. It is mindless, certainly, beyond instinct and hatred. I fight. I consume. But I have a Name, a mind, and a self. I am more than reflex and destruction.
The godling surely sensed him; it paused for a moment, in its inexorable approach. Come and fight! Illa’zhi invited. This place is mine, not yours! Come and fight me, if you will!
The tendrils lengthened, and now it looked like nothing so much as a ball of black plasma, floating towards the city. Waves of madness emanated from it, and wherever the long tendrils touched, Illa’zhi could see . . . sparks going out. The creature was consuming the life-force of the city-dwellers as it passed overhead . . . and then black pieces of it broke off. Fell to the ground, and crawled, entering the dead bodies of those it left in its wake.
Shadeslore! Shield yourself! Shield everyone here! Illa’zhi’s fury was enormous, and prompted, in part, by the fact that the creature was ignoring him, the open challenge he’d given, in favor of . . . destroying humans. His rage wasn’t that they were helpless. Rather, the humans being grazed upon weren’t worth fighting. There was no risk in fighting them. No consequence. Illa’zhi could have snuffed them, himself, but there was no value in it. One could grow in size by eating a million blades of grass, but there was no growth in capacity from that. One learned nothing if there was not a true battle, true adversity. Illa’zhi tore through the city, feeling human sparks flee in his path, and he churned towards the entity that tore at the sky like a black hole, destroying everything in its wake, only to bring those lives back . . . as twisted images of itself.
Building sides and windows shattered in Zhi’s wake, and still the humans ran. But at least those fleeing him, would not be devoured. Not by this thing, nor by the ghul it raised.
Along an east-west street now, trash-bins and a couple of motorcars flung skyward in Zhi’s haste, the air around him darkening as he advanced on the destroyer. The sun, still riding near its zenith, seemed to darken. To turn blood-red and bloated in the heavens, all the sky around it darkening into twilight colors, as the black lightning arced out, again and again around him . . . and then, at random, struck him, too. Searing pain as it reached for his essence, but Illa’zhi wrenched the arc of power. Devoured it, while it attempted to devour him.
Dim awareness of bodies, moving and writhing around them on the ground as they closed on each other. Thousands of ghul, pouring through the streets, drawn to their master’s power . . . and then, as if diverted onto a fresh scent, they began to move away, with all the alien power and grace of a spirit, moving their human bodies as if they’d acquired new joints and muscles. Leaping up and climbing buildings, breaking windows and ducking inside to hunt the living. More food for their master, eaten by ten thousand hungry mouths.
And yet . . . as Illa’zhi reared up, and struggled to engulf the entity, fought it, bit off pieces of it as it contended with him . . . for all its strength, he scented weakness, too. So many deaths had invigorated it. So many sacrifices, after a fashion. But ten thousand hungry mouths were difficult to control. Its attention was . . . fragmented. Shadeslore!
They are coming for us! Her voice was sharp.
Do not kill them! Not until you have no other choice! They require its power, they require its attention! He could see through her mortal eyes, the bodies moving towards the gates in the fence that surrounded the academy. The bars were six inches apart. Enough to keep out a human. But not a ghul. They compressed themselves, contorted unnaturally, and began to slide through, and then ran along the ground on three limbs for greater speed. Shadeslore set herself, and raised a wall of pure force around herself and the students nearest her, while the ghul began to attack the trucks in which the students and other professors had shut themselves. Punching through windows and diving in. Screams of fear, followed by magic, as the sorcerers fought back.
Illa’zhi held onto Shadeslore’s mind, tenaciously. His anchor-point in this realm, one of six. The other five were over a hundred miles away, and one of them wasn’t even a conduit. Just a bond of love and faith. Belief. It was going to have to be enough. If he failed now, the entire city would become ghul. Shadeslore might escape, but all those around her—even the jotun!—might well become ghul. He tore and shredded his opponent, and was stabbed by the black lightning, over and over again. Every mouthful of his enemy that he consumed, he could feel boiling inside him, as if it, in turn, threatened to consume him from within. He extended his wind. Extended himself. Felt a hundred ghul bodies loft up into his air, only to be flung aside like rag-dolls. And engulfed the entity. Swallowed it.
It fought him, still. It fought from within him, trying to shear him apart. Nothing but mindless malevolence, and so much power. Illa’zhi writhed in agony. Too much, he thought, grimly, and prepared to sever his bonds to Shadeslore and the children. To banish himself to the Veil, where, if he dissipated, he might stand a chance of coming back together again, for there was no consequence there . . . and if he died in the transition, the Veil would take his energies, and the godlings, and Shadeslore, again, would be safe.
“No!” Erida shouted, and blasted the closest ten or so ghul with a column of fire. Her more favored, subtler methods would have no effect; ghul did not breathe. They were dead meat, nothing more. Freezing the blood in their veins might slow them, but to end them? It had to be decapitation, or fire. Nothing else worked. Horribly, she recognized some of these people. There, the man in the beige fatigues, with the red beret, marked with the eagle and the Star of David? The Judean commander who’d pulled her into a tank just two hours ago. She recognized the dark eyes, the neat goatee that would fit beneath a gas mask, and blasted him, too. Illa’zhi! Light of the dead! You are mine and I am yours and you will not leave! She clung to their soul-bond, calling him by his Name, over and over. Reinforcing who he was, and what he was, and
then his sense snapped, and flowed along the soul-cord.
Fast as thought, the efreet appeared before her, not in his towering, two-mile cyclone form, but, at first, in his solidified-smoke body . . . and then he collapsed at her feet, and his body shifted again. The normal jet-black faded away, leaving olive skin. Dark hair, a day’s growth of beard. But the eyes remained the same, glitteringly yellow, but heavy-lidded and dazed as he looked up at her. Illa’zhi’s mortal form had been patterned off the males he saw around Erida, and those he saw most often in her thoughts. He was thus about five foot eight in height, compactly built, with Chaldean features. Maybe a hint of Carthaginian, for flavor. He had also never assumed his full-human form in public before. Shadeslore. I do not think I can hold it.
“Yes, you can!” Erida blasted another handful of ghul off one of the trucks, even as the student sorcerers, incanting in unison, tore the wrought-iron fence-posts out of the ground. Rendered them red-hot. And sent them, like spears, through the bodies of the ghul, bending them back into arches. Stapling the ghul to the ground. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would keep them pinned for a time.
Illa’zhi’s eyes actually rolled up in his head, and his body passed out, spasming briefly. Illa’zhi!
No answer. The bond wasn’t broken, but the efreet was still locked in battle with the entity he’d consumed. Trying not to let it belch forth, free once more. You stay with me! Erida told him, sharply. You’re not leaving! Fight it! If you take it to the Veil while it’s still somewhat alive in you, we don’t know what will happen. There is a chance, that having done that, it will always have been there. Hold fast!
Off to her left, she saw a pack of fenris fighting the ghul who were pouring in over a low wall. The ghul only stood a chance through pure numbers; the fenris were picking them off as they slid over the edge, and biting the damned things in half, shearing them apart at the waist. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d heard one of the huge wolves complain about the taste. Off to her right, two jotun had drawn their melee weapons—one had a seven-foot-long sword in his hands, and the other, an axe with a two-foot wide head. Both of them were dealing with the ghul with grim brutality, kicking the creatures back with a booted foot before lopping off a head, and moving on to the next one. The trouble is, there’s . . . about ten thousand more ghul in the city, if Illa’zhi’s vision was correct, Erida thought. They’re not all coming here. This is just . . . hah, just a couple thousand or so. The rest are rampaging everywhere. We have to get ahead of this. Somehow. And our best weapon is passed out on the ground at my feet.
The ghul just kept coming, but they seemed . . . less organized. Each had probably received a fragment of the mad godling, Erida realized, distantly. As a normal ghul received a spirit to animate its decaying flesh. These fragments, however, had been meant to feed the godling, and to allow it to grow in strength from what they ate. But even with their master dying, they still each had the seed inside of them. The seeds could be banished, perhaps? Except that that would send these fragments to the Veil. Where they have never been before, but then would always have been . . . I’m not sure I have the power, without Zhi to draw on. And I don’t think I have the right. Battle wasn’t really the place for heavy philosophy, but Erida had a horrible feeling that if she made the wrong decision here, she could destroy the Veil, somehow. Or her own world’s future. Conservative tactics, then. Need more information.
In a break in the fighting, she got a jotun to heft Illa’zhi’s body into one of the trucks. Managed to find a satellite phone, and tried to get ahold of the local Legion legate. There was no getting through, but she could see, in the distance, Judean attack helicopters and Persian ornithopters both taking to the air, and, for once, not firing on each other. They were all firing missiles down into the city streets. Erida put a hand to her mouth. “They’re going to have to burn the city,” she said, in dawning realization. “They’re going to burn it to the ground. We have to evacuate all the people left alive.” She spun, and looked at the handful of professors and students with her. “All of you? One of the jotun will go with you, as your escort. The rest of us? We’re going to go, neighborhood to neighborhood, and try to get people out.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” one of the professors told her, bravely enough.
“Protect the students, and protect the Magi’s legacy,” Erida snapped at him. “Drive. Go!”
So for the next eight hours, Erida, the jotun, and the fenris canvassed as far to the south and west as they could. They didn’t dare head east. That way led to Persian forces, as well as ghul. They found pockets of Roman resistance. Parts of Chaldean neighborhoods that hadn’t been entirely overrun. But mostly, they found bodies. Hundreds of bodies, with their eyes put out, throats bitten, entrails gnawed. The jotun were splattered from head to toe with blood, and the fenris’ white coats were matted with gore. And the ghul, whenever they found a pack feasting on the bodies of their latest kill, would turn, snarl, and throw themselves, with alien, acrobatic grace at the jotun, clinging like monkeys on the giants. The jotun set their shoulders and peeled the possessed corpses off them. And then beheaded them.
By the end of the day, they’d rescued about two thousand survivors, and the city was burning behind them as they began the long march back to the Wall. And Erida was surprised to see the battle-hardened jotun landsknechten around the fire that night, putting their brutish faces in their enormous hands, and struggling not to weep with exhaustion and horror. They were used to having to kill grendels and ettin. They were accustomed to killing other mercenaries and the standing armies of the Persians. They weren’t used to killing people who looked like civilians.
For her part, she looked back over her shoulder only once, and saw the ziggurat of Nabu, built twenty-five hundred years ago, being blasted by fire from ornithopters and helicopters alike, as both sides attempted to deal with the ghul. She turned her face away. It’s survived this long. It’ll survive another day. It’ll survive this stupid war. I’d pray to the dead gods for it, but that’s a waste of breath, isn’t it?
The next day, she was reunited with Illa’zhi, who’d finally regained consciousness, and with it, cautiously, his smoke-form. He approached her, moving with surprising slowness, and put his head down on her shoulder for a moment. In public, no less. Are you all right?
No, he admitted. It no longer tries to consume me. It is dead. But its energy is . . . vile. Mad. I feel it straining at my thoughts. A desire to consume, to devour, without restraint. Without control. Everything around me . . . looks consumable. Even you. I should return to the Veil, and expel it.
If you think that is what’s best . . . .
I do not know what is best! He sounded almost peevish. I have never before consumed anything like this. It is . . . most uncomfortable.
Are you saying that you have a stomachache? Erida rubbed a hand between his shoulder blades, trying not to smile.
When you next consume a mad god, I will not laugh at you, Zhi informed her with hauteur. I may ask, instead, if you require a glass of water with bicarbonate of soda, but I will not laugh at you.
Erida’s shoulders shook, once, but she bit down on the smile. Considering that they were in the middle of a camp of two or three thousand people, most of whom had been hunted through the streets of their home city by ravening undead propelled by a mad god, just twenty-four hours before, laughter would be inappropriate. So instead, she called on decades of diplomatic training, covered her face, and managed to turn it all into a snort. Come on. Let’s see if we can at least siphon some of the energy off, somehow.
In the end, he did have to return to the Veil. He returned a week later, and told Lassair, frankly, I have no idea how you have managed to digest what you’ve consumed.
I put it down to my sunny disposition. But in truth, I have only consumed madness once. And . . . with equal truth . . . I do not think I have yet digested what I consumed. Neither has Saraid. We’re unsure what Loki’s son absorbed, if anything. Niðhoggr s
urely served as a grounding rod, as well. I’ve never had to carry the burden alone, fire-that-destroys. Allow Erida to assist you.
I would not give this madness to her, or any of the children. I will contain this. I will overcome this. But I will not let it contaminate them.
Ianuarius 2, 1989 AC
Adam glanced across the room at his wife. She was wrapped up in her swan cloak—dies Martis had rolled around again—and had a baby perched in her lap. Shiori Matrugena had been born just two days before, and looked red and sleepy, swaddled in her yellow blanket. Across the table from Sigrun, Solinus and Masako had the shell-shocked, dazed look of new parents everywhere, and well they should. A tiny new person with wants and needs and desires of her own had catapulted into their lives, and they were surely not getting any sleep at all. These were the children that Adam had helped diaper, and then trained in martial arts. The children he’d shaken his head over, as Trennus had recounted, tiredly, Solinus’ latest spate of detentions, and as Kanmi had regaled them all with the brilliance of his daughter’s latest incantations.
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