Indigo Springs

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “That’s the gist.” Astrid regards her calmly. “You should agree to let me drain you.”

  “It’s cute how you think you’re still in charge.” Sahara flicks out a strand of pearls. I don’t feel anything, but Astrid is thrown backwards. She comes down hard on her butt with a splash in the shallow lake. Her nose is bleeding.

  “You’re going to come with me,” Sahara says. “Whatever you did to Patience? You’ll do it for my Primas. You’re going to make chantments and keep your mouth shut. Do it, if you like, because you figure I’ll snap out of it one day.”

  “I know better, Sahara.”

  “Then do it to keep people from getting hurt.” She waves vaguely at Mark, at me.

  “Sahara?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was always in charge.” Astrid climbs to her feet. Clutched in her fist is a clump of mud, gray silt, and dangling green algae that writhes in her fingers, clearly contaminated.

  “Whatever power you think you had, you threw it away.” Sahara produces a diaper pin from her jacket, brandishing it like a weapon. Astrid’s clothes knot together, constricting at her wrists, her waist, her throat.

  Astrid barely has time to choke before I’ve moved between the two of them. My clothes quiver. Then there’s a gust from my ring. The fabric goes limp and I feel the fatigue setting in.

  “Remember Will?” Astrid says. “Will doesn’t like traitors.”

  “Don’t care much for violence, either,” I say.

  “News flash, then—it’s Astrid who’s your murderer. You think I killed that asshole Lee Glade, don’t you? She let you think that?”

  “I know she killed him.”

  “He’ll tell anyone who asks too,” Astrid says. Our eyes meet and for some reason it’s funny—we laugh.

  Sahara leaps skyward, wings displacing gusts of air as she rises off the ground. She aims at Astrid with the diaper pin from over my head.

  Then Astrid raises her hands…and Sahara freezes in midair.

  She lets out a surprised sound, a buzzing, distressed birdcall. Her fingers splay; she drops the safety pin. It falls end over end, bouncing as it hits the ground. I retrieve it carefully.

  Astrid doesn’t move as Sahara’s hands turn bright blue. “What are—?”

  “I’m holding the vitagua inside you,” Astrid says. “As long as it’s in there, I can manipulate your body. Don’t you remember? You might as well be a puppet. Should I make you pick your nose?”

  “You won’t hurt me,” Sahara snarls, thrashing.

  Instead of answering, Astrid looks at Mark. He bites into his lip, and she draws the vitagua out of him, pooling the liquid above us, out of reach. Mark’s features humanize enough for him to put the glasses on. Ignoring Sahara as she scissor-kicks the air, Astrid chants the glasses into Mark, pressing the frames and lenses into his face. They vanish like a stick sinking into mud, and the red spots on his skin fade.

  “Your turn,” Astrid says to Sahara. Opening her muck-filled hand, she displays a bottle cap and a fishing lure. Litter scavenged from the bottom of the lake, no doubt, things she picked up when she landed.

  She chants them both, face flushing with vitality, and tosses the lure at Sahara. It twirls through the air, dragging one sharp fishhook across the palm of Sahara’s bright blue hand. The skin breaks. Vitagua spurts out in a geyser, rising to join the sphere of fluid extracted from Mark.

  Sahara shrieks again, voice still inhuman, like a starling’s call. The birds around us flutter. Their clamor lessens as Sahara’s wings shrink, as her features become more human. She struggles against her magical puppet-strings, with increasing success: as the vitagua drains from her body, Astrid has less to hold on to.

  Sahara sinks from her position in midair, falling to the forest floor, hands stretched up toward the liquid magic bled from her body. As her feet touch down I take her arms. She struggles, but her strength is no match for mine.

  This is the woman we’ve been so afraid of?

  A last few drops of vitagua well up out of her cut hand, and then the scratch begins to bleed red. The only blue left is in the edges of the torn skin.

  “Residue,” I murmur.

  Caught in my arms, Sahara Knax bursts into tears.

  “Get the chantments off her,” Astrid orders, tossing the chanted bottle cap on her palm.

  I ease the long coat off Sahara. Its pockets are heavy with chantments, and I pass them to a dazed and wary Mark Clumber. The two of us pat her down, looking for other items. Chains and baubles dangle from her throat, her wrists and ankles. We pull off rings and earrings, stripping her of all the jewelry as she flaps and fights.

  “She harmless now?” Mark rasps when we’re done. I glance up, startled—I’ve never heard him speak.

  “Don’t I wish.” Astrid sets the newly chanted bottle cap against Sahara’s chest, between her collarbones. Sahara tries to lunge away, but I hold her.

  “What does that one do?” I ask.

  “You’ll see.” A drop of vitagua falls from the pool still floating above us, landing on the spot where the chantment meets Sahara’s skin.

  Astrid presses on the cap with a fingertip and the metal disappears into Sahara’s flesh, vanishing without leaving a mark. “Magic calls to magic,” she says. “The chantment will draw the residue out of your body and into itself.”

  “It won’t change anything.” Sahara heaves with all her strength, and I lose my grip. She stumbles a half step…and then her knee buckles.

  “The bottle cap keeps her from running,” Astrid explains as her childhood friend pitches into the dirt.

  Sahara screams in all-too-human frustration, and the gathered starlings fly away.

  “It’s for the best, Princess,” Astrid tells her. “You’re going back to Roche, Will?”

  Am I? I imagine packing it all in, becoming a chanter. Living in the bizarre city I saw in the unreal. It’s a surprisingly tempting fantasy…but it’s preposterous. I can’t do anything until I’ve located Carson and Ellie. And I’m not ready to let go of the real. If it is slipping away, that only makes it more precious. “I’m going back.”

  “Take Sahara with you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Roche wants her, right?”

  I am flabbergasted. “But—”

  “Remember the point, Will,” she says gently. “I can’t waste energy on her.”

  “Just as Roche shouldn’t have,” I say, feeling as though I’ve only just caught on. “You were the one he needed to contain.”

  “He spent all those weeks searching for her—”

  “While you spent them recovering from your grief.”

  “I needed time.” She lays a finger on Sahara’s cheek. Testing her resolve?

  “You can’t walk away from me,” Sahara says, a charming half smile lighting her face. “Come on, I’m drained, you’ve won. What damage can I do now?”

  “Cut my throat in the night? Eat at my peace of mind?”

  “I could atone or some maudlin thing. Astrid, you can’t leave me here with them. Not me.”

  “I want you to get better, Sahara,” Astrid replies quietly. “I want you to be uncontaminated, to live a—”

  “You love me,” she insists fiercely.

  “I always will,” Astrid says. “But—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “We’ll never be friends again.”

  Sahara shakes her head, turning on the charm, wheedling. When Astrid shakes her head, eyes full of sympathy, she goes red with rage.

  “Will,” Astrid says, “take her to Roche.”

  She turns her back on Sahara, walking to the edge of the lake. The unreal fades into view before her, an expanse of white sand opening up near the water. A step takes her to the boundary between the worlds. One foot rests on the unreal dune; the other remains on broken cedar and moss.

  I trot in her wake. I ought to try to arrest her, but the idea seems ridiculous. Instead I catch her hand and murmur, “That offer you
made…”

  “It’ll be open whenever you’re ready.”

  I squeeze, not wanting to let go, and paper scrapes my palm. Astrid is holding something. Gently, I pry her fingers open.

  It is one last card, a portrait of the two women standing back to back. Astrid’s painted face, confined as it is to one side of the image, seems to be looking for a way out. Everything she wanted is behind her: Sahara, looking skyward, ready to fly away.

  The portrait is a bleak one. Astrid’s view is blocked by prison bars. Jacks’s blood stains her stomach and legs.

  In this portrait Astrid’s despair is so deep, I feel it running in my veins. I want to give her everything she has lost: be her rescuer, save the world for her. Give her that ordinary life she wanted.

  I don’t need an oracle to tell me that I’m not that man.

  “It’s okay, Will—it’s old news,” Astrid says. She turns over the picture and shows me another portrait. Her gaze is clear in this one, and she’s wearing the same waterlogged jeans she’s dressed in now. She has found a measure of peace. “Get your prisoner back to Roche, okay?”

  “I will,” I say. “I guess…I’ll be seeing you?”

  “Don’t sweat the future—that’s my problem. You’re about to be a big hero. Enjoy it, okay?”

  I nod. My next words are forced, pushed up from my belly through a dry throat. “And you? What now?”

  Astrid Lethewood looks up, beaming.

  “Now? Now’s the part where I remake the world.”

  I must look alarmed, because she reaches for my hand. “It’s the curse that makes the magic dangerous, Will. Once it’s broken, we can release the magic, carefully. We’ll free all the trapped people in the unreal…maybe even find Jacks.”

  “That’s a tall order.”

  “I won’t be alone.” She glances at the pool of vitagua still hanging above us, liquid magic she drew out of her contaminated friends. It rises and expands, growing like a balloon and getting farther and farther away. With every second, it gets lighter, thinner, harder to see. Eventually it disappears.

  The trees, dusted by a vapor-thin edge of magical contamination, begin to grow. Their leaves brighten, and out-of-season flowers bloom at our feet in a carpet.

  “Mark,” Astrid says. “You still want in the gang?”

  Clutching Sahara’s coat and the collection of chantments, Mark Clumber scuttles through the opening between worlds, kicking up clouds of unreal sand.

  “Good-bye, Will,” Astrid says.

  I raise my hand in farewell.

  An image of her burns on my retinas as the worlds between us pop apart like bubbles. Astrid is in the unreal, and I am left facing my reflection in the lake, warped by water into someone I no longer recognize. Left with a magic ring, a pack of cards, and the world’s most wanted fugitive.

  And I’m standing at the heart of an alchemical apocalypse.

  But that’s more than I can process. I decide to believe in Astrid’s newfound confidence. What else can I do?

  Tucking the cards into my coat, I take the wilted Sahara Knax by a forearm, nudging her in the direction of the compound. She limps dramatically; it’s going to be a long walk.

  “She’s lying, you know,” Sahara says. “She doesn’t know shit.”

  “Caroline Forest, Sahara—where is she?”

  “Screw you.”

  “Do you know where you’re going? You think anyone is going to care what happens to you? You could use a friend.”

  “I know where your loyalties lie.”

  “Caro flew to San Francisco on the fourth of August. She stayed with our children at one of your Alchemite safe houses.”

  “Let me go and I’ll tell you where she is.”

  “Do I look that stupid?”

  She scoffs. “I could pass the word to my followers. She could kill herself. She could kill them—”

  It’s as far as she gets before I knock her onto the writhing grass. “You’re powerless now, remember?”

  “Just you keep believing that,” she spits.

  I’m saved from my temper by a young soldier who pounds up to me at a run. “Sir? Commander’s searching for you. You okay?”

  It’s not a question I can answer honestly, so I yank Sahara to her feet. “I’d be better if you got us a car.”

  “Us?” He sees who I’m with and goes pale with shock. His jaw drops; then, as it registers that she’s helpless, in custody, he reaches out, as if to touch her. Sahara glares and he recoils, looking at me in awe.

  “It’s over,” he says, wonderingly.

  It’s just begun, I think. The ground shivers, and a ladybug the size of my fist flies past, carapace chattering. “How about that car, soldier?”

  “Temporary command post’s half a click due east,” he replies.

  There’s nothing to do but hike down.

  We start toward the command post, me assisting our notorious prisoner as our escort struts at my side, his hand resting on his weapon. His steps are light; I barely hear his shoes hitting the ground. The activity in the trees doesn’t bother him: we’ve caught Sahara; he thinks this is the end.

  Her arrest has renewed his faith in the future. He believes I’m holding the end of our troubles by her slender brown arm. They all will. Will they believe me if I tell them it’s not true?

  The ground jolts again, harder. Sahara stumbles, and as I catch her, our eyes meet. We are both scared.

  The part where I remake the world, Astrid said.

  We break out of the murmuring trees and below us I see an improvised square of official vehicles surrounded by armed soldiers. Within the square is a collection of salvaged equipment and satellite dishes.

  Beyond the cars where the underground complex should be is a smoking crater. I take a long look: at the hole, the dead machines, the ruined concrete and steel walls. Millions of dollars of property scattered like trash, destroyed as surely as Astrid’s house or the aircraft carrier yesterday. The air around us is icy.

  Behind me, the trees are blue-green and growing fast, and nobody’s paying attention. Roche must believe he can napalm them later, if he’s noticed them at all.

  “Laid waste to your big-ass fortress,” Sahara boasts. “Not bad if I’m supposedly the warm-up act, huh?”

  The soldier gives me a queer look, uncomprehending.

  “Keep walking, Sahara.” But though my voice is confident, my hands and feet grow icy as I look farther, beyond the burnt-out complex, beyond the smoke rising like a column above the trees. I look all the way to the horizon, where the mid afternoon sun hangs above the mountains in a sky already aglow with alchemized radiance, drowning in purest blue light.

  • Tor Books by A. M. Dellamonica •

  Indigo Springs

  Blue Magic

  • Acknowledgments •

  Many people have provided me with advice and assistance since I began writing Indigo Springs in 2001, and continued to do so after I completed revisions in mid-2003. I am deeply grateful to my agent, Linn Prentis; my editor, Jim Frenkel; and a host of editors, writers, and supporters who’ve guided me over the years, especially Wayne Arthurson, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Nalo Hopkinson, Doug Lain, Louise Marley, Jessica Reisman, Harry Turtledove, and Peter Watts.

  I am blessed in having a loving and supportive family. My wife, Kelly Robson, and my parents—Barb Millar, Brian Millar, William Robson, and Sandra Robson—have always been enthusiastic, clear-eyed, and loyal supporters of my writing. Michelle, Sherelyn, Susan, and Bill have done the same, while providing the much-needed teasing that is the province of siblings. Friends too numerous to name have done everything from reading drafts to providing moral support. In particular, I would like to mention Lisa Cohen, Ming Dinh, Trent Doiron, Denise Garzon, Nicki Hamilton, Liz Hughes, Elaine Mari, Ginger Mullen, Annie Reid, Ramona Roberts, Lealle Ruhl, and Brian Wetton.

  You made it possible for me to write this book, and I will always be grateful.

  This is a work of fiction. All
of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  INDIGO SPRINGS

  Copyright © 2009 by Alyx Dellamonica

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by James Frenkel

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-0-7653-5907-0