Then Sigrun reached out and put her hand to Trennus’ chest. Rune-born light flared, and then she fell back with a groan, blood beginning to pour from between her breasts. Steelsoul caught her, but Truthsayer and Emberstone both leaped forwards as well, Truthsayer reaching for Stormborn’s shoulders, while Emberstone moved to Trennus’ side.
___________________
. . . Flamesower had traveled for a long time, always along the length of the cord. It seemed infinitely long, and he had seen much. The spider had been correct. The cord seemed to attract denizens of this place to him. Many wanted to consume him. Some had tried, and he’d learned to flee, quickly. He fought when there was no other option. He’d been surprised at his own strength. So had been those whom he fought. He looked tiny. An amorphous blob, with no true shape, and only a Name burning at his heart. But he wouldn’t surrender his Name, and, when he needed to fight, he could reshape himself. He took a dozen forms, whatever seemed best. A stag, a bear, a bird of prey, a snake. He wrestled and he contended. Sometimes, he was devoured, but even then, the cord persisted, and he refused to give up his Name. He would not be bound.
Saraid. That was the name of the hind that followed him wherever he went. His first ally in this place. She trailed along behind him. Told him when there were traps. Told him which other spirits might make trustworthy allies. Guarded him, guided him. He didn’t know how he knew her, but he was indebted to her. Loved her. And realized that when she was present, a second cord—a much finer one, like gossamer—tied him to her, and her to him. This is as it is meant to be, she told him. We are bound, we two. We always have been. Because we always will be.
No weariness, because there was no time. But even though there was no time, there was . . . experience. He was learning. And with knowledge, came power. He wasn’t sure what his true form was, anymore. Who he was, other than his Name and the cord, had ceased to matter. Memories of another life, a time in the world where everything ended, were distant. Trifling. Except that there were other Names that he knew. And those were important to him. He wouldn’t give up those Names, either, no matter what creature had managed to defeat and consume him. Because he understood that consumption didn’t matter. It was a game.
He learned the names of the ones he defeated, however. And his travels went on forever . . . until he felt the cord throb against him. A voice, whispering his Name. Flamesower. Beloved. Come back to me. Come back to us.
He was confused, but the voice was familiar. And because he was bound to it, utterly, he had no real choice, but then, he had already/always chosen . . . His last sight was the leaf-dappled eyes of the hind. He thought she looked joyous, but also deeply sorrowful, at the same time.
Trennus opened his eyes. His body felt heavy. Leaden. He could barely move, and felt trapped inside of it, horrible, lumpen thing of clay that it was. His center hurt. No. His heart hurt. That would be because you were the idiot who stabbed himself in it, he told himself, seeing the faces of his friends above him. For a moment, they didn’t look real. Nothing more than masks with liquid, gelatinous eyes. Too-solid flesh. Trennus panicked for a moment, and then Lassair slipped her hand into his, and he turned towards her. She looked real. Beautiful. Phoenix wings spreading out from her shoulders in blazing glory, her body all fire. Thrumming along the bond between them. A glowing coal at the back of his mind, which, when he touched it, he realized, was her. She was in him. A part of him. And there was this unbalancing sensation, as if he wasn’t entirely in himself, either. Glorious. Ecstasy-inducing. She slipped into him, and he slipped into her, and they were counterpoised in their minds, slipping into and through one another, over and over again. Trennus blinked, dazed. Refocused on the fire that was her flesh. There was something . . . wrong . . . about that . . .
The child? he asked silently, not trusting his voice.
I made it fire, too, she admitted, casting down her eyes. I will make it flesh again, when I am. I am . . . not entirely sure what this will do to it. But your gift gave me power. Inti’s sacrifice, too—
“Inti’s what?” Trennus was appalled. He’d apparently missed a few things while he was, well . . not to put too fine a point on it . . . dead. He hadn’t really expected to be alive again. Breath in his lungs felt strange. And he had memories. Horrifyingly clear ones, at least, for the moment, of the Veil. The spider. Of what it felt like to be devoured, over and over again. The alliances he’d made there with the spirits he’d defeated, and whose Names he had learned. How they’d sometimes worked together, to fend off greater Names. And how they’d all scattered and hidden when a Greater Name moved through the area, like a leviathan, heedless of the little fish that spun in its wake, as the water swirled in vortices. And a brief, faint recollection of the hind. The one who’d been with him, every step of the way. Saraid . . . .
And then, distraction. Chatter of voices, as Kanmi and Minori both tried to describe what had passed: “Mamaquilla was injured, and Cocohuay gave up her body so that Mamaquilla would have an avatar—“
“—and then Adam shot Inti in the back of the head, and I haven’t actually figured out why, or even how it worked yet.”
Lassair provided a blur of images to supplement the words, as Sigrun sat back up, wincing openly as she inspected a wound just under her sternum, and Adam reached out and gripped Tren’s shoulder, hard. “Your eyes, Tren,” he said, cutting through the chatter. “What happened?”
Trennus raised his hands to his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he admitted.
He gave himself to me, Lassair explained, simply. He is my servant now, body and soul. I am in him, and he is in me, and we will be, forever.
At that moment, Saraid gently disentangled herself from his body, and faded out, demanifesting. And the loss of her gentle presence suddenly left Trennus bereft, even though his soul and senses sang with Lassair.
Sigrun heaved herself back to her feet, with Adam’s aid. “Spirit-touched,” the valkyrie muttered.
The ground shook underfoot. Focus returned with it, and Trennus reached down into the earth, and swallowed. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “Everything else can wait. Coropuna is about to erupt.”
Adam’s head swung around. The miniature sun still hung in the sky overhead, sending brilliant, cold light through the clouds that still spat hail and freezing rain down on them. He knew that physicists would be studying any and all video records of the tiny star for years to come. Inti, like every other god, had mostly obeyed the laws of physics. He hadn’t turned the world on its axis faster to create sunlight at midnight; he’d created a very small star, instead. And that star was burning out. Adam just hoped that it hadn’t perturbed the orbit of the Libration point space station, or, god forbid, the moon itself. He rather thought not, though. Inti had been motivated to save Mamaquilla. And while Mamaquilla wasn’t the moon, itself, it was her symbol.
The ground shuddered under his feet. Trennus looked up at them all, and staggered to his feet. “Did you hear me? We have to get out of here—”
___________________
Adam nodded to his friend. “I heard you.” Trennus’ eyes were hard to meet; they burned blue-violet now, like the heart of a flame. He knew he should be deeply disturbed by this; Trennus had given up his soul to Lassair. He’d died. Technically, he could be now considered some . . . aberrant form of ghul, with Lassair’s power possibly providing the motive force for his once-dead body. But Adam couldn’t think of Tren like that. “Give me a moment.”
He walked carefully across the icy, rubble-strewn floor. Knelt down beside Inti’s body, and met Mamaquilla’s moon-white, luminous eyes, as the goddess looked up at him. “Forgive me,” Adam asked her. “He asked me to do it.”
I know, mortal. Her voice was weary, and held all the sorrow in the world in the soughing of the sea. I do not hold you or yours accountable. All those to whom blame accrued, are now dead.
Adam swallowed, and unholstered his pistol. Turned it around, and presented it to her
, butt-first. In spite of her words, he could clearly picture her taking the gun, and firing it on him. In a way, she’d have the right.
Mamaquilla regarded the weapon with distaste. No. I cannot take this. Inti was the one to whom soldiers looked in battle. I . . . do not use weapons, beyond a net. And your weapon is strange to me. She looked down at her husband’s fallen form. He entrusted this weapon to you. He could have made it so that it could only kill him. He did not. He would not have done that, if he did not see a future need, and if he did not trust you. Keep the last-forged weapon of my husband’s hands, and know this: it will only fire in your hands, or the hands of one of your line. Inti trusted you. Not all of mankind.
The ground trembled underfoot once more, and Adam nodded, respectfully. Rose to his feet. Kanmi raised a finger. “We passed a field of ornithopters on our way in,” he said. “Between the light show, the ushnu going up, and the mountain shaking, the chances that they’re still there are slim to none, but that’s our best bet.”
Adam glanced back over at Mamaquilla, who still sat there, rocking the body of her husband. Another tremor, and Adam looked, uneasily, at the ruined roof overhead. “Tunnel?” he asked.
“No time,” Sigrun replied, and wrapped her arms around his waist. The ground dropped out from under him as she raced upwards, arcing out of the ruins. He had enough time to see that the megalithic stones had been melted together along the path of the solar prominence that Inti had deployed. Sigrun set him at the foot of the ushnu’s southern face, and then leaped up into the air once more. Adam huddled in on himself as another surge of sleet and hail hit his body, and looked up in time to see Lassair carry Trennus out of the ruins, with Sigrun following her, holding Kanmi . . . and Minori slowly rose through the air in Sigrun’s wake, buoyed by a howling vortex of wind that made her look uncannily like a djinn.
Adam glanced at the glacier-covered peaks as another rumble shook the earth. The pristine white snow-and-ice caps reflected the dying light of the tiny sun above as it dimmed. Became ruddier. The red disc was now larger than the tiny pinprick of incandescent light it had been previously, but was still perceptibly smaller than the moon, as seen from Earth. In its light, Adam could see cracks forming in the glacier caps, and turning, he spotted people scurrying in and around the buildings downslope of the ushnu, frantically loading belongings into cars and trucks. None of them were looking at the ushnu; everyone was far more involved with trying to get out of here.
“Looks like the evacuation is underway,” Adam noted. Part of him said Some of these people are innocents. We should help organize the evacuation . . . and the rest of him said Not our job. Our job is to get out of here, locate Livorus, and then get him out of Tawantinsuyu. “Which way to the airfield?” he asked Kanmi, who’d just let go of Sigrun. “If we can, we can bring some of the survivors with us,” he said, trying to get his conscience to shut up.
“Right,” Kanmi told him, dryly, huddling against a rush of sleet and wind. “We’ll just be the foreigners who were taken to the ushnu by their emperor and mysteriously survived the explosion when the head of state didn’t. Let’s not complicate things, ben Maor. Airfield is that way.” He pointed to the southwest, and downslope. When Adam hesitated, Kanmi gave him an irritated look. “They’re evacuating. They have a plan. We can’t save them all.”
Another rumble, and they all looked up, as a vast piece of one of the glaciers sheared off, and began to plunge down the mountainside to the east of them. “Let’s survive, first!” Kanmi shouted over the roar of the distant avalanche. “You can beat yourself up later! I’ll provide the damned stick! Go!”
They only had three people capable of flight, and Minori couldn’t manage Kanmi’s weight, so they ran for the airfield, slipping and sliding on the hail and sleet and mud. As they did, Adam’s mind continued to churn, but he was focused now, on just one problem: ensuring the survival of his team. People were streaming into the airfield, but while there were six ornithopters present on the field, Adam saw only two pilots. Both of whom were arguing with frantic, frightened people, on the north end of the field. He pointed towards the south end of the field. “Kanmi,” Adam said, grimacing as they all crouched in the tall grass near the field. “Can you do something fairly distracting?”
“More distracting than half the mountainside falling?” Kanmi’s voice was tart.
“Less distracting than that.” Adam looked up at the clouds. “This is going to be really bad flying, if the weather doesn’t let up soon.”
“Have Caetia here set off a couple of dozen lightning bolts north of our position,” Kanmi said, dryly. “I guarantee, people are going to look.”
Adam felt foolish, and looked up at the sky. It might be his imagination, but the hail suddenly seemed to be slacking off dramatically. “Ah, Sig?”
“On it,” she muttered. “Esh, you must be weary. You are forgoing a perfect opportunity with which to show off your skills.”
Kanmi’s grin was forced. Adam could read weariness in all their body language now. Sigrun set off the lightning, and they all moved south, while everyone in the field stared north in consternation. Minori unlocked the cabin door of an ornithopter, and they all clambered inside, Adam grabbing a flight manual to start preflight checks. “I don’t think the aviation administrators will down-check you for your safety routine,” Kanmi muttered. “Just go.”
“And when we crash because the wings are icy, what then?”
“I’ll melt the ice on the wings,” Kanmi retorted. “Or Lassair will, or Min will, or Caetia can get out and push. Just start us up.”
Another prolonged, and deep rumbling that passed through the vehicle’s frame, and Adam tossed the manual at the copilot’s chair, and started the engine. Spirit-powered or not, the whole vehicle thrummed a little as he did so. “Everyone strap in. Return your tray tables and chairs to their full upright positions, and if you’re inclined towards prayer? Now is probably a really good time.”
People up the field from them heard the engine switch over, and he could see heads turning. Could see guards with muskets, alarmed that one of their vehicles was being commandeered, dropping down to aim at them, while various people began to run, right across the line of fire, charging for their ornithopter. Adam looked over the various controls, which had labels in Latin and Persian—the vast majority of ornithopters were, after all, Persian-built—and got the ungainly wings to deploy to their liftoff position. Ornithopters didn’t require as long of landing strips as fixed wing crafts, because lift-off of an ornithopter relied not on thrusters, and not entirely on building up speed, but on hydraulics in the landing/takeoff struts that functioned like a bird’s legs, throwing the vehicle airborne before the first down-stroke of the wings. “Get the wings cleared,” Adam said, and turned the ornithopter to send it down the short runway. “And hope for a good updraft before we hit the edge of that cliff there.”
That was, of course, the easiest way to get an ornithopter airborne. Start like a glider, and drop from somewhere high. And pray that the wings handled properly, because otherwise you would plummet like a rock.
Facing away from the field now, he could no longer see the people running towards them. It let him clear his mind, and he went through all the practiced motions of flight. This craft was larger than the ornithopters he’d flown before, but seemed responsive. They built up speed towards the edge of the cliff, as Kanmi, Minori, and Lassair all worked to de-ice the damned wings. “Getting close,” Adam noted, clinically. “Twenty feet. Ten. Deploying wing extensions.” He paused. “Brace.”
The vehicle lurched sickeningly, and then its wings clawed at the air. Adam felt through the control stick the instant an updraft caught the wings, and they began to soar on it, reducing the need for the vehicle to flap strenuously, at least at first. He angled the nose just so, and they began to ascend, using that sharp wind to their advantage. “We’re going to have to circle to gain altitude,” he told them.
“Don’t worry about altitude right no
w,” Trennus told him, his voice sick. Adam knew that his friend’s eyes had to be squeezed shut. “Even if all we do is glide in an angle downwards, we can take off again from a valley somewhere. We need distance, not altitude.”
Trennus is correct, Lassair told him. Do not look back, Steelsoul. Not until we have some fifty miles between us and this place.
Adam, against most of his flight training, obeyed, and got them moving. A craft this small didn’t have an autopilot. He couldn’t do what the others were doing, and look out the side windows as he moved them southwest, gaining distance. He needed to bank, eventually, to get them back on a northeast heading, back to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, but as insistent as Tren and Lassair were? He’d be a fool not to listen to a ley-mage and a fire spirit about a volcano.
Less than ten minutes later, Adam knew they were a solid twenty miles from the landing field, and banked to head due north. As he did so, he heard a low rumble that transmitted through the frame of the ornithopter, and Lassair whispered, Brace yourselves.
“Oh, gods,” Trennus said, quietly, but fervently.
Adam swallowed. The main peak of Coropuna, the western face, had exploded, and belatedly, gusts of wind buffeted their ornithopter. He steadied them in the air, staring at what he could now see. The white glacial cap was gone, and a vast plume reached up into the gray light of the pre-dawn sky. “Tephra,” Trennus said, tightly. “Ash, debris, ice, water, rocks. Anything that makes it into the air as ejecta. That’s what we’re seeing right now.”
Kanmi’s voice then. “A damned good thing we’re not flying a fixed-wing craft. The engines and the intakes would be filling up with ash.”
“Microscopic fragments of volcanic glass. Yes.” Trennus sounded concerned. “Ah, Adam? Esh is right, isn’t he? The engines aren’t . . . .”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 120