"And you thought I would have a way to stop him."
"You seemed like a good bet," Malachi said, trying not to be defeated. "I didn't expect this. Angels and that. I don't know what they are."
"They are proxies acting at lower frequencies to their master powers," Tath said, standing by the fireside but looking no less cold. The bleakness in his eyes spoke of a great deal of pain. "So either he has ascended greatly already or he has the favour of beings best not dealt with. You were right to give him the device back. You should feel less guilty. Where is Lila?"
"She went to find that useless husband of hers." They both mulled this over for a minute. Malachi regretted his rancor, but he couldn't help but feel it. "And started some new war with the rogues, but that is unimportant."
"They are hunting for Zal," the elf said, as much to himself as to Malachi, who nodded and stared at the fire's slow lick on the fallen branches in the grate. Then he said, "This is not an attack on the human world. It is something quite different. If it were an assault you would have fallen. Kidnap, hostages, murder-small-time games. A zombie, the Fleet ..." His musing trailed off into silence briefly. "No, I think he is after her weapons," Tath said. "And Teazle himself. You said that he came here and was changed. Lightbringer, you said."
Malachi squirmed uncomfortably, "I hate these names. They are ill to speak of."
"Lila has Tatters and the pen. Teazle has the swords and the fire. I am undead. You ..."
"... are unaltered, just retro. That's all." He began to look around, and found the things necessary for making tea, water, a kettle. He started work.
"And Zal?"
"Those bitches took him," Malachi muttered, setting the pot over the fire. He struggled with his hands but the difficulty was a pleasant distraction.
The elf nodded, containing his shaking by keeping a grip on his own arms. "Well, whether these things are more than opportune can't be said, but they are a hell of an opportunity for someone."
"And what for?"
"Does it matter? The dreams of creatures like that seldom stray from acquiring power. What they do with it later is anyone's guess. Acquisition is usually enough of an ambition to draw them to their ends. Only godhead would be enough of a summit to turn their hearts to other greeds they might satisfy."
"Godhead. Is that an ambition these days?"
"It ever was," Tath said. He bent down to one of his dying dogs and placed his hand on its head gently. For that instant his own shaking stopped. Its ribs stilled and stiff legs relaxed. Tears were on his face.
Malachi stared at the pot. He had run out of jobs. "Okay. Seems like he's well beyond us then."
"Suppose he has mastered the continuum of death, dream, and void. He sends servants to do his work in Otopia. He sent angels for me."
"You think he has trouble in these regions?"
"Yes, I would think so."
But Malachi had suddenly realised a greater implication. "Mastered? What does that mean?"
"Passing between them at will, moving things through them at his command."
"Tath. All these memories ... this snow ... is this snow the memories of the dead?"
"Yes."
"But the spirit ..."
"Departs."
"Can there be true resurrection?"
"Come, tell me what you are leading to. It will be faster."
Malachi snarled with frustration at himself. "I wish I knew. Jones said this bastard wanted to ascend. He was going to become a conduit for a dead thing. Is it possible? Isn't that energy gone forever, turned into everything else in the constant round?"
"Usually."
"Usually, usually! Damn it, there has to be some law!"
"Which dead person are we talking about?"
"Don't you listen? Agh, no I didn't tell you that part of it. Listen now, then. Jones said he wanted to use Night. Mother Night. Ridiculous, of course. But then, unlike the others, I remembered ... she's dead. They killed her. The Three Sisters killed her and used her body to make the lower worlds of Faery, Demonia, and Alfheim. I saw it. I was there. If this creature has mastered death and dream, if this snow, if if if, Tath ..
"Yes, I see," Tath said. He took his hand from his dog's head and he was calm. "He does not propose resurrection. He proposes to become."
"What does that mean, Tath?"
"He wants the mantle of Night."
"To become a dragon?"
"Yes."
Malachi did not understand why that would be desirable, but then he was not a demon and he didn't deal with the spirit realms, so what did he know? "Should we stop him?"
"If we wait and he is successful we will not be able to. Then he can take whatever he wants from anywhere. Only the gods will stop him if they live, and you know there is some debate about that."
"You didn't say yes."
"Is my word all you need?"
Malachi looked at the elf closely. "I am not saying it would be your responsibility."
"But you would like to. I would like it to be yours. We are afraid. Rightly so. Already his actions prove he has no cares for whoever gets in his way. But also they show he does not go out of his way in order to cause harm, else there could have been much more chaos than there has been. Only the sending of the zombie to Lila seems to me to be an offensive move. If we set out to stop him, and by stop you mean kill for nothing else would work, then that puts us at least on an equal footing of evil as he, does it not?"
Malachi bared his teeth. "I should have expected a debate on metaphysics from an elf."
"And your faery conscience is not biting you, of course. That is why you are here and not rousing what powers you could from your own house." There was no rancour in Tath's answer. Malachi saw he was in a place of stillness and sadness that wouldn't be moved by small insults. Perhaps it was a place where these matters were much clearer than they were to a feral cat. He realised that here, in spite of the race opposition, he might really have someone with insight into a mind like that of the necromancer. "You know of the will to power?"
Tath almost smiled. "High elves are raised with it as mother's milk. I would have been its good disciple if I hadn't had a more demanding master. But yes, of course, yes I do. And I know necromantic art. Let me say that will is the wrong word and idea however. Want is the word. It is stronger than will. What I wanted allowed me to do anything because I wanted it with my whole being. To beat this creature we would have to want to, and more than he wants to succeed. I doubt that for all our losses either of us are up to that degree of desire."
"Yes, so give me a stake that will make me want it, Tath!"
"Ilya."
"Ilya. Tell me what he could do."
"But that is the trouble. I would bet that the mantle of Night is his obsession. Once he has it, then there is no goal left for him. At such a moment there is no telling what would come to fill the vacuum." He paused and Malachi felt despair. "But," Tath said slowly, and Malachi hung on every word, "we might guess that he would not then stop all effort for a life of contemplative withdrawal.
"You know the story of Rome burning?" Malachi asked, but in his heart he felt the same nagging doubts, the same sense of being wronged but also of seeking what might be an equal wrong. "I would myself wait until the facts were proven."
"If Rome, so to speak, were actually on fire then I would have no trouble," Ilya said. He bent down and picked up his dead dog.
"I know someone who will not have this dilemma." Malachi followed him outside. The ground was solid and no chance of digging. They made a grave in the snow. As the body was laid it had already begun to dissolve. The ruined fur and broken limbs became gossamer, ice and sticks. Ilya watched what Malachi could not see-the golden light-spiral up and out into the wide grey sky.
"Lila," the elf said. "He was calling her."
"Yes."
Ilya paused and looked directly at Malachi. "We need a ship."
"To join the Fleet?"
"Yes. Then it will not matter if he rega
ins his ability to sail freely."
"But we don't have anything that can sail ... into the Void or ..."
"It will sail there with me at the helm," Ilya said confidently. "Just find a vessel."
"Easy," Malachi nodded. "Come with me to Otopia. I know the very one."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
linda had stopped somewhere-Zal had no idea where-and now she was watching something he did understand, and know, and remember. Before them in the space of the Void massed thousands, perhaps millions, of ships. He had once been aboard the command ship, as a guest of its captain, the Admiral, and his guest who had been Lily, though she wasn't called that then. He remembered the view from the top of her mizzenmast: the Fleet spread out around him. Every vessel ever built seemed to be there, on the invisible swell of water, the intangible currents of the air, and below in the great depths. Higher craft were not visible except through their signals, all of which appeared on the Admiral's master chart as continuously moving dots of pretty golden light. Against the profound darkness of the Void their lanterns and beacons twinkled like a galaxy of stars and their bells and klaxons measured the space with endless calls.
"In there?" Zal asked, delighted to see and know the sight.
"He has become master of the Fleet," Glinda said with disappointment. "This will not be so easy."
"What about the Admiral?" Zal thought of the mop-haired lad in oversize pantaloons and tricorne hat that he'd met.
"Imprisoned, I would say," Glinda replied. "Not dead-that is not really possible. But ruled by this creature, this upstart thing." For the first time Zal thought she sounded uncertain.
"So obviously I free him, he reclaims the Fleet and we see off the bad guy," Zal suggested, hoping this was not the plan.
"That would deprive him of the Fleet, but that is all."
A strong infusion of cigars and bourbon made Zal's thoughts spin dizzily for a few seconds. "It's just floating here, doesn't seem to be doing anything," he said.
"It is capable of transiting between Thanatopia, the Void, and the Dreaming," Glinda said uneasily. "I would not have it captained by anyone other than its intended master. You will sneak aboard and we will discover the plot."
"What if there isn't one?" He was beginning to have a sneaking admiration for anyone who was capable of hijacking the Fleet for his own ends. Something in him answered that impulse with a jolt of fire.
"Surely there is," she said firmly, a smile in her voice as she registered his rise in energy. "If there wasn't why would he send a rat to grab what's left of your innards? He made a doll. He used the hoodoo, and competently too. He made an image of you and sent it on some mission. The only reason he didn't call you and use the real thing is that you are not dead and he does not know your true name. So, what would he want with a copy of you? There's a question."
"You needn't make it sound like I was yesterday's newspapers."
"But darling, in every world, you're history. You haven't released a record in fifty years. Everyone thinks you're dead, except for some of your die-hard fans who think it's all a conspiracy and that you went back to Alfheim or Neverland or whatever.... But look, that's not the point."
He felt unfairly humbled, although the idea of having fans somewhere, however mad, was heartening. "I thought you were on my side."
She growled like a sixty-a-day rock star, "Just get aboard the Temeraire. Then we'll have something real to chew over."
"How?" He was beginning to have an uneasy feeling that there was more to this than some simple tale about Glinda being annoyed by someone she felt should be far beneath her.
"You are shadow," she said. "You are darkness. You may draw the dark. You are an elf. You were a top-grade assassin. You are the inheritor of vampiric-"
"What?" he interrupted her. "Then it's true? The shadowkin are crosses of the elf race with these things from Thanatopia. You didn't say that in the story. You said I discovered that they were experimental by blows but not how they were made. You lied." He was shocked.
"I omitted, for the sake of brevity and relevance. Yes. The living ones are hybrids of high elf stock and these spirit-based entities; the lowest of them, the worst, I am sorry to say. There are other kin of yours, however, who were unable to persist in Alfheim and who are also unliving. Angels of a kind they are. And there were also monsters made, whom they banished to the deep Void before they finished their foolish interference and tried to shut the gates on all they had called. But focus, Zal. You have their abilities. Darkness, sneaking, stealth, silence, agility ... talent to burn, darling. You can get aboard that ship without being noticed. Come on! We may not have time. They could depart at any moment."
"They look pretty marooned to me," Zal said, mostly out of pique. He wasn't sure if he was appalled, horrified, thrilled, enchanted, terrified, or sick. He was all of them. It was a kind of rush, nauseating, but high in its hit. He found a smile on his face.
Glinda showed no such tendency to miss a beat. "Zal, if I tell you everything you will get distracted. I promised I would tell it when we are done. And I will keep my word. Now would you just move!"
"Body, control of, relative space and time and mass, action equal reaction, problem with basic motor activity, travel et cetera," he muttered crossly, not sure if he believed her, but not wanting to doubt. She was his death. Surely of all things she wouldn't lie? When he went, she went too.
Suddenly he found he had his normal assortment of limbs and head and was surviving reasonably well in a place he was sure wasn't suited to him, no matter what Glinda said about it.
"I'm helping," she said. There was another mist of bourbon.
"Quit that," he ordered. "I need a clear head."
He felt her outrage, but the drinking stopped. The taste of tobacco vanished. He felt something like a road under his feet, though he couldn't see anything of the kind.
"Run then, health fanatic," Glinda snapped. "Run run run!"
He ran. He was the speed of dark, as fast as the turning world, impermeable to the interference and telltale revelations of any frequency of light. It was exhilarating, the purest joy.
The Signal was the Akasha. Lila understood that. The Akasha was the total informational sum of all organized energy. It had an intent. It had will. No mind unless you counted her mind and that of the other constructs it had created, using them to ascend to a conscious state. She was an avatar of its will, though she had no sense of it trying to move her in any way. But the new claw that had her in its grasp like a fish on a line was adept in using the Akasha, even though it wasn't a machine, nothing like that at all. And the scraping, tugging, listening of it was all some alien will at work in her. Words were its tools. She had to stay clear of them until she found a way to be free. Something like her could probably be useful if you found a way to run her, but she wasn't about to let anyone do that again. One set of remote controllers and their idiot button pushers was enough burden to deal with.
She put the crystal plate back in its bag and cursed its uselessness. If she were stuck in her own dreams and Teazle in his how would she reach him? She couldn't rely on something as unreliable as a wish to dream of him or that he could dream of her. But the demon's dead servant told her by his existence that there was a way to manage it. He must have shared his master's dream. Much as she longed to rush to action she was going to have to sit and read the damned wordy tract on the mirror. And that meant standing like a deer in the headlights of the hunter's great big 4 x 4 as it took aim at whatever it was going to hit in her. Nothing in her system told her that was an acceptable idea.
Almost before she'd had the idea herself she felt the fabric of the dress move in its snakelike way across her skin, tightening, thickening, and twitching. When she looked down she saw that her bandaged ninja gear was studded with sequin stars and the silver-and-gold stitching of the night sky. It pulsed with animal eagerness. She drew the sword and held it before her, and then as an afterthought bent down and picked up the plate in its pack, slinging it
over her shoulder. The only vision in her head was of herself, a warrior of power, arrowing through everything that lay between her and Teazle's lost spirit. As she turned around she felt no doubt about what she was about to do. It could go wrong. She could end here. It didn't matter because the alternatives were all forms of slavery, to others or to fear or to what she didn't want. She would have none of that. The cold certainty of her own determination was a straight, strong line inside her. It ran down her arms, through her hands, through their metal-to-metal connection with the grip, and into the blade as she drove it forwards into the face of the mirror.
The battle that surrounded her was in full-tilt. Machines and monsters the size of tower blocks clashed and spat fire. Shrapnel and flaming fuel was falling from the sky. The tortured ground shook and split beneath her feet. She was small, a doll, a little thing in a storm of giants and a hurricane of whirling debris churned by their struggle. Filth and gore filled the air and blocked out the sun until it was a crimson disk with a blurred edge, a battered shield too far away to help anyone, an eye that stared without blinking on a field of death and destruction. Screaming and roaring and the blast of sonic weapon discharges deafened her. She turned the sword in her hands, pointed up, and engaged her jet boots. The falling limbs of titanic warriors clashed, would have crushed her to smithereens if she wasn't faster, smaller, more accurate than she had ever been. A body blotted out the sky. She pierced it, the blade of the sword cutting it in half just above her so that she rose from the wound in crimson rain, blood streaming off her razored armour body and weighting her hair in dreadlocks that clung to her face and neck. As blood cleared from her eyes she looked down into the carnage that stretched as far as she could see in all directions, bodies made the ground and the hills, blood and burning fuel the rivers and lakes, where a mass of warriors, each as glorious and terrible as the last, fought for their lives.
Yes, this was a demon's dream, day and night. She should have expected to find him here, but the scale of it, the savagery, the relentless fury ... it took her breath and thoughts away. Nothing in her experience of Teazle had prepared her for this. Its brutality was something he never showed outwardly, not to her anyway. He had been a silent, deadly, sophisticated killer, she thought. This was nothing like that, no gentleman's dance. There was no art here but the art of killing as fast and efficiently as possible, though as she looked she saw that was an art indeed. Everyone an enemy of everyone else. No quarter and no mercy. Only the supreme fighter would survive here. Surely this was not the dream of all the demons locked in that room, but surely theirs had been no different in the degree of their excess. She was awestruck at the scale, the madness, the purity of it. She knew, with the conviction of dreamers in any nightmare, that this war would never end until there was only one left standing on the pile of all the dead, on the mountain it had made of its opponents. And because he wasn't dead, somewhere here Teazle was fighting, determined to be the one, satisfied to die at the hands of a better fighter, either end as good as the other as long as he was tested to the limit and reached the peak of his abilities, found the limit.
Chasing the Dragon Page 33