Chasing the Dragon

by Justina Robson

  "Help me!" She tried to reach them but they were carried away; nobody heard her, or if they did they just smiled at her as though she was the perfect bride and hostess as they moved off. Only Sandra kept coming.

  Lila began to pat and then hit herself with the flat of her hands, trying to beat the fire out, but wherever she put it out it sprang up somewhere else. And then it began to hurt, but worse than that was the panic. She tripped up and fell on her ass. The remains of the flaming dress ballooned around her, knotting around her legs. The pain grew intense, white hot. She wanted it to be over. Sandra Lane bent down towards her. "Are you okay? Aww, it's been a long day, huh? Here. Have a drink." She held out a long-stemmed glass and poured the contents over Lila's lap. The pure alcohol went up with an explosive whoosh in a gout of searing heat. Lila felt her face melting, running, but it was nothing compared to the misery she felt inside as she lay there, worthless, useless, powerless. Even so she struggled and she didn't understand why she didn't die. Wretched, able to do no more than twitch, she persisted when she longed for it to end. Finally all she could do was listen.

  She heard Sandra Lane's cheerful golden voice: "No, she just won't sign it. I don't know why, darling. Maybe it's all been too much for her? You know, she always was a bit of an attention seeker. Oh, always was since she was a kid, thought she was better than everyone else. Boohoo my mom and dad are drinkers, yes they are, didn't you know? God, talk about lush, you could strip wallpaper with her mother's breath. And as for her father, his only steady job was AA. Uh-huh. Didn't she tell you? And then there was the job she had that was so much better than everyone else's she never stopped talking about it. I suppose you must have met her after that? There was nothing she couldn't do. Yes, she really did say that. Oh, and you won't believe this, she used to have this crush on that elf, you know the one, yes him with the ... yes ahaha! Can you believe it? I know." Peals of laughter from a sizeable group of people briefly overcame the snap and crackle of flames. "Soo embarrassing! Talk about teenage crush victim. I know! Oh, he died in some motorbike accident, blam right into a pylon or something, yes, bound to happen. Mmn. He probably did deserve it. No, it doesn't look like she's coming. Probably decided to burn to death rather than do the decent thing. She would, yes. She's selfish that way. Oh, spiteful seems a bit strong. Well, I could always sign it, I suppose?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FlUE

  he deck of the Temeraire was suddenly alive with activity. The crew rushed to issue the necromancer's orders though they were not ready for a battle and all they could do was to bring the ship about so that she faced her attackers head-on, presenting less of a target. The harpoon in her mainmast, however, did not release in spite of the change in angle. The line vibrated with tension and gave off a low note as aboard the other ship an engine worked to reel it in.

  Under the angel's grip Zal struggled. Everything was hard, material, for an instant, and then he thought of fading to darkness and slipping into the shadows. He felt a quickening all over, as if he were electric, and then he was free and the angel was staring at him face-to-face. He held out his hands towards it and saw how deeply shaded his arms were, almost opaque, the darkened edges of his clothing the pen marks of an artist's final inking. Wait! I can stop them. Get me to the other ship and I'll stop them."

  The angel stared at him for a long second. Its body, almost comically like that of a snow angel though much less well defined, was shot with varicoloured lights dotted with brilliant moving points. It looked like a living nebula, giving birth to new stars.

  "God, you're beautiful," Zal said, not realising he was speaking aloud, but it was such a magnificent sight he couldn't help it. The angel's eyes blazed in a turning storm of brilliance. Their light shone onto him, and through him. He felt himself dancing around that light, unharmed but interrogated by it. A strange joy filled him as the angel knew him, although it gave no sign of change in itself. Looking at it made a channel open in his chest, through his heart, as though they had been harpooned together by a magnificent spear. His mind and body lit up and he felt that in spite of all he had lost he knew himself and was himself more truly than he had ever been. All this passed in an instant and then he had to look up.

  Around and behind the angel in the rigging Zal could see regions of darkness massing and forming; in fact, he felt more than saw them. They had a deadly cold about them as they poured themselves together, massing substance from infinitesimally small holes that were foaming open around the ship's masts and sails as the Void opened onto Thanatopia. Even the sailors cowered in fear as they drifted down from above, coalescing with languorous delicacy into shadows as dark as Zal and darker. They were pure and uncomplicated hungers, spilling at the necromancer's command, their will mastered by his infinitely more powerful one.

  Zal watched them over the angel's shoulder and saw them whirl and spin towards the demon's upraised arms. They were dreadful only because he could feel their power, their lack of any restraint. Only the fact that their will was subjugated by Xavien's prevented them from falling instantly on everything that could have been sucked and scavenged from the beings around them. The angel over him flared across the region of what Zal thought of as its wings with a flash of light that he fancied was repulsion. He glanced at its face, to see, and looked into its eyes. His mouth, ever ahead of the rest of him, asked in puzzlement. "Why are you protecting him?"

  There was a shudder in the angel and it reached out with both arms. A blinding flash of dark enveloped him and then Zal found himself standing on the rear of the other ship's ghost-glowing deck, banks of instruments flashing lights before him, the thunder of her engines vibrating through his feet and two startled crew-elf and demonstaring at him as if he were a living incarnation of evil itself. But beyond them he saw the helm. A ghost was there, her face dismayed and surprised as she looked over her shoulder and saw him. He saw her recognise him as he began to run towards her. Her mouth dropped open. Beside her, turning, was a faery, his orange eyes vivid against the black of his skin as they flared wider. His white teeth were shocking as his lips parted in a half smile of amazement and disbelief. Zal didn't know them but he felt good about them so he didn't bother himself. He ran harder, feet sure on the deck's slippery surface as she shook and groaned with the effort of dragging herself to the other vessel.

  The elf ghost at her station reached out with her claws but Zal dodged her, not knowing if she could catch him or not. The demon leapt. His fingers passed through Zal's leg.

  "Stop!" Zal shouted as he ran, everything in his way. He passed the line winch and tried to hit the controls, but he was too light and the ship ground on, quickly closing with the Temeraire's forward guns. The dark swirling around the masts was visible against the pale sailcloth bank of her rig as she dipped, nose down, towards their onslaught. Zal could see Xavien at the rail, the angels on either side of him in the air forming into shapes like arrows pointed directly at them. "Stop. Please! Stop! They'll kill you!"

  Then it was his turn to falter openmouthed as the figure on the other side of the captain turned around. His pale hair floated out in the ship's weak gravity; his elongated classic high-blood features caught the hoarfrost light and stood out in white planes. The eyes, which had once been blue, were black, but Zal would have known him anywhere. It was the first face he had recognised in an age, and in the split second between knowing it and finding the name that fit he felt all that was between the two of them and it was such a powerful flood of emotion, so dense that he slid to a halt in his tracks, grabbing at his chest for a second, sure now if he wasn't before that he did still have a heart.

  "Ilya," he said as the ghost captain snarled at him, her face twisted with hate, and yelled, "we cannot stop! It will bring chaos!"

  The faery was staring at him. Zal glanced at his face, and realised it was expecting recognition. He had none, so he looked back at Ilya, almost unable to understand the vibrations that were emanating from him. Unmistakably it was power, much greater than Zal's own. For an in
stant he was thrown by the lack of contact between them-every elf joined aetheric bodies on meeting-then remembered that here they were their aetheric bodies and had no other, him literally. "Ilya! Listen to me. Those things on that ship are-"

  "Angels. We have met." He was so calm, but that meant nothing. There was a time when both Zal and Ilya would have been calm in a battle and died calm without a trace of feeling in their faces and little of it within themselves. A smile was almost forming on Ilya's face. "I thought you were finished." The smile suddenly shone. "But you never appeared where I was, so I knew it was not so."

  "Fire!" screamed the captain, ignoring their exchange.

  "Don't fire!" Zal screamed at her.

  "Zal?" the faery asked, his tones suggesting he didn't understand, that they were supposed to be on the same side and that side was fighting. Zal wasn't sure, but he saw the darkness hanging over the Temeraire suddenly deepen and he knew what it meant.

  "Stop!" He hung on the faery's arm and pushed at the captain though she shook him off and tried to hit him. "It's not worth you dying. They'll carry on anyway. Please. I'm begging you. Stop."

  The harpoon gun sounded its blast and a bolt went screaming over their heads, trailing a fine line. One of the angels flared and it flicked down at the last moment, slamming into the forward bulkhead of the Temeraire.

  "There is more to this than meets the eye," Zal babbled, unsure of what he was going to say but only knowing he didn't want them to die and it was nearly upon them. "Give me a chance! If you knew me, if you know me, if you care, then just wait. Wait. You can commit suicide later. There's always later. A few more minutes of an interesting life. Come on." It was then he realised that he was addressing the only truly living person on the vessel, apart from himself. He looked back at Ilya, surprise deepening his curiosity even as his spirit plunged. "What happened to you?"

  The elf had his head on one side slightly, chin drawn back; his eyes were deeply puzzled. "Zal, is that ... concern for me on your face?"

  "No!" The captain's wail of disappointment almost drowned him out as she surveyed the missed shot and witnessed the severing of her lines by the angels. At the same time the dark shades plunged forwards across the gulf, a boiling, indistinct mass like a cloud come to cover their skies. "Man the blasters! To stations! Get ready to fire nets."

  Zal was shaken, but the moment with Ilya felt more compelling than his impending doom. "Shouldn't it be?"

  Ilya looked at him with something approaching wonder. "Did you forget ... ?"

  "Yes," Zal snapped. The black cloud had blotted out most of the sight of the Fleet now. It was speeding towards them. "I did. I forgot everything. But apparently not you. Now isn't the time for a reunion. If you want that you have to act. What should I do? More concern?" He darted forward over the last few metres that separated them and hugged the tall thin frame, just able to feel its bitter cold surface, though that didn't lessen his grip. "I love you. I need you. I want you to live. Don't die. There, now please, stop her! Stop her." The strange thing was that as he talked he found he meant what he was saying. He really didn't remember any details, only the feelings. For the first time in a long time, he knew that he was telling the truth as it was meant to be, without regard for incidental things, like facts.

  The faery had begun to try and reason with the ghost but she was fighting him. Her face was distraught, a ruin, tears running down it in big, black inky lines. "No, no no!" she was moaning as her hands mas tered the difficult controls and brought them around so their starboard side faced the huge sailing ship. The demon and elf and other ghosts were all set, seated on swivelling gun mounts, their odd barrels taking aim, the hum of the power generator becoming a scream. Zal had no idea what they even did.

  "Jones," the faery said, holding onto her even though she was fighting and swearing at him. Her crew looked to her. All their faces were so sad. Zal didn't understand. "Jones. For me. For the crew. For what you learned. Maybe there's more."

  "There is no more!" she cried. "Don't you hear her, in your mind? You didn't. You don't know what she's like! She ate us, Mal. She destroyed us! And him, he's like her. Shadow!" She wrenched her head around and opened her mouth.

  Zal knew what was coming. He slapped his hand over her face and pressed on it with all his might, pulling hard on every scrap of shade, every bit of the Void's natural dark, on the black tears running on her cheeks. He stared into her narrowed eyes as she glared her hate and rage at him. Then he thought he had heard right after all. "She?" He looked away from her terrified face at the other two. "She?" He looked over his left shoulder.

  Glinda stared at him fixedly through a haze of Old Havana. "Ahha," she said slowly. "I didn't think Xavien was all that great a demon name. I think our necromancer is playing a game of charades. Figures they're not brought up in the best schools of meddling with dark forces. Who in their right mind would piss me off that much?"

  Unable to move in his grip Jones rolled her eyes toward the Temeraire. Zal realised he was crushing her. He could feel the substance of her melting against his insistence, literally, her glow fragmenting, fading. He let her go and backed away in despair. She reeled against her control deck. The oncoming wave struck the ship, and where it touched its glittering, glowing edges the light was instantly consumed. Ilya, who had been gazing at Zal, raised one hand without even turning around.

  "Get back," he said in a tone of command that was as gently spoken as it was absolute.

  The captain, Jones, spat at Zal and took hold of her wheel again, bracing herself for the onslaught as if for a hurricane. But it never reached them. Like mist rising and clearing with the sun, Ilya's command had dispersed it into primary particles. Zal felt it wash past him invisibly, too discontinuous and disparate to be any more than an unpleasant, itching chill. In seconds that too had gone.

  "What the hell?" Zal said, an echo of Glinda, but the effect hadn't gone unnoticed aboard the other ship. One of the angels had suddenly crossed the gap. Its explicit examination of Ilya was obvious, even though it hovered above and in front of him without making any significant movement. He stared back at it, watchfully, with what Zal thought was intense bitterness rather than rapture.

  Nobody was staring at it with more awe than Jones however. "What ... what is that?" she whispered hoarsely to the faery who was standing behind her, supporting her. "It looks like ... is it ... ?"

  "Yes," he said, as elegant and insouciant as if they were in a pleasant lounge and not at the brink of extinction. "It's an angel."

  "I never saw one this close." She gave a snort, an almost noiseless one-shot laugh. "Isn't that just the shits? They chased me. I was too scared to turn around and look."

  "Not entirely without reason," Ilya said dryly.

  The angel abruptly vanished and reappeared some five hundred metres away on the Temeraire's deck. The two of them spiralled up suddenly in a rush of light and remained close to the crow's nest there.

  Abruptly Jones slapped a switch and the power generator quieted. The ship stopped thrumming and they slowed to a halt with a brief hum. The two ships floated a hundred metres apart and the Fleet massed around them, gathering close on all sides so there could be no escape.

  "Captain?" her demon crew asked from his position at the front gun.

  "Stand down," she said. "We died once out here. It's enough. We're done." She pulled away from the faery and walked away from the helm and ran down the steps in the centre of the deck, followed closely by the demon, while the rest of the crew reluctantly went about the business of disarming.

  The faery glanced uneasily at the Temeraire and then more urgently back at Zal. "Zal, what happened, did you really forget everything?"

  "I don't know," Zal said. "Did I know you?"

  The faery seemed disturbed. His cat ears flattened to his head. "Yeah." He glanced at the deck hatch and then back at Zal.

  Zal felt awkward. He looked to Ilya, who was still staring at him. "You're not ..."

  "He's an avatar
," Glinda said behind him with undisguised surprise and what Zal thought might be professional envy. "Jack's supplanter. The twice-dead Winter King. It's complicated. Faery remade him. It does that. Long story."

  "Oh right." Zal nodded at her. "I thought he was Ilyatath Taliesetra. An elf. But yeah. Something happened to him."

  "Who are you talking to, Zal?" the black faery asked, peering around.

  "The Three Sisters," Ilya answered for him as Zal said, "Glinda." They paid no attention as the cat fey hissed and muttered under his breath. For a moment there was only the two of them.

  "What happened to you?" Ilya asked him.

  "I ..." Zal began, but he couldn't go on because there was only blank space in his head, not even lint. "There was a girl," he said. "She had silver eyes." It was what came into his thoughts first. At this he saw Ilya's face tighten slightly and take on a look of caution. The faery's even more so. "What?"

  "We can have a reunion later, as you said." The faery pointed to himself. "Malachi. Now that ship is coming this way, and when it does any chance we had to act will probably be gone so tell us what's going on from your end and make it fast."

  Zal looked and saw the Temeraire's crew making ready to board. "There is something going on over there that isn't what it looks like. Demon, necromancer, manages the beasties, superior mastery of ghosts, strange behaviour, using people's insides to create doppelgangers ... but that woman just said ... she said she ... and those angels. I don't think two angels would be here if this were what it looked like."

  "And what's that?" Malachi asked, folding his arms.

  "An attempt to seize the ultimate in aetheric power and re-create the world. I mean, is that what you thought?" He looked at the faery, who was mulling it over, his jaw jutting, and at Ilya.