by Liz Williams
He was right, Omi thought. He could take out ifrits with a bow, but they did not respond well to bullets: modern technology had not built its own relationship with them, whereas the ancient ways, in some curious sense, had. So, after a thorough debriefing in which he had told Chen’s department everything he could think of about the Khan, he had gone scouting.
The main influx of ifrits had slowed now, with only sporadic flocks coming into the city. Looking up, Omi could see them massing, a dark tornado cone against the blackness of the stormclouds. He had once heard it said that ifrits feed off lightning, and watching the flickering lances across the cloudscape, he did not find this difficult to believe. The mass of ifrits hovered just above the Khan himself: Was he, in turn, drawing power from them? An odd symbiosis, Omi thought, and not a fortunate one for Singapore Three.
Magic. Grandfather had not reappeared since Omi’s transgression over the matter of Agarta, and Omi was resigned to this, though his heart hurt every time he thought of it. If he had not been so weak, such a fool — as shameful as if he had been seduced… but it was useless to entertain such regrets and he knew his grandfather would tell him so, were he here. He needed to learn from it and keep on the right path from now on. He was a warrior, not a magician, but he needed to remember what Grandfather had told him about the Khan and magic: the Khan had existed all those years by draining the power of the land. Was that why the Gobi was as it was, a toxic desert? Could one necromancer achieve so much? Perhaps so, given sufficient time, and the Khan had certainly had that in abundance. And now the Khan, freed from his geographical chains, had been able to come here. What energy there was in this city, Omi thought, what vitality. The energy lines themselves were still repairing after an unfortunate incident some years ago involving the Feng Shui Practitioners’ Guild, but there was plenty here for the Khan to occupy himself with.
And with that thought, Omi came back out of an alleyway and found himself opposite the Opera House. The Khan’s army stood in their clay and human lines, implacable, impervious to all that the city had thrown at them. Behind a row of police cars and tanks, Omi glimpsed the attenuated figure of Exorcist Lao, who seemed to be in the middle of giving directions. Omi sidled around the square to join him.
“Ah, it’s you. Any luck?”
Omi shrugged. “Some ifrits down. I can’t do much.” Frustrating, but true.
“Who can?” Lao cast an uneasy glance toward the army. “I can’t understand what he’s waiting for.”
“Where’s Agarta?” Omi asked. Deep within him, something wailed, bereft.
“It disappeared. God only knows what’s happened to — ”
Lao was interrupted by a sudden roar of fury from the Khan. It echoed around the square like the thunder itself, an ear-splitting cry of rage.
“Something hasn’t pleased him,” Lao said, eyebrows raised.
The Khan raised his sword. Lightning ran up it and shot into the heavens, bringing an answering increase in the force of the rain. Lao opened his mouth to say something to Omi but whatever it had been was forever lost as the army started to move. It surged forward out of the square, the clay horses bounding over the cars and tanks, trampling anything in their path. Bursts of gunfire from the direction of the troops did nothing to slow them down. Lao raised his arms, uttering a quick, firecracker spell, but Omi could see it fizzling out like sparks in the rain.
He ducked as a clay horse leaped over him, leaving a surge of power in its wake. There was a sharp peal of sound to his right; Lao spoke urgently into his cellphone and immediately Omi’s ears pricked up.
“Chen! We’re having — what did you say? Yes, he’s with me.” He turned to Omi. “Chen’s on his way. Says the Empress is gone.”
Omi felt a wave of relief. One down, one to go. “Where are they going?” The army was sending out tentacles from the main mass, which still occupied the Opera House Square. Horses thundered down the alleys and streets, heading in different directions.
“I don’t know.” Lao looked baffled. “I don’t know what they’re attacking.” The Chinese troops seemed almost incidental to the Khan’s concerns, as small a distraction as a gadfly. Lao and Omi crouched behind a tank, watching and waiting.
•
The normally immaculate and florally scented Miss Qi looked close to disheveled, Zhu Irzh thought. To his mind, it made her rather more appealing, but Miss Qi evidently did not agree. She was frowning.
“I’ve spoken to a few of them. They don’t remember anything.”
“The Empress must be dead,” Chen said. “Or at least, the equivalent.” He had told them how the Empress had fallen into the Sea of Night, how Agarta had cast her out. No loss, Zhu Irzh thought, and everyone else seemed to agree. But Mhara was still in his weird floating trance — which had something to do with Inari’s baby, apparently — and nothing seemed to be capable of breaking it.
“We’re just going to have to proceed without him,” Chen said.
“We’ve managed okay so far,” Zhu Irzh replied. Typical of gods. They’d let you do all their dirty work and then wake up. It was, he considered, the story of Chen’s life. At least, according to Miss Qi, the Empress’ hold on the Celestials present in Singapore Three was now broken, which left only the Khan. He started to say, “We might as well let him rest in peace,” when Mhara’s prone form gave a blue shimmer and disappeared.
“What — ” Chen began, but Robin answered.
“He’s in the temple. Don’t ask me how I know — I can feel it.”
“Why has he gone there?” Chen turned to Inari. “Darling, did the baby say anything?”
“No, not a word.”
But Lao’s urgent voice on the other end of Chen’s cellphone confirmed that the bulk of the Khan’s troops were heading for Mhara’s temple.
•
“It’s not just here,” Chen said to the demon, some while later. They were standing outside the familiar confines of Mhara’s temple, white on its slight rise. It was still raining, drops as hot and heavy as blood. “I’ve been listening to the police radio — the Khan’s soldiers have been congregating on entry points throughout the city. Kuan Yin’s temple is also surrounded.”
“So what’s he planning?” Zhu Irzh asked. “He’s focusing on entry portals to Heaven and Hell — assuming Mhara’s temple has an analogue in Hell.” It seemed unlikely, but stranger phenomena had happened.
“He’s already raided history for an army,” Chen said. “And now he’s got one. He surely can’t be planning to launch an attack on Hell or Heaven? Either one is too heavily defended and with his ally the Empress gone…”
“Don’t know.” Zhu Irzh squinted through the binoculars at the temple. The Khan himself was clearly visible, mounted on his piebald pony, as expressionless as a stone. But he was staring directly at the temple and there was no doubt as to where his attention lay. “What happened to Robin?”
“She tried to get in there but she can’t. Whatever magic the Khan is using as a barricade is extremely potent.”
“What kind of spell was it that you used to defeat the Empress?” Zhu Irzh asked Roerich. “Could you do the same thing again? Without Chen, this time.”
Roerich shook his head. “The Empress was drawing power from the Sea of Night — that thing you saw was a denizen of it. I earthed her power via Chen through Agarta itself. But the Khan is a part of this world, even if he’s out of his own time and territory. He’s drawing on the power of the land here, not something eldritch elsewhere.”
But that power was strong. Zhu Irzh could feel it pulsing underneath him. The energy lines that congregated on Mhara’s temple were being sapped, like someone tapping into an electricity supply. The Khan seemed to grow — not in his actual physical size, but in his magical aura, which swelled as the power surged through him.
“We’ve got to stop this,” Chen said. He turned to Omi, who had joined them in the company of Exorcist Lao. “Is there anything you can do?”
Omi’s face was draw
n; he looked far older than his years. “It’s my job,” he said. “But I don’t know how to carry it out. My grandfather’s gone. You can’t help me, can you, Nicholas?”
“No. My plans for defeating the Khan didn’t work out, if you remember.”
“Something’s happening,” Zhu Irzh said. All the power summoned by the Khan was coming to a point, building up like a thunderhead. Zhu Irzh’s head felt as though a storm was about to break, and the next moment, it did. The Khan took all the power he’d gathered and launched it at the temple: the demon could see this, not through his physical senses but in his mind’s eye, a great arrow of lightning directed at the modest white building before them, striking through the rain.
The temple remained, but Zhu Irzh could not see how it still stood, for the strike blasted all the ground around it so that the temple hung in empty air above a great gaping abyss. Behind it, the demon glimpsed the Sea of Night, a thin black line, and beyond, the bright shore of Heaven and the livid one of Hell. It was like glimpsing the universe in miniature, but there was more to come. A series of glowing cracks appeared in the abyss, fracture lines between the worlds, and Zhu Irzh understood how it was that Chen and Inari and the others had passed so easily through. The universe was indeed breaking down. The nearest crack was splitting apart, growing so that the world it contained filled the gap. That world was like the Taklamakan: somewhere bleak and arid and blisteringly hot. But this was a land in which no human could survive: Zhu Irzh’s demon senses told him as much.
And within it were armies. Legions upon legions, iron-armored, fire-eyed. Zhu Irzh glimpsed swords and spears and more complicated, arcane weaponry: massive trebuchets with creaking metal cogs, huge rusted catapults with flames flickering along their sides, tanks painted in all the colors of destruction. At the front, on a great red horse, rode a figure in a helmet, his face concealed, a broadsword hanging by his side. Something about him was familiar and with a shock, Zhu Irzh realized who he was: this was Tamurlane’s spirit — Timur the Lame in an earlier time — endowed by all the powers of a Hell that was not home. He was looking at the Hell to which the Khan was spiritually linked: a desert realm, a land of fire, and through the coalescing ether he thought he smelled the Khan’s fear.
The Khan, Zhu Irzh knew, had no intention of dying, of entering that Hell. Instead, he planned to bring its armies here. Then, beside him, the demon heard Omi say, “I’m going in.”
•
Despite all they had been through together, Omi was still surprised to find Zhu Irzh beside him.
“You’re coming with me?” Omi asked.
The demon gave him a slanted glance. “Gotta face your demons, you know. The Khan and I have unfinished business. Besides, it would be a shame not to see how things turn out.”
“Thank you,” Omi said, and meant it.
“Do you happen to have, you know, any kind of plan?”
Omi smiled. “No. Just an instinct, that this is what I have to do. But I don’t know why, Zhu Irzh. You can walk away now if you choose.”
“I’ll see how it goes,” the demon said.
Together, they walked toward the breach in the fabric of the universe. Omi saw the others — Chen, Lao, Roerich — fall back as they came on, as if it had been acknowledged that this was now their rightful place. Ahead, Mhara’s small temple floated high above the ground, suspended like a toy. The breach was growing and out of the corners of his vision Omi saw all manner of things begin to appear at its edges: ships and barques and galleons, all the predators and pirates of the voids, gathering to see what pickings were to be had.
Suddenly, Omi’s boots were no longer ringing on concrete, but on baking desert earth. He gasped for breath and the demon pulled him back.
“Not too close.”
“Can’t avoid it.” And he couldn’t: someone else’s Hell was closing around him and its airs were toxic and fire-filled — Omi’s throat closed and he started to choke.
“Shit!” he heard the demon say and then his senses were filled with cool water and the scent of endless grassland. A breath of wind brushed his face. He looked up. The blue crane hovered above him, wings beating like a huge fan.
“Raksha!”
The shaman smiled. “Here I am.” She rode the crane with customary ease, a short spear in her hand, and the light of battle in her eyes. “It’s time,” she said, and Omi knew what she meant. He turned to Zhu Irzh.
“Thank you again for walking with me. But you’ve come far enough now.”
“Hey,” the demon said, surprised. “You don’t want me with you?”
“It’s not that. I might need your support here, to hold the gate open. But she and I must go on alone.” Raksha was waiting. He climbed onto the crane’s blue back and it bounded upward.
Omi looked down. At the entrance to the abyss stood the demon, a small, dark figure against a wasteland of sand and fire. Omi could see the outline of the gateway before him, a portal to the world of a different Hell. It glittered faintly, betokening activity. Within it, the vast army waited. The Khan spurred his pony forward. Omi had a good view of him from above, and he could see how careful the Khan was to keep away from the portal. Unlike Zhu Irzh, he was afraid. And that, Omi thought, gives us our principal advantage. He tapped Raksha on the shoulder.
“You know what we’ve got to do, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She touched the crane’s neck, in turn. Omi glanced through the gateway and saw that the army was beginning to move, slowly at first, the front ranks hammering across the desert, then the surge of the tanks and troops behind. Something swung dangerously close to Omi’s head; he ducked.
“What was that?” He looked back. An anchor hung in the air, attached to a thick iron chain. Its pointed ends moved to and fro like a pendulum. It was attached to a ship, riding high in the clouds and flying a black flag.
Omi had not anticipated having to deal with flying pirates when all this began. He swore.
“Don’t worry,” Raksha shouted above the wind. “We’re too small to bother with.”
Omi was not sure she was right about that. The appearance of the anchor had seemed a little too deliberate. Maybe they were just playing. The Khan’s pony wheeled below, galloping up and down in front of the portal and the slight rise on which Zhu Irzh stood. Omi saw the demon raise a hand and give a cheerful wave to the Khan.
“Closer,” Omi breathed. “Closer…”
An ifrit dived, screaming. They’d spotted the crane. If the main flock took an interest, he and Raksha would be torn to pieces. Omi drew the bow and fired, spearing the creature through its nominal heart. There was a shriek from the flock. The crane dived with a speed that ripped the breath from Omi’s lungs.
Zhu Irzh stepped back a pace. Through the portal the army thundered on. Omi caught his breath. Then Zhu Irzh took a scroll from the pocket of his coat. He held it high, shouted something. Omi was too far up to hear the words but he thought he knew what the demon was calling.
“Here’s what you want, Khan. Come and get it!”
The crane was still swooping downward. Omi glanced back over his shoulder and saw a line of ifrits pursuing them. They were ten feet or so from the ground, closing on the Khan, who was riding toward Zhu Irzh. The demon stood firm, still holding the scroll. The Khan’s sword flashed up and Zhu Irzh threw himself in a roll under the screaming pony’s hooves.
Raksha and the crane swept alongside the Khan. As they did so, Omi reached out and seized the man around the waist, dragging him from his mount. The Khan shouted but the crane was hurtling on, with the Khan dangling from Omi’s grip. The bird could not, however, take the new weight; its flight was dipping and an ifrit snapped at its tail feathers. The crane squawked.
“Go, Raksha, go!” Omi shouted, and the shaman threw herself off the crane’s back, landing safely amongst the scrubs. Omi caught a glimpse of her sword as she came up fighting. Then that terrible smack of heat was once more striking him as he flew through the portal itself.
; This time, however, Omi found he could breathe. The same magic that had protected him from the freezing altitude during that first flight was still in effect, protecting him from the worst ravages of this new atmosphere. Now that they were through the portal, the Khan’s struggles had redoubled. He clutched at Omi’s throat. Omi struck him back, slamming his fist into the Khan’s face but it was like hitting a bag of rocks. Omi struck again, feeling the jolt all the way up his arm, but the Khan lashed out. The back of his hand connected with Omi’s jaw and he felt it dislocate. The Khan’s hand hammered back and Omi lost his grip on the crane’s neck feathers. Locked with the Khan, he fell off the crane’s back. The ground hurtled up to meet them, some twenty feet below.
Immediately Omi was gasping for breath, released from the protective field of the crane. He landed flat, managing to break his fall somewhat, but the Khan was on top of him. The Khan’s hands around his throat. Omi had a nightmare glimpse of the Khan’s face above him: the bulging, reddened eyes, the leather-and-bone countenance. He punched the Khan again and again, but it was no use: the breath was going out of Omi and his vision was turning black.