Web of Defeat

by Lionel Fenn

  Then, across the charred path, he saw Abber in the lower branches of the palm tree, hefting what looked to be moderately large coconuts in each palm.

  The dragon was circling, stoking its fires, its black scales reflecting the hellish light like so many ebony mirrors in the midst of a volcano.

  Abber pointed frantically to a tall twisted tree at Gideon's left, signaling that he should climb up as well. Gideon looked, saw the way the thick branches extended from the knobbed, tapering trunk in a series of wagon-wheel-like levels, and shook his head regretfully; it was an idea, but a stupid one, which if followed would leave him no room for maneuvering, no room for artful dodging and clever broken-field running, no space to contemplate the best place for the next blow of his weapon—which, he reminded himself, he had yet to use in its full capacity because he couldn't get close enough to the thing to dent it, much less incapacitate it.

  Abber insisted again, silently, then ducked behind the bole as the dragon lined itself up for another flaming run.

  Gideon, realizing that even if he managed to run a hundred yards through unbroken underbrush and rapacious ivy he would still suffer terminal sunburn, climbed the tree.

  It was hard.

  Though the bole was knobby and gnarled enough to permit hand- and footholds, it was also slick with a clear sap that oozed from several places where the dragon's aftermath had punched holes in the dull green-and-brown bark. It was like trying to climb a glass slide at an amusement park with only one functional arm, and only the sound of the dragon's engine revving and the blast of the fire that reached a good twenty yards from the blunted tip of its snout prevented him from leaping back to the ground to meet his fate.

  When he reached the first level of branches, the dragon was on its way.

  When he hauled himself up to the second, with tears in his eyes and a grinding in his shoulder, the dragon was already turning the earth beneath its blast into bubbling tar pits.

  When he reached the third, he was barely able to swing around the trunk before the dragon bellowed past, bending the tree, snapping off a few branches on the lower spoke, and cutting off its furnace with a puzzled snarl that withered a boulder into an oval of standing stones fifteen feet high.

  It would not, however, be denied.

  Again it swung around, and again it came down its homemade path, but much slower, at a glide, its great eyes scanning the jungle for signs of its prey while its nostrils flared in search of a scent.

  As it passed Gideon, it snorted.

  As it passed Abber, it sneezed.

  As it landed and turned to walk back with a decidedly overfed-mallardish waddle, Gideon speculated briefly on how he would be judged in the hereafter if he died bringing a curse down on the masseur's family, and family to come, for getting him up a tree like this.

  On the ground, however, the Wamchu dragon was less impressive. Its folded wings kept getting in the way and it had to shrug every few steps to keep them on its back; its tail dragged and bounced, once in a while whipping from side to side to knock down an offending tree, an impudent bush; and its head seemed too heavy to raise on its lithe but short neck. In fact, the beast seemed to be in some discomfort, to which was added the abrupt thud of a coconut bouncing off its scales just behind its left ear.

  It stopped, muttered a few weak flames, and moved on, sniffing the air, its hooded gold eyes missing nothing, its clawed feet mincing along, unaccustomed to the weight they and the stubby legs had to carry.

  When Abber threw another coconut, it stopped under Gideon's tree and looked up.

  Gideon saw again the intelligence in those saucer-like orbs, and smiled.

  The dragon's hideous upper lip curled in a purely human sneer, and it raised itself up until its sloping forehead was level with Gideon's chest.

  Abber threw yet another missile, and the head twisted around.

  Gideon did not need to be told twice what was expected of him in a last-ditch, what-the-hell situation. One-handed and clamping his teeth against the muscles tearing in his injured shoulder, he lifted the bat and brought it down squarely between the dragon's ears with more strength than he knew he had in him, and grateful for it he was.

  The dragon, surprised and perhaps a little hurt, went down on its knees in a rush of fire and smoke, its wings unfolding to flap feebly against the ground while its head swung from side to side.

  Without hesitation, Gideon slid down the slippery bark with a great deal of wincing and landed at the beast's side, took the bat again, and used it to crack the relatively fragile bone that held the wing to the beast's scaled fuselage. Then, when the dragon tried to squirm around, he nailed its temple with an uppercut, its jaw with the downswing, and for good measure gave it a third, central nostril before he realized it was unconscious.

  He staggered into the path.

  He felt the bat slip from his fingers.

  He smelled sulphur and a hint of orange, and saw Abber racing toward him, coconuts at the ready.

  And he fell without embarrassment in a semiswoon at the dragon's side, finally giving way to the searing that swelled in his shoulder, remembering with an unabashed scream that the self-hypnosis hadn't worked on the gridiron either. He was, no two ways about it and the hell with his new heroic image, in agony, and there was nothing he could do about it. He could only scream again, and pray for the blessings of unconsciousness, and wonder what in hell Abber was doing, massaging him, for god's sake, when he needed to be taken immediately to a hospital for instant repair and intensive therapy.

  He stopped screaming when the pain stopped.

  He stopped crying when he realized there was nothing to cry about, unless he counted the tatters his shirt was now in, and the gap in the right knee of his jeans, which he wasn't going to do just yet because Abber was helping him to his feet.

  Gideon touched a finger to his shoulder, holding his breath against the onslaught of agony that, amazingly, did not come. He kneaded the joint; he rolled the bones; he prodded front and back with a stiff finger.

  "How?" he asked.

  Abber, wiping his hands on the bilious green loincloth, shrugged with a self-deprecating smile. "My appellation, as you recall, is Bones."

  "But you're a masseur."

  "My talent," the grey man said with shy, downcast eyes, "is something of a broad-based one, specializing as it does in the complete eradication of my client's internal discomforts. Since this particular discomfort was in the form of osteopathic separation, it was nothing for me to rejoin that which this beast had put so crudely asunder."

  Gideon looked at the bulk of the black dragon, at the puffs of smoke snorting from its two normal nostrils, and looked around for his bat. "That's magic, you know," he said.

  "What's magic?"

  "What you just did."

  Abber looked at the coconut in his hand. "You are unable to throw one of these?"

  "The bone, Abber, the bone! You fixed me like nothing had happened to it."

  The masseur shrugged. "It is not magic. It is merely an extraordinary skill some of us have and some of us do not."

  The bat was half buried in fresh ash, but before he could reach it, the grey man had already wrapped his long fingers around the handle. He lifted it as though he expected it to weigh little more than a feather; when his motion flipped him onto his back and the cloud of ash settled around him, Gideon took the bat and let the holster close itself snugly around it.

  "That's magic!" Abber said as he stood.

  "No, that's what you get when you ask Whale to make a weapon for you."

  "What is Whale?"

  Gideon smiled and took the man's arm. "You may well ask, my friend, and perhaps someday, when we are not running for our lives, I will tell you all about it." He looked over his shoulder. "But for now, I think we'd better move it. The critter won't be out for very long."

  Abber agreed, adjusted the loincloth, and broke into an instant brisk trot Gideon didn't think he'd be able to match after such a strenuous, combativ
e trial. When he did, he looked at the man's back with open admiration. He should have known that this land would be a never-ending source of amazement, and as he caught up and pulled alongside, he hoped he wouldn't grow so jaded as to take any of it for granted.

  Like the jungle drums he heard swelling in the background now returning to its normal vocalization.

  "Abber?"

  "I hear. Do not be afraid."

  "Do you know what it is? Can you tell me what they say?"

  Abber made a thumping noise.

  Gideon reassessed his wonder.

  And two hours later, as full dark reached the jungle and the peak of the volcano to the north was giving the night sky an eerie new moon, Abber stopped and pointed.

  Ahead of them was a wall of mist that rose from a bubbling, rushing stream. Though there was little light to see by, Gideon sensed that the wall stretched far above the tops of the tallest trees. He also noted that there seemed to be no way to skirt it.

  Abber put a hand on his arm. "We go in there."

  "In there? Why?"

  "Well, for one thing, the dragon's awake."

  Gideon whirled and peered into the gloom. It did not take long for him to hear the sound of a very large creature stumbling along after them, swearing to itself and every so often sending an irritated gout of flame into the night.

  "And the other?"

  Abber smiled. "Our destination, hero, is on the other side."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "It's dark," Gideon said.

  Tuesday, he thought then, would be proud of the observation.

  It was more than dark; it was white. Very white. So solidly and unrelentingly white that it might as well have been dark.

  "It's supposed to be," Abber replied from some short distance to his right. "It's the Wall of Demarcation."

  "The what?"

  Gideon continued walking, taking short steps to test the hard ground, which was, apparently, without significant vegetation or the remnants of glacial passage.

  "Demarcation. The Wall of. A distinct wall, hero. Maybe even unique. Yet one of many others like it and not like it throughout this miserable plot of land. You can do anything you like to it and still it remains the same. That, you might say, is its tragedy."

  "Abber."

  "And its strength. It lives. It breathes. And somewhere in its depths lies a heart that beats still for the love of a good woman and a hell of a bottle of scotch. No rest for this Wall. It works night and day—"

  Gideon took out the bat, suffered temptation, then began to rub a hand up and down its length.

  "—to keep the cesspools of the outer world from despoiling its pristine state."

  Deep within the greenwood's grain a soft blue light began to glow.

  "It's hard, hero. Damned hard. Yet none are immune to its lure, its siren call, it's turning blue!"

  The light rose from the green wood and Gideon holstered the bat, caught the light between his palms, and shaped it into a globe. When he was sure it was properly lighted, he blew on it gently until it hovered some ten feet ahead of him. Its light was strong enough to show Abber's astonished face not ten inches from his own.

  "Blue!" the masseur repeated in rapturous astonishment.

  "The only color it comes in," Gideon said testily. "Now, which way, Bones, huh? I don't want that dragon on our tail. He could be murder in here."

  "Murder in the heart of the mist," the grey man said in a low voice. "That's what it's all about, right? Murder, lust, rapine, ruined dreams, and soiled virtue. That way. Follow the light. Into the light. It's the only way."

  They walked side by side in silence for nearly five minutes.

  It was wonderful.

  Then: "The dragon," Abber said.

  Gideon grunted.

  "It won't follow us. The Wall will prevent it."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I am. But then, in fairness, hero, are we ever sure of anything in this miserable, rotten—"

  "Shove it."

  Abber paused in mid-step, shrugged, and moved on, muttering to himself about sirens crying out in the night, the air rent by the screech of brakes and the howl of lost children. Gideon tried to think of something else, anything else, that would shut the man's voice out and clue his own thinking in to their current situation. But before he could achieve this remarkable, and admittedly futile, feat, the grey man put a cautionary hand on his arm and stopped him.

  "Now what?"

  The masseur pointed to the way the bluelight had seemed to gain in intensity what it lacked in size.

  "It's on the other side," he said cheerfully.

  "That's right."

  He started to run, and was hauled back without warning.

  "We should sleep now. Here."

  "Why not out there? You said the dragon wouldn't follow us, right?"

  "Right."

  "So?"

  "So there aren't any dragons out there."

  "So?"

  "So there are other things."

  Gideon considered it.

  "It's night."

  Gideon felt suddenly weary and lowered himself stiffly to the ground, brought the bluelight back with a gesture, and, once he was sure the masseur was comfortable, clapped his hands. The glow extinguished itself. The white closed in, and it was dark.

  "Abber," he said at last, his hands cupped behind his head and his feet crossed at the ankles, "what's this Harghe Shande like? Is there something I should or shouldn't say when we finally meet him? Whale says he's some kind of barbarian or something, so maybe I should let you do all the talking at first. Have you met his niece? What is she like? Do you think she'll help me? Do you think we ought to bring her something, some flowers, something like that? God, I just thought—do you think the Wamchu wives will be waiting when we're through? Just between you and me and the fence post, I think Chou-Li likes me a little. She could have turned me into a sexist ice cube if she'd wanted, but she didn't. Of course, Thong could have made me into a stew, too, so I guess that line of reasoning isn't going to work. But do you think we're shut of them for a while, or are we going to have to be careful? I was told, in the strictest confidence, by the way, that Grahne Shande is a little on the wild side. Is that going to be a problem? I mean, it's bad enough I have to chaperon a duck and a blacksmith; I don't want to have to fight off a giant's niece's advances, too. Jesus, I just remembered that. Hey, is she big, too? I mean, is she tall, like her uncle? Or are we talking in the biblical sense of giant here, just a guy who's a hell of lot taller than the average guy in his hometown. In that case, I suppose it shouldn't be too bad. I went out with a woman once who was a head taller than me. Incredible. We danced all night, and I'm still not sure whether her eyes were blue or dark brown. God, you should have—"

  Abber snored.

  "Right," he said decisively, and closed his eyes, trying not to imagine the dragon stealthily creeping up on them under cover of the foggy wall, or the Wamchus sending out little messages of destruction with their idiosyncratic psychic-cum-psychotic abilities, or the cat-thing from the creek full-grown again and pissed off, or a rankgo with legs, or Jesus, I wish that guy would stop snoring.

  He turned his head and saw that Abber was gone, that he had awakened himself with his own snoring. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, yawned, and stood, stretched, scratched his chest, his thighs, his waist, his neck, and was heading for the most troublesome parts when Abber floated out of the mist in front of him.

  Gideon smiled.

  Abber grinned back, beckoned, and turned.

  Less than two dozen strides later they broke through the Wall, and Gideon put his hands on his hips.

  "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch," he said.

  —|—

  The Wall sparkled behind them as if it had been inlaid with pearls, while to their left, not more than a few days fast run away, were the slopes of Hykrol Peak, and to their right the same distance away the beginnings of woodland that appeared to stretch unbroken all the way to
the horizon.

  In front, however, and stretching for miles toward the rising sun, was a veldt. High grasses in all shapes and configurations; low grasses in all colors and consistencies; isolated stands of elegantly twisted and kingly crowned trees; the sparkle of a river a few hours away; a soft warm breeze that tousled his tangled hair like a long-lost aunt or a friendly car salesman.

  "Is it not paradise?" Abber said with a grand sweep of his arm. "Is it not like unto those dreams which are sent from That which we cannot comprehend?"

  "It's something else again," Gideon agreed, and saw, near the start of that forestland, a low cloud of brown and red dust lifting above the rippling grass.

  "We have but to journey thusward for two simple days, hero," the grey man announced as he reached into a clump of feathered vegetation and drew out a staff half again as tall as he. "We shall breach together, you and I, the timid walls of time, and in no time, and in no wise otherwise shall we tarry, shall we be where our hearts have been since Dawn first glimmered in the eyes of a mewling babe."

  The dust cloud, Gideon noted, hadn't settled, though the breeze had stopped blowing. If anything, it was growing larger, and was definitely growing nearer. And he was definitely beginning to feel the subterranean tremblings of a large mass on the move.

  "Abber, what sorts of things live on this plain?"

  "Of that I know little," the grey man admitted, "though the little I do know is not so little that I am unable to perform feats of survival which would, were they little enough indeed, astound even the littlest-minded of the greatest kings who ever walked the earth."

  "I don't think you understand."

  Abber, however, was busily squinting at a line of fat flat insects carrying a withered leaf on their backs toward a small hole in the ground. "There," he said, and pointed.

  Gideon looked. "No, that's not them."

  "Who?"

  "Them!" he said, pointing, looking around, dropping his arm when he saw Abber looking elsewhere.

  "These are marvelous creatures, hero."

  "Abber, look!"

  "No. You must look here. 'Tis an omen, hero, that I have discovered. A sign that we should not gather unto ourselves more than we need from the appropriate harvests, though how much that is, who can say? Omens are not, by their nature, terribly precise. And in this case, nowise do I understand how it suits our present situation."