by Edward Aubry
Hadley scrutinized the tool. "Maybe," he said. "I'll have to play with this a bit, see how much I can make it do." He swished it through the air a few times. "Yes, I think I can try that."
Harrison took Hadley's arm. They shifted again. They were outside now. The sunlight reflecting off the snow was a sharp contrast to the dim tunnel. Harrison squinted, unwilling to close his eyes for fear of being helpless. They were standing on a hill, overlooking the giant Gryphon.
"We overshot," he said. He could see his breath in front of his face. He turned to Hadley, who was staring at the ground. The scientist bent down and touched the snow with his fingertip. Harrison could see a pale green glow beginning to emanate from Gizmo, which Hadley seemed unaware of.
"What …?" Harrison began. As he spoke, his vision altered. The landscape appeared before him in varied shades of orange. It was impossible to tell if this was an effect of snow blindness or some sort of attack. "What's wrong with my eyesight?"
"Basilisk ray filter," said Hadley. "I did that. It's for your protection."
While he was sorting out what that was supposed to mean, he looked around. And immediately understood. Lurking behind them was a beast of such extraordinary ugliness that seeing it almost made him throw up. Its head, which was vaguely bird-like, was mounted on a mammalian torso that tapered down to a serpentine tail. Normally, if he recalled his mythology correctly, one glance from this beast would have killed him on the spot. Hadley had saved his life. The basilisk was assuming a nonthreatening posture, but, then, it probably expected Harrison to die any second.
Harrison slowly raised the sword.
My blade will not kill it , she said.
"I know," he whispered. He held her parallel to the ground, maintaining eye contact with the basilisk. Then he slowly lifted the sword until the flat of the blade completely obscured his view. He rolled the blade slightly, back and forth, until he heard an inhuman shriek. He lowered the sword, and looked at the basilisk. It was dead, killed by its own reflection.
"Dumb as a bag of hammers." He turned to Hadley. "How did you know it was there? You couldn't have seen it, right?"
"No, that would have killed me. Hence the filter." Hadley pointed to the snow. "Tracks," he said.
"You knew those were basilisk tracks?"
"With a little help," he said, holding Gizmo up. "This thing is amazing! It's enhancing my knowledge of magic the same way it boosts technology."
"Wow," said Harrison. It hadn't done that for him, but, then, he probably didn't have the aptitude for magic. "Are there any more monsters on this island?"
"Dozens. I can sense them."
Harrison shook his head. "Well, shall we try again?"
He blinked, and found himself somewhere else. He was inside, at least, but there was no sign of his pixie. There was also no immediate sign of monsters, or Scott's goons, either. He was in a small room with a single door opposite a wall of glass, which angled slightly away from the door. The ceiling light was off, but there was enough light coming from beyond the glass wall that he had no trouble seeing. He could hear machinery. He looked at Hadley, who shrugged. Guessing that they were in some sort of observation booth, he gambled that they would be hard to spot in the dark. He crept toward the glass, being careful not to move too close.
He was looking down at a factory floor, of sorts. There were several enormous machines, which all looked alike to Harrison, assembling and mass producing some item he did not recognize. Dozens of men were working those machines, feeding materials into them, removing finished product, inspecting it, and storing it in cases. All of this looked pretty everyday to Harrison. With one obscene exception.
All of the machines were connected by cables to an object that resembled a giant, living heart. It was about ten feet in diameter and was suspended (by no obvious means) a few feet off the floor. He could see it pulsing, and imagined that he could hear a heartbeat. With each beat, it threw off a dirty orange glow, like a smoking ember. None of the men working around the machines seemed to notice the glow.
"What on earth is that?" Harrison whispered.
"I have no idea," Hadley replied. "I'm picking up magic from the levitated object, but its function is unclear. It may be a power source. Or it may be supplying a material for the manufacturing process."
Harrison had already identified the fact that it was magical. That was a no-brainer. But he was deeply disturbed that Hadley couldn't identify it. Just looking at it made him queasy. "Will this thing survive the bomb?" he asked. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he remembered that he himself would not. He felt his heart accelerate.
"Unlikely," said Hadley. "Assuming we're still on the island, this operation is well within the projected blast radius."
Well, there was that, at least. Whatever was going on down there-and he was sure it was no good-it would not be going on for more than another few minutes. That is, assuming he ended up anywhere near where he was trying to go. "Okay. Let's try one more time."
They were outside in the bright sun again. This time, though, the white was accented by flares of orange. Streaks of fire were shooting out of a source Harrison could not identify. Mostly, he could not identify it because he was scrambling for cover. He could see a huge portion of Scott's army doing the same. He recognized that he was somewhere in a compound of low-lying buildings, and as he pulled Hadley around a corner they suddenly had a magnificent view of the front of the Gryphon. Most of the buildings were burning, as were dozens of men, some running, most screaming, some sickeningly still. Several men ran past them. One man tried to stop them. Harrison cut him in half.
A building less than twenty feet away from Harrison erupted. He fell over from the shock, and while he was struggling to get back to his feet, he felt powerful gusts, pulses of hot air, pushing him back down. Something gigantic descended upon the burning wreckage, and strode through it directly toward Harrison.
A dragon stood before him, panting, its breath hot sulfur. Harrison was sure he would choke on the smell. The dragon drew in a vast, wailing breath and reared up on its hind feet.
"Just flew in from the coast," said Gustav. "Boy, are my vings tired?"
Harrison stared at the dragon.
"Is joke."
"I get it." Harrison was starting to feel his world come back into focus. He looked behind him. Hadley was still there, but making no move to come closer. None of Scott's men were coming closer, either. They were safe for the moment. "Gustav, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Ach!" The dragon brushed away the question with one wing, making Harrison cough. "Long story. I vas recruited. No more dinosaurs, anyvay. I vas ready for new adventure."
"Uhhh, who recruited you?"
"Little vuns. Somethink about end of vorld. I asked they maybe get me more dinosaurs? They said they look into it. You seen any dinosaurs here?"
"Little people?" said Harrison. Gustav's exposition was wandering again. "Like Glimmer?"
"Ja," the dragon nodded. "Only not so pretty."
Faeries. Titania sent him. He had needed just a little more of an edge, and now he had it. "Listen," he said aloud. "Please listen very carefully. In a few minutes, you're going to need to clear out of here. Get as far away from the island as you possibly can. But for those minutes, I need you to be keeping these people busy. Can you do that?"
Gustav nodded his enormous head. "Ja. Can I eat dem?"
Harrison's stomach rolled. "Sure."
A fireball exploded a few yards away.
"What the hell?" Harrison shouted, but Gustav was already airborne. The fire hadn't come from him, and he was going to confront whatever had sent it. Harrison could see him flying toward another creature up in the sky. Roughly the same size as Gustav, this attacker was serpentine, but had an enormous frilled head and short legs fore and aft. It slithered through the sky with no obvious means of lift or propulsion. It briefly exchanged fire with Gustav, leading to its own demise, and then it came crashing, burning, to the ground. As it
fell, Harrison recognized it. He had seen it hundreds of times on placemats in Chinese restaurants.
Scott had dragons, too.
He heard a screaming above them and looked up. Two more of these creatures were coming over the top of the Gryphon building. Gustav was flapping furiously. He would be useless as a distraction while he had to fend these things off.
"Get out of here," Harrison called up to his friendly dragon. Gustav whirled in midair, surprised to hear him at such a distance. "Get clear of the island. There's a ship sailing away from here right now. Your only responsibility is to protect the people in it. Do you understand?"
Gustav pulled a wing back and forth in front of his face, which Harrison guessed must be the dragon equivalent of a salute. He took a parting shot at one of the Chinese dragons, apparently injuring it, though not enough to bring it down, then turned and sped away. His speed was remarkable, and Harrison wondered if the snaky dragons would be able to match it.
The question proved moot. With Gustav subtracted from the equation, the Chinese dragons turned their attention directly on him. As they came plummeting toward him, he ducked backwards and grabbed Hadley. "Hang on!"
He imagined the two dragons colliding with the ground as he vanished. He knew it was unrealistic, but he enjoyed the image.
As he reoriented himself, he saw that he was inside again, this time in a narrow, empty corridor. Again, there was no sign of Glimmer.
"That was fascinating!" said Hadley. "Chinese dragons are symbols of luck and strength. I wonder if that's a mistaken impression. Or did Scott somehow corrupt them?"
"Are we getting close yet?" Harrison asked. There would be plenty of time later for a conversation on comparative dragon culture. He was getting tired and frustrated. Any chance he had of surprising Glimmer's captors was long since spent, and his only hope now was that Scott's army was too busy doing dragon damage control to communicate properly.
Hadley clutched Gizmo. Its glow was slightly brighter. "I think we may be," he said. "The wand seems to be picking her up like a homing beacon. I'm guessing it's not far from here on foot."
Harrison felt his heart pound. "You ready?" he asked Bess. It was a rhetorical question.
Aye , she answered. He felt a mild surge of whatever magical adrenaline she was feeding him. He ran. It took less than a minute for Harrison and Hadley to cover the distance to where Glimmer was. Harrison charged into the room, sword drawn, fully prepared to carve to pieces anyone even approximately in his way.
The room was empty.
It was a laboratory of some sort. It smelled overwhelmingly of formaldehyde, which suddenly activated a long-dormant memory of cutting up a fetal pig in his high school biology class. The walls were lined with cabinets and shelves, which were filled with jars containing various animal parts suspended in liquid. He felt no need to inspect these jars, no curiosity about what parts they contained. He was too busy scanning for a pixie, and for anyone who would be a direct threat to his life. A sound caught his attention. He turned and glimpsed what looked like a set of television rabbit ears. A blue electric arc formed at their base, traveled to the top, and vanished. This device, he recalled, was called a Jacob's Ladder. It had virtually no practical use and was suitable only for decorating a mad scientist's movie castle.
Bzzzt, it said to him. Over and over again.
And then he found the people. Five of them. He was pretty sure he was looking at three men and two women. They should have been easy enough to classify, since they had no clothes.
They also had no skin.
And they were no threat to him at all. They were hanging on the far wall of the laboratory, apparently unable to move. He was torn between horror and relief. It was impossible for him to tell, at first, if they were conscious, or even alive. Then one of them turned its (his?) head toward him, and stared at him with bloody, lidless eyes. It made a dull, guttural sound, and the other four turned their heads to see what the fuss was all about.
Harrison had no idea what to do. These people must be in agony, but if he freed them, then what? He couldn't possibly save them. It briefly occurred to him that they might not be people at all, but horrid monsters, waiting for him to wander too close so they could leap on him and tear his skin off, too. Then he saw what was holding them to the wall, and choked back a sob. They were people, all right. Skinned alive, probably kept from bleeding to death by magical means, to prolong their agony, and impaled on huge hooks to keep them from fleeing.
But they weren't, couldn't be, Harrison's priority right then. He walked past them, avoiding their eyes as Hadley stood and stared at them. Harrison was unable to tell if he was staring in horror or with scientific detachment. Well, they'll be vaporized soon enough, he thought. Their pain will be over. He took a modicum of comfort in that, even though they couldn't do so.
In the corner of the room, just past the last of the five torture victims, a birdcage hung on a floor stand. Inside the cage lay his pixie, naked, wingless, and motionless. She was lying on her stomach. For a fleeting moment, he was sure she was dead, that he had come all this way for nothing. Then she stirred. She raised her head, and Harrison saw the pain and exhaustion in her face.
"Harry?" she said. It was a whisper, raspy and desperate.
"Shh," he said, putting his finger to his lips. He sheathed Bess and reached for the clasp on the cage. "I'm getting you out of here." It was all the detail he could bear to give her at the moment. Soon they would be back on the Ptolemy, and then she, and Apryl, and everyone else aboard, would have to watch Harrison die. He planned to spare her that news as long as possible. He touched the lock.
"Aaagh!" He jerked his hand back and looked at his palm. The ring on his middle finger was glowing, and he felt searing pain where it touched his skin. "Damn it!" he whispered.
"Harry?" She sat up.
"Shh. It's okay." He was shaking his hand, trying to make the burning go away. There must be some spell on the lock. The ring's getting feedback. He touched the lock with his left hand.
"Gah!" This shout was louder than before. His right hand was trembling spastically. "Fuck!" He looked at his right hand again. The ring was smoking now. He was sure blisters were forming under it. He tried to take it off, but the pain when he touched it was paralyzing.
"Harry," said Glimmer. "You have to get out of here."
He shook his head. "I'm going to get you back to the ship. I just need to get past this lock. Hadley, do you have any ideas?" He turned to the scientist.
Scott stood across the room, inspecting Gizmo. Standing beside him were a man wearing a lab coat and the stone man who had bound Harrison to a chair in a cage not so very long ago. The stone man had his hand around Hadley's face. Hadley struggled to break free.
"You're here," said Scott. "That's good. I was afraid you'd left."
Harrison held out his left hand, waiting for Gizmo to fly into it. He would simply have to teleport the entire cage to the ship, and worry about opening it from there.
Scott shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't think so." He held Gizmo out to his side. He should not have been able to hold it at all. Harrison winced as he took in the implication. If the anti-theft spell was having no effect on Scott, then Scott was more than he appeared to be. He might not even be Scott anymore.
Harrison watched helplessly as Scott closed his hand and squeezed. Gizmo was crushed like ripe fruit. As the machine imploded, it sounded like a xylophone being shattered with a sledge hammer. The emerald marble burst and green dust hovered and swirled around Scott's hand. He opened his palm, and rubbed his thumb against the tips of his fingers. Fragments of Gizmo tumbled to the floor.
And that was it. Harrison's means of setting off the bomb, Hadley's all-purpose magic enhancer, was no more. In a last act of desperation, he tried to teleport himself, Hadley and the cage back to the ship. He could feel the energy flowing through him, but at a vastly diminished rate. Without the wand, he wasn't strong enough on his own.
He stared acros
s the room into Scott's eyes. Something else stared back.
"Ru'opihm?"
It nodded Scott's head, perhaps surprised at Harrison's directness. "Well," It said. "We have a lot to talk about."
Chapter Forty-Seven:
Faerie Gifts' Strings
Harrison waited. He was desperately afraid. He did not cower, however, and he did not surrender, or beg for mercy. He was way past the point where these would have made any difference, and he was not dealing with an adversary who would have responded. So he waited. His adversary was not immediately forthcoming about what they could possibly have to discuss. Hadley had stopped struggling, but Harrison could see that he was still breathing. Feeling that he had little, if anything, to lose, he tried taking the initiative.
"May I have my pixie back?" he asked politely. His expectations included laughter or outrage on the part of the Evil One. They did not include Its actual response.
"No," said Scott's voice. No malice, no mockery.
"Please?"
This time It did laugh. It was a dry, patronizing sound. "Really, no," It said. "I have plans for her. Besides, you won't be going anywhere, so it really wouldn't serve any purpose for you to take her."
Ru'opihm nodded to his stone man, who released Hadley, who fell to the floor. Harrison assumed he was unconscious until he sat up and rubbed the sides of his head. He was bruised and scraped where stone fingers had pressed into his cheeks and temples. Ru'opihm studied Hadley, then said to man in the lab coat, "I believe this is your opposite number, Hauptmann. The industrious Dr. Tucker." Hauptmann's brows rose as he looked Hadley over with an expression that was either resentful or disgusted.
Ru'opihm walked casually around the room, inspecting or simply observing the objects stored in their jars. It wasn't walking to Harrison, and Harrison didn't move. It turned and pointed to one of the flayed humans mounted on the wall. "November 18, 1978," It said. "Jonestown Massacre. She had the ability to neutralize any poison, any toxin. She could even alter them at the atomic level if need be. Also a fully effective anti-viral ability, although she never figured that out."