Fiddleback Trilogy 3 - Evil Triumphant

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Yellowed light glinting from his tusks, the Yidam nodded in agreement. "The destination that Mi-ma-yin intends for Coyote is in the same dimensional sphere as the dimension in which Nero Loring has found indications of Ryuhito. Moving there together will make our transit easier."

  Will nodded, not really understanding. He had been told about the other unseen worlds by his grandfather and had even had perceptions of them when using peyote during ceremonies, but he had always dismissed those as hallucinations. The gap between believing his visions the product of drug-induced imagination and believing they actually existed as other worlds upon which he spied was not, in theory, that far. In reality, which Will pegged as physically being able to visit those other realms, he had a hard time accepting their existence and his ability to travel to them.

  Crowley popped a clip into the Mac-10 he wore on his right hip and snapped the bolt open. "Okay, I'm set to go."

  The Yidam, in a black jumpsuit that had been stitched together from two other, much smaller suits, let a pistol-gripped shotgun dangle from a strap over his right shoulder. "As am I." He adjusted the crossed bandoliers of shotgun shells with his lower arms, then nodded to Will. "Are you prepared?"

  "I hope so." Will tried to keep doubt out of his voice, but he failed. The other two men smiled indulgently, and Will did not feel he had erred in letting them know how he felt. "What do I need to do?"

  Crowley laid a gloved hand on Will's right shoulder. "Relax first. The vision test that Hal gave you on the day you signed on, the one with the pink and purple circles, proved you are empathic enough to be able to actually perceive things in other dimensions."

  "Wouldn't the visions I've seen in ceremonies indicate that ability as well?"

  "Not always. There is a difference, which is akin to the difference between being totally blind, legally blind and lacking the need to use glasses. Drugs might make the legally blind sharp-eyed, but we have no use for anyone that can't function straight." Crowley eased the boxy machine-pistol in its holster. "Clear, sharp perceptions are vital where we are going, and the ability to think quickly may make the difference between life and death. That may sound melodramatic, but it is true and well worth bearing in mind."

  Will nodded solemnly. "Yes, sir."

  "What we are going to do, the Yidam and I , is to rip a hole between this office and the hospital. We will do that by tapping into a sidecar dimension that is remarkable for one thing: Distances there are roughly one one-hundredth of what they are here. A step there will be a hundred steps here."

  The Yidam smiled. "Will, I believe your people have a legend about moccasins that allow the wearing to pass great distances in the wink of an eye."

  "Hiawatha — not my tribe, but I remember it."

  Crowley smiled and jerked his head at the Yidam. "You know these Buddhist demigods — we all look the same to them."

  "Well, you all do have only two arms."

  All three of them laughed at the joke, and Will felt some of his tension bleeding away. "Moving through that dimension will let us reach the hospital quickly, correct?"

  "Exactly," Crowley assured him. "Once there, we will do what we need to make sure Coyote is stable, then we will bring him to the dimension in which he will be left to heal. This will not be that easy, but you can make the passage much easier if you do a couple of simple things."

  "Anything."

  "Close your eyes and start breathing to a four-count. Clear your mind of everything but the counting, then let that slip away."

  Will closed his eyes and exerted control over his breathing. He recognized the sense of well-being that flowed over him as the same he had felt during and after the rituals his grandfather had taught him. It struck him that the same techniques he used to purify himself and to be put in touch with the spirit world were the ones he needed to move through dimensions. Once that thought occurred to him, he forced it away and left his mind blank.

  He felt Crowley grab his right wrist and the Yidam his left, then got the sensation of drifting forward. He felt a flash of heat as he moved out of the air-conditioned comfort of the office, and that prompted him to open his eyes. He found himself in a dark place that appeared to have no walls or edges, yet left his body feeling squeezed as if he were wedged between two smoke-gray slabs of glass.

  To his left he saw the Yidam, but on his right Crowley had changed. Gone was the green-eyed, dark-haired occultist and, in his place, Will saw a man made of shadow. He had depth and a gold ring flash on his right hand, but beyond that bit of color, Crowley appeared to be a three-dimensional silhouette. He is not human.

  The silhouette turned and looked at him. "I'm human, very human. Outside my own dimension I am just..."

  "Eccentric," the Yidam offered.

  Crowley laughed. "Eccentric. I like that."

  Though none of them took a step, Will sensed forward and downward movement. The dimension in which they stood darkened significantly just before their downward movement stopped. "We are in the Grand Dark?"

  "Skimming just below it, in fact." The surrounding area lightened a bit and the air grew chilled. Crowley nodded confidently. "We are here."

  The surrounding reality cleared like a fogged window being wiped clean. Will felt pressure under his boots as the floor grew solid. He waited for nausea or discomfort because of the journey and used his concern with his physical well-being to hold back his worry and wonder at having passed between worlds.

  Crowley, once again in human guise, crossed to the door and opened it just a crack. He shut it again slowly and whispered to them in a hoarse voice. "This is room 954. Coyote is in 958, two doors down. The hallway looks clear."

  Again he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Will followed him and, when Crowley pointed to it, wheeled along a portable oxygen stand that had been left beside the doorway to 957. With Crowley holding the door open, Will and the Yidam entered Coyote's room. As the door closed behind him, shutting out all the bright light, Will shivered.

  Michael Loring lay in a bed surrounded by machines. White gauze had been wound round his head and covered it completely, except where a plastic mask fitted over his nose and mouth. The heavy outline of his chest and midsection beneath the thick blanket hinted at the body-cast into which the man had been fitted. An IV drip fed into Loring's right arm, the needle taped in place between the gauze sheath on his hand and the blue-green hospital gown in which he had been dressed.

  The machines surrounding him felt cold to Will, and he realized the man laying in the bed seemed more dead than alive. Little red and green lights flashed on the monitors. A green wave spiked its way through a small grid readout, while a little red digital counter tracked Loring's heart rate and respiration. Will watched the light show for a moment, sensing more life in them than in Coyote himself, then he looked back at the man again.

  He studied him more closely and swallowed hard when he realized what had struck him as being the most wrong with Loring. "His left arm...."

  Crowley nodded. "They took it two days ago. Too much damage." He pointed to the oxygen cylinder. "Free that from the cart and set it gently between his legs."

  From his place by the door, the Yidam hissed, "Someone is coming."

  "Dammit, I wanted to do this easily." Crowley yanked the clear lead from the respiration monitor and settled it over the nozzle of the oxygen tank. He opened the valve, and Will heard oxygen hiss out into the mask. "Hold on, Will. Vikram, let's move it all."

  The Yidam came around to the right side of the bed and tossed the IV bottle to Will. He caught it and held it high with his right hand while holding on to the end of the bed with his left. Behind him, the door opened and someone began to yell, "What are you doing here?"

  "Go!" Crowley shouted, and Will tightened his grip as the bed began to slide forward into the wall at its head. It met resistance at the first, then gave slowly as if being pushed through mud. The wall itself began to stretch and thin, as if it had been made of balloon rubber. The ugly powd
er-blue of the wall leeched color and became white around the edges of the headboard. The shouting behind him increased, and added to it came the keening wail of a heart monitor linked to a patient with a pulse of zero.

  Suddenly, the wall exploded like a burst bubble, and Will felt himself jerked off his feet. Into a blackness the bed sailed, and it instantly dipped down as if it had gone off the edge of a cliff. Over the headboard, Will saw a rust-red world of stone and swirling sands. It reminded him of some of the desolate places in northern Arizona where his grandfather had taken him to learn the old ways, except that here the world looked very small, and the constellations in the black-bowl sky were alien to him. "Concentrate on pulling up!"

  Will looked at Crowley, and in the hunched set of his shoulders he could read the strain of trying to fight against gravity, it appeared to him as if Crowley were standing on solid ground and hauling up against the bed's nosedive, yet Will's body was extended out like a tail on a kite. A quick glance at the Yidam showed Will the godling was fighting as hard as Crowley to prevent their crash-landing.

  Tossing the IV bottle on the bed beside the oxygen tank, Will pulled his right hand down to the foot of the bed. Tightening his stomach muscles and bending his legs, he brought his knees up to his chest, then kicked them out and down at the invisible floor on which the other two seemed to be standing.

  His heels hit something solid and skidded along as if he were trying to stop a speeding car by grabbing the bumper and using his body as a brake. Realizing that he was trying to do just that, on a metaphysical level, he yanked back on the footboard and dug his heels in harder. He visualized himself as a pivot point and pulled hard to steer the bed up and into the sky.

  Pain ripped through him for an eternity, but he felt the bed shifting. It came up for a second, then tried to dip down again. Sensing the deception as if the bed were some game fish he was fighting, Will pulled back even harder and used its momentary surrender against it. The bed tugged back against him, but he saw the Yidam shift his grip, and the bed canted up and to the right. Crowley grunted loudly and, with shadow muscles rippling, hauled the bed even and then forced it up farther.

  Bracing themselves, the three men kept the bed pointing upward. Will realized how far they had fallen when a patina of red dust curled up as they swooped through the valley he had first seen. Like a wild horse given its head, the bed picked up speed and rocketed toward the stars. Will remained ready to fight against it, but he knew if the bed decided to spin or snap on down, he'd be thrown flying like the last child in line during a game of Crack the Whip.

  "We're okay now, I think."

  Will looked at Crowley. "What do you mean?"

  The stars began to swirl together, leaving their places in the heavens, to form a light-tunnel. The bed centered itself on the tunnel, and the speed increased until red -and-blue highlights worked themselves into the tunnel's pattern of light. As they entered the tunnel, Will felt a jolt of cold, a searing blast of heat, then nothing at all.

  "That place, that red world, is where Coyote saw himself kill his predecessor, it marks the place he sees death. When we freed him from the world, he brought us there without a second thought."

  The Yidam shook his head. "I cannot see this one wanting to die."

  "Nor can I." Crowley pressed his right hand to the man's forehead. "I think, perhaps, he anticipated death and, as this was where he saw the other Coyote die..."

  "It seemed a natural destination." Will nodded grimly. "And now?"

  "Now we are bound for a dimension in which he can heal."

  Will looked at Crowley. "Are you taking us there, or is he?"

  Crowley shrugged. "I have implanted the route in his brain. He is functioning on a low level, almost solely on the lizard-brain level. Letting him take us there is easier and less of a strain in our resources."

  The Yidam's blood-red eyes narrowed. "But will he take us there safely, or by a direct route?"

  "I don't know."

  The light-tunnel ended unexpectedly as the bed burst into the air above a world with molten oceans of sulphur crashing relentlessly into an eroding purple beach. The blankets began to smolder, then stopped as they broke through a wall and into a dark, forbidding land with sluggish nitrogen rivers carving their way five miles deep into the surface of the planet. The bed plunged on toward a mile-high nitrogenfall, but sliced through to a new dimension before any of them felt the liquid nitrogen's deadly touch.

  The bed stopped abruptly, and Will found himself catapulted up and over the end by inertia. He flipped once through the air as he sailed beyond the head of the bed, then landed hard in the dirt. He let his body roll, bleeding off the energy of the landing, and regained his feet in an instant.

  He looked back at the bed and saw the Yidam picking himself up off the ground. Crowley's shadowform still lay in the dust beside the bed. Will saw where Crowley, when thrown clear, had slammed into a man-sized dolmen. The occultist lay on his back and cradled his left arm against his chest.

  Will crossed to him and knelt beside him. The shadow-form provided little contrast, but even so Will could see Crowley had broken his left forearm. Like shards of ebon crystal, he saw the sharp ends of a bone jutting up and out of the man's arm. At his elbow, a black liquid dripped off, but when it fell clear of Crowley's form, it became red, and Will recognized it as blood.

  "Compound fracture. We will have to get you back to the hospital."

  Crowley shook his head. "No need and no time." He turned his head toward the Yidam. "You have to set it."

  The monster nodded and came around to Crowley's side as Will shuffled on his knees around toward the man's head. The Yidam crouched down and placed his smaller, more delicate hands on either side of the wound. "I cannot read you; you are closed to me."

  Will sensed apprehension from the Yidam and got absolutely nothing from Crowley. "He needs to be X-rayed and to have the bone set and cast."

  Crowley shook his head and grunted against the pain. "Don't worry about fine manipulation. Just set it enough to get the bone ends close to each other. I can exert some influence to make certain they grow together."

  "Open yourself to me, and I can assure it."

  "No." Crowley looked at the Yidam, and Will felt certain he saw a silver-blue light glow in the Yidam's eyes for a heartbeat.

  The Yidam stiffened for a second, then nodded slowly. "You are wise. I do as you request." The Yidam grabbed Crowley's wrist and elbow in his stronger arms. His eyes narrowed and he yanked, then twisted slightly.

  Crowley screamed sharply, then cautiously drew in breath. He said nothing, but made little animal sounds as he forced himself to breath in and out. From what Will saw and heard, he knew the man was in pain, but he could get nothing from him. The ability to sense pain and discomfort in others, Will realized, was something he had always had and assumed others did as well. Only here, in the absence of sensing anything from Crowley, did he realize how special his gift was.

  Still keeping his left arm hugged to his chest, Crowley sat up. "There's a cave up there, in the hillside. Vikram, if you will carry Coyote up there, I will see to it he is well warded for the time it will take him to heal."

  Will pointed to Crowley's arm. "Are you going to stay here and guard him while you heal up?"

  The shadow man shook his head. "No. The way this dimension works, my arm will be fine in a day or two — and that will pass in bare minutes back in Phoenix. Were I to wait for Coyote to regain his senses and grow back his arm, I would, well, not quite be the same. The last time I was here, I was in my sixties, but I regenerated the damage of my infirmity: old age. I have no desire to experience puberty in reverse."

  Crowley held his right arm up, and Will helped him to his feet. As the Yidam carried Coyote up toward the cave in the grassy hill, Crowley pointed Will toward a small path. "C'mon, I'll show you the reason for this place."

  Will followed the walking silhouette up a short ridge that looked down on a deep valley. From that vantage
point, he saw that the world appeared to be a bowl no more than 14 miles across. With bluffs and rivers, trees and meadows, it reminded Will of picture books on the Trojan War and the Odyssey. With the bowl of the sky sweeping down to link up at the horizon, Will imagined the dimension having been carved out of Greece by some mad god using a giant melon-bailer on the world.

  That impression grew stronger as he focused down on a large, flat stone in the middle of the river running through the valley below. A humanoid of incredible proportions lay chained spread-eagle on the stone. He had the curly black hair and thick beard that Will associated with the men depicted in ancient Grecian um paintings. A bronze shield lay at his feet, and a spear had been jammed into the earth at his head.

  Crowley pointed to where the sun peaked through the mountains at the horizon. "Dawn. They'll be coming for him now."