Roaring, the minotaur hurled the Fyreman’s body away, plunging into the fray. Two Fyremen jumped on the Astrid ringer, chopping into her false body with swords.
Bramblegate was ablaze.
“Pull out!” Will shouted. “Everyone run!”
Igme lunged into the spreading fire. He caught Janet before she could fall, dragging her through the gate. Others followed, grabbing up the wounded and beating a retreat.
Will held them off as Bramblegate erupted into flames.
Alone now, Will drew the last of their letrico into his ring and reached out, embracing the crush of Fyremen as they tackled him.
He thought, longingly, of Jacks and the unreal. That was what Astrid had done, the first time she’d gone there. She’d wished herself out of the real.…
The light changed, and he was at Jacks’s feet, ankle deep in a puddle of magical slush. Fyremen, maybe six of them, were trying to overwhelm him. He was out of letrico: the ring was draining him.…
Then Teoquan and his warriors came pouring from the nooks and crannies of the Pit, burying the flaming men under the weight of numbers.
He crawled free, out of letrico and weak with fatigue. The Fyremen were screaming.
“Pike, how’d we do?” he panted aloud. “The curse down?”
No answer.
He tuned in to the news center. Casualties were arriving at the hospital. Mark had destroyed the brand-new rosarite circles around Washington, D.C. Seers reported that Roche and Gilead were launching a major offensive against Indigo Springs. Sahara Knax’s whereabouts remained unknown. Juanita Corazón’s whereabouts remained unknown. Gilead Landon’s whereabouts currently unknown. Will Forest’s whereabouts were unknown—
Will touched his tuning fork. “Doghouse, Octagon—I’m safe, I’m in the unreal.”
“Will Forest is unharmed and in the unreal,” the briefing amended. “Four volunteers have been lost in the assault on Crete. A massive windstorm has sprung up in central Africa, assumed to be magical in nature.…”
Mark Clumber had probably performed his heat draw there when he destroyed the Fyreman disenchantment circles, Will thought.
“The curse is not broken. Our seers are actively searching for other Fyremen who might be reciting the Befoulment.”
“I said bring them corpses.” An Astrid ringer had materialized next to Jacks, staring in horror as the Roused warriors wrapped up their massacre of the Cretan Fyremen.
“The corpses weren’t kicking our asses,” Will told her, dragging her out of sight before Teo caught a glimpse of the ringer, drawing her back into the real.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE CHOPPER TRAVELED WEST to an airfield on the coast, south of the contaminated forest in Oregon. From there, they transferred to a sixties-vintage troop transport.
Juanita scanned the area as they trotted across the airfield to the plane. The place was a-bustle: camouflage-clad young men, thousands of them, were doing combat drills under the direction of bright, flame-licked drill sergeants.
As she stepped aboard the plane, the murmuring voices at the back of her mind hushed, all at once, like candles being blown out. The muscles in her hands—the ones she kept clenched against the urge to knead—relaxed.
Disenchantment? She took a careful look around, spotting a web of rosarite strands wound through the cabin. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t relieved.
They lumbered into the air and were soon out over the Pacific, bound, they told her, for Hawaii. Gilead sat up front, conferring via radio—with underlings or superiors, she didn’t know which. Sahara was under guard in the rear. The arch of brambles was nowhere to be seen, and the voices remained silent.
It was as close to being alone and unobserved as Juanita had been in two months. Even in sleep at Wendover, the Alchemites had had her under siege. But Sahara couldn’t invade her dreams anymore. She closed her eyes.
When she awoke, it was dark. She prayed again, expecting to feel dumb—hypocritical, maybe—and instead discovered an odd certainty, as if she were eight again and her dad was still alive, as if the clock on her faith had been reset to those last unquestioning days before his death. Somehow, she was in the right place, where she needed to be.
She took a minute to savor the sense of gratitude building within, then turned her mind to the mess unfolding here and now.
All these factions. Gilead. Sahara. Astrid Lethewood. Only Astrid had helped her without asking anything in return. She wanted to protect people … protect everyone, from the sound of it. She didn’t want Sahara torched. I’m not saintly, she claimed, but that seemed pretty big of her.
What about me? Juanita wondered. Do I want Sahara burned? She considered the Alchemite’s threats against her family, Ramón locked in dreams, the fellow marshal they’d executed while she watched. She remembered Heaven, going up in flames.
That debt’s been paid, she decided.
But how to save herself, let alone Sahara?
“Hey.” Gilead, off the phone at last, handed her a cup of steaming coffee. Without waiting for an invitation, he sat across from her, long legs crossed on the floor. “What are you thinking about?”
“Inner peace,” she said. “You?”
“Attack’s a go. We have the green light from Washington to burn the contaminated forest and everyone in it.”
“How soon?”
“Roche is positioning support squads—new guys, borrowed from the marines.”
“Guys only?”
“Not necessarily.” His eye fell on the sea-glass pendant still hanging at her throat. “My uncles have blessed your name—you’re one of us, if you want to be.”
He didn’t know she was contaminated, then. But—“That’s not an option.”
“You’re sure?”
“Gilead, as far as I can tell, you’re the most liberal guy in this fraternity of yours—and you’re a homicidal maniac.”
“Don’t you think that’s overstating?”
“Believe me, I wish.”
“I’m not the monster you imagine.”
“I didn’t imagine you burning Caro Forest to death.”
“I released her,” he said. “She’d been condemned to life as Sahara’s plaything.”
Her lip curled. “What you did was repellent.”
She thought that would end the conversation, but he sank back in his seat, looking pensive. “If we’re to save the world, a few people must be sacrificed. You must see that.”
She snorted. “Who’s the next ‘sacrifice’—Sahara?”
“Not necessarily.” He glanced toward the rear of the plane, where Sahara sat with her guards. “Before he was … abducted, Lucius was studying a particularly confusing prophecy. Sahara’s destiny is to return to the Hive of Befoulment—it’s there that she meets her fate.”
“Hive of—you’re taking her with you to Indigo Springs?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how to breach Lethewood’s defenses. But Sahara believes she’ll get in.”
I don’t want her burned, Astrid had said. Might she simply let Sahara through that gate of thorns?
“What exactly does your big book of prophecy say?”
“Don’t mock.” His lips thinned. “Lucius believed Sahara’s return to the Hive would trigger a battle for control of the well. There’s a passage—’the slow fouling of the world ends. The Brigade will be tested, then transformed.’”
She sipped the coffee, which was bitter and grainy. “Transformed?”
“Victory’s a kind of transformation, don’t you think? It goes on: The survivors offer peace to our enemies, the traditions of centuries will be overthrown—”
“Habits,” she said. “Secrecy, torching people?”
“Excluding women.”
“I’m not signing up for this.”
“Don’t you see, Juanita?” His eyes shone. “When we’ve won the well, there’ll be no need for the pyre.”
“You’ve spent your life planning to burn every single
chantment and contaminated person. You expect me to believe that if you win, you’re gonna come over all warm and pacifist? How naïve do you think I am?”
He patted the book. “You know I believe in this. When you see, Juanita, that it’s come true, you’ll believe too.”
“Believing in what’s proved isn’t faith,” she said, quoting something the judge had told her. What he’d think of this …
Inspiration struck. “You want me in?”
“I do.”
She pushed the coffee away. “Put the bonfires out.”
A startled laugh broke from his lips. “The prophecy says peace comes after the battle.”
“Promise me you won’t burn another living soul,” she said, “and I’ll get Sahara Knax into Indigo Springs for you.”
“You? How?”
“I’m a resourceful woman, Gilead.”
He mulled it over as they flew inland, over the smoking red maw of an active volcano, over a wall of jungle and into a perfectly cross-shaped compound shaved from the bamboo. Smoke poured from the center of the compound, and as they circled it, Juanita saw a pyre.
“No,” he said at last. “Knax and Lethewood die, the well falls into our hands. Then we transform.”
“That what it says? First one, then the other? Show me this so-called faith of yours, Gilead, and I’ll take Sahara to Lethewood.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“How do you know? It’s all euphemisms and symbols and what did some guy who died three centuries ago mean by ‘transformed’? Or Lady of, what was it? Masks?”
“Lady of Lies. And you don’t believe any of it.”
She crossed her arms. “You need Sahara Knax to go home.”
They touched down, bounced, touched down again.
“I’ll think it over,” he said.
“Think fast.” The plane juddered to an abrupt stop. “If I see one more person hit the barbecue, Gilead, this offer expires.”
His jaw worked for a second. Finally, after he’d failed to stare her down, he went up front.
“All the damn pyres!” she shouted up the plane. “I don’t care if they’re in Timbuktu.”
A cracking noise drowned her out; a second later, tendrils of plant root pushed in, breaking the windows. They were growing fast, winding themselves around the rosarite in the fuselage—and burning in the process. Glass shivered and broke; a smell of burnt candles filled the air.
The catlike urge to knead returned.
Juanita pressed her hands against her lap, waiting while Gilead argued on the radio in Latin. She couldn’t fool him for long; she had to get out of here, get Sahara away.…
Finally Gilead cracked the airplane door open, letting in a rush of moist, humid air.
“Lethewood’s people have attacked one of our bases in Europe. You expect us to lie down and take it?”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think I can’t distinguish between self-defense and executing helpless people? What about the bonfires?”
“We’ve suspended the cleansings,” he said. “Tell me how you’re going to hold up your end.”
“Okay,” she said, peering out at the runway. Something had happened to the rosarite all around the compound—the ground was churned up, the chains broken by willow roots. Men scrambled to and fro, stowing gear and humping weapons—it had the look of an evacuation.
The bramble archway had grown in about twenty feet from the runway. “Uncuff Sahara and bring her here.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m blessed, right? I’m in the gang?”
“There’s a loyalty oath.”
“Yeah? All those marines of yours take it yet?”
“It can wait.” With a half smile, he handed her three glass flasks. “Welcome to the … Brotherhood.”
She pocketed them quickly, before he could see them burning her hand. “Sahara, Gilead.”
He gestured, and the guards brought Sahara. On the plane, she had reverted to a more or less normal appearance—the rosarite had arrested her transformation. Now it was broken, she was shifting back into a bird-woman.
“You can’t save her, you know,” Gilead murmured.
“My prisoner, my problem. Why don’t you focus on offering peace to your enemies? Of all the crap you’ve predicted, that’s the part I actually like.”
Taking Sahara by the arm, she coaxed her down the boarding steps. Camouflage-dressed soldiers stared as they passed. Torches raised, they radiated hatred.
“You don’t really believe they’ll start beating their flaming swords into plowshares, do you?” Sahara whispered.
“At least I’ve given him a chance. Would you prefer to stick around and see how long it takes them to torch you?”
“When Gilead figures out you’re bluffing—when he figures out you’re contaminated—”
“Who says I’m bluffing?” They had reached the arch. Juanita walked through, clutching Sahara’s upper arm as if her life depended on it. What if Lethewood had lied? What if she was as crazy as the others and didn’t care what happened to Sahara?
Please, Juanita prayed, let me be right, let Lethewood be okay with this.
The light changed … and she still had Sahara.
Instead of the train terminal she’d arrived in before, they were in a blue-lit tangle of brambles, a dim and apparently endless thicket that stretched in every direction.
“What the—what in the name of the Blessed Earth is this?” Sahara demanded, shaking brambles from her growing wings.
“It’s your big escape,” Juanita said, and as Sahara turned, talons raised, bird eyes black with rage, she added weakly: “Tah dah.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ASTRID’S EARLIEST MEMORY OF Mark Clumber went back to first grade, to her first fire drill. She had evacuated with her classmates, but Sahara had dragged her off somewhere—she couldn’t remember why—and somehow they got mixed in with the kindergarten kids waiting, by the swings, to go back indoors.
She had been worrying they’d bring down the wrath of Teacher when Sahara said, “You have funny eyes.”
She’d turned to see Mark watching them.
If Mark had been hurt by the comment, it hadn’t shown. Instead he had held out one pale hand, opening it to reveal a bit of found treasure—a glittering crystal prism, the sort of thing that fell off hotel chandeliers. He’d raised it to the sun, letting rainbows splash out on the sidewalk.
That same hand lay before her now, half-buried, tawny desert sand whisking over its palm in the wind. Its fingers and wrist were unmarked, as they had been that day in the playground, but the rest was burned flesh, a charred skeleton with a pair of glasses fused to its skull. The smoking remains of the shovel chantment lay beyond its grasp.
“Is he there?” That was Pike. “Should we send medics?”
“No,” she said. “The Fyremen got him.”
“I’m sorry, lass,” Pike said.
We weren’t friends. Her mouth formed the words, but she didn’t say them aloud.
“Katarina says it should be about a hundred and nine degrees where you are.”
She held out an arm, testing the air. “I’d say it’s thirty below.”
They had never done this before. She’d done a couple big heat draws when she first built Bramblegate, but she’d gone to Antarctica and the far North for the power, places where it was already cold, where climate change—according to the scientists—had damaged the permafrost and melted icebergs, where cold was the normal state and the animals had thick fur. They got less letrico in subzero temperatures, of course, but the idea had been to minimize their impact.
“Thirty’s survivable, and the desert’s not exactly teeming with people,” Pike said. “Maybe all Mark’s killed is bugs and plants.”
“Maybe.” She bent, laying a hand on the burnt remnants of the skull. “I’m sorry, Mark. I can’t begin to…”
Information was pouring through the news center and the Octagon: rosarite destruction had unveiled
Fyreman bases in Rome, Kiev, Juneau, Hawaii, and Rio de Janeiro. The sites were being evacuated, but the curse was still in effect. The Fyremen were concentrating in California and Hawaii, and there were hundreds of them now reciting the Befoulment.…
“Any sign of the bad guys there in the desert?” That was Jupiter, in the Octagon, speaking to her ringer there.
“I have the place to myself.” She looked around the ocean of sand. It was cold, but the air rushing down from above was hot. The chill Mark had put on the desert would not last long.
Spying a shape on the horizon, she trotted after it, loping up and down the dunes with the wind.
One of her other ringers caught a whiff of baking beans, and nostalgia overtook her. Sahara was such a meat-and-potatoes kid, she remembered.
An Astrid doppelgänger was in the hospital too, watching as the medics worked on the volunteers who’d fought in Crete. Tragedy had struck there too: Janet, an ex-marine named Jimmy Dean, and a couple other volunteers were dead. The doctors were sober and busy, using work to keep grief at bay.
“Jupiter,” she said, speaking through the ringer in the Octagon, “it looks like all the Fyremen are reciting that Befoulment now.”
“They’re massing in one place,” Jupiter said. “We might get another chance to shut them up.”
“Mark won’t forgive us if his death doesn’t matter.”
“Gilead Landon’s been located in Hawaii.”
Back in Emergency, she said to Will: “Landon’s at a Fyreman base in Hawaii—should we go after him there?”
“Damn right,” Igme said. “Press the advantage.”
“Excuse me, what advantage?” That was Thunder—he was sitting with Janet’s body.
“Igme’s right,” Will said. “We should go immediately.”
“You nuts? At best, Crete was a draw.”
Bad morale, Mark would’ve said. Poor Mark, Astrid thought, always so big on the armyspeak.…
“You don’t want to come, Thunder, don’t come,” Will said.
“We aren’t soldiers, Forest—”
“They’re on the move,” Jupiter said.
He was right—the bamboo screen showed the Fyremen standing around a willow-strewn plane, downing potions in a grim parody of a drinking binge. They turned to bright, white-hot figures, whirling in place until each man became a column of smoke. Merging, they swirled into the bamboo.
Blue Magic Page 29