River of Blue Fire

by Tad Williams

  Florimel’s voice cut across everything like a buzzsaw. “William came through with us, Martine.” Renie took this to be good news. “He has hit his head on something, though. He is unconscious.”

  “Thank God,” Martine murmured, and then astonished Renie by asking, “Do we have something we can use to tie him?”

  “Tie him?” said Renie. “You mean, tie him up? Are you talking about the same William. . . ?”

  “Yes. He is . . . I do not know what he is,” Martine said. “But he is not what we believed. He tried to kill Quan Li.”

  “I don’t understand.” Renie shook her head, helpless before this onslaught of strange new information. “Who all is here? What has happened?” This new world, preternaturally still only moments before, now seemed a hive of activity. T4b had regained his feet and was wiping his handspikes clean of not-ground—several of them were darkly streaked. He was also examining Emily 22813 with interest, although Emily looked at the armored man in turn as though he might be some kind of huge and particularly unpleasant insect.

  Quan Li and Florimel (it took a moment to recognize which was which, since Renie had not seen them in a while, and both still wore similar Temilún bodies) were crouched over Sweet William, whose long limp figure, dressed in the familiar black, lay near the spot the gateway had opened. A rill of blood seeped from under his hood and down across his pale face. Florimel was tearing strips off her ragged peasant blouse to bind him; Quan Li was doing the same, somewhat angrily, as though she resented the other woman’s help and would have preferred to tie the prisoner herself. Renie wondered how badly William had hurt her, to make retiring Quan Li so fixed and militant in her purpose.

  There was no sign at all of Orlando or his friend Fredericks.

  !Xabbu climbed to his feet, still holding the lighter. He watched all this activity with a kind of bemused detachment, as though in a shallower version of the trance he had summoned earlier.

  “Did you find us, or did we find you?” Martine asked. She seemed quite ragged, able to keep on her feet only with Renie’s support. “It was all so confusing. There is so much to tell!”

  “We found something,” Renie explained, “a key or a remote trigger, something like that. An access device of some kind, anyway—it looks like a lighter, see? !Xabbu used it to open a gate. Two gates, now! We think it belonged to one of the Grail people, but this other man stole it . . .” She realized she was babbling with relief and happiness. “No, forget it, I’ll explain all that later. But I don’t understand this bit about William. He attacked Quan Li? Why? Is he mad?”

  “I fear he is a spy for the Grail Brotherhood,” Martine replied. “When we were in the Place of the Lost—but I forget, you do not know where we have been, what we have done.” She shook her head and laughed a cracked little laugh. “Just as we do not know what has happened to you! Oh, Renie, how odd it has all been!” She wagged her head in exhaustion. “And this place! What is it? It feels very bizarre to me.”

  Emily’s sudden shriek startled both Renie and Martine so badly that they jumped. “Is he dead?” the girl squealed. “There’s so much blood!”

  Renie turned to look. While attempting to put some space between herself and T4b, Emily had almost tripped over Sweet William, but the girl was not the only one caught by surprise. Kneeling beside him, Florimel held up her hands and stared wonderingly at the scarlet that slicked them both to the wrists. Quan Li’s hands were also streaked in blood; she shrank back from William with her eyes wide.

  “He does have a head wound,” Florimel said, but she sounded uncertain. “They bleed very badly . . .”

  Renie reached them in a few seconds, and with Florimel’s help turned the long figure over. As William flopped onto his back, Renie let out a gasp of surprise. His black outfit was in ribbons across his belly, and all the creases were awash in blood. A puddle was forming beneath him on the oddly-colored ground, changing color where it had lain for more than a few moments, swirling with pale blues and greens and sickly grays in those places, but still bright red in the wounds and on his garments.

  “Jesus Mercy.” Renie felt sick just seeing it. “How did this happen? It looks like an animal got him.”

  !Xabbu bent close. “He is still alive. We must make more bandages and wrap him quickly.” He squatted, then took strips of cloth from Florimel and Quan Li that had been meant for use as restraints and began to pull them tight across the ugly wounds. T4b stood over them, absurdly out of place beside the monkey and the two peasant sims, like some offshore-factory children’s toy dropped into a classical painting. Nothing on his costume would make suitable field dressings, that much was obvious.

  Renie felt a tug on her arm, and allowed Martine to draw her to one side. Instead of asking for reassurance, Martine brought her mouth close to Renie’s ear. Her whisper was so quiet that at first Renie was not sure she was hearing correctly, because the blind woman’s words were shocking.

  “One of them did it,” Martine said. “I’m sure that one of them must have tried to kill him. Something else could have attacked him in the cavern—the place where we were—but I felt some act of violence occur just as we entered the gateway, and we were all bunched in a group by then. I cannot tell who is guilty, though—which one of our number is only pretending to feel shock and sadness. Something in this new simulation, some distortion, is blurring my senses.”

  Martine was talking as though she could read minds, and Renie had no idea what that was about. In fact, she had very little idea what any of this was about. “I don’t understand.” She took a breath, then forced herself to speak quietly. “William is a spy, but one of us tried to kill him?”

  “One of the people who came through with me,” Martine replied. “I believe that to be true—whatever the cause, it must have happened there, just before we went through the gateway. I am frightened, Renie.”

  “What can we do?” She stole a quick look. Everyone except Emily seemed actively concerned for William’s life, whatever he had done. And how could they be certain that Martine was right—that the blind woman’s other senses were reliable? Just days ago she had been so overwhelmed by the network that she had been almost catatonic.

  Martine abruptly turned to the others and said in a loud, shaky voice, “I know that one of you has done this to him.”

  Everything stopped. Florimel and Quan Li’s hands halted above Sweet William, still holding bandages torn from one of their shrinking garments, so that they seemed arrested in some staged tableau of mummification. T4b also seemed surprised, but his expression was hidden by his buglike mask.

  Emily had been backing away from the bloody scene, hands clutched protectively over her stomach, but the girl from New Emerald City froze like a rabbit at Martine’s shout. “I didn’t do anything!” she howled, then bent double as though to get between the accuser and her unborn child.

  “Not you, Emily,” Renie assured her. “But, Martine, we can’t just . . .”

  “No.” Martine shook her head. “What we cannot do is live with doubt. If I am wrong, I am wrong, but I do not believe it. And in a moment I will have an answer.” The small woman marched toward the startled group like a sheepdog trying to intimidate a pack of its feral cousins by sheer force of personality. “You know that I have ways of seeing things that you others do not—those who traveled with me know that, anyway.”

  “What, because something attacked William, and you think it is one of us, you are to be the judge and jury?” Florimel shook her head in disgust, but there was a strange hint of fear and anger in her eyes as well. “That is madness!”

  “It will not take much judging,” Martine snapped back, showing an aggressive force Renie had never seen from her. “It must be either you or Quan Li—you are the only two who have blood on you, and whoever did this would not come away clean.”

  Florimel only scowled her contempt, and Quan Li mad
e a weak protest, but Renie had a sudden flash of memory. “Martine, I saw him . . .” she pointed at T4b, “. . . cleaning those spikes of his right after you all came through.”

  “Saying what?” T4b bellowed. “That’s far crash—calling me duppy? Sixes, gonna be sixes on everyone!” He raised his armored fists and flared his body-spikes like the spines of a blowfish, making himself a truly frightening package. Renie was forced to consider the fact that without Orlando and his barbarian sim, they would have trouble defending themselves against the Goggleboy if it did come to a fight.

  Martine was unswerving. “Then T4b is a suspect, too. If the rest of you do not trust me, let Renie judge.”

  “Zero be judgin’ me,” T4b warned. “Far-scanning, you think that. You not, nobody not . . .!”

  “Stop!” Renie bellowed as loud as she could, desperate to keep things from running out of control. “Stop it, all of you!”

  In the near-silence that followed, !Xabbu’s quiet voice cut through everything, startling as a gunshot. “He is trying to speak,” the baboon said.

  Everyone turned to look; all saw Sweet William’s black-painted eyes flutter open. Then, in that instant of expectant stillness, a figure abruptly leaped across William’s body and attacked !Xabbu.

  The attacker was one of the Temilúni sims, but at first Renie could not tell which—was not even sure for a confusing second or two that it was an attack, since assaulting the baboon made no sense. The whole thing seemed to unfold in slow time, without obvious logic, like some kind of drug experience. Only as the dark-haired woman raised herself to her knees, unpeeled !Xabbu from her arm, then flung him aside with surprising strength, could Renie see that the aggressor was Quan Li.

  Something shiny had bounced away from the scene of their struggle and come to rest only a step away from Renie. It was Azador’s pilfered lighter. As she belatedly realized that Quan Li had only attacked the baboon so she could snatch the device, Renie bent and grabbed it, then squeezed it tight in her fist.

  Quan Li climbed to her feet, rubbing her bloodied arm. “Damn,” she snarled, “that little bastard can bite!” She saw Renie’s bulging hand and took a surprisingly quick step toward her, but when T4b and Florimel moved up to take defensive positions on either side of Renie, Quan Li stopped. Her first flash of rage abruptly mutated into a disconcerting, lazy smile that stretched the features far more than seemed natural. “Why don’t you just give me that and I’ll be on my way, no harm to anyone.”

  The Hong Kong grandmother’s voice and posture had both changed dramatically, but the metamorphosis of her familiar face was even more terrifying. Some new soul had sparked to life inside her—or had finally been set free.

  !Xabbu reappeared, limping back to stand near Renie’s feet. Reassured that he did not seem seriously hurt, she had just opened her mouth to demand answers when Quan Li sprang with terrifying speed to one side, grabbed Emily, then jerked the girl close to her body in a single, continous movement as lithe and deadly as a snake strike. The grin widened. “If any of you takes another step toward me, I’ll snap her neck. That’s a promise. Now, let’s talk about that lighter, shall we?”

  “Emily’s a Puppet,” Renie said desperately. “She’s not even real.”

  Quan Li raised one eyebrow. “So you wouldn’t care if I pulled her apart right here in front of you, is that right? Bones and strings everywhere?”

  “Tryin’ it, and you six-meat,” growled T4b.

  “Well, dang it, podner.” The harsh new timbre made Quan Li’s imitation cowboy-drawl sound even more bizarre. “Guess we got us a Mexican stand-off, then.”

  Despite this person’s matter-of-fact tone, the entire situation felt fatally unstable to Renie. She struggled to keep the panic out of her voice. “If we give you the lighter, then you promise you’ll let her go?”

  “Happy to. Plenty more where she comes from.”

  “Answer some questions first. That will be part of the bargain.” If we can keep whatever or whoever this is talking long enough, Renie thought, perhaps one of the others will think of something. Her own mind was churning, but nothing useful was coming. She was furious with herself for being tricked, furious with Emily for being captured. She did not want to risk the girl’s life any more than necessary, but they could not just let the lighter go: the idea of giving up that precious device, when they had only just discovered it, was devastating—unthinkable.

  “Questions. . . ?”

  “Who are you? You can’t be Quan Li.”

  “You are a clever girl, aren’t you?” said the person in the peasant sim. “So clever you think you can convince me that you wouldn’t care if I skinned this child alive.” Emily yelped and struggled a little, but was silenced with a squeeze. “But the truth is, you don’t know much about anything—like what’s happened to your brother, just for instance. Well, I do, and it’s pretty bloody funny, in a sickening kind of way.”

  “Do not listen!” Martine put a hand on Renie’s shoulder. “She is lying—she is just trying to hurt you, to make you angry!”

  Staring at the contorted, hateful face that had lurked inside a shape they trusted, Renie felt sick. It’s the Wolf, she thought. All that time, it was the Wolf dressed up like sweet old Grandmother. . . .

  “Lying, am I?” The Quan Li thing abruptly turned and hissed a warning at T4b, who had moved a step closer, and pulled the arm around Emily’s neck tighter. For a moment the girl’s feet lifted from the ground, kicking. “Why would I bother? Why on earth would I care what a gang of hopeless losers like you lot thinks or doesn’t think?” The lupine smile crept back. “But since you’re asking for the latest news and sports, you might be interested to know that your original Chinese grandmother is very definitely dead. Atasco guested her in—that’s how I got onto her line. Granny Quan pretended to be a hacker, but I’m sure some Hong Kong contact got her onto the network. And wound up getting her killed, for that matter.” The laugh was febrile, excited. The monster was enjoying this.

  “Are you working for the Grail Brotherhood?” Renie asked. “Is that why you have been spying on us?”

  “Spy for the Brotherhood?” the creature said slowly. “Do you really think this is about you? You don’t know anything.” The expression changed again, slackening into a cold emptiness which was somehow more terrifying than the demonic grin. Emily appeared to have fainted in the stranger’s arms. “Enough talk. I’m calling your bluff, bitch. Either give me the lighter or I start taking pieces off her.”

  Renie could not doubt it—the eyes that glared back at her out of Quan Li’s face were as untroubled by human scruples as those of some elemental spirit—like the Hyena of !Xabbu’s stories. She badly wanted someone else to make the decision, to take some kind of control, but none of her companions moved or spoke. It was down to her, and she could keep one or the other—little whining Emily, only debatably human, or the key to a universe, and perhaps to her brother’s life.

  She handed the lighter to !Xabbu. “Open a gateway.”

  “What are you up to?” the stranger snarled.

  “I’m not just going to hand it to you,” Renie said scornfully. “God knows what you could do to us with it. When !Xabbu opens the gateway, you release Emily and we hand over the lighter. Then you step through and leave us alone, like you said.”

  Florimel was astonished. “You are just going to give it to this monster?”

  “I wish we had a choice.” Renie turned back to the Quan Li thing. “Well?”

  It hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Right. But no tricks. Things will get very ugly very fast if you try anything.”

  !Xabbu had closed his eyes in concentration, and was paddling his fingers atop the lighter’s shiny surface. For a moment Renie was afraid he would not be able to make it work again, but then a glimmering curtain of fire kindled in the air behind the stranger. The Quan Li thing m
aneuvered back toward it carefully, keeping Emily outward as a shield, until the golden rectangle was only a step away.

  “Toss me the lighter,” it said.

  “Let go of the girl”

  “It’s not your call any more.” The flat, emotionless tone was back. “You could even kill me and I’d just drop offline, which is more than you can do-I’m not stuck here the way you are. But I’d rather have the lighter, so throw it to me.”

  Renie took a deep breath, then nodded to !Xabbu, who pitched it to him. The stranger caught the lighter and examined it quickly, then smiled as it took another step back to the very edge of the golden light, dragging Emily along. The mouth that had been Quan Li’s puckered; the spy leaned and placed a kiss on the unconscious girl’s cheek. “Come on, sweetness,” it said to her. “Let’s go find ourselves somewhere to play.”

  “No!” Renie screamed.

  Something leaped onto the stranger’s leg and clung. The spy shouted in anger and pain, then Renie and Florimel and T4b were all wading in together, slapping and gouging and trying to drag Emily and her abductor back from the shimmering gateway. Quan Li’s Puppet was slippery and shockingly strong, and even with superior numbers they might not have been able to save the girl, but the Quan Li thing could not hold her and pry !Xabbu’s teeth out of its thigh as well. With a screamed curse it let her go, then thrashed its way free from the confusion of clutch and tumble.

  It paused, the gateway so bright that the stranger was little more than a silhouette as it pointed a trembling finger at Renie and the others, but when it spoke, the tone was eerily calm. “Now it is bloody personal. I’ll see you lot again, every one one of you.”

  “Too right you will,” Renie muttered.

  It brandished Azador’s lighter as if to mock their loss, then stepped backward into the light. A second later the gateway went out like a snuffed candle.

  For the space of several heartbeats, the silence and stillness seemed to have choked everyone. Renie suddenly thought of something: “Where’s !Xabbu? He was holding onto that . . . thing!”