Sol gave Rig an amused look. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“You’d think you’d be used to it by now.”
They lifted off, and Rig kept the illusion of a small flock of kingfishers over them once more. Maccis could see patrols moving around the island, and he looked down at them dispassionately. They could be decent men. They could be just doing their jobs and following orders, the same as he was. The orders that had set up the Immortals processing facility were abhorrent. The orders that had resulted in the attack on the Judean nuclear power plants were abhorrent. His orders were probably abhorrent, too. But at the moment, there was nothing really left . . . but to survive.
Solinus slipped off Scimar’s back, and took his phoenix form, clutching the spell-stone in his talons, and slipped off to the southeast, as the rest of them began to circle above the waters, lazily, as if looking to catch some fish. The kingfisher guise on the phoenix stayed intact, until the dot that was Solinus was swallowed by the distance.
A half a minute later, Solinus reported, In position. Be ready.
Maccis looked away. They all did. The light was still searing, a white flash that seemed to illuminate the entire world, and the heat passed over and through them, as if they were falling into the heart of a star. Wind buffeted them like a cannon, and the lindworms struggled to stay airborne, and then plummeted into the ocean waters below.
They all managed to surface, though when the light passed, it took close to a minute for Maccis’ vision to come back, even though he had looked away and closed his eyes. Violet afterimages faded like bruises from his field of vision. Solinus? he called, turning and looking around.
Devastation. The island’s white sand beaches were blackened, melted glass, smoldering red in places. The trees were gone for at least three miles . . . and Ikaros wasn’t a large island, only ten miles wide, at most. Not a building in the outpost remained intact; the ones that hadn’t been vaporized had collapsed, fragmented into splinters of metal or super-heated rock. Maccis’ lungs burned. The oxygen content of the air was low, and the concussive blast had forced the air out from the blast . . . and now it was returning, in a rush, as they all choked and tried not to pass out in the water. That’s something we didn’t think of . . . Maccis thought, his vision dimming.
He awakened several minutes later on a clear portion of beach, well away from the molten, glassed-over sands. His shoulders ached with burns, as if something hot and clawed had seized him there. He rolled over, coughed wrackingly, and asked again, weakly, Solinus?
I’m here. Just grabbed Rig. The lindworms . . . they’re starting to wake up. They float pretty well, fortunately, but I think Heolstor may have broken a wing-bone or two in the fall into the water.
Maccis rolled up to at least his elbows, groaning. This was as close to a hangover as he ever wanted to get. Every part of his head throbbed in protest. I’ll go to him. I’ve learned a few healing tricks . . . .
He’s swimming to shore. The other two are . . . yes. They just got into the air.
Twenty minutes after that, Maccis was kneeling beside Heolstor, trying to repair the lindworm’s broken flight bones. His gift for healing was not particularly powerful, but it had grown a little, over the years, as he learned to focus his general ability to make plants bloom with fecundity into healing animals. There were side effects. Embarrassing ones. Fortunately, when he used these abilities, people were usually in far too much pain to notice a certain amount of sexual arousal.
How long will this take? Scimar asked, his head swiveling around to regard the horizon, anxiously.
“Thirty minutes, I think. I’m slow. I know.”
We don’t have thirty minutes, Heolstor told them. Mad ones will come. Leave me. Moltensoul may fly as a phoenix.
“Technically, I can fly as a lindworm, myself,” Maccis said, holding the bones in the wing in place with his hands as he continued to knit them together, pouring power into the tissues and cells. “Shut up. We’re not leaving you behind.”
Ships, Rodor said, suddenly. A mile or two to the west. They may send landing craft to this very beach.
Rig sighed and held up a hand, covering them all in invisibility. “I used illusion against mad godlings in the Arctic. I don’t know if a big godling will see through it . . . but I know no human will. So everyone be quiet and let Maccis heal Heolstor.”
“Clean up the beach,” Solinus said, suddenly. He was still naked, his uniform having been burned off during his transformation. “I need to cover the tracks Heolstor left, when he walked to this area. Rig, make damned sure they don’t see any tracks where we’ve been standing.” He hastened away, covered by Rig’s invisibility, and took to the air once more, to fan at the sands with the phoenix’s wings, covering the lindworm’s tracks, but leaving none of his own.
Landing craft sped out from the ships. Persian uniforms on the soldiers as they disembarked, the sand of the beach curling away under their heavy boots, and the soldiers stopped and stared at the ruins of the island, the buildings that remained, that were on fire. And then started marching towards the inferno. This must have been the Emperor’s location. No one would go into that blaze if there weren’t something incredibly valuable in the ruins.
A magus had just disembarked, and was pointing around, directing the soldiers to look for tracks, for anything that might lead them to the enemy, and paused, taking a tripod out of the landing craft behind him, and stabbing it into the earth. Maccis wanted to whistle, but refrained. It was highly unusual to see a magus carrying a piece of ley-surveying equipment. Anyone could use one, even a normal human; it was a device that checked for the power, stability, and resonance of local ley-lines, and could locate them . . . even if the user wasn’t a ley-mage, themselves. I have a bad feeling about this, he thought. The more so, as the magus began to, very carefully, incise the lines of a binding circle on the ground just above the high tide line. He’s not going to try to bind a mad godling, is he? Maccis’ tone became alarmed. I don’t think even Father’s tried to do that. Hecate damaged herself trying to banish one.
That’s probably how the Persians initially seemed to be able to keep free of the ghul. They were more or less supplying the mad godlings with energy. That suggests that they had to have had some means of bargaining . . . . Rig’s voice was suddenly appalled. Oh, gods. You don’t think that maybe . . . they deliberately set up targets for us to attack, to attract the mad ones?
The thought flickered through them all, inducing a moment of stomach-tightening panic. No, Solinus said, after a moment. If they wanted to attract a godling, they have cities of their own, and access to at least part of the hydrogen spell, themselves. Half their cities are in ruins. And if they wanted to release a great deal of life energy, they wouldn’t use their own people, but ours. Though self-sacrifice is more potent . . . .
We can go. Heolstor’s healed. Maccis thought, feeling the last of the bones knit, and slipped up onto Heolstor’s back. But . . . what is he doing?
The rest of you go, Rig said, silently. I can keep you covered in illusion for a half mile. And I can stay here, hidden.
Rodor’s tone held asperity. And then what? Sneak invisibly onto one of their ships and slowly walk, invisibly, from wherever they make port? Solinus is not the only one prone to making bold proclamations.
Rig gave him a crooked grin. I was going to ask you to stay with me.
And I was about to volunteer. The lindworm bared his teeth. I liked young Vigdis. I would not wish her father to do something foolish when he was my responsibility.
Oh, so I’m your responsibility, am I?
Certainly. We try to bring our riders home safely. That’s the job.
Rig could hear, under the sarcasm, a surprising amount of personal loyalty. And wondered how much of it was the damned dreams, and how much of it was real. Still, he couldn’t deny the sense of incipient friendship. Couldn’t deny the sense of a bond between them. Glad you’ll be here with me, he admitted, as Solinus reluctantly
agreed to the plan. Then he and Maccis took off with Heolstor and Scimar. A half a mile away, however, they became visible, and, while the lindworms were pushing themselves to their fastest speed, the Persians on the mainland, in communication with those on the ships who spotted them, scrambled ornithopters. If nothing else, we’re buying Rig time to find out what they’re doing on the island, Solinus tossed at the rest of them, and took his phoenix form and rose into the air, a blaze of flame, and engaged with the first ornithopter, the bullets it fired passing right through his body to rattle off Scimar’s scales.
Watch it! Maccis tossed at his brother, and unpacked the machine gun he’d been issued for this mission. Its weight felt odd and unaccustomed in his hands. He’d always done his killing close up. As a rider, he was entirely dependent on Heolstor’s reflexes and speed in the air, as the experienced lindworm ducked and dove, pitched and yawed, trying to present Maccis with good targets at which to fire. And then the sense of this kind of combat being alien faded completely, and Maccis could have sworn that he’d been belly-to-belly with an ornithopter before. His hands remembered how to rake its underside with bullets. And then Heolstor had to peel off into a steep dive, which became a loop, and Maccis braced into it, easily.
But the ornithopter pilots were able to anticipate the lindworm’s spiral, and fired on them, in turn. Maccis felt an impact, but no sharp pain at first as he was flung forward on Heolstor’s neck. Are you hit? the lindworm asked, concerned.
I think so. Doesn’t feel bad. Come around.
At that moment, Solinus dove at the window of an ornithopter, and when his phoenix body hit the glass canopy, it melted, and he landed on the screaming, panicking pilot, who flailed, trying to beat him away. The co-pilot reached for a small emergency fire extinguisher, only to have the phoenix solidify enough to bite down on his hands, snapping off fingers, cauterizing them instantly. With the cockpit in flames, and the pilots screaming, the first ornithopter fell from the sky, freeing Solinus to move to the next. And the next. The glass canopies made this simple, compared to the tanks he was used to running down.
On the island, Rig watched as the soldiers hustled back from their examination of the ruins. His knowledge of the major Persian languages, such as Farsi, was good enough to understand their report to the magus, “Sir . . . there aren’t any survivors.”
“How can you possibly be certain so quickly?”
“The center of the encampment is gone, sir. The entire facility where the magi were preparing the new Immortals . . . .”
“Immortals are powerful, and usually protected from magic and fire. Check under the rubble.”
“I beg your forgiveness, but there is no building there. The headquarters building, too, is gone. There is a smoking hole in the ground where the foundations were, but—”
“There was a bunker built beneath the headquarters building. Reinforced poured-stone. It took over a year to build, even with spirit assistance. The Emperor is doubtless still alive.”
Shit, Rig thought, and drew Livorus’ sword, tempered with the power of Hel in it. Sol! Maccis! This was the right site. Emperor might still be alive. Going to go check.
Verify. Then get your ass out of there. We’re going to have to run pretty soon here. Maccis is bleeding, and he hasn’t shifted form to heal yet. Solinus’ voice was urgent.
Rig, with Rodor, followed the soldiers into the fiery no-man’s land. The occasional tree, filled with red-hot pitch, exploded with a concussive pop in the distance, showering the area with blistering splinters, and Rig tried to breathe shallowly. The smoke made his head spin, reminding him that he’d damned near died of suffocation less than an hour ago. His head hurt. Rig pulled his tunic up over his nose in a fruitless effort to filter the smoke, and then remembered he had a gas mask in the saddlebag, mounted up, and pulled it out. Sorry I don’t have one for you, Rodor.
We are hardier than our fellow humans. A faint hint of dark humor in the lindworm’s voice, as he tried to avoid stepping on any debris that might shift and break under their combined weight. Rodor seemed to understand stealth instinctively. The less illusion Rig needed to use, the better.
They watched as the Persian soldiers, activating technomantic devices, moved into the smoldering hole that was the basement of the headquarters building, moving debris out of the way with field shovels. Burning their hands, in spite of their magical precautions. What was left of a wall collapsed, and not all of them got out of the way in time, which made for more propping and shoring and digging, and the smell of burning flesh.
Rig, can you get out of there? Sol’s voice was urgent in Rig’s mind.
Go. Fly as fast as you can for the coast of the peninsula. We’re fine here. They can’t see us. And our devices are handling the residual heat.
No arguments. Maccis is hurt worse than I thought. He has to transform to stop the bleeding.
Then silence. Rig couldn’t let his worry cloud his mind. He focused on keeping them both unseen, unheard, and unnoticed as the bunker door was finally uncovered almost an hour later. The soldiers tapped on it repeatedly, and then began trying to haul it open. Rig tried to figure out what such a bunker would use for ventilation . . . surely not fans and CO2 filters, like a space station?
The door opened, and the soldiers called down into what appeared to be a very long shaft, reaching down into the earth. Rig considered his options, and slipped down off Rodor’s back. Padded across the shifting, sliding, red-hot debris, feeling the pulse of the technomantic devices at his wrists and throat, protecting and cooling him, drawing power from the fire itself to do so. And then, with the sword his father had given him in his hand, he skewered the first soldier, a radioman, and Rodor leaped forwards, crushing another under his scaly body.
No signals. No distress calls. Just eight bodies lying in a neat pile under the pitiless gray sky. Rig fumbled in the saddlebags again, and used a flashlight to peer down into the darkness. Judean engineers had estimated, in his hearing, that a bunker would need to have walls of reinforced concrete thirty-six feet thick to withstand the full blast of a hydrogen spell at close range. The hand light easily picked out the second airlock door, twenty feet down the narrow shaft. They must have shifted the command building, and concealed all the construction work with illusion from the satellites. Gods damn, but their magi have some tricks that I could learn from, if that’s what they did. What had probably been a metal ladder was now a puddle of aluminum at the foot of the shaft. I could get down there, but getting back up would be a pain in the ass. I can’t fly.
Instead, he fumbled in his pack, and got out a couple of packs of high explosives, and set them with a timer. He dropped them into the hole, and closed the main door again, to muffle the sound. The earth trembled under him, thirty seconds later, and when he heaved the hatch back open again with Rodor’s help, a choking pall of black smoke rose once more, and the lower hatch was gone. Rig concentrated, and focused on his othersight . . . and saw no life beyond that hatch. But he could smell the odor of charred flesh, and did his best not to gag at it. They cooked, he told Rodor, who let the main hatch slide closed again. They baked alive. And I’m not going down there to identify the bodies.
No. Rodor sniffed at the air, and growled. Something comes.
The magus?
No. Worse. A godling. Sure enough, there was a speck on the horizon, rapidly growing in size.
Rig winced. He’d fought them before, with assistance. He’d been one of many people involved up in the Arctic, though his role had mostly been to conceal the others, and serve as a power sink. Let’s get out of here. If it wants the magus, it can have him.
It is not attacking. Rodor’s tone, as the speck became a blob, was puzzled.
There’s nothing for it to attack here. Nothing is left.
Untrue. There are eight bodies at our feet, and any number of living men on the nearby ships. Easy enough to turn into ghul. Rodor’s head swiveled as Rig pulled himself back up onto the lindworm’s shoulders, and they bot
h shuddered as the mad godling flew by overhead, its tendrils tucked in against its body. It is behaving . . . oddly.
Rig grimaced, but the lindworm was right. They skimmed their way back to the beach, in time to see the godling hover there, not harming the soldiers who scrambled into their landing craft, and keyed the motors, trying desperately to get back to their ships. The magus stood alone on the beach, his binding circle his only protection as he stared up at the entity, his long hair and beard flapping in the wind. The magus raised his arms over his head, and Rig couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying—it was Chaldean, at a guess, and ancient. But he could feel the surge of focused will that the summoner was using, reinforced by the circle’s markings. Traceries that were partially fractal math, and that could destabilize a spirit’s manifested form, or bind it.
The mad godling pulled in closer. If an amorphous ball of negative energy could be said to regard anything, it seemed to be studying the magus. Rig held his breath as the godling moved in over the binding circle, and light began to radiate out of the lines and arcs carved into the soil. The summoner’s fists clenched, and he began to scream in mortal agony as tendrils reached down, and plunged into his chest. But somehow, the man found the fortitude, the will, to remain standing. I don’t know what I’m seeing, Rig called to the others. He’s not dying. He’s not being absorbed by the godling. Nor turned into a ghul.
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 148