by Scott Duff
“Okay,” I said. “Peter and I will go over first. I’ll distract him long enough for Peter to get Gordon and Ferrin over. This should give you enough time to lock onto our position and start whatever you’re going to do. We don’t need to know what that is. If we know, we’ll anticipate then he’ll know and it’ll be useless. If at all possible, your people should take that portal from Peter. It’ll be harder for the elves to see and force closed. Okay?”
“Much like what we expected,” Bishop said, nodding. Hmm. We were getting obvious. We would have to shake things up soon.
“Where do you want your end?” I asked, ready to move.
“We’re set up at the top of the hill,” he said pointing up through the house. I glanced over and saw everyone from the party had redistributed into groups throughout the fields surrounding the west side of the house, where we’d been riding a few hours ago. There was a tent set up there now, atop the hill. I wrapped the five of us in portals and moved us. Bishop was almost run over by a man walking to the tent. He quickly side-stepped Bishop, murmuring apologies as he jostled him. Peter nodded to me once and he wrapped portals around us and moved the four of us north to a neighboring hilltop.
I turned to Gordon and Ferrin. I pleaded one last time, “I really wish you two would change your minds. You don’t have to do this. You shouldn’t do this.”
“Bullshit,” Ferrin said. “You’re my best chance at keeping Ian safe. I’m not losing that.”
“You know my answer, Seth,” Gordon said, crossing his arms on his chest, puffing up. “Get on with it.”
Peter giggled. “Can’t you just feel the testosterone surge?”
“Good!” I said. “We’re gonna need all the aggression we can get.”
I faced Peter and stared into his eyes, just for something to focus on. Gordon and Ferrin moved in behind him on either side, watching intently. I pushed out my senses and felt the wards. Peter slipped in beside me, raising his sensitivity with me. The wards were hot with the activity of the day. Then we slipped past them and out into the energy planes. Then the astral, too. I felt the difference again. So did Peter. We felt Bishop questing out for us, along with Ferrin and Gordon and several others, and not finding us.
When I spoke, Peter spoke with me and the words were full of emotion and intent, desire and power. Kir du’Ahn, Eth’anok’avel. It was just a whisper, at least the sound was. Ferrin turned to Gordon, quizzically. Again, we spoke, Kir du’Ahn, Eth’anok’avel. An aura appeared around us in violet, fading to black. We seek you. The universe began answering our call, peeling back a layer of reality and showing the veil between worlds. I pulled energy from the batteries and wrapped it thoroughly through the aura around us. We were going slowly to be as subtle as possible, but we do need to get it done. It was time to put that calm determination to work.
Kir du’Ahn, Eth’anok’avel, we seek you, brothers.
We come for you, brothers.
We slipped down beneath the veil into a narrow chasm filled with light purple and pink strands of rotating energy that stayed just out of reach. We had no doubt that our path led us to Kieran and Ethan. What I found curious was that we saw a path at all. Then we were punching a hole into the squirming strands, turned a bright and angry red by the contact. And we were in.
“Hello, Seth. I’ve been expecting you.”
I whirled around to face him, the armor snapping into place. Taking stock as quickly as possible, Peter and I had pretty much nailed it. I stood in the floor of the Arena. MacNamara sat atop a very tall throne in the center. The throne itself looked to be made of bone, but was the palest blue, deepingdeepening on the way up until the very top, then it burst with a vibrant orange to mimic the sun. I tied into the perspective spell and locked in with the Quiver.
“Hi, ya Rat Bastard,” I snarled at him. “Sorry I won’t be staying.”
I slipped into the Pacthome.
Chapter 59
Ten seconds and counting. That’s all I had to wait and I hated every damn one of them. He had more than that anyway since I couldn’t leave right away. Five seconds. I paced the gate again.
Seth’Dur’an o’an, I’m coming, putting the full force of my will and considerable power into the words. Sinking into that primal chasm again, I knew for certain this was not the same as portal travel. This held a certainty to it that the conduits of portals just didn’t have. Further, there were no conduits, no intervention of space at all. Just a chasm between strands of writhing energy and I was standing beside Peter where Shrank was bound to Kieran. It was the most memorable spot we could think of that was likely to be empty.
“Just like we predicted,” I told them. “He’s got ‘em all, maybe seven or eight hundred in the Arena to watch him win against us, cocky bastard. Y’all right, Peter?” He looked drained and pale. Peter had made the portal back, grabbing Gordon and Ferrin on the way. Looking at him now, I should have been the one to do it—he looked too wasted to move. Gordon stood next to him protectively, hand on his back as he bent over, breathing hard.
“Just a… little winded… is all,” he panted out, standing and flashing a smile.
“They’re all in the Arena, but that’s changing as we speak,” I said. “They’re streaming out after us now.”
“So he can see you?” asked Ferrin.
“Not outside the Arena,” I answered, snapping the Crossbow off my back and opening the connection to the Perspective spell in the Arena. “And let’s see if I can’t make him want to shut that down.”
Concentrating on the Arena, I looked for the elves that were giving the orders. Just like any army, there were hierarchies of rank that processed orders and committed them: generals, lieutenants, sergeants, and foot soldiers. I aimed for the middle. I loosed twenty Bolts, shifted a degree, and loosed another twenty, nice and lazy. All of them were in a very high arc and came down almost straight out of the sky like a quiet summer rain.
“Here they come,” I called out. The first swarm of leaf-eaters to leave the Arena crested the empty ring where tents and pavilions previously stood. No doubt, they expected two lonely mages, fairly empty of power, as the environment was low as well. I rushed forward to meet them, Ferrin took my left and Gordon, my right. Peter went up. Up? I didn’t have the time to question how as the Day Sword jumped to my hand, splitting a golden staff in half and slicing neatly through the neck of the elf wielding it. He didn’t have time to recognize his or his weapon’s demise.
The inertia of the swing took me into an impossible turn. Kicking out with both feet, I connected twice, hitting an elf with each, snapping one’s neck instantly and crushing through the skull of the other. I landed, crouching. Thrusting out, the Night was in my left piercing through the guard of a sword narrowly missing Gordon and drinking deeply and quickly of its binding.
“Fire in the hole!” Gordon yelled.
I had no idea what that meant, but he dove for me and Peter dove for ground. I went with it. A plume of magma shot up through the ground fifty feet away forward of us, thirty feet high. The ground was shaking violently as the plume died away quickly. I grabbed the four of us and moved us away.
MacNamara stood at the top of the Arena, looking out at our handiwork. He gained control of Gordon’s miniature volcano within seconds of it being unleashed, but not before it removed his first wave, some eighty or ninety elves. We were standing opposite him, on the ledges of the Arena. It offered a mild blind spot for Ferrin and Gordon. Like most of the tactics we used against the elves, it would only be useful once.
I sought out Kieran and Ethan on the floor of the Arena. They were both there, bound together, in a sphere of energy I couldn’t place. It was like what I saw looking through the anchor. It rolled away from me whenever I tried to look at a specific spot.
I heard a whistling noise to my right, then a portion of the Arena exploded suddenly. MacNamara’s head snapped in that direction. A second whistle, followed by another explosion away from the Arena, caught his attention for only mo
ments. It was much closer and far more colorful. It rocked the Arena as it collapsed a section of the coliseum, dropping the seats the elves occupied. The elves were abandoning the Arena, either taking to the field or exiting to the rooms below.
We needed to up the ante on the destruction. I pulled the Crossbow and selected a random target. The Quiver provided me with a silver Bolt this time. Curious to see the effect, I fired and instantly found a red shaft in place and the target still acquired in my senses. Curious again, I fired. The silver Bolt shot across the Arena and, and in a twenty-two foot radius around the elf it hit, everything was covered in a silver sheen. It was if the entire area was suddenly layered in a half inch of solid silver, buffed and polished in a millisecond. Then the red Bolt hit and the silver lit up in solid crimson energy that melted down into slag, falling down into the depths below. It penetrated but I couldn’t tell how far from here.
That was a seriously cool duo, but I didn’t think they were coming back.
“Peter, what would happen if we opened a portal to, say, nowhere?” I asked, watching MacNamara prance across the ledge shouting orders and waving dramatically. We still hadn’t been noticed. What kind of all-powerful liege lord was this?
“Don’t really know,” he said. “If you believe television and stories and things, you cut a hole in space and our reality bleeds out like it’s under pressure. That never made sense to me. That implies an imbalance that can’t possibly exist.”
“Okay, let’s table that idea for later discussion,” I said. “We need something that will keep the Rat Bastard busy for a few minutes so we can get to Kieran and Ethan. Something as safe for us as possible.”
MacNamara shouted at his elves again and another battalion moved to leave the stadium. Half of his forces had left the Arena and the other half was in disarray, spread throughout the field and a small section of the stadium. I estimated we’d removed close to a hundred of them so maybe an eighth of the total. He’d be more careful now.
“Fake him out,” Peter suggested. “He can’t see our auras, so let’s project a hundred images at him of you in the Arena and one of you and me running out of the Arena in plain view. See if he chases.”
“Let’s try it, then,” I said. “Gordon, can you do that prism spell you did on the road in Dublin and reflect images of me into the Arena?” I could feel him already cycling the power he needed.
I raised the Crossbow, loading another silver arrow. Aiming for the seat of the Rat Bastard’s bony throne, I said, “Tell me when you’re ready.”
“Go,” Gordon said after a very brief moment. I fired the two destructive Bolts in rapid succession, curious to see how they would fare against the throne. Just as Gordon’s spell filled the top ledge with images of me firing the Crossbow at the throne, the silver Bolt hit, covering the seat in silver and about ten feet down. Not as large a radius as the stadium seats, but more than I had expected. But the red Bolt, hm, was a different story. The explosion was fantastic! The crimson fire erupted and kept erupting. The Arena shook violently as it burned. The back of the throne flew into the seating behind it, embedding itself into the stone. Slag and ash were blown up into the air as the bone burned in the crimson fire.
Elves ran through the shaking Arena, jumping and leaping for the ledges where Gordon’s prismatic imagery showed me to be. MacNamara was running for the throne, so we changed plans on the fly and I jumped us down to the field, behind the silvery, glowing, spherical trap holding Kieran and Ethan and away from the throne. Lucky for us, too, because the percussive force of the throne completely blowing apart shook the Arena so hard that Richter couldn’t have measured it.
Strands of power, nearly solid, shot skyward through the tiny shards of bony remains on the ground. The throne had capped the fountain of ley lines that MacNamara bound to him. He stood before the fountain for a moment, panting and staring in disbelief at the wreckage. He threw back his head and roared in frustration, further shaking the Arena. His elves turned in unison at him, awed. His aura burned fiercely around him, so hot with anger even a man without the second sight would see it. Gordon’s spell popped under the onslaught, destroying the illusion.
I drove my senses into the magic holding my brothers. Peter and Ferrin readied to fight while Gordon cycled power for another deception. I needed to trust that they could handle this situation. Kieran and Ethan needed out.
Two things were evident in the magic of the sphere as I pierced the first level of the spell. The first was that this was not MacNamara’s magic. The second was that we were extremely lucky once again, because I was out here and not in there. If I had been caught with them, it would have been much harder to break out. As it was, the anchor in my head provided the key. Whatever caught them had locked them into an exotic universe, closed it off, and then wrapped it in on itself. It was a very large universe, not infinite but very large. I didn’t want to consider the physics involved. They could possibly force their way out in time. How much time and what their conditions would be afterward were the big questions.
I hopped down into my cavern, pushing through the anchor and into Ethan’s world. Again, I was flattened and squeezed as I moved past his rolling form, seeking a tether to the parts I could relate to. It was getting easier to understand the weird twisting of space here, but it still gave me a headache. I found the point where it entered reality—the reality that Ethan was currently in, not the one I currently stood in—and hooked my hand on the ethereal line at that point. Ready with the first step, I let my awareness fall back to Faery.
“Y’all ready?” I asked, looking up from my crouch.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Gordon said, switching gears in his cycling. He hefted something resembling an ax handle from a leather holster tied to his thigh. Shorter than an ax, the head was a six-inch edged iron blade that looked like something you’d split wood with or maybe shave bark off of lumber. It looked perfect for him.
“Let’s do this, then,” I said, standing up. I ran my fingers along the sphere as I walked slowly around it to face MacNamara’s backside. “Hey, Rat Bastard!” Yeah, I was stuck on that one.
He whirled around to face me, his chest still heaving with his arms outstretched and tense. “You!” he screeched.
“Yeah, me. Who else?” I asked cordially. I melted the helmet so he could see my face. The guys lined up beside me, Ferrin, Gordon, then Peter on the end. Tapping the sphere for emphasis, but not taking my eyes off of him, I asked, “Do you even know what this is?”
“Ha! A most delicious torture!” he laughed, taking a step forward. “Would you like to join them, little boy?” The malevolence and hatred in the words was flagrant. The elves surrounding us ate it up like candy.
I grinned at MacNamara cheerfully, saying, “May I?” I don’t think he understood the sarcasm and threat inherent in the question. Reforming the armor, I shoved my arm into the surface of the sphere. At the same time, I returned to the point in Ethan’s world where his body entered that exotic universe and I started searching. If I had been looking for Kieran or Ethan, I might have looked forever and not found them. But I wasn’t looking for them. I was looking for myself. And I knew where I was. Still, it took a few seconds.
The elves surged forward and the guys jumped into action. Gordon tossed his handle forty feet out and into the ground, striking hard. The earth split wide in a gaping hole ten feet wide and twenty feet long from the wooden haft, swallowing a line of advancing elves. Ferrin was running for Gordon’s chasm as Peter sent a wave of violently spiraling purple tornadoes about an inch tall at the horde of elves behind MacNamara. Gordon twitched his hand like he was throttling a motorcycle and his handle flew through air, back to his hand and closed the hole mere seconds before Ferrin crossed it. Ferrin flung a variant of the chaotic spell he used yesterday after Peter’s tornadoes, which flowed around the elven shields and dodged weapon thrusts on the air currents their own weapons made while sucking up what little magic the surroundings held. Distracted by the torn
adoes, Ferrin’s spell tore through the elven shields like tissue paper, frying a swathe five feet wide until it, too, got sucked in. At least twenty were distracted enough to fall into the closing chasm.
“Oh, dear,” I called out, seeming distraught. MacNamara’s attention was falling away from me to the guys. I needed to keep him on me for a few more minutes. They moved to the other side of him and stepped up their attacks, so I turned my attention solely on MacNamara.
“Something seems to have grabbed my hand, Sealbreaker,” I said, using an English word for one of his names. “And it’s pulling me in.” I slipped in deeper, up to the elbow, now. Damn, this elf was arrogant. There wasn’t any other reason he could miss that I wasn’t upset by the fact that I was pulled into a trap. He took another step forward.
“Yes, little boy, join your brother,” he snarled at me. I watched behind him as my team devastated his. Seriously, two minutes in and his forces were down by more than a third. Damn, my guys were good!
“You really don’t know what this is, do you?” I asked him again, sinking in to my shoulder.
“It’s your doom, McClure,” he snarled, stepping closer. “That’s all I need to know. You’ll rot in there like your putrid kind does. Insects will forage in your intestines. Bacteria will eat at your brains, your eyes, your tongue. After a few centuries I’ll send someone after the weapons you stole from us and return them to their rightful owners.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” I said cheerfully. “Well, let me explain a few things. First, I know it’s not yours. Second, it’s a paradox, a twisted universe, much like this one, that’s been contained in such a way that all the outside edges meet. For my limited human mind, that’s a bit hard to imagine, but here it sits. Basically, you have my brothers caught in a four dimensional loop, which they may or may not ever be able to get out of.” The liege was paying attention to me now, listening carefully. I suddenly knew too much and that made him suspicious. I pulled my arm slowly back out to the elbow.