Ariel

by Steven R. Boyett

  She looked as if she were going to say something and apparently thought the better of it. I tried to walk without looking behind me, but it wasn’t easy. Five kinds of warning bells were going off in my head and the small of my back, where I’d been hit before, was nearly screaming.

  The rider turned around and we resumed walking. I tried to puzzle it out—why would Ariel striking sparks upset them like that?

  The men walking with us were mostly silent and wary. Some glanced at Ariel with a strange mixture of wonder, curiosity, and fear.

  We were in the outskirts of Chinatown, amid shops which had sold clothes and martial arts equipment—the latter no doubt looted. The rider slowed to walk with us, rubbing his left eye socket with an index finger. He saw me trying not to look and his other eye narrowed. He wiped the finger on his pants. “The bird who did this to me,” he said. “That was its owner we killed?”

  I mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “I said yes, you son of a bitch.” I glanced around self-consciously. The men looked almost amused - yeah, brave little fuck, so what—we’re gonna kill him anyhow. The rider half-smiled. There was something cold in his single eye, as if he were pleasuring himself by picturing me cut to dogmeat. Except for the eye he had that German übermenschlich look about him—he could have been a figure on a Hitler Youth poster, but the broadsword at his hip and the ruin of his eye gave him a vaguely piratical look that jarred with his Aryan features. I smiled inwardly as I regarded his eye. Give me half a chance, bastard. I’ll do the rest of you, too.

  He just nodded at my attempt at bravado, that same half-smile on his pale face. “Good, good. The falcon was his buddy; that means it died, too.” The glint in his eye grew stronger.

  “No,” I said, glad at being able to contradict him, “we killed the falcon. Malachi Lee did. It didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Malachi Lee.” The smile thinned but the eye remained cold. I looked away from him.

  They must have seen us coming in by sea—but how? I looked at the skyscrapers all around. The streets looked like deserted hallways with the ceilings somehow ripped away, leaving behind jagged walls. If not for our present situation I’d have been impressed by the grandeur of the city’s architecture.

  I asked where we were going, but the rider said nothing.

  “Where do you think, Pete?” said Ariel. “He’s taking us to his employer, his liege lord, the one he bows to. The necromancer.” I could see Ariel was trying to irritate him. Nobody with power likes to be reminded that they have superiors, too.

  Very distinctly, he hawked, turned his head, and spat at her. My hand went for Fred at my side and clasped air. The phlegm looked as if it were deflected by the wind and it curved left, splattering on the street ahead of her.

  The men muttered to each other. I thought I was beginning to understand.

  “Nobody spits on a unicorn,” said Ariel proudly. One day her pride will be her downfall, I thought.

  The rider glared and turned away. “We’ll see what good being a unicorn will do you soon enough,” he said to the empty street ahead of him. “You can protect yourself for now—but you can’t protect him.”

  I knew the “him” was me and felt the pang of adrenaline shooting into my heart. It had just hit me that I was the only thing holding Ariel back. Her fear for my life had caused her to be captured and kept her from trying to escape. She’d have been able to get away easily if not for me.

  I caught some of the men who surrounded us eyeing Ariel speculatively. They looked away quickly if Ariel looked at them. They were afraid of magic. It was what kept them in check, I felt sure. Most of them had the look of long-time loners about them—the wary eyes and mistrustful glances, the conservation of movement, the constant checking of terrain in all directions. Most loners don’t trust magical ability, fearing it for the unknown that it is. These loners guarding us associated magical ability with people in authority, with their superiors—people with the power to make them do things. Now an enemy was in their midst—two enemies, actually, but I didn’t count—an alien thing. And it performed magic.

  “How much farther?” I asked.

  “A few miles,” he said grudgingly. “You can see it from here.” He pointed at a building ahead. My eyes followed the line of his finger to the Empire State Building.

  Empire State Building.

  Yeah, I could see it, all right. We’d turned onto Fifth Avenue. An absurd thought kept running through my head like an annoying jingle. Gee, I’ve always wanted to see New York! Gee, I’ve always wanted to see New York! Gee—I walked like an old man, shoulders slumped, head hanging, feeling beaten. I was beaten. I was tired. I’d given up.

  Off to see the Wizard. The worm in the Big Apple. I walked like an automaton. Welcome to the Machine, Mr. Garey. Why, thank you, nurse, I’ll take a double—left biceps this time, please. Free Will, my ass—Fate led me here, that malicious bitch.

  Dozens of armed men walked the streets in front of the Empire State Building. They became alert when they saw us, gesturing to one another and pointing to Ariel. The double revolving doors of the Fifth Avenue entrance were guarded by two armed men dressed in a hodgepodge of collected homemade armor. One even had a hockey goalie’s mask pushed back on top of his head. They looked vaguely like English knights.

  How many men could you fit into a building one hundred two stories tall? Thousands, at least. Tens of thousands, probably. I couldn’t be certain the entire building was occupied—it posed too many practical problems, such as how to get from the bottom to the top. Elevators wouldn’t work anymore.

  Magic? Ariel had once said that magic was a resource like any other and shouldn’t be wasted. Employing magic for routine elevator-type operations seemed a bit extravagant. What else, then? Pulleys and ropes in the elevator shafts? No way—the amount of rope necessary would be too heavy for any group of workers to pull. It never occurred to me that the necromancer would set his quarters, his “sanctum sanctorum,” as Dr. Strange used to say, at the bottom of the building. Anybody utilizing this skyscraper would instantly recognize the military and psychological advantages of being master of all he surveyed. No, I never doubted for a second that we were going to the top.

  The answer was so obvious I missed it.

  Seeing the broken windows of a McDonald’s on the other side of Fifth Avenue made me realize I was hungry. The last time I’d eaten was a small dinner at sea on the Lady.

  We passed a restaurant called Leo Lindy’s at the base of the building and turned left onto Thirty-fourth Street. A sign above the revolving doors ahead read: TO OBSERVATION DECKS. Orbach’s was right across the street, Macy’s a little farther down. Preening itself in the middle of the road was a griffin. Shai-tan.

  I hesitated, glancing at Ariel. She remained silent. Our guards pressed closer around us, probably thinking that if there was any one time we were likely to make a break for it, this was it.

  They were right—Ariel reared. Men backed away unthinkingly, all but one who pulled a hand axe and drew it back. Ariel twitched her head and the man fell with his skull caved in.

  This is it, I thought, and I side-stepped the crossbow bolt I pictured heading my way at any second. Turning around quickly, I saw that “Smith” had turned the Barnett toward Ariel, whose back was to him. His hand was going for the trigger when I leapt, kicked it to the side, and gave him a right to the temple. He sagged to the street and the crossbow went sailing. I went for it—and found my way blocked by a bloody broadsword an inch in front of my face as I knelt on the street. I tried to look past it at the rider, but I couldn’t. There was nothing else in the universe but that point, two inches from my eyes. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even think. My ears told me the shouting had died down, that Ariel obviously wasn’t fighting anymore because she’d seen me, but it didn’t register, nothing registered but the blade, the blade. The rider’s voice was a world away, made throaty by his heavy breathing. “All right,” he said. “I may not hav
e your power—I’ll give you that. But if you say another word, make a wrong move, do anything other than walk to that building, I’ll kill him.” The blade shook before my eyes. I flinched. “Get up!” I stood, not taking my eyes from the end of the sword, and it followed me up. “Move.”

  I moved. I stepped over a body. The remaining men had their weapons drawn. I felt them on all sides, at my back, ready.

  We left three bodies behind. Blood covered Ariel’s horn. It was all too much for me and I cried.

  The rider strode ahead of us, heavy broadsword bobbing in time with his swagger. He stopped at the huge, leonine bird, reached up, and stroked the feathers at the bottom of its throat. He stroked down, ruffling at the place on Shai-tan’s breast where feathers became golden-brown fur. The beast arched its powerful neck and blinked its eyes, a sleepy killer. It saw Ariel and spread its huge wings, hissing from deep in its throat. The rider calmed the griffin, stepped forward, and untied the long reins from around the right stirrup, standing on tiptoe to reach them. He held both reins in his right hand and turned to face us. The reins grew taut as he stepped forward. The griffin stood reluctantly and stepped forward slowly, not being pulled, but not exactly following. Our guard looked nervous as the beast approached, but they merely exchanged glances and kept a watchful eye on us. The rider stopped in front of me and lowered the hand clenching the leather reins. I smelled hot brass. “What’s your name?”

  I looked him in the eye and said nothing.

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” He gestured with the reins. “Get on.”

  I glanced at Ariel.

  “She’ll follow you up,” he said.

  “How do I know that?”

  He smiled. “You don’t. But you don’t have much choice, either.”

  I looked at the griffin’s molten gold eyes. Why didn’t the cavalry ever come over the hill in real life?

  The griffin settled itself down on the street, bringing the stirrups level with the top of my chest. “Get on,” he said again.

  I grabbed the stirrup and the bottom of the saddle, jumped, and pulled myself up. I swung my right leg around and settled onto the saddle. It creaked beneath me.

  “Hold on to the saddlehorn,” said the rider. “Use both hands. Don’t pull on the reins or you’ll get thrown—it’s a long way down.” He turned to Ariel. “We’re going to hold him on top while Shai-tan comes back for you. I know you can probably keep yourself from being lifted if you want to, but if you do we’ll throw him off. Understand?”

  “I understand.” She looked over to me. I tried to nod confidently but I knew she wasn’t fooled. She nodded back slowly and looked to the rider. “If you do anything to him, I’ll kill you. Griffin or not, men or not, you know you won’t be able to stop me.”

  “We don’t care about him.”

  I swallowed hard. By then I had made up my mind to go for him. I truly didn’t care what happened to me as long as Ariel was all right.

  She must have seen it in my eyes, for she shook her head slowly and said, gently but firmly, “Go on, Pete.”

  Shai-tan stood, craning her neck, head flicking about alertly. I rocked in the saddle and grasped the long horn in both hands. The rider released the reins. “Take him up,” he told the griffin mildly.

  The street wheeled as the griffin turned and took two running steps that jarred my teeth. Two great flaps of the sail-sized wings and we were aloft. We climbed steeply. I looked down and managed to glimpse Ariel looking up at me, the rider and our captors around her. Shai-tan began circling and I had to look away because the ground began to revolve slowly and I thought I’d be sick if I kept looking. The griffin made two complete circuits in an upward spiral around the skyscraper. To my left the building seemed to rotate clockwise. We were about three hundred feet up when Shai-tan headed north, away from the building. We were still climbing. Skyscrapers rose ahead of us. I recognized the Pan Am and Chrysler buildings. Soon they began to give way beneath us and I saw Central Park ahead. The view was marvelous, unhampered by smog. I held on to the saddlehorn for dear life, rocking in time to the griffin’s surging wingbeats. Shai-tan called out, a predator’s cry echoing into the canyons of the city. We banked right, turning a hundred eighty degrees. We were now about three-quarters of the way to the top, around nine hundred feet up. The World Trade Center was bluish gray in the distance. Beyond lay Battery Park. I searched the blue expanse of water farther on, but saw no sign of a boat. I hoped Shaughnessy was all right. If she’d been with us when we were captured she’d have gone with us, and if we’d tried to fight our way out of it she’d have fought alongside us. And died alongside us, too. I’d seen no reason for it; it wasn’t her fight. I’d sent her back to the Lady Woof in case there was a trap, so at least she could get away.

  My hair streamed back in the wind rushing at my face. The powerful back muscles of the griffin flexed beneath me as its wings grabbed air. To have a Familiar such as this! The feeling of power it would give to soar above the cities, to command the pent-up fury within this creature!

  I remembered Russ Chaffney and felt ashamed.

  Cars had become motionless beetles; people weren’t even large enough to be called ants in comparison. Men waited on the perimeter of the eighty-sixth floor observatory, the only suitable place to land; the protective metal fencing that had once been set in the guard wall had been removed.

  The cathedral-like Chrysler Building and the blue strip of the East River were now to my left. Except for the sound of the wind rushing past my ears, it was deadly quiet down there

  As we neared the eighty-sixth floor it became apparent that the only place with enough room for Shai-tan to land was one of the corners; the guard wall jutted irregularly and the walkway was too narrow, only about ten to twelve feet wide. The building slid underneath and Shai-tan cupped her wings, braking by air drag. The griffin landed smoothly on the near corner, one of her claws gripping either side of the angle of the guard wall, and folded her wings to her sides. A dozen armed men stood on the brick-colored deck before me. I gathered I was supposed to dismount where I was. It meant swinging out over open air and stepping onto the six-inch-wide wall, then stepping down from there. I glanced up at the thick needle of the TV tower rising above the observation deck and felt as if I were pitching over backward. I lowered my gaze to the wall on the left-hand side and eased out of the saddle, probing for the top of the guard wall with my right foot, slowly lowering myself until my feet touched the wall. I tried looking back over my shoulder so I could see just the wall and the observation deck without having to take in the cityscape below and ahead, but it was impossible—it was there in my peripheral vision.

  Shai-tan shrieked just as my feet settled on the wall. I jerked and lost my footing. There was time only to push away from her and pitch myself backward onto the observation deck, where I was caught by the waiting men. “Thanks,” I said, and then felt stupid.

  Shai-tan spread her wings and jumped over our heads. A brief gust spread across the deck and she was aloft again. She rose twenty feet, flapped twice—just enough to clear her from the building—and then pulled her wings in and plummeted in a dive toward the street. I stood on tiptoe and leaned out over the wall as she dove, just managing to catch a glimpse as she cupped her wings and began to level off, and then she disappeared below one of the lower terrace levels. I was grabbed from behind and my arms were pinned behind my back. “All right, let’s go,” someone said. I tried to struggle but my hands were held fast. And there were at least a dozen of them, all armed. “I’m supposed to wait here!” I said over my shoulder. “They’re bringing Ariel up—my friend—a unicorn—and I’m supposed to wait until she gets here.”

  “Get him out of here,” said the voice.

  “No, wait—”

  They pulled me. Again I tried to protest and was punched in the kidney for my efforts. I gasped and my insides locked up when I tried to inhale. They dragged me up a short flight of steps and into a metal and glass area that used t
o sell souvenirs of New York City. A double elevator bank slid past, blurry, and then I was jarred as they dragged me down several flights of stairs. Keys rattled and a door opened. I was brought to my feet and turned around to face somebody. His face was blurry. I blinked to clear my vision, and when I opened my eyes again I just had time to see the flesh-colored blur before his fist hit my face. Colored explosions spread from jaw to eyes, and everything went black.

  *

  I was roughly shaken awake. Reflex took over before I was fully conscious, and I grabbed the arm tugging my shoulder and pulled. Whoever it was pitched forward, striking his head on the wall, and then they were all over me, five men crowding around me pinning me down with their knees on my arms and legs. I began struggling, then relaxed. “All right,” I said. “All right. I’m not gonna resist.”

  I was pulled to my feet and pushed into a corridor lit by lanterns set on the floor at irregular intervals. The effect was eerie. The five men surrounding me were lit from below in pale orange, shadows making empty black sockets of their eyes.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  No answer. They indicated the direction I was to walk by shoving me. I stumbled, caught myself, and began walking. Our footsteps echoed in the long, empty corridors.

  We stopped at a door guarded by two men in homemade armor. One of them nodded to my escort, flicked his eyes to me briefly, and opened the door outward. My escort led me in.

  The room was dimly lit by five candles near the walls on the left and right. The door clicked shut behind us. The flames wavered. I smelled burning wax. The pale yellow light barely revealed an office desk with a large black chair behind it at the far end of the room. It sat before a large window which looked out on the night sky.

  “That’s fine.” The voice came from the chair. The guards, who shifted nervously as they stood more or less at attention, turned and left the room. The candles flickered again as the door opened and shut with a final sound.