Crusader

by Andrew Smith

  “Don’t bother,” said Wyyla. “I’ll get it.”

  “As you please,” Mme. Rumella responded tranquilly.

  Wyyla began a short chant, and clouds appeared, and rain from them.

  Hunter cast the feather spell on himself as Voz simply rose into the air. They spotted McLenen from their new vantage point and took off in his direction.

  “How can you do that?” Hunter called as leapt along below the floating Voz.

  She grinned as the wind whipped the hair from her eyes. It seemed light, almost ethereal. The tattered suggestions of black and gray veils flew out all behind her. “You’ve seen my mother fly, haven’t you?”

  “Right, but she’s only half-corporeal, isn’t she?”

  “And I’m half-banshee,” Voz replied.

  “Does that make you a quarter incorporeal then?”

  “Don’t be cute,” she called over her shoulder: “it doesn’t suit you.”

  Ahead of them, the dark sorcerer poured down more blue-white energy upon the city below. A pair of red Peeler flares erupted into the sky.

  * * * *

  The fires put out, Mme. Rumella and Wyyla reentered the shop. The others waited with a minimum of patience.

  “Hospice, jail, and havoc,” said Mary. “That would appear to knock three of our four main suspects off the list.”

  Leila turned to Benny. “This is one of those times you wish you had all your suspects up on a big white board. Y’know, so you could cross the wrong ones off and make a big red circle around the right one.”

  “So what happens now?” Grace asked. “Do we go after this guy?”

  Mme. Rumella looked at Mary. “Do we?”

  “Yes.”

  “That sounds catastrophically frightening,” Leila remarked

  Grace laughed. “You sound pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.”

  “Well,” Leila explained,” I used up my daily share of freak-out during the ant-spider thing.”

  “I take it there’s no chance of waiting?” Benny asked hopefully

  “No,” Mary told him. “There are still resources at the Mulhoy, and who knows where else, that he could use. If he learns to read that thing, it’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. And you do realize I’m being literal here. Hell. Breaking.”

  “But couldn’t we at least wait for Voz and Hunter?”

  Mary looked insulted.

  “What? Is it really that urgent?”

  “I don’t like waiting,” said Mary

  “Besides, why wait?” Grace asked

  Benny told her about Ruin as Mary had told him

  “Then again, waiting does have its merits...”

  “I don’t think so,” Mary insisted. “There’s still too much we don’t know. Waiting is not something we could afford. If Delilah had good reason to suspect McLenen, perhaps he was involved, and perhaps his running around now is just another distraction.”

  “That’s a little too far on the fetching scale if you ask me,” Leila said, adding, “far...far fetched.”

  “I admit it could be coincidental, but that’s not often the way things work around here. I say we go now.”

  “I’ll leave a note for Hunter and Voz,” Mme. Rumella said, fetching pen and paper from a drawer.

  “Nice inkwell,” said Leila. Mme. Rumella gave her a puzzled look.

  “So, are we at least going to get the Crusader on our little suicide run?”

  “You know what would be comforting? If you didn’t call it that.”

  “No-one is asking you to come Grace,” Mme. Rumella assured her

  “I’m coming,” she said. “I just like to think I’m coming back.”

  Mme. Rumella grabbed her purse and filled it with every smoke vial she had. “Right then, we’re off. Wyyla, Benny,” she said grudgingly, “it would be most expedient if you two looked for the Crusader from the air.”

  Benny’s face lit up.

  * * * *

  They were gaining on him. Voz had the unsettling feeling that he wanted them to do just that. She was sure Hunter was having the same thought, even though, while she wore a distrait grimace, Hunter’s face tore open in a grin that scared even Voz. Though he nearly killed a woman and was currently setting the town ablaze, she almost pitied the sorcerer. Almost.

  “Hello!” Damon McLenen called. The silver-framed device Wyyla had described was suspended in place over his chest. “The first of the city’s erstwhile defenders. I was wondering when you’d get here.”

  Voz scoffed. Hunter shot him.

  Damon was ready. A black veil of clouds appeared and absorbed the force-of-light orb. Hunter swore as he descended. It was difficult to tell, but Voz believed McLenen was looking at him, about to strike. This probably won’t be too healthy for Hunter, she thought, but it’s better than the alternative.

  Voz screamed. The air split open. A black something darted upon it. The dark sorcerer faltered, but managed to cast something. Voz found herself in a swirling globe of the same inky clouds that surrounded the sorcerer. While they protected him from attack, they confined her. She kept screaming but the clouds would not break up. She flew forward, beating her fists against her spherical cage. The clouds did not feel hard against her hands, but they still failed to give and she only succeeded in propelling herself forward a few feet. She concentrated on her less-corporeal state and tried to pass through, but the clouds wouldn’t let her. She swore and kicked at the cage again. “I’m just not Irish enough.”

  Hunter touched the ground below. Just to test, he fired three more shots into the air. The all stuck McLenen’s veil of cloud, but did no good. The momentum forced him quicker to the ground and he leapt up again at a shallow angle over a low building nearby. He landed by catching his foot on the ledge of the far side of the roof. He turned and looked at the sorcerer and the encapsulated Voz. A beam of energy angled downward from McLenen’s chest and towards Hunter. He dodged.

  But only just. The sorcerous energy hit the roof, sending snatches of molten slate spraying all around. Hunter shielded his face. A gob of hot slate hit the back of his neck and sizzled. Hunter growled. The slate was, rather incongruously he thought, on fire. Hunter took a step to his left, the effect of the feather spell carrying him several feet, aiming all the while.

  Hunter, having done a fair share of hunting in his day, knew more offensive sorcery than anyone he knew. Except maybe Mary. She had moods. He uttered the words ‘spider’s web’ in Middle French. The spell, a by-product of Anglo-French feuding in the middle ages, should, cloud shield or no, ensnare the dark sorcerer and bring him down. Hunter watched, thwarted, as the web evanesced, became nothing. The spider web must be a dark spell. He hadn’t even thought about it. He leapt to another rooftop as the sorcerous energy struck his last position.

  Most of the buildings this far outwise were fairly short, but this one was a good six stories. McLenen didn’t rise farther into the air, but came forward to meet him. Hunter’s mind cycled hastily through the many spells he had learned over the years. He realized that much of the offensive sorcery he knew must be dark. But McLenen had put on a defensive spell when he fired the force-of-light orb rather than dissipate it, as with the spider web.

  Nature spells...Having spent centuries in the forest, Hunter had absorbed some of the sorcery there. As active as sorcery was in the city, in the forests it was practically ambient. Hunter raised his gun and whispered a word that meant ‘sun’, though not in any of the languages of man.

  A knife of searing, burning gold erupted from the arquebus and struck McLenen. The sorcerer was pushed back a few feet. Hunter hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking on his part that the veil of dark clouds surrounded his opponent seemed to be dissipating.

  A crackling blue began. It sprayed around the edges of the sun beam an cascaded down. Hunter could feel the force of it already. His gun slid onto the middle of his chest as he strove to keep it steady. Half of his ray was already swallowed, and the force on the arquebus was
making him lean back. If he didn’t move soon, he would lose his balance and be... He didn’t know what. Crushed? Cooked, maybe?

  Hunter swept his right foot to the left, sending him into a spin a few inches above the ground. The sun ray snapped off and the blue-white beam crashed into the roof, setting it afire. Hunter had expected to move further. The feather spell must be wearing off. He quickly re-cast it, and leapt into the air. The beam stopped, though Hunter could still see the Sorcery Core crackling from behind the veil of clouds. McLenen turned to spot him and fired, but the new beam went over his head. Hunter was moving as fast as the feather spell would allow.

  Hunter held his gun at arm’s length, putting it as a bar between himself and McLenen as they collided. The gun hit him in the knees and sent him spinning as Hunter descended. In an instant, the arquebus was back at his shoulder. He fired a string of force-of-light orbs to change his trajectory, the last straight down to get a slight altitude boost. He pulled his legs up into a sitting position.

  His drift brought him onto Voz’s cloudy bubble, which sank a few feet under his weight.

  “Voz!” Hunter called. “Can you hear me?”

  “Hunter?” came the slightly muffled voice from within. “Can you get me out of this thing?”

  “I’ll try.” He placed on hand on the bubble, with the other on his Focus. He couldn’t think of any spell that would release her, but concentrated on the idea. Nothing happened. Hunter saw that McLenen had righted himself and was coming back for more. “I saw you moving this thing around. If I can make McLenen go into the woods, I might be able to manage something for you. Do you think you can follow us.”

  Voz pressed her face as close to the wall of her cage as she could, barely appearing behind the swirling blackness. “I think so,” she affirmed.

  Hunter smiled. She had never looked more like her mother. A cloud of flame billowed out towards them. The flames broke against the globe which contained Voz, but Hunter barely managed to lift off before they hit it.

  Hunter had been impressed with Mary’s dual fires-which-soar, but this had to be five times that amount of fire. This, he surmised, was why no-one of sound mind ever decided to mess with Sorcery Cores.

  He checked his surroundings. Having spent most of his time in this world beyond the city, he hadn’t developed the keenest sense of the rings that divided the city by time. He did, however, know exactly which way was outwise, to the forests. He guessed this was about the twelfth century, which meant a long way to go before he had any hope of releasing Voz.

  He fired some force-of-light orbs at McLenen, just to make him mad, then leapt away towards the forests.

  * * * *

  “It’s been half an hour,” Leila fretted.

  “It’s a large city,” Mme. Rumella patiently replied.

  “I’m just saying,” Leila pointed out, “because you said the situation was urgent.”

  “I never said that,” Mme. Rumella retorted.

  “I did,” Mary reminded her. “And I think Leila has a point. Perhaps we should give up the search for the Crusader. He proved rather well earlier that he can disappear at a moments notice. We may never find him.”

  “We’re making our way out,” said Mme. Rumella. “We’ll just have to hope he’s somewhere between the eighteenth and fifth, B.C.”

  “And on our path,” Mary added.

  “Near our path,” said Mme. Rumella, indicating the sky. Benny and Wyyla, invisible at this distance, circled the air above looking for signs of the Crusader as the others walked.

  “Our path to where?” Leila asked. “You never said.”

  “The very heart of Rome, dear. The Palatine Hill.”

  * * * *

  The forests loomed ahead. Hunter saw the patch directly ahead was buried in a thick bank of fog. That was helpful. Hunter was taking running leaps each time he hit the ground, propelling himself as fast as he could go. He dodged randomly this way and that as breams of pale blue set fire to the city around him. He fired randomly over his shoulder to make sure McLenen would not get bored and give up the chase.

  He touched down and ran a few steps, barely touching the ground each time, then took off. He threw his center forward and his head down and checked the area behind him as he spun. The bubble of Voz was still following, in erratic bursts of speed as the captive threw herself against the side of her cage.

  Hunter reached the forests and touched down in the bank of fog. Other than the disturbed swirl of his own landing, he couldn’t see fifty feet in front of him. He barely held to the ground as he tip-toed off into the trees. He began to whisper words that only made sense in the forest. The fog thickened further, expanding outward and into the air.

  Hunter saw the muted blue of the sorcerer’s energy glowing in the fog, dispersing it. But there was too much moisture and the fires it caused immediately fizzled. More mists rushed in to replace the ones burned away.

  Hunter heard a rustling in the wet leaves around him. He made his towards it, careful to cling to the ground as he went. There, among the white mists, was a globe of dusky black cloud. Blue light flashed in and out in the background.

  “Voz?”

  “Hunter? I’m glad I found you.”

  “I’m impressed that you found me. I was about to go find you.”

  “Of course you were.”

  “Do you want to be in there forever?”

  “I bet if you killed him it would go away.”

  “He has a Sorcery Core, so I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  Hunter touched both hand and Focus to the bubble and concentrated on releasing it. The nature order of sorcery was out in the open here. It was everywhere: in the grasses and trees, in the soil, in the mists that obscured them all. It was, however, not responding. Hunter shrugged. He had never been the most perceptive person when it came to unfocused sorcery. His time in the forests had taught him something about it, it had to, but apparently it was not enough. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Voz’s disembodied voice sounded. “Alright, run.”

  “What?”

  “Throw me in McLenen’s direction. But not too hard, I don’t want to overshoot him. Then run. Run away and cover your ears.”

  “Right,” said Hunter, catching on. He put his arms as far as he could around the sphere, and, checking the ground was clear behind him, fell over. He let one foot shoot forward as the other was brought up under the globe, launching it backwards.

  Within, Voz pushed up with all her strength as the cloudy cell flew. She rose into the air. Face to the barrier, she could barely make out McLenen, screaming in anger as he fired again and again at the ground. She only hoped that Hunter was far enough away. She pushed against the opposite side of the globe to slow herself. And she began to sing.

  The notes were pure and smooth and flowed like honey even through the barrier of sorcerous clouds. The words didn’t matter. They were whatever syllables moved themselves into Voz’s mouth as she sang. The melody started low, almost in the baritone range, though still strangely feminine, and worked its way up. She held for three seconds on a phenomenal E-above-high-C before a diminishing slide down a tenth.

  She stopped. She knew that unless McLenen was exceptionally strong of will, which she doubted, she would have had him in the first few seconds. She enjoyed singing, but sang so rarely because, even when she didn’t intend for it to happen, her voice tended to have unfortunate side effects.

  “Damon?” Voz asked to the sky.

  “Yes?” came the sing-song reply.

  “Damon,” her voice was soft, indulgent. “You should let me out of this cage,” she said.

  “Of course,” McLenen hummed.

  The clouds fell away around her. The ones protecting McLenen also dissipated into the white mists all around. He stared at her in rapt attention. Voz had him and she knew it. “Come here,” she said

  The dark sorcerer floated serenely towards her. The only time his eyes strayed from her was when he blinked. They hovered mere inc
hes from each other.

  “Give me the device,” she said, so softly it could hardly be considered a command.

  She saw now the stained glass and silver details of the device around the crackling energy of the Sorcery Core. It appeared to be hovering a fixed distance from his chest. He put his hands to it and pushed it away. Voz grasped it. McLenen let go and dropped like a stone

  Voz hovered, blinking, as she heard a soft ‘thump’ in the mists below. “What a fantastic idiot,” she said to no-one and flew away.

  * * * *

  Benny zoomed this way and that. He had been searching fruitlessly, and felt like he had covered miles. There was no sign of the Crusader anywhere. Despite the large area that he, and surely Wyyla, had covered, it was tiny compared to the whole of the city. Distance was quickly covered, but area was an entirely different story. Searching for someone, it is imperative to have a good idea where the are, considering they could be indoors, underground, or disguised by any number of methods.

  There was a shriek on the air, that of a very irate bird. It was the signal Mary had decided on, to the bemusement of the rest. Benny flew back to the street path his aunt was taking and set down. Leila aimed her Focus at him as he came down, then pointed it sheepishly away. Everyone had had their Foci drawn since they left the shop

  “I haven’t seen him,” Benny announced.

  “Neither have I,” Wyyla added, and everyone looked around for her

  “When are we?” Grace asked, as though she were only now becoming aware of the situation. The entire walk she had been lost in thought.

  “The fourth century, B.C.,” Leila answered. “Almost there. How does someone hold on to a prime piece of real estate like the Palatine Hill anyway?”

  “Prime?” Mary inquired.

  “Yeah. It’s the Palatine Hill. It’s cool. Maybe that’s just because I’m an anthropologist.”

  “I thought you were an archaeologist,” Benny puzzled.

  “Can be both,” she said.

  “By being evil and scary, to answer your question, pet. I say if we haven’t found him by now, the likelihood is we won’t. So, do we do as Mary suggests, and fight Ruin now, assuming of course that he is in fact at the Palatine Hill, or do we wait?”