by Scott Meyer
After a brief conversation, Louiza, the doctor, took charge of the situation and nobody argued, which in this case was all the vote they needed to take.
Of course, Gwen already had the crowd on her side. She wasn’t sure this would be the case. After all, Ida was popular enough with the other sorceresses to get herself elected to the only elected office they had. Happily, as the other sorceresses started to arrive, they all noticed that Gwen seemed genuinely happy to have other people involved in the argument, while Ida seemed frantic and skittish and tried to hide it under an increasingly unconvincing front.
Once all of the sorceresses had arrived, Louiza told the guards to leave, which they did gratefully. Then, the sorceresses set about trying to figure out what was going on. They formed a rough circle with Gwen and Ida in the center and told them both to explain themselves. This might sound like a less aggressive approach than the male delegates were pursuing further out toward the rim of the city, but from Ida and Gwen’s point of view it didn’t feel less aggressive.
“All right, you two,” Louiza said. “You called us all here. What’s going on?”
Ida said, “I didn’t call you here! She called you all here, not me! I told you not to listen to her!”
Louiza held up her hands to make Ida both quieter and calmer. “Okay, okay,” Louiza said. “Fine, Ida. You didn’t call us here. This meeting is Gwen’s doing.”
Ida smiled, feeling as if she’d scored a point.
Louiza said, “Okay, Gwen. You called everyone here. What’s going on?”
“Wait! What?” Ida shouted. “Why does she get to explain things? How’s that fair?”
Louiza squinted at Ida, then, in a slow, even tone said, “She’s the one who called us here. I think we’d all like to know why. It seems logical to ask her for an explanation.”
“Actually, Ida,” Gwen said, “I think it would be better for everyone if you did explain what’s going on.” She softened her expression as much as she could, and looked Ida directly in the eye. “Go ahead, Ida, tell them what’s happened, from your point of view. They’ll listen.” She hoped her message was piercing through all the layers of ego and embarrassment and panic, actually reaching Ida’s brain. Gwen thought this might be Ida’s only chance at redeeming herself.
Ida muttered, “I don’t know.” Then she broke her eye contact with Gwen, shrugged, and in a loud, clear voice said, “I don’t know why Gwen called you all here. I can’t think of anything she’d have to say, unless she intends to lie.”
Gwen grimaced. Ida misinterpreted this as a sign that she’d scored another point.
Louiza squinted again, then said, “Well, I can see why you fought to get the chance to say that you don’t know what she’s going to say.”
“Except that I know it’ll be a lie,” Ida corrected her. Gwen realized that on a certain level, she missed Jimmy. At least he’d been a good liar. Ida was panicking, and there’s a reason you never hear anyone say, “Luckily I panicked and did something really smart.”
“Noted,” Louiza said, in an effort to placate Ida. She turned to Gwen. “Okay, your turn.”
Gwen said, “Ida is in a romantic relationship with her servant, Nilo.”
Most of the sorceresses laughed at this. Louiza smiled and shook her head. She started to say something, but Gwen cut her off. “Because of her feelings for Nilo, she used the file to stop his aging.”
Louiza’s expression changed. She no longer looked amused. She looked concerned. The other sorceresses stopped laughing as well, but Gwen noted that instead of looking concerned, many of them looked embarrassed.
“And,” Gwen continued, fearing she might lose what little momentum she had, “when she told him about it, he talked her into giving him other powers!”
Gwen saw a lot less quiet embarrassment among the sorceresses and a lot more quiet shock. Louiza looked at Ida and asked, “What powers?”
Ida said nothing, so Gwen answered, “The power to make small explosives, powerful enough to bring down a statue. The power to create enchanted arrows that home in on a specific target. The power to create portals in space. He told her he wanted these powers to eliminate Brit the Younger. He believed that if he did, Brit the Elder would be out of the way as well, leaving Ida, as president, in charge.”
Now, Gwen could detect no embarrassment in the crowd, just anger. All eyes turned to Ida, who also looked angry. Louiza asked, “What do you say to that, Ida?”
Ida said, “See? Lies!” Several of the women listening groaned. “Yeah,” Ida said. “I know. Why would she make up a lie like that?” Ida nodded vigorously and wagged her index finger. “You know what I think?” She continued nodding and wagging slightly longer than one would expect before continuing. “I think she, Gwen, and that guy, that Martin, I think they are the ones who were trying to get rid of Brit. Yeah! Yeah! It all makes sense!”
Ida spread her arms wide and spun around, making sure that she had everyone’s attention. She did.
“Yeah, Gwen wanted Brit out of the way because she wanted that other wizard guy, the old one—”
“Phillip,” Gwen interrupted.
“Yeeeees, Phillip! You liked Phillip, didn’t you? Yeah, and you knew that he and Brit the Younger were an item, so she had to go!”
Gwen asked, more out of curiosity than any concern, “Why would Martin help?”
Ida said, “Because, because . . . because he, he wanted you! Right? I mean, it’s obvious that he’s into you! Obviously he wanted Phillip out of the way so he could have you to himself!”
Gwen shook her head. “So, you’re saying that we killed Brit so I could have Phillip, and we killed Phillip so Martin could have me. That’s stupid.”
Ida said, “No stupider than the plan you say Nilo and I had.”
“Well,” Gwen said through gritted teeth, “I can’t argue with that.”
“No, you can’t,” Ida smirked.
“But tell me this,” Gwen asked, “what about Ampyx?”
Ida asked, “What’s an Ampyx?”
Gwen, speaking more to the gathered sorceresses than to Ida, said, “He’s a guard who was in the room when Ida admitted her plan to Martin and me.”
“Well, clearly, he’ll back you two up, because he’s in on it, too. He probably wants you as well.”
Gwen was amazed. “You’re saying that I killed Brit because I wanted Phillip to myself, and that Martin and Ampyx both helped me, killing Phillip in the process, because they both wanted me instead.”
Ida shrugged, smugly.
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Look, if we were just going to get rid of Phillip along with Brit, then there’s no point in getting rid of Brit in the first place. Also, even if that made sense, the plan you just laid out still leaves me, Martin, and Ampyx here in Atlantis, so neither of them has me. The math doesn’t work out.”
Ida said, “Oh, I dunno. Maybe you’re into that kind of thing.”
Gwen said, “If I were, then they’d have no reason to get rid of Phillip.”
Ida said, “Look, it’s your stupid plan. I can’t explain it.”
Louiza decided it was time to take back control of the meeting. “A lot of accusations have been made here. Some plausible, some less so. I propose that we don’t do anything rash until we’ve had time to talk to Martin, Nilo, and . . . what’s his name?”
Gwen said, “Ampyx.”
Louiza looked at Ida and said, “We’ll talk to them, then we’ll do something rash. I further propose that I continue to refer to the guard in question as what’s-his-name.” The wave of head nods and muttered affirmations made a vote unnecessary.
Louiza opened her mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by a blinding flash of light coming from a gap in the buildings up near the rim of the city. All of the sorceresses looked up and saw fire, chaos, and panic. An instant later, loud, horrific sounds
of screaming and explosions reached their ears.
“What in God’s name is that?!” Louiza gasped.
Gwen said, “The boys.”
Every window, door, and alleyway that fed into the square was packed full of people craning their necks to see what would happen next, but the square itself appeared to be populated entirely by wizards and cobras. Nilo was there too, but nobody could see him, because he and Martin were buried under the cobras.
The wizards wore many different disguises. There were shamen, medicine men, philosophers, con men, holy men, magi, and magicians, but they were all, when you got down to it, wizards, and now they were acting like it. Once Vikram had finished producing the cobras he joined the rest of the wizards in creating and maintaining the invisible walls that were holding the squirming mass of horror in place. The cobras were piled at least ten feet deep, and where the force fields held them in, they formed a solid wall of slick, coiling blackness.
Gilbert, still disguised as a tuxedoed mass of tentacles, asked Vikram, “What if the cobras bite him? We’re not trying to kill anybody.”
Vikram said, “Oh, they’re not actually poisonous. They’re not even really snakes. They look and feel real, but all they do is slither around. They don’t bite.”
A small light spot appeared in the undulating wall of snake flesh. It grew, and became recognizable as a hand. A second hand joined it, pushing against the invisible force field, then Nilo’s face became clear, contorted both by the pressure of being pressed against the force field, and by the horror of what was doing the pressing.
Nilo struggled and scrambled and clambered his way to the top of the pile, which looked a bit like tall marsh grass swaying in the wind, only instead of grass, it was hooded cobras, all poised as if ready to strike. Gilbert was so amazed by the sight of Nilo fighting his way to freedom that he didn’t even think to extend the force field until Nilo was already vaulting over the top of it.
Nilo landed clumsily on the ground between Gilbert and Sid, neither of whom made any move to stop him, as they were busy holding back a wall of snakes. They knew the snakes weren’t real, but they didn’t have time to think. They were acting on instinct, and the “avoid being buried under an avalanche of cobras” instinct is pretty strong.
Nilo rose awkwardly to his feet, looked at the wall of snakes behind him, looked at the monsters on either side of him, and ran away from all three of them as fast as he could.
Sid shouted, “Someone stop him!”
Nilo was running toward the open end of the square that led out to empty space and a spectacular view of the city. If he reached the edge, he could jump. As steep as the bowl was at this level, the tops of the buildings on the next level down could probably be only thirty feet or so down. He would have to vault over the railing, but he could survive that jump, and then would have an excellent chance of escaping.
John, the Chinese wizard, heard Gilbert’s call, and in one smooth motion redirected his energies from maintaining the wall to shooting some sort of glowing energy ball toward Nilo. The ball of red light passed through him as if he weren’t there, continued straight out into the empty expanse of the city’s airspace, then flashed a blinding red light. When the light died, in its place, suspended in midair, was a massive Chinese dragon. Its body, at least fifty feet long, undulated through the air like a gymnast’s ribbon, but at the front end, instead of a fourteen-year-old Ukrainian girl with a stick, there was a head like that of a lion, but much larger and much less sleepy. Its claws looked like daggers. Its eyes looked like hatred itself, and it made a beeline for Nilo, who scrabbled to an undignified stop, shrieked, and darted away to his right.
John would have found it quite gratifying if he’d seen it. Unfortunately, he had lowered his force field to create the dragon, and as such had been buried under an avalanche of snakes.
The dragon changed direction to follow Nilo, who ran a full, panicked lap of the cobra pile until he emerged on the other side of the square with an unobstructed run to the open air and freedom again. Luckily, John had shown the way, and the Incan shaman at the other side of the pile had paid attention.
The Incan dropped his force field and reached toward the open air. In the space between Nilo and the railing, a mounted conquistador appeared, glowing like a fake ghost in an episode of Scooby Doo. Steam burst from the ghostly horse’s nostrils as it reared up on its hind legs and flailed menacingly with its hooves. The rider leveled a flare-fronted musket at Nilo, but Nilo had already altered his course to run another lap of the pile. As he ran around the back side of the square, each wizard he passed abandoned the wall and did something to add to his problems. By the time he emerged again on the other side of the square he was pursued by the dragon, the conquistador, a three-headed wolf, a stone golem, and a small pack of vicious Chihuahuas. The cobra wall had also unraveled behind him, giving the impression that he was fleeing from a nonstop wave of deadly snakes.
As he again sprinted toward the railing and, Nilo hoped, freedom, he was passed by another bolt of energy that struck the railing and exploded into a wall of solid flames that filled his entire field of vision. He stopped dead in his tracks, shielding his eyes from the light and his face from the searing heat. His shoulders sagged, and he turned to face his tormenters. He saw the people of his city, his people, watching from every available vantage point, waiting to see how he would be tortured next. He saw the wizards, the monsters, and the tiny yapping dogs all waiting for him to make his next move, and all standing ankle deep in the pile of snakes (except for the Chihuahuas, who were standing on the surface of the snakes).
It was almost impossible, but Nilo managed to keep his fear in check.
For an instant, the central mass of cobras emitted a glow, as if they were piled on top of a theatrical spotlight that had been quickly turned on and then off again. Then the pile began to swell, bulging and pulsing outward. A circular wave of wriggling snakes rolled outward like a ripple in a pond as a swirling mass of what appeared to be small silver boxes broke the surface of the pile. The boxes coalesced into a larger version of the recognizable form of a crouching wizard, Martin, who had finally managed to find his staff.
Giant Martin rose to his full height, cobras rolling off of his shoulders and back like rain. He planted his gigantic staff on the ground with a sound like two wrecking balls colliding. He looked down, surveying the scene. He saw the fearsome creatures, the wall of flame, the large audience, and the international task force of wizards, all clearly ready for action, standing in what he had to admit were mostly bad imitations of kung-fu poses. Martin took this all in, then opened his giant mouth and in a voice so deep and so loud that you could feel it in your viscera, he said, “See! This is more like it!”
With that, the last of Nilo’s self-control disappeared. His mind was wiped clean of all rational thought. All he knew was that he wanted to get away. He turned, screaming, and leapt through the wall of fire. He emerged on the other side, hair and clothes smoldering, and fell thirty feet to the roof of a building below. He landed badly, rolling on his side. He speed-crawled to the edge and then slid over. He fell another twenty feet to street level. He landed on his back, groaning, just in time to see giant-Martin burst through the wall of fire with his legs tucked up under him, one hand in a fist and his staff held out before him like a sword. All of the hideous creatures, and all of the wizards who had created them, followed Martin through the wall of fire. Most flew under their own power, but the distinguished gentleman from China rode his dragon.
Martin made a three-point landing, taking up most of the street. Nilo ran like he’d never run before, literally. In his terror he’d forgotten all grace and technique, and was shambling like a toddler, arms flapping uselessly. His hair and the heavy fabric of his kilt had stopped smoldering, but his netting shirt burst into actual flame. Luckily for him, there was very little of it to burn, and the fire was mostly light and flash with very little heat
. Still, Martin caught up to him in one massive stride, more a short flight than a single step, and kindly put out the fire by mashing Nilo to the ground with the flat of his hand.
Nilo yelped piteously as Martin grasped him around the waist in his giant fist, and lifted him up two and a half stories to Martin’s eye level. (In truth, Martin was located in the giant’s torso, but lifting him up to the head was better showbiz.)
Nilo pushed and struggled and beat at the immense fingers with his fists, but Martin did not feel it, so it had no effect. Nilo screamed insults and curses, ranted and raved, and made specific threats about what he’d do when he got loose. Martin wanted to squash him like a bug. He’d tried to kill Gwen and Martin and Ampyx. He’d beaten Martin mercilessly and had tried to kill Gwen. He may have killed Phillip and Brit, both of her, and what made it all worse, he’d tried to kill Gwen. Martin wanted to squeeze him until he popped, but he didn’t. He showed some restraint. Instead, he raised the hand that was holding his immense staff and gently flicked Nilo’s head with his index finger. Nilo’s head flew to the side as if he’d been slapped.
Martin looked to the assembled wizards, who, along with their various creations, were hovering around him like planets orbiting a star. He said, “Thanks for the help, everyone. That was great!” Martin’s eye was caught by Gilbert and Sid, who had not yet taken the trouble to revert from their monster forms. He looked at Gilbert’s wings and tentacles and said, “Cthulhu, obviously.”
Gilbert’s face tentacles parted, and he replied, “Obviously.”
Martin turned to Sid, and asked, “Are you Fek’lhr, guardian of the Klingon afterlife?”
Gilbert slobbered, “As envisioned by Ardra in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Devil’s Due.’”
Martin laughed and asked, “How is it that we’re not friends?”
Gilbert said, “Maybe in our time you’re just a jerk.”
Sid added, “Or maybe we are friends, and Gil and I have just been messing with you.”
