Mobius

by Garon Whited

  Of course, if you’re trying to irradiate vast regions, put your nuke in a ground-penetrating warhead, check the wind direction, and pick your target point.

  I already discussed all this with Diogenes. For a six hundred kiloton airburst—or thereabouts; I didn’t have exact mass readings on the arrowheads—my target height was fifteen hundred meters. Pick a city, draw the bow, get a gate lock, and fire an arrow upward from someone’s chimney-pot top. With that bow and the usual delayed-action acceleration spell, firing an arrow a kilometer and a half straight up isn’t a problem. The trick is getting it to go off before it gets too high! So, give it a spell to act as an altimeter, launch the arrow, close the gate, and move on to the next target before I have to see what happens.

  If you want the gory details, here they are.

  First off, let us address the mushroom cloud. There’s the big visual. Following the unholy flash of retina-frying light, we get the FOOM! and the ongoing after-rumble, like thunder. Assuming your retinas aren’t fried, you get to see the rest. Up goes the tall man of smoke with the wide hat. This particular man stands about eighteen thousand meters high—call it sixty thousand feet. High enough to engulf most commercial aircraft if the EMP didn’t already send them into ground-bound death spirals. The mushroom portion of the cloud is even wider than the whole thing is tall. Twenty, twenty-five thousand meters? It’s huge. It’s impressive.

  When dealing with nuclear weapons, as a general rule of thumb, if you can see the mushroom cloud, you are too close.

  Of course, this world is flat, so there’s no horizon. Everybody can see it. If I had a window, I could see it from here.

  So, mushroom cloud. Check.

  There’s also the incineration effect of the fireball. It’s a good visual, but you have to be even closer to see it. Remember the initial bright flash? The one you ducked so you could see the rest? Let’s address it for a second. It fries everything to ashes within… seven hundred meters? Call it half a mile. For people, buildings, livestock, vehicles—whatever—it’s like a full-frontal blowtorch, only worse.

  As gruesome as the flash-fry effect is, it’s something of an anticlimax. The only reason it’s given any screen time in the movies is for the visual. The heat travels at the speed of light, so it gets to the victims before the speed-of-sound shockwave. There’s a brief window between the two, but movies generally stretch it so the audience can get a good look and the visual effects department can justify their budget. Then the shockwave hits, and it’s even more devastating. Sure, the house has been set on fire, but out to, say, two, two and a half thousand meters in any direction—a mile and a quarter, maybe a bit more from ground zero—it all gets blasted to matchwood. Wooden houses, stone towers, walled keeps, they all go tumbling down like a nursery rhyme.

  In a way, this is a good thing! The zone of more-likely-to-die-than-not radiation dosage is somewhat smaller than the fireball at this detonation altitude. So, by and large, dying from radiation sickness isn’t much of an issue, since everyone likely to die from it is charred to ashes and blasted to smithereens.

  With nuclear weapons, take any good news you can get.

  These aren’t sharp delineations, of course. The same effects still happen farther away, only not as much. You still get some radiation at twice the distance, but it’s more likely to make you sick than to kill you. At three miles, the shockwave will knock down your house rather than blast it to kindling. At that distance, hiding in a ditch may keep you from being blasted, as well. And the thermal portion of this exercise might not reduce you to ashes, but it will still give you third-degree burns on any exposed skin as far away as ten kilometers—call it six miles—from ground zero.

  No matter how far away you are, it’s not safe to look directly at it when it detonates. Safety first.

  Once things cool down a bit, the crater is over three hundred meters across. You can string three football fields in line and they’ll just about fit, if you overlap the end zones. It’s also between fifty and a hundred meters deep, depending on where the bedrock is. At this altitude, the blast doesn’t pick up much material, if any. Fallout isn’t a major problem. On the other hand, the crater and everything around it is likely to glow in the dark for a while, but most of it will be short-lived.

  All in all, the center of town has a big, circular hole punched in it. Get out the city map, put a pin the middle of town, and draw a circle three miles across. How much town is left? Oh, and outside the circle, knock down anything made of wood and set fire to everything flammable. Does it still count as a town? Now find another city map and repeat.

  Forty-three times.

  I presented three mirrors to the dusks outside the scrying room, as well as instructions to have the men imaged therein arrested and held to await my pleasure. One took the mirrors, saluted, and sprinted off. The other fell into step beside me as I walked away.

  One out of two isn’t bad, I suppose. I wondered what he would do if an assassin sprang out. Anyone qualified—anyone the Order of Shadow felt qualified—to be in a war was already there. This kid couldn’t be fifteen. I’d guess he was thirteen. A big, strong, well-trained thirteen-year-old, but not yet an adult, not even in Karvalen. They don’t view adulthood the same way, here, though. It’s not an arbitrary number, it’s the ability to fend for yourself. You can be an “adult” at thirteen, if you think you can swing it. I doubted he could, but also suspected he’d be more of a help in a fight than a hindrance. Clearly, he felt proud of his responsibility.

  He followed me up to the King’s Chambers and went in first. I let him, mostly because he didn’t ask. He slipped through the door, steel armor scraping against the stone, even as I opened it. He had sword drawn and was ready to face any hostile entities lying in wait.

  I might have enjoyed having something hostile try to kill me. I was not in a good mood.

  I had the mountain unseal the door to the balcony-patio area. I don’t recall the last time I was out there. I know I went out at least once, but how long ago was it? A year? Eight years? Sixteen? I don’t remember and I’m not going to consult my mental diary to find out.

  Of course, once I was out there, I realized it faced due north, exactly opposite the way I wanted to look. Maybe it was a sign. I went up there to look, but maybe I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see. I haven’t tried scrying on any of the… sites… with a mirror. Even as I made giant footprints of fiery death along the Empire of Light, I had Diogenes zoom in with the sand table on the next target, never on the aftermath.

  I thought I felt a faint vibration in the floor.

  “Do you feel that?” I asked my shadow. My armored shadow, not my actual shadow. He looked puzzled as I crouched down and touched the stone with my fingertips.

  Another faint vibration. Definitely. And a third. And a fourth.

  Shockwaves. Of course. It takes time for them to travel through the rock, just like the vibrations of earthquakes take time to travel from their epicenters. It simply took this long to reach me, here in the mountain.

  I retreated from the patio, returning to the interior of the mountain, perhaps to hide my face from the world.

  Of course, my Diogephone rang immediately. I dug it out to answer, missing my old skinphone. Skinphones aren’t practical in armor. Wearing one under the armor means it’s useless. Building them into a forearm weakens the armor. Wearing them over the armor means it breaks instantly. At least with an electronic brick, I can armor it and put it in a pocket. Plus, I have a magic cloak. It’s greatest power, I think, is it always has a pocket when I need one.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Professor, we have a hit on the orb-detection gate.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “Where?!” I asked, as calmly as I was able, which wasn’t very. Diogenes was unruffled by the unintended urgency of my tone. The dusk on bodyguard detail stepped smartly around the edge of the doorway and out of my line of sight. Obviously, there’s an intelligence requirement for a Knight of
Shadow. Or maybe it’s one of the general orders: When the King is using That Tone, don’t be a visible target.

  “Probe gates do not have a lock on the Orb, but three are accessing nearby openings. Readings are consistent with the world of Rethven. Visual observations indicate a ruined city. Astronomical observations indicate a location to the extreme west.”

  “Zirafel.”

  I jumped off the balcony and headed for the courtyard doors. Bronze met me halfway there, already knowing my intention. This was the perfect distraction from dealing with my foray into mass murder, as well as a long-standing thing on my To Do list. Grabbing an Evil Orb and burying it on an intergalactic comet would make me feel immensely better.

  We galloped into the mountain and through the corridors. Bronze let out a metallic, screaming wail to herald our coming while I sent a wedge of light ahead to encourage people to clear the way. It worked, or mostly. People plastered themselves flat against the walls and we raced between them. We didn’t hit her top speed, but we went much more quickly than I would have guessed.

  We skidded to an almost-stop in front of the upper gate-room door. Bronze hit it with both front hooves, high up, and knocked the door-slab down. I felt bad about it for a fraction of a second, but the mountain wouldn’t mind and would fix it within a few days.

  Inside the gate room, I slid down along one side of Bronze and came to a final halt next to the gate. I grabbed it by the magical lapels and ordered it to seek the Great Arch of Zirafel, to lock on, to open, and give us passage.

  It didn’t.

  I tried again, harder, drawing on the power of the crystals in the walls. The spell worked, the gate reached out, but it failed again to make a connection.

  Which, of course, was only to be expected if the Great Arch was in use—if the Orb was getting away.

  I tried again with even greater urgency, aiming instead for the granary I’d once prepared as an escape route. It connected with a sudden snap in perspective and both Bronze and I were through it before the vertigo could subside. I grabbed the saddlehorn with both hands and she bolted, swinging me aboard as we shot toward the Plaza of the Arch.

  If the Orb of Evil was on the move and detectable, it had someone to move it and somewhere to go. If it was willing to be detected—if it was willing to risk detection—it obviously felt the journey was important. And if it was important to the Orb, stopping the journey was important to me.

  If it didn’t know we detected it, it was in for a nasty surprise. I’m pretty sure it would be as thrilled to see me as I would be to see it.

  I held on for dear life, if I may use the phrase, as Bronze cornered at a full gallop, hooves sticking to the ground as though magnetized, blue-green sparks arcing all around them. We would have thundered around the corner, but she was being stealthy. She knows several neat tricks like that. We now had a straight shot toward the Plaza of the Arch and I had a partial view of the proceedings.

  The Arch was already active, as I thought. A man had his back to me, facing the arch. He held the Awful Orb up over his head, in bloody hands, while the Arch operated. “Operated,” I say. The Arch didn’t seem to have a connection, as such. Through it, I saw what appeared to be a long, dark tunnel, not a simple doorway to a destination. I had the impression it was extending, lengthening like some sort of trick photography shot, making the apparent tunnel extend into the distance. Overall, it struck me as similar to the instant between establishing a connection and the sudden snap of it coming close, only this went on far longer.

  Was the Arch dialing out? It could only dial Tamaril, or so I was led to believe. Or was someone else dialing in, forming a connection with the Arch of Zirafel as the destination? If so, who—or what—was the Orb trying to summon through it? And why? Or was the power diagram designed to force the Arch to dial another destination? If so, a specific, single destination as part of the design, or a more versatile dialing subroutine temporarily bolted on to the Arch’s enchantment?

  To either side of the Arch, at each foot of it, lay a body. One was a horse, its throat slit, and the other was a woman. I didn’t recognize her, but I could see her heart was removed with less than surgical precision. Most of their blood was on the ground, painted, I presume, into significant symbols. I couldn’t tell for certain at that distance; even atop Mount Bronze, the angle was poor. On the other hand—well, other eyeball—the magical spectrum around the Arch lit up like a containment diagram for angels. It sizzled and shimmered in glowing lines of crimson and gold and lightning blue, all rotating slowly counterclockwise with the Arch as the pivot. Some of it was unintentional discharge, power surging and sparking as it leaked from the spell’s imperfect internal conduit connections. Even the leakage looked physically dangerous. If it weren’t for a bit of shielding directly in front of the Arch, power would likely ground through anyone standing there and crisp them like a lightning-struck marshmallow.

  Bronze accelerated, leaving smoking hoofprints in the stones along the straight street toward the Plaza of the Arch. The crackle of blue-green sparks was barely audible over the rush of wind and underlit us with their eerie glow. Even my cloak helped, tucking itself down and writhing into a tight covering over my armor, reducing the wind resistance. Bronze tried not to breathe fire, to keep us as low-profile as possible for as long as possible, but, despite her best efforts, finally started blowing jets of blue flame from her nostrils a solid streams of black smoke from her ears. I crouched like a jockey and watched ahead, trying to anticipate.

  Within the Arch, the other end of the connection drew no closer. It didn’t snap into place. It remained a long corridor of darkness until, finally, a dim, silvery light appeared at the far end of the tunnel.

  The Arch ate itself.

  The twining, interwoven cables of its structure rolled around each other, their substance turning to energy to feed the connection. The thick, woven cables disappeared, one by one, thinning the structure of the Arch. As it did so, it converted the substance of its being into power. The brightness of all the spell-wrought lines of force increased drastically, shining like cracks in a black sky letting in the sun. The leakages ceased as all that power suddenly had somewhere to go.

  The man with the Orb stepped into the dark tunnel as the Arch continued to shrivel. He vanished into the distance, as though pulled down the tunnel by some unseen force to disappear into the light. The Arch, however, thinned even more quickly.

  Bronze made an instant evaluation. Even at her speed, we had a fair amount of street and the whole width of the Plaza to cross. We wouldn’t reach the Arch before the structure of it diminished to nothingness—that is, not without running full-tilt into whatever was on the other end of the connection. I agreed. Since the other end might not be in Tamaril, it might be anywhere—including somewhere sunlit. If I were the Orb and making an escape, I’d choose somewhere hard to follow, so it was unlikely to be healthy.

  Instead, we approached at full speed while I shifted my awareness into hyperdrive. I wanted to understand—or at least remember—every line of light, every arc of energy, every aura of power. Wherever the Orb went, I was going to find it, and knowing how it got there, wherever “there” was, was a crucial step. I studied the spell as we approached, stretching those few seconds into minutes.

  Bronze altered her course to swing around the remains of the Arch and the spell painted on the ground before it. She turned away from the diagram, blowing vast clouds of fire over one shoulder now that we were no longer concerned with stealth. Her hooves dug crackling, spark-shot divots in the stone, carrying us in a curve so I might study the symbols on the ground. It was a wise move on her part, since the blood was still fresh enough to want to crawl to me. We kept enough distance to minimize the effect. It blurred some symbols, but not beyond recognition. I felt I could, with work, reassemble the spell fairly accurately and infer much of the rest. If I missed an ideogram or three, I could solve for those with a little trial and error.

  However, my hemo-magnetism dis
torted the symbols enough to disrupt the spell. I immediately understood at least part of its function. The quasi-physical structure of the Arch was being transformed back into energy to establish the connection, hence the rapid decrease in mass. It should have been—would have been—an instantaneous process, I think. The spell slowed the process down, forcing it to operate in a more sedate fashion, making the Arch into a one-shot portal. No wonder the Orb felt safe. By expending the Arch, I couldn’t use it to reestablish the connection with its last destination!

  When my presence distorted the fresh blood on the ground, it disrupted the spell holding the reaction in check. The blood burned with a crimson radiance, looking as though raw lava cracked the pavement to rise into view. The last of the Great Arch of Zirafel instantly consumed itself, rolling inward around itself, shrinking to a single thread of existence, a geometric line—and vanishing. A silent wave rolled outward from it, transforming everything near it in an expanding circle of destructive change.

  Bronze is sensitive to magical operations, which is hardly surprising, considering her origins. She felt the spell breaking and shifted from curving around the Arch to running straight away from it. I looked back under one arm while Bronze ran for it. For a moment, I thought she might even outrun whatever happened. We were already in motion and going faster than I’d have thought possible.