Dagon had been co-equal with the oldest Phoenician god, El, thousands of years ago, a god of grain and fertility. The worship of both had been altered over time; most of the worship of El had been transferred into that of Baal-Hamon. Dagon, however, had become, somehow, a sea deity instead, but as his cult and stature shrank over the years, rather than attempting to gain more worshippers, more power in the mortal realm, Dagon sank more and more of his power into his avatar. He became the embodiment of what the Judeans called the Leviathan . . . a vast creature larger than a blue whale, and with an enormous mouth filled with teeth. Faintly reptilian, he was usually depicted with legs, arms, claws, and a tail, the better for swimming through the murky depths of the sea that was now his home. The brine of the sea also allowed the god to hide from his enemies, Kanmi figured. He was a drop among a billion other droplets, and the other gods were deaf and blind to him, so long as he remained in the depths.
Dagon was very old, and while no longer much worshipped, was still deeply feared. Kanmi could remember his father, on many a sea voyage, stopping to make a libation offering at a tiny shrine to Dagon among the docks of Tyre, in the hopes that the devourer of the depths wouldn’t take the ship on which he was embarking. Kanmi swung around, and stared at the glassy surface of the inland sea. Maybe he won’t come, he thought. It’s only eighteen inches of water. Spread over hundreds of square miles, sure, but it’s still a puddle. It’s not the sea . . . .
For the second time in five minutes, a shadow blocked out the sun, and Kanmi looked up as Dagon the Devourer appeared in the shallow Chott el Jerid. The ancient god—more a beast now, than anything else—reared back his massive head and displayed a mouth lined with backwards-pointing, needle-fine teeth, hooked at the ends, ensuring no escape for his prey, and screamed in rage at having been summoned. Silver-and-rust scales rippled in the sun as the huge beast, over a hundred feet long, braced himself on his short, stubby legs, so much better suited to swimming than to walking, and lunged forwards, belly scraping on the sand, and unerringly snapped up the summoner whom Kanmi had thrown out of the binding circle, lifting his head to choke down the flailing legs that were now all that was visible of the man in question.
One down, Kanmi thought, numbly. Twenty more sorcerers, and four more summoners to go. Shit. Where’s Min? He looked around, and realized he had no idea where his wife was, or if she’d even managed to get free of her bonds. Gods damn it all, I didn’t ask to be the only person without a script and without the ability to communicate!
At the back of the crowd, Adam had been trying to get a bead on any target, but knew he was out of range. “We’ve got to move up,” he said, grimly. “Hate to lose cover, though. Anyone have eyes on Rig, Esh, or Min in that mess?”
“Cover I can manage,” Tren said, lifting a hand and pulling up a mass of earth in between them and the sorcerers, like a berm. “I can’t see any of them—shit!”
Adam’s head snapped up as Niðhoggr’s image vanished from the sky . . . and was replaced by an enormous creature, which looked to Adam like nothing so much as some kind of enormous plesiosaurus, somehow stranded on land. Except this would be a plesiosaurus big enough to hunt blue whales, if the two species had ever coexisted. The ground underfoot trembled, and Adam looked at Trennus sharply. “Not me!” Trennus shouted. “It’s originating with the creature.”
“They summoned it—can you banish it?”
“I was able to banish Loki because he was willing. I don’t think I can wrestle that thing into submission!”
Rapid-fire exchange as they all moved up to the berm of earth that Trennus had pulled out of the lake floor. Sigrun had her spear in her hands, and Adam caught her wince, and looked back in time to see wiggling legs disappear into the creature’s cavernous mouth. Livyatan, Adam thought, numbly, and aimed a shot at one of the closest sorcerers, who clearly didn’t know what he should be doing—attacking the beast that had been summoned to save his people, or continuing with the ceremony. The bullet converted, instantly, into plasma on leaving the barrel, and seared through the sorcerer’s magical protections to catch him in the upper chest. The impact spun him around and sent him flying into the brine with a translucent, upward arc of water that was oddly beautiful as it caught the sunlight. “Sig,” Adam said, trying to line up another shot that wouldn’t risk hitting any of the young, dazed-looking captives who were staggering around in the water, “at the moment, I think we’re justified in calling for backup.”
“Niðhoggr!” Sigrun shouted, and the sky began to cloud over, slightly. Just enough at the moment to let her summon lightning, as friction built between the clouds. “Niðhoggr!”
Nothing happened.
Dagon had just been caught by the will of the four remaining Carthaginian sorcerers, and Kanmi could feel them, too, feeding on Baal-Hamon’s power as they struggled to leash the ancient beast-like god. “Everyone, calm yourselves!” Salicar Germelqart shouted. “Find out where that damned illusion came from—there was another illusion, a phoenix, a few minutes ago. We have intruders somewhere nearby. They, too, can be sacrificed to our lord, but we must be calm!”
In the pandemonium, the people moving to and fro, the earth shaking underfoot, and the salt pyramids and tower in which the idols were housed trembling, it was little wonder that no one had noticed yet, what Kanmi had; a berm of earth behind them all, and, as he turned back to look, a noiseless flash of light that slammed into a sorcerer’s shields, sending him tumbling into the water.
The flash of light, however, got more people to turn, and Germelqart’s eyes widened. “Kill the intruders!” he shouted, and turned to stare at Kanmi, who was clearly missing a son at the moment. Then he grabbed one of the closest children, who was still, in drugged confusion, clinging to his sorcerer father’s robe, and shoved the pair at the stairs of the shrine. “You! Hanno, Brother Oea! Perform the sacrifice! Empower the god! Everyone else—attack!”
A lightning bolt slammed directly down on Germelqart’s shields, outlining his form in blue-white light. You’ve never had better timing, Sigrun, Kanmi thought, and slopped his way out of the water towards the leader of the Carthaginian Liberation Party. He could see the valkyrie rising into the sky, giving the sorcerers a target at which to aim, while allowing Trennus and Adam to continue in their usual devastating work . . . and Kanmi grimaced as fire, ice, and electricity promptly assailed her. The ice and electricity, as usual, had no effect; it was the fire that concerned Kanmi. Plus, there were people in this crowd of sorcerers who had different tricks. He peeled off the energy of the fire and redirected it back down at the ground—right at himself, actually. His shields were designed to capture energy like this, and it would look as if someone had targeted him. Come on, Min, where are you . . .? He got up on shore, trying to get closer to the leader, only to see Dagon take a rushing two or three steps into the crowd, dragging his belly. Everyone broke and ran, and the god-beast raised his head and snapped at the valkyrie who hovered in mid-air, bringing lightning down from ever-darkening clouds overhead.
Sigrun yelped and shot higher into the air, seeing the massive jaws close on where she’d just been, and brought lighting down on it, again and again. She had no idea what the creature was, but clearly, some kind of god, or god-born beast. “Niðhoggr, I need you, please!”
For a moment as she strained upwards into the sky, feeling the first drops of rain—rain, in the Sahara!—splatter against her face—nothing happened. And then, above her, she saw the massive and quite definitely real black-silver form of her friend appear. A glance downwards at the copper-toned waters of the lake revealed that they’d turned as leaden as the sky, and Nith’s reflection rippled there, his wings spread wide . . . and then he streaked downwards, exhaling.
Salt water crystallizes into ice at lower temperatures than fresh; the more salt, the lower the freezing point. As Niðhoggr’s breath overshot the god-beast, it formed a sheet of milky-red ice atop the briny mere below, instantly, in spite of the high ambient temperatures. T
he massive creature below roared and reared up, awkwardly, on his hind legs. Though these limbs were no longer intended to bear his massive weight in any bipedal fashion, he still managed to rake his talons along Nith’s side as the dragon sped past, and Nith’s razor-barbed tail, long and sinuous, whipped out, thought-fast, and caught the creature across its armored snout. Sigrun hissed and brought lightning down on it, again and again, until her radio crackled at her belt. “Sig!” Adam called. “Let Nith handle the monster. Focus on the sorcerers.”
On the ground, Adam was doing precisely that, himself, though every time the leviathan reared up and dropped back down again, it felt as if the entire world shook. Hard to aim. Hard to be sure what he was going to hit. “Sari!” Adam shouted over the noise, and watched as Trennus yanked two more sorcerers under the surface of the lake and into the earth. “Tell Rig to get the children out of there! As many as he can!”
Trennus’ hands clenched as he struggled with the sorcerers he’d just plunged into the earth, and grated out, “These ones are keeping themselves alive. They’ve shielded themselves. Bubbles of air. Going to take more time than usual.” He was making unusual gestures, as if he held pieces of clay in his palms and was stabbing into them with his thumbs. Adam had a sudden vision of pieces of stone, deep underground, spearing and kneading into human bodies.
Even as Saraid spoke to him, Rig already had one infant over his shoulder, and had shifted illusion modes. Half of illusion was bending light and fabricating reality. The other half lay in delusion. Hallucination. Tricking people’s minds, and the minds of the drugged young men and boys were soft. Pliable. Malleable. They saw what he wanted them to see—himself, but in their self-image. So to the adults, he looked about thirty, long, dark hair back in a tail at his neck, gray eyes, fair skin. Foreign, but sure of himself, and pointing the way to safety. Away from the dragon and the giant water beast and everything else that was strange and dangerous. To the children, he looked like a playmate, a friend, just about their age. “Come with me,” the image whispered, and they understood it, because their own minds supplied the words. Come with me, where it’s safe. Away from all of the noise and the confusion. Come with me.
Rig glanced around, but he couldn’t get to the last man with an infant, and there was another man with a toddler, ascending the trembling stairs of the salt tower. Can’t get to him, either. His drugged charges needed his guidance. He needed to get them to . . . well, anywhere that wasn’t the battlefield would do, really. And, to top it all off, he needed to ensure that the sorcerers didn’t notice that they were losing their captives. Thus, concentrating so intently that it was difficult to put one foot in front of the other (slam of impact, rattling his jaw, as Niðhoggr crashed into the massive god-beast’s armored body, shaking the earth once more) Rig staggered on, causing each of the first-born to become as invisible as he was, himself.
Another wince of effort, and he left behind undetailed moppets in his wake. He needed to let the sorcerer’s minds fill in some of the details for these illusionary dolls. At the moment, so long as something moved away from them or the enemies on the field, that was all that was necessary. When one of the sorcerers, inevitably, fell on one of the illusions, or walked through it, the spell would be broken, but for the moment (kra-chow, thunder following instantly on the heels of a flash of white lightning) he needed to just . . . keep . . . moving.
Minori, in the meantime, had looked up at the enormous beast that had appeared to her left, and had seen a dozen weapons explode in various guards’ faces, courtesy of her earlier sabotage. No time for the tiny surge of triumph that flooded through her; one webby paw attached to a stump-like leg twice the width of her body slammed down perilously close to her. Minori pulled wind in tightly around her, and, with a controlled vortex, pulled herself off the shaking ground, veering off at a steep angle to get as far away from the beast as she could. She didn’t recognize it any more than most of the others did, and didn’t dare stay in the air long; she’d just be a target, like Sigrun was setting herself up to be. Minori therefore dropped down inside the binding circle that she’d broken, and checked her area for targets. The leader of the sorcerers was too heavily shielded at the moment, and she could see Kanmi moving towards him. Let’s see if I can’t make life a little harder for everyone else, at least.
She focused on the next summoner, whose gaze was solidly on the god-beast that was rampaging around, trying to bite Nith out of the air, trying to catch the dragon as it swooped in to attack once more. Lightning lit up the air in an almost continuous stream of arcing bolts, as rain began to pelt down with it. Lassair, are the children out of the area?
Rig is moving them now.
Let me know when they’re free. I’m going to turn every drop of rain into a bullet, as I did in our little coffee house incident. But first . . . a summoner or two less will turn this creature into a free agent. It may even choose to decamp.
It will not. It has been wounded, and more so than it has experienced in millennia. It has been challenged by Niðhoggr. Somehow, when Lassair said the beast’s name, Minori could hear the meaning of it—Malice-striker—behind the Gothic syllables. It will not retreat, unless mortally wounded, I believe.
Damn it. Minori peered around the edge of the tower, feeling another jolt in the ground, and caught sight of a sorcerer who still had an infant over one shoulder. There’s my target, then. Can’t wind-flay him, can’t entomb him in ice, that’ll hit the child . . . what are his defenses tuned to . . . electricity. Smart boy, with Sigrun raining down lightning onto all the sorcerers . . . good, she’s been holding off on hitting the lake itself until the noncombatants are out of the water. And . . . hmm. What else is he warding against . . . ah. Steel and other metals. But not other solids. Bad choice. Stay with me, Lassair. I’m going to need a little of the flexibility of youth for a moment or three here.
Minori knew she’d have to be close for this, in order to catch the child once the father fell, and once more lifted herself into the air, keeping her feet well clear of the lake water, which had broken sheets of ice floating here and there at the moment. She dove right into the swirl of combat, feeling a dozen spells crawl across her skin at once—two of the men were using laser projection systems, surely Judean-made—and amplifying the beams with magic as they aimed up at Nith. Another man was using the strongest gravitic magic Minori had encountered to try to haul Sigrun down from the sky . . . and spikes of rock speared up into him from the ground as Trennus took exception. To Minori’s right, another man fell as a bolt of pure white plasma, brighter than the sun, tore through his chest.
Her target saw her coming out of the corner of his eye, and spun to face her, one hand still up on his son’s back. An oddly protective gesture, considering that the man meant to sacrifice the boy, but there were, in the end, only so many ways to hold an infant. He hit her with a wave of pure kinetic force, almost raw energy, formed into a lance that impacted against her sternum and threw her back through the air. The wind knocked out of her, Minori landed in the water, and then corrected her momentum and rolled back to her feet, the saltwater burning as it ran back out of her sinuses. She took an old kendo ready-position, almost out of habit. Need to time this just right . . . . She’d sparred, sword against spear, with Sigrun, and sword against sword with Trennus for years, mostly for the enjoyment of it, keeping her old skills sharp. There was almost no one else in Judea who used the old weapons for anything other than entertainment these days.
The sorcerer grinned at her and whistled, beckoning her closer, as he readied another spell. Minori had no idea if he saw the old woman or the young one, but the taunt had no effect, either way. She lifted herself from the water that would have slowed her footwork and flew forwards, both hands dipping down into the surface of the water, silently thanking Nith for having pre-cooled the lake. It made it easy to steal the remaining heat out of the water, scooping it up into a katana made of pure ice. Her feet barely left ripples across the surface as she flew in, and
, as she rose from her crouch, she swung the blade, up and right, from the lower left starting position . . . and with precise control, let the blade become water again, before it could so much as harm the baby’s toes. The water had been clear when she started the motion; as it sprayed over the infant on the man’s left shoulder, it was red with the man’s blood, as the ice-blade cut right through his shields. Minori slid in and past him, skimming just above the surface of the water, and caught the infant deftly from the loosening arm, even as the father fell screaming.
And then she was off again, whisking through the air, in the direction that Lassair told her Rig had taken the other children. “Still one more,” Minori said, the words torn away from her lips by the wind, peeking over her shoulder as the infant struggled and screamed, red-faced and frantic. “The toddler, on the steps—” She couldn’t see the child anymore. The father had already entered into the sacrifice area, undoubtedly.
I will go back for that one. Go to Rig! Protect the first-born. There are too many for him to defend entirely by himself.
Lassair left Minori’s body, with a certain amount of regret; the sorceress was her friend, and she liked making her feel young and healthy again, not to mention keeping her body protected from the dozens of dangers flitting towards Minori that the human mind simply wasn’t equipped to see and react to as quickly as a spirit could. Truthsayer weakened the binding circle. I will be able to leave its confines, once I cross its threshold. There is that, at least. Lassair landed at the top of the stairs and plunged through the archway at the top.
The Goddess Denied Page 89
