It still loomed there like a figure out of nightmare. The entire bottom of its skull was a smoking ruin. It had no mandibles, and only one eye and one hand left, and it still stood, in defiance of every rational thought. “My god,” Adam said. “What do we have to do to kill this thing?”
“We probably can’t kill it,” Trennus said, over the radio. “We need to bind it.”
Livorus padded out into the body of the house, stepping over broken china knickknacks knocked from shelves, nodded to the lictor who was keeping everyone safely back in the living room . . . and stuck his head out one of the front windows. “Matrugena!” he bellowed, in a stentorian tone that could have been heard across a parade ground. “It is something called a pazuzu. It was considered a demigod or a demon of the night winds. Its realms were filth, poison, and disease. Its Name is Istafa’n.”
The creature’s head turned. It looked directly at Livorus, and its real target in sight, and its Name on Livorus’ lips, it dropped everything to charge for the house, mindless and enraged.
Two things happened at once. A living pillar of fire leaped up under its feet as Lassair exploded to life, catching and tangling the beast . . . and Sigrun, healed enough to move, at least a bit, took to the air and hit the creature like a living bullet, catching it around its ravaged head and neck and hauling it to the ground with a resounding impact. “Could use . . . a little . . . help here . . .” Sigrun managed. Wounded or not, it still outweighed her by over two thousand pounds, and it reached up with its one remaining clawed hand and latched onto her arm, squeezing. “Little help!” Sigrun repeated, and managed to get to her feet, hauling back.
Trennus, make the ground lift! Lassair’s thought cut through everyone’s minds, and Trennus, still crouched in his binding circle, like a spider in a web, grinned. Ley-energies rippled out, and the street itself undulated like a cat arching its back, forming a hill. A wet, slick slope, with water pouring down both sides, and Sigrun yanked at the behemoth that had clamped down on her arm, and was trying to rake the flesh from her bones, struggling to pull it down the hill. Emberstone, help her!
___________________
“On it,” Kanmi muttered, and, gritting his teeth, decreased local friction under the creature’s body. Decreased gravity’s effect on its mass. He didn’t have any force to work with at the moment, besides Sigrun’s, so he increased that, as best he could, and shouted, “Fly, Caetia, you have more force to work with that way!”
“I do that, and I’m going to lose an arm, Esh!”
“Just do it! We all know you heal quickly.”
Sigrun swore, and threw herself into flight. She could feel additional energies boosting her own, and realized what Kanmi was doing, even as she hauled the creature across the lines of Trennus’ binding circle. Blood was pouring down her arm freely, and it was not unlike riding an agitated bull as the creature heaved and struggled and fought. “Is just its Name going to be enough?” she shouted, even as Trennus moved in, wrapping his arms around the other side of the creature, forcing its head down to the ground.
Dimly, she realized that the Pict’s hands were bloody, and had just enough time to wonder why, before the ground underfoot shifted from stone to mud. “No,” Trennus called back. “Need it in the mud, Sigrun. Earth binding.”
She didn’t question it. Just did, exhaustedly, what she could do, and the two of them, working together, heaved and fought and forced the creature’s head down into the mud. Her blood poured freely down her right arm, to the ground, mingling with the earth and the water there . . . which, under Trennus’ command, rippled and flowed up and along the massive body. “This is working better than I thought,” Trennus gritted out, and then the mud froze. Solidified. He raised his bloody hands, both of them clearly slashed open, and brought them together in a resounding slap . . . .and said one word. “Istafa’n.”
What was now a statue of the creature began to contract. Compress. Heat rose from it as Trennus continued to mutter, and runes began to incise themselves across the surface. Words of warning in a dozen languages, and the creature’s Name, over and over. Istafa’n. Pazuzu. Demon of filth. Dangerous and bound.
Sigrun stood there swaying, staring at the statue, then at the ground, at her own blood, and then at Trennus again. “Trennus . . . .”
“Yes?” He looked up from his work as the rain began to abate, and Kanmi and Adam began to, warily, walk towards them. Kanmi went so far as to prod the statue at the center of the binding circle, as if looking for cracks.
“You blood-bound it.”
“Had to. I could bind it to the circle with its Name. But I didn’t have a prepared object. I had to create the prison with ley, and I needed enough power to bind it to the prison.” Trennus looked down at his bleeding hands, just as Lassair, in her phoenix form, landed on his damp shoulder with a sizzling hiss.
“Trennus . . .” Sigrun wanted to shout, but she was just too damned tired and still in too much pain. Her leg hurt, badly enough that now that the adrenaline flow was reduced, she couldn’t stand on it. Her arm ached. Her ribs stabbed her every time she breathed. Her spine held a dull, grating agony. But at least none of these are burns. Burns aren’t a clean kind of pain at all. “I bled on the ground, too. My blood was in that binding.” She wearily called her spear back over to her, so that she’d have something to lean on, like a staff, and got the weight off her leg.
His head jerked up, and he swore. Viciously. “Oh, gods. Sigrun, I’m sorry.”
Adam raised a hand as the four of them turned inward, forming a circle. “For those of us who didn’t apprentice in magic? Pretend I know nothing on the subject, and explain. Use small words.” He held his fingers up, about an inch apart.
Trennus opened and closed his bleeding hands. “Blood binds. What you bind, you’re bound to. It’s a rope that goes both ways.” He shook his head. “Someone could break the statue. That would unseal it, and the creature would come after whichever of us happened to be closest. Failing that . . . our descendants. It would smell our kin, from over hundreds of miles. It would know them.”
“DNA,” Adam said, his voice empty.
“Yes. Admittedly, whoever performed the binding has priority.” Trennus rubbed his face. “If we’re alive when it happens, it’ll come for us, not our kin.”
But you are mortal, Trennus. Stormborn is not, at least, not quite. Her life is likely to be very long, indeed, and you believe you have made of her a target, for all of it? Lassair’s tone was concerned.
“I’ll be very careful crossing the street.” Trennus grimaced. “And we’ll sink this thing in salt water. Deepest part of the Mediterranean we can find. That way, even if, gods forbid, some ship drops an anchor and breaks the statue . . . the salt water will be a buffer. It won’t wake up. It won’t come looking for us.” He reached out, and actually, very carefully, put his arms around Sigrun. “I promise, I will not let this bounce back on you.” He grimaced again, his eyes wretched. “I wondered where the extra energy was coming from.”
Adam shifted, irritation plain in his expression. “You’d better not let it bounce back on her. Accidents happen, and I know it, but for god’s sake, Trennus . . . .”
“I know. I’ll make it right.” Trennus looked at Sigrun and Adam. “I never make bargains I don’t intend to keep. You know that.”
Sigrun nodded, and Kanmi, looking around as the rain finally died to a light mist, said, dryly . . . and very quietly, “I think we took out an . . . entity with less trouble than this, last year.”
The god was greatly weakened. This ancient . . . demigod . . . was not. He had been captive for over three thousand years, nursing his hate. Lassair’s tone was definite as she peered at them all from her avian eyes. The strength of his hate was far more powerful than anything I could muster. He had memories that I could touch, however, as you bound him. Memories of an army. Bronze spears, tearing at his flesh. Bronze-tipped arrows. A summoner of great power, a prepared vessel, a pot made of common clay, but his Nam
e upon it, in letters baked in fire and prepared in blood.
They spilled his blood on the sand, and he took three dozen of their lives that day, but they had another spirit with them. One the likes of which I have never seen. The spirit of air and poison could not see it, not with Veil senses. Lassair’s voice was terrified. A spirit whose name was inscribed on a cuneiform tablet, bound there in blood, just as they sought to bind the pazuzu. They gave the tablet to their greatest warrior and told him that he might have to be their sacrifice. And when he fell at the spirit’s hands, and lay there, broken and bleeding, he took the tablet out from under his armor, with bleeding hands, and he spoke the word written there . . . and the spirit came. Her voice held horror. Its name was not a Name. It was Gevah.
“Mountain,” Adam translated, feeling odd. It was a common enough word in Hebrew.
It rose up from the clay and the blood around the fallen warrior’s body. The body was repaired, but the essence of the human . . . the pazuzu could not see his spirit in Veil sight, as if he were utterly bound to some god. The body rose up again, this time twice the height of a mortal man, and made of stone, the bones of the earth. His fists had become boulders. Lassair paused. And so they fought, until the pazuzu was beaten . . . and Gevah himself lay dying on the ground. The priests took the blood and lives already spilled that day, and bound the beast with their sacrifice. His last sight in this world gave him satisfaction . . . the creature of stone was crumbling into dust. Perhaps the pazuzu slew this other spirit, in truth. I do not know. Then the pazuzu only knew darkness and hatred for an eternity, until he awoke and smelled blood. Not the blood of those who had bound him. That has grown faint over the centuries. But blood, human blood, from a . . . a body-covering . . . that had been used to shroud his prison. And smelling it, he hungered, and in hunger, he hunted. He understood that the price of his release was to kill this man. The one to whom you are bound, Trennus.
“Livorus,” Trennus muttered, and shrugged off his shirt, disturbing the phoenix on his shoulder as he did, so he’d have something with which to bind his bleeding hands . . . and then they all turned. Looked at the wreckage around them.
“Callisuni?” Adam asked, wincing and pointing across the street at the neighboring house’s front porch.
Sigrun leaned on her spear and shook her head. “It was almost instant,” she said.
“You’re sure?” Adam asked.
“I can always tell when a wound’s mortal. I don’t think he had time to feel it when the car hit him.” The words limped out, empty consolation that they were.
“All right. Let’s get you inside. Get your leg and Tren’s hands looked at. And then figure out what we do next.”
Chapter XII: Subversions
The history of modern aviation begins with hot air balloons, which were first used as signaling devices in Qin between 264 and 324 AC. While this innovation was known in the West after the circumnavigation of the globe by Leif Dalgaard in 1000 AC made the opening of ocean-based trade routes to Qin and Nippon possible, it wasn’t until 1607 AC that the first tethered hot air balloon flight was displayed at an exhibition at the Imperial Palace in Rome . . . almost sixty years after the locomotive was first demonstrated. The first untethered manned hot air balloon flight occurred, again, in Rome, in 1645, piloted by a pair of Gauls, the Locinna brothers.
These balloons were initially seen as novelty items that allowed the common man the gift of flight enjoyed by birds, sorcerers, and some god-born. Early sorcerers and many priests actually opposed them. Documents written in the period suggested that sorcerers believed that the skies would soon be as crowded as a market square, and that this could not be allowed for a mere fancy. Priests of the period stated that flight was a gift from the gods, and should not be placed in mundane hands.
Practical applications were slow to be seen. Hot air balloons were large, visible, and at the mercy of the winds. Using them for surveillance over Domitanus’ Wall was primarily a Judean innovation, as they had no summoners who could call spirits for surveillance flights or god-born who could engage in aerial reconnaissance. The balloons were used, once or twice, for high-level aerial bombing attempts. They were, however, far too visible and slow-moving to be truly effective. Persia’s cannons could tear them from the sky, negating the need for expensive bargains between Persian magi and their djinn.
The first manned, fixed-wing flight occurred in 1825 AC, just outside of Novo Trier, and was conducted by Ursus and Wystan Abered, two brothers from a large ship-building family. Their goal was to out-compete other companies that moved goods and people over the northern Sea of Atlas. To do so, they decided to try to build ships of the air. After several notable failures with hot air balloons, they addressed most of their efforts to fixed-wing, heavier-than-air craft. The result was the first biplane.
Adoption was swift for cargo and passenger use, but it took seeing airplanes used for bombing runs during the 1855 Caspian Crisis for the rest of the world to see the military utility of airplanes. Judean bombers lifted off from airfields outside of Judea and traveled into Mongol territory, bombing seaports held by the Khanate there, and returning to Judea on a single tank of chemical fuel. Persia objected to their airspace being violated, naturally. However, their slow-moving ground-based artillery was ineffectual against the speedy bombers, leaving Persia to voice its objections solely with djinni and efreeti. Thus, after that notable success, the Roman Empire began building its own fixed-wing aircraft.
By way of comparison, the helicopter is a peculiarly Judean invention, the first wide-production model being developed in Judea in 1875 AC. It has, however, been heavily adopted for use in the forested wilds of Raccia and Nova Germania, especially for the evacuation of injured people to medical facilities and dealing with wildfires. Judean Defense Forces use helicopters as troop transports and mobile weapon platforms, as well.
The ornithopter, however, was developed in the Persian Empire in 1895 AC as an alternative means of air travel, and has been broadly adopted and adapted by India, Qin, Mongolia, and parts of the Quechan and Tawantinsuyan regions of the Roman Empire. In Persia and Mongolia, the ornithopters are powered by compelled, enslaved spirits; in Qin and other areas, ley-powered engines are used to give the beating wings their motive force. The ornithopter had superior mobility compared to most fixed-wing aircraft . . . until the development of the jet turbine in 1915 AC. This innovation, the product of a Hellene-Judean engineering team, once more raised the stakes in the continuing technomagical race . . . .
—Wulfric Atargiet, A Brief History of Manned Flight, pp. 12-13. Carlfugol Press, Cimbri-on-the-Caestus, Nova Germania, 1934 AC.
______________________
Maius 6, 1955 AC
In the distance, sirens began to wail, echoing back off of houses as the gardia cars began to approach from the highway. “Duros?” Adam called into the radio.
“Copy, ben Maor. Civilians are secure, I’m coming back up to check on Callisuni.”
“You can check, but Caetia says he’s gone.”
“Damnit. Well, she’d know, wouldn’t she?” The Hellene’s words were bleak. “Coming back to the house, then.”
Adam got Sigrun’s left arm over his shoulder, all too aware of the muffled grunt of pain as he did so. “You, ah, need to do anything for Callisuni?” he asked, tentatively. Valkyrie did mean, technically, chooser of the slain.
She shook her head, limping forward with his assistance. “He was a Gaul, and the wound was instantly mortal. Even if he were a Goth, Jute, or Frisian, the best I could do now is to bear witness.” She sighed. “As we all will.”
Adam helped her toward the house, aware that behind every intact window in the neighborhood, curtains were twitching as people watched. “You always know when it’s a mortal wound?”
“I always know when someone’s going to die,” she corrected, hissing under her breath as he helped her up the steps. The demon’s claws were still embedded in her ankle, the hand itself still wrapped around her
calf, though the muscles had gone limp now. “Disease, poison, wound. Doesn’t matter. I know when there’s no hope left.”
“That sounds . . . appalling.” Adam opened the front door, nodded to Livorus, who stood just inside the hall, and was waving them each in.
A firm wrist-clasp from the propraetor, and a clap on the shoulder. “Damned good work,” Livorus murmured. “Shame about Callisuni.”
“He died bravely,” Adam said. “Unnecessarily, but bravely. I told him not to take the shot, and he did it anyway.” That one was going to keep him up nights, he knew.
“I’ll note the former, but not the latter, in my letter to his family,” Livorus said, and lightly lifted Sigrun’s chin with his knuckles. “You’re all right, my dear?”
“I’ll be fine,” she replied, sounding weary. “I heal from the most life-threatening wound to the least. Though the bones are knitting far more quickly than I’d have thought. The cartilage around them, though . . . ?” She paused. “I feel as if someone hit me with a lamppost.”
“Someone did hit you with a lamppost,” Kanmi noted from behind them, as Adam helped her into the dining room, looked at the binding circle on the floor, sighed, and lifted her onto the table, which had been pushed up against the wall. The few place settings toppled out of the way as he settled her into place.
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Sigrun said, leaning back with a muffled groan. “Mystery solved.”
Interested eyes peered around the frames of the two doors that led into the dining room, one on each side of the room. Peripheral awareness of all the faces: his family, the propraetor’s family, Kanmi’s family, guests . . . sirens in the distance, getting louder . . . mutters in Hebrew and Latin. His mother, bolting for the emergency medical kit in the bathroom, and coming back with it. “I’m a trauma nurse, let me through . . . .” His brother’s soft comment, in Latin, “Perhaps she shouldn’t be in combat, if she’s this bad at it . . . .”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 60
