“No substance?” Sayri Cusi hissed, and his hands blazed with blue-white light. Levinbolts streaked out from him, slamming into Inti, who actually took a half a step back, grunting in pain. Sigrun burst out of cover, taking two or three shots from the various bodyguards, and flew directly in front of Inti, taking the rest of the electricity directly to her own body, the pure white of her rune-marks blazing in the darkness. She was a living lightning rod; Adam had seen her accidentally damage a calculator just by touching the damned thing.
For his part, Adam took advantage of the distraction she offered, spinning out of cover to fire his single bullet at the emperor of a sovereign nation. I can’t be in any more trouble than I am already . . . . He saw the shot slam into the emperor’s side, and the man took a step back now, his head turning towards Adam . . . . but when he reached down and touched his side, there was no blood there. He laughed now, a dark, rough sound, like rocks grating on one another. “I am the master of earth and sky now, the world above and the world below. I hold the power of life and death within me. I am a god, more truly than any of my ancestors. You challenge me, mortal?” Sayri Cusi smiled, a merry, fey little smile, suddenly coquettish again. “Then you can just die.”
The pillar behind which Adam had taken cover shattered, and the huge blocks of which it was comprised toppled backwards, as if pushed by an unseen hand. Adam threw himself backwards scrambling away like a crab. Time slowed as adrenaline pounded through his system, and through his panic, he knew he couldn’t move away in time. Even if the pillar didn’t kill him, the ceiling would collapse on his head . . . .
. . .and Inti reached out a hand and the pillar blocks simply stopped in place. The upper blocks hung in mid-air, motionless; the lower blocks, still tipped past the incline of repose, looked like nothing so much as a child’s slide. Adam swore again, silently, and scrambled back, still further, feeling the cold, rough stone of the floor against his palms. Comforting sense of reality, with it.
He’d have felt a good deal better, however, if Inti’s enormous voice hadn’t sounded quite so strained as the god next spoke. These two are my champions, as are any others who choose to fight on my behalf. I stand against you. I will not permit any more harm to come to my land and my people. I have been trapped, in a snare at least partially of my own making. But no more. Inti’s head turned towards Adam slightly. You had weapons when you came here. Be armed once more.
Adam had, reflexively, dropped the useless musket when he’d thrown himself away from the pillar. Now, as he stood, he found the comforting weight of his Velserk pistol in his grip, and ahead of him, he could see that Sigrun had a holster wrapped around her waist once more, and her hands gripped the haft of her spear, where she stood between Sayri and Inti. Adam found another pillar to stand behind, grimly aware that cover could be turned into a weapon against him in this fight. The odds aren’t much better now, but at least I’ll die with a weapon in my hands, he thought, numbly.
Supay bared his fangs, his mouth stretching and distorting that brick-red face with the white eyes painted all over the skin. You are unarmed, brother. Today, I will become the new king of the gods. He raised the massive obsidian club he bore, and stepped forwards, with slow deliberation, pushing past the Sapa Inca.
Oh, and now I have a motive that even my feeble human brain can grasp. Power. Control. That’s an easy one. Adam raised his gun.
Inti lifted one hand, and responded, calmly, I am unarmed, brother. But I am not alone. Away with your vaunted darkness. Let there be light.
Adam turned his face away, closing his eyes as Inti’s entire form burst into glory; he didn’t dare look into that blaze, any more than into the heart of the sun. It dimmed Sigrun’s light into that of the distant stars, and Adam could feel searing heat come out of Inti’s form, in waves. There was no darkness, anywhere in the room now; even the shadows behind the pillars were filled with that unearthly glow. Will you challenge me, brother? Will you, truly?
The death-god bared his fangs and leaped forward, swinging that massive club, and to Adam’s sick horror, Sigrun threw herself in between, like the champion Inti had named her. She flew forwards, ducking under the overhand swing of the club, and jabbed the point of her spear at Supay’s throat. To Adam’s surprise, the blow connected; though the god turned his face aside at the last moment, her spear sliced through his cheek, opening a new mouth between the various eyes. Adam had rarely seen Sigrun use her full speed in sparring; she pivoted now, before Supay could react, whirling the spear in her hands, slamming the butt of it against his head, so far above her own. There was little difference between a staff form and a spear form, really, and Sigrun’s style was all about speed. Not being there when an opponent turned on her. Another swirl of the spear in her hands, and the point was back in place, slashing into Supay’s back from above.
The death-god snarled, black blood flowing from his cheek, and spun on her, swinging his sacrificial club in a lateral arc, aiming for the valkyrie’s ribs, and Sigrun rolled to the floor, changing levels, and only one of her feet tagged by the vicious strike as a result.
As she tried to regain her footing, Adam raised his gun and fired directly on Supay. He rather hoped Kanmi’s handiwork on the bullets would let him have some kind of effect on the god; bare bullets hadn’t done a damn bit of good with Tlaloc, after all. But he wasn’t surprised to hear the sound of a ricochet, either. Sig isn’t particularly mortal, Adam thought, grimly. But I am. Guess I’m in charge of keeping the rest of these creatures off her back. The thought took less than a heartbeat, and then he’d turned and fired, once more, this time on Sayri Cusi.
The Sapa Inca staggered backwards, but there was no blood. Still, the momentary look of panic on the emperor’s face did Adam’s heart good . . . and then the two massive creatures made of rock stepped forwards, forming a protective wall between Cusi and Adam, and the human guards, looking panicky, moved forwards—the ones who hadn’t been caught trying to reload their weapons, anyway. Musket balls clattered against the closest pillar as Adam ducked behind it.
The huge rock creatures had glowing-coal eyes, which now focused on him as the spirits turned to face him . . . and he knew he’d better make his shots count. All the little demons, gray-skinned and gem-eyed, hissed and moved to their master’s defense. They were small and they were quick, and they ran in a wave, right for Sigrun’s back.
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For Sigrun, there was nothing in her mind but defiance and fear. She knew there was no way in which she could defeat Supay. This was not Tlaloc. This was not a weakened god, drained by men and machines. This was a god bloated on blood and sacrifice, like a tick or a leech. She’d gotten in a few lucky hits, but looking up into the god’s eyes, she could feel darkness and dissolution radiating out of him. No hope. Nothingness. The destruction of all things. She would die here, and there would be nothing after. No reunion with her gods. No Valhalla. No Adam. No consciousness. She would go out, like a candle, and for nothing, she’d be nothing
The despair moved over her in suffocating waves, and Sigrun’s hand slipped on her spear. Nothing but nacreous blackness in Supay’s eyes, and oddly, in spite of everything . . . it was seductive. No more fighting. No more struggling. No peace, but also, no more war. No, Sigrun managed to think. No. Others rely on me. I do not just fight for myself. I fight for Adam. I fight for Livorus. I fight for my gods and my people.
The struggle inside her mind had taken less than two heartbeats, and she managed to raise her spear again, as if against the force of three times normal gravity . . . and then Adam shouted, “Sig! Behind you!” and something landed on her shoulders, digging in with razory claws, and Supay took advantage of her shock to slam her in the side of the head with his club, slamming her to the ground. Then claws. Claws and hands and teeth, everywhere, and Sigrun fought. She landed on her side and rolled to her back, feeling a body, clinging to her tenaciously, like a monkey. Heard the mad screams and chitters as three more supay landed atop her. She
fended the first away from her vulnerable eyes, backhanding the creature away, but the one still clinging to her back had dug in with its teeth and now pulled back, ripping and tearing. Sigrun choked down the scream, feeling blood pouring down from the wound, and kicked away a third gem-eyed creature as it darted in, slashing at her belly with its claws. The fourth fell away from her, its face a ruin, as Adam fired a round into its head, and Sigrun’s heart, already pounding, increased its pace. That bullet had passed right above her head.
She rolled over, reaching back with her left hand, and tried to drag the monkey-like creature off her back, but she could feel talons digging into her hips from its feet, more talons hooking into her arms for better purchase, and then it was trying to bite at her throat, going for the carotid artery this time. Sigrun jammed stiffened fingers back, gouging at the eyes . . . with no effect, as they were made of the same stone as the rest of the creature’s body. Fruitlessly, she tried to call down lightning. She couldn’t, of course; the stone roof cut her off from the sky. This is the Pyramid of the Sun all over again, Sigrun thought, dimly, and finally hooked her fingers under the line of its moving, biting jaw, and pulled, hard, throwing herself forward at the same time, so that the small creature rolled off her shoulder, and she slammed its head into the ground. Stone against stone; it sprang up, almost unscathed, and came right back at her, Sigrun catching it once more by the throat and holding out at arm’s length, even as its stone talons slashed at her left forearm, raking deeply. She called her spear to her hand, and, holding the supay off the ground, sank the point into its eye. Past the gem-like surface, the flesh gave way easily enough. “They are flesh beneath the stone!” Sigrun shouted. “But they will not die while in contact with the earth, I think!’ With that in mind, she threw her current target to the ground, and the other two latched onto her legs, biting and clawing. She could feel blood pouring down from her shoulder, from the gobbet of flesh the first one had removed, and jabbed at the two currently attached to her legs. They hadn’t caught the femoral artery yet, but that was just a matter of time, and she could bleed out from that faster than her body could heal the damage.
While Sigrun was scrambling on the floor with four of the little demons, Supay closed on Inti himself, and the sun-god caught the obsidian club in his golden hands as Supay swung it at him. Adam swore, again, because the instant Supay swung at Inti, the sun-god’s blazing light went out, leaving them with nothing more than the glimmer of ley-powered bulbs and dozens of afterimages clouding his vision. He could barely make out the two titanic figures as they wrestled for control of the weapon, and felt worse than useless as he squinted, found a target in one of the little demons, and fired again. He felt the ground under his feet shift, and he leaped out of the way, ducking and rolling, and, as he came back up again, he saw an enormous hand made of stone had just snapped its fingers closed where he had just stood. Sayri Cusi, Adam thought. The emperor’s still very much in this fight. Damn it. We need help. We need a lot of help.
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Outside, the others ran in Mamaquilla’s wake. The goddess had assumed a form that looked like pale moonlight cutting through fog, and streamed ahead of them through the empty air, racing to the side of her brother and husband, Inti. Kanmi kept a steadying hand under Minori’s elbow as they jogged, a litany of curses going through his mind. This is stupid. She had internal injuries before Cocohuay worked her healing. She’s grunting with every step. “You’re going to jostle something loose,” Kanmi snapped at Minori. He wasn’t angry with her. He was angry with absolutely everything else.
“I’m fine,” Minori gritted out. “Keep . . . going . . . .”
They rounded the corner of a long, tiered building, which looked like nothing so much as a very fancy cake, to Kanmi’s eyes, and followed the ghost-pale form of Mamaquilla as she blurred forwards, and down into a tunnel entrance, a hundred feet or more ahead of them. “Nothing like directions,” Kanmi muttered, between pants. He was in damned good shape . . . at sea level. Two miles above it? He had an unaccustomed stitch in his side. At the entrance to the tunnel, he stopped everyone, however. “Cocohuay,” Kanmi asked, sharply. “What can you do in combat? Fire arrows of moonlight, falling stars, anything?”
The older woman, who’d brought up the rear, and now stood, panting and wheezing, raised her head. “Nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head. “My lady is not a warlike goddess.”
Trennus, the dappled green spirit-armor of Saraid swirling around him like leaves in a storm, antlers sprouting from his head and twined with what looked like phosphorescent ivy, turned his head towards her. “What can you do?” the Pict asked, frowning. Kanmi choked back any ribald jokes about Trennus wearing horns. Technically, antlers weren’t horns, and he liked his teeth where they were. Besides, now really wasn’t the time.
“In two hundred years in her service, I have driven fish to the nets, kept the waves gentle and mild for sailors, and eased the danger and rigor of childbirth for hundreds of women.” Cocohuay sounded irritated. “I can heal, as I did your friend, but I have never held a weapon in my life.”
“Wonderful.” Kanmi gritted his teeth. “Stay at the back. Stay in cover. If you need to touch someone to heal them, wait for one of us to come get you. Gods. This isn’t going to be one of the good days.”
“Have we had a good day yet?” Trennus asked. For an instant, Kanmi thought he could see an ethereal stag’s face in front of the Pict’s own, and shook his head in reply, bringing his defensive incantations to mind.
They moved down into the tunnel, and Kanmi could see a sun-bright gleam ahead of them in the darkness, and they all began to hustle forward . . . and then it went out, entirely. Mamaquilla’s voice, crying out in anguish. Inti! Beloved! I am here! I will fight by your side! Her fog-like essence was one of the few sources of light as they stumbled forward, and Kanmi gestured for the others to halt as they came to the edge of the tunnel. He could feel Minori pressed up behind him, the chill air of her shields against his back. And as he looked into the battle area, Kanmi couldn’t tell friend from foe in the swirling mass of bodies.
Look through my eyes, Lassair urged them all, her voice terrified, but strong, as she hugged the wall behind Trennus. See as I see.
Kanmi sucked in his breath as the spirit’s perceptions overlaid his own. He already could perceive energies, but he never associated that sense with his eyes; it was more of a pressure against his skin. But now, there was no more darkness, just swirling fields of different types.
At the center of the room, a figure outlined in golden fire that blazed like the sun, circling, moving, grappling, with something. An absence. A void. I’m looking at a black hole, Kanmi realized, mildly horrified. Entropy incarnate. It was only discernable in Lassair’s vision by the fact that it blocked out the sight of other beings behind it, and because it drew energy from everything around it, spiderlike strands of power being sucked in from everyone in the room, even from the blazing golden glory that was, surely, Inti the sun-god. Inti himself had golden streamers of light pouring out of him in every direction. Some being pulled into that black pit of entropy that occasionally resolved itself into a vaguely man-like form. Some being pulled out in five or six different directions . . . towards the binding seals around the other towers, Lassair whispered to them all, in explanation. He maintains them, still, for fear of what will happen if all are loosed suddenly. And some of his power rose upwards, spreading along the ceiling like a golden veil of flame. Holding the ceiling up, preventing it from being pulled down on all these fragile mortal forms.
Kanmi took in the rest of the figures in seconds. Mamaquilla’s shimmering white light over a core of blue-green surged forward, trying to reach the sun-god at the center of the room. Massive creatures of flame and earth turned and attacked her, fire blazing out of their hands. Elementals. Cherufes, Lassair, specified.
Smaller creatures, also mostly of stone, but linked to the death-god through tendrils of black, wavering smoke
. . . supay. Humans, gray, dim, terrified. A creature that twisted and distorted, making his head ache to look at . . . a vaguely human outline of gray fog, but inside of it, encysted, were . . . formations of light. Like crystals, intruded into the matrix of a rock formation. One looked like a chunk of gray metal, the second cyst looked to be formed entirely of lightning, and the third cyst was comprised of an orb of golden light, which, blister-like, burst for a moment, coruscating out. Trying to spread, like a disease, rippling over the body, only to hit the other two cysts, and be repulsed. That one is the lord of this land, Lassair whispered.
Gods. You don’t mean that’s the fucking emperor? This isn’t going to be a good day at all.
And there, fighting with the damnable little creatures, was a female form comprised of blue-white fire surrounded by veils of fog, and at the very back, ducking out from behind a pillar . . . the shining silver form of a man. “We found our lost goats,” Kanmi said, his voice sounding very small in his own ears, and trying for a little bluster. “Let’s get them home. “
His own vision returned, briefly, as Mamaquilla flooded the room with her own white light. The goddess threw one of the massive stone creatures away from her with little more than a flick of her hand, but the other snarled and vomited lava directly in her face. It wrapped its arms around her, its entire body going from rock to magma in an instant, and tried to crush the female form it held to the ground. It hit, but Mamaquilla shifted to her moonlight form and danced away, flowing forward, trying to engage with the darkness that was Supay. We have always been stronger together, Inti, my love! Take of my power, and be renewed. Love and longing in that beautiful voice, the silvery hiss of waves lapping the shore. The sound Kanmi had loved and feared all his life.
No! If I take of your power, it will flow through the entire great machine. The entirety will be unbalanced, and you may be as trapped as I am!
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 115
