Jim Baens Universe-Vol 1 Num 6

by Eric Flint

  The disembodied Shai recognized a dream—the earth turned under their feet, leading them where they wanted to go, and the market sprang up before them, like it was meant to be there.

  He saw his sister turn to the young Shai and whisper in his ear. With just a bit of concentration, he could make out her words. "Who's that?" The flick of her eyebrows indicated the subject of her query.

  The young Shai tracked the direction of her gaze. "One of the new ones at the warlock guild," he said. "My captain says we better keep an eye on the warlocks. They've got some kind of new magic going on."

  Jenara smiled. "Oh? I thought they just made talismans and ointments."

  "Not anymore." Shai's gaze remained glued to the tall man in plain dark clothes who lingered by the apple stand, studying the fruit with great attention. "Look at his eye."

  Jenara did, and exhaled a gasp. "What is it?"

  "Some sort of stone. I heard that . . ." The young Shai turned around abruptly. "What was that?"

  At the far end of the marketplace there seemed to be a disturbance—voices rose in anger, and the sound of a breaking clay jug echoed through the square.

  "Go," Jenara said. "Do what you have to. I'll start shopping."

  His young apparition took off running in the direction of the ruckus, and Jenara headed toward the fruit stand.

  The older Shai smiled bitterly—how blind he used to be, how trusting. Not for a moment did he suspect then that his sister would act so brazenly, despite what he had just told her about the warlocks. Like a foolish mosquito attracted by the glitter of the sundew, Jenara was helpless to resist the red glow that flowed from the warlock's eye socket and spilled across his pale cheek, coloring it as red as the apples in front of him.

  The hovering Shai could barely make out their words. Jenara asked about magic, with the expression of keen intensity he rarely observed in her before. Nepheli answered, patiently, without condescending.

  Oh, how he wished he could swoop down and warn her of her impending doom, of the dangers the warlock portended. How he wished that he hadn't been so blind in his youth, that he had paid more attention when he came back from apprehending a thief, to find his sister smiling, her basket empty, that he had noticed the tall frame of the warlock walking away at a brisk pace.

  * * *

  The shards of stone and brick dug into Shai's cheek. He sat up, clutching his pounding head. Nepheli lay next to him, a slow trickle of blood seeping from a cut on his shaven head. His confusion gone, Shai grabbed the warlock's shoulder. "Nepheli, wake up."

  The man shifted and moaned, and sat up.

  "What was that?"

  "We were knocked out," Nepheli said. "Oldie but goodie. I guess they are not going to let me stand here diverting their spells."

  "Why didn't they kill us?"

  Nepheli chuckled. "Because it is impossible to kill a man with mere will." He pushed himself up and stood. He was weak, his legs unsteady from disuse. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be alive today."

  Shai stood too. "I dreamt of Jenara," he said.

  Nepheli's expression did not change. "I imagine that your guilt at her exile is great."

  Shai glared. "You broke her heart."

  "No. You broke her heart."

  Shai was about to argue but couldn't find the words or the desire for a retort. He gestured toward the outside of the wall. "What do we do now?"

  "Now we need blood," Nepheli said.

  "Not this again." Shai felt bile burning his throat. "I can't let you do this."

  "I told you magic had a price."

  Shai thought about his city. He wanted nothing more than to save it. Just a few lives for the welfare of all . . . and he had already sacrificed what was most dear to him. "How much blood do you need?"

  Nepheli cupped both of his hands together. "This much . . . to start with."

  Shai reached for the scabbard on his hip and pulled out the short blade of his cutlass, standard constable issue. The blade glinted briefly, but dulled the moment a tendril of smoke wrapped around it, coating the steel with black grime. He handed the cutlass to Nepheli, hilt first.

  Nepheli hefted the weapon in his hand, his good eye looking at Shai quizzically. "You love this city that much?"

  Shai nodded.

  Nepheli motioned for Shai to follow him. They walked along the wall until Nepheli stopped at the wider part of it, near one of the unmanned guard towers. The guards had been the first to fall victim to the spells.

  Shai rolled up the sleeve of his tunic, exposing a forearm wrapped in ropy veins. He looked at the empty embrasures and held out his arm. The blade was so sharp that he did not feel it slice through his skin. Warm blood flowed, hitting the bricks under their feet.

  Nepheli cupped his hands, and the dark blood dripped, slow and thick, filling them. Nepheli walked in a circle, drizzling the blood as he went. The dust soaked up the blood, and soon Shai felt light-headed.

  Nepheli wiped his hands on his tunic and examined the cut in Shai's arm. It was closing already, shallow as it was. "That's enough for now," the warlock said. "How are you feeling?"

  "All right," Shai said. "A bit dizzy."

  "Sit down then."

  Shai sat, the bricks of the guard tower rough on his back. Light-headed, he thought about Jenara and wished that he could fall back into the dream, to ask her the things he wanted to know. Why did she run from home, to the warlock guild, to Nepheli? If he didn't enchant her, did she really love him? Was the magic he offered so much better than a normal life?

  Nepheli whispered under his breath, and his hands traced a complicated arabesque through the air over the blood circle. His movements seemed to leave glowing traces in the still air. They zigzagged and flared briefly, then disappeared, like fireflies on the summer night.

  The blood circle shone—with a gentle yellow glow at first, changing to orange and then red, as if it was heating up. The smell of molten iron filled the air, and the bricks under Shai shook and crackled. The circumference of the circle grew brighter and hotter still, separating the brick enclosed within it from the rest of the wall, and lifting it.

  The stone creaked and moaned, and contorted, shaped by an invisible force. The glow faded. Nepheli ceased his spell-casting and rubbed his face as a man just coming awake.

  "What is it?" Shai whispered, looking at the man-sized, oblong, smooth stone that stood upon the wall.

  "What does it look like?" Nepheli spat. "It's an egg."

  Stray sparks flitted across the surface of the egg. Shai did not need to ask to know the otherworldly origin of it. Whatever rift Nepheli had opened, the egg had come through it.

  "What's inside?"

  Nepheli scoffed. "A baby bird, I imagine. But let's see."

  The sparks moved with greater agitation, and cracks snaked across the surface of the stone egg. With a deafening crack, the egg opened. The fragments of the stone shell fell away and tumbled from the wall.

  Shai had to clap his hands over his ears as an unearthly screech tore through the air, setting the bricks of the tower atremble. He dared to look up only when the scream had died down. There, among the shattered eggshells, sat a giant hatchling. It looked much like a house wren—naked pink skin with bits of fluff, gangly wings, and giant black eyes visible through the still-closed membranes of the eyelids. But the bird was at least six feet in height. Its beak, trimmed with yellow, opened, and Shai covered his ears again. The bird screeched, stretching its neck, as if it expected to be fed.

  Nepheli picked up the cutlass and cut his own hand across the palm. The bird smelled the blood and craned its neck. Nepheli held his closed fist up to the bird's mouth and squeezed fat, lazy drops of blood into its beak.

  The bird stopped screeching and seemed to fall asleep, content. As it slept, it grew, and new feathers poked through its goose-bumps-covered skin. Shai watched, enthralled, as the gigantic baby bird, ten feet tall, with a wingspan of fifteen feet, developed in its sleep.

  Nepheli laughed softly. "Look at
those wings," he said. "They'll be able to blow all of that smoke away from the city."

  "What if the sorcerers hurt the bird?" Shai said.

  "Can't burn fire with fire," Nepheli said. "Can't hurt magic with magic."

  * * *

  A week had passed since Nepheli's creation had first screeched its discontent over Tavrid. The bird continued to grow. When it was awake, it begged for food, its cries reverberating over the market squares and the streets, and it flapped its wings. The sorcerous smoke could not overcome the wind the bird was creating, and fell apart, briefly clouded the air, and was gone.

  Whether it was the cessation of the magical assault or the rousing cries of the bird, people started coming out of their houses. The towers were manned again, and the market thronged with the disheveled, thin, and hungry-eyed populace. Even though no food had been delivered from the farms in months, the city's granary still had some grain. But the supplies dwindled.

  Nepheli spent most of his time tending to the bird. He fed it as before and refused Shai's offering of blood.

  "Magical creatures need magical blood." Scorn was audible in his voice. "Not yours."

  Shai worried about Nepheli. Ill fed and frail to begin with, he had grown weaker as the bird had grown stronger. Still, he stayed by its side and slept on top of the wall, sheltered by an enormous wing.

  As people around him came to life, Shai felt as if a great hand that had been clenching at his heart had finally relaxed and let him breathe with a full chest. Even a threat of famine seemed more bearable than the previous disease of the spirit. He gathered the guards and the constables who had reported back to duty and planned an offensive against the enemy camped outside the city gates.

  His plans became more urgent as Nepheli started to unravel. He barely spoke, and his emerald eye seemed dull. His skin, always pale, acquired an alarming transparency that reminded Shai of Jenara. His good eye grew glassy and shone with a weak reflection of the emerald, and pale green vapor issued forth from his mouth with every ragged breath. Everything but the bird escaped his notice.

  Worse, the city seemed to unravel as well. The air crackled with magic, and the strong smell of an impending thunderstorm hung in the air. Tiny rifts opened everywhere—in the walls of the buildings, between the stones of the pavement, and in the eyes of his people. The rifts pulsed with a pallid green glow. Sometimes they disappeared almost immediately, and sometimes they persisted. Strange, sickly creatures tumbled out occasionally—diseased mice, eyeballs on eight hairy spider legs, and skeletal flowers.

  "What's going on?" Shai asked Nepheli.

  Nepheli jerked his shoulder. "What? That?" He pointed at a tiny green half moth half hedgehog that crawled from a thin fissure by their feet. "This, my friend, is a rip. It leads to another world."

  "A portal," Shai said. "Jenara told me about them."

  The warlock smiled. "Yes. They are hard to control, and I'm not as strong as I used to be. Twenty years of solitude with only rats and spiders for company weaken a man."

  "Can you close them?"

  "Yes, but my friend here will be gone too." He gestured at the gigantic bird. "And we need him."

  "What will happen if it's not closed soon?"

  "It'll get worse. The portals grow and merge. In a few weeks, there'll be nothing but one giant portal, and the whole city will tumble into it." Nepheli's voice was even, indifferent. "Where to I don't know, but I assure you that it won't survive the trip. I'll hold on as long as I can, but . . ."

  Shai nodded. "My soldiers are back on their feet. We can try to open the gates and fight them outside the city."

  "It's a good idea," Nepheli said.

  Shai realized that he was not indifferent but exhausted. Beyond exhausted—every day, Nepheli lost a little more blood and a little more magic. A few more days, and he would be bled dry, leaving the city with no defense against the intrusion of the enemy outside of the gates, and the unknown realm—within them.

  "We'll go tomorrow," Shai decided.

  * * *

  Shai spent the night before the battle sleepless, lost in the memories. He still remembered the first time he'd seen the inside of the warlock guild. He bashed down the double doors held together by a flimsy iron clasp, and rushed into the narrow hallway, fringed with two rows of wooden columns. He expected the place to be grander, more decadent, and he was taken aback by its simplicity and the faint scent of cinnamon that permeated the building. He looked around to get his bearings, and headed for a passage in the end of the hallway; before he could reach it, Nepheli stood in front of him.

  "Where's my sister?" Shai spat.

  Nepheli's gaze flicked to the dark space behind him, and Shai pushed him out of the way, intent on turning the guild inside out if need be, to get Jenara back. From the darkness of the passage, the guild members filed into the hallway. They observed in silence as Shai yelled and threatened and demanded that they give her back to him.

  Jenara, previously hidden in the group, stepped forth, her face pale, her eyes too large for it. Normally she would've been embarrassed at his making a scene, but not that time. "I'm staying here, Shai," she said. "There's no reason to be concerned for me." She smiled at Nepheli. "Right?"

  He nodded. "Your sister is a grown woman, Constable. I understand your distress, but let me remind you that you have no jurisdiction here. You will be welcome to visit after you've cooled off."

  "Jeni," Shai pleaded. "Come home with me. These people . . . you don't know what they are. They've charmed you, haven't they?"

  Jenara frowned and shook her head. "No, they haven't. I wonder at you, brother. Is it so hard for you to believe that I could love on my own?"

  Shai's wrath turned his vision dark, blood-filled. "Does your family mean anything to you?"

  Jenara bit her lip and turned away, and Shai directed his anger at Nepheli. "It's all your fault," he said, as he grabbed for the scabbard at his side. His hands shook.

  "Please, Constable, do not do anything you would regret later."

  The condescension in Nepheli's voice stung him more than the veiled threat, and he finally managed to rip his weapon from the scabbard. Nepheli stepped back, raising his hand, and Shai remembered what he had heard about the warlock's powers. Shai advanced, half-expecting the lightning bolt or a wall of fire to turn him to cinders.

  "Stop it!" Jenara flung herself at Nepheli, pulling down his raised arm with all her weight. "Have you lost your mind?"

  "I apologize," Nepheli told her. "I wasn't going to kill him."

  "You can't hurt my brother," she said. "Ever. Promise me."

  He did; he promised her to never raise his hand against Shai.

  Jenara nodded and turned to Shai. "Brother," she said, "please don't make me choose." With that, she threaded her arm under Nepheli's, and the two of them turned, swallowed by the throng of their compatriots and the darkness of the interior, leaving Shai alone in the entryway, his weapon still bare, his heart in ashes.

  * * *

  Shai ordered the ranks and listened to the bugle. Another green fissure opened by the soldiers' feet, and they stepped away, breaking the ranks, simultaneously awed and peeved. Shai stared into the rift, forgetting to give the signal.

  Doorways, his sister used to call them. Portals. Rends. Shai remembered her deathly-pale face, her porcelain skin grown translucent from the blood loss.

  "Nepheli is killing you," Shai had told her.

  She smiled. "He's teaching me. The other worlds are so beautiful, and he's showing them to me." Her eyes turned dreamlike, dark. "All men promise the sky and the moon, but there's only one who can give them to me—a multitude of skies and moons and suns, an infinity of doorways and worlds."

  He refused to listen. "It's not that! He enthralled you. Honestly, what do you see in him?"

  "No one else kisses as sweetly."

  He used to believe that she was charmed; now, he looked at the pale flames that came out of the cracks and thought that the other worlds must be ex
quisite, that the rift Nepheli had opened as well as the bird that came out of it possessed a fascinating, if dangerous, beauty.

  "Mayor."

  Shai looked up, and his gaze met the captain's.

  "We're ready, Mayor," he said. "And we better do something quick."

  The spiderweb of hair-thin fractures crisscrossed the paved yard in front of the city gates. The lines flickered, disappeared, and appeared again, contorting. The air crackled with tiny sparks.

  Shai commanded the gatekeeper to open the latches, and his men spilled through the gates.

  Even the air seemed different outside of the city wall—it smelled of wet dust, green grass, and woodsmoke. Shai raised his cutlass and charged toward the camp, where the enemy soldiers scrambled for their weapons and armor.