by Liz Williams
“What’s the Empress up to?”
“I don’t know,” Chen said. “But I’d be very surprised if it turned out to have nothing to do with the Khan.”
•
Inari luxuriated in the wide bed, appreciating Jhai’s Egyptian cotton sheets and the dim, soothing lights. It was somehow more comfortable than even beautiful Agarta: perhaps because this was a demon’s home, after all, and not the province of the more morally elevated. And in a wider sense, the city was her home as well: an imperfect one, to be sure, with many dangers, but still more her place of sanctuary than anywhere else. Now that she finally had some peace and quiet, she could tune into the child within her. It turned slowly, not kicking, just moving in its watery casing like a small seal.
“Who are you?” Inari whispered aloud, and the child replied with calm certainty, utterly serene, completely secure, I am the bridge.
“What do you mean?” Inari asked, but the child said, with perhaps a touch more urgency, Someone is coming.
Inari sat up. A figure was forming out of a cloud of mist in the far corner of the room, shadowy and vague. Black and red tendrils snaked out from it, but Inari did not need to see these to know who it was.
“Empress!”
“You,” said the Empress with an absolute malevolence at odds with her usually saccharine voice, “are coming with me.”
The Empress drew a gateway in the air, but Inari retorted, “I don’t think so.”
She threw a warding hand outward, drawing on what she thought at first was the power in Paugeng, but then realized it came from a different source entirely: the child in her womb. There was a sudden surge and the Empress reeled backward, but the gateway remained. Inari braced herself for another bolt, but the door flew open and Chen was there, with others behind him.
The Empress, taken by surprise, faltered for a moment but the gateway was already starting to glow.
Enough, the child said inside, with sudden impatience. Inari remained rooted to the bed as the Empress, and Chen and his companions, were pulled through, leaving Inari clutching the sheet to her throat and staring at empty air.
•
Chen staggered against the wall. He’d been here only a short while before, fleeing while the city rocked around him, but this was greatly changed from the Agarta he’d known then. Dark threads covered its walls like a spiderweb, pulsing with faint crimson magic. In an impressively short space of time the Empress had converted the city into her own personal lair. Chen did a quick count: Roerich and Zhu Irzh, those who had come with him when he’d felt Inari’s distress and the cry of his child. Unnerving, to be suddenly summoned by one’s own unborn offspring, but Chen found it encouraging that the Empress could be distracted enough to screw up: it suggested that her power was not, after all, omnipotent.
“Where now?” Zhu Irzh asked.
Roerich pointed to the threads. “Those are growing more thickly further up the passage. I suggest we follow them.”
They did so, but it was not easy. Chen was reminded of a recent — and unwelcome — sojourn in the Ministry of Lust, in Hell, a place that was also alive, but in a more unpleasantly organic and fleshy way. This had something of the same feel to it, a sign of how far the Empress had fallen. They moved through air that had become stagnant and fetid, over floors that were covered in a soft powdery dust, like moldering fungus.
“So great a change in so little time,” Roerich said unhappily. “I’m appalled that she’s achieved so much.”
“She was an Empress,” Chen said. “Her husband was even more destructive, believe me.”
Agarta’s windows were also filmed, with a faint black slime, making it difficult to see where the city was currently located. Eventually Chen managed to make out the long reach of Shaopeng: it seemed that the city was still where they had last seen it. But he was distracted from the view when something rushed at them out of thin air, a swift and hideous shape. Roerich, with an exclamation, struck it aside and it swept screeching into a corner in a tangle of leathery wings. At once, Roerich was upon it, blasting it into an ashy outline with the force of a spell.
“What was that?” Chen asked. “Ifrit?”
“Ifrit.” Roerich’s dark eyes were narrowed. “And that means the Khan.”
“Wonder who’s the paymaster?” Zhu Irzh said.
“We might soon find out.”
The threads led them upward, winding around one of Agarta’s spiral stairs until they came out onto the summit of a landing. Here, the grime was so thick that Chen could see nothing from the little pointed window. Roerich turned to him. She’s here, his expression said, more eloquently than words.
The door before them was locked and the threads seemed to have welded it to the lintel. Roerich tugged, but soon stepped back. Chen was about to suggest alternatives, when the Empress evidently decided to take matters into her own hands. The door melted away before their eyes, leaving Chen unsure as to whether it had been an illusion in the first place.
Within, the Empress sat in state, enthroned on a black mass that reached up over her head. Like the threads, it, too, seemed almost alive: a series of arcs and spines that moved faintly in crustacean motion. From the top, a point coming down over the Empress’ head, a thick twisting rope of darkness sank into the middle of the Empress’ skull. She was smiling. Chen had no idea what this thing might be — something from the depths of the Sea of Night itself? — but he could hear it whispering. Beside him, Roerich gave a murmur of revulsion.
The Empress reached out a hand and the black mass convulsed. A bolt of energy shot along the Empress’ arm, pulsing with blue light, and Chen threw Roerich back against the wall as it shot past, leaving a scorched patch on the stones opposite. Beneath his feet, Chen felt Agarta writhe in agony.
“I need you to help me,” Roerich said urgently as they cowered behind the lintel. “I think I can help the city to eject her, but I need to ground the power in someone who is actually mortal.”
“Best if I do it,” Zhu Irzh said. “No offense, Chen, but demons are tougher.”
“I’m afraid by ‘mortal,’ I meant ‘human,’ ” Roerich said. He looked at Chen. “Are you willing?”
“I don’t feel that I have a choice.” Now that they were finally facing their foe, Chen once again felt that curious feeling of calm, a Zen-like bow to inevitability that he had experienced before at moments like this. Perhaps to someone of a different culture, the attitude toward choice would be different; to Chen, it seemed that it had to be a question of fate. Roerich appeared to recognize this in him, for he nodded.
“Very well.” He touched Chen lightly on the shoulder and together they stepped into the shimmering doorway.
FIFTY-THREE
“What’s wrong with him?” Huddled in a borrowed robe of Jhai’s, Inari stared down at the prone form of the Emperor. Mhara, floating in midair, looked as serene as a person asleep, his arms resting by his sides and his blue eyes closed. The light that surrounded him was very faint, yet it had pushed Inari away when she tried to touch Mhara, a gentle, but irresistible force.
“I don’t know.” Robin’s spectral face was creased with concern. “I’ve never seen him like this before.”
“It doesn’t look bad,” Inari ventured.
“Whatever the case,” Jhai said flatly, “he’s not going to be battling his mother anytime soon.”
“What if this is just his body and his soul is elsewhere?”
Robin sighed. “It’s not that simple. When he became Emperor, he essentially fused into a single entity — he doesn’t really have a soul, he is a soul. So what you see here is Mhara himself; there isn’t anything else.”
“So we now have the question of whether he’s done this to himself,” Jhai said, “or whether someone has done this to him.”
“I am certain of this,” Robin told her. “Mhara wouldn’t save himself and leave us at risk. That suggests that this is enforced from outside.”
“The Empress is the most likely suspe
ct,” Jhai said. She crossed to the window and raised one of the blinds. Over her shoulder, Inari saw the cone shape of Agarta, still hanging over Shaopeng. But something had changed.
“It’s spinning,” she said.
The cone was beginning to revolve like a gigantic top. Dark threads spun out from it, as though the city was weaving. Within Inari, something twinged.
I have taken measures, the child said.
“What are you talking about?” Inari asked it aloud.
Jhai gave her an odd look. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I’m not talking to you.” She didn’t want to sound rude, but since the child had once more started to communicate…
The Emperor cannot be risked, the child said.
“I don’t understand.”
There was a feeling like a sigh: exasperation, perhaps. Oh Mother. As if talking to an idiot, the child said, He cannot be risked. I have placed him under my protection. This more than anything else scared Inari. The fact that her baby was able to affect the existence of the Emperor of Heaven was alarming in the extreme.
“The baby’s done it,” she said.
Jhai and Robin stared at her as though she’d gone mad. Maybe she had, Inari thought. It would explain a great deal. “It’s just told me,” she said.
“Well,” Robin remarked after a moment, “someone’s certainly done something.”
•
Agarta was revolving. Chen still could not see out of the windows, but he could feel the motion of the city underneath his feet, and within himself, too, via his magical senses. The Empress’ teeth were bared in a feral grin. She cast bolt after bolt of energy, which jolted through Roerich and down through Chen’s boots. Roerich himself was doing nothing, either protective or offensive, and Chen had decided to respect his decision. If everyone started going off on their own track, things tended to get messy.
He was not sure whether the Empress’ attacks were causing the new movement of the city, either through reaction on the part of Agarta, or direct control on the part of the Empress. But if he was not greatly mistaken, the Empress’ triumph was starting to waver, as Roerich took hit after hit without flinching. Chen did not know, however, whether he himself could withstand this indefinitely, and from the unfamiliar look of worry on Zhu Irzh’s face, he must look worse than he felt. Which wasn’t great, quite frankly. His skin was beginning to prickle as if bitten by a hundred mosquitoes and the place on his shoulder where Roerich was touching him had begun to burn hot. Then his knees buckled and he almost went down.
Roerich, whispering a spell beneath his breath, cast a fleeting glance at Chen, who saw him grow pale. Then everything started to pulse, as if they fought beneath a strobe light. The only constant that remained was the Empress’ eyes, like two black sparks in a psychedelic fog. After a moment, Chen realized what was happening: Agarta had begun to spin in earnest and they were being whipped around like a top. The window shattered, blasted outward. There was a thin, high keening sound — the Empress, screaming. Chen considered that to be positive, at least. He and Roerich were flung against the wall, breaking Roerich’s grip on his shoulder. The demon swore. Chen grabbed at the rail of the landing, feeling himself being sucked across the few feet to the window. Suddenly, his hands still gripping the rail, he was airborne, feet flying up into the miasma emanating from the Empress’ chamber. From the broken window he caught a glimpse of nothingness, lit by a dim swirl of lights, instantly recognizable as the stretch of the Sea of Night. Beside him, Zhu Irzh and Roerich were hanging on for dear life. The black threads which had filled the halls of Agarta were the first to go, swept up like cobwebs into a vacuum cleaner, leaving cool clear stone.
“Chen.”
He looked to see Roerich’s dark gaze. Roerich extended a hand. “Can you?”
“I will.” Roerich’s touch was like fire, filled with borrowed power. Chen gritted his teeth, forcing the power down through his hands since his feet were not in contact with the earth. He saw the surge pass through Roerich, illuminating him in a brief instant into a skeletal negative, bones and skull and teeth outlined in a lightning flash, and Chen knew he looked the same. Through the open doorway he saw the Empress blasted off her unnatural throne. She clawed, clutched, screamed — and then was gone, sucked through the window into the Sea of Night. Chen had one last glimpse of her spinning figure, growing tiny against the backdrop of the Sea, before she disappeared.
The throne itself scuttled out, claws rattling for purchase. A scorpion, lobster, centipede: all of these things. Chen saw revulsion fill Roerich’s face and the Russian opened his mouth for a final spell, but it was not needed. The creature followed its mistress into the depths of the Sea of Night.
From deep within Agarta came a soundless cry of exultation. The Sea of Night vanished. A huge salt wave splashed up against the turret and in through the open window, narrowly missing Chen and the others. It raced down the staircase, washing the city clean. Agarta spun again and Chen briefly blacked out with the sudden momentum. When he opened his eyes once more, the city hung in a clear sky, with the towering peaks of the Himalayas beyond. The sun touched the long lines of the glaciers, spilling into icy fire. Roerich’s face was filled with peace.
“She’s gone,” was all he said.
But Chen could hear moaning. With Zhu Irzh, he ran to a door set in the wall, close to the main parapet of the city. When they wrenched it open, they found Nandini crouched behind it. Her face was in her hands.
“Come on,” the demon said. “It’s okay. You can get up now.”
Nandini turned a traumatized face toward him. “How could this have happened?” she whispered.
“The city’s become too far removed from the affairs of men,” Roerich said. “Men, and other things — it’s become too distant from Heaven and Hell. You’ve so little experience of evil now, so little memory of it, that you don’t recognize it when it appears and all your defenses are as dust. That has to change. Either that or you simply keep the city here, amongst the high pure peaks. It’s your choice.” He looked up as he spoke, glancing past Nandini, and for a second Chen saw the other Enlightened Ones. A woman in a headdress of peacock’s feathers, a tall, stern man in blue, a Chinese sage amid the throng. But Roerich, unintimidated, went on: “But if you do choose the world of ice, it is my opinion that the city will start to wither, be blasted at the root. It needs the conflict and tension of the other realms in order to thrive, for its role is balance.”
“We will give thought to what you say,” said a voice from the air, and Chen did not think it sounded pleased. But whether or not this was the case, the grudging note in it suggested that Roerich’s words had left their mark. Roerich bowed.
“I thank you,” he said. And before the words had left his mouth, the room around them had changed. The Himalayas disappeared. They were once more standing in the boardroom of Paugeng, with Jhai and Robin and Inari staring at them across the floating body of the Emperor of Heaven.
•
Omi ran down alleyways, ducked under awnings, dodged parked cars. The ifrit veered ahead, its wingspan so wide that it had to tilt in order to fly. Omi, with a brief prayer for forgiveness, leaped onto the roof of someone’s Mercedes and drew his bow. The arrow struck home; the ifrit fell from the air like a downed pterodactyl and burst into flames.
It was raining. The downpour had started around dawn, with thunder that seemed trapped over the city, rolling around and around and out across the bay. Now, five hours later, the Khan had still not made a move, but the ifrits were pouring into the city like the rain itself and Omi could not think that they were unconnected. A bold move on the part of the Khan, Omi thought. The incoming ifrits were keeping the army occupied and the government had called off the air force: too many tall towers. Shots fired at the Khan had whizzed harmlessly into vapor, and still the Khan sat upon his pony as if carved out of iron indeed, and smiled. Omi jumped down from the car and left its alarm shrieking behind him.
He was, as yet,
unsure of what his role would be. He had spoken to Chen’s department, been introduced to one Sergeant Ma and a demon hunter out of Beijing. Omi and the demon hunter had eyed one another appraisingly, like an evaluation, and come to a tacit mutual regard. The hunter, No Ro Shi, had then introduced him to the departmental exorcist, Lao, a gaunt and acerbic man who had nonetheless welcomed Omi and then told him that he was more or less useless.
“Your most valuable asset as far as I’m concerned is information,” Lao said. “That’s not to say that we don’t value your skills as a warrior — far from it. But we have got to look at the wider picture and we’ve already got enough firepower. For what it’s worth.” Lao looked momentarily sour. “It’ll be magic that will win this war, mark my words.”
