Assail Infinity
“How much time before the green fires destroy the charmways to the Dark Shore?" Reece asked Lady Von, standing together with Jyoti in the brisk wind at the heights of Gabagalus. Several black dirigibles hovered above the coraline crags, conducting trade with the wort farms and distant, crystalline cities that glittered like fallen stars, wholly indifferent to the threat of goblins.
"Is there time for us to return to New Arwar and destroy the last of the goblins?" Jyoti clutched the witch queen's robed arm. "Can we do that and still bring Dogbrick back to Irth?"
Lady Von took each of their hands. "The glare of the charmfires obscures the Sisterhood's view of the future."
Reece cocked his head skeptically. "You've withheld information from me before."
"Esre's death must not burden you at this critical moment." Lady Von pressed closer to Reece. "I did not withhold fateful knowledge from you. You know that. So, trust me now. I cannot tell you when the charmway to the Dark Shore will collapse. There may not be time for you to go and return even now."
Reece anguished for his friend Dogbrick. Is he still alive? he had to ask himself to defeat the urgency he felt to return at once to Earth. The goblins in New Arwar were alive. That he knew, and this dark knowledge was sufficient for him to decide.
"It's clear we must go to New Arwar at once and destroy the goblins," Reece said.
Jyoti asked, "Can you not contact the Brood of Assassins and send them in?"
"I will do so at once. But there is little time." The witch queen released their hands and stepped toward a metal door set among bolted seams at the side of a massive berthing post for dirigibles. "The goblins in New Arwar have surely sensed the destruction of their comrades. The longer we wait, the greater the possibility they will elude us."
She opened the door and removed two amulet-shawls and a firelock. She passed them the shawls and hefted the blunt-nosed rifle. Running her hand over the chrome barrel's heat tarnish, she spoke, "This is the only weapon I could find at so short notice. In fact, it is the only weapon I have ever handled."
Jyoti and Reece dropped their heavy charmor vests and donned the shawls. Charm relieved their feverish exhaustion, and they stood taller and more alert. The margravine took the firelock from Lady Von, checked the gold-jacket Charm cartridge fitted into the black housing, and nodded to see it fully charged.
"Go get Dogbrick." Jyoti set the charge pin to maximum and backed toward the charmway that led to New Arwar. "I'll take care of the goblins."
"No." Reece strode after her. "We're staying together from now on. Remember?"
Jyoti stopped under the weight of a heartbroken frown. "I want us to be together, you know that. But I can't ask you to abandon your friend. The last charmways are burning."
"I don't even know if he's alive," Reece countered. "But we know there are more goblins. Thousands of lives are in jeopardy."
"Yes!" Lady Von waved them off urgently. "Go to New Arwar. I will find your friend Dogbrick upon the Dark Shore. I owe you at least that for what you have done to protect the dominions." She drew the black veils over her face. "Go quickly now. The goblins are alerted. You must catch them before they flee."
Jyoti and Reece ran together across the platform of the air pier and into the tunnel that the Sisterhood of Witches had connected by charmway to Elvre. They crossed through a corridor of raw rock, where green rumors of light seeped from slick side passages with blowsy drifts of heat and a stench of charred rock.
Presently, they entered a lightless cavern. The lux-diamonds of their shawls released eye sparks from a covey of bats among the stalactites.
They charged up a long series of switchbacking steps that brought them to a large chamber of massive, gray-metal cylinders radiating pipes coded by color. "We're in the manor's basement, with the air cycler," Jyoti recognized. "We'll take the lift to the goblin's floor."
"Better not," Reece warned. He pointed to a black lens hidden among the shadows of elbowing pipes. "We're being watched. That's a video camera. I didn't know you had that technology on Irth."
"We don't." Jyoti adjusted her charge pin and fired a red bolt that smashed the camera to crumpled metal. "It's Overy Scarn. She's taken New Arwar for herself." She checked her niello eye charms before shouldering open a service door beneath a lintel of brightly painted pipes. "You're right about the lifts. They're traps. We'll take these back stairs."
At the head of the stairs, the sentinel chief, Roidan waited with five guards. .38 auto pistols drawn, they aimed at the doorway the couple would pass through to access the goblins' floor. Overy Scarn had alerted them to the intruders she had seen in her surveillance cameras, and she watched the interceptors on a monitor screen in her suite.
Rapid bursts of yellow charmfire struck the guards from behind, throwing them against the door in a bloody huddle. Roidan spun about in a crouch, and a hot bolt struck his pistol and exploded it in his hands. Flying metal shards of the ripped weapon shredded his crimson-and-gold armorial uniform and tore the face from his skull.
Instantly, Overy Scarn leaped from the chair where she had been fingering her spellbinder girdle and stared aghast at the torn corpses of her sentinels.
Jyoti's face appeared on the monitor. She offered the camera a hard stare and thumbed the niello eye charm on her amulet-shawl that had warned her of the ambush. "You're next," she mouthed and pointed her firelock at the lens.
Static burst across the monitor, and Overy Scarn staggered back, shocked at how simply the margravine had eluded her trap. Jyoti had simply exited the stairwell where Overy had last eyed her and Reece and had followed an amulet to an unguarded flight of stairs.
"She relied too heavily on her Dark Shore weapons," Jyoti muttered angrily. She stalked toward the door that led to what had once been her bedchamber. "She forgot about Charm."
Reece was not listening. He already stood before the goblins' door. He could feel them within, pulling at the Charm in his shawl, urging him to open the door. His blue-white knuckles glowed with pain where he held the doorknob—pain that coursed from within, from the anguish of the five that remained—the last of the goblins.
A cry of mourning began to assail infinity, keening the loss of the hundreds, reaching in despair higher than time to the desolate emptiness outside pain, beyond suffering, to where the greasy smoke of the consuming charmfire had launched the souls of their dead.
Jyoti shoved Reece aside and kicked open the bedchamber door. In a gauzy nimbus of white webs, the room glared with light from starry windows. An ammoniacal stink gushed out, and with it came Nette, a razor knife slashing.
Jyoti blocked the blade with her weapon, and the knife and the firelock clattered to the floor as the two women collided. Nette rolled on top, her gummy hands reaching for Jyoti's throat, her grimacing face greased in goblin yolk.
The Doom of New Arwar
From behind, Reece tackled Nette. Knocking her away from Jyoti, he tumbling with her across the corridor. Immediately, he found himself on his back, his arms paralyzed by two nerve jabs so swift he never felt them. The assassin's left hand jerked his head back by the hair, exposing his larynx, and the right heel of her hand cocked for a death blow.
Before she could strike, the margravine rolled to where the firelock lay, seized it, and fired, slamming Nette with a bolt of red energy.
The door to the bedchamber slammed shut. On her back, Jyoti rammed the door with her heels and knocked it loose from one hinge. She hurriedly crawled into the radiant room, the firelock thrust in front of her.
Five goblins bunched together in a corner, crying. Webs of planet light draped them from the night-shining windows, silhouetting their bone-warped arms and bowed legs. A curd of furry white gel sacs dangled like spider's eggs from the walls and window frame behind them.
Their cries wailed with almost musical despair, and their craze-lidded eyes stared white and sharp with pain. Flexing their little hands, they reached for the demon that crawled into their chambe
r—not warding off their destroyer but beseeching her, plaintively summoning her—
Jyoti had no mind for mercy. She remembered what they had done to her when last she occupied this room. Frightened that their gel sacs might rupture and mesmerize her again, she fired several frenzied rounds of blue-white energy at their cringing bodies.
They splattered into burning gouts of flesh and writhing eels of sizzling viscera that shriveled almost instantly to bubbling tar. The heat of the bolts ignited the goblins' web work, and the gossamer draperies billowed into vigorous sheets of flame.
Arms upraised against the violent heat, Jyoti jumped backward and collided with Nette. She whirled about, flames buffeting against the protective aura of her amulet-shawl, and brought her firelock to bear on the assassin.
"Don't!" Nette lifted her hands to show she offered no threat. "I’m free of the goblins' spell!" She grabbed Jyoti's shawl and fell backward to the floor, tossing the margravine over her and out the door. Jyoti crashed into Reece, and they both sprawled into the corridor.
In a moment, the assassin tumbled over them. Her silver, bristle-cut hair singed black by the conflagration that blazed in the doorway behind her, she cried "It's going to explode!" She took the dazed couple by their elbows and stood them up. "Scarn stores her weapons and ammunition from the Dark Shore in the attic room above the bedchamber. We must get off this floor!"
"Where is Poch?" Jyoti cried.
Nette scrambled toward the main stairway, and Reece and Jyoti followed. A squad of sentinels met them on the first landing, and as they raised their auto pistols, the stored weapons in the attic detonated.
A fireball bloomed from the upper storey, and Jyoti charged ahead of it. Screaming and shooting short bursts of star-white energy from her firelock, she cut her way through the startled sentinels. The assassin locked arms with Reece and leaped over the banister.
In the suite below, Poch and Shai Malia felt the blast despite their ear-buds and glanced listlessly at each other where they lay on the divan. As Poch reached for the black glass pipe, the double doors to the suite burst inward. Three steaming and charred figures staggered toward them, a wall of flames seething in the corridor behind.
Poch yanked the ear-buds from his head, heard screams from the inferno beyond, and groped among the divan's cushions for his gun.
"Poch!" Jyoti shouted. "It's me!"
Squinting against the spark-spinning smoke that slouched into the suite like a great beast, he recognized the smudge-faced woman with the cropped hair. He moved to rise, and his legs gave out, flopping him back down. "Jyo—"
“The manor's burning!" Nette yelled and beckoned them from their dream-bound lounge.
"Fire is gutting the charmways too!" Jyoti grabbed her brother under his shoulder and yanked him upright. "We have to get out now."
Shai Malia found the chrome-plated handgun and pointed it at Jyoti's face. “This is a ruse! Where's Scarn?"
Nette kicked the gun from Shai Malia's hand. "It's not a ruse. The whole manor is ablaze!"
"They're doped," Reece said, staring amazed at thrashing musicians on the television, scattered cans of cola on the floor, and garments from Earth strewn over the furniture.
A splintering crash shuddered the room, and the ceiling buckled, spewing plaster and fiery hail.
"Out!" Nette screamed and pulled Shai Malia by her elbow from around the divan.
Jyoti put her arm over her brother's shoulders and swept him away from the center of the room toward the door. "This floor is collapsing! Poch—hurry!"
Reece lunged into the hallway, and only his amulets protected him from the column of flame that churned where the main stairwell had been. "We have to try for the back stairs!"
"Poch!" Shai Malia called to her husband. “The pipe! The coca crumbs!"
"Forget them!" he bawled, but she had already twisted away from Nette and scurried toward the divan. "Shai!"
Poch lurched free of his sister and ran after his wife. Jyoti moved to follow, and Nette grabbed her from behind. The assassin dragged her from the room as the buckled ceiling poured down in a deafening avalanche of flames and cinderous debris. "Poch!"
Dervish gusts of fire swirled up with scorching shrieks from the hole into which Poch and Shai Malia had plummeted under a torrent of incandescent ashes.
"They're gone!" Reece shouted, grabbing Jyoti's flailing arms.
Nette took the firelock from the margravine and activated all the power wands in Jyoti's amulet-shawl, easing her with Charm.
Pelted by searing cinders from the smoking ceiling, the three survivors dashed to the back stairs. Smoke hindered their descent, and they leaped down the steps with theriacal opals clasped to their nostrils.
Behind them, explosions shook the walls. Charmwrights, wizards, trade executives, and guards who occupied the manor had fled onto the expansive lawns, and the back stairway carried no one else.
In the basement, among the mammoth air cyclers, Overy Scarn blocked the entrance to the charmway, her Sig Sauer clasped in both hands.
"The charmway is burning!" She waved her gun at Jyoti. "I can't find my way. But you know how to get out of here, and you're taking me with you."
Nette sidestepped in front of Jyoti and shot a blue bolt as Scarn opened fire. The assassin hurled backward and collapsed dead in Jyoti's arms, her face locked in a defiant grimace.
Where Overy Scarn had stood, venomous flames curled from a char of ribs and boiling bowels, sputtering with the hex-gems of her spellbinder girdle. Hefty limbs had scattered to either side of the dark portal. And her head had disappeared, cast into the charmway.
Evil Creations
Black veils floating like a shadow, Lady Von strolled down Fifth Avenue, appalled by the fashions in the shop windows and grateful for the opal nose ring that filtered the city's toxic air. Morning sunlight slanted down the side-streets. Its bronze radiance looked dirty. Sunshine, so unlike the diamond clarity of the Abiding Star, frightened her. She understood better now why these worlds had become known as the Dark Shore.
The Sisterhood needed their queen's authority to destroy the last remnants of Duppy Hob's evil creations: the cities of Earth. Should this dim planet be purged of all the devil worshipper's amulets? Should the populace be restored to their aboriginal societies, free from the perilous magic of science? The Sisterhood possessed the Charm to do this, and it would be gruesome work.
Lady Von had immediately quashed that plan and agreed with the Brotherhood of Wizards that the destruction of the charmways both on Irth and across the Gulf would protect the Bright Worlds from Duppy Hob's wicked legacy. Staring at the weird costumes the people displayed in their most elegant storefronts and then scanning the slovenly crowds shoving through the dusty sunlight, she felt glad that soon this fetid place would no longer connect to Irth.
A team of witches had prepared for this final tour of the Dark Shore, and they had expressed angry worry when Lady Von announced that she herself would go alone to shut down the charmways on Earth. They had warned—and rightly so—that the Dark Shore swarmed with peril. The strong eye gazed blind at events beyond the Gulf. She had concurred and turned the argument back on her sisters. "Better one should risk and fail than an entire cadre. What needs be done can easily be done by one. This is the decision of your queen."
And so, Lady Von had met the margravine and the magus in Gabagalus alone, with no aides. Her witchery had directed the couple back to New Arwar, almost certainly to their deaths if the blind god Justice came to fulfillment and the one man from the Dark Shore on Irth perished. Yet she had not acted maliciously. She had bestowed on them the finest amulet-shawls that charmwrights had ever crafted, to provide maxiumum protection from morbid forces.
What would happen to Jyoti and Reece had been cleanly delivered into the hands of Chance. That blind god would decide their fates—but not Lady Von's. The Sisterhood of Witches and Brotherhood of Wizards had armed her with talismanic devices that wielded godly powers in this cold reality.
Chance alone could not defeat her, for even if Death's blind hands took her, the wizards had rigged her amulets to release white-hot rays of Charm focused to explode this gloomy planet’s small yellow star. One way or another, her mission to close the charmways would be fulfilled.
The transit from Gabagalus had been uneventful, and along her way through rock corridors that led to Earth she had left behind a trail of conjure-metal. Those silver-green ingots would erupt into charmfire at her command. Before detonating them, she had several more tasks to accomplish.
Her stroll down Fifth Avenue, after she had arrived among the erratic boulders of Central Park, had assured her that no disciples of Duppy Hob remained. As she moved within the city-amulet that the devil worshipper had created, she listened to the intelligences it touched and heard only three resonant echoes of magical power on Earth: herself, Caval, and a denizen of the Dark Shore, no doubt a disciple of Duppy Hob.
She hailed a taxi. Without uttering a word, she pressed a seeker amulet to the clear partition between her and the driver, and he turned off his meter and obediently drove her through the congested streets. When the seeker went cold in her hand, the taxi stopped at the curb before a tall building of mustard-colored brick. She exited the cab, and it glided away, the driver unaware of what had happened, already intent on finding his next fare.
The uniformed doorman stared at her with open amazement, until she waved aside his attention. In the elevator ride to the top floor, she felt for Caval again and almost did not find him this time—he had grown so thin, a filament of Charm stretched from the magnetic core of the planet up into the Gulf.
To the Abiding Star itself, Caval's voice whisked through her brain. I am a slender ray from the star of creation.
"The Brotherhood of Wizards said I would find you here," the witch queen whispered with awe, "but I did not believe them." She parted her veils, exposing the hex-gems she had pasted to her face to heighten her Charm. "You are thinner than any soul that has ever focused itself beyond the body!"
Octoberland (The Dominions of Irth Book 3) Page 28
