“Struggles among siblings,” Phecda mused, “are often the worst.”
A harsh breaking sound heralded the sound of wet, slopping feet mounting the stair.
“It comes,” Death said, “and unlike Jay’s forces, I cannot sing.”
“Alasss,” hissed Phecda, “neither can I.”
“Nor I,” said Tranto. “Though I can trumpet.”
Mizar only whined. Picking up the music box carefully in his spike-toothed mouth, he laid it at Death’s feet. The slim, cowled figure lilted it with a white hand.
“I doubt that this carries the song to charm Earthma’s savage son, faithful hound, but my thanks.”
The inner door did not delay the intruders for more than a few moments. It burst open with a great splintering of wood and protesting of hinges. Behind the shower of wood came Antaeus and, not so much at his heels as escorted by him, came Earthma.
Antaeus continued to resemble nothing so much as a blob of moire, uncomfortable to look upon, amorphous of form. As he entered the room, he was reshaping his mass from something four-legged and bull-headed into a vaguely humanoid shape. Head and neck were one smooth curve that split into two thick, rounded shoulders, beefy arms, squat torso, and token legs. There was no differentiation for facial features, hair, or anything else. More than anything else, Antaeus resembled a chalk outline of a truck driver’s corpse shaded in greenish black.
Earthma had manifested as a full-breasted, round-buttocked, woman clad only in a wealth of glinting emerald hair. Her skin was cocoa-toned, highlighted in green and rose. Objectively viewed, she was lovely, but none of those who looked upon her felt anything but varying degrees of fear and loathing.
“And so,” she said, when it became apparent that no one else would speak, “we at last come to this. Don’t you feel foolish for resisting, Old Death? All that effort and cleverness to arrive at what must come.”
“Must come?” Death’s voice was harsh.
“Death comes to us all.” Her laughter was fruity and rich. “Except to the immortal gods.”
“I had placed myself among those,” the Lord of Deep Fields said.
“You were wrong to do so. This is a time for change in Virtu and in Verite. One of the things that is to be transformed is the sovereignty of the Lord of Entropy. Now, as has always been dreamed, death shall be subjugated to the forces of life and creation.”
“Forgive me if I do not rejoice.”
“Of course. You always were a bitter old thing.”
“And now, Earthma. How do you plan to effect this changing of the guard?”
“My son will claim your cowled robe.”
“I wear it yet.”
“So I note. Will you hand it over?”
“I think not.”
“Pity that.”
“For you.”
Mizar growled, the rattling of rusty cans tied to broken barbed wire. A mountain shrugging, Tranto shifted from foot to foot. Emerging from the throat of Death’s robe, Phecda dripped venom from exposed fangs.
Antaeus lumbered forward a step, arms raised to bludgeon, thick gobs of moire oozing the power of unmaking.
“Doe, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, doe!” Light and sweet, deeper and slightly out of key, miraculous, voices raised in song, music within Death’s silent Palace of Bones.
Without, on the battlefield, the Brass Babboon heard and knew his cue. He activated the recorded music stored within his workings.
“There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.”
A polished panel of dark walnut swung open and from it emerged Jay, Alice, and Drum—all armed, all singing about holes in buckets, fixing and mending. The men took the part of hapless Henry; Alice carried Liza’s reply.
On the battlefield, those ghosts who had not been banished caught the sense of the song (or the nonsense) and joined in with glee. The force of the cheerful, coherent sound resisted the moire that Antaeus directed toward them. It wavered, but it did not warp, and with every futile attack Antaeus was diminished.
The Lord of Entropy was not affected, nor was Earthma, but the latter was so stunned by the turn of events that she forgot her son for long enough that Antaeus was visibly diminished by its attempt to continue the assault.
“Son!” she shrilled, but whatever she would have said was cut off by the report of a CF rifle.
Virginia Tallent stepped out of an alcove across the room, a hidden door open behind her. Her first several shots were directed into Earthma’s manifestation, but the remainder of the clip struck Antaeus solidly in the torso. She slammed another clip home and continued to fire at Antaeus.
“The whetstone is dry, dear Liza, dear Liza. The whetstone is dry, dear Liza is dry.”
Antaeus visibly weakened, but he did not fall. Nor did Earthma.
“Creation and chaos are not enough,” the Lord of the Lost muttered, “but I believe that they have shown me what will be.”
Stooping, he touched the floor upon which he stood. His arm vanished into it. Earthma may have divined what he intended, may have intended to interpose, but the Chaos Factors that Virginia brought to bear upon her manifestation, combined with Antaeus’s steady disintegration as the CF rounds bollixed his programming and the song interrupted his moire’s coherence, was too much for her. She raged impotently as the Lord of Entropy rose.
A block of scuffed marble, white veined with black, now rested in one skeletal hand. He opened it and withdrew a gleaming green object the size and shape of a peach pit.
“Son!” Death called, and for that moment his face and form was that of Earthma. “Catch, son!”
Antaeus reached, grasped. His moire gulped the glowing creation seed, dissolved it. At that moment, the palace settled into itself with a noise like joints popping. Startled, Virginia Tallent paused in the reloading of her CF rifle. Behind her, hinges that held the secret door unscrewed themselves and the door sagged.
“With water, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, with water, dear Henry, moisten it with water!”
Antaeus froze. Although he lacked face or much of form, the blind motion telegraphed surprise. Near him, a plaster molding fell, shattered into powder. His blobbish form moved, questing as a plant does for light.
“Your Antaeus has no earth left upon which to stand, my dear,” the Lord of the Lost said politely to Earthma.
A wall sagged inward, would have buckled then, but Tranto braced it with his forehead. Still singing, the human trio moved to the shelter of his bulk. Death continued speaking, advancing on Earthma.
“Neither does my fine palace, alas, but the end is certain.” He grinned then and with whiteness shone. “Death comes for us all, even for impudent deities who have trespassed on my realm.”
“I…”
“And on my prerogatives.”
Death gestured at Antaeus and from the moldering moire Markon’s voice was faintly heard accepting Earthma’s offered death.
“You cannot deny that.”
“I…”
“You bitch!” Her voice thin and no longer even faintly feminine, Virginia Tallent screamed. She darted across the room, dodging falling masonry and building timbers with lithe ease.
Jay stopped singing to yell, “Virginia, no!” but his cry could not reach the fury who flung herself on the goddess.
“You killed him to feed that!” Virginia flung a wild hand at Antaeus, little more than a puddle now.
“Killed him too soon,” Earthma said, fending off Virginia’s blows.
“Had I waited longer, Antaeus would have been stronger. I erred in my enthusiasm.”
Idly, she flung Virginia to the floor. The tile cracked with the impact. Virginia struggled to one elbow, a loaded CF pistol cocked in a trembling hand. She pulled the trigger, did not know that the Lord of Entropy added his force to her attack. Dying, she saw Earthma’s manifestation shiver, begin to unravel, and fragment into nonlinear code.
“But there’s a hole in the bucket…”
<
br /> “Markon,” Virginia whispered, and then she died.
Had it not been for Tranto and Mizar, neither Jay nor Alice would have made it out of the crumbling Palace of Bones. The phant sheltered them with his body, concentrating on keeping Mizar in sight as the hound found opening after opening, the structure collapsing to rubble around them.
Barely dodging a falling support beam, Desmond Drum recalled his virt form to the Verite, shouting that he would meet them at the Union Station site. Death, of course, was immune to danger from destruction and Phecda remained coiled within his cowl.
Once on the battlefield, a weeping Alice withdrew—saying between sniffles that she would brief the Brass Babboon and the remaining ghosts—and Jay was left alone with Death. Although he tried to face the Lord of the Lost with appropriate courage, he could not hold back his tears.
“Do not mourn too greatly for Virginia, Jay,” Death said with surprising kindness. “She had seen the moire, nor did she care to live on, a cripple in Verite, bereft in Virtu. Remember her kindly and do not think her a coward for choosing this way to end her suffering.”
Jay snuffled back a fresh bout of sobs.
“She’s gone, both here and in the Verite?”
“Yes. Her Veritean body was eaten with disease. When Markon died, only her desire for revenge kept her living. Having achieved something of that, she let herself believe that the injuries she had sustained battling Earthma were fatal.”
“But it isn’t fair! She didn’t really harm Earthma.”
“She may have done more damage than we know.” The Lord of the Lost sighed a very human-sounding sigh. “Antaeus represented a great expenditure of resources on Earthma’s part. The CF rounds fragmented his programming and your song made it difficult for him to use his moire to draw power from his own destruction as he had done time and again on the battlefield.”
“I wondered what he was doing,” Jay said. “I knew it had to do with creation and destruction, but…”
“Song—patterned sound—is not natural to Deep Fields, where everything loses its pattern. Your live song, as opposed to recordings, created patterns and thus created interference for the moire, which breaks down patterns.”
“I’m glad we helped.”
A glint of white within the cowl. “I wish you had picked a more lovely piece of music. Your father, at least, had taste in such things.”
“Next time.”
“The next battle will not be here, Jay. Nor will I be able to direct it, although I will assist indirectly.”
“The next battle?”
“Surely you intend to oppose the crossover,” Death said dryly. “Or do you want the likes of Earthma and myself to have free reign over the Verite?”
“You have a point.”
“But first, Jay D’Arcy Donnerjack, you and your allies need rest. Deep Fields is good for this, but alas, this time I cannot offer you a bed. I suggest you retreat to Castle Donnerjack. We can confer another time.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep,” Jay said.
“I’ve heard that before. Go. We will speak again.”
Jay sketched an awkward bow and left for the Brass Babboon. As he walked a high-pitched, broken sound followed him.
Surveying the ruins of his restored kingdom, Death was whistling.
FOURTEEN
“Four days! Can we possibly manage to stop them with only four days?”
The speaker swung by his tail from a cherry tree that swayed slightly with the motion. Caltrice worked programs to stiffen the tree; the swaying stopped; the swinging continued unabated.
“Dubhe, what choice is there?” Reese Jordan said reasonably.
“The Judeo-Christian tradition says that all the earth was created in seven days,” Desmond Drum added. “Most humans believe that Virtu came to be in a matter of hours. Thanks to Caltrice’s altered time flow, we have extra time with which to plan and some privacy.”
“That’s a hint to stop whining and get to work.” Jay reached up and patted Dubhe.
“Right. Hand me a banana, would you?”
Clad in neat black jeans, a white tee-shirt with the “Ginger Rogers” slogan printed on it in black, and sandals, the Lord of Deep Fields sat on a rock near the banks of the stream. Out of courtesy for Caltrice, this manifestation did not emanate the moire. In fact, he could have easily been mistaken for a pale man of somewhat ordinary Caucasian features if it were not for the mien of authority he bore and the fearful deference all accorded to him.
“Actually, Dubhe, there is every reason to believe that we will be able to stop the crossover attempt—the question is how to minimize casualties to our side. We have extraordinary resources at our disposal and, when you consider it, the crossover attempt is so outrageous as to be improbable. In Virtu, such things can change the outcome.
“Moreover, I have considered the effects of our battle in Deep Fields on their plans and I believe that the loss of Antaeus will hurt them sorely.”
“Could you explain why, sir?” Alice asked. “He was powerful, but he struck me as rather mindless.”
“He was, but had he defeated me and taken over my kingdom, he would have been imbued with all my knowledge and resources. To explain why this is important, permit me a diversion into matters that some, but not all, gathered here know.
“Quite simply, the crossover attempt is the most important element in a series of actions that will be coordinated around it. The armies that Skyga, Seaga, and, to a lesser extent, Earthma are gathering are not meant to cross into the Verite. Their conflict will occur in Virtu. Further, Skyga is the divine principle behind the Church of Elish.”
“The Hierophant?” Alice asked.
“No.” A very small grin shaped on the lips of the Lord of Entropy. “That is another. Skyga, however, has provided the Hierophant with power and allies. His design is to establish a beachhead within the Verite while in Virtu his forces contend with those of Seaga. If all goes according to plan, there will no longer be the Highest Three, but the Highest Two.”
Jay frowned. “If he has that much power, why would he share with Earthma?”
“Antaeus. The plan was that Earthma would maintain vassalage over her son and thus over the powers of Deep Fields. As both you and Alice have reason to know, the Great Ones create many of their troops from within their imaginations. With Antaeus in charge of Deep Fields, those troops could be ruled immune to the touch of moire. Thus their creator would be freed from the need to resurrect them. That concentration could then be directed elsewhere.”
“But when we came to your rescue,” Jay said with a certain degree of satisfaction, “we kept that from happening.”
“Precisely.”
Desmond Drum briskly rubbed his hands together. “This fits very nicely in with everything else we have learned. My guess is that Skyga no longer maintains whatever trust he had for Earthma…”
“Trust her!” Dubhe muttered, swinging faster.
“…and that she is being relegated to a secondary position.”
“It is too early to be certain,” Death answered, “and my knowledge of those On Highest Meru is less perfect than I would like… although it is improving.”
His grin recalled a skull.
“You said you thought we could win,” Alice reminded him. “How? Skyga alone is still terribly powerful.”
“And,” said Reese Jordan, who was still not comfortable conferring with a principle he had striven to avoid for so long, “why should you care about our casualties? Won’t they simply enrich your Fields?”
“They would most certainly in some cases,” Death’s gaze rested on Tranto, Dubhe, and Mizar, “although for those of Veritean origin the final destination is more problematical. From a merely practical standpoint, any plan that wastes limited but valuable resources would be foolish. I cannot resurrect those who fall and I have no desire to see Skyga win this game.
“However, there are simpler reasons. Gratitude. Friendship. When I needed help, those ga
thered here assisted me. I would not spend them lightly.”
Reese nodded. “My apologies, but I needed to know.”
“And now you do. Let us move on to the question of tactics. Even without Antaeus, Skyga and Earthma have formidable resources. We will need an ally of their rank.”
“There is only one,” Jay said, “and you can’t mean Seaga! He stole my mother!”
“That he did, and yet that is who I mean.”
“No!”
“Jay,” Tranto said, “he has a point. You saw what one of Earthma’s lesser minions did to me. If we do not have similar allies, any effort we make within Virtu is foredoomed.”
Fuming, Jay bit back his protests and let the Lord of Deep Fields continue.
“We can contact Seaga through Celerity, the messenger of the gods. I have reason to believe that he will convince Seaga to coordinate his activities with ours. Since Celerity is one of those from Higher Meru I cannot meet with him myself—unlike Earthma, he has not trespassed on my prerogatives. Therefore, one of you will need to do so—one of the Veriteans would be best since if he mortally assaults you, your virt projection can be programmed to translate the damage into thrusting you from the site.”
Silence, then Drum spoke. “Let’s settle that after we decide who is doing what elsewhere. Link and I did a lot of research into the Elishites. This, combined with what we learned about Bansa’s device, gives me every reason to believe that there is a hardware component to the crossover. If that is sabotaged, then the crossover may be stopped.”
“Or slowed,” the Lord of Deep Fields said. “Some of the deities have acquired symbiotes whose virt talent enables them to project the deity.”
Drum glanced at Alice, both remembering the day when they had been assaulted by the winged bull.
“There are two likely locations for those devices,” Jay said, “on Meru and at the California Celebration site. And, as I had nearly forgotten in all the excitement, those two sites are associated.”
Quickly he told how he had entered the factory by way of a crossover and found himself on what could only be the Celebration grounds. He concluded:
“I should make my way back to Meru—the Brass Babboon would take me—and check out what I can. If the equipment is on the Virtuan side, I’ll deal with it there. If it’s on the Veritean side, I can cross over and see what can be done.”
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