“Don’t feel like you need to take your time, Dubhe,” Jay called.
The monkey’s response was almost incoherent, but what came to them over the music was clearly obscene.
“Will a CF pistol work on a lion?” Alice gasped as they climbed after Dubhe.
“Don’t know. Depends on their place of origin.”
Jay threw a potted hibiscus at the lead lioness. His aim was good, but the feline shook the dirt and flower petals from her head and kept climbing. Alice followed suit, nailing a black-maned lion in the shoulder.
“I hope no one notices us,” she said.
“Doubt they will,” Jay said. “Look up.”
Alice did. The skies were full of gods and monsters.
Bel Marduk stood atop the northern ziggurat; an impossibly beautiful dark-haired woman accepted the crowd’s homage from the south. Both of these figures were on the heroic scale, but more realistically sized beings were taking flight, some upon winged steeds, other by spreading wings that recalled those of angels.
Most were strikingly handsome or beautiful and clad in costumes similar to those worn by the Elishite clergy. Amid this pageant, one figure stood out—a pot-bellied fellow who appeared to have a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other. A pair of brilliant orange sunglasses hung from a multicolored braided lanyard around his neck. He was clearly laughing, although the sound was inaudible through the cheers of the crowd and the blaring music.
“Jay,” Alice said, “something’s happening over at the ziggurat across from us—at the eastern one.”
“Great!” Jay kicked out, landing a booted foot solidly on the nose of a lion. “And Dubhe?”
“Almost there.”
Alice heaved another potted hibiscus at the approaching lions. She wondered why she and Jay hadn’t brought more weapons, reminded herself that they had decided that in RT weapons would endanger innocents in the crowd. Still, she wished she had at least a can of mace.
“I wonder,” Jay called, “where the Elshie security team is?”
“Jay,” Alice answered, “I think those lions are part of the security team.”
“Shit.”
* * *
The crossover was complete. After millennia, the gods and goddesses of Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria again breathed the air of the world they had once ruled. If some of them were disappointed at the pollution or that their worshipers radiated amusement and excitement rather than awe, they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Then, from the east a great light shone forth, a light that caused even the brilliance of the sun to seem dimmed. Forth from the heart of that glow stepped a mighty figure. This time the crowd screamed in fear
(especially those in the eastern grandstands), for what towered over them was an enormous multiheaded dragon.
“Tiamat!” Bel Marduk roared, fire bursting from his lips.
The dragon screamed a challenge, a shrill sound like dozens of cartoon pterodactyls falling on their prey.
The lesser gods got out of the way, heading north or south. A few forgot the warnings that the western ziggurat could not support significant weight and landed on its jutting steps, causing the structure to shudder and chunks of plasterboard sprayed with decorative pseudo-stone to plummet down.
From within the halo of the multiheaded dragon, lesser beings were emerging: small dragons the size of Cadillac limousines, blobs like manta rays that flew on the air, squid that jetted through the ether.
The deities of Sumer and Babylon heard Ishtar give the call to battle, surged again into the air, the Celebration forgotten, aware of the terrified humans only as a fit audience for their first epic battle of the post-crossover age.
Bel Marduk raised his arm to smite Tiamat; Ishtar cried out commands to the rallying godlets; Tiamat shrieked her defiance.
Huddled behind a particularly well-arranged cluster of honeysuckle and hibiscus, a skinny black spider monkey flipped a bronze switch. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened. Then the ruby crystals glowed like coals and the white like stars. There was a resonant buzz that caused all who heard it, divine or mortal, human or animal, to cover their ears.
“CROSSOVER CANCELED,” noted the crystal screen. When Dubhe dared look up, he saw that this was true.
* * *
Tranto the pliant stood beside Death on the plains surrounding Mount Meru and watched as the gods boiled out of the crossover area. Death sat upon the horse that Jay Donnerjack had coveted, clad in armor of bone and rust. The hound Mizar sat at his feet, sniffing the winds.
Now that there was no more need for the facade of Babylon and Sumer to be maintained, many of the deities shed their costumes, transforming into fantastic shapes from every myth and legend remembered in the Verite and from many forgotten. Some, such as Bel Marduk and Ishtar, remained as they were since this was as they were.
“Jay and Alice have done it.” The Lord of Deep Fields could not be imagined capable of cheering, but his deep-voiced words held something of the sense. “And the denizens of Virtu come back to their mountain to fight for precedence as they did in the days of old. Now the armies gathered will meet as they did during the millennia following the Great Flux.”
“And you?” Tranto asked.
“As always, my Fields will be enriched. I am here to settle a few scores.”
They watched as great birds clashed with dragons, as whales swallowed tanks, as trees bombarded elven hosts with acorns.
Sayjak, eyes bleared with visions and lack of rest, led the People to fall on a horde of icy slugs. A phant who might have been Muggle tore up tree trunks and flung them at a pack of dire wolves. A Red Cross ambulance bore Paracelsus and Sid to bring aid to those proges judged too minor for repair by their divine generals.
“Where will you seek your prey?” Tranto asked.
“I have no need to seek,” the Lord of Entropy replied. “In the end, I am always in the right place. Mizar, step about a meter to the left.”
The hound did so, moving just as Jay Donnerjack, Alice Hazzard, and Dubhe appeared in the place where he had stood. The Lord of the Lost permitted himself a small smile.
“You have done well, Jay,” he said. “Why do you return here?”
“We’re looking,” Jay answered, “Alice and I, for our missing parents.”
“Alice, I owe you for your assistance,” said Death, “and I prefer to pay my debts swiftly lest they are embarrassingly recalled at a later date. Your father—having performed his roles as the Master and the One Who Waits—has again become the Piper and, as such, is fighting with his Legion.”
In a single motion, less a dismounting than a dislocation, Death dismounted his steed.
“You and Jay may take my mount and seek the Piper. It will shield you within my aura until you choose to take part in the battle. After that, my protection is lifted.”
“And my mother… Ayradyss?” Jay asked.
“Keep your eyes to the sky,” Death said cryptically. “Let Dubhe bide with me and Tranto. I promise that no harm will come to him.”
The two scions of Virtu and Verite rode into the maelstrom of battle.
“I can’t tell who’s winning,” Alice said, something of Link Crain in her voice. “I can’t even tell who’s on what side! I’m glad I don’t have to cover this war.”
Death’s steed carried them to where the sound of bagpipes cut through the noise of battle and there they found Ambry standing over a fallen comrade, playing mightily, his cheeks red and rounded. As they advanced, the fallen soldier vanished, reappearing moments later fit and ready again to fight.
“I’ve no choice,” Alice said. “Get me up close to him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Draw him through into the Verite. That’s the only place where he’s safe from being used by Skyga as a pawn.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can only try.”
Before Jay could protest, she had slipped to the ground and away.
“Alice!”
The young woman only ran, and when she reached the side of Wolfer Martin D’Ambry, he seemed to know what she intended. Ceasing to play, he gave his hand into hers. A glow surrounded them, but before Alice could effect the crossover, something blotted out the sun.
Jay turned his gaze upwards and saw Alioth, the black butterfly, now again the mighty thunderbug. Skyga was seated upon the bug’s thorax, his face terrible with rage. Ball lightning was forming within his hand.
The god had raised his hand to hurl destruction upon his fleeing minion when a slender, graceful form that seemed to swim through the air as much as fly on its dragon’s wings rose from the battlefield. Ayradyss swung the Sword of Wind and Obsidian into Alioth’s underbelly.
“No!” Jay screamed.
The blast of ball lightning forced tears from his eyes, tears that blurred his vision of the duel between the Angel of the Forsaken Hope and Alioth, the Black Butterfly, Mount of Gods. When Jay had scrubbed his eyes clear again, the winged mermaid was no more, leaving a great emptiness in his heart. Dots of moire scattered the landscape, dust from a butterfly’s wings. Nothing was to be seen of Skyga, Alice, or Wolfer Martin D’Ambry.
Jay sobbed. “What’s happened?”
“The combatants destroyed each other,” came the voice of his father from his wrist. “I could not perceive what happened to Alice and the Piper. They may have been slain by Skyga, or they may have made their escape.”
“You’re so cold.”
“I am merely an aion.”
Jay bent over the horse’s neck. The steed wheeled through the quieting battlefield and the scattered moire parted as it bore Jay hack to
Death. Still sobbing, Jay murmured a rhyme he had learned when he was little more than an infant:
Butterfly, butterfly. Flutterby, flutterby. Come to me, come to me. I’m lonely todee.
This time, nothing came to his call.
FIFTEEN
Randall Kelsey stood atop the westernmost ziggurat surveying the damage below. He had not noticed the device of crystal and platinum hidden in the shrubs near his right foot. Nor did he notice when a small black monkey appeared from nowhere, grabbed the machine, and vanished again.
He did hear footsteps that approached from below.
“Hello, Randall.”
“Hello, Emmanuel.”
“Arthur.”
“I know. I just never stopped thinking of you as Emmanuel Davis. Arthur Eden was a bugaboo to scare Elshies with. I always rather liked Davis.”
“Thanks. So what are you going to do now that the Church of Elish is bust?”
“It is, isn’t it? With the Hierophant going on the talk circuit to explain that the entire idea was his greatest joke ever there will be no fancy talk getting us out of trouble this time.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Maybe I’ll write a book, call it something like Butt of a Joke. I know lots of things that the Hierophant—Aisles—won’t be admitting.”
“Good idea. Want a collaborator? I have lots of experience and some great publishing connections.”
Kelsey grinned. “I like the idea. Can I buy you a drink? I’d love to know where you’ve been all these years.”
“Sounds great.”
They walked away from the ruins of a place where once, briefly, gods had again walked the earth.
* * *
Sayjak led the People back to the jungle, but he no longer gleamed with golden light, nor did tactical brilliance come to him in dreams. Devastated by the battles they had fought, their families weak and ruined, the other bosses turned on the one they had hailed as the Boss of Bosses.
They had begun the delightful process of beating him within an inch of his life when the biggest phant anyone had ever seen emerged from the jungle and trumpeted loudly. Dropping the head of Big Betsy behind him, Sayjak fled.
Secretly he was relieved. Being Boss of Bosses just wasn’t for him.
* * *
“We’ll come up with a story to explain Ambry,” Alice promised. “Drum is a wizard with fake identities.”
Wolfer Martin D’Ambry, his hand firmly entwined with that of Lydia Hazzard, grinned at his daughter.
“I have an answer I think will work. Why not say that I am Warren Bansa returned from imprisonment in Virtu?”
Alice gaped. Lydia giggled, sounding more like a girl than Alice ever did.
“We talked about it last night. I took Ambry to my lab and ran some preliminary tests. Detailed DNA work will take longer to do, but I think we can prove without a doubt that Ambry is Bansa.”
‘What a story that would be…” Alice mused. “Please, let me handle the press release! I can get the story in all over the place and guarantee you a fair review. There are going to be all sorts of protests…”
She beamed, imagining breaking one of the great stories of the year. Visions of Pulitzers danced in her head.
“When we have the test results, we’ll let you know.”
“Great!”
The door buzzer rang. Alice’s delight faded.
“That’ll be Milburn from the Donnerjack Institute. I’ve got to go.”
“Good luck with Jay, honey,” Lydia said.
“He’s in bad shape according to Dack,” Alice answered. “The last straw was learning that Reese Jordan had died. I’ll do what I can, but he’s the only one who is coming out of this mess with nothing good.”
Wolfer Martin D’Ambry nodded. “I understand despair, Alice. If I can help…”
“I’ll call.”
* * *
Jay Donnerjack was getting drunk with the crusader ghost in the upper gallery of Castle Donnerjack when Alice arrived. He raised his glass and toasted her, but standing seemed beyond him. The ghost was in little better shape.
“Hi, Alice. I have a story for you.” Jay’s words were slurred. “Do you know that for the first time in centuries Castle Donnerjack doesn’t have a wailing woman?”
“It doesn’t?” Alice sank down on the floor next to him.
“Nope. My mom took the job and then Seaga swiped her and she got wiped fighting ol’ Alioth. I loved Alioth, y’know. That flutterby was my buddy when I was jus’ a squirt with no parents and nobody. Weird that my mom killed my bud or my bud killed my mom.”
“Yeah.”
“I hear that you did the crossover like a pro. Dubhe tol’ me. Now you got a mom and a dad. I don’t got either.”
“Poor Jay.”
“Yeah,” he sniffled. “Poor me.”
“Poor Jay. He has millions, a castle in Scotland with ghosts, an Institute at his command, and freedom of both Virtu and Verite. Poor, ol’ Jay Donnerjack.”
“Poor ol’…” He stopped, glared at her through bleary eyes. “Are you laughing at me, Alice Hazzard? How dare you!”
“Ever since Dack called me, all frantic, I’ve been feeling really sorry for you, Jay. Then when Milburn picked me up to bring me here, I had the whole flight to think. You did lose a lot, but lots of what you lost you never had.”
“Huh?”
“Your parents. They both died when you were tiny. Most orphans don’t get the second chance you did.”
“Aye,” the crusader ghost agreed. “The bonny lass is right.”
“Shut up!”
“And Reese, that hurt, I’m sure, but most people don’t get to have nearly immortal teachers. Reese was dying before you or I were born. He’s gone now—or is he? I couldn’t get a straight answer out of Tranto.”
“You asked Tranto?”
“Sure. Didn’t you know that he and Death hit it off really well? He visits Deep Fields so that they can build rubble constructs.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No, you’ve been sulking.”
Jay blinked at her. “I have.”
“And you’ve had good reason to, but are you ready to quit now? Dack’s a mess.”
“Poor Dack.”
“And Mizar—unlike Dubhe, he can’t come across to visit you.”
“Oh.”
Jay stared at his fingernails.
“I feel like a jerk.”
“Healthy—unless you start moping about that next.”
He punched her. She grinned.
“They say there’s truth in the vine, Alice, so I’m going to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Did you get the feeling that we were supposed to fall in love with each other?”
She blushed. “Well, yeah.”
“And that didn’t work, either.”
“Probably a good thing, too. I wouldn’t like suspecting that my loving made me a pawn in someone’s game.” She leaned and kissed him lightly on one cheek. “Anyhow, who’s to say what will happen? We’re only kids yet.”
Jay turned red. The crusader ghost laughed.
* * *
High atop Mount Meru at the center of the universe the gods sat unmoving on their stone thrones, contemplating Virtu all about them. In the past, they had sacrificed much of mobility for the better part of omniscience. Now they spared just a bit of mobility to watch their backs.
Celerity, he who had been Ben Kwinan, had borne to them a message. Written in blood red on parchment of bone-white, it had been brief and to the point:
“Now I have freedom of Mem. Do not forget.”
They did not need to see the signature, a fanciful sigil like unto a skull, to know who sent it.
“Arrogant,” said Seaga.
“Obnoxious,” agreed Skyga.
“But, sadly, true.” Earthma sighed. “It was a good game while it lasted. I, for one, shall rest long before I play again.”
She ceased speaking and closed her eyes, humming softly to herself.
Seaga lowered his voice to the faintest of whispers.
“Skyga, do you believe her?”
Skyga frowned a firmament-darkening frown.
“Her?”
High atop Mount Meru, two gods contemplated a third.
* * *
In Deep Fields he dwelled, Lord of Everything, although anything that he made tended to fall into pieces. The great silence of Deep Fields was interrupted only by Sibelius’s Symphony Number 2, Opus 43 emanating from the player hanging from a wind-blasted logic tree against which he leaned and the grunts of Tranto as he shoved rubble into a mighty mountain.
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