Poison Sleep

by T. A. Pratt

  “So what’s the next step?” Gregor said.

  “I take Genevieve to my tower. She wakes and sees where she is. She submits to my power. Then? Conquest. Subjugation.” He grinned, showing his hideous teeth. “I’ve been looking forward to this all my life.”

  15

  S he’s gone,” Austen said, materializing from wherever he was when he wasn’t in the library. “I think something’s happened.”

  “Maybe Marla found her,” Zealand said. “She was going to sedate her. Genevieve may wake in the hospital, safe.”

  “I suppose,” Austen said, though he paced around and wouldn’t relax. As the minutes stretched into hours, Zealand worried, too. He tried to read, but the books in the library were incomplete, making sense for only a few pages at most before trailing into gibberish or blank pages. Austen said the books were made up of whatever Genevieve could remember from things she’d read, so nothing was wholly there, and even the fragments were inaccurate and misremembered as often as not. He couldn’t find his lost The Art of War anywhere, and Genevieve’s version turned into limericks three pages in.

  A great rumble shook the palace, and Zealand went to the balcony. There was nothing around them but clouds—until a chunk of masonry fell from the top of the palace and whistled past him, plummeting through the cloudbank. More chunks followed, and soon Zealand retreated inside to keep from being smashed. “Austen, it’s all coming apart!”

  “She’s been captured, then,” Austen said, shaking his head. “By Reave. He always said the first thing he would do was tear down her palace, to show her there were no more safe places in all the world. We’re doomed.”

  “The hell we are,” Zealand said. “How do we get out of here, back to the real world?”

  Austen shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never left. I’m not sure, even now, that I could leave, that I’m…cohesive enough…to survive out there.”

  “It’s leave, or have this place come down around us.” Zealand grabbed Austen by the shoulders and shook him. “Come on.”

  Austen nodded. “We can jump down, through the cloudbank. Marla fell through the clouds that way, and she landed all right.”

  Now Zealand hesitated. “Just…jump?” As if responding to the word, the books began leaping from the shelves and falling on the floor. The whole palace was vibrating now.

  “Unless you can think of a better option,” Austen said.

  “Nothing ventured,” Zealand said, and took Austen’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure serving with you, sir.”

  “Same to you. Once upon a time, I was a probability-shifter, and even though this body is just borrowed from Genevieve’s mind…well, I’ll exert myself as much as possible to give us good luck. It’s possible to survive falling out of an airplane, if you land just right.”

  “Assuming we don’t just fall forever through dreamspace,” Zealand said.

  “Assuming that.”

  They made their way to the balcony—the tower was listing hard to that side anyway, so gravity helped. Zealand looked down, and couldn’t see anything but white clouds. He took a breath, then let it out. “Over the side,” he said, and jumped, followed a moment later by Austen.

  They fell through the clouds, and the Earth—only it wasn’t the Earth—was far below, a vast expanse of ivory-yellow dotted with bits of green. Tears flew from Zealand’s eyes as he slitted them against the wind, and he turned to look at St. John Austen, who was falling alongside. But something was happening to Austen, bits of him tearing away, turning to dust and gossamer. He dissolved like sugar, feet vanishing, legs vanishing, hands and forearms and elbows and biceps unspooling and trailing away like smoke. He turned his head to Zealand, and opened his mouth as if to make some final apology or promise, but his head disappeared, and his body, and then Zealand was falling alone. He shouted, “No!” but the wind stole his words away. Austen was right. He hadn’t possessed enough personal substance to survive beyond the boundaries of Genevieve’s palace.

  As he fell—he fell for so long—Zealand wondered what would happen to him. Could Reave force Genevieve to dispel the mold that had sealed Zealand’s wounds and saved his life? Would he die from the knife wounds in his back? Did it matter at all? Would he smash to pieces on the hard plain below?

  He landed in the water. From that height, hitting water should have been like hitting concrete, but it was no worse than a belly-flop into a pool, except for the cold. The mold swarmed over his body, insulating him from the worst of the icy waters, and he kicked and flailed to the surface, looking around, blinking water from his eyes, trying to get his bearings. The city on the shore there—was it Felport? It was hard to tell through the snow, and the approaching gloom of dusk.

  A blond surfer-girl in a blue wetsuit surfaced beside him. “You’re all green,” she said.

  Zealand stared at her, then laughed. “Yes, I am. Isn’t it a bit cold for surfing?”

  She shrugged. There was no surfboard in evidence. “I get by.”

  Zealand cleared his throat while he tread water—the mold was doing all the physical work for him, moving his arms and legs in perfect form. “Are you some kind of…sorcerer?”

  “I’m the Bay Witch. This is my bay. I noticed you fall in. I didn’t see where you came from.”

  “Ah, yes.” It was surreal, having a polite conversation five hundred yards from shore, in the freezing bay of Felport in the middle of winter. “Marla Mason mentioned you.” He improvised a little. “She spoke quite highly of you.”

  “You know Marla?”

  “I’ve been assisting her with the recent unpleasantness.”

  “The lady who has bad dreams. What are you doing in my bay?”

  “I fell. From another world. I landed here.”

  “Lucky. You could have landed on top of a wrought-iron fence or something.”

  “I am counting my blessings even now. I should get to shore.”

  “It’s not very pleasant up there,” she said. “There are monsters in the streets. I saw them, when I swam in close. There’s an army of men with shadows for faces. The word is, Marla failed, and now we’re all fucked.” She shook her head. “There are terrible things under the waves. I’m fighting them, but they’re coming up out of caves that weren’t here this morning, and there’s no end to them. I should get back. Tell Marla I’m doing my best to keep the waters safe.”

  “I will,” Zealand said, and she dove beneath the waves. He began kicking his way toward the shore. If he encountered any of Reave’s men, he would fight them, and if Genevieve had been captured, he would just have to rescue her. What else could he do? He’d chosen his side, and he wouldn’t do anything differently if he could. But if he could get Marla’s help, so much the better.

  “Rondeau, I don’t know what to do,” Marla said. She sat at the bar, drinking a weak vodka tonic. She couldn’t afford to get drunk, but she couldn’t cope sober. The cloak had healed her burns, but it hadn’t helped the memory of pain. She’d never been fully engulfed in fire before, and it was probably in the top five most horrible things that had ever happened to her. Nicolette had really gotten the drop on her, but at the same time, Marla had to admire her skills—the booby traps were effective, and she must have set them up in a hurry. “At this point I’m just glad I’m not on fire anymore, and that’s setting the bar pretty low.”

  Rondeau sat beside her. He was her oldest friend, the only person she felt comfortable being even halfway open with, apart from Joshua. When Rondeau saw the flash of flame, he’d gotten up, busted head and all, to dump snow on her. By the time Joshua woke up and joined them, Marla’s burns were healed, and she was basically naked under the cloak except for her boots, all her non-magical clothing burned away. Her hair was singed, but it had been short anyway, so the harm wasn’t serious. Without the cloak, she would have been killed. Joshua had doted over her like a mother hen until she finally sent him to get some rest on the couch in her office.

  “We’ve never been fucked at quite this ang
le before, that’s for sure,” Rondeau said.

  Marla drained the glass, considered having another, and thought better of it. “Reave is digging in. His tower is in Ernesto’s junkyard, and his army is coming out of it. I mean, we can fight him. Viscarro has all kinds of nasty shit down in those vaults, stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. The Chamberlain can stir up her ghosts. We can push back the army. But…I’m not sure it would help. I mean, he’s not going to run out of fighters. He creates these things from nothing, from Genevieve’s nightmares.”

  “As long as he’s got Genevieve, we can’t beat him,” Rondeau said. “Not for good. So, I mean, there’s no question of what to do—we go in and rescue Genevieve.”

  Marla considered. He had a point. “I can mobilize the other sorcerers, get them to fight Reave’s forces directly, let him think that’s the approach we’re taking. And I can take a small force, handpicked guys, make my way into Reave’s tower, and get Genevieve out. He must have her locked in a room somewhere, tormenting her. Even if she falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, he’s destroyed her palace, convinced her there’s no safe place she can hide, not even in her dreams.”

  “What’s locked up can be unlocked,” Rondeau said.

  Hamil came down from upstairs. “I just talked to the mayor. He says there’s looting and rioting, and he’s blaming it on the bad weather and the state of emergency, the usual. People are staying inside, mostly. But Marla, if Reave’s people start kicking down doors…” He shook his head. “We can’t hide this from the populace indefinitely. Eventually, the governor is going to wonder why he hasn’t heard anything from one of the largest cities in the state for a while, and who knows what will happen then?”

  “We have to act fast,” Marla said. “I get that. Call Ted down here. I need to talk to everybody.”

  “Even me?” Zealand said, coming in from the side door. He was wet, and though the water was mostly frozen, he began dripping as soon as he entered the heat of the club.

  “You’re alive!” Marla said. “Where the fuck were you last night? Why are you wet?”

  “I ran into Reave. He attacked me in the closet, and got the better of me. Genevieve scooped me up and took me to safety. But she disappeared, and her palace began to crumble, and when I jumped, I fell in the bay. Eventually.” He spread his hands.

  “What about St. John Austen?” Marla said. “Did he…?”

  Zealand only shook his head.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “We’re going to go bust Genevieve out of Reave’s tower. Tonight.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” Zealand said.

  Marla assembled her strike team: herself, Zealand, and Ernesto, who had insisted on coming, because, as he said, “That bastard has his tower on my real estate, and I want to kick him out.” Marla had refused to let Rondeau or Joshua come; they both had useful skills, but while Rondeau was an adequate brawler, he wasn’t meant for this kind of quasi-military operation. And Joshua would just be a distraction to her. She’d be so worried about his well-being that she’d have a hard time focusing on the task at hand. There had never been any chance of Ted coming, of course, though he was in charge of calling the other sorcerers to coordinate the diversionary action.

  They made their way to Langford’s warehouse, fighting with a squad of Reave’s shadow-faced men right on his doorstep. The things didn’t even leave behind corpses when they died, only puddles of viscous black slime. Langford let her group into his heavily reinforced warehouse, and now Marla was considering his available firepower.

  They hadn’t exactly come unarmed. Marla had her boots, her rings, her cloak, and her dagger. Zealand had the preferred tools of his trade, pistols and knives, though his best weapon was the weird crawling fungus he wore like a second skin. Ernesto had a little jar of sludge that, when opened, would release his pollution-golem, a vicious creature. He also had an array of junkyard magic, powers of decay and destruction and disintegration. Of all the sorcerers in Felport, Ernesto was the one Marla trusted most in a fight, except perhaps the Chamberlain, but she was more valuable in the diversionary action. Even now, the other sorcerers of Felport were putting together their forces, tame ghosts and golems and shapeshifters, pyromancers and poltergeist-handlers, assassins and thugs. The Four Tree Gang and the Honeyed Knots were even lending a hand. There would be battle on the streets, Felport’s finest sorcerous warriors standing against Reave’s horde. But all that was just misdirection. The real operation would take place at Reave’s tower.

  Ernesto was admiring a trident coiled with copper wire, as Langford explained that it could shoot lightning. Zealand had looked over the blendings of tech and magic and sniffed at it all, checking his pistols instead. Marla didn’t want to burden herself with lots of trickery—it could be distracting to have too many options in a tight situation, and it was better to have a few weapons she trusted utterly. She’d come here for another reason.

  “Langford,” she said, taking him aside. “We need to get to the top of Reave’s tower, fast. I think that’s where he’s keeping Genevieve. He’s a top-of-the-tower kind of guy. But if we try to fly, especially carrying Zealand, we’re going to be puking our guts out by the time we get all the way up there. Flying is like motion sickness turned up to eleven, and Ernesto’s even worse at it than I am. Do you have, like, jetpacks or something? A helicopter you can strap on your back? That kind of James Bond bullshit?”

  “As flattered as I am to be your Q, I’m afraid I don’t have anything like that,” Langford said. “But…” He tapped his finger against his lips. He sighed. “I have something. It will cost you when this is over, but…come here.” He led her to a big silver refrigerator, and opened the door, revealing a vast array of bottles, jars, and tubes. He took a small vial of red liquid from a shelf. “This,” he said, “is gorgon blood.”

  “You mean like from Medusa?”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “Well, that’s pretty cool, Langford, but how does it help me fly?”

  “Pegasus was born from Medusa’s blood,” Langford said. “The flying horse. Of course, a giant was born from it, too, and many snakes.”

  She frowned. “You’re telling me that if you drop that blood on the floor, a flying horse is going to spring into existence? Magic’s magic, Langford, but that’s some mythic shit.”

  “Medusa and Poseidon mated, but their offspring were not born until Medusa was beheaded, and her blood spilled into the sea. This blood, I am reliably informed, was caught in midair, and never touched earth or water. Thus, its potency remains. Pour a drop into the sea, and a new son of god and monster will be born.” He shrugged. “I’ve never tested it, though I did a DNA test…don’t ask where I got an exemplar for comparison, it’s a long story—but it’s real. I always thought it was something I’d experiment with in my retirement.”

  “You’re sure you don’t have a jetpack?”

  “No. But I have a device that can override conscious will and give you direct control over another creature. Of course, you have to fasten it on the creature’s head first. So if you do manage to make a flying horse, or something like it, you can control it, and make it fly wherever you wish.”

  “Like the magic bridle Bellerophon used to tame Pegasus?”

  Langford shrugged. “It’s a hobby. I like the old myths, even though the gods in those aspects are mostly obsolete and long vanished. I thought, in my retirement, I might conjure a winged beast and travel the world. Perhaps find a monster or two to slay.” He gave a little half smile, and Marla felt she was seeing a new side of Langford. She knew him as an obsessive perfectionist who seldom left his lab except to acquire new research materials, but apparently, inside him, there was a world-wandering warrior waiting to get out.

  She could explore her new understanding of Langford’s character later. The matter at hand mattered more. “What if a giant gets born, instead of something that flies?”

  He shrugged. “A giant co
uld perhaps lift you to the top of the tower. It’s just an idea. You don’t have to do it. Of course I’ll charge you dearly if you do. I could use a new laboratory.”

  “This feels a little like letting a bunch of cobras loose in your house to take care of your mouse problem,” Marla said. But she took the vial.

  “One drop,” Langford said. “You don’t want a horde of monsters rising from the surf.”

  “Okay. What am I supposed to do with my magical flying whatever after we’re done? I can’t exactly donate it to the Felport Zoo.”

  “You could bring it back to me for dissection. I’m sure it would be very interesting.”

  Marla blinked at him. So much for Langford’s romantic streak. “We should get moving.”

  “Oh, you’ll want these,” he said, and rummaged in a drawer until he came up with a pair of aviator goggles. “Just say the word ‘zoom’ and they’ll become binoculars. ‘Unzoom’ and they’ll go back to normal.” He gave that half smile again. “I guess I’m a bit like Q, after all.”

  She took the goggles and called Ernesto and Zealand over. “Come on, guys. We have to go down to the beach.”

  “This seems ill advised,” Zealand said, standing in the dark on the snowy beach, watching as Marla waded out up to her ankles. There was enough light from the streetlights on the hill behind them to provide some ambient illumination, and Marla had her night-eyes working, sucking up stray light to make her vision almost as good as it was in daylight.

  “I think it’s great,” Ernesto said. “We pussyfoot around too much trying to be safe. I didn’t become a sorcerer to be careful. Let’s see some miraculous shit!”

  “Yeah,” Marla said. She opened the vial, put her fingertip over the opening, and tipped it over. She righted it and lifted her finger away, a drop of blood shining on the fingertip. She awkwardly stoppered the vial one-handed and slipped it into her pocket. “You guys ready?”