Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  «She's playing for time,» Yasmin murmured. «She probably has more wights coming around behind us.»

  «We can't take on twenty wights in our current condition,» I replied.

  «And,» Miriam added, «they're standing between us and the portal to Mount Celestia.»

  «Hezekiah,» I said, «can you teleport us around those wights?»

  He shook his head. «I don't have enough strength. I thought I was empty before I went after the Fox; now I know I'm tapped dry.»

  Wheezle cleared his throat. «I might have a spell that could help…»

  His face, his hair, his clothes were still caked solid with white anti-magic dust. «Don't do it,» I told him. «Losing Oonah was enough for one day.» I turned to Miriam. «You said there was a portal at the end of every Spider leg?»

  «Yes, but I don't know where they all go.»

  «Do you know what the keys are?»

  She shrugged. «Whoever built the Spider left keys at most of the portals. Not the one to Sigil – the key there is a picture of yourself, so you have to make your own drawing. But the other portals have keys just lying around.»

  «Darlings!» called out Rivi's projection, «have you decided to surrender yet?»

  «Just about,» I answered. «Or else we've decided to… run!»

  * * *

  The wights were not fast runners; that's all that saved us. We ran back the way we had come and the wights pursued, but with the lunging arm-swinging gait of all their kind. It slowed them down… and perhaps they were also inhibited by the resentment of being controlled, of being forced to submit to Rivi's every command. Slaves seldom move with the same zeal as those whose wills are free.

  Even if the wights could not keep up with us, the projected image of Rivi dogged our heels every step of the way. It didn't move by walking or running – Rivi's pose remained as sedate as a statue, hands folded demurely across her lap – but the projection sped effortlessly along with us, as inescapable as starlight. The ghostly image wove among us, making sudden darting motions, trying to distract and confuse us, make us trip over our own feet. Along with the sight of her was the grating honey of her voice, «You won't get away, you know. I have wights all over this building. Give me back my grinder!»

  None of us answered. We were too busy running, trying to keep our balance despite the aggravation from Rivi and the increasingly frequent tremors that rocked the building.

  Ahead of us was a lounge area, located at the junction of another of the Spider's legs. Beyond that, I could hear the hissing of more wights racing toward us from the other direction. «We have to take this exit,» I said, pointing along the corridor through the leg.

  «I don't know where the portal goes,» Miriam protested.

  «Doesn't matter. Peel it.»

  The corridor had originally sloped downward toward the ground; but as the other side of the Spider sank, this side had slowly tipped upward like the end of a see-saw. Now the corridor angled slightly skyward – only a bit, but it still took extra effort to run up it. «Kiripao,» I shouted, «I sure hope you're praying to whomever you worship that this slope doesn't get any steeper.»

  «It is counter-productive to pray while running,» he yelled back. «While you are running, run. While you are praying, pray. Never whistle while you're —»

  The Spider gave a staggering heave. Our end of the see-saw tilted a little higher.

  «Isn't this glorious!» the ghost of Rivi crowed a hair's breadth from my face. «Do you find this corridor getting a wee bit hard to climb? You'll really have to watch your footing now, won't you – one little slip, and you'll roll all the way back to the waiting arms of my wights.»

  «Pike it, slag,» Miriam snapped. But Rivi had a point: one or two more tremors and the corridor would become too steep to climb without pitons. The wights had already given up – they stood like a pack of undead wolves at the bottom of the ramp, waiting for their prey to slide down into reach.

  The Spider rocked again. Hezekiah gave a surprised little, «Whoops,» and nearly lost his feet; but Miriam was right beside him and grabbed his arm before he went down.

  The slope of the corridor was now more than forty-five degrees. It didn't help that the floor was an artificial material as smooth as marble. The leather soles of my boots provided poor traction on such a surface; barefoot would be better, but I wasn't about to sit down and waste precious seconds unlacing.

  «Poor wee darlings,» Rivi mocked. «Time is running out.»

  «What about you?» Yasmin snapped. «The whole place is sinking. Are you planning to go down with it?»

  «So what if I do?» Rivi laughed. «The Glass Spider is air-tight… and given time, I can find the controls to set things right again. You're the ones with the tight schedule. I'm afraid you can't take another tremor. What do you think, Petrov?»

  And suddenly, the ghostly projection of Rivi was joined by a second image: one whose appearance shocked me so badly, I nearly stumbled. Petrov stood before us, his mouth open in a soundless scream. Flames still surrounded him like a furnace; his arm had burned completely down to ash. Before Unveiler could drop from his hand, Rivi must have forced him to press the scepter to his chest. Now it blazed there like the symbol on a paladin's breastplate, grafted to his skin by the withering heat. How could he still be alive? His heart and lungs must be on fire, his throat completely seared to charcoal; and still he stood before us, too agonized to scream.

  «Release him!» Wheezle cried from his perch in Yasmin's arm. «He has earned death. Let him go!»

  «Give me the grinder and I will,» Rivi purred.

  «Sorry, Petrov,» I muttered, and ran through the poor sod's projection, trying not to think of the flames. Even the illusion of them made me shudder.

  * * *

  Up ahead lay the end of the corridor, marked by a closed doorway. Kiripao, running several paces ahead of the rest of us, slapped the button to open the door and leapt inside as soon as the gap was wide enough to let him enter. Miriam dragged Hezekiah through a moment later, followed by Yasmin carrying Wheezle. As soon as I had passed the threshold, Kiripao stabbed the button behind me and the door began to close.

  The very second the door snicked shut, another tremor struck. All five of us fell backward, striking the door with our full weights. It gave one loud creak, and for a moment I thought it would give way, sending us flopping all the way back down the corridor to the waiting wights. I held my breath, heart pounding… but the seconds ticked by, one, two, three, with no sickening collapse and eventually I let the air sigh out of my lungs with relief.

  Just across the room I could see the faint glow of a portal in the arch of the outside doorway. Imbedded in the wall beside the door was a steel cable from which dangled several cheap tin whistles on strings. Obviously, the whistles could open the portal, and the portal could take us away from Rivi's madness; the only problem was that the floor between us and the exit now sloped upward at an angle of about sixty degrees.

  Without hesitation, Kiripao pushed himself away from the door at our backs. His hands and feet were bare; although the floor was too smooth to offer convenient handholds, he still managed to pull himself up to the cable and seize one of the whistles.

  «All right,» Yasmin called, «just hold onto the cable and lower a rope…»

  But Kiripao had other ideas. Sticking the whistle in his mouth and blowing loudly, he threw himself directly at the portal.

  It flickered open giving a glimpse of somber gray skies clotted with forbidding black clouds; then it winked shut again.

  «Sodding berk!» Miriam shouted at the vanished Kiripao.

  «Now, now,» Hezekiah told her, «he's a Cipher. He probably decided to rush ahead and make sure the coast was clear.»

  «Either that,» Miriam muttered, «or he wanted to give us the laugh before the damned Spider drops completely down a hole.»

  «Problems, darlings?» The smirking image of Rivi flickered into existence once more, standing at an absurd slant in the mid
dle of the room. «Abandoned by your wee friend?»

  «He's just scouting ahead,» I snapped, then turned my attention toward taking off my boots. The slope was sharp, but I could still climb up to the door barefoot, provided the Spider didn't tilt anymore. I couldn't participate in the conversation anyway – Yasmin and Miriam wouldn't have let me get a word in edgewise, because they were too busy pouring curses on Rivi's head. Rather intriguing curses I might add… I certainly wanted to find out what Yasmin meant by «that sneaky trick with the neckerchief.»

  By the time I was ready to climb, Hezekiah had pulled out a rope from his own knapsack. «This'll be good and sturdy,» he said as he handed the rope to me. «Uncle Toby made it himself.»

  «Wonderful,» I growled. But perhaps my surge of annoyance at the mention of Uncle Toby had its positive side – it spurred me up the incline with a driving ferocity that brought me to the steel cable in record time. Once I had an arm safely wrapped around the cord, I set about fastening the rope for the others to climb.

  «This is getting irksome,» Rivi's image said to me as I let the rope tumble across the slanted floor. «Did you know, darling, that all this time I've been standing in one of the Spider's other control rooms?»

  The image bent over, as if Rivi was reaching toward something. Then, suddenly, the Spider careened wildly to one side, emitting a monstrous groan of protesting metal. Through the glassed-in walls of the room, I saw the next Spider leg to the right snap as viciously as a bullwhip, then come hurtling toward our own leg… as if one leg of the Spider was attacking the next. By my estimation, the incoming leg would hit our own leg about halfway down its length. There was nothing I could do but close my eyes and wait for impact.

  When the collision came, it rattled my teeth like a punch in the mouth. Our leg weathered the blow rather well… by which I mean it didn't break clean away. After a single bone-shaking shudder, our leg steadied back in position. Even before the vibrations had begun to die away, Yasmin was already climbing the rope, with Wheezle's arms clasped around her neck.

  «You were lucky, darlings,» Rivi's projection said. «The legs aren't really designed to mount such attacks. Then again, they aren't designed to withstand them either. A pity I can't move your own wee leg to shake you off… but that's because you destroyed the appropriate engine room. Oh well, I'll make do.»

  The attacking leg swept back for another strike. As Yasmin reached me, I shoved a whistle into her mouth and shouted, «Go! Go!»

  «Thanks for the advice, Britlin,» she muttered, despite the whistle held in her teeth. «I would never have thought of it myself.» And then she was blowing on the whistle and swinging her legs toward the portal. As it winked open, I caught a whiff of dank and fetid air; then Yasmin and Wheezle were gone.

  Miriam and Hezekiah rushed through immediately after her, taking advantage of the few seconds that the portal remained open. Rivi screeched in fury as the Clueless boy, still carrying the white grinder, disappeared through the gate. A split-second later, the portal winked closed, putting the grinder finally out of Rivi's hands.

  I wished I could aim some devastating taunt in Rivi's direction; but I had already stuffed a whistle into my mouth, and was busy shoveling the other whistles into my pockets. Why make it easy for Rivi to pursue us? Let her find her own whistle.

  But I had momentarily forgotten the Spider leg that was hurtling in on a collision course. A leg like that doesn't move quickly; but once it is aimed, nothing can stop it.

  Like a battering ram it slammed home again, and this time the impact nearly knocked me free from my grip on the steel cable. I heard a crunch, a snap… and then I could feel myself in freefall, as my half of this Spider's leg broke off and plunged toward the surface. Maybe the dust below would cushion the crash, but I didn't feel in a gambling mood. Blowing a piercing blast on the whistle in my mouth, I hurled myself through the waiting portal.

  11. THREE WELL-FERTILIZED SHRUBBERIES

  Here's a tip for any would-be bloods who may be reading this memoir: try not to jump out of an unfamiliar portal while blowing a whistle loud enough to wake the dead. Stealth is better… trust me.

  Since I had swung myself through the portal feet first, I emerged the same way, landing flat on my back in mud and still blasting away on the whistle. Yasmin leaned over me, snatched the whistle from my mouth, and hissed a desperate, «Shh!» I shushed with all due haste; and since I expected that dragging myself out of the muck would be a noisy process, I simply lay where I was, hoping I had not dropped into quicksand.

  Or a corrosive bog.

  Or into the path of ravenous army ants.

  All of which seemed distinct possibilities, since I didn't know where the sod I was.

  My view of the world was restricted to a number of tree branches crisscrossing close overhead – gnarled and twisted branches of mist-slick wood, wreathed with dagger-like leaves. All the branches hung heavily with streamers of frosty green moss, like pale fat boa constrictors lying well-fed in the trees and letting their tails dangle.

  The cool air smelled of damp-rot, strong and cloying… the normal smell of a swamp, of course, but more intense than any natural swamp I'd visited. There was nothing placid in this swamp's aura of decay, no calm decomposition of fallen leaves into rich brown muck – I had a hunch that putrefaction here would be swift and aggressive, enough to rot the boots off your feet if you stood still too long.

  When I thought about it, that wasn't such an unappealing prospect: having my clothes decay off my body would be an interesting sensation, if not downright titillating. But I had no time to wait for the rot to set in, because somewhere off to my right, Hezekiah whispered, «They're coming this way.»

  «They heard the piking whistles,» Miriam glowered.

  «If I could just cast a spell —» Wheezle began, but Yasmin cut him off immediately.

  «No spells. We're covered with dust.»

  «Then we must fight.» That last voice was Kiripao's… no surprise. Our elven monk was beginning to worry me; impulsiveness was one thing, but his constant eagerness to plunge into battle would spell trouble if we couldn't keep him in check. I had to wonder what religious order Kiripao belonged to – the monks I'd met before Kiripao had all conducted themselves with delicate restraint, fighting only when circumstances left no other choice. They certainly didn't leap into combat without the slightest attempt at parlay.

  Still, I couldn't waste precious moments brooding about Brother Monk: it was high time to get off my back, and face whatever new ugliness was heading our direction. The mud put up sticky opposition to my plan, but it wasn't deep enough to hold me securely; in three or four seconds, I had ripped myself free and regained my feet.

  We stood on a small rise in the middle of a bog that stretched as far as the eye could see. Stunted trees grew wherever the ground was solid enough to support them, but much of the landscape was covered with water: stale and brackish water, lying in stagnant black pools. As I continued to examine my surroundings, the surface of the closest pool broke into rings of dark ripples. Something white and shapeless rose from the depths, sucked briefly at the air, then disappeared once more into the lower darkness.

  «What are they?» Hezekiah whispered.

  Was he asking about the white thing in the water? No, his head was turned in a different direction. I followed his gaze out over the swamplands… and there, coming toward us with silent speed, were ten slices of blackness. For brief instants, as one or another of them glided over a patch of ground that was clear of tree-shadow, I could make out a gaunt humanoid shape, like a walking skeleton – a skeleton equipped with small bat-shaped wings ending in fearsome claws. Then the figure would move into the shade of another tree and virtually disappear, blending so completely with the shadows that even my Sensate's eyes could scarcely discern them.

  «Does anyone know what they are?» I whispered.

  «Umbrals,» Kiripao replied. «Close cousins to shadow fiends. Umbrals steal souls and sell them to the highest b
idder.»

  «If they want to steal our souls,» Hezekiah said, «they'll have to use magic, right?» He lifted the white grinder and tapped it meaningfully against his palm.

  «Use the dust sparingly, honored Clueless,» Wheezle warned him. «Umbrals are only found on the Lower Planes; and if we have landed on a Lower Plane, we do not want to attract the attention of any powers who dwell here. They may decide to seize the grinder for their own.»

  «Back in the Spider,» I reminded him, «you said that gods would leave this grinder alone… that they'd be afraid of every other god ganging up on them.»

  «That would be the attitude of any sensible god,» the gnome nodded. «However, the Lower Planes are a patchwork of divine fiefdoms, each ruled by its own distinct deity. Every significant god is shrewd enough to exercise caution; but there are numerous small gods too, many of whom are gibberingly insane. If this land belongs to one of the mad powers, we must try to remain beneath its notice.»

  «Get ready to fire anyway,» Yasmin muttered to Hezekiah. «Those things are getting too close for comfort.»

  The umbrals were now only fifty paces away, close enough for me to catch the occasional glimpse of mouths filled with bristling teeth. Those teeth could tear through throat-flesh like a rip saw; and I didn't want them any nearer my jugular than they already were.

  «That's close enough!» I shouted. «Stop and we'll talk.»

  The creatures didn't slow down. They knew they outnumbered us; they carried no weapons, but those teeth and claws could shred us just as efficiently as a butcher's axe. I drew my sword and waited. For the last twenty paces of their approach, the umbrals would have to climb the rise where we stood. Holding this higher ground was our group's one advantage, and I intended to exploit it to the fullest.

  At the bottom of the rise, the shadow things halted… possibly because they realized a mad rush would be risky, possibly because they had something else in mind. One of their number slipped back into the thickest darkness under a tree and drew something from a black pouch at its waist. I could barely see the umbral, let alone the small object it was holding; but whenever a foe acts furtively, it's time for preemptive action.