There was no response. This wasn't in my script. I tried again. "How we doing in there?"
Still nothing. Usually, being this flippant to one of the Elders would guarantee a response of some kind, either amused or annoyed depending on their temperament and the situation. Nothing was disconcerting. I debated tapping on the glass and decided against it, on the notion that if fish didn't like it, this was probably a million times worse.
I sat, cross-legged, still shining the light onto that great orb. "Look, can you hear me at all?"
I HEAR YOU, MICHEL. The not-voice was a relief even as it fired my fight-or-flight reflexes, drizzling adrenaline through my system. I could feel my heart rate rising.
"Oh. Good. I need to talk to you."
SPEAK.
"So tell me. If I'm under contract to you, now, what is it I'm meant to be doing?"
SPEAK TO AZIF, MICHEL. HE KNOWS. HE WILL TELL YOU.
"Why can't you?"
YOU KNOW WHY. The voice was as loud as I remembered; for all that it didn't exist. I brushed at my nose, and my hand came away wet with blood. I looked at it for a moment, then back at the window.
"Okay. Tell him to find me."
BY WHAT RIGHT DO YOU PRESUME TO INSTRUCT ME? The words were harsh, but the tone was (I thought) somewhat amused.
"You need me to do something. It's more efficient than me wandering Manhattan looking for the wayward bastard." My nose was dripping regularly. I vaguely wondered if it was the result of mere proximity, a result of the voice, or something worse, but I wasn't paying too much attention.
HE IS WHERE YOU MET HIM THE LAST TIME. My vision blurred slightly as the voice rumbled, then focused on the silence at the end. When I looked down, the eye was closed; a moment later, the sarcophagus faded to industrial painted steel.
I staggered down to the floor and wearily made my way upstairs into the sunlight.
Walking back west to the wine bar I'd ended up in after my last visit to the Elder God of Sewers (part of me cringed at the sobriquet, waiting for some bolt of lightning to crisp me; some other part exulted in the belittling nickname). It was early afternoon so they were open. I ordered a Pernod and sat looking at the bar mirror.
Five minutes later, one of the few patrons in the rear got up and moved towards me. Since I was looking carefully at everyone, I saw her begin to move; since I was male, I continued to watch as she walked across the floor to the bar and spoke briefly with the tender before moving along the bar towards me. I turned on my stool to watch her come, but before I could say anything, she stepped close and laid one manicured hand on my forehead.
Then, only then, when she was close enough, could I see the flames dripping from her eyes.
When she touched me, they vanished. I waited for her to pull her hand back, confused, then turned away from her whispered apologies and stared at the mirror again. The flames depended from my orbits onto the marble bar top, flickering from orange to pale blue as they ran across the surface before guttering away. "Azif?"
"Hello, Michel." My reflection spoke to me, but I didn't.
"He says you'll tell me what the hell is going on."
"Yes."
I sighed and waved for the tender, ordering a whisky when he arrived. "Get to it, then. I have the feeling I'm not going to like this."
"Your grandmother was the Balancer, Michel."
"Tell me what the hell the Balancer is and then keep going. I'm in no mood to drag this out of you."
Azif frowned at me in the mirror. "You are in no very receptive mood. Are you sure you wish me to tell you this now?"
"Trust me, yes. Don't worry. I'm saving up my mad for a different group of Elders, Azif."
"Very well. The Balancer is the Elder Cthulhu's proxy in the Game of Stones."
"And the Game of Stones is…"
The other leaned towards me from behind the bar's reality. "You see its results every day, Michel. Those here on Earth play at dice and cards, and their stake is the state of the world. Not in crude terms of 'evil' and 'good' or for the nonsense of souls, but for influence. There are many times, many Elders in the firmament; some duplicate others. There are Egyptian Gods, Celtic Gods, fictional Gods, all with the same element or role."
"Your boss is fictional, Azif."
"Can you say that with assurance, having met him? He exists in fiction. He exists in the Abyss. He exists under Central Park. This is not a hindrance."
"Okay. Get on with it," I sighed, raising my drink again.
"You know my lord's destiny."
"Yeah. He's supposed to wait for the Last Trump of some kind, bring about the destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants, call back the Elder Gods to resume their rightful place or some such?"
"He will bring about the destruction of the Earth and mankind on it, yes."
"Then why the hell should I help him, or you?" I swigged whisky.
Azif shrugged. "It does not say when this will happen, does it, Michel? It does not say when, or why. He waits for a time known only to Him; for conditions written only in His thoughts. All we know is that the time is not soon, for in the meantime, there is the Game of Stones, and He concerns himself with its play."
"Cthulhu plays jacks to pass the time?" I decided against another whisky. I was getting belligerently smartass.
"No, Michel. The others play the Game of Stones. But He watches. He will not tolerate a tipping of the balances past some particular point. When it appears that there has been such a leaning of influence, his proxy will act to restore the Balance."
"That's me."
"That, at present, is you," agreed the Djinn from the mirror.
"How many of these Proxies have there been?"
"Hundreds. Thus our assurance that the Last Times are not likely nigh. We cannot be sure. But it appears that this game is a long one."
"How is Cthu-; how is He set above the other Elders? The ones that play this Game?" I asked my reflection.
"He is not above, merely apart. His role, of spoiler, is one of choice rather than destiny. For reasons none of us know, the prophecies and ravings which Man have gifted us about Him tell us that yes, He will be instrumental in destruction, madness and death. However, for reasons which are His own, he chooses to maintain humanity minimally harmed and unaligned before that time comes."
I thought about that. "So the Balancer, and Yellow Eyes, act to keep the peace if this Game of Stones intrudes too far on humanity. What happens if this Balancer acts in a way that He doesn't approve of?"
"We don't know. Balancers have disappeared, but it's a dangerous job. He has said, on more than one occasion, that his Balancers are picked for their probable reaction rather than instructed on how to behave. Some have speculated that this means that the choice of Balancer itself is a single move in the Game, rather than an ongoing interference."
"What are the sides in this game?"
"That you will need to work out yourself, although the permutations are infinite. Typically, the Balancer only acts to preserve the status quo in betwixt the various factions' preferred positions."
"You're telling me I have to make this up as I go along. Or, rather, that that's been the tradition."
"Indeed," said Azif.
We sat there for a time. I had one hand under my coat and realized I was massaging the grip of the Desert Eagle, causing me to grimace and lay both hands on the bar again. A thought occurred to me, and I asked the mirror, "How did my grandmother keep this balance? What did she do?"
Azif smiled. "Your grandmother enforced rigid rules of behavior and manners," he laughed. "None of the Elders dared be branded as uncouth in her parlor, and her parlor was the City of New York by the time she passed."
I laughed back. "You mean she managed to define anything she didn't like as rude? "
"Yes. She was a formidable woman."
"Even at the beginning? How did she get the job? Was it always a game of manners and snubs?"
"No. In her youth, she took a much more ... active role.
It was memories of those times, in fact, that made her later system so effective; none of the players wished to return to what were collectively thought of as 'The Bad Old Days,' before Nan Wibert had settled down."
I grinned at myself in the bar mirror. I'm fairly sure it was an ugly grin. "The Bad Old Days, huh?"
My reflection didn't grin back. Azif looked somewhat alarmed. "What are you thinking of doing, Michel?"
"I don't know, yet." I finished the whisky. "But tell me one last thing. Shu took my bandolier and my trench coat from me. Is there anything in the rules that says he's allowed to do that?"
"The rules are whatever the players have set out for themselves," Azif replied, sliding my tumbler back and forth across the bar between his hands, in the mirror. "I can say, though, that your grandmother would have been most annoyed."
"Oh, I'm past annoyed, Azif. I'm far, far, past annoyed. I'm back into some funny Zen state where 'annoyed' is a cloud in my rear view mirror."
He stopped playing with the glass and cocked my head at me. "I do not like what I hear in your voice, Michel."
I just grinned at him for a bit. He looked down at the bar, then back. "What do you wish else from me?"
"Where were they holding me? Don't tell me you don't know."
He shook his (my) head, then reached for a napkin and removed a pen from my inner pocket. I kept my eye on the mirror as my hands wrote an address. He capped the pen and replaced it in my pocket, looking at me. "The mantle of Balancer isn't a letter of marque and reprisal, Michel," he warned.
"You already said it's what I make of it."
"Yes." He shook my head again. "Whatever you plan to do please pass me on before you go."
"Don't worry, Azif. This isn't about you. Or even about your boss, really. I need to ask one favor, though."
"Ask."
I told him, and slid the three magazines surreptitiously onto the bar. He grimaced, but nodded and placed my hands over the three oblongs. No one but me noticed the rippling in the air, as it didn't move out past my encircled arms. When he had finished, I turned in my seat and bumped a party of young stockbroker types leaving the bar, apologized, and felt Azif stream off into one of them.
Then I paid my bill, slipping the shapes back into my belt loops. Taking up the napkin, I peered at my handwriting. 233 Broadway.
I said something profane to myself and didn't bother to deny the savage undertones in my voice before sliding off the stool and out the door towards a downtown C train.
The Woolworth Building is one of the gems of downtown New York. Bellied up to Broadway, it thrusts its offset tower at the sky with the eagerness of a young poet despite its Gothic age. Renovation work, begun over a year before, draped the lower floors of the structure in protective scaffolding, shielding passers-by from the detritus of stonework overhead.
I took stock of my weapons, standing there in front of the entrance, uncaring of the flow of people in and out of the building. True to New York, none of them glanced at me as I adjusted the Desert Eagle, the grenades and the baton underneath my coat. Satisfied, I marched into the main lobby.
There was a main security desk, which I ignored. I headed for the elevator banks with the assurance of a tenant, and my reward was a single incurious look. Once there, I found the low-rise bank and got into the first open car. I turned to face out, and the four or five people who had been moving in behind me stopped at my face. I shook my head gravely at them and punched the Door Close button, then pushed for the Basement.
The elevator opened into a high-ceilinged, narrow concrete hallway. It was painted, with doors, but there were clearly no public spaces here - the doors were unmarked, and the hallway just dirty enough to pointedly emphasize its lack of invitation. I strode off to the right, at random, towards a red EXIT sign protruding from the wall.
When I yanked the door underneath it open, I found a stairway. One which seemed awfully familiar, and went both up and down. I started down. One flight later, I reached a sub-basement; the stairs went down one more level and ended. I slid out the door into a poorly-lit hallway; the susurrations of moving air caused the Desert Eagle to slide out into my hand with the grace of an evening song.
I puttered around for perhaps five minutes before opening a final door and finding myself in the workshop once again. My joints ached sympathetically at the sight of the work table, the two lights clipped over it, looming in the middle of the space. Still holding the gun, I moved over to it, ran my off hand over its surface. Definitely the same one.
"You really are most persistent."
I spun at the words to see Shu stepping out from behind a bank of shelving. He had a look of curiosity on his face. There were three or four forms moving behind him, hiding in shadow; he gestured once, holding them back. I retreated to the side of the work table near the door. He stopped on the other side of it, just outside the pool of light from the lamps.
I stroked the table again. "This is pretty solid." It was, too; thick metal sides reached down from the work surface. The piece didn't move when I pushed at it experimentally; it was either mounted to the floor or contained enough mass in its cabinetry to anchor it firmly.
Shu waved his arm over it. "That has no bearing on me." He stepped forward into the table, his torso protruding from it, then stepped back. "It cannot protect you from me, even without my servants." A gesture back at the sylphs gathered behind him.
"No, you're right," I said. I lowered the gun, and pushed it into my coat to holster it. Shu looked satisfied. I fumbled with my left hand for a moment under the coat, anchoring the gun, then straightened and looked at him. "But it can protect me from this."
With that, I flipped the stun grenade I'd armed over the table and then fell flat to the floor behind it.
Elder Gods may be damn near omnipotent, but there are rules. They have to know what their power will be doing; they have to use them. The exception is those passive abilities linked to their personification. Malsumis stopped bullets like a tree; Baba Yaga shifted forms, changeable witch. Shu, though ... Shu, I was guessing, was indeed a God of the Air. One who hadn't had to seriously deal with a threat to his body in a good long time.
There was a metallic clonk as the grenade's mechanism hit the table or the floor across the table from me. I was just starting to wonder if Shu was going to have time to get back, and my hands had just touched the thong at my chest to maintain a conduit to the Water of Life within, when the grenade went off.
Bang.
It's such a small word, but in this case it applied; my hearing vanished almost immediately, leaving only that initial slap of sound. I felt my head bounce on the floor, and despite my eyes being squeezed shut a wall of light pushed through my eyelids. The table's frame absorbed nearly all the grenade's force, though, directing it away from me and towards Shu and his sylphs.
I forced myself to stand up. I had to blink several times to get my eyes to stay open, and my ears were producing nothing except a faint ringing, stunned to silence. I pressed my chest, harder, and there was a sudden flare of pain as life energy flowed into me from the vial, accelerating my recovery.
Shu was standing perhaps fifteen feet from the table. His form was indistinct, and there was a determined expression on his face. As I watched, pulling myself up from the floor, he gritted his teeth and solidified his edges a little more. I had the Desert Eagle out. I shouted at him, despite being unable to hear myself, "Hey, you think there's any metal dust in the air in here?"
He looked at me, confusion and anger warring, and then I leveled the Desert Eagle and fired it at his head. The first round sang from the gun, and I reached out with my will. There was a faint echo of resonance from a corner of the room, and I grinned as the first bullet dropped to the ground between us, its energy spent in the searching 'cast. Shu stepped towards me as I turned and ran for the echo. I didn't spare him more than a glance; the sylphs were nowhere in sight, likely still struggling to reform after the shockwave of the grenade tore their masses into st
ray air currents and blasted them violently around the room. There was the smell of cordite.
The fading pulse of force led me to a shelf near the wall. I tore random objects off it until there, at the back, was a familiar strip of leather. I had just time to hook it, clumsily, around myself and over my coat, before Shu staggered into the aisle. He was firming up, but still his outline wavered slightly, and there was an expression of mostly anger on his face now as he finished regaining control of his form. He spoke, threats or promises, I couldn't tell. I just shook my head and pointed at my ear.
He was perhaps ten feet away when I leveled the Desert Eagle and fired a round at his head. He ignored it. The second bullet left the gun and I stole its energy, feeling the pocket watch in the bandolier pulse; then the third took flight and I poured the energy into its small shape. Azif had touched it; I touched it. No longer lead, pressed instead into samarium-cobalt, the jacketed magnet spun towards Shu and as my 'cast touched it, it flared hard in electromagnetics. Metal dust, swirling in the air from the grenade blast where it had been left after being torn from the crevices, crannies and nooks of the shop's floor and tools, formed a sudden shape in its path. Trailing a net of metal much as an aircraft trails its sonic boom, the bullet passed through Shu's head.
He wasn't ready for that. The fan of metal dust, held there by unnaturally strong force, ripped the airspace of his head apart again. I watched his features disperse into a cloud of tan color then slowly start to wash back. He stopped and went to his knees, apparently overtaken with the amount of concentration required to cope. I kneeled in front of him, waiting.
As soon as I could see his eyes again, and watched them focus on my face, I nodded and brought up the gun again. He stumbled back and raised a hand, but I fired anyway. Twice. His head and a section of his shoulder atomized. I used the time to search the shelves near where I’d found the bandolier and came up with all three of my guns, still in holsters. I quickly stuffed them into pockets.
Then I squatted down and waited some more, reflecting that I'd actually heard the last two shots, which meant my hearing wasn't permanently gone. When Shu had gained back most of his head, I raised the Desert Eagle to aim again. He finished collecting himself, eyes burning with fury, but made no move other than to straighten to a standing position. I rose with him, the gun between us. When he was (as far as I could tell) completely solid, I waggled the gun at him. "This can't kill you, but it can make you damned uncomfortable. Your buddies still haven't figured out how to get back yet. Care to admit that I can piss in your pool for, oh, I dunno, several hours?"
The New York Magician Page 11
