by Dan McGirt
“How long until the tanks run dry?” asked a colonel.
“They hold enough to run the full system for another two hours,” said a technical advisor. “By then, it will have leveled most of the city.”
“Shut it down!” commanded the queen. “Find a way! Now!” Soldiers hastened to obey.
“One advantage,” noted Hawkinstern. “Few marauders left.”
I surveyed the city with my binoculars. The general was right. Most of the surviving marauders were retreating to the north, but some were still attacking the outskirts of the city, where the AMOK resals couldn’t yet reach them. I took a closer look at a band of three harrying a detachment of soldiers several blocks away, near one of Rae City’s numerous parks.
It was no ordinary group of soldiers. It was the unit assigned to escort Sapphrina and Rubis. I had forgotten all about them amid the excitement of Ormazander’s attempt on my life, the revelation of my aura, and the attack of the winged marauders.
The sisters were huddled against an overturned touring carriage with the soldiers, six in all, ringed about them in an effort to repulse the flying demons. This band was fortunately armed with hooks, not bombs, but were nonetheless dangerous. Even as I watched, one marauder decapitated a soldier with a single swipe of its hook, the severed head bouncing down the street like a ball.
“Merc! The twins are out there! We’ve got to help them!” I pointed out the scene. Mercury looked at me like I was insane.
“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “If we go out there, AMOK will cut us to ribbons.”
The marauders lifted a soldier into the air and ripped him in half. Rubis looked as though she had injured her leg and was unable to stand. Sapphrina picked up the sword of a fallen soldier and bravely stood over her sister, holding the weapon inexpertly. The marauders caught up another soldier and hacked off his limbs one by one, letting them fall on the frightened girls.
They were toying with them, slaying all their protectors and saving the twins for last. Who knew what horrible deaths they would suffer? I remembered the boasting of Babbadabbas. Demons had a sick appetite for mortal women.
“We have to save them!” I cried, dropping the expensive binoculars, which were caught by a diving staff sergeant before they hit the floor. I ran for the stairs, intending to race through the street dodging resal blasts and falling towers if necessary.
“Wait, Jason!” said Mercury. It was the first time he had called me by my given name. I paused and looked back. “I’ll come with you. There may be a way to reach them.”
“Then let’s go!”
“To the queen’s bedroom,” he said, leading the way. Puzzled, I followed, grabbing a jewelled battle axe from a wall display as we ran through the palace corridors.
Raella’s bedchamber was opulent and spacious. The walls were decorated with gold, silver, and platinum filigree studded with precious gems. The ceiling was painted with scenes of birds, clouds, and celestial bodies. The birds moved, while the images of the sun, moon, and stars actually glowed, giving off the light that illuminated the room. The bed, wardrobe, settee, and other furniture were all of rich craftsmanship, but I didn’t have time to admire them. We had come for the rug.
The plush blue carpet was shot through with threads of gold and silver and covered the floor from wall to wall, but seemed otherwise unremarkable.
“I don’t see the point of this,” I said.
Mercury waved his hands and a rectangular section of the rug, ten feet by five, floated into the air, revealing the bare marble floor beneath it. Almost immediately, the remaining carpet grew to cover the exposed space.
“Magic carpet grass,” explained Merc. “It can grow anywhere with the proper spells and tending.” His outfit changed to black fatigues and his cloak turned purple as he hopped aboard the hovering rug and sat cross-legged. The rug promptly fell back to the floor. Merc winced, waved his hands again, and the rug reluctantly staggered back into the air.
“We’re going to fly?” I asked nervously. “On that?”
“It’s the only way to get there in time. By the way, you might want to change clothes. I always have problems fighting in formal attire.”
“Change clothes? I don’t have time!”
“Just imagine what you want to be wearing. The spell on your clothes will adjust them to order.”
I willed my clothing to become denim jeans and a gray work shirt and sat down beside him. The carpet felt soft but solid beneath me. I wasn’t greatly reassured.
“I don’t trust this thing.”
“You can’t fall off unless you jump or get pushed,” he said. “I promise not to push you.”
A hole opened beneath me and my posterior fell through as the flying carpet shot forward and over the edge of the balcony to fall straight down with alarming speed. Raella’s room was on an upper level of the palace, so we dropped over a hundred feet before skimming inches above the glass surface of the skylight above the throne room. None of the AMOK resals fired on us until we dipped down to the lower terraces.
“I thought you said I couldn’t fall off!”
“You haven’t, have you? But I didn’t say anything about not falling through. Raella must not be giving this grass all the proper nutrients. I’ll have to mention it to her.”
“Do that, would you?”
Merc made the carpet dance through the air so erratically that the smart crystals were unable to track us properly. The air around us blazed with arcane power bolts, but none struck the carpet. Our wild flying, however, caused the fabric around me to rip. The hole widened and more of my body sank through it until I was bent double with my knees beside my ears, held up only by my calves and arms. We reached the far side of a circle of towers, putting their bulk between us and the resals, and streaked above the rubble-filled streets.
“Wasn’t that easy?” said Mercury.
“I think I left my stomach back in the palace,” I said queasily as my legs slid through the hole. I maintained my grip on the battleaxe, the haft of which spanned the gap in the rug and served as a crossbar to hold me aloft.
“We’ll pick it up later.”
“Could you give me a hand?” I said irritably.
“Sorry, I’m driving. Just hang on, we’re almost there.”
A panicked mob was nearing the scene of the sister’s peril. We zipped above their heads and sped onward. Only one soldier survived. As we approached, a marauder struck him in the chest with its spiky tail, crushing ribs and splattering blood. He fell lifeless.
The demon lunged at Sapphrina and easily batted the sword from her grasp. As it reached for her she screamed and fell beside her equally hysterical sister.
Merc had donned his sunshades and now unleashed a resal blast of his own, striking the marauder dead. A second demon flew at us, but met the same fate. The third marauder elected to retreat, but flew too high and was nailed by an alert ack gunner.
The frenzied, frightened mob was almost upon us. Merc brought the carpet almost to the street and my feet touched solid ground. Sapphrina rushed to embrace me. Merc commanded the carpet to mend and helped her aboard while I lifted Rubis in my arms and hopped onto the carpet myself. We lifted off and the running crowd passed harmlessly beneath us.
“We dare not return to the palace until AMOK shuts down,” said Mercury. “We’ll take cover in one of these other towers.”
I cradled the two crying girls and murmured soothing phrases while we flew toward a nearby conical tower formed seamlessly of pink stone. The ack gun atop it had been destroyed by demon bombs, but the tower itself was still intact. We swept through the ground floor entrance into a large open court overlooked by a circular indoor loggia. The building was an enclosed bazaar filled with small clothing and novelty shops. There was a pile of rubble in the center of the round plaza. While some fearful patrons huddled beneath whatever cover they could find, others looted the shops over the protests of the owners and fled with their arms full of stolen merchandise to join the
mob outside.
We flew up to the highest gallery, where the soldiers were stationed and had access to the roof, which had apparently caved in on them when the bomb struck. A dozen dead and wounded men lay amid broken boxes of ack quarrels, fragments of pink stone, and the splintered remains of the ack itself. There was a ragged hole in the ceiling where the bombs had struck.
“Who is in command here?” said Mercury. We stepped off the carpet just as it dissolved into a tangle of hovering thread.
A young gunnery sergeant with blood dripping from his head snapped a salute. “I am, Lord Boltblaster!”
“Why aren’t your men controlling the looting below?”
“We lack the numbers to be effective, sir. Five dead, seven wounded.”
Merc nodded. “Just checking.”
He mounted the stairs to the damaged roof and surveyed the city from that vantage point while I further calmed the girls.
“What do you see?” I called.
“AMOK has shut down,” Merc said grimly, leaning over the hole.
“That’s great!” I said. His expression said otherwise. “Isn’t it?”
“No. The marauders are regrouping and a fresh wave is coming in.” The sergeant and I scrambled up to look. Another swarm of winged demons, as numerous as the first wave, was approaching from the north. The survivors of the first assault were gathering to meet them. “Without AMOK, they’ll swamp the remaining ack guns.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“Fight back the old-fashioned way—with high sorcery.”
* * *
13
We returned to the Solar Palace and climbed once more to the pinnacle tower. The guards didn’t want to let Sapphrina and Rubis enter, but I wasn’t willing to leave them behind. At a word from Mercury, they relented.
“That was a mad stunt!” cried Raella when we entered the crowded bubble.
“All in a day’s work,” said Mercury, squeezing her hand briefly. “And it looks as though we’ll have more work before the day is through.”
Outside the demons stormed one ack post after another with brutal precision. Fires burned in several areas of the city and panicked citizens had forced open the seven gates and were fleeing into the countryside.
Timeon and Ormazander entered the bubble, accompanied by fourteen lesser wizards—Leaguers and members of Raella’s staff of court magi. General Hawkinstern led his military underlings from the room. The defense of the city was now in the hands of the wizards.
“You’ll want to depart as well,” said Raella to the twins and me. “It will be safer below.”
“Begging Your Majesty’s pardon, but if what you’re about to do fails, is any place in the city safe?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted.
“Then I’d rather be where the action is. The girls can go below.”
“We’ll stay,” said Sapphrina, clutching me. “Don’t make us leave, Jason.” Rubis nodded less certainly. I shrugged.
“As you will,” said Raella. “But I advise you to keep your heads down.”
I sat with the girls at the top of the stairs, one on either side of me. The magicians gathered around the queen for instructions.
“Our peril is great,” she said gravely. “The numbers of our enemies are vast, too numerous to count.”
Timeon lifted his staff. “Let the numbers of our enemies be known!” Glowing red numerals appeared in the air beside him. There were three hundred sixty-six winged marauders.
“That is still a great many,” said Raella. “And our defenses are rapidly failing.”
The number dropped by five as the surviving ack batteries took their toll, but these were quickly bombed. The only non-magical defenses remaining were squads of archers and crossbowmen on rooftops, but they were scattered by intense bombing from the marauders. The demons now massed to attack the Solar Palace.
The queen’s eyes shone with regal passion. “I must therefore do what has not been done in nearly a millennium and call directly on Rae, Goddess of the Sun, to preserve us, praying she will hear the plea of her chief priestess. If Rae City falls and the man Jason Cosmo is captured by the minions of the dreaded Society or the pawns of the Demon Lords—whichever these marauders may be—then beauty and truth, justice and honor, hope and peace, may be forever lost to the peoples of all kingdoms.”
“In other words,” said Mercury. “This is very important.”
“The ancient rite of summons demands my total concentration,” said Raella. “It is up to you to hold back the demons until I complete it.”
“I suggest we use the Cascading Calligraphy of Chaos,” said Merc. “Is everyone familiar with that spell?” The others nodded, some of the junior magicians a little hesitantly. Mercury noticed their unease. “Don’t worry, it’s as easy as ABC.”
“The difficulty,” said Timeon, “lies not in casting the spell, but in maintaining it, which requires great stamina.”
“We’ve only got to keep it up until Raella petitions the goddess,” said Merc. “After that, it won’t matter—one way or the other.” He pulled a handful of little brightly colored rods from under his cloak. They looked like some sort of writing tool, but were made of a substance I didn’t recognize. Each wizard took one.
“Are these the scented variety?” asked Ormazander.
“No, and don’t sniff them,” warned Merc.
Holding the rods between their fingers, the wizards joined hands to form a circle around the chamber, with Raella in the center. They were facing inward, their backs to approaching invaders. The glass dome slid open, exposing us to the open air. The breeze blew stiff and cool. The noonday sun stood directly over us. The demons were closing fast.
The wizards hummed a single note in unison to aid their concentration for the coming conjuration. Whatever this spell did, I hoped it worked quickly. Rubis trembled with fear. Sapphrina seemed oddly calm.
Raella lifted her arms to the sun and spoke in an ancient language of power. Her diamond necklace glittered with brilliant blue-white fire and grew in size until it passed easily over her head to hover like a halo. Suddenly it flared golden, becoming a solid ring of light, no longer a string of jewels. The ring continued to rise and expand until it was larger than the diameter of the platform that held us and floated a good twenty feet above our heads. The sun was perfectly centered within the ring.
The marauders streaked through the air toward the tower from all directions. The wizards had now added more notes to their repertoire and were happily humming a familiar tune used to help children remember the alphabet. How much help did their concentration need? The demons were almost upon us!
As the first marauders got close enough that I could see the orange of their eyes, the wizards broke the circle and turned to face their enemies. Loudly singing the alphabet song—not, unfortunately, in perfect harmony—they began to madly trace glowing letters in the air with their magical markers. Some wrote the same letter over and over, as if performing a handwriting drill. Others autographed the air with their repeated signatures or scrawled curses and insults directed at the demons. Whatever they wrote, it took on substance. Expanding webs of red, blue, purple, yellow, green, and orange surrounded the platform and enveloped the demons like a net woven of rainbows, entangling their wings and preventing the use of their weapons. The winged marauders were balked, unable to penetrate the web of color which soon all but obscured them from view.
Several tried to get at us by flying in through the golden ring, which was not colored over. They were reduced to ashes as they passed through it. Timeon’s enemy counter recorded their demise.
Sapphrina curled against me and I felt something hard amid the softness of her chest. Before I could open my mouth, she pulled a dagger from her bodice and slashed at me with an unearthly scream. Her eyes glowed with a sickly purple light. The possessor that had escaped Votarius’s body now controlled hers! I tried to wrestle the knife from her hand, but she broke my grip with superhuman strength and sho
ved me down the stairs. Rubis grabbed at her but was easily cuffed aside.
The wizards were busy with the marauders and Raella with calling the goddess. I was on my own. Fortunately, Sapphrina was no sorceress. I didn’t have to worry about spiritual lightning this time around.
I did have to worry about my battle axe, which the girl hefted as easily as I had, discarding the dagger. I fled down the winding stairs. She followed, screaming profanities only a demon could imagine.
I rounded a turn in the stairwell, waited, clubbed her in the gut with a doubled fist as she came into sight. She lost her footing and the axe, which clattered on down the stairs. I pounced on her, twisted her right arm painfully behind her back. Oblivious to the pain, she pitched forward, causing us both to tumble down after the axe.
Our painful decent ended with us sprawled together on a landing. Ruffles and petticoats were wrapped around my face, blinding me. I struggled to disengage, but was immobilized as she scissored my head tightly between her legs.
She sat up, still pinning me. I heard the scrape of the axe as she grasped it, felt the tensing of her muscles as she lifted it to deliver the fatal blow. I reached up blindly and clutched her long hair, which had fallen loose. I yanked her face down against her own knee and felt the axe strike the stone floor on the other side of my body. I was now able to wrench free and roll clear from my intended murderess. She still had the axe in her hands.
I noted that we were in the chamber at the base of the observation tower where the general staff awaited the outcome of events above. Hawkinstern and the other officers looked up from their maps and charts in surprise as I yelled, “Get her! Hold her!”
“Unwise to get involved in lovers’ quarrels,” observed Hawkinstern. “War is safer.” The soldiers returned to their planning, ignoring my pleas.
