Closing Doors: The Last Marla Mason Novel

by T. A. Pratt

  “Everywhere. Anywhere. I talked to it, to the sand, when it was inside Cole. It used his mouth. It’s definitely intelligent. It calls itself the Inimical.”

  “That’s... comforting. We should—” He almost said “We should ask Cole what he thinks.” Because turning to his mentor, his teacher, in time of need was as instinctive as a flower turning to the sun. The notion that Cole was gone, really gone, seemed to skitter away to a different corner of his mind every time he tried to look straight at it. “What should we do?”

  “Fight. Destroy the sand.”

  “How?”

  “Find every speck of it and burn it.”

  “That... didn’t work so well last time.”

  “I know. We’ll have to do better. I got a sample of the sand, and I think I can get someone to make a detector that actually works.”

  “Okay, but even if we manage that... what next? We get everyone on the planet to line up in a row so we can check them all out at once, so the sand doesn’t have time to sneak around behind our backs? We somehow... scan every square inch of the planet’s surface?”

  “Not just the surface,” Marla said. “The Inimical made a big deal about how it could burrow into the bowels of the Earth, too.”

  “So, then, we strip-mine the planet and sift every layer for black sand? Burn the whole world to a cinder? Gods, Marla. This is going to be harder than getting rid of bedbugs.”

  “I am open to alternative suggestions, B. Anybody can bring me problems. I need you to bring me solutions.”

  “I... okay. You see about making the detectors. They’re bound to be useful, one way or another. As for me....” He took a breath. “I guess I have to do the thing I’m never, ever supposed to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Summon an oracle for more than purely informational purposes.”

  “Oh. You mean call up an oracle and....”

  “Ask it to destroy the black sand.”

  “That would take a big oracle. I assume it would demand a big payment.”

  “Yeah. Doing this, it’s the kind of thing that gets oracle generators killed. Rondeau summoned up the Pit Boss to do him a favor, and he lost all his money and his home, until you helped him get it back. All he wanted the Pit Boss to do was neutralize one rogue sorcerer. I need to find an oracle that will destroy a world-conquering monster from another universe.” He ran a hand through his messy hair. “You really know how to throw a farewell tour, Marla.”

  “I just hope it’s not goodbye for the whole planet. Take Rondeau with you, okay? I don’t like the thought of you trying to deal with an oracle of that magnitude by yourself—the spirit of gentrification nearly knocked you out out, and you’re going to need something way bigger for this problem. Rondeau should be immune to the sand, sort of. If his brain dies, that triggers his backup protocol, and his true self zips down to the underworld and into a new body. At least you won’t have to worry about him getting body-snatched.”

  Bradley nodded. “Oh, good. It’ll be nice to have one thing in the entire world I don’t have to worry about.”

  Marla appeared in Hamil’s apartment, and found him furiously peering at a tablet. She had to assume he was still himself. She couldn’t drag everyone she spoke to down to the underworld for an examination, and if he was infected, he’d probably reveal it soon enough by attacking her. The Inimical wasn’t bothering to be subtle with her lately.

  Hamil sensed her, glanced over, then went back to his screen. “Marla. Hello. The world seems to be ending. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Shit. Black sand?”

  “In the harbor. It devoured part of a pier. Mr. Beadle is using order magic to keep the sand from spreading, but it’s taxing his resources. Nicolette has called a council of war—I was just on my way to join her. I see none of this surprises you.”

  “I’ve met the sand, yeah. That’s why I came to see you. I need your help to stop it.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Self-replicating alien matter, wants to transform the planet into more of itself, intelligent and capable of at least some degree of coordination with its various, whatever you want to call them, nodes, though I don’t think it can communicate instantly across great distances—as far as I know its local nodes act independently. Calls itself the Inimical.”

  “An alien invasion. Really. It’s always something. What would you like me to do?”

  Marla reached into a shadow and drew out a small sphere of yellowish force, with a few motes of black sand floating in the middle. “I need a way to track this stuff down. The sand can be hiding in anybody, and it absorbs memories so it can impersonate people effectively. Can you build me a simple detector that indicates whether people are infected or not, and points the way to any concentrations of sand? I’m going to need to deputize a lot of junior world-saving rangers, and they’ll need a reliable test they can use in the field.”

  Hamil considered the sphere of force. “Hmm. Should be a simple matter of creating a sympathetic link. I could embed the grains of sand in lockets, say, and have them chime or glow or even pull in the presence of other sand—”

  “Perfect, yes, do that. You shouldn’t have trouble getting more sand if you need it, if Felport is being overrun. Tell the pyromancers that the sand can be melted and fused, you just have to get really hot first. Oh, and Hamil: be careful. Sanford Cole tried to make a detector for me using divination magic, and the sand infected him. He’s dead.”

  “You can’t be serious. Cole? He was a legend, a god among insects—present company excepted.” Hamil looked genuinely shaken by the news, and that was terrifying, because “placid” and “implacable” were Hamil’s whole deal. “What are you going to do while I work on this?”

  “Try to help out at the harbor, I guess. I assume the Bay Witch is there?”

  “Zufi has been on the front lines throughout this ordeal. She refused to attend the council of war, she said, because she is busy fighting the war, and even Nicolette respects that.”

  “So do I,” Marla said.

  She stepped through a convenient a shadow and raced along the waterfront. Mr. Beadle, the order-mage, was sitting on the pier, his porkpie hat at a jaunty angle, his face beaded with sweat, his hands moving in mystic passes. A black circle fifty feet across floated on the surface of the bay, surrounded by a shimmering sphere of force. Langford's old apprentice Danielle Ching-Yi Kong, the alchemist, was swirling a beaker and peering at the bubbling green solution with her all-white eyes (she'd lost her pupils in a lab accident, but could now see into the infrared and UV ranges). Probably working on some potion to neutralize the sand.

  “Marla Mason?” Beadle had been a lieutenant for one of the other leading sorcerers when Marla had served as chief in Felport, and he still held her in awe, despite being on the council now himself. Danielle was a sorcerer of some consequences, too, but they clearly weren't attending Nicolette's war meeting, either. Maybe it was just Nicolette yelling in a room. “I heard you died,” he said, “but then I heard you’d become Death, though I wasn’t sure what that meant, because you always hated necromancers—”

  “I still do. They’re very needy. I was just passing through town, thought I’d drop by to help.”

  Danielle squinted at her. “What are you made of?”

  “Sugar, spice, the usual. I—”

  The Bay Witch leapt out of the water and pulled herself up onto the docks. “Marla. You have not fulfilled your promise to me. The sand still troubles the sea.” She turned her head and coughed into her fist. Marla wondered if Zufi had slept at all lately. Dealing with the infestation of the waters was probably taking a lot out of her.

  “I know, Zufi. I’m still working on it. Let me introduce you to my friend Cosmocrator.”

  The smooth-skinned demon broke the surface of the water and looked up at Zufi, grinning with his broken-seashell teeth. “Oh, my. Who is this glorious morsel of the sea?”

  “I am the Bay Witch,” sh
e said. “You are a demon.”

  “Think of how beautiful our children would be,” Cosmocrator said. “And such good swimmers!”

  “It is nice of you to bring a water demon to have sex with me, Marla, but now is not a good time. I see you are here in a body made of spit and dust again. How can you help when you are occupying such a weak vessel?”

  “Cosmocrator, go turn that sand into water, will you? Beadle, drop the forcefield when Cosmocrator gets close.”

  “I, uh, Nicolette told me to contain the sand until she ordered me to do otherwise, so....”

  “I outrank her. I’m a god now.”

  “Oh.” Mr. Beadle blinked. “Some people said that, but I thought it was, you know, figurative, that they meant you were like unto a god.”

  “Nope. Actual god. Ruler of the underworld.”

  “The thing is, I’m not convinced Nicolette would agree that a god outranks her—”

  He was more scared of Nicolette than her? What was the world coming to? “You’re alive for a short time, Beadle. You spend most of your existence dead, and that’s dead in my realm, under my control. You’ve got a decision to make now: how would you like to spend eternity? In the realm of a grateful queen, or the realm of an annoyed one?”

  “Ah. I see your point. Just say when.”

  “Wait,” Danielle said. “That creature can transmute the sand into water?”

  “I can transmute all kinds of things into all kinds of things, honey.” Cosmocrator swam with impossible speed and grace toward the floating patch of sand, and Marla shouted “Now!” right before he struck the forcefield. Beadle stopped his precise mystic gestures, and Cosmocrator was immediately swarmed by the surging sand.

  “He is being devoured,” Zufi said. “I am unsure how I am meant to mate with him if he is devoured.”

  “I didn’t bring Cosmocrator for you to—look.” The center of the sand was changing, now, transformed into honey-colored chaos, and then back into water. Ripples of luminosity, followed by ripples of water, spread out evenly until the sand was entirely gone.

  All the sand they could see, anyway.

  Cosmocrator swam back toward them. “Good?”

  “Excellent,” Marla said.

  “What did you do?” Beadle said.

  Marla said, “Cosmocrator is made of primordial chaos—the stem cells of the universe. My chaos can turn into anything, and it can turn other things into itself, sort of like the sand does. So, water becomes black sand becomes chaos becomes water again. Poof. Or, a series of poofs.”

  “Primordial chaos.” Beadle shuddered. Chaos magic wasn’t remotely his bailiwick. It must be a nightmare for a master of order, having to work under Nicolette. Poor guy. “Better the chaos that works for us than the chaos that works against us, I guess.”

  “There are more patches of sand nearby,” the Bay Witch said. “You will come with me? I will show you.”

  Marla nodded. Until Bradley found an oracle or Hamil got the detectors working, there wasn’t a lot else she could do. She wasn’t about to return her attention to the underworld and face Lauren’s grief and rage. Her presence down there wouldn’t help.

  Her presence could help elsewhere, though....

  “Beadle, have you heard from other cities?”

  “Oh, yes. We’re not the only one suffering invasion from the sea. Boston, Savannah, the gulf coast of Florida....”

  “Okay.” Marla couldn’t create enough copies of herself to cover the whole country, but she could spin up half a dozen, and enough attendant demons to join her. She could go to those cities, make contact with the local sorcerers, and tell them to spread the gospel of fire and forcefields until she could dispatch demons to convert the sand.

  Maybe she could keep the world from ending long enough for Bradley to summon up an oracle that could save it more thoroughly.

  “Come, Marla,” Zufi said. Marla felt the tug of obligation, of promises made and unfulfilled, and followed her and Cosmocrator in the water.

  The Last Oracle Hunt

  “What the shit!” Rondeau said from the couch, startling the young woman who knelt between his legs.

  Bradley spun away and covered his eyes. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt!”

  “Uh, this is a business associate of mine, Mandy. I guess this is a meeting I really have to take. I’m sorry. I’ll call you, okay?”

  Bradley kept resolutely facing the window until he heard the suite’s door open and close. When he turned around, Rondeau was pulling up his pants and scowling. “It’s almost always nice to see you, B, but I liked it better when you didn’t know how to cast Shadow Walk.” B looked at him blankly. “You know, the Dungeons and Dragons spell? What, you’re telling me you weren’t a nerd when you were younger? Fine. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. A guy conquers the entire underworld of Las Vegas, maybe he thinks he’s earned a little time with a nice woman, especially after being in a body that wasn’t even interested in women, nice or otherwise, for years. This guy, he thinks he’s way overdue to reacquaint himself, and the moment of truth is approaching, but no, duty calls. What can I do for you?” He glanced at his watch. “And can I do it quickly? Mandy has work in two hours. I mean, technically I’m her boss, or at least, her boss works for me, so I could arrange for her to go in late, but it’s like, do I really want to set that kind of precedent—”

  “Cole is dead, Rondeau.” The words still didn’t seem real. It was like Bradley was reciting lines from a play, because how could a world without Sanford Cole be a fact? Except on some level he did understand. He must, because he was willing to do something he’d sworn never to do, in order to avenge his friend, and stop the sand from killing anyone else.

  Rondeau shut up, widened his eyes, barreled across the room, and gave Bradley a bear hug. “Oh, man, I am so sorry. Cole was the best, seriously, the best, and I know you two were close. What the hell happened?”

  “The Inimical got him. The black sand. That’s what it calls itself, apparently.”

  Rondeau released him and stepped back. “No shit? I thought you guys beat that, didn’t Vinnie Two-Eyes and the Gnashing do their bit?”

  “No, they did great, but the sand tricked us. It was laying low all along. It’s launched an all-out attack now, though. I heard from some of the other San Francisco sorcerers that’s it’s coming in from the bay, and it’s hitting Chicago, too. We know it’s been to Vegas before, so you might want to have your people be on the lookout.”

  “Aw, damn. This is bad. Like bio-weapon bad, huh?”

  “It’s worse than that. Plague and natural disaster in one package, except it’s really lots of packages. Marla’s doing what she can, but even a god can only do so much, and I’m not convinced she’ll be able to hold the sand at bay, let along beat it. So... it’s nuclear option time. I’m going to summon an oracle and ask it to stop the sand.”

  “Whoa. B. I’m a slow learner, but even I eventually learned not to do stuff like that. You can ask oracles questions, but you can’t ask them for boons. They’re like genies, not the real ones, but the ones from the racist old stories—they’ll give you what you want, sort of, but they’ll fuck you up in the process.”

  “I know. I’m the one who told you all that. But what choice do we have? The sand is going to attack us from all directions. It can co-opt our allies, infect them and infiltrate us. Even if we figure out a way to track the stuff reliably and have an all-out war, if we leave even a single grain of the stuff in the world, it can reconstitute itself, and we’ll be back to square one. Except it’ll be more like square minus a million, because there’s no way we fight this without suffering bad casualties. So—we need big magic.”

  Rondeau nodded glumly. “I see that. Ugh. This is all my fault, B. I summoned up this stupid sand. It was a harmless meteorite lodged in the dirt until I asked it a question and had to do it a favor.”

  “You were doing Marla a favor, Rondeau, that’s all. I would have done exactly what you did. You had no idea what the black
star was planning. It told you its price, it seemed reasonable, and you agreed to pay it. I don’t think this is on you.”

  Rondeau shook his head, mouth twisted in a sour grimace. “That’s sweet of you to say, but... gods. I’m so glad I don’t have that kind of power anymore. I never had the right temperament for it. As far as guilt goes, unleashing black sand on the world ranks below the time I ate your double from this universe, but only by a little bit. Can I go with you to track this super-oracle down?”

  “That’s why I came. Calling up something strong enough to stop the sand... I think we’re moving past nosebleed and headache territory. I might have a brain aneurysm or something, or be unable to speak when the time comes. I need you there to ask whatever I call for help, if I can’t.”

  “And to assess the cost.”

  “Doesn’t really matter what the cost is. I pay it. I’m not even supposed to be in this world, you know? I should be part of my collective overmind, looking after the multiverse, staying out of trouble. Instead I got to strike out on my own, have some adventures, hang out with friends. If the price is death, or torment, or whatever? Fuck it. I’ll pay it. I pay it, and I save the world.”

  “And if the cost is hurting someone else?”

  It wasn’t so much that Bradley hadn’t considered that, as that he hadn’t wanted to consider it. “Then we weigh it. We weigh whether whatever I’m asked to do is less damaging than what the black sand will do unchecked. I mean... it would have to be something pretty bad.”

  “Yeah,” Rondeau said. “I am so glad I don’t have this power anymore. So where to first? Should I call for a car, or a plane? Or a boat? I could get a boat.”

  “None of the above, I don’t think. I still have Marla’s Shadow Walk power—good name for it—so I can just follow my gut. It beats driving around aimlessly looking for a thread to pull.” He held out his hand. “One last oracle hunt, buddy.”

  Rondeau clasped his hand in Bradley’s. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” He paused. “Until the apocalypse or whatever.”