He had to do something.
Maybe he could reenter the real world behind Quetzal. Sneak up on him. Surprise him and distract him. Distracting him had worked before.
It wasn't much of a plan, but John didn't think there was time to come up with anything better.
He ran toward the building, or at least where he thought the building ought to be. Standing where he guessed the door to be, he turned to face in what he hoped was Quetzal's direction.
Now, how to walk between the worlds?
He didn't know.
How had he done it before?
He had needed to get away, get anywhere, and he had. But now he needed to get to somewhere, and a very particular somewhere.
He stared at the flickering light, feeling helpless. It had been a long time since he'd seen a flash of Dr. Spae's color.
She needed him.
He needed to get to her.
The air around him began to sparkle.
He needed—
Rainbow colors glistened.
He needed!
Dimly, he perceived the shadowy shape of Quetzal; the wizard had backed the doctor up against a tree. John could see
the tree clearly. She needed him. John ran forward, holding with as tight a will as he could to the fact that he needed to be in the sunlit world.
The ground changed beneath his feet as he ran. The shift shocked him and he stumbled, sprawling face-first on the ground. His ears roared.
What a putz!
He struggled to sit up. A windstorm had blown up while he'd been away; maybe it was a side effect of the magic—he didn't care. He was back in the sunlit world! There was light all around, bright and piercing. He'd done it!
Now he needed to get off his ass and help Dr. Spae.
Or did he?
The doctor was slumped at the base of the tree, but Quetzal no longer menaced her. Instead he writhed as if he were in agony, and flung uncontrolled bolts of magical energy at the sky.
What in hell was going on?
Screaming, Quetzal ran across the green. Shafts of light from the sky tracked him as he headed toward the great gates. John expected him to stop, or try to climb, but the darkling mage ran straight at the gates. There was a flash and a clap of sound like thunder. When John could see again, he saw a jagged hole in the gates. The edges of the iron pieces glowed a dull red.
Quetzal was gone.
CHAPTER
30
"Keep the lights on him! Keep the lights on him!"
Charley didn't know if the other crew still chasing Quetzal heard him. Their erratic success suggested that they did not, but maybe they were having the same troubles that Hagen was having. Something Quetzal was doing was screwing up the electronics.
The Mamba banked hard, just missing a church steeple. Charley could've counted the cracks in each slab of roof slate. Scraping a building had already sent one of the verries limping away to find a safe landing zone.
"Watch where you're flying," he said.
"You run the lights," Hagen snapped back. "I'll fly the verrie."
Two verries should have been more than enough to stay on Quetzal's trail, but for a guy who wasn't supposed to know about being hunted by aircraft he was very good at taking advantage of every bit of cover the city provided.
"We're down on the university grounds." It was the pilot of one of the two verries that had landed. "No sign of the guy who popped out of the air or the woman. Lee's dead. The other guy's got a bullet in his torso. You want an evac?" "Negative," Hagen replied.
"Call 911," Charley ordered. "Tell them you've got a man down with a gunshot wound." The radio was silent for a moment. "Do it!"
Another moment of silence. "Is that a confirm?"
"Confirm," Hagen said. "Get your butts back in the air first."
"Wilco."
Hagen banked hard again. Charley was learning that the Mambas had more than a visual resemblance to dragonflies— at least when Hagen was in the pilot's seat. The verrie danced through the sky like a dragonfly, all zigs and zags and swoops and dives. It was a good thing Charley wasn't prone to motion sickness.
They had lost Quetzal again and until they had the other two verries back in the air, they didn't have enough eyes in the sky to keep the wily bastard in sight.
Hagen put their Mamba into a widening spiral centered on the last place they'd seen the fugitive. The other verrie kept station over that point. Run or stay, they'd be ready for him. Charley killed the lights, relying on the night sight. With luck, Quetzal might think he'd lost them and emerge where they could nail him again.
"There!"
Hagen slaved Charley's night sight long enough to point it in the right direction. Quetzal was scampering down a steep bank. Hagen turned the verrie in pursuit, calling the other Mamba to join him. They were low, coming in on the fugitive, when Charley saw where Quetzal was heading.
"Shit! What's that wall?"
"Railroad tunnel," Hagen said.
"Tunnel?"
"Check the console map."
"How do I get it?"
The map appeared. Hagen must have done something; Charley certainly hadn't. It took him a few seconds to spot the tunnel. "But it's sealed."
"Only to vehicles," Hagen said. "He can get in."
Hagen sounded sure. "Not good. It comes out the other side of the hill, near the river. Your other birds back in the air?"
A moment. "Roger."
"Send them over there. We'll have him trapped."
"We got civilians down there." It was one of the other pilots.
"Where?" Charley demanded.
"Closing on the mouth of the tunnel."
Shit! There were two ragged figures, a man and a woman, making their way along the wall toward the tunnel. They looked like streeters; they probably had their slumps in the tunnel. "You got a horn on this thing, Hagen?"
"A what?"
"A loudspeaker."
"Affirmative."
"Patch me into it. We've got to get them out of there. They have no idea what they're getting into."
John and Dr. Spae ignored the echoing voice from the hovering verrie demanding that they torn around and leave the area. It said it was the police, but John didn't believe it; the police didn't fly milspec verries like that Mamba. He tuned out the noise as he helped Dr. Spae toward the slit at the edge of the wall. Once they were under the roof, the voice shut up, which was fine by John. They kept moving until they reached a point where the tunnel turned, cutting off most of the light leaking in from the sprawl glow.
"What is this place?"
"Railroad tunnel. Goes through. The hill." Spae was panting, nearly out of breath. "Give me a minute. I'll be okay. In a minute."
John looked back at the bend in the tunnel. There was a paler patch, deep gray against the jet of the dark tunnel. The tunnel was broader than he would" have expected, ten yards across at least. There were two sets of tracks, huddled on one side of the tunnel. Half of the right-of-way was not set up for trains at all. The place smelled vile, and trash and litter almost covered the gravel that crunched underfoot. Dr. Spae had insisted that Quetzal would head here. Now that they had stopped running for a moment, he had a chance to ask, "How do you know that this is where he'll come?"
"He needed to get away from the searchlights. They weren't ordinary lights."
"I know. I saw. But why come down here? Wouldn't any building do?"
"To escape the lights, yes, but the men in the verries would have seen which he chose. They could wait him out. Down here, he has a surprise for them."
"A trap?" John didn't like the idea of following Quetzal into a trap.
"An escape route," the doctor said. She was getting her wind back. "One of the cults associated with his Glittering Path had a sect here in Providence. They had a house up on the hill and were supposed to hold rituals down here. It's been speculated that the cult had dug a connection down to the tunnel. It seems likely; it fits the facts. A passageway leading from here
to a house on top would have let the cultists travel unseen to their ritual site. This railroad tunnel gives Quetzal the same protection from the lights that it gave the cultists from prying eyes. Their passageway will be his escape route from the verries. Once he gets to it, the men up there will have no idea where he's vanished to. They couldn't possibly know where he'd emerge."
"And we do?"
"No, but we can follow him. Can't you feel him?"
John wasn't sure. There was something about the place. He had a sense of space, stretching vastly before him. He could almost feel the weight of the earth pressing down from above. Deeper in the tunnel there was a glimmer where no light should be.
"You ready, John?"
He wasn't. "Sure."
They stayed near the wall, using it to keep their orientation in the dark. Even John's excellent night vision was stymied here. But the longer they remained, the better it got. He began to see things by the faintest reflection of light leaking down the length of the tunnel.
There were people living down here. Streeters. John and the doctor passed several carefully arranged piles of debris and trash. To someone without anything better, those trash heaps were home.
They came across two of the tenants.
The bodies were sprawled, limp and lifeless. John didn't need to look closely to know that Quetzal had drained them. There was a stink on the air that wasn't natural, a stink he could now associate with the darkling mage.
Quetzal had come this way.
Dr. Spae was the one who found the entrance to the secret passageway. It was hidden in the back of an alcove in the wall. A pivoting panel opened on a rotting black curtain, behind which was a small chamber lit by the feeble glow of an ancient incandescent bulb. An angled shaft led up into the hill. Somewhere up above, another faint light glowed.
John insisted on going first.
"Be careful," Dr. Spae advised.
It was a bit of doctor's advice he intended to follow scrupulously.
The shaft was steep enough that to ascend, he needed to use the rusty iron rungs driven into the wall. After twenty feet or so, it opened into another chamber. This one was very irregular, a strange place where in the dim light a shadow might be an opening leading away into darker realms, or just a smudge on the rockface. It gave the place a feeling of a hall of mirrors, where you could not tell the real passages from the reflections. John discovered another shaft leading up, from which faint sounds emanated.
Quetzal, making his escape.
Dr. Spae joined him and listened. She agreed that the noise they could hear was Quetzal, but she disagreed about which direction the wizard was going.
"He's coming back."
It wasn't what John wanted to hear. "Why? The men in the verries couldn't have cut him off. You said they wouldn't know what house he was headed for."
"Maybe he can't get through. Maybe the tunnel up there has collapsed. It's been a long time."
"Maybe he's coming back because he knows we're here."
Spae shrugged. "His reasons don't matter."
"What will we do?"
"Fight him."
"That didn't work before."
"Then we bring the roof down on his head."
The earth above them felt very, very weighty. "We'll die, too."
"Then we'll die."
John didn't want to die under tons of dirt. "It's that important?"
"Did you get any sense of the telesmon he'd uncovered?"
John didn't know what a telesmon was, but he had gotten a sense from the object Quetzal had been carrying. He hadn't liked it at all. It had felt... evil. "Yeah."
"Then you know it's that important."
"Can't you just collapse it on him, and not on us?"
"I don't think I can be that selective, especially with him fighting me."
"Try, Doctor."
"I'll do what I can, John. Now give me your hand; we need to link."
As the doctor built her spell construct, shadows began to play against the floor of the chamber. Quetzal was coming closer. Dr. Spae pronounced herself as satisfied as could be expected. Quetzal s foot emerged from the shaft.
Why didn't Dr. Spae do something?
His other foot. His legs. This would be a good time.
Do it! Bury him!
The doctor must have sensed John's distress. "He has to be in the right place," she whispered.
Quetzal stood upon the floor of the chamber. He turned and saw them. Smiling grimly, he said, "I see I was not the only one to know of this passage."
The doctor didn't respond, so John was silent as well.
"What brings you and your shy elf puppet here, Spae? Didn't you get enough last time?"
"We came to stop you," the doctor said.
"I've already been stopped. Time and the earth have beaten you to it. The passage is blocked, and the only way out is the way we came in."
"You have no way out," Dr. Spae told him.
"A duel here would be dangerous. The deep earth likes not our kind. If you insist upon having your death at my hand, let us do it outside. In here, the walls could collapse."
"I'll help them."
Quetzal shook his head. "You won't. You'll be trapped here as well."
"I'm willing."
John felt her release energy into her spell construct. A sound like thunder miles off echoed through the rock. Quetzal's eyes darted wildly about for a moment, then he set to disrupting the doctor's spell. Through his rapport with Dr. Spae, John could feel the doctor working the spell on the earth around them, calling it to close. He felt, too, the props she had placed to shield them; they seemed terribly flimsy.
The play of magics in the chamber sent shadows scampering crazily about the rockface. The arcane light illuminated a dark spot on the wall; a spot that seemed to be a shadow, but was not an ordinary one. If the interplay of arcane forces hadn't heightened his senses, he wouldn't have recognized it for what it was.
The earth moaned around them, bending closer. Dust shifted from the walls, and clods of dirt and small stones dribbled down from the roof.
Dr. Spae's construct was achieving reality. The roof would fall soon.
John tightened his grip on her hand and tugged her back toward the shadow that wasn't exactly a shadow. She let out a wordless howl of protest as Quetzal reacted to her broken concentration. Through the link with Dr. Spae, John felt Quetzal wrest control of the magic. The groaning stopped, and so did the fall of rocks. Quetzal laughed and stepped forward.
John didn't care.
"John, let go of me!"
John didn't. He intended to hold her where he wanted her. "Stand still, Doctor! Let me have the spell."
"But you don't—"
"Now! There's no time to argue!" He was betting that the rapport they shared would help her to trust him. He tried to be calm. And why not? They were only staking their lives.
"You've made a mistake, elf. I have the spell now."
"We'll see," John told him.
He ripped at the lattice the doctor had set to try and save them.
"No, John! You're wrecking it!"
He knew. But by destroying their back door, the spell would be reenergized.
Quetzal recognized what John was doing. The darkling mage scrambled to take control of the astral props. John let him have the lesser ones without a fight, concentrating his effort on wiping out the mainstay over the spot where Spae had been standing. Where Quetzal now stood.
John willed the earth above to join the earth below.
The stone moaned its longing to become whole and seal the hollow in its midst.
"You should have been buried long ago," John said, as he felt the last of the prop evaporate into nothingness. He forgot the spell, forgot the rock, forgot the earth closing in on them and gave his will to need, the need to be elsewhere. He took himself and the doctor sideways into the shadow.
Behind them, the trickle of falling stone became a torrent. Looking over his shoulder, John saw Quetza
l raise both hands in a fending gesture, dropping his precious telesmon. The artifact rang like a gong as it hit and bounced. The small sound was lost in the clamor of the rockfall.
Even Quetzal didn't have the power to stop the earth in its motion. His screams were buried with him under tons of dirt and earth and rock.
John tugged harder on Spae. They could not afford to tarry; they might still be caught. She stumbled; only his hand in hers kept her upright. John felt something bang off his shin; it clattered away in the darkness. Coughing from the dust, they staggered on.
When John thought they had gotten far enough to be safe, he kept going for another dozen yards. He listened. The rock was silent. It was safe to stop. He leaned against the tunnel wall and slowly slid to a sitting position.
Dr. Spae sat beside him. "What happened? Why aren't we buried?"
"We're in the otherworld, Doctor."
She looked around, though they were in near darkness and there was little to see. Her mouth was open as if she might taste a difference in the air. "You brought us here?"
He nodded. "I seem to have discovered the trick."
They rested for a while in silence.
John broke the quiet by saying, "I'm sorry about Mr. Beryle." The doctor didn't respond. Maybe it had been the wrong thing to say. After another while he tried, "We had probably best get out of here."
Dr. Spae nodded. "Can we stay in Faery awhile? I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to the real world."
"Sure. I guess so. The tunnel still seems to go in the right direction."
They followed the tunnel. For some reason, John found it easier to see in the dark of this Faery tunnel than he had in the railroad tunnel.The doctor seemed to have the same advantage; they walked along in the center of the broad passage.
"Why is this passage here?" Dr. Spae asked suddenly.
'"I don't know."
"But we're under the hill, aren't we? The natural landforms are supposed to be the same in the two dimensions. Since they don't have trains in the otherworld, this should be a solid hill in Faery."
John hadn't considered that. If he had, he might not have tried what he had done, and they might have been buried with Quetzal. He didn't want to think about that. "I guess that there are tunnelers in the otherworld, too. I didn't create the place, Doctor. I just found it and walked us here."
robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain Page 35
