I DON’T REMEMBER what happened next. The next thing I do remember, I was southbound on the white stone of the Naranda, alone and shivering with the cold.
THE ROAD SIGN said:
Harleton 318
I’d heard of Harleton – a wide spot in the road. The spotter would make it easily enough. It showed nine hundred and thirty miles range – though as the charge declined, the spotter would move more slowly. Already it had dipped to eighty miles an hour with the accelerator heeled all the way over.
Four hours later I pulled into Harleton. It was the middle of the night by then, the town fast asleep. Only the main square was lit; the merchant’s quarter was dark as the night surrounding it. One soldier stood guard, and it gladdened me to see that he wore my father’s green and gold livery.
He took me to the Command Hall – a building barely worthy of the name, large enough for perhaps twenty people – and woke his commander, an old sergeant with a face like a potato, who reminded me a bit of Gurny: hight Moorisan, which family name I knew, though I did not know him. He recognized me, which was useful; I had no papers on me to prove myself. “Vampires are coming,” I told him. “Extinguish the light in the main square, and any others you may have burning.”
They did, and the sergeant woke the town, including their wind witch – they had only one, there were not forty people in that town, all trying to crowd into the Command Hall. She was a slight girl of perhaps seventeen years: my age. She looked awfully young.
“How fast can you fly?”
She yawned. “In my gear? Wings on? Eighty or ninety miles an hour.”
I nodded. She could be in Arch by morning. “Bring me paper,” I told the sergeant. “And some mulled wine. What’s your name, miss?”
“Avaland, of the House of Sun and Wind.” It was a professional name, telling me nothing about her family, but I needed no more. She had red eyes, which are unusual, and a large scar on her shoulder, probably from a flying accident, in the shape of a capitalized baf.
Father, I wrote,
I trust this message to a wind witch from Harleton, hight Avaland SunWind. She is slightly built, red-eyed, and bears a large old scar in the shape of a capital baf on her right shoulder.
Everyone at the lodge is dead, save me. Uadalure, Ahjan, Remane, Gurny, all the rest. By vampire and fire. Gurny and Uadalure and some boys were in a limousine that went off the road about a mile south of the lodge. You should find their bodies in the ravine beneath.
The vampires are smart. Old. Well organized. They are following me down the Naranda, though I am at least two hours ahead of them. I have stopped in Harleton to send this message. Please send troops. I am bound for Hell.
I looked at the letter and sighed. I was so tired, wanted to fold the letter and give it to the girl, but it couldn’t go like that. I’d been taught better. Clearly she was a wind witch. Of course the girl was slightly built, she was on messenger duty. It was a scar, of course it was old, and he could see how large it was. I didn’t need to name anyone. “Everyone” would be sufficient. I needn’t mention the ravine, Father would know what “off the road” meant. “I have stopped in Harleton” was redundant once he had seen the messenger, and “send troops” impertinent.
Of course the vampires were old, if they were smart.
“Bring me another sheet of paper,” I instructed them.
Hagra al’Mara
of the House of Five Statues
care of Anteho Sanrissi
steward of the House
Father,
I trust this message to Avaland SunWind. She is red-eyed, and bears a scar in the shape of a capital baf on her shoulder.
Everyone at the lodge is dead. Vampires, fire. Gurny and Uadalure and some boys were in a limousine that went off the road about a mile south of the lodge, at the fourth switchback.
The vampires are smart. They are following me down the Naranda, though I am at least two hours ahead of them. I am bound for Hell.
I was so tired. I used the only thing that came to me, next: something only he, I, and Anteho Sanrissi would know. She had been present for this:
I have no seal. In the event you do not recognize my writing, in our last conversation you called me arrogant and unready. You may have been right.
– Tariq
I folded the letter, and gave it to the girl. “Protect that with your life. Do you know the Five Statues estate in Arch? Fly to the main entrance and request the steward. She will know what to do. Look at me.” She did, unwillingly. “There are vampires, trailing me by perhaps two hours. Do you know what they will do if they catch you?”
She swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Fly.”
“HAVE YOU A a fire witch?” I asked Sergeant Moorisan. A fire witch might have been trained in how to charge my spotter, if I was lucky.
He shook his head. “No … my lord.” I didn’t know whether the hesitation was because of my age or something else: I thought the talk of vampires had frightened him, and he could see what was stamped on my face as well as anyone.
I nodded. “A spotter with more manna than my own?” I used the old word for charge almost automatically, a man his age.
“No charged vehicles at all, my lord. Horses and dramfer only.”
Neither were options. A horse would get me to Hell, if I’d enough time and could find water; but I didn’t have time, the vampires would catch me easily. The dramfer would run until its heart exploded, and would keep me ahead of the vampires until then … but we’d be no more than halfway to Hell when it expired.
I DRANK MY my wine and napped for an hour. Sergeant Moorisan awakened me. “It’s time, sir.” He’d dropped the title again. Not worth arguing. They found me a trooper’s coat and a new helmet, one without a broken faceplate or the smell of Gurny’s flatweed. A flat of water, some road rations, and four charges for my heater.
I stood with Sergeant Moorisan at the side of the road, wearing the coat, new helmet in hand. “Be silent,” I instructed. I slipped into enough of a trance to use witch sight. Their heat was visible down the road, only ten or twelve miles. I ranged them and measured their speed: just as fast now as they’d been chasing me out of the lodge. Hadn’t slowed. Well, that was information.
I let the witch sight slip away. “Return to town,” I told Moorisan.
“Gladly. Good luck, my lord.” The title again. What an odd old man.
I felt oddly reluctant to mount the spotter. I’d warmed up enough from the wine and coat that the cold night air was almost pleasant, and it might be the last time I ever felt it, if I ended up dying in Hell. Rather than mounting I walked the spotter down the road toward the vampires for a few minutes. I wanted them to be sure of me when we blew by Harleton. I reached the spot I’d selected, mounted, put the helmet on, moved the spotter about so that my back was to the vampires.
A mile distant, a few of them hooted in pleasure at the sight of me. The sound traveled across the flat planes. I found it encouraging – their leader might be smart, whichever one it was, but they were just vampires, as a group, when all was written down. I gave a great exaggerated start, jerked up as if I’d been drowsing on the spotter, fired off a few pointless shots in their direction in a display of unreasoning panic, and gunned the spotter away down the road.
They never noticed darkened Harleton as we passed it.
EVE
N NOW I gained on them. Six hundred and two miles to the first exit to Hell. Ten hours, estimating the average speed the spotter would make getting me there. By the time I was halfway there the charge would have drained to the point I was no faster than the vampires. By the time I was most of the way there, they’d be gaining on me. It’d be close, before the Gate, unless they gave up the chase.
They showed no signs of it. The monotony of the road lulled me, and I was able to slip far enough into trance to cast my witch sight backward. Two dozen miles distance between me and them. Their speed had not changed.
I returned to myself. I figured I could spare a few minutes. I pulled the spotter over, got off, drank and made water. I wasn’t tempted by the road rations. I walked around, dropped to the road and did pushups, stretched, and got back on the spotter. I didn’t bother with witch sight, they were about sixteen miles back if they were coming at all, and I’d lost any hope they wouldn’t be.
On the road again.
SIX HOURS LATER the Sun rose. I’d increased the distance between us to near fifty miles at one point, but the spotter had been slowing as the charge died.
Less than two hours before I reached the Gate at the First Exit.
I WAS FOUR miles distant when I first saw the Gate. In the mid-morning light the sky had brightened to a pale blue: ahead of me I spotted a piece of red sky, a little off the side of the freeway.
The vampires were three miles behind me. They’d slowed, finally, after at least sixteen hours in the air, from the time they’d attacked the lodge. Only the greatest of wind witches could have made any better speed.
I’d hoped for guards at the Gate. They weren’t always mounted, and never for military reasons; no one had challenged Potsdam out of Hell in ten generations. But sometimes they sent guards when a caravan was due to pass through.
No luck.
I’d never been to Hell before. No one I knew to speak to had ever been either, that I knew, but I’d seen the entertainments. “Hotter than Hell” was a phrase for a reason. I eased back on the throttle, took the exit, drifted down the ramp through the Gate, and into a brutal heat.
The road changed colors. It had been white stone all the way from Tajan, a thousand miles distant. Abruptly it was a reddish brick. It had been desert on the Middle Earth side, and it was desert Hellside … but a different desert. Scarlet sky, drifting white clouds, no visible Sun but a terrible brightness nonetheless. The white and brown of Middle Earth’s desert ground was now black and muddy red –
I noticed none of this at the moment. The spotter slewed around and I – meant to hop off, but my muscles were frozen and joints were locked and the exhaustion dragged at me. I half fell off the spotter, regained my balance and took the spare charges out of my coat pocket and stuck them in my belt. If I was going to die, I was going to do it with no charges left and the field about me littered with the bodies of my enemies.
The vampires dropped to the ground, just the other side of the Gate. From this side they were backed by blue sky and the long white road. They did look like me – silver eyes, white hair, though unlike me they’d pure white skin, no gold in it at all. They wore clothes that had probably belonged to people once – too large, like any of the Windborn they were slight of build, and the clothes were with a few notable exceptions ragged and torn.
Two of the notable exceptions were in the front row of the horde in bloody uniforms, the green and gold of my father’s house, taken off the dead of Tajan.
They stared at me and then, as one, howled.
No one can fly in Hell.
I made an ancient gesture of disrespect to them, stood there a beat longer, and then turned back to the spotter. I took off the helmet and hung it on the backbar, took off the coat and tied it down to the seat behind me. I’d sweated through my shirt already.
I didn’t bother looking back. If they came I’d hear them in time to turn and take some of them with me.
The spotter did twelve miles an hour, as the charge gentled down toward nothing, but it was faster than walking, and would be for a while yet. A terrible howl rose up behind me, but I ignored it and moved on.
And then I heard the howl change. I hauled the spotter to the side and looked back.
The vampires walked through the Gate, and set off after me afoot.
I STAYED TO the road. There was no reason to do otherwise as long as the spotter held out, and in Hell it might actually hold out longer than it would have in Middle Earth: wind magic doesn’t work in Hell at all, but fire magic works fine, and the spotter’s engine was fire magic, to put it crudely, stored and compressed.
I didn’t know what they called this road, it was no longer the Naranda, obviously, but there were no signs mounted anywhere along its length. No buildings, no sign of anything that might be called civilization, since I’d passed through the Gate into Hell.
I rationed my water but before another day had passed it was gone and a brutal thirst tormented me. I was gaining on the vampires again, now they were afoot. I didn’t know how long I’d be on the road. Until I found help, or turned to face those following me, I supposed.
How long could they walk without water? Longer than me, I was sure, but that wasn’t really useful for planning.
Not that I was planning. I drowsed, only slightly awake, drifting down the road aboard the spotter. It was traveling at no better than a quick walk now, but that was, I knew, better time than I could make at this point actually walking.
I saw no Sun the entire time I was in Hell. Perhaps they have none? I didn’t recall an entertainment making a statement on the subject. But when I arrived it was bright, and as I traveled down the road it got less bright, and then actually dimmed. It got no cooler, just dimmer, and then fully dark.
I don’t remember that night well. I spent it expecting the vampires to catch up with me, to rush me out of the utter blackness. I’m sure I slept some. I caught myself falling forward more than once.
I’d lost track of the time when it began to brighten again. I hadn’t noticed it getting cooler in the night, but I did notice it getting hotter as the light returned. I was half out of my head by then, considering turning about and walking back toward the vampires, to see how many I could kill before they felled me.
At first I thought the little white house was a mirage. Such things happen on the road, in the heat. I let my eyes close, drifted a while, opened them again. Still there, quite the persistent mirage. I drifted toward it placidly, unworried, and then the spotter came gently to a halt, with the mirage about a half a mile distant. The spotter hovered in one spot for a moment and then dropped to its plates and sat solidly on the ground. I knew it would not rise again. I felt a rush of gratitude toward it that embarrassed me, as if it were a creature and aware: I was alive because of it. I patted it once as I dismounted. I didn’t want to leave it, but I knew I’d die if I stayed with it. Of course I’d probably die if I left it too, but at least my parents wouldn’t be ashamed of me having quit.
I picked up my coat with the road rations in its pocket, the empty flat of water, left the helmet with the spotter, and walked toward the mirage.
It resolved into a small white adobe house with a long shaded porch. A soft chair and a long wood bench sat on the porch. A covered well rose up out of the dusty hard dirt front yard, twenty feet right of the porch. They had four goats penned around the side, and two dramfer tied up by the well, drinking from a trough
in front of the well.
Two demons stepped down from the porch at my approach.
They looked as the paler-skinned tribe of demons do: skin both redder and more fair than that of most people, with those unpleasant five-fingered hands that make them prized for their skill as musicians, if not for much else. These two were short – for demons, I mean, perhaps six feet. The thinner of the two had hair a color I’d never seen – not yellow, exactly, closer to straw – and black eyes, the all-black eyes without structure you sometimes see among demons. The other was about the same height, but stockier, with blue eyes that were structured like my own silver eyes, and fine short brown hair.
They were dressed oddly for demons – at least oddly for my perhaps childish stereotype of what demons wore. Both were in pants, shirts, and boots: aside from their species they could have stood at the intersection of Broad Street and Potsriver Boulevard and the only comment their outfits would have aroused was the color, a dull red that was out of style that year in Arch, but doubtless blended in well with the landscapes of Hell.
“So you’re real,” the thin one said softly. “We’ve been hearing reports of you for the last day. Name yourself and give us your business in Hell.”
I came to a halt before them and managed a stiff bow.
I tried to speak and nothing came out. I tried again and forced words out my parched throat. “I am Tariq al’Marita, son of Hagra al’Mara, of the House of Five Statues, descendant in straight line of the union of Black Alucar and the Stone Queen, founders of the Fifth Republic. My lineage extends to the Dawn Republic: I can recite it if you wish, though I would ask a drink first.”
Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories Page 28
