Mountain of Black Glass (54 page)

The shape beside was only slightly less horrific, a tall but stooped figure with the protruding chest of a bird, and with feet that might have been human except that the toes stretched and curled into long talons. But if the rest of the vulture-man was just ugly, it was his face that was truly ghastly: his elaborate hooked beak might have once been a human face before something had melted flesh and bone and stretched the nose and jaw outward like putty. But where either human or bird would have eyes, the creature had only malformed flesh and empty sockets.

“Stop,”
the sphinx rumbled in a voice so deep that the soldiers all took a step back. Even the tortoise-men swayed a little, like reeds in a stiff breeze.

The vulture-thing smiled slowly, showing teeth at the hinge of his beak. “Ah, yes, the guardian known as Yesterday,” he said in a bizarrely sweet voice. “How appropriate, loyal Saf, since you clearly fail to understand how things have changed.”

“The Temple of Ra is the holy of holies, Tefy,” the guardian replied. To Orlando at that moment, watching from the doorway, the sphinx's great bulk seemed the one thing holding the universe in place. “That does not change. That will never change. You and Mewat have overstepped your authority by assaulting the house of the Highest. Turn and flee this moment, and perhaps your master Osiris will intercede for you with his grandfather. If you stay, you will be destroyed.”

Cobra-man Mewat laughed, a hoarse wheeze, and a glint appeared in the darkness of Tefy's empty sockets. “That might be, Saf,” said the vulture-man. “You and your brother are old and powerful, and we are but young godlings, however high in our Lord's favor—but we are not fools enough to pit ourselves against you.” He lifted his hands, the fingers long and thin as spider's legs, and clapped them together. The sound was picked up and echoed by the tortoise-men, who beat fists against bellies to make their shells echo to a slow drumbeat.

Saf crouched a little lower, as though preparing to spring. Muscles writhed like river current beneath his stony skin. The terrified crowd groaned and lurched backward yet again, surging against the chamber wall like a wave against a breakwater. People caught in the crush screamed for help, dull, muffled sounds that did not last long. “If you will not stand against me, carrioneater, then who shall?” Saf growled. “I will crush your tortoise-men like Bast in a nest of rats.”

“No doubt,” said Tefy calmly. “No doubt.” He began to back toward the doorway. Mewat, after showing his mouthful of crooked fangs in a sneer, followed him.

“They're going!” Fredericks exulted in a strangled half-whisper. Orlando, too, was feeling vastly relieved at the retreat of vulture and cobra until three tall figures stepped past the pair and through the temple doors.

“Oh, this impacts,” Orlando murmured. “This impacts
plus.
”

The three gods—and there was no doubt they were gods: larger than mere humans, they moved with the grace of dancers and the swagger of outlaw bikers—arrayed themselves before Saf, who rose to sit on his hindquarters, his head towering above everything except the temple roof. The drumming of the tortoise-men grew louder.

“Interesting,” Bes said from his seat atop the dais, as calm as if he were watching an arm-wrestling match in a corner bar. “I wonder what Tefy and Mewat gave away to bring in the war gods.”

“War gods?” But Orlando did not really need confirmation—one had only to look at the leader, a huge, bull-headed creature, to know it was true. Long and sharp as it was, the bull-man's curved sword was less frightening than were his naked arms, so thick with muscle he looked as though he could have twisted the temple doors off their hinges by himself. The other two attackers, a man and a woman, appeared no less formidable. The male god had gazelle horns jutting from his head; flickers of lightning played up and down his arms and crackled around the head of his war club. The goddess was the tallest of the three, dressed in a pantherskin and deftly balancing in one hand a spear that could skewer a dozen men at once. Orlando suddenly realized why Bes had treated their own claim of being gods of war with such droll contempt.

“Mont I can understand,” the dwarf god went on. “He's the bull fellow, and he's got problems at home—wife running around with Amon like a bitch in heat, people talking behind his back. But Anth and Reshpu? Of course, she always likes a fight, and Reshpu's a new god—perhaps he's trying to make a name for himself. The harpers would sing forever of someone mighty enough to kill one of the great sphinxes.”

“Can't anyone stop them?” Orlando demanded. The crowd was groaning like a wounded animal, trapped, terrified, mesmerized. The war gods feinted at the sphinx and the watchers exclaimed in terror. In a blinding instant, a bolt from Reshpu's hand crackled upward toward the ceiling, then dissipated with a snap of burning air. “Why don't you do something?”

“Me?” Bes shook his oversized head. “I was going to go home, but it's too late now. What I'm going to do instead is stay out from underfoot while the bigger children play.” He slipped down from the stand, then hurried away along the wall, his bandy legs carrying him deceptively quickly.

“Where are you going?” Orlando screamed after the little god.

“One of the excellent things about my size,” Bes called over his shoulder, “is that there are many fine hiding places available to me, O godlet from beyond the Great Green. Urns are my specialty.” He vanished into the shadows at a trot.

A bellow of anger followed by another electrical flare dragged Orlando's attention back to the battle at the front door. Anth and Reshpu had attacked simultaneously; the goddess had sunk her spear into Saf's mountainous flank before dancing back, but the gazelle-horned god had not been so lucky and was caught squirming beneath the sphinx's paw. Lightning flared again; Saf pulled back his scorched claws, allowing Reshpu to crawl out of reach. Mont charged in, swinging his scimitar at the sphinx's face before dodging a swiping blow which would have hurled him against the wall. His sword bit at Saf's neck. No blood followed when Mont snatched the blade free, but the sphinx let out a rumbling cry of pain that made the air pulse. The tortoise-men beat their chests until it became a continuous thunder.

“They're going to kill him!” Fredericks shouted over the tumult. “We have to get out of here!”

“We have to find Bonnie Mae.” Heart pounding, Orlando scanned for the others, but in the lamplight it was a nearly impossible task. The crowd at their end of the room was less tangled and compacted, but it was still a thicket of brown Egyptian faces and bodies and pale clothing, a chaotic mass of humans and petty gods struggling not to be crushed, trying to flee somewhere in a temple with few such places left.

Orlando grasped Fredericks by the arm and had just pulled his friend a few steps out onto the floor of the great chamber when a black cloud rushed through the demolished doorway. For a moment Orlando thought that Tefy and Mewat were pouring in poisoned smoke, and he felt his already racing heart falter.

I'm too tired for this
. . . was all he could think.

“Bats!” someone shrieked, but they were only half right. The cloud was full of darting black shadows, but something else flew there, too—thousands of terrible pale serpents with translucent dragonfly wings, hissing like steam.

What had already been madness now became something else entirely. Ragged screams filled the air. The temple, already shadowy, became darker still as the cloud of flying things blocked the light from the wall torches. Shrieking people were running everywhere with no sanity or plan, as though trapped in a burning building; others had already been swarmed by bats and flying snakes and lay writhing on the floor covered with crawling, biting things.

A shape that might have been a woman barreled into Orlando from the side and knocked him sprawling before disappearing into the chaos. As he stood up, one of the besieging soldiers appeared before him, aiming at his stomach with a short stabbing-sword; Orlando had only a moment to react. Off-balance and unable to jump back, he fell forward instead, twisting so that the thrust only sliced the skin of his chest. He had almost forgotten his own sword, clutched in his hand so long the grip was sweaty, but his hard-won fighter's reflexes led him to an unthinking backhand blow into the soldier's unprotected legs behind the knee. The man screamed and fell forward. Orlando took the soldier's head off with a two-handed swipe, then batted away the sudden attack of a winged thing with the flat of his blade.

Before he could locate Fredericks, two other soldiers loomed out of the shadows. Loyalty tugged at them when they saw their comrade dead at Orlando's feet, but their faces were as disoriented as most of the others Orlando had seen, and after a moment they slipped back into the melee. Even Tefy and Mewat's troops seemed overwhelmed by the ghastly scene.

As Orlando waded into the crowd, he saw several people screaming on their backs with winged snakes wrapped around their heads, striking again and again at their faces. One bloodily wounded man crawled toward Orlando, his hand raised in a plea for help, but the two soldiers Orlando had seen earlier grabbed at the man's torn garment and pulled him back, stabbing his sides. Before Orlando could even react, another red-spattered body landed at his feet, nearly headless. The tortoise-man who had just killed the mother with its ugly stone-headed club now backed a screaming boy-child against the wall and raised the dripping cudgel once more. The leathery creature's face was expressionless, the eyes half-lidded, as though it could find scant interest in the nightmare scene.

Tired as he was, Orlando could not stand by while such a horror took place. He found his balance and took a loping stride toward the silent killer, bringing the broadsword around in a sweeping two-handed blow meant to separate bald head from lumpy body. At the last instant the creature saw him; as it straightened and turned his stroke caromed off the top of its shell, and although the tip of his blade struck the creature's face, smashing the eye socket and tearing away tissue and bone, the tortoise-man did not even stagger. Worse still, it made no sound despite the terrible wound, but turned slowly to face him.

Every muscle in the sagging Thargor-body ached; Orlando had to struggle to keep his trembling legs straight beneath him as he squared off against this newest adversary. Had he been in the Middle Country, the sagging-skinned monster would not have frightened him, but there was something in the thing's ruined face and remaining yellow eye that told him it had no sense of self-preservation—it would try to kill him even with all its limbs severed from its body—and he knew if he failed, he would not be bounced back to the real world. Also, every second that passed increased the chances that he would lose Fredericks and the others forever.

He gathered his strength then lunged forward. As he had feared, the point of his blade scraped then bounced off the shell covering the creature's midsection. Its return stroke was slow, but not as slow as he could have hoped: Orlando felt the wind of the great stone as it whipped past his face. He stumbled back and tried to catch his breath. The thing advanced.

He ducked beneath another swinging cudgel blow and grappled with the monster but its strength was frightening. He had time only to try one jab into the crevice in the thing's shell at the groin, but the space was too tight and the flesh at the leg joint was hard as an old boot. As he spun free, the tortoise-man switched hands with its cudgel—a dishearteningly clever move from a creature of such slow inhumanity—and caught Orlando a glancing blow on the shoulder with the stone head that almost knocked him to his knees. A flash of pain shot down his arm, and his fingers went numb. His sword clanged to the stone and he had to pick it up with his other hand. His wounded arm hung uselessly; he could not even make the fingers close.

As the tortoise-man turned and shuffled toward him again, the cracked face still with no expression except what might have been the ghost of a green-gray smile, Orlando backed away. He could turn and bolt for the back chamber—he could be there in seconds. Whatever gateway was open he could step through before anyone could stop him and be gone from all this. Wherever he landed, he would be alive. His last weeks or months of life would be his to spend, not wasted in this hopeless struggle.

But Fredericks would be lost. The monkeys—all the children—would be lost.

Something heaved in his chest and Orlando's eyes blurred. Even surrounded by what seemed like the end of the world, he was ashamed of his own tears. He lifted the heavy sword in his left hand, grateful that at least he could swing it—Thargor had labored through years of practice to be ready for just such a need—but knowing it would do him little good. The tortoise-man brought the club around in another rocketing sweep, so fast that Orlando had to jump back. He cut at the club handle but the wood was hard as iron. He crouched low to swing at a leg, but although the blade bit, only a gray trickle breached the wound and the creature almost caught him with a downstroke.

A cloud of bats so thick as to be almost a solid thing dropped down between them, hiding them both for a moment in chittering darkness. When they spiraled up again, Orlando realized that the tortoise-man was slowly driving him toward the melee, where his back would be completely unprotected and there would be bodies beneath his feet. He knew he would not last another minute in those circumstances. Gambling on a last attempt to reach the silent creature's neck, he feinted, the movement made soggy by weariness, and then rolled underneath the snapping backswing to climb the creature's plated belly. He could not bring the sword to bear at such close quarters so he dropped it, risking everything to wrap his hands around the tortoise-man's wattled neck before it could think to crush him between club and shell. The thing flailed as his thumbs found the place its windpipe should be, but its hide was too thick: he was hurting it, but he could not crush the leathery neck. It rammed one of its arms against Orlando's throat and began bending his upper body back, struggling for an angle to smash out his brains.