Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (31 page)

Mitch frowned. “What was that?”

“The priest of Diana, the Rex Nemorensis, was selected in a very peculiar way. I know you’ve read Fraser’s account, so….”

“I don’t remember it,” Mitch said. “How about you recap?”

He did remember, Lewis thought. This was for his benefit. It was like Mitch to make sure nobody was left behind and nobody was embarrassed about it.

“The priest had to be a fugitive slave, a wanted man. He had to challenge the current King of the Grove to a trial by combat. The two of them would go into the woods, and whichever came back alive was the winner and would serve as Diana’s priest for the rest of his life.” Jerry glanced around at their faces. “So you see it had to be a desperate man to try it. If he lost he would be killed. And if he won, he’d have an honorable place for a few years, until another challenger killed him. Or he might hold it for quite a while, at the cost of death after death in the wild wood.”

“The hunter’s bargain,” Lewis said, and wasn’t aware he’d spoken until he realized they were all looking at him. “Life for death.”

“Exactly,” Jerry said. “The Rex Nemorensis embodies that lethal math.”

Lewis didn’t think any of them were strangers to that. It was what war came down to in the end – kill or die. He could see how it must go, the desperate man going into the woods in misty morning, a knife in his hand, knowing that the king of the grove is waiting. He knows the woods better, and he’s waiting along some game trail, at some place where the path divides in the forest. Perhaps they will stalk one another by day and meet at last by night, while the crescent moon sheds her cool light in benediction over death….

“Anyway,” Jerry said, “Caligula either had some political problem with the Rex Nemorensis who was serving when he came to the throne, or maybe he just didn’t like the guy. But in any case he bought a famous gladiator and brought him to Nemi. There the gladiator ‘ran away’ and challenged the King of the Grove. It was a set up, and of course he won. It was sacrilege for anyone to interfere in the choosing of Diana’s priest that way, a serious desecration of her shrine. Nobody had ever done it before and as far as we know nobody ever did it again. It was shortly after that when Caligula had the Nemi ships built on the lake. There’s been a lot of speculation that they were the site of some of his most horrific murders, including possibly the murder of his sister Drusilla, though other accounts say she died of a fever.”

“Nice guy,” Lewis said. His skin crawled.

“Yeah.” Jerry pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “Anyhow, after Caligula’s murder, his uncle Claudius came to the throne. It appears that Claudius tried to set a lot of things right. The tablet we have definitely dates from the first year of Claudius’ reign based on the consuls serving, and it suggests that Claudius tried to appease the goddess by sinking the pleasure ships in the lake, giving to her all their treasure and getting rid of the offending things at the same time. I’m guessing that the plaques were aboard them and that they bound the
animus infernus
that had possessed his nephew.”

Lewis shivered again. He could see it too clearly, the scene conjured by Jerry’s words. Another misty morning, the lake like black glass, the middle aged man standing on the shore, a fold of his toga over the back of his head in a way that Lewis had never seen. He was making a long speech, some of his words slurring together, others enunciated too carefully, but there was power in it. Power and sorrow. He had loved his nephew before the demon claimed him.

Just like it had now taken Henry.

“It’s pretty clear that Claudius invoked Diana to bind the creature, and that she did so. We need to figure out what Claudius did and see if we can do the same thing,” Jerry said.

“She wants us to,” Lewis said. “That’s what I’ve been dreaming,” He blinked, trying to piece it together. “All the dreams about the lake and about things hunting in the dark, even about Davenport the first time, before I met him. There’s a white hunting dog, a white hound.”

Jerry nodded seriously. “That’s one of Diana’s aspects, yes.”

His eyes unfocused, Alma’s fingers blurring together. He had been on the verge of something, carried in the flashes of vision, and now it came suddenly clear. “She leads the pack, and they hunt by her will. They wear her mark, and they hunt in her name. Diana’s Hounds.”

Mitch looked startled, but Alma didn’t. “The amulets,” she said. “We wear her mark. We’re her hounds.”

Lewis nodded slowly. “She’ll help us. She wants to. I don’t know why she doesn’t just…do something.” He swallowed. He was talking about her like she was real, a pagan goddess, who surely ought to be on the same side as a demon if anything. But it didn’t feel that way in his gut. It felt like she was asking them for help. That was why she showed him things, why these visions came so clear. “I think she needs us,” he said.

“Of course she does,” Alma said gently. “How else does any spirit work in the world?”

“Ok,” Mitch said. “Let’s think about going to Italy. But first we have to get off the airship in Paris.” He glanced at Jerry. “Without getting killed along the way. The airship is supposed to arrive in Paris at eight am tomorrow morning. We’ve got ten hours to stay out of that thing’s way. So the first thing is that nobody wanders off alone. We stay in pairs. Jerry, that means you’re with me.”

Jerry nodded tightly.

Mitch unfolded from where he leaned against the wall. “The other thing that making it chase us will do is make it less likely for it to hurt Henry. It’s not enough to get rid of the thing. We need to get rid of it without harming Henry.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Jerry said warningly.

Mitch looked at him sharply. “Think about it. We don’t leave our own behind. Henry was our lodgemate once. It’s not his fault he’s possessed by this thing. We get it out of him without harming him.”

“It probably is his fault,” Alma said. “And ours too. We wired Henry that Davenport had lost us in Chicago and that he was on his way to New York. How much do you want to bet that old Henry couldn’t resist going to confront Davenport by himself? And he didn’t have an amulet.”

Jerry hit his forehead with his palm. “Of course he did! That’s just like Henry! He trotted over to the hotel as soon as he got our telegram, ready to handle Davenport alone.”

“And it jumped into him,” Mitch said grimly.

“I should have known. I’ve known Henry long enough.” Alma let out a deep breath. “Ok, let’s give this a try, Jerry. Once we get to Paris we’ll head for Italy by train and see if he’ll chase us. But you’d better have figured out what we’re going to do when we get there.”

“Believe me, I mean to,” Jerry said fervently.

J
erry said he was going to sit up and work on it while Mitch curled up on the upper bunk in their room, so Alma and Lewis went back to their own cabin. Even spooned together, sleep eluded Lewis for a long time, and when at last he did sleep it was briefly and restlessly. Alma seemed an enormous weight on his arm, pressing him down into the mattress, and it wasn’t long before he rolled over, staring at the ceiling above.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked. Her voice was clear, not muddled by sleep.

“No,” Lewis said. He ran his hand over the day’s beard on his chin. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.” He wasn’t surprised she was lying awake. He would be too, if he were her. “Listen,” he said awkwardly, “About Gil….”

“He would never want me to do something like that,” she said. “Never.” He felt the splash of one tear hitting his arm, but her voice was angry. “It only made the offer because it’s in Henry, and it knows it would hurt me. That’s how it works, Lewis. It feeds on misery and fear and pain. It’s feeding off me right now, and I don’t know how to stop it.” He heard her choke back a sob, tightened his arms around her, not knowing what to say.

“What we had was beautiful and wonderful. And it’s over.” Her voice sharpened. “Things happen. No one gets forever. We were so lucky, Lewis! For a few years we had everything.”

Lewis bent his face against her hair. He couldn’t do anything about the demon, or even about its offer. All he could do was be a shoulder for her, and he’d do that if she’d let him. He wouldn’t let it take her. No matter what.

Alma raised her face and kissed him hard, breathlessly, as though she could devour him, and Lewis leaned into it, his arms tight around her. This was the way to break it, he thought. It fed on misery. There was no sustenance for it in love.

When she looked up her eyes were bright. “I’m ok,” she said, and there was no tremor in her voice. “I’m fine.”

“Sure,” Lewis said. “Sure thing.”

“I just couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“Me either.” Lewis twisted enough to glance at his watch. 3:30 am. He wondered where they were. Possibly over England, or nearly so. He wondered if this might not be the most fantastic time to be in the observation car, crossing sleeping Britain by night, the lights of towns and cities winking up into the sky, clustered like threads of light on a spider’s web.

Alma huffed. “Can’t sleep just because we’re trapped on an airship with a demon?”

“Yeah.” Lewis grinned. “Oddly enough, it makes me nervous.”

She gave him a sudden sharp look. “You’re serious.”

Lewis paused. “Yeah,” he said, after a moment. “There’s something — not right somewhere.”

“Can you see where?” She gave the word the little twist that said she meant more than ordinary sight, and he closed his eyes obediently, trying to find the stillness that let him reach outside himself. His mind stayed stubbornly blank, and he shook his head.

“Nothing. Sorry.”

She shoved her hair back from her face, smoothing it into some semblance of order. “If you’ve got a bad feeling there’s probably something wrong. Let’s get up and go see.”

“Truly?” He’d never seen this before, this kind of rock-bottom faith in him. She would get up in the middle of the night and go wander around just because he said he had a feeling something wasn’t right. And this…. This was like a cold place in the pit of his stomach, the absolute unshakable certainty that something was badly wrong.

“You’re a clairvoyant,” Alma said. “If you have a feeling, that’s good enough for me. And the number of things that could be wrong beggars the imagination.”

“Ok,” he said, and leaned over to hunt for his pants. “Let’s get dressed then.”

T
he door that separated the passenger areas from the crew compartments and the cargo holds was unlocked. That wasn’t exactly surprising, Alma thought, you wouldn’t want to block access in an emergency. What was a little surprising was the dark green leather that covered both sides of the door, quilted like the upholstery of a sofa. Soundproofing, maybe, though the airship was astonishingly quiet in operation. She let it close softly behind her and looked around. The crew corridor was more brightly lit, the lamps utilitarian, and through gaps in the ceiling she could see the duralumin girders of the frame rising up into the dark.

“Ok,” she said, and looked at Lewis. “Where to?”

“Up.” His face looked different in the harsh light, harder and younger at the same time, oddly unfamiliar. She hadn’t seen him like this before, except maybe once in the blurred aftermath of a dream.

“Ok,” she said again. Stairs or ladders? There must be one or the other, and they needed to get out of the main corridor, out of sight —

Ahead of them, a cabin door swung open, and a man in a striped flannel bathrobe stepped out. Lewis started forward, but she flattened her hand against his chest.

“Mr. Palmer,” she said, softly.

He turned, blinking, sleep fading to a frown. “Mrs. Gilchrist? What are you doing here?”

If you’re going to tell a lie, Al, make it a whopper
.
She could almost hear Gil’s voice, could see him standing by the mantel with its electric fire, Jerry with his new wooden leg propped up on a footstool, shaking his head at both of them. Their second Christmas in Colorado, that had been, when things were starting to go well again.

“Good, I’m glad I didn’t have to wake you,” she said. “Has Mr. Kershaw told you why we’re on board?”

“No.” Palmer looked from her to Lewis and back again.

“Henry received some crackpot letters,” Alma said. “Threats against the Independence. He didn’t think it was anything serious at first, but later — he had reason to wonder. So he asked us to come along. And now — Mr. Segura has had some indications that there might be trouble up in the hull. Maybe with the gas cells.”

For a mercy, Palmer didn’t ask what those indications were, just blinked at them for a moment. “No wonder he’s been worried,” he said. “Do you want Captain Brooks? Or one of the pilots?”

“I think actually we want you,” Alma said, and smiled. “We just want to take a quiet look around — it may only be an attempt to create bad publicity.”

As she’d hoped, those were magic words. “Of course, Mrs. Gilchrist,” Palmer said. He glanced back at his cabin door, and she said, “There’s no need to change.”

“And no time, if there is a problem,” Lewis said. He was falling into the spirit of the story, Alma thought. “I just hope I’m wrong and we only lose some sleep.”

“All right,” Palmer said, and tightened the belt of his robe. He was wearing sturdy-looking slippers, Alma saw with some relief. “Where do you want to go?”

“Up,” Lewis said again. “There’s — there’s a catwalk along the bottom of the gas cells, right? I’d like to take a quiet look there.”

“If there’s a problem with the gas, it would show up in the control car,” Palmer said, but he didn’t sound entirely sure of himself.

“It should,” Lewis agreed. “But I’d just like to take a look.”

“Ok,” Palmer said. “Which catwalk?”

Lewis hesitated. Alma said, “There are two?”

“Yes,” Palmer answered. “We have both hydrogen and helium cells — we need the hydrogen for the extra lift, and it’s a good deal cheaper to valve it to balance the fuel consumption than to waste the helium. Mr. Kershaw’s idea was to place the hydrogen cells inside the helium cells, so that the helium protects the hydrogen from any sparks. It reduces the danger of fire dramatically — but my point is, there are two catwalks that give access to the cells, one at the bottom of the helium cells, and the other running, well, through them, to reach the hydrogen cells.”