Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm (79 page)

Ossifrage and Nakasu went first to hold the atrium. Abby urged the girls into a line, telling the older ones to protect the youngsters.

I said to Foster, “You should go through too, Foster. Use your Space Ghost inviso powers to keep everyone on that side unseen.”

Foster said, “Not yet. I got to tell you what watchglass is.”

“What is it?”

“It is the reason why we have to kill your bloodsucking trophy pet over there.”

Foster said, “A watchglass is a Geiger-counter for magic. It is built specifically to find unclean spirits.”

“Like me?” I said.

“Like walking shadows,” said Abby.

“Which is what?” I said.

Foster answered, “Mummies, vampires, werewolves, creatures from the Black Lagoon, and every other Universal Movie Monster Abbot and Costello ever faced. You’re something different.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “
Highlander
was from Twentieth-Century Fox.”

Foster said, “I thought your people were more like John Carpenter’s
The Thing
.”

Abby offered helpfully, “The horror-cross of the Sea-Witch is also a walking shadow.”

Penny said, “Not to fear. I can place Wild Eyes in a hidden place inside my body to obscure her from the watchglass. It will take me about ten minutes to prepare. Nor will you, Ilya, trouble a watchglass by passing over it, since your life is inside your body, albeit more than human life. But the glass will turn black if
he
passes over it.” And she nodded at Vorvolac.

“What if we float over this glass floor?” I said. “Ossifrage can…”

“A watchglass is not pressure sensitive,” said Foster. “It is like the metal detector at school. Only spiritual.”

I looked at him in amazement. “You have metal detectors at your schools in your world?”

“No,” Foster said, “In my world, gypsies were not allowed to enter the schools, and the teachers are machines built by the military-industrial syndicates and animated by Svartalfar, the dark spirits of the underworld. I learned how to forge identity papers before I learned to read, in order to get a school passport.”

“Wait. If you could not read and write, then how could you forge papers?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “So my first few forgery attempts did not go well. In any case, just now I was talking about our world, not my world. Oregon. Metal detectors were put in last year. Remember those school shootings? And before you ask, my cloak of many mists cannot fool cameras or mirrors. I can only fool things with brains. Which I guess is why
you
could see me.”

“You cast a shadow in bright light,” I said. “Also, if you close one eye.”

“I know,” he said, “I know how my own superpower works. It was a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny,” I said.

“Give it a week to sink in,” he said. “You’ll wake up at midnight doubled over with laughter.”

“You know what else is not funny,” I said. “Getting old.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean this is my decision and no one else's. I am the judge, jury, and executioner. And I get one shot at it with no do-overs.”

At that point, Vorvolac started giggling, guffawing, snorting. There he stood on his two legs, feet bare, his arms and skin-flaps still wound up in chain, and blindfold made out of a pillowcase still over his eyes.

“Let’s play it smart!” Foster nocked an arrow and drew his bow. “Let’s kill him before we find out why he is laughing.”

Penny did not look worried, but the fierce bird on her shoulder puffed up her wings and lowered her head and uttered a shrill scream which I am sure all of the people in the townships above and below us must have heard.

I said, “Didn’t he have one leg just a minute ago?”

It was hard to tell because they were folded up like umbrellas beneath his armpits, but the leathery wings of Vorvolac did not seem torn any more.

Penny said in the tightly-wound voice, “He has the heart of Rahab in him. Twilight flows from the open gate. He has learned how to use the power he drank to regrow himself just in the moments while we stood here. He will learn more if more time passes.”

I sighed. “Okay. We have to kill him after all. Let’s just dump him over the railing. It is the only reasonable way. I mean: he gave up his humanity, right? We don’t have to be humane, do we?”

Vorvolac spoke up quickly, “Lord Ilya! I surrendered to you! I obeyed! I have harmed none!” And he grinned. He had teeth like a snake.

His eyes were still covered, but there was something so sick and so sinister in that grin I could not stand it. If my life had had a soundtrack, it would have been playing the theme from
Jaws
or from the shower scene in Hitchcock’s
Psycho
by now.

Foster did not wait for any order to shoot. He shot. There was no way he could miss at this distance. The bow had maybe a seventy-pound pull: Foster was not as tall as me, but he was stronger than most grown men. The longbow could pack a punch that would drive a shaft through a steel plate.
Thwack
. The glass arrow went right into the narrow chest of Vorvolac, and the arrow shaft quivered.

Vorvolac staggered backward a step or two, but he did not fall. His silvery blood did not spurt from his chest, but rather a quicksilver ball of poisonous fluid gathered at the wound, and pulsed, and then hesitated. Then it shrank as the blood was pulled back into the wound. Vorvolac grunted and groaned and then screamed like a woman in labor.

And the arrow slid itself out of his chest, and clattered to the marble floor, tinkling.

Vorvolac was laughing. “What a peculiar sensation! Ilya, you whose life I shall eat next—does this always feel so odd when you do it?”

“Oh, that is not a good sign,” I said.

I spared a glance over my shoulder. More than half the girls were into and through the gateway. “Ladies! Run, do not walk! You can enter the sphere from all sides at once!”

Abby translated this comment. Then she ignited and threw her sickle spinning like a fiery boomerang in a swift, flat arc straight toward Vorvolac’s head. It was a great shot, but the chain suddenly turned dull and lost all its color, and the red-hot blade went dark and cold. He ducked, and the weapon sailed over his shoulder, but the chain was dead and could not wrap around his neck.

Abby stared at the dropped chain which led from her hand to the sickle lying on the floor. Her face was stricken. She tugged on the chain, but it rattled limply, and did not respond.

Penny started singing, a shrill, eerie chant of two notes, high and low, over and over, that made you dizzy just to hear it.

I did not wait for whatever Penny was doing to work its charm. I rushed Vorvolac like a linebacker, grabbed the blindfolded prisoner around the body, hauled him squirming to the railing, and tossed his writhing, chain-wrapped body up and over and out into the darkness.

He dropped like a stone, but he was still laughing.

And, below him, far below, the water was disturbed.

A giant shape came out of the water, as if a whale were to leap like a dolphin, but instead of falling back, soared.

I saw it was not a submarine, or rather, not just a submarine. It was an airship. It was the length of ten football fields across, larger than any zeppelin my world had ever built. A Niagara Falls’ worth of water sluiced from the rigid gas envelope. The bowsprit was carved like a square-bearded king with the body of a winged bull, and the wings of the bull curved back to follow the long axis of the immense ironclad craft; and water dripped, glittering in streams, weeping from the stoical face of the king.

Up it rose.

“Oops,” I said.

Lanterns spaced on the port and starboard of the prow ignited, and a beam of flame struck me. By dumb chance, the shadow of the balcony rail fell across my face, so I was not blinded, but the top of my head and my chest and arms were on fire, so I fell backward, screaming in pain. Which, I will say again, is totally unfair, since pain is nature’s way of telling us harm is being done to an organism, but none of this harm could actually harm me.

Abby said, “I’ll go get the Master! He’ll smite the airship!” and turned and scampered toward the dark ball of nonbeing. The girls were now rushing the gate, those behind shoving those in front on through. The solid-looking black ball surface offered no resistance: it was like jumping into a pond. But Abby was in the rear of the female stampede, and there were too many panicky bodies in the way for her to reach the surface.

I heard, but did not see, the deep thrum of catapults or ballistae going off. Two harpoons longer than jousting lances came flying up from housings on the bow of the rising airship, sailed over the balcony rail, each trailing a long line behind them. With a double-crack, they planted their spearheads into the upper part of the half-dome of the gigantic alcove out of which the balcony was scooped. The shafts were eight feet long and made of lampwood, which immediately emitted a blinding blue-white light. Penny’s magic must have been the dark-flavored kind rather than the light-flavored kind, because the dreamlike dizziness following her voice cut out. She was just a normal girl with a normal singing voice.

Penny turned, raised her wrist, and practically flung her bird at the dark ball. “Flee, my soul! Flee for our life!”

But the wooden shafts hanging overhead were putting out that blazing light,
ylemaramu
, that quells twilight and shuts down gates. The black ball of the gateway was visibly shrinking, wavering, and the aura of northern lights whirling around it was flickering and dying. It was smaller than a bowling ball and Wild Eyes had to clap her wings tight to her body to sail through.

There were still about half-a-hundred ex-slave-girls on our side of the gate at that point. Some were screaming, but most of them knelt and put their faces to the floor, hair spilling like little black waterfalls, and stretched out their slender arms to their captors, palms up, begging to be spared.

The sight should have disgusted me, because American pioneer women would never have acted that way, nor would maidens of ancient Rome, but I cannot say I blame them. I was supposed to be the big hero, and I had failed them. It was my fault, not theirs, that they had to push their pretty faces onto the floor so that some goon could come step on them.

Abby was trapped on our side also, and so were Foster and Penelope: yes, the selfsame girl I had promised and vowed and swore and boasted I would save. That promise looked like it would turn out as false as my word to Vorvolac. Me and my big mouth.

I said a prayer to St. John the Apostle and the fat cells in my skin, which were on fire like candle tallow, simply stopped burning. My skin was all black and crispy, but honestly, since I did not fear the damage was permanent, it did not bother me as much as you'd think.

So I leaped to my feet, drew my katana, and assumed the stance called
Hasso-no-Kamae
, the Stance of the Eight Directions. The feet are close together with one foot forward, and the blade is before the right shoulder, edge forward, slanting up at a slight angle. Elbows are close to the body. It is also called
Moku-no-Kamae
, the Stance of the Tree, because the swordsman is upright.

I saw Foster’s face vanishing as he donned his goggles and mask. Then I did not see Foster except maybe as a shadow, but I heard him step up next to me. I heard him grunt, and then heard the familiar creak of a bow bending as the string was drawn back. From where his shadow fell, I could see he had drawn the great bow to his ear. The blue-white light was not driving his invisibility away.

At that moment, I knew he was more than a friend. He was not running, even though no one could see him, and he could have escaped easily. He was drawing his puny little weapon that shot a puny pointy little glass stick against a massive warship filled with soldiers and gunners and dark magicians.

But, by Saint Sebastian and all the warrior saints, he did not run, did he? He did not.

Abby stepped up to my left, and raised her now-dead sickle weapon, but she held the blade high, and had the chain gathered in her other hand to throw. She was not running either, and she was a skinny little girl. My heart seemed to expand in my chest. I was proud of her. Proud of someone willing to die beside me—me, a monster who could not die.

Penny had nothing, not even a knife, and she looked woebegone. But she would not kneel like the other girls, who wept and begged and moaned, but she instead raised her chin and defiantly slipped her eyeglasses on. She was unarmed and unclothed, but in that moment, I think I saw the real Penny, not the surface that attracted me, but the real character underneath.

“Run away, Penny,” I said. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

Penny said, “Where should I flee now that they would not see and foresee? That is the flagship of the fleet. That is the craft of the Great King himself.”

I said, “Foster, is your mist entirely gone? Do you have any other tricks, any way you can hide Penny and Abby? Hide the harem girls, or get them to run?”

But there was no time for reply. Grapnels shot up, hung in the air a moment, and clutched the wooden balcony rail. From the unnatural way the black chains writhed and snaked, I could see they were living metal.

Over the edge of the balcony came floating the body of Vorvolac, who was still chained up and blindfolded, and still laughing in mockery and triumph. He was not even slightly dead. Indeed, he seemed in the best of health.

With him was a dark-haired, hook-nosed, and dark-bearded man. The beard was held in two short braids, and the hair was held in a ponytail so long that it looked like he had not cut it in years, maybe never. Two things were odd about him. First, he was standing on a cloud of smoke as if it were solid. Second, he held a shepherd’s crook in his hand, and his coat was of camel-hair, dyed black, but with a long train or tail that was forked like a tuxedo. It was the same costume, or, rather, the same uniform, Ossifrage wore, except in a darker hue. With a gesture of his crook he was drawing Vorvolac through the air.