All That Glitters (29 page)

 

T
he Defenders lost no time in putting Tyvian and Artus on their faces and kneeling on their backs. Two others were gently transporting the death-­pale Marcom back somewhere—­to a healer or doctor, perhaps. Maybe a priest. At the moment, Tyvian had neither the time nor inclination to worry overmuch.

“Can I say something?” he managed through the half of his mouth that wasn't kissing Crosstown cobblestones.

A man in a mirrored mageglass helm shouted in his ear, “Shut yer hole!”

Manacles clamped around his wrists and he was hauled upright. “You're really going to want to hear this.”

The Defender grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back so the light of the tattlers clearly illuminated his face. “Here he is, magus. He won't shut up neither.”

Tyvian found himself looking at a rather tired but still smug Argus Androlli. “Not blowing anybody kisses now, are we, Mr. Reldamar?”

Artus was hauled up next to Tyvian. “We got this one, too.” The Defenders sounded excited—­nearly giddy. Tyvian understood. It was like a fishing trip, and they'd just hauled in the One That Got Away.

Tyvian eyed the smoke billowing from the windows of the Cauldron behind them and felt the rumbles in the cobblestones and decided to cut through all the wordplay. “Magus, we need to get out of here right now.”

Androlli looked at the Cauldron over his shoulder. “Do you burn down
every
building you go into?”

“He's not kidding, magus!” Artus nodded. “We gotta run for it! Trust us!”

Androlli snorted. “Don't worry, we're leaving, but not before I ask you—­”

The Mage Defender didn't get to finish his sentence. Behind him the Cauldron—­which had been producing a stream of soot-­covered, terrified patrons and employees out of every possible door and window for a few minutes now—­shuddered as though it were an egg about to hatch. Androlli trailed off, looking back toward the building. “What in all the hells is this?”

The wall of the Cauldron closest to them collapsed forward in an avalanche of stone, lumber, and plaster. The Defenders closest to the wall were crushed beneath the rubble; Androlli would have been, too, but for a last minute guard he managed to erect, which spared him and those behind him—­namely Artus, Tyvian, and their two arresting Defenders.

Before the dust had cleared, Gethrey Andolon, still ensconced in his colossus, emerged from the gutted interior of the whorehouse. His mageglass hide was covered in a thin sheet of plaster, coating his shoulders and torso like snow. Gethrey shook it off with a quick twist and then looked down at Tyvian. His voice boomed through the alley.
“Surprise, surprise!”

Androlli craned his neck upward, mouth agape. “Hann's boots!”

Tyvian felt his bowels contract in fear. Nevertheless, he couldn't pass up the opportunity: “I told you so.”

Tyvian's adrenaline banished his weak-­kneed terror faster than it did for anybody else. The first thing he did was kick Androlli in the direction of Gethrey, who tried to step on the Mage Defender and splat him into so much smug Rhondian goo. Androlli threw up another guard—­this one powerful enough to force Gethrey to stumble backward into the Cauldron.

The Defenders on either side of Artus and Tyvian leveled their firepikes and began blasting at the colossus, but the eldritch war machine had been specifically designed to handle such punishment well—­the fiery bolts pattered off his torso plates like so many incendiary raindrops.

Tyvian was about to pick their pockets for the keys to his manacles when he had those keys thrust into his hands by Artus, who was a half second ahead of him. “What do we do?”

“Run for our lives!” Tyvian grabbed him by the shirt and tugged him into a limping sprint down the alley. Behind them, the rumble of collapsing architecture indicated that Gethrey was close behind.

They shot out of the alley and into the street, only to find themselves staring down a firing line of twenty Defenders, their firepikes blazing. “Oh Kroth!” Tyvian dropped to the ground, pulling Artus with him, just as the Defenders opened up in a blaze of Fey energy that lit the night. The blasts were aimed at the colossus, but the basic inaccuracy of the firepike meant bolts of fire scattered over a wide area, hitting the Cauldron, the building next to it, scorching cobblestones, and also bouncing off the colossus's armored hide.

Gethrey charged into the street, totally ignoring the Defenders in favor of hunting down Tyvian and Artus. The two of them dodged one heavy footfall and then scrambled into the nearest building—­a four-­story tenement just recently set alight by a volley of firepike blasts. Tyvian didn't pause to talk to Artus until they were in a corridor on the second floor. It was then that they actually had time to remove the manacles from their wrists, too.

“How do we stop that thing?” Artus gasped, his eyes wide. “Fire melts mageglass—­can we set him on fire?”

“Does he look especially flammable to you?” Tyvian growled.

The building shook as Gethrey plunged a huge mageglass hand into the tenement structure and swept it across in a lateral direction, destroying whole apartments and probably killing or injuring a dozen ­people. Tyvian caught a glimpse of the colossus peering through the gaps in the wall.
“
Tyvian, this grows very tiresome. Where are you?”

The screams of ­people hurt or just terrified caused the ring to give Tyvian such a wrench that he gasped. “Artus, we split up—­he's after me, not you. Find Hool, find Myreon—­help her if you can.”

“Myreon?” Artus blinked, “You mean you
actually
rescued her?”

Tyvian scowled, “This is not the time, Artus!”

Artus nodded. “I sent Brana to grab us a boat—­we can escape that way when you're done!”

Tyvian blinked. “That's . . . that's actually an excellent idea.”

Artus broke into a wide grin. “Really?”

­People's heads popped out of their front doors and into the filthy second-­floor hallway. More screaming. Tyvian waved Artus away. “Yes really! Just go, dammit!”

Artus gave him a firm nod and went. Tyvian turned back toward Gethrey. Did he have a plan?
Was
there a plan here? The ring burned, not caring—­he had to deal with this.

Tyvian went up to the third floor, fighting a panicked flow of humanity rushing downstairs, shoeless, with their children tucked under their arms. A mageglass fist thrust through the wall and into the central corridor, its fingers fumbling around for something to hold onto. It grabbed a pantless man around the waist and squeezed. The sound was like a large beetle ground beneath a wagon wheel. Blood splashed the ceiling.
“Was that you, Tyv?”

The fist pulled out, causing even more destruction on its exit, so that Gethrey could examine his grisly acquisition. A whole room fell off into space to Tyvian's right. He kept running upstairs, his wounded leg's fiery pain masked by the throbbing of the ring urging him on.

“Hmmm . . .”
Gethrey remarked absently.
“Probably wasn't you, was it? You'
d have pants on.”

Tyvian tore past the third floor and went straight to the fourth, pushing past even more fleeing ­people. For the first time, he realized just how
many
of the poor made their homes here. It had to be near to hundreds. Gods.

Gethrey struck the building again and again, this time seeking to knock the place down more than finding Tyvian. It was working. The whole building swayed, threatening to fall against its neighbors. Tyvian found himself standing in the half-­ruined attic, a hole torn open by a hurtling block of stone cast carelessly by Gethrey's rampage. Beneath him, he could see Gethrey punching and striking at various stubborn stone chimneys that supported much of the building. If they went, the whole structure would go. The ring throbbed with worry, but Tyvian didn't need its reminder. “I have to draw him away,” he said aloud.

Around Gethrey, a cordon of Defenders blazed away, worrying the back and sides of his armor like a swarm of bees. The colossus's armor was strong, but it couldn't take that indefinitely. Sooner or later that much Fey energy would make certain plates destabilize and vanish. Perhaps they already had—­just not enough to get at Gethrey inside.

Tyvian had an idea. A really, really stupid idea, he thought. Nevertheless, he took two steps back from the opening in the wall and got ready to run. Looking at his ring, he said, “Wish me luck, better self,” and took off.

He leapt out of the fourth story of the half-­ruined building to wrestle a fifteen-­foot war colossus without so much as a paring knife for a weapon. He knew it was, to date, the craziest thing he had ever done. He was forced to reflect on the way down, however, that the night was still young.

He hit the top of the colossus with a bone-­jarring thump. The mageglass plating was like a wall of solid steel; he was surprised to still be alive.

Gethrey, ensconced within his war-­construct, looked up at him through translucent crystal plating, his mouth agape.
“Are you out of your mind?”

Tyvian would have said something pithy, but his mouth was full of blood—­must have bit his tongue or lip or something when he hit. He was clinging by his fingertips to the small cracks between the moving plates of mageglass, spread-­eagled atop the colossus like a cat atop a galloping horse. It occurred to him, much later than it really should have, that he ought to be devising a plan to survive this. Nothing immediately came to mind.

Gethrey was laughing.
“Fine—­this just makes things easier.”
He shook the colossus's torso back and forth. Tyvian's feet came loose from their precarious toeholds and slid back and forth with the force of momentum. He put his head down and clung for dear life. The world spun as Gethrey spun, blurring into a collage of fire and smoke and darkness.

Tyvian knew he should have fallen—­he should have flown into space by now—­but he hadn't. Come to think of it, the fall should have at least knocked him unconscious.
The ring!

It pulsed with a kind of power Tyvian hadn't ever experienced before—­well, perhaps
once
before, deep in the tunnels of Daer Trondor, when he brought Myreon back to life. When he had sacrificed himself for the lives of countless innocents, just as he was doing right now.

There were shouts—­sorcerously amplified shouts—­coming from below.
“
Surrender or be destroyed, by order of the Defenders!”

Gethrey stopped shaking and faced the firing-­line of Defenders, all of them set and ready to shoot. Tyvian, head still spinning, could see the sergeant with his sword raised, shouting orders to his men.

Tyvian suddenly realized where they were going to fire and where, exactly, he was clinging. “Oh . . . Kroth!” Adrenaline surging, the ring practically shining with power, he managed to scramble off Gethrey's “head” and onto his back just in time for the firepikes to spit their blazing bolts of energy into the colossus's chest. They hit with a great blaze of heat and flame, causing Gethrey to stumble back a pace, but the mageglass armor of the colossus still held back the onslaught.

With a roar of frustration, Gethrey snatched up a massive timber that had fallen from the Cauldron and hurled it at the mirror men. They had prudently activated some guards incorporated into their armor, so they weren't all crushed, but instead knocked sprawling as the sorcerous defense flashed with energy. It was the opening Gethrey was seeking—­he charged their position, kicking or crushing any Defender that stood in his way, and ran through another four-­story building as though he was pushing his way through undergrowth.

The masonry of the home crumbled around the colossus like it was made from hollow plaster—­wood and stone were crushed or pushed aside by the war-­construct, and with the roar of its destruction were joined the screams of the ­people living inside. Tyvian clung to the colossus's back, again only able to stay on by dint of the ring's power, and saw a little girl, no older than eight, fall from her crushed bedroom to the street below. The sight of her, the sound of her scream, shook his heart. His mind cleared; he knew what had to happen now.

They emerged onto a parallel street in a puff of dust. Gethrey was still chuckling.
“Now, time to settle you, Tyv. Hold still now.”

Gethrey fumbled for Tyvian, but the colossus moved much like a person did, and it didn't have the ability to grab the middle of its own back. Tyvian stayed put, trying to figure out how to pry the construct open while Gethrey struggled like a man with an itch he couldn't scratch.

Mageglass was impenetrable, yes. Enough fire and enough heat would melt it, true—­the firepike blasts had probably weakened the armor a fair amount. He knew he just had to find the gaps in that armor and somehow exploit them.

Gethrey threw himself backward into the wall of another building. Tyvian, anticipating, scrambled back onto the colossus's shoulders, this time standing on his own two feet. From the side of the building extended an iron bar meant for throwing a rope over to hoist furniture to the upper floors, rather than bother with the narrow spiral staircases these places had. Tyvian grabbed it with both hands and pulled, snapping it off the side of the house like a tree branch.

Gethrey stood and, seeing Tyvian's new weapon, laughed.
“Gods, you don't quit, do you? All this to protect some pointless commoners? You really are mad.”

The colossus's open palm slapped down where Tyvian was standing, but Tyvian nimbly danced to one side and Gethrey only managed to slap himself in the face rather than crush him. The force of the blow knocked Gethrey off-­balance and he stumbled backward again, smashing into another building. Tyvian held on.