Going Under (14 page)

"Yessss," said the drake in Demonic. It stared into the distance fixedly during the long and uncomfortable silence that followed.

They took the time to observe the rocky emptiness of the mountains, to eye the dark and scrubby-looking forests that crept over the lower slopes, the glittering ice of the glaciers, far above them. The wind blew gently and the sun was warm.

"Doesn't seem that bad," Lila said after a few minutes had passed. "Bit big though. How are we going to find-"

"Ssilence," said the drake. There was a peculiar cold authority to its words that even Lila could perceive. Zal and Sorcha both adopted even more oblique angles to it, unconsciously moving in sync with each other. Nobody spoke. Thingamajig twiddled his thumbs and made himself very small and inconspicuous on his rocky outcrop near Lila.

Lila observed the drake closely. It had characteristic peculiar eyes that were more light than solid, crocodilian snout stretched out, gashshaped nostrils flaring. The small fans and spines that frilled its ugly skull were spread and erect. It was listening. She wished she knew for what.

Zal, moving slowly but surely, got to his feet. He was looking the same way as the drake and his long ears were in a "side out" position Lila had learned to associate with aetheric filtering.

"It's coming," he said quietly. "Get up."

Lila stood. "What's coming?" She figured if he would speak, she would too. As far as any of her senses could tell the wilderness ahead was empty of everything except pleasant afternoon sunlight and a few breezes that spoke of later rain to come, but the others were starting to spook her. In the absence of solid ammo she measured what she might do with blades, electricity, sound, or by hurling nearby objects. For the first time in a while she felt Tath stir and creep out of her chest along her arms, his aetheric body shifting up towards her skin and then into contact with the outside world. At her neck the amulet started to become hot.

The drake's head snapped around fifteen degrees in a split second, looking directly at her for an instant before going back to its vigilant stance.

our magicians worC&fils against a irayonhin, Tath said. &marJ zEfe.

It didn't hold, Lila said. Otherwise it wouldn't have noticed anything.

Zut it didn't notice me. The necromancer's supple aetheric form
spread itself up her neck like an invisible mantle, creeping through her
armour to test the world beyond. He fixated on the same point the
others gazed at, where Lila saw nothing. Zafis riylt.

What is it?

eat/-, said Tath and Lila was so familiar with him that she didn't need to ask if he was being literal. He meant that whatever it was he had no hope that any of them would survive it. The details of its nature were irrelevant beyond that point.

I can't believe there are things out here so much worse than ...

if To cares vln'at you 6efieve ? Tath asked.

For once the retort didn't sting her. She gazed ahead into the pleasant boredom of the landscape, uneasy only because she could feel Tath growing cold with the desire to hide, or to run.

But what are they doing out here with just one stupid wall to hold them back? Wouldn't they have already razed all the cities if they were that unstoppably bad?

Tley leave no interest in t/e affairs oftne minor d mops, Tath said. as to
v1 at interests tem, `dare not o7ecuJate. -Jure y it is notnfin y t~iat zvoufiCinterest
anef

Lila asked Zal and Sorcha what they thought. They didn't move from their positions but Zal said, "power," and Sorcha, "mastery," and Thingamajig said, "completion," and the drake said, "Godhead."

Jut IiJe the elves t~ren, she replied inwardly.

Tath flickered witheringly and she laughed at him, but he was serious about the danger and although the others were trying their best to maintain a confident stance, she could feel tension beginning to creep between them. Her human body, what was left of it, suddenly felt most distinct from her machine self. The flesh and bone wanted to escape.

"Is there a point to staying here?" she asked in her calmest tone.

"Teazle can't hear us on the other side of the wall," Zal said.

"He won't hear us now."

"He will," Sorcha whispered, backing up very slowly, as if it were accidental, against Zal's other side.

Lila put it down to some magical sense, rather than entertain the notion that Sorcha might mean they would soon be screaming loudly enough for Teazle to hear, and decided now wasn't the moment to ask questions. It had become very quiet. Even the wind had stopped.

The merest ripple, like the beginnings of a heat haze, shimmered across the ground and through the air a short distance away. It became more pronounced in the next second, rocks and earth moving like the surface of a still lake disturbed by the rise of a large body from deep beneath. Pebbles and loose dirt shimmied and whirled up into brief, tiny spirals before falling flat. This activity covered a wide area, several tens of metres square. Within its span what small scrubby grasses and weeds had struggled into life abruptly withered and crisped. There was sudden flat heat and Lila's skin began to tingle with the first hint of sunburn. She automatically put up an arm to shield her face and Zal turned away, backing off behind her as Sorcha's crimson flames rose around her like a cloak. Thingamajig leaped to her shoulder and tried to burrow under her armour; failing, he clung to her back instead.

"We could just go and Teazle can catch us up later," Lila said, trying hard to feel it was not too late for this. Her amulet was burning again. The cool wash of Tath's andalune body covered her face suddenly, with the effect of a cold handkerchief. She was able to lower her arm.

~t is incorporeal at fast ffeyin to understand; the elf said to her. Tnfe
reason you see not/ in y is because it bias removeimost of its existence from tie, p#cy.
icafpfane.

We can't fight what we can't hit, Lila said.

6Vou can /iit it efsew/ ere, w/ ere it is. o/ Cot /ere.

So where is it?

,Tee Yoidc --'d e, , fs~ace, Tath replied. 7niOt.
~Pia.

But ... how ... ?

~t affoverfas, the elf replied, as though this was obvious. Ad-you
not know ?

No I did not know, Lila replied, mimicking his own voice back to him with bad humour. But if we can't hit it, it can't hit us.

Irony, the elf said. ft bias enou / resence n'-ere to dC afvit~i t ie aet~ieric and-
t~iat is quite enouJ/i.

"Zal?" Lila said as they remained still, as if already captured. To Tath she said, Can you do anything?

Jer~ia~s, Tath said. Zut f iouEt it. jou may /io~e it has no iff will ft
zvoufulle a scant fi~le. S bias come because it sensedpower, anr[t~ee ow y reason it
m~79 gave interest in that is to acquire it.

"Yeah, seems a lot of bother just to call Teazle back," Zal said, for once unable to mask the tension in his voice. "I thought it would be ... much easier and less dangerous. I never crossed the wall before." He gave a humourless laugh, "I've got stupid, being here so long. The city fooled me ..." he sounded surprised.

"It is worth the mistake to discover a legend," Sorcha whispered, with a lift of her pointed chin. "I thought stories of the wall were to keep greedy idiots away from the Family hoards hidden in the mountains."

They were all quite still, including the drake. The air in the dead, hot region had begun to move. Vague shapes and shadows crossed it, turning in on themselves. Something was slowly boiling itself into form.

"You came here on a whim and you didn't know this would happen?" Lila said, just to get things straight and distract herself from the threads of panic she was beginning to feel.

"The Country Vice is not unsurvivable," Zal objected, then added, over fifty percent of the time." There was a soft explosion of light and Lila felt and saw the yellow and orange flame of his wings suddenly unfurl, casting weak lilac shadows of them all out before them.

Inside the shimmering air a shape began to emerge that was recog- nisably demonic: a tall satyr with extremely heavy horns on its head. It carried a sickle and a sword, a spear and a dagger and two katanas in its three pairs of hands. The slightest wash of black ran through it, a single drop of ink in a glass of water, and stained it just enough to see, though the landscape was clearly visible through it.

~t wears to gave some life-rCrainin y abilities li,€e my oun t~iat cLo not require
direct contact.

Joy, Lila replied, giving full rein to her Al strategic and tactical systems. And how do I get it more corporeal? But to this she had her own answer. She'd never met a demon who wouldn't eventually rise to some form of taunt. They had no sense when it came to their pride. The eventually bit was the part that was going to be trouble. She didn't see why you'd give up an advantage like total invisibility, to her at least, so she guessed it was in some way vain. She turned around, putting her back to the demon as if there was nothing there, and set her hands on her hips-

"So where is Teazle? It's not like it would take him any time to get here."

"Might be dead," Sorcha said, after a moment's pause.

"I'm not dead, you pitiful excuse for an Ahriman," said the drake and abruptly shifted its form, becoming suddenly as smooth as plaster, smaller, thinner, whiter, and even more draconic. Teazle flicked his wings and scooped up a shower of dust and small stones, flinging them over the wild demon that faced them. For an instant Lila saw the creature's surface become coated and flicker. Teazle continued, "Though I am rather pleased you'd go to all this bother just to find me. Lila, don't stand there with your mouth open. Zal, do something useful like attune yourself to that bastard so you can tell me how to kill it. I've been trying to figure it out for five minutes but it's too good with demon aether."

The demon figure reached back with one hand in a classic casting action.

"Ah holy crap," Teazle said.

The next few seconds passed in slow time for Lila as all her abilities went into overdrive. She saw that Zal was in line to be hit by whatever was coming and pushed backwards to make sure she was in the way. Teazle teleported behind the semivisible demon. Sorcha opened her ruby red mouth and took a huge breath. Zal moved to the side, away from Lila. The demon's arm came back and its hand opened.

And then she was taken by surprise as Tath, without asking or warning, seized control of her body. His force was astonishing, bursting from aetherial to physical power in less than a split second. She felt him as if she was wearing him on the inside. His elven reflexes were faster even than her machine ones and he acted with absolute precision. He reached out, caught hold of Sorcha by the arm, and dragged her in front of Lila with a single jerk that was so abrupt Lila felt the demon woman's shoulder joint pop. But this was a trifle compared to what happened in the next instant.

Tath jumped forwards across their connection into Sorcha's aura. Lila felt him flinching, revolted, but committed too much to care. Whatever the demon had cast hit Sorcha at the same moment. Lila felt an abominable emptiness, a hunger beyond sating, and it pulled; it pulled on Sorcha and it pulled on Tath and it pulled on her with the horrifying gravity of a neutron star. But instead of drawing on phys ical matter, it drew on spirit and she, who had never really believed in the existence of souls and had doubted seriously if there was any reality in notions of spiritual energy or chi or anything like that for humans, felt her life force lifting out of her cells, quite bodily, and funnelling swiftly into a moving tornado whose terminus lay beyond them all, beyond Demonia, in a dimension she had no name for, into a being whose maw was open and into which she had no way of preventing herself from falling.

It was like being pulled abruptly to the edge of a cliff and then right over, to your great surprise and dismay, finding nothing to hold on to. There wasn't even time to scream.

She realised with what she presumed was her last moment, quite calm, that in any case she had had no defences against this kind of attack. She tried to look for Zal, and hoped he might get away. She felt herself leaving her body and plunging forwards, through Sorcha, whose spirit had already left her. At least Tath was still with her.

You give up too easily, she felt him say to her, and then there was a truly horrible moment in which the easy forward motion ground to a halt and she felt completely suffused by Tath in a grim intimacy she would never have granted, and through him she could just feel Sorcha, and beyond that and with growing clarity, the demon-and the demon was unbearable, unspeakable. Beside it even Teazle was simply a player among fools. She had never believed such things existed.

Tath pulled.

Then she understood that the ritual being worked against her was that of a necromancer. The funnel of life led directly through the odd, flat, and two-dimensional realm of death, into the demon who stood beyond it. He commanded them to come, but Tath commanded them to remain, and now they were lost in a tugging match which would solely be determined by the power of the intent of the two combatants.

Free of her body Lila could look down on herself, on Sorcha and the others. In another way she could see through herself and the elf, and the demons, through the regions they passed across. She saw Teazle's odd form stretched out in those dimensions too and felt surprise as her agony increased-the sense of being stretched too thin. She was part of a rope that was made up of her, Tath, Sorcha, and the other demon and it was under a huge load as its two opposing anchors hauled on it. The most curious thing was that as soon as she had lifted up here she felt no stress about what was going on. Death, or life, both were equal. She was quite detached about the outcome because whatever happened she knew that she was all right. This demon, even if it killed her, could do nothing to her beyond ending her human life-and she had just risen above that and seen that it was, in any case, only a temporary station. She didn't even feel the slightest emotion at the prospect of the annihilation of her consciousness. She'd been unconscious before and it had never bothered her. So what if she never woke up? Things would go on without her.