robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (50 page)

John didn't want to die under tons of dirt. "It's that important?"

"Did you get any sense of the
telesmon
he'd uncovered?"

John didn't know what a
telesmon
was, but he had gotten a sense from the object Quetzal had been carrying. He hadn't liked it at all. It had felt... evil. "Yeah."

"Then you
know
it's that important."

"Can't you just collapse it on him, and not on us?"

"I don't think I can be that selective, especially with him fighting me."

"Try, Doctor."

"I'll do what I can, John. Now give me your hand; we need to link."

As the doctor built her spell construct, shadows began to play against the floor of the chamber. Quetzal was coming closer. Dr. Spae pronounced herself as satisfied as could be expected. Quetzal s foot emerged from the shaft.

Why didn't Dr. Spae
do
something?

His other foot. His legs. This would be a good time.

Do it! Bury him!

The doctor must have sensed John's distress. "He has to be in the right place," she whispered.

Quetzal stood upon the floor of the chamber. He turned and saw them. Smiling grimly, he said, "I see I was not the only one to know of this passage."

The doctor didn't respond, so John was silent as well.

"What brings you and your shy elf puppet here, Spae? Didn't you get enough last time?"

"We came to stop you," the doctor said.

"I've already been stopped. Time and the earth have beaten you to it. The passage is blocked, and the only way out is the way we came in."

"You have no way out," Dr. Spae told him.

"A duel here would be dangerous. The deep earth likes not our kind. If you insist upon having your death at my hand, let us do it outside. In here, the walls could collapse."

"I'll help them."

Quetzal shook his head. "You won't. You'll be trapped here as well."

"I'm willing."

John felt her release energy into her spell construct. A sound like thunder miles off echoed through the rock. Quetzal's eyes darted wildly about for a moment, then he set to disrupting the doctor's spell. Through his rapport with Dr. Spae, John could feel the doctor working the spell on the earth around them, calling it to close. He felt, too, the props she had placed to shield them; they seemed terribly flimsy.

The play of magics in the chamber sent shadows scampering crazily about the rockface. The arcane light illuminated a dark spot on the wall; a spot that seemed to be a shadow, but was not an ordinary one. If the interplay of arcane forces hadn't heightened his senses, he wouldn't have recognized it for what it was.

The earth moaned around them, bending closer. Dust shifted from the walls, and clods of dirt and small stones dribbled down from the roof.

Dr. Spae's construct was achieving reality. The roof would fall soon.

John tightened his grip on her hand and tugged her back toward the shadow that wasn't exactly a shadow. She let out a wordless howl of protest as Quetzal reacted to her broken concentration. Through the link with Dr. Spae, John felt Quetzal wrest control of the magic. The groaning stopped, and so did the fall of rocks. Quetzal laughed and stepped forward.

John didn't care.

"John, let go of me!"

John didn't. He intended to hold her where he wanted her. "Stand still, Doctor! Let me have the spell."

"But you don't—"

"Now! There's no time to argue!" He was betting that the rapport they shared would help her to trust him. He tried to be calm. And why not? They were only staking their lives.

"You've made a mistake, elf. I have the spell now."

"We'll see," John told him.

He ripped at the lattice the doctor had set to try and save them.

"No, John! You're wrecking it!"

He knew. But by destroying their back door, the spell would be reenergized.

Quetzal recognized what John was doing. The darkling mage scrambled to take control of the astral props. John let him have the lesser ones without a fight, concentrating his effort on wiping out the mainstay over the spot where Spae had been standing. Where Quetzal now stood.

John willed the earth above to join the earth below.

The stone moaned its longing to become whole and seal the hollow in its midst.

"You should have been buried long ago," John said, as he felt the last of the prop evaporate into nothingness. He forgot the spell, forgot the rock, forgot the earth closing in on them and gave his will to
need,
the
need
to be elsewhere. He took himself and the doctor sideways into the shadow.

Behind them, the trickle of falling stone became a torrent. Looking over his shoulder, John saw Quetzal raise both hands in a fending gesture, dropping his precious
telesmon.
The artifact rang like a gong as it hit and bounced. The small sound was lost in the clamor of the rockfall.

Even Quetzal didn't have the power to stop the earth in its motion. His screams were buried with him under tons of dirt and earth and rock.

John tugged harder on Spae. They could not afford to tarry; they might still be caught. She stumbled; only his hand in hers kept her upright. John felt something bang off his shin; it clattered away in the darkness. Coughing from the dust, they staggered on.

When John thought they had gotten far enough to be safe, he kept going for another dozen yards. He listened. The rock was silent. It was safe to stop. He leaned against the tunnel wall and slowly slid to a sitting position.

Dr. Spae sat beside him. "What happened? Why aren't we buried?"

"We're in the otherworld, Doctor."

She looked around, though they were in near darkness and there was little to see. Her mouth was open as if she might taste a difference in the air. "You brought us here?"

He nodded. "I seem to have discovered the trick."

They rested for a while in silence.

John broke the quiet by saying, "I'm sorry about Mr. Beryle." The doctor didn't respond. Maybe it had been the wrong thing to say. After another while he tried, "We had probably best get out of here."

Dr. Spae nodded. "Can we stay in Faery awhile? I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to the real world."

"Sure. I guess so. The tunnel still seems to go in the right direction."

They followed the tunnel. For some reason, John found it easier to see in the dark of this Faery tunnel than he had in the railroad tunnel.The doctor seemed to have the same advantage; they walked along in the center of the broad passage.

"Why is this passage here?" Dr. Spae asked suddenly.

'"I don't know."

"But we're under the hill, aren't we? The natural landforms are supposed to be the same in the two dimensions. Since they don't have trains in the otherworld, this should be a solid hill in Faery."

John hadn't considered that. If he had, he might not have tried what he had done, and they might have been buried with Quetzal. He didn't want to think about that. "I guess that there are tunnelers in the otherworld, too. I didn't create the place, Doctor. I just found it and walked us here."

"But what would need a tunnel this size? It's big enough for an eleph—"

She stopped abruptly and stood staring, wide-eyed. John felt his own eyes go wide when he saw what she was staring at.

The tunnel before them was filled with massive, scaly haunches and a spined tail. A great wedge of a head rested on the tail. The creature's skull was crowned with a pair of spiral horns. Many lesser horns formed a row from the base of each of the greater pair that joined at the eye ridge and marched down the long muzzle to meet a prominent nose horn. Teeth of varying sizes jutted from the closed jaws, and faint wisps of steam rose from its flaring nostrils.

There could be little doubt what this Faery creature was.

"A dragon," breathed Dr. Spae. "This is a dragon's lair."

The beast was curled up like a cat sleeping. Its slablike flanks heaved up and down, undisturbed by the doctor's voice. John hoped it would stay that way.

He pointed to a narrow space between the wall of the tunnel and the slumbering dragon. As silently as they could, they tiptoed past the beast. To their unspoken relief, it didn't stir. To their even greater relief, the stars of the otherworld soon appeared, framed by the tunnel's mouth. They hurried out of the hill.

They hadn't gotten more than ten meters when Faye appeared out of the brush. Without a word, she grabbed their hands and tugged them back the way she had come. She waited until she'd dragged them among the trees before speaking.

"Dr. Spae, you look terrible. Are you all right?"

The doctor gave her a weak smile. "I'm just tired, dear. I'll survive. I always have before."

Faye smiled encouragement and support, then turned to John. "Why did you take her in there, John? Don't you know what's in there?"

How was he supposed to know? This wasn't exactly his native turf. This was his father's turf. Speaking of whom... "Where's Bennett?"

"He couldn't come, John. I have help, though. Lesser folk, mostly, but willing to fight."

John didn't see anyone but Faye. "So where is this help?"

"They were afraid to come closer to Urre'shk."

"Who?"

"The dragon," said an elf, who might have appeared out of thin air. The newcomer was as tall as John, but dark where he was fair.

"Who are you?" John asked him.

"You haven't earned my name, changeling. I came to fight the wyrm lover."

"So did we!" chorused a medley of voices. Shining eyes peered from beneath bushes and around trees. Noses, some long and pointed, some stubby and shiny, others entirely more human, poked from hiding places among the greenery. The vegetation hid dozens of Faery folk, but John couldn't see all of any of them. A shy folk—but, to judge from the glints on teeth and claws and unsheathed weapons, a fierce folk as well. Even if they were afraid of dragons. The largest of all the folk gathered around them lurked where it was almost completely hidden from sight; John caught a glimpse of a bright red hat and heard the clink of metal on metal. From the hidden skulker, a deep voice rumbled, "We're ready to fight now."

"Quite the army," the elf remarked. "Are you ready to be the general?"

"There won't be any fighting," John said. "The battle's over."

The dark-haired elf said nothing; he turned and walked away. A rustling in the brush announced the departure of many of the other Faery folk as well. But some remained, their eyes glittering in the darkness under the leafy hiding places, their faces appearing fleetingly from behind the trees.

"Is it true, John? Quetzal is destroyed?"

"Buried beneath the mountain."

Faye threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. Shrill, piping voices and froggy croaking raised a ragged cheer.

Conscious of Dr. Spae's presence, John hugged Faye back, but only for a short while. "Pretend I'm not here," the doctor said, but John couldn't do that. They had to go back. Besides, there were better places to celebrate than the middle of the woods with who knew how many Faery folk hanging about, watching.

Dr. Spae was right about the landforms being similar in the otherworld and in the sunlit world. John knew the hill was the hill, which meant that his slump was ...

He turned to find Faye already pointing in the correct direction.

She was smiling at him, and he had to smile back. They laughed.

John helped Dr. Spae up, but she refused his assistance beyond that, saying, "I'm not that—what's the current phrase? Oh, yes—whipped out."

They set out, to the accompaniment of thrashings and rustlings in the bushes and trees. A thin, reedy voice sang a chorus of a tune that John had never heard before, and instantly the woods erupted into song. It was a wild song and, for it, the lunatic mix of voices singing it was right. Their progress became a parade—as experienced by a blind man. For all the ruckus, the only marchers John could see were Faye and Dr. Spae.

But it didn't matter. They'd beaten Quetzal and saved the world from—from what, exactly? Maybe knowing the nature of the threat didn't matter, either. It had needed doing, and he had been part of the doing. And maybe—just maybe it wouldn't have been done without him.

At the riverbank John walked them back into the sunlit world; it was time to go home.