Ariel (38 page)

The necromancer brought his hand before his face. He turned it. He blinked once. He stepped back into the doorway and looked to the side. "They're all yours," he said. And he retreated.

* * *

They'd been in the room with him, waiting for me to come after the illusion of Ariel he'd created. Now they poured from the doorway. Had we been right there, on just this side of the door, they would never have got out. We could have killed them easily as they tried to emerge. Now it was too late to try to get that close, and we had to thank our good fortune that they were at least bottlenecked in the doorway.

Malachi got the first two with throwing stars. One in the mouth, one in the sternum. I pulled the Aero-mag and used my remaining five darts. I made all but one count and then had nothing left but Fred, and I had to stand there while Malachi hurled his remaining stars: one, two, reach for the hip, three—that one missed, slamming into the edge of the door.

The adjacent door opened and we had to run for it.

We headed the way I had come, running side by side. We dashed ten paces and Malachi darted left around a marble corner. I hadn't expected it and swung wide, having to push off the far wall to avoid colliding with it. Something
wheet
ed past my shoulder as I rounded the corner.

I followed Malachi as he turned right, then left. He cut a man down without breaking stride, reached the stairwell door, and held it open for me while I sped past him and started up, taking the stairs three at a time.

"Down!" he said, shutting the door behind him.

I turned and headed down, intending to descend two flights and come up the other staircase. I stopped when I saw people coming up, turned back around, and ran up the stairs to eighty-four. I opened the door, ducked in case somebody was waiting there to hack whoever came through, ran out—

Nobody in sight.

Malachi was right behind me, and we sped away. We reached the opposite stairwell, went in, and climbed back up to eighty-five. We went out the door the same way, Malachi first this time. Someone was waiting there; he turned when Malachi barreled through and I cut him down as I emerged.

Our run became a brisk trot. I was growing short of breath. Much more of this and I wouldn't be able to fight anything.

Turn, straight, turn, turn, straight—I couldn't have traced our route if I'd had a map; it was totally random.

"What happened," I gasped as we hurried past doors I kept expecting to fly open as we went by, "to the others?"

"Split up when we met more opposition," he said between breaths. "I don't know who's where." He slowed. "Start trying doors. But be careful."

"You don't have to tell me twice." I tried a door. It was locked. He tried a door across the hall and it opened. He peeked in quickly, looked back, and beckoned to me. We locked the door behind us and turned around.

Oh, man. The low, round table of heavy wood, with the pentagram in the center, was still there. Behind it was the office desk. Behind that was the large, black swivel chair, and behind that a picture window with a dizzying view of the East River and beyond. "Malachi," I whispered. "This is it. This is the necromancer's  .  .  . where he was, where
I
was, before."

He raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" He walked around, surveying the room. He ended up staring at the desk interestedly. "Good."

"Good! Christ, we're—"

"Guard the door. Let me know if you hear anyone coming. And keep quiet."

He reached beneath his warm-up suit top and drew forth a length of wire resembling a packaged guitar string. He straightened it and inserted an index finger into a loop at each end, then got behind the office desk and turned the swivel chair sideways.

"What are you—"

"Quiet, I said."

I shut up and kept my ear to the door. He began sawing at something—metal, from the rasping sound. What I'd thought was some type of garrote must have been a loop saw, and a damned good one, too, if it could cut through metal. I wondered what else he had tucked away.

I cleared my throat. The rasping stopped. "What's garlic poisoning?" I asked.

"Garlic juice in the bloodstream," he said from behind the desk. The sawing resumed.

"But  .  .  .  . That means  .  .  .  ."

"No, it doesn't. It was a lie. If I'd thought of it, I would have rubbed garlic on the
shuriken
, but it didn't occur to me until we were about two thousand feet over New York." His head popped up from behind the desk, lips smiling thinly. "But it ought to keep him occupied."

I leaned closer to the door. "Someone's coming."

The smile vanished. I listened as the voices and hurried footfalls of two men went past. I waited to be sure, then told him they had gone. "They're looking for us, though. They think about thirty of us came in from above."

The sawing resumed. "Good," he muttered. "Let them keep thinking that."

Half an hour later—during which I'd had to stop him once more—he stood and carefully set the chair back upright once more behind the desk.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I made a nasty. Come look, but don't touch."

I joined him behind the desk and knelt to see what he was pointing at. I swallowed. Yeah—nasty.

"Let's go," he said.

"Malachi—" I hesitated. "What are we looking for—the necromancer, or Ariel?"

"We'll have our hands full enough without having to look for anything, especially. Come on."

We made sure the hallway was clear. I looked back once before closing the door. The upper half of the black chair was outlined against the picture window.

I followed Malachi.

* * *

We came upon the bodies of the ten men we'd fought at the stairwell entrance. "I don't get it," I said. "Where's everyone else?"

"They must have scattered. Searching for us, probably. Tom's strategy must have worked; I get the feeling most of their men left for the lower levels when the fighting started earlier."

"So what now?"

"I guess now we look for trouble. Start opening doors again. Sooner or later we're bound to run across something."

He opened a door. Empty office.

I shook my head and opened a door on the other side of the hall. I was halfway through closing it when I realized there were men in there. Armed men. They got up when they saw me. I slammed the door.

It opened again quickly and a man started out. On the side of the doorway across from me, Malachi crosscut and the head rolled. Blood emptied into the corridor. Voices came from inside the room.

The door behind me opened and three of them came out. Fuck—adjoining rooms. I backed up to have more fighting space, I saw motion in the corner of my eye just before I engaged, and a wordless shout came from the end of the hall. Tom Pert's voice.

Then Malachi and I were busy as hell and I didn't have time to look. A spear thrust for my chest. I pivoted, blocked with Fred, and drove the spear to the floor. The end snapped off. Now a quarterstaff, the stick came back and struck me in the waist. A little lower and it would have struck bone. It knocked the wind from me as it was. I forced myself to breathe as I slid my blade down the length of the stick and cut off his fingers. I stopped his scream quickly as I swung again.

The rest was like some demented Laurel and Hardy parody. Turning to face the next man, my feet slid out from under me as I fell to the floor in the blood. Above me I watched a thrust aimed at my back, coming from a man I didn't even know had been there, slide into the ribcage of the man I'd been turning to face. I swung blindly at the one who'd accidentally killed his comrade, opening him up across the stomach. He dropped his weapon and clutched at himself. The ends of his intestines poked through flaps of skin. A swordpoint appeared from his chest, lengthened, and shot back in. He dropped. I looked up foolishly at Tom Pert. The blood on the floor had seeped through the seat of my pants and I could feel it on my skin. It was warm. More had spattered my thigh as the man above me was pierced.

I got up. Hank and Walt had arrived with Tom. Hank was covered with blood—I realized I was, too—but didn't seem hurt himself. Walt was pale. The bandage around his biceps had turned crimson. It dripped from one of the tied ends.

The noise of our fight had brought more opposition. They crowded at us from all directions and all the swordplay and scrambling and vying and killing and blood blended into one continuous swing of metal. There were fifteen of them, I think, and like Hercules and the Hydra it seemed two replaced each one that dropped. There were still only five of us.

I remember little of it. I could only react. I had to stay alive, so I maimed and killed.

At one point I was fighting back to back with Walt. At another I managed to catch a glimpse of Malachi Lee. A ring of bodies surrounded him. Hank fought calmly and methodically, guarding himself at all angles. Tom snarled bear-like at his opponents as he fought. The sound of battle brought more of them, two and three at a time, from wherever they had been looking for us.

It became hard to move because of the bodies.

We were at the intersection of two hallways and they came from all sides. The man running toward me skidded as he tried to stop to engage me, and I ran him through almost without a thought. I was granted a brief respite from the carnage and looked toward Malachi Lee. He'd become separated from us by the bodies and the tide of opponents. Tom, Hank, and Walt fought with me at one end, and Malachi fought alone at the other. Five men were trying to get at him, but all were hesitant. They'd seen him dispatch others as quickly as they approached. But I could see how tired he was and that some of the blood on his clothes was his own.

Behind them stood a man: tall, Germanic, one-eyed. The griffin rider. He looked annoyed.

Malachi batted aside a blade, sheared off the wielder's wrist, and arced smoothly through his throat, all in less than a second. One of the remaining four, the nearest, attempted to seize his opportunity and move in. Malachi blocked and swept down, just missing the man's shin. He was slowing.

Tom, Hank, and Walt were still engaged with their opponents. No more were coming. We stood in the midst of a buzzard's feast; some of the bodies still twitched like Galvani's frogs.

I deserted my comrades-in-arms, heading for Malachi. I slipped on the slick floor and moved Fred out of the way quickly so I wouldn't land on the blade. I got up from the twisted limbs and spreading organs. The air was thick, sour-sweet.

The number of men in front of Malachi had grown to eight. One of them reeled backward suddenly, a spear embedded in his chest. To my right, Hank's arm completed a follow-through arc.

And the rest descended on Malachi. He rolled backward, swinging his sword wildly to ward them off, and ended up on his knees, bleeding from a half dozen new wounds. The men he fought paused uncertainly as he held his sword out to the griffin rider, turning it so that the handle pointed away from himself.

The griffin rider nodded, smiling, and stepped forward.

Malachi thrust. The point disappeared into his warm-up jacket. Narrowing his eyes at the rider, he worked the blade to the left across his stomach. He brought it around in a half circle, pulled it out, and thrust again, lower this time. He yanked the blade up and his insides spilled out onto his thighs. He shuddered. His head lowered, his jaw went slack, and he fell to one side among those he had killed.

I brought my blade up, seeing Malachi beyond the reddened edge.

He didn't have a
kaishaku-nin
, a second—the one who assists, who cuts off the head before the pain becomes too great. The rider had taken that from him.

I headed for him. Hands tugged at my shoulders, stopping me—We have to get out of here pete there's nothing we can do come on walt give me a hand with him he's—

I twisted away from them and faced the men who'd killed Malachi. The rider looked gleeful. He taunted me with his broadsword. "Get through them," he said. "Get through them and you can have me. Otherwise you aren't worth it." He nudged Malachi's body with a boot. "He didn't make it." He laughed.

The men attacked.

Tom, Walt, and Hank formed a flattened diamond with me at the head. There wasn't room in the corridor for us to fight side by side.

The first man to reach me died before he completed his initial swing. The second had a sword and shield. I raised my blade high for a downstroke and he covered up. When the blow didn't come he looked over the edge of his shield and I killed him.

They kept coming, gradually forcing us back. A stumble over a corpse would have meant death for any of us and we were bitterly tired. In less than thirty seconds I found myself with my back to a door, three attackers trying to press in on me. Before they reached me, I found the knob and pushed open the door, jumped in, slammed it, and locked it behind me. They pounded a few times, then stopped.

I turned around. Adjoining rooms to either side. Which meant more doors leading into the corridor. I hurried to the room on the left, leaving bloody footprints on the carpet. I opened the door.

Ariel.

No illusion this time. No mistake. Her horn was rust-brown with caked blood. There was no glow like a moonlit snowfield in her coat, no light in her eyes. She held her right front leg up the way a dog holds its leg when it is injured.

And for the first time in all the times I ever saw her, she looked, not like a unicorn, but like a horse with a horn.

Chains lay on the floor behind her where she'd been shackled, but she had apparently grown too weak for even those restraints to be necessary.

"Ariel." A whisper.

Her head was lowered almost to the floor. Slowly it rose. She looked at me. A touch of the old light returned to her midnight eyes. She spoke with the trembling voice of a little girl, afraid and alone. "Peeete."

I ran to her. My sword clinked to the carpet in front of her dulled mirror hooves, and suddenly my cheek was against her and my hands clasped across her limp mane. I left blood smears where I touched her. I hugged her and said her name over and over. My eyes burned.

I drew back and looked into her eyes. There was something uncomprehending there, a puzzlement. "It's all right," I said. "Everything's going to be all right."

She blinked. "Peete?"

"It's me, it's me," I soothed. Something swelled inside my chest. She was startled when I touched her muzzle. Her head turned away and she looked at some point beyond the wall. I moved toward her. Her eyes didn't follow me.

"Ariel?"

She looked back at the sound of my voice, but not quite at me. I reached for her. She didn't register the movement.

She was blind.

She'd grown weak enough for his powers to work, and he'd blinded her. He'd had her shackles removed, and he'd blinded her.

I screamed. It broke into a long sob and she tentatively stepped forward and lowered her head, brushing the side of her face against mine.

The door to the corridor burst open and men poured in. I grabbed my sword from the floor and turned to face them, holding it high. They avoided me, fanning out to line two of the walls, weapons readied. Behind them came the necromancer. I heard fighting in the corridor beyond. The necromancer walked calmly into the room, unable to keep a certain arrogance from his stride, until he had walked around me and stood, eyeing me, with his back to Ariel. "My friend and his Familiar have flown down to help with the battle below. As for you and yours  .  .  .  ." He glanced at Ariel. Her head was cocked curiously, listening. "I see you've found out she's blind. We tried to make it real, but none of us could touch her. It's amazing to watch; we couldn't even hit her with arrows. I ended up using a spell, a simple one, really, but the result's the same."

I launched myself at him, swinging Fred. He spoke a short syllable and my fingers went lax. The sword dropped to the carpet. I tried to move my fingers but the muscles wouldn't respond.

He shook his head. "You shouldn't be so predictable. You tried that last time you were here. All I have to do is say something that enrages you, and you react." He turned to Ariel, who was silent and still, head turned to the side as she listened. "She's weak now," he said. "I don't need to wait for her to die to get her horn. She can't defend herself anymore." He stepped forward until his face almost touched mine. "You had your chance. We could have arranged for me to take the horn and let the two of you go on your way. It's your own fault. Now I'm going to take it anyway, and you're going to watch."

I strained to move. He sneered and turned back to Ariel.

Her head had lowered, horn brushing the carpet. It rose as the necromancer spoke a harsh, two-syllable word. His hands wove an invisible cat's cradle. Something began to form between them. It was visible only because it disturbed the air around it, seemed to bend and compress it into a grid. A cage, the length of Ariel's horn. It shimmered and hummed between his palms, not quite touching them.

Ariel's head cocked to the other side as the hum grew louder. The necromancer stepped forward. Ariel shifted back, keeping her weight off her right foreleg.

He brought the thing up until it was parallel with her born. Between his hands the length of air sparkled. He spoke another word in a guttural tongue and the shaft grew brighter. Internal harmonies grew within the humming. The cage thing glowed white-hot. Ariel backed up another pace as he advanced, carefully extending his hands toward her.

If I could move—

Another pace and she was against the wall. Another word, long and ugly with clicking sounds, and she shivered. Her head lowered unwillingly until the point was level with the floor. The necromancer brought the glowing space between his hands to her head. His body blocked my view as he stepped in front of her.

"No-o-o  .  .  .  ." Her voice was fragile crystal.

There was a rending sound. As the necromancer's arms extended fully, his body jackknifed forward, bending at the waist, and a foot of spiral horn came out of his back. He gasped feebly. The glowing space disappeared from between his palms as his fingers curved into claws. He grabbed her head. She lifted her horn and he came up from the floor. His body slid farther down the spiral length.

I fell to the floor as movement returned, stopping my fall with my hands. I stayed there, unable to take my eyes away. Ariel tossed her head from side to side. The necromancer flailed like a broken puppet. "
No-o-o-o-o
!" she screamed.

His eyes were clenched as he held the top of her mane. His mouth was drawn back and his teeth showed in a skull-like grin. She dipped her head and he slid from her horn. He landed on the carpet, half-rolled, and was still.

She raised her head and looked at me—
looked
at me—the spell of blindness broken. Red traced a glistening path down the bottom third of her horn. I seized my sword and stood.

The necromancer's men were as transfixed as I had been. Now they looked from his spread-eagled body to us. One of them raised his bow.