The Golden Shield of IBF (3 page)

The Horde had come for her, and they were using magic to slow her response to their attack.

There was no time for a compression spell. Her precious things would have to be left behind, perhaps to be retrieved later. Swan slowed her breathing, reduced her heart rate to normal. Her hands moving in all directions, she ordered the books and scrolls and vials and retorts to their hiding places, ordering the notes she had taken to fly into her leather spell bag.

There was the noise of heavy footsteps coming up the winding stairs to the tower. Not much time.

Swan extended her left hand, calling, “Sword and sheath and belt, come to me!” They flew immediately from the small couch on which she’d placed them when entering the tower, coming to her hand. She cinched the double wrap belt around her waist. “Dagger!” She had used the tip of her dagger to open the stubborn cork which had sealed one of her vials. There was always the temptation to use magic for everything. That was wasteful, and led to laziness. The dagger slid across the long rough-hewn table where she’d set it, coming to her open right hand. It was the only weapon she always carried. She raised her skirts to sheath it on her left calf.

The footsteps were loud enough now that her second-sight only confirmed what she already knew. Six Handmaidens on the heels of a dozen black-clad warriors from the Sword of Koth. The warriors wielding crossbows, axes and fireswords.

The window would be her only escape. If she used her Enchantress powers to fight these persons whom her mother had sent to kill her, she would be so drained that she might not have enough magic to escape if ordinary means should fail.

Summoning her cape and her spell bag as she ran, Swan reached the window, twisting the latch. Her plan was simple enough. She could summon a strong night wind in a matter of moments, then cast herself from the window and the powerful air currents would set her safely in the courtyard. There’d be time to reach the stable and escape.

Throwing open the sash, the first words of the wind summoning spell were on her tongue. Swan screamed instead, throwing her shoulder against the open window, slamming it shut, but not in time. Swan staggered back.

The warriors from the Sword of Koth, the six Handmaidens, the breaking of the guarding spell. They were all a diversion. Her mother was about to kill her, personally. Only her mother could have summoned what lay beyond the window and was inexorably creeping across the tower floor, along the tower walls.

Her mother had somehow, using magic Swan could
not
even begin to comprehend, summoned the Mist of Oblivion, the blackest of all magic, a fog but denser than the deepest, darkest night, damp and cold, consuming all that it touched, rendering everything into nothingness. In moments, the castle and all within it would be devoured by the Mist, would utterly cease to exist, not just as flesh and bone, stone and steel, but even as dust. If her mother somehow lost control of the Mist of Oblivion, all of Creath and all of the universe of sun and stars of night would be lost, every life within it gone forever.

The stout wooden door at the far end of the tower shattered inward. Three of the Sword of Koth, faces swathed in black leather battle masks, ran into the room. The six Handmaidens, black robed beneath their cloaks, followed after them. The Handmaidens immediately formed a circle, joining hands. And they began their chant of power.

“Fools!” Swan screamed at them. “My mother is murdering all of you along with me!” The other nine warriors were coming through the doorway now. A crossbow bolt was fired, streaking toward Swan’s head. She flicked her hand, diverting the missile from its target.

The window, the wall where the window had been, the floor near the wall, all were gone, enveloped in the creeping blackness of the Mist. In a matter of eyeblinks, the warriors would be closed off with her where she stood and the Mist of Oblivion would devour them all.

Swans heart beat savagely, her chest visibly pulsating, her breathing labored. It was the magic of the Handmaidens at work against her body.

Swan started to raise her hand, to counter the magic the six Handmaidens worked, but this was what her mother wanted her to do, waste her magic, waste the precious eyeblinks it would take. So there must be an option, something that she could do in order to survive.

And though her mother was now trying to take her life, if Swan survived she would have her mother to thank. Her mother had spoken once of a casting she had made, taken from an old scroll. It drained Eran of almost all her magic for a period of several hours.

Swan let her mind drift back to the Memory Pool, to recall the incantation if she could.

Another crossbow bolt. To deflect it would not drain her. Swan waved her hand. The Mist of Oblivion rolled toward her, was only a few spans from her feet. Two warriors lunged toward Swan with their glowing hot fireswords.

Swan stretched out her arms, her hands grasping for the magic in the air around her, feeling its current surging through her body, strengthening her. She uttered the words of the incantation as she pressed her palms together between her breasts, becoming one with the energy around her.

Light, dazzlingly bright, filled her, exploded from her, magical energy beyond anything she had ever experienced or even imagined, a sound crackling like thunder from chain lightning—

A darkness that glowed like light but was neither light nor dark was all around her, then gone.

Swan looked up. There was a different light, that of the sun, but the sun was different, too. Tall castle towers, unlike anything she had ever seen, soared into the blue sky above. Her gaze trailed downward along the castle walls. They were filled with windows, larger than any she had ever seen. An army of coaches moved along smooth black stone roadways on either side of her, but no horses or other beasts drew them.

There was magic here. Of that, Swan was certain.

Someone spoke to her in a tongue which she did not understand. Swan turned toward the voice. It belonged to a girl, a girl about her own age, black coloring around her eyes, a spiked animal collar around her neck. The girl spoke again to her and smiled. Swan smiled back. The girl was attired only in a leather binding around her breasts and a skirt that was too short to be a skirt and boots which rose to her thighs, their heels too high to be practical for riding.

The girl spoke still again, and when Swan did not respond, the girl nodded, then began using her hands in some sort of gesturing symbology. Swan did not comprehend the gestures, but realized clearly their intent: the strangely dressed girl thought that she was deaf. A very large lantern swayed over the road. It had been emitting a red light, which seemed to serve no practical purpose of illumination on such a bright and sunny day. The light changed to green and the oddly dressed girl touched at Swan’s elbow and propelled Swan with her into the road.

Swan was about to protest, but then she saw something on the other side of the road which gladdened her heart. Yes, there were men in odd metallic suits carrying strange weapons, a female creature that seemed to be half cat and woman, other oddities. But, she saw a girl attired similarly to herself, in long dress and hooded cloak, although the girl carried no sword, no spell bag. With her were two men, one of them a great teacher or philosopher from the look of his cowled robes, the other dressed in the finery of a courtier, like the ones whom she had seen pictured from the days before her mother’s reign, in bright red hose and gleaming black knee boots, a black jerkin over his white shirt, a bonnet with a feather plume on his head. A sword—a little too flashy looking to be very good steel—hung from an elaborate frog at his hip.

Reaching the far side of the road, Swan saw others dressed in similar finery, and others attired even more oddly than the girl who had guided her across the road. What land was this? Swan had learned spells to translate writings so that she could assist Erg’Ran in his translations from the prophecies of Mir. They required little magical energy once mastered. She cast such a spell now to interpret the runic symbols on the cover of a colorful book the courtier with the flashy sword held in his hand. And Swan wondered, what was a DragonCon? A Comics Expo? What was an Atlanta?

She would need a spoken language spell, and very quickly, because the girl who wore the animal collar and overbound her breasts with leather was talking to her again and so was the half-cat, half-woman creature.

Chapter Two

It was stuffy in the back of the FBI field command vehicle, the Saturday afternoon sunshine defeating the air conditioning, aided by the heat inside generated from the banks of electronic equipment. A row of video monitors was running real time surveillance feeds from cameras hastily positioned to surround DragonCon’s principal venue and the other two buildings in question. Even a moment’s glance at the monitors confirmed that a seemingly unending stream of people, many of them costumed after their favorite characters in science fiction and fantasy, were busily entering, hanging out in front of or leaving the convention. The camera operators and two agents did nothing but study the monitors, looking for one particular face.

So far, no one had seen that face and chances were good that the suspect they sought was still inside, mingling with the convention crowd. A third agent, monitoring the systems, could work a switcher and replay tape of the real time video feed. There had been one false alarm, but other than that not even a sign of the bomber.

Tom Criswell’s fingers were a blur over his computer keyboard, hacking into DragonCon’s computer system. The BATF bomb specialist, Jim Sutton, was using a laptop—this was an FBI van and Sutton was BATF—for the purposes of getting all the background he could on William Culberton Brownwood, self-styled right-wing fanatical avenger. “Well, he’s never had a moving violation,” Sutton announced, “and his next door neighbor drives a Pontiac.”

Alan Garrison’s attention was divided between listening to Matt Wisnewski, the SAC who was running the operation, and checking his weapons. “I’ll tell you right now, gentlemen,” Wisnewski said, “that I’d rather we use standard procedures to evacuate the buildings and isolate the suspect. And, no offense to BATF, Sutton, but I’ve always felt that the Bureau can best handle situations of this nature on its own.”

“What you’re really ticked off about, Wisnewski, is that I called the U.S. Attorney and, for once in history, Justice listened to Treasury and decided there was a situation that couldn’t be played by the Bureau’s rulebook,” Sutton declared. “If we tried a mass evacuation, we’d lose our bomber in the crowd. If we checked every parcel and bundle and purse, the suspect would either detonate his device as a diversion to cover his getaway or slip out some other way because it would take fucking forever.”

Without looking away from his computer screen, Tom Criswell remarked, “I’m in. This DragonCon convention? They’ve got over eighteen thousand registered attendees in three separate buildings that are all interconnected!”

“It’s the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the Southeast, one of the largest in the world, and Saturday is always the best attended day. I’ve never missed one. I was here last night, as a matter of fact, so I’ve already got my convention badge,” Garrison informed them.

“By the time this is over, Garrison, that may be the only badge you’ll have,” Wisnewski cracked. “Just because you can blend in here with these science fiction people doesn’t mean squat, Garrison. And getting your BATF buddy Sutton here to go around me to the U.S. Attorney so that you can grandstand and try apprehending the suspect on your own is irresponsible conduct that we’ll discuss quite seriously after this is over. If the suspect uses his device and lives are lost, it’ll be on your head, Garrison, and yours, too, Sutton. The same if we lose him.”

Wisnewski snorted again.

The spare magazines for Garrison’s brace of SIG P-220 .45s were checked, both guns already secured in their shoulder holsters. Something he hadn’t been taught at the FBI Academy at Quantico but had been taught by some old friends who’d gone professionally armed all their adult lives was that the best way to disguise the presence of a gun carried in a shoulder holster was to carry two guns of identical or similar size in a double shoulder holster. This equalized the bulges.

Garrison stood up. He was as ready as he could get, armed to the teeth and a wire under his shirt. Thank God, he thought, that the wire didn’t have to be taped on, because that meant shaving his chest or waiting for the inevitable pain of removing body hair along with the tape.

Criswell asked a reasonable question. “How are you going to try finding this guy out of all these people?”

Garrison answered, “I got down here for a little bit last night, like I said, and I was planning to come back this afternoon anyway and spend the rest of the day. I pretty much know where everything is, where the panels are being held, like that. If I can’t locate him during the day, he’ll show up where the crowds are at night. Saturday night there’s always Atlanta Radio Theater doing a live production and later there’s the masquerade contest.”

Sarcastically, Wisnewski asked, “And do you dress up for this masquerade like all these other weirdos we’ve been seeing going in and out?”

“No, I don’t. And, they’re good people, not what you called them.” Figuring he was in line for an official reprimand at any event, Garrison decided it was just as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb. “But, now that you mention it, Matt, I did show up once in a blue suit just like the one you’re wearing, with FBI cufflinks just like yours. They wanted to give me a prize for the best Washington bureaucrat costume.”

Sutton laughed.

Before Wisnewski could respond, Garrison continued. “Most of the costuming you’re seeing on the surveillance cameras isn’t for the masquerade contest. People wear hall costumes and just live in character for a few days. It’s fun. Our guy might have knocked somebody over the head and stolen a costume. At first thought, that might make finding him harder, but it could make it easier, too, if I know what costume to look for. A lot of these folks will dress as the same character year after year.” What he didn’t tell Wisnewski, but had told Sutton, was that he intended to take certain people within the convention into his confidence, give them a description of the bombing suspect, and let them be extra eyes and ears. Because he had attended DragonCon ever since its inception, a lot of the people there—some of whom he didn’t even know by name, only by face—were people he cared about. If Wisnewski had his way and used standard Bureau procedures, Brownwood might indeed be desperate enough to detonate his device and take thousands of lives. It was a lose-lose situation from the starting gate, but Alan Garrison had to reconfigure it so there’d be at least some slight chance of winning.