The Silver spike (13 page)

He was enveloped in flame. He dared not think of anything
else.

He suffered badly before he shielded himself with a chrysalis of
protective spells. He was sprawled on the earth then, his wicker
body charred and broken. His pain was terrible and his rage more
so.

Bladders continued to fall. Mantas that had dumped theirs
returned with their lightning. The wicker man extended his charm to
include a pair of shamans. One struggled to lift the wicker
man’s battered frame. The other found the tag ends of the
Limper’s charm and began to weave it stronger.

The remnant of the wicker man waved a blackened arm.

A manta tumbled from the night, little lightning bolts popping
and snapping around it.

The wicker man waved again.

Toadkiller Dog charged the temple. Most of the men followed. A
quick, successful assault would mean shelter from the horror in the
sky.

That horror pursued them. The air above the Limper had become
too dangerous.

Fire bladders fell and blossomed orange, finishing the baggage
and supplies. Safe now, the wicker man forgot the fires. He chained
his anger. He returned to his interrupted task

As Toadkiller Dog neared the monastery wall something reached
out and flicked him away the way a man flicks a bug. Soldiers
tumbled around him.

There would be no shelter from the devils in the sky.

Yet a few men did keep going, their progress unimpeded. Why?

The mantas came down on rippling wings. Toadkiller Dog hurled
himself into the air. His jaws closed on dark flesh.

The wicker man murmured while the two shamans recovered
something from the smoldering remains of a wagon. He beamed at
them, oblivious to the surrounding holocaust.

The thing they brought him was an obsidian serpent,
arrow-straight, ten feet long and six inches thick. The detail was
astonishingly fine. Its ruby eyes blazed as they reflected the
fires. The witch doctors staggered under its weight. One cursed the
heat still trapped in it.

The wicker man smiled his terrible smile. He began singing a
dark song in a breathless whisper.

The obsidian serpent began to change.

Life flowed through it. It twitched. Wings unfolded, long wings
of darkness that cast shadows where no shadows should have been.
Red eyes flared like windows suddenly opened on the hottest forges
of hell. Glossy talons, like obsidian knives, slashed at the air. A
terrible screech ripped from a mouth filled with sharp, dark teeth.
The thing’s breath glowed, faded. It began trying to break
away, its gaze fixed on the nearest fire.

The wicker man nodded. The shamans released it. The thing
flapped shadow wings and plunged into the fire. It wallowed like a
hog in mud. The wicker man beamed approval. His lips kept forming
words.

That fire faded, consumed.

The thing leaped to another. Then to another.

The wicker man indulged it for several minutes. Then the tenor
of his whisper changed. It became demanding, commanding. The thing
shrieked a protest. A fiery haze belched from its mouth. Still
screaming, it rose into the night, following orders.

The wicker man turned his attention to the Temple of
Traveler’s Repose. It was time to see by what sorcery the
place kept itself inviolate.

The shamans took hold and carried him toward the temple
wall.

Bomanz’s knuckles were white. They ached. He had a death
grip on some windwhale organ. The monster had dropped low enough
that the flash and fire and chaos down below gave him a clear
perspective of just how far he was going to fall if he relaxed his
grip for an instant. Silent and Darling were close by, watching.
One false move and Silent would give him a kick in the butt and a
chance to see if he could fly.

It was testing time. The White Rose had orders to stop the old
horror here, where there might be help from its victims. This time
she had woven him into her plan.

In fact, he had the feeling he was the plan.

She had not explained anything. Maybe she was playing woman of
mystery. Or maybe she really did not trust him.

He was in charge—till he did something unacceptable and
bit a boot with his butt on his way to doing a swan dive into
hell.

Menhirs seldom got any feeling into their speech. But the one
that materialized behind his left shoulder managed sorrow as it
reported, “He’s shielded himself. Neither fire nor
lightning can reach him.”

The surprise had seemed a wan hope, anyway, but a long shot
worth trying. “And his followers?”

“Decimated again. The monster is unconquerable, though. He
suffers, but pain just makes him angrier.”

“He’s not invincible at all. As you will see if I
get close to him.”

Bomanz’s least favorite talking buzzard cackled
wildly.

“You’re big-timer, eh? Ha! That thing is gonna
squish you like a bug, Seth Chalk.”

Bomanz turned away from the bird. His stomach flopped as he
looked down again. The buzzard was determined to get his goat. He
was amused by the bird’s optimism. He had learned
self-control in a hard school. He had been married for thirty
years.

“Isn’t it time you stones made your move?” He
tried a disarming smile, a man with nothing on his mind but the
issue at hand.

A little scheme had begun to fester in the back of his head. A
way to put that snide vulture in his place.

The stone said, “Soon. What will you contribute to the
farce?”

Before he could temporize the buzzard shrieked, “What the
hell is that?”

Bomanz whirled. That damned bird wasn’t scared of
anything, but it was squeaky with fear now.

Vast dark wings spanned the night, masking the moon and stars.
Fires animated wise and evil eyes. Another limned huge needle
teeth. Those malignant eyes were fixed on those who rode the
windwhale.

Silent made frantic warding signs that did no good.

Bomanz did not recognize the thing. It was nothing of the
Domination, brought out of the Barrowland. He was an expert on
those and believed he knew every rag and feather and bone that had
gone into them. Neither was it something of the Lady’s empire
or she would have made it her own thing during her heyday. So it
had to be loot from one of the cities desolated since the Limper
had come out of the empire.

Whatever its provenance, it was dangerous. Bomanz began putting
himself into that trance from which it was easiest for him to meet
a supernatural challenge.

As he opened himself to the energies of another level of
reality, fear struck. “Get on to the next phase!” he
shouted at the scarred menhir. “Now! Recall the mantas! Get
everybody off this damned thing!”

Fire-edged wings beat the night. The red-eyed thing streaked
toward the windwhale.

Bomanz used the strongest warding spell he knew.

The monster tortured the night with its shriek of pain. But it
came on, its path deflected only slightly. The windwhale shuddered
to its impact.

All across the windwhale’s back talking menhirs began
vanishing, leaving baby thunderclaps.

The talking buzzard cursed like a stevedore and flailed at the
air. Young mantas screeched in fear. The Torque brothers rushed
Bomanz, shouting questions he did not understand. They were going
to throw him off.

Darling stopped them with a gesture.

Below, the windwhale’s belly opened and gave birth to a
boiling globule of fire. Heat rolled up its flanks. A huge shudder
ran its length. Bomanz’s knuckles grew whiter. He wanted to
move back but his hands had a will of their own and would not turn
loose.

Another explosion tore the windwhale’s belly. The great
sky beast dropped a short distance. Upset became panic.
“We’re going down!” one of the Torques shouted in
his barbaric eastern gabble. “Oh, gods, we’re going
down!”

Darling caught Bomanz’s eye and in peremptory sign
language ordered, “Do something!” She was not
rattled.

Before he could respond the air filled with icy water spraying
from organs on the leviathan’s back. Despite the departure of
the menhirs the windwhale had begun to lose buoyancy. It was
shedding ballast high, hoping that would dampen the fires.

The chill water helped stifle the panic.

Mantas began coming in out of the night, fluttering into the
spray. The instant they came to rest their young scrambled onto
their backs, followed by other Plains creatures. Once a manta had
all the weight it could bear, it flopped to one of the slippery,
downsloping launch slides that allowed them to hurtle into
space.

Another explosion shook the windwhale. It began a slow buckle in
the middle.

Darling approached Bomanz. She looked like she would put him
over the side personally if he did not start doing something more
than gawk and shake.

How could she stay so damned calm? They were going to die in a
few minutes.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the author of the
disaster. He tried to pump himself up.

He did not know what that thing was but he would not let it
intimidate him. He was the Bomanz who had slain a grandfather of
dragons. He was the Bomanz who had walked into the flames, daring
the wrath of the Lady in all her majesty and strength.

But his feet had rested upon solid ground those times.

Softly, surely, he murmured the calming mantras, following with
the unleashing cycles that would allow him to slide free of his
flesh.

In a moment he was adrift in the whale’s belly, floating
through the flames, watching the dark fire-eater. Only because it
fed so gluttonously had the windwhale not yet been consumed by a
holocaust.

He added his skills to the self-protective efforts of the
windwhale and the damping of the fire-eater’s feeding. The
flames began to dwindle. He tried to move subtly and do his work
unnoticed by the predator. That thing had only one thought. Soon
the windwhale could manage the fires alone.

The fire-eater tried to breach another gas bladder. Bomanz
slapped it away. It tried again, and again, and again, failing,
till it flew into a frustrated fit.

While it was out of control Bomanz insinuated tendrils of
sorcery. With a jeweler’s touch he evicted the commands of
the wicker man. He replaced them with one overwhelming imperative:
destroy the wicker man. Consume him in darkness, consume him in
fire, but rid the earth of his noxious presence.

Bomanz retired to his own proper flesh. Physical sight showed
him the stars masked by fire-edged wings that spanned half the sky.
Those wings tilted. The body they supported dropped toward the
place Old Father Tree wanted defended at all costs.

Bomanz glanced at Silent and Darling. The dusky, humorless
wizard smiled slightly, nodded, made a small gesture to indicate
that he had witnessed a job well done.

So maybe he was finally off the shit list.

He watched the fire-eater strike.

“Damn!” It was plunging toward the compound. Limper
must have broken in.

The windwhale had fallen a long way, too. It was in easy
striking distance for the wicker man. The giant of the sky had
buckled in the middle, become a sagging sausage. It had no more
ballast to shed. Neither could it control its motion through the
sky. It was at the mercy of the wind, heading south, still losing
altitude.

Silent and Darling joined Bomanz. He demanded, “Why did
you stay? Why didn’t you get the hell off?”

Silent’s fingers danced as he relayed to Darling.

“Knock it off with the waggle fingers. You can
talk.”

Silent gave him a hard look. He did not say anything.

The windwhale lurched. Bomanz grabbed an organ stem as he
hurtled toward the monster’s side and a drop still three
thousand feet till it was over. A gobbet of flame rolled up, singed
him. He cursed and clung for his life. The windwhale continued to
reel and shudder. It began making a hollow, booming noise that
might have been a cry of pain.

An overlooked spark had tangled with a slow leak from a gas
bladder. The game was about over. There was nothing to be done this
time.

He was going to die in a few minutes. For some reason he could
not get as upset as he thought he should. Mostly he was angry. This
was not the way for the great Bomanz to go out, just dragged along,
without an audience and no great battle to die in. Without a legend
to leave behind.

He cursed continuously, in an unintelligible mutter.

His thoughts, more agile than ever he pretended, scurried around
in frantic search for a way to make sure the wicker man went with
him.

There was none. He had no weapon but the fire-eater, which was a
javelin thrown and now beyond his control.

The windwhale began settling more rapidly. Fire crept up the aft
half of the monster. The bend in its middle grew increasingly
pronounced. The sucker was going to break up. “Come on. That
half is going to go.” He began climbing the steepening slope
of the fore half. Silent and Darling scrambled after him.

Another explosion. Silent lost his footing. Darling grabbed a
treelike organ with one hand, caught him with the other. She
hoisted him to his feet.

“That ain’t no woman,” Bomanz muttered.
“Not like I ever saw.”

The rear half of the windwhale began falling faster than the
front half. Secondary explosions hurled comets of whale flesh into
the teeth of the night. Cursing monotonously, Bomanz continued his
scramble away from disaster—every second wondering why he
bothered.

The fear began to come, feeding on his helplessness. His talents
were of no avail. He could do nothing but run from the conquering
fire till there was nowhere left to flee.

Yet another explosion ripped and wrenched the windwhale. Bomanz
fell. Below, the aft half of the monster tore free and fell away,
the whole enveloped in flames. The rest of the windwhale bobbed
violently, trying to return to horizontal. It yawed and rolled
while it bobbed. The old sorcerer hung on. And cursed.