Authors: Tony Richards
The darkness lifted. There had been only the vaguest sense of motion, like the world had tilted very slightly underneath my feet. But when my surroundings came back, I really was outdoors this time, on another rooftop to the west side of the Town Hall. I almost lost my balance. But I held myself together, then gazed down at Union Square.
There was something else the Eye of Hermaneus hadn’t shown me. In the scene I’d watched, the banners had been flapping agitatedly for sure. There had obviously been a heavy wind.
But up here, closer to the spreading cloud, the air was moving with the violence of a hurricane. It howled and tore at me, ripping at my hair and clothes, dragging across my cheeks. I pushed against it, managing to remain upright.
The ceremony was in full flow. Aldernay had taken a back seat. And the major adepts had stepped forward, forming a broad semicircle, stretching out their arms and joining hands. Each one had a microphone in front of them, and they were leading a slow, sonorous chant that was being repeated by the crowd. It seemed that everybody knew the words. Perhaps that was a touch of magic too. They rang across the broad square like the chiming of a bell.
Half the sorcerers, the judge included, were crying out in English. But Gaspar Vernon was using Ancient Greek, his great voice booming. I’d heard him cast spells in it before. The McGinley sisters were speaking in some kind of Celtic tongue. And Kurt van Friesling … Dutch or Flemish, something along those lines.
And I
reckoned all the different languages gave an added dimension to the witchcraft. But it sounded like Babel below me.
There was not the slightest hesitancy that I could make out. Not the tiniest awareness that they might be headed in the wrong direction. I had almost got to Levin before, making him reconsider. But all of that had been swept away. The adepts looked totally engrossed, the same way that the ordinary folks were, wrapped up in the solemnity and power of the moment. Their voices reverberated from the speaker system, certain and unstoppable.
I swung my attention to the crowd. Saul Hobart was still there, high up on the statue’s plinth. He had his riot gun in both hands and was, unlike everyone around him, staring directly upward. He’d figured which direction the trouble, when it arrived, was going to come from. And I wasn’t sure what he hoped to achieve. But it didn’t even occur to the man to back off.
Among all those townsfolk, I had never seen the big lieutenant look so very tiny. And had never seen him stand so very tall.
Some things are revealed, in desperate circumstances. Like the true nature of someone that you only
thought
you knew.
In the torchlight, I could see the way the other faces had become. They were still happy, but looked less dreamy than before and more intent. All this chanting was their ticket out of this place, yes, their passage to a safer life. They seemed quite convinced of that.
There was so much glittering down there. The bright winking of metal and the languid flash of crystal. Almost every person had brought something magical along. Pendants and amulets, talismans, fetishes and charms. Some of them must have been bought only a few days ago. Others had, doubtless, been in people’s families for generations. Individually, they counted for nothing all that much. But all massed in one place?
It was – they didn’t even know it yet – a part of the engine that was driving them toward their own destruction.
I inclined my head back, staring at the cloud above.
It seemed to be no more than a dozen yards above me. Either it had simply thickened, or the thing had actually dropped lower in the sky. Its black vapors rolled and swirled, but its darkness was not absolute. Dazzling bolts of lightning were passing through it the entire time, and more thunderclaps rang out.
It could only be moments until Saruak’s face appeared. And what was supposed to happen – how was I supposed to stop it?
The voice of Amashta drifted through my head again.
“I cannot destroy your enemies, Defender. That is your task. I can help you, but I cannot save you.”
In which case, I wondered why she’d even bothered bringing me here. And all that talk about me being her conduit?
“It is a matter of free will. In time, you will come to understand. But you must make the choices and decisions. What would you do now?”
And that was all the explanation that she gave me. Did she expect me simply to have faith in her?
A dozen thoughts all tumbled through my brain at once. I wanted Saruak gone. I wanted everything put back the way it had been. But I wasn’t sure how much of that was even possible.
I kept staring at the crowd. And began to see what the right answer was.
“You’ve held yourself aloof and distant for so very long a time, Defender,”
the strange voice went on.
“You have made a shell of your own anguish, curling up inside it. You must let go, if you want to save these people. Think about them
all
as though they were your own.”
I felt my eyes widen as I gazed at them. Families, the same as mine, all squeezed together tightly by the pressure of the throng. And if anything bad happened to one of them, they’d hurt no less than I …
Than I …?
“What do you genuinely want to happen?”
And I knew what the first task was, the most important one.
“Get all of these people out of here.”
“Agreed.”
A strange emptiness overcame me, for a moment. Then the warmth I’d felt was surging through my arms again. I started to understand it. She wanted to use me as a lightning rod. And so I lifted them toward the mass of people, tipping back my palms the way I had seen Kurt van Friesling do.
Thousands of glittering points of brightness – little golden sparks – came flowing from them the next instant. It wasn’t me making this happen, whatever it might look like from below.
They were no larger than motes of dust, but the wind that was still buffeting at me had no effect on them whatever. They moved in a perfectly straight line at first, pouring evenly outward. Then, when they were over the crowd, they began to spread. Until the whole of Union Square was covered with a gossamer-thin brilliance, a shining golden veil.
I was almost breathless as I watched what happened next. The sparks began descending, breaking off into paired up groups of two as they did so.
Each pair found the eyes of a congregant. Stopped there, winking for a moment in that person’s gaze. Then vanished, as though drawn inside. And it wasn’t only selected people. It was happening throughout the crowd. Only the adepts were untouched.
The chanting subsided, then drifted to a total halt. The townspeople’s content expressions were all gone in the next instant. Most of them looked startled. All of them were peering round. The kids were beginning to get frightened. There were wails, and then a loud, scared murmuring started up.
On the stage, the adepts kept on calling out for a few more seconds. Then they took in the fact that nobody was listening to them anymore. And they, too, faltered and then stopped. They seemed to come around all by themselves.
Urgency swept over me. These people had been freed, for sure. But they were still packed in like cattle. If a panic did start up?
It would be the same result as I’d seen at the Manor, except that I’d be partially responsible. I struggled to think what to do about it, then snatched out my cell phone. And, my fingers shaking, dialed Saul Hobart’s number.
He looked astonished anyone was calling him right now, but he fished into his pocket all the same.
“Saul!”
I watched him hunker over slightly.
“Ross? Where are you?”
“You and your men have to clear the square! As quickly as you can, but without any melodrama! Can you manage that?”
He was staring round, and I could see how worried he’d become. It finally occurred to him to look up, and he saw me.
“Hell, we’ve never dealt with anything on this scale, Ross. But we can try.”
Then he forgot all about me and got on his walkie-talkie. Blue uniforms began pushing their way among the stunned, unhappy people, whispering instructions, picking infants up. Presumably, the cops on the surrounding streets were doing the same thing, because the pressure on the mob decreased a little as the folks along the edges started filtering away.
There were so
many
of them. If this was going to work, then it was going take a while. At least not many people were turning their attention upward, where the black cloud was still rumbling.
I craned round at the figures on the platform.
If the common folks had seemed bewildered, then the adepts all looked thunderstruck. They were wandering gently about on the stage, their expressions disbelieving.
Gaspar Vernon and Martha Howard-Brett stepped forward unsteadily, wanting to do something, although they didn’t seem sure what. But Judge Levin, who was standing tautly, spotted me immediately. He seemed to figure out, extremely quickly, what was going on. He grabbed the others by their elbows, drawing them both back.
Whispers passed between the little group. And then the whole bunch of them began retreating into the Town Hall, Aldernay leading the way.
A gap appeared at the center of the throng, as the crowd grew thinner. The flagstones around the statue had almost wholly emptied out. Saul had stepped down and was ushering people to the bridges, which were already filled to capacity, a mass of figures pouring off the other end.
I tipped my own head back again. The cloud was still pitch-dark, still filled with lightning. But it had shrunk to about a tenth the size that it had been before.
People were not thinking about him anymore. He no longer held their attention in the way he’d done. And his power had already been drained a good deal, I could see.
But not all the way, by any means.
Saruak’s face appeared up there.
He was exactly how the white jewel had depicted him. His gaze was no longer pallid, but a sickly, venomous green. It immediately fastened on me. Which was fine, I thought, so long as his attention was diverted from the people down below. More of them were managing to get away as the crowd thinned, the whole square clearing out. The streets beyond it were full of motion, I could see. All of it heading away from here. So my focus went back to him.
“
You!
” he howled.
His voice was as loud as the screeching wind around me. Almost a part of it, the way it shrieked. His disembodied features drew up nearer to me, the cloud becoming even smaller.
Any pretense at humanity was gone. His teeth looked more like the sharpened fangs his monster had displayed. They jutted across his upper lip, the same way that the Dralleg’s had. His left pupil was about four times the size of his right one, by now. Fumes seemed to be rising from him, mingling with the cloud. And a great mass of scaled tentacles writhed where his body ought to be.
But I’d seen all of this before, and I was not so badly shocked as I had been the first time.
One thing struck me oddly. In this form, he had no wrinkles. His beard was gone. And his face was utterly smooth, with not the tiniest line or crease. It almost looked like plastic, it was so unnatural. There was not a sign of ageing.
And his hair, tied back into a ponytail, was dark and lustrous, not gray. That made sense. Why on earth would a tree spirit grow old the same way humans did?
But the way he usually appeared … I had even noticed liver spots. So it began occurring to me – was it possible that he’d been living in a human’s body, all this time? Was that how he’d managed to leave New England in the first place?
A couple of his tentacles came burrowing toward me like enormous snakes. But they stopped short, waving in the air at me.
“What have you done with my Dralleg?” he yelled.
He’d drawn to within about twenty feet of the rooftop. And the cloud around him was still diminishing. Which didn’t mean, I told myself, I ought to underestimate him anytime soon. He’d already had some degree of power when he’d first shown up in the Landing. Even in this weakened state, he was still pretty dangerous.
Proof of that came in the very next instant. Saruak seemed to understand that, if I was still standing here, then his creature wasn’t alive any longer. He let out a disgusted moan. One of his tentacles stopped shifting and then pointed in my general direction. But it didn’t try to grab me. It just lifted in the air instead.
Exactly like Cassie, gravity abandoned me. I was yanked off my feet as though an invisible hand had caught hold of me. Everything inside me seemed to lurch.
A second later, I was sailing out across the rooftop’s edge. The sidewalk, four stories down, pitched giddily below me. It was no mere show of petulance, this time. Saruak was furious, and he was going to let me fall.
The heat came surging back into my left arm. And, an instinct taking hold of me, I pointed it where I’d been standing.
And I heard Amashta’s voice again.
“You must hold fast.”
Another shower of sparks flew out, bright platinum ones this time. They did not spread out, the way the gold ones had. They stretched between my arm and the roof like some kind of shining rope. And they had pretty much the same effect.
I felt my momentum change. Instead of falling, I just swung around in a wide arc. My feet hit the tar paper a mere couple of yards from where they’d first been.
My heart was pumping, fierce and hard. What had happened had shaken me badly. But there were other concerns than my own safety, and I forced myself to concentrate on that. My attention went toward the ground again.
A kind of herd mentality had taken over. Most of the people fleeing from the square were going south, or east across the river. Very few had headed past the platform and the Town Hall. And I wanted to keep Saruak away from them for as long as was humanly possible. So I turned in that direction and began to run.
A thick, protruding metal pipe – part of a flue or something like that – groaned and broke off, at a muttered word from his lips. It came hurtling at my face. I simply ducked it.
But when a couple of loose bricks off a cornice did the same, I could see the same evasion wasn’t going to work a second time. I was caught between them. I felt energy pulse and raised my hands. There was a flash between my palms. The chunks of brick were deflected in mid
-air, crashing harmlessly to either side of me.
Saruak was rushing up behind me, I could see when I glanced back. More of his tentacles were reaching for me. The edge of the roof was coming up. It was only about four feet to the next one, so I didn’t hesitate. I jumped.
This one was aged, all of brittle slates, its incline heavily tilted. Which meant I landed on it at an awkward angle. I skidded and wobbled for a second, then righted myself. Several tiles broke free and clattered away.
His shape was almost over me, so I continued running.
Saruak let out an enraged bellow that made the whole roof shake.
Suddenly, all the tiles I’d passed across were springing up behind me. Being lifted into the air simply by the violence of his yell. I heard the massive clashing noise as they broke free, and chanced another swift glance back.
It was like they’d all been turned to playing cards, and some great arm was sweeping them along. A wave of jagged, broken slate was surging up toward me. And I could feel the ones underneath my feet starting to tear free – they seemed to squirm as though they’d come alive. I stumbled, my footing becoming unsteady.
The next roof was a good eight feet away, and had a high cornice into the bargain. But this one was coming further apart with every passing second. How much longer before the whole thing collapsed? There was no staying here. I flung myself across the gap.
There was a dizzy moment of inertia. My arms were stretched as far as they would go, my hands grasping desperately for something – anything – to hold onto. Then they found the ledge and curled across it. The rest of my body slammed into the brickwork. A harsh jolt of agony went through my knees and ribs.
I put that behind me quickly, scrabbling and hauling myself up.
Union Square tipped like a teeter-totter, below me. And it was almost empty now. I couldn’t even see Saul Hobart.
I swung my legs across the side. My feet came down on weathered gravel, and I realized where I’d wound up. This was the roof of my own office building, practically where this whole thing had started. We had come face to face out front of here.
Which seemed fitting. But could I do any better, this time … could I actually stop him, finish him?
I spun round, then backed off a little, satisfied the crowd was safe. Saruak’s huge features were still advancing on me.
He stopped about ten feet above me. One of the largest of his tentacles lashed out and caught me solidly across my jaw.
The blow sent me flying. I went crashing down and rolled a couple of times. White light filled my head, but not the magic sort.
I took hold of my jaw carefully, making sure it wasn’t broken. Then I got to my feet and steadied myself. And simply faced him down.
The warm energy had come back. It had started rising through my entire body, not simply my arms. And so, as I had done before, I thrust out my palms at him.
That strangely accented old voice went through my head again. Although, this time around, the words seemed to be directed at the Manitou, not me.
A spirit you are, but not merely that. Show me the other things that you are made of, Saruak.
Again, I felt hollow momentarily. My body didn’t even seem to belong to me when that happened.
The sparks that flew, on this occasion, were far larger. And translucent, almost colorless. They moved in a different way from the others.
They circled him, then wrapped themselves around him like a shifting ball of gel, smothering his features. Then they tightened, pressing down.
His tentacles tried to shove them away, but he couldn’t seem to get free of them. They kept spinning away and then returning. His expression became distinctly alarmed, and the fire died out in his bilious green eyes.
And then, the remnants of the cloud around him all began to funnel downward, drawing him along with them. The night sky reappeared, above. The vapor hit the rooftop, billowing and evaporating a few yards ahead of me.
And when the last of it cleared, he was standing there. No fangs anymore. No long tentacles. His human body had returned, and he was still wearing that ragged coat, although the hat was gone. The gray hair and beard were back, and all those wrinkles I’d become familiar with. Which made me remember what I had figured out before.
This was no disguise at all. It really was the way he looked most of the time.
But there was something else as well, the spell had done to him. Something that I genuinely hadn’t been expecting.
It was hard to tell straight away, in the dark. But some of his wrinkles weren’t that any longer. Some of his skin, patches of it on his face and hands, had been replaced with what appeared to be bark.
Yes, it was exactly that. His fingers looked more spindly than ever, and a dull brown color. The long nails had disappeared.
They were twisted. They looked more like twigs than digits. Which was when I finally understood what Amashta had done.
Saruak was mostly spirit. But was partly man as well, and partly tree. And she’d reduced him to those elements, the human who he had possessed, and the oak that had birthed him.
He was looking down astonishedly at himself, bewildered by the changes to his body. He hardly seemed to be aware that I was there at all. All the rage had left him, and been replaced by stunned horror.
I have done what I can, Defender
, the voice told me.
It is up to you now.
It paused for a second.
Then it added,
“Now it genuinely begins.”
It faded to utter silence, and I knew that it was gone.
I gazed at Saruak coolly for the first time since I had arrived here. In either form – tree or human – he could now be harmed, I hoped.
So I decided to test that theory out, and started to move over to him.