Djinn City, page 31
“What’s your gut feeling, Barabas?” Rais asked.
“He does, and he will.”
“All right, we don’t have much time then,” Rais said. “I think the only way out for us is to negotiate a peace with Matteras. All that stuff he said about living space sounds like bullshit to me. Or at least not the whole thing. He’s got some personal stake. I need to get to the lab in Nevada. If everything works out there, I think we can get to Beltrex and convince him to step in. That should be enough clout to get a sit-down with Matteras.”
“Vegas!” Barabas said. “I want to go there!”
“Er, Barabas, you need to stay here and protect the house,” Rais said. “No way anyone is going to attack it with a djinn inside, even if it’s just you.”
“Hey!”
“Joking,” Rais said. “Maria and I are going to Nevada. The rest of you stay here and deal with Dargoman. If we don’t make it back, well, it means we’ve failed, so get ready to run like hell.”
“Maria,” Juny said, “that knife of yours. Do you know how to use it?”
Maria bared her wrist. It shimmered on her arm and then slowly winked out of sight. “I’m ready to use it. Readier than Rais, anyway.”
“Good,” Juny said. “Good. You’ll do.”
“What about me, Rais?” Moffat asked.
“You’re going to stuff Barabas with every kind of pharmaceutical product you can get your hands on,” Rais said. “Whatever it takes. Just make sure he does not leave the house.”
“Sure,” Moffat said. He winked at the djinn. “This dude is a beast. I’m not sure I can keep up.”
“What about the RAS?” Juny asked.
“The Sephiroth crashed, apparently. I’m going over to see Golgoras next,” Rais said. “We’ll need him with us and the full weight of the society.”
“When do we leave?” Maria asked. “I’ve got to make up some excuse for my parents.”
“In two days,” Juny said. “We’ll file the lawsuit tomorrow. I’ll hit him with some other things I’ve got lined up too.” She took a deep breath. “I just want to say that this is dangerous, and we might not win. Dealing with djinn is always dangerous. I am proud of all of you, however. Maria, Moffat, I have prepared an evacuation plan. You and your families have been factored in. I want you to make arrangements and give them the heads-up. If we fail, things will become very chaotic in this city. I will do everything I can to ensure their safety. I hope you trust in that.”
“Thanks, Aunty,” they chorused. It was easy to believe in her competence. Juny then proceeded to stick with time-honored aunty tradition and fed them tea and a plethora of heavy snacks.
Later, as Moffat was seeing him into the car, he slapped Rais on the back of the head. “Do you actually have a plan, or are you just trying to take a honeymoon with Maria?” he said. “You spent half the damn meeting smiling at her. Do I have to remind you how bad it was when she dumped you? She is the antichrist, man. You need to remember that shit.”
“I was smiling,” Rais said, “because we’re flying coach to L.A., China Southern. She’s never flown economy before. It’s going to be the worst thirty hours of her life.”
CHAPTER 38
Fire Horse
Indelbed had always dreamed that their escape would be explosive, the dragon thrusting out of the water, soaring above the people as they gaped in astonishment on the bank. The reality was more of a slow grind through rock and sand, a dusty, exhausting process that strained his every ability with the field, yet still left time for long stretches of utter boredom.
In surface life, he remembered seeing a picture once of the two great machines that had drilled the Channel Tunnel, connecting France and England. His father had studied in England, and of course the house was full of memorabilia from the colonial age; their family had prospered during the British era, being part of the traitorous land-owning class.
He had always thought England was somewhere vaguely north, close to Sylhet. When he had finally seen it on a map, he’d been astonished to find it more than halfway across the earth, an island so remote that it seemed a very peculiar thing that those people had come all the way to Bengal. But then, perhaps their island had been very cold and unpleasant?
The tunneling machines, however, had impressed him no end, and seeing God’s Eye in action finally, he realized that the giant wyrm worked in a very similar fashion. His rotating jaws were filled with different kinds of teeth, some to crack rock, some to grind, and a final, flatter set that drilled through sand. He produced copious amounts of saliva, which seemed to serve a lubricating purpose, and there were channels in the bone along the sides of his face, where the cuttings were shunted aside. Indelbed wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be eating some of the rocks. He would have asked Givaras, but he wanted to avoid another lecture.
Givaras was using a goad on him, leading the wyrm by manipulating certain spots on his skull. He had seriously considered trepanation to better access the brain, but Indelbed had persuaded him out of it. It was unlikely God’s Eye would take kindly to having holes drilled in his head, regardless of the benefits.
The first part of their escape was simplest, as they were using an existing tunnel, and God’s Eye merely had to enlarge it. The wyrm did this with sullen ease, often just using brute force to collapse layers of sand and pebbles. Indelbed’s job was the least glamorous. He was the rear guard, which meant choking on a steady stream of cuttings and wyrm shit, itself composed mostly of rock. He had to pull the travois, full of their stockpile of wyrm meat and water, which was unbearably heavy, but could be slid along the tunnel floor with relative ease once he cleared the way. Far harder, he had to form a protective casing with the field around the area being drilled, to prevent the dreaded cave-in, and then to gently collapse the tunnel behind them, to prevent pursuit by other wyrms.
This strategy had created some friction between them, because Indelbed had wanted to preserve the route back to the cavern in case this attempt failed. In reality, the thought of existing in a little traveling pocket of dust-choked air for god knows how long had steadily frayed his nerves, but Givaras had pointed out that leaving a giant tunnel behind them just begged for a convergence, and the untested deterrence value of God’s Eye’s tail was a rather thin sliver to hang all their hopes on.
For twelve days they continued along the tunnel. As they approached the periphery of the network, wyrm incursions became frequent, and their progress slowed to a crawl. They were in a deep pocket aquifer now of wet gray sand, and the roof of the tunnel required constant propping up. This was the riskiest portion of the route, for aquifer water filled the tunnels here, and they had to extend the field in a bubble to the front and rear in order to keep from drowning. At least they were able to replenish their water supply.
God’s Eye was hungry and irritable by this point, taking longer to start up after each rest, snapping angrily at them during feedings, agitated, suspicious, barely allowing Givaras to approach his great head.
Then, as they neared the edge of the boundary, disaster struck. God’s Eye bored too hard at a clayey layer, collapsing the tunnel above, burying them in clay, sand, and squealing wyrms. Indelbed felt the field constrict under the weight, suddenly hammering him to his knees, water seeping up quickly from the edges, until he was moments away from being crushed or drowned. Over the roar of God’s Eye he could hear the panicked hissing of wyrms thrashing around in the light and a rancid maw snapped near him, and he had to fight the instinct to collapse the field altogether. Things crumbled around him, and he felt the thump of God’s Eye’s tail clubbing him in the stomach, flinging him back.
Givaras shouted a command in djinn and fire spurted from his outstretched hands, a horrible liquid flame that coated everything and sucked the air out of the tunnel. God’s Eye roared angrily, but his carapace was thick; the plates blackened and blistered, but held. The juvenile wyrms popped in the heat, their chitin literally cooking them alive inside their own skin, the softer parts just melting. It was over in seconds, an awesome display of power that flashed across Indelbed’s altered vision, erasing the delicate lines of the field completely.
He staggered in fear, seeing only white, and fell against God’s Eye’s smoking body, scorching his palms. He heard Givaras hobbling over.
“I can’t see the field!” Indelbed shouted. “It’s all white. My field is gone!”
“Hush now, boy.” Givaras righted him. “Your field is intact. You are still holding us up. Be calm. The white will fade, and you will see the lines again.”
“What was that?” Indelbed asked. “So much power… You said you were weak. How could you do that?”
“It was a spell,” Givaras said. “I was saving it for Matteras, but this seemed like an appropriate time to use it.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you could do that.”
“There are many things you do not know, apprentice,” Givaras said. “I said my field was weak. It does not mean I am ineffective.”
“We’re buried. I can feel the weight above my field. It’s cracking.”
“You’ve got to keep calm. Just hold it together.”
“We can’t go back. The tunnel has caved in for real.”
“You did well keeping us alive,” Givaras said. “Things are not so bleak. We are now very close to the outer edge. Can you not feel the presence of the construct? I suspect two or three more days will get us to the wall of our prison, and the first part of our journey will be done. And these wyrms have unwittingly reprovisioned us.”
“Yay, more wyrm meat. At least you cooked them.”
It took them three days to get to the seal. It appeared to Indelbed as an enormous wall of light hanging somewhere over the dark horizon, pulsing as they got closer, until he could see the individual strings making up the structure, something beautiful and horrific with power, on a scale beyond his imagining, a display of force that beggared Givaras’s fire. Not for the first time, he questioned what crimes his master could have committed to warrant such an exhibition.
Finally, their tunnel broke through to a stone chamber made of ancient monoliths, and they could go no farther, for the wall of light was now within touch, curving up around them, and the heat from it was enough to shrivel their eyelids. God’s Eye gave a long, plaintive moan, unable to turn and flee, and turned a great sad eye at Givaras, an accusing glare, as if to question why he had been goaded so far to certain death.
“What do you see?” Givaras asked.
“Light!” Indelbed said in wonder. “Strings of light woven together.”
“You can see the field,” Givaras said. “Can you see the fire behind it?”
“Fire?”
“Channeled from the earth’s core. Do you not feel the heat? That, despite the field barrier containing it. Imagine how hot it is in the center,” Givaras said. “An ingenious seal by Matteras.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The seal is not the barrier. Any barrier made of magic can be broken, given enough time. You see, constructs decay over time, and even if they are renewed with power, they are still dependent on structural logic.”
“So what is this thing?”
“The field you see is merely a double layer surrounding us,” Givaras said. “The real trap is what is held in the middle. This is core fire, mined from the center of the earth, as hot as the surface of the sun. Clever, clever trap.”
“So it was all for nothing.” Indelbed sat down inside the wyrm’s coil. The plates were already warm from the heat. God’s Eye shivered nonetheless.
“Not so.”
“We cannot cross this barrier.”
Givaras was standing within touching distance of the barrier, fieldless, his naked fingers stretching toward the fire, blistering, the skin roasting.
“You’re burning!” Indelbed shouted, far more scared, he realized, of being left alone here, trapped in this blazing room, than any other kind of doom.
Givaras retreated. “The barrier repels my field, like two magnets pushing against each other. But if I go naked, I burn. Clever, clever Matteras. How tempting, to step inside the flame.” The djinn was smiling, a manic grin lighting up his face. His charred hand smoked.
“Let’s go back, Master, please.” Indelbed had visions of Givaras diving into the fire, of some suicidal madness claiming the djinn. To be trapped here was bad, but to be alone would be much worse. He would die then, he decided, just step into the fire and let the core fire have him.
“If the dragon were more mature, he would have flown through,” Givaras said, petting God’s Eye. “They do that when they are older, you know.”
“He hates it,” Indelbed said. “He’s cowering in fear.”
“He does not have the scales for it yet.”
“Scales.” Indelbed was preoccupied with many things, but he was not slow. Givaras’s inflection of the word had a peculiar resonance.
“Dragons anneal themselves in the hottest fires they can find. There is no fire hotter than this. Matteras has provided us with a gift.”
“I have scales.”
“You have scales.”
“No!”
“It is what you were made for.”
“No! I’m not walking into fire.”
“Come with me. Just stand next to it. I promise you, you will not burn. You cannot see what I can see. Your skin is reflecting the flame like diamonds.”
Indelbed got up as if sleepwalking. The djinn led him to the barrier, pushed him on. The heat was great, but it felt weak against him, like tides hitting a distant shore.
“I was broiling when I stood this close,” Givaras said. “I felt my skin cracking. Yet nothing happens to you.”
“Did you know this was the trap?” Indelbed asked. “Core fire?”
“Yes,” Givaras said. “Or rather, I suspected. I could not be sure until I saw it physically.”
“This is why you gave me the dragon hormones.”
“I suspected it would be useful.”
Indelbed stared at the wall of light. So close, the weaves mesmerized him. “You think I can just walk through?”
“The layer only repulses the field. It’s permeable if you’re just meat. Turn off your distortion field and let the fire take you.”
“And then?”
“Get to the center, make a spherical shield, and push down. The fire runs in a circuit, like electricity. You have to make a bubble and cut the loop. It should give us a tiny window to cross over.”
“You think I’m going to survive in the middle of this core fire long enough to do all that?”
“Don’t worry, it just has to be for a couple of seconds. Just make a shield and hold on as if we were dueling. I bet there’s a device on the other side, some kind of field generator that keeps the fire going.”
“You’re betting now?”
“I will turn it off, and you’re home free.”
“I’m just going to walk out of there…”
“A little crispy maybe. You’ll be fine.”
Indelbed walked in. It was not fine.
The seal of light had been holding back the true heat of the core fire. Once inside, the flame washed over him like an errant wave, the nascent scales beneath his skin shriveling—pathetic, iridescent insects—the scream boiling away in his throat, as he pushed down with some primal instinct, down with his faltering field, core fire licking around the edges of his ragged bubble, threatening to engulf him.
He felt the whisper of space around his body, a slowly disintegrating pocket of superheated air, and with a terrible effort he turned his head, saw the vague outline of the wyrm lumbering toward him and then balking, cowering before the flame, his massive head throwing off the djinn’s goad, his high-pitched wail making an unearthly sound that penetrated the veil of fire, making clear his extreme unwillingness to proceed.
Indelbed felt hope draining out, the pocket starting to collapse in earnest, and then Givaras dived through the gap to the other side, moving fast like a mantis on stilts, borrowed legs burning to a deep burnished ebony as the heat flared at the intrusion. The bubble collapsed behind him. Indelbed’s field guttered and shrank to an ethereal second skin, the dragon blood singing inside him, yearning, not nearly enough proof against core fire, but still he lingered, a stick figure spinning arms akimbo, a little bit of hope tethering him to life, as all around him the fire roared, and that brief window snuffed out.
“I made it,” Givaras said, his voice so very distant, marred with pain. “You did well. I knew you would.”
“I’m burning, Givaras! Get me out of here!”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Stop the fire. Turn the machine off!”
“There isn’t a machine, I’m afraid.”
“What?! No machine?”
“None.”
“There never was a machine,” Indelbed whispered. “Help me, Master… It hurts.”
“The pain will pass if you let go. You have succeeded, after all. I am free.”
“You raised me like cattle…”
“My fire horse,” said Givaras. “Matteras thought I would kill you, but I built you into something… wondrous. Be thankful. I gave you far longer than I should have. After all these years, I found that I enjoyed… teaching.”
“Please, I beg you, Master…”
“Your apprenticeship is ended, I’m afraid. All that is left is to burn.”
“Burn?”
“It is a noble death.”
Indelbed shrieked as the final patina of the field dissipated, those ghostly particles vanishing, and the terrible heart of the core fire, hotter than the sun, roared through him, a brief flash of something so exquisite that it made up for the complete abyss of dissolution. “Then let all djinns burn with me, I pray to God!”
“That’s the spirit,” said Givaras, as he walked away.
CHAPTER 39
Last Ride
Rais drove across the city, looking out through the back window, protected by tinted glass. His mother’s driver wasn’t cut out for the jungle traffic outside the tristate: the thrust of rickshaws, pedestrians dashing across in front of them glaring, buses slowing in the middle of the road, desperate passengers hurling themselves into the open doors. He spent too long switching lanes, never cut off the other cars fast enough, was, in short, too polite to really survive out here. He was also afraid to get the Mercedes scratched, the old car polished as always to a beautiful shine. It took them two hours to get to the old airport hangar, longer than normal, but today was an exam day, literally thousands of students pouring out of every nook and cranny, trying to get to their halls, trailing harried parents.
