A Game of Universe (30 page)

You’ll still have his blood on your hands,
Medea impatiently explained. She shoved me deep into the recesses of my consciousness and took control.
I’ll just be the one doing the killing.

Let her go,
Fifty-five urged.
Do like we did with the vault door, junior. Leave the physical stuff to Medea, and get your borrowing ritual ready. It’s the only way we’ll win against him.

I had no choice. This was Medea’s area of expertise. She would hold my body until this was done—one way, or the other. I watched her, but it was an abstraction, a ballet that I saw from the balcony, while my mind concerned itself with the borrowing ritual. Without access to my hands, however, it was too difficult to think my way through all the mnemonics. I found myself distracted, wanting to watch their dance of knives.

Number Eight’s grin vanished. He circled her. His eyes stared at Medea’s center.

She, in turn, circled him, and kept my body low, my muscles tense.

A quick slash! Medea barely deflected his blade with mine.

She feinted low and to his right, brought my knife up inside his guard. He easily caught my blade with his. He took a step back, though; his style wasn’t perfect. Medea should have pressed the attack when he retreated, but hesitated. Number Eight held something in his other hand, something she couldn’t quite see.

A lunge at my chest. Medea was the one who had to back up now. The blue edge of his knife caught my elbow and broke the skin—a touch of fire!

This left him wide open. She could impale him with a clean thrust to his heart, but his left arm came up … holding nothing. Medea jumped back and nearly lost her balance.

Whatever he held in his other hand cut my cheek. Blood covered it; an invisible blade made visible, then with a flick and a quick wipe on his thigh, it vanished again.

I tried to concentrate on the ritual, on the physiological fundamentals of intelligent thought, and on the
Seven Scrolls of Telepathic Construction.
The mental construct coalesced. A trickle of power flowed, then collapsed. I had forgotten a step.

He’s playing with us,
said Fifty-five.
He knows we’re no match for him.

Another exchange between the two, feint, thrust, riposte, counter, but I didn’t watch. I had to focus, unlock the mnemonics with my mind alone. And all this time, the blood poison worked on my arm, itching, an acid that chewed the nerves. It was maddening to me, and I was physically disconnected. How did Medea stand it?

Her thoughts were calm. She expected to lose, yet it didn’t bother her. A memory surfaced. I should have ignored it, continued with the ritual, but I could not. She remembered her father teaching her to fight with knife, with stick, and hand to hand. She loved him, she hated him, and she respected his skill. He told her that any opponent, even one more skilled or better armed than she, could be vanquished—if she was willing to exchange her life for his.

Medea shifted from a side stance to face number Eight.

He lunged.

She knew it was a feint, for his other blade, the invisible one, came from below to take her in the stomach. Rather than dodge, she stepped
into
the thrust.

The unseen knife struck my thigh, pierced the muscle, and broke the skin on the other side. Medea dropped my knife and grappled with number Eight, trying to wrench his curved blade away. She cut my hands to ribbons. They burned with poison, but she wouldn’t let go.

The blade fell from his grasp.

Number Eight left the invisible dagger in my flesh, reversed his stance and elbowed her in the gut. He dropped to one knee and tried to throw her.

Medea knew this trick, however, and planted my knee in his spine.

They fell together, him on the bottom, Medea on top, my hands holding his, and both our arms pinned under the combined weight of our bodies.

I almost had it. One last mnemonic to unravel, then the ritual was done.

Number Eight rose, pushed us both up with one hand. He was stronger than three men should be. He laughed.

It only made Medea mad. She cried, “I cannot lose!”

She thumbed my emerald ring, released the safety for its proximity fuse, then caressed the stomach of number Eight once—and set it off.

Medea abandoned my body.

I barely heard the explosion. I sure as Hell felt it.

A flash whitewashed the corners of the vault, glistened in every watching eye of the floating orbs, and made the jade Buddha from Cassius’s locker glow an iridescent green. The pressure blasted through my fingertips and slammed into my body. It left my teeth buzzing.

Darkness and nothing for a time, then an itch in my right arm. That was the blood toxin reminding me I lived. The shock should have traveled through my body and made jelly of my brain. Why that didn’t happen I cannot say. Maybe it was the angle of my arm, maybe the blast got muffled by number Eight’s body in between, or maybe I just got lucky.

Number Eight was not lucky.

He was under me, all wet; his rib bones tore into my skin, exploded outward from the blast. I rolled off his corpse and saw the light globes in the vault wink off one by one.

Shadows gathered about number Eight, and the darkness took a form, a barbed tail and an evil Cheshire smile. I heard it drink from his fluids, and watched it grow and solidify—black smooth baby skin and slender bat wings. It was the devil called Nefarious come to collect on Erybus’s contract.

It lapped up the rest of number Eight’s soul, then yawned, stretched his wings and filled the vault. It sauntered into the corner, sat on its haunches, and observed me with charcoal eyes. His clawed hand clasped his elbow and he pointed to me.

I looked at my arm, and saw it was gone from the elbow down, blood pounding out the artery to the rhythm of my heart. Strange, it didn’t hurt at all. It was numb like the rest of my body.

Two red points of light then appeared on my chest, the aiming lasers of number Eight’s guardian orbs.

“Damn,” I whispered in a shaky voice.

Nefarious grinned at my pronouncement and whispered back, “Precisely.”

20

N
umber Eight’s guardian orbs exchanged a burst of static and a laser sight shifted from my groin to my neck. I had no strength to move; I could only watch. There was too much blood gone, and my arm was a ragged stump. Hadn’t this happened before? No, that was Osrick’s arm, chewed off by a dragon.

“Two ducks at the same time,” Nefarious gleefully remarked. “Both number Eight and you. No, three! Is that Sir Osrick with you?”

Both laser sights faded.

Behind the orbs a haze filled the hall, tendrils of mist that moved as water might. It rushed into the vault, and lapped at their black plastic shells.

“What is this?” Nefarious asked.

The orb’s laser sights flickered through this cloud to locate something solid to lock onto, but nothing was there. They fired anyway. Two beams of silver fire scorched the wall.

Wisps of fog gathered into long fingers and reached out to caress both guardian orbs. The orbs drifted backwards, but hands formed in the mist, surrounded them, and took hold. The orb’s dozen eyes searched frantically for a way out of this web. A desperate continuous stream of static poured between them.

The fingers closed, and the orbs rattled about, then stopped, fixed in midair. Giant hands pulled apart, paused, then smashed the two together. Black shells cracked. The yolks of a dozen eyes spilled.

The cloud drifted toward me.

Fingers melted and ethereal bodies appeared, male, female, and hermaphroditic, with leering faces and parts obscene. They held hands, made a ring around me, danced and sang with voices that sounded like laughter and falling rain. One kissed me with frosty lips. Blisters boiled upon my skin.

“Desist!” cried a woman. “Not him.” Lily stepped into the vault, and the cloud withdrew. It clung about her legs like a child might hold onto its mother. Runes on her belt glowed pale silver. The fog coalesced there and vanished.

Nefarious hissed smoke rings out his nose, and thundered, “Mortal, your luck defies logic!”

“Hurry, squire Quilp,” Lily said sternly. “Your master is injured.”

Quilp followed her in, looking scared and a little pissed off. He saw the shattered globes, a jumble of mechanical and organic eyes, exposed and staring, and examined the construct. Neither he nor Lily took note of the devil.

The princess cleared her throat.

Quilp smiled apologetically to her and left the orbs. He stepped through the remains of number Eight to get to me.

“See to his wounds,” she commanded.

He gritted his teeth and got a blue shield from his bag. “We gotta have a talk about this new girl of yours, buddy,” he whispered to me and attached the robot doctor to my shoulder. “You never said she used
magic.”

The robot’s probes snaked into my arm. Flashes of heat cauterized the blood vessels; fluids pumped in to replace those lost.

“This isn’t doing the trick,” Quilp told her and chewed a nail.

“Think of a way to save your lord, craven, and soon,” she coolly replied. “Or I shall change you into a more unpleasant form than the last. A fish mayhap, so I can watch you suffocate.”

“OK, OK, I’ve got an idea.” He checked the blue shield’s display, then said to me, “You have a nerve toxin and some sorta plant poison in you, along with a couple hundred metal splinters, mostly in what’s left of your arm. All that junk is working its way deeper inside of you. I’m gonna have to take it off. Do you understand?”

Take it off? What did that mean? It took too much effort to fathom. A heaviness filled my chest, making it hard to breathe. It would be easy to let go, sink into sleep and forget the Grail, let someone else get it, forget my poor lovely Virginia, the sapphires in the corners of her eyes shattered, tiny broken frozen tears, ignore Lily and her curse, and just doze.

Nefarious slithered over to me. He whispered in my ear, tickling me with his forked tongue, “That’s it. Let it all go. The girl you loved is dead. There’s nothing left here for you. Come with me. We need men of your caliber in our organization. With your record, your ambition, you could have
my
job in a century or two. Think about it.”

“Go to Hell,” I croaked.

“A fine way to speak to the guy who’s saving your butt,” Quilp muttered.

Lily sat by my side and took my good hand. “Stay awake my husband. I fear if you sleep, it shall be forever.”

“She’s right,” Quilp said. “You gotta stay up.” To the blue shield he spoke: “Override safety protocol and amputate the patient’s left limb at the shoulder. Synchronize cardiac rhythm, and set filter for phosphofluoridates and aromatic diols. Boost the immune system while you’re at it, too.”

A tentacle moved inside me, a scrape across the bone in my upper arm. It wrapped around that bone, coiled several times—then pulled free in a single draw. A jolt of pain, three electric shocks. Blackness.

Awareness returned.

Nefarious shrank. He became less substance and more shadow. With his tail whipping back and forth, he held up his wrist, pointed, and hissed, “This changes nothing, mortal. Soon you are mine!”

I blinked and only the shadows remained.

The blue shield on my stump twinkled with red warning lights. One turned amber, then another, and one flashed green. I realized finally that my arm was gone. I got dizzy and wanted to throw up. My stomach was empty.

“I think he’ll make it,” Quilp whispered to Lily. “He’s gonna have to get to a hospital and soon. One robot doctor can only fix so much.”

“Help me up,” I said weakly.

“Hey, buddy, not so fast. You’re one arm short.”

I looked again at my arm. It wasn’t there.

Don’t sweat it,
Fifty-five said.
We’ll have it replaced with a mech or an organic.

I wanted to flex, but there was nothing to move. Osrick had lost his arm, I remembered, and if he survived without one, then so could I. Lances of pain that shot up an arm that wasn’t there. Next to me lay my enchanted blade. I grabbed it with my right hand, thankful for something familiar to hold onto.

“We have to go,” I said. “The man I killed has guards outside Golgotha. They will wonder where he is.”

“We have seen his knights,” Lily said as she helped me sit up.

“Where?”

“They entered your Hall of Heroes. That was when squire Quilp experienced a change of heart.” Lily leaned closer to me and whispered, “The knave wanted to leave me. He wanted to surrender to our enemies without a struggle. So, in his mind, I made him believe that I transformed him into a Sussex hen. It was a proper reflection of his cowardly nature.”

I asked Quilp, “How was life as a chicken?”

“Go to blazes!” he spat through clenched teeth.

Lily glared at him with eyes that could have been two smoldering blue coals, and said, “I returned to him his original shape so he could lock the door behind us. We then came with all haste, only pausing to release and bind the creature within the sorcerous triangle.”

“That was the mist I saw?”

She nodded, then looked warily at Virginia and inquired, “And that is your captain there, is it not, my husband? How did she come to this place?”

Virginia’s body lay twisted in the corner, her hands still clutching her abdomen. There was the distinct smell of charred meant. My insides turned cold. “Quilp,” I said, “is there anything you can do for her?”

He shrugged. “Already took a look. Sorry, she’s dead.”

Dead. I lost her twice, once on the Bren world, and again here.

“The army that laid siege to Castle Kenobrac captured her,” I explained to Lily. “The man that I killed here, he rescued Virginia to learn what she knew of the Grail. She knew nothing. Her death was pointless.”

“Servants must often surrender their lives for their masters,” Lily said. “Her death in your service does you great honor.”

Honor and duty would not bring Virginia back.

Accept the emotions you had for your pilot,
the psychologist said.
Doing so will hasten the grieving process, and heal your spirit.

Forget your feelings,
hissed Fifty-five.
We’ve got work to do. Remember our friend with the black wings? The clock is ticking, junior.

I glanced to my left wrist, to check the time. It was gone—both wrist and watch.

Quilp offered me his hand, and said, “Can we get out of here? Or are we gonna sit and wait for that legion to come up for tea?”

I let him pull me up. My head split in two, shadows clouded my eyes, and I blacked out again for a moment. This dizziness lapsed, however, and I noticed the blue shield urgently flashed a warning: my blood pressure was dangerously low.

“The Cup of Regulus,” Lily asked. “It is not here?”

“No, but I believe it is close,” I said. “We must go back the way we came. The thief who stole it from Osrick buried himself in it. But first, Quilp, I’ll take whatever stimulants you have left.”

He shook his head. “I’m tapped.”

“You’re a liar. Give me your bag.”

“Hey, I don’t have to stand for this kind of treatment.”

Lily snatched his bag and handed it to me. Inside was a hit of Shazam hidden in the lining.

“That was for an emergency,” he protested.

I examined the bulb, and saw within the sparkling lightning bolt that gave the drug its name, then pressed it to my neck. A snap and fire blossomed across my skin. Blood rushed and thunder rumbled through my mind. When I inhaled, icy needles pricked my lungs, and my heart quivered. The blue shield squealed a warning as my blood pressure jumped.

“We’re going back to level three,” I said, “back to the dead,” then headed for the vault door. Virginia lay in my path. That stopped me cold. I knelt down, and closed her eyes with my hand. She had trusted me and I betrayed her. She offered me her love and Celeste threw it back into her face. And still she tried to resist Sister Olivia’s inquisition.

I stood and left her again.

We retraced my route down the corridor the orbs patrolled, then past the guard station. The cadet’s body wasn’t there.

“What happened to the—”

“The vaporous apparition was starved by its imprisonment,” Lily explained. “I could not refuse it.”

“Oh.” It bothered me that the cadet wouldn’t get a proper burial. He had died at his post, and no matter how poorly he did his job, he deserved better.

Lily placed her arm around my waist for support and we descended the spiral Hall of the Honored Dead. Quilp walked behind us, which made me uneasy.

The psychologist said,
Quilp has a paranoia of magic originating from his obsession with technology. Merely knowing the princess is a sorceress has exacerbated his normal nervousness. And having been the unwilling subject of such magic, he may be on the edge of a breakdown. He requires careful observation.

I halted at Cassius’s crypt.

“This one?” Quilp asked and pointed to the plaque with Elvis Presley etched upon it.

“No,” I said. “The one with the tree.” I slipped my knife between the plate and the wall. Again, I knew I had seen this tree before. It was from a dream or a vision—Necatane’s vision! This was the tree Lily had led me to. In the top branches there should be an eagle clutching the Grail in its talons. It wasn’t here, and neither were the two snakes that had bitten me.

“What are we waiting for?” Quilp asked and shifted nervously.

I worked my enchanted blade back and forth in the seam where the square of adamant met the wall. The gravestone loosened a bit, but it wouldn’t come free. Something on the
inside
held it fast.

“Stand back,” Quilp said and pulled a pistol from his bag. “I’ll blast it open.”

“Don’t,” I said. “You’ll damage whatever is inside. Use your hands.”

Quilp reluctantly put the weapon away and gave the plaque a tug. It didn’t move. He got a better grip with both hands and pulled again. Air sucked into the evacuated chamber, and the stone cover fell off. White cubic crystals grew inside.

I touched one, then tasted it. Salt. Proof that Lily had not lied. She had killed him.

Reaching in, my arm went numb, painfully asleep; the magic was strong. Quilp must have sensed it too, because he took two steps back. I touched more salt crystals, then in the back, something larger, cold and smooth stone. I pulled it out.

No choir of angels sang, and no heavenly light dazzled my eyes. It was only a chalice of stone, slightly heavier than I thought a cup this size ought to be, and completely encrusted with salt, but otherwise ordinary. Inside was Cassius: fine white ash.

“This is what I risked my butt for?” Quilp cried. “A margarita glass? You gotta be kidding. I thought it would be covered with diamonds at least.”

I upended it.

The ashes spilled out with an almost human sigh. If Cassius’s soul had been saved from damnation by resting in the vessel—it was no longer.

I rubbed some of the crystals off and found a wondrous blue marble: bands and whirls, aqua, azure, and indigo. Along the sides were veins of silver that looked like the residue of a sweet wine, with legs that trickled into the center. The stem was thick, and it felt comfortable in my grasp. It resonated with power, vibrated with magic.

“That is the Cup of Regulus,” Lily declared. “The cup Osrick brought to me.” Her eyes were wide and reflected the colors of the Grail stone.

We’ve won!
the gambler cried.

Not quite,
I said.
We still have to get back to Golden City.

You’re forgetting one detail,
Fifty-five remarked.

What’s that?

Your princess. She thinks the Grail is hers to drink from. It isn’t. One sip and the deal is off according to Erybus’s contract. You better lie to her, and quick. And remember junior, the best lie is the truth twisted.

“Lily,” I said, “before you drink from the Grail, I think it would be wise to understand its powers first.”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“I know one who is an expert in such magics and curses.” Which was true. Erybus had studied the Grail for centuries. “He can tell us how to properly dispel your malady.” Again true. Erybus probably could tell me—if I asked.

Lily considered.

“Otherwise, we might misuse its power.”

She is uncertain,
the psychologist said.
You touched a nerve, however. I sense she fears the Grail’s power, fears what it did to Osrick, how it warped him into something inhuman. You have deceived her, but not indefinitely. She is too clever.