Blue Magic (36 page)

“You sure you want to go on another mission?” Will whispered to Janet.

“I ain’t dead yet, Forest.”

“I never wanted this to be a battle. But we’ve been at war, in a way, for a while—” Astrid stopped, biting her lip.

Great,
Will thought—
she’s choking.
He looked at the crowd of expectant faces, seeing excitement, hope, and terror.

“Mark’s risking everything so we can break the curse,” she said, and people nodded. “With that done, we’ll release the magic, free the Roused, and start putting the world right.”

That got a cheer.

“Seers are getting a location!” Jupiter’s voice rang from a tree-mounted saxophone: “The Fyremen are on Crete.”

“Mount up, people!” Clancy bellowed, ringing the bell on the trolley.

Astrid’s ringer shifted, whispering in Will’s ear: “If any of the Fyremen die, can you send them to the unreal?”

He looked at her, shocked.

“Teo’s an inch from gutting Ma. Giving him a few bodies…”

“To desecrate?”

“It’s awful, I know, but if it helps buy more time…”

Instead of answering, he gave her a quick kiss. Then, to Clancy, he shouted: “Get us to Crete before they regroup.”

Overlord
trundled forward, and suddenly they were blinking away daylight, rolling to a stop beside a shattered length of Fyreman chain. Beyond it was a stark white house with a blue door, built on the edge of a cliff wall. It was a remote, hard-to-reach spot; the trolley was teetering.

Igme put a tin whistle to his lips, blowing, burning letrico. Music poured out: orchestra and chorus, then one high soprano note. The cottage windows shivered and rained down in shards. Hopefully, any flasks containing Fyreman potions would shatter too.

Bramblegate grew on an outcropping of rock as volunteers took positions on the cliff.

Men were emerging from the house, their bodies aflame—they’d had time to throw back at least a few potions, then. Linking arms, they marched, creating a wall of fire and coming straight for the Springers. Machine guns clattered; one volunteer fell. Igme brandished a domino mask, and the rest of the bullets flew upward.

Janet ran to the injured woman’s side.

Clancy waved the diamond bracelet they had taken from Ellie. The machine gun fire thinned as Fyremen fell asleep, vanishing into dreams. The walkers, bodies aflame, kept coming.

Behind the volunteers, the cliff was crumbling away.

“Chant,” Astrid’s ringer said in Will’s ear. She stepped out, near the edge of Igme’s shield, drawing their fire.

Will slid off his ring, selecting a carved wooden swan. He chanted it, thinking of dance floors, grace, ballrooms.

“Here.” He handed it off, and the swan took flight, swirling and dancing behind them, its volunteer drawing up letrico. The cliff was falling out from under them, but polished mahogany floorboards were growing underfoot, providing support wherever its feathered skirts happened to sweep.

With room to move now, the volunteers spread out. Janet had healed the girl who’d been shot. Astrid’s ringer had the machine gunners—those who hadn’t been knocked out—distracted.

Will grabbed up a rubber mallet, chanting it and then handing it off. A volunteer smacked the mountain with it, knocking away the house and a good portion of the hillside, exposing a tunnel and a dozen men armed with swords, some gaping comically, others fainting into sleep and vanishing.

The rest charged.

Will slipped his ring on and moved to the fore of the melee. The air was cooling; fog rolled down the mountain, drawing wind downward. Soon they’d be blown off the cliffside, mahogany platform or no.

The tunnel crumbled further, revealing a low-ceilinged cave, a chamber of twenty-five or more men, gathered around a stone altar, surprised Cretan faces …

There was a minotaur on the altar. Withered, weak, with mad eyes and burns on its arms and legs …

Heat wafted over Will’s face; he heard shots, a scream. The dance floor was burning.

Janet scooped up a dropped plunger, swinging it overhead. Silence fell—the men, whose lips were still moving, clawed at their throats. She stepped forward, her white mitten extended toward the creature on the altar.

Half human, half animal—part of the Befouling spell,
Will thought, and then—
No, this is it. Igme uses a coiled toy snake to sweep aside the ring of old men, but one clings to the altar.…

A scimitar-wielding Fyreman ran at Will. He ignored him, leaving his magic ring to rebuff the assault. Janet had reached the minotaur, was pouring letrico into him, feeding vitality into his body through the white mitten.

“Watch out!”

Too late. Behind her, an old man rose up, fighting the wind. He shot Janet in the back with an ordinary-looking pistol.

The minotaur rolled to its feet, snapping the shooter’s neck. Janet dropped the healing chantment, grabbing for the altar, sagging.

Beneath the volunteers, the dance floor cracked and swayed.

Roaring, the minotaur hurled the Fyreman’s body away, plunging into the fray. Two Fyremen jumped on the Astrid ringer, chopping into her false body with swords.

Bramblegate was ablaze.

“Pull out!” Will shouted. “Everyone run!”

Igme lunged into the spreading fire. He caught Janet before she could fall, dragging her through the gate. Others followed, grabbing up the wounded and beating a retreat.

Will held them off as Bramblegate erupted into flames.

Alone now, Will drew the last of their letrico into his ring and reached out, embracing the crush of Fyremen as they tackled him.

He thought, longingly, of Jacks and the unreal. That was what Astrid had done, the first time she’d gone there. She’d wished herself out of the real.…

The light changed, and he was at Jacks’s feet, ankle deep in a puddle of magical slush. Fyremen, maybe six of them, were trying to overwhelm him. He was out of letrico: the ring was draining him.…

Then Teoquan and his warriors came pouring from the nooks and crannies of the Pit, burying the flaming men under the weight of numbers.

He crawled free, out of letrico and weak with fatigue. The Fyremen were screaming.

“Pike, how’d we do?” he panted aloud. “The curse down?”

No answer.

He tuned in to the news center. Casualties were arriving at the hospital. Mark had destroyed the brand-new rosarite circles around Washington, D.C. Seers reported that Roche and Gilead were launching a major offensive against Indigo Springs. Sahara Knax’s whereabouts remained unknown. Juanita Corazón’s whereabouts remained unknown. Gilead Landon’s whereabouts currently unknown. Will Forest’s whereabouts were unknown—

Will touched his tuning fork. “Doghouse, Octagon—I’m safe, I’m in the unreal.”

“Will Forest is unharmed and in the unreal,” the briefing amended. “Four volunteers have been lost in the assault on Crete. A massive windstorm has sprung up in central Africa, assumed to be magical in nature.…”

Mark Clumber had probably performed his heat draw there when he destroyed the Fyreman disenchantment circles, Will thought.

“The curse is not broken. Our seers are actively searching for other Fyremen who might be reciting the Befoulment.”

“I said bring them corpses.” An Astrid ringer had materialized next to Jacks, staring in horror as the Roused warriors wrapped up their massacre of the Cretan Fyremen.

“The corpses weren’t kicking our asses,” Will told her, dragging her out of sight before Teo caught a glimpse of the ringer, drawing her back into the real.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE CHOPPER TRAVELED WEST
to an airfield on the coast, south of the contaminated forest in Oregon. From there, they transferred to a sixties-vintage troop transport.

Juanita scanned the area as they trotted across the airfield to the plane. The place was a-bustle: camouflage-clad young men, thousands of them, were doing combat drills under the direction of bright, flame-licked drill sergeants.

As she stepped aboard the plane, the murmuring voices at the back of her mind hushed, all at once, like candles being blown out. The muscles in her hands—the ones she kept clenched against the urge to knead—relaxed.

Disenchantment? She took a careful look around, spotting a web of rosarite strands wound through the cabin. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t relieved.

They lumbered into the air and were soon out over the Pacific, bound, they told her, for Hawaii. Gilead sat up front, conferring via radio—with underlings or superiors, she didn’t know which. Sahara was under guard in the rear. The arch of brambles was nowhere to be seen, and the voices remained silent.

It was as close to being alone and unobserved as Juanita had been in two months. Even in sleep at Wendover, the Alchemites had had her under siege. But Sahara couldn’t invade her dreams anymore. She closed her eyes.

When she awoke, it was dark. She prayed again, expecting to feel dumb—hypocritical, maybe—and instead discovered an odd certainty, as if she were eight again and her dad was still alive, as if the clock on her faith had been reset to those last unquestioning days before his death. Somehow, she was in the right place, where she needed to be.

She took a minute to savor the sense of gratitude building within, then turned her mind to the mess unfolding here and now.

All these factions. Gilead. Sahara. Astrid Lethewood. Only Astrid had helped her without asking anything in return. She wanted to protect people … protect everyone, from the sound of it. She didn’t want Sahara torched.
I’m not saintly,
she claimed, but that seemed pretty big of her.

What about me?
Juanita wondered.
Do I want Sahara burned?
She considered the Alchemite’s threats against her family, Ramón locked in dreams, the fellow marshal they’d executed while she watched. She remembered Heaven, going up in flames.

That debt’s been paid,
she decided.

But how to save herself, let alone Sahara?

“Hey.” Gilead, off the phone at last, handed her a cup of steaming coffee. Without waiting for an invitation, he sat across from her, long legs crossed on the floor. “What are you thinking about?”

“Inner peace,” she said. “You?”

“Attack’s a go. We have the green light from Washington to burn the contaminated forest and everyone in it.”

“How soon?”

“Roche is positioning support squads—new guys, borrowed from the marines.”

“Guys only?”

“Not necessarily.” His eye fell on the sea-glass pendant still hanging at her throat. “My uncles have blessed your name—you’re one of us, if you want to be.”

He didn’t know she was contaminated, then. But—“That’s not an option.”

“You’re sure?”

“Gilead, as far as I can tell, you’re the most liberal guy in this fraternity of yours—and you’re a homicidal maniac.”

“Don’t you think that’s overstating?”

“Believe me, I wish.”

“I’m not the monster you imagine.”

“I didn’t
imagine
you burning Caro Forest to death.”

“I released her,” he said. “She’d been condemned to life as Sahara’s plaything.”

Her lip curled. “What you did was repellent.”

She thought that would end the conversation, but he sank back in his seat, looking pensive. “If we’re to save the world, a few people must be sacrificed. You must see that.”

She snorted. “Who’s the next ‘sacrifice’—Sahara?”

“Not necessarily.” He glanced toward the rear of the plane, where Sahara sat with her guards. “Before he was … abducted, Lucius was studying a particularly confusing prophecy. Sahara’s destiny is to return to the Hive of Befoulment—it’s there that she meets her fate.”

“Hive of—you’re taking her with you to Indigo Springs?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to breach Lethewood’s defenses. But Sahara believes she’ll get in.”

I don’t want her burned,
Astrid had said. Might she simply let Sahara through that gate of thorns?

“What exactly does your big book of prophecy say?”

“Don’t mock.” His lips thinned. “Lucius believed Sahara’s return to the Hive would trigger a battle for control of the well. There’s a passage—’the slow fouling of the world ends. The Brigade will be tested, then transformed.’”

She sipped the coffee, which was bitter and grainy. “Transformed?”

“Victory’s a kind of transformation, don’t you think? It goes on: The survivors offer peace to our enemies, the traditions of centuries will be overthrown—”

“Habits,” she said. “Secrecy, torching people?”

“Excluding women.”

“I’m not signing up for this.”

“Don’t you see, Juanita?” His eyes shone. “When we’ve won the well, there’ll be no need for the pyre.”

“You’ve spent your life planning to burn every single chantment and contaminated person. You expect me to believe that if you win, you’re gonna come over all warm and pacifist? How naïve do you think I am?”

He patted the book. “You know I believe in this. When you see, Juanita, that it’s come true, you’ll believe too.”

“Believing in what’s proved isn’t faith,” she said, quoting something the judge had told her. What he’d think of this …

Inspiration struck. “You want me in?”

“I do.”

She pushed the coffee away. “Put the bonfires out.”

A startled laugh broke from his lips. “The prophecy says peace comes
after
the battle.”

“Promise me you won’t burn another living soul,” she said, “and I’ll get Sahara Knax into Indigo Springs for you.”

“You? How?”

“I’m a resourceful woman, Gilead.”

He mulled it over as they flew inland, over the smoking red maw of an active volcano, over a wall of jungle and into a perfectly cross-shaped compound shaved from the bamboo. Smoke poured from the center of the compound, and as they circled it, Juanita saw a pyre.