Heart's Magic (41 page)

"Oh wait--Harry, your mum
was always too drunk to teach you anything, wasn't she?"

"She did her best. I made
my peace with it ages ago." Harry lit up his blue-white spark light
again and squinted at the monstrosity. "Who are you?"

"
What are you?
" Elinor
asked.

"Oh, very good. Extra
prizes for you. You realized the question is not who, but what."
The machine capered about--as much as anything could while rolling
on wheels--waving its clumsy arms in an unnerving dance. "Perhaps I
am the voice of the machines, of their collective
minds."

"I don't think so." Elinor
slid her hand down between herself and Harry, into the folds of her
skirt where it spread around Harry's injured leg. She worked the
long pin out of his trousers and concealed it in her hand. She had
a feeling more blood for magic might soon be needed.

"Why not? Do you doubt that
machines can reason? Is it so impossible for a machine to compute,
to draw inferences and make decisions?"

"I doubt that
these
machines can
reason." Elinor could feel Harry gathering in magic.

From the air, from the
brick in the floor beneath their feet, and from the earth and stone
and water flowing beneath the floor, Harry collected magic. She
provided support, a foundation upon which he could build his
structure, whatever it was.

"Not even built upon each
other as we are? All of our reasoning capabilities working
together?"

"There hasn't been time for
that." Elinor hoped to distract the whatever-it-was from Harry's
activity, so she kept talking. "Not for connections to be made to
link the little brains--if the machines have them--into a large
brain with reasoning power. No, you're something else." She
narrowed her eyes at it, wishing Grey or some conjurer--any
conjurer--were here to deny her guess. She did not want her
suspicion to be correct.

Harry was building a
shield, laying it from the foundations up. Elinor pricked her
finger again--her previous opening refused to bleed more--for blood
to add to the protection. The pin was smeared with Harry's blood,
alarming her. Was it fresh blood, or from before she bandaged his
leg? It also mixed their blood again, but this time she didn't
care. She was glad, in fact. Harry was right, little as she liked
to admit it. They needed every bit of advantage they could get
against this enemy.

"What do you think I am?"
the still capering monstrosity asked in its eerie vocalized
whistle.

"That one's dead easy,"
Harry said.

Elinor put her bloody
finger behind Harry's back where his left hand held the copper wand
and wiped her blood along both wand and hand. Amanusa had painted
blood on what they wanted to shield, so Elinor thought it ought to
work now. The shield snapped into place around the three
flesh-and-blood people as Harry spoke again. "You're another
demon."

It shrieked, a piercing
scream with the shrill whistling overlain. Elinor wanted to stop up
her ears, but didn't dare let go of Harry's hands. She didn't think
Harry's guess had made it angry. More likely that they had put up
such a lovely shield. The magic felt like plate steel, holding it
out.

"But you ain't got the
power to come through in the flesh," Harry went on, "'cause
nobody's done a spell to give you a way through. So you got to use
wot's already here. Like the poor machine things there."

By now, Kitty had clambered
to the top of the heap. It extended long whip-like cables that
penetrated the shell of the machine next below, fastening Kitty in
place. Elinor suspected the cables did more than merely attach the
machines. Those lower down shuddered and twitched, their
semi-random clacking becoming more unified and rhythmic. The eye
sockets of the cat skull atop the horrible creature began to glow a
deep and terrible red. Elinor shivered, and tucked herself closer
to Harry.

"You're weak," Harry
sneered at it.

Elinor didn't think it was
wise to antagonize the thing, but she didn't argue with
him.

"You're naught but ugly
whispers in the night," he said. "You got no real power. Just a
bunch o' lies to tell."

"Real enough!" The monster
lashed out with arms that were finally long enough to lash. The
terminus of one limb was a machine that seemed to be mostly long,
sharp blades, and on the other, a thing with saw blade
pincers.

Elinor flinched away from
its attack. So did Nigel, but Harry stood fast, confident in the
strength of the shield he'd built. That, or his injury kept him
from moving. The demon-machine struck the shield and-- It didn't
bounce off, but its attack was slowed so greatly that Harry was
able to dodge it with ease. He took a limping step back and the
shield moved with him, which was a great relief to
Elinor.

The patchwork construct
shrieked in fury, its "eyes" flashing scarlet. The tiny skull, a
little smaller than Elinor's fist, looked silly as the head atop
such a large ungainly thing. It made her laugh, which drove the
demon-machine to greater fury.

It smashed at the shield
again and again, as if it thought it could batter it down by force.
Unfortunately, she began to think it might. The magic dented under
the continued blows, forcing the three of them to crowd closer
together. Nigel began to whimper at each blow, cowering with an arm
shielding his head.

"Nigel!" The monstrous thing
punctuated its words with blows of its arms. "What--are
you--doing--in there--with--
them?
"

He cringed at the sound of
his name, whimpering, his crooked wand dangling from his limp grip.
Elinor wanted to reach out, take his hand and bring him closer, but
she was afraid to let go of Harry.

"You're one of us, Nigel,"
Harry said.

"You're not," the
demon-machine whistled. "You're better than they are. Purer.
Uncorrupted by fleshly lusts."

Nigel trembled, beginning
to keen in a frightening way. Elinor feared he would break, feared
what he would do if he did.

"You're not like them," the
thing went on. "They are wicked. Corrupt. Consumed by vanity and
ambition. You are different. Not one of them."

Elinor could sense Nigel's
distress, his isolation and fear. She couldn't let him endure it
alone. She let go of Harry's hand, the one behind his back, and
reached past him toward Nigel. "That's a demon, Nigel, and demons
lie. You are one of us. You're human. Fallible and
forgivable."

She'd forgotten she'd
lanced the hand she offered. The bleeding had stopped, but it still
stained her fingers. Nigel recoiled, bumping into the
shield.

It shivered, but didn't
crumble. Nigel took another step back, sort of...melting through
it. He was on the outside, with the machines.

"You are
special,
Nigel." The demon-machine
changed its attack on the magic shield. It stopped beating on it
and began to lean on it instead. The dents became an inward
bulge.

The close contact with so
much magic seemed to hurt the individual machines making up the
demon's "body." They writhed and recoiled, squealed, and some parts
of them went limp. As if the magic had "killed" them. The demon
didn't seem to notice.

The attack wasn't doing
Elinor or Harry any good either. She could feel the drain on their
strength, the stress Harry was under to hold it intact, and she
supported him as best she could.

"We're missing conjury,"
she murmured, clasping his hand again.

"Yeah, but conjury's all
we're missin'." Harry held his copper wand in his fingers, stroked
his thumb over her hand. "We'll stand."

Nigel shivered in a pond of
machines, still clutching Elinor's wizard's bag to his chest. He'd
uncurled a bit from his cower, lowered his damaged arm curled round
his head, but he still trembled.

"Think of all they've done
to you, Nigel," the demon-machine said. The whistle had lost most
of its shrill pitch to become more of a hiss, the rumbling
vocalization still sounding beneath it. "Think of all the
sacrifices you've made to practice magic, and
they
took it away from you, stripped
it and left you bare--"

Sacrifice.
The word jolted Elinor and the shield wavered.
Harry tightened his grip on her hand. "Stand strong, old
girl."

From someone else, the word
would have been an insult, but from Harry--she could feel the
affection in it, understand it meant loyalty and steadiness and
everything good.

"It's not
all
gone," Nigel said.
Tentatively, but he said it. "I worked magic."

"Did you?" Elinor held
tight to Harry, taking strength from him. Not actual physical
strength, but courage, determination. "What magic did you
work?"

"Fixed the pie woman's cart
to keep her pies warm." Nigel thought a minute. "Put a binding
spell on a small child to keep it from wandering." He paused again.
"There was another, but I can't remem--I made a potion. A simple
toothache potion of this and that. Things I found."

"Pah!" The demon-machine
could spit contempt quite impressively. "Pies. Toddlers.
Toothaches. Puny stuff. Mere hedge magic. You were the
magister.
After all you've
given up, you should work great and powerful magic, but they stole
it from you."

Again, the creature spoke
of sacrifice, of giving things up to have magic. Did she have so
much in common with Nigel? Elinor didn't want to believe
it.

"Look at what they've done
to you," the demon hissed. "What they have taken from you. They owe
you. They should pay for what you have lost. Kill them. Use the
knife you took from her and
make them
pay.
"

The demon-machine pressed
harder on the shield, reaching slowly through with its
knife-machine arm, so sluggish they could evade it. They didn't
have much room to retreat, however. Not with all the other
threatening machines blocking their exit. They might be small, but
they were many.

"Knock it off," Elinor
whispered. "Knock off the machine on the end of its
arm."

She felt magic stir, Harry
calling lightning. But they were inside the shield with the machine
arm, and there were no clouds, little to call the lightning from.
"No." She took a step to the side, dragging him with her. "It can't
move fast. Just break it off."

She seized the next machine
back, behind the one on the end. The demon squalled and tried to
pull its piecework arm back through the shield, but it moved as
slowly out as in. Harry caught on to what she meant. He stuck his
steel wand up his sleeve, evaded the waving knives, and snapped the
end machine off the monstrous arm.

The bone connectors were
brittle, cracking right in two. The broken-off machine dangled from
half a dozen wire cables, while the demon-machine pulled its arm
out of the shield. The cables frayed and split as they passed
through the magic, and the little knife-ended machine crashed to
the bricks and hobbled out of the way. Harry reclaimed his wand and
Elinor's hand.

"
Kill them!
" The demon-machine turned
on Nigel, shrieking and flailing its arms. "Wreak your revenge.
Make them pay! Females are corrupt, unclean, and he is complicit in
her corruption!"

Nigel had the clasp knife
unfolded in his hand. She hadn't noticed him take it out, what with
their machine disassembly. Elinor's heart pounded in fear. He could
get through the shield. It hadn't been made to hold him out. He had
reason to hate her. Had she helped him any when she's messed about
in his mind? Had she made things worse?

"You know you want to." The
demon's voice had taken on a seductive timbre, working at Nigel's
hidden desires. "It is the right thing to do."

"Nigel--" Harry tightened
his grip on his wands. "Don't. I won't let you hurt
her."

"Corruption." The
demon-machine hissed it. "All your sacrifice for naught, because
of
them.
Their
filth, their wickedness--"

"What God has declared
clean," Nigel whispered, "
you
do not declare filthy."

Elinor blinked. Was that
actually Nigel Cranshaw speaking? She'd never heard him utter such
sentiments.

He opened the wizard's bag
and put the knife back inside, taking out his primitive wand, bark
still on the raw wood.

The demon-machine howled
and lunged at Nigel, outside the shield, vulnerable. Elinor
screamed. Harry shouted. She threw a peg, off-balance and poorly.
Harry ignited it with another shout. It didn't stop the monster,
didn't injure it. It did set its wheels on fire, and made it
flinch.

The pitiful spell gave Nigel
time to get his wand up, time to deflect the demon-thing's blow so
that it didn't kill him. It struck his shoulder, something
went
snap!
and he
staggered. He didn't fall and he didn't drop his wand.

Elinor grabbed a whole
fistful of pegs. This time, she intended to yank their magic out
when Harry hit them with his spell. It might boost the effect.
Harry wound up his magic as Elinor cocked her arm to throw. The
demon-machine swatted Nigel to the floor and fled.