Keeping It Real (48 page)

Shaping himself was only a variation
.
If he had still possessed his own body it would have been routine.

Without it he had to spend himself in making the effort
.
Lila felt his presence flicker and weaken. But his

ghostly hand extended up and up, beyond the rigid lock of her manacle on Zal's leg, up to his arm where

the flechette was bound. Tath said a word and a darkness, a final shadow, dragged at her heart. She felt

part of her life leaving her as the flechette disintegrated
.

T
he binding is undone,
Tath informed her weakly. But
h
i
s lungs have collapsed. He drowns.

She tried again and again to find any connection that
could operate, counting away the seconds. How

could it
take so long? There must be a mistake ...

And then at last she heard her Al-self 's voice: Countdown to automatic restart commencing Five,

four, three . . .

. . . and then the world shook and boomed again and another pulse tore silently through them and the

voice was gone.

Lila opened her mouth and the water of Aparastil filled it
as she tried to suck it
into her lungs. She

failed. Her lungs were too compressed to hold anything. Detached and dreamy, knowing this the final

stage of asphyxia, the dream and the hallucination, she wondered what they would think at
home when

they found out, only they wouldn't
find out
of course, because she would be falling for ever, and in any

case, they thought
she was already gone . . . She wanted to sleep. Yes. Just for a minute. After so much

fighting, surely she deserved a minute? She

began to drift, but
an annoying voice, an annoying sensation in her chest wouldn't leave her in peace.

Tath was talking to her, in a stupid foreign language that wasn't remotely like elvish or Otopian.

Everything was sibilant, like hissing snakes. The vowels were owlish, hooting, soft.

Shu
t
up,
she said to him.
Why won'
t
you jus
t
shu
t
up?

Ooleratnan sirssalliel, Tath said softly, coaxing her. The words tied her up and drew her closer to him.

They opened tiny doors inside, onto sweet darkness that was not of the lake at all. They offered

pathways. She saw

lights within them, beckoning her. Sirmasenna, sirmasenna, abrayutb manmayess.

Just like the dragon, she remembered. She hurt. She was beyond tired.
Le
t
me
go.

Abrayuth Lila Amanda Black. Abrayuth set imma. Manmayesim.

She saw Dar's face. Not the face of her dreams that
had tormented her. The face of his death,

stretched in pain.
Leave
me aione!

Countdown to automatic restart commencing. Five, four, three, two, one. Main power online. Auxiliary

power online. Automedic enabled. Emergency autorespiration enabled.

Lila struggled against
the colossal weight
of anaerobic toxins in her blood, against
the need to sleep still

clogging her mind. Around her the world, which had been no bigger than a mote of dust, expanded into

vast, lightless space. They were still falling - more than 230 metres down.

Lila pulled Zal's body against her and held it to her side with her left arm, then ignited her foot jets and

began to drive them upward, ascending as fast
as she could. As she did so she ordered the last of her

drug precursors to synthesize adrenaline, Terbutalin and other pharmacological agents that
aided rapid

decompression
.

Tath, frail as candlelight, stretched out inside her, and kept up his

Whispering, to Zal this time. Abrayuth Azrazal Suhanathir Taliesetra. Abrayuth set imma. Manmeyesim.

Selecting the biggest needle from her store, Lila activated her wrist
injector, found Zal's neck, located

his artery with precise ultrasound and pushed in, tangling her fingers in his hair to stabilise his head and

neck against her arm. His pulse was very slow, very weak, heart almost stopped, but the cold and the

opiates and Tath had saved him so far.

Lila could run her own blood through a nitrogen scrubber to save her from the bends. The same

system was now flooding her with necessary oxygen whilst replacing much of what she would normally

have needed with helium, oxygen being toxic at depth. She shifted her hold

on Zal and switched usage on her secondary forearm systems, dropping and dumping her gun and its

ammunition into the lake, replacing it
with another wide-bore catheter which she inserted into the other

side of his neck
.
She shunted her blood back around away from the gas exchange system and ran Zal's

blood through it instead, not even pausing to consider the effects of contamination. She had to get up,

and she had to get up very soon.

And so they went, breathing alternately with Lila's machine system, stopping often in their ascent
as the

nitrogen built and dispersed, held in life by Tath's commands against death. As they ascended they drew

after them a long, lambent
tail of wild magic and after the tail came the golden and black gliding shape of

the dragon
.
Lila saw it suddenly as she held at 210 metres, the palace above her, the water around them

full of bodies, and artefacts and clutter, trapped beneath the bubble's silvery bulk. Fascinated in spite of

her fear she stared at it as she pumped Zal's blood through her arms and back into him, waiting for him

to wake up or show any sign of life, listening to his slow, weak heartbeat. . .

Don'
t
look a
t
i
t
. You know be
tt
er
t
han
t
ha
t
.,
Tath said, breaking his canticle.

But
Lila didn't
need to look at
it. She smiled as the dragon came up on them and then wound around

them, wild magic from the deep streaming off its flanks, sparking on her arms and legs, in her hair,

against
the metal surface of her eyes.

Zal shuddered against her and only her thumbs locked against his jaw prevented him from trying to

breathe the lake. His eyes opened, but she doubted that he'd see much with his unmachine sight, a few

gleams. He could feel the cold vice of her around him however, and the pain of his many cuts.

'It's all right,' Lila said through her hands into the bone of his skull. 'I've got you.'

I
t
is no
t
all righ
t
.,
Tath amended gently and, with dismay, Lila saw the dragon's lazy winding around

them change into a full-on charge towards the bubbles above.

Some
t
hing Arie said upse
t
i
t
maybe?
Lila asked him but she rolled onto her back away from their

vertical position and drove them away as fast
as she could through the water. She didn't see the Dragon

or its impact on the Palace, but she felt it. There was a high-pitched vibration, and then a world was

falling.

As Lila felt
Zal's hands catch hold of her waist the first
object struck them
.
It was the stone altar of

Earth. Lila rolled and fell with it, fighting out from under. Zal's grip fell away on the left, tightened

reflexively on the right. But then they were in the midst
of a storm of falling debris -every piece of

furniture, every object, every person who had inhabite
d
the Palace of Aparastil was now within the lake,

an
d
those below fifty metres were sim
p
ly sinking,
a
s bo
d
ies will when they re
a
ch
a
certain
d
epth. The heaviest things sank the fastest
.
Lila an
d
Zal receive
d
a battering. Ami
d
the furore Lila felt the water itself

surging, trying to tow her with it as it respon
d
e
d
to Arie's summons
.
The lake queen was
d
rawing un
d
ines

to her ai
d
, huge bodies of lakewater, animated by her will, though they were weakening as the mages

who had bound themselves to her drowned, one by one
.

A
st
ar!
Tath thought, and Lila inwardly moaned with the very idea of trying to do more than survive.

To their left and right, back and front, materials fell and bumped and bashed them. Something heavy

smacked the side of her head and she reeled, seeing stars. She m
i
ssed her pump sw
i
tch and Zal blacked

out again.

There was a moment or two of floating weightlessly, beginning to fall again. Through radar and sonar

and heat-sensors she saw Arte propelled towards the surface in a twisting eel-like vortex of water, an
d

she saw the dr
a
gon's golden
a
rrow tear through that
column, its huge mouth agape. It seized Arie in its

jaws
a
nd, without pause, turned to face gravity
a
nd plunged down
a
nd down into the dark until it was

lost to all sight.

Lila restored Zal's oxygen and boosted the level of it in the tri mix. She added the last dregs of her

pharmacopoeia as o
p
iate antagonists and began the long journey u
p
towards the light. They rested at

forty metre intervals, w
a
iting for the nitrogen bubbles in their blood to
a
bate. At
180 metres Zal's hands

came back to Lila's waist. It was discernibly green here, and L
i
la could see h
i
m
i
n normal vision as the

faintest ghost in front of her.

'It's still okay,' she said to him through her hands. 'Don't worry about the
p
ain. It's only
p
ressure.

You'll be fine.' It
was a lie. She thought
that
the
p
ressure
a
nd de
p
th would h
a
ve burst
his e
a
rdrums -

though he should still he
a
r through the transmission of his skull - and the pumping system kept having to

speed its game. Zal was bleeding out, right
i
n front of her.

T
he ca
thet
er I used preven
t
s healing,
Tath sa
i
d to her, s
i
mply as

an explanation. He did not mention Astar again, but Lila kept scanning for her. She could not remove

her hands from Zal's neck and head. She kept Zal on an extra cycle and rose through another fifty

metres in ten seconds flat, constantly adjusting the oxygen mix. They kept
bumping palace debris that

sank very slowly or floated. Dead bodies were there, but Lila didn't look at them. She knew Astar must

be among them. Knew it. And Tath did too. He became very still and silent.

At fifty metres Zal suddenly moved closer to her, the drift of water between their bodies vanishing, its

cool replaced by warmth. His eyes were heavy-lidded but
the corners of his long mouth flickered with

the hint of a smile. His lips, blue tinged, parted slightly and she saw him swallow.

Drink
t
he wa
t
er,

Tath said suddenly. He
is
t
rying
t
o
te
ll

you.

She did. Vigour and health surged into her. She didn't care to think about what would have happened

to them if they hadn't been submerged in a lake of such intense aetherial properties. Long dead.

Zal's smile deepened and he pushed forward against
her hands. His arms slid around her. She didn't

believe what
she felt. Here was Zal, cut, bleeding, half-dead, catheterised, drugged, cyanotic, but

against her she could feel the unmistakable line and press of a serious erection. His
andalune
body

caressed her so lightly she could have mistaken it for currents in the water, but
this moved beneath her

clothing.

Demons adore such s
t
rai
t
s,
Tath said with appalled fascination.

She decided to ignore it and took them to the surface, turning her face to the light
and air as it
came

down to her, holding Zal away from her as she cycled his blood and rebalanced it to elfin normal. The

fresh day broke against her face and she gasped for real, clear air.

In front of her Zal coughed and groaned with pain. They floated for a moment on the power of Lila's

jets and then she drew back both needles with a whir and snap. Zal gasped and his head rocked as she

let him go and took hold of him more securely around his midsection. Keeping them high in the water

she quickly found his right arm and pressed her thumb down on the open wound, sealing it shut. Zal

smiled faintly at her, barely conscious.

'Are we at my two minutes of charity yet?' he asked. And then he disappeared.

He was seized so fast
that
Lila barely noticed it
as he was torn from

her weak hold and pulled down again. Then something tough grabbed her foot
and dragged her under.