Penult (62 page)

“
Jesus! What the heck kind
of animals are these?” said Olivier.

“
They are not animals,”
said Karla.

“
God help them if the bugs
get wind of them,” said Georg.

“
We can set the column
right here,” I said. “The quake would probably reach.” I was
thinking: get this thing done, get out of here and I could
concentrate on fading and what to do about the damned ricin
spreading through my body on the other side.

“
Nah,” said Olivier. “Let’s
get a little closer. I want to take that whole fucking place down
like they took down Luthersburg. I want them to have a full swig of
their own medicine.”

We came to a branching of pathways and
chose the steepest, most direct route to the valley bottom. It led
to a causeway across one of the lakes, whose surface was almost
flush with the water level. Still, there was no indication of any
kind of guard post, defenses or surveillance of any sort. Penult
had the markings of a land that had known only peace and order
within its borders.

Well, that was all about to change.
Olivier rushed ahead, eager as a kid on Christmas morning. Even I
was getting pretty excited about setting off the column.

We caught up with Ubaldo and Olivier
at the causeway where they had paused to assess the approach to the
city. The causeway was seamless and made of the same bone-like
material as the roads. The lake was crystal clear revealing a
multitude of stripy fish with peach bellies browsing among water
weeds.

Several scooters zipped by on one of
the roads upslope, but no one seemed to notice us. A couple
appeared on the meadow just above us, just strolling along hand in
hand. There stares showed more amusement than fear. It all seemed
too good to be true.

“
We should call the bugs,
before we start the quake,” said Georg. “We don’t want to be on the
ground when this thing goes off.”

“
Your beetle can carry four
of us no problem,” said Solomon. “And James has the
wings.”

“
My wasp will come when I
need her,” said Ubaldo, tapping the device around his
neck.

“
I’m thinking … we should
try and get a little closer still,” said Olivier.

“
I don’t see why not,” said
Ubaldo. “We have yet to be challenged.”

So we started across the causeway. It
made me a bit nervous to be so exposed. With nowhere to run but
directly forward or back, it would have been the perfect to strike
us with their falcons.

A scooter rider stopped to watch us.
Another and then another joined him until a small gaggle had
accumulated.

Olivier couldn’t stop grinning. “Look
at these people! Nobody’s got a clue what we’re all about. I bet we
could stroll right up to the city gates.”

“
We should set the column
here,” I said.

“
Soon,” said Olivier.
“Let’s just get just a little closer. Up on that road, maybe. It
looks pretty important. Well-traveled.”

We made it across the causeway. Karla
again reached for my hand. This time I took hers gladly. I was
getting nervous and in need of a little human contact. I glanced at
her, and she looked right back, unsmiling. She was looking worried,
too.

“
What’s wrong?” she said. I
kept my lips pursed tight. Her question startled me. I wasn’t sure
how to interpret it. Was she talking about us or just things in
general? I just kept lips pursed tight. Either way, there was
nothing I could say that would portray the full complexity of my
anxieties.

As we started up the slope, something
clanged and chimed in the distance. It was a pretty sound, like
church bells sounding a mildly dissonant chord in unison. The white
spires of the city underwent a subtle change. The blue-green
glacial tint of their more shadowy recesses turned purplish, like
veins behind pale skin. The Pennies who had stopped to watch us
scurried off abruptly, looking a bit panicky and
confused.

“
Shit,” said
Karla.

“
Okay people. This is it!”
said Olivier. “Raise the column! They’re onto us.”

Chapter 64:
Demons

Georg released the clingy straps that
secured the column to the beetle and let it slide off Rhino's back.
It clanked like tone wood as it bounced and rolled into one of the
shallow ditches that bordered the roadway. Ubaldo grabbed a
U-shaped block from Rhino's back and leapt into the ditch,
hammering it into the ground against the uphill side of the column.
Georg attached one of the cables affixed to loops halfway up the
column while the rest of us grabbed the other lines and hurried
uphill until they went taut.

“
Go easy now,” said
Olivier. “Equal tension. Keep it centered.”

Slowly, we raised the column, like
colonists hauling up the corner post of a barn. Loomis continued to
clang its polyphonic alarm. The spectators had scattered and were
fleeing back to the city on their scooters.

When the column was vertical, I
dropped my line and rushed over and retracted the lowest ring of
spikes, rotating the bottom segment until the nubs lined up with
those just above it, just as I had seen Victoria do. As I worked my
way up segment by segment, the cracker came to life. Air hissed
through its myriad channels. The outer surface grew hot and began
to shimmer and ripple, cycling through a complex series of
textures. Spiky supports sprouted from the base and drilled their
way deep into the dirt and chalk beneath.

I glanced up-slope, half expecting to
see an army of Cherubim charging down at us. The towers of Loomis
had gone all gunmetal gray tinged with purple and veiled with mist.
The mist swirled and grew until it shrouded the tallest of the
buildings.

“
This ain't right,” said
Olivier. “This cracker's not shaking nearly as much as it needs to.
Are you doing it the right way?”

“
I ... I thought so.” I
stared at the segments, noticing one ring that wasn't quite
perfectly aligned.

I grabbed onto the spikes and yanked.
It wouldn't budge.

“
It's ...
stuck.”

“
That cloud! It's coming
this way!” said Karla.

There was a granularity to the mist
now that told me that its individual components were much larger
than I first thought. It was made not of water vapor but of
objects. They looked like birds from afar, but they moved like
bats, their bodies withered and spare like origami
doves.

Several strands swirled up and
converged into a huge clot of white that arced upward forming a
parabolic trajectory that peaked and dove like a huge, white
amorphous fist slamming towards us. I tried to ignore it as I
fiddled with the cracker, twirling the control rings one by
one.

Olivier tried to help but had not
absorbed the lesson as clearly as me. The fist of doves
accelerated, whistling like those screaming meemie fireworks that
used to freak me out when I was a kid.

As the fringe of lone fliers preceding
the main swarm was about to hurtle into us, Olivier thrust out his
staff and conjured a spell. I suppose he had intended to raise a
shield but diffuse field that sizzled out the splintered end of his
stick, wiggled in the breeze like a giant soap bubble before
popping and splattering bits of plasma on the ground.

I had no choice but to divert my
attention from the column and stuck my sword out at the oncoming
threat. Spells happened now without my having to think, which was
good and bad. Spontaneity was nice but my instincts did not always
make the best decisions.

The blast that issued forth from the
tip of my blackened sword was plenty powerful, but much too
concentrated, punching a hole through the center of the mass of
paper doves, wadding a bunch together and dropping them out of the
formation. I might as well have fired a bullet into a cloud of
smoke. The vacated spot filled right back up and the mass kept on
swarming towards us.

“
Take cover!” said
Ubaldo.

Solomon dropped to his knees and
covered himself with the thick, homespun cloak that doubled as his
bedroll and armor. Ubaldo and Olivier pressed themselves into the
muck at the bottom of the ditch, while Georg took refuge behind his
beetle.

Karla just stood and gawked,
mesmerized. I had visions of her walking into that patch of
Fellstraw.

“
It's okay. There’s nothing
to them. They're just paper,” said Karla. “Maybe they are just
trying to scare us.”

“
Get down!” I dove at her
knees and tackled her to the ground.

The leading edge of the cloud came at
us in two strands. They curled around and converged over the column
and engulfing it in a maelstrom of paper, chewing and slashing like
a swarm of chainsaws. The ground around us erupted in a tornado of
grit and shredded grass. Karla cried out as one of the paper birds
latched onto her elbow and snipped at her with its serrated beak.
Georg howled with rage and pain as he lashed out with his scepter,
struggling to protect Rhino from the onslaught, but as Urszula had
warned, spells did not come easy in this corner of the
realm.

I crawled on top of Karla and
smothered her, covering every inch of her with my body while the
paper demon birds nipped and slashed at my clothes and skin, biting
into flesh and drawing blood.

“
Goddamnit! I had enough of
this shit!”

The reluctant lode of willpower
lurking deep in my belly took charge and sprang to life, expanding
my force of will outward in all directions, forming an
impenetrable, corrosive shield of protection. Scores of paper
demons failed to breach it. They burst into flames and crumbled to
ashes.

The shield smothered all outside
sounds. All I could hear now was my own and Karla's breathing. She
twisted around to face me and kissed me on the lips, her cheeks
damp with tears.

I felt only numbness inside and pain
where the avatars had nicked me. Maybe Karla interpreted my actions
as an act of love, but what I had done for her, I had done more out
of respect for the memory of what we once had. That feeling was
gone now, snuffed beyond hope of reincarnation. It might be argued
that a love that fragile was not worth reviving.

I said nothing and did not return her
affections, just held her close and waited out the storm, listening
for clues as to what was happening around us. As the shield relaxed
it allowed some sounds to seep through the barrier. Anonymous
groans. Dying flutters and hisses. A tinkling as chunks of the
wrecked column broke off and shattered on the roadway.

It sickened me that we had come all
this way and risked so much for nothing. After a time, a cool wind
played against my cheek and I knew that my will had receded back
into its source. The shield was gone, but so were the demon birds.
All that remained were crumpled and brittle remains strewn all over
the ground around us.

I stood up and took measure of the
situation. Karla, still a little skittish, stayed down. The column
lay in pieces arrayed around a jagged stub that remained planted in
the ground. The ground around it seemed untouched. He had not
managed to activate it sufficiently to conjure anything approaching
a root quake.

Just off the road, Rhino lay upended,
the membranes joining his thick plates between segments slashed by
a thousand cuts, many studded with the remnants of the suicidal
paper birds. Yellowish hemolymph gushed from wounds with each
upward heave of his plates.

I found Olivier crumpled in a ditch
and panting, his face all bloodied. Georg lay lifeless beside him,
his throat slashed, his neck broken. Ubaldo and Solomon came
staggering over to join me, their clothes shredded and dripping
blood.

“
Fucking avatars,” said
Olivier, grimacing. “We could have made armor, a shelter,
something.”

Ubaldo's wasp landed beside her master
and gently reached out with her palps to taste his mangled
elbow.

“
No!” said Ubaldo. “You go!
I will call you.”

The wasp obeyed. With a flick of its
wings it was off the ground and zooming back towards the
shore.

“
But maybe we
should
call the bugs and
skedaddle, yes?” said Karla, finally emerging from the ditch. “I
mean, what else can we do here?”

Ubaldo stood and stared up the road
towards the city whose spires were brightening, shedding their
purple tinges, returning to their original palette of glacial blues
and greens.

A contingent of heavily-armed
Hashmallim, some riding on large, armored carts, others jogging on
foot, had fanned out across the meadows and were making their way
down to us. Above them, a lone winged Seraph, guided their
assault.

“
We fight,” said
Ubaldo.

Chapter 65:
Replica

Karla shut her eyes, pinched her face
and shrieked in a pitch almost beyond the range of human hearing, a
talent most humans lose by the age of three.

“
You are calling your
insect,” said Ubaldo, crimping his brow.

“
Yes! Of course,” said
Karla. “We can’t fight this many. They will destroy us.”