Wolf in Shadow-eARC (36 page)

“That’s okay, I’ve had the misfortune of a modern British education, but I do read the occasional book,” Rhian replied.

“Things are hotting up,” Frankie said, diplomatically changing the subject. “Look!”

She stood close to Rhian to mask the divining rod. It was pointed towards the center of the hall, quivering gently as if excited.

The center of the arena was roped off and a poster announced it was an orc encampment created by the Royal Tunbridge Wells Fantasy Reenactment Society. Or, to put it another way, a bunch of weirdoes dressed up as monsters.

An attempt had been made to create a monster camp with the sort of wooden tepees that can be bought as children’s play houses. They had a campfire underlit by red bulbs to give a mock flame effect. Re-enactors sat around in animal fur costumes, pretending to sharpen swords. An orc with a gigantic plastic battle axe consumed a Pret-a-Manger low-calorie vegetarian-option, sandwich, which somewhat spoiled the effect. So far, so caveman but what really added to the weirdness was the monster masks that covered the top half of their faces and heads—and the green-skin makeup.

“They look like that Finnish monster rock band that won the Eurovision Song Contest,” Frankie said.

“Not something I watch,” Rhian replied, with a shudder.

“I don’t either, of course not. It’s just that sometimes one sees articles, in the Sunday
Guardian
,” Frankie wittered.

It was, Rhian reflected, an English middle-class conceit that one never watched television, except for the odd improving program on the BBC. Television was for the proles. Nevertheless, English middle-class ladies all seemed to know the plots to the soaps and the winners of the various game shows. No doubt it leeched in by osmosis since, of course, they never watched such lowbrow stuff.

Frankie walked around the encampment, following the guide rope. Rhian stayed put and watched. It looked about as menacing as a children’s tea party hosted by the Teletubbies, but the punters seemed to like it. The group were doing a roaring trade having their photos taken with customers who got to wave the swords and, if pretty girls, be abducted over a monster’s shoulder. Apparently being a monster gave one a certain license. One of the re-enactors came over to Rhian, waving clawed hands and generally pretending to threaten her. To keep in the spirit of the event, she shrank back, squeaking in mock terror.

“Har, har, a fair young maiden for the cooking pot,” said the monster, “or I could take you out for dinner after the show if you give me your telephone number.”

Rhian laughed and shook her head. “There are enough monsters in my life already,” she said.

She was starting to enjoy herself , despitethe silliness. Frankie reappeared, having made a circumnavigation of the encampment.

“Rhian,” she said in an urgent hiss, “this is serious.”

“Har, har, another maiden for my harem,” said the monster in a booming voice. Putting his hand around Frankie’s waist, he attempted to lift her over the rope.

“Will you get off!”

Frankie struggled free, disheveling her hair and showing far too much leg. She pushed her glasses back on and smoothed down her skirt in an effort to recover her dignity.

“It’s about to kick off,” Frankie said.

“So I see,” Rhian said.

“I’m serious, look at this.”

Frankie showed her the divining rod, which thrashed and coiled around Frankie’s arm like a pet snake. The end lifted towards Rhian, and, just for a moment, she saw two eyes and a flickering tongue.

“The rope around the encampment show makes a perfect delineated area for a magical circle,” Frankie said.

“To do what?” Rhian asked, having a shrewd idea what, but wanting to hear it confirmed.

“To contain the magic, to concentrate it and raise a cone of force that will open a portal deep into the Otherworld. So deep that it links to places human beings can’t go,” Frankie replied.

The air thickened with static, something Rhian now associated as immanent to magic. Frankie grabbed the rucksack off Rhian and removed a chip of chalk rock from a side pocket. Kneeling, she carefully drew a thick circle on the plastic-coated floor around them, going over any thin sections as necessary to reinforce the line. She placed four candles, red, yellow, blue, and green equidistantly around the circumference of the circle.

“Sylphs of air fly to the circle,” Frankie lit the yellow candle.

“Undines of ocean depths, swim to me,” Frankie lit the blue candle.

“Salamanders, dancing on fire, join us,” Frankie lit the red candle.

“Gnomes of the earth, link the power of your tunnels to my cause,” Frankie lit the green candle.

There was something incongruous about a witch in large glasses invoking a magical ritual as old as mankind, especially as she used a cheap see-through purple plastic lighter.

“Har, har, we have a witch for the burning, boys,” said the man in the monster mask on the other side of the rope.

His voice sounded deeper and garbled, as if his teeth were too big. Rhian looked at him carefully. The silly plastic mask stuck closely to his face, looking more real, like a proper film prop. The man was bulkier than she remembered, his arms a little too long, his legs a little too short.

“Um, Frankie,” Rhian said, touching the woman’s shoulder.

Frankie pushed her off, placing little heaps of some herbal mix in between the candles. She set alight each pile, not with the gas lighter but with her finger. They burned with steady green flames without the herbs being consumed.

She raised her arms and head to the ceiling and spun clockwise, “Orbis.”

The green flames from the herbs and yellow from the candles shot upwards to knee height, swirling around the chalk circle clockwise in green and yellow rings.

“I say, the special effects at these shows are getting better,” said a wargamer holding handfuls of carrier bags.

“Nah, seen better,” said his mate, who was clutching a box full of plastic battleships.

“I’ve bought us some time,” Frankie said. “The circle I’ve cast won’t hold for ever but, I hope, long enough for me to raise my own cone of power. Make sure you stay within the ring.”

The air inside the roped-off encampment thickened, forming into translucent grey tendrils that drifted clockwise, linking and amalgamating to form bubbles like the wax in a lava lamp. Reenactors shambled and grunted, swinging their swords at some invisible barrier around the encampment. It rang like a bell with each strike.

Frankie stood with her eyes closed. She posed with her arms out to the side and her elbows bent at ninety degrees. Her hands were open and flat, palms up. She reminded Rhian of pictures of princesses and queens in Egyptian tombs. Frankie had often said that all Western religious and magical ritual traced back to Egypt, the ultimate source of arcane knowledge. She chanted something in a fluid language that sounded Romantic. It was full of words ending in “o” and “a.” No linguist, for all Rhian knew it could be Spanish, Italian, or even Romanian itself.

The floating blobs and tendrils solidified and pinkened. Rhian felt a subsonic snap in her chest. The floaters rushed together into a tiny pulsating ball in a pink color too rich to exist naturally. Then it exploded with a pop like the cork from a champagne bottle.

Hundreds of chittering, leaping things appeared from nowhere at the edge of the rope. They scuttled outwards into the hall like an upended basin of cockroaches. Mischievous rather than dangerous, they jumped on the display tables, kicking over the models. They ripped up books and magazines, throwing the pieces into the air to create an artificial snowstorm. They flipped up women’s skirts to make them scream.

One flung itself at the flame barrier around Frankie’s magic circle. The humanoid thing hung there, gibbering angrily, scrabbling with clawed hands and feet. Bright red eyes glared at Rhian from a pink face and body. Pointy ears waggled and it poked its tongue out at her in a manner that was decidedly obscene.

“Um, Frankie,” Rhian said, patting the witch’s shoulder.

Frankie shook her off without opening her eyes.

“Don’t distract me. The portal only links to superficial layers of the Otherworld at the moment, but someone is trying to drive it deeper.”

The pink goblin burst into green flames. It leapt off the magic circle, screaming in a fluting voice. It fled across the hall seeking the security of fellows, managing to set light to others in its panic-stricken flight. When it was consumed, it left nothing but pink ash drifting in the air. The green flames spread quickly and lethally amongst the goblins without anything else catching fire. The goblinoids never seemed to learn, clustering together in their terror. They were all destroyed, leaving chaos as their epitaph.

“Now you have to admit that was good,” said the wargamer with the carrier bags.

“Seen better in 1970s Doctor Who episodes,” said his hard-to-please mate with the plastic battleships. “And they had wobbly scenery to boot.”

“Be fair, it would wobble if you booted it.”

Rhian filtered out the inane conversation and focused on the encampment. Grey tendrils and blobs were reforming and rotating clockwise, slowly turning rust red. The color pulled into the center. It thickened, spinning faster and faster, like when an ice dancer pulls in her arms. A vortex of seething energy formed. The funnel continued to squeeze and wriggle until it spat out a monster.

And what a monster—Five meters long, it looked like a flattened ice-cream cone. The ice cream end, the head, was smooth and the color of old bones, but the segmented body was rust red. Lateral deep purple projections that were as long as the body was wide, stuck out from each segment.

Rhian couldn’t get her head around the physics of the thing. How did something so bulky float in the air like a zeppelin? She tapped Frankie on the shoulder.

“What! I told you not to bother . . . Ye gods!” said Frankie on noticing the beast.

“What in the name of Hell is that?” Rhian asked.

“A monster from the Otherworld,” said Frankie, helpfully.

The tentacles rippled in sequence, like a series of Mexican waves. The monster slid through the air, picking up speed.

“That is impossible,” Rhian said. “Those tentacles . . .”

“Parapodia,” Frankie interrupted.

“What?”

“Parapodia, like on the side of segmented worms,” Frankie said.

“These
parapodia
things cannot possibly move enough air to generate motion,” Rhian said.

“Not according to the rules of our world,” Frankie said, “but who knows how things work where it comes from. The portal opening has moved deep within the Otherworld.”

“What are we going to do about it?” Rhian asked.

“Close the hole,” Frankie replied. “Cut off the energy from the portal, and the monster can’t exist here. Nothing that far away from our physics could. The more you distract me, the longer it will take.”

Frankie readopted her ancient Egyptian princess stance. She closed her eyes and resumed chanting. The monster circled the display hall, ten or twenty meters up.

“Now that is cool,” said the wargamer with the carrier bags.

“It’s just a radio-controlled balloon,” said his mate. “I was at the Riddlington Riflemen Show when they flew a twenty-foot zeppelin round the room. Silly sods couldn’t afford helium, so they filled it with hydrogen that they made themselves. A spark from the electric motors ignited the gas. The whole venue burned down. The Sea Scouts were pretty miffed.”

“The Sea Scouts, why?”

“The show was in their Scout Hut.”

On the second pass, Rhian noticed that the monster had five bright red eyes wiggling on little stalks at the front. The slit under the chin was presumably the mouth. It circled a third time, watched by the admiring crowd, and seemed to come to a decision. The pattern of
parapodia
oscillation changed and the nose dipped. It picked up speed.

The monster leveled out at about two meters height and turned to head for a group of wargamers watching from an open area. The slit under its head opened and a long, segmented cable as thick as a man’s thigh snaked out. On the end was a hinged claw like a serrated beak. The spectators scattered and the monster changed direction to follow one individual. The claw turned sideways and opened.

Rhian jumped over the flames and out of the magic circle to find the very air fizzing with magical energy. She recalled the subway where she met Max—and the elves. By the time she hit the floor, she landed on four feet and the world was monochrome.

There was a moment of disorientation, then the wolf howled. She gave it her all, a special howl, a challenge. She screamed the cry of an alpha female detecting an interloper in her hunting grounds, “a get out of my face or else” sort of howl. She ran after the floating monster. Pushing between the wargamers, she sent them flying. Plastic battleships sailed through the air, but the wolf was gone by the time they crunched on the floor.

“Well, really,” a voice said.

The monster left a pervasive scent, like rotten seaweed spiced with nitric acid. The youth targeted by the floater ducked under the claw and fled. It snapped shut on thin air. The floater lifted its nose and climbed hard, killing speed by translating it into height. It then stalled, rotating as it dived to change direction, and reorientated on the youth.

“Well, I’ll be damned, an Immelman Turn!” somebody yelled.

What struck Rhian was how little panic the audience showed. One or two people were backing away nervously, mostly women. They demonstrated yet again the superior intellect of the female of the species. Most of the wargamers gawped as if at a strip show.

The monster had plenty of other potential targets but seemed incapable of flexibility once committed to a particular prey. As a predator it was very, very dumb, albeit big and dangerous. Unlike the wolf, who was very, very smart, as well as dangerous. She changed direction at full speed, claws digging into the plastic, proving the superiority of ground traction. She cut across the angle of turn rapidly, closing on the floater.

The youth began jinking from side to side, hollering in terror, or perhaps excitement. The floater quickly caught him up. He finally did something sensible and tried to dive under a stall, but left it too late. The claw on the cable snaked in after him and pulled him out, screaming, by his ankle. Blood splattered across the floor where the deeply serrated claw bit into his flesh, and the monster lifted the youth. The extra weight badly affected the floater. It made heavy weather of climbing, giving the wolf a near stationary target.