Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

Debris was falling freely now, leaves and branches; Raven retreated farther. He judged that the monster was free of obstructions, and stared upward, trying to determine why it did not fall, in all its fury, upon those below.

Men were shouting-undoubtedly the odious Dibbs and his underlings, but Raven spared no glance for such as they.

The beast, he could see, was gripping the great trees with its claws, holding itself aloft as it studied what lay below. It could see the sky-ship, but surely knew not what it might be. Likewise could it see Valadrakul; did it know him for what he was? If so, it might strike him down before another spell could be cast.

Raven hesitated. Valadrakul was too intrigued in his magicks to move of his own choice; should one then try to pull him thence, out from beneath his foe, ere disaster might arrive? An it might disrupt a casting, yet would it save the wizard to fight again.

Ere he could decide, another spell went up-no mere bolt like the last, but a torrent of glowing force, orange and gray, smoke and fire bound into one. It leapt up from the wizard’s hands and into the beast’s gaping maw.

The thing, in anticipation of the attack, had released its hold upon the trees, had drawn in its claws and begun to fold its great wings.

And then all happened with such speed that Raven could not follow. Valadrakul’s fire caught at the inside of the monster’s throat, and its head seemed to be burnt out from within, the glow of the flames visible for an instant through its crystalline eyes; smoke and fire billowed forth, obscuring all; and the creature fell.

Sound and wind forced Raven back; he flung up his arms to protect his face, and thus did not see the actual impact. The rush of air knocked him back against a tree; his head struck hard against the wood, and for a moment his thoughts were scattered.

When he could see again, and understand what he saw, the spaceship was gone from his sight. The clearing, too, was gone. Valadrakul was gone, and Colonel Carson’s remains, and poor Elani’s. The demented Earthman, Ted Deranian, had vanished as well.

And in the place of all of them was only a great black heap.

It needed a moment ere Raven understood that that heap was the remains of the fallen bat creature.

And that Ted Deranian and Valadrakul lay somewhere beneath it.

Pel approached the dead monstrosity carefully. The thing was obviously dead or dying; Valadrakul’s fireball, or whatever it was, appeared to have burned out the entire interior of its skull, and surely even one of Shadow’s magical creations couldn’t survive that.

But on the other hand, with a thing that size, even a final spastic twitch of a wing could probably break a person’s neck.

He saw no twitching, though. He couldn’t hear if the thing was making any sounds; Amy was screaming as she ran toward him, drowning out almost everything else.

Her screaming was not particularly piercing, just loud; Pel judged that she was not so much frightened or hurt as working off accumulated tension. He ignored the screams and looked the situation over.

The body had fallen directly atop I.S.S. Christopher and then slid partway down the far side, but the outstretched wings seemed to cover the entire area; the bony claws had gouged huge raw yellow chunks from the surrounding trees on the way down. Pel kicked aside a curl of bark the size of his head from one such wound; he stepped over a fallen branch and stopped a few feet from the black membrane of the wing.

It looked like thick rubber or polished leather. At first Pel thought he could see the shapes of tree-branches showing through from beneath, but then he realized that those were veins within the wing itself.

He started to reach out, then stopped. He didn’t really want to touch the thing.

Ted and Valadrakul were underneath it, though. They might even still be alive. Forcing himself, Pel reached out, grabbed for the edge of the wing, and tried to lift.

It was still warm, and it felt horribly like human skin with a thin coating of fine fuzz. It was thicker than he had realized; when he slid his fingers underneath he couldn’t get his hand all the way around the edge to close his thumbs over the top. Prying upward with just his hands did nothing at all; the wing did not budge, and his fingers slid out from beneath.

That black fuzz was as smooth and soft as cat fur; it didn’t give him any easy purchase.

“Someone give me a hand!” he called.

He tried again, thrusting his arms under the wing as far as his elbows and heaving upward. His muscles strained; his breath stopped. The veins in his face distended, and he felt as if something would burst at any moment.

The monster’s wing did not move.

“You think they’re still alive under there?”

Startled, Pel recognized Susan’s voice. He also realized that Amy had finally stopped shrieking. He relaxed and turned to Susan, who had come up behind him.

“They might be, anyway,” he said. “But they may not have much air left, if they are.”

“You think it’s airtight?”

Pel waved at the huge black covering. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I think you need better leverage; there are plenty of branches you could use.” She, in turn, waved at the scattered debris left by the creature’s descent, and the ship’s fall before that.

“More men,” another, deeper voice said. Pel realized that Stoddard was standing at Susan’s shoulder. “Sticks are well enow, but this needs more men than one.”

“You’re right,” Pel said.

“We’re two, then,” Stoddard said.

“Three,” Susan corrected him.

Stoddard looked down at her from his six feet or so of height; she smiled crookedly up at him from an inch or two over five feet, her still-bandaged arms folded across her chest, and corrected herself, “Two and a half.”

Pel called, “Lieutenant Dibbs!”

* * * *

Dibbs had wanted to find all his men before attempting any rescue efforts; four of them had not returned yet. Only when Prossie Thorpe had reported a decision from Base One would the lieutenant agree that uncovering Valadrakul and Deranian was more urgent.

And only Prossie knew that she had lied-there had been no decision to report. The people back at Base One had completely lost touch with the situation; they were still talking about whether Colonel Carson might not be completely dead, and what medical assistance might be appropriate. Bascombe and Hart were concerned with an attack on Shadow’s stronghold, with setting up a proper chain of command that they could duck out of to avoid accountability if they had to. Even Carrie had not really followed the sequence of events after the arrival of the first group of hellbeasts; she was far more concerned with assurance that her cousin was safe, that there weren’t any more monsters lurking somewhere nearby, about to leap out and eat everybody. No one at Base One understood about the black wing, about how big it was. No one there appreciated that Valadrakul was the only wizard left, and that magic was their only hope, both in any fight against Shadow, and as a way home.

Valadrakul had to be saved, or they were all trapped here, all as good as dead. And no one was listening, no one at Base One, none of the Imperials in Faerie. Pel had tried to explain, but Dibbs had almost ignored him-Brown was a civilian, a passenger, with no authority. Raven argued that the two should be freed, but he said nothing about a need for magic; he spoke only of how Valadrakul was a faithful servant and owed loyalty. Amy and Susan babbled of a common humanity that meant nothing to an Imperial soldier.

And Prossie could not speak on her own account; she was a telepath, and a woman-a mutant bitch. She had been called that all her life; she knew that that was how Dibbs saw her. No one would listen to her as herself.