Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“Hah!” began Sy. Karlini took a step toward him. Always keep a working distance, Sy had been taught, so he also took a step back, and fell neatly over the upended chair Haddo had placed behind him.

“Amateur,” Haddo said. “With communications stayed should have he.”

On the Council floor, perhaps the only one who had noticed any part of this exchange had been Dooglas. Whatever Gazoont had been up to with his green gem-thing, though, it had obviously not led anywhere useful. “Fah!” he shouted. Enough of this. Balancing himself precariously in the center of the whirling pulpit, with a bracing arm extended to the lip at his side, he dug underneath his shirt, past the whistle, and found the small rune-covered disk on its heavy chain. Dooglas pulled the chain over his head and held the disk up in his clenched fist. “Sapriel!” Dooglas called. “Hear me!”

Svin had shaken clear of the tangle of troops and cascading benches. Most everything movable, including pews, desks, rugs, loose sections of parquet, and, of course personages, had made their way outward to the wall, either sliding, tumbling, or hurtling, where they had now piled up in a long mixed-media heap. The single door had become clogged almost immediately by the two bureaucrats and a back-bencher who had reached it simultaneously, being followed immediately after by the back bench itself; the resulting agglomeration had eliminated the doorway from useful consideration as an exit. Svin, however, had managed to keep hold of his ax, and was using it to make his way against the centrifugal pull toward the center, like a mountain climber working his way against gravity up the ice. A straight line of ragged gouges in the parquet traced his path radially behind him. Now, he jammed the fingers of his left hand into the space cleared by the ax on its previous chop, clenched his teeth, drew himself ahead, and then in a smooth motion jerked the ax free of the floor and swung it out in front with a convulsive fling. It bit securely. Only two more rounds of this and he would be at the lectern.

Shaa shook his trailing foot clear of the policeman who had been hanging onto it and pulled himself more securely onto his perch. He had reached the ledge that circled the chamber ten feet above the floor and served as the take-off stage for the ornamental pillars of the rotunda by immediately scurrying toward the wall when the floor had started to turn, keeping a careful eye out for newly arriving passengers and debris, and making his way up the growing pile. This was scarcely the diversion he had hoped to cause. If it worked, though, he would be more than happy to claim credit later. He rose and carefully inched his way around to the left, then leaned down and extended his hand. Haalsen Groot had just arrived at the wall, riding his box of judgment like a saddled battering ram. Out in the center of the room, a volume of air above Dooglas’ head was starting to coagulate.

Groot finished clambering out of the box onto the ledge. “Did you think this was going to happen?” Shaa asked him, nodding with his chin at the developing manifestation.

“What? - oh! No, surely not. I certainly would have never thought this Sapriel would take an active role even if Dooglas was involved with him.”

“Hmm,” said Shaa. “Well, unless yon barbarian is able to wind this up quickly, we look to be seeing an active role, and then some.”

“Send me your power!” Dooglas was saying. “Back me in my moment of need! Invest me with the aura of your greatness!”

“A bit excessive on the rhetoric,” Shaa said critically, “wouldn’t you say?” A shaft of coiling vapor with a distinctly orange tinge was reaching down from the area of curdling air toward Dooglas. Dooglas’ head and upraised arm began to scintillate.

Like the scraping of giant fingernails across slate, a large shuddering screech appeared, setting teeth on edge across the room. The hum and chug of the engine under the floor faltered. The floor shuddered, rocked, hopped up an inch and wobbled back down. Oily black smoke sifted up through the newest holes Svin had chopped; he drew a deep breath and narrowed his eyes, trying to see ahead through the sudden fog. He got a hand on the sill of the flapping pulpit door. A deep voice spoke in the midst of the crystalline zone above Dooglas. “Go away !” it said.

“Lord,” Dooglas said perplexedly, his head tilted back to stare upward, “I beg your pardon -”

‘‘I’m right in the middle of -” the voice continued.

Then the voice was overtaken by a large sound of sucking, and the swirl of sparkling air began to collapse inward like a deflating balloon. Above the ebbing slurp, a distant deep howl was briefly heard as the air rippled a last time and became smooth.

“Sapriel!” shouted Dooglas. “Sapriel? Where are -” Beneath his feet, the floor heaved again, settled, visibly canted over at a slight angle, a spray of parquet and a jagged coil of torn metal leapt into the air at the edge of the Pit, and the floor ground to a sudden halt. Svin had just set himself into motion. With the centrifugal resistance unexpectedly removed, he hurtled forward like a boulder out of a siege catapult through the open gate of the pulpit and into the still-twinkling Dooglas, the flat of his ax chewing a wide splintery track through the decorative hardwood siding. Dooglas and Svin hit the opposite side and kept going. The sparkle that had covered Dooglas’ upper body came loose like a suddenly-molted skin; firefly motes danced for a moment in the air before winking out in small delicate puffs.

Svin brushed a pile of punched-out wood off his arms and began to climb off the flattened Dooglas, who was looking at nothing in particular with his eyes crossed. The logjam at the doorway heaved and fell free in a jumble of waving arms and bench legs. Behind it was Eelmon, and behind him was a press of new police troops. They began to push their way into the chamber, the lead policeman shouting, “Traitors! Lay down your arms!” Then he looked around, saw the heaps of furniture and persons piled up against the walls, and the lack of remaining armed insurrectionists, and his voice trailed off.

People began to separate themselves from the wreckage, sorting out the bruises and puncture wounds from the occasional broken bone. Groot spotted the Speaker being extricated headfirst from a mound of rug, smiling weakly, and then noted the figure of old Caloot bounding across the floor toward the recumbent Dooglas. Dooglas watched Caloot come toward him with glazed eyes and a loose-jawed drool. Groot eased himself off the ledge and across the judgment box and went to join them.

“You boys never do learn, do you?” Caloot was saying, one hand on his hip and the other on the hilt of his walking cane, and his gaze turned downward. “You thought you could move against Groot here and not be taken down for it, and maybe you could have, you never know. Oh, maybe the Council would have given you a slap on the wrist if you’d left it there, but with the number of members you started off controlling and the others who wouldn’t have had enough guts to actually line up against you if you hadn’t forced them, you didn’t have anything serious to fear. But you wanted it all, miscalculated and played your whole hand, didn’t you, except you didn’t have as much to build with as you thought, eh? Well, at least you got headed off before you caused to much harm, before it got too far out of control.” He waggled his finger. “Let this be a lesson.”

Caloot turned away and started limping out, then paused once more to look around him. “Why does everybody always want to take over a city? You take over a city, you’ve got to actually run the place.” He shook his head. “Some folks are just plain crazy.”