Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Apocalypse

The exit from their current alley came into view around another twist, and they saw yet another wider street filled with yelling, shrieking, stampeding people. The revelry of the past several days had now clearly tilted over from the riotousness of celebration to the riot of panic; it was now no news to anyone in the area that the gods had been at each others’ throats in their very midst, and that the general public had been placed on the playing field themselves. The hysteria was being spread by the realization that the imminent fate of the masses was not merely a matter of the dire threats of folklore or even the cautionary tales of ancient history, of the collapse of empires or the devastation of continents; no, the casualties in the midst of the city - at the Knitting itself - were plainly in the thousands, and blood-soaked but still ambulatory victims were spreading the graphic image in their flight across the city away from the stadium.

As if that were not message enough, the rain of prodigies from the sky had not entirely ceased either, and the evidence of its landing was impossible to overlook, whether it took the form of a thirty-foot boulder freshly embedded in a ripple-edged crater straddling a boulevard and an adjoining building, surrounded by what must have been a lethal spray of cobblestones; or a fishing net still slick with sea-wrack and crammed with expiring skipjack; or the numerous structures along the streets with their roofs caved in and flames mounting through the shattered beams; or the rampant evidence of wild sorceries, uncontained and uncontrolled, their control logics scrambled and even the characteristics of their manifestation transformed. The wizard lights, for example, so common a feature of Peridol’s streets as to be unremarkable, had now become a constellation of miniature suns, comets, flares, and diving torches, any of which might unexpectedly swoop down from the sky and explode into a building or pounce incidentally on an unlucky pedestrian, burning their skin or blinding their eyes or - as in several cases they had passed - immolating the victim in a spontaneous sooty pyre.

Max and Shaa and Phlinn Arol, each of whose power was still reasonably intact due to the shielding effect of their proximity to Arznaak’s inner lobe, and whose minds had not been reduced to mush in the manner of so many others they had passed, without obvious wounds yet still crumpled on the pavement or clawing at their eyes or baying at the sky, drooling with dedication and incoherence covering their expressions, had been maintaining a common shield over the group. This barrier had not been subjected to direct attack but had been proving effective in deflecting the swooping passes of errant aerial hazards. Svin’s sword had been equally convincing for those hazards of a more concrete nature.

Svin, in the lead now, slowed at the alley’s exit and leaned out into the street. Even in the midst of flight, it was prudent to look ahead to see if you were rushing into something worse; after all, the throng trampling ahead of them might be in active flight from some fresh immediate menace. Indeed, almost as soon as the two groups had linked up on the battleground of the stadium floor and had launched their escape from the arena through a grandstand tunnel now emptied of spectators still able to walk, they had suddenly heard again the tumult of pounding feet and the shriek of voices, and had seen ahead of them a shifting light, now gold, now red. Flattening themselves against the wall, they had let the terrified pop-eyed pack swarm past them without sweeping them off their feet. Behind the ragged mob, though, was the source of the light, revealed to be a humanoid creature of flame, accompanied by a smaller flame-cloaked familiar projecting the general aspect of a terrier. Within each could be glimpsed the remnant of a corporeal form; a sorcerer caught in the midst of a spell, perhaps, which had blown back over him and the dog at his feet. Max’s first thought had been to try to snuff the fires and see if the person within could be saved, and Phlinn Arol and Shaa had similarly shifted into readiness for some sort of operation, but - almost faster than the eye could follow - Svin, in a broad horizontal two-hand sweep followed by a tight overhand loop that converted his blade’s trajectory to the vertical, had rendered the issue moot. Eyeing the heatless flames as they churned along the remains of the carcasses, Svin had said, “Emergency conditions apply. Any questions?” and that, rightly enough, had been that.

“Isn’t there something you can do to stop this?” Jurtan Mont gasped now, to no one of them in particular, as Svin in his role as spearhead shoved his way out into the street.

“Nothing to do but stay out of the way of this stuff until it burns out,” Max said.

“What if it doesn’t burn out?” said Jurtan. “Some of these things look like they’re eating, getting stronger. Look! - like that!”

Ahead of them, three of the leaping fire-comets, each about the size of a bushel basket, had suddenly begun to orbit each other, wrapping themselves quickly into an overlapping spiral. An even more powerful burst of light strobed out, and when the brightness had died enough a second later so the thing could be viewed without squinting, the three had become one.

“That’s not all,” Jurtan went on. “I keep hearing music...”

“Yeah?” said Max. “What music?”

“The Karlinis’ themes. And things I used to hear back at their lab.”

Shaa said, “I sent Karlini back there to keep an eye on things.”

Leen said, “I should check on the Archives, and your sister and my brother and poor Tarfon trapped in the secret passage.”

Max said, “With things the way they are we shouldn’t split up.”

Phlinn Arol said, to no one in particular, “Max has a tendency to overreact.”

Max threw up his arms. “Go wherever you want, then, the lot of you!” He turned and seemed about to plunge into the crowd on his own, leaving the rest of them behind.

“Max!” said Leen admonishingly. “Don’t run amok. Look, the palace complex is just down this street. I know one of the back ways in. Come on, follow me.”

Gashanatantra, who had been keeping pace with them but keeping his own counsel as well, spoke in Phlinn Arol’s ear. “We should talk,” he said. “Between the three of us,” he shifted Pod Dall on his shoulder again, “and Jill-tang, whom I would hope is intact, and Jardin, if he escaped the stadium, we represent a large proportion of our remaining peers. Between us we have things to discuss.”

“What about Byron?” said Phlinn Arol. “If he survived, he could easily set the agenda.”

“He was led down the path once,” Gashanatantra said. “I doubt he’s evolved enough to escape that happening again. But on the other hand...”

“Yes?”

“The current situation may be just the sort of contingency for which he had prepared some emergency plan.”

“That may be so, but how would you plan to find him in all this mess? I can’t hear anything through this din.”

They both knew he wasn’t discussing the noise level of the crowd. “Maximillian is right,” Gashanatantra decided, “this is no time to be wandering the streets alone. This group is rather clever; perhaps they will lead us to him.”

Karlini had continued glancing behind him as he and the two Monts retreated from the bubbling goo, and had seen something that had made him more nervous than the obviously infected and mutating bat. A line of insanely hypertrophied wizard lights had passed them overhead like flaming beads on a string, heading toward the wrecked laboratory. Over the mound of gray, the string of globes had gone into a downward spiral as though circling a drain, and then, with a rapid slurping pop-pop-pop, had dove into the goo and disappeared...