Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Apocalypse

... but it hadn’t seemed so much as though they were diving, as being sucked. Clearly this was a problem, and one for which Karlini felt some responsibility, although the real predicament had come from an overlapping cascade of roughly independent events rather than someone setting out to have things wind up this way. And the Lion was right, someone would have to try to do something about all this. The question was whether anything anyone could do would make any difference. Hopefully some sort of reinforcements would show up soon, and they would have a better idea how to proceed.

Karlini and Tildamire had stopped a block or so upwind, where the Lion, snarling at their lily-liveredness, had smashed his way into the corner general store in search of the ingredients for an incendiary device. Now that the Lion had found his supplies and was busily hurling firebombs into the buildings up the street, he was still foaming over with a constant mutter of curses, most of which were fortunately impossible to clearly discern. The breeze was now carrying new sheets of flame toward the swelling pillows of goo.

The commotion was also bringing the few denizens of the neighborhood who were still on hand, rather than present at the Knitting or just out carousing, staggering into the street. “How long you think it’s going to take before those people your father’s burning out of their homes gang up and try to lynch him?” Karlini said to Tildamire.

“What father?” said Tildamire. “I’ve never seen that man before in my life.”

“Okay,” said Favored-of-the-Gods weakly, consulting his tattered map yet again in the light of Wroclaw’s lantern. “Looks like we take the next right, and then there’s some kind of exit.”

The right turn Favored had mentioned was visible just ahead. It was just as well the light was meager; I didn’t need to see my companions to be reminded how dismal the bunch of us looked. By rights, none of us should be ambulatory, but then there was very little right about the situation.

“Found it have I,” said Haddo, scratching his way unevenly around the corner. A section of the passageway wall leaned outward, actively creaking. We wedged our way through it and found ourselves facing a line of wide tables, and beyond them, rows and stacks of books.

“What part of the Archives is this?” I asked Favored. “It looks like the main Reading Room, right? How do we get to the hidden stuff?”

“Let me see,” he said. “I -”

We all froze. We had just heard another door bang open somewhere close at hand, followed by a clatter of feet and the sound of a rabble of low voices. “Retreat?” hissed Haddo.

“No,” I said, “wait.” We were concealed from the main door by the pillar that also shielded the exit from the secret passage, but the lanterns carried by the new group were already lighting up the large room ahead of them. I peeked around the pillar and discovered my imagination hadn’t been playing tricks on me this time, anyway. I still didn’t particularly want to deal with Max, but in the scheme of things I thought I could cope. I raised my hand, stepped into the open, and said, “Hey, there.” They all wheeled toward my direction, but fortunately no one moved to attack.

Instead, about a half-dozen voices said “You!” in tones of varying incredulity.

“That’s right,” I told them. “And I bet we’re all heading for the same place.”

“See?” said the Lion, between pants. The reason he was panting had a lot to do with the fact that they had just been chased headlong down several twisted streets, only managing to elude their pursuers by seizing a quick route to the nearest rooftop after rounding the latest corner. Even the Lion had decided against making a stand to fight them all single-handed after the fellow with the crossbow had appeared, although they’d surely hear his complaints about their poor supporting work later.

Now the chase was clattering away beneath the very tree whose overhanging branches had proved so timely. “See what?” demanded Karlini. “I’m not up to this nonsense any more.”

Indeed, Tildamire didn’t understand why Karlini wasn’t unconscious again yet; he was clearly exhausted enough for it. But her father was looking away from them, beyond the peak of their perch’s slightly canted roof and the low buildings across the next street. “There,” he said, pointing.

And indeed the lane two streets over was clearly the site of his recent rampage; the twisting avenues had brought them back around to a close overlook of the renewed fires. “Yeah?” said Karlini. “So what? So as an arsonist you’re a success.”

The Lion spared him a contemptuous glance. “Another menace is crushed. Thanks to direct action, not a useless magician.”

Karlini sighed. “Okay, so what about all the screaming coming from that direction? Don’t tell me it’s all people you burned out of their houses. Sounds like it’s extending a pretty good distance downwind.”

“Perhaps my scourge failed to reach far enough,” the Lion said thoughtfully. Off beyond the fires, there was suddenly an abrupt flicker of lacy green, as though a ground-hugging lightning strike had ramified its way down a street. “Are you ready yet to do your part?”

“I don’t care if you use your scourge on me,” said Karlini, “I’m still burned down to a crisp. What about you, Tildamire?”

Tildamire shrugged. “I wish,” she said.

Karlini glared at the Lion. “Are you going to hit me with your sword if I tell you we’d better get out of here and get hold of some help?”

If Leen hadn’t quite liked the idea of opening her Archives up to visitors earlier, when each of them could be evaluated on an individual basis, she had never considered the idea that matters could quickly get a lot worse. There was no point in not admitting it: she hated having all these unvetted people tramping through her domain. But there was no point in dwelling on the situation either, since it was clearly far too late to be complaining. But still. It wasn’t a single guest here and another there. This was an out-and-out convention.

Even the Archive guardians had been cooperating, though not necessarily through any voluntary decision on their own. She’d have thought the guardians would have just fried the lot of them and be done with the affront. The guardians, though, had proved barely in evidence, revealing their presence only by the barest background murmur. Aside from randomly glowing patches of wall and errant wisps of steam, too, the path into the Archives - so fraught with danger and exacting maneuver under normal circumstances - proved merely a maze of twisty passages, a coiled slide, and a short staircase, although the entrances and exits from the individual chambers were still as likely to be found in awkward locations halfway up a wall as in the normal aspect ratio for doorways or arches.

If this sort of thing was the rule throughout the city - and there was no reason to presume it was not, given the other widespread evidence of the impact of Arznaak’s attack - then there would be any number of banks, treasure troves, and strongboxes whose wards and alarm systems would be out of order; a paradise for thieves and reavers, in other words. And the palaces of the gods! - their masters laid low, their special defenses disabled, their whole rationale undermined... whole wars could be sparked over that plunder. But then...

The Archives were a treasure house of the first rank, too. And their defenses, as she had just seen, were at the moment more hypothetical than anything else.

Of course, what she did have on hand, in this motley congregation, was a resource rich both in cunning and in serious brawn. She helped them sort themselves out and let them set to work, some on preparing a substitute defense against assault, some on ministering to the worst-off among the gang, the rest bent over tasks they set themselves.