Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Apocalypse

Copyright 1993­-2007 by Mayer Alan Brenner. First published by DAW Books, New York, NY, May, 1994. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution­NonCommercial­No Derivs 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­nd/3.0 or write to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, U.S.A.

From the ground, the bird was an infinitesimal white speck lost against the isoluminescent glare of the midday sky. From the perspective of the seagull, however, the ground and its features were clearly apparent in all their multiplicity and confusion. Below it now as it circled in its leisurely bank was the sparkling band of the Tongue Water, to its right the smoky bulk of the manufacturing district and beyond that the widening mainland, to its left the great city of Peridol.

There was more than just scenery transpiring down there under the bird’s dangling feet, though. The seagull’s unhurried path was carrying it around a wide coil of dark smoke that mounted even higher, curling and roiling, until an onshore breeze took it and shredded it into streamers and ragged sheets. Following the pillar of smoke downward took the eye into the midsection of a tall bridge. The bridge currently spanned the water less effectively than it likely had even a short time before. The center reach of the roadbed was obscured by steam clouds that were replacing the dark smoke with a puffier white. Here and there, where the steam parted, a few dying flames could be noted, and in more numerous other locations the surface of the water itself was visible through the bridge floor, rimmed by jagged holes and the raw edges of ruptured steel.

Wedged up against and partially underneath the bridge on its upstream surface, glinting and glittering, was a prodigious cliff of ice. Even to the seagull’s inexpert eye, it was clear that the steam clouds had resulted from the contact, in the not-too-distant past, of the shorn-off crown of the iceberg with the incendiary fires. Since the center section of the bridge was exhibiting - in addition to the roadbed damage - a prominent sag and list, of dire structural import, it was also apparent that the supporting influence of the iceberg’s bulk was keeping the larger part of the bridge from collapsing full-on into the water. A slender crag of ice that had not been clipped on contact with the bridge still towered over the upstream mass of the iceberg and loomed at a perilous angle over the bridge itself. Curiously, the uppermost section of this ice needle seemed to bear within it the crushed remains of what might have been a modest fishing boat.

Spectacular though these sights were, the seagull’s interest was not primarily architectural. Crowds of people were apparent on every side; on the bridge itself, on the river-bank grandstands, even a few remaining bobbers in the water or on small boats being ferried to the shore. Flocks of other birds wheeled about as well, those of sea and land keeping largely separate but all diving periodically to snare some useful morsel from the water or the crush on land. With a glance back over its shoulder the seagull verified it was being trailed at a respectful distance by a congregation of other gulls, panting and bedraggled from some recent exertion though they appeared.

A few large sea-creatures were still visible too, as looming shadows beneath the surface or as splashing wakes of foam. Confused by the abrupt end to the Running of the Squids but still attracted by the lures, a school of leaping marlin were trying to thread the tight gauntlet beneath the bridge and break through to the open ocean downstream. A lingering leviathan, wisely deciding against pitting itself against the bridge, was beating its way back upstream against the current.

The gull stood on a wingtip and spiraled down toward the bridge and the Peridol shore. From the swirls of soldiers, rescuers, gawkers, and hangers-on an occasional character stood out. Heading off the bridge into the city was a man who stood a full head taller than even the heftiest of the crowd around him. The man stood out even further by virtue of the breadth given him by the people in his immediate vicinity, even at the expense of hurling themselves bodily away to either side or of flinging themselves to the ground. The bird had descended low enough to catch the dull glint from the man’s nicked battle sword, but the glower on his face would clearly have been sufficient by itself to open the path in front of him. The man also had a bundle slung lightly over one shoulder, something that was either a six-foot length of crisped meat fresh from the spit of a street rotisserie, or, improbable though it might have been, an actual still-or-barely living person.

The gull cawed twice and then flapped vigorously, gaining altitude again as it launched itself over the city. Beyond the fashionable estates mounting the slopes of the Crust, on its way toward the palace complex, the bird spied a churning mob surging along a boulevard, howling and hurling offal and the traditional rotten produce at something up ahead. As the vantage point changed, this something resolved itself first into a sizable contingent of soldiers, and then in their midst a stout ox-cart. Lashed down to the bed of the cart and apparently encased in partial stonework to boot was another man. He shared with the berserker the same expression of grim determination. It was more difficult to read his face, however, since his head was all but obscured behind its bindings and a mask-like cage. As had happened with the hulking berserker, several gulls detached themselves from the trailing flock and began to loop deliberately above the cart as the lead bird swooped away.

The great city held far too many urgent sights for the bird to give even fleeting attention to each one. Accordingly, it passed over without a second glance another human figure sprawled prostrate in the refuse-heaped mud of a narrow back alley, its eyes fixed on yet another fire off across the city up ahead. In truth, a second glance would scarcely have revealed more information concerning this particular human. The trash covered the body so thoroughly that even its sex could not so easily be determined, and as for its status among the living or otherwise, well, certainly no sign of breath or movement disturbed the stillness of its repose. But then if the seagull had chosen to be comprehensive about it, it would have most likely had no trouble finding another dozen or two people in similar circumstances at that very moment somewhere in the city. Was the city not, after all, Peridol, foremost in the known world in every leading category, urban violence not least of all?

Whether the gull indulged in this particular depth of reflection was obscure. Its purpose, on the other hand, could scarcely be doubted. As it gained altitude, the second black cloud-pillar ahead revealed more of its base behind the intervening structures and low hills. Where the fire on the bridge had been dying under the melting ice, this new one was clearly in the prime of its life. Such were the volume of the leaping flames and rolling fireballs and shooting pyrotechnic flares that its source was wholly shrouded. Anything from a single building to a full block or more might be in the midst of being consumed.

Beneath the seagull now, reeling down the center of a street, was another ragged and disheveled man. He was both singed and dripping sea water, and like the others the bird had singled out for closer inspection his face was set in a grim expression of bleak determination. As the bird watched, the man staggered and almost fell on his face, obviously pushing across the limit of his endurance. He managed not to go down, though, and instead continued the last vestiges of his dead run.