Elizabeth Bear - Book of Iron

Ambrosias rattled at Bijou’s ankles. Salamander tucked her small orange associate into her bosom for safe keeping.

“I know,” she said. He reared up beside her, his ferret-skull head at the level of her shoulder. She thought if he could have, he would have hissed.

The cold raised the fine hairs on her arms, the nape of her neck. Her teeth ground together. Ice from the moist cave air rimed the rock and mud beneath her feet. When she shifted her weight, she heard ice cracking. Beside her, she could feel Salamander shaking. Only the bard seemed undiscomfited by the cold, and he had an excuse.

“Oh,” said Maledysaunte from Bijou’s back, “I think not.”

She didn’t speak those terrible words aloud again, for which Bijou was thankful. But Bijou turned anyway, feeling the presence of the Book within Maledysaunte as she raised up its aspect, and blistering heat rolled forth from her skin. Beside her, Prince Salih raised a sleeve to ward the side of his face. Bijou imagined she could smell his beard scorching. Riordan, on her other hand, seemed as unaffected by heat as cold.

The terrible heat baked Bijou’s shoulder and the side of her face before she turned back, shielding her eyes. It was a destroying power, wild and terrible. Bijou felt it wrestling with the preserving chill of the amber light, leaving the rest of them a barely-habitable zone in the middle.

“Can’t you mitigate that?” Kaulas asked.

“Sorry,” said Maledysaunte, with no evidence of strain in her voice. “The Book was not written to preserve life.”

The circle broke and reformed with Maledysaunte at the center, the rest ringing her within the band of light. Bijou squinted at the floor for several moments. Yes, the slow crawl of light had been arrested.

“Well,” Bijou said. “That’s doom staved off for a little while, at least. Now let’s figure out how to break out of here.”

“Punch through?” Prince Salih asked.

“What have you got?” said Salamander.

“Sword.” Bijou heard the rustle of cloth as he shrugged. “Poignard. Bullets.”

“No firing a gun inside the bubble,” Riordan answered. “Did you bounce off that thing?”

“Ricochets,” Prince Salih agreed. “You know, I’m not the one with the magic.”

“No,” said Maledysaunte. “Kaulas, I’m kind of busy. Do you think you can find a loose end in that and un-weave it?”

“Fight order with chaos?” he said.

Her voice still showed no signs of strain. “Since we don’t have a precisian of our own, fire with fire isn’t exactly an option…”

“So we’re all agreed that hitting it with swords won’t work?” Riordan said. Maledysaunte’s voice might show no strain, but that of the undead bard certainly did.

Bijou wondered what it was like, to be dead and still know fear. Could he feel pain? Did it matter? She didn’t know enough about the traditions of the religions of Avalon to guess what Maledysaunte might be keeping him from—or if his own people would hold him just a soulless shell, the essential part gone on to a better place.

“Hit it and find out,” Kaulas answered.

Riordan and Prince Salih must have a shared a glance, or some other moment of unspoken communication that Bijou missed, because they moved forward in unison to break the circle. Bijou saw the flash of swords in the amber light as they skinned their blades.

“You’re rusting my sword, Maledysaunte,” Riordan complained.

“Would you rather freeze?” she asked.

He hefted the northern broadsword—an ancient, crude-looking thing—and swung it over his head as the prince slashed at the amber barrier with his own ancestral scimitar.

It was as if two great bells rang on different notes. The reverberation seemed to start inside Bijou’s head and shudder down to her toes. Rock dust shifted around them; the floor trembled against the soles of her feet.

The swords that Riordan and Prince Salih raised again blazed bright and true and razor-edged in the sourceless light, reflecting gleams this way and that.

“It sharpened my blade,” said the prince. “Other than that, I don’t think we hurt it.” He sheathed the scimitar.

“Well,” said Kaulas, “it’s good to confirm the hypothesis. Let me try.”

As the prince and the bard fell back, the necromancer stepped forward. Bijou watched his narrow form advance, caftan sweeping about the legs of the suit he wore beneath. She should feel something—Affection? Jealousy? Pride?—at this moment, but whatever the appropriate emotion was, it eluded her. Instead, mind racing for alternate solutions, she waited to see if Kaulas would succeed.

She imagined the ticking clock, the moment when—somewhere outside—Dr. Liebelos would complete her preparations and summon the Book, destroying Maledysaunte in the process. Would they freeze into stasis then, as the bubble of negentropy collapsed around them? Would Dr. Liebelos allow that to happen, despite her daughter’s presence?

Would they even know it had happened until Dr. Liebelos let the bubble open? Could you die inside a stasis trap?

She didn’t know, and under the fear and uncertainty that set her heart to beating raggedly and her palms to oozing sweat she realized she felt mostly the burning itch of curiosity. She was a Wizard, after all—a scientist at heart. She wanted to know the answers before she died.

Kaulas spread his hands wide as he approached the wall of the trap. Not a dramatic gesture: a practical one. Bijou could see the shimmers of heat collecting around his fingertips, stretching in streamers from his hands. There was no light, not yet. Just that warmth, and the infiltrating reach of it like bare roots spreading, seeking.

He brushed those dendritic extensions against the amber wall. It might have shuddered; the faintest of ripples might have spread through it. If they did, they left no trace in their wake.

But slowly, meticulously, Kaulas began insinuating the unweaving of his touch into the tight-spun order that held them in thrall. A dim glow traced their seeking, dull red like the afterimage of lightning strikes on the retina.

They did not so much flare as throb, pulsing in time with what Bijou imagined was the beat of Kaulas’ heart. With each pulse they pushed in farther; with each dimming they receded. Not as much as they grew, however, and for a moment she dared to hope. She found herself leaning forward, fists clenched, rocking in time to that pulse as if urging a horse to a jump— push, push, push now.

Kaulas groaned, grunting with effort, leaning against the wall of the bubble, pushing his palms flat. Slowly, Bijou thought. Slowly, slowly, they began to sink through the amber light, wrapped in a protective glow like sullen embers.

The thunderous crack and the reek of ozone shocked her into a scream. Kaulas made no sound except the harsh whuff of expressed air as he was hurled back, arms blown wide.

Prince Salih stepped in and caught him.

It was one of the smoothest things Bijou had seen in a long partnership of smooth interventions. Kaulas might have been silent; the prince grunted thickly as the necromancer’s weight struck him. But he was braced, and he only staggered a step backward before arresting Kaulas’s ungainly flight. Bijou covered the distance in three running strides, relieved or furious to see Kaulas’ eyes open blearily.

“Well.” He raised his hands gingerly, still slumped back against the prince. They were raw, and looked sore. “I’ve identified one of its defenses.”

“I’ll say you have,” Bijou said, swallowing irritation and amusement. The damned man had an uncanny ability to make her feel two contradictory emotions simultaneously. She took him by the elbow and steadied him to his feet as the prince pushed. “Now what?”