Jo Clayton: Blue Magic

The sled swerved sharply, picked up yet more speed and began running at the wall on Maxim’s right, rocking, sliding, tottering under the increasing force and speed of the whacks from Amortis’ immaterial fists. It must be hellish inside there.

The sled swerved again, scooted behind the chair and stopped. The changers sucked great gulps of energy from the earth elementals and washed it across the back of the thronechair. The obsidian chairback exploded in a spray of molten stone; part of the energy in that eruption came from his own power which he’d stored in the chair, part from the stone life in the elementals, stone against stone, stone melting stone. Maksim jumped to his feet, did a hasty dance with his staff to shunt the melted obsidian away from him, cursed, then laughed, appreciating the irony in this interweaving of chance and intention. He leaped onto the chairseat, drew what remained of the stored power into himselfand flung the fire back at the changers and the sled.

Hampered by the narrow space and nervous about getting too close to Maksim, Amortis struck at them, hit the sled hard enough to slam it into the backwall, hit it again when it rebounded. And again.

The elementals kept trying to crush the shield, push ingthat futile attack because Maksim wouldn’t release them. They pressed more substance into their fists and beat on the shield, they grew knife-edged talons on feet and hands, gouged at the shield, they oozed themselves up toward the top of the shield sphere, oozed back down again when they couldn’t get a hold on it, their stony substance stretching and flowing like cold taffy.

The changers went wheeling and whipping through the elementals, they scooped huge gouts of earthfire out of them and flung it at Maksim, flung it with such power it seemed to reach him almost before it left their hands. He deflected it, but he was linked too closely to the elementals to escape their pain, their fury, the heat got at him, the fire raised blisters on his face and arms.

The exchange went on and on, neither side seriously affecting the other. Maksim kept waiting for the mist to act, but nothing seemed to be happening on the sled. It slammed against the wall, bounced against the back of the dais, it groaned and whined, it came close to capsizing, but the shield never faltered. He cast up a deflector of his own to carry the changers’ attack away from him and away from the chair so its stone wouldn’t melt from under him, he slapped his right foot on the stone, slapped his left foot on the stone, yelled a wordless defiance that filled the chamber, set himself firm as stone, set himself for a last throw, unknotting the trap-web about Amortis, dragging it back into himself, dragging an unwilling Amortis down from the dome, holding her shivering on the dais beside him, her mass compacted until she was a mere ten feet tall, a vaguely bi pedalshape of red-gold white-gold light. Sullen light. He muttered to himself, pulling from his sorceror’s trickbag the preparatory syllables that would set the points for the wild web he was planning to spin.

Sometime later he happened to glance round, no particular reason for it, it was just something he did; he saw black, dull black shirt and trousers, threadbare, wrinkled, a round graceless form silhouetted against the flare of the deflected earthfire. Tungjii. Watching. It jolted him. What’s that one doing here? Never mind. Concentrate, Maksim, don’t give himmer a crack for hisser thumbs. Forget himmer, you’ve got them in your hands, you can throw them anywhere you want once you’re ready. Ready ready, almost ready…

His voice boomed in a reverberant chant, filling the chamber with sound so powerful it was a tangible THING, the intricately linked syllables weaving a fine gold web about the sled…

DAK WOLOMENAS WOLOMENAS SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS

SEY NO TAS SEY NO MENAS PAGASE PAGASE AMEGARTA GAR

HREOS MEGARITAN…

Danny Blue grunted as he slammed into one of the legs, then into Brann; he rolled across the table, contorted his body to avoid the sensor panel, finished for the moment stuffed into the corner where the windbreak curved round one of the front legs. The sled shuddered, scraped against the wall, stone shrieking ,as it rubbed against stone. He ignored the battering and focused on water; the shield he’d woven about the sled wasn’t difficult to hold in place, it just required a steady flow of power which Brann and the changers supplied. A tube, that was what he needed, a tube and some molecular pumps. Tithe, hmm, same weave as the shield, don’t want Maksim cutting it…

Brann wrapped one arm about a table leg and reached for Dan’s ankle so she could keep up the feed. It was hot and stuffy and darkly twilight inside the sphere, the sensor panel provided a dim bluish glow and the feed pipe was a soft yellow, neither of them made much impression on the darkness. She and Dan weren’t choking on fouled air because Yaril and Jaril fed them fresh along with the godfire, but that only kept the atmosphere bearable, it didn’t make it pleasant. The godfire feed was spasmodic now (she smoothed it out before sending it on into Dan); the changers were moving too fast and too erratically to maintain a constant flow. They took turns as they’d done that time on the mountain, plowing through the elementals, collecting from them, splashing earthfire at Maksim, snapping the feedpipe down to Brann, pumping her as full as she could hold, doing this over and over. When the earthfire flooded into her, when it sat seething in her, it wasn’t quite as agonizing as godfire, but it was bad enough, it was like gulping down mouthfuls of boiling acid and it never got easier. She endured the pain because she had to, Danny Blue depended on her, young Koti had called in a promise-and most of all she was no longer ready to die, there were too many other promises she had to keep, promises she had made to herself. She endured and grew stronger not weaker as the torment went on.

Her eyes began to burn. She blinked repeatedly, tried to focus, but she could see less and less as the minutes passed. Her skin burned. She touched her face, held her fingertips close to her eyes and saw that they were stained. She touched them to her tongue, tasted warm salty wetness. Blood. Her tongue began to burn. The pain from, the earthfire was hiding… what? She fought to set that internal burning aside and feel about with immaterial fingers for what else was happening.

Smoky rotting vegetation smell, faint but there. A feeling of humidity, swampiness. Hunger. Now that she was listening, it shouted at her, HUNGER. “Dan,” she cried. Her voice was hoarse, her throat felt as if something was scraping it raw. “Dan, there’s something in here with us. What is it? DAN!”

Danny Blue heard Brann saying something, but he had no time nor attention to give her. He Reshaped the Pattern of the spherical shield (maintaining the shield in place and carefully separated from his other activities), and used the new Pattern to construct a closed cylinder; he poured more energy into it, lengthening it. He inserted the lead end into the shield, eased it through, then began the exacting and difficult task of forcing the cylinder through the thick elastic rind of earth elementals.

Brann realized he wasn’t listening and dropped the attempt to reach him. She took her hand from his ankle and clamped it briefly around her own arm, felt something like a greasy film spread around it. Scowling, she wiped her hand on her trousers, then closed it around Dan’s ankle so she could maintain the feed. She’s got a reading from the thing: an intensification of that feral hunger, no sense of intelligence behind it, only will, a predator’s will. Cautiously she reached out, pulled life from the thing, drinking it in as once she’d drunk the life of a black malouch, there was the same sense of wildness, greed, hunger. And fear as the thing felt the danger from her.