Faith Hunter - Bloodring

We would all die without seraphic help. I needed to call on them, even if this time it meant I'd die, but I couldn't. No innocent was near death. I had to wait until Thadd or Eli was mortally injured. Compulsion held my tongue.

"They will take you in a single rush this time. You must call on my wheels." The words belled in my mind.

"Your what?" I said, as spawn circled us.

"Call on them. Call on the navcone. Call on my wheels."

"That helps a lot," I muttered raising my blades. "They're going to hit us all at once," I said. No one refuted me. Eli sighed and drew a hunting knife. Its blade was nearly as long as my shortsword had been. "I have an idea, but I need to… meditate." I had almost said conjure but caught myself at the last moment. I didn't think Durbarge would "suffer a witch to live" if he caught me at my gifts.

With a weary sigh, I folded my knees and sat on the cairn. A black opal was near my boot, but I was too tired to move. Blood and pain throbbed in my veins like vinegar and whiskey, dulling and enervating. I closed my eyes and opened a mind-skim on top of the mage-sight. The world ducked and spun around me. The hot taste of acid and chocolate rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down.

To my side, the mound pulsed once, here, not-here, a lavender energy I didn't understand but had used. Had made my own. In time with it, my amulets pulsed, and energy flowed into me. Guiding the tempo and rhythm, my blood beat at one with the mound. I breathed, and my breath blew out a lavender mist. Beside me, Thadd glowed all the shades of tourmaline, and I smelled the reek of kylen excitement and fear. He could suddenly see the amethyst too. I felt his lips press together to stop whatever he wanted to say.

The rest of the scripture that described the creature trapped in the bowels of the mountain emerged in my mind. She gave it to me, the words belling clear and ringing. "And there appeared in the cherubim, the form of a man's hand under their wings. And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubim, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the color of a gem stone. And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it… And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, 'O wheel! And everyone had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a human, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

"Use the otherness of the blended scan," she said. "The otherness…" And her voice fell silent.

My mind was still sluggish, my fatigue marrow deep. I was close to collapse. I struggled to find the moment in my memory when the sight had changed, to isolate the otherness I had experienced when I blended the mage-senses.

"Blasphemy," another voice tolled. "Humans and mages cannot do this. Only the archseraph and his senior winged warriors can do this thing. And only after they are paired with a cherub."

"She has bound herself to my wheels," the Mistress' voice rang.

"Foolish, she," came the answer.

The world fell away. Light, sound, smells, textures, blasted at me, smothered me, flailed me like barbed chains, rolled me like rapids, and trapped me there, dying. I fell, retching. My heart beat once.

And I fell and fell and fell and fell. My heart beat a second time.

On one level, in one place, I landed on the stone cairn. Felt the bones in my hand break, shatter, splinter, into hundreds of calcite shards. Purple light flared. The rocks beneath me shook, vibrated, and began to slide. One shifted and slid over my broken hand. My heart beat a third time.

In the other place, I glimpsed a river of lava, heat, energy, life, and death, and blood, and birth. It flowed to me, through me, and was gone. What are wheels? The boulder ground my shattered bones. Pain spiraled up, pulling me back. My heart beat twice more.

Below me, I saw a glimmer, a shine, a gold so pure, it was self-sustaining energy, trapped, hidden, shielded, beneath a layer of otherness. The otherness stood outside the world where my hand was broken, secluded, isolated in a sea of calm. A sea so black and textured it was like black velvet viewed on a moonless night. A place, but not a place. The next universe beyond this one? The space between universes? Between dimensions? The next dimension beyond where I existed? It wasn't within my understanding. My brain wasn't equipped with the necessary synapses to appreciate or comprehend it.

I threw up. Instantly I was back in the world I knew, my hand trapped beneath a boulder so massive, no mage could have moved it. Pain, a lissome agony, streaked up my arm, paralyzing me. My heart beat a sixth time. I gagged again as the pain reached new, unheard-of peaks of torture. I realized the earth was shaking. Earthquake.

On the hillsides, Darkness raced at us, streaking blobs of reddish black. "Tears of Taharial," I whispered, not caring that I was heard. I was trapped.

The cairn below me shifted again. The boulders slid and tumbled. The flesh of my hand was shredded, the bones ground to dust. I screamed. Time shifted. Thadd picked me up and threw me across the clearing. I landed in a tangle of spawn, sending them bowling away.

I cupped the remains of my hand against my chest and pulled the blade from my nape, whirling it once over my head, spitting stomach acid and partially digested chocolate. From beneath the cairn, navcone rose into the air. Navcone was gold, tons of gold, twisted and spiraled in perfect circles, hoops of energy that sparkled and spun and sang with joy. If pure energy could laugh, it roared with laughter. And I knew what it was. It was part of a machine.

As if moving in slow motion, Durbarge flew through the air and fell beside me, bones broken. Thadd landed at my other side, nimble footed and reeking of kylen.

From the mound only yards away, and from the oval glen beyond, lavender light pulsed, throbbed, pounded, a beating heart of life pouring through the soil and grass and trees. The ground shifted. Fire erupted like lightning. The earth rose and the accumulated soil of decades, rolled from the top of the new hill and tumbled to the ground. And still the mound and the glen lifted.

Amethyst, a single, narrow, pulsing, faceted amethyst the size of a football field, appeared through the falling soil. It sang, it choraled, a paean of joy and hope and life.

And its eyes opened. Glowing amethyst eyes, like the eyes along the Mistress's body. That was her name, the Mistress. Mistress Amethyst. Holy Amethyst. And these were Amethyst's wheels. I quoted the rest of the scripture from Ezekiel about the cherubim. "Their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about."

The eyes, hundreds of eyes, thousands upon thousands of them, blinked and looked at me. The weight of the stare was the weight of the world. The song of the wheels changed key and hummed a softer tune, an audible caress I could feel across my skin as if I lay naked in a summer field. It felt alive.

Above me the navcone rolled, altered its plane, and slid through space as if it weighed nothing. It impacted the lavender stone. Cracks showed through the amethyst, shattered fragments as useless as my hand. The gold navcone settled around the damaged stone tip with a soft, broken snap.

The navcone was the navigation nosecone of a ship.

Sweet Hail Mary. The amethyst I had been drawing upon was a ship. The eyes smiled at me. The ship crooned, pianissimo, a gentle lullaby melody. The lavender stone behind the nosecone clicked and separated into two hoops. Purple light discharged from the skin of the stone like lightning. It separated again and formed four, again and became six. A seventh circle lifted from the center and whirled and whorled. The other wheels began turning, gyrating. Each wheel within a wheel sang a different harmony, a chorus, a hymn.