"Which would damage the overduke"s body, and thenhe"d be p.i.s.sed. If we had Pentothol we might be able to do something, but we don"t. To get him to cooperate requires a lever or a bribe, and we ain"t got squat. And there"s no guarantee that Botello knows what we want him to know. For all his power he"s an amateur, and they tend to cut corners when real work is inconvenient to their desires. I still need you over there to find Anton and help me work out how to deal with the river, but when it comes down to bra.s.s tacks, Anton is a side issue. The river is the big deal."
"So I go to h.e.l.l?"
"You go to h.e.l.l."
"d.a.m.n it."
"Ain"tthat the truth?"
Cadmus and Velma walked in. His gaze went right to Filima and took the rest of his body along. He guided her off into a corner for a quiet talk. Apologizing like crazy if I read his body language correctly. I could have listened in, but was too busy smiling at Velma. She came over to me, smiling back.
"I think it"s a brave thing you"re doing," she said. "Terrin told me how you"re going to find Anton and bring him home."
The last I"d heard I was going to find Botello and kill him. Of course that was sc.r.a.pped what with Botello being Anton. I switched gears quick, though. It"s not often I have a major babe hanging on my every word. Very cheering, considering the circ.u.mstances. "Well, it"s a dirty job, but someone has to-"
"Can it," said Terrin. "We gotta get moving. You guys, front and center in the chairs. We"re going to do a modified kind of seance."
"Really?" Cadmus perked up. "You liked my idea?"
"It has angles I can use, so listen. We"re all going to sit, Myhr lies on the floor in the middle. I"m going to be his anchor for this side of Reality, you guys are gonna add your psychic energy to the pot. It means less work for me so I can focus on keeping him safe."
I was all for that.
"But Botello drained off my magical energy," said Cadmus.
"Good. Less static on the line. This is a mental thing, not a magic thing. Filima, you keep your power to yourself, don"t try to help me."
She nodded, and everyone picked a chair, standing ready. They looked as nervous as I felt. He gave them each a small quartz crystal and told them how to hold it. I got a larger crystal and a sword.
Cadmus stared. "I say! That"s my sword, the one made with-oh, ah, that is . . ."
"Cold iron," Terrin completed for him. "Yeah, I got it off of blondie-boy. Told me it was a family antique.
What"s your family doing running around making wizard killers?"
"Haven"t the faintest," he said, looking uncomfortable. "The thing"s very old. Forgot I had it."
"Yeah, sure, whatever. Myhr, there"s two things you have to remember to make this work: hang onto the sword, hang onto the crystal."
"I get the drill. If I don"t then horrible things happen to me, right?"
"Exactly-you lose these and we"d have to buy new ones "cause they"re borrowed."
"Then I won"t be trapped in h.e.l.l and eaten by demons?"
"I never said that. And stop speculating on what you think might be there. It won"tever be what you think, besides I"ll shield you from seeing the worst of it so-"
"Worst of what?"
"What do youthink ?"
Oh Gawd . . .
"Just tell yourself it"s a movie with production design straight out ofAlien and you should be able to keep from going into shock."
My back fur was up. In a big way. All over my spine like static electricity. "Terrin . . ." He gave me one ofthose looks. No smart-a.s.s grin, no patronizing, snarky frown, but something of the real person he kept well hidden inside. "It"ll be fine. I promise."
Jeez, but I"m a sucker for sincerity. One of these days I"d have to get therapy before it killed me.
"Places everyone," he said to the others. They all sat except for Terrin. "We"re going for a take. Myhr, lie down in the circle, your head to the south."
I did so. Terrin stood before the southern chair, looming over me. He had a small crystal ball in one hand, and a large quartz crystal in the other that he held out over me. He muttered some kind of chant, waving the quartz around in a power pattern. The chalk sigils surrounding me kindled and brightened, feeble at first, then glowing like embers from a fire. They began to pulse; it was pretty, until I realized their pulsing exactly matched the beating of my heart.
Oh, s.h.i.t.
He stopped waving, stepped back, and dropped wearily onto his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"What"s wrong?"
"Nothing, just this gawd-d.a.m.ned magic-sucking world! It"s trying to kill me. I ain"t gonna give it the satisfaction."
Something about him had slipped. His aura was wrong. What in the world . . . I focused and realized he"d cast a glamour on himself. It seemed to melt from him, at least to my eyes. I didn"t know if the others saw the reality.
He looked to be a hundred years older, hair turned bone white and so much color leeched from his skin that the veins underneath were visible. His weight was down, too; he"d gone gaunt, from cheekbones to hands, which were downright spidery.
We"d been here only one night, a day, and another night. At the rate he was deteriorating . . . I got a nasty, dark, cold feeling inside that he was dying and that it would be only a matter of hours.
"Yeah," he said, as though hearing my thoughts. Sometimes he picked them up if they were strong enough. "This is as serious as death." From the expression on his wasted face I knew he wasn"t exaggerating.
He made an effort to straighten. I could see now that he was moving like an arthritic chicken. Despite the warm gold glow of the sigils he looked sickly. One-good-breeze-and-he-might-float-away kind of sickly.
d.a.m.n . . . and d.a.m.n again. That wasn"t fair. It sucked ca.n.a.l water.
"Yeah," he said. "It does. I can"t do this alone, Myhr. I need your help."
Jeez-I knew what it had cost him to saythat .
"What do I do?" I asked. I was nervous. Didn"t like it. Couldn"t help it.
"Close your eyes, breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. The same for the rest of you.Clear your minds."
Easy enough, but I couldn"t ask questions. Maybe he just wanted me to shut up so he could concentrate.
I did the breathing for awhile until a dim flashing took place beyond my closed eyelids. That would be the sigils pulsing brighter. Their pace still matched my heartbeat-which was speeding up.
I gripped my crystal and the sword hard.
"Keep breathing," he said.
After a minute or three the flashing faded. The room turned strangely cold. I thought I knew what that meant.
Okay, show me what you see.
My eyes popped open as much from surprise as anything else. I sat up. His voice was rightin my head.
"What the h.e.l.l-?"
Yeah, pretty much,he cheerfully agreed.
In. My. Head. "You didn"t say you"d be crawling around my skull! Get out!"
Cool it, Myhr, I already know what you do in the shower on Sat.u.r.day nights, so chill. Your secrets are safe with me.
"ARRGH!".
Anguished screams cut no ice with him. He waited for me to settle down. Look, we"re stuck like this for the duration. Just do what I say and it"ll be over that much faster. Okay?
Like I had a choice in the matter. It was one thing to get a telepathic distress call from him, very much another to hold a conversation. "What else are you into?"
"Not a lot. I"m seeing through your eyes. It"s coool. I gotta get me a set like yours when this is done."
I suppressed a groan. And shut my eyes for a second, just to annoy him.
Take stock. Are you all there?
Now that was a d.a.m.n stupid question, until I remembered where and what I was: a projection of myself into the Otherside. I seemed to be in my own solid body, wearing familiar clothes, sword and crystal firmly in hand. One part of my brain accepted the reality, found comfort in it; another part was just as certain it was pure illusion. I didn"t know why I knew that, must have been the cat DNA pulling some overtime. "It"s copasetic so far as it goes. Now what?"
Look around.
I looked around. And listened. And smelled. And felt.
It was bad. Bad beyond bad. No pretty blue room, but a strange, flat landscape with no specific light source. Earth, trees, gra.s.s, sky, clouds were an unrelieved cotton candy pink. My sensitive nose was jammed with the smell of burning sugar. The pink ground was sticky. I was being pelted by cobwebs of forming candy. The stuff fell on me like gossamer snow. Pink, of course. Sticky.
On the heavy air I heard the thin fruity voices of thousands of children singing. In h.e.l.l? That was wrong.
Terrin had sent me to the wrong place. I was in kiddie heaven and any second some Otherside Shirley Temple in a fluffy dress would come tripping up to give me a chorus of "The Good Ship Lollipop."
The singing children abruptly launched into that particular song.
"Terrin? You messing with my brain? What"s going on here?"
Your brain"s already messed up. I"m doing what I can to shield you from what"s really here.
"You promised meAlien . I"d rather have that than this!"
No you wouldn"t. Shut up and walk. Hold your crystal out. See if it draws you anywhere or lights up.
"Okay, I"m walking. Gawd, it"s like the floor of a dollar movie theater here."
He snickered. The son of a b.i.t.c.h had put me in circus h.e.l.l and he was laughing about it.You"re doing fine. Bear left at that-er-ah-tree.
"Tree?" It looked more like a giant gumball. "What is it? What are you seeing?"
Never mind, you don"t wanna know. Oh, yeah-do me a favor and don"t eat anything here.
Yeah, sure, like I was planning to scarf down this junk.Not that hungry. "How does that do you a favor?"
So I don"t have to listen to you bellyache about it later.
He seemed to be following a theme here, so I decided not to ask him what was really raining on me.
I slogged forward, going fast. I guessed that this was costing him a lot in terms of effort, and speed would be a good thing, but I was without a clue to where I was going. The quartz didn"t do any special effects for me. Once I glanced behind when I thought I saw movement. Nothing there unless you counted a faint silver thread winding away into the pink distance. One end was attached to my back somehow.
Must have been how he was channeling to me. Man, this wasweird .
"There"s nothing here," I said. "Just miles and miles of monochromatic indigestion."
Okay. Dammit. I was hoping I wouldn"t have to do this to you.
Before I could ask an obvious question I felt a rippling shift through my body, through the whole of everything around it. The pink landscape suddenly darkened to blood-red, the sticky rain stopped, and the children"s singing changed to laughter like wind chimes, harsh and discordant. In another minute I wouldreally hate this place. You should see something. Look!
I looked, but even my eyes had their limits. Making a slow, in-place circle-without tangling my astral thread, it remained illogically straight-I held out the crystal. It flickered once, very faintly.
That"s good! Go with it!
I moved in that direction, though the crystal remained dormant. "Not that I"m eager to see any of "em, but shouldn"t there be some demons here?"
Yeah, but I"m shielding you. They can"t see you either, if that"s a comfort.
It was. A big one.
I"ll prolly have to remove it before too long. When you get closer to Anton. What shields you could hide him from view.
"Hey. I just thought of something. How will I know Anton if and when I see him?"
Easy. He"ll be the one not trying to eat you.
Oh, gawd . . .
Chapter Seventeen.
In a Street Near Darmo House Botello"s horse, commandeered from one of Anton"s guard, wasn"t as restive as that white monster belonging to Cadmus, nor as pliant as the one stolen by the Burkus House lackey, but somewhere in between. The animal was none too happy having him on its back, but not to the point of bucking, just balky and restive, ears flat, snorting and stamping all the way. Botello considered slapping a tranquility spell on it, but decided to save his power. Throwing fire had taken a bit out of him. Better to save himself for facing his dear, soon-to-be-departed wife.