Embrace the Night
Page 51

She screamed and ran into the crowd, straight into the path of the elephant. It trumpeted its fear at the sight of a stream of fire headed right for it, and I guess its instinct was to try to put it out, because one of those massive feet came down with the force of a steam-driven pylon, right on top of her. And then another one for good measure. And then I looked away because it was either that or be really ill.
“You did me a service,” Pritkin was saying. “That was the return. Do not presume on my goodwill again.” He climbed onto the railing, still watching me out of the corner of his eye, and when Parindra made another flying swoop, he caught hold of the edge of the carpet and was gone.
“Pritkin!” I shouted the wrong name, but it didn’t matter; by the time the words were out of my mouth, he was already out of earshot. He was not, however, out of trouble.
It took Parindra all of a second to notice that he’d picked up a hitchhiker. He kicked out with his foot, but Pritkin grimly held on, which seemed to annoy the Indian Consul. He took the rug straight up, five or six stories above the tops of the houses, before trying again. This time, he succeeded, dislodging Pritkin with a kick that looked vicious even from this far away, and that sent him flying off into the night.
I stared, my heart in my throat, knowing that even a mage couldn’t survive a fall from that height. But before the scream working its way up my throat could get out, a filmy mass formed above his head, glowing pale blue against the black sky, like a neon jellyfish. The bottom of it flowed over Pritkin’s hands and arms, the rest ballooning up overhead, slowing his rate of descent to a crawl.
I’d known shields could do a lot of things, but a parachute was a new one. It was working, though, and unless there was a breeze I couldn’t feel, he was in at least some control of the thing. And he wasn’t trying to get back into the house; he was navigating a course in the other direction.
“Human magic never ceases to amaze,” Mircea said from behind me.
I whirled. “We have to get him!”
“Ming-de has agreed to take us with her when she makes her exit, which will be very soon. I do not know how she will react to having an unknown mage on board.”
“Not help him—get him! He has the Codex!”
Mircea’s gaze sharpened. “You’re certain? You saw it?”
“I didn’t need to,” I said viciously. “He’s trying to leave. And there’s no way he’d do that unless he already has what he wants.” Somewhere, under that monster of a cape, he had it on him. And now he was getting away with it.
Mircea was looking at me oddly. “You know this mage?” I did a double take, then remembered that Mircea hadn’t seen Pritkin without the hood up on the cape. That was good as far as the integrity of the timeline went, but it meant that he didn’t know the conniving, devious, dangerous son of a bitch we were up against.
Before I could answer, there was a flash of red light and a crack that was audible even over the sounds of battle. And between one blink and the next, Pritkin simply vanished. “What the…He’s gone!”
“Stay here.” Mircea jumped over the railing, wading through the carnage to where Ming-de had just emerged from the house. Her thronelike chair was back in hover mode, gliding serenely through the chaos, her fans cutting a broad swath in front of her while her guards hacked and slashed at everything on either side. But the fans apparently recognized Mircea, because they let him through to talk with their mistress.
In a moment, he was back, using a knife he took off a passing mage to pry at one of the orbs in the dragon’s claws. “What are you doing?”
“I promised to take you through the ley lines. It seems I will keep that promise sooner than I had thought.” With a flick of the wrist, the orb came loose in his hand. Ming-de floated gently up the ramp, which pulled in after her. The whole ship began to shake, and slowly rose off the ground, like the hot-air balloon it wasn’t.
“Wait!” I raised my voice to be heard over the sound of a couple dozen spells hitting the barge all at once; it looked like the mages weren’t too pleased at Ming-de’s early exit. “I don’t understand!”
“I will explain later. But if you wish to catch the mage, we must move quickly.”
“But ley lines are massive energy sources!” The way the pixie had described them, they were a cross between a volcanic eruption and a nuclear reactor. “We can’t go in there!”
“I assure you, we can,” Mircea said, putting an arm around my waist as the shuddering barge cleared the rooftops.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” I said shrilly, as he jumped up onto the narrow railing around the barge, balancing us there with a complete lack of appreciation for little things like rickety construction, pissed-off war mages and, oh, gravity.
“Hold on.”
I shook my head violently. “No, see, every time you say something like that, we end up doing something really—” Mircea crouched slightly and his muscles tensed. “Listen to me!” I shrieked. “We can’t—”
And then we did. Mircea jumped into what for a second was only thin air, then we were swept sideways into a rushing maelstrom of light and color, like being in the middle of bloodred rapids all pelting madly for a waterfall the size of Niagara. Flashes of blinding light exploded all around us, while molten channels of pure energy raced alongside and arced overhead. There was so much for my mind to take in that it was a moment before I realized we weren’t frying.
“We do not have shields like the mages,” Mircea said, looking euphoric, “but entering a ley line, even merely skimming the top, without them is madness. The energy forces would consume us in an instant.”
“Then why aren’t they?”
He pointed out a faint golden bubble of energy glowing softly all around us. Next to the pulsing swirl of the ley line, it was almost invisible. “The stronger mages can use the lines for rapid transport over short distances with merely their personal shields. Longer journeys require something more substantial.”
I stared around, amazed, as the energy stream rocketed us forward. “How did you even know this was here? There was nothing visible.”
“Not with the eyes, perhaps. But you could sense it, too, if you knew what to look for.” I was impressed for a moment, until Mircea suddenly grinned. “Or you can do what most of us do, and carry a map.”
“But you don’t have a map.”
“I lived in Paris for many years; I long ago memorized the lines’ locations,” he admitted. “I used them all the time.”
“You carried around something like that?” I gestured at the orb in his hands. The thing was as big as a soccer ball.
“There are pocket-sized shields, although they don’t give such a smooth ride.” A particularly large eddy in the electric current sent us spinning off to the left for a moment.
“Smooth?” I asked, clutching his arm to keep from falling.
“Oh, yes.” Mircea caressed the little sphere lovingly while somehow bringing us back into the center of the stream, where it was slightly calmer. “I will hate to have to return this.” He grinned at me again, obviously exulting in the wild ride. “It’s more than a shield. It can also help you find the lines, by glowing brighter when one is near, and can open a fissure if placed directly in its path.”
“But how are we supposed to find the mage in all this?”
Mircea pointed to a whirlpool of light up ahead. “Someone exited the line there, not long ago. I did not notice any other ley-line activity before his, did you?”
“I don’t know.” Between the spells and the duel and the whole thing with Pritkin, half a dozen could have been activated at once and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
“We will have to risk it,” Mircea said. “Hold on.”
“You know, I am really starting to hate that—”
And then we were falling, careening for the side of the line through a maelstrom of light and sound. For a moment I thought something had gone terribly wrong. But with a sudden absence of color and a resounding boom, like a peal of thunder, we were once more standing on solid ground.
“The Latin Quarter,” I heard Mircea say, while my eyes fought to adjust. The shifting, brilliant colors of the line left pulsing shadows on my vision, like fireworks against the deep black of the sky. “This area is a warren of small streets even in our time. This will not be as simple as I’d hoped.”
I finally managed to focus on the only remaining source of light, the orb in his hands. It was glowing softly, although if it was still putting a shield around us, I couldn’t see it. Of course, I couldn’t see much of anything else, either. Beyond the small puddle of light, all I could make out were buildings rearing darkly on every side, reaching for the great span of the galaxy overhead.
“How can you tell where we are?” Even with vampiric sight, this was dark.
“That particular line runs through central Paris and the Ile de la Cité. And I can smell the Seine.”
Good for him. I could smell mostly layers of garbage that lay rotting in the gutters despite the cold weather. My shoe squelched in something slimy that stuck to my sole and sent up the vinegar reek of decaying fruit. Horse manure and the sharp scent of human urine were everywhere, as if the streets had been drenched with them. Somehow, the swashbuckling movies never mention that sort of thing.
“This way.” Mircea took my arm, which was a good thing because the cobblestones were uneven and what parts weren’t covered by a thin layer of ice were slimy.
The dark, winding street was too quiet, and so narrow that I constantly felt like someone was about to lean out from the shadows and grab me. Considering Pritkin’s preference for offense over defense, there was at least a chance that someone would. But we came to the end with no problems, and discovered a slightly brighter scene lit by a sliver of moon: the Seine, with the soaring towers of Notre Dame beyond it. The light snow of earlier in the evening had melted on the cobblestones, turning them into an icy mirror that reflected the huge cathedral perfectly. Unfortunately, they did not also reflect Pritkin.