Tefy's vulture-beaked grin pulled wider still. "Her?" He peered at Fredericks' male Pithlit-the-Thief sim. "So it is masks and costumes, is it? But—let her go? I think not. No, it is you who will come with us, or we will peel her apart in front of you. Do you want that? You and the rest of your people must have noticed by now that there is no escape from the network—that what happens to you here will be all too real."
Orlando took a step closer. "I don't care. If you hurt her I'll take at least one of you with me. I've already sixed one of your turtle-boys." He felt no need to add it had almost drained his last strength to do so.
Fat Mewat goggled his eyes in enjoyment and let out a loud, rolling belch. "Ooh, aren't you a wicked lad?" he hissed at Orlando. "Aren't you, now?"
A loud impact from just behind him made Orlando jump. He whirled to see the door sphinx Saf being dragged to the ground by the bull-headed war god Mont, who clung to the sphinx's neck like a terrier. Antlered Reshpu drove his prongs into Saf's side again and the great sphinx let out a long, low moan like wind rushing down a deserted street. The massive guardian struggled back onto his lion's legs once more, but he was clearly losing strength.
"It is nearly finished here." Tefy stilted a step closer to Orlando. "You and your people have lost. If you come along without struggling, we will release your friend—we will need only one of you, after all. You see, when we take you to our hidden place you will tell us all that you know and wish you had more to tell."
My people? Do they know about Renie and the others? Orlando could make no other sense of Tefy's words. The vulture-man knew Orlando was a Citizen, a real person—he couldn't think he was anything to do with this local insurrection in the Egyptian simworld.
No, he realized suddenly, they think we're part of the Circle. A group that actually was a threat to the Grail people, or meant to be. Was there some way he could use this to his advantage? The fear made it almost impossible to think, and he was so tired.
"Right," he said out loud. It was easiest this way—if they took him, they would be trading Fredericks for damaged goods. There was little chance he would live through an interrogation, and he had nothing much to give them in any case: he knew little of the Circle, and could not even be sure Renie and the others were still alive. "All right. Let her go. Take me."
Mewat extended a scaly hand. "Come here, then, my lad. Don't be afraid . . . you may even enjoy parts of it. . . ."
Allowed to sag until her feet touched the floor, Fredericks' eyes flickered open and surveyed Orlando blearily for a moment, then caught sight of Tefy's angular form.
"Run, Orlando!" Fredericks struggled uselessly, then was heaved up into the air again, hanging from Mewat's meat hook paw. "Just run!"
"They're going to let you go," said Orlando, trying to keep his friend calm. If there was any hope of getting out of this, they could make no mistakes. "Just don't do anything sudden, Frederico."
Fredericks thrashed helplessly. "They won't let me go! You're scanning major if you think they will!"
Orlando edged closer. "They said they would." He eyed Tefy, who was rubbing his impossibly long and bony fingers together, cheerful as a child at a birthday party. "Right?"
"Goodness, yes." The distorted beak pulled down in a look of wounded solemnity. "In our way, we are . . . men of honor."
Orlando took another step forward. The aura of terror around the pair beat at him like a stiff cold wind; it took all his courage not to turn and run. How could Fredericks stand it without shrieking?
"Now," he said as he came within just a few meters of Mewat, "let her go." He lowered the sword until it pointed at the thing's immense, pale, oily stomach.
"When I can touch you," the cobra-man said.
Fighting his terror, Orlando gave Fredericks the most significant glance he could muster. This would be delicate—how much pain could he cause this monster if he struck at that flabby hand?
A sudden impact made the floor vibrate and drew the cobra-man's gaze to the side. The great sphinx had tumbled again, and this time was writhing on the floor with the two war gods atop its chest.
"Dua!" The sphinx's bellow threatened to crumble the temple's walls. "Dua, my brother, I have fallen! Come to my aid!"
Orlando seized the moment, lashing at the hand that held Fredericks suspended. "Run!" he shouted. As Mewat jerked in startlement, Fredericks managed to twist free. Orlando leaped in with his blade to cover her escape, slapping at the snarling, jagged-toothed face, but Mewat deflected the blow with his wounded hand, then struck with terrible, unlikely speed, dashing the hilt from Orlando's grip. His partner Tefy stilted after Fredericks and snagged her in his long fingers before she had taken two steps.
A huge arm coiled around Orlando and pulled him suffocatingly close. He struggled, but there was no breaking that grip. Mewat's mouth brushed his ear.
"After you talk, and talk, and talk about what we want to know . . . I think I will eat you up." The thing belched again, engulfing Orlando in a fog of decay. Bright spots shimmered before his eyes, but they were only sparks against the rapidly encroaching blackness.
A booming voice echoed from the temple's stone walls. "I come, my brother!"
Orlando's captor paused. Out of the shadows at the back of the temple another huge shape was pulling itself across the floor. The second sphinx's back legs dragged uselessly, and a gush of desert sand leaked from its wounds in a dully sparkling trail.
"I have deserted my post, O my brother," it moaned, "for the first time since Time itself was born. " The skin that had been a faint sunrise lavender was now pale gray. "But I come to you."
Orlando's captor looked to Tefy, who held Fredericks entangled in his long pinions. They appeared to be communicating soundlessly, perhaps considering how safe this spot might be with two massive sphinxes about to join forces in a death struggle. Dua crawled through a phalanx of attacking tortoise-men toward his brother, almost oblivious to their blows. Several vanished beneath Dua's bulk with their mouths stretched wide, still voiceless in their death agonies. Screams and even stranger noises began to fill the shadowed temple again as the bats and serpents, disturbed at their feeding, whirled up like a storm of black snow.
"Now to our hidden place. . . ." Tefy declared when a shrieking gust of air from the temple's front doorway knocked him sideways and sprawling. Fredericks almost broke free, but Tefy quickly secured her and staggered to his splay-toed feet. The much chunkier Mewat had wobbled but held his balance. They could all hear a rising howl outside the temple, as if a tornado hovered overhead.
A soldier crawled in through the doorway, battered and bleeding.
"He is coming!" the man screeched. "The Lord Osiris is coming! He rides the bird Bennu, whose wings are the storm and the dark flame, and in his fury he strikes down even his own worshipers!" He fell face-down on the floor, sobbing.
The look of pure fear that flashed between Tefy and Mewat this time was much easier to interpret, but Orlando took little satisfaction from it. Even if the two servants were terrified of their master, the arrival of Osiris would surely only make things worse for Orlando and Fredericks. Hadn't Bonnie Mae Simpkins said that he was one of the highest Grail masters?
The swirling, shrieking winds rose to such a pitch that the humans still alive in the temple began dropping to their knees, bleeding from ears and nostrils. Suddenly a great stone large as a house fell from high in the ceiling near the front doorway and crushed a group of tortoise-men, then split into several huge chunks that tottered and fell, smashing others who had survived the first impact. Those who could still move tried to drag themselves away from the doorway. More massive stones vibrated out of the walls, tumbling to the floor like bombs. The war gods and a few tortoise-men fought on against the failing sphinxes, oblivious, but the world seemed to be ending around them.
As Orlando struggled uselessly against his captor's clammy grip, the howl of wind outside the temple increased to an even more frightening pitch. Orlando's ears popped, the pain sh
arp and hot. The entire front of the temple heaved, as though the stones were the belly of a single, gigantic living thing, then the wall collapsed inward.
He had time only to see an impossibly large shape in the night sky just outside, a black something big as a passenger jet with flapping wings outlined in flame, filling the ragged hole in the temple facade, then one of the huge door-stones cartwheeled past them, striking the cobra-man Mewat a glancing blow which threw him sprawling on top of Orlando.
For a brief instant, smothering beneath the monstrous weight, Orlando could feel the final darkness as close as a whisper in his ear. The roar of wind was stilled, replaced by a great pulsing silence. Something urged him to let go, to step away, that freedom and rest awaited him.
But I can't. . . . was his only thought. There was something he still had to do, although in the throbbing stillness he could not imagine what that thing could be.
A little air rushed back into his lungs, burning down his throat. The great mass of the cobra-man had pinned his head and shoulders against the stone floor; he was drowning in a foul-smelling, scaly blackness. He heaved, but there was no dislodging Mewat's limp bulk. He shoved with his arms, trying to push himself backward, but could find no room to get his elbows bent for leverage. The exertion brought up his own personal blackness again. The first saving breath had not been replaced, and now he could almost feel his rib cage collapsing.
I can't do it anymore. . . . Simply staying alive seemed a heavier weight than anything—a Titan's burden he had shouldered too long. I give up. . . .
It was only when he abruptly slid a few inches backward, just enough that he could finally suck in that second breath, that he realized something was pulling hard on his leg. The shift was enough to allow him finally to draw in his elbows so his rib cage could expand. Even with oxygen in his lungs it was a miserably hard, noxious job to worm his way backward from under Mewat's belly, but the search for light and air had his adrenaline pumping, and whoever had a grip on his ankle was still pulling. After a horrible, inching time he finally squirted out from beneath the blubberous stomach.
When he was out into the windy chaos of the shattered temple once more, wheezing and choking, he was startled to find it was not Fredericks holding his leg but the little domestic god Bes.
"The view isn't much better out here," the god informed him, grinning.
Orlando struggled onto his knees. The temple's front wall was gone. The giant bird shape had landed, though the fire-tipped wings were still spread and beating, driving fierce winds through the ruined hole where the temple facade had been. A pale figure was seated on its neck, mummy wrappings smoldering as they streamed and snapped, golden-masked face the embodiment of angry power. Orlando wanted nothing to do with it. He scrabbled on his hands and knees through the rubble until he found his sword, then suddenly remembered.
"Fredericks! Fredericks, where are you?"
"Over there," said Bes, looking up from his inspection of Mewat's huge, silent form. "You can probably help him if you hurry."
Orlando cursed the little god's blitheness and dragged himself to his feet, close to tears. This wasn't fair, any of it. He wanted only to be left alone. He wanted sleep. Didn't anyone care that he was a sick kid?
It was hard to see in the darkened temple, and hard to make sense of what he was seeing anyway, but after a moment he spotted Fredericks and Tefy rolling on the floor beyond one of the fallen door-stones. Whatever advantage the surprise of the great god's entrance might have given Fredericks was now gone: eyeless Tefy had wrapped his long fingers around Fredericks' neck and was forcing her head backward until it seemed certain her spine would break.
Every step Orlando took toward them increased his terror, as though the vulture-man were surrounded by some kind of poisonous fog, but Fredericks was helpless and needed him. He heaved his sword up in both hands and forced himself into a stumbling sprint, then spun into a flat, swinging attack that Thargor used for disembowling dangerous beasts. But he was not looking for a body blow, not with Fredericks struggling clamped between the creatures's bony legs.
"You!" Orlando screamed as he bore down on them. "You scanning, ugly . . . bird-faced mamalocker!"
Tefy looked up, blind gaze inscrutable, as the sword hissed inches above Fredericks' flailing hands. With all Orlando's momentum behind the blow Tefy's scrawny neck offered little resistance: the beaked head snapped free and flew end over end through the air like a misshapen football. As the bony body collapsed, Fredericks fought her way free, sucking air.
"You're alive!" she said when she could breathe again. "I thought that big slug sixed you!"
Orlando was so exhausted he could not speak. He put one hand on Fredericks' arm for support, then bent double until the black spots began to go away.
"You really don't have time for that," Bes called from nearby. As if in answer, Fredericks let out a sudden screech of disgust and terror.
Orlando laboriously straightened to look around. Tefy's body was scuttling away across the floor, fingers clawing at the tiles as it searched for its head. A few yards away, Mewat was beginning to drag himself upright despite a massive dent in his skull that had popped one of his reptilian eyes out onto his cheek.
"The gateway," Orlando gasped, pulling hard on Fredericks' arm. "We have to get to the . . . we have to . . . the gateway."
"What happened to the Circle people?" Fredericks asked as they staggered away from the temple's ruined doorway. "And the monkeys?"
Orlando could only shake his head.
"WHERE ARE MY SERVANTS?" a voice thundered from the doorway. Osiris seemed as large as either of the sphinxes, but unstable, as though not entirely made of matter. A sickly light oozed from between his bandages. "TEFY? MEWAT?"
Just keep going, Orlando told himself. Others were running too, shrieking and stumbling, besiegers and besieged both driven mad by the appearance of Osiris. Step, another step, another step. . . .
An angular shape loomed before them—it seemed to stretch to the distant ceiling. "You have done me wrong!" it screeched. Orlando, convinced Osiris had caught them, stumbled and nearly collapsed. Wolf-headed Upaut, abandoned by the few of his followers who still lived, stood atop his throne as though surrounded by floodwaters, his eyes glowing a baleful yellow.
It took Orlando a confused moment to realize that the wolf-god was not shouting at them, but at the billowing form across the temple's acres-wide floor. "Injustice! You took what was mine, Osiris! You mocked me!"
Orlando could not imagine anything more foolish than lingering near this idiot god. He tugged at Fredericks' arm and they lurched past the foot of Upaut's throne. The would-be usurper was almost dancing with indignation and rage, pointing at distant Osiris.
"But see! I have turned your land against you!" Upaut screamed, then a vast cloud of pulsing white light rolled toward him across the temple. Fredericks snatched Orlando by his long barbarian hair and jerked him away. As the glaring wave flowed across Upaut, the wolf-god's bellow became a brief, whistling shriek of agony. The throbbing glow gave off no heat; as it slowed and stopped just a half-meter away from them, Orlando was so bemused that he almost reached out to touch it, but Fredericks dragged him on until the light began to recede again, revealing the throne. Upaut still stood atop it, arms thrown out in righteous fury, but after a moment Orlando realized that the god was not moving. Scorched to carbon in moments, he was now a perfect wolf-headed statue of fine ash. A moment later the replica collapsed in a silent gray implosion, leaving only a tiny pyramid of powder on the seat.
Lit now only by the inconstant glare of Osiris' own person and the thin, distant radiance of stars, the ruined temple was full of crazy shadows. Figures appeared in front of them and disappeared; the floor was covered with dark obstacles. Orlando barely noticed. He clung to Fredericks' arm, conscious only of the need to put distance between himself and the terrible figure of the Lord of Life and Death.
Why did we ever think we could fight them? Orlando wondered. They
are gods. They really are. We never had a chance.
A heart-stopping groan reverberated across the vast room, a sound like the timbers of a wooden ship being torn asunder—the death cry of one of the great sphinxes. More stones were toppling from the ceiling. The entire temple seemed ready to collapse.
Orlando and Fredericks reached the temple's far wall, their progress fearfully slow. Here, on the edge of things, bodies still moved, a living tableau of Hell's torments. Shadowy figures rolled on the floor, tearing at each other—temple dwellers, soldiers, tortoise-men, all tangled in a horizontal tapestry of destruction. Some of the shell-bodied creatures even seemed to be fighting among themselves, biting at each other's faces in ghastly silent combat.
As the two friends struggled to force their way through the door at the back of the temple, which was half-blocked by a dam of contorted bodies, the god's powerful voice again blasted through the temple, so loud he might have been standing right behind them.
"OF COURSE I'M BLOODY WELL ANGRY, YOU USELESS IDIOTS! AND PUT YOUR DAMNED HEAD ON WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!"
In another universe Orlando might have laughed, but nothing here was even remotely funny.
Something struck him, rattling his skull, and the floor abruptly rushed up to meet him. He felt Fredericks pulling at him, but he could not immediately remember how to make his limbs work. Only a meter away something that might once have been young Vasily from the Circle had been twisted into a terrible, almost shapeless knot. Fredericks got an arm around Orlando's chest and somehow he managed to find his feet, but he felt strangely disconnected, as though his head were floating free of his body . . . spinning in air like Tefy's vulture head. . . .