The God Eaters

  Ash reeled back, choking. As he struggled not to throw up, he sensed Chaiel's echoing shock as he, too, looked into the cell.

  The thumping didn't pause.

  "What are they doing?" Ash gasped, when he could speak at all. "Oh god, what do they think they're doing here? And --" He straightened. "Are there more of those things?"

  Chaiel shook his head in dismay. "What should we do about it?"

  "Do?"

  "Should we put it out of its misery?"

  Ash spread his hands. "How? We're unarmed."

  Then they both jumped as a sharp clang sounded from one of the other cells. Spinning to face it, Ash saw a pair of eyes glittering behind another barred window. The clanging noise came again, and he realized the cell's occupant was tapping something against the metal door.

  The face retreated as Ash came forward. It backed off just enough that he could see that it appeared human, small, a child. White face, dark eyes, dark stubble on its scabbed scalp.

  He swallowed sour spit before speaking. "Um. Hello. Can you talk?"

  The figure shook its head. It made a small whimpering sound.

  "Hold on, I'm going to try to get you out."

  Whimpering again, the figure nodded frantically.

  As Ash fumbled with the mechanism that barred the door, Chaiel grabbed his arm. "Is that a good idea, Ash? What if the creature's dangerous?"

  "What if it is?" Ash returned. "It's aware of its situation, not like that giant fetus in there. I can't just walk away." Setting his teeth, he finally got the wheel to turn, and the bar cranked back. He hauled the door open.

  The prisoner wobbled out, smiling gratitude, and Ash's heart squeezed small with pity. It was a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, naked, emaciated and bruised. Attached to her shoulderblades, surrounded by swollen and suppurating flesh, was a pair of enormous, greasy black wings.

  "Oh." The meaningless syllable was all Ash could get out. He reached to steady her, wincing at the way she flinched.

  Chaiel's face twisted. He spit on the floor. "This place is sick. I want to leave."

  "Wait. Are there... are there others?"

  The girl shook her head. She pointed at the cell that held the head-banging creature, then made loops by her head with her finger: crazy. She gestured at the other cells and drew her finger across her throat: dead.

  Ash nodded. He took the child's arm to help her walk, avoiding the hideous taxidermy on her back.

  Moving more slowly now, they followed the hall the other direction. This time what they found was more encouraging: a stair leading down. No discussion was necessary.

  --==*==--

  Kieran wasn't afraid, but he sensed it wouldn't be long until he began to be. Fighting Ka'an had been a bar brawl compared with this. He was in over his head.

  Thelyan was powerful, and he was fast. Far too fast. And he knew what he was doing. He had a repertoire of spells that he could just rip off in an instant. He'd bark out a phrase, trace a shape with flickering fingers, and suddenly something nasty would be flying at Kieran's face -- a hissing gout of invisible heat, or tendrils of pain groping for his nerves, or a clap of eardrum-rupturing concussion. No matter how tight his defenses, some of it always got through. Kieran had learned the hard way that by the time he saw what the spell was, it was too late to avoid it.

  The air reeked of singed hair and burnt leather, and the palms of his hands were blistered.

  But he'd learned. He had a sort of strategy. He'd decided that since it was impossible to tailor his defense to the attack, the best he could do was to throw something out at the same time, it didn't matter exactly what. He didn't try to make these blasts into spells; just did his best to get them into the right place to disrupt whatever Thelyan was making. It mostly worked. So far.

  And it just went on and on. They stood facing each other, hands slashing the air. Thelyan spitting spell words; Kieran muttering fragments of obscenities. To an unmagical eye, they must have looked like a couple of railyard bums having a lunatic argument. Kieran was getting tired. He couldn't tell if Thelyan was wearing out; it was possible that the Director could go on all day.

  When he'd felt Ash calling for him from within the mountain, he'd hoped that it meant this fight was only a distraction. Keep the Director busy long enough for Ash to get out, then run for it.

  But when he'd been able to spare the attention to check his surroundings, he found that there was a lot more of the Watch left alive than he'd thought. Even though Ash was moving within the mountain, which meant he wasn't stuck in a cell, he still wouldn't be able to walk out the front door. Kieran would not only have to beat Thelyan, he'd have to do it with enough juice to spare so he could take down whoever was guarding the compound.

  As things stood, that just wasn't going to happen.

  He'd wasted a couple bullets finding out that Thelyan's shield against projectiles was a lot better than Ka'an's had been. Thelyan had again moved to snatch up a rifle from below, and this time had succeeded, but Kieran had seen how the shield thing was built and so the gun hadn't done Thelyan any good. It was down to this flicker-fast chess-game staring contest, which Kieran knew he wouldn't win. He had to find a way to move the fight onto better ground. Make it physical, somehow.

  This realization came without words, gradually building in the moments between attacks and deflections. He had to be realistic; plain determination wasn't going to beat skill. And I'm thinking too much. I've been thinking way, way too much today.

  I'm a thug, damn it. What the fuck am I doing playing brain games with this bastard?

  Managing the shape of his power was taking up too much of his attention. Thelyan seemed not to have to consider it at all. He had it trained to his hands and voice. He spoke and gestured, and it leapt from him already formed into some lethal shape. Kieran tossed out random bursts, tangling Thelyan's spells as they emerged, scattering them. Sometimes he was too slow. As his resolve to shift the ground firmed, he missed one, and knives of air tore across his chest, ripping clothes, welting his skin.

  A button, sliced from his coat, fell to the ground and bounced. It seemed to take a long time.

  "Don't cut the tattoos, asshole," Kieran said. His cheerful tone surprised him a little, and pleased him. He knew what that meant.

  This was starting to feel like a fight. Whatever Thelyan was doing, he didn't know what to call that, but a fight he understood. If there was going to be blood flying around, then the thing made sense. And if someone's going to spit teeth, it won't be me.

  Hauling his power in tight around him, letting it develop a bit of a spin, Kieran stepped forward.

  Another set of invisible blades met him halfway; only partially deflected by the whirl of his pattern, it struck him in the side. Now his left sleeve was hanging in shreds. But he'd decided to take the pain. It could have been a lot worse. The coat was a loss, but his skin was barely scratched. Relishing the wary way Thelyan stepped back at his approach, Kieran closed the distance between them until their patterns overlapped. Tangled, clashing, like kite strings fouled together.

  The Director's eyes widened in outrage in the instant before Kieran's fist caught him across the cheekbone.

  Kieran followed this with a hard hail of fast blows to any target he could see, trying to keep the man off balance so he couldn't form a spell. There was a bitter joy in him now. Where's your fancy magic? Where are your pain spells and your headgames? He battered aside Thelyan's arms, followed the Watchman's attempts to back away. The pale-haired man was far shorter than Kieran, and weaker. Thelyan cringed, he cried out; things broke, things bled, fingers, an ear, and now he was the one off guard, unable to summon a defense.

  When Thelyan was staggering, slack-faced, punch-drunk, Kieran hopped back half a step to finish him off with a nice solid kick to the temple.

  Mistake. In that split second, Thelyan threw out a wall of solid force -- half-formed, no attempt at subtlety this time, just pure kinesis. It caught Kieran right in
the face and lifted him off his feet. The world flashed white as he flew headfirst backwards in a long arc, then flashed again as the back of his skull hit the ground with all his weight behind it.

  He lay stunned, looking at the sparkles. There wasn't even pain. And then there was; all at once, fat and dull from behind, small and sharp in front. Something tickled inside his throat and he tasted metal.

  Bloody nose. Concussion? Don't have time to puke. As soon as thought re-formed, he was moving. His head throbbed in big slow waves as he stood up. Hot blood rolled out of his nose in a sheet, down his lips and chin, threaded itching down his neck. His eyes wouldn't focus, but his mind's sight was working just fine. When he saw what Thelyan was doing, he laughed.

  The dumbshit was taking time to heal himself. "Can't you take a few bruises, buddy?" Kieran's voice sounded thick, but he was only amusing himself anyway. "Tell me, you ever been smacked in the kidney with the back end of a rifle?" As he talked, he was gathering up his pattern, shaping it more carefully this time. Blood spattered from his lips with his words. "If you're not pissing pink, you can't really say you got beat up. You should have those guards of yours give you a demonstration. You know -- for science."

  Thelyan wasn't listening. He was watching Kieran warily, but his attention was turned inward.

  The injuries Kieran had caused him were righting themselves, and all the power he wasn't using for that was shaped into a shield that looked as solid as a brick wall. He clearly thought they'd reached a stalemate, declared a momentary cease-fire to lick their wounds.

  Kieran finished his preparations as he finished talking. He wasn't going to try to get through that brick wall. Instead, he took the hungry, gnawing pattern he'd fashioned and shoved it into the ground at Thelyan's feet.

  The Director stumbled as the stone beneath him began to crack and crumble. He scrambled aside, but the crumbling followed him. Leaving off his healing, he sent a spell of his own to block Kieran's, then spread a wide net of force above Kieran's head, which immediately started to radiate a blistering heat.

  Spells again, Kieran thought disgustedly as he countered. But they weren't quite back where they'd started. It was a little different now. And he thought maybe he was starting to get the hang of it.

  --==*==--

  "What's that?" Chaiel balked, pointing. "I'm not touching that."

  Ash studied the strange pattern before them. It cut through the hallway at an angle, a slanted plane of regular, interlocked shapes. While he examined it, he stated the obvious: "There isn't any other way to go." At the foot of the stairway, they'd found this hall, and there had been no doors or branches from it in all the long way they'd followed it.

  The child with wings grafted to her back sank to her knees. Ash reached out to her, concerned, but she shook her head. Just resting. Her pale face was sheened with sweat; he didn't think he'd ever seen a little kid sweat that much. She was really sick.

  He pushed pity from his mind. Once they were out, then he could try to get her some medical help. Right now, he had to figure out whether the thing that crossed the corridor was dangerous, or maybe something they could use. Its pattern was geometric, and its workings were less complex than the null sphere had been. But he'd spent hours on the sphere, and he wasn't sure if he had even minutes now. Brushing off a protest from Chaiel, he went to put his hand to it.

  There was no sense of resistance. His hand went right through. The pattern didn't react to him at all. "I think it's safe," he said, and stepped forward.

  Blindness snapped down around him, patterns vanished, the walls of his mind closed in. With a short cry of dismay, he scrambled back. To his great relief, nothing prevented him, and his magical sense returned as soon as he was back on the right side of the pattern. Understanding dawned.

  "It's the ward."

  Chaiel frowned. "What ward, what do you mean?"

  "The ward that -- we must be near the prison section. Go through for a second. Go on, it's harmless, you can walk right out again."

  "You'd better be right." Chaiel did as Ash asked, and came back out even more quickly than Ash had, and even more shaken. "That was awful," he said with an accusing glare. "Why did you make me do that?"

  "So when I tell you that's where they keep the Talents, you'll know what I'm talking about."

  "Why do I care?"

  "Well, I'm just thinking, if that ward came down, a few locks and bars wouldn't do much to hold those guys. I'm thinking that might do Kieran some good, if the Watch were distracted by escaping prisoners."

  "It might do us good as well," Chaiel said thoughtfully. "Can you do it?"

  Ash shrugged. "Let me think a minute."

  Sighing resignation, Chaiel turned to the child and explained to her. "That means we have to be very quiet for a long time, until we're thoroughly bored, and then he'll suddenly come up with some genius idea he can't explain."

  The girl nodded solemnly and folded her hands in her lap.

  Ash hid a smile and turned to study the ward. After a moment he forgot his amusement. There was something familiar about the way this thing was put together. It had some design elements in common with the null sphere, but that wasn't what nagged at him. Something about it made him think of Dawyer's experiments with electricity; he could see the page in his mind, last spring's issue of the North Bank Technical Quarterly. There'd been diagrams, he'd been frustrated because they weren't labeled right, the experiment couldn't be reproduced without further information...

  Batteries. The ward was a battery. That was how it kept anyone inside it from doing magic -- it snatched away any free power within its boundaries, and used it to strengthen itself.

  And that meant... yes, it was a simple hexagonal matrix... must be spherical, or at least domelike... so if any of the nexus points were removed... "But how do you get at it? If it just eats anything that comes near it -- from outside, but -- no, that trick's not going to work here. Just make it stronger."

  Behind him, Chaiel sighed again. Only then did Ash realize he'd been talking out loud. He turned, catching the gray-eyed boy in a theatrical yawn.

  "Hey Shy, if you want to do something to something but the something just grabs whatever touches it --"

  "Something something?" Chaiel's tone was mocking, but Ash had already answered his own question, smacking himself on the forehead.

  "Another battery. Duh."

  "You're making no sense at all. And I wish you'd stop calling me Shy."

  "Hm? Sorry." Ash's reply was an absent mumble. He was already building his own battery. It didn't need to have a structure like the ward's; a simple layered pattern would suffice, transparent one way and opaque the other. He constructed it in the palm of his hand. Just as a precaution, he took the time to arrange his own pattern as receptively as possible, in case his one-way membrane drew out more than one nexus point.

  When he was finished, he stretched out his hand... hesitated.

  "You might want to step back," he said. "There's a remote chance that my head will explode."

  "You're joking."

  "Mostly." Nevertheless he waited until he heard Chaiel and the child moving away before he plunged his hand into the ward.

  He heard the beginning of his own scream before he went deaf. Energy leapt into him with terrible force and speed -- agonizing -- distantly, he was aware he must pull his hand out of the flow, but couldn't find it. Couldn't find his body. Couldn't find himself at all.

  --==*==--

  Kieran heard Ash cry out in his mind. In the moment of distraction this afforded, Thelyan got a direct attack through, knocking Kieran tumbling across the rough stone of the mesa's top. Kieran didn't care. Something had happened to Ash, something bad, and now Ash was in pain.

  What is it? -- the thought was incoherent, just a burst of fear sent nowhere. Huddled crouching with his head behind his arms, pattern meshed tight around him, Kieran didn't care what Thelyan might do to him in the next second. If Ash was being killed right now, then it didn't matter w
ho won this fight. The sense of pain and fear from Ash was mounting. Kieran took a hitching breath, tasting stale blood and dust, and sent out to him again. Will my power help? Take it!

  When he touched the bullet charm at his throat to send his power out, though, he sensed immediately that the problem was something opposite. Energy flooded along their link, coming from Ash's direction. It was jetting through, like steam from a pinhole punched in a boiler. Ash had encountered a surge of some kind.

  It didn't matter why. All Kieran needed to know was that Ash was being burned out by it, drowned in it.