The Maelstrom

  The smee changed back to a lutin and examined his hands. “I didn’t know David was so strong!”

  Max said nothing, seizing the opportunity to gather himself. Leaning over the basket’s rim, he allowed the cold gales to clear his mind while he gazed out at the gray clouds and the faint, gray-green landscape far below.

  The winds howled at such heights, whipping through the balloon’s rigging with a stinging mix of ice and sleet. Katarina was sitting quietly, curled next to her mother, who was ministering to her burns and soiled face. Gazing back down, Max tried to estimate their speed as the balloon carried them east over a series of small lakes and hardscrabble hills. For the moment, they were traveling in the proper direction, but the winter winds were capricious. He hoped whatever David had done, whatever energies he had sourced from Max, would enable a swift recovery. They might need Rowan’s sorcerer to summon a breeze to blow them toward Bholevna. Easing down, Max rested his back against the basket and closed his eyes to think.

  Are my own clones working for the Atropos?

  What should we do if Yuga has destroyed David’s tunnel?

  How did our enemies know we were at Madam Petra’s?

  His next realization was that someone was shaking him.

  Night had fallen. The burners’ golden light danced on the smuggler’s face as she crouched above Max and tugged at his cloak.

  “Wind’s changed,” she said. “We’re drifting north. Something’s happening below.”

  For several seconds, Max merely blinked at the woman and tried to piece together where he was. His face was numb from the cold and he was disoriented not only from ordinary exhaustion, but also from the aftershocks of David’s spell. Nodding dumbly, he pushed himself up.

  Below was a sea of clouds. In the moonlight, they appeared like herds of soft, silvery cattle drifting over the slumbering earth. Peeking here and there through the gaps was the edge of a great city, a sprawl of twinkling lights in clusters and spokes and patterns. Above the winds and the creak of cordage, Max heard droning calls, as if the clouds were lowing in their dark pasture. Was he still dreaming?

  “What city is that?” he murmured.

  “That’s not a city,” breathed Madam Petra. “It’s an army.”

  Rubbing his eyes, he peered again, reminded suddenly of Mina’s accounts of the many worlds, half veiled within the summoning circles. The lights might have been such a place, thousands of fireflies hovering over some dark, primeval marsh. They were so tiny, so distant that Max imagined the smuggler was joking until he heard the lowing again. Slowly but surely, his wits returned as the freezing winds cleared away the cobwebs.

  The sound was not lowing cattle; it was the call of war horns. There must have been hundreds of them—perhaps thousands—all blowing in unison far below. At ground level, the volume must have been deafening, a din to herald an End of Days. As Max watched, many of the lights began to move, creeping north.

  “Can they see us?” he wondered.

  “I doubt it,” said Madam Petra. “We must be a mile or more up, and there’s cloud cover. The burners are small … even if they saw us, we’d probably just look like a tiny star.”

  “A tiny star that’s moving,” said Max.

  “An army that size isn’t concerned with a moving star; it’s concerned with other armies.”

  Madam Petra snatched Max’s spyglass as soon as he produced it. Leaning out from the balloon, she scanned the landscape below. She was silent for several minutes, sweeping the glass across the lights, which were converging into distinct patterns and formations. Focusing on a shimmering cluster, she shook her head and returned the glass to Max.

  “Prusias is here,” she said grimly. “That’s his palanquin in the central column. Do you see it?”

  Max spotted it right away, a section where many lights were crowded like honeybees congregating around their queen. The rolling palanquin must have been enormous, but still it was dwarfed by the surrounding sea of banners and torches. There must have been a quarter million troops below, not even counting the siege engines and supply wagons, cooks, engineers, carpenters, blacksmiths, servants, and God knew whatever else accompanied an army of such size. Max’s initial impression had been correct. This was indeed a city—a creeping city bent on conquest. The horns had ceased, replaced now by the tolling boom … boom … boom of drums to set the march. As they sounded far below, the columns tightened and the army curved to the northeast, following the line of a river as it stretched toward Dùn and the border with Aamon’s kingdom. The smuggler’s voice tickled Max’s ear.

  “Still believe Rowan can win?”

  Max said nothing but watched Prusias’s legions coursing north like streams of glowing lava. Leaning against the basket, Madam Petra brushed against him.

  “The king still bleeds, you know,” she said. “His wounds won’t knit. My contacts say you carry a blade that nearly took Prusias’s heads, one by one. Rumor has it the malakhim have to replace his bandages thrice a day lest they soak through and frighten off all his little concubines. Can you imagine? The King of Blys sullen on his throne while those wraiths attend him like anxious nursemaids!” The smuggler laughed like a mischievous girl. “Poor Prusias, no wonder he’s grown so ill-tempered! I should like to see the weapon that could hurt one such as he. Do you have it here?”

  She was standing very close, beautiful and wicked by the light of the burners. The others were asleep, snoring beneath piled blankets while Toby dozed as a luxuriant ermine. When Max did not respond, Madam Petra gave a nostalgic smile.

  “It’s so strange to think that you were Bragha Rùn,” she reflected. “I saw three of your victories in the Arena. You fought like a god—so strong, so quick. Your matches were poetry. The whole kingdom was dying to know who was beneath that frightful mask.” Leaning close, the smuggler searched his face. “There’s something in you that isn’t in those clones,” she concluded with a whisper. “Something immortal …”

  She stared at Max as though he were a piece of art, a prized jewel she’d salvaged from her smoldering safe back in Piter’s Folly.

  Max’s tone was sharp. “I’m not some moonstruck politician or Workshop admirer.”

  The smuggler’s smile vanished. “You misunderstand me, Max.”

  “I think we understand each other perfectly, Madam Petra. I’m taking my friends and the pinlegs back to Rowan. You and Katarina will be welcome if you choose to come with us. At Rowan, you’ll have land of your own and whatever protection we can provide.”

  The smuggler gave a wry laugh. “And if we choose not to settle in a doomed realm?” she inquired, blinking sweetly.

  “You can do what you like,” replied Max. “But until we’re on our way home, you and Katarina are staying with us. I won’t have you running off and raising the alarm.”

  “You think I’d betray my own kind to the demons? How uncharitable.”

  “You were fleecing your own people on Piter’s Folly. I don’t pretend to know what you’d do or who you’d sell. But you won’t sell us.”

  “So Katarina and I are hostages?” she asked, obviously bemused. “Let’s see if I understand this properly. You sneak into my home, bring assassins to my door, steal my pinlegs, and hold us against our will, but I’m the criminal?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Max, returning the smile. “You can lodge a complaint with the Director.”

  “You know, I met her once at a party,” recalled the smuggler. “Beautiful woman; terrible shoes—”

  Just then, something heavy struck the basket, nearly upending it. Stumbling at the impact, Madam Petra toppled out, catching its rim with her fingers. She clung to the bucking balloon as if it were a life raft.

  “Get it off me!” she shrieked, her face white with terror.

  Lunging over the side, Max seized the smuggler by both wrists and wrenched her up. Something dark was clinging to her lower legs. A screeching filled the air as something else collided with the balloon from above.

  He
aving Madam Petra back into the basket, Max saw what had been clinging to her. At first he thought it was a baka, for the creature also had batlike wings that scratched and snared on the wicker. But as it raised its bloody, raptorlike face and hissed, Max saw that it was a Stygian crow—a rare breed of evil creature he’d read about in one of David’s books. It was three times the size of its natural namesake and had a fiery core that shone through thin, membranous patches along its rib cage. Its talons were enormous, and these had raked the smuggler’s legs cruelly. The creature had released the woman, however, and was now hopping about the basket like a ravening vulture, stabbing its beak at Katarina, who screamed and kicked at it. More screeches sounded in the air.

  Max’s first swing of the gae bolga sheared cleanly through the creature’s neck. The headless body spun away from the girl and staggered toward Toby. The smee was now wide awake and hysterical, shielding David and pleading with the creatures to go away as they swarmed about the balloon like moths around a flame. Some rocketed past while others swept up to seize hold of the ropes and rigging. Slashing at those within reach, Max had slain half a dozen of the creatures, but he could hear others atop the balloon, their claws pinching and scrabbling for footholds on the slick material. Already the wind was howling through a score of tears and punctures. The balloon was losing altitude.

  Down, down the balloon swept and spun toward the earth, curving away north as it was buffeted about by the icy gusts. Max could see stars through holes in the balloon’s fabric as it strained to hold together. The crows screeched and struggled to hold on, their belly fires burning like bright furnaces.

  “Hold on to anything you can!” Max shouted, skewering another crow and stumbling back to seize several ropes. The balloon was impossible to steer, but Max had glimpsed a lake glittering below and prayed that they might reach it. Thrusting the ropes in Petra’s hand, he stumbled as the balloon bucked in a sudden gale and nearly sent the pinlegs tube skittering over the side. Max snatched out his hand and caught it, cradling it under his arm and peering over the basket’s edge. The army was much closer now, individual torches visible to the naked eye as they plummeted down. They would end up crashing into its midst, unless …

  “Toby!” Max yelled, cutting away the ballast of sand bags. “Become something big—something with wings that can slow down our fall!”

  “What do you want?” cried Toby. “There’s only so much—”

  “ANYTHING!”

  The smee leaped out of the balloon, hovering momentarily with a look of terror upon his ermine face. They quickly left him behind, spinning like a top as the ruptured balloon plunged to earth. The Stygian crows had now abandoned their crashing quarry, their silhouettes turning lazy circles against the bright moon. The balloon had drifted a mile or two east of the marching army, but the ground was already racing up to meet them, a blur of snow-sprinkled terrain that was dotted with lakes and pine forests. One of the lakes was just ahead, but their altitude was dwindling rapidly. By now, the balloon was no more than a charred and torn sail dragging against the wind. Across the basket, Petra was huddled around her daughter. Max did the same with David, propping the unconscious boy up in his arms and praying that they struck water.

  And then, almost imperceptibly at first, they began to slow.

  Above them, Max beheld a pair of wings, stretched as wide and taut as a glider’s. A gargantuan albatross had snatched up the remains of the balloon and ropes in its talons and was breaking their fall. The bird’s wings were twenty-five feet across, and yet it could only dampen the speed of their descent. The smee squawked with the strain, his voice warbling as the balloon’s trajectory smoothed and they were skimming twenty feet above the lake Max had sighted. Just a little slower and they could safely—

  With a screech, the albatross abruptly dropped the balloon and they crashed into the water.

  The initial shock of impact was replaced by brutal cold, needle stabs of pain as Max tumbled about in the shallows of the icy lake. He saw stars as his head struck something, a log or fallen tree. He groped for air, felt it rush into his lungs as he finally broke the surface. A hand brushed his and he glimpsed David sinking back below. Seizing his friend, Max raised his head out of the water and began swimming toward shore.

  It was hard going. The chain shirt was an anchor about Max’s neck, pulling him ever down into the reedy depths. He kept his eyes fixed on the stars, glittering beyond the billows of his sputtering breath. Gasping and straining, he towed David to shore.

  Madam Petra and Katarina were already there, shivering on the banks and sorting through the wet baggage they’d managed to salvage.

  “The p-pinlegs?” asked Max, chattering in the frigid cold.

  Petra could not speak but merely pointed out toward the lake.

  “Get in the woods,” said Max, nodding toward the nearby trees. “Start a fire.”

  “The army,” gasped Petra. “They’ll be coming. We have to hide!”

  “It w-won’t matter if we die of cold,” said Max. “Can you carry David?”

  The smuggler nodded, buckling only slightly as Max slung the boy over her shoulder. She walked briskly to the woods, Katarina staggering along in her wake. There was a coughing sound near Max’s feet. A beaver was waddling out of the shallows, looking cold, wet, and miserable.

  “Toby,” said Max. “Are you all right?”

  “I think I broke something,” the smee groaned, limping.

  “Petra’s gone ahead to start a fire,” said Max, quickly pulling off cloak and hauberk. “I’m going back for the pinlegs.”

  Before the smee could respond, Max dove back into the lake, stretching out for the ruptured balloon that was floating atop the icy waters like a lily pad. The cold was like an iron vise clamped about his chest, each stroke squeezing the life out of him. At last his hand touched the balloon, fumbling about until he found a rope. Taking hold of it, Max filled his lungs and dove straight down.

  The basket was swinging slowly in the depths like a pendulum suspended by the balloon on the surface. Max felt frantically about the basket’s interior, swimming around inside and groping blindly for the pinlegs tube. After several minutes, his lungs were afire. He abandoned the dive and raced back to the surface.

  A glimpse of stars, the rush of oxygen into his lungs, and he dived once again, feeling his way down the ropes to the basket. Once there, he gazed desperately about the water and saw nothing—not even a trace of moon or starlight that filtered through the surrounding blackness.

  With frantic concentration, Max enveloped his hands with witch-fire. He’d never tried to do such a thing underwater and wasn’t certain that it would work, but sure enough the eerie blue flames kindled from his fingers, a swirling, incandescent blaze that sent bubbles hissing up toward the surface. Battling the cold, he paddled through the lake’s depths, his hands like two ghostly flares as he searched the weeds and wreckage.

  On his fourth dive, Max found it. The pinlegs was peeking out from a nest of reeds on the lake’s bottom, a dim glint of metal at the very limits of the witch-fire’s radiance. Even as Max seized it, he felt the strange creature kicking and scrabbling against the tube’s interior. Clutching it tightly, he rocketed to the surface and swam for shore.

  Had Petra not called out to him, Max might have wandered about the woods until he collapsed. He was delirious with cold, his skin blue and his mouth frozen into a horrid grimace as he stumbled about in search of his companions. Taking his hand, the smuggler led him to a small hollow, shielded from the wind by a close stand of pine trees. Some dead wood had been heaped in the hope of a fire, but the fuel was wet and they’d been unsuccessful.

  Max was so desperate for warmth he dropped the pinlegs tube and promptly seized hold of two logs. Again, witch-fire coursed from his fingers, bathing the wood with flames. Seconds later, they were hissing and popping, fully ablaze as he stood holding them.

  “They’ll burn you!” exclaimed Madam Petra, swatting the wood out of Max’s hands.
They fell onto the other logs, catching into a small fire as Katarina fed them with strips of bark and kindling. Max stood right next to the pile, even as it grew to a crackling blaze that sent plumes of sparks and embers cascading over his legs.

  Slowly, warmth returned, seeping into his bones to chase away the mortal cold. Gazing down, he saw the others gathered about the fire. Madam Petra and her daughter had undressed down to their underclothes, drying their other garments on an array of rocks and logs that they’d dragged over. Toby was sniffing gingerly at his injured leg, inching ever closer to the heat. David was still unconscious but breathing evenly. Madam Petra had removed his wet clothes as well, and Rowan’s sorcerer lay in naught but his underwear, the firelight dancing on the shiny ten-inch scar that ran down the center of his chest.

  Max stood staring at the flames for another five minutes. When life finally returned to his fingers and limbs, he squeezed the remaining lake water out of his clothes and threw them directly on one of the smaller logs. When they began to smoke, he removed them and slipped them on.

  “Look after them,” he said, buckling the gae bolga to his side. He nodded to the longsword lying by the smuggler’s boots. “Do you know how to use that?”

  Madam Petra nodded.

  “Good.” He nodded. “If I’m not back by dawn, strike out for Bholevna. There’s a shortcut near there—a way to get home. David knows where it is and how to use it.”

  “But where are you going?” asked Katarina, sounding frightened.

  “Back to the lake. They’ll be coming soon.”

  Indeed, they were already on the scene when Max emerged from the wood. He saw the riders milling about the lake’s shoreline, a score of dark figures seated on horseback while one waded into the moonlit water and cast a hook at the balloon. When the hook caught, the soldier tied it to his saddle and swatted his horse’s flanks. It trudged forward on the icy banks, dragging the balloon and basket into the shallows. The riders’ attention was fixed on the lake; none were watching as Max slipped from the woods and stole closer, keeping to the brush and bracken.