robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (49 page)

As they closed on the building, Charley saw that Lee had reached his man. The guy was sprawled and still. Lee was still, too, spitted on the spikes of the university's iron fence.

One of the other pilots asked for instructions, but Charley missed most of it; there was some sort of crackling interference. It had to be all over the e-m bands, to defeat the automatic frequency shifters.

"Hold on," Hagen's voice said in his ears. The internal circuit was clear, at least. "I'm going to take us over the top."

As they cleared the roof, the first thing Charley saw was the crater. It looked as if somebody had dropped a bomb on the lawn. The second thing he saw was the woman, leaning against a tree and waving her arms as if she were chasing away bees. The third was Quetzal, slowly advancing on the woman. Neither the woman nor Quetzal reacted to the verrie's approach.

"Morning's coming early today, abomination," Hagen said. "Now, Gordon! Hit the lights!"

Charley stabbed the trigger button on his virtual console, sending twin beams spearing down to impale the tableau. Like a bug hit with insecticide, Quetzal began to writhe.

The flashes were shifting, changing their nature in some way. Something significant was happening back in the mundane world. The color John saw less frequently, which he had come to associate with Dr. Spae's magic, came less frequently still. He suspected that Dr. Spae's battle against Quetzal was going badly. Suspected? Hell, he
knew.

And Faye had not returned.

The doctor didn't have a lot of time left.

He had to do something.

Maybe he could reenter the real world behind Quetzal. Sneak up on him. Surprise him and distract him. Distracting him had worked before.

It wasn't much of a plan, but John didn't think there was time to come up with anything better.

He ran toward the building, or at least where he thought the building ought to be. Standing where he guessed the door to be, he turned to face in what he hoped was Quetzal's direction.

Now, how to walk between the worlds?

He didn't know.

How had he done it before?

He had needed to get away, get anywhere, and he had. But now he needed to get to somewhere, and a very particular somewhere.

He stared at the flickering light, feeling helpless. It had been a long time since he'd seen a flash of Dr. Spae's color.

She needed him.

He needed to get to her.

The air around him began to sparkle.

He needed—

Rainbow colors glistened.

He needed!

Dimly, he perceived the shadowy shape of Quetzal; the wizard had backed the doctor up against a tree. John could see

the tree clearly.
She needed him.
John ran forward, holding with as tight a will as he could to the fact that he needed to be in the sunlit world.

The ground changed beneath his feet as he ran. The shift shocked him and he stumbled, sprawling face-first on the ground. His ears roared.

What a putz!

He struggled to sit up. A windstorm had blown up while he'd been away; maybe it was a side effect of the magic—he didn't care. He was back in the sunlit world! There was light all around, bright and piercing. He'd done it!

Now he needed to get off his ass and help Dr. Spae.

Or did he?

The doctor was slumped at the base of the tree, but Quetzal no longer menaced her. Instead he writhed as if he were in agony, and flung uncontrolled bolts of magical energy at the sky.

What in hell was going on?

Screaming, Quetzal ran across the green. Shafts of light from the sky tracked him as he headed toward the great gates. John expected him to stop, or try to climb, but the darkling mage ran straight at the gates. There was a flash and a clap of sound like thunder. When John could see again, he saw a jagged hole in the gates. The edges of the iron pieces glowed a dull red.

Quetzal was gone.

CHAPTER

30

"Keep the lights on him! Keep the lights on him!"

Charley didn't know if the other crew still chasing Quetzal heard him. Their erratic success suggested that they did not, but maybe they were having the same troubles that Hagen was having. Something Quetzal was doing was screwing up the electronics.

The Mamba banked hard, just missing a church steeple. Charley could've counted the cracks in each slab of roof slate. Scraping a building had already sent one of the verries limping away to find a safe landing zone.

"Watch where you're flying," he said.

"You run the lights," Hagen snapped back. "I'll fly the verrie."

Two verries should have been more than enough to stay on Quetzal's trail, but for a guy who wasn't supposed to know about being hunted by aircraft he was very good at taking advantage of every bit of cover the city provided.

"We're down on the university grounds." It was the pilot of one of the two verries that had landed. "No sign of the guy who popped out of the air or the woman. Lee's dead. The other guy's got a bullet in his torso. You want an evac?" "Negative," Hagen replied.

"Call 911," Charley ordered. "Tell them you've got a man down with a gunshot wound." The radio was silent for a moment. "Do it!"

Another moment of silence. "Is that a confirm?"

"Confirm," Hagen said. "Get your butts back in the air first."

"Wilco."

Hagen banked hard again. Charley was learning that the Mambas had more than a visual resemblance to dragonflies— at least when Hagen was in the pilot's seat. The verrie danced through the sky like a dragonfly, all zigs and zags and swoops and dives. It was a good thing Charley wasn't prone to motion sickness.

They had lost Quetzal again and until they had the other two verries back in the air, they didn't have enough eyes in the sky to keep the wily bastard in sight.

Hagen put their Mamba into a widening spiral centered on the last place they'd seen the fugitive. The other verrie kept station over that point. Run or stay, they'd be ready for him. Charley killed the lights, relying on the night sight. With luck, Quetzal might think he'd lost them and emerge where they could nail him again.

"There!"

Hagen slaved Charley's night sight long enough to point it in the right direction. Quetzal was scampering down a steep bank. Hagen turned the verrie in pursuit, calling the other Mamba to join him. They were low, coming in on the fugitive, when Charley saw where Quetzal was heading.

"Shit! What's that wall?"

"Railroad tunnel," Hagen said.

"Tunnel?"

"Check the console map."

"How do I get it?"

The map appeared. Hagen must have done something; Charley certainly hadn't. It took him a few seconds to spot the tunnel. "But it's sealed."

"Only to vehicles," Hagen said. "He can get in."

Hagen sounded sure. "Not good. It comes out the other side of the hill, near the river. Your other birds back in the air?"

A moment. "Roger."

"Send them over there. We'll have him trapped."

"We got civilians down there." It was one of the other pilots.

"Where?" Charley demanded.

"Closing on the mouth of the tunnel."

Shit! There were two ragged figures, a man and a woman, making their way along the wall toward the tunnel. They looked like streeters; they probably had their slumps in the tunnel. "You got a horn on this thing, Hagen?"

"A what?"

"A loudspeaker."

"Affirmative."

"Patch me into it. We've got to get them out of there. They have no idea what they're getting into."

John and Dr. Spae ignored the echoing voice from the hovering verrie demanding that they torn around and leave the area. It said it was the police, but John didn't believe it; the police didn't fly milspec verries like that Mamba. He tuned out the noise as he helped Dr. Spae toward the slit at the edge of the wall. Once they were under the roof, the voice shut up, which was fine by John. They kept moving until they reached a point where the tunnel turned, cutting off most of the light leaking in from the sprawl glow.

"What is this place?"

"Railroad tunnel. Goes through. The hill." Spae was panting, nearly out of breath. "Give me a minute. I'll be okay. In a minute."

John looked back at the bend in the tunnel. There was a paler patch, deep gray against the jet of the dark tunnel. The tunnel was broader than he would" have expected, ten yards across at least. There were two sets of tracks, huddled on one side of the tunnel. Half of the right-of-way was not set up for trains at all. The place smelled vile, and trash and litter almost covered the gravel that crunched underfoot. Dr. Spae had insisted that Quetzal would head here. Now that they had stopped running for a moment, he had a chance to ask, "How do you know that this is where he'll come?"

"He needed to get away from the searchlights. They weren't ordinary lights."

"I know. I saw. But why come down here? Wouldn't any building do?"

"To escape the lights, yes, but the men in the verries would have seen which he chose. They could wait him out. Down here, he has a surprise for them."

"A trap?" John didn't like the idea of following Quetzal into a trap.

"An escape route," the doctor said. She was getting her wind back. "One of the cults associated with his Glittering Path had a sect here in Providence. They had a house up on the hill and were supposed to hold rituals down here. It's been speculated that the cult had dug a connection down to the tunnel. It seems likely; it fits the facts. A passageway leading from here to a house on top would have let the cultists travel unseen to their ritual site. This railroad tunnel gives Quetzal the same protection from the lights that it gave the cultists from prying eyes. Their passageway will be his escape route from the verries. Once he gets to it, the men up there will have no idea where he's vanished to. They couldn't possibly know where he'd emerge."

"And we do?"

"No, but we can follow him. Can't you feel him?"

John wasn't sure. There was something about the place. He had a sense of space, stretching vastly before him. He could almost feel the weight of the earth pressing down from above. Deeper in the tunnel there was a glimmer where no light should be.

"You ready, John?"

He wasn't. "Sure."

They stayed near the wall, using it to keep their orientation in the dark. Even John's excellent night vision was stymied here. But the longer they remained, the better it got. He began to see things by the faintest reflection of light leaking down the length of the tunnel.

There were people living down here. Streeters. John and the doctor passed several carefully arranged piles of debris and trash. To someone without anything better, those trash heaps were home.

They came across two of the tenants.

The bodies were sprawled, limp and lifeless. John didn't need to look closely to know that Quetzal had drained them. There was a stink on the air that wasn't natural, a stink he could now associate with the darkling mage.

Quetzal had come this way.

Dr. Spae was the one who found the entrance to the secret passageway. It was hidden in the back of an alcove in the wall. A pivoting panel opened on a rotting black curtain, behind which was a small chamber lit by the feeble glow of an ancient incandescent bulb. An angled shaft led up into the hill. Somewhere up above, another faint light glowed.

John insisted on going first.

"Be careful," Dr. Spae advised.

It was a bit of doctor's advice he intended to follow scrupulously.

The shaft was steep enough that to ascend, he needed to use the rusty iron rungs driven into the wall. After twenty feet or so, it opened into another chamber. This one was very irregular, a strange place where in the dim light a shadow might be an opening leading away into darker realms, or just a smudge on the rockface. It gave the place a feeling of a hall of mirrors, where you could not tell the real passages from the reflections. John discovered another shaft leading up, from which faint sounds emanated.

Quetzal, making his escape.

Dr. Spae joined him and listened. She agreed that the noise they could hear was Quetzal, but she disagreed about which direction the wizard was going.

"He's coming back."

It wasn't what John wanted to hear. "Why? The men in the verries couldn't have cut him off. You said they wouldn't know what house he was headed for."

"Maybe he can't get through. Maybe the tunnel up there has collapsed. It's been a long time."

"Maybe he's coming back because he knows we're here."

Spae shrugged. "His reasons don't matter."

"What will we do?"

"Fight him."

"That didn't work before."

"Then we bring the roof down on his head."

The earth above them felt very, very weighty. "We'll die, too."

"Then we'll die."