Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (23 page)

Angle is likely where they want to engage me. Muck, Nightand Crush are my three choices outofhere, and the spear should luresomeone into Night. Iwasjust in Muck, so it looks like Crush is it. Having made that decision, he took two steps to the left, focused his mind on splitting the wall between dimensions and moved.

Crush’s atmosphere closed in on him like a hot and humid summer day inside an iron box. The dimension’s gravity ran about 30% greater than that of Earth, as nearly as Coyote could tell, except for the occasional “upspout”

in which gravity geysered up or out or counter to normal.

The landscape gently rolled through a series of gray hills, with a deep, dark blue sky that appeared to be in perpetual twilight. The only sign of life he saw were broad, squat
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

plants and ribbonlike kelp that thrived in the upspouts.

Coyote crouched, not wholly by his own choice, and let his mind stream out to probe the other nearby dimensions. Rust remained clear, but he detected something in Slide.
Slide has an advantage for the defender. As I’m
supposed to be the one being hunted, and he’s searching
the logical place for
metobe hiding, perhaps Ican surprise him.

Coyote concentrated and cleared his mind as much as he possibly could. He stopped probing Slide and, instead, left himself open and passive. He let all the impressions he could from Slide pour into him, then inside his head he filtered out everything but the
getsul’s
probes. Like a Stealth aircraft, he deadened his own image, giving the
getsul
nothing upon which to track. In return, however, he picked up on the man’s probes and used them to pinpoint him.

Soft shift.Instead of popping a hard-and-fast shift image into his brain, which is what allowed him to do rip-shifts to elude pursuit, Coyote assembled an image of Slide from bits and pieces. He imagined the lighter gravity and cooler, drier atmosphere. The air tasted cool and slick. He filled the flat, glassy landscape with the rivers of neon colors that flowed through it. Whirling Frisbee clouds filled the sky like blue polka-dots on a pink background.

Building Slide up image by image, he willed himself forward. Without taking a step, he dissolved himself through the wall between Crush and Slide. As he opened his eyes he saw the tableau before him matched that which he had imagined in all but one aspect. A
getsul
crouched a dozen feet in front of him, utterly unaware that his foes had just materialized behind him.

“You lose, sport.”

At the sound of his voice, the
getsul
spun around and made a serious mistake. Slide, as Coyote had discovered in his first run through the clutch’s dimensions, could easily have been designated Teflon or Grease. Everything had the frictional equivalence of ice on wet glass. As the
getsul
completed his turn, his pivot foot slipped back, and his other foot skipped forward. He went down in an abrupt and painful split, then fell forward and bashed his face into the ground.

Coyote winced as the man hit. Dropping to one knee,
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

he bent forward, then pulled his head up, imparting just enough forward momentum to his body to start him sliding toward the unconscious man. He bumped up against the
getsul
and that bled off his momentum. He pressed fingers to the man’s throat and found a strong, steady pulse.

Only one left, I think. Kneeling there, Coyote checked Crush and Muck but found no one. I don’t want to stay here. MaybeMuck toAngletoStorm, and Ican hide there.

Concentrating again, Coyote made a rip-cut in the wall of Slide and pulled himself through to Muck. He sank about six inches into the red-gray ooze covering the ground. He recognized the gelatinous substance as something Fiddleback had transplanted to a tower in Phoenix.

Because the slime, which Coyote thought must have been some form of life, concentrated gravity in itself, it created a bond between whatever it touched.
If not for the fact that
it probably, eventually, eats the stuff it touches, it could
make wonderful Super Glue.

He stood, and the slime dripped off his legs. Taking great sucking steps forward, he came to a sheer hillside covered with the slime. Climbing up, he twisted around and planted his back flat against the rock face. Hanging up above normal human eye level, he focused his mind and probed both Rust and Angle.

Initially, he caught only a faint impression of a
getsul
in Angle, but that trace evaporated beneath the harsh glare of a far stronger sensation. Someone or something entered the clutch and its trace filled the whole series of pocket dimensions. At first, Coyote thought someone had made a bad mistake in not shielding himself, but then he caught the edges on the impression and he realized it had been curbed so it would not extend beyond the clutch.

This is deliberate, then. A lure and a trap.As Coyote sorted through the sensations being broadcast by this new hunter, he decided it was not Mong, nor was it any of the other monks with whom he had trained. He also discovered the hunter was male, but he couldn’t bring himself to see the hunter as a man. The second he drew that conclusion, he knew who was out there.

The Yidam.

Twisting his way around to face the cliff, Coyote clawed his way up toward the top. The impressions of the Yidam
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

pounded into him like hoofbeats. The Yidam stalked openly through the clutch, confidently and contemptuously advertising its presence. The hammering sensations came faster and harder as the Yidam approached, but they so overwhelmed Coyote that he could not pinpoint a direction, and he looked about in vain for any sign of the creature as he reached the top of the cliff.

Suddenly, there above him, the Yidam appeared through a slash in the sky. Cloaked in black, the Yidam stepped through to the cliff edge and stared down at him. His scarlet eyes flashed with gold, and his gaze seemed to bore right through Coyote. White tusks stood out in sharp contrast with his jet-black skin, and the cloak opened enough to let Coyote see the necklace of skulls hanging from around his neck.

Gold glinting from his talons, the Yidam’s right foot swept free of the mucusoid carpet creature and caught Coyote over his left ear. Stars exploded before Coyote’s eyes, and he sensed himself starting to fall. At the same time, something stabbed deep into his mind, using his disorientation to make him vulnerable. He snapped his head around to try to break that contact, but only succeeded in starting his body rolling through the air.

«Get out of my mind!»Coyote focused long enough to snap his mind shut, then immediately assessed his situation. He knew he had little control over his body as it still fought off the shock of the blow.
One chance.

Coyote ripped through to Angle and braced himself for impact. He landed with his left shoulder on one of the huge hexagonal plates that made up the world of Angle. The plate gave a bit, preventing his shoulder from being crushed, then pushed back and returned almost all of his energy to him. Bouncing up at the complementary angle from that at which he’d hit, Coyote spun up and off to the right.

Are you as cocky as you advertise?Coyote craned his neck back to watch the gash from Muck and tried to will himself back toward it. As he spun around, he lost sight of it, then, as it came back into view, he sawthe Yidam’s feet break through.
Bingo!

Spinning uncontrollably, Coyote passed close to the opening into Muck. His feet flailed through the air and caught the Yidam in mid-chest, crushing two of the skulls.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The blow immediately killed Coyote’s spin, but sent the Yidam whirling backward and down toward the ground.

The Yidam hit hard with his head, but the soft ground prevented him from breaking his neck. His body continued to spin down, slamming his buttocks into the ground as well, then he bounced up and started forward somersaults through the air. He made some motions to control his flight, but he headed away from Coyote and could do nothing until he hit the ground again.

Angle’s gentle gravity pulled Coyote down to a hexagonal plain. His legs managed to support his weight by the time he landed, but he let himself drop into a crouch, anyway. Reaching down, he jabbed his hands into the Earth and tore a new opening into another proto-dimension. Taking one last look at the flying Yidam, Coyote broke through to Storm.

A driving barrage of hailstones blasted Coyote to the snowy ground. Pushing off the ground, he tried to stand, but a thunder strike’s concussive explosion knocked him down again. Lightning strobed silver into the dark world, then the hissing sting of wind-sped sand blinded him.

Not necessarily my best choice.He blinked away the sand and set himself as he sensed the Yidam’s approach.

He turned slowly, resigning himself to always be facing into the wind, and raised his left hand to shield his eyes.

A forked lightning bolt split the sky, silhouetting the Yidam off to his right, then an arctic wind separated them with a sheet of snow.

Cutting to his right, Coyote snapped a kick through where he had last seen the Yidam. To his surprise, he connected solidly and heard a grunt. Expecting a riposte of some sort, Coyote threw himself on his face, then rolled twice to the right and rose into a low crouch. A curtain of rain cleansed the air between them, drenching the Yidam and wrapping him up in his heavily sodden cloak.

With a half-step forward, Coyote drove his right heel into the monster’s spine. Raising his left arm, he blocked the elbow flying back at him, then hammered his right fist into the same spot he had kicked. He felt thick muscles protect the spine from the full force of the blow, but he hit again, then leaped back as the Yidam fell forward and scythed his legs back through where Coyote had stood.

As he landed, something in the back of his mind painted
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

a schematic over the outline of the Yidam. His mind tried to fit the monster into a foe identification template and rejected it when the height and robustness of the figure failed to drop into standard variations from the norm.

Before the template faded, Coyote saw it contained detailed information on the weakness of the creature it had described, including the locations of nerve ganglia and points where a single strike could maim or kill.

Where did that come from?

The Yidam looked back over his shoulder.«
From your
master, Dark Minion!
» The Yidam pushed off the ground and set himself in a long-legged fighting stance. Still hidden beneath the cloak, his elbows broadened his outline, and his gold-clawed hands appeared through the slit at its center.«
Iknow why you have been sent, and it
ends now.
»

Coyote pulled back to the right as the Yidam closed and posted a kick that would have pulverized his left shoulder had it landed. Back-peddling as fast as he could, Coyote ducked and dodged away from the kicks and punches the Yidam threw at him. The creature’s sheer ferocity and power made it terrifying, but Coyote’s discipline and control made him invincible.

The Yidam came up and around with his left leg in a roundhouse kick that Coyote avoided easily.
Too easily.

As he made that realization, he saw the Yidam lean forward and use his flying leg to counter-balance his upper body. Reaching out with his right hand, the Yidam caught Coyote’s right ankle and tossed him back up into the air.

Coyote landed hard on a rock ridge. The fall stunned him. He looked up as the Yidam loomed over him and raised a foot meant to crush his skull in one final stomp.

Coyote tried in vain to bring his arms up to protect his head, but his limbs would not respond.
Sorry, Crowley,
Fiddleback is all yours now.

The foot never fell. Egg-sized hailstones caught the Yidam in the back like a shotgun blast, cartwheeling him over Coyote and down into a little hollow. A white, wet blanket of snow unfurled itself over them, then an icy gust of wind crystalized it into a sheet of ice. Water soaked him, then another sand storm gnawed on what little of his flesh it could expose beneath the ice.

Pumping his legs, Coyote kicked free of the ice. Rolling
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

over onto his side, he slid down the hillside to where the Yidam lay buried on his stomach. He smashed the ice over the creature’s head and saw by the vapor cloud he still breathed. When the Yidam’s eyelids fluttered for a moment, Coyote raised his right fist for a knock-out blow, but dropped it when the creatures eyes did not open.

Been here too long.Reaching out, Coyote cored a hole between Storm and Might, then knelt in the warm, dry darkness of absolute night. When he had first run across Night, the idea of being utterly blind had frightened him, but he realized the total lack of visual stimulation made concentration easier. The tenebrous atmosphere felt heavy, as if filled with humidity, and flowed around him like a stream.

Calming his racing heart, he gently probed Rust to see if the last
getsul
had taken up a position there. He found nothing, so he pushed his probing beyond Rust to Muck and Crush. Those dimensions remained clear. Beyond them he added Slide and Angle to his sweep of the clutch.

Nothing.
He quickly checked Storm but he got nothing from it either.
Ishe in Night?

Coyote focused his mind on the dark dimension, but sensed nothing.
Maybe he was moving fast, remaining
one step in front of my probes. Maybe he homed in on me
as I did the
getsul
in Slide.
Coyote instantly moved to the left, remained low, and raised his hands toward off unseen strikes.

If he is here, at least we’re even—we’re both blind.