Operation Chaos

XXXIII

I drew alongside. The air was still cold and blowing, a wail in our ears, a streaming past our ribs, a smell akin to burning sulfur and wet iron. At hover, the broomsticks rocked and pitched. Her foot against mine was a very precious contact.

We peered into the globe she held. Svartalf-Bolyai craned around her arm to see. This close, the intervening space not too different from home geometry, the scrying functioned well. Ginny zoomed in on the castle. It was sable in hue, monstrous in size and shape. Or had it a shape? It sprawled, it soared, it burrowed with no unity except ugliness. Here a thin spire lifted crookedly from a cubical donjon—there a dome swelled pustular, yonder a stone beard overhung a misproportioned gate . . . square miles of planless deformity, aswarm with the maggoty traffic of devils.

We tried to look through the walls, but didn’t penetrate far. Behind and beneath the cavernous chambers and twisted labyrinths that we discerned, too much evil force roiled. It was as well, considering what we did vaguely make out. At the limit, a thought came from just beyond, for an instant-no, not a thought, a wave of such agony that Ginny cried aloud and I bit blood out of my lip. We blanked the globe and embraced till we could stop shuddering.

“Can’t afford this,” she said, drawing free. “Time’s gotten in short supply.”

She reactivated the scryer, with a foreseer spell. Those rarely work in our universe, but Lobachevsky had theorized the fluid dimensions of the Low Continuum might give us a better chance. The view in the globe panned, steadied on one spot, and moved close. Slablike buildings and contorted towers enclosed a certain courtyard in an irregular septagon. At the middle of this was a small, lumpy stone house, windowless and with a single doorway. A steeple climbed from it, suggestive of a malformed ebon toadstool, that overtopped the surrounding structures and overshadowed the pavement.

We couldn’t view the inside of this either, for the same reason as before. It seemed to be untenanted, though. I had the creepy feeling that it corresponded in some perverted way to a chapel.

“Unambiguous and sharp,” Ginny said. “That means she’ll arrive there, and soon. We’ll have to lay our plans fast.”

“And move fast, too,” I said. “Give me an overall scan, will you, with spot close-ups?”

She nodded. The scene changed to one from on high. I noted afresh how it pullulated in the crowds. Were they always this frantic? Not quite, surely. We focused on a single band of demons. No two looked alike; vanity runs high in hell. A body covered with spines, a tentacled dinosaur, a fat slattern whose nipples were tiny grinning heads, a flying swine, a changeable blob, a nude man with a snake for a phallus, a face in a belly, a dwarf on ten-foot pencil-thin legs, and less describable sights- What held my attention was that most of them were armed. They didn’t go for projectiles either, evidently. However, those medievalish weapons would be bad to encounter.

Sweeping around, our vision caught similar groups. The confusion was unbelievable. There was no discipline, no consideration, everybody dashed about like a decapitated chicken yelling at everybody else, they jostled and snarled and broke into fights. But more arms were being fetched each minute from inside, more grotesque flyers lumbered into the air and circled.

“They’ve been alerted, all right,” I said. “The drums—”

“I don’t suppose they know what to expect,” Ginny said in a low tight voice. “They aren’t especially guarding the site we’re after. Didn’t the Adversary pass word about us?”

“He seems to be debarred from taking a personal hand in this matter, same as Lobachevsky and for analogous reasons, I guess. At most, he may’ve tipped his underlings to watch out for trouble from us. But they can’t know we’ve acquired the capability to do what we did. Especially since we’ve made an end run in time.”

“And the diabolic forces are stupid,” Ginny said. “Evil is never intelligent or creative. They receive word a raid is possible, and look at that mess!”

“Don’t underrate them. An idiot can kill you just as dead.” I pondered. “Here’s what we’ll do, if you agree. Rush straight in. We can’t prevent them seeing us, so we have to be quick. Good thing our sticks function close to normal in this neighborhood. We won’t make directly for the yard or they might block us off. See that palace, I assume it is, over to the left—the one with the columns in front that look like bowels? Must belong to the big cheese, which makes it a logical spot for enemies to drop a bomb on. At the last moment we’ll swerve toward our real mark. You get inside, establish our paranatural defenses, and ready the return spell. I’ll keep the door. The instant Val appears, you skewer the kidnaper and grab her. Got it?

“Yes. Oh, Steve.” The tears ran silently from her eyes. “I love you.”

We kissed a final time, there in the sky of hell.

Then we attacked.

The wind of our passage shouted around us. The drear landscape reeled away beneath. I heard Svartalf’s challenge and answered with my own whoop. Fear blew out of me. Gangway, you legions of darkness, we’re coming to fetch our girl!

They began to see us. Croaks and yammers reached our ears, answered by shrieks from below. The flying devils milled in the air. Others joined them till several hundred wings beat in a swarm across the sooty stars. They couldn’t make up the minds they scarcely had what to do about us. Nearer we came and nearer. The castle rose in our vision like the ranges we had crossed.

Ginny must spend her entire force warding off sorceries. Lightning bolts spattered blue on the shieldfield, yards off, followed by thunder and ozone. Lethal clouds boiled from smokestacks, englobed our volume of air and dissipated. I had no doubt that, unperceived by us, curses, hoodoos, illusions, temptations, and screaming meemies rained upward and rebounded.

The effort was draining her. I glimpsed the white, strained countenance, hair plastered to brow and cheek by sweat, wand darting while the free hand gestured and the lips talked spells. Svartalf snarled in front of her; Bolyai piloted the broom. None of them could keep it up for many minutes.

But that conjure wave made it impossible for anything to get at us physically. The creature in charge must have realized this at the end, for the assault stopped. An eagle the size of a horse, wearing a crocodile’s head, stooped upon us.

My cutlass was drawn. I rose in the stirrups. “Not one cent for tribute!” I bayed, and struck.- The old power awoke in the blade. It smote home with a force I felt through my bones. Blood spurted from a sheared-off wing. The devil bawled and dropped.

A bat-snake threw a loop around my right arm. I grabbed its neck with my left hand before it could sink fangs in me. Human, I remain wolf; I bit its head off. Barely in time, I cut at a twin-tailed manta coming for Ginny. It fell aft, spilling guts. An aerial hound sought to intercept us. I held my weapon straight and got him with the point.

Horns hooted their discord. The flapping, cawing, stinking flock retreated in its regular disorder. Our stratagem had worked. Their entire outfit, infantry, air corps, and all, was being summoned to defend the palace.

We pursued to within a hundred yards. The manor was no longer visible for wings and feculent bodies. I lifted my blade as signal. We swung right and whizzed downward. Babel erupted behind us.

We landed jarringly hard. Surrounded by walls, brooded over by the cap of its tower, the building huddled in twilight. I bounced from my seat to the door and tried its ill-feeling handle. It creaked open and we ran in.

A single room, dank jagged stone, lay before us. It wasn’t large in area, but opened above on the measureless dark of the tower. The room was bare except for an altar where a Glory Hand cast dull blue light. The arrangement of objects and the pattern on the floor were similar to those we’d employed for transit.

The heart cracked in me. “Val!” I sobbed. Ginny wrestled me to a halt. She couldn’t have done so without Svartalf getting between my ankles.

“Hold it,” she gasped. “Don’t move. That’s the changeling.”

I drew a lungful of air and regained my sanity. Of course, of course. But it was more than I could endure to look at that chubby shape before the altar, gold curls and empty, empty eyes. Strange, also, to see next to the half-alive thing the mass already exchanged from our house: dust, sandbox contents, coffee grounds, soggy paper towels, a Campbell’s Soup can—

The devil garrison was boiling over the walls and through the portals into this courtyard. I slammed the door and dropped the bolt. It was good and heavy: might buy us a few minutes.

How many did we need? I tried to reconstruct events. The kidnaper was doubtless moronic even by hell’s standards. He’d heard Marmiadon’s curse. A lot of them must have, but didn’t see anything they could do to fulfill it. This one noticed our vulnerability. “Duh” he said, and flashed off to collect some kudos, without consulting any of the few demons that are able to think. Such a higher-up could have told him to lay off. His action would give a clue to the link between hell and the Johannine Church, and thus imperil the whole scheme for the sabotage of religion and society that the Adversary had been working on since he deluded the first of the neo-Gnostics.

Being the dimbulb he was, this creature could not solve the momentum problem of transferring a body other than his own between universes, unless the exchange mass was nearly identical in configuration. His plan would have been to appear in our home, scan Valeria as she slept, return here, ’chant a hunk of meat into her semblance, and go back after her. The first part would only have taken seconds, though it got the wind up Svartalf. The snatch ought to have gone quickly too, but the cat was waiting and attacked.

At this moment, if simultaneity had meaning between universes, the fight ramped and Svartalf’s blood was riven from him. My throat tightened. I stooped over him. “We’d ’ve arrived too late here except for you,” I whispered. “They don’t make thanks for that sort of help. Infinitely gently, I stroked the sleek head. He twitched his ears, annoyed. In these surroundings, he’d no patience with fine sentiments. Besides, currently they were Janos Bolyai’s ears too.

Ginny was chalking a diagram around the room for a passive defense against demonurgy. It took care, because she mustn’t disturb altar, emblem, or objects elsewhere. They were the fiend’s return ticket. Given them, he need simply cast the appropriate spell in our cosmos, just as we’d use the things and symbols in Griswold’s lab for a lifeline. If the kidnaper found himself unable to make it back with his. victim, God alone knew what would happen. They’d certainly both leave our home and a changeling replace them. But we’d have no inkling of how this came about or where they’d gone. It might provide the exact chance the enemy needed to get his project back on the rails.

Outside, noise swelled-stamp, hop, clang, howl, whistle, grunt, gibber, bubble, hiss, yelp, whine, squawk, moan, bellow. The door reverberated under fists, feet, hoofs. I might well have to transform. I dropped the scuba gear and my outer garments, except for wrapping Barney’s jacket around my left forearm.

A mouth, six feet wide and full of clashing teeth, floated through a wall. I yelled, Svartalf spat. Ginny grabbed her wand and cried dismissal. The thing vanished. But thereafter she was continually interrupted to fight off such attacks.

She had to erect fortifications against them before she could begin the spell that would send us home. The latter ritual must not be broken off till at least a weak field had been established between this point and the lab on earth, or it became worthless. Having made initial contact, Ginny could feel out at leisure what balance of forces was required, and bring them up to the strength necessary for carrying us. Now she wasn’t getting leisure. In consequence, her defensive construction went jaggedly and slowly.

The hullabaloo outside dwindled somewhat. I heard orders barked. Thuds and yammers suggested they were enforced with clubs. A galloping grew. The door rocked under a battering ram.

I stood aside. At the third blow, the door splintered and its hinges tore loose. The lead devil on the log stumbled through. He was rather like a man-sized cockroach. I cut him apart with a brisk sweep. The halves threshed and clawed for a while after they fell. They entangled the stag-horned being that came next, enabling me to take him with ease.

The others hauled back the log, which blocked the narrow entrance. But my kills remained as a partial barrier in front of me. The murk outside turned most of the garrison into shadows, though their noise stayed deafening and their odors revolting.

One trod forward in the shape of a gorilla on man’s legs. He wielded an ax in proportion to his size. It hewed. Poised in karate stance, I shifted to let it go by. Chips sleeted where it hit stone. My cutlass sang. Fingers came off him. He dropped the ax. Bawling his pain, he cuffed at me. I did the fastest squat on record. While that skull-cracker of a hand boomed above, I got an Achilles tendon. He fell. I didn’t try for a death, because he barred access while he dragged himself away. My pulse seethed in my ears.

A thing with sword and shield was next. We traded blows for a couple of minutes. He was good. I parried, except for slashes that the jacket absorbed; but I couldn’t get past that shield. Metal clashed above the bedlam as sparks showered in twilight. My breath started coming hard. He pressed close. A notion flashed in me. As he cut over the top of his shield, I dropped down again. My weapon turned his, barely. My left hand grabbed the ax, stuck the helve between his legs, and shoved. He toppled, exposing his neck. I smote.

Rising, I threw the ax at the monster behind, who reeled back. A spear wielder poked at me. I got hold of the shaft and chopped it over.

No further candidates advanced right away. The mass churned around, arguing with itself. Through the hammering of my heart, I realized I couldn’t hold out much longer. As human, that is. Here was a chance to assume the less vulnerable Lyco state. I tossed my blade aside and turned the flash on myself.

At once I discovered that transformation was slow and agonizing amidst these influences. For a space I writhed helpless between shapes. A rooster-headed fiend cackled his glee and rushed forward, snickersnee on high. Were or no, I couldn’t survive bisection. Svartalf bolted past me, walked up the enemy’s abdomen, and clawed his eyes out.

Wolf, I resumed my post. The cat went back inside. We were just in time. The garrison finally got the idea of throwing stuff. Space grew thick with rocks, weapons, and assorted impedimenta. Most missed. Hell is no place to develop your throwing arm. Those that hit knocked me about, briefly in pain, but couldn’t do any real damage.

The barrage ended when, in sheer hysteria, they tried to storm us. That was turmoil, slice, hack, rip, tumbling about in their vile welter. They might have overrun me by numbers had Ginny not finished her paranatural defenses and come to my aid. Her weapon disposed of the demons that crawled over the pile of struggling bodies.

When at last they withdrew, their dead and wounded were heaped high. I sat down amidst the ichor, the fragments, the lamentations, unreeled my tongue and gulped air. Ginny rumpled my fur, half laughing, half crying. Some claws had reached her; blood trickled from scratches and her dress was tattered into battle banners. Svartalf’s aid had prevented her opponents from inflicting serious wounds, though. I glanced within and saw him playing mousey with a devil’s tail.

More important was the soft luminosity from the lines woven across the floor. We were accessible as ever to physical force, but goetics couldn’t touch us now. To break down her impalpable walls would take longer than we’d possibly stay.

“Steve, Steve, Steve—” Ginny straightened. “I’d better prepare for our return.”

“Halt!” called a voice from the dusk. It was hoarse, with an eerie hypnotic rhythm, not calming, but, rather, invoking wrath and blind energy. “Waffenstillstand. Parlementieren Sie mit uns. ”

The devils, even the strewn wounded, fell quiet. Their noise sibilated away until the silence was nearly total, and those who could, withdrew until they merged in vision with the blackness behind them. I knew their master had spoken, the lord of this castle . . . who stood high in the Adversary’s councils, if he commanded obedience from these mad creatures.

Boots clacked over flagstones. The demon chief came before us. The shape he had adopted startled me. Like his voice, it was human; but it was completely unmemorable. He was of medium height or less, narrow-shouldered, face homely and a bit puffy, ornamented with nothing but a small toothbrush mustache and a lock of dark hair slanting across the brow. He wore some kind of plain brown military uniform. But why did he add a red armband with the ancient and honorable sign of the fylfot?

Svartalf quit his game and bristled. Through diabolic stench, I caught the smell of Ginny’s fear. When you looked into the eyes in that face, it stopped being ordinary. She braced herself, made a point of staring down along the couple of inches she overtopped him, and said in her haughtiest tone, “Was willst du?”

It was the du of insult. Her personal German was limited, but while Bolyai was in Svartalf she could tap his fluency by rapport with her familiar. (Why did the devil prince insist on German? There’s a mystery here that I’ve never solved.) I retained sufficient human-type capabilities to follow along.

I ask you the same,” the enemy replied. Though he kept to the formal pronoun, his manner was peremptory. “You have encroached on our fatherland. You have flouted our laws. You have killed and maimed our gallant warriors when they sought to defend themselves. You desecrate our House of Sendings with your odious presence. What is your excuse?”

“We have come to gain back what is ours.”

“Well? Say on.”

I growled a warning, which Ginny didn’t need. “If I told you, you might find ways to thwart us,” she said. “Be assured, however, we don’t intend to stay. We’ll soon have completed our mission.” Sweat glistened forth on her brow. “I . . . I suggest it will be to the advantage of both parties if you let us alone meanwhile.”

He stamped a boot. “I must know! I demand to know! It is my right!”

“Diseases have no rights,” Ginny said. “Think. You cannot pierce our spell-wall nor break through by violence in the time that is left. You can only lose troops. I do not believe your ultimate master would be pleased at such squandering of resources.”

He waved his arms. His tone loudened. “I do not admit defeat. For me, defeat has no existence. If I suffer a reverse, it is because I have been stabbed in the back by traitors.” He was heading off into half a trance. His words became a harsh, compelling chant. “We shall break the iron ring. We shall crush the vermin that infest the universes. We shall go on to victory. No surrender! No compromise! Destiny calls us onward!”

The mob of monsters picked up a cue and cried hail to him. Ginny said: “If you want to make an offer, make it. Otherwise go away. I’ve work to do.”

His features writhed, but he got back the self-control to say: “I prefer not to demolish the building. Much effort and wizardry is in these stones. Yield yourselves and I promise fair treatment.”

“What are your promises worth?”

“We might discuss, for example, the worldly gains rewarding those who serve the cause of the rightful—”

Svartalf mewed. Ginny spun about. I threw a look behind, as a new odor came to me. The kidnapper had materialized. Valeria lay in his grasp.

She was just coming awake, lashes aflutter, head turning, one fist to her lips. “Daddy?” the sleepy little voice murmured. “Mothuh?”

The thing that held her was actually of less weight. It wore an armor-plated spiky-backed body on two clawed feet, a pair of gibbon-like arms ending in similarly murderous talons, and a tiny head with blob features. Blood dripped off it here and there. The loose lips bubbled with an imbecilic grin, till it saw what was waiting.

It yowled an English, “Boss, help!” as it let Val go and tried to scuttle aside. Svartalf blocked the way. It raked at him. He dodged. Gin, got there. She stamped down. I heard a crunch. The demon ululated.

I’d stuck at my post. The lord of the castle tried to get past me. I removed a chunk of his calf. It tasted human, too, sort of. He retreated, into the shadow chaos of his appalled followers. Through their din I followed his screams: “I shall have revenge for this! I shall unleash a secret weapon! Let the House be destroyed! Our pride demands satisfaction! My patience is exhausted!”

I braced myself for a fresh combat. For a minute, I almost got one. But the baron managed to control his horde; the haranguing voice overrode theirs. As Ginny said, he couldn’t afford more futile casualties.

I thought, as well as a wolf can: Good thing he doesn’t know they might not have been futile this time.

For Ginny could not have aided me. After the briefest possible enfolding of her daughter, she’d given the kid to Svartalf. The familiar—and no doubt the mathematician—busied himself with dances, pounces, patty-cake and wurrawurra, to keep her out of her mother’s hair. I heard the delighted laughter, like silver bells and springtime rain. But I heard, likewise, Ginny’s incantation.

She must have about five unbroken minutes to establish initial contact with home, before she could stop and rest. Then she’d need an additional period to determine the precise configuration of vectors and gather the required paranatural energies. And then we’d go!

It clamored in the dark. An occasional missile flew at me, for no reason except hatred. I stood in the door and wondered if we had time.

A rumbling went through the air. The ground shuddered underfoot. The devils keened among shadows. I heard them retreating. Fear gripped me by the gullet. I have never done anything harder than to keep that guardian post.

The castle groaned at its foundations. Dislodged blocks slid from the battlements and crashed. Flamelight flickered out of cracks opened in gates and shutters. Smoke tried to strangle me. It passed, and was followed by the smell of ancient mold.

“ . . . in nomine Potestatis, fiat janua . . .” the witch’s hurried verses ran at my back.

The giant upheaved himself.

Higher he stood than the highest spire of this stronghold beside which he had lain buried. The blackness of him blotted out the stars of hell. His tottering feet knocked a curtain wall down in a grinding roar; dust whirled up, earthquake ran. Nearly as loud was the rain of dirt, mud, gravel from the wrinkled skin. Fungi grew there, pallidly phosphorescent, and worms dripped from his eye sockets. The corruption of him seized the breath. The heat of his decay smoldered and radiated. He was dead; but the power of the demon was in him.

“. . . saeculi aeternitatis. ” Ginny had kept going till she could pause without danger to the spell. She was that kind of girl. But now she came to kneel by me. “Oh, darling,” she wept, “we almost won through!”

I fumbled at my flash. The giant wove his head from side to side as if he still had vision. The faceless visage came to a stop, pointed our way. I shoved the switch and underwent the Skin-turning back to human. The giant raised a foot. He who operated him was trying to minimize damage to the castle. Slowly, carefully, he set it down inside the fortifications.

I held my girl to me. My other girl laughed and romped with the cat. Why trouble them? “We’ve no chance?”

“I . . . no time . . . first-stage field ready, b-b—but flesh can’t cross before I . . . complete—I love you, I love you.”

I reached for Decatur’s sword where it gleamed in the Handlight. We’ve come to the end of creation, I thought, and we’ll die here. Let’s go out fighting. Maybe our souls can escape.

Souls!

I grabbed Ginny by the shoulder and thrust her back to look at. “We can send for help,” burst from me. “Not mortals, and angels’re forbidden, but, but you do have contact established and . . . the energy state of this universe—it doesn’t take a lot to—There’s bound to be many c-creatures, not of Heaven but still no friends of hell—”

Her eyes kindled. She sprang erect, seized wand and sword, swung them aloft and shouted.

The giant stepped into our courtyard. The crippled devils gibbered their terror, those he did not crush underfoot. His fingers closed around the tower.

I couldn’t tell what language Ginny’s formula was in, but she ended her cry in English: “Ye who knew man and were enemies of Chaos, by the mana of the signs we bear I call on you and tell you that the way from earth stands open!”

The chapel rocked. Stones fell, inside and outside. The tower came off. It broke apart in the giant’s clutch, a torrent that buried the last of hell’s wounded. We looked into lightless constellations. The giant groped to scoop us out.

Our rescuers arrived.

I don’t know who or what they were. Perhaps their looks were illusion. I’ll admit that the quarters of the compass were from which they came, because these are nonsense in hell. Perhaps what answered Ginny’s call was simply a group of beings, from our universe or yet another, who were glad of a chance to raid the realm of the Adversary that is theirs too. She had built a bridge that was, as yet, too frail to bear mortal bodies. However, as I’d guessed, the entropy of the Low Continuum made paranatural forces able to accomplish what was impossible elsewhere.

Explain it as you like. This is what I saw—

From the west, the figure of a woman, queenly in blue-bordered white robe. Her eyes were gray, her features of icicle beauty. The dark tresses bore a crested helmet. Her right hand carried a spear whose head shimmered midnight azure with glitters as of earthly stars; and upon that shoulder sat an owl. On her left arm was a long shield, which for boss had the agonized face of another woman whose locks were serpents.

From the south, the greatest serpent of them all. His orbs were like suns, his teeth like white knives. Plumes of rainbow color grew on his head, nodding in the wind he brought with him, shining with droplets of the rain that walked beneath. More feathers made a glory down his back. His scales were coral, the scutes upon his belly shone golden. The coils of him lashed about as does the lightning.

From the north, a man in a chariot drawn by two goats. He stood burly, red-bearded, clad in helmet and ringmail, iron gloves and an iron belt. Driving with his left hand, he gripped a short-handled hammer in his right. The cloak blew behind him on mighty gales. The rumble of his car wheels went down and down the sky. He laughed, swung the hammer and threw it. Where it struck, fire blasted and the air roared; it returned to him.

Each of these loomed so tall that the firmament would hardly contain them. Hell trembled at their passage. The devils fled in a cloud. When his master left, the giant’s animation ceased. He fell with an impact that knocked me off my feet. It demolished a large part of the castle. The newcomers didn’t stop to level the rest right away, but took off after the fiends. I don’t imagine that many escaped.

We didn’t watch. Ginny completed the transfer spell and seized Valeria in both her arms. I tucked Decatur’s sword under one of mine—damn if it’d be left here!—and offered Svartalf the crook of that elbow. From the floor I plucked up the kidnaper demon. It had a broken leg. “Boss, don’t hurt me, I’ll be good, I’ll talk, I’ll tell ya ever’t’ing ya want,” it kept whining. Evil has no honor.

Ginny spoke the final word, made the final pass. We crossed.