Heartland

XXVII

One of the skills taught young Watchers was how to channel energy. Building and executing a spell took a certain amount of concentration, as well as a source of ready fuel, and if the magus had to draw and convert power from the leys, then the effectiveness of his magick was diminished accordingly. Magi like Antoine strained that distinction with their ability to draw power almost effortlessly, but the rule still held: one part to feed, one to transform, and one to execute. The trinity of doing magick. Channeling meant you could offload two-thirds of the effort on to others, and depending on the number of conduits you could manage, it meant your available pool of energy could be much larger than you could draw on your own.

This is how armies are built. Singular in focus, endless in power. The sum of the group is greater than the individual.

We were two, and had to settle for a single stream. Antoine gathered the leys and bound their streams into a single point in his chest; I-very carefully-attached a Chorus leech, and opened the conduit between us. There was a little bleed, as much as Antoine kept himself hidden, the Chorus could still taste him in the flow.

The tide had gone out another foot by the time we reached the shore. Invigorated by the heady flow of energy from Antoine, I swept through the mass of slippery rocks and wet sand along the water's edge with the Chorus. My senses were engorged with data: the hard light off the water, the laughing sound of the waves as they pulled at the giant, the smell of brine and decaying plant matter, the groaning thunder of stone under siege as Spiertz fought to overcome the cloying grip of the ocean, the stale scent of blood and sweat coming off Antoine and me. Somewhere in all that data was the cold hunger of the Spear.

It lent invincibility to those its wielder commanded, but there was a cost. Nothing was free in this Universe. It was a closed system, after all, and energy could neither be created nor destroyed. We existed in a constant state of transformation, and rewards were given in exchange for tribute. The pound of flesh is always paid. Wounds made by the Spear would never heal.

Unless they were healed by the Grail. This was the symbiotic relationship of the pair, and why they were required for the Coronation. One blooded the candidate, the other healed. Spiertz could be made human again if he could get to Paris.

In his elemental state, he was vulnerable to water. It was too fluid and the touch of it against the giant's stone skin was corrosive. The gaping wound where the giant's left shoulder had been was a mass of slag, now that it had been fighting the ocean. Many of the buttress legs were gone, melted away by the salt water, and the right arm had been compressed. Less surface area to be touched by the sea.

Near the edge of the sea, the water running up the beach and kissing the edge of my boots, I found the twisted remnants of the giant's stump. Sticking out of a mass of fused glass and steel was the sharp point of the Spear. The giant pounded the water, struggling to drag himself closer as I knelt beside the hunk of granite and iron and glass. The Chorus, fueled by the ready power streaming through my body via the conduit with Antoine, spat out of my clenched fist like an arc welder's hot torch, and the detritus around the Spear grew orange and red before it bubbled away. A cloud of white steam hissed around me as the liquefied materials hit the water.

The giant's arm rose out of the water like an octopus' tentacle, cracking as it grew longer, and it cast a shadow on the sand as it slammed down. I stepped aside, and its impact splashed hot water all over me; as it writhed in the shallow water, I let the Chorus guide my hand through the warm mist surrounding the melted rock.

The Spear fell into my hand naturally, and when the giant's hand whipped up again, I met its approach with the shining blade of the Spear. The Chorus covered the pitted and stained blade with a glaze of incandescence and the pair-Will and Spear-sliced through Spiertz's animated stone. The hand fell into the surf, and the giant made its first human-sounding noise.

The Chorus swirled around me, raising a storm of light, and I pointed the Spear at the giant, which had stopped fighting the surf. It was lying on its side, its head raised out of the water, and it stared at me. "That's right," I Whispered to the stone statue, on the off-chance that my magi-speak would get through to Spiertz. "You're going to have to get past me if you want a shot at the Crown."

The giant's expression darkened, its mouth widening to a ragged pit, and for a moment, I thought it was going to vomit sand at me again, but it jerked its head back and then forward again. The long strands of its hair snapped forward and two of them broke off. The Chorus tagged them immediately, reading their intent, and they deflected one. The other one came directly at me, and I moved the tip of the Spear to intercept it, and reached deep into the conduit. Power flowed through my arms and legs, bracing me, and the Spear vibrated with energy, singing a harmonic overtone that climbed in pitch as the missile struck. The stone exploded in a shower of gray dust, coating me with grit.

I flicked the Spear down, angled it flat, and then flicked it up, throwing a wave of energy in a wedge before me. The ocean receded, forced back by my command, and I strode out into the newly cleared beach. When the waves came back, I flicked them out again, and the giant recoiled from the edge of the psychic wedge I commanded. I sliced through two of the buttress legs, clearing my way to the central leg, and then I thrust the Spear deep into the stone.

Spiertz was in there; I could feel him now. He howled at me, a psychic charge I felt in my arm, and I responded, releasing the Chorus through the metal blade. They shrieked as they devoured the giant's leg, eagerly snapping at the wisps of Spiertz's soul they could find in the rock. The giant pulled its leg back, trying to get away from the Spear, and the stone crumbled. It turned white, like water leaching out of mud, and then crumbled into ash. A wave crested the giant's leg, washing over my hand, and the Spear came free of the stone as all the rock around the wound was swept away.

The giant tried to lash me a few more times with its strands of hair, but the Chorus, emboldened by the bits of Spiertz's soul they had devoured, caught each one of them and burned them into smoke. Spiertz couldn't grow another hand on the end of his arm, not past the cut made by the Spear, and so he grew a pair from his elbow; I cut them off too. I waded out further, and sank the Spear into the stone of his waist, and when the ocean claimed all the dead rock from that wound, Spiertz lost control of the lower part of the giant's body.

After an hour of hacking at his body, all that remained was the skull, and the features had been wiped off by the waves. I raised the heavy stone of the giant's skull out of the water-reducam de maris-and touched it with my free hand. Part of Spiertz swam in the cacophony of the Chorus, and because his personality and memory had been devoured piecemeal, most of it was incoherent noise in my head. What remained of Spiertz's personality was bound in the stone still, but there wasn't much left. A lot of the Mason was gone.

I drove the Spear into the center of the skull's smooth forehead, and the Chorus filled the stone vessel with their light. Steam rose from the skull, and Spiertz shrieked and thrashed within the prison of stone. He wasn't human enough to curse me, but I felt his rage. I squeezed the shaft of the Spear, flushing power down to the Chorus, and the rock exploded. What didn't vaporize in the blast was thrown into the water, and clustered around the burning tip of the Spear like glowing fireflies were the tiny remnants of Spiertz's soul, clutched in the thorny claws of the Chorus.

Antoine severed the conduit as I returned to the beach. "Percutiam te et auferam caput tuum a te," he said, staring out at the gray stains in the water. The ocean washed the detritus of the giant away, the tide pulling the mud back out into the deeper water of the bay. I will smite you and take your head from you. David, telling Goliath how the giant Philistine was going to meet his end.

"Am I next?" Antoine asked.

I shivered. My skin was cold all of a sudden; the sunlight felt weak, as if the sun was looking elsewhere, and its heat was lost to us.

There's a memory I have of Portland, and I don't know if it was a dream or a vision, but it burns in my head. Antoine standing on the bank of the Willamette River, watching the water wash away the ash of Portland. "It is done," he says. The morning sun has burned away all the black, and none of the soul-dead have survived the dawn.

None but me.

"I am standing on the precipice of the Abyss," he says, "staring into the face of nothingness, and what do I see but the glitter of many lights. So many threads-undone, unbound, twisted free of the Weave." He turns his ruined face away from the ravaged cityscape and looks at the man standing next to him. "Where do they go?"

Philippe Emonet leans on his cane; his left leg, bent and twisted, pains him. His hair is in a disarray, and his face is slack and loose. He shrugs.

Antoine raises his silver hand and touches his face. The fingers come away wet, dappled with a pink smear of blood and water. "I am the Witness," he says. "I have Seen what has been done-what we have done-and I will carry this terrible knowledge with me for the rest of my days."

Philippe nods slowly.

"We're all responsible, aren't we?" Antoine says. He lowers his hand and the fingers dissolve back into the smooth shape of the silver cap. "But you are the lucky one, aren't you? You only have to carry this weight a little while longer."

Philippe's lips curl into something like a smile. Long enough, he says, his words clear to both Antoine and me, though his voice doesn't work. There are others who will carry it longer than you and I.

"Of course there are." A bark of laughter rips out of Antoine, a stab of noise that appears to be painful. "You still need me, don't you, Old Man? You've taken everything from me so that I am pure in my purpose, so that my desire is focused on one thing only. Markham may have been your salvation, but I am to be your vengeance. Is that it?"

In this dream, I am a ghost, a translucent vessel that is being filled with the morning light. A cup, not yet full of fire. I stand on the water of the Willamette River, and watch Antoine argue with his conscience.

"I will wait," Antoine says. "I will Watch. That is what I will do for you. I will be patient, until my turn comes."

As the light changes, as the vision becomes less like a dream and more like the morning after the death of Portland, I become more solid and the specter of the Hierarch vanishes. Antoine remains, standing on the edge, staring into the Abyss.

Am I next?