Bedlams edge, p.20
Bedlam's Edge, page 20
The proportions, however, were all wrong; the arms were too long, tipped with large hands that had far too many long-clawed fingers. The legs? Were they legs? They were bent as arms would be and also ended in clawed hands. The body was nearly rectangular, and the head . . . the head wasn't even vaguely humanoid.
It had what might have been two eyes—lidless, lashless, small black holes in what would have been a human forehead. The nose spread across the entire center of the face, extra flesh folded and ruffled around a single large, hair-filled nostril. The ears were caricatures of those of the Sidhe, pointed at the top but with lobes that hung flabbily below the shoulders. And the mouth . . . a wide gash reaching from one dangling earlobe to the other; at the top long, sharply pointed teeth hung over the center of the lower lip, from the bottom jaw grew huge curved tusks that bracketed the pointed uppers.
The Sidhe pulled himself more upright and faced the djinn. Rivka did not understand the words he said, but from his stance and expression, she was sure he was saying something like, "I have freed you. You are my slave." Rivka held her breath, but the djinn only stared.
Then one long arm reached out toward the Dark Sidhe. The many-clawed hand grew larger until it was able to seize him around the waist. The Sidhe, who had cast Dov aside like a child, screamed and struggled. The djinn seemed totally unaware. Its mouth opened . . . opened . . . opened.
Dov and Rivka leaned toward each other staring, paralyzed by shock, as the djinn popped the Sidhe into the cavernous maw that seemed larger than its whole body. It swallowed, gagged, swallowed again.
The Sidhe was gone. The djinn, possibly a little taller and with a pot belly, turned its head and reached an arm out toward Dov and Rivka. Dov's silenced Glock spat twice. A terrible cry tore through Rivka's mind. The arm pulled back but the creature did not shrink or grow faint. In fact, it seemed to grow larger and more dense. And then there was a voice in Rivka's head . . . a voice speaking Hebrew!
"Mortals. How dare you hurt me! I am free now. I am drinking power. Soon I will be greater than ever. I will eat you. I will eat whole worlds."
"If you eat me," Dov snarled back in Hebrew, proving that he too had heard the djinn, "I will give you a worse belly ache than eating ten thousand worlds. I have a special mouth with a thousand teeth. You felt one of them. From within I will gnaw you with all thousand."
"I will chew up your mouth so that all your teeth are broken," the djinn roared.
Inside her head the sound was terrible and for a few moments Rivka was too afraid to think, but then she noticed that the djinn had not reached for Dov again. While it was obvious that the steel bullets did not have the same effect on the djinn that they had on the Sidhe, it had been hurt. By emptying the Glock and the Uzi, she and Dov could get away. But could they? Could they allow this thing with its avowed evil intentions to remain loose?
Panic at bay, Rivka began to think. The continuing conversation between Dov and the djinn was also significant. It was trading threats and insults with Dov, but only by varying what Dov said, not thinking of anything new. Clearly it was not too clever. Probably it could not use a Gate. Probably it could not burst through the force that held the mists within the Unformed Land. Was probably enough?
Rivka looked at it and realized it was significantly larger and that the mists around it were thinner. Could it go on sucking in the mist, growing larger and more powerful until even the forces that contained the Unformed Lands could no longer hold it?
Suddenly Rivka was aware of Qaletaqua and Asharad staring in horror at the growing djinn, at the upright figure of Dov, Glock in hand but now dwarfed by the creature that loomed over him. Both Sidhe were nursing ugly red bolts in raised hands, and for a moment Rivka wondered if all of them attacking at once could hurt the djinn—but even if they could, and could escape, she was sure they could not kill it.
From the expressions on the faces of the Sidhe, any hope of escape or slaying the djinn was vain. And the creature was looming ever higher, bent a little forward as it peered down at Dov. Surely it had gathered so much power that the bullets and the Sidhe's levin-bolts could do it little harm. Rivka felt tiny and helpless and then, suddenly, she had a clear memory of a children's movie with a tiny helpless figure being loomed over by . . . a djinn from a bottle. Sinbad.
"We've got to get it back into the bottle," she said in English, coming up close behind Dov. "We've got to make it think the bottle is or holds something precious."
The djinn uttered a wordless roar of rage, and as if she had taken that as a warning Rivka switched to Hebrew. "Do you think you can grab the bottle, Dov? We mustn't let the djinn get the bottle."
Dov fired half a dozen rounds from the Glock into the djinn's foot-hands. Surprised as much as hurt, it jumped back. Dov crouched and scuttled forward while Rivka fired bursts from the Uzi into the djinn's hands. It hissed and rubbed one arm with the other, as a man might rub a sting, while Dov ran between its legs and grabbed the bottle.
"I am full. I am all powerful," the djinn bellowed. "There is nothing I cannot do. You cannot stop me with your silly little pricks."
Rivka forced a shrill laugh. "Do what you like, giant ass. You can do nothing of importance. We have your bottle. Stupid pig. Did you not know that you left all your magic, all the wisdom you gathered through the ages here in your bottle—and we have the bottle."
There was an odd moment of silence, as if the djinn was trying to remember, and then it asked, "There is wisdom and knowledge in the bottle?"
Rivka did not answer. She came forward to Dov's side and laid a finger on the bottle; it was solid and strong, restored—if it had ever been weakened—when the Dark Sidhe fed the djinn power.
"Answer me!" the djinn roared. "I can crush you!"
"Great Mother save us," Asharad breathed. "If he breaks the bottle . . ."
Rivka forced another shrill laugh. "Oh, yes, great and mighty djinn, you can crush me and break the bottle so that all the wisdom and knowledge run out and are lost. Then you will be forever as you are, gross and stupid, strong but powerless."
"Give me the bottle or I will kill you all!"
Rivka looked at the huge many-fingered hands, each finger now as thick as her upper arm and tipped with a gigantic, horny, curved claw. The bottle in Dov's hand was so tiny in comparison; she could not believe that the djinn could manipulate the fingers delicately enough to pick it up.
"Put it down," she whispered to Dov in English.
He glanced at her questioningly and she nodded. And when he had placed the bottle firmly on what served as the ground in this place of mist and unreality, she pulled at him and he backed away. The djinn raised a ponderous foot-hand. Rivka gasped with fear. If it broke the bottle, they were doomed.
Behind her she sensed that Asharad and Qaletaqua were raising the hands cupping the ugly red fireballs and she cried, "Not yet." Instead she aimed the Uzi at the foot-hand and saw that Dov's Glock was pointed the same way.
However, the djinn did not step on the bottle. It only came that one step closer, huge foot-hands straddling its prize. "I know what I need to know now," it bellowed, its mouth beginning to stretch as it had when it swallowed the Dark Sidhe, and it reached out to snatch up Dov or Rivka or both. "I will swallow the bottle and have my wisdom inside me."
Glock and Uzi sang out together and the concentrated sting of the steel bullets made the djinn pull back. Before rage could make it indifferent to discomfort, Dov cried, "Brainless pig, knowledge needs to be in your head, not in your belly. Give back the bottle. It is useless to you. You have allowed yourself to grow too large to reach what is inside."
"You lie!" the djinn snarled. "As I went out, so will I go in and take my wisdom and fly out again. But first I will eat you, maggot mortals."
The maw stretched. The Glock and Uzi sang, but this time the huge hand only hesitated a moment and came forward again. The maw stretched farther . . . and two balls of fire flew into the black opening. A shriek even more terrible than the first cry of pain and surprise rendered Rivka nearly unconscious.
In a moment she had rallied. She heard Asharad, speaking in Persian, cry, "You do not know how to deal with us. We are the Sidhe. We have weapons far more terrible than those of mortals. Once your kind knew us but you have lost that knowledge and have left behind your magic. We are free to torment you as we will."
Suddenly the djinn began to make a strange cackling sound. Dov's arm tightened around Rivka's waist and then relaxed as they realized the creature was laughing.
"The top and seal are gone," it cried. "As I went out so go I in to take my magic and my wisdom . . . and there is no way for you to bind me and keep me."
Rivka shuddered convulsively and her left hand tightened even more on what she still held against her breast. The djinn's head bent. Dov and Rivka, backed against Asharad and Qaletaqua, were sure all four of them were about to follow the Dark Sidhe into the djinn's huge maw, but two more levin-bolts, weaker and paler than the first pair but enough to hurt, struck.
With a bellow of rage, the djinn backed up astride the bottle once more. It bent impossibly double, and a black pigtail none of them had seen before began to change into a dense line of smoke that flowed down into the bottle. The djinn's head followed and then its body.
There was a distant roar of sound, and a tiny wisp of black trembled on the mouth of the bottle. Rivka dove for it like an infielder going for a double-play ball and drove the cork and the cap of the bottle home. The cap fought against her, rising.
She shrieked one word and forced it down. Gasping and shaking, she began to drone the word over and over while she smoothed down wax that melted and molded itself to the bottle when her fingers touched it. Into the softened wax, she twisted the wires that had unwound themselves.
In her hand the bottle quivered and jerked, but she held it firmly, and began to read the spell incised into the bottle from her handheld. The bottle stilled and . . . perhaps . . . from some infinite distance there came a wail of despair.
Dov helped her to her feet and they both stared down at the bottle, still now. Asharad and Qaletaqua approached warily.
"Is it truly sealed?" Asharad asked, squinting and sort of wincing away from the bottle in Rivka's hands.
"For another ten thousand thousand seasons," Rivka said.
"What will you do with it?" Qaletaqua wanted to know, head somewhat averted. "I will not make my people the keepers of such a burden."
Dov frowned at the selfishness, then sighed. That was the Sidhe. But there was no reason they should get away with abandoning responsibility. He could not force them to keep the bottle Underhill, but he had the perfect reason for them to watch it.
"I can see it gets back to the museum," he said, "and I think—" now smiling beatifically "—that I will have it and the keys to the vault handed back, as publicly as possible, to the one responsible for leaving the museum unguarded. But we mortals are of very short life. In one hundred years, no one in the mortal world will remember—and they do not believe in djinn anyway. The Sidhe must come and look at the bottle from time to time."
"What good will that do?" Asharad asked. "We cannot touch it. We can hardly see it."
"As long as you can hardly see it, you will know that the spells are holding," Rivka pointed out sharply. "And if they begin to weaken, you must go to the land now called Israel. The people there speak a modern version of the language of King Solomon. Seek out a scholar who knows the old tongue, and he can do again what I did."
Both Sidhe grimaced and grumbled but agreed, realizing there was no way mortals could keep watch on the bottle of djinn for thousands of years. Rivka rewrapped the bottle in the silk scarf, repacked her Uzi, and followed Dov to the Gate, which in two heartbeats brought them to Qaletaqua's booth in the Faire grounds. Dov looked up at Qaletaqua and Asharad.
"That's twice I've pulled your chestnuts out of the fire, Sidhe," he said, grinning. "You owe me!"
Qaletaqua looked resigned. Asharad snarled. But both nodded acknowledgment.
After a brief but significant silence Dov went on, "But don't hesitate to let us know if you need mortal help again."
As they passed the empty shelves, Rivka picked up the bottle of gin they had forgotten on their first trip. They stepped outside of the tent. The head of Security spun toward them, looking relieved. "Well, that didn't take long," he said. "Twelve minutes."
Dov and Rivka exchanged glances. It seemed that the Sidhe could manipulate time as well as distance with their Gates.
"No," Rivka said. "It was simple enough. They didn't want the bottle of djinn after all."
Eric Flint's writing career began with the novel Mother of Demons (Baen Books), which was selected by Science Fiction Chronicle as one of the best novels of 1997. With David Drake, he has collaborated on An Oblique Approach, In the Heart of Darkness, Destiny's Shield, Fortune's Stroke, and The Tide of Victory, the first five novels in the Belisarius series, as well as a novel entitled The Tyrant. His alternate history novel 1632 was published in 2000, along with Rats, Bats & Vats, written with Dave Freer. A second novel written with Dave Freer, Pyramid Scheme, was published in October 2001. His comic fantasy novels The Philosophical Strangler and Forward the Mage came out in May of 2001 and March of 2002. He recently began a major fantasy series with Mercedes Lackey and Dave Freer, the first two volumes of which are The Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic.
Flint graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1968, majoring in history (with honors), and later received a masters degree in African history from the same university. Despite his academic credentials, Flint has spent most of his adult life as an activist in the American trade union movement, working as a longshoreman, truck driver, auto worker, steel worker, oil worker, meatpacker, glassblower, and machinist. He has lived at various times in California, Michigan, West Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, and Illinois. He currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife, Lucille.
RED FIDDLER
Dave Freer & Eric Flint
Dave Freer is an ichthyologist turned author because he'd heard the spelling requirements were simpler. They lied about that. He lives in a remote part of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with his wife and chief proofreader, Barbara, four dogs and four cats, two sons (Paddy and James) and just at the moment no shrews, birds, bats, or any other rescued wildlife. He does his best to blame his extraordinary spelling on an Old English sheepdog's nose, or the cats on his lap.
His first book, The Forlorn (Baen), came out in 1999. Since then he has coauthored with Eric Flint (Rats, Bats & Vats, 2000; Pyramid Scheme, 2001; and The Rats, the Bats & the Ugly, 2004) and with Mercedes Lackey and Eric Flint (Shadow of the Lion, 2002; This Rough Magic, 2003; The Wizard of Karres, 2004). He has just completed his next solo novel for Baen, A Mankind Witch, and is due to write several more books in The Shadow of the Lion sequence and Pyramid Scheme sequence.
Besides working as a fisheries scientist for the Western Cape shark fishery, running a couple of fish farms, he has worked as a commercial diver and as a relief chef at several luxury game lodges. Yes, he can both cook and change diapers. He spent two years as conscripted soldier along the way, so he can iron, too. His interests are rock climbing, diving, flyfishing, fly-tying, wine-tasting and the preparation of food, especially by traditional means.
"The darkness fades into fields of light, and it is time I was away, love."
The singer sat down while her voice and its magic still echoed around the fake wooden beams. There was a thin patter of applause. Thin, because the Curragh of Kildare Bar and Grill was finally nearly empty, after another night of music and far too much draft beer.
Rúadan began to put away his fiddle, since it was time he got out of here. Daylight was close, and daylight always seemed to bring on awkward questions. It was quite strange in a way. Here he was in Mortal lands, far away from the twilight of Underhill . . . but he remained a creature of half-light.
As strange as the Curragh of Kildare. Since the day he'd been sent here, there'd always been a shebeen, or a bar, or a drinking place of some sort on this spot. It was a good place to play his fiddle o' nights, where the patrons would buy him a beer or three, and not remember him too well in the morning.
He hauled out his old blackthorn pipe and began stuffing it. Moira, clearing ashtrays, grinned at him. "You're not going to smoke that vile stuff in here again are you, Red? Last time it set off the sprinkler system."
Rúadan smiled. Moira was a barmaid and over the centuries he'd met enough of them. He usually tried to stay on good terms with barmaids. They were definitely never the butt of his jokes. When you cadge drinks a lot, it makes every kind of sense not to use barmaids as victims. Besides, he'd found he liked girls who were good at fending off a drunk with one elbow while counting change, taking an order, and smiling at the next customer. And they had had enough confidences betrayed to them to not exercise their curiosities too far about old fiddle-players.
The trouble was that this Moira was a bit out of the run of the mill, and maybe wasn't hearing enough slurred stories about wives who didn't understand. She'd asked him questions. That was never a good sign.
"Smoke is necessary for a good shebeen," he answered, putting a match to his pipe.
"Why? It's supposed to be banned here in South Africa. It is in Ireland now. They put the ban in place last year." She lifted as pretty a chin as he'd seen on a colleen for many a year. He'd seen a lot, and most of them gave him even more of a crick in the neck than this one.
"For atmosphere."
"That doesn't just mean smoke, you know. That's what the shamrocks and green tablecloths are for. And the music."
"Aye. The music is right enough."
This imitation of old Ireland would have been funny if it had been any less accurate—or any more so. The spirit of the music was dead on, somehow. It wasn't that the singers were all great—or even necessarily good—or that some of the players didn't make a horse's butt out of the old tunes. But the heartbreak and laughter in it were right. And this piece of earth had always liked his fiddling. Indeed, it was a beautiful piece of earth, much like Ireland back in early days, when there'd been but one treeless plain, for all that this place was on the cool southern end of Africa. The strip between the sea and the Outeniqua mountains was cloaked in yellowwood forest and dense fern, hiding narrow gorges with ale-brown, peat-stained rivers. There was only one major road across all of it, and the little hamlet of Bloukrans—one gas station, seven scattered, rundown houses, a general dealer, and the Curragh—straddled that. Once this had been a logger's town. Now it survived on travelers, tourists, and people from the beach-holiday town of Plettenberg Bay driving nearly twenty miles for good beer, better music, and a lack of municipal bylaws about closing time. But there'd always been a settlement, brewing, and song here. Rúadan knew there always would be. The place they now called the Curragh loved the music and the singing. The magic that leaked through from Underhill—his reason for being (to put it politely) "posted" to a place so far from the Node Groves of the New World—was centered on this spot. It needed a protector.
