Текст книги "Firestorm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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I stopped off in the first airport bathroom to change clothes. I stripped to the skin—a weird sensation in a public forum—and put on new everything. After the underwear, I donned a hot-pink sleeveless tee with a crisp white shirt worn loose. New black jeans with the Miu Miu flats. My old clothes went into the bag.

As I left the bathroom, I heard my name being called over the intercom, and I headed for a courtesy phone, which directed me to a deserted area of the concourse. People milled around, looking frustrated. All the boards showed delays or cancellations, and from the look of some of them, it had been a long twenty-four hours or more.

I followed the directions and spotted a handsome uniformed man waiting for me with a hand-lettered sign that read wardens on it. He had the posture of somebody who'd done military service, and the uniform was still formal—the standard captain's suit of commercial aviation, with a cap to match. I smiled at him and held out my hand, palm toward him. He passed his own close to it and nodded at the stylized sun-symbol that manifested.

"Ms. Baldwin," he said, and put the sign under his arm to offer me a firm handshake. He was middle-aged, probably in his early fifties, and he had the hard-bodied look of a guy who was enthusiastic about his fitness. Tanned, too. Streaks of silver in his hair that he might have cultivated, they looked so casting-office perfect.

"What's your name?" I asked him. He looked momentarily surprised.

"Captain John Montague, ma'am. My copilot is Captain Bernard Klees. No other crew on board for this trip. We try to keep it small, times like these. I understand that you're Weather."

I nodded. "That's right. I know it's going to be a challenge for you—"

"Ma'am, we eat challenges for snacks."

"Don't you mean breakfast?"

"Never found them to be a full meal," he said, straight-faced, and made a graceful, professional gesture to move me toward the departure doors. We didn't have a Jetway, of course, being a private plane. The captain took charge of my bag as we stepped out into the rain and wind, and trundled it briskly across to a waiting Learjet big enough to carry ten or fifteen passengers. A budget Learjet, if such a thing was possible. Weather Wardens were generally loath to fly, so it usually carried only Fire and Earth Wardens, and only at the highest levels.

He loaded my luggage in a compartment and told me to take any seat, and as my eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, I saw that there were other passengers on the flight. Seven of them, in fact. I didn't recognize most of them, but there was no doubt they were Wardens; the crew was taking authorized personnel only. It was possible that these unlucky few were being flown in from overseas, as the Wardens redistributed their manpower to meet the crisis.

I knew Yves, an Earth Warden with long dreadlocked hair and a perpetual smile; he winked at me and gestured to an empty seat next to him. I winked back, but before I accepted, I scanned the remaining faces. Nancy Millars—Fire—not my favorite person in the world, not my least favorite. Rory Wilson, also Fire, who rated higher both because he was a better Warden and because he was just, well, cute.

The last two caught me by surprise. They were sitting together, heads down, but then looked up as I took a step down the aisle, and I found myself looking at Kevin and Cherise.

"What the hell?" I blurted, amazed. Cherise shouldn't have been anywhere near this plane. She didn't have the credentials.

Kevin's face was setting itself in stubborn angles—jaw locked and thrust forward, head lowering like a bull about to charge. Man, the kid was defensive. "We're supposed to be here," he said. "Check with Lewis if you don't believe me."

I stared at him, at the mottled flush on his chin and cheeks and forehead under the lank unevenly cut hair. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I couldn't even tell if he was lying, but I always allowed for that possibility when it came to Kevin.

I looked at Cherise. She raised an eyebrow, the picture of cool competence. Sometime during our time apart she'd found time to get her look together. She was ready to shoot the cover of Sports Illustrated. I had no doubt that there was a bikini somewhere in her bags. She'd never leave home without one.

"Glad to see you, too, Jo," she said. "Are you okay? Last time I saw you—"

"Sorry," I said. She stood up, and we hugged. "Yeah, I'm okay. I guess. Looks worse than it is."

She put me at arm's length and studied me. "Looks pretty bad. That's maybe a seven on the cute scale, but only because it's you in that outfit. And what's up with the bruises?"

"Bad day."

"No kidding." She nodded toward Kevin, who was glaring at me resentfully. "Lewis said I could keep him company."

Lewis, I reflected mournfully, was sucha guy. If Cherise wanted to go, she'd have found a way to convince Lewis in about ten seconds flat. It was just her special superpower. I could manipulate weather, she could manipulate men.

"I even have a special identification thingy," she said, and pulled it out of the pocket of her jeans. On it was a silver metallic printed copy of the stylized sun of the Wardens, with her name and picture below it. "See? I'm, like, official. I can flash my badge, Jo! Isn't that cool?"

She'd always wanted to be one of those people from The X-Files, I remembered. Good grief. This was out of hand.

"Miss Baldwin?" That was the cool, firm voice of the captain, coming from behind me. "We need to get moving. Please take a seat."

I could exercise my authority—presuming anybody acknowledged it—and toss Cherise off the plane, but that would mean tossing Kevin, as well, and if Lewis had dispatched him for a reason, that was a very bad idea. I pasted on a smile, waved to the captain, and moved past Cherise and Kevin to slide into the seat next to Yves.

"Long time no see," Yves said, and leaned in to kiss my cheek. "Such a warm greeting! I might think you don't even like me anymore."

I turned and kissed him, as well, both cheeks, European-style. "Yves, you know better. But you might have heard, I've been having some, ah, challenges lately."

"Challenges," he repeated, and laughed. Yves had a wonderful laugh, bubbly and full-bodied as champagne. "Yeah, I heard about your challenges. Somebody tried to get me to vote against you, you know. Get you taken in for—" He made a snipping gesture. We tried never to directly refer to getting neutered and having our powers removed, except in gestures and low voices. "Told 'em to fuck off, I did."

I squeezed his fingers. Yves had thick, strong fingers, scarred from years of working outdoors. He was a big guy, solid and comfortable, and I'd always liked him. All Earth Wardens seemed to have a sense of Zen balance to them, but he was one of the best, and I was lucky to have him on my side.

Actually, I supposed I was lucky to even havea side at all.

The seats were lush and comfortable. Whoever had chosen the interior had gone with a dark chocolate leather, butter-soft to the touch. The row Yves and I occupied was midcabin, over the wing. I was on the aisle, away from the windows. That was fine with me.

The intercom came on. "Welcome to Hellride Airlines, folks; this is your captain, John Montague. It's not going to be a nice trip, since as you see, we have a Weather Warden flying with us today," the pilot's electronic voice announced. "We have no flight attendants on board for this trip, so if you want to eat, help yourself to sandwiches and drinks from the cooler. I do hope you enjoy them. You'll be throwing them up later."

The copilot's voice came on with the same cool competence overlaid with a veneer of humor. He had a British accent. I was instantly reminded of Eamon, with a cold flash and a shiver. "Also, should we survive this, donations toward our retirement fund are cheerfully accepted, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bernard Klees– K-l-e-e-s, no relation to anyone in Monty Python, so please don't ask me for a rendition of the dead parrot sketch."

There was a ripple of laughter. Montague came back on. "Strap tight and hang on, people. We'll get you there."

Radio off. I heard a shift in the idling engine noise, and fumbled for my seat belt. My hands were shaking a little. God, I hatedflying; I'd done it a few times before, but only when the weather was firmly under Warden control, and only when circumstances required it.

Yves covered my fingers with his and gently held them as the plane taxied out onto the runway and picked up speed. "Relax," he told me. "They're the best pilots we have. Maybe the best in the world."

I didn't have to tell him how little that meant, if circumstances turned against us. Yves knew.

The plane lifted off with a bump and a sudden angular thrust of acceleration, and then it got eerily smooth. The force pressed me back into the leather, and I whimpered a little, thinking about the air around us, the fact that we were moving through it and drawing attention to ourselves. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to slow my rapid heartbeat.

"I heard you were—" I looked in time to see Yves's eyebrows doing an interpretive dance. "With a Djinn."

"Not just any Djinn," I said. "And yes. His name is David."

Yves lost his smile. "Something wrong?"

"You could say." I turned my head away and tried closing my eyes again. It didn't really help. I still saw David's face as the Demon's claws closed around him, that desperate, furious intensity.

He'd used power to break me free of the trap when he should have been using it to fight for his life. My fault.

"Hey." When I opened my eyes, Yves was holding out a copy of a magazine featuring shiny, glossy people doing stupid things for the cameras. "You used to like these, as I remember."

I needed to put it away. Bury the pain, and focus on something else. Self-pity wasn't my style.

I forced out a smile as though at gunpoint, took the magazine, and flipped it open to the first photo page. "Oh my God," I said, and pointed to the unzipped miniskirt and white stirrup leggings that the misguided pop star was wearing with low-heeled pumps. "Tell me that's not a sign of the end of the world."

Yves chuckled, shrugged, and opened his magazine: Mother Earth News. I wondered if he knew how funny that was.

For the first hour, at least, the trip was uneventful. Self-pity lingered, but Yves had succeeded in distracting me. The magazine's outrageous fashion mistakes occupied my mind, and I was almost feeling normal when something cold pressed against my arm.

I yelped and tossed the magazine into the air.

It was Cherise, with a can of soda. She offered it again. I took it, and she perched on the air of the empty seat across from me. "You okay?" she asked, and popped the top on her own can.

"Sure," I lied. "Why?"

She looked me over. "Jo, honey, you look pretty good, but don't kid a kidder. I saw what you looked like on the way to New York, and I'm pretty sure you've been through hell since then." She sipped daintily at the sweat-beaded can. Moisture dripped onto her lime-green raw silk capri pants, and she frowned at it, then found a napkin and wrapped the can.

I considered my answer carefully. "Um… yeah. I'm okay. I—you know how Earth Wardens can heal people? Has Kevin told you—?" She nodded. "Well, I got healed up, so I'm more or less okay. Just tired." And discouraged, and scared out of my mind. But other than that? Peachy.

She nodded again, looking down, and then suddenly those sky-blue eyes locked on mine. "I got a phone call. From your sister."

" What?" I didn't mean to yell it. It rang around the interior of the plane, bringing everyone to sharp attention. Even Yves, normally the least excitable of people, put his magazine down to look at me. "Sorry. Sorry, guys." I lowered my voice and bent closer to Cherise. "You got a call from Sarah? When?"

"A couple of hours ago. She couldn't get through to you this morning. She sounded—" Cherise's face turned just a bit pinker. "Okay, this is going to sound bad and all, but does she do anything? Heroin, maybe?"

"No," I said. I felt sick to my stomach, and it wasn't the altitude, or the overly sweet soda I was automatically sipping. "No, not Sarah."

Compassion didn't come naturally to Cherise; it made her look too young. "Sweetie, the family's usually the last to know. Listen, she sounded really spaced. Orbital. She said to tell you that she was okay, and that everything was going to be fine. She'd met somebody in Las Vegas. I asked her where she was staying, but she said not to worry about it."

I leaned forward, pressing the cold soda can against my forehead, fighting not to laugh. Or cry. "Yes. Thanks, Cher. That's Sarah all over, isn't it? Rescue her from one madman, she's off to find the next one—"

"She's not okay, is she?"

"No," I murmured. "I doubt she is. I really doubt she's going to be, either."

"She's not with what's-his-name anymore?"

"Eamon? No."

"Too bad," Cherise sighed. "Damn, he was cute. I lovedhis accent."

"He was an asshole, Cher."

"They're all assholes. But it's not every day that you find one that's really decorative."

"He tried to kill me," I snapped. "More than once."

She froze, deer in the headlights. Amazed. And then her face just filled with delight. "Oh my God! You go, Jo! That's so cool!"

"What?" There were times when I really didn't get life on Planet Cherise.

"You're still here," she said simply, and grinned at me with the unbroken enthusiasm of the truly weird.

I hugged her. Hard. "Staying here, too," I said.

"Oh, you'd better. You owe me for scratches on the Mustang."

She moved away, back to her seat. The gap between her white tank top and the green capri pants showed flawless tanned skin, and a tattoo of a big-headed space alien flashing the peace sign as she bent over to move something out of her way. Probably Kevin's feet. He was snoring.

He stopped snoring as the plane shuddered.

"Damn," Yves said quietly. "Here I was starting to think we'd make it without this."

Turbulence. The plane shuddered again, then dropped, a free fall that seemed to last forever. Outside, clouds were swirling. It was hard to get any sense of what was happening, but I could feel the hot energy consolidating itself out there.

Something had sensed me. A storm, maybe, one big enough to gather some elemental sentience. Or something else, and worse, like one of Ashan's Warden-killing Djinn. This would be a prime target. That was why I hadn't wanted to have others on the plane. My life—sure, I'll risk it. But there were a lot of lives at stake here. And I was the point of danger.

"Everybody hang on!" I yelled. Lightning flashed outside the windows, and I felt the plane powering up. They were going to try to get above it, looked like. Good strategy. The only problem was that the storm was going to chase them. "Yves, switch with me."

We unbuckled and fumbled across each other, mumbling politenesses; he was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a colorful dashiki-style shirt in yellow, blue, and orange patterns. A blaze of brightness in a world that was rapidly turning the color of ashes outside. I settled in his empty chair and buckled in, clutched the armrests, and looked out the window.

I didn't really need the view, but it helped; sometimes, focus could be achieved better with a visual cue. I filled up my lungs, let it out, filled them again, and allowed myself to drift free.

I got battered immediately by currents of force on the way up to the aetheric. It was a war zone, with silent colorful explosions of power snapping and popping in a hundred places at once. The cloudscape roiled, black in places, red in others, everything unstable and bizarre. I spotted an area that had taken on the silvery overlay I knew was going to be a huge problem, and concentrated on it. As I did, I felt myself joined by someone else who boosted my concentration and power, bracing me when I faltered. The power signature felt familiar, but I couldn't stop to wonder about it. I just worked, fast and frantic, trying to make sure the space around our airplane remained relatively disaster-free as our pilots arrowed for the safety of the higher sky.

On the mortal level, the turbulence shook us hard, and then the engines howled louder and suddenly, the ride was glass-smooth again. I gasped in air, feeling the shift on the aetheric at the same time, and recognized the power that had helped me.

Imara. My daughter was with me—not physically, not on the plane, but she was watching over me.

"No," I whispered. My breath fogged the glass of the plane's window on the inside as mist beaded on it outside. "No, stay with Sarah. Stay out of this."

Words wouldn't do on the aetheric level, but she understood what I was saying, I think. I felt a pulse of reassurance from her, from that shadowy flicker of presence; I couldn't see her at all clearly, just as I couldn't see any of the Djinn (or Ifrit, for that matter) while we were on the aetheric plane.

"I mean it!" I said to the flicker that was my daughter. "Stay out of this! Stay with Sarah!" Who, God knew, needed the chaperone.

The flicker moved away from me, but not far. Not far enough. She wasn't minding her mother, clearly; maybe she was under instructions from her father, but I didn't find that too likely. David had been in agreement with me about keeping her out of Ashan's grasp, and yet here she was, hanging about like bait on a hook.

And there was nothingI could do about it.

We stayed high for most of the trip, well above the unsteady clouds; the storms kept forming beneath us, hopscotching across the country. Our passage was causing chaos, no doubt about it, and I had the sick feeling that we were probably causing deaths, as well, but it wouldn't have been better if I'd driven, and it probably would have ended up worse in the end. I couldn't save everyone. Hell, I was no longer sure that I could save anyone.

The speaker gave that distinctive little click, and everyone in the cabin looked up from what they were doing—mostly reading or sleeping. "Hi, folks. Well, we've run about as far as we can at this altitude, we're going to have to start our descent. As you know, this is going to be rough, so please, try to keep those amusement-park screams to a minimum. It doesn't make us fly with any more confidence. Ah, and Captain Klees would like to remind you that today's movie selection of Die Hard Twois now available on your LCD screens. Ah, hell, that was a joke. It's really Turbulence, followed by Con Air. Anyway, you guys keep cool back there. Let us do the sweating."

He was off the air about ten seconds when the first shudder came, as the plane began to tilt forward, nose down.

Oh, crap.

We were in for it now.

The shuddering turned into a steady shaking, as if some giant hand had closed around the plane's fragile skin. I swallowed hard and clutched the armrests as outside the pale blue sky went mist gray, and then started a hellish descent toward black. The clouds looked thick enough to walk on. Thick enough to trap us, like spider-webs around a fly. Lightning flashed close, illuminating the interior with a wash of blue-white flame, and in its flare I saw Yves calmly reading his Mother Earth News, legs crossed. I couldn't see anyone else, but I doubted they were all so fatalistic about it. Surely some of them must have been as terrified as I was…

We shuddered and dropped. Free fall. Ten feet or more, and it seemed to take forever. We hit an updraft with a bang and fishtailed, or tried to; I sensed the pilots correcting up front, adjusting the engines. Keeping us intact.

We dropped again, farther this time, and I felt the plane twisting to the left—and then something hit us from the right side, and we rolled.

Screams. Yves dropped his magazine and grabbed for his armrests as everything went sideways; my empty soda can clattered against the cabin wall in a chittering panic, and I heard a crash from below as bags shifted. The roar of the engines shifted, and then the speakers activated again. Copilot Klees made an authentic western-style yee-haw. "Well, you people are solucky," he said, as if flying sideways, staring down at the ground from the side window, was an everyday occurrence. "You're about to experience the joy of flight all those U.S. Air Force ads talk about. Hope you're all observing the seat belt sign. Three—two—one—"

The plane rolled left. Rolled completely over so that we were hanging upside down, and I had a brief surreal glimpse of my long black hair shuddering in midair like a beaded curtain, and then the world was rolling again, and we came upright again. Steady as a rock once we'd achieved level status.

Maybe people screamed. I don't know—I'm pretty sure I did. I looked over at Yves as I clawed my disordered hair out of my eyes, and his legendary calm was shaken enough for him to cross himself and begin murmuring something I recognized as an Our Father.

We were still descending.

"Hope you enjoyed that," Klees said. He still sounded absolutely cheerful and unperturbed, as if he did this daily, with two shows in the afternoon. "If anyone feels the urge to purge, please, avail yourself of the bags. My contract does require me to do cabin cleaning, as well."

A shaky laugh from someone up front with more intestinal fortitude than me. I was seriously contemplating the aforementioned bag, which looked sturdy and inviting, but I hadn't eaten or drunk enough to need to resort to it. A few grim, sweaty moments, and I was okay.

I grabbed leather as the plane did another unsettling shimmy combined with a bucking motion. Outside the windows, black clouds pressed as close as night. I rested my aching head against the pillowy seat and thought that maybe I ought to try the aetheric again, but I was no longer certain it was a good idea.

Yves took my hand. The warm anchoring of his skin helped keep me from visions of the plane corkscrewing down into the earth and exploding.

I closed my eyes as the plane shuddered and rocked, heeling from one side to the other, slipping violently sideways as if trying to avoid something I couldn't see or sense. My weather senses were overloaded. I was useless up here, with so much happening and focused right on us. If I'd been on the ground, it would have been different, but I felt so helpless up here, so out of control…

The plane leveled out in a sudden lurch, as if it had suddenly hit a patch of glass-smooth air. No turbulence, not even the slightest bounce. I opened my eyes, blinked at Yves, and he raised his eyebrows and gave a Gallic shrug.

"Bathroom," I said, and unfastened my seat belt, climbed over his knees and hustled for the tiny, cramped stall. It was unoccupied, thank God, and I lunged inside, clicked the latch shut, and leaned over to splash cold water on my face. The urge to vomit was passing. I dampened a paper towel and used it to blot sweat from my face and neck, then leaned over to splash my face again, since it had felt so good the first time.

When I straightened up, there was fog coming out of the air vent over my head. I blinked at it, thinking wildly about James Bond movies and knockout gas, but I didn't smell anything, and I didn't feel any more light-headed than normal.

It continued drifting down from the vent in thick, cloudy streamers, twisting lazily in the air, tangling together into a denser mist as it fell. I stretched out my hand and felt cool moisture on it.

Even though I didn't fly much, I was pretty sure this didn't qualify as normal.

In seconds, the mist had formed a shape, and that definitelywasn't normal. Not even on an airplane full of Wardens.

I felt the hard edge of the sink cabinet digging into my butt, and realized that I was staring when I ought to be fleeing. I reached for the latch on the door—

–and it instantly froze up, covered with ice crystals. When my skin touched it, it burned like liquid nitrogen, and I yelped and flinched backward.

The shape in the fog wasn't male, and it wasn't female. It wasn't anything, really. Soft edges, curves, a genderless oval of face, no features on it.

As I watched, the whole door glittered and glistened with forming ice. No way was I going out that way.

Which was the only way, unless I was brave enough to rip out the chemical toilet and go that direction.

Which I wasn't.

I backed away as far as the tiny bathroom would allow, overbalanced, and sat down hard on the toilet's lid. The fog-shape leaned toward me, and the air around me began to move and breathe in subtle motions, whispering over my skin and combing through my hair, sliding under my clothes to touch me in places where, well, wind just didn't usually go. I controlled the impulse to self-defense. So far, nothing that had happened was life-threatening, just—weird.

"Um—hi?" I ventured. The air around me stirred up, moving faster, ruffling my hair and fluttering my shirt. There was no sense of heat or cold to it; everything was exactly room temperature, passionless and sensation-free. "Who are you?"

The figure wrapped in fog bent closer, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. No air. Okay, no problem, I was a Weather Warden, I'd dealt with this before…

Only I couldn't. I couldn't get a grip on the air at all. Whatever was facing me had absolute control over my native elements.

As soon as I realized it, the air flooded back in, and I took a grateful gasping breath. "Right," I said. "Oracle. There was a Fire Oracle, so you'd be… Air and Water."

I hadn't even thought about it, but of course Oracles would come in threes—Fire, Weather, Earth. Collect the whole set… Well, at least it was another opportunity for me to communicate.

Maybe. So far, this one hadn't said a word.

"I'm—I'm supposed to talk to the Mother," I said. It'd be nice to dress my mission up in fancy talk, but I didn't think that would come naturally to me under stress, and I didn't think that I'd have the time, either. "Can you help me with that?"

No answer. Even the subtle currents of air that had been stroking my skin came to a halt. I hoped that wasn't a rude question.

"I'm a Weather Warden," I said. "I'm—in a way I'm part of you—"

Mistake. The wind came back, a steady, crushing pressure all over me, pinning me in place. I'd never experienced real g-forces, but this reminded me of the films I'd seen. It was painful in ways I'd never imagined, stressing every muscle and bone to the limit.

Then it stopped. I overcompensated, pitching forward almost to the floor, and sawed in ragged breaths that tasted of blood.

The Oracle didn't like being compared to humans; that much was obvious. I could understand that. We were imperfect creatures, constantly being born and dying. Tied to the earth and sea by gravity, hunger, a thousand invisible strings. The Earth herself saw us as a nuisance. The Oracle hadn't seen anything to change its mind.

"I saved him," I said, and looked up at the faceless creature floating in the air above me. "I saved the Fire Oracle. The Demon Mark would have destroyed him, and once it was past him, it would have been in the Mother's blood. So a little respect might be in order here."

No answer. Man, this was frustrating, not to mention scary. I cast a longing look at the ice-covered bathroom door.

"I saved the life of an Oracle, and I need you to help me now. Just help me talk to the Mother."

There was a sudden sensation in the air, as if everything in the world had shivered. The Oracle, wreathed in fog, leaned closer. As it did, streamers of milk-white mist wrapped around me to lick me like tongues. I shuddered, and as the Oracle's face came closer to mine, I saw its eyes.

Just for a split second, because I turned my face away and closed my eyelids and prayed, prayednever to see such a thing again. I remembered that I'd thought Jonathan's eyes had been scary—and they had been, depthless and terrifying—but at least they'd reminded me of something I understood. Something inside my experience.

These were the eyes of eternity itself.

"Help me," I said. "Please."

The air shivered again, more violently this time, with a sound like a million silver bells falling out of a dump truck. Deafening. Was that a voice? Was I supposed to understand it? I didn't. I couldn't. Even the Fire Oracle's screams had made more sense.

"I can't understand you!" I said, and immediately knew that was a mistake. One doesn't correct gods, even minor ones, and if the Djinn bowed to these creatures, that was good enough to qualify them for the name. The air around me curdled and thickened, pressing on me again. Squeezing. I couldn't breathe. Spots danced bright in front of my bulging eyes, and I pitched to my knees on the tiny bathroom floor with the Oracle, bent at some impossibly inhuman angle, following me down. Boring into me with those eyes.

I was starting to wish that I was any kind of Warden other than a Weather Warden. If this was my patron saint, I was in real trouble, because I had the sense that it was playing with me. Enjoying my pain. Interested in my panic.

Just when I thought it would crush me like a grape, the air stilled again, completely dead of intention or life. The Oracle hadn't moved away. When I breathed, I was breathing in mist that flowed off its genderless, featureless face.

I avoided looking at it directly.

"I'm not quitting," I said. "If you won't help me, I'll go to the Earth Oracle."

It had a mouth, after all, and teeth made of ice, and it showed them to me. I whimpered, I think, waiting for it to destroy me, and mist wrapped around my neck in a thick, choking rope to pull me closer.

My skin stung with a sudden ice-cold chill.

I focused past the teeth, on the terrifying eyes of the thing, and said, "I'm not giving up. If I have to give my life to get this done, then I will. Kill me, or let me talk to the Mother."

The vote seemed to be on the side of killing me, but it was too late to reconsider, and besides, I meant it. If I had to die, I would. Hell, I'd done it before, and I would again, at least once. Might as well make it count.

Apparently there was a third alternative I hadn't considered, because the rope around my throat suddenly dissolved into cool white fog, and the Oracle's teeth flashed in what could only be interpreted by my brain as a smile, and… it simply misted away. Back up through the ventilation system.