Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(114)

Tara blinked, and the nested thorns of light below nearly blinded her. Demon coils battered and scraped the floor. “Don’t look down,” she said, and knew from Shale’s drawn breath that he had.

Green flame dripped from the walls. It bubbled and convulsed as she approached the floating man, and assumed huge apelike forms.

Oss’s teeth clattered.

Shale regarded the fire-apes skeptically. “Can you fix them like you did our friend here?”

“The closer I come to Altemoc, the more damage my Craft does,” she said, voice level. If she didn’t stay calm, who would? “Oss should buy us some time.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Shale said. Displaced wind battered her. He suddenly occupied more space than he had moments before.

She neared the lightning nexus. Fire shapes closed in. One lunged at Tara, but several hundred pounds of gargoyle bowled it to the diamond floor. Oss charged two more elementals, and its bone talons tore through fire.

Tara set down her backpack, smoothed the lapels of her jacket, and stepped toward the lightning.

Uniformed figures splayed prone on the diamond floor, breathing deep. A cane lay at Altemoc’s feet. She was close enough to see the man himself, thirty-two or -three, nice cheekbones, jawline a bit too narrow. The glyphs that shone through his suit were not glyphs at all, but scars.

She cleared her throat. Behind her, Shale roared and punched through an elemental’s face. “Good morning,” she said. It was morning somewhere. “I’m Tara Abernathy. The Two Serpents Group sent me to negotiate for your prisoners’ release. To whom am I speaking?”

Altemoc’s head jerked down to face her, a poorly managed marionette’s movement. His eyes opened, and the space between his lids was flat and blinding red. Not a good sign. He opened his mouth. Blood-light lit his teeth from within.

She was almost ready for the voice when it came: a man’s wrapped around and through a woman’s, if that woman were a thousand meters tall and made of fire.

What/have/you/done/

“Let’s start with a name. You have me at a disadvantage.”

Two elementals seized Shale’s arms and tried to pull him apart. Moonlight from his wounds spilled on the diamond floor. His wings beat, the elementals lost their footing, and he pulled free—to rip one’s leg from its body and swing it clublike into the other’s face.

Firekeeper/call/me/or/Deathwarden/Thunderspeaker/Shewhoburns/

“Ms. Keeper,” she said. “I think I understand most of your situation, but let’s see if I have it right.”

Speak/

“Down there, under our feet, you’ve trapped a raw demon, one that entered this world through a crack, unsummoned, without limits on its power. I didn’t know that was possible in the pre-Craft era, but if you made me guess I’d say it came through during a war between gods, a few thousand years ago. About right?”

Gods/serpents/thosebeyond/outspiders/skazzerai/

“I don’t need particulars. Most of the time, unbound demons pop into singularity and take a few cubic miles of planet along, but this one’s big. It might have chewed up the whole world before it burst. So you caged it.” Keep her talking. Don’t think about what the thing beneath your feet might do if you screw up. “You tricked it into a part of your mind you clocked slow—a subjective second every million years, say. Must have used half the necromantic earths in Northern Kath to build this place. Impressive systems redundancy: any elements taken from the mountain will return in time. So millennia passed, until Kovak Central Mining started drilling.”

An elemental tore Oss’s wing free, only for the wing to transform to a bony claw that strangled the fire.

Ignore the battle. Focus on the—what was she at this point? Deponent? Witness? If so, Tara should be asking more questions.

Torment/tear/efficiency/reduced/lose/seconds-on-century/

“The mine damaged containment. You patched the wound by draining a convenient power source, which turned out to belong to the miners’ filtration system. Necromantic slurry seeped into the water table, and zombies rose throughout Centervale. You didn’t know what was happening—without human worshippers, your mind operates on a geologic time scale. So when Mr. Altemoc came to rescue his people, and used his scars to engage with you, well, you found a well-prepared mind to work through. He’s fighting back, though. You can’t think fast without him, but you can’t digest him any more than you can digest a knife.”

He/feels/no/pain/visions-dreams-past-paradise/offer/

“Let me be straight with you. You face a damages claim from Centervale Conglomerated Agriculture, another from KCMC, reckless endangerment and grievous harm from my employer, maybe tortious interference, a violation of the rule against perpetuities depending on whether you’re technically alive, and that’s before we address any personal claims brought by Mr. Altemoc, or by these folks on the ground.” The Keeper was older than the Craft. How to translate? “The kind of power about to descend on you, it eats gods for breakfast. Neither of us wants to go down that road.” Especially since your hole card’s terrifying. “But we can make a deal.”

Explain/

“Your containment system is, let’s say.” She licked her lips. Oss tried to bite through an elemental’s face but only blackened its own jaw. “Inefficient. We’ve developed better. We know more about demons now than they did in your day—we might be able to put the devourer-of-worlds down there back where she came from. Even if that’s impossible, the redundant ore you can spare by improving your efficiency will fetch a lot of soulstuff on the right market, and we could use that power to automate containment. You could walk the world again. Find believers. Or at least live without a demon gnawing your entrails.”