CHAPTER 9

The Invisible Circle

X

Instead of floating up the stairs, the golden Q turned right—Wilburn and Iddo’s right—at the foot of the ziggurat and led the crowd around the perimeter of the bottommost step, the water gushing back to un-submerge the lake bottom in front of them.

And now, at last, the end of the procession came into view, emerging from the trees to follow the path over the rim of the caldera. There was another object floating there behind the final chanting marcher in the line, who might or might not have been wearing stripes—it was too dark to tell now that the Q had gone around the far side of the temple. All Wilburn and Iddo could discern of the object was that it was a large black box… possibly a huge black box.

The box descended the trail after the marchers, and was approaching the shoreline when a faint amber glow announced the imminent return of the Category-Q, which had almost completed a full lap around the temple. The Q arrived back where it started just as black box crossed the lake, so that the end and the beginning of the procession met, closing the circle—no wait, the hexagon. Either way, the temple was now surrounded by chanters, and in the golden glow cast by Q-blob, the black box was revealed to be an iron cage. A concerningly large iron cage. Of course, the cage might have been empty; the bars were set too close together to afford a view of the interior. It might’ve been empty… but it wasn’t, Wilburn just knew. The universe, however grand, was not so kind a place as that.

He was about to wonder something about the cage to Iddo, when suddenly, the atmosphere in the temple became charged. Wilburn’s mouth flooded with spit. He tasted metal. He felt a cold, grippy texture in his gut. He and Iddo spun around to see a whirlwind of black shadows near the center of the temple coalesce into a pair of figures, one as tall as Alfajean, who jumped up from the alter, the other almost as short as Wilburn, who stood rooted to the spot.

XI

Two figures. The girl, and the other. The girl, dark of skin, dressed all in black—boots, pants, a long coat, and her hair a wild spray of midnight curls. Perhaps a year or two older than Wilburn, but hard. Here was not someone who played with stuffed animals anymore. Every angle, from her jawline to her ready stance, spoke of solidity and strength. An absolute rock in the river. And her eyes… such anger there. Not the kind that is really fear in drag, nor the white-hot rage that makes one reckless, but the worst, most deadly kind of anger, cold, intelligent, determined, and controlled. Eyes that said, without artifice, I’ve been through hell and I brought back a souvenir for you. Eyes that said, and it was no bluff obviously, not a challenge, not even a threat, just a direct statement of fact: I will kill you. Those eyes drilled holes in Wilburn, who, for a fraction of a heartbeat, made the mistake of meeting them. It was like looking into the sun. He winced away reflexively, as one might yank one’s hand from a hot stove. This girl was terrifying.

But the other was a whole other level of terrifying. It wore the form of a towering naked man hewn from obsidian, utterly black yet glistening, like a glass bottle filled with ink. In the moonlight, the raised edges of runes shimmered across its surface, every inch embossed with flowing alien scripture. Even the lips, even the whiteless eyes bore runes. It was a motherless thing, like a statue brought to life. Like a machine without a machine’s innocence. Not a he, despite the male form it wore—an it—a thing. It had a mind, yes, oh hideously yes, it had a mind… but it was not a person. Something essential to personhood was missing, and it couldn’t have been plainer. The monster might as well have been missing its head. But Wilburn didn’t feel sympathy for it, ohh no. He was revolted, and nearly overwhelmed by the urge to smash the monstrosity to bits, then crush the bits to dust and scatter the dust to the wind, to purge the world of this stain… But he was scared. No, scratch that. He was terrified.

Demon… Had Iddo thought that to him, or had Wilburn figured it out for himself? Either way, he knew it was the truth. Demon. This time, the church had nailed it, minus one point for the horns—the church’s angels always had them; this demon did not, although it did have pretty spiky ears—but the evilness and the awfulness and the abominationness was precisely as advertised. What was it the old priest said you had to do to get rid a demon? Oh, right… call me. But Wilburn was fairly certain the old priest wouldn’t have stood a chance against this demon; and he was mighty glad that Iddo was protecting him instead.

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He could feel it happening—the destruction aimed at him in deep mental dimensions, turned away by the force of Iddo’s shield. An invisible battle was taking place at the speed of thought, the demon and the girl pressing a furious offensive, Iddo rebuffing them by… by… by building these, like, information-puzzle-mazes… faster than the girl and the demon could solve them. It was baffling, a bit like watching chess—if both sides were allowed to move all their pieces constantly, and if the chessboard doubled as a ping-pong table minus the net and every chess piece had its own ping-pong ball and paddle, but instead of balls, what was bouncing every which way were these little, like, idea-pockets, inside each of which was a color-number that changed every time the pocket bounced. The solution to each puzzle-maze was a different arrangement of pieces on the board plus a specific sequence of color-numbers, such that the girl and the demon had to first figure out the pattern, then attempt orchestrate it in the face of Iddo’s opposition. And incredibly—they were doing it. Not just doing it, but fast, solving puzzle-mazes left and right.

“Oh good, you’re here!” Alfajean said, oblivious to the conflict. “This is cutting it a bit close, don’t you think? I’ve been worried sick. I was beginning to fear… but no, it’s all right now. You’re here. And your part hasn’t come up yet, so there’s no harm done. Allow me to introduce myself…” Alfajean proceeded to do just that, while the ferocious psychovatric battled raged on. Then, Alfajean introduced Buttrom and Wilburn. “And of course, the yak who hardly needs an introduction, the one and only Master Iddolorious Bungflower of Frogswallow’s College,” Alfajean concluded, beaming warmly at the new arrivals. “And your names are…?”

The demon and the girl said not a word, made not a move, gave not a sign of any kind that they had heard, except that the girl’s eyes flicked momentarily to Alfajean before returning to Wilburn to continue drilling holes in him. He was the true target of the attack, he knew, although he couldn’t imagine why. But he could tell the girl and the demon didn’t really want to fight Iddo; they wanted to get past Iddo to him. They struck in tandem, each trying to create an opening for the other to exploit, each trying to exploit the opening the other was trying—and failing—to create.

Iddo’s shield was like a quilted bag made out of puzzle-mazes, surrounding himself, Wilburn and Buttrom. Alfajean, of course, needed no shielding, as they were immune to psychovatry. The very instant a puzzle-maze was solved, it vanished, which theoretically should have weakened Iddo’s shield. The problem, from the girl and the demon’s perspective, was that Iddo’s shield was several puzzle-mazes thick all over, and he was reinforcing it faster than they could degrade it. It was like a deck of cards: for each card the girl and the demon drew off the top of a deck, Iddo added two more to the bottom. Clearly, they were no match for him, but they seemed unwilling to admit it, and Iddo seemed content to allow them to continue their assault indefinitely, for although he stymied their attacks, he never launched any counteroffensive of his own.

“All… righty then…” Alfajean said awkwardly. They clapped their golden hands once, then laced their fingers together and bobbed on the balls of their feet. “Well… on behalf of the PROVED I’d like to thank you both for coming… and I’ll just remind everyone that the conditions of the truce state that neither party is to initiate violence for the duration of the ritual, and um, that both delegations are to observe the ritual from outside the circle of power… excepting the neophytes, who must of course remain inside the circle… Any questions…?”

Crickets.

A bead of sweat ran down the girl’s brow.

“Okie… dokie…” Alfajean said. “Well, as long as two of you keep to that side of the alter—what direction is that, west?—then the four of us will stay over here on the east side of the alter, and everybody should be able to go home in one piece. Doesn’t that… Doesn’t that sound lovely…?”

Crickets.

But abruptly, and for no apparent reason that Wilburn could discern, the girl looked away from him, and at the same moment she and the demon withdrew from the attack. They didn’t fully disengage, for they maintained static contact with Iddo’s shield, touching, ready to resume hostilities at the slightest provocation, but not pushing—detente. The girl’s hostile gaze traveled to Alfajean, whose seemed incongruously intimidated, given that the girl was barely half their height. The angel addressed her tentatively, “So… do you know what is required of you… Ms… ah… um… you…?”

The girl actually responded. She gave a slight shrug—and her long coat melted away into tendrils of black smoke, exposing a sleeveless shirt and the lean, well-muscled arms of a boxer. Also a knife, a very big knife, hanging in a black sheath on her belt.

“Great…” Alfajean said.

The girl drew the knife. Its blade was so black it was like a fissure in reality. Wilburn, Buttrom, and Alfajean flinched backward, but the girl, with a casualness verging on disdain, merely tossed the knife underhand onto the alter, where it landed with a heavy ding that seemed to resonate far longer than was natural.

“Great…” Alfajean repeated weakly. “Well… enjoy the ritual…”