Lila was falling, her feet no longer supported by the water. At high process speed she stretched time out for herself and felt the Lady's willpower, strengthened and aetherised, pushing her and Tath down into the lake. She didn't need them any more. Lila did not attempt to counter Arië's supreme force or struggle to stay within the palace. She simply placed her hand around Zal's ankle as she fell past his sprawled, bleeding body, and locked it in place, dragging him after her into the icy water. Heavier than any human or elf, or any being twice her size, Lila fell like a stone.
Gold and green lights far away winked at her in the instant of silent calm as they plunged into the depths. She looked down and, on radar, sounded the bottom, only there was no bottom…She looked up and saw the silver palace of air above them receding gently. And then the water convulsed around them and boomed with a grating, grinding sound like planets colliding. A powerful electromagnetic pulse followed, so powerful that it momentarily knocked out all her machine self and left her reeling inside, alone, with Tath. The ends of readouts and the simple obliteration made for an easy calculation of the cause.
Faultquake! Lila shrieked at Tath.
But Aparastil…he began
Sathanor's not on a regular fault or even an aetheric ley, you idiot. Don't you do geology? The whole thing is a crater. This is the Quantum Bomb crater as it manifests in this dimension and we're falling into the biggest nonrecorded fault in the whole history of faultlines! How could you live in this thing and not know?
There was a second in which she felt Tath bristle.
Arië was the keeper of such knowledge and her word…
She lied! Lila frantically tried to reconnect with her systems but all of them had died. The reactor, presumably, ran on but she couldn't find it. She couldn't feel her arms below the elbow, her legs below the first few inches, half her spine seemed to be missing, her internal organs felt as though they were being crushed by a deadly, numbing cold, and she was suddenly very, very short of breath, Tath, you've got to help me!
Now! Lila screamed at him. Her lungs and body were aching, burning. She didn't know how much longer she could prevent herself trying to breathe. A second trembling ran through the ground and the lake.
Tath's andalune surged outwards. Though Lila could only sense it in her human body she could feel the desperate energy with which he focused himself and drove up through her arm and shoulder. At such densities and concentrations the aethereal was capable of becoming corporeal and Tath's form of magic, the lively art, was more able than most to manifest strong forces through the shaping of raw aether. Shaping himself was only a variation. If he had still possessed his own body it would have been routine. Without it he had to spend himself in making the effort. Lila felt his presence flicker and weaken. But his ghostly hand extended up and up, beyond the rigid lock of her manacle on Zal's leg, up to his arm where the flechette was bound. Tath said a word and a darkness, a final shadow, dragged at her heart. She felt part of her life leaving her as the flechette disintegrated.
The binding is undone, Tath informed her weakly. But his lungs have collapsed. He drowns.
She tried again and again to find any connection that could operate, counting away the seconds. How could it take so long? There must be a mistake…
And then at last she heard her Al-self's voice: Countdown to automatic restart commencing. Five, four, three…
…and then the world shook and boomed again and another pulse tore silently through them and the voice was gone.
Lila opened her mouth and the water of Aparastil filled it as she tried to suck it into her lungs. She failed. Her lungs were too compressed to hold anything. Detached and dreamy, knowing this the final stage of asphyxia, the dream and the hallucination, she wondered what they would think at home when they found out, only they wouldn't find out of course, because she would be falling forever, and in any case, they thought she was already gone…She wanted to sleep. Yes. Just for a minute. After so much fighting, surely she deserved a minute? She began to drift, but an annoying voice, an annoying sensation in her chest, wouldn't leave her in peace.
Tath was talking to her, in a stupid foreign language that wasn't remotely like elvish or Otopian. Everything was sibilant, like hissing snakes. The vowels were owlish, hooting, soft.
Shut up, she said to him. Why won't you just shut up?
Oolerathan sirssalliel, Tath said softly, coaxing her. The words tied her up and drew her closer to him. They opened tiny doors inside, onto sweet darkness that was not of the lake at all. They offered pathways. She saw lights within them, beckoning her. Sirmasenna, sirmasenna, abrayuth manmayess.
Just like the dragon, she remembered. She hurt. She was beyond tired. Let me go.
Abrayuth Lila Amanda Black. Abrayuth set imma. Manmayesim.
She saw Dar's face. Not the face of her dreams that had tormented her. The face of his death, stretched in pain. Leave me alone!
Countdown to automatic restart commencing. Five, four, three, two, one. Main power online. Auxiliary power online. Automedic enabled. Emergency autorespiration enabled.
Lila struggled against the colossal weight of anaerobic toxins in her blood, against the need to sleep still clogging her mind. Around her the world, which had been no bigger than a mote of dust, expanded into vast, lightless space. They were still falling—more than 230 metres down.
Lila pulled Zal's body against her and held it to her side with her left arm, then ignited her foot jets and began to drive them upward, ascending as fast as she could. As she did so she ordered the last of her drug precursors to synthesize adrenaline, Terbutalin, and other pharmacological agents that aided rapid decompression.
Tath, frail as candlelight, stretched out inside her, and kept up his whispering, to Zal this time. Abrayuth Azrazal Suhanathir Taliesetra. Abrayuth set imma. Manmeyesim.
Selecting the biggest needle from her store, Lila activated her wrist injector, found Zal's neck, located his artery with precise ultrasound, and pushed in, tangling her fingers in his hair to stabilise his head and neck against her arm. His pulse was very slow, very weak, heart almost stopped, but the cold and the opiates and Tath had saved him so far.
Lila could run her own blood through a nitrogen scrubber to save her from the bends. The same system was now flooding her with necessary oxygen whilst replacing much of what she would normally have needed with helium, oxygen being toxic at depth. She shifted her hold on Zal and switched usage on her secondary forearm systems, dropping and dumping her gun and its ammunition into the lake, replacing it with another wide-bore catheter which she inserted into the other side of his neck. She shunted her blood back around away from the gas exchange system and ran Zal's blood through it instead, not even pausing to consider the effects of contamination. She had to get up, and she had to get up very soon.
And so they went, breathing alternately with Lila's machine system, stopping often in their ascent as the nitrogen built and dispersed, held in life by Tath's commands against death. As they ascended they drew after them a long, lambent tail of wild magic and after the tail came the golden and black gliding shape of the dragon. Lila saw it suddenly as she held at 210 metres, the palace above her, the water around them full of bodies, and artefacts and clutter, trapped beneath the bubble's silvery bulk. Fascinated in spite of her fear she stared at it as she pumped Zal's blood through her arms and back into him, waiting for him to wake up or show any sign of life, listening to his slow, weak heartbeat…
Don't look at it. You know better than that, Tath said, breaking his canticle.
But Lila didn't need to look at it. She smiled as the dragon came up on them and then wound around them, wild magic from the deep streaming off its flanks, sparking on her arms and legs, in her hair, against the metal surface of her eyes.
Zal shuddered against her and only her thumbs locked against his jaw prevented him from trying to breathe the lake. His eyes opened, but she doubted that he'd see much with his unmachine sight, a few gleams. He could feel the cold vice of her around him however, and the pain of his many cuts.
“It's all right,” Lila said through her hands into the bone of his skull. “I've got you.”
It is not all right, Tath amended gently and, with dismay, Lila saw the dragon's lazy winding around them change into a full-on charge towards the bubbles above.
Something Arië said upset it maybe? Lila asked him, but she rolled onto her back away from their vertical position and drove them away as fast as she could through the water. She didn't see the Dragon or its impact on the Palace, but she felt it. There was a high-pitched vibration, and then a world was falling.
As Lila felt Zal's hands catch hold of her waist the first object struck them. It was the stone altar of Earth. Lila rolled and fell with it, fighting out from under. Zal's grip fell away on the left, tightened reflexively on the right. But then they were in the midst of a storm of falling debris—every piece of furniture, every object, every person who had inhabited the Palace of Aparastil was now within the lake, and those below fifty metres were simply sinking, as bodies will when they reach a certain depth. The heaviest things sank the fastest. Lila and Zal received a battering. Amid the furore Lila felt the water itself surging, trying to tow her with it as it responded to Arië's summons. The lake queen was drawing undines to her aid, huge bodies of lakewater, animated by her will, though they were weakening as the mages who had bound themselves to her drowned, one by one.
Astar! Tath thought, and Lila inwardly moaned with the very idea of trying to do more than survive. To their left and right, back and front, materials fell and bumped and bashed them. Something heavy smacked the side of her head and she reeled, seeing stars. She missed her pump switch and Zal blacked out again.
There was a moment or two of floating weightlessly, beginning to fall again. Through radar and sonar and heat-sensors she saw Arië propelled towards the surface in a twisting eel-like vortex of water, and she saw the dragon's golden arrow tear through that column, its huge mouth agape. It seized Arië in its jaws and, without pause, turned to face gravity and plunged down and down into the dark until it was lost to all sight.
Lila restored Zal's oxygen and boosted the level of it in the tri mix. She added the last dregs of her pharmacopoeia as opiate antagonists and began the long journey up towards the light. They rested at forty-metre intervals, waiting for the nitrogen bubbles in their blood to abate. At 180 metres Zal's hands came back to Lila's waist. It was discernibly green here, and Lila could see him in normal vision as the faintest ghost in front of her.
“It's still okay,” she said to him through her hands. “Don't worry about the pain. It's only pressure. You'll be fine.” It was a lie. She thought that the pressure and depth would have burst his eardrums—though he should still hear through the transmission of his skull—and the pumping system kept having to speed its game. Zal was bleeding out, right in front of her.
The catheter I used prevents healing, Tath said to her, simply as an explanation. He did not mention Astar again, but Lila kept scanning for her. She could not remove her hands from Zal's neck and head. She kept Zal on an extra cycle and rose through another fifty metres in ten seconds flat, constantly adjusting the oxygen mix. They kept bumping palace debris that sank very slowly or floated. Dead bodies were there, but Lila didn't look at them. She knew Astar must be among them. Knew it. And Tath did too. He became very still and silent.
At fifty metres Zal suddenly moved closer to her, the drift of water between their bodies vanishing, its cool replaced by warmth. His eyes were heavy-lidded, but the corners of his long mouth flickered with the hint of a smile. His lips, blue tinged, parted slightly and she saw him swallow.
Drink the water, Lila, Tath said suddenly. He is trying to tell you.
She did. Vigour and health surged into her. She didn't care to think about what would have happened to them if they hadn't been submerged in a lake of such intense aetherial properties. Long dead.
Zal's smile deepened and he pushed forward against her hands. His arms slid around her. She didn't believe what she felt. Here was Zal, cut, bleeding, half-dead, catheterised, drugged, cyanotic, but against her she could feel the unmistakable line and press of a serious erection. His andalune body caressed her so lightly she could have mistaken it for currents in the water, but this moved beneath her clothing.
Demons adore such straits, Tath said with appalled fascination.
She decided to ignore it and took them to the surface, turning her face to the light and air as it came down to her, holding Zal away from her as she cycled his blood and rebalanced it to elfin normal. The fresh day broke against her face and she gasped for real, clear air.
In front of her Zal coughed and groaned with pain. They floated for a moment on the power of Lila's jets and then she drew back both needles with a whir and snap. Zal gasped and his head rocked as she let him go and took hold of him more securely around his midsection. Keeping them high in the water she quickly found his right arm and pressed her thumb down on the open wound, sealing it shut. Zal smiled faintly at her, barely conscious.
“Are we at my two minutes of charity yet?” he asked. And then he disappeared.
He was seized so fast that Lila barely noticed it as he was torn from her weak hold and pulled down again. Then something tough grabbed her foot and dragged her under.
She was swallowing water, her hands battering lost items, getting tangled in scarves and clothes, hitting wooden things, hitting dumb flesh limbs. Lila was so tired.
“Battle Standard,” she said and felt the elfin clothing of Tath's be cut to shreds as all her capacities and weapons expanded to their maximum extent. The water boiled around her and the grip on her foot vanished.
You called Each Uisge! Tath exclaimed, jolted out of his grief into a breath of hysteria at her stupidity. Otopian mania! Do you know nothing?
Zal's friends, Lila amended, diving down and boosting power with grim and certain intent. She could see the two faeries ahead of her, their beautiful black horse forms with their finned feet and streaming hair wrapped fatally around Zal's pale body. His hot blood made a trail that was easy to follow. She had not known about Poppy and Viridia being deadly hunters, but even if she had, they were her only possible allies.
In human form perhaps. In water or their true body they remember nothing but the hunger. You are insane! All this, and now they will drown him and rip him to pieces and leave you his liver as a keepsake.
Like hell they will, Lila said, Unless I'm mistaken, you can knock them cold.
In Otopia maybe, Tath said. In Aparastil…no Each Uisge has ever come here. They are of the water, Lila. They are in their element.
The water horses dived fast but Lila's rocket boots were faster.
As she neared them she noticed that they were slowing, their easy glide becoming sluggish and dull—they were falling asleep, just as they always did around elves when their andalune bodies made contact with faery flesh. It would have been funny if she hadn't been so exhausted, and in some other time and place.
She caught the water horses that were once Poppy and Viridia around their fine necks and, as the hair tried to tangle her arms, wrapped her legs around Zal and swept her hands through their manes, cutting the hair clean through. The faeries fought and struggled to recapture them both but they could not get a good enough grip.
This time she took Zal up fast, not looking or caring what they hit, not pausing at the surface but leaping up and out into the waning light of late evening. She set them down at some distance inland, at the clearing where she and Dar had stopped before entering Aparastil. There she laid Zal on the sweet blue-green grass.
The wounds on his arms were all gone, except the single puncture that still bled freely. It was incongruous there, in the delicious peace of the wooded grove, in the scented twilight. Lila tried not to notice how beautiful Zal was, how his vulnerability made him almost perfect, that she wanted him, like this and here, when he was barely even there. She didn't want to be that person.
How do I fix it?
You cannot. I will, Tath said. Even he was a shadow of his former self. Lila regarded with horror the degree to which he had faded. It was only with the greatest effort that he managed to extend his aetherial presence outward through her. He spoke in the dragon's language. The wound in Zal's arm stopped flowing. Lila felt Tath sink lower, lower, shrink down to almost nothing.
Tath!
He didn't respond.
Songbirds swept across the glade, calling their last calls of the evening. A soft blue mist rose among the grass and there was loveliness everywhere, everywhere.
“Zal?” Lila said, kneeling beside his head. He was unconscious.
Like she used to do for herself she went through the routines of checking, this time doing it for him. With ultrasound she located the meridians in his body, scanned and found his deafened ears, some damage to his heart, peculiar resonances that might have been unique to him, or a kind of ruin—she didn't know what. Her hands, multisensory, glided above the surface of his skin and she willed him well. For herself, she felt almost perfectly healthy, in a fresh and glowing way, the way she recognised of Sathanor, that had never been before she had come here. Her own body was well in itself, for the first time perfectly harmonised, biometalloids and flesh seamless, as though they were always meant to be this way.
Finally she had nothing left that she could do. She sat back on her heels and slowly watched her Battle Armour power down and withdraw into normally sized limbs, ordinary shapes. “Please wake up,” she said to him, in her own voice. But he did not.
After a few moments she heard sounds from the lake. Poppy and Viridia, getting out to come looking…
Lila bent down and picked up Zal in her arms. She held him gently, close to her, and carried him away into the night forest, away from hunting faeries and hunting Saaqaa, wherever the path took her, seeing and avoiding all the soft trails of lemon and lime magic that twisted and danced in the moonlit air.