Testa stumbled to her aid, the earth and air increasingly p agitated, as if stirred up by their very presence. She grabbed hold of Phoebe's arm and helped her to her feet, which was no minor task.
"I'm all right," Phoebe gasped, "really I am." She looked round at Tesia. "You can go back now," she said.
Listen to her, Raul said, his voice quivering.
"You've done everything you can," Phoebe went on. "I can make it from here." She threw her arms around Tesla. "Thank you," she said. "You're an amazing woman, you know that?"
"Take care of yourself," Tesla said.
"I will," Phoebe replied, breaking their embrace now, and turning her gaze and her body towards the shore,
"I meant what I said," Tesla called after Phoebe.
"What's that?"
"I wasn't@'
She didn't have time to finish, distracted as she was by a figure who appeared on the shore ahead of Phoebe. He was, of all the creatures she'd seen at work and play here, the most authoritative; a fleshy, imperious individual, with sly, hooded eyes and a dozen or so small gingerish beards sprouting from his cheeks and chins, each teased and twirled so they resembled horns. In one hand he carried a small staff. The other he was using to lift up his voluminous robes, allowing three children-identical to one another and to the laughing child Phoebe and Tesla had encountered on the slope below-room to play tag between his bare and spindly legs. He was not so diverted by their frolics, however, that he didn't see the women in his path, and by the look on his face it was plain he knew they were not part of his retinue.
Instantly, he raised a shout, "Gamaliel! to me! Mutep! to me! Bartho! Swanky! to me! to me!"
Phoebe turned and looked back at Tesla, her face a picture of despair. The shore lay ten strides from her, at most, and now the way was blocked.
"Duck!" Tesia yelled, and pointed Lourdes at the man in the robes. He raised his staff the same instant. There was energy skittering about it, she saw, gathering coherence It's a weapon! Raul yelled. She didn't wait for proof. She simply fired. The bullet struck the man in the middle of his belly, lower than she'd aimed. He dropped his robes and his staff, and let out a cry of such shrillness she'd thought maybe she'd mis-sexed him. The children's giggles turned to shrieks, and they raced around him as he tottered forward, the cry still coming between his tiny teeth.
One of the children pushed past Phoebe, ignoring or indifferent to the gun, yelling, "Somebody help Blessedm'n Zury!"
"Go!" Tesla yelled to Phoebe, but the order got lost in the din of Zury's agony and the children's shrieks. 'the niist didn ;t mute the cacophony, it served as a roiling echo-chamber, the tu mult gathering so much power it made the soft ground shudder. w By the panicked look on Phoebe's face it was plain she as too confused to take advantage of the chance while she had it. Yelling to her again, Tesia started through the shallows to press her on her way.
Nofarther! Raul was yelling in her head. I can't hold on.
He wasn't alone in this. The assault of noise and motion threw Tesla's senses into confusion. Her sight seemed to fly ahead of her, drummed from her skull, and for several sickening heartbeats she was looking back at herself from the very threshold between Cosm and shore. She might have been claimed completely, but that Phoebe reached out for her, and the contact brought her sight to heel.
"Get going!" she yelled to Phoebe, glancing towards Zury. He was in no condition to protest Phoebe's departure. He was bent double, puking up blood.
"Come with me!" Phoebe hollered.
"I can't."
' I'You can't go back that way!" Phoebe said. "They'll kill you.
"Not if I'm-2' Tesla-? Raul was yelling.
"Quick. Go on, for God's sake!"
Tessllaa-?
"All right!" she said to him, and pushed Phoebe from her, down towards the shore.
Phoebe went, wading through a swamp of softened rock.
Tesssilaaa "We're going!" Tesla said, and turning from Phoebe started back towards solid ground.
As she did so there was a moment of utter disorientation, as though her sanity suddenly fled her. She halted in midstride-her purpose, her will, her memory-gone from her in a blaze of white pain. There was a blank time when she felt nothing: no pain, no fear, no desire for self-preservation. She simply stood teetering in the midst of the tumult, Lourdes slipping out of her hands, and lost in the tidal ground. Then, as quickly as her wits left her, they returned. Her head ached as it had never ached in her life, and blood ran from her nose, but she had sufficient strength to continue her stumbling journey to safe ground.
There was bad news ahead, however, and it came in four appalling shapes: Gamaliel, Mutep, Bartho, and Swanky.
She had no strength left in her limbs to outrun them. The best she could hope now was that they not execute her on the spot for wounding Zury. As the hammerer closed upon her, she glanced back over her shoulder, looking for Phoebe, and was pleased to see that she had crossed the threshold, and was gone.
"That's something," she thought to Raul. He made no reply. "I'm sorry," she said. "I did my best."
The hammerer was within a stride of her, reaching to seize her arm.
"Don't touch her," somebody said.
She raised her spinning head. The somebody was striding out of the mist, carrying a shotgun. It was pointed past Tesla, towards the wounded Blessedm'n.
"Walk away, Tesla," the shotgun wielder said.
She narrowed her eyes, to better make out the face of her savior.
"D'Amour?"
He gave her a wearily wolfish grin. "None other," he said. "Now, do you want to just walk this way?"
The hammerer still stood within striking distance of Tesla, plainly eager to do her damage. "Move him," D'Amour told Zury. "Or else."
"Bartho," the Blessedm'n said. "Let her pass."
Whining like a frustrated dog, the hammerer stepped out of Tesla's path, and she stumbled down the slope to where D'Amour stood.
"Gamaliel?" Harry said. The black stick-man turned his seared head in D'Amour's direction. "You explain to the Brothers Grimm here that I've got sights on this gun that can see through fog. You understand what I'm telling you?" Gamaliel nodded. "And if any of you move in the next ten minutes I'm going to blow the old fuck's head off. You don't think I can?" He took a bead on Zury. Gamaliel whimpered. "Yeah, you get it," he said. "I can kill him from a long way down the hill with this. A long, long way. Okay?"
It wasn't Gamaliel who spoke, but his obese brother.
"O-key," he said, raising his fat-fingered hands. "No shoot, o-key? We not move. 0-key? You not shoot. 0-key?"
"O-key do-key," D'Amour said. He glanced round at Tesla. "You fit to run?" he whispered.
"I'll do my best."
"Go on then," D'Amour replied, slowly backing away.
Tesla started off down the slope, slowly enough to keep D'Amour in view while he retreated from Zury and the brothers. He kept retreating until he could no longer be seen, then he turned, and raced down to join Tesla.
"We got to make this quick," he said.
"Can you do it?"
"Can I do what?"
"Pick Zury off in the fog?"
"Hell no. But I'm betting they won't risk it. Now let's get going."
It was easier descending than climbing, even though Tesla's head felt as though it were splitting. Within ten minutes the fog ahead of them brightened, and a short while after they stumbled into the bright summer air,