And she turned, and on silent gliding steps, went toward the great doors.
The Witches looked on in awe, bowed and parted to the left and right to make way for her. Even without understanding the speech, they were clearly more impressed with the actions of a Blue Woman than with anything a Blue Man would do. Small and dainty as a child, blue as a plum, she receded between the tall hooded figures of the Witch crones and their menfolk.
Aanwen was gone.
10. Oenoe’s Kiss
Sir Guiden whispered to his wife. Some of the other Blue Men, at this point, drew their pistols, some pointing at Sir Guiden, some at the bewildered Nymphs, others at Montrose.
Oenoe blew a kiss at Rada Lwa, and flower petals from her mantilla drifted toward his pale face, and he blinked, eyes unfocused, dazed.
But before she could complete her neurological spell, Preceptor Naar, nonchalantly riding one of his clanking machines, stepped between the two and parted them. Sir Guiden, at the same moment, let out a yelp and dropped his misericorde, for it had burned him. Several of the gems on Naar’s coat were active: this was the same trick used on Menelaus when first his coffin was forced open, namely, heating metal by magnetic induction.
Naar’s mechanism reached down with a large black-and-yellow painted claw, and delicately plucked Rada Lwa out of the grasp of Sir Guy, and set the albino down to one side, where he staggered, and went to one knee. With the other claw, Naar’s automaton picked up Sir Guy, dangling him like a child.
Oenoe clutched her stomach and looked wild with fright. It was the first expression Menelaus had seen on her face that seemed unrehearsed and utterly sincere, and it was an expression of utmost misery. Menelaus said in Natural, “Get the dogs away from the sarcophagus this second, and I can control the room!”
She replied in the same language, “Even I, beloved, cannot work so swiftly. The chemicals need time to react to the nervous system.”
The iron claw tightened. Sir Guiden screamed in a strangled, high-pitched voice: “Montrose! Help me! Ayúdame! MONTROSE!”
Three people reacted. Menelaus stepped forward, and brought his rock out from under his cloak, and he stiffened the fabric to steely hardness. Rada Lwa, who was kneeling, reached and plucked up the dropped misericorde and leaped to his feet, looking to see who had screamed. Scipio on the throne stood up.
Then the three men all looked at each other, surprised. Rada Lwa blinked oddly, unable to focus his eyes on the face beneath the metallic cloak of tent material. Then he looked at Sir Guiden, saying in Spanish, “Wait. Who called my name?”
Scipio said in English, “Ancestor, did you say every object was armed?” He let the black, glassy blade clatter to the dais beside him. Illiance somersaulted effortlessly out of the way like an acrobat to avoid being struck or cut by the dropped blade, and smoothly rolled upright on his feet, his face all the while serene.
Scipio meanwhile with his toe had flipped open the hinged shell that formed the top of the tortoise footstool. Inside the hollow tortoise were two streamlined pistols of milky white ceramic, curved like the letter J, not quite as long as a man’s forearm. The thumb-trigger was an emerald oval of touch-sensitive crystal. Menelaus recognized them as the same design of “slumbering gun” he always slept with, a caterpillar-drive linear accelerator, atomic powered, no moving parts, locked to his biometrics.
Scipio tossed both to him. The weapons were live. He could sense the energy from the atomic cells by the crackle in his implants when he caught them, one in each hand. Menelaus pointed one barrel at Naar, the other at Ull.
One of the dog things nearby said in Intertextual to Ull, “Master! Relict Anubis! Him! Allow me to run at him! I will stab him with the bayonet, the sharp, sharp bayonet, and fire my piece at point-blank range into his uncooperative non-Blue body! Ugly, ugly body! It will burn with much burning, bright! Bright!”
Mentor Ull said back, “Not to be allowed. The discharge may pass through his body and strike the sarcophagus behind him, and wound pack mates.”
The shoulders and tail of the dog thing drooped. A piteous whine escaped from between white, sharp teeth.
Mentor Ull scratched the dog thing fondly behind its ear. “It was a good and loyal suggestion. You are good! Good Follower!”
“Me! I am a good Follower!”
“Take a squad to his left and right, that you may stab and fire at an angle without striking the coffin. Do not shoot until I command.”
Dogs began inching up the dais, left and right, ears high, tense as bowstrings.
Montrose said in Iatric, “Naar! I have perfect peripheral vision and am perfectly ambidextrous and I have greased rattlesnake reflexes, and I really, really love shooting people. At this distance, I can pick which nostril of Ull’s nose and yours to drill, the left or the right.”
Naar looked bored. “A shot of a metallic projectile? The result will be unimpressive.” A shift of the automaton’s claw, and Sir Guiden, pale and gasping in pain, was now hanging before Naar, spoiling Menelaus’ aim. Naar said languidly, “Preceptor Illiance, if you will—?”
The gems on the coat of Preceptor Illiance glistered and shined. Menelaus saw black sparks dance before his eyes, and he thought it was some exotic energy discharge, before he realized that it was merely his eyeballs betraying him due to lightheadedness. His muscles locked up as if with cramps: he could not so much as twitch a finger.
Illiance drifted over, stood on tiptoe, and pried the two white pistols out of the numb hands of Menelaus.
Illiance said apologetically, “The food you have been consuming over the past week has been infested with nerve-seeking nanite bodies or mites which can permit or hinder normal axon-dendrite discharge of those nerves, and which we can control by means of simple radio signals.”
Montrose now understood why the Blue Men had been so utterly nonchalant about the Chimerae arming themselves with primitive, macroscopic weapons. On a microscopic level, the combat had already been lost.
Menelaus reflected sadly on how worried he had been about the goddam shower water. Damn, but he hated nanotech!
Illiance thoughtfully pointed one pistol at the golden floor, flipped up the trigger guard, and pushed his thumb on the trigger spot. “Not loaded,” he said in Intertextual, when nothing happened.
Mentor Ull said, “Loaded. You can see the dowel of firing material through the barrel. The trigger is biometrically sensitive, perhaps affixed to a family gene pattern.”
Illiance placed the oversized pistols, one in each side pocket of his coat. The curving grips hung far out in the air like horns of a lamb, bumping his elbows. He said thoughtfully, “Then Beta Anubis could not have fired it in any case.” He looked puzzled. “But the Judge of Ages, whose pistols these are, could have. Why did he pass them? With our translator paralyzed, we have no convenient means to inquire.” His look of mild puzzlement grew deeper, darkening to a look of bewilderment, or even fear. “Something is wrong. There is some basic, erroneous assumption I have been making about these circumstances.”
Scipio perhaps did not realize Menelaus could not move; or perhaps he was just feeling reckless; for he stepped forward, picked up his dropped sword, and pointed it at Naar.
In a tone so majestic no one could misunderstand, he spoke what was clearly a command. But it was spoken in English, a language which no one could understand. The import was clear enough: he was demanding the Blue Man release Sir Guiden.