They emerged from the crack. Layanna exerted some psychic force and the elephant stilled, then, almost surprisingly, knelt. Nonplussed, the others climbed into its litter once again, where they were safe from the maggots that squirmed along the creature’s back, and Layanna followed, just as the horde arrived.
The elephant stomped down. It crushed one Infested creature, then another. Sheridan fired, shooting out one’s brains, and Janx and Hildra opened up, too, targeting first those who carried guns. Maggoty hands grasped at the bands holding the litter.
With Layanna driving the elephant, the beast plowed a path through the horde, knocking the Infested aside or grinding them to paste, and at last pulled free, barreling down the main street toward the great black dome in the heart of the city. The rhythmic jounce of the elephant’s tread jarred Avery’s spine, and the litter swayed dangerously, threatening to break and slide off. It hadn’t been designed for such use. Avery held on tight, willing them on.
Trumpeting sounded to the left. His head whipped around to see another elephant, this one under Infested control, coming from down a side passage. Then another from the opposite direction.
Hordes of Infested streamed just behind the beasts, some riding animals, some afoot. Some fired at the rogue elephant and its riders, but the distance and movement made the shots go wild. The enemy elephants gained ground, and shapes took position in their litters. Guns flashed.
A bullet whizzed past Avery’s ear, punching a hole in the red silk wall of the litter and causing the wall to dance. He crouched, making himself as small a target as possible, while Janx, Sheridan and Hildra returned fire.
Layanna made their elephant veer left down a side passage, then turn right at the next avenue, swinging back toward the Dome, as the maggot titan had referred to it. The maneuver kept them out of the enemy’s line of sight for a minute, and at last the Dome loomed ahead, great and black and alien. For the first time, Avery realized that no vines grew on it. No vegetation of any kind. And yet the flowers came from here, the shoots running, apparently, under the wall. And inside somewhere ... the Key ...
The Dome approached, but slowly, and once again Avery had to adjust his estimate of how big it was. It reminded him of coming on a mountain, always nearing but ever far, huge beyond a human’s ability to predict scale and distance. For the first time he saw that slender towers, so small as to be almost insignificant against its vastness, rose from each of the five archways, and that the surface of the Dome was multifaceted, like a diamond. Just what was the structure? Why did the giants’ city surround it?
“Almost out of bullets,” Janx said.
“Me, too,” said Hildra.
They slapped in their last rounds. The enemy snipers seemed to have run low on bullets, as well, or had run completely out, as they’d stopped firing.
Only five roads led to the Dome, Avery saw, each running from one of the city’s great buildings. This one, like all the others, reached a grand door fully two hundred feet high, sealed completely shut. It was from the top of these doorways that the towers arose. Layanna stopped the elephant before the door, had the animal kneel, and the group climbed gratefully down. She started to direct the elephant at the pursuers, but Sheridan stopped her.
“Send it away and it could come back under their control,” she said. “Have it lay down and we can use it for cover.”
With a frown, Layanna complied, then turned her attention to the door. There was no lock, no keyhole, just a smooth black surface built by inhuman appendages in some age long ago, baked in energies that permitted no natural growth and even impeded Layanna’s ability to bring over her other-self.
“Maybe they won’t attack,” Janx said, taking position behind the prostrate elephant. “I mean, they wanted us to come here, right? At least you, blondie. Now that they’ve—”
A bullet whined through the air, striking the wall not five feet from the top of Layanna’s head—as close as the sniper could come with the elephant blocking the way—and ricocheting with a spark.
“Think again,” Hildra said.
Sheridan crouched and took aim, and so did they. When no further shots came, and their enemies weren’t much nearer, they continued to wait.
Avery studied the door, then Layanna. “Well?” he said.
“I don’t know. I think it will open for me—”
“Good.”
“—but I don’t know what we’ll find on the other side.”
Swallowing, he glanced back toward the approaching elephants. The horde of Infested on the ground had almost reached them.
“I think we’d better risk it,” he said.
“Then stand back.”
She laid her palm against the door, and he could feel something vibrate and ripple around her, much more powerful than the small force she’d exerted on the elephant, and, with a great roar of metal or stone or diamond or something else altogether—Avery had no idea what the Dome was composed of—the great door slid aside, revealing a huge gaping rectangle of blackness.
Back on the road, the horde of Infested stopped their forward progress, as if in awe. They, or their controllers, may have been waiting hundreds, even thousands of years for this one moment. Then, slowly, they began to come forward again.
Avery and the others stepped through.
With a hollow boom, the door sealed
shut behind them.
Chapter 2
A spike of claustrophobia stabbed Avery between the shoulder blades. We’re trapped.
“Anyone have a light?” said Hildra.
“Not me,” Janx said.
“I don’t think we’ll need one,” said Layanna. “Wait.”
After a moment, the air began to glow, just softly, the illumination—a sort of violet—coming from no specific source and only revealing the area immediately around them. They stood encased in an eerie violet fog. Sounds reached them—scratching. Wailing. Thumping. The horde had reached the Dome. Howling, denied a glimpse of the promised holy act, whatever that might be, they expended their fury on the structure’s wall. Object of worship or not, it bore the brunt of their rage now. To the beat of the awful sounds, however muffled, Avery and the others inched forward through the gloom.
“What is this place?” said Hildra, awe in her voice.
“That,” said Avery, “is a very good question. I assume it’s older than the city, and that the city grew up around it. Did the giants worship it?”
“I don’t think they worshipped it,” Layanna said. “But what lived in it.”
