It slammed her to the ground, sand washing up around them to make the creature difficult to see. A tail whipped toward her face, a vicious barb barely missing her eyes, and it lifted a long limb and struck downward, making eddies of sand.
Lara surged sideways, out from under the worst of its weight. She rolled and the thing pounced after her, landing on her backpack and shaking it hard enough to rattle her teeth. The instinct to curl up protectively warred with the impulse to run, and in the moment of hesitation the thing collapsed on her, wrapping multitudinous legs around her ribs and hips. A clatter sounded by her ear, a chitinous warning, and she had a sudden vision of a spider severing her spinal cord.
She flung herself forward, fingers dug in the sand until she was on her feet and running for a wall. The air supported her wrongly, offering waterlike buoyancy, but she was grateful: in normal atmosphere the beast’s weight would have kept her pinned. Grunting with effort, Lara spun at the last moment and slammed her back into a wall with enough force that the monster riding her squealed and released her. Black ichor popped from it, drifting through thick air. The thing slithered to the ground, then shook itself like a dog as Lara backed off.
Spider, crab, stingray; there might once have been some kind of taxonomical name for the thing, before dying Unseelie magic had corrupted it into something else. It had six legs, not eight, and a plated spine that curved over broad wings and bled down to a lashing tail. Bulging eyes were set far apart on a flat head, but its mouth protruded, pincers snapping together almost too fast to see. The sound was primitive, reaching into the back of Lara’s mind and speaking of danger.
“I exorcise thee, unholy spirit.” The words, whispered, were comforting, though Lara was unsurprised when the many-legged thing didn’t flinch. Nightwings were made purely of magic, and in the Barrow-lands were susceptible to the rituals of Lara’s faith. But this chimera contained too much of animals that had truly existed. Magic might have re-formed them into one, but an exorcism wouldn’t banish a nest of spiders, either. It took more mundane means.
The chimera rippled its wings, lifting up, slower than before but still quick and graceful. Blood floated from it as it pumped its wings and gained height. She tipped her head back, hair wafting around her face the same way blood followed the chimera.
It beat its wings down in two sudden rushes and was gone, black against the black distance of the tower ceiling. Alarm spurted through Lara, hands going cold and core tight as she searched the darkness for warning of its next attack. Scraps of song ran through her mind, pieces of music she’d used as spell-magic in her own world. They could perhaps be used to tear the chimera back into its component parts by calling up the truth of what it had been: “Amazing Grace” had given her the ability to see clearly, and had ripped apart nightwings as they attacked.
But too much clarity of sight would shatter the remains of Llyr’s magic, a risk she couldn’t afford. She reached over her shoulder, curling her fingers around the ivory staff. It was a bad choice, of that she had no doubt. But it was also her only weapon, and the chimera was quicker than she.
“I’m not any good at this,” she whispered without knowing to whom she made the protest. “I barely know which end of a sword to hold. I don’t know how to fight.”
The chimera fell on her again, and there was no more time to worry.
Twelve
Black light retreated under the staff’s white flare as Lara thrust it upward, catching the chimera’s belly. Its weight staggered her as the blow struck home. Lara braced herself and flung it toward a wall as hard as she could.
The air’s peculiar buoyancy worked in her favor, supporting the chimera over a greater distance than she could have thrown it herself. It hit with more force than she expected it to, Llyr’s spell doing its part as well. Lara ran forward to strike at the sea monster again as it slithered down the wall. Its many legs went slack with the second hit and, heart pounding, she put a hand on one of its wings, less eager to kill it than wisdom might dictate. Impatience and a sense of danger surged through the staff: its bent for destruction was far greater than hers. Lara throttled it back as she explored the chimera through touch.
Her fingers made an impression on the wing, black softness oozing between them as though she’d put her hand into a bucket of thick warm grease. Lara’s gorge rose and she pulled back, then gritted her teeth and slid her hand up to the creature’s insectoid spine. Fragments of the exoskeleton were broken, sharp edges discharging small clouds of dark blood. Its long tail twitched, not quite threatening; she thought the thing was semiconscious and reacting on instinct. The staff hummed, a soft impression of discontent, but didn’t fight her again as a louder music sang in her mind.
Deep hollow atonal howls, like sea conches turned to sour instruments; that was the chimera’s song. It wasn’t a true thing, in much the same way the gash between Annwn and her world wasn’t true. They were things not meant to be, even when magic forced them to exist. It would be better to return the beast to what it had been than to kill it. That, after all, was what she hoped to do with the whole of Annwn. If she could bring the staff under her control to save the chimera, it boded well for the healing of the lands.
The stingray looked like the largest part of the whole, its broad wings and long tail and even its small protruding eyes dominant in a way that its scuttling legs and pincer mouth weren’t. Lara pressed her hand deeper into the greasy wing, holding the idea of the conch shell’s music in her mind and searching for anything within the chimera that resonated.
A hint of unadulterated music teased at the edge of her consciousness. Lara whispered encouragement, sending out a thread of her own song to guide it. Just a thread: her power could still be her undoing in the heart of the drowned realms.
The chimera’s tail lashed, suddenly full of life again, and scored a blow against her cheek. Icy pain cut to the bone, shattering her focus.
The staff, though, was prepared: heat and light roared from it eagerly, smashing into the chimera. The staff itself moved, dragging Lara with it so the weight of her body was behind the blow. It—she—skewered the chimera, strength enhanced by the staff’s will, and a shot of glee ricocheted from it. Blood erupted from the chimera, discolored red-purple hanging in the air as the beast screamed and thrashed, long tail whipping about in spasms of desperation and pain.
Black light exploded in the tower, fighting against the staff’s corrupt white. Shards of ebony, already fragile, shook and collapsed with magic’s impact, as if the strike that had brought the chimera down also recoiled through the city walls. As if the staff were trying to finish what it had begun so long ago, and latent magic in the Unseelie citadel was fighting back.
Lara yanked the staff free of the chimera, horror blinding her as much as the clashing light did. She’d meant to control the thing, not be controlled by it. Someone, in making the stave, had invested it with far too much will of its own. Rhiannon had been a goddess indeed, if she could dominate its power. For a hopeless moment Lara wondered how Oisín had managed for the long years he’d carried the thing.
Eagerness leapt in it again, sucking at Lara’s flash of despair, rushing back up that emotion, trying to find lodging in Lara’s mind. She yelled, raw sound that hurt her throat, and very nearly threw the ivory weapon against the wall trying to rid herself of it.
Triumph scattered through her at the idea. Her fingertips spasmed, gripping the carvings at the last instant. The staff’s anger replaced its triumph: out of her hands, thrown against city walls filled with magic, it would be able to exact its will. Maybe not forever, but long enough to wreak untold destruction, until either its or the city’s remaining magics were burned out. Confidence sang in Lara’s mind, all the purity of tone she’d been unable to find within the chimera. The staff was too dangerous to let out of her hands, and even as her only weapon, too dangerous to
She clawed it back into her palms, strangling it again. Its light flickered, sullen response to her silent demand that it return to sleep. That was twice within the Drowned Lands she’d awakened it, and twice it had wrought ruin. It boded ill for the healing she hoped to accomplish, but she had learned something: without certainty, she couldn’t control the weapon. The stingray had
