PROLOGUE
Like a raging mountain, the Terichik rose screaming from a frozen, nightdark sea. Its many-sectioned, grotesquely wormlike body reared up; tons of water and ice thundered into the ocean with a howl like the death of worlds. The black night swirled wind-whipped snow through mist that tasted of salt. The Terichik’s mouth gaped cavernously. Endless rows of serrated teeth gleamed as it shrieked its mindless wrath. Its breath was a cold and fetid wind.
The humans beneath it were warrior and wizard, princess and commoner. They were frail meat in the Terichik’s path, brittle fleshly twigs tumbled in an angry storm. They scrambled for safety, ran back onto land, away from the sea. They fled past the wreckage of the shattered Inuit village: rows of crushed houses, a great stone lodge with its roof stove in, boat hulls splintered and scattered like insect husks.
Bulwar was the first Adventurer to die, and he died well. He was the greatest warrior among them, but foolish to think that his enchanted usik, the pubic bone of the sacred walrus, could stand against the Terichik. Even faced by a beast to dwarf ten killer whales, Bulwar roared defiance and sprang forward. His ice-caked black beard flagged in the frigid air. His mightily thewed arms coiled beneath the bear furs that lent him strength and courage. Bulwar had once been an ordinary man, a “systems analyst” in the white man’s world. Here where the heavens met the earth, he was a great warrior, a great force for good.
His magic, his courage, his strength were not enough. The Terichik crushed him, savaged his body with fanged cilia. His screams echoed in their heads long after his body had vanished into its gaping maw.
The humans retreated. There were twelve now, people of the tundras and the people from the white world beyond.
They ran until the sound of rifle shots split their screams. Two more of their number fell, trapped in a withering crossfire.
Agile and lithe, beautiful Eviane rolled to safety behind an abandoned boathouse. Even as she hit the ground, she unslung the automatic rifle from her back and braced the butt against her shoulder.
She was a woman of flaming red hair and sparkling green eyes. Her mouth was generously wide, quick to laughter or rage. Now it was flattened into a fighting grimace cold enough to freeze the stars in the sky.
She peered along the rifle barrel and then glanced back over her shoulder. Her companions were holding the Terichik at bay. The sky shimmered with power, enchanted flame searing away the clouds. It was Eviane’s task to break the back of the ambush, to send the minions of the Cabal howling back into the wastes.
The Terichik rose to blot out the moon and stars. Its screams shook the earth. Eviane’s stomach boiled acid with fear.
Now was not the moment to shirk! Now was the time to concentrate, to bring her wit and skill to bear.
She sighted through the rifle scope. Through the driving snow, a black-speckled ridge of ice and rock leapt into relief. Somewhere behind it were the men who held them pinned and vulnerable to the awesome Terichik.
Her scope’s crosshairs trisected a shadowed forehead. Eviane grinned: one of the Cabal’s minions was about to join his ancestors. The painted face, the glowing eyes were almost an invitation.
She inhaled deeply, held that breath, and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle jittered against her shoulder. Snow sprayed to the Cabalist’s left. He jumped in surprise. Before he could run she fired a second time. He threw his arms around his chest; his mouth gaped wide. Recoil pulled Eviane’s gun barrel upward. The Cabalist’s head exploded.
Eviane was shocked. Tickled in an odd way, but shocked. Strange. Usually you just get the flash of red. This time they’re using prosthetic makeup effects. Kinda gag-out, but Wow!
Confusion reigned on the far side of the ridge, and the attack, the ambush, was breaking. It had failed! The enemy was in rout! Eviane came to her feet, howling victory, and her companions rose with her. Brandishing guns and spears they raced across the frozen ground. The night blizzard’s shrieks matched their own.
Another Cabalist rose, his hands raised to the air in the sign of surrender.
Take no prisoners! She laughed giddily, and fired from the hip. The Cabalist doubled over, holding his stomach. He yelled something, something that seemed to take great effort to say, but the wind was too loud to make out the words. His face was twisted with pain.
Eviane fired again, and his body straightened out as if hit under the chin with a baseball bat. Twisting, he crumpled to the ground.
Eviane walked to her first target, moving more slowly now. She stared down at the body.
The wind’s whistle was dying. The flakes of ice were settling to the ground. The air was warming, but she shook.
She bent down, examining the wound she had inflicted. The man’s forehead was gone.
What incredible… effects…
As if they had a will of their own, her fingers touched the dead man, crawled to the ghastly hole above the still, staring eyes. They traced the edges The wind died. Sound became silence, save for the whimper of wounded and the growing murmur of the other warriors who approached with lowered weapons. Mute, the titanic shape of the Terichik writhed in the sky behind them.
Eviane stood, eyes wide, mouth open but silent. Finally, as with a terrible effort she screamed, and ran. She threw the rifle, the goddamned rifle, aside and hurled herself behind an upturned stand of boats.
She knelt there, whimpering, and watched without comprehension as the Terichik flickered and dissolved. As the moon disappeared from the sky above her. And the stars. And the distant mountains. All that had been heaven and horizon was now a blank white dome crisscrossed with enormous rectangles.
One building at a time, the abandoned Inuit village disappeared: the lodge, the smokehouse, the line of boats. The boathouse remained, but it was too far. Eviane whimpered and ran and hid again, this time beneath a heap of splintered wood and iron: the only remaining boat.
Over and over in an endless loop her mind screamed: What is happening? What is happening? I don’t under- ohgodohgod And then even the wreckage disappeared.
Eviane knelt on a blank field of white. Around her, her companions threw down their weapons and began to gather around the two bloodstained bodies.
At the edge of the dome, a door opened. Men and women in crisp orange uniforms entered. They mouthed phrases about “effects breakdowns” and “optical difficulties” as they hustled away the warriors and angakoks, the princess and the commoners, separated the quick from the dead. Eviane remained on her knees, unseeing, unhearing, even when she was lifted up and carried gently but firmly to the exit.
The bodies were covered, belted onto stretchers, and whisked away. Only blurred imprints and smears of red remained on the artificial snow.
Finally, men came to pick up the rifle. They handled it with infinite care, as if it were a sleeping viper or a live grenade, something that might awaken to wreak new and greater havoc.
As if it was a thing of magic in a world of technology, or of technology in a world of magic.
Chapter One
“ In the beginning.’ Three words spoken uncounted billions of times.”
The narrator’s voice echoed everywhere and originated nowhere. It filled the vast dark cavern of Gaming Area A with its rolling, resonant embrace. Alex Griffin peered into the blackness. Phantasmal carts danced about him in elaborate patterns, orange outlines in his infrared goggles. The carts glided through an endless, empty night, invisible to each other.
“ Yet they have never lost their magic, never diminished in majesty. Ever have we looked back to the roots of our cultures, the origin of our species, the genesis of our planet.
“ Come with us now, and peer into the past of our solar system, to the formation of our most distinctive neighbor-”
