The physical attack had given Urdli the opening he needed to resolve the arcane battle. As the avatar's upper arms slammed into Estios, shredding his armor and body with hooked claws, Urdli had slipped a mana bolt past its defenses, slicing the limbs from its body. With that attack, Urdli severed the avatar's bond of similarity to its totem and threw it into shock, opening the way for the death blow.
'Impressive magic,' Estios gasped, as he struggled to support himself on one elbow. His desperate attack had nearly cost him his life, but he would survive with sufficient medical care. He remained intent on his purpose. 'Pull me over and I'll set the bomb up for the Dance.'
There was no point in that. Urdli had beaten the avatar, and the weapon was now his. 'No,' he said with a smile. 'No?'
Urdli was amused to see the confusion on Estios' face. 'It is too useful,' he said, letting his hand wander across the casing of the weapon. 'The detonator in this weapon is active, the fissionable material unalloyed. Don't you understand? This bomb will work.' 'Of course.' Estios coughed. There was blood in his spittle. 'That's why we're here to destroy it.' 'Not we.'
'We have to destroy it.'
'As I said, not we.' Urdli spun, casting a power dart as he did. No more should be necessary to finish Estios in his weakened state. The spell struck, flaring almost visible as it bore through Estios' hastily erected defense. The dark-haired elf went down in a sprawl.
Urdli dismissed the fallen elf and turned to thoughts of the bomb and the place it would have in his plans. His plotting was disturbed by a sound behind him. He turned to find Estios standing. 'I cannot permit you,' he said.
Urdli sneered at him. 'So Laverty set you to watch me, after all.'
'So what if he did? That's not why I can't let you take it.' Estios made a weak gesture toward the bomb. 'Such things don't belong in our world.' 'Do not oppose me. You'll die.' Estios tried to laugh, but the sound devolved into a spasm of coughing. 'I'm not afraid to die if it will matter.' 'It will not.'
A strange smile grew on Estios' face. 'You're wrong.'
Estios stretched wide his arms, and Urdli felt the magic gather. There was a familiar feeling to the mana flow. Somehow Estios had managed to tap the same well that Urdli had used to break the barrier with which the avatar had warded the cavern. Such power was dangerous. Urdli strengthened his own defensive spells and cast a counterstrike against Estios.
The spell bounced harmlessly from the flowing wall surrounding Estios. Urdli shrank back from the heat and light. With that much power. Estios would overwhelm his defenses; he felt the potential gathering. In the face of such power, Urdli's command of the mana was pitifully weak. He would be blasted to atoms. If it was to be so, it would be so. He straightened, determined to take the blast valiantly. Estios tossed a pouch into the air, scattering the dust that the Dog shaman had said was necessary for the Dance magic. Estios swung his arms forward, the palms of his hands outward, and rippling waves of green energy shot forth.
But the magic didn't strike Urdli. Instead, it bathed the bomb in pulses of light that fluctuated hypnotically. The dust danced along the light bursts and settled to coat the weapon with a glittering skin. Urdli didn't need to be connected to the spell to know that the bomb was being rendered inert.
Estios collapsed, the last of his breath rushing out as he fell. The light faded and the cavern plunged into darkness.
The only sound was Urdli's curse.
The presence outside Grandmother's system leapt forward with the eagerness of a barghest unleashed. Like a barghest, it broadcast fear with its chilling, haunting scream. Hands full of data, Dodger froze as the blackness of cyberspace rippled with waves of crimson. As the rippling effect faded, three icons of massive armored samurai charged into. Grandmother's system. Their heads were bound with the rising sun headbands of kamikaze and they brandished drawn swords. With fierce brutality they advanced, slashing through icons and through datalines as they came.
Morgan turned to face the newcomers. She was still occupied with the system's ice, but that didn't seem to bother her. She appeared confident. One samurai, having advanced beyond his brethren, noticed her. That icon stopped attacking the system, raised his sword high, and charged. She whirled her cloak at him, then frowned when nothing happened. Repeating her gesture with more vigor as he closed, her perplexity turned to surprise as his sword sliced through her cloak with the sound of a high-frequency feedback.
In nanoseconds she was besieged.
Taking notice of the battle the second samurai passed near Dodger, on his way to aid his partner. Contempt showed on his face as he struck out with his hand.
When the blow struck Dodger's head rang, and his vision was ringed with swirling colors. Images danced within those colors, growing as they spun inward to fill his vision. He tried to force his sight clear, but individual images surged up to block his vision. Whirling color blinded him to the Matrix, and he raged at his helplessness. She needed him. He could hear her calling. It took great effort, but he took a step forward. His vision dimmed to deep gray, then finally cleared. He saw Teresa sidestepping the blow of a samurai's sword. He blinked; not Teresa, Morgan. The fight was a blur of interacting programs and progressed with a speed that left his head spinning, aswirl with images and afterimages. He felt a mite among giants, as out of place as deer on a metroplex street.
Like the deer he was only meat, not match for the technological wonders battling around him. He didn't even know what the samurai had used for an attack program. Baffled and stunned, he saw another samurai, another sword, another place. He'd been helpless then, too, but she had saved him. He ached with guilt, fear, and helplessness. Overwhelmed, he lost touch with the reality around him, and his memories came crashing down.
Meat, ever fragile, was always meat.
In that other time, as now, his fate had lain in the hands of his love. Then he had been unable to do anything. But here in the Matrix he was the Dodger, a wizard and master of cyberspace combat. He saw a chance as the struggling icons shifted toward him. He started forward, but the battle flashed past him with incredible speed and he was unable to intervene.
Grandmother's system was crashing, from the combined effects of the third samurai's uninterrupted destructive efforts and the side effects of Morgan's engagement with the first two. Alerted by the real-world effects of the Matrix events, one of Grandmother's guardian deckers materialized in the system. Dodger recognized the chrome spider icon of the decker he knew as Matrixcrawler. Though he'd known
the man's work for years and even met him at the virtual club Syberspace, he had never guessed that Crawler might be an agent of Spider. The icon and street name were not unnatural choices, and Dodger understood now their mocking significance.
The chrome spider skittered toward the lone samurai. The crystal web of a capture program spun out of the spider's abdomen into waiting forelegs that stretched it before casting. Without turning to face his attacker, the samurai swung his sword back one-handed. The gleaming blade struck the web-holding legs just below their first joint, lopping them off cleanly. The samurai spun, catching the hilt of his weapon with his second hand as the sword whistled on its follow-through. Without even a nanosecond's pause, the blade changed direction and buried itself in the spider's head. Energy crackled from the point of contact in lightning forks, the chrome crisping to black where the blade touched it. The blackness spread in a haphazard jigsaw pattern, and the spider icon fractured along those lines. The samurai returned to his destruction of the system while the shrinking chrome fragments of the spider faded behind him.
Matrixcrawler had been a topnotch decker, and he had apparently achieved surprise. Yet the samurai had struck before Matrixcrawler could attack. Dodger had thought that only Morgan could function that well in the Matrix. What kind of program could react so quickly and be so devastatingly accurate and effective?
'A Semi-autonomous knowbot,' Morgan's voice told him. Despite her battle, she had excess capacity to speak to him. He was worried that she sounded winded. He had never before seen her pressed.
'They're too powerful,' he said.
'They are more advanced than predicted.'
