knew, every one of my opponents had been doing it all night, jabbing away at one another with magic, and I just hadn’t noticed because they hadn’t bothered to direct much of it at the human.
Besides, I was pissed off.
So I figured it was time to read Wotan’s mind. Or look through the backs of his cards with X-ray vision. And it was really a shame that I had no idea how to do either of those things.
My first lesson in Timon’s brand of mumbo jumbo had only focused on defense. He said there wasn’t time to teach me anything else, and that I shouldn’t try anything else. Just play cards and block any magical punch that anybody threw at me.
It was probably good advice. But I did have one trick I could try, because I’d taught it to myself. I visualized the Thunderbird and brought a quiver of power up out of my center. And the next time the action folded around to me, I bet. Queen threw away her cards.
Like many experienced players, Wotan never looked at his hand until it was his turn to act. As he reached for it now, I jumped out of my physical body and across the table. I landed behind him and looked over his shoulder as he turned up the corners of king-queen off-suit.
Not a great hand overall, but perfect for kicking the crap out of my king-jack. I flew back into my body, and when he went all in, I mucked.
And studied the others. If any of them had noticed me soul traveling-or whatever it was called-I couldn’t tell it.
Okay, good. Now I just had to hope I’d get a chance to make the trick pay off before the end of the night.
It happened five minutes later. I bet ace-nine. Wotan came over the top with queen-seven.
If he paired up and I didn’t, I was still going to the rail. But the odds were in my favor, and that was all I’d been waiting on. Grinning, I sprang back over the table. I meant to plunge back into my body like a hand sticking into a glove.
I landed someplace else instead.
I looked around in confusion. It was dark, but not dark enough to keep me from making out the high stone columns holding up the roof, because the building had no walls to block out the starlight. Or the sight of distant pyramids rising against the night sky.
I just had time to think: Egypt. Then creatures stalked out of the shadows.
They were eight feet tall, with heads that were too big and the wrong shape. The nearest one roared like a lion and chopped down at me with an axe.
I jumped out of the way, and I swear, he missed. Still, a shock went through me, and I split into pieces.
Or into five versions of myself. Number Two looked exactly like me. Number Three glowed red, and Four, a silvery white. Five was murky and almost invisible in the gloom. But I still recognized him as a semblance of me, the way you recognize your shadow on a wall.
The giant with the lion’s head came at me-or at us-again. So did one of his buddies, who had the long toothy jaws of a crocodile.
The five of us scattered. I felt instantly that it was a mistake, but it was also the only thing to do if we were all going to avoid having to fight giants with our bare hands. And I didn’t control the others, anyway. Each of them was making his own decisions.
I ran, dodging through the columns with their carved hieroglyphics, using them for cover. The giants used them, too. A fat one with the head of a hippo jumped out right in front of me, feet planted wide in a sumo stance and hands stretched out to grab me.
I dropped and slid on the hard stone floor like I was sliding into second. I shot between his feet, scrambled up, and ran on.
Not long after that, I found myself at the spot where the temple-if it was a temple-gave way to desert sand. Panting, I wondered if I should keep going. Then what I thought might be the voice of a hippo man gave a grunting, croaking cry.
But not quite the way a real animal would do it. I thought I could make out words in the noise, although I had no idea what they meant.
Echoing through the temple, other animal voices roared, hissed, and bellowed in response. The three or four monsters that had been hot on my trail turned and headed back the way we’d come.
That seemed like it ought to be a good thing. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t.
For the first time since the Army cut me loose, I wished for my M16. And when I did, I felt what was starting to be a familiar shiver inside my chest.
Was it possible I could
Then the cramps hit, like my insides were rupturing. Maybe because I was operating on only one fifth of my mojo. I kept concentrating anyway.
Something slithered around and through my fingers, liquid and oily at first, then hardening. I looked down and saw my rifle, just like back in Afghanistan. It even had the long scratch on the stock.
My instincts told me that, hard as the trick was, it would have been a lot harder in the real world. But in this place, I’d had just enough juice to pull it off.
I waited for the cramps to ease, then crept deeper into the temple. As I did, my other selves slipped out of the shadows one by one.
First came the red guy, shining like a hot coal. Next, the one who looked exactly like me. And then, hesitantly, the shadow.
Which left us a man down. “Where’s the other glowing guy?” I whispered.
The shadow pointed toward the heart of the temple. Right on cue, animal voices started chanting.
“Shit,” I said. The giants had called off the chase because they’d caught one of us, and one was apparently all they needed. “Christ only knows what they’re doing, but we need to go get him.” I started forward.
The others stayed put.
I turned back around. “What’s wrong?”
“If I die tonight,” asked the guy who looked exactly like me, “who will remember me?”
“Who gives a rat’s ass?” I answered. I looked at red me and shadow me. “What’s your problem?”
They just stared back, and I decided they couldn’t talk. Not that they really needed to. Their attitude was clear.
“Hey,” I said, “I don’t want to go, either. But do you really think any of us can be all right without him? And at least we’ve got this.” I hefted the M16.
At first, nobody reacted, and I wondered if Red and Shadow had really even understood me. Maybe the five- way split hadn’t left them with their fair share of brains. But then the glowing me gave a nod, and the spooky version turned up his hands in a way that somehow communicated that he still didn’t like it, but he was in.
“Give me the rifle,” said my twin. “I’m a really good shot.”
“To hell with that,” I said, “make your own. Or, if you can’t, wait until I shoot a monster with an axe, and then pick it up.”
Apparently he couldn’t whistle up an M16, because he just gave me a pissy look. Then we all sneaked toward the chanting. Sometimes it sounded like real voices reciting real words, and sometimes, like feeding time at the zoo.
Finally our objective came into view. Sort of. The lion, croc, and hippo men hadn’t been considerate enough to light torches or anything like that. But even in the center of the temple, there was a little light coming in from outside, and that, combined with the GE soft white glow of silver me, was enough to show what was happening.
A round pit opened in the floor. On the far side of it was a giant bronze balance scale. A pale, fluffy feather longer than I was tall lay in one weighing pan. A lion man and a croc man were lifting Silver into the other. He struggled, but feebly, like he needed to recover from a crack over the head.
I couldn’t see any way that Silver wasn’t going to weigh more than a giant feather, but the monsters weren’t leaving anything to chance. They pulled down on the pan in which he lay like drug dealers gypping a customer.
