“Isn’t there something you can do to stop this?” Jurtan Mont gasped now, to no one of them in particular, as Svin in his role as spearhead shoved his way out into the street.
“Nothing to do but stay out of the way of this stuff until it burns out,” Max said.
“What if it doesn’t burn out?” said Jurtan. “Some of these things look like they’re eating, getting stronger. Look! - like that!”
Ahead of them, three of the leaping fire-comets, each about the size of a bushel basket, had suddenly begun to orbit each other, wrapping themselves quickly into an overlapping spiral. An even more powerful burst of light strobed out, and when the brightness had died enough a second later so the thing could be viewed without squinting, the three had become one.
“That’s not all,” Jurtan went on. “I keep hearing music...”
“Yeah?” said Max. “What music?”
“The Karlinis’ themes. And things I used to hear back at their lab.”
Shaa said, “I sent Karlini back there to keep an eye on things.”
Leen said, “I should check on the Archives, and your sister and my brother and poor Tarfon trapped in the secret passage.”
Max said, “With things the way they are we shouldn’t split up.”
Phlinn Arol said, to no one in particular, “Max has a tendency to overreact.”
Max threw up his arms. “Go wherever you want, then, the lot of you!” He turned and seemed about to plunge into the crowd on his own, leaving the rest of them behind.
“Max!” said Leen admonishingly. “Don’t run amok. Look, the palace complex is just down this street. I know one of the back ways in. Come on, follow me.”
Gashanatantra, who had been keeping pace with them but keeping his own counsel as well, spoke in Phlinn Arol’s ear. “We should talk,” he said. “Between the three of us,” he shifted Pod Dall on his shoulder again, “and Jill-tang, whom I would hope is intact, and Jardin, if he escaped the stadium, we represent a large proportion of our remaining peers. Between us we have things to discuss.”
“What about Byron?” said Phlinn Arol. “If he survived, he could easily set the agenda.”
“He was led down the path once,” Gashanatantra said. “I doubt he’s evolved enough to escape that happening again. But on the other hand...”
“Yes?”
“The current situation may be just the sort of contingency for which he had prepared some emergency plan.”
“That may be so, but how would you plan to find him in all this mess? I can’t hear anything through this din.”
They both knew he wasn’t discussing the noise level of the crowd. “Maximillian is right,” Gashanatantra decided, “this is no time to be wandering the streets alone. This group is rather clever; perhaps they will lead us to him.”
Karlini had continued glancing behind him as he and the two Monts retreated from the bubbling goo, and had seen something that had made him more nervous than the obviously infected and mutating bat. A line of insanely hypertrophied wizard lights had passed them overhead like flaming beads on a string, heading toward the wrecked laboratory. Over the mound of gray, the string of globes had gone into a downward spiral as though circling a drain, and then, with a rapid slurping pop-pop-pop, had dove into the goo and disappeared...
... but it hadn’t seemed so much as though they were diving, as being sucked. Clearly this was a problem, and one for which Karlini felt some responsibility, although the real predicament had come from an overlapping cascade of roughly independent events rather than someone setting out to have things wind up this way. And the Lion was right, someone would have to try to do something about all this. The question was whether anything anyone could do would make any difference. Hopefully some sort of reinforcements would show up soon, and they would have a better idea how to proceed.
Karlini and Tildamire had stopped a block or so upwind, where the Lion, snarling at their lily-liveredness, had smashed his way into the corner general store in search of the ingredients for an incendiary device. Now that the Lion had found his supplies and was busily hurling firebombs into the buildings up the street, he was still foaming over with a constant mutter of curses, most of which were fortunately impossible to clearly discern. The breeze was now carrying new sheets of flame toward the swelling pillows of goo.
The commotion was also bringing the few denizens of the neighborhood who were still on hand, rather than present at the Knitting or just out carousing, staggering into the street. “How long you think it’s going to take before those people your father’s burning out of their homes gang up and try to lynch him?” Karlini said to Tildamire.
“What father?” said Tildamire. “I’ve never seen that man before in my life.”
“Okay,” said Favored-of-the-Gods weakly, consulting his tattered map yet again in the light of Wroclaw’s lantern. “Looks like we take the next right, and then there’s some kind of exit.”
The right turn Favored had mentioned was visible just ahead. It was just as well the light was meager; I didn’t need to see my companions to be reminded how dismal the bunch of us looked. By rights, none of us should be ambulatory, but then there was very little right about the situation.
“Found it have I,” said Haddo, scratching his way unevenly around the corner. A section of the passageway wall leaned outward, actively creaking. We wedged our way through it and found ourselves facing a line of wide tables, and beyond them, rows and stacks of books.
“What part of the Archives is this?” I asked Favored. “It looks like the main Reading Room, right? How do we get to the hidden stuff?”
“Let me see,” he said. “I -”
We all froze. We had just heard another door bang open somewhere close at hand, followed by a clatter of feet and the sound of a rabble of low voices. “Retreat?” hissed Haddo.
“No,” I said, “wait.” We were concealed from the main door by the pillar that also shielded the exit from the secret passage, but the lanterns carried by the new group were already lighting up the large room ahead of them. I peeked around the pillar and discovered my imagination hadn’t been playing tricks on me this time, anyway. I still didn’t particularly want to deal with Max, but in the scheme of things I thought I could cope. I raised my hand, stepped into the open, and said, “Hey, there.” They all wheeled toward my direction, but fortunately no one moved to attack.