All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [266]
Robert clasped Eliot’s forearm, said nothing—just gave him a nod.
Fiona and Robert raced toward Sealiah’s defensive lines and vanished in the crowds.
Eliot took a deep breath to steady himself. They were counting on him. He faced his band. “Just follow me,” he said.
Kurt, Sid, and Bon nodded. James and Janis cleared their throats and grabbed their microphones.
Eliot would try something soft to start with, try to quell the violent noise from the opposing army and drain their fury. He wasn’t sure how to do that, though; so he tried a few simple notes to feel his way forward.
Sid jumped in right after him on his bass, the beat too fast.
Kurt followed, then stopped as their notes clashed and he realized that wasn’t where Eliot was headed.
Bon released his bagpipe’s mouthpiece, looking disgusted.
“Hang on,” Eliot said. “This isn’t working.”
And why should it? They’d never played together before. Eliot had never played with anyone before.
He looked over the edge of the mesa. In the vanguard of Mephistopheles’ charging army were black-and-blue splotched dinosaurs—velociraptors, an Allosaurus, and a Tyrannosaurus that sprinted ahead. A good (if not terrifying) choice. If Eliot could have formed anything from the shadows, a few hundred tons of razor-clawed killing machines would have been his pick as well. They’d tear though Sealiah’s phalanx.
Behind the extinct reptiles ran centaurs (patchwork men stitched together with their own horses), legions of axmen, sinuous panthers, and truck-sized ants with huge mandibles.
The giant Mephistopheles extended his hand from the thunderheads swirling about him. He stabbed with his massive pitchfork into the river, and the water froze about it—the river crackling and turning to ice along its entire length.
The Infernal Lord left his weapon there. Smoke in the air materialized into a new pitchfork, and he led his reserve forces across the now-solid river.
Eliot blinked and forced himself to look from the monster. He ran his hand over Lady Dawn’s smooth wood grain. He had to focus on what he was good at: Making things happen with his music.
His band looked worried, but also eager to try.
“Follow this,” he told them. “Sid, you first.”
Sid’s lip curled back, half smile, half grimace.
Eliot started with the first music he’d learned: the simple “Mortal’s Coil.”
Five notes in and Sid jumped in with the beat. He got it perfect and bobbed his head to the rhythm.
Eliot imagined six kids running around a Maypole, laughing and singing. He took it as a good sign.
He nodded at Kurt, who joined him, perfectly matching Eliot’s notes.
Then Bon added to the song with a low moan from his bagpipes.
Janis and James start to sing, both a little dissonant, but together harmonizing:
Girls and boys run too fast
wheel o’ life never lasts
grown up and knowing sin
that’s when fun really begins!
Eliot picked up the pace, changed the tone from light to dark—and his band followed as neatly as if they were linked and he’d yanked them along.
The image of a Maypole danced in his mind, and all of them pranced around it, the colored ribbons tangled about the pole and their hands.
Eliot felt like they had been bound to his music and his will.
That was creepy. But okay, for now, because it was also extraordinarily useful.
He glanced at Sealiah’s defenders bracing on the edge of the mesa. The phalanx tightened their formation. Archers clustered about lit braziers and readied bows.
At the very edges of her army, Eliot spied his father, dressed in black leather and holding two curved swords. He grinned, stepped to the shadows, and could no longer be seen.
So Louis wasn’t a complete cheater and coward. He was going to fight. There was more to his father that Eliot had realized.
The Queen’s personal knights made a ring about her as she knelt and touched the earth. The ground moved; roots appeared from her fingertips. A shudder ran through the mesa.
Several men on the walls shouted and pointed below.
Along the steep slope and about the base of the mesa, vines wormed