The Shadows of God by Greg Keyes

Author:Greg Keyes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504026598
Publisher: Open Road Media

4.

Defeat

In the middle heavens, three armies of angels clashed: the dark, strange forces from the forest, hidden by a mist; the bright avenging cherubim of Adrienne’s son; and her own pitiful array.

Through the clash, through the ferments of shattering matter and dissolving spirit, she saw Nicolas, and he was dying. His forces were collapsing around him, and fire ate toward his center. Airships fell from the sky and alchemical artillery burst asunder, split by the very energies that motivated them. Nicolas was losing the fight for his life.

High above the battlefield, something else was forming, something Adrienne recognized. The keres was opening its wicked eye. For the moment it was nothing, just the nucleus of the vast, destroying storm it would become. But she recognized it.

For an instant she was paralyzed. She could not let Nicolas die. She could not let the keres spring to life. And her son’s strange enemy was ignoring the waking god.

“The keres, Uriel. Stop it from forming!”

I—The pause went on, too long. Very well. Farewell, Adrienne.

Grimly, Adrienne stretched out her aetheric fingers to the heart of the maelstrom, where Nicolas lay dying.

Apollo!

He took me by surprise! The Sun Boy sounded desperate. He cinched my power, somehow. Many of my servants do not know me. I’m going to fail, unless I can form the dark engine.

That will slay us all, Nicolas.

Better that than this! I cannot fail!

Let me help you. I have power. Together we can stop your enemy.

I am the Sun Boy! The prophet!

I am your secret friend. Let me help you.

For torturous moments, nothing happened, and then matterless fingers closed in hers.

And there came a jolt, like a breath of God, and Adrienne saw a tree rising into the heavens. No, not a tree but a tower, Nimrod’s tower—or Jacob’s ladder—and high above, at the very top, a light that might be God, at long last might—

Then the images dissolved. Her son swelled like a thunderstorm, like a great wave of the sea; and she felt herself rushing with him, an arrow in flight, the charge of a huge cavalry. She saw the enemy in the woods as Nicolas saw him—a great horned man, shaggy, wrapped with serpents.

Satan! Nicolas cried. Lucifer!

They met, and the devil’s power snapped. He was strong, yes, but Adrienne and Nicolas were more powerful than heaven.

Red Shoes blinked at the sky, not understanding at first. Not understanding why he was still whole and alive, why his enemy had withdrawn even as he tasted his flesh. His masterly plan had been destroyed at a stroke, his power scattered to the winds, the power of the snake within him snuffed to a mere glow. The hand of the Sun Boy had done all that. His power was without limit.

And yet Red Shoes lived. The Sun Boy had turned away, as if from a gnat. The airships had fallen from the sky, long lines of horizontal lightning and sputtering plumes of flame, one-eyes and Long Black Beings turned against themselves.

The iron people were

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