The Last Green Tree

by Jim Grimsley

  The daily choir sang in an open air ampitheater suspended over Citadel Park (Shu Shylar, the Park of Blossom Everlasting) near the center of downtown Avatrayn along the river. The sound of the daily choir had become part of twin-city life, ringing in the stone canyons between the tall buildings; Avatrayn was an island around which the river Trennt flowed; buildings there had grown into the bottoms of the clouds. The sound of Prin singing was difficult to describe; the sound had a way of making the skin prickle, eerie at times, full at times, not words that could be understood but that plucked at the consciousness of the listener, causing every sort of reaction from confusion to hallucination. Not everybody in Avatrayn proper enjoyed the sound, and many a soul avoided the park at all costs; it took a brave person to walk near the choir, though it was not at all forbidden. Today a change of song soon came about, moving from the near-unison of “Seeing and Far” to a blend different songs and lines of chant, the three thousand voices breaking into component choirs, the singing and accompanying music harsher, more energetic, accidents of tonality colliding. This song was far more strident than anything the choir sang routinely, and people at the edges of the park were stopping to listen. Attendants were closing the park itself and moving crowds away from the choir. People near the park were looking up at the sky before any warning, as if, from the Prin singing, they heard an echo of what was to come.

  Within moments, the sound of air raid sirens, unheard of in Feidreh-Avatrayn since the earliest days of the colony, pierced the city and countryside, and alerts of every kind permeated the local Surround.

  Vekant stood in his place as lead cantor at the pivot of the music and began to work. As always, when he rode the choir he felt its vastness, an expansion of himself, his hands reaching farther than anyone’s hands ought to reach. Each of the Prin was part of a pair, a ten, a hundred, a thousand, and so on; each choir could take a separate function of the incanting, so that the total music was made of many songs, some of them more like dances, some of them unspoken but intoned within the kei-space, some played on instruments. Part of the choir sang to enable Vekant to find what he needed to find, the war machines moving toward Jharvan. Part of the choir sang to recall the rest of the Prin to the Citadel, part sang to maintain a link between them. Sometimes the collisions of music raised the hair on his head; sometimes there was a clash like the world was coming apart. All this was familiar, part of the job.

  He should have had no room in this head-space for emotion, certainly not for fear, but it was there from the start. The music even in the early moments of the engagement had a quality of otherworldliness, impossibility.

  What was unfamiliar was what the work of the choir had shown them all, and what it was showing them now. Here was an attack that was not a drill, that was real. Everyone had expected some kind of civil war to break out and here it was, fearsome and immediate. Vekant could feel the armies coming, waves of aircraft, sections of the choir naming each one, beginning the work of reaching for them all. Even though he had only part of the choir assembled, their voices should be enough.

  The choir reached toward the airborne intruders in the most routine way, meaning to disable them and plunge them along with all occupants into the ocean; the core of this was a choir of a hundred who would disable the war machines in a single wave, once they were named. The only difficulty Vekant might expect was the music itself, which sometimes carried him too far beyond himself, swelling in every direction. But all at once within the chant Vekant was aware that the choir was opposed, not feebly as by the rudimentary Hormling anti-Prin devices but quickly and expertly by voices at least as powerful as the choir.

  True language flowed forward from the approaching armada like nothing Vekant or any of the Fukate Ten Thousand had ever heard.

  The impact was felt throughout the choir, and then beyond, through the whole local Oregal. The component choirs of the Fukate were staggered but their singing never faltered. Evars kept discipline over their tens, juduvars over the centuries, krii over the millennial groupings, and the various units split the drill of listening as they had all been taught. The choir faltered in the naming song and lost its image of the approaching air armadas. At the point at which they ought to have begun to bring down the invaders, the work had to begin again.

  One need not always know a true language to defend against it, as Drune and Malei-Prin understood from contests with one another. A good ear ought to feel the intent behind the work of any cantor or speaker, and one kind of operator can often decipher the work of another. But this sound, this countersinging, protecting the airborne fleet as it approached, was bizarre, jarring, a rude cacophony, a jagged feeling in the mind, nothing like a true-word in it, and the choir managed to pierce the defending song only here and there, sending a few dozens of the airborne vehicles into the ocean. Already Vekant could feel the difference, that this was an engagement like nothing that had tested the will of Irion in centuries.

  He could feel the bluntness of all he and the Prin were doing from the choir. What should feel precise, keen, unstoppable was instead tepid and indecisive; where movement should feel easy he felt as if he were slogging through mud.

  He left the circle of the choir, still in the kei-state, maintaining himself in the pivot of the many songs; he needed more information of the kind that the Hormling could tell him, and he needed to warn Commander Rui that the choir could not stop the armadas from reaching Jharvan. He hurried to the crisis command center in the Citadel with his Cleric of the Left, Shoren, and a fifth-rank operator carrying data equipment. He had been to the command center hundreds of times during drills and for other routine duties, but now a real crisis called him here, still so fresh he could hardly credit that it was real.

  Representatives from Enforcement were already assembled when Vekant—his three lictors arranged prettily around him, and to his discredit he was aware of this—burst into the situation room and said, “Gentlemen, the Prin choirs are not able to stop the attacks.”

  Commander Rui was moving toward him.

  The murmuring of the other groups of officers and staff ceased, and a shocked silence hung over the room.

  “The rebels have an ally that can counter the Prin. We’re fighting this enemy, but we know nothing about who it is and can’t stop the air attack or any invasion that follows. There’s a wave of flitters approaching as well, along the established routes and toward the isthmus. We’re bringing down only a few.”

  Rui stood perfectly still, and he felt her uncertainty.

  One of her junior officers moved toward her with a look of pale panic on his face.

  “Launch counterattack, everything we have,” Rui ordered, voice clear in the sudden quiet. “Get every soldier and every piece of hardware we’ve got in place for Plan Green Line.” To Vekant, she said, “We’d been keeping clear of your people, trying to stay out of your way. That was a mistake, I guess.”

  Her voice snapped everyone in the room to attention and they set about their work, point nodes plugging themselves into their consoles and graphics operators starting to stream visuals into the tanks.

  Rui turned to Vekant and gave him a searching look as the room moved smoothly into a new mode. She drew Vekant aside and lowered her voice. “Are you really telling me your Prin can’t contain this?”

  “Not until we learn who these speakers are and what language they’re using.”

  “But nothing we’ve ever faced stops you people.” She was attempting to control her shocked expression, to mask it.

  “We stop one another quite easily and handily,” Vekant said. “That’s what you’re dealing with here, Commander: a being, or a group of beings, like us, who’ve allied themselves with the Dirijhi.”

  “Heavenly fire,” she said and looked at her hands, dark knuckles tight as she gripped the back of a chair. “I have to tell the governor. Maybe some of your own people? Do you have rebels in your ranks, too?”

  He shook his head. “We’d hear their words, know their language.”


  By now the main approaching force had been identified as armored personnel carriers, some for individuals and some for groups, along with thousands of transport flitters that hugged close to the surface of the ocean. A fight escort of drones and manned craft flew alongside, and as soon as Enforcement got its own fighters aloft, fireworks began in the afternoon sky.

  As the Ajhevan aircraft drew nearer the continent, some of the Prin singers began to have more effect, overwhelming and penetrating the strange countersinging here and there, dropping more scores of the carriers and their support craft. For a moment Vekant felt as if this might turn to victory, the kind to which he felt entitled, true words bringing down the war machines or disabling them with a thought, sweeping his hand through an advancing infantry troop and dropping them in their tracks. But the countersinging redoubled and the Fukate choir struggled to maintain any kind of perimeter, even when the invaders reached the shores of Jharvan and dropped their cargoes onto the ground.

  The Enforcement tech operators were making use of all available media and commandeering satellites, public cameras, and any private ones offered up by the database, and reports of strikes were starting to come in from a thousand miles of Jharvan coast, all the way to the Isthmus of Fostine and Badrigol.

  What emerged from the armada of flitters shocked Enforcement and made Vekant concentrate for a moment on the singing of the choir in order to steady himself. Construct troops appeared first, cloned organics married to machines, human in shape but with a patched-together crudeness. Hundreds of thousands of constructs came ashore in the first wave. Intelligence assemblers got to work classifying the types of construct soldier the Dirijhi and rebels had employed, while on the ground Enforcement armor and infantry began to meet them and try to drive them back.

  Meantime the armored single-carriers were starting to drop, and what got out of those was hardly like a weapon at first. A carrier fell into the middle of an infantry battalion struggling to set up heavy automated laser fire; a thing unfolded out of the carrier on at least six legs, with two vicious arms like spikes, the creature’s carapace looking like it was made of black metal, maybe pure carbon, a body like an insect trembling and pulsing. Lifting a snakelike head, it shrieked and knocked troops flat with the sound, started spearing them on its forelegs, dismembering them, tearing open human abdomens, ripping limb from limb, blood coloring everything except the creature’s own pure, lightless armor.

  Another single carrier landed in a public plaza, popped, and something flew out of it, a stream of wings; civilians started to shriek and go down, sliced to ribbons or frightened to death.

  Minutes passed. Arriving now were pods filled with nanoweaponry, most of this launched into manufacturing zones and military bases; arriving now were automated artillery and flying drones; arriving now were members of the northern press corps with their inflatable communications centers.

  More civilian reports streamed to the command center from the office of the planetary governor. Vekant heard bits and snatches of the texts as he struggled in the kei-space to maintain himself against the fear that came to grip him. He could feel a change in the farther choirs now, the ones closest to the invaders. Where any particular smaller choir was near the battle lines near the coast, it had a fairly devastating effect on the invaders at that range. Some of the decades and hundreds at the front were sweeping waves of killing-song through lines of the constructs; others were managing to drive the mantis-creatures back. A front was beginning to take form.

  The Hormling data network, efficient and responsive as it was designed to be, flooded the intelligence processors and assemblers with data, which they sorted and compiled and began to use to paint a broad picture.

  “Do you want to come into the quiet room with me?” Commander Rui asked, and Vekant realized she was repeating the question. He had lost himself trying to sort out what was in his head, the flutter in his stomach. Listening again to the uncertainty of the choir, he shivered.

  He asked, “Do you have some better picture to share with me?”

  “A completer one. Not a good one.” The commander’s quiet room lay off the main ward of the command center, a small data room, dingy-white walls, chairs for a dozen.

  Vekant sat. “I can offer you what I know as well.”

  “Our troops barely got deployed, even with the warning you were able to give us. We’re being pushed back all along the coastline except in the twin cities. It appears that the Prin are being somewhat effective in holding off the rebels here.”

  “That agrees with what I know,” Vekant said. “The closer the fighting comes to the Prin, the more effective we are.”

  “We’re facing construct ground troops designed to take heavy damage and using weapons at least as good as anything we’ve got. We knew the northerners had a big arsenal but I never expected anything like this.”

  “Can your troops hold?”

  She shook her head. “My troops were never meant to hold off an invasion. My troops were expected to supply ground support for the Prin.” She could hardly bring herself to meet his eye.

  “We’ve all relied on the Prin once too often, it appears.” Vekant tried to ignore the feeling of humiliation, of having let the officers down. “How long can we hold out?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You have a recommendation?”

  “Pull back everything to whatever kind of zones the Prin can defend. Pull the population back with the troops, call for the rural population to abandon their towns and homes and farms and come to the capital for protection, if they can.”

  The planetary governor was linked to the conversation and began to implement the commander’s orders as soon as they were given.

  “What about you?” Commander Rui asked Vekant. “What do you have?”

  “Some of these enemy carriers have to contain local cantors. This much true language is not moving from a distance; somebody close to Jharvan is doing the countersinging against the Prin. We have to find out who.”

  “All right.”

  “I can give you a team of Prin for that.”

  “Won’t that hurt the main choir?”

  Vekant shook his head. “We don’t have the main choir here. I have three choirs of a thousand and about three thousand more in smaller choirs in the city; the rest of the Prin are recalled, but I have no idea how long it will take them to get here if these attacks reach into the countryside. I’m ordering them to consolidate into centuries; anything less is defenseless. They’re likely to do us more good if they’re close to the invaders, anyway. I’m going to tell the smaller choirs to stay with your people in the field for now. We’ll coordinate locations with your staff.”

  “Done. What else?”

  “Lay in supplies and any needed ammunition for a long stay here in the Citadel, in case we’re driven back here.”

  “And?”

  “Call for help. Through the gate.” Vekant gave her a simple, direct look.

  “I suggest you do the same,” said the commander.

  “Understood.”

  At that moment a shuddering ran through everyone; the command center’s equipment faltered; Commander Rui touched the back of her head, the base of her skull, and Vekant felt a moment of intense nausea, the whole choir pausing in its cascade of music. A moment later came the news that the Anilyn Gate had collapsed. Silence fell over the situation room. A whole world went quiet, and waited.

  Million Mountains

  In the northern borderland of Iraen, beyond the Fenax Plain, a single figure stood in the Fang of Gar, the pass leading north, where mountain piled upon mountain; here one could see the beginning of the never-ending teeth, Cundruen. The mountains towered on either side of him and the flank of the narrow pass swept upward. He wrapped his long coat around him, pulling the head-wrap closer. Wind howled in the pass, shredded on the rocks. Rank on rank the mountains marched to the horizon. When he was a boy, he believed they went on forever, to the edge of the land of heroes, Zaeyn.


  He was dressed in heavy Erejhen weave, good boots and thick leggings, and he carried a small pack on his back and a long walking stick. A big-footed animal walked beside him, looking something like a dog or a big cat. His sleeved cloak was wrapped tight around his body, and his face was masked with the head-wrap. “Coromey,” he called, and the animal trotted to his side, mouth neatly compressed, nostrils the size of slits, narrow openings for the eyes, multiple ears heavily fringed in fur, some of which could be closed and warmed while others were in use. Designed for the coldest mountains. “Here, fur-child. Sit. We need to think.”

  He had strayed farther north than this before, but this time meant to go farther still. This was a journey he would make in the body, risky as it was to take his original form out of Inniscaudra and chance its life in the depths of the Barrier Mountains. He had sent warnings where he could about the danger he felt, or, rather, the danger he now knew to be present, both far away from Iraen and very near it. His disappearance into the mountains at such a time would upset Malin, he knew, but there was no help for it. Without information, he had no way of fighting Rao.

  The last journey he made in the north country was for the one of the recent weddings of the Great Wife of the Svyssn, who killed her king-consort every decade and took another. It was said one day she would run out of husbands; the sky would rain down on the world and collapse and all would then be night. She had many husbands still to pick from, the ten tribes of the Svyssn fat and snug in their stone houses and warm winter pits, happily scratching the fleas off each other’s backs and watching Hormling vid-surround through the long winter. This trip he had traveled as quietly as possible, which meant silent and invisible in his case, even Coromey slipping along unnoticed by the mountain hawks and scryowls. He had made Coromey for this use, for company on long journeys; he made the cat-hound partly through his own true-speaking but also employing the skills of his Hormling partners, scientists he had sponsored to come to Inniscaudra to live and study with him.