And then, as quickly as it came, the light was gone.
Sword could hear nothing. Could see nothing. The thunder still sounded in her ears, and the world seemed covered in white.
Finally, sound returned. No one spoke, but she heard something crackle. She opened her eyes, and saw small rocks all over. They seemed to dance on the ground like water on a hot pan, and Sword knew that they were so hot they were literally exploding from the inside.
The heat, though, did not touch her. Nor did it touch Marionette, who was looking around with the first semi-human expression Sword had ever seen on her: wide-eyed wonder.
Tiawan was gone. Destroyed at last by a flame greater than his own. By a rage and a loss that made his seem a mild thing in comparison.
The man who would destroy an Empire was gone.
So was Wind.
Sword stayed there, unmoving, waiting.
A figure rose from the ash.
Sword's heart jumped. "Wind!" she shouted, feeling foolish at once for calling to a woman who could not hear.
That feeling disappeared an instant later, replaced by a mixture of sadness and loathing.
The figure that rose was burned, blackened. A charred creature that resembled a stick left behind after a campfire. But as it lurched toward Sword and Marionette, the black fell away. Pink flesh was revealed. The arms and legs untwisted. Hair grew. The gait shifted from a lurching slide to a strong, confident walk.
Phoenix stood before her, this time as the Chancellor. "You can't kill me," he said simply as he stood before Sword.
9
Phoenix sounded oddly sad. "You can't kill me," delivered not as a triumph, but as a curse.
"I'll try, though," said Sword.
"Not until after we have defeated the enemy that lays below."
"Why would they attack us? Why not leave us alone, like they have for a thousand years?"
"Because we disappointed them." He raised his arms, the gesture taking in the whole of Ansborn. "The people below sent a few up the mountain. Very special people – the ones we call Gifts. The plan was that they were to breed, and become more powerful. But it didn't work. Gifts were rare among the children of Ansborn, and Greater Gifts even more so. The people below didn't want that, so they planned to destroy us after a set time."
"And if you didn't want that to happen, if you didn't want our deaths, why did you try to kill so many people?"
He nodded, looking like a teacher acknowledging a prize student. "Because I knew there was another plan: the Culling."
Sword frowned, interested in spite of herself. Or perhaps she was just using his words to distract her from all that had just happened, and what might still lay ahead of her. "You said that word before. What is it?"
"Instead of killing all of us, the people below had the option to simply kill the unGifted. Perhaps this time the remaining people – all of them Gifted this time, instead of being the mixed group of those with Gifts and those without who first ascended the mountains – would have more powerful Gifts as their children. I thought perhaps I could put that alternative in motion, and save the Empire. At least give it time."
He blinked, and his shoulders slumped. He looked as old as his many years – a man holding the great weight of lifetimes within him. "I could not save all – not even most. But some. And some is better than none."
Phoenix shrugged. He didn't look like a great, powerful bear the way he had the first time Sword had seen him. He looked like a whipped dog. "I was too late. I started my own Culling – a Culling of corruption, of killing, of disease – but those below had already set in motion their plan to come for us."
Arrow, thought Sword, remembering Phoenix's statement about what he had found in the Strongholds.
"How do you know all this?" she asked. But of course the answer was obvious: it had to do with the book that Phoenix had given her.
But no. He surprised her. "My father told me," he said simply.
Sword gaped at him. "Your father?" she demanded. "Your father told you some fairy tale about what lies below and –"
"There are… well, people of a sort who live below us. Not the people who sent us here, but others called Guardians. They are the ones who ensure that no one passes below the clouds. They are the ones who kill anyone who tries, and they are the ones who place them atop the spires." He looked at his hands, and suddenly the twisted, bent old man stood before her. Vrisha, his first form, and the only one he had not stolen from another.
"My father came to place someone atop the spears. But for some reason he was different than the others. For some reason he walked away, and found my mother, and loved her." Phoenix sighed. "He loved me."
Sword heard him stress one of the words. "Different?" she said.
Vrisha shook his head. "I didn't believe him when he told me all this. I thought just as you did: a fairy tale. It wasn't until I first came to the palace." His shape shifted, and he turned into the tall, beautiful woman dressed in black. "I came because I had found power, and I hungered for more. It was then – thirty Turns and more after my father's death – that I found another Guardian."
"And you knew his fairy tale was true?" Sword snorted. "Because you saw someone?"
Phoenix nodded slowly. "And because he looked just like my father. The same red hair with a streak of gray, the same slight build – but powerful, strong. Stronger than any person – even an actual Strong – should be." He looked at her, deep in her eyes. "You've seen him, too. A century later. This time as the librarian in the palace."
Sword felt something pull back inside her, as though her soul sought shelter in some deep place inside herself. What he said was wrong. Not incorrect – she sensed now the truth of what he said – but wrong, in the way rain falling up might be wrong.
"He lives forever?" she asked.
Phoenix shook his head. "No. There are many Guardians. They grow old, they die as normal men. But more are born – my father said they were made – and take their place. They live below us, in the cloud, but walk among us as well, mostly unnoticed. They keep us here. They monitor what has happened. And they report to their masters – to the people below."
Something crackled nearby. Sword looked to see an auto-car making its way slowly across the pitted ground left behind by Wind's Second Gift.
When it drew close, the vehicle stopped. Father Akiro got out, his mouth agape. A boy with long, white-blond hair, dressed in soiled clothes that had once been a fine, small version of an Academic's garb, got out of the other side of the auto-car. He also looked stunned.
"What happened here?" said Father Akiro. He looked around, then turned to stare at the wide moat. The castle walls looked as though they had been attacked. Pieces of them were missing, rocks and mortar pulled away by the winds that had surrounded them.
Sword didn't answer Father Akiro. She began running to the castle. Running to the place where she hoped she might find some friends, some hope.
She ran to the edge of the moat. So wide now, and deep enough she thought if she fell she might drop right through the world, to whatever lay below.
"Wind?"
Sword lifted her eyes. She was standing in front of what was left of the castle gate. Through it she could see Cloud, standing in the courtyard beyond. His head was bleeding, and a slightly-built man who looked like a Strong supported him. A few others gathered behind them.
Is that all? Is that all who are left?
If Phoenix had been telling the truth, he had given Tiawan a disease. Tiawan infected Malal, and now….
Now all that were left in the castle were Gifts. The only ones immune.
"Wind?" Cloud called again. His voice, weak from injury and exhaustion, barely carried across the chasm to Sword.
She realized in that moment that she was standing between two of the spires that were used to impale those who tried to descend the mountains. They stood like guardians, ensuring that she deliver her message.
Cloud was still waiting. Finally, she shook
her head.
Cloud started to weep. He curled into the Strong like a child.
Sword felt like an intruder watching something secret. Cloud was implacable, his face always a mask of perfect self-control. But he had broken.
"Is Arrow there?" she called.
Cloud did not answer, of course, but the Strong shouted back to her. "We are the only ones here!" He gestured at the small group that stood nearby. Perhaps two score people.
Sword felt a sudden surge of happiness. It shamed her – should see feel any happiness in light of all that had happened, and all that Phoenix said was still to come?
She couldn't help herself. She felt bright. She masked her feelings by looking around. "How can we get across?" she shouted. "How can we get you out?"
No one answered at first. One of the women near Cloud touched him on the shoulder and he slowly pulled away. She Signed to him, and Sword knew she was relaying the question. Cloud was younger than all of them, but he was the brother of the Captain of the Guard –
(the once-Captain)
– and, more than that, a man whom others trusted to do the right thing.
Cloud nodded. He wiped his eyes and stood as straight as he could. But he did not turn to Sword. He spoke to those gathered around him. Sword couldn't make out what he said.
As he spoke, she saw the others in the courtyard gather closer around Cloud. After a moment, they all shifted. Some slumped. Some began to weep. Others – most of them – stood straight and tall, with shoulders out and chins high.
One by one, they nodded. All of them.
Cloud finally turned to her. "We can't leave," he called.
Sword didn't understand, until she heard Phoenix say, "He's right."
She jumped. She hadn't realized he had made it to the spires. He stood there as Devar, wind ruffling his dark hair. Marionette stood at his side, and for once she seemed to have forgotten her doll. It hung loose in her hand.
She spoke, and sounded less in a dream as well. As though what had happened had broken through the madness she brought with her wherever she went. She stared at the castle and said, "The poppets inside… I can't raise them." She looked at Phoenix, an expression of surprised sadness rippling over her face. "There is not enough of them for me to lift."
Phoenix looked suddenly terrified. "Like we found at the Stronholds, child?"
Sword felt terror sweep her own soul. That must have been what he found at the Strongholds. He must have gone there, killed them all, sent them as undead killers to Halaw, and then realized that the Ears stationed at the Strongholds had suffered the same fate as the others in the Empire. But that meant….
It wasn't Phoenix who did that, after all.
Then who?
She knew. A very real part of her knew. But she shied away. She didn't want to face it. Not now, perhaps not ever.
(the people below
it's real
it's all real)
Poppet was shaking her head. "Not like there. Not like the dark place," she whispered. She held up her doll, using its voice to speak for her. "This is different."
Phoenix looked at the castle. A new, different kind of fear spread its cast over his expression. "The disease," he whispered.
Marionette's eyes suddenly lost their sanity. She held her doll tight, squeezed it so hard that its wooden back broke in her arms. "Don't worry, my love," she whispered. "We'll find more friends for you to play with. I promise."
Sword looked away from the little girl in revulsion. She met Phoenix's eyes. "Don't hate her," he said. "She has suffered more than anyone alive. That she still lives at all is a victory of a kind you will never understand." His gaze moved to the castle. "If we let them leave, the disease will spread to all the Empire."
"Then what do we –" Sword's voice cut off as she realized the import. Not of his word's, but of Cloud's. Of the looks in the others' eyes as he spoke to them.
She looked across the moat in horror. "No!" she screamed.
But there was nothing she could do. Cloud raised a hand as soon as she saw him. He smiled a half-smile that spoke only sorrow.
Then the smile changed. It softened into something that, while not exacty joyful, at least carried peace. The knowledge that what he did was, as so often with him, the right thing to do.
His arm dropped.
The storm came.
10
Sword screamed again. "No! No! NO!" She kept screaming, so loud and so hard that her voice instantly hoarsened and she felt blood trickle down the inside of her throat as it tore with the force of her shrieks.
But she didn't hear the words. No one did.
The storm that came dwarfed anything Sword had ever seen. Not a tempest, but an entire world that seemed to fall from the sky. Clouds, wind, rain, lightning. All gathered in a mass of turbulence, a maelstrom so dark it seemed more like a solid wall than wind and water and fire.
She saw things inside it. Rocks. Dirt. Long objects she recognized as sections – whole sides – of the castle wall. It all disintegrated as it spun. The vortex existed only to destroy, and that destruction was complete.
For a moment, Sword thought she saw other things. Smaller. Moving not merely with the wind, but of their own accord. Then they disappeared, yanked upward and in faster than a loosed arrow, a fired bullet.
The maelstrom grew so loud Sword felt like her skull would burst apart. Like she would turn inside out.
And then, even more suddenly than it had come, it was gone.
And with it, so was all that had stood within the moat.
The castle had not merely been destroyed, it had been disintegrated. Not a stone stood, not a blade of grass remained.
Of Cloud and the others who had stood with him at the last – and had faced their fate with strength, knowing exactly what they had agreed to, and what would come for them – there was no trace.
Phoenix placed his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Sword looked at the hand.
He acted for the Empire.
He did what he thought was actually right.
He killed them all!
She could not move. Her body locked tight with rage, with loss.
Father Akiro had joined them. He was old, stooped. Walking with the assistance of two canes and the further help of the boy who had come with him. A feeble body, but his voice came deep and strong.
"If you don't get your hand of her, you cur, I will kill you myself."
Sword managed to turn her head. She saw Phoenix's eyes – the eyes of a man she had cared for. For a moment, he looked almost amused at the old priest's threat. Then loss took over.
"I will find you," he whispered. "We must fight."
Then he disappeared, and Marionette along with him.
Sword stood silent. She stood still.
She looked at the nothing that had once been the seat of an Empire. That had once been her home.
She waited. The shadows lengthened.
Darkness gathered. And she knew what was coming, even before it fell like a mist about her shoulders. Not night, but the darkness.
Sounds came. A low grunt from somewhere near.
She felt something grip her. Realized it was the old hand of Father Akiro.
She held it.
The darkness fell away.
She looked up.
She did not scream. She had no voice left to her. She had no tears left to shed. Her heart was a hole deeper than the chasm before her.
Father Akiro gasped. He choked, and sobbed.
Sword turned away without a sound. She went to the auto-car, leaving Arrow's body atop the spire.
She got in the auto-car.
She was Sword.
She was one of the last three Greater Gifts.
She would find Brother Scieran and Father Inmil in Faith.
She would learn what they had found of the people below.
And then she would kill that world.
She would kill them all.
&
nbsp; EPILOGUE:
the fallen state
"We came from below. Shall we ever fall again to our birthplace? The answer is sure: we must. The albatross returns to its country to mate and to die; and we shall one day fly to the land of our inheritance and partake of its glory."
- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension
So much was nonsense.
So much was beyond them.
Strange words littered the Old Books. Words for which no concepts existed in Ansborn. The books Mother Maci had taken for descriptions of childbirth had resolved into something much darker: some kind of chart of family history. But not one to show where a family came from; this was something designed to create a family. To breed people like animals, and cultivate specific traits.
Brother Scieran had no idea why anyone would do such a thing. But it made him cold and hot at the same time. And he could only think, This is evil.
Father Inmil made a strange sound. Nearly a chuckle.
"What is it?" asked Scieran.
"So much here. Books that seem to discuss the etymology of our units of measurement: leagues, rods, miles, feet. Others that talk about where the design of auto-cars came from. And this one," Father Inmil showed him his book he was currently looking at, "is some kind of treatise on the animals of Ansborn. I still can't make it all out, but the old ones had different names for some of them. Some of them are quite odd. Woollies –"
"I found it!" Everyone looked at Mother Maci. Her eyes were alight with discovery. "I found the poison! Malal's affliction!" She kept reading. "It seems to be from a spider. The venom…." She drifted off.
"Well, woman, what is it?" Father Inmil yelled at his sister with the irritable tone that only siblings can manage. "And can we cure it?"
"I'm not sure. I'll… I'll keep reading." She bit her lip. "Though it seems it isn't just the venom. It was engineered somehow. Created by this 'nation of other nations.'"
Brother Scieran shook his head. They had found repeated references to that place. No maps, no explanations of what it meant. Clearly the people below had known what it meant with such intimacy that they felt no further description was necessary.
Child of Sorrows Page 39
