by Jack Conner
The picture of Mari and Ani was bent and smudged, corners ripped away, holes torn through it. But Mari and Ani were still visible, still recognizable, their smiles still white and clean. They stared out at him from the picture, the one he had taken so long ago, the one that had looked out at him from his cabin bulkhead on the Maul, giving him comfort and strength.
Gently, Layanna reached over and took the photograph. She stared at it for a long, quiet moment.
“Your family?”
He nodded. His eyes stung, and it surprised him to feel tears trying to force themselves out. Little devils. He didn’t let them come.
“Mari and Ani were killed in an Octunggen attack,” he said. “Some sort of plague caused by a light.”
Her brow creased, as if something troubled her. “Uls Arctulis. The Deathlight.” She handed the picture back. “Yes. I am ... familiar ... with the weapon. I am sorry.” She seemed to gather her strength and said, “My family, too, have died.”
“How?”
“Once I revealed myself to be a traitor, my whole line would have been ... purged. Exterminated.”
“That’s awful.”
“Like yourself, there can be no going back for me. I can never return to my people, my home. All is denied me. The lights of Xai’nala, the shimmering gardens of Sere ... Oh, my race is wondrous, Francis. Brutal and terrible, yes, but wondrous. Beautiful. Our cities straddle dimensions, times, and so do we. Passing down a city street, we may pass through a hundred dimensions at once, a thousand, each one different second by second. Dimensions are born and die like flowers, blooming and fading all around us, through us. Our old civilization spanned the galaxy, Francis, and the galaxies or their analogues of innumerable other planes. The Luz’hai. The Forever Empire.” She hesitated. “Somewhere out there it still exists—warped, twisted, malevolent.”
She wrapped her arms across her chest and rocked back and forth. She almost looked ready to cry.
Avery had never seen her so open, so vulnerable. Surprising himself, he lifted an arm and, in seeming slow motion, wrapped it around her shoulders.
She appeared equally stunned. She stiffened.
Then, miraculously, hideously, she softened. She leaned against him. She was very warm, and, though he found the contact awkward, part of him relished it. Together they sat like that, huddled under the freezing mountain winds, while the dirigible flew on, and after a time, despite himself, he felt his eyes start to close, his mind start to drift ...
Sounds of wonder woke him.
Janx and Hildra had gathered on the port gunwale, staring out into the night. Avery rose, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
“Holy fuck,” Hildra said.
Before them, giant squids drifted through the sky, rows and rows of them. Air bladders inflated, the great beings floated over the mountains, heading north. The sky was still dark, and the squids glowed. In a thousand fantastic colors that shifted moment by moment, the squids’ phosphorescent bodies shown brilliantly against the pale stars and black sky. In shades of purple and pink and violent crimson, in electric green and throbbing fuscia, in aquamarine and ruby and cyan, the squids glowed, and their hues bathed the peaks below, a shifting kaleidoscope of color.
There were hundreds of squids, each a hundred feet long or more, and they bobbed effortlessly through the air, like phantoms, like gods. Colors would strobe down tentacles like flashing lights, then blink off, then the torpedo-like head of one massive giant would burn with vermillion, and then a dozen more would follow it. Whole forests of color blinked, flushed, flickered out, then burst into new glory.
“It’s beautiful,” Layanna said.
“They migrate north every winter,” Avery said. “No one knows why. In Hissig we have a great celebration on their return.”
“Squid Day,” said Janx, then grunted. Casting a sideways glance at Layanna, he said, “And you did this, darlin’?”
“We changed the oceans, yes.”
Wind hissed and fluttered, and somewhere came the eerie hoot of a giant squid, then another. Hildra laughed, almost girlish.
For a long time the four just stood there, staring out at the great, glowing squids as they bobbed through the skies. Thousands of tentacles swished lazily, and streamers of light glowed and flashed, coursing along surreal bodies. Avery and Layanna stood very close to each other. At last the column of squids vanished over the peaks to the north and disappeared from sight. Avery felt as if the air had gone from his lungs. He and the others still stared at the place where the squids had gone, as if hoping for one last look, until the sun rose over the mountains to the east.
It was then that Hildra swore.
“Octunggen!” she shouted. “Octunggen to the west!”
Chapter 4
Avery scrambled to the opposite gunwale, the others with him, and strained his gaze toward the west, where dim black peaks were just visible. The newly-risen sun threw crimson across the horizon, and by its glow he saw the faint glimmer of dirigibles—several, perhaps as many as ten or more. A complete raiding party. The red light coated their rounded backs, hinting at the gondolas below. It was too far away, but he knew if he were closer he would recognize the Lightning Crest on their envelopes.
“They’ll think we’re one of them,” Avery said. “We have the same emblem and colors.”
“Until they look through a spyglass,” Janx said.
“That ain’t the worst of it,” Hildra called.
She indicated the trail behind them. The bloody light of dawn fell across the shapes of rays sweeping in from the east. The great dark wedges cut the sky, trailing their long barbed tails. They had drawn very close to the dirigible over the course of the night and now were no more than six miles behind. They had ascended the skies, presumably to have a better view of their quarry—and to make it more difficult for the dirigible to put mountains between them. Even then the dirigible was nearing another snow-dusted peak, but Avery wasn’t sure it would be enough.
And there were not just three rays. Miles behind and to either side of the main trio came another three. Sheridan must have roused the whole fleet against them. Between the iron and the fire, Avery thought.
The lead rays seemed to have noticed the dirigible at the same time the occupants of the dirigible noticed them.
A green light flashed from the central ray.
Shit. It was all Avery had time to think before a green glow fell over them. Avery felt his flesh grow warm, and then lance of agony shot through him. Blisters bubbled under his flesh.
Hildra shoved gears angrily. The dirigible jerked to the side.
The green light faded. Avery’s boils subsided, and he inhaled a deep, shuddering breath ... but then the light fell on him again. He screamed. Janx bellowed from the stern.
Hildra was not to be deterred. Even as a boil popped on her throat, spurting the wheel with puss and blood, she twisted it and grappled with the levers. The dirigible jerked to the side, throwing Avery against the forward gunwale. Layanna pitched up against him.
Avery started to turn back and snap at Hildra, but then he saw what she was doing. She was aiming the dirigible at the Octunggen raiding party.
“You’re mad!” he said. “They’ll ...”
“They’ll what?” Hildra said. “Kill us worse than the rays?”
She drove the dirigible at the Octunggen, but indirectly, threading between mountains to screen them from the rays and their green glare. As she flew around the broad midsection of one mountain, a press of hoary, hairy goats stared at them blankly. The animals were so close Avery could smell them. Relieved to be out of the green light, he sagged against the gunwale and absently brushed the blood of a burst boil on the back of his hand against the netting.
Layanna was breathing heavily, and her skin was reddened, but she showed no signs of the boils that had deviled Avery and the others.
“You’re immune,” he said.
“We didn’t give the Octunggen weapons that could be used against us—a
t least, not easily. Obviously they’ve found ways.” She touched her side where Sheridan’s bullet had found her. “Although I believe that gun was designed by my kind ... to kill me.”
The craft lurched again, and Hildra said, “Hang on.”
She had rounded the last mountain in her path and flew the dirigible right at the Octunggen raiding party, which appeared to have just left one mountain behind and were drifting toward another.
“This’ll be interesting,” said Janx, the cords of his neck bunching.
The Octunggen noticed them, and their ships fanned out, creating a half circle in the sky that pointed toward the approaching dirigible. Surely they would also notice the Lightning Crest on its balloon, Avery thought. But what if they look through a spyglass?
Suddenly lights glittered among the Octunggen ships, and the half-circle realigned, pointing toward something else. Avery glanced back. The rays had reentered his line-of-sight. Here it comes. He braced himself, expecting another blast of the green light. Instead, the three rays, who had formed their own triangle formation, now pointed straight at the Octunggen. They had to be dealt with first.
The lone dirigible shot toward the raiding party, and Avery’s group drew so close he could at last make out individual Octunggen soldiers in their crisp black uniforms, moving along the gondolas amongst bulky machines, some cranking gears, others stabbing buttons. Unwieldy lenses swung toward the approaching rays. Strange, bulbous barrels bristled.
The Octunggen gave a cry of welcome as the dirigible entered their circle. Then, almost immediately, they stopped what they were doing and stared at the occupants of the vessel. Avery had the distinct pleasure of seeing looks of shock, anger and utter bafflement cross their faces. Then the little dirigible passed through their ranks and out the other side. Its occupants flew on, away from the Octunggen, toward the west.
Avery half-expected the Octunggen to break up and fly after them, not simply to pursue them but to escape the advancing rays.
“They’ve got to run,” he said, staring at them and the massive wedges of the rays approaching from the east. “They have to.” The rays could simply hold more weapons than the dirigibles could, and half the weapons would be those stolen or pirated from Octung. Not to mention the psychics ...
“They won’t run.” There was a note of pride in Layanna’s voice. “Not while there’s hope of victory. They are Octunggen.”
With shocking suddenness, battle commenced between the in-sweeping rays and the half-circle of dirigibles. The air between the parties blurred. Lights flashed. A weird roar of some machine thundering reached Avery’s ears and staggered him backward against the gunwale. One of the dirigibles erupted in blue fire. Breaking into pieces, it plummeted from the sky, soldiers and odd weapons spilling out of it like corn kernels from a split sack. The balloon exploded. Other dirigibles flamed, too, scattering the mountains below with fiery debris, some of it human. A few of the dirigibles simply drifted off, their crews disoriented by a psychic blast.
The Octunggen were not to be outdone. A great ripple of air blurred into existence before the lead dirigible, then the others. The blurring intensified and shimmered, as if the dirigibles were combining their energies. At last the blur rolled outward, gaining speed, straight toward the ray that took up the right rear point of the triangle.
When the blur reached the ray, it was as though a huge cleaver sliced the creature cleanly down the middle. The vast being, the thing that stretched a mile or more and trailed its tail out for miles behind it, divided in two. Dark ichor and unidentifiable fluids spurted from the wound even as the two halves fell from the sky, spilling its host of soldiers and equipment as it did. Avery saw them from afar, hundreds of men like tiny dots plummeting to their deaths. The massive sections of the ray fell with them, and Avery felt unsteady at the sight. The gargantuan halves of the animal struck the mountaintop, and ichor and snow exploded upward. Rockslides thundered down the slopes, and Avery saw the ruins of an old keep obliterated by the avalanche.
Sheridan, he thought. I wonder if Sheridan was aboard that ray.
For some perplexing reason, he hoped not.
The dirigibles and rays continued their battle, and Avery could only stare in awe. One dirigible seemed to flicker, blink out of existence, then flicker back on, again and again, faster and faster, before it finally winked out entirely. Another dirigible seemed to pass half into another dimension, then return utterly leeched of color, black and white, and so brittle that it disintegrated like charred wood, her men with her, in the next gust of wind. The Octunggen struck back, and it was a fantastic, awful battle. Thunderous cracks blasted, and the air shivered horribly.
Janx laughed and clapped Hildra on the back. “You did it!” he said. “Pitted the bull against the bear. Beautiful!”
“And don’t you forget it,” she said. She lit an Octunggen cigarette, and Janx helped her cup the flame against the wind. Smoking, she guided the ship behind a mountain, and the battle vanished from view. Avery hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he gasped in a great lung-full. He leaned back against the gunwale. His fingers trembled, and sweat beaded his brow.
* * *
For hours the dirigible drifted over the mountains, heading west. The battle between the Octunggen and the rays was far behind them, if it still continued, which Avery doubted. The Octunggen force had been only a light raiding and scouting party, after all. The rays would be plowing ahead, over the ruins of the smoking dirigibles, their masters hunting Layanna and the other fugitives with the same indomitable will they had displayed so far. At least the Octunggen had bought Avery and the others some time, and he would shed no tears for a party the likes of which had killed Mari and Ani.
He began to see scattered settlements clustered among the mountains, simple stone buildings with goats roaming the fields. To his horror, vultures wheeled over the towns and bodies rotted in the grassy roads. He and the others clustered at the bow, staring down at the carnage in horror.
“Octunggen,” Hildra said.
Janx ground his teeth. “Couldn’t even let the bloody mountain folk alone. What bastards.”
Layanna’s voice was hard. “The mountain people supply meat and produce to the cities. Without food, the cities cannot fight. It’s an old tactic.”
Once Avery had translated, Janx grunted. “Well, me stickin’ my boot up Octunggen ass is an old tactic, and I mean to do it soon as boots and asses allow.”
Avery noticed that the dirigible was drifting slightly off course, and he returned to the wheel. He’d replaced Hildra, who curled up at the stern, an Octunggen blanket thrown over her. A white, stylized bolt of lightning marked it.
Avery steered west, taking them over more and more villages. They were entering Ungraessot, dark scion of L’oh, currently under massive invasion by Octung. He passed over scenes of destruction that churned his stomach, bodies heaped in village courtyards and burned, nailed up on posts, severed heads mounted on fences and poles. Crows picked at the carcasses. In the more recent massacres, batkin feasted on corpses’ half-clotted blood. It was needless destruction, designed to instill fear in Octung’s enemies. Nevertheless, it was obvious that the Octunggen had reveled in the slaughter.
Soon villages became larger, and Avery saw cities sprawling across mountainsides. Some cities spanned more than one mountaintop, as the valleys were too narrow and rocky to support a population; great, sturdy bridges arched over the misty gaps. Many were broken or heaped with the dead, and mounds of burned corpses piled higher than the squat churches in the city squares. Factories had been shelled, mansions sacked, great cathedrals collapsed.
Eventually Avery saw active campaigns, dirigible packs sweeping over mountains, smoking cities on the horizon. Great airplanes split the skies, bombers, rumbling as loud as thunder. A great formation of them returned from some bombing raid. Small fighters grouped around them, protecting them. Many displayed the scars of battle, black scorch marks and pocks like bullet holes. Smo
ke fumed from several engines.
“The Ungraessotti are fighting back,” Avery noted.
“Not for long,” Layanna said. “They’re nearly beaten. You were asleep last night, but I saw fires on the mountainsides and valleys. Campfires. The Ungraessotti are fleeing the cities. I don’t imagine Ungraessot can hold out for long—a couple of months, maybe, if that.”
He began to see huge zeppelins gliding through the air in the distance. Sunlight glared off massive silver balloons emblazoned with the sigil of the Lightning Crown. They moved through the sky like monstrous torpedoes, straight and sure, but slow, dignified. Avery presumed Octunggen commanders rode the zeppelins, overseeing the war from just behind the battle lines. Others would be leading from the front, in constant communication with these superiors.
Below streamed supply columns, transports, great smoking tanks. They crunched through the ruins of burnt towns, trundled over corpse-heaped bridges, smashing aside burnt-out vehicles and rolling over the dead. Some of the larger, more palatial buildings had been preserved and taken over by the Octunggen. Avery imagined sweaty barracks, soldiers toasting their victory over bottles of stolen champagne, women from towns that had been plundered being raped. Ungraessot was an ancient country, and it had a complex and layered culture stretching since back before L’oh had conquered it and transformed it more than three thousand years ago. The Ungraessotti were renowned architects, stonemasons, engineers and artisans. There would be much loot to steal, and much invaluable treasure inadvertently destroyed. History was being wiped away.
Toward noon Avery noted blinking lights on the steering console. He swore.
Janx looked up. He and Hildra had been playing cards amidships. The cards were Octunggen and featured unfamiliar characters, but, not to be put off, the two had invented a game that loosely resembled Jury-and-Tackle.
“What’s up?” Janx said.
Avery tapped the blinking lights. “I think we’re running low on fuel, or maybe gas for the balloon.” He shrugged. “It’s unlabeled.”
