by Jeff Grubb
Gwenna herself was elvish, as were most of the natives of Argoth. There were pixies, treefolk, and all manner of other forest dwellers on Argoth, but the elves were the smartest and most refined of all the races—at least in Gwenna’s opinion. There were only a few of the mannish breed, and they tended to keep to their holy orders and stone retreats. Gwenna wondered why, since there were so many elves in the world, most of the invaders from the old tales were mannish in nature.
Invaders almost always came by sea, their boats smashed on the surrounding reefs or pulled into small maelstroms around the island’s coast. They were usually waterlogged, battered, and weak by the time they arrived, and as such put up little or no fight when it was time to kill them. This one, however, came from the air and seemed to be in much better shape for it.
The invader’s craft looked like a wounded bird curled up on the white sand of the beach. If Gwenna had not seen it land, she would not have thought it could fly at all. Indeed it was hardly much of a flier. More of plummeter, for it dived like a cormorant for the beach, pulling up only at the last moment. Even then, it had smashed into the sands with a bone-thumping crunch. One wing was twisted at an odd angle now as a result of that crash.
Titania’s Law was fair but firm on the matter of invaders. They should be watched, and word sent back to Citanul, to Titania’s Court. If it damaged the island (as most invaders did, sooner or later), it would have to be destroyed.
Gwenna could not imagine why this particular invader needed to be destroyed, but such was Titania’s Law, serving the great goddess Gaea. This invader looked mostly harmless, unlike a waterlogged savage. But those were the rulings of the land: observe the invader to see what crimes it committed against the land, and then, when the order came from the court, dispatch it before it could cause any further damage.
So Gwenna watched.
* * *
—
Harbin circled the crashed ornithopter, then kicked it again. The blow did not do anything to repair the smashed device, and it made him feel only slightly better about his situation.
When his father agreed to allow him to train to be an ornithopter pilot, he dreamed of flying such a craft into battle. Instead, he had spent a dozen years on routine matters. Running messages and orders throughout the combined kingdoms of Argive, Korlis, and Yotia. Conducting surveys along the northern coast of Malpiri. Carrying diplomats and bureaucrats from Kroog to Penregon. They were vital assignments, but safe ones.
He tried to be reassigned to a combat unit, or at least to a garrison unit, but received no aid from his elders. Mother had been adamant against his flying in the first place. Father had been cool and distant, as always, and spoke about the importance of not showing favoritism. That was very much like Father: the perfect answer to every question. Even Uncle Tawnos was sympathetic but did not attempt to change matters.
There had been excitement in his work. He was once assaulted by Malpiri tribesmen when on the ground and discovered Fallaji raiding parties four separate times. On one such occasion, he was pursued by a flying dragon engine and outflew it, bringing it within range of one of his father’s clockwork avian flocks. Yet still, while most other pilots had been moved to the front, he had been left behind in relative safety.
Harbin smelled a plot, and the plot stank of his elders’ collusion. He tried once more for a combat posting and was told that after his present tour of duty he should settle down to a training position. He was twenty-six now, they said, practically as antique as the first primitive ornithopters. Melana, his wife, would like him to take the training position, but then his wife spent all her time in Mother’s court and would like nothing more than for Harbin to abandon flying altogether.
There was a rustling among the forest leaves, and Harbin tensed, his hand going automatically to his sword hilt. The rustle continued, and soon a pair of eyes on multicolored stalks raised from the impenetrable green. The eyes blinked at Harbin in the sunlight, then pulled back and retreated deeper into the forest. Harbin caught a flash of yellow and black striping and realized he had been looking at a forest slug, though one almost as large as himself. The slug was more afraid of him than he was of it.
Harbin shook his head and realized that he was still gripping his sword hilt. The blade was one of Tawnos’s “new metals”—lighter, stronger, and more versatile than the blades previously in use. The blades had proved useful in combat and had turned the tide in a number of critical battles against Mishra’s forces.
Harbin carried one of the first of the new metal blades, and his craft had been one of the latest longer-winged, lighter creations from Urza’s workshops. Had it been a lesser craft, it would not have survived the storms that drove him to this strange beach.
More collusion of the elders in controlling his life, thought Harbin. More unwanted protection that probably saved his life.
The storm had come out of nowhere as he skirted the Korlisian coast. He tried running from it but was driven farther and farther out to sea. He tried to climb above it, but the rising anvil of the thunderstorm kept towering over him like a great wave. It was as if the storm held its own intelligence and was intent on keeping Harbin from escaping its grip.
At last he flew into the storm itself and was battered for three days and three nights by its fury. Howling winds threatened to snap the wings and peel back the protective housing, while bolts of lightning chained around him. Odd electrical fires danced along the wings and the guide pulleys. For one horrible moment the entire craft had been inverted, and Harbin saw the sea rise before him like a wall of water before he regained control of the craft.
Then the storm was gone, and he was in clear air. Behind him the storm still boiled like soup, but ahead there was land, a huge rolling expanse of greenery. Where the land met the sea there shone a bright strip of white sand, gleaming like a beacon. Exhausted from three days of continual battle against the sky, Harbin brought the wounded craft down hard on the beach and felt something give as the craft landed. He tumbled from the ornithopter and collapsed on the sand in exhaustion beneath one of its half-folded wings.
It was afternoon when he awoke, and Harbin could not be sure if he had slept a few hours or a few days. He had been undisturbed, and fortunately he had set the craft down above the high tide mark. Brushing the sand from his uniform, he surveyed his surroundings and the damage to his craft.
His world was a straight line of beach of such a white brilliance that it hurt his eyes. The sky above was a crystalline blue, unmarked by clouds overhead, but turning first white, then gray, and finally black along the horizon out to sea. The storm was still offshore, waiting patiently like a cat at a mousehole.
Inland was a verdant jungle, seemingly untouched by man. It began at the beach’s edge with a thick tangle of low-lying vegetation, but soon mounted in towering, white-barked trees of a type that Harbin had never seen before. The forest was so ancient that the upper branches were interlocked, forming huge canopies.
Harbin wondered if perhaps this was the way Argive had looked, long before Father and Mishra began their continual war. Before the lands were strip-mined and the skies turned dark from the factory smoke. Perhaps this was the way paradise was supposed to look.
Harbin took a sighting on the sun. He was south of civilized lands, farther south than the southern Korlisian coast. He had no idea of his longitude. Home could be due north, or northwest, or northeast. If he guessed northwest, Harbin figured, if he flew that direction, he would probably hit land. Eventually.
Harbin looked back at his craft. It was mostly in good shape. Some of the wires had snapped, and the pulleys along one of the control surfaces were stripped, the result of his landing. The worst effect of the storm had been to splinter the right wing strut. It held up to the brunt of the storm, but cracked halfway through. It would have to be replaced before he took another chance with the winds aloft.
Harbin kicked the craft a third time but not as hard. Then he opened the housing and pulled out the re
pair kit every ornithopter carried.
Within the steel box was a collection of tools: a hammer, and an axe with two spare heads; a flexible piece of saw-toothed metal; spools of wire and spare pulleys; spools of thinner catgut and steel needles to repair holes in the wings; a balled coil of rope. He thumbed through the box. Fishing hooks. Tape measure. Emergency rations. Flint and tinder. An oversized hat to protect him from the sun. Harbin looked at the collection and felt Father’s heavy hand again. It was as if his elder thought of every contingency for such a crash. And Urza probably had.
Harbin gnawed on a chunk of smoked meat and walked around his craft a few more times. With the exception of the main strut, he could take the ornithopter aloft immediately. But he would have to find the right tree for the replacement strut.
That meant going into the jungle, the one with the huge black and yellow slugs in it.
Harbin hoped the slugs were the worst of the dangers in the primeval forest. He hefted his axe and headed into the thick vegetation.
* * *
—
Titania’s rules on invaders were straightforward and strict, and Gwenna knew what the response to her report would probably be. Still she followed the letter of the law in dealing with the latest invader. She watched.
Of course word would come from the court that if the invader had not damaged the land it should be captured. If it had damaged the land, it should be killed. And of course, given time to communicate, even mystically, back to the court and to gain a response, it was inevitable that the invader would do something to damage the land and would have to be destroyed.
Gwenna felt a slight touch of sympathy for the invader. It did not know it was signing its own death sentence by stealing Gaea’s bounty without permission.
Perhaps that was Titania’s intention after all. Titania spoke for the goddess Gaea, and the elves, pixies, and treefolk listened.
The invader moved gingerly though the border vegetation, trying to find a path through the undergrowth. The scrub and vine maples tugged at its pants, and the water dripping from the canopy above left dark stains on its white shirt. Gwenna started after it, moving quietly from tree to tree by the interlocking branches, remaining out of sight. Once she brushed a dead branch, and sent it clattering to the forest floor. She remained perfectly still as the invader scanned the area, looking for her. Then it set out again, and she followed, an arboreal shadow.
Once he was past the scrub vegetation on the beach, the territory opened up beneath the great trees. The soil was thick here with rotted vegetation, and the canopy was broken only by blown-down and toppled trees. The fallen giants served as nurse logs for new growths, straining for what little light penetrated the leaves above.
The invader stopped at one of these glades and chose a particularly straight sapling of yarrow wood. It circled the tree three times, then nodded and pulled a strip from its shirt and tied it around the trunk at about eye level. Then it headed back for the beach in a clear line. Though it did not use it, the invader carried an axe in its hand.
Gwenna knew in an instant what the invader’s intent was. By cutting down the live tree it would sign its death warrant. The messengers would return and they would say, “Has the invader damaged the land?”
Gwenna would be forced to respond, “Yes, it cut down a sapling.”
The messenger would say, “Then the invader must be similarly cut down.”
And to Gwenna that seemed a waste. She wanted to know more about the broken bird thing that the invader rode. How could it fly and carry a mannish invader? There had never been a winged invader before. Perhaps they needed to learn more of it and leave it alive.
Gwenna quickly scouted the area and found a nearby deadfall, where a huge paleroot had recently blown over in a storm, taking other yarrows and tangleoaks with it. She found an uprooted yarrow about the same size as the one the invader marked. This tree had been recently killed by the fall. She offered the proper prayers to Gaea and removed the dying branches of the yarrow with her own blade, then pulled the entire sapling to where the invader would return, and laid it across the path.
The invader returned with a large coil of rope and found its way blocked by the fallen sapling. It was confused, then looked at the tree it was about to fell, then at the deadfall. It shrugged (a curious, mannish shrug), and tied the rope to the fallen sapling, taking Gwenna’s offering and sparing the living tree. It pulled and struggled and cursed (in its strange language) and finally dragged the dead tree back to its campsite.
Gwenna felt relieved she did not have to kill the invader immediately.
The invader came back within the forest one other time, to find fresh water. It didn’t kill anything then, either, instead surviving on food it brought with it and fishing in the gentle surf. Fishing was permitted by Titania; she only protected the land.
The invader spent most of its time hacking at the yarrow, then removing one of the bird thing’s wings and replacing it with the spar it had carved. Gwenna watched but found its actions boring and confusing. It would measure something, cut it, measure again, cut again, and eventually trim the new spar to resemble the old. These actions seemed a waste of time to Gwenna.
The nights were warm, and the invader did not light a fire, though it obviously laid one. As a signal to others, perhaps? she thought. Were there more of these flying men in the world?
On the fourth night the invader retired early, and Gwenna crept down from her arboreal perch, leaving the forest and crossing onto the beach itself. She felt odd without the protection of the trees above, but her curiosity had gotten the best of her.
The invader was sleeping in the belly of its wounded bird, now sporting a new wing of roughly hewn yarrow. She was close enough to see the invader clearly now and thought about how much like a child it looked. Soft cheeks and a smooth forehead. She was close enough to touch it, to draw her dagger across its throat as it slept.
She could do it, too, and claim that the invader had despoiled the land in some way and as such had to be destroyed. But in her heart she knew she could not lie to her fellows, and besides, Gaea would know the truth. If Gaea knew, Titania would find out.
And she was still curious how the bird thing worked.
The invader struggled in its sleep, reacting to some threat in its dreams. Gwenna darted out of view, and the young mannish invader mumbled something and twisted in its sleep again. Gwenna circled the craft once more and knew that it was a made thing that smelled of dead wood and oily resins. Then she retreated back to her hiding place to continue the watch, as Titania would have wanted it.
In the morning Gwenna was startled awake by a new sound, a sound that convinced her in a moment she had made a mistake in sparing the young invader.
She could see the beach from where she perched, and the bird thing was moving now. The invader was within it, and the bird thing was flapping its great wings. There was a high, whining noise that hurt her ears, and the sand billowed out in great dusty clouds beneath the moving wings. The invader’s craft took a single, low hop on the beach, then a second, and then shot into the air like an arrow.
Gwenna watched the mechanical creation gain altitude, the wires that ran through its wings singing as it caught the wind like a kite. The bird thing began to circle and spiral upward over the warming sand of the beach. Gwenna wondered if it was going to fly deeper into the island’s heart and how she was supposed to follow it if it did.
Instead the bird thing increased its altitude until it was a small dot, then flew northwest, toward the continual line of storms that marked the borders of Titania’s influence.
Gwenna came out of the beach again, watching the small craft as it became smaller still and finally disappeared entirely from her sight. She had not expected the bird thing to fly again. She had not expected the invader to be foolish enough to escape. She had no doubt it would fail in the attempt and be driven back to shore elsewhere along the island coast.
But if it was driven back or destr
oyed by the storm, she did not see it.
An elder came to her two days later and found her still at her post, waiting for the bird thing to return. She told him that she had watched the invader as he repaired his craft and then departed.
The elder asked, “And did it damage the land while it was here?”
Gwenna replied, “No, it did not.”
The elder thought for a moment, surprised by the answer. Then he said, “Then you did the right thing not to slay it if it violated no law.”
And that was that. The invader did not return that month, nor in the month that followed, nor in the month after that. No one found the remains of the invader or its bird thing along the rest of the coastline, and it was assumed it had been destroyed by the storms that surrounded and protected Argoth.
Gwenna was unsure. There was a nagging in her stomach about the invader; about the fact that she kept it from despoiling the land and thereby preserved it from death. She wondered if she had done something wrong in letting it live.
To Argoth’s pain and her own shame, she would live to see how wrong she had been.
The assistant announced Harbin’s arrival to the Lord High Artificer and Protector of the Combined Kingdoms of Argive, Korlis, and Yotia. Harbin did not wait for Urza to respond but was in the room already, hot on the assistant’s heels, not giving his father a chance to send him away.
“Father, you must see me,” said the younger man.
“And see you I do,” returned Urza, pushing his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. He nodded to the assistant, and the young girl retreated to her own studies.
Harbin looked at his father. Urza was leaner now and his frame had taken on an almost birdlike quality. His hair was snow-white and had receded to expose most of his careworn brow. He wore his spectacles all the time now, not just when working. He looked old and tired.
“You have read my preliminary report, sir,” said Harbin, politely but without preamble.
