Lavin bowed to it. "And you still do," he said smoothly. "You may relay your orders to my commanding officer from now on. She is below, on the mountain top."
The bast twitched its tail suspiciously. "Send a message to this commander with your flag thing," it hissed. "Tell it to deliver up the abomination to us now!"
The semaphore operator looked at Lavin, who nodded. He stepped back, carefully loosening his sword in its scabbard.
§
Galas stood on a level spot halfway between the monastery and the peak of the mountain. She had ordered the semaphore be set up here, where she could survey all the action. When the question about the Nag's Head had come down, she nearly cried from the memories it evoked. There could be no stronger evidence that Lavin still lived, and that he still honored what had once been between them.
Arrayed around her were Lavin's men. They were plainly stunned with the turn of events, but remained silent. They would do whatever she asked, she knew. Lavin had commanded it; and they had no other lifeline.
The semaphore operator read out the Winds' demand that Armiger be given up. Galas sighed, and glanced down the mountainside. She had been expecting this, of course. It was inevitable, now that Armiger had clearly failed to do whatever it was that he had intended.
She could see him down there, a small figure standing still by the parapet overlooking the valley. There was no one near him; the monks were afraid of him, and rightly so. He seemed so insignificant there—just another lost soul. However, until she gave him to the Winds, all of Galas' people were threatened.
In turning to give the command that he be taken, Galas felt herself loosing hold of all that she had striven for. Armiger represented the last shreds of her dream of autonomy from the Winds, and tradition. With him gone, the world would flatten out again, into the drab and futureless round it had always been. Her people would be slaves again, and now for all time.
It was ironic. Lavin had surrendered to her at last—and yet, he had won, more completely than he probably knew.
So be it. The safety of her people came before everything else. That being the case, however, she must not just give Armiger up. He was valuable; and the wrath of the Winds must be turned away from her kingdom.
With difficulty, she cleared her throat, and said, "Send this message to my dear General Lavin:
"We will turn the general Armiger over to you, provided that you promise to leave our army, our cities and our people unharmed. This is a small price to ask."
She stood with her hands clasped as the semaphore operator began waving. Her gaze was turned not up at the all-encompassing sky made by the moon, but down at the monastery courtyard, where a kindred spirit stood disconsolately, awaiting his fate.
§
"...This is a small price to ask," recited the operator by the moon's doors. His voice trailed off with the last syllables, as he saw the effect his words were having on the listening basts.
"We have been betrayed!" shouted their leader. It rounded on Lavin. "There can be no negotiation with those who are to serve us. If your commander will not obey our orders, then we will take matters into our own hands."
Lavin stepped forward. "What do you—" The bast was shouting something. Lavin felt a lurch go through the whole fabric of the moon; he stumbled.
"Sir!" The semaphore man was waving to him. "The hooks! They're heading toward the mountain." Lavin ran over to the edge of the door, and looked down. Giant metal claws were spiralling away from below them, aimed at the mountainside.
"We will collect the abomination ourselves," said the bast. "And remove your army from this place at the same time."
Calmly, Lavin drew his rapier and ran the bast through before it could even shout. He watched impassively as it toppled to the deck. Then he turned to his men.
"Relay the message to the other moons and to Hesty on the ground. Then send this code word to the moons: Repast."
The other basts shrieked, and bared their claws; Lavin had posted men to watch them surreptitiously many hours ago, and now the moon suddenly echoed with musket-fire. The basts fell, clawing and yowling. Gunpowder smoke wafted past him and swirled out into the cold air above the mountains.
"But sir, what does this mean?" In the aftermath, the lieutenant was the only one brave enough to speak up. He would have made a good marshall, Lavin thought, given time. Too bad.
"We have known for some time that we are prisoners of the Winds," he said. "We were wrong—Galas was right all along. The creatures who've enslaved our army do not have our interests in mind. Nor do they have the right to abuse us. Our homes are threatened, and if we let them, they will destroy us. We've known that, and we've been waiting on the proper moment to act.
"That moment is here. Send the messages, then I have one last detail for the engineers. They know what it is. For the rest of us, all we can do is pray that whatever rules both Man and Wind will be merciful to us, and let us live through the next hour."
He stood with his sword out, watching the semaphore messages go out. The engineers ran to their stations and unreeled their fuses. At any moment the vagabond moon might realize what had occurred, and act to save itself. He wasn't about to give it the chance.
Lavin's heart was lifting. It lifted as the charges went off with sharp bangs and his men cheered. It lifted as the moon's internal support cables whipped up and away, and ripples began to spread across the geodesic skin of the moon.
As the gales above the mountain took the moon and pulled it out of shape, he fell and slid along the floor, but he was no longer afraid. He knew he had finally done the right thing. He was able to hang onto the broken stump of a guy stanchion for a while and watch while the moon's skin split and the sensation of falling—really falling—began. Then they were turning too fast and the gusts were too strong, and he let himself go.
For a while, he was flying.
§
Men had crowded the parapet below to watch the fall of the moons. Galas stood with one of the officers who had been in on the plan. He told her how they had observed the fragility of the great vehicles under windy conditions—how their skins were too thin and vast to be truly rigid, so that they needed internal support. He told her how Lavin had mined the guy wires. As he spoke she watched the globe that had hung above them tear apart on the south peak, and fall in wind-torn pieces across the valley.
Galas had thought she had nothing left to cry for, but she did weep as she watched the three moons in the valley vainly try to avoid one another. They collided at last in terrible slow motion, and with only the sound of far distant thunder, they split and drifted like the finest gauze onto the flaming, jagged peaks of the forest, which shredded them completely.
Lavin was dead. At the end of all things he had obeyed her, and maybe he even loved her still, as he had claimed. She put her hands over her face, and turned away.
44
Jordan hurried down a dim passage near the mountain top; his hand tightly gripped Tamsin's, and she stumbled as she tried to keep up. The others were blundering along behind him, but he no longer had the patience to wait for them. Something terrible was happening above.
First, Mediation had fallen silent. Its constituents were busy—whether busy panicking or marshalling their forces, he did not know. The desals were only part of Mediation, Jordan knew; there were other, more powerful entities located deep within the planet's crust: the geophysical Winds. He had caught vague telltales of their presence once or twice, like a deep rumbling far below his feet. Now that rumbling too was silent.
Something had happened above the mountain—some catastrophe involving the Heaven hooks. Jordan's own senses weren't strong enough to penetrate that far, and Mediation was not showing him anything. He could sense the immense machines of the Titans' Gates slowing, however. They seemed to be shutting down.
Mediation, he called now. Answer me! What's happening?
Silence. The back of his neck was prickling. Had the geophysical Winds been defeated by Thalie
nce? Or had the Galactics attacked Ventus, as Axel warned they would?
It was only dozen meters now to the exit nearest the monastery. He would know in seconds.
"Come on! We're nearly there!"
"What's the hurry?" Axel loomed out of the shadows. The scowl he was wearing made him look like the sort of creature Jordan's mother had always warned him lived underground.
"Something's wrong."
Axel shrugged. "That statement probably applies to every second I've spent on this blasted world."
"No, I—" There was the door. As he hurried towards it, Jordan commanded the oddly-shaped lozenge to open. Dust burst in little clouds from its edges, and a moment later light split the gloom.
At that moment a voice spoke in Jordan's mind. It had some of the qualities of the voices of the Winds; there was an impression of great strength there, and the sort of calmness borne of great age. From its first words, however, Jordan knew this was no Wind.
Stop now. You will cease this petty assault. There is nothing you can do to me. Reconcile yourselves to being devoured, because it will happen to you within the day.
The door stopped moving—half open. Daylight flooded in around it, revealing the utilitarian antechamber they had come to. It was about four meters on a side, its walls of rock. Some ancient bones were piled in one corner. The door itself was carefully shaped to appear like part of the mountainside; bits of moss had broken off and fallen inside as it opened. It was attached to a curved arm that ended in the ceiling; the door opened inward and up.
Jordan ran up to the thick stone slab and hauled frantically on it. It didn't move. He closed his eyes and focussed his concentration. The door wouldn't listen to him, and there were no mecha on it that he could compel.
Axel wrapped his arms around the valve as well. "Bah! Damned ancient technology. I guess it's not even self-repairing."
"That's not the problem. Axel, we have to get this door open." Jordan had a sick feeling that they were too late. He suppressed it angrily. They had to keep going.
"Get behind me," said Axel. He unclipped something from his belt.
You have done well, servant. Your reward will be to merge with me, at a higher level of consciousness than you knew before. You can participate in the redesign of this world.
Jordan stepped back into the hallway with the women. Axel put up one hand as if to ward off the sun, and levelled what looked like a half-melted version of a flintlock pistol at the hinge of the door. A flash of blinding light made Jordan step back. When the flash didn't cease but settled into a hot hissing presence, he turned his back and groped further into the corridor.
Let us make heat now. I need more energy.
There was a loud crash and the light ended. "Damn," muttered Axel, "I'm nearly out of charge."
Jordan turned to see sunlight streaming in through a thick haze of smoke. The room smelled like a smithy. Coughing, Axel hopped over the fallen door and outside. The woman Marya followed him immediately.
Tamsin was by his side. "Ready?" she said.
"No." They stepped out into the false day—and pandemonium.
Jordan stood on a slope above the southern plateau of the north Gate. Hundreds of men were running around below shouting. About half of them looked like soldiers; the rest were the monks Jordan had seen through Armiger's eyes. Although they were yelling, Jordan couldn't hear what anyone was saying over the long, continuous rolls of thunder that filled the air.
He grabbed Axel by the shoulder. "What's happening?"
Axel pointed. "Maybe we'd better get back inside."
Jordan looked up.
Coils of light were falling from the sky.
For a second or two he couldn't figure out what he was seeing. From the zenith to the horizon, long glowing threadlike shapes one after another faded into view, moved gently down the sky leaving red trails like blood, then faded from view again—or else touched the earth, where great white blooms of light appeared. As he watched, a brilliant shimmering rope appeared almost directly overhead, grew for seconds into a bright starred tangle like a falling rope, then suddenly found perspective as a giant flaming branch-like shape that plummeted out of sight behind the mountain. The whole sky lit up with a blue-white flash, and the ground under Jordan shook. Then the sound came round the mountain, and he lost his footing.
He tumbled head over heels down the slope, and landed about a meter from Axel. He sat up, bruised and half-deafened. Tamsin was next to him in seconds, offering her hand. With a grimace Jordan took it and stood.
"What the hell is all this?" shouted Axel. His words seemed strangely muffled to Jordan.
"It's the swans!" shouted Marya. "The Diadem swans are attacking!"
Jordan's heart sank. "Not attacking. They're falling."
"Falling? But why... the fleet?"
"No." It took a few seconds for Jordan to orient himself. The valley was this way, the saddle between the two peaks over there. And if you walked far enough, Mediation had told him, you'd be able to see the ocean over there...
"This way!" He started running without waiting for the others. Men were huddling behind rocks; they were digging holes, standing with their backs to the cliff, anything to find shelter.
He saw the parapet where he knew Armiger had been standing. There was the general, slumped against the stones, looking downward. Jordan steeled him to ignore the falling sky, and ran to him.
"Armiger!" He didn't turn, so Jordan put a hand on his shoulder. It didn't feel like flesh under his fingers, more like wood.
Armiger's eyes were tightly closed, and a grimace twisted his face. His hands were knotted tightly on the parapet.
"Armiger! It's Jordan! I'm here. Tell me what to do."
Armiger's lips moved. Jordan couldn't hear what he was saying, so he closed his eyes and concentrated. He felt his own lips form the word, "Nothing."
"Then it's true!" He shook the general by the shoulders. "You were a resurrection seed all along."
"I thought I was the seed," murmured Armiger. "But He didn't trust me that far. I wasn't the seed; he planted the seed where he knew I wouldn't find it."
The others had arrived. They stood with their shoulders hunched, except the Voice who stared into the sky with appraising curiosity. Jordan sat up and looked out over the parapet.
The floor of the valley was visible in gaps between towering shafts of smoke like the trunks of a giant forest. Fire raged from a hundred sources. The geodesic shards of the vagabond moons poked out of flame and smoke here and there; as he watched one toppled over, sending a ripple out through the forest fire.
Something made of red-hot blades squatted at the center of a blackened hectare of ground. Thin beams of light flicked out of it every few seconds, incinerating the few remaining trees nearby. Heat-haze made the thing shimmer like an hallucination. It must be at least as big as Castor's manor.
"3340," said Armiger. Jordan looked down at him. The general lay staring at the roiling sky. "It only took Him minutes to crack the codes of the Winds. He is able to command them now. He's ordered the swans to commit suicide."
"Can't you stop him?" Jordan knew the answer even as he spoke. Armiger shook his head.
Tamsin knelt by them. "What about the desals? Can't they do anything?"
"It's paralyzed Mediation somehow too." Jordan instinctively ducked as another explosion sounded somewhere nearby. "That's why the door stopped moving before."
"That's it then," said Axel. "It's up to the fleet. They're going to nuke this entire continent to make sure they get 3340. If we'd only gotten to the ship."
Jordan stood up. "Armiger, is that red thing down there 3340?"
The general glanced at him. "Yes."
"He's very hot. Like a fire. Is that all there is to him?"
"For now. He's growing fast. He's hot because he needs energy..." Armiger drifted off again, eyes fixed on nothing.
Jordan leaned on the parapet. "Let me try something."
"What are you doing?" as
ked Axel.
"I was worried that we'd have nothing to bargain with, between the Winds and Armiger," said Jordan. "So while we were on our way to the mountain, I took some steps."
"What steps?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. Just don't disturb me for a bit. Okay?"
Axel stood with his hands in his pockets, scowling at the ground. Marya stood wide-eyed, her hand to her mouth. The Voice returned Jordan's gaze calmly. And Tamsin, who was obviously scared, smiled and gestured to Jordan as if to say, "Go on."
Jordan turned, closed his eyes, and fell into Vision.
§
The silence had become unbearable. The White Wind stopped walking, and settled back on her haunches. The music she had felt in her mind for weeks was gone, and with it the self-assurance that had kept her going.
She had come to the shore of a giant underground lake. Its dark waters stretched away to an unguessable distance; only this thin strip of stony path on the outskirts was lit, and it only poorly. She knew the ones she had pursued had come this way because they had left their scent; she had used that scent to negotiate a maze of pipes, and faith in it had led her into a dark shaft full of rising vessels. Now she was high above ground level.
Just minutes ago she had paced along in complete confidence, knowing she was well watched over and treading paths prepared for her by ancient and loving creators. Now all she knew was that she was deep in the bowels of a mountain whose machineries had come to an unexpected stop. Anything might happen. The waters might rise. The lights might go off.
Uneasy, she started walking again, more rapidly. An upward-sloping corridor let off the lake, and she took that. In the distance she saw daylight, and loped toward it, relieved.
Just as she reached an open valve door whose portal had been melted, maybe by laser fire, a voice bloomed in her mind.
Cease to move. You will all cease to move, even if it means your death. Do it!
The voice hit with the force of an explosion. Calandria May fell to her knees. She put out her hands to stop her fall, and saw the white fur on them, the claws. That didn't matter—because she recognized the voice in her mind. It was 3340, whom she had helped to kill.
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