He stuck a tentative hand out from under the cloth, and felt heat as from a summer sun on his palm. It was as though he sat in his own private, invisible beam of sunlight.
His hand trembled as he drew it back under the coat. This was impossible. That the whole world was quickened with life, invisible owlish eyes staring from every object, he had no doubt. But what did Enneas matter to the spirits of this world? He was just another bug crawling on the face of Ventus. How could he be visited now by a Grace that had denied him all his life? The Winds strode like kings through the sky and earth; they would never turn their attention to one such as him. At the end of all things, alone and starving in the desert, he finally had to admit he was beneath their notice—or anyone's notice.
And yet... the warmth remained, and the dryness.
Something moved out among the scrub_grass and scattered stones. Enneas made himself go completely still, peering as though his gaze could open another avenue through the rain to better see what was there.
A bedraggled head poked up from behind a rock, and he let out a sigh of relief. It was only a fox. The little fellow emerged from hiding; the soaking rain had reduced his coat to a tangled mat, making him appear impossibly skinny. Enneas' heart went out to him.
The fox reached his head down and lifted something. Carrying the speckled brownish object in his jaws, he trotted a few meters towards Enneas, then stopped.
He was carrying a dead quail, Enneas realized. Thinking about that quail roasting over a fire made him suddenly realize how ravenous he was. He sat up.
The fox jumped in surprise and ran back a ways. Then it stopped, cocked its head as though listening to something, and returned. It picked up the quail and came a little closer. Then it paused, watching again.
Enneas cleared his throat. "What... what do you want, little one?"
The fox cocked its head again. Then, very slowly, it walked up to Enneas. When it was no more than a body_length away, it dropped the quail. It put a paw on the bird, then turned and pranced away.
He watched it go, mouth open. When it was ten meters away, the fox paused, and looked back. It met Enneas' eyes.
And it seemed then to Enneas that a voice spoke to him—a very quiet voice, almost like the whisper of the rain itself; not human, but somehow like he would imagine a fox's voice to sound, if foxes could speak. It was a voice as faint as imagination's, yet Enneas knew he was not dreaming it; that it really had said:
hello.
He couldn't breathe. For a moment Enneas held his trembling hands together, then he began to weep—it seemed as if decades of loneliness and disappointment released themselves in this one torrent of relief and wonder. He hugged his knees and cried like a little boy, while the fox sat with its tail wrapped around its paws and watched.
Enneas wept at hearing what he had never expected to hear—never even known he was missing: a voice that should have been as close as his own pulse, but which had seemed as forever unattainable as the gates of Heaven itself.
Hello.
45
"The Winds say she's alive, Axel." Marya touched his shoulder. "You'll just have to accept that she doesn't want to contact us."
He shook his head. "I just wish I knew."
They stood on the ramp of a military transport that was grounded outside the ruins of Rhiene. Above them the once-green escarpment was smothered in grey mud, and where a city had once been now there were only the jagged stumps of buildings. The lake had moved in to claim much of the lower valley. Long lines of refugees stood waiting for medical assistance and food; military doctors from the fleet moved up and down the line, supplemented by morphs. Rhiene had been the first city the swans visited their wrath upon when they began to attack Mediation. Luckily it was also the last.
Jordan Mason had told the two factions of the Winds, Mediation and Thalience, that their world would be destroyed by the Archipelagic fleet if they did not reconcile. Axel didn't understand all the details—he knew pure thalience was a mode of thought alien to humanity, and that Mediation had been the bridge Jordan used to finally permit the swans and the other greatest Winds to communicate with humanity. In the long minutes while Jordan, Armiger and the Desert Voice had huddled silently on the mountainside, the Winds had met, reached some treaty, then opened communications directly to the fleet. 3340 was dead, they told the admirals. The Flaw was finally understood, and would be healed. But Ventus was not now, nor would it ever be an Archipelagic world.
Axel had spent his last week on Ventus searching for Calandria May. The Winds had been happy to let him sleep in any Manse he came across, but they refused to help him find her. They insisted that Calandria was free and able to make her own decisions about her life; but they would not put Axel in touch with her.
It was frustrating, but he could not bring himself to hate the Winds. He was sure they were not being malicious. The part that hurt, to which he could not reconcile himself, was the idea that Calandria did not want to speak to him. After all they had been through, it was a painful parting.
"We have to go," said Marya. The crowd that had been watching the ship for days was backing away as the engines whined into life. Some morphs shambled past the bottom of the ship's ramp, slobbering happily to one another. They had itched to tend humans for centuries, and now they were finally getting their chance. Those touched by them rarely died, no matter how advanced their illness or injuries. It was ironic that the gibbering, misshapen Winds most used by mothers to frighten children were now being treated like royalty everywhere they went.
He sighed, and turned away from the sight. As the doors closed, Marya said, "Is it back to the mercenary's life for you now?"
He shook his head. "I wanted to talk to you about that. I hear you've got a new job."
She smiled. Marya had been invited to become a member of the new diplomatic staff the Archipelago wanted to send to Ventus. He knew she must have leaped at the opportunity.
"The Diadem Winds are making delegates for us," she said as they walked into the warm, softly lit passenger area of the ship. "They'll be humanoid, apparently. Some will be going to Earth, and I might accompany them. On the other hand, there's a post here on Ventus... I can't decide."
"I know how I'd decide," he said. The thought of going back to Earth—or anywhere in the Archipelago—left him cold. Surrounded as he might be there by artificial intelligences, humanity and ancient culture, Axel knew he would feel alone. The air he breathed there, and the ground he touched, would feel dead and valueless compared to this place. Even though only those humans with the archaic Ventus DNA could command the mecha and speak to the Winds, Axel had felt their presence all around him in the past days. It made all the difference to know they were watching over him.
Maybe he was just feeling lonely because of the loss of Calandria. On the other hand, maybe he had found a part of himself here that he'd never known he was missing. It hurt to think that, as an offworlder, he no longer had a right to be here. The Winds would tolerate no tourists on Ventus.
"It's too bad there's these two positions," said Marya with a sigh. "If one of them were to be taken, my decision would be so much easier to make."
"Hmm?" Axel looked up. What was she getting at?
"I've been speaking to the diplomatic corps," she said. "Apparently you have a criminal record as long as my arm, and there's a thousand laws prohibiting people like you from holding a diplomatic position."
"Yeah," he said with a shake of his head. "I always did have a problem with big government."
"On the other hand," continued Marya with a wicked smile, "the Winds trust you. So does Choronzon, who has considerable pull with the Archipelago now that 3340's been defeated."
"What are you getting at?"
She sighed. "Axel, I'd love to take the Ventus posting. But I'd love to spend some time on Earth more. And I just can't think of anyone from my Institute who's got the experience or... streetwise nature, to take the post here."
"Are you offering me a jo
b?" he asked incredulously.
"Me?" She pointed at herself. "Gods no, I don't have the authority. No, the Winds have asked for you. The diplomats are turning blue in the face over this, but they want to make the Winds happy..."
The ship shook slightly with takeoff. They had come to a lounge, and Axel found he needed to sit down.
Until this moment he had believed he would never set foot on Ventus again. He stared at Marya, stunned. "Well," he managed at last, "I guess it was a good idea to save you from the swans after all."
She laughed. "Then you accept?"
He rose and went to a viewscreen that was tuned to an outside view.
Ventus lay below, a vessel of light. Axel gazed down at the amber, green and white of Iapysian desert as it became one with the curve of the planet.
Calandria was gone; so, it seemed, was the rest of his past.
"I accept," he said.
§
The White Wind squinted at the glare and noise as the starship rose and vanished behind the clouds. Well, the moment had passed, and she had not shown herself to Axel. She would probably never know whether she had stayed hidden because of shame, or because she didn't want to have to explain herself to him.
She rolled over in the soft snow. The maelstrom she had fallen into had spared her, as she'd known it would. The Winds were efficient, they would not let her die needlessly. Now, though, they had no use for her, and she was her own creature at last.
It was perhaps the first time in her life, either as Calandria May or as the White Wind, that she really felt free. In the final analysis, it was this that she hadn't wanted to tell Axel. How could he understand that she had never been happy as a human in the first place? 3340 had been a seductive enemy; in fighting him she had fought that part of herself, successfully for a while. Here on Ventus, she had lost to it—and she was happy that she had.
She spotted a wildflower. It poked up bravely through the snow, and in the wan daylight it was like a little blue jewel, begemmed with beads of water and surrounded by crystals of ice. The White Wind crept up and lost herself in the contemplation of it. In her mind was a song, and the song was endless: all of Ventus sang a hymn of beauty and truth, and she was a part of that now. High above the sky she knew the Diadem swans were dancing, and they would dance forever.
She stared at the little flower until the tears in her own eyes made her shake her head and walk away.
§
A cold winter rain descended on the valley below the Titans' Gates. The flood had long since subsided, and remnants of the army now worked to make a new road across the blasted landscape. Of the forest that had once stood there, not a single twig remained; in their zeal to destroy 3340, the Winds had reduced everything in the flood down to its constituent molecules. Where pines had towered over needle-strewn loam, now there was only grey rock and a fine, black ash that shifted uneasily in the breeze.
High on the mountainside, a lone figure paused at a narrow window on the northernmost facade of the monastery. Here, where the ledge on the North Gate narrowed and vanished, the monks had long ago built a precarious, wedge-shaped tower that clung to every available contour of the mountain. The window looked out from this tower's furthest point, with nothing but a six hundred meter fall beneath it.
Galas turned from the window to inspect her new quarters. There were three rooms, all walled and floored in granite. Her new bed chamber was triangular, with a single slotted window. The room she stood in now was larger, and the third was larger still. Each had a fireplace, where some of the last of the available wood was crackling now. Generations of abbots had lived and died in these small rooms.
"Are they adequate for you?" asked the present abbot.
She smiled at him. "They were for you. Why shouldn't they be for me? —But are you sure you're willing to give them up?"
He shrugged. "Everywhere is holy now, your highness. We have no reason to stay here any longer."
Galas walked to a window and looked out. The pebbled glass gave a distorted view of the devastated valley below, and beyond it the desert of Iapysia, across which she had fled only days ago.
"Am I going to freeze once the wood runs out?"
He laughed. "I didn't. But I'm sure if you ask the rooms nicely, they will be warm in the future."
"Yes, of course." So simple, yet impossible to conceive.
She stood there, smiling at the possibilities in these three little rooms. After a while she heard the abbot cough politely and move to the door.
"Oh, thank you," she said before he could escape. "You don't know what this means to me."
He cocked his head at her and smiled. He looked years younger than the first time she had met him, over a decade ago. "May I ask?" he said hesitantly. "What does it mean? For you to stay here, that is?"
She laughed. "Peace and privacy, two things I have never had in my whole life. You should know that yourself, abbot; no one will make the trek up here lightly. I am negotiating with the vagabond moons to exclude these peaks from the tourist trade they are planning. Only those who really wish to speak to me will come—which excludes every courtier and most of the nobles of my former court. Parliament is cowed, now that the army has spread its tales. They call me the Queen of Diadem now, and far be it for me to disillusion them. —They'll all learn soon enough that their powers in this new world are equal to mine.
"I'll wait out the winter here. I have no stomach for travel right now. And come spring, I'll find a little cottage in a small town somewhere, and settle down quietly—with a new name, I think."
"Then you have no more wish to rule? The country needs you now more than ever."
She shook her head. "I've been crushed under the weight of power all my life. I think I'm going to enjoy missing it." She laughed at the lightness with which she dismissed royal power. Every moment was a surprise, these days. She hoped that feeling would never end.
"It seems that we have all been given new lives," said the abbot. "I wish you well in yours, Galas." The abbot bowed, and stepped backward out of the room.
Galas returned to examining her new realm. Hmm. Where to start? These rooms might be small, but she was happy to have them. She felt she deserved no more, after letting her kingdom fall into civil war. She had dared much, and lost it all; but she had never dared nor lost as much as the people she commanded, and knowing this humbled her.
She could hear the walls' murmur, faint in her minds' ear. This new sense Jordan Mason had given to the world was like dreaming while awake. She could order these stones to change their color, texture, even to become warm. She could talk to trees and animals, even the air itself.
Everywhere is sacred; we are all divine. No more could a man justify power or wealth by claiming he needed it to protect his people from material want. The elements were enemies no longer. It hadn't happened yet, but Galas knew that soon, this fact would throw into sharp relief the true colors of every tyrant in the world. New wars and revolutions would follow, but they would be different from those that had occurred in the past. Only men would do the killing now; neither starvation nor exposure would kill those dispossessed of their homes. And very quickly the refugees, who would have been powerless in the wilderness in past ages, would realize they were dependent on the conquerors for nothing. They would make new political pacts, this time with the Winds.
And so the world would fall into chaos, Galas thought, but this time men would have to think of new excuses for getting their fellows to follow them. The arrangement Mason had made with Thalience was clear: the Winds regarded humanity as a treasured companion but not a master. One might command the meek mecha in the walls, but no one commanded the Winds. From now until the end of time, they and humans would share responsibility for Ventus, and neither side would let the other harm their world.
This situation was just. It was everything she had ever dreamed of. It also made rulership irrelevant for Galas—and that, too, was just.
Someone knocked on the door as she was hauling
the abbot's old desk from its old position to a better one. "Come in!" She drew a hand through her tangled hair and smiled as Armiger entered.
He was dressed in traveler's clothes again, fresh ones that still looked a bit stiff on him. His face had regained its fleshly colors; the Archipelago had required that he be stripped of his nanotechnological core. He was only a man now, albeit one with memories of being a god.
"My dear friend," she said. "How do you like my new palace?"
"Everywhere you are, is a palace." He laughed at the sour expression she shot back. He too seemed transformed, these days. He was even able to joke. "So you're really staying here?" he asked, sending an appraising look around the narrow room. "The Winds are building new Manses; you could move into one of those, without having to feel you'd taken it from anybody."
"This is all I need." She went to him, and took his hand. "What about you? Have you decided what you need?"
"No." He shrugged. "I don't yet know who I am, I suppose."
"Welcome to humanity, Armiger," she said wryly. "Let me tell you a secret: you will never know who you are."
He shook his head. "Am I human, really? I think I was once, centuries ago. And then after 3340 died, I became human again... when I met Megan. Now that she's gone, am I still? I don't know."
"You are more than ever, Armiger. That is her gift to you. Don't squander it."
"Gift..." He nodded. "The part of her I can keep. Yet I don't know what to do with it."
"Just be, my friend. Learn to simply be."
He shook his head, but not in denial. "And you? Have you given up everything you were to become a nun in a cell? I can hardly believe it."
"It is necessary." She looked around at the narrow space. "I am too ambitious by far. And rulership is addictive. Something new is needed for the great of soul to do, and I wish to learn what that thing is. Consider this cell to be a self-imposed discipline."
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