by Rick Shelley
"It is appropriate, Bay. Thank you," Silvas said.
Bosc was already on the drover's bench, the team's reins in his small hands. Koshka climbed up beside him. Satin and Velvet had not figured in Bay's planning, but the cats leaped up onto the bed of the wagon and took up position on either side of their dead mistress. No one attempted to persuade them to dismount.
Braf formed up his soldiers—armed with spears and short swords and clad in their customary armor of leather studded with metal rivets—behind the wagon, then looked toward Silvas and Bay for his orders. Silvas helped Maria to mount Girabelle, then he mounted Bay and nodded to Braf. Bay walked toward the front gate. Maria guided Girabelle into position next to Bay. As soon as they were out in front of the wagon team, Bosc flicked the reins to start the whites. Braf and his soldiers marched at the rear of the procession.
The march had scarcely begun before Silvas reined Bay in, not halfway across the drawbridge, forcing the rest to stop behind them. Silvas had given no thought to picking a route to the Shining City and the Citadel of the gods. He had assumed that the route would be there to find without difficulty. Coming out of the Glade on a normal day, Silvas would have expected to see the wide land that sloped gently downhill toward the village a half mile away. There would be familiar fields, orchards, and pastures spread around the landscape and, most likely, people out at work.
There was a road leading away from the main gate of the Seven Towers, but it was not the familiar dirt lane that led along the center of the valley. This road was much wider, ten yards from side to side, perfectly level, and it seemed to glow with a faint ivory light. There was no trace of the natural landscape. This might have been a completely different valley, wider and flatter, as if the Seven Towers opened in a distant locale, as it had so regularly during Silvas's tenure. But no pillar of smoke hid the Glade and connected it to some distant venue.
"It seems that our way is prepared for us," Silvas commented, his voice not as dry and ironic as he had intended.
"At least we don't have to worry about getting lost," Maria said.
Bay turned his head to look at Maria with both eyes. His nod was a subtle sign of approval. "We won't get lost," Bay said.
It's not something Carillia would have said, Maria realized, uncertain just where that information had come from.
"We did expect to find the way open," Silvas said. "There's no need to stand here and gawk as if we had never seen a bit of legerdemain before."
With that, Bay started walking again, off of the drawbridge and onto the glowing road. Maria kept her horse at Bay's right. The horses pulling the wagon needed a little urging to step onto the strange road, but once they were moving, Bosc had no difficulty keeping them on the way. Braf and his soldiers came behind the wagon, as before. The nature of the road mattered not at all to them. It was smooth, and the grade was minimal. That was all they would ask of any road.
"I've never seen this landscape before," Silvas said after they had ridden for twenty minutes. The road had been slightly downhill at first. After leveling off, the road bent slightly to the right in a long, gentle turn, and then it straightened up and started an equally gentle climb.
"I've never seen a sky so blue, or clouds so perfectly white," Maria said. "Are we already in the land of the gods?"
"Near enough, I imagine," Silvas said. "I expect that when we reach that crest ahead, we'll see the Shining City, laid out in all its glory, just far enough away for us to gather a full appreciation of its splendor."
"A minstrel show to awe us," Bay said, his voice denying that he would feel any awe, no matter what the presentation.
"That seems so shallow of them," Maria said.
"Shallowness is the least of their vices," Bay said sourly.
"I can't argue with that," Silvas said. "But for the moment at least, we need some sort of accommodation with them. I would as lief not fight another battle such as Mecq—ever, for choice, certainly not soon. Maria and I need time, more than anything else."
"Time means little to that lot, one way or the other," Bay said. "They have less concept of time than you might imagine."
"You seem very certain of that," Maria said.
"Facts are my gift," Bay said. There was no tinge of boasting in his voice. "While not all knowledge is in my purview, if I do know something, I know it of a great certainty."
"One of his gifts," Silvas said. "It's unlike you to be so limiting about yourself, Bay."
Bay merely snorted.
It was not merely that the sky was colored to perfection. Every detail of the landscape that surrounded the pilgrims was drawn to a meticulous ideal, as if not even the most insignificant fault could be tolerated. The colors were pure. The trees grew in graceful symmetry, without a single missing or stunted branch to spoil the effect. A gentle breeze caressed trees, grass, and growing grain with just the appropriate movement to balance the composition.
"No mortal artist ever did such a job," Maria said.
"Literally true," Bay said. "But many a mortal artist has taken his inspiration from vistas such as this."
"You mean they see into the land of the gods?" Maria asked.
"Many mortals have glimpsed some segment of this land. An artist is merely someone with the memory to hold the vision and the talent to turn it into something that others can see as well," Bay said.
"But the rendering always falls short of the ideal," Silvas added. "That is the way of life."
"That is the way of these gods as well," Bay said. "They fall pitifully short of the ideal."
"After Mecq, who could argue with that?" Maria asked.
"More than you would credit," Bay said. "Already, I'd wager that there are some folk in Mecq itself who are beginning to talk their way into disbelieving what happened. And away from Mecq?" He shook his head. "Few who hear about the battle we fought there will ever believe the story. It will be a wild tale from the hinterland, a legend from beyond all reckoning. Soon, there will be a dozen names attached to the place where a great mythical battle took place. A few learned friars in some distant monastery might argue over the story, but as an idle pastime, not in search of Truth."
"Is he always so gloomy?" Maria asked.
"Almost always," Silvas said with a dry chuckle. "I wouldn't know how to deal with Bay if he became an optimist. I'd think someone had switched horses on me."
Bay would not dignify that exchange with any reaction.
—|—
As Silvas had predicted, they could see the Shining City lying spread across the distance before them when they reached the top of the rise. The walls of the city stretched left and right, if not "as far as the eye can see," then still across enough of the horizon to be impressive.
Silvas moved Bay to the left side of the road. He and Maria stopped there. Bosc reined in the wagon team. Braf and his soldiers came up along the side of the wagon and stopped to rest. Braf came over to Silvas while his honor guard squatted to take their break in the meager shade offered by the wagon.
"That's where we're going?" Braf asked with a short gesture toward the Shining City.
"That's where we're going," Silvas confirmed. "To be slightly more accurate, we're going to the Citadel of the gods, in the precise center of that city." He pointed. "There, where the towers are tallest and covered with gold."
Braf did not have Silvas's gift of telesight, but his eyes were adequate for his needs. "Real gold, no doubt," he mumbled.
"No doubt at all," Silvas said.
"Be difficult to carry it off from there, though," Braf observed.
Silvas laughed. "Ah, Braf, what a Viking you'd have made with that eye. Your first look at the home of the gods and your only thought is the difficulty of making off with their gold."
"I'm no priest," Braf said. The growl in his throat would have terrified a stranger. "A soldier thinks on soldierly things, my lord."
"The only treasure we're interested in escaping from that city with are our lives, my friend," Silvas said
. "That may prove difficult enough. You'll find they bear us no love in that city."
Braf growled again. "It's good we're not here for more, lord. I'd need a few more men than I brought along today."
Silvas greeted that with a full-bellied laugh. Maria joined in hesitantly, but Bay awarded it a laugh and a generous nod.
"Well said, Braf." Silvas wiped at the corner of his eye. "After you've had a chance to look around, you can tell me how many of your doughty gurnetz you'd like for the other job."
Braf harrumphed, then looked across to his soldiers. "We've had time enough to rest. Whenever you're ready, lord."
"A moment more. I want to look on this vista yet."
"You'll see better when we get closer," Bay reminded Silvas.
"But I won't be able to see it all spread before us the way it is now."
"Is it as large as London?" Maria asked as Silvas started to focus his telesight on the distant walls.
"Look with me," Silvas told her, and he felt her vision reaching out and expanding, joining his. "As large as London? Far, far larger. If you put London, Paris, and Rome together, they would fill but a single quarter of the Shining City. Add Constantinople and Athens, and all of the great cities of Islam, and you might come close to the size of this."
There was a wide moat around the outer wall of the Shining City, as wide as the Thames where it passed the Tower of London. Glistening blue water filled the moat to the brink. The towers spaced along the city wall were each larger than the Glade. Within the city were myriad buildings, many of them tall enough to reach above the outer walls. In some quarters, the buildings were spread out. In others, they pressed close against each other. Beyond them, Silvas and Maria could see the top of a second set of walls, higher and more massive than the curtain that enclosed the entire city.
"That is the Citadel of the gods," Silvas said, focusing Maria's attention on the inner wall.
"We're going inside there," she said.
"Yes."
"It might be difficult to get back out if they try to stop us."
"It might," Silvas conceded. "I think it far more likely, though, that they'll be more than happy to see the last of us."
"One way or the other," Bay said, intruding on the discussion. Silvas and Maria ended their survey.
"One way or the other," Silvas echoed. He stood in his stirrups to look back the way they had come. The avenue seemed to stretch forever, a glowing ivory lane that vanished in the distance. There was no sight of the Glade, even when Silvas used his telesight. The distance blurred in a mist his eyes could not penetrate. "We might as well get going."
Once everyone was moving again, Silvas pointed ahead at the Shining City. "That is the ideal toward which men have always reached—Mount Olympus, Valhalla, Paradise, the Heavenly City."
The Shining City lay on a vast plain—an open space with only sky at its horizons—surrounded by fields of grain and vegetables, and pastures crowded with cattle and sheep. The farming areas were neatly separated by well-tended orchards of fruit and nut trees. Small villages clustered around the intersections of roads that mainly led toward the city.
"They know nothing of drought here," Maria observed. "They might feed all of England from this one plain."
"Most like," Silvas agreed. "But no doubt there are mouths enough here to eat it all."
"And then some," Bay contributed. "They're never shy to take the best of whatever can be found elsewhere."
"Do you truly hate the gods so much?" Maria asked the horse.
"They've amply earned any hatred I might bear them," Bay said. "Haven't they earned yours as well? What happened to Mecq was but a game to them. They care less for the lives of people than you do for the ants and crickets you might accidently tread on in the forest."
"Whatever our feelings, I doubt this is the best time to openly air them," Silvas said. "There will be time enough for that once we are safely home within the Seven Towers."
"I know when to hold my tongue," Bay said.
—|—
They needed two hours to cross the plain to the city. Up close, the outer wall of the Shining City appeared to be taller than the keep of the Glade. The Seven Towers might almost have disappeared within the moat. That ditch showed no bottom to curious eyes looking in from above. The water was crystal clear, a decided contrast to the water in moats surrounding castles and cities in the mortal sphere, moats that were also used as sewers. The gate towers at either side of the main gate to the walled city were wider and higher than any tower in England. A stone causeway, thirty feet wide, crossed two-thirds of the moat and ended on a tiny island. The last channel was crossed on a drawbridge. The planks of the drawbridge had been hewn from gigantic trees. Each board was forty feet long, two feet wide, and near a foot in thickness. The links of the chains that controlled the bridge looked to top a hundredweight apiece.
Does the show extend to keeping Titans to wind the bridge up and down? Silvas wondered, but he did not speak.
Two sentries stood in the archway of the gate, one at either side. They appeared to be normal humans, tall and heavily built, clad in brilliantly reflective plate mail, and armed with long spears and swords. Their eyes dismissed the new arrivals with a single glance. Silvas and his companions were allowed entry into the Shining City without challenge.
Beyond the gate and the sixty-foot-thick curtain wall, there was a large plaza. Large enough for all of Mecq to sit in, and then some, Maria thought. And this is but the smallest part of one quarter of this city.
There were hundreds of people in and around the plaza, but no one appeared to pay any attention to the troop entering the city. It was not so much that they seemed to be consciously ignoring the newcomers, but more as if they actually did not notice them.
"Our path remains clear," Silvas observed. Across the square, one street, a broad avenue, showed the same ivory glow that the road from the Seven Towers had displayed. Bay headed for that extension.
Will the path be the straightest and shortest, or will it twist and turn to give us more time to gape? Silvas asked himself. He was modestly disappointed that the way seemed to be as direct as possible from the curtain wall to the Citadel. The way was not short—traversing the outer city took as long as the trek across the plain to the city wall—but it was as direct as possible. The newcomers had to go around to the far side of the Citadel. That was where the gate to the inner city was located.
"The outer city is undoubtedly reserved for mortals and demigods, the servants of the gods," Silvas said, his voice bland.
But even Silvas could not hold back the catch in his breath when they finally turned a corner and came face-to-face with the reality of the Citadel of the gods. It lay on the far side of a plaza that was a half mile in diameter, and the Citadel seemed to reach straight up into whatever heavens might nestle above the land of the gods. The wall was higher than the steeples of any of the newest cathedrals in Europe. The towers set in that wall were higher by half. And the inner towers, the castles, and palaces of the gods, stretched even above those.
"This was where Carillia lived before she came to me," Silvas said, feeling perhaps the deepest awe he had ever experienced. This is what she gave up for the Glade, and for me! The flood of emotion that came over him threatened to destroy his self-control.
—|—
There was another moat around the Citadel, narrower than the one that circled the entire city, but still quite wide and deep. The drawbridge was as solid. The halves of the gate of the Citadel were each forty feet high and twenty feet wide, mounted on rollers that ran in tracks. The two bars that could be slid across to hold the gate closed were tree trunks, each more than two feet in diameter and long enough to span the entire gateway.
"What raises such fears in gods that they put such defenses around themselves?" Maria asked in a voice pitched to reach only Silvas, even though they were in the middle of the drawbridge across the fifty-yard-wide moat.
"I imagine they would say that it is
merely to impress those who can be impressed by it, not because of any fear," Silvas replied. "But if they had no fears, we wouldn't have witnessed the battle at Mecq."
"My father felt fears," Maria said. "He sat in his castle and talked always of needing more soldiers. He dreamed of throwing walls across both passes between our valley and Blethye. The more we suffered from the drought, the grander his dreams became."
"I think these gods are not so much different," Silvas said. He thought of Mikel's visit to the Seven Towers the day before, and he felt a sourness in the pit of his stomach. "The ancients told of gods and goddesses who were as petty as the meanest of mortals. It seems they knew truths that the White Brotherhood has lost sight of."
Inside the walls of the Citadel was another city, larger than any in the mortal world. Lanes and avenues headed off in three directions from the gateway. Smaller castles and palaces with extensive grounds around them were set off from each other. A few more plebeian buildings lined the street that paralleled the Citadel's wall. The scale was so vast that it was impossible to grasp instantly, even for these visitors.
Silvas reined Bay to a halt just after Braf's soldiers cleared the inner edge of the wall and gate towers. The others stopped as well, moving close to Silvas.
"Where do we go now?" Maria asked. The glowing pavement had ended at the drawbridge. There was no trace of a continuation inside the Citadel.
"We move to the center of this square," Silvas said, hesitating hardly at all. "I think we will be met. If not, we'll wait a moment or two, and if that doesn't suffice to bring us a guide or some clear indication of our path, we'll leave the Citadel and find an inn in the outer city to host us until Mikel and his brethren see fit to call."
"I can find the way to where we are meant to go," Bay announced softly. "I feel the call of it."
"I rarely ask your sources, Bay, but is this knowledge your usual sort or something planted for the occasion by our reluctant hosts?"
