by Ken Scholes
Amylé held up the Firstfall Axe, and light glinted off its silver surface.
And even at that distance, he felt her, he smelled her, and it washed over him with an ache of longing that he could never be quite prepared for.
No, Neb realized. It’s more.
Ria stood beside her, and even at that distance he saw Winters in the woman’s posture and face. Both of them wore the same suit of light he wore, and Ria held a pair of long knives still dark and wet from cutting her way through the forest.
And Neb wanted them. It is the Calling. The People had built into themselves a mating drive that increased or decreased based on their population.
And there appear to be only four of us left.
Neb looked over his shoulder. “You really should wait inside Grandmother,” he said again. “There’s nothing you’re going to be able to do out here, Lady Tam.” He didn’t add what he wanted to: I’m not certain of what even I can do.
Jin Li Tam nodded and glanced to Chandra. Then they turned with their children, and when Isaak emerged from the tree they slipped in with Administrator Gras.
Then Neb tucked the crescent away and checked the hand cannon in his pouch as Isaak stepped up to join him. “I have one shot, and it’s not very accurate,” he told the metal man. He’d cleaned it and reloaded it but knew now that only close range would be effective. And he did not know if it could penetrate the blood of the earth that she wore.
“Our statistical likelihood of success is twenty-three percent based on my limited analysis.”
The New Espirans had limited security forces—they lived in hiding with the world only recently becoming aware of their presence. They had no need of an army, and their Codex required secrecy and noninterference as they gathered for the Time of Sowing. Still, they had access to at least some of the weapons of the olden times.
And a dozen mechoservitors like Isaak. No, nothing like Isaak really. They shared the design, though they were much older. But these mechoservitors had no sense of personhood about them, and they were only used as tools to accomplish tasks, then deactivated until needed again.
When Isaak had first vanished into the tree, he’d breached the subject of sending them in as support with the administrator, and she’d grown pale with the notion.
“The council would never permit such a thing,” she had said. He’d tried to press it, but the line of her jaw told him she would not change on this until she saw reason to.
The look on her face as she slipped into the tree told Neb she was closer to seeing reason.
But if she didn’t call them soon, it was going to be too late. And if Amylé and Ria prevailed, he doubted the tree would be only thing brought down by the axe.
“I have Amylé,” Neb said. He tracked her as she ran the meadow, measuring her steps as she leaped ponds and brooks. Then he surged forward, leaped into the closest brook, and willed himself toward her, letting their bodies pull at each other as he evaporated into light and then reemerged from a pond behind her.
He did not wait and he did not call out. Neb threw himself at her back and brought her down. But as they fell, she kept her grip on the axe and twisted. The smell of her so close, the heat of her body against him, disoriented Neb and he clung to her, dodging her knees and feeling her breath upon the bare skin of his neck.
“Our time is done, Nebios. Don’t you see? The People have had millions of years to grow beyond their baser origins on Firsthome. Stand or fall at Lasthome is what they promised, and we fell long ago.”
“We are standing still,” Neb said. “Stand with us.”
Some of her fierceness was losing its edge now that her hands were upon him, and he saw now that her own eyes were wide and her nostrils flared. Then a wave of disgust washed over her face. “See? It’s disgusting. They’ve built survival into our very bodies, but who decided that we deserve to survive?”
Then she jabbed him hard with the handle of the axe even as her knee found a soft place. Amylé tossed him off of her and stood. But when she tried to enter one of the ponds, the blood of the earth refused her.
Amylé roared. “I see you’ve met our Grandmother and she’s favored you.” She turned on the tree. “The time of the People has passed.”
The Grandmother Tree’s voice was in his head. My sap will not serve those who wish me harm. Neb had pushed the blood of the earth to the point of refusing him when it was such that it might harm him, and he could only hope this meant that once Amylé’s suit burned out, she’d lose the strength, speed and protection it afforded. But Neb couldn’t afford to wait, and he had no idea how long her suit was last.
He saw Isaak closing with Ria and watched her knives spark off his metal skin as she danced backward. Then Neb was on his feet and letting the blood of the earth carry him to Amylé. His fist connected with her jaw to send her sprawling, and as he leaped on her again, her feet came up to catch him and toss him aside.
He landed on the pouch and felt the impact of it against his ribs, then rolled off of it quickly to scramble to his feet. As he staggered to the side, he saw Isaak and Ria thrashing about in one of the ponds. And he was vaguely aware of invisible soldiers dodging in and out with their own blades, but they were more the annoyance of summer insects than any kind of real threat or help.
If you can call for help, Neb willed the Grandmother Tree, this would be a time for it.
Amylé swung the axe, and he leaped back but felt the wind of it. She shouted as she swung again, and he dodged as the axe bit deeply into the tree; then as she tugged at it, he drew the hand cannon and pulled back the lever.
Neb stepped up to her, pointed it, and pulled its trigger back hard. It popped and smoked but did not fire as it had earlier.
Then Neb saw Amylé’s smile and heard her laughter as her free hand came up and took hold of him, lifting him into the air.
“It all ends, Nebios. First here and then I bring the Firstfall Axe to the moon.”
Then she tossed him aside and brought the axe down again. And Neb closed his eyes as the Grandmother Tree’s howl of pain filled his skull, and the shaking ground beneath him would not let him gain his feet again.
Jin Li Tam
It was already cacophony in the crowded space within when the Grandmother Tree’s howl of pain was added to the din. Jin Li Tam closed her eyes against it and held Jakob close to her chest as he wailed.
The girl—Marta—had put up quite a fight, screaming and thrashing about. Chandra was busy soothing Amara; Jin with Jakob. That left Administrator Gras to try to calm Isaak’s companion down, and it wasn’t a task her years in bureaucracy had prepared her for. Still, eventually the girl calmed down. Until the tree started screaming.
And through it all, the Grandmother’s voice continued. “I’m sorry, Children. I don’t mean to frighten you.”
“I need to see what’s happening,” Jin said.
Marta’s head shot up. “Me too.”
I’m not certain it will help you.
But Jin simply repeated herself. “I need to see.”
And suddenly, she was far above the clearing looking down, watching the fight unfold as New Espiran soldiers attempted to engage. She saw light glinting off of Isaak’s surface as he closed on Ria and then caught Neb knocking Amylé off her feet out of the corner of her eye, closer to the tree. The axe was buried in the tree.
“They aren’t going to be enough,” she said.
Grandmother’s voice was sober, and Jin suspected it was for her alone. No, Great Mother, they are not.
“What about the New Espiran mechoservitors?”
“We’ve deployed them,” Gras said, “but without translation capacity they are a full day’s run from here. We have airships arriving within an hour, but our vessels have never needed arming. Our technologists have been working on that since the crèche was first breached.”
Jin Li Tam winced as she watched Amylé knock Neb into the side of the tree. She heard the thud of his head.
Gras continue
d. “Last word is that Petronus was en route to the Named Lands, but I don’t think he can be back in time to help us.”
Jin had seen him in the dream, young and strong—closer to her age than his own seventy-odd years. But even with a kin-dragon and the lightways, it would take Petronus longer than they probably had. Jin turned her attention back to the battlefield. Ria and Isaak fought at the edge of the tree line now; she brandished a long branch at him as he advanced upon her. “I think we will have to find a way to help ourselves.”
I am the forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam. I can find this path. Her eyes settled on Ria. The woman didn’t fight with the same grace she’d seen in her younger sister, but she had a brutality fed by wrath. Still, Jin could not imagine this woman harming Jakob or Amara. Certainly she would harm the others, and Jin was fairly confident that her own role as Great Mother no longer held any merit. But could she truly harm the children?
And did that matter? She couldn’t fully grasp what it meant to lose the Grandmother Tree, but she sensed that it could not bode well. And it wouldn’t stop here. The look on Amylé’s face—the look on Ria’s, too—was too close to Sethbert’s on the day that Windwir fell. There was a reason her grandfather had assured his ascendance to the overseer position for the United City-States. There was madness in him, and she started to see it in his eyes and in his voice after secret meetings. When they’d stopped and sat and drank wine to watch Windwir’s pyre on the horizon, he’d laughed.
He had wanted to burn it down. She recognized that same look in Amylé.
“Grandmother,” she said, “is there anything we can do?” She thought about it. “What bargains can be made?”
Some part of the tree screamed as the axe bit into her again. But the voice in Jin Li Tam’s head was calm. There are no optimal bargains to be made.
Isaak went down, and Jin watched the massive branch crash down upon his chest. She saw something spark and heard Marta gasp. She is watching, too.
“The time for optimal is past,” Jin said.
I can restore one of you. Like Petronus was restored.
Jin knew nothing really about what had happened to Petronus. She’d seen him in the dream, and she’d heard through the administrator that he was working closely with their ambassador upon the moon. Most recently, she’d heard that he had found a way to access the kin-dragons. Whatever had happened to him, it had allowed him to unseal the temple and had shaved forty years off his life.
She closed her eyes and focused her words. I would have access to the blood of the earth? I would be as strong as Neb or the others?
For a few hours, yes.
She looked to Amylé and Neb now. He fought about as well as a boy who’d grown up in a library would fight. He’d picked up some skill along the way, but it was not enough against his opponent. Amylé, on the other hand, was practiced precision that smelled more of military training and little practical experience. And Ria fought with the skill of a Blood Guard thrown off balance by her anger.
Jin was already tracing the steps of her knife-dance across the meadow and measuring the distances.
“A few hours would be enough,” she said out loud. The mechoservitors would arrive by then. The airships. Petronus, even, could be here by then.
The Grandmother Tree’s voice was low now, and Jin sensed only for her. No, Great Mother, you do not understand.
What am I not understanding?
If I do this to you, it cannot be undone. You will have only a few hours before your body burns out.
She’d heard about her sister Rae Li Tam’s last days, thrashing about as the blood magicks burned out and slowly killed her on her trip back to the Named Lands. But Petronus survived?
He was restored slowly, and it burns out slowly. But no, he will not survive his restoration either. But Aver-Tal-Ka was hatched as a safeguard in Frederico’s Bargain, and Petronus’s sacrifice will bring about the Sowing.
Jin Li Tam swallowed. “I don’t need to see any more,” she said in a quiet voice. When the fight spun away and she once more stood in the red light of the Grandmother Tree’s heart, she looked at the women there with her. “One of us needs to go out and help them. The Grandmother Tree can make us strong like them.”
“I’ll go,” Marta said.
“No,” Jin Li Tam said. “I’m the only one here with any combat experience.” For the briefest moment the scattered parts of her aligned, and the queen brought her shoulders up even as the mother clung to her son and the Tam within her schemed and spun strategies. She looked at Gras. “Have Petronus bring Rudolfo if he can.” Then she looked at Marta. “See Jakob to Ire and Aedric’s care until Rudolfo arrives if I am not able to.”
She wasn’t sure exactly where the New Espirans had spirited her sister to, but she’d been assured of her safety. Still, their rigid protocols were proving to have put them into a corner with only one escape.
But maybe I can reason with them. She doubted it, but she did not doubt that she could beat them. Amylé lacked experience, and her hand-to-hand skills were mechanical and easily predicted. Even Neb was learning, but taking a beating as he did. And Ria could be manipulated with Jakob and her faith.
Jin Li Tam looked at Jakob. “Mama has to go help.” She kissed his hair, inhaling the scent of him. He clung, still crying, and she handed him over to Marta.
“I want to go with you,” the girl said. “I need to help Isaak.”
Jin Li Tam crouched so that she was level with Marta’s eyes. “I need you to take care of my son, Marta. He is the Prince of the Ninefold Forest and the delight of my heart.” The tears in her eyes ambushed her, along with the lump in her throat. “I will be done quickly, and you will have Isaak back.”
Are you certain, Great Mother?
“I wish everyone would stop calling me that,” she said as the tears finally slipped down her cheeks. “But yes. I’m certain.”
She felt the fleshy branches coil around her and lift her until she was pressed tightly, facefirst, against the tree’s great beating heart.
Taste the root of heritage and give yourself to it.
Jin opened her mouth and felt her body seize and her eyes roll back as the Grandmother’s sap flowed into her. The more she thrashed, the tighter the branches held her, and sudden bursts of light set the world careening away from her again and again until she realized that it was in synchronicity with the beating heart of the Grandmother Tree.
“Clothe me,” Jin Li Tam whispered, and the blood of the earth obeyed her. “Hide me,” she said, and she vanished from view. Then, as the vines released her, she flexed her muscles and felt the strength building within her even as calm and a sense of euphoria flooded her.
Then Jin Li Tam, the forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam and Queen of the Ninefold Forest, kissed her son upon his forehead and slipped out of the Grandmother Tree to find knives and give herself fully to one last dance.
Chapter
24
Ria
The massive branch struck Isaak, and Ria smiled at the sound of metal groaning beneath the force of its impact. The metal man toppled, and she hit him again from behind.
It was strange, fighting with a mechoservitor so much like the Watcher. That ancient mechanical had at one point in the distant past been Ahm Y’Zir’s personal servant and later became the force that helped codify and promote his gospel.
She’d studied on that mechanical’s knee from time to time as a child when the Watcher visited the empire. And his stories about the Wizard King’s early years in exile had always fascinated her, though some he couldn’t share.
But even stranger than fighting the mechoservitor, it amazed her that she held her own. She remembered watching Neb and Isaak fighting the Watcher up in the Machtvolk Territories on the Mass of the Fallen Moon. She’d marveled then, and now she herself was doing damage against him, with strength and speed and focus the likes of which not even the best blood magicks could provide.
You do not need to do this, Child.<
br />
The voice surprised her. And she’d heard it before but couldn’t place it. Still, it wasn’t welcome.
“Get out of my head,” she shouted as she shrugged off a magicked soldier, tossing him into a silver pond. They should’ve evaporated upon contact, but she suspected these New Espiran rats, buried in their warren below the ground, had tricks upon tricks in their hidey-holes.
Which they kept to themselves and used to spy upon us all. Amylé had let her listen to the subaether. And she’d seen the wreckage of the ship at Windwir, the men and women in strange uniforms.
The voice of the Grandmother Tree persisted. You’re scaring the children, Winteria. That stopped her, and Ria looked up at the tree.
“Where are they?”
A voice to her left made her jump. “They are here, Ria. I’m sure she told you.”
She knew the voice, and her eyes scanned for some sign of her. “Great Mother, were you part of Vlad’s grand deception? Or do you finally now see how deeply the kin-wound in House Li Tam runs?” She thrust the branch in the direction of the voice as she spoke. “Of course you see,” Ria said. “Look how easily you took matters into your own hands and spirited Lord Rudolfo’s heir away from him in pursuit of your family’s constant need to move the world.”
Isaak lunged in, and as she turned to fend him off with the branch, she felt a fist from behind into her kidney, driving her to the ground with a howl of pain. “You can’t possibly wish to harm your Crimson Empress and your Child of Promise, Ria. Help us stop Amylé before she kills them and maybe kills us all.”
She doesn’t understand, Ria realized as she pushed herself up from the ground. The pain made her angry, and she let it pour into her words. “They are Abominations. Everything he told us in his gospels were twists and turns on truth and myth to bring back that which Y’Zir had sworn to remove from Lasthome forever when he took the moon from the last of the Younger Gods. He grew old and wise upon their blood, and now his kin wish to bring them back and restore them to power … or worse, start the entire cycle over again.”
