by Kage Baker
He opened his eyes, stared. It wasn’t there, but he could still feel it.
“It’s only a little recess in the wall,” said Lady Svnae soothingly. “The lights and things are just illusions, you see? All you have to do is reach in your hand and take it.”
“He’s not an idiot,” said Willowspear.
“Uh-oh; temperature’s dropping in here,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Come on, Smith.” He looked at Smith, followed Smith’s stare down his arm, saw the fingers clenched around a bar of air. “What is it?”
“I—my arm’s moving by itself,” said Smith.
“It is?” Lord Ermenwyr went pale. The arm and hand were turning, as though to direct the invisible bar like a weapon…
Lady Svnae reached into her bosom and pulled forth what looked like a monocle of purple glass. She peered through it at Smith for a moment.
“He’s got a Cintoresk’s Corona,” she announced in a calm voice, and lunged forward and caught Smith in her arms. The next thing he knew he was being dragged backward up the tunnel at high speed, gazing back at Lord Ermenwyr, who was running along behind, knees up and elbows pumping. It was suddenly much warmer.
They emerged into the firelit cavern again, and Willowspear and Greenbriar came panting after them. The other monks, who had now given up any attempt to meditate, watched them fearfully.
“What happened?” Willowspear asked.
“We all came very close to getting killed,” said Lord Ermenwyr, wheezing as he collapsed on the cot.
“Get off of there,” said Lady Svnae, shoving him as she set Smith down. She took out the monocle once more and examined him closely through it. “Tell me, Child of the Sun, are you experiencing any unusual symptoms not related to the poison? Perhaps voices in your head?”
“No,” said Smith dully. He watched as she raised his left arm cautiously, palpitated along it as far as the hand. “It felt as though I was holding something cold. An iron bar.”
“You think he was being possessed?” Lord Ermenwyr asked his sister, looking speculative. “Because of proximity to the Key?”
“I think I need to study the Book of Fire again,” said Lady Svnae. “I think I might have missed something crucial.”
“Well, this is a fine time to figure it out,” said Lord Ermenwyr pettishly, groping for his smoking tube.
“Better now than thirty seconds later, when we all might have been blasted with balefire,” she retorted. “Child of the Sun—”
“Smith,” he said.
“Interesting choice of an alias. Well, Smith, have you had any strange dreams recently? Any kind of psychic or spiritual conversation with your ancestors?”
Smith was unwilling to talk about his dream, but she looked earnestly into his eyes. Her own were wide, dark and lovely. Unwilling, he found himself saying: “I might have. But it didn’t make any sense.”
“No, I don’t suppose it would,” she said, and patted his cheek. “That’s all right. You just lie down here and rest, now, Smith. And if you feel the least bit odd, especially in that hand, please tell us. Will you do that, Smith dear?”
“All right,” he said, too dizzy to be annoyed by her tone of voice. He sank back on the cot and closed his eyes.
He heard the rustle of her gown as she went somewhere else, and the faint thump and crackle as someone added wood to the fire. He heard Lord Ermenwyr settle down, muttering to himself, and a noise suggestive of a boot flask being uncorked and drunk from…
Sound went away, and he was flying over a plain, and he knew so many terrible things.
There below him was the city of Troon. Burning in the air above it was the formula for its destruction: a certain smut introduced into the barley, four ounces of a certain poison poured into its central well, one letter containing a certain phrase sent anonymously to its duke, one brick pried loose from the foundation of a certain house. These things accomplished, Troon would fall. And then…
Here was Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees. One water conduit casually vandalized and one firebrand tossed into a certain tree, hung with moss, would begin the sequence of events that would kill the city. And its survivors might flee, but not to Troon, and then…
Here was Mount Flame City, seething, pulsing, so overripe with clan war that all it would take would be one precisely worded insult painted on a certain wall, and all four of its ruling houses would lie in ashes. And so would the great central marketplace of Mount Flame, and so would all the little houses who depended on it.
Here was Karkateen: a brick thrown through a window. A suggestion made to a shopkeeper. A rumor spread. A sewer grating removed. These things accomplished, in a certain order and at a certain moment, and Karkateen would be gone, and with it its great library, and with the library all the answers to certain desperate questions that would soon be asked in Troon, in Konen Feyy, in Mount Flame. Deliantiba and Blackrock were already in the throes; they’d need only the slightest push to complete their own work. And Salesh…
But wasn’t it grand, to have secret knowledge of such terrible things?
His arm hurt.
But wasn’t it a finer destiny than he had ever supposed he was intended for, high and lonely though it might be? Being the Chosen Instrument of the Gods? His arm hurt but he was flying high, beside a sharp version of himself that was cool and clever as he had always wanted to be, an elegant stranger made of diamond and chrome, the Killer, sneering down from a great distance at the insects crawling below. Stupid bastards. Wasteful. Quarrelsome. Banal. Ignorant and proud of it. And every year more screaming brats born to swell their numbers, and every year more urban blight on the land to house them all. Better if the whole shithouse went up in flames. Everyone said so. His arm hurt.
“Heavens, what’ve you done to your arm?” Mrs. Smith was peering at it.
“It really hurts,” he told her, obscurely proud. “It’s turned into blue steel. Isn’t it fine and lonely?”
“You ought to run that under the cold tap, dear,” she advised.
“No!” he said. “Because then it’d rust. It’s better to burn than to rust. Everybody says so.”
She just laughed sadly, shaking her head.
Smith sat up, gasping, drenched with cold sweat, and saw Lord Ermenwyr scrambling to his feet. The monks were hastening out of the chamber. Someone, somewhere, was shouting.
“What’s happening?” Smith asked.
“The Steadfast Orphans have called for a parley,” said Lord Ermenwyr.
“What are we going to do?”
“Nothing,” the lordling replied. “They don’t want to talk to us. I think we’d best eavesdrop, though, don’t you? Just in case the holy brothers allow themselves to be persuaded, and we have to make a hasty escape?”
“Can we do that?” Smith got to his feet and swayed. The room spun gently for a moment, and he found Willowspear beside him, keeping him upright.
“He should rest,” Willowspear told his lord, who shook his head grimly.
“Not alone. He needs someone to keep an eye on him, don’t you, Smith? We’re not going far. I found a nice little spy hole while you were asleep. This way, if you please.”
They set off down another of the winding corridors in the rock. Smith walked without much help, and was mildly surprised that his foot wasn’t giving him trouble. He had a feeling that if he took his boot off, he’d never get it back on; but who knew how much longer he’d live, anyway? His arm, however, was still throbbing.
They rounded a bend, and he was temporarily dazzled by what seemed a blaze of illumination at the end of the passage. As they approached, it resolved into wan afternoon light, coming through a barred and partially shuttered opening in the rock. Closer still and he saw that pigeons had nested in here for generations, and the last few feet of the passage were chalky with ancient guano, littered with feathers and bits of old nest.
“Phew.” Lord Ermenwyr drew out his smoking tube and lit it. “Nasty, eh?”
He stuck the tube between his teeth, clasped his
hands together under his coattails, and stood scowling down through the bars. Smith and Willowspear edged closer, treading with care, and looked down too.
They saw the ranks of green tents, and the assembled Yendri standing in tight formation before them, tall unsmiling figures each in an identical baldric, each one bearing a simple cane tube. A shimmer in the air, a faint haze only, betrayed the presence of the Adamant Wall that kept them from coming closer; now and again a hapless bird or insect struck it, bouncing away stunned or dead. Close to the Wall stood the Yendri leader, cloaked in green sewn with white stars, and he was addressing someone unseen, speaking at great length.
“I can’t understand him,” said Smith.
“He’s speaking Old Yendri,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “Nobody’s used it in years. It’s an affectation. They speak it to show how pure they are.”
“Pure!” Willowspear glared down at them. “After what they’ve done?”
“What’s he saying?” Smith asked.
“Oh, about what you’d expect,” Lord Ermenwyr replied, puffing smoke. “Hand over the abominations, that we may cleanse the world of them and so bring the Suffering-Deluded-Ensorcelled Daughter so much closer to sanity and blah blah blah. I think he’s just warming up to his main demand, though.”
Someone else was speaking now: Greenbriar, out of sight directly below them. He sounded angry, accusatory.
“Good for him,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked. “He’s telling them off properly. Asking the Grand Master how he dares to wear the Star-Cloak. And … now he’s just said he can’t drop the Adamant Wall. And … ha! He just said something that doesn’t really translate, but the closest equivalent would be, ‘Go home and simulate mating with a peach.’ ”
There was a crunch of twigs. Svnae came up behind them, bending low and holding the train of her gown up out of the debris. She had slung a bow and a quiver of arrows over one shoulder.
“I’d never have thought he’d use that kind of language,” she said in mild surprise, peering over Lord Ermenwyr’s shoulder at the scene below. “However would a monk learn about the Seventeenth Shameful Ecstasy of—” She noticed Smith and broke off, blushing.
The cloaked man spoke again, quietly, with implacable calm. Before he had finished, Greenbriar shouted at him in indignation. It was the closest Smith had ever heard to a Yendri being shrill.
“What’s going on now?” he asked.
Lord Ermenwyr snorted smoke. “He says it’s all our fault,” he replied. “That we made the destruction of the garden inevitable by taking refuge here. They are not responsible. And Greenbriar just called him—well, you’d have to be a Yendri to appreciate the full force of the obscenity, but he just called him a Warrior.”
“Well, isn’t he?” Smith inquired.
“Yes, but ordinarily they hire mercenaries from your people,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “They don’t like getting their own hands dirty. This is some kind of elite force, I suppose.”
“You know what this reminds me of?” said Svnae in a faraway voice. “Watching the grown-ups through the stair railings when we were supposed to be in bed.”
“Staying awake to see whether Daddy’d drink enough to discover the eyeball I’d hidden in the bottom of the decanter,” Ermenwyr agreed fondly. Then his smile faded. The man in the cloak was speaking again. He spoke for a long while, and the lordling listened in silence. So did Willowspear and Svnae.
“What is it?” Smith asked at last.
“He’s calling on them to put aside their differences and rise against a common enemy,” Lord Ermenwyr replied at last, not looking at Smith. “He means your people, Smith. He’s talking about Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches now. He says it’ll be profaned if they don’t act. And he … I thought so. He knows the Key of Unmaking is here. He says he’ll spare them if they’ll deliver up the Key to him. Now we know why he didn’t bring mercenaries from your race, Smith.”
Greenbriar had been making some kind of reply.
“And he’s telling him no, of course,” Lord Ermenwyr went on. He fell silent as the voices went on down below. He turned to regard Smith with a cold thoughtful stare. Lady Svnae turned too, and though there was a certain pity in her gaze, it too was terribly thoughtful.
“What’re they saying now?” Smith stammered.
Willowspear cleared his throat. “Er … the Grand Master of the Orphans is saying that the brothers have been deceived. He just told them that all the high-yield cultivars and medicinal herbs they’ve been growing here have been intended to help the Children of the Sun, not the Yendri. He said Mother betrayed them.”
“Why would your mother want to help us?” asked Smith.
“She has her reasons,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Now… he’s saying there have been signs and portents that the Star-Cloaked Man is returning to this world. He will be the … hm … the Balancer. He will bring harmony. They are confident he will come in wrath to take by her hair the disobedient—” He stopped, aghast.
“What?” Smith asked.
“Just something really nasty about Mother,” said Lord Ermenwyr briskly, though he had gone very pale. “And I’ll have to kill him. Perhaps not today, though. Sister mine, I have a getaway boat and six big bodyguards watching it for me. Are you positive there aren’t any other hidden back doors to this place?”
“We could make one,” Svnae replied.
“I’ve got a remarkable rock-melting spell.”
“An explosion might be quicker.”
“Just what I was about to say.”
“We can’t just leave!” said Willowspear. “What about the brothers? What about the Key of Unmaking?”
“The brothers will be fine as long as the Adamant Wall holds, and as for the Key—Smith, old man, I’m sorry, but your race will have to take their chances. I make it a point never to try to pinch anything that belongs to a god, especially when he’s paying attention.”
“If it’s too dangerous for us to take the Key out of there, it will be even more dangerous for the Orphans to try,” said Lady Svnae. “Cheer up! Perhaps nothing very bad will happen after all.”
“Other than a race war?” Smith demanded.
“Well, er—” Lady Svnae was searching very hard for a response both reassuring and noncommittal when there was a shout from beyond the window.
They all turned to look. The shout had been a summoning.
From the back ranks of the Yendri came a very young man, striding confidently to the front. He halted before the Grand Master and made deep obeisance. The man put his hands on the boy’s head in a gesture of blessing. Then he turned and addressed Greenbriar.
They listened at the window in silence. Suddenly, Lady Svnae put her hands to her face in horror. Lord Ermenwyr’s smoking tube fell out of his mouth.
“That tears it,” he said. “Willowspear, Smith, we’re going now. I hope the monks have the sense to run.”
“Why?” Smith peered out at the boy, who was standing proudly beside the man in the cloak.
“They’re going to take out the Adamant Wall,” Lord Ermenwyr replied over his shoulder, for he had already grabbed his sister by the arm and was pulling her down the passageway with him. “Come on!”
Willowspear seemed to have taken root where he stood, so Smith caught his arm and began to stagger after the lordling and his sister. “Let’s go, son.”
Willowspear turned his face away and ran. “Innocent blood,” he said. “Willingly offered. The boy will let them behead him, and his blood will break the Wall.”
Smith could think of nothing to say in reply. He concentrated on following Lady Svnae, just close enough to avoid stepping on the train of her gown. He congratulated himself on the fact that he was able to run so well, all things considered. Thinking about that, and watching where he put his feet, kept him from dwelling on the fact that his hand was cold as ice and turning blue.
Down and around they went, through long echoing darkness pierced now and again by the light of a distant barred window. The
air was a roar of echoes. Something was echoing louder than their footsteps. Something was loud as surf on a lee shore—
The train of Lady Svnae’s gown stopped moving.
Smith cannoned into her. She felt like a warm and beautifully upholstered wall. He staggered backward and collided with Willowspear, who cried, “What is it?”
It was a moment before anyone answered him, but the silence was amply filled by the thunder of their beating hearts and the other sound, the louder sound. Smith, who had been a mercenary, knew what it was. He felt a sharper pain in his hand and, looking down, saw that he had pulled a stone from the wall. He hefted it, getting the balance, knowing exactly where it should be fractured to make an edged weapon.
“The battle cry sounds familiar,” said Lady Svnae.
“Nine Hells,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “It’s Daddy.”
Lady Svnae turned on her heel decisively. “This way,” she said, and they followed her up yet another tunnel, one with quite a lot of daylight at the end. It was bright because it opened out on a gallery of stone, lower in the face of the rock than their previous vantage point but still well above the floor of the valley. It had clearly been cut from the rock for persons wishing to enjoy a spectacular view. The view now was indeed spectacular, if not exactly enjoyable.
The Adamant Wall was still in place. The order of the previous vista had been destroyed, the neat green ranks broken up by a chaos of black and silver that was streaming over the hill to the south. An army, liveried and fearsome, had arrived.
It was like no battle Smith had ever seen. More horrible, if possible, because many of the Yendri stood straight and let themselves be cut down by the invading force, but it appeared that they did so to enable their comrades to advance on their targets without interference.
They made for three targets.
One ran with the demon-army in its black plate and silver mail, and he was a white stag of branching antlers, silver-collared. He bounded, feather-light, across the tips of their spears. He dropped like a bolt of lightning on the Yendri. Where he struck his hooves slashed, his antlers raked. Yet the Yendri fought one another to get at him, though they fell bleeding at his feet and were trampled. He dodged the green darts and danced on the bodies of the slain, belling his frenzy, exulting.
