by Sharon Shinn
But all these concerns went out of his head as he descended even closer to the ground. He was hovering a few hundred feet above the Eyrie and below him he could see—clearly delineated against the rich blackness of the night—that Velora was on fire.
C hapter T hirty
Susannah woke with a start in the middle of the night. Her heart was hammering and her breath came too fast. She must have been dreaming, though she had no memory of a nightmare. She sat up carefully, trying not to jostle her sleeping companions, and took in deep breaths of air.
But she still felt troubled and panicked, too restless to sleep. There had been times in the Lohora camp—and, before that, the Tachita tents—that she had been roused from sleep in the middle of the night, and always with some cause. The fire had grown mischievous, a child had cried out, there was some danger approaching on silent feet. Had there been a noise or a scent, here in the slumbering halls of Mount Sinai, that had jerked her awake and put all her senses on alert?
Shivering a little in the cold, she slipped out of bed and threw on a robe, then crossed to the door and stuck her head out. No sounds, no odors, nothing to rouse her to fear.
But something had wakened her.
She paused only long enough to add slippers and a lighted candle to her ensemble, and then she quietly left the room. The untenanted halls were ghostly and full of whispers, though there was no feel of menace in the dorm wards or the women’s halls, as Susannah made her way quietly through the living quarters. Nothing disturbing in the kitchens or the dining room. No aura of danger in the public chambers. No sense of trouble at all.
But when she glanced down the long corridor that led to Mahalah’s workroom, she saw a faint light at the end of the hall.
Soundlessly, she stepped along the stone floor, using her hand to shield her candle flame from the wind of her passage. She listened intently, but she could hear nothing coming from the big central room—no voices, no sound of weeping, no noise of working. She paused a moment at the open doorway, and then stepped in.
Mahalah was sitting in front of the interface, making unreadable words appear on the glowing blue screen. There was no one else in the room.
Susannah had made no sound, but Mahalah wheeled her chair around the instant that she entered. The oracle was smiling. “Susannah,” she said. “What keeps you up so late at night?”
“I’m sorry,” Susannah said at once. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“No bother,” Mahalah said. “I’m often up at all hours. But I usually have every inch of Mount Sinai to myself when it’s this late.”
“Something woke me up,” Susannah said. “I thought I would check and see if there was anything amiss. But I’ve been through every hall and found nothing disturbed.”
Mahalah smiled at her kindly. “I think you might be dreaming,” she suggested.
Susannah put a hand to her forehead. Indeed, she felt strange, almost disembodied. She could feel her fingers against her brow, but they seemed disconnected from her body. “I think you might be right,” she agreed.
“But I’m glad you’ve come here tonight,” Mahalah said. “There’s something I’ve been wanting you to see, and you can only see it if you’re dreaming.”
That made no sense, but no one ever made sense in a dream. “What is it?” Susannah asked, stepping closer.
Mahalah gestured toward something in the middle of the room. “Do you see that little box lying there on the floor? Go stand by it, and then wait for a few moments. I’ll tell you when to close your eyes.”
Stranger and stranger, but now that she knew she was dreaming, Susannah was at peace. Obediently she crossed the few yards to the spot that Mahalah had indicated. She stooped to examine the box, a small wooden container inlaid with rows of ebony. “What’s in this?” she asked.
“The box means nothing. It merely marks the place,” Mahalah said. “Now, close your eyes and count to—to fifty, I think. That should be long enough. And don’t be afraid. You will be quite safe.”
“I’m not afraid,” Susannah said, and closed her eyes.
She began counting, not very fast because she felt too sleepy and languorous to hurry through her numbers. Her skin felt alive with static, as if a storm was about to pass through, and her robe stirred around her as if there was a breeze in Mahalah’s chamber. But she kept her eyes closed and continued counting.
Suddenly her whole body was seized with magic. It was as if her skin turned inward and her bones turned outward, as if her lungs shrank down while her head expanded. She kept her fingers curled around her candle, except she could no longer feel the candle; she could no longer feel her fingers, or her elbows, or her toes. Keeping her eyes tightly shut, she kept on counting, though it seemed she had been counting for centuries. When she reached the number fifty, she opened her eyes.
She was in a place of glass and ivory and silver.
Pivoting on one heel, she turned slowly to take in the whole picture. Oh, this was nothing new—she had been here hundreds of times before. There was the wide, blank screen with the flickering lines; there was the incomprehensible map laid across a translucent surface. At stations scattered throughout this brightly lit chamber were variations of the interface that Mahalah used in her own chamber, and that Susannah had seen so many times in her dreams. Even the chairs and the vents high on the walls looked familiar. Even the floor, tiled in smooth, unbroken white. Even the hallways that branched invitingly away.
“Mahalah was right,” she said aloud, though quite softly. “I am merely dreaming.”
She set down her candle, because there was no need of it in this well-illuminated place. Besides, the flame had gone out sometime while she was counting.
“I have been here so many times before,” she said. “I wonder what I am supposed to be looking at now?”
“Susannah,” said a voice so deep and resonant that she imagined it was what winter would sound like, but so well-known to her that it was almost comforting to hear it now. “You have come to visit me at last.”
She almost laughed. “I have come to visit you again,” she said. “Surely I have been here many times before in my dreams.”
“Many times,” he agreed. “But this time I can actually see you.”
“Is it Yovah who has sent me the dreams of this place?” she asked. “For I do not feel afraid, and yet this place is somewhat fearsome.”
“Yes, Jovah has communicated with you,” the voice replied. “For there is a task that must be done, and only you can do it.”
“I will be happy to do whatever the god wishes,” she said obligingly. “But why am I the only one who can perform this duty?”
“Mahalah is too frail, and everyone else too frightened,” he said.
She shook her head, for it seemed she would get no direct answer; but again, that was the way of dreams. “What would you like me to do?” she said.
“Do you see the corridor directly before you? The one with the triple lights at the end of the hall.”
She looked in two wrong directions before she spotted the markers he indicated, and then she stepped forward. The white tile looked so smooth and cool that she wanted to take off her slippers merely to feel it beneath her feet, but she wasn’t sure where she was and she didn’t want to be disrespectful, so she kept her slippers on. “What next?” she asked when she reached the designated intersection.
“Now turn to your left, and walk until you reach a door marked with a numeral two.”
Again, she followed his directions and came to the location he had described. “Go down the stairwell and exit through the door at the bottom.”
The stairwell was like nothing she had ever seen before, a single spiraling twist of open steps made of metal or glass or—what it really looked like—frozen foam. She kept her hand on the reed-thin railing and descended cautiously. She was relieved to step through the door and out into another corridor that was constructed and lit just as the hallways above were.
“And
now?”
“Down this hallway before you, toward the row of blinking red lights. Stop when you get to the door marked with this word—” And he spoke something that she didn’t understand. It came to her, in a quick fanciful thought, that Jossis might have used such a word. The arrangement of vowels and consonants sounded like the invader’s speech, or what little she had heard of it.
“I didn’t understand,” she said.
“Just walk slowly forward. I will tell you when to stop.”
So she traversed the corridor, which seemed lined with windowless doors that guarded who knew what collection of secrets. Many of the doors bore small placards that announced their names, or perhaps what lay inside, but Susannah could read none of the words.
“Stop here,” the voice directed. “Open the door on your left.”
She tried, but the door stayed shut. “I think it’s locked,” she said.
“Do you see the flat metal plate above the handle?” he asked. “Lay your palm on that until you feel the metal heat up. Then lift your hand very quickly.”
Wondering, because this had never been part of the dream before, Susannah did as he bid her. The metal plate was as cool and smooth as she imagined the white tile would be, and she did not think the temperature of her hand would be enough to warm it. But sure enough, after she had stood there less than a minute, she felt a fever surge through the flat metal, and she hurriedly withdrew her hand.
“Enter the room,” the voice said, and she did so.
Rarely had her dreams contained any vision like this, and for a moment she was afraid to step forward. It was as if she had skipped up a street made of moonbeams to come to rest on an avenue of stars. One quarter of the room was nothing but glass, and it all seemed to overlook the constellations. She felt faint and dizzy, as if she was on top of Mount Galo—on top of a mountain ten times higher than Galo—and as if she stood on the very peak of the mountain and looked up into the sky. She stayed very close to the doorway, where the floor and the walls were solid, and hesitated before asking for her next directive.
“Now what would you like me to do?” she said at last in a small voice.
“I need you to reposition my artillery.”
For a moment, Gaaron felt himself freeze into place above the mountain. For a moment, he could not actually comprehend what he was seeing. It was not the entire city that was on fire, but bits and pieces—the southern perimeter was completely ablaze, as well as most of the eastern bazaar. Here and there, a residential district was in flames, or a solitary building, or a low patch of land that might have been a park. But all the fires were growing, leaping higher, spreading out searching tendrils of flame to the next block, the next building. Soon enough, there would be nothing of the city left.
As he watched, still stunned, a fresh tongue of flame licked out and darted into the safe heart of the city.
Which was when he realized invaders were below, sending their bolts of fire into Velora.
A cry ripped from his throat, and he suddenly remembered to breathe. And, as suddenly, remembered how to work his wings, to dive closer to the ground so that he could see the marauders and gauge how many of them there were.
There appeared to be hundreds, their dark bodies illuminated by their own trail of luminous destruction. The whole southern half of the city was ringed by massed black figures, two and three deep. The Edori tents and Jansai wagons that had stood here only a day ago were gone, leveled to ashes. The invaders marched slowly forward, fire sticks pointed before them, scuffing through the cinders of the ruined camps.
One of the strangers saw Gaaron’s shadow against the night sky and shouted. Instantly, half a dozen fire sticks veered Gaaron’s way. He banked sharply and then strained forward, hoping to escape the range of their venom. Heat licked along his bare arm but he saw no arrow of fire; the flame must have evaporated inches from his skin.
He darted deeper into the city, away from the advancing terror, desperate to see how matters lay. A few of the bigger buildings were on fire, burning with a frenzied intensity that promised to leap to the neighboring awning and the roof across the alley. By their light, he could tell that the streets were filled with milling, screaming people, everyone running for safety, everyone maddened with fear. Gaaron was close enough to see a small girl standing alone on a corner, eyes closed, fists clenched, her mouth open in a perpetual shriek. Even over the din of fire and shouting, Gaaron thought he could single out her thin, wild cry.
“Gaaron!” A harsh voice called his name and he wheeled around to see one of the Velora merchants waving both arms to him. The man was grimy and flushed; he looked as if he had barely escaped from the falling timbers of a blazing house. “Gaaron, do something!” the man shouted up at him.
“I will,” Gaaron called back, and drove his wings down hard against the hot air of the burning city.
He had not risen a hundred feet above the ground when rocks began raining down from the sky.
“Gaaron!” a new voice cried just as he jerked himself upward, beating his wings frantically to escape this fresh danger. Suddenly, the air around him was seething with the flexing of many angel wings. The currents were so rough from their random beating that it was hard to keep himself aloft.
“Gaaron!” someone else shouted, and he found himself in a circle of maybe twenty angels, hard to see in the dark by the starlight above and the firelight below. “They’re attacking Velora!”
“How long have they been here?” he shouted back.
“I don’t know!” the voice replied. He thought it was Enoch, but the speaker was so hoarse that he couldn’t be sure. “We’ve brought—we just flew out here a little while ago—we’ve got bags and bags of rocks, we’ve been throwing them down—”
“Good!” he called. “Have you managed to hit any of them?”
“Too far away to tell,” came another voice. Ahio, he thought. “But I’ve seen some of their fire sticks shooting astray, and I think that’s because we’ve knocked someone over.”
“You’ll have to get closer,” Gaaron said. “Aim for their heads as best you can. But not too close—you don’t want them to turn their fire sticks on you.”
“Gaaron, what else can we do?” Chloe.
“Nothing yet,” Gaaron replied tersely. “First I must pray for thunder.”
There was a general exclamation at that and a moment of rough air almost impossible to negotiate as all the angels crowded closer to hear more. But Gaaron pushed himself a yard or two higher, away from their questions and their dangerous wingbeats.
“Ahio, come with me,” he directed. “The rest of you—closer to Velora, and don’t stop flinging down your stones. I do not know how long it will take the god to respond to our prayer.”
“But Gaaron—”
“But can you be sure where the lightning will strike?”
“Gaaron, the city will be leveled in half an hour!”
“Gaaron—”
“But, Gaaron—”
He ignored them all, left them all behind with a determined downbeat of his wings. The god was so far above them that he could not see the danger that threatened. Gaaron must go practically to Jovah’s doorstep to ensure that the god could hear.
He pointed his chin upward and followed his own trajectory as high as he could go, up through the black heavens and into the regions that belonged solely to the god. It was so cold that his feathers turned to frost; the blood in his veins iced over. The air was so thin that his head pounded with pain, and a thin soprano shrieking began sounding in his ear. He could barely breathe this high up. He was not sure he could sing.
He hovered a moment, investing great energy in each drag and uplift of his wings, letting his lungs accustom themselves to the knife-thin air. He was so light-headed that he had forgotten Ahio was to follow him, and so he was astonished to see a pale, fluttering shape materialize beside him in the uninhabited reaches of space.
“Gaaron,” Ahio said, and his beautiful voice sounded ti
nny and faraway. “This is too high.”
“We will sing from here,” Gaaron said, and opened his mouth to begin his prayer.
The notes fell out of him like sparks or fireflies—tiny, beautiful, and winged with fire. He saw them drift away from him and spiral upward, as if wafted by invisible smoke on summer air. He sang one entire verse before Ahio’s voice dropped in, dark and smooth as polished amber. Their voices blended, and the images faded, and now the world around Gaaron was turned to music. The stars sent up faint trumpet blasts; the wind soughed through with an oboe plaint; and the braided voices of the angels gained force and beauty as they chorused their way up the chilly ramps of the atmosphere to the dark, vaulted chambers of the god.
They sang for an hour, their voices growing more powerful with every melodic line. Their lungs filled up on this insufficient air and their hearts beat in quick, metronomic strokes to send the blood racing more industriously through their bodies. Ahio’s voice glided under Gaaron’s, providing a structure, a place to gather; Gaaron’s voice leapt upward from the springboard of Ahio’s strength. They flung their prayer to the god’s attention, and felt it go crashing through the windows of Jovah’s house.
Yet, no thunderbolt fell. No lightning erased the stars.
Once again—singing the prayer over again from the beginning. Gaaron felt himself starting to tire. His wings were woven of icicles; the feathers tinkled together like crystal quills. He weighed a thousand pounds, two thousand. If he folded his wings and plummeted to the earth, his impact would destroy Velora and every invader within fifty miles. He was so cold he could not distinguish any sensation, internal or external. He was cold enough to be the source of winter itself.
