Ventus Part 20

He would make for the forest. It was a day or two's travel away, but he wouldn't feel he could rest until he was under the trees, gauze or no gauze. And then, if he survived, he would try to find his way home.

Or would he? He had started walking, and paused now. He might lose the Heaven hooks for a while, but something else would come after him in time. The Winds were everywhere. He had only delayed the inevitable--unless he were to wear this accursed cloth for the rest of his life, and shun any community that the Hooks might dismantle to reach him.

Jordan realized that if he survived, it was going to be as an outcast, unless he was willing to risk everyone around him. Was that how he was going to end his days? Hiding from G.o.d and man alike in the forest?

He lowered his head, and wept as he ran.

A few minutes later there was a brilliant flash of light in the sky, like sheet lightning but as bright as the sun. A few seconds later, a violent bang and grumble of thunder sounded.

The vagabond moon had lit up like a lantern in the flash. In the aftermath of the thunder, Calandria and Axel stood from their digging to watch as the moon dipped lower, until its base disappeared behind the trees. Then it seemed to crumple like the finest tissue, even as it continued to move east. Over the next few minutes it spent itself across the fields, in a trail of girders and torn skin many miles long. There were no fires, no explosions, and only faint distant rumblings as it fell.

It came down closer to Jordan, and he saw the bottom ring with its mouth full of hooks touch the earth and shatter, spilling stone blocks, trees and human figures. Many of those figures lived, and struggled free of the wreckage; the moon had not fallen straight down, but glided slowly into the earth at an angle. Most of those alive when it hit were still alive afterward.

Jordan saw this, but he could not stop, because he could not be sure some new horror would not follow. He continued walking, nursing a st.i.tch in his side. If he could not go home because of the voices in his head; and if Calandria May was wrong about Armiger, as he had begun to suspect; and if even she could not prevent the Heaven hooks from coming after him; then he would have to find help elsewhere.

He was no longer walking east. His goal now lay to the southwest.

When the aerostat had finished falling, Calandria May knelt down, closed her eyes, and signaled her s.h.i.+p. Axel watched as her brows knit, and she frowned. She remained kneeling for longer than he thought should be necessary. When she opened her eyes, she looked at him with an expression of tired acceptance.

"The Desert Voice doesn't answer," she said. "I'm afraid, Axel, that we may be stranded."

Part Two.

The Wife of the World.

14.

...We shall win new feelings, superior to love and loyalty, from the field of the human heart.

General Lavin put down the book, and rubbed his eyes. It was late. He should be sleeping, but instead he kept returning to these d.a.m.nable pages, to stare at words written both by a familiar hand, and an alien mind.

Distant sounds of crackling fires, canvas flapping and quiet grumbled conversation rea.s.sured him. His army sprawled around him, thousands of men asleep or, like him, uneasy in darkness. Lavin felt a tension in the air; the men knew they were close to battle, and while no one was happy, they were at least satisfied that waiting would soon be over.

He had closed the book four times this evening, and every time began pacing the narrow confines of his tent until, drawn equally by loathing and hope, he returned to it. The things Queen Galas said in this, a collection of private letters liberated from one of her experimental towns, were worse than heresies--they attacked basic human decency. Yet, Lavin's memories of her from Court were so strong, and so at odds with the picture these writings suggested, that he was half-convinced they were someone else's, attributed to her.

This was the hope that kept him returning to the book--that he would discover some proof in the writing that these were not the writings of the queen of Iapysia. He wanted to believe she was isolated, perhaps even imprisoned in her palace, and that some other, evil cabal was running the country.

But the turns of phrase, the uncanny self-a.s.surance of the voice that spoke in this pages; they were undeniably hers.

He sighed, and sat down in a folding camp chair. He was having more nights like this, as the siege lengthened and Galas continued to refuse to surrender. The strain was showing in his face. In the lamplit mirror his eyes were hollows, and lines stood out around his mouth. Those lines had not been there last summer.

Some kind of discussion broke out in front of his tent. Lavin frowned at the tent flap. They'd wake the dead with those voices. He cared for his men, but sometimes they behaved like barbarians.

"Sir? Sorry to disturb you sir."

"Enter." The flap flipped aside and Colonel Hesty entered. The colonel wore riding gear, and his collar was open to the autumn air. He looked haggard. Lavin tried to take some satisfaction in that: he was not the only one who found it hard to sleep tonight.

"What is it?" Lavin did not make to rise, nor did he offer Hesty a seat. He realized he had spoken in a certain upper cla.s.s drawl he was usually at pains to disguise from his men. They seemed to think it was effete. With a grimace, he sat up straighter.

"They've found something. Over in the quarry." Something in the way he said it caught Lavin's full attention.

"What do you mean, 'found something'? A spy?"

Hesty shook his head. "No. Not... a man. Well, sort of a man."

Lavin rolled his head slowly and was rewarded as his neck cracked. "I know it's late, Hesty, and one's vocabulary becomes strained at such times. But could you expand on that a little?" He reached for his coat, which he had carelessly slung across the back of a chair.

Hesty raised one eyebrow. "It's hard to explain, sir. I'd rather show you." He was almost smiling.

Lavin joined him outside. The air was cool, but not yet cold. Autumn came late and gently on the edge of the desert; south, in the heart of the land, it never came at all.

South and west lay the experimental towns, now mostly razed. Flashes of memory came unbidden to Lavin, and he suppressed them with a shudder. "It's hard to sleep, now that we're so close," he said.

Hesty nodded. "Myself as well. That's why I think a little mystery might do you some good. I mean, a different kind of mystery."

"Does this have to do with the queen?"

"No. At least, only very indirectly. Come." Hesty grinned and gestured at two horses who waited patiently nearby.

Lavin shook his head, but mounted up. He could see the palace over the peak of the tent. Looking away from that, he tried to find the path to the quarry. The valley was a sea of tents, some lit by the faint glow of fires. Columns of grey smoke rose from the sea and disappeared among the stars.

Hesty led. Lavin watched his back swaying atop the horse, and mused about sleep. Some nights he struggled with exhaustion like an enemy, and got nowhere. Maybe Hesty did the same thing, a surprising thought; Lavin respected the man, would even be a bit afraid of him were their positions not so firmly established, he the leader, Hesty the executor. After one battle, he remembered, Hesty's sword arm had been drenched in blood. Lavin had killed a man himself, and felt proud and ashamed, as one does, until he saw Hesty. Hesty had been grim, his mind bent to the task of securing the town--unconcerned with himself. There was a lesson in that.

It was possible the man was acting that way now--simply doing his duty to try to ensure a night's distraction for his commanding officer. Lavin smiled. It might work, too. Sometimes the only way to win the struggle with insomnia was to let it carry you for a while--ride it like he rode this horse.

As they left the camp, he found his thoughts drifting. The movement of the horse lulled him, though it was a hard rocking from side to side, never subtle, not swaying the body like a dancer swayed. Which made him think of dancers; how long had it been since he had attended a dance? Months. Years? Couldn't be. No one seemed to host them anymore. None like the one where he had first seen Princess Galas, anyway. It wasn't hard to believe that was twenty years ago--easier to believe it was a hundred.

Swaying was how he had first seen her. She was finis.h.i.+ng a dance. At that time she could have been no more than seventeen, a year or two younger than himself. He had stood in a corner with some friends, plucking at his collar. They had all craned their necks to try to locate this storied mad princess in the moving maze of dancing couples. When she did appear it was very nearby, as the song broke up--she curtsied, laughing to her older partner. He bowed, and she spoke to him briefly. They drifted apart as the next dance began.

She stood nearby, miraculously alone. This baron's hall held easily a thousand people, and all had to meet her, or be seen to try for etiquette's sake. Her father's spies would know who did and did not pay her compliments. She, like any princess, was a vessel for his favor. Lavin saw her sigh now, and close her eyes briefly. She wants to recover her poise, he thought.

His friends huddled together. "Let's meet her!" "Lavin, shall we?"

"We shall not!" He said it a bit too loudly, and she looked up, her eyes widening just a bit. For the first time Lavin had realized she might have come to rest here because his was the only group of people at the ball near her own age. Everyone else was middle-aged or older, a fact that had been making Lavin's group squirm.

So he smiled, and bowed to her, and said, "We shall not meet the princess. If she wishes, the princess will meet us."

She smiled. Galas was willowy, with large dark eyes and a determined thrust to her chin. She held herself well in her formal ball dress; Lavin envied her such poise. But she was of royal blood, after all. He was merely n.o.ble.

His companions had frozen like rabbits caught in a garden. Lavin was about to step forward, say something else ingenuous (although he seemed to have exhausted his cleverness with that one statement) when suddenly Galas was surrounded by courtiers. They had rushed, without seeming to rush, around the edge of the dance floor, and homed in on her like falcons.

Galas became caught in a tangle of clever opening lines. They led her, without seeming to lead her, away to the lunch tables. Lavin stared after her, not heeding decorum.

When they had almost reached the tables, she turned and glanced back. At him.

He would always remember that moment, how happy he had been. Something had begun.

Harsh shouts ahead. Lavin opened his eyes. Hesty had led them to a deep gash in one of the hills near the city. Here, under the lurid light of bonfires, gangs of prisoners labored through the night to create missiles for their steam cannon.

Lavin and Hesty dismounted, and the colonel led him into the pit, where captured royalists cursed and wept on the stones they were chiseling, while Lavin's men whipped them.

Over the years workers had taken a large bite out of the hillside. The layers below proved to be made of salt. Lavin had not been here before, and he marveled at the cleanness of the carved walls. In daylight they would probably glow white. The whole place stank of ocean-side. The scent made him smile.

The salt was precious, and the entire site was under guard because his men wanted to walk off with the stuff. They had tried quarrying for proper stone but it was a good distance underground. Lavin wanted a heap of rock the size of a house near his cannon when it came time to fire on the city. The salt was available; precious or not, he would use it. His men could collect the shards off the street later and buy their own rewards with it. Lavin couldn't buy what he wanted, so he was indifferent to its lure.

"It's over here!" One of the overseers waved at them from across the pit. A large crowd had gathered there, numbering both soldiers. The prisoners showed no fear, but glanced up at Lavin with frank eyes as he strode past. Their att.i.tude made him uncomfortable--they were her creations, and he didn't understand them.

"Sir!" The overseer saluted hastily. His broad belly gleamed with sweat in the torchlight. He stood over a large slab of white salt, perhaps twice the length and width of a man, and at least half a meter thick. Two brawny soldiers were brus.h.i.+ng delicately at its surface with paint brushes.

Lavin c.o.c.ked his head skeptically, and looked at Hesty and then the overseer. "You got me up in the middle of the night for this?"

"Sir. Look!" The overseer pointed. Lavin stepped up to the slab.

There was a man buried in it. The outline of a man, anyway, blurred and distorted, visible through the pale milky crystal crystals. Lavin stepped back in shock, then moved in again, repelled but fascinated.

"Where..."

"The whole slab came off the face over there," the overseer pointed, "about two hours ago. Killed the man it fell on. When they went to get him they thought he'd climbed out and died on top of the thing--they saw the outline, see? But his leg was sticking out from underneath." He laughed richly. "Three legs was a bit unlikely, eh. So they looked closer. Then they called me. And..." he seemed to run out of steam, "I called the colonel."

Hesty traced the outline of the figure with his fingertip. "We have the quarry foreman. He thinks the layers we're working in were laid down eight hundred years ago, by the desals."

Lavin lifted whitened fingers to his face. The sea. "So at that time, this area was a salt flat? How then did it become hilly?"

"Mostly runoff, but this is more of an underground salt mountain than a flat. Otherwise the whole area for kilometers would be mined. But sir: look at this."

Below, and a little to the right of the body, a dark line transected the crystal block. "What is it?"

The soldier, Lavin saw, wore some kind of uniform. He could make out the bandoliers. And poking over his shoulder was, unmistakably, the barrel of a musket.

Lavin caught his breath. Muskets were the property of the royal guard. Always had been, as far as he knew... and he was right. Even so many generations ago, Iapysia had been exactly as it was when Lavin was a boy. And then came Galas, to break all the ancient traditions and bring her people to ruin.

Something else glinted in the torchlight. He bent closer to examine what might be the soldier's hand. "More light. Bring some hurricane lanterns here. I want to see it." People hurried to obey. Lavin heard Hesty chuckle behind him.

Yes, your distraction worked, Hesty, he thought. Be smug about it if you want.

When they had brought the lanterns Lavin took another good look. He was right: preserved in the salt, wrapped around the withered finger of the soldier, was a silver ring.

He stood back, knuckled his eyes and was rewarded by a salty sting. "I want that."

"Sir?..."

"The ring. Get it off the corpse. Bring it to me." He blinked around at the men. They looked uniformly uncomfortable.

"I'm not grave-robbing. We'll return it to him after the siege, and accord him full honors as a member of the king's guard when we inter him. But this ring is a powerful symbol of the continuity of the dynasty. Think about it. I want it on my hand when I ride into battle."

With that he turned away to remount his horse.

Back in his tent he prepared for bed. Something told him he would sleep this time. His lamp still burned above the camp table, and as he bundled his s.h.i.+rt to use as a pillow, his eye was drawn to Galas' book, which still sat open to the pa.s.sage he had read earlier.

Lavin marveled that he had been so mesmerized by the words. Now, the book beckoned again, and he wondered if Hesty's distraction had been enough to break the spell it had cast over him. He hesitated; then, when he realized he was acting like he was afraid of the thing, he stalked over quickly and bent to read: An ancient sage held that in different ages, humans held the senses in different ratios, according to the media by which they communicated and expressed themselves. Hence before writing, the ear was the royal sense. After writing, the eye.

We say that similar ratios pertain between emotions. Each civilization has its royal affect, and its ignored or forgotten feelings. Or rather--there are no distinct emotions. You have learned that in the human heart, love resides within such and such a circle, hate there in another, and between are pride, jealousy, all the royal and plebeian emotions. We say instead emotion is one unbounded field. Our way of life causes us to cross this field, now in one direction, now another, again and again on our way to the goals to which our world has constrained us. The paths crisscross, and eventually the field has well-travelled intersections, and blank areas where we have never walked.

We name the intersections just as we do towns but not the empty fields between them. We name these oft-crossed places love, hate, jealousy, pride. But our destinations were made by the conditions of our lives, they are not eternal or inevitable.

We know that the answer to human suffering lies in changing the ratio of emotions so grief and sorrow lie neglected, even nameless, in an untraveled wild.

The task of a Queen is to rule a people truly. The task of the Queen of Queens is to rule Truth itself. We know that the highest act of creation is to create new emotions, superior to those which, unguided, have fallen to us from Nature. And this We shall do.

As We have won new fields and towns from Nature, We shall win new feelings, superior to love and loyalty, from the field of the human heart.

Lavin closed the book.

Hesty had done him more of a favour than he might know. Despite all he knew about the queen's excesses, and even after all the atrocity and hatred he had seen during the war, Lavin still had his doubts. She had been his queen... and more.

The night stars and the rounded hills reminded him now of permanence. Thinking of the ancient soldier they had found, he remembered that those same stars had gazed down upon his ancestors, and they would smile on his descendents, who because of him would speak the same tongue, and live their lives as he would prefer to live his. Things would again be as they once had been. He had to believe that.

A messenger coughed politely at the flap of the tent. Lavin took a small cloth bundle from him, and unfolded it to reveal the soldier's ring. It was shaped like a carven wreath, the tiny flowers still embedded with salt crystals like dull jewels. He sat on his cot for a long while, turning it over and over in his hands.

Then he put it on, and blew out the light. He felt calm for the first time in days. As he drifted off to sleep, Lavin felt his confidence return, flowing from the immeasurable weight of the ages lying heavy in his hand.

Below and behind them, a horse nickered in the dark. Armiger glanced back--though Megan could not fathom how he could see anything in that shadowed hollow. Their horses were no doubt safe, but Armiger had to a.s.sure himself of everything.

They crouched on a hilltop overlooking the besieged summer palace of the queen of Iapysia. The palace was dark, a blot of towers against the sky, sinuous walls hugging the earth. The pinp.r.i.c.k sparks of campfires surrounded the city on all sides. Thousands of men waited in the darkness below this hill, and Armiger had earlier pointed out pickets on the surrounding hills as well. This hill's sentry watched the palace a hundred meters below the spot where Armiger and Megan hid.

"I count ten thousand," Armiger said. He squirmed forward through the sand, obviously enjoying himself. Megan sat back, brus.h.i.+ng moist grit from the cloak she sat on.

"It's sandy here," she said.

"We're right on the edge of the desert," Armiger said absently. He c.o.c.ked his head to look at the hills to either side.

"Who would build a city in a desert?"

"The desals flood the desert every spring," he said. "The Iapysians seed it in antic.i.p.ation of the event, and harvest what comes out. The desals are using the desert as a salt trap, and don't really mind if the humans introduce life there. It probably saves them some trouble, in fact. A good arrangement, so Iapysia has thrived for centuries."