“Sir?”
Hesty’s voice came to Lavin from a long way away. The voice represented the distant past, a time of hope he could no longer comprehend. The present was an unending cycle of misery that would end only with death. Nothing mattered except that pain.
He had lain here under a canopy, unable to move, for days now. He knew the official story was that vertigo had laid him low, but the truth was much more simple. Lavin’s heart had died, and he no longer wanted to live.
“Sir.”
With difficulty he turned his head. Hesty stood over him, his face revolving in a direction opposite to everything else. Lavin retched.
“How are you feeling, sir?”
What a laughable question. Lavin wanted to close his eyes and vanish into his misery again, but to his surprise Hesty sat down cross-legged next to him and whispered, “We need you, sir.”
Lavin looked at him closely for the first time. Hesty’s face was lined with care, and his hair unkempt. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days—not surprising in the circumstances.
“What…” Lavin was surprised at his own voice, which was hoarse and feeble. “What is happening?”
Hesty let out a great sigh. “We’ve been getting word from back home along the semaphore lines. Apparently the Winds are marching everywhere. They’ve obliterated cities, sir! The skies are full of swans and Heaven hooks, and in some places the cities’ gates are closed because morphs are snatching travellers off the roads. Rivers have dried up. It’s insane!
“The priests here are in a panic. The Winds… the Winds are not what they thought…” To Lavin’s great surprise, Hesty shuddered.
“Sir, they’re using us, then they’re going to kill us. I’m sure of it. So are some of the others, but not the field commanders. The men have faith in the Winds, but… a lot more of them were secretly sympathetic to Galas than we thought. There’s rumors that the Winds are angry with us over her death. Overall, the rank and file believe we’re on some just crusade dictated by the Winds. But really we’re marching to our deaths, and a lot of them have guessed.”
“Yes.” Lavin swallowed. “Yes, we are.” His mind was wonderfully clear all of a sudden. He could picture the entire situation in his mind—everything save the object of the Winds’ wrath, which lay somewhere on or about the Titans’ Gates.
His negligence had brought them to this, too, he was sure. Galas had been right in everything she’d said. He should have fought at her side. Instead he had laid the groundwork for a holocaust.
Hesty sat there for a while, dejected. Lavin stared at him, thinking of all the men who had fought under him, some of whom he had ordered to their deaths. They had trusted him—and thousands still placed their faith in him alone.
He might deserve to die—but they did not.
Lavin managed to lever himself up on one elbow. “Bring me some water,” he commanded. When Hesty gave it to him, he drank eagerly, suddenly realizing that he might have allowed himself to die of thirst in his grief. Suicide by neglect.
He hated Hesty for reminding him of his duty. Scowling, he said, “The Winds will destroy us when we’ve served our purpose. We need to know what that purpose is.”
“They won’t speak to me,” said Hesty. “The basts consider you the commander. In your absence they’ve been giving the orders.”
Lavin was stunned. He had assumed that the army would be well commanded in his absence. He’d had no idea that the Winds had taken over directly.
“I… I will talk to them,” he heard himself say.
Hesty looked at him, hope visible in his face.
“Knowing when they intend to discard us is only the first part, Hesty. We need to act when that moment comes—or before it comes. We need to escape them.”
“But how?” Hesty gestured at the evidence all around them of the omnipotence of the Winds.
“The basts will not be a problem. We can shoot them. The swans are terrifying, but I’m not convinced they can do much on the ground. And the Heaven hooks… well, I have an idea about them.”
Hesty grinned. “I knew you would, sir.”
Lavin groaned. “Go get the engineers. I need something made, and we have very little time.”
With sudden energy Hesty leapt to his feet and snapped a salute. “Yes, sir!” He sped out of the tent.
Lavin lay there for a while, staring at the canvas overhead. His mind was utterly empty. Finally, he groaned and stood up.
As he emerged from under the canopy he could hear a deep roaring, like continual thunder. Men were shouting and pointing, and the basts were racing as one to the great doors on the underside of the moon. Lavin followed their gazes upward.
A brilliant light glowed through the tessellated skin of the vagabond moon. The sun itself made only a diffuse, if bright, glow. This light was sharp enough that he had to look away after a second; and it moved, traversing the sky from south to north.
So far the ranked men on the parade ground had held formation, so Lavin had no difficulty crossing the floor to where the basts and a few stray men had gathered. The great doors were located at about the 15th degree of floor angle. From here only a sliver of sky was visible, and a great deal of dizzying ground far below. Lavin caught a glimpse of rushing pine trees far below, then fixed his gaze on the rolling mountains at the top of the door.
Something like a tiny blue-white sun hove into view, dropping and visibly slowing as it went. Shadows radiated away from it, and he was sure it was the source of the rumbling.
The small sun went behind an angle of mountainside, silhouetting the trees along its spine. After a few seconds the light went out. The rumbling went on for a long time, gradually dying down to stray echoes.
More miracles. Lavin shook his head in disgust, and went to take command of his men.
*
“What was that?” Tamsin blinked at the spot where the little sun had set. Doubtless she had the same spots before her eyes as Jordan.
“Mediation?” He had come to rely on the geophysical Winds as advisors in the past few days. Where once he had wondered or decided that curiosity was futile, now when Jordan had a question—any question at all—he asked. Often, Mediation answered.
“That was a starship from the new Diadem fleet,” said Ka. “But it should not be here. The fleet has been sent to engage the Galactics.”
“Fleet? Galactics?” This was all news to Jordan. Obviously he had been asking the wrong questions.
He and Tamsin had just entered the valley below the Titans’ Gates. They had changed mounts regularly, and come to this place more quickly than Jordan had expected. Their animal entourage was spread out for a kilometer on each side, watching for morphs or other, even more dangerous things that Mediation said the swans were dropping here and there. Jordan had fully expected the vagabond moons converging on this spot to seek him out, and had been surprised when the vanguard of the giant spheres began to settle beyond the ridge behind them. Mediation had reported that they were disgorging an army of humans and horses; Jordan had no doubt that this was Parliament’s army, but had they come to guarantee Galas’ death or were they serving the Winds now? Mediation did not know.
The Heaven hooks seemed wary of approaching the Titans’ Gates directly. Those that had not landed hung high in the atmosphere, some kilometers back. They might be able to spot Jordan’s party from there—but there was no sign that they had.
Armiger and the queen were halfway up the ancient steps that zig-zagged up the Titans’ Gates. Tiny buildings were visible very high on the flanks of the grey peaks. According to Tamsin this was a monastery, a place Galas had visited many times before. This was where the general and the queen expected to make their stand.
Jordan had different plans. He knew the Gates were honeycombed with passages and chambers used by the Winds. There were many entrances to these passages, but Armiger and Galas had not approached any as yet. Jordan had ordered the entrances nearest them opened; hopefully they would see one and head for it. He had told Mediation to send a guide out of the mountain to fetch them, but the nearest creatures that could speak were deep inside the mountain. It would take a while for one of them to reach the surface.
Jordan had been about to send Ka to act as guide for Armiger and Galas, but this starship was a new and unknown factor. So far it seemed like the general and queen would reach the monastery without trouble, and he could easily use the inner passages of the Gates to catch up to them there.
He decided. He pointed to a hawk that was part of their entourage. It sat patiently on a branch some distance ahead, waiting for them. “Ka, go take a ride on that hawk. I want you to investigate the ship that just landed. Mediation, are there any entrances to the Gates near that spot? Yes? Then let’s head that way. We can enter the mountain from there.”
Tamsin scowled. “I don’t like the idea of going underground again.”
“This time will be different,” he said. He didn’t add that she would probably find it no less frightening than the desal highway. He had visited the inside of the mountain, in Vision, and knew that it was not a place where humans had been meant to go.
*
Armiger had been eating stones for some time now. He wasn’t random about it. He had definite preferences, and seemed to be trying to balance his diet according to some inner knowledge. They didn’t talk about it, and Galas was grateful for that, as she was grateful not to talk about the mirrored seeds that he occasionally tossed behind himself as they walked. He didn’t pull those seeds from any pocket or pouch. They appeared in his hand as he walked, and he dropped them.
She had thought they might be alive and fertile, and was proven right when the first transparent, silvery oval appeared out of the woods, and came to hover over Armiger’s head. He ignored it, and the six that followed it. They shimmered and occasionally tinkled like tiny bells. If she looked back, she could see bright spots on the path far behind them—things like silver cacti were growing there. Way back, three kilometers ago, she thought she glimpsed something glinting through the branches of one of the tallest trees on the hillside.
When Armiger did talk, it was often not to her, but to Jordan Mason. “Jordan, we are at the foot of the long slope that leads to the Penitent’s Stairs,” he might say. Or, “Jordan, meet us at the Titan’s Gate Monastery. You must go there now. There is no time to lose.”
“Why are you talking to him?” she had asked. Armiger had grimaced, and not replied for a while.
“I need him,” was all he eventually said.
The trail had become too steep for the horses, and they dismounted. Now travel became a true misery for Galas, because the muscles of her inner thighs screamed loud protest with every step, and climbing was even worse. She knew there were thousands of steps ahead of them. The first hundred meters, from the trail to the foot of the first of the stairways carved in the nearly-vertical stone of the North Tower, nearly did her in.
If she looked back the vagabond moons dominated her view of the foothills. The moons were waiting on some signal to pounce, and she was terrified of being caught by them. Nonetheless, she had gone only thirty meters or so up the first stair before she sat down with a thump, and gasped, “I can’t go on. All this riding has ruined my legs.”
Armiger frowned at her. He hadn’t even broken a sweat; there was no reason why he should, she supposed. He chewed and swallowed the red quartz pebble he’d been crunching for the past few minutes, and said, “We’re almost there.”
“I know that. Have you got any idea how much riding takes out of you? I’m not used to it, Armiger.”
He tilted his head to one side. “I could carry you, I suppose.” He extended a hand.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Truth to tell, she didn’t want him touching her. That hand had been burned off, and regrown; his skin had taken on a greyish tinge and she had been half sure before that he had stopped breathing. Now she was sure of it, as she saw him deliberately draw in air to speak.
“We cannot afford to lose any time,” he said. She shrugged wearily. Armiger scowled, but said, “I’ll prepare you a pill that should help.”
Her smile was ironic. “Thank you.”
They sat in silence for a while. Armiger was abstracted; she had the distinct impression that he was listening to something. “Jordan Mason,” he said abruptly, “we are at the base of the stairs. We will rest here for a few minutes then make for the top. You can meet us there.”
“You think he’s that close?” she said.
Armiger shrugged. “My creatures have seen him. He’s down there.” He pointed. “But we can’t go back for him. Not with the Winds about to move on us.”
“I know you had a plan,” she said. “It failed somehow, didn’t it? You didn’t get what you wanted from Jordan. You can’t really command the Winds, can you?”
He stared off into the distance. “I’ve been on Ventus for nearly four years. In that time I’ve investigated hundreds of possible ways of overthrowing them. The best and purest is to learn their languages and codes, and simply command them. There are other ways, though—not as efficient, more destructive—but they will do.”
She pointed above his head. “Those things?”
He nodded. “They are part of it. If you can’t tame the plants in a garden, the best you can do is replace them. Rather than command the Ventus mecha, I can replace it with mecha of my own. These mecha are more efficient; they’ll choke out the Ventus mecha in no time.”
“But you’ll have to cover the world with them. How will you do that?”
He gestured at the mountains that rose above them. “This is the nexus of the desal highways. Those highways even go under the sea—you told me so yourself. If I flood the highways with my own mecha seeds they will sprout everywhere. They’re hard for the Winds to detect, and as long as we have the highway system intact we can continue to disseminate them. We could have a global infestation underway within days.”
“Infestation… Armiger, what will these mecha do to the other life here—the flora and fauna?”
“Ah.” He looked down. “Well, part of the problem with this plan is that my mecha won’t have access to the Winds’ network. They won’t be able to coordinate resource usage with the Winds, so they’ll probably throw the Ventus ecosystem out of whack.”
She thought about it. “…How far out of whack?”
“Well, the idea is to threaten the Winds with disaster, so that they surrender. Once they do that, we can scale my mecha back, keep it dormant even.”
“What if they don’t surrender?”
“My lady,” he said, “you never ask that question after you’ve gone to war.”
She nodded, but in her heart Galas was reconciling herself to a grim possibility: once they reached the familiar plateau of the Titans’ Gates, she would need to look for ways to dispose of Armiger himself, should things get out of hand. He might not believe in surrender—and she never had as queen—but if the choice were between a world ruled by the Winds, or no world at all, Galas knew how she would choose.
*
It seemed like years since Lavin had stood on solid ground. He felt the vertigo recede a bit—enough for him to walk unaided. There was no joy in the recession of this misery though; it just made more room for misery of another kind to infect him.
He stood as still as he could and watched men and horses pour out the doors of the vagabond moon. Kilometers away, close enough that their flanks nearly touched, another moon disgorged its cargo. Together they and the several behind them blotted out the sun over ten or twelve foothills and valleys.
Not everyone would be disembarking; he had convinced the Winds to use the moons as their baggage camp. In moments he would return there as well, ostensibly to give his authority to orders coming from the Winds. In reality, he had kept his most trusted men aboard the moons, and had also set up a clandestine semaphore system. He would be relaying the commands of the swans through the medium of the basts—giving his official words to their directives—but he would also be sending commands directly to his men through the semaphore.
It was windy here in the foothills. The moons were depositing the army here partly because the air was so treacherous nearer the Gates. Of course, a two-kilometer sphere made its own weather to a degree, and a dozen of them were an entire weather system; the White Wind had confided in him that this just made things worse, because weather was inherently unpredictable. The skins of the moons rippled under sudden gusts, and lightning played around their crowns almost continuously. They electrified the air and then pulled it around themselves with invisible fins, the bast had said. With so many of them all together, their electric fields interfered. Add steep mountain peaks into the equation and things became frankly dangerous.
He was counting on that.
A bast stepped up to him. It wasn’t the White Wind—that one was away investigating the burning thing that had landed. “We have found them,” said the bast. “They are making for the monastery, as we suspected. Your men will take the trails directly there and capture them. We will accompany you.”
“They’re going to get there first,” he said. “And that place is highly defensible. Why don’t the swans go in and get them?”
“Not an option,” said the bast. “You will go.”
Lavin shrugged. “I guess you’re right. The desals would cut the swans to pieces.”
The bast bridled. “You will not question our orders.”
“I will where it concerns my men. Listen, we are too far back here for me to command them. We need to get this moon over the valley—or better yet, over the peaks themselves. We could lower a battalion using the Heaven hooks, come on them from above. They have no way to defend against that.”
The bast bared its teeth. “You are saying you will fail to take the monastery from below?”
“We won’t fail. It could take weeks, months, even. You could keep us supplied that long, but—”
“Unacceptable. This abomination is too dangerous. We must destroy it now.”
“So why don’t you use nature itself, like you did against Armiger’s army in Ravenon? Send in all the animals, uproot the plants.”
The bast’s tail twitched. “We have tried. They will not respond. Permanence is controlling this valley. We do not have enough morphs to convert these life forms. That is why you must go in.”
“Then we have to go in from above,” he said. “There is no other way.”
The bast turned away. Then it said, “I will ask the swans.”
Yes, bring us in close, Lavin thought as he watched it walk away. Get us high, and close together in the mountains. Then we’ll learn if you can fly.