For a moment Axel Chan was content to just smell the air. He stood on the ship’s ramp with his eyes closed, letting the breeze stroke his hair like the hand of a lover. His ears popped. He was back on Ventus, and he needed no more reminder of why he’d come than this scent of pine and loam.
The navy had given them this cutter in order to let Marya do a reconnaissance of the maelstrom of swan activity building over these mountains. The Archipelagic forces had originally wanted the Voice to lend her recognition codes to a destroyer-class ship, but the AI had insisted that they come in this small craft, without an escort. That way they could attempt to locate Calandria—a part of their plan they had not mentioned to the admiral.
Even a close orbit had not told them what was going on down here—but Calandria’s transponder signal had pinged faintly from the very heart of the energy storm. When they picked up her signal, the three had exchanged uneasy glances in the cockpit. To descend into the vortex could be wildly dangerous—but if anyone on the ground might know what was truly happening, it would be Calandria May.
“Hey, move!” Marya gave Axel a small shove from behind. He sighed, and jogged down the rest of the ramp to finally stand on the soil of Ventus again. Marya came to poise beside him, and after a moment the Voice joined them. The AI’s striking resemblance to Calandria May still disturbed Axel, but the Voice was obviously a different person: she stared around herself with the wide-eyed wonder of someone who had never set foot on a planet before.
“You’ve been here,” he chided. “You dropped us off last summer, remember?”
She shook her head. “I had a different body than. To be this small and vulnerable in this environment… it’s indescribable.”
Both humans smiled at her. Then Marya pointed at the twin mountains rising above them. “Look! There’s buildings way up there, on the side.”
“Gods.” Axel’s mind boggled at the amount of labour it must have taken to put those structures up there. “Maybe that’s where she is.”
He hoped she was nearby, and not on the other side of those mountains. The ocean lay there; Axel had seen it as they came in. He had also seen strange waterfalls that vanished into shafts in the far side of the two peaks, as well as what looked like gigantic pipes shimmering under the surface of the ocean. There were a few towns around here, but no major cities within a day’s travel of this place. He had no idea what Calandria might be doing out here.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. He felt the signal—but it wasn’t coming from the mountains. “She’s in the valley,” he said. “A kilometer or two at most that way. Seems to be moving in this direction, fast.”
“Should we wait, or go out to meet them?” asked Marya.
“Ka,” somebody said.
A shadow whipped past and Axel and Marya ducked. The Voice turned, blinking in astonishment at the large hawk that swept in a circle around the perimeter of the clearing where they’d set down, then returned. It landed on a moss-cushioned log not three meters away, and folded its wings.
“Beautiful,” whispered Marya. “Ka,” said the hawk. “So you found a way off world, Axel.”
“Uhn,” said Axel. A bird was talking to him.
“It’s me, Jordan,” said the hawk. “Can you hear me?”
“Jordan?” He peered at the hawk. “How are you doing this?”
“My servant hitched a ride on this hawk. He’s talking to you for me. I haven’t changed myself into a hawk, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, of course not.” Axel sidled closer to the hawk, looking for a speaker or antenna somewhere on it. “You seem to have come up in the world, Jordan.”
“You could say that.” Jordan Mason’s voice held a wry tone Axel had never heard the boy use before. “Hello, Lady May.”
Axel looked over his shoulder. “Oh. That’s not Calandria. I know it looks like her. It’s… rather hard to explain.”
“Not Calandria? Where is she?”
“She’s not with you?”
“No.” The bird fell to calmly grooming its wing, seemingly indifferent to the human voice issuing from its body. “Listen,” said Jordan, “if that’s all of you, you’ve got to get moving. Come meet me and I’ll explain everything.”
“You know what’s going on here?” asked Marya.
“Yes. Are you a friend of Axel’s?”
“Yes. I’ve heard a lot about you, Jordan. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Well, we haven’t met yet, and we won’t if you don’t get moving. The soldiers are almost on top of you.”
“What soldiers?”
“The army of Thalience.”
Marya looked at Axel, her eyebrows raised. He shrugged. “We’ll be right there, as soon as we collect Calandria.”
“Axel, there’s no time!” The hawk unfolded its wings and leapt into the air. “Follow me!” It flapped north.
Axel put his hand on Marya’s shoulder. “You two go with the bird. I’ll collect Cal and follow along.”
“How will you find us?”
“I’ve got a fix on the Voice’s transponder. Don’t worry, I won’t be long.” The hawk was perched on a branch, watching impatiently. Axel watched Marya and the Voice stalk through the underbrush in its direction; then he inhaled a cold breath of mountain air and turned the other direction. The hawk cawed at him. He ignored it.
She was nearby. He had to know she was okay. Once he had her he would collect Mason and head back to the ship. With luck they could be offplanet within the hour, and with further luck Calandria and Jordan Mason would be able to tell the fleet enough to halt the planned bombardment.
He thudded over the tangle of roots and fallen pine needles, attention focussed on the signal he could sense ahead of him. It was closing on his position. She must have sensed him as well. He grinned, starting to relax.
Abruptly the trees opened out to define a well-tended trail that slotted east to west through the forest. He looked to his left, saw nothing, and turned to his right—
—Two horses came at full gallop over a ridge not twenty meters away. The lead rider shouted something and lowered a weapon across his arm.
Axel jumped back. There was a loud bang and splinters flew from the tree over his head.
The signal was very close now. For the first time it occurred to him that Calandria might be a prisoner. He cursed and unholstered his laser pistol.
The horse had stopped. “Show yourself!” shouted the rider in a thick accent Axel couldn’t identify. He snuck a look around the tree; three more horses were approaching.
“Don’t shoot!” he yelled. “I’m just an innocent traveller.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to fear if you come out here.”
“Yeah, right,” muttered Axel.
Something moved swiftly in the corner of his eye. He whirled, in time to glimpse a giant cat-like form in mid-leap. Axel fired without thinking, and then it knocked the wind out of him and they tumbled over and over.
The furred thing fell away. Axel got to his hands and knees, shaking his head. He’d lost his pistol, but the golden cat-thing lay curled around itself, a black burn in its chest and bright blood pumping out of the center of the charred patch. It moaned, twitched, and lay still.
Where was the pistol? When he spotted it he scrabbled in that direction. He stretched out his hand to grab it—and the point of a sword came between him and it.
“Stand,” said the man behind the sword. He wore the bruised-blue and russet livery of a soldier of Iapysia. He looked like he meant business. Four other soldiers had dismounted behind him.
The others looked behind themselves as several more of the cat-like creatures padded over, then stood up on their back legs. They were all gold-colored, except one which was a striking white.
This one’s eyes widened and it hissed when it saw the situation. It ran forward with surprisingly human grace, and opened its arms.
“Axel!” it shouted as it wrapped its arms around him.
Someone screamed. Axel struggled to pull free of the cat-thing, and after a moment he did—or rather it let go of him and he fell. He levered himself onto his elbows, then froze.
One of the horses was down. A very large bear reared over it, bawling loudly. One of the soldiers was down too, with his hands up to fend off the hawk that was stabbing at his face.
Two foxes raced out of the forest and leaped at the remaining soldiers. Way back there, something else big was crashing in their direction.
“Fight, you cowards!” shouted the white cat. It moved with astonishing speed, knocking one of the foxes out the air mid-pounce. Then it spun on one foot and jumped backwards, disappearing behind Axel.
“Axel, run!” shouted the hawk. It ducked in close then burst in a flurry of feathers as one of the soldiers shot it point-blank. Something iridescent, half-visible, twirled up from the falling bird, then flashed into flame and drifted down as another of the soldiers emptied his musket into the chest of the bear. It staggered back snarling. Then a third man fired, and it fell dead.
Axel turned to run—and found himself eye to eye with the white cat. It held out something. His pistol. “Take it!” it hissed.
He hesitated for a second, then grabbed the pistol and ran. Animals big and small crashed past him, all converging on the soldiers and their cat-like companions.
Axel had no idea what he’d just seen. He didn’t want to know. All he wanted to do at this moment was run and keep running until he’d forgotten it all.
*
Armiger felt a trembling in the electric fields that interpenetrated the mountains. He looked up. The vagabond moons were rising again. Sheet lightning played over their vast curved sides.
“How do you feel?” he asked Galas. She nodded, and levered herself to her feet. He had spent some minutes preparing a concoction of complex molecules and nanotech, and now he handed her the pills he had distilled it down to. She looked at them doubtfully, but when he pointed to the rising moons, she dutifully tossed them back and swallowed. Then she began to slowly climb the stairs, swinging her legs wide with every step.
He looked back at the foothills. It was some testament to how exhausted Galas was that she had not spent any time looking at the view. The vagabond moons rose to fully half the height of the Titans’ Gates when on the ground; although the nearest one was at least eight kilometers away it eclipsed a good twenty degrees of the sky. The sun was getting low on the horizon, and the shadow of the Gates fell across the moon, dividing it into two halves, grey below and rose colored above. Beyond it and the two companions that had landed, nine more moons clustered high in the stratosphere, where they shone in full sunlight.
The stairs that they had to climb were also in shadow. This wasn’t much of a problem for Armiger, who could see in the dark, but Galas was going to have difficulty. “We must hurry,” he said.
He could sense his mecha growing in the valley below. The Winds could probably perceive it by now too, and he had no doubt they would react violently to his decoys. An assault by the Winds on the valley could buy them valuable time.
“Look.” Galas pointed above them. Lights burned in windows high on the mountainside, and another pinprick glow was waving back and forth slowly at the top of the stairs. “They’ve seen us,” she said.
“Good.” They climbed together for a few minutes, and her steps became more sure as the medicine he had given her took hold. She didn’t speak, and it was just as well because he was brooding about what to do next. His plans had once been precise and confident, but his deterioration into humanity seemed to have clouded his reasoning. He should have abandoned Galas at the foot of the stairs, but he found he could not. She was a dangerous drag on him at this point; left to himself he could have run all the way to the top of the mountains by now, and launched himself into one of the pits that led to the desal highway. Deep underwater in the roots of the mountain, he would have been safe and could have propagated his mecha without fear of interruption.
If only Jordan Mason were here. The boy held the key to the command language of the Winds, and Armiger was sure he could extract it, though he might have to take Mason apart molecule by molecule to find it. Yet the boy was meandering through the valley below with no apparent destination. It was infuriating.
Maybe he could contact the boy through his mecha. He did retain a com link to all of it, after all, in much the same way that the Winds remained connected to all life on Ventus. He could reprogram the genes of his mecha from afar. Maybe he could give some a voice.
He directed his thoughts to the largest of the mechal cacti growing in the valley. It was a good twenty meters high now, and had slowly turned black. In his mind’s eye it appeared as a coal-black jumble of saucer-shaped leaves joined together without stems. Its roots ran straight into bedrock and heat radiated off it as from an oven. Armiger hadn’t anticipated that effect of its metabolism—it might well start a forest fire if he wasn’t careful. That would certainly raise the ire of the Winds, which was good, but it might also threaten Mason.
This cactus was of a design older than Armiger himself. It was a product of 3340’s imagination, not his. It had the potential to bud all manner of other mechal life forms off its round leaves, and he had never had time to explore the complete catalog of possibilities. He asked it now to provide him with a list of forms able to speak that it could grow rapidly.
Wait… it said in an eerily familiar voice.
Armiger stopped climbing.
“What’s wrong?” asked Galas. She touched his arm. He realized he had been glaring down into the valley, his hands balled into fists.
“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”
I can produce any of these, said the mechal tree in 3340’s voice.
Armiger gasped, but he did not stop climbing. The tree unrolled a series of images in his mind of mechal animals, some disturbingly human-shaped. Armiger barely paid attention—it was the touch of the tree’s mind that held his attention. It had a certain signature to it—his own, of course, but also something more. Were he asked to describe it, the best he could have done would have been to say that the thing’s mind smelled like 3340.
“Thank you,” he told it. “Do nothing. Sleep now.”
I cannot sleep now, it said.
Armiger swore.
“Tell me,” said Galas between gasping breaths.
“I may have made a mistake,” he said. “We have to hurry.”
“I can go no faster,” she said. “I’m ready to collapse.”
“Then I’ll carry you.”
She made no protest this time as he gathered her up in his arms, and began bounding up the steps.
*
Jordan’s first sighting of Axel was as the man half-fell out of the forest shouting, “They’re right on my heels!” Axel was dressed in tough black clothing, and had a belt festooned with odd devices around his waist, very like the woman who was not Calandria May. The third woman, who had introduced herself as Marya Mounce, was wearing some kind of close-fitting camouflage that made it hard to see her from the neck down. She seemed keyed up, and kept looking around herself and flaring her nostrils.
A few of Jordan’s animals straggled out of the woods after them. The rest were fighting a rear-guard action, but the basts had decimated them.
Axel clasped Jordan’s forearm in an almost painful grip. “Good to see you, kid! You’re looking great.”
“Thanks.” Jordan was bursting with questions, but there was no time for them now. He could sense some of the cat-beasts that had chased Armiger and the queen approaching through the woods. They were very stealthy animals, but to him they shone like beacons through the translucent tree trunks. Several hesitant humans with guns followed them.
“Let’s get back to the ship,” said Axel. Jordan shook his head.
“They’re between us and it,” he said. “And I think the swans have figured out that it’s not one of theirs. I don’t think they’re going to let it leave.”
“It’s our only option,” argued Axel. “We need to get out of here.”
“I agree,” he said. “And we will. That’s why we have to go this way.” He pointed.
“He may be right, Axel,” said the woman who was not Calandria May. “I can hear a lot of traffic from the swans suddenly.”
It was cold, and getting dark rapidly. The swans should be turning on their midnight sun soon, but until then the forest would be impassible to these people. “I’m going to make a little light,” said Jordan. “You follow it and don’t let it out of your sight. We have to move quickly if we’re to keep ahead of the cats.”
He started walking; Tamsin fell into stride beside him. As he raised his hands to create a ghost-light on the shoulders of his jacket, he heard Axel and the others rushing to catch up.
“Well, what are those cat-things, anyway?” asked Axel. “One of them knew my name. Damn near killed me.”
“I’d never seen one until the other day. I think they’re a new kind of animal that the swans brought,” said Jordan. “They can talk, I know that much, and they seem to be leading the army that’s following us.”
“Army?”
Jordan glanced back, resisting the urge to laugh. “A lot’s happening right now. How did you find us, anyway?”
“Looking for Calandria. We found her signal, followed it down. At least, I thought it was her signal…” He fell silent.
One of the cat things had broken away from the others and was trailing them very closely now. It was almost completely dark now, so Jordan had to rely on his Vision to see where they were going. Axel, who seemed to be aware of the cat too somehow, sauntered easily beside him.
Of course, Jordan should have remembered that Axel Chan could see in the dark as well as Calandria had.
The cat seemed to be keeping a discreet distance, so Jordan said, “Tell me all about it—where you’ve been, what you’ve done. Then I’ll tell you what’s happened to me.”
Axel laughed. “Best offer I’ve had all day.”
*
The White Wind crept through the forest, low to the ground, and listened as Axel told his tale. She remembered being Calandria May now—remembered Axel, his passions and follies, the lopsided grin and strong hands. She had rushed to embrace him the instant she saw him, and he had not recognized her.
She wept as she padded along, regretting everything. Her life had been so sweet, and she had never known.
The others were hanging back on her instructions. She could not disobey her new masters, but neither did she have to obey them mindlessly. She knew, if they did not, that Axel posed no threat to Ventus. Jordan, though… She was not so sure about him.
She wanted to turn and run, and run all night through the woods until she could sleep the sleep of exhaustion and forget. Instead, the White Wind held her pace next to the humans, and listened with growing wonder to the tales of the Desert Voice, and of thalience, and of Earth.
*
Calloused hands reached down to help Galas up the last few steps. She could only nod her gratitude to the dark-robed men who stood under torchlight on the broad ledge that fronted the Titans’ Gate monastery.
The moment she was safely on her feet, the whole crowd of thirty or so men knelt as one. “Your highness,” said the abbot, a balding man with grey eyes whom she had not seen in years.
“I am not the queen,” she said. “Not any more.” The words still sounded strange to her.
They all looked up as one. “We know your palace was under siege,” said the abbot. “We assumed it would be taken. So this means you are in exile now. I must tell you that you have always served the desals well and have honored the ancient traditions better than any monarch in recent memory. You have our loyalty now and forever. For that reason, we still consider you queen, if not of Iapysia, than at least of this mountain.”
Galas found herself blushing. She looked down. “Thank you.” She could think of nothing further to say.
“My queen, are you responsible for the unprecedented visit of all these Winds to our humble monastery?” The abbot gestured in the direction of the vagabond moons.
She shrugged. “I suppose I am, in a way.”
“Is this stairway defensible?” asked Armiger.
The abbot eyed him appraisingly. “It has proved to be in the past,” he said. “You are Queen Galas’ escort?”
“This is the general Armiger,” she said. “He is my protector, and yours now.” She saw that Armiger had dismissed the strange silvery ovals that had hovered over his head the past few hours. Had she not known he was not breathing, she would have thought he looked perfectly normal.
Armiger walked over to the parapet. The monastery was just over halfway up the vertical eastern face of the north Gate. Invisible from the valley was a broad ledge, almost a plateau, that narrowed to nothingness a hundred meters north, but broadened to the south as it swept around the curve of the mountain face. The monastery buildings were built towards the north end, so that the very last towers hugged the cliff itself with sheer rock below them. The stairway arrived midway along the south edge of the plateau, where the monks had built a garden around the front gates of the monastery.
“What lies that way?” asked Armiger, pointing to the southerly curve of the narrow plateau.
“Habitations of the Winds,” said the Abbot.
“Desal machines,” added Galas. “There’s bottomless pits, waterfalls spouting out of the cliffs… it’s hard to describe.”
“And the distance to the southern peak?”
“About three-quarters of a kilometer at this point,” said the Abbot.
Armiger nodded. “Too narrow for a vagabond moon to fit.”
“What are you thinking?” she asked him.
“I’m satisfied about the stairs down,” he said. “But I somehow doubt that’s where our threat will come from.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look.” He pointed at the moons. As far as she could tell, they hadn’t moved. They hung over the far end of the valley and the foothills, seemingly close enough to touch, but in reality kilometers away.
Armiger must have seen her uncomprehending expression. He said, “Count them.”
She did so. There were eleven.
“An hour ago,” said Armiger, “there were twelve.”
*
A new sun came on, exactly at the zenith. It appeared first as a sliver of brightness, then bloomed over a few seconds into a square too bright to look at. In those few seconds, the sky underwent a complete transformation from twilight to day; every shade of blue flashed through the heavens as the stars went out everywhere except near the deep blue horizon. Way out there, clouds and the edges of the furthest vagabond moons lay in shadow; nearer in, they gleamed in pure sunlight.
Axel squinted up at the light. “Solar mirror,” he said. “Big sucker.”
Jordan nodded. He had seemed subdued ever since Axel and Marya had told him what they’d learned about thalience and Turcaret. Axel had seen him shake his head several times, scowling.
“So we’re going to meet the infamous Armiger,” Axel said. “I’ve been wanting to do that for almost a year. You say you spoke to him once? You still think he’s not a resurrection seed?”
Jordan hesitated. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But I’m not sure.”
“Don’t say that,” said Axel. “Say, ‘Axel, he’s not a resurrection seed, and I can prove it.’ That would make me happy, if you could say that to me.”
“He’s up to something, and I’m not sure what,” Jordan said. “I don’t think that proves anything either way.”
“You said he took the secret of commanding the Winds from you, but he hasn’t used it. And you don’t know why not.”
Jordan shook his head. “He should have started using it right away. He could have taken over the world by now if he’d been able to.”
“He has the technology, but not the keys,” said Marya. “It’s exactly like Turcaret. He can speak to them, but they’re not listening.”
“Oh, they’re listening,” said Jordan. “They hear what I say, and they talk back. That’s not it.”
She shook her head. “But thalience…”
Jordan barked a laugh. “Whatever thalience is, the swans have given up on it. They’re bitter, and they’re in the mood to clean up after neglecting their jobs for a long time. So they plan to wipe humanity off of Ventus.”
Jordan’s companion said, “You said this fellow Turcaret had to have a certain kind of… thing in him.”
“DNA.” Marya nodded vigorously. “Yes, that must be it. Armiger doesn’t have the proper DNA.”
“Not quite true,” said Axel. “The fact is, he probably doesn’t have DNA at all. …So that’s it.”
Jordan nodded. “He has the broadcast power, but not the ‘password’.”
“That’s what we came to find out,” said Marya. “Let’s get back to the ship.”
“No!” Jordan ran several steps ahead. “We’re nearly there!”
“Nearly where?” They had come to an almost vertical cliff—the end of a long sinuous drape of Titans’ Gate stone. The cliff was seamless, and at least fifty meters high.
“There’s a door into the Gates here,” said Jordan.
There was a flash of lightning, and moments later a grumble of thunder from fairly nearby. Tamsin pointed up through the trees. “Here they come.”
The Heaven hooks were descending on the valley. They were no less impressive in daylight than they had been at night; it was simply clearer now what they were. Three of the vagabond moons were edging over the valley; together they would fill the sky over it from one end to the other. Their very bottommost sections had petalled open, and now long black gantries and cables were unreeling. From a distance these looked delicate, but the gantries were thicker than the trees below them.
As Axel watched, lightning stuttered from the cables of the lead craft. A long line of explosions stitched across the valley floor.
“If we’re going to get to the ship we have to leave now,” said the Voice.
Jordan shook his head. “The swans are waiting if it takes off. They haven’t moved against it because the Hooks are going to take care of it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I used to rely on Mediation to relay what they were saying. I don’t need to anymore. I can hear them myself now.”
They all stopped walking and stared at Jordan. He put his hands on his hips and glared back.
“Are you gonna argue with me?” he said belligerently.
Surprised, Axel laughed.
“But, the ship!” wailed Marya.
“The ship is about to be eaten,” said Jordan with a shrug. “We’re going this way.” He pointed to the cliff.
Marya glanced at Axel; he shrugged.
“Apparently we are,” he said.