A World Too Near (41 page)

“Up,” the Gond said, gesturing his small arms in SuMing’s direction. She climbed into the seat opposite him, and the sled began winding through the Gond nest.

“Where is she?” he growled.

“Oh Excellency,” SuMing wailed, “she is going to the sere.”

His great round eyes looked at her in alarm. The fiery ground. One step into that killing yard . . .

She waved him onward. “Heaven give us mercy, she is on her way now.”

Morhab expertly steered the sled into the corridor, rounding the corner from his den and accelerating down the hall. SuMing held on fast to keep from flying out of the sled on the turns. As they sped on, SuMing said, “Engineer, bring Pai, I beg you.”

“No time,” he shouted, coming to a lift and signaling the door to open.

It was the wrong way to reach Johanna’s apartment. SuMing moaned, “She will never listen to you! Bring Pai, who is like a sister to her.”

Morhab paused the sled, and the doors tried to close on the sides of the conveyance. “Why didn’t you bring Pai yourself?”

SuMing didn’t answer him. She let him assume she was witless enough to go running to and fro in an emergency.

Grumbling, he reversed direction, pushing the sled to speed again, heading for Johanna’s quarters.

At Johanna’s chamber they collected the groggy Pai and sped on again toward the outer defenses. With the effects of the powder Johanna had administered in her food, Pai did not question why she had not been wakened first, nor did Morhab take time to inquire. Profound creases cut across the Gond’s face. SuMing wondered if he worried that his days of pleasant torment of Johanna would end if his victim killed herself, or if he worried that he might be blamed.

But in these conjectures, SuMing was mistaken.

Morhab drove in a frenzy of worry.
Johanna
, he thought with desperate longing.
Stop, Johanna, stop, and I will release you. Do not. Do not
. . . The two servants on the seat opposite him clung to each other with near hysteria, barely able to keep their seats. They would die for their dereliction, Morhab vowed. Glancing at his passengers, he saw perfect examples of the common Chalin woman—stupid and worthless, whereas Johanna was elegant and refined, the supreme jewel of his life. He had never meant to cause her misery, and
that he had apparently done so filled him with remorse. He had only wished for her to share herself with him, and not in any base manner, but in a noble way. . . . She did not think it noble. Or even bearable. That she despised him, despite all that they had shared, saddened him beyond measure.

Coming to the parade grounds, he signaled the door open, and the sled shot over the yard at its maximum speed. To Morhab it could not be fast enough.

Had Johanna discovered that Pai was reporting to him? That was the only reason he could imagine for her suicide. She might rather immolate herself than face the lord’s garrote. But Morhab had planned to beg the lord to put her under arrest in his own care. Lord Inweer would owe him some consideration for discovering the plot that was presently to bring Titus Quinn to Ahnenhoon. The poor, deluded woman, to think that she could bring the man of the Rose here, and no one the wiser! He would have spoken to the lord at first hour of Early Day. And of course, he still must speak to the lord whether Johanna died or not.

Across from him, he saw Pai’s wild stare. She had never intended to doom her mistress. But Morhab had made clear that it was either spy for him or suckle his Gondlings in the nest.

Entering the great fortress of the watch, Morhab slowed, moving at a stately pace through a wide tunnel suitable for ten Hirrin to march abreast. He did not wish to raise alarms in the watch. If he succeeded in saving Johanna, no one need know. SuMing pointed the way into a remote corner of the watch, and he drove onward, chafing to speed ahead, racked with apprehension. Few soldiers billeted in this section of the watch, its silent corridors echoing with the whine of the sled.

As they approached the outer wall of the watch, SuMing half stood, waving her arms to direct him toward a heavy door. As the sled hovered in front of it, Morhab saw that the door was still partway open from Johanna’s passage. He stared at it in dismay. “She has gone through already?” He eyed the hard-packed dirt. It looked quiescent. But it always did, while hiding its fire.

SuMing said, “Her lord has told her that today on the sere there will be a cycle of burning and not burning, so that soldiers can pass over. This is a quiet cycle, but hurry!” She jumped down from the sled and began pulling the door wider so that Morhab’s conveyance might pass through. Pai rushed down to help, and the door came fully open.

Now they could see that someone stood far out on the sere.

From his perch on the sled, Morhab gaped at Johanna standing on ground that should ignite her. How could there be a cycle of inactivity that Johanna could predict? Looking to the other side of the sere, he scanned the fifth domain, the wall of that structure called the terminus. There were no soldiers waiting to cross. It made no sense that the lord had set a schedule of burning and not burning on the sere.

As Pai stood frozen by the door, looking out onto the dreaded black ground, SuMing grabbed her by the shoulders. “She will only listen to you, Pai. You must go.”

Pai looked doubtful. “You come too.”

SuMing’s face hardened. “You know how she hates me. It is better for me not to show my face.”

A sly look came into Pai’s face. “You are afraid to step on the sere.”

“Indeed not, if Johanna stands there safely.” She turned to Morhab. “Shall I come along, Excellency, or just her friends?”

Morhab thundered, “Pai, step up to the sled. We go alone.”

Having little choice, Pai relented. She climbed onto the sled.

SuMing watched as Morhab powered the sled onto the blackened ground.

“Now, Johanna,” she murmured. And from the shadows, her mistress rushed to help her push the door shut behind the sled.

She and SuMing then crept to the window opening where she had set up her device to project her likeness. They watched as the sled moved forward. Under the platform of the vehicle, dust stirred, then purpled. As the sled churned forward, a seam of fire appeared underneath, spitting a plume to one side. Morhab looked down with a look of surprise tinged with sadness, as though the world had disappointed him. Beneath the sled smoldered an incandescent plate of fire.

The sled shook sideways, and a jet of flame ignited a pillow behind Morhab. Instantly the fire jumped to his person. Morhab bellowed. A curtain of fire swept onto his papery wings, incinerating them. The sled swerved around to make a turn and head back for the door as Johanna’s image flickered out.

Standing on the sled’s passenger seat, Pai wailed piteously. With the flames eating the pillows and drapes of Morhab’s conveyance, Pai leaped to the ground and began racing for the door of the watch. Explosively, her feet burst into flames, shooting up her clothing, turning her into a torch.

Amid Morhab’s terrible cries, the rear end of the sled exploded, crumpling it onto the ground, where a conflagration engulfed it, sending clouds of black smoke curling over the sere. The Gond couldn’t move, but burned with his pillows and stone well computers, which popped and hissed like firecrackers.

Back at the window, Johanna tucked the imager into her tunic pocket. Pursued by the memory of Morhab’s awful bellows, she and SuMing hurried back through the corridors of the watch. SuMing held out her arm for Johanna to lean on her, but found that she was scarcely more steady herself.

“We are safe now,” SuMing whispered as they ran.

Johanna shuddered. “Did you see them burn? Oh, God, they burned like straw.”

SuMing thought that image would stay locked in her eyes forever. But forever would not be long if they did not compose themselves and present a calmer façade. Gathering their dignity, she and Johanna took several steadying breaths and resumed their progress down the corridor.

At the next turn they saw soldiers racing toward them. Noting Johanna, one of them stopped to hear her story, that Morhab the engineer had threatened suicide unless she accepted him as a suitor. They heard how she had rejected Morhab, never thinking it would come to this. She only hoped the soldiers wouldn’t be too late to prevent it.

They were far too late. From the thousand windows of the watch, astonished soldiers had seen Morhab’s sled burning brightly. Some of those on duty claimed they had seen a woman standing there beforehand, but those who heard this story dismissed the notion.

No one could stand on the sere.

PART IV
A
PLAGUE
OF
MATTER

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

To frighten one hundred, kill one.

—a saying

D
EPTA STOOD ON A STEEP HILL overlooking the plains of Ahnenhoon. In the distance, skirmishes flashed as defensive units met Paion intrusions that appeared from nowhere. A light breeze soothed Depta’s hide, and she reveled in four feet on solid ground. For the moment, at least, she and her lady were not racing after the man of the Rose, but stopping at a battlefield to inspect troops and carry out minor functions—or so Lady Chiron would have it appear.

At the foot of the rise lay Chiron’s brightship, so small at this distance she could cover it with one hoof, outstretched. She saw the miniature form of Lady Chiron as she stood beside her ship receiving a delegation of officers. Once finished with formalities, Chiron would slip away to keep watch on the Repel. Chiron could not be far enough away for Depta’s comfort.

She had grown to despise the lady.

The thought curled in Depta’s gut like a tumor. Finally the truth. But what would happen when Chiron asked, “Do you love us?”

A minor general named Ci Dehai had been assigned to attend her, and now leaned in to say, “That is the high General Lehao who greets the lady.”

“Impressive,” Depta said, hardly registering the high personages below.

Depta could run into the hills. She could just imagine
a court-bred Hirrin blundering about in the gullies, with no allies to run to. Perhaps the only recourse was to take her own life. Earlier, General Ci Dehai had given her a most instructive tour of the armory, where a thousand different weapons might be used to good effect. She had paid strict attention, even to the point of testing a few of them, to the general’s surprise and amusement.

“We have,” Ci Dehai was saying, “thirty-two divisions of sentients, formed into eight regiments, each commanding a place on the grid where incursions are predicted by perturbations of the walls.”

Divisions. Regiments. Depta tried to focus. But for what?

In the far distance, the walls of the world converged from both sides, pinching the world into a narrow strip of misery where the armies met, where Depta stood.

“On the instant, troops can reinforce each other across adjoining grids, then quickly re-form at stations,” Ci Dehai droned on. “The Paion are methodical, allowing us to predict incursions as to grid placement, if not time.”

Across the seven miles of battlefield between Depta and the storm walls, the armies mustered and engaged the Paion, creating snarls of troops and bursts of fire across the plains. So this is what war looked like, Depta thought. As isolated as she had been at the Ascendancy, it was easy to forget the war. It was also easy to miss the fact that she had given her life over to a fiend.

“See there?” Ci Dehai pointed. “The fortress of the Repel.”

Crouching on the right side of the battleground was Lord Inweer’s massive redoubt, at this distance a mere shelf of black stone. It was in that stronghold that the doomed Johanna Quinn lived her last hours. Lord Inweer didn’t yet know it was she who had alerted Titus Quinn to the purpose of the engine, but Chiron would inform him soon. Since treasonous thoughts came so easily to Depta these days, she allowed herself to conclude that Johanna Quinn was a patriot of her own land, and shouldn’t be held accountable to the vows of the Entire.

Once you decided to think for yourself, a great many ideas began to sprout.

At Depta’s side, Ci Dehai kept up a running commentary for his important visitor. “See, Preconsul, the zeppelins cause consternation among the troops. Fear is the best weapon the Paion wield, not the killing rain.”

Skimming over the war plain, Paion dirigibles swam, hailing down an ochre rain. The great airships, few in number, were fat targets, soon brought down by cannons shooting blue-white fire. The Paion used no great devices of war, nor did the Tarig grant such powers to their own armies. The Entire couldn’t endure high disruption, and the Paion wished to claim the Entire intact, not in shreds. Thus, in the million days of the war, cannons shooting fire and zeppelins raining acid remained the most fearsome weapons of this contest.

The general pointed. “See there, Preconsul, an airship blooms.” To watch this new zeppelin, he turned sharply to one side, exposing the mottled flesh of the ruined half of his face.

Depta watched as a smear of sky became an oblong ship, budding into existence before the walls of the Repel. She couldn’t judge its size, and asked.

“The airship would not fit on this hill, Preconsul. It carries one thousand Paion.” At her doubtful look, he shrugged. “They do not value life as we do, since they have so many soldiers to waste.”

“Do they ever fight on the ground?”

“Certainly, Preconsul. Otherwise we would have merely an artillery war on our hands, whereas you see the infantries drawn up in divisions. But the enemy does come by ship. They bloom from nowhere, and wreak havoc until we have them in our sights. Then we obliterate them.” They watched as a jet of blue fire snagged the zeppelin, sending a stream of fire along the top of the vessel.

Depta knew only one military quote, and she recited it now to maintain her end of the conversation. “‘In all the dimensions of matter, only one enemy.’”

Ci Dehai responded with some irony, “Unless you count the Rose.”

That was unexpected. “We are not at war with the Rose, General,” she said. Not yet. Not unless Titus Quinn succeeded. “We withhold knowledge of the Entire, but that is not the same as war.”