CHAPTER TWELVE
“Now what?” Grunwold asked.
“We wait,” Cerseru Kham replied. “To make the wait more pleasant, let me supply more substantial refreshments.” She waved one hand and a laden buffet appeared to one side of the conference table. “Avail yourself of them. Or you may return to your ship. The lightning shadows will not trouble you, even should you try to depart—only if you should try to return.”
Grunwold and Kaj beelined toward the refreshment table. Xerak didn’t even seem to have heard the invitation but sat, unmoving, staring where his master had vanished.
“I have several questions,” Meg said. “Perhaps, now that we must wait, you could answer them.”
“I will answer what I can,” Cerseru Kham replied. “Some mysteries are restricted to the initiated.”
“Such restrictions are traditional in our world as well,” Meg agreed mildly. “We,” she indicated herself, Teg, and Peg, “have been troubled—perhaps tantalized is a better word—by links between this world and the one from which we came.”
“Such as?”
“Echoes of language, similarities of art or symbolism . . .”
“The fact,” Peg interrupted, “that from what we’ve seen, you people have characteristics—most obviously heads and tails—of creatures that are common in our world, but apparently don’t exist here.”
“I was getting to that,” Meg commented, arching her eyebrows in mild reproof. “However, it seemed impolite to rush in to such a very personal element.”
“But it’s the most obvious link,” Peg countered. “The others could be explained away on anthropological grounds. Right, Teg?”
“Some,” Teg agreed from where she’d followed the boys over to the buffet. “Symbols such as star shapes, spirals, masks, even pyramids, dragons and other winged creatures aren’t restricted to any one culture. Sounds also recur, whether because of common linguistic roots or plain old coincidence.”
“Like Ohio is the name of a state,” Peg put in helpfully, “but also how to say ‘good morning’ in Japanese.”
“Like that,” Teg said. She looked at Cerseru Kham. “So, now that Peg’s been blunt and rude, can you explain why it seems like this world holds so many echoes of our world?”
“Or yours of ours,” Vereez put in from where she was—without being asked—preparing poffee and tea for Meg and Peg. “I’ve been there, remember. I’ve seen how people who look like us constantly show up in your art.”
“You’ve been there?” Cerseru Kham’s eyes widened. “That’s amazing!”
“I brought her,” Teg explained worriedly. “The boys, too. I hope I didn’t break any rules.”
“No, you didn’t. At least not any rules I know, but your inquisitors may be the first people from our world to go to yours in several centuries. And, as far as I know, you three are the only humans to ever visit this world—at least as humans.”
Cerseru Kham rose and trotted briskly over to the buffet, poured herself a tall glass of pa-pa juice, and put a few nibbles on a small plate, which she carried back to her seat.
“Much of what I am going to tell you is usually reserved for initiates but, given how unusual this entire situation is, I am going to break silence. I hope that when I am done, you will understand why this information is usually kept secret.”
She looked at them as if hoping someone might promise in advance, but no one did.
“Sorry,” Grunwold said, sniffing various pitchers and bottles before settling on a dark ale that frothed as he poured it into a drinking bowl. “We’ve had too much of secrets lately. They’re beginning to taste a lot like lies.”
“Tell us your story,” Meg said encouragingly. “We are not unreasonable, and we have all, humans and denizens of Over Where alike, had to learn to accept a great deal that would have seemed beyond reason.”
Cerseru Kham nodded. “Being capable of accepting what seems beyond reason may be useful in understanding what I am about to tell you.”
She waited until everyone had refreshments and had taken seats. Xerak remained cross-legged on the floor, facing the section of tangled roots through which his master had walked, but the cant of his head made clear he was as attentive as the rest. He even gave Vereez a smile when she set a bowl of poffee down next to him.
“Long, long ago,” Cerseru Kham began, her cadence that of a storyteller, “our ancestors lived on your world. Magic flowed more freely then, and those who could use it often served their communities as teachers and leaders. Even in those early days, when people lived in small family groups and everyone knew everyone, those who were especially talented in the ways of magic were often taken as gods.
“Whether as gods or priests serving gods or mystics, as human society evolved, wizards were highly influential. To mark themselves out from the general population, they often adopted shapes that blended human characteristics with those of animals that were considered particularly important in one way or another.
“Time passed. Humans prospered. Eventually, the first great city-building civilizations developed. Wizards remained influential, often serving as advisors to those who did the actual ruling and administration. Over time, debate arose within the community of wizards as to how best to influence their societies. The first rulers of these larger communities had been those with personal influence—whether those with magic, those who excelled in the hunt or in war, or those with some other value to the community.
“As communities grew in size, a new ruler arose. This new ruler was not human. It grew to power in stealth, gaining in prominence even before it was proclaimed. This new ruler was the domination first of custom, later of law, for law is custom codified. In time Law came to hold power over even those who were lawgivers. Law became the means to challenge the rights of even the most powerful warlord or arrogant plutocrat. Law allied itself with punishment, and through punishment with death. Thus, death, which before had been seen as a part of the natural cycle, came to be seen as the enemy of life.
“While many wizards were uncomfortable with the rise of Law, seeing it as inflexible and impersonal, some wizards saw Law as the means to bolster their own waning influence for—and no one has ever settled on what the reason was for this—since the rise of cities, the power of magic had been ebbing, and with it the influence of those who wielded magic.
“From being seen as gods, many wizards had fallen to being seen as servants of gods, and weak servants at that, for the working of magic drains the user. But what if Law could be transformed from a code that had evolved from a society’s needs into something given by the divine? Then the gods and the servants of the gods would have influence to compete with—even to surpass—that of those who commanded armies.
“So it was that those who sought to use Law to preserve their own power banded together. But not every wizard agreed with this choice. Some had been studying the ebbing of magical power, and had come to the conclusion that the reason there was less magic was that people had forgotten that death was not an ending, but was simply one element in the soul’s journey. Death was coming to been seen as—at worst—a cessation of existence. At best, death was seen as a passage into an afterlife separate from this life’s cycle.
“When some wizards argued that magic could be rejuvenated by teaching people how to connect with their past selves, those who had embraced the ideology of Law protested. Humanity did not need more magic, they said, it needed more order. To encourage the belief in a reincarnating soul was to remove the sting of death that lies behind so many punishments—especially as many religions were teaching of an afterlife that included rewards for those who adhered to Law and punishments for those who did not.
“So it was that from the single seed of magical ability, two trees arose. One was the Tree of Law. One was the Tree of Life. Eventually, those who chose to dwell beneath the shade of the Tree of Life decided to leave the world where magic had become twisted and perverted into a means of control—of limiting potential, rather than expanding it.
“They sought—some say created—another world where they could begin again, without coming into conflict with their rivals. Reaching back to their most ancient roots, they chose to reshape themselves into creatures other than humans. This was because, increasingly, the wizards of Law had preached the primacy of the human form. By choosing a wide variety of nonhuman traits, the advocates of Life made a statement as to their oneness with the variety of all living things.
“The advocates of Life are this world’s first ancestors, although not our only ones. The story goes on to say how not all of this tradition left the world of origin at one time. Many users of magic remained on your Earth, thriving for centuries, even millennia. However, eventually the rule of Law spread—encouraged, so some say, through the sheer force of the long-ago city-builder’s tradition. Each time Law won out over Life, a new wave of immigrants found the Tree of Life and joined us here. The one thing that binds us is the knowledge that the soul is immortal and will repeatedly take different living forms.”
Cerseru Kham folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head, indicating that her tale was done.
“Wow!” Peg said. “That makes a curious sort of sense. I can see why, in the variation of the story that we have, Adam and Eve aren’t supposed to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowledge of something, rather than blind adherence to—even fear of—a code of laws is a big difference from blind obedience. Basically, choosing obedience over knowledge is accepting the law, but leaving the understanding to someone else.”
Teg added, “The story you told us, Cerseru Kham, does explain why the mythologies of so many cultures in our world include a ‘before’ time, a time when gods walked the earth and miracles were commonplace. Usually, anthropologists explain this as wishful thinking, but I’ve always wondered why so many cultures should wish for the same thing, why they should be content to view themselves as fallen from an age of gold to one of mud. You’d think they’d want the reverse—a sense of progressing toward perfection.”
Meg nodded agreement. “Cerseru Kham-va’s story also explains why there are many stories of a time without sin, because the concept of sin in the abstract belongs to Law.”
Meg turned to Cerseru Kham, a light of challenge in her pale blue eyes. “When you were chiding Uten Kekui for his refusal to take up his responsibilities, you spoke of the roots of the world trembling. Now that we understand that your world has its roots in ours, tell me, do the great artifacts have some part in this story?”
Cerseru Kham nodded. “When our ancient ancestors left their world of origin, they did not close the way to eventual reconciliation. However, those we left behind remained frightened of us. Perhaps because we did not embrace their right to rule us, they felt we would someday seek to undermine them. Because of that fear, they blocked our return. In doing so, whether knowingly or unknowingly, they also blocked the ability of our souls to follow us after death into our new home.”
“What?” “How?” The exclamations were general.
Peg murmured, “The angel with the fiery sword barring the way into the Garden of Eden.”
Cerseru Kham continued, “It seems that our souls ‘belong’ in some sense to the world of their origin. We learned of the consequences of this obstruction early in our migration: if blocked, the soul cannot be reborn. Since we still had many who shared our priorities back on the world of our birth, we worked with them to create a structure called the Bridge of Lives over which our souls could continue to cycle. The great artifacts are what maintain this bridge. With only one—my Maet Pexer—currently working fully, the gap is decreased. I am aware of a . . .”
She gestured, swirling her hands in the air as if physically reaching for an idea. “There isn’t really a word for it. A pressure? In any case, a sense that the passage of souls from past life to rebirth is being constrained.”
“I see why you’re worried,” Meg said thoughtfully.
“Are there no new souls?” Peg asked. “Or are you all descended from the rebel angels?”
Apparently, the translation spell was able to handle Peg’s wording, for Cerseru Kham replied, “There are new souls, but these are only created when there are not sufficient souls to animate the bodies of those newly born. This happens from time to time, but globally our population is very stable.”
Grunwold said, “I don’t understand. If all of us are descended from wizards, why don’t all of us have the ability to work magic?”
“All of us are not descended from wizards,” Cerseru Kham replied patiently. “Many of those who chose the way of Life rather than Law were not wizards. However, even a wizard’s soul may lose the ability to perform magic for a lifetime or so—most often if he or she is working through a personal conflict and chooses not to remember some key aspect of his or her past lives.”
“My master,” Xerak challenged, his gaze still fixed on where Uten Kekui had vanished, “lost his memory, but retained his power.”
“Your master,” Cerseru Kham said, a note of asperity in her voice, “may have remembered more than he is admitting.”
“Speaking of Xerak’s master,” Vereez said. “How long before we can hope for Uten Kekui-va to come back? Is this initiation journey something that might take days?”
Nice of her to ask, Teg thought. Xerak is clearly beginning to worry, but he doesn’t want to sound as if he doesn’t believe Uten Kekui can’t handle whatever challenge Ba Djed will lead him to.
“The amount of time needed to fulfill the challenge can vary,” Cerseru Kham replied. “Let’s give Uten Kekui somewhat longer before declaring his effort a failure, shall we? After all, although my tale embraced the events of millennia, still, not all that much time has gone by.”
Xerak grunted agreement.
“I would like to hear about this Garden of Eden you mentioned,” Cerseru Kham said, looking at the three humans.
“Me, too,” Vereez said. Grunwold and Kaj nodded. Xerak cocked one ear back, but otherwise remained focused on the tangle of tree roots.
Peg obliged. “I can’t promise to get the story perfect, because there are so many different retellings, but I’ll do my best.”
When she finished, Meg said, “Nicely done. A little Milton, a little Sunday school, but mostly Biblical. As you were telling the story, I found myself thinking how interesting it is that, in some versions of the tale, the serpent ate the fruit of the Tree of Life and so gained the immortality denied to the descendants of Adam and Eve.”
“Something similar happens in the Epic of Gilgamesh,” Teg said, “except that a serpent eats the flower Gilgamesh is bringing back to the world of the living, rather than a piece of fruit, which is why snakes, rather than humans, are immortal. Interesting how the desire to live forever is repeatedly given a negative slant.”
“I wonder,” Teg went on, “how the various flood tales fit into this. It’s interesting that one of the earliest—the Sumerian tale of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh—is also tied up with the search for eternal life. You’ll recall that Gilgamesh . . .”
From the Epic of Gilgamesh, they went on to discuss other flood tales from around the world, including how in many the Earth is remade after the flood. Vereez listened avidly. Grunwold stretched out and at least pretended to nap, Heru nested down next to him. Kaj also listened, occasionally asking questions. Xerak sat, stiff backed, his spear staff across his lap, gaze unwaveringly fixed on the spot where his master had vanished.
It was Grunwold who broke the increasing tension.
“I may not be a wizard,” he said, rolling to his feet and stretching, “but I do have a good sense of time. Cerseru Kham-va, how much longer before you do whatever you do to figure out if Uten Kekui is in need of assistance?”
“I suggest we give him at least a day,” Cerseru Kham replied. “I suggest that you all spend at least some of that time resting. If you do need to help him—something that I think is highly unlikely—you will do neither him nor yourselves any good by being exhausted. This cavern is not equipped with sleeping quarters, but I swear on Maet Pexer that you will be able to return here if you leave to go to your craft.”
“She has a point,” Peg said. She put down her knitting and went over to Xerak. “Come on. Be sensible. You’ve worked some major magics over these last several days, your nerves are shot.”
“C’mon, bud,” Grunwold echoed. “You know Peg’s right. If you won’t come on your own, I’ll drag you.”
“You and whose army?” Xerak growled, a deep rumbling thing, close on a roar.
“Me.” Kaj stood beside Grunwold, his magnificent muscles rippling. “I’ve seen the results of sleep deprivation all too often. And I’m not as confident as Cerseru Kham-va that we’re not going to need to go after Uten Kekui.”
“Give in, Xerak,” Teg suggested. “Me and Vereez and Kaj, we’re all your apprentices, right? And we have your example of stubborn devotion as our model. How about making this easy on all of us?”
At that, Xerak started shaking, Teg thought at first with rage. Then she realized that he was trying to hold in laughter. When it bubbled out, it started the rest of them—even Cerseru Kham—laughing as well.
“All right. I’ll go get some sleep.” Xerak pushed himself to his feet. He looked hopefully over at Peg. “Dinner first? All that Cerseru Kham-va so kindly supplied is tasty, but suddenly I could use some of your Irish stew.”
“Easily done,” Peg said. “I have some in the larder. It only needs warming.” She looked at Cerseru Kham. “We’ll send you a bowl. It’s not quite right, since I had to use domestic kubran rather than mutton, and substitute different root vegetables for the onions, potatoes, and carrots, but it’s pretty good.”
Cerseru Kham showed her teeth in a wide smile. “I would be honored. There are times I grow quite tired of my own cooking.”
Despite Cerseru Kham’s confidence that Uten Kekui would succeed in his initiation, when they re-entered the cavern beneath the roots of the world some hours later, she was its only tenant.
“Uten Kekui hasn’t come back,” she said without waiting to be asked. “Worse . . . I believe something may be seriously wrong. Remember how I told you that since Ba Djed and Qes Wen lost their custodians, I have been aware of an increasing sense of pressure?”
No one spoke, but ears of various sizes and shapes perked to indicate agreement. The humans had to settle for nodding.
“Sometime during your rest period, I became aware of fluctuation in that pressure. At first it became less, which I took as a good sign—an indication that Uten Kekui had retaken his role as trustee and the bridge was strengthening. Not long ago, I felt the pressure increase again, becoming—if anything—more intense than it had been.”
“So, what’s happening?” Grunwold demanded.
Cerseru Kham looked directly at Grunwold when she replied. “Yesterday you said something that indicated you believed that I could somehow see Uten Kekui and monitor his activities. I didn’t bother to explain then—because I thought Uten Kekui would have returned by now and the point would be moot—but I am unable to check on him. He has gone where one might follow, but none can see.”
Xerak made a choking sound, but otherwise couldn’t seem to form words.
“One?” Grunwold retorted. “Is that poetical phrasing, or are you saying only one of us can go after him?”
Cerseru Kham smiled. “Poetical. If all of you wish to go, you are welcome to share the risk. I, however, will not be going. As the one remaining custodian of a great artifact, I cannot in good conscience do something so irresponsible.”
“That makes sense,” Grunwold agreed gruffly. He looked at the others. “Anyone want to stay here to protect our backs?”
“Or be ready to come pull you out if you fail?” Vereez said, trying to sound as if she were joking and failing entirely. “Honestly, I think we all should go.”
Xerak started to say something and she held up one black-nailed hand.
“Xerak . . . Stuff it. We’re not letting you go alone.”
Xerak rubbed a rounded ear. “Actually, I was going to say that if Uten Kekui has come up against something he can’t deal with, then I’m not certain I could deal with it alone. I’d appreciate some help. But Grunwold does have a point. It might be wisest for a backup team to wait.”
Kaj shook his head. “We’re too small a group. How would we split our numbers to leave an effective backup? Four and three? Five and two? Two and five? However we do it, we either start with or leave behind a weaker band—and it’s not as if our abilities are interchangeable. Xerak is the only qualified wizard in our number. He will definitely want to be in the first group. Any group without him will be without a wizard—less able by definition.”
Teg fought down a sudden impulse to claim she could serve as backup wizard, uncertain as to whether what fueled it was overconfidence or a desire to have an excuse to stay behind.
Instead, she said, “Kaj’s made a good point. Cerseru Kham-va is remaining behind. If we also vanish, after a suitable time, she can arrange a rescue party.”
“I would and will,” Cerseru Kham agreed. “No matter what lingering doubts you may have regarding my ethics, you can believe that I will arrange a rescue. After all, Uten Kekui took Ba Djed with him, and that must be retrieved at all costs.”
“Enlightened self-interest,” Meg said, with a close-lipped smile that robbed the words of any sting. “A believable motivation.”
“Since we’re looking for my master,” Xerak said, “I think that rather than attempting to retrace his steps, the best thing would be to create a search centered on him specifically. Cerseru Kham, can you show me how to make the ritual understand that?”
“I can try,” she replied. “It’s a sensible enough request.”
Moving to the vicinity where Uten Kekui had departed, she reached up and wrapped her hands in a cluster of dangling tree roots, then shut her eyes and began to chant under her breath. The tree roots began to move, twining down to stroke the sides of her face and fondle her large ears. Eventually, Cerseru Kham opened her eyes just enough to look out from beneath hooded lids. With a jerk of her head, she beckoned Xerak closer.
“Join me,” she said, her voice distant. “Show the tree your intent.”
Without hesitation, Xerak reached up to meet the grasp of the roots that were already reaching for him. They entangled his arms up past the elbows, lifting him off the ground with what seemed like indecent eagerness. More tendrils grabbed his head, twisting through his mane to caress the skull beneath.
Teg found her hand drifting to where the sun spider amulet rested, wondering if her rapport with earth magic would be enhanced here in this apparently subterranean realm, or if the gigantic tree beneath whose roots they stood was already using all available magic. Happily, Teg wasn’t forced to find out. Well before she was tempted to experiment, the roots gently released both Cerseru Kham and Xerak. Xerak’s boots hadn’t quite come to rest on the packed dirt of the floor before he was talking.
“I think I’ve gotten the tree to understand that we want to go to where my master is. I felt as if the tree was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I think it was that Master has met with some sort of difficulty, but we already guessed that, right? So, I’m still going. Everyone who’s coming, follow me.”
Pausing to give Cerseru Kham the briefest of bows, Xerak started off at a jog-trot toward where—as on the day before—the dangling roots were separating, creating what was definitely a tunnel between here and . . . where?
Not long ago, Teg might have considered her actions more carefully. Now all she saw was Xerak’s maned head, followed closely by Grunwold’s stag antlers, and she started running to catch up because who knew what trouble those kids were going to get into if she and the others weren’t there?
The tunnel through the roots didn’t so much end as, all at once, they found themselves somewhere else. Teg didn’t bother to look back to see if the tunnel remained open behind them. She knew it wouldn’t be, and that didn’t particularly bother her. What did was the vista in front of them.
Stretching side to side was a broad sweep of something varicolored green, simultaneously opaque and translucent. It took Teg a long moment to register that what she was seeing was a broad, mostly flat body of water. She looked up and saw a sky heavy with rain clouds. Little bits of light peeked out around them, silvering the edges of some clouds in a fashion that made the overall impression all the more dark and heavy.
“Lowering clouds,” Peg said, pronouncing the word lou-er-ing, “or is that lo-ering, because they look so low? I’ve never known what’s the right way to say that word.”
“Lou-er-ing,” Meg said, absently, “but the root word probably means ‘to lower,’ so you could justify either. The real question is, where is Uten Kekui?”
Xerak was standing at the edge of the water, looking out over the flat green sea. He grasped his spear staff tightly in his hands, his attitude one of intense concentration.
“Xerak’s looking,” Vereez said trotting back to join them, “or scrying or sensing or something. Where are we? This doesn’t look like your world, does it? It doesn’t look like anywhere I know in ours.”
Teg wrenched her gaze away from that huge sheet of water. She had no idea why this body of water was so mesmerizing. She’d seen large bodies of water before: the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, some of the Great Lakes, even the Mediterranean Sea. Why did this strike her as so impossibly vast?
Looking behind her, Teg felt a shock. While she hadn’t expected to find a neat tunnel, offering retreat, she hadn’t expected this. They stood on a shelf of material too gravelly to be called sand, to sandy to be pebbles. In a life spent grubbing around in the dirt, this was the most innocuous material Teg had ever seen. It reminded her of crusher fine gravel, but it was somehow even more boring than that most utilitarian of landscaping materials.
Beyond the crusher fine spit on which they stood hung a thick curtain of fog. Like the gravel, it was lifeless and flat. No wind rippled it; no light bounced off it. It was just there. Teg knew if she walked into the fogbank, sound would be muffled, her sense of direction would vanish. She’d be encased in nothing. The idea was hypnotically tempting.
Xerak turned around before Teg could give in to the temptation to walk into the fog.
“Master’s out there.” He pointed over the flat, green water, the tip of his spear as direct as the needle of a compass. “I can sense both him and Ba Djed. My awareness of them is faint but definite.”
“Pity,” Grunwold said, “we don’t have Slicewind. I’d sail you right over to him . . .”
He broke off in midphrase as the green glass of the flat waters was suddenly interrupted by the intrusion of a very familiar shape. Slicewind bobbed slightly as it adjusted to its new undersurface, then steadied.
Grunwold started to run forward, then stopped. Wheeling around, he tried to face the others without losing sight of his beloved ship.
“I’m not hallucinating, am I? That is Slicewind floating there, right?”
“It looks like it,” Kaj replied, deadpan. He tilted back his head and sniffed. “Smells like her, too. I catch the odor of the pancakes Vereez burned this morning.”
Vereez tossed her head back and sniffed. “Kaj’s right. And if I try hard, I get the smell of Xerak’s socks.”
Grunwold might have been expected to add something. This was just his sort of takedown match, but he only stood, staring at Slicewind. Then he turned to Xerak.
“You did this? Right? Or whatever you were communing with earlier knew we were going to need a ship.”
Xerak shook his head slowly. “I think you did it, Grunwold. You’ve always gotten far more out of Slicewind than the rest of us. I thought you were simply a fine sailor, but now I think you also have something of a wizard’s gift. Maybe, as with Teg and the sun spider amulet, you simply needed the right artifact to channel your abilities. Wind and water would be my guess as to your affiliations, but wood, too, or you wouldn’t have been able to bind the ship so closely to you.”
Anyone but Grunwold might have continued to protest, but his usual cockiness carried him through.
“Well then, as I was saying, I’ll sail you to wherever it is you sense your master.” Grunwold ran his fingers over the tines of one antler. “But first, can one of you give me a boost up to the deck so I can lower a boarding ladder?”
Teg decided that the wind that came from nowhere to fill Slicewind’s sails was a materialization of Xerak’s desire to find his master. Peg thought it had more to do with Grunwold’s will and his rapport with the ship. Meg refused to conjecture.
“What matters is that we are moving—and at a fair clip—over an ocean that remains still as glass although, overhead, the clouds are in motion.”
Teg leaned back and looked up. The clouds were indeed moving, but their action was anything but normal.
“There’s something wrong with those clouds. Look! They keep going back and forth, back and forth,” she said.
“Like a giant’s breathing, pulling and pushing,” Peg offered. “In and out, in and out. You don’t think there could be a giant somewhere, do you?”
She addressed her question to the company in general. Xerak, poised in the ship’s bow, figurehead and compass in one, answered.
“It’s possible. I think anything is possible. We’re getting closer. Soon we won’t need to guess. I hope everyone is ready.”
“Ready for anything,” quipped Grunwold from the wheel. Despite the uncertainty of their situation, he was almost insanely cheerful. He reached up to stroke Heru, who was perched on his shoulder.
No matter how good a face he put on it, Teg thought affectionately, Grunwold didn’t like being the only one of that trio without even a sniff of magic.
Vereez called down from the crow’s nest, although the curious stillness of the air meant she barely had to raise her voice to be heard. “No sign of land. Not even an island, but there’s an odd cloud formation off in front of us, midhorizon. Do you see it? It seems uninfluenced by whatever is pushing the high-altitude clouds back and forth.”
Everyone except Grunwold moved to where they could get a clear look at the skies, unimpeded by the sails.
“That can’t be a thunderhead,” Peg said, her inflection making the statement almost a question. “Maybe a pair of thunderheads?”
“With lightning?” Kaj asked from where he stood, one hand resting lightly on the port rail. “There’s something bright toward the middle.”
Then Teg experienced one of those sudden shifts of perspective that were so incredibly valuable to her as an archeologist. “Holy Mother of Mercy! That isn’t a thunderhead. It isn’t a cloud at all. It’s an angel! Those ‘thunderheads’ are its wings. And the ‘lightning’ is the shimmer of its blade.”
The angel was gigantic, a towering humanoid that bore as much resemblance to the angels of Christmas pageants as a bump in the bedding does to the mightiest of Himalayan mountains. Its features were those of a human only in that they were not those of a fox or a lion or a deer or any other creature, but their lines and planes belonged to an idealized concept of humanity, not to any of the races of the Earth. The eyes were bright yet somehow blind: eyes that had looked upon a light more brilliant than the sun, and saw only by what it remembered of that light.
In its right hand, the angel held a sword that could have cleaved Slicewind from bow to stern; the left arm supported a shield that could have roofed a city. It stood, apparently upon the water, legs braced, as if on guard. The motion of the angel’s slowly fanning wings was the source of the wind that moved the highest clouds. Teg was trying to figure out what the angel was standing guard over when Kaj screamed, a howl raw with panic.
“Grunwold! Up! Take Slicewind up! I feel something moving in the depths!”
Grunwold didn’t wait for explanations. At the first shout of “up,” he hauled back on Slicewind’s altitude lever, raising his ship into the skies at an angle so steep that Xerak reeled back from the bow, only keeping from spilling overboard by sinking his claws into the mast. In the crow’s nest, Vereez shrieked and gripped the basket’s edge. On deck, the others clung to coils of rope and the edges of lockers. Heru sprang skyward, flapping his wings and squawking complaint.
Grunwold leveled Slicewind off well beneath the high-altitude clouds, but far above the now-roiling dark-green waters. Foaming white, these parted, revealing the gaping, many-toothed mouth of what Teg’s brain, dredging up long-ago Sunday school lessons, offered a name: Leviathan.
To say that Leviathan could have swallowed Slicewind in a single gulp would have been the understatement of all time. The jaws that gaped beneath them were a vast cavern, bordered by row upon row of snaggling teeth, a cavern that yawned so wide that it could have engulfed a continent. The eyes that peered up at them were minute by contrast, flat pinpricks of coolly judgmental awareness.
“Gee,” Peg said, her voice shaking even as she joked, “do you think someone doesn’t want us to sail any further?”
Undeterred, Xerak staggered forward again. He leaned out over the bow, looking right, left, beneath, seeking an impossibly small figure in this landscape of giants. Teg ran forward to his side, pulling out her binoculars as she did so. Let Xerak use his internal compass to find Uten Kekui. She had a thought as to where he might be. She didn’t like it but . . .
Below, Leviathan made the waters unnavigable. Teg had no doubt that should they try to sail Slicewind higher, the wind from the angel’s gigantic wings would make the skies too turbulent for sailing. Yet the angel did not come after them, but instead stood guarding something. What?
She found the angel’s prize in the middle distance that was neither sea nor sky: a liminal space that she had nearly overlooked, taking the glimpses of shimmering color for mist or sea spume lit by the brilliance of the angel. However, now that she had located it, she could see that the angel stood upon an insubstantial bridge, lit with the brilliance of the aurora borealis. One terminus faded off into the distance to be swallowed by the massive bank of fog and mist. The other ended somewhere near where the angel’s bare feet rested in the unnaturally still water. A slight turn of the head was enough to render this bridge invisible, but now that Teg had located it, she scanned along its span, looking for what she knew must be there.
Curled in a tight fetal position, not far from the angel’s little toe, lay Uten Kekui. Whether or not he was conscious was open to question, but Teg had no doubt that he had wrapped his body around Ba Djed—protecting the responsibility he had first tried to claim for himself alone, then as desperately to reject—with every bit of strength left to him.
Apparently, the angel wasn’t going to bother even stepping on him, but equally Uten Kekui could not escape under his own power. Beyond the angel, the aurora borealis span vanished into some impossible distance, presumably back into Teg’s own world, so even if Uten Kekui was conscious, and they somehow distracted the angel, Xerak’s master couldn’t escape that way.
“Xerak, keep control of yourself,” Teg said, touching the young wizard’s arm and tugging one side of his mane to turn his head in the correct direction. “Look for the most improbable bridge you can imagine. One end is near the angel’s feet.”
She knew when Xerak caught sight of both the bridge and the one who lay upon it, for his arm went tight under her fingers, but to Xerak’s everlasting credit, he didn’t do anything impulsive or foolish. He whispered very softly, “Master,” but that was all.
Teg became aware that the rest of Slicewind’s crew—with the exception of her captain, who remained at the wheel, his restlessly preening xuxu back on his shoulder—had come to join them.
“How can we rescue Uten Kekui?” Peg’s question was so matter-of-fact that she might have been asking what sort of toppings they wanted on an after-book-club pizza. “Do you think the angel will let us go onto that weirdness of a bridge?”
“If it does, I could sail Slicewind over the span,” Grunwold offered. “Then one or more of us could climb down, tie a rope around Uten Kekui, and haul him up.”
“Me,” Xerak said. The strain of keeping even a facsimile of calm was making him shake. “I’m going.”
“I’d want at least two of us to go,” Teg said. “I think your master is holding Ba Djed. We’d be in a real pickle of he dropped it and it rolled off the bridge. We’d be lucky if all it did was roll into the water. More likely, Leviathan would swallow it.”
“I’m worried as to whether that bridge is strong enough to hold us,” Kaj said. “It’s sagging under only Uten Kekui’s weight.”
Teg raised her binoculars. Before she’d been mostly focused on Xerak’s master, but now that she looked at the bridge itself, she saw what Kaj meant. Initially, she’d believed that the span was difficult to see because—well, because it was nothing more than light and mist. Now she realized that it was very, very slowly fading. Ghost images at the edges showed that once the bridge had been wider. Doubtless it had been more solid as well.
“The bridge might be weaker than usual,” Kaj suggested, “because only one of the great artifacts has a keeper. As long as all it had to support were reincarnating souls, it could manage, but a grown man is too much for it to bear. It’s dissolving under the pressure. If we step on it, we’ll finish the job.”
Teg expected Xerak to take offense on his master’s behalf, but clearly the danger Uten Kekui was in made trivial any arguments as to whether the wizard was responsible for his own plight.
Peg went over to one of the coils of rope and began industriously sawing off a piece. When she was done, she held the length of rope against an astonished Xerak.
“What are you doing, Peg?” The young wizard was astonished enough to stop shaking.
“Making a flying harness to put around whoever we lower down. It’s possible that we can move Uten Kekui to one side. Then we can get Ba Djed, and haul up your master.”
“Make a second harness,” Xerak suggested eagerly. “If we can get one onto Uten Kekui, maybe we can pull him up without anyone having to walk on the bridge.”
“I am going to make two,” Peg said, “but Uten Kekui is going to have to do with either a rope tied firmly around him or someone who can grab hold of him and hang on while we haul them both up. We’ll need at least two people to go down—one to grab Uten Kekui, one to get a firm hold on Ba Djed. I’d suggest you and Kaj. You’re attuned to the artifact. He and Grunwold are the strongest of the lot, but Grunwold’s going to be needed at Slicewind’s helm. It’s too much to expect that the angel isn’t going to make a try for us.”
“Let me help you, Peg,” Vereez said, hurrying over. “I’m actually pretty good at knots.”
“Excellent. Many hands make light work, and mine aren’t as strong as they used to be.”
“I’m not bad with knots, either,” Teg said, lowering the binoculars.
“You measure Kaj,” Peg said. “I trust you to be accurate, even if you do need to work fast. We’ll need around his waist, then over his chest . . .”
She rattled off a series of measurements. Kaj obediently raised and lowered his arms while Teg got the measurements she needed, then he hurried over to inspect the cargo winches. Luckily, for their purposes, there were two. Grunwold clearly wasn’t thrilled about having Kaj tinkering with any aspect of Slicewind, but he needed both hands for the wheel, since the gusts were becoming increasingly erratic. Instead of complaining, Grunwold used the time it took to knot the harnesses together and get them fitted on Kaj and Xerak to test the angel’s reactions, much as he had done with the lightning shadows.
“I’ll bring Slicewind in as close to that winged guy as I can,” Grunwold said when Kaj and Xerak were ready to go over the side, “without seeming to challenge him. I’ll angle for a broadside pass, so as to place you as near to Uten Kekui as I dare but, even so, you may need to run a few paces on the bridge.”
“Try to let the rope take most of your weight,” Peg suggested, “while you just provide the horizontal motion.”
Meg had taken over the crow’s nest, and now she called down. “I finally remembered what that bridge reminds me of: it’s a more vibrant version of the span created when Inehem’s transport spell and ours were in conflict. Expect the footing to feel odd—as I recall, Inehem’s version almost felt rubbery.”
Xerak flashed Meg a smile. “Thanks. Oddly, knowing this is like that makes me feel better. One less strangeness.”
With Grunwold needed at Slicewind’s wheel, and Xerak and Kaj going down, the winches were left to Vereez, Peg, and Teg. The two humans were teamed on one winch, while Vereez took the other—reminding them tartly that though she might not be a bruiser like Kaj or Grunwold, daily practice with her twin swords had left her far from weak.
That spared Meg for the highly important post of spotter, since Grunwold would only be able to estimate when Slicewind would be in position, and the winch teams would also need help knowing when to play out or haul in their lines.
There was no time for rehearsal, not with the aurora borealis span thinning more and more with every passing moment. Grunwold brought Slicewind around. The angel’s flat, all-seeing, unseeing eyes tracked the ship’s motion, but otherwise the angel did not move, not even to the rippling of a gargantuan muscle or the pulsing of a wing.
“Based on Winged Boy’s lack of reactions, I could probably take us in closer,” Grunwold said as he glided Slicewind in less than ten meters away from where Uten Kekui still sprawled in apparent unconsciousness, “but I’m not going to risk it.”
“Good,” Teg responded nervously.
Grunwold might not be worried, but this close the angel looked more monstrous than ever. Its basic unreality was emphasized by how its skin lacked even the tiniest blemishes, such as visible pores or the fine down of hair that adorned even “naked” human skin.
“Winged Boy looks plastic,” Peg commented. “Like the universe’s largest tree topper.”
She might have said more, but Meg called, “Almost in position. Three, two, one . . . Go!”