“I said you that you could not save them,” said Qurunad. “This war cannot be won without sacrifice. They are needed, but not as men. Be thankful that you live.”
“You did this on purpose,” said Rel. “You knew what would happen. You used me to remove Brauctha.”
“Now you catch on,” said the Brass God. “Shkarauthir also had to go. He would not have pursued the correct course of action either. All was necessary, and all was ordained. I told you I had limited powers of foresight. You did not listen. If it makes you feel better, I am sorry it has to be this way, and I am sorry it has to be you, but this war cannot be lost.”
Rel’s body was failing, he was dissipating on the wind. He could see through his own skin to the bones and blood vessels beneath, and the sandy floor behind that.
“You fucking bastard!” whispered Rel. “I’m dying.”
“You are,” said the Brass God. “Your gifts will kill you, but not tonight. I am not done with you yet. I did not lie when I said I cannot leave this place. This is my army, but I require you to lead it.”
The Brass God came limping to his side and clamped his metal hand against Rel’s head. Coldness spread through Rel’s body. Darkness took away the tyranny of choice, and Rel’s ability to force his will upon the fabric of being faded along with his consciousness.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Darkling Remembers
UNDER A CEILING of stone hundreds toiled. The Darkling watched them from atop a boulder hidden away in the mouth of an abandoned side gallery.
There had been no need to cajole the population of Perus to work in the excavation of the caverna. The word of the gods’ will had spread quickly. The growing Church of the Returned was swelled by thousands of fresh converts. Many of them toiled gladly in the dark underworld of Perus, driving a hundred yard wide diagonal shaft downward into the city’s hidden depths, where the last functioning World Gate on the continent lay hidden.
Through Guis Kressind’s stolen eyes the Darkling observed goodfellows and peasants alike hacking away at the stone. Miners had been brought in from all over the kingdom, but they were in a minority. Engineers fought a losing battle to impose order on the enthusiastic hordes of citizens tunnelling their way downward. Few of them had real tools. Many employed the uprights torn from iron railings as crude picks, ramming them home with little more than devotion to their gods to sustain them. Women and children carried water to the masses, and a few distributed food. But in their fervour most wanted to be at the rock face themselves. Bishop Rousinteau’s priests shouted sermons, promising life eternal at the right hand of the gods if only they could breach the walls, take out the rock, and expose the means of their deities’ access to the world anew. They worked themselves into exhaustion, falling where they dug. Some of them would not rise, their lives expended in the most profound form of worship.
“Can you see that?” whispered the Darkling. There was no one with it. An observer would see a man on the edge of physical dissolution speaking with himself, insane, perhaps. But the Darkling was never alone. Imprisoned deep inside his own body languished the spirit of Guis Kressind, and he could hear every word. “Your species changes the world again. Their zeal,” he sketched his gloved black hand through the air, “it reinforces itself. It makes the return of the gods more likely. I do not like Shrane. The taint of iron in her magic sickens me, but though she is skillful, I am craftier than she. Her beloved iron lords will not inherit this Earth.”
The Darkling smirked at Guis’ wordless anguish. The Darkling felt it inside himself, as piquant an emotion as new love.
“Shhhh,” it said. “You witness a great event. You are privileged. You will see the restoration of the true masters of this Earth. You shall see the renaissance of the Children of the Five. The Tyn Y Dvar will be born again.”
Explosions trembled the rock as magisters let off charges of glimmer and iron. Clouds of rockdust billowed up the shaft. A cheer went up that turned quickly to shouts of terror as a secondary collapse occurred. Rock cracked. Screams echoed out from an unauthorised side gallery. Boulders tumbled free, bouncing down the steep incline of the shaft, crushing the devout. The dust cleared. The dead were carried away. Blessings were sung to those who had sacrificed themselves doing the gods’ work, and the frantic industry was set in motion again. The Darkling watched it all.
“See how willingly they die? This is primal exultation, the act of worship in blood and sweat. Such focus warps reality. Your kind has such a gift for that.
“Before the god driving, when I served the Dark Lady proudly in immortal form, these spaces under Perus were avoided by humanity. The poor, the dispossessed, the insane lived here, wretches hiding in the palaces of the mighty past. But I remember further back, to this place as it was before the destruction wrought by the Children’s War. I remember gleaming spires, and mighty temples to the One. I remember the days my arrogant kin raised up the Morfaan from the beasts of the Earth to fawn after them, and moulded life into iron to make their Draathis slaves. I remember the days the Morfaan opened the first of their gates, simpering for the approval of their masters, breaking through the walls of this world as these labouring citizens break through this rock, without care or understanding of what they did. And then they brought you here.” He growled. “I was once a free being, a creature who dwelled in the air, beyond the hubris of other Y Dvar. You think me evil, but I was above such notions, until your kind trapped me in this shape and pushed the fathers of the Morfaan to the edge of your world. As the poor fouled the palaces, so your species has fouled this Earth. No more. These fools will fling open the roads of fire. The iron children will come and wipe away the stain of your existence. The Draathis shall destroy the last of the Morfaan, and then, when their role is done, my masters will cast off the prisons your worship put upon them, and they will destroy our wayward brothers and sisters, and smash the iron abominations, and sweep this place clean of all contamination. Then all shall return to the way it was, before Morfaan and Draathis and men. The worlds of Form and Will shall be restored to the designs of the One. And you, dear Guis Kressind, shall have the pleasure of knowing you were instrumental in the extinction of your species upon this world before I devour your soul.”
Running feet cut their way through the clattering of iron on stone. A youth approached the Darkling’s hiding place. The Darkling smiled at the expression on his wan features. Dread and awe mixed meant worship, and worship meant power. The Darkling hissed in pleasure at the strength given him by the boy’s belief in his divinity.
“My lord,” said the boy. He dropped to his knees and abased himself. The Darkling slid off the boulder he squatted upon and landed softly on dusty rubble.
“Rise,” he commanded. “Look upon me.”
The boy did as ordered. His eyes widened further as he looked into Guis Kressind’s unhealthy features, the sallow skin, the greasy hair coming away in clumps, the red-rimmed eyes. A sick-sweet stench of spiritual decay enveloped him.
“My lord god,” said the boy. “Adamanka Shrane, most blessed prophet of the returning gods, requests your presence. The final wall before the chamber of the gate is to be breached. She desires your presence.”
“Then she shall have it,” said the Darkling. He made to go, but paused, and smiled. “Tell me boy, do you wish my benediction? Do you wish the blessing of your gods?”
“Yes, your holiness. More than anything!” He clasped his hands beneath his chin.
“Then stand.”
The boy stood, shaking with anticipation. The Darkling reached out, and caressed his cheek with stinking fingers. The boy whimpered in rapture.
“Accept the blessing of your gods,” it said. The Darkling grabbed the boy at the back of the neck, and drove the fingers of its right hand deep into his eyes. The Darkling inhaled the boy’s screams, until the youth’s gaping mouth let out little more than a squeak. Holding the thrashing youth fast, the Darkling squirmed his fingers through the jelly of the boy’s eyes, p
ushing until orbital bones cracked, and through into the soft meat of the brain. The boy jerked hard twice, and died.
The Darkling let him drop, his slick fingers slipping free of the boy’s ruined face as he fell.
Guis Kressind’s face smiled horribly widely. The Darkling licked humours, blood and brain matter from its hands, and wiped the remainder upon his filthy coat.
“You are blessed,” said the Darkling. Whistling to itself, it sauntered out from the hollow and into the tunnel, heading for the end of the world.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
An Admission of Expertise
AUTUMN CONTINUED AS it began—colder, darker and wetter than in previous years. The countess was increasingly preoccupied with the idea that the Twin had an effect on the weather. In search of inspiration, she prepared to set her orrery going again. The experiment required a little adaptation to the machine before she activated it. The sun at the centre of the device was a decorative bronze sphere. She required something that gave out light and heat that she could measure. Nothing absolutely relative to the real sun, but enough to allow extrapolative modelling. She removed large parts of the bronze with a magister’s saw, another fabulously expensive device, to open the sun up so that it would take a glimmer lamp.
She spent many contented hours absorbed in the work. During this time she sought no one out, and anyone who disturbed her was sent running by bellowed invective. Her mechanical skills were more than adequate and she enjoyed employing them. She had all she needed within the hall. The annoying noises of renovation outside the keep receded from her attention. Her fretting about the events in Perus subsided. Days of peaceful effort were hers, interrupted only by Astred or Hovernia’s half-hearted attempts to get her to stop and eat or get a little sleep. She neglected both. Indeed, the countess could barely bring herself to toilet when inspiration had a hold of her, allowing herself to go only when her bladder felt it would burst.
After she installed lamps in the sun, she spent hours tending to the rest of the machine, oiling workings and freeing up parts that had stuck. The salt nature of Mogawn’s air spared nothing and she was forced to disassemble the entirety of Bolsun’s complicated subsystem and clean rust off dozens of parts to get all the little moons working again.
Impatience urged her to damn it all and set the thing running in the hope it would simply work. She refrained for fear of damaging it.
As a child she had been whipped three times a week at least for lack of consideration before acting. It was one lesson she was glad her father had taught her. There was a sort of delicious frustration to be experienced in doing it all right, even if she was tired and irritable by the time Bolsun’s little flock of children were orbiting their father properly.
It was early morning of the 13th of Takcrop when she set the machine going again. The sun had not yet risen. She could have slept, she probably should have, but she could not until the task was done. The glimmer engine complained at being restarted. The arms supporting the planets wobbled and bounced as they commenced their movement, only settling into smooth motion as they picked up speed. Soon enough model worlds were whirling about at several hundred times real speed. She had forgotten to reset the velocity parameters. Clucking her tongue, she went to the ornate pillar that held the workings and power motivation, ducking past speeding metalwork that could have caused serious injury. She flipped open the access panel hidden underneath the maker’s plate, and adjusted the speed to match that of the celestial spheres the machine modelled. They ground to a near stop, or so it seemed.
She doused the fire despite the cold, so that the harsh blue-white glimmer lamp in the altered sun was the sole source of light in the room. With the ersatz sun burning, she felt she watched the procession of the spheres from some secret place out in the dark of the sky. There was no air up there, she was sure of that. Understanding the insulating qualities of air, she wondered if it would be hot or if it would be cold in the direct face of the sun, and if a human body could survive the vacuum, if given a sufficient supply of air. She had done experiments on the expansion of dissolved gasses in liquids at low pressures, and she thought there was a good chance one’s blood would boil.
How could she explain that? Say “boil” and people think heat. So few people understood what she did. When she was forced to explain things it aggravated her. But she persisted. She wanted them to understand. She wanted not to be alone in her wisdom.
Engrossed in her experiment and her own thoughts, it was with annoyance that she greeted the opening of the hall’s door and the arrival, along with Captain Qurion, of a great deal of predawn light.
“Oh shut the door!” she snapped.
“My apologies, goodlady,” said the captain. “You are working?”
“No, I am at embroidery and watercolours like any noble goodlady, what do you think?”
He had the decency to appear apologetic. There was a boyish quality to his face when he looked like that. He was an odd one, she thought. He was obviously quite well respected by his men. He was manly in that way a soldier should be, but he had an impudent streak to him. They were all boys at heart, men. They did not have to undergo the pain of growing up properly, she thought. This was their world.
“Your orrery. You have your sun.” He frowned. “I expected the planets to move.”
She sighed, annoyed at the intrusion of yet another man who though an explanation was owed him. “They are moving, only very slowly. It is adjustable. At the moment, I have this set to a true representation of their orbital speeds. It will take the Earth one year to orbit the sun atop the pillar at this setting. It is also a matter of scale. This is a model, whose bounds are determined by this room. In reality, the system of worlds around our sun is many thousand million miles across, and the planets move at thousands of miles an hour, faster than anything you can imagine. Scaled down, it is not so exciting, but it is accurate.”
“You can prove all this, I assume?”
“By mathematics,” said the countess. “The same mathematics that allow an artillerist to determine where his shot will land enable me to accurately calculate the precise size, trajectory and speed of the celestial bodies. Yes, I can prove it. I have.”
“I am impressed.”
“You do not need to be impressed, and you certainly do not need to patronise me.”
“I meant no offence, I am impressed. I was quite successful at mathematics at school, and then modestly so at the lyceum. I could never have matched this though.”
“You have a degree?” she asked, surprised.
“In mathematics, yes. I was very keen on becoming an empiricist. But my father insisted on the army, for the money, he said. I’ll grant you that an academic can earn nothing if he finds no station, but a soldier’s wage is not so large. I think he wanted an officer son for the prestige. It is good to have a hero in the family,” he said ironically.
“I am sorry,” she said, and meant it.
“Don’t be. We are all trapped by birth. There’s plenty of time. I won’t be a soldier forever. If you would indulge me a little?”
“Yes,” she said sharply, though not sharply enough to put him off.
“I take it the spheres themselves are not to scale. Bolsun, in particular.”
“If they were, Bolsun,” she pointed at the largest planet, which she had spent a day laboriously repairing, “would either have to be the size of a grain of sand, or, if rendered at that size, situated somewhere out over Mogawn-On-Land, which is ten miles away. The other planets would either be too small or too far away to see. So the model is a fancy, the relative speeds are, however, correct. And, as a model for testing theories, should we assume that these model worlds are a genuine system in themselves, which I am forced to, then it works quite well. The mathematics is sound. I can show you, if you wish.” She shouldn’t have to be so insistent on her own competence. If she were a man, she would not have to be.
“Do you know, I would genuinely like to see that,” he said.
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br /> “Really?” she asked, taken aback.
“Really. The work behind this is astounding. I have seen orreries before, naturally, but they are curiosities. Not one takes into account the variables you have. None of them are much use.”
“You have an understanding of my work then. Why did you not say?”
“I thought it might be a bit crass,” said Qurion. “Barrelling in here, announcing to the best mind in Karsa that I know all about her work when I don’t. I’d be trying a little too hard. Besides, I’m here to refortify and garrison this castle, until such time as the threat of the drowned passes, not foolishly try to equal you.”
“You are a hidden dracon’s claw,” she said thoughtfully.
“I prefer circumspect and tactful.”
“But you do understand what I am doing.”
Qurion shook his head. “Oh no no, not at all. If they taught your brand of mathematics in the lyceums, then maybe I would, but they didn’t.”
“One day they shall,” she said fiercely.
“I hope they will. You are respected for your work, you know that.”
Lucinia shrugged. She did and she didn’t.
“What are you doing now? Why did you install the lamp in the sun?”
“Oh,” she said absentmindedly. “I am testing my new theory, again very approximate, that the Twin’s unusual proximity is directly affecting the weather. I expect it is simply because of the deflection of solar radiation from our world. It can’t dim the light by much to represent this, but the passage of my model Twin over the model Earth will have an effect. I’m curious to see exactly what. I doubt I could work out all the variables without long term observational data, and I don’t have four thousand years in me. But, it is precisely this kind of tiny change I find fascinating.”
“So, precluding the end of the world, you will next commence an exploration of meteorology?”
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