by Pearl North
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For Richard
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who offered help during the writing of this book. In particular, Steve Ainsworth, Paulette Petrimoulx, and Todd Harlan. Your support, guidance, and friendship mean so much. Thank you.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE Clauda’s Journey
CHAPTER 1 Po Awakes
CHAPTER 2 Blame
CHAPTER 3 Kinesiology
CHAPTER 4 A New Voice
CHAPTER 5 The Confidence of the Queen
CHAPTER 6 Vanishing Point
CHAPTER 7 The Nod of Nods
CHAPTER 8 Thesia
CHAPTER 9 Lost and Found
CHAPTER 10 The Clockmaker General
CHAPTER 11 The Queen’s Consort
CHAPTER 12 Haly-in-the-Silence
CHAPTER 13 Thela’s Challenge
CHAPTER 14 The Book of the Night
CHAPTER 15 To the Rescue
CHAPTER 16 Thela’s World
CHAPTER 17 Conspiracy
CHAPTER 18 The Barley King
CHAPTER 19 Sacrifice
CHAPTER 20 Journey to the Bottom of the Libyrinth
CHAPTER 21 Endymion’s Journal
CHAPTER 22 Anything
CHAPTER 23 Everything
Where to Find What the Books Said
Tor Books by Pearl North
About the Author
Copyright
Experience the Libyrinth Trilogy
PROLOGUE
Clauda’s Journey
Clauda paced her room in the Tower of the Fly all night, unable to sleep. Only a few days ago, a fire had devastated the Libyrinth’s crops. Now, everyone was scrambling to do whatever they could to keep the community alive. In the morning she’d fly the wing out to search for food. But what kept her up was not their dire situation, or her mission.
The Chorus of the Word was leaving for the Corvariate Citadel at dawn, too, and Selene was going with them. In all the months since they’d been in Ilysies together, Clauda still had not gotten up the courage to talk to Selene. It wasn’t like her to hold back when she had something on her mind, but this was different. And now, she was out of time.
“You’ll never know unless you ask,” she said under her breath. “And if you don’t ask now, who knows when you’ll have another chance?” She glanced out the window. The night sky was turning blue. She had to hurry if she wanted to catch Selene before she left.
She hurried through the rest of her packing and cinched her knapsack closed as if she could keep her courage from deserting her with a good stout knot.
She found Selene in her chamber. The tall Ilysian had her back to the door and was putting clothing in a saddlebag. The sight took Clauda back to that day in Ilysies when Clauda had come to warn Selene of the queen’s treachery and had discovered the depth of her own feelings in the bargain. “Selene,” said Clauda.
Selene turned. Her face, usually serious, softened with a smile at the sight of Clauda. That had to be a good sign, right? “Hey. Thanks for stopping by,” said Selene. “I’m glad I get a chance to say goodbye before I leave. We don’t get to see much of each other these days.”
“And it’ll be even less now.”
Selene hesitated, then said, “Well, until we complete our missions, anyway.”
Clauda nodded. They stared at each other in silence. Clauda couldn’t read the expression on Selene’s face. She stepped closer. “Selene?”
Selene fastened the clasp on one saddlebag and turned from the bed, taking a step toward Clauda. “Yes?”
They were close enough now that Selene’s fragrance of ink and wool filled Clauda’s nostrils, making her dizzy. “Do you…” She didn’t know where to begin. The words she wanted to say tangled themselves up in a knot and lodged in her throat, making it hard for Clauda to breathe, let alone speak. Her mouth opened and closed like a beached fish gasping for air.
Selene frowned. “Are you all right?”
Clauda nodded.
“Are you having a seizure? You haven’t had one since the Redemption, have you?”
Clauda shook her head. She was losing her nerve. If she didn’t do what she came here for soon, it was never going to happen. And words were not helping her now.
Selene put a tentative hand on Clauda’s shoulder and leaned down. “Do you need to sit down?”
Clauda put her hands on Selene’s shoulders and arched upward. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to Selene’s.
The brief, soft crush of their lips was better than any flight she’d ever taken in the wing. Selene tasted like barley, and there was a fraction of a second when her lips parted, just slightly, and Clauda felt as if she drank Selene in. This elixir warmed her from head to toe.
And then Selene gripped her shoulders and pushed her back. “Clauda? What…?” Selene’s eyes were wide and her mouth hung open. “What…?”
Clauda looked up into Selene’s shocked face and shook her head. The warmth that had filled her a moment ago turned to red-hot humiliation. “I’m sorry. That was a mistake.” She backed away, out of the clutch of Selene’s hands. “I’ve got to go. Have a good trip.” She turned and ran without a backward glance, unable to bear the sight of Selene’s shock and dismay a moment more.
She stopped in her own room to pick up her knapsack. She splashed water on her flushed face and took a few deep breaths, forcing herself to regain her composure. She had a job to do and nothing was going to stop her from doing it. People were relying on her. There were more important things at stake now than her silly feelings.
In the stable yard Clauda found a small delegation had gathered to see her off. Haly, Gyneth, Burke, and Rossiter stood in the doorway to the stables. Already they looked a little thin and they were sweaty and dirt-streaked from planting the new crop. The sight of them helped her to set aside her hurt. She was grateful she had something useful to do.
Everyone else was out planting seed as fast as they could, but it wouldn’t be fast enough. It would still take months for the grain to grow and ripen, and they had only scant weeks of food left. Which was why Clauda had packed for a long trip. While the Chorus of the Word traveled to the Corvariate Citadel on foot in quest of the bloom and to elicit aid from the villages of the plain on their way, Clauda would be scouring the outer reaches of the land in search of food.
She’d head north first, to Thesia. No one had heard anything from the mining and industrial center since the Singers had taken over more than six months ago. It seemed impossible that a whole nation could become destitute in that time, but if such was the case, then she’d fly to the four corners of the world in search of food. There had to be something out there somewhere.
Clauda embraced each of her friends in turn. When she came to Haly, she closed her eyes and held her tight. “I will find something,” she said. “I will.”
Haly nodded. “Just stay safe, and come back to us, whatever you find out there.”
Clauda would secure food for them if she had to cross the sea to find it, but she didn’t tell H
aly that. Reluctantly, she pulled away and turned to face the wing.
As always, her heart soared simply at the sight of it: a thing of living metal, shaped like a crescent with the wings curving backward. The Wing of Tarsus had a face on its underside, human and serene. It was powered by the same energy cells used in all the technology left behind by the Ancients, and that power was directed by a human mind: Clauda’s mind.
Her thoughts calmed and things became simple again. She placed her hand on the smooth, golden metal surface of the wing and the hatchway opened for her.
The inside of the wing was an almost featureless chamber. When Clauda had first entered it in Ilysies a year ago, she had been surprised to find no seats or controls of any kind. Only a statue of a woman, made of the same gleaming gold substance as the rest of the wing.
The door to the cabin shut behind her before she had a chance to catch one last glimpse of her friends. Just as well, probably. Last looks were bad luck. Anyway, she’d be back within two weeks with a hold full of pickled trout and Thesian goat’s milk.
How long would it be before Selene and the rest of the Chorus of the Word returned from their mission? And what would Clauda say to Selene when they did? Well, there was no point in thinking about all that now. What was done was done. Selene was a good person. She’d forgive Clauda in time. Maybe they’d still be able to be friends. And in the meantime, Clauda had the wing. Compared to the tangle of desire and embarrassment that thoughts of Selene spawned in Clauda’s gut, her relationship with the wing was simple and certain.
Eagerness to be aloft pushed her worries aside. Clauda faced the statue and recited the words Adept Ykobos had taught her when she was a patient and a prisoner in the Ilysian palace. “Mighty queen, mother of Ilysies, blessed, brave Belrea, open for your daughter, bathe her in the light of your righteousness.” Then she kissed the statue on the forehead, mouth, and belly.
A seam of light appeared, running vertically from the crown of the figure to the feet. The seam widened as the statue opened into two halves, and golden light poured out. Clauda turned and fell backward into the statue’s interior.
The light caught her and cradled her, as if with countless gentle fingertips, supporting and soothing her, surrounding her in warmth and light. As many times as she had done this now, these first moments of interface with the wing still entranced her.
Soon, her consciousness merged with the wing. She was no longer simply Clauda, or even the Second Redeemer or the Hero of the Libyrinth or whatever other foolish titles people saw fit to assign her. She was Clauda-in-the-Wing, and she could fly.
She breathed in, and lifted off the floor of the stall in a delicate maneuver that she’d mastered over these several months. She eased out of the stall and out through the stable doors. Once in the yard, she rose up until she was above the level of the wall, and the great plain beyond called to her. With a single thought, she sped over the yard and into the sky.
The blue sky and the yellow land reached out to welcome her, and she flew into their arms. How she loved to fly. She loved the way the ground blurred beneath her, and how the blue of the sky deepened when she flew very, very high. Clauda-in-the-Wing felt every ripple of air that passed over her golden hide as she soared far above the Plain of Ayor. She banked and climbed. The land scudded past beneath her, rolling brown hills dotted with scrub bushes and rocks. She went as fast as her heart and her mind would allow, until the air stung against her skin and the human part of her gasped for breath. The sheer joy of flying filled her with the perfect contentment of a creature doing what it was meant to do.
She slowed again, now hovering. The sun warmed her back and created thermals—rising columns of warm air. She climbed them, entranced with the diminishing land wheeling slowly beneath her. And then, when she was so high up that she could see the horizon of her world curving, she flipped onto her back and gazed up. The sky, still blue at the edges, had turned black directly above her. She wondered what it would be like to go higher still. What was that blackness and what lay beyond it? Someday she would find out, but not now. Now she had a mission to accomplish.
She rolled back over and headed north, toward Thesia. Her path took her over the Tumbles. Somewhere near here was the underground vault where she and Haly had been held prisoner. Selene had taken drastic action to rescue them that night, throwing an Egg into a fire and causing a massive explosion. That had been Clauda’s first inkling that Selene was not always the calm and rational being she pretended to be.
Thoughts of Selene’s passionate nature jarred Clauda’s focus. At the same moment, a gust of wind struck her, carrying with it fine grains of sand that stung her golden hide. She nearly lost control of the wing, and had to fight hard to right herself.
Once she’d stabilized again, Clauda-in-the-Wing scanned the horizon for the source of the wind. In the south and the east the skies were clear blue, but in the north and west, in the area where the vault had been, heavy gray clouds massed on the horizon. There, in the center of the storm system, was a cloud unlike any she had ever seen before. It was oval, like an eye, and it shaded from mauve at the edges to purple to a center as black as the night sky.
The odd oval cloud rotated, mauve and sickly green tendrils spinning off from its outer edges. Clauda-in-the-Wing stared at it, both human girl and Ancient machine struck dumb. The wind picked up and the cloud blossomed. In the span of one heartbeat it grew from the size of Clauda’s fist to an oval, whirling mass as wide as the wing was. But the wind was coming from behind her, pushing her toward the cloud. No, that wasn’t right, either. With a sickening twist her perception shifted and she realized that it wasn’t a cloud.
It was a vortex, and it was sucking her in.
She flipped around and started flying in the opposite direction with all her might, but still the ground below slipped away in the wrong direction. She felt the grip of the vortex now, merciless on her metal skin. Though she struggled, the ground below continued to slip away, faster and faster. There was no escape.
Then she might as well face this thing that was her doom.
Clauda turned the wing around. By now the edges of the vortex were beyond her field of vision. The center, which from a distance had been as black as the void between stars, was now shot through with twining arcs of lightning. At the very center, argent and black mixed in equal measure.
Did Selene push me away out of revulsion, or surprise? What would have happened if I had stayed?
The force of the vortex, ever stronger, now unbalanced her and she tumbled, end over end, purple and black and white flashing past her field of vision. As she left all colors behind and entered the light-shot dark, her nose started moving at a faster rate than the backward-pointing tips of her wings. She stretched.
The pull was going to tear her apart, and just as regret for not explaining herself to Selene and demanding an answer seared her heart, she saw something that drove all other thoughts from her mind.
Letters. The light and dark were not streaks of lightning against a black sky. They were strings of glowing, incandescent letters. An N the size of the wing sped past her and as she looked into the distance ahead, she saw the strings of letters formed words; the words, sentences.
“‘We are all going on an Expedition,’ said Christopher Robin, as he got up and brushed himself. ‘Thank you, Pooh.’”
Those words made no sense to Clauda, but others did: “Tucker Mouse took himself very seriously now that he was the manager of a famous concert artist.” That came from her favorite, The Cricket in Times Square.
Clauda-in-the-Wing’s tail caught up with her nose, and she now sped down what appeared to be a tunnel made of words.
“Once the fire lizards settled to the business of eating, Piemur glanced at Menolly, wondering if she’d heard the drum message.”
“‘When he broke that commitment to art, to making beauty, to recording, to bearing witness, to saying yessiree to the life spirit, whose only request sometimes is just that you ackno
wledge you truly see it, he broke something in Hal.…’”
“After that I was lost for a long time, doing dreamtime without end while my body paid the price.”
Finally, the tunnel ended quite abruptly and Clauda found herself in emptiness.
She remembered the first time she’d gone into the stacks of the Libyrinth. She’d followed Haly and they’d gotten separated and Clauda wandered among endless shelves of books, all of them looking just like the others to her. She had still been too young to read, and she’d heard the stories about people being lost forever among the shelves, eventually dying of thirst or starvation. Clauda had never felt more small, insignificant, or fragile than she had then.
Until now.
Nothingness stretched out around her, limitless. It was a space that was not quite black. More of a dark reddish brown, the color you saw when you closed your eyes. That unnerved her almost as much as everything else put together. She wasn’t in outer space. This was something different. For the first time Clauda wondered how she breathed while meshed with the wing, and what it would mean if there was no air around them.
She swung around to face the way they came, and inside the statue, within the web of light, the human girl gasped.
Before her hung an object made of words and light. Strings of letters traced arcs of light like orbits about an incandescent center where distance made words and sentences coalesce into a glowing orb.
She was drifting, and as the distance grew, even those outlying arcs of words lost resolution, and the whole of the thing took on a characteristic shape she’d seen before. A spherical core within a flattened disk of light and all of it whirling about its center.
She’d seen this before, in a picture from an astrophysics text of the late Earth period. The caption had said that it was what the scientists of that time believed the entire universe might look like.
1
Po Awakes
When Po first awoke, he didn’t remember where he was. He stared about at the gauzy draperies and ran a hand over the soft, clean bed linens. Then he heard her voice, and he remembered it all. He was in Ilysies. He was the consort of a queen.