by Pearl North
He could not refuse her, not when she used those last five words. “I don’t know if it will work,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Just try.”
She handed him the pen.
Po’s fingers closed over it. All he had to do was write “the pen does not exist,” and the world would be safe. But he could just as easily walk across the sky. It would make Thela unhappy.
There were no pulse points or energy meridians for him to tap into, but then, that had been the case with Endymion, too. He grasped the pen lightly in both hands and closed his eyes. He focused on his breath and on the warmth of the living metal in his hands.
He plummeted through darkness toward a vast network of argent light far below. It took him a moment to realize he was not free-falling in his own body. He clung to a feather that twirled and whirled as it fell. The network below them spun like the images in the kaleidoscope his cousin had received for her eighth birthday.
They neared the network and Po realized the lights were not random. They were words.
“We must find a way to break into that tower and destroy the orb,” said Yammon. Soon, Po and the feather were among the words. The feather sliced through the words with its gleaming sharp edge, and caught up the loose ends with its tip, reforming them in new configurations. “Belrea was a mighty queen, the first ruler of Ilysies.”
But the rewritten letters did not shine as brightly as those that had been severed. They were thinner, too. They looked fragile; a careless move might break them.
Po opened his eyes to find Thela watching him expectantly. “Well, what did you see?”
He told her.
“No real information about the pen itself then,” she said. “Assuming, of course, that the feather was your kinesthetic vision of the pen.”
“Simply a reiteration of its function, though it’s worth noting that the pen erases as much as it writes. But what’s really interesting is the network of words.”
“What do you make of that?”
“That must be what the world looks like to the pen,” said Po.
She nodded. “Or perhaps it is a quality of the world that permits the pen to function as it does.”
They made love, and slept, and the pen sat on the table beside the bed and Po could not reach for it.
But he awoke in the middle of the night with an idea about how to help Thela and the world at the same time. He looked at Thela sleeping. She was proud. She would not admit a mistake even if she knew of it. And she certainly would not take advice from him. But she wanted the land to be fruitful. He knew that.
Po pressed against her side. She didn’t stir. She was very deep in sleep. He sat up and took the pen in hand.
He thought long and hard about what to write. Whatever it was, it had to make Thela happy. That limited him quite a bit. In the end, he wrote two things: “Queen Thela will know Redemption,” and “The story Kip told Po in the vegetable garden at Minerva’s house in the town of Nikos is true.”
He watched his words fade with satisfaction. His grandsire Kip’s tale was about how men used to be flowers that gave off a special pollen that fertilized the land, until the flowers fell in love with the women and became men. According to the story men’s tears and blood caused plants to grow. Now, no matter what else happened, the land would be fertile.
Suddenly he realized he had not set a time limit on Thela’s Redemption. He raised the pen to amend that when she murmured and rolled over. He barely had time to put the pen back on the nightstand before she opened her eyes and drew him to her.
12
Haly-in-the-Silence
Haly dropped the book as if it had grown teeth and bitten her. This was an Old Earth book, but with the same title as Iscarion’s book. What did it mean? Theselaides had been born here and died here, so the Theselaides who wrote this book couldn’t be the Libyrarian Theselaides. And why were there pictures of things from this world on the cover of an Old Earth book anyway?
She snatched the book back up again, collected the holograph album from the table and, with Endymion’s consciousness rolling around in her pocket, she left the tower.
She strode down the steps and across town to the Department of Compensation. The board was in session. As she entered the room they fell silent and stared at her.
“I have done all that the clockmaker asked me, and she is satisfied with what I have done. I’ve completed the terms of my agreement,” said Haly. This next part was a bit of a risk. “Furthermore, you may now enter the clock tower without fear.” She noted the way the chair’s pupils widened and the other members of the board glanced at one another. She sensed she was on the right track. “The clockmaker is so pleased with what I did for her that she has elected to leave this place in peace, and accompany me back to the Libyrinth.”
The board bent their heads together and whispered. Seconds later, the chair said, “Tollkeeper, please go and verify what Halcyon the Redeemer has told us.”
The tollkeeper stared at her a moment, betrayal in his eyes, then turned crisply and left the room.
They sat in silence, the board staring at Haly, Haly staring back at them. She wasn’t about to tell them about the book.
When the tollkeeper returned, he appeared much more relaxed. He stared at Haly in wonder a moment, and then seemed to recover himself. He turned to face the board. “It is as she says. The atmosphere of dread is gone, entirely. I went all the way inside, and I found that the clockmaker … her essence has left us.”
The board stood. “Gone? Entirely?”
The tollkeeper broke into a grin. “See for yourselves.”
“I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain,” said Haly. “Release Gyneth now, before you do anything else.”
The tollkeeper bowed to her. “Of course, Redeemer. I will escort you there now and release him personally. We all owe you a great debt.”
“Then perhaps you can convey us to the border of Thesia, so there are no further misunderstandings,” said Haly.
He looked chastened. “Yes. Of course.”
* * *
It was a beautiful, fresh morning, the air cool, and the land spread out before Haly and Gyneth, broad and flat now that they had descended from the mountains. “Well,” said Gyneth. “Now it’s just us.”
The tollkeeper had dropped them off at the end of the road the previous night, making sure that they were amply provisioned for the rest of their trek, including providing them with a brand-new wagon, courtesy of the Board of Compensation.
He had offered to accompany them farther, but they declined. Now Haly took Gyneth’s hand and stared at the distant horizon. “Yes.”
She had not mentioned the book in her satchel. She did not want the Thesians to know about it, because there was no telling how they’d react. The most important thing was just getting Gyneth freed and getting out of there. Then, last night, when they’d been alone, she hadn’t wanted to. They’d both been in a celebratory mood and she didn’t want to think about that book and its implications.
But she had to show it to him sometime. As she reached into her satchel, her hands shook and she hesitated. As long as she didn’t show the book to another person, she didn’t have to think about it, either. And she didn’t want to.
* * *
The next day they encountered something in the sand. “It’s metal,” said Gyneth, nudging sand away with one toe. “Let’s see what it is.”
They began uncovering it but before long, Haly recognized the gray metal hide. She pulled her hand away and stumbled backward, tripped, and landed on her backside on the down slope of the dune. “Gyneth!” she shouted. “Get away from it. It’s a Devouring Silence!”
“Is it? Wow!”
“No,” she said, “not wow. Not wow at all. Come on. Hurry!”
“But it’s dead.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” she said. “I saw one live once. You don’t—just come on! Gyneth!”
He heard the panic in her voice and he
came away, but when she took his hand and started to hasten down the slope he didn’t budge. “Don’t get upset, but I want to take a closer look at it.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No. I’m not. But I’m just thinking about the way they work, what they do. I—”
“If you’re thinking about those things then you shouldn’t even consider going near it.”
“Will you listen to me for one second?”
Haly let out her breath. “Fine.”
“Okay. Here’s the thing. If Thela has the pen and she starts using it, we need something to counteract what she can do. Now this is just a hunch, but you know how they suck up all the light and the sound when they’re taking captives.”
“Yes.”
“What if that’s a kind of erasing and we can use it to erase what Thela writes?”
“That’s crazy. How do you know it works that way?”
“I don’t know. I told you. It’s a hunch. I’d like to—”
“No.”
“You haven’t even let me finish.”
“We’re not putting Eggs in Devouring Silences and setting them loose. How would we control them?”
“Maybe they’re like the wing, and there’s an interface.”
She shuddered. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“But if it does, wouldn’t it be a good idea for someone to try now, before it’s too late?”
She looked at him. “You’re serious about this.”
He straightened his shoulders. “I want to try.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“You’re going to do it no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
Gyneth didn’t answer her. Haly sighed. She might as well be around, to try and rescue him if he needed rescuing. In defeat, she gestured to him to proceed.
Gyneth walked up beside the half-buried machine creature and placed a hand on its flank. Just as with the wing, a hatchway opened. Gyneth looked at her.
Haly hurried back across the sand. “I’m not letting you go in alone,” she said. Her heart in her mouth, she followed him inside.
Within, it was much as the wing was, only instead of gold, everything was that dull-gray metal color. But there was a statue, just like in the wing.
“What do they mean, these statues?” she wondered aloud. “Why would beings like the Ancients use human forms?”
“Endymion wrote that her cohort, Dylan, gave all the machines faces.”
“I wonder why he did that.”
“Well, we don’t even know if these Devouring Silences, and the wing, are machines of the Ancients or artifacts of the book our world is based on.”
“The Book of the Night.”
He nodded.
“Let’s read it and find out. Right now. Come on.”
He smiled and turned to the statue. “Blessed Belrea,” he said, “open for your children.” He kissed the statue on the mouth, belly, and feet, just as they’d seen Clauda do with the statue inside the wing. And the statue opened.
But what came pouring out was not light.
It was the opposite of light. Haly had seen this before. She reached for Gyneth to pull him to safety, but it was too late. Tendrils wrapped around him and pulled him into the statue and it slammed shut. No. No.
She spun to the hatchway, opened it, and jumped through. She began digging through the sand to get at the creature’s underbelly. She’d seen Selene do this. She could do this. But before she could wrest her knife from her belt and sink it into the flexible underside of the Devouring Silence, it was on the move. Haly was nearly buried in sand as it turned, and tunneled downward, out of reach.
She sat on the ground staring about her in stunned horror. Gone. He was just gone.
“He’ll be back,” she said to herself, forcing herself to at least pretend to believe it. Anything else was too terrible. She waited.
What seemed like hours later but might only have been a few minutes, she felt a tremor beneath her palm. She jumped up and saw the sand hump up and then slide away to reveal the silver face of the Devouring Silence. Gyneth got out. Relief poured through her body to see him. He had a stunned expression and a big goofy smile on his face. “Haly. You have to try that.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held him as tight as she could.
* * *
“We can get home a lot faster in that,” said Gyneth that night as they sat around the campfire.
“I’m not sure I want to get home faster,” said Haly. “Especially if it means going inside that thing. Gyneth, they were used to take slaves.”
Gyneth nodded. “Yeah, but I think they do more than that. The tongue. I wasn’t in there very long—”
“Too long, if you ask me,” said Haly.
“But I sensed something with the tongue. Words.”
“Words?”
“Yeah. I tasted words. You really need to check it out for yourself. Come on. It’s not like you to be afraid of things.”
She stared at him. “Not like me? Gyneth, I’m afraid of everything.” She sighed and ran a finger through the dust, tracing curves and spiral. “I always have been.”
“Well, okay, but you never let it stop you before.”
His words rankled her, but she said, “That’s because I had no choice.” She looked up and wished she hadn’t. Gyneth probably thought he was hiding it well, but she saw the disappointment in his eyes. And he didn’t even know about the book. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try the Silence.”
She immediately regretted her words. Why hadn’t she just shown him the book instead? Still, she let him lead her over to the Silence, and he opened the hatch and they climbed inside. It was cool and dry, dark but for the jar of palm-glow Gyneth had opened. There were no bones in the cabin of this Silence. It smelled faintly of peppercorns, but that was all. No indication of what this thing had been used for.
Gyneth opened the statue. What poured out was the opposite of the light Haly had seen the few times she’d seen Clauda enter the interface in the wing. It was the nonlight of the Devouring Silence’s tongue. She turned around. Gyneth put his hands on her shoulders. “Okay?”
She stared at him, at a loss for words.
“You know I wouldn’t suggest something that would hurt you,” he said.
She did know that.
“Just try it for a short time. You can come out whenever you want, just by willing it. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” She took a deep breath and let herself fall backward into it.
She floated in nothingness. Immediately her tension melted away as she felt herself supported by what felt like thousands of tiny hands, cradling her. This was nice. She soaked in the sensation. Thoughts of the book, the pen, Endymion, Thela, and the Thesians all fell away and she found herself completely at ease, and utterly empty. The novelty of the sensation was so acute that for quite some time she was aware of nothing else besides the inflow and outflow of her breath.
And as she focused more and more on that, she saw the first tendrils of unlight.
Clauda had described the lines of light which connected her with the wing. These were just the same—sinuous, elusive—but they were made of darkness instead.
Haly knew better than to reach for them with her mind or her body. She waited as they gathered close. The touch of the first one left her mind alert, though her body felt numb. Then another touched her and another, and Haly’s awareness of her body dissolved like sandstone under a waterfall.
The earth was to her as the sky to a bird or the sea to a fish. Haly now felt herself to be a sleek creature of the earth. She rolled and dived, tunneling for the sheer joy of feeling the land flowing over her metal skin.
Experimentally, she opened her mouth and let her long, tentacled tongue roll out to taste the earth she moved through.
“The Plain of Ayor was a sparse and arid land.”
The words were dry and dusty on her tongue. Haly-in-t
he-Silence snapped her tongue back in. Her human heart pounded against her ribs but the part of her that was the Devouring Silence simply rolled along through the earth as if nothing unusual had happened.
Haly-in-the-Silence opened her mouth again and let one thin tendril out to touch the soil again. “Belrea lived in a small village five days’ walk from anyplace else.”
She drew her tongue back in again and tunneled up to the surface. Once there she disengaged her mind from the songlines and the statue opened. She rushed out of the beast and stood on the plain, turning in a slow circle, blinking in the sun.
The plain looked just as it always had. There were no sinkholes to indicate that the land she’d “tasted” had disappeared. No discolored patches or swaths of dead silverleaf to show there had been any effect from the creature’s tongue at all. “Okay, okay,” she muttered under her breath.
“Haly!” Gyneth rushed out of the Silence and ran toward her. “Are you all right?”
She took a deep breath. She’d left her satchel on the floor in the Silence. Had he looked inside? Had he found the book? She searched his face but found nothing but concern for her.
“I’m fine. Fine. I just … wow!” She let her joy in the experience of melding with the Silence overcome her other concerns, for the moment. “That was amazing!”
“So…” Gyneth scuffed one toe in the sand. “Can we keep it?”
Haly couldn’t help but smile. “It would be a lot easier than walking the rest of the way.”
They moved all their stuff into the cabin of the Silence. Once Gyneth had interfaced and started them on their way home, Haly fumbled in her satchel for the paperback novel The Book of the Night. She opened it and scanned the pages until she came to the part that read “The plain of Ayor was a sparse and arid land” and then flipped through it again until she found “Belrea lived in a small village five days’ walk from anyplace else.”
The book fell from her fingers and she sat down fast enough to make her backside sting. But her mind was too occupied to take much notice. “The same words,” she whispered. “The very same words.”
And she’d tasted them. “Molecules.” Despite the heat of the day, she shivered. An idea slowly coalesced in her mind. She remembered Hilloa talking about her “three sticks in a bag” model of the universe. The sticks can be anything.