by J L Forrest
As yw Sabi spoke, the computer displayed image after image, archived by the Atreianii millennia before. Death. Oceans of corpses. Dissolution. Annihilation. Nyahri slid to her knees, her gaze cast upward.
Ay, mistress, you had tried to tell me, but I did not understand. You were devils.
“We’d no internal political agenda then,” yw Sabi said. “At first, there weren’t even that many of us, we Atreianii. Seven to begin with. Then a few dozen.
“We weighed all our options, and the Culling was the best way to guarantee Earth’s long-term survival. Since we planned to live on it for several tens of thousands of years, at least, we preferred to keep Earth pleasant. While we built from extant human cultures, languages, and regional knowledge, we also reset human society, cleaned the slate. There could be no cultural appropriation anymore because there would be no surviving members of any culture to protest it.”
“It is why you killed all the mothers.” Nyahri whimpered.
Yw Sabi nodded. “During the following human generations, we raised the population to a more-or-less constant seven hundred fifty million, and in that time we expanded humanity’s presence in the solar system. Sojourn! Play video of the Expansion. Edit to two minutes.”
“Playing,” said Sojourn.
In hundreds, vessels sailed from the Earth into space. Men and women served under the Numenii, who governed outside the asteroid belt. Martian settlements flourished, though they labored hard to terraform, to develop fruitful hydroponics, to sew fields in once-dead soils, and to establish order.
By millions, men flew beyond Mars, lighting ghost-fires on Europa and Callisto, Ganymede and Io, to Tethys and Dione, then Uranus’s satellites, and farther to Triton. Some ceased to resemble men, despite the underlying material of their muscles, blood, and bone. Earth thrived, and the Atreianii imagined Mars could one day be their second home. They began designs upon Venus, as well.
“We never intended the torturous existence of the outer colonies to be permanent, but we’d no illusions it’d last anything less than centuries. Human labor was still necessary, even in an age of machines. It’s true, Nyahri, we eliminated disease, exterminated hunger, ended war, saved the biosphere, and spread life throughout the solar system, but if the Atreianii reawaken, men will again die and their children will be slaves, without paradise in this generation or the next or the next ten as we Homo sapiens atrean propagate them and work them to re-ascend on their broken backs.
“Once we institute mature manufacturing, which may take as long as twenty or thirty years, humans will return to the order of pets. If the Atreianii accepted me, which of course I doubt, you Nyahri would be privileged as a claimèd, an Exemplari, but what of your people? The E’cwnii? The Oudwnii? The Inwnii or the thousand other enclaves of humanity who’ve taken hold in our absence? Existing cultures and the resistance inherent in them will not do. For the moment, humanity is collectively doomed to relive its mistakes and joys and sorrows and triumphs, unless the Atreianii wake, transform men into chattel and zoo animals.”
The montage ended, the room returning to its first state, plain gray, quiet, and empty. Yw Sabi helped Nyahri to stand, kissed her forehead, and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“When the Atreianii finally turned on each other,” yw Sabi said, “when they first showed the same pettiness for which humanity died, I knew the Atreian experiment was a failure. A tragedy of the commons could not be avoided.” Yw Sabi sighed. “Our breaking of humanity was a catastrophe twice over and, if anything, there’re less of you today than lived under our rule. I will serve unto my own kind the same treatment, so far as necessary, then perhaps begin anew.”
She fell quiet, lost in some other thought.
“Sojourn!” she addressed the Citadel. “Give us a globe of the Earth, accurate to last recorded declination.”
“Declination is calibrated within one-one hundredth of one second of one degree. Do you wish to proceed with this resolution?”
Yw Sabi narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “You’re triangulating now?”
“Multiple simultaneous triangulations are feasible, both ground to ground and ground to orbit.”
“Ground to orbit? You’re communicating with OpNet?”
“Confirmed.”
“And Persephone?”
“Confirmed.”
Yw Sabi smiled, clearly relieved. “Patch me through to her!”
“Patching. Patch request denied.”
Yw Sabi’s relief turned to anger. “Fuck. Denied by whom?”
“Identification request denied.”
Yw Sabi mastered her composure. “Load last declination and estimate the locations of all Citadels worldwide, as well as all the major Stations.”
“Loaded.”
As tall as the Atreiani, a blue and white and living Earth hovered before them. On its surface, a myriad of red points glowed, as well as a handful above, the brightest showing Sojourn Temple.
“How many are there, Sojourn?”
“One hundred forty-three Citadels, fourteen Stations.”
Yw Sabi startled, her eyes wide. “Only seven? Five millennia destroyed only seven? I thought half would be gone. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Nyahri drew to the Atreiani, standing beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder.
Yw Sabi continued, “List all latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for all the Citadels.”
Red numbers filled the air, a translucent wall from ceiling to floor. Yw Sabi studied them. “There’re holes in this roster. Give me the manifest.”
Another sequence scrolled before yw Sabi, this one in letters too quick for Nyahri to read.
“Mistress, can we go?” Nyahri asked.
“We’ve some work left.” Yw Sabi took Nyahri’s hand, turning from the hologram, and she made a sign at the door which made it dilate. The live-map guided them farther into the Citadel’s belly.
{32}
As they walked, Nyahri worked to keep her legs under her, overwhelmed by the murder of billions, billions still as new a concept to her as genocide. As she followed Sultah yw Sabi, she weighed her mistress’s own guilt.
“Yw Sabi, why do you care what happens to men?”
The Atreiani looked at her. “Because of you, in one sense.”
“I was not yet alive, yw Sabi, when you made these plans.”
“Your predecessor was and, long before her death, it was her who helped me understand. Now, I awaken in this age, and within six weeks I find still another reason to fight the Atreianii.”
“What reason?”
“Again, you.”
Despite all, Nyahri smiled. She held her lip in her teeth, tugging back her questions for a better time.
In silence they walked to the corridor’s end, where yw Sabi opened a series of doors. Red light bathed the way into a tiny chamber. Its floor fell, downward in slow measures, bringing them into a shaft as deep as a bow shot, driven into an abyssal dark. Glass chambers floated on every side, pods nestled like pomegranate seeds.
Three hundred cocoons, at least!
Each held a naked form, a sleeping Atreiani. Most were female. A few showed no apparent sex at all. All possessed the same fathomless black hair and, while most had skin like yw Sabi’s, other hues appeared from golden obsidian to the caramel of smooth agate.
The air hummed, unseen machinery reverberating within the awakening Citadel. The floor continued its fall.
“This is their berth cylinder,” said yw Sabi.
“They are alive?” said Nyahri, knowing the answer but scarcely believing it.
“Dormant, as I was. Diamondide encases each. It’s possible we could have procured the tools from Sojourn to cut through their casings, as you suggested, murdered the inhabitants while they remained unconscious.”
“But?”
“By my calculations, we might’ve gotten through six or seven before the first of their peers awakened. After that, they would kill us, and that’d be the end of it.”
The l
ift dropped through the chamber floor, past guts of piping and conduits. Everywhere, ghost-fires glittered. Faint light lent some definition to the dark, and the lift slowed to a halt. The air throbbed, its energy pervasive, and yw Sabi hurried down the corridor toward a sealed chamber. It ended in a vault bound by heavy walls. Nyahri’s skin tingled as her mistress raised the witch-scepter before the barriers.
“Sojourn! Control panel.”
“Advise, string-core reprogramming hazard. In the event of core-integrity failure, berth-cylinder loss estimated one hundred percent. Confirm.”
“Override.”
“Control panel loaded.”
Green holograms floated before yw Sabi. She touched one, then another, and the lights became red. The chamber’s vibration changed, deepened, and faltered. Nyahri clutched her spear, looking over her shoulder, imagining the wakened Atreianii arising behind them. The Citadel’s hum skipped and pulsed.
Nyahri remembered Abswyn, the terror of that day. She prayed to the lion god, lord of bravery.
Sojourn Temple’s voice boomed, “Self-destruct sequence initiated. Core integrity ninety-four-point-four, point-three, point-two percent and falling. Estimated meltdown in one hour, forty- eight minutes, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven seconds and counting.”
Red lights and white flashes filled the corridor. A klaxon sounded, the string core’s metallic walls bent, and cruel sound cut the air, as it had outside Abswyn. Yw Sabi took Nyahri by the shoulders, pointed back toward the lift, and they ran.
◆◆◆
They returned to the entry chamber. The first high pitch of the Citadel’s dying ended, replaced by low pulses which rumbled through Nyahri’s chest and between her ears. By the portal exit stood two teardrop-shaped containers. Metallic, dog-sized spiders carried the containers, complete with eight legs apiece, whose hollow bodies cradled many of the tools which yw Sabi had ordered from the Temple’s AI.
Robots, Nyahri realized, unsure where the term came from. Ekaterina’s word, now my word.
In one rested a heavy black box, and yw Sabi lifted its lid. It contained sheaves of white and pristine paper, dense print darkening each page. She opened another box to find stacks of tiny clear cylinders, scores of hundreds in fitted frames. After resealing the boxes, she strapped them into the carriers. Last, she slipped bundles of pins, replacements for her explosives, into her pockets.
Yw Sabi shouted to Nyahri over the din, “We must go!”
She worked magic upon the carriers, and the spiders followed them down the corridor. Yw Sabi opened the exit portals, leading Nyahri through the cramped corridors of S’Eret, the way illuminated by witch-light. Nyahri choked through the smoky haze, but at last a ray of morning daylight cut the dark.
The ground trembled.
In the courtyard, Kwlko and Turo pulled at their reins, skittering and neighing. Within minutes, mistress and claimèd galloped from the ruined fortress, heading northeast along now-familiar trails, the tight paths up the mesa side. The spider- bots kept pace.
From the vista, Nyahri glanced backward at the valley’s burnt maelstrom, a wasteland many thousands of horse-strides in all directions. A handful of Oudwn buildings still stood, spared by some miracle, but the Citadel’s immolation would soon wipe these away. The earth-shake worsened, even as the horses carried them from the low valley onto the higher saddle between the peaks of the northern mountains. Over the top, they passed once more into pristine forests.
An arrow flew, striking yw Sabi in the chest.
Soft as cotton but stronger than iron, her suit of witch-cloth deflected the point, though the Atreiani groaned at the blow. Nyahri’s gaze followed the arrow’s arc.
Dhaos stood amongst the trees, next arrow already nocked at his cheek.
Nyahri held her palm up. “Do not!” she said. “There is no time!”
He let fly, even as they almost rode him down. His second arrow found the flesh between yw Sabi’s neck and shoulder. The travertine pale of her skin turned instantly, shockingly scarlet, and she tumbled into the dust.
“Deceivers!” Dhaos yelled. “You cost us everything!”
Nyahri halted her stallion, swung from the saddle, and ran to yw Sabi. Part of her knew she must defend herself against Dhaos, but if her mistress already lay dead, what would Dhaos matter?
She turned her back on him.
“E’cwn witch!” he said. “I know what the collar at your neck means.”
Nyahri knelt at her mistress’s side. Yw Sabi’s eyes were closed, and blood covered her throat, staining the fabric of her suit, sticking in her hair. The fletching showed amidst the blood, but Nyahri dared not move her mistress, not till she could better understand the damage. Laying her ear against yw Sabi’s chest, Nyahri listened.
Yw Sabi lived, her strange heartbeat unfaltering.
“All your archers came to kill us?” Nyahri asked, looking over her shoulder at Dhaos.
“Only me.”
He drew another arrow, aiming it at her. The sun rose higher, its unctuous rays cutting the drifting smoke, soiling the eastern and southern skies.
“You should run,” she said flatly to him. Nyahri tried to clear yw Sabi’s wound, placing herself between Dhaos and her mistress. She needed supplies from her horse, but she could not risk giving Dhaos a second shot at her mistress. “The Citadel will die soon. It will kill us here.”
Dhaos spit. “I do not care if none of us survives this.”
Nyahri’s tears blurred her vision.
Then the scepter-song played, high-pitched over the Citadel’s distant drum. Nyahri flinched, remembering the C’naädin slaughter, but the song now sounded to her like the sweetest music, the ringing of harmonious glass bells. The collar’s warmth spread through her shoulders and along her spine.
Dhaos collapsed like a rag doll. His arrow bounded harmlessly into the trees.
Yw Sabi lay with her eyes open, the scepter clenched in one hand, pressing her other hand to her neck. Nyahri crouched against her mistress, stoppering the wound with her hands, crimson thickening over her fingers.
“You are losing a lot of blood,” she said.
Yw Sabi nodded.
“Keep your eyes open.”
Nyahri stripped Dhaos of his cloth shirt and tore it. Yw Sabi rolled to her side, and Nyahri wiped the injury as well as she could.
The shaft had lodged low in the meat.
Nyahri broke the arrowhead and drew it from yw Sabi’s flesh in a single pull. Through all this, the Atreiani only scrunched her eyes.
Packing cloth against both ends of the wound, Nyahri pressed it tight, and she wrapped her mistress’s neck and shoulder with all the material she had to spare. As Nyahri helped her to stand, yw Sabi clutched the scepter in her bloodied fingers.
“Yw Sabi, can you ride?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice only a whisper.
The Atreiani climbed into the saddle herself, but her strength ebbed. She spit a mouthful of blood.
“Lean across the saddle,” Nyahri said.
“The cases—” yw Sabi began.
“They are fine.”
The spider-bots waited a dozen paces down the trail.
Dhaos lay as a dead man, his magiswood bow angled across his body, his eyes wide and unblinking. Nyahri knelt beside him, feeling his strong pulse, assured he lived.
“The cases contain medicine,” she said to him, nodding toward the spiders, “for your people. Do not pretend to know whether we, my mistress and I, are evil or good. Do not pretend you understand one godsdamned thing about any of this, stupid Oudwni.”
“Come,” yw Sabi whispered, “my claimèd.”
“Yea, yw Sabi. What of Dhaos?”
“He might make it in a hard run.”
“We could take him?”
“Slow the horses? Leave Dhaos to his fate. The little prick shot me.”
Nyahri vaulted to the stallion’s saddle, turned his head northward, and urged him into a gallop. The unfettered horses bol
ted.
Yw Sabi’s consciousness flagged.
They raced toward the Wyst River. Nyahri tapped Kwlko’s rump, driving him faster, his lungs opening and his nostrils flaring. Yw Sabi lay in the saddle, one arm around Turo’s neck. Behind them, the vaccines and a trove of medical knowledge traveled in the bellies of robots. The switchback trail ascended along the mountain pass, over a snow-blanketed ridge. As the riders passed deeper into the trees, the hum of the dying Citadel quieted. They descended into a valley thick with aspen, the ground leveled, and Nyahri gave the horses full rein.
Behind them, Sojourn Temple exploded. Hellfire scorched the sky. Wind blew, the sound as deafening as at Abswyn, yet the mountains shielded them from the worst of it. Nyahri pushed until she found a quiet clearing, sheltered from the road.
She eased her mistress from the saddle, and yw Sabi collapsed in her arms, her breath shallow, her skin cool. Blood stained her from her face to her thighs. Nyahri peeled back the gore-stained fabrics, praying to the viper goddess, lady of healing.
“Six weeks,” she said to her beloved, “since it was my blood all over the trail, yea?” Nyahri forced a laugh, which turned desperate and bitter in her throat. “Now let me save you.”
Yw Sabi gave no answer, passed into unconsciousness. Nyahri worked with all the craft her mother had ever taught her, and she prayed for more besides. Arteries appeared, or not, where Nyahri least expected them. The Atreiani’s muscles folded wrongly against each other, alien to Nyahri’s training. Her skin resisted sutures.
No one had ever explained to Nyahri how to heal a devil.
Gods, Nyahri prayed, please do not die.
She isn’t so easy to kill, returned the thought, at once Nyahri’s and another’s. Have faith.
The morning passed. Nyahri went without food, water, or rest. The afternoon grew long, and night fell once again, before Nyahri ceased her labors.