“—when she’s finished speaking you may begin the hyperdulia,” the Archbishop instructed the precentor in a loud whisper. They stood directly behind ziz and the frowning Nike, and the Archbishop gazed coolly down at the crowd. She did not smile.
Abruptly ziz dropped her arms commandingly. The crowd grew quieter. There were isolated shouts of “Where is Shiyung!” and “Avenge the margravine — Bring the Healing Wind!” When two Aviators stalked menacingly from their posts, the vast chamber grew eerily and abruptly silent. ziz adjusted the coder at her throat and began to speak.
“We are today, as we have done many times before, opening the Gate of Araboth to the world Outside,” she began, her amplified voice tinny and shrill. It cracked when she said the word Outside. “As our founding Saints have advised, we will gaze upon the horrors of that world, and as they did, we will turn our backs upon it, and not look upon it again for another decade.”
Scattered applause and cries. ziz looked a little more confident.
“We will also perform the rites of propitiation against the howling storms that would destroy us, were it not for the vigilance of the Architects. And our sacrifices this year will be dear ones: they have already cost us the life of our sister, our beloved Shiyung.”
Screams at this, and wailing, and many voices imitating the ululating cries of the Redeemer. And then suddenly, beneath all of this came another noise, low at first, then growing louder until it drowned the other sounds. A deep and mournful wail that grew into a shriek, a moaning aria of loss and bereavement and hunger: the song of the Compassionate Redeemer.
ziz was silent, listening with the others. Alone in that great empty space the Redeemer sang, and she felt the floor beneath her shiver, not from a distant explosion but from the weight of the Redeemer itself as it pressed against the walls of its prison and begged for release. It was a monstrous thing, so hideous to look upon that its creator had gone mad and then been murdered by his own assistant; but it had a human voice, and its sobbing song made it seem that it had human hungers as well.
Tears filled ziz’s eyes, and she turned to take her sister’s hand. Reive and Rudyard Planck huddled together, the dwarf stroking her broken scalp and murmuring gently. And then a high whining sound filled the air, like the endless note of a tuning fork, so piercing that Reive backed away from Rudyard and stared upward, covering her ears.
The ceiling was moving. So far above her that it was nothing but a silver-gray Crosshatch of steel and glass, shimmering through the smoke like a meditation pattern on a ‘filing screen. The Redeemer’s song wailed on and on, joining with that other piercing note. As Reive stared, a silvery mote like a splinter moved above her; a moment and it had become a steel beam, twisted loose from its joinings and falling, falling, until she watched breathlessly as it passed within a few feet of the balcony with a deep whistle. It fell so slowly that Reive marked where it sliced through the pall of smoke that had drifted from the balcony to hang above the crowd. A moment later it smashed there. There followed screams so anguished she closed her eyes. Still more agonized shrieks, and howls like those of tortured animals, louder and louder until the gynander realized that this was it, the beginning of the Great Fear—the mob had already given itself over to terror. She stumbled to the balcony and gazed down.
The crowd had broken up. The huge beam lay like a silver arrow across fully a third of the floor. Figures squirmed beneath it, and the bronze floor deepened to ruddy gold beneath them. From the corridors streamed more Aviators, and moujiks in green eager even now to transport the corpses to the medifacs.
Beside her the dwarf whispered to himself, his eyes closed in prayer. Reive looked up to see ziz staring white-faced down at the carnage. Beside her Nike was yelling, her face crimson, but ziz turned and slapped her.
“Now!” she shouted at the Archbishop. “Do it now! ”
The Archbishop turned and called angrily to the precentor, who stepped forward and shakily began to sing the hyperdulia.
Another explosion. Only dust and scattered debris fell this time, but the crowd surged forward to the Gate. On the Narthex the clergy’s frightened voices joined the others as they struggled to leave the platform. ziz bit her lip so that bright blood pocked it, then cried, “Enough!” She shoved her way through galli and distracted diplomats until she stood next to Reive and Rudyard.
“Go now,” she ordered, pointing to the rickety stairway. She grabbed the velvet rope and tore it off, then pushed Reive onto the first step. “To the bottom, just go—I don’t care what you do next—”
Reive stumbled, looking back terrified at the dwarf. When he nodded she began to walk very slowly down, step by step.
On the platform Rudyard Planck straightened and brushed flecks of dust from his clothes. At ziz’s hysterical prodding he raised his head and looked at her disdainfully.
“There is no need for that,” he announced. He took a step, stumbled—the entire balcony was weaving drunkenly from side to side—grabbed the handrail and began to descend a few feet behind the gynander.
As Reive walked the crowd grew quieter, and the sounds of explosions and falling debris seemed to fade. At first the stairway moved so that she clutched the railing, fearful of being pitched from it, but after a few minutes it grew relatively still, only swaying a little from her own weight and that of the dwarf. When she glanced back at the balcony it had also stopped moving. Some of the Orsinate’s party seemed to have gotten their courage back. She saw a nervous g alli and the precentor and Archbishop peering down at her, and behind them ziz and Nike arguing. As she paused Rudyard Planck walked carefully until he stood beside her on the narrow stairway.
“Where does it go?” she asked; although she could see quite clearly that it led to the Gate.
“It’s for the sacrificial victims.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it quickly; his was freezing cold. “In years past they sometimes had the hecatombs descend it. It’s amazing it still stands. It’s so they can all see us. The Gate opens, and we go out first, and then they free the Redeemer….”
It did not take very long to reach the end. As they descended the smell of the crowd grew heavier, sweat and perfumes, the odor of petroleum that hung about the Archangels in the refineries, and the metallic scent of blood. Overpowering all of it was the stench of the Redeemer, so intense down here that Reive breathed through her mouth. There was no longer any temptation in the smell: it sickened her, and she almost longed for the Gate to open so that it might disperse.
And then Rudyard was at the bottom, his face very pale, and he turned to help her down the last two steps. As she walked onto the smooth bronze floor before the Gate she felt the silence behind her like a wall, pressing so close that she thought she’d scream. When she looked at the Narthex balcony it was so small and so far away that her nausea grew even stronger. She reached for Rudyard and clung to him, and together they gazed up at the Lahatiel Gate.
It rose, up and up and up, a great bronze wall so smooth and dark it seemed impossible there could be a seam anywhere upon its surface. But then it moved; almost imperceptibly it shuddered as though buffeted from outside by a terrific wind. Reive suddenly thought of Ucalegon, the monstrous storm, and how even now it might be tearing at the outside of the domes. A shaft of pure terror raced through her. The Redeemer at least was something from within the domes, something engineered by the Ascendants and protected for all these years by the Architects. But a storm? She could not even imagine it, only recall the shape of the wards traced upon her breasts and scalp, slender lines coiling in upon themselves, and a wave ringed with teeth. She should have gone with Zalophus, even if it meant being devoured by him; even if it had only been a dream.
She started to step backward, was thinking of trying to flee into the crowd, when from within the breathless silence came a tiny sound, like a child crying. Reive stopped, Rudyard’s hand tight about her own, and listened as the sobbing went on, so faint and heartbreaking that she wept herself to hear it, and heard thousan
ds of other voices catching and crying softly behind her. A gust of warm air brought another rush of the scent of burning roses. Reive raised her head, wiping her eyes to look upon the huge doors before her.
It was as if those moaning sobs were tearing the Lahatiel Gate apart. Reive’s breath caught in her throat. A thread of light appeared, the color of pewter, unraveling from the very top and center of the Gate until it reached the floor. As she stared the thread glowed from dull silver to gold, and then to an angry crimson; widened to a band of streaming red that raced up what had seemed to be a solid wall. The band grew wider, the light fell in a shining band upon the floor and flowed until it met her feet. Reive cried out and stumbled backward.
“What is it?” Her voice was hoarse, scarcely louder than that gentle persistent weeping. “Rudyard, what is it?”
The fiery stream continued to widen, and now the Lahatiel Gate itself was so brilliant she could not have borne to look upon it. It was as though the wall were aflame; but while warm air flowed all around her it was not hot enough for a bonfire. The sobbing moan grew louder, rising to a steady wail that was almost a roar. Behind her the crowd moved, she could hear other voices murmuring, calling out, rising in a steady torrent that at any moment would break and roll forward, to meet that terrifying wall of light.
Because the Lahatiel Gate was gone now: a wall of flaming colors rose where it had been. And of course this was not a wall. It was Outside, it was the World come pounding at the doors of the city.
“ No! ”
Crying out, she tripped, and felt more than heard the throbbing voice of the Redeemer burst into full cry. When she stumbled to her feet again it stood there before her.
It was a moment until she could even see it, she had been so blinded by that irruption of sunlight. And when she did make out its features—spade-shaped head upon long swaying neck, weakened forelegs, tail making a skreeking noise as it switched back and forth above a gaping hole that had opened in the floor—when she did discern that this was, indeed, the Compassionate Redeemer looming above her, she was more terrified for the crowd immediately behind it than for herself. That was before she realized the Aviators had erected an obfuscating field between the Redeemer and the mob. Reive could see them as through a yellow mist, and hear them, quite clearly, as could the Redeemer and the dwarf. But for the moment they were safe where they grimaced and yelled behind the transparent wall.
And Reive, of course, was not.
“Run!” Rudyard shrieked. She could barely see him, a small greenish blur darting behind her. She fell as he grabbed her, then staggered to her feet again. A long wailing cry followed them as she ran, the dwarf at her side, and stumbled down the steps.
“Try to keep down—can’t keep the crowd back forever—doesn’t take much to satisfy it—try to keep down —” he gasped, and Reive tried her best, yelping when she tripped and fell down a few steps. All around her roared a wind, so loud it almost drowned out the wails of the Redeemer. Spray whipped her face as they half ran, half fell down the last few steps, and then Rudyard was dragging her across something soft and hot.
“No—” She staggered to a halt, yanking her arm from the dwarf, and looked back. The Redeemer still stood on the topmost step, its neck glowing rose-pink against the darkness within the domes. That was what struck Reive—how it seemed to be utterly black in there, so dark that she wondered how she had been able to see at all. Shaking, she turned away. And stopped.
Everywhere was a howling emptiness, a rage of color and light that pounded against her. Above them rose the Quincunx Domes of Araboth, so huge they loomed like an immense silvery cloud. The limestone steps from the Lahatiel Gate ran down to the beach like milk poured from an inverted bowl. Waves of sand ripped across the narrow strand, slashing her cheeks and scalp. Beyond the beach was water, heaving in great sheets onto the beach, white and green and a blue that was nearly sable. She cupped her hands around her eyes to protect them from flying sand and turning tried to see where the ocean ended and the sky began, finally decided the sky must be that paler expanse of gray and steely blue. Directly overhead it was the color of Zalophus’s eyes. On the farthest rim of the world, where it swelled against the sea, it was dead black.
“Reive!”
Rudyard’s voice floated to her. She turned slowly, feeling as though she were asleep or already dead. A hot wind raked her scalp, bringing with it the faintest scent of salt roses. The dwarf stood several yards down the strand, an impossibly tiny figure against all that thrashing gray and white. He had cut himself when he fell. Where he clutched his wrist, grimacing, blood glowed ember-bright. His voice drifted toward her in broken gasps.
“Don’t stand still—it will find you— keep moving— ”
Choking, she turned and ran, her bare feet dragging through the sand. She headed for the water, a few yards away. When she looked back she saw the Redeemer gingerly creeping down the steps, head weaving back and forth, long scarlet tongues trailing from its mouth. She turned away and continued toward the water, clutching her side where it ached from running. Her mouth was dry and sour; she stopped to cup her hands in the foaming water around her ankles. When she brought it to her mouth it tasted bitter and warm as bile, and she spat it out again.
“ Reive …”
The dwarf’s voice sounded even fainter now. Wiping her mouth she turned, saw that he had straggled back across the beach, heading for the foot of the steps.
“Rudyard. No. ”
She ran toward him, though it felt as though the sand sucked at her feet with each step. Once she tripped and slashed her thigh on a broken shell. She saw what he meant to do: put himself between her and the Redeemer, lure it to him and give her time to escape. When the dwarf saw her running toward him he shouted frantically, waving her back; but Reive could think of nothing now, she was like a kite cut loose in the wind. The thought of being alone on that strand terrified her; the sight of the waves crashing behind her, that inky stain on the horizon spreading beneath the sky: all of it numbed her so that she could scarcely move. She wanted only to feel something solid against her skin, metal or carven stone or glass, anything but this awful shifting world. She thought she would rather die than endure this horror, but then she saw Rudyard Planck.
He had reached the base of the steps, and stood there forlornly, nursing his bleeding wrist. On the steps above him, perhaps two thirds of the way down, the Redeemer swept its head back and forth. The suckers streaming from its mouth whistled through the air, and its wail had deepened to a low, questioning moan.
The dwarf looked up, craning his neck. When he saw how near the creature was he cried out and fell backward, catching himself on the edge of a step. As Reive raced up beside him she glanced aside and saw the blood spilled across the sand, a broken line that ended at the dwarf’s feet.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he gasped. She smacked him when he tried to fight her off, grabbed him—he was heavier than she’d thought—and pulled him onto her back.
“Hang on,” she said, coughing, bent nearly to the ground. The Redeemer’s cloying scent filled her nostrils like perfumed water and she could see its shadow slicing through the brightness behind her as she tottered toward the waves. Rudyard yelled something in her ear but she couldn’t hear him. She had some vague notion that if she could only reach the water, they could somehow find safety.
Her back ached beneath the dwarf’s weight and her feet slipped on the wet sand, so that over and over she fell, struggled back up, and stumbled forward a few more steps. Looking behind her, she saw the Redeemer stopped at the bottom of the stairs where Rudyard had been, its long suckers touching the steps and sand and then plying questioningly at the air. At the top of the broad steps, within the shadow of the Lahatiel Gate, she could just make out whitish shapes, like teeth in a great dark mouth. The figures of those waiting inside, she realized. They were pressing forward, the oriels must have been removed or else extended to allow the crowd to move farther out, until they nearly crossed into th
e light. Above the city clouds whipped in gray and white streams, reflected in the domes’ smooth glassy surface; but the sky immediately above Reive was dark green. Funnels of sand churned up the steps, the wind made a steady keen whining in her ears, drowning out nearly every other sound. All this she knew in one quick flash; then she was staggering on again, the dwarf clinging to her fiercely as he gasped, “Down—let me down! ” while behind them the Redeemer shambled across the sand, moaning softly to itself.
They were at the edge of the beach now. It looked solid enough, with just a few inches of foam sluicing across the sand, and then angry blue-black water like molten glass. Reive paused, shifting so that the dwarf could clamber a few inches higher on her shoulders. The wind was so strong it seemed to suck the very breath from her mouth, and she turned sideways to gulp in deep shuddering gasps. For a moment she knew nothing but an overwhelming happiness, to be still and have her lungs full of air again, and to have spray and not sand pelting her cheeks. Then: “Reive—the waves, be careful!”
Something kicked her stomach and she went flying. The dwarf tumbled into the surf. Head over heels she rolled, shrieking in pain as her arm was wrenched, then gagging as water filled her mouth and nose and eyes. She was catapulted headfirst into the sand; something slammed against her side and she felt as though her head were being torn from her shoulders. Then just as suddenly it all stopped. She was sitting up, covered with sand and sea wrack, water streaming across her lap while the wind howled in her ears. Not five feet in front of her the Redeemer crouched over the body of the dwarf.
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