by R. M. Meluch
“There is a foot bridge,” said Arilla. “On one side stands the Aerie. On the other Haven. Both together are also called Aerie.”
The mountain was block-faulted, its south face a barren granite palisade with the Aerie an inaccessible citadel at the top of the sheer rise. Itiri planes couldn’t fly that high. Even Iry’s heavy atmosphere thinned at such heights. It was six miles above the sea.
“How can anyone possibly get up there?” Alihahd asked.
“We are going to walk,” Arilla said.
“We are?”
“You are going to fly.” She guided the humans across the golden field to the foot of the twin mountain where a balloon was prepared.
Alihahd liked this method of transportation less than he did the seaplane.
The balloon rose slowly, smooth and soundless on a warm anabatic current, the wind the Itiri named eaninala, the day wind.
Then a sudden gust swept the balloon toward the cliff face. The mountain loomed large and filled the view. A glitter of quartz. A rock wall with the shadow of their fragile basket growing on it.
Then the shadow of an eagle.
There came a tug and a change of direction.
An eagle had seized a ring at the end of a long rope attached to the balloon and was towing it back into the rising air current.
There were more eagles just above them, scouting the winds to find where the eddies flowed.
Vaslav leaned over the edge of the basket to try to see the birds. “Are they yours?” he asked the warrior Stasa-yxan, who had come with them in the basket.
“The talassairi belong to no one,” said the warrior.
The boy was abashed. He didn’t talk well. He had only been using Universal for a few weeks. He was sorry he had tried to say anything.
Harrison Hall was relaxed and merrily sinister—even as they were swept toward the rocks—the only one of the humans who seemed untroubled.
It began to grow cold, and Stasa-yxan gave the three humans black cloaks to wear.
The air thinned. The balloon spread out. The countryside diminished into a sunny haphazard checkerboard whose straight rigid boundaries had been forced to curve with a winding river and to scallop the rising ground into flat stepped concentric levels outlined with blue-gray stone retaining walls so that the whole scene looked as if an orderly pattern of red and brown and green and gold squares had melted and run together.
Stasa-yxan frowned at some part and murmured as if making a note for himself, “Blight.”
The others saw nothing. The fields looked healthy.
Alihahd had been silent this journey, lost in a brooding sulk, until Vaslav glanced his way, did a double take, and pointed, his mouth open but lacking the words to explain.
Alihahd blinked back to awareness and looked down at himself. His cloak had turned from black to white. “Is this thing alive?”
“Thou mindest not the cold as much as thy companions,” said Stasa-yxan. “Thy thoughts are elsewhere.”
Alihahd pulled the now-white cloak around him and huddled bleakly in the bottom of the woven-reed basket. “How appropriate.”
The balloon rose to a level jut not far below the bald pate of the western summit. Alihahd climbed woodenly out of the creaking basket and jumped down to the rock shelf, landing weightily on his feet to find himself standing on an island in the sky.
High. So high. Above was nothing but cold sky and bright sun. The air was dry and thin, and everything appeared distinct in the harsh desertlike light.
Low furry plant life crept all the way to the tops of the mountains. Even on the nearly barren rock summits some life still clung, a tatter of grass, a patch of lichen.
Stasa-yxan led the way on a footworn twisty path through moss and creepers to the colonnades of Haven. The path leveled and straightened to a paved walkway called the Ledge Path, from whose base the five levels of Haven rose up in columned tiers, each higher level set farther into the slope. The little city in the sky gleamed in the bare light, the columns, arched doorways, and lancet windows intricately carved, latticed, fretted, and inlaid with gemstones and leafed with metal.
Across the narrow crevasse that separated the twin peaks, Haven’s twin, Aerie, glittered in near mirror image, so that the terraced hollow between the summits formed a titanic natural amphitheater split down the middle.
Curious red-haired ranga poked their heads from the archways of Havenside to peer at the human strangers. There was no movement or curiosity from Aerieside.
A bridge spanned the crevasse where it narrowed to twenty feet across. It was a single-person footbridge made of wooden planks and rope, with knotted handrails. At its mooring Stasa-yxan stepped aside for Alihahd. “Thou first.”
A wind moaned up the fissure and the bridge swayed.
Alihahd watched it swing.
Stasa-yxan fastened a safety line to Alihahd, but it provided no feeling of security. If anything, it made him feel worse.
For being six miles above sea level the winds were light here. They should have been roaring through that narrow abyss as in a wind tunnel.
They could always change.
Stasa-yxan nudged Alihahd. The short span was suddenly very very wide, becoming wider the longer Alihahd stared at the knotted fiber ropes and the wooden planks.
Somewhere beyond the sheltered hollow a wind howled.
Because there were no choices, Alihahd grasped the rope guides and stepped out, not looking down. He was midway across, poised over empty space, when a voice sounded from behind him on Havenside, calling long and tonal, a muezzin sound of repeated ritual.
“Erika! Ameeerrrrika!”
Alihahd turned his head with a start. He could not have heard what he had heard.
Sudden and startling as a splash of water, a child appeared running down a mountain path like a hardy little goat. “Coming!”
A human child.
She was bundled in a long heavy dress, wide-legged trousers, thick cloak, and leather boots. Black hair spilled down her back to her hips. Baby-fat cheeks were red and round. Her black eyes had lights within.
Alihahd felt his interest spark, and was so shocked by it he had to clutch for the bridge ropes and catch his balance. He was not sure how old the girl was, but knew she was not old enough for any man to be looking at her the way he was—especially him.
And you, he was thinking to his prick. Never mind that.
It had a mind of its own, and its timing was awful. He considered himself too old. It should by rights be dead. He’d honestly thought it was. He just wanted it to leave him alone.
When was the last time you rose to any good occasion?
This had less to do with the girl than it did his present danger. It was a sad state of affairs when it took proximity to death to excite him. He held his white cloak fast around him and growled inwardly. He continued across the bridge, disdainful of the long drop—courting it, in fact.
Safe on the other side, he turned to look again, but the girl Amerika had disappeared into one of Haven’s many rock chambers.
Did I dream her?
Human. His emotions raced. Not for the girl this time, but for what she implied.
Space travel.
Trying not to hope too much, Alihahd unhooked his safety line and let it drop back to Havenside so the others could cross.
As he waited, slowly, subtly, the aura of this side took on life and strength and pressed itself into his consciousness. He knew without being told that this side of the Aerie was home to the warrior-priests.
The Aerie was silent, in repose. Like a monastery, it breathed feelings of age, space, and power, as if God were actually more manifest here than other places. Mosques, temples, and cathedrals gave Alihahd the same impression and always left him uneasy—places built for the God of the People of the Book.
The sun ha
d passed its zenith, and the first direct light of day was arriving now on Aerieside. The warm rays lifted steam from the shade-dank rock, and furtive vapors trailed low across the cold blue-gray stones and spilled out between the pillars of the shadowy arcade, then faded in the thirsty air.
The priestess first appeared like a vision at the end of the colonnade. Backed in the sunlit frame of the farthest arch, she came striding up the columned arcade through alternate light and shadow, sunbeams catching on clouds of rising mist that swirled around her feet with her advance and rolled outward in her wake. She moved with a purpose, flow and force in her walk, sharp as an arrow in flight.
As she neared, she took on lines of reality. A sheer blue kaftan billowed out behind her, its long full sleeves slit from shoulder to cuff so her arms showed through thin and ropy with sharply defined muscles. Her tough, weathered skin was blue-black. Her coarse black hair swung down, long, straight, and thick, from a glossy topknot and was knotted again at the end. She wore a white flower behind her ear and a double-curved sword at her side.
She turned and passed under an ornate archway aglitter with topaz and chrysoberyl to an inner chamber.
And when Alihahd’s companions had crossed the bridge, Stasa-yxan led them to the same monumental archway.
Alihahd paused at the entrance, then walked in.
The chamber was a great nine-sided room with polished wood floor and high domed ceiling of gold. Mirrors set in the tall window jambs shot sunlight up to the ceiling, where it diffused and spread softly, and the chamber glowed in warm golden light.
The golden dome unsettled Alihahd.
Two more warrior-priests flanked the inner doorway. Tall and strong as the others, they seemed somehow smaller in this chamber: not so sure, not so proud. And Stasa-yxan changed as he passed under the arch. He seemed to shrink and become meek in this place.
But it wasn’t the chamber itself that affected the warriors. It was the figure at the far end.
Enthroned in a wide ceremonial seat on a dais behind a low lattice barrier was the dark warrior-priestess. Her eyes, trained on the doorway, were black and bottomless, fierce and benign. Her daunting presence filled the room.
She was jet, head to toe, a melano color phase, like a panther. Broken red scars blazed on her sharp cheekbones. She sat with one elbow propped on the armrest, her body curved to the side, one bare foot folded underneath her on the seat. A great snowy owl perched on the tall carved back of her throne.
Stasa-yxan bowed in the universal gesture of respect. “Azo! Fendi!”
The Fendi returned a light nod.
“It was a starship that fell out of the sky,” Stasa-yxan said. “These survive.”
“Are they human?” the Fendi asked. Her dialect was clear—almost modern.
“They are,” Stasa-yxan said.
The Fendi raised hairless brows. “Human starships fly to Iry again. How long has it been?”
“Fendi, I know not.”
The Fendi smiled at Alihahd. She spoke, eyes on him, words directed at Stasa-yxan. “It has been a while.”
Two thousand years it had been.
Alihahd spoke. “So long we forgot you were real and not a dream of ours.”
The warrior-priestess smiled wider, baring white teeth.
Alihahd was puzzled. It had been two thousand years since an Earth ship came to Iry, yet. . . .
He heard pattering feet on the path outside. Amerika. He knew her step already. She was no dream.
“Fendi. Was that not a human girl I saw?”
The Fendi nodded to Stasa-yxan. Stasa-yxan answered for her.
“It was,” the warrior said. “We have several guests here. But she did not come on her own ship. We brought her.”
Then they do have interstellar capabilities! Hope leaped to full life.
The Fendi spoke again, musing to no one in particular. Not to the humans. Not directly. “So Earth finally decides to remember us.”
Her tone was nonjudgmental. She considered the development neither good news nor bad news, only interesting fact.
Birds were flying in the chamber’s spacious dome, flitting in and out of the tall windows. They were little black birds like swallows. One flew near the Fendi, and she absently snatched it out of the air with lightning grasp without even turning her head, nothing moving but her arm. She petted its head with one long finger, then tossed it back into the air, unhurt—all as effortless and unthinking as a person might bite his nails.
The snowy owl blinked a slow blink.
At last the Fendi asked, “They are not of these new humans—the Na′id, they are named?”
New? Comparatively, Alihahd supposed. Na′id colonization had been spreading for the last century and a half. The empire had conquered a large part of the known galaxy in that time.
“No, we are not,” said Alihahd. The question was for him even though she’d directed it at Stasa-yxan.
“They are not here to assert human supremacy and—what is the other slogan?—galactic dominion?”
“No,” said Alihahd. “We were shot down by Na′id.” Then he remembered that he was not actually certain of what had befallen Harrison White Fox Hall’s ship and realized he’d been answering for the man. He rephrased, “The boy and I were, anyway.”
The Fendi’s eyes slid to Hall. Stasa-yxan spoke to Hall for the Fendi. “And thou?”
“We were,” Hall affirmed.
“Tell them to stay in peace, then,” the Fendi said, finality in her voice. Alihahd sensed dismissal.
And he felt panic. Stay? He needed to get out of here, and soon. “Fendi,” he said quickly. “I cannot stay. If you have a starship and could give me passage, I will give you anything you ask. I can pledge a great deal. Only tell me what you want.”
The smile disappeared. The eyes flashed. Her head snapped toward Stasa-yxan. “Say to that one: Thou camest. We did not bring thee. We are not for hire.” Her alien accent thickened in anger.
Alihahd immediately backed down. “I am sorry. I am already in your debt.”
She smiled again. “Art thou a Fendi?”
Stasa-yxan made a noise in his throat. The Fendi had forgotten to speak to the human through her intermediary.
She hadn’t forgotten. The Fendi stood, pushed her warrior attendant aside, and descended from the stepped dais. She moved around the lattice barrier.
Alihahd was struck speechless for a moment. What a bedraggled thing he must look; he had just insulted her, and she asked if he was her equal.
“I was,” he said.
“Thou hast a people to whom thou must return?”
“Yes, Fendi,” said Alihahd.
She reconsidered—seemed to.
“When one of us next leaves Iry, thou mayest go also,” she said. “The physician may be next. Till then we can take you back to Lower Aerie. Most of our human guests are there. Winter drives them down. Only niaha—three—humans stay up here. Amerika, Layla, and Montserrat.”
“When will the next ship leave?” Alihahd asked. Why had she mentioned winter?
The Fendi frowned. The snowy owl clacked its hooked beak.
“It could be long. It could be tomorrow. Like death,” she said.
Whether the last words were statement or analogy Alihahd couldn’t tell. The Fendi was displeased, and her warriors were frightened.
She ascended to the dais again. “My name is Roniva.”
That was a signal to go—for the second time—and they’d best obey. She didn’t want their names. She would learn them in time if she cared to.
The owl glowered from its perch on the back of the throne.
The young warrior, Stasa-yxan, motioned the guests out. Alihahd started to leave. He glanced back once, and forgot what he was going to say. His back hadn’t been turned for more than two seconds.
The snowy owl was gone.
• • •
It was a long hall, its shadows very deep. Alihahd had come this way still seeking an escape. The labyrinthine passageways of Aerieside led him up rock-hewn stairs spiraling up a mammoth newel like a ziggurat, and he was wheezing by the time he climbed to the top. There was oxygen enough in the air. He simply couldn’t draw it in. Blood pounded in his head.
At the end of the long hall shone a turquoise door. It was open. A shaft of sunlight fell into the dark corridor from the chamber.
A voice called to Alihahd from beyond the door. “Ave.”
It was the girl Amerika.
Then came a male voice. “Peace be upon you.”
“And upon you peace,” Alihahd answered, curious. He approached the massive door. Its ancient mosaic was faded from long standing in the dry air.
Inside he found a warrior-priest, the girl, and an eagle. The eagle cocked its head sideways and regarded Alihahd with one onyx eye, inhuman intelligence in its gaze.
The girl stole shy glances at Alihahd from beneath long black lashes. Her dark skin deepened color in a blush.
The elderly Itiri beckoned Alihahd farther into his chamber with a white, spidery hand, his drooping skin jiggling with his motions.
The cave with its stuccoed walls was small, clean, and lined with racks and racks of herbs and delicate blown-glass vials of swirling colors. It was a physician’s chamber. Even with the clutter, the room was airy, its woven mats fresh. Swallows trilled at the tall windows.
“Thou art ill,” the physician said from his worktable.
“No. No, I am not,” Alihahd said.
The physician wrinkled his brow in doubt. He said to Amerika, “Healthy humans appear thus?”
“No,” Amerika said.
“Thy temperature is high,” the physician told Alihahd, and Alihahd wondered how he could tell.
“How is it you speak Universal?” said Alihahd, drawing attention from himself.
“It is the language between the stars,” said the Itiri physician. “Is it not?”
The way you speak it? “It was. Two thousand years ago,” said Alihahd.
The physician made a motion with his head that was analogous to a shrug.