Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Beyond the PatrolFolk, the entire west end of Commons' Beach was scattered with Faces and AG staffers: knots of grieving primals and stonebenders, a few ogres, some humans, ogrilloi, and six or seven sleepy trolls who scowled and rubbed their eyes, uncomfortable with even the dim light leaking through the heavy overcast. The biggest knot clustered around Kierendal's canopied sedan chair.

  Beneath the canopy, Kierendal held a handkerchief to her mouth. Her eyes were dry, unblinking, and her face might have been carved from pale grey ice. Each time she moved the handkerchief from her mouth to her forehead to mop the fever-sweat from her brow, she revealed sharp preda­tor's teeth through which she panted shallowly, like a cat in pain. Many of the AG staffers wept openly; Kierendal stared at the clouds with black rage, as though she believed eagles might answer the intensity of her need.

  With his dirty cloak—already soaked with the ashy drizzle—thrown about his shoulders, and his rumpled broad-brimmed hat drawn low, Deliann looked less like a large, broad-shouldered primal than a small slim human. To come here today, to share even his limited, disconnected sense of Tup's loss, he'd had to pretend to be exactly what he was.

  This irony made him feel only a little filthier than the sand beneath his feet.

  He had been on the run ever since that night in the Warrens, hiding, moving, trusting no one, huddling in alleys, crawling under collapsed roofs of fire-gutted buildings, never sleeping, foraging for scraps. He was closer to starvation than he had been even in his first days on the planet, but he didn't really care.

  Fever had stolen his appetite.

  The pocket of infection within his thigh had swelled, and now sent streaks of red up through his hip, reaching for his heart. He drew Flow constantly, holding down the pain, trying to slow the infection's progress, but it was a losing battle; he needed professional healing, but he had no money. Any who once might have healed him for free worked for Kierendal.

  His exhaustion sent his fever flashing and flickering from memory to fantasy and back again; sometimes he could make out a hallucinatory scene, and sometimes all he had were screams and the silhouettes of shapes seen dimly through a curtain of flame.

  If he so much as closed his eyes‑

  -the fire bursts out from within its ring of brick and the whole room starts to go up like a torch and the Cats fall back as Deliann and Tommie scramble out a window, but there's more of them outside waiting in the street and both ends of the alley and Deliann's flame springs out an instant too late as a crossbow quarrel goes through Tommie's guts, missing the bone and ripping straight through his stomach and out a kidney, and Deliann's answering flame ignites buildings on all sides. "See?" Tommie coughs, palm pressed against the spurting hole in his belly, "guess I don't have to worry about your HRVP after all ..." and Deliann is carrying him, holding him up with one arm around his shoulders, limping along the alleyway, clearing the Cats from around them with blasts of flame, and Tommie's saying, "Neela ... gods, Neela, take the money, go ... at least try ..." when another crossbow bolt that should have hit Deliann in the neck takes Tommie in the back of the head. His skull is strong enough to stop the forged steel vanes so it doesn't go all the way through—its barbed head pokes out through his eye socket with his eyeball punctured and dangling on his cheek—and he starts to convulse and Deliann can't hold him anymore and the last thing he says is ". . . shit goes bad by itself ... Neela ..." and he dies in the mud with the fire roaring all around them‑

  -and he swayed and almost fell, there on the beach, and the sudden motion jerked open his eyes. He swiped his sleeve across his brow, gasping.

  The rain on the beach was solidifying now, turning from a misty spray to a thicker drizzle that splashed on the sand. Deliann pulled his cloak up, and snugged his hat lower on his head.

  The sand of the Commons' Beach half covered a scatter of greasy food wraps, fish heads, and splintered poultry bones with a dusting of damp shit-brown. Deliann had tried to scuff some of the litter away, to find a relatively clean place to stand, but each swipe of his sandals only revealed a new layer of trash.

  Tup's funerary barge was barely the width of Deliann's outstretched arms, and less than twice that long. Built of plaited reeds, it was already softening and pulling apart like a straw hat left in the rain. She should have been suspended high in an oak, but no trees grow on the bank of the Great . Chambaygen at Ankhana; the compromise Kierendal had settled upon was to join the treetopper custom with that of the First Folk, and so the corpse that once had housed the life of Tup lay on this disintegrating raft in the river, a fish-oil lamp sizzling at each of its four corners.

  The mortal remains of the little treetopper were staked in the center of the barge; thin cords—no more than bits of string—tied her ankles to one stake, and her wrists to another above her head. Her tiny mouth gaped darkness, and her eyes stared unblinking up into the rain. Gaping also was the long slice that opened her belly from the yellow-red bone of her sternum all the way to her brush of feathery pubic hair. The lips of this gash were threaded with coarse black stitching; to these stitches were knotted further threads of black that spread fanlike to either side of the corpse; tied to the reeds of the barge, the fans of black thread held the gash-lips wide, fully exposing their mouthful of intestine, liver, and stomach.

  Bits of metal, tiny mirrors, and jewels of glass made a carefully arranged starburst around her, salted with bits of raw meat gone already high. The sparkle and the scent of emergent rot should have drawn crows and vultures, perhaps even an eagle, to feed on the exposed entrails, and so properly begin the body's dissolution into the earth that had borne it, even as the life that had animated it had now dissolved into the Flow—but the tainted rain kept the scavengers away.

  Deliann didn't know if Kierendal could survive this.

  The slowly twisting knife of Kierendal's pain turned within his guts; he stared from beyond the cordon, suffering with her. The ache in his chest was like the stroke of a lash over salted cuts: more pain than he could stand, but less than he deserved.

  There was a sort of current in the knots of Folk gathered on the beach; they seemed to cling together, sharing their grief and their memories of Tup, but every once in a while someone—a primal here, a stonebender there, even the occasional ogrillo or human—would break off from one of the knots and join another; that knot, larger now, would soon spawn offspring of its own, eddies of grief that brought each of them into contact with each other. The contact might be as intimate as a sobbing embrace, or as brief and distant as a nod of the head and a shared grimace of sympathy.

  He ached to join those eddies of grief; if he could touch someone and be touched by them, even for an instant, he would not feel so hideously alone. He tried to summon Tup's living face, tried to hold a memory of her, tried at least to feel some real respect for the loss that her friends and lover had suffered, but he couldn't. Standing in the rain, head bent, hating himself, he could only really think about how much he hurt.

  And could he be that shallow, after all?

  Again he swayed, dizzy, weakening, and his eyes drifted closed‑

  -he leans his simmering forehead against the cool strap of iron that binds together the door slats of an apartment in the Industrial Park. "No," he says, "no, don't open the door. Get your mother. I need to talk to your mother," and he sags against the iron, turning his face to bring his cheek against it, using the chill to shore up his crumbling courage. When the woman's voice comes hesitantly through the door, "Tommie? What's going on? Who are you? Where's Tommie? Has something happened to my husband?" all he can say is, "Don't open the door. There's a fire," he says. "There's a fire, and you have to get out." Her voice goes shrill, "What do you mean, a fire? Where's Tommie?" and finally he has to say it: "Tommie's dead, Neela. He's dead and you have to go," and she says "I don't understand! How can he be dead?" and all he can say is, "There's a fire," and as he says it he makes it so: curls of smoke leak from the slats of the door beneath his palms. "Go out the back. Take y
our clothes and all the money and go," he tells her, and she shrieks back at him, "Who are you? What happened to Tommie? Who are you?" and he says, "Nobody. I'm nobody at all," as he thinks I'm the king of the dyes‑

  -and that thought shocked him awake on the sand, staggering, grasping a nearby shoulder for support. The shoulder belonged to a stranger, another of the onlookers, a woman, and she struck his hand away, then delivered a stinging slap across his face. She paused one more second, to spit a bigot's epithet, then shoved away through the crowd.

  Deliann shook his head, rubbing his stinging cheek. His wish had been granted: to touch, and be touched.

  How is it that everything I do comes out backward?

  At this thought, he glanced over his shoulder involuntarily, reflexively—And so was the first of the onlookers at Tup's funeral to see the massed infantry squares marching toward them, along the beach from Nobles' Way. He could not tell if they were real, or phantoms born of his exhaustion and fever, and did it matter?

  His only answer was flame.

  Fire was so easy, so fast: a reflexive spurt of power that pulsed down his arms to spray from his fingertips, a kundalini roar from the base of his spine. With a gesture, he could draw down the arrows of the sun.

  With real screams and real blood, the fever dream unfolds

  The infantry marches along Commons' Beach, and there are archers behind them. The PatrolFolk who had cordoned Tup's funeral unlimber their weapons, and the human onlookers surge against each other in cross-rippling waves, trying all at once both to see what is happening and to get out of its way, and Deliann, crushed among them, thinks It's just like Tommie, but this time I won't run. I can't run. I am their king, and this is my place, and with his gesture a sheet of flame roars from the sand toward the grey-leaking clouds, a towering ragged-fringed bastion of fire from the buildings to the river, but the infantry keeps marching and now arrows begin to fly, catching fire as they pass phffthp through the flame, and when they strike flesh, clothing burns and now the beach sizzles with screaming burning wounded people scattering: sparks from a kicked-over bonfire.

  Deliann clears Piper's Alley with a gout of fire two hundred yards long, sending the troops that had filled. it scrambling away coughing blood out of scorched lungs, and the panicked Folk upon the beach flow toward the alley mouth like water toward the breach in a river dam. Deliann swings himself back to the east, to turn his fire upon the advancing infantry in truth now, to roast them within their armor and fill the Ankhanan skies with the smoke of burning corpses, and a hand like the claw of an Ilmarinen MachineWorks steam shovel falls upon his shoulder. He looks back and up into protuberant fist-sized yellow eyes shot through with red, and Rugo the ogre slobbers regretfully around his brass-capped tusks: "Knew I s'oulda kiltya before. Now I'm gonna get in s'it with Kier," and the last Deliann sees is a barrel-sized fist scaled with grey-green horn descending toward his face like a boulder offa cliff.

  The man who had been a god paused upon the mountaintop, victorious. He had gained these heights by wit and will, and from here he could see before him the promised land.

  He could see from where he had come, he could see where he wished to go, but he failed to see where he was; for though he had been a god, he was now a man.

  From his very first step down the far side of the mountain, he began to learn what it is to be human.

  ELEVEN

  The story trickled onto the nets in exactly the kind of dribs and drabs most likely to keep the cauldron of public prurience at a rolling boil. First the fire at the Curioseum, and the suggestion of sabotage and arson by a shadowy group of eco-terrorists, the Green Knights; then came the Where is Caine? stories, as a source within MicroNet confirmed that Hari Michaelson's Mantrak anklet had vanished from the satellite position grid and the courts had presumptively seized his house and all his assets.

  The investigation of the Green Knights led the CID to one Administrator Kerry Voorhees, the head of Biocontainment for the San Francisco Studio. Professional Voorhees was unavailable for comment but a few of her associates in Biocontainment were extensively interviewed, and they spoke of certain behavioral changes that seemed to have begun with Voorhees' "friendship" with Shanna Leighton. When CID searched Administrator Voorhees' Oakland apartment, coded documents relating to the Green Knights were found in her desk's datacore, as was a journal that suggested her relationship with Shanna Leighton went somewhat beyond friendship.

  The real fury began when a reliable source within the Studio leaked clips from the security records of the Curioseum fire, when the public learned how close the world had come to losing Caine forever—and when an enterprising reporter uncovered the enlightening fact that the Studio had bought Michaelson's house and the rights to his Adventures back from the civic treasury.

  The mystery of Michaelson's disappearance now took on massive conspiratorial overtones, with rumors of secret missions and Studio-sponsored death squads. Had the Studio killed him? There was, for the space of twenty-four hours, a rumor that Michaelson had been seen entering a backstreet cosmetic surgery clinic in Kabul; was he truly on the run, or had the Studio sent him undercover to strike back at the eco-terrorists? And what, in all this, was the connection to the HRVP outbreak on Overworld, and the—by now popularly confirmed—homosexual love affair between Pallas Ril and the terrorist Kerry Voorhees?

  After two days, the partially decomposed body of Administrator Voorhees was found floating in the Bay; in the datacore of her palmpad was a full confession. She had dusted supplies waiting for transshipment to the Transdeian mining colony with test samples of several different HRVP strains. This was done, her obviously unbalanced account claimed, to draw public attention to the dangers of Earth exploitation of Overworld resources.

  She had made this recording in the depths of guilt and the agony of having been betrayed, when she realized that her lover, Shanna Leighton—her mentor, her idol—had deceived her. Entertainer Leighton had never intended to halt the outbreak; she instead had sworn to go to Overworld and, as Pallas Ril, carry on the fight against any who would harm the natural world—against any who would till the earth for crops to feed a family, against any who would so much as gather fallen wood for a fire.

  Kerry Voorhees could not live with having done the unthinkable. And the unthinkable had been done—as Jed Clearlake himself notably observed with the sort of tragi-ironic bon mot of which most net reporters can only dream—for love of Pallas Ril.

  In the furor of the search for Caine, Gayle Keller became an instant celebrity and came off quite well on his many netshow interviews. His somewhat oily facade of unrevealable inside knowledge was nicely balanced by his staunch defense of Chairman Michaelson: loyalty is a primary virtue in an Artisan. He repeatedly insisted that Chairman Michaelson was devoted to his job, to the Studio, and to the world—that he was a real team player. The Chairman had acted hastily, true, in sending Pallas Ril to Overworld without first investigating the source of the outbreak, but you have to remember who he had been, don't you? Caine was a man of action; Chairman Michaelson had seen a chance to end the crisis almost instantly, and at virtually no cost to the Studio. That was responsible Administrating, no matter the unfortunate outcome. He certainly could not have known how unbalanced his wife had become, nor could he have had any idea what she was planning.

  "What man, after all," Keller pointed out with a wry shrug, once in each interview, "ever really knows what a woman is thinking?"

  When the mystery of Michaelson's disappearance was finally solved, it fell to Studio President Businessman Westfield Turner to break the tragic news to a shocked and saddened public. At a press conference with the Roman facade of the Leisure Centre in Geneva for a backdrop, Businessman Turner spoke to the world.

  "Late last week, San Francisco Studio Chairman Administrator Hari Michaelson—courageously, and without consideration for his personal safety—consented to join with the Studio and the Overworld Company in a clandestine effort to combat the most terrible
threat that the people of Overworld have ever faced: the cowardly, vicious bio-terrorist who infected that pristine and innocent place—killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, and placing millions at risk—the ruthless Pallas Ril.

  "The effort was successful, the danger averted. Pallas Ril and her savage terrorist organization can never again threaten the safety of the innocent millions of Overworld. But this victory has come at a terrible price."

  Businessman Turner paused here and could be seen to take a deep, slow breath: clearly moved, and steeling himself for what he must next reveal. "It is my sad duty to inform you all that Administrator Michaelson—along with Administrator Vinson Garrette, Professionals Gregor Prohovtsi and Nicholas Dvorak-gave his life in this effort."

  Businessman Turner went on to touch briefly upon some of Michael-son's accomplishments, his rise from the 'Temp slum of San Francisco's Mission District to the Chairmanship of the jewel in the Studio's crown, his services to the Studio and to the world as Caine.

  Operations were now under way to recover his body, lost in the cliffs below Khryl's Saddle. According to Chairman Michaelson's expressed wishes, his remains would not be returned to Earth, but would be transported to the city he loved best, Ankhana, for burial. The San Francisco Studio—already shut down for a security review in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Curioseum—would remain shuttered for a month in respect for his memory, and Studios around the world would close for three days of official mourning.

  "The job Hari started isn't over; there is work still to be done, to protect Overworld from the scourge of HRVP. Even as I speak, the Adventures Unlimited Biocontainment Administrator is organizing the largest and most comprehensive antiviral relief effort in the history of mankind. As Studio President, I offer my personal word that the Studio is in this to the very end. The job Hari gave his life to begin, I swear that we will finish."