Among the Powers (24 page)

“I can’t believe any of this,” Lady Sunlight
said as she stumbled forward into the stone corridor beyond. “It
can’t be happening.”

Rawl wished she were right, but he knew, as
he walked to their cell, that it was all quite real.

“
...Arn of the Ice rides upon the north winds in
the winter, and roams invisibly throughout the world, wherever the
winds blow and wherever the snows can seep in. He draws icy
patterns upon stone and glass, shapes the snow into graceful
curves, and does all he can to transform all the world into a new
wing for the Ice House...”

—
from the tales of Kithen the
Storyteller

The Skyland’s automatic defenses had been ready for
anything when the nuke went off, and the island was undamaged. The
Skyler’s automatic defenses had also been alert and ready, and her
optical symbiote had thrown nictating membranes across both eyes
before the flash could do any serious damage.

The symbiote itself had suffered
extensively, but no one much cared about that. In a few wakes it
would regenerate completely, it had no sensitivity to pain, and it
possessed only the most rudimentary sort of consciousness.

No harmful radiation except visible light
had gotten through the fields surrounding the Skyland, so no one
had to worry about burns or hidden damage of any sort.

Geste and Imp had been looking at the
Skyler, not at the flash. They were unhurt.

Bredon had been looking up, not directly at
the flash, but he had no symbiotes guarding him, no programmed
reactions, no defenses beyond what he had been born with and the
dying remnants of the “repair kit” Geste had fed into his
bloodstream. His eyes were intact, and would heal, but for the
present he was half-blind, seeing everything only dimly. He had
completely missed seeing the mushroom cloud.

By the time everyone’s condition had been
ascertained, and Bredon’s injuries treated with
microbe-administered analgesic, anti-infectants, and healing
accelerator, the machines had definitely established that the
Skyland was completely unscathed. The island, having no orders to
the contrary, had sailed on, directly toward the site of the
explosion, and by the time anyone paid attention to their location
they were over the mountains, and the rising sun was a disk,
noticeably above the horizon.

By the time Geste had assessed the damage to
the various machines he and his companions had sent on ahead—most
of the observers in the area had been vaporized—the Skyland should
have been within sight of the High Castle, and the sun should have
been well up the eastern sky.

The sun was presumably where it should be.
The castle, however, was gone, and the entire area covered by
smoke, smoke so thick that once they had entered it the sun was
hidden from view.

Of course, protective fields kept the smoke
from touching anything on the island. The Skyland forged on, and
the Skyler sent machines out to douse the fires and dissipate the
smoke. Within an hour they were hovering near where the castle had
been.

The peak upon which the castle had stood was
still there, and a wide variety of debris littered its slopes, but
the huge and complex structure that had once capped it was gone,
leaving a gleaming crater. Bredon peered over the edge of the
Skyland in wonder, cursing his damaged vision and marvelling at the
desolation.

It was hard to believe that anything had
ever lived in the smooth, glistening black hole atop the mountain;
the inside surface shone like glass, and carried an uneven reddish
tinge that might have been the glow of the residual heat. Nor was
the surrounding area much better; for as far as Bredon could see,
the land had been laid waste.

The forests on the surrounding slopes had
been blown down, trampled by the shockwave like grass beneath a
horse’s hooves, and most of them had caught fire; the Skyland’s
machines now had the fires contained, so that the smoke no longer
blocked the view. Bredon and the others could see just how complete
the destruction was.

“Well,” Geste said, contemplating the
crater, “there’s certainly no one down there now. Either Brenner
and Sheila and Sunlight and Rawl got out, or they didn’t, and
either way there isn’t anything we can do about it.”

After a moment of silent contemplation of
the horrible thought that Lady Sunlight might have died, Bredon
asked, “Isn’t there any way we can find out if they’re alive?”

Geste shrugged, then stopped. “Of course
there is,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
They’ve all got emergency transponders.” Without further warning,
his eyes rolled back in his head disconcertingly for a moment, then
reappeared.

“They’re alive,” he said. “Or at least
Mother tracked all four of them leaving the High Castle together,
then lost them again at Fortress Holding. She spoke to Rawl
briefly, too. So either they’re all alive, and captured, or they’re
alive and launching some sort of hare-brained counterattack, or
they’re dead and Thaddeus is doing something very tricky and
forging their signals.”

“What can we do about it?” Imp asked.

“Not much,” Geste admitted. “We just go on,
I guess.”

Bredon was relieved that Lady Sunlight still
lived, and looked down at the crater with new eyes.

“If Thaddeus has weapons that can do this,”
he asked suddenly, pointing at the ruined mountain, “why does he
bother with those little flying things that were shooting at us
when we came here before?”

“I can think of several possibilities,”
Geste said. “First off, he seems to have wanted Brenner and the
others as prisoners, not ash. A nuke would have killed them if it
got through at all. Also, there are ways to defend against nukes.
If Thaddeus had just thrown one at Brenner first thing, Brenner
could have defended against it. I don’t know what delivery system
he used, but if he had just dropped it and triggered it while the
High Castle was intact, it wouldn’t have breached the castle’s
protective fields.”

“It wouldn’t?” Bredon stared at the
wasteland below and tried to conceive of anything withstanding such
force.

“It wouldn’t. Nukes aren’t subtle. They just
throw an incredible amount of energy at everything. Brenner’s
defenses
were
subtle; Thaddeus had to pick away at them
until he found the weak spots.”

“Oh,” Bredon said.

“Another thing, we didn’t bring any nukes
with us when we came to Denner’s Wreck; he must have built this one
himself. And as I said, nukes aren’t subtle. By setting one off,
he’s let us all know that he’s been stockpiling weapons and that
he’s not afraid to use them. It gives the game away. Everyone will
see that he’s not just playing around.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? You can get the
others to help, then.”

Geste shook his head. “I’m not sure. If
Thaddeus had dropped a nuke and Brenner had survived it, then I
could; the others would all agree that it wasn’t playing fair. But
trying to stir them up with Brenner gone is another matter. It’s
over and done, now. I don’t know.”

“I think they’ll help,” Imp said, her voice
tense. “I think they’ll have to.”

The Skyler said, “What worries me is why
Thaddeus feels he can use a nuke now, after he had already broken
the High Castle. Why does he feel so safe?”

The others all turned to look at her; she
stepped back, her manner defensive.

“You’re right,” Geste said. “Why
does
he feel safe?”

“Or maybe,” Imp said, “we should ask why
he’s willing to use one now when he wasn’t before. What
changed?”

“He captured the four there,” Geste said
slowly.

“But he already had Khalid and O and
Aulden,” the Skyler pointed out.

“That’s just three; he must have thought
that he needed more hostages before he let it become obvious what
he was doing,” Geste suggested.

“Do you really think that’s it?” the Skyler
asked dubiously.

“I don’t know,” the Trickster admitted.

The four stood silently for a moment. Then
Bredon cleared his throat and said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

“He won’t talk to us,” the Skyler
snapped.

“Wait a minute,” Geste said. “If he
is
feeling safe, he might be willing to talk now. It won’t
hurt to try.”

“I don’t know,” the Skyler said. “I don’t
like this. I don’t like
any
of this.”

“None of us do,” Imp replied.

“If we’re going to talk to him, we should
plan out what we want to say. What do we want from him, anyway?”
the Skyler said.

“Frankly, what
I
want is to pack him
away somewhere, without any of his external systems, and ship him
back to Terra for a little psychological repair work,” Geste said.
“The man is deranged!”

“He’s not going to agree to
that
,”
the Skyler said.

“I suppose not,” Geste admitted, “but maybe
we can coax some sort of concession out of him.”

“All
I
want is Aulden back,” Imp
said.

“And I want Lady Sunlight, if she’s still
alive,” Bredon said.

“I don’t want anything from him,” the Skyler
said bitterly, “except to be left alone.”

“Well, maybe he’ll agree to that,” Geste
said consolingly.

“Why should he agree to anything? He can do
what he pleases, can’t he? Brenner couldn’t stop him; how can we?
He’ll just ignore us.”

“I intend to be hard to ignore,” Geste said.
“Skyler, get this hold of yours moving west; let’s see Thaddeus
ignore a million tons of rock hanging over his head!”

The Skyler hesitated, then waved a command
to a nearby floater. As Bredon watched, the scenery beneath them,
which had been stationary for several minutes, began to move
again.

“I don’t like this, Geste,” she said. She
turned and began walking back toward the main house, calling back
over her shoulder, “I don’t like it at all!”

“
...he turned, and found himself face to face
with a great winged lizard, as tall as a man and a dozen meters
long, with wings that could serve as a roof for the biggest house
in the village.

“
He sat down and began composing his
death-speech, wishing that someone was around to hear it besides
this great green lizard-beast.

“
But then, to his astonishment, the beast spoke,
saying, ‘Greetings to you, sir. Why are you here, in the land of my
mistress?’

“
And then Helleber knew that he was facing a
dragon, and that he was in the domain of the Dragon Lady, and hope
blossomed in his heart, for all the tales he had heard of her were
happy ones.

“‘
Why, I am lost,’ he said, ‘and have no food, no
water, and no way to get home.’

“‘
Then climb up on my back,’ the dragon said,
‘and I will take you to my mistress who made me, and I am sure she
will be glad to help you.’

“
So he approached, full of fear at the sight of
the monster, but forcing himself to walk up to it
calmly...”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

The humans aboard the Skyland spent the rest of the
secondlight in dismal, nervous anticipation, and when the sleeping
dark approached no one slept, or suggested sleep. The sun was
sinking in the west, and they were nearing Fortress Holding.

By unspoken agreement, they gathered on the
terrace where they had eaten lunch.

“He hasn’t done anything,” the Skyler
said.

“Are you sure?” Imp asked.

“Of course I’m sure! I’ve got my machines
watching Fortress Holding, just as you do!”

“He hasn’t done anything that I’ve seen,”
Geste agreed. “Oh, a few of his machines fought off some of my
saboteurs, but that’s nothing.”

“He must know we’re coming,” the Skyler said
nervously. “Why doesn’t he do something?”

“I don’t know,” Geste answered.

They were silent for a moment, and it was
not a human who broke the silence.

“Excuse me,” the Skyland said, “but Thaddeus
the Black is calling and wishes to speak to, quote, ‘whoever is in
charge up there,’ end quote.”

“There you go,” Geste said with a wave.
“He’s doing something. Talk to him.”

“Oh, no,” the Skyler said. “
You
talk
to him.”

“It’s your hold,” Imp protested.

“But it was Geste’s idea to come here,” the
Skyler insisted.

Geste shrugged. “All right. Put him on,
Skyland.”

A face appeared in the air, and Bredon
studied it curiously.

So this was the infamous Thaddeus the Black!
He had seen old pictures back in Arcade, pictures that Gamesmaster
had shown him while explaining who Shadowdark and Thaddeus were,
but this was the first live transmission Bredon had seen.

The first thing Bredon noticed was that, as
the pictures back at Arcade had shown, he was not black, his name
notwithstanding. His complexion was slightly darker than most of
the other Powers Bredon had seen, but Leila and Hsin were both a
good bit darker, and there were people in Bredon’s home village who
were darker, and the southern traders who came by twice a year
selling metal pots and pans and tools were darker still.

His hair was black and curly, but that
scarcely seemed enough to justify the name. His eyes were brown,
and he was heavily bearded. The face behind the beard was lined and
scarred, unusual for a Power, but no more so than many a villager’s
face was by his fortieth turn of the seasons, and by no means even
close to the grotesquerie of Shadowdark’s visage.

Thaddeus did bear some resemblance to his
father; their eyes were similar, and both had prominent noses,
though Shadowdark’s was straight while Thaddeus had a definite hook
to his.

And his face was oddly proportioned, like
Shadowdark’s. Bredon remembered that Thaddeus was said to be almost
three meters tall. The image was only slightly larger than a normal
head; either Thaddeus’s height was entirely in his body, or he was
using a reduced-size transmission.