Banner of souls (39 page)

She was once more standing on the plain, but it was darker now, and colder. The grass beneath her feet was crisp with frost. The only light came from the Memnos Tower itself, as though shadows cast shadows.

"Lunae!" Dreams-of-Wars voice came out of the dark like an arrow. She sensed a mass of bodies shifting all around her: the Sown, groaning into consciousness.

"Dreams-of-War! Where are you?"

But there was some light, she saw—a tiny spark, no larger than a firefly. It danced above the heads of the Sown, spreading what at first Lunae took to be light in its wake. But then she saw that it was not light at all, but fire. She thought of the thing that she had brought from the El-dritch Realm.

A hard wet hand clamped itself to her arm.

"Lunae! What have you done?" Dreams-of-War hissed.

"I took us through," Lunae said, but as she spoke, she remembered Essa speaking of the end of Mars.

And of firestorms.

"Where's the kappa?"

"I am here," the nurse said, seeming to bustle out of the darkness.

Dreams-of-War was staring at the spark, which spun frantically above the dazed heads of the Sown.

"It's looking for a body."

The thing was crying out, in a high, thin voice like a wasp. Dreams-of-War gaped at it. "
Yskatarina
?"

There was nothing to contain the spark, torn from the Realm. The haunt-engine was dead, the Tower quite dark now. But the coarse grass had caught, blazing up like burning hair. Lunae saw each one of the Sown burst like a pitch torch, fire streaming from beneath the chitinous helm-heads. She heard the Kami shrieking, fleeing their borrowed bodies—but there was nowhere to go. Next mo-ment, she looked up into a firewall. A blast of heat struck her, so intense that it felt cold. Lunae snatched Dreams-of-War and the kappa up and out.

The Eldritch Realm once more lay before them, but this time it seemed a calm and ordered place: a sea of night, filled with stars and sparks, each gliding around its appointed sphere. The Realm spoke to her.

"Are you disembodied?" It did not sound greatly disturbed, merely somewhat puzzled, as though the smallest cog in its mechanism had developed a minute perturba-tion.

"I don't know."

The Realm made a minuscule adjustment, turning in upon itself, leaving room for Lunae to take them back to the place they had left—to the Martian morning and the rising sun.

Epilogue

They stood in the Martian dawn, staring down into the newest crater of the plain. Where the Memnos Tower had stood for thousands of years, where the Sown had risen and the Kami poured back through time, there was now only a gaping hole, a wound in the red earth.

"No matter." Dreams-of-War, latest Matriarch of Mars, spoke briskly. She stood in only her underharness, un-weaponed. But not, Lunae suspected, for long. "I've never liked that place. Too much intrigue. I don't like intrigue. Now that I have the Matriarch's phial, I shall return to the clan house and recruit from the women of Winterstrike. We will live as we once lived, out on the plains and moun-tains, doing what we do best."

"And what of Earth?" the kappa said, mild as ever. "Who will govern our world, now that Memnos is gone?"

"I don't know." Dreams-of-War gave her a blank look. "You kappa are pretty much running its industries and services, as far as I can see. Sort something out."

"That is your only piece of advice, Matriarch?"

"Why should I care?"

"Why, indeed?" the kappa said after a moment. She turned to Lunae. "And you?"

Lunae thought back to Fragrant Harbor, to the smol-dering ire-palmed ruin that had once been her only home. Then she looked at the crater, now starting to flood as the canal seeped forth into it.

"Do you really understand what you are?" the kappa asked.

Dreams-of-War scowled. "What is she, then?"

"She is the first of the Kami, really. A person who can move through time. Perhaps the only one—though we do not know what has become of the Mission on Earth, whether any remain there."

"Well, I can't think of her as Kami," Dreams-of-War spoke firmly.

"Yet she is." The kappa gave a grim smile. "And what if Lunae's existence causes the kind of future we have just prevented to unscroll again?"

Dreams-of-War made a dismissive gesture.

"Don't trouble me with paradoxes. I have decided not to believe in them."

"The kappa is right," Lunae said. "And I know what I want to do."

"Then what is that?"

"I told you, back at Cloud Terrace. I want to travel as far as I can. First to Nightshade, to look for answers. And then—perhaps—beyond. If I can shape time, perhaps I can shape space, too. Who knows what I may be able to do? Who knows where I might be able to go?"

"Who knows?" the kappa agreed, and they fol-lowed her gaze upward, to where the Chain was slowly turning.

About the Author

Liz Williams is the daughter of a stage magician and a Gothic novelist, and currently lives in Brighton, England. She received a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Cam-bridge and her career since has ranged from reading tarot cards on Brighton pier to teaching in Central Asia. She has had short fiction published in
Asimov's, Interzone, The Third Alternative
, and
Visionary Tongue
, among other publica-tions, and is coeditor of the recent anthology
Fabulous Brighton
. She is also the current secretary of the Milford UK SF Writers' Workshop.
Banner of Souls
is her fifth novel. She is currently working on her sixth.