The Stars Askew (37 page)

Irik staggered to his feet, lifted his bag, and, with surprising feverish energy, started running. Ahead stood a cliff, with dangerous-looking goat trails climbing frighteningly up it.

Armand practically danced across the stony ground, certain that any moment his ankle would roll and he would be left clutching it and moaning. Still faster he ran, leaving Irik in his wake.

He reached the cliff face and knew it was both necessary and impossible to climb the goat trails. They were too sheer and treacherous. The idea sent him into a panic. He remembered gripping the rope in Varenis as he escaped the Belligerent watchmen, sure he would fall to his death. He looked up at the cliff again: they would have to try. He would conquer his fear of heights, or die trying.

As Irik rushed to his side, he looked back to where the spear-bird circled with impossible speed, a cyclone of wings and beak, a blur in the air. The first Cyclops crouched on the ground, one hand above his head like a builder beneath a falling stone. He was transfixed, terror of the bird paralyzing him—few could face a spear-bird's gyre calmly.

Armand was vaguely aware that Irik had begun to climb, but he was mesmerized by the death flight before him.

“Up now, Armand!” called Irik. The oppositionist was still apparently seized by the burst of feverish energy—possibly his last—and he was already a third of the way up the cliff.

The second two Cyclopses flung slingshot stones at the spear-bird, but it was like flinging missiles into a hurricane. In an instant the lone Cyclops had disappeared into a fury of flapping wings.

Armand scrambled up one of the goat trails. In no time, the drop beneath him was precipitous and terrifying. Above him, Irik's foot slipped over a foothold, sending dirt over the precipice. The oppositionist's hands splayed out as he pressed himself to the cliff face. His bag went over the edge. Despairingly, he looked down past Armand to where it lay.

“Leave it. Keep going.” Armand himself was gripped by terror. In his mind, he saw himself falling from the cliff again and again. His legs were shaking. He placed his hands on the rocky wall to calm himself.

In places the trail stopped, only to begin again three feet higher. Quivers of fear shot through Armand as he scrambled up. Halfway up the cliff, he came to a series of ledges that ran up like a sheer ladder. He froze and began to shake. The terror swept him away, like a snowflake on the breeze.

Irik called from the crest of the cliff. “Come on, Armand. Up.”

“I can't.” Armand was paralyzed. He grasped the ledge before him with desperation. Looking down at the rocky floor below, he knew a fall would kill him.

“Armand, come on!”

“I can't! I can't!”

He heard something from above but was too afraid to look up.

Irik's voice was closer now. Impossibly, despite his illness, the oppositionist had climbed back down to Armand. His soft voice lilted with sardonic humor. “Look at us two, Armand. A bratty oppositionist and a pompous traditionalist, scaling cliffs and running from Cyclopses. You wouldn't want to be anywhere else, would you?”

Armand pressed his face against the rock, felt its coldness against his cheek.

Irik spoke again. “It's a black joke, life. What do you think the Cyclopses are thinking? ‘Why do we have to chase those two? Why can't we just go home? I didn't sign up to face spear-birds in the cold. The whole thing is just
so annoying
.'”

Armand smiled. “You think we're messing up their plans for the day?”

Irik spoke louder and more sardonically now. “I think we're messing up their plans for the
week.
I mean, they look quite peeved down there.”

Armand chuckled, and the fear abated a little. He looked up and Irik reached down. “Come on.”

Armand continued the nightmarish climb, calmer now, his hands steadier, his legs more assured. Finally, impossibly, he reached the top of the cliff, where he collapsed, heaving and sweating beside Irik. Armand looked across to his friend, who now stared into the sky blankly. His face was as green as lichen. How much courage it had taken for the oppositionist to come back for Armand.

On the plain below, the two Cyclopses were standing around their fallen comrade. The spear-bird had taken flight under the barrage of slingshot stones, it seemed. Armand watched as they left the crumpled figure and began to march to where the cliff tapered down to a sheer incline, far away. From there they would climb up to the plateau and continue their relentless chase.

“It's time to move again,” said Armand.

Irik looked up from his resting place. His face was pale, his breath ragged. “Just a little longer.”

When they began to move once more, it seemed to Armand that they might have reached the highest pass between the mountains. Ahead lay a crest, beyond which he could only see sky. He was filled with hope.

As he let the strange feeling wash through him, he felt something soft touch his face. He looked up to see the first flecks of snow spinning onto them. Black clouds rolled across the sky. His hope blew away on the gusts of icy wind.

“Perhaps the shadow will help us.” Irik stared blankly as he walked. Sweat poured from his body as the sickness played out its patterns inside him.

“What shadow?” asked Armand.

“Surely, you've seen it. The shadow. The figure looking over us. Cloaked.”

“It's just your fever speaking, Irik.”

“What fever?” asked the oppositionist. “It's you who has the fever. I'm ice-cold. I'm as cold as the heart of Varenis itself.”

Yet they continued, two tiny figures in a massive hostile landscape, until the dark sky cracked open and the snow fell in great swirling swathes.The storm closed in on them as twilight fell. Armand could only see thirty feet ahead, through dancing, swirling flakes of snow.

There's something beautiful about the wild indifference of this world,
thought Armand. Beside him, Irik swayed on his feet.

“We have to find somewhere to shelter.” Armand led them closer toward the sheer slopes of the nearby mountain. Here they found small overhangs, but Irik shook his head as if to say they were too small.

“We have to choose one of these,” said Armand.

“No,” said Irik. “There's a house up here.”

Armand grasped the man. “There's no house.”

“My mother's house is right here. Can't you see it? My mother—she's the figure who has been watching over us. The shadow.”

“Is your mother dead?” asked Armand.

“Yes,” said Irik, who began to cry.

“There is no house,” said Armand. “Come, let's huddle beneath this outcrop.”

He pushed Irik beneath the rocky ledge, turned to wedge himself in, and started at the great hulking form of a Cyclops, standing in the roiling snow, trident in hand, staring at them.

The Cyclops called out in a guttural language, filled with clicks and aspirations. His comrades were apparently nearby.

Armand grabbed the wooden spike. He would die here, he decided. They would have to carry his corpse back to the camp with Irik's. Never again would he work in those mines. Despair now filled him. He had endured so much. Now all was at an end, all his hopes and plans. He found himself moaning softly, as if he might be dying already.

The Cyclops called out again in his native tongue and began to march forward. Its single eye pierced Armand with animosity. The violence would be swift and brutal.

At first Armand thought it was a tiny bird darting from the ledge above. It made a soft sound—
phht
—like the wooshing of air. The Cyclops screamed, his hand over his eye.

Then there was a mechanical sound from above. Armand craned his neck to see, but the ledge obscured his vision. There was a click and then a second rushing sound. The blinded Cyclops grabbed at its neck and thrashed around.

A moment later a hooded figure leaped into the snow in front of Armand. Its cloak flapped dramatically around it, and a chunky modern bolt-thrower swung in its hand. With the grace of an athlete, the figure dashed across the snow toward the towering Cyclops. In a rapid motion, it placed the bolt-thrower beneath the Cyclops's chin. There was a clunk, and his great head was thrown back violently as something burst from the top of it. The massive creature stood motionless for a moment, then collapsed straight back into the snow.

The hooded figure strode purposely back toward the overhang. Armand pressed against Irik, gripping his spike grimly, determined to defend them both.

Recognition struck Armand with the force of a blow. The shadow, as Irik had called it, was the same red-bearded assassin who had tailed him from Caeli-Amur all that time ago.

The figure threw back its hood. There was no beard after all. Instead, a woman shook out her bright red ball of hair. “These new bolt-throwers—I
like
them!”

“Who are you?” said Armand in amazement.

“I'm your guardian god, Armand Lecroisier,” the woman said.

“That is
definitely
not my mother,” said Irik.

 

TWENTY-NINE

Max's journey back from the Sentinel Tower to Lixus passed quickly, and before long, he stood on the hills overlooking the city. Lixus looked like a watercolor painting: solar hues brushed the ruined towers romantically. Max had no desire to enter the city at night, so he camped on the ridge and watched the towers slowly fade into inky silhouettes. He ate simply, enjoying the quiet in his head. Aya had sunk so deep that he was almost not there at all.

The following morning Max rode through the vast empty streets of Lixus and reached the plaza. The tear-flowers had been hacked down, their platelike heads shriveled on the ground under them. Karol's corpse lay beside them, still encrusted with a layer of hardened nectar. Since Max had left, the flowers' roots had plunged into Karol's body. Once they had sucked Karol's essence into the flower stems, but since they had been cut down, they had hardened and dried. Now Karol's head tilted back, his mouth half open, his eyes staring off into the land of death, tiny rootlets crisscrossing his cheeks, curling around his lips. The officiate's expression was caught between excruciation and euphoria, between entrapment and release.

The Towers were empty. Perhaps the crow-people had followed the Pilgrim south to the Teeming Cities. It would be a long march, and many of them would die, but perhaps they would find the meaning they were all searching for. Now an air of melancholy engulfed Lixus. Were the vacant, crumbling towers, the overgrown gardens, the deserted hot springs all glories destined for ruination? Max scavenged some abandoned provisions and continued.

*   *   *

It was afternoon when Max came to a crest and looked over at the rolling hills. When he passed this place some weeks ago, it had been a picture of bucolic prettiness: the villas perched on the hills or snuggled in the valleys, the fields and greenhouses and olive groves. Now he watched an ominous scene. Like ants on a dead body, columns of black guards marched along the roadways, descended on the villas and farms. Everywhere he looked, they clashed with defending forces. The dead lay strewn in gutters or propped against walls. Plumes of smoke twisted into the air from burning buildings.

Max continued into the maelstrom. Before long, people streamed past him. First came the remnants of House agents—officiates, subofficiates, and intendants—on horseback. They rode with fear in their eyes, saddlebags filled with whatever booty they had rescued, scarcely giving him a second look as they headed south. Then came those fleeing on foot. The bulk of these were simple rural folk who had worked the farms, the goods in their arms just rags and trinkets.

A hearty-looking old man halted beside Max's horse. “Turn back, traveler, turn back! The seditionists have come and they're razing everything.”

Maximilian's heart lurched. “But why would the seditionists do that? No, it's impossible.”

The old man looked back at the scene behind him. “You're right—impossible.”

The man ran on without another word as a group of black-suited guards rode toward Max. As they raced past, they eyed him suspiciously. They were hard-looking men and women, their flat, angular faces and steely eyes filled with ruthless determination. Menacing short-swords dripped with blood.

In the middle of the road, an abandoned carriage lurched to one side, its axle broken from speeding over the potholed road. Its horses were gone, and clothes and knickknacks were strewn on the dirt around it.

A villa stood at the end of a short road to Max's right. Several seditionists were busy setting its walls alight with hay and firewood. Others were throwing stones at the villa's first story. From the upper windows a bolt-thrower appeared. One of the arsonists screamed, went down clutching his side.

Through the frosted glass walls of a greenhouse, Max saw figures engaged in a bitter skirmish. Several of the silhouettes went down in a rain of blows.

Max rode closer. Through the greenhouse's open doors, he caught sight of sapphire bushes, their blue petals waving desperately about. A black-suited guard hacked at banks of delicate herbs, candle-flowers, and scarlet livid-moss. Many of those beautiful plants had thaumaturgical properties. Beside the beds of flora lay corpses of gardeners, hoes and pitchforks clasped in their hands.

Max leaped from his horse and strode into the damp heat. Lush and sickly scents wafted over him.

Three more guards hacked away at the fire-trees. Elsewhere, shivering-moss lay hewn from its bed, its bright green color slowly fading, its motion smaller and smaller.

“Those are precious!” said Max.

One of the guards—a pear-shaped woman—turned, and in smooth liquid tones said, “Look, it's the owner.”

“I'm not the owner, you imbecile,” said Max. “You should know who I am.”

“Ejan gave us the right to do whatever we like out here. ‘You're off the leash!' he said. So bugger off.” The woman sneered, turned back to the garden, slashed away.