“Tomorrow,” said Jerem Cozak, “they may decide
to build the city differently, or I may instruct them to.” Then, when he caught
me looking at the strange rainbow again: “Yes, that is them, too, though I
think it may be too much. But they say they are paying tribute. They will not
say to what, though I think our ally might have learned.”
It seemed
strange to me that there was anything the White Swarm would not tell him. “It
is all so beautiful,” I said.
He shook
his head. “Yes, but I did not wait to show you something beautiful.” He led me
between two buildings, one of which was like a spiral cut in half. On the other
side the space opened into a simple circular plaza, on which sat nine metallic
frames, shaped like long, thin seeds and black as the color of the void between
the stars. Though they were very long, perhaps thirty paces, they were not much
taller than a man standing.
“So we will
remember,” he said, “what awaited us here.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
He waved a
hand toward them. “These were spikeships, or needleships, as they were once
called both. Our ally arrived in one. But they come from Black Orchids, the
large spheres that once besieged our world before its fall. Do you remember?”
I nodded my
head. He went on.
“Nine
ships, one for each khrall. Faster than the Orchids, they came ahead. They
brought with them the shockpikes that killed your mastodon, and mine. They
filled these ships with them. They brought them specifically for that purpose.
But these ships are how they arrived first, and why we were all deceived.
Perhaps we will never know how.”
I nodded.
“The fire,” I said. “Why was there one? You never answered, though you yourself
asked the question. And I did not think to ask it at the time.”
“I did not
either, for I never saw the flames. But our ally lead twenty five thousand men
over the cliffs above, to their certain deaths. Their valkyries fell upon the
city as a barrage, and their explosions began a conflagration that reduced all
the buildings of Kasora to slag. The armed host waiting to trap us was entirely
destroyed.”
“Better,
then, that we were immune to fire.”
He laughed
again, then sobered. “Just so, though it did not save everyone.”
“Were the
khrall destroyed?”
He shook
his head. “They are harder to kill than that. But they were certainly dismayed.
They needed that army to defeat us on the ground. And they realized, at the
end, that that was exactly what they needed to do. But because of her they
failed, and lost everything, and left.”
“Why?” I
asked. “I don’t understand. I see no one hurry, and the city is remade. But is
there not a fleet of Black Orchids still coming to rain down death upon this
world? And if our ally did find the lightships, when why did she sacrifice
herself to save us, when she could have taken this city from above? Last, if
she did not find them, as I’m guessing she did not, why are you so glad? What
exactly has happened here?”
He smiled
again. “Just so! Now you ask the right questions! But they are so many I cannot
answer them myself. Come, I would show you something else.”
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