Page a Day: Two Hundred Seventeen

           The Road turned its last corner just as I realized I was finding it difficult to breathe. Even the White Swarm can only help so much. And we were well above the altitude of many living things, as the rocks and snow and ice around us told. The land of canyons topped out in a horseshoe-shaped snowfield that ringed the top of the watershed. In nicer climes, I could have imagined it filled with flowers. The Road straightened out and crossed it, climbing right for that caldera that the Shuni called the Cup of Gods.

            Which wasn’t much to look at, really. Just a depression within a broken-into circle of cliffs that marked the base of the even-higher pair of peaks that came together there.

            Well, not a circle, exactly. “Hey, Nogilian,” I said. “I thought –”

            “Yes,” came the affirmation beside me. “It is not as it should be. It is not as it was.”

            We rode closer. A caldera, Elmy, is the ragged circle torn in the earth by volcanic eruption. It usually tops mountains, though they can form in other places. It may have a gap on the downhill side, as this one did, where lava once flowed out. It should not have a sharper, clearer, tapered  cut on the uphill side where there is no water to carve it. Ever.

            “Something has happened here,” Nogilian said. “The Guardian Vah Yonise once brought me to this place. The pass could not be reached then. These cliffs have changed.”

            I hesitated to voice my thoughts. It seemed too incredible. We crossed the broad snowfield.

            “The fire of a Black Orchid’s interstellar drive,” I said as we went, “Cuts straight through rock even from high orbit.”  

            I glanced over to see Nogilian’s eyes seeking my own. “There were such ships battling around Thaeron,” he said. “Ten years ago, while my world was falling. Some fled in haste.”

Page a Day: Two Hundred Sixteen

            “Right, ” I said. “Okay, message clear. I must absolutely go down. I’ll get right on it. Uhm. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Operating instructions, timetables, reports on the disposition of Jerem Cozak? No? Alright, then. I need to grab some shuteye. Big day, tomorrow.”

            His eyes found mine over the flames. “We/have been/deceived,” he said. “We will/not come/ in time.”

            And disappeared, in the next blink. If I’d wanted to learn more, I clearly wasn’t going to. I stood up, stretched, and laid myself out. Nogilian shook me in the half-light of dawn.

            “It’s time,” he said. He’d let me sleep late because there would be no morning meal. No one had any rations left.

            “Yeah,” I said. “I suppose so.” I looked up and shivered. Not a cloud in the sky. The temperature had dropped astoundingly overnight. Calm down here in the valley, though you could hear the wind ripping among the peaks and see the tatters of snow whipped aloft. That kind of day, then. 

            We mounted up and went. The Road zigged and zagged through the land of cliffs, somehow always higher than where its most recent maneuver began. A mad cartographer couldn’t have figured it out. And never a fleck of snow or ice upon it, not even here. What would have been drifts just skipped across it.

            I contemplated Kasora. What was happening there? Ninetieth day, and Jerem Cozak knew as well as I that we had less time than that. He would have to be giving them hell right now. Kasora hadn’t sounded like the kind of place that would just roll over. Speaking of which, forget the Augers, why did he want Kasora? Even our initial conference, sketchy as it had been, had left no doubt that he would end up there, whether or not I did.

            Why? What was so damned important about that place? The wind we rode up into held no answers. I steadied my valkyrie, and moved on.

Page a Day: Two Hundred Fifteen

            He shrugged. Right. The basic incuriosity of this world. “It does not matter, Cassan Vala. You sounds like a Historian. Either we will find these ships tomorrow and save this world and Jerem Cozak or we will not. There is no time for anything else.”

            He looked at me strangely and stood, then shambled off into the darkness toward his tent.

            I kept on staring into the flames. I don’t know exactly when Suriel showed, but then I never do. One moment I sitting there staring at a nice patch of nothing, my eyes beginning to droop, and he was there, between blinks. Exactly where Nogilian had been. With the way the Niskivim thought, that was probably supposed to mean something.

            Suriel did not seem entirely himself, though. I could see Nogilian’s tent through his chest, which meant that he was more transparent than normal. And he had lost much luster, not shining as he should have been.

            “You must/ go/ down,” he said, bowing forward. Long moments passed.

            “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I replied. “I already did that. It was pretty spectacular. It got us all the way here. Tomorrow, we climb this pass and see what we can see.” Apparently, I was still in something of a mood.

            “You must/ go/ down,” he repeated.  I tried another round of the waiting game.

            “Look,” I said. “I understand if you’re confused about time and causality and all that. Sounds like that might not be all that clear cut for you. But I can tell you: it’s done. We’ve all moved on. Bigger and better things, and I have to say I didn’t exactly appreciate the vagueness of the instruction. You’d think super-intelligence would find a better way.”

            He replied with the same damned injunction. Nothing further seemed forthcoming.

Page a Day: Two Hundred Fourteen

            And it’s all together, right? You finish up your time with the quicksword, you cross the quad to learn what we call the bolter or lightgun. Different areas, but it’s all made to work together, specialties cooperating in defensive force. So I look at Thaeron and I see: valkyrie, heatwhip, quicksword, each housed in terrain best suitable for its operation. This cannot be coincidence. Thaeron was a training world for the military of the entire Profusion, and it was made to work as one.”

            He scowled. My words were not incidental. If he was who I thought he was, the notion of unity would not be lost on him.  

            “It may be as you say,” he said. “I do not see what obtains from this.”

            I frowned. “Let me ask you another question. These famous Arks of Kasora, these closed during the time you call the Wars Between the Cities. Anything else go quiet about that time?”

            He shrugged. “Many weapons and resources were exhausted. In Nogilia, whole cities were destroyed.”

            “And in Ariel, the Well that healed the first Faith, that went quiet not long after he had found it, yes? And he was the one who ended the wars.”

            He nodded, squinting, clearly puzzled.

            “What I mean is, was there once a Healing Well in Kasora as well? One that would have ceased working about that time?”

            “The legends say there once was, yes. But what are you driving at, woman?”

            I shrugged.  “I can’t say, exactly. But your whole damned world runs by machines. Wouldn’t it make sense if many of them worked together, like the machines that came to help us from the deep?”

Page a Day: Two Hundred Thirteen

            We followed this one anyway. We reached the base of the mountains at just about noon. There were evergreen trees among the foothills. We slowed to a speed just faster than a man can run. The road wound upwards, using both switchbacks and natural courses to maintain its preternaturally even ascent. It cut across boulderfields, and I wondered what by what process it kept itself clear of those. It switched sides across several valleys, and simply let the streams flow over it. It climbed always. The day remained calm. The trees diminished. 

            By dusk we approached an area of cliffs and crevasses as the Road to the Sun edged its way along several glaciers. I looked up at the jagged silhouettes of the Spine of the World, still high overhead, and declared encampment for the night. I hated stopping, but would lose no more men to this endeavor. We cut and burned the valley’s dwarf pines for fuel. Nogilian had said the Cup of the Gods would not be far, a half day’s ride away.  

            “Correct me if my geography’s wrong,” I told Nogilian. “But we’re not far from Kasora.”

            Across the fire, he nodded. “The Cup of Gods sits in a pass on the other side of which is the snowfield that births the cascade above the city. The Shuni believed that the Road to the Sun once connected the jewel city to those of the plateau. But this makes no sense. There is no road on the other side, only precipice.”

            I shook my head, chuckling. “You Thaeronians,” I said. “Even when you see it, you don’t see it.” 

            His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

            I took a breath. “On Earth, we live in vast cities, the size of mountains, that contain millions of people on each level. There are only seven of them, probably only seven in the whole universe. And the top level is always the head honchos, the prince or dictator or oligarchs or whatever other damned system the city happens to have in power at the time. But on the level just below them is always the district of the military, a city unto itself, complete with facilities for training soldiers and their officers.