Epiphany of the Long Sun (55 page)

"It is my task-" Incus's voice had risen to a squeak; he cleared his throat. "My task to
explicate
for you the
utterance
of the god." The recurrence of something near his accustomed singsong restored his confidence. "To
gloss
upon his
message
and
relay
his
commands.
"

A man in the second row shouted, "It was Pas, wasn't it?"

Incus nodded, his cheeks trembling. "It
was.
Lord
Pas,
the
Father
of the
whorl
and the
Builder
of the
Gods."
Neither he nor his hearers noticed his mistake.

"He talked to me," Hammerstone told Auk. His voice held a dawning joy. "I seen him once, way off, reviewing the parade. This time he talked to me. Like I'm talking to you, and he gave me a order."

Auk nodded numbly.

"Patera will have heard, won't he? Sure he will. We'll talk about this years from now, how Pas talked to us and gave me the order. Me and Patera."

"Ere I
commence
my
exegesis,"
his voice was stronger, and carried an authority that stilled the congregation, "I shall
confide
to you something not generally known, which I
myself
learned only
today.
There has been no
announcement,
but I was not sworn to
secrecy.
On
Molpsday
Great
Pas
granted a
theophany
to the-the
aged worthy augur
who has for
innumerable decades
served us as
Prolocutor
. His office has been
attorned
to me by
Saving Scylla
, who would doubtless see his
protracted devotion
rewarded with that
freedom
from
concerns
which is the
perfumed ointment
of
superannuity
. It was that, I
confess
, which sent me in search of
tranquility
, as I have
related
. The
disquieting intelligence
that the
Father
of the
Seven
had
manifested
himself to one whom I have been
only too ready
to reckon a
rival
."

"Did he say something about me?" Half pleading and half threatening, Auk closed upon the ambion. "He said something, didn't he? What was it?" Hammerstone interposed himself.

"I
prayed
to
Pas,"
Incus continued, wondering. "I urged the
justice
of my
cause
with
tears.
Now how
clearly
do I see this lesser
plan,
the
plan
that is to set in motion his
greater Plan!
First he
bestowed
his
benefaction
upon the
Prolocutor
that was, then upon the
new
." Incus indicated his own stomach. "It is the
hallmark
of the
actions
of the
gods
that, however
unanticipated
they may be, once done they are seen to be both
perfect
and
inevitable
.

"And
now
I confide the
divine utterance
that
Great Pas
has
vouchsafed
to us."

High above the mummy-colored bead that was General Saba's airship, but five hundred cubits below the low winter clouds, Fliers whom Caldé Silk was just then likening to a flight of storks rode the blustering north wind.

From their center, Sciathan studied his companions. Their eyes were on the clouds, as he had expected, or else the sere brown fields, the silver threads of streams, or the shrinking lake; no mere emergency could overcome the habits of years, no urging-not even a god's-bring them to consider the teeming Cargo below relevant.

Sciathan himself glanced up at the clouds and scanned his instruments before abandoning both. A long yellow-brown column of marchers was approaching the city from the south. He had glimpsed similar parades often, giving little thought to them and what they might portend; soldiers and troopers could be halted by avalanches, turned aside by floods and forest fires, and dispersed by storms not much less readily than flotillas. No host had ever succeeded in crossing the Mountains That Look At Mountains; and in all likelihood, none ever would. Here in the hold, hordes like the one below would be a different matter.

Swords of Sphigx

S
tanding stiffly in his official cloak of tea-colored velvet, Caldé Silk cursed himself mentally for not providing chairs-or rather, for not seeing to it that chairs were provided. He had supposed (such, he told himself, had been his lamentable innocence, his utter unfitness for the position thrust upon him) that he, with Quetzal, Oosik, and Saba-and Maytera Mint, if she could be found-would take their places on this platform, at which the force dispatched by Trivigaunte to the aid of Viron would appear.

The fact, of course, was otherwise. The fact was that even Generalissimo Siyuf's highly disciplined horde of seventy-five thousands remained a mass of seventy-five thousand women and men-to say nothing of thousands of horses and none but the Nine knew how many camels.

Camels!

As a precociously pious boy, he had considered Sphigx the least attractive goddess, a tawny-maned virago, more lioness than woman. Now it appeared that real lions had nothing to do with real warfare; horses, mules, and camels were the pets of Stabbing Sphigx, and he would have accepted them happily (or even gerbils, guinea pigs, and geese) if only they would appear in reality.

A freezing gust shook the triumphal arch. It had been hastily erected, and would almost certainly collapse if this winter wind blew even a trifle harder; indeed, it was liable to collapse in any event if Siyuf's troopers did not put in an appearance soon.

Surely there ought to be somebody in the crowd around the platform who could and would fetch chairs. First, he decided, he would ask that a chair be provided for Quetzal, who was of advanced years and had been standing for the better part of an hour; then, as if it were an afterthought, he could order chairs for Oosik and Saba, and himself as well. Five minutes more and he would leave the platform, collar a commissioner, and demand chairs. He must and he would-that was all there was to it.

The wind rose again, and he clenched his teeth. Yellow dust gave it a score of visible bodies, whirling devils that skated over the Alameda. A streamer of green paper tore free of the arch to mount the wind in sinuous curves, vanishing in a few seconds against the heaving bulk of the tethered airship.

From that airship, he reflected, it should be simple to gauge the advance of Siyuf's troops. Given just one more day, he might have arranged for signals: a flag hung out from the foremost gondola when her advance guard entered the city, or a smoke-pot lit for an unanticipated delay. To his own surprise, he found that he had lost none of his eagerness to board that airship, in spite of multiplying duties and the winter wind. Like Horn (just the person to find chairs, or boxes at least) he longed to fly as the Fliers did.

There were a lot of them today. More, he decided, than he had ever seen before. An entire flock, like a flight of storks, was just now appearing from behind the airship. What city sent them to patrol the sun, and what good could such patrols do?

A fresh gust roared along the Alameda, shaking its raddled poplars. To his right Saba stiffened, while he himself shivered shamelessly. The Cloak of Lawful Governance tossed like Lake Limna about his shins, and would have streamed behind him like a banner if he had not been holding it with both hands. Hours ago, when he had put it on in the Juzgado, it had carried in its long train a sensation of oppressive and almost suffocating warmth; he had been sorely tempted to substitute a cheap (and therefore thin) augur's robe for the luxuriously thick one he was wearing under it, although Master Xiphias and Commissioner Trematode had dissuaded him. By this time it should have been soaked with his perspiration; instead he found himself wishing fervently for a head covering of some kind. Saba had her dust-colored military cap, and Oosik a tall helmet of green leather. He had nothing.

The old broad-brimmed straw hat he had worn while repairing the roof was gone-lost at Blood's, like Maytera Mint. The new broad-brimmed straw he had bought at the lake was gone too, left in the room from which the talus had snatched him. Patera Pike's cap, the black calotte that Patera had worn in winter, was back at the manse-he had scarcely dared to touch it after Patera's ghost had dropped it on the landing.

All were dead now, Pike, Blood, and the talus. The second and third by his own hand.

Would this Siyuf and her troopers never come? He searched the clouds beyond the airship for a glimpse of the sun. The dying Flier had said they were losing control. With what chains did one control the sun? With what tiller was it steered?

But no doubt the sun was merely masked by the threatening clouds; it would be childish to complain because winter had come at last when the calendar declared it half over.

Spring soon, unless this winter proved to be as protracted as the summer that had preceded it. If the rains failed then, so would he; if the new corn sprouted and died, Viron's new god-appointed Caldé would surely die with it. He pictured himself and Hyacinth fleeing the city on fast horses, but Hyacinth was as lost as Maytera Mint, and he knew nothing about horses save that they might be offered to Pas without impropriety. This though Pas was dead.

Was Hyacinth dead as well? Silk shivered again.

A band struck up in the distance, and ever so faintly his ears caught the clear, brave voices of trumpets and the clatter of cavalry.

Someone, it might have been Oosik, said "Ah!" Silk felt himself smile, happy in the knowledge that he had not been alone in his misery and impatience. On his right Saba murmured, "I can identify the units as they approach, if you want, and tell you a little about their history."

He nodded. "Please do, General. I'd appreciate it very much." He was tempted to ask her about the Fliers, as commander of the airship, she might know something of interest-possibly even of value. But it would be the height of bad manners for him to display curiosity about anything other than the military might of Trivigaunte at this moment.

A young woman's dark face (after a brief uncertainty he recognized Horn's sweetheart Nettle) appeared at the left side of the platform. Loudly enough for him to overhear, she asked, "Wouldn't you like to sit down, Your Cognizance? There's a man renting folding stools."

Quetzal beamed. "How kind you are, my daughter! No, I've got my baculus, so I'm better off than the others." (It was not entirely true; Oosik had his heavy sword in front of him and was leaning upon it as if it were a walking stick.) "Patera Caldé isn't as lucky," Quetzal continued. "Would you like this kind girl to rent you a stool, Patera Caldé?"

It would be unthinkable, of course, for him to sit while the Prolocutor stood. Silk said, "Thank you very much,. Nettle. But no. It's not necessary."

"I've just decided," Quetzal told Nettle, "that though I wouldn't like
one
stool, I'd like two. One for me and one for Patera Caldé. Have you enough money for two?"

Nettle assured him she had, and disappeared in the crowd.

On Silk's right Saba muttered, "You men lack the stamina of women. It's biology and nothing to be ashamed of, but it shows why we make the best troopers." His cheeks burned; a subtle alteration in Quetzal's posture hinted that he too had heard, and was awaiting Silk's reply.

What would Quetzal himself have replied? Saba's remark bordered on inexcusable arrogance, surely, and such arrogance was punished by the just gods-or so he had been taught in the schola. Reflecting, he decided it was one of the few things he had been taught that seemed undeniably true.

He smiled. "You're entirely correct, General, as always. No observer can help noticing that women endure far more than men, and with greater fortitude."

On Saba's right, Oosik muttered, "Our Caldé has a broken ankle. Haven't you seen how he limps?"

"It had slipped my mind, Caldé." Saba sounded honestly contrite. "Please accept my apologies."

"You have nothing to apologize for, General. You stated an inarguable fact. Sphigx and Scylla might apologize for facts, I suppose-but a mortal?"

"Just the same, I-here they come."

The first riders, tall women on spirited horses, could be seen through the arch. Each bore a slender lance, and a yellow pennant stood out below the head of each lance. "The Companion Cavalry," Saba told Silk in a low voice. "All are wellborn, and in addition to their regular duties, they supply bodyguards to the Rani."

"I know nothing about these matters," Silk leaned toward her, "but wouldn't slug guns be more effective than lances?"

"You'll be able to see them better in a moment. They have slug guns in scabbards, left of their saddles. Their lances are used in a charge. You can't fire a slug gun with its muzzle at the horse's ears without panicking the horse."

Silk nodded, but could not help thinking that from the accounts he had been given, Maytera Mint and her volunteers had fired needlers when they charged the floaters in Cage Street. Presumably, the moderate crack of a needler did not disturb a horse like the boom of a slug gun. To him at least, it seemed that even a small needler like Hyacinth's, with a capacity of fifty or a hundred needles, would be a superior weapon.

Nettle reappeared, holding up folding stools with canvas seats. Quetzal accepted one, and Nettle went to the front of the platform to pass the other to Silk.

He took it and exhibited it to Saba. "Wouldn't you like this, General? You're welcome to it."