Foreigner (20 page)

“Know what?”

“Why, that Mekt was the first bloodpriest.”

“She was?”

“Goodness, Mokleb, surely you know at least the first sacred scroll? ’The ten who had been the fingers of God came together and produced five clutches of eight eggs. But God said soon all of Land would be overrun with Quintaglios if all those egglings were allowed to live. Therefore, She charged Mekt with devouring seven out of every eight hatchlings, and Mekt was thus the first bloodpriest.’”

“I thought bloodpriests were all male.”

“They are now. The seventeenth scroll is all about that.” Cadool shook his head. “I’m surprised, Mokleb: I can’t read, and even I know these things.”

“What does the seventeenth scroll say?”

“That Mekt refused to continue being the bloodpriest. She said it was inappropriate for one who lays eggs to be involved in the devouring of hatchlings. By that time, there were many more Quintaglios than just the original ten, and Detoon the Righteous — you
do
know who he was, I hope — established a secondary priestly order, exclusively male, to look after culling the infants.”

“Fascinating,” said Mokleb.

Cadool shook his head again. “You know, Mokleb, given that you can read, you really should do it more often.”

Mokleb, her mind racing, bowed concession. “That I should.”

Novato and Garios finished loading the lifeboat with supplies: dried meat and fish, amphoras full of water, books in case the journey up the tower proved boring, paper for making notes and sketches in case it did not, leather blankets in case it got cold, and. of course, one of Novato’s best far-seers.

Although from the outside the lifeboat’s hull was rounded, the interior was all a simple rectangular hollow. As she loaded her !ast carton of meat, Novato shuddered. The lifeboat had seemed roomy when empty, and now, filled with provisions, it perhaps could be described as cozy, but twenty days within might make her mad with claustrophobia. Still, that was the round-trip value: after ten days, the lifeboat should reach the summit of the tower. Perhaps she’d be able to get out then and walk around.

Finally, it was time to go. Garios and Karshirl stood just outside the lifeboat’s open doorway, ready to say goodbye. Novato bowed to them, then said simply, “See you later.”

But Garios was not one to let such a moment pass without something more. He handed a small object to Novato. It was a traveler’s crystal, six-sided and ruby red. “Good luck,” he said, then, bowing deeply, he quoted the Song of Belbar: “‘If beasts confront you, slay them. If the elements conspire against you, overcome. And if God should call you to heaven before you return, then heaven will be the richer for it, and those you leave behind will honor you and mourn your passing.’” He paused. “Travel well, my friend.”

Novato bowed once more, then leaned back on her tail and touched the part of the wall that controlled the door. From the inside, the lifeboat’s walls grew momentarily foggy, and she knew that from the outside they would have appeared to liquefy. When the walls cleared again a moment later, not even a faint etching on the transparent hull material marked where the door had been.

The lifeboat began to move up the tower. Looking down through the floor, Novato could see Garios and Karshirl rapidly diminishing from view — father and daughter, although they probably didn’t know that. It was only because of the difference in their sizes, Garios being twice Karshirl’s age, that Novato could tell them apart.

After just a few moments, the lifeboat had passed through the apex of the blue pyramid and was now rising up in the open air. The pyramid was sitting in a hollow scooped out of the cliff. The strip of beach on either side of the pyramid’s base looked like a beige line.

The coastline of Fra’toolar was enjoying a rare day of reasonably clear skies. Novato’s view continued undiminished, except for the parts blocked by the four ladder-like sides of the tower. She could soon see huge tracts of Fra’toolar province and, stretching off to the south and east, the vast world-spanning body of water, each wave cap an actinic point reflecting back the fierce white sun.

The lifeboat had accelerated briefly, but now seemed to be moving at a steady rate: equal intervals elapsed between the passing of each rung of the ladders. Novato had seen ground from the air before, when flying aboard her glider, the Tak-Saleed, and its successor, the Lub-Kaden. But she’d never been this high up. Looking straight out, she could see that she was passing the levels of distant clouds. Looking up, the four sides of the tower converged infinitely far above her head.

Novato had worked with charcoal and graphite to capture images of planets and moons observed through her far-seers. But those illustrations had been made over daytenths, with objects crawling across her field of view. She wanted to sketch what she was seeing now, but with each moment the ground receded further and previously invisible parts of the landscape appeared at the edges.

Rivers and streams cut across Fra’toolar like arteries and veins. Tracts of forest and open fields were visible. And what was that? A series of rounded brown hills — hills that were moving! A thunderbeast stampede!

Novato felt dizzy as the heights grew greater. She could now see well into the interior of Fra’toolar, although clouds obscured much of it to the north, their tops fiercely bright with reflected sun.

A flock of wingfingers was moving by the tower: imperial jacks. judging by the colors. She hadn’t realized they flew this high up. But already they were disappearing below, although she could easily make out the flock’s distinctive tri-pronged flying pattern as it passed by, heading east.

Novato was high enough now that the blue tower itself vanished into nothingness before it reached the ground. Although she assumed the tower was of equal width all the way to the top, it was as though she were in the middle of an incredibly elongated blue diamond, a diamond that tapered to infinitely fine points above and below.

The sun had moved visibly toward the western horizon now. Looking down, Novato could see a thick black shadow at the eastern end of the forest tracts. The whole interior of the lifeboat darkened and brightened in turns as it passed the blue rungs of the ladders. Occasionally, she saw a puff of white gas erupt from one of the cones projecting from some of the ladders’ rungs.

Novato let her eyes wander out to the horizon line — which, she realized with a start, was no longer a line at all. Instead, it was bowing up. Her heart pounded. She was seeing — actually
seeing
— the curvature of the world she lived on. She’d long known that the Quintaglio moon was a sphere, but she’d known it indirectly — from seeing ship’s masts poke above the horizon before the ships themselves became visible, from seeing the circular shadow her world cast on the Face of God, from experiments done measuring the angles of shadows cast at different latitudes. But to actually
see
the curvature, to see the world’s roundness — that was spectacular.

And then, a short time later, she became aware of something even more spectacular. It was late afternoon, the sun still well above the horizon. Nonetheless, the sky was growing darker. It had started as lavender and, without Novato really noticing it, had deepened to violet. Now it was well on its way to black. What could make the sky black while the sun was still out? A flaw in the optical properties of the lifeboat’s metal hull, perhaps? Unlikely.

Novato mulled it over while the lifeboat continued its steady climb, Fra’toolar’s coastline now visible all the way to Shoveler’s Inlet. She knew that water droplets could refract sunlight, splitting it into a rainbow of colors, and she’d long suspected that the sky was purple because myriad droplets in the air scattered light. But if no such scattering was going on, then there was no humidity in the air this high up. Well, water was heavy, of course, so moisture would tend to settle toward the ground. She was well above the clouds now — perhaps they marked the highest level at which water vapor was a constituent of air.

Later that day, Novato watched the most spectacular sunset of her life: the brilliant point of light touched the curving limb of the world, the world-spanning body of water stained purple for hundreds of kilopaces along its edge. The sun’s setting was protracted by the lifeboat’s continual upward movement, and Novato savored every moment of it.

With the sun gone, moons blazed forth in full nocturnal glory. Myriad stars became visible, too. Soon, in fact, there were more stars than Novato had ever seen before. The great sky river was thick and bright, instead of the pale ghost she was used to, and the stars were so numerous that to count them all would be the work of a lifetime. She thought of Afsan, dear Afsan, who had enjoyed no sight more than the night sky. How he would have been moved to see stars in such profusion!

But once again Novato was puzzled. Why should so many more stars be visible? And suddenly she realized something else: the stars, all those glorious stars, were rock-steady, untwinkling. From the ground, stars flickered like distant lamp flames, but these stars burned steadily. With so many visible, it was hard to get her bearings; the normal patterns of constellations were all but lost amongst the countless points of light. But at last she found bright Kevpel, the next closest planet to the sun after the Face of God. She got out her far-seer and, steadying herself by leaning back on her tail, brought it to bear on that distant world.

Spectacular. Kevpel’s rings were visible with a clarity Novato had never before experienced. The planet’s disk was clearly striped, its latitudinal cloud bands more distinct than she’d ever seen, even with bigger far-seers. And Kevpel’s own coterie of moons — why, she could count six of them, two more than she’d ever glimpsed with an instrument this size.

Had this first day of her trip up the tower taken her that much closer to Kevpel? Nonsense. Indeed, the angle between the tower’s shaft and Kevpel’s position along the ecliptic was obtuse: she was in fact slightly farther away from that planet than if she’d observed it from the ground.

But, why, then, did the heavens blaze forth with such clarity?

And then it hit her: the black daytime sky, the incredible sharpness of the stars, the lack of distortion when viewing the planets.

No air.

This high above the world there was no air.

No air!

She felt her chest constricting, her breathing becoming ragged. But that was madness: she could hear the gentle hiss of the air in the lifeboat being recirculated and replenished. She was sure that at least some of the opaque equipment she could see in the transparent hull was somehow maintaining breathable air. She tried to calm down, but it was terrifying to think that only the clear walls around her separated her from, from …
emptiness
.

But Novato did manage to steady herself, and as she did so her heart grew heavy. The
Tak-Saleed
. The
Lub-Kaden
. Wasted erfort. Gliders couldn’t help get her people off their doomed moon. An airship was of no more use for traversing the volume between worlds than was a sailing ship. A whole new approach would be needed.

A whole new approach.

The lifeboat continued its ascent.

“Angle the sails!” shouted Keenir. “Slow the ship!”

Crewmembers ran to do the captain’s bidding. Toroca was up in the
Dasheter’
s lookout’s bucket, the far-seer Afsan had given him in his hands. He scanned the waters to the stern. There still seemed to be some forty ships in pursuit. By letting them approach more closely, Toroca and Keenir hoped to be able to get a count of how many Others might be aboard each of them. It took a while for the ships to draw visibly nearer. There, on that ship — decks crawling with Others. And on that one, a line of perhaps fifty Others leaning against the ship’s wooden gunwale. And on the lead ship, Others furiously scrambling to one side and struggling now with a piece of heavy equipment.

As he scanned ship after ship, Toroca’s heart leapt as he saw one Other who looked a bit like Jawn.

Suddenly, thunder split the air. The view in Toroca’s eyepiece shook wildly. The mast tipped way over. Toroca was slammed against the sides of the lookout’s bucket. He lowered the far-seer.

Another thunderclap. Smoke and flame erupted from a large black cylinder on the foredeck of the lead Other ship. For an instant, Toroca saw something large flying —
flying! —
through the air, then the water just astern of the
Dasheter
went up in a great splash. Something round and heavy had fallen short of hitting the ship by a matter of paces.

Keenir’s gravelly shout, from below: “Full speed! Increase the gap!”

Footsteps pounding on the decks.

The snap of the two unfurled leather sails.

Another explosion from the tube on the lead ship, but this time the object — something round — smashed into the waves perhaps twenty paces astern. Toroca carefully placed the far-seer in its padded shoulder bag and made his way down the web of ropes to the deck below. Keenir was waiting.

“What was that?” shouted the captain.

Toroca, still rattled, held on to the mast for support. “They’re like those handheld fire tubes I told you about, but much bigger…”

“Did you see the smoke?”

Toroca nodded. “Thick and dark, like from the blackpowder we use for rock blasting. But they … they channel the force of the explosion, and use it to hurtle metal balls.”

“Aye. If they’d connected, the Dasheter would have been halfway to the bottom by now. We’ll have to be careful not to let them get that close again.”

“Eventually,” said Toroca, “they’ll be close to Land itself. Are you sure we’re not setting up our own people for slaughter?”

“There will be a slaughter,” said Keenir, “but not of Quintaglios.”

“I wish,” said Toroca, his voice barely audible above the snapping of the sails, “that there didn’t have to be any slaughter at all.” He took his leave of Keenir and went back to his lab to put the far-seer safely away.