The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (48 page)

Question after question thrilled his mind. But there was one he hardly dared to articulate. Then he made himself ask it, excitedly, falteringly, through the window in his brow, “Are you alive?”

There was silence for several charged moments, and then there could be no doubting that he had his reply. Although he hadn’t moved a step, he found himself within a chamber with walls that glittered faintly as if made of gold. But their surface was too soft for metal. When he reached out to touch them they had a heavy liquid feel, as if he were pressing into a lake of mercury. There was no clear reflection in this dully glittering substance, not even when he shone the torch’s light against it. It absorbed light as, presumably, any energy that was directed toward it—yet still it glowed with a soft and ancient light, like a heart of liquid gold.

“Siam, what do you make of it?”

Siam stared back at him, a mixture of terror and wonder in his eyes. “Mage Lord, do we not sense it, even if we have nothing else to go on other than our feelings?”

Alan’s eyes widened. He ran his fingers over the giving surface of the walls—the liquid softness of organic being—uncertain if they were changing even as he looked at them, while observing for the first time that in cross-section they formed a pentagon. The ceiling was faceted also, the natural drawing together of the lines of the pentagon.

“She’s grieving with us, Siam. I know it, absolutely, though I can’t explain how I know it.”

Siam nodded.

Alan’s heart beat too fast for comfort and he struggled to catch his breath. “We’ve got to find a way to help her.”

“She is beyond any help that I might conceive.”

Alan stood at the dead center of the golden heart of the ship. He called out, “Show me what to do. Guide me!”

Siam’s eyes were wide and staring as he held back in the entrance, the torch trembling in his hand. Alan stood with his feet wide apart as if to give his giddy head balance, then placed a blood-covered hand on each of two opposing walls. The oraculum pulsated.

He maintained his position, the oraculum throbbing powerfully and insistently. Then he thought he saw something, a faint flickering in the walls of the
chamber. His heart pounded as he realized what he was seeing. However faintly, the walls had taken on a background ultramarine, through which a rippling of stars, as complex and beautiful as a clear night sky, came and went from view. The pulsation of stars suggested an answering heartbeat. The heart of the Temple Ship was beating again, however feebly.

Alan’s face was a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion. His lips moved, as if attempting to speak the words that were entering his mind from his communion with the ship. . . .
Remember the frozen lake . . . the lightning!

How could Alan forget their escape from the Storm Wolves? He recalled looking up into the thunderheads, seeing the lightning, his left arm tensing against the sky and his white-knuckled fist bringing it down and directing the lightning at the ice . . . No—not directly at the ice, but first directly through the ship!

“I used the First Power to revive the ship.”

That was what the ship itself was telling him. Abandoning all defenses, Alan opened his mind completely, through the oraculum, focusing on the pulsating matrix.

Oh—wow!

Extraordinary sensitivity combined with immense raw power. Not the patronizing voice of command he had anticipated, but the invitation for him to be one with her in love and fellowship. A wave of new vigor tingled through his mind and body.

With all of his mental strength, he poured the First Power into the golden heart of the Temple Ship. The tingling surge was so exhilarating he was forced to clench his teeth—or he would have shouted out like a drunken man. The wonder, the joy of it, coursed through his blood and spirit. The ship was returning what he had asked of it. It gave it to him with such joy—more freely than he could ever have hoped for or dreamed.

Communion!

Alan and Siam headed back the way that they had come, stumbling as they retraced their steps through the dusty labyrinth, slipping around the pitfalls until they emerged, blinking, into the daylight. They didn’t look back as the portal closed itself off behind them. Leaving Siam kneeling on the deck, and extolling the great Akoli, Alan rushed to the charred rail on the foredeck, waving his arms at the startled people who had been standing around, confused and anxious, waiting for him. He saw how their expressions changed from fear to hope, sensing the change in him.

Alan turned to the kneeling figure of the chief and shouted, his voice ringing with elation. “Go gather everybody together and bring them up on deck. And Milish!” His eyes searched the huddled groups already on board and found her. “Get the Aides to bring up all the wounded. And Bétaald—gather together the Shee. We must get everybody up onto the deck.”

“But is the deck safe to bear such weight?”

“Trust me! I have something important to tell you all.”

With caution still, the wounded were lifted up the makeshift ladders onto the fire-ravaged main deck. A Shee carried Mo on board, then left her to the Aides, who oversaw a bed of furs. Others stitched Alan’s arms, where he had cut them with the spearhead, then dressed them. Suddenly a woman screamed as the cinders of an oak bulwark disintegrated in a shower of dust. “The ghost of the ship will devour us. See there its very bones are gleaming!”

And in the gap it seemed that she was right: the skeleton of the ancient vessel did seem to protrude through the ash, like a rib of ivory.

“Stay calm!” Alan called out, to settle their fears. “No harm will come to you!” He could hardly contain the rapture that glistened in his eyes. He stood erect, feeling the reviving spirit that amplified and crackled about him. He knew that Qwenqwo had come to stand beside him.

“What is it, Mage Lord? What did you discover in the depths of the ship?”

“Something wonderful!”

“Tell me more, or I shall die from curiosity!”

Qwenqwo turned to Siam a face so full of pleading that the Olhyiu chief laughed and picked him up in a bear hug. “Do not expect a simple man, such as me, to explain what we saw. Not if I lived a thousand years!”

Alan couldn’t help but laugh. “Patience, Qwenqwo! We’ll talk about everything later. Right now I have things to do.”

“Mage Lord!” It was Siam who now approached him, Siam whose eyes were still wide with shock at what he had witnessed, as he waved at the groaning superstructure with his hat. “For all the wonder we have witnessed, yet still I cannot see how we are to escape this prison of ash and peril.”

Alan led Siam to the remains of the rail that separated the aft section from the broad middle deck, and from where they could address the gathering crowds.

“Don’t be afraid of the changes you are about to witness.”

“Changes, Mage Lord?”

More cries were sounding out. Yet excitement surged ever higher. For with a shimmer about the very fibers of its structure, the ship was metamorphosing. “Look about you,” he shouted to them. “The ship is healing itself.”

He could feel his own sense of wonder spread among them. He called out, so they could all hear him, “The dwarf mage has asked me to explain what is happening. But I’m struggling to put into words the miracle I have just witnessed. The Temple Ship has been more than our refuge. Believe me when I tell you that it isn’t just a vessel constructed out of oak. It’s alive! I know how incredible this must seem to you all. And yet it is true. It knows the delight of joy and it knows the anguish of
despair. It mourns the loss of friends, just like we do.” Alan looked at Siam, whose eyes were jumping here and there, as changes were taking place around them.

“Siam wants to know how we’re going to make headway in this sunken wreck, whether it be alive or not, the several hundred miles of distance that still separate us from Carfon.”

Alan shrugged at Siam, then lifted his eyebrows at the equally incredulous Milish, who had left Mo to come and listen to him. “I don’t have a clue as to how it will happen. But my guess is that for the moment we don’t need to understand, only to be patient. To believe!” Then, with rising excitement, he watched how the ash was peeling from the underlying ivory: it was showering skyward, contrary to wind or gravity.

“Trust the Temple Ship. It will take care of us during this journey.” He nodded to Milish, adding in a softer voice, “Now let’s try again and see if we can help Mo.”

Alan accepted the limp body of his friend. Mo appeared so frail, so weightless, he might have held a ghost in his arms. He remembered Qwenqwo’s words in the story he had told them on the river: he had called the ship the Ark of the Arinn. It seemed that no one other than he and Ainé had heard Mo challenge the Legun . . .

Your master will know me by my true name. I am Mira, Léanov Fashakk—the Heralded One . . .

My God!

Mo, who hadn’t needed a crystal to hear the thoughts of others! It seemed to Alan, standing on the deck of
cinders, that there was a mystery to his friend that was every bit as strange and wonderful as the Temple Ship.

Nothing in his power could cure Mo, any more than it had healed the ship. The Legun, through its malice, had damaged both of them. And yet now, after he had set the ball rolling with his oraculum, the ship was healing itself. Was this the lesson he needed to help Mo? The spellbound company saw Alan’s body become one with the oraculum. He made contact again with the ship, being to being; his figure radiated light.

There was a long and strained silence. But Alan endured it, standing with his head bowed. Then, when it appeared there would be no response, they heard a faint tinkling sound, a sound that was strangely comforting. With much whispering and nervousness, people rushed about the decks or gathered in protective clusters around the wounded, as moment by moment the ship melded its powers with Alan’s. The oraculum flashed from Alan to the ship, and at once a new force took shape in the air above them, a force that took myriad youthful female forms, spiraling and reveling around the ruined superstructure. In the wake of their sweeping movements Alan saw rainbows of light, in their voices he heard the birdsong symphony of spring, in their fragrance he sensed the intoxication of a child dancing through a summer meadow dense with wildflowers.

“You’re beautiful!” he exclaimed, his vision, all his senses, compelled to wheel and turn, bedazzled.

The playful forms consummated to a single focus that became a being of impossible voluptuousness, shimmering in the air before searching out the figure in Alan’s arms. Her eyes were the green of a summer meadow, with dancing motes of gold. With a curve of great tenderness, her body stooped until her lips brushed Mo’s brow. For a moment, Mo’s body took on the same radiance as Alan’s. In that moment, he sensed Mo’s spirit revive, just as he had sensed the soul spirit recover in the ship.

Mo’s eyes opened and she looked up into his smiling face. He hugged her gently before passing her back into the welcoming arms of Milish.

Moments later, the whole ship shuddered, then lifted a yard out of the water, and almost immediately began to inch away from the shore. Slowly, haltingly—as if needing to accustom itself to its new form and purpose—it assumed a new course against the center stream.

On the Wings of Angels

For the first ten miles or so the ship gathered a slow and steady pace. All the while the cloud of ashes billowed from the dissolving timbers, following in their trail like a plume of smoke. Then it first became manifest on the port side, a spar as if the bud of a great wing extended outward, sparkling over its ivory surface like starlight.

Kehloke, her wounds bound, came to stand within the embrace of her husband. “Look!” she exclaimed. “It flies through the water as a bird through air—see even the prow has become a great beak!”

Little by little, as the forested slopes glided by, the form of the Temple Ship emerged more clearly, and it was not as a bird but the delta shape of a great manta ray, with vast wing-like extensions of its pectoral fins.
The prow assumed a dome and then a streamlined head, the breadth of its wings brushing the waterside foliage of the narrow channel with each upswept tip, and sweeping around to fashion the living quarters within twin-horned fins to either side of its head, some thirty feet above the waterline.

Past the divergence of the waters around the island and into the great swell of the river, there was a new urgency to the ship’s movements. A quickening of pace, as if it were impatient to leave this haunted valley in the cradle of its smoldering mountains.

All but the severely wounded stood on deck to watch the island of Ossierel with its distant Rath of Nantosueta pass them by on their starboard side and then recede into the mists of early evening, a lambent energy still flickering about the dreadful tor, as if in passionate farewell.

Meanwhile structures continued to evolve over the smooth hill of body behind the head, rearing high, then arching over until they became shelters for the convalescing wounded.

There were no doors or portholes any more, no masts or spars for sails, no bell tower or staircases leading below. Instead downy combs extruded, like living stalactites under these beautiful roofs, raining down a gentle mist of nectar. The Olhyiu women tasted it on their fingers, and then quickly began to gather it up in vessels and hats, so parched lips could be refreshed by it. The men began to construct primitive nets from what
cord and material they had retained. They cast these from the stern and drew them in, heavy with salmon. As the great volcanic mountain chains moved by on either side, the Olhyiu were so overcome with awe they watched in reverential silence as Tazan’s formidable valley closed its fist behind them, passing out of a second winding pass of cliffs that soared above them and echoed the farewell to their passage.

Past the cliffs, they felt the slowing of current as the river widened again and the landscape broke down into smaller pinnacles, a broadening valley of rocks in place of the giant redwoods.

By first light the next morning they were moving swiftly south, carried by the confident swell of the great river. Alan was comforted by the sight of Mo, her hair now trimmed in the fashion of the Aides, being helped to stand at the very apex of the prow, supported by Milish.

A creative ambience trilled the air, as if the ship communicated its joy of recovery with the mountains and the thinning trees, with the water that moved slower than they did in its swirling currents. The first of the seabirds wheeled overhead, delighting in the chase of their passage.

On the second day of their southbound journey, the late afternoon sky cleared to a beautiful eggshell blue from which a light fall of glittering snowflakes imbued the air with loveliness.

Mo was strong enough to join Alan on the foredeck, standing unaided, but still watched assiduously by the caring Milish. They talked about the deaths of the Kyra and Kemtuk, and the loss of Kate. They also grieved over Mark, and the sacrifice he had made.

Mo whispered, “I know he isn’t dead. I feel it.”

Alan put his arm around her shoulders. Her words had echoed the advice of Qwenqwo on the Rath, but these were words he didn’t pretend to understand.

She asked him, “Will we ever see him—or Kate—again?”

“I don’t know, Mo. I really hope so.”

Together, they gazed into the desert landscape, where time had worn a fantastic geometry of stone and sand in which delicate shades of lilac, gold and lavender curled around the natural sculptures: cones and pyramids of stone in gorgeous shades and shapes, as if they had been molded from the primal landscape by the playful hands of children. There were thousands of configurations—tens of thousands. They shimmered and sparkled in the sun, like mother of pearl.

“What do they call this place?” Alan asked Milish.

“In Carfon they call it ‘The Painted Desert.’”

The following morning, like the ghost of a bygone age, the broken dome of a great vault rose out of the haze of scrub and sand: a monolith at least two hundred feet high. By its left side a single wall survived of what must have been a great palace of stone, with level upon level of pillared porticos and romantic arches surviving,
through obstinacy, the millennia of dust-blown time. It seemed much older and finer than the walls of Isscan. Alan, who found himself alone on the prow, wondered at the great antiquity of the civilizations of Monisle and the city-state they were now approaching. Around its hinterland he saw clusters of beehive shapes, tiny in the distance—and yet they must have been two stories high and of the same hues as the rocks.

Milish took Mo back to rest, but joined Alan a little later, standing silently for many minutes, as if she were deep in contemplation.

Something is troubling her
, he thought to himself.

He kept his own silence for a while as the ship hummed to itself, against the complex rhythms of its bow wave against the rocks.

“Carfon,” she spoke at length, “will appear a strange city to you. Of all the city-states, it was the most ancient in its lineage and the most elect within its boundaries. The fall of Ossierel changed everything. It made Carfon the final repository of the truth and wisdom that was our world.”

Something is frightening her!

Alan watched how mists coiled from the bow spray over the water and, like sprites of mystery, still seemed to follow their passage.

It was many minutes before she spoke again. “In Carfon, the ruling families cannot help but resent the transformation. First the Council-in-Exile demanded territory within the oldest walls—and in arriving there became a
power within a power, subject to no laws of Chamber. Since then a generation of refugees has swelled its population to eight million frightened souls.”

“Don’t worry,” Alan replied. “I’ll look to you for advice.”

She hesitated again. “I may be less useful than you anticipate.”

The next day, the passing landscape gave way to the great alluvial plain that fed the city and its hinterlands. Piñon and juniper scrub took root in the desert, and then trees. Broad-leafed trees. To Alan they looked familiar from Earth, but sufficiently different to be vaguely alien. He recognized oaks, but these were blue-leafed rather than green. At first these appeared in isolated clusters but they soon became denser copses, and then woodlands—the remnants of great forests that had once cloaked the land. Soon they came upon the first evidence of cultivation, a warmer land with fields of corn, like mile-square rugs laid to dry in the warming sun.

It was on the fourth day after leaving the forbidden valley that people came out to welcome them in the waters below. They approached in small boats and canoes and tossed aloft garlands of flowers or fresh loaves of bread. Others threw lines, at the end of which were baskets of fruit and vegetables. The food lifted everybody’s spirits, since they had tired of the monotonous diet of fish. Still the great winged shape, the ivory of its coat taking on the rose of sunset or the gold of
morning, coursed swiftly along the center stream as the crowds became ever more numerous along the banks, as if word of their coming preceded them in every hamlet.

And soon a cry was heard from the banks to either side, the same phrase, like a hymn of thanks for their safe-coming: “The Angel Ship—the Angel Ship!”

It was another day before they first glimpsed the city walls, straddling the great estuary on the shores of the Eastern Ocean. Reflecting the low sun of evening, the walls soared two hundred feet above the rocky shore. Crowds lined the battlements. They were holding lighted candles in their hands and, as the ship drew level with them, people performed a ritual, fashioning a triangle from right to left shoulder and down to the inverted apex of heart.

Milish took her place on his left side, dressed in the formal regalia of silver plume and ornate gown and dress. Mo, with head bowed, hunched silently to his right.

The Temple Ship coursed by a deeply recessed and ancient gate in the high walls. It appeared a half-pentangular arch within an arch. Above it was a tablet of stone carved with inscriptions around the edges of its weathered stones. The gate and the walls that enclosed it gave the impression of great antiquity, older by far than the cyclopean walls of Isscan—older perhaps even than the Rath of the Dark Queen in the Vale of Tazan.

“Why are you so tense, Milish?”

She hesitated before replying, as if troubled by the fact that he sensed her every mood. “It is the Water Gate, which leads into the Old City. It troubles me that the High Council-in-Exile has kept it closed against us. Do not underestimate their capacity for mischief.”

He looked up with interest at the massive walls, and at the people with their lighted candles. “I know what’s hidden inside those walls, Milish.”

“Hush—hush! I beg you. Do not speak openly thus. It is blasphemy even to speak of it.” Her voice fell to a whisper, her presence suddenly frail and vulnerable beside him.

“I sense it, stronger than any force I have ever felt through the oraculum. It’s like it’s calling out to me—as if I were sensitive to its calling in every particle of my being.” He put his arm around Mo’s shoulder.

“For all your power, will you not heed my counsel? Do not talk about such things in such unguarded circumstances! Do not even think of it!”

But how could he not think of the Fáil when he knew that it held the answers to the challenge entrusted to him and his friends by the High Architect as she was dying. The continuing purpose of that quest still faced them. Soon, though it might be the most dangerous force in the universe, he would have to confront it. And Milish was right: even thinking about it, he felt its terrible awareness focus on him.

“First we rest,” he said, quietly, calmly, his words addressed more to Mo than to Milish. “Then we organize.”

Milish’s brown eyes assessed the waiting crowds. “For the moment let us give thanks that fate has preserved us. Let us not look grim and whisper.” Milish lifted her arm to wave, and her face was smiling at the fluttering ribbons and the dancing lights.

The Temple Ship then heeled around a buttressed corner of the ancient walls, where a tall tower hovered a hundred and fifty feet above them, and it approached a second gate, more openly constructed than the Water Gate.

“This is the Harbor Gate,” said Milish. “And I am pleased to find it open to us. It would appear that the Prince Ebrit, the Elector, has seen fit to welcome us. But be warned—this is a city that knows only intrigues.”

The Temple Ship halted a hundred yards out, in deeper water.

Soon a barque of state, of gilded and tapestried finery, emerged through the wide-flung gates, and many oars dipped and pulled in perfect harmony as its shallow draught skimmed over the waves. A great cheer sounded from the Shee and the Olhyiu on board, to be answered by the thousands of people holding aloft their candles of welcome.

On the dock, as if disdaining to join those aboard the approaching vessel, Alan sensed a powerful mind. He searched the distant mass of figures until he found its source: a very old woman who stood alone in the shadows of the gate, her toothless mouth collapsed and wrinkled, her back stooped and bent over a staff of power. For a moment he was shocked to sense her warning:

Beware the object of your quest
.
It may prove a poisoned chalice.

A second presence, a good deal more hostile, caused a thrill of alarm to pulse in the oraculum. Alan glimpsed a tall man with a bearlike head, one of his arms replaced by a false limb of black metal.
Could it possibly be Snakoil Kawkaw?
Alan shook his head, keeping a protective arm enfolded around Mo.

He would face any new challenge when it arose. Today Carfon welcomed them like the buds of spring after a famine winter.