World's End (16 page)

Bilblox had been having his headaches for roughly three years now, ever since he first rubbed the purple ash into his eyes, while crossing the North Pacific on Vice Admiral Purcheezie's boat. Sometimes the discomfort was worse than other times. At its best, the pain was very dull, almost like a low-grade fever. At its worst, the pain was excruciating, and it felt to Bilblox as if someone were sticking needles directly into his brain. The pain had only really gone away entirely on one occasion. This happened when Bilblox had used the purple ash a second time, while crossing the Straszydlo Forest. How good that had felt! His head had felt warm and tingly and his entire body had felt light, sprightly, and almost weightless.

In recent months, Bilblox's headaches came with greater frequency, and he often fantasized about using the ash again. Bilblox was ashamed to think such thoughts, but the headaches drove him to think and act strangely. Of course, he shared these thoughts with no one, and he swore that he would never allow himself to relapse and use the purple ash again. He had given his word to Alfonso about this. And Bilblox was a man of his word.

Eventually, the crowd in front of the Tree Palace thinned out and Alfonso reappeared and joined his friends. They all walked down to one of the nearby canals in search of a gondola. Bilblox, the enormous longshoreman, with his entirely white eyes and his pet wolf, was quite a sight to behold. A small crowd of Dormians stopped to stare. Some of the onlookers obviously recognized Bilblox and knew about his heroics during the Battle of Somnos, but others stared at his white eyes with great suspicion.

Alfonso and Bilblox made their way to a gondola that was moored on a canal in front of the Tree Palace. Hill, Resuza, and Nance were already waiting for them in the boat. The crowd of onlookers parted for Bilblox and Alfonso, except for a tall, burly man with sunken eyes and thin lips that stretched tight against his teeth.

"Look at his eyes—they're white!" hissed the man. "It's a Dragoonya!"

A stir rustled through the crowd.

Kõrgu growled, bearing her fangs.

"You're mistaken," said Alfonso in a loud voice. "This is Paks Bilblox, a hero of Dormia."

"He's got white eyes and he ain't to be trusted!" shouted the man.

Two of the man's friends, both of whom were fast asleep, stepped out of the crowd and stood behind him with their arms folded. They were unkempt, with dirty clothing, stubble on their faces, and the stink of liquor on their breath. They looked like trouble. Instinctively, Alfonso reached into his pocket for his blue sphere, but realized that he had left it back at Hill's house, under his bed, alongside the rosewood box. Hill had warned him that weapons were not allowed at a trial and so he had come unarmed.

"Who are you?" demanded Bilblox.

"The question is who
you
are," insisted the thin-lipped man. "Why do you have white eyes? Don't you know what patriotic Dormians do to traitors?"

"I suggest you let us pass," said Alfonso as steadily and coldly as he could. He looked around for Hill, but the crowd had closed in around them, and Hill had disappeared. Meanwhile, the thin-lipped man reached into a satchel tied around his waist and withdrew a slingshot and several jagged rocks. In a lightning-fast movement, he loaded the slingshot, aimed it at Bilblox, and fired. It glanced sharply off Bilblox's head, and he fell heavily to the ground.

"Drop that slingshot, you blasted fool!"

Alfonso looked up.

It was Colonel Treeknot. She was standing directly to Alfonso's right with a loaded crossbow. She wore a long green cloak, the dress of a Dormian military officer, and she had a sword strapped to her waist. Her light blue eyes looked focused but unworried.

"Of all the stupid and shameful things you could have done, this was surely the worst," said Treeknot calmly to the three men. "You just attacked the Great Sleeper and his companion, a decorated hero of Somnos. How does jail sound to you? I'll escort you there myself or, if you would prefer, I can put arrows through your throats right now."

The thin-lipped man gave a fearful look and began to speak. "I'm sorry, Colonel, I didn't..."

"Save it!" snapped Treeknot. She then turned to Alfonso and Bilblox and said, "I'm so terribly sorry. These are emotional times in Somnos, with Kiril being on trial, and it brings out the worst in some."

Bilblox nodded grimly and got to his feet, but said nothing.

***

Upon returning to his uncle's house, Alfonso felt exceedingly tired. He retreated to his guest room to rest. For a while, Alfonso simply lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. His mind was buzzing and, before long, he found himself rehashing his encounter with Kiril at the Tree Palace.

Unpleasant as it was to admit, Alfonso knew that there was truth in
some
of the things that Kiril had said. The age-old conflict between the Dragoonya and the Dormians was not as neat and orderly as it first seemed to be. Alfonso was a Dormian, and this is where his loyalties lay, but it was undeniable that both sides had committed wrongs. It was true that the Dragoonya were the aggressors and that their desire to burn the Founding Trees was both short-sighted and greedy, but did that make them evil? Perhaps it did. But, clearly, the Dormians were also capable of evil, and Kiril's life story was proof of that. It wasn't black and white. Alfonso increasingly felt that this contest between good and evil was not a struggle waged between two opposing armies or two nations, but between two opposing forces within each person.

Eventually, Alfonso did something that was very rare in Somnos: he closed his eyes and fell into a motionless, thoroughly nonactive sleep. When he awoke, greatly refreshed, he got out of bed and searched around his room for something clean to wear. As he glanced under his bed, he noticed something odd. His blue sphere was where he had left it, but his rosewood box was missing. Alfonso searched every corner of the room, and triple-checked to see if it had been put into a dresser or shoved into his backpack.

The box was gone.

Alfonso ran downstairs, found Hill, Resuza, and Bilblox, and explained the situation.

"Strange," said Hill. "I'm sure it must be around here somewhere."

"Don't worry," said Resuza. "We'll find it."

"That's right." Hill nodded. "Look here, I was just about to wake you. We're meeting Josephus on the steps of the Tree Palace at sundown. Some kind of secret meeting is being held."

Alfonso didn't like the sound of that. "But we have to find that box," he insisted.

"I'll keep looking while you're gone," said Resuza.

"Why are ya in such a panic?" asked Bilblox. "This is a big house. It just got misplaced."

"I hope so," said Alfonso grimly. "My sleeping-self went to Alexandria for that box. I have a hunch it's the key to everything."

H
ILL AND
A
LFONSO ARRIVED
at the front steps of the Tree Palace at sunset. The plaza in front of the palace was deserted except for an old man who was juggling six knives in his sleep.

"Who's that juggler?" asked Alfonso uneasily.

"Oh, just a street performer who has fallen asleep and forgotten to wake up," said Hill casually. "I've seen him out before."

For a long moment, both Hill and Alfonso watched with great curiosity as the old man tossed his knives high into the air and caught them gracefully, making no sound except for an occasional snore.

"Hello there, my friends," whispered a familiar voice. They spun around and saw Josephus standing in the shadows of a half-open door. "Come, come, come. The Grand Vizier is wait-ing for you."

They followed the historian into the Tree Palace and down several hallways until they came to a set of wooden doors with the image of a tree intricately carved into it. "This is the Grand Vizier's office," explained Josephus with a little laugh. "It makes my office look like a broom closet."

Josephus knocked twice on the door. It swung open and they entered an enormous room outfitted with three fireplaces, several sets of bamboo furniture, a library of leather-bound books, a magnificent crystal chandelier, and a running stream that wound its way through the room. The stream originated from a small waterfall that poured through a hole in the ceiling and then emptied into a series of small fountains, the last of which drained into a large ceremonial basin with gold cups surrounding it. Standing next to the basin were four attendants, all dressed in dark blue robes.

"Welcome," said the Grand Vizier, who was sitting on a nearby bamboo chair. She pointed to the basin. "The water here is quite fresh, directly from the glaciers that surround Somnos. Please, help yourselves."

Sitting to the right of the Grand Vizier were two elderly men. The first introduced himself as Dr. Nord Nostrite. He was "chief scientist and keeper of the Great Tree." Dr. Nostrite distrusted Alfonso and, even more so, Bilblox. It was Nostrite who had insisted that Bilblox face life imprisonment for putting ash from the Founding Tree into his eyes. Fortunately this sentence was never enforced. In any case, there was no love lost between Alfonso and Dr. Nostrite. The other man introduced himself as General Tadeusz, General Loxoc's replacement as commander of the army of Somnos.

After introductions, the Grand Vizier motioned for everyone to sit down.

"I'm sorry for the last-minute nature of this meeting," she said in a quiet voice, "but I wanted to maximize privacy." The Grand Vizier glanced at her attendants and they immediately left the room.

"As you undoubtedly know, several days ago, a Wanderer named Marcus Firment made his way back to our city's gates," the Grand Vizier began. "During his recent wanderings, Firment claimed to have seen a Dragoonya army of seventy battalions—over a hundred thousand soldiers—right here in the Ural Mountains, near the northern edges of the Sea of Clouds. If this is true, the Dragoonya have amassed a force three times as large as the one that attacked Somnos."

"Do you think that they will attack Somnos again?" interrupted Dr. Nostrite.

"No," said the Grand Vizier. "If they knew our location and wanted to attack us, they would have already done so. Either the Dragoonya can't find their way back here or, quite simply, they don't want to."

"They don't want to?" scoffed Nostrite. "That doesn't make sense."

"Perhaps they have other plans," replied the Grand Vizier. "Firment said that the Dragoonya appeared to be looking for something. And, as you may well know, the city of Jasber is rumored to exist somewhere in or near the Sea of Clouds."

The Grand Vizier shot a quick glance at Josephus.

"I've consulted with Josephus, and he and I agree that it appears as if the Dragoonya are making a massive effort to find Jasber," declared the Grand Vizier.

"Do you really think that Jasber still exists?" asked General Tadeusz incredulously. "That's nothing but a myth put forth by the unifiers, and we all know the honorable Josephus is a leader. Can he realistically provide neutral counsel?"

"Until recently I would have been very skeptical," said the Grand Vizier. "But the news that Alfonso brings from the Seed Depot in Alexandria leads me to believe that the city does exist and that both Jasber and Alfonso's father—also a Great Sleeper—may be in considerable danger. Assuming Leif succeeded in delivering his Dormian bloom, where is he now? That's the question, isn't it? Josephus suspects that Leif is stranded in the maze of razor hedges that surrounds Jasber. It is also possible that the Dragoonya followed Leif on his journey to Jasber and now are very close to finding the city. This would put both Leif and Jasber in great danger. And this would explain why Alfonso was summoned."

"Are you proposing that we send an expedition to find Jasber and Leif?" asked Hill.

The Grand Vizier nodded. "This is precisely the issue we are here to discuss," she replied. "If there is a way to find Leif—and warn Jasber—I should very much like to do it. What's more, there's also the possibility of learning more about the Dragoonya plans. Josephus believes that he knows a route down into the old Fault Roads that leads to the Jasber Gate. And, as for the Jasber Gate, there may be a way to pass through it—but it would involve a considerable risk."

"Considerable risk?" inquired General Tadeusz.

"Yes," said the Grand Vizier. "Guards, bring him in!" she commanded.

At that moment, a door at the far end of the office swung open and a tight formation of roughly a dozen Dormian knights marched in. They all appeared to be huddled around something or someone. Eventually, the knights fanned out and revealed a prisoner, who wore heavy, iron shackles around his wrists and ankles.

It was Kiril.

General Tadeusz rose to his feet and placed a hand on his sword. "Do you think this is wise, Madame?" asked the General. "Kiril is extremely dangerous even with shackles on."

"There is no need for alarm," said Kiril calmly. "I haven't come to cause trouble—not tonight anyhow."

"It's all right," said the Grand Vizier. "On this occasion, I happen to believe Kiril."

"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Dr. Nostrite.

"I have a deal to offer you," replied Kiril. As he said this, he stared directly at Alfonso, as if he planned to offer the deal to Alfonso and Alfonso alone. This deal, if it were to be accepted, would need the support of the Great Sleeper. Kiril knew this. Alfonso felt as if he were being manipulated, but what could he do? After all, his father's life quite possibly hung in the balance.

"What kind of deal?" asked General Tadeusz angrily. "I can't imagine that you are in much of a position to negotiate."

"How wrong you are," replied Kiril coolly. "A man like myself, who has lived for more than six hundred years, has learned a thing or two along the way. What I have is knowledge—knowledge that you desire. Knowledge that may help you get to Jasber. I know that Alfonso visited the ancient Seed Depot in Alexandria and retrieved one of the rare rosewood boxes it provides to Great Sleepers. It appears as if Jasber, my beloved birthplace, still exists. How touching."