Alium, page 36
Ramcrone’s youth was such that Nubes did not know the boy, but Vespia he had met long ago, when she was merely a gifted archer desirous of the warfront. In those days it was said that she might pin a man’s cuff to a wall at two hundred yards; now there was talk that she could deflect opposing arrows from the sky with shots of her own. But it was less her skill with a bow than her intellect in devising technologies and her mind for science and natural prescience of the Fabric that had interested Nubes. He had offered up to her the red mantle, had beseeched her to make good on her mortal blessings and study beside him in the Red Tower Occulimontis.
But she detested sewers of the Fabric, and likened him to Fozlest. Still he recommended her to Chalem for leadership, and watched at first with pride as she swiftly ascended the ranks, then grief and soon after only a growing horror as the unassailable hate with which she approached all contexts involving the Xol grew and blistered. Last he beheld her work, the year before he left to seek Zenidow, she had displayed to the King a lightweight gauntlet equipped with grappling hook and serrated claws made from the elz of Xol armour taken off the fallen. Only instruments of such bark could bite into the flesh of their black trees and allow their climbing. Proudly she spoke of the special honour of slaying the demons in their very homes. Oh how Chalem had smiled. How horrible, Nubes thought then, that she who calls them demons conceives of their even having homes!
“My King,” she said, bowing low. One dreadful orbit beamed out from the wall of straight hair which hung in triangular locks as she stooped, communicating to Nubes that her opinion of wizards had only worsened. And really, how might one trust a sewer—he thought—when one’s sworn enemy fights and works chiefly with a power one refuses to understand.
*
Though at the coming of each his Captains Chalem made some pass of the eyes, some flash of hazel severity from his position by the window, he looked for the most part abjectly out to the sea through the stained-glass image of that very expanse, while he waited for at last Vespia to arrive. Then he turned, rapped his sceptre, and bade all follow.
Ascending the dais, he thumbed a slim, blue gem set discreetly in the flat silver arm of the throne, which sank with a low click into the metal. A muted grinding issued from below, and the grand chair itself suffered a sonorous tremor, shifted in its place, began to rise and turn, slowly but smoothly ratcheting some eight feet from the stage. Within the huge stone column risen from below was hewn a curved archway unto sooty darkness, and through it went the King without a word.
He took a torch from a sconce beside the entry and, after lighting it with a match from his pockets, applied its flame to another, handing this to Vespia behind him. Neither she nor any who followed spoke of the hidden pillar or its passage, each drawing a slender shaft of wood from the sconces and kindling them in turn. Behind the Captain of Rangers came Ramcrone, after him Donlan, and lastly Nubes, trailing his old fingers against the cool stone.
An orangish caravan of flares crackled and beat against the curving dark walls as they carefully descended a steep spiral stair. In seven circuits the tight coil opened into a larger chamber, low-ceilinged, inhabited only by a suit of ancient armour standing in one dusty corner. Many dark, doorless hallways branched off from this place. Chalem took the furthest from the steps. Again their boots and sandals fell on spiral stairs. Though more spacious than the first, this case screwed on thrice as long, betraying no sign of an end until suddenly meeting a thick silver door which required no key.
Now they walked into a vast, uncomfortable library, its stately shelves completely packed. The entire structure was immaculately organized, but even as the King tapped confidently along and turned with practised precision through the redolent grid of musty wood and aging paper, it seemed that they were completely lost. At the end of one dusty aisle they stopped before a blank stone wall with a small hole in its face. Chalem fitted the intricate, fine tip of his sceptre snugly into the opening, and turned swiftly his thick wrist. There was a deep shifting of discreet mechanisms, and an arching outline appeared, at first so subtly as to be a trail of damp dust, now deepening into a thick trench of shadow. In this slender, ellipsoid shape, a smooth chunk of wall swung inward with the heavy groan of stone on stone.
They filed into a stuffy tunnel beyond, seeming like the corridor of a long forgotten dungeon, and walked along a cobbled path, the flames of the torches lapping over smooth, flat stones. Here was a dead end, as though a cave-in of great boulders had wedged together like an immense altar, but Chalem placed his hand against one of these embedded rocks, and it sank slightly into a surprisingly cohesive structure. A chthonic snore ran all through the chamber. The wall then began to shift sidelong, and as it did dust and dirt fell in sheets all about, and grains of rocks scattered all over the floor. A stale blast of air swept out from the dark crypt beyond.
Chapter XX
Harbinger
Inside it was pitch black but for their torches. Chalem set his own in one of the empty sconces which studded the walls, and gestured for the others to do the same. Then he sat at the simple wooden table in the centre of the room. Rough-hewn chairs were aimlessly set about the place, many tipped over, decked in cobwebs. Some were righted, and all joined at the table but Ramcrone, who stood in the flickering shadows. With the torches burning in the stale air, the room swelled with their dancing, uneven warmth, and a smooth metal panel was revealed, set deep into the stone wall opposite their entrance.
“How is the war going, do you think, Captains?” Chalem finally said.
“We have all but lost,” intoned Ramcrone.
Nubes chuckled distantly. “I like this one.”
Vespia spoke in a cold, furtive haste. “The demons have pushed our rear bases nearly back to the coast on which we first landed, and they bring greater power to the battle each day. There is little we can do to reach them with our arrows or siege weapons when even one sorcerer is on the battlefield. They cast impermeable shields about themselves, and our armour does nothing to protect us from their spells. It is true that the Demon Witch was slain on the plain of wrath, but she was soon replaced by two warlocks each of might equivalent to her own.”
“Leostoph’s army has fled that front sorely reduced,” said Donlan, who had listened solemnly, nodding. “Even the trees sense our defeat. The black metal creeps into regions formerly it had left alone.”
Chalem stared vacantly as each spoke, torchlight rilling through his hair, quickening in bright beads down the length of his sceptre to the floor. “Well then. Nubes. Please inform the Captains as to your personal opinion.”
The wizard had fitted a long, wooden pipe into his mouth, its vast bowl composed of three turtle heads stacked in order of ascending consciousness. Chewing absentmindedly on the mouthpiece, he looked from one flame-shadowed face to another, inky pits flexing beneath his furrowed, bushy eyebrows, obscuring all but the finest twinkles of his thought.
“I’ve not been to the theatre,” he said finally, “so I cannot speak for the dead. But I certainly never advised that you go about attacking the purple folk.” A slender flame leapt from the burl of his staff, which he tipped over the loamy greenery packed into the cranium of the topmost and piercingly wise-eyed reptile. Fingers of smoke reached out from the coils of his beard, slinking downward and meandering in little rivers over the table top.
“What do you think, though, about our ability to defeat them, as we are?” Donlan asked the wizard.
“There is no chance at all.”
“What!” Ramcrone slammed his huge hands suddenly down upon the table. The collecting pool of blue smoke broke its milky congress and rushed over the edges. “Where was this intelligence twenty years ago!”
“Gladly given,” Nubes said remorselessly. “Your King chose to forgo it.”
Vespia shifted coldly in her seat. Donlan sighed, lowering his gaze. Ramcrone faced Chalem as a soldier composed, yet unable to fathom his orders.
“Goodness,” said Nubes, examining the blazing blue orbs of the knight’s eyes, “I shouldn’t have thought you would trust a wizard though. It is quite natural for Chalem to disregard my ranting. Why, it’s practically in his blood.”
“You are Nubes,” said Ramcrone plainly, scowling in the wash of yellow-orange. “There is no wiser being on Altum, and no older or more powerful ally of Lucetal. My father told me you could melt the skin from Fozlest’s bones.”
“What? How can you stomach even the thought of such a victory, turning to the accursed arts?” spat Vespia.
“Victory is victory,” Ramcrone grunted, closing his eyes. “There is no poetry in war.”
Nubes raised an eyebrow. “Anyhow, it’s preposterous to think that I could stand against the Empress. Were I even a man of violence, Fozlest is far more powerful than I.”
Ramcrone looked to the wizard. “Were you a man of violence, the people of this city would have a new King.”
“Hm,” said Nubes, drawing from his pipe. Smoothly he exhaled a new field of roiling vapour which gathered blossoming over the wood. “Those are foolish words. Without Chalem, there is no Lucetal, we all know this.” He glanced at Vespia as he spoke. “I have my own poetries to adhere to. However accursed are my arts in the eyes of the people, I shall stand with the Sons of Chalor until I am driven from the island once and for all.”
“We miss the point, bickering amongst ourselves.” Ramcrone cast the rays of his eyes over the other Captains. “If m’Lord does not listen to his most honoured and eldest advisor, I begin to suspect that many good knights have perished for matters of pride alone.”
“Silence, Ramcrone,” hissed Vespia.
Chalem called her off with the wave of a hand. “You are correct, brave Ramcrone; my pride was our compass, but also my love for Altum. I desired overmuch to capture the forests of Efvla before they blackened, yet now they are blacker than ever. Alack! This war cannot be undone, and the demons have now been aggravated to expand their Empire. There is only one way to end our conflict with the Xol.” He looked coldly at Nubes.
The wizard’s countenance had lost all pretense of transparency, for he heard in Chalem’s words that uncanny tenor of ego which could never truly abide by a sewer’s learning. The leering faces of the Kings of Lucetal swam in gaudy painted oils, sagging tapestries, and crystalline window-scenes before his old eyes. Yet great as his anger became, beneath it was a deep sadness for Novarekind and its hubris. And what terrible hubris as well, he thought, was it for Chalem to insist he attend this council which seemed so poised to defy the wizard’s wishes. Still, he would wait and see it through. There is still time, Son of Chalor, he thought, to see the Xol for the powerful allies that they are.
“Harbinger!” Chalem called with sudden volume.
As from the fringes of the flickering flames, a white light instantly coalesced. Even as it flashed upon the surface of the blinking eye it receded into a blue and ghostly apparition of eerily pure radiance hovering in the interstice of two torch-spirits. It was the transparent figure of a man. He wore a single continuous suit of textureless material which covered even his fingers and toes. Were it not for the stark angular neckline he would seem naked and sexless. Completely hairless, so smooth and subtle was his complexion as the sleek fabric of his raiment, that only an innate sense in the observers told he was Novare.
The large, pupilless eyes were vacant blue deeps each of them. Alert and attentive nonetheless, he seemed to look at each Captain closely. Vespia glared pitilessly at Nubes, for she figured this magical work to be his, but the wizard seemed lost as Donlan beside him who gawked stupidly. Ramcrone frowned and folded his great arms, their gauntlets awash in the queer blue light.
“I am here,” said the apparition tonelessly.
“Explain for my guests what you are,” Chalem drawled, rooting his sceptre into the ground and glaring at the wizard who could not contain his fascination.
The figure turned to face the table, though his legs seemed not to move. “I am Harbinger, a luxint-powered artificial intelligence and central computer of Fort Soarlin. I am able to project from my core through any luxint receiver, such as the device implanted in the King’s ring.”
“This is no cursed magic.” Chalem held up his hand. Fine as a grain of sand embedded in the thin bone circlet round his index finger glowed the same strange blue light which seemed entirely to compose the ghost addressing them. “It is like he said: a manifestation of luxint energy, and nothing more. Luxint is a naturally derived source of power, having nothing to do with the wholly unnatural conjurations of Nubes and his followers, or the Xol in their black trees. The gods smile on luxint, for it is the right of mortal ingenuity. It is like the fire that burns in our kilns and our forges, the wind and water which turn our mills, the trained horse that bears us into war. It is the product of science and engineering only. Though not by any scientist you can know.”
“It seems like magic to me,” said Donlan.
“That is the cost of sudden advancement. How would a primitive man react were you to strike up a blaze and cook for him his raw prey? Would you seem to him a devil if the wild horse was tamed under your yoke? What might he think of your fine metals and jewels; did they come from heaven?” Chalem gazed at Harbinger as he spoke, his words loudening and deepening with pride. “The appearance of Harbinger—so inexplicable to you now—has its roots in the fundamental physical laws of nature, just as the heat of fire and the turning of the mill and the domestication of plants and animals, all those technologies that have evolved our own civilization. But luxint, you see, is a thing so maddeningly ancient as to be superior to our own, from a time when the greatest efforts of our wisest engineers would seem like the banging together of rocks by blithering children.”
“If that is true, is Nubes then merely a scientist?” Donlan said. “He is well known for inexplicable appearances. And the Xol too; their powers are certainly inexplicable. What is the difference between magic and science to this degree?”
“Nubes and the Xol go against God,” Chalem said coldly.
Even Vespia was surprised, if only slightly, by his tone. But she smiled and leered at Nubes as though the shock was rather an inspiration. “They give up their souls in exchange for forbidden vision.”
“Yes,” nodded Chalem knowingly. “They steal and covet great powers and examine the flow of time, but the end of that abominable path is only an abyssal doom. Luxint is another thing entirely. It is the product of hard, mortal work, the result of God-fearing minds toiling only with the tools that were their blessing.”
Nubes spoke softly, and there was a quiver of pain in even his solemn voice. “You are mistaken, Chalem.”
Ramcrone and Donlan knew well this account of magic. Here was a lesson they delivered to their own commanders when the darkness of the war was upon their fevered minds, and in turn their commanders spoke down the ranks of the evil that was the cardinal sin of Xol power. But it was another thing entirely to see Nubes, old and frail, sit and listen and so faintly—as if he saw the Red Tower crumbling even now—deny such accusations against his love and life and work.
All in the room knew that the rhetoric of their clash with the Xol had too deeply stirred the blood of Lucetalians. Popular as Nubes was among the lower classes, when this war was over, the days of wizardry in Lucetal too would have their end. Yet even Donlan who loved the old man could not in his mind separate Xol magic from Nubes’ own, and could not see how a society so turned upon the purple folk could abide that dissolution of boundaries in its very court.
“You strike a chord in us all,” Donlan said, “but to my eyes the appearance of Harbinger is just as ungodly as Xol sorcery. Even if you can prove to us now that there is some logical, god-given path which leads to such an illusion as this blue spirit before us, how could the people of Lucetal not see it as magic?”
“The time for that will come,” said Chalem gravely. “For now, to you, my Captains, I will provide this proof. Today, I will at last tell the story of luxint energy, which has been hidden here below our feet for too long.” The King gazed into the limpid depths of Harbinger’s empty eyes. “Harbinger was introduced to me when I gained the crown, in just such a way as I conjured him before you now. Ever since, I have spoken with him and learned the true history of this place. The generations of the Sons of Chalor have passed a great secret down their bloodline, which now I, Chalem, son of Chaldred, descendent of Chalor, will reveal to you, my most trusted friends. It is the secret of Lucetal.”
“My Lord,” said Vespia, falling from her chair to one knee in supplication. “We are infinitely grateful.”
“Have you no dignity?” scoffed Ramcrone. “We learn the truth is kept from us, and you bow?”
The Captain of Rangers did not spare him a glance.
“At ease, Vespia,” Chalem breathed with honour in his tone. “I am touched at your fealty, but again Ramcrone is correct. I and my fathers have lied to our people for all time.”
“It can only have been for the good of Lucetal,” said Vespia grimly. “I am at your service.”
“And I too,” said Donlan, working the grief from his brow. “You have been a good King to us, trusting in the valuable wisdom of Nubes and his scholars, and open-minded as to the unfolding of the war. Many of our greatest accomplishments have come from the free spirits of my commanders to do as they see fit. And the city blooms for its religious liberty and the academies which you have opened to all. Your father would never have allowed such fluid networks of command or programs so uplifting of the lowborn. And he certainly hadn’t the heart to confront the Xol threat at last. Tell us this secret, and how we might aid you in deploying it.”
