Alium, page 52
“The Novare,” said Fozlest now, her cold, sweet voice thrumming through the crowd, “bring war the likes of which we cannot know. I have seen through the eyes of Nubes Tree-Friend the new weapons of Lucetal that long have slept beneath the crust of the world. They are made of unnatural metal and burn synthetically, cruel mockeries of the light of Xeléd! Many months they have had to train their warriors, to outfit them with such equipment, to take up flight in ships that travel like clouds through the sky, which even now soar over the wide sea from the East. So it is: the time has come for the final protection of our trees!”
The crowd stirred like a rushing wind. Fozlest lowered her hands, and seated herself in the black throne, long purple fingers curling over the polished armrests, looking slowly over all of the faces turned to her. Now she spoke more evenly.
“All summoners, conjure to exhaustion. All enchanters; go, live in the armouries. All tamers, ready every beast. All warriors converge upon the guard trees. All captains move the Five Forests to their stoutest defences. And all Zefled, you my finest mages, and all under your tutelage who you deem ready for this challenge; conduct a symphony of Fabric the likes of which none have seen in one thousand seasons, and through your work Xoldra shall be shielded by light.”
There was a powerful silence. Orders flowed through psychic chains of command, and all throughout the imperial forest a network of preparation began for the coming destroyers. When the information had passed from the minds of the Zefled unto their students and factions in other great elz trees, all sank deeper to the floor, entering upon a selfsame trance. All about them grew at once a great pulsing brilliance, for they were masters of their craft, and high above the tree, all about the city, the first shivering rays of energy began to actuate.
“Two days shall flesh this defence,” Fozlest addressed the still pacing Nubes.
“The ships of Lucetal arrive sooner,” muttered the wizard grimly, tapping away. “And anyhow, even the mightiest weave cannot ward off their guns forever. Xoldra will fall.”
Fozlest sighed stiffly. “That may be, but my people need hope. This shield and others like it in all our cities will reach high above our trees. So long as even one throws its light up from the dark, there will be hope, and in the places where doom falls first, eyes will turn, like all the trees, to Xoldra. If this barrier here still shines for all Xol to see, no matter their suffering, at least the battle will be worth fighting.” The Empress’ knuckles turned violet against the black armrests of her seat. “But personally I’ve a different hope. Lucetal shall not reach the coast at all.”
The glimmer in Nubes’ eye vanished, and he appeared gravely beside the throne. “You cannot still be on about that plan. It is not yet the end of days, Fozlest. Do you wish to hasten it? Far greater powers than the Lucetalians and their inherited trifles are bound for this world. Even these new toys will be nothing when Duxmortul and his Wrudak blot out the stars.” He rapped his staff firmly against the elz floor. “A covenant is our only option!”
“Chalem has already done away with your twisted fantasy,” said the Empress calmly. “You say it yourself: he comes to annihilate us. If in the end our power will not suffice, the Frandun is all that I know on this planet with might enough.”
Nubes closed his eyes and sighed. The curls of his beard seemed to wilt. “It will be the end of us all, Fozlest. Lucetal and Xoldra alike will be ripped from the Fabric. Altum itself will become a dead ball before even the Shadow arrives to smother it.”
“But for the Alium,” Fozlest spat, little hope in her rough voice. “Surely the bulk of Lucetal’s forces have their sights on Xoldra itself, which must send them directly over the demon’s prison. However chaotic is its intent to destroy, no living thing can fall so easily in its path than Chalem, and if his new weapons are so awesome, then surely their battle will be a great one. In that time, my Zefloz may plumb Zenidow yet.”
Nubes laughed dryly. “And do what? The Alium sleeps. Only the sons and daughters of Caelare can stir it.”
“Oh? Is it they whom you’ve sent?” The Empress turned sharply. “Do not think my fading sight a sign of faded thought. You have only just returned from the mountains yourself.”
“You are cunning as ever, Fozlest. Freely I tell you: by my guidance, two are set upon the place, but they are not enough to fulfill the prophecy I was given. It is for the fate of Altum that more children of the Goddess should converge upon Zenidow, but who can say what seasons might pass before their coming? If ever the Alium is to become our ally, it may be in time for the arrival of the Shadow, but it surely cannot awaken so soon as this silly war! If you do not compromise with Chalem, you will be equally responsible for hobbling the last defenders of the world. Duxmortul will find only a whorl of ash and dust in place of Altum, and floating amid the traces of our annihilation will await the dozing Alium unscathed, naked and free to grasp and bring back to Its master. You would hand the greatest gift in the Cosmos over to the ensign of Scelgeorat the Usurper willingly. Know this, when you spite Lucetal.”
Fozlest set her pitiless white eyes to the tired old wizard, and in them was a wrath which would not be assuaged. “Surrender will not protect our forests. Novare wish only for open spaces to dig up their metals and build their castles, and none so much as the loathsome Sons of Chalor. If our demise and the destruction of all we love is indelible, then let a true god be the arbiter of doom rather than this self-appointed King of nothing.” She looked out upon the Zefled in deep prayer. “We will meet Lucetal with the fullness of our strength.”
Nubes folded his old hands over the burl of his staff and sighed. For a little while he stood solemnly, eyes closed, tugging at his beard, as all throughout Xoldra and in unfolding succession among every community of Xol to the very edges of the Black North, hundreds of thousands of sorcerers and sorceresses received the news which emanated from the imperial forest. In the next few hours, all around their vast conglomerates of elz would begin to appear great shimmering spheres of protective energy in like image to the mightiest which even now took shape high above Xoldra, and in every mind and heart that day which had not battled upon or dealt directly with the woes of the front, would be kindled the first true spark of war which always they had feared would reach them even so deep in the forest. Their efforts all these years had not been enough. Lucetal had grown strong; now it was coming.
And here he was again, thought the wizard, standing beside a different throne, begging another ruler for peace, understanding. It simply would not be. Perhaps it was all his fault, even, expecting Chalem to take up the technology of his ancestors without turning them upon his favourite enemy, then coming here and stirring up such commotion that his old friend had gone so mad as to wake up the worst and most ancient evil in the history of Altum. Truly, Fozlest was right; but for the Alium, indeed. The only hope now was with Sylna and Ogwold.
“Well then,” he coughed at last, clearing his throat and rolling back his wiry shoulders as if to take up his old mantle of merriment. “If we are all to die horribly, I will take my fall at Chalem’s side, for though he is a despicable ass, to the last I am a servant of Lucetal.”
Methodically he tapped his staff, grumbling as if hesitant to go on. “You say that Novare are only for metal, yet here you sit, Empress, in a tree hardened and gleaming as the purest lucidium, which can no longer grow without your sewing, and will never again feel the light of the sun or moisture in its roots. Ah, but, you know this. Indeed, no one in this world despises the curse of the elz as much as you, Empress. Perhaps you might have released the Frandun long ago if I hadn’t come along. Yes, I see what is the real object of your cunning. To keep Chalem from you trees is one thing, but here arises your final opportunity to free this forest from the Xol. You wish to eradicate us all.” Nubes sighed, not looking at Fozlest, for he did not need to know her expression. “I wish the best for your people, old friend, and hope to one day speak with you again in a time of peace. The world is greater than Efvla and its trees. ”
With one last rap of his staff, the wizard tipped his hat, bowed low, and strode away with sudden nimbleness and disappeared beyond the high-arched doorway at the end of the room. The eyes of the Empress upon her mages did not waver.
*
Long after the wizard had gone, Fozlest sat in tumultuous thought. Inevitably, the intense concentration of the Zefled began to irritate her, as often large groups, however silent, seemed to do. Sighing, she stood, crossed her brawny arms, frowned sternly over their supplicant numbers; lifting her grand tails to avoid dragging their armour loudly over the hard black floor, she walked to the back of the great hall.
There she climbed the sable stem thrusting, winding, budding high above her throne into a luminous, hollow bulb nestled in the apical moment of the funnelled ceiling like a small moon, radiant and blue as Xeléd. The opacity of this great dewdrop could be changed in a thousand ways, from revealing through its membrane all which proceeded in the court below, to swallowing the Empress in perfect solitude. So as she rose into the stillness of her private quarters, the surface under her feet rippled from crystal transparency to a milky blue, enfolding her in quietude.
Her subjects knew that the chamber was nothing so divine as a true shard of Xeléd, as once it had been rumoured, but certainly it reminded them of their Empress’ divine right, chosen as was her family’s blood by Caelare to lead the purple folk. The bulb itself was really an immense glowlet, cousin to those floating orbs which were a universal source of light in dark places for all Xol, and represented the most juvenile sort of sewing a sorceress may learn. Still there was an art of vast hierarchy to composing such lights, and Fozlest sat quite near the top of it. She had cast this great specimen in as an unbloomed flower, blue as the Divine Moon itself shining down upon the seat of her power.
Complex though its creation had been, this was hardly a complicated room. Smooth and simple were the curving walls, and it was furnished only with one mat for sleeping and thinking. Here she sat now, as she often did, to meditate upon her next action, the blue light filtering through her eyelids as the shield of the Zefled materialized in waves around the city. She could feel it growing even in her seclusion. High, vivacious walls of pure light welling up out of the forest floor would soon grow to yawn over the trees, reach ultimately above even this highest spot in all Xoldra where she sat, to meet and meld as one cohesive integument, just as the bulb in which she now sat.
It was a moving, but a desperate image. She stirred with the power of the Xol so clearly envisioned, but she trusted Nubes when he said that no act of sewing could protect them. Gravely he had shown her the doomful vision of Duxmortul’s fleet, but she knew now more than ever, in the still peace of her room, that she would never side with Chalem. Even if a union of Xol and Novare was the only path out from the Shadow, she knew that in the settling dust the hated King would set his eyes once more upon the hidden metals beneath the forest floor, and the noble trees which to him were as expendable as the dirt and rock which interred his prize. That, indeed, was his goal, she thought—Lucetal before Altum. Why else should he violate one thousand years of peace? Why else should he invade our land even as a great evil threatens us all?
At the clang of her armoured tails, the great bulb out-bloomed. Leaping up she lighted upon one of the broad blue petals unfolded, looking one last time down at the praying Zefled. Then she threw herself smoothly through one of the high windows which cast the mauves and oranges of twilight over the court. Cold air struck her face as she hung upside down in weightless oblivion; slowly began the fall, then with incredible power increased her speed, purple-black locks streaming out behind the great nodule of her hair like the dark flames of a falling meteor. It seemed entire minutes expired before the last enormous black boughs flew by and the ground rushed up to meet her. Flipping upright, she thrust her hands and tails straight down, slowed at once by the dense psychic cushions they projected, and stepped to the forest floor.
One winding black body split from the tangle of immense black roots like a slender new-fallen branch still tumbling; but flowing onward lithely it showed a dexterous calm far removed from the stoic silence of elz. It was an enormous, armoured myriapod which approached Fozlest and bowed its diamond head, the black plates quickening in the waning sun. The uncountable ranks of its blade-like legs folded into the ground as she leapt atop its hull, lowering herself down into the spacious crevice between helmet and hauberk as though she operated a ship all her own. With one powerful undulation they were a dark javelin through the black trees.
Powerfully they raced the moonless night, cold stars gathering with the dark in swaths, streaming high above in the net of branches. Whether or not the breath of dawn touched the sky, they rode in a dark day, the bright climes of Xoldra already behind them. Now they navigated the dense-canopied networks of shadow-haunted Lofled, a lightless labyrinth of elz which like some guardian trial surges east to the great sea. Along the tenantless black, metallic tunnels the tireless legs of the great myriapod tore, and only in the hours of late and lambent noon did the creature appear with its hidden passenger out from under that thick ceiling of hard branch and suffocating leaf into the gold-touched coastal swaths of Fexdrel the Young, a narrow, sickle-shaped wood only some hundred years in the blackening, which enfolds the elder abysses of Lofled.
The first traces of evening emboldened the rich yellow light, and showed again in the transforming variability of their colour the true speed with which the Empress rode. Now the dark trees began slowly to change, exhaling their pitiless shade of black, shedding their metallized sheen, seeming subtly each so different from one another in texture and hue, almost moving with the wind, gesturing gradually towards the light, tightening the musculature of their tender roots, showing those rare forms which marked the change in them from woody and green to inflexible obsidian. How strange it was that as they outran the slow progress of the curse, these trees only just poisoned seemed free and mortal in greater and more expansive numbers, when in actuality they would one day stand rigid and black as all those which they had left behind.
Confronted with the seeping petrification of these yet living trees, Fozlest remembered a childhood dream. Surely the extinction of the Xol would save the trees; without us, life might return to the vibrant flowing diversity described so passionately, but distantly in scripture. Even as she took the throne this thought had plagued her. Not even loyal and most trusted Xelv could show the young Empress the necessity of their ancestors’ decisions. So as she devoted her every resource to elucidating an end to the curse, a secret hatred for her kind was born, and festered in all that she did. Seeking a cure as much as liberation from that cruel and awful nature in her kin, at first she stalked the wide world alone, but distrust was grown in the people so abandoned, and the stability of the Empire called her home. So off she sent instead her most powerful sorcerers and sorceresses, and the greatest minds of Xoldra into unknown reaches, glowering after them as they were the travelling touch of cold elz incarnate. And while they were gone, whenever the needs of the people waned, long, furious, bitter hours of calculated enthusiasm were spent in the great libraries of old.
But no outland discovery or proposed elixir or incantation or holy rite or scientific insight or amount of meditation shed but the slightest more clarifying light upon the issue than the most vague and battered apocrypha of the ancient texts. At long last it seemed that the curse was eternal. There would be no resurrection of the old forests; there would be no changing the blood of the Xol. Such was the first time that Fozlest had thought seriously of the Frandun. A terrible monster, a demon-god it was, that all Xol knew well in scripture as much as in myth and rumour. The Frandun was a hideous abomination, the unborn son of Caelare and Xeléd ripped from the womb of the sun and cast down to suffer upon primordial Altum.
Yet it was as much a god as its parents the Day Star and the Divine Moon, and it had its place in the Cosmos as one who controls fate. Even then she figured that there must be some way to release the creature, a new Power of Altum to decide the destiny of its inhabitants. That was the real dream, the second dream which completed the first, coming to her out of most hopeless darkness on a fitful night when the last of her great efforts had failed. She saw the sea sundered, the monster liberated from its subsea shackles, descending upon sick Efvla to smite the Xol and wipe away the disease of their existence forever, leaving the trees to flourish in peace at last.
But at last, it was Nubes that finally helped her see things differently. The red wizard appeared with impossible precision on the very morning of that horrible nightmare. She had stood in her high hall looking down upon the blackened lay of Xoldra when the sentinels of lower Xoloz sent to her the impression of a little Novare man in billowing red robes. In those days having little reason to distrust a single man come so deep into her territory, and feeling as well like there was nothing left to do but give up, the Empress had welcomed the odd creature into her court. There he stood boldly before the throne to warn the Xol about his people, a civilization called Lucetal, and their obsession with tearing up the land and coveting its deepest contents. He showed to her a terrible vision of smoking mines, of the treeless, barren, pocked wastes of Petrampis, the dead continent of his homeland across the sea.
She could still see him with his brownish hair and all the symptoms of impending old age, could still hear him intoning gravely that were the Sons of Chalor to visit Efvla they would surely raze the land for its metal. He had honoured the Xol that day, treasuring their most banal literatures, going away with their silliest artifacts, repeating their unique names for the twenty moons with savouring lips, and asking endless questions about the Fabric. But warmest of all in her heart was that final moment when he had dubbed them before Caelare the guardians of the world’s greatest forest. More clearly now than ever she remembered reciting in reply, with feeling for the first time—as off the wizard went on his next adventure, promising to return—those words which were her parents’, and their parents’, all down the blood of her history to the very source of the curse, whatever it was. Presently, the last elz trees fell away around her, and she repeated these words aloud.
