Alium, page 53
“When life fails, elz shall persist.”
The rapid thudding of the myriapod’s feet stormed on. Now all around were the living and perceiving trees and plants of diverse shapes and glorious species which had known Efvla long before the coming of the Xol. Rushing by went their glossy green leaves and blazing flowers, and in the cool shade of their breathing, supple barks were the signs of natural growth. Seeing things as they should be, changeful and shaped by time and chaos, the hideous metal spikes of elz rearing behind it all in an endless uniform mass seemed a terrible sickness over the land.
But Fozlest almost laughed. So it was that Nubes once again after all these years had changed her mind; though, not to follow his counsel. The Empress shook her head. The dream of the Frandun was more than childhood fantasy. If the curse could no longer protect the forest, then the Xol were simply a great parasite, sucking up its beauty at the cost of its mortality. And she would not allow a villain like Chalem to play god to her people.
“When elz fails,” she added, “life shall persist.”
*
Now a wide rocky space of soft green turf and moss-heavy boulders opened upon the dull endless crash of the purple sea. Here the trees were few, thin and slender, bow-backed, their long leaves like glassy locks. The salt air struck Fozlest’s nostrils, seared her glazed white eyes. She slipped from the myriapod’s shell as it was a suit of armour, and the creature bled away winding like some fluid machine into the forest shade, though it was quite easy to distinguish among so many vibrant colours.
The Empress walked slowly now, for her goal was near, letting the forgotten touch of the coast rekindle her memory. Now the land rose gradually into a great promontory, so that even the elz trees far behind seemed to look up out of their collective black at the lone Xol who ascended to greater heights without them. Among the sparse, bendy trees there grew a hardy yellow grass, which became all the more tall and sinuous with sea-wind as Fozlest summited the great shelf and found herself now upon a vast plain, strewn with the sundered remains of huge stone walls, the carcasses of collapsed roofs. Beyond that golden expanse of waving grasses and silent, dark ruins, the purple sea at last appeared; at first, it was the finest line of colour achieving infinity with the unattainable horizon, yet with one, now but two footfalls it had grown enormous as a second sky. But Fozlest could not enjoy such a view for long.
A vast, broken proscenium lay at her feet like some huge fallen giant of stone. Crushed and warped, jutting from its split limbs like gleaming bones were the distorted likeness of thick golden gates, etched with the glyphs of a lost society. Such was the storied entrance to the ruins of Molavor. A rare breed of Novare—honourable and just—had raised this great arch long ago. Happily they had shared their trades all through Efvla; with reverence had they studied the Xol classics. With the lost people of close Fexdrel they had shared a special bond, yet as well many of their philosophers and naturalists had laboured in far off Xoldra itself alongside the scientists of Fozlest, pursuing the truth of elz. So moved they were both by the necessity and the horror of the curse, for they were known to hold both sides of the debate.
To most all Xol, this place was known only as the home of the Green Eye, that woeful man who had slain so many of her kind in fury, as the flames raged, as the buildings collapsed and the tabernacle was broken. Of course, she could show no mercy to such a one were he to reappear, but in her private thoughts he was a symbol of that land which was once her greatest ally. Though Fozlest might easily say that Zelor had hardened her heart, in the end—she placed one hand against the cloven arch—it was she, who they so trusted, who betrayed Molavor. If only Nubes had found her sooner, the Molavorians might have risen beside her in battle once again. What disgust they would share for the Sons of Chalor! Still, they would never have allowed the awakening of the Frandun. Her hand slipped from the old stone.
Straightening herself, she shouldered past the arch into the city proper. Those low ruins which had seemed few from afar, and beneath the high grasses, grew in stature and numerousness quickly as she went. She wound through teething foundations, under the ribs of collapsed buildings, leapt down from uprooted roadways, glanced over broken carts decked in ash, mangled skeletons still clad in armour. She paused once more beside the demolished cathedral, unrecognizable but that she knew it had once stood here, glorious and stately, a holy place for Novare and those Xol who went among them alike. Here it was she had taken little Zelor long ago, and offered up his will for adoption. As she stood again lost in memory, twilight seeped like tessellating inks into the dry grass, and the sky sagged violet-dark, wind softening, the dry grasses soughing; the twittering of the dusk’s first aborjays recalled her haste. She strode off into the melting shadows of the broken buildings, and by the time she reached the ragged cliff overlooking the great sea, a moonless night had fallen thick and black over its satin waves.
Looking out over the expanse of transforming water like a dark, billowing blanket under the cold stars, she thought of poison, woven inextricably into the seething tapestry of purple deeps, leaching into the ground, feeding all of the plants of Efvla, of Petrampis, perhaps of all other continents hidden elsewhere upon the sphere of Altum. Of course, it was not poison to her. This world—everything was hostile to the Novare; they did not belong here. Their very existence confounded the natural order, and so it was that their flesh was burned away by the water which was life to all other plants, animals, and fungi. Ah, but, there was another poison, she reminded herself. The Xol themselves, though natural and protected from that corrosion, have become a blight upon its wonder. The world is no place for Novare, and the Xol offend its nature. Let us all be annihilated. On this thought, she leapt gracefully from the rocky promontory, fell in silence as the wind ripped through her robes, slipped lithely into the water.
Down she swam into dark depths, holding her breath evenly, confidently. The deep purple water grew freezing cold, and dark to the point of oblivion, but her eyes flashed, beamed, held forth a white spectrum of sight. At first through the pale echo of light flitted and drifted diverse creatures of the sea, but as she was a powerful swimmer and dove only straight down, soon she had no company, not even vegetation, for nothing could live in this darkest dungeon of the world where no light came or favour from the gods shone. Yet at the moment of total oblivion, a colossal white bulk rose from the abyss as if it were the floor of the ocean. At her approach the great mass rounded out far off in each direction, like a small world or an ancient moon fallen in primeval days to this lowest point in the sea. Everywhere it was crusted in pale white, an infinity of bone or some impossibly large reef long ossified, now revealing its rich texture of frozen fur, ragged strands in chaotic tableau like white elz trees rising petrified about her as she lighted and sat among them on the alabaster land.
Here was required at last the use of the Fabric, for she could no longer hold her breath. Casting an easy atmosphere from her shoulders to the peak of her nodule of dark hair, she drank clean air therein, cleared the pounding pressure from her head, soothed her thoughts in the deaf roar of the boundless ocean around her. Thrilling as it had been to dive so recklessly deep, now she could truly focus. So she assumed her posture of meditation, conjuring forth all that was her might in works of sewing, which already was greatest among her people, yet as well all energies that she could find hidden, welling in the remotest untapped latencies of her spirit, and calling with equal pleas to the Fabric, welcoming and beseeching all power that would show forth its assistance.
So power came, for Fozlest was one of the Xol blessed as never before, mighty enough—some said—even to undo the curse of elz by sheer force of will. Perhaps that was now what she did. Indeed, there came to her summons, in time, more energy than was summoned even in the first blackening of Efvla. Bright she burned with overwhelming force bursting from her pores in an aura of purest resolve that washed out her image, so that the whole of the ocean seemed lit aflame, the heavy waters and abyssal pressure blown back, and the great frozen fields of the eons-imprisoned Frandun below and all around were awash. In the solid orb of power which then began to consolidate her position, there was the threading of all living, material, and spiritual realities near enough to hear her call, and wide had reached that need. Alive in the light were the hearts of the organisms of the sea and sky, and all that went upon the land in Molavor and Fexdrel, but for its elz trees which were sealed away; and even the bones of the long dead, even the spirits of rock, water, light itself, the clouds above, and among them so many more nameless threads too abstract for incarnation, but which saw their relation to the Empress and knew their time was come, were drawn together in a great fabric sewn as one and to her form enfolded.
All these things compounded in harmony amid the sunken sun which was at that moment no longer Fozlest, but all things with which she had joined, and not so much any one of these things as it was the universal, unshakable determination which bound them. So it was that at the grandest and most radiant moment, when all that could come was poised upon the brow of Fozlest alone, directly and precisely downward in one voice, one single, merciless command, everything went to the white crust beneath, and the very ocean shivered.
Swiftly the light faded. The great boom of its passing dwindled into the mute abysses of the deep. Hardly could Fozlest maintain her breathing apparatus, so exhausted were all her faculties. She had spent all but her last on the deed. Time seemed to slow, stop. Water ceased to flow. The blood of the Empress’ very veins lost its purpose. And yet the immensity beneath her, upon which she sat trembling with vacancy, was quite unchanged.
“You would undo my work, Fozlest,” came a warm voice from above.
Looking weakly up, the Empress beheld a lady all of light, in white flowing dress, crowned in starlight, hovering like the sun itself woven bright and golden from the dark firmament of the sea. “Caelare.” Fozlest lowered her eyes. “You honour me with rebuke. Punish me how you will. I do what I must, for Altum.”
“A power far greater than Lucetal threatens what you aim to protect. When the lesser enemy is annihilated, know that the Frandun will turn upon you. My firstborn will not suffice to defend this world alone.”
Fozlest was silent; then she spoke. “So be it. Whatever alliance may be formed, Chalem will never end his campaign to dig up your forests. But that is not all, My Light.” She strained to look into the bottomless eyes of the goddess. “The spread of my peoples’ disease cannot go on. The time of the Xol is at its end.”
Caelare stared long at the Empress, expressionless. The divine angles of her radiant eyes seemed to contain all knowledge of past, present, and future. “Strong indeed are the Xol,” she said finally, “and mightiest among them is Fozlest.”
The Empress bowed her head low, understanding little. “You speak too kindly of blasphemy, My Light… But hear me more. If we are all to be destroyed, it is my last wish that one of the Xol end the curse upon the trees. Grant me that power, I beg you, let us release your firstborn to strike corruption from the world.”
“Strongest of my children,” Caelare lilted, seeming already far away, her voice and luminance receding beyond a veil of dark water stitching together. “It was your success that summoned me.” Then she was gone.
Time began anew. Water filled Fozlest’s robes. The roar and pressure of the deep was on her shoulders. With a boom which shook the deep itself, a great crack bloomed in the hard white land, opening from where her tough hands still touched the surface. The erupting gulf disassembled into jagged fractal rifts ever-dividing over the horizon of the endless mass of the frozen Frandun, down into the deeps. All around the Empress, the great white trees seemed to wave just slightly in the current. A silent ash fell from their lengths.
Chapter XXVIII
Return of the Elechlear
Nubes leaned back in the depression of sand formed to his narrow buttocks, but not to marvel any further, as he had for many hours, at the majesty of the purple sea before him. Rather, he squinted high up at a silver sequin streaming over the horizon and across the sky.
Even against so cloudless and sun-charged a day, the luminous blue trail of the sleek object was more pure and bright a colour than the vault of heaven itself, looking as though some fine, living sliver of the neon moon Xeléd—well, he thought, in Lucetal it was Mutat—had descended to Altum as a metal bird of prey. Yet this craft was swifter than the greatest Euphran, slicing across the vastness of the sea even as its most distant gleam caught the wizard’s eye, already slowing, banking round the shore, hovering noiselessly over the beach, its slim orthogonal wings tucking back as it settled down.
The angular, brilliant wake of raw energy narrowed into a thread and dissolved, leaving no sign of the vessel’s passage. So too did the luminous patterning of its slender hull suddenly vanish, but for one rhomboid panel, still bevelled in light. With a hiss the thin metal slid up, and out from the interior of the flying machine leapt a Lucetalian knight. His red hair flashed in the morning sun, but not so brightly as the cohesive metal suit which flowed flexibly as liquid over his figure, terminating just below the jawline, ribbed and shouldered in the same blue light which had followed the ship.
“Ramcrone!” Nubes rose on wobbly legs and leaned against his staff. “Where is your mother’s armour? You hardly look comfortable.”
The Captain of the Knights crossed his arms as he laughed. “If I could operate a jet in my old plates, I would.”
“Of course.” The wizard threw out from his robes a thin wafer, spinning like a bright coin over the sand, and the knight snatched it deftly from the salty air. Soft blue light flashed once as his fingers closed round the tiny object. “I too have a preference for old plates, though mine would be the Fabric. The magic of this thing is quite handy to have summoned you, but to be honest I cannot stand its presence. Anyhow, I was expecting an old friend and counsellor, not a young warrior like yourself.”
The knight smirked. “Yours is not a common feeling in the Kingdom, but if there was one who would agree with you, it is certainly Donlan. He sends me in his stead. We have become greater friends these days, and he wishes to convince me of your wisdom.”
“Just like your father?” Nubes winked.
“I have my doubts, wizard.” Ramcrone narrowed his tall stare, though he spoke the word ‘wizard’ with a kind of dignity. “But I will hear you out. The machines of the Elechlear transform Lucetal and its people by the hour; whether we have become more or less virtuous is hard to guess. So many are empowered, and so quick was the acceptance of all these things so new yet familiar, I must admit there is no going back to our old ways.”
“Oh? Your war must be going well then.”
Darkness touched the knight’s brow. “The Xol are no match for us now. The first wave of our battleships annihilated all wartime defences they had established. Tens of years of bloody siege, and now such instant progress. There was hardly time to forgive the hiding of such powerful weapons, yet from the first demonstration of our new firepower the city burst with enthusiasm. Already a new theatre of conflict is concluding deeper inland, in the heart of one of their own cities. There are many powerful magic users there who have managed to put up a fight, but it is only a matter of time. Now that we are well positioned in Efvla, Chalem himself comes over the water in his command ship.”
The King’s name drew their eyes out over the layered tapestries of the purple and violet waves in the direction of far off Lucetal, up into the faultless limpid sky, as if like some immense harbinger of war his colossal flying machine would appear. “So, you too have forgiven him?” Nubes wondered aloud.
“Never,” Ramcrone spat into the sand. “Though I see now why the Elechlear wished to forget their past. My men and I, all our people; we have a great need for this luxint energy. If only we had held such power sooner.”
“Indeed, too many lives have been lost.”
“That might easily have been spared.”
“At the cost of extinguishing an entire civilization?”
“I have no sympathy for demons, Nubes.”
“And what will you do when they are all gone? Perhaps new demons must appear among your countrymen? Caelare knows Lucetal needs an Enemy.”
The waves crashed, and a great wind roared cool and clean between them. Nubes’ crimson raiment blustered and flapped as the gale foundered and swept away into the trees. Ramcrone’s eyes lit up fierce and blue as the light which striated his flight suit and glowed within his slim shoulder-plates, and it seemed that the young Captain was replaced by the likeness of Harbinger, that strange azure ghost which was the wizard’s only previous glimpse of luxint energy.
“Chalem will not receive you kindly. There’s much talk of your desertion.”
The knight turned back to his ship, and Nubes followed with grave wonder as they climbed into the flying machine of his ancestors. The seed-shaped cockpit was small and low-ceilinged. Two slender metal seats sat before a silver plane, bare as the blade of a sword but for the field of blue light hovering just upon its surface. One wide window sloped from over their heads and curved beyond the vessel’s sharp nose to end just beneath their feet. Through the spacious crystal pane they saw miles of shoreline meandering ahead, the tangling elz trees stretching into the metallic ridges of the black west, the vast purple sea unfolding and transforming as an infinity of tearing and sewing into the vanishing east.
