Alium, page 58
The mercenary batted away the sphere. “I did not come to the mountains for any Alium, but it is the goal of my friend Ogwold to discover it.”
Sylna looked anxiously from face to face. “Well I certainly don’t want it destroyed! Even if we could do it, perhaps we’d be throwing away our only hope. I doubt Duxmortul requires any additional strength to conquer Altum.”
Elts smiled wanly. “I believed the Piv Muewa when she called Zelor’s goal a righteous folly. He persuaded me with his ambition once, but I was forced to see the terrible truth of his fate. What I do wish for is the demise of Duxmortul, however, and the Alium seems a weapon we shall need.”
Byron nodded, returning to his seat between the bookcases. “It is like the witch said; all we can do is go.”
“Then let’s be off! Let’s be off to Zenidow!” Ogwold boomed, and they all had to cover their ears.
Chapter XXX
Xeléd Down
Fast as she was able, and completely without rest, Fozlest raced from Molavor upon her fast-trundling myriapod. The night had passed quickly in her labour beneath the surface, so that when she emerged from the ruins, listening to the deeply muted, endless cracking and splitting of that nameless integument which for so many ages had withheld Caelare’s greatest enemy, the palace of that very goddess broke above the black treeline in the east and threw upon her deeds a bright and all-knowing light.
By the time the first giant waves had struck the coast, already the promontory of Molavor was far behind her. Still she heard the awful wailing of the Frandun as it was stricken, and saw the star-bright flash, totalizing through the firmament, of what weapon dared fire upon it. As the unholy light of luxint burned the sky, she shuddered to think what it might mean to her people. Evil as the Frandun was, she could not suppress a grateful smirk when sounded again its massive form booming through the sea, for she knew that Chalem and his unnatural power would be destroyed. Still, her own kind was next, and she would not be absent from Xoldra for the final end to the curse.
At present, the noon sun had just begun its descent over the distant sea, and in the golden light, standing upon a tall, bald hill at the boundary between the elz forests of spacious Fexdrel and labyrinthine Lofled, Fozlest beheld from afar the highest black-on-black layers of Xoldra’s canopy, the greater apex of her home-tree Xoloz just piercing that noble midst. More comforting than, at last, a vision of her destination, was that high hemisphere of liquid radiance rising from the elz trees, for the barrier was complete above even the highest point of the city, and seemed at least from where she stood unbroken.
Down from the vantage she sped upon the great armoured insect, and without another slightest pause they shot between the dark, shining trees over familiar land. The remainder of her journey was now far the more gruelling, for the thick climes of Lofled were dark, winding, and in many places blocked to passage, so that only as evening gathered above in trailing, sugary oranges did she come at last upon the wall of pulsing purple light which curved down from beyond the canopy in a thick plane, and marked that perimeter which her sorcerers and sorceresses had deemed the extent of the imperial wood. She dismounted, and the weaving creature she had ridden for so many miles slunk back into the gloom of the wood, wrapping itself about one elz tree and streaming up into its branches.
All through the final act of her return, since she had seen the completed shield high over the city, she had entertained the idea that Xoldra was safe, that perhaps the Lucetalians had been waylaid; or, and this idea she coveted, their new weapons had been unable to penetrate the weave of the Zefled. But as she stepped through the force field, at once these fantasies dissolved, for the city was deathly silent. All smelled of molten elz. Many mighty elz trees were splintered, shattered, warped as by tremendous heat. Now she saw that smoke was everywhere, wreathing the great trees, collecting in the broken matrices of their bound branches and roots, floating through their labyrinthine trunks like spirits of decay. There were no Xol in sight. The city was in ruin.
She sank to the grassy loam upon her knees, her long black cloak, hemmed in purple, fanning about her, and wept silently. It had been many hundreds of years since she had let tears fall from her face, but in the end of it all, the culmination of her devotion to her people, she had been absent for the fall of all she loved and leaving swore to protect, at whatever cost. Cold and lonely in her heart was the wretched hope that the Frandun in its blind fury avenge the death of Xoldra. She had nothing left to lose.
Yet in time the tears ceased to come and withered upon her rough cheeks, for too accustomed to stoicism was her countenance, and already the familiar stony frieze of composure gripped her bones, and forced the Empress to stand. She looked instinctively to Xoloz, which rose still unscathed in all its glory, thick and strong and infinitely tall, and off she went to see what had come of her throne. Drawing closer she saw that even the immense solidity of that greatest tree was melted, splintered, and torn in places, but still stood steadfast, an eternal symbol of the Xol spirit among the ruined wood. Now she saw signs of life, for all about and along its sprawling mighty roots were stationed many silver vessels far sleeker and more radiant than any work of metal ever she had seen.
They were vehicles, she knew, for Nubes had described to her the nature of Lucetal’s new armaments. Their narrow noses were entirely clear, as though a pilot seated in that vertex could see all that transpired in his or her periphery, yet somehow it was impossible to pierce that thick glass with the eye from without. Long angular slits were set within the ships just aft of their doors, in nearly equivalently low profile, though like the wings of a bird are often tucked into invisible depths, Fozlest imagined that these planar scales might shoot out and take to the sky. For surely there was no purpose other than flight for these crafts. They had no wheels, and their smooth bellies sank into the grass too low to accommodate what gear might propel them across the forest floor.
She walked among them standing silent and beautiful, touching the cool metal, feeling for some outline of an entryway in their featureless smooth surfaces, craning her thick neck to see inside their impermeable windows. But as the tears had gone so quickly from her eyes, so too was her shameful fascination with the technologies of men crushed by that part of her spirit which was the Empress, and not merely Fozlest.
So composed, she approached the face of the tree which had been for centuries her dear home, knowing full well that it was infested by the enemy. Here was one of the four great arches formed among its greatest roots which facilitated the sun and fresh air always known to fill the atrium that is the lowest realm of Xoloz. With a deep breath, she wound through that shining black tunnel with what dignity had always accompanied her entrance into the palace. As the walls turned, the great hall opened before her, and she saw that here there had been a terrible struggle. The slain had been pushed into a cold shadow like cold purple lumps, their white blood dried in the ghost of a pool round them, trailing out into the room whence they were dragged.
In the great chamber there stood and sat in what elz furniture retained their integrity several Novare men, though they looked as beings from another world. All over they were plated with smooth silver metal, and they wore visors of the same implacable substance that windowed the crafts waiting outside. At their necks in charged rings she saw a pulsing blue light, which ran in veins down through a network of metal pieces as in luminous, exo-circulatory humours. Like armour were the many plates connected over this underlying energy, but they were not at all bulky. More like liquid they seemed, as they bent and twisted in unison with the body of the knight nearest her, morphing with his movement and seeming not at all a burden upon him as he approached, and then suddenly retreated.
A Novare voice only partly distant and cold issued from his opaque helmet. “It’s the Empress. She has purple hemming.”
“Detain her,” said another of the men, though all seemed to have taken a step back from the tall Xol and her famous might.
The knights carried strange devices that stirred a fresh hate in Fozlest, for they seemed like the unique mockeries of Xol technology which Nubes had described to her. They were not swords at all, or crossbows even though they were held as such. Rather, they reminded her of wands or staffs, for they were trained now upon her chest in like manner as one who is soon to discharge some deadly spell. Even so, she let her own wand drop to the ground, where it rolled forth and came to a stop amid the guards, who kept their distance as if the little thing would explode.
She raised her strong, empty hands. “I see that the city is lost.” She held her wrists out. “I’ll not resist. I wish only to see the one who sits in my throne.”
“She’s been waiting for you,” said a dark-skinned, wiry man discreetly seated across the room in a simple white tunic. Three slim swords lay upon the floor beside him, and it seemed as though they had not been removed from their differently coloured scabbards for a long while. Their owner motioned to the others with an air of natural command, yet though his manner was confident, it was easy to sense in the emanations of his mind a terrible fear.
One knight approached cautiously and snapped two metal circlets about the Empress’ arms. Bright blue crackling webs of energy formed between the independent units, flourishing and undulating at first rapidly, now suddenly straight and immovable.
“The tails too,” said the dark man in the corner, nodding to the long plated whips that trailed behind her. She drew them slowly forward, wrapped them many times around her waist, and presented their purple ends. When they were clapped together in the same manner, she could move only her legs, and hardly so spaciously as to totter. One knight stepped in front of the spiral stair which rose from the centre of the atrium up into Xoloz proper, and the first gestured for the Empress to follow. So the two knights directed her through this place she knew so well, one ahead of her speaking with those whom they passed, floor after floor, the other not too close behind her, though she could feel the intent of his weapon upon her back.
Numberless Lucetalian troops and other Novare in white tunics passed as they rose through the holy tree. Some carried other weapons, or none at all it seemed, and a rare few, she noticed, wore a different sort of armour altogether. This suit, for it was one cohesive unit of metal, she thought, having no gaps in its material whatsoever, seemed thin and fitting perfectly to the figure of the wearer. The knights who wore these suits had no helmets. The material they wore reached all the way up to their ears, completely coating the neck. Fozlest’s first thought was that these garments were perhaps the sort one wears beneath their armour, but something in her mind said otherwise. It seemed, instead, that they represented a wholly more advanced piece of equipment.
Beneath her hatred of Novare, beneath the sadness of the loss of her people, still the fascination which had taken her in the presence of the strange vessels crept into her consciousness. But this time as she pushed away that sacrilege, she was reminded of the coming of the true destroyers: Duxmortul and Its terrible kin, the Wrudak from beyond the stars. To think such technology exists as to thwart the most awesome magic of my finest sorcerers and sorceresses, and that even such things pale in comparison to the tools and minds of those whom Nubes had so earnestly warned her. Almost she succumbed to tears in that moment, remembering her oldest friend, the red wizard. Certainly he must be dead now, she thought, for the same reason I was absent at the fall of Xoldra, because of my pride.
At last they arrived at the Meristem, that very chamber wherein the Empress had set her Zefled to work in casting the great shield in the early sunless hours just two mornings past. The luminous blue bulb of her personal quarters hung softly lighting the high-ceilinged room, though the shafts of sunlight beaming down through tall windows were far brighter, and in their natural glory she was ashamed that she had ever thought to fashion her quarters in the likeness of so divine and inimitable a thing as the great moon Xeléd.
In her own high elz throne sat a young Novare woman. Her hair and eyes were black as tar. Her skin also was dark. She was slim and blade-like, yet there was great strength in her countenance. She did not wear such armour as the others, but the rarer, the more elegant cohesive, form-fitting suit which Fozlest had seen briefly on her ascent through the tree. The suit, though, was not silver, but night-black, and it gleamed like obsidian in the light as if it were made of elz, a wicked union of Lucetalian and Xoldran art. About this suit the woman wore a long black cape, fixed at her shoulders by a silver brooch shaped in the likeness of the Lucetalian coat of arms.
“Empress,” she said coldly from her stolen seat. “You stand before Vespia.” No mention of Lucetal followed this introduction.
“You have conquered us all,” said Fozlest, holding the gaze of the Captain of the Rangers.
“Xoldra fell easily,” Vespia hissed through the hair that swept before her face like a black scythe. “Tell me: what is this Frandun?”
Fozlest smiled cruelly. “You Novare refer to my people as devils. Now you know the power of a true demon. The Frandun is a dark god, an immortal, ineradicable sin from beyond the gulfs of space and time.”
Vespia scowled, shadow passing through her sable visage. “The wizard Nubes divines that you woke it.”
“He divines as well that Chalem would smite the forest with some merciless new power.”
“So it is true then?”
The Empress held up her luxint-cuffed hands as if to display in their helplessness the ruination of Xoldra.
Vespia motioned for a soldier near to her, who brought forward and set upon the floor a slim, silver module. At once a plane of blue light burst forth, expanded, and consolidated into a crystalline three-dimensional projection of a spacious room almost totally dark but for the glow of blue light which washed over its single visible occupant, not Chalem, King of Lucetal, but little old Nubes, tapping away with his old black staff, and pulling thoughtfully at his snowy beard.
With the quickening of his image, he started and turned to face the throne room. Though the silvers and blues of his environment were rendered quite faithfully in the hologram, his robes seemed remarkably purple. “Empress.” He nodded.
“Nubes,” Fozlest started.
Vespia rose from the throne. “Where are your shackles, wizard?”
Nubes grimaced, beginning again his pacing and tapping. “Chalem has… how do I put it? Frankly, he’s gone mad, my Lady. You see, the Frandun has entirely consumed the command ship. Myself and the King, and a great deal of Lucetal’s army are now quite settled in its digestive processes. Already our outermost shielding has begun to dissolve.” Now he faced Fozlest in particular, ceasing his back and forth. “You’ve done it, Empress. Lucetal is quite defeated, and the bloodline of Chalor now lies in the hands of an insensible fool. Now, with the fleet scattered, the monster will certainly head for Efvla.” Tap, tap, tap went the staff. “And I shall not stand to dissolve in this abominable gut knowing that the world may be undefended.”
“What?” Vespia shook, facing the Empress. “He speaks as though you’ve no chance of stopping the beast. You would throw away the lives of your own people just to win?”
“Yes, but she needn’t, Vespia,” cut in the wizard once more. “Listen: in the King’s absence I’ve spent long hours in congress with the computer-mind Harbinger, a being too wise and ancient to have been built by Novare. Still, he tells me it was indeed the Elechlear who made him; I suppose over millions of years such a one grows vastly in knowledge.”
“I am just as always, sir,” came a ghostly voice, as suddenly there winked into being the spectral image of a hairless, featureless man, composed entirely of azure luminance.
“Ah! Here he is.” Nubes smiled at the spectre, somehow clearer than anything else now portrayed in the hologram. “Have you finished your calculations?”
“Yes. Given a considerable surge of power, the Luxint Ray may return to its full capacities, in which state it can at least annihilate the physical form of the Frandun.”
“Impossible,” said Fozlest dryly.
“Ha!” Nubes clapped his hands. “Quite possible actually. Harbinger is the greatest mathematical mind in the galaxy! But there is more I must share. And bear with me, it involves the true nature of Xeléd. Fozlest, the Divine Moon is no moon at all. The great blue orb in the sky which you call Xeléd is actually an elder machine long forgotten, the world-ender, the greatest weapon of the ancient Elechlear and the cause of that civilization’s demise. Once there were many such constructs in orbit. Now there is but one. It was called then the Luxint Ray, and it strikes the face of the world as a star raining down from heaven!”
Fozlest spoke loudly through her diminishing composure. “Blasphemy! Treacherous blasphemy. Xeléd is everything to my people! To suggest that it was made by the hands of Novare is an insult most dire.”
Harbinger looked to the Empress with his gibbous, blue-white eyes, and seemed even to wonder, though he had no capacity for expression, whether he himself was also an insult to her.
The wizard sighed. “But indeed, it is made of metal; indeed, it was sent into the night sky by mortal hands. Still, this does not mean it is no longer Xeléd! I learned today that you are truly its children! Harbinger has revealed as well that your race and most all things upon Altum were born of this great weapon’s divine fury; the Divine Moon itself is the reason the sea was stricken purple in elder days. Why else should that water burn the skin of the Elechlear’s descendents, but not your own people to whom it is nature? Then here is your chance to reach out to your creator! Slay the Frandun and destroy the high command of Lucetal in one blow! Stay the extinction of the Xol! There will be time to wait and see what the Alium might do for your trees.”
Fozlest started. “You mean it is possible; the Alium may have some sway over elz?”
“Anything is possible given the scale of the thing. Whatever the Alium is, even Caelare will not or cannot disturb it.”
