Ventus

"Yes, your majesty."

"How are the supplies holding out?"

"Well enough, they say."

"Reward the soldiers who bring our guest over the walls. Give them each a double ration. Also convey our thanks."

"Yes, your majesty. ...Ma"am?"

"Yes, what is it? Bring me a mirror."

"Who is this person? A spy of some sort?"

"A messenger," she said brusquely. Satisfied with her appearance, she gathered her skirts and swept from the chamber. They followed, casting final glances about the shaft.

Out of a sense of devilment, Galas decided to leave the door open--the first time ever. She hid a smile as she paced toward the audience hall.

As a girl she had made up stories about the figures painted on the audience hall"s ceiling. Later she learned the struggling, extravagantly posed men and women were all allegories for historical events. By then it was too late; she knew the woman directly above the throne as the Smitten Dancer, not as an idealized Queen Delina. The two men wrestling on the clouds near the west window were the Secret Lovers to her, not King Andalus overthrowing the False Regent. Every time she entered this room she glanced up and smiled at her pantheon, and she knew that those observing her a.s.sumed she was drawing strength from her family"s history, and knowing that made her smile again.

She composed herself on the throne and waited. When had she had a visitor who had not closely studied the history of Iapysia? If this stranger was truly from the heavens, would he know whom the frescoes represented? Or would he be in the same state of innocence as she when she wrote her own mythology on them?

Or would he know all histories, the way that the desals had? She scowled, and sat up straighter.

The doorman straightened. He looked tired and confused, having been ousted out of bed for this one moment. "Your majesty..." He read the card he had been given with obvious puzzlement. "The lord Maut, and lady Megan."

Maut? Megan stopped in her tracks. "What name is this?" she hissed at him.

"My name," Armiger said simply. "One of them, anyway." He smiled and strode into the vast, lamp-lit chamber as if he owned it.

Galas restrained an urge to stand. Now that he stood before her, she had no idea what she"d been expecting. This was no monster, nor by appearances a G.o.d.

He seemed mature, perhaps in his early forties, his hair long and braided down his right shoulder, his face finely carved with a high brow and straight nose, and a strong mouth. He was a little taller than she, and was dressed in dusty travelling clothes, with soft riding boots on his feet, an empty scabbard belted at his waist. As he paused four meters below the throne, she saw the light traceries of character around his eyes and mouth, indications of both humor and weariness.

Behind him, like a shadow, stood a peasant woman. Her face shone with a mixture of timidity and defiance. As Maut bowed, she curtsied deeply, but when she raised her eyes she looked Galas in the eye. There was no hostility there, nor respect; only, it seemed, unselfconscious curiosity. Galas liked her immediately.

Galas held up the folded letter. "Do you know what this says?" she asked the man.

He bowed again. "I do," he said. His voice was rich and deep, quite compelling. He gave a quick smile. "May I humbly beseech Queen Galas, wife of this world, to grant an audience to a traveller? For I have not rested on green earth since before the ancient stones of your palace were laid, nor have I spoken to a kindred soul since before your language, oh Queen, was born."

Galas saw the woman Megan start and stare at Maut as he spoke. Interesting.

"What are you?" she asked. "And--maybe more germaine--why do you speak of me as a kindred soul?"

Maut shrugged. "As to what I am--you have no words for it. I am not a man, despite appearances--"

"What proof do you have of that?"

For a moment he looked angry at her interruption. Then he appeared to consider what she had said. "My moth was unconvincing?"

"There are people who make a life"s work of tricking others, Maut. Your moth was highly convincing--but just because something is convincing, that does not make it true. It is merely convincing."

He waved a hand dismissively. "It cost me energy to perform that minor miracle. I have very little to spare, and no time to recover any I lose now."

Galas leaned back. She felt betrayed, and suddenly cynical. "So you have no more tricks? Is that what you"re saying?"

"I am not a trick pony!"

"And I am not a fool!"

They glared at one another. Then Galas noticed that the woman Megan was covering a smile with her hand.

Galas forced a grim smile of her own. "You know our situation. This is not the time for frippery, or lies. Is it so strange that I demand proof?"

Grudgingly, he shook his head. "Forgive me, Queen Galas. I am much reduced from my former station, and that makes me tactless and short-tempered."

"But unafraid," she said. "You are not afraid of me."

"He is not afraid of anything," said Maut"s companion. Her tone was not boasting--in fact it was perhaps a little apologetic. Or resigned.

Maut shrugged again. "It seems we"ve gotten off to a bad start. I am very weary--too weary for miracles. But I am what I say I am."

"But, you have not said what that is!"

He frowned. "There is an ancient word in your language. It is not much used today. The word is G.o.d. I am--or was, a G.o.d. I wish to be so again, and so I have come to you because, of all the humans on Ventus, you are the only one who has caught a glimpse of the inner workings of the world. You may have the knowledge I need to become what I once was."

"Intriguing," said Galas. It was still unbelievable, on the face of it. But... her fingers caressed the letter in her lap. She had seen what she had seen.

As to his flattery--well, she knew, as an absolute certainty, that no one in the world had the knowledge she held. It was perhaps slightly charming that he recognized it.

"And why should I tell you what you wish to know--even a.s.suming that I have the knowledge you need?"

Maut put his hands behind his back. He seemed to be restraining an urge to pace. "You have looked up at the sky," he said. "All humans have done that, at one time or another. And you have asked questions.

"You want to interrogate the sky. And you of all people, Queen Galas, would interrogate nature itself, everything that is other, in your human search for understanding. Everything you have ever done proves this. You are human, Galas, and your madness is very human: you wish to hear human speech issue from the inhuman, from the rocks and trees. Could a stone speak, what would it say? Your kind has ever invented G.o.ds, and governments, and categories and even the s.e.xes themselves as means of interrogating that otherness.

"That the world should speak, as you speak! What a desire that is. It informs every aspect of your life. Deny it if you can.

"Allow me my ironic bow. I am here, madam, to perform this deed for you. I am everything you are not. I was blazing atoms in an artificial star, have been resonances of electromagnetic fire, and cold iron and gridwork machines in vast webs cast between the nebulae.

"I am stone and organism, alive and dead, whole and sundered. I am the voiceless given a tongue to speak.

"I will speak."

And yet, the irony was not lost on Armiger that on this world, stones did speak; that the very air sighed its voices in his ear. It was the humans who were deaf to the language of the Winds. Armiger, though he heard that language, did not understand it. The sound of his own words was quickly absorbed into the stone of the walls, the ancient tapestries, the lacquered wood cabinets. And in all these things the Winds resided.

Armiger knew they could listen if they chose; he suspected they did not care what he said. The masters of Ventus went on about their incomprehensible tasks, whispering and muttering all around him.

He had spoken half for their benefit, but they ignored him, as they had since he had arrived on Ventus. So, he thought, his words dissolved into the stone, into the carpets, into the wood. Save for the two women who stood with him, none heard his brave boast.

Yet, though none in the palace heard, still his voice went out. It penetrated the chambers and halls of the ancient building, and pa.s.sed through the sand and stone of the earth as if they were an inch of air. In the high clouds from which the raindrop-dwelling Precip Winds gazed down, Armiger"s voice flickered as unread heat-lightning on a frequency they did not attend. Even the Diadem swans, swirling in a millenial dance among the van Allen belts, could have heard had they known to listen.

No swan heard, nor any stone-devouring mountain Wind, or any of the elemental and immortal spirits of the world. But a solitary youth, lonely and sad by a lonely campfire mouthed Armiger"s words, and sat up straight to listen.

16.

Tamsin Germaix spotted the man by the road first. Her uncle was busy talking about some grand ball he"d been to in the capital. Her eyes and hands had been busy all morning on a new piece of embroidery, much more difficult than the last one Uncle had her do. But every now and then (and she hid this from him) she had to stop because her hands began to shake. Now was such a time: she frowned at them, betraying as they were, and looked up to see the man.

The figure was sitting on a rock by the road, hunched over. It would take them a few minutes to pa.s.s him, since uncle was more interested in his story than in speed, and anyway every jolt of the cart sent spikes of pain up Tamsin"s sprained ankle. She had the splinted shin encased in pillows, and wore a blanket over her lap against the chill morning air; still, she was far from comfortable.

Certainly they had pa.s.sed farmers and other lowborn persons walking by the road. This track was what pa.s.sed for a main road in this forsaken part of backward Memnonis. Why, in the past day alone, they"d met three cows and a whole flock of sheep!

"...hold your knife properly, not the way you did at dinner last night," her uncle was saying. "Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, uncle."

"There"ll be feasts like that again, once we"re back home. It"ll only be a few days now." He scratched at the stubble on his chin uncertainly. "Things can"t have changed that much."

She watched the seated figure over the rounded rump of one of their horses. He looked odd. Not like a farmer at all. First of all, he seemed to be dressed in red, a rare color for the lowborn. Secondly, she could see a fluff of gold around his collar, and at his waist.

"Uncle, there"s a strange man on the road ahead."

"Huh?" He came instantly alert. "Only one? Is he waving to us? Ah, I see him."

Uncle Suneil had told her about bandits, and how to identify them. This apparition certainly didn"t fit that mould.

As they drew closer Tamsin levered herself to her feet and looked down at the man. He seemed young, with black hair and dressed nattily. His clothes, though, were mud-spattered and torn, and he had a large leather knapsack over one shoulder. He held a knife in one hand and a piece of half-carved stick in the other. He was whittling.

He stood up suddenly as if in alarm, but he wasn"t look in their direction. He had dropped his knife, and now he picked it up again, and started walking away up the road. He seemed to be talking to himself.

"I still think he"s a bandit. Or crazy! He must have taken those clothes off of a victim."

Her uncle shook his head. "A proper young lady knows fine tailoring. Look, you"ll see his clothes have been made to fit him nicely. Now sit down, before you fall off the wagon."

She sat down. He certainly looked mysterious, but after all, they didn"t know who he was. She knew the mature thing to do would be pa.s.s him by; she knit her hands in her lap and waited for her uncle to prod the horses into a faster walk.

Uncle Suneil raised a hand. "Ho, traveller! Well met on the road to Iapysia!"

All he had done for two days was walk. Jordan was exhausted now and was beginning to think his journey to meet with Armiger might be impossible. Calandria had bundled food for several people into her saddle bags, but it weighed a lot. He rested when he needed, and carefully lit a fire before bedding down each night. Despite that, his feet hurt and his shoulders were strained from carrying the heavy bags. So, as midmorning burned away the cold of last night, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road to rest.

He would have given up walking, were it not that whenever he paused to rest, he saw visions of far-off places, and knew they were real. Knowing that fed his determination to keep going.

He needed an activity to keep the visions at bay. He had taken to whittling, and now he pulled out a stick he"d begun this morning, and began carving away at it, lips pursed.

Last night Jordan had sat rapt at his meagre fire as Armiger spoke to Queen Galas. "You wish to hear human speech issue from the inhuman, from the rocks and trees," the general had said. "Could a stone speak, what would it say?" It was almost as though the general knew he was listening.

Armiger had not gone on to tell his story. It was late, and the queen had deferred the audience until some time today. Jordan was not disappointed; he had lain awake for hours, thinking about Armiger"s words. He had pushed aside his self-pity and exhaustion, and made himself come to a decision. It was time to take the step he had been avoiding.

Despite his private miseries and loneliness, Jordan had not forgotten for a moment that Armiger"s was not the only voice he could hear. On the evening when the Heaven hooks descended, Jordan had learned he could hear the voices of the Winds too. Until this morning he had deliberately tuned them out, because he"d been afraid that at any moment the Heaven hooks would rear out of the empty sky and grab him up.

He had bundled Calandria May"s golden gauze into a kind of poncho, then awkwardly b.u.t.toned his jacket over that. The gold stuff stuck out behind him like a bird"s tail, and up around his neck like a dandy"s ruff. But he was pretty sure it was still doing its duty. The Winds did not know where he was.

As the Heaven hooks descended on the Boros estate, Jordan had learned that he could hear the little voices of inanimate and animate things. Each object within his sight had a voice, he now knew. Each thing proclaimed its ident.i.ty, over and over, the way a bird calls its name all day for no reason but the joy in its own voice. Now that he knew they were there, Jordan could attune himself to the sound of that endless murmur. Last night and this morning, he had worked at tuning into and out of that listening stance as he walked.

If he closed his eyes, he could see a ghostly landscape, mostly made up of words hovering over indistinct objects. He could make little sense of that, so he left that avenue alone.

It seemed that he could focus his inner hearing on individual objects, if he concentrated hard enough.

He held up the knife he had been whittling with, and concentrated on it. After a few minutes he began to hear its voice. "Steel," it said. "A steel blade. Carbon steel, a knife."

At the Boros estate, Jordan had spoken to a little soul like this, and it had answered. I am stone, a doorway arch had said to him. This ability to speak to things didn"t surprise him as much as it might have, considering everything that had happened. According to the priest Allegri, some people had visions of the Winds, and the Winds didn"t punish them for this. Allegri had told Jordan that he might be one of those with such a talent. He had been wrong at the time; what Jordan had been experiencing then was visions of Armiger--and those, the Winds surely disliked.

But this? This communion with a simple object seemed to have nothing to do with Armiger. Maybe it had been enabled by whatever Calandria May had done to Jordan"s head. But was it forbidden by the Winds?

Well, he had Calandria"s protective gauze. Jordan was confident he could hear the approach of the greater Winds in time to don it and escape.

It came down, then, to a matter of courage.

"What are you?" he asked the knife.

"I am knife," said the knife.

Even though he was expecting it, Jordan was so startled he dropped the thing.

He picked it up, and began nervously walking. "Knife, what are you made of?"

The voice in his head was clear, neutral, neither male nor female: "I am a combination of iron and carbon. The carbon is a hardening agent."

He nodded, wondering what else to ask it. The obvious question was, "How is that you can speak?"

"I am broadcasting a combined fractal signal on visible frequencies of radiation."

The answer had made no sense. "Why can"t other people hear you?"