Elizabeth Hand - Æstival Tide

This time that would not be necessary. The back of her neck prickled, excitement burgeoned inside of her like a drug as she realized that this must be what it was like for the others, this certainty that she could read Ceryl’s sleeping thoughts like a map. As sure as she knew her name she knew what this dream portended. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

“You have dreamed of the holocaust that will destroy Araboth.”

Her voice sounded too deep, hollow as though it boomed up from some great depth. Across from her Ceryl Waxwing blinked.

“It is the dream of Ucalegon the Prince of Storms, and Baratdaja the Healing Wind.” Inside of Reive’s head was a pounding that threatened to drown the sound of her own voice. She gasped, “It is growing Outside; it is waiting for the gates to open….”

Ceryl nodded slowly. Her hands shook as she drew them to her face. “What else?” she whispered.

Eyes wide, the gynander shook her head, unable to speak. The thudding inside her head became a roar. She heard the voice of Zalophus shrieking—

I hear my sisters calling and the winds gathering for the great storm, I hear the voice of Ucalegon shouting in its sleep ….

The gynander began to shake. Behind her closed eyelids a light pulsed and words whistled through her skull—

Ucalegon. Baratdaja. Prince of Storms and the Healing Wind. The holocaust that will destroy Araboth.

She recalled the tremor that had shook her room that morning, and a hermaphrodite crying The domes moved, we saw the walls shake ….

And then once more the voice of the imprisoned leviathan warning her,

“… in the Undercity the rift is widening: soon it will breach the open sea ….”

“Zalophus,” Reive whispered.

He had not been mad. The city was in danger. It was all real, somehow he had sounded the very depths of the Undercity and seen it there; somehow this woman Ceryl had seen it too. It was not a dream that haunted Ceryl Waxwing. It was The Dream, the Great Portent, the Final Warning that the Orsinate had been searching for so desperately with all their occult games. They had placed all their trust in the Architects, in things that could be measured and quantified and engineered, but the one thing the Architects could not do was dream.

They had thought to keep the world Outside at bay, and had, ever since the Long Night of the First Ascension, when the prairies turned to glass and the sky choked beneath black and frozen rain. After that Araboth had been raised, the Architects set to guard the people who fled the poisoned world Outside the domes. In all those centuries they had never left. The ruling families retreated to the upper levels, where they bred with each other like mad wary spiders. And gradually the world Outside faded to nothing but children’s stories, a green monster resurrected each Æstival Tide and ultimately defeated when once more the Lahatiel Gate clanged shut. An emerald nightmare; the dream of the Green Country.

She saw it now as though it were etched upon her brain. A fissure splitting the Undercity like a wound, prying apart the monstrous colonnades upon which the city rested. Outside, the Green Country overtaking the city. Araboth crushed beneath the wave, a wave like a verdant cape covering the spires and struts and domes of the Holy City.

Reive’s eyes flew open. Ceryl cried out at the sudden flash of color in the gynander’s masklike face. They stared at each other, neither one daring to speak as they thought the same thing.

Treason. Torture. Execution. Death.

Ceryl spoke first, her voice trembling. “There is no other meaning?” Her tone was without hope.

The gynander shook her head. “No. But this is not the only sign. There have been other things,” she said slowly. “We have seen them—on Virtues Level the ground shook, and we heard a warning, from—”

She fell silent, reluctant to speak of Zalophus.

Ceryl nodded. She kneaded the sleeves of her catsuit, her palms leaving damp stains on the fabric. “I have too,” she said hoarsely. “Now that you mention it. A crack in the pavement…”

Such a tiny thing, it had seemed a few hours ago; now Ceryl stared at the floor of her room, terrified that she would see something there, a rift that would widen until it swallowed them all. She looked at Reive.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she said. Her hands tightened as she clenched her arms. Reive said nothing and she went on, desperately, “You know what will happen if you do—they’ll take me, the Reception Committee will come and take me away. This close to Æstival Tide, they’ll give me to—”

“The Compassionate Redeemer,” Reive said softly.

Ceryl nodded. She looked around her room at the alembics and vials of dried herbs, the weights and measures she used in her work. She could hear the steady crash of waves against the outer domes, a sound that thrummed counterpoint to the panicky beat of her heart. It all seemed tainted now, as though her dream were a sickly odor that had seeped into all her things. When she glanced back at Reive she saw the gynander watching her with wide frightened eyes. A pang shot through Ceryl. A feeling she had not had since Giton died: that there were other people in the world beside herself, and somehow she might be held responsible for them.

She took a deep breath. “I think I’d like for you to come with me. To my chambers on Thrones Level. It—I think we might be safer there. At least the rooms are larger than here, there would be room for both of us.”

On Thrones they would be closer to the Orsinate, and that was dangerous. But if the city was really threatened with destruction, it seemed they might be safer on the upper levels than here. And there was something to be said for hiding in plain sight. “Will you come with me?”

Reive crouched into her chair, looking more like a child than ever. For a horrible moment Ceryl thought she would refuse. And Ceryl couldn’t risk that; couldn’t risk letting the gynander return to her own level, where she might betray them both. The thought of killing Reive sickened her; but she would have no choice. She looked at the gynander beseechingly.

Reive lowered her head, drew her hands to her ears. She wished she’d never come here; wished she’d not been so greedy for food and a new patron. But it was done, now.

And Ceryl’s quarters were on the upper levels. There would be no other hermaphrodites there to snigger at Reive behind her back. She would be well fed, and, if she could trust Ceryl, well cared for. Very slowly, Reive nodded.

Ceryl let her breath out in a long whoo of relief. “Good,” she said, and paced to the door. “I think we should go now—”

Before you change your mind, she thought—

“Before it gets any later. I’ve got everything we’ll need up there, the kitchen’s full, I’ve never even spent the night—”

She practically dragged Reive after her, the two of them hurrying down the corridor to the gravator that would bring them to the pleasure cabinet’s level. It wasn’t until they reached Ceryl’s chambers and locked the door behind them that Reive realized that she had forgotten the mysid in its globe.

Hobi grew increasingly nervous as they waited for the gravator to arrive in the Undercity and bear them back to the upper levels. His eyes ached, striving to give sharp edges and angles to this shapeless night. Phantom pyramids and cubicles appeared before his eyes, ghostly well-ordered images that begged for substance; but Hobi knew there was only this inchoate blackness, this dank and primal air, this soft earth beneath his boots. He shuddered, longing for the cool blues and whites of Cherubim, the sterile and vivifying scents from the air ducts.