Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

Baj kept his eyes on the ice-way before him… climbed to its crest… then went even more carefully down a slope that ran like grand descending chords of music, falling… falling bowshots away to lie at last, like some huge ice-beast's tongue, on a broad frozen landing. This an introduction to the fourth of five stories of pillared galleries, open-sided cloisters stretching at least half a Warm-time mile to left and right – a great hive of ancient blue ice, carved from the cavern's wall. Between each story, sculpted dadoes ran the galleries' lengths – of men and beasts walking hand in paw… and changing as they went along, as if the ice had melted them one into the other.

Behind the low rampart of the structure's roof, Baj saw what seemed a distant huge wing of leather rise… then fold down and away. There were soft, echoing calls, plangent as if from brass instruments.

"What…?"

"Occas," Patience said.

Baj had seen an occa, when Ambassdor MacAffee had come to Island – had seen two, earlier, when he was nine or ten years old. Those had been flying, bringing Boston Trade-factors up from Map-McAllen to the bund at Baton Rouge… Huge brown things with angled awkward heads, and looking made of tanned hide, the occas had flown on wide wings with slow majestic flapping – and cried out just as these, in their rooftop roost, were hooting now.

Pedro Darry, standing beside him – they'd been watching Ordinaries at foot-ball – had said, "There are great gifts, that still come too costly."

Baj had supposed Pedro meant that wonderful gift of riding flying – and couldn't imagine a cost too great for that…

"Look there!" A Shrike – Paul-Shrike – pointed down to the right, off the bridge's side. Baj and the others went near that edge cautiously, and saw, far below, hundreds of Boston's citizens walking… trotting along a frosted-ice road running west alongside the great crevasse. Some of those, blue-coated, were sailing the air.

"The Pens Staff, and Faculty people," Patience said. "Most live in West-buildings. They're running to their homes."

"Well done, Sylvia Wolf-General, to make matters easier for us," Richard said, and the distant alarm struck a deep, ringing, musical period for him.

"Yes, until they come back, and bring other citizens with them. – But still, good for us now. There'll be only a few sentries left in the galleries; none are ever allowed inside the Pens." Patience turned away, and trotted down the bridge's slope – lifting a little off the ice now and then, as if she were a winter crow, half-hopping, half-flying a pace or two, so the others had to run – some sliding, skidding perilously – to keep up.

Baj, breathing out dragon-breaths of frost, managed to stay beside her – and Nancy caught up. "… Patience, your son is here?"

"No." Patience answered her from a little height in the air. "Maxwell will be in Creche-solitary off River Street." She smiled. "He so frightens them by dreaming the truth of things – as I was frightened when he dreamed the truth of me."

"Then go to him," Baj said.

Patience shook her head, white hair breezing in the wind. "I promised – promised this first…" Then there was no more stepping and half-flying, but she lifted and dove through the air, striped coat-tails flapping – and was down off the bridge and across the wide landing to the fourth-floor gallery, where she landed as Baj and the others followed, running over rough ice.

"That fucking flying," Richard said, lumbering along… Leaning against a huge, carved, gallery pillar for a moment, to catch his breath, Baj felt its frozen mass even through his parley's fur. "There are only the occas on the floor above – the top floor, and the roof?"

"Yes," Patience said. She was standing on one foot like a chimney stork, taking her own odd rest. "- Their home-roost and nursery."

"Do we go up?" Nancy's red crest of hair was powdered with frost, her narrow face pinched and pale with cold.

Patience shook her head. "The mothers who tend those daughters are… past killing." Boston's great bell of alarm tolled its distant regular stroke as she spoke. "- And in the cellars beneath the building, the big mampies are stabled – born only to be ground-ridden."

"Their mothers?"

"Their mothers die, giving birth to them."

The pillared corridors, one side open to the air, ran distant to either side of them, but Patience – apparently rested enough – turned to their right and trotted that way, small swift muk-boots crunching over floor-ice striped wavering by the columns' lamp shadows. Baj, Nancy, and the others trooped behind her, Richard humming to himself under his breath.

Baj saw, down the way, a naked young man standing to the left at the cloister wall, staring at them as they came. He had a roll of writing paper under his arm… Patience ran past him, then Baj, Nancy… then Richard.

"Who?" the young man called. Perhaps meaning them – perhaps asking who threatened Boston's gate.

Baj heard a single shriek as one of the Shrikes, trotting behind them, speared that young man. Turning to look back, he saw him down, kicking, struggling in the crimson and blue coils of his intestines. His writing papers were unfurled, lifting on the cavern wind… shifting out between ice pillars into vacancy over the great crevasse.

"These stairs," Patience said, rose a little in the air, spun left, and seemed to fall away down steep frost-white steps, Baj and Nancy going after side-by-side, with Richard's heavy boot-steps and the softer shush and thud of the Shrikes' footfalls coming behind.

They reached a landing, turned and went the next flight down. Baj heard a Shrike slip on the steps behind him, fall, then scramble up… Patience led to an iron gate set deep into the ice, and locked with a chain and heavy round mechanical key-turn. It stood sturdy for three clanging strokes of Richard's ax – then the key-turn's thick shank broke with a snap, the chain fell free, and Richard set his shoulder against the bars and shoved the gate squealing open.

They stepped into a wide inside corridor lit by hanging lamps swaying on their chains in a bitter breeze – a long corridor that seemed to run the building's breadth. Patience led the way down it. There were iron doors spaced well apart along both walls; the door frames, also iron, were set as the gate had been, into rounded, thick blue ice. "Inquiry," Patience called as they passed a door. "The Corridor of Inquiry and Advancement…"

Passing one door, then another, Baj saw their metal was smeared thick with black, pitchy grease – and supposed all Boston's iron must be, or rust away.

"Inquiry?" Nancy said, and as if a door had heard her, it clanked, groaned, then swung open as Baj turned to face it.

An old man in a long blue coat stepped though the doorway, leaving spacious rustling darkness behind him, and bringing the odor of babies' manure. He carried a leather parcel on his left shoulder. There was a soft chorus of "Good-bye… " behind him, as the iron door swung shut.

Apparently preoccupied, his head turned to the bundle on his shoulder, the old man started at the gleam of Baj's drawn rapier, and froze, standing still. A pale hairless chest, its flesh fallen, was revealed where the greatcoat fell open, and Baj saw the Boston man was naked beneath the cloth. Naked, and barefoot on the ice.

Astonished, the old man stared at Baj, at the Shrikes- – now standing at ease, leaning on their javelins.

"Who are you?" A voice cracked with age.

"Visitors," Patience called, and turned back to join them.

" 'Visitors.'" An echo from the leather bundle on the old man's shoulder. The bundle stirred, spread a veiny, delicate wing, and Baj saw it was a Mailman. He'd seen one once, at Island – and been told it brought a message from Map-New Mexico, concerning Roamer raids. But this was within arm's reach. He stared, and the Mailman stared back. Shriveled, an owl's size, it had a little baby's head, a baby's considering blue eyes.