Karl Schroeder - Ventus

"That's what we came to find out," said Marya. "Let's get back to the ship."

"No!" Jordan ran several steps ahead. "We're nearly there!"

"Nearly where?" They had come to an almost vertical cliff—the end of a long sinuous drape of Titans' Gate stone. The cliff was seamless, and at least fifty meters high.

"There's a door into the Gates here," said Jordan.

There was a flash of lightning, and moments later a grumble of thunder from fairly nearby. Tamsin pointed up through the trees. "Here they come."

The Heaven hooks were descending on the valley. They were no less impressive in daylight than they had been at night; it was simply clearer now what they were. Three of the vagabond moons were edging over the valley; together they would fill the sky over it from one end to the other. Their very bottommost sections had petalled open, and now long black gantries and cables were unreeling. From a distance these looked delicate, but the gantries were thicker than the trees below them.

As Axel watched, lightning stuttered from the cables of the lead craft. A long line of explosions stitched across the valley floor.

"If we're going to get to the ship we have to leave now," said the Voice .

Jordan shook his head. "The swans are waiting if it takes off. They haven't moved against it because the Hooks are going to take care of it."

"How do you know that?"

"I used to rely on Mediation to relay what they were saying. I don't need to anymore. I can hear them myself now."

They all stopped walking and stared at Jordan. He put his hands on his hips and glared back.

"Are you gonna argue with me?" he said belligerently.

Surprised, Axel laughed.

"But, the ship!" wailed Marya.

"The ship is about to be eaten," said Jordan with a shrug. "We're going this way." He pointed to the cliff.

Marya glanced at Axel; he shrugged.

"Apparently we are," he said.

"What are they doing? I gave no orders for them to move!"

Lavin stood perilously near the open door of the vagabond moon. He needed this vantage point to watch the proceedings below. It was obvious from here that three of the other moons had broken formation and were moving, like ponderous floating islands, to cover the valley.

Lavin's own moon had sailed south and swept around behind the Titan's Peaks. For a while as the moon rotated he had seen nothing but ocean, sunlit for a few kilometers then abruptly plunged in darkness. Then the Titans' Gates had appeared again, very close.

The moon had been moving with frightening speed. Although the wind didn't penetrate the doors, somehow, he could hear it roaring, and all across the floor of the moon the guy wires popped and groaned as the great craft strove to keep its shape. Almost continuous flashes of lightning lit its interior, and the smell of ozone was overpowering. Once or twice as they passed the lower peaks south of the Gates, brilliant bolts had shot down, apparently from right under Lavin's feet, shattering wind-sculpted pine trees on the tops of the mountains below.

A different Lavin would have found the experience thrilling, as many of his men obviously did. They were keyed up to an almost intolerable degree, waiting in their ranks for the order to move.

A bast sauntered over to Lavin and turned its amber eyes to where he pointed. "We move to obliterate a threat in the valley," it said. "It is not your concern."

"A goodly portion of my army is in that valley."

The bast shook its head. "They have been pulled back, except for a few squads that are nearing the stairways. Your suggestion to attack from this direction was heeded and acted upon. Your army is not threatened."

"Then you have no need for it anymore?"

The bast shrugged. "For the moment, no."

And if we succeed here, not at all . Lavin glanced past the bast. Far up the distant curve of the moon's floor, two men were discreetly clamping something to one of the guy wires that crisscrossed the interior of the moon. Four other squads were returning from doing the same thing at various levels up and down the slopes. The basts had been distracted by questions and deliberate mistakes these last few minutes; all was nearly in place.

Lavin nodded curtly to the creature. "Nonetheless you're forcing our hand. Moving on the valley looks a lot like moving against the Gates. They're going to expect an attack from above now."

"We are in position. It is no longer a concern."

Lavin resisted a very real urge to push the bast out the door. Instead, he took a deep breath and looked down. If he had faith in his own body and ignored the suggestion that the world was turning in two diametrically opposed directions at the same time, he had found he could look down through the doors quite safely.

The northernmost Gate lay directly below. The moon had slowed dramatically, and was also rising. They were a good two hundred meters above the flat top of the peak. He could see their shadow slide across the grey stone tables with their dotted pine trees. Vapour rose from a number of suspiciously round pits there. There were also a surprising number of buildings; as he watched, tiny running figures appeared around several of them.

"We're rising, not descending," Lavin pointed out. "Are you proposing we jump?"

The bast shook its long head. "The wind gusts here are strong and unpredictable. It would also be bad if we shorted out on the Gate machinery. We will lower your men using the Heaven hooks."

Even as it said this, something huge and black appeared below, blotting out the view. It took a few seconds for Lavin to realize what it was: a large railed platform, pinioned at the sides by huge metal arms. The arms extended off somewhere underneath the moon. In consternation and awe he watched it rise smoothly and silently until it blocked the door with a deep thump that he felt through his feet.

He turned and waved at the marshalls. The moon's other doors were blocked too, he saw. The Hooks should be able to lower a couple hundred men at a time to the peak. That should be enough, depending on how quickly they did it.

"Move out!" The men had been champing at the bit for some action; now they surged forward, and didn't have to be prompted to leap off the stable black surface of the moon onto the metal platforms below. When the platforms were full the marshalls whistled and the surge stopped. Immediately there was a lurch and the platforms began to drop away. The men on the one below Lavin started shouting and most fell to their hands and knees—but the descent was smooth and except for the icy wind that now whirled through the doors as well, he was sure it would be painless.

For all that he mistrusted the Winds, he knew they were efficient. They would not waste his men in the descent.

Jordan had been anticipating this moment for days. What he hadn't imagined was that he would be completely soaking wet and freezing cold when it came.

He stood shivering with the others at one end of a gigantic chamber that must penetrate deep into the mountain. It must be at least a hundred meters broad, and as high. It didn't really have a floor, more a lattice of pipes both mammoth and small. They were all uniformly grey and unmarked. The tangle was so complex that the eye lost itself in detail after only a few meters. Jordan had just spent the past few minutes trying to figure out a way across the vast maze, but every route he traced either got lost or ended in an impassable drop or roll under a bigger pipe.

"I have our route," said the woman whom the others called the Voice . "Follow me." She stepped out confidently onto a pipe as broad as a house and began walking.

Axel and Marya followed without hesitation. Tamsin shrugged, and went too. After a moment Jordan followed.