Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“Better now than thirty seconds later, when we all might have been blasted with balefire,” she retorted. “Child of the Sun—”

“Smith,” he said.

“Interesting choice of an alias. Well, Smith, have you had any strange dreams recently? Any kind of psychic or spiritual conversation with your ancestors?”

Smith was unwilling to talk about his dream, but she looked earnestly into his eyes. Her own were wide, dark and lovely. Unwilling, he found himself saying: “I might have. But it didn’t make any sense.”

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” she said, and patted his cheek. “That’s all right. You just lie down here and rest, now, Smith. And if you feel the least bit odd, especially in that hand, please tell us. Will you do that, Smith dear?”

“All right,” he said, too dizzy to be annoyed by her tone of voice. He sank back on the cot and closed his eyes.

He heard the rustle of her gown as she went somewhere else, and the faint thump and crackle as someone added wood to the fire. He heard Lord Ermenwyr settle down, muttering to himself, and a noise suggestive of a boot flask being uncorked and drunk from…

Sound went away, and he was flying over a plain, and he knew so many terrible things.

There below him was the city of Troon. Burning in the air above it was the formula for its destruction: a certain smut introduced into the barley, four ounces of a certain poison poured into its central well, one letter containing a certain phrase sent anonymously to its duke, one brick pried loose from the foundation of a certain house. These things accomplished, Troon would fall. And then…

Here was Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees. One water conduit casually vandalized and one firebrand tossed into a certain tree, hung with moss, would begin the sequence of events that would kill the city. And its survivors might flee, but not to Troon, and then…

Here was Mount Flame City, seething, pulsing, so overripe with clan war that all it would take would be one precisely worded insult painted on a certain wall, and all four of its ruling houses would lie in ashes. And so would the great central marketplace of Mount Flame, and so would all the little houses who depended on it.

Here was Karkateen: a brick thrown through a window. A suggestion made to a shopkeeper. A rumor spread. A sewer grating removed. These things accomplished, in a certain order and at a certain moment, and Karkateen would be gone, and with it its great library, and with the library all the answers to certain desperate questions that would soon be asked in Troon, in Konen Feyy, in Mount Flame. Deliantiba and Blackrock were already in the throes; they’d need only the slightest push to complete their own work. And Salesh…

But wasn’t it grand, to have secret knowledge of such terrible things?

His arm hurt.

But wasn’t it a finer destiny than he had ever supposed he was intended for, high and lonely though it might be? Being the Chosen Instrument of the Gods? His arm hurt but he was flying high, beside a sharp version of himself that was cool and clever as he had always wanted to be, an elegant stranger made of diamond and chrome, the Killer, sneering down from a great distance at the insects crawling below. Stupid bastards. Wasteful. Quarrelsome. Banal. Ignorant and proud of it. And every year more screaming brats born to swell their numbers, and every year more urban blight on the land to house them all. Better if the whole shithouse went up in flames. Everyone said so. His arm hurt.

“Heavens, what’ve you done to your arm?” Mrs. Smith was peering at it.

“It really hurts,” he told her, obscurely proud. “It’s turned into blue steel. Isn’t it fine and lonely?”

“You ought to run that under the cold tap, dear,” she advised.

“No!” he said. “Because then it’d rust. It’s better to burn than to rust. Everybody says so.”

She just laughed sadly, shaking her head.

Smith sat up, gasping, drenched with cold sweat, and saw Lord Ermenwyr scrambling to his feet. The monks were hastening out of the chamber. Someone, somewhere, was shouting.

“What’s happening?” Smith asked.

“The Steadfast Orphans have called for a parley,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” the lordling replied. “They don’t want to talk to us. I think we’d best eavesdrop, though, don’t you? Just in case the holy brothers allow themselves to be persuaded, and we have to make a hasty escape?”

“Can we do that?” Smith got to his feet and swayed. The room spun gently for a moment, and he found Willowspear beside him, keeping him upright.

“He should rest,” Willowspear told his lord, who shook his head grimly.

“Not alone. He needs someone to keep an eye on him, don’t you, Smith? We’re not going far. I found a nice little spy hole while you were asleep. This way, if you please.”

They set off down another of the winding corridors in the rock. Smith walked without much help, and was mildly surprised that his foot wasn’t giving him trouble. He had a feeling that if he took his boot off, he’d never get it back on; but who knew how much longer he’d live, anyway? His arm, however, was still throbbing.

They rounded a bend, and he was temporarily dazzled by what seemed a blaze of illumination at the end of the passage. As they approached, it resolved into wan afternoon light, coming through a barred and partially shuttered opening in the rock. Closer still and he saw that pigeons had nested in here for generations, and the last few feet of the passage were chalky with ancient guano, littered with feathers and bits of old nest.

“Phew.” Lord Ermenwyr drew out his smoking tube and lit it. “Nasty, eh?”

He stuck the tube between his teeth, clasped his hands together under his coattails, and stood scowling down through the bars. Smith and Willowspear edged closer, treading with care, and looked down too.

They saw the ranks of green tents, and the assembled Yendri standing in tight formation before them, tall unsmiling figures each in an identical baldric, each one bearing a simple cane tube. A shimmer in the air, a faint haze only, betrayed the presence of the Adamant Wall that kept them from coming closer; now and again a hapless bird or insect struck it, bouncing away stunned or dead. Close to the Wall stood the Yendri leader, cloaked in green sewn with white stars, and he was addressing someone unseen, speaking at great length.

“I can’t understand him,” said Smith.

“He’s speaking Old Yendri,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “Nobody’s used it in years. It’s an affectation. They speak it to show how pure they are.”

“Pure!” Willowspear glared down at them. “After what they’ve done?”

“What’s he saying?” Smith asked.

“Oh, about what you’d expect,” Lord Ermenwyr replied, puffing smoke. “Hand over the abominations, that we may cleanse the world of them and so bring the Suffering-Deluded-Ensorcelled Daughter so much closer to sanity and blah blah blah. I think he’s just warming up to his main demand, though.”

Someone else was speaking now: Greenbriar, out of sight directly below them. He sounded angry, accusatory.

“Good for him,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked. “He’s telling them off properly. Asking the Grand Master how he dares to wear the Star-Cloak. And … now he’s just said he can’t drop the Adamant Wall. And … ha! He just said something that doesn’t really translate, but the closest equivalent would be, ‘Go home and simulate mating with a peach.’ ”

There was a crunch of twigs. Svnae came up behind them, bending low and holding the train of her gown up out of the debris. She had slung a bow and a quiver of arrows over one shoulder.

“I’d never have thought he’d use that kind of language,” she said in mild surprise, peering over Lord Ermenwyr’s shoulder at the scene below. “However would a monk learn about the Seventeenth Shameful Ecstasy of—” She noticed Smith and broke off, blushing.