Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (30 page)

59 Stages of Chaos

Black towers bled into the soiled green of urban dusk. Silver tube lamps cast their sickly glow over the grated walkway. Phylites slipped silently from one pool of light to the next, eyes white-rimmed with fear, unaware of one another’s existence.

“You see?” I said.

“What?”

“It’s happening. Just here, just tonight. But this is how all Enoch will be soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every man his own phyle.”

The first positive sign of the riots was a rail-car burning on the tracks, a black frame filled with flame. Now we began to see marauding bands of helots. It seemed that Vol had successfully channeled their wrath toward the phylites.

“Seila,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I have this feeling that I’ve been dropped into a written history, with the power to change it if I will, though it be disaster to do so. I feel almost that I might meet my own self soon, or see myself from a distance, going about some task like a piece of machinery, or a hero in an old lay.”

“It’s because the doings tonight have been so carefully      orchestrated,” she said. “You knew the plan ahead of time, and have been living with the expectation of its coming to pass.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “What’s happening tonight is part of the natural development of the Ages of Iron and of Peace. Who am I to interfere? And yet I am interfering. I’ve already changed a great deal. I’m releasing built-up tension, like a healer lancing a boil. Bringing down the chimeras so quickly saved Jairus’ people from being slaughtered. And the Misfit’s defeat bought the phylites enough time to flee the area. Now, even if there is an explosion, it won’t be a fraction as deadly.

“But that isn’t what was supposed to have happened. Jairus was to have bombed the rift. He’d planned that from the beginning, as suggested or encouraged by Zilla, no doubt. It was his parting gift to the phylites. How he hates the Cheiropt! And yet his will is no more than the Cheiropt’s appendage.

“And these riots—they were incited by Vol with the purpose of causing the leak in the first place. Most likely everything was already rigged for it. The surviving helots would have butchered the surviving phylites in retribution, with the chimeras spreading terror over the city. That was Zilla’s touch. The chimeras made sure to remove the Misfit’s only reason to save himself while leaving his warships intact. Power was what he wanted, and the only route that remained open to him was self-annihilation.

“Do you see? Zilla has some kind of influence on how things are construed here. Jairus was to have been represented as having released something he couldn’t control into the city, something that devoured his own people. Zilla wants all Enoch to ponder the wisdom of letting cancers like Jairus’ phyle grow in the city.”

The lower stories of a nearby tower exploded, its windows vomiting white flame, blowing crumpled helots and phylites into the black trough of the railway. There was a thundering groan, and then it was crashing down like a felled tree, breaking into pieces that smashed against the tower on the far side of the concourse. Seila and I turned our backs to the blast as the shockwave of dust-choked air struck us.

The ruin blocked our way now, so we turned up a side street. The phylites were left behind. The strip of dying sky was a polluted river over our heads.

“But what’s the point of all this?” Seila said. “You seem to have fathomed
what
is happening, but why is it happening?”

“They aim to send a shudder through the vegetative oversoul of Enoch,” I answered. “The world-city is a chariot drawn by two schyrothim. The schyrothim are cajolery and chaos. Zilla holds the reins. On one hand we have the soothing voice of the Cheiropt and its increasingly ineffective control. Its proclamations of peace and prosperity are like jabs now. On the other hand we have disasters like this one, flowing from tumors coddled by the Cheiropt itself. The chimeras were to have been heralds of chaos. They’re gone now, but there will be others. The people will be whipped into a frenzy of insecurity, because the things they experience don’t match up with the message they hear.”

“Why wouldn’t they just reject the message?”

“Because they want to believe it. They want to be slaves. When enough irruptions of chaos have taken place, Zilla will descend openly upon Enoch, and they’ll beg him to rule over them with an iron rod. They’ll beg him to make experience match message. For all his authority, though, he’ll just end up a powerless figurehead. The Cheiropt will guide every moment of every man’s waking life.”

“What makes you so certain? How can you see what’s happening here tonight and draw such large conclusions?”

“Enoch is like a bed of scale-tree coals. If Zilla lights small fires here and there, soon the whole thing will be smoldering, slow but very hot. Tonight I’m working to put out one tiny flame. But another will spring up somewhere else soon. Trust me.”

“It sounds like you have everything worked out, then,” said Seila.

I glanced at her, but it was too dark to see her face. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” I said.

“What?”

“Myself. What makes me so central? I was drawn into this from the first.”

“You explained that before,” she said. “Jairus thought you were a Druin, so your arrival in Granny’s dungeons made him suspect some connection with Vaustus and me.”

“Yes,” I said. “But that was before I’d received the one clue that doesn’t fit in anywhere.”

“What’s that?”

“On the night after I first saw you, I received a written note at your room. It was the message that led me into the trap where I was almost infested. And I don’t think Jairus had anything to do with it. He promised you that he’d leave me alone. Whatever his faults, there’s no denying that he has his own brand of honor.”

“Well, it was sent by Zilla, then, or his agents. He didn’t want you interfering.”

“Yes, I know that. Assuredly. In fact, he told me so himself.
But it was written in Arrasene characters
. I mean, how could Zilla—”

I broke off because helots began pouring down the opposite side of the sunken plaza we were about to enter. They were lighting their way with brands and wielding tools as weapons. Vol was at their head. At first I thought he was leading them, but then I caught the look on his face. He was being driven by the mob.

“Another change,” I muttered. “Vol was to have gotten away. You had better stay back. Wait for me there.” I pointed to a dark doorway.

“What are you going to do?” she whispered.

“I want to see this.”

I went over to the parapet. Helots continued to pour down the stairs across from my vantage point, pushing the first-comers up the sides of the basin. The wonder-worker was driven by kicks and blows toward a bronze monument at the far end.

“You there,” I hissed to a helot just below me. “What has that man done?”

“He convinced us to rise up against the phylites,” the man said. “I was against it myself, but what can one man do? The women were left behind, and it’s just one giant gas chamber down there now. They’ve all been smothered or fallen prey to foul beasts. That maugreth will pay.”

I tried to tell him about the rescue, but the mob had already reabsorbed his personality. It was too late, anyway. Vol had been stripped naked and pinned like an insect to a board, face down, with nails driven through his hands and his feet. They set him up against the monument and began stoning him. His back and buttocks were soon a welter of blood. Unable to help himself, he kept trying to turn around to face his persecutors, his long teeth flashing in the firelight.

Then by some ill chance he caught sight of me. “That one!” he shrieked. “He knows me! He is always in my dreams!” Countless heads followed the wizard’s gaze. A thousand pink eyes were riveted on me.

“Are you his friend?” a voice called out. One or two of the nearest took a step in my direction. I turned and fled up the alley. Hundreds of feet pounded the stairs behind me.

“What is it?” cried Seila. “What’s happening?”

“The helots are coming. Run for it.” Together we dashed out into the street and turned up it. When we reached the next intersection a host of helots was pouring from the alley. Someone pointed at us.

“We’d better separate,” said Seila.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s you they’re after, and I’ll only slow you down. Lose them and meet me at the room I took you to that night.”

“So be it,” I said. “Good luck.” We set out in different directions.

60 Last Stand

It wasn’t hard to leave the helots behind. I lost myself in a deserted district to the north. The streets were like rivers of ink, for the gibbous moon had just begun to climb above the jagged teeth in the east.

I was hesitating in the middle of an intersection, wondering if I should begin to work my way toward our rendezvous, when a familiar whine sounded in my ears. A shadow swept down out of the night and struck me a pulpy blow. My armor protected me, but I was thrown to the pavement.

I got to my knees and drew my sword. It was glowing. I peered down the street, but it was impossible to make out anything in the murk. Just in time I threw myself down again and covered my neck with my hands. A shadow whirred by above me.

Now I was running, making for a bend in the street where the moonbeams fell along the buildings. The creature wheeled and pursued me. At the last instant I turned and got one glance of a pulpy mass suspended from a lopsided pentangle. I lifted my blade, and the thing shot by me on one side and lost itself in the shadows.

I sprinted down the street. As I passed an intersection a second chimera came at me from the side. I dodged it, getting in one blow, rolled, and went on.

Soon I was being dogged by a swarm of them. My heart sank. The pieces I’d left in the pit had regenerated. The chimeras hadn’t been defeated yet at all, and now there were more of them.

The street ended at the brink of a sudden drop. I was at the foundation’s edge. My refuge lay at the end of the shimmering causeway beyond. The idea occurred to me of drawing the creatures there and putting up some kind of defense, well outside the city. I bounded down to the bridge and dashed across to my island.

When I reached the base of my tower I began to scale its outer wall, afraid the creatures would lose interest if I used the stairs. I kept having to pause to defend myself against the onslaught. The cloud of spinning pentangles over my head was so thick now that it blotted out the stars.

I pulled myself over the parapet and turned to look across the swamp. My worry about losing the creatures had been groundless, for there, at the far end of the causeway, I saw a tiny white-robed figure gesticulating madly, directing the chimeras against me and me alone.

I set my back to a pillar and continued to fight. My only hope lay in cutting the creatures down and cauterizing their wounds with coals from the brazier. My blade flashed through the night. The pulpy parts piled up around me.

Something caught my eye through the swarm of shadows. The white light that had twice sought me out was roving across the rooftops of the city. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but it was still there, flying back and forth like a spotlight.

For a moment then my attention was on fighting. I cut down two more chimeras and looked again. The beam touched on a distant pinnacle taller than the rest, tightened, and became a pillar of fire. A growl of thunder reached my ears.

Still I kept up my fighting. Only a fraction of the chimeras had been cut down. I was being overpowered by numbers. They were continually shooting out their inner mouthparts and snapping at me. It was only a matter of time before one pierced the circle of my defense and cut away part of my face or my neck. I fought on with increasing despair.

Now the light was roving the city again. It swept back and forth, coming ever nearer. At last it slid across the swamp—Zilla was gone now—and came to rest on my own tower.

The light hardly reached me through the shadows that slid back and forth over the terrace like living things, but I perceived that it was brighter in some places than others. There were
characters
in the light, and the characters were
Arrasene
characters. One at a time I glimpsed them, piecing them slowly together while I continued to fight. At last I discerned what they said:
HIDE
.

I cut down one last creature and fled into the salon. Three followed me through the door. I ignored them and hid in the far corner, behind the organ.

The brilliance of a thousand noontide suns burst through the windows, shivering the glass into shards and vaporizing the shards. A crack like the report of doom at the end of things split the air, and the four winds howled like the world-serpent’s awakening.

And then all was still. I was blind and deaf for a moment. Slowly I made out the three chimeras lying helplessly on the floor. I walked over to them and sliced each in half. Then I stumbled out to the terrace.

The pavement was covered with cinders and ashes. Not one chimera remained alive. Stars were strewn through the sky overhead. Enoch glowed with pale fire. Narva was a burning eye over the city. Zilla was nowhere to be seen.

For a second the light returned. It formed the words:
SHE IS NOT FOR YOU
. Then all was darkness.

I went back into the salon, lit a torch from the brazier, and destroyed the flapping creatures on the floor.

61 Rendezvous

Dawn wasn’t far off. I strode briskly through the streets, disguised as a helot again. I circled the temple district and climbed the tall tower to see Jairus.

There I found what I had expected to see. All that remained of him was a pillar of black cinders. They’d crumbled a little, but the iron chain links had fused in the blast, so that the collar was suspended as it had been, seeming to float in the air.

Day was dawning when I reached Seila’s tower. She was in her refuge, waiting for me. She had changed her gown for one of white silk, and washed away the soot of battle and the grime of the streets, and arrayed her hair, and made her face lovely. She stood up when I opened the door.

“Well,” I said, “here I am.”

“What happened to you? Why were you gone all night?”

“The chimeras came back to life. They’re dead now, dead for good.”

I pulled off my hat and began to strip my gauze. Soon it lay in a nest at my feet. I stepped out of the pile, clad in only my breechclout and harness. I undid the latter and let it fall to the floor, too.

Seila’s eyes moved over my body. They were warm, almost melting, and her lips were full and moist. She came to me and wrapped her arms around my neck and bent down to kiss me.

We embraced one another like that for a long time. I noticed that she had dusted the mattress and drawn back the cover. I unlaced the back of her dress and drew it forward off her shoulders. It slid to the floor around her feet. She shivered as I ran my hands down her sides. I picked her up in my arms and bore her to the bed and lay with her.

Soon I was inside her. We were one flesh now; I seemed to look out from her eyes. Her hands were on my back, her legs locked behind my knees, her breasts pressed against my chest. I drove forward over and again, holding myself back until it was time.

And then her body went taut like a bowstring, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and her fingernails dug into my back. She cried out and wept a little.

Like a burst of fire, my essence invaded her inner universe, embracing the secret planets that hung there. And outer and inner space became one, and the universe walked in beauty, and I looked over it as the king of infinite space. In that instant, the scales fell from my eyes, and I beheld what was.

“Seila,” I whispered in her ear. I was still on top of her, inside of her.

“What is it?” she whispered back.

“Tell me his name.”

“Whose?”

“You know whose.”

She shook her head and kissed my shoulder. “He came to us out of the desert. It was the Sons of Taïs who found him, south of the Deserits, wandering aimlessly through the waste. His genius did Vaustus good service. He made marvelous engines for the Sun Mage, but in the end he became impatient with the cast-offs he was forced to work with. He refused to build war machines for Vaustus’ use and had to flee for his life.”

“Tell me his name,” I repeated.

“I knew him, Keftu. That’s why I left the Sanctuary. He never knew it, but I bore him a son. The son died at birth.”

“Tell me his name,” I said for the third time.

“His name,” whispered Seila, “is Astyges.”

Mellow light began to filter in through the lace curtains. The sun had risen over the Pelus, and its beams were falling on the opposite tower, making it a flame of green and gold.