The Last Green Tree Page 11

  He was numb from shock and filled with a pain that hit him acutely at odd moments. Prin had died under his charge. Few Prin had ever died in service, almost none during the Conquest; it was possible to kill a single Prin easily enough, a pair of Prin with some difficulty, but the common wisdom held that the choirs of ten or more could not be hurt except by one another. Since the Oregal was controlled by Great Irion, this eliminated any question of rebellion within the ranks, and so the Prin’s aura of invincibility had never been shaken. Until today. A choir of a hundred lay dead. A dozen choirs of ten dead and three more missing. Other individuals killed while serving in the millennial choirs that were still in operation, when no Prin had ever before died while serving in one of the grand choirs.

  A thing was here, on this world, a power that was more than a match for the Fukate Ten Thousand, more than a match for Hormling Enforcement.

  Would the Mage come herself? Had she closed the gate, and could she open it again?

  Where was Great Irion?

  Vekant was in kei-state, meditating in the word-space with the Choir while seated in his body in the chair in front of his broad window. He and the Choir were defending the perimeter of the twin cities against further attacks from the northern armies, while at the same time allowing refugees from the surrounding countryside into the cities to take such shelter as they could find.

  A fear had taken hold of Vekant and would not leave him. He had come to the room to sit with it, to look at it, this fear. Some voice, some cantor of strong ability, was searching for him through all the mazes of the Prin chorus; some thought was aimed at Vekant, knowing him to be the center of the voices that held the city closed against the armies that had overrun the rest of Jharvan.

  “How many times did we drill and train for times like this one?” he asked aloud. “Why did I never believe a day like this would come?”

  “It’s hard to believe in trouble when you’ve had peace as long as we have,” said Shoren, his Cleric of the Left, seated quietly in a dark corner. She was never allowed to leave his presence while he was in the pivot of an active choir; he often forgot her presence altogether. She must have thought Vekant was addressing her rather than simply talking to himself. She was youngish for a Prin of her rank, in her sixties, training to serve as juduvar in a century choir while assisting Vekant in his duties as chief cantor of the Ten Thousand.

  “We felt nothing in the north on this scale. Did we?”

  “No, sir. I’ve been in every choir with you, I’ve never heard anything like this.”

  “It makes my teeth ache, it’s not like words at all.”

  “Did the cantor want me to have someone open Cueredon Tower?”

  “No.” He shook his head. He had a dread of the place. Only the Drune liked to walk on towers like Cueredon; they could imagine themselves striding the high place like the wizards of old times in Iraen, stirring the wind and calling storms out of the Barrier Mountains. “I’m no good on the high place.”

  “I could call for an operator.”

  “Do we have anyone qualified?”

  “Eshen,” she said. “She’s uluvarii and fourth rank, she could stand there.”

  “I hate to put a solitary Drune on a tower.”

  “We have Seris and Faltha, too. They could go with her.”

  A pair of Malei-Prin and a fourth-rank Drune. Seris and Faltha were the best pair in the choir. He nodded. “I’ll send the tower keys to Eshen, tell her to expect my personal Hilda to bring them.”

  Shoren went to find the data operator. Since the Prin were not able to maintain links with the Surround, they required the services of data specialists trained to avoid disturbing chant-work. Vekant failed to recognize today’s young man, but he appeared steady and knew to keep himself out of sight until he was needed.

  Vekant could see Cueredon Tower from the window of his bedroom; close enough that one could feel the mass of the stone, the size of a modern office skyscraper. The Mage had built this tower, bringing a team of Tervan out of Iraen for the work; the stones were fitted seamlessly, exactly joined, no mortar. The high place on top of the tower was a device of solo operators like the Drune, and from it they could have an effect equal to the Ten Thousand, since the towers borrowed from the strength of Great Irion himself. This was something of a fearful thought for Vekant, for whom the idea of using true language by himself was in some way alien. The assignment to stand in a tower was dangerous to give over to a Drune who might prove to be a rival to Vekant in terms of Prin politics afterward. What if Eshen should prove more effective from Cueredon than Vekant from the pivot of the Fukate Choir?

  While he was watching, Cueredon came alight; the top was too distant for him to see any figure on it, but he could imagine tiny Eshen striding about in the wind, getting a feel for the place, waking up the stones, with Seris and Faltha waiting at the lip of the stairs, not daring themselves to stand directly on the high place.

  With the tower active, the defense of the twin cities went better, and choirs working with Enforcement brought down some of the mantises that had entered the city. Construct troops were no match for the Prin at close range and kept their distance, but the frontline choirs were not able to press any advantage. The cantors among the rebel army, still unseen, were countersinging against the Prin very effectively. A line was established, on either side of which one kind of true language become too strong for the other. As this resolved itself around the twin city, the perimeter proved to be a remarkably regular circle with its center point on the Citadel; more specifically, fixed on the high place over Cueredon.

  Refugees filled the city to overflowing, camped along all the streets, thick in every alley, most guarding a few precious crates of possessions or sleeping around a putter loaded with their household goods. Police were keeping good order, and where the Prin were on patrol nobody was thinking of looting. Immense as the city was, its population swelled to bursting with newcomers. The governor had his hands full trying to keep every mouth fed.

  Another thousand Prin had returned to the city. More were in transit, but others were protecting pockets of survivors and dared not move from whatever sanctuary they had found. Mantises of all sizes and the flock-creatures of many configurations roamed the countryside looking for stragglers. As far as could be learned, most of the continent was in the hands of the invaders after only a few short hours of attack. Enforcement had been unable to provide air cover of any kind, and no one had heard from the Twelfth Fleet, the planetary fleet on guard around Red Star, or from the Ninth Colonial Navan’ Fleet, which was assigned to protect the coast of Jharvan. The Prin were defending and had no means of making any kind of attack.

  The Anilyn Gate remained closed, nothing moving through it in either direction, no transmission from Senal or from the other half of the Hormling universe since the first moments of the attack.

  Vekant assigned a novice to attend Commander Rui, to give her a kind of wakefulness that left her more fit for what she had to do. The other option was to allow her medical people to drug her into wakefulness; in Vekant’s opinion, an Erejhen herbalist could do a better job prescribing for people than most of the Hormling doctors, who were entirely too fascinated by their pharmacology. When the commander was more wakeful, they had a meal together in her briefing room.

  “Their army appears to be all ashore now, there’s nothing else coming across the Vad. But we’re still hearing reports about armies in the east and west.”

  “I expect there are reinforcements waiting on the docks at Jarutan. Lord knows how many of these constructs they’ve got.”

  “Their transport flitters crossed back to Ajhevan hours ago, and there’s no sign of them coming back.”

  “Numbers?”

  “Two million constructs.” She stopped to let the numbers sink in. “We had no intelligence that indicated anything like those numbers. Along with the constructs, about a hundred thousand human independence fighters, which was what we expected. Maybe a thousand mantises, no
way to know how many of the flocks. We had no idea any of those creatures even existed. Untold numbers of botanical weapons from the Dirijhi. Hundreds of the black pits growing, most of them in the areas where the mantises are operating, so we know there’s a connection there. We’ve counted about two hundred chill-trees within the twin cities perimeter, but we expect there are still a lot of seed around for those and we’ll get more.”

  “Do you know what this black slime is?”

  “We think it’s some kind of eating machine, not quite as small as nanobots, but basically an artificial shit-maker—it eats everything it comes in contact with and turns part of it into black shit and part of it into more eater-machines. They can adapt to eat different materials. They only make a certain number of themselves, too, so they can go on eating efficiently. We have stuff like this; this is mass-destruction stuff, not people but infrastructure.”

  “The mantises?”

  “Some kind of carbon construct. Powered by what it eats—like all the construct troops, too, by the way. A carbon mantis can smash through most construction like it’s not even there. I just got this, too. Oh, mother.” She looked at the window in the frame in front of her. One of the mantises was ejecting something from the rear end of what was apparently its digestive tract. “Media guys have footage showing these mantis things taking a crap, and they say the black pits start to spread after that. So the mantises may be the source for the eater-machines. They eat us and make these machines out of us.”

  “They’d need to eat some metal, too, wouldn’t they? And other things?”

  She shrugged. “They do. We’ve seen it. They can eat an armored tank and snack on the personnel inside for a couple of hours.”

  “The flocks?”

  “We have no idea. The creatures look like some kind of special effect from the Surround; I’ve seen footage. There’s a flurry of shapes, all colors; they fly into a funnel shape and get dense, and then you’d swear that it was a person in front of you, not some kind of multiple thing. They give off heat when they’re assembled but not when they’re a flock. In either form you can’t shoot them; it’s like trying to hit one of you Prin.” She smiled at him. “From what I hear, I mean.”

  Over the past few hours Vekant had grown accustomed to new levels of fear, though at times his terror rose to a peak and he had to breathe deeply, like now. He pretended to be reflecting on the image in the frame and slowly got himself under control.

  “What about the Mage?” Rui asked.

  “You spoke to Hanson yourself, right? To what’s left of him on this side of the gate, I mean.”

  She nodded, blowing out a breath.

  “Then you know we won’t get any help from anyone until the Anilyn Gate opens again.”

  From outside, from somewhere rather far away, a shock ran through him all at once.

  The same shock had overtaken the Fukate Choir.

  He was no longer seeing the room in front of him, not altogether; he was seeing from the pivot of the choir glimpses of a far battlefield and had a feeling of oppression, of something moving toward him.

  After a few of these impressions the overall image came clear.

  Coming ashore now was an operator, vast, engulfing. A song began that would not but be heard, no matter how ragged or sharp, no matter how the listener longed to turn away.

  Here was a cloud of language to engulf him.

  “Vekant? What’s wrong?”

  “Something just arrived.” He faltered, his heart pounding. Touching his hand to his brow, closing his eyes, he was aware of his stricken appearance and wondered whether these other people would understand it.

  Commander Rui looked at her staff, who fumbled among their frames. “You look as if this is serious.”

  Once Vekant had met Great Irion, when Vekant was invested as cantor of the Ten Thousand, a trip to the far north country of Iraen. The trip through the green landscape and the audience with the ancient wizard had carved themselves deep into his memory. Vekant had stood in Great Irion’s presence in one of the stone halls of the House of Winter; his presence was vast like this, a tidal wave, sweeping over everything around him. Vekant looked at the Commander, feeling the huge presence moving over the city, feeling the fear of all his choirs.

  “A single flitter just arrived, nothing other than scattered traffic is moving over the Vad,” said one of the officers.

  Commander Rui nodded.

  “We’re not going to be able to help you for very much longer,” Vekant said. “The rebels have a third-level operator coming ashore. We can all feel it.”

  “Third level?”

  Vekant shook his head. “There’s no time to explain. We can’t hold our perimeter against this cantor, Commander. I don’t know exactly what this creature is, but it’s going to take us all apart.”

  “One creature?”

  “Commander. Great Irion is a third-level operator. This is his peer.”

  Then, blackness, a concussion like an explosion, a cringing feeling of terror, and Vekant dropped to his knees.

  Neither Vekant nor the Fukate Choir had been called on to sing any of the serious fugues in the lifetime of anyone currently in the choir; few if any of the Prin had ever used the chant to kill, not for the generations since the Conquest, which had been peaceful. There were perhaps a hundred Drune in the choir and some of them had sung death songs in the Ildrune language; from them came the initial feeling of panic.

  For Vekant the feeling was like a blinding light, or, if framed in terms of noise, like a sudden cacophony filling his head. He had a feeling of outrage, almost petulant, that this was one indignity too many, that suddenly he was no longer master of his head-space. After the noise came a searing pain that dropped him to his knees, and he felt the shuddering through the whole choir as if it were a tangible physical event, as if the ground were shaking, the floor buckling under him. The Prin song faltered and stopped.

  The sound of the enemy cantor was like a sawing along all Vekant’s nerves. Not a syllable, not a word could he understand, but the intent, the taste of the power, and the stunned silence that followed among the Prin were all unmistakable. Vekant could feel the weight of the enemy as if he were bearing her on his back; she was amused at his fear and wanted him to know she was a she. She had in some way caught Vekant and held him and he could not get off his knees, could not rise, could not remember where he was.

  Someone was trying to tend him, and he remembered, after the first panic subsided, that he was with Commander Rui and her staff; somewhere in his distant body he was knocked to the floor with these good people trying to help him; the hand of the new enemy was inside him by then, and the awful sound of her voice was all he could think about. No meaning that he could understand, just the scent, the taste of her intent, that she was singing many ways for them to die, that she was counting them and weighing them.

  The Prin and Drune alike had faced only one another in such tests before; training was nothing like the savagery of the real thing. The whole choir was open to her; the whole Hormling army was open to her; the whole of the twin cities were open to her. The Prin had been fighting for control of the weather even before the war, but now all their control was stripped away.

  She stood in front of Vekant in the room. No one else was there. The room had changed, a very white room, plain walls, dark floor, intricate black and while tile forming a mosaic that drew the eye toward her, the gray-wrapped figure gesturing, four spindly arms, body invisible, a face like a mask. She beckoned with one long, double-hinged arm and he approached though not on his feet; why was the floor so detailed whereas the walls were a blur, the ceiling a mist? The pattern of the mosaic shifted: fast, sometimes, as if streams of current were rushing through it; slow, sometimes, like a snake flexing its body in the sun. Vekant prostrated himself on his belly at her bark-covered feet; he assumed whatever posture she granted him.

  She felt vast. She surrounded him in such a way that there was no question of struggle. With a sho
ck, he understood. The Oregal of Great Irion was torn to shreds; there was only, here and now, her voice, whatever these sounds were. Again he felt the petulance, the irritation, the wish that he could sulk, insane impulses mixed with his panic. Why now, when he was so tired? Why him, when he had never done anything to deserve…

  Was she looking at him? She must know that he was the pivot of the Choir, she must have brought him to her for that reason. She had shaped this space and trapped him in it. Did she mean to talk to him? On her mask he found no sign of a mouth, but this was the mind-space, anything could happen here.

  She had to be a power of the third circle, like Irion, to feel so vast, to strip the whole Prin choir out of the Oregal, to shut down the song so quickly and completely.

  Who are you? Are you the one we always thought would come, the one who wants to take the Anilyn Gate, or to take for yourself the one who makes it? Why are you here?

  From her no feeling, no attempt to communicate, only the shifting pattern of black and white, nearly hypnotic, underfoot; no clear sense of her at all except her glee, her distinct pleasure that he thought of her as “she”; the distinct impression that he had gotten something right, though there was not a hint of a woman or of any female characteristic, or male characteristic, for that matter, in the form in front of him. She was like a spindly tree, in fact, tough in the bark.