"Take me to the underground way," Jordan commanded the terrified sentry. "And don't challenge me again." The sentry fell back, stammering apologies. Tamsin stared at Jordan in wonder as they followed him into the camp.

Before they got to the tumbled stones, a brilliant flash lit the sky from horizon to horizon. Moments later a deep and sustained rolling thunder fell across the ruins. Looking back, Jordan saw a tall spire of smoke and flame where the subterranean Wind had been. The Swans were spiralling up and away from the rubble.

He felt the searchlight gazes of the Swans. They were looking for something now; he was pretty sure he knew what—or rather, whom. "We need to get underground," he told Tamsin. "And stay there for a while."

The soldiers around the tunnel entrance scrambled out of the way of the glowing boy and the girl leading their horses. Jordan motioned for a man to take the reins of the mounts, then walked into the dark niche that housed the tunnel mouth.

"I'd love to do this to the guys at home," Jordan said. His glow lit up the entire chamber, showing clearly the dark slot of the tunnel. The glow was fading slowly as the mecha lost power.

They waited, while the Swans passed to and fro overhead. The Winds of Insolation, as Mediation had called them, could not see through the stone. The mecha of the soil were loyal to Mediation, and although Jordan heard the hurricane voices of the Swans demanding to know where the abomination that was Jordan Mason had gone, nothing answered. At least for now, they were safe.

After a long while the sound of scraping and footsteps came from the slot, and one after another, weary soldiers popped out and blinked at the afternoon sunlight. Jordan's glow had faded, and the soldiers were apathetic and ignored him. After the last one, an old man with a lantern emerged. Jordan's heart was in his mouth. He knew what he was going to see next, but he could scarcely believe it. When a man stepped into the light whose face he had only seen in mirrors, Jordan found himself tongue-tied. He simply stood there, as Armiger helped Megan, then Galas, out of the tunnel. Galas was dressed in tattered finery, Armiger in splendid armor. They looked like creatures of legend.

Armiger waved some device in his hands at the assembled soldiers. "Begone," he said. Jordan knew the voice, and yet he didn't; he had never heard it save from within his own skull.

"You too," said Armiger to Jordan.

"I, I brought horses."

"Good. Now go."

"No. I, I've got information for you."

"For me? What are you talking about?"

"I'm Jordan Mason. I've been watching you for months. Ever since... you came at night and put something in my skull, mecha or something, and then the others came and changed it—I can see through your eyes, hear through your ears. I've been watching! I know it all."

"Wait, stop." Armiger held up a hand. He seemed to be having trouble with his eyes; he focussed on Jordan only with great difficulty. "You're one of my remotes. I thought I'd lost you."

"Yes, sir, I mean no. The woman who attacked you just now, Calandria May—she wanted to use your implants to track you down, only something happened, I was able to see everything you saw..."

"What is this?" Megan took Armiger's arm. "We have no time for this."

Armiger nodded, and turned away.

"Wait!" The three people Jordan had watched in waking dreams for weeks were walking away. This wasn't turning out at all the way he had expected.

Tamsin elbowed him. "Come on!"

He blushed, then cleared his throat. They were nearly at the entrance now.

This was too much. After everything he'd been through...

"Hey! Armiger, you're going to listen to me! I know why you came to Ventus. I know what you're after. You want the secret of the Winds. Well, guess what, I have it!"

That stopped them. Armiger turned, and Megan turned with him, scowling. The queen merely sat down on a tumbled stone, and stared.

Jordan bowed. "'That a stone should speak, as you speak.' I think you told Queen Galas once that that was our deepest wish. You craved permission to speak. Well, now it's my turn. You want to know what the Winds are after, and what their alliances are. With your permission, I will tell you."

Finally I will speak, and you will listen.

Part Three

Resurrection Seed

34

Axel heard the ticking approach of Marya's footsteps. He did not look away from the giant window that filled one wall of the ship's lounge. Outside lay the disk of the Solar system—the original Archipelago.

The view was breathtaking. From here, beyond the orbit of Neptune, Axel could see the evidence of humanity's presence in the form of a faint rainbowed disk of light around the tiny sun. Scattered throughout it were delicate sparkles, each some world-sized Dyson engine or fusion starlette. Earth was just one of a hundred thousand pinpricks of light in that disk. Starlettes lit the coldest regions of the system, and all the planets were ringed with habitats and the conscious, fanatical engines of the solarforming civilization. This was the seat of power for the human race, and for many gods as well. It was ancient, implacably powerful, and in its trillions of inhabitants habored more that was alien than the rest of the galaxy put together.

Axel hated the place.

He couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer scale of it, of course. He had spent months on Ventus, concerned with staying alive and finding his next meal, in the domain of flies and dumb rooting animals. Now he stood in warm carpet grass in the lounge of the navy hospital ship that had brought them from Ventus, surrounded by the scents and quiet thrum of a living spacecraft. If he shut his eyes he could open a link to the outer edge of the inscape, the near-infinite datanet that permeated the Archipelago. He chose not to do this.

It felt so strange to be here. He had so far refused to sleep in the ship's freefall zone, where Marya had taken up residence. He wanted the feel of gravity, and of real sheets instead of aerogel. Maybe because of that, he had waked disoriented today, expecting to see his breath frosting the air, and had flung his hand out to meet neatly stacked, laundered clothing where he expected damp soil.

Axel had not said to Marya that Ventus felt more real to him than the Archipelago; he was afraid of what that might mean. Maybe there was an intimacy in connecting with cold, indifferent soil that no amount of intelligent, sympathetic machinery could match.

"Isn't it marvellous?" she said as she came to stand next to him. "I have never been here! Not physically, I mean." She was dressed in her illusions again, today in a tiny whirlwind of strategically timed leaves: Eve in some medieval painter's fantasy.

"You haven't missed much," he said.

Marya blinked. "How can you say that?" She went to lean on the window, her fingers indenting its resilient surface. "It is everything!"

"That's what I hate about it." He shrugged. "I don't know how people can live here, permanently linked into inscape. All you can ever really learn is that everything you've ever done or thought has been done and thought before, only better. The richest billionaire has to realize that the gods next door take no more notice of him than he would a bug. And why go explore the galaxy when anything conceivable can be simulated inside your own head? You know what Mars is like—a hundred billion people stacked in pods like so much lumber, dreaming their own universe into being while the physical infrastructure of the planet crumbles around them. A friend of mine had a smuggler's base there. I took a walk—only once in the six months I was there. Empty cracked streets, the terraforming failing, red dust freezing to the tiles. And a permanent orgy going on inside the computers. Creepy."