Asx

Battle-echoes gouged the land, only a few short duras ago. Firebolts lashed from heaven, scourging the Six, laying open flesh, chitin, and bone.

Traekis gushed molten wax across the tortured valley, or else burst aflame, ignited by searing beams.

Oh my rings, what images lay seared throughout our trembling core!

The dead.

The dying.

The prudent ones, who fled.

The rash heroes, who came.

Their blur-cloth tunics are now grimy with mud and grue, no longer quite as slippery to the eye. Young tree farmers and donkey-drivers. Simple keepers of lobster pens. Junior hands on the humblest fishing coracles. Volunteers who never imagined their weekend training might come to this.

Our brave militia, who charged into that maelstrom, that cauldron of slicing rays. Amateurs, soft and unready after generations of peace, who now wince silently, clenching their limbs while horrid wounds are dressed or while life slips away. Bearing agony with the gritty resolve of veterans, their suffering eased by the only balm that soothes.

Victory.

Was it only yesterday, my rings, that we feared for the Commons? Feared that it might fly apart in jealous hatreds fostered by crafty star-devils?

That dread fate may yet come to pass, along with a thousand other terrors. But not today. Right now the arrogant aliens stand captive, staring about in surprise, stripped of their godlike tools, their hellish robots destroyed by the crude fire-tubes of our brave militia.

A day of reckoning may not be far off. It could swoop at any moment from an unforgiving sky.

Yet there is exhilaration. A sense of relief. The time of ambiguity is over. No more subtle games of misdirection and innuendo. No more pretense or intrigue. Ifni’s dice have been shaken and cast. Even now they tumble across Jijo’s holy ground. When they stop rolling, we will know.

Yes, my second ring. You are right to point this out. Not everyone shares a sense of grim elation. Some see in recent events cause for nihilism. A chance to settle old grudges, or to spread lawlessness across the land.

One vocal minority — “Friends of the Rothen” — demands the release of Ro-kenn. They advise throwing ourselves prostrate before his godlike mercy.

Others call for the hostages to be done away with at once.

“The starship may have means to track its lost members,” they claim, “perhaps by brain emanations, or body implants. The sole way to be sure is to grind their bones and sift the dust into a lava pool!”

These and other testy groups might think differently, if the full truth were told. If only we sages could divulge the plans already set in motion. But secrets are innately unfair. So we hold our peace.

To the folk of the Six, we say only this—

“Go to your homes. See to your lattice screens and blur-webs. Prepare to fight if you can. To hide if you must.

“Be ready to die.

“Above all, keep faith with your neighbors — with the Scrolls — with Jijo.

“And wait.”

Now our survivors hurry to pull down pavilions, to pack up valuables, to bear the wounded off on litters. Children of all races spend one sacred midura scouring the Glade for every scrap of dross they can find. Alas, that midura is all we can spare for tradition. There will be no festive mulching ceremony. No gaudy caravan, bearing ribboned crates down to the sea and ships — the most joyous part of any Gathering.

Such a pity.

Anyway, the aliens’ ruined station will take generations to haul away, one donkey-back at a time. That task must wait for after the crisis. If any of us remain alive.

The hostages are spirited off. Caravans depart toward plains, forest and sea, like streams of sentient wax, creeping in liquid haste to flee a fire.

The sun retreats, as well. Bitter-bright stars now span that vast domain called The Universe. A realm denied the Six, but where our foes roam at will.

A few of us remain, rooted to this sacred vale, awaiting the starship.

Are we/i in agreement, my rings? To linger near the Holy Egg, resting our base on hard stone, sensing complex patterns vibrate up our fatty core?

Yes, it is far better to rest here than to go twisting up some steep, rocky trail, hauling this old stack toward an illusion of safety.

We shall stay and speak for the Commons, when the great ship lands.

It comes now, roaring out of the west, where the sun lately fled.

A fitting replacement, the ship hovers angrily, erupting a brilliance that puts daylight to shame, scanning the valley floor with rays that sear and scrutinize. Scanning first the ruined station, then the surrounding countryside.

Searching for those it left behind.

XXVII. BOOK OF THE SEA

Alvin’s Tale

Perhaps the spider-things find me as eerie as I find them. Maybe they are trying their best to help. Given the little that I know, it seems best to take an attitude of wait-and-see.

We hoon are good at that. But I can only imagine what poor Huck is going through, if they put her in a cell like this one. A steel room with barely enough room to spin her wheels before hitting a wall, with the ceaseless drone of some weird kind of engine humming in the background. She’s got no patience and may have gone quite loco by now.

If Huck’s still alive.

She seemed to be, when last I saw her, after our plummet into the Midden’s icy depths was stopped by crashing into a sea monster’s gaping mouth. I recall seeing Huck sprawled on a metal surface, wheels spinning, kicking feebly with her pusher legs, while the floor and walls shook under a roaring wind that scraped my ears with incredible screeching pressure.

That pressure saved us, driving out the crushing mass of water before we drowned. But at the time, all I could do was scream, wrapping my arms around my head while my back convulsed from the blow I’d taken, escaping from our broken Wuphon’s Dream.

Vaguely, I was aware of someone else howling. Ur-ronn huddled in a far corner, sliced and torn by slivers of her precious shattered window and further panicked by the drenching wetness.

Looking back, it seemed a miracle she was breathing at all, after the Dream broke up and harsh sea pounded in from all sides. The force of that blow slammed me against the garuwood hull, while my friends spun away, heads over hooves and rims.

I had never before seen an urs try to swim. It’s not a pretty sight.

I remember thinking it would be my last sight, until that explosive cloud of bubbles poured in from a hundred wall slits, splitting the water with a foaming roar. The bubbles frothed together, merging into that screeching wind, and we survivors flopped onto the splintered wreckage of our beautiful bathy, gasping and gagging into dark, oily puddles.

Of the four of us, only Pincer seemed to come through with any power of movement. I seem to recall him clumsily trying to tend Ur-ronn’s wounds, pinning her against a wall with his scarred carapace while fumbling with two claws, pulling shards of glass out of her hide. Ur-ronn wasn’t cooperating much. She didn’t seem coherent. I couldn’t blame her.