Coda, Chapter Three: But Be Careful to Call It Always, Please, Research

Under the gentle rustling of a thousand leaves, Tapuaua drifted upwards slowly out of sleep. She had chosen the little treehouse, the southernmost in Mayoi, for its view of the lagoon to the south. It had been in a dilapidated condition when she claimed it, but new thatching had done wonders for its exterior and a coat of whitewash for its interior. She had a fire and a sleeping platform, a chestful of medical supplies and a fragment of a Realaidain banner to hang on her wall. There had been a day when Elysatah and Asheron had given them out to every citizen; she had found this one under a pile of rubble in the ruins of Shoushi. Against the dark blue field there remained only the sun and one moon, which she found symbolic. The leaves rustled in the morning breeze, and something else rustled, closer to her ear.

"Wake, please."

She blinked. There was no one there, which told her immediately who it was. "I'm awake. Did you come in through the keyhole?"

"Something like that." The Shadow became visible, as if he had parted a curtain of air and stepped through it. "Do you have some containers? I have some Falatacot incense, but I need to contain it somehow before I can give it to anyone else."

"I'm sure I have." She got up, slung on her drum, and went to her hearth. I am wakened out of a sound sleep by a nine-thousand-year-old Shadow asking for containers, like a neighbor asking to borrow a handful of salt. So I cheerfully get up and find him some. Life is very strange. Yes, there were the crocks that had contained pickled fish, washed out and ready for refilling. "Will these do?"

"Yes. No, I need only two. Thank you." The dark hand lifted and poured out a stream of powder into one crock and then the other. It had a pleasant smell, like pine needles. "Now, you and I need to attend your Lady in Cragstone. I sent a message to the Imperator, but he is not in this plane at present. It doesn't matter." A portal appeared, neatly blanking out her front door. They stepped through.

Nalicana's private chamber in Omishan was for formal, but confidential, meetings. Her apartment in Cragstone, high in a tower overlooking the southern moat, was a place for living and working in. All the books and papers had been neatly tidied up onto their shelves, a bad sign: it meant that she had been unable to force her mind to work and had resorted to housekeeping as a form of diversion. The little Carenzi curled up on the foot of her bed had been brushed till its fur gleamed.

Nalicana had just risen, and was twisting her long black hair into its usual knot. She looked at the tall Shadow, and the little Tonk with a crock under each arm, and raised one slender eyebrow.

"I have brought samples of the incense the Falatacot use to keep the Olthoi-life at bay," Dule said, "and the texts of the spells they used with it. Someone now needs to study it and find out how to make more of it, because I can steal only a few handfuls at a time."

"Prospero the Alchemist, here in Cragstone," Nalicana said. "He can do it if anyone can; and if by chance he needs assistance, he'll know where to find it."

"Very well. Now, the text --- two texts. One is a simple fire-lighting spell for setting the incense smoldering. I experimented by translating it out of the Falatacot into other languages, and discovered it still works when phrased in Dericost or in Yalain. It works so well, in fact, that I will not speak it here; you must say Eguin and then Quaguz. The chant performed by the incantor during censing is a verse of eight lines and I did not attempt to translate it; it needs an expert." The Shadow produced a scrap of parchment on which were written eight lines in Dericost runes, with staffless neumes above them to indicate the melody.

"Eshivon and Tapuaua," Nalicana said. "Mostly Eshivon," said Tapuaua. "He'll do the hard work and I'll stand behind him picking the fleas from his fur, as we say. And after that ---"

"After that?" Nalicana prompted.

"After that, Shi Daraua ought to take a look at it, and the incense too. He's a life-mage living in Farali, and finding out new ways to kill Olthoi is his favorite pastime."

Dule handed her his parchment. "Leave me one of those jars for Prospero," Nalicana said. "And don't forget, you and Rebvaz are keeping an eye out for Kellin."

"He took the night watch," Tapuaua said. "I'll be watching during the day." She put one crock down on Nalicana's table. Then she bowed, beat her drum one-handed, and portaled. She landed in Ikeras to the sound of the Town Crier going off.

"Oyez, oyez! Good morning, Ikeras! These are your Dawnsong-and-Half announcements! The Order of Dereth is holding a flatfish breakfast for the benefit of Plague victims; now serving at the Refining Workshop, lots of maple syrup! Through the generosity of Ramen, the Trait Shop is offering a two-for-one special on Crystal! Officers of the Shadow Kingdom, please attend on Naokim at Midsong sharp! (What's this? Oh, Ezheret!) Um, the Falatacot have landed three more Cohorts in the southern Desolation! All Kingdoms and Allegiances are advised to take counsel for war; all individuals, to sharpen their skills and their swords!" The chorus of "Thank you, milord Crier!" and the general buzz of agitation was drowned in Tapuaua's ears as she swam toward the mainland and the portals to the Faralis.

Thromer ascended from the plane of rose into the plane of violet, seeking the flavor of amber. Aspects flittered around him like small imperfect butterflies, and from a distance he could hear the Neonates singing. There was a search nodule here, somewhere, if he could find it --- for it operated on the principle that a seeker must seek, and hence was never to be found anywhere near where you had found it the last time, nor yet in the first few places you looked. So that possibly it wasn't on this plane at all. Thromer searched with eyes and other senses. The aspect of metaphor. The persistence of memory. The smell of purple. The aspect of eleven-plane space: he was getting warm. Amber, gentle on the tongue as his mother's hotcakes. He followed it into a region of question-and-answer, each pair twinkling like snowflakes.

Search vector: Translocation.

Vector: twenty-three and four parts. Well, that was clear enough. He turned spinwards and banked like a skimmer into the vector.

The Emanation of Planar Translocation hung ... no, not quite that, but had its being in the center of a web of correspondences, any of them a potential road elsewhere. One of them almost certainly led to Tuu, and if they ever got shut of battle and war he was going to go and find it, if only to please Mother.

Information required.

Not this-aspect/here. That-aspect/elsewhere.

A flutter of disturbance. Purpose? Requirement? Elsewhere < inappropriate < unsuitable < unpleasant.

Necessity. Authority.

Resignation. Imperator acknowledged. Vector?

Vector {Auberean} > {Dominion Central} > {Throne Room}, he told it, and led the way.

"Remarkable," Daraua said, sniffing at the opened crock. "A pleasant smell, at any rate. Let's try it." He scooped out a little of the powder with a twig, laid it on his hearthstone, and wrapped the crock carefully in a barkcloth patterned with symbols of warding. "Eguin Quaguz." The twig and the powder both burst into flame, and settled down to a soft reddish glow. Fragrant smoke rose into the air, and Daraua sniffed delicately at it, and sat back to think, and leaned forward to sniff again, like someone tasting a fine sauce, while he examined the parchment Tapuaua had given him.

"Have you and Eshivon translated the text accurately? This reference to light? And no mention of blood, nor of darkness as opposed to greater darkness, nor Living Shadow, as in Fesselim's second tablet?"

"There's nothing like that in the original. I can make you a word-by-word interlinear translation, if you like."

"That would be well. This intrigues me. I wonder whether, during their millennia off-world, the Falatacot have had a schism --- or an enlightenment, hey?"

"I believe they had a schism even before they left Auberean," Tapuaua said. "I'll look it up and see what I can find out."

"Good. In the meantime ---" The old mage got up. "Let us try it. What can we use for a censer?" He found a small ceramic bowl, and rigged a harness for it out of some cord used for mending fishing nets. "I'll cense, you sing."

They descended from the tiny hut, built into a lone tree just north of the smoldering Outpost, on the border of Olthoi country. A bowshot away, a Moarsman was trying to stomp out an Olthoi Grub with his flat foot, as if it were a brush fire.

"Eguin Quaguz," Daraua said to the powder in his improvised censer. and it obediently began to smolder. Tapuaua cleared her throat.

"Upon the earth the smoke let fall.

Upon the footsteps of the dead.

The clouds of smoke drifted widely to either side and behind them, slowly settling to the earth. They walked away from the road for the time it took to sing two verses, then doubled back and returned on their own path. By the time they returned to the road the incense had burned out. "Hm, we're going to need a lot of this," Daraua remarked. He squatted on the roadside to observe the ground that had been treated, and Tapuaua followed suit.

"Prospero of Cragstone is going to work on the formula," she said.

"Good. Tell him to come and visit me if there's anything I can aid him with. Hm, look at that."

There was a small fruiting body growing at the edge of the road: it might have been an edible mushroom, except that cautious trials had proven long since that it was nothing of the kind. The length and breadth of a finger, it thrust a fingertip of black-fringed white toward the sky. They had seen a thousand of its kind before, glistening with a thin coat of slime, ready to release uncounted spores into the air on behalf of the underground network of pasty-white threads whose representatives they were. But this one was not glistening. It was drying out, its delicate fringes curling up, and as they watched its slender stem sagged and it toppled. They exchanged glances. "They tend to fall over anyway, when they've cast all their spores," Daraua said.

"Look, though." Tapuaua picked up a slender twig and prodded the thing. "Its gills are still black with spores; it hadn't cast them. And won't now, because it's dead."

Daraua took the twig away from her and dug into the ground with it. The tough white threads broke at a touch. Daraua grinned. "Let Wharu's children have a few days to play with this, and you could grow peppers on it," he said. "Except of course that unless we incense it daily, the Olthoi-life will return. We need a better means of distribution." He rose to his feet with a sigh. "Child, I am going to meditate now. Tell the Lady that the translated chant still works. Tell Prospero, and tell Isin Dule if you can find him, that I shall be happy to discuss this with them whenever they care to visit me. Come back in a few days to see if I have any more news." Tapuaua bowed, and portaled away.

Thromer materialized inside the Throne Room, the Emanation behind him. Nalicana portaled in a few seconds later. "Thank you for coming, milady," he said. "This is the Emanation of Planar Translocation. Can you see it?"

"Just barely," Nalicana answered. "Just a cloud of paler violet against the dark background. It doesn't have one of those masks."

"No, the masks are fairly complex mechanisms designed to present --- well, to present a face, an interface if you like, between the Singularity and the physical planes. When they were designed, you understand, the Singularity did not yet recognize that we mortals were not simple manifestations of a Singularity of our own. When it did begin to realize, the Quiddity shuddered like a pond into which a stone has been cast. The Singularity is still ringing like a bell from that shock, centuries later.

"Never mind. This Emanation is a source of planar magic; it can teach you how to perform the spells you want. I don't dare let it enter your mind; it would send both of you mad. I'll translate."

Discourse/opening. Translocation structure preliminary.

Translocation structure. Preparation > extraction quasi-unique designation. Secondary this-aspect nine-space location.

"All right, let's see," Thromer said. "To portal someone to a location, you have to know the, um, I can shorten it to 'unique designation' for him, it, whatever. All right, I'm going to have to define some terms. If your target is a person, with a name, then the name is its unique designation. If it hasn't got a name, like (say) the nearest Limestone Colossus that you want to capture, then you have to be within line-of-sight to it so that you can designate it mentally, 'that Limestone Colossus.' "

"In the second place, you have to know the coordinates of the place you want it to go to. The Emanation says 'nine-space,' but actually on a place like Auberean, three dimensions will do. What it comes down to is, you have to have been there, or at least to have seen it from not too far away; and then when you visualize the place your mind will read in the right coordinates without your having to do it.

"Now with either of these, there's a special case: your target or your destined location can be yourself. There's an algorithm for sending yourself to someone whose name you know, and there's one for bringing someone to where you are. So those are the easiest cases, and those are the ones we'll start with. Ready?"

Nalicana cast a beseeching glance toward Thromer, as Thorsten dying had cast his eyes upon Elysa. But she said only, "I'm ready."

"Tapu! There you are!" Rebvaz took Tapuaua's elbow and pulled her into a corner of the Hall. "I've found Cashtal. He's on Linvak already."

"Dear me."

"He's joined an all-Yalaini allegiance called the True Inheritors. He's not the monarch, I think he's the second-in-command. His allegiance title is Duke of War."

"Still concealing himself, then. If he is Kellin."

"Kellin?"

The Tonk and the Human turned quickly. The young woman who had joined them was tall and slender even for an Empyrean; her black robe set off her pale skin and her amber eyes blazed. "Do you tell me the Emperor has returned out of the Sundered Lands?"

"Hush, Aracoeli, for the Light's sake. We think so," Tapuaua said, "but we're not sure and we're keeping it as quiet as we can."

"Excellent idea," Aracoeli said. "How many know already?"

"Reb and I, Nalicana, Thromer, Isin Dule, and now you."

"Very well: since I know, how can I help?"

Rebvaz and Tapuaua looked at each other. "He's in an all-Yalaini allegiance," Rebvaz repeated.

"Is he, then. That suggests possibilities. I don't suppose Pfeil would object if I joined them? In a good cause?"

"I'm sure she won't, but hold off for a few days --- until I can get Nalicana's permission to tell Pfeil what's going on. There are reasons she'll have to know soon anyway. Why don't you go to --- where did you see them, Reb?

"South Gevoth. I have no idea where their Hall is, but they were in South Gevoth a few minutes ago."

"I'll go there."

"Go there and make friends and go hunting with them, you know the kind of thing one always does before taking on a vassal or a patron. Hunting fellows can always use a healer. Don't let him know what you think of him, and good luck."

"I sha'n't. Thank you." Aracoeli activated her shining pale celestrum with a flick of the wrist, and disappeared.

"Was that a good idea?" Rebvaz asked dubiously.

"Oh, yes. She was devoted to Asheron. And to Nalicana, who was a year ahead of her in school. I'd trust her anywhere."

"You may have to."

Aracoeli dropped from the South Gevoth portal and hit the ground running. She slowed down, a good distance away from the infested Outpost, and turned to see if anything was pursuing her. There was not a Gearknight in sight ... no, wait, what was that over there to the east? A cloud of dust, a flash of sunlight reflected off ... something. She approached cautiously, ready to turn and run if something came after her. But there was nothing, nothing but a group of tall Yalaini standing, watching, as one of their number finished off the last Gearknight.

Swords flashing, he had already hacked off its right arm and was working on its left. Tall, muscular, white-bearded, with that golden complexion like the face of Au ... and the arm fell to the ground, and the swordsman plunged one sword into the Gearknight's torso and, as it fell, split its head open with the other. The Gearknight collapsed; the swordsman turned and rejoined his cheering companions. He had not had it all his own way; his shoulders were covered in blood and he was limping. But the wound she had seen on his left cheek, on that last day so many centuries ago when he paced the deck oblivious to the little student who sat huddled on the foredeck, had healed and left a neat straight scar.

She raised her hand and cast a heal, and another. The blood vanished from his armor (no one had ever been able to figure out how that worked) and he smiled. "Thank you, milady."

"You're welcome, milord." (She bit her tongue and did not add "In Asheron's name" as usual. There had never been any secret about how the Emperor felt about Asheron.)

"You're a better healer than any of us," said one of the other men, a Mentalist with two night-dark orbs floating above his shoulders. "I am Palerath, monarch of the True Inheritors."

She bowed. "Honored, milord. I am Aracoeli."

"Delighted. The man whose blood you've held back from the ground is my Duke of War, Cashtal." He went on to introduce the others. None of the names, none of the faces were familiar to her. So many of the great ones had fallen to the Olthoi before the last day. She noticed that a number of them were glancing from her to one another and to their monarch, and back to her. The glances all returned to Dalerath, and he said, "Well, we can stay here and wait for the Gearknights to respawn, or we can go out on the plains for other game. Would you like to go with us?"

"Certainly, milord," she said. "Be aware: I'm a healer, not a fighter, and if something over a certain size gets to me, I'm dead. Stand between them and me, and I'll keep you alive as best I can."

Palerath smiled. "You hear that, milords? First person who lets the healer die, I'll change his title to Olthoi Drone Grub. Form up."

They took their places: Cashtal and another Templar in the lead, next a slender Hieromancer with burning blue eyes, Aracoeli in the middle, and Palerath and another Mentalist in the rear. Behind them they could hear mad Ludward lamenting and hammering on a piece of armor plating. "Remarkable," the Hieromancer said. "I don't think I have ever seen that Outpost free of Gearknights before."

"I have met two people who have," Aracoeli said. "The second was the first ever to die to them, on the first day Ludward set up shop --- she was the first to give him the fourth component, the Toolmaking component, and hey presto! she was embracing the Lifestone."

"A Yalaini?"

"No, this was a year ago. A Tonk."

The Hieromancer made a rude sound. "Why do you associate with those people? This is our world, and these funny-looking little latecomers have no right to it."

"Some of them are very pleasant, and helpful at need," Aracoeli said, and Palerath added, "And if we were here a thousand years ago, they were here five hundred years ago, and drove back the Olthoi, which we could not; and their return preceded us by two years during which they opened up Marae Lassel and the portal to Knorr. I don't think we need to despise them."

"I don't despise them," Cashtal said. He's lying, Aracoeli thought. "I do think that we cannot live in harmony with them, any more than we could live with the filthy Dericost undead, and that we need to find a homeland for them somewhere else. Not on Knorr, the seat of our ancestors, and not on Dereth, which is so valuable for its magical resources." He pointed with his right-hand sword to a Gurog standing a bowshot further down the road. "Any more than we can live in harmony than those beasts. Come!" The two swordsmen set out down the road, and the rest followed. The Gurog fell quickly, but three more were waiting behind him. It would seem that Cashtal, not Palerath, is in command here, Aracoeli mused, watching her fellows like a hawk for injury and casting heals like tiny accurate darts. But he is a good fighter and a good leader --- for some values of "good" --- and that is why Palerath named him Duke of War. I must, I must find out what he intends --- and I shall, Light willing. It's early days yet.

Two Gurogs closed on Cashtal, which seemed to trouble him not at all: he had two targets, he had two swords; no one had to wait in line and everyone was satisfied except the Gurogs. He could cut or thrust with either hand with equal grace, and his feet were like a dancer's, moving him effortlessly in and out of range. Kellin had been careful not to face the Olthoi himself before the Sundering, but it was certainly not because he lacked courage nor the ability to fight. Then, he had been willing to spend other men's lives to protect his own; now, he was fighting to win not battles but the hearts and minds of the Yalaini.

a party of Lugians were hunting to their left, setting up turrets and potting wandering Gearknights who had missed Cashtal's earlier efforts, so they went the other way. Bands of Gurog roamed at random, sometimes fighting Gearknights but more often each other, continuing their perpetual civil war of Lodrog's rebels against Geraine's loyalists --- even though Geraine was gone. Light grant he is gone for good. We have troubles enough.

The Mentalists pulled them in one by one, and a friendly contest developed to see whether they could kill the creatures before they reached the swords of the Templars. Now three came charging in together: the first dropped almost within arm's reach. Cashtal finished the second with one stroke, and the other turned and ran. The other Templar ran after him. "Come back!" Aracoeli cried. He paid no attention, intent on closing the distance between him and the Gurog. The Gurog turned and fought, throwing his sharp-bladed axes, wounding the Templar in chest and shoulders. Aracoeli cast dart after dart toward him, but they fell short. "Idiot," she muttered. "If he gets out of range I can't heal him."

"He's a Templar," Palerath reminded her.

"I know he's a Templar, milord; that means only that his injuries go to strengthen the rest of us. If his injuries kill him, it will do none of us any good --- Ah! There he goes."

The Templar fell in his blood. The Gurog exulted. "Move in," Palerath commanded. They did, and the Gurog fell and two of his allies, who had moved in to see the fun, joined him.

"Let me at him." Aracoeli gestured and chanted. "In the name of Aun Tanua." A many-shafted burst of light grew and blossomed from the corpse, and the Templar groaned and got up.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome, milord," Aracoeli said. "Please don't do that again. I cannot restore your Fors Vitae; for that you would have to find a Tonk, or a Lugian, or even a Human Alchemist. But kill a few more Gurogs and you should be all right."

"Who was Aun Tanua?" Palerath asked.

"A Tonk," she said. "Last winter he fought a Kemeroi, and dispelled it from the world we know, and died of his wounds. But this spell was named for him before that, because Nalicana remembered him."

"Tell me about him later," Palerath said. "For now, let's honor him by dispelling a few more Gurogs. With a team like this, I see no reason why we could not hunt here till sunset."

As evening fell, Tapuaua came to the foot of the tower in Cragstone. It looked like all the towers in the fortress city; but they were uninhabikted and it was not, and there was a shape carven into its front door, like a Niffis shell, or perhaps like an ear. It was an ear.

"My Lady? It's Tapu. I have some news."

And portalspace seized her, and carried her upwards and deposited her in Nalicana's chamber. The Mistress of the Order was sitting on her bed and looked very tired.

"I see that you and Thromer have done your lessons," Tapuaua said.

"Oh yes. I hope never to have to go through that again. But with luck I sha'n't have to, I have learned to portal myself to any place I've ever seen; and I can transport someone to another place, will he nill he; and I've even learned to make a device ... I'll start working on it tomorrow ... which someone who does not have that skill can use to transport, for instance, a Colossus to a preset destination. This means I don't have to teach the skill to someone I don't trust: I can issue him the device, let him collect whatever he's to collect, and get the device back. I do trust you, though, and I shall teach you ... once my head stops aching. Now tell me your news."

"Lie down, my Lady," Tapuaua said, and got out her drum. She tapped gently at a healing spell, as lightly as she could, to minimize noise. And she told Nalicana her own news, and Rebvaz's, and Aracoeli's.

"Aracoeli came back to Shoushi to report, and has now gone back to Linvak to dine with the True Inheritors," she concluded. "They've asked her to join them, but she's asked for a few days' grace --- chiefly, to make sure it's all right with Pfeil. Which means we need to tell Pfeil, or rather, Thromer does."

"Very well. Tell him so, will you please?"

"Certainly, my Lady. I need to report all this to him anyway. I'd report to Isin Dule too, if I could find him, but I dare say he'll find me if he wants to." She continued beating her drum, softly with the tips of her long fingers, until Nalicana fell asleep. Then she beat it once more and portaled away.

Nalicana was standing on a high place, with a cold wind blowing about her. The snow was dazzlingly white on the Esper Ranges under the light of the moons. Overhead --- she had to look for a few moments, as the whirling shape occulted Alb'arel again and again --- an orrery spun, marking the paths of Auberean and the other planets around Au. There were others standing beside her, a man and a woman.

"There is something you must do," the woman said.

"Tell me; what is it?"

"Something you must do," the man said. "Look there." A long finger pointed downward, over the tower's rim.

Dark shapes moved over the snow: the moonlight reflected from their shiny backs. They waved sharp claws in the air. "Olthoi," she said. "I can do nothing about Olthoi. We were never able to fight them."

"Your people are fighting them now," the woman said. "Look there." She too pointed. Other shapes were moving against the Olthoi: Humans and Lugians and Tonk, and, yes, tall Empyreans, brandishing swords and casting fireballs. The Olthoi were falling. As she watched, a tall Templar struck with his sword and clove from crest to midpoint an insect taller than himself; a Hieromancer with a celestrum the color of flame cast and enveloped a Nymph on the wing in a sheet of lightning; it fell like a meteor. How was it, that the Yalaini could fight the Olthoi now?

"They learned," the woman said, taking Nalicana's hand in both her own. The hands were like ice.

"They can learn," the man said, taking her other hand in both his own, and they were like fire, and his eyes were blazing. "You must learn."

"Look behind you," the woman said, but she was afraid to turn. The man put his fiery hand on her elbow, and made her turn. The woman's cold hands were on her back, pushing her forward. Behind her were pillars, and the dim light of a portal, and they were pushing her toward it. But the cold wind caught her up, and blew her away into the darkness. "Ciandra!" she cried. "Asheron! Tell me what to do!"

But their voices, very far away, seemed to be continuing a conversation from long ago. "I do not call this nothing," the woman said, and the man, as if in answer, "It will open your bodies and minds ...."

But the wind blew her further away, out of hearing, up into the cold sharp-pointed stars.