“No,” his mother had answered.
“How come?” Orick asked, thinking that perhaps this would be his life’s work, to travel far roads and learn about the world.
“Because God won’t allow it. No matter how many mountains you cross, he has always made more.”
“How come?”
His mother rolled her eyes at him and sighed. “Because that is how he stays God. He knows what is on the other side of every mountain, but he doesn’t tell all of his secrets to others.”
“How come?” Orick asked.
“Because if everyone knew the answers, everyone would be gods, even people who are evil. So in order to keep evil people from gaining his power, he hides the answers to the most important questions.”
Orick had gazed out over the purpled hills and felt a rushing sensation of awe and thankfulness. God had willed him to be ignorant, and for that Orick felt profoundly grateful.
Yet now he was trying to help Everynne steal the powers of the gods. It seemed only just that he should be punished. Maggie got a blanket from the pack and wrapped it around herself. A cold wind was stirring.
Orick sniffed the air. “Maggie, child,” he said, “I think we’d best get back on that flying scrap pile and see if we can’t find some shelter. Something tells me this place gets colder than a lawyer’s heart at night, and you shouldn’t be out in such weather.”
She nodded wearily, got back on the bike, and Orick climbed on behind her. They slowly drove down the mountainside through the rocks and mist. After a few hundred yards, the fog cleared and they got their first view of Wechaus: a rocky, barren world for as far as the eye could see. Off in the distance several miles, Orick could make out one of those sidhe highways.
Maggie made her way down a steep canyon, then wound through it until they reached the highway. Once they hit the highway, the airbike seemed to know the path, and Maggie quit steering. By then, the cold and the wind were having their way with Maggie. She wrapped the blanket tighter around her and kept her head low so that the bike’s windscreen protected her somewhat, but within minutes she was shaking fiercely from the chill, sobbing in pain. Orick did not know what to do: should he tell her to stop and try to get warm? It was already so cold that if he stopped, he might never get her going again. On the other hand, the poor little thing could hardly travel farther in her current condition.
So it was that they topped a mountain and looked across the line of the highway to a distant valley and saw a small village. It was an outpost of some kind-a collection of stone huts shaped like domes, well lighted with pale green lights. Orick could discern several emerald pools. Smoke was pouring from them, filling the night air.
Maggie redoubled her speed, and in five minutes they closed in, and Orick saw that it was not smoke filling the night at all, but steam. The buildings sat alongside a natural hot spring, and he could see the dark shapes of people splashing in the waters, swimming in the deep green pools. As they neared, Orick let out a whoop of delight, for among the many swimmers, he saw dozens of bears.
Chapter 14
Everynne led the others through the gates on the way to Dronon. After making love to Gallen last night, it seemed that everything was ruined. Both Veriasse and Maggie knew of the tryst, and somehow it had all turned into a fiasco. Now, as she drove, she thought that perhaps it would all end. Perhaps today she would die, and thus put to death her guilt.
The vibration of the airbike mirrored her shaking. Her nerves were frayed, jangled, and she found that her teeth chattered even though it was warm.
She drove the thousand kilometers through Cyannesse at top speed, hit the gate and roared through Bregnel into the early afternoon. Veriasse cried out in shock when he saw the devastation, and all of them drove through the place in horror.
In the daylight, everything was gray and foul. Blackened human bones rotted in the streets, and dronon war cities squatted all across the countryside like dead beetles. Everynne counted twenty of them in the distance.
The air was so foul, that Gallen stopped beside a bubbling lake, got a pair of oxygen exchangers from his pack. He gave one to Everynne.
Veriasse gazed out over the countryside. His eyes were glazed with tears. “Look at all the hive cities. The dronon were building a vast military presence here.”
“It looks as if the people of Bregnel decided to wipe them out at any cost,” Everynne said.
Veriasse shook his head sadly. “I feared this was coming. The battle to free Bregnel was not going well. They could not have loosed the Terror more than two or three days ago. If they had only waited, perhaps this could have been avoided.”
“Let’s go,” Everynne said. “Let’s get to Dronon today.” She gunned her thrusters, sped away.
Everynne let her mantle switch through open radio frequencies, trying to catch a clue as to what had happened. She locked onto only one dim channel, far away, probably a transmission beamed from satellite. It broadcast the warning, “Resistance fighters have loosed a Terror. Please take appropriate measures.”
The only appropriate measures were to take flight and leave the planet.
Everynne looked out over the wastes in horror, thinking, If we go to war against the dronon, this is what it will be like. Terrors loosed upon hundreds of worlds. Fleets of starships bombarding planets with viral weapons.
Veriasse and Gallen drove side by side, sharing an oxygen exchanger from breath to breath. An afternoon wind kicked up, raising black clouds of ash that swept over the plains. Everynne hurried down the road, passed three skeletons that were half standing, half kneeling, fused together as if they had held each other for comfort in that last moment just as the burning wall of fire swept over them and the invasive nanoware burrowed through to their bones.
Everynne knew that as long as she lived, the images she saw on Bregnel would haunt her.
They broke through the next gate to Wechaus, headed down a snowy trail in the mountains. It was early morning here. They had not gone a hundred meters when they rounded a corner, spotted bloody paw prints in the snow, and Gallen shouted, “Halt!” raising a hand.
He idled his airbike, sat looking at the prints: a bear had rolled on the ground, leaving behind marks of blood and mud, compacting the snow except in one small circle. Within that circle was one firm red print with two scratch marks beneath it.
“Bear tracks,” Gallen said. “Orick’s here! He left a message.”
“Orick?” Veriasse asked. “But I didn’t show them how to get to Wechaus.”
“Maggie’s a smart girl,” Gallen said. “And you spent enough time looking at routes on your map that she could figure it out.” He pointed at the paw print. “The marks are a code. Back home, when I guard clients, Orick walks up ahead. No one ever bothers a bear, and he can smell an ambush better than any human. He leaves a print by the roadside if the path ahead is clear, but he leaves scratch marks under it if I’m to take warning. One scratch means something has him spooked. Two scratch marks means he is certain that an ambush waits ahead.”
Everynne studied the bloody marks, worrying. The poor bear had to be terribly wounded. “But who would be lying in wait?” she asked. “The dronon?”
“Perhaps,” Veriasse said. “When last I was here, their numbers were not great on this world, but after our escapades on Fale, they will be more wary. We should move forward cautiously.” He pulled out his incendiary rifle, and Gallen did the same.
They followed Orick’s footprints down to a small valley; among the snow-covered rocks they found evidence of a great battle-scorch marks from incendiary rifles, bloody tracks.
The torn body of a vanquisher lay in the snow, his naked green flesh ripped by teeth, clawed by strong paws. His incendiary rifle lay nearby, yet Everynne searched the ground with growing discomfort. The signs seemed to indicate that more than one vanquisher had fought here. Everynne could make out tracks of at least three of the giants. But if there had been only one casualty, then it seemed that Orick had fought in vain.