Hy Pezho sighed. "All I did was make a bomb."
"He's telling the truth," said Sela. "He knows all this to be true. He's studied ancient texts, peered into the past with dark powers. Everything he's saying is right."
"Indeed," said Hy Pezho. "And as much as I'd like to stay here and be the first to be devoured once these gods awaken and so spare myself from their rule, I am now Bel Zheret, and I have been ordered by Mab to create more Einswrath. I've got enough blood to build a sufficient amount to bomb the Seelie Kingdom into oblivion. Really, I'll be doing them a favor, assuming I get to them first."
The silver armor fluttered down from the ceiling, and Hy Pezho stepped toward it. "Within a day the Great Seelie Keep will be a smoldering ruin," he said. "And then the Chthonic gods will rule us all. Ironically, Titania might have been the only one powerful enough to stand a chance against them."
"You're not going anywhere," said Silverdun. "You're going to stay here and help us stop this."
"That wasn't in my orders," said Hy Pezho. "I belong to Mab heart and soul, and I must do as I'm bidden."
Hy Pezho reached out his hand and waved. A blast of Motion struck Silverdun and slammed him backward. Sela, Ironfoot, and Faella were all flung in different directions.
Hy Pezho climbed into his armor. "Good-bye, Shadows," he called. "Fare thee well." The wings began to flap, and he rose off of the floor, beginning to chant an incantation of Folding.
Silverdun channeled Elements and pried open the front of the armor. Hy Pezho fell to the floor, his concentration broken. The silver armor listed to the side, its wings flapping crazily. Silverdun ran at him and tackled him, knife in hand.
"Ironfoot!" he shouted. "Get with Faella and find a way to stop this!" He slashed with the knife, but Hy Pezho slipped from his grasp and kicked out, catching Silverdun in the face. He was as strong as the other Bel Zheret had been. The one that had killed him.
The floor shook. Silverdun cast a brief glance upward and saw Ein's hand open and close. The god's bonds rattled.
A voice boomed into the wide space, speaking in a very, very old dialect of High Fae. "Who pricks my skin and wakes me from my slumber?"
In the rooftop garden in Elenth, Sergeant Hy-Asher supervised the reloading of the catapult with the second Einswrath. The lieutenant was looking over the edge of the rooftop toward the battle.
"Hurry!" he shouted. "They're almost to the gate!"
"You understand," said Hy-Asher, "that if we lob it this close, we'll kill our own troops, and probably half the city as well."
"Who cares?" said the lieutenant. "If they get through the gate, we're all dead anyway!"
Hy-Asher continued winding back the beam, a feeling of dread that he could not control stealing over him.
The High Priest: I fear that we will never agree, then, on what constitutes a good man.
Alpaurle: Is it wise to fear disagreement? Should we not, rather, embrace it?
The High Priest: Surely it is better to agree on such matters.
Alpaurle:You must be correct, of course, as you are very wise. But that is not what I asked. Should we not embrace a state of disagreement, on the grounds that from debate comes knowledge?
The High Priest: In matters of morals, I believe that unanimity is key. I find the idea of ambiguity in such matters disquieting.
Alpaurle:Why?
The High Priest: Because I desire to know the truth, of course!
Alpaurle: But what if truth is to be found in ambiguity?
-Alpaurle, from Conversations with the High Priest of Ulet, conversation VI, edited by Feven IV of the City Emerald
Ironfoot turned back to Faella and Sela, while Silverdun wrestled with Hy Pezho a dozen yards away.
"Sela," he said. `Join me and Faella together, like you did back in the temple. Let's see if we can stop this."
"Take my hands," said Sela. "I'll do what I can."
Ironfoot closed his eyes and felt Faella and Sela flow into him. Now was the time to be perfect. Now was the time not to fail. Now was the time to be the best.
Ironfoot tried to sift through Faella's understanding, but it was difficult; she had no thaumatic training, no understanding of what it was she was doing, or how she did it. She was raw power, a creature of pure intuition.
And what she did, what Lin Vo had done back at the Arami Camp, was beyond anything Ironfoot even understood. All of his equations, all of his understanding about the workings of the Gifts-none of these applied here. This was an entirely new approach to magic. And he was going to have to work it out right here, right now, while his partner fought a demon to the death and gods rose up all around him.
What was iron? What was cobalt? What lay beneath Elements and Insight? What was at the heart of things, beyond reason and understanding? What was the quotient of division by zero?
Silverdun struggled against Hy Pezho, trying to work the knife up into his ribs. Hy Pezho had all of the strength and quickness of Silverdun's previous opponent, but what he lacked was Asp's skill, his experience. Asp had enjoyed a lifetime of killing before Silverdun had met him. Hy Pezho probably knew a thing or two about killing as well, but not the Bel Zheret kind. Not the punching, kicking, biting kind.
They rolled on top of each other, slammed up against the base of Ein's column. Above them, Ein bellowed and strained.
Ironfoot and Faella walked together through the substance of things. He asked questions without words; she provided answers without thoughts. Slowly he began to understand. The ground shook around them and Sela cried out, but Ironfoot couldn't worry about that right now.
As he watched Faella flail against her lack of understanding, trying to reach out with her Giftless re, Ironfoot began to see something. It wasn't music without pitch, not colorless color, but something that lay behind pitch, beyond color. It wasn't a Giftless Gift, but that which lay beyond Gifts, gave rise to them. Beyond iron and cobalt lay something else, a deeper reality. Both were expressions of a deeper whole.
There was no division by zero. That was a function of numbers that applied to the Gifts. The Gifts were not the reality, though. They were a special case of reality. The thaumatics that applied to them, applied to them only in their special cases. In the depth beneath that spawned them, those equations simply did not apply. That depth was the genesis of the equations and was not bound by them.
He and Faella saw it at the same time. Cobalt and iron were simply variations on a theme, as were the Gifts. Thaumaturges had believed in the Gifts for so long that they had made them the reality, just as the Chthonics had made a reality of their own gods. Believing made it so.
Believe in iron, Ironfoot told Faella. Something reached out of Faella, colorless color beyond sight, and twisted.
The truth is sharper than any blade.
-Fae proverb
She looked away from them to catch a glimpse of Silverdun and Hy Pezho. Hy Pezho had Silverdun on the ground, kneeling over him, wrestling the knife from Silverdun's grasp.
She screamed "Silverdun!" Oh, how she loved him. Despite all that was going on around her, all she wanted was for him to be safe. She knew he could never love her. It hurt, but it didn't change how she felt.