CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A Spring Day at the Edge of the World
FAR OFF ACROSS the bay the sea was boiling. The great space-mounted lasers fired down—broad, dazzlingly bright beams that ripped like pillars of fire through the clouds. And where they touched, the surface turned to steam. Great thunderheads were rolling across the sky. The air was heavy. Again and again the lasers struck, burning the elements, stripping away layer after layer, down to the rock.
From her vantage point on the City's roof, Emily watched in awe. The air itself was burning and the roar of the boiling sea hurt her ears. She hobbled across, joining the small group who had climbed up out of the levels and had gathered there to see the end of things. Silent, they waited at the edge of the world, watching.
Last things . . . She stared out at the boiling, bubbling sea, her eyes filled with last things.
It was over. All that she'd ever known was being broken down and refashioned. It was the universe's way. Even so, she felt regret. Regret that she would never see them again: never see Michael, Mach, or— and this she regretted most—Lin Shang, with his clever hands and crippled face. For the world was finally ending. The seas were burning and the air was filled with the roar of dissolution.
And when the seas had finally boiled away and the air could not be breathed, what then? What could little men like Lin do to mend that?
She gritted her teeth, pained by the thought that he would suffer. Pained that she could not be with him when it ended. That, at least, would have been something, but to die alone . . .
She shuddered, thinking back, remembering all that had happened to her. Remembering her family's fall from grace, her father's death, her mother's long-suffering stoicism. And afterward, all those years spent with Bent Gessel building the Ping Tiao. Before DeVore had come. Before the great Prince of Inauthenticity had come and destroyed it all.
And yet DeVore had saved her, sent her away. She glanced down at her severed finger and frowned. To America she'd gone. To America and Michael Lever. Her fate. To become the Eldest daughter, before that City fell in flames and she came scuttling back to Europe.
Oh, I've seen much, she thought, remembering it all. And yet nothing suddenly mattered one half as much as what she had felt these past few days, knowing what Lin Shang had done for her. Little Lin, who had had no power and no beauty, yet who had risked himself for her.
Risked himself, and asked nothing back from me.
And now he would die, as they'd all die, unrewarded, just as others went unpunished. And no sense to it all, no justice, no apparent order. Only the chaos of fate and time and dissolution.
Yes, dissolution, at the back of it all. Death's maggot, wriggling in the bone.
It was getting hard to breathe now. Her eyes stung and her throat was getting sore. And her skin . . . her skin seemed to burn.
Inside, she urged herself, hearing the crack of rock, the demonic hiss of the burning sea. Inside . . .
She turned, making her way back to the shaft. But it was almost over now, and, looking back, she saw first one and then another of the group step out into the nothingness beyond the edge.
THEY HAD BUILT a temporary encampment on the plain below the ruined fortress. Beneath a flapping banner that displayed the Ywe Lung, the great Wheel of Dragons, Li Yuan paced up and down. Behind him Kuei Jen stood looking on.
"Just what in the gods' names is he doing?" Li Yuan asked, pointing to the bank of screens—at the cluster of images sent back from their remotes, high above the burning sea.
"He's draining it," Karr said, pointing to a display at the side which showed the whole of the Mediterranean basin. "He's dammed it at Gibralter, and at the Bosphorus, and again down here where the old canal was. Now he's burning it off. When he's finished he'll probably march his army straight across."
Li Yuan's eyes were aghast. "But why?"
"Because he can," Nan Ho answered quietly. "It's how he is. He wants us to see just how powerful he is before he destroys us. Because it all means nothing to him. The game . . . Only the game has meaning for him."
Li Yuan stared at the display in disbelief. The Mediterranean . . . the madman was draining the Mediterranean!
This was why his father had so feared the idea of Dispersion—this was why he had fought it so vigorously—for out there there were no limits, no controls. Out there Man could do exactly as he wished. He could take the very elements and reforge them; could reshape himself in a thousand different ways and then return—with unlimited energy, unlimited destructive power. Dispersion: it was merely another word for dissolution; for the destruction of all that was decent, all that was truly human.
The wind was coming up now, gusting steadily through the encampment. Li Yuan pulled his cloak tight, then turned to look at Ebert, seated by the far wall of the enclosure, his men surrounding him.
"DeVore brings a mighty force against us. What will you eight do against that?"
"Do?" Ebert turned toward the watching faces of his dark companions and murmured something in their tongue. There was laughter, a rich, warm laughter, and then Ebert looked back at him.
"Wait and see," he answered, his face tilted up as if to the sun. "Just wait and see."
BEN GRIPPED catherine's ARM, hurrying her up the slope toward the lights of the cottage. Overhead the sky was black with cloud and the wind was howling down the valley, tearing branches from the trees and whipping the surface of the bay into a frenzy. As they struggled on, the wind tore at them, threatening to claw them back into the water.
Catherine turned to him, trying to speak, but the wind whipped away her words. Up ahead the shutters of the cottage were banging violently and there was the sudden tinkle of breaking glass.
"Come on!" he yelled, tugging at her, knowing they'd not be safe until they were inside, but she had frozen suddenly, her eyes tight and fixed like the eyes of a trapped and frightened animal. He pulled at her again, but it was no good; she was too heavy, the wind too strong. Unless she helped him . . .
There was a sudden shout—a bellow close by that sounded over the roar of the wind. He half turned, then lost his footing and went down. Yet even as he did, even as he felt Catherine's hand slip from his grasp, he felt someone—someone huge and muscular—pick him up and head toward the cottage.
"The woman!" he yelled at the Myghtern, his voice making little impression on that vast, unending roar. "Get the woman!"
As the giant turned, a sudden gust hit them full on and the Myghtern went down, onto his knees, knocking the breath from Ben as he fell. When Ben came to he was inside, the howl of the wind more sinister, more threatening somehow, now they were out of it. The very air was alive, it seemed, making the hairs on his arms and neck bristle.
"Catherine . . ." he began, starting up, then saw her, seated in the chair beside the door, his sister, Meg, attending to a cut on her forehead. Behind her Scaf and the Myghtern looked on concerned. And Tom? He turned, then smiled. Tom was in his usual place on the turn of the stairs, silent, staring.
The cottage juddered and groaned, the shutters banged. The howl intensified.
"It's getting worse!" Meg said, turning to him, her eyes worried. "What is it, Ben? What's happening?"
"I don't know," he said. "I . . ."
He shrugged, but it was like something he'd read in Amos's journals, about the wind that followed a nuclear explosion: the great inrush of air to fill the vacuum.
DeVore, he thought. DeVore's the vacuum at the heart of this.
But this wind had some physical cause too. Something must have happened. Something catastrophic. He glanced at the screen, but it was blank. Communications must be out. Yes, of course they were out. The storm . . .