Hammerfall (48 page)

They packed up and they rode, a long, weary line of riders.

They went in a kind of twilight, the air cold, the sun thickly shrouded in slate gray cloud.

But the light was enough, finally, to show them a strange, upthrust shape on the horizon.

It was the tower on its hill, on the rim of the land they could see.

“We're almost there,” Marak said, and pointed it out to his wives, who already knew.

Another year is gone, as much as that means.

—Marak's Book

THE AIR WAS
cold and clear, breath of man and beast frosting on the wind . . . it was noon, though anyone who remembered the sky as it had been would never know it. Snow had fallen in the morning, and lay all about . . . more boded in the west, out of which all weather came, but Marak Trin had seen the stars scream down from the heavens. That was hazard. He had seen the deep snows. That was hardship. This little spit of snow failed to daunt him.

More, he was on his way home, and going home, in a logic that defied the tower's careful teaching, all distances were shorter.

Once a month at least he saddled up Osan and rode out as far as the cliffs of the Lakht.

Once a month he surveyed the lakes and the pools below the rim, gathered samples . . . and came back again, surrendered himself and Osan to Ian's examination. Luz wanted to be sure he had picked up nothing new and unplanned in his blood.

He had that examination ahead of him, a small price for his freedom. And he was as interested as Ian and Luz in the quality and persistence of the makers. That his so ably survived reassured the
ondat
in their sky perch—the
ondat,
who were coming to understand the Ila's methods themselves, and who therefore might feel less threatened by the wide expanse of . . . all Luz said existed out there among the stars.

His own travels were to the rim and back. That was enough. Sometimes Hati came with him. Sometimes Norit joined them both. They had seen the whole world change, and skies darken, and the snows pile up.

Then they had seen them melt.

The tribes had spread a few tents outside now, weary of the confinement, and there were a few structures outside, these days, outposts from which trained observers watched the changes in the world. But it was the tents that the tribes longed to see. Aigyan and Menditak talked about establishing outlying camps, and seeing what living could be made out there, given adequate supplies, but Luz said it was too early, that they had yet to release the living things they had engineered . . . that was their word for it:
engineered
. Everything would fit together. The tribes would have their livelihood. There would be a place in the world for them.

There was no sign of vermin. Nothing grew, but a handful of small things that had greatly interested Luz . . . he had brought those back years ago.

But of larger life, nothing moved.

He argued for making the trek up to Pori, such as remained of it, if anything remained on the Lakht. He found it hard even yet to think that nothing at all had survived. Luz sent her fliers up there, and they found nothing different than what was below, but Marak thought a man might see more, do more, find out more.

The
ondat
remained suspicious. He knew about them. He knew about other worlds. He knew how the Ila's people had pushed too fast in their own investigations of territory, antagonized the
ondat
and fought a war with makers—the details were disputed, and the Ila claimed that never was the case, but Luz thought otherwise, and the
ondat
seemed to.

He knew how the Ila had come here and done everything she could to survive, fearing Luz's kind as much as she feared the
ondat
—which argued that the Ila had known there was a wrong, and justice for it.

He knew very many more things about the world he owned than he had ever suspected. He knew that they were allowed to live here, that Luz had made some arrangement with the
ondat,
that, in a sense, they were as observed as Luz's specimens in the lab, to see what the makers in them would do, and to see how the world recovered.

The hammer had come down in the sea, and the shock had rung around the world until it melted the rocks of the eastern ocean, and cracked the world, as Norit had put it, like a broken pot. The earth poured out floods of molten rock, and went on shaking, and sent up smoke to darken the sun—but Luz showed the villagers how to build walls that would not fall in earthquake, and promised the tribes new tents that, with very little effort, could keep out the cold.

It was all what people had done once before, the Ila said, disdainful of their effort. And she would have shown them those things if they had needed them.

They knew. They had put together all the books that reached the tower, and there were no secrets. Deep in the tower depths now was the record of everything that had been erased off the earth. He was written there. So were all of them, every bearer of every book, and all they had done. So were things written there that the
ondat
might not like to know—he had no idea: certain books he knew Luz and Ian and the Ila kept to themselves. He knew various things, being what he was, that those three might wish kept quiet, but he had no disposition to talk about them, and no one cared, outside, anyway. All the excitement these days was about the outposts, and the beshti that were being let out.

There had been a time breathing the air outside had burned a man's chest, a time when even beshti could not thrive above ground. In those days they had gone out with masks and machines.

But Luz said the sea survived. Luz had already loosed makers into the creatures he brought back, to be released again. And he had dug down under thin patches of new snow and sowed seeds as far as the cliffs . . . being born a villager, he found himself doing what a villager did, and planting crops, of a sort, whatever might come of them.

The Ila said they had done all that before, too, and with a great deal more work, too, except they had had the vermin to carry the makers. She and Luz held long, long discussions.

So, well, he scattered seeds. With no vermin in the world to eat them, they would wait. Seeds were good at waiting.

By midday he rode into clear view of the tower, over a remembered last rise in the land.

He was surprised. He saw tents, white tents far outlying the walls they were building, a stubborn little clump of them well out from the tower. He would all but wager those were the an'i Keran. And that other one, equally separated, in an opposite direction—those might well be Haga.

It was spring. He supposed Luz herself might have encouraged this sudden flowering into the open, if it had not been a spontaneous rebellion. The tribes were getting restless under a solid roof.

It was a very good sight, those tents. But the tribes would have to devise a way to signal their differences, some badge of color and pattern. He was sure they would find it.

He crossed the last flat before the tower hill, leaving solitary tracks in the snow behind him, seeing a pattern of tracks going out to the tents. There were beshti out there, on either hand.

And being the only traveler out of the west, and having all that activity outside the tower, he was not surprised to be noticed.

He was not surprised to hear voices,
Marak, Marak, Marak—
and not surprised to feel that increasing warmth in the world that defined home, wherever it was.

His wives knew now he was coming. They were paying attention.

They came out from the tower to meet him as he rode up toward the doors, Norit anxious to welcome him home, Hati eager to ask what he had seen.

The children came running out, too, Lelie's daughter's youngsters, and his and Hati's great-grandchildren running across the light coating of snow . . . that young-looking man that had come out was Memnanan's tall son Memnanet, father to several generations himself, with Lelie.

They were a tribe, themselves. They had gotten to be . . . and a handful of all of them did not age, and healed of their wounds—templates, Luz called them, not their word for it. Memnanan had become one: the three who ruled their lives counted him necessary. And for that reason Memnanan knew he was back, as he knew exactly where Memnanan was, out in the tents, arguing with Aigyan on issues he could almost guess.

But of all the rest, passing the clamorous rush of small children, it was Hati who came running out to meet him, Hati, forever young, braids and veils flying, bracelets flashing gold under the leaden sky.

He slid down from the besha's saddle and opened his arms.

But, almost within his reach, she stopped and looked up, light touching her, and the tower, and the astonished children, who gazed skyward half in fear.

Marak looked up, too, at a long-forgotten power in the heavens.

Sunlight, if only for an instant, found its way through the clouds.

C.J. Cherryh
is a four-time winner of the coveted Hugo Award and is one of today's best-selling and most critically acclaimed writers of fantasy and science ficion. She is the author of more than forty novels. Author Home: Spokane, Washington.

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Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

HAMMERFALL.
Copyright © 2001 by C.J. Cherryh. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub © Edition v 1. JUNE 2001 ISBN: 9780061744839

Print edition first published in 2001 HarperCollins Publishers

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