Of Fire and Night (39 page)

98

CELLI

F
irst the huge treeships, and now this water-and-pearl bubble, complete with a Roamer man inside who seemed as unusual as Beneto. Celli grinned with amazement. Faced with adversaries like these, maybe the hydrogues would just run away and hide inside their gas giants forever!

Solimar whispered in her ear. “Watch this, Celli. The trees have been waiting. We’ll be invincible now.”

Jess Tamblyn and Beneto backed to the edge of the clearing as the spherical wental vessel rose from the ground and climbed like a weightless raindrop toward the canopy.

“What’s it doing?”

“You’ll see!”

The numerous verdani battleships drew closer until they formed a thicket in the sky. On the ground, the rooted worldtrees rustled with anticipation. Celli longed to know what was happening. If only she could use telink like Solimar!

After the wental vessel reached the top of the trees, a flurry of large globules of energized water split off from the quivering craft. The coral-and-pearl framework contracted like fingers drawing together to hold the now-smaller volume of wental water. The flexible globules drifted from the main vessel, as if searching for something.

“This could change the balance of power.” Solimar’s voice was barely above a whisper. He stood close enough to one of the tall worldtrees to touch it and receive messages from the forest mind. “No human has ever seen this.”

Celli waited to be amazed again. Solimar would not let her down, she was sure.

Beneto and the Roamer man stood inside the ring of five broken trees that formed a temple-like meeting place. While her brother’s body was made of clean, vivid wood, these burned stumps were tortured wrecks. Thus far, they had stood as a memorial to the enduring strength of the worldforest. Now, though, the verdani and the people of Theroc needed more than a symbol. Celli understood that.

One of the bubbles of wental water hovered over Jess and Beneto, who raised their hands toward the shimmering ball. The bubble burst. Wental water showered down into the five-trunk grouping, soaking the burned earth and drenching the two men.

More water welled up from the dirt, like a spring bubbling to the surface. The ground became saturated, sparkling. Jess began to laugh. “We summon all the wental water dispersed by the comet!”

His wood-grain face slick with wental moisture, Beneto nodded, showing complete contentment and satisfaction. “Wentals and the verdani will join completely. That is how we will defeat the hydrogues.”

Celli clung to Solimar, her mind bubbling over with questions. She smelled the earthy ozone of heavy dampness rising through the dirt, heard the whispery rush as the moisture flooded into the scorched tissue of the worldtrees. She felt small and insignificant in the grand scheme of events, but she didn’t understand.

Almost immediately after the sparkling water soaked the ring of five burned trees, the soil bubbled and churned like a simmering volcano preparing to erupt. Celli felt tremors beneath her bare feet.

With a rustling of their thorned branches, the ancient verdani battleships rose higher, clearing the canopy, making room. Celli tried to look everywhere at once. Anticipation was a building storm in the air.

Beneto addressed the worldtrees in an amplified voice. “You know what is contained within you. Draw on all of your reserves!”

The ring of near-dead trees responded.

The stunted, blackened trunks cracked, straining to reach the sky. The heartwood began to writhe. Shafts of fresh growth thrust up, new branches snapped out like concealed weapons. With a rough thrashing sound, sharpened fronds grasped upward. As the damaged trees sucked wental water into their tissues, the broken trunks expanded in an accelerated rush of regrowth. The five trees surged higher, twisting around each other and braiding into one enormous main trunk. Rejuvenated roots plunged deeper beneath the surface, tapping into the interconnected forest and drawing more energy, siphoning the wental-comet water that had percolated into the Theron soil.

Feeling the exuberance of the worldforest through the green priests and other observers, Celli laughed with sheer joy. Leaves sprouted from the fresh boughs, and thorns sprang from the ends of the energetic branches, extending like scimitars in search of any enemy. No longer a set of blackened stumps, the new wental-infused growth towered above the canopy.

Another enormous treeship, the first in a new fleet.

Jess Tamblyn watched the spectacle with obvious surprise, as if even he hadn’t guessed what the wental power could do when joined with the worldforest. Celli saw her parents standing together, mouths agape, like little children watching a condorfly hatch from its chrysalis.

Beneto’s voice echoed from all the trees. “This is just the beginning.”

More water globules spread away from the Roamer man’s strange ship. The separate wental bubbles homed in on other broken trees, crippled trunks, and blasted boughs that had never recovered. The large droplets drenched stumps, reviving and transforming them into monumental thorny structures as well. A new armada of treeships sprang to life, surging up from the forest floor.

Solimar grinned at Celli, full of fresh knowledge from the forest. “Now you know what created the verdani battleships in the first place! Worldtrees infused with living wentals, joined in a symbiotic construction great enough to battle even a hydrogue warglobe. A hundred warglobes!”

New thorny battleships lunged up from the ground all across the forest, at least a hundred more. Celli wanted to race through the wooded paths to see them all.

Ever since the first hydrogue attack, the Theron people had felt sore and defeated, overwhelmed by an impossible task of mere survival. Now, though, Celli could feel the strong new sensation of hope. “If the hydrogues know what’s good for them, they’ll just surrender.”

Beneto stood beneath the shadow of the first newborn seedship, facing the Roamer man. “You brought what we needed more than anything, Jess Tamblyn. By reviving Theron trees with wental water, we can now add a new fleet of verdani battleships to the ones we summoned from the far reaches.”

Dazed, Jess flexed his hands, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d helped to accomplish. “Will it be enough? That isn’t the only ability we have to offer. Even now, Roamer clans are gathering tankers and cargo haulers to take shipments of wental water and drop them like bombs into hydrogue gas giants.”

The wooden man looked at the thorny trees that filled the Theron sky. “These new verdani battleships will also find and destroy hydrogues. The enemy is already weakened by their struggles against the faeros. We can tip the balance and defeat them forever.”

Jess beckoned to his water vessel. “Before that can happen, I still have plenty of work to do—coordinating Roamer water carriers, managing the wental distribution—while you prepare to launch your treeships. Even a few hundred verdani battleships aren’t a sure bet against thousands of drogue warglobes.”

The nearest verdani battleship continued to crack and thrash as it grew like a geyser of living wood. Across the worldforest, a hundred more like it reached for the sky, unsheathed swords prepared to strike the hydrogues.

“Our fleet will join the great fight very soon,” Beneto said, then lowered his voice. “But first we must find pilots for each of these new vessels.” He studied the looming, gold-scaled trunks. “And I will be the first volunteer.”

Solimar’s face was solemn, and Celli’s heart clenched with instinctive dread. What did the golem of her brother intend to do? “What does he mean?” She shouted, “Beneto, what are you doing?”

With a splitting sound, an opening appeared in the still-scarred trunk, a dark and mysterious passage. “Each verdani battleship requires a green priest to join the heartwood. The trees cannot fly alone. They need a partner.”

Celli ran toward her brother. “You mean you’re going inside that thing? For how long?” She ignored the other looming battleships, ignored Solimar, even her parents, who still hadn’t realized the terrible truth.

Beneto turned to her. “Look at what I’ve accomplished, little sister. Now it’s time for me to depart. I will fuse myself with this ship, in the same way that the first verdani battleships partnered with other living creatures.”

“But can you come back when the war is over?” Celli forced optimism into her voice. She had always resented being treated as a child, as the youngest, but now she felt very small. “After the verdani battleships destroy the hydrogues, you’ll return to Theroc, right?”

He shook his head. “Even if we win, Celli, I will forever be part of this ship.”

“But . . . but you can’t just leave. You’re my brother, Beneto! I’ve already lost you once.”

“Yes, I am your brother, Celli,” the wooden simulacrum said gently. “I love you. I look like him and have his memories. But I am also much more than that. My purpose now is greater than when I was only human.”

She wanted to drag him away from the dark and forbidding crack in the thick trunk, but Beneto stood firm, as if he had taken root. His next words stuck fresh fear into her heart. “We need a hundred new pilots.”

Before Celli could blurt another question, a crowd of green priests walked out of the forest, summoned via telink. Beneto addressed them, his face content. “Thank you for coming. We have many more volunteers than we need.”

Desperate, Celli whirled to Solimar for explanations. It was all happening too quickly. First the joy and awe, then hope, and now this terrible cost. Solimar squeezed her shoulder in an ineffective attempt to comfort her. “You need to let them go, Celli. Our fate rides on this.”

She shook him off. The volunteers looked placidly determined, accepting their fates far more easily than she ever would. She realized that the green priests must already have decided everything via telink, talking in ways that no other Theron could hear. But what about their families, their friends?

On the other hand, what about the war and the survival of Theroc? She hated the necessity of this choice that was not really a choice. Nobody gave Celli any say in the matter. None at all.

She looked at the face of her brother, saw the longing expression carved there in the vibrant wood. He looked at her, and she felt a flood of all the times she had spent with Beneto, the real Beneto. And this one, too.

A spot appeared by one of his wood-grain eyes, moisture welling up like a bead of sap that spilled from the corner of a delicate eyelid, then began to flow down the hard, rounded cheek. Beneto stepped into the yawning crack in the verdani battleship, then the trunk sealed itself again, and Beneto was gone.

Solimar held Celli for a long moment in silence. She shuddered, feeling his strength, glad for his closeness. At least he was still here to treedance with her, be her friend and maybe eventually even her lover. They had many possibilities open to them. . . .

“I have to tell you one more thing, Celli,” Solimar said, his voice dropping into the silence like a stone. “I have volunteered to fuse with one of the new ships as well.”

99

NIRA

I
n contrast with the horrors of Dobro, the trip back to Ildira was full of joy and love, memories and relief. But her heart was not the same.

The
Burton
descendants would finally be allowed to establish a real home on the planet they had expected to settle centuries ago, before the betrayal. Hopes and dreams could be reborn from the smallest seeds, but what good would even those concessions do if the hydrogues came to eradicate them all?

Aboard the ship, Nira told Jora’h about her years of emptiness, voicing as many searingly painful recollections as she could bear. She didn’t actually blame him, but a kind of distance took the place of her initial joy.

“I swear to you I did not know where you were all those years,” he said again, as he had several times before. “I did not know you were alive.”

“I was already pregnant with our daughter, but they beat me.” Her voice hitched. “As soon as I was capable, after they took Osira’h from me, Designate Udru’h forced himself upon me again and again until I finally conceived his son. After that, there were more fathers, more tortures, and more children. Those poor children. I am glad we could save them.”

“I did not know you were there.” It was a chant.

“But you must have known about the other breeding captives!” Her words became hard now, and her muscles tensed. “All those people, for generation after generation. You had to know what was happening.”

“The program was established long before my father took the throne. I was not told about it until just before his death.” His words caught in his throat. “And he killed himself to prevent me from finding you. Then, when I ordered the Dobro Designate to release you, he told me you were dead.”

“You should never have believed him.” Nira was aware of the harshness in her voice. “You are the Mage-Imperator! You touch the minds of every living Ildiran, and yet your own brother tricked you? How many people have you allowed to lie to you, Jora’h?”

Jora’h clenched his hands into fists. “Right after the Hyrillka rebellion, Udru’h came to me like a penitent and confessed that you were alive after all. He must have known I would learn the truth. I had never even considered that Udru’h would deceive me. That he
could
deceive me.”

“I’ve heard enough lies to last ten lifetimes,” Nira said. “Thoughts of you kept me alive. I called out to you, dreamed of you. I would have given anything just to see you while I was in the breeding barracks. I . . . love you, Jora’h.” She lowered her gaze. “But I am no longer sure I trust you.”

She understood the impossible decision the hydrogues had demanded of him, and understood—now—that he was trying to find a way to stand up against the enemy. But if none of his plans had a chance of succeeding, how quickly would he change his mind? How easily would he bow again?

Adar Zan’nh would be coming home any day now after delivering his message to King Peter, and the Solar Navy was gathering the requisite warliners over Ildira, ready to dispatch them like gamepieces played by the hydrogues.

Jora’h seemed to sense her doubts and concerns. “I promise I will do everything I can to stand up to the hydrogues, Nira.”

“But what if everything you can do is not enough to save your people, and mine?”

After the quiet calm of their journey, Nira felt an old measure of excitement as they descended through the sun-swept sky and landed on a platform atop the Prism Palace. Mijistra spread out like an incomprehensible fantasyland. Guard kithmen marched forward across the rooftop, accompanied by well-dressed courtiers, bureaucrat kithmen.

Behind Nira, Osira’h led the other half-breed children. Raised on drab Dobro, her younger brothers and sisters had never seen such marvels. For a moment, the delight on the faces of her children made Nira forget her other concerns. “This is your home now,” she said.

“We will find quarters for all of you in the Prism Palace,” Jora’h promised.

Adar Zan’nh was also there, standing at attention but looking deeply disturbed. He gave a swift, formal salute, and his voice was leaden. “Liege, King Peter has accepted our offer of warliners, as you expected he would.”

Nira shot a swift glance at Jora’h. He squeezed her arm as if to reassure her. He wanted her to trust him, and a Mage-Imperator was not accustomed to assuaging doubt. Jora’h straightened his reflective robes. “Send them as soon as they are ready. Two cohorts, if possible.”

“Two cohorts, Liege?” The Adar wrestled with his surprise. “That is twice what the hydrogues demanded. And it takes defenses away from Ildira!”

“If we are going to do this, then we must take our best gamble. That is my command. Can we prepare that many warliners? How long will the refitting take?”

“Our teams are working without rest, making remarkable progress. It is the greatest and swiftest mobilization of manpower and resources ever attempted by the Solar Navy. We learned innovative techniques from Sullivan Gold and his engineers.” Zan’nh seemed awkward with his pride. “What we lack in time, we make up for in workers and dedication. Your people will not let you down.”

“Good, Adar. When the cohorts leave, I want you to command them personally.”

Zan’nh seemed taken aback, but then rallied his resolve again. “Yes, Liege. No one else should have to bear that burden.”

Much later, Nira and Jora’h were alone in his high tower room. They stood on the transparent balcony, staring across the magnificent skyline. He put an arm around her shoulders. “Because you are human, we can never share our souls through the bonds of
thism . . . yet words seem inadequate for all that we have to say to each other.”

“That is why it’s so important that I can trust you.” Nira thought wistfully of the time they had spent together when he was Prime Designate. Those had been peaceful times.

“You are as beautiful to me as ever, Nira, but neither of us is who we were.” He drew back to look into her eyes. “Our love cannot be the same as before. I—”

“I know.” In order to become Mage-Imperator, he had surrendered his manhood—the price of controlling the
thism
to hold his people together. She herself had been damaged, abused. The two of them would no longer have a sexual relationship, but now perhaps their love would be even stronger. Physical passion would instead become inseparable companionship.

They stared for a long time at the dazzling, clear skies, at the reflections of the curved buildings. After a while, she finally said, “Oh, how I long to touch the forest mind again! Do you have a treeling? Where are the treelings that Ambassador Otema and I brought?”

Jora’h shook his head, looking extremely sad. “I have no treelings at the Prism Palace. They were all destroyed.” He pressed his lips together, as if catching himself before he could utter another outright deception.

Nira could tell he was still hiding something, keeping secrets. It was as obvious as dark knots in a pale beam of wood. Would it never end?