A Darkling Plain

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  "What have they done to the sky?" asked Hester, looking from the window at breakfast time. She was still feeling weak from her head wound. She thought at first that the marbled haze that hung over the rooftops was the first sign of a relapse; something gone wrong with her eye or her brain. But a glance at the frightened faces of Oenone and Pennyroyal told her that they could see it too.

  The sun rose, pink and shrunken. Flakes that looked like snow were drifting down everywhere. "Snow?" Pennyroyal complained. "In summertime?"

  "it is ash ," announced Grike. " the sky is full of ash."

  General Xao took advantage of the lull in the fighting to have the Fury repaired. "We cannot make contact with Shan Guo," she told her guests. "The new weapon seems to have interfered with our radio sets. So I am sending you home to Naga with a message. We need orders. Are we to advance? Recapture the ground they took from us? Or do we simply wait for them to surrender?"

  Oenone looked at the columns of smoke rising from the dead Traction Cities. She said, "I can't believe Naga had such a thing and never told me of it. I can't believe he used it. All those lives gone. It's horrible!"

  Xao bowed. "Personally, I agree. But let's not say it too loudly, Excellency. My people are most impressed with the new weapon."

  And it was true; as they walked to the docking pan where the Fury lay, the four companions could hear the cheers and songs of victory rising from the lower levels of Forward Command and from all the trenches and fortifications around about. Gunshots popped like champagne corks as relieved

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  Green Storm soldiers loosed off some of the ammunition they had been saving for the cities at the sky instead. When a bullet skipped off the metal pavement a few feet ahead of them, they assumed at first it was a spent round falling. "Sweet Poskitt!" cried Pennyroyal indignantly. "They'll have somebody's eye out in a minute!"

  Only when a flushed, furious-looking soldier lurched out into their path, working another round into the chamber of his carbine, did they understand that the bullet had been aimed at Oenone.

  "Aleutian!" the soldier shouted. He pointed her out to his comrades, who were hurrying up behind him. "There she is, friends! The Aleutian traitor who tried to destroy the Wind-Flower and set up Naga in her place!"

  Grike stepped in front of Oenone and unsheathed his finger-glaives. The soldier's companions drew back hastily, but he held his ground, still shouting. "Your time is over, Aleutian! She is risen! We have all heard the stories! A Stalker killing a thousand townies aboard Brighton! An amphibious limpet found on the sacred mountain! The Stalker Fang has returned!"

  Hester pulled out her gun, but Oenone caught her wrist before she could shoot the angry soldier. "No. Leave him. Who knows what he's been through?"

  Already some of General Xao's men were hurrying from the docking pans to pull the troublemaker away. As they seized him, the man screamed, "Naga could not have made the cities burn like this! This is her victory! The Stalker Fang has returned to Tienjing and killed the crippled coward! Fly home, Aleutian, so she can kill you, too!"

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  Xao's men bundled him away. Oenone was shaking. Hester took her arm and guided her quickly toward the docking pan. "Don't worry. He's mad. Or drunk."

  "I have heard the same rumors from other once-born here," said Grike. " the idea that their old leader had returned was a comfort to them when defeat seemed inevitable."

  "But Fang is dead, isn't she?" Pennyroyal said, trying to shield himself behind the Stalker. "You smashed her."

  "She is dead," said Oenone. "She must be...."

  But she was still trembling slightly half an hour later as the Fury carried her into the stained sky and began the journey homeward to Tienjing.

  London. The night giving way to lightless dawn. Fog everywhere. Fog on the edge of the wreck, where the debris merges into green scrub country; fog in the wreck's heart, where it rolls among the steep mounds of corroded deck plate. Fog on the Womb road, fog on the rust hills. Fog creeping into the cabins and huts of Crouch End, fog hovering around blind lookout posts and lifeless windmills, fog drooping on the steering vanes and rigging of the Archaeopteryx in her secret hangar. Fog piled so deep over the plain that Stalker-birds on watch above can see nothing of London beyond a few tall spires of debris that rise out of the vapor like jagged islands breaking from a white sea.

  Wren woke from unsettling dreams to the drip, drip, drip of moisture falling from the eaves; Theo beside her (so at least he hadn't been a dream); her father still not home. She slipped reluctantly away from Theo's warmth and roamed

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  through the chilly hut, peeking into each room. "Dad? Daddy?"

  His letter crunkled beneath her feet as she came back to Theo. Her head was still stuffed with sleep; she had to read his short message twice before she started to understand.

  Her cry woke Theo, and she thrust the letter at him.

  My dear Wren,

  By the time you read this, I shall already be in the air. I'm sorry to leave without saying good-bye, but, as you wrote once to me, "you would only try to stop me." I don't want to be stopped, and I don't want to remember you crying and upset, or angry at me. I will remember you always as I saw you tonight, safe with Theo.

  I am going to try and explain to the Green Storm that New London is not a threat to them. This new weapon has changed everything, but I believe General Naga is a good man, and perhaps if I can make him understand that we Londoners are not so very different to his own people, he will let us go in peace. Perhaps I can even persuade him to stop using the weapon. I have to try.

  I hope I shall be back in a few days, to see New London leave, but if I die, it really doesn't matter; the truth is, Wren, I am dying anyway. The doctor I saw in Peripatetiapolis told me that. I have been dying for a long time, and I shall soon be dead, with or without any help from the Green Storm.

  The strange thing is, I don't mind too much, because I know that you will live on, and see marvelous things, and one day I hope have children of your own, who will be just as much of a worry and a joy to you as you were to me. That's what History

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  teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation. Well, I've had my turn, and now it's yours, and I mean to try and make sure that you live in a world that is free of at least one threat--

  Wren had her coat on and was halfway to the door before Theo even finished reading. He was glad of an excuse to stop; the letter was private, and he felt wrong for looking at it. "Where are you going?" he asked.

  "The hangar, of course!"

  "He'll be gone.... He says--"

  "I know what he says, but we don't know when he wrote that, do we? He's ill; it probably took him longer than he allowed for, going all along the Holloway Road." She wasn't tearful, just very angry at Tom for keeping such secrets from her. And how on Earth did he hope to fly all the way to Shan Guo without her to help?

  She and Theo ran off together, stopping only to cadge a flask of water from the kitchens. Angie was helping make breakfast. Wren pushed the letter at her and said, "Wake Mr. Pomeroy and show him this!" and ran off before the other girl started asking questions.

  The day was gray and cheerless. It seemed to Wren to smell of ash, as if the immense pall of smoke from all those slaughtered cities had drifted east overnight to blanket London. As they ran on, the murk grew thicker; fog hid the deeper parts of the debris field, and the spires and blades of wreckage that towered on either side of the trackway took on a ghostly look.

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  "Is what your father said true?" asked Theo as they ran. "Is he really that sick?"

  "Of course not!" Wren replied. "He's just saying that because he thinks I won't feel so bad then about him going off to Shan Guo. His heart hurts him sometimes, but he's got pills for it. Green ones."

  The fog grew deeper. By the time they r
eached the terminus at the eastern end of the Holloway Road, they could not see ten feet in front of them, and when they finally emerged from the old duct, they found themselves in a white world where they could barely see each others' faces even though they stood side by side, holding hands.

  At first they thought both airships were gone, but when Theo collided with the Archaeopteryx 's underside tail fin, they realized that only the Jenny Haniver was missing.

  "Who goes there?" shouted a nervous voice.

  "It's me! Wren!"

  A grayish stain appeared in the fog and condensed into Will Hallsworth and Jake Henson. "It is, you know," said Jake. "Pass, friend," said Will.

  "Where's my dad?" demanded Wren, who didn't have time for games of soldiers.

  "He came by early this morning," said Jake.

  "Very early," agreed Will. "Said Mr. Pomeroy had asked him to take the Jenny on a reconnaissance trip and he'd be back soon. I 'spect he's circling up there now, delayed by all this fog."

  "It's a real London particular!" said Jake.

  "Why didn't you stop him, you idiots!" screamed Wren.

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  "Steady on!"

  "He said it was orders from the committee. We couldn't argue with that."

  "Was he armed?" asked Theo.

  Will and Jake looked sheepish. "Not when he got here, no."

  "But he made us give him one of our lightning guns. He said he might need it if he ran into any of those Stalker-birds up above all this pea soup."

  Wren turned to Theo, almost fell against him. She was tired by their journey along the Holloway Road, and she felt that she would never see her father again. She was ready to cry. "He's gone. He's gone forever!"

  Echoey sounds came out of the dank throat of Holloway Road. Footsteps and voices. Someone was approaching, and the sound of their coming was rolling ahead of them down the tunnel. Theo held Wren and tried to comfort her while they all waited for the newcomers to emerge. The hard beams of electric lanterns poked through the fog, lighting up all the little individual water droplets without illuminating anything.

  "Zagwan?" said a tetchy voice from behind the torch glow.

  "Me?" asked Theo.

  "Put your hands up! Step away from the airship!"

  "I'm nowhere near it," protested Theo.

  "No, that's me," said Will Hallsworth.

  "Is it?" A shape blurred out of the fog. It was Garamond, holding the revolver he had taken from Wolf Kobold. "Where's Wren?"

  "Here," said Wren. "What is all this about?"

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  "We caught you just in time, I see," said Garamond. "Just in time for what?"

  Other figures were appearing behind Garamond; they surrounded Wren and Theo in the fog like a circle of stones. Wren thought she recognized Ron Hodge and Cat Luperini among them.

  "They were going to steal the Archaeopteryx!" said Garamond, loud and triumphant. "Natsworthy has taken his own airship east, and now he sends his daughter and their Green Storm accomplice to take the Archy. They planned to leave us with no way of escape when the Storm's Stalkers march in."

  "What are you talking about, you silly little man?" shouted Wren. "My dad's gone to try and talk to Naga--"

  "Exactly! To betray us to his Green Storm paymasters; yes; we have read the letter. I thought it was a little too neat, your African friend turning up at the very moment the birds struck! You arranged that attack just so that he could appear to save us, thinking it would make us trust him. Well, Wren Natsworthy, I have news for you; I don't trust him; I don't trust you, and I don't trust your traitor father!"

  Wren's fist caught him full on the nose. He went backward into the fog with a muffled squeal ("Ow! By doze! By doze!"). Theo held Wren back as she tried to fling herself upon him, though she couldn't even see him anymore. Sobbing, she screamed at the fog that hid him. "What were you doing, reading my letter? That was private! From my father! I told Angie to show it to Mr. Pomeroy, nobody else!"

  "Wren," said Cat, coming to help Theo restrain her. "Wren, Wren ..."

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  "It's Garamond who's the real traitor! When Mr. Pomeroy hears you tried to arrest Theo, he'll--""Wren ..."

  "What?"

  Cat hung her head, fog water dripping from her hair. "Mr. Pomeroy is dead."

  "What?"

  "Angie found him when she took your father's letter to his hut. All yesterday's excitement must have been too much for him. He died last night, in his sleep."

  Garamond lurched out of the fog, one hand clutching his nose, blood dribbling down his chin. "Take theb both!" he ordered nasally. "Tie their hands. Brig theb to Crouch Ed. The Ebergency Cobbittee cad decide what to do with theb."

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  41 Back in Batmunkh Gompa

  ***

  THE jenny haniver PURRED eastward through the poisoned sky, toward the wall of mountains that marked the eastern borders of Shan Guo, and the broad pass through them that was barred and guarded by Batmunkh Gompa. As he drew close to the fortress city, Tom opened the general channel on his radio set and sent out again the message he had been repeating ever since leaving London, explaining that he came in peace. There was still no reply. He turned the knobs on the front of the set, scrolling up and down the airwaves. Static spat and popped like a fir-cone fire, and some kind of interference shrilled. Faintly, behind the gales of white noise, someone was speaking Shan Guonese, fast and panicky.

  Ten miles more to the mountains. Tom had flown through these skies before, with Hester, flying from Batmunkh Gompa to London in an attempt to stop another Ancient weapon.

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  He tried not to think about how that voyage had ended, but he could not keep the memories from welling up. Doubts started to gnaw at him. He had failed then, and he would fail again. His scheme of pleading with Naga, which had seemed so promising to him last night, began to feel more and more like madness. He should not be here! He should have stayed with Wren....

  He started to put the Jenny about, but as he did so, he saw three arrowheads of dark shapes waiting for him in the sky astern. He felt his heart clench like a fist. Memories of yesterday's attack and the birds on the long stair at Rogues' Roost wheeled around him. He snatched Jake Henson's lightning gun from the copilot's seat, trying to ready himself for the attack. The birds would make short work of the Jenny, but at least he would take a few dozen of them with him.

  The birds held their position. He started to realize that they were not attacking, just keeping watch on him. Perhaps they had been there ever since he had risen out of the fog banks over London. It was so hard to see anything in this hazy, tar-brown light.

  And then, at last, the voice he had been waiting for came rustling out of the radio set: a stern voice, speaking in Shan Guonese. He looked eastward and saw the white envelopes of two Fox Spirits glowing in the gloomy sky. The voice translated its order into Anglish. "Barbarian airship, cut your engines. Prepare to be boarded. We are the Green Storm."

  Tom had just time to stow the lightning gun in a hiding place high in the envelope before they came aboard. They were as unfriendly as the Green Storm soldiers he remembered from

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  Rogues' Roost, but they were not arrogant anymore; they seemed afraid. "How did you know General Naga is at Batmunkh Gompa?" they demanded angrily, when Tom tried to explain what he was doing here in the air approaches of their city.

  "I didn't. Is he? I thought he'd be in Tienjing. That's your capital, isn't it? I thought from Batmunkh Gompa you would be able to take me to Tienjing."

  "Tienjing is gone," said the leader of the Storm patrol, pacing about nervously on the Jenny's flight deck.

  "Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

  The young officer didn't answer. Then she said, "Anna Fang's ship was called the Jenny Haniver. I saw a film about her life in basic training."

  "This is the same ship," said Tom eagerly. "Anna was a friend of mine. I inherited the Jenny when she was--when she ..."

  "Quiet!" screamed the offi
cer in Shan Guonese, wheeling around to quell the outburst of whispering that had broken out among her men. They seemed to come from half a dozen different countries, and were busy translating Tom's words for one another. The officer barked more orders, and two of them came forward to hold Tom and manacle his hands. "You will come with us to Batmunkh Gompa," she said.

  "I just want a chance to talk to General Naga," said Tom hopefully. "I have something important to tell him."

  "About the new weapon?"

  "Well, partly, I suppose...."

  More whispering, more orders, none in any language that Tom could understand. Some of the men returned to their

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  own ship and reeled in their spidery boarding bridge. The officer took control of the Jenny Haniver, and Tom peered over her shoulder as they flew on toward Batmunkh Gompa, remembering how he had first come here with Anna and Hester all those years ago. The Wall was as sheer and black as before, and still armored with the deck plates of dead cities, vast disks of metal like the shields of Ancient warriors. But on the summit, where the oak-leaf banners of the League had blown, long lightning-bolt flags hung limply in the reddish sun, and between them an immense statue of Anna Fang stood pointing westward, summoning the people of the mountains to battle against the Traction Cities. As the Jenny descended past her, Tom noticed that she was a lot prettier than the real Anna Fang had been, and that a lot of bird droppings had drizzled down her face.

  Then they were over the Wall, and sinking past the vertical city on its eastern side, the pretty laddered streets and swallow's-nest houses all just as Tom remembered them, except that extra docking pans had been constructed on the lower levels, and hundreds of concrete barracks blocks now covered the valley floor at the western end of the lake. The Jenny flew over them, making for a cluster of buildings outside the city proper, on a crag that jutted out from the northern wall of the pass. Tom saw an old nunnery perched on the flat summit surrounded by what looked like an encampment of tents. The lightning-bolt flags were everywhere, interspersed with giant-size portraits of General Naga. On the pan at the crag's foot where the Jenny set down, someone had scrawled big Chinese letters in whitewash, and then underneath, in shaky Anglish ones, SHE IS RISEN!