“We will time this to happen after dark. I was reminded there’s a high wall along the road on the uphill side, which is why we will have our altercation below the village.”
“What’s going to destroy the thing?” asked Abasio.
“You don’t need to know until later,” said Precious Wind. “Those who need to know do know.”
The thing that had been the Old Dark Man had made itself a lair in an old mine tunnel, almost at the top of the rise, south of the river Wells. The falls was only a short distance away, and the thunder of it shook the place where he spent the daylight hours but the sound did not disturb him. Nothing could disturb him. The part of him that thought was caught in an endless loop. His body, his self, required that he do procedure A. Each day his body, his self, would try to do procedure A. Hours would be spent trying to do procedure A. His body, his self, was unable to do procedure A. His body went by default to procedure B, and more hours would be spent without doing procedure B. Default to procedure C, to procedure D. . .
The list of procedures numbered over a hundred items, but the error feedback mechanism did not allow the loop to get any longer than five items, the same five, over and over. When one was done, the loop would go back to the first one. The only thing he felt was a hideous, weakening hunger that demanded to be fed, but he couldn’t be fed. His body was unable to recognize “feed,” though the creature recognized it as something Mirami and those who had come before her had done. They had had to be fed. After he grew them as infants, he required a thing called a wet-nurse to secrete food and put it into their mouths The Old Dark Man had not done it himself, but back then, when he had been created, he had been given the instructions, he had observed the procedure. Later he had observed the making and feeding of solid food.
When the hunger began, when he could not find the Old Dark House, when he could not find his cocoon—that was what it was called in the schematics: his cocoon—he had tried the procedure as he had seen it. He had taken flesh, his usual nourishment, and instead of putting it into one of the maintenance tubes as he usually did, he had put the flesh into his mouth. His mouth was a weapon. It had no way to swallow, to digest, to nourish. It could bite, tear, but it could not swallow. If he could find the Old Dark House, he would find his cocoon. If he could find his cocoon, he could find Mirami or Alicia, he could rip flesh from one of them and put the flesh into a certain place in the maintenance tube and put the tube in his cocoon. Then he could lean back into its embrace and be fed, satisfied, comforted, maintained.
Each time the loop got to that place, he tried again to find the Old Dark House, find the cocoon, find his flesh providers, Mirami, Alicia. There had been others, before them, but all the ones before them had died. Gone. Without the Old Dark House he could not create others. Failing to find their flesh, he tried to put other flesh directly into the receptacle in his side where the tube connected, but it did not work. The flesh hung there and rotted. Either the flesh was wrong or the device was needed. It was the same when he tried to drink. There was no way out of the cycle. He had not been given a way out of the cycle. He could only follow it through to the end. Procedure E.
Procedure E required him to kill something. That he could always do. Killing was the only procedure he could achieve, the only satisfaction that momentarily stopped the hunger. For a moment. Only a moment. But once he had killed, he was back at procedure A again. The hunger started over.
He had observed Alicia. She had been like him. She was more like him than any of the others had been. She, too, had used killing to stop the hunger, but killing had never stopped her hunger for long. How many others had there been? He could not remember. Many. Many. Most of them like Mirami. Adequate to use for food.
Most frustrating of all was the presence of another program. He knew it was there. He could feel the program like a pressure, pushing on him. It was readying itself for use when the situation warranted, when an optimum target presented itself. Optimum target. Priorty One target. Data concerning the optimum target still came in. Data was still processed. The time was growing shorter. When that time came, the loop would stop. He would come out of the endless hunger into reasoned action! For a time he would not hunger, would not thirst, would not feel all that painful strangeness that was now his daily life. When that time came, he would be himself again. Utterly invincible.
Until then, he hungered. The hunger possessed him. He put back his great head, dropped his huge jaw, and howled. The howl went out across the world and everything with ears heard it, collapsed, and shook with uncontrollable terror.
The three wagons from Woldsgard followed the pattern established by the single wagon that had gone before. They traveled quickly almost to Riversmeet. They stopped there. In early morning when the creature rested (two red rockets) they moved out, went quickly onto the road and as fast as possible to Eastwatch Tower, arriving there before the creature moved again. At two rockets in the morning, the wagons moved out. Precious Wind and Xulai walked beside the wagons, dropping things along the way, things that smelled of Tingawa, of themselves, of the warriors who had attacked the creature in the Old Dark House, who had destroyed that house.
“Dead birds,” cried Xulai, moving a feathered body away from the road with her foot. “Everywhere. They dropped out of the sky like rain. Under the orchard trees there were dozens of them. The thing howling killed them.” Her voice was remote, uncaring, as though she had gone past caring.
“I know,” said Precious Wind. “Try not to focus on that. Just keep moving. Chew a bit of apple and spit it out. Keep littering the way, leaving a trail.”
“I didn’t get to say good-bye to Father. Where was he?”
“Prince Orez said he had to go up to the pinnacle. Something happened up there—nothing to do with all this—but he felt he needed to speak to his men personally.”
“Can Abasio come walk with me?”
“He will, a little later. Just along here we want the trail to be unmistakable, not cluttered up by the smell of anyone else. We’re saying ‘smell’ because we don’t know what the real sensory apparatus is. And we’re trying to keep the target specific, so extraneous people don’t get hurt.”
“Only us specific people will get hurt, right?”
Precious Wind bit her tongue, made herself sound calm. “If we do this right, Xulai, nobody gets hurt except it. You and Abasio will have a long life together.”
“Together,” Xulai agreed. “Yes, we will be together.”
They walked up the hill. When Xulai was too weary to walk farther, she sat on the wagon seat next to Abasio and spit bits of food into the road while two of the Tingawan warriors walked alongside. They were dragging some of Xulai’s clothing behind them. She pretended this was an ordinary trip, from which she would be returning. If it had been, she would have had a good excuse for having Nettie Lean make some new clothes. Certainly her old ones wouldn’t fit her. What did women wear when they were pregnant? Would she live long enough to care?
They went around the fourth switchback and began moving to the north once more. “Two more,” said Xulai.
“Two more what?” murmured Abasio.
“Two more switchbacks. The becoming-pure village came after the sixth switchback.”
“How many, all together?”
“Thirteen,” she said. “Thirteen turns, fourteen trips along the cliff. Last time I quit being afraid of the road collapsing after about the first six or seven traverses.”
“You didn’t tell me you were afraid of heights.” He wanted to put his arm around her but decided not to. It was better to keep everything ordinary. Very ordinary.
“I’m not. I’m afraid of roads collapsing. All those heavy nets made me worry. I’m glad we’re not going all the way to the top. I had nightmares about falling into those falls. I wondered if the duchess had some way to get up the falls, like a fish jumping or something.”
“She and Jenger had their own way to get back and forth.”
“Poor Jeng
er. There was something in his eyes, Abasio. Something that wanted out.”
“I’ll bet. Like a tiger out of a cage.”
“No. That’s how he was trying to be. But in his eyes he was like a child that’s been locked in a dark closet. I saw it just before he died.”
Abasio said nothing. He knew too well what she meant. He had had acquaintances, maybe friends, who had looked like that when they died. Mean, no good, violent, cruel, and when they died they had looked like children, whipped for no reason. He put his arm around her after all.
“Do you think Jenger’s gone somewhere happier?” she asked.
What could he say? Nothing ugly. Not now. “No. I think he’s gone somewhere where nothing will ever lock him in the dark again. Where there is no unhappy. Just birdsong and leaves rustling and the wind.” There was a long silence, interrupted only by the squeak of wagon wheels. Abasio made a mental note to oil them tomorrow, maybe.
She said, “You know what we’re going to do when we get up there, don’t you?”
“I know what you and I are going to do while everyone else is yelling and horses are whinnying. We’re going to climb the wall along the road and get down behind it.”
“Really?” What he had said had sounded like actual information. “Nobody told me. I’m not sure I’m up to climbing . . .”
“There’ll be a net to climb. You’ll do fine. I’ll be right behind you. What you can do now is watch for a couple of wagons coming down. They need to reach the way-halt where we camped just after the sun has gone down, as it’s getting dark.”
“Blue isn’t pulling us. Is there some reason?”
“I didn’t want to risk him. We didn’t need him, so . . .”
“I’m glad. I hope none of the other horses get hurt.”
He thought, I hope no one gets hurt. But if other horses do, they at least won’t blame me for it. Or curse me in absentia.
Time went by. They came to the fifth switchback. Someone had built a path at the end of it, one that led away, around the edge of the cliff to the right. Perhaps there would be a new village there. More time went by. They turned the sixth switchback. They were headed north once more.
When they had gone about halfway, she remembered to look for the wagons coming down. “I see the wagons coming down.”
Abasio looked high to his right, then spoke to one of the walking warriors, who sprinted forward. “We need to drag it out a little,” he said, pulling on the reins. “I’ll check the wheels.”
All the wagons stopped, people watered horses, checked hooves, checked wheels, made considerable fuss about nothing. Above them, at the next switchback, other wagons were doing more or less the same thing. One of the drivers ahead of Abasio raised his voice, shouted something unintelligible, then crawled under a wagon. Someone else shouted about axle trouble. There was some to-ing and fro-ing, this one with a pot of axle grease, that one with a hammer. There were hammer blows, voices raised. Time passed. Abasio spoke to one of the men who again went up the road to see what was happening, which stopped happening upon his arrival. The sun had set. The wagons moved again, very slowly. “Look to your left, watch for rockets,” Abasio whispered.
Xulai could not see Woldsgard across the valley below, but she knew where it was in relationship to the pinnacle, outlined as a greater darkness against a graying sky.
“Red rocket,” she said softly. “It’s moving.”
“Ah,” said Abasio, looking ahead of him. The wagon on the upper road was not yet making the turn. The team began the downward turn and he heard the squeal of wagon brakes as the steeper slope of the turn took hold. The cliff face hadn’t enough room on it for a wide, gentle turn. The switchbacks were tight, not too bad going up, but they were difficult coming down. Particularly for a loaded wagon, which the one approaching happened to be. The brakes screamed; the horses moved against one another, bracing themselves against the load. Abasio held his breath. The wagon straightened out, the slope became gentler, the squealing eased, stuttered, faded. The wagon was now moving past the village, and it was rapidly growing darker.
“Red rocket,” Xulai called. “Three of them, widely spaced, then a blue.”
“My guess is that means it’s really moving toward the way-halt, not up the road.”
“Is that what it’s supposed to mean?”
“We didn’t cover all eventualities,” grated Abasio. “But that’s what I’d mean if I were in charge of the rockets.” He edged the horses to the inside, against the wall, to miss the huge pile of wood up ahead that was blocking the outside half of the road. Some wagons had gone past it; others had slowed down well before they reached it.
The far wagons were converging. There wasn’t room for them to pass one another. A loud argument broke out up in front of them.
“C’mon, love,” he said. “Out of here.”
He lifted her from the wagon, hustled her to the wall, and put her hands on the net she found there. “Foot up,” he said, putting it there. While the noise ahead of them escalated, he came behind her, up and up and up, and over, among a dozen pairs of hands that promptly began drawing the net up from behind them. Someone took Xulai’s arm and moved her into the village quickly. Abasio was beside her. The other drivers were climbing over the wall around them. They ran along a level path, into an opening, through a gate that shut and was barred behind them, up a flight of stairs, and another, into a room to their right. Then they were alone, facing a window that looked down on the road below them. All the wagons were tight against the cliff, leaving the outside part of the road bare.
Far across the valley a green rocket sparkled in the sky, then half a dozen more.
“That would mean it’s right on top of us,” said Abasio.
The hullabaloo below had stopped. There was no sound. Uphill, at the way-halt, something exploded; a comet flamed down the hill and landed on the huge pile of wood that had blocked half the road. Some wagons were well past it, others hadn’t come that far. The fire had the roadway all to itself as it burst into leaping flame.
“There were two small cannons hidden in the wagon we sent earlier,” Abasio whispered. “There were also two men who knew how to use them. They were all set up under the overturned wagon, hidden behind hay, but aimed, loaded, ready. All they had to do was fire them. The villagers had that huge pile of wood ready . . .”
The wood burned brilliantly. The roadway lit up as though by daylight. Standing in the firelight were two, no, three figures: downhill, Precious Wind surrounded by her wolves; nearer the fire the Old Dark Man, a hideous, skeleton-like figure, half-flesh, half-metal, looming against the firelight, and across from him . . .
“Shh,” said Abasio, putting his hand across her mouth. “Don’t.
“But it’s my father,” she whisper-screamed into the palm of his hand. “It’s Father.”
He put his mouth to her ear. “He came with the other wagon, the one that came several days ago. He wanted to. No. He demanded to.”
“Jacob,” Justinian called. “Jacob, do you hear me?” He was dressed in a white garment. He carried something.
Abasio whispered. “He’s carrying the maintenance tube the Tingawans took from the Old Dark House.”
“What is that he’s wearing?”
“The book the emissary brought says it’s called a lab coat,” he answered. “There were pictures in the book of the people who made the slaughterers wearing them.”
“If it doesn’t work . . .”
“If this doesn’t work, it’ll be up to the wolves . . .” And after the wolves, us.
Justinian’s voice. “Jacob, you remember me. It’s Doctor Hammond. Remember?”
The Old Dark Man said, “Doctor?”
“You must be terribly hungry, Jacob.”
The thing gasped, opened its mouth. “Hungry! Must finish imperative procedure so can be fed.”
“You can be fed first, Jacob. We decided. You’ve been so effective, you can be fed first.”
“No . . . No
cocoon.”
“That’s all right. We’re building a new cocoon. In the meantime, I’ve brought food. See here. Sit down here beside me. Open the portal. Let’s give you some food.”
Xulai saw the bench beside the road, just within the edge of the firelight. Justinian sat down on the bench that someone had put at the side of the road, inside the circle of firelight, not so close it would burn. Who had measured?
“Here, Jacob. Sit beside me.”
Abasio whispered, “The wagons that were coming down the hill were full of archers with fire arrows. They’ve all sneaked out by now. They’re on the other side of the fire from the Old Dark Man. If they have to shoot, the arrows will light as they come through the fire. They’ll be burning when they hit . . .”
“Father will be hit . . .”
“He’s wearing protection. He’ll fall flat on the road if anything goes bad.”
The man in the white coat said mildly, “Sit down, Jacob. Rest.”
The thing staggered. Stumbled. Turned as though undecided.
“You’ll have to hurry,” said Justinian. “So we can finish on time. You’re so hungry. So very hungry you’re losing efficiency. You’ll be more efficient when you have food. Come, let me feed you.”
The thing sat, fumbled with its body where a hip joint might have been. Justinian put the tube into the opening and turned it a quarter turn. It made a loud snick, an emphatic dagger of sound piercing the utter silence. Down on the road, even the horses had stopped breathing.
The thing raised an arm. Firelight reflected from fingertips like knives. The thing turned toward the man in the white coat. Xulai tried to say, “Why, don’t, don’t let him . . .”