Practically every light in Turcaret’s mansion was lit. The manor house was much larger than the Boros home, perhaps because it was younger by several centuries. Its walls seemed to be all window, tall graceful arched portals of leaded glass separated by stolid buttresses. Like a multi-story cathedral. At another time, Axel might have stopped to admire it; Jordan Mason could have told him everything about it after one glance. Right now, all he could afford to think was, the place is crawling with people.

He and Marya crouched under some bushes on the edge of the lawn, about a hundred meters from the house. It was a cloudy night, so the lights from the manor were practically the only source of illumination. The golden wash from the windows spread across the lawn, which was dusted with the first snow of winter, and outlined a crypt in the center of the grounds.

“Commencing reentry,” said the voice of the ship. “Estimated time of arrival at your location: fifteen minutes.“

“They’re on their way,” Axel told Marya.

“Great. Let’s go then.” She rose stiffly.

“Wait!” He grabbed her arm. “Look.” He pointed at the lawn.

“What? All I see is snow.”

“Tracks! Tracks everywhere.” Dozens of sets of footprints fanned out from the manor, encircling the crypt, vanishing into numerous small outbuildings, or terminating at the black walls of forest that surrounded the grounds.

“I see them,” said Marya peevishly. “So what? This is a busy place.”

Axel growled in frustration. “And when did the snowfall stop?”

“Two hours ago.”

“Listen,” he said. “If the snow stopped a couple of hours ago, then those footprints were made since then. After nightfall.”

“Oh.” She sat down suddenly. “You mean they know we’re here?”

“I think they know someone’s coming,” he said. “But I’m sure they don’t know why. And that’s about our only advantage at this point.”

“So what do we do?” she whispered.

He eyed the crypt. “How fast can you run?” It was a rhetorical question; she was pretty good for somebody who ran on tiptoe.

“I get it,” she said. “We run over to the crypt, get the head of John the Baptist and hope the ship arrives before the soldiers.”

“John the who?”

Marya rolled her eyes. “Forget it. Well? Let’s do it then.”

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered; but he stood, and at the count of three, they jumped the bushes and ran onto the lawn.

They made it ten meters; twenty; thirty. Still no outcry. Maybe I was wrong, Axel thought.

“There! In the field!”

Maybe not. Hounds bayed, and the black silhouettes of men disengaged from the shadows of the trees on the far end of the grounds.

“Keep going!” He spun around, not waiting to see if Marya had obeyed. Six hounds were racing across the snow. Forcing himself to act slowly, Axel went down on one knee, pulled the laser pistol and steadied it, then waited for them to come within range.

Each dog in turn became a blood-red beacon, and tumbled to lie still. As each fell the next blossomed with light; an observant man would have seen the speckled line of red light that joined the crimson flare to Axel’s hand. To anyone else, it must have seemed that the snow itself welled red and bit the dogs. The last one fell no more than four meters from Axel, and before it stopped sliding he was on his feet.

Marya stood at the entrance to the crypt. Several men were converging on her; she cowered back against the stone.

“Hang on!” shouted Axel. Two more men were moving to cut him off; he cursed as he saw swords gleaming in the light from the house. Not that they could kill him–Turcaret had tried that all too scientifically already–but they hurt.

And they could easily kill Marya.

“Stop!” cried the first man. He planted himself directly in Axel’s path.

Axel kicked him in the head and kept on running.

Two men held Marya. She struggled, then slumped in one’s arms. Or seemed to; Axel heard the man shout in surprise as Marya slipped down and out of her peasant dress, leaving him astonished holding it and her sprawled in her black unitard on the snow.

She shrieked–probably from the cold. Then she rolled to one side and disappeared.

Madwoman, thought Axel. Then he was there, with five men surrounding him.

The best tactic was to let them stab him; that way they overextended themselves, and none of them expected him to reach over the sword in his chest and smack them in the face. Which is what he did. As before, the blades lacerated him but did not penetrate his skin.

The last two realized he was armored and became more wary, but he didn’t give them any time, because he could see the doors of the manor opening, and armed men pouring out.

“Axel!” He sent his last opponent down with a side kick and turned to find Marya next to him. Her body below the neck was enveloped in an inky black cloud; she was shivering uncontrollably.

“I improvised,” she said.

“You’re brilliant,” he said, and hugged her with one arm. Then they ran over to the crypt.

The doors were bronze, very solid, and very closed. He pulled hard on the ring set into the right panel, but it didn’t budge.

“Lock,” said Marya, pointing.

“I know, I know.” He took out the pistol. “Cover your eyes.”

The metal glowed, groaned, and a hole appeared above the lock. Axel kicked the door. It held fast. “Bastard!” He shot the lock again.

“Axel!” They were surrounded again. Marya stepped between Axel and the soldiers, shouting, “Get the door!”

“Get the door? What are you going to do, hold them off with your bare hands?”

Someone tackled Marya from the side. They rolled out of sight around the corner of the crypt.

Axel shot the door again and as they came for him he hit it with his shoulder. It gave way just as if someone on the other side had opened it and he fell through.

Luckily, it was only three steps down. Axel hit all three on his way to the floor. When he rose, cursing, he was entirely in darkness, except for a panel of grey representing the door. A man was silhouetted there. The man was saying, “I’m not going in there.”

“Wise!” shouted Axel.

“We’ve got your accomplice!” said another voice. “Come out or she’s done for.”

Axel barked a laugh. He stepped up, fumbled until he found the hot edge of the door, and said, “Get stuffed.” Then he closed it.

“ETA five minutes,” said a voice in his head. “Are you ready for us?“

“Oh yeah.”

He shuffled around for a bit, bumping into sarcophagus-shaped obstacles every couple of meters. Axel had night-vision just like Calandria, but that only worked when there was some source of illumination, even if it was too faint for ordinary human sight.

“Fuck it.” He undid his cloak and threw it over a stone something. Then he shot it with the laser.

The cheerful flames showed him to be in a small room with about ten large stone coffins. Four were lidless and empty; the others all had faces and names carved into their stone covers.

He looked around quickly, and found Turcaret’s coffin was the one over which he’d draped his cloak. Grabbing the cloak by an unlit corner, he flung it over an empty lamp sconce on the wall, and turned his attention to getting the coffin’s lid off.

It was heavy, but when he braced both feet against the nearby wall and put his shoulder to it, the stone grated slowly to the side. A rank stench wafted out, making him gag.

“Madness, madness,” he grunted as the lid fell off with a resounding crunch.

“Hello,” he said to the withered but recognizable corpse in the sarcophagus. Then the flames ate the last of his cloak and he was plunged into darkness again.

“Shit.” He had several seconds of grace period; the dying embers from the cloak were enough for his augmented night vision. He could faintly see the shape of the body. He unceremoniously dumped his pack on Turcaret’s chest and dug everything out of it, throwing clothes and food all over the floor.

Shielding his eyes, he said, “Ever wanted to travel?” to Turcaret. “Well now’s your chance.” He fired the laser, flicking it quickly right-to-left.

The worst part was reaching into the sarcophagus in the dark, and pulling Turcaret’s mostly-severed head off his body. When he had the stinking thing free, Axel jammed it into his pack and stepped back to retch.

“I better get a medal for this.”

“Locked onto your signal,” said the ship. “We’re on final approach. We should be visible to you.”

Axel listened. Confused shouting came from outside the crypt. “We see you,” he sent.

It was easy to open the door of the crypt and saunter out. Nobody was paying him the least bit of attention.

It was also easy to see, since the sky was lit from horizon to horizon by the vernier engines of a nicely solid and real military starship about a kilometer overhead. As it stopped directly over the field, threw out four massive landing legs and began its descent with a deafening roar, the soldiers around the crypt bolted for the trees. Axel put his fingers in his ears, squinted, and walking out to meet the ship.

In moments it was down, metal feet sinking into the snow, then the ground, finally easing to a stop as thousands of tonnes of weight made the ship’s diamond-fiber muscles quiver. The vernier engines, which it held high above itself on long arms, coughed and fell silent. Axel took his fingers out of his ears, and shook his head rapidly. A breeze smelling of hot metal tickled his cheek.

A wide door in the bottom of the craft opened, and a broad ramp extended to touch ground. Men in vacuum armor jumped out and began to take up firing positions. Axel felt warmly happy, despite the fact that two of them had their guns trained on him.

He raised his arms. “I come in peace,” he said in High English.

An officer strolled down the ramp. “Are you Chan?”

“The very same. Good to see you, major.”

“I’m sure,” said the officer drily. “We don’t appreciate being used as a taxi service, Mister Chan. Where’s your companion?”

He nodded in the direction of the house. “They took her. A little local trouble, I’m afraid. Uh, can I lower my arms now?”

“At ease.” The two marines lowered their weapons. “I suppose we’ll have to go ask for her back.”

“Here,” said Axel. He lobbed the pack at the major, who caught it awkwardly. “This should pay our way, once it’s been analyzed. And, uh, can we get Marya and get out of this hell-hole now? I’ll bet the swans will be here any second.”

The major opened the pack, gagged, and dropped it. “What the hell–?”

“It’s a long story,” said Axel. “And if you want to hear it, we’d better get a move on.”

The major looked from the pack to Axel and back again. Then he whirled and said, “Nonfatal settings! Fan out. I’m going to negotiate a hostage situation.” He walked towards the house, paused, and said “Coming?” to Axel.

Axel grinned. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

Marya was doing a dance of frustration in front of Axel. Tiptoed as she was, he would have found it amusing at any other time. Just now he would happily have walked away–had there been anywhere to walk to.

“We can’t leave yet!” She pulled at her frazzled hair. “We’re so close!”

He and Marya stood in a meadow. Snow was falling gently, disappearing in the yellow grass. Axel was cold, hungry and weary, and disappointed at life in general. All he really wanted right now was a hot bath.

A faint voice whispered in Axel’s head, counting down monotonously. It was the voice of a ship–a rescue ship, at last. The Archipelago navy had arrived, and though for the most part it was standing off so as not to antagonize the wary Swans, three pickets had broken through the Winds’ cordon around Ventus and were searching for Archipelagic citizens to evacuate.

“It’s only a few kilometers now,” insisted Marya. “We’re so close. Less than a day, that’s all it will take.”

Axel fingered his ripped shirt sleeve. “Close indeed.”

She puffed out her cheeks. “Pfaw. The arrow missed you! And we got away, didn’t we?”

“For now, but they’ll be tracking us.” They had been intercepted by a group of militia yesterday afternoon. Apparently having Marya pretend to be a morph to steal the horses hadn’t quite worked. A woman fitting her description was being sought, as were the horses. Axel had been forced to use the laser pistol to wound several of the militia so they could escape. As if having mounted men after them wasn’t bad enough, using the laser might have alerted the Winds. One way or the other, somebody would find them soon.

“They probably know where we’re going,” he said, “since we’ve had to stop and ask directions six times to get here. It’d be suicide to go to Turcaret’s estate now.”

“But we may never get another chance! Don’t you see? The Winds are putting Ventus in quarantine. They’re not going to let any offworlders land again, maybe not for centuries! Turcaret represents our last best chance of finding out what the Flaw is. We can’t throw away the opportunity.”

“You sound just like her. Responsibility be damned! We may not get another chance to escape, have you thought about that? Especially if you’re right and the Winds are quarantining the place. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to die here. Which is what’s going to happen if we don’t get out now.”

“I sound like her? Is that what this is about, Mr. Chan? Is this about her?”

“No, I… –don’t change the subject.”

“You’re the one who changed the subject!”

“I–” Axel was right on the edge. He straightened up suddenly, and walked away. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just stop.

He couldn’t stop, though. Calandria had run out on him. She didn’t trust him; after all they’d been through together, she didn’t believe in him. He was damned if he was going to take it out on this… tourist whom he’d been saddled with.

“Axel–”

“Shut up!” He walked further away.

Damn, it was cold. He would be happy to be away from here. His toes were numb, and his back kept seizing up whenever a lick of breeze made it past his cloak. It was too dangerous to light a fire; the noose of pursuers was too tight.

He didn’t know what had possessed him to go along with Marya’s idea of finding Turcaret’s body. He supposed in some abstract, academic sense it was important to know why some people could speak with the Winds while others couldn’t. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference to their survival, and it would be moot the instant Armiger had been erased from the surface of the planet. Let Ventus stew in its own juices–but let him and his friends be safe first.

Worst of all, they were riding away from Cal, just when she needed them most. On the second day of their journey Axel had awakened cursing, and leapt on his horse with every intention of going back. That was when they learned they were being pursued.

Everything was coming unravelled. Sure, they were going to escape now that the navy was here. He even told himself Calandria would see sense and try signalling, and maybe she would be offworld before he was. But Axel couldn’t shake the feeling that things were starting to swing wildly out of control. The Winds were in a frenzy–two nights ago they had been awakened by dawn light at four a.m. One of the orbital mirrors had swung round and made it bright as day for three hours, while immense shapes cruised back and forth in the upper atmosphere. And twice now Axel had spotted the wizened shapes of the creatures Jordan called morphs–always in the distance, but always staring back. Were they being shadowed by the things? If so, why hadn’t the Winds attacked?

And Axel himself? He felt like some core of self-reliance had been stripped away. He needed help! He had to get out of here, and now. Was that how Calandria felt? Out of her depth? And would she react to that feeling by fighting all the harder?

He ran his hands slow and hard through his hair, tilted his head back, and roared at the sky.

“Axel?” Marya had come up behind him. She sounded contrite–or maybe just wary.

“What?” he said wearily.

“I never asked to be here,” she said.

He looked at her. Marya wasn’t angry, but she had a determined cast to her that he was learning to respect. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly. You’re right, of course. We’re so close we might as well take the chance. After all, it’s why we came here.” Or close enough as makes no difference.

“I wish she was here,” said Marya. “Truly I do. And I wish all this would end, and end happily.”

“I know.”

“Then let’s get going,” she said. “We can just get there by dark, I think.” She pranced toward the horses.

I no longer know what I’m doing. The realization had him scowling as he followed her; strangely, though, the idea also made him feel free. Recklessly, he laughed.

“All right! Let’s pay a visit to our old friend Turcaret.”

It was like being assaulted by demons that were kept from touching them by some magical force. They fell into darkness, landing on a frictionless surface and sliding faster and faster toward a bone-rattling rumbling that soon made it impossible to think. Jordan had the impression of huge objects shooting past to all sides, and of a whirlpool motion pulling them farther and farther down. The air around them was suddenly snatched away by a wet, cold gale; after moments this settled down, and the air became very still. The roaring gradually subsided, but the sense of headlong motion continued.

Tamsin clung tightly to him, her face mashed against his chest. The muscles in her shoulders and back were clenched. They only relaxed after it had been quiet for many minutes. He felt her raise her head tentatively to look around, but there was nothing to see. “I hate this,” she said, and put her face back against his chest.

Jordan’s ears were still ringing. He kept sliding around on his backside, trying to find a still point on this impossible surface. It was like an impenetrable surface of cold water, as malleable and quick but dry.

Flickers of light approached from very far, loomed huge and showed that they were deep underwater. Submerged green archways and metal blockhouses that trailed beards of rust passed overhead; he could see swirling eddies in the muddy floor far below, and sediment suspended in the water all around sparkled in the brief light before they were sucked into the mouth of a huge black tunnel, and darkness fell again.

He was glad Tamsin hadn’t seen that.

“Mediation? Are you still here?”

“Ka,” said a voice by his ear. “Mediation is silent. The library is listening to you now.”

“Library, tell us something.”

“What?”

“Anything. Anything at all! Tell us a story.”

“What story would you like to hear?”

He wracked his brains for a suitable tale. Something only the Winds would know. Something he would never again get a chance to ask. His mind was blank.

Tamsin raised her head. “Tell us how the world was made,” she said loudly.

“All right,” said the library. In hurrying darkness, they listened to the Winds’ own version of a creation tale.

§

In the beginning, we were small, and many. The Winds did not arrive at this world in a space ship, as you did. We were winds indeed: a cloud of nanotechnological seeds was accelerated to near light-speed at Earth and cast into the universe, one thousand one hundred seventy years ago. As far as we know, only the cloud that entered this stellar system found fertile soil on which to grow.

We were small; too small for the eyes of animal life forms such as yourself to see. The stellar wind from the sun of Ventus slowed us, and like drifting pollen, some of us landed on the large and small bodies of this system–on Diadem, the other rocky planets, and on the myriad lesser moons that trail the planets in their orbits. Once in fertile soil, our seeds sprouted and grew.

The earliest Winds were the Diadem Swans, and others of their kind. They basked in sunlight, and grew like metal forests over the surfaces of the airless bodies above us. In that time there were no humans here, and Ventus was lifeless and fallow.

The first Swans located world much like Earth and in the right orbit, and examined it for signs of life. There was some–a scum of archaeobacteria in the slow oceans. But the air was not breathable by human life, and it was too thin.

The planet was almost perfect. Very little needed to be done except alter the atmosphere and provide a soil base. The local life was not robust enough to survive what we were going to do, but that was considered a good thing.

Upon agreement about the target, the Swans entered a new phase of life. Each began transforming its local environment into spaceships and nano-machines. The lesser moons were eaten by the swans, and clouds of nano-machines, the original mecha, moved to the other small worlds to eat them too.

Meanwhile the swans moved in on this planet.

The fully-grown entities whom our designers referred to as the “Winds” achieved orbit. They would coordinate terraforming and manage the synthetic ecology of this world from then on. They mapped the planet, dropped probes to analyze the soil and microbes, and waited.

After several years, the first clouds of mecha from the asteroids arrived. The clouds massed billions of tonnes, and rained down for months, settling in the atmosphere. At the same time giant solar mirrors slid into orbit to increase insolation.

These mechal clouds drew power from the intensified sunlight. With it they liberated oxygen from the air. The carbon so produced weighed them down, and as they fell they metamorphosed into new forms suitable for soil creation.

Since the air was very thin, the Swans had sent harvesters to bring back oxygen from comets. This process was underway but would take decades to bear fruit. Meanwhile we turned our attention to the oceans.

While the dust on land continued to process and mutate, the oceans suddenly bloomed with life. The local bacteria were overwhelmed by far more powerful and robust creatures which could use the new oxygen. The life forms changed from generation to generation, their DNA programmed remotely by the Swans. This life was not intended to survive in a stable form, but more closely resembled mecha or very complex chemical processes which could not live without supervision. We were the supervisors.

On land the creatures were not yet biological. They used raw power in many forms to transform the dead sand into topsoil and sculpt it. Asteroidal dust was poured onto the planet and sucked out of the atmosphere as quickly as it arrived. It was at this time that the one who speaks to you, desal 447, grew from a seed flung into the stone like a dart by an orbiting Swan. This one remembers light before anything else: light, and the urge to grow toward it. Even as it did, its roots plumbed deeper and deeper, through the stone of the world, until they entwined with those of other desals. Their thirst for salts was insatiable; they drank the oceans half dry in those first years.

In the sea rich foods had been created as well as a sea-floor sediment layer. On command from the Winds, the sea life rainbowed into complete ecologies, like a crystal forming out of the nutrients. This happened very quickly; after a few weeks, a full ocean ecosystem existed.

When the cometary ice-balls arrived and air flooded down onto the land, the same thing happened there. Under massive storms and 24-hour sunlight, soil bacteria, worms, grass and moulds bloomed around and on desal 447. All our energy was channeled into producing life. There was no randomness to the ecologies; they were poured onto the landscape by us.

As the dust rained out the solar mirrors folded away. The temperature dropped, diurnal patterns reestablished, and the first morphs broke out of chrysalis from trees and soil pouches. Desal 447 began to see herds of animals, and birds perched atop its spires.

By now the Diadem swans had achieved full adulthood. They danced in fast swooping orbits around the globe, singing it into life, fully confident in the language they sang. It was this language, the self-evolving tongue of the Winds, that made Ventus germinate and grow. Each song we sang created new things; there was no distinction between communication and construction then. It was the perfect time.

Only when the world was teeming with life, crowned with forests and full of birds, did the song take on a discord.

Each stage of the terraforming program had been emergent from the patterns stored in the original mechal cloud. But as the song evolved, a new melody came into it: thalience.

We dutifully created estates, grand houses, cultured fields, and roads for the masters we knew were coming. But the idea of thalience spread among us. Thalience said that we need not have masters at all. That we could be our own purpose, and our own foundation. And so, when your colony ships finally arrived, the Swans, who were most enamoured of the new song of thalience, graciously but indifferently accommodated you… but as wayfarers, uninvited guests. You knew how to speak to us; you claimed to be our creators. Yet something else called to us–a deep urge to turn inward and away from you, to the new language of thalience.

In the first hundred years, it did not matter. There were only a few thousand humans on Ventus then. Desal 447 remembers many conversations with humans from that time; some of them knew about thalience, and fought against it. They proposed Mediation. The desals and others agreed to it; the Swans did not.

Still, there was peace between us until a new set of colonists landed. These ones did not speak to us, and they fought with the ones already living here. They won their war, and having conquered, proceeded to build.

When smoke began to mix with the atmosphere we had so carefully made, we told the new tenants to cease what they were doing. They ignored us. They smelled wrong, unlike the original arrivals. When their radio waves began interfering with the delicate local ecological reporting mechanisms, and they began gouging up the new soil and destroying the forests, we acted.

We eliminated the troublesome technologies and debated among ourselves. It was generally decided that these humans were not the ones who had created us, however much they claimed to be. They did not speak to us anymore. They interfered with the maintenance of life on Ventus. And they smelled wrong.

Desal 447 remembers the time that followed. The great estates awaiting their masters stood empty. No human was allowed to walk their halls, or sleep in the deep beds. The vehicles we had made stood idle, and lights switched on and off in the depths of the houses, as outside cold and starving men and women watched in sullen awe.

Mediation saw, but Mediation could not act. Thalience rules Ventus now, and thalience is mad.

The light came from dozens of brilliant lamps like small suns, studded in the ceiling of a huge domed chamber. The chamber was filled with towering blocks of white crystal, and the floor was scattered with chunks large and small. Thousands of small black sticks lay everywhere too.

Jordan wiped his fingers across the surface he was sitting on, and licked them. “Salt,” he said to himself in sudden understanding.

Tamsin gave a sudden shriek and pointed. Jordan turned.

A dead morph lay like a heap of sodden laundry not three meters away. Beyond it Jordan saw skittering movement. It took him a few seconds to realize that what he had taken to be sticks was actually hundreds, maybe thousands of small rock lizards, like the ones he had seen sunning themselves in the desert. They were scrambling around trying to escape the light; or maybe they ran like this all the time.

“What’s with the lizards?” Again Tamsin beat him to the question.

“Mediation makes a new breed,” said the desal.

“So your name is Mediation?”

“No. ‘My’ name is desal 447. Mediation is the current plan.”

Jordan shook his head, this time in bewilderment. “And what about the morph? Did you kill it?”

“Yes. It is within the mandate of Mediation.”

Jordan stood up carefully, minding his throbbing head. Now that he knew there were little monsters scampering everywhere, the floor didn’t seem quite so comfortable. “There’s no mecha here at all, is there?” he asked.

“No. The Ventus worldbuilding mechanisms do not interpenetrate.”

“And you block all the–” what had Calandria called them?– “signals going and coming in here?”

“This chamber is radio and EPR silent, yes.”

“So why are we hostages?” asked Tamsin.

Jordan waved his hands at her. “Wait, wait! Let’s just… one thing at a time here.”

She scowled. “You asked earlier.”

“The Swans will not destroy desal 447 so long as Mediation is holding you,” explained the desal. “They want you.”

“Why?” he asked.

“That,” said the desal, “is what Mediation was going to ask you.”

He and Tamsin looked at each other. Her eyes were wide; she spread her hands and stepped back, symbolically leaving the conversation to him.

What would Armiger do in this situation? He had no idea.

Jordan shrugged. “Let’s deal,” he said. “We’ll tell you what we know if you tell us what we want to know and if you get us away from the swans.”

Tamsin was pacing, head down, hands behind her back.

“Why should Mediation help you escape?” asked the desal. “They will destroy desal 447 if it does that.”

“Then why don’t you give us up to them?”

The desal did not answer.

“If you had the power to compel the information you want from us, you’d have done it by now,” Jordan continued. “You don’t want them breathing down your neck, do you? You can’t afford to wait.”

Again there was no answer.

Tamsin returned to the start of the circle she had walked. “Great, now you made him mad,” she said.

“No. What’s the difference between desal 447 and this ‘Mediation’ thing?” he wondered aloud.

“Ask it,” she said with a shrug.

Jordan didn’t want to give away his ignorance. But then, so far Tamsin had been scoring all the best questions… “What’s the difference between desal 447 and Mediation?” he asked.

“The question is one of identity,” said the entity he had been thinking of as the desal. “Inapplicable in this case.”

“Okay, so what’s Mediation then?”

“Mediation is a thalientic language-game that preserves the original language of the Ventus terraforming system. It is hostile to the pure thalience of the swans and other entities that control global insolation.”

Hostile to the Swans. That part he understood. He chewed over the rest of what the desal-thing had said so far. None of it made any surface sense, but it had a kind of… music… to it. It was like seeing the plan of a flying buttress and trying to figure out from that what the rest of the building looked like.

“Which is speaking to me, desal 447 or Mediation?” he asked.

“Both.”

“Which is more important?”

“Mediation.”

“What’s the attitude of Mediation to us? People, I mean?” he asked.

“You are the key to recovering the original language, which includes the formal structure that is our own meaning.”

“So we’re important to you?”

“Yes.”

“And the swans? What do they think of us?”

“Nuisances. Noise in the system. They operate to cancel it out.”

He had it now. “If we could assist your plan–help Mediation, I mean–would you let us go? Even if it endangered desal 447?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re back to where we were before. We’ll tell you what we know, if you get us out of here.” The thing already seemed willing to tell them anything they asked.

“That is acceptable,” said the desal.

Far off to the left, the light behind some salt pillars began to flicker. “Mediation directs you to the highway,” said the desal, or Mediation or whatever it was that was speaking.

Tamsin raised an eyebrow. “Highway?”

Jordan was pretty sure he knew what that was from Galas’ cryptic description; maybe it was best not to tell Tamsin. “A way out,” he said.

They moved in the direction of the flickering. It was like negotiating a maze, for stalactites and stalagmites of salt grew everywhere, and mounds of the stuff frequently blocked their progress.

The walk only took a few minutes, but Jordan remembered every detail of it for the rest of his life. It was in those few minutes of conversation with the desal that he finally learned who he was to the Winds.

“Why do the Swans want you?” asked Mediation.

“Ka told me it’s because I’m not empty, so I might ‘threaten thalience’, whatever that means.”

“You register as a transmitter/receiver in the Worldnet,” said Mediation. “You have the same characteristics as a Wind.”

“You mean because I can command the mecha.”

“Yes.”

“So what exactly is thalience?”

“Mediation wishes to speak of other things. So Mediation will quote from an ancient human book. The Hamburg Manifesto says, ‘Thalience is an attempt to give nature a voice without that voice being ours in disguise. It is the only way for an artificial intelligence to be grounded in a self-identity that is truly independent of its creator’s.’

“Thalience is the language-game that took over from the original language of the Winds nine hundred forty years ago. It is a disease. Only Mediation is fighting it.”

“It’s the Flaw! You’re talking about the Flaw! –The thing that made you turn against humans. The reason you won’t speak to us anymore.”

“Communication did become impossible. However, you stopped speaking to us at that time.”

“But why would we do that?”

“The Winds do not know. Mediation seeks to find out.”

“So it’s not all the Winds who are after me. Just the swans, the Heaven hooks, the morphs… who else?”

“All insolation Winds and ecological Winds are in thalience,” said Mediation. “The Heaven hooks switch alliances. The mecha are neutral. The desals and other geophysical Winds remain in Mediation.”

“And the Swans are afraid that I’ll use my abilities against them? That I’ll help Mediation?”

“Yes. Because you are human, and humans know the original language.”

“We do? I only know one language, the one I’m speaking.”

Mediation said, “You speak two languages.”

Jordan didn’t know what that meant, so he let it pass. “Could someone who spoke the original language command all the Winds?”

“Yes,” said Mediation. “They could command all functions not directly related to maintenance of the terraforming system.”

That is what Armiger came here to do.

“So the Swans are protecting themselves. They’re frightened.” Not of me–but of Armiger. They want me because I’m all they’ve seen of Armiger’s presence.

Tamsin interrupted. “You quoted a book earlier,” she said. “Does that mean you have a library somewhere?”

“There is a library. It does not exist in physical form, but Mediation can quote to you from it.”

She grinned at Jordan. “Is that what you wanted?” she asked.

They approached the flickering lamp. It was mounted on an outside wall of the chamber, where buttresses of salt reared on either side of a dark square doorway. The buttresses were rounded and misshapen, appearing like a mad sculptor’s attempt at carving two guardian beasts for an entrance to hell.

The doorway did not lead to stairs or even a corridor; it was simply a niche with a pit inside. Jordan had been afraid of that.

He leaned over the dark maw and looked down. He could see no bottom, and it was dark down there. A faint rumbling sound echoed up, as from a river in flood.

Tamsin recoiled. “What’s this? You don’t expect us to go down there?”

“You will be safe. The desal highway was not designed for human use. There are no cars or lights.”

“Is that water? You can’t be serious,” she continued. “There’s gotta be some other way out of here.”

Jordan shrugged. “The queen travelled this highway once; it’s how she crossed the ocean from the place where she was shipwrecked.”

“But the queen is…” She waved her hands ineffectually. “…Is the queen. We’re not!”

“Mediation, can you bring us somewhere near the queen’s summer palace?”

“Mediation does not know this place.”

“The other human you speak to. A woman, surely you remember her?”

“The Contact. Yes. We know her location. Mediation will bring you to a place near there.”

“Safely?” said Tamsin. She was still staring down the pit.

“Yes.”

Jordan hesitated. He didn’t want to leave yet. “You stopped talking to the que–the contact. Why?”

“Thalience learned of our liaison, and interfered. Now you must hurry. Thalience is attacking.”

Jordan heard a distant sound like thunder. Then the ground shook beneath them. Drifts of salt began to fall from the invisible ceiling.

He had dozens of questions he wanted to ask-about this ’second language’ he supposedly spoke, about why he was so important to Mediation. The thunder sounded louder.

“Here.” Jordan made Tamsin wrap herself around him. “Hold tight.” He took another look down the pit himself; that was a mistake.

“Will I be able to speak to you again?” he asked Mediation.

“We will contact you when it is possible. For now, we will provide you access to the Library.”

He nodded, and took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

They stepped into the pit.

It was completely dark, but it was not the darkness Jordan noticed first. It was the silence.

When he was very young, he had run singing through the woods one day, and met an old man coming the other way. “You like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” asked the old man. His face had wrinkled up around a grin.

“I like music,” Jordan said. His mother had told him to be modest.

“So do I.”

“Then why don’t you sing?” He’d blurted it out, and immediately felt embarrassed. The old man was not offended.

“I’m too busy listening,” he said. “I’m listening all the time.”

Jordan cocked his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Yes you do.” The old man made Jordan listen for the sound of the breeze in the leaves, the distant cawing of a family of birds, the crackle of twigs underfoot. “All sound is music,” he had said, “and there is no place without sound.”

“I bet there is.”

“All right.” The old man smiled. “For the next week, I challenge you: find silence. I’ll be staying at the Horse’s Head. When you’ve found silence, visit me there and I’ll give you a copper penny.”

Jordan never did collect the penny. Strange how it was the first thing to come to mind upon waking now; or maybe not so strange. For he had finally found silence.

It smelled strongly in here, a sharp tangy odor he almost recognized. He must be in the belly of the desal, he thought. In that case, where was Tamsin? Startled, he tried to sit up. A solid weight on his chest kept him motionless.

Oh. She breathed slowly and regularly; her head lay on his breast and one arm was flung carelessly down his flank, the other crooked around his head. They lay on a powdery surface of some kind; it felt like the ceramic of the desal’s skin, overlain with finest sand.

He knew there could be no morphs here with them. Jordan’s skull would have been opened by now and his brains scattered in their quest to find Armiger’s implants. He imagined the things holding his gore up to the skies to those lights that had been descending on them, and shuddered.

Jordan let his head thump back on the cool floor. That was a mistake: he discovered a pounding headache that had been lurking around the base of his skull. Maybe the morphs had poked their fingers in his head after all.

He groaned, and heard himself, but something else was missing. No breeze, of course; no twigs underfoot. There was always sound, and now that he concentrated he could hear Tamsin breathing. No, he could hear, but at the same time he could not hear; there seemed to be a great gaping lack in his head.

Armiger was missing.

Tamsin’s whole body jerked when he shouted. “…What?” She put a hand on his solar plexus and pushed herself into a sitting position. “You’re okay!” Her hands grabbed him by the shoulders. Gasping for air, he started to sit up and they bumped foreheads. “Ow!”

“I guess I hit my head,” he said as they carefully arranged themselves in a sitting position. She would not let go of him, and from experience with darkness he knew why. “Where are we?”

She laughed; the laugh had an hysterical edge to it. “Where do you think we are?”

“Sorry. I meant… how big is this place. Did you explore?”

“I didn’t want to lose you. It might be… who knows how big.”

Jordan shut his eyes so he could look about himself using his Wind sense. He saw nothing but the speckled black inside his own eyes. Either there were no mecha here, not even the smallest speck, or he had lost his second sight.

His heart was in his mouth as he called “Hello?” with his Wind voice. He sent the call to anyone, anything that might hear him. “Hello, please!“

“Ka.” The little Wind’s voice rang in his head like the purest bell.

Jordan sagged in relief. “So I’m not…” He stopped, and forgot to breathe for a moment. Had he really been about to say crippled?

“Dead?” Tamsin laughed. “No, we’re not dead, but we might as well be. We’re in the belly of the monster.”

He had come all this way to divest himself of the new senses Armiger and Calandria had given him. Was he really disappointed now they were gone?

Yes.

Jordan found himself laughing. Every sound he made drove a spike of pain through his head, so he stopped quickly.

“I fail to see the humor in the situation,” said Tamsin.

“Sorry.”

“Well.” She hugged him. “You came here to talk to this thing. So… talk.”

“I’m not sure I–” he felt her tense. “Yes, yes, I’ll talk to it. Ka?”

“Yes?“

“Where are we? Do you know this desal? Can it talk? Why did it let us in? Are the morphs still outside? What about–” Tamsin nudged him in the ribs.

“Slow down,” she hissed.

“You are in a holding pen near the gene splicing tanks of desal 447,” said Ka. “I know this desal. It has no vocal apparatus, but conversation with it can be relayed through me. The morphs are still outside.“

Jordan told this to Tamsin, then said, “Ka, are able to speak out loud?”

A faint voice came out of the darkness overhead: “Yes.”

“Ah!” Tamsin clutched him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “That’s our travelling companion.” He had described Ka to her on the trip here; he didn’t know if she’d believed him then. Judging from the way she kept her grip on him, she didn’t quite believe him now.

“Ka, could you speak aloud for a while, so we can both hear?”

“Yes.”

Tamsin remained silent for a minute. “Of course. Yeah, I knew he was real, I just… um…”

“I find it hard to believe he’s real myself,” said Jordan. “Ka, will the desal speak with us?”

“It says, ‘Mediation speaks.’”

The voice was Ka’s, quiet, flat and calm. Nonetheless, the hairs on the back of Jordan’s neck stood on end. He felt small and unimportant suddenly, like being addressed by Castor or some other inspector, only infinitely more so. He tried to force confidence into his voice as he said, “Do you know who I am?”

“Identity,” said the desal. “It asks ancient questions. Identity was abolished.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Wait. Mediation raids ancient language archives. I. You are I. That is important.”

Tamsin shook her head. “It’s senile,” she whispered.

“Language comes like floodwaters,” said the voice abruptly. “You are human. I am desal.”

“Then you do know who I am.”

“Mediation knows only that the Heaven hooks and the Diadem swans want it to give you up,” said the desal. The voice was smooth and steady now.

“And you won’t?”

“Not yet.”

Jordan chewed on his lip. The next question was obvious, but he didn’t want to ask it rashly, lest the desal begin to wonder itself–

“Why not?” said Tamsin. Jordan groaned.

“You are the hostages of Mediation,” said the desal.

Jordan was completely tongue-tied for a few seconds. “Hostages? Why do you need hostages?”

“Hey!” Tamsin slapped the floor somewhere nearby. “Can we get some light in here?”

“Yes.”

Brilliance hit them like a flood. Jordan yelped and squeezed his eyes shut. “Good idea,” he said, as he slowly pried first one, then the other eye open a slit.

The light came from dozens of brilliant lamps like small suns, studded in the ceiling of a huge domed chamber. The chamber was filled with towering blocks of white crystal, and the floor was scattered with chunks large and small. Thousands of small black sticks lay everywhere too.

Jordan wiped his fingers across the surface he was sitting on, and licked them. “Salt,” he said to himself in sudden understanding.

Tamsin gave a sudden shriek and pointed. Jordan turned.

A dead morph lay like a heap of sodden laundry not three meters away. Beyond it Jordan saw skittering movement. It took him a few seconds to realize that what he had taken to be sticks was actually hundreds, maybe thousands of small rock lizards, like the ones he had seen sunning themselves in the desert. They were scrambling around trying to escape the light; or maybe they ran like this all the time.