Diamond Age

Dawn found her in the heart of a great forest. King Coyote's castle was built on a high woodland plateau surrounded by mountains; she estimated she was several hours' ride away. Staying well clear of the high road taken by the messengers from the Cipherers' Market, she made camp under an overhanging rock along a river, sheltered from the chill wet wind and safe from the eyes of the raven sentinels, and lit a tiny fire where she made some tea and porridge. She napped until the middle of the afternoon, then rose, bathed in the bitter water of the stream, and untied the oilcloth packet she had brought with her. It contained one of the costumes worn by the messengers who galloped to and from the Cipherers' Market. It also contained a few books containing enciphered messages— authentic ones dispatched from various stalls in the market addressed to King Coyote's castle.

As she made her way through the woods toward the high road, she heard massed hoofbeats rolling by and knew that the first contingent of messengers had just come over the pass after waiting for the storm to pass. She waited a few minutes and then followed them. Turning onto the high road out of the dense woods, she reined in her horse and sat for a moment, astonished by her first sight of the Castle of King Coyote.

She had never seen its like in all of her travels through the Land Beyond. Its base was as wide as a mountain, and its walls rose sheer and straight into the clouds. Galactic clouds of lights shone from its myriad windows. It was guarded by mighty stockades, each of them a great castle unto itself, but built not on stony foundations, but upon the very clouds themselves; for King Coyote, in his cleverness, had devised a way to make buildings that floated on the air. Princess Nell spurred her horse forward, for even in her numbness she sensed that someone might be watching the high road from a window high in one of the castle's glittering oriels. As she galloped toward the castle, she was torn between a sense of her own foolishness in daring to assault such a mighty fortress and admiration for King Coyote's work. Faint clouds of diaphanous black oozed between the towers and stockades, and as Princess Nell drew closer, she saw that they were actually regiments of ravens going through their military drills. They were the closest thing King Coyote had to an army; for as one of the ravens had told her, after he had stolen the eleven keys from around her neck,

Castles, gardens, gold, and jewels

Contentment signify, for fools

Like Princess Nell; but those

Who cultivate their wit

Like King Coyote and his crows

Compile their power bit by bit

And hide it places no one knows.

King Coyote did not preserve his power by armed might but by cleverness, and sentinels were the only army he needed, information his only weapon.

As she galloped the final miles to the gate, wondering whether her legs and back would hold out, a thin steam of black issued from a narrow portal high in one of the floating stockades, thickened into a transparent ball, and dove toward her like a plunging comet. She could not help flinching from the illusion of mass and momentum, but, a stone's throw above her head the cloud of ravens parted into several contingents that whirled around and struck from several directions, converging on her, passing around her so closely that the wind from their rattling wings blew her hair back, finally reforming into a disciplined group that returned to its stockade without a look back. Apparently she had passed the inspection. When she reached the mighty gate, it was standing open for her, and no one was guarding it. Princess Nell rode into the broad streets of King Coyote's castle.

It was the finest place she had ever seen. Here gold and crystal were not hidden away in the King's treasury but were used as building materials. Green and growing things were everywhere, for King Coyote was fascinated by the secrets of nature and had sent his agents to the farthest reaches of the world to bring back exotic seeds. The wide boulevards of King Coyote's city were lined with trees whose arching limbs closed over the ashlars to form a rustling vault. The undersides of the leaves were silver and seemed to cast a gentle light, and the branches were filled with violet and magenta bromeliads the size of kettles, making a sweet sharp smell, aswarm with ruby-throated hummingbirds and filled with water where tiny fluorescent frogs and beetles lived.

The Messenger's Route was marked with polished brass plates set among the paving-stones. Princess Nell followed it down the grand boulevard, into a park that encircled the city, and then onto a rising street that spiraled around the central promontory. As the horse took her toward the clouds, her ears popped again and again, and from each curve in the road she enjoyed a sweeping view over the lower city and into the constellation of floating stockades where the raven sentinels soared, coming and going in flights and squadrons, bringing news from every corner of the empire.

She rode by a place where King Coyote was adding on to the castle; but instead of an army of stonemasons and carpenters, the builder was a single man, a portly gray-bearded fellow puffing at a long slender pipe, carrying a leather bag on his belt. Arriving at the center of the building site, he reached into his bag and drew out a great seed the size of an apple and pitched it into the soil. By the time this man had walked back to the spiral road, a tall shaft of gleaming crystal had arisen from the soil and grown far above their heads, gleaming in the sunlight, and branched out like a tree. By the time Princess Nell lost sight of it around the corner, the builder was puffing contentedly and looking at a crystalline vault that nearly covered the lot.

This and many other wonders Princess Nell saw during her long ride up the spiral road. The clouds cleared away, and Nell found that she could see great distances in every direction. King Coyote's domain was in the very heart of the Land Beyond, and his castle was built on a high plateau in the center of his domain, so that from his windows he could see all the way to the shining ocean in every direction. Nell kept a sharp eye on the horizon as she climbed toward the King's i

Finally the road became level and turned inward to pierce another unguarded gate in another high wall, and Princess Nell found herself in a green, flowery court before the King's keep-a high palace that appeared to have been hewn from a single diamond the size of an iceberg. By now the sun was sinking low in the west, and its orange rays ignited the walls of the keep and cast tiny rainbows everywhere like shards from a shattered crystal bowl. A dozen or so messengers stood in a queue before the doors of the keep. They had left their horses in a corner of the yard where a watering-trough and manger were available. Princess Nell did likewise and joined the queue.

"I have never had the honor of carrying a message to King Coyote," Princess Nell said to the messenger preceding her in the queue.

"It is an experience you will never forget," said the messenger, a cocky young man with black hair and a goatee.

"Why must we wait in this queue? In the stalls at the Cipherers' Market, we leave the books on the table and continue on our way."

Several of the messengers turned and looked back at Princess Nell disdainfully. The messenger with the goatee made a visible effort to control his amusement and said, "King Coyote is no small-timer sitting in a stall at the Cipherers' Market! This you will soon see for yourself."

"But doesn't he make his decisions the same way as all the others-by consulting rules in a book?"

At this the other messengers made no effort to control their amusement. The one with the goatee took on a distinctly sneering tone. "What would be the point of having a King in that case?" he said. "He does not take his decisions from any book. King Coyote has built a mighty thinking machine, Wizard 0.2, containing all the wisdom in the world. When we bring a book to this place, his acolytes decipher it and consult with Wizard 0.2. Sometimes it takes hours for Wizard to reach its decision. I would advise you to wait respectfully and quietly in the presence of the great machine!"

"That I will certainly do," said Princess Nell, amused rather than angered by this lowly messenger's impertinence.

The queue moved along steadily, and as darkness fell and the orange rays of the sun died away, Princess Nell became aware of colored lights streaming out from within the keep. The lights seemed to be quite brilliant whenever Wizard 0.2 was cogitating and dropped to a low flicker the rest of the time. Princess Nell tried to make out other details of what was going on inside the keep, but the countless facets broke up the light and bent it into all directions so that she could get only hints and fragments; trying to see into King Coyote's i

Finally the messenger with the goatee emerged, gave Princess Nell a final smirk, and reminded her to display proper respect.

"Next," intoned the acolyte in a chanting voice, and Princess Nell entered the keep.

Five acolytes sat in the anteroom, each one at a desk piled high with dusty old books and long reels of paper tape. Nell had brought thirteen books from the Cipherers' Market, and at their direction, she distributed these books among the acolytes for decipherment. The acolytes were neither young nor old but in the middle of their lives, all dressed in white coats decorated, in golden thread, with the crest of King Coyote. Each also had a key around his neck. As Princess Nell waited, they deciphered the contents of the books she had brought and punched the results onto strips of paper tape using little machines built into their tables.

Then, with great ceremony, the thirteen paper tapes were coiled up and placed on a tremendous silver platter carried by a young altar boy. A pair of large doors was swung open, and the acolytes, the altar boy, and Princess Nell formed into a procession of sorts, which marched into the Chamber of the Wizard, a vast vaulted room, and down its long central aisle.

At the far end of the chamber was-nothing. A sort of large empty space surrounded by elaborate machinery and clockwork, with a small altar at the front. It reminded Princess Nell of a stage, empty of curtains and scenery. Standing next to the stage was a high priest, older and wearing a more impressive white robe.