Alabaster

XIII. The Weaver's Retreat

The Glaistig, Queen of Immolations, stands with Kypre Alundshaw on the barbican overlooking the gates of Kearvan Weal. She led the alchemist here from the outer courtyards, despite the protests of her architects and engineers, who argued that the earthquakes might have weakened the tower. But it looked sound enough to her, and from the barbican she can see between and beyond the steep walls of Wailer's Gash and out onto the plains beyond. She has borrowed one of the astronomer's telescopes, and with it the Glaistig can clearly make out a cloud of ash-grey dust heading into the rising sun. Both the Nesmians' horses, though only one of the red witches would be returning to their far-away protectorate on the river Yärin.

"Have you found her, your Grace?" Alundshaw asks, and the Glaistig nods and passes the long brass telescope to him.

And then Kypre Alundshaw can see her, too, the dust-haze trail marking Pikabo Kenzia's progress across the barren hublands. He wishes that he knew one of the heathen prayers, so that he might offer it up for her safe return home. She left the Weal without the body of her companion, which has now been bound in a gravling's winding-sheet and will be buried in the catacombs below the keep.

"She kept her word, Alundshaw," the Glaistig says, the hot wind through the Gash rearranging her reddish-blonde hair and the folds of her long gown. "With luck, she'll reach the Dog's Bridge before nightfall."

The alchemist lowers the telescope and rubs at his eye. "With luck," he says, "the Weaver's army will have all gone before her and the path will be clear."

"Would that she might have at least accepted an escort," the Glaistig sighs, almost whispering now. "They've bought us precious time, Alundshaw."

The alchemist places the looking-glass to his eye again, and it only takes him a moment to find her this time. He watches and contemplates sacrifice and the time that has or hasn't been bought by the death of the woman named Ezcha.

And the wheels turn as the wheels have always turned, the alternating bands of granite and basalt and fire which are this flat, revolving world, and at its dim center the hublands lie, as still as still will ever be. The fixed point about which all creation revolves, the pivot and the axle, the rod and the shaft, and the Dragon lies coiled in its fiery abscess, long miles below Kearvan Weal. He's awake now, fully and truly awake for the first time in more than a hundred mille

As her Seraphim were banished by the magic of the red witches, he easily snagged the soul of one exorcised angel, mere moments before it winked out of this existence and into another-hooked it snug and screaming on a mountainous thumb claw. Now the Dragon lies in its bed of fire, considering this frail creature of light and hate, this simple device which has brought so much pain and suffering and fear, this deadly toy the Weaver has stitched together from memory and nightmare and her own insanity. It would be such a simple undertaking, the fabrication of an angel, the Dragon thinks…

The wheels turn.

And far out on the Serpent's Road, atop a barren hill, the Weaver licks her wounds. She keenly felt the moment when her Seraphim were ripped from the disc of the world and strewn across the cosmos. She felt it like a knife driven through her skull and can only begin to guess at the power that might have ever accomplished such an exile. Beneath the rising sun, her white hair hangs about her face, tinged pink-orange, and the gem set deeply into the flesh between her pale eyes glows a bitter crimson. The sulfurous mists shrouding the stays and towers of the Dog's Bridge are underlit by the wide sea of fire between this i

And the Dragon picks her angel apart to see what makes it tick.

The Glaistig's hooves stamp restlessly against the flagstones, and the alchemist lowers the telescope.

"Now that they are no longer in the world, these angels," she asks him, "do you think she'll try again?"

Kypre Alundshaw considers the question, then considers his reply twice as long. "The Weaver," he says, "like her Seraphim, is an alien to our lands. We have undone one weapon, but we must begin to consider what other infernal beings she might spin. We ca

For a moment they stand together atop the barbican, listening to the wind roaring through the Gash, through the mountains and around the jagged edges of the Weal, and then the Glaistig shivers, and the alchemist leads her back down to the courtyards.

And, blind to wars and the sacrifices that may end them, if only for a time, the wheels turn as the wheels have always turned…

XIV. The End of the Begi

Dancy sits on one of the old marble headstones in the overgrown cemetery and watches the church burn down. She didn't start the fire; she isn't exactly sure what started the fire, but she knows that it's probably for the best. Fire will make the earth here pure again, her mother's ghost whispers from beneath a tangle of blackberry briars. Fire will burn out all the evil, and good green things will live here again.

Dancy keeps waiting for her mother's ghost to evaporate and the angel to show up and take her place. It usually happens that way, first her mother and then the angel. Sometimes, she actually prefers the angel. There's a loud crack, and Dancy looks up to see that the roof has collapsed completely. The sky is lit with a flurry of red-orange cinders as the last of the shadows, freed from the inferno, escape into the night. That's okay. She didn't come for them. Where they go and what they do, that's none of her concern. Someone might almost mistake them for smoke, streaming up and out of the flames. One passes directly over her head and vanishes into the thick wall of live oaks and magnolia behind the little cemetery. The shadow's screaming, so maybe it believes it could die in the fire. Maybe it's even afraid, Dancy thinks, and then she thinks about all the places a shadow can hide.

Those are the souls of bad people, Julia Flammarion assures her daughter. They were never baptized or they died without making confession, so they can never go to Heaven. Some of them were pagan Indians, and some of them were murderers and thieves and drug addicts.

Dancy glowers at the blackberry thicket where her mother's hiding, not so sure she believes that God would turn an Indian into one of those shadows just because it never got the chance to be baptized. That sounds even less fair than most things seem to her, but she knows there's no point arguing with her mother.

Dancy glances up at the eastern sky above the tops of the trees, and there's the faintest pink and purple hint of dawn. The heat from the fire is keeping the air around her warm, so at least she doesn't have to worry about the dew or the morning chill. Then she remembers her knife, that she hasn't even cleaned the blade the way the angel has told her she should always do. She looks down at the monster's dark blood already gone to a crust on the steel and frowns. She'll have to find a stream or a pond somewhere to wash it clean, as clean as it's ever going to get. She wipes it once against the leg of her jeans, but hardly any of Elandrion's blood comes off the carving knife.