Forge of Heaven

The terrace they reached was vast, having its own horizon, having piles of rock and growth of vegetation, some of which, grease-wood, grew taller here than it had on the unprotected plateau or the ridge above.

Their fugitives might be somewhere on this very level, somewhere beyond the spires of sandstone, the irregular ins and outs of the shelf and the obscuring growth of tall brush. The terraces and ledges that seemed from above to offer easy passage down to the pans proved, not unexpectedly, a constant frustration of dead ends and precarious edges, the most promising ways as apt to strand the herd with no way out but a long trek back the way they had come—toward them. At all disadvantage, they were still gaining on their quarry, and if the heavens could settle down and pay attention again, he still might get his needed information on their route.

But he could not wait for that help. Night was coming on, when the young rascal might not rest. The Ila had made a disastrous move. Now the sullen and strange tribes of Earth were making demands on Brazis that for some reason Brazis could not resist, and the whole untidy intersection of interests was increasingly threatening.

The Ila had had one of her notions go extremely wrong, in his best guess. He could sometimes prevail with the Ila: they shared certain views. They both knew the world as Luz and Ian had never seen it, and shared opinions Luz and Ian did not understand. He knew her ways and her attitudes, and he would offer to intercede, if anyone could listen. Luz was alone with the situation, alone with the Ila in the Refuge, he was aware of that, and knew the two of them had been entirely too friendly lately. Luz was in the Refuge, and Ian—Ian was likely off at the far end of the lake, in the town that had grown there. Ian, who had been Luz’s lover off and on for as long as the Refuge had stood, was currently not Luz’s lover, and a feud had simmered between Ian and Luz with varying heat for most of the last hundred years. It had started over Ian’s insistence on autonomy in his own work, unease in a relationship that had grown with Luz’s dislike and Ian’s support of the previous director in the heavens, who had had ideas coinciding with Ian’s, on the apportionment of scarce metals.

And now, it seemed, that old rift had led to uneasy relations with the director’s successor, Brazis, and Luz, of course, had found a sympathetic ear in the Ila. The two of them, disliking Brazis, complained of his continuation of the old director’s programs. Luz clung close to the Refuge, which the Ila never left, while, tired of the disagreement, Ian lately lived with Nai’ib, a mortal woman from the tribes, out on the Paradise shore.

Ian sulked, working on his rockets, his robots, machines that supported certain of his desert roads, and occasionally made his own forays into the eastern desert. Ian was consequently in closer contact and sympathy with the tribes than Luz had ever been willing to be, herself. The tribeswoman living with Ian was only one cause of the rift between them.

“Wasting his time,” Luz had complained to Marak two years ago, and asked if he had a better understanding than she did of Ian, the man who had been her lifelong partner. “What in all reason does he do out there?”

“He receives reports from the riders,” had been his observation. “He does the same as always. He tests his machines.”

Biology and mechanics, life and cold, scarce metal, which Ian hoarded for his projects and sought in the wreckage of villages and the Holy City itself, up on the Plateau. Such were Ian’s consuming passions. Luz was the theoretician, the pla

Now he feared they would see the result of all this diverse pla

But if Auguste was hurt in this assault, Ian had been quick to protect all of them whose watchers might be affected. Luz, who might well have figured by now that she had been deceived, would be busy reasoning with the Ila and trying to protect the relays themselves: that would be her first thought. Luz would banish until later, in her realization, the thought that flesh and blood might be in danger, might feel pain, might die. That was the way they were, Ian and Luz. It was why he attached himself more to Ian.

But now he asked himself if Ian drifting away to the Paradise shore with Nai’ib might be why Luz continued lonely and upset, and why she had fallen more and more into the Ila’s company.

That association had its inevitable outcome. Luz was betrayed, now, it seemed, by an expert at betrayal. And would she learn? For a century or two. Maybe.

But there was nothing he and Hati could do now but go on as they were and keep careful track of their lacework of escape routes, making sure no shortcut brought them back up to a dead end, if the worst suddenly happened at Halfmoon. Negotiate with the Ila, he might, but not with the earthquake.

And once they had the beshti back, if the heavens and earth wanted to quarrel for a century or two, they would still have the beshti, and the boys, and the canvas. Let them all do what they liked, Brazis and the Ila, Ian, Luz, and the rest. They were untouchable out here, give or take another hammerfall, once they got back to safety. There had been quarrels before. There had been long silences in the heavens. The ondatwere the problem. The one uncertainty. The threat none of them wanted to wake.

“We shall be soaked before nightfall,” Hati estimated. She tapped her beshta with her heel as it showed interest in a thorn-bush, and shortened up on the rein.

The beshta squalled a protest at this injustice, swayed from side to side under the taut rein and kept squalling to the heavens. The cliffs above echoed with her indignation.

And found a new source not so far distant. Beshti called to beshti, in the uneasy smell of the wind.

Then the old bull bellowed out, throwing up his head.

That brought a second distant answer, three, four voices, female. And a raucous challenge.

“Aha,” Hati said. “The young bull out there is worried now. We may get them yet.”

“Marak.”

A quiet voice from the tap, this. Ian’s. He was by no means sure he wanted to listen. His headache persuaded him it might not be safe.

“Marak, do you hear me?”

“Ian. We have very little patience for this.”

“Marak-omi, there’s trouble in the Refuge. The Ila has invaded systems aloft and killed her oldest watcher. She has demanded Procyon’s return to duty in your name. Luz has now entered her apartments and attempted to reason with her. The force of the Ila’s action has done damage to all the watchers.”

Forgotten, the beshti, everything, in the vivid imagination of the Ila’s establishment in the Refuge, the Ila and her aau’it and her guards, Memnanan still among them. Memnanan would be put in a very difficult position if the Ila bade him bar Luz from her premises.

Without hesitation, headache and all, he reached out for the Ila himself, the system being open for the moment. He did not do it as he wished, like a thunderbolt, but reasonably, quietly, well under control. “Ila. What have you done?”

“There you are, Marak Trin Tain. And how do you fare?”

“Well enough, until I hear earth and heavens are in an uproar. Why should you kill your watcher?”

“Why? Why not?”

Temper. High temper. “Ila, favor me with an answer. Why would you harm an i

“For your safety! For the safety of the world, with traitors in the heavens and the ambitions of the small, stupid men who protect them, now let loose to cause all of us grief! Be silent, Luz! Wewill tell him! Listen, Marak. Are you listening now?”