Ventus Part 6

She had that serene, unconcerned look about her again. "No we won't. I have protection," she said. Ahead of them, tall stately red maples stood in even ranks. The underbrush was spa.r.s.e, as if someone regularly cut it back.

Jordan shook his head. They jogged through tall wet gra.s.s and into the shelter of the trees. Calandria pointed to a brighter area ahead. "Clearing. I guess there's extensive grounds around this one."

She led him on. After a minute he said, "So you've been in other manses?"

"Yes. I have a way of getting in." She stopped and rooted around in one of her belt pouches. "This." She brought out a thick packet of some gauzy material, which she shook out into a square about two meters on a side. "We wear this over us, like we're playing Ghost."

She held it out to him and he touched it. The material was rather rough, and glittered like metal. It crackled a bit when it folded.

"Stand close." Reluctantly, Jordan did so. She pulled the sheet over both their heads. It was easy to see through, but a little awkward to walk with, as it tended to bell stiffly out. They had to take handfuls of the stuff and hold it close. "Put your arm around my waist," she directed him when it became apparent they were not walking in rhythm. Jordan did so with the reluctance of someone touching a snake.

He forgot his wariness when they came out from under the trees. His hand tightened around her and he gasped. Calandria stopped as well, and smiled.

The forest was cleared here in a perfect rectangle almost a kilometer long. They stood at one end of a green, clipped lawn dotted here and there with artfully twisted trees. Square pools of water trembled now under the onslaught of the rain; under clear skies they would be perfect mirrors. Softened by the haze of rain, made shadowless by the cloud, a great mansion rose up at the far end of the lawn. Its pillars and walls were pure white, the roofs of grey slate. The windows were tall and paned in gla.s.s, which lit up every few moments with reflected lightning. Behind some of the windows, warm amber light shone.

Jordan indicated the lit windows with his chin. "They're home. How can we get in when the Winds are home?"

"They're not home." She nodded sagely. "That's part of the secret. The Winds never visit these places. You have a lot to learn, Jordan."

"Everybody knows the Winds live here," he said sullenly.

"I know they don't. You may have a lot to learn, but you are going to learn it, never fear. Let's call this a good first lesson for you. This way." She stepped onto the lawn and led him along the edge. "Wouldn't want to be hit by lightning on the way in," she said.

There were no horses tethered at the front of the huge building. Though light glowed from its windows, Jordan could see no movement within. The marble steps leading up to the tall doors were well swept, but there were no servants visible. He hung back as May trotted up the steps; she took his arm and pulled him gently but inexorably after her.

He held his breath as she reached out to the door handle and turned it. She pushed the door open, letting a fan of golden light out into the blue-grey afternoon. "Come," she said, and stepped in.

He hesitated. Nothing happened; there was no sound from within. Reluctantly, he put his head around the doorjamb.

"I'm soaked!" Lady May yanked the water-gemmed sheet off and tossed it down. "Look at this." Her legs and backside were covered in mud.

Jordan stared past her uneasily. It was warm here, and dry. Light came from a great crystalline chandelier overhead. That meant there must be servants to tend the lights. They were bound to show up at any moment.

"Close the door please, Jordan." He eased in, closed the portal but kept his back to it.

This place was bigger than Castor's mansion. They stood in a bow fronted vestibule at least two stories tall. Two wide marble staircases curved up to either side. Ahead was an arch leading to darkness. There were tall wooden doors at the foot of both staircases. Everything looked clean and straight, but the style was ancient, as if he'd stepped into one of the etchings in his father's book of architectural mannerism.

He looked up past the chandelier. Gold arabesques over the windows. The ceiling was painted with some torrid mythological scene, framed at the edges by ornate gold guilloches.

Lady May followed his gaze. "Derivative," she said. "Venus restraining Mars."

Jordan had heard of neither of them. He looked down. They were both dripping on the polished marble floor. Suddenly horrified at how wet, muddy and disreputable he must look, he said, "We have to get out of here."

"Find the lavatory," she said.

"No, what are you saying? They'll catch us!" He fought a rising tide of hysteria, which clicked in his throat.

"Jordan," she said sharply. "There is no one here. No one to take notice of us, anyway, as long as we keep this with us." She held up the silvery gauze square. "It disrupts their sensors."

He shook his head. "The chandelier--"

"--needs no tending," she said. "And is tended by n.o.body. There are things here, and I suppose they're servants of the winds, but they're just mechal beings. You know mecha?"

He nodded guardedly. "Flora, fauna and mecha. Like the stone mother. But those are just beasts."

"And this is like a hive for some of them. It looks like a human house for reasons it would take hours to explain. It's not a Wind place; just a mecha house."

"Then why are people killed who try to enter?"

She sighed. "The same reason people are killed when they enter a bear's den. They protect their territory."

"Oh."

"Come on. Let's find the lavatory." She picked up the gauze, half wrapped it around herself, and walked dripping up the stairs. Jordan hurried after.

The halls upstairs were carpeted luxuriantly. Lady May indifferently trailed mud footsteps through the red pile. Jordan walked in her footsteps so as not to soil it even further. His heart was pounding.

Lady May found a huge marble-sheathed room full of fixtures and appliances somewhat familiar to Jordan, but more ornate and absurdly clean. As she entered light sprang up from hidden lamps near the ceiling. Jordan started and stepped back, but she ignored the indication that their presence was known, and went to a large black tub. "Aaah," she sighed, letting her cloak slide off her shoulders. "I need this." She began let water into the tub from somewhere.

"You've been here before," he accused.

"No. This is just a very familiar building plan." She began to unlace her s.h.i.+rt. "I am about to bathe," she said in her slow drawl. "We must both remain close to the sensor sheet, so do not leave the room; but I would appreciate it if you turned you back while I disrobe."

Embarra.s.sed, Jordan turned around. "What you might do," she said, "is clean my clothes for me. I'll do the same for you while you bathe." A sodden bundle of cloth and leather hit the marble next to Jordan with a splat. "Just dump the cloth in that hopper there, and put the leather in the one beside it for dry-cleaning. The boots can go in there too. The mecha will clean them for us."

"Why would they do that?" he asked as he went to comply.

"The mecha keep this house for inhabitants just like us. They have ever since the beginning of the world. The manses were to be the estates of the first settlers here, as well as libraries and power centers. Their tenants never arrived--or at any rate, they didn't recognize them when they did arrive. So they wait. But they're more than happy to fulfil their household functions as long as they don't think we're intruders."

"And this cloth somehow fools them?"

"Yes. It's a machine." He heard her stepping into the water. "Aaah. Do you know machines?"

"Yes. Machines are a kind of mecha."

"Other way around, actually. Mecha is a kind of machine."

He puzzled over that, as he sat down cross-legged facing the still-open door. The hallway was dark; he heard the sound of rain tumbling against distant windows.

"When we've bathed and eaten, Jordan, I will explain to you why I had to take you away from your family, and just what your dreams about Armiger mean."

"You know why I'm having them?"

"I do. And I can end them. If you cooperate. That's why I came to you."

"But--" he started to say for the tenth time that he knew nothing that could help her, but a sound from the hallway stopped him. He scrabbled backward on hands and knees. "What was that?" he whispered.

Lady May was sitting up in the tub, one arm across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Steam wreathed her. "Probably some mechal thing. Cleaning the carpet, I'll bet. Here, come close and get under the sheet." She drew it up from the floor and draped an end over herself.

Jordan hurried to comply. They could hear a delicate clinking sound now, like wine gla.s.ses tapping one another, and then a long slow sliding sound, like a rough cloth being drawn across the ground. Jordan was terrified, and huddled next to the tub. Lady May sank back under the water, just her face showing. The gauze fell into the water and made a flat floor across it.

Something moved in the doorway; Jordan held his breath, eyes wide. He thought he caught a glimpse of golden rods rising and falling, of gla.s.s spheres cradling reflected lightning, and then the thing was past, tinkling on down the hall.

He let his breath out in a whoosh. Lady May sighed, and her wet hand rose to clutch his shoulder. "You're safe, Jordan, much safer than you realize. Safer than you were in that village, after you started dreaming."

"I don't believe you," he said.

"Your worst enemy is yourself," she said, and her hand sank back again.

They ate well in a dining hall of royal proportions. Jordan had spent the most luxurious half hour he could ever recall bathing in the marble tub. His clothes were now clean and dry, and Lady May had lit a fire here in the hall, in a large hearth with stone gargoyles on the mantelpiece. It looked as though no one had ever lit a fire there before. Warmth against their backs, they contemplated the rain-streaked darkness of the windows, and Lady May told him the names of some of the people on the painted ceiling.

"The stories those paintings tell are traditional stories, older than Ventus itself."

"How can a tradition be older than the world?" he asked.

"Mankind is older than this world," she said in her measured, confident voice. "The Winds made Ventus for us to use, but then they rejected us. Have you never heard that story?"

"Yeah," he said, looking down at his plate. "We made the Winds, the Winds betrayed us and trapped us. They teach us that at chapel lessons." His fingers traced the perfect circle of the china; he was here, and alive, in a place of the Winds. "It always seemed very remote from real life."

"You're very lucky to be able to say that," she said. "Listen, when did you start to dream about Armiger?"

"A couple of days... a day before Emmy ran away, I think. Was it you who did that to me?"

Now it was her turn to pretend to examine her food. "Yes, but I had no idea it would be so traumatic for you. And it wasn't originally our plan to kidnap you this way. But let's go back a step or two. How do you think I was able to get you to dream about Armiger?"

"You said he put something in my head," he said. "But why should I believe that? I never felt it before. I think you put it there, that night."

"You believe what you want," she said with a smile. "Meanwhile, I'll tell you my version anyway. Armiger did put it there, probably six years ago, when he first arrived on this world." He looked over quickly. "Yes," she said, "Armiger is not from this world."

"What other world could there be?"

"We'll get to that," she said. "Armiger came from another world. And when he came to Ventus, he made you and a number of other people into his spygla.s.ses. He could see through your eyes, hear through your ears, all these years."

Jordan suddenly lost his appet.i.te. He put a hand to his forehead, thinking of all the minor shames and crimes of his youth.

Lady May went on indifferently. "He didn't care about you, or what you did, of course. He was looking for something."

"What?"

She sat back, her mobile face squinched into a speculative look. "Not sure. But we think he came here to conquer the Winds."

Jordan shot her the kind of look he reserved for Willam's less-successful jokes.

"Hmm. I guess it would sound crazy to you. Tell me, what specifically did you dream about Armiger?"

Any former reluctance he'd had about revealing his dreams was gone; Jordan now hoped May would be able to remove them, the faster the better he satisfied her. He began with the first dream, and she listened patiently as he described Armiger's death and burial.

"You remember him writing his name in the mortar? That was real, not an actual dream?" Jordan nodded; he felt he could tell these visions from dreams.

"Strange. He's faked his own death. I wonder why."

"Tell me what they mean!"

"Okay." Lady May turned her heavy wooden chair around to face the fire, and stuck out her boots. They listened as something c.l.i.ttered by in the outside hall, and her hand hovered near the protective gauze until it was gone. "In the first dream, you say you saw a great battle, which the Winds interrupted.

"If that was a true vision, he has been defeated here, just as he has in s.p.a.ce. Maybe Armiger only just received a transmission telling him about the greater defeat off-world. You see, a little while ago a battle was fought among the stars. I was there. And I helped destroy a creature rather like the Winds. A thing that went by no name, only a number: 3340." Firelight caressed her features as she spoke. "This creature had enslaved an entire world, a place called Hsing. There are other worlds, Jordan. Other places than Ventus where men walk." He shook his head. "Well, anyway, 3340 has been destroyed. But some of his servants survive. One of these servants is Armiger.

"Armiger was sent here six years ago by 3340, who hoped to find a way to enslave the Winds, and thus take all of Ventus as its own. And Armiger sent out his machines to try to find the Achilles' heel--the secret vulnerability--of the Winds.

"I'm sure you know the Winds destroy all machines that are not of their own devising. They did this to Armiger's first probes. He tried hiding some probes in animals, but the morphs discovered them and took the probes out. But he had learned that the Winds do not change humans the way they do other life here. The morphs can kill, but they do not change people, do they? Only animals. So he realized he could hide his probes in people. And he did so. One of those people was you."

"I would remember," he protested.

"No, it was done in your sleep, using very small mecha. That's all the probe is, a mechal infection on your brain. Nanotech, we call it. And for six years he roamed Ventus, casting a wide net to learn as much as he can about this world. In order to learn how to conquer the Winds."

"You can't conquer the Winds," he said. "The idea is absurd. Armiger must not be very bright."

"Maybe, maybe not." She shrugged. "His master had enough power to spare to send him on a mission that had no guarantee of success. But what if he did find a way?"

She left the question hanging. Jordan stared at the fire, and tried to imagine the sovereign Winds bowing to another power, to the thing that had scratched its own name on the inside of its tomb.

"Armiger," Lady May said, "wanted to become G.o.d of this world. But he had a master, from whom all his power came. Armiger is only a spy, possibly an a.s.sa.s.sin. And he has learned that his master is now dead." She steepled her hands and glared into the fire. "So now what? Is he free to pursue the plan on his own? Your story suggests he's gone mad, but he may just be going to ground, dropping from sight, which would make sense if he suspected we were going to come after him."

Jordan blinked at her. This was too strange to question; he could not fit any of it into his understanding of the world.

Lady May seemed to sense his confusion. "The rest is simple," she said. "All 3340's agents are being hunted down and killed. Axel Chan and I have come to find Armiger, and destroy him. Destroy it; Armiger's not a human being like you and me."

"But he died."

"And you went on receiving from him after he died? He's not dead, although he might not realize it himself yet, if he has gone insane. When we came here, Axel and I could not discover Armiger, but we found you. And we found there was maybe a way to use you to find him. Our intention was to hire you away from your father, as an apprentice. I travelled with Turcaret for credibility's sake, to negotiate that with Castor. Castor would have none of it, though; maybe it was Turcaret poisoning his mind about your sister, he realized he couldn't shatter the whole family and chose Emmy. We were stuck until your sister ran into the woods. You see," she shot him a conspiratorial smile, "it was the perfect opportunity, and I really had no time to explain."

"So you made me dream."

"I'm not sure why that's happening. He seems to be broadcasting a signal to his eyes and ears. Trying to summon them home, maybe. A good happenstance, since we still can't track Armiger directly through your implants. But you can tell us where he is. Better and better."

"For you, maybe." He stood up and walked away from the fire, to peer out the rain-runneled window. Instead of telling him something he could make sense of, she'd prattled a tale of insanity. "You're telling me you're from the stars, too."

"I am." She laughed. "Oh, Jordan, I'm sorry we had to meet this way. Our intention was to hire you, and you were to receive all the benefits of our knowledge and skills. We were going to pay you better than in coin for your service, and you would return home equal to Castor or any of the monks in your wisdom. You see, we did plan to tell you something about the world you live in--the truth, not the myths you were raised on."

He heard her stand and approach. Close behind him, she said, "And I will still honor that intention. We have more to make up for now, but I promise you we will make it up. Money is the easiest thing; I can pay you in knowledge, and wisdom."

Jordan had lost the safety of his village and family. Calandria May had told him a tale which, in the normal course of things, would have sparked his imagination; it made a good tale, people up there in the sky, fighting nameless G.o.ds and stalking a demonic a.s.sa.s.sin across the plains and mountains of the world. Now, though, he could only shake his head dumbly, and try not to think at all.

For a while they stood looking out at the storm; when he glanced at Lady May again, her eyes were hooded, her carven features masklike. But she caught his eye and smiled, not with her usual harsh amus.e.m.e.nt, but with sympathy. In that moment she was beautiful.

"Let me show you something," she said.