Wizards At War

The warriors drew closer. Kit didn’t do anything right away, waiting for them to give him a lead. When they were perhaps five meters distant, the lead warrior looked at Kit and held its claws up in a slightly different way, crosswise instead of vertical. Kit held his claws up the same way as they passed. “May these do the One’s will,” said the lead warrior.

“May these do the One’s will also,” Kit said, and went by. Dairine started to relax as they went on, meeting more groups of workers and warriors. It’s not going badly so far, she said silently to Spot. I just hope they’re able to communicate in more than these rote phrases. Otherwise, we’re going to have a lot of trouble telling the Hesper why we’re here.

They walked on, examining their surroundings. It was hard to see much terrain through the trees, but they got a sense that they were approaching the city-hive as the path they were walking was joined by more paths from either side. The main path broadened out, and the traffic on it increased considerably, until they were all lifting their claws every ten seconds or so to salute some new band of workers or warriors.

This place could give you cramps in the arms pretty quick, Kit said. He was managing not only his own claws but Ponch’s as well, and he sounded a little uncomfortable.

Maybe we won’t have to do it inside, Filif said.

Dairine looked ahead. Over the bodies of the many Yaldiv who were now sharing the path with them, she could see the forest around them thinning slightly. Beyond it, the trees, no longer so gnarled and tangled, were starting to be replaced by bigger-trunked ones, darker-colored, leafless—perhaps stripped of their leaves by the depredations of thousands of Yaldiv. But then, as the trees lining the path began to give way to a much more open area, Dairine saw that she had been mistaken. As the line of Yaldiv immediately ahead of their group poured out from the narrow path into a space easily a mile wide, she found herself looking up and up at a structure she could hardly make sense of. A roughly conical central tower speared upward out of a wide, dark, shining surface in a random patchwork of beiges, reds, and rose colors. Hundreds of feet high it rose, toward a forest ceiling far higher and less claustrophobic than the one under which they’d been traveling until now. Close around the central tower, several smaller towers rose from the dark surface, which Dairine could now see and smell was tar—an immense pool of the stuff, all slicked with rainbowy oil. It was a city of paper, at least above ground; probably it had been built of the chewed leaves that they had seen the workers tearing off, and dyed with the unfortunate trees’ sappy blood.

Across the lake of tar and oil a number of causeways had been built; they were made of stones and rubble underneath, and paved with more of the chewed-leaf paper. Kit led the way in the wake of many, many more Yaldiv who were making their way toward the city in the fading light of day’s end. At the end of the causeway was a great tunnel guarded by warriors, and even from halfway across the causeway, Dairine could see the words written above it in the Yaldiv language.

THE COMMORANCY IS ONE THE COMMORANCY IS ALL

It seemed like weeks since she’d first heard the word. Commorancy. A home, a “place inside the walls”—

Every Yaldiv who approached the door was stopped, and there was an exchange of some kind between the entering Yaldiv and the guards. Other warriors were entering the tunnel in front of them, and Dairine watched to see what they did. They raised their claws crosswise in the same kind of greeting as had been used on the outer path. But at this distance, she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She hoped Kit could.

Kit came up to the warriors and saluted them. Before he could speak, Dairine heard two of the warriors chorus, “Within or without?”

“Within, absolutely,” Kit said.

The warriors stared at him briefly, their little scent-detecting antennae working. Then one of them waved him past. “Pass, and go about the Great One’s business.”

They walked through the guarded door. As they went, Dairine saw Ronan elbow Kit warningly with one foreleg. Don’t get cute!

Strikes me that the one thing it’d be smart not to lose around here is your sense of humor, Kit said.