Part 2 (1/2)

As he walked, the rawmana rose all around him from the rawly opened earth. It was a madden-ingly subtle emanation, like ancient perfume, like warm air from an oven used yesterday to bake the finest bread. Zalazar inhaled it like a starving man, with mind and memory as well as lungs. It wasn't enough, he told himself, to really do any-thing with. But it was quite enough to make him remember what the world had once been like, and what his own role in the world had been.

At another time, under different conditions, such a fragrance ofmana might have been enough to make the old man weep. But not now, with the wonder of the cloud visible just ahead. It seemed to be waiting for him. Zalazar felt no inclination to dawdle, sniffing the air nostalgically.

There was movement on the planed ground just before his feet. Looking down without breaking stride, Zalazar beheld small creatures that had once been living, then petrified into the mountain's fabric by the slow failure of the world'smana, now stirring with gropings back toward life. Under his sandalled foot he felt the purl of a new spring, almost alive. The sensation was gone in an instant, but it jarred him into noticing how quick his own strides had suddenly become, as if he too were already on the way to rejuvenation.

When they reached the eastern edge of the table-top, Zalazar found he could look almost straight down to where a newly created slope of talus began far below. From the fringes of this great ma.s.s of rubble that had been a mountaintop, giant trees, freshly slain or crippled by the landslide, jutted out here and there .at deathly angles. The dust of the enormous crash was still persisting faintly in the breeze, and Zalazar thought he could still hear the last withdrawing echoes of its roar...

”Grandfather, look!”

Zalazar raised his head quickly, to see the tilted lens-shape of the gigantic cloud bestirring itself with new apparent purpose. Half rolling on its circular rim, which dragged new scars into the valley's gra.s.sy skin below, and half lurching side-ways, it was slowly, ponderously making its way back toward the mountain and the two who watched it.

The cloud also appeared to be shrinking slightly. Ma.s.s in the form of vapor was fuming and boiling away from the vast gentle convexities of its sides. There were also sidewise gouts of rain or spray, that woke in Zalazar the memory of ocean waterspouts. Thunder grumbled. Or was it only the cloud's weight, sc.r.a.ping at the ground? The extremity of the round, mountain-chopping rim looked hard and deadly as a scimitar. Then from the rim inwards the appearance of the enchanted cloudstuff altered gradually, until at the hub of the great wheel a dullard might have thought it only natural.

Another wheelturn of a few degrees. Another thunderous lurch. And suddenly the cloud was a hundred meters closer than before. Someone or something was maneuvering it.

”Grandfather?”

Zalazar spoke in answer to the anxious tone. ”It won't do us a bit of good to try to run away.” His own voice was cheerful, not fatalistic. The good feeling that he had about the cloud had grown stronger, if anything, the nearer he got to it. Maybe his prescient sense, long dormant, had been awakened into something like acuity by the faint accession ofmana from the newly opened earth. He could tell that the mana in the cloud itself was vastly stronger. ”We don't have to be afraid, lad. They don't mean us any harm.”

”They?”

”There's-someone-inside that cloud. If you can still call it a cloud, as much as it's been changed.”

”Insideit? Who could that be?”

Zalazargestured his ignorance. He felt sure of the fact of the cloud's being inhabited, without being able to say how he knew, or even beginning to understand how such a thing could be. Wizards had been known to rideon clouds, of course, with a minimum of alteration in the material. But to alter one to this extent...

The cloud meanwhile continued to work its way closer. Turn, slide, ponderous hop, gigantic b.u.mp and sc.r.a.pe. It was now only about a hundred meters beyond the edge of the cliff. And now it appeared that something new was going to happen.

The tilted, slowly oscillating wall that was the cloudside closest to the cliff had developed a rolling boil quite near its center. Zalazar judged that this hub of white disturbance was only slightly bigger than a man.

After a few moments of development, during which time the whole cloud-ma.s.s slid majestically still closer to the cliff, the hub blew out in a hard but silent puff of vapor. Where it had been was now an opening, an arched doorway into the pale interior of the cloud.

A figure in human shape, that of a woman n.o.bly dressed, appeared an instant later in this doorway.

Zalazar, in the first moment that he looked directly at her, was struck with awe. In that moment all the day's earlier marvels shrank down, for him, to dimensions hardly greater than the ordinary; they had been but fitting prologue. This was the great true wonder.

He went down at once upon one knee, averting his gaze from the personage before him. And without raising his eyes he put out a hand, and tugged fiercely at his grandson's sleeve until the boy had knelt down too.

Then the woman who was standing in the door-way called to them. Her voice was very clear, and it seemed to the old man that he had been waiting all his years to hear the call. Still the words in themselves were certainly prosaic enough. ”You men!” she cried. ”I ask your help.”

Probablyask was not the most accurate word she could have chosen. Zalazar heard himself babbling some reply immediately, some extravagant promise whose exact wording he could not recall a moment later. Not that it mattered, probably. Committment had been demanded and given.

His pledge once made, he found that he could raise his eyes again. Still the huge cloud was easing closer to the cliff, in little b.u.mps and starts. Its lower f.l.a.n.g.e was continually bending and flowing, making slow thunder against the talus far below, a roaring rearrangement of the fallen rock.

”I am Je,” the dazzlingly beautiful woman called to them in an imperious voice. Her robes were rich blue, brown, and an ermine that made the cloud itself look gray. ”It is written that you two are the men I need to find. Who are you?”

The terrible beauty of her face was no more than a score of meters distant now. Again Zalazar had to look away from its full glory. ”I am Zalazar, mighty Je,” he answered, in a breaking voice. ”I am only a poor man. And this is my innocent grand-son-Borma.n.u.s.” For a moment he had had to search to find the name. ”Take pity on us!”

”I mean to take pity on the world, instead, and use you as may be necessary for the world's good,” the G.o.ddess answered. ”But what worthier fate can mortals hope for? Look at me, both of you.”

Zalazar raised his eyes again. The woman's countenance was once more bearable. Even as he looked, she turned her head as if to speak or otherwise communicate with someone else behind her in the cloud.

Zalazar could see in there part of a corridor, and also a portion of some kind of room, all limned in brightness. The white interior walls and overhead were all s.h.i.+fting slightly and continually in their outlines, in a way that suggested unaltered cloudstuff. But the changes were never more than slight, the largescale shapes remaining as stable as those of a wooden house. And the lady stood always upright upon a perfectly level deck, despite the vast oscillations of the cloud, and its turning as it s.h.i.+fted ever closer to the cliff.

Her piercing gaze returned to Zalazar. ”You are an old man, mortal, at first glance not good for much.

But I see that there is hidden value in you. You may stand up.”

He got slowly to his feet. ”My lady Je, it is true that once my hands knew power. But the long death of the world has crippled me.”

The G.o.ddess' anger flared at him like a flame. ”Speak not to me of death! I am no mere mortal subject to Thanatos'.” Her figure, as terrible as that of any warrior, as female as any succubus of love, was now no more than five meters from Zalazar's half-closed eyes. Her voice rang as clearly and commandingly as before. Yet, mixed with its power was a tone of doomed helplessness, and this tone frightenedZalazar on a deeper level even than did her implied threat.

”Lady,” he murmured, ”I can but try. Whatever help you need, I will attempt to give it.”

”Certainly you will. And willingly. If in the old times your hands knew power, as you say, then you will try hard and risk much to bring the old times back again. You will be glad to hazard what little of good your life may have left in it now. Is it not so?”

Zalazar could only sign agreement, wordlessly.

”And the lad with you, your grandson. Is he your apprentice too? Have you given him any training?”

”In tending flocks, no more. In magic?” The old man gestured helplessness with gnarled hands. ”In magic, great lady Je? How could I have? Everywhere that we have lived, the world is dead. Or so close to utter deadness that-”

”I have said that you must not speak to me of death! I will not warn you again. Now, it is written that...both of you must come aboard. Yes, both, there will be use for both.” And, as if the G.o.ddess were piloting and powering the cloud with her will alone, the whole ma.s.s of it now tilted gently, bringing her spotless doorway within easy stepping distance of the lip of rock.

Now Zalazar and Borma.n.u.s with him were surrounded by whiteness, sealed into it as if by mounds of glowing cotton. White cus.h.i.+oned firmness served their feet as floor or deck, as level always for them as for their divine guide who walked ahead. Whiteness opened itself ahead of her, and sealed itself again when Borma.n.u.s had pa.s.sed, walking close on Zalazar's heels.

The grinding of tormented rock and earth below could no longer be heard as the Lady Je, her robes of ermine and ultramarine and brown swirling with her long strides, led them through the cloud. Almost there was no sound at all. Maybe a little wind, Zalazar decided, very faint and sounding far away. He had the feeling that the cloud, its power and purpose somehow regained, had risen quickly from the scarred valley and was once more swiftly airborne.

Je came to a sudden halt in the soft pearly silence, and stretched forth her arms. Around her an open s.p.a.ce, a room, swiftly began to define itself. In moments there had grown an intricately formed chamber, as high as a large temple, in which she stood like a statue with her two puny mortal figures in attendance.

Then Zalazar saw that there was one other in the room with them. He muttered something, and heard Borma.n.u.s at his side give a quick intake of breath.

The bier or altar at the room's far end supported a figure that might almost have been a gray statue of a tormented man, done on a heroic scale. The figure was youthful, powerful, naked. With limbs contorted it lay twisted on one side. The head was turned in a G.o.d's agony so that the short beard jutted vertically.

But it was not a statue. And Zalazar could tell, within a moment of first seeing it, that the sleep that held it was not quite-or not yet-the sleep of death. He had been forbidden to mention death to Je again, and he would not do so.

With a double gesture she beckoned both mortals to cross the room with her to stand beside the figure.

While Zalazar was wondering what he ought to say or do, his own right hand moved out, without his willing it, as if to touch the statue-man. Je, he saw, observed this, but she said nothing; and with a great effort of his will Zalazar forced his own arm back to his side. Meanwhile Borma.n.u.s at his side was standing still, staring, as if unable to move or speak at all.

Je spoke now as if angry and disappointed. ”So, what buried value have you, old man? If you can be of no help in freeing my ally, then why has it been ordained for you to be here?”

”Lady, how should I know?” Zalazar burst out. ”I am sorry to disappoint you. I knew something, once, of magic. But...” As for even understanding the forces that could bind a G.o.d like this, let alone trying to undo them...Zalazar could only gesture helplessly. At last he found words. ”Great lady Je, I do not even know who this is.”

”Call him Phaethon.”

”Ah, great G.o.ds,” Zalazar muttered, shocked and near despair.

”Yes, mortal, indeed we are. As well as you knew when you first saw us.”