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  Again the chamber was partially lit, the shadow of the globe a large crescent on the wall tapestries. The far doors to the Feast Hall were open. This was a much more anxious experience than she had imagined it would be. If Lord Scanthax or one of his manifestations were to catch her, he would know that he could no longer trust her. They would discover how she had escaped the scrutiny of Ambassador and it would be immensely harder to get away in the future. Worse, Lord Scanthax would wonder what she was doing here and perhaps take precautions that would prevent her plan from ever being realized. All the same, there was no point turning back; not now that she had come this far. Given the drive to war that was under way at the moment, there might never be a night when the meeting rooms were unused.

  The Feast Hall, too, had enough light to see by and the doors that led toward the Map Room were open. The light was different down there, flickering and orange. It meant there was a fire lit in the Map Room. And now that she stopped to listen, she could hear a very faint murmur of conversation. From where she stood, the words were not distinct, but it seemed that at least two people were present. Were they expecting more? She checked behind her and slowed her breathing to concentrate. No one seemed to be coming along behind her. It was comforting that apart from the area near the entrance to the Map Room, the rest of the Feast Hall was dark. She would begin in the blackest corner of the room and crouch there should anyone enter.

  Most of her survey was done by touch, scripting open each wooden seat along the walls, then the panels behind it, to confirm that they were solid and not a hidden passage, and finally restoring the wood. In this way, feeling relatively safe in the shadows, Penelope methodically made her way around the Feast Hall. It was slow going, but she had to be certain that she knew where all of the exits were and that she could seal them. Although she had anticipated that at least one of the chairs or wooden panels would conceal a hidden passage, there had been no such disguise so far in the section of the room where she could search in relative safety.

  Now it was necessary to draw close to the entrance that led to the Map Room. Penelope anxiously worked her way right up to the shadow of the door nearest her, the voices from the Map Room becoming more distinct as she did so.

  “To my mind, it is like Tharsby Pass again.”

  “My dear General, everything reminds you of Tharsby Pass, because you constantly wish to remind yourself and our lord of your greatest triumph.”

  “Lord Scanthax has no need to be reminded of that achievement. An impregnable valley. Powerful weapons. An impossible task. Yet we took it. By sheer persistence we took it.” There was a distant thump, and Penelope could imagine General banging the table with his gauntleted fist. “Cry Scanthax! We took it and we can take Saga in the same manner, whatever their weaponry!”

  “Calm yourself, General; you are not addressing the troops here.” It was not clear to Penelope who was speaking. His voice was laconic and confident. One of the inner circle of manifestations, certainly. Perhaps Chancellor? No, his voice was more weaselly than this one.

  “Your tactic—let us call it ‘the rush’—has its place. But how do you know this is the place for it? We are far too short of intelligence to stake all our current forces on a move that might well strip us of all our defenses if we fail.”

  “I know you perceive me as lacking in intelligence, Assassin, but I have more intuition about these matters than you do. And I say this: most wars are won slowly and after many battles, including many defeats, but some are decided at the outset. I feel this is such a war. Even if we produce military units ten times faster than them, every one of their weapons can account for a hundred of our men. The longer we postpone the attack, the more difficult it will be. Does it not worry you that they won the skirmish at Gate Four, then did nothing, except perhaps send one assassin toward us? What are they waiting for?”

  “Actually, General, I agree with you more than I might have previously indicated; that is, apart from one significant consideration you seem to be neglecting.”

  “Yes?”

  “We have Princess working hard on the construction of those energy-throwing weapons. Given time, we will be able to equip ourselves as well as our enemies. It is how we have triumphed in the past and how we can do so now.”

  “I prefer to rely on our own strength rather than the human. I hear that she finds it hard to make the guns, that her progress is slow. Moreover, she is unreliable.”

  “Princess does seem to be increasingly erratic, but Ambassador believes she is motivated to complete the work by the promise that she will be given complete control over her human environment.”

  “Ambassador is a fool and a waste of Lord Scanthax’s processing power. He should be reabsorbed.”

  “But you can see the advantage in delaying an attack until we have either enormous reserves or new weapons?”

  “I don’t like it. I’m troubled by the thought we might have already lost our chance. And I had hoped that our days of dependency on the human were over.”

  “They won’t be over until our last possible rival is eliminated.”

  “Enough. I accept Lord Scanthax’s decision. Leave me with these maps and I will draw up the dispositions for the new units.”

  All at once footsteps were walking rapidly toward her. There was no time to move back to the far end of the chamber, nor could she unclip quickly enough for her avatar to disappear. So Penelope shrank up against the wall, aware that back in her bed her organic heart was thumping hard. If Assassin closed the door behind him, he could not fail to see her. His footsteps rang out right beside her ears and—O delicious moment!—continued on unchecked, gradually dying away as he walked out of the Feast Hall and back toward the center of the castle. When she was sure he was long gone and she had recovered her nerve, Penelope resumed her task, working her way carefully back around the hall rather than risk crossing in front of the open doors. It had been interesting to overhear the high-level manifestations talk about her. Lord Scanthax and Ambassador were more circumspect in their language, but even from them the message was the same: they saw Penelope as an outsider and wanted her only for the advantage she could give them in war. Whatever the future held for her, if she left it in the hands of Lord Scanthax, it would be a limited one. To get the freedom she wanted, to travel through Edda and beyond, she would have to improve her bargaining position and that meant catching Lord Scanthax at a vulnerable moment. Thinking about the hostile tone of General’s voice made her all the more determined to implement her plan. Lord Scanthax had no gratitude for everything that Penelope had done for him and Penelope no longer had any loyalty to him, no matter what efforts he had made to keep her alive as a baby.

  On the wall opposite the open doors, but not directly across from them, was an enormous fireplace. It was so large that Penelope could step under the mantelpiece without having to bend. And it was there that she found the hidden passage. There were alcoves in either corner of the fireplace where someone could stand and not be seen by anyone in the room. One of them was of solid stone, but the nearest had a wooden door, painted to appear as though it were gray rock. Making careful exploratory holes in the door, Penelope found the catch that allowed her to swing it open. Beyond it was a very small chamber with a hole in the floor and a ladder of metal steps imbedded in the wall below.

  Penelope was curious as to where exactly the passage ended, but that wasn’t important now. What mattered is that she knew where the secret door was and that it could be welded shut. She closed the door and quietly put the catch back on. Everything was as she had found it.

  Although it was unlikely there was another hidden exit somewhere, for the sake of completeness Penelope decided to finish her circuit of the Feast Hall, even though this meant creeping across a section of the wall that was brightly lit because it faced the open doors to the Map Room. It was a situation where if she were caught at this stage, she would be furious with herself for not having returned to her bedroom while she had the chance. But it w
ould be worse still if the day came when she thought she had trapped Lord Scanthax, only for him to surprise her. Therefore, she made herself crawl quietly forward on her hands and knees to peek down the corridor toward the Map Room. General was not in sight. She could hear him down there, occasionally opening drawers and pulling out sheets, then quietly scratching out his notes and orders. But it sounded like he was sitting close to the fire and well away from the door.

  Anxiously, and still on all fours, she hurried by the illuminated part of the wall. Once safely out of sight again, she could relax a little and return to her methodical exploration of the room’s seats and wooden panels.

  Unexpectedly, in the middle of the far wall, she found a space instead of stone. Another hidden exit? Lord Scanthax was more security-conscious than she had supposed. But it did not take long to discover that the space was a small box room, equipped with a periscope-like device that allowed the viewer to look out over the whole of the Feast Hall. The lens of the periscope was cleverly designed to slide along the line between two panels, so you would not notice it unless you looked closely. The booth contained several weapons—guns from Ruin mostly—and boxes of ammunition. It was clearly designed to accommodate a bodyguard, who could survey the room while Lord Scanthax feasted. Clever. Not that there would ever have been a threat to him at the redistribution or award ceremonies; all the people present were his own manifestations except, of course, for Penelope and, perhaps—safely contained in cages—captured rivals over whom he could gloat.

  Satisfied that she had thoroughly scouted the Feast Hall, Penelope stood with her hands on her hips, taking it all in. At the next redistribution ceremony the room would be full, between Lord Scanthax and all his manifestations, and she would be able to hold them there, trapped. It would be necessary to make the windows bulletproof and strengthen the doors, but she would leave that until closer to the assembly, just in case one of the more observant manifestations, such as Assassin, noticed something had changed. For now, though, she had done very well. Feeling optimistic for the first time since Lord Scanthax had forcibly unplugged her from Edda, Penelope tiptoed her way back toward her bedroom. She would sleep well tonight.

  Chapter 18

  A SAPPHIRE IN THE SKY

  Not until he was high above the clouds of Myth, gazing down at the slowly moving flow of white cotton, did Erik appreciate just how much he had missed Epic. Only there had he experienced anything like the environment through which they were now flying. The peaks of a vast mountain range were all about them, clad in snow that glistened under a bright sun as though brushed with diamonds. Rising high into a deep blue sky, the mountains were far taller than any that existed on New Earth. It was a shame Injeborg’s avatar had not survived to be with them now, as she would have adored the view, taking pleasure, as Erik did, in seeing how the lines formed by the mountain peaks channeled a bank of cloud so that it was like a white river making its way between them. These were views that could never be witnessed back on New Earth.

  His delighted contemplation of their surroundings was interrupted as Milan suddenly began rummaging through his belongings.

  “I’m frozen. I’m going to get in my sleeping bag.”

  Of course, his friends from Saga must be suffering. Cindella didn’t feel the cold, not unless it was severe enough to begin lowering her life points and even then Erik received no physical sensations to match the signals coming from his avatar. But this high up, the air must be very thin and the temperature not much above freezing.

  “Good idea.” Athena’s teeth were chattering.

  Gunnar, naturally, was also untroubled by the cold, sitting comfortably and safely in the center of the platform. For less obvious reasons, Ghost and Jodocus, too, seemed relaxed, as they looked at the jagged horizon. Following their gaze, Erik saw that a particularly sharp mountain peak was coming distinctly closer. It had not been evident just how fast the air elemental that carried them was moving until the approaching mountain gave him something to measure their progress by. This was evidently their goal and as Erik scrutinized the peak, he caught a flash of blue light as though from a sapphire earring. It came from a structure that was so tiny at this distance that it looked like a small bead, but was probably a substantial building seen close up.

  About an hour later, the light was revealed as a reflection from a large dome, a hemisphere, seemingly made of glass, set on the snow-covered ground of a small plateau. All around the dome were piles of sticks several meters high, making the whole area look like a bird’s nest. In a way it was, because there was a huge concentration of birds standing around the open ground and also circling far above the dome. They were of all types and sizes, not just the mountain birds Erik was familiar with from New Earth. Surrounding the tall eagles, who looked at home on the mountain, were thousands of much smaller birds; Erik could see finches, doves, swallows, and blackbirds, all of which seemed out of place high up on the mountainside. From the center of this enormous avian flock, a golden eagle launched itself into the breeze. After three beats of its massive wings, it was already gliding, feathers splayed. Moments later the eagle was circling above them, watching them with intelligent eyes. It came as no surprise to Erik when the raptor spoke.

  “Who visits the mistress?”

  “Tell her Jodocus comes in response to her invitation.”

  The eagle dropped away from them and swept through the sky back to the dome.

  At first sight the building had seemed awe-inspiring, mainly as a result of its mountain setting and the way it reflected the vast blue skies above, but as they drew closer it became less impressive. The surface of the dome was streaked with bird droppings and the disorderly piles of branches strewn around the base ruined the purity of the hemispheric design. And then there were the birds: a flock of thousands covering the rocky plateau on which the dome had been constructed. Rather eerily, the birds turned their heads as one to watch as the group arrived. Except for a little shuffling now and again, the birds did not stir, but nevertheless they seemed attentive and poised, ready to leap into the air. Those near the foot of the dome had to do so as the air elemental set the platform down near a pair of sliding doors.

  As everyone picked up their bags, clothes, and weapons, the glass doors slid open. A middle-aged woman was there, wrapped in a full-length blue wool coat. It was her gray and slightly disheveled hair that indicated her age; that and the wrinkles on her pudgy hands. Her eyes were as sharp and intelligent as those of the eagle, and her gaze fixed on Erik as she caught sight of Cindella. Then, abruptly, she broke off her scrutiny and turned to Jodocus.

  “So, you’ve overcome your bitterness at last.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “And you’ve brought friends. Curious friends.”

  “Frozen friends,” muttered Milan, pointedly.

  The woman flashed him a smile—a false one—and addressed Jodocus again. “Who are they?”

  “Why don’t you bring us inside and I’ll do the introductions there?”

  She considered this, and the longer she mulled over the question, the more evident it became to Erik that she harbored a deep mistrust of Jodocus. At last she nodded and beckoned them to follow her with a jerk of her head. At the same time, the focused concentration of the avian flock broke. The birds all about them were no longer a collective force, watching, waiting, prepared to act. They were individual creatures once more, for whom the travelers held no interest.

  The interior of the dome was filled with hallways and rooms, so that it was not possible to get a sense of its huge scale. And the chamber that the woman took them to was particularly small. The dome formed one gently curved wall of the room, and although grimy, it let in enough light that the whole room was bright. There were rugs on the floor and a fireplace set in one of the interior walls. The fire was lit and must have been producing a great deal of heat, because Milan sighed aloud with pleasure. A bald, expressionless servant, looking like a dummy from one of the clothing shops i
n Saga, came in with a chair, placed it on the rug, and left, only to return shortly afterward with another. When they were all seated, Jodocus gave their names by way of introductions.

  “And our hostess is Anadia, mistress of avian life.”

  Anadia nodded and signaled to her servant. He returned with a tray of glasses. “Water?” They all gratefully took a glass, and while Erik could not enjoy the drink, he did note the small improvement in Cindella’s fatigue status.

  Anadia stood up and came over to Cindella, touching her face.

  “Beautiful. But you are human?”

  “How can you tell?” Erik and Gunnar exchanged a discreet glance. He was surprised; compared to most avatars, Cindella was highly lifelike, due to his having maximized her charisma when he created her.

  “I will answer that”—she looked up at Jodocus—“but I also want answers to my questions. Let us take turns?”

  The elementalist nodded, so she turned back to Cindella. “I don’t think I can tell by looking at you. Not from your avatar; it is extraordinary. I was watching as you took a drink, and even that motion was completely convincing. The birds, however, keep me informed of a great deal, and I have had them watch you ever since the battle at the end of the road. They report that you and you”—she pointed to Gunnar—“disappear, whereas you three do not.”

  “I see,” said Erik. “Thank you.”

  “Now”—she resumed her seat and looked at Jodocus—“what is the significance of those ugly tattoos that now cover your body?”

  “Ah. I’m glad you asked. For I have made the greatest contribution to elementalism, well, ever. Each design has an elemental bound within it. No longer are elementalists constrained to work with the materials at hand. Here, for example, high in the mountains, I could release the energy of a fire elemental drawn from the heart of a volcano. I would write a book on the subject and become eternally famous—except for the fact that there are no other elementalists left but me, are there?”