The Nested Worlds

"A private needs to be obedient. A sergeant needs to be experienced. A lieutenant must be brave, a captain must be intelligent, a colonel, political…but a general, above all else, must be lucky." —Attributed to Duc Gawin the Third of Urstoin.

A confrontation

the Herald's Arms Hotel, Auldenheigh 09.06.03.15.19

"Well, well, well…my counterpart at last."

There was a man waiting on the front steps of the Herald's Arms Hotel. A masked man, his face still hidden behind the eerie, mechanical insectoid apparatus the street gang had described. But as Adrey looked up at him, he shrugged the huge blue robes from his shoulders and let them fall to pool around his ankles.

Underneath he was lean, even skinny, but tall, with a pattern of rolling dice embroidered into his shirt. And he swished a long rapier through the air with a dramatic flourish. Jerl could tell in an instant that he had no real idea how to use it, though: his grip was all wrong, just wrapped around the handle like he was holding a hammer rather than with a finger extended through the guard rings for control. And the flourishing salute he gave was a bad actor's, full of flash and empty of any real understanding of the weapon.

As an experienced sabrist himself, Jerl could have had the silly thing out of his hand in a second. And yet, the masked figure looked entirely confident as he tripped gaily down the hotel steps, ignoring the guns aimed his way.

"You know, that outfit really is quite dowdy, Countess Mossjoy," he said. "Such a drab shade of grey doesn't suit you at all."

"I have more important concerns," Adrey retorted. She half-turned and waved a hand at her troops. "Leave this one to me, gentlemen."

"Colonel—" Takes began.

"He's a Wordspeaker, Trapper. If you try and join in, he'll just slice you to ribbons."

"Maybe…" Jerl stepped forward. "But I like two-on-one odds, myself."

"No," Adrey said. "His power only grows as the odds stack against him. Remember, he fought a Herald to a standstill."

The insectoid mask shifted and clicked as its wearer, presumably, grinned at her. "You guess correctly, dear sister in power."

"Who are you?" Jerl demanded. "What have you done with the Vault?"

"Why, I am the Aleator!" The figured took a flourishing bow. "The gambler, the gamer, the one who throws dice! And as for the rather boring matter of your friend's former property—" he inclined his head toward Deng-Nah "—It's now in better hands. The Crowns would never have allowed you to open and use it anyway."

Adrey blinked. "…Oh."

Jerl glanced her way. "What?"

"I know which one it is."

"Of course you do!" the masked figure capered like an anachronistic jester. "Your guesses and deductions are always right now, dear Adrey! Everything just slips neatly into place, doesn't it just?"

"Uh-huh." Adrey's tone was flat and disinterested. "You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit grand larceny."

"Oh, I'm not coming," the Aleator replied. He swished his blade again. "Rot away in a prison? No thank you! No, I think I'll make a daring escape now, if it's all the same to you."

Jerl looked around. The Aleator was surrounded by elves and Particulars, covered from multiple angles by accurate marksmen and superhumanly quick warriors against whom his own talents, if Ellaenie's account was true, would be like a boy waving a stick at random.

"…That seems unlikely," he said.

"Weren't you listening? My power only grows as the odds stack against me. Unlike yours, Jerl Holten. Or, indeed, like my dear Word-sharer." He returned his attention to Adrey. "Honestly, my lady, you could have had the exciting and endless power of good fortune, but instead you squandered it on…what? Deduction and analysis? What a waste! Lady Nimico was quite disappointed."

"She values only what entertains her, 'dear brother,'" Adrey shot back, sarcastically. "Do you enjoy being her momentary bauble?"

"Ohh…" even from behind the mask, the width and lecherousness of his smile shone through. "I enjoyed it very much, thank you."

He looked around as if weighing up their presence, then—

Steel clattered off steel as Adrey's own blade whipped out to meet his, deflecting a stroke that, amateurish or no, would have opened Jerl's throat to the bone. Jerl exerted Time, slowed events around him, and darted sideways. His sabre described a textbook arc through the air, but his accelerated perspective just allowed him to watch in astonishment as the Aleator, seemingly in reeling from Adrey's interception, just happened to flail his rapier through the exact movement that corresponded to an ideal parry and riposte. Only accelerated reflexes saved Jerl from a skewered heart—he twisted aside at the very limits of his power, feeling his sinews sing and pull from the immense strain, and the rapier punctured his upper arm instead. His sabre fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

To the other side, De Tredleck had taken a pace, drawn his pistol with astonishing sped, and pulled the trigger…only to curse as the weapon mis-fed and jammed.

A pale blur came in from Jerl's left, quick as a lightning flash: Sin. She timed her attack expertly, so that the Aleator's rapier was busy fending off one of Adrey's blows and couldn't come back around to sting her, but the ridiculous man seemed to stumble as he got his footing wrong on the steps—Sin's howling sword-stroke missed him by half an inch, and her return follow-up strike had to be turned aside or risk lopping off Adrey's hand.

Instantly, the fight was a slapstick farce, which Jerl could only watch while retreating, clutching his bleeding and immobile arm. Adrey, Sin, Harad, Deng-Nah, the Particulars, the Rüwyrdan, all came at him with the fearsome skill precision and coordination that should have seen their foe cut down in seconds.

But everything that could go wrong, did. Takes swore as he took a shot only for his rifle's barrel to explode into three strips of bent metal. Derghan dithered, unable to take a shot as the Aleator's uncoordinated flailing somehow forced Sin into his line of fire. Rüwyrdan elves who had trained and fought alongside each other for lifetimes suddenly found themselves getting in each others' way, plagued by random troubles like their sword-belts coming loose or their footwraps coming unravelled.

Such setbacks only delayed the Aleator's defeat, however. Little by little, the noose tightened and his options were cut off. He retreated up the steps, fencing simultaneously with Adrey, Deng-Nah, Sin and Harad, but while his Word-guided flailing kept putting the sword in the right place to prevent a kiling blow, four on one was simply too many. He couldn't counterattack, couldn't riposte. And it was only a matter of time before one of them knocked his guard too wide for him to close it again.

A feeling like warm ice soaked into Jerl's arm: Amir had run up and was pressing a magestone to his wound, pouring healing energies into it. Jerl turned his head to acknowledge his help.

The frontage of the hotel exploded.

Jerl regained his senses to find himself lying in a heap, with Amir under him. Some instinct made him cover the back of his head and curl up as chunks of masonry thudded into the street around him. He could hear somebody shrieking in pain, loud enough to cut through the ringing in his ears.

Strong hands checked him over and hauled him upright: Derghan. The shrieking turned out to be Amir, whose leg was obviously badly broken, and Derghan stooped to check on him in turn.

Dazed, Jerl looked up the steps, and saw only dust.

A figure staggered out of it, blundering down the steps until she collapsed at the bottom. Jerl rushed to Sin's side, but she was already rolling over and pushing herself up. She coughed blood onto the stonework, then took a deep wheezing breath.

"Sin!" He tried to help her, but she waved him away.

"Others…I'm fine. Help the others…"

"Bullshit you're fine!"

"Help. The. Others."

Jerl looked up. The dust haze had dissipated somewhat, and he could see—

Wullem de Tredleck sprinted past him up the stairs toward a crumpled figure in drab grey. Then he turned his head.

"HEALER! I need a damn healer over here, right fucking now!"

Jerl…knew a bit of healing, at least. And with Amir's leg broken, he was the one to get there quickest. He lurched up.

Deng-Nah was alive, and seemingly whole. At least, he was moving and groaning but not obviously bleeding very much.

Adrey was alive too, her face a mask of concentration as she burned a magestone to ash in her efforts to knit together Harad's mangled torso. The elf's one remaining eye locked on Jerl's face.

"…Too…eager…" he croaked. "Goaded us…into a trap…"

"Shut up and let us work," Adrey told him. Her own face was cut and bleeding in half a dozen places, but her eyes and hands were steady.

Harad's head twitched. "Save it for…the living…Chal fa, mellwan. Until...my next…"

Breath rattled out of him, and he was still.

The next few minutes passed without Jerl's mind really noting or recording them. He checked on Deng-Nah, who was dazed and wheezing, but, all things considered, remarkably unhurt. Amir guided them through setting his leg, then through knitting it with magic well enough for him to get up and limp around tending to everyone. A squad of Constabulary showed up, along with men from the Regiments.

Eventually, he found Adrey standing and surveying the scene with an expression like anger itself had come to walk the world wearing her face. Her skin was stained red with blood, not all of it her own.

"Where's—" Jerl began.

She shook her head. "Got away, the bastard. Skipped through a fucking explosion unharmed." She turned a furious expression his way. "And I should have seen it coming. Of course he was just playing for time and luring us in!"

Behind the anger, he realized, was terrible worry. She looked back toward the ruined hotel and her tone grew softer. "Why didn't I see it coming?"

"Because you share the same Word," Mouse said. He'd been doing what he always did, lurking in Jerl's shadow, helping here and there but mostly doing what he did best—watching, unobserved. "You cancel each other out."

"I don't know, his random sword-waggling seemed to work just fine against me," Adrey pointed out. "I should have put a hatpin in his throat instantly, the way he fights, but—"

"You didn't get stabbed, did you?"

Adrey's eyes flicked to the red-soaked puncture in Jerl's sleeve, then down to the ground. "…Harad saw it coming just in time," she said. "The instant before the bomb went off, he shoved Sin down the stairs and threw himself in front of Deng-Nah and me. If it wasn't for him—"

Jerl nodded. "Well. We'll know better after I pull back and we try this again."

"You're going to?"

"We lost Deng-Nah's Word, we lost the Aleator, we lost Nimico, and Harad is dead," Jerl pointed out. "Why wouldn't I? Today's been a disaster."

"I could think of a few reasons," a new voice said quietly, yet with a presence that landed on the conversation like a hammer blow.

They all jumped, even Mouse. When they turned, all sound went away. Suddenly, the bustle and yell of people tending to the aftermath of the bombing gave way to complete, awed silence.

Standing there barefoot and barely loin-covered in the rubble-strewn street, vast and magnificent beyond any mortal thought, was the King. He made eye contact with Jerl, who stared at him like a deer on train tracks might stare at the oncoming engine. Around him, men took their caps off, or even knelt. Adrey dropped a low curtsey.

"Please, do not let me further upset your day," he said to everyone, without breaking eye contact. His eyes, as deep and brown as the shadows under an ancient tree, gave away nothing.

"Come," Eärrach intoned, voice as gruff and deep as the world. "You and I must speak."

"What kind of gods create Heralds like Faun and Satyr, the wild and bestial, who dance naked in the woods and fornicate with men and women alike? What kind of gods endorse such sin?" asks he. I reply, "Perhaps, the kind who intimately understand human nature, and know how best to work with it." —The ancient philosopher Grioklene, Discourse at the Crossroad.

Walking and talking

Auldenheigh 09.06.03.15.19

Jerl felt a bit like he'd just been called to the headmaster's office.

It was a long-buried feeling. He'd gone to a boarding school in Antage long enough to learn to read and write, and get a basic grounding in history and geography, but his parents had recalled him to the Rosehip Inn when he was twelve, and not long after that his dad had commissioned the Queen and from there on in Jerl's education had been an on-the-job affair. But he still remembered the meek trudge up the long, draughty wooden hall on the top floor of the Kipton School for Boys, lined with the portraits of former headmasters all staring sternly down from the walls.

Following in the King's cobble-crushing footsteps brought that feeling back to him, even on an airy bright day on Auldenheigh's streets. That same feeling of having the direct personal attention of somebody far more powerful than you, whose opinion you had no option but to respect.

Amazingly, people ignored them. Even though Eärrach stood easily over eight feet tall, wore little more than an animal pelt around his hips for modesty, and had a set of impossibly lavish antlers that stretched nearly completely across the street…the crowd just walked around them without even glancing up. It was like they were just a moving piece of street furniture that everybody was so accustomed to that they no longer even consciously noticed it. And though his footsteps did, indeed, leave prints in the cobbles, the powdered stones knit themselves back together again seconds after he'd moved on. The Crown couldn't help but damage as he moved, but he was considerate enough to repair afterwards.

"I don't usually visit cities," the King said, conversationally. "I've never liked them, since I was a child. Even when life and responsibility forced me to live in them, my heart was always in the woods. Also," he added, "I must constrain myself severely to preserve the city against my presence." He grinned sheepishly, "and thus, the antlers."

"…Your antlers restrain you?"

"No no, they tend to sprout whenever I bind myself up too tight! There's symbolism and such, but truthfully, the first time it happened so many billions of years ago, I liked them so much I decided 'why not?' And so now they mark me, when the moment is right."

"I see…" Jerl said, not really seeing at all. But…the Crowns did deal in symbols quite heavily, he'd noticed. Talvi and her glacial hair, Haust and her mists, Sayf and his otherwise incongruous paunch…

"Does the symbolism…pertain to your wilder nature?"

"Of course! I think the immediate thing they show me is caution. I cannot allow myself to be too civilized!" He flashed a smile that relaxed Jerl somewhat, wide and carefree even though Jerl knew he'd come for a solemn purpose. "They're also a reminder of what I inherited. The responsibility I've chosen to bear, once carried by ancient gods, or at least the ancient myths of our people—you'll find the two are often one and the same. Even my elvish name evokes such a personage I strongly reflect. It wasn't even a conscious choice on my part, symbols just have that much power. Especially the symbols that are important to me, in the world I shaped. But I'm jumping into the conversation we're about to have before we're ready to start it."

He made a show of looking around. "…What's good to eat around here?"

"Uh…" Jerl looked about. "Well, if it's still standing, then we're only a little ways from the White Temple Curry House. It's on the corner of Leadbank and Towdrover Street. You won't get better Prathar food without flying to Prathardesh itself."

"Ooh, curry! It's been centuries! Let me…" The King closed his eyes, concentrating…and condensed. That was the only word Jerl could really think to describe what he witnessed. Instead of a towering colossus of a man, what now stood before Jerl was still a huge, broad, absurdly powerful-looking man, but now dressed with style, and sized almost appropriately for a day in the city. The antlers were gone too, but now around his corded pillar of a neck was their shape, wrought in a fine beaten silver pennant. He looked like a mythical woodsman straight out of a children's tale.

Or, maybe more honestly, as if he'd walked off the pages of a two-steel-bit bodice-ripper sold at the news stands, complete with the buttons-missing shirt and over-sculpted chest on flagrant display. The thought made Jerl chuckle, and the King's eyes twinkled, as if he knew the joke.

"You approve?"

"You're uh…still very striking," Jerl ventured. Actually, he was overpoweringly handsome and beautiful in a way that awakened everything Jerl loved in the male form; it was somewhat difficult to focus on much else. Jerl wasn't about to say as much, though it was obvious he didn't need to.

"…Ah!" The King chuckled, and now his demeanor changed entirely. "How could I have missed that?! I must be distracted. Lead on! I will promise to behave myself. Mostly."

They strolled down to Leadbank, the wide avenue that ran along the river's leading edge, then turned left toward the Elven City, with the Heigh twinkling to their right in the light of a clear day. It was idyllic, even with the lingering signs of war damage, and the ground shuddering under every unhurried step the King took.

The White Temple had indeed been spared from the various explosions and devastations that Adrey's Word-empowered decimation of the Oneist occupiers had inflicted on some less fortunate areas of the city. The burnt hulk of the Ring of Eternity was still visible on the trailing bank, away down the river where it looped around to form the district of Heigh Bend. It had come down right on top of a Circle, and the Oneist compounds walls were being robbed out by the locals to repair their houses and businesses. But it was still going to be a long time before the airship wreck was gone.

They sat at a circular cast-iron table by the waterside, after being guided there by a young man in a shirt that was somehow immaculately white despite his constant bustling back and forth with trays of saucy food. He didn't seem to notice anything especially strange about Jerl's dining companion, and he wondered what Eärrach was allowing him to see.

As the waiter bustled away, he glanced up as the sound of distant thunder rolled over the city. Jerl frowned and looked up too, but saw nothing. All the storm patterns he could see were far away, bothering distant earthmotes or simply making a lot of mess in otherwise open air. Enerlend, so far as he could tell, was going to have a clear day all day.

Eärrach chuckled up at the sky. "We'll get to that. Sayf is in a troubled mood, right now."

"Sir…shouldn't we…"

"You should know better than most that Time is a thing to respect, and right now, I am taking time to know you more personally. I promise you, young Jerl, I do not do such things lightly. So…sit and eat with me. Have a smoke. And tell me of your friends. Let us converse. And ask questions, Jerl. I will answer them."

"Any question at all?"

"Absolutely. Start small and mundane, though. Satisfy your curiosity. The big questions can wait."

Jerl sat back and looked at him…then blurted out the first one that came to mind: "Are you as strong as you look?"

He immediately felt his face redden, but the King grinned good-naturedly. "Far, far stronger, far beyond your capacity to imagine! And I don't mean that as an insult against your intelligence, Jerl. Far from it. It's just that not even the greatest genius in the world really feels the size of truly big numbers."

"I'd like to think I can imagine pretty big, so…how big are we talking?"

"Vast. Try to picture a billion in your head, okay? It could be a billion anything. Tricky, yes?"

"…Well…I can imagine vast, but that's not the same thing, is it?"

"No, the two sort of blend together in our imagination, because numbers that big are too abstract. It means something, but neither you nor anyone else has any intuitive grasp of a billion in the same way that you do for, say, five. Yet, if I were to say something suitably silly like, oh, I could esily curl a weight a billion times greater than this whole world…" The King grinned in a particularly friendly, yet self-satisfied way. "Well, it's both a ridiculous comparison, nor is nearly enough of a quantity to describe me." He sat back and looked at his arm in its sleeve. Even relaxed, it had such presence…

"So as for the question: you don't have numbers named for a proper answer."

"So the answer is…yes." Jerl summarized.

"Ha!"

Jerl grinned, though he was trying not to feel a little foolish for asking such a childish question.

Eärrach gave him an encouraging smile, though. "Honestly, thanks for asking! It's funny how often people think that question but don't have the balls to ask it. Talvi was right, I do like you!"

"So you know they think it, then," Jerl said.

"Yes, because I know what everything in this little creation of mine thinks or feels. Not from reading minds, or from controlling them; I know this because I can see all possible paths and decisions. That perspective of time you quite rightly shy from swimming…that is the start of where I see things."

"Then…" this was already starting to bend his mind. "How can you…"

The King waited, looked Jerl in the eye before answering.

"How can I be surprised by anything? Because I am. Seeing is not the same thing as living. And being able to do something isn't the same thing as doing it all the time. You're strong enough to lift…what? A few hundred awkward pounds off the ground? More, if pressed. You're a strong man even in your rather impressive family, and among your already famously strong people. But just because you could easily carry a log doesn't mean you walk around with one on your shoulder all the time."

"…Do you always lecture like this?"

Eärrach's roar of laughter was a thunderclap, though again the people nearby somehow failed to notice. "I'm sorry! Yes! Unfortunately, yes. Even with my very closest friends, even with my wife. It is an ancient proclivity of mine. I wasn't always this way! But spend a few millennia lecturing at university…"

"A few millennia?"

Eärrach shrugged. "I had tenure." He let the comment sit for a beat, then chuckled and continued. "It let me pursue some interesting hobbies, and the topic was on our ancient origins, so…" he shrugged again. "But I thank you for calling me out! I appreciate a gentle corrective more than people realize."

Jerl chuckled. "Just following some advice Lady Haust gave me, when I met her," he said. Another question came to mind, jumping back to something the King had said earlier. "So…no, never mind."

"No, Jerl. This matters. Ask."

"…Okay. So you are aware of all that I think, feel, and do—"

"And have and will, and it is all immediately present to me. I can see orthogonally and diagonally across time and space, and deduce from the tiniest details just like your friend Adrey. And of course, I wield fully every other of the Words alongside, as well as all the lesser powers of a rational being."

"—And yet you can be surprised?"

"Yes."

"And the difference is…What? Attention?"

"And desire, and effort, but yes."

"Okay then forgive me but…how are you not a god?"

The King sighed, but more in resignation than any frustration.

"Jerl, I am a god, in most every sense that matters. I simply refuse the title of God Himself, because I am not He. I too am a created being, and all of this is a gift and a burden He allowed me in my love and hubris to embrace. Now, you have just asked—ah! Yes, hello young fellow, what is your name?"

The waiter, clearly not used to more from his customers than a quiet thank-you, paused and blinked as though seeing the large and inhumanly handsome nut-brown figure sitting in front of him for the first time. "Ah…Saldeep, sir."

"Saldeep! A pleasure. And look at him, Jerl—neatly turned out, poised, attentive…a catch for any young lady in the city, I'd say." The King gave the young waiter a warm smile. "A drink for us both please, and whatever you would recommend before the main course!"

"Oh! O-of course, sir!" Looking quite astonished, the young man jotted down some notes then flashed Eärrach a grateful smile and bustled away looking surprisingly bucked-up, as though that one compliment seemed to have turned around a bad day.

"…What was that about?" Jerl asked, puzzled.

"He's been struggling to ask out the girl he's sweet on, and calling himself a coward in the privacy of his own head. Now….well, he might still chicken out. But he's more likely than ever to finally do it."

"And the girl?"

"Oh, she's been hoping he'll ask for weeks." Eärrach indulged in a job-well-done smile, then sat back and interlaced his fingers comfortably behind his head as he reclined, which caused his tremendous arms to frame his head in a deeply distracting way. "Anyway, you have asked some important questions. Good! What does this have to do with you, I feel you wonder? Well…what do you think?"

Jerl gawped at the King's magnificently brawny arms for a moment, then shook his head clear and sat back too, rubbing his thumb through the hairs under his lip as he gathered his thoughts. "I think…I've had plenty of time to think about that, ever since I first met Talvi," he said. "Why me? Well…because forces greater than me say so. And some of them are forces from outside me, like the Word…and others are forces from inside me, like my own sense of right and wrong.

"And I think I understand why you and the others don't step in yourselves beyond occasionally, uh, showing up for a chat and to share your thoughts. So…I guess what I'm really wondering is, why now? I should be with my crew, helping Amir with his leg, figuring out what to do with Harad's body...

"But then a god shows up," and Jerl nodded sheepishly, which caused Eärrach to grin boyishly, "and wants to eat curry with me! Could I really have said 'terribly sorry old chum, now's not a good time, I'm swamped!' ?" he put on a lavishly upper-class accent.

Eärrach gave a gentle nod of understanding. "No," he agreed serenely, "I mean, I would have respected your wish of course, but it would have been a grave mistake on your part. I promise I am not wasting your time. I am here for reasons beyond that I genuinely do enjoy company and curry."

"I know. Or…well, you know what I mean."

"You trust me on that."

Jerl nodded.

Eärrach nodded again, then pricked up his expression vaguely skywards as if to say 'listen' and held up his massive, almost paw-like hand and extended five blunt, calloused digits. He curled them down one by one, and just as he tucked his thumb into his palm, another long rumble washed out of the clear sky. Several nearby pedestrians checked their pockets and bags for umbrellas.

"Sayf rarely gets angry," he said, once it had passed. "But believe me, today is one of those rare days. You were right in what you said back there: Today has been, in some senses, a disaster."

"But you said you can think of a few reasons why I shouldn't pull it back."

"Some disasters need to happen. Even though they aren't what we wanted, or perhaps bring about something we did want but in a way we most definitely did not want. Sometimes…all too often, in fact, disasters can be doors to paradise."

Jerl didn't answer aloud. He looked out at the river and thought about his father, and about watching his friends die in that first timeline, before he'd opened Time's vault.

Eärrach watched him with a gentle, sympathetic expression. "Ah, now that is a conundrum, isn't it? You know I cannot possibly be wrong, because in this moment it is not faith in me which leads you to believe. You have the fact of me before you, and you know what I am, at least enough of that truth for the matter at hand. And yet…even in the face of genuine certainty, you can't accept it, can you?"

Jerl shrugged, still looking out over the river. "I keep thinking…there has to be a way. With a power like mine, why can't I keep hauling back and trying until things happen perfectly? I know everyone gets a say, and the only things I can really influence are…well, the things I can influence. But…part of me insists there's a...a…"

The King leaned forward and took one of Jerl's hands in the vastness of his own. "A golden path," he said, almost as a whisper, with no small amount of sympathy and sorrow loaded into his tone.

"…Yeah. Yeah." It took Jerl a moment to re-collect himself, while the King waited patiently. It seemed Jerl could almost feel sympathy radiating off Eärrach, and that was just enough to help.

"It's…there's gotta be this one shining thread that'll make everything turn out perfectly if I can only find and follow it. And, you know the others have talked to me about this, the Shishah has, my own friends have…but in my heart of hearts, I want that golden path to exist so badly, you know?"

Eärrach's face wasn't built to be soft, but his expression managed it regardless. "I really do."

"You mean…you really do understand, or you really want it to exist?"

The King of the Crowns shrugged. "Both. But it doesn't exist, Jerl. If you allow, I will help you to see…After we eat, and talk. All in its proper order. First…tell me of your friends. You seem blessed in them."

It was at that moment drinks and an appetizer arrived at the hands of Saldeep. "Ah, quick service! Thank you kindly, young lad. Now I think I am in the mood for your most challenging curry, and I could stand to eat quite a lot of it! What would you recommend?"

"Our strongest is…forgive me sir, quite strong…"

"I have had many curries in my life, young lad. Challenge me! And of course whatever my friend here wishes—?"

"The red curry. Five."

They ate. And Jerl, as requested, talked about his friends. He talked about his confused teenage crush on Sin before he'd figured himself out; about how astonishingly angry Derghan had been when he first came aboard, and how that anger had drained away over long nights of mead and card games in the officers' cabin as he finally got to vent about what had become of his Clan. He lamented how long it had taken them to stop dancing around each other and Sin's self-denial, and how glad he was that they were finally a couple. He laughed to recall Amir's fussy, fastidious first day when he'd gone about desperately trying not to touch anything and thereby get dirty. He recalled how he'd "won" Gebby's services off a rival crew in a bet, and how the twins had come with on the grounds that where he went, they went. And he laughed over the time Marren got stuck upside-down in the forward billet webbing because he'd bet he could swap out the slipstay cable before the bag could finish inflating.

And the King, in turn, shared personal stories beyond any conceptualization of ancient.

"—pulled it right out of my mouth! The memory caused me to gag for years afterward. Even a little now, if I'm honest."

"Are you sure it's not the curry?"

The King raised an eyebrow. "It's the hottest curry I've had in a very, very long time," he allowed. "But not that hot. Honestly I think it's better than my own recipe! I shall need to ask after the chef."

Jerl chuckled, and spooned the last of his freshwater shrimp into his mouth. "It's…hard to imagine you as an ordinary man."

"Ordinary-ish. I won't lie and pretend I started out as some meek little thing. I would have been a shocking specimen of a man in this world, even as a young teenager. But I went to school, I had first loves, I was a soldier and a father and an adventurer…I also carry the singular distinction of having been born on our origin world. Not even the other Crowns can claim that."

"Hence the lecturing."

"Indeed. Sayf keeps a few treasures we preserved from it, like the statue of David, but he was born long after we had left that world behind. And frankly, between repairs and restoration, and of course the Second Creation, not a single atom of the thing is still original at this point. But the artist's mind, soul and vision live on in that statue, even if his hands never touched an iota of its material."

Jerl leaned forward. "What was it **like? That first world?"

The King looked around. "…This world was made in its image, albeit very different in its mechanics. But the trees, the plants, the animals? If I could transport you back to those ancient woods, you'd notice little strange…until you saw your first sunset, and the stars came out."

"The…what?"

"Our homeworld was a rocky 'planet,' essentially a ball of hot metal some seventy-five hundred miles across, with a crust of solid, life-bearing stone and water on its outside, as relatively thin as the skin of an apple. It orbited its sun at a distance of ninety-three million miles or so. And it spun. So, if you were standing here…" the King held up his fist and pointed. "And the turn of it carried you to *here…*you would be in its shadow. Night time. And you would look up into the dark sky and see other suns, so far away that they were no more than cold specks in the black. But perhaps…later. Apologies, I can get quite sentimental. Ah! Yes. Here," he handed Saldeep a large gold coin as the waiter came to check whether they had finished. "Make sure you keep some of that for yourself, yeah? And…" he moved in, conspiratorially. "She'll say yes."

In the very next moment, they were outside. Jerl blinked, and found himself—

"—You enjoyed that, didn't you?" he accused.

"Of course! What's the point in being me if I can't have some fun with it sometimes?" The mightiest being in the cosmos gave Jerl a cheeky, boyish grin. "You ever notice how strapping, handsome young lads like him are often either painfully full of themselves, or painfully introverted?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"As a former introvert….yeah."

"You forgot handsome and strapping."

"I…wait, what?"

Eärrach chuckled, "I enjoy teasing with truth. Anyway, welcome to my home!"

Jerl looked around. They appeared to be on the shore of a flat mirror-calm lake, ringed by mountains on all sides. On the far side, pine forests marched down the foothills right to the water's edge, but the near-side's forests were deciduous. A little way around the shore's curve was a log cabin with a boat dock, smoke curling from its chimney. "…Where are we?"

"Somewhere I can relax. And fortunately, Haust already gave you the protection you need, so…."

He relaxed. The feeling was like…well, to Jerl's mind, it was like that moment when the gas bag got full enough to overcome its own weight and started taking the strain of the hull's weight as well. There was that same prolonged sense of shifting and creaking, except that it wasn't happening in a mere frame of lightweight timbers, but in the stony guts of an earthmote.

Up until now, Eärrach had merely been a huge and indescribably handsome man, whose charisma seemed to fill the world.

Now, as he grew in height, and width, and impossible depth of thew, and sheer gob-smacking presence…he was the world. The sensation of him seemed to rush out from inside the mortal limits of his skin and flood outwards, until he was in everything and of everything. The air was him, the still waters of the lake were him, the distant snow-capped mountains were him.

Eärrach's body wasn't that big antlered hard-muscled thing with feet, or this far vaster hulking artwork of a man-god standing naked before Jerl. It was the whole world. There was no meaningful distinction between one and the other.

The dizzying sensation made Jerl's heart ache even as it nearly knocked him over*.*

"I am sorry," the King added, ruefully, "that this hint of my nature is difficult to bear. Though…I am thoroughly not sorry for how you feel…"

…A trollish face. The King was teasing him.

Jerl caught his breath as the feeling of power settled. It had been like fishing in a small boat only to watch a mountain collapse into the far lake, and riding the waves. But the waters stilled again, and he could metaphorically let go of the wood and relax.

"You're….unsubtle," he ventured. "And kind of an exhibitionist."

"Guilty! But come, we haven't quite reached our destination, and the time for dawdling is behind us." He reached out an arm. "I feel the need to move, and if you will indulge me…"

Uncertainly, Jerl approached. The King swept him up in one arm—like a boy!—and there was a feeling of stupefying power flowing in and through and around Jerl, then—

They were flying. Flying. King Eärrach had leapt and now they were hurtling in an arc across a vast earthmote he'd never seen before, then the arc bent down, they fell faster and faster—

They landed at the base of a mountain with a colossal thud and a cratering impact that made the land splash. The damage repaired itself as they walked away, though the heat coming off the molten rock was so intense, the King could not put him down until they were a fair distance away.

Jerl took the opportunity to look around. The earthmote was…well, okay. Day, and it was lunchtime in Auldenheigh so they were no more than ninety degrees from Garanhir in either direction…about thirty degrees withroil, from the looks of it….and that brown-grey smear low in the sky over there was surely the Craenen peninsula…and high overhead, almost invisible behind the blue haze of the air, that was Yonguitang…

He consulted his mental chart of the Second Sphere, and nodded. "This is one of the forbidden motes. The ones airships can never approach."

"Oh yes. I set up a vortex to push them away. It would be fatal for unprotected mortals to land here."

"Why?"

"The gravity would flatten you and everything you had with you thinner than a film of water." The King sighed. "A few stubborn souls have ignored the warning and tried to push through the storm."

"You let them die?"

"Should I intervene every time somebody puts a gun in their mouth or a knife to their wrist?" The King shrugged. "Part of me will always want to, of course. But the worst of all possible worlds is the one in which mortals are slaves to a god's whim. People must be free. And if you aren't free to do the wrong thing, then you aren't free at all."

He looked up at the sky, and sighed. "Besides…death is not the end."

"I doubt it's easy, though," Jerl ventured.

The King didn't reply. In silence, he carried Jerl to a spot where a huge tree had fallen and two cairns had been built to mark the start of a path which swiftly vanished among the pines. Above the treetops, a mountain peak seemed to lean over them like a sharp thunderhead.

Here, he set Jerl down. "Now...I want to see how high you **can climb this. I have a sneaking suspicion that you can go far higher than any other mortal. Perhaps, if I dare to dream…you might mount its summit."

Jerl looked up at it. The mountain was practically a spike, all sheer sides and knife-blade rocky ridges. There was a path though, he thought. It meandered left and right up gentler foothills, then zig-zagged between the ridges toward a summit he couldn't see from this angle.

"I'm a decent climber, of course. But…it's been a long time since I hiked up a mountain," he said.

"The challenge is not physical. Well. Not merely physical. Remember our brief thoughts on symbol?"

Jerl looked about. "I should take the mountain itself as a symbol."

"And anything you might do on this mountain, yes. This place, this earthmote, the lake, my lodge, all of it is symbolic."

"You are such an enigma," Jerl snarked, sensing he could get away with it.

"All the more to seduce you with! But never mind that. Climb! Here," he snapped a finger and…what could only be a full proper set of climbing gear appeared next to him, made of materials Jerl had never seen, in bright orange and silvery grey.

"You're my guest on my private earthmote, so please take advantage! This is a sample of some of the best our kind has ever produced. It should fit perfectly. So, quickly! Get changed and let's go! I suspect you could climb far higher than you think. Worry not for your strength," the King intoned. "You will have what you need. Also there are snacks in the pack. And now that we're here…"

The King sighed happily. Somehow…

Somehow, Jerl became aware that the King suddenly seemed vastly, incomprehensibly more, and that impression only amplified wildly with each step the King took. It was like he was unfolding somehow, without actually changing. Jerl marveled at it, almost to distraction—

"Didn't you already…shift? Why again?"

"On this earthmote, I can unwind, at least a little." He wiggled his toes in the earth beneath him, which Jerl felt as a small earthquake. "It is a handsome forest, is it not? And on this mountain, I can unwind far more. At its summit, I can unwind entirely. Soon, young Jerl, you may well see me for what I truly am."

"…Won't that…what'll happen to me?" Jerl asked.

"You'll be changed by it, of course. Which is why it's important that you be the one to climb. If we do this, it can only be by your consent and invitation—this is something that cannot be forced."

Jerl considered those words as he changed. The clothes were…well, odd was an incredible understatement. When he shrugged on the jacket, it stretched and shrank and wrapped itself around him until it fit more perfectly than he'd have thought a garment possibly could. Up the front, where normally he would have expected buttons, the edges came together and merged until there was nothing more to see than a seam as thin as a hair.

He ran his hand over the fabric. It felt like it had no temperature, neither hot nor cold. In fact, it barely felt like it had a surface. There was a hint of texture, but mostly it felt like…well, like his own skin. When he brushed his fingertip along the sleeve, he felt it on the back of his arm as though he was wearing nothing at all.

When he put the hood up, he found a small tube hung in just the right position beside his mouth for him to easily sip from it, while never getting in the way. He glanced at the King, who gave him an encouraging nod, and sampled it.

He got a mouthful of hot tea. Perfectly brewed, at the exact right temperature.

"…Where—?" he patted himself down, trying to figure out where it was coming from, where the fire and kettle or whatever might be hidden, or even where the water was. There was nowhere inside the thin, close-fitting garment where it might obviously be stored.

"I did say, it's the best our kind ever produced." Eärrach chuckled. "Would you prefer coffee? Cocoa? Any one of a thousand other beverages?"

"…Tea is fine," Jerl replied, shakily.

"Well then…" Eärrach extended a hand in the direction of the twin cairns which marked the beginning of the trail up into the foothills. "After you."

Jerl glanced at him uncertainly. Then around at the forested landscape around him. Then up at the imposing summit so high overhead. He thought about the cryptic comments Eärrach had been making so far in the conversation, and the similar hints he'd heard from Talvi, Sayf, Haust, Yngmir, the Shishah…

He ought to have been scared, he thought. And though there was a certain…anticipation…that made him pause for a moment, what he really felt was…was…

…He had no word for it. But it drew him forward.

He hoisted his pack, and set off up the hill with a god following behind him.

But what, then, of a duke or a king? What single virtue shall we look for in our rulers? Humility? But a humble man would never claim the crown that needs claiming. Arrogance, then? But an arrogant king is bad for his subjects. Wisdom, perhaps? But who can clearly articulate what wisdom is? To rule is not easy, and even the best of kings have failed at it though they had every virtue in good supply. —Attributed to Duc Gawin the Third of Urstoin

Reporting

Ducal Palace, Auldenheigh 09.06.03.15.19

"—And then they just left. Jerl left the Queen under Sinikka's command and told her to take off and hunt down Mab Keeghan if she can."

Ellaenie, seated at the desk in what had once been her father's study and which she had never yet been able to bring herself to think of as hers, gave Adrey a curious look. "Why?"

Her friend bobbled her head, and took a quick sip of tea. She'd washed the blood off her face, but there were still traces of it on her uniform, and a couple of new scars on her face. That was the problem with magical healing—it was fast, but had she left such small nicks to heal naturally, they'd have left no blemish. At this rate, Adrey was going to be nothing but scars. Crowns knew, Ellaenie had done her best, but that P branded on the back of her neck was there to stay, forever.

Now there was a thought to hurt Ellaenie in her heart. But it was just the latest in a litany of worries that had been plaguing her most of the morning. She wasn't sure why, but she just couldn't settle today. Something in the back of her head was as tense as a cat in a thunderstorm. She was honestly quite glad of Adrey's visit.

"On my advice," Adrey said, after swallowing her drink. "The theft of a Word took priority, of course, but I'm deeply worried about Jared Mab Keeghan. Civorage dared to keep a proxy in the city and use his Word to cover the man's escape. Not to mention bombing the workshop so we wouldn't know what he was doing."

"What do you think he's doing?" Ellaenie asked.

"Some kind of new airship, would be my guess. I couldn't tell you why I think that, it's just…"

"Your Word," Ellaenie nodded. She sighed, rose from her desk and went to join Adrey on the couch. "I couldn't tell you how mine works, either."

"Right. For me…the little pieces fall into place and a picture forms. Derghan Vargursson told me what some of the little mechanical pieces in the workshop rubble were. Throw in the splinters of bamboo, the scraps of resin-reinforced canvas…but it didn't fall into place for me until I asked At-Bezwi if he knew anything about Mab Keeghan.

Ellaenie nodded. The Queen's navigator had an incredible memory for places and facts and statistics, but his memory for people was effectively perfect. Frankly, she thought he'd have made a better practitioner of Craft than Art. "What did he say?"

"He didn't know a lot. Jared fell out with Maeve Keeghan, the family Ardkin, a few years back after a blazing row in private. If Maeve ever told anyone what it was about, Amir's never heard it. But he did hear a rumor that Jared's parting shot to Maeve as he stormed out was 'You've forgotten what being a Keeghan really means! Old Dubhgall's turning in his grave right now.'"

Ellaenie sat back and smoothed her skirt out as she got comfortable. "Not a lot to go on."

"My Word doesn't need a lot." Adrey gave a small smile, which contained just a faint glimmer of her old braggadocio. "Do you happen to know what's written on Dubhgall's memorial stone?"

Ellaenie thought, then snapped her fingers irritably as the memory refused to coalesce. "Oh, I did know…Something about….beware of your sons? No…"

"'Beware, you who would overturn the world—" Adrey prompted.

Ellaenie nodded. "'Tomorrow, your sons will do likewise.'" She tipped her head and considered it. "So…?"

"'Misen agin mi braithrun, as agin ar kaithrun; Kaith agin ar seoslaug, Seos agin ar bhailaug; Bhailaug agin na crae, dhen, Crae agin na Craenen. An saibhadhen Craenen uile, as agin soaghule.'"

This one Ellaenie did know: Quite aside from the fact she spoke Craenen well enough herself, Eärrach had taught that specific rhyme to her years ago, shortly after Saoirse Crow-Sight's death. The old rhyme was as good a summary as you'd ever get of Craenen culture, and roughly translated it read: "Me against my brothers, and us brothers against our kindred; Our kin against our neighbors, and us neighbors against our town; Our town against our Crae, then the Crae against all Craenen; And when the Craenen have stopped fighting each other, It's us against the world."

"You think…Jared went to Maeve with something important?"

Adrey nodded. "Something he thought was vital. Something he thought endangered his family. And she didn't listen to him. So they had a blazing argument and he stormed out, basically accusing her of being hidebound. But what could possibly be a threat to the wealthiest family in the Nested Worlds?"

"Something that threatens the source of their wealth," Ellaenie said.

Adrey nodded. "And that would be lift gas. There are plenty of other guilds, companies and artisans who make engines and pumps and other such gadgets, even if K&S are widely considered to be the gold standard. But only K&S know the secret to manufacturing lift gas." She got up and took a slow walk around the room, still limping slightly. Apparently whoever had healed her face hadn't noticed she'd hurt her leg. Ellaenie resolved to fix that for her personally before she left.

"I think…" Adrey said, slowly, "…I think Jared Keeghan came up with something that will make lift gas obsolete. And when he tried to convince Maeve to pivot K&S away from the gas and toward his creation, she ordered him to bury it instead. So he went looking for a different patron, and found Nils Civorage."

"What could make lift gas obsolete?" Ellaenie wondered. "The whole world depends on it!"

"For now. But birds fly without lift gas," Adrey mused. She stopped dead in the middle of the study floor and her eyes widened. "Oh, Crowns. What if he's…? Yes. Yes! He's invented a sort of…machine bird! A heavier-than-air flying machine! Winter's tits, that would…."

Ellenie sat and watched her as she paced and thought, muttering to herself. What she caught wasn't encouraging though. **"It'd be small, light, fast…couldn't carry as much as an airship, maybe. But if it was as agile as a bird, you'd never be able to fight one with cannons….shit."

She turned to Ellaenie. "I need to get to the Queen before they take off. If I'm right—and I am right, I know it—then what CIvorage just smuggled out of the city is—the regiment and I need to—"

"Go, then," Ellaenie said. She stood, pulled a cluster of acorns from her pocket and drew the life and stored magic from them to weave a healing spell. Adrey sighed faintly as the pain in her bruised leg went away. She gave Ellaenie a grateful look, hugged her, then scurried from the room.

No sooner had the door closed than some instinct drew Ellaenie to look into the corner. A flat patch of light detached itself from the wall, filled out, and became a slim, pale figure robed in white, her eyes hidden behind a veil.

"Haust?" Ellaenie darted across the room. "What are you doing here?"

"Fetching you," the Red Lady took her hands. "You need to come with me, back to the Oasis."

Something cold fell down Ellaenie's spine and settled nastily in the pit of her stomach. "…What is it? What's happening?"

Normally it was hard to read Haust's expression behind her veil. Not this time. This time she was deeply, deeply worried…and uncharacteristically angry. She pulled on Ellaenie's hand and together they twisted sideways through space that was not space, as though here and there were no more distant than the opposite side of a shadow.

And Ellaenie finally knew what the uneasy, troubled feeling that had been gnawing at her for the last few hours must be.

It was a mother's instinct. And her daughter needed her.

"Or perhaps they are not gods at all, but merely powerful mortals with mortal flaws" said he. "Perhaps. So they have claimed. But might not a teacher who knows our faults and lives as we live be the better guide?" I asked. "Surely a divine guide must be superior to a mortal one?" said he. I replied, "How could mortal men hope to understand the unfiltered divine?" —The ancient philosopher Grioklene, Discourse at the Crossroad.

Going Uphill

The Mountain Mountain Time

For the first thousand paces or so, they walked the trail in silence.

Jerl had never been one for just walking in the woods for pleasure. He was a trader, an airshipman, and before that the son of an innkeeper. The woods were…well, mostly they were a dense green barrier between patches of interesting civilization, that he was quite glad to be able to fly over and ignore. But he had to admit, the exercise was pleasant after a filling meal. The going seemed pretty easy, and the air was perfumed with the scent of pines.

Quite powerfully perfumed, though. Did trees really smell so strong?

It certainly wasn't Eärrach. The King of Crowns had his own scent, which was just as much of a presence as him—certainly not unpleasant, very much the opposite in fact. Masculine, healthy, natural…and rather too much of a good thing. That seemed to be his style.

Jerl wiped his brow. The day was actually pleasantly crisp thanks to the cold air sinking down from the snowfields above, but he must have exerted himself more than he thought, between running around Auldenheigh after the thieves, and then getting into that manic melee with the Aleator…

…No, that couldn't explain the growing heaviness in his limbs. It was nothing to do with tiredness at all, the feeling was physical and real. It became markedly stronger as Jerl ascended a series of stones hammered into the dirt to serve as steps as the path climbed a bank. Some force or power was making him actually, genuinely heavier.

He looked back at Eärrach who grinned at him. "You're feeling the beginnings of it."

"Am I going to get heavier with every step?" Jerl asked. "I'll never make it to the top if so."

"Don't worry about your body, Jerl. With my support, the challenge is not physical. Not really."

"…Right. Symbols."

Eärrach chuckled. "You're getting it."

"So the climb getting heavier and heavier with each step is symbolic of…what, exactly?"

"Of transformation and ascension. Of course…it isn't merely symbolic. But I think, in this moment, I should resist my urge to talk and teach, and instead let you experience the mountain unaided."

"…Okay?"

"I assure you, Jerl, I am not wasting your time. I like you. And I am coming to respect you. I would not put you on this path if it didn't matter. Can that be enough for now?"

"You sound as if there is a great deal you wish to say."

"There is. You and I are much alike in some important ways, but one of our many differences is on matters philosophical. You aren't much for head-in-the-sky thinking, are you?"

"I think scholars sometimes grow too enamored with their ideas, and not the reality in front of them."

"Ah! Now there are some interesting words in there…but later. For now…" the King gestured up. "We climb. And for this climb…" with a snap of his fingers, he was suddenly clothed and equipped. If anything, somehow, the sudden modesty made him an even more strikingly handsome brute.

Infuriating. And also worrisome; what were they in for, exactly, that the most absurdly physical being in existence felt the need to bundle up against the mountain?

"I…okay." Jerl scratched his head, and they climbed for a while in silence. The trail eventually turned sharply around a craggy stone. Somebody—Eärrach, presumably—had carved looping, curling runes into it, and decorated its top with an elk hide, plus the elk's skull. A symbol? Probably. Of what? Was it important?

He wished he could focus on two questions at once.

Eärrach paused at the stone, then licked the end of his index finger and, without any apparent effort, stuck it into a bare patch of the stone and began to add a new rune like Jerl would have run his finger through wet sand. He said nothing, though.

"…Look, I'm not a scholar, or a thinker, or especially not a god," Jerl said. "But to me, this seems like…I should be doing something."

"You are, Jerl. You are becoming. And what is the rush? Do you feel pressed for Time?"

There was a big, infuriatingly playful grin on Eärrach's brutal artwork of a face.

"I feel pressed by you." Jerl looked up the slope. "I wouldn't be doing this except you think I should. And who am I to say no to you?"

"You're a free man who is entitled to say no to anyone, at any time, for any reason."

"I've heard this one before. If you aren't free to do the wrong thing…"

Eärrach chuckled. "Of course, the problem with doing the wrong thing just to prove you're free to do so, is you've then done the wrong thing."

He dusted his hands off and resumed walking. "Yes, I'm pressuring you, a bit. You're the sort of man who doesn't leave your comfortable rut unless spurred, but you already knew that about yourself. Well, I'm spurring you to do the right thing. But that doesn't mean there's any actual urgency here. Not in this place or in this moment of moments."

Jerl considered that as he walked alongside the Crown, onward up the trail. Time, when he consulted its power, seemed to be…remarkably tranquil. In fact it was as still and glassy as the lake had been. Normally, when he bothered to pay attention to it, he felt the flow of time around him as a million tiny tugs and ripples, as people lived and chose and pushed and pulled the tapestry of it back and forth, stretching it and warping it with their every breath, thought and deed. He felt time's flow by its turbulence.

Now…he could scarcely feel it at all.

Eärrach shot him an amused look, and continued to stride indefatigably on up the trail. After perhaps a mile, they passed another marker, and this one bore the pelt of a bear whose size boggled the mind—The damn thing looked big enough to snap a pony in half in its jaws.

Eärrach paused again to doodle in the stone, but Jerl kept walking. His mind was turning over, now, thinking about all he'd seen and learned and done. And it occurred to him that there'd been a huge question weighing on him for some time now that consumed his attention as he struggled to answer it: "What should I do next?"

Right now, the answer to that question was supremely simple—for the time being, he was hiking up a mountain. And he'd continue to do so until he reached the top, or not. It was oddly liberating. And a chance to fill the logbook, so to speak. His mind could turn away from the looming thunderheads of the future, and take a calmer, clearer look at things.

Okay. So the Crowns had all spoken to him, now. And so had most of the Heralds, for that matter. And all of them had been pointing him in broadly the same direction, saying broadly the same things, in their own ways and after their own fashions.

He was still thinking by the time they reached the next turn and became aware of a complex rhythmic thudding sound grabbed his attention. He turned, and knew a moment of primordial terror as he saw two massive canine predators, each the bear's equal in stature, barreling toward him at a full sprint, their paws kicking up a plume of trail-dust. Maicoh and Maingan swirled around their master—Maingan just whined plaintively, while Maicoh sat and yawned, revealing a row of fangs that could have bisected a horse.

"Left us," he whined, reproachfully.

"I wanted some time to work on Jerl's mind!"

"Too many words." Maingan barked.

"Easy!" Maicoh agreed. "Reality is being."

"Become more, be more real!"

Maicoh stuck his nose between Jerl's shoulder blades and gave him a shove, encouraging him up the trail. "Up! Go!"

"Quick!"

"Okay, okay!" Jerl agreed, and quickened his pace. He noted a strange look on Eärrach's face as the hunting hounds, satisfied, went tearing off up the path like they'd just spotted a gigantic monster rabbit. "…What?"

"That's…the most talkative I've ever seen them be, with anyone," the King mused, watching after his companions with a thoughtful expression. "And of course, they're completely right. I love to talk, and teach. But I'm not your teacher here, the mountain is. Let's just walk."

They continued their ascent in silence for an hour or more. Jerl's burden continued to grow as they zigged then zagged back and forth across the slope of the foothills, but the King was true to his word: Even though the sensation of the burden grew and grew, Jerl didn't find himself tiring under it, and even though it constantly felt like it was approaching his limit…it never quite reached it. The weight piled on with every step, but Jerl was immune to it in a way he knew he'd never be able to adequately describe.

They reached the snowline, and the trees began to thin. Another carved marker stone guarded the point where the path turned straight up the slope and became a run of narrow, steep stairs, and this one depicted a human. Fortunately, not through the use of a human's hide and skull. Instead, the stone had been painted, crudely, with slim stick-figures made of straight lines and little blobs, hunting and fending off equally crude beasts with spears that were just more straight lines…

Symbolic of something. Symbolic of what? Eärrach offered no hints, he merely paused to scratch another rune into the stone's surface with his fingernail.

Jerl took the opportunity to pause as well, and for the first time he turned back to look down the hill he'd climbed.

An unbroken sea of cloud churned peacefully, some miles below him. The sky had been clear the whole way up. And they certainly hadn't climbed that far…!

Eärrach put out a hand and kindly stopped his moment of vertigo from knocking him over.

"Need a minute?" he asked.

Jerl sipped from his hood-tube, and drank down a good gulp of the tea. The wind on his face was bitter cold, now he noticed. Literally bitter in fact—the freezing sensation in the back of his mouth whenever he inhaled was exactly that unpleasant. The tea was the perfect tonic to wash it away.

"I'm good," he said. "I just…wasn't expecting that." He gestured at the cloud sea.

The King smiled, shrugged, and looked up the slope. "Gird yourself. There's more to come."

"…Right."

He shot the marker one last look. First an elk. Then a bear. Then men, hunting elk and defending their home from a bear. Well, okay. What next?

He climbed, curious to find out.

FWD TRENCH LINE E4-G2 75PCT COMPLETE AVG DEPTH 6FT STOP INIT REINF SANDBAGS + TIMBER UNDERWAY STOP COMM TRENCH TO REAR DEPOT BEGUN EST COMPL 16 03 STOP NO CONTACT RPTD BUT OBSRV MOVT + PREP BEYOND MARKER 3 STOP SIT TENSE STOP DOUBLE SHIFTS ONGOING TO EXPEDITE WORK STOP —Capt. Ardersen, Auldenheigh 3rd Sappers, telegram to Headquarters.

On Mab Keeghan's Trail

Airship Cavalier Queen, Enerlend 09.06.03.15.19

"There are two decent coaching inns within a day's ride of Auldenheigh—the Shelford Coach House, and the…" Amir fingered the guide book and arched his eyebrow slightly as he read. "The Dog and Duck Inn. The latter is the cheaper establishment, and the guidebook warns it's a case of getting what you pay for."

Colonel Mossjoy nodded firmly. "That's where they stopped."

"Really? I would imagine someone of Civorage's ego would choose the nicer option."

"Civorage isn't here, just one of his proxy bodies. And besides—richer hotels may advertise discretion, but really they gossip worse than a street full of housewives, because the people who stay there enjoy being gossiped about." The colonel's eyes sparkled humorously over the map table. "Cheaper establishments, on the other hand…"

"…May attract the sort of person who truly values their privacy, and may take pains to ensure it is respected."

"Not to mention generally just attracting an unremarkable type of person. Fortunately, I think we can be persuasive…" Adrey glanced over at Sinikka. "Unless you have any objections?"

Sin shrugged. "It's Jerl's ship, I'm just looking after it for him. But he won't object to my putting her at your disposal."

Amir nodded and walked his tools across the map for a few seconds. "Local bearing ninety-seven degrees, eighteen ship miles."

Sin nodded then slipped out to give the heading to Gebby.

Amir followed the colonel up on deck as well. Mossjoy had taken to the air like she was born to it, already walking with the easy, swaying gait of a veteran airshipman. Her Particulars, on the other hand, still had that grey-faced, worried look men always wore the first time their lives were trusted entirely to ropes and canvas. They were sitting in a small group amidships and trying not to look intimidated by the altitude.

More fool them: they were missing a gorgeous view. Enerlend was enjoying a rare spell of fine weather, though the occasional rumble and boom in the sky suggested an almighty storm was rampaging somewhere out there in the distant haze. Below, though, Amir could see to the earthmote's edge in all directions.

And he could certainly see the war. There were a couple of regiments marching along the great Urstoin highway, perhaps rotating back onto the front after R&R in the city. And off in the distance to trailward, he could see the dust and fume as the sapper regiments built earthworks and trenches to shield the city's flank against an assault around the Blue Sea from Betlend.

Up until now, the numbers had been academic. Now, he saw just how terrible the conflict would be. Enerlend was a lone duchy facing down six others. Even if only three shared a direct border, all were united under the rule of a madman.

It was going to get bloody down there. And fiery up here too, most likely.

Mossjoy sighed as she leaned on the rail, staring out at the same landscape.

"Steel for your thoughts?" he asked, after a minute.

She glanced up as though she'd forgotten he existed for a moment, then shrugged, looking back out over the besieged landscape. The movement bared the nape of her neck, and he shivered sympathetically at the sight of the letter P branded there.

"…Being up here makes it clear how much trouble we're in," she said.

"We have a lot on our side."

"Four Words of Creation against one, yes. But the one has had years and years of time to build his lead." She glanced over her shoulder to make sure her men couldn't hear, then added quietly, "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure we can win this."

"You're not sure? I thought you had the power to know these things."

She shrugged. "My Word has limits. People don't always do exactly what I predict, and over large groups and long timescales, those little surprises add up. The Words of Creation muddy the waters, too—Jerl's especially. If there's a tight path through this mess we're in, he can find it."

"If?"

"Yes. You saw our fight with the Aleator this morning. For all his power, once we stacked our advantages against him, he had to flee. Even command over time itself might not help, if Civorage has stacked the deck well enough."

Amir nodded and looked up as another thunderclap rolled out of a clear sky. He couldn't see a candidate cloud formation anywhere. "I have faith," he said.

"In what?"

"That right and good will prevail. We have the Crowns on our side."

"That is a heavy weight on our side of the scales, true." She rolled her shoulder and massaged it, then looked down and forward. "…Twenty-one minutes to our destination."

It wasn't a question, but Amir nodded as though it had been. "Yes, that sounds about right."

She pushed away from the rail, gave him a nod as though to thank him for the conversation, and joined her men in a huddle.

Amir joined Sin and Gebby at the wheelhouse. Gebby acknowledged him with a tug of his forelock. "Steady on course, navigator."

"Thank you, Gebby. What do you make of all this?"

Gebby shrugged. "Shit's been weird for months. Way the skipper tells it, we all died his first time around." He paused and chuckled. "…Though I got murdered in a fuckin' brothel, which might just be my chosen way to go anyway."

Sin snorted a small laugh and emerged from her brooding silence. "I've died worse ways," she allowed.

"And now he's off havin' dinner with King Eärrach hisself," Gebby mused. "Life's…taken a funny turn. I'm enjoyin' it!"

"You are? I'm just about biting my nails to the quick," Amir replied.

"We're seein' things few folks see, goin' places few folks go, and we're makin' a difference," Gebby pointed out. "And gettin' paid a far wage for it, too! What's not to enjoy?"

"The fact we've all died in this endeavor at least twice, according to Jerl."

"Aye, well. We're all pretty spry for corpses, aren't we?" Gebby shrugged. "I didn't die. It's just a memory the skipper has of something that didn't happen. So why worry about it?"

"I'll tell you what's worrying me," Sin said, quietly.

"What's that, boss?"

"I'd swear the head count is one short." She looked around the deck, blue-green eyes flickering as she counted again. "But…I can't think who we're missing. Besides Jerl, obviously."

Amir frowned and took his own head count. Sure enough, although he felt certain the crew numbered forty-two, he could only account for forty-one. The impulse to ignore the problem stole over him—clearly he'd just miscounted, or misremembered. He was about to shrug it off when some instinct made him pause. He was a student of the Thundering Hall, blessed from childhood with an exceptional memory which he'd then sharpened with mnemonic techniques learned from Yngmir himself. He didn't mis-count, he didn't misremember, and he knew a thought that was not his own when he noticed it. They were missing someone. They were missing….

Missing…

"….Mouse," he said.

"Who—? Oh." Sin's eyes widened, and she scanned the deck again with a grimace. "Shit. I forgot him again."

"Well, that is his power. But why would he leave the ship now?"

They looked at each other, and traded a three-way shrug. There was no answer. And there wouldn't be an answer until, if and when, Mouse returned to them.

The thunder rolled again, and they looked up to search once again for a suitable cloud bank. Still, the sky seemed clear.

"Never known a clear sky do that before," Gebby commented. "Bloody weird."

"Yes." Amir nodded, then frowned. "…What were we talking about?"

"Oh, never mind," Sin shook her head. "We'd better get ready to take the ship down low. Gebby, prepare for a ladder landing."

"Aye aye, Quartermaster."

Amir shook off the itchy feeling that he was forgetting something, and nodded. He had his own work to do—Gebby would need a forward lookout to manage the descent safely. He clapped the helmsman on the shoulder and made his way forward to the prow, where he unfolded his telescope and set it to his eye.

…There. Four miles along from Shelford, a coaching inn stood alone, nestled up to a copse of coppiced woodland. The only signs of life on the road were another regiment on the march, and a lone rider, probably a messenger carrying dispatches to the front.

Amir took his bearings, calculated the angles, and returned to the wheelhouse.

It was time to start catching up with Keeghan.

Mouse hadn't been much of a rider, before the Word. After all, he'd lived underground in a city in a cave, as a street rat. It wasn't a childhood conducive to horsemanship, even though the little girl he'd once been would, like most little girls, have dearly loved to have a pony.

The Word changed all that. Riding, he'd learned, was all about working with the beast: A horse was far bigger and stronger than a human, and though persuading them to do the work was relatively easy, it was still a matter of persuasion. If a horse really didn't consent to have you on its back, you were not going to stay there for long. And it could withdraw its consent at any time.

Mind was a useful shortcut, especially considering that a horse's mind was exceptionally simple. They liked to run, and they liked to eat. And if they were happy to run with a human on their back, they were doubly so if they forgot the human existed…which was quite easy to achieve when the human in question weighed only a hundred pounds soaking wet.

He glanced over his shoulder and up as the breeze carried a familiar engine drone to his ears. The Queen could fly far faster than a horse could run, of course, but they'd been too busy with Deng-Nah's stolen word.

Mouse was, of old, a thief and a con artist. And he'd known two things at once—first, that the search for the stolen vault was just taking their eye off something that needed to be watched carefully, and second that trying to convince Jerl and the others to abandon it would just waste time.

So he'd slipped away from the party, unnoticed even by Jerl, and stolen a horse. It belonged to a military courier who was probably in a lot of trouble right about now, but he'd get the animal back eventually.

Right now, he was on Civorage's trail, and he suspected he was the only one who could follow it. The publican at the Dog + Duck hadn't even consciously remembered a wagon with a man, a woman and an apprentice. When questioned aloud, he'd shrugged and said mournfully that business was terrible quiet with the war on and his last guests had been three days ago.

But Mouse had snuck upstairs and found the unmade beds and snuck into the scullery where he noted the dirty crockery from breakfast. And he'd seen fresh hoofprints and wheel marks in the yard that couldn't be more than a couple of hours old. So he'd taken a closer look at the man's mind.

And he'd found Civorage.

Not in an overpowering, Encircled way. It was just that the man's memory had been suppressed. He'd find the crockery and unmade beds later, grumble about them and take care of the work, but it wouldn't occur to him to wonder about it. It was the sort of thing Mouse himself preferred, and far subtler than Civorage's usual hammer-and-anvil approach. He was using finesse for once.

Mouse wasn't sure what to make of that.

He knew Jerl would see through it, of course. But there was another problem: there was only so far the Queen could stray toward Urstoin's skies before passing near the dexter front, and the air defence cannons deployed there. If Civorage had made good enough time, then airship pursuit was impossible.

The horse raced past a column of marching men, who didn't even glance up. Their minds were a harmonizing tapestry of several emotions—worry, camaraderie, resignation, warrior fierceness, duty, longing for their loved ones, fatalism, optimism, patriotism, excitement, anticipation, dread…or nothing terribly much at all in many cases. None of them remembered seeing a wagon on the road, but that wasn't Mind fuckery, that was just a reality of their marching pace versus how fast the wagon would be moving and when it had set out.

He was trying to estimate speed and distance in his head, and coming up with some unhappy numbers. If the wagon had set out at daybreak, then they could have gone as many as fifteen miles by now, if they pushed the horses hard.

The front was only nine miles ahead of him. For the moment, it was just two lines of entrenched men staring at each other over half a mile or so of abandoned farmland, and fending off the occasional scout or probing raid. There hadn't yet been a big clash of arms…but everyone knew it was coming. All too soon, the sky ahead of him would be flashing and rumbling with artillery…in fact, Mouse suspected the only reason it wasn't already was because Civorage wanted to be sure Mab Keeghan and his prize were safely out of harm's way before the shooting started.

He gritted his teeth at that thought, and willed the horse to run faster. If the violence erupted before he could slip across the front himself, then this pursuit would soon become impossible. Mab Keeghan would vanish onto an airship and out of Mouse's grasp forever…and the Cavalier Queen couldn't follow.

This one, he knew, he'd have to do alone.

"Surely the Divine would, in its perfection, know the best way to teach mortals?" said he. "Surely it would," I agreed. —The ancient philosopher Grioklene, Discourse at the Crossroad.

The Next Marker

The Mountain Where time has no meaning

The next trail marker wasn't anything like as crude as the stones they'd passed before. Those had been raw, natural, unworked stone, but this next one had been cut and polished. A sort of half-dome was recessed into its front, flanked by ornate little pillars with flowers carved into them. Words were carved above it, in an angular alphabet Jerl didn't recognize.

A different alphabet, this one made of flowing, intricate lines and dots, was painted in gold on the doors of a wood cabin inside the recess, its doors held shut by a simple hook-and-loop latch. The wood was so dark as to be almost black, and the lettering gleamed dully, clearly worn by tremendous age.

At Eärrach's gestured encouragement, Jerl opened the latch, and the doors opened easily. Inside was an oil painting.

It was not, he thought, a terribly good one, given that the artist had no grasp at all of perspective, proportion or human anatomy. The subject was a skinny and tortured man, naked save for a loincloth and a crown of thorns, and crucified. He was flanked by two standing figures, both with their heads bowed in sorrow, but the crucified man's own face was turned down toward them with a benevolent expression.

As Jerl took a step back to consider this strange artifact, he realized that the inside of each of the cabinet's doors also bore a painting, in different styles. On the left was a figure with blue skin and more than the usual number of arms. He sat in a strange and uncomfortable-looking posture, crowned and layered in gems and fine silks, and his four hands were delicately occupied with holding up an assortment of tools and a large pink flower. His eyes stared steadily out of the canvas with an expression of calm command, kingly and unchallengeable.

On the right, a figure with weirdly elongated earlobes and a haircut like somebody had glued pebbles to his scalp sat cross-legged beneath a tree, wearing robes that bared his right shoulder. His hands were cupped loosely and comfortably in his lap, and his eyes were gently shut in a way that suggested deep, peaceful contemplation.

For some reason, all three figures' heads were framed by bright, gilded circles.

"…What am I looking at?"

"What is the difference between a person and an animal?"

Jerl frowned at his guide. Eärrach had not hitherto struck him as the sort to answer a question with a cryptic and seemingly unrelated question.

"Uh…intelligence, I guess?"

"What is intelligence?"

"Well…" Jerl rubbed his jaw as he thought. An answer was slow in coming.

"Think out loud," the King suggested. "What's delaying your answer?"

"I…keep thinking of one, and then thinking of a reason why it's wrong."

"Let's walk and talk, then. It's a long way to the next one." Eärrach turned away and carried on. Now, the trail wound around the mountain's side, with a cliff towering above on the left hand, and another plunging down to the right. Even to Jerl, an experienced airman, the yawning drop was a little intimidating. But the shelf was wide, and angled slightly up on its outside edge: if he did slip, he'd slide safely back toward the mountain's heart.

He kind of wished he had a walking pole or something, though. The constantly growing weight, even if it somehow seemed to both grow without end and yet never become too much, was still a strain and a burden. He'd have liked to have something to help him take it off, just a little.

"I…" walking and thinking and talking all at once weren't easy. "I was thinking…intelligence is, y'know. Problem solving."

"There are crows that can solve puzzles a human child cannot, and even some adults would struggle with," Eärrach pointed out.

"There are?"

The King nodded, ambling along with his hands behind his back. "Breathtakingly clever birds. Very intelligent, by the definition you just gave. "

"Right…well…I was thinking of monkeys. So…yeah. It's not that." Jerl focused on putting one foot in front of the other for a time. "Language? And I don't mean learning enough for, like, 'sit, stay, walkies' here. I mean being able to really talk. Hear a question, give an answer, ask a question. Have a conversation."

"Once upon a time we had machines that could do that, very convincingly."

"No shit? And they weren't intelligent?"

"I would argue no."

Jerl considered that, and considered the images he'd seen. Okay. So…elk…bear…primitive men…then men with golden circles around their heads. Intelligence…

Become more. Be more real.

Suddenly, he felt like he'd been slow and stupid. "People…don't just stop at talking. We talk about stuff. Big and difficult stuff. The stuff that's got no place in an animal's world."

"Like what?" Eärrach asked.

"Like right and wrong."

The King nodded slowly. "One of the first stories I ever learned was about exactly that. Care to hear it?"

"…Yes, please."

He listened as they continued around the mountain's curve and ever upwards. A lot of the story was actually familiar, if not in specifics then at least in general shape. It reminded him of the stories the elves told of that first day on the Firstmote, when they and the first million humans had been woven side-by-side then scattered to grow and fend for themselves.

"I don't think I quite get why being naked was such a big deal," he said, once Eärrach had finished. "The story seems to treat it like they learned what good and evil were, and being naked was so obviously evil it was the first thing they noticed. Which…considering your preferred state of dress…."

The Crown laughed. "Is it that? Or was their nudity a shorthand for living in a state of innocence, perhaps?"

"Uh…shorthand, I guess."

"Perhaps! This story was passed down from generation to generation long before anyone finally wrote it down. It survived out of the mists of deep time because it's memorable and gets the point across, not because it's necessarily perfect. Stories can't be perfect, if humans must tell them."

They rounded a bend in the trail, and there was another marker. This time, the stone was perfectly oblong, a square pedestal that rose to Jerl's shoulder height. Atop it, cast in darkly tarnished bronze, sat a nude and physically superb man, not in a posture that showed off his figure, but in one of deep and ferocious thought. His left hand rested lightly on his left knee, and his right elbow, propped in his lap, supported his chin.

Eärrach looked up at the figure with a fond smile. "Sayf isn't the only one who kept a few things through very deep time. And as you can see, later generations didn't conclude from that story that nudity was evil…What do you think of him?"

"He looks like he's wrestling with something difficult."

"Something awful?"

Jerl tilted his head as he considered the sculpture's expression. "….No. Just deep and solemn."

"I've always wondered what he was thinking about. There were a great many interpretations, and the artist who created him never gave a definitive version…" The King turned his head back down and looked at Jerl. "I suspect you see the trajectory we're on, now."

"I was…kind of expecting the symbolism to be subtler, yeah," Jerl allowed.

Eärrach chuckled, not unkindly. "Do I look like a man who traffics in subtlety?"

"I don't think you'd be what you are if you couldn't."

"True! Though I didn't say I was incapable. You will note my subtle use of precise language…"

"I mean—"

The King nodded gently. "I know. But in any case…look up."

Jerl did so. The mountain looked no shorter from this angle than it had from down at its feet. In fact…if anything, it looked taller than ever. It looked impossibly tall, as though the distant pinnacle was higher than any earthmote in the Nested Worlds was long.

"…Oh."

"Mhm. We've only just started, young Jerl."

"But—" He stopped himself. He'd been about to say, 'Climbing that is going to take years!' but…of course, they weren't in the normal flow of time, now. And he certainly didn't feel like long enough had passed to climb the huge distance they'd already come. Something inside him, some insight that might be his own, or might be his Word, or might be both at once, told him that this ascent would only take as long as he needed.

No more, no less.

And afterwards, when he returned to his friends and the Queen and all the rest of it, he'd have been gone for…what? A few hours, maybe. No time at all, really.

He cleared his throat, and nodded. "…Right."

A smile, then. A warm, deep smile. The King saw right through him, and this time, Jerl could just barely feel it. Feel the all-piercing gaze of a god sear right through him, gentler than a thought, more violent than anything…

And leave him whole.

Afterwards, there was a waiting silence. Jerl looked back up the mountain again, back at the thinker on his pedestal, back down the trail they'd just come up, down at his boots, then up again, toward the peak.

"…Alright," he said. "What are we waiting for?"

And he continued upwards.