"Ha! I suppose." Gretchen smiled. "I know how it feels to be denied, ridiculed, opposed at every turn. My clan is poorly favored in the Empire. We have no powerful friends. There are no tenured positions for me, no research grants or stipends. Most of my fellows from graduate school have actual posts at actual universities – or they oversee important sites – and me? I grub in the refuse on the edge of human space for a scattering of quills a day, looking for sites of interest to others. Then they do the real work, and I'm on to another world, bag in hand, exhausted, my boots needing repair…"
Malakar trilled, her mood entirely restored. "A perfect path for your tiny feet to walk! Do you truly enjoy the dull work of counting and measuring and making reports which must come after all this poking and prodding and prying into dusty, hidden places?"
"Yes, I do." Anderssen's professional sensibilities were outraged at such a suggestion, though at the same time a little voice was saying Oh god, no! "Survey is only the first step in a long process – the real work is in the analysis and conclusions at the end. I mean, how else will I get a position somewhere without publications? Without discrete evidence of my work?"
"Hur-hur-hur!" The gardener hid her snout behind both claws. "This old walnut thinks your path does not lead to the stuffy chambers of a Master, with acolytes fawning and snuffling at your feet. Your path lies at the edge of furrowed soil, it does, where there are strange shadows and queer lights among the trees, where every step is into the unknown. What wonders might you see, with undimmed eyes?
"Hoooo… Now, how do I interpret such a look as you now wear?"
Gretchen felt pressure grip her chest, driving the breath from her lungs, and a startlingly clear vision overwhelmed her seeing eyes, blotting out the rows of trees looming in the twilight, covering the wagon-tracks they had been following through the grass…
Bitterly cold wind lapped around her. Her hands were in the sand, one leg throbbing with pain. Glorious jewel-colored lights shone beneath her, lighting her face. Threads of crimson and sapphire and diamond-blue clung to her forearms, dragging her down. Something was moving in the darkness, a voice was speaking, but all she could see were the glittering pinpoints of the hathol and the firten swarming to the bounty of her exhaled breath, drinking her carbon dioxide and waste gasses; growing, swarming, building chains of fire to trap her so they might feast on the energy reservoir of her body…
"Ahhh!" Anderssen flinched back from Malakar's reaching claw and she stumbled into the brush lining the road. The Jehanan drew back in surprise, hissing. For an instant, before she blinked, Gretchen thought the rule-straight trees were limned with pale light, and the gardener was softly glowing in the twilight, every scale distinct in disturbingly clear sight. Then twilight enveloped her again and there were only stray glints of the sun on clouds high in the sky.
"What happened?" Malakar regarded her warily. "Your countenance changed."
"It's nothing." Anderssen was trembling and she batted uselessly at her legs and arms. There aren't any crawling threads of living light on me. None. Not even one. She felt strangely hot, as if she'd plunged her face, hands and arms into boiling water. I don't think I was supposed to remember that. Hummingbird should complain to whoever sold him that memory eraser. "Just old memories. Don't think this business of poking and prying is without peril."
"Hooo! True words." The gardener took hold of Gretchen's shoulders and set her back on the track with a gentle touch. "Paths are dangerous – if you follow, does it not lead? If you follow all the way, it must take you far from the safety of your own garden, out into brambles and marsh and among twisted rocks."
"I suppose." The last gleam of the sun faded, leaving them in complete darkness. Anderssen produced her flashlight. A cool light sprang out, illuminating the roots of the trees and setting stems of grass in sharp contrast. The flashlight made her feel better. See? I can drive back the darkness! "I don't want to follow a dangerous path! I want to do my job, get paid a reasonable wage and go home and talk to my kids about how their day went at school."
She laughed hollowly. "I've already been offered your far-traveled path, filled with spines and pricking wounds and bitter pills. A path into shadows and hidden places – where true secrets lie, not just the grave-goods and barrows of the dead. I said no then, and I'd say no now."
The gardener made a deep humming sound in the back of her throat. "Hooo… Of course. But this old walnut wonders…" Malakar reached out her claw into the beam of the flashlight, making a jagged, monstrous shadow spring up against the silver-barked trees. "Shadows imply light." Her claw withdrew, revealing the track winding ahead of them. "And a path, direction. You remind me of how much I have lost by fearing both."
"Fearing?" Anderssen began walking, finding the bare, widely spaced tree trunks oppressive. "You didn't fear to oppose the Master and his policies!"
"Hooooo… I feared to leave the Garden. What sprouts have gone untended elsewhere as I lay anguished on a mat in the common room, biting my own tail and dreaming useless thoughts of revenge and malice? Will I ever know?" Malakar lifted her snout, pointing ahead. "Do you see the lanterns?"
Gretchen angled the flashlight towards her feet. Her eyes adjusted and she saw – ahead, obscured by a line of trees – gold and silver lights and heard the rattle of drums and pipes. In the faint glow of distant lamps, she caught the outline of buildings, sharp rooftops, banners and the hot glow of a bonfire.
"Do you hear the voices?" The gardener picked up her pace. "Nemnahan has begun!"
The Gemmilsky House
Gandaris, "Bastion of the North"
Crouched in darkness, Colmuir squinted at the view from one of the perimeter spyeyes. This one was focused down on the front gate from a realspruce tree, where the Jehanan soldiers had found the portal held closed by more than a simple wooden bar. Their commander – even at this range, staring at a reptilian face mostly obscured by black rubber goggles, the master sergeant could pick out an officer – waved his men back, then stepped smartly away. The entire gate structure shivered as the tank approached, cobblestones cracking under heavy treads. The armored behemoth – Colmuir counted one main gun, four cupola-mounted machine guns, some kind of grenade launcher on the turret and a smoke dispenser – ground down the lane, stopped, chuffed diesel smoke, and rotated ponderously on one set of treads.
"Just a moment," the master sergeant whispered. "He's at th' gate now."
The rumbling of dual engines carried even through the tiny microphone on the spyeye, as did the grating scrape of dozer blades emerging from the front of the machine. Gears shifted, generating a violent rattling sound, and the tank rolled forward, belching exhaust, and slammed squarely into the gate.
"Go!" Colmuir growled, feeling the ground shake. He thumbed a glyph depicting a conical mountain belching flame. In the spyeye view, he saw the front gate shatter, torn off its hinges by the weight of the tank. The stone pillars on either side of the entrance shuddered, but stood firm until the armored shoulders of the machine ground into them. Then ancient granite split, spewing dust and the entire structure collapsed backwards. The tank rolled up over the debris, treads spinning and crashed down on the other side. Jehanan soldiers darted into the opening, automatic rifles at the ready.