Chapter Fifteen: Gathering
"We're here," said Rhem at the sight of the end of the passage. Her voice retained extra breath from their efforts with the rising columns in the last room.
"Mm-hm," said Deis, "here we are," though it wasn't as though they could have forgotten the sight of the place.
Nina turned. "Ryu? You're ready for this?"
He nodded. "I'm going to do it." Pause. "Have you got anything for her to wear, in case? Shoes and things?" She showed him the several changes of clothes stowed in her pack with relief - it would be a fine thing if she returned in the same state as Ryu and Deis and proceeded to freeze to death. "Thanks."
"Have you got something for him?" she asked, to preclude his worrying over it later. He showed her his own spare things with an equally relieved expression.
"They might be a little short in the leg, but I think they'll work."
"Mm-hm."
"At least cold shouldn't bother him as much."
"You're cold?"
He put the things back and slipped his hand around hers, then smiled. "Now I'm not."
They emerged from the interior of the shrine and gathered at the base of the steps, flanked by Won-Qu and A-Tur. At the top of the steps was the summoning platform with the engraved circle. They all stared at it for a minute more before Ryu finally let go of Nina's hand, detached from the group and walked up the steps. The Abbess trailed behind him for a while, but stopped at the edge of the circle. He continued into the center of the circle, then knelt, drew the sword and laid it down before him as he had done in Chek; the bell tinkled once. He reached down; with his back to them they weren't sure what he was doing until he lifted his hands with the cord tangled about them like a cat's cradle and the bell gleaming in the fading sun.
Ryu untangled the cord and lowered his hands to slip it around his neck, the only sound that of the shivering bell, then raised his hands again and held them there, his head tipped back.
Before Nina could persuade herself to continued quiet she called out, "Good luck!"
For a moment he faltered, but then he nodded and seemed to add her voice to his unseen forward motion.
Scias whispered, "G… g…g…" His voice rose. "G-good l-luck…"
"I wish you good fortune, Youn…" A-Tur seemed to choke for a moment. "Ryu."
Won-Qu said, "As do I."
Ershin said, "I, too, hope your luck is good."
The Abbess said, "Be careful, Ryu."
Rhem echoed in her own voice, "Be careful."
Deis said, "Don't you dare blow yourself up."
Ryu spoke. It came from a long way off. "I won't."
Nina considered kneeling as well, but it seemed rather ostentatious to do such when she had no part in whatever was going on. Even the Abbess, who had offered to help - she, too, seemed to be left out of the unseen goings-on. Whatever it entailed, in the end Ryu would go it alone.
They were still and they waited. They waited a long time.
"You okay?"
"'Tis nothing." P'ung Ryong attempted to get up and nearly somersaulted backward with his fall.
Cray lay down his club (it was, at least, one of his lighter ones, otherwise he'd probably be looking at a major concussion right now) and walked over. "I think that's enough for now."
"'Tis not enough."
"It's enough, if it's not too much. We should get a doctor."
"I hath no need for such." He promptly contradicted himself with his next fall.
"It should all be cleared up in less than two weeks," said Elina later, when P'ung Ryong had been taken off for a lie-down and the two of them were alone on a castle balcony. "It's odd, isn't it. He was our god - and you can blacken his eye like an ordinary person. You can teach him things."
"I didn't mean to-"
"That's the fourth time you've said that. You weren't to know you were that much stronger than he was."
He made out the Tower of Wind in the distance. "Sorry."
"Our people should be at those places you mentioned by now," she said after a time. "Except for Hesperia, of course."
Upon P'ung and Ch'o Ryong's request, he'd supplied a list of the locations where they had encountered the other dragons so that it could be ensured Ludia wouldn't try anything like they had with Sa Ryong - or if they already had, to be sure they hadn't been successful. "That's great."
"I just hope something didn't happen to them - it's been more than three weeks, hasn't it? A lot can happen, in three weeks."
He was cold. It was probably the winds. "Yeah. A lot can happen."
Her warm hand tried to grip his chilled one; it ended up enveloping hers. "But things will turn out all right," she said. Her tone was between a statement and a question.
His gaze shifted toward the general direction of Chek. Everything with Ryu and Fou-Lu, the Endless, Ludia and the Empire… can it turn out all right?
"It had better," he said.
After the sandflier had landed in Shyde and before the soldiers had gotten up enough courage to approach him and "request" his presence in Ludia, Yuna had approached a stall and purchased a blank book at an inflated price. In it he inscribed from memory thaumaturgical formulae and data on preliminary experiments and diagrams that would have been incomprehensible to any untrained in the art of Yuna-scribble. He had kept them in mind for days and now he wrote them down for fear that they would leak out if he kept them there much longer. But he stuck with his scribble; he wasn't so deluded as to think that certain people wouldn't read it at the first opportunity.
The last of the Ludian soldiers emerged from the last of the buildings in the village - Yuna would like to have a closer look at the architecture, when he had the time. "Nobody there, Master Ilgor."
"Ah, excellent," he snipped back. The soldier took a few steps backward. "Well, scholar? Any chance your myth saw fit to give more precise directions?"
"Myths are hardly known for their precision. There would not happen to be a map, by any chance?"
Ilgor turned to the assembled soldiers. "Find a map." They scattered back through the doors.
Some time later Yuna pored over the large yellowed sheet one of the soldiers had found. He actually found the spot a good bit before he announced it, but it wouldn't hurt, he thought, to let them sweat a bit. "Well!" he said when the Ludian Master looked on the brink of detonation, "this looks like the place." He gestured, and the other man leaned forward and scrutinized the ink dot surrounded by archaic lettering. "It lies to the southwest."
"Yes, I can see that," Ilgor snipped. Yuna wondered if anyone had told him snippery was best used in moderation. He turned to his troops. "Get ready to move out."
Collected murmurs of complaint were tossed back. One climbed into the range of audibility - "Aw, Master Ilgor, I'm tired, 's getting dark out, can't we stay the night at least?" This became a chorus.
Ilgor threw up his hands. "Fine." He spun toward Yuna. "You have no objections, I hope?"
"None at all," said Yuna, restraining his smile. "It can certainly wait."
That night, finally given an extended span of time alone in a warm place, he reviewed what he had written in the book, then reviewed his prior conclusion and found it valid. The Empire, at least the part that mattered, had turned against him - certainly the incident in Astana was rebellion, but he gathered Captain Ursula had been made a general, and with such morality as Rhun had instilled in her there was no chance she would stop until his decapitated corpse was thrown into the sea of mud, whether the act of doing so was formally legitimized or not. Result being he was cut off from his progress in Astana, except for that which he had been able to remember.
He had hoped it wouldn't have to come to this, but there seemed nothing else for it - he needed a proper model for his planned creation. It would have to be a comparatively minor summoning, of course, nothing as powerful as the God Emperor had been - if there would be that sort of power again, steps had to be taken to ensure the appropriate individuals possessed it. Disposal after its purpose was fulfilled would be difficult considering he had lost the Dragonslayer as well, but it might well have value in itself, if he set it up properly.
Though of course the Ludian Ilgor would hardly be as easy to handle as the late Soniel, but if he played everything right, things would fall in place. They always had. And at last, at last the world would be at peace.
Come on, come on, I know you're there. It's all in the mind, she said. Come on.
Good luck, Nina had said. Don't blow yourself up, Deis had said. I won't, he had said, and he just hoped to get to the point where doing so would be an option.
If I knew it would've meant this I never would have gotten rid of you. I'm sorry. Come back. Don't leave me. He closed his eyes tighter. Think of symbols. I'm breaking an impenetrable wall. I'm smashing a boulder in my way. At least… I'm trying to.
Behind him there was silence.
Nina and me. Mami and him. I'm alive and I've got… I've got Nina. He's in my sword because it's safer than with me, and Mami's dead. What's wrong with this picture? If we're two halves then let's have some equality here.
He could hear the coursing of his blood in arms and legs and chest and head, but he could no longer feel the sun. Had it set, already? Again and again he envisioned a crumbling wall, a pile of gravel. He flung himself against the barriers - he could "see" them, now that he knew they existed - and bounced off in the opposite direction with equal force. At least his mind couldn't bruise. He'd made the barriers himself - one way or another, they had to fall to their creator. At least, they had to in theory.
Open up, damn you. Damn me.
He didn't notice how tired his arms were until they flopped downward. As they did, his fingers brushed against a metal sphere - the bell.
Why not? A little ceremony might help. He cupped it and lifted it high again, and felt the cord move against his neck. He shook the bell and focused on the sound. he demanded to the shapes lurking behind the wall and down the path blocked by the boulder. This was hers, and I'll save her. It would really be helpful if you got those things out of the way now.
This time Ryu felt the barriers give a little more under his efforts before they snapped him back again. Still, something more was needed. He gathered together the last words he'd heard from the outside and brought those to bear as well.
Good luck!
G… g…g… g-good l-luck…
I wish you good fortune, Youn… Ryu.
As do I.
I, too, hope your luck is good.
Be careful, Ryu.
Be careful.
Don't you dare blow yourself up.
And adding itself at the end of the sequence, I wish thee good luck, thou who art me.
He didn't know how many times it repeated itself before the barriers fell. But they fell. And at the same time Ryu dashed through a symbolic hole in the wall he leapt over a symbolic pile of gravel, and then he kept on running to what he had so quickly thrown away, in a time so long ago.
All I can say is I'm sorry I didn't do it before and save us all this trouble. But anyway it's going to be all right now.
I'm going to make it right.