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Atun-Kaah
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Flight Over Forannest
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Tess's dreams were vivid, filled with blood and Arceus. Not the new Arceus, the God of ghettos and social conscience and free lunches, but the old ARCS Original One, who had proclaimed unto the Hisuians not to suffer a witch to live, and who had given it to His son Arceus to rise from the dead. She was screaming that she would pray, pray forever, if necessary. Out of the darkness hands of amazing strength gripped her shoulders.
"You would welcome the oblivion of your death now, I think," said the voice of Cypress, his voice almost sorrowful. "There is no memory for the dead outside of Arceus; only the hunger and the need to serve the Master. I could make use of you. I could send you among your friends. Yet is there need of that? If you fall, that will make Bronze little. And the boy will fall also. But I could possess you, make you move against him at this time. Even seduce him. There is, perhaps, a more fitting punishment for you, stupid girl."
"Arceus damn you!" she cried out.
"It's too late for such melodrama," said the Un-Cypress. "There is no need for it. You have forgotten the doctrine of your own religion, is it not so? The Arcean rings, the bread and wine, the confessional: only symbols. Without faith, the rings are only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes. If Cobalion had not slain my Barons, I would have been able to overcome you all at once. In a way, I hoped it might be so, that you would be spared. It has been long since I have met any girl I thought worthy of my touch. You're worth ten other women to me..."
She remembered Bronze saying: "Some things are worse than death." She tried to struggle away, but the hands held her in a viselike grip. Then one hand left her. There was the sound of cloth moving across bare skin, and then a scraping sound of a razor. The hands moved to her neck.
There was a flash of light. She was looking at the dead, reeking throat of the Un-Cypress, blood smearing its face and forehead like war-paint. There was a booming, triumphant laugh. His red eyes were flashing with hellish triumph. They locked with hers, and Tess felt the will draining away from her. Blood ran down from the creature's mouth and dripped into hers. Then its face exploded in a cold gush of blood which blinded her and then she woke up screaming.
...
She would have fallen off Cobalion's back if Gabite hadn't caught her. It was cold and grey and there was some dim sense of a deep angle to the ground. To the right was a rock wall with serried blotches of dust. At last she looked out to her left, and fright took her in rough hands. It was dark, but vaguely she saw a huge chasm that went down into nothing. They were on a mountain path above the gorge perhaps twelve feet wide. Behind them the road fell down and led into an underground tunnel that went to Flouruma. Before them the route went up a little before leveling out and skirting to the left, vanishing behind a mountain.
The gorge was an elongated bowl, and down in the deeps she saw vague blurs of towers and broken arches. Above the high stone rim were more mountains in the vapid shadows of clouds. All was dreary and blear. The wind blew strongly and she saw wisps of snow being urged about far above. And straightway before her, over the great divide of stone that the path accommodated, was a tall peak that shone white. At its sight the breath left her in a gagging, inarticulate groan.
"Relax," said Bronze, walking beside Magnezone. "We're out of town. It's nearly ten miles behind us." And he told her of all that had happened.
"It's cold," she said. "Where are we?"
"We are in the high mountain pass that leads deep into the Frostveil Mountains, to Frostveil City and the next Gym," said Cobalion. "Of old this range of mountains around the gorge was called the Echoriath, the Encircling Mountains, for they bordered the City of Caves, Atun-Kaah, which was the capital of the empire of Logaria before it fell. Once the north side that we now face was open to the green lands, but the lands have changed and stone has filled it."
"Logaria?" she said. "Then this was Bronze's old capital. Well, not his personally, but..."
"Look upon the ruins of the White City," said Bronze. A weariness had settled over his face and drew down his eyes. "See the ancient seat of the Kings of Southernesse, or what remains of it. Little was left after the fall of Logaria."
She looked down again at the gorge and made out more shapes, of walls and houses and fair places made long ago. But even from so high up she could tell that they were ruined and grey and dead. At the southern end of the gorge was a high outcropping of stone, clearly lit in the colorless light, but this was cloven in many places and the stone had fallen far below. Once the bastion of stone would have faced the deep defile of the entrance to the plain far to the north. Now it and the palaces and estates upon it were broken and barren, white stone stained with time to be grey. And for a long mile on either side of the vale, running east and west, were the shoulders of mountains like sheer hills, black-boned and bare.
In days long past the City was built by the Men of Logaria in their pride and power, after the overthrow of the Enemy in Kalos and his flight, and after the War of Wrath a sure guard on the north, lest he should seek to return to his old realm. But the strength of Logaria failed, and men slept, and the city was swallowed up by time. The watch-towers had fallen into decay; what once was filled with arms and sleepless guards lay empty. Stony-faced they were, with dark window-holes staring north and east and west, but in no window did an eye look out.
"I used to hear about this city from my mother," said Bronze, "about the tall Men with the shining eyes, and their houses like hills of stone, and the silver crown of their Emperor and his White City: wonderful tales. They built very tall towers, and one they raised was silver-white, and in it there was a stone like the Moon, and round it were great white walls. Oh yes, there were many tales about the Tower of Atun-Kaah. Doubtless, the stone you can see was once a part of it."
He sighed. "It isn't nice now, not beautiful at all. It was ruined long ago. It is a very terrible place now. Travelers shiver when they see it, they creep out of sight, they avoid looking into the gorge. But we will have to go that way, for it may be the only path to Frostveil that is not watched, if Cobalion is right. That is the only other way. We can go off the main road onto another path, a path that goes down. For the mountains have a natural tunnel at the northern end, and the old road goes up and up, until it reaches a dark pass at the top, and then it goes out into the light, straight into the old sewers of Frostveil City. The city's right at the base of that mountain." He pointed to the white peak. "That is Mount Athras, the Sandhorn, the highest mount in Roria. It is hallowed to Arceus and in ancient times, the Logarian kings were crowned upon it. I will also be going there for a crowning, if possible."
"Silver crown? I wonder who could make a crown for you," said Tess. "The days of old Logaria are long gone, and no one's going to have a spare one lying around. You'd have to make a replica."
"Ryan and his Aredians will take care of that," said Cobalion. "They still preserve the knowledge of Logaria, and if things go well, Bronze will have a new crown to bear. But it will not be the same as the old one." A black shadow crossed Cobalion's face, and he looked down to unguessable streets. "You will see why the new Logaria must be different from the old."
"But how will this help us?" asked Tess. "Surely the Enemy knows all about the City of Caves, and that road will be guarded as close as this? The City isn't empty, is it?"
"Not empty," whispered Cobalion. "It seems empty, but it isn't. Very dreadful things live there, crooked Pokemon, but worse things live there too. The road goes right under the shadow of the main walls and passes the broken gate. Nothing moves on the road that they don't know about. The things inside know."
"I don't like the sound of it at all," said Tess.
"Could it be any worse than what you just lived through?" said Bronze. "We have no choice. The Enemy is watching the skies for Charizard and Magnezone's flight. I do not think we could survive another journey with Cobalion. It was only by a knife's balance that I wasn't killed by Darkrai and he will be ready again. What frightens you about the city so much?"
"The battle was different. You knew on what side everyone was on and what each side stood for. It was horrible, but I don't feel bad about anything we did. But I don't know about Pokemon. Cobalion, what side are the things in the ruins on?"
"Now that the Enemy has returned, he is gathering old allies into his service," said Cobalion. "Not all of his servants are men and demons. He has many birds and beasts and Pokemon. Even some of the trees are on his side. I do not know yet if his call has reached the City of Caves, for his power is too weak to attend to everywhere at once, at least not yet. But we must expect to be watched down there as we are being watched up here."
"Who is watching us?" said Bronze, looking to the clefts above as to spot concealed eyes.
"I am not yet sure. Whatever it is, it has been following us since we entered Flouruma. Whether friend or foe I cannot tell, but it has been skirting the rocks above us for some time. It may mean to attack at night."
"No cause for concern, if there's only one," said Bronze, stopping a moment to remove gravel from his shoe. "A wild Pokemon, a hunter of the barrens. We will see what it means, good or bad. What good lays in lengthening our road to find it now?"
...
The day drew on. A deep silence fell upon the little grey spot of the road where they walked, so near to the borders of Mount Athras: a silence that could be felt, as if it were a thick veil that cut them off from all the world about them. Above them was a dome of pale sky barred with fleeting smoke, but it seemed high and far away, as if seen through great deeps of air heavy with brooding thought. Not even an eagle poised against the sun would have marked them journeying there, under the weight of doom, silent, moving under their coats. For a moment he might have paused to consider Cobalion, a god with no flesh worth pecking.
Tess looked down on to the road. At any rate nothing was moving on it now. It appeared lonely and forsaken, running down to empty ruins in the mist. But there was an evil feeling in the air, as if things might indeed be passing up and down that eyes could not see. She shuddered as she looked again at the stone pinnacles now dwindling into night, and she heard a sound of water that seemed cold and cruel: the voice of the River Serpentwater, the polluted stream that flowed from the mountains and down into what was once the Field of Forannest, but now the Valley of Wraiths.
"Where are we going to sleep?" she said. "We've walked a while and we need a place that we can lie hidden in the dark."
"No good hiding in the dark," said Cobalion. "It is the day that we must hide in."
"Oh, come on!" said Tess. "We have to sleep, even if we get up again in the middle of the night. There'll still be hours of dark then, time enough for you to take us a long march, if you know the way."
"I agree," said Cobalion, "but first we must get off the road and down to the city."
As soon as they were at the spot where the path no longer rose and began to curve eastward, they saw a steep track that went down. They went on this riding Cobalion's back, down the dark sloping land. They could see little, for the cold night was now becoming so deep that they were hardly aware of the stems of stunted trees before they stumbled against them. The ground became more broken and Cobalion's walking was more difficult, but he seemed in no way troubled. He led them through thickets and wastes of brambles; sometimes round the lip of a deep cleft or dark pit, sometimes down into black bush-shrouded hollows and out again; but if ever they went a little downward, always the further journey was longer and steeper.
They were descending steadily. At their first halt they looked back, and they could dimly perceive the tops of the cliffs they had left behind, lying like a vast dense shadow, a darker night under the dark blank sky. There seemed to be a great blackness looming slowly out of the North, eating up the faint blurred stars. Later the sinking moon escaped from the pursuing cloud, but it was ringed all about with a sickly yellow glare.
Across the tumbled lands the mountains reared ever taller and frowned more fiercely at them, black and shapeless below where night lay thick and did not pass away, above with jagged tops and edges outlined hard and menacing against the sickly glow of the sky. For about an hour they went on, silently, oppressed by the gloom and by the absolute stillness of the land, broken only now and again by the faint rumbling as of thunder far away or drumbeats in some hollow of the hills. Down from their hiding place they went, and then turning south they steered as straight a course as Cobalion could find across a long broken road that leaned down towards the dead city. Presently, not far ahead, looming up like a black wall across their road, they saw a belt of trees. As they drew nearer they became aware that these were of vast size, very ancient it seemed, and still towering high, though their tops were gaunt and broken, as if tempest and lightning-blast had swept across them, but had failed to kill them or to shake their fathomless roots.
They left the ring of trees and crept along the path towards the city gates. This road, too, ran straight westwards for a while over the dry field of Forranest, filled with dry grass and deadly flowers, but soon the way began to bend away southwards, until it came right under the great bastion of rock that they had seen from the distance above. Black and forbidding it loomed above them, darker than the dark sky behind. Crawling under its shadow the road went on, and rounding it sprang west again and began to climb steeply into caverns unseen.
Here stood the ancient walls and tower of Atun-Kaah, before which was the Valley of Wraiths, and the ruined city of Logaria. All was dark about it in the gorge, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of its stone long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. In the walls and windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night. For a moment the three companions stood there, shrinking, staring up with unwilling eyes.
Cobalion was the first to recover. Again he moved across the vale urgently, but he spoke no word. Almost the great champion dragged himself forward. Every step was reluctant, and time seemed to slow its pace, so that between the raising of a foot and the setting of it down minutes of loathing passed. The darkness was darker than anything Tess had imagined, darker than the depths of nightmare, darker than drugs, darker than demons, dark enough to make her forget the sun. The only light in the gorge, sickly and evil, was not a comfort.
"Only a mile's journey," said Cobalion quietly. "Then we'll have made it. We'll make it yet."
So they came slowly to the halfway mark. Here the road, gleaming faintly, passed over the field abruptly southward, in the midst of the valley, and went on, winding deviously towards the city's gate: a black mouth opening in the outer part of the northward wall. Wide flats lay on either side, shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. Luminous these were too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel smell; an odor of rottenness filled the air.
From mead to mead the road sprang. Figures stood there at the gate, carven with cunning in forms human and bestial, but all corrupt and loathsome. Old statues of kings that might have once been wholesome had been broken before the other gargoyles, with huge noseless heads lying silent at the bases of shadowy feet. The water of the Serpentstream flowing away in the north was silent, and it steamed, but the vapor that rose from it, curling and twisting about the bridge, was deadly cold. Bronze passed his hand over his brow and wrenched his eyes away from the city. The luminous, outthrust portion of mountain rock in the southern distance fascinated him, and he fought the desire that was on him to run up the gleaming road towards its gate.
"Claim your throne!" the voices screeched. "Claim your throne at last! Or are you too coward to dare?"
"I will not!" he said loudly, starting Tess. The sound seemed to have alerted the very hills themselves. They grew deeper and stronger, almost leaning over to hear him. As he looked away, seemed for the moment to have been blinded. The darkness before him was impenetrable.
"Oh, Cobalion, let's fly out of here," said Tess. "Let's fly out of here. Please."
"We might, but only if..." The god looked on, his features changing from grim to worried. Tess saw that they were still heading east on a narrow path that gleamed faintly at first, as the main road did, until climbing above the meads of deadly flowers it faded and went dark, winding its crooked way up into the western sides of the valley.
"It may be as I feared," said Cobalion, and the hiss between his teeth seemed to tear the heavy stillness like a whistle. "The road might be blocked. Whether by force or chance I cannot say, but we will have a hard time finding it and then breaking through. Our labor will attract guests."
"Let us keep to our path, even still," said Bronze, sending out Electabuzz. "We'll all feel better once we're out of the sight of that gate and have a solid wall to put our backs towards."
Electabuzz's eyes shone with a green-white light, reflecting the noisome ghost-sheen of the city perhaps, or kindled by some answering mood within. Of that deadly gleam in the city and of the dark eyeholes they were always conscious, ever glancing fearfully over their shoulders, and ever dragging their eyes back to find the darkening path. Slowly they labored on. As they came away from the stench and vapors of the poisonous stream their breath became easier and their heads clearer; but now their limbs were deadly tired, as if they had walked all night under a burden, or had been swimming long against a heavy tide of water. At last when they had reached the western end of the gorge and were against the mountain slope there, they could go no further without a halt.
Tess stopped and sat down on a stone. They had now crossed the Valley of Wraiths to the edges of a great hump of bare rock. Ahead of them there was a faint upward path in the steep valley-side, and round the head of this the path went on, no more than a wide ledge with a chasm on the right; across the sheer westward face of the mountain it crawled upwards, until it disappeared into the blackness above.
"Not here!" said Cobalion with great agitation. "Do not rest here. The enemy can see us and that we are weary! When they come out of the gate they will see us. Quickly, climb, climb!"
"All right!" said Tess in a remote voice, as of one speaking half asleep. "I'll try." She got to her feet.
...
But it was too late. At that moment the rock quivered and trembled beneath them. From the gate came the noise of trampling feet and screams. Enemies were coming up to them from the gate. And with horror Bronze realized that shouts were coming from above them as well as behind. On the luminous pavement under the shadows of Old Logaria's walls came marching a phantom company, grey distorted figures in a mist, dreams of fear with pale flames in their hands.
Even as these thoughts pierced him with dread and held him bound as with a spell, the shades halted suddenly, right before the bend of the road, and behind them all the other hosts stood still. There was a pause, a dead silence. Bronze felt a fearful head sweeping the shadows with its unseen eyes. Then the head turned and saw them.
"Fly! Fly!" cried Cobalion. "Foes are behind and ahead! We must fly!"
Bronze felt his senses reeling and his mind darkening. Then suddenly, as if some force were at work other than his own will, he began to hurry, tottering backwards, his groping hands held out, his head lolling from side to side. Both Tess and Cobalion ran after him. Electabuzz caught its master in his arms, as he stumbled and almost fell, right out into the threshold of the road.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" came a screaming, lunatic voice. "IT WON'T DO YOU ANY GOOD, WHATEVER IT IS! I HOLD THE CITY! And you'll come, verily you'll come to me! Say it's true! Before the shadow of my thought reaches your paltry hiding place, you'll come!"
Tess covered her ears, wincing and looking at the chief ghost-rider. It was the shape of an old king, green and white. She almost expected to see the pulse begin to beat in the hollows of the man's temples, where clocksprings of veins had been delineated with only a few gentle, feathered shadings. The brown grass died and turned to a black covering on the frozen soil underneath. At the corner of the lips, she could see the wink of a single sharp tooth, and she thought the lips might come to life, revealing a mouthful of fangs: one mere wink of white made the imagination see all the rest, and even to smell the reek of dead nightmare that would accompany each outflow of breath.
The spectre had perfectly captured a tuft of hair curling from one of the man's nostrils, and a tiny thread of scar that wove in and out of the king's right eyebrow like a bit of string. "BRONZE TERCANO! What are you doing? Come, little emperor, for sunset is nearly nigh!"
With a great effort Bronze halted, stood upright, and brandished his dagger. All four of his Pokemon stood around him. "Go back, Tar-Castamir!" he cried. "Go back to the Land of the Dead and follow me no more!"
His voice sounded thin and shrill in his own ears. The shape of the dead king halted, but Bronze had not the power of Cobalion. His enemies laughed at him with a harsh and chilling laughter. "Come back! Come back!" they called. "To the Djinn we will take you!"
"What are you doing?" said Cobalion. His sacred sword shone like a phial of light. "What devilry works in your mind and your heart?"
"By Arceus and Southernesse," said Bronze with a last effort, lifting up his blade, "you shall have neither Tess nor me!"
A mist was falling over his eyes. With his failing sight he saw a shining figure of white light; and behind it ran small and large shadowy forms waving flames, that flared red in the grey mist that was covering the world. Charizard's wings beat with a heat that grew fainter and fainter. Steelix's freight roar echoed in the deep, became blunter and blunter as the echo faded, and then the icy scream of his mother pierced his heart with an intensity that drowned away the warmth at last. Bronze felt that he was being torn apart by a whirlwind. He was lost in an agony of pain that finally dissolved into the darkness of complete unconsciousness.
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The first sign of returning consciousness was cold and then sound. He was aware of voices that seemed to be traveling to him across an arctic waste. Slowly the icy sounds cleared and he realized that the voices belonged to Tess and Cobalion and a third voice he did not recognize. He did not hear the screaming ghost-king. He tried to open his eyes but the lids would not move. He tried to sit up, but he could not stir. He struggled to turn over, to move his hands, his feet, but nothing happened. He knew that he had a body, but it was as lifeless as marble.
Hee heard Tess's frozen voice: "His heart is beating so slowly."
Cobalion's voice: "But it's beating. He's alive."
"Barely," said the new voice.
"We couldn't find a heartbeat at all at first. We thought he was dead."
"Yes."
"And then we could feel his heart, very faintly, the beats very far apart. And then it got stronger. So all we have to do is wait." Cobalion's words sounded brittle in his ears, as though they were being chipped out of ice.
The new voice: "Yes. You're right, sir."
He wanted to call out to them. "I'm alive! I'm very much alive! Only I've been turned to stone." But he could not call out any more than he could move.
Tess's voice again. "Anyhow you got him away from the city. You got us both away and we couldn't have gone on holding out. The ghosts were so much more powerful and strong than...how did we stay out, Cobalion? How did we manage as long as we did?"
Cobalion: "Because the old king is completely unused to being refused. That's the only reason I could keep from being absorbed into the wraithworld, too. It wouldn't have killed me, but I would have been useless to help on the physical plane. No mind has tried to hold out against the dark power of the ruined city for so many centuries that certain centers have become soft and atrophied through lack of use. If Ruby hadn't come to us when he did I'm not sure how much longer I would have lasted. And our Pokemon cannot fight such spirits."
"Ruby, why were you following us at all?" said Tess. "Was there a particular reason for going there?"
Ruby, with a frigid laugh: "Going to Flouruma was a complete accident. I never intended even to leave Anthien. I was heading after Gold on the Chairman's bidding. But when I got to Flouruma you three were gone, and the situation was more complicated than I had expected. I was sent on my way by the soldiers there."
Tess: "Cobalion, how was the city's curse able to get Bronze before it tried to attack you and me?"
Cobalion: "From what I know it's because Bronze thought he could deliberately defy the power of Dark Logaria and return. He trusted too much to his own strength...listen! I think the heartbeat is getting stronger!"
His words no longer sounded to him quite as frozen. Was it the god's words that were ice, or his ears?
Silence. A long silence. Then Tess's voice again: "Can't we do anything? Can't we look for help? Do we just have to go on waiting?"
Cobalion: "We can't leave him. And we must stay together. We must not be afraid to take time."
Tess: "You mean we rushed into things too fast, and Bronze rushed in too fast, and that's why he got caught?"
"Maybe. I'm not sure. I don't know enough yet. I will have to ask him."
Silence for a moment. Then Ruby's voice again. "I think I feel a pulse in his wrist now."
Bronze could not feel his fingers against his wrist. He could not feel his wrist at all. His body was still stone, but his mind was beginning to be capable of movement. He tried desperately to make some kind of a sound, a signal to them, but nothing happened. Their voices started again.
Bronze could hear Ruby sigh. "I went. And here I am. A wiser and a humbler man. I'm sure I haven't been gone for three days. Now that I know your set better, I have some hope that we may be able to turn this war around. But one thing I have to tell the others is that we know nothing."
Tess: "What do you mean?"
Ruby: "Just what I say. We're children playing with dynamite. In our mad rush the Pokedex Holders have plunged into this before..."
With a desperate effort Bronze made a sound. It wasn't a very loud sound, but it was a sound. Ruby stopped. "Hush. Listen."
Bronze made a strange, croaking noise. He found that he could pull open his eyelids. They felt heavier than marble but he managed to raise them. Ruby and Tess were hovering over her. He was lying in a chamber with a ceiling of what looked to be carven stone. He blinked, slowly, and with difficulty. His tongue felt like a stone tongue in his mouth, but he managed to croak, "I can't move."
"Try," said Cobalion. He sounded now as though he were very angry with Bronze. "Wiggle your toes. Wiggle your fingers."
"I can't. Why is Ruby here?" His words were blunted by the stone tongue. Perhaps they could not understand him, for there was no answer.
"We were knocked out for a minute, too," Tess was saying. "You'll be all right. Don't get panicky." She was crouched over him, and though her voice sounded tremulous as she peered at him with anxious eyes. Ruby was kneeling at the other side. He was away from the city, but this unexplained iciness was almost as bad. Cobalion had not saved him. Now he was able to look around a little, and everything he could see was rusty and stony. Magenzone was tending a fire. They were in a room with rocks piled against an arched door. The walls were covered in steles in an old Logarian tongue that he did not have the strength to decipher.
"You have talked spoken in your sleep more than is good for you," said Cobalion. He breathed out a little air, and the gust had a delicate, springlike fragrance that blew almost imperceptibly into his body. Then he discovered that he could move a little better again, and that he was no longer paralyzed. His body was bathed in waves of warmth.
"How does your body feel now?" said Cobalion. "Are you alive and warm again?"
"I don't know," answered Bronze. "They don't feel at all: which isn't an improvement, but I can move my arm again a little. Yes, it is coming back to life. It is not cold," he added, touching his left hand with his right.
"Good!" said Cobalion. "It is mending fast. You will soon be sound again. I have tended you for the day since you were brought here."
"Day?"
"Well, a day and half a night to be exact. We brought you from the field and that is where you lost count. We have been terribly anxious, and we have hardly left your side ever since the evil day. I am an ancient master of healing, but the weapons of our Enemy are deadly. To tell you the truth, I had very little hope; for I suspected that there was some power of Dark Logaria still worming through your mind. But I could not find it till an hour ago, and then I excorized it. The black magic was deeply buried, and it was working inwards to your spinal cord."
"And it seems that you fade very reluctantly," said Cobalion after he saw Bronze shudder. "I have known strong warriors of ancient Hisui and Logaria who would quickly have been overcome in minutes by that evil power, which you bore for more than a day."
"But what happened?" said Bronze. "What were the dark riders trying to do?"
"We have encountered a remnant of the old system of magic that used to dominate the world. It still dwells in deserted places. The imprint of Tar-Castamir, the last Logarian emperor before the fall, tried to devour your spirit. If it had succeeded, you would have become like they are, only weaker and under their command. You would have become a wraith under the dominion of the Dark Lord, and he would have tormented you for trying to keep his Brick, if any greater torment were possible than being robbed of it and seeing it in his hand."
"Did you not realize the danger before your brought us down into the pit?" said Bronze.
"I did not think out road would be blocked. Fortune and fate have helped you, not to mention courage. For your heart was not touched, and only your body was pierced; and that was because you resisted to the last. But it was a narrow shave, so to speak. You were in gravest peril while you faced Tar-Castamir, for you are descended from him, and by his blood and yours you were half in the wraith-world yourself, and he might have seized you. You could see him, and he could see you."
"But why could the rest of us hear and see the ghosts?" said Tess.
"I thought you could guess. Because they are real ghosts; just as the shapes are forms that they wear to give shape to their nothingness when they have dealings with the living."
"Tar-Castamir died long ago, and all his bodyguard with him," said Bronze with effort. "They are buried in the Caves of the Forgotten at the shores of the sea. Why was he here?"
"The Enemy is at work everywhere," said Cobalion. "Atun-Kaah is a defiled place, and it will take a great while to cleanse it of the memory of the evil kings of yore. As for what befell you, I shall risk a brief tale. But quite brief, mind you, and then you must sleep again. This is what happened, as far as I can gather. The king's specteres made straight for you, as soon as you collapsed. They did not need the guidance of their sense any longer: you had become visible to them, being already on the threshold of their world. And also the Brick drew them, for they serve the Enemy who desires it. Your Pokemon sprang aside, mortally afraid, for the dead have great powers of fear. The shades were too swift to overtake, and too many to oppose. Even Tess and I together could not have stood against the power of the Dead City.
"When Castamir swept by to catch you, it was Ruby that arrived from the air. There his Castform hastily made the light of the sun come down. The ghosts that tried to cross the rays of light were destroyed, and then he came down to deal with any of the remaining shades. The moment the sun appeared, he rushed out, followed by his Gardevior and your Pokemon with flaming attacks. Tess and I turned and ran. Caught between fire and sun, and seeing a warrior-god revealed in his wrath, they were dismayed and stricken with madness. The imprint of Castamir was hurled into the fire of Charizard and overwhelmed, while the other fled into the city."
"And that is the end of the haunts of the Dead City?" asked Ruby.
"No," said Cobalion. "Castamir has been destroyed, and without him the other ghosts are crippiled. But the evil in the City itself cannot be so easily destroyed. However, there is nothing more to fear from them at present. After the battle we found you lying on your face with a blade under you. Electabuzz was standing guard beside you. You were pale and cold, and we feared that you were dead, or worse. Ruby's Pokemon found the underground path and Steelix broke through. We carried you slowly up the tunnel till we could go no further."
"Then what is this chamber?" said Bronze.
"It is an old Logarian granary, in the sewers of Frostveil City," said Cobalion. "If that is any consolation for you, we are at the city."
"Oh, certainly," he said, and laughed as he tried to stand up and found that this simple task was still beyond him. "Frostveil City was made by the Logarian exiles after the fall, you know. They built it around the slopes of Athras because it was the only peak that had survived the cataclysm. Thought it was sacred. Might be good for a capital."
"Encyclopedic as always," said Cobalion. "He is feeling better! Yes, great Athras, mountain of everlasting whiteness, is held dear to Arceus. The Lord is not the sort to assign local significance to any one place, but burnt offerings were offered upon it, and it was never tainted, even in the days of Logaria's deepest corruption. It has seen no king to be crowned in well over fifteen hundred years, and one day an heir to the South-kingdom may climb its slopes again."
Bronze felt a shudder of pain down in his spine. His lower back to life with a tingling pain. The piercing sensation moved up his legs and into his arms. The pain in his back was turning into a sheeting agony that made him cringe. At that moment he realized that he would live with the pain of his injuries for a long while, if not the rest of his life. The first bite from the crazed Mightyena in Chesemea, the force of the shell blast in Anthien, and now the icy death of Dark Logaria had wounded his back permanently. Would he be a cripple? This thought was hazy and came at a moment when Cobalion, with another breezy exhalation of fragrance, sent a soft warmth that assuaged his pain. Then he fell fast asleep.
.
.
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Aredia
.
Thou didst divide the sand by thy strength; thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the desert. Yea, I behold thee as a beast coming up from the dunes; thou hast the two horns of the lamb, but thou speakest as the dragon.
It was the immutable prophecy in the Coda, the threads become rope, a thing Silver now seemed to have known all of his life. He looked out across the evening shadows on the wasteland. One hundred and seventy miles due north lay the Old Gap, the deep and twisting crevasse through the central Frostveil Mountains by which the first ancient Aredians had migrated into the desert.
No doubts remained in Silver. He knew why he stood here alone in the desert, yet filled with a sense that he owned this entire land, that it must do his bidding. I know this universe.
He studied the approaching Beedrill and its escort Venomoth. He knew its guide and rider had seen him by this time, noting the spot atop the dune. The Beedrill rider would discern no principle in this object seen from a distance, but that was a problem he had learned how to handle. Any unknown object was dangerous. The guide's reactions would be quite predictable.
True to that prediction, the Beedrill's course shifted slightly and aimed directly at Silver. This Beedrill was a weapon which its trainer had employed many times. It had helped the trainer beat Deoxy's in Kanto. This Beedrill, however, failed to do its rider's bidding. It came to a buzzing halt ten meters away and no manner of goading would send it across another grain of sand.
Silver opened his mouth and called out: "Welcome, twice welcome!"
The Beedrill rider stood behind his escort who was riding the Venomoth, one hand on the other man's shoulder. The rider held his face high, nose pointed over Silver[s head as though trying to sniff out this interruption. Sunset painted orange on his forehead. "Who is that?" the rider asked, shaking his escort's shoulder. "Why have we stopped?"
The other man stared fearfully down at Silver, said: "It is only someone alone in the desert. A young man by his looks. I tried to send Beedrill over to him, but the Pokemon won't go."
"Why didn't you ask me first?" the rider demanded.
"I thought it was only someone alone in the desert!" the escort protested. "But it's a demon."
"Spoken like a true son of Kanto," said Silver. "And you, sire, you are Giovanni."
"I am that one, yes." And there was fear in Giovanni's voice because, at last, he had met his own past.
"This is no garden," said Silver, "but you are welcome to share this place with me tonight."
"Who are you?" demanded Giovanni. "How have you stopped my Beedrill?" There was an ominous tone of recognition in Giovanni's voice. Now he called up the memories of this strange man, knowing that he would meet an end here if he was wrong.
"It's a demon!" the Aredian escort protested. "We must flee this place or our souls—"
"Silence!" roared Giovanni.
"I am Silver of Johto," said Silver. "Your Beedrill stopped because I commanded it."
Giovanni hovered in frozen silence.
"Come, father," said Silver. "Alight and spend the night with me. We have not met in so long. I'll give you sweet syrup to sip. I see you've Aredian kits with food and water jars. We'll share our riches here upon the sand."
"What do you here in the Inner Desert?" asked Giovanni.
"Looking for you."
"It is a demon in child form," the guide said.
"You will spend the night here," said Silver.
"We will do as he says," said Giovanni. He released his grip on the guide, slipped out of Beedrill's pincers and slid down to the sand, leaping clear when his feet touched. Turning, he said: "Take my Beedrill off and send it back into the camp. It is tired and will not want to fight my son."
"The Beedrill will not go!" the guide protested.
"It will go," said Silver. "But if you try to flee on it, I'll let it eat you." He moved to one side out of the Beedrill's sensory range and pointed in the direction they had come. "Go that way."
Giovanni clambered up the duneslope and stood two paces away. It was done with a swift sureness which told Silver this would be no easy contest. The medicine that Celebi had given the old Rocket leader had done more than cure him of his heart disease. Knowing his own appearance, Silver studied the other face, seeing the lines of likeness as though they'd been outlined in light. The lines formed an indefinable reconciliation, a pathway of genes without sharp boundaries, and there was no mistaking them. Those lines came down to Silver from the old days, from the warm days, from the miracle times when he was a young child in Kanto. But now they stood at a dividing point on Aredia as night waited to fold itself into the dunes and evil was poised to devour all the world at last.
"So, father," said Silver, glancing to the left where he could see the youthful guide trudging back to them from where the Beedrill had been abandoned. "Here I am; here I remain! We cannot forget that, father."
"How did you find me here?"
"I am in league with the king of Aredia," said Silver. "Lance and I spotted your camp yesterday. I fastened my memory to a place my flesh had never known. I need an evening with my father."
"I'm not your father. I'm only a poor copy, a relic." He turned his head toward the sound of the approaching guide. "I no longer see any visions of my future."
As he spoke, darkness covered the desert. Stars leaped out above them and Silver, too, turned toward the approaching guide. "Greetings!" he called to the youth.
Back came the response. "Mind yourself!"
Speaking in a hoarse whisper, Giovanni said: "That young Khavadh is a dangerous one."
"All of the desert-men are dangerous," said Silver. "But not to me." He spoke in a low, conversational tone.
"If you come for help, I will not share it," said Giovanni.
"Perhaps you have no choice," said Silver. "You are my father and the leader of Team Rocket."
"I'm no more than bait in a trap," said Giovanni, and his voice was bitter.
"And you already have eaten that bait," said Silver. "But I don't like its taste."
"What are you doing?" hissed Giovanni.
Silver felt the dissonance between them then. It was an element of the universe with which his entire life grappled. Either he or his father would be forced to act soon, making a decision by that act, choosing a vision. And his father was right: trying for some ultimate control of the universe, you only built weapons with which the universe eventually defeated you. To choose and manage a plan required you to balance on a single, thin thread, playing God on a high tightwire with cosmic solitude on both sides. Neither contestant could retreat into death. Each knew the game and the rules. All of the old order and its illusions was dying as the Djinn returned. And when one contestant moved, the other might countermove. The only real truth that mattered to them now was that which separated them from each other. There was no place of safety, only a transitory shifting of relationships, marked out within the limits that they now imposed and bound for inevitable changes. Each of them had only a desperate and lonely courage upon which to rely, but Silver possessed two advantages: he had committed himself upon a path from which there was no turning back, and he had accepted the terrible consequences to himself. His father still hoped there was a way back and had made no final commitment.
Presently Silver sensed ozone in his nostrils, the betraying odor of a Poke Ball opeing. The young guide Khavadh was trying to kill both of these dangerous men, not knowing what horrors this would precipitate.
"Don't," whispered Giovanni.
Silver sent out a Weavile that launched itself off the dunetop, hearing his father scream in protest. But the awful impetus of the Pokemon's amplified muscles threw its body like a missile. One outflung hand caught the neck of Khavadh, the other slapped around to grip the doomed youth's robe at the waist. There came a single snap as the neck broke. Weavile rolled, and dove directly into the sand where the Poke Ball had been opened. Clawed fingers found a Grubbin that had been inching toward them in the sand, throwing it in a looping arc far to the south of them.
As the Weavile came to the dunetop in a single leap, Silver said: "Now I'm your guide."
"Never!"
"I am here to give purpose to our lives again by giving you a choice. Would you rather keep talking or return to that hole in the desert you've been living in, trying to get away from me?"
"No, Silver. The world is your universe now," said Giovanni. "I have failed to do anything."
The words filled with defeat cut through Silver. Giovanni had tried to guide the last strands of a personal vision, a choice he'd made years before when he understood that his son was still alive. From that, he'd accepted his role as an instrument of revenge for the remnants of Team Rocket against the Eclipse-men that were trying to conquer the world in his place. They had contaminated him, but he'd accepted this rather than the view of this universe that Silver had chosen.
The sadness in Silver was so great he could not speak for several minutes. When he could manage his voice, he said: "So you were baited by the dark powers, temped and confused by wrong decisions. But now you know who was behind it all along. You know that the Djinn has returned."
"I know...yes, I know."
Giovanni's voice was old then and filled with hidden protests. There was a reserve of defiance in him, though. "I choose not to go with you."
How old his voice sounds, Silver thought, and the thought was a wrenching pain. He said: "I've got the old handkerchief that you gave to me concealed in my coat. Do you wish me to return it to you?"
"If I'd only died," whispered Giovanni. "I truly wanted to die when I went into this desert, but I knew I could not leave this world. I had to come back and..."
"Restore the legend of Team Rocket," said Silver. "I know. And there are still thousands of old Rocket jackals waiting for you to return, to fight in your name. They want your vision! You know this."
"I refuse. I'll never give them one more vision."
"But you do have a vision."
"Sometimes." How sly his voice sounded.
"Will you take back the handkerchief?" said Silver.
Giovanni sat down suddenly on the sand, a dark blotch in the starlight. "No!"
"Yes," said Giovanni presently, "I have a vision, at times. But it does not include you."
"That may be true," said Silver, "but I am your son."
"Are you a good son?"
"I hope."
"Will you permit an old man to go to his grave finally? Will you let me find peace on my own terms?"
"No, I'll not permit that," said Silver. "But it's your right to fall upon your knife if you insist upon it."
"You think me coward for refusing that path," said Giovanni, his voice husky and trembling. "Oh, I understand you well, son. Augury and haruspication have always been their own torments. But I was never lost in the possible ways I could ever come back to the light. What I've done, according to the civilized world, is unspeakable!"
"Your sins will be a summer picnic by comparison to what the Alliance is doing, will do. What matter if I'm the son of Giovanni? The Alliance is the greatest threat to all I love. I will crush them as I defeated your organization. If you are too weak and afraid to do so, then I forgive you, father. But Cypress's body is not his own."
"Do you think I fear them?" said Giovanni. "Do you not see the battles and skirmishes against the Alliance that my soldiers have made, a final breath from a dying organization? Night will come. You cannot control the future. Deoxys's divination taught me that."
"You have no right to deny this, father. I'm here to give you a new purpose again. I'm breaking free of my terrible purpose by doing so. There are many who think you are dead. If so, you died an evil man. Let history remember you, oh yes, whether it be monster or saint, but you dread having people forget you. Come and return. Gather the strength of Team Rocket and help us oppose the Alliance. Even to the death. But it will be remembered, if there are free people to remember in ages to come."
Giovanni's shoulders sagged. "You cannot. You must not. Oh, I understand you well. But better I die knowing that I could have done nothing to defeat the Alliance than to try to do so and fail."
"No, but I see that I cannot sway you. I love you, my son. But no future has you with me in it."
Tears slipped from Silver's eyes, and his hand dropped to the side. "If I'd chosen your way, I would be known as the lord of Team Rocket. But I never took your vision far enough. My hands have done good and evil things, just like yours."
"But my evil deeds were the greater, even if they were mingled with good!"
"Which is the way of many great evils," said Silver. "You know I won't just stand here and let you go. It's a shame that you never had a better father yourself, Giovanni. Then maybe things would have been better for you. But your strength is enough for this."
Giovanni buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook for a moment, wracked with sobs, and then he lowered his hands and his mouth was set in a hard line. "There is a curse upon my line. I prayed that you would stop seeking me, that you'd throw that handkerchief in the sand, that you would deny your terrible purpose and not face it, and run away to make another life. It was there for you."
"At what price?" said Silver. "Pokedex Holders fight evil. I don't know if it's Arceus or Fate or Chance, but that's the way things are."
"Fight for what? The world is broken and there is no hope for reform. The Association is old and everyone knows it. There will always be another enemy to fight, even after you're dead."
"I thought that way, too. But things are changing. There's a new Pokedex Holder, and a new Emperor to rival the Association. Whether he rises or falls, I can't tell. But he rode the Steelix."
"If he's putting himself in the way of the Alliance, then he's a fool!"
"Not facing it would be worse than death," said Silver. "The end changes the path. It always does."
After a long silence, Giovanni said: "Just once I failed to fight for my principles: now. I fled. I did it for myself, but that made me a bad leader. I cannot lie to you any more than I can lie to myself. I ask you only one thing: must I fight the Eclipse Alliance? Is it necessary?"
"It's that or humans will be extinguished."
Giovanni heard the truth in Silver's words, and spoke in a low voice which acknowledged the greater breadth of his son's vision. "I did not see war among the choices. What are our chances?"
"I don't know, father. But are you willing to take the risk that comes with standing down? The world that Cypress will create will be devoid of redemption. There will be no more amending, no more reparations. How can there be, when everyone is a slave?"
"Are the Rorians willing to side with this new emperor?" said Giovanni. "Do they even know he has returned?"
"Many people suspect it, I suppose," said Silver. "But there is no more delay. You haven't a choice. In running away like a blind man, you put yourself in a place of more pain than you realized. You have to do something but don't want to do it. If you had come back from the path to absolute power this would not have needed to happen. All men are responsible for their actions. Your old excuse about being twisted forever was just a way to get out of doing the hard thing."
Giovanni trembled. "You will force me, I see this."
"You have forced yourself to choose what is right and made it very difficult."
The night wind blew coldly around them then. It whipped Giovanni's robe around his legs. He shivered. Seeing this, Silver said: "You've an Aredian kit, father. I'll inflate the thermitent and we can spend this night in comfort."
But Giovanni could only shake his head, knowing he would have no comfort from this night or any other. Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket, must be destroyed. He'd said it to himself many times. Only Silver could go on now.