Chapter Text
The Archarbor stood alone.
The bright Joy spiral shone upon its gleaming roof and lush gardens. Behind it, the Void’s own hand, three fingers and a thumb, reached for the prize.
Thanks to the ceaseless scouting from kaithe racers like Barris, the Void hand’s approach had been spotted with hours to spare. Unfortunately, Acrithis needed every minute to transport the heavy reels and crates of books because there were no bridges from the solitary island to the mainland. No fragile co*ckleshell boat could carry enough to empty the archives in time. Every spare wagon worked at the farms. Every spare Dax was headed to the Palace as Sythel and Lodun’s escorts.
Saving the archives at the Archarbor would be a logistical feat unlike any other.
For the first time in a long time, Drifter measured himself against the task and said, “I’m all out of miracles. I’m all out of power. This isn’t a party I can plan; this is just delaying the inevitable.”
Dominus asked, “What would Teshin tell you?”
“Be hearty therefore and cautious in your speech. For one who speaks his fear aloud to his comrades before the fight is like unto a cupbearer bringing poison.”
Even though they’d just arrived, Dominus promptly wheeled Histornam around and headed back towards the tent city.
“What are you doing?”
Dominus said, “You can’t do it alone. So I’m getting reinforcements.”
This time, they rode through the camp and gathered in their train everyone who wanted to help, be they sage, docent, or booklover. They arrived at the docks at Thrax Gardens followed by a small army of volunteers and the Dramatis Personae and their puppet.
Didaskalos’ Orowyrm puppet waved overhead in all its glory. The mid-afternoon light struck the puppet’s metal fittings until it glowed as if powered by reactors. It was always windy out beyond the mainland, so the puppet’s streamers danced merrily. Bombastine wore the Scholar’s Mask and carried the scroll that bore the Scholar's words. The rest of the actors wore stage versions of Dax armor and carried banners that might pass for the royal ones…at a distance, if Drifter squinted.
“The Void won't be fooled,” he warned, unable to stop himself from voicing his doubts. “Even my Orowyrm can't fight the Void's Hand and win.”
Bombastine helped the others board a boat out to the Archarbor. “We will put on the performance of our lives anyway. But I think it will go better than you fear. The Scholar looked into the Void and feared it, and thus his fear took shape. How will it react when I speak his words to it without fear, I wonder?”
Dominus said, “Hopefully better than I did, when you first confronted me. But at least it can't knock out a puppet.”
Once they all arrived at the Archarbor, the genius of the actors’ plan became clear. The troupe boldly marched up and down the swirling aggristone. Each time the Void's hand reached as though to grip the island, the Orowyrm puppet flew to boldly block it. It seemed repulsed by their fearlessness and unable to grasp an Orowyrm that was completely emotionless.
Drifter would never have thought to confuse the Hand. “Maybe it can work.” He allowed. “I still have no idea how we're going to get the archives from here, across a gaping chasm, to safety. Acrithis, I hope you’ve got one more clever plan.”
“I do,” she said, with a sidelong look. “This time when you transform into an Orowyrm, can you manifest some pathos clamps?”
He balked. “Excuse me?”
“It’ll make it easier to attach the chains.”
“What.”
As it turned out, what Acrithis remembered and everyone else had forgotten, the islands of Duviri were not anchored in place exactly where they’d been created. After all, since the people had once towed away the island of Lorn with ropes and kaithes, it stood to reason that islands could be moved, and indeed had been. The great chains that served as tow lines were stored up in the tether towers that bound the Orowyrms.
So while Didaskalos paraded his Orowyrm puppet up and down the winding paths to the fanfare of Bombastine’s oration and the dancers’ trumpets, Drifter transformed into the real thing. Apollos the Acrobat climbed up on him with the first huge grappling hook. “Are you sure you won't manifest some pathos clamps? It'd make it much easier to attach these.”
Drifter rumbled.
Dominus translated. “He says no. Try the side clamps. Drifter hooks his glaive on those all the time. He hasn’t broken one and fallen to his death yet.”
Then Dominus hauled the other end of the two chains around the Archarbor's trunk with Histornam. Apollos climbed Drifter like a monkey, hooking them securely to him like a massively oversized Orvius.
Acrithis oversaw the docents and scholars sorting books onto the island’s landing dock for unloading as soon as Drifter pulled them up to the mainland. She waved to him. “Time to pull!”
Dominus and Apollos settled into the hollow on his head. “Pull!”
Drifter set his weight into the chains like a kaithe in harness. Though his reactors strained and flamed, nothing happened. He was solidly anchored to a massive hunk of rock, and it wasn't moving.
Apollos said, “Well, we tried.”
Dominus said, “I refuse to believe that a bunch of fearful peasants did more with kaithes and ropes than an Orowyrm with the calm of the true warrior.”
Drifter snorted.
Dominus patted him. “Think of the Conclave. If at first you don't succeed, try something different.”
Drifter was mindful of his earlier thoughts that he wasn't going to symbolize his way to success. He turned instead to what he knew had worked in the past. Not one kaithe harnessed to the island of Lorn, but many. Fear was indeed a powerful motivator, capable of making many people work together to cast out an island…and so was the love of something greater than themselves.
From his vantage point, he saw the windmills of the farms turning as farmers labored along townsfolk to feed everyone. Behind him, actors and scholars all cheered together as he strained again. Beyond his sight, countless citizens built a sanctuary for themselves and their neighbors. His friends sought to save what they could from Castle Town.
For the love of something greater than themselves, all of Duviri’s people worked together to save what they treasured most.
Finally, he had an answer to his doubts. He didn’t have to do it alone. He was one of many.
In sequence, he fired off his reactors. Each reactor pushed him forward a little bit. Just a small pressure against the chains.
Not one single, heavy, straining pull. One of many.
The Archarbor began to move.
Apollos said, “Well, I'll be damned.”
Slowly at first, then surely. Everyone on the island erupted into cheers. Before long, cheers from everyone waiting at the Trax Gardens docks reached him on the wind.
Firing each reactor in sequence to create one of many pushes also meant that he kept enough control that the Archarbor didn’t slam into the mainland either. Oh, he wasn’t going to claim that their landing was smooth. Oh, no.
Everyone wound up on their asses from the impact. The docks crumpled. Boatmen informed him in no uncertain terms what he could do with himself.
The workers tilling the fields for tomorrow’s harvest looked up as everything shuddered, saw that the Archarbor was a lot closer, saw the Orowyrm, and shrugged off the strange sight. Orowyrms were forces of nature; everyone knew that.
Dominus patted him. “Hey, I think you broke the Archarbor’s windmill.”
He twisted as much as the chains would allow.
The thin lines that connected it to the stalk did not appreciate the impact. The blades twitched fitfully. Acrithis stood in front of the closed off stalk with her hands on her hips.
He groaned.
Dominus said, ““Oops” is right. I guess I'd better get these chains off and go fix it.”
The Void's hand had not given up on the moving target of the Archarbor and, as before, its slow speed was deceptive.
Once freed, Drifter dropped off his passengers and flew over to Bombastine. The actor touched his metal carapace.
Through transference, Drifter said, “You’re doing a better job of distracting it than I could.”
Transference laid them both bare to each other. For once, Bombastine had no envy at all for Drifter's powerful orowyrm. He had pride, though. Pride aplenty in how he and his friends (and oh, how wonderful it was to have colleagues that he could think of as friends) acted out their roles. “If this is to be our last curtain call, then we shall make it one worthy of an epic tragedy. And yet,” he continued bravely, “you and your son gave me hope that we might earn a happy ending if only I can learn to value something greater than myself. For these, the true treasures of Duviri, the risk is worth it.”
Drifter transformed back into himself so he could grab Bombastine in a proper hug. “Break a leg.”
Dominus scampered past them over to the broken windmill. “I just want to say there's something dreadfully ironic about me fixing this.”
Bombastine agreed, “It's quite an encore performance.”
It didn't take long for Dominus to fix the windmills. Once the stalk opened up, everyone hauled books with a will.
Then the Paragrimm flock descended.
Such a concentration of books and scrolls drew Paragrimms from all over the kingdom. The metal owls perched on reels and boxes. They lined the makeshift bridge. They watched each Sage, docent, and booklover with beady little eyes as if to say that if anyone mishandled a book, Acrithis’ book of tortures would include being pecked and clawed to death.
“Speaking of Paragrimms, Drifter,” Acrithis said when they passed with arms full of books, “would you do me a favor? Go persuade that Paragrimm that roosts downstairs in the Enigma that this island is about to be a really bad place to stay.”
He had never expected that the third and, in all likelihood, the final time he went down to view the Archarbor Enigma and its admonitions on emotional regulation would be to persuade a beady-eyed bird that, first, he was not out to harm its precious books, and second, “Look, if you want to become a bird in the Wall of Bone, I can’t exactly stop you, but I do not recommend it.”
It clacked its beak at him.
“Somewhere in your library hutch there’s probably a book that says what happens to birds who get sucked into the Void. Maybe try reading that if you don’t believe me?”
It ruffled its feathers. It turned its back on him. It lifted its tail.
“sh*t!” If he’d been even a hair slower, he’d be covered in the smelly stream that ejected from its rear end. “Fine, Stinker, I get the point! I’m leaving. Don’t blame me when you-”
He was interrupted by the teeth-gritting, spine-shivering scrape of claws on bone. The very air ripped in two and an elongated metal claw of a hand reached through from the Void itself into Duviri.
“Void Angels. sh*t. We're in for a Void Flood.”
The Paragrimm’ beady little eyes fixated on the new target.
The claws gouged great rents in the floor and then reached for its hutch.
It shrieked its battle cry: “Knowledge! Mine!” It launched itself from its perch onto the claw, talons bared.
Drifter reached for Sirocco, then paused, hand empty. Dominus had it. Denphius had Sun and Moon. Drifter had not grabbed another weapon, despite Teshin's warning. So he was unarmed and useless as the bird wrestled with a hand that outweighed it by a ton.
He imagined he heard the soft thunk of Teshin smacking his armored hands on his forehead. And then his voice on the wind, reminding him that being disarmed meant death.
No, Teshin said, “The Void can heal as well as harm.”
Of course! Ambient void energy seeped from the rent in the fabric of Duviri. It gathered up in glowing droplets and, then, began to float.
Drifter grabbed as much vitoplast as he could and shoved it into the rip. It only healed a little bit. He told Stinker, “Look, you’ve got wings. It floats; you could get this easier.”
Stinker ranted at him and the claw in equal measure. “Mine. Knowledge. Mine mine knowledge!”
By the time Drifter junoed up on and climbed over the enigma consoles to collect enough vitoplast to seal the wound, the claw looked rather worse for wear. Maybe even relieved to get away from the raging Paragrimm. “And good riddance,” he informed it.
Stinker fluffed his feathers proudly. Then he saw what remained of his splintered hutch. He let out the saddest little “Knowledge?!” and began rooting around in the remains of his favorite books.
Drifter took his last look around at the consoles that had saved his life. “Hey, I'm sorry, but we've got to go.”
Stinker ignored him.
“Where there's one of those, there'll be more. And that's not counting it's big brother's hand out there.”
“Mine,” Stinker whimpered, plucking out a ruined page.
“It's gone.” On a whim, he hit Obliviating Entanglement's console. “Let it go.”
“Mine.”
Would a shift in perspective help? But when he read the Quadra Tabulator, he sighed. He was the one who needed to change his approach. “You know, if I could save this place, I would. These literally saved my life, and made my life worth living.”
“Knowledge…”
“Yeah. But I’m not going to cling to them at the cost of my life. If I die in vain, who’s going to use that knowledge?”
Stinker cooed. He raised one taloned foot.
Drifter recalled that Dominus wore heavy hawking gloves. He made a hasty wrap for his forearm out of his belt and leather bookcovers. “What do you say, Stinker? Shall we make sure this knowledge isn’t lost with us?”
Stinker landed on his arm and allowed himself to be carried up and out…into an Archarbor overrun.
Since the Void's Hand must catch up with the Archarbor, it had unleashed its void angel claws on the island and on anyone who tried to rescue the books. No one could haul boxes and reels while dodging silver claws that ripped and tore ceramic as easily as they did the aether. Bombastine, Didaskalos, and the Dramatis Personae struggled to maintain their patrol.
Acrithis watched with despair. “The Void will claim all that makes us us,” she said. “It will not let even the smallest piece of us escape its grasp.”
Drifter looked around for vitoplast to heal the rents.
Ambient void energy seeped out and gathered in floating globules just like downstairs or in the Undercroft, but here they had all floated upwards until they were caught under the umbrella-like roof of the Archarbor. It was too high for all but the kaithe riders to reach. He expected to see Histornam swooping around with a vitoplast collector, since Dominus knew how to deal with Void Floods in the Undercroft.
Instead, his son came running up with his arms full of vitoplast containers he must have retrieved from the Undercroft. His eyes shone as he asked Stinker, “Can we make a harness for you?”
Though Stinker favored him with a magnificent stink-eye, he suffered to let the container be strapped on his chest.
Once Stinker collected a full load of ambient void energy, and saw with his own beady eyes that he could close a breach and open the way for all those precious books to be saved…
“Knowledge! Ours!” Stinker shrieked his cry loud enough to carry across the whole of the Archarbor to Thrax Gardens and out to the Void. “Ours! Ours!”
The whole flock of Paragrimm took off in a storm of metal and glowing feathers. They swarmed over anyone with a container and hands to harness them. They cawed and clicked impatiently until they got their makeshift harnesses and once the harnesses ran out, the flock took their anger out on the claws.
Acrithis said, “I would not have bet on a battle between the Void Angels that roosted on the Zariman and the Paragrimms that roosted in the Archarbor.”
Drifter said, “I wouldn’t have put my money on the birds, but…”
She smiled. “You'd have lost that bet.”
And she kept smiling, for she admitted, “While you were busy below, Dominus never lost hope. Never stopped trying to buy us more time so we could save what we could. I never expected him to value books and art the way I do. I was wrong. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about him destroying islands in a tantrum ever again.”
Drifter asked, “Would you follow him?”
She considered. “I might.”
Drifter buried himself in loading and unloading books. There was still so much to do and so little time to do it, even with many hands to make the work light and the defense strong. Hauling crates and boxes was hot, sweaty, back-breaking, knee-straining work. He did not even worry about the approaching Void's Hand. Let Bombastine and his colleagues hold it at bay with brave words. Let Dominus lead the Paragrimm flock closing the breaches. The Void would have its due…not one moment ahead of time.
He did not look up from the task until Stinker flew back to him, and said, sadly, “Knowledge, Gone.”
Sages and docents clambered over the bridge with their last baskets of scrolls in hand. The Orowyrm puppet proudly retreated on the last flying boat, guarding all the small fleet, defiant to the end.
Drifter climbed up to the crest of the Thrax Gardens. Acrithis and Dominus stood side by side, hand in hand.
Soon Bombastine and the Dramatis Personae gathered there in their finery. Did they truly fool the Void? Did it matter? They had all done their best and saved what they could.
The Archarbor stood alone and empty.
The Void's Hand grasped the stalk of the Archarbor like the trunk of a great tree and shook it. Ambient void energy shook free and then rose up like so many bubbles.
The sky tore as a great rift ripped through the fabric of Duviri.
Stinker took off, winging towards the Archarbor.
“Stinker-”
Even if Stinker could gather the vitoplast, the rent was too large to heal. He didn't even try. He dove under the aggristone that shuddered and quaked and cracked, dwindling to a mere speck until he was out of sight.
Acrithis sighed. “Maybe I should have joined him. Desperately trying to save one last book.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Dominus said. “I’d miss you.”
She blinked. “Once we remake Duviri, there will be many merchants to ply you with luxury goods.”
“Yes,” Dominus allowed, “But who will be my Royal Historian?”
“Oh.” She said, softly. Then tartly, “I will not be bribed to paper over your rather sorry conduct.”
“Of course not,” Dominus said, and under the mask, he smiled. “Nobody expects you to be kind, just truthful.”
She laughed, a sound of joy and not despair, even as the Hand clenched and shook and pulled the Archarbor away from Duviri and into the rift where it was lost to sight. Nothing was left of the archives except for a speck of glinting metal and glowing feathers. The rift began to close.
“Come on, Stinker,” Drifter called down to the struggling Paragrimm. “You can make it!”
A tendril of Void reached back out of the closing rift to snag Stinker and the precious scroll he carried.
Everyone, seeing that one last book had been snatched from its grasp, cheered and stamped for him.
The raucous cry of the Paragrimm flock rose above the rest, “Knowledge! Ours! Knowledge! Ours!”
Dominus took up the call in his own shrill voice. “Knowledge! Ours!”
As king, his voice had once reverberated across every corner of the kingdom. Everyone knew it by heart. For once, they did not fear it. They took up the cry at once. Sages, docents, booklovers, boatmen, actors, Acrithis, Drifter and everyone with a love for literature in their hearts cheered and stamped their feet. “Knowledge! Ours!”
Stinker reached the lip of the mainland and all but collapsed onto Drifter's upraised arm.
Too busy with holding a giant, exhausted owl, he handed over the scroll to Acrithis without looking at it.
She began to laugh and passed it to Bombastine.
He snickered.
She gasped, “Oh, what an epic-”
Dominus cracked up, laughing like back in the old days when the highlight of his day was mocking one Drifter.
Drifter said, “Oh, no, don't tell me.”
“-tragedy your life is!”
Didaskalos snatched the scroll. “I'd better stash this away before he rains all over us and ruins my puppet a second time.”
Stinker fluffed his feathers proudly, tiredly.
Drifter sighed. “Really, you just had to save The Many Deaths of the Dissenter?”
It was a weary, but happy bunch who trouped back to Agora accompanied by wagons full of food and books. No one would starve or get bored while they could help it.
Then they got to the crest of the basin, from which they could see Castle Town.
Or what remained of it, which was nothing but rubble heaped atop the island as though a giant child had stomped on a pile of toys and broken all of them.
Drifter’s heart sank.
Had he really expected that the Void would not be prepared for them? Had he really thought that they could blithely go forth and remake Duviri unopposed?
It would not be that simple, as the city reduced to tumbled stones and timbers broken like matchsticks attested.
Dominus stood stock still, hand pressed to his mouth as though to cry. His home was brought down to wrack and ruin. Then he asked, “What about Lodun and Sythel?”
A thin ribbon of road still connected Castle Town to the mainland. The hand that flattened the palace was no longer in evidence. “I’m sure they made it out alive,” Drifter said, and hoped he wasn't proven a liar.
The sober group rushed back to the Agora headquarters.
Sythel and Lodun stood at the war table, heads bowed and shoulders bent with the weary load of defeat. They were surrounded by their own spoils of war: records, decrees, and a few bits of ceremonial regalia. All of it lay tossed aside as though it didn't matter anymore.
“It doesn't matter,” Sythel said. “We couldn't stop the Void. The throne was no help at all. Now it's buried in a heap of rubble.”
“You tried,” Mathila comforted her.
They licked their wounds as the last fading glory of Joy lit the sky. They'd lost so much. They'd saved what they could.
Drifter put his dark thoughts out of mind for the morrow. He found Lequos, retrieved his schedule, and set to work planning the day to day needs that would keep the people and their leaders going.
First, baked bread and stew for the court's dinner. For once Dominus didn't even turn up his nose at it after a long day's work running around, even though it was rough-milled peasant bread.
Then, tents for the Courtiers, each in their colors. Lequos suggested it, and Drifter thought it an indulgence.
Lequos asked, “Do you know how many people have asked me “Where’s Prince Lodun? Where’s Bombastine?” If you don't like it, you can spend tomorrow directing petitioners.”
“Colorful tents it is.”
Drifter was hard at work hours after dusk faded and night fell and bonfires blazed. He stumbled into his tent with tomorrow's schedule in hand (for there was a whole tent city to be organized and more latrines to be dug and everything else to be done.)
Dominus was already tucked into a cot and bedroll. He slept peacefully with no sign of nightmares, because Stinker cooed over him and Lodun, of all people, sat next to him.
“Knowledge,” Stinker said, and extended a claw for his schedule. “Gimme.”
Drifter was far too tired to argue with a bird. “Just give it back in the morning.”
But not so tired that he didn't have a moment for Lodun, so he sat on his cot and emptied his pack. “Tea?”
“Not at this hour,” Lodun said. He got up to leave.
Dominus shifted in his sleep. He clutched a familiar doll in his hand. Was that a gold-bound book under his meager pillow? Yes, Drifter would know The Tales of Duviri anywhere, and he’d last seen that particular copy next to that exact doll in an alcove in the Palace.
“Thank you,” he said, moved almost beyond words that this was what Lodun had chosen to save.
“My nephew shouldn't have nightmares,” Lodun said. Then, because he was never one to linger on emotional moments, he ducked outside the tent flap.
Drifter lingered only because he was sore and tired and even this rough cot felt like heaven beckoning him to sleep. He forced himself up and out. “Lodun?”
Crossing the way to his new red tent, Lodun paused.
“Look, it'll be busy as hell in your tent tomorrow with messengers coming and going. You won't get a lick of rest once they know to find you there. Do you want to-”
Drifter thought to himself, why play coy? He held the tent flap open. “You're family now. Stay with us.”
Finally, finally, Lodun accepted it. “I think I'd like that.”
It turned out that Lodun snored. In counterpoint to Dominus’ soft whistles. In harmony with the soft rattles of Stinker rooting around.
Drifter was either far too tired or too comfortable to care because he fell asleep immediately, having done his level best to secure Duviri's true treasures for the days ahead.
