The Assassins of Altis

Chapter Fourteen

Mari and Alain kept walking toward the robed figures, while the group who apparently made up a welcoming committee strode toward them. They met at the bridge, the robed group spreading out to block the span. One of their number stopped ahead of the rest.

“Good day,” Mari said politely.

“Good day,” the robed figure in the lead responded, throwing back a hood to reveal that she was a woman, tall, a bit thin, with sharp eyes. She managed to look both gracious and unwelcoming at the same time. “You are lost. We will give you directions back to Altis.”

“We’re not lost,” Mari said.

“Then I regret to tell you that we do not welcome visitors here. Our people live apart from others. We must ask that you leave this valley and explore some other part of the island.”

Mari raised her arm to point at the tower. “We’re not exploring. We came here to visit that tower and those who live in it.”

The woman conveyed puzzlement. “Why would you seek that? Our people have lived here for generations, and we have nothing in which the outside world would be interested.”

Alain leaned close to Mari to speak in her ear. “The first part of her statement was true, the last part a lie.”

Nodding, Mari smiled at the woman. “You can see that this man is a Mage. He can tell when someone speaks the truth. And when they don’t.”

“He wears the robes of a Mage,” the woman agreed. “But Mages do not accompany Mechanics. One of you is false. Perhaps both of you are.”

Mari smiled. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that if I were you. I am Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn, and this is Mage Alain of Ihris.” She noticed some of the robed figures reacting slightly when she said her name, and wondered what news the person they had seen on the path might have brought here. “We have questions which we hope you can answer.”

“Then you will surely be disappointed,” the woman replied, more severely this time. “I ask you again to go. You are not welcome in this valley and will not be permitted to go farther.”

“There’s nothing in that tower?” Mari asked.

“Our homes. Nothing more.”

Mari glanced at Alain, who shook his head, then back at the woman. “But I have read that there is much more there,” Mari said. She didn’t need Alain’s help to see the way the robed figures tensed after that statement.

But the robed woman recovered quickly, smiling sadly. “There are many stories with no basis in fact. Whatever you read of that tower is no more real than one of the tales of Mara the Undying.”

That made Mari fix a cross look on the woman. “At the moment, Mara is kind of a sore subject with me. Do you want to know where I read about this tower? I’ll show you.” The robed figures all watched as Mari shrugged off her pack, kneeling to carefully unseal the watertight package holding her half of the banned Mechanic texts from Marandur.

She stood up slowly, holding one of the texts, then carefully opened it to the page with the drawing on the side. “It says here, ‘The tower on Altis, where records of all things are kept,’ and the drawing certainly resembles your tower.”

The robed woman was staring not at Mari but at the book she held. “What is that?”

Mari turned it to read the cover. “Survival Technology Manual, Base Level Two, Volume Four, Wireless Communications, Second Edition, Revision Three, Demeter Projekt.” She looked back at the men and women facing her. “Demeter. That sounds like our world. Dematr.”

A ripple passed through the ranks of robed figures. “The tech manuals,” a woman whispered. “Coleen, it’s one of the tech manuals.”

One of the men cried out in a much louder voice. “We cannot let this opportunity pass!”

“Silence, all of you,” the woman ordered. “We know nothing of this, or of that book you hold,” she insisted to Mari.

“Don’t you want to know where I got it?” Mari asked.

“Such knowledge could be extremely dangerous to us,” the woman named Coleen replied, but even Mari could see the yearning for answers in her.

“Not as dangerous as it is to me and my Mage. We got it in Marandur. It’s from the vaults of the old Mechanics Guild Headquarters in that city.” It hadn’t come directly to her from those vaults, but the statement was still true.

She could see the people before her wavering. Mari held up the text. “This is only one of what we have. If you truly value knowledge, perhaps you would like to see the texts. All of them.”

“What… what is you want?” Coleen asked.

“We are here seeking records of the past,” Mari said. “Records which might tell us how our world came to be as it is. I need to know this.”

The woman rallied. “We cannot help you.”

Alain spoke to her for the first time. “You choose not to help us.”

“I’m offering a trade,” Mari said. “You answer my questions, and I let you look at the texts that are in our packs.”

“Can you tell us about Marandur?” a man asked. “What it is like right now?”

Coleen turned to glare at the man as Mari answered. “Yes. And about the masters and students still occupying the university there.”

“They still survive?” a woman cried. “Coleen, please, this is priceless.”

“We have our mission,” the leader said, but her resolve was clearly wavering. “What do you seek in our records?”

Mari met her eyes. “I need to know why the world is the way it is, why the Great Guilds control its fate. I need to know if there is a good reason for that, if the world’s subjugation to the Great Guilds was in the name of some higher purpose or in response to some awful events. And I need to know anything about other ways that the world could be, ways that give more freedom than anyone has now.”

“Why do you need to know this?”

Mari took a deep breath and then spoke steadily even though the words felt as if someone else were saying them. “Because I am the daughter of Jules, and our world will soon face a great crisis that will destroy everything. I can stop that, if I can unite Mechanics, Mages, and the common folk to overthrow the Great Guilds and bring freedom to this world.”

Another of the robed men spoke. “It is her, and the Mage. The ones we were told of.”

Coleen gazed at Mari. “Do you have any idea of the cost if we reveal ourselves to you, and if that information becomes known to the Great Guilds?”

“I swear to reveal nothing of this place, not unless you give me permission.”

Her eyes went to Alain. “But what of the Mage? What oath can he give?”

Alain inclined his head toward the woman. “I vow also to say nothing.”

“The word of a Mage means nothing.”

Mari felt anger that she couldn’t quite suppress. “That may be true of most Mages, but it is not true of my Mage. He is a man of honor.” She held up her left hand so the promise ring shone in the sun. “He is also my husband, and I will not have his word questioned.” She could see the eyes of the entire group focusing on her hand in disbelief, then shifting to see the identical ring on Alain’s.

The woman leader stared at Alain. “Why did you marry this Mechanic?”

“Because I love her,” Alain answered.

“But the wisdom of Mages says that all people are shadows, and no feelings must bind you to others.”

“Lady Mari has shown me a new wisdom, one stronger than that which the elders of the Mage Guild teach. That is why we walk together, and why I have resolved with her to do the right thing.”

Mari spoke into the silence which followed Alain’s declaration. “We wish you no harm. Please. We need to know that what we are doing is the right thing.”

The woman shook her head, looking down at the path. “We hold knowledge, Lady Mechanic, but the answers you seek may be beyond the wisdom of any man or woman. We can provide facts, but right and wrong are judgments, and only you can decide them.”

“Then give me the facts to make such a decision wisely! That’s why I came here, to have the data I need to make an informed decision!”

The woman turned to look at her fellows, and one by one they nodded back at her. She faced Mari and Alain again. “We cannot deny your request, for knowledge must have a purpose, and for too long our only purpose has been to protect it, not to assist in the use of it as our calling demands. I am Coleen, head librarian of the librarians of the tower. If you will come with us, we will try to answer your questions, and in exchange you must grant us access to the materials you carry. The knowledge in them will be a great gift to us and to the people of this world.”

Mari nodded, smiling. “It’s a deal.”

Coleen led the way to the tower, the rest of the librarians following behind Mari and Alain. People they passed stopped to look at the procession in amazement, but either Coleen or one of the other librarians always assured them that all was well. Mari endured the slow walk, wanting to run to the tower, but Alain’s hand in hers helped hold her back.

When they reached the tower, Mari paused to run her fingers across its surface. Up close, the material was just as smooth as from a distance, but also very hard and apparently unmarked by time. “What is this? Mari asked.

“We don’t know,” one of the male librarians admitted. They had all dropped their hoods and seemed just as eager to talk now as they had formerly been reticent. “It was something our ancestors could make, a material which could be poured like water, yet would hold a shape and then harden into something stronger and more enduring than stone.”

“Our ancestors.” Mari glanced at Alain. “Did they come from the stars?”

“Yes. Very few people are still aware of that.”

Mari felt her breath stop for a moment. “Our ancestors really did come from the stars?”

“Don’t the Mechanics still boast of their lineage from the stars?”

“Yes, but most of them don’t believe it anymore. It’s true?”

Coleen gave Mari a wry smile. “If you truly wish to know how our world came to be as it is, that is where you’ll have to start, with the ship that came from another star.”

The ground floor of the tower was a vast room, with stairs leading upward and down. The interior was illuminated by some kind of electrical lighting, though Mari noted that a lot of the lights had failed. “Where’s your power generator?” she asked.

A librarian waved around to encompass the tower. “The tower itself turns the sun’s rays into power for us to use. But the amount of power has been slowly dwindling for generations for reasons we do not understand, and when lights now go out, we have no more replacements for them.”

Coleen headed for one of the stairways down, leading Mari and Alain down three flights to what must be a level well beneath the surface. “It is very safe here,” she said. “The safest storage space in all of Dematr. Not just because it’s deeply buried in living rock, but because this part of the planet is very geologically stable. It is where we keep Original Equipment.” From the way she pronounced the words, it was easy for Mari to hear the capital letters in them.

Coleen paused at the door at the bottom of the stairs, manipulating a lock and then standing aside as she opened the door to allow Mari and Alain to enter.

Lights came on as Mari walked into the room, apparently triggered automatically. She came to a halt, staring around at an assemblage of equipment which surpassed anything she had ever imagined. Mari knew her mouth had fallen open as she gazed at the smooth panels, at the devices whose functions she could only guess at. As Mari slowly turned to take in everything, she felt moisture running down her cheeks, and reached up to wipe away tears of joy and wonder. “Stars above. So many things in the banned texts are right here, truly existing. Oh, this is awesome.” Her voice cracked and Mari had to close her eyes, more tears spilling out as she cried at the marvel of these devices which actually did exist, which were real and here in front of her. Things that the Mechanics Guild had kept from her world.

“Mari?” Alain’s voice was concerned as his hand touched her gently.

“Oh, Alain.” Mari shook her head, opening her eyes and turning around and around to look at everything over and over again. “This is so beyond belief. This is what the Mechanics Guild took from us. Am I right?” she asked Coleen, who had entered behind them and now watched Mari with shared joy.

“Yes,” the librarian said. “All of these things came from the great ship, which means all of them came from a world warmed by another star. They were all built an unimaginable distance away, many, many years ago. We have had to keep them hidden to protect them from your Guild.”

“Not my Guild,” Mari denied violently. “I am a Mechanic, but that is not my Guild any longer. I could never belong to any organization that forced the suppression of such wonders.”

Coleen had walked over to one wall, where a large diagram hung, the image on it faded but still legible. “This was the ship.”

Mari came close, staring at the drawing. “What’s the scale?”

“Here,” the librarian said, indicating a marker in one corner of the diagram. “Our ancestors used something called a metr. A metr was about half a lance in length.”

Checking that against the diagram, Mari felt her jaw drop again. “It was huge.”

“It had to be. The voyage took hundreds of years.” Coleen indicated a map on the wall next to the diagram of the ship. Even under its protective covering, the map had browned with age.

Mari and Alain studied the map, seeing huge continents of unfamiliar shape. “What does this show?” Alain asked.

“The home of our ancestors,” Coleen said, her voice now worshipful. “The place from which the great ship came. Another world. Urth is its name.”

Mari traced the outlines of the continents with her fingertip, carefully not touching even the covering of the map. “Urth. How far away is it?”

“We do not know anymore,” another librarian answered. “We know only that the distance is so great that light itself takes many years for the journey.” Her voice saddened. “One of the stars we see in the sky is the sun which warms Urth, but we no longer know which star that is.”

Coleen, plainly enjoying sharing this information, pointed to one part of the ship. “This was where the crew lived and worked. Because the trip was so long, the original crew aged and died along the way, and their children continued in their stead, and so on until this world was reached.”

Mari ran her finger under one large word, the text odd but readable. “Demeter. The name of our world. Just like on the texts. That’s how it was originally spelled and pronounced?”

“Yes. It was also the name of the ship.” The librarian indicated another portion of the diagram. “And this area was where the passengers were, along with all of the animals, fish, plants and other creatures the ship brought.”

“There couldn’t have been very many passengers,” Mari said. “That area is a lot smaller than the crew area.”

“There were thousands of passengers.” Coleen’s face lit with awe as she spoke. “Our ancestors knew how to take newly created children from the bodies of their mothers, then freeze them so that they would exist unchanging for many years, until thawed and allowed to grow into babies.”

Mari stared at the other woman, shocked. “They took children newly created from the mothers?” Mari became aware that her hands had dropped down of their own accord, covering her own lower abdomen protectively. Alain had noticed her gesture as well and seemed unusually startled by it. But why should he be? Perhaps because he was a man he couldn’t grasp why that would appall a woman. “That’s horrible.”

Coleen shook her head, speaking gently. “No. It harmed neither mother nor child, and every mother and father who gave their unborn children to this purpose did so by choice, so that their children could live here someday.” She gestured to the equipment around them. “The ship also carried devices which could serve as mothers to bring the children to term.”

“Machines?” Mari demanded. “Machines in which babies grew until they were birthed?” She had worked around machines most of her life, she loved machines in many ways, and yet the idea felt incredibly repulsive.

“Machines of a sort,” the librarian agreed. “It was necessary. Upon arrival here the devices brought to birth a first generation of passengers, and when those were old enough to care for babies another generation, and so on until every passenger had been born. Since then,” she added with a slight smile, “every birth has been in ways more familiar to us.”

“The animals, too?” Alain asked. “This is how the first animals came here?”

Mari thought Alain was still rattled, but then she was used to spotting subtle signs of how he felt.

“Yes, the animals as well,” Coleen replied, then turned a serious look on Mari. “And this is how the Mechanics Guild came to be and to control so much, and why so little of our history is truly known. When the great ship reached our world, most of the crew felt that they and their ancestors had done the work to reach here and deserved to be rewarded far more than the passengers. So they decided to violate the orders that had been given long ago on Urth. These crew members allowed only a small portion of the science and technology they had brought here to be made known to the passengers as they grew. The crew members also never told the passengers where we had all come from. Those who chose to create the Mechanics Guild claimed to be the only humans who could build and repair mechanical devices. The passengers knew only what they were told and were too busy laboring to build the first cities and scatter life through this world to dream of the truth.”

Mari felt a sense of anger as well of relief. “Then the Mechanics Guild was always about power and wealth. It never had any higher purpose, never had any other justification.”

“And what of the Mage Guild?” Alain asked. “Did the Mages on the great ship make an agreement with the Mechanics Guild in those days?”

Another librarian answered. “We have no records we can read and no memory passed down to us of any Mages being on the great ship,” he said. “The first mention of Mages comes more than a generation after the ship arrived here.”

“None of the ship’s records we have been able to read speak of Mages as real beings,” Coleen added. “We found only children’s stories and fantasies and other fictions which feature humans able to do supernatural things.”

Mari stared at Alain. “Mages didn’t come on the ship along with everyone else?” She felt a sudden, awful, sinking sensation, wondering if she and Alain could ever have children.

But the librarian who had spoken before was shaking his head. “All people here came from the ship. There was no one on this world before its arrival. Something happened after people came here, or perhaps on the voyage itself. There are words which may hold the answers, though we no longer understand enough about them. Mutation. Genetic drift. Something called genetic engineering, which was able to change the very nature of a person’s body, may have been involved. We don’t know. All we do know is that a generation after the arrival of people here there began to be reports of people who had magelike powers, weak at first but growing in strength and variety. More and more of these Mages appeared, and eventually they were strong enough to form their Guild.”

“And,” Mari added, feeling some relief to know Alain was as human as she, “strong enough to be able to survive the attempts of the Mechanics Guild to destroy what it couldn’t understand. But Mages are… like us? I mean, in all of the important ways?”

A woman librarian frowned slightly at Mari’s question. Then her expression cleared as understanding came and she looked at Alain. “As far as we know, yes. You should not need to worry on that account.”

“Thank you.”

Alain was looking concerned again, but that was easy to appreciate given the topic. “From where did the librarians come?” he asked.

“Not all members of the crew agreed with the decision of the majority,” Coleen explained. “Some of the crew were what were called…”

Another librarian spoke up. “Data Storage and Media Retrieval Technicians.”

“Yes. It meant librarian, in part, and so our ancestors reverted to the simpler and more complete name.” Coleen gestured around to include the entire tower. “The plan for settling this world included the construction of this tower in a safe place, as a refuge in the event of disaster and a secure location to keep records and equipment of value. When those who established the Mechanics Guild made their decisions, the ancestors of we librarians were forced to agree to their terms. In order to prevent the Mechanics Guild from destroying these records and devices, our ancestors agreed to remain silent about them. In exchange, the Guild knew all of this remained available to them if it was ever needed.”

The librarian sighed, she and the others looking guilty. “It was a bargain with demons, but necessary. The alternative would have been the loss forever of everything here and all we knew. For century after century the librarians have remained hidden here, protecting the past but unable to share it, hoping for the day when the Mechanics Guild would fall and we could once again give our knowledge to the world.”

Mari grasped Coleen’s arm. “I can’t fault your ancestors or you for that decision. I know just how ruthless the leaders of the Mechanics Guild can be.” She took a step toward one case, gazing at some of the small devices within it. “I saw something like these in the Mechanics Guild Headquarters. A very old far-talker that looked like this.” She bent to read the labels. “Rah-dee-oh. What does that mean?”

“It was what our ancestors called far-talkers.”

“Why? What does it mean?”

The librarian looked embarrassed. “We don’t know. Much of this equipment no longer works. Other devices still work, but we no longer know how to operate them safely.” Coleen gestured toward another small device. “This is a mass data storage reader. According to our information, it can hold thousands of books within it and display all of the knowledge, but how it did this we cannot remember.”

Mari stared at the racks near the device, which were filled with what looked like coins. “That’s not money?”

“No. Each of those coins holds a tremendous amount of information. Perhaps. Once they did so, but we do not know if the information on them has deteriorated over time, as the pages of a book will crumble with age.”

“How could something this small hold so much?” Mari wondered, peering at the coins. “And how could the information be read?”

Another librarian spoke up. “I believe something called a lass-er was used for that.”

“A lass-er?” Mari knelt down, digging in her pack and surfacing with one of the texts. “Like this?” She offered the ancient text to the librarian, who took it with trembling hands.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes. Just so. Somehow this light could be used to do things which normal light cannot.”

Mari looked at Coleen. “You don’t have copies of these Mechanics Guild texts?”

“No,” Coleen said, leaning to look at the one held by her fellow librarian. “The Guild kept anything designed for easy use and understanding. We have heard of those texts but thought them forever out of our reach. They were supposed to aid the people who came here if they lost more complex equipment or suffered a loss of knowledge. Those texts were designed to provide easy instructions and knowledge for regaining technology that might have been lost in a disaster. The texts are of incredible value now, literally priceless because no sum of money could replace them.”

Mari looked at the text she held, its pages made of some very tough and durable material instead of paper, but which were nonetheless showing signs of age. “You mean if something happens to these, there are no others?”

“Perhaps in the vaults of the Mechanics Guild headquarters in Palandur, where none will ever see them,” the librarian replied. She hesitated, then spoke with great care. “Lady Mari, we are skilled at making exact copies of what records we have. It has been one of our major occupations in the last few centuries, to preserve things whose originals were fading or crumbling. It would be a great service to all the people of this world if you allowed us not just to view the texts you have, but to make copies of them as well.”

“Copies?” Mari turned the text in her hand, thinking of the vast distances it must have come, the hands which must have first held it. Thinking of the perils which she and Alain had faced on the journey from Marandur to here, the times when the texts might have been lost forever. “This came from Urth? This very text? All that way, and it was held by our ancestors?”

“Yes.”

Mari took a deep breath and looked to Alain. He nodded back in agreement.

Another deep breath, and then Mari held the text carefully in both hands as she looked back at the librarians. “Exact copies? You can make exact copies? No errors? Every line, every drawing, perfect and correct?”

“That is our calling and our often-practiced skill,” Coleen confirmed eagerly.

“Then I do wish that you would make copies.” Mari swallowed nervously, then rushed out the rest of her words. “As long as they are exact copies, I would like to take the copies, and leave the originals with you, where they will be safe.”

An extended silence followed her words, then all of the librarians bowed to her, embarrassing Mari. Coleen straightened, fighting back tears. “You may be the daughter of Jules in truth, but you also have the soul of a librarian, Lady Mari. There is no way in which we can adequately repay you for a gift of this magnitude.”

“The texts aren’t mine,” Mari insisted. “They belong to everyone in this world. I’m not giving you anything that you don’t already have a right to.” She looked around, feeling very awkward, trying to find something else to talk about, and her eyes came to rest on the map of Urth and beside it the diagram of the Demeter. “What became of the great ship?” Mari asked. “It was so huge. Surely its remains must lie somewhere, or was it completely taken apart?”

“The ship was stripped of all it held and much of its structure.” Coleen pointed upwards. “The bones of the ship remain to this day, far above the sky we know, floating like the moon above this world.”

Mari jerked in surprise. “It’s still there above us? But we can’t see it?”

“Even the remains of the great ship are small compared to, say, the moon,” another librarian explained. “If we trained powerful far-seers on it, we could see the remains, but—”

“But,” Mari continued, “the Mechanics Guild has discouraged or banned anything to do with the study of the skies and the stars. Of course. They didn’t want anyone figuring out where we came from, or seeing the ship.” She shook her head, feeling her jaw tighten. “What incredible selfishness and arrogance.”

Alain had gone back to study the map of Urth. “Why did the ship come here? It must have been a tremendous undertaking.”

“We are no longer certain,” Coleen admitted. “I’m sure the truth lies somewhere in there,” she added, with a wave at the drawers full of shiny information coins. “But we no longer know which of the possible reasons we recall are true. Some say that it was simply adventure and exploration. Some that it was an attempt to spread humanity’s seed to the stars. Others think that such an expensive and enormous undertaking meant that they had no choice, that some disaster loomed which would cripple or even kill all who remained on Urth.”

Mari stared at Coleen. “Like a terrible storm?”

“We do not know,” she replied.

“If what we remember is true,” a male librarian said, “worlds can suffer enough variation in climate to cause serious problems. Then there are said to be huge stones floating in the vastness between stars, and sometimes these fall to a world, as if a mass equal to the entire island of Altis became a projectile to strike Dematr. You can imagine the damage. It is also said stars such our sun and the sun that warms Urth can change, becoming hotter, larger, or even exploding when their fuel is exhausted.”

“What?” Mari shook her head firmly. “I don’t know about the rest, but that last can’t be right. How can something explode after it runs out of fuel? An explosion needs something to feed it.”

“We do not know,” the librarian said with equal firmness, “but what remains to us says this can happen.”

“I don’t see how. What kind of fuel does a sun use, anyway?”

The librarian made a helpless gesture. “That knowledge was withheld from us by the Mechanics Guild’s founders.”

Alain was looking at another map. “This is Dematr, our world. But it looks more like a painting than a drawing.”

“It is an image,” Coleen explained. “Made from what were called orbital surveys when the great ship first arrived here.”

“I have been told how the world appears to one riding a Roc high in the sky,” Alain said. “This seems the same, but as if from a height no Roc could reach.” He pointed to the map. “There is the Dematr we know, the lands around the Sea of Bakre. But what is this far to the west across the Umbari Ocean?”

Mari answered before the librarians could. “The western continent? It’s real?”

“Yes,” Coleen said. “Far enough distant to be difficult to reach with the ships we have. Needless to say, the Great Guilds have not permitted any expeditions in search of it. As far as we know, no ship has ever gone there, and no people live there. Perhaps it has plants and animals such as those we know, or perhaps it is still like this world was before the great ship came.”

“You know so much,” Mari said softly. “You have kept so much knowledge safe. And yet there is still so much more to learn.”

Coleen smiled. “Those things are the definition of happiness for a librarian. That and sharing the knowledge we have.”

Mari walked carefully through the room, not quite touching the devices, noting that all had been kept clean and free of dust. The Mechanic in her admired the care with which the librarians had tried to maintain these things. “When I saw the texts in Marandur, and saw all of the amazing things they described, I knew it had to have come from somewhere. All of that technology had to have developed over many years, building on advance after advance.” Her gaze went to the maps again. “And now I know where it came from. Urth. Where our ancestors lived and hopefully our brothers and sisters still live. And now I also know how much was taken from us, and why, by those who founded the Mechanics Guild.”

She stopped in front of a very large box which rose slightly higher than her height and was about three times her width. Mari read the label on the device, which had words stamped into metal. “ ‘Transmitter.’ This is the largest far-talker I’ve ever seen. Why is it so big?”

The voice of the librarian who answered Mari was hushed. “It is designed to talk not to anyone on Dematr, but to the stars. This device is supposed to be able to send a message to Urth itself, and receive replies.”

Mari stared at the librarian, then back at the transmitter. “It has enough range to reach across a distance that took centuries to cover? Does it still work?”

“We don’t know. It should. It has never been activated.”

“Why not?”

Coleen answered this time, her voice resigned. “The Mechanics Guild forbade our ancestors to activate it. The librarians of the tower have survived these many years because the Guild wanted to have these devices and knowledge still available if they were needed to maintain control of this world. But we have always existed at the sufferance of the Mechanics Guild, for we have neither weapons nor defenses. Over time, knowledge of us may have faded in the Guild, a loss of memory probably aggravated by the purges which have occasionally resulted in the deaths of numerous Mechanics.”

“Purges?” Mari asked. “Was the last one of those about a century ago?”

“It was.” Coleen made a helpless gesture. “We have had no inspectors from the Mechanics Guild visit for many decades, and when you first appeared we feared that the Guild had remembered our presence here. But it appears the Guild has forgotten us. However, if we activate the transmitter, it might alert the Guild. We don’t know. We have never dared try it, for if the Guild learned we had done so then everything here could be lost.”

Another librarian spoke gruffly. “It’s questionable whether we still can activate the transmitter. We told you earlier that the power we receive from the tower has slowly lessened. It may no longer be enough.”

Mari ran one hand very gently across the surface of the transmitter. “Maybe someday I can get another generator here. I saw that your stream is fed by a waterfall, so a simple water turbine might be all you need.” She bent to look at the transmitter’s label again. “ ‘Feyn-man. Feynman Transmitter.’ What does Feynman mean?” The librarians shook their heads in reply. “I didn’t see an antenna.”

“The tower contains the antenna—is the antenna, if what we have remembered is true.”

Once more Mari touched the device reverently. “We’ll speak to the stars. Someday we’ll speak to the stars.”

Coleen spoke with sadness this time. “We can offer you no aid in your task, Lady Mari. We must remain hidden while the Mechanics Guild retains power, and we have no weapons to offer you.”

Mari gazed back at the librarian. “My friends and I can make weapons, with the help of those texts. I don’t want to have to use them, but we may have no choice. If the Great Guilds remain in control of this world, everywhere will end up like Tiae and eventually Marandur—because the founders of the Mechanics Guild wanted the wealth and power of Dematr for themselves.”

Alain nodded. “And because the Mage Guild will not care what is happening to everyone else as long as its elders stay in control. They do not wish change, because they do not believe the suffering of others is real. They would not believe this is real, even as they die at the hands of mobs of commons.”

“You said most of the crew of the great ship disobeyed the orders they had been given long ago,” Mari said to Coleen. “Do you know what those orders were?”

Coleen looked at the other librarians, who made various gestures of ignorance. “All that we know,” she told Mari, “is that what they did—take control of all technology and power for themselves—was in violation of those orders.”

“Then whatever they were told to do involved sharing their knowledge with everyone,” Mari said. “And sharing power with everyone. Those people who built the great ship, who knew so much more than we did, intended that this world be free of the control of anything like the Great Guilds. They intended that the commons have more control over their own lives.”

“That is safe to say,” Coleen agreed.

“Then I know what my job entails,” Mari said. “In order to fix things, I need to correct the errors made long ago. I need to break the power of the Great Guilds, and I need to give the common folk the right to rule themselves.”

“Do you truly believe that you can do that?” Coleen asked.

“I don’t know,” Mari said, looking toward Alain. “But we’re either going to succeed, or die trying.”

The librarians had given them a comfortable room to stay in while the librarians worked through the days and nights copying everything Mari had brought. Night had fallen, and from their bed Mari and Alain could look through a window at the stars shining above the valley where the tower sat.

“Can you believe it, Alain?” Mari asked him. “It’s so astounding. What must that voyage have been like? What is Urth like? Think how it must have felt when those people got here and first set foot on this world.”

“And then decided to enslave all the others who would live here,” Alain could not help adding.

She turned and gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I’m trying to focus on the romance here. What are you thinking? All of this Mechanic stuff in the tower and all, and finding out the Mages began appearing after people got here. How does that all feel for you?”

Alain did not answer for a little while, trying to put his thoughts together. “I thought at first that you were very unhappy, distressed when you saw all of those Mechanic devices. I wondered if you were jealous of those who had created such things. But then I saw that it was joy that moved you. And I felt some of that, through you. There is much to learn. We share that, you and I. In many ways our thoughts are different, but both of us want to learn new things. In that we are alike.”

Perhaps Mari sensed that he had more to say, because she waited until he spoke again.

Alain gestured at the stars. “You know that I was taught that all we see is false, an illusion. Those stars, this world. And so I can change the illusion, for a little while. But people make the illusions, and this has been puzzling me more and more. Mage teaching says that people are but shadows moving across the world illusion. Even I would be but a shadow in someone else’s mind. But I do not believe that any more, not of you and increasingly not of others. If we create the illusions by what we believe, then how can we be illusions as well?”

Mari made a baffled gesture. “I’m not quite following you, but I would think that to create something you’d have to be real.”

“Yes,” Alain said in a low but intense voice. “The people are real. That surely is the explanation for why the Mage arts cannot directly alter a person as they can anything else.”

“You told me about that. It is kind of odd. I mean, people are made of the same elements as other things in the world.”

“People are not those things. They are different somehow. But they are not illusions. No Mage can alter that which is real, and I now believe that each person is a reality, and a truth.”

Mari reached over and grasped his hand. “I’d sure like to believe that’s true.”

“I think it is. Why has not my connection to other people harmed my ability to change the world illusion? Because it is a totally different thing. I can love you and it harms my art not at all. Indeed, I believe my love is somehow leading me to a new level of art. I have told you this, that I have found new strength. I do not understand it all, yet, but I feel things I did not feel before, and I sense possibilities beyond anything my elders promised.”

“Because you love me?” Mari sounded uncomfortable. “I’m not that special.”

“You are a truth, Mari. Everyone is. More importantly, you are my truth.”

“You’re really embarrassing me.”

“I am sorry,” Alain said.

She laughed and held him close. “Wait’ll I get you someplace safe and private again.”

“Must we wait?”

“You’ll have to. The librarians said there is some sort of ancient recording device in each of these rooms and they never know when one will kick on for a little while. They may be willing to live with that possibility, but I’m not.” Mari lay back, then spoke tentatively. “Alain? That reminds me. Is there something about being married that Mages know that nobody else does?”

Alain frowned up at the dark, puzzled by the question. “Not that I know of.”

“But somebody told me that everybody knows Mages know something nobody else knows. I didn’t know that, but everybody else knows it.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Um.” Alain tried to work his way through her last statement. “How could it be something only Mages know if everybody knows it?”

“No,” Mari said, exasperated. “You’re trying to confuse me.”

“I am trying to confuse you?”

“It’s something that Mages know that everybody knows Mages know but nobody else knows,” Mari said.

“Mari, I really have no idea—”

“About being married, Alain!”

Alain tried to remember every reference to marriage he had heard from other Mages. There were not many, and they were all the same. “The only thing I was ever told about marriage by Mage elders was to avoid it all costs, because it weakened you.”

“That’s not it. And I’d like to have a talk with those Mage elders someday.”

“That probably would not be a good idea,” Alain suggested. “What is this thing Mages know about marriage supposed to be about?”

“You know.”

“Uh, no.”

“People,” Mari said. “In bed together. Something special about that.”

“Are you serious?” Alain thought, then again shook his head. “No. Nothing. No one ever said anything about that. We were told that sex was but a physical act and no emotion must connect to it.”

“Really?” Mari asked. “Maybe a female Mage would know. I’ll ask Asha the next time we see her.”

“Mari, I must ask again if you are serious?”

“Yes. Alain, I’m afraid this is something you just don’t understand.”

Alain lay back again, staring at the ceiling. “I am certainly not going to argue that,” he murmured under his breath.

“I heard that!”

Alain raised his hand to gaze at the ring there. It had not caused any physical changes in him that he knew of, but Mari’s ring seemed to have given her extraordinarily good hearing. He wondered if they only had that effect on Mechanics, or if all women gained that ability along with their rings.

“Alain?”

“Yes, Mari?”

“Would you have done it?”

Alain took a moment to ponder what that could refer to. “What do you mean?”

“What those people did, the ones who gave their unborn children to the ship.” He heard her sigh. “They would never see those children, and those children would never know their parents. They would grow up so unimaginably far away, and they wouldn’t even be born until long after their parents had died. That would be so hard. But those children would someday walk the soil of another world, one warmed by a different sun, and they’d see and experience things their parents couldn’t even imagine. And those people knew that someday their children and grandchildren and so on would live on that world and make it their own. So I can’t decide.”

Alain lay silent for a little while, thinking about it. “I do not know. As you say, it would not be an easy choice.”

“No. It would be very, very hard. I guess I’m lucky we’ll never face that choice. I have a feeling that having children will require enough difficult decisions as it is.”

Alain felt a curious blend of wonder and fear fill him. He could not see her expression well in the dark, but Mari’s comments reminded him of her statements about children earlier that day, her actions when she had heard about the passengers on the great ship, as if she were protecting something inside her. “Mari? Are you trying to tell me something?”

“What do you think I’m trying to tell you?”

“This talk of children…”

“Well, we have to think about it, Alain.”

“But…”

“You seemed upset when the librarians and I were talking about the passengers on the ship.” Mari rose up on one elbow and gazed at him. “Does having children scare you? Do you not want children? You never said that before.”

Alain stared back at her, feeling his questions crystallize into near certainty at the upset sound in her voice. “I want children. I do. But I thought that would be later, when the risks to us were much lower.”

“That’s right,” Mari said.

“But, you keep talking about… acting as if…” Alain was having trouble getting the words to come out, something that he found perplexing. “Mari, are you… ?”

“Am I what? Am I sure?”

“No.” Neither his Mage training nor his time with Mari had prepared him for this. “Are you expecting a child?”

“Am I what? Stars above, no! I need a few more years of life under my belt before I’ll be ready to handle raising children, especially if ours have any combination of your personality and mine.. I’d also like a little better assurance that I’ll even be alive a few years from now before I take on responsibility for a new life.” Mari suddenly laughed. “Was I trying to tell you something! I had you worried, didn’t I?”

“A little,” Alain admitted.

“ ‘A little’? I’ll bet you were terrified! Oh, now I understand! No wonder you got so nervous! You thought—!” Mari laughed some more, and even after she fell asleep Alain suspected Mari still had a smile on her face.

But he lay awake a while longer, gazing up through the window at the stars filling the night sky, feeling relieved but also, in some strange way, disappointed.

The next few days passed slowly. Mari kept fidgeting, knowing that Alli would have begun looking for them to return to the city but would be waiting in vain each evening. The mysterious special Mechanics would have arrived in Altis by now. What would they be doing? Had either the Mechanics Guild or the Mage Guild figured out that Mari and Alain were on this island? As Captain Patila had warned, there was only one good way out of Altis, via the city and the port, and Mari wanted to be gone before that path was blocked. Her most important questions had been answered, but the librarians needed time to copy the texts she had brought even with all of them working at full speed on the project. She couldn’t complain about the food, since the librarians kept offering the best their small farms could provide, and the sleeping room was quite comfortable except for the ever-present possibility that some kind of device would begin making a record of her actions without her knowledge.

But there was so much to do, and she had no way of knowing how much time was left to do it. “I’m worried about Alli,” Mari informed Alain.

“She seemed very capable,” he commented.

“Of course she is! But so am I, and I wouldn’t have lasted nearly this long if not for having you around.” Mari frowned, looking out the window and down across the valley. “You know, that’s important.”

“I am glad you think so.”

“Stop it. I’m serious.” She turned to look at him. “It’s like we found out at Ringhmon. Something that would have trapped or killed one of us, the other could get through. Working together, we could overcome any threat. That’s personally important to us, but I’m wondering about these purges in the Mechanics Guild that have happened every now and then, according to what Alli’s friend found out and what the librarians say. There must have been Mechanics like me before, people who were willing to risk themselves for what was right. But they always must have failed.”

“They were not the daughter,” Alain said.

“How do we know that?” Mari asked. “How do we know that I’m not just the latest daughter? That there haven’t been others, now and then in the centuries since Jules died, but those others never made it this far?”

Alain considered her words before replying. “That is possible. A daughter of Jules, the prophecy says. Not the daughter. It could be read to mean that there would be more than one, though eventually only one would succeed. You think the others, if they were fated for the same role, failed because they had only Mechanic skills?”

“Yes.” Mari sat down next to Alain. “I’ve asked the librarians if they have any record of people who could have been earlier daughters, but they can’t find anything. If those daughters died right away, as I would have at Ringhmon, who would have heard about them? They would have been gone before they could accomplish anything, just like I would have if not for you. You’re the wild card, the random variable that Mechanic traps can’t hold. And because you’re with me, I’ve been able to escape that fate. That’s what may be different this time. You. It’s not just the daughter.”

He shook his head. “What is different is you and me, because I would not have survived alone, either. Yes, with my help you escaped the Mechanic ship, but I would have died in the Northern Ramparts long before that if not for you.”

“You and me.” She thought about that and liked it. “A team. Individually, we’d both be long dead. Together, maybe we can finally change the world. Maybe that’s what the world has been waiting for, what the prophecy really required. A Mechanic and a Mage who would work together to make things right.”

They stood at the point in the valley where the path back toward Altis began.

Coleen the librarian hesitated, then offered her hand. “We’re not supposed to take sides, but good luck anyway. May you find success in your efforts and may your life be a good one.”

“Thank you.” Mari gave her most sincere smile back. “But we’ll meet again. Alain and I will return some day, just like I said.” She swung her arm and pointed toward the base of the tower. “Some day I’ll come back with a generator, and we’ll power up that far-talker you’ve got, the one that talks to the stars, and we’ll see who answers when we call.”

Coleen’s eyes shone. “That would be a marvelous thing. What would we say, Lady Mari? What would we say to them?”

Mari grinned. “First off, we’d have to apologize for taking so long to get in touch.”

The journey back was much easier; they took the librarians’ path the entire way. The path proved to be cleverly routed, not only concealed but also containing a couple of breaks where it seemed to come to a halt. In each case, only the guidance they had received from the librarians allowed Mari and Alain to spot the relatively easy but difficult-looking route to meet up with the next stretch of the path. At its end, the path let out through a maze of broken stone into a pass which in turn led to one of the finger valleys that led into the city of Altis.

By the time they reached the city proper on their second day after leaving the librarians’ tower, the sun had long since sunk behind the mountains to the west and the streets of Altis were dark. “Let’s eat something fast and find a place to sleep,” Mari suggested. “It’s too late to meet Alli tonight.”

Alain agreed, and after cramming down a meal from a street cart which was about to shut down for the night, they found a decent though far from fancy hostel. The only room available was on the second floor, but that suited them. Once inside the room, Mari sighed and hugged Alain. “Hey, nice room, nice bed, no ancient recording devices. It’s really late, and I’m really tired, but we can still try to have some fun tonight.”

Alain held her tightly. “That would be nice. I wish we were not so tired.”

“If wishes were horses… what’s the rest of that saying, anyway? There’d be a lot more horses around?”

Alain didn’t answer, his grip tightening on her.

Mari winced. “Ouch. Careful, lover. I’ve got a lot of sore muscles.”

“Danger,” Alain murmured.

She got it then, stepping silently from Alain’s grasp and gliding over to the room’s window to look out and down. The scene outside was mostly of the alley beside the hostel, but a strip of the street could be seen past the crates stacked near the alley’s entrance. The street was dimly lit this late in the evening. She saw a couple of people walking by in the weary manner of those just trying to get home for the night. A horse-drawn wagon rolled past slowly, the hollow clopping of hooves sounding strangely threatening. “I don’t see anything out here,” Mari whispered.

Alain shook his head. “My foresight warns of danger outside the window.” He pointed toward the door. “And there. I do not know what.”

Mari drew her pistol, carefully and quietly chambering a round and letting off the safety, then walking on cat’s feet to the door. Kneeling, she peered under it and saw nothing. Standing again, Mari listened intently. She heard nothing, and yet that very silence felt dangerous in some inexplicable way. Mari reached for the door handle, turning it carefully, then with infinite care eased the door open very cautiously, her pistol aimed at the gap as it opened. Nothing was visible in the barely lit hallway outside the room. Mari waited, breathing shallowly, then suddenly swung out as fast as she could and stared toward the stairs.

Easily half a dozen people were stealthily coming down the hall, carrying rifles, their Mechanics jackets a deeper dark against the night. They froze as they saw Mari, then charged toward her, raising their weapons as they came.