The White Rose

Fifty-One The Sign

A freezing rain was falling. Everything was glazed with crystal ice. “Looks like a warm snap,” I said.

She was without a sense of humor that night. It took an effort to overlook my remark. She led me to a carpet. It had a crystal dome covering the forward seats. That was a feature recently added to Limper’s craft.

The Lady used some small magic to melt the ice off. “Make sure it’s sealed tightly,” she told me.

“Looks good to me.”

We lifted off.

Suddenly I was on my back. The nose of the fish pointed at unseen stars. We climbed at a dreadful rate. I expected momentarily to be so high I could not breathe.

We got that high. And higher. We broke through the clouds. And I understood the significance of the dome.

It kept in breathable air. Meaning the windwhales could no longer climb higher than the Taken. Always chipping away, the Lady and her gang.

But what the hell was this all about?

“There.” A sigh of disappointment. A confirmation that a shadow darkened hope. She pointed.

I saw it. I knew it, for I had seen it before, in the days of the long retreat that ended in the battle before the Tower. The Great Comet. Small, but no denying its unique silver scimitar shape. “It can’t be. It isn’t due for twenty years. Celestial bodies don’t change their cycles.”

“They don’t. That’s axiomatic. So maybe the axiom makers are wrong.”

She-tilted the carpet down. “Note it in your writings, but don’t mention it otherwise. Our peoples are troubled enough.”

“Right.” That comet has a hold on men’s minds.

Back down into the yuck of a Barrowland night. We came in over the Great Barrow itself, only forty feet up. The damned river was close. The ghosts were dancing in the rain.

I sloshed into the barracks in a numb state, checked the calendar.

Twelve days to go.

The old bastard was probably out there laughing it up with his favorite hound, Toadkiller Dog.