Heris never did understand that part. But all the old farts agreed: The thing could not be managed without the presence of the divine blood. They were the ones intimate with the Night. They knew the supernatural rules.
She hoped.
Iron Eyes was waiting on the quay. Impatiently. “Good to see you two…” He did not explain what irritated him. “The youngsters are over there already. Including my only son. The Windwalker is working himself up. He knows the appearance of Aelen Kofer means an attack is coming. It always has. He’ll think the Old Ones are free and will turn up after the Aelen Kofer prepare the way. But all he’ll get is you. Hurry. I don’t want him smashing up the future of my tribe.”
Heris scowled. If Jarneyn hadn’t been determined to save the dwarf world from outsider pollution she and the ascendant would be there now. “So let’s hoist all sail and a-reeving go.”
That won no smiles.
They kept saying she had to work on her sense of humor.
Iron Eyes wasted no time moving Heris and Asgrimmur outside the Realm of the Gods.
The ascendant was shaking when Heris took hold for the translation. So. He could be afraid despite all his strength and power.
Out the other side, arriving at the same point as before, with Asgrimmur totally shaken. He needed three minutes to regain control.
“Are the transitions really that rough?” Heris asked. They were like blinking her eyes for her, anymore.
“Yes. And worse each time. That was terrible. I felt trapped. The more time went on the more sure I was that I’d never get out again.”
“We need to explore that, then. Come on. Tell me while we’re getting set to shoot.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me what you experienced, carefully and clearly. I want to know why it’s different from what I experience. And will you look at that?”
There had been a dramatic change in the Windwalker. The great jellyfish blob was gone. The god had traded the protection of two-thirds of its mass for a shape that concentrated strength and required less energy to maintain.
The Windwalker now resembled a gigantic lard toad tadpole about to shed its last remnant of a tail.
Asgrimmur said, “It isn’t that hard to explain. When you translate you’re a human cutting a chord across the Night. When you carry me you take a part of me back home. The Banished and the Walker were born of the Night. Svavar was imprisoned there for centuries. Svavar is repelled. The Walker and Banished are, too, but they’re also drawn. And we can see the entities that dwell there. The hideous souls.”
“Souls? It’s like Hell? Or Purgatory? Or Limbo?”
“Limbo, maybe. For the souls of gods. Instrumentalities have two souls. They bring one into our world with them. They leave the other one in the Night. It anchors them. I see those when we pass through.”
“Well, that sounds good.” Distracted. “It’s got eyes this time. It’s looking at us… Down!” She pulled the ascendant off his feet.
The toad-thing’s tongue struck where they had been an instant earlier. Heris wasted several seconds wondering how she had anticipated Kharoulke. Maybe repeated exposures during her transitions had left her sensitive. “Why am I wasting time brooding when that thing is about to…? You Aelen Kofer! Why aren’t you shooting?”
Asgrimmur tried to say something.
“Yeah. Never mind for now. Come on.” She grabbed his hand and yanked, proud that she had remembered which one was real. She headed for the nearest dwarfish ballista.
That, being of Aelen Kofer manufacture, was an amazing engine. Which had been assembled where it could not be brought to bear on the Windwalker. None of the crew admitted sharing a language with Heris.
Asgrimmur interrupted her rant, “They couldn’t put it together in a clear line of sight because the Instrumentality would get them with its tongue.”
Heris’s high excitement wilted. “All this for nothing? Did I outsmart myself again?”
“Again?”
“For the first time. What do I do now?”
“You go to the other machine, which is out of the toad’s range, and get it started. Once the Instrumentality is fixed on it these dwarves will move their engine up.”
“You follow dwarf gabble good enough to get all that?”
“I filled in based on context. But parts of me did speak the language when they were independent.”
“Got you. Hanging around with them probably helped, too. So. Here we go. Off to the other one. Carry on, boys. You’re doing a wonderful job.”
Jarneyn’s son, called Copper, had picked up some middle-world Firaldian from Heris, Asgrimmur, and the Ninth Unknown. Copper was in charge of the second and even bigger Aelen Kofer machine. Heris demanded, “Why haven’t you shot the damned thing yet?”
“We were directed not to engage until you were here to see the effect of each shot.”
Heris muttered something about beginning to understand the frustrations her brother often felt. “All right. Talk to me. What are you going to do, Copper? And how did you come by that name?”
His companions snickered. Heris did not miss the fact that they understood her question fine. Then recalled that when they cared to the Aelen Kofer commanded the mythic power to understand all languages. When they failed to understand they did so deliberately.
Copper said, “It’s a bad joke. I did something stupid a few hundred years ago.”
“All right. When I need to know I’ll ask Iron Eyes. What are you doing?”
In part, that was obvious. The dwarves were cranking the ballista so tight it shrieked in protest.
Copper said, “Velocity will be critical, first shot. That will be a missile we cobbled together while we were waiting.” By gesture he invited her closer to the engine, a bow type with long arms crafted of laminated horn from a beast that did not exist in the middle world.
Done cranking, the dwarves moved to their ammunition, carefully arranged on the flattest ground available. Heris counted eight shafts, each fourteen feet long. They ranged from three to six inches in diameter. The one selected was six inches thick and appeared to be made of ice in imitation of a fluted marble column. The head flared out to a foot wide, beginning three feet from the end. That head was hollowed back in a cone shape a foot and a half deep inside.
“That looks like ice,” Heris said.
“It is ice. Carefully frozen, then bound with strings of the sort used on the rainbow bridge. If there wasn’t an overcast you’d see the light do marvelous things.”
“How can ice hurt the Windwalker? He’s a winter god.”
“It won’t stay ice. Impact will turn the ice to water. Hot water. As one shaft splits into twenty thinner ones. The Instrumentality will have twenty jets of water shooting through him. The pain should break his concentration.”
The shaft was in place. The Aelen Kofer moved to where they could begin cranking as soon as the ballista discharged.
Copper said, “This was your idea. All we did was tinker. Which is what Aelen Kofer do. Get up on the king seat and give the old toad a poke in the eye.”
Heris allowed herself to be guided to a seat atop the engine, above and to the left of the butt of the ice shaft. Copper said, “You see two oak levers by your right hand. The nearest one is the safety capture. Push forward on that one first. When you want to loose you do the same with the farther lever. Do them in that order, left lever, right lever, or you’ll find yourself in big trouble.”
“Got it. Forward on the nearest lever, then shoot with the other one.” She rested her hand on the safety release. That lever was as long as an ax handle. She focused on the Instrumentality, whose own focus was entirely on her.
The god knew what was coming. It was poised to do something about it. Kharoulke was one hundred percent connected to the moment. Was one hundred percent outside the Realm of Night. This was a fight for existence. No
