Renyard's friends. They bring desperate news. As we suspected, our foes attack three realms at least, all of them strategic. Your own world is in mortal peril. Tanelorn herself is again under deep siege, this time from Law, and could fall at any moment. And now, it seems, Moo Uria herself faces her greatest threat. This is not coincidence, gentlemen. We have a very powerful opponent.' She was already leading us away from the docked raft, through twisting, narrow streets.
'But Tanelorn can't be conquered,' said Fromental. 'Tanelorn is eternal.'
Oona turned serious eyes up towards his distant face. 'Eternity as we understand it is in jeopardy. All that we take for granted. All that is permanent and inviolable. Everything is under attack. Gaynor's ambitions could bring about the destruction of sentience. The end of consciousness. Our own extinction. And possibly the extinction of the multiverse herself.'
'Perhaps we should have killed him when he first threatened us,' said Fromental.
The young huntress shrugged her shoulders as she led us into one of the slender buildings. 'You could not kill him then,' she said. 'It would be morally impossible.'
'How so?' I asked.
Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if I had missed the most obvious answer in the world.
'Because,' she said, 'at that point in your mutual histories he had yet to commit his great crime.'
Chapter Nine
A Conference of Spheres
I was having difficulties with Mittelmarch notions of time. It seems we were all fated to live identical lives in billions of counterrealities, rarely able to change our stories, yet constantly striving to do so. Occasionally, one of us was successful, and it was the effort to change that story which somehow helped maintain the balance of the universe-or rather the multitude of alternate universes Oona called 'the multiverse,' where all our stories were being played out in some form. Oona was patient with me but I was of a prosaic disposition and such notions didn't sit easily with my ideas of common sense. Gradually I began to see the broader vision, which helped me understand how our dreams were simply glimpses of other lives, often at their most dramatic, and how it was possible for some of us to move between these dreams, these other lives, and even sometimes change them.
She spoke of these matters after she had taken me to my quarters and allowed me to refresh myself. Then, when I was reinvig-orated, she led me out into the sinuous streets of Mu Ooria, a vital, crowded city which was far more cosmopolitan than I had anticipated. Clearly not all humans were banished into the darkness. Entire quarters were filled with people of many different races and creeds, evidence of a great mingling of cultures, including that of the Off-Moo. We passed through street markets which might have flourished in modern Cologne, between houses which would not have been out of place in medieval France. Clearly the Off-Moo had a long history of welcoming refugees from the surface, and these people had kept their habits and customs, blending happily with the others.
As well as the familiar, there was also the exotic. Oona led me past reflective jet and basalt terraces festooned with pale lichens and fungi, balconies of sinuous limestone whose occupants were sometimes indistinguishable from the rock. This eternal, sparkling night had a luring beauty of its own. I could understand how so many chose to settle here. While you might never know sunlight and fields of spring flowers, neither would you know the kind of conflict which could rob you of both in an instant.
I understood and sympathized with the people who had chosen to live here, but I longed to see again the familiar, robust, cherry cheeks of our honest Bek peasantry. Not one of the inhabitants of this place looked entirely alive, though they obviously took pleasure in their existence and enjoyed a high level of complex civilization, despite the sense of the crushing weight of rock overhead, the knowledge of this land's dark boundaries, the hush which seemed to settle everywhere, the slightly exaggerated courtesy you didn't expect to find in a busy metropolis. I had every admiration for it but would never choose to settle here myself. Would I ever now find my way back to my fatherland?
Again I was filled with a sense of desperate frustration. I loved my country and my world. All I wanted was the opportunity to fight for what was decent and honorable in both. I needed to take my place with those who resisted a cowardly terror. Who encountered cruelly philistine forces wishing to destroy everything that had ever been valuable in our culture. I told Oona this, as we continued to stroll through the winding canyons of the city, admiring gardens and architecture, exchanging pleasantries with passersby.
'Believe me, Count Ulric,' she assured me, 'if we are successful, you will have every opportunity to fight the Nazis again. But there is much to be done. The same battle lines are being drawn on at least three separate planes and at this stage it looks as if our enemies are stronger.'
'You're suggesting I fight for the same cause by taking part in your struggle?'
'I am saying that the cause is the same. How you serve it will ultimately be your decision. But it will be simultaneous with other decisions.' She smiled at me and put her delicate hand into mine, leading me eventually into a great, natural circle, slightly concave, close to the city's center. Here there were no stalagmites, and the stalactites in the roof were hidden by the deep shadow created by the lake's glare.
I thought at first this was an amphitheater, but there was no evidence that it accommodated any kind of audience. Leading out of the circle was one wide main thoroughfare which seemed to go directly to the lake. If the Off-Moo were a different people I would have assumed it was designed to display some kind of military triumph-a returning navy might parade up this avenue and its victorious forces present themselves to the people in the great, shallow bowl.
Oona was amused by my stumbling suggestions, my noticing that the floor seemed to have been worn smooth by thousands of feet, that there was a faint, familiar smell to the place.
'This is the only chance you will have to come here,' she said. 'Assuming the tenant returns.'
'Tenant?'
'Yes. He has lived with the Off-Moo for as long as their history. Some think they came to this world together. There is even evidence that the city was created around him. He is very old indeed and sleeps a great deal. Periodically, perhaps when he is hungry, he leaves this place and travels down there'-she pointed to the broad avenue-'to the lake. The times of his disappearances vary, but he has always returned.'
I looked around for some kind of dwelling. 'He lives here without furniture or shelter?'
She was enjoying my mystification.
'He is a gigantic serpent,' she said. 'In appearance not unlike the voluk, but much bigger. He sleeps here and offers no harm to the Off-Moo. He has been known to protect them in the past. They believe that he goes into the lake to hunt. A strange beast, with long side fins, almost like the wings of a ray, but primarily reptilian. Some believe he has vestigial limbs secreted within his body, that he is in fact more lizard than snake. Not unlike those resurrected husks they turn into rafts, though much larger, of course.'
'The World Serpent?' Half amused, half in awe, I referred to the mythical Worm Oroborous, said by our ancestors to guard the roots of the World Tree.
Surprisingly her tone was sober when she replied. 'Perhaps,' she said. Then, deliberately, she lightened her mood and took my hand again.
I was suddenly conscious that I was trespassing and was glad to let her laugh and lead me through another series of winding twit-tens to show me the pastel glories of the water gardens, fashioned from natural stone and cultivated fungi. Glimmering points of light from the misty miniature falls reflected all the subtle colors of the bizarre underground fauna. My guide was delighted at my enchantment, taking proprietorial pride in the wonders of Mu Ooria.
'Could you not learn to love this place?' she asked me, linking her arm in mine. With her I felt a friendliness, a comfortable closeness which I had never experienced with another woman. I found it relaxing.
'I love it already,' I told her, 'and I think the Off-Moo a civil and cultivated race. An exemplary people. I could stay here for a year and never experience all the city has to offer. But it isn't in my nature, Fraiilein Oona, to take exotic holidays while my nation is threatened by a monster far more dangerous than Mu Ooria's adopted serpent!'
