“What can he do?” Jacent spoke from sheer amazement that there was anyone who might be thought to be helpful.
“Nothing,” said Boarmus. “Most likely nothing. But I’ve done everything I can think of, and this is the only thing left to try. There were dragons on Panubi. I don’t know what kind. But Files says dragons are supposed to be … miraculous. Holy, maybe, whatever that means. And if there’s anything holy or miraculous left in this world, we need it to help us. So go, boy. Go!”
Jacent climbed into the machine and went. He didn’t know how to fly it, but it wasn’t that different from something he did know how to fly. He didn’t know where Panubi was, but the on-board navigator was able to find it. He didn’t know where Zasper was, either, but the model thirty-four knew where the Enforcer post near Shallow was, and those left alive at the post remembered that Zasper had gone west, toward Thrasis and the Great Wall.
14
As he made his erratic way above the River Floh, Jacent saw lines of refugees traveling westward along the banks and over the undulating plains. Scattered encampments stood at the Great Wall where people were frantically building ladders and towers. Though bodies lay heaped here and there along the line of march, Jacent saw no signs of human conflict. The refugees had been hunted down, were still being hunted down by the other thing.
Past the Great Wall the killing stopped. Here he saw only groups on the move, escapees from Deep and Shallow who’d swum past the barrier, and people from other provinces who’d come by boat or raft. The surface of the Floh was still speckled with small craft tacking their slow way upstream.
When the gorge gaped its narrow throat before him, he prudently chose to fly over rather than through it, and this route brought him in sight of two Enforcers making slow progress along the high trail. By that time Jacent needed company almost as badly as he needed directions. He landed the flier—unskillfully—and took Fringe and Danivon aboard. Danivon, who had noted the sloppy landing, took over the flier, and this allowed Jacent to concentrate on Boarmus’s message. Though made rather incoherent by fear and exhaustion, he managed to convey that Tolerance was being wiped out, that Boarmus wanted a miracle, would they take him to Zasper, who would produce one.
“I don’t know what kind of miracle old Boarmus expects,” Danivon said flatly. “I know Zasper won’t produce one, because Zasper is dead. I don’t know what kind of dragons there are where we’re going, if any. I left the group in Thrasis, and up until then we’d only seen the one dragony beast the old woman had with her plus some smaller ones said to be its descendants.”
“Jory’s dragon was impressive,” commented Fringe in an infuriatingly calm voice.
“That’s true,” Danivon agreed, gritting his teeth. “But it had surprise on its side, and even if there were hundreds like it, they wouldn’t be much use against a world full of killing machines.”
Jacent wiped tears of weariness from his eyes. “Boarmus was really hoping about the dragons. And I was too.”
“Then you must hope for some other dragons. Since none of us have been where we’re going, how can we say what we’ll find?” Danivon cast a sidelong look at Fringe, who sat stiffly beside him, saying nothing, wearing the half smile she had worn since she found him at the riverside. If they all saw inescapable horror looming before them, likely Fringe would still be wearing that same little smile.
“The massif,” she said unnecessarily, pointing ahead of them at the smoothly glowing dome that rose above the center of the continent like a giant carbuncle. “There’s the massif, Jacent.”
Jacent obediently followed her gaze but was unimpressed by landscape. “Nobody was getting killed inside the wall,” he persevered, unwilling to give up hope. “So there must be something here that can fight the network off.”
Danivon shook his head. “Keeping an enemy out is different from fighting one off. Withstanding siege is a different matter from winning a battle.”
Fringe said, “If it’s your safety you’re worried about, likely you’ll be safe here.”
Jacent stopped trying to hide his tears of weariness and frustration and frankly wept, his voice rising in incipient hysteria. “It isn’t just me. It’s everybody. It’s Aunt Syrilla, only she’s already dead, and it’s Boarmus and all my friends in Tolerance, and my home in Heaven, and …”
Danivon turned to lay his fingers on the boy’s lips, shutting down the flow. “All and everyone would probably be safe here, boy, but there’s not enough room in Central Panubi for the entire population of Elsewhere, even if we could think of means to get it here. Take hold of yourself. Things are as they are, and no amount of wishful thinking will change them!”
He took his hand away and Jacent was quiet, no doubt stunned into silent grief. He wasn’t alone. Since meeting Fringe, Danivon had grieved for her as he did for Zasper. Here she was beside him, yet he grieved as though she were dead. Something had happened to her. He didn’t know what, but she was most dreadfully changed.
He grunted sharply at the sight of the acropolis almost below them and let the flier sideslip toward the shore, landing it like a dried leaf on a stretch of turf. People came running. Jory and Asner limped out from one of the buildings beneath the trees, and those leaving the flier looked beyond them to see
