Dragonfly Falling

‘Close the curtains,’ he said, and one of his students did so, drawing the patched blinds to cover the falling sun. He had four in his class now: one other Moth who had likewise found his home society unbearable, a cynical but gifted Spider girl, a dysfunctional Beetle youth who could never sit still, and a Fly who came every tenday but never seemed to learn anything. He would need them all now, for whatever faint help they could give.

‘We are going to embark on a ritual,’ he told them, when they were all seated on the floor of his room. Between the walls and his desk there was so little room that their knees were all touching in their circle. ‘This ritual is to attack the Vekken army in ways that the material and mundane defences of this city are incapable of. Precisely what effect we can manifest I am unsure but, as I have taught you, the power of magic stems from darkness, fear, uncertainty, ill luck. All those gaps between the lighted parts of the world.’

‘All things that can’t be tested,’ said the fidgeting Beetle youth. ‘That can’t be proved.’

‘That is so,’ Doctor Nicrephos agreed, ‘and very close to the heart of the mystery.’

‘Doctor, is this going to work? I mean, really?’ asked the Spider girl. She cared, he knew, more for her politics and her rumours than for her studies.

‘Yes, Doctor, because I was thinking about finding myself a sword and going onto the wall,’ the Fly added. ‘I don’t see we can do any good here.’

‘But that is the very attitude you must banish, if we are to do good,’ Nicrephos insisted. ‘Belief is what you require. If you go into this without belief then, yes, we will fail. You must open your minds to the possibility, allow room for that uncertainty.’

That they looked doubtful was an understatement. With no other option, though, he pressed on. ‘Listen to me, close your eyes, all of you.’

With poor grace, they did so.

‘I require your help, your thoughts, your strength in this. It is a great magic that I intend, that I could not manage on my own. I want you to bend your thoughts on the Vekken camps. Many of you must have seen them from the walls, or from the air. Think of all the Vekken soldiers, hundreds and hundreds of them, with their tents all in lines so very exact, and inside those tents their palettes laid out just so. Imagine them going to sleep there at night, all at the same time, like some great machine. But they are not machines. They are men and women as we are. They have minds, although those minds bleed into one another. I want you to imagine that mind as though you could see it, the mind of all the Ant-kinden there, like a great fog hanging about their camp.’

He could see it himself, in his mind’s eye, a great shining jelly-like creature that squatted in and about all those orderly tents, the minds of all the Ant-kinden, touching and connecting.

‘We are going to insert something in that mind,’ he went on, after he had given them a good long chance to picture it. ‘We are going to put something dark in it. There are always areas of the mind that are ready to accept darkness. These Ants love certainty and order, and so they must fear doubt and chaos. You must think of all the doubt and chaos that you can, imagine taking it from your own minds and placing it within that great lattice-mind of the Vekken. All your fears, all your worries, all your pains and guilt, you must dredge these up for me and project them into the mind of the Ants.’

He stopped talking, feeling the pull of concentration build up between them. He was straining now, his heart knocking in his chest. It was so very long since he had done anything like this, and it was like trying to gather a great thing and push it up a steep slope. His students were little help, doubtful, embarrassed, reluctant to look at the darkness within themselves, and more than that, there was the great and overarching ceiling that was Collegium, city of progress and science, of merchants and scholars and artificers, and a hundred thousand people who did not believe.

It was no good, he realized. He had not the strength to force his own will out of the city, let alone onto the Ants. He was too old and had been too long amongst these people.

Now his one chance to aid in the defence of his home was faltering. His students were beginning to shuffle as the silence dragged.

He called out, in his mind, If there is some power that hears me, please help me, for I have not the strength! I will promise what you ask, but help me, please!

He heard one of them, the Spider girl, draw her breath in hurriedly, and then there was a sudden pain in his skull that made him arch his back and choke. It was cold, pure cold, reaching along his spine and prying its way into his eyes. He felt tears start and freeze on his cheeks. Something had grasped him with thorned hands that thrust into his mind.

And, despite all this pain he heard the words in his mind, a monstrous, mournful chorus that said: What is this that calls? What is this that begs of us?

I am Doctor Nicrephos of Collegium, he said desperately, because the pain and the pressure combined were on the point of stopping his heart. If you have strength then lend it to me, for my city is under threat and I would send my thoughts onto our enemy. Please, if you know any pity, lend me your strength!

How bold you are, the voices said. Old man, you have not so many breaths yet to draw. Why seek to save that which will so soon outlive you? We have no pity but we do have strength. What claim have you on us?

Ask what you will, Doctor Nicrephos promised. Please aid me, and I shall do as you ask.

He felt his request hang in the balance. He knew his students had all felt this change too, that the room was cold enough for frost to form on the curtains, and that their breaths were pluming visibly in the dim air.

We shall aid you, but you shall perform a task for us — and it may mean your death that much sooner.

He would have agreed, he was sure, but they were not seeking his agreement. The compact is made, the dirge of the voices continued, and he felt the cold, that had already tested the limits of his tolerance, double and redouble, flood into the room, through his students, and then out, across the city and the walls, to poison the minds of the Ants. It fought its way clear of the great mass of disbelief that cloaked Collegium, and set about the work he had planned for it, and he knew that the Ants would not sleep easily tonight, nor for many nights to come, because the nightmares that his new ally could bring forth were worse by far than the feeble horrors that he and his students could dream up.

Home at last. Stenwold made himself a cup of hot herb tea, hearing Balkus stomp into the spare room and collapse on his bedroll, probably still wearing his armour. He should have been bodyguarding all day, but Stenwold had told him to fight up on the wall, and Balkus — Sarnesh Ant-kinden at heart — had been only too happy to empty his nailbow at the Vekken. More than that, of course, as there had been savage close-quarters fighting there and Balkus had been in the thick of it, holding the line on the north wall. A head taller than almost all the other fighters, with a shortsword in one hand and a captured Vekken shield in the other, the man had provided a tower of strength for the defenders.

Stenwold sipped his tea, found it bitter, and poured more than a capful of almond spirits into it. He needed to sleep tonight, because tomorrow would be no more forgiving to his nerves. Perhaps Balkus would die, or Kymon. Perhaps he, Stenwold, would.

Tired as he was, he toyed with the idea of it actually being a relief. With Graden’s suicide, though, he could not fool himself that way.

He drained the cup. He knew he should be hungry, but he was too tired for it, too numbed by exhaustion.

I am not cut from this military cloth. The sight of the dead sickened him, whether their own or the enemy’s. Brave men and women all, doing what they were instructed was right, and Stenwold, of all people, knew how history wrote over such victims, and the truth of whether they had been right or wrong got washed away in the tide of years.

I hope Tisamon is doing better than I am. He felt the absence of the Mantis-kinden keenly. Yes, the man was intolerant, difficult and primitive in his simplistic concepts of the world, but he was loyal, and could be a good listener, and Stenwold had known him a long time.

He levered himself up and trudged his way up the stairs, kicking his ash-blackened boots off halfway, knowing that he would trip over them in the morning but too depressed to care. He left his leather coat hanging over the banister. His helm remained downstairs on the kitchen table.

He slogged on into the darkness of his room, unbuckling his belt, and stopped.