17 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

Highkirk

At first light, an exhausted Dorsin stumbled down the clocktower stairs and pushed open the doors of the sanctuary.

Two blocks of long benches flanked an aisle that ran down the middle of the building. Stained glass windows between the buttresses colored the dawning light, illuminating dozens of snoring figures huddled beneath blankets between the pews. At the far end of the aisle, there was a dais. An object like a tall cabinet rested against the far wall; something like an altar with two winged figures was at the nearer side of the dais.

There were whispered rumors that Adonists engaged in blood sacrifice, but the altar was pristine. If blood had ever stained it, it had been cleaned up well.

To the altar's left was the T-shaped lamp with seven wicks, as Rosabella had mentioned. To the right was a throne. Or was it simply a chair? Its workmanship was solid, not exquisite, and the old man resting on it was no princeps.

As Dorsin made his way down the aisle, then man stood. He had on a hat, and tassels on the ends of his garments quivered as Dorsin approached. "Princeps Dorsin."

Dorsin nodded, stopping before the altar. "You have me at a disadvantage."

The wrinkled old man smiled, and his face became a chasm-filled wasteland of wrinkles. His knees creaked laboriously as he came down the two steps of the altar. "No, Princeps. The man who neglects to share his name in friendship shows moral disadvantage, which is the worst kind of all. Call me Zakiel. Zakiel Fehrstane, Councilman and Rab of the synakirk." Zakiel offered his hand.

The man wasn't treating him as one ought to treat a Princeps, but then, Zakiel wasn't a Nethress subject, either. Dorsin clasped Zakiel's wrist.

Zakiel nodded. "Your wife, Princeps."

"Yes. Is she well?"

"The Sodalitatis is looking after her. Please, follow me." Zakiel went to a door in the corner of the room at the back wall and led Dorsin down a dim oak hallway. "Who finds a wife finds a good thing. This has been an Adonist principle since before the Exodus."

Dorsin was grateful that the man brought up a point of commonality between their people. It made it easier for him to be equally civil. "A command by your gods, then?"

Zakiel held up a finger that quivered as he ambled. "Not gods. God."

"Adon and Yesh are--"

"One. Adon is one."

"But Yesh--"

"Is one with Adon."

Dorsin frowned. "They're two names."

"How manifold is the spirit of Adon? One? Sevenfold? Yet it is one spirit. And the spirit is also Adon."

"Many can't be one." Ah, what a mess. Here Dorsin was relying on the hospitality of these people, and he was already insulting their religion.

Zakiel offered another crevice-faced smile, though, as if he hadn't noticed. "And many aren't. One is one. Adon and Yesh are one." He patted Dorsin's arm in a manner than Dorsin could only call "fatherly," though Gerart had certainly never shown such gentleness. "What is impossible for men is possible for Him. Ah! Perhaps it isn't impossible for men, Princeps. Your flesh is one with your wife's, after all. 'Where you die, I will die, and there will my bones be buried.'"

Oralie, speaking those ancient words atop Jormungandr as the wind whipped fever-soaked hair against her face...

"But you aren't here to argue theology with an old man, Princeps." Zakiel pushed open a door into a small chamber whose oak boards gleamed, brilliant with the light of dawn. "See to your good thing."

Dorsin strode in, and Rosabella rose from the side of Oralie's bed as he entered.

A good thing. His mistress held a cloth stained with his wife's sweat.

A good thing. One thing. Not two.

A farmer cannot tend two fields. As Rosabella nodded demurely to him, he wanted to turn tail and flee.

Instead, he knelt beside the bed. Beside Oralie. Beside Rosabella. Wife and lover. He was a man cursed. "She is well?"

Rosabella went gracefully to her knees alongside Dorsin, gazing at Oralie, and he almost commanded her to leave. He didn't, because he was weak.

Rosabella nodded. Then she frowned and shook her head. "She is unchanged, my heart."

"What is the trouble?"

"I saw her, Dorsin." Rosabella turned luminous emerald eyes on him. "I saw her in Synapsis."

Dorsin thought of his terror on the street as Oralie had seized his mind and said goodbye to him. "I know."

Silence fell for a while as they stared at Oralie.

"There is a realm of darkness and stars. She spoke to me from within it." Dorsin reached for Oralie's hand, tenderly caressing her cool fingers. "Perhaps she is still there."

"How will you find her?"

Dorsin thought of Zakiel's words, and he extruded nerves through his palm, braiding them into Oralie's. "We are one flesh."

Heartbreak tore across Rosabella's face, crossed the space between them, and ripped Dorsin open. A moment later, the despair vanished from her lovely visage. Rosabella put her hand atop Dorsin's and Oralie's. "I will join you."

"No, Ambassatrix. I need you to stay here and look after us." Dorsin rolled his shoulders back. "I don't know what this will entail. I don't know how long it will require me to be gone. It could be a moment." Or it could be days before he revived Oralie, or months, or years.

Or he might only be imagining that there was anything he could do.

Rosabella nodded, and when her hand withdrew, Dorsin lamented its departure. "Onto the bed, my heart," she whispered.

Dorsin did as Rosabella advised, taking care not to disturb Oralie too much as he lay down next to her. He smiled his thanks at Rosabella, though her smile in return reflected his own guilt and sadness.

Then Dorsin closed his eyes and quested down his nerves and up Oralie's, seeking her mind in her coma-drenched void. He felt nothing; he saw nothing as he fell into the strange state that lay between waking and sleeping.

Was that her voice calling from far away? What was she saying? Dorsin, Dorsin? Was that Dorsin's imagination, or else Dorsin's guilt?

"Oralie," he thought.

You've come. It was definitely her voice. She sounded as exhausted as Dorsin felt.

"I'm here. I've bound my nerves with yours. Can you feel me?"

No... my body is beyond me.

Dorsin searched for her consciousness, but he could barely feel her thoughts despite the entwining of their brains. He sent his senses into her body and bobbed toward full consciousness. Her body was there; why did she say it was beyond her?

He released her body like a veterinary chirurgeon releasing a bird back into the wild and sank back into the comfortable darkness where momentary dreams of spasms resided. "What do you mean?"

I don't know. I am... so tired, Dorsin.

"Awaken, my love. Awaken and regain your strength."

The sea is too deep. Her voice was heartbreakingly faint. I'm lost.

"You aren't lost. I'm here."

You cannot reach me, my darling.

The sea, the void. She was in that place of strange Synapsis. "You're in the starry emptiness, aren't you, Oralie?"

Let me go, Dorsin. Even Tvorh couldn't help me, and his Symbiont is stronger than anyone else's.

Dorsin didn't know what hellish trials his wife was suffering in the inky black, but he knew that if they could join in Synapsis, connect their thoughts more deeply, he could share the torments, bear them, and perhaps find a way to pull her out. Between their entwined nerves and her strange Synaptic powers, it had to be possible for him to lend her his mind to use as a ladder out of the pit. "Reach me. Bring me back to you, my love. Let me help me."

Let them take me.

Who wanted to take her? Not that it mattered. One enemy was the same as another, and Dorsin had never once surrendered in battle. "I won't. I will defeat them. We will defeat them."

We can't fight them, Dorsin. And I can't flee, no longer. I've tried flight and failed.

"Then let me fly with you."

Dorsin...

He remembered--

--Standing on a decaying skywhale in the freezing sky, holding frail, shivering, genophage-wracked Oralie in his arms. "Oralie, I will only ever fly with you."

Then he thought of Rosabella and hated himself for the lie.

Oralie paused. Had she had sensed his infidelity in the guilt that spiked his thoughts? You will come to me?

"I will go to the ends of Tellus for you, my darling," he said. "I will slay armies for you. I will burn this world for you."

Those, at least, were no lies.

"I will do anything for you." Except give up his original sin, his original Grace, who even now sat at their side watching over them.

Time within the dark half-sleep paused as if standing still. Then a hole of deeper blackness swelled within him, and Dorsin saw, or sensed, stars of green and blue in that empty void.

Come to me, then, called his wife from beyond the pit.

Dorsin dove in without hesitation.

***

"You have to bounce with the wolf's gait," Jorn called. "Otherwise you'll be saddle-sore!"

Jorn didn't know how hard it was to do that and ride side-saddle. Hrega stuck her tongue out at him as the four of them--Hrega and Bilr and the Princeps's sons Jorn and Norman, who were just a few years older than the twins--rounded the tree at the far end of the pacing grounds. The wolf loped easily over the grass, and Hrega dug her fingers more tightly into the beast's coarse fur.

This wolf was named "Throatripper." They said she'd been Princeps Dorsin's own battle mount for a few years. Hrega didn't know why wolves needed to go to war, and she didn't know why they needed such mean names, either. Especially when they were old, they deserved nice names.

Like "Daisy." That was a nice name.

"Are you all right, Bilr?" Hrega called back to her sister.

"Yes," Bilr said, her voice tight. She wasn't comfortable on the wolves. Adenine didn't like them, and Bilr cared a lot about what her rat thought. Bilr was a lot like a mouse herself, come to think of it.

Not like Hrega. Hrega loved loping through the fresh cold air, smelling the wet grass, chasing after Jorn's wolf, being wild and free. She threw her head back and shouted happily, and her voice echoed back from the buildings of the Governing Palace's complex on the horizon.

The echoes brought back a new sound, which Hrega's sensitive ears caught away from the wild mountain winds. Mother! Mother was talking.

"Jorn, stop." Hrega pulled up on Daisy's reins, and the jungle wolf skittered to a halt. Jorn and Norman looped back to join Bilr and Hrega.

"What's going on?" Jorn asked, tossing a lock of dark hair from his eyes. "Hey, Norman, bet I can beat you to the shooting range!"

"Shhhh," Hrega said, grimacing. "Mother's talking."

"What's she saying?"

The words came over the breeze, distant but unmistakable. "...distance of sixty miles. Perimeter defenses are standing by. Lockdown procedures for the city have been initiated, and instructions are being broadcast on all wavelengths. All non-combat personnel are advised to take shelter immediately.

"All combat personnel are required at battle stations to await deployment instructions from the Comitatus.

"Repeat: this is not a drill. Perimeter senses indicate an unannounced hostile armada at a distance of sixty miles. Perimeter defenses are standing by..."

Hrega gulped. She knew how much damage those big skywhales could deal. She'd been aboard one during the last siege a year ago, and the city was barely recovered from that fight. "We have to go back to the Palace," she said. "Come on, Bilr. Come on, Daisy!"

"Daisy?" Jorn asked, but Hrega's wolf was already galloping away.