LITMIR.BIZ

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the dazzling light of the City of Pain. Or a man might fall down from space in a lightship or ferry and step out on to an icy run of the Hollow Fields where a friend might greet him with smiles, embraces and perhaps a mug of peppermint tea steaming in the cold air. Among the singularities of the life of Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the miracle that he had first come to the city otherwise. When only fourteen years old, he had left the island of his birth and crossed six hundred miles of the frozen ocean with his dogsled and skis. In the middle of a storm so fierce that he could hardly see his frozen feet through the wind-whipped snow, he had stumbled on to the sands of North Beach half-dead and alone. Alone and yet not alone: strangely, by chance or fate, a white-furred alien called Old Father had been waiting there to greet him and give him the bamboo flute that would become his most cherished possession. As Danlo now stepped from the pit of the Snowy Owl, he reflected on the irony of his homecoming. Although many must have heard the news of his arrival, neither Old Father nor any friend awaited him with musical instruments or mugs of tea. Almost the moment that his boots touched the hard surface of his world, twenty journeymen dressed in variously coloured robes – but each sporting an armband of gold – converged upon him. Unbelievably, Danlo thought, the journeymen wore lasers holstered in sheaths of black leather at their sides.

      ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess, have you fallen well?’ One of the journeymen, a rather haughty young man in the green robe of a mechanic, greeted him formally. He stared at Danlo’s black robe and the diamond brooch pinned above his heart. And then he turned to Danlo’s fellow ambassador. ‘Lord Demothi Bede, have you fallen well?’

      That was the only welcome they received. Quickly, with a cold manner that bordered on rudeness, the journeymen ushered Danlo and Lord Bede into a large sled waiting on one of the nearby glidderies. One of the journeymen sat at the front of this black-shelled sled to pilot it while two others sat beside Danlo and Lord Bede in the passenger seat. The remaining seventeen journeymen took their places in the seventeen other sleds lining the gliddery. Although they extended no friendship towards these two enemy ambassadors of their Order, they would escort them through the streets of Neverness in safety and great style.

      Before they began their short journey through the city, however, five pilots dressed in light wool kamelaikas approached the open sled. They stepped carefully across the gliddery’s slick, red ice. Each of these five, too, wore a golden band around the upper arm – gold against midnight black, the very symbol of Ringism.

      ‘Hello, Pilot,’ the first of them said to Danlo. This was Nicabar Blackstone, a hard-faced man with hard grey eyes and a shock of precisely-cut grey hair. His lightship, the Ark of the Angels, lay ready on the run for a return to near-space. Lined up behind it like long silver beads on a strand of wire were the Infinite Dactyl, the Blue Lotus, the Diamond Arrow and the Bell of Time. Behind Nicabar stood Dario of Urradeth, Cham Estarei, Ciro Dalibar and the Visolela. Each of them greeted Danlo and Demothi Bede in turn. And then Nicabar said, ‘Word has arrived that the Vild Mission has been successful. It’s said that Tannahill has been found, and that Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the pilot who found it. That he crossed the entire Vild into the Perseus Arm. Thirty thousand light years through the Vild! Is that true, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?’

      ‘Yes,’ Danlo said, and then bowed his head slightly. ‘It is true.’

      ‘Then you are to be honoured.’

      ‘Thank you … for honouring me,’ Danlo said.

      Nicabar Blackstone bowed deeply to Danlo, as did Cham Estarei, Dario of Urradeth and even the Visolela, with her thin, old body and stiff joints. Only Ciro Dalibar held back, snapping his little head at Danlo in a quick mockery of a bow as if he were a turtle. His little eyes regarded Danlo coolly and jealously, but when Danlo tried to look at him, he turned his face down towards the gliddery as if he were a newcomer to Neverness marvelling that the streets of the city were made of coloured ice.

      ‘But I won’t honour your embassy to our Order,’ Nicabar said. ‘It isn’t worthy of a pilot who has mastered the Vild – and the son of Mallory Ringess himself!’

      ‘We seek only to stop this war,’ Danlo said. ‘Is this so dishonourable?’

      ‘You bring war to our city – to all the Civilized Worlds. You who have betrayed our Order to join what you call a Fellowship of Free Worlds.’

      ‘No – we would bring peace. There must be a way towards peace.’

      ‘Peace on your terms,’ Nicabar said. ‘Such a peace can only inflame the desire for war.’

      Until now Demothi Bede had remained silent, letting the two pilots argue between themselves as pilots are wont to do. But then he looked at Ciro Dalibar who was staring at Danlo openly with a silent, burning rage. ‘It would seem,’ Demothi said, ‘that there are those of your Order who desire war merely for the sake of war.’

      Ciro scowled at this, looking back and forth between Demothi and Danlo. In his high, angry voice, he said, ‘It’s too bad that you ambassadors will be safe in the city while we pilots risk our lives in space to protect you from your own Fellowship when it attacks us.’

      ‘And as for that,’ Nicabar broke in, ‘you should be aware that things are very different in Neverness than when you deserted her five years ago. We’ll try to ensure your safety, but there are many who won’t welcome you, either as ambassadors or as wayless.’

      ‘I am sorry, but I am not familiar with that word,’ Danlo said.

      Ciro Dalibar shot Danlo a quick, cruel look, and he was only too happy to explain this term in Nicabar’s place. ‘There are those who follow the way of Mallory Ringess into godhood. And there are those who refuse to realize the truths of Ringism and turn their faces from the way. These are the wayless.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘Some, of course, have never heard the truth so it’s our glory to bring it to them.’

      ‘I see,’ Danlo said in a voice as deep and calm as a tropical sea.

      But his equipoise seemed only to enrage Ciro further, for he stared at Danlo and half-shouted, ‘And you – you’re the worst of the wayless! You helped make Ringism into a force for truth, and then you just betrayed us! You betrayed your own father and everything he lived for.’

      Danlo had no answer for this, in words. He only looked at Ciro, and suddenly his dark blue eyes deepened like liquid jewels alive with an intense inner light. Because Ciro couldn’t bear the sheer wildness and truth of this gaze, he muttered something about traitors and then stared down at the ice in silence.

      ‘We’ll say farewell, now,’ Nicabar Blackstone said. ‘The lords are waiting for you and we must return to the stars. I’m only sorry that in the coming battles, I won’t have the chance to test myself against the pilot who mastered the Vild.’

      With that he bowed to Danlo with perfect punctilio and led the other pilots back across the gliddery’s ice to their ships. It took them only a moment to fire their rockets and a few moments more to shoot off into the deep blue sky.

      The tall, serious journeyman who had his hand on the throttle of Danlo’s and Demothi’s sled, turned to look at his two passengers.

      ‘Are you ready, Pilot? Lord Ambassador?’

      ‘Yes,’ Danlo said. ‘Please.’

      ‘Very well. My name is Yemon Astoret, if you should need to address me.’

      All at once the seventeen sleds fired their own rockets, and eight of these thundered down the gliddery ahead of Danlo’s sled. Then, with a jolt, he felt his sled begin to move, sliding across the red ice on its gleaming chromium runners. The remaining eight sleds followed them across the Hollow Fields northwards into the city that had once been his home.

      ‘So this is Neverness.’ The Ede hologram, projected out of the devotionary computer that Danlo carried on his lap, seemed to be drinking in the splendour of the city as if he were as alive as Demothi Bede or Danlo. ‘The City of Man.’

      Many

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