"Do we knowthat?"

He looked at Shimshek, smiled with a sudden shedding of the fears which had made him old. Laughed, as he had laughed when he was young, and the world was, and they knew nothing of what would be. "No. No. Hai, my friends, my dear friends, there issomething left we don't know."

"Tell me what we shall do," said Shimshek. "Tell me, Yilan, and I'll do it."

"Remember," he said. "Remember! We'll fight, my old friends', we'll fight each time. We'll change the pattern on him; and you'll be by me; and you'll. . . someday. . . tip the scales. I believe that. O

my friends, I do believe it."

" Ishall fight now," said Gunesh, drawing her small dagger.

"We are all drunk with the smoke," Yilan laughed. "We dream of old heroes and old wars. But the dreams are true. And we are those heroes."

He strove to rise, to walk, the last time, and Shimshek put his sword into his hand. Together they helped him down the steps, and Gunesh had gotten herself his second sword. Old Horse was standing there, with Shimshek's beast. Poor Horse, no one had attended him. And some of Shimshek's guard were there. . . and some of Boga's. " Kill them!" Shimshek commanded, and quick as sword could clear sheath the battle was joined: no honor there—Boga's men fell in their blood, and all about them men boiled from wagons clutching swords. "Get me up," Yilan raged; and Shimshek's guards gave them horses. Horse was left, to die of age.

He hit the saddle, winced, tautened his grip on the sword. "A curse on Boga," he shouted. "Death to Boga! Traitor!"

The cry spread, breaking the peace of the night, and the whole camp broke up into chaos, wagons pouring out men and men screaming for horses.

And Shimshek rode like a man demented, Yilan and Gunesh riding behind him, the night muddled before them, dark shapes of men and horses plunging this way and that, the tide of shouts and rumors sweeping the plain for miles. Fires were doused like all the stars of heaven going out, and men rushed inward to fight they knew not what night attack.

Straight past Boga's lynx standard they rode, Shimshek in his fury cutting down the standard-guard. Leaning from the saddle, he seized up the banner and bore it like a lance, for the heart of Boga's men who had rallied to defense.

He tore through them. There was slaughter done; and Gunesh swept through, wielding an unaccustomed sword on the heads of any in her way; Yilan last. . . he struck with feeble fury, with longing, with a rage of ages frustrated.

"Traitor!" he screamed.

And a spear, swifter than poison, found his belly. He saw Boga who had hurled it, saw Shimshek's blade arc down to kill Boga as he had killed him a thousand thousand times; saw Gunesh fall.

"My friends," he mourned, and tears blinded his eyes before death did. They butchered him; but he knew nothing of that.

They had done it at Pompey's statue, and at Thermopylae, and a thousand times before. Shimshek died, and Gunesh died beneath her horse, a son within her.

The fighting spread among the great horde; horde split from horde; bodies littered the plain. Some, leaderless, drew away in confusion. Boga's was one such tribe; and Yilan's; and Shimshek's. And a hundred others followed. Those left fought for Supremacy, killing and killing, until the sun showed them what they had done.

The sun rose on a calm day, in the strange sanity of this waiting. The City of Heaven waited, madness purged, men and women standing on the walls, holding the spears they had gathered from the ground outside, with the doors closed fast and barred, with their courage regathered in their hearts. No more flowers, no more ribbons; they were there to defend their home, a toughened, determined crew.

But the dust diminished; it went toward the west and diminished. When scouts went out they saw at a great distance the carrion birds circling and the slaughtered remnant of a great host, and the trampled trail of a retreat.

They found the broken banner of Yilan the conqueror, but his body they never found; they brought the banner back in triumph, and the spirit of the City swelled with pride, for they were great, and suspected it, in a fiercer, warlike spirit.

"We have turned them," said Kan Te, when the news came, clutching his spear the tighter. "We shall tell the story," said Tao Hua. "We shall never forget this day." They walked with a different, deadlier step, a people conscious of death, and of the land about them, ambitious for revenge.

A new, fell spirit had gotten through the gates, clinging with the stink of the smoke.

"We shall wed properly," Kan Te said. "I don't think it matters; there must have been many who did what we did. There is no shame, but we shall wed properly."

"I am not ashamed," she said.

"Nor am I," he said. He kissed her, there atop the walls, in the sight of folk who had ceased to be shocked by anything, and she kissed him. They walked away together, and she set her hand to her belly, struck with a recollection of pain and pleasure and a lingering warmth. . . she could have become pregnant, she realized. She had not thought of that before, had not thought in terms of living long enough, and life was good. The warmth was strange, as if some vitality had gotten into her, some strange force of desire and will.

As if some stranger had come to dwell there, born of the death and the shaking of their world. He had.

2004

I was happy when my editor wanted another Sunfall story for this volume, and the request gave me the chance to do a city I particularly love, which I hadn't done in the first volume. So Venice now joins the company—a city of unique history and constantly shifting perspectives, a city of romance and a particular stubborn courage in its long dealings with the sea. Maybe that's why it so attracts me, this city at war between sea and land, a city that has found a unique way to be modern, and still to remain so perfectly ancient.

CJC

MASKS

( Venice )

Venezia of the canals, queen of the Adriatic, Venezia: a city built and rebuilt, while the sun starts to fail and the Earth grows strange. She was never meant to be an eternal city—only a refuge from danger.

She was never planned to become one of the last great cities on Earth, but here she sits, behind her immense sea gates. The great tides of this latter age rush in and out while, outside the city lagoon, the heatborn Adriatic storms howl and hammer the ancient metal, cleverly-worked tidal gates a thousand times renewed and enlarged. The sea is the city's passionate admirer, a ruinous suitor who brings her gifts of ships and wealth when he smiles, and threatens to overwhelm her when his temper darkens.

While her gates hold, the sea observes his gentlemanly limits. So long as her gates hold, he will bring her his gifts as he always has, and he will bide his time, having had, as all her people know, no change of heart or character at all.

Timbers bear the city up, the oldest pilings long decayed into quaking ooze, so that her newest pilings float, rather than rest, in the accumulated detritus of ages. The natives say there exist places where, if an unfortunate fool, well-weighted, should fall into the canal, he would sink for a year before he reached bottom, down amid bronze age pots and Roman armor of the Iron Age. So they say. Venezia loves her legends.

Venezia loves two things more than her legends: her unique liberty and her internal peace. She has cherished her liberty from oldest times. While other cities bled under dukes and potentates, when other cities burned their dissenters and dressed all in black and gray, their citizens pretending deep, grim piety to survive, Venezia elected doges, civil leaders, who made humane laws.