Thirty-Nine
Of Moths and Flames
The giant moths were waiting for us at the forests edge. I think their design was based on luna moths, but Ive never
bothered to look them up. If so, even their models had been large by insect standards but we were in a place where insect standards didnt apply, and the moths which confronted us were unbelievably huge. Their wingspan must have been at least thirty metres; their wings were a creamy color, with every scale clearly distinguishable. Their thoraxes were furry. They didnt come with saddles and stirrups fitted, so my hands and dangling legs had to cling as best they could to the warm fur. The odor of the fur was peculiarly sweet, like perfumed tobacco smoke.
Their compound eyes were made up of hundreds of units, each one as big as my fist. They glinted red in the fading twilight. I tried to meet the stare of the one set aside for me to ride, but it couldnt be done. A human cant meet the stare of an organism whose visual apparatus is like a pair of cluttered doorways or gigantic sacks of ripe fruit.
Rocambole, as might be expected, stepped on to his mount with all the insouciance of a creature which had learned to ride moths as soon as it had learned to walk like a man.
Night fell as we rose into the air, striking a neat poetic balance between lightness and darkness. The moon emerged from behind the battlements of the appalling palace, like a cleverly placed spotlight. The words convey a sarcasm I could not feel at the time, for I had never seen a moon like that before. It was a moon whose status as a world was manifest, but whose status as a sinister companion to the life-giving sun was even more obvious. I could see every crater, every plain of ancient stone, and every ghost that haunted those bleak expanses, with awful clarity.
We moved silently through the chilly air. The odor of the moths supported the illusion that we were drifting like clouds of warm smoke rather than actually flying. The huge wings moved, but awkwardly, like the fabric wings of some hopeful but ill-designed glider, flapping that way and this in response to the changing tension of wires and cables.
The stars were very bright, and far more numerous than those which could be seen from the Earths surface, filtered by the atmosphere. Unlike the unashamedly baleful moon, the stars seemed as aloof and uncaring as their distance entitled them to be and yet I felt a slight attraction toward them, as if their patterns really were attempting to impose a subtle dictatorship on my fate and character.
It was all so obviously artificial that I was soon able to suppress my instinctive fear of falling, and I made a concerted effort to construe the experience as a pleasurable one.
I might have succeeded, had it not been for the bats.
At first, I assumed that the bats were part of the show, sent forth as one more facile ornamentation of excessive showmanship. Even when I realized that they were emerging from holes in the sky, shattering and scattering the stars as they did so, my first thought was that it was one more special effect laid on for my entertainment. Fortunately, I tightened my grip anyway before the moths hastened to take evasive action.
I counted a dozen of the hurtling shadows, although I might have counted a couple more than once. They were not that much larger than the moths even here there were rules determining airworthiness, which were more-or-less unbreakable but the fact that they could not swallow us whole did not make their gaping and toothy mouths any less terrifying. Their high-pitched screeches were clearly and painfully audible.
One passed by within inches of my ducking head; another was within inches of tearing a strip from my mounts right wing; a third actually succeeded in carrying away a portion of one of the moths legs, and nearly caused the creature to tip me off its back. More shadows passed by, close enough for me to imagine that I felt the wind of the predators passage but we were high enough now to be almost level with the outer foundations of the palace, and it obviously had cellars let into the interior of the crag.
Whether they were there before I looked I have no idea, but when I did look I saw portals in the crag and the muzzles of guns pointing out of them and even before I caught sight of them, those guns had opened fire, delivering a cannonade of astonishing ferocity and accuracy.
The bats exploded as they were hit, becoming brilliant gems of pure flame as they dived away into the ocean of darkness that now lay beneath us.
There was a brief moment when I thought that my moth might turn of its own accord to pursue one of those falling flames, hurrying to immolate itself and me but the impulse was transformed into a mere tremor, more a reflexive shiver than a purposive threat.
We landed, not on the topmost roof but on a jutting balcony, and I was quick to leap down to the apparent
safety of a flagstoned floor.
What was that? I asked Rocambole, as he hastened to join me.