Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 353
mainland desal.
I touched the portrait. It stopped flashing.
And something overhead blocked the sun as a deep
rumbling sound began to build around me.
I had time to issue one more detailed command before
the floor gave way under my feet and I fell into the dark
cyclonic stream of the highway.
I awoke with sunlight heating my face. I heard murmurs
of wonder and fear. Opening my eyes, I saw the faces of my
own countrymen. They spoke in the accents of the province of
Santel, whose city has a desal on the hill above it.
I sat up. I was in a cubic chamber, three meters on a side.
A square door opened out on the sunlight; four peasants stared
in at me.
They had seen a door open the previous night. The next
morning they mustered courage to approach, and the
townspeople, alerted, were not far behind. A crowd gathered
as I climbed out of this desal, four hundred kilometers from the
one I had entered days before, and faced my silent people.
On the walls of the chamber I came from were visions I
had crafted with the desal’s help. These indelible frescoes
were arranged around the portrait of myself, the state crown of
Iapysia afloat above my head. To these the desal had added its
own panorama, a kind of procession that led around the entire
chamber.
From that moment, when the people saw that the Winds
had blessed me as queen, my succession to the throne was
guaranteed.
The panorama authored by the desal, however, has a
different meaning for me than it does for my people. The
people believe it is a chronology of my lineage. To me it