Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 637
or reverse the course of winter itself. It seemed Mediation had
thrown its fortunes in Jordan’s lap, because it regarded him as a
link to its ‘original programming’.
Mediation told him that vagabond moons were
converging on this continent from all over the world, and
gigantic orbiting mirrors were changing their orbits to track
this way. (The idea of these mirrors was one more concept he
could barely encompass, but he needed to accept it.) Diadem
was in a ferment, but the swans weren’t telling the desals what
was going on up there. The swans themselves were converging
on a spot almost directly over Jordan’s head. They were
marshalling vast energies, for what purpose no one yet knew.
Relations were strained along the hierarchy of the Winds;
it was impossible for any Wind to refuse an order that
preserved the integrity of the commonly-accessible and
unchangeable ecological template of the world. Once those
conditions were fulfilled, however, the Winds could do
whatever they pleased. If the swans had found an ecologically
safe way of obliterating the desals, or even all human life on
Ventus, they could try it.
At times Jordan tuned out whatever discussion Tamsin
was having with Ka, and monitored Armiger’s progress.
Armiger had set a punishing pace, and his party was a days’s
ride ahead now, steadily moving southwest. He wasn’t sure,
but he guessed the general was making for the nexus of Winds’
power at the Titans’ Gates. Mediation had shown the place to
him, and Jordan was eager to see it with his own eyes.
As they stopped for another rest, Tamsin waved away
Ka’s offer to read to her and went to lie on the sand. "Oh," she
groaned. "I’m so stiff I’m going to crack like a twig."
"I know," he said. "I feel the same way."
"Can’t your precious Mediation fix us, the way morphs