A Voyage Through Air

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Wardveil,’ Taggie shouted at Jemima over the roar of the turbines and thrumming rotors.

  Jemima nodded. The quest had been so exciting and important, it had just carried her along, allowing her to completely forget Mum’s messenger. She cast a wardveil around the group, just as she had done when they left the palace. But with one small alteration that would allow the old woman in black to sight them.

  Taggie jumped down on to the beach, holding her hand over her face to protect her skin from the harsh blizzard of sand the rotors were churning up. Holding on to Lantic, she led him towards the town.

  The back of the beach was a high wall of granite stones, made up from cottages with glass-fronted balconies, artist studios that boasted tall windows to let in the clear Atlantic light, and a couple of long holiday-flat blocks. Looming up behind them was the Tate gallery, occupying an old converted gasworks.

  Dad pointed at a set of stone steps that led up to the road running in front of the gallery. The helicopter lifted off behind them, quickly shrinking away into the night sky. Lord Colgath’s cloaks billowed dramatically around him as he glided smoothly across the clean Cornish sands. Dogs being taken for their evening walk scampered away fearfully, their confused owners running after them. Earl Maril’bo walked beside the Dark Lord, unseen by any humans as he blended eerily into the undulating shape of the beach, then the rigid granite blocks.

  Taggie followed Dad up the steps. On her right, the customers of the chic Porthmeor Café gawped at the strange travellers from behind the safety of their glass-and-aluminium balustrade, where they sat enjoying their gourmet suppers. One of the customers right at the back of the café was an old woman in a heavy black dress, wearing a veil. Jemima saw her and smiled secretively. ‘Is the cure here yet?’ she asked silently.

  The unseen head behind the veil turned to face Jemima. Curiously, none of the other customers in the café seemed to notice her. ‘The sorceress mistress is only a day from the Great Gateway to the Second Realm.’

  ‘So Mum’ll have the cure in a day?’

  ‘I hope so, yes.’

  Jemima raised her hand in a sneaky wave, then she was at the top of the stairs, hurrying after the others.

  The road curved round into the Digey area of town, with elegant, slightly crooked, stone cottages on both sides. Dad led them round the corner. Then he turned sharply into a tiny alley called The Meadow. There was another turn after a few paces, followed by some granite steps. High white-painted yard walls were on both sides, with old net float bottles strung along them in decoration. Wheelie bins made the alley even narrower. Another turn. More steps. A junction. The alley rose steeply. At the next corner there was a black-painted door that looked like it led into a cottage. By now Taggie had no idea where they were, they’d turned so many times, but she did sense a powerful (and familiar) magic close by.

  She stood in front of the door. ‘Toramus, I am Taggie Paganuzzi, the Queen of Dreams. I ask that myself and my companions may pass into the Realm of Air.’

  The glass net floats rattled against the walls. ‘Greetings, Queen of Dreams,’ Toramus said in a light voice. ‘Arasath said you would be travelling this way. May your visit bring peace to all the Realms.’

  The black door swung open, showing a low, unfurnished room beyond. Sophie dashed past Taggie. ‘Come on!’ she implored, tugging her raincoat off.

  Taggie caught hold of Jemima’s arm as her sister hurried past. ‘Just remember, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, OK? That means you keep it quiet.’

  ‘Taggie! I’m a seer, I know what we’re facing. Stop treating me like I’m ten.’ She shook off Taggie’s hand and stomped into the little room.

  Taggie waited until everyone was inside. ‘I would also ask that you remain closed to anyone else for several days,’ she said to Toramus.

  ‘Of course,’ the Great Gateway replied.

  Taggie gave the heavy black door a suspicious glance. Was that Of course I will – or Of course you want me to? The Great Gateways did so enjoy being tricky.

  The room was completely bare inside, with wooden floorboards and granite walls and a single oil lamp flickering on the wall. There was only the one door. It swung shut behind her.

  Taggie could just make out the door’s brass handle in the gloom. With everyone standing behind her, she turned it, and pushed.

  Brilliant sunlight flooded into the room, making her blink against the glare.

  Sophie was the first out, her hair bustling about as if she’d emerged into a gale. Taggie followed eagerly. The Great Gateway opened into a small square surrounded by cottages similar to the ones they’d just left behind in St Ives. Here, though, they were all four or five storeys high, and covered in vines heavy with grapes. Taggie peered straight upwards, but the cottage walls were so high, all she could see was a square of bright sapphire sky. She noticed that the windows on every top floor were actually glazed doors, even though none of them had balconies. It took a moment to realize that would be for skyfolk to come and go.

  Sophie launched herself upwards, arms out wide, turning as she went. They all heard a long whoop of rapture as she soared above them. Then, once she was clear of the cottage roofs, she began to accelerate hard, streaking away, with her sparkling red contrail almost lost in the bright sunlight.

  ‘Sophie!’ Taggie called in annoyance – but not very loud: she didn’t want to draw attention to them. Sophie had completely vanished from view now.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Lantic said. ‘This looks just the same as any other Realm.’

  ‘Just you wait,’ Earl Maril’bo said. ‘This is Tarimbi, one of the medium-sized isles. We need to grab ourselves a proper view. This way.’

  ‘What about Sophie?’ Jemima protested as the elf chose one of the narrow roads leading out of the square.

  ‘She’ll come back soon enough,’ Taggie said. ‘If not, you’ll have to find her with your runes.’

  Lord Colgath kept his velvet-lined cloak and dark hat on. Taggie suspected he was also using a mild shadecast. Nobody seemed to notice him as they followed Earl Maril’bo down the uneven road. The residents of Tarimbi seemed normal enough – not that there were many of them walking about. They were mostly humans, with a few four-armed Holvans, and even a green-haired giant or two lumbering along.

  After a couple of minutes, they came to a much larger square, where the surrounding buildings were grander than the cottages behind. The ground sloped away steeply, and they were given their first true glimpse of Tarimbi.

  The isle resembled a mountain torn out of the ground by its roots. It looked as if it was about five miles from tip to tip, with a diameter of about two miles. The middle section was covered in thick emerald vegetation, with citrus trees packed close together amid banana trees and palms and breadfruit and pineapple.

  Above them, the sky was a brilliant, clear azure, with the sun burning a hot blue-white just above the isle’s far tip. As Taggie shifted her gaze round, the sky began to shade darker until opposite the sun it became the hazy indigo of dusk scattered with twinkling stars. Tiny green specks glimmered in every part of the blue firmament through which the isle drifted. Taggie drew a sharp breath of realization when she saw them. Other isles! There must have been hundreds in view, stretching away for hundreds, thousands of miles, into the unbound expanse of Air. The isles spread throughout the entire Realm, an archipelago that never ended. Her jaw dropped as the size of the Realm finally hit her. You could fit a thousand First Realms into the Realm of Air, she thought. A million. And still you’d hardly notice them.

  Jemima was laughing giddily, while Dad had his arm round her shoulder, smiling in delight.

  ‘No wonder they brought Mirlyn’s Gate here,’ she murmured. ‘How would you ever find anything? It’s the greatest hiding place in the universe.’

  Beyond the palm-thatch rooftops that stretched away down the slope was a flat section of land where Tarimbi’s port park was situated. Five huge wooden towers rose from the gr
ound, shapes similar to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but twice the height, and with branches sticking out horizontally all the way up the top half, forming wharfs where big cylindrical ships were docked. Skyfolk buzzed around them like bees round a nest.

  ‘Look at the ships!’ an awed Jemima blurted. ‘Aren’t they amazing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Taggie agreed. ‘They are.’

  Sophie reappeared, sinking down into the square in front of Taggie. ‘The sky just goes on forever,’ she said with tears of joy in her eyes. ‘I could fly for my entire life and it would never end.’

  Taggie embraced her friend, unsurprised to find Sophie was trembling with happiness. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful here.’

  ‘We need to find some rooms,’ Dad said. ‘And get Lord Colgath out of sight. Then we’ll see about chartering a ship.’

  ‘The taverns around the port park would be best for that,’ Earl Maril’bo said. ‘That’s where the crews spend most of their time and their pay.’ They all set off down the slope.

  Taggie watched the shadows cast by the buildings slowly moving across the ground.

  ‘The isles all rotate,’ Sophie told her when she mentioned it. ‘So the town will eventually turn round to face darkwards.’ She pointed to the dusky side of the sky. ‘It gives the isles a kind of night, but nothing like as dark as those in the other realms.’

  ‘How long do they take to turn?’ Jemima asked.

  ‘Depends on the size of the isle. Some are no bigger than boulders; they turn fast, in a couple of hours or so. One this size will take about a day to rotate completely.’

  Taggie scanned the brighter section of sky again. In the far distance, right on the edge of her sight, she could see layer upon layer of thin cloud. Some were white like gauze, while others were a deeper blue, which made them no more than phantoms against the immensity of the sapphire void.

  There was so much strangeness to take in, but she held off peppering Sophie and Earl Maril’bo with questions. She would find out all about it soon enough.

  THE ANGELHAWK

  They paid for lodging at the Harpooned Paxia, a four-storey inn on the perimeter of the port park, nestled between a warehouse and a ship’s carpentry shop. Lord Colgath stayed in his room as the isle’s rotation slowly turned the town into shadow. The rest of them went back outside and followed Earl Maril’bo, who led them round the edge of the port park to a smaller tavern called the Dark Phoenix. ‘This is where the captains and senior crews drink,’ he explained.

  The inside was lit with green and blue lightstones. It was filling up already as the town turned to face darkwards. Humans and skyfolk drank at the same tables. Giants had their own much larger booths at one end where the roof was higher. Earl Maril’bo went off to talk to a couple of elves at the bar while Dad claimed a table in the corner. He ordered some bread, cheese and fruit from one of the serving lads. ‘Now remember,’ he warned his daughters. ‘I’m a scholar, and you’re my apprentices. Taggie, we’ll use your proper name. A girl your age called Taggie is just going to raise suspicion.’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Taggie scowled. She really didn’t like ‘Agatha’.

  It wasn’t long before Earl Maril’bo came back to join them. ‘OK then, I have good and bad news,’ he said. ‘This whole realm is like totally buzzing right now. The guild of watchers has seen a comet falling sunwards. All the captains are getting their ships ready to chase it, and not just on this isle.’

  ‘Why?’ Lantic asked.

  ‘Comets are the bodies of angels on their final flight into the sun,’ Sophie said. ‘They fall through Air in fire and thunder to add their glory to the sun.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very safe,’ Lantic said. ‘Why would the captains want to chase something like that?’

  ‘As the angels fall, their blood boils into the sky,’ Sophie said. ‘Sometimes their heart bursts open as well.’

  ‘Athrodene,’ Taggie said as realization struck her. ‘The heart of an angel.’

  ‘Yeah, you got it, little Queen,’ Earl Maril’bo agreed. ‘It’s incredibly difficult and dangerous stuff to catch, ships are always getting smashed by fragments and flame that the comet shoots out. Captains have gotta be major league to manoeuvre close enough and avoid damage. You have to zigzag through the tail just after the comet’s flashed past you. If you’re too eager, and get too close, the slipstream will suck you in and drag you along – all the way into the sun.’

  ‘It’s worth it, though,’ Sophie said. ‘A chunk of athrodene the size of your fist can pay a ship’s crew for a year. By the time it reaches another Realm it commands triple that price, or more.’

  Jemima started pinching the armour she was wearing under her blue dress, making sure she hadn’t lost it somehow.

  ‘Such events are seriously rare,’ Earl Maril’bo said. ‘That you’ve got a comet falling at the time when the War Emperor is preparing to invade the Fourth Realm is seen by many here as an omen. Not that anyone is like sticking their neck out and saying if it’s a good or a bad one . . .’

  The serving boy arrived with a tray. Platters were handed round. Dad and Earl Maril’bo poured wine into their glasses. A bowl of nuts was provided for Felix.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to the serving boy, who gave him a surprised grin.

  ‘So if all the ships are going off to chase this comet, we won’t be able to buy passage to Banmula, then,’ Taggie said glumly as she slowly peeled a banana.

  ‘Not quite,’ the elf said with a knowing grin. ‘There is one ship in port which has suffered a misfortune. The Angelhawk. It lost several sails and snapped two masts when it was caught in a violent storm. They had to jettison most of their cargo just to make it back here. The captain has no money to pay for a refit or compensate the merchant who chartered her. If you listen to rumour, she can’t even pay her crew.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dad, brightening. ‘Where is she?’

  Earl Maril’bo turned round and pointed discreetly at a table close to the bar, where a miserable-looking man and a skywoman sat drinking from a single bottle of cheap wine set between them. ‘There. Captain Rebecca, and her shipsmage, Maklepine.’

  Dad beckoned the serving boy back over. He was quickly dispatched with some coin to take a bottle of good wine over to the captain’s table.

  ‘If she got caught by a storm, should we be hiring her?’ Taggie asked in concern. ‘She can’t be much good.’

  ‘Storms here can be very big,’ Sophie said. ‘The winds from sunwards can carry storms hundreds of miles across. While the freezing winds that blow in from darkwards bring blizzards with them, they have hailstones the size of your fist that travel so fast they can break your bones or a ship’s decking timber.’

  ‘Really?’ Jemima said eagerly. ‘Cool!’

  Taggie sighed, rolling her eyes.

  Captain Rebecca made her way over to Taggie’s table, carrying the new bottle of wine that the serving boy had given her. Taggie was used to skyfolk being almost delicate in appearance, but the captain was very different. For a start she was large, probably a couple of inches higher than Dad, though not as tall as Earl Maril’bo. While Sophie’s skin was pale and almost translucent, the captain was tanned a dark brown, with dozens of tiny pale scars on her cheeks as if she’d been scratched by some animal with a dozen slender talons on each paw. ‘So who is it that has money to spend freely in these times?’ Captain Rebecca asked as she plonked her glass down on the table. Her long face had a square jaw, which made her striking rather than beautiful, Taggie thought. The eyepatch she wore had a sapphire set in the middle, in which tiny yellow stars swirled in a tight spiral. ‘You’re an odd company, aren’t you? Sweet children, and an elf. I smell a strange skulduggery here.’

  Maklepine, the old shipsmage who followed her over, placed a restraining hand on the captain’s arm. ‘Now, Captain, these kind people have travelled far to talk to us. Let us thank them for their fine wine and listen to what they have to say. Hmm?’ He was a less impressive figure than
his captain, wearing the emerald and sapphire tunic of his profession, with a yellow bandana round his head, holding what was left of his greasy hair. Every finger had a ring that glowed with a soft magical light, and his tiny ruby nose stud twinkled like a livid pimple. His thick beard was trimmed in an elaborate spiral on his cheeks, showing tattoo runes that slowly changed shape.

  ‘I apologize,’ Captain Rebecca said. A thick curly mane of hair blacker than an elf’s drifted slowly around her head, the tips licking at her broad shoulders. She sat down heavily on a stool while Dad introduced everyone. Taggie tried not to grimace as she was announced as Agatha.

  ‘A scholar on a trip to scribble down even older scribblings, eh?’ Captain Rebecca said scornfully when he finished. ‘And your boy here . . .’ She smirked at Lantic. ‘How long have you been an officer of the Blue Feather regiment then?’

  Lantic glared at her as he started coughing.

  ‘Lantic is not of the regiment,’ Felix said. ‘He simply wears an old friend’s tunic.’

  Captain Rebecca peered at the white squirrel. She blinked, and pushed her face closer. ‘Either this is very good wine, or you talked.’

  Taggie realized the captain was quite drunk.

  ‘I do many things,’ Felix retorted.

  ‘Yes, a very strange scholarly company,’ Captain Rebecca said, as if saddened by the fact. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We would like to charter your ship,’ Dad said.

  ‘Ha! You. I know you. You come to me because you’ve heard the Angelhawk has fallen on hard times. You think I will be cheap and grateful. You are wrong.’ She picked up her glass and defiantly swigged some wine.

  ‘I know you won’t be cheap,’ Dad said in a steely tone. ‘You have repairs to make.’

  ‘What of it?’ Captain Rebecca said, suddenly defensive. ‘We hit a continent storm. Any lesser ship would have been torn apart.’

  ‘What’s a continent storm?’ Jemima asked.