Aeromancer

by Don Callander

  “That comes next, Stone Wizard,” Deka said a bit tartly, for she hated to be interrupted. “Douglas begins:

  “Masters and Mistress, friends all! I am in a cave on the edge of High Desert of Samarca, near the Darkest Mountains which separate us from Ebony Sea to the east...”

  The message was long but Deka recited it perfectly, without a mistake or misplaced emphasis. Flarman and Litholt (and everyone else in the kitchen) listened through to the end without comment.

  “I think we’d better discuss this in council,” Flarman decided when the Wraith had finished and picked up another cookie from the plate in front of her.

  “Question is,” said Litholt thoughtfully, “can Douglas, Myrn, and Cribblon, alone, face down a creature of The Darkness?”

  “I’ll waken the Water Adept, shall I?” asked Bronze Owl.

  “No, let the man sleep an hour more,” decided the senior Pyromancer. “I want to do some researching first. Like... what would be the quickest way to reach Samarca? Can you stay for our answer, Deka?”

  “I’ll return whenever you call, Flarman Firemaster, but I must be about my other tasks.”

  “Of course! Well, let’s set a council for... ah ... after lunch, in front of the Dwarf’s Fireplace. Two o’ the clock, that is.”

  “I think I’ll do a little studying, also. I need to know more of these Darkest Mountains and the unexplored shores of Ebony Sea,” Litholt decided.

  When they looked back, the Wraith had disappeared, along with the rest of the oatmeal cookies. The miscytwine was long gone from Pitcher.

  ****

  “If Flarman or Augurian were here they might give us some expert advice,” Douglas said to Lesser Dragon and Princess Indra over his breakfasting. “I’ve looked and studied for an hour or two and I still only get a very dim outline of what opposes us—who holds Serenit captive, and where he’s hidden among the peaks over there.”

  “Could I help?” asked the Dragon.

  He lay prone on the rock ledge outside Douglas’s cave, his scales blending so perfectly into the colors of the stones around and under him that even the birds circling the nearest hills didn’t notice him. His head was inside the cave.

  “I’m wasting time here,” muttered Douglas, sounding more than a little disgusted with his lack of progress.

  “Isn’t it your goodwife’s task to steal away the man Serenit?” the Dragon prompted him gently.

  “Of course,” said Douglas. “Perhaps if I do my own task I’ll be more useful to Myrn, later on.”

  He turned to the flying horse, who rolled her eyes at him mischievously and cocked her head to one side.

  “I’m sorry, Princess!” Douglas said, shaking his head. “I tend to worry about my beautiful wife, when I should be taking your problem to heart, as we agreed.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” said the filly. “What do you need to know, Douglas?”

  “Where will you find your father and mother and their people? It’s time to arrange for their disenchantment.”

  “I can find them easily enough,” replied the horse. “Papa’ll have left word of their whereabouts at certain places we know of on the far shore of the Ebony.”

  “You’ll go, then?” Douglas asked.

  “Of course, Wizard.”

  “Next question is ... how shall the Dragon and I go?”

  “Fly, of course!” said Indra, with a surprised laugh.

  “But everything I’ve ever been told about these Darkness Servants warns me they can smell an enchanter or a Wizard when one gets close.”

  “But you want him ... her... it to detect you, I thought,” said Lesser. “To mask Mistress Myrn’s movements near its lair.”

  “True—but not too soon, Dragon,” said the Pyromancer. “I would rather not have to tackle a Dark Power until we know a bit more about it.”

  “I’ve lived near the shores of the Ebony for more than a century,” said Indra. “I never even knew there was such a thing as a.... a... Power of Darkness here!”

  “Armed with more complete knowledge, we’d stand a better chance of forestalling any plots this wandered bit of Darkness may have hatched against Men and others who opposed The Darkness in Last Battle.”

  “I see.” Indra nodded.

  She rose from her pile of dry hillside grass and stalked about the cave from side to side, deep in thought.

  “Well,” said Lesser, “I’ve been flying over the Darkest Mountains for close on a thousand years. This Dark Servant or whatever you want to call it will have observed me and will recognize me, I’d think. I can carry you to the Seashore to meet King Priad and maybe not be suspect. After all, thousands of birds and other things fly over this land daily. And there are Men—miners, I think—in the mountains, too. People tend to take us for granted.”

  “You’re right, of course,” agreed Douglas.

  “I’ll go separately,” declared Indra. “I’ll find Papa and Mama. We’ll then meet you in a preagreed place on the strand, out of sight of the Servant in the mountains.”

  Douglas thought for a long moment, then nodded his head.

  “Go ahead, Princess! Tell us where we’re to meet you. We’ll wait there, in case you have to go farther afield to find your family than you think. Bring them to meet us.”

  Said the little horse at once, “Wait for us at Walrus Shingle. With the kind of racket those great Sea-going mammals make ashore, not even the most powerful Wizard or Sorcerer could eavesdrop.”

  She squeezed past Lesser Dragon’s shoulder and trotted out into the morning sun. Waving her tail at her companions, she launched herself into the sky.

  “She didn’t give us directions to this Walrus place,” Douglas realized.

  “I know where it is,” Lesser Dragon said. “Hard to miss, what with all their yowling, grunting, and booming. Shall we wait for darkness, then? Time for a nap and a good, sustaining dinner first, I’d suggest. I’m becoming addicted to Blue Teakettle’s home cooking!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Afoot in the Darkest Mountains

  “I don’t dare use even the simplest Flying Spell, let alone Augurian’s gift, the Traveling Pearls,” Myrn explained. “Flarman says the Darkness Servants are very good at smelling spells. We’ll have to go afoot.”

  “Ugh!” grumped the monkey, flopping down to blow a bit of sand from between the toes on his left hind foot. “Well, I climbed all over Blue Eye. Slid all over Eternal Ice, too. I guess I can climb these bad, old, dry mountains.”

  “Monkeys are considerably lighter than Sea Otters,” Cribblon chirped. “Or ... why not join me as a small bird?”

  “No, someone has to keep his feet on the ground,” retorted the Otter. “There might be all kinds of fierce beasts in those mountain fastnesses, you know! Hungry is the constant state of all wilderness beasts, I know from experience. A snow leopard once told me he expected to dine no more than once every two weeks, and I know snakes who go for months without a round meal.”

  “A quick pair of wings are better than size,” Cribblon argued, but Marbleheart was determined to stay a monkey.

  “Well, good-bye then, Harroun! We’ll be back as soon as we can, of course,” Myrn said, giving the old desert chief a warm hug and a kiss on the bearded cheek. “And young Saladim! I wish you could go along to help, but I fear what’s coming is going to be pretty much magical, requiring Wizard-lore rather than bravery and good swordsmanship.”

  “In the foothills we’d be as close as possible to you, should you need us,” Harroun suggested.

  “No, stay here, please!” Myrn insisted. “I can call to you here as well as up in the hills, anyhow. Good-bye, brave desert men! Come along, beasts!”

  The Sheik and his son watched them climb down the path on the outside of the Deep and strike out toward the east.

  “I wonder how the pretty little filly fares,” Saladim said wistfully as they turned to reenter the crater.

  “You were really impressed with her, I’d say,” his father c
huckled.

  “She’s a real Princess, Father! I wonder if she’s as pretty a girl as she is as a horse.”

  “Probably ugly as a she-goat,” his father gently teased.

  ****

  “You could turn me into a horse,” suggested Marbleheart.

  They’d walked their rough path for four hours and stopped in the shade of an overhanging rock for lunch and a much-needed breather. The sun was beginning to dip toward distant Sea, far away to the west, and the air was very hot. Fortunately, it was also very dry.

  However, thunderheads were beginning to gather over the Darkest peaks, threatening a storm.

  “No!” Myrn said, a bit sharply. “Stop trying to protect me, Marblehead! Magicking this close would be like a beacon at moonless midnight if the Darkness thing is at all watchful.”

  “We should’ve thought of it earlier, I agree,” said Cribblon with a sigh.

  He was fresh as a Valley morning himself. He flew ahead and circled back to report on the steeply rising path, recommending the best ways to go. He sought out timid mountain mice and shy rock birds to come to tell Myrn what they knew of the area and of the strange Darkness creature.

  So far they’d brought only vague rumors and frightened tales. As Myrn remarked while massaging her weary feet, few of them had ever gone more than a mile or two from where they’d been born or hatched.

  “What we need is high-flying kinds of birds,” suggested Cribblon.

  “Eagles and such?” asked the monkey. He was holding up well, being small and light and agile. Dry heat doesn’t bother monkeys at all.

  The sparrow considered Otter’s suggestion for a moment. “Eagles? Maybe gyrfalcons or kestrels. They’re smaller and are as sharp-eyed as eagles, or so Bronze Owl once told me. Raptors have more curiosity, too, which is a good thing to have when you’re small in a big, big country.”

  “But wouldn’t they be dangerous?” Myrn wondered, interested in the idea despite her misgivings. “They might as easily eat you, Cribblon, as listen to you!”

  “Some truth to that,” the Journeyman Air Adept-sparrow agreed, solemnly. “But it may be worth the risk... and I’d be far away from you, Myrn, if I were forced to make a sudden shape-change in midair.”

  “If he... this Servant—I do wish he had a name—is watching Douglas he might not notice a tiny bit of magic like that,” Myrn considered, slipping her stockings and shoes back on. “Wait ‘til morning, Cribblon, if you’re to do it. Somewhere I read that the first rays and the last rays of the sun tend to blind even the most powerful Watching Spells.”

  “Not much help if a hungry raptor stoops on you,” grumbled Marbleheart. “Our Enemy is not the only danger here, Myrn.”

  “Worth the risk,” Cribblon insisted. “Otherwise we’re likely to be wandering about here in the mountains for days and days. What do you think, Myrn? It’s your Journeying, after all.”

  “Be careful, Cribblon! I know you traveled alone all over Old Kingdom for years with a considerably smaller fund of magic than you have gained since, but still...”

  “I’ll wait until this storm passes,” decided the middle-aged Journeyman, glancing at the towering black thunderhead above. “No sensible bird flies willingly in such inclement weather!”

  Myrn and her party continued as long as they could, following steep-sided, rock-strewn gorges toward the high pass between the shoulders of two stark peaks. Soon the storm began, with fat, warm raindrops which were, at first, refreshing to the girl and the animals, but soon became a nuisance, making the trail slippery and the views uncertain.

  “Time to camp for the night,” Myrn decided at last.

  “I’ve been looking for caves and such,” Marbleheart told her. “No luck.”

  “There’s an overhanging cliff up ahead,” Cribblon said, landing on Myrn’s left shoulder. “It’ll be some protection ... but not very much.”

  A great, blasting bolt of blue-white lightning flashed across the darkened sky and immediately the rain began to fall more heavily, as if the thunder had shaken it loose from the clouds.

  Myrn calmly made a hand pass over her head and drew her companions close. The rain pelted all about them with ever-increasing fury, but only a few drops penetrated her Umbrella Spell. Lightning crashed and boomed almost without cease, shivering the air and shaking the ground.

  “Now! While the lightning is playing,” Myrn yelled to her two companions, “I’m going to carve us a hole in yon table rock. It’ll just take a few seconds. Stand by!”

  Using the tremendous roars and flashes of electricity from the low clouds to shield her magicking, Myrn quickly sliced into the stone wall she’d selected, carving a wide, barrel-vaulted passage into its lowest strata, until the three of them could easily walk within.

  A few more moments and Myrn had set a fire, conjured up a hot meal, and made comfortable beds for them all, cozy as could be.

  “With any luck at all,” she puffed—the spelling had been arduous, if swiftly completed—“even a close watcher wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “Ham and eggs!” exclaimed the Otter, delighted with the selection from Blue Teakettle’s kitchen.

  “Argh!” Cribblon made a wry grimace. “Eggs! I never really liked them before and I like them even less now that I know how a bird feels.”

  “No eggs for you, then, Airhead!” said the monkey. “More for us! Have a bit of this toasty-buttery corn fritter and some Valley ham—it’s Blue at her very best!”

  They settled down in some comfort, despite the tumult of the storm outside. The fire, tiny as it was, burned cheerfully, and the smell of hot cornbread and fried ham made them feel quite at home.

  ****

  Douglas and Lesser Dragon had given Myrn’s party several hours’ head start. When they were ready to leave the cave at the edge of the foothills, twilight had fallen and the storm that had driven Myrn and her companions to shelter was flashing and rumbling across the face of the mountain range.

  “We’ll fly high, shall we?” asked the Dragon. “Take us a bit longer, but that’ll just give our horseling more time to find her papa.”

  “The storm’ll mask our movements, I should think,” Douglas agreed. “Can you carry me or should I fly alongside?”

  “Get aboard! No magic required! I can carry a much greater weight than a youthful Fire Wizard ... and on my back you’ll be quite invisible to anyone or anything below us.”

  Once Douglas was aboard, seated astride just in front of the beast’s long, leathery wings, Lesser gave a warning grunt, a low shout, and flung his tremendous bulk off the cliff before the cave, catching a rushing updraft under his wings and letting it carry them high into the dark sky.

  “These thunderheads must be close to five miles high, maybe more,” he commented once they were well aloft. “It’ll grow a little chilly, Pyromancer!”

  Douglas drew a heavy, hooded, woolen cloak from his left sleeve and shrugged into it as the Dragon continued to beat his wings for altitude. Gusty winds shook the flying Dragon from all sides but Lesser flew steadily upward in great spirals, not allowing the vagaries of updrafts and downdrafts to turn him from his course.

  The black and uproarious storm clouds towered like a cliff beside them, sheer from the foothills below. Lightning bolts crashed and roared every few seconds and dense cloud-masses charged upward and dropped suddenly down within the storm, flash-freezing rain into white pellets of hail and melting them back to rain once more. Where Lesser flew the air was rough but remained perfectly clear.

  “Myrn is down there in the storm, somewhere,” Douglas commented after a while. “She knows what to do to keep safe and dry, of course. Still...”

  “Brave, capable lady, your wife, I understand from the little horse,” rumbled the Dragon. “Must be terrible not to speak to her!”

  “That’s the worst part! And this storm roil makes any clear distant-sensing nearly impossible.”

  “The same should go for our Enemy, however,” the Dragon pointed out. “There!
We’re nearing the roof of the storm!”

  The sun, just below the western horizon at this altitude, struck long, golden beams across the flat, intensely black top of the thunderhead, throwing its writhing turmoil into sharp relief.

  A spectacular sight, seldom seen by the ground-bound, Douglas thought, thrilled despite the bitterly cold and gusty air. He relaxed a bit, let the Dragon do the flying, and even enjoyed the view for some minutes as Lesser topped the miles-high column of storm wrack and began to glide over it toward the east. This high, the air was surprisingly calm.

  “Walrus Shingle is a bit to the south, there, along the coast. See? With the Ebony beyond? Quite a sight!” the Dragon called over his shoulder.

  He stretched his great wings out straight to either side and spiraled slowly downward, now well beyond the storm’s eastern wall by a number of clear miles.

  In a bit over an hour, with night fully fallen over Nearer East, the Dragon touched down on a flat, multilayered rock standing with its feet in the surf a bit offshore. He slid easily down the far side and ducked into a shallow undercut.

  “No line of sight from our Enemy,” he reported to his passenger. “Suit you as a camping spot until dawn, young Wizard?”

  “Perfectly... dry, warm, and secure. You must be tired, after your high flight.”

  “A bit on the wing-weary side, I admit,” said the Dragon. “A few hours’ nap and I’ll be just fine. That’s Walrus Shingle, down there. Where the waves are breaking on the gravel beach. You see?”

  “I think I see a few of the great tuskers, too,” Douglas told him. “But they can wait until morning.”

  Lesser nodded, waited until the Pyromancer had dismounted and then wrapped himself in his cloak and found a soft chunk of sandstone for his pillow. The Dragon promptly half-buried himself in the warm sand and fell into deep slumber, snoring gently, exhaling occasional puffs of smoke that smelled, Douglas thought, like Flarman’s workshop under the High ... sulfurous yet sweet, with hints of peat smoke and rain-washed clover.