Aeromancer

by Don Callander

  “The sort of place in which a Bit of Darkness might hide?” Douglas called after her.

  But the Wraith was gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Very Ancient Place

  “I do recall a few fragments of tales, come to think on it, of the ancient Sandrones,” Myrn said as they resumed their trek. “A fierce, warlike race. I don’t recall anyone ever telling of their homeland. It may well have been here.”

  “The wickedest of Men!” Cribblon called back from his place second in line. “Frigeon spoke of them. Practiced Black Arts, he said, and banished all softer emotions from their hearts. They conquered a vast empire, enslaving native peoples and forcing them to work in mines from which they extracted cold iron for their swords and arrowheads. No, I don’t recall he ever said where they lived.”

  “Must have been here. Deka’s no fool,” Marbleheart turned his head over his shoulder to say.

  Douglas nodded. “What happened to them, then? If Flarman knew of them, he never spoke of them to me.”

  “According to old Frigeon,” the Aeromancer replied after a pause to negotiate a particularly uneven patch of broken scree, “they destroyed each other in bloody civil wars. If there were survivors, they must have fled their city and their homeland.”

  The company plodded silently on in the terrible heat and rising clouds of fine dust, saving their energies for walking, breathing, and climbing over broken fields of shards and creeping up steep slopes of dangerously loose scree.

  Only Lesser, gliding silently high overhead, darting off to this side or that to investigate alternate routes for those on the ground, seemed quite at ease.

  When the sun’s rays struck almost levelly across the tortured plain, they came to a sharp-edged cliff dropping away, straight down a mile or more, beneath their weary feet. The land below was shrouded in evening shadow, with only occasional sharp pinnacles of stone rising high enough to be lighted by the setting sun.

  “Camp now,” Douglas decided wearily. “Anybody got any idea where?”

  The Dragon swooped down in time to hear his question.

  “I saw a sort of cave over that way a bit... just below the rim. Actually, this whole thing is a crater. Perfectly round. Very wide and deep. Very, very ancient.”

  “Lead the way!” Douglas said. “It’ll get more than a bit chilly here in the open after the sun sets.”

  “Deserts usually get cold at night,” Myrn said from experience. “Shelter of any kind and a warm campfire—and a good dinner, too—will be most welcome.”

  “A cool bath would be even more welcome,” growled Marbleheart, turning to follow the Dragon along the rim, which was as smooth and level as a road. “Watch your footing, people! With this sun in our eyes, a person could lose his step easily.”

  They carefully trailed after the Dragon along the very edge of the drop. Douglas noted that the stone on which they trod was glassy-smooth and darkly streaked in black, blue, and gray.

  “A volcano?” he asked Cribblon.

  “No, I think not,” the Journeyman replied. “If we had the Lady Geomancer with us, she could tell us about this rock.”

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Myrn said, shaking her head.

  “I have... on a much smaller scale,” declared Cribblon. “It’s an impact crater, I think. Circular in shape and ... oh, a good ten miles across. Very, very ancient! It’s been thousands of years since something crashed down here.”

  “See! The very stone melted and ran like hot wax,” Marbleheart pointed out. “Glad I wasn’t near when this happened!”

  Lesser spread his leathery wings and dove into the dark crater. When the party caught up and peeped over the edge, they saw him clinging to a narrow stone lip or shelf, fifty yards down the sheer crater wall.

  “Cave here,” Lesser called up to them. “Wait! I’ll come up and ferry you down. The wall’s mostly the same sort of black glass ... too slippery and smooth for climbing, even for an Otter-turned-monkey!”

  He flew back to the level above, loaded them all on his back, and dove off again, circling out over the black bottom of the crater, where the sun no longer shone at all, landing easily on the narrow shelf of smooth stone just before a long, low opening in the cliff wall.

  “Water!” cried Marbleheart in glee, jumping to the ground.

  He ran to a shallow basin just inside the cave mouth and sipped a mouthful of the water it held.

  “Pshaw! Ooooh! Nasty!” he cried, spitting the water out again at once. “Besides, it’s blood-warm.”

  “Never mind!” Myrn laughed. “I’ll get some water from the great courtyard fountain on Waterand—the best water in the world!”

  “Right away, I beg you, Mistress,” the Otter cried mournfully, spitting and sputtering. “I think this stuff has poisoned me!”

  Douglas scooped a palmful of the offending liquid and smelled, then tasted it.

  “Nothing too very harmful,” he assured his Familiar. “Smells and tastes rather like geyser’s water, although not as boiling hot. You recall the hot springs in the Stone Warriors’ valley? Same thing. Dissolved minerals and chemicals and things like that. Some would deem it quite healthful.”

  “The more fool, they!” coughed Marbleheart. “How could anything so vile be of any benefit?”

  Myrn quickly imported, by means of a handy Aquamantic spell, a large crystal basin of cool, clear Waterand water. She also provided tall crystal tumblers fit for a king’s table and a fifty-gallon silver tub for the Dragon, and soon they had all slaked their desert thirsts, including the Dragon, who could go for weeks, he said, without water of any kind.

  “Good for you,” sputtered Marbleheart, “but I’m a water baby myself, and I’d dry up and blow away if I didn’t get fresh water daily.”

  “Hourly, rather,” laughed his Master. “Let’s look at our accommodations for the night.”

  The party followed him into the cave, ducking under the low ceiling at first. Once past that, even the Dragon could easily enter, and he breathed a long, steady yellow flare to light their way.

  A few paces inside, the cavern floor dropped steeply to a huge room with a dark pool at its center that glittered in the flare’s light.

  “Something...,” Douglas began, but stopped when he reached the gravelly margin of the pool. The Dragon’s light showed a perfectly flat, mirrored surface ... and the reflection of his head and Myrn’s as she stepped up beside him.

  “It’s not more bad water, is it?” the Sea Otter exclaimed. He tried to taste it but only succeeded in bumping his sensitive nose. “Ouch! It’s hard as ice, but not as cold and not wet at all!”

  Douglas laid his palm on the surface, fingers splayed.

  “It’s glass, I declare!” he exclaimed, drawing his hand back and examining it, as if he thought it would be blackened by the obsidian.

  “Common substance around meteor strikes,” declared the Dragon, who was something of an expert on such matters. “It bubbled up here as a liquid and hardened without anything to disturb it. Rather pretty, don’t you think?”

  “Well, if we sleep here,” Myrn said, running her hands over the obsidian slowly, “I suppose it’ll be no worse than sleeping on a marble floor. It’s not cold, anyway.”

  Douglas agreed. The glass retained heat... perhaps some of the long-ago heat of the awesome impact.

  Marbleheart found a beach of soft, black sand off to one side where they could settle in some comfort, eat their supper, and crawl under their blankets. Douglas was about to drift off to sleep when he heard the Sea Otter speak.

  “Who are you talking to, Familiar?” he murmured.

  “Bats,” whispered Marbleheart. “They live here in a side cave and go out during the night, they tell me, seeking insects for their food.”

  Douglas sat up and listened.

  Indeed, he heard soft fluttering above him and a high, almost inaudible squeaking. When he looked toward the slightly lighter mourn of the cave, he saw a great, slurred mass
of rapidly moving specks of blackness flowing upward and out into the night.

  “I’d have liked to bespeak them myself.” He yawned. “Maybe we can catch them in the morning. Bats are shy but usually quite friendly and helpful. Remember the bat family in the witch-queen’s dungeon?”

  “I remember Tuckett and his family very well,” his Familiar whispered. “These bats’ll be back just before dawn, if I remember bat practices. Go to sleep, Douglas!”

  Before long the entire party, including the Dragon, were sound asleep.

  When she awoke, Myrn climbed the steep slope to the mouth of Bat Cave and found her husband and his Familiar studying the crater, now lighted by the risen sun.

  “Quite a sight!” chirped Marbleheart. “I don’t relish the thought of walking around down there. Hard on the feet! Bound to get pretty hot, too!”

  “Beautiful in its own, special way,” Douglas said, turning to greet Myrn. “But our Otter’s right. We’ll be better off now flying to the other side.”

  “What’s on the other side?” wondered the Journeyman Aquamancer. “Oh! I see! A city of some sort on the far rim.”

  “The cave bats pointed it out to us or we might have missed it. Unless I’m completely wrong,” Douglas said, “that’s Sandrovia. Or what’s left of it. What else could it be?”

  “A place for a wicked bit of Darkness to hide,” Myrn said. “The sooner we look at it, the better. Not particularly pretty, is it? Well, the Sandrones didn’t sound like a particularly attractive race, from what Cribblon says. Do you think any still live there, husband?”

  “No idea ... but we’ll soon find out.”

  “Breakfast first,” insisted Marbleheart, turning to reenter the cave. “A good place for ... what?”

  “Black coffee and pumpernickel bread?” Myrn called after him. “No, I guess bacon and eggs and hotcakes would be better. I’ll see to it at once!”

  The broiling sun was well above the eastern rim by the time the party mounted Lesser Dragon and was carried smoothly across the vast crater to the silent, sun-bleached ruin on the north rim.

  Marbleheart peered curiously down into the crater as the Dragon flew over it, commenting on the weird formations and muted blacks, dark blues, and purples at the bottom. Rain for hundreds of centuries had filled many of the depressions in the floor with dark, greenish water but no plants grew there, even now. The thin soil was largely a dusting of dark obsidian sand and snowlike flakes of shiny mica, formed during the tremendous heat of the original impact.

  “I’m certainly glad we didn’t have to walk.” Cribblon shuddered. “Oh, my poor old feet! And the way around would’ve added a day or more to our journey. Hurrah for the Dragon!”

  “Hurrah!” Marbleheart added in a heartfelt cheer.

  “Getting close,” warned Lesser, blushing a brilliant crimson all the way to his ears. He coughed an embarrassed blast of green smoke and shook his head. “Where do you think we should land, Wizard?”

  “Take your choice,” Douglas said, after a glance at his fellow travelers. “We’ll look at the town first, then search for signs of the Servant.”

  “Unless he finds us first,” Myrn added, tucking her blowing hair under her kerchief. Female Wizards seldom wore Wizard’s caps. They resembled the witches’ conical hats too much, and Lady Wizards were careful to be distinguished from that lesser (often antisocial) type of magicker.

  “If he’s nearby, we’ll smell him out!” Marbleheart pointed out. “How about the open square, Lesser? Room to land your great bulk?”

  “I can land on the head of a pin, if I’ve a mind to,” grunted Lesser. “Even a pinhead like yours, Sea Otter!”

  If he’d had a thumb the Otter would have thumbed his nose at the Dragon. He laughed delightedly, instead. The great flying beast dropped his starboard wing and curved down into an open plaza before a tall, stark building with some remains of a steeply pitched roof and a dozen thick, broken towers.

  The plaza was paved with granite blocks evidently once polished to a high gloss but now dulled by long centuries of weathering. In corners and doorways standing open to the constant winds, fine black sand drifted like coal dust, often several feet deep.

  The scene was one of ancient ruin, empty for thousands of years. The low, round-edged buildings had a few high windows and a few wide doorways from which the wooden doors had long since crumbled to dust. Even their hinges had turned to faint, rusty stains.

  “These windows were all heavily barred once,” observed Lesser. He stood tall enough to look in at the high, empty openings closely. “Not much left to look at within, either.”

  Douglas stood in the center of the plaza, spinning slowly on his right heel until he’d turned through the entire compass. Myrn, meanwhile, drifted lightly back and forth, touching the rough walls and peering up at the remains of steeply peaked eaves far above.

  “Not a soul around,” Marbleheart declared, his voice echoing over the sound of the hot breeze soughing around the corners of the buildings and moaning softly across the empty windows. “Not even enough signs of life to seem spooky or feel haunted!”

  Cribblon was the most active of them all, darting briefly into dark doorways and reappearing almost immediately, his head thrust forward and his hands clasped firmly behind his back. He reminded Marbleheart of a hound, casting for an elusive scent.

  “Any ideas?” Douglas asked at last, sitting on a low wall in the shade of the palace shell.

  “There’re plenty of signs of Men,” his wife said slowly. “But not for a very long time ... centuries, at least!”

  “What strikes me is not what I detect,” said Cribblon, emerging from the palace itself, “but what I don’t. Such a place, you would think, would have been taken over a long time ago by small animals, maybe even some larger beasts, and certainly flocks and families of birds. This is a perfect place for swallows, even for hawks and birds like owls, kestrels, and gyrfalcons. The air here should be a-buzz with wings, and the nooks and crannies crowded with nests. Not even the bats choose to live here in Sandrovia!”

  “What do you make of that?” Douglas wondered.

  Cribblon shrugged his shoulders and resumed his patrol about the square, entering houses and coming out again, breathing Airish Exploring Spells and shaking his head when he got no responses.

  Lesser Dragon found a hot stretch of sun-washed pavement and dozed quietly. Wizardly doings were not his thing.

  Marbleheart climbed to the top of the palace wall and peered from that vantage up and down the narrow curve of the city on the crater rim. Finally he slid down a remaining pitch of roof made of closely fitted slates, very smooth and even, and scrabbled down to join Myrn and Douglas in their spot of shade.

  “Nary a sound,” the Otter sniffed. “Nary a soul, neither!”

  Cribblon came, at last, and sat beside them, too, his eyes still constantly sweeping the palace forecourt and the narrow plaza beyond, up the sides of houses and across their broken rooflines.

  “There’s something quite unnatural about this place,” Douglas decided after a long silence.

  “Too quiet,” Myrn agreed.

  “Not even bugs, nor even airborne plants!” murmured the Aeromancer. “If there were plants, you’d expect bugs, and you’d then expect small birds and lizards. If there were small birds and lizards, the larger raptors would be flying silently overhead in the morning light, hunting the birds and lizards. But... nothing!”

  “Try a Calling Spell,” Marbleheart suggested.

  The Pyromancer sat straighter, reached into his left sleeve, and produced a worn leather pouch tied with rawhide strings.

  Untying the strings, he placed the bag on top of the wall between his knees and studied the array of tiny bottles, tubes, vials, boxes, and bags fastened in place by red rubber bands.

  He finally chose two small crystal vials.

  Marbleheart, who’d watched him do Calling Spells many times before, hunched closer. Myrn moved to give her husband elbow room, and Cribblo
n nodded and watched carefully.

  Douglas made a series of magic gestures. A brightly burning fire of sweet-smelling bits of dry wood sprang to life on top of the wall. After a few moments, he uncorked a silver vial and tilted a single droplet of milky liquid into the palm of his left hand. From a second vial, he added three dashes of a white powder. A small marble of soft gray with pure white striations formed at once and, speaking a soft series of spelling words, Douglas dropped the sphere into the center of the fire.

  The flames turned bright orange for a moment and, when they’d returned to a steady blue color, the watchers saw a bright-glowing pink, pearl-sized droplet in the middle of the fire, its surface slowly whirling and twirling in delicate shades of gray. Douglas, adding another short incantation, added a single tiny drop of a clear liquid from a third vial onto the sphere. With a sharp hissss the liquid touched the hot bead, turning it at once a golden color, crackling and pulsating very slightly.

  “Wait!” Douglas cautioned the watchers. “The call may take a minute or two to be answered.”

  “What... ?” Marbleheart said.

  He stopped to scratch at his round right ear with a forepaw.

  “A bee?” Myrn exclaimed. “Way out here!”

  “Sit still!” Douglas ordered the Otter sharply. “He won’t hurt you!”

  Marbleheart froze.

  The bee, which had circled the Otter’s head twice after being swiped at, settled on his forehead and began cleaning his wings, humming softly to himself.

  “Hello!” Douglas said to him. “I’m sorry if I bothered you. I can see you have to work hard to gain a living in this empty place.”

  The insect stopped his grooming and turned to face the Pyromancer.

  “Been a very long time since any of my hive-mates has reported seeing a Man, let alone a party of them, if that’s what you be, friends.”