The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  “That religion is called by its practitioners Islam. Its practitioners call themselves Moslems—and they are most assiduous in its practice. At any moment now, we shall be interrupted by their caterwauling prayers, which, like the ablution rituals of the Sisterhood, they perform several times a day.”

  “How long,” asked Fireclaw, eager to plunge into the pile of maps rapidly growing upon the table before him, “will these infernal prayers go on?”

  He had a second thought. “And are they so damnably obligatory as to interfere with the safe completion of this silly quest they’ve asked our help for?”

  “Of the latter, young Sedrich, I know no more than thee. They’ve certainly a language well created for prayer, also for elaborate insults, curses, and—”

  Mochamet al Rotshild spoke.

  “The captain biddeth me remind thee that he and these other Eldworld Moslems wish to establish an alliance with whatever standoffish domain may exist across the Great Blue Mountains—they know as little about the facts of the matter as we—ere their great Asiatic rivals can. There’s a battle raging ’tween the two Islamic civilizations for control of what they call the basin of the Greater Ocean which lieth ’twixt this continent and one called Great Asia.”

  Fireclaw nodded.

  The captain, through Oln Woeck, explained that there were many rumors about the magical accomplishments of those dwelling west of the Great Blue Mountains. Wizards there had learned the turning of base metals to precious ones, it was said, or the extension of human life to immortality, even perhaps to make ships such as this one fly.

  Mochamet al Rotshild laughed with Fireclaw and Oln Woeck at these tales, then grew serious of aspect.

  “Even more fabulous rumors,” he conveyed through the Cultist, “concern a weapon capable of destroying whole armies and fleets, wielded by a flesh-eating Sun-God—a notion, I might add, which both horrifies and fascinates these pious Moslems. The captain, who is not so pious—he bade me say that to you—hath his doubts about these other tales, all save the last about the weapon. He claimeth to have seen it work, and hath been ordered by his king to investigate further.”

  The captain pointed at a map purporting to display the entire earth. He made a short speech, then waited for Oln Woeck to translate it for Fireclaw before continuing.

  “Open war is even now being waged in yet another place, here, which they call the ‘Island Continent.’”

  From his mother’s teachings, and the crude hand-drawn maps in her many books, Fireclaw had known about Great Asia and the Greater Ocean, though in details the charts he’d seen in boyhood differed considerably from these of the Saracens.

  Of this Island Continent, those same books had said nothing, not even acknowledging that it, or yet another, icebound at the bottom of the world, existed.

  “Similar representations as this that he leadeth,” the captain explained through Oln Woeck, pointing to the southern continent of the New World, “are even now being made among the ‘Incas’, here, an ancient, powerful, and subtle people.”

  “‘Incas,’“ Fireclaw repeated, letting the alien word roll over upon his tongue.

  “But I suppose,” the tattooed Cultist added on his own account, unable to resist a bigoted sneer, “that the mighty Fireclaw knoweth nothing of such matters, and careth less, having been most fully occupied with the carving out of his own domain among these benighted—but so very compliant—savages for many years.”

  Fireclaw thrust the steel throat of the resin-impregnated leather cuff upon his severed right wrist over the oddly-shaped handle of the dagger at his waist.

  There was a solid metal-to-metal click, although he did not withdraw the blade. Ursi lifted his head, whistled plaintively, then laid it across his paws again and was still.

  “Priest,” Fireclaw answered, gratified to see that Oln Woeck still disliked the title, “limit yourself to what the captain, here, has to tell me, and spare me your nasty little embellishments. Or I shall directly have need of learning his language for myself.”

  Mochamet al Rotshild chuckled, having understood a bit of what had passed between the men.

  “You-fella Fireclaw tellum priest-fella good,” the captain essayed in his faltering version of Helvetian. “Me-fella Mo quicky-quick learnum Fireclaw tongue, if helpum.”

  His blue eyes twinkled with mischief as the leader of the Brotherhood glared back at him.

  Sedrich grinned back. He liked this wicked red-haired foreigner and resolved forthwith to learn the captain’s language whether or not he decided to dispense with Oln Woeck’s translation services by paying back the debt he’d owed the man for twenty years.

  He looked from the Cultist to the Commodore and back again. As was always the case, the trouble with simply killing someone like Oln Woeck was that, within the hour of his death, there would be a thousand of his ilk—and maybe worse—to take his place.

  That this was never the way with wiser men and more valiant warriors, Sedrich Fireclaw felt, constituted one of the greatest tragedies of human history.

  He turned his attention to the map, where certain significant facts had begun to emerge.

  From the Saracen point of view, one with which he could heartily agree, judging from the map, this expedition had already been under way a long time, demanding a weary-making and dangerous voyage across what they termed the Lesser Ocean to the shoreline of a barbaric New World, thence out of the eastern forests and across the western plains.

  When asked about it, Mochamet al Rotshild told Fireclaw that Saracen seagoing ships ran on steam, a tidbit Oln Woeck was extremely loath to translate until he was once more shown a bit of dagger-blade.

  This time, the captain’s.

  Fireclaw was of course familiar with the small, alcohol-fueled steam engines used by the neighboring Red tribes. But he had not stayed at home quite long enough to see the march of progress alter the horizon of the eastern sea. In a way, he thought he might be glad about this. He might never have found a way to imitate these later marvels, had he grown up watching for them on the ocean.

  Finally, nodding his head and shaking the hand of Mochamet al Rotshild, he agreed to guide the Saracen expedition to the shore of the Greater Ocean. He was not surprised—given the one condition he’d extracted—that his fellow Helvetian was not quite as happy with the decision as he had claimed he’d be.

  Inside Fireclaw the Destroyer, a much younger Sedrich, son of Owaldsohn, father, it now appeared, of Owald, had time to wonder what Oln Woeck would find to steal from him this time.

  3

  Some time later, after one of the prayers Oln Woeck had promised would transpire, the three men stepped out upon the deck.

  There Fireclaw was formally introduced to the young woman, scarcely more than a girl, he thought, seeing her up close, who had tried so hard to kill him just the day before.

  She had been taking the occupant of the gilded cage back in the cabin for a walk. Giant Ursi threatened to knock the girl over, attempting to jump up to investigate an alarmed Sagheer more closely. Fireclaw had to order him—and sharply—to sit.

  “Ayesha,” he pronounced her name again.

  “Fireclaw Sedrich al Sedrichsohn,” she echoed, rolling the r’s until they each became a trill.

  He laughed.

  “Just Fireclaw will do. I’ve gotten used to it. Or Sedrich, as I was called when I was her age.”

  He was amused that, with the aim of sweetening their diplomatic cause, the Saracens had brought with them this fierce (although admittedly dark-eyed and pretty) child warrior. She was apparently the favorite daughter of their ruler, one Abu Bakr Mohammed VII, who claimed, among a long string of somewhat pretentious titles which did not translate at all well into Helvetian, that of Caliph-in-Rome.

  Like Fireclaw, this ruler’s daughter had a constant animal companion, a tiny, ancient-eyed being she called by the name Sagheer, who rode atop her shoulder.

  Already last evening and this morning, Fireclaw had watched his Com
anche in-laws as they had begun to bring supplies to his ranch in trade for goods Mochamet al Rotshild offered them. Like Fireclaw, they had never before seen such an animal. Unlike him, many were terrified by it, muttering among themselves that it was the spirit of an ancestor which advised her constantly by whispering in her ear.

  “She is to be wedded,” offered Oln Woeck, “immediately upon our arrival, to a mysterious and powerful Sun-King, purported to rule absolutely across the Great Blue Mountains.”

  “A prospect”—Fireclaw nodded, watching both Ayesha and the captain for signs that they understood his words—“she visibly anticipates with a truculent fatalism which apparently encourages her to risk death at the hands of strangers.”

  Mochamet al Rotshild guffawed, then spoke at some length to the girl, who promptly colored, assumed a furious expression, and turned her back upon the men.

  The little animal upon her shoulder scolded them.

  Ursi barked in counterpoint.

  Fireclaw wondered to himself what kind of father would employ his daughter as a bargaining chip in such a manner, saying as much to Oln Woeck, who, with many a frightened gulp and stammer, conveyed the question to the captain. The younger Helvetian was deciding that he did not like this Abu Bakr Mohammed much.

  He was truthful—to Oln Woeck’s dismay—about this as well.

  “I would imagine,” the Cultist translated directly for Mochamet al Rotshild, “that Fireclaw hath seen many a brutal act in his life, brought about by dire necessity.”

  Fireclaw nodded.

  “Nor,” the captain added, “can I imagine Fireclaw flinching from commission of such an act himself, in need.”

  It was Fireclaw’s turn to laugh. The captain had him.

  “Morever,” the Helvetian had Oln Woeck say for him, “I have long made practice of remaining unconcerned about the fate of strangers. It has served me well. Best tend the needs of those belonging to oneself.”

  He shrugged.

  “If the girl is being sent west for political purposes, very well, she is not my daughter, she is cargo.”

  Mochamet al Rotshild frowned at this cold-blooded dissertation. Still, in all, this attitude made easier the things which had to be done in the name of duty.

  When in Rome, do as the Caliph. Very well, thought the red-haired Saracen, let this wise-eyed barbarian be his guide in more than just the geographical sense. He did not like what he was doing to Ayesha, and this Fireclaw had spoken of it well.

  Let it remain that way with him as well.

  XXIV: Knife Thrower

  “No soul knows what it shall earn tomorrow, and no soul knows in what land it

  shall die.”—The Koran, Sura XXXI

  Amber flames lit the faces of the people watching him.

  “And the servants of the gods were manifest in numbers greater than the pigeons blackening the sky as they pass from south to north in springtime and from north to south in autumn.”

  Blanket slipping off his shoulders to the ground behind him, Knife Thrower raised both naked brown, lean-muscled arms, pointing the direction which the sparks flew from the fire burning before him, drowning out the smaller, bluer lights of a moonless sky.

  Looking round the circle which had formed about him, he knew that Fireclaw had heard this tale many times. Also his sister, since the earliest days of her childhood.

  This was exactly as it should be. Nor did it deter him now. That such tales be told again and again, until each Comanche, each Cheyenne, each Dakota knew them by heart, and learned from them, was a solemn duty which the gods had placed upon them, one of many such. And the telling of the tale to strangers—those few who were permitted entry to this land—conveying the warnings it contained, was of special importance.

  There were many strangers now.

  The old, scarred one who never bathed.

  The great and hairy one whose beard was the color of a winter sunrise.

  The one who had survived an arrow through the chest (both Fireclaw and he, the war-chief of the Mountain Notch Comanche, bore many similar scars).

  Others, too, including two women and the oddly dressed servants of the hairy one.

  All must be told that they trespassed and what punishment was likely to be. Ordinarily this duty fell to the shaman of the Comanche, but Knife Thrower’s tribe’s had died a few days ago—an omen, the People were saying among themselves now—not yet ceremonially replaced by the youth the old man had chosen for the duty.

  And besides that, Knife Thrower was himself curious about these interloping strangers.

  “ And the servants of the gods did slay the People, scattering those they left alive from forest-frost to burning sand, mixing them again and again, until no two people in any of the villages they created spoke the same language.

  “And they did give these villages each a name, and bade them take up life again, as before, yet with certain injunctions.”

  Fireclaw knew what these injunctions were, thought Knife Thrower. He broke them every day. His very presence broke the law, as did the fire-weapon on his hip.

  And yet the gods left him alone.

  “And in the times of my own grandfather did the Dog-Eaters break the injunctions, believing the gods tired, or unobservant, or passed into the not-is. And the Dog-Eaters, being not so many nor so strong as others, fashioned for themselves a weapon, using fuel they had been shown how to make for their riding-machines.”

  “And the weapon spouted flame, consuming men and many other things, many paces away.”

  Knife Thrower shuddered.

  He always did at this part of the story. He knew many of the People who had personally seen the result of the Dog-Eater’s experimentation. Some of them bore scars so terrible it appeared the very flesh upon their faces and bodies had melted and reset.

  “And, though it had been many generations since the servants of the gods came down into our land, they did descend upon the disobedient and proud Dog-Eaters with a greater flame, and with their toothed swords and lances of unbearable glory.

  “And when the servants of the gods had labored over the Dog-Eater’s village for a day and a night, even the stones had slumped into themselves and run into the soil like the wax of bees.

  “And the servants of the gods spoke to the People, saying, ‘Behold, the Dog-Eaters are no more. Guard you the land against intrusion and hold thy injunctions. Fish, hunt, use the weapons you have been given to work the will of the gods, and all shall prosper.

  “‘Break the law and you shall perish horribly.’

  “And an unnameable thing came in the night and swooped them up and they were gone.”

  He dropped his upraised hands into his lap and was still.

  The hairy one spoke to the old man.

  The old man spoke to Fireclaw.

  Fireclaw asked, “This thing without a name that swooped them up, what did it look like?”

  Knife Thrower thought long before replying.

  “My brother, you have asked me this yourself, many times. Tell them what I told you then.”

  “That it was dark,” the Helvetian answered, “that no one would say what the thing looked like, even those who saw it plainly by the light of a burning village.”

  These words did Oln Woeck haltingly convey to Mochamet al Rotshild and the other Saracens.

  “It was very large,” Knife Thrower conceded.

  “Yes,” Fireclaw urged without translation for the benefit of the others, “and what else?”

  “It made a roaring sound like that of giant bees too many to be counted in a countless number of lifetimes.”

  Fireclaw repeated what the Comanche war chief had told him, and waited for the second translation.

  “Yes, go on.”

  “That its color was that of our riding-machines before they are painted. A dull color of unpolished silver.”

  “In other words,” Fireclaw sat back in triumph, “a machine.”

  Knife Thrower swallowed what seemed to him the deepest
of heresy. He was accustomed to such from Fireclaw.

  “Perhaps, my brother, perhaps. I have had such thoughts myself, since meeting you. But a machine of the gods. And, if they are alike unto that machine as we are to the machines with which they have gifted us, then the gods are more than mighty, they are...they are...”

  Words failed the war chief of the Mountain Notch Comanche.

  This did not happen often.

  Still, it seemed to happen whenever he discussed the gods with his brother Fireclaw.

  2

  It was a spiny land, of which the rolling hills of south Faransaa had been but a mild foretaste.

  She had come to view one of the spiny ones, not this green shrub which she crouched behind with Marya, which seemed to be all spikes itself but a clumsy brown waddler something like a European hedgehog, only much, much larger.

  Its spines were deep brown at the root, deep brown at the tip, with a broad band of ivory occupying the center third.

  Marya had been given something like this animal by one of the Comanche, a fibrous handful of prickles, dry and brown. She had been told that it was the egg of a prairie creature. Ayesha had recognized the cockleburr and the joke behind it, but her servant had not truly believed her when she had explained that she was being played with.

  Thus this minor expedition onto the prairie by themselves.

  Ayesha was certain she could find the creature, more certain that it was a mammal which did not lay eggs. So far, the only profit from the journey was that Marya had learned to avoid the flat green ground-hugging cacti with long red-brown spines, nearly invisible against the sandy soil. The limp she walked with now was her diploma.

  In Rome, the gullible Marya had once been given a flamingo feather, told to thrust it into the rich soil of the Caliph’s garden. From it, she was assured by that particular joker, would grow, like a plant-cutting, a fabulous bird.

  She had believed that as well, in preference to the truth a seven-year-old Ayesha had told her, each day faithfully watering the base of the thing until one of the gardeners, disgusted, had pulled it up and burned it with the lawn-rakings.

  “See, Princess, there it is!”