“Just indulging my curiosity,” she answered as Shannon came to the door behind the boy to peer in as well. Adella glanced at the weapon’s rack beside her and grabbed the hilts of one of the swords, a cutlass with a curved tip that suggested it came from the islands of the Southern Sea. As she suspected, the sword came away with only a little effort, for wizards were notoriously indifferent to weapons and put little value on them.
“Here,” she said tossing the weapon to Jhan and a second, a scimitar, to Shannon. “Arm yourselves. You’re going to need more than a bow and a few throwing daggers where we’re going.”
“That’s stealing,” Shannon said, putting the sword down.
“Stealing?” Adella repeated in real surprise. Then she shrugged. “Let’s call it borrowing.”
“Borrowing without permission is stealing,” Shannon said.
“I’d gladly ask the master’s leave if he were at home,” she replied, “but he’s not. I’ve a need for these things, girl, though I’ll be happy to return them as soon as I’ve finished. A man with so much wealth will surely not even notice they’re gone.”
“It’s still stealing,” Shannon insisted, and Jhan put his sword down as well.
Adella’s eyes narrowed slightly. “We’re off on a desperate mission to rescue the hostages of Nargost Castle, right?”
“Yes.”
“If Malcolm is for us, he’d have no objection to us taking whatever we might need to help us succeed,” the woman reasoned. “And if he is against us, then we should take everything we can carry. So we’ll hold these things as hostage against Malcolm’s future behavior.”
Shannon frowned, uncertain. Then she said, “But…but wouldn’t taking them make Malcolm the more likely to join the forces of our enemies?”
Adella grinned. “Take a potion of bat’s ear or a scroll of writing styles off a wizard, and he’ll hunt you to the death. But take a sword off him, and he’ll never notice its missing. Trust me on this.”
The two cautiously picked up the weapons, almost as if afraid to be bitten, but after a moment, they were wielding them about, testing their weight and balance, eyes widening as they began to recognize their quality. Adella left them there, going back out into the main hall and staring thoughtfully at the mirror.
She thought for a moment of pressing her own palm to the mirrored wall, but then she smiled away the thought. Aside from the potential dangers, she had no desire to reveal details of her past to her two young and innocent companions. There was, however, a simple solution to the problem.
“Shannon,” she called, and the girl emerged from the side room. “The castle seems to have taken a liking to you. Let us try your luck once more.”
She led the younger woman back to the mirror and gently pressed both her hands to the surface again, her own palms against their backs, holding them in position. Once more, the mirror broke into images, dizzying pictures from a considerable height with a gleaming white mane billowing in the foreground that told them they were riding the back of the pegasus, and Adella could feel the shiver of excitement that went through Shannon’s body. She smiled, their spirits matching exactly, but while the girl continued to watch the surface, Adella slipped her own fingers between those of Shannon’s to lightly brush the mirror surface. She did it a second time and then a third, and she watched as the images swept down from the sky and inside Llan Praetor. At first, the pictures exactly followed their path, but when it reached the central chamber from which they had launched their magical search, it continued on through the far door. Adella mentally recorded the path, but the more it twisted and stretched, the less she liked the idea of following it. Then the images burst through the main doors into this very hall. Finally, to all their surprise, the image continued on to the second of the side rooms, the one that seemed to contain nothing but the unwanted swords.
Adella looked from the mirror to the side room behind them, frowning. She released Shannon and took two steps backward, her gaze still jumping from image to reality.
“What are you looking at?” Shannon asked, rubbing her hands again to drive out the cold.
“The wall image is a reflection over time,” Adella answered. “If you look close, you’ll see even our images are slightly out of sync.”
They looked carefully and then Shannon exclaimed in startled agreement, “You’re right! It’s not a true reflection!”
“Our presence is too fleeting for the mirror to fully capture,” Adella explained. “But there is something else different. Can you spot it?”
Both Shannon and Jhan looked back and forth to check first the image and then the reality.
Finally, Jhan shrugged and said, “I can’t see anything that…”
“The table!” Shannon interrupted. “The table is different!”
“Good eye, girl!” said Adella, and Shannon beamed at the complement. “It’s been turned just a little bit, and that suggests Malcolm’s hand at work. Now keep your place and don’t move. Jhan, stay with her.”
Obediently, both of the young folk stayed in position, making it child’s play for Adella to enter the side room and slip out of sight off to the right, secretly produce the wand, and mutter the command words, this time holding the thicker end and pointing the other at the table. There was a small burst of light that could not be completely hidden, and then the table shifted, forcing Adella to jump backwards as a surprisingly large section of the floor began to open. Jhan and Shannon left their posts and ran to see what they had found, Adella slipping the wand back up her sleeve at the last moment.
Down inside the newly revealed space was a strangely shaped boat with mast shipped inside and a multi-colored sail around it.
“A farsail, by thunder!” exclaimed Adella and jumped down into the vessel. “I knew Malcolm would have some simple way out of the fortress. I knew it, and here it is!”
Shannon and Jhan exchanged confused glances, and finally Jhan said haltingly, “It’s a boat. A weird little boat out of the water.”
“This boat doesn’t float on water, boy,” Adella answered, still examining the interior of the vessel. “It floats on air! Come and take hold.”
The vessel was remarkably light despite its bulk, but it still took all three of them to lift it properly and carry it out into the main hall. Adella made a closer inspection here, and she quickly found what she sought: a small niche in the prow to accommodate a ball about the size of an ogre’s fist and a locked compartment in the bottom of the vessel.
“What’s in there?” asked Shannon, peering over the woman’s shoulder.
Adella glanced back at her and finally answered, “The farsail itself isn’t magical, and I’m not sure it could even float on water by itself, let alone the air. It needs a magical source which is always kept with the vessel. Unfortunately, this one is kept in a secure safe.”
She tried to insert one of her picks in the lock, but as she feared, some force kept diverting the instrument from the hole, denying it access. These small magical vaults were often powered by the very item they protected, and no pick or simple opening spell had a chance of success. It required real magic.
Reluctantly, Adella produced the wand again, pointed at the lock, and muttered the necessary invocation, and a small beam of power flashed out from the tip. The ray did not touch the lid, some power holding it back, but as Adella focused and bore down with her will, the beam creped closer and closer until finally it reached the lock. An instant later, the lid sprung open, revealing what looked like a glass sphere. Shannon, however, was staring at the wand with open wonder and growing suspicion.
“Where did you get such a wondrous device?” she asked with narrowed eyes. “Is this wand another one of your ‘borrowed’ items?”
Adella looked at her calmly for a moment before saying, “No. I won it in wager with the Wizard Trexler.”
There was an odd ring of truth in the woman’s words, but Shannon frowned, still distrusting her. “What kind of wager?”
“I bet th
at I could bury my sword in his belly before he could fry me with his lightning,” she answered evenly. “Now if you’re quite done with your moralizing, climb on board. We’ve many leagues still ahead of us.”
Shannon blinked, first at the woman and then the boat, but she reluctantly climbed in with Jhan, relieved to find the little vessel was not as unstable as it looked. Adella carefully placed the glass sphere into its niche in the prow, and there was an instant burst of light, the entire vessel suddenly trembling with life. Adella quickly climbed aboard and seated herself at the tiller in the stern.
“Never have figured out how these blasted things work to be fair with you,” she admitted, cautiously fiddling with the tiller. “Trexler used to fly all over the Plains of Alencia on a farsail like this, but the best I’ve ever been able to do is get them to float and weave a little.”
“Then what good is this thing to us?” Shannon asked dubiously.
“Well, first, a craft such as this will have its own way out of the fortress,” replied Adella, picking up the lines that led to the small mast which was lying in the middle of the air-boat. “And second, we’re on top of a mountain. I may not be able to get it to fly properly, but I’ll bet diamonds to dung-beetles I can get it to soar down off these cliffs.”
Shannon exchanged an alarmed glance with Jhan, but Adella ignored them.
“Pick up the mast,” she directed them as she pointed to the braces where it was clearly intended to stand. “Seat it home on my command, and then get into the bottom of the boat as quick as you can and hold on. Now on the count of three. One to be ready. Two to be steady. Three, and it’s in!”
They slammed the mast into position, and then Shannon and Jhan half-fell, half-jumped into the bottom as they grabbed the gunnels, while Adella braced herself in the tiller seat.
Nothing happened.
Shannon and Jhan glanced at each other and then together looked askance back at Adella in the stern.
“Didn’t think we’d need the sail inside,” Adella said a little self-consciously as she played with the control ropes that led to the small mast. “Jhan, give the canvas a little shake, will you?”
Cautiously, Jhan reached up with one hand and tugged at the canvas sail, though with little effect. Shannon reached up from her side as well, and between them, they loosened the canvas. Adella tugged hard on the rope, and the small triangular sail rose into position. For a moment longer, nothing happened, and Jhan was clearly about to make some cutting remark when the sail seemed to fill with some unfelt breeze. The farsail responded by rising slowly off the floor.
“Hold hard!” cried Adella, curling the end of the rope around her hand for a firmer grip as the sail began to fill with a stronger wind. The vessel responded by rising towards the distant ceiling with alarming speed, its prow pointing upward only slightly. But just as Shannon began to cringe down from the impending impact, the glass sphere flashed power once again, and the ceiling of the room seemed to dissipate, almost as if were made of nothing but mist.
A moment later, they found themselves flying above the mountains, looking down on Llan Praetor from a sun that was close to the horizon.
“Yes!” cried Adella in triumph. “It’s just as I always suspected! The mountain and the base are real enough, but at least some of Llan Praetor itself was made from the clouds!”
“Is it early morn or close to dusk?” asked Shannon peering over the gunnels towards the distant sun. Jhan, however, was keeping his face inboard after a single glance at the mountain tops below them, the winds as wild and as piercing as ever.
“We’re facing north, and the sun’s to our left,” said Adella, getting her bearings. “That means the night will soon be upon us. Let’s see what this thing will do while the light lasts.”
She gentle moved the tiller, and the vessel banked sharply to the left, eliciting a frightened moan from Jhan. Adella eased back, and the craft righted itself, though it seemed to have picked up speed. She released a little of the control rope she held in her left hand, dropping the sail just a little, and instantly, the bow of the vessel pointed downwards.
“That’s the way we wish to go!” Adella said brightly, and played out another tiny length of the control rope.
The result, however, was completely out of line with the small action. The farsail heeled over in a wild nose dive, accelerating at a perilous rate, and when Adella instinctively pulled back on the rope, raising the sail again, it caused the air-boat to fly even faster rather than raising its bow. They were careening downwards at ever increasing speeds, racing towards the craggy sides of the mountains below. Adella turned the tiller hard to the right, sending the vessel flying away from the nearest mountain and gaining a little clearance, but the floor of the valley below was rushing up to greet them.
Shannon was gasping, Jhan was moaning, and Adella was snarling curses at the obstinate thing, but none of it seemed to make the slightest difference. Death was only a matter of a few heartbeats away, when Shannon suddenly noticed another rope attached to the bow that seemed no more than a tow line. Except it was leading back towards the tiller. Without a word, she threw herself back towards Adella and seized the bow rope with both hands. The woman reacted in kind, supporting Shannon’s action without wasting time on debate, and the two of them put enough pressure on the line to pull it taut. Instantly, the bow began to rise in response, pulling slowly away from its impending collision with the ground, though the speed seemed to increase even further. The two women were shouting in their intensity as they put every bit of their weight and strength onto the line, forcing the bow up one maddening inch at a time, fighting the air-boat for their very lives, and losing. Then, without warning, another body flung itself upon the rope, Jhan fighting off his terror to add his weight to the struggle, and then with dreadful slowness and after an eternity of jeopardy, the fates relented and the vessel slowly began to right itself.
They were not yet out of danger. The farsail was now whizzing along just above the floor of the valley at a speed that made the surrounding nothing but a blur, entire mountains flying past them in seconds, and Adella quickly discovered that the tiller needed to be handled with extra care when traveling at such a rate.
“Pull again!” she roared to Shannon and Jhan who obediently threw their weight again on the control line. The bow swung upwards again, beginning a climb, and a little of the craft’s speed fell off as a result. Shannon tugged even harder, hoping to take even more of the way off the wind-boat, but Adella abruptly put a shoulder into her mid-section and sent her sprawling into Jhan. Both of them dropped their hold on the line, and Adella let it play out her own hand, dropping the sail in an instant.
The farsail stopped climbing, leveled off slightly, and began a slow descent even as it continued to race forward. Its speed was decreasing, but it was still moving much faster than its designer had intended for a safe landing. Adella was leaning forward, studying the terrain carefully, and Shannon scrambled up to a kneeling position just in time to see a plateau on the side of one of the mountains rushing at them. She grabbed the gunnels, closed her eyes, braced herself, and an instant later came a bounce as the air-boat hit rock, a second bounce, then a third, and finally the vessel came to a merciful skidding stop. Shannon blinked, peering about, and in the fading light, she could see the view of endless mountains had given way to foothills flattening out to an endless plain beyond. Their short, mad trip had carried them all the way through the Mountains of the Winds.
The next sound she heard was Adella’s laughter.
“By all lightning, storm, and thunder, that was a ride to remember!” she shouted to the rocks. “Not even the eagles could have caught us this day!”
Jhan had staggered up from the bottom of the boat, and he was glaring at the woman.
“You maniac!” he roared at her. “You could have gotten us all killed!”
“You can die just walking into the wrong saloon,” she answered easily. “This was a lot more fun!”
He
could only gape at her. In spite of herself, Shannon found herself grinning with sheer exhilaration, her heart in sync with the woman’s. Adella, however, was studying the craft and the craggy plateau on which they had landed.
“We’ve some repairs to make before we launch against,” she said slowly. “Those lines need splicing, and the rocks stove in one of the planks of the hull. A day at least, and that’s only if the winds stay fair.”
“You’re planning to try flying this thing again?!” Jhan cried in disbelief, the echoes adding emphasis to the question.
“Relax, boy,” Adella said, rummaging through the bottom of the craft. “Any adventure that ends with you standing upright is a good one. Now what about some dinner? I’m famished!”
CHAPTER 6
The Paladin and the Juggernaut
Darius looked out at the forces arrayed against them, and his heart sank. The numbers of Northings and rock goblins were simply staggering, for the only other time he had seen such a mass of goblins and humans, they were locked in a battle of annihilation against each other. But the scouts had already warned them of the size of their foes, and that was not the cause of his dismay. The green canopy of death that covered the sky above the army looked like a malignancy that was devouring the heavens themselves, but they had seen the canopy for the last ten leagues. In the forefront marched the solid black shadow that was the titanic form of the Juggernaut, its power tangible even at this great distance, its sheer size an assurance that the walls of the Drift would never stand against it. But he had already beheld the titan in the mirror of Malcolm’s wall and was prepared for the spectacle.
It was not the sight of the enemy that was the cause of the Paladin’s despair, but rather the sight of his allies. It was the second day of their march, and Boltran had pressed forward after only four hours rest with the heavy cavalry of all the principalities and only a few regiments of lighter infantry who could maintain the pace. Forty squadrons of the heavy horse now covered the back of the ridge behind them, invisible to the enemy, but there were only three regiments of infantry in sight. Duke Argus, he knew, had nearly the entire contingent from Corland just behind the farther ridge in reserve, but that knowledge carried no comfort with it.
Upon This World of Stone (The Paladin Trilogy Book 2) Page 8
