A small smile curled at the corner of Elias’s mouth. “Good,” he said with more anger than he intended. “Stay dead, you unfathomable bastard.”
In the smile, something familiar flashed, and for a fraction of a second, the dark apparition of the knight he’d seen in his battle-fever haze in the bowels of Iseult stared back, smirking, wearing Azrael’s face.
“As if you could ever kill me.”
The sound of a breaking mirror filled his ears, and it took Elias a handful of panting, terrified seconds to realize that he’d driven his fist into the reflective glass.
“Everything alright in there?” The voice was Aimee’s, just outside the door. Elias looked at his hand. Blood stained his knuckles. He wiped them clean, then tied a strip of cloth around his hand before thrusting it into his glove. Then he turned and opened the door. “No,” he said, emerging. “Can we go?”
“They’re waiting outside,” Aimee said, giving him an odd look, before she glanced over her shoulder, then up to him with a seriousness in her blue eyes that would accept no argument. Pentus’s paranoia-stoking comments echoed in his mind, mingling painfully with the confusing and dizzying memory of standing nose to nose with the sorceress in the doorframe of her cabin less than an hour earlier.
“I’m shaken,” he said. He didn’t say by what. He wasn’t entirely sure. “But I am all here. Lead on.”
She frowned with a look that said a more in-depth conversation was coming, then nodded and headed for the lowered bay ramp. It was a relief, he decided, not to have to meet that look anymore, for the moment. Again, he didn’t trouble himself over why: the road down which such thoughts led was dangerous, and – he suspected – not just to himself.
Viltas, Rachim, and Vallus awaited them outside Rachim’s villa. Elias noted at first glance that the lord shipman looked healthier than the last time he’d seen him, which was a source of relief. They could little afford for allies to fall ill at this juncture, and the ship had already lost one captain to necromancy masquerading as a disease.
Beside the lord shipman stood his son Vallus, looking somehow thoughtful and awkward all at once. Elias took his measure as they approached. He had the attitude of a man that had grown up in the shadow of a hero of whom he was forever falling short in the eyes of others. His face was softer than his father’s, kinder, and whereas the lord shipman’s gaze was worn and reserved, Vallus’s brown eyes were open and attentive.
Azrael would’ve considered him an easy kill. Elias realized that so would many others, which made him wonder just how well the boy knew it himself.
Then he saw what Vallus was looking at. Also joining the group, approaching even as the Elysium party walked out through the doors, was Belit. And this time, she wore her full panoply of crimson armor and cloak, her helm tucked under her arm, and her longsword lashed to her hip. She walked, fierce and serene, stopping short and giving the group of them an approving nod with her dark, solemn face at their arrival.
Vallus looked as though he’d just seen the sun rise. Elias felt a small half-smile slip up one side of his mouth. So that was it, then. Perhaps he wasn’t the wisest man in the world, and had only been free to be himself for a few weeks, but years of training in reading others had left him able to identify adoration when he saw it.
Belit spared the lord shipman’s son a brief glance, in which lay a host of conflicting emotions. Then Harkon was speaking, and he had to pay attention.
“Lady Belit,” the old portalmage said, “I hope that this assistance does not compromise the perception of your neutrality?”
Belit smiled. “The proper response to that, Magister Bright, is to ask ‘in the eyes of whom?’ The council’s vote has made it clear that doing anything at all risks having my reputation compromised. Lord Viltas tells me that this concerns the menace behind the death of my late captain. If that is so, none may question my involvement.” She paused. “If my reputation was worth more to me than performing my duties, it would be paper thin, and of no value.”
Harkon smiled. “I knew I liked you. Regardless, I am grateful. I think between the lot of you, we have more than sufficient authority to gain entrance to the chamber, yes?”
“You would hope,” Rachim chuckled, “but the Maiden’s Chamber is sacred to both our highborn and low, and obstinacy is a bitch. Let’s get moving.”
The most obvious benefit of moving in an official capacity was the ability of the group to use more direct transportation methods. Their guides led them down the main thoroughfare of the upper levels, over glistening streets lined by the fine, stoneworked architecture that encrusted the entirety of the behemoth’s back, and straight to a gilded elevator. It stood at the edge of a rail-lined, massive spiral aperture in the middle of a large square filled with aides, servants, household majordomos, and black-robed functionaries scurrying across the space in the fulfillment of their duties.
Somewhere high above them, the belly of another behemoth blotted out the view of the sky. Elias glimpsed a thousand bits of decaying, hodgepodge scaffolding, swarming with dirty people operating in what was probably the most dangerous, poverty-ridden part of their ship.
“Really,” Elias heard a white-armored armsman say as he walked past them, “must overflights happen during the day? It’s like watching a crazy man expose himself in the midlevel corridors. Filth.”
He watched Belit’s eyes flash with barely suppressed anger, then the lot of them were in the elevator, and the door was closing, before a hiss sounded and they began their descent. The window of the elevator was open to the interior of the vast bore, and a wind whipped past them as it slowly traveled below. The entire interior wall was a combination spiral roadway leading ever downward, and the host to numerous dwellings that faced outwards into the dank hole. Ladders clustered off makeshift scaffolds once they passed below the first three levels, and workers and enlisted rushed here and there on errands without number.
“You said that the chamber was sacred,” Aimee said, raising her voice to be heard above the keening wind. “What do you mean?”
“That,” Rachim began, “is a bit of a complicated thing to explain. Best to say that Iseult’s metadrives are its heart, that its heart is older than the memory of anyone else on this ship, and that people revere what’s ancient.”
“Also,” Vallus said with a slight laugh, “Rachim is not known for his grasp of sentimentality.” He smiled over his shoulder at the sorceress. “When people say this ship is alive, they’re not joking.”
Elias’s brow furrowed. “The name,” he said. “It’s from an old legend, isn’t it?”
“Very good,” Vallus said, turning his curious gaze to the green-eyed knight. “You know your romances.”
Elias paused, leery for a moment of how he should answer. “Required reading,” he said.
“Wait.” This time it was Vant who spoke up. The engineer’s eyes widened with amazement and youthful fascination. “Are you saying what I think you are? Because I think you’re saying that Iseult’s metadrive is one of the ancient ones. Before the process of synthetic inception was invented.”
“Well, I don’t know much about that,” Vallus said, “but I know my legends. They say that the ship was born from the grief of the maiden who bears her name, and her death, so that others might survive to sail the heavens.”
“Oh my gods,” Vant said. “I didn’t think any of them were still in use.”
“Care to explain further?” Aimee asked. “For those of us not educated on the finer points of metadrive engineering?”
“Sorry,” Vant murmured. “Modern metadrives are ignited by a process called synthetic inception. A spark of the infinite is ignited in the core, and it boils into a raging manifestation of the first prime; raw magic churning in perpetuity, seeking the outlet that skyship systems then channel into power. It… didn’t always used to be that way. A long, long time ago, it was only possible to create a metadrive by way of the sacrifice of mystically potent human lives.”
�
��Dig deep enough into any history,” Viltas mused, “and you find a font of limitless ugliness.”
“That’s not the legend,” Belit said quietly. “At least, that’s not how they tell it below.”
The elevator came to a stop midway down the vast aperture, and suddenly began moving inward, sliding along a rail that held their compartment hanging in open air. All around them was the massive interior corridor of Iseult with the layered cake of all her mismatched levels visible in cross-section beneath them.
Elias caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, and shifted to the far edge of the elevator, squinting until he saw the familiar uniforms of the enforcers walking the catwalks far below. Something struck him immediately.
“There are twice as many enforcers,” he murmured, “than when we came down here before.”
“The tradeoff,” Rachim growled, “to staving off Yaresh’s purge. He couldn’t use his armsmen, but since he’s still in charge of the ship’s security, he can use his extant position to command the commanders below him to increase their personnel. Every lord below the upper levels has been ordered to double their complement of enforcers to ‘keep the peace.’” The one-eyed man frowned. “Most of those brighter uniforms were doled out in the past three days, after maybe a day’s worth of training.”
“That’s a lot of untrained men with weapons and newfound power,” Elias murmured. The frown twisted his expression as he watched a man with a club take an idle swipe at a woman hurrying past with a basket. When you wanted to repress a people, hiring the vicious and destitute among them to exercise brutality over their fellows was a brilliant way to get the job done.
The tactic was disgustingly familiar: Lord Roland had taught him how to use it. His jaw clenched, and his bandaged hand balled into a fist at his side.
“Aye,” Viltas said quietly. “He couldn’t deliver a purge, but he could see that people beneath him were suitably brutalized. He sees this as his duty.”
“In the hands of the wrong person,” Harkon said, “duty is a dangerous word.”
“Heads up,” Vallus said, breaking into the conversation and pointing ahead. “We’re nearly there.”
The elevator let them out at the edge of a vast, bronze wall covered thickly with strips of parchment paper, and stained and tarnished by the innumerable filths that inevitably filled the interior of a city-ship this large, and this old. Still, by squinting, Elias thought that he could make out the outline of a set of images, moving left to right in lines over the large face beneath the countless bits of paper. They depicted war, loss, and something else, nearly obscured by the black burn mark of what seemed to have been some sort of explosion, a long time ago. The wall had a gentle curve, and it wasn’t until he stepped back that Elias realized that the entire chamber was in the shape of a vast, metallic heart.
Viltas took the lead, with Harkon, Aimee, and Vant at the fore. Rachim followed, and Belit fell into step beside Elias, as the latter kept his eyes about him. A pair of gray-armored guards with shock-spears and large rifles waited before a large door at the base, and at the group’s approach, one tilted back the visor of his utilitarian helmet to address them. “Entrance into Her Lady’s Chamber is strictly regulated. Have you proper clearance to pass?”
“As lord shipman,” Viltas said calmly, “I do. With us as well is Lord Rachim, and Belit of the Red Guard. Our errand is of–” he paused “–governmental concern. We will not interfere in the performing of the engineering workers’ duties.”
The guard took their measure, then gestured to his partner behind him. The guard pressed the palm of his armored hand to the door, and a brief glow flooded across it, before the doors opened slowly outward. Within, a soft purple light glimmered. “Proceed,” the guard said. “Disturb nothing within this sacred space.”
The walls of the chamber must have served as a barrier, keeping the overwhelming energy of the room from affecting the mystic senses of every mage on the ship, because the moment they stepped into the room, Elias nearly had to stop to catch his breath as a wave of dizzying power washed over him. They entered onto a long walkway that stretched from one end of a large, diamond-shaped chamber to the other. Suspended by an intricate series of cables, six long, translucent cylinders rose in a semi-circle, each the height of a large man, and filled with swirling, purple light.
“Subsidiary cores,” Vant breathed, just ahead of them. “Oh gods,” he said. “This setup is old…”
And there, in the center of the half circle, was another, larger core, crowning a pyramid dais of silver and platinum. The light within it was deeper, a gossamer, churning purple flame. Of all the cores, this one struck Elias the most, and immediately. Attendant to the power, an emotional weight seemed to emanate from it, beautiful, ancient, consisting of mingled desperate hope and deep sadness.
“Allow me to introduce to you,” Belit said with a tremendous warmth in her voice, “at long last, and truly, Iseult herself.”
In the warm glow of the chorus of lights, Elias glimpsed the faces of Harkon and Aimee. The face of the former was reverent and quiet… the latter was lit with wondrous awe for the beauty around her. “She’s beautiful,” Aimee breathed.
Viltas stepped forward, and pointed to a central platform near the center of the vast chamber, circular, etched with a number of arcane symbols, and edged by several upraised workstations of levers and switches. Elias knew a metadrive control-station where he saw one. “That,” Viltas said, “is where we saw him performing his ritual, all those years ago. It’s since been cleaned more times than can be counted, but perhaps the eyes of a true magister can determine something of value. This is what Amut protected. Perhaps it is also what he died for.”
A tall man in a long gray coat approached the group. His shoulders had a rank insignia that marked him as someone of authority, and his balding pate was set with a number of decorative gemstones, as was popular with certain members of the officer aristocracy. “Lord Rachim,” he said after a moment. “Lord Shipman Viltas… How may I help you?”
“This is Harkon Bright,” Rachim said, gesturing to the old portalmage. “He’s been promised a tour of the metadrive chamber whilst the council prepares for its next vote. I told him that you and your expert crew could answer any questions his people have about the illustrious maiden’s history. Hark, this is Chief Engineer Hephus, tender of the cores, and notable eccentric. He’s trustworthy.”
The engineer’s heavily lidded eyes slid from Rachim to the rest of them. They settled on each person in turn, seeming to take their measure with a hefty dose of analytical paranoia. Elias was starting to wonder if the man would actually refuse when he flashed a small smile, and said, “I am at your service.”
Harkon nodded, and gestured for Aimee to follow him. “Vant,” he said quietly. “Talk to the good engineer, I assume you have your questions ready?”
It was like watching an over-eager child straining at the grip his mother had on the cuff of his shirt. Vant’s grin was boyish and infectious. “Had them even before you thought to tell me to compile them. Goodman, my name is Vant, engineer of the skyship Elysium. I have so many questions.”
Hephus’s expression changed slightly from indifference to one of bemused alarm as Vlana’s brother descended on him, but in short order the man was occupied, and Harkon was speaking to the group of them quietly. “Aimee and I will perform a tacit examination of the room. Elias, please stand watch. I would prefer that we weren’t interrupted, if possible. If you sense anything… off, tell me.”
“You have my word,” Elias answered, then resigned himself to standing with Belit near the central platform as the others spread out to their work.
“So you clearly know a different version of the story than the rest of them,” Elias said after a moment. He hadn’t forgotten where his teacher had suddenly left her corrective rebuke hanging earlier on the way, and it had gnawed at him since.
Belit’s eyes didn’t leave their casual task of observing the room as the
others began their investigation. “You were educated, were you not? What do you know of the legendary lovers, Iseult and her Tristan?”
Having his question answered with a question caught Elias off guard, and he paused to consider the shelves of literature he’d been made to memorize, at least in amounts sufficient to produce anecdotes when needed. “There are hundreds of versions,” he answered, after a moment. “But in most of them, Tristan was a warrior, and Iseult a princess betrothed to his liege. He forsook his duty to be with her, and perished in the war that followed. When she learned her lover had died, Iseult took her own life in grief.”
“She was no shrinking princess,” Belit said quietly. “At least, not the woman from whose name this ship derives. She was a great sorceress, who loved a magister just as wise. But their people’s home was dying, so she and her lover gave up their mortal lives to offer up their souls as the core metadrives of the ships that now bear their names, and who have always flown close and cared for one another’s affairs. Iseult, and her Tristan.”
Elias’s eyes widened, and his gaze was drawn once more to the central core. “You mean–”
“I do,” Belit said, nodding her head with a quiet, warm smile. “When we speak of the heart of Iseult, of the ship as if she possesses a soul, it is no hyperbole. Legend and time may have distorted the original tale, but what remains of a hero to whom every soul on this ship owes their life burns bright before you. That is why this chamber feels like a martyr’s temple, and why the outer walls are encrusted with the loving prayers of countless thousands over the generations, covering up the gilded mirror that tells her story: this ship is alive, junk ritter, and her beating heart glows eternal before you.”
Dragon Road Page 15
