Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  They pushed deeper still. Around a corner were signs of struggle. The burn marks of shock-spears and flame lances against the walls. They stepped over the remains of a man physically torn apart as if all four limbs had been tugged in opposite directions until he burst.

  They turned another corner. Bjorn prayed behind him, though Elias didn’t know the name of the gods he invoked.

  At once they emerged onto the edge of a grand promenade, not unlike the walkway that spanned the vast cargo apertures in the middle of Iseult. Yet no consistency of warm, life-evidencing lamps glimmered here, and the doorways to the top level had been violently wrenched asunder, and their mechanisms still spitting a shower of sparks into the darkness below. From high overhead, a flash of lightning painted the ruined interior of the immense chamber a chilling silver. The light danced off broken railings, ruined living quarters, ruptured doorways and fractured, bent columns. Noble and brave, Elias repeated in his mind. Gentle and kind.

  “There!” Vant said. Turning, Elias followed his arm to the source of a faint glow, perhaps a mile away. Tristan’s metadrive chamber was the twin of Iseult’s: built of a beautiful bronze, its structure like that of a vast heart.

  Or at least, it had been once. Some tremendous force had torn the wall open, as if from some giant’s ripping dagger strike, and the purple light from within bled out into the immediate vicinity. It flickered, irregular and indistinct. “Two hearts,” Vant breathed.

  “And one of them dying,” Bjorn said.

  A mad determination seized Elias as he leaned out over the rail to see. He couldn’t see the core itself, but by the light, it still worked. Still lived.

  “Dying isn’t dead,” Elias said, and straightened. “Come on. There’s still time.”

  He took two steps forward, and another flash of lightning from high above painted the walkways on both sides of the vast aperture silver again. Silver, and alight with thousands of stars.

  No. Elias’s heart nearly stopped. Not stars. Eyes.

  They stood silently upon the gangways. They stared from the other sides of ruptured doorways. They crouched at the edges of rails and stepped softly from within the darkness of lightless corridors. Blood splattered them, leaked from the wounds that had slain them. Faces of a thousand varieties, unified in the pallor of their rotting ends.

  Tristan’s crew. Undead. All of them. And all of them locked hungry eyes on the three men that had just stepped into their ship.

  “Oh,” Vant swallowed to his left. “So that’s where they all went.”

  A unified sound of mingled wailing, whimpering, and screaming surged around them, and Elias readied his sword. The warmth of the glowing steel was a comfort in his aching hands, and the flow of adrenaline quieted some of the pain in his head. “Get ready,” he said, and summoned his speed. “I’m going to make a path.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At Maelstrom’s Edge

  “Viltas,” Rachim swore. “How in the name of all the gods could I not have seen it?”

  “Don’t berate yourself,” Aimee answered as they walked swiftly through his villa, past armsmen preparing. She was shaken, still recovering from her duel with the Faceless down below, but there was no time to evidence weakness or let herself rest. Everything now depended on the desperate. “Even his own son didn’t know.”

  Near the doorway they stopped. Vlana armed herself, and Aimee flung her fingers several times through the Radiance gestures, as if so doing would drive the ache from her limbs and quiet the raging swell of fear that surged through her. Fear for her friends. For her teacher. For Iseult. For Elias.

  Somewhere further down that list, she was sure, concern for herself had to lie.

  “Are the other officers going to help?” Vlana asked.

  “The messages I sent aren’t getting returned,” Rachim said, checking the edge of his sword. “And I just received word of a number of smaller ships departing, about an hour ago. I can’t say how many of them exactly, but it seems a fair bet that at least a small portion of the officer aristocracy is cutting and running rather than staying here.”

  “And the portalmages?” Aimee asked.

  “The two still alive are with Haysha and the remaining astronomers,” Rachim said. “But they’re doing everything they can to get the ship’s navigation back up and working. They won’t be any help going forward.”

  “Hey,” Aimee deadpanned. “It’s not like we’ve had to do everything ourselves up until now in any case.”

  “You don’t.” She turned. Vallus stood in the doorway. He was pale, still weak from the healing and his injuries before. “And you don’t need to worry about the officers or their armsmen. Not so long as you have weapons.”

  As he said this, Belit emerged from the next room, having cleaned the blood from her armor. She stopped at the sight of Viltas’s son, orphaned less than an hour before. “Val,” she said.

  “I already know,” Vallus said. A spasm of grief crossed his face. “A mutual friend brought me word.”

  And from just behind him stepped the familiar figure of the downleveler in service to the Oracle, Ferret. “That’s the thing about us enlisted,” he said. “We hear everything that happens. I needed to know that the son wasn’t the father. Now I do… so I got this young diplomat an audience, and let him speak.”

  Belit’s eyes widened, as Aimee watched an understanding sink in.

  “The people of Iseult have no love for the functionaries, or their guild masters,” Vallus said. “And they didn’t care for the three candidates for captain, all of whom argued for how they would better serve its ruling caste… but they remember Amut. They remember that he tried to serve them… and they will follow you. All you have to do is arm them.”

  Rachim’s eyebrow cocked over his one good eye. “The other officer aristocrats will see that as naked rebellion.”

  Silence. Aimee and Vlana exchanged a look.

  Belit’s eyes closed. She breathed out… then she opened them. “Then rebellion it is. Are you still with me, Rachim?”

  That wasn’t what their host was expecting. He stared at her for a longer moment, then looked at Aimee.

  “Don’t look at me,” Aimee said. “Harkon stirs trouble wherever he goes. I’m absolutely behind this.”

  The older man paused, then shook his head with a sigh. “How many did you get?”

  Ferret’s eyes sparkled. “The question isn’t how many people I got you, it’s how many weapons can you get them.”

  Rachim’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, I suppose I’m a rebel, then. Count me in.”

  “The Faceless is gone,” Belit said, “but most of the cult he allied himself with have been raised as the dead in his service. With their master gone, they’re functioning on their last order, which is to drive Iseult straight into the storm. We have to secure the wheelhouse and the metadrive chamber, and ensure that they’re not able to compromise our ability to power or fly the ship.”

  “Jerich holds the chamber,” Ferret said, “and he’s not about to vacate. I’ve got several thousand waiting just below the surface, and that’s without counting those currently organizing beneath our feet. If the dead want to take Iseult, they’ll find themselves with a hell of a fight on their hands.”

  Belit smiled. “Rachim, between what we confiscated from Yaresh and the combined armories owned by Pentus and Diara’s estates there should be enough to spread around a large chunk of hardware. Val, go with him. Get on it.”

  “You’re the boss,” Elysium’s host replied.

  “Thanks for not commanding me back to bed,” Vallus deadpanned with mild amusement.

  “You wouldn’t listen anyway,” Belit said, then she turned to Aimee and Vlana. “The two of you come with me. We’re headed to the wheelhouse.”

  They stepped out into the fringes of a horrible storm. Lightning flashed in the distance and thunder tore across the heavens in its wake. The crackle of mystic energy played at Aimee’s senses, wild and chaotic. This close to the mae
lstrom, it followed, she had to beware the third prime of magic: things do not always happen as people understand they should.

  Never had she been in a place where her magic going awry was more likely, or less convenient. And now here she was, the mystic muscle behind what had started as moderation in the democratic selection process of a new captain, and was ending as an out-and-out revolt. Belit drew her sword, and set her eyes on the ivory tower of the wheelhouse, visible above the other buildings, a white spike against the black wall of the immense storm. Then she started walking, and Aimee and Vlana followed.

  What was the ancient phrase her uncle had been so fond of? Go big or go home.

  They were midway there when the pelting rain began to fall. It drove at them almost vertically, and the street tilted as a vast wind buffeted Iseult’s flank. They were crossing into the storm’s outer perimeter. Up ahead a light gleamed atop the tower, and the bridge that connected it to the two other corner towers swayed in the wind.

  They fought their way to the base of the tower, and that was when Aimee saw the state of the guards. Freshly dead. Their weapons scattered. The remains of several destroyed undead lay at the foot of the steps.

  Behind the slain sentries, the doors to the wheelhouse had been wrenched open, and stairs wound up into the darkness. A scream echoed from somewhere high above.

  Belit snatched up the shock-spears from the two fallen guards, and tossed one to Vlana. “Keep hitting them,” she said. “Like you and your brother did when you came to our aid below. Remember, if you don’t have powerful magic, there’s only one way to bring these things down: catastrophic structural damage. They can’t fight if they can’t move.”

  Vlana looked down at the weapon in her hands and swallowed. “I hate these things,” Aimee heard her mutter, but then she held it in a not unfamiliar grip. “Ready.”

  Aimee flexed her fingers. “Let me lead,” she said. “And keep the damn things off my back.”

  The three women stepped into the darkness. A winding staircase of carved stone ascended before them. Aimee started up, first walking, then jogging, summoning a small light to illuminate their way.

  Nothing came. No further screams issued from the tower’s apex. At length they crested a length of stairway and stepped through a pair of double doors. Above their heads, Aimee glimpsed gold words etched into the stone and metal.

  “Wise must be the mind Her heart sustains.”

  On the other side of the doorway, a scene of ruin waited. Iseult’s wheelhouse – what in newer ships might be called the bridge – was beautiful. A flash of lightning illuminated a stone chair, throne-like, upon a central dais surrounded by a room in a half circle. An immense navigation table of exquisite crystal was splattered with blood, and a dead pilot slumped over the large black wood wheel that steered the ship through the heavens.

  All around them, the slaughtered remnants of Amut’s once-faithful bridgecrew lay in bloody tatters. Belit stepped through the door behind her, took in the horrors, and closed her eyes for just a moment to steady herself. “I knew them,” she said quietly. “I knew them, and when they needed me, I was not here.”

  “You destroyed the Faceless,” Aimee said. “It would be worse if you hadn’t. The question now is, what do we do?”

  Belit looked around, keeping her shock-spear in hand. Aimee saw no trace of the dead, nor was there time to tell which of the corpses had been most recently slain. Most were barely recognizable, their uniforms splattered with red and faces mutilated.

  “You’re Elysium’s navigator, right?” Belit asked Vlana.

  “And quartermaster,” she answered. “But yes. Clutch and I split the duties.”

  “Alright,” Belit said. “Quickest explanation I can muster: the astronomers’ dome handles long-range navigation, but the crystal table over there is for direct, short-range work. It responds to touch. I need to know precisely how quickly we’re headed into the maelstrom’s wall. Aimee, see if you can get the communication tube to the metadrive chamber working. I’m going to need to give them very specific orders in a few minutes.”

  “Understood,” Aimee said, and moved to a series of tubes and mouthpieces, each connected to a set of labeled switches. Gods, there were a lot of them.

  As she worked, she saw Belit approach the wheel with trepidation in her eyes. “Sorry, pilot,” she said. “Your shift has ended, and I can’t let you fly us into hell.”

  She shifted the corpse, and it suddenly spun, bashing the swordswoman across the face so hard that she crashed to the floor.

  Turning, the glowing eyes of the undead pilot blazed as it repeated the same phrase over and over again. “They killed me. Kill their hope. Kill their hope. Kill their hope. Kill their hope.”

  And roaring the Faceless’s last command, muscles straining, the corpse began pulling at the wheel until the timbers groaned.

  No time for Radiance. She didn’t have the space. She might incinerate the wheel as well, or blast other delicate controls on the wheelhouse. Instead, Aimee vaulted over the control tubes, and blasted the undead pilot with a gust of wind. The corpse held onto the wheel with one hand. It snarled. She wove her hands through the gestures of the spell again. It let go, lunged forward, and kicked her in the chest. Aimee’s breath left her. She staggered back. It advanced, swiped with a limb, forcing her to dodge. No breath, no voice. No voice, no magic. Belit rolled on the floor, groaning.

  Aimee croaked for breath. Vlana vaulted up onto the table behind her and jabbed over her shoulder with the shock-spear. The jolt sent a blast of lightning through the corpse, pausing it for just a second as every limb twitched. Aimee sucked in a breath of air, wove another wind spell, and delivered it at the end of an uppercut to the dead thing’s jaw, as hard as she possibly could.

  The walking corpse hurtled backwards across the room and slammed into the far wall. It rose, unfazed.

  “Gods, I hate these things,” Aimee croaked.

  “So use the damn undead-killing spell Harkon taught you!” Vlana yelled. Belit rose. She’d lost her spear, and now drew her sword. The steel glinted in the darkness.

  “Not in here!” Aimee answered. “It could fry half the instruments!”

  “Dammit!” Vlana swore.

  “Remember what I said!” Belit shouted as the undead rushed them.

  Aimee popped her neck, remembering. “Catastrophic structural damage.”

  They came together at the foot of the stone throne. Vlana’s shock-spear set it shuddering again. Belit’s sword rose and fell, over and over. Aimee fell back on one of the most basic self-defense spells taught to first years at the academy: she hardened her fists with an infusion of mystic power, and laid into the walking corpse like a wet punching bag. They drove it back. Belit’s sword sent a limb splattering to the floor. Vlana jabbed it again, sending it shuddering backwards, with its back to the door and the stairway down. Aimee pivoted back as it set its legs to rush again. Finally, the space she needed, with nothing sensitive behind it.

  Her hands flashed as it lunged, and the brilliant Radiance beam blasted it to ash before surging out the doorway, away from the controls.

  Breathing hard, Belit rushed to the wheel. “Back to your positions!”

  Aimee dashed for the tubes and switches. Vlana’s fingers flew over the crystal table’s surface. Lights flashed into being in the air just above her hands.

  Blood had stained the switches and labels of the communication tubes, but after a few seconds of searching, Aimee found the one she wanted, flipped the switch to open the line, and said, “Metadrive chamber? This is Aimee de Laurent in the wheelhouse.”

  An agonizingly long moment followed, then the familiar voice of Jerich came back. “We haven’t heard from the wheelhouse for hours, what’s going on up there?”

  “Everyone’s dead,” Aimee snapped back. “Belit has taken the wheel, and she’s got orders.”

  She looked over her shoulder at where the tall woman held the wheel, straining as she acquired a feel for the c
ontraption.

  “What were your orders again?”

  “Vlana, I need those numbers!” Belit said.

  The quartermaster’s eyes flicked across the lights displayed before her. “No autoquill,” she muttered. “Gods, I’m not used to this. Alright, give me a second. We’re on a direct course towards the maelstrom’s outer storm-wall. Tristan is ahead of us, and moving slower. I give it an hour until those winds make turning this thing almost impossible!”

  Belit’s expression was grim. “Tell them I need them to reverse thrust and get ready for a hard port turn. We’ll need stabilizers to keep from rolling, especially in this damned wind.”

  Aimee pulled the tube. “Reverse thrust, ready for port turn, ready stabilizers, it’s getting really damn windy out there!”

  “Understood,” Jerich’s voice came back, clipped. “Also, Nubin wants me to tell you that we just got a shipment of weapons courtesy of Rachim. We’re getting reports that Pentus’s old estate is completely overrun, and there are dead things coming up from below. Why are you in the wheelhouse?”

  “That is a long story,” Aimee fired back. “For now I’ll leave it at ‘the bridge crew is dead and you shouldn’t worry because we absolutely know what we’re doing.’”

  Silence. Then came “What?”

  “Yeah,” Aimee said. “That’s what we said. Will keep in touch. More weapons should be coming soon.”

  “Comforting.”

  “Isn’t it?” Aimee replied, then ended the communique before glancing over at a vaguely horrified look on Belit’s face. A half second later they felt the whole ship shudder under their feet as the engines reversed. Belit’s arms strained as she pulled the wheel, and slowly, the immense behemoth began to turn.