by Frank Tuttle
“Days don’t get much darker,” muttered Mug. “Mistress, I hate to mention this, but even if we figure out what the crate is hiding, it’ll still be in Tirlin and we’ll still be —”
Lightning flashed again, and thunder roared again.
“—here,” finished Mug.
Mug’s leaves whipped and waved. He swung all his eyes toward Meralda.
“We’re both donkeys,” he said. “Donkeys, I tell you. It wasn’t a riddle at all. Just a bit of Mage humor. The last line, Mistress. That’s the only one that matters.”
Meralda stared at the words on the glass.
What is my name?
Meralda groaned. “Of course it’s his name! He told me where to look. Anyone else finding the crate could try and solve the riddle forever, if they pleased. Without knowing who stored the crate, they’d never discover its secrets! You’re right,” she said. “I should have seen it too. Tower. Speak the name Amorp over the crate, and report.”
“As you wish,” wrote Tower, the letters shaking and jumbled.
“You would have figured it out in a moment,” Mug said. “Keep in mind I’ve got more experience being around Mages, while you have experience being a Mage. I know how Mages think. The man simply couldn’t resist the urge to have his name spoken one last time.”
“Am I that bad, Mug?”
“Oh, it’ll take years, but you’ll get there,” Mug said, cheerily.
“Done,” wrote Tower. “There is activity.”
“Activity?” Meralda asked.
“Various devices and artifacts are mobilizing,” wrote Tower. “Scores of them. Barfet’s Capable Mender. Alaford’s Deft Hands. Carp’s Meticulous Assembler.”
“Never mind the guest list,” Mug said. “Tell us what they’re doing.”
“That is unclear,” wrote Tower. “Some are converging near the Mage’s work table. Some are rummaging through the Shelves. Two are pulling the crate—”
The words vanished, and the Glass showed only the many-eyed gaze of Mug and Meralda’s glowing red eyes.
“No,” Mug said, rapping on the glass with the curled end of a vine. “No, you don’t! Tower, come back here!”
The glass remained reflective.
Meralda closed her eyes briefly, hating the shadows they caused to appear on her desk. After a moment, she touched the Glass lightly. “Tower,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“We’ve flown too far from Tirlin,” Mug said. “Get the Captain to turn us around!”
“And face the black death? No. We’re not helpless, Mug. We can hide in the storm.”
“Yes, hide among the lightning bolts in our huge bag of lifting gas,” Mug said.
“Glass, show me the black mass, as before.”
Meralda’s reflection vanished, replaced with sky. In the midst of that sky, the black death hurtled toward the Glass.
“Rotate,” Meralda said. “Show me the view from above.”
The Glass obliged. “Higher,” Meralda said, and the view shifted. Bruise-colored clouds filled half the Glass and the troubled Sea the rest, as the bulbous black death raced toward the cloud bank in the center.
“Hold,” Meralda said. The image stilled.
“Mistress, it’s nearly inside our clouds,” Mug said. “It’s as fast as us. Faster, even. We’ll never outrun it.”
“We may not have to,” Meralda said. “If Nameless and Faceless managed to hide a dozen or more latched air masses, and if they catch in the monstrous thing’s spellworks, it might go down, right here and now.”
A crow flapped down beside Meralda. The crow tilted its head and regarded the image in the glass with a cold black eye.
‘Tis done, it said. Nameless remained nearby, to attend.
“What’s done?” asked Mug.
“Wait,” Meralda said. “It won’t be long.”
The air around the black death exploded, blossoming into a rapidly expanding ball of fire that filled the mirror’s face with blinding white light before the Glass hastily moved its focus toward the boiling heart of the storm.
Beyond the Intrepid’s hull, a long, rolling boom rose, briefly louder than thunder, leaving a persistent rumbling in its wake.
“Did you do that?” Mug waved his leaves. “You did that! You burned them up!” He blew a fanfare of trumpets and clapped his fronds. “Mistress, how did you do that?”
“Glass,” Meralda said. “Try to find the object again. Failing that, look to the waves below for wreckage.” The view turned and tilted, speeding back and forth, its images dizzying.
The glass found clouds and rain and Sea and sky, but nothing more.
“They’re gone,” Mug said. “Ashes and sticks! Ha!”
“We have no proof yet.” She stood, and took in a deep breath. “I’ll need to raise my Sight.”
A knock sounded softly at her door. Meralda frowned.
“It’s Line Cook Jeffrey, Mage,” said Donchen. He lowered his voice. “There’s no one in the corridor to see me at the moment.”
Meralda’s heart raced. The light from her eyes was sufficient to illuminate her entire cabin, and her dark glasses did nothing to hide it.
“Let him in,” whispered Mug. “He’ll find out sooner or later. It’s actually quite attractive. I wish mine glowed.”
Meralda stalked around her cabin, snatching up hats and scarves and items which had appeared and still lay where they landed. Her eye-lights fell across a veiled beekeeper’s helmet, and she raised it to put over her head.
“Meralda Ovis,” Mug said, as Meralda made frantic shushing motions. “You will not hide your face under that ridiculous contraption.”
“I can’t let him see me like this,” Meralda said. She flung the helmet aside and dashed into her water closet. “Tell him I am bathing,” she said. “Tell him I am not feeling well.”
“You are the most intelligent, bravest, best person I know,” Mug said, as the water closet door slammed. “One day soon I hope you’ll forgive me.”
He flew his cage to the door and spoke. “Come in quickly.”
Donchen, in his Line Cook form, slipped inside and closed the door quickly behind him. “Where is she?” he asked. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” Mug said. “Donchen. I love Meralda. Do you also love Meralda?”
Line Cook Jeffrey shimmered, and in his place stood Donchen, his grey eyes touched with mild confusion.
“That is not a question to ask in jest, friend Mug,” he said.
“I don’t ask in jest. I know she’s listening, so say it loud. Do you love Meralda?”
“I love Meralda,” said Donchen. “Now and forever.”
Mug’s cage bobbed. “So, hypothetically speaking, if Meralda’s eyes started glowing suddenly, you’d still love her, would you not?”
“Now and forever,” repeated Donchen.
Meralda emerged from the water closet, her eyes blazing like fresh-latched mage-lamps.
“I have a poker game to attend,” Mug said quickly. “Donchen, if you’d be so kind as to open yonder door, with a modicum of haste, that’s a good lad—”
Mug sailed through the door, which Donchen closed. A rain of Benton’s Medium Fine Pencils (With Gum Eraser) fell from the ceiling, rolling and scattering across the deck. “I’m changing. I can’t stop it. I don’t understand it. I called Mug a construct,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I wanted to pull that awful Vonat thing out of the air, and I think I could have done it, but I don’t know how much would be left of me if I did. Or the world for that matter. I’m afraid, Donchen. Terrified.”
Donchen rushed to her. She put up a hand, but he wrapped her in his arms anyway. He held her while she cried, and after a time he began to hum a Hang tune, and after another time he began to sway, moving her with him.
Meralda found her voice. “What are you doing?”
Donchen’s right hand slipped down to the small of Meralda’s back. He took her right hand in his left, and extended it, and as he hummed h
e began to dance, crunching pencils and various small objects beneath his shoes.
Meralda followed, clumsily at first and laughing through her tears at her own missteps. Donchen’s humming grew, and soon he was singing, his words Hang, but melodious and lovely.
Meralda danced. At times she laughed. Others, she cried. Lightning flashed beyond the hull and thunder roared, and the Intrepid’s deck tilted and pitched. But Donchen’s arm was tight around her, and his taut body was pressed close, and soon Meralda forgot her tears and her glowing eyes and the occasional brief fall of rose petals went entirely unnoticed.
Finally, Donchen met her gaze.
“The song is called Now and Forever,” he said. “When we return home, we shall have it translated, and we will dance to it at the Opera House, you in the finest of gowns. We will dance and have a glass of wine and watch the Moon rise over the Palace.”
“I shall terrify cab-men and cause dogs to bark,” Meralda said.
“You are beautiful,” said Donchen. “Red eyes or brown. Two eyes or three.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“Oh, but it is,” said Donchen. “It is true now, and it will be true tomorrow, and it will be true when we are both old and grey. Now and forever, my love.”
“And if I become something cold and distant? Something haughty and cruel, not because she intends to be cruel, but because she is simply past caring, past feeling?”
“That will not happen. We have a proverb–winter ice is springtime water. And the sun always shines.”
Meralda buried her face in his neck, hoping to hide the blood-red light still pouring from her eyes.
Chapter 12
Much later, when Mug found Meralda, she was in the aft observation salon, chatting idly with the young woman manning the brass telescope.
Mug paused in his flight well before the salon’s door. He hovered there a moment, eavesdropping, and had turned to leave when Meralda called to him from inside the salon.
“I hear your coils, Mug. Let him in.”
A Bellringer hastily flung open the door.
Mug rolled a dozen of his eyes and sailed through, his leaves gathered tight around his stem.
Meralda smiled, her eyes glowing, but not blazing. Mug’s leaves relaxed when he saw her smile was genuine.
Meralda was seated in a velvet-lined chair facing the salon’s wide sweep of glass. Perched behind the telescope was Airman Darling, who grinned and waved at Mug briefly before putting her eye back to the lens.
Beyond the glass, the clouds were close and dense, leaving the salon dark and wholly engulfed in dark grey vapor except for those brief moments when the airship sailed through a chasm in the layers of clouds.
“Beastie here was just telling me about your newfound love of card games,” Meralda said. Her smile remained, even wider than before. “Perhaps one day I will sit in on a game.”
The Intrepid dipped, sending Mug flying nearly into the ceiling.
“Of course, Mistress,” he said, leveling his cage to settle near the deck by Beastie. “We’ll show you how the game is played. Anything out there but clouds and rain, Beastie?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” replied Beastie. “Of course I can’t see very far, except when the wind blows a gap in the clouds.”
“I looked with Sight,” Meralda said. “I found nothing.”
The airship rolled a bit, hit broadside by a powerful gust. She quickly righted, but Mug left the deck to hover halfway to the ceiling.
“So how long will we remain in this soup?” he asked. “Must be quite a storm. We’ve been flying through it for hours, and it seems to be getting worse.”
“We took barometer readings my last watch,” said Beastie. “We’ve never seen numbers like that. Benny—Airman Barns—claimed they were too low to be correct.”
“Low readings are bad, I take it,” Mug said.
“Low means stormy.” Beastie frowned suddenly. “Oh,” she said.
“Oh what?” asked Mug.
Beastie swung the telescope back and forth, searching the murk.
“Nothing. My eyes must be getting tired. Thought I saw something.”
Meralda turned to face her. “The Vonat craft?”
“No ma’am,” said Beastie. “Something smaller. Much closer. Like a big bird.” She leaned back and rubbed her eyes. “I should call for relief. My eyes are playing tricks on me.”
“Can’t be any birds this far from land,” Mug said. “Maybe you are tired. How about a quick game of cards?”
“You couldn’t beat me no matter how tired I am.” Beastie rose. “I’ll send someone to man the telescope, if that’s all right?”
“Go,” Meralda said, with a wave of her hand. “It’s nearly useless in these clouds anyway. Thank you for keeping me company.”
Beastie stretched and left the salon, leaving Mug and Meralda alone.
“Must be pouring rain down below us,” Mug said, studying the dark beyond the glass intently. “Of course I don’t guess the Great Sea minds getting rained on.”
“I imagine not,” replied Meralda.
Mug aimed a blue eye at her, keeping it carefully hidden in a clump of leaves, and was surprised to find Meralda still smiling.
“I thought you might be angry,” he said.
“No,” Meralda said. “Not at all.”
More of Mug’s eyes crept out of hiding. “There are things about you legged folk I suppose I’ll never understand,” he said. “For instance, all that hugging—”
“Captain to Mage,” said the speaking tube by the salon’s door. “Captain to Mage.”
Meralda hurried to the tube and took it from its hook. “Yes, Captain?”
The Captain’s voice, tiny in the tube, replied. “I have reports from the forward telescope of things in the clouds,” he said. “They don’t know what they saw, but they think they saw something.”
Meralda’s smile faded. “We had one such sighting here as well. The airman described it as birdlike.”
“Probably just wind in the clouds,” said the Captain. “That, and nerves. Unless you have reason to believe otherwise?”
“None at the moment,” Meralda said.
“Keep the bridge apprised,” he replied, and then the tube went dead.
Meralda hung up and walked to the very edge of the salon’s viewing glass. Mug joined her, hovering to her right.
“Be careful, Mistress,” he said.
Meralda nodded, closed her glowing eyes, and lifted her Sight.
The Intrepid’s glass panes, and the steel frame that held them in place, glowed here and there with traces of old magic. Meralda was surprised at seeing so many arcane smudges, so far from the Intrepid’s latched machinery.
The longer she looked, the greater detail she saw, until every frame piece was shot through with faint traces of light, which grew brighter and more detailed as she studied them.
She forced her Sight outward, pushing through the clouds, finding the entire sky alight with electrical discharges leaping like frenzied sprites from cloud to cloud. Bolts of lightning shone like cracks in the sky, brief but blinding bright.
Further and further she searched, her mind’s eye racing through the clouds as if borne on the back of some fearless mythical bird. For a moment, Meralda forgot her mission, forgot herself, and became engrossed in the sensation of swooping and soaring through the boiling heart of the storm.
“Mistress,” Mug yelped. “Your feet. Put them back on the deck.”
Meralda pushed her Sight back, looked down, and saw she was hovering a foot above the deck.
She fell immediately at the realization, landing badly and winding up on her knees.
Mug buzzed down beside her.
“Mistress! Are you all right? Did you break your bone?”
“Bones,” Meralda said. Her head throbbed anew. “I have more than one bone.”
“Well are they broken?” demanded Mug. “You were flying. I thought I ought to say something, before yo
u went through the glass.”
Meralda rose and released her Sight completely.
The sparklings in the steel frame and the glowing smudges on the salon’s glass wall remained.
She turned to Mug. She saw his physical form, but also the traces and moving threads of his arcane body, the one that formed his essence.
Meralda blinked. She rubbed her eyes, and kept them closed for a moment.
“Mistress?”
“I failed to let my Sight go.” Her voice sounded desperate, even to her.
She opened her eyes.
Her Sight remained, leaving her normal vision almost wholly obscured.
“Speak to me!” Mug said. “Bellringers! Get in here!”
Kervis and Tervis rushed inside, hands on their sword hilts.
“What’s wrong?” Kervis asked.
“She won’t say,” Mug said.
“My Second Sight won’t let go.” Meralda made her way to her chair, walking through several arcs of extremely weak residual magic to reach it. The traces, when they met her skin, felt like the touch of cool, smooth glass.
Meralda sat and put her hands over her eyes.
“That’s dangerous, isn’t it?” asked Tervis.
“I’m sure it’s a momentary condition,” Mug said quickly. “Relax, Mistress. Don’t force yourself.”
“I can fetch a cup of tea,” said Tervis. “Would that help?”
“Tea?” Meralda said. “Of course. I’m levitating. Seeing Sight through my eyes, which can no longer be called normal, because they’re glowing. I’m followed by rains of pencils, cats, or cast-off cutlery. Yes, a cup of tea will surely set all that back to rights.”
She laughed aloud, and heard Mug buzz near.
“Mistress?” he said.
Meralda opened her eyes to find all twenty-nine of Mug’s staring at her.
Each eye was alight with thousands of miniscule magical sparkles, which revealed detail and pattern as Meralda looked upon them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Tea. Yes. Thank you, Tervis.”
The Bellringer turned on his heel and hurried from the salon.
“Better now?” Mug asked.
“Quite,” Meralda. “Back to normal.”
