by Frank Tuttle
“Hello,” Meralda said softly. “I’ve missed you all so very much.”
“Mage,” said Tower, speaking through Moffet’s Articulate Reader. “How have you come to return?”
“I have not,” Meralda said. “This is only a dream.”
“A most peculiar dream,” replied Tower, in Moffet’s clipped tones. “Still, your return is fortuitous, for the assembly of Amorp’s hidden device is complete.”
Meralda remembered her earlier efforts to solve Amorp’s riddle, and discover his gift. The memories seemed very old to her, as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
“What is it?” she asked, as Como’s Agile Insect climbed up into her lap.
Meralda recognized the peculiar shuffle of Modwap’s Helpful Automaton before it emerged from the Shelves, an unfamiliar bulk cradled in its four spindly arms.
“My cursory investigation suggests it is a means to direct and then instigate extremely powerful electrical discharges,” said Tower. “I believe Amorp called it the Delighter. The observable spellwork indicates the device was built to be used only by persons with Second Sight.”
Meralda turned in her chair as the Automaton bore Amorp’s hidden device to her.
The beams of her eye-lights fell upon the contrivance, illuminating it in a flash of crimson. It was thick, composed of short fat tubes, all banded by copper and fitted with hoses and coils and intricate protrusions of quartz.
At one end the tubes opened, each terminated by a series of silver rings. At the other, a stock, like that of a crossbow, was fitted to the tubes. The dark wood stock was decorated with a Tirlish flag, inlaid in silver.
“Just how powerful are these discharges?” asked Meralda, as the pounding in her chest began to subside.
“At least four orders of magnitude more energetic than the most powerful single lightning discharge which has struck me in the last seven centuries,” replied Tower. “There appears to be a mechanism which controls the release intensity. It is set to low by default. The energy output of the highest setting is incalculable.”
Meralda let her radiant gaze wash over the device.
“Directed lightning,” she said. Hidden in the intricate filigree that both decorated the stock and served as a radiant surface to spill heat from the copper tubes were the words Amorp’s Implacable Delighter. “No wonder Amorp hid this away.”
The Agile Insect in her lap began to issue a buzzing purr. Meralda stroked its metal carapace.
I wish I could stay here, she thought. She looked around the Laboratory, her gaze passing from Phillitrep’s Mathematical Engine to the dozens of smaller mobile artifacts still gathering at her feet.
“This is my home,” she said. The glow from her eyes softened as she spoke. “I’m not a monster here.”
“I assume your statement is rhetorical in nature,” said Tower. “I do not know by what means you have returned. Will it be possible for you to take the directed lightning device with you when you depart? Or will it appear to be wherever you look, as is the case with the Horn?”
Meralda shook her head. “I am only dreaming,” she said. “I simply do not know.”
“That is unfortunate,” said Tower. “We are well out of effective contact range via the Glass. I am unable to transport the device to you.”
A low rumble, brief but quickly repeated, shook the Laboratory. The artifacts and devices gathered around Meralda, huddled and looked about. Those closest to her crowded beneath her chair, chittering and shivering.
The rumblings continued, increasing in strength and quickness, until Meralda recognized them as footsteps.
Giant footsteps.
“What an unusual seismic disturbance—” began Tower.
Meralda rose, eyes blazing.
“Not in my home,” she said. “You will not bring your malice here.”
She rose, passing through the Laboratory, the Palace and the air as easily as if they, and not her, were formed of a dream.
She saw the Gaunt approaching, striding over the green hills and grassy meadows that lay just beyond the Lamp River. The Gaunt was as tall as the clear night sky. Its fists were raised, and its mouth hung open.
“Here I am,” called Meralda, soaring toward those great black eyes. “Catch me, if you can.”
She spun around the Gaunt’s wrinkled face. It whirled, claw hands flailing, the beginning of a scream rising up like a dry rasp of thunder from its saggy, pale throat.
Meralda flew, darting to and fro, leading the Gaunt away from Tirlin, taking it back toward the Sea.
She laughed and called out to it. It leaped and caught, but its hands closed on empty air, and soon the lights of Tirlin were lost to Meralda’s sight. Within moments she saw a beach, and then she was far out at sea, the Gaunt still leaping and grasping.
Meralda exulted, unmagic burning like cold tame fire within her. Swooping and soaring, she laughed as the Gaunt gnashed its toothless gums and howled in rage. Her eyes burned like twin suns, her laughter rang like thunder, and she filled the night with both.
From storm to storm she led the Gaunt, while winds and rain and hail beat against the giant. Now and then, the Gaunt would cover its face with its hands and wail, as if in agony, and Meralda would dare fly to its ear, where she would shout taunts before darting away.
The long night wore on, as though the sun neglected to rise. Meralda spied an enormous, swirling storm, far larger than any before, and she led the Gaunt into it, gleeful as great bolts of lighting lashed the giant, leaving it scarred and smoking and stumbling.
Ever deeper Meralda flew, unmindful of the ferocious howling winds or the falls of jagged hail. The Gaunt pursued, stumbling and half-blind, but never slowing.
Meralda soared briefly above the highest clouds, and saw that the vast storm rotated, circling about a central axis. Laughing, Meralda descended, eager to lead the Gaunt into the very heart of the tempest.
When Meralda emerged suddenly into calm dry air, the shock of it shattered her dream, sending her plunging headlong down toward the waves.
Boiling storm clouds rose up like a curving wall behind her. The wall stretched from the choppy grey Sea to the cold sky above, but beyond the wall stars shone, and the wind was still and cool.
Meralda fell. In the instant before she awoke, her face turned up toward the sky, and she caught a glimpse of a dull silver wheel, hanging just below the stars. The wheel was so vast just an arc of it stretched full across the sky, vanishing in the clouds on either side, turning slowly against the night.
Mrs. Primsbite’s drawing, she thought. It is real after all.
Meralda turned, the Sea filled her vision, and she awoke in the Jenny’s hull, beside the starboard flying coil.
Her heart pounded. Her face, her hair, her clothes were drenched. Her fingers were wrinkled, as though she’d just emerged from a long bath, and she tasted the salty Great Sea in her mouth.
She rose, every joint and muscle aching. Her eyes filled the Jenny with light, which fell across an unfamiliar mass perched atop the coil housing.
Meralda gazed full upon it, focusing past the luminous nimbus of newly-latched magic that surrounded the device like fog on a meadow.
Amorp’s Delighter lay on the Jenny’s primary coil housing.
Meralda reached out and touched it. It was solid and cool and very much tangible.
Footsteps pounded down the passageway.
“Mage!” cried a voice Meralda recognized, after a moment, as that of Kervis.
“Meralda,” shouted Donchen. “Are you aboard?”
Mug’s flying coils buzzed as he swooped through the Jenny’s main hatchway and then down the short maintenance crawlway.
Meralda pushed Amorp’s device into the shadows behind the Jenny’s coil, just in case it didn’t vanish when she looked away. “I’m here,” she said, as Mug came near. She turned toward him, lighting him with the glow of her eyes. “I fell asleep working. What’s the matter?”
She heard footsteps on t
he upper deck, and the sound of hurried movement down the hatchway.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Mug said. “The storm turned strange. Everybody aboard heard laughter in the sky. There were lights, too, but it wasn’t lightning.”
Donchen hurried down the crawlway on his hands and knees. “The Captain feared the Vonat airship was returned,” he said. “Did I hear you say you were asleep?”
“You did,” Meralda said. When Donchen took her hand she smiled, and squeezed his briefly. “I didn’t mean to. What time is it?”
“Nearly midnight,” replied Mug. “Strange, I don’t hear the laughter now.”
“The lights have stopped,” shouted Kervis, from outside the Jenny. Meralda knew from the sound of his voice he was probably looking through the porthole where she and Donchen once shared a kiss. That memory too felt distant, almost alien. It was precious to me once, Meralda realized. Will I soon dismiss it altogether?
“I’m sure it was only thunder,” Meralda said. “Thunder and wind. I haven’t felt the Vonat craft since it vanished.”
I can hardly tell them I’ve spent the night flying about while fighting a giant, she thought. They already suspect I am going mad.
I might well have conjured this giant, as I’ve conjured so many other things, Meralda realized. Horror at the thought set her heart racing.
What if that’s true? What if my dreams are taking physical form, walking about no matter how ridiculous they seem? What if the Vonat prophecy is coming about because my unmagic is giving it shape and substance?
“Meralda,” said Donchen. “Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”
“I’m just tired,” she said, remembering to accompany her words with a wan smile.
“Maybe all that was just a storm, and maybe it wasn’t,” Mug said. “But that’s not the only news. All this wind, all this buffeting about—we’ve sprung a leak, Mistress. We’re losing lifting gas so fast the Captain tried to seal off the Number 18 bag.”
“Tried to?”
“We may have sustained structural damage as well,” added Donchen. “The bag is only partly sealed. We’re still leaking gas, and we’ll soon start losing altitude.”
“Let’s go,” Meralda said, pointing toward the light at the end of the crawlway. “This can wait.”
“The Captain wants to see you,” Mug said. “You know what that means.”
Meralda exited behind Donchen and stood, her back and knees sore. “We’ll have to risk stopping to pump seawater,” she said. “We’ll also have to leave the cover of the clouds.”
“If the Vonats are still out there, that’s when they’ll strike,” Mug said.
“And what of the damage to the venting controls?”
“Beastie is crawling that way now,” replied Mug. “There’s five hundred and forty feet of twenty-inch-wide crawlspace between us and the damaged linkage. Beastie’s the smallest aboard, and the quickest. She should be at the linkage in an hour and a half or so.”
The speaking tube set above the Jenny crackled, and the Captain’s voice rang out.
“Flight officers to the bridge,” he said. “At once.”
Meralda and Donchen hurried down the Jenny’s ladder and sped off toward the bridge, Kervis and Mug right behind.
* * *
Night hid the storm clouds through which the Intrepid flew. The storm was weakening by the moment, its wind little more than a stiff breeze, its flashes of lightning dim and far off. Still, the bursts lit the clouds and the view of ragged thunderheads rushing past was, Meralda decided, spellbinding.
“We’ve lost fifteen percent of our lifting gas,” said the Captain. He chewed hard on the stem of his unlit pipe, and his fingers stabbed the report he held as though he wished to punish the paper and the letters written upon it. “We’ll lose another ten percent for every hour Bag 18 isn’t sealed.”
“Two more hours and we’ll be a boat,” muttered Mug.
“Nearly so,” agreed the Captain. “Which means we have no choice but to descend and pump seawater. Mage. What’s the absolute minimum stay required to pump enough to replenish half our losses?”
Figures danced through Meralda’s mind. “Six hours and twenty-two minutes,” she replied.
“How long until airman Darling reaches the linkage?” asked the Captain.
“She signaled us at Bag 9 a few minutes ago, sir,” replied Watch Officer Merton. “She’s moving faster than we expected. Say another half-hour.”
The Captain grunted.
“We all heard voices on the wind,” said the Captain. “Saw lights. But you see no evidence that the Vonat airship is responsible?”
“None,” Meralda said. Save of course the giant who chased me in my sleep, she thought. But let’s hope that was just a dream, or some unmagic-spawned hallucination. “I will station myself on the ramp. Keep watch on the sky. I assure you, Captain, we will not be caught unaware.”
“We don’t have a choice,” said the Captain. He turned and glared at the flash-lit clouds. “Blast it. Elevator. Take us down easy, five degrees. Level us off at fifty feet. Rudder, bear west. Let’s get out from under the wind and the rain.” He reached for the speaking tube. “Pump room, make ready. Descent has begun. All hands, all passengers. Cover the portholes and extinguish all lamps. We’re leaving the clouds and going dark. That is all.”
The watch officer flipped a series of switches, and the spark lamps on the bridge flickered and died. Lights and dials still glowed here and there, but the bridge was only illuminated by distant flashes of lightning and the radiance of Meralda’s eyes.
“I’ll assist with the deployment of the pump,” Meralda said.
“If you can speed things up, take whatever measures you feel necessary,” grumbled the Captain. “You have my authority.”
Meralda nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”
The passageway beyond the bridge was dark, and crewmen were latching shutters over the portholes. Meralda lit her own way, the beams from her eyes bobbing as she walked.
“I hate the thought of hanging so close to the water for six hours,” Mug said, as he flew next to Meralda.
“I thought you hated flying through storms,” Meralda said.
“That too,” agreed Mug. “It occurs to me there isn’t much about this infernal voyage I don’t despise. Present company excepted, of course. Hello, Donchen.”
A smiling Donchen emerged from a doorway and fell into step beside Meralda.
“I take it we’re going to pump seawater aboard,” he said. “I believe I’ll go along, if you don’t mind.”
“I need you to speak to the Vonat,” Meralda said. “I don’t have time, but there are things I need to know.”
Donchen frowned briefly. “About what?”
“About this Vonat myth you mentioned earlier,” replied Meralda. “The Gaunt, I believe he called it. I need details. History. Associated folklore. Anything and everything he can remember.”
“You believe the crew might actually have caught glimpses of a giant, through the clouds?”
“Of course not. But if the Vonats believe in this prophecy of theirs, might they not shape magic according to the images of their myths?”
Donchen shrugged. “I suppose. If that is what you wish, Meralda, I’ll see Kurbus immediately. As long as you promise to be careful out on that ramp.”
Meralda rolled her eyes, which caused the glow of them to circle from wall to ceiling to wall again. “I promise I will not trip and fall into the Great Sea,” she said. “Honestly.”
“Very well,” replied Donchen. “I will find out as much as I can.”
“Thanks,” Meralda said.
Donchen nodded and headed off toward the Vonat’s cabin.
“Well, you got rid of him handily enough,” Mug said when Donchen was gone. “But don’t think you’ll be rid of me so easily. I’m not blinded by love.”
“Nor is he,” Meralda said. They reached the end of the passageway, and descended into the loading bay via t
he spiral stairs. “And you will do as I say as soon as I say it, or else. Is that understood?”
Mug spun his cage around. “Yes sir, Captain sir,” he said, bringing up a gaggle of leaves in a mocking salute. “Shall I watch for sea monsters or rampaging giants?”
The pump crew, consisting of half a dozen grease-smudged Tirls all cursing and banging on the hose reel with hammers, saw Meralda and went suddenly silent.
“Evening, Chief Engineer,” said the foreman, flustered. “Sorry for the language, but the reel bearing is stuck. Salt air, I figure.”
“Get a torch,” Meralda said. “Just don’t start a grease fire. Who is in charge of the ramp winch?”
“That would be me,” cried a voice from above, the speaker lost in the frame of the massive crane that lay stowed against the Intrepid’s hull. “Airman Corliss, ma’am.”
“Open the bay,” called Meralda. “Lower the ramp. I’m going out to keep watch.”
“Yes ma’am,” came the faint reply. A moment later an electric motor whined, and the massive loading ramp began to inch down, revealing slices of night on all three sides as it lowered.
Instantly the wind howled, and wisps of cold wet air rushed in. “Mind the breeze,” Mug said. “Last I looked, our airspeed was a hundred and twenty, and it’ll take us a while to slow down.”
Meralda nodded, his words barely registering. She gazed out at the widening slices of night, and remembered flying weightless amongthe clouds, taunting a giant, filling the heavens with her glee.
Did that really happen? Have I lost the capacity to separate reality from fantasy?
“Mistress,” cried Mug. “Feet on the ramp, if you please. Let’s not make the crew more nervous than they are, shall we?”
Meralda started, and fell half a foot.
“Better than a rain of frogs,” shouted Mug. His cage swiveled. “They’ve freed the hose reel. We’re in business, Mistress. Let’s go watch the show.”
Mug buzzed down the ramp, wobbling a bit as the rushing wind caught his cage. His coils whined, but he managed to remain over the ramp.
Meralda followed. She gripped the rail at first, until she realized the wind was barely ruffling her hair. She could hear it howl, feel faint tugs on her blouse and skirt, but the air passed around her, parting as if she were a smooth, massive stone.
