Voidfarer

by Sean McMullen

  Riellen returned my purse. I counted out four silver florins, placed them on the pillow beside the healer's head, then turned away for the door.

  "Sir, four florins is very high payment for, well, nothing at all," Riellen whispered. "I'll just wake her—"

  "No! She looks rather sweet asleep, I'd prefer not to disturb her—and you wasted several hours of her time with your collective electocracy rubbish."

  "Sir, I... oh. Again, my apologies." j

  "Well next time, think!"

  I picked up my change of clothing, then took Riellen by the back of her collar and marched her out of the room.

  "It's past dawn," I said as we reached the stairs. "We are going down to the stables, where / am stripping off these clothes and you are going to pour a couple of pails of water over me as I wash. You are then taking my clothes down to the market and having a laundress wash them, to make up for what you made me endure a few hours ago."

  "Sir, I shall pay for it out of—"

  "Riellen, shut up."

  "Sir!"

  "I'll then be riding out to investigate that falling star from yesterday evening. You are coming with me."

  I checked Roval's room before I left for the market. There were seven empty wine jars on the floor. Roval was on the floor too. I decided that if he had not been in a fit state to find his own bed, he would not be of much use finding a fallen star.

  Chapter Five

  THE CYLINDER OPENS

  I met with the ostler Grem at the stablers row in the market. There I bought breakfast for both of us, and he provided ajar of wine for the journey. I hired an extra horse for Riellen, and as it happened, the stablers row was beside a speakers wall. There were walls like this in every market in the empire, and they were meant to be where prophets, lunatics, and deranged agitators could blow off steam and rhetoric harmlessly while being ridiculed by idlers. They were also where disguised agents of the local magistrates sometimes lurked in search of those preaching treason. Riellen was there as I arrived, and as usual, incitement to affray was her strong point. Riellen viewed any crowd with an almost erotic longing. If people were gathered, she had to tell them something. It did not seem to matter what the message was, it was the act of telling that appealed to her. Handing out pamphlets was also _ rather high on her list of favored vices. The ostler and I were actually with our horses and about to mount up when Riellen climbed onto the speakers wall and waved a sheaf of pamphlets. She had her constable's coat inside out, and thus resembled an artisan, but her hair was unbound and it was obvious to the onlookers that she was female. She wore her spectacles halfway down her nose, as a sort of declaration that she could read—and thus that she spoke with added authority. With one hand on her hip and the other raised above her head and waving the pamphlets, she began to speak.

  "Brothers! Sisters! You all know me! You all know why I'm here!" Nobody in fact knew her, and certainly nobody knew why she was there. A dozen or so idlers began to move in her direction to try to find out who she might be, and why she was

  actually there. Besides, female speakers were very rare, so she also had novelty value.

  "For too long you have been taxed without any say in how your taxes are spent," she continued. "What does the regent know about your needs? What does any king know about any commoner's needs? Does the regent care about the pothole in Featherheap Lane? Does he know that the north end of this wall is crumbling?"

  There were the inevitable jeers and catcalls, but they were peppered with cries of "She's right!"

  "Who knows best where the taxes and levies should be spent?" demanded Riellen of the crowd, which had by now been swelled to about a hundred by the relative novelty of a woman skirting the borders of treason. "You do! You, the vendors, marketeers, and honest folk of the town who come here to buy and trade. You know how to spend taxes where they need to be spent. Not the regent! You, the citizens] You must have a say in spending your taxes. Each of you must have a vote. If you had to vote on whether to spend taxes on a new crown for the regent or repairing this wall, what would you vote for?" A general groundswell of 'The wall! The wall!" now competed with the jeers.

  "Should it be a new gold ring for the regent or filling the pothole in Featherheap Lane?"

  "The pothole! The pothole!" overwhelmed the jeers; in fact, several of those jeering were now being shoved and cuffed by those around them.

  "So, are you going to just stand there, and take it lying down?" demanded Riellen. "What must be done? Ask yourselves! What must be done?" Riellen intended her audience to pause for thought. The pause was meant to be just long enough for them to realize that they did not have the answer.

  "This is what you must do!" she declared, brandishing her sheaf of handwritten pamphlets. "Form a neighborhood issues group. Vote for a delegate. Vote on what must be repaired. Vote on every injustice that must be addressed. Scribe it onto a notice. Post it on the market bulletin board. But here is a warning. Never, never accept an invitation to meet with great lords. That is their way of finding your leaders, seizing your leaders, and killing your leaders."

  Riellen began to fling her ten handwritten pamphlets into the by now eager crowd.

  "But what if our notice is ignored?" bawled a costermonger from the back.

  "Yeah, we got no army ter back up our words," shouted a fishwife near the front.

  "But the regent has one, Miss, er—" began the costermonger.

  "Riellen!" called someone who was holding a pamphlet, and could apparently read.

  "Then, brothers and sisters, you must form voters'militias to defend yourselves!" shouted Riellen, waving both fists in the air.

  "But who would tell us what to do after that?" called the costermonger.

  "You must vote for a presiding officer, a leader to put your decisions into action. Apresidian] But that is in the future. For now you must elect a market delegate, and a market delegate committee."

  "Well I votes fer Miss Riellen as delegate!" bellowed the costermonger passionately. "Who votes aye, Miss Riellen fer delegate?"

  "Aye, Miss Riellen for delegate!" roared most of the crowd, which was by now in the vicinity of a thousand souls.

  "No, no, brothers and sisters, you don't understand," called the suddenly alarmed Riellen. "I am not one of you, I am only spreading the message of electocracy. You must vote for one of your own people, one whom you know and trust, and who understands the issues here."

  "The town militia!" cried someone above the tumult. "The town militia is coming!"

  "Stop them, don't let them take Miss Riellen!" called the costermonger. No single person had a complete picture of what happened next. The militia had probably been told that a riot was in progress, and once they arrived at the outskirts of Riellen's

  crowd, a riot most certainly did erupt. Canes, swagger sticks, staffs, knives, and stones met the militiamen's reversed street axes, spears, and shields, yet there were a mere score of militiamen against the hundreds in Riellen's audience. What was certain was that the audience carried the day, then dispersed before a hundred lancers rode in from Castle Gatrov wearing full armor and brandishing field axes.

  By now I had managed to get hold of Riellen, bind up her hair, get her constable's coat reversed again and back onto her, rub dirt onto her face, and heave her onto her horse. We rode out past the cultivated fields for the forest with the ostler, but were not pursued.

  "Do you really believe all that rubbish?" asked the ostler as we traveled.

  "Yes, I do!" muttered Riellen. "It makes a lot of sense." I "It's a wonder nobody was killed back there," I grumbled. "If the town magistrate ever catches up with you, it will be on-the-spot execution for incitement to affray."

  "Affray is only what you define it to be," began Riellen.

  "As long as you happen to be the magistrate," I countered. ("Please, no more politics!" pleaded the ostler.

  T shall begin a new speech tonight," declared Riellen. "It will contain a plea for the people to support the sorcerers and
initiates against persecution from the ignorant and greedy monarchs who fund the Sorceric Inquisition."

  "Sounding like borderline incitement to affray," I sighed. "Words like you used today are liable to get a lot of important people upset."

  "Oh I can do better than that," said Riellen proudly. "Listen to this: Voters must understand that sorcerers are not their enemies. The sorcerers who built the terrible ether weapon, Dragonwall, are all dead. The sorcerers and initiates who the Inquisition now persecutes are the very sorcerers who opposed Dragonwall! They are good sorcerers, and friends of voters. Allow the Inquisition to kill all sorcerers, and we shall be at the mercy of rogue sorcerers from beyond Alberin and Scalticar. Hide the brave, loyal sorcerers of Scalticar, oppose the oppressive killers who sit on thrones and squander the taxes and levies bled from the hardworking voters who are the lifeblood of the continent."

  "I rest my case," I commented. "Now then, Constable Riellen, I am your commander, and I command you to stop talking politics. Is that understood?"

  "Yes sir," she replied reluctantly.

  "Is she really a Wayfarer Constable?" hissed the ostler as Riellen dropped a little behind.

  "Mind your own business," I muttered.

  "Oh sir, I spoke to Madame Norellie this morning," called Riellen. "You should have stayed and spoken with her last night."

  "Riellen, how was I supposed to get a word in edgeways while you were sitting there explaining voting procedures for the Electocratic Collective of, er—"

  "Entertainment and Therapeutic Artisans, sir. I completed a charter for them before I went to sleep."

  "Does the constitution include a clause for talking politics all night on the client's time?"

  "No, but—"

  "Did you, at any stage, ask her if she was willing to stay and listen to your radical political theories without payment?"

  "Er... no. But sir, she did seem sincere, and genuinely interested. I shall restore the four florins from my own purse, that is, when I have saved enough to—"

  "Never mind."

  For all the infuriating peculiarity of Riellen's ideas and beliefs, I kept talking to her for the rest of the ride to the fallen star. Silence meant that thoughts of Lavenci would come flooding back. Lavenci sitting on the edge of her bed and undressing for her lover of the night, Lavenci's gasp for every creak of her bed, all in 2/4 time, and as always, my hand being slapped away from her breast.

  v v >;

  The cylinder had fallen to earth about seven miles west of the town, and near the edge of Waingram Forest. It had come down at a shallow angle, smashing a path through farmland fences, hedgerows, and isolated trees for fully three hundred yards, before splashing into the rich, dark earth of the ploughed fields. It had come to rest half buried at the end of a long ditch of its own making.

  There were two hundred or so people gathered about the ditch, mostly peasants from nearby estates, but there were also several nobles and merchants on well-groomed horses. I appeared to be the most senior member of any civil enforcement service present.

  Riellen and I declared ourselves to a couple of members of the local farmland watch as we pushed our way through the crowd. People not only made way for us, they even muttered words along the lines of 'Took yer bloody time gettin' te scene!" A Skeptical preacher was standing at the north edge of the ditch, performing a superstition exorcism, while on the south side a priest of the Brotherhood of the Great White Ram was chanting a healing prayer for the wound in the soil. Beside him was a rather stern-looking man wearing a sign declaring the end is nye, and beside him was an equally stern woman whose sign merely read repont.

  The cylinder was fifteen feet in diameter, from what I could see. Recalling its shape from when it had flown overhead, I estimated the length to be at least fifty feet. The shape suggested an egg that had been stretched to several times its former length. A river barge would be about the same size, yet the idea that it might be a vessel did not occur to me at once. It was still warm, for the loam around it was steaming. Its bright orange color gave the impression that it was glowing like a live coal.

  "What I wants to know is who pays for fence and sheep's shade trees?" said a peasant in a lamb-docking smock as we stood there taking in the scene.

  "Well yes, and these are my lands that have been gouged," said a rather elaborately dressed peasant beside him. "What I want to know is, who should be prosecuted?"

  "An act of the gods, Viscount," suggested the ostler.

  "That's all very well, my man, but gods are notoriously hard to serve with a writ," replied the better-dressed peasant. From his collar crest I now deduced that he really was a ludicrously dressed viscount.

  I had the impression that the man did not get away from his estates and tenant farmers very much. He wore a burgundy work tunic of fine wool, over which was a half smock of red silk, and his grubby gloves were kid leather. His work clogs were of the same Acreman mahogany as was used for expensive bagpipes. Obviously all this impressed the peasants who surrounded him, but I suspected that he was not the laughingstock of his peers only because he had little to do with them.

  "What do you think, Constable?" I asked Riellen.

  One glance at the cylinder told anyone without serious eyesight problems that it was not a meteorite. Meteorites are irregular and pitted, but this one was smoothly rounded and symmetrical.

  "Looks to be an immense egg" was all that she could suggest. "What manner of bird has a bum big enough to lay that?" asked the ostler.

  "A dragon, perhaps," I suggested.

  "A dragon? But it looks to be five yards across. For a dragon to lay an egg of that size, it would have to be, er ..."

  "A hen twelve inches high can lay an egg two inches long," I said. "From what I remember of this egg flying over last night, I would say it is three or four times longer than its diameter ... so six times fifty feet is a reasonable estimate for the creature that laid it."

  "Six times fifty is ... er ... um ..."

  "That is a three-hundred-foot dragon, sir," said Riellen diplomatically. We all glanced fearfully to the sky for a moment, but no three-hundred-foot dragon with wings half a mile across was diving upon us. Those who had been standing close enough to hear now hurried away to spread our theory to anyone who would listen.

  "A dragon, you say?" the viscount asked in a tremulous voice.

  "I can't be certain," I replied hastily. "We need a sorcerer to look at it."

  "Alius knew it were a bad idea te kill all our sorcerers," said the peasant in the smock, waving in the direction of the thing from the sky.

  "What I want to know is what is the empress doing about it?" demanded the ostler.

  "She's vanished, Regent Corozan is running the country," I explained.

  "Well, what's the regent doing about it?"

  "I'm the regent's representative," I said reluctantly.

  "Well, what are you doing about it?"

  I put my hands on my hips and glanced over the scene with the professional skill of someone whose life often depends on assessing a dangerous situation quickly and accurately.

  "Riellen, go to those boys who are throwing stones at the egg," I said, pointing along the ditch. "Send them on their way—and stop that clown splashing exorcism oil on it."

  The viscount, ostler, and peasant fell in with me as I descended into the pit. Somehow having someone—anyone— take charge seems to always allay people's fears. Confront a leaderless crowd of two hundred with three or four well-led militiamen waving riot sticks, and they will scatter. Give that same crowd a leader, then confront it with a three-hundred-foot-long dragon breathing white-hot hellfire, and it will attack. In the latter case the crowd will get itself collectively reduced to a puff of smoke, but it will do so heroically. Thus I found myself in charge, and obliged to examine what nobody else was quite willing to approach. For some perverse reason I suddenly wanted to be the first to touch the cylinder.

  "With respect, sir, best I go first," I said to the viscount.
"No sense losing a nobleman should the worst happen."

  He was all in favor of that, and thus I was the first to step out onto the cylinder. Squatting down, I lowered my hand to the surface very slowly. It was about as hot as a slate roof at noon on a summer's day, and was covered in oxidation that had the texture of waterworn granite. It was a uniform deep orange in color, and for some reason this now made me think of the moonworld Lupan. The very same color as its deserts, I thought. Could there be a connection? Perhaps a dragon from Lupan flew across the gulf between our two moonworlds.

  "Seems safe enough," I called.

  "What do you make of it?" the viscount asked.

  "This might well be from Lupan," I suggested. "Scholars of the cold sciences think there might be creatures living there."

  "A dragon from Lupan? Why come all this way to lay an egg?"

  "Storm cranes spend the winter in northern Acrema, yet fly here to nest in spring," I pointed out. "Perhaps dragons fly here from Lupan to lay their eggs."

  "We'd have noticed if this happened before. I mean a three-hundred-foot dragon is bound to draw attention to itself."

  "They may only do it every ten thousand years."

  "Well, where is the dragon?"

  "They might be like turtles. They lay their eggs and then abandon them."

  "I say, do you mean to say that a dragon from Lupan will hatch on my estate?" exclaimed the viscount in a voice that had suddenly lost all trace of fear.

  "Could be. Make friends with the chick, and you could ride it all the way to Lupan when it grows up."

  My words were meant as a joke, but the nobleman took them seriously. He jumped from the torn soil onto the cylinder, and his peasant tenant was close behind him.

  "I say, this egg from Lupan did come down on my land," he pointed out to us,

  "and thus it is my egg."

  "My leasehold!" cried the peasant, pointing at the soil. "My egg"

  "I hereby claim this bounty as my property under the Marine Salvage Act of 2877," the viscount declared, even though the object had fallen from the sky and we were several days' journey from the sea, even a couple of hours by horse from the river. "All of you, get away from it!"