Five leagues from the Monolith, Mar made an unannounced stop and then personally scoured the vessel for any sign of magic, walking through every cabin and space and even going so far as to wiggle through the dark crawlspace under the lower deck. Once completely satisfied that there would be no repeat of the first expedition's calamity, he resumed the flight.
Mar limited the unavoidable stop in Khalar to three days, during which he infused twenty skyship hulls, held an affable meeting with a smiling and cooperative Privy Council, consulted with the relentless hordes of the ecclesiastical college, made a less than rousing speech to two legions of recruits, and acceded to Lord Purhlea's request to have Berhl back from Mhajhkaei.
The three days wound up being five, but finally Number One sailed north.
"What's our heading, my lord king?" Ulor asked as he held the skyship steady in the face of a cutting wind and a chill, light mist.
Telriy was indisposed again and the discouraging weather blowing in off the mountains had convinced all the rest of the crew and passengers to stay below decks or in their quarters, so that Mar, the marine, and Lord Hhrahld stood alone on the steerage. Wilhm had said sagely that Aunt Whelsi had told him to stay in out of the rain.
"My guess would be that we follow the Blue," Mar mused. "Khavurst mentioned a great desert and I think that must be the Waste. But since I don't know the source of either fork -- except for Khavurst no one has seen either one, as far as I know -- it could very well be that there is another large desert far to the northeast."
Ulor raised a hand to shelter his eyes from the thickening rain and grinned. "Flip a coin?"
"I'd rather not leave it to chance. Lord Hhrahld?"
"Put your helm toward the sunset. I never did like sailing toward the dark, especially with bad weather coming on."
"Well, that's two votes for the Blue. Hmmm, wait, I have an idea. I'll be right back."
He found the younger Gaaelfharenii sitting cross-legged, with his eyes closed, in the darkened cargo hold.
"Wilhm, which way is the mountain?"
Though he did not open his eyes, the giant's arm shot out to point west-northwest.
When Mar returned, he gave Ulor the word.
"Aye, my lord king, the Blue fork it is."
And, at last, Mar's quest to save his wife and child began.
THIRTY-THREE
A hundred leagues north of Khalar, the Blue Ice River exploded in a giant cataract from a chasm that clove the Mheckel Mountains as if some monstrous being had struck the formation with an axe the size of a city. The granite sides of the cut went up in broken shelves, stepped-back ledges, and undercut cliffs for what looked like a thousand manheight before giving way to the high slopes of the snow blanketed peaks to the north and south. Confined by a buttressing ridge, the lake below the falls was larger than Khalar, blue and clean, and surrounded by a thick emerald forest of fir and spruce. To the southwest, the river spilled out of a narrow outlet choked with boulders the size of a house, forming an impassable stretch of rapids that snaked through the foot hills for five leagues before easing out into the floor of the Ice River strath and its wider, more lethargic terrain.
"Mhiskva's Gap," Mar said.
"Apt name." Telriy agreed.
The onset of the winter months had considerably shortened the days, and the sun had already fallen behind the mountains, leaving the lake and the skyship in a shadowed twilight.
"We probably shouldn't run the gap at night and it'd be bad cold trying to go over the top. Ulor, let's find a place to moor. We'll go through first thing in the morning."
"Aye, my lord king."
With no sizable clearing in sight, Ulor brought Number One down along the eastern shore of the lake where a rocky shelf left by seasonal flooding made something resembling a beach. Yhejia and her galley crew, a rotating duty shared equally among everyone save for the Gaaelfharenii (their size made fitting into the galley problematic) and Scahll (banned from the galley for his heart-felt belief that everything, vegetables and all, should be cooked to the consistency and color of shoe leather) carried tables and benches out onto the gentle slope and laid on supper in the crisp air. The meal consisted of a thick stew with beef, hard bread, a sharp yellow cheese, and dark tea or cold water from a spring found on a hill a few hundred armlengths from the lake. While there were not enough places for everyone to sit, Lord Hhrahld, Wilhm, Quaestor Eishtren, and the other legionnaires proved perfectly content eat lounging on the thick needle blanket under the conifers at the top of the beach, and Mar found himself squeezed in amongst Telriy, Ulor, Yhejia, their children, Tsyl and her son, the Auxiliaries, and Pip. Happily, Yhejia entertained no silly ideas about segregating royal personages to eat off by themselves.
For a moment, he had a flash of the Moon Pool vision that had shown his own prodigious brood of children, a future that now seemed highly unlikely.
As he contemplated the children further, doubts began to creep into his mind about their presence. Originally, he had had no concerns about their safety. After all, they did not have to slog overland through the brambles of the forest or across the sands of the Waste, but would speed unruffled across the harsh terrain at upwards of twenty leagues an hour, comfortably insulated from man, beast, and environment. He had no reason to expect violence or disaster during the expedition, but that did not mean, he decided after further consideration, that either or both would not appear. With no specific idea of what they might encounter on the journey, he could not say for certain that Number One was not sailing full speed toward peril.
"Maybe I should take a party ahead in a rowboat to scout," he said to Telriy.
She made a face, scooted closer, and circled her left arm about his right. The gesture was unmistakably possessive.
"Don't get any ideas," she said firmly. "We're all safer together."
He inclined his head and then studied making his stew disappear (it was delicious) as a babble of idle chatter swirled about them, but made up his mind to do just as he had said at the first sign of approaching trouble.
As the meal wound down, Mar heard Baeyrl, sitting with his mother directly across the table, ask if the cataract were The Mother of the Seas.
Tsyl pointedly tapped his bowl with her own spoon. "I don't think so. Finish your stew."
The boy turned his lively eyes boldly on Mar. "What is The Mother of the Seas?"
When Tsyl tried to shush Baeyrl, Mar spoke up. "It's all right. The Mother of the Seas is, according to Khavurst, 'a fantastic mountain of ice.'"
"What is that?" the boy wanted to know.
"No idea."
Emboldened, Mlehn, one of the Auxiliaries, asked, "What are we going to find there?"
"Ruins, sand, and magic."
"What kind of ruins?"
"The ruined kind."
Everyone laughed and then wild speculation exploded all along the tables.
Mar was not really sure what to expect. Another Waste City? Another hidden bronze door? Another brass cylinder? It did not actually matter what they found or even if they never reached The Mother of the Seas. All that mattered was that Telriy remain safe.
After supper, Signifier Aael had the Auxiliaries build a large campfire in the manner prescribed by legion regulation, and though it became quite cool as the night matured, all of them stayed outside around it, bundled in blankets and joking and talking in excited tones about the adventure till they reluctantly fell asleep. Ulor and Eishtren set up a full watch, but there seemed little need for it. The undisturbed natural noises of the wilderness, a disjointed symphony of evening bird song, the droning buzz of insects, and the occasional slap of water as a fish leapt, suggested that their natural idyll was untroubled any predator, two legged or otherwise.
At the first light of dawn, after a cold breakfast of barrel apples, bread, and cheese, the Auxiliaries drowned the embers of their fire and then hauled the benches, chairs, their blankets, and sleepy-eyed selves back aboard. All hatches secured, Mar gave Ulor a nod and
the vice-captain raised ship and cruised slowly back across the lake toward the cataract.
"Take us up until we're a hundred armlengths above the falls," Mar told him. "Let's go in dead slow."
"Aye, my lord king."
A fog of spray shrouded the entrance to the chasm, throwing up a brief flash of a rainbow as the rising sun hit it just right, and as soon as Number One nosed into the cloud, the deck and upper works became slick and damp. Everyone but the youngest children, confined below by Yhejia and Tsyl to morning chores and lessons, had come topside to watch and every eye peered out keenly as Number One coasted into the mist.
"Cliff thirty armlengths to port!" Fugleman Truhsg sang out as the mist began to thin.
"Same twenty-five to starboard!" shouted Scahll.
"Hold your speed steady," Mar ordered Ulor.
"Aye, my lord king."
Then Number One emerged from the mist into the narrow cut, the warm morning light glinting from the speeding water below and making the edges and cracks of the dark stone of the cliffs glow golden.
Ulor made a slight adjustment to bring the bow of the skyship dead center of the brightly lit chasm, which was no more than sixty armlengths wide at the surface of the gushing flow and looked to run arrow straight all the way through the mountains, its far end vanishing into a single point.
"Never seen anything like that that was not made by man," Lord Hhrahld commented.
"Rocks will play tricks, though," Taelmhon said. "There's a stretch of beach five leagues west of Mhajhkaei where a lane of stone that looks just like pavement runs down right under the water as far as you can swim. It's just rock with an odd shape."
Bear grunted. "I know that place. The priests say the Forty-Nine made it as a road for Ephtehg’rha to drag up all the drowned wrecks at the end of time."
"No, it's just rocks," Aael countered. "I was drunk one time and got some fellows to help me prise up some of the blocks."
As the skyship moved forward down the towering stone channel, Telriy laid a hand on Mar's arm. "There's been magic here. A lot of it. Old magic."
Startled from a simple, awestruck appreciation of the view, he opened his senses to the ether and understood immediately what she had meant. The walls of the chasm wept a weak, patently artificial flux, a polluted admixture of sound-colors that felt like the residue from some ancient titanic modulation.
"Lord Hhrahld is right," he told the others. "Someone used magic to slice open the heart of the mountains."
"My lord king, does that mean that all of the river is manmade?" Aelwyrd asked.
"Yes, Aelwyrd," Telriy replied with a frown. "Someone made the river. Or, at least, all of the part from here onward. From here down the Khalar, the course is probably natural."
"So this a canal?" Polg wondered.
Lord Hhrahld laughed. "Not with a cataract at the end of it, boy, unless the builders wanted their barges to come out as tooth picks."
The passage of the thirty or so leagues of the chasm, though somewhat tense, was uneventful. Except where rock falls had blocked the course and thrown up rapids, the ribbon of water ran still and deep, its bottom as flat as a highway as it followed a gentle but regular rising grade. Though Mar had most of the crew constantly watch the fractured cliffs ahead for caves or structures, they saw none. Nor did they see any obvious marks to indicate who or what had created the gap. Fearing landslips or unfriendly inhabitants who would only need to hurl rocks from the heights to do great damage, Mar had Ulor keep the speed of the skyship down to a crawl, so that it looked to take all day to make the passage.
By midday, the unrelenting sight of the rock faces sliding by had become mind numbingly boring, making the continuous watch of the cliffs a tedious chore. After Telriy, complaining of a crick in her neck, went to their cabin to rest, Mar relented and had Quaestor Eishtren reduce the lookout to just two men and release the rest of the crew. Wanting to stay on deck himself, he relieved Ulor at the helm and doubled the skyship's speed.
Finally, about the fifth hour of the afternoon, the end of the cut came into view and Mar slowed again to a crawl. Aael, who had been holding a class to teach the older Auxiliaries how to tie a clove hitch, floated across the deck and shouted the news down the hatchway. Most of the legionnaires soon reappeared on deck.
Having gained perhaps a thousand armlengths in altitude, Number One exited the chasm to find another lake about half the size of the first. The water here had a darker, deeper look. Except for a narrow band of greenery along the banks of the lake and the winding river leading west, the terrain here much dryer, with scrub and chaparral competing among scattered stands of the twisted desert pine that was characteristic of the periphery of the Great Waste.
Almost immediately, Fugleman Truhsg called everyone's attention to the north shore of the lake where two long stone piers jutted out into the water and other constructions could be made out further inland.
"I don't see any smoke," Aael said. "Might just be ruins."
"Fuel might be scarce around here," Quaestor Eishtren advised. "They might not keep a fire going all day."
"We could ignore the place and sail on, my lord king," Ulor suggested.
"I don't like the idea of flying into unknown territory at night," Mar demurred. "I'd like to have some idea of what's up ahead. If there's anyone there, they're probably Gheddessii and they have a reputation of being touchy, especially in their own territory. Let's get some altitude and stay out over the lake well out of reach."
"Aye, my lord king." Ulor concentrated to make the skyship rise.
"Quaestor Eishtren, we'll need extra men on watch tonight."
"Yes, my lord king." Eishtren immediately gathered up Dhem, Kyamhyn, and Scahll and went below. Since the quaestor habitually took second watch, he and the three legionnaires would be heading down to get some sleep before their midnight duty.
Yhejia came up, exchanged smiles with her husband, and asked, "Are we going to moor tonight? Or should I plan a cold supper?"
"Cold, I'm afraid," Mar told her. "Don't set out a plate for me. I'm going to take a look around."
Knowing that if he informed Telriy about his plans that she would almost certainly issue a difficult to ignore veto, he immediately soared away from the deck, swinging far out to the west into the red light of the lowering sun.
THIRTY-FOUR
Reasoning that any inhabitants would be distracted by the floating skyship, Mar planned to sneak into the lakeside village from the landward side. Unhurried, he followed the trace of the lazily winding river westward for three or four leagues before turning north, then descended to ground level to weave a measured, circling path through the scrub until he found a modest knoll from which he could spy on the site.
Concealed in a convenient clump of stunted dheaia as the day faded to early evening, he watched the collection of dusky, closely spaced structures for about an hour. He saw no people or animals about, except for a few desultory sparrows and one scrawny desert hare, but did not take that to mean that the place was abandoned. The scrub in the area around the building had been cut back sometime in the last year, and he had seen old stumps farther out. He had also come across a dozen filled-in latrine pits as he had made his way to the knoll. A good number of people apparently had lived here not too long ago, at least temporarily.
After considering the layout, he decided that it was not so much a village as a camp. Formed with manheight high, dry stone walls, the buildings had two basic shapes, circular and more or less rectangular, but neither type had roofs. There were no paved paths, just trails that had been made by shifting out all the surface stones to reveal the softer soil below, and no large communal structures or storage buildings as far as he could tell. At a guess, this was some nomadic tribe's not yet occupied overwinterage. He doubted that it snowed a great deal here, and while some of the lake might freeze, the river would not, giving access to good water and fish throughout the lean winter months.
Mar had not kept close track, but he k
new that it was near the end of the first fortnight of 1st Wintermoon, maybe Tenthday or Eleventhday. In another fortnight or so, the cold would set in to stay and Khalar would see its first snows. No doubt the Gheddessii were already driving their herds here and would arrive within no more than a few days.
Content that the empty camp held no immediate threat to Number One, but wanting to poke around in it anyway, he slipped from the dheaia and drifted openly down the knoll to the camp's ill-defined edge. When he looked in the first of the circular walled rooms, he saw a neat stack of long poles to one side, a central fire pit lined with darkened mud brick, and a series of square, flat stones evenly spaced across the dirt floor. When he investigated one of the stones, he found a round hole chiseled in its center. Infusing one of the poles and swinging it upright, he found that one end had been trimmed to fit snug in the hole. Apparently, the Gheddessii simply raised temporary roofs when they arrived. All of the round buildings he looked in followed the same pattern, and he saw no variations that might indicate individual ownership. A lingering reek of manure and the dark stain of the interior hard packed floor identified the rectangular buildings as stables or barns.
It was nearly full dark when he wandered down toward the shore, intending take a look at the piers and then fly straight back to the skyship, and came upon a raised platform sitting out in the open about fifty paces from the water. It was precisely round, about ten armlengths across, and had a level surface made of interlocking blocks, no two of which were exactly the same shape. Never having seen such a lustrous, dark red stone before, he casually drew closer to examine it and discovered that the slick faced material had thin veins of emerald and turquoise writhing throughout. Without much thought, he drifted out toward the center of the platform to make a closer inspection.
He had made only one slow revolution, examining with some admiration the clever way that the blocks had been fitted together, when he abruptly fell heavily, dropping about an armlength and striking the platform on his buttocks and right arm. Dazed, he did nothing for a moment, then propped himself off the warm stone, wondering if he had inadvertently canceled the lifting flux in his brigandine. When he straightaway tried to re-infuse it to rise back up, nothing happened.
Key to Magic 04 Emperor Page 20
