“That’s the hot air from the remains of the island,” called Wensomer to Ninth. “We need to circle it and use its thermals to maintain height.”
Ninth did not answer, as she had not been asked a question. Wensomer continued to spiral upward, keeping her left wingtip toward the darkening column of hot air. All the while she counted, estimating times for passably fit men to run from the palace to the docks carrying a bulky leather suit, then to row from the docks to Dawnlight. By the time she reached her set number, they were flying through warm, roiling fog, and she was having trouble getting her bearings. The rain was still flaying her shoulders, head, ears, and arms, but at least the windchill had been swamped by the fire-circle’s air. She began to spiral downward.
As Feran reached the waterside he was wheezing from fatigue but driven on by despair. Takeram helped him into the ungainly heat-armor that had been tailored for a somewhat bigger man. Several marines lifted him into the racing shell.
Silverdeath detonated, out across the water. The marines looked about fearfully.
“Now, stand clear, all of you!” Feran shouted through his open faceplate above the echoing thunder that was spilling across them. “No, not you, Takeram. Come closer, listen, I have more orders.”
“Your Majesty?”
“Jam your torch into the framework.”
“Done, Your Majesty.”
Feran smashed the long blacksmith’s tongs protruding from the suit’s arm across Takeram’s head. Stunned, the marine commander fell across the racing shell. A second blow ended his life. Feran grasped the oars as well as he could with the tongs, then began rowing. The others saw only a confusion of thrashing limbs before the shell began moving. Behind him, Feran could see other figures rushing up. Then angry shouting and the clang of axes echoed out across the harbor.
Things splashed into the water nearby or whizzed overhead. Arrows, Feran thought as more missiles flew all about him. Forteron was showing his true colors, and had apparently swept Takeram’s militiamen aside in a depressingly short time. Should have killed him while he was entranced, Feran thought glumly as an arrow struck the rear of his boat. Even with only one rower, and a body trailing arms and legs in the water, the racing shell was still very fast, however—though the torch gave the archers a point to aim at. Feran cleared the river mouth in two minutes. The battle fleet seemed to be burning fiercely on the southern side of the harbor. Ahead of him, the light from the fire-circle was fading, but even though the island was hidden in clouds of steam and the rainsoaked gloom, it was wide enough to find by dead reckoning.
Three hundred feet above, Wensomer noticed the gleam of a torch moving straight for Dawnlight.
“Only one person in all Diomeda would be visiting on a night like this,” she called back to Ninth.
A sandbar trailed out into the water beside Dawnlight’s island. It had built up to the southeast of the island, and this was where Feran was aiming. The shell grounded in the darkness, and Feran heaved himself out and drove a spike anchor into the sandbar. Taking his pitch torch, Feran waded ashore. The water was uncomfortably warm as it leaked slowly into his suit, but already the currents were mixing cool water from farther afield with the scalding layer that had ringed the island.
Wensomer’s wingtip collided with the racing shell as she skimmed just above the water. Had she been higher up, she might have recovered, but at no more than a foot or so above the surface, she had no option other than to cartwheel messily into the sea. She and Ninth stood up, knee-deep in warm water.
“My lady, the crossbow is gone,” Ninth reported.
“What? Where?”
“When crashing, the strap broke. I search—”
“No! You could take hours in this murk. Come with me.”
Wensomer set about absorbing her wings as they waded. Soon they had found the shell, along with the body of Takeram.
“I believe we have found something suspicious,” panted Wensomer as they examined the shell and its dead passenger.
“The man is armed,” said Ninth, drawing the marine’s knife.
“An eating-knife,” Wensomer pointed out, tapping the man’s belt. “Note that his ax is missing. Think about who might have it.”
“Feran?”
“Your powers of deductive logic may one day rival mine, auton girl. Cut a hole in this boat’s side and push it out to sea. After that, we wait.”
Dawnlight palace had actually been a square, fortified wall with towers and halls built into it. In the middle were gardens and storehouses adequate for any siege. These either had been flat to begin with, or rendered flat by Silverdeath. The main walls had collapsed outward. Thus Feran had a straightforward and relatively easy walk to the place where Silverdeath had fallen. He spent precious moments searching in the murk, but presently found it on the flagstones. He scooped up his prize and started back. The suit was beginning to char and smolder, but the walk was only half as long as for Druskarl at Helion, and Feran had been able to get up to a slow jog on the flat surface. Thus he was back at the water’s edge less than five minutes after setting foot ashore.
There was no shell. Feran removed his helmet and held his torch high. No boat, no body. He stuck the base of the torch in the sandbar and began to strip off the other pieces of heat armor. In a pinch he could float Silverdeath over to Diomeda on the empty, hunchbacked heat-suit and find a new host, but where was the shell?
A movement caught his eye, figures wading out of the darkness. Two women. One dressed in a servant’s tie-blouse and trousers … Velander! The other was the dancer from his court!
“We gave him a nice burial at sea,” said Wensomer. “It seemed the right thing to do, his being dead and all that.”
Feran draped Silverdeath over his neck, then shook his arms into the sleeves.
“Ah, Velander, and my cunning dancer,” he replied.
Wensomer breathed a casting into her hands.
“Interesting fact: Silverdeath cannot claim anyone as host who has put it onto himself, and it makes quite a good mailshirt,” Feran declared with something approaching amusement. “In order to regain Silverdeath as my active servant, all I need is another body. Would you like to provide one?”
He drew his ax.
“My mother told me never to give my body to any man without checking his penis first,” replied Wensomer.
The insult of the previous morning stung Feran like nothing else could have. His face went blank, and he began to wade purposefully toward the two women.
Wensomer flung the ball of glowing scarlet tendrils she had fashioned. The energies should have burst over Feran’s head and wrapped around his neck, strangling him. Instead the ball was pulled down to vanish into Silverdeath’s mass of jingling metal. Feran laughed. Wensomer stepped back, breathing more ether into her hands and this time fashioning a long, glowing whip, which she lashed at his knees. The tip snaked upward, to bury itself in Silverdeath, which then drew the rest of the whip into itself. Wensomer was pulled off her feet before she could let go, ether streaming out of her and vanishing into Silverdeath. Frantically she gasped a casting word that snapped the etheric whip, but she was now severely drained. As Feran came striding over, she detonated another casting in a brilliant flash, then scrambled to one side as he stumbled past, dazzled and chopping blindly at the water.
“Nice, but how many more of those can you do?” Feran laughed as he blinked the dancing afterimages away.
Wensomer responded with another flash, but this time Feran had closed one eye before it detonated. Wensomer turned to run. He followed her until she stumbled and fell. He raised the ax above his head—and a dagger flew through the air and thudded into the back of his hand. During the month past, Ninth had learned a little of javat defense skills, and by assisting with Laron’s lessons she had certainly learned how to attack.
Feran cursed and dropped the ax. Wensomer lashed out with her foot, connecting with his testicles more out of luck than design. Feran staggered back; then, pulling the
knife from his hand, he started after her as she made for deeper water. Suddenly he remembered he had dropped the ax. He tried to retrace his steps, but in the dark water and steam, and by the light of a single torch, it was hopeless.
Feran was far from beaten. All that he had to do was float Silverdeath across to Diomeda and there would be no shortage of hosts. He started back to where he had left the leather suit, but Ninth was standing in front of it, now empty-handed. No longer in a mood to be distracted, Feran waded straight for her, knife held underhand.
“Stay or die, it’s all the same.”
Feran stabbed, left-handed, but Ninth twisted where she stood and with one hand batted his hand aside while backhanding him in the nose with her other. Feran saw a brilliant blue star, at least as bright as Wensomer’s castings, felt his leg snared by Ninth’s, and went down with his wrist in her hands. Ninth spun her whole body around with her hands above her head, twisting her much-stronger opponent’s arm behind his back as he fell. Feran breathed water, tried to raise himself on his other arm, then collapsed as Ninth’s knee rammed into his back. He dropped the knife, gasped water, tried to rise again, then collapsed under Ninth’s weight.
In a sense Ninth was puzzled. Feran was not fighting back in any of the ways Roval had taught Laron. Feran ceased to struggle and went limp. Roval had said to count to two hundred when suffocating anyone, and beware of tricks. Ninth tightened her grip on Feran’s arm, and he started thrashing again. This time his movements were weaker.
From farther out into the darkness there was a splashing and swirling of water followed by, “Ninth! Don’t let him catch you, I’ve found his ax!”
Ninth considered, like the well-designed auton that she was. The order was to not be caught, rather than to stay away from Feran. She had caught him, so logically she should remain there, pinning him down.
“Yes, mistress.”
“Where is he?”
“Near the torch, mistress.”
Wensomer came out of the darkness, holding the ax in a surprisingly professional manner. She glanced about wildly.
“Ninth! Where is he?”
“Underneath me.”
“What! Get clear! Get back!”
Ninth did just as she was told, pulling away in a great splash of water. With the last of his strength, Feran reared up. Wensomer chopped at where his head seemed to be. The blade of the ax cut through the vertebrae of his neck, severed muscles, sinews, veins, and arteries before stopping halfway through his windpipe
Wensomer stood over Feran in the dark, bloody water, the ax in her right hand, still wearing her dancing coinbelt and the remains of her silk costume, but looking nothing like a court dancer.
“What—how …” she panted.
“I was drowning him, mistress.”
Wensomer dropped to her knees and began laughing, and tears quickly mixed with the seawater on her face.
“Mistress? Have I made a joke?”
Wensomer shook her head, sending a spray of water onto the dark wavelets. “No, I am the only joke hereabouts. Hurry, get Silverdeath off his body.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“How did you pin him down?”
“A technique learned from Roval.”
“What? The bastard taught me none of his javat fighting, in spite of all our years together.”
Given the condition of Feran’s body, and his lack of cooperation, getting Silverdeath off was considerably easier said than done. At last they stood together by the light of the guttering torch as Wensomer held Silverdeath high.
“I have only to put it back on Feran,” said Wensomer. “Because it would be put on by my hand, I would become mistress of Silverdeath and he would be restored to life as its host.”
There was no question, so Ninth said nothing.
“But no,” Wensomer continued. “I cannot be trusted with command over Silverdeath. Nobody can be trusted with power like that. Besides, the turd deserved to die. He must have been over a hundred years old, and that’s life enough for anyone. Silverdeath must be destroyed, and I think I know the only way. You must wear Silverdeath, my little auton girl.”
“Yes, mistress,” replied Ninth, holding her hands out for the metal fabric.
“Are you not curious about why?”
“No, mistress.”
“It may kill you. Are you not worried?”
“No, mistress.”
Wensomer could hear the splash of approaching oars. Without another question she helped Ninth into the metal shirt.
“Someday you must show me how you managed to pin the little rat,” muttered Wensomer as Ninth shook her arms into the sleeves.
“It is simple, mistress—”
Her voice was cut off. Silverdeath had begun to assimilate her as a host.
“But not in this lifetime. I’m sorry, Ninth, I want to hope otherwise, but I doubt that I shall ever speak to you again.”
As it had done with others before, Silverdeath flowed into a continuous skin beneath the girl’s clothing, but instead of offering its services to Wensomer it went rigid and began to glow slightly. Purple shimmers flayed over its surface, and Ninth’s clothing began to smoke and char. Rain falling onto her hissed and spat as if she were made of hot coals, and at her feet the water began to bubble. Wensomer backed away, then ducked down into the dark water as she heard shouts from the approaching boat.
“There, that glowing thing,” someone called in an upper-class Diomedan accent.
Half a dozen long, low gigboats nosed into view through the rain and drifting steam. They were built to have a very low profile in the water, with the rowers lying almost flat on their backs. Wensomer quickly realized that these were loyalist nobles, absent from Dawnlight palace when the fire-circle burst.
“It’s gone, it really is gone,” the speaker continued. “The palace blasted from existence in an eyeblink.”
“That, there!” exclaimed someone else. “The glow, it’s not from a torch.”
“It’s what they called Silverdeath, Your Highness,” said someone else.
“So, it’s true. This accursed device can lay waste a palace … or a continent.”
“Silverdeath not looking right,” said a woman with a strident voice and a heavy Damarian accent.
Those on the lead boat got out and gathered around Silverdeath.
“Can anyone hear me?” shouted the nobleman. “Who is Silverdeath’s master?”
Wensomer stayed crouched in the water.
“Highness, lookee here!” shouted one of the rowers. “A body.”
… Highness? thought Wensomer. Prince Selva. They hoisted Feran’s body up to a sitting position and held up his almost severed head.
“The emperor fella, I seen him on the pier. He commanded Silverdeath.”
“But not anymore, quite obviously. I wonder if Silverdeath is here for the taking?”
Wensomer saw a figure take an oar and prod at Silverdeath. Oar and oarsman detonated in a shower of bloody fragments and splinters.
“Stay back,” the former empress shouted, somewhat redundantly.
“What happened?” asked Selva.
“Said to be vulnerable, times, when using Silverdeath,” said Warsovran’s former wife, empress and sorceress, wading over from one of the other boats.
“This fella were its master, I recognize him from this mornin’ on the pier,” said the rower.
“Then what do you think happened, Learned Paditan?”
Paditan, thought Wensomer as another figure came wading over. The court sorcerer of Diomeda. The lanky, angular figure waded around the glowing form once, his arms folded behind his back.
“Someone killed this Feran buffoon just as he was putting Silverdeath onto this girl!” he concluded. “Zaltus, was it not on a man before?”
“Aye, and this be no man,” said Zaltus, looking carefully at Ninth.
“Your Highness, Silverdeath now has a host but no master.”
“Silverdeath, I am your new master!” bark
ed Prince Selva at once. “Obey me!”
Silverdeath did not react at all. Wensomer nodded to herself.
“It must be jammed, as surely as a watermill with a broken axle,” said Paditan. “Nobody can touch it, nobody can be its master.”
“And the Torean battle fleet’s gone, leaving only those decoys. Lucky we did a scoutin’ run first—”
An arrow in the back cut Zaltus short. He staggered a few paces and fell—straight onto Silverdeath. There was another bloody explosion, but by now two squadrons of small boats were exchanging bowshots.
“Highness, make a break!” shouted someone through the confusion. “We’ll hold them.”
Forteron’s men were in conventional, slower gigboats, but there were five times more of them, and they had a lot more archers. In no more than two minutes, those of the Diomedan squadron that had not fled, had been wiped out. Forteron waded over alone and stood before Silverdeath. Wensomer saw him pull an arrow from a body and toss it at the luridly glowing figure. The shaft flashed into ash and splinters. He knelt in the water and held up Feran’s head by the hair, then an officer came wading over to report.
“The Diomedan prince is not among the dead, Commander, and one of their stealth boats got clear. Five of ours have set after it, but those stealth boats are very fast.”
“So, I suspect that you may now call me prince of Diomeda,” Forteron responded. “Look here.”
“Feran Woodbar, dead! But how? Silverdeath could chop ships in half to protect him.”
Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 52
