The Voyage of the Minotaur

by Wesley Allison

  Chapter Six: The Minotaur Sails

  Zeah Korlann stood on the dock and watched as the sailors prepared the H.M.S. Minotaur for launch. In his left hand, he carried a clipboard with numerous lists of people, equipment, and supplies that had to be on the ship when it left, as well as lists of things that needed to be done before the ship could leave. All of the papers were covered with pencil marks and notes. As far as he could tell, everything was finished. Miss Dechantagne, Master Terrence, and Master Augie had all boarded. The Dechantagne household staff had too. Professor Calliere and his two assistants had boarded this morning, as had the sorceress Zurfina, carrying some kind of animal in a travel case. The sorceress led her ward, a thin little girl, like her mistress decked out in black. The night before, more than two hundred soldiers, recently mustered out of the service, and transformed into a private army by Master Terrence had arrived and had found their bunks below deck. Shortly thereafter the settlers had boarded—families who thought they could find a new life in a new world—a total of two hundred sixteen men, two hundred eighty-eight women, and one hundred ninety-five children. They would be a vanguard of immigrants into what Miss Dechantagne hoped would eventually be a thriving colony. The very last on the ship, besides Zeah himself, were the clergy. A priest named Father Ian had arrived with two acolytes and a dozen church laymen.

  “Are you ready to go, Mr. Korlann?” called Lieutenant Staff from the ship.

  Zeah waved to the affirmative and made his way up the gangplank, which as soon as he was aboard was withdrawn to the ship by several sailors who had been waiting. Others hurried about to cast off lines. The H.M.S Minotaur, unleashed from the dock, slowly pulled away, the current of the river doing the work of a tugboat. Her great bow slowly swung around to the south, and the great engine began to throb, pushing the ship forward against the flow of the river, so that she didn’t drift into other vessels below her. It took the Minotaur twenty minutes to swing completely around, under the guns of Fort Tharbin on Isle de Fortann, and begin sailing west down the Thiss.

  Zeah made his way down the length of the ship toward the stern. Because the Minotaur was a battleship rather than a liner, it was working with what was essentially a skeleton crew, in order to make room for over one thousand passengers. These passengers had to pitch in to complete the duties normally performed by the sailors. Zeah thought that this was probably all for the best. On a voyage that would take more than fifty days, people would need something to keep them occupied. He would have preferred it not to be his job to assign all the duties, but it was. When he reached the open deck near the stern, Zeah found the representatives of the settlers waiting for him. He dug through the papers on his clipboard and handed the lists of duties to each man. Then he climbed down the series of ladders to the cabin, which he shared with five other men. It was about the size of a small closet in the Dechantagne house, which they had left occupied by a small staff of caretakers in the great city.

  Since Zeah had been up all night, supervising the final preparations for departure, he had scheduled for himself a much-deserved nap. The head butler found his bunk and fell immediately asleep. Later that evening he worked to make sure the needs of the three Dechantagne siblings had all been met. He was surprised to find that they needed very little help from him. Both of the men had served in the army and were used to the relative privation and restrictions of movement found on a ship. Miss Dechantagne had been given the Captain’s cabin for her use during the voyage. This gave her approximately sixty times as much space as Zeah enjoyed for the trip, though admittedly, even this was a tiny fraction of the size of her boudoir at home in Brech. She faced this hardship stoically. With his duties many, but manageable, Zeah was able to go to sleep with the rest of the passengers on the first night of the voyage, and so he was asleep as the great ship left the flowing waters of the Thiss and entered the open ocean.

  Though he slept well with the droning engines reverberating through the metal bulkheads, when he got up the following morning, Zeah quickly became seasick as the Minotaur rocked back and forth in the ocean waves. He had thought the position of his cabin, roughly in the middle of the ship, as seen lengthwise, would help prevent sensations of movement. The ship didn’t sway end to end though, but rather side to side. He got dressed and made his way up the series of ladders, but had to stop and vomit into a bucket before he made it all the way on deck. Once topside, he saw that breakfast was being served to passengers and off-duty crew who were forming a queue near the stern. Zeah got in line, though he didn’t feel like eating. When he reached the front of the line, one of the Dechantagne household staff, whom Zeah knew well, handed him a bowl of porridge and a piece of pumpernickel. He tried to force his mind to take control over his stomach. Eating a little something would probably make him less sick, he reasoned. Taking the food, he wandered forward.

  There seemed to be more people milling around on the starboard side of the ship, so he headed to the port, in hopes of finding a spot to sit. When he rounded one of the battleship’s great gun turrets, Zeah saw why most of the others were eschewing this particular location. Zurfina the Magnificent was standing near the railing. Her blond hair was its usual, carefully cultivated chaos. She was wearing a dress which completely covered her from head to heel, but which was so tight and so contoured to her body, that it was more lewd than if she had been standing there naked. Zeah would have sworn that it was made from rubber, had such a thing been possible. The girl that had accompanied the sorceress when she had boarded was with her now. She too wore a black dress, in a more traditional style, though made of the same shiny substance. And the question of what type of animal that the sorceress had brought aboard with her was now answered. The case that she had carried when she had arrived now sat beside the girl, and on top of the case perched a small, sinewy, winged reptile. It had a long, snakelike neck, and an equally long, snakelike tale, four legs and two thin wings. It was covered in scales the color of new steel, even its wings. When it suddenly flapped them, sparkling reflections caused Zeah to cover his eyes. It was a dragon, the first that the head butler had ever seen. The girl was feeding it pieces of raw, red meat with a gloved hand. Between bites the tiny dragon would make growls reminiscent of an angry housecat and the girl would giggle.

  Zeah paused for a moment uncertainly. He was about to turn around and go back the way he had come, but the sorceress looked up and saw him. Not wanting to be seen a coward by one so powerful, he squared his shoulders and stepped forward with his porridge and pumpernickel. The girl was sitting on a case covering some type of shipboard equipment, and the butler moved to sit next to her only a few feet from the dragon and the obscenely dressed magic user.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “You are more than welcome, Mr. Korlann,” said Zurfina, in her smoky, sultry voice. “We are at our lessons. Perhaps you can benefit from them as well.”

  Zurfina raised her hand and a glowing sphere rose up from the deck. It floated up until it reached the height of her shoulders, and then began expanding and becoming more opaque, until Zeah recognized it as a globe of the world, which stopped growing at eleven or twelve feet in diameter. As it slowly spun in mid-air, Zeah could make out the shapes of the landmasses and oceans of the world.

  “This is Greater Brechalon,” said Zurfina, and the shape of the four islands making up the country glowed.

  “It’s little,” said the girl.

  “Yes it is, Pet,” said Zurfina. “It’s just one of many countries on the continent of Sumir and Sumir is just one of the twelve continents. We’re going to this one—Mallon.”

  Another portion of the globe was illuminated as it slowly rotated around in mid-air. This was a large portion of a tremendous landmass made up of four continents, and was almost on the opposite side of the world from Greater Brechalon and the rest of Sumir.

  “And this area right inside of Mallon, is the land of Birmisia”

  “It’s little too,” said the girl.

  �
��True, it is only a small portion of Mallon, and yet it’s larger than all of Greater Brechalon. You see, that’s why the King and the Prime Minister want colonies on all these other continents. There is all this land, just sitting there, filled with the riches of nature, and no one to reap them—a vast world without the benefits of civilization.”

  “What’s so great about civilization?” asked the girl.

  “You see, Mr. Korlann?” said Zurfina. “Out of the mouths of babes come great truths.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength over thine enemies, that thou might slay them and lay waste to their lands and their flocks,” quoted Zeah. “For the kingdom of the Lord shall reign over all the other kingdoms of the world.”

  “Yes, well,” said Zurfina. “She has plenty of time to become disillusioned later.”

  The tiny steel dragon startled Zeah, as it let out a short growl. The little beast was undeniably beautiful. It reminded the butler of a statue that was heavily detailed—the pointed barb and the end of its tail, the whiskers around its face, each individual scale fitting neatly together as it moved.”

  “You have a question, Mr. Korlann?” asked Zurfina.

  “Is this a real dragon?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “Aren’t they… well, dangerous?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “How large will it get?”

  “Far too large to sit where it is now sitting,” said Zurfina, her smoky voice punctuating the image.

  The girl fed the dragon one last piece of meat, and then took off the leather glove that had protected her hand. The dragon, evidently unhappy that his meal was over, let out a particularly long and unhappy growl.

  “Does it have a name?” asked Zeah.

  “Of course,” said Zurfina.

  “We don’t know it yet,” said the girl. “He’s too little to talk.”

  Zurfina clapped her hands and the giant globe disappeared. She snapped her fingers and the carrier, on which the little dragon sat, popped open. The dragon squawked unhappily, but climbed down into the carrier, then tried to bite the girl as she reached down to close the door.

  “Brassy berk!” said the girl.

  “No more lessons today, Pet,” said Zurfina. “I’m going to take a nap. Put our boy away and then practice your magic.”

  The girl picked up the animal carrier and began lugging it forward. Zurfina smiled at Zeah and winked. He half expected her to raise her arms above her head and disappear, but she didn’t. She just followed the child carrying the dragon, and all three passed through an open hatch and out of eyesight. Zeah ate several bites of his porridge; just enough to have something on his stomach, then poured the rest over the side and tossed his bread in the ocean after it. Then he walked back to the stern to return his bowl.

  Zeah didn’t see Zurfina the Magnificent for more than a week after that day, but she was not the only purveyor of the mystical arts aboard. Two wizards had been hired by Master Augie, and had joined the expedition as part of the mercenary company commanded by Master Terrence. The first was a war wizard named Dudley Labrith, who had served with Lieutenant Dechantagne’s battalion in the Royal Colony of Birmisia. He was a tall, well-built man with dark black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, and had been born in the great city of Brech. He dressed like the rest of the military men on the expedition, in khakis and pith helmet. The other wizard was from Mirsanna. His name was Suvir Kesi. His dark complexion and unusual comb mustache alone would have made him stand out among the crew and passengers, but he accentuated his differences even more by wearing traditional clothing of his homeland—a bright blue silk shirt and loose fitting black pants tucked into his high black boots, and a yellow fez with a blue tassel on top. Several days after his encounter with the sorceress, her ward, and the dragon, Zeah found the two wizards huddled together along the railing. As he approached, they both turned to greet him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Korlann,” said Kesi, his pronounced Mirsannan accent making his words sound oily and slick. “It is Mr. Korlann, is it not?”

  “Yes. And I have the pleasure of addressing the Great Wizard Labrith and the Great Wizard Kesi?”

  Regardless of just how great they might be, Zeah assumed that it was a good idea to play it safe. Even low-level wizards could be quite dangerous for someone with no magical talent at all, like himself. The two wizards nodded in acknowledgement.

  “Tell me, Mr. Korlann,” said Labrith. “Which cabin belongs to Zurfina the Magnificent?”

  “It’s…why do you want to know?”

  “To introduce ourselves,” said Kesi. “Give her a chance to get to know us.”

  “Oh, I’ve long been an admirer,” said Labrith.

  “I, as well,” said Kesi.

  “It’s… you know,” said Zeah. “I’m afraid that I don’t remember which cabin she was assigned. I must have it written down in my notes, back in my cabin.”

  The two wizards glanced at one another.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it,” said Kesi.

  “No. It wasn’t anything important,” said Labrith.

  “You know,” said Kesi. “This Zurfina is quite well known among practitioners of the arts. I am quite surprised that she would sign on to this type of expedition. With power of her sort, she could be the royal wizard in any country she chose… if this is the same Zurfina of which I have heard.”

  “Quite, quite,” said Labrith. “It was my understanding in fact, that the Ministry of War was looking for her in Brech, but was never able to find her. How were you able to find her, Mr. Korlann?”

  “Miss Dechantagne contacted her,” said Zeah, “on the advice of a wizard from Mernham Yard.”

  “Interesting,” said Labrith.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Kesi.

  “Well, I have much to attend to,” said Labrith, nodding. “Good day to you, Mr. Korlann. Good day to you, Wizard Kesi.”

  “Yes. Good day to you, Wizard Labrith.” said Kesi. “Good day, Mr. Korlann.”

  The two wizards turned and departed, each in a different direction. Zeah continued on his way. He had much to attend to as well, though he couldn’t help but wonder at the strange twists of fortune which would place an ordinary butler on a battleship in the middle of the ocean with several wizards and a dragon.

  The very next day, Zeah had an enormous brainstorm. Almost a week in close confines with limited washing facilities was beginning to tell in the odoriferousness of the ambient air aboard the Minotaur. Organizing several dozen workers, Zeah arranged to cordon off the rear portion of the deck and divide it into a dozen rooms by hanging sheets strung up on lines. Each of these makeshift rooms was then supplied with a washtub. Hot water was pumped up onto deck from the boilers below, and cold water was pumped up from the sea. Soon a queue was formed and over the course of ten hours, hundreds of passengers and crewmembers alike were afforded the luxury of a bath. The occasion was so successful that it was continued the next day, and Miss Dechantagne, no doubt just as bothered by the unpleasant redolence as was Zeah, ordered that it be made a weekly event.

  It was on the second day of the organized bathing event that Zeah was approached by a young woman about his daughter’s age, with red hair and large green eyes. She was quite lovely with a carefully sculpted nose and a delicate complexion. Somewhat on the short side, she was wearing a brown bonnet, and light blue dress with a dark blue shawl. Zeah knew that he had seen her before, but with all the people he had supervised boarding the ship, he couldn’t quite place her.

  “I understand that we have you to thank for all this,” she said to the butler.

  “Just doing my job,” he replied. “Miss?”

  “Lusk. Egeria Lusk. I am Professor Calliere’s assistant.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” said Zeah. “I should have remembered. How are you, Miss Lusk?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Korlann,” she said and smiled. “I’ve been able to get a great deal of work done.”

/>   “Really? It was my understanding that the Professor’s machine was not going to be available until it could be set up at our destination.”

  “That is correct,” she said. “But you see my work is more on the theoretical side.”

  “Oh?”

  “My job is to create programs for the Result Mechanism.”

  “Programs?”

  “A series of instructions. Mathematical calculations really.”

  “Oh.”

  “You see, Mr. Korlann. I’m not just a pretty face. The downside is, that I won’t be able to tell if my work is correct, until we get where we are going and I can input the programs into the Result Mechanism.”

  “Then you can see if it follows the directions correctly?” asked Zeah.

  “Precisely.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “We shall have to wait and see,” she said. “Either the machine will get stuck somewhere, and I will have to go back through my work to find the error—that’s the better of the two possible outcomes. Or it might finish its instructions and the final results would be unreliable.”

  “And would this have important consequences?” asked Zeah.

  “Are you asking if my work is important, Mr. Korlann?”

  “No, of course not. I am merely a butler. Such things are beyond my concern. I was just trying to understand so that I could be of service if needed.”

  “My first program for the Result Mechanism was a mathematical formula to determine trajectories for firing large artillery pieces. It was just a test really. I’m working on all kinds of other mathematics now.”

  “I see,” said Zeah, though he didn’t. “And can I do anything for you to make your voyage more comfortable?”

  “Yes, Mr. Korlann. You could join me for a stroll on deck tonight after dinner. Meet me right here at, say, eight?”

  Zeah was at a loss. He had been carrying on his conversation strictly as a butler and a servant, never suspecting that the young woman might have other motives. A dozen questions ran through his head at the same time. Was she really asking him what he thought she was asking? Why would she be interested in a man old enough to be her father? What was her social status relative to his? Was she wealthy? Was she poor? She wasn’t a Zaeri, was she? Was she a Kafirite? Did he have something that she wanted? Would it be appropriate for him to meet her? Would people talk? What would they say? Did he find her attractive? The last question at least was easily answered.