Fire Sea

by Margaret Weis

  His ship struck something again, listed sideways. Haplo could hear, behind him, a wail and a clattering crash. Alfred, down again. The ship could take such punishment, guarded as it was by its runes, but not indefinitely. Each blow sent tiny tremors through the sigla traced on the hull, forcing them a little farther apart, disrupting their magic ever so slightly. Two had only to completely separate, one from the other, open a crack that would grow wider and wider. That was how Haplo's first trip through Death's Gate had ended.

  Making his way forward as rapidly as possible, tossed from side to side by the erratic motion of the heaving ship, Haplo became aware of a lurid glow lighting the darkness around him. The temperature was increasing, growing hotter, much hotter. The runes on his skin began to glow a faint blue, his body's magic reacting instinctively to reduce his temperature to a safe level.

  Could his ship be on fire?

  Haplo scoffed at the notion. He had passed safely through the suns of Pryan; the runes would most assuredly protect against flame! But there was no denying the fact that the red glow was burning brighter, the temperature growing warmer. Haplo quickened his pace. Emerging onto the bridge with some difficulty, due to the lurching of the vessel, the Patryn stopped and stared, amazement and shock paralyzing him.

  His ship was sailing, with incredible speed, down a river of molten lava.

  A vast stream of glowing red tinged with flame yellow surged and swirled around the vessel. Darkness arched above him, made darker by contrast to the lurid light of the magma flow below. He was in a gigantic cavern. Vast columns of black rock, around which the lava curled and eddied, soared upward, supporting a ceiling of stone. Numberless stalactites hung down, reaching for him like bony, grasping fingers, their polished surface reflecting the hellish red of the river of fire beneath them.

  The ship veered this way and that. Huge stalagmites, with wicked, sword-sharp edges, thrust up from the molten sea like black teeth from a red maw. Haplo understood what had caused the crashes they'd previously experienced. Jolted to action, he moved forward and placed his hands on the steering stone, reacting by instinct more than by conscious thought, his gaze riveted with horrid fascination on the dreadful landscape into which he sailed.

  “Blessed Sartan!” murmured a voice behind him. “What frightful place is this?”

  Haplo spared Alfred a brief glance.

  “Your people made it,” he told him. “Dog, watch him.”

  The dog had obediently herded and harried Alfred to this point by nipping at the man's heels. It plopped itself down on the deck, panting in the heat, fixing its intelligent eyes on the Sartan. Alfred took a step forward. The animal growled, its tail thumped warningly against the deck.

  I've nothing against you personally, the dog might have been saying from its expression, but orders are orders.

  Alfred gulped and froze, leaned weakly against the bulkhead. “Where … where are we?” he repeated in a faint voice.

  “Abarrach.”

  “The world of stone. Was this your destination?” “Of course! What did you expect? That I'm as clumsy as you?”

  Alfred was silent, eyes staring out on the awful panorama. “So you are visiting each of the worlds?” he said at length.

  Haplo didn't see any reason why he should answer and so he kept quiet and concentrated on his steering. It deserved concentration. The huge boulders sprang up suddenly, without warning. He considered taking to the air, but decided against it. He couldn't determine the height of the cavern's ceiling. The hull could withstand punishment far better than the fragile mast and dragon's head prow.

  The heat was intense, even inside the ship, which had the advantage of being protected by runes on the outside. Haplo's skin gleamed a bright blue as the runes cooled him. Alfred, he noticed, was humming beneath his breath, tracing runes in the air with his long-fingered hands and shuffling his feet slightly, his body swaying to the rhythm of the Sartan magic. Flanks heaving, the dog panted loudly, but never took its eyes from Alfred.

  “You've been to the second world, I presume,” the Sartan continued in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “It would be natural for you to travel to them in the order in which they were created, the order they appear on the old charts. Did you … did you find any trace of”—

  Alfred paused, seeming to have trouble speaking—“my people?” he asked finally in a voice so soft that Haplo heard him only because he knew what the question was going to be.

  The Patryn didn't immediately answer. What was he going to do with Alfred? This Sartan? This mortal enemy?

  Haplo's inclination, and he was astounded by how his hands and fingers itched to perform the action his mind presented to him, was to toss the man into the magma river. But to murder Alfred would be to indulge in his own hatred, a lapse of discipline the Lord of the Nexus would not tolerate. Alfred, a living Sartan—as far as Haplo had discovered, the only living Sartan—was an extremely valuable prize.

  My Lord will be pleased with this gift, Haplo thought, considering. Far more pleased with this than anything else I could bring him, including my report on this hellish world. I should probably turn around, deliver the Sartan immediately. But… but…

  But that would mean reentering Death's Gate and Haplo, although he hated admitting his weakness to himself, couldn't view that prospect without true alarm. He saw again the rows and rows of tombs, knew again the death of hope and promise, experienced the knowledge of being terribly, horribly, pitifully alone….

  He wrenched his mind from the dream or whatever it had been, cursed the eyes that had made him see it. I won't make that journey again, not now, not so soon. Let time blunt it, blur the images. He rationalized: it would be extremely difficult and dangerous to turn the ship around. Better to keep going, complete my mission, explore this world, and then return to the Nexus. Alfred isn't going anywhere without me, that's for damn sure.

  One glance at the Sartan's sweat-dewed face, the shivering limbs, and Haplo was reassured. Alfred appeared incapable of making his way to the head without assistance. The Patryn didn't think it likely that his enemy would have either the strength or the ability to wrest the ship away from him and make good an escape.

  Haplo met Alfred's eyes, saw—once again—not hatred or fear but understanding, sorrow. It occurred to the Patryn, suddenly, that the Sartan might not want to escape. Haplo considered, discarded the notion. Alfred must know what terrible fate awaited him at the hands of the Lord of the Nexus. And if he didn't, Haplo would obligingly tell him.

  “Did you say something, Sartan?” he tossed over his shoulder.

  “I asked if you found anything of my people on Pryan,” Alfred repeated humbly.

  “What I found or didn't find is no concern of yours. It will be up to My Lord to tell you what he thinks you ought to know.”

  “Are we going back there? To your lord?”

  Haplo heard, with a bitter satisfaction, the nervous quaver in the man's voice. So Alfred did know, or at least had a general idea, of the reception he would receive.

  “No.” Haplo ground the word. “Not yet. I have a job to do and I'm going to do it. I don't think it likely you'll want to wander about this place on your own, but, just in case you're thinking you might give me the slip, the dog will have its eyes on you day and night.”

  The animal, hearing the reference, brushed the plumy tail on the deck, the mouth widened in a grin, exhibiting razor-sharp teeth.

  “Yes,” Alfred said in a low voice, “I know about the dog.”

  Now what's that supposed to mean? Haplo wondered irritably, not liking the man's tone, which seemed to border on compassionate when the Patryn would have preferred fear.

  “Just a reminder, Sartan. There are things I can do to you, things I would enjoy doing to you, that are not at all pleasant and would not ruin your usefulness to My Lord. Do what I tell you and keep out of my way and you won't get hurt. Understand?”

  “I am not as weak as you seem to consider me.”
<
br />   Alfred drew himself upright with a semblance of dignity. The dog growled and lifted its head, ears flattened, eyes narrowed. The tail thumped ominously. Alfred shrank backward, stooped shoulders rounding.

  Haplo snorted in derision and concentrated on his sailing.

  Up ahead, in the distance, the river of magma forked. One large stream branched off to the right, another, smaller, veered to the left. Haplo steered his ship into the right, for no other reason than that it was the larger of the two and appeared easier and safer to travel.

  “How could anyone live in such a terrible environ?” Alfred, talking rhetorically to himself, seemed considerably surprised that Haplo responded.

  “Mensch certainly couldn't survive, although our kind could. I don't think our trip into this world will be a long one. If there ever was life here, it must be dead by now.”

  “Perhaps Abarrach was never meant to be habitable. Perhaps it was meant to be only an energy source for the other—” Alfred's tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, he fell abruptly silent.

  Haplo grunted, glanced at the man. “Yeah? Go on.”

  “Nothing.” The Sartan's eyes were on his oversize feet. “I was merely speculating.”

  “You'll have the opportunity to ‘speculate’ all you want when we return to the Nexus. You'll wish you knew the secrets of the universe and could reveal them, every one, to My Lord before he's finished with you, Sartan.”

  Alfred kept silent, stared out the glass porthole. Haplo darted glances up and down the black and barren shoreline. Small tributaries of the magma river meandered off among the rock shoals and disappeared into fire-lighted shadow. These might lead somewhere, might lead out. There was nothing above them except rock.

  “If we're in the center of the world, in the core, it's possible that there could be life above, on the surface,” Alfred remarked, echoing Haplo's thought. He found that extremely irritating.

  He considered beaching his ship, proceeding forward on foot, but immediately abandoned the idea. Walking among the slick-sided, sharp, black stalagmites that gleamed with an eerie, lurid brilliance in the magma's reflected glow would be difficult, treacherous. He would stay with the river, at least for the time being …

  A dull roaring sound came to his ears. A glance at Alfred's face told him the Sartan heard it, too.

  “We're moving faster,” Alfred said, licking his lips that must be rimed with salt to judge by the sweat trickling down the man's cheeks.

  The ship's speed increased, the magma hurtling along as if eager to arrive at some unknown destination. The roaring sound grew louder. Haplo kept his hands on the steering stone, peered ahead anxiously. He saw nothing except vast blackness.

  “Rapids! A fall!” Alfred shouted, and the ship plunged over the edge of a gigantic lava cascade.

  Haplo clung to the steering stone, the ship fell downward into a vast sea of molten lava. Rocks thrust up out of the swirling fiery mass, black nails grasping for the puny ship that was hurtling down on them.

  Shaking himself free of the fascinated horror that gripped him, Haplo elevated his hands on the steering stone and, as his hands lifted, the runes on the stone glowed fiercely, brightly. The ship itself lifted, the magic flowing through the wings, activating them. Dragon Wing, as he had named it, wrenched itself free of the magma's clutching grasp and soared out over the molten sea.

  Haplo heard behind him a groan and a slithering sound. The dog was on its feet, barking. Alfred lay huddled on the deck, the Sartan's face white as death.

  “I think I'm going to be sick,” he said faintly.

  “Don't do it here!” Haplo barked, noting his own hands shaking, experiencing himself a lurching in his stomach and a bitter taste of bile in his mouth. He concentrated on flying his ship.

  Alfred apparently managed to control himself, for the Patryn heard nothing more from him. Haplo sailed his ship upward, hoping to discover that they had flown out of the cavern. As he flew up and up into the darkness, he was disappointed to observe stalactite formations. These were incredibly large—some as much as a mile in diameter. Far, far below gleamed the magma sea, flowing to a horizon that was red on black.

  He took the ship back down, near the shoreline. He had caught a glimpse to his right of an object that appeared man-made jutting out into the water. Its lines were too straight and even to have been formed by nature's hand, no matter how magically guided. Moving closer, he saw what looked like a pier, extending from the shore out into the lava ocean.

  Haplo brought the ship down. He stared at the formation intently, trying to get a clear view.

  “Look!” Alfred cried, sitting up and pointing, startling the dog, who growled. “There, to your left!”

  Haplo jerked his head around, thinking they must be about to crash into a stalactite. Nothing loomed ahead of them and it took some moments to determine what Alfred had sighted.

  Banks of clouds, created by the extreme heat of the magma sea meeting the cool air of the cavern far above, could be seen in the distance. The clouds drifted and parted, and then myriad tiny lights were visible, blinking out from beneath the clouds like stars.

  Except that there could be no stars visible in this underground world.

  The mist flew apart in tattered rags, and Haplo could see clearly. Perched on terraced steppes far from the magma sea stood the buildings and towers of an enormous city.

  CHAPTER 10

  SAFE HARBOR,

  ABARRACH

  “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING THE SHIP?” ALFRED ASKED. “I'm going to dock at that pier or whatever it is over there,” Haplo answered, with a glance and a nod out the window.

  “But the city's located on the opposite bank!”

  “Precisely.”

  “Then, why not—”

  “It beats the hell out of me, Sartan, how you managed to survive so long. I suppose it's due to that famous fainting routine of yours. What do you plan to do? Waltz up to the walls of a strange city, not knowing who lives there, and ask them nicely to let you in? What do you say when they ask you where you're from? What you're doing here? Why you want inside their city?”

  “I would say—that is, I'd tell them—I guess you have a point,” Alfred conceded lamely. “But what do we gain by landing over there?” He gestured vaguely. “Whoever lives in this dreadful place”—the Sartan couldn't resist a shudder— “will ask the same questions.”

  “Maybe.” Haplo cast a sharp, scrutinizing gaze at their landing site. “Maybe not. Take a good look at it.”

  Alfred started to walk to the window. The dog growled, ears pricked, teeth bared. The Sartan froze.

  “It's all right. Let him go. Just watch him,” Haplo told the dog, who settled back down onto the deck, keeping its intelligent eyes on the Sartan.

  Alfred, with a backward glance at the animal, awkwardly crossed the deck; its slight rocking motion sent the Sartan staggering. Haplo shook his head and wondered what the devil he was going to do with Alfred while exploring. Alfred arrived at the window without major mishap and, leaning against the glass, peered through it.

  The ship spiraled down out of the air, landed gently on the magma, floated on sluggish, molten waves.

  A pier had been shaped out of what had once been a natural groin of obsidian, extending out into the magma sea. Several other man-made structures, built out of the same black rock, faced the pier across a crude street.

  “You see any signs of life?” Haplo asked.

  “I don't see anyone moving around,” Alfred said, staring hard. “Either in the town or on the docks. We're the only ship in sight. The place is deserted.”

  “Yeah, maybe. You can never tell. This might be their version of night, and everyone's asleep. But at least it's not guarded. If I'm lucky, / can be the one asking the questions.”

  Haplo steered the dragonship into the harbor, his gaze scrutinizing the small town. Probably not so much a town, he decided, as a dockside loading area. The buildings looked, for the most part, like warehouses, alth
ough here and there he thought he saw what might be a shop or a tavern.

  Who would sail this deadly ocean, deadly to all but those protected by powerful magic—such as Alfred and himself? Haplo was intensely curious about this strange and forbidding world, more curious than he'd been about those worlds whose composition closely resembled his own. But he still didn't know what to do about Alfred.

  Apparently the Sartan was following the line of Haplo's thoughts. “What should I do?” Alfred asked meekly.

  “I'm thinking about it,” Haplo muttered, affecting to be absorbed in the tricky docking maneuver, although that, in reality, was being handled by the magic of the runes of the steering stone.

  “I don't want to be left behind. I'm going with you.”

  “It's not your decision. You'll do what I say, Sartan, and like it. And if I say you'll stay here with the dog to keep an eye on you, you'll stay here. Or you won't like it.”

  Alfred shook his balding head slowly, with quiet dignity. “You can't threaten me, Haplo. Sartan magic is different from Patryn magic, but it has the same roots and is just as powerful. I haven't used my magic as much as you've been forced by circumstances to use yours. But I am older than you. And you must concede that magic of any type is strengthened by age and by wisdom.”

  “I must, must I?” Haplo sneered, although his mind went almost immediately to his lord, a man whose years were numberless, and to the vast power he had amassed.

  The Patryn eyed his opposite, eyed the representative of a race who had been the only force in the universe who could have halted the Patryn's vaulting ambition, their rightful quest for complete and absolute control over the weak-minded Sartan and the squabbling, chaos-driven mensch.