The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (57 page)

The barge was slowing to a crawl. Seconds later, it stopped completely as the boilers powered down. The crowd in the hold began to stretch and stir. Homst adjusted himself against the bench now that the vibration through his back had stopped. “Hold where you are,” the woman said. The flail was low at her hip.

Moments later, Homst squinted as the hatch in the ceiling above the woman’s head swung open. Both sides of the ship’s ladder were open to the cold air now, wide enough for the passengers to exit two abreast. The woman took a position at the base of the ladder and began directing bodies towards the steps, up and out into the sunlight. Homst hung back for a few seconds before taking his position in the line onto the deck. A shoulder brushed his, and he looked to the side. The woman there looked up at him, and a flicker of light touched her eyes.

“Homst,” she whispered. He dipped his head. “Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

He grunted a single laugh. “That’s right.”

“It’s mine as well. That’s how I remembered.”

“Well.”
Thirty years old today.
They took another shuffling step forward as the line continued to file along. “May your years pass quickly,” he said politely.

“You too,” she said. They stared at the backs of the men in front of them until they came onto the deck.

The sky was a brilliant ice-blue, lined with snowdrifts of vaporous cloud. Four more guardians on the deck funneled the crowd towards the gangplank. From the look of their faces, the wrinkled woman downstairs was probably the youngest of the pack. These men and women, flails in easy reach at their belts, all had to be in their fifties. The snarling woman downstairs was probably forty-five, newly transitioned into the next step on her lifepath.
No wonder she was taking her duties so seriously.
The guards on deck were more disinterested than threatening as they shepherded the young passengers down the ramp to shore. They must have seen thousands of thirty-year-olds make this crossing. From the way they routinely turned their backs to the younger men and women, Homst thought his earlier impulse had to be right. No one ever fought back at this stage in their path.

He stumbled a little on his way down the gangplank, muttering an apology to the woman behind him. He’d just caught sight of the Luminary waiting for them on the graveled shore.

Her silk robes draped her youthful frame with sinewy grace. Her entourage of Celebrants was eight strong and fashionably dressed in well-shorn furs. One played the harmonium, and another the pipe, as the youngest of them danced barefoot in the waves, arrayed with ribbons. After the long years on the island, it was overwhelming to see such a spectacle of youth and beauty concentrated in one place. The Luminary was smiling in the midst of it, completely aware of the effect her display was having on the barge full of comfort-starved travelers.

It hurt less than he’d expected to see her. Of course he’d been a Luminary not so long ago, as time was measured. (Homst’s own entourage reached six at its peak.) All of them had been Luminaries until age twenty-eight, when the window for understanding the messages of the Vanished closed forever to them. It had been hard to accept at first—which is why, of course, that they’d been loaded onto a barge and taken to the island across Lake Vaal for two years, where they had been made to accept it.

As his feet touched the gravel and he looked into the beautiful, painted face of the Luminary before him, Homst realized that he
did
accept it. His time had passed. He was thirty years old, and had nothing more to offer the world except his obedience, and nothing more to hope for than a prompt and uneventful death. But the woman in front of him—nineteen if she was a day, at the very opening steps of her progression to greatness, flush with promise and brilliance—was hope incarnate. The Vanished would be speaking to her for years to come, revealing their secrets and hinting at the path to the Zenith—the glorious summit where earth met sky and heaven began. She might be the one to whom salvation on earth would be revealed. He would listen to her every word, and follow her every command. That was the role his lifepath demanded.

“Drifters,” the Luminary called, her voice rising over the lake like a hunting-horn. The last of the passengers came down to the shore, eyes fixed on the form of the shining young woman.

“Your days as Luminaries are over,” she went on, “but it may be said that your best days are yet to come. Be proud, Svargath, and celebrate your luminous youth! Ours is the generation to whom the footsteps have been revealed!”

The woman behind him gasped. Homst felt his own head reeling at the announcement. Individual Luminaries frequently claimed to be following the footsteps, of course; but to claim to speak for a whole generation was stunningly bold...
unless it’s true.
What can she mean? What visions have appeared while we’ve been on the island?

“The Vanished have made themselves known,” she cried, lifting her hands high. “The clouds enshrouding the Zenith have begun to part. These are days of greatness, Svargath, and you will see things in your lifepath that a hundred generations would envy!

“But you must pledge to me your strength. Will you do it?”

“We will!” the cheer rose up. Homst found the words lifting themselves out of his throat unbidden.

“Will you swear to me your obedience?”

“We will!”

“Will you let your body mark the ascent to the Zenith, if that is what your Luminary demands?”

“We will!”

“Then follow me, O Drifters,” she shouted, her face glowing rapturously, “to salvation and to war! Follow your young ones to Delia!”

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