The Witches of Ne'arth (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 2) (37 page)

“He greatly exaggerates.  However, I am not concerned about operational status at this time.  The airship is being readied for a test flight today.  I want you to be aboard the ship during the test flight, and to have the ship fly over the city, so that you might be seen by the public as in command.  I believe it will greatly enhance your prestige.”

Valarion felt the ground wobble.  “You . . . want me to . . . personally . . . . ”

“Your visible presence aboard the ship will have a positive effect on the morale of the citizenry.”

At the moment, the idea wasn't having a positive effect on
his
morale.  “Given that I serve a vital purpose in your plans, do you think it is wise to risk my life in an untested flying machine?”

“You needn't be concerned about that.  I have suitable replacement candidates to fill the office of emperor in the event that you become unavailable.”

And with that,
he
was dismissed. 

Valarion was in agitation as he returned to the Upper World.  He had never realized what a distasteful word
summoned
was when he was at the wrong end of it!  Wasn't the whole point of becoming an emperor to always be the summoner, never again the summoned?

As he entered the palace's Great Hall, he pasted resolution on his face and walked taller.  Servants, soldiers, and stray supplicants greeted him with elaborate deference, and some of his pride was salved.  He informed his secretary to cancel his appointments for the day and call for a coach.  He went to the entry and paced.  He accepted tea from a servant.  He drank only a sip and flung the cup at the wall. 

Summoned!
 

Barely an hour later, Valarion watched Landar scurry from the airship cavern across the canyon floor as the imperial entourage arrived.  Bading the Imperial Guard to remain at a distance as they walked in solitary toward the cavern, Valarion briefed the scientist on the Mother's instructions.

“The test flight is for testing!” Landar fumed.  “Not for showing off!  A leak, a fire, and we'll have a show all right – one that will be our last!” 

“If it's any consolation, she has ordered me aboard.”

“We already have enough ballast!”  Landar muttered.  He scowled and swore, then saw what Valarion liked to call his 'Execution Face.'  Landar bowed apologetically.  “Forgive me, my Lord!”

“I too have a difficult time thinking straight with her on my back,” Valarion replied quietly.  “She is becoming ever more intractable.”  

“You speak of the woman who was within the curtains?  Is she the ruler of the Sisters?”

“You may consider her such.”  Which was bold as he dared say, seeing that he was being watched from the cavern mouth by temple guard. 
How many of them are there? 

Landar gazed into the distance and stroked his beard.  “After the battle, you know, she had a private consultation with me.  She seems to know a great deal about the construction of airships.  Not just theory.  Practical things, like where to reinforce the bracing, the best alloy for the hydraulics.  She even asserts there is an unburnable gas that may replace hydrogen – “

Valarion found himself impatient to meet his fate.  “Is there a reason you are telling me this?”

“I am conveying that I gained the impression that the Sisters have experience in the manufacture and operation of airships.” 

“Do you see the skies filled with their ships?  Why would they need ours if they have their own?”

“I do not have answers to those questions.  I merely observe, the lady behind the curtain seemed to have practical knowledge, the kind that only comes from experience.  I leave the conclusions to you.”

“I conclude that it isn't worth thinking about at the moment.  Now when can you begin the flight test?”

“We were about to bring the ship out, My Lord.  I'll have it done now.” 

Valarion waited at the cavern entrance.  Valarion's guard joined the workers in undoing the securing lines.  They towed the ship majestically into daylight.  Any sexual innuendo was lost in the sheer size of the monstrosity as its sides of Sarkassian silk slid out of the cavern mouth and gleamed beneath the sun.

Landar's assistants rolled a wheel-mounted stairway to the entry into the gondola.  Captain and crew ascended, then Landar, who nodded to Valarion.  His heart throbbing, Valarion climbed on jellied legs into the belly of the ship.

The first ship was nothing in comparison.  The interior of the gondola of the
Triumph
was bigger than a trireme  Without an escort, it would have been easy to become lost within its dual levels and branching passages.  The bridge alone was bigger than the entire gondola of the first ship.   

The captain was conferring with his crew, who were standing before various mechanical devices that Valarion understood to control the functioning of the mammoth ship.  While the captain smartly saluted, the crew barely acknowledged a few glances and nods toward the supreme ruler of the Imperium.  Valarion did not take it as a slight.  Intuitively he sensed that a distraction even for a second might be catastrophic here.  Let them watch their instruments, and he might survive this.

“My Lord!” the airship's captain said rigidly.  “All stations report ready for launch.  At your word.”

His training as military commander had taught Valarion that hesitation, no matter how fearful he was, had no place on the field.  Automatically, he replied, “You may begin your flight, Captain.”

“Start engines!” the captain said. 

“Start engines!” the watch officer said. 

“Start engines!” subordinates shouted into the speaking tubes that coiled from the floor like metallic snakes. 

As further orders were barked down the chain of command and status responses climbed back up again, the six engines clicked, chugged, and whirred, joining into a communal hum. 

Valarion went forward and touched the window.  It was a meter high and a meter square, so clear it was hard to believe he wasn't looking through air. 
A miracle of modern-day glazing technology
, he thought.  A row of such windows wrapped around the front of the bridge in a horseshoe configuration, and he thought as he had done the first time upon sight of the ship: 
No wonder this thing is so expensive
. 

Unlike an irrigation canal, though, it would soon prove its military value – or kill him while trying. 

A junior officer came to the windows, raised and lowered arms.  A man standing on the ground in front of the ship duplicated the signal, and the ground crew released the lines simultaneously.  Valarion felt a lurch and frantically grabbed for the railing.  No need, though; after that the ascent was so smooth that the only clue to motion came from visual cues. 

Outside, the ground was falling away, the men becoming smaller, the whole world becoming smaller, the sky expanding as they cleared the cliffs.  Valarion controlled his breath and surveyed the interior of the island of Italia eastward in a view that heretofore could only be had by climbers of Enta.

“Level altitude,” the captain said.

“Level altitude two hundred meters,” the response came.

Valarion turned west and his eyes met the cone of the volcano.  They were more than midway to the top.  He could give the order and they might rise high enough to peek inside.  Certain myths said that those who glimpsed the interior would be blessed with long life by the volcano goddess Atani.  Other myths said that espying Tyfon, the monster of the volcano, might cause him to awaken and erupt.  As air travel became routine, Valarion supposed, both superstitions would surely fade.  Unless, that is, they were true.  Valarion decided to test
that
another day.   

With Valarion's assent, Landar coordinated the flight test with the captain.  The ship sailed to and fro, full power and full halt, ascend and descend, hard-a-port and hard-a-starboard.  Despite the maneuvers, the ride was smoother than a trireme in placid waters. 

When the tests were concluded, Landar finished marking papers on a clipboard and said, “She's all yours, My Lord.  But I'd like to get her home within an hour so we can do an inspection.”

“An hour is all we'll need,” Valarion replied.  “Captain, take her to Rome!”

“Yes, My Lord!” the captain said.  “Speed and altitude, My Lord?”

“Speed should be leisurely, altitude low enough for the people to have a good look.”

The captain's cheek twitched, but without comment he translated the directives into specific commands and the ship headed north and rounded Enta.  The slopes of the not-quite-so-dormant volcano slipped past, revealing open sea and the Island of the Sisters.  The sheer hexagonal walls of that fortress, so intimidating when viewed from the water, seemed no higher than the threshold of a doorway.    

No wonder she prefers the sewers
, Valarion thought.  How easy it would have been to bomb the noxious coven into oblivion, had their nest remained on the island!

Valarion noticed that within the fortress, one of the largest buildings, an otherwise nondescript warehouse, was topped by a tower of metal, many meters in height, that resembled the branchless trunk of a tree. 
What in the name of the Witch of Rome is that contraption for?
  

The airship headed west, over the water and paralleling the shore.  Below on Italia, men plodded along the shore-side road.  Many stared, some fled for concealment.  With almost equal shock, Valarion realized that the airship could serve as an instrument not only of destruction but also of terror. 

The ship curved southward.  As they circumnavigated the volcanic cone, the city came into view.  They passed over the crumbling ancient wall that had protected Rome in its fishing-village days from the marauding bands of the islands interior, and the great ship slipped its shadow over the streets. 

Valarion was struck by the emotional impact of the perspective.  From the Bay of Rome, the city on the slopes of Enta appeared lofty.  From the balconies of the palace, the city appeared charming.  From this altitude, the city appeared flat.   

The people below took notice of the ship.  Pointing and conversing, their numbers grew as the buildings emptied into the streets.  Valarion sensed they were enthralled rather than afraid.  No one was cowering, and many waved.  He waved back, but realized they wouldn't be able to see well behind the windows.

“Is there some way I can be better viewed by the people?” he asked. 

“There is a platform below and behind,” the captain replied.

An officer escorted aftward, down a ladder, through a door onto a platform outside.  Valarion gripped the rail as the breeze rushed against his body.  He was facing rocket launching racks similar to those that Landar had employed in launching the attack against Irkut's cohort.  For the flight test, only the forward-most battery had been loaded.  He spared the rockets an appreciative, almost grateful glance, then peered downward.   

The ship was two hundred meters over the city.  The people recognized the imperial purple of his fluttering cape and waved, yelled, and cheered.  Leaning precipitously over the rail, he waved back.  That brought their response to a frenzy:  people jumping and waving both arms over their heads as if they too were trying to fly.

It seemed the whole city had turned out to watch.  Some streets were so crowded that the pavement became hidden under the mass of humanity.  Victory Square was mobbed.  Soon it was no longer possible to speak of crowds, for the entire city had become one Crowd, stretching north to south, Enta to Bay.  Not since the early days of the republic had a ruler of Rome met nearly all the citizenry in one gaze.

The ship steered toward the North Claw of the Mouth of the Bay.  It passed over the military base.  Soldiers and seamen spilled from barracks and hastily assembled in rows as trumpets blared.  Hands extended in salute, thousands chanted:  “
VALARION . . . VALARION . . . VALARION!
” 

He saw the ashen remains of Military House and remembered the day when Archimedes had looked down upon him from the other airship.  Valarion looked at the bay where the masts of the sunken ships protruded from where Archimedes had set fire to half the fleet.  Valarion wondered if the crowds had the sights of that day seared in memory as strongly as he did.  Well, he would have to do something about that.

He surveyed the scene, resting his eyes on a dilapidated shack at the halfway point on Mount Enta.  It was an old naval lookout station that had been abandoned decades ago for a newer one nearer the volcano's rim. 

Now, he thought, the whole city would remember it again. 

“I need a messenger to convey instructions to the captain,” Valarion said.    

The officer indicated the speaking tube.  “I can contact the bridge through that, My Lord.”

Modern times
, Valarion thought.  He pointed to the shack.  “I want rockets launched against that structure.  If he asks, it's for a demonstration.”

A moment later, the ship gracefully turned, then hovered perpendicular to the mountainside.  Crewmen emerged from the gondola and took stations at the launching racks, which were swiveled and angled to take aim. 

With a flexible hose to his ear, the officer reported, “My Lord, weapons are primed and targeted.”