Empire of the East (24 page)

The wizard called out jovially: “Rolf, have you ever steered a sailing ship?”

“No. Though I have lived my whole life near enough to the sea.”

“It matters not, I have experience. Once we get up a sail, I'll show you how to tack against the wind. We'd best not fly by daylight, there may be reptiles scouting.”

Things did not immediately go right with the rigging. Rolf was called upon to hold lines, tie knots, and pull. A sail soon rose upon the mast, but then hung in utter limpness. Gray, scowling again, hauled this way and that on lines and cloth, but the sail would not so much as flutter. He hoisted a pennant, but it too drooped like chain mail. Clenching his fists, Gray muttered: “Is this some countering magic? I sense none. Yet there was a breeze before we lifted from the ground.”

“There is one yet,” said Rolf, nodding to the ever-shrinking pattern of the camp's cookfires, dimming now with the approach of dawn. “Or what is carrying us northward?” But he could not feel a breath of moving air upon his face.

Gray took one look back at the camp, and called the djinn to question. “Why does the wind not belly out my sail?”

“Name a reason, and I will say if it be true.” The clatter of the djinn's voice became something like a cackle.

Gray sputtered.

Rolf asked: “Djinn. Are we becalmed because our whole craft is already moving with the wind, like part of it? Instead of the wind pushing past us?”

“It is so.”

Angrily Gray flared up. “There were sails drawn in the Old World pictures—” Then a thought struck him silent; after a moment he grumbled: “Of course, those drawings may have been sheer fancy; they did that sometimes. But they
did
have real airships. How then did they steer them? Rolf, question it some more. And I will think, meanwhile.”

Rolf tried not to think of how fast they might be drifting, and how high. “Djinn, tell me. Did the ancients ever use sails?”

Clatter, cackle. “Not to fly.”

“Did they use paddles to propel their airships?”

“Never.”

“Rudders to steer them?”

There was a reluctant-seeming pause. “Yes.”

“Yes?” Rolf pounced without a second thought. “Then fetch us such a rudder, here, at once!”

The air around them seemed to sigh, as with a giant's effort, or perhaps the satisfaction of a djinn. Then arrived the rudder, here and at once indeed; it was a wall of metal, curving, monstrous, overgrown, wedged between balloon and basket so that it bent the mast and stretched the ropes and all but crushed the occupants. Shaped roughly like a door for some great archway, the rudder was a good twelve meters long. Its longest, straightest edge, turned downward now, was nearly a meter thick; coming out of the flatness of this edge were festoons of cabling and the ends of metal pipes.

The balloon sank horrendously under the huge load. Gray, bent double under the slab whose main weight was fortunately carried by the basket's rim, cried out an order. In an instant the great mass was gone. The airship leaped up again, Gray stood, and Rolf recovered himself from the position into which he had been forced, almost entirely out of the basket.

There was silence for a little while, except for gasps and wheezings. When Gray spoke at last, his voice was icily detached. “In magic, hasty words are ill-advised. So I learned long ago.”

“I will not utter any more of them. Believe me.”

“Well. I have blundered too, this night. Let us learn from our mistakes and then forget them, if we can.”

“Gray, may I ask the djinn a cautious question?”

“Ask him what you will. Our troubles seem to stem from giving him orders.”

Turning to the unperturbed scroll of smoke, Rolf asked: “Did the Old Worlders ever use such a rudder as you brought to us to steer a flying craft like this one, lighter than the air and with no means of making headway through the air?” He was imagining himself in a boat, drifting with a current; and he saw clearly in his mind that the rudder in the boat was useless, for there was no streaming of water around it.

“No.” The monosyllabic answer seemed all innocence.

Gray asked: “Did they ever steer craft like this at all?”

“No.”

The two humans exchanged a weary look. Gray said: “I had better give orders for the gradual deflation of the bags, so that we drift no farther. It will take our men a while to reach us as it is.”

“I see no danger in that order,” Rolf approved cautiously. As gas began to hiss from the bags again, he turned to the east, where now the sun lanced at him from above the distant range of black. There was one peak that seemed to tower above the rest, its head lost in a wreath of cloud that looked much higher still than the balloon.

Gray seemed to know where he was looking. “There lies the citadel of Som the Dead. On those cliffs—can you see them?—that rise up halfway on the highest mount. There's where we must somehow land part of our army.”

And somewhere there, thought Rolf, my sister may be still alive. “We will find a way,” he said. With his hand he struck the basket rim. “We will make this work.”

“Here comes the ground,” said Gray.

The landing was a tumble, but it broke no bones.

Chup stood frozen in the doorway, watching as the man whom he had killed stood up, fresh and healthy as when their duel had started. Tarlenot, startled by Chup's entrance, turned and got up quickly. But when he saw Chup's paralysis of astonishment, he relaxed enough to offer him a slight bow and a mocking smile.

Charmian, who had looked up as if expecting Chup, said calmly: “Leave us now, good Tarlenot.”

Tarlenot, with the air of one who had completed his visit anyway, bowed once more, this time to her. “I shall. As you know, I must soon give up this happy collar for a while, and take to the road again. Of course I mean to see you again before I set out—”

She waved him off. “If not, you shall when you return. Go now.”

He frowned briefly at her, decided not to argue, and gave Chup one more look of amusement. Then Tarlenot withdrew, going out through a doorway at the long chamber's other end.

Charmian now turned herself completely toward Chup, and at the sight of him began to giggle. In a moment she was rolling over on her couch, quite gracefully, in her mirth. And she laughed with a loud clear peal, like some innocent teasing girl.

Chup moved unsteadily toward her. Still looking after Tarlenot, he said: “My blade went this far down in him. This far. I saw him die.”

She still laughed merrily. “My hero, Chup! But you are so astonished. It is worth all the vexation, just to see you so.”

For his part, Chup was very far from laughter. “What powers of sorcery do you have here? What do battles mean, and warriors' lives, when dead men jump up grinning?”

Her mirth quieted. She began to eye Chup as if with sympathy. “It was not sorcery, dear Chup, but his Guardsman's collar that saved him.”

“No collar stopped my blade, I cut down to his heart. I know death when I see it.”

“Dear fool! I did not mean that at all. Of course you cut him down. He died. You beat and killed him, as I knew you would. But then he was restored by the Lord Draffut.”

“There is no way of restoring…” Chup's voice trailed off.

She nodded, following his thought. “Yes my Lord. As it was done for you, by the fluid of the Lake of Life. Since you do not wear the collar of Som's Guard, I had to risk the Beast-Lord's great displeasure by having the fluid stolen for you—by one of the demons he so hates. But I would face greater risks than that, to have you with me.” Her face and voice were innocent and proud. “Come, sit beside me here. Have you the little trinket with you, that was woven of my hair?”

He walked to the soft couch, and sat down beside his unclaimed bride. From his pocket he brought out the golden charm, clenched in his hand.

“No, keep it for me, my good Lord, until I tell you how it must be used. Keep it and guard it well. With no one else will it be so safe.” Charmian took his hand, but only to press his fingers tighter around the knot of yellow hair.

He put the thing back in his pocket. Still foremost in his thought was the resurrection he had witnessed. “So, Tarlenot will be magically healed, whenever and however he is slain?”

“If he falls here, in sight of Som's citadel and with his collar on. Did you not hear him say just now that he will leave his Guardsman's collar here when he goes out as a courier again? The valkyries will not fly more than a kilometer or two from the citadel.”

“The what?”

“The valkyries, the flying machines of the Old World, that take the fallen Guardsmen up to Draffut to be healed. They get but little practice now.”

“What is this Guard of Som's?”

“An elite corps of men he thinks reliable.” She had released his hand and was talking in a businesslike way. “They number about five hundred; there are no more collars than that.”

He observed: “You have not yet managed to get one of these protective collars for yourself.”

“I will depend upon my strong Lord Chup for protection; we will see that you have a collar, of course, as soon as possible.”

“You have been depending on the strong Lord Tarlenot till now, I gather. Well, I will wait and catch him with his collar off.”

Charmian laughed again, this time even more delightedly, and curled up amid her silks. “That messenger? Why, you are joking, lord. You must know I am only using him, and to make him really useful I must lead him on. My only true thoughts are for you.”

Grimly and thoughtfully, he said: “I remember that you do not have true thoughts.”

Now she was hurt. Her eyes looked this way and that, then sought him piteously and fluttered. One who did not know her as he did might easily have been convinced. He knew her, and was not fooled; but she was still his bride, and all-important to him. He frowned, wondering why he did not wonder. There must be a reason, and he ought to have remembered it, but somehow it eluded him.

“My every thought has been for you,” his all-important bride was pouting. “True, when you arrived today I pretended to be angry—surely you could not have been deceived by that? I wanted Tarlenot to fight you, so you would put him in his place. You must have understood that! Could
he
ever have beaten you, even on the sickest day you've ever had?”

“Why, yes, he could, and handily.”

She avoided his reaching hand and jumped to her feet. “How can you dare to think that I have ever meant you harm? If you will be rude enough to ask for proof of my intentions, I can only point out that here you are, restored to life and health and power. And who is responsible for your restoration, if not I?”

“Very well, you saved me. But for your own reasons. You wanted this.” Again he pulled the charm out of his pocket. Looking down at the soft, shiny thing resting so lightly in his open hand, he could remember vaguely that he had felt misgivings about picking it up for the first time, but he could not remember why. He asked: “What do you want it for?”

“Put it away, please.” When he had done that, Charmian sat down again and took his hand between hers. “I want to use it. To make you Viceroy in the Black Mountains, in Som's place.”

He grunted in surprise, beyond mere disbelief.

“Be at ease, my lord,” she reassured him. “The wizard Hann, who is with us in this enterprise, has made this apartment proof against Som's spies.”

“
I
came in quite unnoticed.”

“Not by me. I wanted you to enter, my good lord.” Her small hands pressed his fingers tenderly. “Ah, but it is good to have you sitting with me once again. You will be Lord of High Lords here, with Zapranoth and Draffut as your vassals and only the distant Emperor himself above; and I will be your consort, proud beside you.”

He made another boorish noise.

Unruffled, she pressed his arm. “Chup, do you doubt that I would like to be the lady of a viceroy?”

“I don't doubt that.”

Her nails spurred his forearm. “And do you think that I would want some lesser man than you beside me, one who could not hold such a prize when we had won it, or try for something higher still. By all the demons, you underrate me if you do!”

Viceroy, Lord of High Lords…armies numbering tens of thousands under his command…beside him, Charmian, looking as she did now. He could no longer
wholly
doubt what she was saying. “Has Viceroy Som no need of you, to hold his place and help him try for something higher still?”

Her eyes flashed anger, mixed with determination. “I want a living man, not dead…but you are right, my lord, Som is the key. We must dispose of him.” She said it easily. “He gave me shelter when my father fell, thinking I would be useful to him one day; I convinced him you would be useful too. He does not know that you have brought the means of his downfall.”

Chup's manner was still scornful. “And what are we to do with Som the Dead? How shall we topple him?”

Her eyes, that had gone to feast upon some distant vision, came back to his unwaveringly. “The circlet woven of my hair must go into his private treasure hoard, unknown to him. Only thus can he be made vulnerable to—certain magic that we shall use against him.”

“He must have protection against such charms.”

“Of course. But Hann says that the one you carry is of unequalled power.”

Chup said: “You speak much of this wizard Hann, and what he says. What does he gain, by helping you?”

Charmian pouted. “I see I must soothe down your pointless jealousy again. Hann wants only vengeance, for some punishment that Som inflicted on him long ago. I know that Hann gives no impression of great skill at magic, yet he is stronger in his way than Elslood was, or Zarf—”

“Then why can he not make a stronger charm than Elslood wrought?” He thought he could feel it in his pocket, like a circle of heavy fire.

She shook her head impatiently. “I do not understand it perfectly, but it seems that Elslood, wanting me to care for him, stole some of my hair and wove the charm. But he tapped some power greater than he understood, the charm only made him dote all the more on me. Never mind. We need not struggle with these technicalities of magic. All that you need worry about, my lord, is getting the charmed circlet woven of my hair into Som's private treasure hoard.”

“How?”

“I have already gone far in learning ways and making plans for that. But the execution of the plan requires someone like yourself, my lord; and who is there but you?”

“How?” His voice was still heavy with his skepticism.

She seemed about to tell him, but first she recounted once more the joys of being viceroy. Her soft voice wore him down, so that he passed the midpoint between doubting and belief; all things were possible, when his bride whispered that they were.

Now she was telling him what he must do: “Now hear me, my lord. Three things must fall together ere we strike. First, the human guards who watch the outer entrance to the treasure vault must be those we have suborned. Second—are you listening?—the new breed of centipedes in the second room must not yet have hatched. Thirdly, the word for quieting the demons in the inner vault must be the one we know…”

Demons again. He ceased to listen. He was wearying quickly of all these endless words, even if they came from her, when she herself was here. Shaking his head to break the spell of words, he reached for her.

“My lord, wait. Hear me. This is vital—”

But he would not wait, nor hear her any longer, and with a small sigh of vexation she let him have his way.

On the next day, when he had truly rested, there came to him officers of Som's Guard, who wished to question Chup about the military situation in the West. Chup related the rumors common in the Broken Lands, for what they might be worth. He told the officers what he had observed of troop movements, from his beggar's post, and of other matters bearing on the military, the conditions of roads and livestock in the Broken Lands, the feelings and prosperity of the populace, the state of the harvest. He could give the Guardsmen little comfort, except as regarding the relative smallness of Thomas's force. Thomas would need great reinforcement before he could attempt an attack upon this citadel.

Chup was soon sitting at ease with the officers, military men like himself. He was now dressed like them in a uniform of black, except that he had as yet no rank, and of course no Guardsman's collar. In the course of exchanging soldiers' talk he asked about the collars. He could not imagine how it would feel to enter a fight with the knowledge that you could be glued together again if you were hacked apart; would it be a spur or a hindrance to the most effective action? Would a man who wearied let himself be killed to gain a rest?

One of the officers shook his head, and raised one finger. It ended in a tiny abnormal loop of flesh, instead of a fingernail. “The healing's not that safe or certain. Things sometimes go wrong, up in Lord Draffut's house. A man who's badly mangled going in may well come out too crooked to walk straight. And those who've been too long lifeless when the valkyries pick 'em up may never again be smarter than little animals.”

The other officer nodded his scarred head. “Still,” he said, “I think none of us are likely to turn in our collars.”

“See much fighting here?” Chup asked.

“Not since we came here, and Draffut handed out his collars; he was here first, you know, before the East or West…We do grow somewhat stale, those of us who stay inside these mountains. Nothing but a peasant uprising from time to time. But we practice. We'll handle this Thomas if he comes.”

Chup was invited to visit the officers' club on a lower level of the citadel, where wine and gambling and fresh peasant girls were available. He got up and strolled with the two men to sample the wine; as for the dice and the women, he had no money at the moment, and could not imagine himself wanting any woman but one.

Walking the main, buried corridors of the citadel Chup took note of the fighting men he saw. He supposed the garrison might number a thousand if all were mobilized; but the five hundred elite Guardsmen should be easily able to hold the natural defenses of the place against Thomas's four thousand or so. A few of the Guardsmen were grotesquely misshapen with old scars, of wounds no man could ordinarily survive, though they were active still; this confirmed what the officer had said about the uncertainty of being healed.

Chup had other things to watch for on his walk to the officers' club and back again, through rooms and passages carved from the mountain's rock. In one large chamber, decorated with some ancient artisan's frieze of unknown men and creatures, he spotted without paying it any obvious attention the entrance to the passage that Charmian had told him to watch for. It was an unmarked tunnel leading downward and yet farther into the mountain. It was this way that, by many turns and branches shed had described, would lead him to Som's own treasure hoard.

Again and again during the next two days she repeated her instructions to him; by then he had ceased to doubt her word on anything at all. And then she awoke him in the night, to tell him that the time had come, the three requirements had fallen together. Tomorrow he must try to reach the treasure vault of Som.