by A. C. Cobble
“Well,” said Oliver, “let’s go find them.”
In the captain’s cabin of the Cloud Serpent, Oliver leaned over the maps he’d taken from the ship’s library. They were sparsely inked and had already proven to be inaccurate. He doubted anyone had updated the charts in twenty years, the last time an expedition had visited this strange land. It must have been before the storm wall had been raised, which surely even the worst of cartographers would have noted.
On a blank page in his notebook, Oliver sketched the bit of coastline and river they’d seen thus far. It looked as though the maps from the Cloud Serpent’s shipboard library were drawn based on tales from traders rather than direct observations, and he’d nearly thrown the things across the room when he saw how hopeless they were. He didn’t, though, and a practical urge to correct the record had overcome him. Now, while they were sailing south, two leagues east of the massive river that split the continent, he was calming himself by drafting a new map and noting on the old where they needed adjustment. All of the maps did have the river, so there was at least one thing they got right.
Two hundred leagues south along that river was the one city that each of the maps had in common. It looked to be a capital, though there was no name on the maps or in the legends. On the maps, the city was typically depicted as large, geometric structures, like cubes half-buried in the sand. He doubted that was the truth, but he couldn’t begin to guess what they would find.
So far, they’d only seen small villages that clung to the banks of the river like parasites, slurping at the life that flowed by them. None of the settlements housed more than a few hundred people, and most were a fraction of that. Inland, the crew on the airship didn’t spy anything except the occasional roaming herd of livestock with a few tenders following behind. Those men were carrying the only armaments they’d spotted anywhere — wide-bladed spears, slings, and crooks that could be used to snag attacking predators. The crew had seen several grimalkin, hyenas, and other creatures that no one could identify stalking behind the herds. The barren landscape of the Darklands was filled with deadly predators, but it was all the natural order that one would expect near an undeveloped community. There was nothing there that Oliver and his crew had any interest in. It wasn’t what they’d come for.
Every time they passed people, in the villages, on boats, or watching the herds, the people bowed down, touching their foreheads to the ground and not looking up until the airship passed. No one tried to interfere with their passage, and no one questioned what a strange airship was doing flying beside the river. Even for a member of Enhover’s royal family, the flagrant groveling was disconcerting. What sort of terror did these people’s rulers inspire? What sort of trouble were they flying into?
Oliver sat back and frowned at the maps in front of him.
Half a dozen, likely all copied from the same erroneous narrative. Why was that? Why had no one from the empire of Enhover explored this land? His father and his ancestors had an abiding fear of sorcery, but the people of the Darklands weren’t posing a threat to Enhover. They’d never ventured out of their own territories as far as Oliver knew. No one in the Southlands seemed to fear attack from the Darklands. That pirate nation didn’t even have a proper standing army. Instead, the Southlanders simply did not venture east. They acted as if the Darklands was not there, and it was only the occasional forays by traders from the secretive land that even proved its existence.
The storm wall would have deterred many an adventurer, but prior to their sighting of it, Oliver had never heard of the thing. Had it existed the last time an Enhoverian visited these lands and returned to tell of it? He didn’t know, but he didn’t think so. It certainly wasn’t shown anywhere on the maps he had, and something like that would have made it there if the cartographer knew of it. Hells, it would be the talk of every pub near the harbor in Southundon if a sailing crew had seen such a thing.
Aside from those traders who visited the Southlands, there was no record of anyone leaving the Darklands. Maybe no one did. Except for Imbon. He was sure of it, now, seeing the similarities in the pictures on that tropical island and in the villages along the river. The Imbonese hailed from the Darklands. Why had they left, and why were they returning? Where in the frozen hell were they going now?
Frustrated, he stood and stomped to the door, exiting onto the deck of the airship. The sky was clear, the dry wind brisk across his skin. The sails flapped above, and the deck was filled with the comfortable sounds of the crew hard at work.
He walked to the side of the airship and looked out at the shimmering band of light that was reflected off the river. It was only broken by the occasional thrust of a dock into the tranquil waters and the slender skiffs that darted across the surface. The people aboard cast nets for fish, hauled in their scaly harvest, and bowed in the center of the tiny vessels when they saw the airship passing above.
The people of the Darklands bowed at the sight of the airship, never looking up once they initially noticed it. They were used to seeing flying vessels, Oliver realized. It was why they didn’t show panic. They merely bowed and let the Cloud Serpent past unmolested. Whoever ruled the strange land normally approached the villages from the air. It had to be related to why the Imbonese made such an effort to steal an airship.
He frowned. It was related, but how?
He stalked the deck, peering at the haze on the horizon. In the orange and pink glow of the setting sun, it looked as though a massive cloud was rising straight up, lit from below by the light of thousands of bonfires. It wasn’t unlike the plume above Imbon when the mountain erupted, he decided, but so far, the Darklands was flat, the terrain only broken by arid hills and sharp, broken ridges. They hadn’t seen anything like the volcanic cone of Imbon.
Above the column of smoke, the rest of the sky was crowned in thick, gray clouds. The first clouds they’d seen since crossing the barrier at the coast. It seemed as if all of the moisture had been drawn from the air and gathered there. There was no rumble of thunder from the distant formation, though, no flicker of concealed lightning. Nothing at all to suggest an oncoming storm except for the clouds themselves.
“That smoke has to be coming from the city, no?” asked Sam beside him.
He ran his hand over his hair, touching the leather thong that held it tied back. “Yes, I suppose so. It’s odd, though, isn’t it? We’ve seen fewer and fewer signs of life along the river. If we’re approaching what passes for a metropolis in this land, then shouldn’t it be getting more congested, not less?”
“Down river from a large city probably isn’t the best place to fish,” remarked Sam. “The water could be filled with sewage.”
He grunted.
“Another half turn of the clock until nightfall,” said Sam, wrapping her arms around herself. “Is it my imagination, or is it getting colder each evening?”
“The dry air can’t retain heat,” explained Oliver. “The farther from the coast, the larger the swings in temperature once the sun goes down. It’s difficult to tell, but we could be gaining in elevation as well. That would make it cooler. Also, there’s some literature that predicts a center point of the world somewhere near Durban, and we’re below that mark now. As the climate gets warmer going from Enhover to the tropics, it could be getting cooler going south from that line.”
“A center point?” questioned Sam. “The center of the world is Durban?”
“Well, there’s no proper center,” said Oliver, grinning. “It’s a globe, of course.”
“A globe, like a circle?”
Oliver nodded, frowning. “The world is a globe, like a ball.”
Sam tilted her head as if she couldn’t quite believe him.
“If it was flat, how would you explain the movement of celestial bodies?” he asked. “The rise and fall of the sun, the moon? Why do you think the horizon disappears in the distance instead of extending forever? The motion of the seas, the wind…”
She shrugged.
“Th
e… Never mind,” he muttered.
“The Church always claimed our world was a circle, that all of us were constantly rotating through life and death,” said Sam. “I thought it was meant to be an analogy to help the parishioners understand the cycle between our world and the underworld.”
Oliver blinked. “Well, I think that bit is an analogy. I meant that… I’m not talking about an analogy. The physical world is a globe. Here.” He pointed to a thick glass globe filled with swirling faes that hung behind them. He walked to it, holding up a fist. “Now, pretend my hand is the sun. You see how the light from it would shine on half of this globe?”
“Shouldn’t the globe of fae light be the sun?” asked Sam, eyeing the brightening swirl of tiny creatures inside. “Do they seem agitated to you?”
“Sure,” said Oliver with a sigh. “The globe is the sun. Look at how the light is only cast on half of my fist. The backside is dark. That’s how we experience night and day. The world, my fist, spins as it moves. The light rises and falls, and that’s a day. A year—”
“What does that have to do with it getting colder south of some arbitrary point?” wondered Sam.
Oliver barely heard her. The fae, instead of flitting about in typical random fashion, had slowed. Their bodies glowed brighter than before, and as they stilled, he could feel them, feel their anticipation, the warmth of each individual speck of light.
“That’s odd,” muttered Sam, stepping beside him and peering into the glass.
The fae shied away from the priestess. Experimentally, Oliver held his hand closer to the globe. The tiny creatures drifted toward it, and as his skin touched the glass, they pressed against the interior, directly opposite of his hand.
“Oh, that is odd,” whispered Sam.
Oliver moved his hand away, and the fae drifted away. He moved his hand back to the glass, and the fae pressed against it again. He gestured, and the cloud of small, glowing creatures flew to the edge of the globe in a wave. He could feel them, like tiny pinpricks of light shining through a thin curtain. He could sense their warmth and knew they could sense him. He directed his thoughts, and they responded, dancing to his silent tune. They were eager, like they’d been starved for attention, like they wanted to play.
“Spirits,” gasped Sam. “How are you doing that?”
“I have no idea,” he breathed.
The final rays of sunlight faded as the sun dipped below the horizon. Oliver stared at the globe of fae light, amazed.
“Shall we lower the sails, m’lord?” called Ainsley from the main deck. “We can drift here and then start again at dawn so we come across this city of yours in daylight. Probably better to see it then instead of the middle of the night.”
“It’s not my city,” complained Oliver, “but yes, I think during—”
“Duke,” said Sam, pointing ahead of them.
He looked and saw that the huge plume of smoke was still visible in the dark, lit from beneath by an angry red glow. Fire, or some other source, blazed light up to the bottom of the cloud bank, producing enough heat and light that they could see it from leagues away. Oliver gaped at the image, wondering just how much fire it would take to cast such a bright glow.
A flicker of shadow passed in front of the distant light.
“Did you see that?” queried Sam, a nervous trill in her voice.
“Captain Ainsley,” Oliver called. “Have the crew prepare at stations.”
“For what?” she shouted back.
“I don’t know,” he whispered under his breath, then louder added, “Prepare for combat!”
Around them, crew members scrambled to get in place, calling in curious voices but none of them failing to hasten to battle stations. Whether or not they knew the nature of the threat, they knew they were in the Darklands. They were prepared for anything, they thought.
Quietly, Sam whispered, “What was that? It looked far away, but… but if it was, then it must have been as big as us. Duke, no airship could have moved like that.”
He didn’t answer. His gaze was roving, looking out into the night sky. With the sun down, the world had faded to a dark blue. In the darkness, he couldn’t see anything, but he could hear something.
“What is that?” questioned Sam, taking his side and looking futilely into the night.
Long moments passed. The airship quieted as the crew found their stations and held ready.
“Sails?” wondered Oliver, ignoring Captain Ainsley who’d come to join them. “That could be the creak of sails?”
On the deck behind them, a man screamed.
Oliver spun to see the sailor staggering back from the deck gun, a bolt of feathered and stained wood sticking from his chest.
Another man cursed, gripping his arm where a bloom of blood was staining his shirt. Across the deck, a steel-tipped wooden arrow skipped to a stop.
“We’re under attack!” bellowed First Mate Pettybone.
The crew crouched beside what cover they could find, the gunners grabbing the deck guns and pivoting, but they had no targets. There was nothing they could see.
“Take cover, m’lord,” insisted Ainsley, grabbing the sleeve of Oliver’s jacket.
He shook her off, looking into the black, trying to locate the thumping he’d heard. The sweeps of the Franklin’s Luck, maybe, clawing at the air? Why would a fully armed airship be shooting arrows at them?
Another missile struck the deck, narrowly missing a man. Then two more whistled in from the opposite side, striking a sailor in the chest and the neck. He fell with a gargled yelp, his feet kicking briefly as he died.
“The fae lights!” cried Sam. “Hide them! They can see us but we can’t see them.”
“No!” roared Oliver. “Don’t hide them. Break the glass. Release the fae!”
“What?” asked Sam, glancing at him, confused.
Oliver darted to the globe behind them and yanked it from its hook. He smashed it on the deck of the airship.
The fae swirled up in a frenzy, and he waved them toward where he thought he heard the thumping. A dozen of the tiny creatures raced into the night, casting their glow on the sails of the airship and then onto something else.
“Frozen hell,” muttered Ainsley. “What is that?”
Big, the light reflecting dully on it, something thrashed and undulated in the air. Another globe of fae light was broken, and Oliver willed the little creatures into the sky. They raced around a body. A giant body. Clawed feet on short legs, a sinuous tail, and a long, muscular torso.
“Hells,” said Ainsley, peeking out from behind the gunwales. “It’s a lizard, like in Imbon.”
“Except this one’s got wings,” remarked Sam, her voice stilted and stunned, heavy with fear.
“It’s not a lizard,” hissed Oliver. “That is a spirit-forsaken dragon.”
“What?” cried Ainsley and Sam at the same time.
“It’s a dragon!” said Oliver again, his voice rising. “Hells, a—”
Another arrow came winging at them, and Oliver ducked, cursing.
“Captain,” he instructed. “We need to shoot back. See if we can strike that thing before it blows— Oh hells.”
“The ones in Imbon blew fire,” said Captain Ainsley, echoing his realization. She blinked, confused. Then suddenly the captain was bolting to the stairwell, leaping from the forecastle to the deck below. “Evasive action. Evasive action. Fire at will. Spirits forsake it, move! That damned thing can breathe fire!”
The Captain II
She reached the rear of the airship and yanked on the handle of the simple wooden box there. It remained stubbornly locked. There was a key to the thing somewhere in her cabin. Hells if she knew where. She yanked a pistol from her belt and stepped back, aiming the firearm at the locked box. The weapon cracked when she pulled the trigger, acrid smoke and the loud bang startling her and those around her. After opening the shattered door to the box, she grabbed one of the ropes and tugged it.
Beneath the deck of the airs
hip, a series of gears turned, tubes opened, and water began to pour out of the keel. They lurched higher, several crewmen falling to their knees from the unexpected speed of the ascent.
She spun, looking at the men near the deck guns. “Fire on the damned thing!”
They stared at her, dumbfounded. The airship rose, and the lights of the fae passed out of sight.
Snarling, Ainsley yelled to Pettybone. “Get below. I want every cannon ready. I’ll dump water on the rocks, and we’ll drop back down. When we pass, those damned cannons better be firing!”
“Captain,” shouted a man.
She turned and blinked. On the other side of the airship, more fae were swirling around a second giant, flying lizard. She refused to admit it was what the duke had said. It couldn’t be. Dragons were a myth.
The lizard’s mouth was open and it was making a strange, gargling noise.
Her eyes went wide. “Fire, you motherless sons, fire!”
A man spun a deck gun and lit the wick, splitting the night with the loud retort of the three-incher. It was an ill-aimed shot, and she didn’t need to look to see it was wide. In the open maw of the lizard, heat was building in wisps of orange and red.
She pulled the other cord in the box she’d broken open, dumping a tank of water on the stones in the hold. The airship dropped, and she felt her feet lift off the deck, and then suddenly, she crashed back down, cursing.
Drawing her second pistol, she pointed it up and aimed it at the lizards. She fired, knowing the small shot from her pistol wouldn’t stop a beast that large, but she had to do something. Around her, the crew had regained some, if not all, of their senses. More cracks of small arms popped off like children’s fireworks at the new year.
Like a master puppeteer, she gripped the second rope and pulled again, shutting off the water tanks, readying to dump it again and send them soaring. Hopefully, Pettybone had the cannoneers whipped into order now, and they would get a clean shot.