by William King
After what seemed like forever, a massive explosion sounded below them. Ulrik assumed that The Pride of Karnak had finally been destroyed but did not dare descend to investigate. He fought to keep his teeth from chattering, lest even that slight noise should let the enemy detect them.
Eventually, he fed some power to the engine. It coughed to life, and the lifeboat began to rise, emerging from the cloud. Ulrik kept it skimming forward, like a ship on the surface of misty sea, lest he needed to dive back into cover again.
There was no sign of any pursuers. They were alone in the sky, with only the late afternoon sun above them, and a churning plain of cloud below.
“That was too close,” Ulrik said.
“You speak the very essence of truth,” said Valerius. “However do not disparage the part that you and Rhea played in our escape. Without the pair of you we might not be here either. In particular I appreciate the skill you showed in piloting this craft. When we get back to civilisation I will see that you are suitably rewarded for it.”
Despite the fact he could hear the hypnotics in the mage’s voice, Ulrik found himself warmed by the praise. A surge of pain and despair through the control stick told him that they had a problem.
“The elemental is dying. I do not know how much longer it can keep us aloft.”
“I feared as much when the sorcerer hit us with that spell. It had the look of something intended to drain life from a victim, and being a creature of magic, the elemental would be particularly susceptible to it.”
“I am going to have to take us down,” said Ulrik. “It would not do to be so high and without power.”
“Do what you have to,” said Valerius. “Our lives are in your hands.”
“Do you have any sorcery that might help us?”
“Alas, levitation is not an area of competence in which I ever excelled. Had I known that I might end up in so dire a situation as this, I might have laboured a tad harder over my grimoires.”
“I take it that means no?”
“Your grasp of the situation is sound. It makes one proud to have someone so quick witted in one’s employ.” The mockery in Valerius’s voice was all too evident.
“There must be lift harnesses in the boat. We could take them and bail out,” said Rhea.
“And that would leave us in the middle of the wastelands with no water, no supplies and no means of transport. Crashing would be a mercy compared to that.”
“There is something I might try but I am loathe to do it while the engine is working.”
“What?”
“When the engine stops working I’ll let you know,” said Valerius. He and Rhea were busy rummaging around the in supply chests looking for lift harnesses.
Why me, Ulrik thought? It did not seem fair that he should have survived the Pit, only to end up here in a ruined air-boat powered by a dying elemental while below them pirates circled like waiting vultures. Even if they somehow managed to land safely, they would be stuck in the desert hundreds of leagues from civilisation.
Life was not fair, he told himself. He was just going to have to deal with it. A stab of poisoned energy through his hand told him the elemental was tottering on the edge of oblivion. There only seemed one thing for it. He pushed the stick forward. The engine stuttered, the flaps in the wings moved. The prow of the lifeboat pointed downwards. They descended once more into the clouds.
Once more the feeling of blindness, of imminent peril, threatened to overwhelm him. The thought that the cloud might run all the way to the ground, and that he was heading into a fatal crash nagged at his mind. It was joined by the idea that either the engine or the elemental might die before they made landfall. He ground his teeth. If he had believed in any benign gods he would have prayed to them.
They emerged from the cloud just as he had begun to fear the worst. He glanced desperately around and saw no sign of the air pirates. The rust red sands of the waste were still a long way beneath them. He pulled the stick back a little, making their descent into what he hoped would be a long slow glide. A glance at his fellow passenger’s faces told him they were all as tense as he was.
“I love this,” said Ulrik, which was true, now that he could see again. He enjoyed the sensation of height and speed and having his life in his own hands.
“Perhaps you would be better advised to give your attention to your flying rather than to conversation,” said Valerius. “Not that I wish to discourage you from becoming more communicative, but there is a time and a place for everything.”
All feeling of contact with the elemental died. The rotor coughed and began to spin down, the lifeboat lurched as the liftkeel cut out. The vehicle now had all the aerial manoeuvrability of a thrown stone.
Ulrik felt a brief stab of sympathy with the elemental. It had been drawn from its home plane, only to die here in a world not its own. The feeling faded to be replaced by one of panic.
“I take it that was not something good,” said Valerius.
“Well spotted,” muttered Ulrik, testing the stick and the foot pedals. At least, the ailerons and rudder were responding. Things could have been worse. “Is everybody strapped in?” he asked. “This is not going to be an easy landing.”
He scanned the Wastes below them, looking for a relatively flat piece of ground. He found what looked like a dried up river bed, running ahead of them. That would have to do. He sought out more landmarks- seeking any sign of human habitation and found none. Best worry about surviving the landing, he told himself, and then he could fret of dying of thirst and starvation in the wastelands.
The descent continued at frightening speed. He tried to keep it flat and smooth. He willed the elemental to come back to life. Nothing happened. He heard someone moving behind him and saw that Valerius had unstrapped himself and was crawling towards the runestone. Ulrik wondered if terror had finally driven the wizard mad.
Valerius laid his hands on the runestone and began to chant. A glow flowed from his hands, and the runestone’s surface lit up. Ulrik felt a faint flow of energy, different from that provided by the elemental, begin to pulse through the stick. The liftkeel began to support them, the rotor sputtered back to life. Ulrik threw it into reverse to slow them, and pulled the stick back to try and gain a little altitude.
“Get us down quickly,” said Valerius, agony in his voice. “After the battle I can’t keep this up for too long. The magic I worked back there has already drained me.”
Another fear struck Ulrik in the belly—perhaps the wizard would overextend himself and die. For him, the consequences of that would be as bad as any crash. He aimed for the river bed and brought the lifeboat down. Its runners squealed as they bit into the sand. Red dust filled the air around them. Pebbles and small bits of rock pinged off the lifeboat’s sides.
They skidded across the dry earth, bouncing and juddering until eventually they came to a halt. “Let me congratulate you on a fine landing,” said Valerius and passed out.
Ulrik looked around. They were stranded in endless leagues of deadly desert. Somewhere in the distance he heard the hissing roar of a poisonous sand dragon. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, he thought.
Chapter Eleven
Ulrik studied the deadly wastelands about them, parched drylands rolling away to the horizon. The landscape was mostly rust red but occasionally sand of a different colour - cobalt blue or imperial yellow -flowed through it. Great spires of tortured rock rose like demon towers over a sterile hell. Standing there it was easy to believe that they were the last people left alive on a planet cursed by demons. The world seemed old and dead. The sun was the unblinking eye of some unforgiving god who had passed final and fatal judgement on mankind.
Here and there tough plants grew- spinefex and cactus. A number of small mutated rodents scampered around in the shade and overhead, predatory reptiles soared.
“That was exciting,” said Rhea, clambering out of the lifeboat. The cat-girl’s fur was dusty but otherwise she looked just fine.
“So was fighting in the Pit. That does not mean I would like to go back to it.”
“I think we have other problems,” said the cat-girl.
“You mean being stuck in the desert with no food and no water, no idea of where we are and of how to get home?”
“Actually I was thinking of the fact that the elemental is dead and our airship is damaged.”
“I somehow forgot to include that in the list, didn’t I?”
“There is food here,” said Rhea, pointing at the hopping rodents. “And we can get water from those cactus. You have to watch for the spines. Some of them are poisonous. Some of them are hallucinogenic.”
“And some of them are drinkable; fortunately for us, I know which ones are which,” said Ulrik. “Mostly.”
“I think we’d better see how our lord and master is getting on,” said Rhea, vaulting lightly over the side of the lifeboat. The wizard was unconscious and pale as death, but at least he was still breathing. He had taken a few bruises but other than that physically he appeared fine. It was what else might have happened to him that worried Ulrik. A sorcerer could die if he over-drew on his power. Ulrik placed a hand over the implant in his chest. As far as he could tell, it was not about to break free just yet.
“Behold the mighty wizard,” said Ulrik. “You think we are going to need to carry him?”
“Give him some time to wake up. We won’t be moving until after sundown anyway. Best to move at night. Cooler then. We can navigate by the stars that way too.”
The cat-girl’s cheerfulness was starting to get on Ulrik’s nerves.
He began checking the lockers under the lifeboat’s seats and in its sides, discovering a fair supply of hard tack, as well as flasks of water. They also found a mage-compass set to the Typhon beacon. Ulrik did some swift calculations in his head. They had probably covered two hundred and fifty leagues or so. Add in another ten leagues or so for their flight on the lifeboat and they were very roughly forty days march at very best from Typhon if they moved in a straight line.
Of course that would be impossible, for not all of the wastelands were as welcoming as this area. Some parts would have no plant or animal life and no water. Some would be a trackless maze of dunes and iron sands, others would be tainted by the power of the subworld gates.
“What are you thinking?” asked Rhea.
“I am thinking we have a long walk ahead of us.”
“We could just stay with the lifeboat,” she suggested, not too convincingly. “The convoy will have sent out searchers by now. They might find us.”
“And we could sit here until the end of the world waiting for them, if they don’t. Of course by then we will have run out of food and water so we won’t have to worry about it. Or maybe the fleet won’t find us- maybe the pirates will.”
“I was just listing the options. Can you think of any others?”
“We could wait for Valerius to wake and see if he has any magic that will help us.”
Rhea moved to the edge of the dried up river bed, studying the distance. “It is lovely here,” she said. “It reminds me of the place where I grew up.”
Ulrik studied the reddish clouds, hanging low in the yellow sky and thought of all the monsters that roamed this place. Somewhere out there ancient gateways still smouldered, and the paths to hell glowed bright.
“I would not exactly call it lovely,” he said. “Anyway, we have work to do, let’s see what we can salvage.”
The Ring filled the sky with light. The moons raced across the blackness. Stars glittered coldly. The air had the faint metallic tang that Ulrik associated with night in the desert.
Rhea threw herself down beside him by the fire. In her hand she held a skinned rockrat. She slit its belly with one extended claw, gutted it and skewered it and then placed it in the ashes to bake. “A childhood treat. I prefer them raw,” she said, “but many people find the sight disturbing.”
“Your courtesy is greatly appreciated.” She cocked her head towards the airboat where Valerius slept.
“He seems exhausted, don’t you think?” Ulrik asked. “I am worried about him. He has not woken yet.”
“He can seem anything he wants—that is his gift,” said Rhea.
“You are not very trusting tonight.”
“I find a certain suspicion helps keep me alive.”
“A lack of trust is the start of wisdom, as my first captain used to say.”
Her warm fur nestled against him. She touched the area over the implant. He shrugged her hand away.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I once heard a philosopher say that this world is a prison and we are all damned souls trapped here to feed the demons.”
“That’s a gloomy thought,” she said.
“Another claimed that the world is a prison for demon gods and the gates were shut to keep them here.”
“You have been hanging out with some gloomy philosophers.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“You’re a strange man,” she said. “These are the sort of words I would expect from Valerius not from a sky pirate.”
“Sky pirates think all the time about crime and punishment and hell and damnation.”
“So it would seem. My old master once claimed that the Elder Gods abandoned this world after they bound the Demon Princes. The world is so old and so many lies have accreted one upon the other. Who can tell what is true and what is not? Do you think the Black Ship was a demon ship?”
“How would I know? I am not a wizard.”
“Perhaps we should ask Valerius?”
“I am not sure I want to know. If the Demon Princes have returned, the world will become a very dark place indeed.”
“Some would say it already is.”
“And on that gloomy thought I bid you good night.” He rose and went to lie by the other side of the fire.
She studied him as if disappointed by this response. He looked at her for a long time wondering what was going on here, and unsure as to why she was pushing herself on him. She was Valerius’s creature for sure, but then again, at this moment in time so was he.
He lay flat on his back staring up at the cold stars. The constellations he had learned as a boy glanced back down at him; the Reaper, the Wolf, the Demon’s Tail. Once, given enough time he could have used them to navigate back home. The only problem was that now, he had no idea where home was.
Sleep came.
Ulrik looked up at a strange sky. Overhead two suns blazed and a large moon glimmered palely through the clouds. He stood amidst an endless blighted forest, the like of which existed nowhere on Urath. The giant trees were ochre, orange and crimson, striated in various layers, rippled by a hot wind that made them whisper like angry ghosts.
He knew that this world was not his own but he had no idea how he had got there. Huge hive-like structures emerged from the forest. Around them buzzed clouds of insect-like things each as large as a man or larger. He felt exposed, knowing that the things were carnivorous and worse than carnivorous and yet at the same time he felt a certain kinship with them and he was not entirely sure why.
He fought down the urge to run, to hide, to flee into the endless jungle and get as far away from the potential hunters as he could. As he looked upon the creatures, he felt something pulse within his chest and looking down he saw that the flesh had begun to bulge and stir as if some small creature had burrowed within his chest and was desperately trying to emerge.
He felt no pain. He felt nothing at all except a strange rippling motion in his flesh. He knew that this was wrong, he wished that he had a knife so that he could slash his chest and let whatever was in there get free, but he was naked and unarmed.
Looking at himself he realised that he was no longer quite human. His skin felt tougher and perhaps that was the reason why the thing buried in his body could not get free. His nails were longer, more like claws. His eyes had changed as well, were covered by some tough translucent membrane that
protected them from the windborne poisonous spores.
Looking around, he could see that there were the ruins of a buried city hidden by the jungle surrounding him. The huge ziggurats were so overgrown by creepers and vines as to be almost invisible. Mould and moss blurred their outlines until they looked almost like natural hills but here and there statues and massive doorways told him that this was the work of intelligent beings.
He felt certain that this city had not been built by the insect-like creatures. He was sure that once human beings have lived here. As he watched, the wind blew aside a curtain of hanging moss, revealing a huge statue that lay beneath. The features were familiar and it took a long time to realise that the man looked like Valerius. His features had been eroded by centuries of time but it was still recognisably the wizard. More than that, there was something sentient, God-like about the statue, a sense of a powerful intelligence, of a living presence.
The statue reached out with one colossal stone hand, pulled itself upright and gazed around with gargantuan, empty eyes. It looked down on Ulrik like a man contemplating some tiny insect and its lips began to move, slowly, like those of some great ancient god sprung to life.
“Interesting,” it said. Ulrik looked up at it astonished. It was the last thing he had expected the statue to say.
“I had expected something more oracular,” Ulrik said.
“This is a dream. We are both asleep.” The voice belonged to Valerius, greatly magnified.
“So I have just come to realise.”
“I suspected that something like this might happen.”
“You suspected what?”
“That the spell with which I bound the demon might also bind us in some strange way. And it appears that I was correct. One moment I was enjoying the splendours of the harem at the Emperor’s court, and now I find myself, somewhere else and in quite a different form than the one I would normally choose to wear.”
“I think it’s one that suits your egotism.”