by William King
“Obviously. This is your dream after all. I am just a visitor here.”
“You mean you’re telling me that this is real that I am actually talking to you in my sleep.”
“I expect so.”
“Then what is this place?”
“Don’t you recognise it? Isn’t it some place from your thoughts or memories?”
Ulrik shook his head. “I do not know this place.”
“Interesting.”
“I wish you would stop saying that.”
“But it is interesting. This is very coherent, far more so than a dream ought to be. And it has remained fixed throughout this conversation when it really ought not to have.”
“What are you saying?”
“Something is holding our vision of this place stable, and if it’s not you and it’s definitely not me, it must be something else.”
It took a little while for Valerius’s meaning to sink in. “You means this world is the dream of the demon you implanted in my chest.”
“Such would be my guess.”
“Then it is sentient.”
“It is dormant. It dreams. We are in the world of its ancestors.”
“How would it know what it looks like? It was just an egg.” The ludicrousness of this conversation was starting to affect Ulrik now. It was at once funny and menacing to stand beneath this alien sky and discuss the meaning of a dreaming demon’s memories with a colossal statue.
“The Malashtra’s minds do not work like ours do. They pass on memories to their offspring. It is coded in their genetic helixes.”
“So we are standing in the memories of the demon’s mother?”
“Apparently.”
“And it looks as if humans once lived here too.”
“That might be a figment of your own imagination, as I suspect this statue is.”
“Or it might not.”
“That too is possible. The Malashtra were conquerors of many worlds. They might have taken our world too had they not been driven back by the sorcery of my ancestors.”
“They were warriors then?”
“They had a warrior caste, very numerous and very powerful. Many were specially bred to perform different functions, like blood ants or some other forms of insect in our world. And they used other living things in which to lay their eggs.”
Ulrik slapped the moving patch beneath his skin. It did not stop moving. He felt no pain. “And that’s what you implanted in me.”
“Indeed.”
“You are a bastard.”
“I do what is necessary to ensure my own survival. You are no different.”
Valerius’s voice was like thunder, the grating roar of a stone god speaking. The earth beneath seemed to vibrate in tune and the buildings all around began to crumble and slide. A crack appeared in the earth at Ulrik’s feet and he had to spring to one side to avoid being swallowed. As he did so he noticed hordes of insectoid creatures pouring forth, like a swarm of man-sized ants. They scuttled across the ground as if directed by one will, and Ulrik found himself fighting down the urge to join them.
He woke covered in cold sweat.
Chapter Twelve
“That’s it, you’re doing fine,” said Valerius, watching as the Ulrik straightened out the rotor blade with his hands. He still looked tired. There were bags underneath his eyes, and lines in his face where there had been none before but at least he was awake.
Rhea lounged on the prow of the ship, apparently napping but Ulrik was aware of her occasional quick challenging looks.
He had stripped the rotor engine and cleaned the inner workings. As he had suspected they had become partially clogged by gobbets of flesh. The landing runners were twisted but the wings, ailerons and rudder all appeared to be working. If Valerius could power the vessel again, they would be able to get the lifeboat into the air. What happened after that would be left to the Lords of Chance.
Ulrik was enjoying himself. For a moment he even managed to forget the strange dreams of the night before. He liked it out here in the Wastes, and the work reminded him of his youth, and his early days as an air sailor. There was a certain satisfaction to be gained from overhauling the engine, like solving an intricate puzzle. It was good to feel there was something he had control over when so much of his life was beyond his ability to influence.
“How long?” Valerius asked from behind him.
“We’ll be finished by this evening. The bulk of the work is already done.”
“Will it hold to Typhon?”
Ulrik shrugged. “The Gods alone know. We’ve done our best and that is all we can do.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” said Valerius.
“I had a strange dream last night,” Ulrik said.
“I know. I was in it.”
“Then we are bound by the spell you cast. As you said in the dream.”
“It appears so. An unexpected side effect of the process. It just goes to show you can never predict all the consequences of your actions.”
Ulrik was not sure whether he believed the wizard. Valerius did not seem like a man who performed any action without calculating the risks. Then again, he had bought Ulrik’s bond on a whim, or so he claimed.
“How did that happen?”
“The spell links us and I was very tired. My control might have slipped. The demon might have edged a little closer to freedom.”
“That’s not a reassuring thought.”
“I will do better in the future. I will need to, for both our sakes.”
Ulrik did not really want to know what the wizard meant by that statement. It was clear that Valerius did not really want to answer any more questions either. He walked away to the edge of the camp and stood looking out into the desert.
Rhea stared at them as if baffled by this exchange. Ulrik returned to making repairs.
Darkness fell swift as a sword stroke. A cold wind sent dark clouds scudding across the sky. Valerius pronounced himself ready to try his hand at propelling them. He warned them that he was going to be in a trance the whole while and not to disturb it lest his powers fail. Ulrik was to fly for half an hour and then set the ship down. He did not want to overstrain himself when it might be the only way of getting them home. Ulrik could see the sense in that. He only hoped they did not encounter any pirate ships. Under these circumstances a chase would not last long.
Valerius sat with his hand touching the runestone. Rhea sat behind Ulrik. All their supplies were fastened in place. Ulrik had the locator compass strapped to his wrist. The plan was that they would fly in the general direction of Typhon, and stop if they found a settlement or the convoy.
He touched the control stick and felt a faint flow of strange energy. He ordered lift and for long tense moments, nothing happened, then the airship began to drift upwards. He cut in the engines and the rotor turned, not with the energy it had possessed when the elemental lived but still with considerable force. He tested the controls and found them responsive.
“We’re away,” he said at last, pointing the prow at the sky and sending full power to the engine.
He was glad to be aloft and awake. At least tonight, as they flew, there was no chance that he would dream.
Ulrik set the lifeboat down beside the remains of the huge airship, Rhea had seen from the air. Valerius clambered out and hobbled wearily through the mass of torn metal. Ulrik joined him swiftly. It was possible that there were desert scorpions or rainbow vipers taking shelter.
“It’s The Pride of Karnak,” said Valerius. He sounded like an old man.
The light of the Ring cast long shadows through the remains of the fuselage. Huge spars of metal jutted overhead like the ribcage of some dead leviathan, vibrating as the wind whistled through the metal, singing the funeral dirge of the downed airship. Sand had entered the hull and partially buried it
“They stripped her clean,” said Ulrik. “No supplies. No survivors.”
He could not keep the disappointment out of his voic
e. He had hoped they might be able to salvage something useful from her. They had circled the ship from one end to the other and found only a few broken packing crates and the twisted metal of the enormous hull. The runestones were gone and so were the liftkeel nodes. The engines had been taken right down to the propellers. There was some clothing fluttering from the jagged metal or driven skittering across the rocks by the wind. There were no bodies.
“It’s like army ants went over her,” said Rhea.
“They are thorough, whoever they are,” said Valerius. He studied the horizon as if he expected a black ship to come racing over it at any time.
“We’re not going to find anything here. It’s definitely your House’s ship though, isn’t it?” Ulrik was already certain it was but he just did not want to admit it while there was the possibility of a mistake.
Valerius pointed to some painted letters still visible on a section of the scorched hull. Ulrik could just make out the word Karnak. He picked up the remnants of a banner that showed the ships name and the sign of his House. “This was her, all right,” he said. He shook his head, visibly upset, although Ulrik could not tell whether it was over the financial loss to his House or because of the loss of life.
“She was a beautiful ship,” Valerius said eventually. “I would like to get my hands on the bastards who did this to her.”
“So would I,” said Ulrik and was surprised to find that he meant it.
The night air rushed by. The airboat seemed to hang suspended in the sky while the wastelands scrolled by beneath. The rotor whirred, the liftkeel spurted ozone. The wind whistled through the broken windscreen. Ulrik felt supremely alive at that moment. He loved the feeling of night and speed and altitude. Nothing compared to it.
The Ring’s light glowed bright through the clouds, casting long shadows across the barren Wastes. Down below large animals, frightened by their passing, raced away. Once he heard the roar of a big predator, most likely a banthar. In the pilot’s chair, with all his attention focused on his surroundings he felt quite alone, as if he could fly to the furthest horizon if he wished, and were the master of his own fate. He decided then and there that no matter what it took, he would win free of Valerius somehow and own a ship again. It was what he had been born to do.
His eyes had adjusted to compensate for the darkness, and he could make out details that would have been invisible to a normal man. Around a pool stood a herd of threehorn wyrms, huge saurians sometime used by the Uruks for transport, famous for their short tempers and massive shields of bone that protected their heads and necks.
In the distance a pool of magic shimmered over a massive section of the desert, marking the entrance point to a demonic subworld sealed by wizards in times long gone by. It had the colour of oily water to his enhanced sight. He adjusted the course of the lifeboat to circumnavigate it. Such areas were dangerous, not just because they interfered with the flows of mystical energy within the craft but because they give rise to terrible mutations and were home to monsters. Any wise person avoided them. He tried to imagine the scale of the ancient disaster that had led to the creation of such things but he could not.
He was glad when he spotted an oasis pool just before dawn. There was nothing bigger than a few rabbit-rats and a wasteland fox near it, even so he circled it a few times to make sure there were no ambushers lurking in wait before he set the lifeboat down.
Everyone was grateful for the chance to get out and stretch their legs. Valerius roused himself from his trance and staggered to the water’s edge. Ulrik kept within sight just in case. It was not unknown for poisonous serpents or desert raptors to lurk near a pool. Some were homes to water kraken or rogue elementals. Nothing threatened them though. The weather was fine and clear, the water pure and there was even some small game to be brought down. Ulrik cooked it over an open fire.
Rhea lay curled up at his feet, basking in the heat of the fire. She had used the water to get herself clean and now looked up at him with an air of expectation. At least he thought it was expectation. He could read nothing in those cat eyes. She glanced over at Valerius. He lay asleep in the back of the life-raft, covered in blankets against the pre-dawn chill. She stretched luxuriously in a way that emphasised her lithe female form. Catching Ulrik’s gaze on her, she licked her sharp teeth with her very pink tongue.
“You must be cold up there,” she said.
“A little.”
“We could huddle together for warmth.” There was an invitation in her voice.
“Valerius,” he said.
“The master is asleep. He will not wake soon. I have seen him like this before, after he has cast some great spell. He is very weak at the moment. If he has access to Black Lotus he would take it to renew his strength.”
“Powering the life-raft drained him so much?”
“Maybe that. Maybe all of the combat spells he used before that. Most likely some combination of the two. I have never seen him so exhausted.”
In the firelight Rhea looked very human and it had been a long time since he had lain with a woman. She seemed to sense this. He supposed it was one of the gifts bred into her. She raised herself so that she faced him, her hands resting on his thighs.
She turned her hands over so the fur on their backs touched his flesh. It was an odd sensation like being rubbed with a rough towel. Her eyes caught the firelight and glowed. At that moment it was easy to believe that there was some demon in her heritage. It did not make her any less attractive.
He reached out to touch her cheek. She caught his hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong. She took his fingers and ran them along her lips. Those felt human enough. She unfastened his garments, but left his weapon belt close to hand.
Ulrik grabbed her and held her close. She fought back with surprising strength, pushing him onto his back and straddling him. She was ready when he entered her, and her back arched as she cast her head back and let out a low throaty chuckle that was rich with satisfaction and a certain malice. At that point Ulrik was beyond caring.
Afterwards they rolled apart and Ulrik lay on his back starting at the sky. Rhea seemed to fall instantly asleep but whether that was actually the case, Ulrik could not tell. He envied her. He had no desire to fall asleep and into the world of his strange dreams.
Chapter Thirteen
Overhead the Ring glowed in the evening sky. The lifeboat bumped in faint turbulence as it surged through the air. In the distance, Ulrik saw lights glittering atop a skyland, a huge chunk of rock drifting in the air above the desert, a flying mountain, sides marked by moss and scarred and pitted, enormous caverns gaping in it side like the maws of some titanic beast. The roots of trees clutched rock like the frantic fingers of a man about to fall off the mountain side. A cloud of desert birds surrounded it, for it was doubtless their home.
He wondered what could keep such a massive chunk of stone floating over the wastelands. Perhaps Valerius could explain it to him some day.
He swerved the lifeboat to investigate the cluster of stone domes, windmills and defensive turrets on the skyland’s top. It was, as he had suspected, a wastelander fortress village.
He pointed the township out to Valerius.
“What do you think?” the wizard asked, his voice so quiet as to be almost inaudible. His eyes had barely opened. His face was lined with fatigue. He looked as if he was about to expire at any moment.
“We might be able to get shelter and supplies, and they may be on the route of a tramp airship.”
Valerius nodded. “I am not sure I will be able to power this ship all the way to Typhon. If we’re lucky they may have a replacement runestone we can hook up to the engine. What are the chances of them being hostile?”
“There’s always that chance. They might be Isolates or reavers and try and take us for all we’ve got. Place like this in the middle of nowhere- they might even think we’re fresh meat.”
Ulrik glanced back at Valerius; he looked pale and listless, life was visibly being sucked out
of him by the flight. “I think we should go in. We’re armed and even if they are not friendly we should be able to hold them off long enough to make a getaway.”
“I don’t like the look of those turrets. They may have alchemical cannon.”
“Or they might just be for show, to scare off sky raiders.”
Valerius considered for a moment, weighing the alternatives. Eventually he shrugged.
“Take us in then and we’ll see what happens.”
They swept in over the open castings of an old mine. Ulrik felt almost nostalgic as he made out more details of the village: adobe huts and moisture traps made from stretched windsail; tall windmills, with their small blades high above rickety towers used to pump water into the crystal greenhouses and through the tiny gardens; a number of small airboats tied down outside individual houses; the larger structures that must be the local tavern and general store.
It all reminded him of his youth. The place stank of poverty and making do and of people too poor or too long entrenched to ever consider going anywhere else. Judging by the number of small ships the place most likely had an artificer or a wizard of all trades and maybe, just maybe, they might be able to replace the runestone of their craft. If nothing else, if Valerius had enough money, they should be able to hire a new ship for the onward journey.
The lifeboat came to rest on its runners in the central square. Ulrik and Rhea jumped out. Ulrik turned to Valerius. “Got any cash? I might need some.”
Valerius nodded and tossed him a pouch. It felt heavy and it jingled in the right way. Ulrik strolled over to the tables.
“Evening,” he said to the nearest onlookers, ill-clad locals sitting under glowglobes at tables near the tavern, smoking pipes, playing pogue or shufflecard. They were lean, tanned seamed-faced men and women dressed in leather and broadcloth. Most had the crystal goggles and face-scarves of the deep waste traveller. Heavy gauntlets lay on the table in front of them. Nobody reached for a weapon. Everybody measured them with their eyes.
“What you want?” asked one old timer, taking a swig from the glass in front of him.