The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  Sedrich’s eyes were calculating. He reached down to tousle one of the animals between the ears.

  He didn’t have to reach far.

  “Yes, Father, the paddle wheels need to rotate independent of each other, so the boat may be steered.

  “I’ll make a drawing after supper.”

  II: Mistress of the Sisterhood

  “We have charged man, that he be kind to his parents; his mother bore him painfully, and she gave birth to him; his bearing and his weaning are thirty months.”—The Koran, Sura XLVI

  Sedrich Owaldsohn was a blacksmith, as anyone could tell from the ebon lines imprinted upon his palms, his fingertips, underneath his stubby fingernails.

  Had the man purified himself ten times a day, instead of the required five—Owaldsohn was ne’er one to permit cleanliness to lapse into empty ritual, as his son would attest, presenting well-chafed skin as evidence—his vocation would have marked him nonetheless. It had been thus since he was himself a boy. When yellow iron bellows in the quenching bath, be it oil or water or icy brine, the outer layer is transformed into ink, giving the blacksmith his name.

  By the time the pair were hungry for the evening meal, Young Sedrich’s arms were black from the shoulder down—a first intimation he’d follow in his father’s profession. They’d spent the remainder of the day heat-treating steel billets for shoulder-bow prods, replacement parts for hunting weapons fashioned from hair-fine glass, bound together with tree sap hardened with a substance which was a secret of the village resiner. The stock would be of bonded wood, even linen.

  There had been talk of renewed trouble with the Red Men. The canton was in the throes of grim preparation.

  Owaldsohn claimed his greatsword from a nail driven in the shed-rafter where it hung when he was working. Whistling up the dogs, they began walking the hundred yards separating the smithy from their family home.

  It was a warm evening in the summer. Owaldsohn’s claimstake, defined on this side by a sea-cliff, overlooked the eastern ocean, upon whose surface the slanting sun, low over fields and forests to the west, picked out an occasional whitecap. Partway to the house they paused, hoping to glimpse an iceberg, or, perhaps, to catch the rarer sighting, even more fascinating, of a spouting whale.

  “Father, look!” the boy shouted. “A ship, at the edge of the world! It must be passing tall! It twinkles, flashing and fading in a rhythm, as if...as if—”

  “I see it, son, although just.”

  Owaldsohn put a hand on Sedrich’s shoulder, peering with middle-aged eyes in the direction his son was pointing.

  “As if what?”

  “As if the sails were somehow turning like...like windmill blades, only—”

  He paused, lacking words to continue.

  “Horizontal,” his father supplied. “As if in the same plane as a gristmill. I believe you’re right, now you point it out.”

  He looked at the boy.

  “To what purpose, d’you suppose?”

  Sedrich screwed his face up, concentrating.

  He shook his head.

  “Think about your own boat, Sedrich.”

  The boy laughed. “Why, you could gear such a contrivance to a pair of paddle wheels, Father! You could—”

  Owaldsohn joined his son in laughter. “And what a stench old tattooed Woeck would raise o’er that!”

  The glittering alien vessel disappeared.

  They resumed walking.

  “Hello, the house! Ilse, we’re home!”

  As they trod the walkstones leading to the long log structure, Sedrich saw what his father had. His mother had arrived already. Her staff lay propped against the doorframe, a sign she was available if needed.

  The staff was as tall as she, a finger’s width in breadth, fashioned of copper. His father would have given much to learn its secret, brought by Mistresses of the Sisterhood from the Old World, sacred to ceremonies of forging from which all save Mistresses were excluded. Ilse herself had fashioned it, as was required. At one end it tapered for some distance to a needle-sharp point. At the other, a crook, also sharp-ended, presented a broad surface, back of the bend, which could be used, and often was, as an effective club.

  Sometimes Owaldsohn would, with a grin, offer to fashion her a better one. In equal humor she would, of course, refuse. Annoying, for a blacksmith to see butter-soft alloy ensorcelled into something rivaling honest metal in steel-hard durability. It wouldn’t have been impossible to learn its secret. Yet, not for immortality itself would Owaldsohn have violated the trust which lay between them.

  Just now, both crook and pointed end were lacquered with dried blood. Both dogs sniffed curiously and growled.

  “Mother’ll be in a bad mood,” Sedrich observed.

  His father grimaced in agreement, reaching for the latch-rope.

  The stoop-stone had been scrubbed and was already drying. Thus Sedrich understood that little Frae Hethristochter had already gone for the day. He surprised himself by feeling disappointed. Frae was a neighbor-girl who helped Ilse with the house. An unusual arrangement it was, a potential source of jealousy among the village women had it not been for his mother’s sacred duties. The child’s widowed father, for all he was closer to Sedrich’s age than Owaldsohn’s, acted by mutual consent as a local arbiter. He often spoke for the village in regional councils.

  “He is also a cheap son of a bitch,” Owaldsohn growled as if in answer to Sedrich’s unspoken comment. “Willing to put an infant to profitable labor!” He shook his head.

  Sedrich knew what he was thinking. Apprenticeship was one thing—any child must learn a trade. However, in this village of a hundred houses, Sedrich and Frae were the only children between babyhood and marriageability. Of all the loose confederation upon the eastern shoreline—or at least those hundred villages within a week’s energetic walk—this one was considered fortunate. Neighbors were inclined to offer an opinion—if they did nothing else—regarding how a child was raised.

  Owaldsohn laughed as he perceived that Sedrich’s thoughts paralleled his own. “Well, son, it could be worse. To a man of Oln Woeck’s beliefs, for example—Fiery Cross and Sacred Heart—our practices of cleanliness are empty rituals, imposed by a community which would burn him out did he not make some visible concession to them.”

  “Thou shalt not suffer a rat to live,” intoned Sedrich, echoing the teachings of an admittedly brief lifetime.

  Ah, well. Hethri Parcifal held to the customs. Mother esteemed Frae a bright girl, learning the way of the Sisterhood from simple exposure to Sedrich’s family. She’d turn out proper e’en if she lacked a mother of her own to teach her.

  “As in the days of our fathers,” Owaldsohn responded, “so ne’er mote it be again.”

  They entered.

  The small house was spotless, walls scrubbed until, had the bark not been peeled in the building of the place, there would have been none left in any case. Curtains, clothing, bedding were changed each morning. Despite the day’s warmth, flames rolled in an enormous hearth.

  Sedrich scarcely noticed.

  Twin models of decorum, Willi and Klem took places flanking the great door. They were as clean as the house itself, having spent most of the day, as was the wont of their breed, bathing in the salt-surf.

  Hanging the greatsword on the wall beside a massive shoulder-bow—from this weapon’s cranequin had young Sedrich got the idea for his boat-crank—Owaldsohn strode across the polished hardwood floor to embrace his wife.

  “Put this day aside,” he murmured, “now we’re home together.”

  “How is it you always anticipate my mood?”

  Ilse Sedrichsfrau, initiated Ilse Olavstochter, was a small woman, slender, dark-haired with a tracery of gray, her cheekbones high and prominent. Unlike the blue eyes which marked her husband, hers were dark, set like those of Red Men, slanted, with foldless lids in oval framing. She wore a homespun shift, her flower-decorated hair bound back with patterned ribbon in anticipation of the evening rit
ual. She was more often visible to neighbors in robes of the Sisterhood, her hair unbound, flowing over her shoulders toward the small of her back.

  “Your staff outside,” replied her husband, peeling off his work-stained vest, “wants cleaning.”

  She shook her head, a sour look on her face.

  “Let the night air cleanse it first. Perhaps then ’twill be fit to touch.”

  “Gunnarsohn’s house blessing?” Sedrich asked.

  She nodded. “I don’t understand what people think about.”

  “You speak of Ivarsohn, the house-carpenter?” Owaldsohn sneered. “A Pest upon him!”

  Ilse chuckled. Used to her husband’s language, she didn’t flinch at the obscenity.

  Owaldsohn skinned off his knee-length moccasins, placed them in a cabinet on an outside wall with vest and breechclout. Ilse put in Sedrich’s garments before she closed the door.

  Sedrich himself, bare and shivering, padded off to another room.

  From a table candle—dinner was already laid but would wait until after the ritual—she lit a stick of pungent incense, placing it before a grille below the cabinet. A draft drew it, through the wire racks and the clothing they held, out into the evening stillness to mingle with incense from other dwellings. Compounded by the Sisterhood, people could breathe it with the mildest discomfort. Yet no insect could live within its fragrant embrace.

  Owaldsohn growled, pulled the eagle feathers from his tangled hair. Holding his breath, he tossed them into the cabinet, slamming the door behind them.

  The puff of smoke he released thus dissipated.

  Ilse laughed. “Ivarsohn left the place with open spaces along the walls and under the roof. Gunnarsohn failed to notice. The house is sawdust new, Husband, yet I killed three large rats before the blessing could be completed!”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Hence the stains upon your crook. Well, isn’t it what the blessing—and the Sisterhood—are for, my love?”

  “Ivarsohn’s a Cultist,” she replied with ill humor. “Each year grow they in number and influence. ’Tis a bad omen.”

  “A pox,” Owaldsohn roared, “upon Thor Ivarsohn, Oln Woeck, the whole smelly gaggle of superstitious shave-pates!”

  He told her of Sedrich’s morning confrontation.

  She shook her head. “No Mistress ought to criticize the Cult, nor would the Cult in theory take issue with the Sisterhood. ’Tis no matter of choosing ’tween them. Each has its place in the way of things, preserving tradition, protecting the present—”

  “Caring not a fart for the future!”

  “Sedrich!”

  He laughed a wicked laugh. Heaping more charcoal into the already blazing fireplace, which jutted, open upon three sides, into the broad room, the naked blacksmith climbed five tiled steps, easing his grimy body into the tub above it. The younger of the massive canines, Willi, whistled wistfully. It had taken the family months to discourage both dogs from joining in the family bath.

  Owaldsohn groaned with pleasure as the near-boiling water sloshed about him.

  “Did you speak to me, Mother?”

  The boy had reappeared, a towel wound about his loins, displaying a recent adolescent modesty. His father sometimes teased him, threatening to invite Frae to bathe with them some evening.

  The boy’s blushes were soon lost in the color the hot bath brought to his skin.

  “No, dear.” Ilse was the last to join them, bearing a tray of colorful tumblers beaded with condensation. “To your father, who often says things in haste he oughtn’t.” Her vocation wouldn’t permit her to partake of fermented or distilled beverages, and Sedrich, she maintained, was too young. Nor would Owaldsohn drink alone. Thus did they imbibe—the blacksmith in a grudging spirit—of cold peppered fruit juice, as steam from the heated waters rose about their shoulders.

  As always, when there were rumors about the sighting of a ship—today’s was the first he’d himself seen—Sedrich begged to hear again of the Invaders of the Elder World. It had been his favorite bedtime tale in infancy. Now it was his favored conversation at the evening time.

  “We’ve no way of telling truly whether they be Invader vessels,” Ilse cautioned, “or those fashioned by some other stranger.”

  Fumbling beneath the scalding water, Sedrich produced the towel he’d worn, wrung it out, and set it on the tile beside the bath.

  “This I know, Mother, for they ne’er make landfall in the New World.”

  “So ’tis said....” She pursed her lips, thinking, Sedrich knew, of those two items which, more than any others, made life as it was lived in their village possible—cotton cloth and iron pipe—and of the generally accepted explanation that they originated in villages much like this one, “far to the south.”

  “Likeliest”—his father turned the tap to cool the tub, watching his son from the corner of his eye—”they be not Invaders, for then they’d come ashore, wreaking conquest as of old.”

  Sedrich wriggled in the hot water, delightful shivers of terror traveling up his backbone.

  His mother continued. “All we possess are legends, Sedrich, of which the Sisterhood—”

  She looked to her husband. “Yes, and the Cult, after its own fashion—are custodian.”

  Owaldsohn gazed through the steam, out the great windows to the sea beyond.

  “Those legends speak of times in Eldworld when great men dared greater deeds.”

  “Yet,” answered Ilse, “they were cut down in their pride, nine hundred nine and ninety out of every thousand. In weakened numbers, those remaining could venture naught but to retreat before unnamed and numerous Invaders from the south.”

  “Unnamed,” repeated Sedrich, almost to himself.

  His mother heard.

  “No tale or book I know of names them.”

  She nodded toward a case of volumes across the room, each hand-lettered, passed down to fewer heirs each generation by their predecessors.

  “See for yourself, young sir.”

  Sedrich made a face.

  “I am a blacksmith, Mother. I want naught to do with books.”

  “Yet you show a talent for them ’twould be sinful to neglect. Pity poor Frae who, unmothered and unlettered, must needs learn to read and write from me five years later than she ought.”

  “Frae is a girl!”

  Owaldsohn chuckled, then assumed serious aspect.

  “Would I had time for learning, son, though most men cannot. ’Twould be a help in the forge—fashioning springs, for instance. As is, I need remember size and heat and quench and draw for a thousand which were better marked down.

  “Should something e’er happen to me—”

  All three rapped on the resin-impregnated tub-edge.

  “—you’d at least possess the writing of it.”

  Ilse spoke. “Sedrich, you should value Frae more. She is intelligent, no ordinary barren female falling into the Sisterhood for aught else better. Hers is a powerful gift.”

  She mused, “’Twould be a merry thing to induct my own marriage-daughter.”

  Owaldsohn made a noise which was half laugh, half growl.

  “Sedrich is too young by far for such discussion to be decent, Ilse!”

  “Ne’er any harm in discussing, dear,” his wife replied. “Plans for Sedrich’s future are important. He was such a long time coming! We won’t be with him long to guide his footsteps.”

  Young Sedrich’s ears reddened as his parents spoke of him thus in his presence. As before, the embarrassed reaction was disguised by the heat of the bath.

  “Nor should we be, woman, for, by St. Willem and St. Klemmet”—by the doorway, both dogs perked their ears at mention of their names—“he’ll soon be a man in his own right!”

  “Which was my point.” Ilse overlooked Owaldsohn’s self-contradiction. “Husband, always you force me to consider truths I might not otherwise confront. I’ll return the favor: I see no reason not to begin learning letters, e’en for one of your venerable years!”
/>   Bested, Owaldsohn made a sour face.

  Sedrich laughed.

  Spilling both their drinks in the doing of it, his father seized the boy and pressed his head beneath the water, holding him there as he flailed. Of a sudden, Sedrich fell limp, lying thus, face below the surface, for a long time.

  Owaldsohn, in alarm, hauled him up and shook him.

  A moment passed.

  Then Sedrich’s breath exploded into his father’s face. He laughed until his own turned redder even than it had been.

  III: The Cult

  “I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak from the evil of what He has created, from the evil of darkness when it gathers, from the evil of

  the women who blow on knots, from the evil of an envier when he

  envies.”—The Koran, Sura CXIII

  Beneath the slanted beams of a loft he’d claimed as his own upon first leaving his baby crib, Sedrich pondered his parents’ words as he prepared for sleep.

  The room was small, cluttered with the many artifacts of imaginative boyhood.

  From the center joist dangled an artful miniature rowboat equipped with crank and paddle, which he’d pieced together from parchment scraps and bits of wire.

  Where one wall was vertical the boy had hung a dozen facsimiles of knives, swords, axes, edged weapons customers had ordered, which Owaldsohn had first try-fashioned out of wood. One or two more fanciful in form young Sedrich had carved out, which had not yet found a life in steel.

  That would wait until his eye and hand were surer.

  No thought had he given to marriage, being but eleven—although precocious. This last he understood with an unmodest certainty few adults carry away from childhood. He was aware no Helvetian was allowed to marry until a child of the union-to-be had been conceived. From a boy’s point of view, marriageable girls were mercifully rare. In their village of a hundred houses, but two families boasted of children Sedrich’s age—Owaldsohn and Parcifal. Of families with younger infants there were perhaps another three or four.

  The full moon, orange on the horizon, poured itself through the round leaded window set into the other vertical end-wall. Sedrich blew the candle out and slid between the worn, familiar blankets of the low pallet he was accustomed to sleep upon. He lay back, arms folded behind his head, and thought about his village as if it were the dwelling-place of strangers he, a visitor from far away, must strive to understand.