The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  “I’ll tell him, Grandmother, I’ll—Grandmother? Ilse!”

  It was as if the old woman had nodded off to sleep, one hand resting upon her mending, the other hanging, relaxed, over the edge of her cot. A gentle smile lay upon her careworn face. Bending close beside her, he could feel no breath against his cheek, no pulse within her thin wrist, nor at the base of her neck.

  Owald sat beside her in silence for a long while, watching a small spider repair the damage he’d done to its web entering the hut. Midday came, later on the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. At last he covered Ilse with the knitted blanket she’d draped across her knees. Taking with him the little leather notebook, he ducked beneath the spider’s web, taking his last leave of the hovel.

  Her Sisters would give Ilse proper burial.

  He’d left the compound and the village before dark.

  3

  Unnoticed, either by the two men or the dark-eyed girl who listened past a barrier of foreign language, the engines of the airship throbbed inside the room.

  “The rest of it,” Owald finished at length, “is simple enough, though a long time in the happening.

  “I headed west, but was neither as lucky nor as wise as my father. I lost aught I carried in the sea-wide river which divides the forest from the plains. I was captured by the Sioux ere I saw the Great Blue Mountains. In chains transported, as a slave, to their stony feet. Not a tale I’m much proud of.”

  Fireclaw had risen during Owald’s speech. He stood staring out the odd round window at the mountains passing beneath the great ship. Now he turned to his son.

  “How’d you come to soldier for His Imperial What’sit?”

  Owald glanced round about to see who’d overheard the blasphemous epithet. Then he relaxed, laughing.

  “Zhu Yuan-Coyotl told you the truth. Not a thing e’er leaves Han-Meshika, Father, artifices, knowledge, people—in particular that which first comes in from the outside. ’Tis our—’tis its—greatest strength. No one outside knows aught about it, while it knows aught that passes in this whole wide world.”

  Fireclaw dragged the other chair beside that his son occupied. Elbows upon his knees, Owald leaned forward.

  “While impressed by my prowess as a warrior, the savages were afraid to keep me as their own. Far from being the model slave, I became property to a succession of increasingly dissatisfied owners, sold further and further west.”

  He moved closer.

  “We may even have crossed paths upon one occasion. I believe I was among a number of ‘guests’ who stopped at your ranch for water and a rest. I never saw you, but guessed later from mutterings about our host, the mighty Fireclaw, who you might be.”

  Owald hesitated, then added, “Slave-runners have a potion with which they treat the only food they give their captives. It numbs the will, but leaves the sensibilities intact. I’d have given you proper greeting at your ranch, were it not for the fact I never thought to do it.”

  He shuddered.

  “The drug also dulls the fighting-spirit, and the capacity to breed more slaves, so it is withdrawn once captives are brought within Han-Meshika. I learned afterward it’s used there as medicament for certain distempers of the blood.”

  He leaned back again.

  “I came at last into the Sun’s domain, where, drawing some attention with my fighting skills, I came into his service, eventually joining and coming to lead the elite contingent of his guard.”

  Fireclaw, his brow wrinkled, opened his mouth to speak.

  Owald interrupted.

  “’Tis not as strange as you might think, Father. The bodyguard entire consists of naught but outsiders like myself, an elite corps of foreigners—Saracens, Mughals, Incas, Nubians—selected from misadventurers who’ve wandered in, ne’er to be permitted to leave.”

  He folded his hands in his lap.

  “Perhaps one trespasser in ten thousand’s chosen thus, men unattached to any domestic faction—no ties, no connections, no family, no friends. Zhu Yuan-Coyotl doesn’t trust his own people—not e’en his ordinary standing reserves—well enough to supply them with effective weaponry. To this policy, in fact, which he didn’t himself devise, is laid the Crystal Empire’s long-lasting peaceable stability.”

  “To that, and to those Dreamers of his, whate’er they may be. Tell of those few,” Fireclaw asked, “who’re permitted arms.”

  His son produced a grim smile.

  “The selectees are hated, feared by the populace. Outnumbered millions to one, they’d perish in an instant were it not for Zhu Yuan-Coyotl’s official countenance.

  “Upon this account they’re considered safe to issue firearms. They owe their allegiance, not to mention their continued existence, to the Sun alone, the single man they serve—thus preserving themselves—by defending his life.”

  Fireclaw nodded his head.

  “That sounds to me like an intelligent arrangement.”

  “As it’s been,” Owald answered, nodding, “some thirty generations in all. But this you’ll be seeing for yourself, and soon enough, Father.”

  “We’re bound now for the capital city—where you’ll take your place beside me in the guard!”

  SURA THE SIXTH: 1420 A.H.—

  The Crystal Empire

  **

  “Hast thou not regarded thy Lord, how He has stretched out the shadow? Had He willed, He would have made it still. Then We appointed the sun, to be a guide to it; thereafter We seize it to Ourselves, drawing it gently.”—The Holy Koran, Sura XXV, Salvation

  XXXVIII: The Ice-Mountain

  “It was by some mercy of God that thou wast gentle to them.”—The Koran, Sura III

  Her arms still folded, Ayesha cleared her throat.

  Fireclaw looked up at her, where she stood leaning in the doorway. She raised her eyebrows, then glanced at Owald.

  “Charjooh. Your pardon, Princess!”

  The older of the two Helvetians couched exaggerated politeness in reasonably good Arabic.

  “Have you followed aught of this—any of it within your proper concern?”

  “It was not my wish to pry, sir, chanaa muthachassibh.” She gave a shrug.

  “Laa thaghthaam, one word in three, perhaps.”

  The warrior laughed.

  Thinking now of David Shulieman lying wounded in the next room, of Mochamet al Rotshild breathing uneasily in his hammock, of the dead girl Lishabha, of Fireclaw’s own brother-in-law Knife Thrower, of poor murdered Traveling Short Bear, of Dove Blossom, and of too many others, dead or dying, simply that she herself might be brought, unwilling, to this place, she felt a wave of sudden anger surge through her.

  “This young man,” she added, “your son, would have you don the livery of those butchers who—”

  Fireclaw put up his hand, palm outward.

  “Those butchers who saved lately our trespassing hides from other and possibly worse butchers.”

  Absently he shifted his gaze to the hand he held up, turning it to see the palm.

  He let it drop.

  “And you forget, girl, or perhaps you do not know, that I have done some butchering in my time.”

  He let his eyes drop to the floor. An inward and grim expression had washed across his weathered face momentarily, then vanished. She guessed that he was thinking now upon his own ghosts.

  And of Oln Woeck.

  “I have some butchering left to do even yet.”

  Briefly, and with an explanatory word to Owald, he sketched out for the Princess much of what had been told him, omitting, she could tell, only those parts most personal or painful to relate to one who was, upon startling realization, still a stranger to him. He told her of the Goddess whom his mother had served, and in whom, he seemed to realize only as he spoke, he had long since ceased to believe. If so, she thought, then it had been a gentle parting.

  “...though why it is any of your concern, I do not know. This boy here, my son, finding him is the only reason I came along with Oln Woeck up
on this foolish expedition of yours. My mother dearly wanted...his own mother was very...”

  He stopped, perhaps in the belief that he had gone too far.

  Yes, thought Ayesha, he, too, was thinking about ghosts, many of them dead far longer than Knife Thrower or Lishabha. From the casual utterances of others—she understood Helvetian better than she had admitted—she had pieced together Fireclaw’s story during their journey and knew more about him than he was aware of.

  She remembered again the ancient saying among her own mother’s people: “In my weakness, I fled to the desert to escape mine enemies—and the desert made me strong.”

  Now she nodded, merely indicating understanding, knowing as she did so that it was the same economical gesture his dead wife might have made, communicating a deeper sympathy than any third observer might have taken from the act.

  That a lifetime of tears was hidden somewhere behind the eyes of this war-shaven slaughterer, she understood as well. Another watcher might have dismissed them as a weakness or hypocritical sentiment. Yet she could see the effort he spent undertaking to stifle them. She could not, she knew, bring herself to condemn either the man or the feelings he was attempting not to show her.

  An odd thought struck her.

  At least, if Fireclaw were to join the bodyguard of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl, he would be staying—she doubted anyone could hold the man against his will—within the Sun’s domain. For some reason—she was beginning to know the reason, but not yet ready to acknowledge it—her heart was lifted by the thought.

  Something pinged within the room.

  Owald shouted out a single word.

  The door swung wide before yet another of the copper-kilted warriors, this one pushing before him a wheeled tray, its odd-shaped contents covered with a quilted swatch of cloth.

  “I took upon myself the liberty of ordering a meal.”

  Owald dismissed the soldier, wheeling the covered cart into the center of the room.

  “Our journey draws near its end. You must both be well prepared for what that will bring.”

  Strange aromas began invading the air around the cart.

  “The truest test of courage is not the first bite of a foreign food,” Sedrich observed, “but the second.”

  Owald joined Ayesha in laughter, perhaps rather more than the jest truly merited, and whisked the insulated cover from the serving tray.

  Abruptly, a gong sounded somewhere outside in the corridor.

  Owald looked up, startled. With a ripping noise, he peeled back a section of his sleeve, apparently consulting a timepiece he carried strapped about his wrist.

  “Damn!”

  Rising, he gathered up his heavy pistol-belt and eagle-headed helmet from the floor where he had dropped them.

  “Come with me, the both of you,” he growled, then in laboriously slow Helvetian for the Princess’ benefit, “We must have picked up a tail wind. I’d like to have eaten something.”

  He glanced wistfully at the cart.

  “We go, instead, to be tourists, to witness the sight of sights. Have no fear, ma’am, for your sleeping companions. I’ll send someone to care for the wounded.”

  “Ma’am” indeed, Ayesha thought. She had never been called that before! Princess she was used to being called, or at most, Your Highness. She was not some middle-aged, overweight dowager! She blushed beneath her olive complexion. Was this formality because he knew she was bound for marriage to his ruler?

  Or did he take her for his father’s woman?

  And why did all these questions to herself fill her with a warm and languid stirring which was, somewhere at its foundations, such an enjoyable sensation?

  She, at least, had forgotten about the food already.

  At the young man’s insistence, Fireclaw agreed, with visible reluctance, to leave Ursi behind. Although how well the dog would get along with a flock of strange nurses, Ayesha wondered with a little amusement. Sagheer, however, would not be separated from her. Of him Owald offered neither advice nor command.

  The rolling serving tray they locked up in the bathroom to keep the animals from distributing its contents throughout the stateroom—though not before both men had grabbed themselves whatever came to hand to carry with them.

  Tossing a hesitant and guilty glance back toward the sleeping Commodore, Ayesha followed Owald through the door.

  Fireclaw followed after them.

  2

  Striding along the corridor outside the stateroom, they came to yet another door which, sliding open, revealed a case of skeletal metal stairs arranged in a tight spiral.

  The throbbing sound was louder in the stairwell, rendering conversation impossible.

  Swallowing a last, inadequate bite, Owald brushed his hands upon one another, then signed to them to precede him.

  Ayesha gathered her skirt-hem and obeyed.

  He followed them downward and around past several doors, then shouted them to a halt. He slid a door aside, then led them forward, toward the sunlight.

  At the end of the corridor, a narrower one than that they had left above—and blessedly undecorated, the girl thought to herself—they came at last to a transparent door which Ayesha reasoned must have been immediately beneath the Sun’s glass-paned audience chamber several flights above their heads. It opened into a broad, semicircular room rimmed in what at first appeared to be floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Owald slid the door aside.

  A harsh wind slapped them in their unprepared faces, nearly ripping the gathered skirt-hem from her hand. Little Sagheer shrieked and hid his face against her bosom. She tucked him inside her robe, where he seemed content to remain.

  Owald grinned, then motioned them forward.

  Ayesha was astonished. The “room” ahead was actually a covered balcony, open to the air, hanging beneath the hull of the giant airship. In its arch-fronted center, a single V-shaped pair of glassy panels breasted the main force of the wind, yet a hurricane seemed to whirl and surge about them, bringing water to their eyes, making it difficult to snatch a breath as the air rushed past.

  His own hair billowing about his eyes, Owald ushered the Princess and the warrior forward until they stood upon the brink, held back by a low and flimsy-appearing rail.

  Owald peered ahead.

  “The pilot will turn a touch into the wind now—it waxes fierce upon this stretch—and crab a little across the course. Otherwise, the ship bobs up and down, shaking everything within it, and disturbing the digestion. Not the most pleasant of sensations.”

  He seized his father’s arm and pointed.

  “You see yon tower upon that point ahead? I’ve practiced mooring this vessel there myself. Except for mountain journeys, which require more experience than I’ve yet accumulated, I could pilot this machine, single-handed, clear across the Eastern Ocean if I had to.”

  Owald glanced upward.

  “Nor is Zhu Yuan-Coyotl maladroit at the wheel. He’s probably there this very minute. He loves to fly.”

  Ayesha looked down.

  Judging by the angle of the late-afternoon sun, the airship had turned southwestward, crab-stepping across what first appeared to be a great, wide, convoluted river. This spread itself more broadly by the moment as they traveled over it, as if it were the mighty Nile about to meet the sea, but transformed itself, instead, into a series of bays, punctuated here and there by odd-shaped islands.

  As the ship left its course over the water, Ayesha caught her breath. Beneath them lay a multicolored carpet, bathed in sunlight, a huge abstract mosaic, which she gradually came to realize could be nothing else than a city, leagues across, a city to dwarf any—even all—of those ruled by her father the Caliph.

  From horizon to horizon, north to south, east to west, edifices, no two of which appeared to be of the same size, shape, or color, crowded one another, heaped themselves toward the underbelly of the airship and toward the sky above that.

  Among them, not a single acre of bare ground was to be seen. What greener
y there was—and there was greenery aplenty: tall grass, palm trees, thick-woven decorative hedges, ornamental shrubbery—carpeted the rooftops of the buildings. Ayesha thought she caught a glimpse of an orange-orchard before the ship passed over it, sweeping the rooftops with a shadowy footprint even longer than itself.

  The city teemed with people, too far away to be discerned in any great detail, looking to the girl much like a vast army of insects milling about in a gigantic hive, crowding one another, surging, going about their everyday incomprehensible, insectile business.

  Nor did there seem to be any coherent system of avenues or alleyways. Buildings merged into one another, a squarish tapering monument becoming a rounded dome, a lacy minaret melting at its base into acres of flat, glass-covered structures. Streets—none of them straight for more than a few dozen paces—flowed over these as often as around, sometimes ducking beneath them, occasionally appearing and disappearing in a manner which made no sense to her eyes.

  All such features ended, however, at the water’s edge where they, and the course of the giant airship, intersected yet another shoreline, that of the largest bay of all.

  Across the water—dark gray, whitecap-topped, and cold-looking—she could just make out a cliff-gapping harbor-entrance, night-lights already blinking upon opposite promontories (or perhaps they were left lit all of the time), and beyond, the razor-straight blue-under-blue line of the western ocean’s horizon.

  To the northwest and southeast, the great bay stretched away into the dusky infinity of the coming night.

  Between the structure-crowded shoreline they now crossed and the mountain-flanked harbor-mouth, four small islands lay within the bay, all near its entrance from the sea. Three of these, in particular the northmost, sheltered by twin peninsulas, were built over as densely as the endless city which surrounded the bay they lay within.

  Directly to the south, nearest the harbor-mouth, a barren, rocky islet raised itself from the water, forming the foundation for a mighty tower, the tallest building Ayesha had ever seen, taller than she had thought a building could be, featureless and gray.