The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  “A mite awkward for a one-handed man,” he observed, leveling at a target. He peered through the telescopic sight.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Owald chuckled. “Safety. The small lever, away at the rear. Give it a quarter-turn upward.”

  “Damn silly thing,” Fireclaw growled, “to tinker into a weapon! What if you needed a shot in a hurry?”

  Nevertheless, the warrior obeyed, resighting the weapon, and putting renewed pressure upon the trigger. Its bellow filled the hall. The spent casing leapt from the ejection-port atop the gun, spun tinkling upon the floor.

  Fireclaw blinked.

  “Loud enough for three guns!”

  Owald nodded, grinning wide, as one of the soldiers ran forward—that small were the bullet holes they couldn’t be seen from where they’d been fashioned—to examine the target.

  Excited, he pointed at the paper silhouette’s midsection, shouting back a single word, not in his native tongue, a Southeast Asian dialect neither Owald nor any other of the bodyguard was fluent in, but in Guard-speech, a clever, useful synthesis of the Sun’s own devising, rendered necessary by the varied origins of his protectors.

  “Dead center, he says, Father. He’s much amazed, but I’m pleased to tell you I’m not.”

  Shouting, he signaled the guardsman back to the safety of the firing-line again. He thrust a gauntleted hand out, uttering more words of command in the same artificial language. The guardsman nodded, retrieved an extra magazine from a fabric pouch containing several, fastened at the small of his armored back.

  With a dubious expression upon his face, he handed it to Owald, who handed it to Fireclaw.

  “Thirty rounds,” the commander told his father.

  Fireclaw ejected and laid the first magazine upon the padded bench, reloaded with the full one, leveled the little gun, fired it five times at each of the targets in turn. Little recoil was apparent; the muzzle scarcely lifted between shots. Empty cases spurted from the weapon, several hanging in the air at once.

  When the deafening echoes died from the hall and the minimal “smokeless powder” smoke cleared, there remained no need for anyone to run down to the targets. Each had a single ragged hole—five shots clustered overlapping in the center of the head.

  The armored guardsmen jabbered at one another—the other man was Saracen-Irish, the sole language the two shared in common one they’d learned in the line of duty within the Empire’s borders. They took firmer holds upon their weapons.

  Fireclaw laughed aloud at the sight. Owald frowned, then joined him, clapping them both upon their shoulders, afterward asking for a spare magazine from the other man. This he also gave to Fireclaw, accepting the empty in exchange.

  He laid it aside upon the bench.

  “Rotate the safety lever yet another quarter-turn, Father. Be prepared for a surprise. And for Goddess’ love, keep the business-end pointed downrange!”

  Giving his son a skeptical look, Fireclaw reloaded, aligned the sight upon a silhouette, pulled the trigger. Before he could release it once again a brief moment later—with a startled expression upon his bearded face—the magazine was empty, the floor about his feet littered with aluminum cartridge cases.

  Silence.

  “So this,” Fireclaw offered at long last, “is how the mysterious blanket-ripping sound comes to be. Impressive—”

  Licking a finger—he touched it to the still-smoking barrel, listening for a hiss—he peered downrange, unable to see any further damage he’d inflicted upon the targets.

  “—but somewhat wasteful.”

  One of the wooden posts beside a target groaned, gave forth a splintering noise. With a whoosh it toppled forward, tearing the target it had helped to hold in half.

  Owald laughed again; this time his comrades joined him.

  “It’s an acquired skill, Father.”

  He took the weapon from Fireclaw’s fingers, removed the empty magazine, pushed a knob upon its side, and split the receiver end for end with a tipping motion.

  One of the guardsmen took a long steel rod from the cabinet. He swabbed the barrel. The other gave the exposed parts a cursory going-over with a tiny brush.

  “You’ll learn,” Owald told his father. “You learn faster than any man I’ve e’er seen.”

  He hinged the weapon back together, slapped the magazine home, locked it up again inside the counter.

  Fireclaw made a sour face and shrugged. He waved his right arm to indicate the place they were in, the nervous guards who watched his every move, his own missing hand.

  “For aught good it’s done me,” he answered.

  As if in cosmic agreement, the earth beneath their feet chose this moment to express its own unrest. There came to them a floating, fluttering sensation, as if they stood within a boat and their breakfasts didn’t sit well with them.

  Overhead, lighting-fixtures swayed a few fingers’ widths. A long time passed before they were still.

  Although he disbelieved in omens, a disturbing tingle traveled up Owald’s spine. Watching his father at blade-practice had been one thing; teaching him the use of automatic weapons could well turn out to be another. Despite a great enthusiasm for which he’d his own good reasons—Fireclaw must be recruited to the bodyguard; those who failed to find a useful place within the Crystal Empire were soon disposed of—the younger Helvetian still wondered about Zhu Yuan-Coyotl’s judgment and motive in this regard: the trouble he foresaw couldn’t be invisible to a man the likes of the Sun Incarnate. Nor was it likely much to be ameliorated by his famous warrior-father gaining yet another skill-at-arms.

  Yet the next few words he intended speaking were the sole reason he’d joined Fireclaw at this morning’s practice. Receiving the Sun Incarnate’s permission to speak them had been more arduous by far than getting the nod about the gun.

  “About your hand, Father...”

  Fireclaw turned from a reexamination of the targets, a puzzled frown written across his face.

  “What about it, son?”

  ’Twas the first time Fireclaw had named him thus. It added to the tingling of his spine.

  “Well, if you’re to join the bodyguard, you’ll have to be less clumsy in the use of its issued weapons.”

  He pointed at the prosthetic cuff.

  “Yon stump-shoe could slow you down, under fire.”

  Fireclaw nodded, waiting.

  “That it could.”

  “I’ve spoken to Zhu Yuan-Coyotl about it, just this morning, Father. He’s granted his permission. You’ve an appointment—another honor, I might add—with his personal physicians tomorrow afternoon. They’ll be wanting samples of your flesh.

  “They’re going to start you a new hand growing.”

  XLI: Spire of Dreamers

  “How many a sign there is in the heavens and in the earth that they pass by, turning away from itl”—The Koran, Sura XII

  Firelight cast dancing shadows upon the thick furry wall of evergreens surrounding the encampment. Smoke drifted into the starless sky, filling the clearing with incense.

  Sitting under the front edge of the lean-to, Ayesha pushed at the coals. For a time, the light drizzle which had followed them all week had ceased. A fresh log hissed and bubbled, the bark crackling. She tossed aside the weathered stick she had been using to stir the fire—one end was charred and smoking. She turned, her eyesight dimmed by the fire’s light, to face her companion.

  Fireclaw lay back to one side of the rough shelter he and the men had built for her, warming his damp-moccasined feet at the campfire’s margin. His weapons lay discarded beside him.

  He and his friend Knife Thrower had just returned from patrolling the perimeter of their small encampment, replaced now by Mochamet al Rotshild and Sergeant Kabeer. It was their second week upon the trail westward. They had just passed beyond the lands of the hospitable Utes, having maintained the fiction of seeing the dignitary, Traveling Short Bear, home. They were entering this
new land with caution, taking long rest-periods, building conspicuous camping places, giving the so-far-invisible inhabitants of the region a chance to look them over.

  Several yards away, in the outsized shadow of the Princess’ lean-to, young Shrimp and his companion Crab lay sleeping. In a few hours, they would replace the Saracens upon watch.

  Despite a lifetime spent tolerating the woman’s failings, Ayesha felt lonelier than she would have imagined possible with Marya gone. The fourth day of their journey, she had reached a careless hand down for a dried stick for the fire, only to see the stick writhe in her hand, striking her with its extended fangs upon the tender inside of her elbow. The poison had been injected into a vein.

  So quick had her dying been that it had scarcely delayed the party, despite the efforts of the Helvetian and his Comanche comrade to pull the potion of the rattled serpent from her body. Fireclaw, suffering a bad tooth, was still somewhat pale and shaky from the effort which had resulted in his own poisoning.

  This was a hard land, set in the center of what she was discovering to be a harder world.

  He sat up, speaking as if he knew Ayesha’s thoughts.

  “It is a shame, Princess,” he offered in improving Arabic—the man seemed to be a sponge for languages—“that your father did not see fit to provide you with more than one female companion.”

  Ayesha nodded.

  “My stepmother was ordered to accompany us. My father thought that a suitable, um, reward, for certain...but, in any event, the unhappy woman took her own life the very day we disembarked. We had no time to find anyone else we both trusted.

  “Two deaths already. What is next? It has been an ill-starred voyage even thus far.”

  “Yet it might have been far worse.”

  The warrior moved closer to the girl, into the shelter—and relative seclusion—of the lean-to. She wondered what it had been like for him, living upon the edge of the vast prairie, all alone, for so many years. She was curious. Why had he not taken a woman from among Knife Thrower’s people? It did not occur to her to move away. It was not cold in this place, with the fire glowing before them, yet his closeness was a comfort much like needed warmth.

  He placed his hand upon her shoulder.

  She reached up to remove it, then, at the last instant, placed her own over it. Breathing became difficult; an odd exhilarating, painful sensation sang through her body. Fighting tears she could not explain, she ducked her head forward, brushing his hand with her cheek.

  So Fireclaw would be the one.

  He placed his other hand about her slender waist, pulled her to him. She felt his palm cover her breast, travel down the contours of her body to rest upon the inside of her thigh. His mouth found hers. Without remembering how it had happened, Ayesha discovered herself lying beside the giant Helvetian, helping him to remove her garments.

  With something beginning to resemble desperation, she fumbled at his clothes.

  Then she did feel the cold, until she was surrounded by his warmth, breathing in the smoky, animal smell of him. He possessed her body with his mouth and hands, denying himself nothing of her, as she denied him nothing. She knew little pain—it was, after all, her first time—yet he was gentle with her, languidly slow.

  When it was done with, she wanted it to begin all over again.

  2

  “No, my Princess?” David Shulieman levered himself onto one elbow. “Then tell me—maa chalhghapar—why you jump each time that Sedrich Fireclaw’s name is spoken? Maa manna?”

  Mochamet al Rotshild grunted agreement.

  “Perhaps it is just that our Ayesha—who grew up in the shadow of Vesuvius—now finds herself sensitive to the trembling underfoot such as we have this morning experienced.”

  Both men chuckled.

  The Princess Ayesha, daughter of the Caliph-in-Rome, turned her back to both of them, her face burning with embarrassed fury.

  “Maadaa qulth? David Shulieman, you have been my lifelong mentor, but now even you overstep—”

  “And what of me, then, Princess?”

  Mochamet al Rotshild leaned upon the cane he had walked with since first getting to his feet after the attack aboard the airship. The sound of his breathing was now less noticeable, his coloring was better, Ayesha observed with a detached part of her mind, but he still hobbled like the old man he had overnight become.

  “Maadaa thureet! What about you, Commodore?”

  Ayesha heard the bitterness in her own voice. Even she was a little surprised.

  “That my esteemed father, in his infinite kindness and wisdom, has appointed you my official keeper implies no obligation toward you upon my part!”

  The Saracen captain turned to Rabbi Shulieman and shrugged. The rabbi would have repeated his gesture, had he not been half reclining. Instead, he allowed himself to roll flat upon his back once more, the gesture conveying more resignation than a simple shrug.

  “See here, Ayesha, limaadaa—”

  “No, you see here, Captain! David! Both of you! Have I not journeyed in humiliating obedience to this godforsaken place at the bidding of my father? Have I not suffered every horror, every indignity short of death itself, which could have been demanded of me? Have I not done my duty, perhaps even a measure more?”

  Silence enjoyed a momentary reign. Neither man could refuse her the affirmative nod she demanded.

  “I shall wed this Sun-King-Coyote-Shrimp of yours, as I have promised, lima laa? If, of course, he wants me—damaged goods that I have become. But one thing neither of you—nor he!—shall ever have of me is the privacy of my thoughts and feelings! I shall not be interrogated about them further!”

  She whirled with an inarticulate noise, stamping out her anger upon the carpet leading to another room of the apartments they had been assigned within the Palace of the Sun.

  Mochamet al Rotshild shrugged again.

  With a sudden noise, the door slid open.

  Owald was there, in full uniform, high-polished helmet in the crook of his arm.

  “Princess”—he nodded, speaking in Helvetian, the only language they shared in common—“gentlemen, your attendance is required by the Sun. I’m to escort you to him.”

  Ayesha turned in the doorway she had entered, argument forgotten, a concerned expression upon her face as she looked at David lying bandaged upon the couch.

  “The rabbi,” she told Owald in syllables as stiff and formal as the young man’s greeting, “is ill as yet. He can’t accompany us. Nor do I believe the Commodore—”

  Owald shook his head.

  “My lady, this is no request. I’m commanded to bring you before Zhu Yuan-Coyotl this minute. I’ve come prepared to meet what seem to me, anyway, to be your reasonable objections.”

  He raised an armored hand, beckoning to someone in the corridor beyond the range of Ayesha’s vision, then stepped aside. There entered the room another of the soldiers, pushing a lightweight wheeled chair. Owald set his helmet aside, assisted in getting the rabbi upright. Shulieman was stoic about being placed in the chair, although it was clear to Ayesha that the process pained him.

  Owald straightened.

  “I can have another such contrivance here within a moment, should the Siti Mochamet—”

  “Not upon your life, boy!” Mochamet al Rotshild roared in Arabic.

  He rose to his feet, albeit leaning upon his cane.

  “When the day arrives I needs must become a human roller-skate, you may bury me, whether or not I am still breathing! In the name of the Merciful and Compassionate, let us go!”

  The animals, Po and Sagheer, were left behind. Together they traveled the great length of the residential hall to one of the elevating chambers they had not quite become accustomed to.

  Within it, Ayesha was surprised when the car passed by the level of the Sun’s audience chamber. It continued to descend many more floors than she had believed the palace possessed.

  The door slid aside, permitting entrance of an odor of dampness, iodine,
and oiled machinery. Owald guided them down a metal-walled corridor which opened upon a vast water-floored chamber, lit by electric lampions of a kind only yet speculated about at home in Europe, set high in the ceiling overhead.

  “Our greetings! Heebh ghaalah!”

  The cheerful voice was that of the Sun Incarnate, standing upon a metal-mesh walkway bordering the artificial pool which took up most of the huge room. Many strange craft lay bobbing at anchor or tied to posts along the walkway. The Sun had been inspecting one such, showing it to Fireclaw, who stood beside him.

  Ayesha’s troubled heart—she had not seen the warrior since their arrival here, not since falling into exhausted sleep and dreaming—began racing within her, and she had difficulty breathing until she gained embarrassed control of herself.

  The man had looked at her and looked away.

  “Charjooh! Ghaadaa min luthbhah! Sightseeing this morning!” exclaimed the Sun. “Step carefully, now, this little tub’s round-bottomed and treacherous.”

  David was taken from his wheeled chair, lowered onto a leather-padded seat within the boat, amidships, with Owald. Ayesha climbed down, settling upon the seat behind him, against the comforting bulk of Mochamet al Rotshild. Zhu Yuan-Coyotl—and the Helvetian warrior, his back toward her—sat up forward. The sole survivor missing from their original party, she realized as the Sun Incarnate of the Han-Meshika pushed buttons which caused the little boat to throb, was the elder Helvetian, Oln Woeck.

  A startled moment came and went as a two-sectioned canopy of some ribbed, glassy substance slid up from the gunwales upon each side, clanking together overhead. Something hissed. Ayesha experienced a moment of discomfort until she swallowed.

  Her ears popped.

  The Sun Incarnate steered the boat away from the dock.

  “Despite appearances, this is not sea-level, here.”

  He waved a free hand at the black, oily water they traveled across toward the shadow-obscured far wall.

  “We are many fathoms below it. That arched portal up ahead is a water-lock.”

  This portal they then entered.

  Ayesha watched as heavy metal doors slid closed behind them. Inside the chamber, the water-level began rising as the Sun manipulated controls upon the console before him.