by Terry Brooks
He looked suddenly hurt. “Why are you so mad at me?”
“Because I love you, and I don’t want to lose you! I think more of you than you do of yourself! You put yourself in these dangerous situations and you expect me not to mind?”
He sighed. “I expect you to understand.”
“Well, I don’t! I don’t understand! Not any of it!”
“What if I promise not to do it again?”
“Now you are being condescending.” She was furious. “You tell me what you think I want to hear and everything will be all right. Is that it? Keep me happy until you do it again? Because you will! You can’t help yourself!”
He looked exasperated. “What am I supposed to do, Aphen? What can I do that will please you? It seems nothing will, listening to all this.”
She stood up, limped across the room, and turned back to him. “I can’t answer that right now. I’m exhausted. I’m relieved to have you back and terrified you might go away and do this to me all over again. Remember that time you went to Arishaig and posed as a courier so that you could get inside the chambers of the Coalition Council? Remember when you penetrated the quarters of the Red Guards and had to fight your way out? Alone? In the middle of Federation country?”
He stared at her. “What happened to your leg? What have I missed while I was away?”
She smoldered. “Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. At least you noticed. Finally.” She glared at him. “Go back to sleep. That’s what I’m going to do.”
She stomped out of the room without looking back.
Aboard the Arishaig, the decks were mostly empty of life. A helmsman steered the vessel north, a lookout slouched in the crow’s nest atop the mainmast, and a pair of soldiers stood watch across from each other, port and starboard amidship. The night was dark and moonless, the cloud cover heavy over the Prekkendorran, a shroud of mist rising off the lowlands of Clete some miles ahead to drift south toward the advancing Federation fleet. Except for the creaking of the rigging and the snores of sleeping men, the warship was quiet.
Drust Chazhul came on deck and moved toward the aft railing, breathing in the night air, steadying himself for what would happen in the next few minutes. Stoon would be in place by now—although Drust did not have any idea at all where that would be—ready to spring out when needed. They had gone over the plan a dozen times. Arodian’s personal attendant had mentioned to Stoon, when the assassin had engaged him in conversation down in the servants’ quarters and plied him with considerable alcohol, that the commander liked to watch the sunrise each morning from the fantail, the launching deck for the handful of flits the airship carried. The fantail was positioned aft below the command deck and the pilot box, hidden from view from the men who would be on watch. The plan was for Drust to confront him there and hold his attention long enough for Stoon to get in position, and then the assassin would grab the commander and throw him over the side of the airship.
They were flying at somewhere around two thousand feet. No one could survive a fall from that height.
Drust was confident. There would be no witnesses. Arodian would not suspect an attack; he knew himself to be physically superior. It would all be over quickly.
Drust Chazhul could feel the flutter of expectation in the pit of his stomach. Edinja was dead and gone and, after tonight, Arodian would be on his way to join her. There would be no one to threaten him after that.
He thought momentarily of the mysterious notes he had received suggesting he was responsible for Edinja’s death, wondering again at their source. Could it possibly be Arodian? He couldn’t fathom how the man had managed it, but he didn’t dismiss the possibility outright. If the notes stopped coming after tonight, he would know.
He paused momentarily at the steps leading down to the fantail, fidgeting and edgy as he searched for and found a solitary figure standing at the aft railing. Lehan Arodian, watching the first silvery rays of sunlight creep above the horizon.
Taking a deep breath, he started down the steps to the fantail, eyes fixed on the other man.
“What’s this?” The sound of Arodian’s voice startled Drust, and he stopped where he was, still six feet away. Arodian didn’t bother to turn around. “You don’t have any bad intentions, do you, Drust? Sneaking up on me like this?”
Drust recovered his composure. “Of course not. I noticed you from the command deck and came down to say good morning. Beautiful sunrise, isn’t it?”
Arodian shook his head as he turned to face Drust. “The truth isn’t in you, is it? You knew you would find me here. Why not admit it?”
Drust feigned surprise. “You misjudge me. I am not that sort of person.”
Arodian came forward a few steps, away from the railing. “You are exactly that sort of person. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
Drust felt a twinge of uneasiness. “I don’t see how you can make such wild statements …”
Abruptly, he was seized from behind, wrapped in an iron grip. A callused hand fastened on his throat, silencing the shout he was trying to make. He was lifted off the deck, his feet left dangling as he struggled in disbelief and terror to free himself.
Lehan Arodian walked over to stand right in front of him. “Little man,” he hissed. “You should have been content to warm the Prime Minister’s seat until I was ready to take it back from you. Did you think you could make it your own at my expense? Did you, little worm?”
Drust stared at him, wide-eyed. He thrashed harder, desperate now to escape. But the hand about his throat only tightened further.
“You should have paid better attention to what was going on right under your nose, Drust. You were so concerned about Edinja and me that you missed it entirely. Throw him over.”
Drust Chazhul was carried to the railing of the fantail, still kicking and trying unsuccessfully to scream, fear the only emotion left to him.
This can’t be happening!
“Help me hold him!” he heard a familiar voice say. “He’s breaking free!”
Stoon! No!
Arodian hurried over, reaching out to seize hold of him as well, and now four hands were gripping him, hauling him right up against the railing, lifting him …
Then suddenly Stoon shifted his powerful hands to Arodian’s neck, cutting off his air and with it the cry he tried too late to give. Off balance and caught completely by surprise, Arodian went over the railing with a wild thrashing of arms and legs and disappeared into the darkness.
Stoon helped a shaken Drust Chazhul to his feet, straightened him up, and patted him on the back. “Are you all right?”
Drust shook his head, feeling anything but. “I thought you’d betrayed me!” he hissed in fury. “I thought you were really going to do it! Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?”
He was so angry he was shaking. But Stoon only shrugged. “If it didn’t appear you believed I was betraying you, I wouldn’t have been able to get him to the railing without cutting his throat. His body might be found. We want this to appear to be an accident, don’t we?”
The Prime Minister rubbed his throat gingerly. “What was wrong with my plan? Just get his attention long enough for you to push him over! What was wrong with that?”
“It was weak. Transparent. A chance meeting at dawn on the fantail with no one else around and you come upon him without bad intentions? He would have seen through it right away. I had to convince him beforehand that he was in danger and that I, wishing to free myself of an indentured bargain, would willingly do to you what you expected me to do to him. He had to believe that his money and a promise of freedom would buy my services. He needed to think that with my help he could turn the tables on you, could make you the victim. It appealed to his sense of irony. He liked the idea.”
“I thought I was a dead man.”
Stoon laughed, infuriating Drust further. “You were never in any real danger. What would I gain by betraying you? You and I are built the same way, come from the same place. Don’t you
see, Drust?”
He wasn’t at all sure he did. And he couldn’t stop thinking about how it had made him feel, to believe he was about to be killed by his supposed confidant and ally.
It would be a while, if ever, before he would put himself in another situation where his life depended on the assassin’s loyalty, he promised himself.
Then, his anger beginning to fade sufficiently that he could relish Arodian’s demise, he stood with Stoon by the fantail railing, composing himself as he stared east to watch the sunrise.
20
“There’s an airship coming in from the east,” Mirai advised, pointing back toward the Bakrabru airfield from which she had just come. She brushed strands of her blond hair from her face, glancing over her shoulder. “I think it’s flying a Druid flag.”
Redden and Railing leapt to their feet, but Farshaun Req was a little slower to rise. Age played a part in this—he was more than seventy, after all—but mostly it was demonstrative of the way he reacted to almost everything. Slow and measured, no need to hurry, everything in good time. Once on his feet, the other three waiting on him impatiently, he took a moment to stretch limbs cramped from sitting.
For the last two hours he had been engaged in conversation with the twins about ways they might modify their skimmers to make them go faster. No one knew more about building and flying airships than Farshaun. One of the chief reasons the twins had been so eager to accompany Mirai to Bakrabru was the prospect of talking with the old man about their latest project and finding out how he thought they might improve the design.
It was Farshaun, after all, who had taught them to fly airships back when they were just becoming interested in learning but lacked the necessary guidance and skills. Their mother was against their flying anything following the death of their father, but she had relented when it became clear that if she wanted to maintain even a modicum of control over her wild sons she was going to have to toss them a bone now and then. Better that they learn to fly safely before they just threw all caution to the winds and went off on their own. So she had agreed to let them go to the village of their cousins, the Alt Mers and Meridians, to study under the man who was recognized almost everywhere as the premier authority of his time.
“A Druid airship?” he asked Mirai speculatively. “What would a Druid airship be doing all the way over here? Are you sure of what you saw?”
Mirai, who was always sure about everything and didn’t like to be questioned, shrugged. “I could be mistaken.”
She said it in a way that suggested she most certainly wasn’t.
Farshaun smiled. He liked Mirai Leah. She was competent, prepared, cool, and calm in the hottest of situations. He had never seen her ruffled. It didn’t hurt in her business dealings that she was beautiful, too. Certainly Redden and Railing thought so. He wondered suddenly how that intriguing triangle was going to resolve itself—which someday soon, he suspected, it must.
“You are not often mistaken, Mirai,” he offered by way of conceding the point. “Shall we find out what it’s doing in our backyard?”
They departed the shade of the grove of maple trees where the boys and he had been conversing and walked back toward the village and the airfield. Bakrabru wasn’t large, but it did sprawl. Much of this was due to the terrain: a centrally located flat where the airships were built, housed, and launched, and the surrounding hills where the residents of the village—most of whom were engaged in airship construction, maintenance, and usage—made their homes. This mix of trades and lifestyles had marked the history of the village for more than a century. There was some debate over which of the Four Lands produced the finest craftsmen and fliers, but none when it came to naming the Rovers of Bakrabru among the top three. They had constructed airships for the Free-born during the wars on the Prekkendorran, and some among them had even fought in those wars. The Ohmsford brothers could point to several of their own family members whose names were almost legendary, including their great-uncle Redden Alt Mer, for whom Redden was named, and his sister Rue Meridian, their grandfather’s mother and the wife of Bek Ohmsford.
But they were all gone, and it was Farshaun Req who schooled the Ohmsfords of this generation. Schooled Mirai Leah, as well, for that matter. All three of them had been coming to Bakrabru to learn from him for the better part of the last ten years. They were good students and quick studies, sharing an intensity and determination that had enabled them to advance quickly to the front ranks of the best and most able he had ever taught.
The twins were a bit reckless, of course, but even that could be a positive when you were engaged in racing Sprints. He gave them a momentary glance, thinking again how closely they mirrored each other—so closely he couldn’t tell them apart. So far as he knew, no one could, not even Sarys. Only Mirai could make an instant distinction, and no explanation as to why that was so had ever been given, although speculation ran rampant in some quarters.
They crested a rise and caught sight of the shingled roofs of the buildings that marked the westernmost boundary of the village. Bakrabru was one of the first permanent Rover villages, the beginning of a substantial change in a nomadic way of life that before had defined the Rovers as a people. The village was situated inland from the Blue Divide and set close to the western shores of the Myrian. Its location allowed for testing the aircraft assembled by the shipbuilding families both in the air and on water. It was ideally suited for both construction and experimentation, providing the villagers with the flats necessary for situating the sprawling complex of warehouses and hangars used for building and storage, as well as proximity to the lake for docking finished aircraft and the surrounding hill country for protection and escape from raiders.
The need for the latter had never been put to the test because no one in the history of the village could remember anyone ever attacking Bakrabru. No one would want to. The Rovers were engaged in building some of the most deadly airships in the Four Lands, some of which were always kept armed and ready for use. It made better sense to engage them in commerce than war.
“Don’t the Druids ever come here?” Railing asked suddenly.
Farshaun pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Not in the last few years. They don’t often leave Paranor these days. Not unless they are tracking down rumors of lost magic. That’s become their whole purpose in life.”
“So this visit must be important,” Mirai said.
“Must be. Maybe they need a new ship built. We’ve given them good ships over the years. Given them the best.” The old Rover glanced over at her. “Don’t let that get back to the Federation, though. We do business with them, too. Got to keep everyone happy.”
They passed through several clusters of cottages and outbuildings that had been walled away to form compounds built to withstand attack. Most looked a bit unready for such an event, the brick and adobe walls starting to show cracks and the metal hinges on the gates rusted. Farshaun wondered suddenly if they were taking things too much for granted at Bakrabru. Just because no one had ever attacked didn’t mean they couldn’t do so now. All it took was a change of mind, and that was the sort of thing that could happen on a whim.
They were still not within sight of the airfield when the black hull of the Druid airship hove into view, still several hundred feet off the ground as she maneuvered into position for a landing. She was long and sleek, built for speed and maneuverability. Her light sheaths had been trimmed to about half of what she could call on when at full sail and flying for speed. But even the reduced amount of canvas was impressive, and all of them stopped to watch as she came about and gave them full-on views of her elegant lines.
“That’s a beautiful ship,” Redden whispered.
“She should be,” Farshaun declared, giving him a look. “I built her.”
They started walking again, the younger three moving closer to the old man. “For the Druids?” Railing pressed.
“For the Ard Rhys herself. For Khyber Elessedil. She came to me looking for a flagship, one that
would stand up to anything the Federation might be flying. Something that would outfly and outperform any other airship, but something, too, that looked so impressive you couldn’t help stopping in your tracks just to admire her.”
“Like we did,” Mirai said, smiling.
“Like you did. Like everyone does when they see her for the first time. She’s the Walker Boh. A warship disguised as something less threatening, but clearly the better craft no matter what she goes up against. The Ard Rhys says she reminds her of the stories of the Druid she’s named for. Can’t say if she’s right or not about that. Building her was my last big effort as a shipwright—the last where I had a hand in everything. After she was done, I let others take the lead and just offered advice when it was needed. I’d done my part. I just wanted to teach.”
“Just to teach, huh?” Redden repeated sarcastically. “Good thing there’s something you can still do.”
Farshaun smiled. “Can do it better than you, too.”
They watched the black hull of the Walker Boh settle earthward and disappear from view. They hurried a bit now, wanting to see who was on board.
When they finally crested the last of the hills in the chain separating them from the airfield, they saw that the Walker Boh had anchored perhaps a dozen feet off the ground, mooring ropes attached to rings screwed into posts that had been buried deep in the earth. A handful of Trolls were bringing down the last of the light sheaths and detaching the radian draws while rope ladders were being lowered over the gunwales. Black-clad Druids were climbing down along with an assortment of others while a clutch of airfield workers gathered around to watch.
Already on the ground and looking around was a striking-looking older woman with Elven features and long, gray-streaked dark hair. She wore the familiar black robes, but unlike the others she bore a silver patch sewn into the left front panel.
When she saw them approaching, her gaze steadied and she started toward them.
“Well, well,” Farshaun said softly. “The Ard Rhys herself.” He raised his hand in greeting. “Something’s afoot.”