Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  “So he did,” said Shrue. “But my trunk is hard to steal and harder to burn. We shall find it intact in the ashes. The sky galleon owners of Mothmane Junction will welcome some of the things that KirdriK packed in it…which reminds me. KirdriK?”

  The daihak, the purple feathers rising from the red crestbones of his skull to touch the doorframe twelve feet above the ground, his huge six-fingered hands twitching and opening and closing, growled a response.

  “Would you be so kind,” said Shrue, “as to kill the two Purples waiting below?”

  KirdriK showed a fanged smile so broad that it literally went from one pointy ear to the other. Another few inches and the top of his head would have fallen off.

  “But take them to the tenth level of the Overworld to do the deed,” added Shrue. Turning to Meriwolt and Derwe Coreme he explained, “It reduces the number of collateral casualties considerably. At least in this world.” Turning to KirdriK again, he said, “Rejoin us as soon as you are finished in the Overworld.”

  KirdriK winked out of sight and a few seconds later there came an astonishing thunderclap, rattling the Library, as the daihak dragged the two Purples out of one reality and into another. The stone corpse of Ulfänt Banderz jiggled on its high bed and books and nostrums tumbled from shelves and dressertops.

  “To the damned megillas,” said Shrue. Derwe Coreme was loosening the iberk’s horn from her belt as they left the room.

  Mauz Meriwolt lagged behind a moment. Standing over the noseless stone corpse, the little figure clasped his hands in front of him and bowed his head. His huge black eyes filled with tears. “Goodbye, Master,” he said.

  Then Meriwolt hurried down to join the other two. Dame War Maven Derwe Coreme’s shattering hornblast was already echoing from the mountainside while the blare of answering iberk horns rose from the valley below.

  There were three tall steel-and-iron towers rising over the caravan city of Mothmane Junction like metal markers on a sundial. The tower tops ranged from three hundred to six hundred feet above the town and river. Each tower was made of open girders, skeletal and functional yet still ornamental in some forgotten age’s style, and the top of each tower was an acre or two of flatness broken only by the necessary cranes, dock-cradles, ramps, shacks, passenger waiting areas, and cargo conveyors necessary to service the almost constant flow of sky galleons that had once filled the skies here. Now as Shrue and his companions, including the seventeen Myrmazons who’d accompanied their leader, rode down the wide main avenue of Mothmane Junction—residents and stranded pilgrims and others scurrying to get out of the way of the exhausted and angry megillas—the diabolist could see that only three galleons remained. For centuries, the sky galleon trade had withered as the quantities of ossip sap and its phlogista extract became more and more scarce. Most of the ancient sky galleons that had called Mothmane their primary port had long since been grounded elsewhere or stolen by pirates and put to more practical uses on the Dying Earth’s seas or rivers.

  But three remained—grounded atop their respective departure towers but relatively intact. Before they reached the shadows of those towers, Shrue took out his telescope and studied their choices.

  The first tower rising into the dark blue midday sky, that of the Most Excellent Marthusian Comfort Cruise Line, was little more than girders of rust holding up crossbeams of wooden decay. The outside stairway had collapsed and the broad-bucketed elevator had long since plummeted to the bottom of its shaft. Shrue could see rough rope ladders spiderwebbing the structure and men moving on the sagging platform three hundred feet above the river, but they appeared to be dismantling the once-proud galleon that nestled in its dockstays. The ship’s masts were minus their sails and most of the deck structures—and some of the hull—had already been stripped of the priceless ironwood.

  The second tower, its ancient signs and banners still proclaiming Lumarthian Luxury Travel! Cruises and Transits to Anywhere on the Dying Earth! Sky Galleons of Ultimate Comfort and Total Safety and Most Decadent Luxury! Pilgrims Welcome!! Worshipers of Yaunt, Jastenave, Phampoun, Aldemar, and Suul—Praised Be Their Names!—10% Discount!, was hardly more intact than the first tower and ship. There was no one visible atop the tower—even the cargo-handlers’ shacks had fallen down. The sky galleon docked there was larger than the first, but looked as if it had been in a battle—the length of its hull had been scorched and breached and riddled with ten-foot-long iron harpoons that gave the old galleon a porcupined look.

  Shrue sighed and studied the third and tallest tower. The stairway—all sixty zigzagging flights of it—looked shaky but complete. The lift platform was still at the bottom of its shaft but Shrue could see that all of the levitation equipment had been removed and the remaining metal cables—looking too old and far too thin to support much weight—were connected to a manual crank at the bottom. The banner here was more modest—Shiolko and Sons. Sky Galleon Transit to Pholgus Valley, Boumergarth, and the Cape of Sad Remembrance (Ossip Supplies Permitting).

  Well, thought Shrue, no one would be paying to fly to the Cape of Sad Remembrance after the recent tsunamis. He focused his glass on the flat top of the tower.

  There were tents and people there—scores of both—which was both reassuring and dismaying. Whoever these potential passengers were, it looked as if they had been waiting a long time. Laundry hung from ropes tied between old tents. The sky galleon, however, looked more promising. Nestled in its tall cradle-stays, this ship—smaller than the other two—looked not only intact but ready to fly. The square-rigged sails were tidily shrouded along spars on the foremast and mainmast while lateen-rigged canvas was tied up along the two after-masts. A bold red pennant flew from the foremast some sixty or seventy feet above the galleon’s deck and Shrue could make out brightly painted gunports, although they were closed so he could not tell if there were any actual guns or hurlers behind them. At the bottom of the cradle, sunlight glinted on the great ovals and squares of crystallex set in as windows along the bottom of the hull. Young men—Shiolko’s sons was Shrue’s wild guess—were busy running up ramps and clambering expertly through the masts, lines, and stays.

  “Come,” said Shrue, spurring his panting and sulky megilla. “We have our galleon of choice.”

  “I’m not climbing sixty flights of rusting, rotting stairs,” said Derwe Coreme.

  “Of course not,” said Shrue. “There is a lift.”

  “The lift platform itself must weigh a ton,” said Derwe Coreme. “It has only a cable and a crank.”

  “And you have seventeen marvelously muscled Myrmazons,” said Shrue.

  The owner and captain of the sky galleon, Shambe Shiolko, was a short, heavily muscled, white-bearded beetle-nut of a man and he drove a hard bargain.

  “As I’ve explained, Master Shrue,” said Shiolko, “there are some forty-six passengers ahead of you—” Shiolko gestured toward the muddle of sagging tents and shacks on the windswept platform where they all stood six hundred feet above the river. “And most of them have been waiting the two years and more that I’ve lacked the extract of ossip and atmospheric emulsifier which allow our beautiful galleon to fly…”

  Shrue sighed. “Captain Shiolko, as I have tried to explain to you, I have the ossip phlogista for you…” Shrue nodded to Derwe Coreme, who lifted the heavy sealed vat out of his trunk and carried it over, setting it on the boards of the platform with a heavy thunk. And from his robes, Shrue produced a smaller lead box which still glowed a mild green. “And I also have the crygon crystals for the atmospheric emulsifier you require. Both are yours without cost as long as you book us passage on this voyage.”

  Captain Shiolko scratched at his short beard. “There are the expenses of the trip to consider,” he mumbled. “The salaries for my eight sons—they serve as crew, y’know. Food and water and grog and wine and other provisions for the sixty passengers.”

  “Sixty passengers?” said Shrue. “There need only be provisions for myself and this servant…” He gestured t
oward Mauz Meriwolt who was largely disguised within a diminutive Firschnian monk’s robe. “With the possible addition of another member of my party who might join us later.”

  “And me,” said War Maven Derwe Coreme. “And six of my Myrmazons. The rest can return to our camp.”

  Shrue raised an eyebrow. “Certainly, my dear, you have other more…profitable…undertakings to pursue? This voyage will be of an undetermined length, and, indeed, might take us all the way to the opposite sides of the Dying Earth, and that by a circuitious route…”

  “Nine of you then,” grumbled Captain Shiolko. “Plus the forty-six who have waited so long. That will be provisions for fifty-five passengers, and nine crew of course, counting myself, so sixty-four mouths to feed. The Steresa’s Dream has always set a fine table, sir. Mere provisions, not including our salaries, will come to…mmmm…five thousand, three hundred terces for the vittles and a mere two thousand four hundred terces above that for our labors and skills….”

  “Outrageous!” laughed Shrue. “Your sky galleon will sit here forever unless I provide the ossip extract and emulsifier. I should be charging you seven thousand five hundred terces, Captain Shiolko.”

  “That is always your privilege to do so, Master Shrue,” grunted the old sky sailor. “But then the cost of your passage would rise to more than fourteen thousand terces. I thought it easier the first way.”

  “But certainly,” said Shrue, gesturing to the crowd, “these good people do not want to take such a long and…I confess…dangerous voyage, since I would insist that our destination, which is not yet even fixed, will be the first one to which we sail. You can return for them. This amount of ossip phlogista alone should levitate your beautiful galleon…”

  “The Steresa’s Dream,” said Captain Shiolko.

  “Yes, lovely name,” said Shrue.

  “Named after my late wife and the mother of the eight crewmen,” murmured the old captain.

  “Which makes it even more lovely,” said Shrue. “But, as I was saying, even if we were to meet your exorbitant demand for recompense, these good people should not wish to endanger their lives in such a dangerous voyage when they desire simple transit to less problematic destinations.”

  “With all due respect, Master magus,” said Shiolko, “look at them what’s waited here so patient for two years and more and understand why they will insist they be aboard whenever Steresa’s Dream departs its cradle. The three there in blue finery—that is Reverend Ceprecs and his two wives and they booked passage on our fine galleon for their honeymoon cruise, and that was twenty-six months ago, sir. The Reverend’s religion forbids him to consummate the happy trio’s marriage vows until they are officially on their honeymoon, you see, so they have waited these two years and more in that leaking old burlap tent you see over near the comfort shack…”

  Shrue made an indecipherable noise in his throat.

  “And the seven persons there in working brown,” continued Shiolko. “They be the Brothers Vromarak who wish nothing more than to bring the ashes of their dead father home to their ancestral sod hut on the Steppes of Shwang in the distant east Pompodouros so they can return to Mothmane and resume work at the stone quarry…”

  “But the east Pompodouros almost certainly will not be on our way,” said Shrue.

  “Aye, Master,” said Shiolko, “but as you say, if you won’t be wanting transport back to here, we can drop the Brothers on their way—and only for an additional eight hundred terces from each of them for my inconvenience. And that tall, tall fellow there, that is Arch-Docent Hu from Cosmopolis University…he’s been waiting nineteen months now in that cardboard shack you see there…and he cannot complete his thesis on the effect of antique effectuations on working-glass gloam-mine gnomes unless he visits the city of fallen pylons across the Melantine Gulf. I will charge him only a modest surcharge of fifteen hundred terces for that detour. And then, near the back of that group of orphans, there is Sister Yoenalla, formerly of Bglanet, who must…”

  “Enough!” cried Shrue, throwing up his hands. “You shall have your seven thousand five hundred terces and your ossip and your emulsifier and you may load the paying menagerie as well. How long until we can sail?”

  “It will take my sons only the afternoon and night to load the necessary viands and water flasks for the first weeks of our voyage, Master Magus,” grunted Shiolko, showing only the slightest flush of pride at his success. “We can sail at dawn, should the treacherous sun choose to favor us with one more sunrise.”

  “At dawn then,” said Shrue. He turned to reason with Derwe Coreme but the woman was already choosing the six Myrmazons to accompany her and giving the others instructions about their return to the Myrmazon camp.

  And thus began what Shrue would later realize were—incredibly, almost incomprehensibly—the happiest three weeks of his life.

  Captain Shiolko was true to his word and Steresa’s Dream lifted away from its docking cradle just as the red sun began its own tortured ascent into the deep blue sky. The galleon hovered for a moment like a massive wood-and-crystal balloon some thousand feet above what looked to be the entire population of Mothmane Junction turned out to watch its departure, and then Shiolko’s eight “sons” (Shrue had already noticed that three of them were young women) shook out the canvas sails, the captain engaged the atmospheric emulsifier at the stern—which thickened the air beneath the sky galleon’s hull and rudder sufficiently to allow it to make way and to tack against the wind—and, following Shrue’s directions after the diabolist had consulted his little box holding Ulfänt Banderz’s nose, set the ship’s course south-southeast.

  All forty-six of Shiolko’s original customers as well as Derwe Coreme and her Myrmazons, Meriwolt (still in his robes), and Shrue himself then pressed to the railings of the mid-deck or their private stateroom terraces and waved to the shouting crowds below. At first, Shrue thought that the thousands of Mothmane Junction residents, peasants, shopkeepers, and rival sky galleon workers were roaring their approval and best wishes up to the voyagers, but then he saw the low morning sunlight glinting off arrows, crossbow bolts, rocks, and a variety of other things flung up at Steresa’s Dream and he realized that the first departure of a sky galleon in more than two years was not an occasion held in unalloyed affection and approval. But in a few moments, the galleon had gained several thousand feet in altitude and, after first following the River Dirindian south for a few leagues, banked off southwest above the wooded Kumelzian Hills and left Mothmane Junction and its muted roars far behind.

  For the next several days and then weeks, Shrue’s and the ship’s routine blended into one.

  At sunrise each morning, the diabolist would rise from his place in the double hammock he shared in the comfortable suite with Derwe Coreme and—even before meditating according to the Slow Discipline of Derh Shuhr—Shrue would scramble up the manropes to the Gyre’s nest near the top of the mainmast and there use Ulfänt Banderz’s guiding nose to take a new course reading. That course would be checked via the nose box several times during the day—Captain Shiolko was a master at making the slightest adjustments—and for the final time, by the light of the binnacle (when one of Shiolko’s male or female sons was at the wheel), just at midnight.

  Steresa’s Dream itself was one of those rarest of avas in the later Aeons of the Dying Earth—a machine with complicated machinery inside it—and on the first day of the voyage, Captain Shiolko proudly showed off his beautiful ship to Shrue, Derwe Coreme, robed Meriwolt, and many of the other interested passengers and pilgrims. Shrue immediately then understood that the tiny crew of eight “sons” could manage such a complicated craft not due to the usual reason—magic—but because the huge sky galleon was largely automated. Controls on the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship (which was Shiolko’s private preserve unless the captain specifically invited a passenger to come up) or other controls down in the aft engine and steering compartment helped reef and furl the sails, shift and shorten the countless ropes
and lines, move ballast as needed, and even calculate wind and drag and mass so as best to move the ossip phlogista through the maze of pipes that honeycombed the hull, masts, spars, and sails themselves. The emulsifier machine so fascinated Shrue with its magickless glows and throbs and safety devices and arcane gauges and bone-felt spell-less vibrations that often, when he could not sleep, he came down to the engine and steering compartment to watch it all work.

  The sky galleons had been built for passenger comfort and even those paying the fewest terces found themselves in comfortable surroundings. For Shrue and the other high-paying passengers, it was sheer luxury. The diabolist’s and Derwe Coreme’s stateroom at the third level near the stern had a wall of crystal windows that looked out and down. Their double-sized hammock rocked softly and securely in even the worst night storms. After Shrue had checked their course and done his Discipline rites in the morning, he would wake his warrior roommate and the two would shower together in their own private bath. Then they would step out onto their private balcony to breathe the cool morning air and would go forward along the central corridor to the passenger dining area near the bow where there were crystal windows looking ahead and underfoot. The sense of vertigo in these glass-bottomed lower rooms faded with familiarity.

  On the fifth day, the Steresa’s Dream passed east out of known territory. Even Captain Shiolko admitted that he was excited to learn what lay ahead of them. Over wine with Shrue and Derwe Coreme late that night, the captain explained that although his sky galleon was built as a world-traveler, Shiolko’s wife Steresa, while she lived, so worried about dangers to her husband and children that, in his love and deference to her, the captain had stowed away his impatience to see the farthest lands and satisfied himself with transiting passengers to known (and relatively safe) destinations such as Pholgus Valley, Boumergarth, the former cities on the Cape of Sad Remembrance, and towns and ports in between. Now, said the captain, he and his sons and the brave passengers and the fine ship that Steresa had loved and feared so much were outward bound on the sort of voyage for which Steresa’s Dream had been designed and built centuries before Shiolko or his late wife had been born.