Key to Magic 03 King

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  "Or at least a handmaiden or bastard."

  "Aye, that's true."

  Mar shook the shipwright's hand. "Farewell, Khlosb'ihs, I'll see you when we get back."

  "Farewell, my lord king!"

  From the new shipyard, which Khlosb'ihs had established in a wide, rocky gulley northeast of the Docking Tower, Mar flew back to the causeway. Number One waited there, hovering with the lower deck hatch level with the causeway. At last report, she was fully loaded and ready to depart. He landed on the upper deck near the steps leading to the now partially enclosed steerage deck.

  As part of his modifications, Berhl had wanted to build a roofed blockhouse with half an armlength thick walls around the platform, but Mar had interceded, explaining that the pilot had to actually see where he was going, and the vice-captain had had to satisfy himself with waist high bulwarks on the back three sides

  The most significant change in the skyship was on the upper deck. Berhl's work crews had built a lightweight, gently sloping, shingled roof from the stern to just aft of the stairwell hatch, leaving only an abbreviated open space immediately behind the steerage platform for the two rowboats. By the addition of interior walls, they had then converted this new interior space into traveling quarters. Farthermost astern was a large stateroom intended for him and Telriy, complete with sitting room, bedchamber, and dining area. A crosswise corridor with jutting observation platforms port and starboard separated the royal quarters from a smaller set of interconnected rooms for Ulor, Yhejia, her sister Aiyse, and their brood, including Pip, who had taken to calling Yhejia, "Mam Yej". Forward of that along the lengthwise corridor, Berhl had installed tiny cabins for Quaestor Eishtren and Legate Rhel (Mar would have called them closets) and bunk dormitories for the Auxiliaries, boys to port and girls to starboard. Fugleman Truhsg and the other marines and legionnaires would bunk on the lower deck, where bulkheads had been added to segregate the space into a galley at the stern, storage compartments amidships, and a single long barracks room toward the bow.

  Ulor and Phehlahm were on the steerage. Both marines saluted as Mar climbed up to join them.

  "We're ready to raise ship, my lord king," the subaltern reported.

  "Everyone's aboard?"

  "Aye, my lord king. The supernumeraries and Auxiliaries are in quarters under the supervision of Signifier Aael. I've stationed lookouts at the stern and amidships. Fugleman Truhsg and five legionnaires are standing by at the cargo hold to bring aboard the gangplank. Quaestor Eishtren, Legate Rhel, and the rest of the men are below with the Queen and Yhejia."

  "What are they doing?"

  "They're rechecking the supplies against the manifest." The marine grinned. "My wife always gets worried that something's been left behind. That's the way she's always been every time we changed barracks."

  Mar made no comment; the arcane rites of women remained something of a mystery to him. "Let's get going. I'd like to make Khalar by dark."

  "Aye, my lord king. Phehlahm, relay the order to Fugleman Truhsg on the double."

  The marine flashed another salute, hopped down to the deck, ran down the aisle between the rowboats, and dropped down the hatchway to the lower deck. Almost immediately, however, he popped back up, followed by one of Truhsg's men. Both pounded up toward the steerage platform at full speed and Mar, frowning at this newest delay, flew down to meet them.

  "What is it?" he demanded.

  "My lord king," the young legionnaire -- Dhem, Mar thought his name was -- began urgently, "the fugleman needs you to come right away. The Gaaelfharenii has come aboard and he won't get off."

  "Which one? Lord Hhrahld?"

  "No, my lord king, the young one, Wilhm."

  Mar had not had the time to concern himself with the pirate chieftain or his odd apprentice, other than to confirm that Aunt Whelsi had tended their wounds, since the evacuation to the Monolith. Not having heard differently, Mar had assumed that the Lord-Protector's more aberrant impulses had sorted themselves out and that the magical carnage that he and Wilhm were capable of unleashing was safely contained. It was just his luck that one of them should choose the moment of his departure to go off on a tangent.

  He found Wilhm sitting cross-legged, calm and unperturbed, on the deck just inside the cargo hatch. Aside from the greatsword strapped across his back, he had brought nothing with him. Truhsg and the others stood around him, simply watching.

  "We couldn't stop him from getting aboard, my lord king," the fugleman explained. "He pushed us aside as if we weren't even there and I've heard enough tales to know better than to try to draw steel on a Gaaelfharenii. When I asked him what he was doing here, he just said that he's come for the journey."

  "I'll take care of it, fugleman." Mar approached the seated giant. "Wilhm, aren't you supposed to be with Lord Hhrahld?"

  Blinking slowly, Wilhm considered this. "No, my lord king."

  Mar bit back a curse. The huge man was, if anything, inescapably literal-minded. He tried a more specific question. "Why did you leave Lord Hhrahld?"

  "I didn't leave him. I'm still there."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There's a me with another name that's inside his head."

  "Right." Mar thought a moment. "The dreams told you to come on this trip?"

  "Aye." Wilhm's manner of speech had changed. He now sounded very much like High-Captain Mhiskva.

  "What else have they told you to do?"

  "To follow you into the mountain."

  "What then?"

  "To fight the demons."

  "What demons?"

  "The demons that are in the mountain."

  "Where is the mountain?"

  "At the end of the journey."

  "How long is the journey?"

  Wilhm spread out his hands to their widest extent. "Longer than that."

  Mar sighed. He obviously would not gain much information from Wilhm or his apparently prophetic dreams. "Will you do as I tell you?"

  "Aye, my lord king. Captain Mhiskva has told me that you are the King."

  "Alright. Go topside and wait for me by the rowboats."

  Wilhm rose in a single, smooth and graceful motion and walked toward the stairs, tilting his head slightly sideways and moving with crouched steps to avoid striking the ceiling beams. While the pose was decidedly comical, no one laughed.

  "Fugleman," Mar told Truhsg, "let's get the gangway on board and the doors closed. Ulor's going to raise the ship immediately."

  Number One departed without further crisis. Mar had seen no point in any official leave-taking and had expressly discouraged any sort of ceremony or demonstration. He had spoken briefly with Lord Ghorn, Lord Purhlea, and Mhiskva early that morning to confirm that no new emergencies had arisen, and was confident that all matters requiring his magic had been taken care of or could be put off. Thus, only the dockhands and a few idling civilians were present to see them away.

  With no point in rushing -- he did not yet know where they were going -- Mar stood by, chatting with Phehlahm inconsequentially about the weather, and let Ulor guide the skyship down the southern tunnel to clear the overreaching dome of twinkling sand spheres. Other than Mar, Ulor's competence as a skyship pilot was second only to Telriy's, though even his best speed -- around five leagues an hour -- was a mere fraction of Mar's. As yet, neither Ulor nor any other of the trainees had learned to create enchantments on their own, being able only to make adjustments to existing simple flux modulations, but Mar hoped that that would come with more time and practice. Once clear of the defensive dome, the subaltern made a slow curve above the forest and climbed to a cruising altitude of five hundred armlengths.

  Checking the compass mounted to the headwall, Ulor reported, "That's due north, my lord king. Have there been any updates on our course?"

  "Not yet." Mar had no intention of revealing the true source of his directions and had told the Mhajhkaeirii that he would receive them through an extended process of ethereal meditation. He yawned, and then yawned aga
in. "I'm going to catch a nap. Send Phehlahm if you need me."

  Mar stopped long enough to make sure that Wilhm would be content simply to sit in the warming sunshine with his back propped against a rowboat, and then went through the open hatchway into the new quarters. He heard sounds through the thin wood panels of the walls but encountered no one as he followed the shadowed corridor toward the back. The four midship lookouts saluted when he reached the cross corridor and he took a moment to go to each station and say a word each pair. This part of the trade of kingship had come to him easier than he had expected. All one had to do was smile convincingly, shake hands profusely, and make a concerted effort to remember names.

  He had looked in on the stateroom while it was under construction, but had not seen it since it had been finished and was pleasantly impressed when he stepped through the door. The carpenters had paneled the main room in a lustrously varnished pine and the space had a warm, effervescent golden glow to it. He recognized the soft rugs on the floors, footed copper bathtub, wardrobes, tables and padded chairs as some of the great many items that had been added to his lists for retrieval, but did not linger over them. Being dead tired -- which seemed to have become a permanent condition -- the item that interested him the most was the cotton mattresses that he had lugged back for the wide sleigh bed that Berhl's craftsmen had fashioned. It sat at the back of the room. Yawning again, he paused only to unbuckle and drop his brigandine and kick off his boots (and socks!), before crawling onto the top of the quilted coverlet. For a moment, he lay on his stomach, doing nothing more than enjoying the comforting softness of the bed, then he let his eyes close.

  He awoke to the hushed sounds of stirring water. Forcing his eyes halfway open, he found a darkened room. He must have slept longer than he intended, well after sundown. There was some light, the soft yellow glow of a lamp. Idly, he rolled his head toward the source.

  The lamp sat on a table beyond Telriy. She was in the tub, bathing languidly in lightly steaming water. Having done up her hair with pins, she rested her head against the high back of the tub. Her heat-flushed face, neck, shoulders, and the upper swells of her full breasts were exposed above the rippling water.

  Spellbound, Mar did not move or speak.

  Dipping her arms in the water for a final rinse, she swirled the fluid half playfully, her movements revealing more of the entrancing flesh of her breasts. Then she rose and stood for a moment, backlit by the lamp and glistening in all her firm nubile glory, with delicate wisps of vapor evaporating from her skin.

  Looking up, she saw his eyes feasting upon her but did not flinch as she stepped from the tub and casually dried herself with a cotton towel.

  Ardor surged through his veins, but he still did not move or speak.

  A nightgown hung on a chair near to hand, but she only glanced at it briefly before moving over to the bed.

  When she urged him over onto his back and began to undo the buttons of his shirt, he felt compelled to confess, "Our first child will not be a son."

  She gave him a little smile. "I know."

  He crushed her to his chest.

  Mar's unease flared just seconds before the deck beneath the bed ruptured in a scalding blast of hurtling fire.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Thrown upward and carrying Mar and Telriy with it, the mattress and frame of the bed sheltered them from the brunt of the initial explosion. The tall headboard struck the overhead beams first, saving them from being crushed against the roof, and as the bed sagged to fall back into the raging maw of the fire, Mar quickly infused it with lifting flux to hold it in place. He caught Telriy around the waste with one arm and held her tight against him. Heat and smoke pressed in on them, and Telriy, clinging to him in turn, coughed against his neck as the bed began to smolder. Taking a quick sense of the ethereal nature of the fire, he worked to dampen the flames, trying to disperse the flux that surged from below.

  He had little success. Though the flames consuming the shattered wood of the deck and the walls of the stateroom seemed entirely natural, with an ethereal component similar to those he had already seen, there was a hint that the source of the ignition was artificial.

  He turned his attention upward, enchanting the beams and lathes and making them rend themselves apart to open a hole big enough for them to escape. A vortex immediately rushed up towards the black, starlit sky, fanning the fire. Almost overcome by smoke and heat, he dragged himself out, pulling Telriy with him. At the last minute, obviously still possessed of a clear presence of mind, she reached back with one hand and caught the quilt.

  As they crawled away across the rapidly tilting roof, a searing gust shot smoke and yellow-orange fire two manheight high from the hole. Number One began to shudder, its stern dropping abruptly. The skyship's magic was failing.

  His first thought was to seize Telriy and fly away, but his second was of the others aboard, and he realized that if he abandoned the skyship that they would all likely die. Fighting the skyship's fading spells, he slowed her descent but did not try to level her off. If they could get down without a disaster, there was a good chance that he could get everyone off alive.

  The inferno, however, had other ideas, spreading across the roof as it widened the hole. Tongues of searing flame were whipped by the wind, reaching alarmingly toward the spot on which they crouched.

  Wrapping the quilt around her with one hand, Telriy pointed sharply with the other. "Mar! The river!"

  Visible by the pale light of the quarter moon, a sweeping loop of the Ice, a great, glinting snake in the midst of the jagged, dark landscape of the forest, lay no more than a thousand armlengths to starboard.

  She was right! His magic might not be able to extinguish the fire, but the water certainly would. He forced the skyship to turn, risking an increase in speed that would generate a stiffer wind to fan the flames, in hopes of reaching the water before either the fire or the ground prematurely ended the voyage of Number One.

  Luckily, rather than grow, the fire moderated somewhat, having burned out a great cavity and thereby reduced the available fuel, and he did manage to bring the skyship down in the river. Clearing the trees along the bank by no more than fingerlengths, he worked desperately to maintain the lifting spell even as he let her settle into the current, knowing that the vessel, never meant to float, would sink like a stone without magic to support her. Steam shot up from below, but portions of the upper deck and its roof continued to burn. When a low sandbar appeared in front of the bow, he drove the skyship straight for it and felt her keel grind as she ran aground. With the bow firmly supported, he let the stern sink, half-flooding the rear section of the upper deck and drowning the last of the flames. He left only enough strength in the flux to hold her upright.

  With rapidly fading clouds of steam rising around them, he got to his feet and helped Telriy up. Her improvised quilt dress had been singed in places, but she apparently had suffered no burns herself. "Are you alright?"

  Adjusting the quilt as high as it would go above her bosom and cinching it tight, she told him, "I'm not hurt. We'd better see about the others."

  Mar led her toward the bow, staying to the port side where the angle of the skyship made for easier walking. Before they had gone very far, Ulor climbed over the forward edge of the roof and clattered rapidly down the slight slope.

  "My lord king! My lady queen!" the subaltern burst out. "Thank all the gods! I knew that you must have taken control of the skyship, but I'd thought the worst!"

  "Is anyone hurt?" Telriy pressed. "How are Yhejia and the children?"

  "She was awake still when the blast struck and got everyone forward of the cross corridor to safety. One of the Quaestor's men, the one they call Bear, was on the port lookout and he has some mild burns, but the rest, Auxiliaries and all, are fine."

  "What of the men below deck?" Mar questioned.

  "Truhsg had them trying to fight the fire, but when the water started coming in, Quaestor Eishtren ordered them topside. We were about to put
off the rowboats with the supernumeraries and the Auxiliaries when you ran her aground."

  "Alright. Let's go."

  Upon reaching the roof edge, they found the small deck around the rowboats crowded with the skyship's entire complement, from an unruffled Wilhm perched on the bow railing to Aiyse's youngest, a baby girl named Tyis, sitting in wide-eyed interest in one of the rowboats. Legate Rhel, holding an absolutely excited Pip, stood near Yhejia and her clutch of children. Quaestor Eishtren, standing with his bow slung on his shoulder and one hand clamped to the starboard rail to steady himself on the canted deck, saluted when he saw Mar appear.

  After doing a quick mental count to assure himself that indeed everyone had survived, Mar looked over at Eishtren. "I don't think anyone will be able sleep on board with the ship at this angle. Can you put up a camp on shore? I can fly all of us over in the rowboats."

  "Yes, my lord king! Truhsg, we'll need tents and supplies."

  "Yes, sir! Dhem, Kyamhyn, Scahll, with me! The rest of you make ready to go!"

  The rowboats, both bought off the beach at a fishing village west of Mhajhkaei, were large enough to carry ten passengers each. Between the two, Mar was able to fly everything and everyone to the shore in only three trips. Wanting eyes on Number One till morning, he had the Quaestor choose a spot for their camp that was just a few steps from the bank of the river. It took no more than five minutes to get a fire going in a small cleared area to provide light, and Eishtren's legionnaires and the marines industriously fell to and pitched the tents between the boles of the massive old oaks and hickories in less than half an hour. Without delay, Yhejia and Aael bedded down their various broods, despite some grumbling. Wilhm, without prompting, lay down by the fire and was soon fast asleep. With all work done, Eishtren set the armsmen in quads, two men to watch while two slept, in a rotating watch all about the camp.

  During this time, Mar busied himself with gathering enough deadfalls with his magic to build a pile of fuel a manheight high. Satisfied that there was nothing else that needed his immediate attention, he walked to the spot by the slowly settling fire where the four senior Mhajhkaeirii, Eishtren, Ulor, Rhel, and Truhsg, stood together in a frowning, solemn clump.