The Witches of Ne'arth (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 2)

by Joseph Schembrie

  “Of course.”

  “Now, Carrot, our Royal Licenses authorize only one human client per sponsor, and as you can see Bob and I already have clients at the moment, else I'd take your business right now.”

  “I see.”

  “Yet it's dangerous to be wandering through the Kingdom unsponsored. Now, when I say 'dangerous' I don't imply physical violence, for we Henogalians are a very peaceful people, and most welcoming to visitors once we get to know them. However, certain busybodies could report you to the King's Guard, who could have you ejected back into Human Britan and blacklisted so that you can't return. Unlikely but possible. I assume you'd like to avoid that and keep going forward with your current enterprise, would you not?”

  Carrot observed how smoothly and flawlessly the troll spoke Standard, how his expression and mannerisms emanated warmth. She had been around merchants enough to recognize a professional sales pitch.

  “Yes,” Carrot said. “We would like to keep going forward if we can.”

  “Well, it so happens that my brother-in-law is also a licensed associate of mine. He and his wife, my sister, keep an inn a day or so from here. For the time being, you could stay with him as your sponsor. How does that sound?”

  “What of my companions?”

  “They'd have to hide in the woods, I suppose, until Bob and I are free of our current obligations. Then we'll come to the inn and all six of us can set off together, wherever you want to go. So what do you think? Would that be amenable to your plans?”

  Carrot turned to Norian and Mirian. “Are you two all right with that? I stay at an inn, while you remain for now in the woods?”

  Norian shrugged. “We expected to camp the whole of the trip. It sounds that we might receive cooked meals out of this arrangement.”

  Mirian faced Carrot, extended her arms, clasped her hands and bowed her head. “I beg the Child Queen that while you recline at feast, remember your humble servants and save for them the table scraps!”

  “Eh,” John said. “There is one small detail.”

  “There is?” Carrot asked innocently. She knew enough of commerce to suspect that as they hadn't yet discussed money, the detail had to do with money.

  John sighed deeply. “Alas, we cannot accept credit.”

  “We have silver.”

  Carrot bade them to wait, then hastily retrieved her backpack. She thumped the satchel on the ground at the feet of the trolls, revealed the brimming contents of mint-condition fifty gram coins.

  “Will some of this do?” she asked.

  Bob clutched his chest and bleated, “Holy shiddonians!”

  John did something that Carrot had not thought a troll body could accomplish: he bowed deeply at the waist.

  “Yes, My Queen.” He broke into a dazzling smile. “Some of that will do nicely!”

  12.

  After depositing Carrot and her companions in the land of the trolls, aka 'Kingdom of Henogal,', the airship had headed south until it was over the Oksiden Road once again, and then tracked west. The crew of Andra, Prin, Savora, and Matt watched as forests ended in beach, and ahead lay a gray sea gilded with the silver reflection of the sun.

  At eighty kilometers per hour they left sight of land. A few fishing boats sparkled upon the sea within sight of shore, and then there was only emptiness to the horizon.

  Finding himself tired, Matt went to the aft cabin and took to heart Senti's advice to get rest and Ivan's advice that 'natural sleep is best.' He hoped that while he slept, Ivan could divert enough processing bandwidth toward diagnostics to determine whether the memory gap problem was due to a flaw in host or implant.

  Resting on the hammock, Matt had another strange dream. A two-headed yet faceless ghost shimmered before him, telling him that he had to leave Carrot. Who are you? he demanded. The ghost didn't reply.

  When he awoke, he returned to the forward cabin and discovered that the view outside had transformed completely. The sea was concealed by a plain of clouds. Ahead and to their sides, billowing pillars of clouds ascended into a milk white ceiling. The airship plunged through drifts of mist, where visibility went to zero as everything outside the gondola windows briefly went white.

  Yet it was almost tranquil. Rain was intermittent, buffeting was minor, and the drone of the engines was constant as the airship ventured into a realm of cloud-canyons many times larger than any geologic counterpart could ever be.

  “It's so strange,” Andra said as she piloted. “Yet so beautiful.”

  “'Ice cream castles in the air,'” Matt murmured.

  Savora glanced inquiringly. “That sounded like it was from a poem.”

  “It's from an old song. Very old, by now.”

  “I would like to hear it.”

  Matt shook his head. “I couldn't sing it. Not to do it justice, anyway.”

  “What I would like,” Prin said, “is to know where we are.”

  “That's not really the problem,” Matt said, perhaps a little undiplomatically because he was still shaking off sleep. “We know where we are thanks to global position signals from Moonstar. What we don't know is where everything else is because our satellite maps are fictitious.”

  “So you've explained,” Prin said. “Or rather tried to explain. I fear 'augmented reality overlay' is a concept that will forever be beyond my grasp.”

  Matt reviewed the flight log that Prin had been keeping. They had maintained an altitude of five hundred meters until dark clouds threatened a storm, and then had ascended to three thousand meters to avoid the threat of downdrafts pounding them into the waters. Because of their altitude, they had lost sight of the surface, and for a while a mist had obscured the view entirely.

  Prin hunched over the center table, scrutinizing the chart that Matt had printed. Savora joined him and drew lines with protractor and triangle.

  “We should be in this area,” Savora said.

  Prin inspected. “Empty sea for long kilometers. The few glimpses we've had through the cloud cover have confirmed that.”

  “As long as monotony gives us a moment of respite,” Andra said, “I would like to discuss an important matter. Is this poor ship to go nameless until the day it crashes?”

  Prin laughed. “The matter has already been addressed, my dear. Archimedes held a poll among the workers some time ago.” He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a scrap of paper, then squinted with his glasses. “Let us see . . . most popular choices are . . . Sky Lord . . . Sky King . . . Sky Demon . . . Sky Wizard – of course! . . . and the winner is . . . The Good Witch of Britan.”

  “A reference to Carrot?” Andra asked. “How charming!”

  “I love it!” Savora exclaimed.

  “And altogether not surprising,” Prin said, “considering how many of the workers were warriors That Day in the Dark Forest.”

  “It -- it seems kind of long-winded,” Matt said weakly.

  “We can shorten it to Good Witch,” Prin replied. “And as we're unanimous, so it is.”

  Ivan, who was perceptive of Matt's moods even when they were concealed from the outside world, said, “Matt, you don't seem to approve of the name.”

  “Carrot doesn't like to be called a 'witch,'” Matt subvocaled. “I don't think any woman wants to be compared to a blimp.”

  “I noticed that you did not voice your objections.”

  “I don't want to dampen the mood.”

  From the table where she was working the charts with her navigation tools, Savora gave him a smile. He didn't return it, because he was remembering the last time he'd seen Carrot smiling, waving below as the airship ascended.

  How could I leave her? Yet even as he questioned his reasoning, he felt somehow that he'd had to do what he had done.

  When Herman the Space Station finally made radio contact, Ivan reviewed the navigational data and displayed their position in a pop-up window. Their navigational error was only meters from that which Ivan had calculated from inertial guidance. For the benefit of the human
crew, Matt jabbed his thumb on the map, smack in the middle of the sector that Savora had circled.

  “Good navigation,” Matt said. “How did you do that?”

  “Simple,” Savora replied. “I can tell from the pitch of their hums how fast the engines are running, and that tells me airspeed. Also, when the sea is visible, I can judge ground speed by the size of the waves. Compass, astrolabe, and clock confirm my calculations.”

  Doesn't seem so simple, Matt thought.

  If there was one thing that Savora's exposition did, it made Matt appreciate all the mathematical heavy lifting done by Herman and Ivan. He marveled that Savora was able to achieve similar results with organic brain cells. Even more astonishing was that she seemed to enjoy it, spending lengthy passages of silence at the navigation table, scratching numbers on paper as she updated their course projection.

  With that, conversation dwindled. More hours passed. Prin distributed cold rations and they ate. They took turns at the wheel while napping in shifts.

  Then:

  “What's that?”

  Prin pointed ahead. At the horizon, a dark gray band floated above the sea. It was more cloud cover, but thicker and darker than any they had yet seen. It stretched from north to south, horizon to horizon, from sea level to altitudes the Good Witch could not reach.

  Consulting Ivan, Matt replied, “A weather front, obviously, but it doesn't show on satellite view.”

  “Look how extensive it is,” Prin said. “It's almost like a wall. And when I say 'almost,' I leave open the possibility that it in some way is.”

  Matt wondered why the station's image processing software had been reprogrammed to conceal weather patterns.

  At the wheel, Andra cried out: “What is that?”

  She was pointing at the window pane directly in front of the pilot's station. A tiny splotch of dark, thick liquid had splattered, and was in the process of being smeared over the outer surface.

  Prin went forward and squinted. “We seem to have had a collision with a bug, ending in somewhat more tragedy for the bug than for us. It's happened at lower altitudes over Britan a time or two. Why is this time upsetting you, dear?”

  “I'm not upset,” Andra said. “I'm puzzled. We're at high altitude in the middle of the ocean. Where did a bug come from?”

  Prin shrugged. “Perhaps it was nestled in the structure of the ship, only to emerge now for an untimely death.”

  Prin's theory was soon falsified. A second bug splatted, and several more drifted past the windows. Ivan's visual array confirmed the ship was traveling through a cloud of bugs, density one insect per thousand cubic meters and stretching all the way to the storm barrier that was still minutes away.

  Ivan took high-speed, high-magnification photographs of the non-splatted bugs, and Matt related to the crew: “They appear to be like spiders. Instead of webs, they've woven parachutes – parasails – to catch the wind and stay airborne.” No one, he noticed, was asking him to print a picture. “Ivan says there's nothing like it in the natural ecosystem of Earth. That means they're genetically engineered.”

  “For what purpose?” Prin asked.

  “I don't know. At least, they don't seem to be a threat.”

  The sky darkened. The cotton candy clouds of minutes before became stones of dark gray. Droplets tapped the windows. Gusts buffeted the gondola, which swayed like a pendulum beneath the belly of the balloon.

  “I don't appreciate being knocked about like this,” Prin said, raising his voice above the howl of the wind and rattle of the ship's structure. “Perhaps we should hold off going farther until the weather improves?”

  “We've flown worse weather during test flights,” Andra said.

  “I wasn't asking you. You're so confident, you'd fly over a volcano while it threatens to erupt. Matt, you're our expert on weather. What do you advise?”

  “Let's keep going,” Matt heard himself say.

  The next lightning flash was blinding. The crash of thunder came instantly, drowning out the drone of the engines. Altitude remained stable, indicating no leakage from damage, but for some time after the balloon had a bluish aura, harmless yet unsettling. While remaining calm, Prin and Andra held hands.

  Matt thought of going back, but just then Ivan reported that wind direction had reversed. They were being pushed into the front, and would be fighting severe headwinds if they retreated, which would only prolong the exposure to the storm. Instead of retreat, Matt had Ivan scan the clouds for regions of relative calm and the ship pursued a zigzag course through the storm, avoiding downdrafts and wind shears.

  The ship was holding together, but still he thought: If we die, it'll be because of me. How could he have not foreseen the risk of bad weather? The annals of twentieth century airship aviation were filled with records of crashes from storms.

  The fog became so thick that it blanked sight of the ship's nose. Another close lightning burst briefly disabled the cabin lights, including the instrument panel lights, and Prin and Matt worked to restore power. When the lights came on again, the drop in interior temperature had turned their breath visible and made the windows opaque with frost. Savora opened the heat exchanger vents into the ventilator system while Andra held the wheel, her face expressionless though her knuckles were white as she waited for the de-icing to restore view of the external world.

  Rain water dripped from the ceiling and splattered on the deck. Then came a flurry of snow. A marble sized hailstone cracked a side window. As the ship rocked in darkness, Matt thought of the times the engines had failed over Britan during test flights. If that happened now, they would be tossed helplessly by the storm.

  Why did I allow this?

  As soon as he thought that, he heard a down-note shift in the hum of one the engines. He tried to convince himself that it was only his imagination, but then the starboard engine coughed and its propeller slowed to a stop. Andra caught the change in propulsion vector and steered hard starboard to compensate. Then the port engine died. The ship creaked in the silence, twisting in the gusts.

  “We're adrift!” Prin cried.

  Image processing provided enhanced lighting for Matt, and with them he watched the scientists grope in what for them was almost total darkness. Savora, however, walked directly to a storage cabinet and immediately pulled out a rag. Puzzled, Matt watched her head into the aft cabin. He followed and found her about to open the hatch to the starboard engine strut.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “The floating spiders have clogged the filter screens for the engine air intakes,” Savora replied. “I'm going to wipe them off.”

  “Well, are you sure that's the –”

  She popped open the hatch, quelling the rest of his sentence in a blast of arctic-cold air. Even the fraction of a second that Ivan took to fortify against the temperature was enough to convince Matt that Savora was severely underdressed for an excursion outside the gondola. As the ship rocked, he clawed along the rail toward the hatch. Before he reached it, Savora returned, her rag covered with dark spots and slickness. She glanced at him wordlessly, went to the other side of the cabin, and climbed out the port engine access hatch.

  “You could have frozen to death!” he said when she had returned.

  “I am fine,” she said, wiping the ice crystals from her hair. She shut the hatches. “Andra, start the engines!”

  While Prin held a tiny lantern over the controls, Andra attempted to windmill the engines back to life. Sparks flew across the levers and coils, but the engines did not turn. As the wind howled and the gondola cabin chilled, fear reflected from all their faces.

  Why did I allow this?

  Prin hesitantly said, “If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the extreme cold has affected the engines. What does Ivan say, Matt?”

  Matt inquired and relayed Ivan's response: “He says the current outside temperature is below the freezing point of the engine lubrication oil. In other words, the engine may have seized up because
the oil is frozen solid.”

  “Does he know what to do?”

  “There is no applicable procedure in my archive of airship manuals,” Ivan replied, anticipating Matt's request.

  “Ivan,” Matt said, “is there any chance that the wind will blow us out of the storm?”

  “My meteorological analysis indicates that the storm pattern is a typical vortex.”

  “Which means?”

  “The most probable answer is that the wind will not blow us out of the storm.”

  Matt struggled to keep from speaking out loud. “Well, do you have any ideas about what to do?”

  “Yes, Matt. I suggest that you create a procedure to warm the engines.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I do not know, Matt.”

  The subtext was, Humans are supposed to be creative, do something creative.

  Matt became aware that the others were staring at him. Warm the engines, he thought.

  Create a procedure that an artificial intelligence would not think of. Because it was too risky, too outlandish, too crazy. After a moment's thought – if you could call having something flash into your mind 'thinking' – he had such an idea.

  “Andra, Prin,” Matt said resolutely. “Get ready to start the engines when I say go. Starboard first, then I'll call for port.”

  He went into the aft cabin and opened a supply cabinet and extracted an empty jug. He opened a ceiling panel near the rear door and held the jug underneath the fuel tank drain line outlet. He removed the plug, twisted the valve and listened to the trickle of Britanian-made naval rum into the jug.

  Savora, who had entered the aft cabin after him, watched and frowned. “What are you doing, Matt?”

  “I'm going to warm the engines by pouring rum on them, then setting the rum on fire.”

  “Matt, you cannot do that. That will cause the hydrogen gas in the balloon to ignite.”

  “The hydrogen is insulated behind two layers of Sarkassian silk, Savora. The burning point of Sarkassian silk is well above that of rum, so we'll be all right. Now let me do this.”