Reign of Stars

by Tim Pratt

  Genthia swiveled her head, turning a beam of high-intensity scorn on Alaeron. "Of course they're snakes. They don't have any arms or legs, do they?"

  "If a lack of arms and legs was all it took to make a snake, any man could be turned into a snake with a few strokes of a sword," Alaeron said. "When in fact it takes, at minimum, a rather skilled wizard to enact such a transformation, and the effect is seldom permanent. I suppose given time and the proper materials I could make a potion to—"

  "What's an eel, then, if it's not a snake?" Bugbear was clearly determined to overcome his abject terror of Alaeron by being loud and aggressive instead of cowed and absent. "Some kind of lizard?"

  "It...it's a fish," Alaeron said. "It breathes water, through gills or through its skin. Snakes, even water snakes, only breathe air, and lack gills. Admittedly, some eels are amphibious, capable of brief forays onto land, but they all breathe water. There are some other fascinating internal distances between snakes and eels, if you dissect them, regarding the number of chambers in their hearts..." Alaeron felt perhaps he was entering overly specialized territory, and trailed off.

  "So if we cut off your arms and legs and threw you in the water," Genthia said, in the tone of someone pondering a great mystery, "and kept you from breathing air...would that make you an eel, then? Or would we have to subtract a few chambers from your heart first?"

  "Alaeron can't help himself." Skiver's tone was soothing. "The other day I was showing him my new knife and I told him it was a stiletto, and he said calling it a stiletto was practically as vague as calling it a dagger, and that to be specific it was a cruciform rondel, having four cutting edges designed to inflict terrible damage with every thrust, and I just nodded at him like I'd learned something. A minute later he wandered off to draw sketches of spring-loaded knives and everything was fine. That's usually how it happens."

  "I still can't help feeling like he's insulting my ship," Genthia said. "Calling it a fish and all."

  "I didn't say that—and even if I did say that, fish are good swimmers, so why is it an insult to—" Alaeron went silent at a glare from Skiver.

  "Alaeron," his friend—increasingly it looked like his only friend on this craft—said. "Remember what I told you about how to behave after you've given offense?"

  Alaeron brightened. Of course—the formula. It seemed silly and pointless, but Skiver said it worked more often than not. He half-bowed to Genthia. "I sincerely apologize. I was in the wrong, and will do my best to avoid making that mistake in the future."

  "Hmph." Genthia crossed her arms, unmoved.

  "Better go with Variation Three," Skiver said sagely.

  There were variations Alaeron had learned for times when a simple verbal apology failed. Variation One involved offering a bribe in the form of coin; Variation Two involved kicking out the aggressor's knee and running away; and Variation Three...

  Alaeron rummaged in his bag and removed a large bottle etched with skulls and little pictograms of dead people with X-ed out eyes. "Would you like a drink? Of this? Which I offer by way of demonstrating the sincerity of my apology?"

  "Variation Three is offering me poison?" Genthia said.

  "Ah. No. It's just in a bottle marked poison so that no one will try to drink it. It's actually a liquor I distilled myself, with Skiver's input—"

  "Goes down like a silky dream, but it'll knock you flat in three glasses," Skiver said. "Small glasses, at that. You should see how clean the still he uses to make this stuff is. You could use bits of it for your wedding china."

  "You drink it first." Genthia glared at them both. "You too, Skiver."

  "You wound me, Genthia. As if I'd kill you. I don't even know how to sail! But fine, it's no hardship to sip this nectar."

  "You'd better provide the cups," Alaeron said. "I have some, but if we did plan treachery, it would be easy just to poison the cups we gave you rather than the whole bottle—"

  "Stop helping, Alaeron." Skiver accepted the small wooden cups from the first mate, eyeing them thoughtfully. "This stuff probably won't dissolve the wood, but drink fast just to be sure, eh?"

  Alaeron poured out shots, and tossed his back at the same moment Skiver did. As always, Alaeron failed to see the point; alcohol made one slightly stupider while making one feel far smarter, and it slowed the reflexes, and in quantities too large it acted very much like the poison it was—to a certain extent, the markings on the bottle weren't even a lie. Anyone who drank a significant portion of the bottle in a sitting probably wouldn't be waking up the next day. Alaeron could brew substances that created far more interesting effects—ones that produced visions, or provided superhuman speed and agility—but so many people were content with a drink made from the fermented sugars of various forms of vegetable matter. Skiver swore by this bespoke liquor's value and potency, though, and when the pirates decided there was no treachery and accepted pours of their own, they were suitably impressed, too, and demanded refills all around. Soon they were sitting companionably on the ship as one surly, sober pirate manned the tiller.

  Genthia gestured with her cup. "If you keep this in a bottle marked up to look like poison, what do you keep your poison in?"

  "Plain bottles that look like almost all my other bottles, but with tiny markings on the sides or on the corks that I can feel with my fingertips in the dark," Alaeron said truthfully. Genthia looked troubled, so he added, "But I'm not a poisoner! No, no, no. I can't remember the last time I poisoned anyone. I just sell the stuff."

  "He makes a nice venom." Skiver, two cups in, was clearly feeling beneficent and expansive. Alaeron didn't point out that in order to be venom a substance technically had to be injected, either by a needle or a fang or a claw or a blade, while substances that killed when ingested were more properly termed simply ‘poisons.' Fortunately he'd learned his lesson about excessive specificity—at least temporarily—from the eel-versus-snake conversation, and chose not to go down that road again, but simply to nod his head modestly, taking the compliment.

  Skiver went on. "I've got blades doctored up by his art that can paralyze a man, or make him fall asleep with the barest brush of the edge. He knows how to make nastier things, but usually doesn't."

  "Morals, eh?" Genthia said. "In the River Kingdoms those are as useful as wings on a frog."

  Alaeron declined to comment on the self-evident uses that frogs could certainly find for wings, given the opportunity. It wasn't really morals, either. What people did with the poisons he made was hardly his concern. The more straightforward killing toxins were just less interesting to concoct.

  "As charming as the River Kingdoms are," Skiver said, "we're not going to be here long, if your ship's as fast as you say it is."

  "Oh, yes." Genthia took another sip from her cup. "That's right. You're bound for Numeria. A place positively famed for its morals."

  Chapter Eight

  Night's Numerian Shore

  They spent the evening at the pirate camp, a cheerful place tucked away on a wooded island in the center of a broad branch of the Sellen. Skiver donated most of the luggage they'd brought for show to the pirates, as a thank you, he said, though really it was because they needed to start traveling more lightly from here on out.

  Alaeron was introduced to assorted pirates and forgot all their names, except for a balding, stick-thin priest called Cantor, who seemed to be either in a constant state of divine bliss or riding the wave of some pleasant intoxication. While they sat around the fire eating bowls of barely cooked fish and warm rice, Alaeron eased himself a little closer to the priest. "Were you the one who worked the spell to amplify the captain's voice during the raid?"

  Cantor tilted his head as if listening to distant music and said, "Oh, yes, lending Genthia the voice of a god. I do many things for my people. I bring swift winds, and smooth waters, and keep the insects away. Oh, and healing, when someone gets a sword in the face or..." He waved his hands vaguely. "What have you."

  Alaeron found priests and oracles less
interesting than wizards—wizards had spellbooks, and given time, Alaeron could study those books and learn to create extracts that could more or less replicate many of their spells, while priests just...thought really hard, or sat still and didn't think at all, or gazed heavenward and babbled, and somehow made magical things happen. They could work impressive feats, no doubt, but Alaeron didn't think he'd enjoy being a priest. For one thing, they were utterly beholden to their gods—all the power any cleric had was borrowed, and in a sense, they were just employees of some divine taskmaster. When the great god Aroden had died, even his mightiest priests had been stripped of their powers and forced to either convert to new faiths or turn back into ordinary folk, with no special abilities beyond accepting tribute and offering moral instruction. It would be like waking up one day and discovering all your potions and extracts had turned to plain water, and losing all knowledge of how to create more. How horrible!

  Still, Alaeron was to some extent interested in everything, so he said, "If you don't mind me asking, which god do you serve?"

  "Oh, he's done it now," Genthia said from the next log over. She elbowed Skiver. "He's going to get Cantor started. Hope you're ready to be converted, alchemist."

  "I do not proselytize," Cantor said with great dignity. "The truth of my god is self-evident, and any who choose to open their eyes and see will inevitably join its cause. Those who do not..." He shrugged. "They select their fate."

  "Cantor worships the Divine Ass," Genthia said. She cackled.

  "Don't we all," Skiver muttered.

  "I revere the Holy Fundament," the priest said with exaggerated dignity. He lifted his hands and sketched a broad, round shape in the air. "This world on which we scurry and scuttle is the hind parts of the one true god, who squats over the great latrine of the heavens, preparing to empty his bowels endlessly into the night sky, at last quenching the fires of the stars. The first tremblings of his great movement have already begun."

  "He's talking about the Worldwound," Genthia said. "He says it's the puckered asshole of the Holy Fundament, and all the demons pouring out of it are the first dribbles of cosmic shit, the trickles that herald the flood."

  "Hrm," Alaeron said. "I've seen drawings of the Worldwound, based on observations taken from the air, and it does bear a certain resemblance to, ah..."

  "The biggest rectum in the world, yeah, I know." Genthia shook her head. "Which only goes to reinforce my holy friend's unique worldview. The bizarre thing is, his spells work, even though he's worshiping a deity he invented after drinking a bottle of solvent and eating too many funny mushrooms. I figure there must be some god of trickery and chaos who amuses herself by granting the Ass-Father's prayers."

  "Fascinating!" Alaeron drummed his fingers on his knee, thinking back over the various strange texts he'd read over the years. "I wonder which god it could be...the Lantern King seems obvious, but I think his influence on the mortal realm is limited—"

  "Your words are merely the shadow of the Holy Fundament's passing wind," the priest said, sadly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to perform my nightly sacrament." He rose and disappeared into the dark.

  "He means," Genthia said, "that he's going to take a shit."

  "That's a holy man who has his priorities straight," Skiver said.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  They set out the next morning with a small crew, just Genthia, Bugbear, Cantor, and a couple of armed pirates who were feeling stir-crazy and wanted an outing. "You're bound for the capital city, Starfall," Genthia said, "which isn't a place you can reach by water, even if I wanted to go there, which I don't. So I think I'll drop you off, oh...not far from Iadenveigh. It's a booming metropolis by local standards, so you can find someone to sell you horses, or at least some provisions for your walk to the capital."

  "We'll manage," Skiver said.

  "Iadenveigh." Alaeron shook his head. "It's not the most...welcoming place, for someone like me. Worshipers of Erastil, you know, huntsmen and trappers and foresters, suspicious of outsiders. They can take or leave magic, but when it comes to strange relics they can be positively zealous in their disapproval. Not overly fond of alchemists, either. And they truly despise the Technic League. I can't say I blame them—the League is objectively terrible—but..."

  "Right," Skiver said. "Best not mention our true purpose, then."

  "This Technic League, they're the Black Sovereign's advisers, yeah?" Genthia said. "I've never ventured too far off the river in Numeria—been up to Chesed once or twice for trading, but the interior is pretty well a mystery to me. Still, you hear stories..."

  "Not exactly," Alaeron said. "It's better to think of the League as the Sovereign's allies than as his counselors. They're powerful in their own right, not directly subject to the Sovereign's authority or will, and they pursue their own interests and researches without interference. At the same time, they do make an effort to keep the Sovereign happy, because if he wanted to, he could rally his warriors and root them out—or at least give them a war that would be devastating for both sides. So the League helps the Sovereign when he needs it, and supply him with treasure and...other things." Those other things were bizarre drugs, mainly. Alaeron was himself a great believer in better living through chemistry, but the Sovereign had by all accounts been under the constant influence of some bizarre chemical or another for literally years now. Nevertheless, he remained a formidable man, still in possession of his legendary will and strength, even if his once-great ambitions to unify the north had been reduced in scope to merely dominating the narrow world of the debauched court at Starfall.

  "So why do the common people hate the League?" Genthia asked.

  "The Technic League doesn't tend to put the needs of the Numerian people first," Alaeron said at last. "The Sovereign's people handle the running of the country, so when the League comes along, it's never to do anything good. They're not well liked within Numeria as a whole, but Iadenveigh is in more or less open rebellion against the League. We have certain relics in our possession that would cause us a great deal of trouble if they're noticed in Iadenveigh."

  "Terrible place, bad memories, understood," Skiver said.

  Alaeron shook his head. "Oh, quite the contrary. When I left Numeria I'd, ah, had some trouble with the League—"

  "He killed one of their captains, or something," Skiver half-whispered to Genthia.

  "—and the League was pursuing me. I fled to Iadenveigh when I made my escape, knowing the League wouldn't immediately follow me there, at least not without making preparations first. The locals had heard about the Technic League casualties I inflicted, and mistook me for a sympathizer with their cause. They gave me aid and comfort, and helped smuggle me down the river to freedom. I even have friends there, of a sort. But not friends who would be delighted to know I was coming back to work with the League again, so we'd best be subtle."

  "I do love making new friends." Skiver spun a coin across the backs of his fingers. "We'll come up with a plausible cover story."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "We're here to infiltrate the League in order to destroy it." Skiver took a deep draught of some horrible beer-like substance made from wood mushrooms and whatever mutant wild yeast rode the breezes of Numeria.

  Alaeron's old friend—or, at least, onetime co-conspirator—Redfang threw his head back and laughed, showing off the crimson-colored teeth that gave him his name. He always looked like he'd just ripped out someone's throat, and there were various stories about the origin of his strange smile, but Alaeron suspected he'd just drunk from a stream contaminated by some of Numeria's myriad wreckage and been forever stained as a result. He had a great mane of reddish hair, too, and enough beard to carpet a fair-sized parlor, and was dressed in the same muted greens and brown bits of leather that most of the other denizens of the town wore.

  The three of them sat companionably in a corner of Iadenveigh's central lodge, a sort of combination tavern, community center, and fortification. It was a smoky, dark space, made of h
eavy timbers, but managed to feel spacious for all that, with high ceilings and open windows (though there were thick wooden shutters that could be dropped in case the place needed to be made more secure). The walls were decorated with the mounted heads of stuffed trophy animals, most impressively large but otherwise unremarkable, except for a few mutated versions of ordinary animals: a hugely antlered deer with a nest of tentacles where its mouth should have been, a wolf with dangling eyestalks, and a river crocodile with bright feathers sprouting in profusion from its head. There was also a four-foot-long river fish of some sort, with baby-sized forelimbs ending in perfectly formed humanoid hands where its front fins should have been.

  "Last I heard, you were on the run from the League." Redfang drank from a clay mug and smacked his lips. "Now you're off to wage war against them?"

  "War might be putting it a bit too strongly," Skiver said. "Y'see, Alaeron's promised to buy his way back in to the League's good graces. He's got this story about how he did some researches and discovered the location of a secret cache of relics, and he's got all sorts of maps and charts and diaries from dead explorers and such to make it look plausible. But when he gets in to see the League leaders, he's going to spring a trap—"

  "Strictly magical," Alaeron interrupted. He wished Skiver had run this particular avenue of deception past him first. He was treading on dangerous territory. Redfang was fond of Alaeron, and respected enough in the town for that fondness to extend an aura of general protection to the outsiders, but even a whiff of the technomantic arts could lead to a sudden shift in tone, and the two newcomers could easily find themselves the subjects of a show trial that would end with the two of them fed to a bear, or given some other appropriately rustic form of execution. "It's just a combination of two potions that should never be combined, the same way you should never mix bleach and ammonia, because it creates toxic gas. But in this case, it's far more destructive than gas."