by Frank Tuttle
“I just un-made a considerable volume of the Great Sea,” replied Meralda. “All with the tiniest of whims. Oh, and you may have noticed the two black dragons I command. Just as in the prophecy. What a coincidence!” She turned her gaze on Donchen. “What if the Vonats are right?”
“We make our own fates, through our actions alone.”
“Which is just what I’m doing,” Meralda said. “I can’t even see your face anymore. Did you know that? You’re an upright glow to me now. And I’m the red-eyed woman they call Mad Meralda. We make quite a couple.”
“I will pull out the tongue of any man who calls you Mad Meralda,” replied Donchen, his voice hard. “Pull it out and tie it around his throat.”
“You’ll be quite busy from now on,” Meralda said. “Quite busy indeed.”
The Bellringers returned, and Meralda took her papers and began scratching out calculations while Tervis poured coffee.
“How long?” asked Donchen, when she stopped writing and pushed the pencil behind her right ear.
“At this rate, we’ll have replaced half of what we lost in two hours,” she said. “If the converter plates don’t break down first.”
“Do we have replacements?”
Meralda nodded. “We do. Five pallets of them, if I recall. Crates 56CP through 61CP. Lower hold, aft. They weigh two hundred pounds apiece.”
“Can you spare the Bellringers and I?”
“Go,” Meralda said. “Bring as many as you can carry.”
The speaking tube buzzed as Donchen and the Bellringers left. “How are we doing, Meralda?” asked the Captain.
“Two hours, and we’ll be halfway back,” she said. “The giant?”
“Still behind us,” he replied. “Mother of all storms ahead. We’re making for it. Cover is thin elsewhere. Will a rough ride affect your converters?”
“Not at all,” Meralda said.
“Good to hear,” replied the Captain. “You’ve done a fine job, Chief Engineer,” he added. “When this is all over, you’ve got a job on my crew anytime you want it, and that’s a bloody fact.”
“I might just take you up on that,” Meralda said. “Engineer out.”
The tube went quiet.
“Ignore the ignorant and uncultured comments of the crew,” Mug said. “The Captain likes you.”
Meralda didn’t answer. The rush and roar of the converters filled her hearing.
You’ll never go home, whispered the voice in the back of her mind. Watery graves for one and all. Mug might last a day or two, floating, until the salt water does him in.
Meralda shut the voice out. “Glass,” she said to the mirror the Bellringers hung on the bulkhead. “Show me the Gaunt, if you can.”
The Glass shimmered, not fixing on a scene until Meralda reached out and touched its frame. “I am with you,” she said. “Do not fear.”
Goboy’s Glass flashed, and the Gaunt came into view.
The dragons still raged, tearing at it, clawing when flesh was exposed, coughing fire at its face when it wasn’t. But one dragon flew clumsily, its right wing shredded, and the other bled from its neck, struggling to stay aloft.
“Mistress,” Mug said, hovering near the image. “I didn’t think it possible, but they’re losing.”
“Nameless,” Meralda said, closing her eyes. “Faceless.”
“Call them back,” Mug said. “Quick, before they’re killed.”
“I need more time,” Meralda said to the dragons. “Hold the Gaunt.”
The dragons roared in answer, and both spat columns of fire at the Gaunt’s wide black eyes.
Mug regarded Meralda silently.
“We aren’t ready to ascend,” she said.
“I know that,” Mug said.
“If I call them back, the Gaunt will be upon us before we can escape.”
The image in the glass fell apart, leaving Meralda and Mug to face their reflections.
“That’s true too,” Mug said. He turned his flying cage around, and drifted toward the open door.
“Where are you going?” asked Meralda.
“I don’t know,” he replied, and then he was gone.
Alone, Meralda watched the needles climb and listened to the hiss and squeal of lifting gas bubbling from seawater and being pumped quickly away. To her new Sight, the workings of the conversion spells moved and shuttled, tearing apart water at its most fundamental level. But I could improve the process by changing this, she thought, or by adding a simple armature there. One more act of unmagic–would it be worth the risk?
Then she remembered the Sea solidifying, and shuddered.
If the changing waters hadn’t stopped, I might have literally killed the world. She imagined the whole wide Great Sea turning to tar, right up to the beaches of the Realms and the harbors of the Hang. All doomed, with a single act of unmagic.
Suddenly modifying the machinery that produced highly explosive lifting gas didn’t seem like a good idea, urgency or not.
“Glass. Can you find the Gaunt again?”
The Intrepid’s bow appeared. Then clouds, seen from far above. Then the Sea, the clouds again, and the airship’s tail.
“Never mind,” Meralda said.
She closed her eyes and sought the Gaunt herself.
It only took a moment. Nameless and Faceless still wheeled about the giant’s face. Jets of white-hot fire splashed off its skin, leaving chars and blackened bone behind—but the Gaunt was on its feet, and moving.
It landed a solid blow on one of the dragons, knocking it into the Sea. The other roared and dived full into the Gaunt’s face, only to be sent reeling away by a blow to its midsection.
Meralda looked to the Sea, but the dragon did not rise.
The Gaunt ceased flailing at its remaining foe. It lifted up its face to gaze at Meralda’s apparent vantage point, and it lifted its right hand toward the spot, pointing with a wizened finger.
Meralda fought to control the depth of her Sight. Pull back, she thought. I don’t need to see the spaces between atoms. That won’t help.
She looked upon the Gaunt as it walked through the Sea, waves slapping at its hips. It can’t be an actual giant. Meralda knew it wasn’t. Bones wouldn’t support it. Muscles couldn’t move it. So it might be real, but it can’t be a real giant.
“Show me,” Meralda said, in a whisper. “Show me what you are.”
The Gaunt howled. The remaining dragon dove at the back of its head. As the Gaunt turned, Meralda’s Sight changed, and for an instant she saw through the giant’s skin.
There, where its heart should have been, flew the black death, much diminished but still recognizable.
“I didn’t kill it,” Meralda said. “It simply transformed.”
How many centuries of magic, how many spells, how much time and effort did the Vonats devote to this thing?
The Gaunt howled in triumph, and Meralda’s Sight blurred. But she saw the Gaunt catch the last dragon in its hands, she saw it twist the struggling form violently.
The Gaunt dropped the dragon. The limp form took a long time to fall.
The giant pointed again. It screamed, churning through the Sea toward Meralda.
Meralda pulled her Sight away, and leaned heavily on the controls for a moment before picking up the speaking tube. She called for the Captain, advised him to make any climb he could and push the flying coils until they began to burn.
The airship’s deck tilted as her nose began to lift, and the hum of the flying coils penetrated every deck and every bulkhead.
Meralda raised her Sight again, as much as she dared.
The Gaunt was running now, growing in stature with each step. Meralda thought she could see segments of the black death burning out and falling.
The Gaunt lifted its hands toward the sky.
Donchen and the Bellringers returned, struggling and grunting beneath the bulk of two flat, wide crates. “We brought a pair,” said Donchen. “Will that be enough?”
“We’ll ne
ed at least three more,” she said.
Donchen smiled, his face covered in a sheen of sweat, but his eyes shone bright and calm.
“We shall fetch them,” he said. The Bellringers smiled back as well, mopping sweat but eager.
“Thank you,” Meralda said. She bit back any more words and turned to the controls, as if troubled by the lamps.
Donchen led the Bellringers away, and Meralda waited until they were well out of sight before she slipped out of the conversion room and made her way swiftly to the Lucky Jenny.
Chapter 14
A pair of pump mechanics lingered in the loading bay. One collected tools, while the other squatted precariously in the crane’s frame and greased the pulleys.
Meralda dismissed them both, claiming they were needed forward. The light from her eyes sweeping the dark, empty bay and the sudden rain of cemetery flowers hastened both crewmen through the main doors.
Meralda turned and looked up. The lower half of the Lucky Jenny’s hull hung overhead, secured by lines to the upper deck. A switch labeled EMERGENCY PULL ONLY was set in the bulkhead below the Jenny, and beside that a brass wheel waited.
Meralda threw the switch. Motors and gears began to grind. In a moment, the Jenny began to descend.
Meralda closed her eyes and waited.
Inside her, the unmagic howled, eager to be released. Meralda fought it, clearing her mind of all but a single goal–that of keeping her boots in contact with the deck.
About her, the air grew warm. She saw bright flashes through her tightly-shut eyelids, heard a shower of small objects fall all around her.
She remembered watching the Sea turn solid, watching every living thing that swam in it die. She saw Nameless fall, and Faceless. Finally, the Lucky Jenny settled a foot above the deck and began to inch forward, toward the end of the loading ramp.
Meralda turned the brass wheel. Machinery whined, and the ramp began to inch down as a howling wind came rushing in. The launch listed onto her port side, but her hull looked intact, so Meralda hurried toward her and set about untying the mooring lines.
“Captain to loading bay,” said the speaking tube. “We’re showing the flying launch has been lowered and the ramp is being deployed. What the devil is going on down there?”
Meralda clambered up the Jenny’s hull. She scrambled down the hatch, closed and locked it behind her, and made her way to the pilot’s seat.
Like the Intrepid, the Jenny’s bow was glass framed by steel. From Meralda’s boots to the top of her head she was encased in glass, with only the pilot’s yoke and a narrow band of instruments and switches before her.
She studied the pilot’s panel, working the switches and knobs. Flying coils on, saturation to seventy percent. Running lamps on. Cabin heat on.
The Jenny shook and lifted off the ramp, bobbing like an All Hallows apple in a tub full of cider. Meralda righted her with a small turn of the pilot’s yoke, and fought back a wave of tears.
“I loved you, Donchen,” she whispered. “And you, Mug.”
She was dimly aware of noises at the loading bay doors. The Captain shouted through the speaking tube, even calling her name, but his words were soon drowned out by the rising hum of the Jenny’s eager flying coils.
You were correct after all, she thought, addressing the spoken premonition she’d heard earlier. It appears I will never see home again.
“But those I love will,” she said aloud. “I’ll see to that.”
The ramp crept down, and the wind howled. Beyond the end of the ramp lay nothing but night, nothing but darkness.
But somewhere out there, Meralda knew the Gaunt still charged through the Sea, growing closer with each giant step.
The ramp came to a shuddering halt. Meralda glared out into the dark.
“Show me the Gaunt,” she said. “I’m not running anymore, do you hear? This time, I’m coming for you.”
She set the coils for forward flight, shoved the throttle levers forward, and the Lucky Jenny shot from the Intrepid like an arrow into the dark.
* * *
Meralda gave in to her Sight.
She stopped struggling to retain any sense of the normal, of the mundane. Let the clouds become hazy, shimmering bodies of light. Let the wind show itself as a glowing rush of delicate spiraling fibers. Let the raindrops sparkle like tiny droplets of living fire, changing color and intensity as they fall.
“Let the new world be born,” she said.
As the hidden world around her emerged, Meralda felt as though her own memories, her feelings, her self, were all slipping away.
How long until I can’t recall my name, she wondered. How long before Donchen and Mug and Tirlin are just faded memories, images devoid of meaning? A day? Two?
She managed to focus on the controls, and she shoved the throttle lever as far forward as it would go.
Then she turned her unleashed Sight out into the storm, and searched it for the Gaunt.
The door behind her opened with a metallic squeal.
“Oh my,” said Donchen, stooping beneath the short pilot house door. “Now we’re stealing government property. Tsk, tsk.”
“Technically, this makes you a pirate,” added Mug, who sailed past Donchen to hover near the Jenny’s forward glass. “Don’t we need a black flag with a skull on it, if we’re going to be air pirates?”
Meralda’s eyes blazed.
“It’s no good being cross,” Mug said. “Although you would do well to congratulate us both on our cleverness.”
“You must both leave,” she said. Neither Donchen nor Mug made note of the fact that the movements of her lips were entirely out of time with the sound of her words. “This is no place for either of you.”
“I disagree,” said Donchen, who settled into the seat next to Meralda. “There is, in fact, no other place for us than by your side.”
“Anyway, it’s not like you can just throw us overboard,” observed Mug. He turned and faced Meralda, cage to nose. “Not if there’s any of Meralda left in there.” He poked a vine through his cage and touched the tip of Meralda’s nose. “So, is there? Hello?”
“Do not test my patience,” Meralda said.
“Then don’t insult my intelligence,” Mug said. “You flew away and left me behind and how dare you go off to die without telling me goodbye.”
His words stung, and Meralda was surprised she felt the blow.
“I’m not done,” Mug said. His eyes blazed and his leaves shook, and he brought his cage close. “You created me, Mistress. We grew up together. I was sure we’d grow old together. But if that isn’t to be, well, then we’ll die together, and you just try using that blasted unmagic to send me away, you just try.”
“Mug,” began Donchen.
“I’ll have my say,” Mug said, leaves quivering. “I know you’re still in there, Meralda Ovis. I don’t know where this unmagic came from or why it came, but I know you, and I know you won’t give up. Not while you’ve got breath in you. So dig down deep and fight, Mistress. You hear me? Fight.”
“I don’t wish to interrupt,” said Donchen.
“Then don’t,” snapped Mug. “You haven’t said a word, Meralda. That’s part of the problem. You take problems inside yourself and you try to fix them there, but you can’t always do that and we want to help, we really do—”
“The Gaunt,” said Donchen, his voice rising. “Meralda, ascend—”
Meralda hauled back on the pilot’s yoke, and the Jenny stood on her tail and hurtled skyward. The Gaunt’s fingernails scraped the bottom of the Jenny’s hull, spinning her about and sending Mug bouncing off the pilot cabin’s bulkheads.
Meralda twisted the yoke. Though the cloudy murk beyond the glass revealed nothing but swirling vapor, her Sight showed the Gaunt in close pursuit. Worse, the giant’s stature increased as she watched, matching the Jenny’s climb.
“You did have a plan,” said Donchen. “Other than dying a hero,” he added.
“I meant to lead the Gaunt
away from the Intrepid,” Meralda said. The Gaunt’s reaching hand drew near, and she gave the pilot’s yoke another savage twist. “Away from everyone.”
“Change of plans,” Mug said, righting his cage at last. “No more dying. Fight this thing. Kill it.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Not without turning the Sea to ash. Perhaps the world too.”
“Forget the unmagic, then. What about regular old Tirlish magic?” replied Mug. “Surely you can still use that!”
The Gaunt roared, swiping the Jenny, its clawed hand passing so close it left a brief rend in the clouds and caused the airship to lurch.
“I don’t have anything—” began Meralda.
But I do. Amorp’s Delighter. It’s back there, behind the port coil, unless it too was just part of a dream.
“Aha!” Mug said. “She’s had an idea!”
“It’s foolish,” Meralda said. Her Sight showed the Gaunt massing for a leap, and she sent the Jenny hurtling into a narrow spiral.
“So is doing nothing,” said Donchen. “What can we do?”
Meralda shook her head. “Someone needs to fly us,” she said. “I may have a weapon. It almost certainly won’t be enough to destroy the Gaunt, but it’s all we have.”
Donchen smiled and slapped his hand down on his knee. “I shall fly this marvelous craft,” he said, his tone as light as if he’d just suggested a picnic in the Park.
“You’re not a pilot,” Mug said.
“True, but you are,” replied Donchen. “You will say push that lever, or twist the yoke thusly, and I will comply. Meanwhile, Meralda will employ her secret weapon, and we’ll all be back aboard the Intrepid to face charges by lunch.”
Meralda laughed despite herself.
“You’ve gone as mad as me. It’s hopeless,” she said. The Gaunt leaped, missing the Jenny by mere yards, and roaring in rage. “Hopeless.”
“Then we’d best be about it,” said Donchen. Before Meralda could reply, he turned and took her face in his hands and kissed her until the Gaunt roared again, much closer now.
“I will not let you die,” she said. “Either of you.”