Voidfarer

by Sean McMullen

  "Any time is convenient, Learned Elder. Right away is expedient, however. The Lupanians move very, very fast, we cannot afford to delay our preparations by even a night."

  "Well then, we shall be ready for you within a quarter hour," she responded.

  "Hall of Neophytes. Roval will take you there."

  x >: >:

  Justiva, Norellie, and the others wrote continually as I read from my journal, asked intelligent questions, and generally seemed to have grasped the full seriousness of the situation. This gratified me, but they were not the people who were in power, and could make no decisions of importance. Reading the journal again brought to life the horrors of the days past: the close-run escapes, the slaughter, the destruction, and the misery. I skipped the two field trials aboard the barge, but Justiva took charge of the journal when the other Metrologans set me sketching the tripods, the handling beasts, and the casting that was the heat weapon. For hours my mind was filled with images of glittering latticework legs striding across the fields of high summer, while Justiva and Halland read and reread my journal, and students plied me with questions as they built models of the towers and voidships out of wood, paper mache, and resin.

  It was perhaps the fourth hour past midnight when Justiva left us to attend some other matters. By now a five-foot-high model of a fighting tripod stood at the center of the floor on three latticework legs, its rope tentacles hanging limp and the mirror plate of its hood staring blankly at us. The students were still working on a pottery-clay mockup of a handling beast.

  "I don't like the way that thing is looking at me," Halland said as he munched on a bran and honey biscuit.

  "It's only a model," laughed Norellie, taking him by the arm.

  "From my perspective, it looks like the one wading in the Alber River, just before Captain Danzar's ballista brought it down," I said. "Any moment now I expect the heat weapon to come to bear on me.. . and then I'll be standing before the ferrygirl."

  Norellie took a towel from the basket of biscuits and draped it over the cowl of the model.

  "Better?" she asked brightly, putting a hand on her waist and rolling her hip in the commander's direction.

  "Thank you, ladyship," we said together, both of us just a little astonished.

  "Would that the originals were so easily overcome," added Halland.

  "Well then, I must seek easier victories elsewhere," she tittered. I realized that I was softly humming "The Drawstring of the Drawers," and stopped immediately. There is something curiously unsettling about women who are so very skilled at the allure of men as was Norellie. They become so very good at it, they develop some ill-defined yet very destabilizing talent to sweep aside common sense and inspire rashness. Now Justiva reentered the room.

  "If you do not mind me saying so, Inspector, you look terrible," she observed as she sat down at the table again. She riffled through my journal. "You have lived through an extraordinary eight days."

  "Only eight days?" I sighed as I rubbed my eyes. "It seems like eighty."

  "And what has this to do with Riellen?" Norellie asked, holding up the fingers of her hand outstretched.

  "Five? Perhaps the number of people gathered together that she needs to hold a rally?"

  "No, it is more than the number of people I know who would not have wrung her scrawny little neck for what she did to you for three years. I am not among them."

  "You are a woman after my own heart," agreed Halland.

  "Why, Commander, what a flatterer you are," she said, batting her hand at him and raising an eyebrow. "We really must rest now, yet there is so much more to talk about. Perhaps you

  could sleep here in the temple compound for the night—oh, and you too, Inspector."

  / do believe that she fancies the commander, I thought. / wonder if he believes it? I rubbed my eyes and stifled a yawn.

  "Perhaps the commander could accept your most generous hospitality," I said, my head on ever so slight an angle, and my eyebrows raised a trifle. "I am staying with friends, however. They will worry if I do not return at all. What say I return for breakfast?"

  "I'm sure I could also find—" began Halland with an embarrassed glance from me to Justiva.

  "Oh no, no, no, Commander," insisted Norellie, taking him by the arm. "Come with me, this is one night when you will lie in comfort." But probably get little sleep, I thought as I glanced to Justiva and raised my eyebrows again before I could help myself. She gave me the barest flicker of a wink in response, then nodded imperceptibly.

  XXX

  I was in fact sleeping at the Lamplighter, and had to rouse the landlord to be let in. After a mere four hours asleep I was up again, washed, dressed, and in search of breakfast. There was a small market on the riverside, and I went straight to Greasy Al-frodan's Gourmet Rolls, my favorite stall for breakfast. There, directly in front of the stall, were Lavenci and Riellen. They appeared to be in the middle of some icily polite exchange.

  "Ah, Inspector, I was getting worried about you!" declared Lavenci as I walked over and went down on one knee to her.

  "Er, how so, ladyship?"

  "Well, you once said this is your favorite place to breakfast, so I have been waiting here since dawn in the hope of speaking with you." Riellen twitched as if she had been prodded in the back with a very sharp dagger.

  "I regret your discomfort," I said as I got up. "Pelmore's hanging at noon would have been an easier place to find me. The execution cannot proceed unless both sentencing and ratifying magistrates are present."

  "I'll not be attending, that turd has wasted enough of my life already," Lavenci declared; then she turned on Riellen. "Leave us. My dear friend Danolarian and I must speak of matters that are not for the ears of virgins." Severely discomforted, Riellen cowered, saluted, then hurried away.

  "What did she want?" I asked as we watched her go. "More apologies?"

  'The little rat has been doing some research. She came here to warn me against the temptation to suicide." "Really?"

  'Three of the couples who she afflicted with the constancy glamour were in Alberin, she has checked upon them. One man drowned himself in the Alber. Another's partner vanished, so he was hanged for suspected murder. The third man sailed for Helion Island in search of the cure, but his ship was never heard of again. The two surviving women have become nuns in the Contemplative Order of Divine Etheric Transcendence."

  "People in that order spend most of their time darkwalking. Many of them never return from it."

  "They are the ones who have transcended, and both women may be trying to do just that. Danolarian, if an allurement glamour is rape, a constancy glamour is nothing short of murder. It warrants the death sentence, and I told Riellen as much."

  "Reluctant as I am to admit it, Riellen did not know that until now."

  "And if she had?"

  T would have recommended that she hang beside Pelmore. Well then, why are you here, ladyship?"

  "I have eaten here every day that you have been away— except for when I traveled to Gatrov. Today I waited, though. I knew you would come here, and I had something important to tell you."

  "In that case, may I buy you another breakfast?"

  "Oh! You would? I mean yes, yes. More is the pity that it is not breakfast after a night lying naked in your arms."

  I bought two groundnut rolls with parsley and fried onions, and we sat on a wall overlooking the river to eat. Lavenci took

  only two or three bites before glancing at me, clearing her throat, and taking a deep breath.

  "Danolarian, I did not petition for Pelmore to be spared!" she said in a harsh, forced voice, before flinging her roll into the water and burying her face in her hands.

  "Someone did," I responded quietly, taking little interest in my own roll.

  "Mother dragged me off to see Elder Justiva of the Metrologans the morning after I had been freed. Justiva is from Helion, and she knew a little about the constancy glamour. At the temple we met Norellie, who had been wise enough
to flee before the towers razed Gatrov. They both tried several spells and castings, but none worked. Both Justiva and Norellie agreed that the glamour can only be lifted if both partners are still alive."

  "Lavenci—"

  "No! Please, hear me out first. When mother and I were alone again, I told her everything. It took hours. She—she thinks Pelmore's sentence should be put off for some months. I told her that Pelmore murdered a fine and brave man, in cold blood, and for that he should hang. I'll take my seven years of celibacy and call it a lesson in the very expensive school of experience. However ... Mother used her considerable influence to try to have Pelmore's sentence changed to a lifetime in some dungeon. I know that pressure was put on you, and that you resisted. The word is that your career in the Wayfarers is over, so take this."

  She dropped a little scroll with legal and merchant bank seals into my hand.

  "What is this?" I laughed wearily. "A recommendation for a job in a bank?"

  "A bank note for eleven thousand florins, nearly all of my personal wealth."

  "Eleven thousand florins?" I gasped. "I cannot accept this! It's more than my wages for twenty years!"

  "Yes, don't spend it all at once."

  I took a bite from my roll, then offered it to Lavenci. I had to drop it into her hand so that she would not feel my touch. A barge glided slowly by, drawn by a horse on the towpath. A

  ferryboat followed, bearing two merchants who were laughing and waving their hands.

  "We used to sit here and quote poetry to each other," I said as a squad of militiamen marched along the tow path beneath past us.

  "I slapped your hand away here," replied Lavenci in barely a whisper. "It will always be accursed in my memory."

  Below us, the marshal in charge of the squad called for three cheers for the Alpindrak piper and his lady. I forced a smile onto my face and waved. Lavenci puffed her chest out and waved too.

  "His lady," she sighed. "How I have longed to hear those words," she said once the squad was past. "Had it not been for that slap, it might be true today."

  "Recently, well for just four days past, I have been wondering about that slap," I said, just a trifle timidly.

  "As well you might."

  "I should like to hear the story behind it."

  "No, please, you would think badly of me," she replied breathlessly.

  "So, it was as I thought," I said, looking as glum as I was able. "I did not think you that type." "Type? What type?"

  "Where I come from it is called the peon princess. Such a girl bestows her favors upon the lowborn, while spurning the advances of her peers and betters. She delights in the power to elevate the lowly and cast down the mighty. Strange, you do not seem cruel, yet only cruel ladies think to play such a game."

  The spring of the trap was set, the hook was baited. Lavenci did not want to be thought of badly, yet I was fairly sure that she was even less anxious to be thought of as what I had described.

  "I could tell you a story, but you may never wish to speak with me again," she declared with her hands steepled over her mouth and nose.

  "But perhaps if I heard it we could then go our separate ways in peace," I suggested.

  ___Lavenci thought about this for a time. I watched as a

  charred plank drifted past on the water from inland. I had a fairly good idea how it would have been set on fire.

  "Very well," she said, lowering her hands and rubbing them together. "Once upon a time there was a sickly girl with a beautiful, suave, alluring mother, and an older sister who had charm and wit sufficient for an entire troupe of comic players. The sickly girl was very intelligent, however and on her fifteenth birthday she graduated from her mother's academy, and was made the youngest sorcery academician in the history of Diomeda.

  "It was then that she discovered a curious thing. If she found any youth in the academy comely, he would be too intimidated to refuse her advances. She made it her business to seduce students in unusual places where they might be chanced upon; she wanted to gain a reputation as a hoyden. Soon her suave mother and witty sister no longer thought of her as a shy virgin, and the girl found it exciting to discomfort her mother's staff and students, and to keep them guessing who might or might not be in her favor. Years passed, then she met a lovely boy, and in the most romantic of circumstances. She wanted to be his sweetheart, to be courted by him, but she knew nothing of the protocols of courtship used by people who were actually in love. Poor girl, she simply did not know what to do."

  Lavenci paused to catch my glance, and let me see the pain in her own eyes.

  "She must have managed something," I suggested, somewhat startled.

  "Oh yes, she treated it as an elite scholar like herself would. For five frantic days she read romantic novels in every spare moment, then met with her beau each evening. She tried to apply all that was said in the novels about sweet, coy maidens being courted. The novels were very specific about what nice girls did when a boy's hands wandered up skirts or down blouses, and thus she slapped her sweetheart's hand when he touched her breast. Poor, sensitive boy, he was mortified, and she was too proud to apologize. The next day he was sent away to war. Months passed, and while he was away, her beau met another soldier who boasted of doing the most intimate things possible with a girl who he described closely, then named. It was, of course, the boy's sweetheart.

  "When the boy returned to the city, well you can imagine what happened. She had read a lot more books, and she tried to tease him, to show off her sharp wits. He asked her why she would share gross familiarities with others, while despising him so much that she could not even bare a caress of his hand. Suddenly desperate and mortified, she flung all her games and facades aside and frantically offered him anything and everything that might please him. Alas, it was too late. He spurned her, and went his way. She was left inconsolable."

  "What happened to her?" I asked,

  "That part of the story has not happened yet. Would you like the rest of this roll? I am no longer inclined to eat."

  Lavenci offered the remaining length of roll to me. I declined, feeling nauseous too.

  "You had to make all those mistakes," I ventured, staring across the river.

  "For you, there was no other way." I turned back and caught her eye. "Now you are wiser."

  "Am I really?" asked Lavenci, shaking her head.

  "I think so. Anyway, did you ever stop to think that I might have problems too?"

  "Really?"

  "Really and truly."

  "Then I should be allowed to hear your story, and make up my own mind," responded Lavenci, eager yet anxious, all at once.

  Now it was my turn. Ever since Riellen's trial aboard the barge I had been steeling myself to reveal my past to Lavenci, yet I had not known how to. In a curious sort of way, putting it into a story made it easier.

  "Once upon a time there was a prince, the son of an emperor. He was tall, clever, healthy, very well educated, and skilled with weapons. On his thirteenth birthday a princess from a client kingdom introduced him to the arts of dalliance, and thereafter he never spent a night alone, and all his bedmates were of royal bloodlines. Before he turned fourteen he had killed two training partners in fencing accidents, had earned a degree in cold sciences, and could speak many languages.

  "It was now that the emperor assembled the largest war fleet the world had ever seen, to conquer some distant kingdom. The empress would not let the prince sail with the fleet, but he was bored with luxury and security. He disguised himself as a commoner and enlisted on one of the ships. He was tall and strong, and could pass for one five years older. It was a hard life. He had to do filthy, menial work, his hands grew blistered, he fought bullies, learned to splice ropes, ate coarse foods, received a flogging for some petty offense, but became popular with his shipmates.

  'The prince grew to like the life, because he was being accepted for himself, and not his rank, wealth, and birthright. He had just been promoted to able seaman when word of a disa
ster reached the fleet as they lay anchored off a tiny island. A terror weapon, unleashed by the emperor, had destroyed the entire continent of Torea. The father of the prince had become the greatest murderer in the history of the world."

  Lavenci gasped and dropped the remains of the groundnut roll to the towpath below us. A stray dog snatched up the morsel and ran off with a half-dozen other dogs pursuing it.

  "You are Prince Darric, son of Emperor Melidian Warsovran of Damaria," she whispered, shrinking away from me along the wall.

  "No, I am not," I said with a little chuckle. "Neither am I able seaman second-class Allidian Orence. Not since the fifteenth night of sixthmonth in 3140, anyway. That was when I found the body of Danol Scryverin in Diomeda, the night the city fell to my father's invasion fleet. He had destroyed a continent by accident, now he was carving out a new realm by yet more warfare. I was revolted. I was the son of the worst murderer in the history of our world. Thus I became the dead Danol Scryverin so that I might escape my birthright. I learned Alberinese and Diomedan ... and you know the rest."

  "Wensomer's half brother," whispered Lavenci, more to herself than me.

  "Yes. Madame Yvendel had an affair with Father when they were both young students, at what was then your grandmother's academy in Diomeda. Wensomer is their love child. I met her when I was seven years old. She told me that she had a half sister, and that Rax Einsel, the court sorcerer, was the father."

  "Father," said Lavenci dreamily. "I met him once, in Diomeda. Just once."

  "Really?"

  "We embraced, we spoke of many things for an hour, then he was gone. I think he knew he was about to die."

  "I knew him well, I should tell you all I can remember of him. He taught me the basics of magical castings, cold sciences, and applied logic. He was a kind man, and very witty. It was he who helped me run away to sea. I suspect that he knew what was about to happen to Torea. His last words to me before I boarded the ship were 'You will like Diomeda, my true-love is there.'"

  "His truelove?" exclaimed Lavenci. "He actually loved mother?"

  "That's what he told me, but he named no names. Years later Wensomer became empress of the new Scalticarian Empire, and one day I saw her during a parade and recognized her. Father bequeathed to both of us a strong streak of leadership and affinity for power, but we both fought the temptation to use it. I deliberately remained a lowly Wayfarer, and Empress Wensomer conducted a dissolute and scandalous royal court so that people would treat her reign as a joke. On Alpindrak she told me that the girl I was courting was her half sister, and Rax Einsel's secret daughter."