by Greg Curtis
Except that she'd only just come from the temple. Edouard thought about that as he held his sister's chair for her. The temple was an hour away by horseless carriage or two by horse if you hurried. Three or four hours if you took your time. And probably half a day’s travel on foot. But if she had already had dinner then she must have travelled quickly. And, he slowly realised, he hadn't seen how April had arrived either. He'd merely opened the front door for her. He hadn't seen either hoof or mane of a horse. He hadn't heard one outside either.
No horse. That was one thing. Already having eaten her dinner so clearly meant her journey to his home had to have been a very quick one. That was another. And then there was the matter of the soldiers encamped around the town. Breakwater was cut off from the rest of Therion. So how had she made it through their lines? Three mysteries about a single journey.
By the time he'd sat down himself and dinner was being plated up, Edouard's mind was spinning. Running through all the possibilities. And in the end he realised, there was only one.
“You portalled here!”
He blurted it out like a silly little child and everyone suddenly turned to face him. Polite conversation stopped, and so too did the dining. But he didn't care as the wheels and cogs of his mind were whirling furiously, assembling all the little puzzles of the past few days and putting them together into a single picture. Like a jig saw coming together.
The handmaidens could receive messages and supplies from far away quickly. They could seemingly cross blockades at will. They could travel quickly. And the alliance they'd made with his family made mention of the shrines. Every one of their family's homes was to have a shrine built on its lands. Now he knew why. It wasn't simply a public statement of their alliance. It was a portal network being built. And the House of Barris was being used as a façade.
“Sister, Father is not going to be pleased to hear of this.”
Of course Edouard was making a judgement and he could be wrong. His father was a shrewd old bugger. He might already have guessed, if he hadn't already agreed quietly. After all a portal network, if you could find enough sparks with the magic of dimension to operate it, could be useful to them as well. And suddenly he knew why Tyrel was busy training those with the magic. She was probably actively recruiting them too.
But even as he realised that another mystery unfolded in front of him. Where would you find sparks? Among the children. Many children had something of the gift, but unless it was trained it wasted away. Like muscles that weren't used. And who had the greatest access to children? Teachers. The temples were offering free education to the children across the various realms. But they weren't just doing it to bring Tyrel's words to the people. They were looking for those with the spark.
“Father has nothing to worry about.” She stared at him defiantly – for about half a second before she had to look away. She didn't truly know.
“I hope you're right. But we will speak of this later. You, Kyriel, Mara, Anatha, Selene and I.” This he knew wasn't the topic to speak of among strangers, not even his guests. It was the business of the House of Barris.
No more needed to be said on the matter just then Edouard knew. And with a small gesture he indicated to the others that they should continue eating. Some of them though had heard what he'd said. And possibly they'd guess the rest in time. The secret was already slipping out.
Still, they returned to their meal and normal conversation resumed. Mostly about irrelevancies. Even Edouard felt his appetite returning as his thoughts turned back to the meal.
Until Janus decided to destroy Edouard's calm once more as he casually mentioned that there was one person who might know more of the Cabal wizards. Or rather one giant black dragon with a love of reading. If only they could find a way of breaking through the blockades to speak with him. Except that Edouard realised that he could get through the blockades.
It was at that point that Edouard finally lost his appetite.
Chapter Thirty Three
“You're sure about this?”
Kyriel looked dubiously at the metal gondola sitting in the stables beside his horseless carriage, no doubt wondering if it would really do as he promised and take them through the blockades.
“My Lady I am as certain of this as you surely are that Ascorlexia will see us and not immediately think about dinner!”
“Oh!”
Her response didn't exactly fill him with confidence. But then he hadn't really been that confident about their journey to begin with. Even if there weren't all the usual dangers of bandits and wild animals, not to mention a land filled with soldiers bent on doing them harm if they landed in the wrong place, he wasn't eager to go anywhere near a black dragon.
Still, there seemed little choice if they were to speak with Ascorlexia and so Edouard pushed hard against the huge gondola and finally managed to wheel it out into the yard. Even as light weight as it was it weighed as much as four men and he could really have used Marcus' help. In the end though it sat proudly – in his thoughts anyway – in the yard; the fort standing tall in front of it, the stone wall behind. He couldn't help but notice that the tower was full of people as the other handmaidens and his guests had gathered there as well as on the ramparts of the wall. All were curious. But they had a right to be when he'd told them he had a machine that could carry them through the blockades safely. Both the one around them and the one surrounding Ascorlexia's cavern.
Actually he'd been a little inaccurate in that. The ship wouldn't carry them through the blockades, it would carry them over them, albeit slowly. But that was still better than the handmaidens' portals could do. They could only travel from one shrine to the next. And there was no shrine on the black dragon's land.
“If you'll lend me a hand my Lady.”
Edouard grabbed a handful of the silk stuffed into the gondola and started carefully pulling it out, and Kyriel did likewise. Soon, with the two of them working at it the gigantic silk bag was lying out on the grass, ready to be inflated, and that was a simple matter of erecting the lightweight frame around the base of the bag to keep the silk from the flames and then lighting the paraffin burners.
“It's a balloon!”
Someone from up above them on the tower shouted it out. They had obviously guessed what it was. It wasn't so surprising since there were others around in some of the more sophisticated realms, but it did somewhat take away from Edouard's enjoyment as the mystery was solved. He'd quite enjoyed seeing Kyriel's puzzlement.
“More than that good people – ” he shouted up at them, “ – this is a ship of the sky.”
Maybe that was boasting, but he was proud of his vessel. His sky ship as he called it. A lot of hard work had gone into building it, a lot of design too, but it was worth it in his view. With a lightweight steam engine to power it – he'd spent six months designing and building that single machine – and a propeller to pull it through the air and a tail to keep the ship straight, this was the first balloon that could steer its own path through the skies. As long as the winds were light.
The bag took time to fill as it always did. It was a slow and careful process as they had to keep adjusting the silk to make sure it didn't come too near the flames or snag on anything, and the sun was well and truly up by the time the bag was standing high above them. But when it did it was a proud sight to behold. The silk was bright and colourful in the sunshine and the bag itself was as large as the entire fort. To build it he'd bought enough silk to make ladies dresses out of for the entire kingdom, and then had had seamstresses working night and day for weeks. And he didn't care. There had to be advantages to being a noble, and being able to soar through the air was one of them.
“My Lady.” Edouard handed Kyriel a pair of goggles when she could finally tear her eyes away from the huge balloon above them, and a thick leather jacket. The one thing he had discovered as had many others before him, was that it was cold up there. Shockingly cold. A leather jacket and gloves were essential equipment, even if they
did rather transform her from a woman of modesty and refinement into a hulking labourer.
After that it was simply a matter of clambering on board – something that wasn't so easy when the gondola had no sides that could be lowered – and casting off.
Lifting into the air was the same joy that it had always been, and yet having an audience to watch them made it somehow even more special. And being able to watch them waving as they ascended past them in the still morning air, was truly wonderful. Naturally he waved back. Kyriel however, was spending more of her time looking over the side of the basket and staring down at the ground disappearing into the distance. Her normally tanned face had gone somewhat pale. Almost as pale as her hair in fact. He guessed it was her first time in a balloon.
“It's quite safe My Lady. I have been flying this ship for three years at least and never had a problem.”
That wasn't completely true. The landings had sometimes been a little embarrassing, especially the time he'd landed on the roof of an old abbey and had to be rescued by men with ladders, but he'd never hurt himself. Except occasionally tripping as he got in and out of the gondola. But Kyriel didn't have to know about any of that.
Soon though they were soaring high above the town of Breakwater, and he was spending too much of his time looking down on the soldiers blockading it to worry about his travelling companion. The blockade was more extensive than he'd realised. There were half a dozen encampments surrounding the town as he'd been able to see from the tower. But there were three more further out. Each on the main roads leading in and out of the town.
They were also more brutal. Around many of them he could see burnt out wagons and make shift graveyards where they'd buried the bodies of their victims. Too many of those lying under the soil would be the townsfolk. People he knew. That made him angry. That these people should be murdered for no crime save that they lived nearby. That was more than wrong.
Of course they weren't the only ones to have been killed by his brother's soldiers, and he guessed that more graveyards would be found around each of the other places they'd blockaded. Even before he counted the cost of the attacks by the mammoths and the sprigs. Simon's grab for the throne had already been paid for with the blood of thousands. Much more would be spilled before it was ended.
At least they were beyond the range of the soldiers' weapons. Every so often as he looked down he saw the puff of white smoke that he knew was gunfire. But none of the musket balls made it anywhere near them. They were simply too high. That was good – though a part of him almost wished they were lower so that he could shoot back at them.
A small whistle distracted him from the dark places his thoughts were leading him and he was grateful for it. Kyriel didn't look so happy though as she no doubt imagined it was a warning of some sort instead of just the boiler of the steam engine announcing that it had reached temperature. She was still sitting in her wicker seat, staring over the side at the ground far below and looking a little ill. He calmed her as best he was able while he extended the propeller forward ten feet on its shaft and then extended the rudder backward a good twenty feet. Then he tripped the switch that engaged the small engine and watched as the propeller started turning. From this moment on they were no longer just a balloon carried by the winds. They were a ship able to steer their own course through the sky.
Of course it was a slow journey. The engine didn't provide a lot of power. It couldn't when it was so small. So the propeller spun quite slowly and they probably moved no faster than a man marching quickly. But that wasn't such a terrible thing when they had the glory of the world set out before them to gaze upon.
And it was glorious. As the balloon soared high above the ground he could see the fields and forests set out like a picture beneath them. Something that no one who hadn't ever flown or climbed a mountain could ever imagine. The other thing he noticed was the curvature of the distant horizon, something that squared well with the words of the sages as they claimed that the entire world was a gigantic ball in the darkness of the ether. Each time he saw the horizon curving away into the distance he knew their words to be true, even if most still claimed the world was flat. It had to be. Otherwise they'd all fall off.
But that was an argument for another day and other people. For the moment he was simply happy to gaze down upon the flat tabletop lands beneath him and enjoy. After a time Kyriel seemed to do the same. Or at least she stopped hanging her head over the side of the gondola and staring forlornly at the ground.
Not much was said between them. Not much needed to be said. But he fancied that they both enjoyed the journey. Especially when elevenses approached and he poured them a cup of wild flower tea from the urn. There had to be some advantages to having a burner only a few feet above your head and plenty of hot water was one of them.
After tea they finally came across the city of Theria itself, and Edouard was pleased with the time they were making. The winds were obviously in their favour. But he was mostly curious as to how the city was surviving. He hadn't actually seen it since he'd escaped the dungeon and then he'd only seen the great walls of the city disappearing in the darkness. Before that the last time he'd seen it had been when he'd been brought before Simon, again in the darkness.
Somewhere during that time, the city had been locked down so he understood, and no one knew anything about what had been going on inside it since. They were actually going to be the first to be able to report back on it in nearly a month.
From high above the city looked more or less as it had before he'd been locked away. The great walls with the terrible holes in them. The buildings inside broken and battered. The castle in pieces. And as far as he could see no one had set about repairing any of it. Granted it was a massive task but they hadn't even started to clear away the huge piles of rubble. It was still piled all around the holes in the walls and the broken buildings. There weren't even any workmen. There should have been whole gangs of them hauling away the rubble. There should have been teams of oxen and horses and men crawling over the walls like ants. But there weren't. That made no sense to him. To go to all that effort to capture a city and then once you had it, not to bother repairing it? Not to try and transform it back into that thing you had worked so hard to steal?
Smoke hung in the air above the city. Dark smoke which he knew wasn't from chimneys. The city burnt wood not coal. This was the smoke from fires that had burned out of control. Something that matched the large black patches he could see dotting Theria. The city had burnt and he guessed no one had been there to put out the fires. Of course they were too high up to make out much of the detail. But that was a good thing. He knew that when he noticed the little puffs of white smoke here and there and knew it was more musket fire. The soldiers were shooting at them again. Thankfully their shots would never reach them. They would never even come close.
There was however, one place in the very heart of the city where things had changed. Where even from so far above he could see the signs of men working. They were building something. In the very heart of the city, next to the castle, and in the centre of a zone of blackness, workmen had started building a great round structure. He didn't know what it was. They were too high up to make out much of the detail. But he knew it was huge, the size of the castle itself, and he could see that it was round. An arena perhaps? It looked about the right shape. Though why you would build such a thing in a ruined city he couldn't imagine.
Seeing the arena filled Edouard with dread for some reason. He didn't know what it was or why it had been built. He had no idea what it might do. But he knew instinctively that it, whatever it was, was the reason for the entire coup. Everything had been done to build this thing. And he knew that that could not be good. When people overthrew a kingdom to build something. When they murdered thousands to build it. Whatever they were building could never be good.
Still, as they sailed over the city, he knew he would never get an answer to his questions. No one would ever tell him what it was. Not Simon. A
nd especially not his black robed Cabal wizard. But maybe, if the handmaidens were right, the black dragon could tell them. In another three or four hours he'd know.
If he hadn't been turned into an appetiser for an irritated dragon before then.
Chapter Thirty Four
“My Lady we're here.”
Edouard probably didn't have to tell Kyriel. She could see for herself if she chose to look over the side of the sky ship. But for some reason she refused to do so, keeping her eyes looking anywhere but down. Sometimes she just closed her eyes and refused to look at anything. Still, she needed to know. To prepare herself for the meeting with the great dragon.
At least they weren't being shot at anymore. They'd passed over the blockade a third of a league back and once again seen the little puffs of white smoke that were weapons being fired. But once they were inside the great dragon's realm that had stopped quickly. Edouard understood it was the same with all the blockades around the powers realms. The soldiers shot anyone entering and prevented anyone from leaving. But under no circumstances did they fire into the realms. And they did not dare risk a servant's life either. Anything that could upset a power had to be avoided at all costs. It was just a shame that they were so much less concerned about the lives of him and his guests at the fort. They shot at them regularly but fortunately their weapons didn't have the range. Not up hill.