Wings Over Talera

by Charles Allen Gramlich

  It was the powder I hunted, and beyond the ranked piles of shot I found the room where it was kept. That room made a square within the greater rectangle of the hold, and its walls were plated with metal as defense against projectiles and fire. There was a single entrance, a brass-banded door of oak, and in front of it stood two guards wearing swords, with leaf-bladed spears leaning close to hand.

  The guards had already seen me. There was no going around them, no turning back. Over the door, where torches could not be used because of the black powder, a glow globe was fastened. I stalked into its light from out of the shadows. For a moment the guards were confused by my helmet and cloak. Wasn’t I one of theirs? Had I come early to relieve them? Did I bear a message? I smiled at that last thought. Surely, I did have a message for them.

  Both guards were human, both male. One frowned, put his hand on his sword. He called a question. I ignored it, kept walking. More words came—a quiet order to halt and then a command, ringing. I drew my sword, left handed. They drew theirs.

  One of the two had red hair. It was he who turned to sound a warning bell beside the door, and I hurled the dagger that I’d palmed in my right hand. The straight, flat, stiletto blade took the red head between the second and third knuckles of his fingers and pinned his hand to the wall.

  It took a moment for the wounded man’s scream to gather, and in that moment I leaped forward, sword winking as I shifted it from left hand to right. The red head’s mouth opened and I cut him across the throat so that his cry was born dead in a foaming of blood.

  The other guard lunged at me. I twisted to one side, heard the whiff of his blade driving past me, felt it scrape a sharp line of burn down my left side. I snapped my wrist hard across at my waist, my own blade humming as it cut through air to meet his. Steel raked on steel, knocking his sword well out of line with my body. He tried to recover. I didn’t let him.

  My left hand flashed out, fingers locking about his throat, shutting off any chance he had of calling for help. Then I stepped into him and drove my blade up into his chest cavity. His eyes met mine, widened for an instant, shuttered closed the next as his legs went limp and I let him fall. He hit the deck with a soft thud, pulling away from my blade so that it slipped free and hung there at my side—dripping.

  “Bravo,” a voice said from behind me.

  I turned. Slowly. Standing there was the scarlet-cloaked officer of guards that I had seen before. Now, he unclasped the amber broaches that pinned his cloak at the shoulders and flung the garment away. By that act he showed himself to be a man proud and arrogant, convinced of his own superiority. A more cautious warrior would have saved the cloak for defense, to wrap around an arm to foil a stabbing sword.

  Overconfidence was a weakness I could exploit.

  I turned to face the man fully, took off my own cloak and tossed it aside. Then I removed my helm and let it drop. The man frowned. I gave him back a thin smile. He removed his helmet and set it down on a stack of cannon balls.

  I did not know how this man had found me out. Nor did I truly care. I could see from the red-ember glow in his eyes, and from the swirl of his tattoos, that he was Vohanna’s minion. And for that I would kill him. But first, it occurred to me that I should make him pay—for Bryce, for Eric, for Diken Graye...for Rannon. Vohanna was the reason they were all lost to me. Perhaps it was time I took something of hers.

  The man saluted me with a flick of his blade, then took a fencing stance. I did not bother to return his gesture. That irritated him. He was one who would demand respect, a proud man.

  “I find little interest in hacking up more of Vohanna’s mind-controlled slaves,” I said offhandedly, lowering the point of my sword to the wooden planks and giving every appearance of leaning casually upon it. That appearance was a lie, but he did not know that.

  He snarled. “My mind is my own. And I am no slave.”

  “A lap dog, then,” I said, in an agreeable tone.

  The man’s face flushed. “You will die for that.”

  “Not today,” I replied, smirking at him.

  Again he snarled, and lunged with his sword extended in a perfect line for my heart. His speed was incredible but his emotion had telegraphed his movement and my own blade flicked up, slapping his aside. I stepped right, letting his momentum carry him past me, and I cut him across the upper chest, leaving a long, thin furrow that bubbled red.

  He pulled up, free hand rising to touch his wound, fingertips coming away sticky. I smelled the blood, sharp in my nostrils. The man met my gaze, incredulity written like Braille across his features. It was in his thoughts that I could have killed him with that stroke and had cut him instead as a deliberate insult. He was wrong, but I didn’t need to let him know that. Again I offered my thin smile. And now I raised my blade and saluted him, mockingly.

  His face went livid; his pupils dilated wildly, black on red. He launched a blistering attack, driving me back as he hurled himself recklessly upon me. I fended myself but could do little to take advantage of his rashness. He was too quick, too powerful. But he was also tiring.

  Anger is a heavy emotion to carry.

  The man’s attack fizzled in a flurry of striking, clanging swords. He came to a halt, gasping for breath and trying to hide it, with sweat glistening on his ruddy face and beading in his hair. His eyes blazed, and were fearful at the same time—like a wolf finding that his easy prey has fangs. I affected a bored pose, letting the tip of my sword drop again to the floor-planks.

  “Perhaps some lessons,” I said to the man, keeping my voice mild and idly waving my left hand toward his sword.

  He vented an absolute shriek at my insult, and lunged again, wildly. I spun off my left heel, dropping to one knee with my back to him, my left hand slapping across, catching my sword’s hilt behind the right hand to add power to a driving thrust over my shoulder. The blade seemed to leap upward in a shining arc.

  The guard officer’s upper body was too far forward. His balance was ruined and his sword was well out of defensive line over my head where my heart had been moments before. He had no chance to block my thrust as it razored in from his right side. His body seemed to draw the blade in, seemed to suck it in deep beneath the ribs until the hilt met the flesh of his belly with a wicked smacking sound.

  I jerked the weapon free and, continuing my turn as I pushed up off my knee, rose to a standing position behind him. He was perfectly still, leaning so far forward that I thought he would fall. But then his head started to turn toward me. I saw the glistening of his eyes, and I swung my blade around and down, chopping through his neck right where his helmet would have protected if he hadn’t removed it. The head spun free, thunked wetly against the wall, and fell to roll quietly to a stop.

  I was already plucking up the man’s scarlet cloak and wiping my sword clean. Then I slung my own cloak, the soldier-gray one, around me. Walking over to the door of the gunpowder room, I reached up and grasped the hilt of my dagger where it had buried itself deep in the wood. I jerked it free, and the corpse of the guard whose hand it still pinned slumped the rest of the way to the floor with what sounded like a sigh.

  Sheathing the dagger, I bent and picked up my helmet from the floor. For a moment, in the polished gleam of that helm, I saw my face. It was cold and bitter, the eyes like chips from a jade glacier.

  I glanced toward the three dead men that I shared the room with. For the first time I realized that I’d felt nothing during those killings. I’d taken their lives remorselessly. All except for the last, the officer’s. I’d felt something when I taunted him, before I took his head. It had been something like...glee.

  Looking back at my face in the mirror of the helm, I thought I saw for a moment, deep within the oil-dark pupils, a blooming and shimmering of crimson.

  I hurled the helmet savagely away from me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE BLACK PYRAMID

/>   A gleam of red. Deep in my eyes.

  It was a lie.What I’d seen reflected in the helmet had to have been a lie. I had not become that which I fought against. I had not! Vohanna must be stopped. Bryce must be saved. And if that meant meeting violence with more violence, so be it.

  I turned, kicked open the door to the room that I knew must house the black powder for the cannons. I was right. Kegs of the stuff stood like parade-ground soldiers in the small space. And piled high in one corner were thousands of swollen-headed blast quarrels like the one Diken Graye had used days ago to bring down Rannon’s airship. All around me I smelled the hellish stench of sulphur and charcoal.

  Stepping over the threshold, I sheathed my sword. A fire axe hung on one wall. I took it down. I had to work quickly. It seemed unlikely that Vohanna would keep each of her minions under constant mental surveillance, but how long would it be before she checked in and found some of her servants missing in action? Somehow, I doubted it would be very long.

  A glow globe hung from the ceiling in the black powder room, and by its light I overturned several kegs of the grainy material and used the axe to smash them open. Powder spilled in dry rivers over the floor. The air began to fill with an ashy dust.

  I picked up another keg and carried it to the door, then punched open the top and began pouring a thick trail of gunpowder out into the hold where the cannons were located. The keg was empty by the time the trail reached an outside wall of the ship. I tossed the barrel aside, then turned to drag one cannon away from its porthole, which was big enough to provide me an exit if the drop wasn’t too far. I glanced out, saw the ground some twenty-five feet below. It was a long way but I had little choice.

  Drawing my dagger and holding up the axe, I struck one blade against the other, sending a wave of sparks sleeting onto the line of gunpowder at my feet. Light flared up, yellow and ugly. An odor of burning reeked in my nostrils. I turned and slipped through the porthole to dangle for a moment by my hands. Inside I could hear the scorpion hiss of fire running swiftly over black powder, and I let go, slid along the curved hull, dropped to land in a roll and come up running.

  I heard the shouts of guards, saw startled faces with wide eyes. I yelled at all of them to run. As I was running. One tried to get in my way, tried to grab at me. I shoved him aside and ran.

  Then something huge lifted me. I felt heat, heard a massive whumpf that seemed to envelop me. And I was thrown forward like a doll as the bomb of the ship went up behind me. I rolled over, protecting my face with my hands. A crescendo of flame pillared high in the smoking crater where the airship had been, licking and coiling even against the ceiling far overhead. Acrid fumes twined in the air; debris pounded to earth around me.

  I brushed off flaming splinters and ash and stumbled to my feet. The twisted iron of what had once been a cannon lay a few steps to my left, and even as I rose a jagged chunk of steam engine clanged to earth ahead of me, hissing like bacon on a griddle. I staggered around it, stumbled on away from the explosion. Around me, others were rising too. But they were far too dazed to pay attention to me.

  Reaching the cavern’s far wall, I glanced up with smoke-stung eyes to scan the painted glyphs that marked the many exits. The prisoner I’d interrogated had told me which glyph identified the tunnel that would lead me to the other cannon-armed airships and, eventually, to Vohanna. That symbol was an eye pierced with four thorns, and when I found it I entered the dark mouth beneath.

  To destroy the second ship I came from above. This vessel was not as close to being finished as the first had been, and the scaffolding over the decks was still in place. More elaborate catwalks ran from cavern wall to cavern wall, and there were boxes and bales of supplies stacked upon them. I climbed up the rock wall to one of the walks and then followed it down to the ship.

  The chaos I had created helped me. Apparently, all work on this second ship had ceased as rumbles from the destruction of the first reached here. Even as I slipped into the cavern I noted laborers leaving the catwalks and going down to reinforce the guards for defense. They were all alert, but they weren’t watching behind them and they went down like ranked rows of pawns slapped by a hand when the blast wave of a new explosion struck them.

  At the third ship I made use of my gray cloak—a guard’s cloak—and of sheer audacity. I raced across the cavern floor, shouting in apparent panic, my helmet seemingly lost, scratches on my face, the stink of smoke heavy upon me. The officer of the guard rushed to meet me. He grabbed my shoulders, shook me. His men gathered around, tension and dawning fear writ large on their faces, especially of those not “controlled” by Vohanna. When the crowd was big enough I suddenly discovered my tongue again, and babbled wildly of armies and demons and strange new weapons that brought fire from the sky through the very ground.

  I babbled so madly the officer slapped my face and commanded me to control myself. With apparent difficulty I obeyed him—with true difficulty I avoided breaking his neck for the blow—and as the officer moved to snap out orders for defense of his ship, I slipped to the rear of the crowd, entered the vessel, found the black powder room, slaughtered the guards, blew up the ship and slipped away.

  Where an army is expected, one man walks through.

  Though I’d been told that there were four of the cannon-armed ships, I’d not yet found the last when I exited into a truly enormous cavern lit brightly by thousands of basketball-sized glow globes. Behind me in other caverns I’d left chaos and fire. Ahead it was peaceful and cool, as calm as a lagoon’s surface during the still of midday.

  From where I stood, a road of crystal as clear and fine as glass ran down into the bowl of the cavern. That road ended at a black stone pyramid so immense that it reached all the way from the ground to the roof two hundred tahng* overhead. Here, I realized, lay the underground portion of the pyramid that I’d seen in the jungle above. And I was instantly sure that inside those bleak, black walls I would find Vohanna’s lair, and that of my brother Bryce.

  [*One tahng equals 1.02 yards.]

  The valley of the cavern was as quiet as moonlight, but that quiet was a deception, of course—a trap. I walked willingly into it. There was nothing else to do; I would not stop now.

  The broiling, oven heat of the other caverns was mitigated here. My sweat began to dry as my shell boots clicked on the crystal highway. To either side of me grew leathery-barked trees in perfectly spaced plots, black-leafed ones to the right, silver-leafed to the left. They were vaguely similar in species to the brush I’d seen in other places here below, though much, much bigger. Each limb of each tree drooped beneath the weight of luscious scarlet fruit.

  About a third of the way along the road to the pyramid I noticed that company had joined me. Between every column of trees, in shadowy light, stood a guard. There were hundreds of them. I saw Nokarra, Kaldi, Vhichang, Llurns, Ss’Korra, Humans, even Klar. Each was a massive example of his race, armed with black axes in perfect tattooed stillness, with shimmering webs of scarlet light in their eyes. Their heads did not move to follow me, but I had no doubt they were attentive to my passing.

  Fifty tahng short of the pyramid, both trees and guards ended. And I saw finally how the plants here lived without sunlight. They were fed.

  A moat ran around the base of the pyramid. It bubbled and roiled and was as scarlet as enemy eyes or the fruit of black and silver trees. Huge cables, hoses really, ran from the moat up to the trees, and where the thin covering of topsoil had worn away I saw the pulse of fluid being pumped, or sucked, uphill toward the roots that it would nurture. Some mixture of blood and other substances that fluid was—the death of flesh to give life to root and bark and fruit.

  Spitting the taste of such foulness from my mouth, I strode the bridge across the moat and stopped to stare up at the pyramid as it loomed in awful splendor above me. The black walls did not gleam but were dull and lusterless, worked with bas-reliefs, raised glyphs, a
nd friezes. Most of the symbols were completely alien to me, twisted and ill-looking in some fashion I could not name. Or did not wish to.

  Along the wall overhead were ledges and portholes and closed doors of rust-tarnished metal, with glimmering, slate colored steps connecting them all. But directly in front of me was the only door I cared about, the entrance to this benighted place. It was barely as wide as one man, made of black steel bars, and it yawned wide open. I did not find that openness inviting.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the axe warriors had come out from their places amid the trees and stood like a barrier of flesh and iron on the road. It seemed they did not want me to retreat. As if I would have come this far only to turn back.

  Shrugging, I stepped through the doorway into the pyramid, into a corridor that had been kept narrow for defense. Glow globes drifted lazily here, above my head. And above them, on the featureless walls to either side, there were shadow-mouthed holes through which, I imagined, burning oil or some nastier liquid could be poured down on attackers. I was glad not to be an army trying to conquer this place.

  The corridor took several sharp turns—also for defensive purposes—and after the second turn I began to see darkened stairwells leading up into the interior of the building. I stayed with the main hallway and soon came out into a small, circular guardroom where at last I was met.

  “Greetings, Ruenn Maclang,” Diken Graye said, his voice without inflection, almost mechanical. At his back I tallied a dozen dark-feathered Vhichang with loaded and locked crossbows aimed at my chest.

  The Vhichang are avian but they have human-type hands and arms instead of wings. The tips of the quarrels that nestled in their crossbows were discolored red and I doubted that it was rust. Thoughts of poison made my stomach clench.