by Daniel Kirk
“Light Elves tell the truth,” Asra said, “dark Elves lie.”
Macta shrugged. “More generalizations. At least I know what the truth is!”
There was a rapping on the door and an Aeronaut stepped through the doorway, followed by Macta’s trainer, a battle-scarred Elf named Petar. “Your Highness,” he said, “’tis time for your lesson.”
Powcca got up from his blanket and growled. “Lucky me,” Macta said, “more practice with my new arm, flexing my shoulder muscles until the aching makes me want to die. Asra, do you care to come and watch?”
Asra stood with her arms folded, gazing out the porthole. She shook her head just a little; Macta ought to know by now that she wasn’t interested in his business. “Very well, then,” Macta said. “There’s no rest for the weary!”
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” Asra said.
“Powcca and I will be back before long! I don’t believe I’ll ever top your skills at playing cards, my dear, but perhaps a little knucklebones might suit your fancy?”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Sir,” Petar said, “the Goblin should stay with the Princess during our exercises.”
“But Powcca can’t bear to be away from me for that long,” Macta whined, picking up his pet and burying his face in its fur.
“Must I look after that thing?” Asra cried. “It’s wild and ill behaved.”
“Just like me,” Macta said. “I love Powcca for those qualities. And I love his cute little limp; it reminds me how none of us is perfect.”
“You need to be reminded of that?” Asra said drily. “All right, leave him. But don’t expect me to play with him.”
“Very well,” Macta said, placing his Goblin back on the floor, and patting the creature’s rump. He pulled a well-chewed ball from his pocket and tossed it to the Princess. “If you don’t distract him, Asra, he’ll never let me leave!”
Asra caught the ball with awkward hands and made a face. “Come, Powcca,” she said in resignation, “I suppose we’d best be getting to know each other!” Then she flicked the ball into the corner of the room and wiped her fingers on her dress. “Fetch!”
An area had been cleared out in the upper cabin of the ship for Macta to go through his range of motion exercises. Without several hours of grueling and tedious practice every day, the mechanical arm would never live up to its potential, and its potential was, indeed, great. Not only could the arm duplicate all the movements of a real arm, but the hand, too, could grasp and point. With proper nerve stimulus, the fingers could be moved independently. All Macta had to do was make sure his control of the various muscles in his shoulder was adequate to send the proper messages to the gears and motors in the arm. The King stood with his feet wide, his shoulders flexed. That way the motions of the airship were less likely to throw him off balance. “Let’s get this over with, Petar. I find it all quite boring.”
“Swing the arm to the left,” said his teacher. “Ninety degrees.”
“My left, or yours?”
“Yours!”
Macta felt anger trickling into his veins. “Once again you fail to show me the proper respect, Petar. You should know I expect you to address me as Your Highness. I can still have your head—don’t forget the blades sheathed in the fingers of this contraption. I could probably decapitate you myself.”
Petar returned his pupil’s stare. “Shall we continue, Your Highness, or try again another day?”
Macta swung the arm left. “Fine. Is that high enough for you?”
“Now to the right, Your Highness!”
Macta swung the arm to the right. He continued the exercises for the better part of an hour, performing finer, ever more articulated movements of the wrist, elbow, and digits, following his instructor’s commands. “Very good, sire,” Petar said. “Now I think you’re ready for something a little more … challenging.”
He turned and knelt with his back to Macta, and withdrew a pair of daggers from a pouch on the floor. When he got up he tossed one of them to the King. Macta caught the dagger in his mechanical hand, and turned it this way and that, so the light from the windows danced on the obsidian blade. “This is more like it,” Macta said, his eyes gleaming. “Care to make a little wager on who’s the victor of this mock battle?” He lunged at Petar with his mechanical arm.
The trainer stepped aside and thrust his own dagger toward Macta’s abdomen. Macta easily dodged the blade and spun around, out of Petar’s reach. The floor of the Arvada shifted slightly; the Air Sprite was moving through clouds, and the ride continued to be bumpy. Macta bent his knees and kept his center of gravity low as he locked eyes with his trainer. “Do you think this practice is wise? You might fall and hurt yourself!”
Petar shrugged and moved sideways, twitching the blade in his own right hand. “The motion of the ship adds an element of uncertainty … perhaps you’re not ready for it, sire. Perhaps we should wait until the clouds have cleared, or suggest to the Aeronauts that we climb to a higher altitude, where the ride might be smoother. ’Tis your call.”
Macta chuckled, then thrust again. “Then I call you loser!”
The King of Helfratheim would risk much to avoid the appearance of weakness, and he thought that perhaps he could use the erratic motions of the ship to his advantage. Though his arm was new and untested, he had much experience in the art of the knife fight. Petar leapt back from Macta’s thrust and swung his blade back and forth in front of him, holding Macta at bay. “The trick, Your Highness,” he said, “is to be so confident about the movement of the arm, for its motions to be such second nature to you, that you never fail to pay attention to what is truly important. …”
Macta lunged. Petar felt the blade crease his jerkin as he twisted to the side, narrowly avoiding injury. He raised both arms and brought them down hard on Macta’s mechanical arm. The blade fell from the hand as the fingers sprung open. “You fool,” Macta yelled, his surprise making him careless. “You could have broken—”
Petar was behind Macta in a second. With his left hand he grabbed Macta by the hair and wrenched him backwards. With his right hand, he pressed his blade to Macta’s throat. “You mustn’t care about the arm, you must care about your own skin. The arm is far more durable than you are, my King.”
Petar planted his foot on Macta’s posterior and gave him a shove. Macta stumbled forward, catching himself against the wall, as the ship lurched again. The King’s eyes scanned the floor, looking for the missing knife. When his eyes caught the gleam of the blade in the corner, perhaps ten feet away, he glanced up at his instructor. He hesitated; he wasn’t sure if he’d make himself too vulnerable by reaching for the knife, or if he could trust Petar not to take advantage.
“Pick it up, sire,” said Petar. “We’ll start again.”
“I don’t need a knife,” Macta said as the realization dawned on him that his mechanical hand had its own built-in weapons. He held up his fingers and wiggled them. “I’ve got these!”
For a moment Petar could see in Macta’s expression that he was searching for the right muscle in his shoulder to work the release mechanism of the blades along his mechanical fingertips. “We’re working together on your skill set,” Petar said, “not fighting to the death. Pick up the knife, and we’ll begin again.”
Macta’s shoulder jerked as he held his hand before him. “You must call me—”
Petar dropped to the floor as the massive Air Sprite above them twitched its tail in the turbulent air. The ship lurched to the right and Macta fell backwards. As he hit the floor with a loud oomph, the clips on his fingers released their spring-loaded blades. The blade on his ring finger, though, shot like a flechette from its sheath, rocketed through the air, and lodged more than halfway through the brass ceiling. “What?” Macta cried out and climbed to his feet.
“I’m glad you didn’t have that thing pointed at me,” Petar said.
“It wasn’t supposed to do that, was it?”
Petar shook his head.
“I don’t think so, sire, no. The blades were meant to stay attached to your fingers, out of harm’s way, until you exert the muscles that release them. But I don’t imagine—”
An earsplitting roar filled the cabin. Macta and Petar dropped to their knees, their hands pressed over their ears. There was a hissing sound coming from above, and the air suddenly reeked with sulfurous fumes. “The blade must have ripped open the belly of the Air Sprite!” Petar yelled.
“Impossible,” Macta cried. “They’re bred stronger now, after what happened to my father!”
Petar climbed to the bank of windows and peered out into the clouds. He saw snatches of the ground rushing up to meet them. “Impossible or not, we’re going down!”
The Air Sprite had not been damaged badly enough for a disastrous crash, but as the air came squeezing out, it dropped precipitously to the ground. The once-mighty Arvada bumped along, knocking over stumpy trees and dragging itself over boulders and foliage. There was a screech of metal at the base of the great cab as it tore open like a can of sardines, and stopped. “’Tis your fault, Petar,” Macta cried accusingly as he climbed shakily to his feet and pointed a mechanical finger at his teacher.
“Don’t you point that thing at me,” Petar said, creeping toward the door. “Get ahold of yourself, Macta, and let’s find out what the damages are!”
“What the damages are, Your Highness,” Macta reminded his tutor.
There was a grumble above the cab, as the Air Sprite convulsed and writhed, unable to lift off the ground. Then Macta heard a familiar squeal from somewhere outside. “Powcca!” he cried. Suddenly it occurred to him that Asra, too, might have been injured in the crash. The captain’s quarters, where he’d left her, was at the fore of the craft, just beneath the command deck. That would have been the first part of the cab to hit the rocks and rip open. Macta raced down a flight of steps. Aeronauts were crowded in the corridors, rushing to find the air leak in the Sprite and fix it before all the air escaped. “Let me past, you fools!” Macta yelled as he shoved the Aeronauts away.
When he reached the captain’s quarters he saw that the bottom of the deck had been completely peeled away. His eyes scanned the crumpled metal for any signs of Asra or Powcca, but there were none. There were no bloody smears, or scattered body parts, like there had been when the first Powcca had been run over by a truck on the highway in the Human realm. All Macta saw was a gaping hole in the side of the cab, and a rugged snowy landscape stretching into the distance. “Asra,” he cried, “where are you?”
Macta’s words were whipped away in the wind. He could feel the fetid air of the Sprite still gushing out of the knife wound in its belly, and the shadow of the thing blanketed the land. It was astonishing how delicate and vulnerable Air Sprites were, and how much faith was required in order to place one’s life at the mercy of such a beast. As Macta hurried through the opening he saw that a crew of Aeronauts was already at work on the roof, trying to cauterize the wound in the Sprite with a gleaming silver object, its tip aglow with red. The Air Sprite twitched, and a puff of smoke drifted from its gigantic maw. A distant bark drew Macta back to focus. “Powcca! Asra! Where are you?”
“I think the sound was coming from over there, by the jagged rocks,” an Aeronaut hollered.
Macta stiffened at the familiarity in the stranger’s tone. “I am your King,” he said, “and you must address me with proper respect.”
“Your Highness,” said the Aeronaut, bowing. “I saw the Princess right after the crash, sire; she was following your pet Goblin.”
“Very well, then.” Macta nodded, feeling a stir of happiness that his beloved would try to stop Powcca from escaping. “Lead the way!”
They raced across the rough terrain, where heaps of rocks and boulders lay strewn like cannonballs on a deserted white battlefield. There was precious little flat ground to traverse, and the Aeronaut took advantage of what little he could find so that their pursuit might be the quicker. “This way, sire!” he yelled.
Macta struggled to keep up. His shoes were not meant for such treacherous ground, and he cursed when he lost his balance and scratched his good hand on the prickly, stinging bushes that grew amid the black gaps in the rocks. “Asra!” he cried. “Say something! Tell me where you are!”
The Aeronaut and the King struggled on. The wind whistled in their ears, and the only other sound was that of their feet scrabbling on the craggy path. No more than a few minutes ahead Macta saw a wall of basalt spikes, jutting from the ground like cathedral spires. “She must be up there,” the Aeronaut huffed. “I think I heard the Goblin, sire.”
The path disappeared in a vast heap of rock ascending to the ridge above. “I’m coming,” Macta hollered and began climbing. As he clambered up the mass, with the Aeronaut at his side, his hands and feet knocked loose a cascade of snow and rock. For every three feet he scaled, he slid back down a foot. When Macta finally reached the top of the heap, the Aeronaut cried, “Lend me a hand, sire; I can’t make it!”
Instinctively Macta held out his right hand and the Aeronaut gripped the mechanical fingers and pulled. The straps on Macta’s shoulder rubbed against his flesh and his nerves screamed as if they’d been doused with fire. He yanked his hand away from the Aeronaut and growled, “Climb on your own!”
He scurried ahead through a break in the wall of rock. “Asra! Powcca!”
Macta lurched forward and nearly tumbled into a deep ravine. He windmilled his arms and fell back against the rocky outcropping, his heart pounding and his brain swirling with terror. Pebbles fell into the abyss and bounced, tumbling down, and down, and down. He heard the sound of barking, somewhere far to his left. Then the Aeronaut appeared at his side, and cried out in surprise at the chasm that loomed below. “They’re not here,” Macta gasped. “They’re not anywhere near here.”
The Aeronaut was panting. “I tell you I heard them, otherwise I wouldn’t have come all this way!”
Fury overcame the King as he stood on the precipice, and he swung his arm at the Aeronaut. “You do not address your King like you’re an equal! Fool, you can’t even tell which direction the sound of a barking Goblin is coming from!”
The mechanical hand struck a blow to the Aeronaut’s face. The ferocity of Macta’s emotions had sent the sheathed blades into their weapon position, extended several inches from the tips of the fingers. When Macta withdrew his hand, flexing his shoulder to send the signal to withdraw the Bloody blades, the Aeronaut toppled from the ledge and fell. Macta watched in surprise as the figure struck first one icy outcropping and then another, bouncing like a discarded toy. What a waste, Macta thought, though the fool deserved to die for his insolence. The King had never taken the life of another Elf, though there had been many he had wished to kill. This is really nothing more than an accident, he thought, just lashing out in anger. If I’d done it on purpose, there’d be something to be proud of. But as it is … Then he heard Powcca bark.
“I’m here,” Macta shouted into the wind. He worked his way along the ridge, scraping his face and hand repeatedly on the sharp rocks, and cursing the Aeronaut for leading him astray. Finally he saw Asra in the distance, kneeling at the foot of a crevice in the rock. When he reached the Princess’s side he was dirty and bleeding. Asra looked at him, horrified. “What happened?”
“I might ask the same of you,” he panted. “Are you all right? Where’s Powcca?”
“We’re both fine,” Asra said, pointing into the crevice. “What happened to the Arvada? Why did we crash?”
“I have no idea whatsoever. But the Aeronauts are repairing it now.”
“When the Arvada fell, I thought I was done for. But by the time we’d ground to a halt, the side of the cabin was torn open. Your darling pet didn’t waste any time escaping. I couldn’t stop him; I think he smelled an animal hiding among the rocks, and took off in pursuit. I decided I’d better catch him before he got away, or you’d never let me hear the end of it. I know how attached you are to the little monster.
Now he’s down there, tormenting whatever creature he’s managed to corner. What happened to you? I thought you’d be all right, in the upper cabin. You look dreadful.”
“I appreciate your asking,” Macta said. “I’ve had a rather difficult time looking for you.” He crept to the edge of the crevice and called down inside. “Oh, Powcca, come out! I have a treat for you!”
Asra raised an eyebrow. “You have a treat for the little mongrel? What on earth is it?”
Macta reached his mechanical hand into the crevice. The Blood of the Aeronaut was still damp upon the leather. Powcca came up from the darkness, his muzzle quivering with excitement at the scent. Just then a call came from beyond the ridge; Macta recognized Petar’s voice. “We’re over here,” he replied. “I’ve rescued Asra and Powcca!”
Petar appeared over the crest of the horizon. “I’ve been looking for you, sire! The Air Sprite’s wound has been closed. The crew’s reinflated the cavity of the beast, and sealed up the damaged lower deck—we’re ready to resume our flight!”
“Very well,” Macta hollered. He snatched up his pet in his arms and turned to stalk back to the ship. “Come, Asra, we’ve got to make up for lost time!”
with the thrill of success, and the terror of being caught, as she and Nick stole into the palace. First they raced to their own rooms, to change out of their white robes into clothing better suited for a journey to the center of the earth. The Seed of the Adri was in the pocket of Jardaine’s white robe. She could feel the energy from the Seed making her skin tingle all the way down into her toes and up into her belly. She yanked on her boots, trousers, and jerkin. She couldn’t imagine she’d be needing her mittens, fur coat, or goggles anymore, so she left them behind. But she still had a sheaf of spells, curses, and incidental magick that she’d brought from Helfratheim. She stuffed the papers into her Huldu and strapped it on. Then she carefully tucked the Seed of the Adri, wrapped in a strip of cloth torn from her discarded robe, into the pouch as well.