by Bob Shaw
“You must be Urtarra’s new assistant,” Marcurades said in light and pleasant tones. “I trust that you are enjoying your stay in Bhitsala.”
Dardash bowed. “I’m enjoying it very much, sire—it is my privilege to serve your highness.” To himself he said: Can it, despite Urtarra’s visions, be right to kill such a man?
“I am sorry we could not meet sooner, but the demands on my time are myriad.” Marcurades paused and glanced at Nirrineen. “However, I suspect you are in little need of consolation.”
Nirrineen smiled and lowered her gaze in a way which, to Dardash’s heightened sensibilities, had nothing to do with modesty. The bitch, he thought, appalled at the strength of his emotion. The bitch is ready to give herself to him, right here and now.
“I couldn’t help observing that you cast more than horoscopes,” Marcurades said, nodding at the cross which lay on the grass nearby. “That scrap of wood appears to have magical power, but—as I am no believer in hocus-pocus—I surmise it has qualities of form which are not immediately apparent.”
“Indeed, sire.” Dardash retrieved the cross and, with murder in his heart, began to explain what he knew of the aerodynamic principles which made the circular flights possible. Now that his attitude towards Marcurades had crystallised, the facts that the king addressed him as an equal and chose to wear unadorned linen garments were further evidence of an incredible arrogance, of an overweening pride. It was not difficult to understand how such attributes could decay into a terrible and dangerous insanity, gradually corrupting the young king until he had become a monster the world could well do without.
“As soon as the cross ceases to spin it falls to the ground,” Dardash said. “That shows that it is the fleet movement of these arms through the air which somehow makes the cross as light as thistledown. I have often thought that if a man could build a large cross, perhaps a score of paces from end to end, with arms shaped just so—and if he could devise some means for making it spin rapidly—why then he could fly like an eagle, soar above all the lands and peoples of this earth.”
Dardash paused and eyed the king, choosing his exact moment. “Of course, such a contrivance is impossible.”
Marcurades’ face was rapt, glowing. “I disagree, Dardash—I think one could be constructed.”
“But the weight of the arms…”
“It would be folly to use solid wood for that purpose,” Marcurades cut in, his voice growing more fervent. “No, I see light frameworks covered with wooden veneers, or skins, or—better still—silk. Yes, silk!”
Dardash shook his head. “No man, not even the mightiest wrestler, could spin the arms fast enough.”
“Like all stargazers, you are lacking in knowledge of what can be done with earthly substances like copper and water…and fire,” Marcurades replied, beginning to pace in circles. “I can produce the power of ten men, of a horse, within a small compass. The main problem is to make that power subservient to my wishes. It has to be channelled, and…and…” Marcurades raised one finger, traced an invisible line vertically and then, his eyes abstracted disks of white light, began to move his hand in horizontal circles.
“From this—to this,” he murmured, communing with himself. “There must be a way.”
“I don’t understand, sire,” Dardash said, disguising the exultation that pounded within him. “What are you…?”
“You’ll see, stargazer.” Marcurades turned back to the palace. “I think I’m going to surprise you.”
“And I think I’m going to surprise you,” Dardash said under his breath as he watched Marcurades stride away. Well satisfied with his morning’s work, Dardash glanced at Nirrineen and felt a flicker of cold displeasure as he saw she was gazing at the figure of the departing king with a peculiar intensity.
The sooner my task here is complete, he thought irritably, the better I’ll like it.
Urtarra’s private apartment was a lavishly appointed room, the walls of which were hung with deep blue tapestries embroidered with astrological emblems. He had apologised to Dardash for the ostentation of its furnishings and trappings, explaining that as he was not truly an astrologer it was necessary for him to put on a bold and convincing show for the benefit of all other residents at the palace. Now he was squatting comfortably on his bed, looking much as he had done the first time Dardash had seen him—plump, oily, deceptively soft.
“I suppose I must congratulate you,” he said reflectively. “Going aloft in a flying machine is one of the most dangerous things imaginable, and if you bring about the king’s death without the use of magic your triumph has to be considered all the greater. I won’t withhold your reward.”
“Don’t even think of trying,” Dardash advised. “Besides, you have missed the whole point of my discourse—I will have to use magic. A great deal of magic.”
“But if it is simply a matter of waiting until Marcurades and his machine fall from the sky, I don’t see…”
“What you don’t see is that the machine will not be capable of leaving the ground,” Dardash interrupted, amazed that a man of Urtarra’s experience could display such naïvety about the natural world. “Not without my assistance, anyway. Man, like all other animals, belongs to the ground, and there is no contrivance—no ingenious combination of levers and springs and feathers—which can raise him out of his natural element.
“Note that I said natural element, because it is the essence of magic that it defies nature. I intend to cast a spell over whatever machine Marcurades builds, and with the power of my magic that machine will bear him upwards, higher and higher into the realm of the gods, and then—when I judge the moment aright—the gods will become angry at the invasion of their domain by a mere mortal, and…”
“And you’ll cancel your spell!” Urtarra clapped his hands to his temples. “It’s perfect!”
Dardash nodded. “All of Bhitsala will see their king up there in the sky, far beyond the reach of ordinary men, and when he falls to his death—who but the gods could be responsible? Even Marcurades cannot aspire to the status of a deity and hope to go unpunished.”
“I bow to you, Dardash,” Urtarra said. “You have earned my undying gratitude.”
“Keep it,” Dardash said coldly. “I’m doing a specified job for a specified fee—and there is no more to it than that.”
The days that followed required him to make a number of carefully-weighed decisions. On the one hand, he did not want to spend much time in the palace workshops for fear of becoming associated with the flying machine in people’s minds, and thus attracting some blame for the final disaster; on the other hand, he needed to see what was happening so that he could work the appropriate magic. There was a plentiful supply of mana in the vicinity of Bhitsala—he could sense it in his enhanced youthful-ness and vigour—but he had no wish to waste it with an ill-conceived spell. If mana was again returning to the world at large, perhaps sifting down from the stars, it behoved him to conserve it, especially as he aspired to live as a magician for a very long time, perhaps forever.
He was intrigued to see that Marcurades had divided the work of building his flying machine into two entirely separate parts. One team of carpenters was concerned with fashioning four wings of the lightest possible construction. The frameworks over which silk was to be stretched were so flimsy that strong cords had been used instead of wood in places where the members they joined always tended to move apart. Nevertheless, Dardash noted, the resulting structures were surprisingly stiff and his respect for Marcurades’ capabilities increased, although he knew that all the work of the artisans was futile.
The king had exercised even more ingenuity in the device which was intended to spin the wings. At its heart was a large, well-reinforced copper container beneath which was a miniature furnace. The latter incorporated a bellows and was fired by coals and pitch. The invisible force which springs from boiling water travelled vertically upwards through a rigid pipe at the top of which was a slip ring. Four lesser pipes, all bent in
the same direction, projected horizontally from the ring in the form of a swastika. When the furnace was lit the steam expelled from the end of the pipes caused the swastika to rotate at a considerable speed, and by decreasing pressure losses and improving lubrication and balance Marcurades was making it go faster every day.
Dardash watched the work without comment. He knew from his reading, and a certain amount of experimentation, that all should come to naught when the wings were attached to the pipes of the swastika. For no reason he could explain, the faster that wing-shaped objects travelled the more difficult they became to urge forward, and the resistance increased much more rapidly than one would have expected. Under normal conditions Marcurades’ machine would have been able to produce no more than a feeble and faltering rotation of the wings, far short of the speed needed to create the inexplicable lightness required for flight, but the circumstances were far from normal.
Dardash prepared a simple kinetic sorcery and directed its power into the four newly-completed wings, altering their unseen physical nature in such a way that the faster they moved the less effort it took to increase their speed even further. He prudently remained in a distant part of the palace when Marcurades assembled his machine for the first time, but he knew precisely when the first test was carried out. An ornate ring he wore on his left hand began to vibrate slightly, letting him know that a certain amount of mana was being used up—the wings of the flying machine were spinning in a satisfactory manner.
Dardash visualised the hissing contraption beginning to stir and shiver, to exhibit the desire to leave the ground, and he strained his ears for evidence of one possible consequence. He knew that the king was reckless when in the grip of an enthusiasm, and if he were foolhardy enough to go aloft in the machine in its present form he would almost certainly be killed, and Dardash would be able to claim his reward earlier than planned. There came no cries of alarm, however, and he deduced that Marcurades had foreseen the need to control the machine once it soared up from the still air of the courtyard and into the turbulent breezes that forever danced above the cliffs.
I can wait, he thought, nodding his appreciation of the young king’s engineering talent. What are a few more days when measured against eternity?
The news that the king had constructed a machine with which he intended to fly into the heavens spread through Bhitsala and the surrounding regions of Koldana in a very short time. There was to be no public ceremony connected with the first flight—indeed Marcurades was too engrossed in his new activity even to be aware of his subjects’ feverish interest in it—but as stories spread further and became more lurid there was a general drift of population towards Bhitsala.
The city filled with travellers who had come to see the ruler borne aloft on the back of a mechanical dragon, eagle or bat, depending on which variation of the rumour they had encountered. Bhitsala’s lodging houses and taverns experienced a profitable upsurge of trade and the atmosphere of excitement and celebration intensified daily, with runners coming down from the palace at frequent intervals to barter the latest scraps of information. People going about their routine business kept glancing up towards the white-columned royal residence, and such was the pitch of expectancy that every time a flock of seabirds rose from the cliffs an audible ripple of near-hysteria sped through the streets.
Dardash, while keeping himself closely informed of Marcurades’ progress, made a show of being disinterested almost to the point of aloofness. He spent much of his time on the balcony of Urtarra’s apartment, ostensibly engaged in astrological work, but in fact keeping watch on the western ramparts of the palace, behind which the flying machine was receiving finishing touches. During this period of idleness and waiting he would have appreciated the company of Nirrineen, but she had taken to associating a great deal with certain of the courtesans who attended the king. Urtarra had expressed the opinion that her absence was all to the good, as it meant she had less chance to become an embarrassment and Dardash had voiced his agreement. But he waxed more moody and surly, and ever more impatient, and as he scanned the foreshortened silhouette of the palace his eyes seemed, occasionally, to betray his true age.
“And not before time,” was his sole comment when Urtarra arrived one day, in the trembling purple heat of noon, with the intelligence that Marcurades was on the point of making a trial flight. Dardash had already known that a significant event was about to occur, because the sensor ring on his left hand had been vibrating strongly for some time—evidence that the machine’s wings were rotating at speed. He had also seen and heard the growing excitement in the city below. The population of Bhitsala appeared to have migrated like so many birds to rooftops and high window ledges, any place from which they could get a good view of the forthcoming miracle.
“This is a wonderful thing you are doing for the people of Koldana,” Urtarra said as they stood together on the balcony, with the blue curvatures of the bay stretching away beneath them. His voice was low and earnest, as though he had begun to suffer last-minute doubts and was trying to drive them away.
“Just have my payment ready,” Dardash said, giving him a disdainful glance.
“You have no need to worry on that…” Urtarra’s speech faltered as the air was disturbed by a strange sound, a powerful and sustained fluttering which seemed to resonate inside the chest.
A moment later the king’s flying machine lifted itself into view above the palace’s western extremity.
The four rotating wings were visible as a blurry white disk, edged with gold, and slung beneath them was a gondola-shaped basket in which could be seen the figure of the king. Dardash’s keen eyesight picked out weights suspended on ropes beneath the basket, giving the whole assemblage the same kind of stability as a pendulum, and it seemed to him that Marcurades had also added extra fitments at the top of the pipe which carried steam to the wing impellers.
A sigh of mingled wonder and adoration rose up from the watching throngs as the machine continued its miraculous ascent into the clear blue dome of the sky. At a dizzy height above the palace, almost at the limit of Dardash’s vision, the king reached upwards to operate a lever, the insubstantial disk of the wings tilted slightly, and the machine swooped out over the line of the cliffs, out over the waters of the bay.
Ecstatic cheering, great slow-pulsing billows of sound, surged back and forth like tidal currents as Marcurades—godlike in his new power—steered his machine into a series of wide sweeps far above the wave crests.
“Now,” Urtarra urged. “The time is now!”
“So be it,” Dardash said, fingering the scrap of parchment on which the spell for the kinetic sorcery was written. He uttered a single polysyllabic word and tore the parchment in two.
At that instant the sun-gleaming shape of the flying machine was checked in its course, as though it had encountered an invisible obstacle. It wavered, faltered, then began to fall.
The sound that went up from the watching multitude was a vast wordless moan of consternation and shocked disbelief. Dardash listened to it for a moment, his face impassive, and was turning away from the balcony when two things happened to petrify him in mid-stride.
Far out across the water Marcurades’ flying machine, which had been tilting over as it fell, abruptly righted itself and began to hover, neither losing nor gaining height. Simultaneously, a fierce pain lanced through Dardash’s left hand. He snatched the sensor ring off his finger and threw it to the floor, where it promptly became white hot. Outside was a pounding silence as every one of Marcurades’ subjects, not daring to breathe, prayed for his safety.
“The king flies,” Urtarra said in a hushed voice. “He built better than you knew.”
“I don’t think so,” Dardash said grimly. “Look! The machine’s wings are scarcely turning. It should be falling!”
He strode to a chest where he had stored some of his equipment and returned with a silver hoop which he held out at arm’s length. Viewed through the metal circle the hovering aircraft was a
blinding, sun-like source of radiance. Dardash felt the beginnings of a terrible fear.
“What does it mean?” Urtarra said. “I don’t…”
“That light is mana—the raw power behind magic.” Dardash’s throat had gone dry, thickening and deadening his voice. “Fantastic amounts of it are being expended to keep Marcurades and his machine aloft. I’ve never seen such a concentration.”
“Does that mean there’s another magician at work?”
“I wish that were all it meant,” Dardash said. He lowered the silver loop and stared at the flickering mote which was the flying machine. It had begun to move again, slowly losing height and drifting in towards the shore, and Dardash knew with bleak certainty that aboard it was a new kind of man—one who could use mana instinctively, in tremendous quantities, to satisfy his own needs and achieve his ambitions. Marcurades could tap and squander mana resources without even being aware of what he was doing, and Dardash now fully understood why the future divined for the king had been so cataclysmic. Such power, without the discipline and self-knowledge of the traditional sorcerers, could only corrupt. The mana-assisted achievement of each ambition would inspire others, each grander and more vainglorious than the one before, and the inevitable outcome would be evil and madness.
Dardash, all too conscious of the dangerous nature of the energy behind his profession, suddenly foresaw the rise of a new kind of tyrant—the spawning of monsters so corrupted by success and ambition, believing themselves to be the fountainheads of power, that they would eventually seek to dominate the entire world, and even be prepared to see it go up in flames if their desires were thwarted.