Empire of the East Trilogy

by Fred Saberhagen

  There was a short delay. “No.” This time Rolf thought he detected disappointment.

  He folded his arms, and took a few short paces to and fro. “Tell me, djinn, what did the folk of the Old World do when they wished to fly?”

  “They made a flying machine, and rode in it. I myself was born with the New World, of course, and never saw them. But so I have been told, and so I truly believe.”

  “How did they make these flying machines?”

  “Describe a way, and I will tell you if it is right or wrong.”

  Rolf looked at Gray, who shook his head and told him: “I cannot compel it to greater helpfulness. The djinn must give us what it knows of the truth, in answer to our questions, but if it wishes to begrudging it can yield only a small fragment at a time.”

  Rolf nodded, accepting the rules of the game, which he found more and more fascinating. “Djinn. Were these flying devices lighter than the air?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Had they lifting spheres, as big as these were?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Yet their spheres were not crushed.”

  “That is true.”

  The audience was silent. The time of half a dozen breaths had passed before Rolf chose his next question. “Were their lifting spheres empty?”

  “No.” The monosyllable had a forced, reluctant sound.

  “They were filled, then, with something lighter than the air?”

  “They were.”

  It was midnight before Rolf had extracted from the djinn what seemed to be the last necessary bit of information, and Gray could issue new orders: “—that the new spheres be made of fabric such as you have described, airtight and capable of stretching; and that they be filled, by this lighter-than-air gas that will not burn, to the point where they will lift the basket with us in it.”

  Shortly before dawn, having managed a few hours’ sleep in the meantime, Gray and Rolf were once more in the basket, attended by an audience much smaller and less hopeful-looking than that of the previous evening. Once more Gray gave orders to the djinn. The new balloons, that had replaced the crumpled metal spheres, rose from the sands as they inflated, then tugged boldly at their strong tethers, pulling them taut. The basket creaked and moved, and Rolf beheld the desert floor go dropping silently from beneath his feet.

  The few who watched the launching cheered and waved. The camp was already astir with preparations for the day’s march, and now a wider cheer went up to greet the swift-ascending flyer. Looking down upon an earth much darker than the lightening sky, Rolf saw his comrades’ breakfast fires shrink steadily. The airborne flying machine was drifting slowly but steadily to the north. Gray was issuing sharp orders, planned beforehand, to the djinn, whose smoky image drifted without weight or apparent effort beside the basket. There came a hiss as flying gas was vented from the bags. Their giant shapes were spheres no longer but pressed together above the mast by their own bulging.

  The hissing continued, as Gray had ordered, until their ascent had been stopped, or so the djinn informed them. Rolf could not say from one moment to the next that they were really on the same level, and he would have been hard put to judge exactly how high they were. The fires of the camp were now a scattering of sparks at some distance to the south, and the last people Rolf had seen there had been shrunken to the stature of small insects. Not that he was worried about their height. The tight grip he had taken on the rim of the basket when it lifted, was now loosening. Enjoyment was winning out steadily over fright.

  Gray, too, seemed pleased. After exchanging with Rolf opinions that all was going well, he resumed giving orders to the djinn, for the attachment of rigging to the mast, and the readying of sails.

  The wizard called out jovially: “Rolf, have you ever steered a sailing ship?”

  “No. Though I have lived my whole life near enough to the sea.”

  “It matters not, I have experience. Once we get up a sail, I’ll show you how to tack against the wind.

  We’d best not fly by daylight, there may be reptiles scouting.”

  Things did not immediately go right with the rigging. Rolf was called upon to hold lines, tie knots, and pull. A sail soon rose upon the mast, but then hung in utter limpness. Gray, scowling again, hauled this way and that on lines and cloth, but the sail would not so much as flutter. He hoisted a pennant, but it too drooped like chain mail. Clenching his fists, Gray muttered: “Is this some countering magic? I sense none. Yet there was a breeze before we lifted from the ground.”

  “There is one yet,” said Rolf, nodding to the ever-shrinking pattern of the camp’s cookfires, dimming now with the approach of dawn. “Or what is carrying us northward?” But he could not feel a breath of moving air upon his face.

  Gray took one look back at the camp, and called the djinn to question. “Why does the wind not belly out my sail?”

  “Name a reason, and I will say if it be true.” The clatter of the djinn’s voice became something like a cackle.

  Gray sputtered.

  Rolf asked: “Djinn. Are we becalmed because our whole craft is already moving with the wind, like part of it? Instead of the wind pushing past us?”

  “It is so.”

  Angrily Gray flared up. “There were sails drawn in the Old World pictures—” Then a thought struck him silent; after a moment he grumbled: “Of course, those drawings may have been sheer fancy; they did that sometimes. But they did have real airships. How then did they steer them? Rolf, question it some more. And I will think, meanwhile.”

  Rolf tried not to think of how fast they might be drifting, and how high. “Djinn, tell me. Did the ancients ever use sails?”

  Clatter, cackle. “Not to fly.”

  “Did they use paddles to propel their airships?”

  “Never.”

  “Rudders to steer them?”

  There was a reluctant-seeming pause. “Yes.”

  “Yes?” Rolf pounced without a second thought. “Then fetch us such a rudder, here, at once!”

  The air around them seemed to sigh, as with a giant’s effort, or perhaps the satisfaction of a djinn. Then arrived the rudder, here and at once indeed; it was a wall of metal, curving, monstrous, overgrown, wedged between balloon and basket so that it bent the mast and stretched the ropes and all but crushed the occupants. Shaped roughly like a door for some great archway, the rudder was a good twelve meters long. Its longest, straightest edge, turned downward now, was nearly a meter thick; coming out of the flatness of this edge were festoons of cabling and the ends of metal pipes.

  The balloon sank horrendously under the huge load. Gray, bent double under the slab whose main weight was fortunately carried by the basket’s rim, cried out an order. In an instant the great mass was gone. The airship leaped up again, Gray stood, and Rolf recovered himself from the position into which he had been forced, almost entirely out of the basket.

  There was silence for a little while, except for gasps and wheezings. When Gray spoke at last, his voice was icily detached. “In magic, hasty words are ill-advised. So I learned long ago.”

  “I will not utter any more of them. Believe me.”

  “Well. I have blundered too, this night. Let us learn from our mistakes and then forget them, if we can.”

  “Gray, may I ask the djinn a cautious question?”

  “Ask him what you will. Our troubles seem to stem from giving him orders.”

  Turning to the unperturbed scroll of smoke, Rolf asked: “Did the Old Worlders ever use such a rudder as you brought to us to steer a flying craft like this one, lighter than the air and with no means of making headway through the air?” He was imagining himself in a boat, drifting with a current; and he saw clearly in his mind that the rudder in the boat was useless, for there was no streaming of water around it.

  “No.” The monosyllabic answer seemed all innocence.

  Gray asked: “Did they ever steer craft like this at all?”

  “No.”

  The t
wo humans exchanged a weary look. Gray said: “I had better give orders for the gradual deflation of the bags, so that we drift no farther. It will take our men a while to reach us as it is.”

  “I see no danger in that order,” Rolf approved cautiously. As gas began to hiss from the bags again, he turned to the east, where now the sun lanced at him from above the distant range of black. There was one peak that seemed to tower above the rest, its head lost in a wreath of cloud that looked much higher still than the balloon.

  Gray seemed to know where he was looking. “There lies the citadel of Som the Dead. On those cliffs—can you see them?—that rise up halfway on the highest mount. There’s where we must somehow land part of our army.”

  And somewhere there, thought Rolf, my sister maybe still alive. “We will find away,” he said. With his hand he struck the basket rim. “We will make this work.”

  “Here comes the ground,” said Gray.

  The landing was a tumble, but it broke no bones.

  V

  Som’s Hoard

  * * *

  Chup stood frozen in the doorway, watching as the man whom he had killed stood up, fresh and healthy as when their duel had started. Tarlenot, starlted by Chup’s entrance, turned and got up quickly. But when he saw Chup’s paralysis of astonishment, he relaxed enough to offer him a slight bow and a mocking smile.

  Charmian, who had looked up as if expecting Chup, said calmly: “Leave us now, good Tarlenot.”

  Tarlenot, with the air of one who had completed his visit anyway, bowed once more, this time to her. “I shall. As you know, I must soon give up this happy collar for a while, and take to the road again. Of course I mean to see you again before I set out—”

  She waved him off. “If not, you shall when you return. Go now.”

  He frowned briefly at her, decided not to argue, and gave Chup one more look of amusement. Then Tarlenot withdrew, going out through a doorway at the long chamber’s other end.

  Charmian now turned herself completely toward Chup, and at the sight of him began to giggle. In a moment she was rolling over on her couch, quite gracefully, in her mirth. And she laughed with a loud clear peal, like some innocent teasing girl.

  Chup moved unsteadily toward her. Still looking after Tarlenot, he said: “My blade went this far down in him. This far. I saw him die.”

  She still laughed merrily. “My hero, Chup! But you are so astonished. It is worth all the vexation, just to see you so.”

  For his part, Chup was very far from laughter. “What powers of sorcery do you have here? What do battles mean, and warriors’ lives, when dead men jump up grinning?”

  Her mirth quieted. She began to eye Chup as if with sympathy. “It was not sorcery, dear Chup, but his Guardsman’s collar that saved him.”

  “No collar stopped my blade, I cut down to his heart. I know death when I see it.”

  “Dear fool! I did not mean that at all. Of course you cut him down. He died. You beat and killed him, as I knew you would. But then he was restored by the Lord Draffut.”

  “There is no way of restoring...” Chup’s voice trailed off.

  She nodded, following his thought. “Yes my Lord. As it was done for you, by the fluid of the Lake of Life. Since you do not wear the collar of Som’s Guard, I had to risk the Beast-Lord’s great displeasure by having the fluid stolen for you—by one of the demons he so hates. But I would face greater risks than that, to have you with me.” Her face and voice were innocent and proud. “Come, sit beside me here. Have you the little trinket with you, that was woven of my hair?”

  He walked to the soft couch, and sat down beside his unclaimed bride. From his pocket he brought out the golden charm, clenched in his hand.

  “No, keep it for me, my good Lord, until I tell you how it must be used. Keep it and guard it well. With no one else will it be so safe.” Charmian took his hand, but only to press his fingers tighter around the knot of yellow hair.

  He put the thing back in his pocket. Still foremost in his thought was the resurrection he had witnessed. “So, Tarlenot will be magically healed, whenever and however he is slain?”

  “If he falls here, in sight of Som’s citadel and with his collar on. Did you not hear him say just now that he will leave his Guardsman’s collar here when he goes out as a courier again? The valkyries will not fly more than a kilometer or two from the citadel.”

  “The what?”

  “The valkyries, the flying machines of the Old World, that take the fallen Guardsmen up to Draffut to be healed. They get but little practice now.”

  “What is this Guard of Som’s?”

  “An elite corps of men he thinks reliable.” She had released his hand and was talking in a businesslike way. “They number about five hundred; there are no more collars than that.”

  He observed: “You have not yet managed to get one of these protective collars for yourself.”

  “I will depend upon my strong Lord Chup for protection; we will see that you have a collar, of course, as soon as possible.”

  “You have been depending on the strong Lord Tarlenot till now, I gather. Well, I will wait and catch him with his collar off.”

  Charmian laughed again, this time even more delightedly, and curled up amid her silks. “That messenger? Why, you are joking, lord. You must know I am only using him, and to make him really useful I must lead him on. My only true thoughts are for you.”

  Grimly and thoughtfully, he said: “I remember that you do not have true thoughts.”

  Now she was hurt. Her eyes looked this way and that, then sought him piteously and fluttered. One who did not know her as he did might easily have been convinced. He knew her, and was not fooled; but she was still his bride, and all-important to him. He frowned, wondering why he did not wonder. There must be a reason, and he ought to have remembered it, but somehow it eluded him.

  “My every thought has been for you,” his all-important bride was pouting. “True, when you arrived today I pretended to be angry—surely you could not have been deceived by that? I wanted Tarlenot to fight you, so you would put him in his place. You must have understood that! Could he ever have beaten you, even on the sickest day you’ve ever had?”

  “Why, yes, he could, and handily.” She avoided his reaching hand and jumped to her feet. “How can you dare to think that I have ever meant you harm? If you will be rude enough to ask for proof of my intentions, I can only point out that here you are, restored to life and health and power. And who is responsible for your restoration, if not I?”

  “Very well, you saved me. But for your own reasons. You wanted this.” Again he pulled the charm out of his pocket. Looking down at the soft, shiny thing resting so lightly in his open hand, he could remember vaguely that he had felt misgivings about picking it up for the first time, but he could not remember why. He asked: “What do you want it for?”

  “Put it away, please.” When he had done that, Charmian sat down again and took his hand between hers. “I want to use it. To make you Viceroy in the Black Mountains, in Som’s place.”

  He grunted in surprise, beyond mere disbelief.

  “Be at ease, my lord,” she reassured him. “The wizard Hann, who is with us in this enterprise, has made this apartment proof against Som’s spies.”

  “I came in quite unnoticed.”

  “Not by me. I wanted you to enter, my good lord.” Her small hands pressed his fingers tenderly. “Ah, but it is good to have you sitting with me once again. You will be Lord of High Lords here, with Zapranoth and Draffut as your vassals and only the distant Emperor himself above; and I will be your consort, proud beside you.”

  He made another boorish noise.

  Unruffled, she pressed his arm. “Chup, do you doubt that I would like to be the lady of a viceroy?”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  Her nails spurred his forearm. “And do you think that I would want some lesser man than you beside me, one who could not hold such a prize when we had won it, or try for someth
ing higher still. By all the demons, you underrate me if you do!”

  Viceroy, Lord of High Lords... armies numbering tens of thousands under his command... beside him, Charmian, looking as she did now. He could no longer wholly doubt what she was saying. “Has Viceroy Som no need of you, to hold his place and help him try for something higher still?”

  Her eyes flashed anger, mixed with determination. “I want a living man, not dead... but you are right, my lord, Som is the key. We must dispose of him.” She said it easily. “He gave me shelter when my father fell, thinking I would be useful to him one day; I convinced him you would be useful too. He does not know that you have brought the means of his downfall.”

  Chup’s manner was still scornful. “And what are we to do with Som the Dead? How shall we topple him?”

  Her eyes, that had gone to feast upon some distant vision, came back to his unwaveringly. “The circlet woven of my hair must go into his private treasure hoard, unknown to him. Only thus can he be made vulnerable to—certain magic that we shall use against him.”

  “He must have protection against such charms.”

  “Of course. But Hann says that the one you carry is of unequalled power.”

  Chup said: “You speak much of this wizard Hann, and what he says. What does he gain, by helping you?”

  Charmian pouted. “I see I must soothe down your pointless jealousy again. Hann wants only vengeance, for some punishment that Som inflicted on him long ago. I know that Hann gives no impression of great skill at magic, yet he is stronger in his way than Elslood was, or Zarf—”

  “Then why can he not make a stronger charm than Elslood wrought?” He thought he could feel it in his pocket, like a circle of heavy fire.

  She shook her head impatiently. “I do not understand it perfectly, but it seems that Elslood, wanting me to care for him, stole some of my hair and wove the charm. But he tapped some power greater than he understood, the charm only made him dote all the more on me. Never mind. We need not struggle with these technicalities of magic. All that you need worry about, my lord, is getting the charmed circlet woven of my hair into Som’s private treasure hoard.”