Key to Magic 04 Emperor

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Not having imagined that the dry, blighted land would be so large, he was beginning to wonder if he would ever see an end to it.

  When Mar emerged from the upper deck corridor, he found both officers, the Gaaelfharenii, and all of the legionnaires, including Recruit Aelwyrd, on deck beneath a dark, star-washed sky. Though the moonlight made it easy to see to get about, most had lanterns and were looking intently over the side, as if searching.

  "What's happened?" Mar asked them.

  Ulor came down from the steerage and saluted. "I don't know, my lord king. About an hour ago, I began to have trouble maintaining speed. I thought at first that I was just tired, but now I can hardly feel the driving spell at all."

  "What's our altitude?"

  "For the sake of caution, I've let the skyship down to about fifteen armlengths."

  "Quaestor Eishtren, have you seen anything odd on the ground?"

  "No, my lord king. We have left most of the dunes behind, but there is no vegetation here, just hard rock, dry washes, gravel, and scree."

  "We're still above the river?"

  "There's a vent just off our starboard bow," Fugleman Truhsg said.

  Mar moved up to the steerage platform. "Everyone keep watch. I'll try to move the skyship."

  Number One did move, begrudgingly, but only when he increased the driving force to a strength that should have made it cruise along at near his top speed. If its actual velocity was more than that of a running man, it was only barely so. By morning, they had covered two leagues, but the skyship resisted every armlength of the way, with its response steadily diminishing, and eventually he could not compel it to move more than a fingerlength in a full minute.

  At first, he suspected an effecter that shrouded magical ability, like that of the seer's trap, but decided that this was something else altogether. Rather than disrupt the magic of one magician, this seemed to suppress almost all magic. While he could still detect the modulation that he had spelled into the heart of the timbers of the skyship, its configuration had become indistinct, almost fuzzy. Likewise, the background ether, normally a thick brume of energetic flux, had diminished to a thin, tentative vapor. Only one ethereal aspect, the ever present pull of the earth, maintained its invariable constancy. Other natural forces, most significantly the wind, seemed to have shed their ethereal component altogether.

  When Yhejia and her galley crew -- today, Hryen, Tsyie, Klyvett, and Dhem -- brought up breakfast, Telriy accompanied her and sat with Mar at the bow while he worked his way through salty porridge, cured beef, and toast. The day already warming, Ulor and the rest plopped down in the small patch of shade along the starboard rail.

  "We have to turn back," Telriy told him in a firm tone. "The ether is damaged here, or maybe just missing. The skyship won't fly through this."

  He shook his head. "I have to find Oyraebos' second text. We can't go back until I do."

  "It's impossible for us to go on, Mar. Number One might as well have run up on a reef."

  "Yes, but I can still get about in my brigandine. Number One's spells are still there. The magic just doesn't seem strong enough to work. It's just a guess, but whatever is causing the disruption may be proportional to the size of the spell or somehow relative to its power. I'll probably be able to drive something the size of one of the rowboats at a decent speed. Some of the crew and I could try to reach the source of the river while the rest of you wait here. Once I return with the text, we should be able to swing the skyship around and get back out of this morass without any problem."

  "We don't need the other text, Mar," she insisted, taking his hand with both of hers and caressing it. "You've done incredible things just on your own. You're powerful enough right now to defeat the Brotherhood and I know that you will. Let's just turn back."

  Again, he shook his head. Reasoning that any revelation of the old man's prophetic words might inadvertently alter the future that he was trying to secure -- the one in which Telriy survived -- he had made up his mind not to tell her about his meeting with Waleck or of his warnings, and thus could not offer her an explanation. "I can't. I'm certain that I do need the text."

  Instead of becoming angry as he anticipated, her face became impassive and she slowly nodded. "Alright, if that's what you need to do. When are you going to leave?"

  "First thing tomorrow."

  "How long do you think you will be gone?"

  "Maybe a fortnight. At most two. The river has to begin somewhere. It can't go on forever."

  "We don't have enough water aboard to stay here longer than a month."

  "Then it might be best if you took the skyship back. I can drive it back until you can control it, and then you can take it the rest of the way out."

  "To the marsh?"

  "No, it would be easier on all of you to wait at the cataract." He did not want to take a chance that the Gheddessii might try to attack the skyship, and the cataract's isolation seemed to make it inherently secure. "The lake seems like a good place to hold up and it shouldn't be any trouble for us to make it there."

  "The mountains will be thick in snow in a month. A blizzard would make traveling through the chasm chancy."

  "We'll make it back before then."

  "Alright. I want the Quaestor to go with you."

  Mar grimaced. "That bow of his is a danger all by itself. If it ever goes off, there won't be anything left of him or anyone within a hundred armlengths of him."

  "I still want him to go. With the magic in his bow, he never misses and his arrows go through anything."

  As she did not look as if she would budge on the issue, Mar sighed and agreed.

  When he revealed the decision to the rest of the crew, he was immediately obligated to modify his plan. Wilhm stated simply that if Mar went on, then he would continue with him to the mountain. If Wilhm went, then Lord Hhrahld must also, and there was no doubt but that the two huge men would fill nearly the entire rowboat. Since arguing with Wilhm was like trying to convince the wind to change direction, Mar solved the problem by announcing that he would take both rowboats, one for Wilhm and Lord Hhrahld and the other for himself, Eishtren, and what supplies they could pack in.

  Aelwyrd raised a hesitant hand.

  "Yes, Recruit?" Mar asked him.

  "The Quaestor will need someone to carry his arrows. I'd be happy to volunteer for that job, my lord king."

  Mar looked over at the quaestor, and Eishtren looked thoughtfully at the youth for a moment, then gave a slight nod.

  "You can come, Aelwyrd," Mar approved, and then added quickly when Ulor looked ready to also volunteer, "but that's it. There's no room for anyone else."

  When all was said and done, the two rowboats did not shove off until the third hour of the following morning. After Mar had slowly moved Number One back about a league, Telriy affirmed that she could take the skyship the rest of the way out of the morass without difficulty.

  Subsequently, Mar spent an hour or so flitting about in one of the rowboats, trying to get an idea of how it would maneuver in the magic suppressing area, and determined that with full concentration, he could get near half his top speed.

  "Even if the morass steals more of the magic as we go farther in," Mar told Telriy when he landed back on the skyship, "I should be able average at least quarter speed, say five or six leagues an hour."

  She nodded. "With a hundred leagues a day as a benchmark, you could travel a thousand leagues in ten days. If you don't find Wilhm's mountain before you cover a thousand leagues, you'll never find it. At a minimum, you'll need rations and water for twenty days. I'll get Yhejia and Tsyl to help me sort out dried foodstuffs, blankets, tents, water barrels, and so forth."

  Telriy's "and so forth" included everything from spare clothing to coils of rope to bathing soap. When all of the supplies and equipment that she and the other two women decided were necessary to succor four men for a score of days had been piled on deck by the crew and excited Auxiliaries, its bulk dwarfed the two rowboats.
r />   With the entire crew, children and all, looking on, Mar glared at the hefty piles and pressed his lips into a tight line. "Cut the food and water down to just enough for a fortnight. We'll ration what we eat and drink and turn back when we get down to half. Throw out everything else but one blanket for each man, one cooking pot, two lamps, and four bowls, spoons, and mugs. We'll manage without the rest of it."

  However, even after the reduction, there was still too much. The water alone amounted to two large barrels and three kegs.

  "Why so much water?" an exasperated Mar wanted to know. When he and Waleck had crossed the Waste on horseback, they had carried far less. Of course, they had had the water holes and had been parched most of the way.

  Yhejia answered this. "An armsman on a long march needs to drink at least two gallons a day in hot weather, which should be a fairly accurate estimate for your jaunt, my lord king. Adding an extra portion each for Lord Hhrahld and Wilhm, that gives twelve gallons a day. That's one hundred and sixty-eight gallons for the fortnight."

  He thought a moment. "We'll be following the river. Running underground, it's clear enough to drink. We'll take one keg and I'll use a spell to draw water from the vents."

  Telriy gave him a hard look, and for a second he thought that she would demand that he demonstrate this spell, but she held her peace. This was quite fortunate, as he had not actually figured out how to get water up through the vents. The depth of the river was beyond his range, so he could not simply fly a bucket down to collect water, and the current would likely just sweep away and tangle a bucket attached to a line. He was confident that he would come up with something, though.

  With the extra water removed, the packing began. Leaving the second rowboat mostly empty to accommodate the Gaaelfharenii's size, the first had to be filled up to the oarlocks. By this time, the sun had already made the span of the sky and dusk approached.

  "Eishtren, Aelwyrd, and I can ride on top," Mar, unwilling to try to repack the boats, decided. Tire, he was ready for the preparations to be done.

  The young legionnaire, Dhem, asked suddenly, "Is there any reason that the cargo has to be on the inside, my lord king?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, as you're not having to actually float the boats, couldn't we just lash the supplies underneath with slings?"

  Having missed the obvious, Mar grunted to smother a curse. "Excellent idea. I just wish that you had come up with it before we started."

  "It's too late to sort it out now," Telriy declared. "Everyone needs supper."

  As Yhejia, Tsyl, and Aael rounded up the supernumeraries and started herding them below and the rest of the crew began to wander after them, Mar stood glaring at the rowboats, thinking that after the meal he could get a couple of Eishtren's men to help him start rigging the slings.

  Telriy crossed the deck and took his arm. "Come get something to eat."

  "I'll come down in a bit."

  She gave him a look. "You also need some rest. And a bath."

  He smiled. "Oh."

  The next day, Mar got up before dawn to float the rowboats high enough to allow Eishtren had his men to work beneath them. As he intended to focus on driving the first rowboat and simply tow the second, Mar also had the legionnaires attach a strong cable between the two. It took a full two hours to fabricate and hang the slings, unload the supplies, and stow them in the slings, but eventually all was done.

  After boosting the other four passengers to their respective seats by infusing their clothing and the leather of their armor, he started to rise to his own place. Telriy, without warning and with the entire crew watching, grabbed him in a bear hug and kissed him fiercely in farewell.

  It was almost as if she thought that she would never see him again.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  "I have new dreams now," Wilhm said. "Every night.

  With the rowboats tethered to the sharply eroded spike of a vent, they had drawn water -- Mar's solution's had been to fly down the harrowingly narrow tube with their emptied keg, fill it, and then fly back up -- and made their camp on an adjacent patch of fragipan that was mostly free of pebbles and stones. Now, near the first hour of the evening, with the again gibbous but waxing Father Moon just rising, they sat on the ground in a loose circle around a single dim lantern as they ate their supper. Like every other day since they had left Number One, this was hard bread, cured sausage, and dry cheese.

  Mimicking the others, Mar just waited. Lord Hhrahld was a veteran of the other Gaaelfharenii's conversational idiosyncrasies and over the last six days, Mar, Eishtren, and Aelwyrd had all grown inured to the protracted nature of Wilhm's rare utterances.

  After several moments, the young man continued. "They are bad dreams."

  When nothing else was forthcoming after several more, Mar asked, "What happens in your dreams now, Wilhm?"

  "We die."

  Mar did not say anything for a while, then, "How do we die?"

  "The mountain kills us."

  "Can you tell us what happens?"

  "The mountain kills us the way mountains kill."

  "A fall?" Eishtren suggested.

  "No."

  "A landslide?" Lord Hhrahld asked, his white hair and beard seeming to glow slightly in the dim light.

  "No."

  Aelwyrd took his turn. "An earthquake?"

  "No."

  Mar gave up and repeated the same question that he had asked of Wilhm for the last three days. "How far is the mountain?"

  "Not far," Wilhm replied, giving the same response that he had each previous time.

  Without bothering to shrug, Mar turned to Lord Hhrahld, who seemed to be the best at measuring traveled distance. "How far did we come today?"

  "No more than five leagues at best."

  Mar's guess that he could average quarter speed with the rowboats had been optimistic to a fault. Although they had indeed covered a full one hundred leagues on the first day, the second day he had only managed fifty. The background ether had grown thinner/weaker at the rate expected, but the detrimental effect on his spells had been near exponential. Altogether, their progress thus far amounted to only a hundred and ninety leagues, more or less.

  "Maybe the Waste does go on forever," Aelwyrd said. "The priests say that the Forty-Nine made it."

  "No, lad," Lord Hhrahld. "This land is a continent, just like Szillarn, just much vaster."

  "How certain of that are you, my lord?" Quaestor Eishtren inquired respectfully. "It seems that even our intrepid predecessor, Khavurst the Younger, did not find the far shore."

  "I know it to be a fact, Quaestor, for I have sailed the entire circumference, west from the bay at Mhajhkaei, all the way around, and back again from the east."

  Aelwyrd flashed a smile. "What was that like, my lord?"

  For the rest of the evening, Hhrahld happily regaled them with a vivid account of his adventures, misadventures, larcenies, agonies, and triumphs during a voyage that had lasted more than six years. He accompanied the telling with intricate maps sketched in the sand, expansive recreations of battles wherein he used his audience as placeholders for enemies and allies, and humorous though patently embellished dialogues. Throughout he maintained that he had been solely motivated to begin the odyssey by an argument with a buxom serving wench in an ale house on Llowdryn Street.

  Despite Mar's best efforts, just past noon the following day, the rowboats lost all headway and drifted downward, forcing him to order that the cargo slings be jettisoned into a low dune. Within seconds, the forward boat ran jarringly aground on a tilted shelf of weathered red sandstone and the second crashed down behind it. Mar could not keep either craft upright and both rolled onto their sides, dumping Eishtren and Aelwyrd out, but the two Gaaelfharenii hopped clear without a bobble, landing lightly and unflustered.

  As the four of them stood looking at the beached rowboats, Mar did not waste time trying to make them rise again, but rather delved his brigandine to check the state of its magic. Its modulatio
ns were diluted, but still energetic enough to allow him to get about. He could not gain much altitude, but he was not yet condemned to crawl.

  He turned his gaze on Wilhm. "How far is the mountain?"

  "Not far."

  Unperturbed, Eishtren asked, "What are your orders, my lord king?"

  "I'm not ready to give up yet. We can march overland and make six or seven leagues a day. Let's collect the cargo. We'll make packs for everything that we can carry and store the rest in the rowboats for the return trip. After that, we'll get going."

  They trudged through the afternoon and all of the next day across the gently rolling landscape, climbing over spurs of rock, plodding across dry depressions, and slogging over the occasional isolated dune. As the terrain leveled out, the river vents became easier to find, jutting up as much as a manheight, and Mar established the routine of halting to take a break next to every fifteenth one, which marked a league, more or less. With winter coming on, the heat was not extreme, but the dry air seemed to suck moisture out of them and the cold water from the river made the trek tolerable.

  Increasingly, Mar found it difficult to finesse the modulations in his brigandine and although he could still descend into the vents to draw water, it became clear that at some point that he would not have the fine control to be able to do so.

  On the following day, a cold rain blew down from the north, dropping a shocking volume of water. The sudden torrent drove them to seek inadequate shelter in the lee of a bluff, but still all of them were soon drenched. Quite nonchalantly, Lord Hhrahld stripped down and let the downpour wash the accumulated sweat and dust from his hair and skin, prompting the rest to do likewise. Rivulets of water cascading over the bluff collected in gullies to form brown, frothy steams that flooded a wide gravel flat, forming a vast shallow pond, but within an hour of the end of the storm, every dram of the water had soaked away. After the clouds raced away to the south, the sun returned and they resumed their journey.