by Paul Collins
Fontagu couldn't actually be here, could he? She hadn't seen him with her own eyes, she had just – it hit her then: she had seen him with someone else's eyes!
The idea made her shiver. Crazy people thought like that. How could you see with someone else's eyes? Maybe … maybe she was hallucinating; maybe the icefire gem had affected her mind. A deep pang of fear struck her then, but she quickly pushed it aside. She took a deep breath. There was one way to find out if she was mad or not – though a small voice in her head whispered that it might be better to be crazy than to be right – just this once …
No one saw her climb through a broken window.
The inside of the shuttered building was large and spooky. Low-ceilinged, gloomy, criss-crossed with enormous beams blackened with age, the place was a museum of shadows, cobwebs and long-forgotten death, still smelling faintly of stale blood and urine.
Tab stepped on something sharp.
‘Ouch!’ she yelped, hopping on one foot. She peered under her foot and saw a sharp angle of glass protruding from her instep. Gritting her teeth, she pulled it out. Blood flowed, and after that she limped, muttering curses under her breath.
Tab prowled around the enormous space. There were dozens of pens and stalls and even some quite large enclosures hidden away from view. She limped from one opening to another, peering into each, and leaving a speckled trail of blood wherever she went. After ten minutes of this she stopped, inclining her head slightly to listen. She had heard something. A soft murmur. She moved closer, careful to make no noise. Chanting. That's what it was.
Tab crept forward. There. Pulsating light stabbed the ceiling like rays of bluish sunlight. Tab came to a doorway. The door was slightly ajar. Through the gap she could see Fontagu squatting beside his open bag. In front of him was some sort of pedestal. The magicians’ gem was clutched within a metal fist on top, the bronze fingers glowing with each pulse of the icefire.
Tab didn't have a plan. She considered dashing in, knocking Fontagu off his feet, grabbing the gem, and running for it. There were, however, a couple of hitches to this. One was that the gem looked firmly embedded within the metal fist. Another was that her running days were temporarily over, thanks to her injured foot. Pity. Fontagu would have had to pay her a lot more than ten silver moons to get it back.
Silently, she pushed the door open and edged into the room. Fontagu was absorbed by his task and did not look up. Whatever he was up to, it was not going well. He was sweating, and repeating certain parts of the chant.
‘No, no, not like that, you fool!’ he muttered to himself. He started again, reading from a torn scrap of paper, chanting the words, but the sweat kept getting in his eyes and he blinked and wiped his face with his shirt sleeve.
Tab realised he was frightened.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked suddenly.
Fontagu jumped and clutched his chest, as if he were having a heart attack. ‘You? What are you doing here?’ he hissed. ‘Go away.’
‘You owe me ten silver moons.’
Fontagu must have seen she was determined to stay. ‘Oh, very well!’ He reached into his bag, quickly counted out some coins, and threw them at her. Tab scurried about, collecting them. The money paid, she now felt inclined to forgive and forget past grievances; besides, curiosity was burning a hole in her head, as they say in Quentaris.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked again.
‘None of your business,’ said Fontagu. ‘Now, if you must stand around and gawk, kindly do so silently.’
Fontagu took a deep breath, held up the scrap of paper where he could see it, and recommenced his chanting. The words were strange. Tab had heard nothing like them in her life. They sounded old, and filled her with a bleak sadness and a kind of wistfulness for something lost long ago. Then the tone changed, and an ugliness crept into the language. These words made her think of death.
Just then, Fontagu happened to look up and catch her eye. He had nearly finished the chant and had only to apply the sealing phrase, and all would be done. But with Tab's quizzical, innocent look upon him, he suddenly grew terribly nervous, and stuttered.
‘Ab-ab-abathtir – ku-ku-kumeer … ilso ibn ye-ye-yethris … ’
And it was done. But Fontagu didn't appear happy.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Tab, still fascinated by what she knew must be magic.
Fontagu was packing his bag.
‘Wh-what? Don't be ridiculous. Everything went according to plan.’ But he didn't sound convinced and he was now perspiring more than ever.
He gave a sudden yelp as the icefire gem began to glow a deep, ugly, purplish colour and emitted a cascade of golden sparks which burned wherever they landed. Tab dodged a couple.
‘What's happening?’ she asked.
The bronzed fingers unclenched with sharp clinks as though they too had just been burnt.
‘Erm … that's quite normal,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘Then why are you so scared?’
Fontagu gave her a look that could kill, and drew himself up. ‘I, scared? Preposterous!’
‘You're sweating.’
‘I'm merely portraying a role, something you would know nothing about. This particular role requires sweating.’
The icefire had begun to vibrate. Somehow, it seemed to make the whole building tremble. Fontagu swallowed hard.
‘I think it might be time to –’
A blinding flash of light burst from the icefire, searing everything around it. This was followed by a roar so terrible that it made both Tab and Fontagu cover their ears and double over in pain.
‘Run,’ cried Fontagu* when the noise had abated. ‘Run for your life!’ He didn't wait to see if Tab heeded his advice. He took off, showing a surprising turn of speed in one his age.
Tab stood transfixed. But only for a second. Now the building was definitely shaking, and she feared it might come down on her head at any moment. She half-ran, half-limped after Fontagu. Outside, she staggered as the wind, screaming like a banshee, hit her and nearly threw her back inside the slaughterhouse. Glancing back she saw several of the enormous crossbeams crash down onto the floor.
Almost inconceivably, something told Tab she had to go back upstairs. No matter what, her future depended on the next few minutes. She saw Fontagu then, making his way back to the slaughterhouse. On impulse more than desire, cursing her conscience, she fled back upstairs.
She scrambled over debris and peered into the room where the icefire lay. It seemed harmless enough – discounting the white vapour trails that were even now dissipating like ghosts.
Holding her breath Tab clasped the icefire gem. Against all her expectations it felt deathly cold, as though all the life had drained from it. She bundled it up in her cloak and fled.
Five minutes later Tab was still cursing herself. She had hidden the gem as best she could, but for what purpose? All reason eluded her. But she had no time to ponder her actions. The ground bucked and rocked as she stumbled across it. Above, the sky was darkening rapidly. She watched a squad of magicians wheel and whirl as they fought the sudden gusts of air, then descend quickly to the ground, unable to remain airborne.
Tab fled as fast as her wound allowed. She had no idea what was happening, but as usual her curiosity overcame her concern for her own skin – unlike Fontagu whom she had just evaded and could now see hightailing it for the main gate, presumably intending to get out of Quentaris as quickly as he could.
She hurried across the square, making for the city wall to gain a vantage point. Only dimly was she aware that dark clouds had piled up with unbelievable speed. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind died as though they had entered the eye of some unseen storm. The next moment, however, every dog in the city began yapping and howling. The hair on the back of Tab's neck stood up.
‘What have you done, Fontagu?’ she murmured to herself. ‘And what did I let you do?’
Tab clutched the cloak tight and kept running. As she r
an strange visions jolted her. Dozens of torrential fragments, disjointed glimpses, shards and slivers of things half seen, darted through her mind. She reached the city wall, pounded up to one of the watch-platforms, and had to suddenly clutch her head. She felt dizzy and sick, and would have been scared if the rest of the world hadn't been going just as crazy.
Then the glimpses stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief just as an eerie silence fell upon the city. Tab looked up, and gasped.
The bruised, purplish clouds looked like the coiled intestines of some enormous beast. A vast vortex had formed, circling slowly above Quentaris like a gigantic whirlpool turned upside-down. Thunder pealed. Lightning jagged, setting off ear-splitting detonations.
Everything began to shake. The vibration started deep in the earth beneath Quentaris, spread up through the rock on which the city was built, and made the houses tremble, great and small. The tallest towers shook.
Then, with an indescribable din and a shaking that knocked Tab off her feet, the entire city of Quentaris, hills, harbour and all, wrenched free from the earth that had cradled it for over a thousand years, and rose shudderingly up into the sky, higher and higher, revolving faster and faster.
A party of adventurers led by the famous rift guide, Rad de La'rel, was just leaving a rift cave in the mountain range. They were galloping down the embankment as though Zolka had broken through the rifts. Then those in the vanguard toppled like bowled skittles. The ground shook like a blanket. Laden donkeys and horses whinnied, fear-crazed.
Tab held firmly onto the nearest parapet. The city trembled as it rose into the clouds with a tremendous roar of crushing rock and grinding chaos. There was a terrifying moment of blackness – then a sickening transition before blinding sunlight burst upon Quentaris. The city was still spinning, but slowly now … until it was sucked into the churning mouth of the vortex.
People stumbled about, dazed by what had befallen them. Unbelievably none of the city's buildings had collapsed – magic bonding had held them firm – but anything loose such as market tables and wagons had been smashed to kindling. One by one the survivors of this catastrophe realised that their entire city was now drifting like a sky pirate's ship over unfamiliar terrain.
______________________
* Go to www.quentaris.com to find out how Fontagu was blackmailed into invoking the Spell of Undoing and by whom.
ONE YEAR LATER
It had been a year of enormous change.
Tab stood on the port-side battlements where she had stood exactly a year before, gazing out over the city. Bathed in brilliant sunlight, the waters of the now-enclosed harbour sparkling, Quentaris was a buzz of activity. It was market day down in the town. A forest of gaily coloured stalls and awnings, not to mention some large outlandish umbrellas, had blossomed in the city square, clustering about the base of the mainmast.
Overhead, vast canvas sails crackled and snapped in the wind. The spider web of rigging bounced. Tab craned her neck, staring up at the colossal world of rope and canvas, of bouncing catwalks, towers, turrets, and a complex bridge structure from which Quentaris was steered. Squinting against the sun's bril liance, Tab saw the tiny figures of riggers, canvassers, splicers, knot-men, dousers, lookouts, mizzen-men and the former roofies who made excellent sky sailors – not to mention officers and midshipmen – crawling and bobbing amidst the broad sheets of canvas.
Quentaris looked exactly like an enormous sailing ship, from the rift hills at the stern, to the jutting bowsprit of the prow, and various great masts in between. And, just like such a ship, Quentaris sailed.
Only it wasn't the sea that it sailed upon. It was the sky. Tab leaned out over the parapet and stared into … space. A cloud wafted past. She looked down as Quentaris cast its huge shadow over the alien terrain far below. A herd of galumphing, three-horned creatures stampeded. The fear-crazed animals left a trail of billowing reddish dust in their wake. Above, a flock of sharp-beaked birds with pink plumage flitted amidst the immense masts and rigging. The fore-topsail and main-topsail were fully bloated. Everyone had become accustomed to the ever-present raucous flapping of the city's sails. With a fresh breeze, Quentaris was travelling at a swift six knots.
Tab never tired of this sight.
She thought Quentaris, a city she had always loved, had become magnificent. Indeed, in some fashion that she couldn't quite put her finger on, Quentaris had come alive. The sails were its lungs, capturing great gasps of air to thrust it on its way; the rigging was its sinews, holding everything together; the masts, its bones; and the great slab of earthen rock upon which the city and harbour and surrounding wall sat, its flesh and organs. The sails crackled, the rigging sang, and the two great engine houses - port and starboard – throbbed rhythmically as they converted the magical energy of icefire into the ire ore that powered the gigantic propellers that were used when the winds died and the city becalmed.
Despite all this, Tab shivered as she remembered the Rupture itself, the wrenching upheaval that had thrown Quentaris into the rift vortex that had formed in the sky. Tab knew that Fontagu and the stolen icefire gem had been responsible. She even knew the name of the spell used, having returned to the slaughterhouse to find both the gemstone and the scrap of paper bearing the words Fontagu had muttered.
Only by then, all the words, except for the sealing phrase, were fading even as she stared at the note. Later she had looked up the remaining words in an ancient book of charms in the library of the Magicians’ Guild. Only one spell used such words.
The Spell of Undoing.
From the entry, she had come to understand that somehow Fontagu had messed up. The Spell of Undoing, used properly, should have ‘undone’ the city: undone its prosperity, its luck, its success in battle, as well as the workings of the rift caves. In the process, many might have died.
But it had somehow gone wrong, perhaps because of Fontagu's nervous mispronunciation of the final words.
Instead, it had ‘undone’ Quentaris in much the way that one popped a cork from a bottle and threw it away. Tab knew this wasn't a very ‘magical’ way of thinking, but it helped her make sense of what had happened.
Of course, no one knew of her involvement in the Rupture, nor of Fontagu's. She dreaded the day the citizens of Quentaris found out. Without a doubt they would hang Fontagu from the nearest spar. Tab, who had merely distracted Fontagu at the critical moment, might simply be thrown overboard or, if the citizens were feeling generous, keelhauled.
Quentaris had a very large keel.
On the other hand, there were a few who pointed out that the theft of the icefire had summoned a great many magicians back to Quentaris, in time to be marooned along with everyone else. And without the magicians, there would be no Navigators’ Guild; without the magicians, there would be no hope of finding their way home.
Without the magicians, Tab would also not have become an apprentice guildswoman, clerical division. Being a runner and a clerk was a long way from being a magician, but at least she got to loiter with magicians and, when she was lucky, to see magic at work in its various forms: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
A sweeper came slowly towards her along the wall. His cap was pulled down over his face and he seemed intent on his work, though Tab saw that he handled his broom sloppily, almost with disdain – as if he thought himself meant for better things.
‘This is so demeaning,’ said Fontagu, looking up from his broom. He leaned on it, scowling at Tab's big grin. ‘And look what they make me wear. Grey. I ask you, how can you make a statement with grey?’ He brushed some grime from his tunic and sniffed.
‘Well,’ said Tab, ‘that's your lot for my keeping quiet about your causing this mess. I believe the Dung Brigaders still have vacancies, if you'd like to apply.’
Fontagu paled. ‘No, no, not at all! Look, see, see how much I love my work!’ He started sweeping vigorously but only managed to conjure up a dust cloud that sent them both into great splutters of coughing. Fontagu sighed gloomily. ‘I'
m not really very good at this.’
‘I would never have noticed.’
‘Did you know that it takes a whole month to walk around the entire perimeter wall? A month. Rain or shine. Around and around, that's what I do, around and around and around … ’
He really did sound depressed. And dizzy.
‘You have only yourself to blame,’ said Tab, trying not to feel sorry for the old scoundrel. Any attempt to find out why Fontagu had tried to sabotage Quentaris had been unsuccessful. But Tab would find out one day. She promised herself that much.
Fontagu sighed again. ‘If only I could wear some thing a little more … stylish. And colourful. And, oh dear, do look at my fingernails! I don't suppose I'll ever be able to enter polite society again.’
‘Well –’ Something in the way she said this made Fontagu's head whip around. He looked at her hopefully.