Voyage of the Shadowmoon

by Sean McMullen

  “How long till—” Hazlok began.

  The water around them blazed with a whitish green light, brightening until they had to shut their eyes, then a deep, shuddering thunderclap resonated through the water and their bodies. There was a terrible hissing, with a rushing sound as if a huge gasp of pain was being drawn in by the world itself. Someone near Velander began to pray. Others joined in, not all in the same tongue. As suddenly as it began, the light faded. The rumbling merged into the declining hiss, but the water grew ominously warm around them.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” came the deckswain’s voice.

  “Aye,” agreed the carpenter. “Any number of folk might have survived by jumping off the pier and diving.”

  “Talk sense,” panted Feran. “We’re at least fifteen feet deep here, yet feel the heat. The air above will be as hot as from a smithy’s forge for hours. How would they breathe?”

  “But I’ve been in a smithy’s shop, it’s not so hot as to kill a man,” replied the carpenter.

  “He means inside the forge, not inside the shop,” said Laron. “You’d burn from the lungs outward by breathing the air above.”

  Feran freed a sweep oar and managed to push it up vertically. The wood was charred at the end and crumbled in his fingers when he pulled it back down. Yielding at last to the torments her body had endured, Velander passed out.

  Hundreds of miles out to sea, Warsovran was cornered with his officers and Einsel on the quarterdeck of a caravel-type deepwater trader. The crew was in a state of blind terror after seeing an immense wall of fire, water, and steam surge out of the east to tower over them, then vanish. Another ship was standing by a few hundred yards away, and its master was already raising alarm flags.

  “You can’t make us sail into that!” shouted the bosun, pointing to the roiling mass of fog and ragged waves that now lay not a mile to the east. “What if that thing comes back?”

  “Then we’re dead anyway,” Warsovran said in a clear, sharp voice that was firm with authority. “The fire-circle that follows is always twice as big.” He lowered his battle-ax and let the edge rest on the deck. “What you have just seen is a god’s weapon turned loose by a fool. Now it is spent, quenched by the sea, and I must return to Larmentel and get it back.”

  “Meaning no disrespect, Emperor Warsovran,” said a midshipman, “but if you think we’re goin’ near what caused that, you can take a jump and swim.”

  “The lad’s right,” agreed the bosun. “We’re six hundred miles out to sea and yet it was grand fearsome. What’s Torea lookin’ like after that’s been over it? And what land are you plannin’ to char next?”

  “I am a ruler, I have no interest in annihilation. Until my idiot commander Ralzak unleashed that infernal weapon from the gods, I was uniting Torea’s kingdoms under a single empire and bringing them order and discipline.” He jabbed his finger to the east. “That was an accident. Now the weapon lies spent at the center of Larmentel for any scavenger to pick up. Would you rather it fall into the hands of yet another fool, or be safe in the hands of the only man in the world who can control it? You must help me! I do not need to use the fire-circle weapon, and I want to make sure that it is never used again.”

  They began to argue over his words, which did indeed make sense—provided one could trust him. Warsovran was adept at swaying crowds, especially when playing them for his life. He had got them wavering over a difficult dilemma, and now it was time to offer an irresistible reward.

  “You need only take me to the port of Terrescol, where I shall take the horses and supplies we carry and ride on to Larmentel. While I am away searching for the weapon, you can amuse yourselves by digging for melted gold in the ruins of Terrescol’s merchant halls, temples, and palace.”

  There was a highly excited mutter from the crewmen this time, and a great number of fingers pointed east amid the gesticulation.

  “Wood burns, cloth burns, paper burns, and even people can be turned to ash, but gold merely melts,” Warsovran continued. “If you get there first you may well dig out a half ton of gold before I return from Larmentel. We can sail to Acrema, buy a fleet of ships, then sail back and dig out more gold from all the other port cities. Imagine: a ton of gold for every man on this ship.”

  As he paused for breath the crew gave him three cheers and rushed to raise the sea anchors and unfurl the sails. Warsovran remained on the quarterdeck, glancing to the sun and fearfully estimating when the fire might return to sweep over them if he was wrong.

  “Do we have a chance?” he asked Einsel, who was still staring at where the wall of fire and steam had stood.

  “Cypher told me that a fire-circle will be quenched if either its entire circumference or more than half its area was over water,” said Einsel, with the resignation of one who had accepted death so completely that he could not understand why he still had a pulse.

  “According to the finest maps available to us, the latest fire-circle should have been the last.”

  “Mapmaking is by no means an exact science, Majesty,” Einsel said glumly.

  “That is not to be your concern,” said Warsovran, taking a sheaf of sealed papers from his coat. “Take a gigboat across to the Snowgull and order the shipmaster to sail for Helion. At Helion you will present these to the admiral.”

  Einsel accepted the package gingerly, as if such a welcome development was sure to have a dangerous or unpleasant catch. “So I am not to journey with you back to Torea?” he asked hopefully.

  “Einsel, I trust only myself enough for that particular journey. Meantime, let us look to the positive results of the fire-circles.”

  “You mean that did good?”

  “Oh yes. My supremely vindictive empress is now ash on the wind, my son is safely away with the fleet, and I have been restored to the age of about twenty. I consider all of that to be extremely good.”

  When Velander revived, Laron was holding her head above the water. Everyone under the boat was silent as they shared the wooden bubble of air. They waited in near-darkness. The water remained warm, but when a second oar was held above the surface it came down undamaged. Next a seaman swam clear of the upturned gigboat and held his hand just clear of the surface. He swam back to report it had been like plunging his fingers into boiling water.

  The air under the gigboat became increasingly humid and foul. Another hour passed. They kept very still, not even praying now. The tide was on the way out, and when they could hear waves lapping more distinctly, another crewman swam up to the surface. He returned and said that the air was now hot but breathable.

  “Laron, do we go up?” asked Feran.

  “That would be sensible.”

  Feran gave the order to surface. Sailors swam out to release the four heavy anchor stones, and the schooner slowly rose through the warm water.

  A blustery, hot wind was whipping the sea into a choppy confusion as Velander emerged from under the gigboat. Blinking in the murky daylight after hours of darkness, she waded through knee-deep water to the rail where Feran, Laron, and the deckswain stood. Behind them a sailor was setting up a valve-plunge pump while others dived to rechock the sink hatches. Parts of the port glowed like the embers of a campfire through a veil of steam and smoke.

  “Is the whole of the world like that?” asked the deckswain.

  “Hopefully not,” Feran speculated.

  “Over water the fire-circle may cool and disperse,” said Laron, who was patting at his wet beard almost continually to stop it from falling off.

  “But how do you know?” asked the deckswain.

  “I do not.”

  Velander turned to Feran to ask a question, but noticed that another woman had come up beside him. She was wrapped in a blanket, with dripping, disheveled hair. Curly, black hair. A harlot from the docks, Velander assumed, then she did a double-take so abruptly that the bones of her neck clicked. Her mistake had been natural. She had never before seen Terikel without her blue priestly robes.

  “Gods of the
moonworlds, look at all that tangled rigging over there!” exclaimed Laron, and he hurried away with one hand pressed against his beard.

  The deckswain glanced from Feran to the two priestesses, then hastened after the navigator. After another moment Feran ducked his head sheepishly and quickly waded off to help raise the masts. His back was a landscape of scratches, while his neck sported three lurid bite marks.

  “Thank you for leaving the incense burning to keep soulmate vigil for me,” Velander said icily, pushing her own hair back and feeling for her amberwood combs.

  “Think nothing of it,” muttered Terikel, shivering in her blanket in spite of the heat.

  Terikel left the rail and walked to the aft deck hatch. Looking down, she saw that the pump had not yet removed enough water to let her enter and retrieve her clothes.

  “I nearly died because I went searching for you!” Velander burst out, her fists raised and her eyes blazing. “You betrayed me!”

  “I failed to be Velander’s Terikel,” her mentor said as she turned from the edge of the hatch, “but that’s not the end of the world, is it?” She stabbed a finger at the coast. “That is!”

  Velander did not appreciate the comparison. “Ironic though it may seem, you are now the Elder of the Metrologan Sisterhood,” the newly ordained priestess pointed out as she began to wring water from her blue robes. “Have you any pronouncements?”

  “The celibacy rule is hereby annulled,” Terikel replied sullenly.

  Feran and Laron went as far as the stone pier in the corrak while the Arrowflight was being pumped out. The vista was not improved by being closer.

  “I’m surprised that even fifteen feet of seawater saved us,” said Feran. “The very stones and sand have melted.”

  “Well, don’t get too close, the heat will still roast you.”

  “Are you sure you can go ashore safely?”

  “Safely, no, but I can go ashore.”

  He was strapping on a pair of wooden work clogs, to which he had nailed iron cleats. Taking an iron barhook, he slipped from the corrak and waded up onto the beach. Even for one with Laron’s powers, the heat was fearsome. His clothing smoked whenever it touched anything, and the iron-shod clogs on his feet were charring fast. Kordoban’s house was in no better condition than any of the others, but one heavy stone block was still largely intact amid the ruins. The guard auton was, of course, disrupted and dispersed. Laron smashed the barhook down on the edge of the block. The glazed sandstone surface shattered and the rock beneath crumbled. After two more blows Laron lifted the iron casket out with the barhook. It was hot, but the thick stone had protected it from the worst of the heat. The point of the barhook broke the catch, and amid the charred and smoking padding within were the black glass cup and greenstone sphere. With a leather mooring glove, he took them out and put them in the folds of his tunic.

  On the way back to the corrak Laron gathered some solidified splashes of gold and silver, and a chunk of vitrified sand. The gold and silver was from purses that had been dropped by people who had died and been blasted to windblown ash where they stood. A clump of his beard fell to the stones and began to smoke before he could snatch it up again. The clogs were charred almost all the way through by the time he returned to the corrak.

  “Nothing could have lived through that,” he reported, splashing water onto his feet as Feran began to paddle.

  “So there is no food?”

  “I checked, no food survived,” said Laron, whose idea of food was rather different from Feran’s.

  “We can catch fish and drink rainwater,” said Feran. “The Arrowflight is undamaged, so we might reach Acrema with luck. Could you guide us there?”

  “Yes, but for now I must return to my cabin.”

  “You want to sleep at a time like this?” Feran exclaimed.

  “I do not want to go to my cabin, boatmaster. I must go there. I have a disease, a magical disease. Unless Miral is in the sky, I must lock myself away.”

  Once they were back aboard the Arrowflight there was much speculation about whether the entire world or just the southern continent of Torea had been devastated by the fire-circles. Seasonal trade winds and favorable currents could take them the five thousand miles to the continent of Acrema, but was there any point to making the journey? Feran decided to take the chance, and they set sail in the early afternoon. Battling winds drawn in from the ocean to the hot land, the Arrowflight tacked away from the coast and by evening was on a northeastern heading.

  At the third hour past midnight Velander stood at the stern, where the deckswain, Norrieav, was taking his turn at the steering pole. Laron emerged from his tiny cabin, stretched, then slid the hatch shut. He glanced about in the light of Miral, which was rising through the haze of Torea’s demise. He nodded to Velander and Norrieav, then began taking sightings with his angulant from the few stars visible. Stepping up onto the quarterdeck, he gave Norrieav a fifteen-degree change in heading. For some moments he stood beside Velander, watching Miral’s green, ringed disk hanging above the eastern horizon.

  “I would like to thank you for saving us,” Laron suddenly said to her in Diomedan.

  “Was myself, ah, saving,” she replied coldly in the same language.

  He gestured down to the deck, below which was Feran’s cabin. “Look, when it comes to choosing lovers, rules must be cut to the cloth,” he said in Damarian.

  “So I notice,” replied Velander, stubbornly sticking to Diomedan.

  “Don’t blame Worthy Terikel loving the young boatmaster,” said Norrieav. “She’s spoken to me. She … she still wants to be your soulmate.”

  “Have new soulmate.”

  Norrieav scratched the tight curls of his hair, and Laron turned away to take another sighting from the stars. Velander looked up to the stars that were guiding them on their five-thousand-mile grasp at survival. The mathematics of progressions had saved her a bare half day earlier, and now the mathematics of navigation were taking her to safety. The Queen of Philosophies was ever faithful, and never let her followers down. Shivering, weak, tired, but in control, Velander imagined a cold yet comforting arm about her shoulders.

  Has the world ended? Velander asked her new soulmate. Was the fourteenth fire-circle the last? the figures asked her in turn. She made some mental calculations. Eighteen fire-circles would have been needed to blanket the entire world in fire, according to current estimates of the world’s size.

  “After first fire-circle passed over us, ah, I am fainting,” said Velander to the deckswain. “How many more, there are being?”

  The deckswain gave a short, bitter laugh. “There was but one that passed over us, but that was enough to roast the world.”

  Velander allowed herself a smirk as a thrill of relief flooded through her. Only Torea, the Great Southland, had been destroyed. She thanked her new soulmate, the soulmate who had kept her awake to tend her pyre, and who had warned her to flee.

  “I know the world’s fate,” she said softly. “Follow me through the shoals of reasoning and you can know it, too.”

  The deckswain shook his head, wondering if she was truly sane. Laron stood in silence, frowning with thought in Miral’s light. Velander could hear Terikel just below, sobbing in terror of the world’s end. She decided not to announce her latest discovery for five days and one night, by way of retribution for the vigil that her mentor and soulmate had not kept. Again she imagined a cold, firm arm about her shoulders. Lovers, kings, shipmasters, priestesses, and even sorcerers knelt before the throne of Mathematics, the Queen of Philosophies, and yet out of everyone in Torea she was soulmate to Velander alone.

  “I’ve traced your reasoning, Worthy Sister,” Laron said suddenly, breaking into her reverie.

  “Uh—Yes?”

  “Four more fire-circles would have been enough to cover the world, if Hirodoratian’s solar-apex method of measuring its diameter is correct.”

  “With Hirodoratian, ah, I agree.”

  “Excellent. Well, t
here was only one fire-circle that passed over us. The seawater must have broken its regeneration cycle, so the thing was quenched at only two thousand four hundred miles across. The other continents have been spared!”

  Velander looked up at him with her lips pressed together and her eyes bulging with fury. Then she paused to consider. This youth had consulted at the shrine of mathematics as well, and been given the same—verifiable—answer. Her expression softened.

  “Very good,” she declared with a shrug, then turned away.

  She did not see Laron staring longingly at the back of her neck and licking his lips. Then he hurriedly reined himself back, and pressed his lips together as he gripped the angulant tightly in his trembling hands. By the time Velander turned back to him he was taking another sighting.

  “If you know Hirodoratian’s works then you should know the use of angulants,” said Laron without looking away from a haze-shrouded star.

  “Have used one. At temple.”

  “Navigation needs only mathematics, astronomy, and steady hands. I must rest whenever Miral is down, so there will be nights when I am not able to take sightings. I feel confident that you could learn deepwater navigation faster than anyone else on the ship.”

  “Crew, maybe not sharing your confidence,” she replied, with the tone of one used to being patronized.

  “You saved them once. I feel you have their trust.”

  Once alone in his cabin Laron took out the violet sphere, then set up the mechanism of greenstone sphere and cup. He breathed in a very small tendril of life force. A face appeared in the greenstone.

  “Greetings,” said a small, faint voice.

  “Penny?” asked Laron.

  “Who are you?” the voice asked. “You are not the Elder.”

  Something was wrong, Laron realized that at once. This face was round, with short, brown hair. The image was clearly defined, but it lacked detail. It was almost like an ink sketch of a face. This was not the woman he had seen last time. This was almost like a child.