Voyage of the Shadowmoon

by Sean McMullen

  “No, I am not the Elder,” said Laron. “Who are you?”

  “Auton-9.”

  “Auton-9? So you are not—I mean, are you an auton?” asked Laron, perplexed.

  “Auton, yes.”

  “But you sound almost human. Nobody has ever built an auton so complex and advanced.”

  “Auton construct, I am. The Metrologans made me. Concentricaren, second. 3139.”

  Laron was astounded more than disappointed. This was not who, or even what, he had rescued from the Metrologan Elder’s study. This was an auton. A highly complex and advanced auton; in fact, the most advanced he had ever seen, but an auton nevertheless.

  “Have you ever seen someone called Penny?” he asked.

  “Penny, yes. She was very strong, with clever thoughts.”

  “That may be her.”

  “The Elder command me to learn Latin from her. A little, I have learned.”

  “Why does she not speak to me anymore?”

  “The great fire came very close. Penny had the portal open. Things came in, to escape the great fire. Raptor things. They cut pieces from her. She fled. They chased her through the other portal, to her own world. I hid.”

  So, the fire-circle works in the ether dimensions as well, Laron realized. Penny had been holding the portal open—but from her world. His world. Earth. She had not been a prisoner, she had been looking in from another world. More to the point, she had been looking in when the several raptor elementals had come past, looking for refuge from the fire-circles. They must have made short work of her, then streamed through to … Earth. Well, they should liven the place up a bit, he thought with resignation.

  Meantime there was the matter of the auton in the oracle sphere. Her name was too strange; it branded her as an auton and might draw unwelcome attention were he ever to free her. But any new name would have to be interlocked with her old name, or it would not bind to her. Some slaves were known by a combination of a number and their master’s name, and when freed they were still known by the number. The idea struck Laron as appropriate under the circumstances.

  “Listen, you are Ninth. I name you Ninth.”

  “Ninth? Just Ninth?”

  “Yes, names are strong. People and things can be traced and controlled using names, but now that your namer is dead, you can be renamed. I am a thief—that is, a thief sent to rescue you.”

  “Rescue? Truly?”

  “Yes. Ninth is your worldname. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “My worldname, it is Ninth.”

  “Ninth, do you have a truename?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows it?”

  “The Elder.”

  “The Elder is dead. Never tell it to anyone. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, try to understand this: We have to cross the ocean.”

  “What is the ocean?”

  “Never mind, just trust me. It may be awhile before I can free you from this glass prison. I shall take you to Diomeda, or maybe Scalticar. There are people there who can help you. I—Ninth, your image is breaking up.”

  “The energy to keep the portal open is almost gone.”

  Out on deck the crew noticed a huge, glowing, insubstantial-looking jellyfish drifting in their wake. The creature appeared to be dead, and already a school of smaller fish were churning the surface as they began to scavenge from it.

  “An etherfish,” said Feran, scratching his head. “It seems to be dead.”

  “I’ve heard that they breed slowly, but are practically unkillable,” replied Norrieav.

  “Yes, they absorb ambient etheric energy, then use it for defense. Something seems to have drained that one completely, however.”

  As the seascape brightened with the dawn, Feran’s crew petitioned that the vessel’s name be changed back to Shadowmoon.

  “Seems like bad luck came on us after the name change,” Hazlok explained. “Fire-circles and all, like.”

  Feran stared incredulously at the man, pointing back along the boat’s wake. “You’re saying that the entire continent was blasted out of existence because we changed the name on this glorified beer barrel with sails?” he exclaimed.

  “Er, well … Nothing like it happened while the name was Shadowmoon .”

  Feran shook his head, and let his arms drop to his side. “Why not?” he decided. “The people whose attention we were trying to avoid no longer exist.”

  The carpenter got to work at once. The again renamed Shadowmoon had not been provisioned for a voyage of several weeks, but at first this was not a problem. Dying fish were floating everywhere, along with charred timbers from ships caught in the waning heat from the last fire-circle. A brownish, opalescent pall glazed the sky, while the sunsets were as intensely colored as an orchid made from live coals.

  Each of the seven crew and two passengers aboard the little vessel coped with the destruction of the continent in their own very different ways. Being an Acreman, the deckswain had not lost any family to the catastrophe. Velander had no surviving family anyway. Terikel was suddenly without her Order, rank, family, and friends, and with each day that passed she seemed to slip deeper into a chasm of loneliness. Her only relief was bouts of seasickness, which took her mind off practically everything. Feran mourned a great number of women, but managed to console himself by sleeping with Terikel. Hazlok seemed to cope with the deaths of his friends in dozens of Torean ports by talking about them to whomever was closest, as if by recalling them he could keep something of them alive. The carpenter began carving exquisite wooden busts of his dead wife and children, and was generally Hazlok’s only audience. He used driftwood salvaged from burned ships, wood that had cheated the fire-circles, clawing back images of victims in the wood that had survived. The two remaining sailors, Heinder and Martak, played cards continuously when not on duty, eating, or sleeping. At stake were wood shavings produced by the carpenter.

  Laron was the most calm of all those aboard, but even he sat staring in the direction of the murdered continent when off duty. At first he went about his work with unobtrusive efficiency, but after a week he grew increasingly restive. As always, when Miral set, he vanished into his cabin, where he was as quiet as one dead.

  “I thinks he had a sweetheart in Torea,” Hazlok speculated, looking down from where he and the carpenter were working in the rigging.

  “Can’t think who it might be—never seen ’im with any wench.”

  “Why does he glue on that beard? He’s fooling nobody.”

  “Strange one, he is. Such a fine scholar and officer, yet he looks only fourteen.”

  “Wonder if he’s a virgin?”

  Laron was sitting at his usual place on the upturned gigboat one morning when Terikel emerged through the master cabin’s hatch. She blinked in the sunlight, breathed deeply several times, then went over to the rail and retched for a minute or so. Presently she walked across the gently rolling deck and climbed onto the gigboat beside Laron.

  “Lucky we have so little food,” she said. “I have nothing to throw up.”

  “Every misfortune is attended by rewards,” he responded, drawing his arms tighter around his knees.

  “I feel like casting myself into the ocean,” said Terikel.

  “Death is no answer,” answered Laron, “but it is so permanent.”

  “How do you know? Ever been dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Terikel took the reply as a joke at her expense. She took a deep breath. “We are alone on the Placidian Ocean with our homeland annihilated behind us, and the Acreman slave markets before us. My loved ones are dust on the face of the sun. I am sharing the bed of a youth who has the sex drive of a buck rabbit just released from a year in the stocks, being force-fed oysters and parsley. Every time I escape from his cabin I am watched by a sneer on two legs, who also happens to be one-third of my Metrologan Sisterhood. The boat has enough provisions aboard to provide a light breakfast for two, Helion is still about eig
ht weeks away—if it still exists—and my only change of clothing is made of sailcloth.”

  “Still, you have to laugh,” replied Laron.

  Terikel took another deep breath. “Death is an escape. The dead are luckier than us.”

  “I am not so sure about that.”

  “Feran wants to do nothing but fornicate all night. I wonder if he ever sleeps! Navigator, I lost my family, my Order, my friends, my everything back on Torea. I want to grieve, I want to be left alone. Feran just says that it’s his ship and besides, dalliance is his way of forgetting what happened to Torea.”

  Laron turned to look at her, leaving part of his beard attached to his knee, and his chin bare. “Would you like my cabin—”

  “Navigator!”

  “—when I am not using it?”

  Terikel swallowed, then laughed out of embarrassment. “Ah, I see. I—Yes. Thank you. That’s very gallant. I am touched.”

  Laron noticed the tuft of hair on his knee, licked the resin and cloth base and reattached it to his chin. Terikel twisted about to kiss Laron on the cheek, but he rocked back, then jackknifed forward onto his feet and stood up.

  “I shall have a word with Feran,” he said as he walked off.

  A few minutes later Terikel was lying in Laron’s cabin, which was about as large as two coffins stacked one above the other. The navigator knelt in the hatchway.

  “When Miral is above the horizon, this is yours,” he explained. “Otherwise, I must be here.”

  “You—you really meant it. I am so grateful. Ah, Laron, if only—”

  “You had better get used to sleeping while I am awake,” he interjected, then slid the hatch door shut.

  He stared at the wooden panel, licking his lips—then he noticed Velander watching him. His mouth dropped open for a moment, but he hastily closed it again. She came over to him and gestured forward.

  “Can we speak?” she asked in Damarian. “Privately?”

  Privacy was not easy to come by on the Shadowmoon, but the tiny foredeck was as far away from the others as one might go. They stood together, holding on to the stay ropes.

  “It took all of five minutes for Feran to propose that I take Terikel’s place in his bunk,” Velander reported.

  “I see. Were you receptive to his, ah—”

  “No, I was not!” she snapped. “Why did you give Terikel your cabin?”

  “I felt sorry for her. Do you disapprove?”

  His answer was not what Velander had been expecting. She thought carefully about her own answer.

  “I disapprove of what Terikel did to me, not what you did for her.”

  “I am relieved. I had wondered if you would understand.”

  “I am very logical about things. You are also a very logical person.”

  “Thank you.”

  Velander licked salt spray from her lips, looking forward across the ocean as if seeing into the future. “I have plans for Terikel,” she declared.

  “What will you do?”

  “Apply logic to her.”

  “That sounds very fair of you.”

  “Fair, yes. Pleasant, no. Shall I apply logic to you?”

  Laron gave her a sidelong glance and checked his beard. He had always thought of Velander as a dangerous and predatory person trying hard to be sweet. It was obvious that she was now no longer trying.

  “Feel free,” he decided, although against his better judgment.

  “In the days that the Shadowmoon was in Zantrias, the number of murders in the port rose to three times the norm.”

  “That is a rather esoteric fact.”

  “Hazlok told me that; he has a morbid interest in murders. He also told me there was a murder at each of the ports where the Shadowmoon called between Gironal and Zantrias. All the victims had wounds to the neck. Some were savage mutilations, others were just two punctures above the great artery. One of the Torean schools of martial arts identifies the area as a kill point, and several medicar and sorcery theorists have written that the life force that we use in castings concentrates in the neck.”

  “How very scholarly of them.”

  “You hide them well, but I have observed that you have two long, sharp fangs.”

  “They run in the family.”

  “I have never observed you to eat or drink.”

  “Boat food—can’t stand it,” Laron laughed. He was not comfortable with the direction of the conversation, but was anxious to know what Velander really knew of him. “What is it you wish to know, Worthy Velander?”

  “You have gone a long time without food.”

  “For us sailors, food is like sex.”

  “How so?”

  “One often has to do without for long periods.”

  “But you do not eat at all.”

  “All the more for you.”

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “I have a fair idea.”

  “Day after day there are eight people named ‘Dinner’ walking the decks of the Shadowmoon, and within your reach.”

  “So what? Anyone aboard could make a meal of anyone else.”

  “But everyone else aboard can also eat other food. You cannot. Are we in danger?”

  Laron thought frantically. “From me? No. From you, Worthy Velander? Well, I am glad to be skinny.”

  “I’m more likely to start on Terikel. Returning to you, Laron, I noticed that before the garlic ran out you shunned those who ate it.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “The travel pack that I was presented with for my ordination happened to include a clutch of garlic. Be pleased to bear in mind that I now wear it on a thong around my neck.”

  As Laron stared out to sea, his tongue kept caressing the points of his fangs. Hunger was driving him to the edge of his powers of restraint. Even a bird would have been enough to relieve the longing that was eating away what was left of his humanity, but they were in midocean and this was not the season when birds migrated back in Torea’s direction.

  “Navigator, do you know who I really am?” asked Velander one afternoon, again in Damarian.

  “You have an unusual past, and have traveled widely,” Laron replied. “You were caught up in several minor wars, too.”

  “I’m the daughter of Count Salvaras, who led the first attack against Warsovran ten years ago.”

  “Ah yes. That was the battle that touched off Warsovran’s invasion of the rest of Torea.”

  Velander bristled. She was used to people showing somewhat more respect for her father’s memory. “I like to think that my father woke up a sleeping people who were in dire peril.”

  “And gave Warsovran an excuse to attack.”

  “Indeed? So where were you ten years ago?”

  “Biting people who antagonized me, and looking fourteen.” There was brief silence. Velander’s tactic was to cut down people who were standing on their dignity, but Laron was standing on something that was quite outside her experience. “Where were you?” he asked.

  “I was a messenger in my father’s army. Because I was ten years old and female, nobody bothered with me. I looked like a boy and I acted as a boy. I have carried messages and spied while disguised as the orphaned son of peasants, nobles, artisans, and merchants. Even at ten I could ride a horse, and use a dagger with some skill. I have killed several times.”

  “I hope they were horrible people.”

  “I—What?” Velander was starting to have the suspicion that he was making a fool of her, but could not pin down any specific insult or affront.

  “Never mind, go on,” said Laron.

  “My point, navigator, is that I am not some silly, lowborn girl who has spent most of her life reading books. My father died in battle, then Warsovran’s troops overran our province. When they came to our estate, I was ready. I disguised myself as a stable boy and fled into the darkness. Those in terror squads are fools. They come at night, thinking people are at their most vulnerable. Night is the friend of the victim. It is her cloak,
her knife, her poison.”

  Laron clasped his hands beneath his chin. “Yes, you are quick of thought, I noticed that at Zantrias.”

  Already scanning every word of Laron’s for any trace of affront, Velander suddenly decided that he had indeed gone too far.

  “You dare say that I abandon my friends and loved ones when faced with danger?” she snarled.

  Suddenly they were the focus of every other pair of eyes on the Shadowmoon . It was a very small vessel, and one did not have to raise a voice very far to attract attention.

  “I do not,” Laron said slowly, “but it is still clear to me that you are sensitive on the subject.”

  “I’ll show you how I react to danger!” cried Velander, drawing her knife and slashing for Laron’s face.

  Velander had meant to merely give Laron an ugly scar, to teach him a lesson. In what everyone else saw as just a blur of arms, Laron checked her arm, seized her wrist, twisted her arm around behind her back, then bent her wrist until the pain gave her no choice but to release the knife. Laron pushed her away, then slammed the knife into the wooden railing, burying the blade right up to the hilt.

  “Do not think of attacking me again, Worthy Velander,” said Laron, although he glanced to the rest of the crew as well. “This moment’s little act already has me on the edge of my very limited patience. Oh, and do not place too much faith in your garlic. I find it unpleasant, the same way that you would find a fresh, steaming turd unpleasant, but it will certainly not stop me.”

  Laron walked to the point of the foredeck, turning his back to Velander. She tried to pull the knife free, but without success. Feran tried next, then all the other crewmen. Finally the carpenter brought a crowbar, and extracted the knife after a lengthy and difficult struggle.

  “There, see that splash?” exclaimed Laron, pointing ahead, and a little to port.

  The group that had gathered around the extracted knife and damaged railing looked to him.

  “This is the ocean,” said Feran. “It’s full of waves, they all splash.”

  “Boatmaster, I respectfully request a course bearing ten points to port,” Laron called back. “An arcereon—see, the long neck?”