“It must be wash day. Cover your breasts, we don’t want the sailors getting the wrong idea.”
Ninth pulled her torn tunic across her breasts and folded her arms. Laron put the chunk of glass with the imprisoned succubus into the iron case and closed the lid.
“I am never going back?” Ninth asked.
“You have not left your sphere,” replied Laron. “You are reaching out from the sphere through the circlet and controlling a dead girl’s body. If the circlet is ever removed you will be confined to the sphere again.”
Velander watched everything from the etherworld. She was puzzled. The succubus elemental had been driven from her body, then a simple, almost formless elemental had replaced it. An auton, from what she could make out. What was Laron doing? Had he betrayed her? Then she realized what the problem was. Most of her was gone. She was like a tree with its roots and branches cut away. Life lingered, but she was weakening. The moorings that could attach her to a body had been torn off. Laron was doing nothing because there was nothing he could do. Nothing, except preserve her physical body, that is.
What was his plan, she wondered. Did he have a plan, or did he just hope in the face of hopelessness?
Whatever the case, she could not wait indefinitely. Velander had by now realized that the etheric energy in her chunk of axis glass was fading. Her needs were not great, but in order to maintain herself she was slowly draining it.
Perhaps he does not know I exist, she thought in despair.
After diving to retrieve the bag of gold that had weighted Velander’s body, Laron allowed Feran and the rest of the crew up on deck. They huddled together in Miral’s green light, looking up at Laron, who stood on the quarterdeck. Ninth and Druskarl were behind him. Slowly the vampyre smiled, baring his fangs.
“I would like to announce that I have just killed Banzalo and his four marines, drunk their blood, and dropped their bodies overboard.”
There was very little that anyone could say to that. Nobody tried.
“As most if not all of you will appreciate by now, something happened to Velander in the ruins of Larmentel. I have finally discovered that she was killed by elementals while darkwalking, and her body was possessed by a succubus. The succubus concerned has been feeding on all of you for the fifteen days past, but only boatmaster Feran was awake during the, ah, proceedings. I have managed to drive it out of Velander’s body and capture it.”
“But if Velander is dead and the succubus is gone, who is that?” asked Feran, pointing to the girl beside Druskarl.
“That is Ninth, a child-creature, an auton built during Metrologan experiments before the fire-circles. The silver circlet around Ninth’s head enables her to live through Velander’s body.”
Laron paused for emphasis. There were curious stares, but no questions. Ninth looked on with unsettling innocence.
“Now, a few words about me,” Laron continued. “I am over seven hundred years old. Seven centuries ago, when the Metrologans captured me, they captured the mind and soul of a vampyre, an undead thing that feeds on both your blood and ether, and which cannot die. I was dragged in from another world, and I turned my host body into the only vampyre on your own world. I have many powers that mortals do not.”
The crew of the Shadowmoon had suspected there was something very odd about Laron from the day that he first stepped aboard, but if they had further questions they did not ask them.
“When I was alive, I was the young squire of a good and chivalrous knight on another world. On that world, horses have hoofs instead of claws, and people have round ears and only one heart. Although I am now a monster, I try to cling to at least a scrap of chivalry, however. That is why I feed upon people when I consider to be bad, objectionable, annoying, or even unduly boring. I do try to make the world a better place.”
Laron paused. After an awkward moment the crew began to applaud. Laron cleared his throat to continue.
“Although Ninth inhabits the body of a woman, she is just a child. If any of you so much as lays a finger on her, makes an unseemly suggestion, or even winks at her, his name will be Dinner. As an added bonus, before I begin to feed I shall do something so unimaginably hideous to you that you will curse the day your parents first set eyes upon each other. Ninth is not the one you have been coupling with for the weeks past. She is a little-girl auton who is lost and frightened, and I have sworn to be a very, very protective big brother to her. Do I make my self clear?”
He bared his fangs again. To a man, the crew of the Shadowmoon shrank back, all nodding.
“Boatmaster Feran, Ninth will have your cabin. You will sleep where the crew sleeps.”
“Ah, yes! That is, yes,” replied Feran.
Given the circumstances, there was no loss of face here.
“D’Atro, repair the door to my own cabin. I am never, never to be disturbed again when Miral is down.”
Once more, everyone nodded.
“Boatmaster Feran, I am assuming command of the Shadowmoon until we have returned to Helion. Now, go about your duties.”
In a strange fashion the general mood of the Shadowmoon’s crew improved considerably after Laron’s act of mutiny. He was merely a ruthless, strict, but fair officer, and had not fed on any of them for all the time he had been aboard.
Laron locked himself in his cabin. The chunk of glass just fit into the black cup of obsidian. He breathed energies into it and capped it with the greenstone sphere. A jagged, malignant-looking red snowflake resolved itself within the sphere, but the voice that tinkled out was cool and silky:
“Laron, I was beginning to think that you dropped my prison over the side.”
“Oh no, I want to give you a chance to misbehave before I do that,” replied Laron. “I want your truename.”
“You what? Vampyre, you’re mad!”
“Oh yes, I certainly am. Now, we are a very, very long way out to sea, and if you go over the side you would fade to nothing over a few weeks, within the total blackness of midocean. Velander died quickly, but you would die with exquisite slowness. What is your truename?”
“Nobody knows my truename.”
“I want it.”
“You would make me a slave.”
“Your truename, if you please. It’s either the safety of slavery, or the security of oblivion.”
“I’d rather go to oblivion!”
“As you will, good-bye,” said Laron, reaching for the greenstone globe.
“Wait! Wait. I will make a deal—”
“No deals. Good-bye.”
“Jorpay’thr-ak! Jorpay’thr-ak!”
“I am going to summon you into another tether and drop this chunk of glass over the side. Provided you have given me the right name, you will be quite safe and very, very secure.”
“You lied to me! You said I would be safe.”
“You lied, too. Now, if that truename is wrong, well, you will be in ever so much trouble.”
“Jorpar’thr-ak, anus-breath,” she replied sullenly.
Laron performed the summoning, but the second truename the elemental had given was valid. He transferred her back to the imprinted chunk of glass.
“Now, being your master, I would like a couple of things from you,” Laron announced.
“I can be such an alluring, pleasuring slave.”
“Actually, they’re both information. What is your worldname?”
“Rasmey.”
“Very pretty. Now, I was both prudent and skilled enough to revive Velander’s drowning body and install my, ah, soulmate therein. What truename did you give the body?”
Rasmey’s response was a howl of outrage that trailed into pain. “You tricked me!”
“Oh, yes, and I did an excellent job of it, too. How does it feel, resisting a truename summons? According to the texts I have read, you will burn from within, as if you have swallowed a white-hot poker. I used some very advanced medicar techniques to revive Velander’s body and some even more advanced techniques to install another
soul within it, but not having the truename is a real annoyance. Are you ready?”
Rasmey was not ready, and she never would be ready.
“Jorpar’thr-ak, I command you to speak the truename of the body of Velander.”
There was a short pause, followed by a short, whining moan that quickly grew in intensity.
“Illi-einsielt!” Rasmey gasped resentfully.
Laron sat at the opposite end of the boatmaster’s cabin to Ninth, his hands clasped tightly together.
“Now that we have changed your body’s truename, you must guard it from all others,” he explained. “Carelessness in such matters cost the previous owner her soul.”
“I shall be careful.”
“Whisper a new truename name for yourself into your cupped hands, using the same form of words that we just used for naming your new body.”
Laron listened as Ninth named herself with a truename. It gave him power over her, but it also allowed him to heal her with his own strength.
“Very dangerous, letting someone else know your truename,” Laron emphasized. “Even more dangerous to let someone else name you.”
“This body, it has been mating,” said Ninth bluntly.
Her frankness rattled Laron a little, but he held firm. “Ah, yes. Are you worried that you might be with child after so much dalliance between Feran and the succubus?”
“I just need to know, for the maintenance of the body.”
“The previous, ah, tenant, was taking precautions against that sort of thing. Precautions based on enchantment. If you want to know what is involved, I can show you.”
“No,” she replied, her voice devoid of emotion as only an auton’s could be.
Leaving Ninth to have her first sleep as a living person, Laron went on deck to be alone. It had been quite a strain, yet he had won. The bag of gold was still on the deck, forgotten during the dramas and mutiny that had raged through the little craft this night. Never hurts to keep some handy, he thought, then he scooped up a handful and opened his purse. He noticed the chunk of glass to which he had bound the ocular. For some moments he considered his options, tossing it up into the air. Then he spoke a casting over the glass. It absorbed an unusual amount of energy, but the ocular did what he wanted.
In the etherworld, and unknown to Laron, the tattered, fading remains of Velander’s spirit were totally focused on just one thing: clinging to the etheric beacon anchored to the chunk of glass at the bottom of the purse. The blaze of etheric energies flowed into her, giving definition to every facet of her remains.
It was some time before Velander noticed that the ocular was now registering and storing sound.
Chapter Five
VOYAGE TO ACREMA
Imposing foreign rule on a country is a tricky-enough business at the best of times, but imposing that rule by invading from an entirely separate continent is considerably harder. Eighty days after Diomeda had fallen, reports were flooding in to Forteron about local preparations to attack the Torean invaders. In this case, “local” meant any other kingdom on Acrema. A dozen or so monarchs felt that their thrones were sufficiently secure, and their armies sufficiently idle, to justify getting together and getting involved. The matter of a reason posed a serious problem, however. The king of the i Protectorates was not liked, and had been disrupting trade with high taxes, levies, and customs charges. On the other hand, the Toreans were foreigners, even though they were far more reasonable about trade. It seemed a good idea to invade the place and set up a friendly, Acreman administration. On the other hand, each of the kingdoms wanted their own minion on the Diomedan throne and all the other kingdoms excluded.
In order to at least get some sort of response in motion, the northern kingdoms formed the Alliance, but immediately began to bicker about who was to be in charge. Several meetings and exchanges of messenger autons resulted in a declaration. Significantly, their declaration spoke of restoring the rightful monarch rather than putting the Diomedan king back on his throne. The eleven kingdoms in the Alliance harbored no less than fifteen of the pretenders to the Diomedan throne. Then there was the hidden agenda of desert trade routes. Any army traveling south would have to use them—and thus would gain control of them. All eleven kingdoms wanted this control, to the exclusion of the other ten.
All this, Forteron had expected. His intention had been to occupy the city, establish a firm but humane administration, lower the tariffs on everything, and keep his forces in a defensive posture. In time the Toreans would become part of the status quo, and eventually he and Warsovran would be getting invitations to royal weddings, tournaments, and orgies in the neighboring kingdoms. What really surprised Forteron was a threatened declaration of war that had arrived from the Sargolan empire on a deepwater trader.
The Sargolan empire was a union of five kingdoms of the fertile south of the continent. The Portcullis Mountains divided the desert from the forests, plains, and farms, and these were in Sargolan territory. The empire covered barely a twentieth of the continent’s total area, but it was the greatest single military power. It was taking now taking a very unhealthy interest in the Toreans in Diomeda. It was also sending messages to the northerners’ Alliance, suggesting that they combine forces for an attack.
“The Sargolan emperor wants his daughter back,” Forteron explained to the marshal of the Diomedan City Garrison.
“Who is holding her?” the marshal asked crisply.
“We are, apparently.”
The marshal opened his mouth, closed it for lack of any immediate and sensible reply, then thought very hard.
“If we were, Admiral, I think I would know about it,” he managed.
“And I would expect as much. So where is she?”
The marshal was one of those people who preferred to say nothing at all while he thought. Aware of this, and inclined to tolerate people’s peculiarities as long as they got the job done, Forteron waited patiently.
“One can leave Diomeda by sea, the Leir River, or three main roads. We monitor the roads and port only to collect customs fees, and to make sure that armed infiltrators are not trying to sneak in. If the princess were here, she would have had no trouble leaving in disguise and under an assumed name. I would have been told if she had left openly.”
“‘Openly,”’ Forteron repeated. “Now, that is a good point. Suppose this princess, er …” Forteron picked up the Sargolan scroll and unrolled it. “Senterri, that is her name. Suppose Princess Senterri is in Diomeda covertly.”
“But, Admiral, why?”
“Why does not concern me, Marshal. But if she does happen to be in Diomeda covertly, we shall ask her—once she is located. Sargol’s fleet is no match for ours, but their army is quite formidable, and not above crossing five hundred miles of desert to teach us a lesson. The Alliance kingdoms might have all the unity of a room full of cats, but Sargol would be a politically neutral leader, as far as they are concerned. That combination would be very bad for us.”
“I agree, that would be a force of half the continent’s armies. Lucky that we have a larger navy.”
“Wrong. The Sargolans are threatening to build a thousand ships and sail here. They are quite serious about teaching us not to throw Sargolan royalty in the slammer.”
“Oh no, Admiral, I’m positive she is not in custody.”
“Then, that’s a start. The Sargolans have vast forests for shipbuilding, but we have only what wood is shipped down the Leir. By the gods of the moonworlds, who would have ever guessed that a girl’s face could launch a thousand ships?”
“My wife’s mother had a voice that could etch glass,” volunteered the marshal.
Forteron pinched the bridge of his nose. “Find the princess, Marshal,” he said wearily. “Find her quickly. Our lives may be at stake.”
“If she is in the city, she will be with the local Sargolan community. There are a few dozen Sargolan merchants, students, and general wayfarers just south of the river docks.”
“Good,” F
orteron concluded, rubbing his hands together. “Locate her, then tell me. Do not apprehend her like some common thief. The last thing I want is the girl to be shipped back to her father with a bad opinion of us.”
The marshal bowed. “Your lordship is a wise and cunning diplomat,” he observed.
“That is why I am still alive, Marshal. You would do well to follow my example.”
Fontarian’s ruins were the last chance for the Shadowmoon to take on water before the long stretch across the Placidian Ocean to Helion. They arrived to find they had company. At anchor in the harbor was a triple-hulled Vindican trader. Feran’s first thought was to put to sea again, but Laron pointed out that the Vindican craft could quickly detach a hull to send off in pursuit.
“It is the Rashih-Harlif,” said Laron, peering through his farsight. “We can approach in safety.”
“Aye, and pigs may fly,” Feran said fearfully.
“Then best to wear a hat; pigs have no sense of responsibility.”
“How can you be so sure we are safe?”
“It is a merchant vessel.”
“And that makes you trust it?”
“Not.”
“Then why?”
“Because I was expecting it to be here.”
The gigboat was unclamped and launched, and Laron, Ninth, and Druskarl rowed across to the much-bigger vessel. They were helped aboard with deference, but Ninth and Druskarl had to wait on deck as Laron was shown into the seagrass-and-oilcloth cabin of shipmaster Suldervar. Suldervar bowed to Laron, who bowed in turn. The hospitaler brought wine, and they sat on cushions exchanging pleasantries for a while.
“Why were you not here weeks ago?” asked Laron, with just a suggestion of annoyance.
“My times and schedules are not my own. There is turmoil right across the Placidian Ocean. Warsovran has seized Diomeda. I am due back in Vindic in just two weeks because of it.”
“Diomeda,” said Laron contemplatively. “Large, rich, strong, yet on a desert coast and very isolated. If I had a fleet with nearly a quarter of a million fighting men, but no backup at all, why, Diomeda would be ideal. The armies of other kingdoms must travel a long way to attack.”
Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 25