Voyage of the Shadowmoon

by Sean McMullen

  “Ah, and this is my street,” she responded. “I have a room just down there.”

  “My, ah, er, the Academy … is that way,” was all that Laron could reply.

  “Maybe so, but my street curves around and also leads to the Academy.”

  She turned away and began to walk slowly toward her rooming house. Laron looked at her receding back, tried to make a decision, discovered that his mind had been wiped clean, then hurried after her and fell in beside her again. They did not even stop to discuss whether or not he was going to climb the steps when they reached her place. Laron noted that it was not in a red-lantern area, and appeared to be inhabited by artisans and travelers.

  Pellien shut the door to her room behind him and barred it. Laron stood anxiously rubbing his hands together, wondering what came next, but certain that when she unbarred the door to let him out in an hour’s time he would no longer have the slightest chance of passing his Academy tests. Pellien batted her eyelashes at him as she unclasped her suncloak, then she fiddled with the straps of her robes again. Once more her neckline plunged to the wide, kid-leather belt she wore at her waist. Slits appeared at both of her hips this time. Laron swallowed.

  Quite casually she reached out to a shelf of books made from mud-bricks and old decking planks, then selected Definitions and Precedents in Comparative Anatomy. The title caught Laron by surprise, almost distracting him from what was visible of her body—which was quite a lot.

  “So, you are required to preserve your virginity until tested,” she said as she flicked through the pages, her right hip turned jauntily toward Laron. She was swaying as if to the beat of an unheard tune, exposing a tantalizing line of flawless, smooth leg at each sway.

  “Er, that is, yes.”

  “Is the status heavily monitored?”

  “Er, well, not really, but …”

  “‘But’?”

  “There are tests for level-nine initiate status from Yvendel’s academy that really do require one to be innocent of the pleasures of the flesh—in order to pass an ordeal, that is.”

  “Ah yes, to become a non-commissioned sorcerer.”

  “Yes, but I, ah, rather suspect that I am in the process of failing that particular ordeal, ah, right at this moment,” Laron stammered. “With your permission, that is. I mean, I would not like to impose …”

  “Well …” Pellien seemed to find the page she was looking for. “Before my merchant father was lost at sea and my stepfather sold me as a harlot, I was studying for a life in the etheric arts.”

  “Hence all these books?” asked Laron, wondering if they had been on display when she was still entertaining paying clients. “I mean, were they your father’s?”

  “Well, no. I have managed to buy, steal, and scavenge a few books in the years since, but they all relate to the healing arts. If I cannot be a sorceress, I can at least become a courtesan, then find a patron, enter the Academy of Medicars, and graduate as a healer. Dancing may make me a courtesan, Laron. See? All very simple—ah-ha, here we are. Virginity … definition difficult to specify precisely … exchange of etheric energy … unions must be theoretically capable of producing offspring. Hence … man with female sheep, invalid … woman with—’ My goodness! Invalid, at any rate. ‘Either sex with any Dacostian … long a source of controversy, but resolved by Peppard the Ungainly in a paper presented to the Eighty-seventh Council of Sorric. Four experiments involving virgin slaves from Torea and Dacostia resulted in six out of the eight being able to subsequently pass certain etheric ordeals whose prerequisite is virginity—’”

  Pellien snapped the book shut, then replaced it on the shelf.

  “You must, of course, be familiar with the Eighty-seventh Council of Sorric, Laron. It is on the Metrologan syllabus, Deacon Lisgar once told me.”

  Laron had fed upon several people in Sorric a few centuries earlier, but his memories of the place were vague, and he had never attended a Council meeting.

  “Yes, all of that is true,” he bluffed.

  Laron watched, mesmerized as Pellien hooked her thumbs into the fabric below her belt and pushed back. It retreated until all that he could see in the mirror behind her was a long tassel of red silk running down the cleft of her bottom. Now her thumbs moved forward, until a single, narrow strip of red hanging almost to the floor was all that was left between her thighs to cover her doomed modesty. Laron’s hearts seemed to be not far from battering their way out of his rib cage and fleeing for some less intense sanctuary. Finally she reached to her waist and plunged both thumbs into her belt above her navel. She drew them apart, taking the red silk with them. Her breasts strained against the fabric, then popped out. Something was wrong … they were too low, and—another two breasts appeared!

  Pellien stood smiling at Laron with her thumbs still in her belt and her four quite shapely breasts proudly thrust out. A Dacostian, from the double continent in the west, thought Laron. Four breasts. The males had four testicles; he once had read that somewhere. By now she had advanced upon him, and was unlacing his tunic at the neck. She pulled it over his shoulders, and it fell to the floor. Summoning all his courage, Laron experimentally ran a finger from her throat down between her breasts, and onward to her belt buckle. He tugged at it, and it snapped open. The belt fell away, and her robe fell open. She began unlacing his trousers, then reached between his legs as they were exposed.

  “Ah, only two. That puts my conscience at ease. According to Peppard the Ungainly you can no more lose your virginity to me than to a sheep.”

  This came as a great relief to Laron, who was by now in some degree of pain from his interest in verifying the results of Peppard the Ungainly’s experiments. Pellien slipped her by-now redundant robe off and it fell to the floor. She slid her arms around Laron and he wrapped his arms around her back.

  “Er, sorry,” he whispered.

  “About what?” she purred back.

  “Being scrawny, like I’m fourteen while I’m really seven h—Ah, seventeen.”

  “Worthy Laron, you have not yet learned to let women be the judge of what they like.”

  She led him over to the bed and pulled him down with her. The entire world suddenly became focused between their respective pairs of legs.

  “Gently, no hurry, all the time in the world,” Pellien whispered as all manner of bodily and etheric stimuli cascaded through Laron. Blue sparks and streamers of ether crackled and danced between their loins, enhancing their sensations all the more.

  Velander watched through the ocular, but there were various energies present from the encounter between Pellien and Laron, even in the etherworld. In spite of her ineffectual, tiny reserve of energy, she had been able to modulate some of the energy to enunciate the word interesting twice, when the two lovers had first met.

  Now she watched with interest, and approval. This encounter is quite beautiful, she decided, then tried to work out why she had come to that decision. There was something between them—that was a possibility. What would Laron do for a lover that Feran would not? Now Velander decided that Laron was her soulmate, not mathematics. His seduction was her seduction. Through him, she had experienced sex as it should be. She would probably soon fade to nothing and become truly dead, but should she ever return to life, she swore to herself and to Fortune that she would be the most special person in Laron’s life, and that she would exist for no other than him.

  Two hours later Laron made a quick excursion to the Bargeman’s Pole for two nutmince pies, a bag of oysters, and two jars of Arkendian claret, but it was an hour after dawn before he began to contemplate leaving for the Academy. He was pinned below Pellien, and had to wake her before he could move.

  “Best be leaving,” he said.

  “Why?” she murmured.

  “Must make the breakfast at my lodgings.”

  “You had fifteen oysters last night.”

  “Five of them didn’t work.”

  “Poetry is written about my breakfasts.”

  “
I’ll have to make do with reading it, then. A roll is marked at Academy breakfasts. Priest I may be, but mere student I am, as well.”

  “Ah.”

  A Sargolan prayer gong was sounding as Laron finally kissed Pellien beside her now-unbarred door. Breakfast at the Academy always started just after the neighbors’ gong was beaten.

  “You know where I live,” she whispered in his ear.

  “But you may have company if I call unannounced. Company that may beat me up.”

  “There are no other lovers; I like to stay independent. A boy like you could never have thoughts of possessing me, of forcing me to wash your clothes or give up dance and study. Think of this as a convenient student romance.”

  As he set off for the Academy Laron realized that he had not had a single thought of guilt involving the auton Ninth from the first moment he had set eyes on Pellien. He had not had any thoughts for Ninth at all, if it came to that. Well, at least my feelings for her are genuinely founded in pure chivalry, he thought, and not burned by passions of the flesh.

  “Good old Peppard the Ungainly,” he said aloud, walking as lightly as if he were made of gossamer. “Must burn a coil of incense to your memory one day.”

  While Laron and Pellien had been energetically locked together, several hours past midnight, the Sargolan coastal trader had anchored in Sickle Bay on the desert coast. No ship was there to meet it; neither were there any tents or riders on the shore. Roval was set ashore and the trader sailed back out to sea. Roval sat on the sand watching Miral rise and ascend into the night sky, which was streaked with unseasonal clouds.

  “How long to get the Shadowmoon back on the surface?” Roval asked the darkness without moving at all.

  “With a crew of six, we should be sailing by midnight,” a voice replied from somewhere behind him.

  “Six. Three, plus me—that’s two new men,” said Roval. “Can they be trusted?”

  “I may not be a man, but I’m an experienced sailor and very trustworthy,” said Terikel. “As for the sixth, he’s no sailor but he may be trustworthy.”

  By now Roval had stood and turned. By Miral’s light he could see five figures. One of them was kneeling in the sand, and two had axes raised above him.

  “Noticed him slip over the side of the trader when you came ashore,” said Norrieav.

  “Claims to be a Metrologan,” said Hazlok.

  Roval walked up and put his hands on his knees, scrutinizing the youth’s face by Miral’s green light. He did not recognize him.

  “Learned master, I meant no harm,” quavered the intruder.

  “People who mean me no harm generally don’t go to so much trouble to follow me, in my experience. Who are you, who is your master?”

  “I am Aspiring Lisgar, deacon in the Metrologan mission to Diomeda. I am studying a special syllabus in the academy of Madame Yvendel in preparation for ordination. A priest asked me to follow you, but not to—”

  “Lies! There are no Metrologan priests left!” exclaimed Hazlok.

  “I saw his ring.”

  “Rings can be stolen.”

  “Please, not so hasty,” cautioned Terikel. “I do have a deacon named Lisgar in Diomeda.”

  Lisgar gasped. “Elder?”

  “What was this priest like, and what was his name?” asked Roval.

  “Worthy Laron, and he was very fresh and young looking—”

  “—in a scrawny sort of way,” the exasperated Terikel finished for him. “Congratulations, Aspiring Lisgar, you have just left the service of the not-quite-Worthy Laron and joined the crew of the Shadowmoon.”

  “I noticed him being seasick all the way from Diomeda,” Roval warned. “Still, we have more important things to worry about, like practicing the etherwing casting. Those cliffs yonder should be high enough, and do you have the mailshirt and stilts that I asked for?”

  “All farther back on the beach,” said Terikel.

  “And Miral is being clouded over. Good, let’s start while we have the right intensity of darkness.”

  Governor Roilean’s appointment originally had been seen as the poorest of Sargolan postings. It was a desert outpost that was more of a customs collection point and market town than a regional capital, and its population was made up more of foreigners than Sargolan citizens. With the impending war, all that had changed. Tens of thousands of troops were pouring through each week, and the local economy was booming as never could have been imagined. With the troops came nobles, commanders, and even the occasional prince and king. Roilean was getting introductions to the powerful and influential, and setting up associations that might help him into some more important and congenial posting.

  On this particular night, Prince Stavez, the eldest of the emperor’s sons, was spending a night in Baalder. He was staying in the governor’s mansion, and Roilean had staged the most lavish feast the resources at his command could manage. On the other hand, the prince was a clean-living military campaigner, and not particularly hard to please. A dozen former slave dancers entertained the official guests, while a wholesome and healthy meal was presented to the prince and his five generals. The governor was torn between playing the part of a master of ceremonies and being waited upon in dignified splendor, and compromised by making hand signals to his staff behind his back.

  “Everything has been working so smoothly,” the prince declared approvingly. “Your servants act with military precision.”

  “Well, yes, I find that my own military background has so many practical applications in administration, that I have just continued to, well, run the province like a battalion.”

  “Ah, eminently sensible,” agreed the prince.

  “And the mansion. My servants are drilled and exercised in the courtyard each morning.”

  “Really? I would be interested to watch. My feeling is that the entire empire should be organized on military lines.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Your household could well be the model for a Sargolan household military unit. Perhaps you could have your household scribe draw up the organization of your mansion’s staff structure; I would be pleased to study it while on the campaign against the Toreans in Diomeda.”

  The governor’s heart sank as he signaled for the next course to be brought out. He would either have to break whatever the existing record might be for raising a civilian militia, or he would have to manufacture a very plausible excuse for the household to be in total disorganization by dawn. Governor Roilean made a hurried hand signal for, Call me away. A servant dutifully came across and whispered, “Excellency, I am whispering in your ear.”

  “My apologies, Your Highness,” the governor said softly. “A matter of extreme importance must be attended to.”

  The entire party turned and gave the governor stares that might have been glares of disapproval for leaving the side of a prince without being given leave, or could have been a coded exchange of facial configurations that only the most senior and powerful of nobles used among themselves. He scowled back, then suddenly remembered that one never, never takes one’s own leave of royalty while at court, and this was indeed considered to be a provincial court. Roilean stood as awkwardly as a puppet whose strings were being fought over by people from three different schools of puppetry, then hurried away. What had he done? How could he have done such a stupid thing? One never dismissed oneself from the company of a prince. One dropped hints until they asked if one would like to leave, that was it! He went to his private audience chamber and padded around in a circle for several minutes. He had exited the company of a prince. He had broken protocol. He probably would be made the first ambassador to the melted continent of Torea as a result of this. It was so hard to remember protocols for the imperial court when one was stuck away with the camel drivers, spice merchants, dung carters, money changers, wholesale wine merchants, wholesale slave merchants pretending to be wholesale seed merchants—slave merchants!

  Even as the two words blazed out in his mind, Governor Roilean h
ad already broken out of his circle and was hurrying for the door. By the time he had returned to the crown prince of the Sargolan empire, he had his story, excuse, and disaster contingency plan all worked out.

  “Your pardon, Your Highness—my most abject apologies for taking leave of your company on my own account, like some mere yokel, but a matter of the gravest importance has arisen.”

  Something akin to a glimmering fire flickered into life within the eyes of the crown prince.

  “If it is of such great importance, then I should know of it as well,” he replied. “Do we require, ah, discretion?”

  The governor most certainly did not want discretion; he wanted everyone to know why he had made such a colossal blunder in court protocol.

  “Your Highness, it may save time if all were to hear now. It is not as if I am a Torean sympathizer, but I have been plagued by doubts about your campaign.”

  “Doubts?” exclaimed the prince, a dangerous edge in his voice already.

  “Your Highness, yes—doubts. I have been worried that if the Toreans are indeed right about windrels abducting Princess Senterri, then not enough effort is being put into searching for her inland, within the towns, villages, caravan camps, and slave markets of the deserts to the north. Thus I have had my own contacts hard at work, all paid for from my own limited treasury, of course. They are mere camel drivers, mercenaries, and even slavers, but true word of the princess would be no less welcome from the mouth of a beggar as from that of a duke—”

  “You have been brought word of Senterri?” asked the prince, who by now had been brought word of Senterri many hundreds of times over.

  “I have been brought word of a girl named Senterri, who was recently acquired in the slave market at Hadyal. She had flame-colored hair, and was sold in the company of two other girls.”

  The governor now had the undivided attention of the prince and all his generals. Senterri had two handmaids, and they had been abducted together, according to the Toreans. This was known only by the senior nobles and provincial governors.