There was a definite form in the murk and swirling clouds before him, a vast sphere. Druskarl stared, and almost immediately noticed that it was shrinking rapidly and descending. The eunuch shambled in its direction, wondering how long it would be before it became a shirt of interlocking links and plates again, and if he could survive whatever the wait might be. Of course, this was why it had not sunk into the lake of glass at the center of Larmentel’s ruins, Druskarl realized. It had floated down slowly, reaching the surface only when it had begun to harden. Perhaps it had been cast that way, so that it would not be nearly impossible to recover. The sphere was about ten feet across and still shrinking as it touched the baked cobblestones.
There was a bright flash, and as Druskarl blinked the dazzles out of his vision, he saw that Silverdeath had collapsed into a gleaming tunic of metal. It now seemed quite inert. Druskarl took a butcher’s meathook from his belt, reached down as far as the stiff suit would allow, and snared the fabulous but dangerous prize.
Scarcely glancing at Silverdeath, Druskarl now turned to go back—but where was the road? He fought down a wave of panic, worked the internal wiper of his visor again, then began to circle the outer edge of the plaza. There were several tempting breaks in the ruins of the buildings, but he persisted until he found the parallel pillars again. Once back on the road, he walked more slowly than before, breathing what seemed like fire through the rapidly heating water on his back. Again and again he cleared the visor, but as the gusty wind lessened in strength, the smoke and steam seemed to become thicker. He missed actually seeing the thin iron staff in the murk, but struck it with his right arm as he passed, and heard the clang as it fell.
Druskarl turned right, tramping over broken ground again, hoping and praying that he was walking in a straight line. He seemed to be going downhill, and downhill was to the water. The leather joints at his knees were crumbling away fast; he could feel his flesh burning in the hot air. As he reached up to work the wiper lever, the entire right elbow-joint crumbled away. He smelled burning meat mixed into the steam that he was breathing. He could no longer feel his right arm, and could not work the wiper lever. Blinded, he kept walking, forcing the legs that he could barely feel to move. The light beyond his fogged visor began to brighten, then he fell with a splash.
Druskarl was barely aware that Feran was beside him, wearing a smaller breathing jar and a water-soaked leather coverall.
“You’ve done it!” came Feran’s muffled voice. “You got Silverdeath.”
Feran began to cut away Druskarl’s charred, ruined insulation and plates as they lay in the shallows together.
“Take it, leave me,” gasped Druskarl as the helmet came away, pushing Feran away with his left arm.
“Never!” Feran laughed in triumph, standing to straddle the eunuch. “You’re part of the plan.”
He stabbed Druskarl just below the ribs, jerked upward, then sliced across to cut open both of his hearts. Druskarl went limp as his blood poured out into the water. Feran hauled him up into a sitting position, then began to pull the metal fabric of Silverdeath over his head. With Druskarl alive and fighting back Feran could never have succeeded, but after no more than a minute the eunuch’s burned, blackened right arm was in the second sleeve and the fabric was beginning to shimmer and melt into a silver skin.
Feran flopped down into the hot, shallow water, watching. Soon a gleaming, silver figure stood up, still wearing the charred and crumbling leggings of the insulating armor.
“Serve me!” Feran commanded in a firm voice. “I am Feran Woodbar.”
Silverdeath bowed.
“Your hands applied me,” declared the familiar, hollow-sounding voice. “Command me, as I serve and protect.”
“Your host is damaged. How long will it take to make your repairs and reach your full potential?”
“Moments.”
Feran ducked under the water and released the weights holding down the racing shell. It surfaced, and he began to unpack the oars.
“The host has been optimized,” Silverdeath reported.
Roval had helped the squad of marines dig several ambassadors out from under the collapsed wall. Some had broken bones but none had been killed. All were exceedingly impressed, and several said they would recommend treaties with Warsovran just as soon as they could get letters to their respective monarchs. Slowly the smoke began to disperse over Helion South, while marines and servants bustled about with stretchers, ointments, and bandages.
The entire surface of Helion South was burned down to the rock, and a deepwater trader that had been anchored just offshore had vanished. Nothing north of the channel was melted, but several grass fires had been started, and a fruit vendor’s cart and several sand wagons were burning from the intense radiant heat of the wall of fire that had stopped halfway across the canal.
Suddenly someone called out and pointed. A long, narrow boat was slicing through the water, skirting the tortured coast of Helion South. Warsovran gasped, then muttered a lurid curse.
“All of you, stay here!” he shouted, thinking quickly. “Not you!” he barked at Roval, dragging him aside. “You, clay-face. Do you speak Diomedan?”
Roval shrugged, raising his hands. “Glorious Emperor, I’m a poor fisherman, I only speak Vidarian,” Roval replied.
“No Diomedan—then you’re my man,” said Warsovran in Vidarian. “Come with me.”
Roval held the bow of the shell steady as Feran and Silverdeath got out in the shallows, then he dragged it onto the sand.
“Clay-face,” Warsovran said in Vidarian. “Take my ax. If anyone comes within earshot, kill them.”
“Yes, Emperor, Glorious Emperor,” replied Roval.
Roval walked to about thirty feet away, then stood with his back to them, holding up the ax and waving it every so often.
“Can you speak Diomedan?” asked Warsovran, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder. “That yokel doesn’t.”
“I not only speak it like a native, I am a native,” Feran replied.
“Then we can talk freely. I am Emperor Warsovran.”
“You look young for an emperor.”
“I once wore Silverdeath. It reduces the age of one’s body to about two decades.”
“And one does not resume aging for another decade,” added Feran.
“I—Does it? I mean, how … Who are you?”
“I am known to many as Feran Woodbar. When you ordered my death you knew me as Cypher.”
Warsovran squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. In his experience, people with something like that in their backgrounds tended to be a little vindictive.
“So? You were trying to cheat me, just as I tried to cheat you,” Warsovran countered, his reply being rather more honest than most.
“Quite so. Returning to my identity, I was once known to many as Nare’f As-bar.”
Neither Feran nor Warsovran saw Roval’s jaw drop, because his back was still turned to them.
“So, Silverdeath sponged away your years and scars as well?”
“Oh yes, but a little too well. When I was born, Fortune favored me with weak, puny etheric powers. I lived fifteen years as a nobody. I was a common stablehand, when one day a horse kicked me, cracking my skull. After a month I had healed enough to wake, but I awoke with an initiate potential that eventually gave me the twelfth grading of initiation. A glorious career as a sorcerer was mine, but after Silverdeath had finished healing me I was again at the first level of grading, or even less. I had nothing but restored youth after a lifetime of power. Is it any wonder that I have worked so hard to become the master of Silverdeath by way of compensation?”
The Diomedan sorcerer should have been in his nineties by now, thought Roval, but the facts added up. It was a fact that nobody had seen him for years. The man had had a misshapen skull, that was a very well known fact. Feran’s voluntary control of etheric powers were almost nil; that was a fact Roval had sensed for himself.
“You wore Silverdeath?” Warsovran was
asking.
“Briefly, after we liberated it from its shrine and guards. I made the mistake of allowing my, ah, professional associate to put it on me. We had no idea of how it worked until then. My companion used it to destroy a castle built upon a small island on an inland lake. He did not realize the owner of the castle was not home, but was in the process of returning. He also had quite a large squad of lancers with him. They struck from behind, killing my associate as he waited for the island to cool. Praise be to Fortune, but Silverdeath had stripped sixty years from me while I was its host. I pretended to be my associate’s dim-witted young servant. I was merely driven off after a beating. I watched in the distance as my enemies rowed out to the island once it had cooled sufficiently; I saw them return with Silverdeath. Ah, I had lost Silverdeath, but I had learned that it can bestow immortality as well as invincibility.”
“And now you are its master.”
“Oh yes.”
“Yet you must wear it again to become rejuvenated.”
“That, former emperor Warsovran, is five or six decades away. In the meantime I require servants, and good servants are so hard to come by. You will help me build a new empire in Acrema.”
Warsovran considered for a moment. “And in return?”
“You will be my supreme servant—aside from Silverdeath, of course. You will also be allowed to live.”
Warsovran took the duration of one inward breath to make up his mind.
“Your terms are eminently attractive, Emperor Feran Woodbar.”
“Splendid. Firstly, you are to do my bidding on a few small matters. A certain youth named Laron, currently at Madame Yvendel’s Academy of Applied Castings, is to be delivered into my custody. A young woman named either Velander or Ninth is to be captured and brought to me from Vindic, as is a certain Metrologan priestess named Terikel to be fetched from Scalticar.”
“A Metrologan survived?”
“Oh yes. In addition, I want certain devices fetched, buildings raised, and sorcerers collected. This racing shell is to be taken back to Diomeda, with me, on your flagship, and I am to be tended by three different girls, every night, all the way back to Diomeda. You will speed ahead in a dash galley, and prepare a fitting welcome for me from the entire city. Is all of that clear?”
“It is.”
“One more thing. You are to refer to me as ‘master’ at all times. Spread the word that you have always been working in my name, and that I have finally chosen to reveal myself.”
Thirty feet away, Roval heard the hiss of Warsovran’s breath. Warsovran thought and assessed quickly, however, and it was clear that he had no option but to capitulate—for now.
“I agree—master.”
“Have your personal barge brought here, and take me out to your flagship—with my racing shell in tow. I wish to be aboard as it rams the Sargolan galley Waverider. Make sure there are no survivors.”
“I shall see to it personally, master.”
“After that, I am to be provided with silk robes and your best food and drink. I am to be waited on by women only. No men or eunuchs. Anything without tits that approaches me with a tray or a goblet will be flung to the sharks.”
“Yes, master.”
Leaving Feran standing on the beach with Silverdeath, Warsovran strode up to where Roval was still standing with his back to them, now and then waving the ax at the distant onlookers.
“You, clay-face. Give back my ax.”
Roval turned, and in the very instant before handing the ax back realized that the emperor had spoken in Diomedan. Roval thought very, very quickly.
“I do not understand,” he said respectfully.
“Ax! Give it here!” Warsovran demanded, now in Vidarian.
Roval bowed and presented the ax to Warsovran on the palms of both hands, handle first. Warsovran pointed to Port Wayside.
“Now go.”
Roval bowed again, then backed away to one side as Warsovran brushed past him, shouting orders to his people in Diomedan. When Warsovran reached the governor of the island he did not shout, however.
“Nobody is to leave the island, except on my order,” he said softly and quickly. “I shall also send my galleys out to secure all the ships that are within sight as well, and they are not to be released until my order. Every islander and marine is to be interrogated about what they saw between noon yesterday and this present moment. Everyone from every ship, from the shipmasters down to the cabin boys, are to be questioned also. There will be an absolute blockade of the island. No ships or autons may leave until after I give a release. All ships that arrive are to be impounded. At first light tomorrow, I want the marines to go over every square foot of Helion South for any clue of how that clown reached Silverdeath while the island was still so hot. Do you understand all that?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Uh-uh—just ‘Commander’ for now, if you enjoy being whole and alive.”
As soon as he was sure that he was being totally ignored, Roval began trudging slowly up the slope to where the rest of the Shadowmoon’s company was waiting beside their vantage rock.
“We have a problem that will challenge your capacity for belief,” he announced as he reached them.
Einsel had arranged a series of experiments to study the fire-circle from the beach of North Helion. Some were etheric, involving recording oculars and trigger autons, others were from the cold sciences. These were tissues and cloths of varying colors and thicknesses, open vials of liquids, spring-mounted wind vanes, and such-like. Two marines stood guard nearby. The sorcerer glanced about and noticed an islander sitting on a rock and drinking from a jar of wine as he looked across at the desolation that was Helion South. The rock that was his seat had been selected with great care, and many weeks earlier.
“Guards, I need help!” called Einsel. “Fetch that layabout over there, the one on the rock.”
The guards brought the islander over. His face was coated with clay and oil. They then retreated to their former position, lest they be told to help with Einsel’s work as well.
“I have some alarming news, Learned Roval,” Einsel began.
“I already know it all,” replied Roval. “I was the one with the ax who stood by while Warsovran and Feran spoke.”
“My, but you find your way around with great facility, heh-heh. What went wrong? Our best estimate was that nobody could have walked on Helion South until at least twelve hours had passed.”
“I know, but there are always lateral schemes. I had prepared a means to snatch Silverdeath just after sunset, the method was Learned Wensomer’s—but none of that matters anymore. Will you be going ahead to Diomeda with Warsovran?”
“Yes, right after he returns from sinking the Sargolan galley that Feran arrived on.”
“He is leading the attack in person?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Learned Einsel, I suspect that your master will return with Feran’s secret. If you also learn how he did it, make sure that Learned Wensomer hears of the method as soon as you return to Diomeda.”
The Kygar smashed deep into the Waverider’s side amid a barrage of arrows and fire-pots from the ballistas. The boarding ramp swung down and its spikes bit deep into the Waverider’s deck, locking the two ships together. Warsovran was among the first to storm onto the Sargolan galley, flanked by three of his personal guard. They fought their way aft, to the doors beneath the quarterdeck.
“Arthen, Tionel, guard the door!” said Warsovran as he kicked through the paneling. “Gratz, come with me.”
They killed two sailors before bursting into the master cabin, where the navigator was burning the charts and scrolls. He backed toward the shuttered window through the smoke, keeping the flames between Warsovran and himself.
“You! Did you see Feran Woodbar’s secret device?” Warsovran demanded in Diomedan.
“I—Yes,” replied the terrified and desperate navigator. “What is this?”
“Do you want to live?”
“I don’t give a damn about your duke!” snarled Warsovran. “Will you describe the device to me in return for your life?”
Hope suddenly relaxed the man’s features.
“Only if I do not betray my duke and emperor.”
He stopped as Warsovran whirled and buried his ax in the throat of his own marine.
“Get into his armor and helmet, then dump the body through the window and come with me,” said Warsovran, glancing back out through the door and along the narrow corridor. “Once we’re on deck, keep your mouth shut and stay beside me.”
As long as nobody tried to leave Helion, the locals had complete freedom of the north island, and nobody was particularly interested in visiting the south island. The Shadowmoon’s company spent the rest of the day scavenging driftwood on the beaches, and even traded their gleanings for two jars of wine and half a dozen smoked fish. They watched as the flagship and its escort squadron sailed west, and two hours later the sun set. Miral was high in the sky, and still climbing.
“It will be a long wait until Miral is down and we can swim out,” said Terikel.
“No, it’s not worth the wait,” said Norrieav. “Miral down is only two hours before dawn. We would still be bailing at first light.”
“And the Shadowmoon could be caught by a bathtub rowed by snails,” said Hazlok.
“Drunk snails,” added D’Atro.
“Is this leading anywhere?” asked Terikel.
“There will not be any sharks within a hundred miles of here after what happened this morning,” said Roval. “In half an hour we can swim out past the patrol galleys to the Shadowmoon using breathing tubes.”
“The Shadowmoon will be visible by Miral’s light once it is on the surface,” warned D’Atro.
“Then perhaps we should take the chance,” said Terikel.
Off to one side, at the marines’ garrison, something flashed brightly and a speck of orange light rose into the darkening sky on flickering wings meshed in ether. As they watched, it curved upward, banked, then plunged at a steep angle. Suddenly there was a starburst of sparks and burning fragments.
Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 46