“I think not. Warsovran had a vendetta against the Metrologans. The story put about was that they were plotting something involving the empress, but … well, after hearing what your elemental just said, I think it was because they were experimenting with a way to destroy Silverdeath with the very sphere Ninth is wearing. Silverdeath killed Torea, Laron. We must help the ghosts of Torea’s finest sorcerers reach out from the grave and strike it down in turn.”
Chapter Nine
VOYAGE TO THE ABYSS
Warsovran’s dash galley reached Diomeda two days before his flagship was due to arrive with Feran. He made only a brief announcement, to the effect that Silverdeath had a new master, and that none could stand against it, but that Silverdeath was still their ally.
“By the use of cunning devices he got to Silverdeath before the ground had cooled to below lead’s melting point,” Warsovran told Admiral Forteron. “These are the devices.”
Forteron studied the drawings of the heat armor and racing shell. The boat had no real secrets, it was just the idea that had been refined to extremes. The heat armor was a different matter. A medium-sized pottery jar was strapped on like a wayfarer’s backpack, with a tube leading to the face mask. Its purpose was obviously to cool the air before it was breathed, but there were no details at all of the internal workings.
“It is hard to believe that a mere youth could be so skilled in the cold sciences,” Forteron concluded.
“He is not a youth. He once wore Silverdeath, and before that he was a sorcerer over eight decades old. Nare’f As-bar was his name. Nare of the Academy of As-bar, which is Scalticarian—although he claims to be Diomedan, so who knows?”
“What is he like as a master?”
“About as flaky as a bowl of wheat bran. Watch your actions and tongue when near him. Give him the deference you would afford me.”
“Do you have a plan, my lord?”
“Oh yes. He is clever and resourceful, but ill tempered and excitable, too. I can use that, and I can win back Silverdeath. Meantime, round up a couple dozen skilled artisans and have them build these.”
“The breathing jar is lacking in detail.”
“Tell the artisans that a pit floored with glowing coals is being prepared. Tell them that each of them will be forced to walk in circles around the aforesaid pit until one of them is still alive at the end of a half hour. The first test will be in two days. Einsel will be in charge of matters technical; he is currently outside with the Sargolan navigator. Give him whatever he needs.”
Rain continued to fall as Forteron and Einsel set about gathering the craftsmen together. It was persistent rain. It rendered the city muggy and uncomfortable, and the humidity made people’s clothing stick to their skin. By noon a warehouse had been cleared and put under guard, and the first felt and leather was being cut. As the overcast afternoon began to fade into overcast evening, an artisan of Warsovran’s height and build was walking about in a basic prototype suit of felt and leather while his colleagues labored over a helmet. At midnight he was able to stand beneath a scaffolding while marines emptied vats of boiling oil over him for a full minute, then he walked across a bed of glowing coals. Having accomplished all this, he collapsed.
The following morning Forteron called in to check on progress. Einsel had not slept at all, neither had any of the artisans.
“The iron-shod clogs work, as does the insulation of felt and leather,” Einsel reported. “A plate of quartz crystal provides vision and is kept clear of moisture on the inside by two leather levers wired to lead weights. Sway from side to side and they wipe the plate clean. The hands work two pairs of blacksmith’s tongs with felt wrapped around the handles. They serve as walking sticks as well as allowing Silverdeath to be picked up.”
“Very, very impressive,” said Forteron as he watched a marine striding back and forth on the bed of coals.
“There is only one problem,” said Einsel. “The wearer has only what air is sealed inside the helmet with him. After three minutes …”
The marine testing the suit collapsed, falling face-first into the coals. He was dragged clear with long barhooks.
“But you have written here that the suit has withstood a full quarter hour of walking on coals while flamethrowers roasted it with burning lamp oil.”
“Yes, but all the while, cool air was being pumped down a long copper pipe using a blacksmith’s bellows.”
“Hardly practical for the aftermath of a fire-circle.”
“True, but in two days we shall at least have a suit that can withstand the heat for a half hour.”
“That will be of little comfort to the artisan balloted to try it out in the burning pit for that half hour.”
“Well, I have had an idea for that, a brilliantly simple idea. Look at this.”
The drawing Einsel placed before Forteron seemed better suited to a grotesquely deformed hunchback with an immense beer belly.
“Ah, I don’t know this man.”
“No, no, those are just cavities, nothing more than air enclosed by leather, tin, and felt. I have had one marine’s head enclosed in a sailcloth sack of the same volume, and I was able to walk him around the floor for over three-quarters of an hour, according to the sandglass. In a pinch, we can use this for the half-hour test tomorrow; I am having the lads of the current shift make one up.”
“I have a message from Warsovran about that. The test will be tomorrow morning, an hour before dawn.”
Einsel’s features sagged with dismay. “So soon?”
“Emperor Feran is expected to arrive not long after sunrise, according to the latest carrier auton from the flagship. Warsovran’s movements may not be as free from surveillance as he would like after that. I think this will work. Have three suits made according to this design. One for your tests, one for tomorrow morning, and one to be hidden in the palace for Warsovran’s use.”
Einsel sat back with the sketch in his hand and sighed. “Heh-heh, it is superlatively ugly,” he said. “The mighty Warsovran, a beer-guzzling hunchback.”
“On the contrary, Einsel, it is a most superlatively elegant design, far better than Woodbar’s complex air-cooling device. As an engineer, you are the peer of the best ever to come out of Larmentel.”
“Larmentel?” exclaimed Einsel, glowing with pride at the unexpected compliment. “Admiral, do you really mean that?”
“I may not be an engineer, Learned Einsel, but I have hired, dismissed, bought and sold thousands of them. I know quality.”
“I wanted to become an engineer when I was a youth, but when my etheric potentials were discovered I was sent straight off to a master of applied castings.”
“Perhaps ‘engineer’ will be carved on your gravestone. That is the one place where it really matters.”
Forteron stood up to go, but Einsel hurriedly seized his arm before he could walk away. The sorcerer glanced around hurriedly, checking once again that nobody else was within earshot.
“Admiral, there are things I must tell you, things that could get my height reduced by exactly this amount,” he said, tapping at his head.
Forteron regarded him steadily, his hands on his hips. “As your friend, Learned Einsel, I must warn you that I am also loyal to my monarch. Given the situation with our current head of state, however, I promise to listen and be discreet.”
“It is not Woodbar, it is Warsovran himself. His plan is to goad Emperor Feran into annihilating Dawnlight, then seize Silverdeath, using the suit of heat armor that we are supposed to develop.”
“So? A committee of village idiots chaired by Admiral Griffa could have told us that.”
“But Warsovran intends to use it again, on the army currently outside Diomeda’s walls and ramparts.”
“Never! It would grow to melt Acrema within ten dozen days, and possibly the world. Warsovran is no fool. Besides, when the army sees Dawnlight roasted, they will pack up and leave within a week.”
“He may not be a fool, but he certainly is a bri
lliant madman! He wants to detonate another fire-circle on the army as it camps on the flood plain, then divert water from the Leir to inundate the place before the second fire-circle happens, sixty-four days later.”
“Apparently the plain only floods to a yard or so’s depth. Will that be enough?”
“We don’t know!” Einsel shouted, with his fists clenched, then he sheepishly looked around and waved the staring marines and artisans back to their work. “Look, Warsovran must be removed—I mean separated—from Silverdeath.”
“You really mean killed.”
“Neutralized.”
“Killed.”
“Rendered ineffectual.”
“Killed.”
“‘Killed’ is such an extreme word,” sighed Einsel.
“His inner guard of initiates, ethersmiths, and marines is almost as good a protection as Silverdeath itself, Einsel. Besides, I’m not sure that I want to be a party to all this. Even if I did agree, Admiral Griffa is in charge of his security. The man may be a blockhead, but he’s a thorough and meticulous blockhead.”
“You could have your own guards turn on Warsovran’s, leaving him exposed.”
“No, I could not. My guards are as loyal as I am, but it is loyalty to the monarch. I have no idea what their personal loyalty to me would be, because my own loyalty has never been in question. I could easily be helping the palace headsman provide some more free public entertainment to the citizens of Diomeda within a single hour of trying to recruit my own men as assassins.”
“Then you will not help?” asked Einsel, rubbing his hands anxiously.
“Cannot.”
Forteron wanted to be out of the place and away from all of its moral dilemmas, but a sense of duty kept him there. Not duty to Warsovran, or even to Feran, but to the people under his command. Both the other men saw the marines and sailors as mere rough tools, just a means to power, but to Forteron they were as precious as a set of sharp and finely wrought chisels. The admiral wanted them to be used to carve and maintain something as beautiful, useful, and enduring as a fully armed deepwater trader. Would Warsovran ruin them just to cut up firewood?
“If the fire-circles did get out of control, how would Warsovran survive?” Forteron asked.
“Oh, he intends to have a few ships’ hulls inverted and weighted down within the harbor. Food, drinking water, sheep, chickens, seed grain, and tools would be aboard, along with a couple of thousand men.”
“Two thousand? If converted thus, the fleet could hold all the Toreans under my command.”
“Warsovran intends that fifty women also be included for every man, heh-heh. He intends to rebuild a sizable empire under the cold, ash-laden skies of our ruined world.”
Warsovran had always taught his commanders to think as he would, and now that worked against him. Forteron could easily imagine Warsovran following exactly such a plan, and burning alive nine out of every ten surviving Torean marines in the process.
“Einsel, I cannot help you,” the admiral concluded nevertheless.
Einsel closed his eyes and swayed, his face contorted with real pain.
“Will you at least not repeat—”
“I have not finished. What I shall promise is to recover Silverdeath, should you somehow manage to persuade Emperor Feran to cast it as a fire-circle. In that, I certainly shall go against Warsovran—and I promise never to use Silverdeath.”
Einsel beamed with relief and gratitude, and he bowed repeatedly to Forteron while rubbing his hands together. “My good and valiant Admiral, you may not have to endure the temptation for long. Certain sorcereric associates of mine may have a method of jamming Silverdeath’s internal mechanisms until its energy is totally drained and it fails completely. It may result in a small explosion, but nothing catastrophic.”
“How small is ‘small’?”
“Watch it from no closer than a mile.”
“You call that small?”
“Should you have the fortune to acquire Silverdeath, you will be contacted. One more thing, however.”
“Yes?”
“Seize power. Become king of Diomeda. We need a wise ruler after these two fools.”
“Easier said than done. Nobody is loyal to Woodbar, so he will be doomed from the moment he casts his next fire-circle. Warsovran is a different matter. Most of the fleet worships him.”
“They don’t know what we know.”
“Precisely. If you can arrange for his life to be ended, however, I shall seize power and you will be appointed court engineer from the moment of his death.”
The two days’ notice for Feran’s arrival had imposed a tight schedule on the officials of Diomeda, but on the other hand, large, cheering crowds, an honor guard of ships, massed ranks of marines and militiamen, a couple of dozen dancing girls, and a really impressive feast were all that were really required. Most of the aforementioned merely required the right people to be in the right place in the right clothing at the right time, so by the time the flagship was sighted through the early-morning rain, everybody was more or less in place.
Einsel stopped at Hass Harber Ballistics on the way to the docks, and went straight to a rack of crossbows. Nodding to the proprietor, he selected one of the smaller specimens on offer and took it down with a quite unsteady hand.
“Business prospering, heh-heh?” Einsel asked in a voice even less steady than his hands, as he fished a bolt from his robes.
“Oh, never better. It’s the war, ye know.”
Einsel laid the bolt on the groove. It was an adequate fit.
“I shall have this one, if you please,” he said to Harber.
“I’se never seen nobody buy a crossbow fer a bolt.”
“It’s a family heirloom. It is all that I managed to bring with me from Torea.”
“It’s a heavy head for such a small shaft. Kill anyone special?”
“My grandfather—that is, it missed him in, ah, an assassination—attempt, that is.”
“Ah-ha, yeah, so it’s lucky fer you, because it missed.”
“Yes—ah, yes. It brings good luck. Just now I am in need of good luck. The entire world is, if it comes to that.”
“So why d’yer want to shoot it?”
“So I can miss. How much?”
“Well, it cost me three pagols, but I’ve done a lot of improvements—”
“Ten pagols, and would you draw back the string, please?”
“Draw back the string? How long yer keepin’ it like that?”
“An hour, perhaps two.”
“What? It’ll be ruined!”
“Well, then, you had better sell me a second string, heh-heh.”
Einsel counted out the gold coins, then pressed a small bead of resin into the groove and stuck the bolt down lightly. Concealing it under his rain-cloak, he then swept the cloak aside and raised the crossbow for a fast shot.
“Oi, I’d use me other hand ter steady it, I were you,” said the proprietor.
“Ah, er, thank you.”
Einsel tried again, and then a third time. They agreed that with both hands the little crossbow had a far better feel.
“So, yer gonna shoot at close range? Maybe ten feet?”
“How can you tell?”
“Yer aimin’ flat.”
“Ah, yes. Yes.”
“I notice these things.” Harber’s eyes narrowed. “Yer not gonna do somethin’ stupid with that thing, are ye?”
“No, no. Of course not. In fact, I’m going to do the most sensible thing of my entire life, heh-heh.”
“Ah, well, that’s all right, then.”
There very few things quite so dangerous as a very timid person who is also seriously fearful. Einsel was just such a person, yet he was also very strong willed in his own way. He was determined that Warsovran had to die. Einsel was high in etheric rating, but Warsovran had initiates with even higher ratings than the court sorcerer, and these were guarding him, along with his other personal guards. A casting, an ax, a crossbow bol
t—all of these could be stopped. A shot from a battle galley’s ballista could well get past Warsovran’s guards, but ballistas were fifteen feet long, ten feet across, had a crew of four, and were bolted to the decks of battle galleys. As the weapon of choice for a lone assassin, they did not even get onto the list. There was, however, one far more dangerous weapon available to the little sorcerer. Fear for the world, fear for the future, fear that his thirty-one tracts on etheric fashioning and biographical entry in Notable Sorcerers of the Placidian Rim would never be read by anyone ever again, and finally, fear for the future of an illegitimate child whose upbringing he had paid for even though he had always strenuously denied that it was his.
A gigboat met the flagship as it entered the harbor, and those watching from the shore saw several bundles being hoisted aboard. The galley then proceeded to the pier and tied up. Everyone waited, in the rain. The new emperor did not appear. A herald appeared with a decree. The rain was to be ignored. All rain capes were to be removed from sight. Another quarter hour passed. Everyone had by now grown sodden.
Finally Feran strode down the gangway with Silverdeath behind him. Whatever the powers of the mighty etheric machine, it could not or would not stop the rain. Feran was wearing exceedingly impressive silk robes, a jewel-encrusted belt, an exquisitely ornamented Diomedan battle-ax, and black riding boots made from the skin of a giant leatherwing. Everyone bowed as they stood in the rain, and water cascaded to the pier from where it had been pooling in the folds of the robes of the many thousands of those who stood waiting.
“I do not see the vampyre Laron,” declared Feran, his hands on his hips. “I ordered you to have him here, waiting for me as I left the ship.”
“I regret to inform Your Majesty that the vampyre fled to the island palace a week ago,” Warsovran replied without looking up.
“I want the vampyre, not excuses!” Feran shouted back.
Far across the harbor a new floating catapult had been loaded with a barrel, and was being prepared for a test shot. It was behind Dawnlight castle, and the rain shrouded it from the view of those ashore. The engineers aboard had very precise measurements of the harbor, however, and the barrel in its sling was a tenth of the weight of the standard rock that it was designed to fire. An enclosed galley was towing the catapult’s barge, and it was well within the range of Dawnlight’s own catapults. The defenders held off with their firepots, waiting for the best possible shot. The barge closed, then fired.
Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 49