Voyage of the Shadowmoon

by Sean McMullen

  The barrel flew between two of Dawnlight’s towers, arced through the air above one of the patrol galleys enforcing the blockade, then descended. Its target was the pier beside the flagship. Silverdeath detected the approaching missile, turned and sliced it open in midair with a bolt of etheric fire. After a millisecond-fast spectrographic analysis of its contents, Silverdeath concluded it was of no threat to its master, and turned back to the pier. Seconds later Feran and all the waiting dignitaries were splattered with a carefully homogenized mix of piss and turds.

  Feran screamed with outrage.

  “Silverdeath, who did that?” he shrieked as soon as he was capable of coherent speech.

  “It originated at or near the island palace known as Dawnlight,” came the flat, hollow reply.

  “The swine, the filthy maggots! Silverdeath, de—” With a quite remarkable act of self-control, Feran reined back his temper. “Silverdeath, desist from any retaliation,” he added, slowly and clearly.

  Warsovran stepped forward, reining in his equally strong sense of disappointment.

  “Your Exalted Majesty, a message was flagged from the former Diomedan prince and heir-pretender when your galley was entering the harbor,” he announced. “It said, ‘Shit on you and your exceedingly small and deformed penis, from the anuses of the Prince of All Diomeda and the Elder of All Metrologans.’”

  The words, composed by Warsovran, were meant to be generally insulting. He had not realized the current Elder of All Metrologans had once been in a position to assess the size and quality of Feran’s penis. Contorted by blind rage, Feran turned to see what appeared to be two warships ablaze near the rain-softened outline of Dawnlight. Other ships nearby were now exchanging shots with the defenders, and burning oil dribbled harmlessly down its high stone walls.

  Feran had been pushed too far, and nobody knew that better than Einsel. Within another moment Silverdeath would be launched. Soon after that, the biggest remaining pieces of Feran would fit comfortably into a medium-sized beer mug, and Warsovran would be climbing into a set of heat-armor of Einsel’s own engineering to retake Silverdeath.

  The crossbow under Einsel’s cloak was a small, hunting type, the sort used to stun birds with padded bolts. He had coated his own standard-issue, armor-piercing bolt with poison, just to be sure. Although Einsel had used such crossbows at social hunts in the past, he was not a good shot.

  Warsovran was standing flanked by Griffa and Forteron, although each admiral was about a yard apart from their commander. Einsel was standing behind Forteron as he offered up the first prayer to pass his lips in two decades—it was to Fortune—took a deep breath, lost his nerve, squeezed his eyes shut, deliberately blanked his mind, then made his move before his resolve cracked again. Sweeping his rain cloak aside, he raised the crossbow as he lunged across the gap between the gap between Forteron and Warsovran and fired at Feran. A moment before he fired, three of Warsovran’s guards had landed crossbow bolts in Einsel’s back, spoiling his already doubtful aim even further. He missed Silverdeath’s master, but after traveling another two hundred yards the bolt managed to strike a seagull dead in midflight. However, his aim and intention had been more than enough to draw the attention of Silverdeath.

  There was a bright flash of pure whiteness from Silverdeath’s eyes, and two beams of star-hot energy sought Einsel. In the process they also sliced diagonally through several innocent bystanders. Warsovran, six marine guards standing behind him, and Admiral Griffa fell in a tangle of steaming limbs, blood, and internal organs. Einsel saw Warsovran’s head burst as the beams cleaved through it and the superheated brains blew the skull apart. In the instant between Warsovran’s death and Einsel’s own demise, the little sorcerer thought not of his child, nor of saving the world. His years as Warsovran’s principal sorcerer were forgotten, and thoughts of his thirty-one tracts on etheric fashioning and biographical entry in Notable Sorcerers of the Placidian Region did not even flash through his mind. As Silverdeath’s beams sliced Einsel apart, the image before his dying eyes was of a statue in some Diomedan plaza with the words Rax Einsel, First Engineer of the Diomedan Court.

  Silverdeath’s beams winked off. The ship behind the pile of body parts on the pier snapped in two, and its rigging came crashing to the deck. It began to sink. For a full quarter minute, nobody who was still alive dared to move. Very few dared even to breathe.

  “Take me to my palace,” ordered Feran, wiping a gobbet of foul sludge from his face and favoring Dawnlight with a glare. “I shall deal with them presently.”

  Forteron began to give orders, and a dozen porters came running with a two-seater sedan chair. Feran and Silverdeath got in, and the procession to the temporary palace began.

  “I can barely believe that the sorcerer was foolish to threaten the demon’s master,” muttered the Commander of Marines to Forteron as they stood watching the entourage move off. “The marines behind him, Silverdeath before him—what chance did he have?”

  “Call him ‘Emperor Feran’ if you value your life,” cautioned Forteron. “Silverdeath is his servant, and Silverdeath is invincible.”

  “So, he is our new lord? I do not like the look of him.”

  “Very astute of you. There is hope, however. His servant’s repertoire of tricks is very limited.”

  “Ah. So what can we do?”

  “Get a look inside that,” replied Forteron, gesturing behind them, to where the racing shell was being carried by a dozen more marines.

  Fortern looked across to where Einsel lay, sliced into three pieces. The little bird-hunting crossbow was still clutched in both hands. Died fighting, thought the admiral while holding the trace of a frown on his face. Then Einsel’s words of the previous day returned to him: “Should you have the fortune to acquire Silverdeath, you will be contacted.” You, not we, Einsel had known that he would have to die, and intended to die provoking Silverdeath while catching Warsovran in the crossfire. Forteron found himself moved at the thought of how very lonely and desperate the sorcerer must have felt.

  Forteron went down on one knee and picked up Einsel’s severed head. The eyes were open and protruding, but the expression on his face was oddly serene.

  “Alas, poor Einsel, we hardly knew you,” said Forteron.

  “Your pardon, Admiral?” said the Commander of Marines.

  “Sort these remains out with care,” replied Forteron. “When they are buried I want no confusion about what bits of whom are buried where.” He stood up and handed Einsel’s head to the commander. “Have profile and contour sketches of this man done within the hour, then bring them to me.”

  The patrol autons were called in as soon as the flagship docked. Within a half hour Wensomer launched an auton pigeon into the rain. It flew unmolested out to sea, heading due east for Helion.

  Feran’s demonstration of power did not go unnoticed by the Alliance spies in the crowd. By midafternoon an envoy and his retinue had arrived under a flag of truce, seeking an audience. Feran declared that he had come to take direct control of the military campaign that had been so badly bungled by his commander, Warsovran. The envoy returned to the Alliance army and reported the change in leadership. He also reported that Emperor Feran intended to hold a royal court that very night. The envoy was ordered to return, and to report on any decrees that might be issued.

  The fact of an invasion from Torea was at the heart of the matter, even though the Sargolans also wanted their princess returned, but the fact the invaders had a weapon the size of a man that could slice ships in two was clearly a factor to take into account. Then there were the fire-circles that the other envoys and ambassadors kept talking about. They were deadly indeed, although several sorceric advisors insisted that Feran dared not use them on the mainland. The leaders of the Alliance conferred. The general feeling was that experimental verification of the theory of their sorceric advisors might come at a very, very high price. They decided to take the course most favored by all sensible military commanders: let someone els
e do the fighting.

  All the while the Leir continued to rise. By evening it was four feet above the seasonal average, and the rain still fell steadily. Out in the harbor, on the palace island, someone with a whistle sent out a coded series of peeps. Moments later the crown prince’s guards were out on the short stone jetty, escorting a swimmer who had two inflated piglet skins strapped to his upper arms, and who reeked of pungent shark repellent. Crown Prince Selva was waiting at the siege gate as they escorted the swimmer inside.

  “What news, and from where?” asked the prince.

  “You must carry out the Sea Dragon plan tonight, by order of the Alliance,” announced the swimmer.

  “Sea Dragon? Tonight? But a night attack is unheard of. Predawn, yes, but night?”

  “The Leir is rising fast, and has overflowed its banks. The defenders in Diomeda think the city now has a moat several miles wide, but that very water will be their nemesis. You must attack tonight, and use every man in the palace.”

  The plan had been worked out in secret over many weeks, and was one of several. All had imaginative names, and all names gave a clue to the nature of their plans. For Sea Dragon, the defenders in the palace were to swim to the moored warships and set them alight with skins of oil. When the Torean marines rushed back from the city ramparts to deal with them, the Alliance army would attack the ramparts.

  “Without dawn’s light, and under those clouds, it is going to be hard to coordinate the attack,” warned Selva.

  “Oh, there will be a signal that you will not be able to miss. It will light up the entire city,” the swimmer replied.

  Prince Selva was doubtful, but with only eight hundred men he had no alternative but to cooperate if he was going to regain control of his city. “What about that weapon thing? The one that split the ship in half this morning?”

  “A trick. It was done with wires and a ship that had already been sawn right through,” the swimmer insisted.

  It was a lame explanation, but the prince wanted to believe it.

  “Very well, I shall give the order.”

  Ashore in Diomeda, the real Alliance messenger was lying in a cell as Forteron and Sairet observed him through the door’s eyeslit. He bore the marks of torture.

  “He revealed that the attack will be tomorrow morning,” said Forteron. “After those in the palace slip out and set afire the moored ships of the battle fleet, the Alliance commanders intend to attack across the flood plain in barges.”

  “Their plans are no matter,” replied Sairet. “You have been warned, and their plan was desperate at best.”

  “And how did you learn of this spy?”

  “I am a dancer, and a dancer with access to the court. Someone thought that I might be so loyal as to spy for the Alliance and the Royal House of Diomeda. As you can see, I came straight to you instead.”

  “Who was that someone?”

  “A recent arrival, one who did not know that fifteen years ago I was cast into the street by the assassin of my husband, who was then king.”

  “So, the late king had been fifteen years on the throne?”

  “Yes, and it gave him great pleasure to see me reduced to the status of a windrel, dancing for coppers in the marketplace and teaching the women of the idle rich to sway before their jaded menfolk.”

  Forteron bowed, then kissed her hand. “I am not the supreme commander of the Toreans, my lady, but I shall show you what gratitude I can. This very night I shall commend you to Emperor Feran at his first court.”

  “No! No, please, do nothing to draw attention to me. Yet. Win your victory first. It will be my victory, too, and it will be reward enough. What orders did you pass on to Dawnlight with your substitute courier?”

  “Those of the original,” said Forteron with a sly smile.

  “What?”

  “Why not?”

  Sairet pondered his question. “Indeed, why not? So, you will set a few traders afire before dawn, having already moved the battle fleet into the river or up the coast.”

  “Yes. The army on the flood plain will wade across to attack, thinking our defenders have been rushed to the docks. They will get quite an enthusiastic reception, I should think.”

  The exhausted auton pigeon flopped onto the deck of the Shadowmoon, hardly able to move. The patrol autons had not been cast to stop autons arriving at Helion, for how else could messages from Warsovran—or whoever was giving the orders—be received? The crewmen were playing dice by lamplight, while Terikel was making fish jump at images of ether insects. Roval was on watch on the quarterdeck, and he was first to the bird. He unlocked the casting and handed the pigeon to Terikel.

  “Tonight there will be a fire-circle, I cannot tell what time it will detonate,” said an image of Wensomer’s face floating above Roval’s hands. “It will be upon the marines’ garrison, at Helion. Try to get to Silverdeath first. Use the Shadowmoon as it is best used. If no fire-circle happens before the second hour past midnight, I am either dead or there has been a change of plan. I may even be mistress of Silverdeath.”

  “The garrison,” said Terikel, frowning. “That’s near the geographical center of Helion, on the main island, so … four fire-circles will detonate before the things burn out. Sixty-four, thirty-two, sixteen, eight … that’s one hundred twenty days in total.”

  “Wensomer as mistress of Silverdeath!” breathed Roval. “What a prospect.”

  “Ten dozen days, this makes no sense. Either Feran or Warsovran will be here with the entire Diomedan fleet in a mere eight days. The garrison is on what remains of the isthmus, so if a fire-circle happened over it, how much of its area would also be over water?”

  “More than half,” replied Roval. “Perhaps there will be only one fire-circle. Perhaps we shall indeed have a second chance.”

  Feran spent the entire morning in a series of baths. Baths of milk, baths of wine, baths of rosewater, and baths of scented oils. At noon he set for one of the lower-ranking marine commanders, a man named Takeram. He promoted him five grades in seniority, and put him in charge of forming and commanding the emperor’s Secret Militia. He also gave him a series of tasks to be carried out by sunset. Feran had chosen carefully, after talking to a great many senior officers. Takeram was known to be ambitious, and to think himself overlooked by superiors of less talent than himself. He was perfect for Feran’s needs.

  Takeram’s militiamen visited the boatsheds of the riverside shipwrights in midafternoon. Here they found the shipwright who had constructed Feran’s original racing shell, and who was now not only building more of them, but conducting tutorials for others shipwrights. Takeram chopped him through with an ax. The other shipwrights were gathered in the boatshed, the boatshed was sealed and set on fire.

  Feran spent the entire afternoon in the company of a succession of girls in his palace chambers, and by sunset he was, predictably, exhausted and fast asleep. Even Takeram was not inclined to wake him with his report, instead ordering one of Feran’s courtesans to leave the scroll on a cushion at his bedside.

  Elsewhere in the improvised palace, the preparations for Feran’s first court were both frantic and lavish. Apart from Forteron, a few nobles, and the envoys, Feran would tolerate no others into the court but girls and women, although eunuchs were allowed to carry the heavier platters. Thus the houses of the rich were scoured for girls, women, and eunuchs with experience in court life and protocols, while cooks, bakers, and tailors were brought in with ax-blades pressing between their shoulders. Musicians and dancers were not in short supply in Diomeda, and as the newly appointed royal dancemistress, Sairet had no trouble in assembling a troupe of the finest on the Placidian Rim.

  Sunset took place behind heavy clouds and pattering rain. There was very little of Diomeda that was not built of mud-brick, and in a city that had known less than five days of rain per year until now, the continual deluge was becoming a serious problem. Roofs of mud and thatch began to erode, then leak. Torrents of water washing down the streets weakened w
alls, and throughout the city there was scarcely a fire to be found. The boatsheds on the riverbank were largely immune to the downpour from the skies and the rising level of the river. They had been built on stone or wooden piles to withstand the annual floods, and there were plenty of sails to rig over the roofs. Out on the city ramparts, Forteron’s marines were camped in well maintained tents between properly dug drainage channels. Much of their campaigning in Torea had been in the rain, and in a much colder climate than this. One mile away, the army of the Alliance was also sheltering under tents, but on rather less well drained ground.

  The villas of the rich tended to be made of stone, and there were plenty of servants to plug the leaks as they manifested themselves. In the temporary palace, the throne room was hastily prepared for its new monarch. The richest carpets and hangings available had been appropriated from all the other villas, and a throne of perfumed cedarwood had been built to Feran’s dimensions and specifications. All others were to stand or to lie on cushions. The new emperor would tolerate nobody to be sitting, except himself.

  Feran finally woke at eleven. He read Takeram’s report with approval. Takeram had discovered a very strange suit of leather armor in a covert, unannounced search of the palace, along with sketches of the sorcerer Einsel, the failed assassin with the crossbow. They were all in Admiral Forteron’s quarters. This could be the basis of some quite lively entertainment at court, thought Feran with satisfaction. He had himself bathed again, then dressed. He was inclined to keep his new courtiers waiting, yet he was anxious to reign over them as well. The emperor called for a navigator’s map of Diomeda’s harbor, and noted with satisfaction that there was shallow water and a sandbar to the southeast of the island palace. That would be very useful for him later.