Voyage of the Shadowmoon

by Sean McMullen

  Those in the court had been called the moment the emperor had woken, but everyone had been anticipating a lengthy wait. The rehearsing of the music, fire-eating, windrel dancers, and jugglers provided a welcome distraction, and was watched by Forteron, the Commander of Marines, several Torean nobles, and the envoys. Duke Terracict, from one of the northern kingdoms of the Alliance, had volunteered to risk becoming a hostage in order to assess the enemies and their newly arrived leader.

  A complex and subtle system of coughs, claps, and gestures signaled that Feran was coming. A trumpet fanfare by Torean marines behind a screen announced his entry, and he sauntered up the center of the hall, climbed the sandstone-and-marble steps, and sat on the throne. Silverdeath followed, and stood on his right. Feran was wearing a gold crown that had been improvised from the tiaras of four Diomedan noblewomen by a quick-witted and skilled goldsmith, but nobody dared to laugh.

  Forteron stood at the left of the throne with a scroll, and at a nod from Feran he began to read.

  “‘Matters to be brought before His Royal Majesty Emperor Feran Woodbar are a follows: demands from the Alliance for the immediate surrender of Diomeda to its rightful monarch; appeals for relief from the misery brought about by the unseasonal rain to the citizens of Diomeda; a call for increased taxes to cover the housing, feeding, and equipping of the Torean marines engaged in Diomeda’s defense; a petition from certain merchants for protection from privateers operating in the northwest of the Racital Sea—’”

  “Enough,” said Feran, languidly raising his hand for silence. “I decree my pleasure to be no, no, no, and no. Now, bring on girls to dance, and so to charm away the gloom of this night’s weather.”

  Everyone there had been expecting something a little more substantial from the new emperor, but all had wisely concealed their disappointment. A tray with a goblet of wine was brought, and Feran accepted it after Silverdeath had checked it for poisons. The area before the throne was cleared. The dancers had been allowed a light meal in the midafternoon, and thereafter the servants had been preparing them. A troupe of girls was first, to be followed by Wensomer. The girls danced. Feran leered, then selected three to lie at the foot of his throne.

  One of the serving girls approached Wensomer with a tray of pastries and whispered as she selected one. “The emperor is ready, what will be your tune?”

  “‘Ocean’s Dream,’” replied Wensomer.

  The girl left immediately, even though other dancers were beckoning her over. Wensomer set the pastry down uneaten. A gong sounded behind Feran’s dais and the music began.

  Wensomer rose up from the floor with the first bars of “Ocean’s Dream,” just as if she were a wave gaining height as it approached the shore. She used the slow introduction to send undulations along her outstretched arms as if they were ripples on a placid sea, while her hips swayed back and forth, causing a very unsettling and difficult double direction effect that took the attention of all, the dancers in particular. Even Sairet stared in amazement.

  The first tempo change cut in, and now Wensomer moved in a circle, bending down then swooping up, this time dancing as larger waves, again with the double motion and undulating wavelets along her arms. The tempo picked up further, and she spun the top of her body from the waist, swirling hair, pearl strings, and gauze veils around like spray bursting across rocks.

  Another tempo cut in, very much slower. Now it was as if Wensomer were underwater, for she drew her veils through the air slowly, yet undulated them as if they were floating. Her body rocked with rhythms counterworked against other rhythms, like a frond of kelp suspended between rocks and surface.

  There was absolute silence and stillness in the court, apart from the dancer and the musicians. Behind their curtain, the musicians had no idea how the performance was progressing, however. Feran, Forteron, the nobles, and the others followed Wensomer’s every move, while Silverdeath appeared not to be taking any notice.

  This was more than a dancer’s dance, or an alluring and seductive display; this was spectacle, this was a dance that tuned itself to everyone in the room. Wensomer spoke a language common to all of them, and Wensomer spoke to them of the sheer beauty of movement for its own sake: of dance that allured lecherous monarchs, whirled through marketplace revels, and swayed in the privacy of marital bedchambers. Everyone read Wensomer’s movements as if they were exquisitely crafted verse—they swayed in sympathy, they became the water on which she was the wave, just as if she were an elemental within a mortal body. Together their movements communicated what Wensomer’s body was saying—without knowing that it was an ancient Scalticaran body-verse!

  The music ended with a fading patter on a pottery drum as Wensomer rolled on the floor, drawing her sash and veils after her like a wave retreating back to the ocean after breaking on a beach. Wensomer lay before Feran and his court, the center of attention. The music had stopped, so she rose up and began a low, sinuous bow from left to right. As she moved Feran began to applaud, and everyone else joined in. Everyone who had been watching was now under Wensomer’s influence. She was not controlling anyone, but all were compulsively anxious to please her. They clapped continually, rhythmically. Silverdeath remained impassive. Wensomer had trod the fine line between influence and control. Any attempt to control Feran would have brought instant death from his guardian, but the fact she was still alive meant that she had been successful.

  Wensomer minced across to stand before Feran’s throne, her hips still swaying. Feran stood, then walked down from the dais to her. All the while the applause continued.

  “I like you,” she purred. “Who are you?”

  “I am Emperor, I am master of Silverdeath,” replied Feran mechanically.

  Wensomer looked up to where Silverdeath stood. She turned her head on one side and frowned.

  “What can it do?” she asked.

  “He can annihilate this continent,” said Feran, sounding a little proud.

  “But I like this continent.”

  “He can destroy my enemies, I am his master,” he explained, now sounding anxious.

  “His master? Make him do something for me.”

  “I can make him kill anyone who displeases me.”

  “Hah! What is so special about that? Many men have killed each other over me, and I am just a dancer. I think you are Silverdeath’s servant. I cannot be impressed by a servant.”

  “I command Silverdeath!” exclaimed Feran, his intonation suddenly colored bright by strong anxiety.

  Wensomer began to undulate her arms again, and rolled her hips in time to the rhythm of the continued clapping of the court. “Then make him dance, and I may be impressed.”

  “Silverdeath, do it, dance for us.”

  “Excluded function,” entoned Silverdeath.

  “Command him to stop the rain.”

  “Silverdeath, stop the rain,” cried Feran, with a hint of pleading.

  “Excluded function.”

  “At least make him take me in his arms and fly me above the clouds to see the stars.”

  “Do as she says, Silverdeath,” again Feran cried, the hint of pleading now a streak of despair.

  “Excluded function.”

  Wensomer continued to sway, but was now giggling. With one undulating arm she gestured east, to where Helion lay. “You’re not a Torean, are you?” asked Wensomer.

  “No, I am from here.”

  “I hate Toreans; they burned their continent and caused this horrid weather.”

  “I hate them as well,” Feran insisted, desperate to please her.

  “Yet you cannot destroy the Toreans in Diomeda.”

  “No, to do that would destroy Acrema, too.”

  “Well, there is a Torean garrison on the island of Helion. Can Silverdeath destroy our enemies there?”

  The casting woven from the language of dance and body was powerful, but Wensomer did not realize quite how powerful. Desire to please her was tearing Feran apart. He opened his mouth to cast Silverdeath
to Helion, but Wensomer’s casting had twisted his control and judgment too much. This was the first time she had used the dance-spell, after all. Feran was being wrenched by desperation to win her approval, yet how could a fire-circle eight days’ sailing to the east impress her?

  He caught sight of Dawnlight, in whose windows lamps had been left burning to create the illusion of occupation while the defenders set off to attack the Torean fleet. Those in Dawnlight were definitely his enemies, and a fire-circle over Dawnlight would be a spectacular show indeed.

  “Silverdeath, destroy my enemies in Dawnlight!” shouted Feran, pointing at the island palace.

  Wensomer’s jaw dropped a fraction and her tongue began to form No! but she had already thought through the many alternative ways Feran might react, and so had contingency plans for all of them. This was regrettable, but the eight hundred in Dawnlight were less than the garrison at Port Wayside. This was war, after all—it was eight hundred lives or the entire world. She continued to undulate her body to the rhythm of the clapping, although she had stopped breathing.

  “The feat is at the limit of my powers,” warned Silverdeath.

  “Do it!”

  “Let us go out to watch,” Wensomer purred.

  Feran led the way out onto the nearest balcony. The entire court continued to clap. Feran shook his head, as if he had dozed for a moment. He was out on a balcony, standing in the rain. He was soaked. How long had he been there? He whirled and dashed back inside. Everyone was still entranced and clapping. Both Druskarl and Silverdeath were nowhere to be seen. The dancer was gone, too.

  Betrayed! The word screamed in Feran’s mind. A spell, a casting. Everyone in the court had been affected. Forteron, damn him … But Forteron was still clapping, his face smiling and vacant. Silverdeath should have protected Feran from all spells. How had the woman done it? Then he realized it. She had not attacked him; she had used the language of dance to allure him. She had no intent of harm whatsoever. That was how she had subverted the mighty Silverdeath itself.

  Whatever the nature of the spell, it was certainly fragile. Any sudden noise or movement would rupture it. Feran began to sidle for the nearest door, stepping in a slow march, in time with the clapping. Taking Takeram by the arm, he passed through the door. The clapping continued. Feran backhanded Takeram, across the face, shattering the hold of Wensomer’s casting.

  “Fetch that fire-walking suit you found in Forteron’s quarters,” Feran cried as he and Takeram clattered down a flight of stairs. “Get twenty marines, fetch my racing shell from the palace courtyard, get everything to the Bridge of the Esplanade! Hurry! Surround the palace. Nobody may leave. Then send a squad to the home of that last dancer. Have her killed!”

  Within the etherworld, Velander saw the fire-circle blaze out as a bright line of orange. This time she knew they were in a very large city; she could see the teeming etheric castings, mechanisms, and autons. This time the world would end. She felt her sanity slipping, just as the energy of the crumb of axis glass was also slipping toward nothingness. Not long now, she thought, and it would be a relief.

  Druskarl found himself lying on the floor beside the throne. He reached down and checked his scrotum. There were testicles within it. He was aware of everything that had happened since Feran had stabbed him and put Silverdeath onto his body. Wensomer’s dance had meant nothing to him, but he was by now beginning to suspect that Feran had been tricked. The entire court was clapping slowly, in time. They were obviously under the influence of some casting, one so subtle yet powerful that it had slipped past Silverdeath.

  Slowly, slowly, Druskarl edged away into the shadows behind the throne. Two swift, silent blows dropped an Acreman servant senseless to the floor, and mere seconds saw Druskarl wearing his robes and carrying his tray. In another minute the former eunuch was outside and fleeing into the rainswept darkness. In yet another minute, the palace gates were sealed behind him.

  By the time Feran and his marines had cleared the palace, Wensomer’s casting had weakened, and the people of the court had come to their senses in mild confusion. Feran and Silverdeath were gone. The dancer was gone, too.

  “A superlative dance,” remarked Forteron to Sairet. “Obviously the little devil could not wait to audition her for quite another type of performance.”

  Just then one of Forteron’s aides rushed in, bowed, and hurried up to the admiral.

  “My lord, there is something you should know,” he hissed as he went down on one knee.

  Wensomer stood on a balcony of the highest tower in the villa palace. She had been thinking very quickly, and making some decisions she might have condemned as morally odious only minutes earlier. The rain beat down on her skin through the wispy gauze of her costume as she breathed energies into her hands in glowing tendrils that wove themselves into two tall, thin spikes standing on the palm of each hand. This was a difficult and draining casting, and the fact that she had done it before made it no less exhausting. The spikes were each a hundred feet long when she finally began to speak shaping-words. The base of the spikes formed into a harness, with straps and handholds. The spikes began to broaden and fade, and even before they were fully formed into wings, Wensomer struggled into the faintly glowing machine of pure energies and plasmas. As she brought her arms down she felt the weight of rain on the huge area of her two-hundred-foot wingspan.

  Wensomer leaped. For a moment she lost height quickly as she gained speed, then she leveled into a long glide over the darkened city. Diomeda had only a few public street-corner torches at the best of times, and with the rain falling, these had not been alight for many days. She hurtled through stinging raindrops, taking sightings on lamps in the windows of a few towers, and the light of the city’s hilltop navigation pyre, which was under a stone canopy. It was difficult to maintain height, as there were few air currents to give Wensomer lift. Flapping the enormous wings was out of the question.

  The murky shadows of domes, towers, treetops, and spires passed below, and she flew through a few plumes of smoke mixed with the smell of cooking oil, burning fat, and baking bread. There was a thin, piercing shriek from someone who happened to be looking up at the exact moment Wensomer passed overhead. A small dark flying thing dodged Wensomer with a loud squeak before vanishing into the saturated darkness. She realized that things no longer looked familiar, she had lost her bearings. She caught sight of the hilltop navigation pyre again, found the vast dark of the ocean, then saw the illuminated windows of Dawnlight and the faint running lamps of the three patrol galleys on the harbor. Not long now, but at a speed of over fifty miles per hour the windchill and continual sting of raindrops were rapidly wearing her down. At last she saw the bright beacon lamp that she had left in the higher of her own villa’s twin towers.

  The roof of the tower rushed up. Wensomer raised her wings and dropped her legs, descending in a near-stall until her bare feet slapped down on the wet flagstones of her villa’s square-topped tower. Laron dashed out into the rain to her side.

  “Silverdeath’s been cast,” she began.

  “Good, good, the Shadowmoon is already there, so we just have to get Ninth to—”

  “Not Helion, Dawnlight!” cried Wensomer. “Get Ninth, hurry, and bring that little crossbow from my sunroom—and mead! Bring a jar of my strongest mead!”

  Wensomer stood waiting in the rain, still wearing her belly-dancing rig, but in a gratifyingly short time Laron returned with Ninth, the mead, and the crossbow.

  “Put the jar to my mouth,” said Wensomer between chattering teeth. “My hands are otherwise occupied.”

  “Are you sure you should be drinking and flying?” Laron ventured as he removed the cork.

  “Damn you, Laron, it’s not as if anyone will be able to arrest me! Ninth, get onto my back.”

  Ninth needed to be told nothing twice. Laron slung the crossbow’s strap over her shoulder as she walked around behind Wensomer, then Ninth took hold of Wensomer and locked her legs around the waist of the sorcere
ss. Laron held the jar to Wensomer’s lips and she drank frantically between coughs and splutters.

  “No, don’t put your arms around my neck, hold those glowing things at my shoulders,” Wensomer called to Ninth. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what, mistress?”

  “Laron, expect trouble. Try to escape if—”

  There was a sudden shouting and commotion from out in the street. Wensomer jumped.

  She had expected Ninth to shriek, but the auton girl merely held on tightly, precisely as ordered. Wensomer’s villa was not as high as the temporary palace, but the etheric wings were adequate to the task. Rain stung her skin as she searched for traces of thermals and tried to gain height. All that she could achieve was a shallow glide, however, and that would not be good enough with Ninth’s extra weight.

  Back at Wensomer’s villa Laron hastily chewed and swallowed a clove of garlic then opened the rapidly splintering door to the men of Feran’s new Secret Militia. A bedsmock was over his clothing.

  “Night greetings, liberators!” he said with what was meant to be a Sargolan accent but sounded more like he had a heavy cold and severe constipation. “I am speak very good Diamedan. House new steward am being—”

  “Out of my way, frogeater!” bellowed the captain of the squad, seizing Laron and flinging him out into the rain before leading his men inside. Laron hastened away, discarding the bedsmock as he ran.

  Wensomer was gliding over the beaches at the southern edge of Diomeda and only a hundred feet from the ground when a dazzling flash of light and an immense column of steam, smoke, and dust erupted. It reached from the sea to the clouds, and lit up the city and the entire surrounding countryside. It was centered on Dawnlight, or, at least, what had once been the island palace. Moments later a shock wave swept over Wensomer, buckling her wings and heaving her sideways and upward. Wings of ether cannot be broken, however, and she quickly had them re-formed. Suddenly the air around her was roiling with thermals from the heat of the fire-circle. Wensomer soared high, fighting for control, then banked to begin circling the ghastly column of steam, fire, and ash.