by M J Engh
He began to flap his arms again, as if he meant to fly under his own power. This set him spinning once more, twisting the cable that tethered him. But at last Repnomar took notice of his gyrations and slowed the pods until they hovered almost motionless in midair, with the three of them dangling like long-stemmed fruit.
“You'll never learn to fly straight, Lethgro,” the Captain said, “if you keep spinning like a windmill.”
But the Warden answered with some heat that he hoped he would never learn to fly straight into an open fire, nor a devil's maw, nor the two together; and the Exile put in, with more fervor than was usual for him, that in this case he believed the Warden was right. “And if this is the best course you can steer us, Repnomar,” the Warden finished, “give me that box and let me do my own steering.”
The Captain made a gesture of indifference. “You'd walk through Rotl Fair with your eyes closed, Lethgro, for fear of seeing something new. But I never sailed with a mutinous crew yet, and I don't mean to start now.” And without more ado she turned them back to their former course, and before the Warden could well get his breath they were streaming again through the murky air, slantwise away from the redness.
This, as they agreed later, was done in the nick of time, and Repnomar confessed very handsomely that she had come near to killing them all with her unseasonable curiosity. The Exile, who kept an anxious eye on the red glow as they flew, had been the first to notice; and by the time his squawking and flapping had drawn the attention of the others, that red glow had risen up like a column of flame, brighter by the moment, lighting the thick clouds that billowed from it. Repnomar took one look and began to press her buttons, slowing them to a smooth stop despite all Lethgro's bellows of protest. But it was only for a moment, and she started them off again at a new angle, shouting in explanation, “I had to check the wind!”
Indeed they were downwind from that unwholesome light (faint though the wind was), and the Captain's one thought now was to get them out of the path of whatever would be blowing from it. She kept the torch clutched hard in one hand and the box in the other, thumbing its buttons, and soon they were tearing through the gritty air so fast that it screamed in their ears and stung their faces like sleet, and their legs trailed like wind-whipped signal flags.
At that speed, in that dry rain of bitter dust, it was not easy to see anything. The Warden kept one eye squeezed shut and the other squinted to a slit. He had found that as long as he held himself still (or as still as was possible for a large person being yanked along at high speed at the end of a towrope) the little wings kept him on an even keel. Now and again he snatched a one-eyed look toward the red light, and what he saw chilled him more than the cutting wind.
Like the plumes of some devil-bird tossing in an updraft from the underworld, thick tufts of smoke or cloud were rising in that crimson light, shaking their feathery heads and billowing outward into the darkness. And the redness was no longer only a distant glow; it was a tree of light, as if some subterranean god were waving a giant torch at the mouth of a pit. It was clear that whatever the Exile had feared—or something just as bad—was coming true.
The Captain's eyes, when she snatched a glance that way, were not on the flame of light but on the clouds that rolled from it. In her judgement, trouble was coming at them two layers deep; for the topmost plumes, flattened by the wind, streamed out toward them in fingers and sheets of smoke, raveling into haze, while denser clouds boiled along the ground below like racing storm waves. The flaring red light did not carry far, and from time to time she flicked the torchbeam in that direction, ready for the first sight of that approaching flood. When she saw it at last, she let out a whistle that nobody heard (the wind of their flight snatching it away) and thumbed a button of her box so that they were jerked upward like three fish on a line; for, having no way to gauge the distance of the flame, she had not realized till now the height of that furious cloudbank rolling toward them.
It was none too soon. As they rose, the cloud swept under them—not red, as they might have expected, but swelling blue-gray in the light of the torch. Repnomar let out a whoop of triumph or amazement, and the Warden, clutching his stomach, breathed a somewhat jumbled prayer. Beneath them, the ashcloud showed in the torchlight like Soll waters in turmoil. For a time, Repnomar kept her thumb on the button that hauled them ever higher; but when she judged them to be well out of reach of the highest billows, she leveled them off and steered straight across the cloud's path, thinking this the safest direction.
Now from this loftier lookout above the dust, they could better see the source of it, a boiling cauldron of red that glowed sometimes with raw white streaks. To Lethgro, it looked like the open forge of some blacksmith god, hammering out swords and knives that were most likely destined to no good purpose, while the smoke and steam of the forging rolled away in poisonous clouds. This seemed all the likelier to him from the comparative warmth of the air. To race at such a speed was like facing into the fiercest winds of the year; and yet at moments, shaken though he was by wind and worry, the Warden could not resist giving himself up like a baby to the pleasure of wiggling his fingers and toes, which were no longer stiff with cold. He had time enough to take note of such questionable blessings, for even at top speed they seemed to come no nearer to the edge of the cloud, that churned and roiled beneath them like a Soll of ash.
The Captain was glad of that warmth (for she reflected that Broz in his pod could be warming as well as resting his old bones) and gladder still that the course was so easy to set and hold. Blind as they were, they could not go wrong while she had the wind (much stronger now) and that red light to steer by. No matter how wide this ashcloud might stretch, it had an edge, and they must come to that edge sooner or later. The Captain was sure of this until the very moment when she saw the second light.
This one, too, was far to their left, but ahead—just such a pulsing red flame as the one they were slowly leaving behind. It was very small to the eye, whether from true size or distance, and at first glimpse the Captain turned her torch toward it for better view. But that made it still harder to see, and she shut off the torch altogether, so that the redness stood out clear against the dark. The Captain cursed. No question of it: there were two vomiting mountains—two at least.
Captain Repnomar was not one to hesitate for long. She paused only to light the torch again and sweep its beam as far in all directions as it would reach; lighting up the billows and levels of the ashcloud. Then she pressed the buttons of the little box, and they turned in a tight curve to the left.
In Warden Lethgro's opinion, this was too much. It was, he thought, a sad trait of the Captain's to run more often into danger than away from it; but as a rule she had at least some excuse for her folly. This time he could see no glimmer of sense in it, and he was weary of dangling like a puppet, without power or voice of his own. He therefore hesitated no more than the Captain herself, but seized his towline with both hands and uttered a roar that no beast in any wilderness they had passed through yet could have matched. He was prepared to drag himself forward along that towrope, hand over hand into the teeth of the wind, until he was far enough in front of Repnomar to catch her attention—or, if need be, to flap and wallow his way into her path and wrestle her for the box. But this proved unnecessary, for at his bellow Repnomar slowed the pods so precipitously that she heard a muffled yelp from Broz, and the three of them at the ends of their towropes were whipped forward by their own speed like cast fishbait. The lines pulled them up short with a jerk; and even while they swung backwards and forwards the Warden expressed himself loudly on the subject of the Captain's course-setting.
“What would you rather do, Lethgro?” the Captain retorted with some asperity. “Steer straight from one ashcloud to another? I'd rather cut between them.” And so keen was she on this point that she set the pods in motion again, although slowly, so that they could travel as they argued.
They found little to agree on. The Captain's notion was
that, for all they could tell, a line of flaming mountains might stretch from here to the far edge of the dark. “And,” she said, “we'll never be able to land so long as we're downwind of them, unless you want your mouth stuffed with ashes.” For she remembered how they had scraped midges out of her sailor's mouth on the Low Coast, and that put bitterness into her words.
To this the Warden answered that if a beast threatened to bite him, he would not thrust his hand into its mouth, and that if the Captain felt impelled to turn off-course she had better turn away from the burning mountains rather than toward them. As for the Exile, he held that the Captain might be right as to a line of mountains, or of something equally bad, but might as easily be wrong; and that the new course she had chosen might be the best and safest, if it did not bring them to utter destruction; so that he was hard put even to agree with himself, let alone anyone else.
All this while they were moving slowly through the air in the direction of the red flames, or more truly toward a spot midway between them. Even at this slow rate, they were considerably buffeted, for the wind blew strong into their faces. Repnomar, as she argued, did not forget to cast the torchbeam this way and that, about and below their line of flight. Now she cried out in triumph and pointed, and Lethgro felt a hollow space where his stomach should be.
Ahead and a little to the right, a rift or canyon opened in the ashcloud beneath them, and he saw for the first time how high they were flying. But in a moment he turned his eyes away and took a steadying breath, thinking that he would not get down any more surely by being sick in midair.
“Better go through a gap in a reef where you find it,” the Captain said, “than hold your course and be broken in pieces on the rocks. Or smothered in ashes,” she added, to make her meaning clearer to landlubbers. And she pressed a button, increasing their speed till they were whistling through the air again, so that there was no more conversation for a time.
In fact, the Captain was relieved to have her course confirmed so quickly by that rift in the ashcloud. Though they seemed to be tearing along as fast as ever, that was by no means true, for she was steering them straight into a strong headwind, and it was very slowly that the two burning mountains drew nearer to view. The rift that had opened in the cloud closed again, but others opened and spread, until at last nothing showed beneath them but a faint reddish mist in which the torchbeam lost itself, and the red beacons of the mountains burned to their right and left. Now they all began to breathe easier—so far as they could breathe at all with the wind pounding their faces—for there were no more bursting mountains to be seen ahead of them, and the air below them was clearer by the minute. The Captain, accordingly, slowed the pods to an easier pace and began to bring them slowly downward. But not till the belching mountains were clearly behind them, impossible to be seen without twisting the neck and endangering the balance, did she stop all headway and lower them gently till their dangling feet (the Exile's last of all) found solid rock to stand on.
At first they stumbled and reeled, and the Captain laughed uproariously, saying they were all like landlubbers on their first voyage. But she brought the pods down neatly and lost no time getting Broz out to stretch his legs on honest ground, which he did with much snuffing and snorting and dashing about.
It was honest ground indeed, bare windswept rock with hardly a trace of snow. The first fire mountain was nearly lost to sight behind a swelling ridge and a jumble of other peaks. All they could see of it was an ominous red plume fading into the upper darkness. The other was clearer to view, nearer now and more brightly lit. “But not much of a mountain,” the Warden pronounced, after consideration. They could see, by its own light, that it was not so much a peak as a long mound or rounded ridge like the one on whose slope they stood; and the baleful glow came not from a single pit but from half a dozen shifting spots along what the Exile said must be an open crack in the world. The Warden shivered, and looked down at his feet.
But they were all agreed now that the Captain's steering had proved good, for the air on this side of the mountains was clear and clean. The wind held strong and steady, carrying those unwholesome clouds straight away from them. It was colder on this side, too, so that they were glad of the stove, and Broz came back very cheerfully to its circle of warmth when Repnomar whistled him in. He had a different opinion when it came to thrusting him back into his pod. “But in you go,” the Captain told him sternly, “like it or not. We've no business strolling about in a country where the mountains vomit fire. And flying,” she added softly, “is the next thing to sailing.”
It surprised Lethgro to hear what sounded like wistfulness in the Captain's voice, and made him no easier in his mind. He had long since resigned himself to pushing forward, by whatever means chance and the gods might allow them, to whatever end they might find, whether that was death or Sollet Castle; but it depressed him to think that Captain Repnomar could be reduced to a similar meekness. If the Captain was wistful, things must be even worse than he had thought.
With the exception of Broz, however, they were all content to fly until they were well clear of these unhealthy mountains. On the windward side they were safe enough for the moment, but in such an unstable country they all feared that the wind might veer round and blow the ash their way, or new cracks or peaks might spit at them. “And the sooner we go on, the better,” the Captain summed up, “for we won't make very good time.”
Lethgro wished that she had used words of better omen. Once aloft, it seemed to him that they must be making very good time, for he was as wind-buffeted as ever. But the Captain knew better. To fly crosswise to the wind, she must still steer almost into it, for it was stronger than the pods, and much of their force was spent in fighting against it. From time to time she gained forward speed for a little by running obliquely with the wind until her torchbeam picked out the first fringes of the ashcloud, and then slanting back windward to a more comfortable distance. From time to time, when her numb fingers threatened to let fall both box and torch, they settled to a landing on rock or snow and warmed themselves at the stove. For although on the Exile's suggestion, they shortened the towlines till the three of them were bunched awkwardly close together and just behind the stove, they could not keep really warm in flight. The wind, here where it was not warmed by any burning mountain, was colder than ever, and snatched away both heat and breath; so that flying, except perhaps for Broz, was more wearisome than walking.
It was, however, faster. Before that watch was ended (in the Captain's opinion, though Lethgro suspected that in the absence of any measurement but their own feelings the Captain's watches tended to be longer than other people's) they were well past all sight of ash or fire and had turned back to their original course, which was easier going. So they warmed themselves and slept, loosing both Broz and the crows, who had much to say about their long imprisonment. Before the Exile would sleep, he begged leave to examine his pods again, to make sure they were still fit for the journey; for they too had been sorely buffeted. The Warden saw no harm in this. So the Exile puttered briefly about the pods and announced that in his opinion they were strong enough to carry them to the end of the darkness, or almost, which cheered them all.
Indeed it seemed that their luck had turned for the better. That watch and the next, and for many watches afterward, they had no alarms and no delays. The wind held strong, so much on their own course now that they could fairly drift with it—the easiest style of traveling, the Captain said, that she had ever known, though so tedious that she had to sing songs to keep herself awake. The Exile, too, was pleased with it—especially as he now confessed that he had been perhaps over-optimistic as to the strength of the pods, which were steadily weakening. But with the help of this following wind, he thought, they could easily reach the light. And he ventured to offer a few songs of his own, or what he claimed were songs.
But for all his outward cheerfulness, it was clear that the Exile was troubled, and with good reason. The Warden still insisted that he m
ust be bound securely whenever they slept. Indeed, the longer their luck held good, and the farther they journeyed without hindrance or obstacle, the more severe and wardenly did the Warden become. For he held it ever in mind that one of two things must be true: either they were coming to the light, the Mountains, and the Sollet, in which case his own fate depended on his bringing back the Exile as a prisoner, or else they were not approaching the light at all, in which case the Exile had lied to them from start to finish and must be thought of as an enemy.
If he was severe to the Exile, Warden Lethgro was no less severe to himself, for he thought the principal danger was that he would take pity on the Exile's helplessness; so the kindlier he felt, the more sternly he behaved, and knotted the Exile's bonds ever tighter when they prepared for sleep.
They slept sometimes on bare rock, sometimes on snow or ice, sometimes on drifts of what they took to be snow until it proved to be gritty ash, so fine and thick in places that the Exile sank into it hip-deep. But they saw no more ashclouds or belching mountains, and the fallen ash grew scantier and rarer, until at last they found no more of it.
They no longer spoke of the light, nor of rations, as if such topics were unseemly; but neither Captain nor Warden thought of much else (when they could be said to think at all), for the rations were running low and the darkness seemed to have no end, so that all of them, Broz and even the crows included, grew more and more silent, sunk in their own considerations. Their watches on the ground grew shorter, too, for none of them could sleep much—or rather they found less and less difference between sleep and waking, and thought their time better spent in moving than in lying still.