Warrior (The Key to Magic) (19 page)

"Eh?  How's that?  You've shown good discipline aboard my vessel, Brendnt, and I'm not really concerned about any peccadilloes that you may have committed in the past."

"Not something so benign, I am afraid, Captain.  I believe that you will recognize the lady who accompanies me."

The young woman pushed back her hood and straightaway the captain, the First Officer, and the two guards, all looking quite stunned, dropped to one knee.

Though Lhevatr had never seen the comely young woman before, he knew her to be the witch Telriy, by right of marriage Queen of the Mhajhkaeirii and Empress of the reborn Empire.  The captain and the others, veterans of the re-conquest of Mhajhkaei, would have no doubt as to her identity.

"Please rise, Captain Thylbr," the queen said in a dry tone, somewhat irked.  "I'd like passage to Mhajhkaei on your skyship, if you don't mind, and I need to get there as soon as possible."

Thylbr bolted to his feet. "At your command, my lady queen!  We'll cast off immediately!  If you would care to follow me?"

Rhoird'myg and the guards fell in behind the impromptu procession of the Captain, the queen, and Brendnt.  Once aboard, the latter three moved forward, but as soon as the First Officer's boots hit the varnished planks, he raced to the mate of the deck and ordered him to pipe
Stand To All Hands
.

Amidst the exploding bustle of the skyship's two dozen crewmen popping from hatchways to run for the rigging and mooring ropes, Lhevatr hustled to help the two armsmen haul in the boarding ramp.  He was not normally called upon to make sail and lending a hand with the ramp would give him an excuse for staying within hearing range of the queen.

At the doorway that led to the officers' cabins under the steerage deck, the Captain offered, "We have an empty cabin in the officer's section, my lady queen.  It's rather small, but it's the best we have available."

"I'm sure that it will be suitable.  If you don't mind, though, I'd like to stay on deck for a while."

"Certainly, my lady queen.  Would you like to observe from the steerage?"

"No, this will be fine."

The magician-pilot, Third Officer Keiarh, came up to the Captain and saluted.  "Shall I make ready to get under way, sir?"

Though earnest, Keiarh, a balding, tall and lean retired scholar, could manage at best but six leagues an hour, and that only for short periods.  Whenever the wind was favorable, the
Empress Telriy
relied on her sails.  Thus far, the majority of the voyage had been accomplished under full canvas rather than partial magic.

  The queen spoke up before Thylbr could reply.  "If it's all the same to you, Captain, you can dispense with the sails and allow your pilot to stand down.  I'm in a bit of a hurry and I'd like to pilot the skyship back to the city."

The Captain saluted.  "Of course, my lady queen. First Officer, relay appropriate orders to the crew."

Lhevatr, standing alongside the stowed boarding ramp at the starboard rail and thus off to one side out of the direct view of the bow facing officers and queen, took a firm hold with his right hand.  The skyship was given to sudden surges when under the magical control of the Third Officer, and Lhevatr wanted to be prepared should the queen's piloting skills be similarly abrupt. 

However, save for the sight of the old tower drifting downward, there was little indication of movement as the skyship began to rise immediately into the air.

"I intend to make top speed," the queen told Thylbr.  "Please have a chair brought to me and warn your crew that the wind across the deck will approach gale strength."

Lhevatr, along with the majority of the crew, were ordered below decks as the skyship began to accelerate.  Rather than go along with the other off-duty hands to the empty hold that the crew had co-opted as a lounge or seek his bunk to indulge in the sailor's traditional pastime of sleep, he followed the main corridor aft to the galley, where, as expected, he found the cooks, Mhoyt and Bhelgam securing pots and pans in their shelves.  As he liked to know how his food was prepared, Lhevatr had made a point of cultivating their friendship.  This had incidentally provided him the opportunity to volunteer to serve as an occasional steward in the officers' mess and it was that duty that he hoped would allow him access to the queen.  Given the apparent significant difference in his and her station, he could not simply speak to her without appropriate justification.  

Mhoyt, heavy, tall, and similar in age to Lhevatr, immediately demanded, "What's going on up there, Whoddhurl?"

"The Empress herself has come aboard.  She's driving us back to the city."

Bhelgam, a rower escaped from a Phaelle'n galley, was slim and twenty years younger than Mhoyt.  He made a rude noise.  "So what's the rest of the joke?"

Lhevatr grinned.  "No joke.  She came aboard with Brendnt and now we're headed back to Mhajhkaei at top speed."

"Rumor was that she had run off and left the king," Mhoyt mentioned.

Lhevatr shrugged expansively.  "Maybe so, but now she's running back to him."

Bhelgam scratched the back of his neck.  "I never believed that she would do that.  She could've been spying on the monks."

"I doubt it," Lhevatr said.  He made a gesture with both arms held wide around his belly.

Mhoyt raised his eyebrows.  "That way, eh?  Makes sense. My uncle Cylh always said that a woman most wanted her husband around when she was in the family way."

"Could be you're right, Mhoyt," Lhevatr agreed.  "Hey, wonder if I could get a bit of tea while I'm here?"

"Sure.  I'll have to put on a fire to boil the water, so it'll be a few."

"I'll wait."

"It might be smart to stoke up the stove in case she wants a meal," Bhelgam suggested.  "The Captain wouldn't appreciate us making her wait."

"I'll get the wood for the stove," Lhevatr offered.

He was drinking his tea and chatting with the cooks a few minutes later when First Officer Rhoird'myg stuck his head in.

"Mhoyt, brew some tea right away and send a mug topside with some bread and cheese."

"Aye, sir.  Just so happens that I have a fresh kettle on now.  We'll have it ready straightaway.  Is it for the queen, sir?"

"That's right.  The Captain wants a top notch meal put on for lunch, so the two of you had better get started.  Whoddhurl, you take up the queen's tea and then lay to and help here in the galley."

Lhevatr successfully repressed a smile.  "Aye, sir."

He carried the tea and bread up on a wooden tray.  After considering the significant sound of the air that now passed over the skyship's hull, he went forward and took the stairs up to the corridor under the steerage deck.  This allowed him to exit onto the main deck behind the windbreak of the elevated section.   He found the queen, wrapped securely in her greatcloak, relaxing in a chair just outside the doorway.  The Captain and Brendnt, the latter clearly acting in the role of royal bodyguard, were in attendance, but the rest of the deck, swept by the fierce wind of the skyship's passage, was clear.

"At this rate," Thylbr was said with some enthusiasm, "we'll reach Mhajhkaei by tomorrow afternoon."

"Will your magician be able to monitor the spells while I sleep?" the queen asked.

The Captain deflated slightly.  "Perhaps not at this speed."

"Then we'll have to reduce speed to what he can manage."

Lhevatr presented the tray to the queen, who took the mug with evident gratitude.

"Thank you," she said with a smile.

Lhevatr took note of the fact that Brendnt watched the exchange but showed no overt reaction.

"Thank you, my lady queen," Lhevatr said in an even tone.  "We are happy to serve."

This last common phrase was the pass code that Waleck had given him.

The queen shot him a sharp look.  "Have you brought me anything else?"

"Yes, my lady queen.  It's here on the tray."  Lhevatr glanced down pointedly, though he looked not at the dull green disk little larger than a silver thal sitting innocently in the corner but rather at the plate of sliced bread and cheese.

"That's fine. Let me have the tray.  I'll just put it here in my lap."

Lhevatr complied and then departed.  Back in the galley, Mhoyt set him to grinding spices and he attacked the task with gusto.

He was finally done.

The Society of the Duty had no goals, no plans, and no schemes, only an oft-debated and ill-defined philosophy -- the promotion of the use of magic without the infliction of harm.  Further, the group never organized a collective effort, leaving it to the conscience of each member to determine how that philosophy should be appropriately implemented.

In the last forty years, Lhevatr did not believe that he had accomplished a great deal in that wise.  His own magical ability was negligible.  His service in the legions of the Brotherhood had been motivated not by philosophical aspirations but by a youthful ambition that had eventually succumbed to the realities of age.  His rise through the ranks of the fraternity had been slow and unremarkable, and only at the last as Martial Director, an office gained through a chance accident of war, had he had any influence in the ruling hierarchy.

Perhaps only today had an action of his actually swayed the course of events.

But, regardless, he was done.  He had engineered his last intrigue and would leave the fate of the world to others. 

As soon as the
Empress Telriy
docked in Mhajhkaei, he would take passage for Gkuyoien, find a small place to call home, grow a garden and build a fishing boat, and leave the rest of the world to fend forevermore for itself.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Thirdday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Founding of the Empire

Plaza of the Empire, Khalar

The shuffling crowd surged ahead abruptly.  Pyntyr, carrying his daughter Zhue, gestured for his wife Lyhya to hurry. 

"If we don't move faster," he told her, "we'll miss the juggling."

"Juggling!" Zhue squealed in excitement. Only four, she found words exciting in and of themselves.

Holding on to their dancing eight year old son Mlymhon with one hand and gripping the basket that had their lunch in the other while trying to keep her feet from being stepped on, Lyhya gave him a sour look.  "I think you're more worried about missing those shameless women taking a bath right out in the open."

Pyntyr looked aghast.  "Moon Dancers aren't 'shameless women,' dear.  They're dedicated servants of the Goddess Miyra. And they are
not
'taking a bath,' they're performing holy ablutions."

"Dedicated servants who just happen to be young, slim, and mostly naked.  Hmmph."

Today was the last holy day of spring and all the temples had scheduled special ceremonies to welcome the Advent of Summer.  The brass foundry where Pyntyr worked had closed for the day and he had decided to take his family to enjoy the festivities in the Plaza of the Empire.  They had started early, but unfortunately it seemed that half the Lower City had also decided to do the same thing.  The multitudes occupying the Avenue of Rhwalkahn’s Ascension had been so thick that it had taken them a full hour to walk from the Red Ice Bridge to this point, where the monuments and shrines at the head of the Plaza were in sight.

"My admiration of their nubile bodies is no more than an expression of my faith in the --" Pyntyr began.  The large woman in front of him stopped abruptly, forcing him to do likewise.  A man behind him was not so quick and bumped into him and then muttered a frustrated apology.

Over the constant serrated tremolo of the crowd, Pyntyr heard something that sounded like screams.

"Lyra, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she demanded, drawing Mlymhon up short when he tried to make a break for it between two older women standing together.

"I guess it was nothing."

Like a wave, a backwards movement shifted through the crowd.  Pyntyr barely got out of the way of the large woman when a gang of costume wearing adolescents in front of her shambled to the rear without looking.  Shouts and curses began to circulate.

"Pyntyr," Lyra said, sounding worried, "something is wrong."

"Something wrong!" Zhue repeated, wiggling around in his arms to try to see better toward the Plaza.

"Let's try to move over to the side," he told Lyra, putting his free arm around his wife to make sure they did not get separated.

Another shift surged through the crowd and now an uproar coming from the Plaza was quite clear.

"We'd better go back," Lyra told him firmly, putting her basket down so that she could pick up Mlymhon.

"Alright."  He turned around and spoke to the man behind.  "Pardon me, but we'd like to go back.  Could you let us by?"

Looking concerned, the fellow, holding an unlit incense burner, looked toward the Plaza and then turned about and pressed against the stalled crowd.  The impulse instantly spread and almost immediately a general, though glacial, retreat commenced.  Another surge spurred it to greater speed and then there was a lot of shoving and more shouting.  Within moments, running people started breaking through the narrow gaps in the crowd.  One woman collided with another and the second was knocked down to sprawl on the pavement.

"Lyra!  Get to that doorway before we get trampled!" he said, pushing his wife and son ahead of him toward the deeply inset entryway of a closed bakery.

"Wait!  I don't have the basket!"

"Forget it!"

They managed to reach the doorway just before the general panic took hold and the avenue became full of running, frightened people.

Clutching their son tightly to her chest, Lyra, flustered and afraid, demanded, "What could have happened?"

Pyntyr saw someone he knew, another workman named Thlee from the foundry, coming back from the Plaza at a dead run.  He waved and shouted the man's name as loud as he could.  Thlee turned his head, saw Pyntyr, and dodged into the entryway.

"Thlee!  What is it?" Pyntyr pressed.  "What's happening?"

Wild-eyed, Thlee shouted, "It's the Imperials!  Some of them went up onto the portico of the temple Miyra.  They said that there are no gods but the Emperor and they attacked the dancers!  They killed one of them!  They've killed a moon dancer!"