The Iron Ship (53 page)

There was a divide in the stone; the bottom two-thirds were sea black, that above tending almost to white. Bright lichens clad the upper part, ending in a perfect line where the black began. All was pocked by the various holes that characterised floatstone, the exposed bubbles that gave it its buoyancy. The ground atop the island was uneven and so vast that a scrubby forest of dwarf sycamore clung to the feet of the castle walls.

The castle was an adornment to this god’s ship. Guis saw the great gatehouse and three towers. The keep was set far back, and lost soon to view as the island grew inexorably in front of them.

Pocked cliffs shaded out the westering sun. Mogawn sat in a lake of seawater excavated by the roil of its own turbulence. The scent of the ocean intensified, trapped here between tides, the water was brackish and potent.

The causeway ran on to the base of this mountain of floatstone.

“Where do we enter?” shouted Guis. His ears tingled with the cold.

“Sea gate!” The driver nodded ahead.

The causeway terminated in a wide, circular plaza that intruded into Mogawn’s moat. The driver whistled and his dogs drew the carriage around the outside of this construction. Here the mole was at its highest, forty feet and more, and the water around it was dark.

A gate of black wood set into the floatstone at right angles to the causeway creaked upwards. A drawbridge came down as it went up, slamming onto the slick stones of the plaza. Beyond was a tunnel road.

“Hyah!” shouted the driver. The dogs leaped forward, dragging the coach into the passage. They went upwards through the rock in long loops. Where the cavities of the rock had been cut through, they provided natural windows on the approach to the castle. The wind maundered through them plaintively.

They turned a sixth circuit, and emerged beneath grey winter skies again. The castle walls ambushed them, rearing up suddenly. The carriage, the dray team now panting heavily, thundered over a low stone bridge. The gatehouse gate opened, the portcullis behind clattered upwards, and they were within the precincts of Mogawn.

The coach stopped. The dogs collapsed to the flags. Guis beamed, cheeks ruddy with the wind.

The countess came down the steps from her keep, a rich and feminine gown on her body, a warm smile on her face. She bowed ironically.

“Welcome, my lord, to the castle of Mogawn.”

“I
WANTED to
show you my orrery immediately you arrived, goodfellow,” she said, taking him up the steps of her keep. “You must forgive my impatience. I have been waiting some time to share this with someone who I thought might appreciate it. Your bags will be taken to your room. I’ll give you a chance to change before dinner.”

“I am your guest, countess,” he said. “I will go whither you will.”

Guis heard the orrery before he saw it, a rhythmic machine noise like that heard outside a mill. The countess led him through the donjon door by the hand.

The orrery took up the whole of the keep’s hall. The centre of the device was a dangerous medley of exposed gears. Huge arms swung about the pillar upon which the sun was mounted, scything through the air with enough force to dent a man’s skull.

A great bronze globe feathered by stylised rays, occupied the centre. Around it, and around it and around it, wound a grouping of worlds known to every well-educated man. There was the Earth, her familiar continents and seas described in etched brass. There were her two moons, one bright red, the other egg white. Elliptical tracks described their orbits around the Earth, the white about the equator, the red at a forty-five degree angle to the ecliptic plane of the motherworld. About this trio revolved the Twin on an elliptical path. Black and twice the size of the Earth, its own passage through the aether was distorted both by the Earth and the sun. Out it went, then back, then out again. It appeared to be departing on each loop, only to return to perturb the orbits of the moons.

“An unhappy marriage of spheres,” she explained. “The other worlds about the sun do not form this odd binary. Their moons rotate about the centre of their mass in peace. Not so the Earth.”

She gestured to the five other worlds. Mighty Bolsun swung around the sun in long, unhurried circuits. For every time it went around the sun, the Earth went four. A crowd of moons mobbed it.

Shepherded by Bolsun was the lesser Horaspite, still huge by terrestrial standards. “This world differs to the others in that it spins about a straight axis,” commented the countess. “There is no tilt at all, and therefore no summer or winter, or varying nights, but harmony. A perfect world, perhaps. Serene, and peaceful. Not like ours.”

“Do men live there?”

“And why not women?” protested the countess. They ducked under the long wooden arm bearing Merrder as it swept over their heads.

“Why not?” said Guis with an apologetic smile. “I will rephrase my question: Do people live there?”

“Who knows?” She shrugged. “I hear that certain magisters have attempted to project themselves hence, but none have yet succeeded. Only the great mages of the past claim to have done so, but their testimonies are untrustworthy. Perhaps magisters will, within our lifetimes, walk in spirit upon the soil of other earths.”

She named the other worlds. Between perfect Horaspite wheeled jealous green Merrder, then a collection of moonlets that circled the sun in a ring like dancers. After them came the Earth, then beyond her were the tiny Guuz, and the even smaller Kazzaerok. “Their outlandish names are legacies of their discoveries; both named by Ocerzerkiyans at the heights of their art.”

“They have less awkward Karsarin names.”

“And I prefer the originals, in honour of the empiricist who found them. They are common across the world. Respect is the bridge by which great minds are joined.”

“A quote from Strano?”

She nodded. “The ancients were right about so much, I find. The world today is largely populated by idiots.”

Guis laughed aloud, but the countess remained stern. “I am deadly serious,” she said.

“What is the purpose of the machine?”

“The Old Maceriyans,” she said. “Their civilisation collapsed four thousand years ago. Their writings speak of fire pouring from the Earth. The Morfaan, their reign came to an end twelve thousand years ago, or so it is believed, and they disappeared almost completely sometime after that. What I wish to know is: why? I have constructed this machine to answer that question. The mark of four thousand years is important, Guis. It is the time that the Twin comes closest to our own Earth before receding again. We approach it once again. You notice the Earth tremors upon its near approach, before and around the Great Tides? More often than is usual.”

“Perhaps,” said Guis. “I had not noticed.”

“Well I have. I have documented them, and plotted them. They are more frequent and stronger by the year. I am sure the answer is to be found in the circuits of the spheres. And I would like to know what will kill our feeble efforts at society before it falls. The answer is bound up in the cycles described here. I believe the basic model to be correct, but there are subtleties, permutations that have as yet gone unnoticed.”

“You think our time is done? Surely not. We have surpassed the Old Maceriyans. They were wise, but we have built upon their wisdom.”

“The Morfaan were our betters in all fields of knowledge, and yet they fell. Our demise is not a possibility, it is an inevitability.”

“Then what is the point of knowing?”

“One might as well ask, what is the point of anything?”

A gong sounded. She forced a smile. “Dinner will be served in half an hour. I shall have Mansanio show you to your rooms, where you may change.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Tyn and the Darkling

G
UIS AND THE
Countess sat on opposing couches by the fire, a low table between them. Replete after a fine dinner they drank enriched wines reminiscent of those of Macer Lesser, but of a harsher character. There was something in it other than alcohol.

Guis watched his host, his mind fogged by the wine’s odd effects. He was attracted to her, he supposed. She was certainly vivacious, bold, intelligent... But there was that face. He was not sure if he could bear to kiss it. More to the point, he was bothered by what his friends would say if he did. The firelight on Lucinia’s features exaggerated her manliness. Her nose was incredible, he thought, a jutting crag. A general’s nose, not a goodlady’s. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and glanced away. A man looked back at him from a painting on the wall, the same nose, a glower set around it. The countess looked like her father. He snatched his attention away from the painting, shifting uneasily in his seat. She either did not notice his discomfort, or chose to ignore it, but stared at him unabashed. Flames danced in her eyes, a predatory flicker. He would not have been surprised if she had slunk forward on all fours, as supple and dangerous as a cat.

The illusion shattered when she spoke. Guis blinked drowsily.

“Is the wine getting to you, goodfellow?”

Guis cleared his throat. “A little.” A disturbing moment saw the Hag as a hag, and then as her father. Long accustomed to unwelcome images, this nevertheless perturbed him. His affliction was internal, a private show of horrors for his mind’s eye. These visions manifested outside.

“It is spiced with a herbal blend. The wine comes from Far Ocerzerkiya. Or rather, if we are to be precise about geography, a far northern realm named Zareiskiya past the borders of the empire.

“I am not familiar with it.”

“There are many realms beyond the northern empire. They each have their own names. Realms beyond realms, realms beyond seas, realms beyond this world, even. I find the Hundred disgustingly parochial.” She slid off the couch, walked over to a globe imprisoned in transecting wooded circles. She spun the globe with one finger, jabbing down hard. “Here,” she said, in invitation to join her.

Guis stayed where he was. “I suppose, Countess Lucinia—”

“Lucinella, please,” she said. “We know each other well enough by now.”

“Lucinella,” said Guis, he smiled lopsidedly. “I suppose it is easier all around to refer to the lands north of the Red Desert as Ocerzerkiya,” he said. “That is why.”

“Indubitably. But ease is rarely a cognate with correct.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “The effects of the wine will change. Drowsiness and suggestibility are the initial symptoms. A sharpening of intellect will follow.”

“I may be suffering the indolence of satiation. That was a very fine meal.”

“We live far from modern comforts, but I try to maintain standards. One is a countess after all.” She affected hauteur.

Guis grinned dopily. His earlier discomfort seemed to seep from his toes and pool around his feet. So convincing was the effect that he had to check he had not accidentally let his water go. He stopped smiling.

“The wine again,” she said. “I promise, the coming increase in mental acuity will more than compensate you for the disorientation.”

“I find the sensations interesting, and now I know of their cause, no longer unsettling.”

“Ah!” she said happily. “A man after my own heart. A quester after new experience.”

“If only that were so. I am too timid to chase experience down. On the other hand, I will not turn it away if it comes chasing after me.”

“Talk to me then, while we allow digestion to do its work. When you are feeling more awake, I will show you my observatory. You have seen my orrery, the observatory is my second great pride.”

“What shall we talk of?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

“I would not know where to begin, in any case propriety demands some amount of discretion.”

“Fie on propriety! You are a playwright. Is not all that you do a cry for attention?”

Guis sipped his wine. There were bitter herbal notes under the sweetness. “You have me unmasked, goodlady. All writers are but cautious show-offs.”

“There you are. Now, tell me about yourself.”

“My previous comments notwithstanding, I still do not know what you wish to hear.”

“Might I ask you a question then?”

Guis shrugged. “By all means.”

“Is it true what they say, that you are mageborn?”

“Simply? Yes.”

“And that you almost killed your brother?”

“You are not a shy woman.” He set his glass down.

“Have you heard that I am?”

“No. No I have not. Well. Yes, it is true.” He settled back.

“And that is why you carry the Lesser Tyn?” She pointed at the creature sleeping curled up on his shoulder.

“In part. The real answer to that is more disturbing.”

“Tell me all about it. Please. I am no gossip, but the gossiped about. What you hear will go no further.”

“We are alone?”

“Yes.”

Guis sighed. “Here is a chance not rarely met.”

“How so?”

“I sometimes wish to unburden myself, but shy away,” he said warily.

“You are not about to shy here, I hope?”

“I am, and that is why I tell you so in order to prevent it.”

“Nothing you tell me can be so terrible.”

“You would be surprised.”

“I never am,” she insisted.

“Very well.” Guis leaned forward to pour more wine from the decanter on the table.

“Be careful, it is potent.”

“Good,” he said. His hands shook. He poured and drank a goodly draught. “I was born a twin.”

“Oh?”

“My brother, identical to me, died when I was six.”

“Your magic?” she asked breathlessly.

“No! He drowned. A foolish childhood accident, one of those awful things that can occur to anyone, rich or poor. My mother,” he waved his hand. “She suffered for it. She bore my brothers as a good wife is expected to.” He smiled at the countess to indicate his disapproval of this sort of opinion. “But after my father fell ill from the apoplexy, it proved too much. Her sorrows won out and she became addicted to the Moonflower. She still is, as a matter of fact. She never had a strong mental constitution; as beautiful and fragile as the flowers that succour her.”