The Navigator of Rhada (19 page)

His fear began again.

The land below lay indistinct in the starlight. Occasionally, Kynan could make out the faint reflection of the Janus. The river was broadening as the starship moved slowly nearer to the Inland Sea.

“That luminosity on the horizon, First Pilot,” Brother Pius asked tentatively. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

“Is it sky-glow from the sanctuary?” Evart asked.

It resembled no city sky-glow Kynan had ever seen. The night was still and clear. The sky was a Rim sky, with few stars and a well-defined ribbon of milky brightness defining the edge of the great galactic lens. But there were no clouds to catch the reflected light of a city. Instead, the air itself seemed to pulse with faint illumination, like an Aurora Borealis.

In a way, it reminded the Navigator of the pulsing ionization of the air that surrounded a starship in flight. Yet this was far too extensive and dim for it to be that familiar phenomenon. That its source was the enclave, however, he did not doubt. Across the next low range of hills lay the Great Inland Sea.

It had been Kynan’s intention to fly the starship to the edge of the sea and approach the sanctuary in slow atmospheric flight. Now he was not so certain. There was something indefinably menacing about that dark, throbbing radiation.

He leaned forward, inclining his pilot’s couch so that he could study the dark terrain below. The tops of the great trees shone blackish green in the light cast by the ionization of the air surrounding the starship’s hull. “Slow us down, Brother Evart,” he ordered. “Two percent thrust.”

“Thrust Two, for the glory of God,” Evart intoned, making the adjustments.

The starship hung almost motionless above the treetops, tons of superhard steel and dural floating, drifting on the inshore wind.

“First Pilot!” Brother Clement exclaimed. “Look there! A light!”

Ahead and below, shining through the dark leaves of the forest tops, a single brilliant point of brightness gleamed. A signal laser. At the same moment Kynan’s head began to ache again. It was as though something, or someone, were attempting to tamper with the very stuff of his brain. The impulse was indistinct, unformed, but the import of it was unmistakable:
Land at once.

He scrubbed at his eyes and studied the pulsations of the signal beam. The message was in open code: “In the name of the Theocracy, you are to touch down immediately.” Then followed the cascade of signals that identified him, Kynan, by name and rank. Only high members of the Order had access to such symbols or to the complex devices for creating a beam to send them.

Kynan was too disciplined a Navigator to question that imperative, commanding laser signal. For some reason beyond his understanding, there were Navigators down there in the dark forest, two hours’ march from the Auroran sanctuary: Navigators old enough, exalted enough to give him orders. It was a thing he had been wishing for most devoutly--almost, he thought, making the sign of the Star on his black-clothed breast, a proper miracle.

“Stand by to touch down,” he ordered.

“Here, First Pilot?” Evart asked fearfully.

Kynan favored him with an angry look. “Beyond the signal light,” he said sternly.

“Mea culpa, First Pilot.” Evart began to give orders for the landing sequence to Clement and Pius.

Kynan watched the treetops tensely, seeking a clearing. There was none. The starship drifted slowly over the winking, demanding laser beam. In the glow of ionization now, Kynan could make out the great humping backs of two starships aground, side by side. He could see the bare flesh of the huge trees the starships had broken like match- sticks as they touched down in this hidden place.

“Put her down through the trees, Brother Evart,” he said.

“Amen, First Pilot,” Evart murmured.

The humming of the ship’s engines faded to an almost inaudible whisper. The keel touched the tops of the trees, and ionized particles seemed to set the leaves and branches alight with a cold fire that ran down the massive trunks to splash like molten gems on the soft soil of the forest floor.

The great starship settled, brushing the massive trees aside as though they were nothing, breaking the meters- thick trunks and pulping the uprooted stumps with tons of growing weight. Oddly shaped leaves brushed along the polarized curvature of the bridge, their skeletal structures shimmering with light.

“Touch down, First Pilot,” Brother Pius reported.

Kynan could see the dark vaults of the forest stretching all around; he could feel the huge mass of the starship settling comfortably into the loamy ground, cradling itself into the soil.

“Stand-by sequence,” he ordered.

“Preflight Energy Level, in the name of the Name,” Evart ordered in his holier-than-thou tone.

“Holding pulse power,” Pius replied shortly, his attention caught by the vastness of the mysterious forest into which they had penetrated.

Kynan eased himself from the pilot’s couch. His head was throbbing again. Was it really the Vulk contact that had done this to him? Triad had never been a painful experience to him, but perhaps Gret had penetrated too deeply. The human mind was such a tangle of unknown skeins--

“Open the starboard valve in five minutes, Evart,” he ordered.

“Are you going out alone, First Pilot?”

“I want you and the others to remain here. Hold preflight power and be ready to take the ship away if I do not return by morning.” The protection of the starship was the first and most holy duty of any Navigator.

The three juniors inclined their heads and murmured an Ave Stella for his safety.

Kynan left the bridge and hurried to his quarters for his robe, cowl, and weapons. The ache behind his eyes was filling him with urgency.

Armed and cowled, his mail heavy on his breast, he sought Janessa. The girl was with the warlock in the corridor leading to the stables. She looked frightened, and Kynan felt a pang of remorse. He had been neglecting his ward. He had been too busy to keep her informed, and it was forbidden, of course, for any unconsecrated person to enter the control room of a starship. She burst into questions as he appeared.

“Where are we, Kynan? What is this place? Are we near Star Field? What’s happened?”

Kynan silenced her with a hand on her shoulder. He spoke with some difficulty because his head was hurting badly. “We are in a forest near the Great Inland Sea. We saw a signal. There are two starships of the Order landed here. I am going to report to my superiors.” “But Star Field? The Gonlani strike force?” Her eyes were alight with patriotic concern for her city and her people.

“The strike force must be far behind us. But we
did
see a squadron of Imperials. I don’t know yet what that means, but perhaps I can find out now.”

Baltus said, “You say there are two starships of the Order here? What of the sanctuary?”

Kynan decided to say nothing about the mysterious light he had seen surrounding the Navigators’ enclave. It wasn’t wise to discuss everything freely with seculars, particularly warlocks.

“I must go immediately,” he said. “Baltus, you must stay here with Janessa.”

“We can’t go with you?” the girl asked.

“Better not,” Kynan said, moving away.

“You don’t look well, Kynan,” Baltus said.

“I will take Skua. It isn’t far.”

Kynan saw, with a sense of some pleasure, a look of deep concern on Janessa’s face. He could not resist an impulse to touch her silvery blond hair. She came to him, pressed herself against his mailed chest, and kissed him. Baltus looked away with un-warlockish politeness.

Then Kynan stepped over the scuttle into the stable and called to Skua as the great valve began to dilate and the night smells of Aurora’s forests seeped into the cavernous belly of the starship. For Janessa, the scent of the inland water, the great trees, and the wind were the odors of home. She watched the young Navigator saddle Skua and swing lightly to her back, and she was still standing at the bulkhead as horse and rider moved down the ramp and into the forest.

“You love him, princess?” Baltus asked quietly.

“He is my choice,” she said simply.

The old war mare, moving lightly as a filly, picked her way with dainty steps through the rubble of fallen leaves and branches brought down by the starship’s descent.

Kynan, his head still throbbing with sick pain, sat loosely in the saddle. The weight of his pistol and the sword slung across his back seemed to drag at him. His eyes hurt with the pressure of the steel cap and cowl on his forehead. Ahead, more than a kilometer from where his vessel had finally touched down, he could see the imperative pencil of light from the laser signal.

“To the light, Skua,” he said.

“Yes, Ky-nan,” the animal replied, bobbing her head and shaking her mane. She was rested but hungry: there had been no game for her since leaving Melissande. She hoped for battle and the rewards of a fight--the flesh of her alien cousins. But her primitive telepathy told her that there were no chargers ahead--only many men.

Kynan rode slackly. It seemed to him that the closer he came to the narrow beam of light in the forest, the more painful the ache in his skull became. He was seriously worried now, for it seemed to him that he had contracted, in some mysterious way, a terrible and possibly deadly ailment. There was madness in it, too. He was thinking of his visions, and of the crashing, demanding commands that seemed to burst unbidden into his consciousness. The whole business filled him with sadness: he had been raised a Rhad, after all, and the Rhad were among the most melancholy people in the galaxy. Their guest songs were filled with sad tales of broken love affairs and battles won only at the cost of hero’s lives. Their sagas were laments and their melodies all in minor keys. It was said that the Rhad lived at the edge of the sky and grew sad because there were no more worlds left to conquer.

He moved through what appeared to be an immense, groined hall in which the giant trees were the columns, the tops, far overhead, the vaulted arches. It made him think of the great churches on Algol, the flaming Star symbol on the high altar, the echoing chants of the hidden choirs singing the Psalms and the ephemerides. He was filled with a great, weary love for the Order, which brought reason and religion into a universe teeming with angry men and nations.

He urged Skua to go a bit more quickly. He had been too long away from the comfort of his Order. What a relief it would be now to lay his burden down before superiors, to tell them what was happening and let them decide what should be done.

The mare’s padded paws made no sound on the forest floor as she carried Kynan into the small clearing. The immense curving flank of a starship loomed overhead. Kynan raised his eyes to the open valve. There, with the light behind him, stood a prince of the Order. The Navigator could not make out the golden spaceship and star on the priest’s breast, but no insignia was needed to mark this man as a high priest. There was fur edging on his cowl, and it seemed that he stood in a halo of brilliance from within the starship.

He looked down at the rider and spoke. “Come with me, Nav Kynan.” His voice was sonorous, that of a man accustomed, for many years, to commanding.

Kynan dismounted, knelt on the ground, and made the sign of the Star. “Bless me, Father,” he said.

The older priest made the ritual sign and said, “Come quickly now, my son.”

It did not occur to Kynan to wonder how the prince knew his name, or that he would be in these skies at this particular time. The ghostly knowledge of the Five was legendary. And this was, indeed, one of the fabled quintet of advisers to the Grand Master. The singular cut of his robes Kynan could now see made that plain. He was filled with awe and wonder but not surprise. It was right and reasonable that wherever in the galaxy trouble brewed, there would be the power of the Five to protect both the Order and the faithful.

Kynan said to Skua, “Wait for me.”

The mare’s blue-green eyes glittered in the light from the open valve. “Yes, Ky-nan. May I hunt? I hunger.”

“Hunt, but don’t go far.”

The mare bared her teeth and wheeled to gallop into the forest.

The Tactician followed the colloquy between horse and man with interest. “A Rhadan horse. They are rare, Nav Kynan.”

“Not in this part of the galaxy, Father. The Rhad sell them throughout all this province of the Empire.”

It seemed to Kynan that the senior priest reacted coldly to his mention of the Empire, but he could have imagined it. His sickness was heavily upon him. He made his way up the ramp and presented himself to the great Navigator. “Blessings on the Five,” he said respectfully.

The older man’s eyebrows arched. His dark eyes glittered with intelligence and purpose. Never, thought Kynan devoutly, had he seen so commanding a face. Not even Kreon of Gonlan looked like this.

“So you know who I am,” the Tactician said. “Very well, that is good. It will save much time. I am not the only one here, my son.
All
the Five are here. What we must do here tonight and when morning comes is that important to our Order. Do you understand me?”

“I hear you, Father,” Kynan said humbly.

“We have names, my son. But we seldom use them. I am called simply the Tactician.”

Kynan inclined his head, impressed. Tactician was the title given the nearest thing to a supreme military commander extant in the Order of Navigators.

“Are you unwell, Kynan?”

“A fever of some sort, I think, Father. I seem to have contracted it on Gonlan.”

The shrewd eyes narrowed. “Or from a Vulk, my son?”
By the holy Star,
Kynan thought.
He even knows that!

Was there no limit to the power to know among the princes of the Order?

The Tactician took Kynan’s arm and led him into the starship. As he walked, he spoke. “You were brought here for a purpose, Kynan. For a mighty purpose of immense importance to our Order. What you must do will require great sacrifice and courage. But always remember that you are of the Order. The Order is your strength, your courage, your purpose. It is your very reason for being. That is the way of the Navigator.”