The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds (26 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds
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Only minutes of time spent, and the rest of the Circle would be gone from Demaizen for … how long? His stargazer’s knowledge let him make an estimate, and the answer was a depressing one. Years … years to stay at the Hall with an incapable First and a Second gone away into the Void, and nothing to do except work the luck. He saw himself as he had been in his vision, bound into the Hall by the silver network of the eiran, and laughed without humor.
“The luck of the Diasul.”
He shivered as his words fell into the unnatural quiet of the Hall. He’d gotten a voice-message from his younger brother just yesterday, another one of Felan’s long dull rambles about the family business, matters of buying and selling and who-did-whom-out-of-what that Kief found impossible to keep straight in his head.
He did remember that Felan had asked, as usual, for Kief’s luck-intentions in the furtherance of some profit-making enterprise. Kief felt a stirring of anger, that his brother should be thinking about such petty matters in a time when men like Garrod were risking and losing all in an effort to remake the very galaxy.
Still, family was family. He would make the intentions for his brother—and for himself as well. For surely, if luck was needed for anyone involved in
Rain-on-Dark-Water’
s voyage of discovery, it was needed for the ones who stayed behind.
 
Year 1124 E. R.
 
ENTIBOR: RASKE-BY-THE-SEA
VILLA OF MESTRA ADINA
ERAASIAN SPACE: SUS-PELEDAEN ORBITAL DOCKS
 
W
hen the travelers came at last to Raske-by-the-Sea, Garrod’s sense of foreboding deepened. The city—not one of the first importance, from the way his friends spoke of it—was at least twice the size of Hanilat. Everything about it seemed gleaming, new, and filled with wonders, things he had never seen on Eraasi: Fast-moving groundcars that hovered above the earth without touching it, like the armored vehicles he had encountered earlier on the road; immense, delicate-looking buildings that glittered in the sunlight like ice palaces caught in webs of metal; gaudy images in light and sound that unfolded from the pavement or danced across the sides of the impossible buildings.
The spectacle filled Garrod with a terrible fear. This world, clearly, was rich in natural resources, and existed at a higher technological level than any planet on the other side of the interstellar gap. Yet he’d learned from Hujerie’s recent comments that Entibor was neither the richest nor the most powerful of the known worlds.
We have found them. What shall we do when they find us?
For a few minutes Garrod considered quietly vanishing, returning to Eraasi and never mentioning this place at all. It would be safer all around—for him personally, and for Eraasi, which this world would snap up like a solstice-cake if the people here ever put their minds to it.
But he was Garrod the Explorer, and leaving a world unsurveyed and uncatalogued would not make it go away.
The danger has always been here
, he reminded himself.
We just didn’t know about it until now.
Neither Hujerie not Saral paid the wonders around them any heed. Hujerie, in particular, seemed unimpressed by Raske’s smooth rainbow-hued pavements, its gleaming towers, its multitude of booths and kiosks selling objects about whose use Garrod tried in vain to speculate. Instead, the former tutor walked through the city streets with a singleness of purpose and a near-quivering anticipation.
They came eventually to yet another kiosk, this one situated next to a broad tree-lined boulevard. Hujerie, looking pleased, placed his hand within a dark opening inside the kiosk, and a moment later turned back to Garrod.
“You have been our savior,” he said. “Now it is our turn to show generosity, though it may be less than a hundredth of your own.”
Garrod began an awkward speech of demurral—he could understand the spoken language fairly well by now, but constructing a sentence involving abstract concepts like friendship and gratitude still had the ability to slow his tongue. He was saved from having to finish his reply by the appearance of a shadow on the pavement. A moment later, with a scarce-heard whistling, an atmospheric craft descended to hover a few inches above the sidewalk.
The craft looked and sounded nothing like the flyers Garrod was familiar with on Eraasi. It was smooth, almost ovoid in shape, with bubbles like eyes on its forward end. The doors on either side opened upward, winglike, revealing a cozy interior with padded seats. Cool, sweet-smelling air washed out over the grimy and sweat-stained travelers like a friendly welcome.
They entered the craft, the doors swung down and closed, and a moment later pressure beneath his feet told Garrod that the vehicle was rising rapidly. A moment later, they were flying with incredible speed over the ocean. Dazzling sunlight reflected back at them from the waves below, its intensity mollified by the tinting of the flyer’s windows.
“Safe at last,” Saral said. She hugged Minnin, then held the baby out at arm’s length, bouncing him until he crowed with delight. “Your mamma and dadda will be happy to see you again.”
Soon enough the ocean was replaced by land, and the flyer came down to a smooth landing. Its doors once again lifted open, and the travelers stepped out onto a hillside covered with soft grass.
Something that looked like a ground vehicle waited nearby. A door on the vehicle’s side slid open, and a woman—young and pretty, in a loose gown made of some shimmering fabric that shifted colors as she moved—jumped out. She ran across the grassy hillside to snatch Minnin from Saral’s arms and hug him close.
“Come, come,” the woman said, somewhat breathlessly—she was still hugging Minnin, and the baby didn’t seem to know whether to be happy or distressed about it. “Teng will be so pleased. We scarcely dared hope, when your message came—”
She shooed them into the groundcar. The vehicle rose from the ground and shot forward in a way that made Garrod suspect it contained a counterforce unit of some kind—but one far more powerful than those which gave mobility to the
aiketen
back home on Eraasi.
“Who is your friend?” the woman asked Hujerie, as soon as she had soothed the restive Minnin into quiet. She talked more rapidly than the older man, and with a different accent, so that Garrod hoped he was understanding her correctly.
“He is called Garrod,” the old tutor said. “We owe our survival to him.”
The woman turned to Garrod. “Then you are a friend to us as well. What did you do, Friend Garrod, before the war?”
Garrod hesitated a moment before answering. In this strange world—so advanced in some ways, and so primitive in others—it did not strike him as a good idea to announce outright, “I am a Mage.”
Instead he told the woman, “I was a scholar”—at least, he hoped that was what he had said, and the self-description was not completely untrue.
“Ah, Master Scholar Garrod,” the woman said. “Welcome to our House.”
 
 
Natelth sus-Khalgath stood in the observation box overlooking the cradle holding
Rain-on-Dark-Water.
The newly-finished deep-space explorer was ready for her long voyage, and all but the last few crew members had ridden the gondola up her curving side to the open hatch. When the hatch closed, the chamber would seal its air-tight doors and the last phase in the construction cycle would begin.
Family responsibility decreed that Natelth should be present for the occasion, in the company of the director of the sus-Peledaen orbital yard and half a dozen of its most senior shipbuilders, all outer-family by adoption at least. And the first departure of a ship like the
Rain
—larger, more advanced in its design, and with a longer range than any of the existing vessels in the sus-Peledaen fleet—required more than Natelth’s approving presence. Such a momentous occasion demanded his full participation in the speeches and festivities, all duly broadcast for the benefit of ordinary workers and family members currently enjoying their own, much less formal, celebration.
Natelth had expressed, for the record, the family’s gratitude toward all the workers who had made the Rain into such an advancement on the fleet’s existing design, and the family’s unswerving confidence that her crew would find in her a swift journey to luck and glory. The shipyard director had thanked innumerable people without whom the
Rain
would not have reached her current state of perfection, and had enjoined the captain and crew to treat the new ship with the affection and respect which she deserved. Captain sus-Mevyan, speaking over voice-comm from the
Rain’s
bridge, had thanked the family and the shipyard alike for giving the ship into her hands, and had promised to care for the
Rain
like a sister.
Then the shipyard director poured out glasses of red wine all around, as Captain sus-Mevyan would be doing on the ship’s bridge. Everyone spilled the ritual drops that would do courtesy to the spirits of the ship and of the orbital yard, as well as to any of the family’s dead who might feel a connection with the venture.
All that remained was for the ship’s Circle to go abroad. Natelth could see them, far down below on the cradle platform, four small figures in hooded black robes, standing together in an inward-facing huddle. Not much to look at—but without them, and their presence on this first voyage, Garrod’s marker for the distant world was useless.
The director of the shipyard keyed on the voice-comm to the construction chamber. “Have you seen the luck of the voyage?”
The question was traditional: The Mages of a ship’s Circle, being the last of the crew to go aboard, had a good vantage point from which to see all of the diverse luck-patterns that hung about a vessel. On a new-built ship the lines ought to be clear and untangled … but Natelth fancied that there was a moment’s pause before Arekhon’s voice came back, not loud but quite distinct all the same.
“The voyage is fortunate. We see the lines going forth and coming back again.”
“Are you ready to board?”
Another pause. The distant figures on the platform appeared to consult one another briefly. Arekhon’s voice came over the speaker again.
“We are ready.”
“Board her, then,” said the shipyard director; and, a few moments later, “Gondola away.”
The gondola began its slow ascent to the open hatch. When it reached the top, the four tiny figures that were Arekhon’s half of the Demaizen Circle walked across the hair-thin bridge to the hatch and passed into the ship. The bridge retracted into the belly of the gondola, the hatch closed, and the gondola descended.
“Prepare to evacuate the compartment,” said the shipyard director.
The lighting in the construction area began shifting back and forth between its normal spectrum and an intense, disquieting amber, and the long, repeated bellow of an alarm horn penetrated even the heavy glass of the observation booth. The alarm and the flashing lights went on for several minutes—long enough for anyone caught in the construction area by accident to find an exit and depart.
“Cycle to vacuum,” said the director.
More minutes passed as the orbital yard reclaimed its atmosphere from the sealed compartment. The director turned to Natelth.
“My lord, if you would give the words of release …”
“I would be honored.” Natelth stepped up to the voice-comm. “She is sus-Peledaen’s
Rain-on-Dark-Water.
Send her away.”
With a heavy, vibrating groan, the walls of the area outside the observation box parted. The Rain’s construction cradle fell away in segments like the opening petals of a gigantic metal flower, revealing black space and the stars beyond. Slowly but inexorably, the vast matte-black bulk of the explorer ship fell free of its orbital birthplace, slipping away from Natelth and the other watchers and receding into the emptiness that was her natural home.
Another moment—her engines flared crimson—and she was gone.
 
 
Over the course of the next several days, Garrod learned much—through listening and observation—about the state of political affairs on the world he had discovered. The government was fragmented into a number of geopolitical entities, ranging in size from a handful of small islands to the greater part of a continent, caught up in a web of treaties and personal agreements so complex that Garrod made no effort to untangle them. He wasn’t certain that the native Entiborans understood them, either; otherwise there wouldn’t have been so much argument on the subject.
Apparently nobody had been expecting a tricky diplomatic situation to break out into open and general war—though why it shouldn’t have done so was another thing that Garrod didn’t try to understand. He took advantage of the confusion to pick out a fictitious homeland for himself, settling on a district half the world away from his current situation, and one that had been overrun twice already by different armies. Most of the public buildings on the Immering coast had already been destroyed, and the records they’d housed were gone along with them. It wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that Master Scholar Garrod’s biographical data had also vanished. With luck—and under the circumstances, he would not hesitate to make all the luck for himself that he could—no natives of the area would turn up and start addressing him in a language he didn’t understand.
For the moment, at least, his aid to Saral and Hujerie had won him a place in the entourage of Mestra Adina Therras, as baby Minnin’s mother was formally known. The Therras family was one of several maneuvering for control of the local government—the entire area involved wasn’t as big as the Wide Hills District back on Eraasi, but that didn’t seem to have deterred anybody so far—and Mestra Adina welcomed the chance to expand her House’s roster of clients and protégées.
“Appearances,” Hujerie explained to Garrod, “are everything, especially when the world is so unsettled. For the Mestra to have taken a foreign scholar under her protection is very impressive.”
Garrod thought privately that the Mestra and her fellow petty-nobles would have done better to give up impressing each other, and concentrate instead on keeping their pocket-sized state away from destruction. But in the meantime, the Mestra’s ambition was providing him with room and board and at least temporary safety—though he kept his pack loaded and ready in case he should have to leave on short notice.

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