Abby stared at the dropped chain which led from her hand to the sickle lying on the floor. Her face was stricken. She tugged on the chain, but it rattled limply, and did not respond.
Penny started singing, a shrill, eerie chant of two notes, high and low, over and over, that made you dizzy just to hear it.
I did not wait for whatever Penny was doing to work its charm. I rushed Vorvolac like a linebacker, grabbed the blindfolded prisoner around the body, hauled him squirming to the railing, and tossed his writhing, chain-wrapped body up and over and out into the darkness.
He dropped like a stone, but he was still laughing.
And, below him, far below, the water was disturbed.
A giant shape came out of the water, as if a whale were to leap like a dolphin, but instead of falling back, soared.
I saw it was not a submarine, or rather, not just a submarine. It was an airship. It was the length of ten football fields across, larger than any zeppelin my world had ever built. A Niagara Falls’ worth of water sluiced from the rigid gas envelope. The bowsprit was carved like a square-bearded king with the body of a winged bull, and the wings of the bull curved back to follow the long axis of the immense ironclad craft; and water dripped, glittering in streams, weeping from the stoical face of the king.
Up it rose.
“Oops,” I said.
2. A Dreadnought of the Air
Lanterns spaced on the port and starboard of the prow ignited, and a beam of flame struck me. By dumb chance, the shadow of the balcony rail fell across my face, so I was not blinded, but the top of my head and my chest and arms were on fire, so I fell backward, screaming in pain. Which, I will say again, is totally unfair, since pain is nature’s way of telling us harm is being done to an organism, but none of this harm could actually harm me.
Abby said, “I’ll go get the Master! He’ll smite the airship!” and turned and scampered toward the dark ball of nonbeing. The girls were now rushing the gate, those behind shoving those in front on through. The solid-looking black ball surface offered no resistance: it was like jumping into a pond. But Abby was in the rear of the female stampede, and there were too many panicky bodies in the way for her to reach the surface.
I heard, but did not see, the deep thrum of catapults or ballistae going off. Two harpoons longer than jousting lances came flying up from housings on the bow of the rising airship, sailed over the balcony rail, each trailing a long line behind them. With a double-crack, they planted their spearheads into the upper part of the half-dome of the gigantic alcove out of which the balcony was scooped. The shafts were eight feet long and made of lampwood, which immediately emitted a blinding blue-white light. Penny’s magic must have been the dark-flavored kind rather than the light-flavored kind, because the dreamlike dizziness following her voice cut out. She was just a normal girl with a normal singing voice.
Penny turned, raised her wrist, and practically flung her bird at the dark ball. “Flee, my soul! Flee for our life!”
But the wooden shafts hanging overhead were putting out that blazing light, ylemaramu, that quells twilight and shuts down gates. The black ball of the gateway was visibly shrinking, wavering, and the aura of northern lights whirling around it was flickering and dying. It was smaller than a bowling ball and Wild Eyes had to clap her wings tight to her body to sail through.
There were still about half-a-hundred ex-slave-girls on our side of the gate at that point. Some were screaming, but most of them knelt and put their faces to the floor, hair spilling like little black waterfalls, and stretched out their slender arms to their captors, palms up, begging to be spared.
The sight should have disgusted me, because American pioneer women would never have acted that way, nor would maidens of ancient Rome, but I cannot say I blame them. I was supposed to be the big hero, and I had failed them. It was my fault, not theirs, that they had to push their pretty faces onto the floor so that some goon could come step on them.
Abby was trapped on our side also, and so were Foster and Penelope: yes, the selfsame girl I had promised and vowed and swore and boasted I would save. That promise looked like it would turn out as false as my word to Vorvolac. Me and my big mouth.
I said a prayer to St. John the Apostle and the fat cells in my skin, which were on fire like candle tallow, simply stopped burning. My skin was all black and crispy, but honestly, since I did not fear the damage was permanent, it did not bother me as much as you'd think.
So I leaped to my feet, drew my katana, and assumed the stance called Hasso-no-Kamae, the Stance of the Eight Directions. The feet are close together with one foot forward, and the blade is before the right shoulder, edge forward, slanting up at a slight angle. Elbows are close to the body. It is also called Moku-no-Kamae, the Stance of the Tree, because the swordsman is upright.
I saw Foster’s face vanishing as he donned his goggles and mask. Then I did not see Foster except maybe as a shadow, but I heard him step up next to me. I heard him grunt, and then heard the familiar creak of a bow bending as the string was drawn back. From where his shadow fell, I could see he had drawn the great bow to his ear. The blue-white light was not driving his invisibility away.
At that moment, I knew he was more than a friend. He was not running, even though no one could see him, and he could have escaped easily. He was drawing his puny little weapon that shot a puny pointy little glass stick against a massive warship filled with soldiers and gunners and dark magicians.
But, by Saint Sebastian and all the warrior saints, he did not run, did he? He did not.
Abby stepped up to my left, and raised her now-dead sickle weapon, but she held the blade high, and had the chain gathered in her other hand to throw. She was not running either, and she was a skinny little girl. My heart seemed to expand in my chest. I was proud of her. Proud of someone willing to die beside me—me, a monster who could not die.
Penny had nothing, not even a knife, and she looked woebegone. But she would not kneel like the other girls, who wept and begged and moaned, but she instead raised her chin and defiantly slipped her eyeglasses on. She was unarmed and unclothed, but in that moment, I think I saw the real Penny, not the surface that attracted me, but the real character underneath.
“Run away, Penny,” I said. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”
Penny said, “Where should I flee now that they would not see and foresee? That is the flagship of the fleet. That is the craft of the Great King himself.”
I said, “Foster, is your mist entirely gone? Do you have any other tricks, any way you can hide Penny and Abby? Hide the harem girls, or get them to run?”
3. A Cloudwalker of Arphaxad
But there was no time for reply. Grapnels shot up, hung in the air a moment, and clutched the wooden balcony rail. From the unnatural way the black chains writhed and snaked, I could see they were living metal.
Over the edge of the balcony came floating the body of Vorvolac, who was still chained up and blindfolded, and still laughing in mockery and triumph. He was not even slightly dead. Indeed, he seemed in the best of health.
With him was a dark-haired, hook-nosed, and dark-bearded man. The beard was held in two short braids, and the hair was held in a ponytail so long that it looked like he had not cut it in years, maybe never. Two things were odd about him. First, he was standing on a cloud of smoke as if it were solid. Second, he held a shepherd’s crook in his hand, and his coat was of camel-hair, dyed black, but with a long train or tail that was forked like a tuxedo. It was the same costume, or, rather, the same uniform, Ossifrage wore, except in a darker hue. With a gesture of his crook he was drawing Vorvolac through the air.
Abby said in a voice of fear, “It is the Betrayer.”
I said, “You mean Ossifrage’s younger cousin or whatever up there?” Because the guy really did have a family resemblance to Ossifrage.
Abby said, “He is called Glede, the Black Kite. The eight navies and eightscore warships of the aeons of Elam, Asshur, Uz and Ul he ov
erthrew; great cities of Sasan and Svan, of Brennis and Tharsis also were cast into the sea and drowned at his word.”
I said, “How can he do so much damage just with levitation? Levitation is a wimpy superpower.”
Abby said, “It is said the Betrayer can make the calm sea lighter or heavier in one place or another, as if the whole world were tilted, and so stir up great tidal waves as tall as mountains walking on the sea.”
Penny said, “Even in this light, which stops my song from afflicting men, I can summon the soul of the water.”
“What’s that mean?” I said.
“It means I can prevent the Betrayer from flooding us with the cistern lake, but that is all I can do. My art is not meant for closed-in spaces or small pools.”
Abby shouted, “Look!”
Foster said, “Enemy at six o’clock high! There are cynocephali above us!”
It was true. A cavalry of wolf monsters came swarming out of the windows of the next highest line of lit balconies above us, maybe two hundred yards away, maybe less, straight up the wall. They were sticking to the sheer wall like spiders, trotting, not close enough yet to charge. Or rappel. Or paratroop-drop. I am not sure what it is called when you charge down a sheer vertical wall.
At the same moment, the prow of the armored airship lofted above the railing, as huge as if the face of the Sphinx in Egypt were raising its head to look at me. Affixed to the rigid airship frame were weapons shaped like brass searchlights, and others shaped like arbalests and catapults. From square hatches in the side of the gondola protruded good, old-fashioned cannon like those from the days of Napoleon, except more decorative. The intricately-cast cannon mouths looked like so many astonished dragons with their mouths wide open in circles of anger and shock, all thrusting their serpent heads like town gossips out of their Dutch doors.
From the cheeks of the vast and kingly face of the bowsprit, like the outrageous sideburns of Civil War officers, there were upper and lower catwalks extending along the airframe. On these walks were marines in Victorian pressure suits, like extras from the undersea scenes of Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. They dripped with rivulets of water, and pointed long-barreled weapons of strange design at me; some looked like spearguns, or like blunderbusses, others like fire-extinguishers of bronze.
The brass eyeballs of the giant airship face irised open. Behind was the bridge.
4. Left Eye and Right Eye
Behind the glass of one eyeball, I saw my old pal Enmeduranki. And I do mean old. He looked more worn and withered than the mummy of Pharaoh Nectanebo I had met earlier (not many hours earlier but many thousands of feet higher).
I had not seen his face before. Then, he had been wearing a veil. His jaw was narrow, undershot, beardless except for a straggling scrap of white, and his mouth a crumpled and crooked line, as if it were full of unsweetened lemonade.
He was not on his throne, but standing. Near him were flunkies and high servants in elaborate miters and crowns and copes of white and black, each bearing a more highly decorated emblem of a nine-pointed star on brow or chest than the next, and not one of them was younger than ninety. I assumed these were the other upper ranking magicians, Astrologers and Chaldaeans of the Dark Tower. Some were carrying copper tablets, and some scrolls or charming wands. Behind Enmeduranki was a Blemmyae slave carrying a wide umbrella painted with astrological figures.
Enmeduranki was awesome enough, by the Dark Tower scale of awesome, to have a parasol even while he was inside the bridge of a submarine inside of an indoor cistern, where no drop of rain nor ray of sun could ever come.
And not one of the chief magicians lacked a treasonous hint of the same tired, weary, bored, forever-trapped look in their faces that Enmeduranki had in his face. His was the worst, the most lined, the most filled with despair, but they all had it a little bit. On their faces I saw the grinding madness of knowing the future.
The other eye of the giant face, when it opened, was filled with splendor. Here was a man among men and a king of kings—you could see that even if you were blind.
I was practically at the rail, and the airship was very close to the rail and winching itself closer, so I could see every detail of the Great King clearly.
Above his head, floating and weightless, was a coronet of tiny lights in a circle, brighter and sharper than fireflies, which somehow also looked as if they were immensely far away and utterly holy and pure. They looked like stars from the sky, ripped from heaven to serve as his hat.
The man himself was square-faced, hard-featured, square-bearded, and scarred. His eyes were like two black beads of jet, very dark and very shiny. He was evidently the kind of leader, like Patton or Alexander the Great, who led his men from the front, not from some Pentagon over the sea.
His robe was even more splendid than his crown. Above his armor, which was plated and leaved with brightest gold and blackest onyx, was a robe and alb and mantle of flowing white light. It looked like someone had taken laser-beams, made them as flexible and weightless as spiderwebs, and woven them on a loom.
But the white light was an illusion: every color in the rainbow was in that robe, and there were images within images in the white fields and folds of the mantle, and the longer I stared at the hypnotically circling spirals of images, the more I saw.
This was not like looking at an ordinary object made of matter, which fades in your memory after a month or a decade or a lifetime. The visions woven in the robe reached into my brain and drew themselves there. Whenever I close my eyes, I can bring up the memory in perfect detail, like a three-dimensional picture. If you ever see any object, a weapon, a crown, or a robe that instead of shining with light, shines with this stuff, this light that cannot be forgotten, the light immune from time, you will know you are not looking at an object from the human parts of the universe.
I saw images in silver of moons in crescent phase, and planets rising and setting over green fields. I saw two cities, one at peace woven in azure and alabaster, and one at war, illumed in red and black. I could see tiny images of a bride and groom in one city, or a judge lifting his balance scale above a kneeling criminal, whereas the warlike city showed the horrors of a siege, flames and rapine and desperate men chewing the flesh of their horses or children. Ruby-hued pulsed the glint of swords and the gush of wounds in that microscopic, glowing, supernatural thread-light. In green, I saw fields being harvested, and vineyards, and in gold, a herd of straight-horned cattle.
As the robe folded and rippled, I saw a bull from the herd savaged by lion and lioness, which the herdsmen and their dogs fended off. I saw slaves at their labor and scholars bent over their scrolls and a dancing floor where maidens bent and swayed in the dance as the robelight flowed and breathed. Surrounding all, forming the hem of the garment, was the deep ocean-stream where dolphins and leviathans sported, and a kraken with uplifted jaws rose up from a great river. And in the center of the robe’s breast was an image of a golden sun, surrounded by a spray of arrows with bright rays, too bright for my eyes to look at.
The garment itself was never without motion, and weight did not seem to touch it. Whatever winds were moving it were not the winds of this world in which I stood. The golden armor and his short and crooked sword, as drenched with gems as a Fabergé egg, looked cheap and tawdry by contrast, the way you sometimes see a gorgeous girl make herself look clownish by hiding her beautiful face under clumsy makeup meant to improve her looks.
In his hand was a spear made of a narwhal’s horn. Or maybe it was the horn of a unicorn. The thing was at least five feet tall, and came to his shoulder when at parade rest. So the Great King stood, looking down at me, garbed with a rainbow if a rainbow could be made of fire, one hand behind his back, his feet spread, his star-crowned head tilted forward.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
Abby could see where my dazed eyes stared. She said, “Anshargal, He Who Binds Earth to Heaven.”
The men near Anshargal were younger than the As
trologers. They were hard-faced men, wearing cylindrical war-helmets, carrying jeweled and crooked swords. Each had a baldric or sash studded with little hemispheres painted to look like Earth. Some had one, others had many. It was like seeing the notching in a gun, or the silhouettes painted on the hull of a fighter pilot’s plane. The marshals and generals and admirals of the Great King wore each man on his chest how many slave-worlds the troops under his command had trampled.
I flourished my katana and saluted the Great King by holding the blade before my eyes.
He nodded regally, and I was close enough to see the scar near his mouth pucker slightly as he suppressed a smile.
I also flipped the bird to Enmeduranki with my left hand.
And, again, I saw the scar of the cheek of Anshargal the Great King pucker slightly as, again, he did not smile.
5. Seen and Foreseen
There was some sort of bullhorn or amplifier working, because I heard his voice loud and clear through the glass surface of the eyeball-window. Anshargal said, “So this is the Undying that you talked me into letting defeat my most useful man-slaughterer Rahab?”
Enmeduranki replied, “Sire and Son of Nimrod, all has been seen and foreseen.”
“You have never read me a future with more gaps and blind spots in it,” Anshargal said in an icily jovial tone. “I don’t care for games where I cannot see the chessmen.”
He did not say ‘chess’ but meelulti-passu, a battle-game with pawns. Which, in a way, was even more demeaning a comment: a game where all the men were of low value.
Enmeduranki inclined his head, “Sire, there is the mermaid he loves.” The word he used was Naihiru, which means siren, dolphin, or whale.