Dragon Wing

9

Limbeck was looking forward to the flashraft ride across Drevlin to the capital city of Wombe. He had never ridden a flashraft before. Nobody in his scrift had, and there were more than a few mutterings among the crowd about common criminals getting privileges to which ordinary citizens weren’t entitled.

Somewhat hurt at being referred to as a common criminal, Limbeck climbed up the steps and entered what resembled a gleaming brass box fitted with windows and perched on numerous metal wheels that ran along a metal track. Taking his spectacles from his pocket, Limbeck hooked the frail wire stems over his ears and peered at the crowd. He easily located Jarre among the throng, though her head and face were hidden in the shadows of a voluminous cloak. It was too dangerous for any sort of sign to pass between them, but Limbeck did not think it would hurt if he brought his thick fingers to his lips and blew her a small kiss.

A couple standing alone at the far end of the platform caught his attention and he was astounded to recognize his parents. At first it touched him that they would come to see him off. However, a glimpse of his father’s smiling face, half-hidden by a gigantic muffler he had wound around his neck to ensure that no one knew him, made Limbeck understand that his parents had not come out of filial devotion but probably to make certain they were actually seeing the last of a son who had brought them nothing but turmoil and disgrace. Sighing, Limbeck settled back in the wooden seat.

The flashraft’s driver, commonly known as a flasher, glared back at his two passengers, Limbeck and the copper who accompanied him, in the only compartment on the vehicle. This unusual stop in the station of Het had put the flasher way behind schedule and he didn’t want to waste any more time. Seeing Limbeck start to stand up—the Geg thought he saw his old teacher in the crowd—the flasher threw both sections of his carefully parted beard over his shoulders, grasped two of the many tin hands before him, and pulled. Several metal hands sticking up from the compartment’s roof reached out and grabbed hold of a cable suspended above them. An arc of blue lightning flared, a whistle-toot shrilled loudly, and, amidst crackling zuzts of electricity, the flashraft jolted forward.

The brass box rocked and swayed back and forth, the hands above them that clung to the cable sparked alarmingly, but the flasher never seemed to notice. Grasping another tin hand, he pushed it clear to the wall and the vehicle picked up speed. Limbeck thought he had never in his life experienced anything so marvelous.

The flashraft was created long ago by the Mangers for the benefit of the Kicksey-Winsey. When the Mangers mysteriously disappeared, the Kicksey-Winsey took over the operation and kept the flashraft alive just as it kept itself alive. The Gegs lived to serve both.

Each Geg belonged to a scrift—a clan that had lived in the same city and had worshiped the same part of the Kicksey-Winsey since the Mangers first brought the Gegs to this realm. Each Geg performed the same task his father performed before him and his grandfather before him and his grandfather before him. The Gegs did their work well. They were competent, skilled, and dexterous, but unimaginative. Each Geg knew how to serve his or her particular part of the Kicksey-Winsey and had no interest in any other part. Further, he never questioned the reasons for doing what he did. Why the whirly-wheel had to be turned, why the black arrow of the whistle toot should never be allowed to point to red, why the pull-arm needed to be pulled, the push-arm pushed, or the cranky-clank cranked were questions that did not occur to the average Geg. But Limbeck was not an average Geg.

Delving into the whys and wherefores of the great Kicksey-Winsey was blasphemous and would call down the wrath of the clarks—the ecclesiastical force on Drevlin. Performing his or her act of worship as taught by the scrift teachers and doing it well was the height of ambition for most Gegs. It would gain them (or their children) a place in the realms above. But not Limbeck. After the novelty of moving at a terrific rate of speed wore off, Limbeck began to find riding in the flashraft extremely depressing. The rain dashed against the windows. Natural lightning-not the blue lightning created by the Kicksey-Winsey—streaked down from the swirling clouds and occasionally fought the blue lightning, causing the brass box to buck and jolt. Hail clattered on the roof. Lumbering around, beneath, above, and through huge sections of the Kicksey-Winsey, the flashraft seemed to be smugly exhibiting—to Limbeck, at least—the enslavement of the Gegs.

The flames from gigantic furnaces lit the oppressive and everlasting gloom. By their light, Limbeck could see his people—nothing more than squat, dark shadows against the glowing red—tending to the Kicksey-Winsey’s needs. The sight stirred an anger in Limbeck, an anger that he realized remorsefully had been banked and nearly allowed to die out as he’d grown absorbed in the business of organizing WUPP.

He was glad to feel the anger again, glad to accept its offer of strength, and was just pondering on how he could work this into his speech when a comment from his companion brought a momentary interruption to his thoughts.

“What was that?” asked Limbeck.

“I said, it’s beautiful, ain’t it?” repeated the copper, staring at the Kicksey-Winsey in reverent awe.

That does it, thought Limbeck, thoroughly outraged. When I come before the High Froman, I will tell them the truth. . . .

. . . “Get out!” shouted the teacher, his beard bristling with rage. “Get out, Limbeck Bolttightner, and never let me see those weak eyes of yours in this school again!”

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset.” Young Limbeck rose to his feet.

“Out!” howled the Geg.

“It was a perfectly sousound question.”

The sight of his instructor rushing at him, upraised wrench in hand, caused the pupil to beat a swift and undignified retreat from the classroom. Fourteen-turn Limbeck left the Kicksey-Winsey school in such haste that he didn’t have time to put on his spectacles, and consequently, when he reached the red creaking cog, he took a wrong turn. The exits were marked, of course, but the nearsighted Limbeck couldn’t read the writing. He opened a door he thought led to the corridor that led to the marketplace, got a blast of wind right in the face, and realized that this particular door opened on Outside. The young Geg had never been Outside. Due to the fearsome storms that swept over the land on the average of one or two an hour, no one ever left the shelter of the town and the comforting presence of the Kicksey-Winsey. Rife with tunnels and covered walkways and underground passages, the cities and towns of Drevlin were constructed in such a way that a Geg could go for months without ever feeling a raindrop splash on his face. Those who had to travel used the flashraft or the Gegavators. Few Gegs ever, ever walked Outside. Limbeck hesitated on the doorstoop, peering nearsightedly into the windswept, rain-drenched landscape. Though the wind blew strongly, there was a lull between storms and a feeble gray light was strained through the perpetual clouds—as close as Drevlin ever came to basking in the rays of Solarus. The light made the ordinarily gloomy landscape of Drevlin almost lovely. It winked and blinked on the many whirling and pumping and turning arms and claws and wheels of the Kicksey-Winsey. It glistened in the clouds of steam rolling up to join their cousins in the skies. It made the dreary and drab landscape of Drevlin, with its gouges and slag heaps and pits and holes, seem almost attractive (particularly if all one could see was a kind of pleasant, fuzzy, mud-colored blur).

Limbeck knew at once he had taken a wrong turning. He knew he should go back, but the only place he had to go was home, and he was aware that by now word of his getting kicked out of Kicksey-Winsey school would have reached his parents. Braving the terrors of Outside was far more attractive than braving the wrath of his father, and so Limbeck, without a second thought, walked Outside, letting the door slam shut behind him.

Learning to walk in mud was an experience all in itself. On his third step, he slipped and plunked down heavily in the muck. Upon rising, he discovered that one boot was firmly mired, and it took all his strength to tug it out. Peering dimly around, Limbeck concluded that the slag heaps might provide better walking. He slogged his way through the muck and eventually reached the piles of coralite that had been tossed aside by the strong digger hands of the Kicksey-Winsey. Climbing up on the hard, pocked surface of the coralite, Limbeck was pleased to note he was right-walking was much easier up here than in the mud.

He guessed, too, that the view should be spectacular, and thought he really should see it. Pulling out his spectacles, he hooked them over his ears and gazed around.

The smokestacks and holding tanks, lightning-flinging arms and huge revolving wheels of the Kicksey-Winsey thrust up from the flat plains of Drevlin; many of them towering so far into the sky that their steaming heads were lost in the clouds. Limbeck stared at the Kicksey-Winsey in awe. One tended, when one served only one portion of the gigantic creation, to concentrate on just that one part and lose sight of the whole. The old saying about not seeing the wheel for the cogs came to Limbeck’s mind.

“Why?” he asked (which was, by the way, the very question that had caused him to be thrown out of school). “Why is the Kicksey-Winsey here? Why did the Mangers build it, then leave it? Why do the immortal Welves come and go every month and never fulfill their promise to lift us up into the shining realms above? Why? Why? Why?”

The questions beat in Limbeck’s head until either these resounding whys or the wind rushing past him or the act of staring up at the gleaming structure of the Kicksey-Winsey or all three together began to make him dizzy. Blinking, he took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Clouds were massing on the horizon, but the Geg judged it would be some time yet before another storm swept over the land. If he went home now, a storm of a different sort would sweep over him. Limbeck decided to explore.

Fearing he might fall and break his precious spectacles, Limbeck tucked them carefully into the pocket of his shirt and began to make his way across the slag heap. Being short and stocky and deft in their movements, Gegs are remarkably surefooted. They clump across narrow catwalks built hundreds of feet above the ground without turning a hair in their beards. Gegs desiring to go from one level to another will often catch hold of the spokes of one of the huge wheels and ride it up, dangling by their hands, from the bottom to the top. Despite the fact that he couldn’t see very clearly, Limbeck soon figured out how to traverse the cracked and broken piles of coralite. He was just moving really well and making some headway when he stepped on a loose chunk that tilted and threw him sideways. After that, he had to concentrate on watching his footing, and it was undoubtedly due to this that he forgot to watch the approach of the clouds. It was only when a gust of wind nearly blew him off his feet and drops of rain splattered into his eyes that he remembered the storm.

Hastily Limbeck pulled out his spectacles, put them on, and looked around. He had traveled quite a distance without knowing it. The clouds were swooping down on him, the shelter of the Kicksey-Winsey was some distance away, and it would take him a long time to retrace his route among the broken coralite. The storms on Drevlin were fierce and dangerous. Limbeck could see blackened holes blown in the coralite from the deadly lightning strikes. If the lightning didn’t get him, there was no doubt that the giant hailstones would, and the Geg was just beginning to think that he wouldn’t have to worry about facing his father ever again when, turning completely around, he saw a large Something on the fast-darkening horizon.

Just what the Something was, he couldn’t tell from this distance (his spectacles were covered with water), but there was a chance that it might offer shelter from the storm. Keeping his spectacles on, knowing that he would need them to help locate the object, Limbeck tottered and stumbled over the slag heap.

Rain began pouring down, and Limbeck soon discovered he could see better without spectacles than he could with them, and pulled them off. The object was now nothing but a blur in front of him, but it was a blur that was rapidly growing larger, indicating he was getting nearer. Without his spectacles, Limbeck couldn’t see what it was, until he was actually standing right in front of it.

“A Welf ship!” he gasped.

Though he had never seen one, the Geg recognized the ship instantly from the descriptions given by those who had. Made of dragon skin stretched over wood, with huge wings that kept it soaring in the air, the ship was monstrous in both appearance and size. The magical power of the Welves kept it afloat, carrying them from the heavens to the lowly realm of the Gegs below. But this ship wasn’t flying or floating. It was lying on the ground, and Limbeck, staring at it nearsightedly through the driving rain, could have sworn—if such a thing were possible for a ship of the immortal Welves—that it was broken. Pieces of sharp wood jutted up at odd angles. The dragon skin was torn and rent, leaving gaping holes.

A bolt of lightning striking quite near him, and the resultant thunder, caused the Geg to remember his danger. Hurriedly he leapt into one of the holes that had been torn in the side of the ship.

A sickening smell made Limbeck gag.

“Ugh.” He grasped his nose with his hand. “It reminds me of the time the rat crawled up the chimney and died. I wonder what’s causing it.” The storm had settled in; the darkness inside the ship was intense. The lightning strikes were almost continuous, however, providing brief flashes of illuminating light before the ship was once again plunged into pitch-darkness. The light didn’t help Limbeck much. Nor did his spectacles, when he finally remembered to put them on. The interior of the ship was strange and made no sense to him. He couldn’t tell up from down or what was floor or wall. Objects were scattered about, but he didn’t know what they were or what they did and was reluctant to touch them. He had a fear, in the back of his mind, that if he bothered anything the strange craft might suddenly rise up and fly off with him. And though the thought of such an adventure was somewhat exciting, Limbeck knew that if his father had been mad before, he would positively foam at the mouth to hear that his son had in any way annoyed the Welves. Limbeck resolved to keep near the doorway, holding his nose, until the storm ended and he could find his way back to Het. But the whys and whats and wherefores that were continually plunging him into trouble in school began buzzing in his brain.

“I wonder what those are,” he muttered, staring at a number of fascinating-looking blurs lying scattered about on the floor just a few feet in front of him.

Cautiously he drew nearer. They didn’t look dangerous. In fact, they looked like . . .

“Books!” said Limbeck in astonishment. “Just like the ones the old clark used to teach me to read.”

Before Limbeck quite knew what was happening, the “why” was propelling him forward.

He was very near the objects and could see, with growing excitement, that they were books, when his foot struck against something that was soft and squishy. Leaning down, gagging at the foul smell, Limbeck waited for another lightning flash to show him the obstacle.

It was, he saw in horror, a bloated and decaying corpse. . . .

“Hey, wake up,” said the copper, poking Limbeck in the side. “Wombe’s the next stop.”