Fire Sea

19

Prince Edmund told his people where he was going and why. They listened in unhappy silence, afraid of losing their prince, yet knowing that there was no other way.

“Baltazar will be your leader in my absence,” Edmund announced simply, at the end. “Follow him, obey him as you would me.”

He left amid silence. Not one found words to call out a blessing to him. Although in their hearts they feared for him, they feared a terrible, bitter death even more and so they let him go in silence, choked by their own guilt.

Baltazar accompanied the prince back to the end of the cavern, arguing all the way that Edmund should at least take bodyguards—the most stalwart of the new dead—into Necropolis. The prince refused.

“We come to our brethren in peace. Bodyguards imply mistrust.”

“Call it a guard of honor then,” Baltazar urged. “It is not right that Your Highness goes unattended. You will look like . . . like . . .”

“Like what I am,” Edmund said in grim tones. “A pauper. A prince of the starving, the destitute. If the price we must pay to find help for our people is bending our pride to this dynast then I will kneel gladly at his feet.”

“A prince of Kairn Telest, kneeling!” The necromancer’s black brows formed a tight-knit knot above shadowed eyes.

Edmund halted, rounded on the man. “We could have remained standing upright in Kairn Telest, Baltazar. We’d be frozen stiff in that posture, of course—”

“Your Highness is correct. I beg your pardon.” Baltazar sighed heavily. “Still, I don’t trust them. Admit it to yourself, Edmund, if you refuse to admit it to me or anyone else. These people destroyed our world deliberately. We come on them as a reproach.”

“So much the better, Baltazar. Guilt softens the heart—”

“Or hardens it. Be wary, Edmund. Be cautious.”

“I will, my dear friend. I will. And, at least, I don’t travel quite alone.” The prince’s gaze glanced off Haplo, lounging idly against the cave wall, and Alfred, endeavoring to pull his foot out of a crack in the floor. The dog sat at the prince’s feet and wagged its tail.

“No.” Baltazar agreed dryly. “And I like that least of all, somehow. I don’t trust these two any more than I trust this so-called dynast. There, there. I’ll say nothing more except farewell, Your Highness! Farewell!”

The necromancer clasped the prince close. Edmund returned the embrace fondly and both men separated, the one heading out the cavern, the other remaining behind, watching the red of the Fire Sea bathe the prince in its lurid light. Haplo whistled, and the dog dashed up to trot along at its master’s side.

They reached Safe Harbor without incident, if one didn’t count stopping to haul the nervous Alfred out of whatever predicament he managed to blunder into along the way. Haplo came close to impatiently ordering the Sartan to utilize his magic, float as he had done when they entered the cavern, let magic lift those clumsy feet up over rocks and crevices.

But Haplo kept quiet. He guessed that both he and Alfred were far stronger in magic than any of these people. He didn’t want them to know how strong. Conjuring up fish had them awestruck, and that was a spell a child could perform. Never reveal a weakness to an enemy, never reveal a strength. Now all he had to worry about was Alfred. Haplo decided, after reflection, that Alfred wouldn’t be tempted to give away his true powers. The man had spent years trying to conceal his magic. He wasn’t about to use it now.

Arriving in Safe Harbor, they met the young duke and duchess standing on the obsidian pier. Both necromancers were admiring—or perhaps inspecting—Haplo’s ship.

“Do you know, sir?” The young lord, catching sight of them, turned from his examination of the ship and hastened toward Haplo. “I’ve thought of where I’ve seen runes like this before! The game—rune-bone!” He waited for Haplo’s response, obviously expected Haplo to know what he was talking about.

Haplo didn’t.

“My dear,” said the observant Jera, “the man has no idea what you mean. Why don’t we—”

“Oh, really?” Jonathan appeared quite astonished. “I thought everyone—It’s played with bones, you know. Runes like those on your ship are inscribed on the bones. Why, say, come to think of it, the same runes are on your hands and arms, too! Why, you might be a walking game wall!” The duke laughed.

“What a dreadful thing to say, Jonathan! You’re embarrassing the poor man,” remonstrated his wife, although she gazed at Haplo with an intensity the Patryn found disconcerting.

Haplo scratched at the backs of his hands, saw the woman’s green eyes focus on the runes tattooed on the skin. He coolly thrust his hands into the pockets of his leather trousers, forced himself to smile pleasantly.

“I’m not embarrassed. I’m interested. I never, heard of a game such as you describe. I’d like to see it, learn how it’s played.”

“Nothing easier! I’ve a set of rune-bones at home. Perhaps, when we land, we could go back to our house—”

“My dearest,” said Jera, amused, “when we land we are going to the palace! With His Highness.” She gave her husband a nudge, recalling him to the fact that he had, in his enthusiasm, impolitely ignored the prince.

“I beg Your Highness’s pardon.” Jonathan flushed red. “It’s just that I really never saw anything quite like this ship....”

“No, please don’t apologize.” Edmund, too, was staring at the ship and at Haplo with new-kindled interest. “It is remarkable. Quite remarkable.”

“The dynast will be fascinated!” Jonathan stated. “He adores the game, never misses an evening’s play. Wait until he sees you and hears about your ship. He won’t let you go,” he assured Haplo earnestly.

Haplo didn’t find that idea at all encouraging. Alfred cast him an alarmed glance. But the Patryn had an unexpected ally in the duchess.

“Jonathan, I don’t believe we should mention the ship to the dynast. After all, Prince Edmund’s business is far more serious. And I”—the green eyes turned on Haplo—“would like to have my father’s counsel on this matter before we discuss it with anyone else.”

The young duke and duchess exchanged glances. Jonathan’s face sobered immediately. “A wise suggestion, my dear. My wife has the brains in the family.”

“No, no, Jonathan,” Jera protested, faintly blushing. “After all, you were the one who noticed the connection between the runes on the ship and the game.”

“Common sense, then,” Jonathan suggested, smiling at her and patting her hand. “We make a good team. I’m subject to whim, to impulse. I tend to act before I think. Jera keeps me in line. But she, on the other hand, would never do anything exciting or out of the ordinary if I wasn’t around to make her life interesting.” Leaning down, he kissed her soundly on her cheek.

“Jonathan! Please!” Her face was mantled with blushes. “What will His Highness think of us!”

“His Highness thinks he has rarely seen two people more deeply in love,” said Edmund, smiling.

“We have not been married very long, Your Highness,” Jera added, still blushing, but with a fond glance at her husband. Her hand twined around his.

Haplo was thankful that the conversation had turned from him. He knelt down beside the dog, made a show of examining the animal.

“Sar—Alfred,” he called. “Come here, will you? I think the dog’s picked up a rock in his paw. You hold him, will you, while I take a look?”

Alfred looked panicked. “Me, hold ... hold the—”

“Shut up and do as I say!” Haplo shot him a vicious glance. “He won’t hurt you. Not unless I tell him to.”

Bending down, the Patryn lifted the animal’s left front paw and pretended to examine it. Alfred did as he was told, his hands gingerly and ineffectively grasping the dog’s middle.

“What do you make of all this?” Haplo demanded in a low voice.

“I’m not certain. I can’t see well,” Alfred answered, peering at the paw. “If you could turn it to the light—”

“I don’t mean the dog!” Haplo almost shouted in exasperation, fought down his frustration, lowered his voice. “I mean the runes. you ever hear anything of this game they’re talking about?”

“No, never.” Alfred shook his head. “Your people were not a subject to be treated lightly among us. To think of making a game—” He looked at the runes on Haplo’s hand, shining blue and red as they worked their magic against the heat of the magma sea. Alfred shivered. “No, it would be impossible!”

“Like me trying to use your runes?” Haplo asked. The dog, pleased with the attention, sat patiently, submitting its paw to being poked and prodded.

“Yes, much the same. It would be difficult for you to touch them, just as you can’t easily speak them. Maybe it’s coincidence,” Alfred offered hopefully. “Meaningless scrawls that have the appearance of runes.”

Haplo grunted. “I don’t believe in coincidence, Sartan. There, you’re all right, boy! What did you mean, whining like that over nothing?”

Playfully, he rolled the dog over, scratched it on the belly. The dog wriggled on its back, indulging in a long luxurious scratch along its spine. Flipping over, it jumped up, shook itself, refreshed. Haplo rose to his feet, ignoring Alfred, who, in attempting to stand, lost his balance and sat down heavily. The duke hastened to assist him.

“Will you sail your ship across the Fire Sea or travel with us?” the duchess asked Haplo.

The Patryn had been pondering this question himself. If they were truly using Patryn runes in that city, there was the possibility, however remote, that someone might be able to break through his carefully planned defenses. The ship would be more difficult for him to reach, docked in this harbor on the opposite shore, but there would be fewer to see it and gape at it and perhaps attempt to meddle with it.

“I’ll sail with you, Your Grace,” Haplo replied. “And leave my ship here.”

“That is wise,” the lady said, nodding her head, and it seemed her thoughts had run the same course as the Patryn’s. He saw her glance stray to the cloud-covered city, perched on a cliff at the rear of the enormous cavern, and he saw her frown. All was not well there, apparently, but then Haplo had seen few places where living beings existed that were not subject to strife and turmoil. Those had, however, been run by humans, elves, dwarves. This city was run by Sartan, noted for their ability to dwell together in peace and in harmony. Interesting. Very interesting.

The small group walked down the length of the empty, deserted dock toward the duke’s ship. It was an iron monster designed—as were most ships in the realms Haplo had traveled—in the shape of a dragon. Far larger than Haplo’s elven ship, the black iron dragonship was fearsome in appearance, its huge, ugly, black head rearing up out of the magma sea. Red lights gleamed from its eyes, red fire burned in its gaping mouth, smoke issued in puffs from the iron nostrils.

The army of the dead straggled ahead of them, dropping bits of bone, armor, a hank of hair as they marched. One cadaver, almost completely reduced to a skeleton, suddenly keeled over, its legs crumbling beneath it. The dead soldier lay on the dock in a confused heap of bones and armor, its helm perched at an insane angle on its skull.

The duke and duchess paused, whispering together in hasty conference, considering the feasibility of attempting to raise the thing again. They decided to leave it. Time was pressing. The army continued on, clanking and rattling down the obsidian pier toward the ship. Haplo, glancing back at the skeleton, thought he could see its phantasm hovering over it, wailing like a mother over a dead child.

What was the unheard voice crying? To be brought back to this mockery of life again? Haplo again felt revulsion twist inside him. He turned away, shoving the thought from his mind. Hearing a snuffling sound, he glanced contemptuously at Alfred, saw tears sliding down the man’s cheeks.

Haplo sneered, but his own gaze lingered on the wretched army. A Sartan army. He felt unaccountably, uncomfortably disturbed, as if the neatly arranged world he had long envisioned had suddenly turned upside down and inside out.

•

“What type of magic powers has this ship?” Haplo asked, having walked the length and breadth of the top deck and seen no sign of magic emanations, no Sartan wizards chanting runes, no Sartan runes traced on hull or rudder. Yet the iron dragon sped swiftly across the magma sea, belching clouds of billowing smoke from its nostrils.

“Not magic. Water,” answered Jonathan. “Steam, actually.” He seemed slightly embarrassed by the fact, defensive at Haplo’s look of surprise. “The ships used to be powered by magic, back in the early days.”

“Before the magic was needed to raise and maintain the dead,” Alfred said, casting a look of pitying horror at the cadavers ranged in ragged lines on the deck.

“Yes, quite true,” Jonathan answered, more subdued than Haplo recalled having seen him since their first meeting. “And, to be perfectly honest, to maintain ourselves. You both are learning what magical strength it takes merely to survive down here. The tremendous heat, the noxious fumes take their toll. When we arrive at the city itself, you will be subjected, constantly, to a terrible type of rain that nourishes nothing but eats away at everything—stone, flesh—”

“And yet this land is habitable, compared to the rest of the world, Your Grace,” said Edmund, his gaze on the storm-ridden clouds shrouding the city. “Do you think we fled the moment life grew difficult for us? We fled only when it grew impossible! There comes a point when not even the most powerful rune-magic will sustain life in a realm where there is no warmth, where the water itself turns hard as rock, and perpetual darkness falls over the land.”

“And every cycle that passes,” Jera said softly, “the magma sea on which we sail shrinks a little more, the temperature in the city drops a fraction of a degree. And we are near its core! So my father has determined.”

“Is that true?” the prince asked, troubled.

“My dear, you shouldn’t be saying such things,” Jonathan whispered nervously.

“My husband’s right. According to the edicts, it’s treason to even think such thoughts. But, yes, Your Highness, I do speak the truth! Myself and others like me and my father will continue to speak the truth, although some don’t want to hear it!” Jera lifted her chin proudly. “My father studies scientific subjects, physical laws and properties, matters that are looked down on as being beneath our people’s notice. He could have become a necromancer, but he refused, saying that it was time the people of this world focused their attention on the living, not the dead.”

Edmund appeared to find this statement somewhat radical. “I agree with that view to a certain extent, but without our dead, how could we living survive? We would be forced to use our magic to perform menial tasks, instead of conserving it for our maintenance.”

“If we allowed the dead to die and if we built and used machines, such as the ones powering this ship, and if we worked and studied and learned more about the resources of our world, it is my father’s belief that we would not only survive but prosper. Perhaps we might even learn ways to bring life back to regions such as your own, Your Highness.”

“My dear, is this wise, talking like this in front of strangers?” Jonathan murmured, his cheeks pale.

“Far better to talk like this in front of strangers than those who call themselves our friends!” Jera answered bitterly. “The time is long past, says my father, when we should cease to wait for those from other worlds to come and ‘rescue’ us. It is time we rescued ourselves.”

Her gaze flicked, as if by accident, to the two strangers. Haplo kept his eyes firmly fixed on the woman, his expression impassive. He dared not risk a glance at the Sartan, but he knew without looking that Alfred would look as guilty as if the words Yes, I Come from Another World were written across his forehead.

“And, yet, you, Your Grace, became a necromancer,” Edmund observed, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“Yes, I did,” Jera said, sadly. “It was necessary. We are caught in a circle that is like a snake, who can maintain its life only by feeding off its own tail. A necromancer is essential to the running of any household. Most especially to ours, since we have been banished to the Old Provinces,”

“What are those?” Edmund asked, glad to change the subject, steer it away from talk he obviously considered dangerous, perhaps blasphemous.

“You will see. We must pass through them on our way to the city.”

“Perhaps you, Your Highness, and you, gentlemen, would be interested in observing how the ship operates?” Jonathan offered, anxious to end this conversation. “You’ll find it really quite amusing and entertaining.”

Haplo agreed readily, any type of knowledge about this world was essential to him. Edmund agreed, perhaps secretly thinking that ships like these would carry his people to Death’s Gate. Alfred went along simply, Haplo thought uncharitably, so that the inept Sartan might have the opportunity of falling headfirst down a flight of iron steps into the ship’s hot, dark belly.

The ship was operated by a crew of cadavers, better kept than the army, who had performed their tasks in life and so continued to perform them in death. Haplo explored the mysteries of something called a “boiler” and marveled politely at another essential piece of equipment known as a “paddle wheel,” its iron heated red-hot, that churned through the magma, pushing the dragonship along from behind.

The mechanics reminded the Patryn forcibly of the great Kicksey-winsey, the wondrous machine built by the Sartan and now run by the Gegs of Arianus; the wondrous machine whose purpose no one had understood until the child, Bane, figured it out.

The time is long past when we should cease to wait for those from other worlds to come and “rescue” us.

Haplo, ascending back on deck, thankful to leave the terrible heat and oppressive darkness below, recalled Jera’s words. The Patryn couldn’t help grinning. What sweet irony. The one who had come to “rescue” these Sartan was their ancient enemy. How his lord would laugh!

The iron ship sailed into a harbor, far larger and much busier than the one they had just left. Ships plied the magma sea both above and below where they docked. The thriving New Provinces, Jonathan pointed out, were located near the shores of the Fire Sea, close enough to benefit from the heat, yet far enough not to suffer from it.

Once off the ship, the duke and duchess turned the captaincy of their army over to another necromancer, who shook his head at the sight of the cadavers and marched them off to effect what repairs he could.

Thankful to be rid of their charges, Jera and her husband gave their guests a brief tour of the dockyard. Haplo had the impression that, for all Jera’s gloomy talk, Necropolis—to judge by the goods piled up on the docks or being loaded onto ships by teams of cadavers—was a thriving and wealthy community.

They left the pier, heading for the main highway into the city. But, before they reached it, Jera brought the party to a halt, pointed back at the shoreline of the fiery ocean.

“Look, there,” she said, her hand extended. “See those three rocks, standing one on top of the other. I placed them in that position before we left. And when I placed them there, the magma sea reached to their base.”

The ocedri Was not at the base any longer. Haplo could have set his hand down in the breadth of empty shoreline left between rock and sea.

“Already, in this short span of time,” said Jera, “the magma has receded that far. What will happen to this world, to us, when it has cooled completely?”