“Describe it.”
“We would have to get under way again, running before the wind on nearly bare poles. The small Okamisi ship would have to trim its storm sails with the utmost skill so as to match our speed exactly, then come alongside as close as she dared. We would shoot a line to her with a catapult. This line would be used to haul over a strong hawser with a block-and-tackle apparatus attached. Our two ships being connected safely, you would have to get into a kind of lifebuoy-ring fastened to the block riding the hawser. Those on Lyath would then draw you across the gap between the vessels by pulling on the first rope.”
Anigel’s face went white during the captain’s recital, but she managed a smile. “I am willing to do it.”
“No, my Queen, you will not!” cried Velinikar. “If the two vessels should happen to drift apart all of a sudden, or one get ahead of the other in a rogue blast of wind, the ropes could break, dropping you into the sea. And if the boats were thrust suddenly close together, you would also go into the water as the ropes sagged—perhaps being crushed between the two hulls.”
“I must do it,” she said simply. “It is our only chance to save the King and the children. Make preparations, Captain, while I bespeak Jagun and have the Lyath do the same.”
First the flagship’s carpenter had to construct the breeches buoy, which was nothing but a cork-bark ring less than an ell in diameter, with a cutoff pair of canvas breeches firmly attached to it, and ropes to suspend it from a running block. Then it took nearly an hour for the boats to get into position, and by that time it was nearly dark. Velinikar took the helm of the royal bireme himself so that its course would remain steady as rock. Lyath edged into position somewhat more clumsily, standing off some twenty ells from the larger vessel and bobbing wildly up and down in the troubled waters, never precisely matching speeds.
Now the mates of the two ships shouted back and forth through hailing horns, their voices almost lost in the great wind. The work of installing the breeches buoy began. Kadiya came to the rail of the noga with Jagun and a tall Wyvilo at her side. She and Anigel shouted only a few encouraging words to each other. It was not a time for relayed conversation via the speech without words.
Anigel watched with Immu, Ellinis, and Owanon standing close by her side as the first line was shot across. Then the rest of the equipment was carefully put into place: a winch, and the hawser for the block to run along, and the lighter block and tackle that would pull the Queen across. The first mate of the flagship assured Anigel that small variations in distance between the ships could be accommodated by the apparatus. It was only sudden, violent motions that might endanger her. Three strong seamen came up and knelt briefly at Anigel’s feet for her blessing, then went to stand by the all-important winch that could tighten or loosen the connecting hawser if such aberrant motion occurred.
On Lyath, whose deck lay nearly ten ells below that of the tall bireme, the other end of the hawser was made fast to the mainmast. The block and tackle were affixed below it, with Lummomu-Ko himself ready to pull Anigel in as swiftly as possible. The ropes creaked and the winchmen strove to keep the hawser taut. The wind seemed somewhat abated, and finally the first mate decided that the breeches buoy was ready. Anigel kissed Immu, Ellinis, and Owanon. Then she stepped into the thing, clung to the ring about her waist with all her strength, and was pulled off her feet, into the air, and over the ship’s rail.
The bireme surged downward and Lyath rose up. For a moment the hawser from which the buoy was suspended was nearly at a level, while the foam-streaked gray waters made a roughened hill slanting below. Anigel was moving—riding above the waves, splashed by spray, flung from side to side like a doll hanging on a clothesline. Then the bireme rose and Lyath went into a trough. The hawser above the Queen’s head twanged with strain, then eased. Anigel came to a sudden, jarring halt and then began to move slowly again. The ships were now maintaining a miraculously identical speed and direction despite the heaving waters, like a pair of oddly matched but expert dancing partners.
The buoy was moving quickly again, and Anigel was more than halfway to the noga. She managed to wave at the people along the smaller ship’s rail. Momentarily, the sea flattened beneath both hulls as they came to the bottom of a great trough. Anigel slid easily in the buoy down the slanted hawser, drawn along not only by the powerful muscles of Lummomu but by gravity as well. Side by side, the ships appeared to glide backward up another mountainous swell.
And then the wind shifted abruptly. It seemed to Anigel as if Lyath were rushing toward her. But the hawser that supported the buoy had gone ominously slack, and instead of sliding along it she began to drop sickeningly toward the water. She heard shouts from the Lyath and the shrill scream of a female aborigine from her own flagship. The two ships were closing together, driven by the shifting wind. In another instant she would be in the water.
“Talisman, save me!” she cried.
The wind roared, shifting direction again. There was a mighty twung! as the hawser snapped taut. Lummomu had lost his grip and lay sprawled on the deck. Anigel was being propelled as if by a catapult toward the smaller ship. She knew that in another instant she would be dashed to her death against it—
She stopped in midair.
There was no wind.
There was no tossing sea, no heaving small ship. Both Lyath and the waters were motionless, as if they had turned to stone.
Anigel seemed suspended in calm air, the ropes all in a tangle above her head but unmoving, frozen. She dared not breathe. Life itself had come to a halt.
And then only she, in all the world, was permitted to move. She floated to Lyath, passed above its rail and descended gently, still gripping the ring of the breeches buoy. Her feet touched the deck. Around her were petrified Wyvilo, Jagun like a small statue with wide yellow eyes and mouth agape in amazement, and Kadiya …
Almost as soon as it began, the eerie experience ceased. Anigel fell heavily to her knees, all enveloped in loose rope and cumbered by the buoy. Kadiya and the others were howling with relief, and there were faint cheers coming from her flagship.
When Anigel was freed from the mess, she stumbled into her sister’s arms, weeping for joy. “It was my talisman! It saved me! Kadi—Kadi—”
“Yes,” Kadiya agreed. “Beyond doubt it did. One moment you were plunging toward the water, and the next moment you were here.”
Behind the two women, the mate Ly Tyry was directing the crew to quickly cut loose the ropes that bound the noga to the Laboruwendian flagship. At once the two ships began to draw swiftly apart. Lyath had been moving under two small sails. A third was unfurled to the howling wind and the noga took flight, moving faster now than the bireme. It went faster yet as a fourth tiny piece of canvas was raised.
“Let us go below,” Kadiya said, leading her sister like a child.
The Queen was trembling violently now, soaked in spite of her oilskin garments, and her face and hands were bloodless. But she smiled still, and tried to wave good-bye to those on the flagship.
“The talisman,” she said again. “The talisman did save me!”
Kadiya opened the companionway door. “Let us hope,” she said in a voice gone flat, “that it will save me as well.”
10
The Archimage and Shiki the Dorok flew westward over the Ohogan foothills of Labornok on the first leg of their journey to the Kimilon, each mounted on a huge black-and-white lammergeier. Two additional birds carried their supplies. The Archimage mitigated the storm that swirled around them even more efficiently than Portolanus had done, and Shiki marveled at how warm and comfortable he was—and how swiftly the voors were able to fly—within the magical bubble of calm that the great enchantress spun with her all-powerful talisman.
At first, Shiki was so overawed by the Archimage that he hardly dared to speak to her. He kept reverently silent during their time aloft so as not to disturb her mystical contemplation and was humble and self-effacing when they descended that night to rest o
n the ground. She produced warm food for both of them from a magical contrivance; and later, with the giant birds nestled round about the two tiny sleeping-tents, the talisman continued to shield them all from the elements.
Shiki half awoke in the middle of the night, thinking that he heard strange sounds like those a human person makes when sore distressed. But when he called out, the faint noise ceased, and he told himself that he was imagining things, hearing only the moaning of the wind. In the morning he had forgotten all about it, and his sleep was undisturbed on the other nights that they camped in the mountains.
By the time they had overflown Raktum’s Latoosh Mountains and reached the border of the Sempiternal Icecap itself, the unnatural storm generated by Portolanus finally came to an end and the sky cleared. The flying steeds continued to flap tirelessly across dazzling snowfields, which were broken only rarely by mountains upthrust through the silent immensity of the world-continent’s interior.
The Archimage guided her own voor as expertly as Shiki did the new bird who had taken the place of his late friend, and without thinking he ventured to congratulate her on her skill. She took no offense at his familiarity, but instead seemed perfectly willing to converse, telling him that it was her custom to travel on voorback, on the infrequent occasions when she left her Tower to visit her two sisters or to confer in person with humans or Folk who requested her help. She said she had been taught to guide voors long ago, before she was the Archimage, and her teacher had been the Vispi woman Magira who now served as the housekeeper of the Tower.
Here was another surprise for Shiki, who had assumed that the White Lady was a goddess who knew everything without learning. She laughed at that, and told him something of the story of her life, that she had been Archimage for only twelve years and was still only beginning to learn how to do her job properly. Timidly, Shiki then asked her what kinds of work she undertook on behalf of her clients. She responded in a straightforward manner, telling how she adjudicated disputes, and helped to find lost persons, and counseled leaders who were seriously perplexed, and gave warning of impending natural calamities, and in a myriad other ways guided and guarded those who called upon her and trusted her.
Shiki was astounded when she admitted that there were problems to which she had no solutions. (This amazed him almost as much as his early discovery that she ate and drank as did ordinary people, and tended to her body’s relief, and sometimes even overslept.) He was further shaken when she confessed that she did not know exactly what she expected to find in the Inaccessible Kimilon, only that it was important; and she dreaded having to go to the place and was exceedingly glad to have him accompany her.
It now began to dawn on the little Dorok that he had been mistaken in his earlier judgment of the White Lady. A wielder of magic she was indeed, but she was not a forbidding goddess or even one of the legendary sindona, too lofty to suffer fear or misgivings like ordinary mortals. This Archimage was instead a person of flesh and blood with emotions very like his own, who was unsure of herself and in need of comfort and friendship. And so he dared more and more to converse with her in a commonplace manner and even made little jokes. She in turn asked him details about his life in the Tuzameni mountains, and he told her how he and his wife had tended scattered plots of ferolplants that thrived in the geyser-warmed valley where his village lay, yielding both nutritious tubers and fruits that made a cheering beverage. During the snowy season he had trapped worrams and other pelt animals, while his wife spun and wove zuch-wool into fine scarves and shawls that could be traded along with his furs to the lowland humans. With sadness, Shiki spoke of how his people had been the friends of the giant lammergeier birds from time out of mind, speaking to them through the speech without words and riding them when they wished to visit other villages of the Folk in the mountains of Tuzamen.
“But now, as I have already told you,” he added, “we Dorok and the voors can be friends no longer because of the foul sorcerer.” And he waited for the Archimage to reassure him, to tell him that she would mend the situation by bringing down Portolanus.
But she said nothing, only fingered her talisman and stared out over the desolate icecap that the voors traversed, her face somber and unreadable. That night Shiki again heard the faint sounds that reminded him of weeping, but could not be.
Seven days after they had left the Archimage’s Tower, the travelers saw what looked like a lofty dark hill of peculiar rounded form, rising on the horizon beyond the almost featureless expanse of ice and snow. As they drew closer the mass seemed more to resemble thunderclouds, partly gray and partly black as ink, roiling and swirling and yet seeming much more dense than the ordinary clouds that harbored rain or snow. Occasional lurid flashes of crimson lit their depths.
“It is the Kimilon,” Shiki said to the Archimage, “the place we Dorok know as the Land of Fire and Ice. Usually the great cloud that enshrouds the plateau is largely steam, with only a little smoke and ash, but I fear that now many of the volcanoes are erupting. We must pray, White Lady, that molten lava has not engulfed the interior basin. It is there that we will find the strange building that you seek, in which the sorcerer Portolanus lived. Can your talisman tell if the basin is safe to enter?”
Haramis pulled forth the wand from beneath her cloak and bade it show her a clear Sight of the Inaccessible Kimilon. When she had tried to view the place back at her Tower, details of the interior were always masked by thick clouds, and she could get no close view of what lay on the ground. Now, once again, the picture within the Three-Winged Circle was an obscure one that showed little more than she might see with her naked eyes had she been directly overhead, peering down through the turbulent smoke.
“I am afraid we shall have to wait until we get there to see what has befallen the ancient storage building,” Haramis said. “The Kimilon is a place infused by powerful magic. I am amazed that your people knew of its existence.”
The little man shrugged. “The Land of Fire and Ice is spoken of in our most ancient legends as a place sacred to the Vanished Ones. From time to time one of our Dorok heroes would be impelled by some irresistible inner urge to visit it on voorback, but he knew he must touch nothing there lest he never see his home again. Those who resisted temptation came back safely. A few of the heroes were never seen again, and it was said that they had succumbed to the lure of the forbidden magic of the place and remained there, turned to ice-statues. Thus the old tales were refreshed in the minds of the Dorok, and the way to the Kimilon confirmed again and again in folk-memory.”
“I wonder,” Haramis mused, “whether your people might once have been the servants of some long-forgotten Archimage, who transported at her behest dangerous old artifacts to the Kimilon. You are close kin to the Vispi Folk of the Ohogan Mountains, and they served my predecessor, the Archimage Binah, from time immemorial.”
“White Lady, I know nothing of any such duty. We Dorok believed that the Archimage lived far away from our land and had little to do with us. It was my late beloved voor, Nunusio, who reminded me that you are the guardian and protector of all Folk, and who urged me to come to you.”
Haramis felt a portentous tingling at the base of her scalp. The lammergeiers! She had never thought to consult them …
Hiluro!
I hear, White Lady, and respond.
Speak to me so that Shiki and the other birds cannot hear.
Very well.
Hiluro, do you know of other living Archimages besides myself?
Yes. There is the Lady of the Sea, who lives in the fastness of the auroras, and the Lord of the Firmament, whose home is in the sky. These two and yourself are the only ones remaining of the great Archimagical College established by the Vanished Ones to oppose the evil Star Men. I can tell you nothing of these other two Archimages save their titles and dwellings, and the fact that they will live and continue their mission for as long as the Star threatens the balance of the world.
Thank you, Hiluro.
This was at least
a little more than the talisman had already told her, and Haramis pondered it as they flew closer and closer to the Kimilon. Finally, as the declining sun cast a rose-colored veil over the Sempiternal Icecap and gave spectacular backlighting to the ash-clouds, they arrived.
The Inaccessible Kimilon was a small plateau about three leagues in diameter, hemmed in by a dozen or so tall volcanoes. Five of these, standing shoulder to shoulder in the west, were pouring forth black smoke, with occasional blobs of lurid scarlet lava hurled skyward. Narrow rivulets of molten rock streamed down their flanks. Two more mountains merely steamed, their white vapors mingling with the dark plumes of their neighbors, and the rest were dormant. The active volcanoes were a fearsome sight, and their rumbling was like constant thunder. Shiki was surprised to note that the Archimage’s hand holding her talisman was trembling.
“The wind is blowing the smoke and ash away from the interior of the Kimilon,” Haramis told Shiki. “That is good news at least.”
The four lammergeiers flew through a steep cleft on the eastern side of the plateau, where the extinct volcanoes were covered with massive glaciers streaked by ash and soot. The valley floor was solidified lava—some of it blocky and full of holes like clinkers, and some smoother, with an appearance of huge dark ropes or piles of pillows or poured batter turned to black rock. A sizable lake that reflected the angry sky occupied the center of the depression, fed by torrents of melt-water from the ice fields of the inactive cones. Fumaroles spouted and hissed beyond the lake’s western shore, a region where the ground was cracked and steaming, and hot mudpots bubbled like caldrons of multihued paint. On the eastern lakeshore the ground seemed solid, although deep in drifts of white ash, and the rocks had lichens growing upon them. There were also a few stunted shrubs and other kinds of plant-life, their green leaves withered and discolored by the poisonous exhalations of the volcanoes.