Brechalon

  Stepping out of her steam carriage, Iolanthe Dechantagne retrieved her parasol from behind the seat and opened it, even though it was a walk of only thirty feet to the door. She tucked a small envelope of papers under her arm. The parasol matched Iolanthe's outfit, a grey pin-striped day dress framed with waves of antique lace. The single police constable stationed at the Prime Minister's door nodded affably and made no mention of the fact that Iolanthe's parking skills had resulted in both tires on the right side of her car being well up onto the sidewalk. He opened the door for her, and she stepped into the vast foyer of the official residence. A maid was waiting to take the parasol and lead her into the offices of the Prime Minister.

  Iolanthe had not expected to be kept waiting and indeed she was not. The PM, The Right Honourable Ewart Primula stood up from behind a massive oak desk that had been fashioned from the timbers of the ancient battleship H.M.S.Wyvern. He was a tall, balding man with a thick middle and rather loose jowls that tightened up when he smiled.

  "Lady Dechantagne," he said, hurrying around, but waiting for her to shake his hand.

  Iolanthe pursed her lips. "Prime Minister, you know that title is not appropriate."

  "Well, it should be," the PM replied. "It is most unfair that you should suffer because of? well, because of your father. If it were up to me, your title would be restored and your brother would be viscount."

  "We both know it's not up to you, and the one man that it is up to is not likely to share your inclination."

  "Let's not speak of it then," said Primula, gesturing toward a comfortable antique chair. As Iolanthe took it, he walked back around the desk and sat down. "What can I do for you today?"

  "As you already alluded to, my once historic and distinguished family is not quite what it was." Iolanthe licked her lips. "No viscounts in the house at present, I'm afraid. My two brothers and I could of course live comfortably for the rest of our lives on our household income, but we have bigger plans. We are going to bring the greatness back to our name."

  The Prime Minister nodded.

  "Our plan is not just to help ourselves though," she continued. "Freedonia and Mirsanna are building colonies in distant lands and are becoming wealthy as a result. Greater Brechalon must do the same thing. We propose to build a Brech colony, assuming a royal charter is available"

  "In Birmisia," the PM said, nodding.

  "We have as yet not decided. Birmisia is one possibility. Cartonia is another."

  "I think you have settled on Birmisia. You went to a great deal of trouble to have your brother stationed there."

  "Why Prime Minister," said Iolanthe, with a thin smile. "I didn't know that we warranted such attention."

  "If anything, I believe I have not been paying enough attention. You are quite a remarkable person, particularly for a woman."

  "And you are quite a perceptive person, Prime Minister, for a man."

  Primula chuckled. "So what is it that I can do to facilitate this expansion of our empire?"

  "First of all," said Iolanthe. "There is the question of the aforementioned charter."

  "I see no undue complications there."

  "Then there is the question of transportation."

  The Prime Minister looked puzzled. "You will charter ships, yes?"

  "I will arrange for a number of ships to deliver both settlers, and equipment and supplies. But in order to assure the safe transit of the first settlers and to guarantee the establishment of the colony, I would like the use of a Royal Navy ship, preferably a battleship, along with its crew, of course."

  "Of course," Primula laughed. "You know you just can't charter a battleship like it was a yacht for the Thiss Regatta."

  "Talking of which, congratulations on your victory yesterday."

  "Thank you. The regatta is one of the few pleasures I still allow myself."

  Iolanthe leaned forward, her hand reaching out with a heretofore unnoticed small envelope, which she gave to the Prime Minister. He accepted it, opened it, and unfolded the document inside.

  "Sweet mother of Kafira," he gasped, his face turning white. "Where did you get this? No. I don't want to know. Does anyone else know about this?"

  "No."

  "But they will if I don't accede to your demands?"

  "Don't be silly, Prime Minister." Iolanthe leaned back, folding her hands in her lap and smiled. "This is the original. There are no facsimiles. This is a gift."

  Ewart Primula jumped up from his seat and pulled aside a large portrait of His Majesty on the wall behind him. He quickly turned the combination on the safe, which was revealed, and in a moment he had placed the paper and the envelope inside, closed and locked the safe, and replaced the stern portrait of the King. Turning around, his face took on a wary look, as if he only just realized that there was a tiger seated across the desk from him.

  "I don't know what to say," he said slowly.

  "Don't mention it, Prime Minister," Iolanthe smiled. This did nothing to drive the image of a tiger from his mind. Neither did her next words. "I consider it my duty, one I can perform again. There are a great many similar documents drifting about, you know."

  The PM dropped heavily into his chair.

  "As I understand it," he said with a sigh. "There are two battleships coming in for extensive refit in the next few months-the Minotaur and the Indefatigable, if I'm not mistaken. One of them could be held until you are ready. It is of course, in the best interest of the empire to establish this colony."

  "Oh, indeed it is," replied Iolanthe.

  "Is there anything else?"

  "Oh, export papers and manifest waivers, and things of that sort; nothing we need to discuss face to face."

  "Are you sure you don't want me to give you a government wizard?" More than a hint of sarcasm was present in these words, but Miss Dechantagne appeared not to notice.

  "No. When the time comes, we will hire our own spellcasters-ones we can trust."

  She stood up and the Prime Minister walked around the desk to take her hand, though he seemed far less enthusiastic about it than he had on her arrival.

  "You can't trust any of them," he said.

  "It is not a question of whom one may trust, Prime Minister," said Iolanthe. "It is a question of how far. I will trust them precisely as much as I trust anyone else."

 

  Chapter Six: Blood

  Yuah Korlann woke so suddenly that for a moment she didn't recognize where she was. She was of course, in her own bed, in her own small room, in the servant's quarters of Number One, Avenue Dragon-in Brech? in Greater Brechalon. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and stuck them into her house shoes. What a queer dream that had been.

  She had been walking down a road. It had been winter. Patches of snow lay here and there on the ground and some of the trees were bare, although there were many evergreens. She had been bundled up in a thick fur coat, far more luxurious and expensive than anything she would ever really be able to afford. She even had a fur muff. The most extraordinary thing though, wasn't where she was, but who or more precisely what, she was with. It was an alligator, walking upright and wearing a yellow evening gown. As they walked along, they talked about the strangest things: the state of the Kingdom, literature, and religion.

  Reaching for the glass of water on her nightstand, Yuah saw the open book lying there. She had been reading Night of the Snake by Ebrahim Detsky. That was the problem. She ought not to read books like that right before bed.

  Getting up and throwing the housecoat over her nightdress, she shuffled out the door, down the hallway and into the servant's hall. It was just light enough to see and she realized it was a quarter past four when the wall clock sounded four sharp chimes.

  Padding her way on into the kitchen, she thought about having a cup of tea, but that would have meant starting a fire in the oven. Instead, she opened the door of the icebox and withdrew a bottle of milk-one of six, and go
t a glass from the cupboard. She poured her milk, put the bottle back, and carried the glass into the servant's hall, where she sat down at the great table. As she drank her milk, she could hear the clock tick-tocking in the other room. It seemed to get louder and louder.

  "You're up early." At the sound of the voice Yuah jumped, dribbling milk down her chin.

  "Heavenly days! What's wrong with you?" Both the exclamation and the question were out of her mouth before she turned around to find Terrence staring wryly at her.

  "Good morning," he said.

  "Don't look at me! I'm practically naked!"

  "You're kidding, right? You've got more clothes on than an Argrathian virgin." He stepped past her and made his way into the kitchen.

  "I'm sure I wouldn't know," said Yuah.

  "About Argrathians or about virgins? Shouldn't there be some cheese in the icebox? Oh, here we go. Now where's the breadbox?"

  "Why didn't you just press your buzzer?"

  "What?" He poked his head back in through the doorway.

  "You have a buzzer in your room next to the bed. When you press it, whoever's on duty, I think it's Eunice, will bring you whatever you want."

  "When did I get one of those?"

  "Your sister had it put in a few months ago."

  "How much do you suppose that cost? Oh, here's the bread."

  "You would think that you would know. After all, it is your money she's spending."

  There was a clattering of knives and plates, but Terrence said nothing else until he emerged back from the kitchen with a cheese sandwich on a plate in one hand and what was left of Yuah's bottle of milk in the other.

  "If I'm not worried about it, you shouldn't be," he said, sitting down.

  He took a bite of sandwich and they were both quiet for a moment.

  "That's your problem, you know," Yuah said quietly. "You never worry about anything."

  "You're overstepping yourself, little maid. It's not your job to worry about what my problem is." He drained the milk bottle and set it down, hard, on the table.

  "Somebody has to. You're hiding out somewhere poisoning yourself, aren't you?"

  "Shut the hell up," he said, getting to his feet.

  "You're not taking care of yourself and nobody else is either. I nursed you when you were little, but who's looking after you now?"

  "And just who did you think you were, when you were nursing me? My sister or my mother?"

  Yuah flushed.

  "I see," Terrence stepped close and leaned down to look her in the face. "You thought you were my woman. Well, you're not."

  Yuah felt tears flooding unbidden down her cheeks. She wanted to scream that she wouldn't marry an idiot like him in a million years, but all that came out was "I hate you!"

  "Yeah, welcome to the club." He stood up and tossed the sandwich onto the table, where it fell apart and scattered.

  Yuah jumped to her feet and rushed toward the doorway, pausing just long enough to yell once more at Terrence. She wanted to tell him that he hated himself so much that he would never be able to love anyone else, but all that came out was "You can't have me."

  "Why would I want a skinny little bint like you?" shouted Terrence after her.

  * * * * *

  "What do you suppose this is supposed to be?" asked Arthur McTeague.

  "I suppose it was a city a long time ago," replied Augie Dechantagne, with an emphasis on the second word.

  The two lieutenants and the full platoon of soldiers were standing on a smooth surface of stone slabs that had been fitted together. There were steps here and there, breaking the area up into several terraces of varying heights. In a few places there were piles of stone that might have indicated that a wall had once stood there, but there were no buildings. On the far side of the clearing were a series of seven large stones. Each stood about eight feet tall and they were roughly oval in shape. At either end of the row were the remains of other similar stones that had once stood in the line, but had long ago crumbled, either from exposure to the elements or from ancient vandalism. Though those that remained were weathered and worn, one could see that each had been carved long ago to represent a dragon.

  A loud squawk announced the arrival of eight or ten creatures that burst out of the trees and ran across the ancient stones. They were only slightly larger than the average chicken and were covered in hairy feathers, though their faces looked all too reptilian and their mouths were full of needle sharp teeth.

  "Now, are those birds or dinosaurs?" asked McTeague.

  Augie shrugged, but pulled out a book from his tunic.

  "And what's that?"

  "That my friend is called a book. People, not artillery officers mind, but other people, sometimes read them."

  McTeague gave him a withering look. "What book is it, you great tosser?"

  "It's Colonel Mormont's journal. My brother sent it to me."

  "Yes, I've heard of the chap. He was here in Birmisia a few years ago, right?"

  Augie didn't reply. He was busy flipping through the pages.

  "What does he say about those little buggers?"

  "Hold on a minute. I'm looking."

  McTeague folded his arms and waited. Several of the men were chasing the small creatures around the edge of the clearing.

  "Here it is. Here it is. I knew I recognized them." Augie held up the open page to a drawing that did indeed bear a strong resemblance to the creatures in question.

  "Buitreraptors," McTeague read. "Why do you suppose they all have to have such strange names?

  "You know how these naturalist types are. Besides, if you just went with 'chicken-lizard' and 'turkey lizard' you'd soon run out of names. Face it. That's really what they look like."

  A much louder squawk than those heard before announced to all the soldiers that something larger and more frightening than the skittish buitreraptors had arrived. A monster burst out of the brush and ran toward the tiny creatures. It was a bird lizard too, covered with feathers ranging from a deep turquoise on the head to a light green around the legs, but it didn't fit Augie's earlier nomenclature, if for no other reason than size. Its body was as large as the biggest horse, its head bobbing back and forth about seven feet above the ground, but it's long, feathered tail stretched straight out behind it to make it more than twenty feet long. Though the puny wings would have made any attempt to fly laughable, the clawed fingers and the huge sickle-shaped clawed toes prevented any such jocularity.

  The monster apparently had been stalking its tiny cousins through the woods, but now that it saw the human beings, it abruptly changed its targets. Why chase after a tiny morsel when a much juicier and slower prey could be had? It needed only to shift its weight and maintain the same stride to put it on its new trajectory. With a leap into the air that amazed everyone watching, the beast flew more than forty feet to land on top of Private Holloway, clawing him and bending down to give him a killing bite before anyone could react. A second later, the beast was peppered with more than twenty shots fired from all over the clearing.

  "Kafira damn-it!" Augie shouted. "Color Sergeant!

  "Sir." Color Sergeant Bourne ran toward him and came to attention.

  "Set up a perimeter watch. Make sure all the men have chambered rounds. And prepare a burial detail." The Color Sergeant hurried off to his duties. Augie turned to McTeague. "Come on."

  The two lieutenants stepped over to the giant bird and Private Holloway. It was only too obvious that he was beyond hope. His head had been bitten half through, though his extremities twitched slightly.

  "Nothing to be done," said McTeague.

  "Not for Holloway," Augie agreed.

  * * * * *

  It was a large spider crawling across his face that woke Nils Chapman up. It tickled his right nostril and then continued on its way down his right cheek and over his right ear. He turned his head and watched it as it went over the edge of the mattress
. He didn't want to get up. He wanted to count-one thousand nine hundred seventy-nine? No! No, he wasn't going to do that. He felt sick to his stomach. He had felt sick to his stomach ever since he had seen the impossible undulating movement of the wall in Prisoner 89's cell. He hadn't gone back to the cell since, but the uneasiness, the slowly creeping nausea did not go away.

  He turned over and looked toward Karl Drury's bunk. The sadistic guard was not there. On the one hand, this made Chapman happy, because he found that he was increasingly happy whenever Drury was not around. On the other hand, if he wasn't here and he wasn't on duty, he was probably in 89's cell, abusing her. Chapman shuddered. He had become increasingly sickened by Drury's treatment of women in general and this one in particular, but now he felt even more ill at the thought of the cell itself, and the wall, and the strange writing, and the undulating movement? He shuddered.

  He sat up and rolled out of bed. Taney was the only other guard in the bunkroom.

  "Where's Drury?" he asked.

  "The filthy bastard's got duty at the loading dock," came the reply. "I wouldn't want to be one of the boys working down there."

  "Somebody should stop him."

  "Go ahead," said Taney, "if you want a knife between your ribs."

  Chapman didn't want a knife between his ribs, but he didn't know what else to do, so he went down the ancient spiral stone steps to the docks. Six boys were unloading a skiff, but Chapman didn't see any guards. But as he stepped out into the open, he noticed something strange. There was a shadow in the middle of the dock where a shadow had no right to be. As he stepped closer, he realized it wasn't a shadow-not in the real sense of the word. It was a man-shaped blob of shadow, occupying the same area that a man would occupy had he been standing there, but with no mass and no substance and completely translucent.

  "What is that?" he asked.

  The boys stopped and looked at him.

  "What is that?" he asked again.

  "What is what?" asked one of the boys.

  "Where's Drury?" he asked, his voice rising.

  "He's standin' right in front of you, you great tosser," the boy replied, pointing at the shadowy blob.