George Martin - Songs of the Dying Earth

It was a long night and neither Shrue nor Derwe Coreme slept a moment of it. The clouds had closed in and by midnight Steresa’s Dream was enveloped in cloud-fog so thick that the sons had reduced all canvas so that the sky galleon was barely making way. Huddled in the slight glow of the binnacle near Captain Shiolko at the wheel, Shrue and the Myrmazon chief could see the bright lanterns on the mainmast only as the dimmest and most distant of spherical glows. The only sound aboard the ship, besides the quarter-hour calling of the time by one of Shiolko’s sons, was the drip-drip-drip of droplets from the masts and rigging. But from beyond the ship, growing closer by the hour, was the leathery flap of wings from ten pelgranes closing their circle.

“Do you think they will come aboard tonight?” whispered Derwe Coreme. Shrue was interested that he could hear no fear or concern whatsoever in her voice, only mild curiosity. Her six Myrmazons were wrapped in blankets on the damp deck, sleeping like children. And, Shrue knew, unlike children, they could and would come fully awake in a fraction of a second when the alarum was called. What must it be like, he wondered, to have trained and disciplined yourself to the point where fear could be banished?

He said, “It depends on whether the Red controlling Faucelme thinks he has a real chance of stealing the nose.” Shrue patted his robes where the small box was pocketed next to his heart.

“Does he…it?” whispered Derwe Coreme. “Have a real chance, I mean. By magic?”

Shrue smiled at her in the soft glow of the binnacle. “No magic that I cannot counter, my dear. At least in so obvious an attempt.”

“So you’re an equal to the Red and Faucelme in a fight?” The woman’s soft whisper may have had the slightest edge to it.

“I doubt it,” said Shrue. “I can keep them from snatching the nose, but odds are very much against me in a stand-up fight.”

“Even,” whispered Derwe Coreme as she patted the short crossbow slung across her shoulder, “if Faucelme were to die suddenly?”

“Even then,” whispered Shrue. “But even without the Red, the ancient magus known as Faucelme would not be so simple to kill. But that isn’t what’s worrying me tonight.”

“What is worrying you tonight, Shrue?” said Derwe Coreme and slipped her calloused fingers inside his robe to touch his bare chest.

Shrue smiled but pulled away and removed the tiny box from his robes. Holding it near the binnacle light, he whispered, “This.”

The guiding nose of Ulfänt Banderōz was levitating in its box, rattling at the glass cover. Shrue turned the box on end and the nose slid to the top as if magnetized, the nostrils pointing up and only a little to their left in the night and fog.

“Above us?” hissed Derwe Coreme. “That’s impossible.”

Shrue shook his head. “You see that dial on the post near Captain Shiolko between the wheel and capstan? The small device in the ossip engine room below sends out pulses from the atmospheric emulsifier in the hull by the keel and those return to a receiver, telling the captain the true altitude of the ship even in darkness and fog. You notice that it now reads just above the numeral five — five thousand feet above sea level.”

“So?”

“We are in a valley,” whispered Shrue. “We’ve been following its contours for hours. The Ultimate Library is on one of the peaks above us and to the east — probably at about nine thousand feet of altitude.”

“Why haven’t we struck the cliffs around us and died?” asked Derwe Coreme. Once again, Shrue noticed, the only overlay was of mild curiosity.

“We are going dead slow, floating with the breezes,” whispered Shrue. “Also, I devised a little instrument — there, you may notice our good captain playing close attention to those four dials I jury-rigged from Meriwolt’s calliope.”

The warrior chief looked at the wires running from the device toward something in a box set near the binnacle, chuckled and shook her head. “Boys and their toys. But what’s to keep Faucelme and his pelgranes from striking the surrounding rocks in the dark?”

“Ahh,” breathed Shrue. “They know where they and where we are to a much finer degree than we do, I’m afraid. Pelgranes are nightflyers. They navigate by sound waves bouncing back from objects. That’s what my ‘little instrument’ is connected to — our unfortunate pelgrane visitor’s vibrating thorax. The creatures also ‘hear’ through their thoraxes…it’s why I let our friend come so close and behave true to pelgrane form earlier.”

“You needed his thorax.”

“Yes.” He squeezed her hand. Her skin was very cold and damp but her hand was not shaking in the least. “You can sleep if you want, my dear,” he whispered. “I have nothing to base it on but a hunch, but I don’t think the Red and Faucelme and the three Yellows and three Greens and their pelgranes will make their move tonight, in the dark.”

“Sleep?” whispered Derwe Coreme, former princess of the House of Domber. “And miss all this? You must be joking.” Spreading a blanket, she slid under Shrue’s outer robe and pulled him down next to her.

Captain Shiolko glanced over in their direction once, grunted softly, and then returned his attention to the emulsifier and thorax dials.

The nose began spinning at first light, when the clouds first showed a milky pre-dawn glow and then parted as the red sun struggled to rise. Captain Shiolko brought the galleon to full stop and then allowed it to rise more than three thousand feet.

The Second Ultimate Library was on a rocky promontory overhanging a vertical drop four thousand feet or more to the wooded valley below it. There was no moat at this version of the library, but wooded wilderness stretched away between high peaks for uncounted miles to its west.

“You can set down in that glade near the front door,” Shrue said to the captain. “Then let us out and go on to deliver the rest of your passengers.”

Shiolko grinned. “I know better than that, Master Magician. That Faucelme devil and the red thing what pulls his strings won’t let us go, no matter what. We’ll drop you off if you want, then we’ll moor nearby to that huge old tree near the waterfall where we can refill our casks, but we’ll watch and help if we can. Our fate is your fate. We know that.”

“I am sorry it has come to that,” Shrue said sincerely.

Captain Shiolko shrugged. “Somehow I think I’m speaking for everyone on the ship and perhaps for everyone on the Dying Earth. How it come to this, I don’t know…and don’t especially care. But we could have done worse than have you as our standard-bearer, I think, Master Magician Shrue. I don’t see no stinking kid’s birthday party anywhere near.”

The ten pelgranes landed in the glade even as Steresa’s Dream hovered and let down its gangplank. Derwe Coreme went down first, followed by her six Myrmazons leading sluggish and sleepy megillas just wakened from their sorcery-induced, three-week-long naps, straw from the livestock pens on the middle deck still clinging to their scales.

Faucelme laughed as Shrue descended the gangplank, leading the tall robed and veiled figure by his hand. “Your daihak looks a little wobbly there, diabolist!” called Faucelme as the robed form felt gingerly with his foot before stepping to the soil.

“Well,” said Shrue. “He’s been through a tough fight. At least he’s more solid than your pathetic Purples.”