Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Meralda-then Apprentice Ovis, barely out of the college, less than a year into her apprenticeship to Thaumaturge Fromarch-kept her eyes firmly fixed on page four hundred of Trout and Windig’s A History of Tirlin and Erya and Environs, With Generous Illustration Throughout. She’d read the same passage a half-dozen times, and still could make no sense of it. No wonder, when all the mages did was bluster and argue.

“Bah,” said Mage Shingvere, the round little Eryan. “You’re wasting her time with that revisionist Tirlish history, Fromarch, and you know it. Look at this.” Shingvere spun Meralda’s book around, so he could read from it. “It says here that ‘the Hang first appeared in the spring of 1072, and they’ve visited the Realms once a century since then’.”

Fromarch sighed. “Hang visits have been well documented, even from the earliest days of the Old Kingdom.”

“Bah!” said Shingvere, spinning the book back around to Meralda. “The Hang have been sneaking around since well before ten hundred, and they’ve bloody well been back more than once a century, and you’re an idiot not to see it.” Shingvere shook his finger at Meralda. “You’re a smart one, lass, so you listen to old Shingvere. Read what’s in your books. But don’t ever forget that printing a thing doesn’t make it true.”

Mage Fromarch groaned and rubbed his forehead. “Spare us.”

“The Hang have been watching us for more than a millennium,” said Shingvere, quietly. “Ask any Eryan beach comber. Ask any Phendelit fisherman. I’ve got a scrap of paper with Hang scribbles on it in my study. Are you going to tell me it floated from Hang to Erya?” The Eryan snorted. “They’re out there, closer than you think,” he said. “And one day, miss, they’re going to come sailing up the Lamp to stay. Mark my words, both of you. The Vonats may rattle their swords every twenty years or so, but the Hang are the real threat, Great Sea or not.”

Mage Fromarch stood. “Apprentice Ovis,” he said, to Meralda. “Our Eryan associate’s outlandish ideas aside, we have a history lesson to discuss. Now then. How did the advent of the airship shape New Kingdom politics in the years before the Parting?”

Meralda shook her head. The answer to Mage Fromarch’s question was obvious enough. But there, on the page, was a hand-drawn picture of a Hang warship, a ship that had done what no vessel of the Realms had ever done. It had crossed the Great Sea, and would do so again.

“They’re up to no good,” said Shingvere, softly. “Mark my words, Apprentice Ovis. No bloody good.”

Meralda closed the book, but the crude drawing of the Hang five-master haunted her dreams for days.

Meralda took Shingvere’s penny-stick and, just as she had countless times as an apprentice, slipped it wordlessly in her pocket.

Yvin’s voice faded to a drone. Unhearing, Meralda dreamily recalled the little towns and villages strewn haphazardly along the banks of the Lamp, and wondered what sort of bedlam was occurring as the towering masts of the Great Sea ships bore down upon the fisher folk.

Meralda shivered. The Hang. Sailing up the Lamp at last. If, of course, that Eryan rascal beside me is to be believed.

As if he’d heard, Shingvere caught Meralda’s eye and nodded gravely, every hint of humor gone from his face.

Meralda sighed. It’s true, then. For the first time in forty-five years the Hang have crossed the Great Sea, bound for Tirlin, practically on the eve of the Accords. No coincidence, that.

“He won’t say a word, today,” whispered Shingvere, with a nod toward King Yvin. “We’ll all pretend it’s a secret, till the papers get wind of it. After that, Thaumaturge, if I were you I’d consider exercising that legendary distance mages and thaumaturges have for courts.”

“Would that I could,” whispered Meralda.

Shingvere grinned. “And I’d tell old windbag there to leave the Tower’s shadow be.”

Heads turned toward the Eryan. “Shhhh,” hissed a Tirlish courtier.

Shingvere made a gesture, and the man’s hair stood suddenly on end.

“Shingvere!” said Meralda, as the wide-eyed courtier lifted his hands to his head.

Shingvere glared, and the man’s hair fell. “Mind your manners,” grumbled the Eryan.

Applause broke out as King Yvin bade the Eryan court to rise and be made welcome.

Shingvere rolled his eyes and remained seated. “I’m meeting Fromarch this evening,” he whispered, as the applause died. “You’ll come too, won’t you? I’m sure the doddering old skinflint will have a supper meal of some poor sort.”

Meralda nodded.

Shingvere grinned. “Good. You’re old enough to have a pint with us now, you know. Never drank with a Tirlish woman before. Might be fun.”

Again, applause rang out. Meralda caught sight of the captain’s back as he slipped through the furthest west doors. Soon, three of the captain’s staff and a handful of black-clad Secret Service officers followed.

Yvin’s welcome speech droned on. Within moments, Shingvere was snoring.

Meralda settled into her chair, gazed up at the stained glass murals and Tim the Horsehead’s toothy equine grin, and wondered just how he would have reacted to a fleet of Long Dragon five-masters sailing up the Lamp.

“Pardon, ma’am,” said Kervis, “But what’s a Long Dragon five-master?”

Their waiter hovered near, fussing with napkins and forks on a recently cleared table while he eavesdropped. Meralda brought her finger to her lips, and Kervis nodded and fell silent.

Orlo’s sidewalk cafe was bustling. Diners were being seated on the knee-high walls of Orlo’s sputtering three-tiered fountain, on the backs of parked cabs, on upturned milk buckets, and, in one instance, on a wrought-iron trolley-stop bench hauled away from the curb by a bevy of brawny Builder’s Guild bricklayers. Waiters ducked and bobbed, arms laden with plates and drinks, their movements more dance than stride.

A trio of skinny black-clad bankers darted like crows for the empty table beside Meralda’s. The waiter bade the newcomers welcome, promised them tea, and then, with a backward glance toward Meralda, he darted away.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said Kervis.

“No matter,” said Meralda. “It’ll all be in the papers tomorrow anyway.”

Meralda swallowed the last bite of her ham on rye and washed it down with ice-cold Phendelit day tea.

“A five-master,” she said, wiping her chin, “is a ship. A Great Sea ship, half as long as the Tower is tall. The Long Dragon is the flag of the Chentze, which is the Hang equivalent of the house of a king.”

The Bellringers simultaneously lifted their right eyebrows.

“Big ship,” said Kervis.

Meralda took another long draught of her day tea. “They cross the Great Sea,” she said. “I suppose they have to be.”

Tervis frowned. “No one but the Hang has ever crossed the Great Sea,” he said. “Is that right?”

“It is,” said Meralda. “Eryans, Phendelits, us, the Vonats. Everyone has tried. But the ships either turn back, or vanish.” Meralda put down her glass. “Current thinking holds that the sea extends at least twenty thousand miles from every coast,” she said.

“Fly it,” said Kervis, matter-of-factly. “Why not send an airship?”

“It’s been tried,” said Meralda. “The ones that made it back all told the same story. No land past the Islands. Not a speck. Just sea and storms and it goes on forever,” she said. “That’s a quote, from the master of the airship Yoreland . They were aloft for more than two months.”