Harry Turtledove: Jaws of Darkness

“Haven’t seen her.” His neighbor shook his head. “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded as if he never wanted to see Ealstan again. And when he slammed the door, Ealstan had to jump back in a hurry to keep from getting his nose flattened.

He stood in the hallway cursing softly, wondering whether even to bother knocking on the door across the hall from his. At last, with a sort of despairing shrug, he did. “Who is it?” came from inside: another woman’s voice.

“Ealstan, your neighbor from across the hall,” he answered, wondering if she’d open the door.

To his surprise, she did. She was somewhere in her late thirties-which, to Ealstan’s nineteen, made her seem almost grandmotherly, though little by little he realized she wasn’t reallybad looking. She eyed him with frank appraisal. “Well, hello, Ealstan from across the hall,” she said when she was through, and breathed brandy fumes into his face. “I’m Ebbe. What can I do for you, dear? Want to borrow a cup of olive oil? You should have knocked a long time ago.”

Did that mean what it sounded like? Ealstan had more urgent things to worry about. “I don’t mean to bother you-” he began, as he had to his other neighbor.

“Oh, you’re not bothering me at all,” Ebbe broke in. Aye, she’d been drinking brandy, all right.

Rather desperately, Ealstan plunged ahead: “Have you seen my wife today? She should have been waiting for me when I got home, but she isn’t. I’m worried-she’s expecting a baby.”

“No, darling, I haven’t seen a soul today-tillyou”Ebbe answered. “But why don’t you come on in anyway? If she’s not there, maybe I’ll do.”

Ealstan fled. Back inside his own flat, he barred the door as if all the Algarvians in Forthweg were after him. He wondered if Ebbe would come knocking in turn. To his vast relief, she didn’t.

But that relief quickly passed. The Algarvians in Forthweg weren’t after him. They were after Vanai-and he was horribly afraid they had her.

He ate barley bread and olive oil and salted, garlic-tangy almonds for supper, washing the food down with harsh red wine. Then, instead of talking and laughing and probably making love with Vanai, he spent the longest, loneliest, most miserable night he’d ever passed. He might have slept a little. On the other hand, he might not have, too.

When dawn came, he made a breakfast much like his supper. Then, yawning, he started back to Pybba’s pottery. Someone-more likely several someones-had scrawled a new graffito-Habakkuk!-on walls and fences. Dully, he wondered what the nonsense word meant. Nothing in Forthwegian, Algarvian, or classical Kaunian; he was sure of that.

Pybba glared when he got to work. “You’re late,” he rasped, as he did most mornings whether Ealstan was or not. Then he took a longer look at his bookkeeper. “Powers above! Who hit you over the head with a rock?”

“I wish somebody had,” Ealstan answered. He wasn’t late. Anything but-he and Pybba had the offices to themselves. “My wife wasn’t home when I got there. She still isn’t. I think the redheads have grabbed her.”

“Why in blazes would they want her?” the pottery magnate demanded. “You two didn’t just have a fight or something?”

“No,” Ealstan said flatly. “Why would they want her? She’s Kaunian, that’s why.” He’d never told his boss that. Pybba hated Algarvians, aye, but he had no great use for blonds.

Now Pybba stared at him, eyes big as the saucers he turned out by the tens of thousands. “Oh, you fool!” he cried. “You great stupid fool!”

Habakkuk-the first Habakkuk, the nameship of what would be a growing class-glided east along a ley line not far from the island kingdom of Sibiu. The hobnails in the soles of Leino’s boots dug into the great vessel’s icy deck. The Kuusaman mage smiled-no, he grinned. He was as proud ofHabakkuk as if he’d invented her. Along with a good many other Kuusaman and Lagoan mages, he had.

Ships had sailed the seas for centuries uncounted: ships, aye, but none likeHabakkuk. Ships had been wood and canvas, riding wind and wave.

Then, as magecraft and manufacturing grew more sophisticated, they’d been iron and steel, traveling the ley lines of the world’s energy grid in defiance of wind and wave. Now… Leino took another step. His hobnailed boots bit into the icy deck again.

Habakkukwas a thing of ice, ice and a little sawdust for strength. Leino and his fellow mages had planed the top of an iceberg flat, down in the iceberg-ridden seas bordering the frigid austral continent. They’d hollowed out chambers in the ice, chambers that held men and supplies and-the point of the exercise-far more dragons than any ordinary ship could haul.

Magecraft had shaped theHabakkuk. More magecraft propelled it along the ley lines. And still more magecraft kept it from melting away to nothing as it sailed these warmer (though still far from warm) waters farther from the land of the Ice People. Leino wondered what the natives of the tropical continent of Siaulia would think if theHabakkuk ever had occasion to sail there. Most of them had never seen any ice in all their lives, let alone a great floating mountain of it that refused to disappear even in that blood-warm sea.

High overhead, a dragon screeched. Leino glanced up not in fear but in wariness, lest it prove an Algarvian beast diving to the attack. But it wasn’t; it was painted in the Kuusaman colors of sky-blue and sea-green, which made it hard to spot for a moment against the drifting clouds. Down it spiraled: long, snaky body; short, clawed limbs; great batwings now gliding, now beating; long neck and fearsome, big-eyed head. So much ferocity, all governed by a brain the size of a plum-and by the dragonflier who sat strapped into his harness at the base of the beast’s neck.

Leino’s shiver had nothing to do with the ice on which he trod or with the chilly quartering breeze. Facing the impersonal forces of magecraft was hard enough. They would kill you only if you abused them or made a mistake with them. Dragons, now, dragons might kill you out of malice or simply because they forgot what a command meant. With plum-sized brains, they were better at forgetting than remembering. Leino didn’t think there was enough silver in the world to make him train to become a dragonflier.

But his countryman aboard the descending dragon handled his dangerous job with nonchalant competence. He brought the beast down right where a gang of handlers waited for it. One of the handlers chained the dragon to a stout iron stake fixed deep in the ice. Another tossed it chunks of meat yellow with crushed brimstone or scarlet from a coating of powdered cinnabar, both of which helped the dragon flame strong and far. The dragonflier unhooked himself and went off to report to his superior.

Leino went below, too. The stairways and the corridors were cut from ice. So were all the chambers opening onto the corridors. The doors and their fittings were ordinary doors and fittings, and some of the chambers had wall hangings inside to lend more privacy to what went on in them.

When Leino walked into one of those chambers, the four mages already inside looked up and nodded to him. “Good morning,” Leino said in classical Kaunian. Two of the other wizards were Kuusamans like himself, the other two Lagoans. They shared the great island off the southeastern coast of the Derlavaian mainland, but did not share a language. But every educated man who hailed from eastern Derlavai or the island could use classical Kaunian, the common language of sorcery and scholarship.

“And a good morning to you,” answered his countrywoman Essi. She pointed to a teapot above a spirit stove. “Get yourself a cup, if you care to.”

“I think I will.” Leino smiled. “Being inside all this ice makes me want to have something warm inside myself.”