Authors: Blake Charlton
Spellbound (8 page)
When Cyrus and Francesca were flying above the Auburn Mountains, she studied the massive redwood trees that covered their slopes. The dark trunks grew so tall, their evergreen canopies so thick, that they blocked all but a thin wash of sunlight from the forest's dark understory.
Scattered across the mountains were dying trees, their canopies withered to brown. Francesca had read about the unexplained demise of trees across the entire continent. The druids of Dral named the phenomenon the Silent Blight and wondered if it signified the coming War of Disjunction, when the demons would cross the ocean to destroy human language.
Francesca was about to ask Cyrus what he thought about the Silent Blight when he stopped casting spells along the rig's suspension lines and looked at her.
“Something's just occurred to me,” Cyrus said. “There are maybe a hundred hierophants working the wind garden. The marshal can send them to Avel if the city's in danger.” He paused. “Francesca, no more games. What happened in the sanctuary? I need to know everything you do so I know what to tell the wind marshal.”
She shook her head. “Deirdre ordered you not to trust other hierophants.”
“But can we trust Deirdre?”
“Perhaps not, but let's not include more people about whom we are uncertain.”
“There's something important you're not telling me.”
“Several somethings,” she agreed. “I'll explain when we land. Meantime, has that airship gotten close enough for you to tell me why it worries you?”
He looked north. The white speck that Francesca had seen before had grown into a long white arrow.
“She has,” Cyrus said after a moment. “This is a bad omen.”
“Better tell me quick then.”
“I think she's the
Queen's Lance
. I can't swear to it until we're closer. I flew as her first mate for a year and half.”
Queen's Lance
. I can't swear to it until we're closer. I flew as her first mate for a year and half.”
“And why is that so bad?”
“She's a Kestrel.”
Francesca could only look at him blankly as a twinge of guilt moved through her. When they had been lovers, she would occasionally sneak onto the infirmary's roof and fly a blue flag from one of the corners. If Cyrus could get away from his patrol duty, he would land his rig for a rendezvous.
He would point out the distant airships flying to or from the wind garden and talk about a particular ship's merits or flaws. Francesca had always been too preoccupied with her studies to remember or care about what he had described. Cyrus had always taken an interest in medicine and her life in the infirmary. After half a year together, he could recite all the bones in the wrist, but she could not tell a lofting sail from a foresail.
Judging by the way Cyrus's eyes narrowed, he was now remembering his past irritation at her disinterest. “A Kestrel is a particularly dangerous kind of ship,” he said shortly. “The Kestrel class of cruisers can ⦠oh you wouldn't understand. Here, maybe this will help: common airships are written on linen. Most cruisers are written on cotton. But Kestrels, they are written only on Ixonian silk.”
“Oh!” Francesca said in surprise as she tried to guess the cost of so much silk.
Cyrus continued. “Before the Civil War, when Spires was still a polytheistic realm, every deity maintained a fleetâa few flocks of lofting kites, a destroyer or two, maybe a cruiser or a carrier loaded with warkites. When Celeste and her canonists set out to unify Spires, they wrote five Kestrels. The polytheists never had a chance against the silk ships. The Kestrels tore apart their fleets one by one. At war's end, the monotheists had lost only two Kestrels.”
“Lovely,' Francesca grumbled before asking, “So a Kestrel is a symbol of Celeste's monotheistic Spires?”
“Exactly. Of the three still flying, only one is in the western fleet. She's named the
Queen's Lance,
and I bet that's her now, flying in unscheduled from the Lurrikara wind garden.”
Queen's Lance,
and I bet that's her now, flying in unscheduled from the Lurrikara wind garden.”
“And you're worried that she might be here to demonstrate Celeste's power over Avel and the canonist Cala?”
“Exactly.”
Francesca wondered if the ship's arrival was connected to what had just happened in the sanctuary. Cyrus seemed to be wondering the same thing. “Do you have any idea what this might mean, Fran?”
“I might have one or two ideas,” Francesca said mildly. “I'd even tell you about them if you could be as clever as a parrot and learn to say Francesca.”
He closed his eyes and flatly said, “Francesca.”
“Land us on the garden tower, and I'll explain.”
Blessedly, Cyrus did not argue but turned to the jumpchute.
About a mile ahead of them, the massive Auburn Mountains traded their redwood forests for knee-length coastal grass and sank to sea level before rising up again. This created a lush pass dotted with massive gray boulders that ran through the mountains. By chance it was wider toward the sea, narrower inland.
Cyrus had once explained that during the rainy season the pass acted as a funnel, intensifying the ocean winds. During the dry season, hot air above the savanna rose into the sky and so drew in cooler and heavier air off the ocean. As a result, the pass was one of the most consistently windy places on the continent. By harnessing this wind, Avel's hierophants produced more hierophantic text than any other wind garden.
As they flew into the gap, Francesca could see about two dozen windcatchersâthe massive wind-powered rigs that made up a wind garden. Each windcatcher was written on white linen sailcloth and was, in essence, a giant cylindrical kite. Seeing all of them facing out to sea made Francesca think of a school of fish swimming against a current, their mouths open.
Cyrus flew them over a windcatcher anchored to a boulder. It was perhaps a hundred feet long with a mouth thirty feet in diameter. Its tail pointed slightly downward. When Francesca had first seen this tilt, she had been confused. She hadn't thought a cylindrical kite could fly or that it could be angled upward in a wind that blew horizontally. But then she had remembered the box kites children flew during the Festival of Colors. A simple box kite was tilted in the same way a windcatcher was.
In any case, the wondrous part of a windcatcher was what happened inside. Francesca tried to peer into the one they were passing over, but just then Cyrus grabbed her arm. “We've got to double canvas to get up to the garden tower. Hold on.”
The tall garden tower was a narrow building, made of sandstone, redwood spars, and spell-invested cloth. It stood at the seaside end of the gapâupwind from all the windcatchersâand was shaped like a shark's dorsal fin.
Cyrus touched the cloth that was wrapped around their legs and it shot forward to form a second jumpchute. Even with twice the thrust, they flew up the gap at half their previous speed.
As they approached the streamlined tower, Francesca caught a glimpse of the ocean as a dark blue strata covered by billowing gray clouds.
The vertical, downwind edge of the narrow tower held a stack of landing bays: rectangular, penlike structures made of redwood spars and tight
sailcloth. With some rapid editing, Cyrus landed them feetfirst in one of the bays.
sailcloth. With some rapid editing, Cyrus landed them feetfirst in one of the bays.
Francesca disentangled herself from the jumpchute's harness. Without the rush of wind, the world seemed unnaturally quiet. So she was startled when a girl's voice called out, “Welcome, pilot. The tower warden asks your name and purpose.”
Francesca turned to see a short, green-robed hierophantic apprentice. Her headdress covered everything but her dark eyes.
“Cyrus Alarcon, Air Warden of Avel,” Cyrus answered, “making an emergency evacuation after a possible attack on the sanctuary. The day's words are granite fire south. My compliments to your warden and permission to enter the garden tower for an audience with him and the wind marshal.”
The apprentice hurried through a flap in the landing bay's wall.
Francesca took a long breath. The cool air smelled of the sea. All around her sounded the creaking of rope and cloth. Seagulls squabbled and complained.
Francesca rubbed her cold-numbed cheeks. For the first time, she appreciated the protective qualities of a hierophant's headdress.
Francesca looked at Cyrus's robe and then at Cyrus. Like most hierophants, he had a lean buildâthin waist, well-muscled shouldersâand a shorter stature. When recruiting, hierophants were particular about height; extra weight was a disadvantage in the air. That wasn't to say that Cyrus was unusually short. In fact, standing five inches below six feet, he was the tallest pilot Francesca had ever met.
“We've landed. You have some things to explain,” he said, gathering the jumpchute into his arms. Abruptly, the chute cut itself in a hundred different places and then wove itself back together to form a rectangle of neatly folded cloth.
Looking at the sailcloth, Francesca considered the hierophantic high language, Sarsayah, which could focus its energy only within cloth. In the air, Sarsayah texts dissolved into powerful currents of wind.
Only heart muscle could produce Sarsayah runes, meaning that a hierophant could produce text only slowly. For this reason, they wore voluminous robes to store great amounts of text. With every heartbeat, hierophants cast a few magical sentences into their right ventricle. When the heart contracted, it propelled blood and sentences into the lungs. With every breath, hierophants exhaled a few magical sentences. To capture this language, they wore veils almost constantly.
Francesca was not fluent in Sarsayah; she could not see its runes. Cyrus had said they shone with pale blue light. Years ago, she had watched him
sleep and imagined the veil tied loosely around his mouth filling with words that shone like the morning sky.
sleep and imagined the veil tied loosely around his mouth filling with words that shone like the morning sky.
She looked him in the eye. A curl of black hair had escaped his turban. He had said that flying here would expend most of the text in his lofting kite and robes. Given that she didn't trust Cyrus, that left one question: Just how much text did he have left? What she was about to tell him could spark a confrontation, possibly even violence.
Francesca wasn't a prolific spellwright; her gift lay in perfecting intricate medical texts. Still, she could forge wizardly runes with all of her muscles, whereas Cyrus could forge hierophantic runes only with his heart muscles. She could overpower him if it came to a contest of extemporizing magical text.
She glanced down at the ball of Magnus in her thigh. It was still radiating a shower of signal spells. For good measure, she began writing a golden disspell in her arm muscles.
“Cyrus, what I'm about to say might sound far-fetched. But what I saw in the sanctuary makes me believe we have to investigate a grave possibility.”
When he didn't reply, she continued: “Deirdre claimed that the War of Disjunction has already begun.”
“I'm sorry?”
“It might sound like madness, but listen. A demon named Typhon might have crossed the ocean and taken control of Avel. Deirdre claimed to be his Regent of Spies. She believes that most every hierophant in the city unknowingly serves the demon.”
Cyrus laughed and looked up. “But that's insane.” He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. When she replied only with a level stare, he laughed again. “But it is crazy. It's ⦠Deirdre must be mad.”
“We can't ignore her; she knew your passwords.”
“She did and she couldn't have learned them without connections in the canonist's court, but still ⦠It's just not possible.”
Francesca studied Cyrus's eyes. “Deirdre thinks you might be the only wind mage not yet bound to the demon. She said Typhon brought you back to the city as some sort of screen. I'm not sure what that means, something about your being unaware of the canonist's situation.”
Cyrus looked to the flap where the apprentice had disappeared. “This is ⦠it's just crazy.”
“How well do you know Avel now? Do you know who the Regent of Spies is?”
He turned back to her. “No one outside the canonist's advisors would
know that. Cala might not even appoint a Regent of Spies. And as for Avel ⦠I know it well enough. I've started to command the city's kites.”
know that. Cala might not even appoint a Regent of Spies. And as for Avel ⦠I know it well enough. I've started to command the city's kites.”
A nearby seagull scolded another. “Cyrus, you've only been here a fortnight. Deirdre knew your passwords and gave you an order. She commanded you not to tell anyone about what you saw. It's your duty to obey her.”
“My first duty is to protect the city. Fran, there's just no way a demonâ”
“God-of-gods, Cyrus, it's Francesca now! How many times must I tell you? Heaven aflame!”
He sniffed. “My grandmother used to say heaven aflame as well as God-of-gods.”
Francesca exhaled in exasperation. She'd grown up on the border between Spires and Verdant. As a result she'd developed a diction and accent that most everyone else considered antique. It grew more pronounced when she was upset. Cyrus knew his mention of it galled her.
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