Dragonfang (21 page)
She pulled back her hand and cocked her head quizzically. Was there a security charm in place that detected intent and had remained undetected? Or was it her conscience telling her to leave the book alone? Ever one to rely on her good sense and instinct, she decided not to try again. She would have to burn an offering to White Quell in gratitude for his guidance.
Jelindel looked about to make sure everything else was as she had found it. Satisfied, she headed for the door, but approaching
footsteps forced her to detour down an aisle and hide behind a bookshelf. She heard the door latch lift and fall. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the door swung open. She crouched down and peered between the books. A man was standing in the doorway. He was short and plump, and wore voluminous scholar’s robes. His face held at first surprise, and then wariness.
His demeanour confirmed Jelindel’s earlier suspicion. Entry to the library had been too easy. She wove a measured cloaking spell. Not a moment too soon, as it happened. The scholar had already sent out a questing spell. When it found no living being, he seemed to relax. Nonetheless, he moved as quietly as he could toward the table that Jelindel had occupied. With no need for secrecy, he lit an oil lamp.
Woven in haste, Jelindel’s cloaking spell collapsed with a loud pop. The noise resonated in the quiet of the night. The scholar jumped in surprise, then ran to the back of the library. Jelindel rushed for the door. Already the thief-bell was ringing stridently. Somewhere behind her, Jelindel heard tinkling glass, then someone’s voice yelling, ‘Stop! Thief!’
So. She hadn’t been alone after all.
Footsteps and cries of alarm seemed to come from everywhere, and in a way this was to Jelindel’s advantage. Amid the commotion, her own footsteps went unnoticed. She took the stairs four at a time. Although she stumbled twice, and nearly twisted her ankle, she swung into the room with the dormer, bolted the door, and made for the window with all speed. She slid a few feet down the drainpipe, then jumped the rest of the way, her fall cushioned by a flowerbed.
‘He’s over there!’ a guard cried.
Then another, full of insensate rage: ‘He’s still in here, you fools.’
A glance up told her someone was sliding down the drainpipe. She pushed off. The library was part of a temple complex, and the complex had guards. Generally the guards existed to keep the less disciplined members of the order inside. Searching for intruders was not their specialty. The gatehouse was still unattended as she approached, but a guard was checking the padlock.
He held aloft a flaring rushlight. ‘It’s not locked,’ he called to someone on the wall.
‘Someone’s about, then,’ responded the wall guard.
To Jelindel’s surprise, the guard ran off in search of the intruder. She hurried to the gate, slid the bolt back, and dashed through. Whoever had been on the wall began to shout that the thief was escaping. He flung his spear, but Jelindel was already in the shadows, and the spear disappeared into the night.
Late revellers had dashed for cover at the first sound of the temple’s thief-bell. The town’s night watch was known to arrest everyone in sight during a pursuit, hoping to capture their quarry by chance. On the other hand, this meant that there was nobody around to notice one small sailor in a hurry. Jelindel did not run headlong, but kept to the shadows and slunk along.
Back at the
Dragonfang
, the lone officer on duty gave her an intense stare by the light of his lantern. The thief-bell was a distant clangour. ‘Fleeing a night watchman?’ he asked.
‘Fleeing a husband,’ muttered Jelindel, spreading her open hands and spinning around to show that she carried no loot.
‘Ah ha, so that’s why you stay sober in ports, you little devil.’ The duty officer gave a toothless grin. ‘Down below with you – quick about it.’
Reputations are made thus, Jelindel thought fatalistically. Now it would be rumoured that first navigator Jaelin was, in fact,
a clever thief or an adulterer, rather than a runaway novice from a Nerrissian monastery.
Jelindel was still awake when Hargav arrived. He stank of beer and vomit, and took an unusually long time to find his way into the tiny locker that was his bunk. He tried to sing a verse of some song about a sailor, a squire, and a girl with a piece of string, was silent for a minute or so, then began snoring.
Above him, Jelindel smiled in spite of herself. She lay awake for a long time thinking about pentacle gems, lindraks, privateers, and machines that opened bridges to paraworlds.
F
a’red was not the sort of wizard who muttered arcane spells over foul-smelling cauldrons in dark cellars. Although he was a very inventive man, his ideas far exceeded his ability to carry them out personally. As such, he had learned to delegate work.
A year earlier, over a tankard of ale at the local tavern, he had suggested the idea of a living house to Masonnerry the Artificer. A house that lived off sunlight and water, repaired itself, cleaned itself, kept itself at a pleasant temperature all year around, and ate kitchen scraps.
Over the next few days they discussed the spells required, planted a few dozen seedlings that had been subjected to a very heavy barrage of formative spells, then watered them with a fluid that Masonnerry had brewed in a foul-smelling cauldron in a very dark cellar.
Fa’red had visited Fowler the Foul next. Fowler lived in a house made of woven chicken feathers. While the featherdown mattresses were supremely comfortable, and the goosedown
cushions positively caressed those who sat in them, the place stank of wet feathers when it rained.
While the two wizards dined on fried chicken, Fa’red called for a raw chicken leg. Holding it up, he pulled at a tendon so that the claws of the dead bird contracted, grasping a knife.
‘Have you ever considered the idea of a pair of chicken legs that are ten feet high?’ Fa’red asked.
‘I – oh. Well, not really. What possible use would they have – apart from doing the walking for a twenty-foot chicken?’
‘Could you create such a thing?’
‘Well, yes. Some very arduous incantations over a suitably fertilised egg soaked in some very potent liquid at body temperature would do it. Of course, I would need a dark cellar and a cauldron, and the smell would be positively foul. But it could be done.’
‘And if you just wanted the legs?’ suggested Fa’red.
‘Oh, much easier. You just grow the legs out of the sides of a large fermentation barrel – all breweries have them. You just add water and digestive fluids, then start shovelling in chicken feed. Mind you, a vast amount of chicken feed would be needed, and the cost could be prohibitive.’
‘Just say I was to supply the chicken feed, the fluids, and one very large brewery barrel: could you do it?’
‘Sir, have you not been listening? Of course I can; it is just that I have never done it before. Come to think of it, I rather like the idea of strutting around the town on such an apparatus. My wife would probably appreciate using it for going to the market. Oh, and what a grand entrance I could make at the forty-third congress of the Chicken Wizards Fellowship later this year. I tell you what – supply me with two barrels and twice as much chicken feed, and I shall grow a spare one for you.’
‘And what about a correspondingly large pair of chicken wings?’ asked Fa’red, without trying to look eager.
‘Oh, I could grow them, but they would be no good at all for flying. Big problems with the lift-to-weight ratio when you get as big as that. It’s a matter of feather strength, too. I wrote a paper on it, once. I have a copy here, somewhere, written on feather-fibre paper.’
That night, as Fa’red soaked in a bathtub at a nearby inn, trying to get the smell of chicken out of his skin and hair, he came across an interesting footnote in Fowler’s paper on very large chicken wings.
With skin wings, there is a higher limit to the size that can be lifted for flight. This is the case with dragons, of course, and these remarkable creatures supplement the lift and thrust of their skin, bone and ligament wings by using magic to cancel out as much as nine parts in ten of their weight.
Next on the list was Belforrey the Bat Man. He lived three weeks away by coach. As Fa’red made the journey, he took extensive notes and calculations. Thus, by the time he reached his destination, he had a complete set of specifications ready.
Fa’red showed him the plans and specifications for what he wanted.
‘Well, yes, I could grow you a set of bat wings that could move the weight that you require to be airborne. A fruit bat’s wings would be best, enlarged and strengthened by magical means,’ Belforrey said. They were seated inside a tower.
‘You see, Fa’red, the wings have to be strong as well as light if you want to fly. It would be easy to grow very light wings that could not even support their own weight. Or very sturdy wings
that could not push down enough air to get even, well, my weight off the ground. But strong and light together takes skill, brilliance, flair, even artistry.’ He wandered over to the window to admire the belfry on the adjacent tower. For some reason, he had caused a belfry to be built on each of his thirteen towers.
‘But can it be done?’ said Fa’red.
‘Of course. I have flair and artistry. You take a fruit bat pup from its mother’s pouch, and soak it in some foul-smelling gunk brewed in a dark cellar. I would have to hire one of those, of course – I only have belfries in this castle. This kills the bat pup but allows the wings to grow to a virtually unlimited size. Of course, there is the matter of feeding. You would need a very large vat, the type that breweries use.’
‘Perhaps filled with digestive fluids and chicken feed?’ suggested Fa’red.
‘Oh no, you can’t grow bats on chicken feed. You need fruit, or at least fruit peelings, selected kitchen scraps. It would be expensive, but you would get a very nice set of wings. To tell the truth, I rather fancy myself with such a set of wings. One could put a saddle on the barrel, and steer it with a pair of reins and some pedals and levers. Launching could be a problem though. You would need ten-foot-tall legs to reach take-off speed.’
‘Oh, very impractical,’ said Fa’red.
‘But wait. I could have my peasants build a stretch of perfectly level ground a mile long and fifty feet wide. Then I could put wheels on the barrel and get into the air.’
‘You could call it an airstrip,’ Fa’red said, thinking of a diabolical paraworld he had visited once.
‘What?’ said Belforrey. ‘Oh yes, very clever, Fa’red.’
‘Of course, you could not go anywhere,’ Fa’red pointed out. ‘No road on the entire continent is straight for more than a
hundred yards or so, and they tend to be crowded with peasants, carts, armies on the march, and nobles in coaches.’
‘No problem for me. I will only take off and land here, at my castle. Mind you, there is the question of range.’
‘Range?’
‘Oh, yes. The wings would get hungry after all the exertion of flying. You would need to feed them after an hour. And purge the waste material in the barrel, too. Of course, you would be dead by then. So there’s no point.’
‘Dead? From one hour of flying?’
‘Wind chill, my good sir, wind chill. Even wearing long underwear under leather trousers, fleecy leather boots, and a leather coat, you would be dead of wind chill. Go outside, for example. The air is cool, but there is no wind. Now imagine that cool air as a gale. Imagine sitting in that gale, perfectly still. The heat loss would be incredible. I’ve done experiments. I’ve sat on top of a tower during a gale, and, my word, it gets cold. Add rain or snow, and the time you can endure drops even further.’
Fa’red had taken this into account, but he was not about to let on. ‘So, for example, a flight from D’loom to Mordicar would be impossible?’
‘Well, not impossible, just cumbersome and very uncomfortable. Map, map, where is a map? Maps are like handmaidens, they seem to know when you want them, and hide. Not that I have any handmaidens, of course. They don’t like the bats, you know. Ah, found it.’
Belforrey unrolled the map on the floor. Fa’red knelt down beside him and held down one end.
‘The far north is about three hundred miles,’ said Belforrey. ‘Travelling at about sixty miles to the hour, that would be five hours. Allow another hour for headwinds, and you need six
hours. That would have your wings dead from hunger six times over. It would also have you dead of exposure about seven times. It’s all right if you were a cat with nine lives. But, even so, it’s a high price to pay for an admittedly fast trip. Of course, you could build seven airstrips along the way.’
‘Very impractical,’ said Fa’red.
‘Take off from D’loom, then incline a little southeast to fly over the Garrical Mountains – catch the updrafts, you see. You would need a strip on Dragonfrost Plain. Very cold and high, but quite flat, so easy work. Another strip near the Marisa River, another at Hez’ar, a third near the Serpentire River. Yes, nice flat flood plain there. Oh dear, a forest where the next strip should be. Trees to clear, stumps to dig out, that will take time. Mordicar, well, it is on a coastal plain so –’
