Warrior (The Key to Magic) (2 page)

In a spectacular and stunningly loud fashion, a dozen wooden barks, fishing vessels, and galleys were blown apart, set aflame, holed, and sent to the bottom within half a minute.    Smoke, steam and flickering fires rose about Number One like a curtain, incidentally providing some concealment, and figures could be seen running along the quays or diving from the piers into the questionable safety of the water. 

As the marines continued to pour fire at a blistering rate into any convenient target, floating or not -- the lower deck of Number One had been packed with as many spheres as could possibly have been squeezed in -- Mar raced across the choppy, debris strewn water in a course parallel to the irregular curve of the shore, raising the skyship to five manheight to gain a vantage above the havoc to allow him to find his primary target, the fleet of grain ships that were scheduled to depart on the morrow.

"Shrikes coming up!" Kyamhyn warned.

Almost at the same instant, Mar identified the grain ships at anchor in a tight formation, wallowing low in the water only a cable from the main northern pier.  A quick count gave ten.  If the Phaelle'n followed their habitual practice, this meant that as many as ten Shrikes would be nearby.  Increasing Number One's speed, he drove directly toward the center of the group, disregarding the intervening smaller watercraft.  Jarred slightly by the impacts, the steel reinforced forward prow of Number One smashed unimpeded through masts and rigging.

Bellowed orders from Truhsg made the polybolos crews depress the aim of their war machines to bear on the grain ships.  In the following second, the nearest vessel shuddered under the concentrated barrage, began to burn, and settled to the bottom.  Half a minute later all the grain ships were burning and taking on water.  Some, scored with multiple direct hits, had been blown completely apart.

From starboard, a Shrike flashed over Number One's bow, black cylinders stitching briefly through the deck planking between Mar and Ulor.

Not taking time to cast the static-purple shield, Mar immediately began to drive the skyship up, swerving from starboard to port in an erratic motion designed to throw off the aim of the suddenly swarming Shrikes.

Through the ether, he felt Eishtren's bow launch once and the departing Shrike disintegrated in a ball of aqua fire.  The shock in the ether was tremendous in size.

Two more Shrikes dashed at the stern of Number One and again the quaestor fired.  Both enemy skyships were likewise quickly destroyed by blazing ethereal arrows.  With the twin blasts just a hundred or so armlengths off the stern post, the heat and concussion washed over the deck in a punishing breaker.  For a moment, the disruption staggered the standing crankmen, interrupting the sand sphere screen vomiting from the polybolos, but the marines recovered within seconds and the projectiles sprang outward once more.

"The Shrikes are withdrawing at speed to the north," Kyamhyn announced.

Though he could not have heard the report, Truhsg evidently had seen this for himself, for he yelled, "Cease fire! Conserve ammunition!"

Slowly the polybolos rattled down, hurling a last few tardy spheres, and then became quiet.  The crews straightaway began topping off hoppers and checking their machines for damage.  Unless the gears and levers meshed perfectly, the contraptions had a calamitous propensity to jam.  Berhl's engineers had altered the design to utilize brass instead of wood wherever possible, but the war machines were still frightfully finicky.

Mar swung Number One around in a tight turn and headed the skyship back toward the center of the oblong harbor. 

"Watch for them to come back," he told Kyamhyn.

"Yes, my lord king."

"Ulor, take the helm.  I'm going up to take a look."

"Aye, my lord king."

Mar flew away from the deck, climbing at a rapid rate to a height of a few hundred armlengths.  A slow rotation proved that the enemy skyships were not visible above the horizon, confirming that the Shrikes had indeed yielded the air above the city to Number One.

He called upon
The Knife Fighter's Dirge
to give him a few relative moments to take stock.  Intertwining the peeping-gold element of a water warding flux bubble with a shower of moaning-emerald created by a corkscrew motion of his wrist, palm, and fingers, he generated a lozenge nearly an armlength in diameter that concentrated and focused light to bring him clear, magnified images through the shadowed ether of the frozen world.  He had developed the spell after studying a spyglass that Lord Hhrahld had presented to him as a gift.

Aside from a rowboat or two and a great lot of wrack, nothing remained afloat inside the breakwater.  Happily, the marines' aim had been proficient enough so that extraneous damage had been restricted, by and large, to the immediate area of the quays. A few small fires burned amongst the rubble of the warehouses, but none of these appeared energetic enough to start a general conflagration.

While he saw a few of the Black Monks, a small number of other armsmen, and others that must be dock workers wandering amidst the carnage, there did not appear to be, as yet, any organized defense.

Satisfied, he allowed time to resume its normal pace and descended to the cabin section deck near Truhsg.  As if they had anticipated his intention, Scahll and Bear, both wearing the fugleman badges of their month-old promotions, were waiting with the legate. Each commanded one of the files of legionnaires that Mar had added to the regular compliment of Number One,

"Truhsg, put half your crews on stand-by to provide cover fire if needed and have the rest prepare to sally with the half-section.  I want you to test the mettle of the remaining defenders.  Withdraw to Number One if you meet major resistance."

The legate saluted and began calling out the names of ceannaires, directing quads to head below to fetch their weapons and armor. 

Returning to the bow, Mar ordered Ulor to move in toward the town.  Even with the Shrikes gone, he did not have enough armsmen to seize and hold the port, but a probe backed up by Number One could reveal the numerical strength and morale of the garrison.  That information would be of considerable use to Aerlon.

Mar pointed out a relatively clear area on the southern quay to the marine officer.  "Ground there and have the ramps put out.  Hold position until Truhsg and his armsmen are back aboard."

"Aye, my lord king."

Mar took off again, flying ahead of the skyship.  For just a moment, he smiled.

Number One had been very much Telriy's ship and Eishtren, Truhsg, and the rest Telriy's crew.

In the three months since Number One had returned from the Great Waste, he had made both skyship and crew
his
.

But more than that, he had forged Number One and her crew into a terribly efficient weapon, a sword that he had used and would continue to use to harry and chasten his enemy.

One day, he would plunge that sword through the very heart of the Brotherhood of Phaelle.

TWO

2170 by the Common Reckoning

(3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

Oaurlervy Faction Investigative Section Headquarters

Secured City of Dhiloeckmyur

With the stars obscured by the city lights, the paired beacons of the Orbitals raced overhead in an unclouded black sky, their presence an insult of disorder that could not yet be eliminated.

With long, firm strides that unabashedly declaimed his confidence in his place in the world, Compliance Officer Belter walked from the port circle across the broad, otherwise vacant sidewalk to the fortified entrance of the Investigative Section.  For the fourth and final time, he checked the gig line of his uniform as he took the regulation precise salute of the guards.  Outfitted in a manner expressly calculated to be flagrantly grandiose, the guards wore razor-creased ruby uniforms heaped with gold braid, pristine white gloves, broad-billed caps perched precisely on shaved scalps, and blindingly polished boots. 

As he passed each man, Beltr automatically examined the soldier's eyes for signs of fear, uncertainty, or concern, saw none, and offered a minute nod in approval.  The guards were more or less ceremonial -- the magics of the entryway were its real defense -- but any deficiency on their part would have obligated him to administer immediate and effective punishment.  No failures of any sort could be permitted here at the most important magical installation in all of the Faction Commonwealth.

As a senior Compliance Officer, Beltr had the authority to inflict summary judgment for even minor infractions.  As a superior sorcerer of the Elder Hierarchy, he had the ethereal power to incinerate a slacker so that nothing remained.  Among the lower ranks, he had a deserved reputation as merciless.

Beltr believed in absolutes.  A demonstration of punishment that did not moderate behavior was useless.  Consequently, the occasional total immolation was mandatory to maintain proper discipline.

The great building towered above the street.  A decorous monolith of synthetic stone, soaring buttresses, unmitigated grandeur, and blazing light, the headquarters of the Investigative Section had been designed to make a statement that none could ignore.   Its massive size, shinny black granite facade, and sweeping, heroic architecture were the literal embodiment of the manifest destiny and unmatched achievements of the Oaurlervy Faction.

Now that the final recalcitrants, those misdirected unfortunates of Kharae Holding, had been dealt with, the Faction had no serious rivals on this continent.  It possessed unchallenged control of all of the rural and urban sectors of the highlands and eastern coastal areas.  Within the year, Beltr expected that the remaining hold-outs, the incompetent and disorganized magicians of so-called Free Territories, which straggled unconnected along the fringe of the western coast, would as well make submission to the inevitable rule of the Commonwealth.

Beltr marched through the open doors into the foyer, crossing warning lines painted on the floor that indicated the various protective wards in use, and felt a few light prickles on his skin as the spells determined whether he had permission to enter.  Had they not, the insignificant dust of his vaporized corpse would have drifted practically unnoticed to the floor.

In the cavernous lobby beyond, a second, smaller set of guards, all like him yellow-uniformed Compliance Officers and thus also combat specialized sorcerers, frisked him, closely inspected the items in his pockets -- an identity card and a touchstone -- and used various magical and mundane methods to manually verify his identity.

The Investigative Section was also the most secure facility in all of the Oaurlervy Faction Commonwealth; not even the members of the Directorate Committee could gain entry without a thorough pat down.

All of the Section's essential functions being deep underground, he took the smaller descending lift.  The upper thirty floors of the building were occupied by confinement cells, interrogation chambers, clerical offices, and the associated supplementary departments.   Even were the League or the Republic to target and destroy the building and the entire city around it, the Investigative Section would survive, ten stories beneath the surface inside multiple layers of interlocked defensive wards.

Or, at least, that was the theory.  As far as Beltr was concerned, there was no magic defense for which some nullifying counter could not be devised.  The continued escalation in magical means of destruction had reached a point where he privately believed that the capability to completely annihilate every being on the planet was soon to be an incontrovertible fact.

This, naturally, was only an academic observation.  The overriding purpose of his life was to ensure compliance with the Internal Magical Restrictions of the Directorate Committee.  The IMR regulations were necessary to maintain appropriate civil order, insure the safety and security of the productive citizenry, and to prevent the extravagant and dangerous excesses of the unrestrained use of magic that were rampant in other political entities.  Unregulated magic was the antithesis of proper order.  Only with rigid, complete control of all magic could the compliant inhabitant of the Commonwealth be assured that he could productively pursue the goals of the Oaurlervy Faction.

As he stepped out of the lift into the blindingly-lit lobby of the eleventh level and started across the white marble floor, passing the heroic statues of Compliance Officers who had given their lives in service to the Commonwealth, he again felt the slightly uncomfortable sensation of a ward scan.  This spell did not, however, simply confirm his identity; it also analyzed his emotional and mental state, seeking any indication of vulnerability, disobedience, or treasonous intent.  As he continued toward the check-in desk, a second and then a third scan irritated his magical sense without generating any noticeable physical response.  These two more subtle ethereal investigations would evaluate his magical abilities and note flux residues of any sort.  Had he recently engaged in any unauthorized magical activity, which a reading outside of established parameters would have indicated, he would have been subject to immediate arrest and interrogation. 

Without comment, the officer at the desk wrote his name in a paper log book.  Given that all means of magical data storage could be easily suborned, the Investigative Section maintained all of its records in physical form.

Beltr continued into the corridor that led to his duty station, the monitoring center for the peripheral provinces.  At the blast door entrance, a final set of guards -- again entirely decorative -- braced to attention as he passed through.

As always, Beltr had arrived at the exact time required to begin his shift.  The previous shift commander, Dreal, was, as per standing procedure, waiting to be relieved just inside the high-ceilinged chamber. The center was one very large room, segregated by tall, glassite partitions into dozens of small cubicles.  Most of these were occupied by technicians, the skryers and other magical specialists who performed the routine and constant oversight of the target provinces and their inhabitants.