James P. Hogan Read online

  Unless…

  Unless she could believe the things that Korshak had told her…. But no. That had been long ago. Time had run out. Things like that had no place in her thoughts now.

  A slight sound from the outer room of her chambers caught her ear – as if made by someone moving stealthily. Vaydien stopped what she was doing and crossed warily to the open doorway. Leetha, her younger half-sister, was poised at the outer door, in the act of turning the handle to let herself out.

  “Brat!” Vaydien exploded. What are you doing in here? Have you been spying on me?”

  Leetha responded by brazening things out. “Do you know what, Vaydien? You’re stupid! I have more common sense and know more about reality than you ever will. Even at my age I’d make Zileg a better wife, because I can recognize a good thing when I see it.”

  Vaydien was too exhausted after her confrontation with Zileg to be up to taking on another one. “You don’t understand….”

  Leetha shook her head incredulously, golden curls swirling above her pale green gown. “I don’t understand you. What kind of woman would spoil a future like that? To be the wife of a dashing, fine-looking military officer, who could one day be the most powerful ruler in the entire region. If you weren’t the first in line… It isn’t fair. Ugh! It makes me so angry.”

  Vaydien sighed tiredly. Leetha was as blind as Zileg, but at least she had the excuse of being young. If the truth were known, Leetha very likely was destined to become a powerful lady in the land one day – but not as the wife of Zileg. If Vaydien guessed their father’s designs correctly, Zileg would be discarded when Erendred’s domain was overrun to become a part of Arigane, which was why he was being set up now with a wife who would be expendable. Leetha’s mother would have no argument with that. Getting Vaydien out of the way to clear the way for her own daughter’s future would suit her very well indeed.

  But talk along such lines would be shameful and unbecoming – as well as futile. Before Vaydien could respond, a soft knock sounded on the door. She turned her head toward it. “Yes?”

  “Mirsto.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The door opened to admit a portly, aging, white-haired, bearded figure, clad in a blue robe. As the court physician, Mirsto was one of the few males permitted free access to this part of the palace. Even Zileg had overstepped protocol in entering – but Vaydien had expected nothing better. Mirsto gave Leetha an admonishing look.

  “Do you need to be here right now? Your sister has a lot to do today, preparing for tonight and then leaving tomorrow. She should be getting some rest.”

  “She doesn’t deserve —” Leetha began, but Vaydien cut in.

  “We were just talking. Leetha was about to leave anyway.” Vaydien shifted her eyes. “Weren’t you?”

  A moment passed. Leetha seemed reluctant to move. “Vaydien and I do have private matters to discuss,” Mirsto told her pointedly. She took in the look on his face, sniffed, and let herself out with a haughty toss of her curls. Mirsto moved to close the door behind her.

  Vaydien let several seconds pass, releasing her tension in a long, drawn-out breath. Mirsto reached out and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. The gesture was well-meant, Vaydien knew, but it felt empty. “I saw her follow Zileg in,” Mirsto explained. “It seemed better to wait until he’d left.”

  Vaydien could feel her eyes moistening with tears of frustration and helplessness. “I’m being sacrificed to Shandrahl’s ambitions, just as my mother was. Nothing but evil rules the world. Is that what ended the last one?” Then she saw that Mirsto’s eyes, still sharp and bright despite his years, were twinkling. “Why do you look like that? What place can there be for mirth, on today of all days?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that it’s all evil,” he replied. “I seem to remember a certain young gentleman who entertained the court here some time ago, who displayed fine manners and principles. He knew of wondrous people who talked of building a new world. And he promised one day to come back, I do recall.”

  Vaydien stared at him searchingly, as if fearing a poor joke. “At this late hour. How could it be?”

  “There is talk of surprise entertainment at the banquet tonight. And he was extremely well-received the last time.”

  “You really believe it could be possible?” Vaydien whispered. Mirsto led the way through to the rear room where she had been before, with the large windows opening out to the garden of the inner court. His voice took on a more serious and confidential tone.

  “I’ve had reports from the town. His wagon arrived in the hills above Escalos the day before yesterday.”

  Just when Vaydien had given up hope. She found herself trying to laugh, but it wouldn’t come. Her head was a whirl of feelings and emotions jostling to try and form themselves into something coherent. “It seems impossible. And yet, everything he did seemed impossible….” Coming back into the room, she stopped suddenly, staring at the empty table.

  “What?” Mirsto asked her.

  Vaydien gestured. “There was a vase of flowers right here only a moment ago. I was working on it.” She looked from side to side, at a loss.

  Mirsto’s countenance wrinkled into a smile. “I rather think I feel magical influences at work already.” He moved forward and peered around. “Ah!” Vaydien followed his gaze. The vase was a short distance away outside, standing on a rock amid the shrubbery bordering the pool. Several bright red flowers that hadn’t been there before filled the gaps left by the damaged ones. Vaydien stared incredulously.

  “You’d better go and investigate,” Mirsto advised. “It seems he’s found the one place where your father’s agents won’t be watching. I’ll stand guard for you in the other room. If anyone comes, I’ll tell them you’re resting.”

  THREE

  Besides being a part of Korshak’s stock-in-trade, finding out things that people were not supposed to know formed an irrepressible side to his nature. Investigations pursued in the course of earlier visits had revealed the tunnel built beneath Shandrahl’s palace to provide a way out in the event of an emergency. It seemed that fears of danger and treachery came as constant companions with lives dedicated to amassing wealth and power. The tunnel gave access to the inner court and royal quarters, and had a side passage connecting to the servants’ quarters, where Korshak and Ronti had been directed on their arrival. As well as providing its intended means of escape, therefore, the tunnel also afforded a convenient way in.

  Korshak crouched in the shrubbery by the pool outside the windows, and smiled to himself at the consternation visible within over the vanished vase of flowers. A more conventional way of announcing himself wouldn’t have been consistent with his style. He watched as eventually Mirsto spotted the vase on its rock near to where Korshak was hidden, said something to Vaydien and pointed, and then left the room. Looking mystified, while at the same time rapt in wonder, Vaydien moved to the windows, opened one of them, and emerged. She came forward slowly, searching from side to side with her eyes, not moving her head too visibly, and followed a narrow path to a bower screened by the shrubbery, where a seat faced out toward the pool.

  “Korshak?” she murmured in a low, cautious voice. He rose, smiling, just a few feet away from her, stepped forward, and clasped her hands. She stared for a moment in delighted disbelief and kissed him impulsively, but her expression changed to one of alarm. “You must be insane, coming here like this.”

  “Did you ever doubt it?”

  “But how did you get in?”

  “I have no need of doors. Didn’t you know?”

  “Oh, you’re impossible! Do you even know how to be serious about anything? My father has eyes everywhere. Have you any idea what would happen if you were caught?”

  “Eyes look outward. Never back inside their own heads.”

  Vaydien sighed despairingly; but she was happy. Korshak lowered himself onto the seat and drew her down next to him. “I was beginning not to believe you’d be back,” she said.

  �
��Then you need to get to know me better,” he answered. “I always keep promises.”

  She looked at him hesitantly. “And does that mean you’ll take me with you? That was also a promise.”

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  Vaydien choked weakly. Just as she had been finding her strength…. “Now I think you are serious,” she managed.

  “I always tell the truth, too.”

  Vaydien took in a long breath while she fought to maintain her composure. “You… also seem to have a way of keeping surprises until the last moment,” she said finally.

  Korshak shrugged. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t be surprises. Besides, the worst way I know of guarding a secret is to make it known too soon.”

  “What, even to me?” Vaydien looked shocked. “Who would I tell, apart from Mirsto? And I know that you trust him.”

  “You don’t have to tell anyone. People have other ways of communicating themselves, that they’re unaware of, but which those who make it their business to be suspicious are very good at reading…. In any case, Mirsto already knows.”

  Vaydien gave a satisfied nod. “I knew there was something odd afoot the moment he walked in. He talks with his eyes.” She looked mildly reproachful. “He could have just told me, without you risking your neck like this.”

  “Send an old man to speak for me, while I hide like a rabbit?” Korshak shook his head. “That’s not my way.”

  “I know it isn’t. And that’s why I want to go with you – to a new world.” She snuggled more closely against him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me more about it. Another world that turns about a distant star that’s another sun. The light that moves across the sky is the great ship that will take us there.”

  “Yes,” Korshak replied. It was another subject about which he had refrained from divulging too much.

  “But how are we to get to it?”

  “The builders of the ship will bring us there. They are the ones whose images I have seen and talked with in my travels.”

  Vaydien shook her head distantly and dreamily. “What manner of arts can build a ship that travels across the sky, large enough to carry thousands, you say, yet so high that it appears as a speck? Can one sail to the stars?”

  Korshak took her hand, admired it, and lifted it to his lips while he considered the question. “Shandrahl has metalsmiths who work in the forge and armory to shape weapons for his soldiers,” he said.

  “Ye-es,” Vaydien looked at him uncertainly.

  “And in schools and craft shops out in the city, there are those who cut and polish lenses for spyglasses and magnifiers, and others whose artifice enables steam to turn engines that move mills and other ingenious devices.”

  “Secrets that only the specially gifted can know,” Vaydien said, voicing the generally held belief.

  “Those are just a few, isolated techniques that have been preserved without understanding from a far vaster trove of knowledge that once existed, that enabled feats beyond our comprehension.”

  “You mean greater magic than that which you persuade people you command?”

  Korshak snorted and grinned. “If you like.” He had already made it clear to Vaydien that the things he did were accomplished through trickery – although at times he wasn’t sure if she completely believed him.

  “I have seen strange, intricately fashioned parts of metals and other materials that were unearthed, that could serve no discernible purpose,” Vaydien said slowly. “And once, a decayed device with studs that I was told would let its owner talk instantly to anyone, anywhere. But I was never sure whether to believe it.”

  “Oh, such things were once commonplace,” Korshak assured her.

  “And was it that knowledge that destroyed the old world?” she asked.

  “Yes. But it didn’t have to. The world then was not like the one that you know today – divided into many regions like Arigane and Urst, that are cut off from other places and communicate little. The knowledge that existed then was available to all people, everywhere. There are places in the world today where that knowledge has been resurrected, and the ancient wonders have been created again. But those who have rediscovered that knowledge will not, this time, give it freely to the world to be misused again. It is shared only with selected adepts. To be accepted, they must show themselves worthy in spirit and disposition, as well as aptitude of mind.”

  “And is that how you were chosen?”

  Korshak nodded. “But the same patterns of evil have been arising again in the nations taking shape across the world. So the Builders decided that they would go away and begin a new world of their own, where their knowledge will be used wisely. And so they constructed the great ship that you see traveling across the sky as a light. Its name is Aurora.”

  Vaydien was listening, spellbound, her deep brown eyes watching Korshak’s face unwaveringly. “And we depart tonight?” she repeated.

  “Tonight. You, and I, and Mirsto, with Ronti.”

  “What must I do?”

  “That is what I have come to tell you. Now, listen carefully….”

  At a table in the kitchens at the rear of the palace, Ronti was eating soup and bread with some of the household staff.

  “The same magician that astounded them before,” one of the cooks informed the table over her shoulder, from where she was stirring the contents of a large pot on a stove. “What’s his secret, Mr. Ronti? Everyone has a secret. His must be a special one.”

  “You don’t think he’d tell you, do you?” one of the scullery maids said scornfully.

  Ronti sat back and treated them to a look of one imparting a rare confidence. Part of his function was to take on the hat of Korshak’s agent when the opportunity presented itself. “It’s the bloodline,” he told them. “Korshak is from a family that has produced generations of adepts. His mother could see into the future. She said when he was young that he would one day visit a land far from the sea, where the first daughter would marry a warrior chief and become queen of a great nation.”

  “Lady Vaydien and Prince Zileg!” an upstairs servant girl exclaimed in an awed voice. “Just as is happening. She foretold it!”

  “Master Predger told me once that he thinks it’s all trickery,” the cook said. “Isn’t that so, Master?”

  A man seated at the table head, who was evidently the one referred to, finished a mouthful of food and cleared his throat. He was older than the average of the others, erectly poised and dressed more formally, and could have been a head butler. “All I’ll say is that I’m not convinced. I heed the words of Mirsto, who says that we should be cautious in belief of all things, and demand evidence.”

  “But we all ‘eard ’ow ‘is mother knew about Lady Vaydien and Prince Zileg years ago,” a man in rough outdoor garb put in from the far side. “’Ow could that ‘ave been trickery?”

  “You see,” the servant girl invited triumphantly.

  A young man who looked like a stable hand, sitting next to the one who had just spoken, looked up. “I hear Prince Zileg doesn’t have much time for ideas of magic, either. He says that properly argued reason can reveal natural, everyday causes for all things. In Urst they’re making a better quality of steel by adding burned bones to the melt.”

  “Where did you hear that?” the head butler demanded.

  “Jarsind the smith talked to one of Zileg’s guards while we were shoeing their horses. Prince Zileg takes a great interest in the work of artisans.”

  “Did you hear that, Nastra?” the scullery maid called to the cook. “You’d better start keeping the bones for Jarsind.” Ronti had been watching the scullery maid. Her name was Eena. Although lacking in refinement, she was sharp-eyed, intelligent, the kind who would rise to a challenge. Born into a different background, she could have gone far. Also, Ronti’s instinct told him she had a mischievous streak, which would suit his purpose.

  The cook eyed Eena derisively. “Jarsind? The only thing
he’d know to do with them would be throw them to the dogs.” Laughter greeted the remark.

  Ronti listened intently as he continued eating. He had observed Zileg’s hostility toward Korshak, and read that it was rooted in more than just skepticism toward magic. Zileg was shrewd and missed little. Such was human nature that a penchant for cruelty and vanity didn’t preclude intelligence. That could be a dangerous combination.

  “More bread, Mr. Ronti?” the maid next to him asked.

  “Please.” Ronti took a piece from the dish and looked around the table. “We noticed from our camp in the hills yesterday that there’s some rebuilding going on near the marketplace,” he said. “What’s the story?”

  “Oh, there was a big fire about half a year ago now,” the stable hand answered. “It started in the rooms at the back of the inn….” He went on to elaborate, letting Ronti lead them away from Shandrahl’s smith and the new steel being developed in Urst. Five minutes from now, Ronti doubted if any of them would remember that the subject had been broached at all. But Ronti would report every detail back to Korshak.

  From such seemingly trivial snippets, were many wondrous miracles and prophecies born.

  Later, Ronti just happened to be passing along the passage to the door opening from the yard, when Eena came out of a pantry, carrying an oil jar.

  “Still here?” she said playfully. “I thought you’d gone back to your wagon outside.”

  Ronti kept his voice low. “I stayed back to have a word with you, Eena – when the others were out of the way.”

  “Really?” The tone of her voice asked, now where had she heard this before? But her eyes were saying she could be interested.