All The Turns of Light (27 page)

“And if I become something cold and distant? Something haughty and cruel, not because she intends to be cruel, but because she is simply past caring, past feeling?”

“That will not happen. We have a proverb–winter ice is springtime water. And the sun always shines.”

Meralda buried her face in his neck, hoping to hide the blood-red light still pouring from her eyes.

Chapter 12

Much later, when Mug found Meralda, she was in the aft observation salon, chatting idly with the young woman manning the brass telescope.

Mug paused in his flight well before the salon’s door. He hovered there a moment, eavesdropping, and had turned to leave when Meralda called to him from inside the salon.

“I hear your coils, Mug. Let him in.”

A Bellringer hastily flung open the door.

Mug rolled a dozen of his eyes and sailed through, his leaves gathered tight around his stem.

Meralda smiled, her eyes glowing, but not blazing. Mug’s leaves relaxed when he saw her smile was genuine.

Meralda was seated in a velvet-lined chair facing the salon’s wide sweep of glass. Perched behind the telescope was Airman Darling, who grinned and waved at Mug briefly before putting her eye back to the lens.

Beyond the glass, the clouds were close and dense, leaving the salon dark and wholly engulfed in dark grey vapor except for those brief moments when the airship sailed through a chasm in the layers of clouds.

“Beastie here was just telling me about your newfound love of card games,” Meralda said. Her smile remained, even wider than before. “Perhaps one day I will sit in on a game.”

The
Intrepid
dipped, sending Mug flying nearly into the ceiling.

“Of course, Mistress,” he said, leveling his cage to settle near the deck by Beastie. “We’ll show you how the game is played. Anything out there but clouds and rain, Beastie?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” replied Beastie. “Of course I can’t see very far, except when the wind blows a gap in the clouds.”

“I looked with Sight,” Meralda said. “I found nothing.”

The airship rolled a bit, hit broadside by a powerful gust. She quickly righted, but Mug left the deck to hover halfway to the ceiling.

“So how long will we remain in this soup?” he asked. “Must be quite a storm. We’ve been flying through it for hours, and it seems to be getting worse.”

“We took barometer readings my last watch,” said Beastie. “We’ve never seen numbers like that. Benny—Airman Barns—claimed they were too low to be correct.”

“Low readings are bad, I take it,” Mug said.

“Low means stormy.” Beastie frowned suddenly. “Oh,” she said.

“Oh what?” asked Mug.

Beastie swung the telescope back and forth, searching the murk.

“Nothing. My eyes must be getting tired. Thought I saw something.”

Meralda turned to face her. “The Vonat craft?”

“No ma’am,” said Beastie. “Something smaller. Much closer. Like a big bird.” She leaned back and rubbed her eyes. “I should call for relief. My eyes are playing tricks on me.”

“Can’t be any birds this far from land,” Mug said. “Maybe you are tired. How about a quick game of cards?”

“You couldn’t beat me no matter how tired I am.” Beastie rose. “I’ll send someone to man the telescope, if that’s all right?”

“Go,” Meralda said, with a wave of her hand. “It’s nearly useless in these clouds anyway. Thank you for keeping me company.”

Beastie stretched and left the salon, leaving Mug and Meralda alone.

“Must be pouring rain down below us,” Mug said, studying the dark beyond the glass intently. “Of course I don’t guess the Great Sea minds getting rained on.”

“I imagine not,” replied Meralda.

Mug aimed a blue eye at her, keeping it carefully hidden in a clump of leaves, and was surprised to find Meralda still smiling.

“I thought you might be angry,” he said.

“No,” Meralda said. “Not at all.”

More of Mug’s eyes crept out of hiding. “There are things about you legged folk I suppose I’ll never understand,” he said. “For instance, all that hugging—”

“Captain to Mage,” said the speaking tube by the salon’s door. “Captain to Mage.”

Meralda hurried to the tube and took it from its hook. “Yes, Captain?”

The Captain’s voice, tiny in the tube, replied. “I have reports from the forward telescope of things in the clouds,” he said. “They don’t know what they saw, but they think they saw something.”

Meralda’s smile faded. “We had one such sighting here as well. The airman described it as birdlike.”

“Probably just wind in the clouds,” said the Captain. “That, and nerves. Unless you have reason to believe otherwise?”

“None at the moment,” Meralda said.

“Keep the bridge apprised,” he replied, and then the tube went dead.

Meralda hung up and walked to the very edge of the salon’s viewing glass. Mug joined her, hovering to her right.

“Be careful, Mistress,” he said.

Meralda nodded, closed her glowing eyes, and lifted her Sight.

The
Intrepid’s
glass panes, and the steel frame that held them in place, glowed here and there with traces of old magic. Meralda was surprised at seeing so many arcane smudges, so far from the
Intrepid’s
latched machinery.

The longer she looked, the greater detail she saw, until every frame piece was shot through with faint traces of light, which grew brighter and more detailed as she studied them.

She forced her Sight outward, pushing through the clouds, finding the entire sky alight with electrical discharges leaping like frenzied sprites from cloud to cloud. Bolts of lightning shone like cracks in the sky, brief but blinding bright.

Further and further she searched, her mind’s eye racing through the clouds as if borne on the back of some fearless mythical bird. For a moment, Meralda forgot her mission, forgot herself, and became engrossed in the sensation of swooping and soaring through the boiling heart of the storm.

“Mistress,” Mug yelped. “Your feet. Put them back on the deck.”

Meralda pushed her Sight back, looked down, and saw she was hovering a foot above the deck.

She fell immediately at the realization, landing badly and winding up on her knees.

Mug buzzed down beside her.

“Mistress! Are you all right? Did you break your bone?”

“Bones,” Meralda said. Her head throbbed anew. “I have more than one bone.”

“Well are they broken?” demanded Mug. “You were flying. I thought I ought to say something, before you went through the glass.”

Meralda rose and released her Sight completely.

The sparklings in the steel frame and the glowing smudges on the salon’s glass wall remained.

She turned to Mug. She saw his physical form, but also the traces and moving threads of his arcane body, the one that formed his essence.

Meralda blinked. She rubbed her eyes, and kept them closed for a moment.

“Mistress?”

“I failed to let my Sight go.” Her voice sounded desperate, even to her.

She opened her eyes.

Her Sight remained, leaving her normal vision almost wholly obscured.

“Speak to me!” Mug said. “Bellringers! Get in here!”

Kervis and Tervis rushed inside, hands on their sword hilts.

“What’s wrong?” Kervis asked.

“She won’t say,” Mug said.

“My Second Sight won’t let go.” Meralda made her way to her chair, walking through several arcs of extremely weak residual magic to reach it. The traces, when they met her skin, felt like the touch of cool, smooth glass.

Meralda sat and put her hands over her eyes.

“That’s dangerous, isn’t it?” asked Tervis.

“I’m sure it’s a momentary condition,” Mug said quickly. “Relax, Mistress. Don’t force yourself.”

“I can fetch a cup of tea,” said Tervis. “Would that help?”

“Tea?” Meralda said. “Of course. I’m levitating. Seeing Sight through my eyes, which can no longer be called normal, because they’re glowing. I’m followed by rains of pencils, cats, or cast-off cutlery. Yes, a cup of tea will surely set all that back to rights.”

She laughed aloud, and heard Mug buzz near.

“Mistress?” he said.

Meralda opened her eyes to find all twenty-nine of Mug’s staring at her.

Each eye was alight with thousands of miniscule magical sparkles, which revealed detail and pattern as Meralda looked upon them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Tea. Yes. Thank you, Tervis.”

The Bellringer turned on his heel and hurried from the salon.

“Better now?” Mug asked.

“Quite,” Meralda. “Back to normal.”

Mug hung there for a moment, finally buzzing away without a word.

Kervis returned to his post by the door. Meralda remained in the chair, and let her gaze wander amid the windswept, ragged clouds.

Prolonged use of Sight leads to madness, Fromarch had said, in her first week as his apprentice. Never blend Sight with mundane vision, he cautioned. Those who’ve tried turned raving lunatic, without exception. You might as well latch a thermal spellwork directly to your skull.

That would at least be quick, she recalled the old wizard saying. Probably less painful, too.

Meralda gripped the arms of the chair and waited for her cup of tea. Her Sight wandered through the clouds, watching lightning leap, seeing lesser charges wax and wane and move from cloud to cloud.

She tried to will her Sight away, to ‘cork it up and be done,’ as Fromarch had always said. But the harder she tried, the more distinct and pronounced her Sight became, and the less control she was able to exert over its focus.

After a time, she saw other movement in the clouds, motion lit by flashes of lightning. Dark things, which soared like birds but were not birds, could not be birds. She tried to focus on one of the objects, only to find nothing there but rain-laden cloud-stuff and a cold, wild wind.

But even as she turned away from it, she saw another dark form swoop away. She fought to keep it in her Sight, only to lose it again, only to have her Sight fly away, soaring through the storm like some newly-freed bird.

“Is it the vortex, or the unmagic?”

“What?” asked Mug, and Meralda realized she’d spoken aloud. It could be either affecting me, she thought. Either, or both, or something new entirely.

Or perhaps I am simply going mad
. Meralda laughed, picturing herself floating down the loading ramp at Sheng Zhen, her feet a foot off the ground, her body surrounded by a bevy of random household items orbiting her like so many impromptu moons.

“Mistress?” asked Mug, hovering near.

“I’m going to let go now, Mug,” she said, taking a deep breath. She recalled an old exercise Fromarch had taught her, when she first began exercising her Sight. The old wizard promised her this would always release mystical vision, and though she’d never used it, she still recalled his gruff words and wagging finger. “I’m going to count backward from ten, and then I’m going to close my eyes, and when I open them again, my sight will return to normal.”

“Of course it will, Mistress,” Mug said. “Everything will be all right.”

“Ten,” Meralda said.

Outside, lightning danced.

“Nine.”

Clouds swirled.

“Eight.”

Winds blew.

“Seven.”

Her Sight plunged ever deeper, revealing new wonders and new mysteries with every turn.

“Six.”

Her Sight dove within the heart of a thunderhead. The cloud, black as an old bruise on the outside, was hollow within, and lit with a ruddy glow.

It was filled with flying things. Each was a black disc as wide as a rich man’s carriage. Some were smooth and glistening. Some were covered with waving protuberances, which groped blindly about until they connected with the limbs of another disc. All soared lazily within the confines of the cloud as though they were a flock of wingless birds gliding aimlessly about in a great slow circle.

“Five,” Meralda said, and her voice sounded faint now, and far away.

The flying discs halted, as if they had heard, and then as one they converged on the apparent point of view adopted by her Sight.

“Four!” screamed Meralda, tearing her Sight away, fleeing the great dark cloud. She managed a single brief glance back, and watched in horror as the face of the cloud was pierced by hundreds—thousands of discs, which poured out of the cloud and swarmed off in every direction.

“Three!”

“Mistress, what’s wrong, why are you shouting?”

“It’s not real,” Meralda said. “None of this is real.”

She saw, just for an instant, the figure of a man, his head among the clouds, striding toward her. She heard the beginning of a word, spoken by a voice she’d heard once before.