Eyes of the Calculor (67 page)

Only now did the image fade. Jemli collapsed down onto her huge bed, desperate to have peace, to sleep, to rest, to just lie still with a blank mind, yet aware that the image had told no lies at all. At least nothing that she knew to be lies, at any rate. The Dragon Librarian Service was to be crippled, the Commonwealth left lead-erless, the Southmoors blamed. They were the only neighboring power not to have a representative on the palace balcony, she had even sent the unsuspecting Overmayor of Woomera to die there. It could not fail, she had decided. The presence of her own Overmayor was to be her proof of innocence.

Hours later reports began to arrive by the Gentheist-controlled beamflash system that reached to the border with the Commonwealth. The paraline and road bridges had been blown up on the river border, and trenches were being dug across the roads on the Commonwealth side. Woomeran barges and river galleys were being seized in Commonwealth river ports, and others had been shelled and sunk by shore-based bombards. Another report spoke of a battle raging between two squadrons of river galleys directly outside the river harbor at Morgan. The two forces were evenly matched and were flaying each other to matchwood. The same agent in the beam-flash tower of Morgan reported mobs shooting Gentheists regardless of whether or not they had affiliations with Jemli, and every Gen-theist shrine in the port was burning. Soon after that message the

beamflash transmissions ceased, after an announcement that war had been declared and the border was closed.

Jemli now had a dilemma. Her army of lancers, officials, priests, and newly trained beamflash operators was ready to rush into the Commonwealth and save it from anarchy. It was not an army of invasion, however, and was not intended to deal with coordinated, determined, and sustained opposition. Worse, from Morgan onward, the beamflash towers were all on the Commonwealth side of the river border.

In a strategically canny move, Jemli sent a message to the Burra tower to dispatch three riders to Wentworth, a Woomeran town on the junction of the Southmoor Emirates, the Commonwealth, and her own lands. The thousand lancers there were to make a dash into Southmoor lands, then cross a nearby bridge into the Commonwealth. The riders covered the distance in a single day, and the thousand Ghan lancers were on Southmoor land by midnight and in the Commonwealth by morning.

One of the lancers swam back across the river and staggered into Wentworth five days later. The brigade had been annihilated.

Burra, the Woomeran Confederation

I he report of the surviving Ghan lancer was given to a dispatch rider at once, but it was a further day before he reached Burra, which was now the eastern terminus of the Woomeran beamflash network. The priest in charge of the tower read the report in disbelief before giving it to the transmitter.

/ WENTWORTH LANCERS WIPED OUT / ALL COMMONWEALTH TOWNS AT SIEGE STATUS AVIANESE KITEWINGS DIRECTING COMMONWEALTH AND SOUTHMOOR LANCER BRIGADES FROM THE AIR / THREE CAVALRY BATTLES AGAINST SUPERIOR ODDS/

"Why is this happening?" asked the transmitter. "Peterborough

said that it was the Southmoors who bombed the palace in Rochester."

"The leaders of the Commonwealth and Southmoors think differently," replied the priest, "but faith and the Deity will defeat them. Besides, our people are born and raised as warriors, we learned from the mistakes of the Milderellen Invasion. . . ."

His voice trailed away. The sound that had caught his attention was like the drone of a large bee, but this bee was drawing shouts of amazement from the gallery on the other side of the beamflash tower's gallery. Hurrying across, the priest was confronted with something like a kite approaching from the southeast at much the same altitude as the tower's gallery.

"Abominations in abominations," declared the priest. "They think to spy on our territory as they spied on our lancers."

It was then that the reaction gun aboard the kitewing opened fire on the beamflash tower, with the firepower of a hundred musketeers. In two passes it shattered every mirror, telescope, and lens in the gallery, then turned north. His face flayed by flying glass, the priest staggered back across the beamflash gallery to the northern balcony.

"Warn the capital, that thing might attack their central tower!" he cried, but the man working as transmitter had been killed in the attack.

The priest knew enough code to send basic, unencrypted messages, but the mirrors, telescopes, and even semaphore switchboxes were riddled with half-inch holes. He picked the dead transmitter's binoculars up off the floor and looked for the kitewing. It was barely visible already, flying low and straight for Peterborough. It was fast, it would take no more than twenty minutes to reach the capital.

Thinking quickly, the priest opened the flare locker and ignited a smoke flare, then he selected the largest fragment of mirror in the gallery, took a sighting on the sun and began flashing his warning to Peterborough.

/ ALERT / AIR GALLEY ATTACK IN THIRTY MINUTES / TOWER DISABLED / NINE DEAD / MIRRORS DESTROYED /

Peterborough, the Woomeran Confederation

In the central tower in Peterborough the faint twinkle of the priest's message was noticed a few minutes after the first smoke flare had been sighted. The supervising priest was called, and he ordered that a request for clarification be transmitted. None was returned, but the desperate warning continued. The interval being flashed in the warning now was five minutes.

"There is nothing at all on the paraline," reported the shift's observer.

"He must mean a galley engine has attacked," the priest decided. "He is not a trained transmitter."

"A galley engine would take an hour to cross from Burra. Anyway, the line is clear."

"Transmitter, alert the paraline guardhouses," ordered the priest. "Receiver, is his message the same?"

The receiver peered into his telescope again. "Yes, and a second flare—"

The image of a huge and ungainly kite rose up into the receiver's field of view with its reaction gun already sparkling. Bullets tore through the tower, tearing through flesh and shattering equipment. A lamp was hit, and the olive oil spilled and ignited. In this tower the priest was one of the first to die, and most of the operators who were still alive scrambled for cover. As the kitewing made a second pass the guards on the ground opened fire on it, but they had no way of estimating its true size and speed, neither were they trained to aim slightly in front of a fast-moving target. On its third pass the kitewing was confronted by a lone, brave operator who fired two shots from his flintlock pistols, but to no effect. The flames had taken hold of the tower's gallery by the fourth pass and the operators were already escaping down the stairs.

Jemli herself saw the kitewing empty its reaction gun into the gallery in its last strafing run, then assume a course southeast and slowly gain height. All across Peterborough the tower and church bells were ringing their futile alarms. It was hours before musketeers

ceased shooting at anything that dared to take to the air above the Woomeran capital, by which time five military messenger pigeons had fallen to friendly fire. That evening a galley engine arrived with the news that the Southmoors had formally joined the war and had taken Wentworth in a single battle.

Jemli called a meeting of her Assembly of Priests, then vanished with them behind closed doors until the ninth hour. When they did emerge the criers were roused to go through the city, proclaiming a mighty rally for midnight of the following day.

In the main marketplace of Peterborough two figures walked together as evening faded from the sky. One was a woman wearing a uniform of the palace guards, the other was dressed only in a kilt and cloak, and was assumed to be a visiting hermit.

"You are in great danger, there are now priests following you and listening to everything you preach," cautioned Velesti.

"Oh, good, I might convert them," replied Ilyire.

"You are also unique. How else can we communicate with the cetezoids except through you?"

"I have trained some of my best students, they are already able to carry on in my absence. I am not important."

"What can be achieved by dying?"

"Nothing in particular, but do not worry. I am not planning to become a martyr."

Highland Bartolica, North America

lor Samondel, the problem was that her enemies happened to be the most highly skilled at making what she wanted. The guildmasters who remained loyal to her had begun to reduce the weight of her sailwing by removing its reaction guns and armor and replacing its skin with a much lighter silk, but a difficulty remained. It had been built very much in the traditional style, long before the war with Yarron. It was aerodynamically stable, and reliability had been built into every aspect of its construction, but it was still heavy compared

to the Yarronese sailwings that she had used to conquer the Pacific Ocean. The same applied to its compression engine, which was currently in hundreds of pieces, with the guildmaster under orders to halve its weight and double its efficiency.

"Fourteen hours," declared the guildmasters' spokesman proudly as he stood before her throne.

The court hall was empty, apart from the two of them. It was nearly midnight, and only one lantern was burning.

"That is twelve hundred miles in calm air," replied Samondel. "I need two thousand."

"We could bore and plane a little more wood from the airframe, Saireme Airlord, but that would save only a few more pounds before the strength became compromised, even for handling the most benevolent weather. You could gain another hundred miles at most."

"Then do it. Has your esteemed colleague an estimate on when the compression engine will be rebuilt?"

"Three weeks, he told me. We could be test flying before the end of May."

Alone again, Samondel pondered capacities and distances in her little throne hall. A sailwing leased from South Bartolica could tow her out over the ocean for as many as five hundred miles. The rebuilt engine might just be light and efficient enough to bridge the remaining gap.

She could reach Hawaii, but what then? There would be no second sailwing to tow her for the next five hundred miles, although there was fuel. . . but there was a second sailwing, a Yarronese sailwing. She could spend months there, repairing the sailwing with the tools that had been flown out already. The more efficient Yarronese sailwing could easily reach Samoa, and then beyond to Australia's north. After that, it was a mere thousand miles by land to Rochester. A little gold would buy a horse.

Her mind conjured a suggestion of a cloaked figure to stand before her throne.

"You need never have returned here," Martyne chided.

"My dearest, how was I to know that Mounthaven could lose its arts of flying so very fast?"

"You could have taken me with you."

"You would have been tested and identified as a featherhead within moments of descent. Then shot."

"Well, can you return to me?"

"The kindest of figures say yes."

"Soon?"

"It must indeed be soon. I have sold everything to rebuild the sailwing and buy compression spirit. One of my wardens wants to buy my abdication and his nomination as airlord, and after that I have nothing more."

"Then when?"

"A month, and I shall reach Hawaii. A few more months, then Australia's north. Three months after that, Rochester."

"I shall be there, alone and waiting. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

The vision vanished. Alone within her thoughts, Samondel dozed on the throne. Outside, the two palace guards sat with a bottle of wine between them.

"Saw her talking to thin air again," said one.

"She's mad."

"Heard she's to abdicate next month."

"None too soon. She's not airlord material."

"But a good leader. Many wardens would still follow her to hell."

"Trouble is, that's probably where she's going in that sailwing of hers."

His comrade gestured up to Mirrorsun.

"Well, that thing's building up to no good. Scholars say it's spinning too fast. Some say it's a doomsday engine."

"A what?"

"Something that kills both you and your enemy if your enemy defeats you."

"Daft idea. Who would have built it?"

"Dunno. Australicans, maybe."

Soon they were dozing too. The lamp in the throne hall ran out of oil and winked out. It had been the last lamp alight in all of Highland Bartolica on that particular night.

Rochester, the Rochestrian Commonwealth

I he entire Commonwealth was plunged into mourning in the days leading to Dramoren's funeral. The flower-smothered coffin was drawn the length of Meridian Avenue on a bombard trolley at noon, preceded, flanked, and followed by musketeers, Dragon Librarians, beamflash crews, and even calculor components and regulators. The Overmayor herself led the horse pulling the trolley. Dressed in a black jacket and walking, the most powerful figure in the Commonwealth looked very small to the onlookers. They noted the flintlock in her belt, however, for they were now at war and she was the supreme commander of the military.

As the coffin reached Libris Plaza a loud rumble became audible from above the city, and four enormous flying machines appeared in the south. They flew high above the Avenue, their shadows sweeping along the crowds and marchers, and colored leaves streaming from their open loading hatches. As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone.

The front of the palace was still a gaping ruin as the Overmayor led the bombard trolley to the gates of Libris. Dramoren had been Highliber, after all, and was entitled to be buried in the vaults deep beneath the vast and ancient library. The bombards of the palace began to boom a salute, one shot for every mayorate in the Rochestrian Commonwealth, and each shot was echoed by the bombards of Libris. A closed service in the Libris chapel followed, then the coffin was taken to the burial vaults below ground level.

The crowds were still there when the Overmayor emerged over an hour later, and she walked alone across the plaza to the cheers and applause of almost the entire city and thousands of travelers from the other mayorates. At the foot of the memorial at the center of the