“Projected image. He’s nowhere near here.” Dan’s voice came from a slight distance, when she looked round, he was coming from the alcove with his trousers and her shirt.
“He can see and hear us?” She took the shirt, pulled it around her and buttoned up the front.
“Out here. If we went into the alcove, no.” He tied off his trouser laces and came to lean against the pump sink beside and a little behind her.
“So,” Brann said, “it’s your move, image. What does he want with us?”
The eidolon lifted a large shapely hand, pointed its forefinger at the alcove.
“NO!” Dan got out half a word and the beginning of a gesture, then sank back, simmering, as the eidolon dropped its arm and laughed.
“Busy busy, baby Dan?” The eidolon folded its arms across its massive chest. “I presume you have cobbled together some means of coping with the landfolk. A small warning to the two of you which you can pass on to your versatile young friends. Don’t touch my folk. I don’t expect an answer to that. What I’ve sent the eidolon for is this, a small bargain. I will refrain from any more attacks against you, I’ll even call off Amortis; you will come direct to me on Deadfire Island.” The eidolon turned its head, yellow eyes shifting from Brann to Danny Blue. Its mouth stretched into a mocking smile. “A bargain that needs no chaffering because you have no choice, the two of you. Come to me because you must and let us finish this thing.” Giving them no time to respond, it vanished.
The table hovered waist high above the flags of the paved yard. Still inverted, its front four legs supported a stiff windbreak made of something that looked rather like waxy glass, another of Danny Blue’s transformations. He sat in the middle of the sled grinning at her; liftsled, that’s what he’d called it and when she told him no sled she’d ever seen looked like that he took it as a compliment. Yaril and Jaril were sitting on the rim of a stone bowl planted with broadleaved shrubs that were looking wrinkled and shopworn (end of the year symptoms or they needed watering); the changers were enjoying, the performance (hers and Dan’s as well as the table’s).
Brann shivered. The wind was more than chill this morning, it was cold. If those clouds ever let down their load, it would fall as sleet rather than rain, a few degrees more and the Plain might have this year’s first snow. “Yaro, collect us two or three of those quilts, please? And here,” she tossed two golds to Yaril, ‘leave these somewhere the farmwife will find them but a thief would miss. I know we’re gifting the farmer with three fine mules, but he didn’t sew the quilts and he doesn’t use the table we’re walking off with. I know, I know, not walking, flying. You happy now, Dan? Shuh! save your ah hmm wit until we’re somewhere you can back it up. If you need something to occupy you, figure for me how long our flying table will need to get us to Deadfire.”
Danny Blue danced his fingers over the sensors; the table lowered itself smoothly to the flagging. He got to his feet, stretched, stood fingering a small cut the sorcerously sharpened knife had inflicted on him when he used it to shave away his stubble. Ahzurdan jogged my hand, he told Brann, he keeps growling at me that adult males need beards to proclaim their manhood, it’s the one advantage he had over Maksim, he could grow a healthy beard and his teacher couldn’t, the m’darjin blood in him prevented, but I can’t stand fur on my face so all old Ahzurdan can do is twitch a little. He fingered the cut and scowled past Brann at the wooden fence around the kitchen garden.-It’s hard to say, Bramble. Last night, who was it, Yaril, she said we’d reach the mountains late afternoon today, say we were riding, that’s… hmm… what? Sixty, seventy miles? Jay, from this side the hills, how far would you say it is to Deadfire Island?”
Jaril kicked his heels against the pot. “Clouds,” he said. “We couldn’t get high enough to look over the hills.” He closed his eyes. ‘Before we left on the Skia Hetaira,” he said, his voice slow and remembering, “we wanted to get a look down into Maksim’s Citadel, we weren’t paying much attention to the hills… Yaro?” Yaril dumped quilts and pillows onto the table, walked over to him. She settled beside him, her hand light on his shoulder. They sat there quietly a moment communing in their own way, pooling their memories.
Jaril straightened, opened his eyes. “Far as we can remember, those hills ahead are right on the coast. You just have to get through them, then you’re more or less at Silagmatys. About the same distance, I’d say, from here to the hills, from the hills to Deadfire. Maybe a hundred miles altogether, give or take a handful.”
Dan nodded. “I see. Well…” He clasped his hands behind him and considered the table. “If the sled goes like it’s supposed to, flying time’s somewhere between hour and a half, two hours.”
“Instead of two days,” Brann said slowly. She looked up. The heavy clouds hid the sun, there wasn’t even a watery glow to mark its position, the grayed-down light was so diffuse there were no shadows. She moved her shoulders impatiently. “Jay, can you tell what time it is?”
Jaril squinted at the clouds, turned his head slowly until he located the sun. “Half hour before noon.”
Brann thrust her hands through her hair. Her stomach was knotting, there was a metallic taste in her mouth. Instead of two days, two hours. Two hours! Things rushing at her. Danny was cool as a newt, the kids were cooler, but her head was in a whirl. She felt like kicking them. They were waiting for her to give the word. She looked at the table, smiled because she couldn’t help it, charging through the sky on a kitchen table was pleasantly absurd though what was going to happen at the end of that flight was enough to chase away her brief flash of amusement. She wiped her hands down her sides. “Ahh!” she said. “Let’s go.”
16. The Beginning Of The End.
SCENE: Deadfire island. Taking color from the clouds, the bay’s water is leaden and dull; it licks at a nailparing of a beach with sand like powdered charcoal; horizontal ripples of stone rise from the sand at a steep slant in a truncated pyramid with a rectangular base. About halfway up, the walls rise sheer in a squared-off oval to a level top whose long axis is a little over half a mile, the short axis about five hundred yards, with elaborate structures carved into the living stone (the dominant one being an immense temple with fat-waisted columns thirty feet high and a central dome of demon-blown glass, black about the base, clear on top, the clear part acting as a concentrating lens when the sun’s in the proper place which happens only at the two equinoxes). On the side facing Silagamatys a stubby landing juts into the bay; a road runs from the landing through a gate flanked with huge beast paws carved from black basalt, larger than a two-story house, three-toed with short powerful claws; it continues between tapering brick walls that ripple like ribbons in a breeze, then climbs in an oscillating sprawl to the heights.
Settsimaksimin stands in the temple garden, leaning on a hoe as he watches a narrow stream of water trickle around the roots of bell bushes and trumpet vines. Most of the flowering plants have been shifted from the flowerbeds into winter storage, but there are enough bushes with brilliantly colored frost-touched leaves to leaven the dullness of the surroundings. Behind him Amortis in assorted forms is flickering restlessly about the temple, her fire alternately caged and released by the temple pillars; she is working herself into a fury so she can forget her fear.
Maksim scratched at his chest, then scratched some dirt into the channel to redirect the water. When he was satisfied, he swung the hoe handle onto his shoulder and strolled to the waist-high wall about the garden. Sliding between Deadfire and Silagamatys, glittering ferociously, shooting those glitters at him, the Godalau swam like a limber gem, through the gray matrix of the sea. was nowhere in view, no doubt heesh was around, watching for a crack where hisser’s thumbs could go. Past noon. Divination said they’d be here in an hour or so, riding Danny’s little toy. He had a last look around, took the hoe to the silent brown man squatting in a corner sipping at a straw colored tea and went back across the grass to the minor stairs that led to a side door into the temple.