The Professor peered up into the fog. “I think we need another two to three thousand feet,” he said, his voice grim but determined. “Release ten sandbags, please, Anton.”
“Ten sandbags, aye,” said Anton. The sandbags festooned the outside of the gondola; one hundred in all, in five ranks of ten bags each, port and starboard. The cords holding them were rigged with quick release buckles at his end. He let the tiller go for a moment, took hold of the top buckles on each side, and pulled hard.
The ropes dropped from the side of the gondola, the sandbags slipping off them to plummet toward the prairie below… and the airship resumed climbing. Anton seized the tiller. “Head to port!” yelled the Professor above the constant roar of the burner. “Parallel until we get enough altitude!”
Anton pushed the tiller to port, but he knew they couldn’t really fly parallel to the Anomaly, not with the prevailing westerly pushing them toward it. Of course the Professor knew that, too. If he really thinks we’re going to hit, he’ll want to turn right into the wind and try to fight our way away from the wall, Anton thought tensely. I’ll have to be ready to-
“Ten more sandbags,” called the Professor, cutting his thought short.
“Aye, aye!” Ten more plunged away.
And still the wall of fog rose above them, so close now that they were within the outer reaches of it, the moisture beginning to freeze onto the rigging and metal, forming ice that would weigh them down, slow their ascent. Anton, squinting up, could see no end to the fog. Yet from a distance he’d been able to see the top. They must be close…
The Professor was glaring up through the fog as though he took the Anomaly’s ridiculous height as a personal insult. “Release all ballast, Anton.”
Anton swallowed. Without any ballast, they’d have no way to gain altitude rapidly the next time they needed to. A gust of wind swung them farther into the mist, making the Professor go suddenly ghostly in the bow. On the other hand, Anton thought, reaching for the quick-release buckles, we’re liable to smack hard right into that thing any minute, and what that kind of sudden freezing will do to the airship…
… well, he really didn’t want to find out, not at this altitude.
He pulled all the remaining quick-release buckles. Just as the last snapped open, an enormous updraft seized them.
It felt like a giant had grabbed them and hurled them, spinning, into the sky. The airship shot up, so fast and suddenly that both Anton and the Professor were flung to the floor of the gondola. Anton struggled up again and grabbed the tiller, but they had no headway, the propeller churning uselessly behind them. He couldn’t stop the spin. The world whirled through his vision, wall of fog, sunlit prairie, wall of fog, sunlit prairie. Anton felt his gorge rising. He was going to be sick…
The spinning, mercifully, stopped, but hard on its heels came the unmistakable sound of tearing silk. Anton twisted his head around.
The complex network of pulleys and ropes that gave the tiller control over the rudder had come apart in the violence of the spin. The rudder had swung too far, puncturing the envelope. And now, as he watched, the hole grew.
The airship lurched. A powerful westerly wind had them now. All around were the tops of clouds, but there was something odd about them, almost as though they were in a river, rushing toward a waterfall…
“Downdraft!” screamed the Professor, who had been clinging to the bow of the gondola. As pale and green as Anton felt, he lurched to his feet and flung himself on the burner, twisting the valve wide open. Flame roared, filling the envelope… but the edges of the rip near the stern fluttered, and Anton knew the heat roaring into the envelope was spurting out of it nearly as fast.
And then they swept over the edge of the cloud waterfall, and Anton’s stomach leaped up as they dropped like a stone toward the snow-covered ground far beyond. Groaning, Anton clung to the edge of the gondola, stared down at the strange new lands beyond the Anomaly that were rushing up toward them with alarming speed, and threw up into them.
The Professor shoved him out of the way. He grabbed the tiller, wriggled it uselessly, then seized the throttle and shoved it to full ahead. The steam engine sputtered and shook, and the propeller spun into an invisible blur. Anton turned around. “It won’t last five minutes at full throttle,” he gasped.
“We’ve got to get out of this downdraft,” the Professor said grimly. “It will smash us to kindling if we can’t.” He peered up at the envelope. “We should be able to maintain some lift if we can only get into still air… not enough to stay airborne, but maybe enough to make some sort of landing…” He scrambled aft. “I’ll take the tiller. Lighten the ship. Everything you can find. Throw it overboard. Start with the stores.”
Anton swiped his leather-clad arm across his mouth, hauled himself to his feet, staggered forward, and began emptying the ship of everything they had so laboriously loaded the day before, while all the while the ground below grew closer.
It’s not going to work, he thought. It’s not.
Since the day he’d fled his abusive father, he’d fully expected to die young. But now that the prospect was imminent, he found he didn’t relish it.
You’re not dead yet, he snarled at himself. Grabbing a trunk of scientific instruments, he heaved them up and over the side, the wind roaring in his ears. He glanced toward the stern to see the Professor’s face, pale and set, staring bleakly at him. And behind the Professor, the vast bank of fog that marked the Anomaly grew higher and higher.
It looks just the same from this side, Anton thought. So why did we bother?
And then he turned to look for something else to toss over the side.
Brenna tugged aside the heavy green drapes that covered her window to peer down into the snow-filled courtyard outside. Nothing moved down there, or on the steep white hillsides beyond the outer wall of Lord Falk’s estate: not so much as a bird or a hare, much less a human. “When was the last time we had a visitor?” she asked the mageservant sweeping in the corner, where crumbs from Brenna’s justdeparted lunch had somehow flung themselves. “The Moon Ball? That was more than two months ago!”
The mageservant didn’t say a word. Brenna would have been terrified if it had, since it was essentially a marionette, animated by magic and programmed to perform the same rote tasks day after day. Its round wooden face, on which the magical symbol that enchanted it glowed faintly blue, remained half-turned away. For a moment Brenna considered smashing something on the floor-one of the delicate pieces of glass fruit decorating her mantelpiece, perhaps-just to get its attention and watch it scurry to clean up the mess, but as usual, the impulse passed before she acted on it. Just as well, she thought. She would eventually run out of things to smash, and still nothing would have changed, except her room would be even drearier than it already was.
The door opened and another mageservant entered, carrying a fresh load of wood that it stacked, with inhuman precision, beside the fireplace. “I’m going for a walk,” Brenna told it. It kept stacking wood. “Why, yes, I know it’s cold outside. Thank you ever so much for your concern. I promise you I shall dress warmly.”
The mageservant placed two logs from its newly made pile onto the fire, adjusted the remainder so they looked as neat as before, then went out. Brenna went to the closet, grabbed her warmest coat-ankle-length, hooded, and made of wolverine fur-checked to make sure her red woolen scarf and rabbit-fur mitts were still in the pockets, and followed the mageservant, whose passing had left a faint chill in the air by the door.
The hallway outside her ran left and right, turning at either end to form the two wings of the manor house that wrapped the central Great Hall in their embrace. There were broad, curving staircases at either end as well, leading down to the main floor.