Deor was afraid, too. He was afraid that the wooden frame would fall apart and that they would fall. He was afraid that the glass furnace would run out of control, the gasbags would burn, and they would fall. He was afraid that the wind would come and tip them over and they would fly out of the gondola and fall. Then the earth, whom he had betrayed by leaving, would kill him for his betrayal. He was afraid.
But he was bored by his fear. It was always the same. And would it really be so terrible to die? There were worse things, if the teachers of his youth spoke true.
He looked over the rail of the gondola.
They were now quite high and it was becoming quite cold. Kelat’s teeth were chattering, and it was not because he was frightened. He looked as eager as a miner following a vein of ore. It was strangely cold. It must be—
“Ambrosia!” said Deor. “The cold air is cascading down the gasbags.”
“Yes,” said Ambrosia. “That—that should be fixable.” She closed her eyes and ascended into vision. Deor saw blue circles through her closed eyes. But she sat upright and one of her hands rested lightly on the gondola rail; the other was on Kelat’s shoulder.
She was a great seer—far greater than Morlock, who was great enough to have defeated Bleys in at least one notable test of power. Deor wondered at it, but the Sight was not one of his talents, even in the smallest degree.
The light in her eyes faded, and she opened them. The chill draft from above had ceased.
“We’ll try to keep the cold air away from the gondola,” she said. “It depends—”
“Madam, I don’t mean to be rude, but I would hate to see you waste your time. Unless you think that Kelat can benefit by the explanation.”
Ambrosia grinned. “Canyon keep you then, you stiff-necked dwarven non-seer.”
“The same to you, harven.”
They were well over the city of Narkunden now, and the face of the city bore the scars of violence. Two factions were demolishing buildings to make walls around their neighborhoods. Much of the city seemed to be empty. The docks down at the base of the bluff were burning and the bridge between Narkunden and Aflraun was broken.
“Morlock, Morlock,” Ambrosia said sadly. “What were you thinking?”
Deor was stung by this. “He was thinking that many in the city were starving while others grew fat. Or so I believe, madam.”
“Of course he was. But good intentions are no substitute for skill in any art, least of all the art of governance. A man named Ambrosius came to a town. His intentions were not malicious, at least not wholly so. He ignited a civil war and then went his way, and the evil he had begun continued to burn its way through the city. Am I talking about Merlin in Grarby or Morlock in Narkunden?”
“It’s not the same,” Deor said stoutly.
“Why not? Either Morlock knew the harm he would do by destroying the monetary system of the city, or he did not. He was either malicious or ignorant.”
Deor wanted to defend his harven-kin. But he could not quite. Deor knew Morlock understood something of the economics of scarcity: they depended on it when they sold gems and other goods in the marketplace in A Thousand Towers. So why had he let the golden genie out of the bottle?
Deor muttered something and would have let the subject drop, but Ambrosia squeezed Kelat’s shoulder and said, “What do you think, Prince Uthar?”
The Vraidish boy said slowly, “People have what they can hold. Only that.”
“So? Morlock did them no harm by making their gold as worthless as paper?”
“Paper isn’t worthless. It can carry a promise—a love letter—news.”
“You’re getting subtle, my friend. Perhaps you should go in for philosophy rather than kingship. No matter what some people have written, the two things have little to do with each other.”
“I’m not interested in being king and I’m not going to be king, but you haven’t seen what I mean yet.”
“Maybe you haven’t said it.”
“People had a choice of what to do with the knowledge Morlock gave. If they used it as a weapon, it was because they were already at war. Morlock did not help that. But he did not begin it, either.”
“You’ve given me something to think about,” Ambrosia admitted, and none of them spoke for some time.
They were high enough now that the city below was getting hazy. Aflraun, across the steep river valley, was even vaguer, wrapped in its own smoke. The vistas opened up in every direction were terrifying to Deor, but he would not look away from them. He filled his eyes and his mind with cold light and empty distance. The fear didn’t go away, but it began to seem a small thing—smaller, even, than he was.
They continued to rise. And they were drifting northward: Narkunden was now under their keel.
The land was a vague memory below them, and the cities on the Nar well behind them when Deor broke a long silence to say, “It is warmer.”
“And we’re moving faster,” Ambrosia agreed. “We’re entering the sunstream.”
The change was gradual but unmistakable. The distant earth began to blur even more. The clouds, nearer to them now, gave their real sense of movement. The wind at their backs drove them faster, ever faster.
“This is faster than a hippogriff!” Deor called back, and Kelat laughed.
“That ridiculous cart you were riding?” Ambrosia called forward.
“No—actual hippogriff.”
“What a liar you are, Deor. When did you ever ride a hippogriff?”
Deor ignored the fact that his harven-kin had made a remark that, under Thrymhaiam, would have entitled him to kill her with impunity. They were not under Thrymhaiam, and Ambrosia never had been. Instead, he and Kelat told her the tale, which involved telling other tales.
The wind at their backs held all through the day. They worked the pedals and manuals sometimes, to build up charges in the impulse wells and to give their arms and legs something to do: there was no room to move about the little gondola.
When the sun set, the wind faded. It did not quite disappear, and it was difficult in the dark to say how much they had slowed.
“Should we set down?” Deor called back. “Anchor and, er, stretch our legs?”
“No,” Ambrosia said firmly. “It’s not like we’re going to crash into anything. Any progress is better than no progress; we have a long road before us.”
“But . . . I mean. . . .”
“And if ‘stretch your legs’ is some kind of Dwarvish euphemism, then I encourage you to swing your ass over the side and let go.”
“Madam.”
“Deor. Should I have put it more sweetly?”
“No! I suppose you’re right.”
“I’ll go first, if you gentlemen don’t mind. I should relieve Morlock, but I have to relieve myself first.”
“Only one of us is a man, madam, but I don’t suppose we object.”
Actually, Deor thought he could hear Kelat goggling from where he sat, two benches back, but the young fellow would have to come to terms with life’s undignified details sooner or later.
“Thanks, all. You make up in gentility what you lack in humanity.” She kicked off her underclothing and climbed over the side to relieve herself while Deor and Kelat looked politely away and Liyurriu watched with patient interest. When she was back aboard and dressing herself she said, “Carry on, gentles. I think we should go one at a time, lest we overbalance.”
Or in balanced pairs, Deor almost suggested . . . but that might be impossible. Since his fellow males seemed disinclined to take the plunge, Deor skinned off his trousers and climbed over the edge of the gondola.
Now it was his turn to be watched with shameless and unflinching interest by the werewolf Liyurriu. It made concentrating on the task at hand almost impossible. Then Liyurriu reached forward and grabbed Deor’s forearms with his apish hands. Deor was so startled he almost lost his grip—and then he realized the werewolf was doing his best to help.