Other anomalies keep mounting as we continue to observe. While our instruments are not specialized for this form of observation work, we have registered what can only be described as ‘unknown entities’. Our initial thought was that they were unknown ramuses that we missed in our initial survey. However, our lifesignature sensors have been unable to classify these entities as either living, artificial, some form of construct, or other device. Given that they are operating within acceptable limits for the humanoid inhabitants of the planet, even from orbit, we can only assume that our sensors are operating correctly—they just cannot identify what it is they are seeing.
And speaking candidly, for the record, I have to agree, given that we are trying to get them to identify giant dragons flying through the clouds and enormous, glowing, translucent canids, felines and other predators prancing through forests.
###
Raavi ava Laargan
Standing on top of the snow drift that hid the stone wall of the canal, I stared into the distance. I fancied that I could see our tracks in the ice, here and there, along the path back home.
But we weren’t going there. Instead, we were turning along a different canal path, one that would lead us southwest, along the kingdom’s central plains.
“You okay?” Lady Fia asked, coming up behind me. “We can take you back to your home, and then continue on. I appreciate you coming and helping this far, but you don’t have to.”
I shook my head. “No. I need to come. No offense, but none of the others would be able to fix the boat if it broke, and then you’d all freeze to death. Well, maybe not you, but I imagine you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
“No, very much not. I hate it when I get that cold. I won’t die, but I still get to suffer a lot of the other fun symptoms,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the boat.” We walked—up, this time, because we were going to be working our way up to the mountains. And that was the whole point of canal locks, after all—the land rose and fell around them, and they lifted the canal barges between the different levels of water, which were flat.
There were three hundred locks on our path to the mountains, which would lift us up by over three miles. But there wasn’t a straight-line canal going up there; it wasn’t practical, with so many hills in the way. So what would have been a seven hundred mile journey by road was going to be a four thousand mile journey by ice-boat along the canals.
Lady Fia’s voice broke into my thoughts. “So, Raavi.”
“Yes?”
“This is your boat… and while it’s small, it’s well made. I think we should give her a proper name. What do you think?”
“Really? You think that?”
“I do. It’s a bit unconventional, but if anyone argues that it’s not a real boat… I’d be happy to take it up with them.”
I laughed a little at that, imagining a queue forming of outraged sailors wanting to take Lady Fia to task for giving my ice-boat an honor only for ocean-going vessels. Would she duel them or drink them under the table or what? Or mix it up a little for variety?
“So what would you call her? Give her an old girlfriend’s name?”
I coughed. “That would require an old girlfriend first.”
“Oh dear. Well then… hmm… we could go whole hog and give her a virtue. Courage or Duty or something along those lines.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, as we came up to the ice-boat, reassembled and reloaded on the higher ground of the upper canal, beyond the lock. “Come on. We’ve got a long way to go.”
“That we do.”
The townsfolk had emerged after the earlier attack, heartened by our report from the capital that the King was going to send out troops to help them defend themselves. With their help, we continued on, heading south-west, away from my home in the north and east.
I didn’t know if I would ever go home again.
But I needed to do this.
For everyone’s sake.
#
Zoy
Sitting at the back of the ice-boat, Zoy found herself fidgeting. Which was annoying; she knew how to hold still for extended periods of time. She knew how to keep watch, how to reconnoiter under stealth, and stay hidden for hours upon hours.
So the fact that she kept finding herself tapping her foot or shifting her arms around was downright bothersome.
It wasn’t the trip in the ice-boat, she was fairly sure. The initial fascination and novelty of Raavi’s creation had already turned to tedium. As amazing as it was to be able to travel at such a speed, Dormelion-built canals weren’t exactly known for their picturesque views even in the summer; in the winter, it was all snow-white under gray and black skies. The fact that they were traveling an average of forty miles an hour now was strictly intellectual when those forty miles all looked pretty much the same, hour after hour.
But even though she was bored by the unchanging scenery, it wasn’t the source of her fidgeting. Nor was it the seats; while they were plain wood, with the only padding being their coats and supplies, she’d sat in more uncomfortable places without any problems. She’d once spent nearly twenty hours straight laid out on a dusty and splintering wooden ceiling beam, waiting for an opportunity to sneak into a back room. That had been loud and obnoxious and smoky, and while the sound of the skates on the ice was irritating, it didn’t even compare.
So it wasn’t that.
What was it? Why was she twitching like some thug who’d overdone it on the stimbark?
She sighed and leaned back in the seat.
“You all right?”
Zoy turned to look at Yufemya. The other woman was looking at her with concern—an expression that Zoy recognized all too well from Stylio, even when it was hidden behind scarves and masks.
A dozen lies came to her lips, everything from the sullen yeah, sure, to the more upbeat of course!, but she pushed them aside. Stylio was right there in front of her, and if she tried to dodge the innocent question, her mentor would be sure to call her on it.
“I should be, but I’m not,” she confessed. “And it’s bothering me that I can’t figure out what’s bothering me.”
Yufemya smiled behind her scarf. “Oh, I know that feeling.”
Giving a smile of her own, Zoy leaned in a little and said, her voice pitched lower, but still loud enough to be heard over the skates, “I’ve been meaning to ask why another person from the Empire is here. You’re… well, not the first, that we’ve run into, but definitely the first we’ve seen who seems to just be another traveler.”
“I notice that you didn’t call the Empire ‘home’,” Yufemya said.
Zoy shrugged. “It hasn’t been for a long time. But you’re from Kasmenarta too, judging by your accent.” Although her accent was definitely not from the poor lower levels of the grand crystal city. “Is it home for you?”
With a shake of her head, Yufemya said, “I’m in exile, to put it bluntly.” She frowned and said, “I… sort of killed someone.”
“Sort of?” Zoy snorted. “What, so it was manslaughter, or murder? Or something else?”
“I didn’t exactly get the magistrates to rule on it,” Yufemya said with a roll of her eyes. “I just knew that I needed to get out and away.”
“Fair, fair. Someone from the upper levels?”
Yufemya sighed and nodded.
“Eesh. Good thing that you got out, then.” Zoy considered just how brutal the city militia would be in hunting for the killer—accidental or otherwise—of one of the capital’s upper ranks, those who lived above their lessers, both literally and figuratively. When she’d been a child, before she’d met Stylio, there had been a case where a young lord—a count’s son or something along those lines—had gone down into the slums to enjoy himself at the pit fights. He’d been beaten and robbed, but not killed. After a week’s intensive search by the militia, the three muggers had been found, and lashed to the exterior of the city to let them die of exposure.
They sat in silence for a moment before Yufemya asked plaintively, “Why do you have so many knives?”
Zoy snickered as Stylio gave an overwrought sigh from her seat; she’d been listening, not that she could avoid it, given how close they all were. “I have them because I can use them, and always having one more can make the difference in a fight.”
“Even the ones…” Zoy saw Yufemya’s eyes glance downward, “even the ones there? How would you even get them out in a fight?”
“Oh, those are the holdouts, for when you’re told to hand over everything… and you do. Almost. Saved our lives a few times,” Zoy said with as light a voice as she could manage.
“I see. Well… let me just tell you that seeing you pull out a small arsenal like that was amazing.”
Feeling her cheeks heat at the compliment, Zoy cast about for a reply, but a call from Fia drew their attention. “Everybody, brace yourselves! We’re about to hit a gust!”
“How—” Zoy started to ask, and then she saw it.
Everyone on the ice-boat gasped as they saw the glowing form flying among the gusting clouds, heading northward like an arrow from a bow.
A dragon.
It was vast, and even from here Zoy fancied she could feel the power it exuded.
The gust of wind hit like a blow, making the sails flap hard, and Zoy felt it as they picked up speed; even though they were heading south, more or less, the way Fia had the sails trimmed let them use the north-blowing wind to speed them on their way.
Zoy kept her mouth shut, watching the banks of the canal rush by at a notably faster pace than they’d been moving before. If they crashed at this speed…
But Raavi and Fia seemed to take it in stride, even as Stylio called out “Sixty-four miles an hour!” as they passed another mile marker.
Next to Zoy, Yufemya swore, and Zoy put a steadying hand on her leg. “We’ll get through this,” she promised the other woman.
Yufemya’s gaze caught hers, and she nodded, even as the little ice-ship rocked from side to side; they were traveling more than a mile a minute, down a corridor of ice and snow, miles from civilization; if they hit anything, they would almost certainly die.
But Zoy didn’t feel any fear, now that she’d had a moment to think. Stylio could heal just about anything, so long as the brain was in one piece, and Fia could probably get the mast through her chest and just whine about it ruining her clothes.
And Raavi, for all that Zoy was enjoying teasing him, was someone whose skill she had grown to trust.
They would get through this, traveling faster than anybody ever had.
The gust passed, as did the dragon, and the ice-ship started to slow with the wind.
“Well. That was exciting,” Fia said. “Yu, can you find us some place to stop and take a break?”
Yufemya nodded and pulled out the map.
Zoy leaned in to help.
#
Raavi ava Laargan
“Do you ever wonder what it is?”
“What what is?” I asked, working on piling the kindling over the mound of tinder I’d ignited with my lighter. The thinner branches caught quickly, thankfully.
“The Night-Light,” Stylio asked. “The Night’s Companion. The Sleepless Eye. The Light In The Dark. The Exiled Sister.” She pointed up into the—amazingly—clear sky, where the Night Light glowed among the glittering and twinkling stars. The moon had set hours earlier, but the Night-Light gave more than enough light to see by, especially with the ground covered by snow. “Do you ever wonder?”
I set some more kindling on the burning branches and added a few logs to the pile, the warmth welcome on my skin. “I have. There’s been some interesting research on that, in fact.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of my housemates back home—Emuund—is an astronomer, and he told me about the sorts of things that he and the others were doing and researching.”
“And?” Stylio sat down next to me, sounding fascinated.
“Well, it’s not a planet. The orbit is all wrong for that.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, helping me put on another log; they’d come from a stack of wood under a tarp by the empty village next to the canal lock. The residents were—hopefully—all off in one of the nearby towns or cities, sleeping away in the caverns underneath, having left their orchards of conifurs, beefnuts, and yews to sit through the winter. We were just grateful for the windbreak; Yufemya’s suggestion that we stop here had been well received.
I frowned, doing my best to remember what I’d been told. “All right, so a planet orbits around our sun. There are five of them—two of which we can only see with telescopes—and since we’re orbiting closer to the sun than they are, we go faster. So they seem to ‘loop’ in their motion when compared to the background stars as we catch up and then leave them behind.”
She nodded, especially as I held my fingertips up to show the looping motion as one seemed to ‘overtake’ the other. “I follow.”
“The Night-Light doesn’t do that. It’s apparently locked to our orbit somehow; while it moves around a little, it’s nothing like the other planets. It’s a huge mystery as to what it is, how it’s moving when our math shows that it should be falling behind in its orbit, why it apparently doesn’t have any features we can pick out even with our best telescopes, or even how far away it is exactly.” I frowned. “Why do you ask, though? I thought that the Dormelion Empire… um… discouraged that sort of questioning.”
“Because of the Sacrem?” she asked.
I nodded, and added another log, the previous one having caught, followed by another.
“Yes, they are a problem. But, shall we say, I have left the Empire for various reasons, not the least being their beliefs.” She rose. “Later, when we are done with this, I would like to see the research on the Night-Light if you can find it for me.”
I grinned. “Of course!”
Yufemya came over at that moment with a pack and sat down, warming herself. “Good job getting the fire going, Raavi.” Twisting to the pack next to her, she opened it and started taking out food and a pan.
“It’s not ready yet!” I protested, looking at the blazing logs.
She shrugged. “It’s all right, Raavi. I’m just getting them out and ready. I know to wait.”
I shrank a little. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m honestly surprised you’re still awake. You know you can let one of us take the tiller for a bit, right?”
“But…” I grimaced, trying not to sound too selfish. The ice-boat—which still had no name—was my creation, and I felt so anxious at the idea of giving it to someone else. “It’s all right. I can handle it.”
“Just if you’re feeling tired, feel free to ask one of us to take over,” she said. Then a smile briefly grew on her face as footsteps crunched through the snow behind us, and she turned towards Zoy. “Is the tent ready?”
Zoy slumped next to the fire. “It is. Village checked?”
“It is. No one here, alive or dead. Some tracks through the snow, but they’re at least forty hours old.” Yufemya started rummaging through the pack again. “Also, I looked at the maps, and assuming the surveyors and Stylio’s watch are accurate, we’ve gone close to four hundred miles in the last sixteen hours.”
Zoy whistled and patted me on the knee. “Well done, Raavi.”
A yelp echoed through the trees, followed by Lady Fia’s cursing.
“Everything all right?” I called out.
Lady Fia called back, “Just dandy! Torn gods, I hate field toilet in winter…”
I grimaced in agreement as a chuckle—sympathetic by the sound of it—went around from the others.
Emerging from the trees a few minutes later, Lady Fia was still grumbling as she brushed snow off of herself. “‘Oh, this looks like a sheltered spot! Go here!’ I tell myself… and bumped the tree and the damn thing dropped a whole load of snow on me just as I was finishing up.”
I winced. “That sounds awful.”
“Just unpleasant. It’s not like I can get frostbite, unlike the rest of you, so be careful.” She pointed at Stylio, just as the older woman started to speak up. “Yes, you can heal it, but we shouldn’t depend on your healing if we can avoid it.”
Stylio nodded. “You are correct. But it is still worth noting.”
Lady Fia smiled and gingerly sat down around the fire, before closing her eyes and leaning her head back. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“The fire?”
“That for sure… but also not hearing that screeee sound of the blades on the ice!”
“Hear hear,” I said, and the others echoed me. “I feel like I can still hear it, and I see the canal walls every time I close my eyes!”
We sat in calm silence, only the crackle of the fire making any sound, and then, soon, the sizzle of meats and vegetables in a pan. We had miles to go—a lot of them—but we would do it. I was certain of that. I would make sure we got there.
After we ate, we took the hot stones from the firepit and brought them into the tent to help keep it warm. The thick padded wool of the tent kept the warm air inside. It was cramped inside, but we were all so tired we all fell asleep almost instantly.
#
I woke up, feeling an urgent need for the toilet, and pulled myself from my sleeping pad and blanket. Staggering to the tent flap and managing not to step on anyone on the way, I let myself out.
Wandering away a bit from the camp, I found a sheltered spot—not beneath a tree laden with snow—and did my business, doing my best to ignore the chill and trying not to think of the warm bathroom back in my parents’ house.
I was on my way back when I heard chanting on the wind.
Out here? Now?
I turned in the direction of the sound, and made my way through the snow. It took a little while, but I saw flickering light soon enough, and started heading towards it.
A short while later, I found the source. At the edge of the vast groves and orchards, abutting the forest nearly a mile away from the village, was a massive shrine-stone. It was at least twenty feet tall and carved over every inch. At its foot was a stone bowl, filled with a blaze, with offerings set in niches around it. A group of three men bowed before it, prostrate in the snow, chanting.
And then they stopped.
I swallowed a gasp as the blaze seemed to congeal into a shape. A cat… if cats glowed yellow-white and stood two feet tall at the shoulder. A pair of tufted ears extended up from a squat face above a stocky body ending in a short tail, patterns of spots picked out in yellow highlights.
The fire died down, and the cat padded forward, as if examining the three men, before pausing on the top of the bowl and standing as poised as only a cat could.
“Great Wise One,” said the center man of the three. “We greet you and thank you for answering our summons as always. And our bargain is unchanged: our gifts in exchange for the fecundity of the forest and groves, as we have ever done for you and you have done for us.”
The ethereal cat considered, and I turned and left.
I’d heard about such ceremonies. I’d never seen one, since I hadn’t been inducted into any, but I knew about them. They were private, personal affairs between mankind and the spirits. They were emphatically not gods—the priests had always been very clear about that—but they were beings of power who could be called and bargained with.
The fact that I’d intruded could have broken the whole thing; they might need another man sitting crouched in the trees for next year, and not know it…
I considered going back and telling them. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for breaking their pact with their patron, and it was a beautifully laid out grove. Maybe before we left, so I could have Lady Fia and the others with me, in case they took offense…?
I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and turned, to see a brief glow vanish behind a tree.
Uh oh.
I kept moving through the snow, retracing my steps.
Another glowing blur in the corner of my vision.
I started to sweat, wondering if I was going to suffer a different penalty for my trespass.
I saw it again, and by now I was certain that it was stalking me, and for fun.
Keeping moving as quickly as I could, I kept following my footsteps back. I’d just reached the campsite—I must have been moving faster than I thought—when I heard a sound and turned.
A weight hit me and knocked me to the ground on my back.
I whuffed with the impact, but the snow cushioned my fall. I blinked and looked up to see the ethereal cat standing on my chest. I could both feel and not feel its weight. It was there—I could feel it—but the weight felt less than my own coat.
At the same time, it was unquestionably pinning me to the ground.
I grimaced and said, “Are you going to be upset? I didn’t mean to spy on your summoning. I’m sorry.”
The cat seemed to consider for a moment and sat down on my chest in a classic loaf pattern.
“Urk! How can you weigh so much when you’re made of light?”
It settled in more pointedly, and not having any other ideas of what to do, I reached up and awkwardly petted it.
It purred, the vibration seeming to shake my entire body. I kept that up for a good ten or so strokes before I stopped and it opened a glowing yellow eye and looked at me.
“Got it. So this is my apology for spying on your summoning?” I got back to petting it, and it continued to purr. Somehow it had mass despite the fact that I could see my hand through it, as if it was cloudy glass.
After a few minutes, it shifted and stretched—with long claws extending out right near my face—and then walked off of me.
I rolled and started patting myself down. As I got up, I looked around for it, finding its tracks next to me… but those ended abruptly. And then I saw it on the ice-boat, sniffing inquisitively.
How had it gotten there that fast? It was a good thirty yards away, at least!
It saw me looking, and then, walking lightly along the rim of the boat, made its way to the prow and hopped down to the ice, out of my line of sight.
I trudged over, and looked down.
It was—unsurprisingly—gone.
Turning, I scanned the trees, and saw it standing by the base of one trunk, near where it had toppled me into the snow.
It saw me, stretched, and then pointedly walked into the groves, quickly vanishing from sight.
My heart pounding, I leaned against the ice-boat, and then blinked as the tent stirred. A moment later, Lady Fia emerged, yawning. She went over and started up the fire using a taper from the lamp, before looking at me. “Raavi, you all right?”
I nodded and looked at the shallow prints the cat had left in the snow, before looking again at the ice where it had landed before. In the corner of my eye, I saw the lines from the skates for the ice-boat. “I’m fine,” I said. “And in fact, I have a name for the boat now.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Meet the Lynx.”
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