Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Chapter 5

Now, there are several things you should consider doing if you are plummeting to your death atop a glass dragon in the middle of the ocean. Those things do not, mind you, include getting into an extended discussion of classical philosophy.

Leave that to professionals like me.

I want you to think about a ship. No, not a flying dragon ship like the one that was falling apart beneath me as I fell to my death. Focus. I obviously survived the crash, since this book is written in the first person.

I want you to think of an ordinary ship. The wooden kind, meant for sailing on the ocean. A ship owned by a man named Theseus, a Greek king immortalized by the writer Plutarch.

Plutarch was a silly little Greek historian best known for being born about three centuries too late, for having a great fascination with dead people, and for being way too long-winded. (He produced well over eight hundred thousand words’ worth of writing. The Honorable Council of Fantasy Writers Whose Books Are Way Too Long—good old THCoFWWBAWTL—is considering making him an honorary member.)

Plutarch wrote a metaphor about the ship of Theseus. You see, once the great king Theseus died, the people wanted to remember him. They decided to preserve his ship for future generations.

The ship got old, and its planks—as wood obstinately insists on doing—began to rot. So, the people replaced the rotting planks. After that, other pieces got old, and they replaced those too.

This continued for years. Eventually, every single part on the ship had been replaced. So Plutarch relates an argument that many philosophers wonder about. Is the ship still the ship of Theseus? People call it that. Everyone knows it is. Yet there’s a problem. None of the pieces are actually from the ship that Theseus used.

Is it the same ship?

I think it isn’t. That ship is gone, buried, rotted. The copy everyone then called the ship of Theseus was really just a … copy. It might have looked the same, but looks can be deceiving.

Now, what does this have to do with my story? Everything. You see, I’m that ship. Don’t worry. I’ll probably explain it to you eventually.

Dragonaut fell into the clouds. The puffs of white passed around me in a furious maelstrom. Then we were out of them, and I could see something very dark and very vast beneath me.

The ocean. I had that same feeling as before—the terrible thought that we were all going to die. And this time it was my fault.

Stupid mortality.

Dragonaut lurched, taking my stomach along with it. The mighty wings continued to beat, reflecting diffuse starlight that shone through the clouds. I twisted, looking to the cockpit, and saw Kaz concentrating, hand on the panel. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he managed to keep the ship in the air.

Something cracked. I looked down, realizing that I was standing in the very center of the broken portion of glass.

Uh-oh …

The glass beneath me shattered, but fortunately the ship twisted at that moment, lurching upward. I was thrown down into the body of the vessel. I hit the glass floor, then had the presence of mind to slam one of my feet against the wall—locking it into place—as the ship writhed.

Kaz was doing an impressive job. The four remaining wings beat furiously, and the ship wasn’t falling as quickly. We’d gone from a plummet of doom into a controlled spiral of doom.

I twisted, standing, the Grappler’s Glass giving me enough stability to walk back to the cockpit. As I walked, I took off my Lenses and tucked them into their pocket, feeling lucky that I hadn’t lost them in the chaos.

Inside, I found Bastille huddled over Australia, who looked very groggy. My cousin was bleeding from a blow to the head—I later learned she’d been thrown sideways into the wall when the ship began to fall.

I knew exactly what that felt like.

Bastille managed to strap poor Australia into a harness of some kind. Kaz was still focused on keeping us in the air. “Blasted thing,” he said through gritted teeth, “why do you tall people have to fly up so high?”

I could just barely make out land approaching ahead of us, and I felt a thrill of hope. At that moment, the back half of the dragon broke off, taking two more of the wings with it. We staggered in the air again, spinning, and the wall beside me exploded outward from the pressure.

Australia screamed; Kaz swore. I fell down on my back, knees bent, feet still planted on the floor.

And Bastille was sucked out the opening in the wall.

Now, I’ll tell you time and time again that I’m not a hero. However, sometimes I am a bit quick-witted. As I saw Bastille shoot past me, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to grab her in time.

I couldn’t grab her, but I could kick her. So I did.

I slammed my foot into her side as she passed by, as if to shove her out the hole. Fortunately, she stuck to my foot—for, if you will remember, she was wearing a jacket made with glass fibers.

Bastille whipped out of Dragonaut, her jacket stuck to the Grappler’s Glass on the bottom of my foot. She twisted about, surprised, but grabbed my ankle to steady herself. This of course pulled me up and toward her—though fortunately my other foot was still planted on the glass floor.

Bastille held on to one foot, as the other stuck to the ship. It was not a pleasant sensation.

I yelled in pain as Kaz managed to angle the broken machine toward the beach. We crashed into the sand—even more glass breaking—and everything became a jumbled mess of bodies and debris.

I blinked awake, regaining consciousness a few minutes after the crash. I found myself lying on my back, staring out the broken hole of the ceiling. There was an open patch in the clouds, and I could see the stars.

“Uh…” a voice said. “Is everyone okay?”

I twisted about, brushing bits of glass from my face—fortunately, the cockpit appeared to be made out of something like Free Kingdoms safety glass. Though it had shattered into shards, the pieces were surprisingly dull, and I hadn’t been cut at all.

Australia—the one who had spoken—sat holding her head where it was still bleeding. She looked about, seeming dazed. The pathetic remains of Dragonaut lay broken around us, like the long-dead carcass of some mythical beast. The eyes had both shattered. One of the wings jutted up a short distance away, pointing into the air.

Bastille groaned beside me, her jacket now laced with a spiderweb of lines. It had absorbed some of the shock from the landing for her. My legs, unfortunately, didn’t have any such glass, and they ached from being yanked about.

There was a rustling a short distance away, up where the beach turned into trees. Suddenly, Kaz walked out of the forest, looking completely unbruised and unhurt.

“Well!” he said, surveying the beach. “That was certainly interesting. Anybody dead? Raise your hand if you are.”

“What if you feel like you’re dead?” Bastille asked, pulling herself free from her jacket.

“Raise a finger, then,” Kaz said, walking down the beach toward us.

I won’t say which one she raised.

“Wait,” I said, wobbling a bit as I stood. “You got thrown all that way, but you’re all right?”

“Of course I didn’t get thrown that far,” Kaz said with a laugh. “I got lost right about the time when we crashed, and I just found my way back. Sorry I missed the impact—but it didn’t look like a whole lot of fun.”

Smedry Talents. I shook my head, checking my pockets to make certain my Lenses had survived. Fortunately, the padding had protected them. But as I worked, I realized something. “Bastille! Your mother!”

At that moment, a sheet of glass rattled and was shoved over by something beneath it. Draulin stood up, and I heard a faint moan from inside her helmet. In one hand, she still held her Crystin blade. She reached up, sheathing it into a strap on her back, then pulled the helmet off. A pile of sweaty, silver hair fell around her face. She turned to regard the wreckage.

I was a little surprised to see her in such good shape. I should have realized that the armor she wore was silimatic technology. It had worked as an even better cushion than Bastille’s jacket.

“Where are we?” Bastille asked, picking her way across a field of broken glass, now wearing only a black T-shirt tucked into her militaristic trousers.

It was a good question. The forest looked vaguely junglelike. Waves quietly rolled up and down the starlit beach, grabbing bits of glass and towing them into the ocean.

“Egypt, I guess,” Australia said. She held a bandage to her head, but otherwise seemed to have come out all right. “I mean, that’s where we were heading, right? We were almost there when we crashed.”

“No,” Draulin said, stalking across the beach toward us. “Lord Kazan was required to take over control of the ship when you lost consciousness, which means…”

“My Talent came into play,” Kaz said. “In other words, we’re lost.”

“Not that lost,” Bastille said. “Isn’t that the Worldspire?”

She pointed out across the ocean. And, just vaguely in the distance, I could see what appeared to be a tower rising from the ocean. Considering the distance, it must have been enormous.

I was later to learn that enormous was a severe underestimate. The Worldspire is said by the Free Kingdomers to be the exact center of the world. It’s a massive glass spike running from the upper atmosphere directly into the core of the planet—which is, of course, made of glass. Isn’t everything?

“You’re right,” Draulin said. “That means we’re probably somewhere in the Kalmarian Wilds. Well outside the Hushlands.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Kaz said.

“You think you can get us to Nalhalla, my lord?” Draulin asked.

“Probably.”

I turned. “What about the Library of Alexandria?”

“You still want to go there?” Draulin asked.

“Of course.”

“I don’t know if—”

“Draulin,” I said, “don’t make me force you to hop on one foot again.”

She fell silent.

“I agree with Alcatraz,” Kaz said, walking over to pick through the rubble. “If my father’s in Alexandria, then he’s undoubtedly getting into trouble. If he’s in trouble, that means I’m missing out on some serious fun. Now, let’s see if we can salvage anything.…”

I watched him work, and soon Draulin joined him, picking through the pieces. Bastille walked up beside me.

“Thanks,” she said. “For saving me when I fell out of the side of the dragon, I mean.”

“Sure. I’ll kick you anytime you want.”

She snorted softly. “You’re a real friend.”

I smiled. Considering that we’d crashed so soundly, it was remarkable that nobody had been severely hurt. Actually, you may find this annoying. It would have been a better story if someone had died here. An early fatality can really make a book seem much more tense, as it lets people realize how dangerous things can be.

You have to remember, however, that this is not fiction, but a real-life account. I can’t help it if all of my friends were too selfish to do the narratively proper thing and get themselves killed off to hike up the tension of my memoirs.

I’ve spoken to them at length about this. If it makes you feel better, Bastille dies by the end of this book.

Oh, you didn’t want to hear that? I’m sorry. You’ll simply have to forget that I wrote it. There are several convenient ways to do that. I hear hitting yourself on the head with a blunt object can be very effective. You should try using one of Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy novels. They’re big enough, and goodness knows that’s really the only useful thing to do with them.

Bastille—completely unaware that she was condemned—glanced at the half-buried dragon’s head. Its broken eyes stared out toward the jungle, its maw open slightly, teeth cracked. “It seems such a sad end for Dragonaut,” she said. “So much powerful glass wasted.”

“Is there any way to … I don’t know, fix it?”

She shrugged. “The silimatic engine is gone, and that’s what gave the glass its power. I suppose if you could get a new engine, it would still work. But, cracked as the ship is, it would probably make more sense to smelt the whole thing down.”

The others came up with a couple of backpacks full of food and supplies. Kaz eventually let out a whoop of joy, then dug out a little bowler hat, which he put on. This was joined by a vest he wore under his jacket. It was an odd combination, since the jacket itself—along with his trousers—was made of heavyweight, rugged material. He came across looking like some cross between Indiana Jones and a British gentleman.

“We ready?” he asked.

“Almost,” I said, finally pulling off the boots with the Grappler’s Glass on them. “Any way to turn these off?” I held up the boot, critically eyeing the bottom, which was now stuck with shards of glass and—not surprisingly—sand.

“For most people there is no way,” Draulin said, sitting down on a piece of the wreckage, then taking off her armored boots. She pulled out a few pieces of specially shaped glass and slid them into place. “We simply cover them with plates like these, so the boots stick to those instead.”

I nodded. The plates in question had soles and heels on the bottom, and probably felt like normal shoes.

“You, however, are an Oculator,” she said.

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Oculators aren’t like regular people, Alcatraz,” Australia said, smiling. Her head had stopped bleeding, and she’d tied a bandage to it. A pink one. I had no idea where she had found it.

“Indeed, my lord,” Draulin said. “You can use Lenses, but you also have some limited power over silimatic glass, what we call ‘technology.’”

“You mean like the engine?” I asked, slipping on my Oculator’s Lenses.

Draulin nodded. “Try deactivating the boots like you would Lenses.”

I did so, touching them. Surprisingly, the sand and glass dropped free, the boots becoming inert.

“Those boots had been given a silimatic charge,” Australia explained. “Kind of like batteries you use in the Hushlands. The boots will run out eventually. Until then, an Oculator can turn them off and on.”

“One of the great mysteries of our age,” Draulin said, her boots replaced. The way she said it indicated that she didn’t really care how or why things worked, only that they did.

Me, I was more curious. I’d been told several times about Free Kingdomer technology. It seemed a simple distinction to me. Magic was the sort of thing that only worked for certain people, while technology—often called silimatics—worked for anyone. Australia had been able to fly Dragonaut, but so had Kaz. It was technology.

But what I had barely learned seemed to indicate that there was a relationship between this technology of theirs and Oculatory powers. However, the conversation reminded me of something else. I didn’t have any idea if we were closer to Alexandria now than we had been before, but it seemed a good idea to try contacting my grandfather again.

I slipped on the Courier’s Lenses and concentrated. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get anything out of them. I left them on just in case, then stuffed the Grappler’s Glass boots into one of the packs.

I slung it over my shoulder; however, Bastille took it from me. I shot her a frown.

“Sorry,” she said. “My mother’s orders.”

“You don’t need to carry anything, Lord Smedry,” Draulin said, hefting another pack. “Let Squire Bastille do it.”

“I can carry my own backpack, Draulin,” I snapped.

“Oh?” she asked. “And if we get attacked, do you not need to be ready and agile so that you can use your Lenses to defend us?” She turned away from me. “Squire Bastille is good at carrying things. Allow her to do this—it will let her be useful and make her feel a sense of accomplishment.”

Bastille flushed. I opened my mouth to argue some more, but Bastille shot me a glance that quieted me.

Fine, I thought. We all looked toward Kaz, ready to go. “Onward, then!” the short man said, taking off across the sand up toward the trees.