Fire Sea

9

Did not regain consciousness, he regained a sense of himself. He had succeeded in his objective, he had remained awake during the journey through Death’s Gate. But now he knew why the mind far preferred to make the trip in unknowing darkness. He understood, with a real sense of shaken terror, how near he’d come to slipping into madness. Alfred’s reality had been the rope to which he’d clung to save himself. And he wondered, bitterly, if it might not have been better to have let loose his hold.

He lay for a moment on the deck, trying to draw his shattered self back together, attempted to shake off the feelings of grief and dreadful loss and fear that assailed him—all in the name of Alfred. A furry head rested on the Patryn’s chest, liquid eyes looked anxiously into his. Haplo stroked the dog’s silky ears, scratched its muzzle.

“It’s all right, boy. I’m all right,” he said, then knew that he would never truly be all right again. He glanced across at the comatose body sprawled on the deck near him.

“Damn you!” he muttered and, sitting up, started to give the body a wakening kick with his foot. He was reminded, forcibly, of the young and beautiful corpse in the crystal tomb. Reaching out a hand, he shook Alfred’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he said gruffly. “C’mon. C’mon and wake up. I can’t leave you down here, Sartan. I want you up on the bridge where I can keep on you. Get moving!”

Alfred sat up instantly, gasping and crying out in horror. He clutched at Haplo’s shirt, nearly dragging the Patryn down on top of him. “Help me! Save me! Running! I’ve been running... and they’re so close! Please! Please, help me!”

Whatever was going on here, Haplo didn’t have time for it. “Hey!” he shouted loudly, straight into the man’s face, and slapped him.

Alfred’s balding head snapped back, his teeth clicked together. Sucking in a breath, he stared at Haplo and the Patryn saw recognition. He saw something else, completely unexpected: understanding, compassion, sorrow.

Haplo wondered uneasily where Alfred had spent his journey through Death’s Gate. He had the answer, deep inside, but he wasn’t certain he liked it or what it all might mean. He chose to ignore it, at least for the time being.

“Was that? ... I saw ...” Alfred began.

“On your feet,” Haplo said. Standing up himself, he pulled the clumsy Sartan up with him. “We’re not out of danger. If anything, we’ve just flown into it. I—”

A shattering crash amidships emphasized his words. Haplo staggered, caught himself on an overhead beam. Alfred fell backward, arms flailing wildly, and sat down heavily on the deck.

“Dog, bring him!” Haplo ordered, and hurried forward.

During the Sundering, the Sartan had split the universe, divided it into worlds representative of its four basic elements: air, fire, stone, and water. Haplo had first visited the realm of air, Arianus. He had just returned from the realm of fire, Pryan. His glimpses into each had prepared him, so he had supposed, for what he might find in Abarrach, the world of stone. A subterranean world, he imagined, a world of tunnels and caves, a world of cool and earthy-smelling darkness.

His ship struck something again, listed sideways. Haplo could hear, behind him, a wail and a clattering crash. Alfred, down again. The ship could take such punishment, guarded as it was by its runes, but not indefinitely. Each blow sent tiny tremors through the sigla traced on the hull, forcing them a little farther apart, disrupting their magic ever so slightly. Two had only to completely separate, one from the other, open a crack that would grow wider and wider. That was how Haplo’s first trip through Death’s Gate had ended.

Making his way forward as rapidly as possible, tossed from side to side by the erratic motion of the heaving ship, Haplo became aware lurid glow lighting the darkness around him. The temperature increasing, growing hotter, much hotter. The runes on his skin began to glow a faint blue, his body’s magic reacting instinctively to reduce his temperature to a safe level.

Could his ship be on fire?

Haplo scoffed at the notion. He had passed safely through the guns of Pryan; the runes would most assuredly protect against flame! But there was no denying the fact that the red glow was burning brighter, the temperature growing warmer. Haplo quickened his pace. Emerging onto the bridge with some difficulty, due to the lurching of the vessel, the Patryn stopped and stared, amazement and shock paralyzing him.

His ship was sailing, with incredible speed, down a river of molten lava.

A vast stream of glowing red tinged with flame yellow surged and swirled around the vessel. Darkness arched above him, made darker by contrast to the lurid light of the magma flow below. He was in a gigantic cavern. Vast columns of black rock, around which the lava curled and eddied, soared upward, supporting a ceiling of stone. Numberless stalactites hung down, reaching for him like bony, grasping fingers, their polished surface reflecting the hellish red of the river of fire beneath them.

The ship veered this way and that. Huge stalagmites, with wicked, sword-sharp edges, thrust up from the molten sea like black teeth from a red maw. Haplo understood what had caused the trashes they’d previously experienced. Jolted to action, he moved forward and placed his hands on the steering stone, reacting by, instinct more than by conscious thought, his gaze riveted with horrid fascination on the dreadful landscape into which he sailed.

“Blessed Sartan!” murmured a voice behind him. “What frightful place is this?”

Haplo spared Alfred a brief glance.

“Your people made it,” he told him. “Dog, watch him.”

The dog had obediently herded and harried Alfred to this point by nipping at the man’s heels. It plopped itself down on the deck, panting in the heat, fixing its intelligent eyes on the Sartan. Alfred took a step forward. The animal growled, its tail thumped warningly against the deck.

I’ve nothing against you personally, the dog might have been saying from its expression, but orders are orders.

Alfred gulped and froze, leaned weakly against the bulkhead. “Where .. . where are we?” he repeated in a faint voice.

“Abarrach.”

“The world of stone. Was this your destination?”

“Of course! What did you expect? That I’m as clumsy as you?”

Alfred was silent, eyes staring out on the awful panorama. “So you are visiting each of the worlds?” he said at length.

Haplo didn’t see any reason why he should answer and so he kept quiet and concentrated on his steering. It deserved concentration. The huge boulders sprang up suddenly, without warning. He considered taking to the air, but decided against it. He couldn’t determine the height of the cavern’s ceiling. The hull could withstand punishment far better than the fragile mast and dragon’s head prow.

The heat was intense, even inside the ship, which had the advantage of being protected by runes on the outside. Haplo’s skin gleamed a bright blue as the runes cooled him. Alfred, he noticed, was humming beneath his breath, tracing runes in the air with his long-fingered hands and shuffling his feet slightly, his body swaying to the rhythm of the Sartan magic. Flanks heaving, the dog panted loudly, but never took its eyes from Alfred.

“You’ve been to the second world, I presume,” the Sartan continued in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “It would be natural for you to travel to them in the order in which they were created, the order they appear on the old charts. Did you... did you find any trace of”—Alfred paused, seeming to have trouble speaking—“my people?” he asked finally in a voice so soft that Haplo heard him only because he knew what the question was going to be.

The Patryn didn’t immediately answer. What was he going to do with Alfred? This Sartan? This mortal enemy?

Haplo’s inclination, and he was astounded by how his hands and fingers itched to perform the action his mind presented to him, was to toss the man into the magma river. But to murder Alfred would be to indulge in his own hatred, a lapse of discipline the Lord of the Nexus would not tolerate. Alfred, a living Sartan—as far as Haplo had discovered, the only living Sartan—was an extremely valuable prize.

My Lord will be pleased with this gift, Haplo thought, considering. Far more pleased with this than anything else I could bring him, including my report on this hellish world. I should probably turn around, deliver the Sartan immediately. But.. . but. . .

But that would mean reentering Death’s Gate and Haplo, although he hated admitting his weakness to himself, couldn’t view that prospect without true alarm . He saw again the rows and rows of tombs, knew again the death of hope and promise, experienced the knowledge of being terribly, horribly, pitifully alone. . . .

He wrenched his mind from the dream or whatever it had been, cursed the eyes that had made him see it. I won’t make that journey again, not now, not so soon. Let time blunt it, blur the images. He rationalized: it would be extremely difficult and dangerous to turn the ship around. Better to keep going, complete my mission, explore this world, and then return to the Nexus. Alfred isn’t going anywhere without me, that’s for damn sure.

One glance at the Sartan’s sweat-dewed face, the shivering limbs, and Haplo was reassured. Alfred appeared incapable of making his way to the head without assistance. The Patryn didn’t think it likely that his enemy would have either the strength or the ability to wrest the ship away from him and make good an escape.

Haplo met Alfred’s eyes, saw—once again—not hatred or fear but understanding, sorrow. It occurred to the Patryn, suddenly, that the Sartan might not want to escape. Haplo considered, discarded the notion. Alfred must know what terrible fate awaited him at the hands of the Lord of the Nexus. And if he didn’t, Haplo would obligingly tell him.

“Did you say something, Sartan?” he tossed over his shoulder.

“I asked if you found anything of my people on Pryan,” Alfred repeated humbly.

“What I found or didn’t find is no concern of yours. It will be up to My Lord to tell you what he thinks you ought to know.”

“Are we going back there? To your lord?”

Haplo heard, with a bitter satisfaction, the nervous quaver in the man’s voice. So Alfred did know, or at least had a general idea, of the reception he would receive,

“No.” Haplo ground the word. “Not yet. I have a job to do and I’m going to do it. I don’t think it likely you’ll want to wander about this place on your own, but, just in case you’re thinking you might give me the slip, the dog will have its eyes on you day and night.”

The animal, hearing the reference, brushed the plumy tail on the deck, the mouth widened in a grin, exhibiting razor-sharp teeth.

“Yes,” Alfred said in a low voice, “I know about the dog.”

Now what’s that supposed to mean? Haplo wondered irritably, not liking the man’s tone, which seemed to border on compassionate when the Patryn would have preferred fear.

“Just a reminder, Sartan. There are things I can do to you, things I would enjoy doing to you, that are not at all pleasant and would not ruin your usefulness to My Lord. Do what I tell you and keep out of my way and you won’t get hurt. Understand?”

“I am not as weak as you seem to consider me.”

Alfred drew himself upright with a semblance of dignity. The dog growled and lifted its head, ears flattened, eyes narrowed. The tail thumped ominously. Alfred shrank backward, stooped shoulders rounding.

Haplo snorted in derision and concentrated on his sailing.

Up ahead, in the distance, the river of magma forked. One large stream branched off to the right, another, smaller, veered to the left. Haplo steered his ship into the right, for no other reason than that it was the larger of the two and appeared easier and safer to travel.

“How could anyone live in such a terrible environ?” Alfred, talking rhetorically to himself, seemed considerably surprised that Haplo responded.

“Mensch certainly couldn’t survive, although our kind could. I don’t think our trip into this world will be a long one. If there ever was life here, it must be dead by now.”

“Perhaps Abarrach was never meant to be habitable. Perhaps it was meant to be only an energy source for the other—” Alfred’s tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, he fell abruptly silent.

Haplo grunted, glanced at the man. “Yeah? Go on.”

“Nothing.” The Sartan’s eyes were on his oversize feet. “I was merely speculating.”

“You’ll have the opportunity to ‘speculate’ all you want when we return to the Nexus. You’ll wish you knew the secrets of the universe and could reveal them, every one, to My Lord before he’s finished with you, Sartan.”

Alfred kept silent, stared out the glass porthole. Haplo darted glances up and down the black and barren shoreline. Small tributaries of the magma river meandered off among the rock shoals and disappeared into fire-lighted shadow. These might lead somewhere, might lead out. There was nothing above them except rock.

“If we’re in the center of the world, in the core, ifs possible that there could be life above, on the surface,” Alfred remarked, echoing Haplo’s thought. He found that extremely irritating.

He considered beaching his ship, proceeding forward on foot, but immediately abandoned the idea. Walking among the slick-sided, sharp, black stalagmites that gleamed with an eerie, lurid brilliance in the magma’s reflected glow would be difficult, treacherous. He would stay with the river, at least for the time being. . .

A dull roaring sound came to his ears. A glance at Alfred’s face told him the Sartan heard it, too.

“We’re moving faster,” Alfred said, licking his lips that must be rimed with salt to judge by the sweat trickling down the man’s cheeks.

The ship’s speed increased, the magma hurtling along as if eager to arrive at some unknown destination. The roaring sound grew louder. Haplo kept his hands on the steering stone, peered ahead anxiously. He saw nothing except vast blackness.

“Rapids! A fall!” Alfred shouted, and the ship plunged over the edge of a gigantic lava cascade.

Haplo clung to the steering stone, the ship fell downward into a vast sea of molten lava. Rocks thrust up out of the swirling fiery mass, black nails grasping for the puny ship that was hurtling down on them.

Shaking himself free of the fascinated horror that gripped him, Haplo elevated his hands on the steering stone and, as his hands lifted, the runes on the stone glowed fiercely, brightly. The ship itself lifted, the magic flowing through the wings, activating them. Dragon Wing, as he had named it, wrenched itself free of the magma’s clutching grasp and soared out over the molten sea.

Haplo heard behind him a groan and a slithering sound. The dog was on its feet, barking. Alfred lay huddled on the deck, the Sartan’s face white as death.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said faintly.

“Don’t do it here!” Haplo barked, noting his own hands shaking, experiencing himself a lurching in his stomach and a bitter taste of bile in his mouth. He concentrated on flying his ship.

Alfred apparently managed to control himself, for the Patryn heard nothing more from him. Haplo sailed his ship upward, hoping to discover that they had flown out of the cavern. As he flew up and up into the darkness, he was disappointed to observe stalactite formations. These were incredibly large—some as much as a mile in diameter. Far, far below gleamed the magma sea, flowing to a horizon that was red on black.

He took the ship back down, near the shoreline. He had caught a glimpse to his right of an object that appeared man-made jutting out into the water. Its lines were too straight and even to have been formed by nature’s hand, no matter how magically guided. Moving closer, he saw what looked like a pier, extending from the shore out into the lava ocean.

Haplo brought the ship down. He stared at the formation intently, trying to get a clear view.

“Look!” Alfred cried, sitting up and pointing, startling the dog, who growled. “There, to your left!”

Haplo jerked his head around, thinking they must be about to crash into a stalactite. Nothing loomed ahead of them and it took some moments to determine what Alfred had sighted.

Banks of clouds, created by the extreme heat of the magma sea meeting the cool air of the cavern far above, could be seen in the distance. The clouds drifted and parted, and then myriad tiny lights were visible, blinking out from beneath the clouds like stars.

Except that there could be no stars visible in this underground world.

The mist flew apart in tattered rags, and Haplo could see clearly. Perched on terraced steppes far from the magma sea stood the buildings and towers of an enormous city.