In the morning, it was as though the strange midnight visit with Brenna had never happened.
Anton sat in the same breakfast nook as he had two days before, eating the same breakfast, albeit with slightly less desperation. In fact, he found he was hardly hungry at all this morning, and picked at the food.
For her part, Brenna chatted blandly about the weather, and the upcoming Springfest, and would Anton like to visit the village of Overbridge, and what kind of music did they play in the Outside world, and…
Anton understood why she was doing it, with one of the few human servants standing by, but it still almost drove him mad to talk about such inconsequential things after what Brenna had told him in the night.
But after what seemed an eternity, though it was really only about an hour, Brenna dabbed her lips with her handkerchief-Anton gave his own a quick wipe, as well-and got to her feet. “Well,” she said. “Let’s see how those mageservants have gotten on with your airship, shall we? I’m sure Lord Falk will want a progress report magelinked to him.”
Magelinks, Anton had guessed, must serve the same purpose inside the Anomaly as electromissives did outside. “Yes, let’s,” he said with false brightness to match Brenna’s own, which earned him a slightly annoyed but also amused warning look in return.
Despite Falk’s assurances, Anton had not really believed the mageservants could repair all the damage to the airship in… what, a day and three quarters? But when he and Brenna, after nodding to Gannick, bent in concentration over that eerie desk of his, emerged into the back courtyard, he gasped.
There was the airship-the Professor’s airship-looking exactly as it had when the Professor had first showed it to him, just before terrifying him by informing him that someday soon he would be flying in it.
“I don’t believe it,” Anton said. He circled the gondola, examined the connections between it and the burner and the engine, noted the fresh sandbags hung on the outside of the wicker basket like heavy brown fruit, checked the rigging, the rudder, and the propeller. “It’s
… perfect.”
“Then it will fly?” said Brenna, still brightly, but with an undercurrent of the urgency she had expressed in the middle of the night.
“No,” Anton said. “Not until we can fill the envelope.” He pointed to the long, flat blue worm of cloth lying on the ground beside the gondola.
“And that’s what the burner does?” Brenna gestured at the copper stovelike device in the middle of the gondola.
“Yes,” Anton said. “But it needs fuel.”
“Fuel?”
“Rock gas,” Anton said. “Compressed rock gas. We were out when we crashed. Without it…” He shook his head. “Without it, the airship won’t fly.”
“But it’s got to,” Brenna said, the false cheeriness replaced by naked desperation. “We can’t be here when Lord Falk returns. Either of us.”
“I can’t just snap my fingers and make it fly,” Anton said. “It’s not…” He bit off the last word.
“Magic?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.” She stared at the airship. “So what you really need,” she said slowly, “is hot air.”
“To fill the airship, yes,” Anton said. “But we also have to have a source of hot air on board. Otherwise, we go up, but we come down very fast… about seven hundred feet a minute. You can slow that some by throwing out ballast. If you can lift with a lot of ballast, you can stay aloft longer, because you have more ballast to toss away as you lose altitude.”
“And this ‘ballast’… that’s the sandbags?”
“Yes,” Anton said. He studied the gondola, hung with new sandbags the mageservants had somehow made. They didn’t look like the sandbags they’d left Elkbone with, but they were bags, and they were filled with sand, so they’d do. “Twice as many, if we can get them. There’s a water tank in the base of the gondola, too, but I don’t think we should fill that; in this weather, it would freeze and it would be impossible to empty it… but, Brenna, this is all impossible. If we don’t have the burner, we can’t fill the airship, or stay aloft long enough to get very far away. We’ll have to risk escaping on foot.”
“Suicide,” Brenna said. “Even if the men-at-arms don’t get us, the cold will.” She glanced over her shoulder; a man-at-arms, no doubt sent by Gannick, had emerged and was watching them. “I’ve been remiss in my duties as host,” she said, brightly and loudly. “I have yet to complete your tour of the house.”
“But-”
“I’m sure you’ll find it ‘uplifting,’” Brenna said. Anton got the hint, though he couldn’t imagine what she could show him that would solve their problem…
… until, after touring him past some rather pedestrian statues on the front lawn and the covered hulk of what he was told was a magical musical fountain, Brenna took him through a door in the kitchen into the servants’ corridors, and from there through another door and down a long flight of stone stairs.
As they started their descent, Anton heard a distant roar. It grew in volume until, as they emerged into a vaulted underground chamber, it sounded like an enormous waterfall. But Anton couldn’t see anything except for a strange blue glow, like and yet very unlike the glow of the ubiquitous magelights. Brenna didn’t try to talk above the noise, just led him through the first strangely warm chamber into an adjoining one that was more than just warm: it was stifling.
Anton gaped at the source of both the heat and the noise: a massive torch, a shrieking, howling blue flame, balanced over a fissure in the rock and splaying tentacles of fire across the ceiling above. “The energy source for all the magic in Lord Falk’s demesne,” Brenna shouted. “The manor was built here because of this natural outpouring of rock gas. It was set alight more than seven hundred years ago and has never faltered.”
“The biggest burner of them all,” Anton shouted. If he took even half a dozen steps forward, he was sure its heat would singe the hair from his arms and eyebrows. “But how do we get hot air from down here into the airship?”
Brenna pointed up. Anton blinked, trying to see through the heat-shimmer and licking flames. There were dark openings in the rock above, which made sense; they would have been asphyxiated long before they descended to this level, and the fire would burn itself out in moments, if there were no outlets for the byproducts of its combustion.
“Where do they come up?” he shouted.
“Various places,” she shouted back. “One of which is not far from the airship… a chimney on the back of the manor, that heats the servants’ quarters.”
“A chimney?” Anton shook his head. “No good. How do we get the air down from a chimney to the airship?”
“We don’t,” Brenna shouted. “We take it from the bottom of the chimney. We knock a hole in it-”
“How?” Anton demanded.
Brenna spread her hands. “My guardian is not the only one who can command mageservants,” she said.
“There’s still the problem of replenishing the hot air while we’re in the air,” Anton said. “Otherwise it’ll be a short trip and a hard landing.”
“I’ve got an idea for that, too,” Brenna said. She told him what she had in mind, and for the first time, Anton felt a flickering of hope. If they could fill the airship, get away before the men-at-arms realized what was happening, and keep it aloft for a reasonable amount of time…
… and land it without killing themselves, he thought uneasily
…
The winds would blow them east, deeper into the Kingdom. With no fuel for the engine, he couldn’t take the airship back over the Anomaly. Still, they’d be somewhere else, somewhere far away from Falk and his minddestroying witch.
“We’ll need a hosepipe,” he said, thinking.
“We can get one,” Brenna said.
They made their way up to the courtyard. The man-at-arms hadn’t followed them down into the cellar, from which there was only the one exit, but he was waiting for them when they emerged. He planted himself on the back steps, looking bored, and paid them little heed as they walked over to the chimney. Even on this side it was hot enough to melt the snow from the cobblestones, so that a ragged semicircle of pavement gleamed wetly despite the icy chill, which had deepened since Anton’s arrival.
Anton glanced at the man-at-arms. “Won’t he try to stop us?” he said in a low voice.
“Why should he?” Brenna murmured back. “He knows we’re supposed to be getting the airship ready to fly. He doesn’t have a clue how it works, so anything we do…”
“… is all right with him,” Anton finished. “Nice.” He touched the chimney’s bricks, then snatched back his hand. “Lots of heat,” he said. “Now if only we can get it into the envelope.”
“We can,” Brenna said. Although many of the mageservants had gone back to their regular tasks of household maintenance, a half-dozen stood idle in case more work was required. “I can’t just will them to act the way Lord Falk does,” she said. “No one else in the household can. We have to use this.” She pulled something from her pocket, a short, narrow cylinder of wood with a glass ball on one end that glowed blue.
Anton couldn’t help laughing. “A magic wand?”
Brenna gave him a curious look. “I suppose you could call it that-it’s magic, and it’s a sort of wand. But I don’t know why you find that so funny.”
Anton only shook his head, thinking of street “magicians” he had seen gulling a living from tourists with their misdirection and sleight of hand. They all used magic wands. He’d even heard one once claim that his magic wand was an ancient artifact of the legendary MageLords. But their wands were usually much longer, much more impressive, than this little stubby…
He grinned suddenly. Well, he thought, they do say that size isn’t everything.
Brenna was looking at him curiously, and he flushed, glad she couldn’t read his thoughts. “So… how does it work?”
“It’s been enchanted to take verbal orders and… translate them, I guess is the word… to magical orders for the mageservants. It’s how Gannick orders them about.” Holding the “wand” in her gloved right hand she went over to one of the mageservants and touched the blue symbol on its polished wooden head. “These orders are for all mageservants within this courtyard,” she said clearly. The five other mageservants suddenly twitched and stood up straighter. She lifted the wand from the glowing symbol and looked at Anton. “Tell me what they need to do, and I’ll repeat it to them,” she said. “Be as clear as you can. They’re… very literal.”
Anton remembered a childhood fable, “The MageLord’s Apprentice,” in which the hapless helper of a MageLord learned enough magic to set the MageLord’s magical minions to scrubbing the stonework, but not enough to stop them from scrubbing it to dust, so that the MageLord had returned to find his castle in rubble and his apprentice buried within it.
He also remembered that at the end of the story the MageLord turned on his heel and walked away, leaving his apprentice to suffocate beneath the weight of his own folly.
He shuddered. “I’ll be precise,” he said, and he did the best he could.
Brenna placed the wand back on the symbol on the mageservant’s face, and repeated the instruction almost word for word-almost, because she took it on herself to rephrase some of his clumsier sentences. He thought of “The MageLord’s Apprentice” again, and couldn’t blame her.
“Carry out my orders,” she said at last, and lifted the wand.
The man-at-arms watched with interest as two of the mageservants, having disappeared momentarily in the direction of the tool shed in one corner of the courtyard, returned with hammers and chisels. He actually descended the steps to watch as they attacked the chimney bricks with inhuman strength and precision. “Should they be doing that?” he said.
“Yes,” Brenna said shortly. “They should.” He gave her a skeptical look. “Lord Falk wants this flying device operational,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll begrudge a few bricks from a chimney to achieve that.”
“Miss, I personally think you and the young man here are both a few bricks short of a chimney if you think you can get this pile of rubbish to fly without magic,” the man-at-arms said with equanimity, and returned to his post.
Despite having been on the receiving end of that bit of wit, Anton still grinned appreciatively.
While two of the mageservants were dismantling a section of the chimney, the others disappeared inside. In a few minutes, two of them emerged with more of the oddlooking sandbags, which Anton had finally realized were flour sacks. “Where are they getting the sand?” he asked Brenna as he watched the magical marionettes hang the bags on the ropes on both sides of the basket.
“Groundskeeper shed, out front in the gardens,” Brenna said.
The other two came out with something quite different: a small stove, with a tall, narrow chimney. Anton watched them bring it over to the gondola and place it inside, and as they next headed to the coal shed, he climbed into the basket and manhandled the stove into place next to the useless burner, pointing the chimney up into the envelope. The small stove normally resided inside the extra magecarriage Falk kept at the manor, and came with bellows to fire it up when more heat was needed quickly. Brenna had suggested, and Anton hoped, that perhaps, if they pumped the bellows, they could produce enough heat to slow their descent, though he knew it could never put out enough to keep them aloft indefinitely. At least it will be extra ballast we can throw overboard in an emergency, he thought.
The mageservants returned with a bag of coal each. While he lit and stoked the little stove, the two working on the chimney abruptly opened a small hole, scorching air roaring out, creating a plume of white fog that billowed skyward. Anton jumped over the side of the gondola and ran over to where Brenna stood by the chimney.
Two of the mageservants that had been carrying sandbags now emerged from the house with a huge coil of canvas hosepipe, also liberated from the gardener’s shed, Anton figured. The two that had brought him the stove and coal went into the tool shed, coming out after a moment with a piece of heavy wood and an assortment of tools.
Anton’s instructions-at least as modified by Brenna-seemed to have been clear. Within moments the mageservants had cut a round hole in the wood exactly the right size to take the hose, bound the hole in place with a set of brackets that might have once held torches (the mageservants bending the heavy iron with alarming ease to clamp the hose in place), and spread a thick putty normally used for sealing windows all along the back edge of the board. They placed the wood over the roaring hole in the chimney and pushed it hard against the brick. When they stepped away, Anton went over and felt along the edge of the board. He couldn’t feel as much as a breath of hot air escaping.
Instead, that hot air roared out of the end of the hose, creating a narrower, more focused plume of white as it met the cold air.
“It’s going to take a long time to fill,” Anton warned. “And at some point, our clever guard over there is going to get suspicious.”
“Let him,” Brenna said. She took the wand and went over to the nearest mageservant. What she told it, Anton couldn’t hear, though he did hear the beginning admonition that “these orders are for all mageservants within this courtyard.” The mageservants didn’t do anything different after she finished, but she came back to Anton looking satisfied.
“If we’re lucky, that’ll do it,” she said.
Anton didn’t ask any questions. Unbelievably, the time had come. He was glad Brenna had insisted they both dress as warmly as they possibly could before coming outside that day. There could be no going back for clothes or supplies… or water, he thought. Well, without the burner it would probably freeze solid anyway.
Anton took the hose from the mageservants and thrust it inside the envelope of the airship.
It filled with agonizing slowness. For a long time he thought it wasn’t filling at all, or that the air from that giant gas flame in the cellar wasn’t hot enough… but then the tip of the envelope twitched, and slowly, oh-so-slowly, began to swell.
The expansion seemed to pick up speed as it went along. The man-at-arms watched, obviously fascinated, but didn’t interfere.
Once the airship had begun filling, the mageservants had moved to other positions, as Anton had instructed Brenna to order them. Each had taken the end of a rope from the gondola and tied it around something: a bit of stonework, the railing of the steps, the handle of the gate. Inside the gondola, Anton had rigged the ropes with the same quick-release buckles used to drop the sandbags, spare ones he’d taken from the stores cabinet under the pilot’s bench at the stern, the only cabinet he hadn’t emptied in his frantic search for stuff to throw over the side during the descent from the top of the Anomaly, because the Professor’s feet had been in the way.
It wasn’t until the airship rose off the cobblestones and slowly, as though it hardly meant it, began to swell toward the sky, that the man-at-arms came down the steps toward them. “That’s amazing,” he said. He leaned over and said in a voice just for Anton, “and a little obscene, if you take my meaning.”
Anton grinned, but said nothing. He’d often had the same thought watching the long tube of silk inflate.
The envelope lifted completely free of the ground, and Anton had to scramble to make sure the hose remained pointed up into its interior. Leaving the guard behind, he climbed into the gondola. “Help me out here,” he said to Brenna, who climbed, much more gracefully, in beside him. “Getting close,” he said under his breath.
The man-at-arms continued to watch the airship grow with interest, rather than alarm. “Amazing,” he said again. “And here I thought all this talk of flying was a load of horse apples.” His eyes traced the ropes tied here and there. “Well, those make sense now,” he said. “Making sure you two don’t float away…” And then his eyes narrowed. “Hey,” he said. “You’ve proved you can fix this thing. I think you should stop now.”
“Got to be sure the envelope holds air,” Anton said cheerfully. “Can’t do that without full inflation.”
The man-at-arms looked up at the airship now towering above them. The gondola creaked and shifted a little. “It’s inflated now,” he said, his voice suddenly hard. “Out of there, both of you.”
“But the test isn’t complete-” Anton said.
The guard, it was clear, was having none of that. He drew his short sword. “Out of it!”
“Carry out my orders!” Brenna shouted to the mageservants.
One of the magical puppets stood no more than ten feet away. It suddenly sprang to life, closing the distance between it and the man-at-arms with impossible speed. One three-fingered wooden hand closed around the short sword, yanked it from the man’s hand, and threw it up and away so hard it sailed clear over the tool shed and disappeared beyond the courtyard wall. The other hand gripped the man’s arm. He cried out. The mageservant turned and walked toward the stairs, dragging the burly guard across the cobblestones as though he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes… a small sack, at that. The man-at-arms writhed, but to no avail, and he abruptly quit moving after his head impacted the bottom step… and then the next one. .. and then the next one…
Anton hoped to the God he didn’t believe in they hadn’t just killed the man. He glanced at Brenna, who looked white and a little sick, but she pressed her lips together. “How much longer?” she demanded.
Anton studied the envelope for a moment, then leaned forward to look at the ground. “We’ll lift in a couple of minutes,” he said, straightening, shouting to be heard above the roar of the hot air pouring out of the hose. “But we need to keep filling as long as possible. We need to drive all the cold air out the bottom so we get the maximum amount of lift.”
Brenna looked back at the mageservant as it opened the back door and tossed the guard’s limp body through it. Then it closed the door firmly and stood in front of it.
“What did you order them to do?” Anton shouted to Brenna.
“To let no one into the courtyard but us,” Brenna said.
“Can’t Gannick countermand your orders?”
“Only one at a time,” Brenna said. “And he has to touch them with the control wand to do it.”
Anton could hear shouting now from inside the house. The door opened and Gannick took a step outside, wand in hand, but the mageservant reached for him and he backed up so quickly he fell hard on his rear end, then scrambled backward out of sight, his feet, kicking desperately for purchase, the last of him to disappear.
For a few more precious moments, no one attempted to enter the courtyard, but Anton could imagine what was happening on the other side. Gannick would be calling the men-at-arms. They’d be seizing weapons, rushing through the house. And the mageservants-
The mageservants couldn’t stop them for long.
The back door flew open and the mageservant that stood there vanished in a blast of blue fire. The other mageservants raced for the door.
If they can use magic to destroy the mageservants, they can use it on us, Anton thought. “Time to go! Grab the buckles!”
He’d told Brenna what they would have to do. She seized the two buckles closest to her, he seized the others.
Another mageservant blew apart in a blast of blue flame.
“On a count of three,” Anton shouted. “One… two… three!”
Brenna released her buckles. Anton released his. Majestically, steadily, but oh-so-slowly, the airship began to rise.
Two more mageservants became kindling.
“Too slow!” Anton yelled. “We’ve got to get out of here. They’ll use magic-” He turned, grabbed another buckle on the inside of the gondola, hesitated only a moment-then, as the last of the mageservants shattered, opened the buckle; and, in quick succession, all of the other buckles as well.
The ropes on which the sandbags hung fell away, every sandbag plunged to the icy cobblestones, and the airship, like a tethered hawk suddenly set free, shot into the sky.