Angus Wells
Lords of the Sky
When I was in my twelfth year, I saw the Sky Lords.
I was born in Kellambek, in a village named Whitefish, for its chief source of food and revenue. It lay some seven leagues south of the river Cambar, on a cove shaded by cliffs where black pines grew and the wind blew warm off the Fend through all the long hot summers. Through childhood’s eyes I see the sky forever blue, the sea like rippled silk torn by the fishing boats, the hearthfire in winter merry, the shutters secure against the cold. Through those eyes taught in Durbrecht, I know this was not so: in summer, the air stank of fish and tar and sweat; in winter, draughts blew and the sea roared angry. Both memories are mine, and I think perhaps both are true.
My parents were fisherfolk. My father was named Aditus and owned a boat crewed by himself and two others, one my uncle, Battus, wed to my father’s sister, Lyrta; the other a taciturn man named Thorus, a widower, who seemed never to smile save when he held a cup or spoke with me. My mother was named Donia and, like my father, smiled a great deal, though I think that between the netting and the gutting of the fish and the tending of we children they had little enough, in reality, in which to find such good humor. But they did, and I suppose that is the way of simple folk who accept what is unquestioningly and lack that spark (or curse?) that looks for change. I had one brother, Tonium, and one sister, Delia, both younger by a descending year apiece.
I was a fisher-child. I played on the sand, amongst the beached boats or amongst the black pines. I hoarded shells and bird’s eggs. When the brille swarmed, I waded in, knee-deep, to haul the nets. I swung a sling and pulled girls’ hair; fought with other boys and listened to the stories of old men. On the cliff above the village I had a secret camp: a fortress great as the Lord Protector’s keep, from which I and Tellurin and Coram and all the rest defended Whitefish village against the Kho’rabi. Sometimes I
What did I know then of the Comings?
Little enough: to me, the Kho’rabi knights, the kingdom of Ahn-feshang, they were legends. When I was very young-too young to laugh at the threat-my mother used to tell me that should I disobey her, a Kho’rabi knight should come and take my head. I spent some small time cowering beneath my blanket at that, but as I grew older, sneered. Kho’rabi knights-what were they to me? Creatures of legend, of no more account than the fabled dragons of the Forgotten Country, who had gone away before even my grandfather was born.
But then I saw the Sky Lords.
It was the end of summer, when the winds off the Fend shift and blow westward. The sky was a cloudless cobalt blue, hot and hard, the sun a sullen eye that challenged observation. The sea was still, unrippled. I was on the sand, passing my father the tools he needed to sew gashes in his nets. Battus and Thorus worked with him on the skein: they had decided to forgo the evening tide and spend the dusktime in repairing.
Thorus was the first to see the skyboat, dropping his needle as he sprang to his feet, shouting. My father and my uncle were no slower upright, the net forgotten on the warm sand. I followed them, staring to where they pointed, not sure what it was they pointed at or what set such fear in their eyes. I knew only that my father, who was afraid of
I remember that Thorus said, “They come again,” and my father answered, “It is not the time,” and then told me to run homeward, to tell my mother that the Sky Lords came, and she would know what to do.
As all the men not at sea gathered, staring skyward, I lingered a moment, wondering what held them so, what set them so rigid, like the old, time-carved statues that guarded the entrance to the cella.
Against the knife-sharp brilliance of the sky, I saw a shape. It seemed in that moment like a maggot, a bloated grub taken up by the hot late-summer wind, a speck against the eye-watering azure, that drifted steadily toward me. I felt my skin grow chill with apprehension.
Then my father, knowing me, shouted again, and I ran to our cottage and yelled at my mother that the Sky Lords came.
I think that then, for the first time, I truly knew what terror they induced.
Tonium and Delia fashioned castles from the dirt of our yard, grubby in a manner I-the older-was too adult to entertain. My mother screamed at them, bringing them tearful to her arms, she so distraught she found only brief, hurried words to calm their wailing as she gathered them up. The bell that hung above the cella began to sound, sonorous in the late-afternoon air, its clanging soon augmented by a great shouting from all the women, and the old men, and the howling of confused and frightened children who, like me, knew only that something unfamiliar occurred to induce fear and near-panic in our parents. My mother snatched Delia’s and Tonium’s hands in hers, shouted at me to follow, and drew my siblings, trotting, away from the house toward the cella. The mantis stood atop the dome. The sinews in his fat arms stood out like cords from the effort of his bell-ringing, and his plump face, usually set in a smile, was grim, his head craned around to peer at the shape approaching across the sky. All around me I heard the single word
In the confusion I became separated from my mother, and as I watched the worried faces of those who passed me, I succumbed to childhood’s temptation.
I was afraid-how should I not be?-but I was also intrigued, fascinated to know the
I knew my mother would be angry when she found me gone, but I soon enough dismissed that concern and ran back to the cliff path.
I halted amongst the pines, where they edged and then fell down over the slope, looking first at the village and then at the sky. The village was empty; the beach was lined with men. The sky was still that steel-hot blue; the shape of the Sky Lords’ boat was larger.
I could discern its outline clearer now: a cylinder of red, the color of blood; the carrier beneath was a shadow, like a remora suckered to a shark’s belly, sparkling with glints of silver as the sun struck the blades of the warriors there. I wondered how it had come up so fast. I watched it awhile, my eyes watering in the sun glare,