Lords of the Sky

anchorage would be dangerous.

Then danger was forgotten as her talent revealed the island in all its rugged splendor.

She had been told of the Sentinels, but to be told was not the same as seeing, and the descriptions had been delivered by sorcerers. It would take a Storyman to do this place justice. It was a vast slab of rock, as if a single, inconceivably massive boulder had been dropped into the Fend. Waves broke against the feet of sheer cliffs, smooth and high: un-scalable. White spume crashed against blue-black stone, a foaming line of demarcation broken only where an impossibly narrow gap showed in the rock. It was not, Rwyan “saw,” an inlet but a cave’s mouth, barely high enough the galleass’s masts might enter unharmed. She held her breath as Lyakan put his tiller over and the vessel raced, driven by sweeps and tide, for the opening. The glittering tower was lost, the cliffs loomed above, surfs roar drowned the apprehensive murmurs of her companions. Then Lyakan bellowed and the oars were brought inboard, and the galleass slid between the sea-gates guarding the dark ingress.

Rwyan felt the magic that drew the craft in, defying the tug of the sea, the Fend’s currents as nothing to that power. At her side, Chiara cried out, clutching her arm as darkness fell like sudden night, only a glimmer of day behind, and even that lost as the sea-gates closed. For Rwyan darkness held little meaning, and so she “saw” the proximity of the cliffs to either side, the roof frighteningly low above. She might have reached out to touch the stone, so close was it. Then daylight returned, blinding natural sight after the Stygian depths of the entrance, and the galleass floated gently to a harbor cut by magic’s might from the heart of the rock.

From seaward, the island had appeared entirely forbidding; now it appeared entirely paradisal.

The inlet was circular, a beach of pale yellow sand interrupted only by the blue granite pile of a quay and the hulls of fishing boats sweeping in a great calm arc around the saltwater lake. There were buildings constructed of wood and stone, pale blue, white, or rose petal pink, along the water line. More scattered randomly amongst stands of cedar and pine and myrtle, where little streamlets spilled down from terraces decked with olive groves, orchards, and meadows. Goats roamed, seemingly at will, more agile than the sheep and cattle grazing the luxuriant greensward. There were formal gardens, opulent as any in Durbrecht, and others of more natural shape, displaying a vivid array of wild flowers. Paths wandered the terraces, and long flights of white stone steps. The entire center of the island had been shaped by sorcery to cup this jewel as if in a careful fist.

And on the topmost tier, so high the observers on the galleass must tilt back their heads, necks craned, to gaze upward to where it stood bright against the sky, was the white tower, like a sword raised in defiance of the Sky Lords. A single straight stairway ran to its foot, a door of blue wood there, no other openings. It seemed a very simple structure to emanate so great a sensation of sorcerous power, and Rwyan studied it in awe. Within lay the greatest secrets of her kind.

She staggered as the galleass drifted to a halt, her attention diverted from the tower to the rush of activity initiated by their docking. Two of Lyakan’s Changed sprang to the wharf, securing the ship as two more ran out the gangplank. All came from their rowing benches to assist the newcome sorcerers to disembark. There were none amongst the crowd gathered on the pier: all there were Truemen.

Chiara was aflutter with undisguised excitement as they traversed the plank to meet the welcome of the residents. Rwyan, for all she was enchanted with the beauty of her new surroundings, was less stimulated. Before long, she knew, Lyakan would take his galleass back across the Fend and the sea-gates would close behind him. It felt to her that they would close, too, on Daviot; that he must be shut off from her by all the weight of ocean and distance and duty. She turned her attention a moment back, to the ship and the Fend beyond, and then she sighed, and took a breath, and shaped her lips in a smile as she walked toward her future.

In the weeks that followed Rwyan’s departure, I grew surly. I thought more of my loss than of learning and gave short answers to those who inquired after my abrupt change of mood. My mind was occupied with memories of Rwyan. I indulged in the pointless exercise of self-pity. It was foolishness: what was, was. I knew that; it made my grief no easier. I sank into sullen despair, that exacerbated by my healing leg. I progressed from crutch to staff and then was able to limp without support, chafing at confinement within the College. None but Urt and Cleton knew the reason for my black mood, but it was impossible it should go unnoticed-questions were asked my friends. I am confident neither Cleton nor Urt (who were both interrogated) gave much away, but the College authorities were subtle and very adept in drawing out answers. Such is, after all, a part of the Mnemonikos’s talent, and it may be employed to more ends than the investigation of a story. Whatever was said or not, the conclusions drawn were correct: that I had become engaged in an affair with a member of the Sorcerous College recently departed for the Sentinels. I was brought before a tribunal, that judgment of some kind might be delivered.

Decius presided, and it was to his sunlit chambers I was summoned. He sat as usual behind his desk, but to right and left, on high-backed chairs, sat four of the College dignitaries. Keran was one, beside him, Ardyon; on the master’s right were Bael and Lewynn, who taught geography. I could read none of their faces; I was not invited to sit.

Without preamble, Decius asked me, “Is it true you dallied with a student of sorcery?”

I saw no profit in equivocation and answered him, “Yes.”

“For how long?” he demanded.

I said, “A year.”

His brows rose at that, his round face become owlish in its surprise. “Yet none suspected,” he murmured. “You must have had help.”

I was not sure if he asked a question or made a statement and so offered him no response: I was prepared to accept whatever punishment this College court deemed fit, but I would not betray my friends.

“He’s great ingenuity,” Bael said. I was uncertain whether that was praise or condemnation.

Decius nodded, so that the sun coming through the window at his back flickered bright on his pate. I was somewhat blinded by the light, so I could not see his eyes clearly. He said, “Hmm,” and was silent awhile.

Ardyon leaned toward the master and murmured something I could not make out, save, I think, for the names Cleton and Urt. Decius nodded again in response and made a small gesture, as if quieting a restive hound. I waited. I felt my healing leg begin to throb dully.

Then Decius asked me, “How did you think it should end, this affair?”

I said, “It has not. I love her.” Ardyon’s explosive nasal inhalation told me I spoke too fiercely, and it came to me I might well face expulsion. In a milder tone I added, “I had not thought beyond that-that I love her.”

“Yet you know such”-Decius appeared for some reason to find the subject delicate- “friendships are not encouraged.”

“Nor,” I ventured, “forbidden.”

Close on the heels of my realization that I might soon be thrown out of the College came another. Were I expelled, I could return home to Whitefish village, and that was not overly far from the Sentinels: I could obtain a boat (it was a measure of my mood that I did not consider how I should acquire it) and sail to the islands; find Rwyan there. Of course, that would mean throwing away these last few years, turning my back on all I had learned, and there remained some small rational part of my mind that warned me I should not find entry to the Sentinels easy, and that Rwyan might not be allowed, or might not wish, to leave. Balanced against my desire for her, it was a negligible weight.

“Not forbidden,” Decius said, “but neither encouraged. That for both sides’ sake. Did it not occur to you that she has a duty, as do you, and that your … love … should conflict with that loyalty?”

I wondered why he found that simple word, love, so hard to say. It did not occur to me then, in my youth and my loss, that his love was entirely for the College and all it stood for; that he found it difficult, indeed near impossible, to comprehend that a man might find a greater passion.

I said, “I suppose so. Yes; but I hoped …”

Decius gestured that I continue. I squinted into the light, shrugged, and said honestly, “I did not think too far ahead, master. I hoped we might both remain in Durbrecht … or find ourselves assigned residents to the same keep … or …” I shook my head and shrugged again.

He said, “Your Rwyan is gone to the Sentinels, where none but sorcerers are permitted residence. Even did you somehow find your way there, you would not be allowed to remain. Ergo, your affair could not have