Return to Canifis

He waved the onlookers back, and for the first time Pia got a good look at their home.

The summit of Hope Rock was a plateau, its edge a ring of rising stone that reminded Pia of a castle’s battlements. This natural wall rose to the height of three men, keeping the plateau hidden from view save from directly above. Against the circle’s inner wall, natural ridges and outcroppings, supplemented with crude wooden beams and scaffolding, provided a means of reaching its top. Below, at the circle’s base, Pia noticed a dozen caves from which people ducked in and out.

But it was the contraption at the far end of the plateau that made her gape. A great swathe of canvas was delicately rested across much of the plateau’s area. Nearby stood a squat metal object in a small wicker frame. It reminded Pia somehow of a stove.

“What is that?” Doric asked suspiciously.

“That is the balloon,” Lord Despaard answered with a sudden grin. The nobleman dashed forward. “Master Peregrim? Master Peregrim are you here?”

Pia spied a diminutive figure appear from beneath the balloon’s voluminous folds. He looked no bigger than Jack, yet when he stepped forward she saw how wizened his face was behind a grey wisp of beard.

A gnome.

“Lord Despaard? By the gods! It is you!” When he spoke, his voice was high- pitched and his speech fast. He grabbed Lord Despaard’s hand and shook it firmly in his own. “Have you come here to liberate us from this dreadful place? Can that be true?”

“It is not, Master Peregrim. I am as much a fugitive as you are now.”

The gnome’s face fell as Lord Despaard explained their situation, and many of Hope Rock’s inhabitants listened with interest. When he finished, he looked carefully toward Master Peregrim.

“But tell me, friend, of your own adventure. In Varrock we had given up all hope of seeing you again.”

The gnome shook his head and sat down.

“I came down in the swamp, only a few miles from here. My wicker basket that I used to carry people up was lost, smashed to pieces on impact. I have managed to salvage enough of it to secure the burner beneath the balloon, but there is not nearly enough to build a place for everybody else.”

Doric’s eyes widened. “Then you mean to fly out?” His words nearly choked him.

Master Peregrim nodded. “It is the only way. We cannot walk through the swamps. Karnac and his group have already tried that when they first fled the ghetto. There were two hundred of them then. Now there are less than thirty.”

“What about a boat?” Arisha suggested. “Isn’t that a possibility?”

Karnac shook his head. “Many have thought it a better idea than the gnome’s balloon. But the swamp to the west is unnavigable. It would be impossible to do it.”

“Yet how can this work?” Doric asked. “How does it fly?”

Pia heard the disbelief in his voice.

“I have seen it work, Doric,” Lord Despaard said. “In Varrock it rose from its tether each day and carried at least twenty people aloft on each occasion. But that made use of what what was described to me as a gas called hydrogen-”

“I prefer the term phlogisticated air if you please,” the gnome said with a wave of his hand. “But yes, we do need this gas, and happily there is enough left in the burner’s containers to inflate the envelopes as well as to heat the air. Of course, once I have inflated the balloon I will leave the empty containers behind. There is no point in carrying dead weight.”

Doric shared an uncertain look with Arisha.

“Hydrogen is lighter than air,” Lord Despaard explained further. “When the balloon was in Varrock, Master Peregrim would fill envelopes in the top of the balloon with this gas. Combined with heat from the burner, which also uses hydrogen as a fuel, the air inside the balloon would warm and provide lift.”

Doric nodded blankly.

“And how do you steer it?”

Lord Despaard sighed.

“You don’t. It floats on the winds. The trick is to find a wind going in the direction you want.”

“I see you are a doubter, master dwarf,” the gnome squeaked in amusement. “But I came here in this balloon, and I intend to fly out in it, as well-carrying the people of Hope Rock with me. It can be done. We will make our ascent within the next few days, and we will do so at dawn when the air is cold. The warm air inside the balloon will lift us upward, and once we reach a certain height the wind will carry us west, to Misthalin.”

“But like you said only a moment ago, you have lost the wicker basket to carry people. How will you get around that?” Doric dared a smile.

He’s afraid of this idea, Pia realised. Heights scare him, and he intends to add as much doubt as he can to its success. She shivered. I don’t blame him either.

The gnome grinned suddenly.

“When Karnac’s people first settled here, they tried to fish. But the things that swim in the swamps are not edible, save for the wretched snails that are all we’ve eaten for the last few months.” He gave a sour grimace. “But the nets they made have proved their use as a substitute for the wicker basket. We are stitching them to the bottom of the balloon itself right now. That will allow people to tie themselves on.”

Tie themselves on? Pia shuddered again.

“It’s the only way,” Karnac said firmly. “We are so few now and we can’t evade our enemies much longer. We could perhaps last another six months at most.

“No,” he said again, as if to convince himself. “This is our only chance, and we need to leave as soon as we can. The ravenous have been growing in number recently, which would make any trek to the west impossible, and increases our danger here on a daily basis.” He exhaled suddenly. “But it is strange, for their master seems to be forcing them to the northwest, and they move with a purpose they’ve never shown before. No, flying out is our only option.”

Silence fell, and when no one had spoken for several long moments, some of the citizens of the plateau edged forward. Among them a young woman with a swollen belly, and behind her a gaunt man who likely was the father of her unborn child.

“Can you tell us about the place you come from?” the woman asked, desperation and wonder mixing in her words. “Master Peregrim has told us much already, but we never tire of hearing the tales of such a realm.” The man was smiling inanely, and Pia noticed he was close to crying. For the briefest moment she thought he might be a simpleton.

Arisha spoke.

“I will tell you of Misthalin, and of the lands beyond the holy river,” she said. “Come, sit around the fire, and I will tell you of a line of Kings that goes back for more than a thousand years, of knights and castles, of deeds good and fair, of heroes and wizards.”

“She will tell a good story, I know it,” the pregnant woman said with a smile.

“My people tell many stories,” Arisha said. “We do not often write them down, so where I come from, to tell a story is a skill, and an important one among my kind. Now, let me begin with a very recent one, and a true tale as well. It begins in a storm, with a white castle and a beautiful girl who is found bearing dreadful wounds…”

Pia saw Doric smile, but the crowd listened intently to the priestess’s words, never once interrupting. After a short while, the dwarf stood and went with Lord Despaard and Master Peregrim to examine the balloon, and as Arisha continued, with the introduction of a young knight named Theodore, she felt her eyelids grow heavy and finally close.

She woke, cold, with Jack sleeping at her side. In front of her the fire had gone out. Someone had draped a blanket across them.

She sat up and grimaced as her muscles protested. Her ankles felt fragile, as if they might break, and her knees ached when she pulled her legs in closer to her body. Her back hurt, too.

How many miles did we walk on our journey? And was it yesterday or today? Her belly ached with hunger, and she had trouble recalling the last time she had eaten.

She must have slept through the night. The sky above was dark, though across the horizon, to what she