He clasped his glass of lemonade once more in his gloved, mechanical hand and sipped. His gaze strayed to the ridge of the mount with its toothy ruins, toward the summit where the ancient castle had once stood. He would have liked to see it in all its grandeur, but if the castle and its king had not fallen, the emperor would not have arisen to greatness. Would that have been so bad? The empire’s teaching would have it that the people would have suffered privation under the rule of the despot king. They’d all be his slaves.
Perhaps not so different from the empire, after all. The important thing was his family’s position within the empire. Who knew what it would have been had the old king prevailed?
A flame of color amidst the ruins near the summit caught his eye, a flame like a figure burning in blues and greens. Silk sat up and almost spilled from his chair in excitement. The glass crushed in his hand.
“Howser!” he cried.
His manservant was at his side in an instant. “Sir?”
Silk pointed. “Do you see . . . anything up there? There’s an outcrop surrounded by scrub.”
Howser remained silent, and Silk could almost feel the big man trying to see.
“Use your spyglass, idiot!” he snapped.
Howser turned away, fumbled about, and returned with the telescoping device. He aimed it where Silk pointed.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Sorry, sir, I can’t seem to find it.”
The colorful figure of fire had died in Silk’s vision. He sighed. “It is gone.” Had he truly seen it? Something so magnificent and—and magical? In this day and age?
“Howser,” he said, “you and your men are to go hunting up there. But you will not kill, no matter what it is you find. Do you understand? Capture only.”
“Yes, sir.”
Silk sat back in his chair as Howser hurried off. Already his servants had swept away the broken shards of crystal and were pouring him a fresh glass of lemonade.
His day had just gotten very interesting, and if Howser successfully captured his quarry, it would more than make up for any damage caused by the opposition.
From a distance, Lhean had studied the craters created by the exploding powder. By the time dawn broke, lines of workers were shambling up the roadway. Far back in the procession was an object shrouded in cloth and carried in the bed of a wagon, modified to support its impossible length and apparent great weight. Lhean did not like the metallic feel that it all but radiated. It was, no doubt, another soul-destroying mechanical creation the people of this time seemed to worship.
The whole procession came to a halt when it encountered the first crater. The humans investigated and set slaves to work to repair the road.
Lhean watched it all from his perch on an outcrop, protected from view by a boulder and thicket of scrub oak. He massaged his forearm. It was tender, the flesh almost raw beneath the membrane cloth, which was sodden with ichor. The wrist guard of his armor had blackened, died, and shed itself during the night. Soon the other segments of the armor would follow, and he’d be completely exposed to the elements and to weapons. He would be unable to regenerate new armor unless he returned to his own time, to Eletia.
He glanced toward the city. The Galadheon was out there, somewhere, but so far he’d failed to penetrate the city. It repelled him, turned him around every time. But now time was running out.
Lhean watched the Important Man beneath the canopy take his leisure while others toiled. He saw the prisoner executed by the terrible long-legged mechanical. How could the humans allow mechanicals the power? The power to take lives? They were soulless fabrications only, falsely alive. He could see it was animated with etherea, a perversion of nature. That the people of this time had learned to manipulate etherea as Mornhavon had once done was more disturbing than surprising. That this world still contained some etherea should have given him hope, but it only sickened him to see it so defiled.
The Important Man down below had some peculiarities that suggested that small parts of him were not . . . real. Like the mechanical orb with the spindly legs, the man’s not-real parts—his hand, for instance—emitted a tainted ethereal gleam.
The man’s gaze turned in Lhean’s direction. It was difficult to determine what the man saw because of the dark specs he wore, but his sudden reaction, one of surprise, told Lhean he’d been spotted.
Lhean scrambled from the outcrop into deeper cover. If there was any time he needed to eat that last piece of chocolate he’d been holding in reserve, that time was now. He could not allow himself to be seen again. So far the people who had glimpsed him thought him a phantom. He couldn’t say why, but he suspected the Important Man saw him differently.
THE WITCH HAS SPOKEN
Hard-soled shoes struck the white marble floor of the colonnaded great corridor, the sound echoing up into the vaulted heights of the ceiling where the life and greatness of the emperor was exalted in a series of fresco murals. They had been painted by the master, Adolfi Fyre, who had made the ceilings of the imperial palace his life’s work. He’d died well over a hundred years ago and a succession of artists had carried on the great endeavor, expanding into other areas of the palace. The current master was focusing on the ceiling of the ballroom.
But Webster Ezmund Silk’s goal was not the ballroom, nor did he seek to admire the art to which he’d become so accustomed over his long years. His goal, in fact, was not any of the great rooms or corridors found in the palace. At least, not those found above ground. No, he sought the dark places of the palace down below, untouched by art, beauty, or natural light.