Wyndric Ocean, near Triah
COVA SAW THE SPIRE of God’s Eye long before she saw anything else in the city of Triah. The tower stabbed upward, straining to pierce the sky itself. From a distance, the stone appeared a mottled gray color, but as Cova’s fleet drew closer, she realized the various blocks of stone were all different colors, mostly grays intermixed with pink, brown, black, and even a few bluish hues.
Atop the structure, even from a distance, Cova could make out some details of the Eye’s war apparatus through her spyglass. A series of huge brass rings housed circles of glass and mirrors of varying sizes; the diameter of the largest had to exceed the entire length of her new capital ship, the Reckoner, while the smallest must have been no taller than a man.
She was glad they had arrived on a relatively cloudy day. According to legend, God’s Eye could harness the power of the sun itself, redirecting it toward Triah’s enemies. But her fleet was still far away; it should be safe even if the stories of God’s Eye’s destructive power were true.
For now, Cova intended to blockade Triah’s harbor rather than attack the city. That would give her time to make contact with an old captain of her father’s in Litori—and that meeting, she hoped, could change the course of the war. Her fleet could stay out of reach of the weapon for the time being.
And yet, as she looked at the Eye, she thought she could discern some of the mechanism moving, shifting around.
“Make sure we are all prepared to move,” Cova told Admiral Rakkar.
“Good idea.” Rakkar, too, watched the Eye warily.
* * *
Terris Clayborna, chief Eye operator, strode about the top floor of God’s Eye, ordering the other operators about with a nervous confidence. They all wore brass operator’s goggles to protect them from the high winds atop the Eye, and the traditional brown overcoats of their station. The Eye’s war apparatus, at the very top of the tower, was completely open to the elements.
“Swing the mainframe about,” he called, pointing at the largest circle of brass and glass, attached to a massive metal arm that, in turn, crooked down and into the top level of God’s Eye. The mainframe, the largest circle in the apparatus, held a giant mirror, and always had to be positioned first; it dictated the efficacy of the rest of the apparatus, and had to be exactly correct. “Point it in a west-northwesterly direction, about…” Terris looked to his assistant, Hindra, who held a great tome full of handwritten calculations open before her.
“Two hundred and eighty-nine degrees,” she said immediately, her finger stopping on a single line.
Terris grunted. “Two hundred and eighty-nine degrees,” he said. Hindra’s mind was far quicker than his own. She would take over his position as chief operator one day, and likely do a far better job of it.
A dozen operators rushed to do as he ordered. The mainframe lens loomed around and caught the full reflection of the sun’s rays.
Down below, the steely ring of warning bells sounded throughout the city. The Rodenese fleet remained stationary in the bay, not quite a radial from the coast.
“Halo Three, in position!” Terris shouted, his eyes scanning the apparatus. Two dozen halos in total, twenty-five counting the mainframe, each one of slightly varying size and housing either a lens of convex glass, or a concave mirror, and each mounted on a swinging, swiveling metal arm.
“You are sure the Eye’s beam will reach them from here?”
Terris turned to Grand Marshal Riccan Carrieri, a smile on his face. “A good question, Grand Marshal. What do you think, Hindra?”
Hindra looked up from her tome. “We could reach them if they were yet another half-radial out. Striking them where they are now will be a simple matter of getting the angle and trajectory right.”
“And you will be able to do damage with this?” Carrieri asked, looking up at the cloudy sky.
Terris could understand the Grand Marshal’s skepticism. The Eye’s power had not been demonstrated in decades, and no one had seen it used at full capacity for even longer. Part of that was purposeful: Triah did not want others to know the full strength of the weapon they held so close to their heart, but at the same time was also so visible to the world.
“The Eye requires but little sunlight to work, Grand Marshal— the merest beam; and the clouds are moving swiftly today. We will send a message Roden will never forget,” Terris said.
It took a few moments to get the rest of the apparatus in position. Terris did not need every halo for this attack, but he did require the use of eighteen of them. When all of them except one were ready, Terris turned to the Grand Marshal, sucking air through his teeth.
“We are ready, sir. At your command, we will take down those ships.”
The Grand Marshal hesitated, as if considering, and for a moment Terris feared the man would go back on his decision to use the Eye. But then the Grand Marshal nodded.
“Do it.”
“Halo Two, in position!” Terris shouted. Prompting the Eye’s mechanism was less majestic than firing a weapon of any other sort: it had no physical trigger, but only needed every piece to be moved into an exact location. With each of the other halos prepped and ready, Halo Two slid into position. As if by his command, the sun slipped out again from behind the clouds, and the bright reflection that issued forth from the mainframe lens distorted, instantly reflected and refined through the series of eighteen halos until it burst forth in a fine bar of golden light, jutting west-northwest, toward the ships in the harbor.
* * *
The beam of light came in an instant, and silently, and Cova hardly noticed it in the distance. It almost seemed a particularly bright glint of the sun on the water, until it struck out toward them at a speed that took her breath away, and the seawater the beam moved along began to sizzle and pop. Cova followed the beam back up from whence it came. Not the sun, she realized, but the top of God’s Eye.
The beam of golden light curved toward them and before Cova could react, it reached the next ship over, slicing the craft cleanly in an uneven diagonal, leaving two burning, charred masses that steamed in the ocean.
We’re too close, Cova thought, far too late. Only luck saved her; instead of continuing north toward the Reckoner, the beam curved west and then south, and then arced east again, cleaving three more ships down the line. The beam had cracked four of Cova’s ships like eggs, each one already taking on water as her men panicked, many of them already abandoning their ships, in the space of time it took Cova to take just a few breaths.
“Come about!” Cova screamed—and then realized that her captain was already giving orders. The Reckoner tacked, and the other undamaged ships followed suit. The Eye’s beam arced swiftly along the water, mocking them as they fled.
“Get out of range!” Cova shouted, having no idea how far that actually was but knowing the weapon had to have some range, because holy Goddess, something simply could not be that powerful.