They flew low across the Sakha Republic, through cloudless skies, with miles of taiga forest below, endless gray larch broken by the occasional glinting stream, emerald seams in a giant’s scalp. It was easy to imagine that this land had stood still for thousands of years. Their path would take them farther north, into the subarctic tundra, and then finally to the true arctic permafrost, vast uninhabited lands, a virtual continent encased in ice and ancient secrets. Kuriken’s castle was marked on their oldest chart, drafted on vellum over two thousand years ago, the last time the great djinn had officially entertained visitors. Even more than most elder djinn, he was known for a pathological desire to be left alone.
It was cold now, well below zero, and they huddled in their cabins, Maria bundled in furs, flicking endlessly with her knife, slicing apples. The wonder of the airship had largely worn off for everyone. Golgoras was going fast, but not too fast. He was in a bit of a dilemma. Finally convinced that it was Matteras they were pursuing, he was honor bound to try to rescue his patron. At the same time, he had no desire to actually catch the dreadnought and precipitate an airborne battle that he was pretty sure of losing. Thus he scanned the skies with his instruments all day, and any stray bird or threatening-looking cloud made him take ludicrous evasive measures.
Eventually the forests ran out, and there was just permafrost: a featureless, dreary, soul-sapping whiteness, devoid of landmarks. It was here they finally approached the castle, and in the end, despite their fears of getting lost, it was not that hard to find, for the entire structure was encased in a glowing bright blue force field, visible for miles as a pinprick of winking light, like some fallen star.
“I don’t know what the hell is happening. We go down slow,” Golgoras hissed.
Roger, now fully versed in the workings of the ship, began turning on the compressors. Slowly, the dirigible started to sink. As they got lower, he cut the engines, and everything went quiet.
They were on battery power, which fueled only the command center and air ventilation. The heat from the engines, used to control the climate throughout the ship, began to dissipate, plunging them into an icy hell. Pretty soon they were all huddled in the cockpit, shivering in their furs, miserable and buffeted by drafts. Golgoras had his lone eye glued to the main telescope, an ornate djinn-powered device crowded thick with successive layers of enchantments put on by various captains. It had originally belonged to Sinbad the Sailor, apparently, and was a prized artifact that Golgoras had “salvaged” from a downed airship.
“I can see the dreadnought,” he said finally. “Airborne over the castle. Why is she not moored?”
“What?” Rais crowded him. He had his own mini-telescope, but he couldn’t see shit. The Sublime Porte was only a speck in the air from this far away, and the castle a blue smear on the ice.
“It looks like she’s firing a broadside. I can see flashes of powder. Those cannons haven’t been fired in a hundred years…” Golgoras said. He frowned. “Why are they shooting at the castle?”
Rais finally got a look through the big telescope.
“They’re definitely pounding the castle,” he said. “That blue thing is a shield of some sort.”
“Why, hmm? Why is Matteras hitting his closest ally?” Golgoras thrust his face into Rais’s. “Something very screwy is going on here. I’m not going near that thing with the Sephiroth.”
“We have to investigate,” Rais said.
“That dreadnought has one gun turret fore, two aft, and three broadside. At our current angle of approach she can hit us with at least five turrets,” Golgoras said. “That’s twenty fourteen-inch bores. We only have twelve-inch bores. She’s got range and size on us. If she gets off even one salvo, she’ll shred us before we can even get within firing range.”
“So then what’s your plan? I’m pretty sure Memmion is in that ship…”
“Those guns have an effective range of maybe three kilometers. We put the Sephiroth down, offload you there, and get back up. You Humes can walk over to the castle and investigate all you want.”
“What? Come on, Golgoras, I need a ranking djinn. They’ll blow us to pieces otherwise.”
“I’m not taking my ship into firing range until you confirm what’s going on.”
“How about we park the ship out of sight and all go? You are sort of honor bound to rescue Memmion, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean park the ship?”
“We put it down on the ground with the power off and stealth tech on, so no one can find her.”
“And leave her all alone?!”
“It’s the fucking arctic! There’s no one else here. Tenoch’s men can keep watch. The rest of us wave a white flag and trek over.”
Golgoras pulled him aside. “You want me to leave her unguarded with a bunch of drug dealers?” he asked in a furious whisper.
“Can’t you lock it up or something? They’re hardly going to fly off with it themselves… you think just anyone can fly a djinn airship?”
“Humph, that’s true.”
“You can take your charts with you. That thing is useless without your charts.”
“Pfft.”
“Look, Tenoch’s signed a contract with you. He needs your help to move his cargo. I explained how you guys are about contracts. Trust me when I say that these men are not going to mutiny in any way. I don’t think Tenoch wants to be hunted down by djinn lawyers for the rest of his life.”
“Just as well.”
“So we going?”
“Give them landing instructions, Roger,” Golgoras said. “Keep it stealthy.”
Roger took two hours to stow the ship, and they spent a further hour getting rigged out in snow boots, parkas, and walking sticks, plus ancient-looking backpacks with wooden frames, filled with a variety of camping gear, including tents, bedrolls, and a lot of expired canned food.
The expeditionary party was Rais, Maria, and Roger, none of whom had ever trekked over ice, all three of them in fact having a strong aversion to nature in general. Luckily Golgoras was an inveterate explorer of remote, hostile places and had, for reasons unknown, spent some years living in Antarctica. He was the windbreaker, plowing a furrow through the ice with his field, smoothening the path. It was a three-kilometer trek over fairly level ground, theoretically an hour’s worth of serious walking for Rais and Roger, and hardly a fifteen-minute workout for Maria, who clocked four minutes a kilometer easy at the gym.
It actually took them over three hours to close the distance. The air was thin, sucking out oxygen from their lungs, and the temperature bitterly cold, and the ground deceptively slippery. The packs were awkward and heavy, and they were forced to take frequent breaks. The dreadnought loomed over them, seeming to take up half the sky, the pounding of the guns far from comical this close. Feigning unconcern, Rais was all too conscious of the fact that they were now within range, and any of the airship crew could pick them off if they were so inclined. Fortunately he always carried a white flag in his kit, and he was now flying this as high as he could. Other than Maria’s knife, they were conspicuously unarmed, even Golgoras giving up several of his choice weapons, although an unarmed djinn was an oxymoron, as the field was his chief weapon, and the captain packed a powerful distortion ability.
This close, it was unmistakable that the ship was besieging the castle. The cannonballs rippled the force field with each salvo, sometimes making it falter, but it was holding for now. It was a peculiar, lonely siege, just the ship and the castle, two monolithic structures playing out a lifeless game.
When they crossed the final rise, directly in the shadow of the great ship, they saw the most incongruous sight. There were no trenches in this battlefield, no army of men, or guns, or horses. The ground operation seemed to consist of a few yurts and a campfire with a number of folding deck chairs. From this distance, if Rais was not mistaken, the attacking army appeared to be lounging around the fire smoking and drinking.
“Memmion!” Golgoras huffed, as they staggered into the perimeter. “What the hell is going on?”
Rais, following on his heels, saw an enormously fat djinn turn toward them. He was, indeed, smoking a hookah and had one paw wrapped around a priceless bottle of Lucien Foucauld 1847 Cognac. Sitting beyond him was Elkran, Beltrex, and, at the end of the line, an old lady djinn smoking a cigar and carrying a formidable-looking revolver. They all seemed remarkably hearty for victims of kidnapping. There was an empty chair in the middle.
“Pilot,” Memmion rumbled. “And emissary. Welcome to our siege. We had bets placed on when you would finally catch up.” He made a face. “I lost.”
“Catch up? You knew we were coming?” Golgoras asked.
“Of course. Nothing takes flight without my knowledge,” Memmion said loftily. “Although hearing you brag incessantly about the speed of the Sephiroth, I’m surprised it took you this long…”
“Well, to think we’ve been tearing after you for days, racking our brains on how to rescue you.” Golgoras was getting peeved now.
“Rescue?” Memmion looked puzzled.
“Excuse me, Memmion, Beltrex, Elkran, er, lady djinn,” Rais said, stepping forward into the fire, not least because he was freezing. “Were you not, in fact, kidnapped by Matteras?”
“Eh?” Memmion asked.
“What the devil is he saying?” Beltrex, hard of hearing, asked the ancient-looking lady djinn.
“Apologies, emissary.” Something nightmarish came out of the yurt. He was burned black, the skin split and riven with great bloody trenches, a careless spray of blood mist clouding him, eyes shining through it all with manic intelligence. The wounds were raw, everything about him an elongated, pent-up scream. His legs were wrong, the shin bones inverted and much too long, so that he strode forward with the gait of Pan, a gunslinger’s walk, and too soon he was inside the circle, staring down with amusement at Rais. “It is I, in fact, who kidnapped them.”
“Who the devil are you?” Rais asked, rapidly losing equilibrium.
The burned djinn smiled. “Why, I believe I am the devil. One of them, in any case. Givaras the Broken, at your service.”
It would be churlish to say that Golgoras fainted, for he did no such thing. He only staggered a bit, enough that Rais had to prop him up.
“You’re supposed to be underground,” the pilot said, his mechanical eye rotating wildly.
“Ah, yes, I escaped,” Givaras said. “And seeing the state of the world, I felt it necessary to call my… more mature brethren for a gathering.”
“Givaras!” Rais shouted. “You were in the murder pit? My cousin, ten years ago. Was he there with you? What happened to him?”
“Ah, you are then the emissary Kaikobad’s nephew,” Givaras said. “Your cousin indeed joined me. Indelbed, he was called. A skinny little boy. He survived for a long time. He died just days ago, while we were trying to escape. I am sorry.”
Rais slumped. “He was alive all this time? How did he die?”
“Why, I believe he burned.”
“Did he suffer?”
“No, I don’t think he did.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Strange to say, I did not. I taught him. I enrolled him as my apprentice. I was fond of him. He spoke to me much, about your mother, Juny, for example, and your uncle Sikkim. He thought you all hated him and had sold him to the djinn,” Givaras said.
“No one hated him,” Rais said.
“We were escaping through core fire,” Givaras said. “You see that I am hideously burned. I survived barely. He was destroyed instantly. I doubt if he even felt it.”
Golgoras rounded on Memmion. “What are you all doing? Why haven’t you restrained this criminal?”
“The situation has changed, pilot,” Memmion said. “You would do well to pay attention.”
“Beltrex, what the hell is going on?” Rais asked.
“What?”
“Oh, stop pretending to be deaf,” Rais said. “We visited your vineyard, found the big gaping hole in your bunker. We thought Matteras had gotten to you. Clearly we were way off.”
“Yes, right, Givaras here felt the need to pay us a visit.” Beltrex scowled. “Why he couldn’t take the front door is beyond me.”
“I had no desire to announce myself to the world,” Givaras said. “Considering I’ve spent the past eighty years in a prison, you can surely sympathize.”
“But why on earth did you and Elkran go with him?” Rais asked. “I mean, I thought he was the most reviled, dangerous djinn to have ever existed…”
“Because he made some good points, boy,” Beltrex said. “When you’re as old as we are, well, nothing is black and white.”
“Oh, stop your waffling, Beltrex,” the lady djinn said. She looked at Rais with a toothless smile. “Beltrex was always a big coward. He’d never refuse Givaras in the flesh. I am Mother Davala, emissary, the Fury, Bringer of Vengeance, Sacker of Ancient Sumer and Babylon. Your spirit is weak. There is no fire in you. Kiss my hand and tremble before my majesty.”
“He’s trembling from boredom,” Beltrex said with a snort.
“At least I am not a hypocrite,” Mother Davala said. “I did not applaud and cheer when Matteras put Horus away in that murder pit.”
“I didn’t see you protesting much either, Davala,” Beltrex said.
“I sent a strongly worded letter.”
“Six months after.”
Givaras looked at his army mournfully. “Such is the nature of my alliance,” he said. “It’s no wonder I keep losing.”
“Mother Davala, an honor.” Rais grinned. “Beltrex, I’m sure you’re very brave. Can someone please tell me the rest of the story?”
“Givaras gathered Elkran and Beltrex. They came to me next,” Memmion said in his deep basso. “Convinced me to get the big ship out. We came to pick up Kuriken, but as you can see, we were a bit late.”
“I thought we came here to find Matteras,” Maria said. “Where the hell is he?”
“Take a look.” Memmion tossed a telescope her way. “Top of the tower.”
Rais, Maria, and Roger took turns looking. There was a figure on top of the tower, nailed to a cross. On closer inspection, it turned out to be Kuriken. The expression on the djinn’s face was one of priceless fury.
“Did Matteras do that?” Rais asked. “Is he mad?”
“No more than the rest of us,” Memmion said.
“But they were allies… Kuriken wanted even more earthquakes than Matteras,” Rais said.
“Matteras has plans beyond the simple desire to make living space,” Givaras said. “You humans, unfortunately, are only a small part of the picture. In his thirst for knowledge, he has perhaps discovered certain essential truths about elder djinns that would lead him to consider Kuriken an enemy.”
“Elder djinns?”
“The ancient ones,” Givaras said, spreading his arms wide. “You see us here now, this haggard lot, alongside Kuriken on his tower and Bahamut in the sea. So few of us left.”
Mother Davala snorted. “You mean so few of us answered your summons.”
“Many are sleeping,” Beltrex said, “or wandered far off the mortal path.”
“You say Matteras is fighting all the elder djinn?” Golgoras asked. “By what mathematics is his auctoritas greater than Memmion’s, or the Mother’s or even Beltrex’s, much less all of you combined? What can he hope to achieve?”
“You perhaps underestimate his following. I must inform you, pilot, that the Hub fell two days ago,” Memmion said.
“Fell? To whom?”
“To the younger djinn, members of the so-called Creationist Party, in partnership with the Ageist Society.”
“Nonsense, Memmion, I left the Hub barely a week ago. The steward was firmly in charge.”
“He has since been defenestrated,” Memmion said.
“Kemet has also fallen,” Mother Davala said. “Hazard has taken the Great Pyramid. Karnak too is in the hands of the Isolationists.”
Golgoras’s eye telescoped alarmingly. “How can this be? Matteras is defying the Lore.”
“He is perhaps not so orthodox as he once believed,” Givaras said. He seemed to be enjoying a private joke.
“He has caught us unaware,” Memmion said. “But we too have caught him out. He is locked in that castle, surrounded, far from aid.”
“Surrounded?” Rais asked. “You guys maybe have the campfire surrounded. The castle looks far from worried.”
“I could pound that thing into rubble!” Memmion shouted. “I have air superiority! I could separate that thing into atoms. No fortification exists in this world that can resist the Sublime Porte!”
“Yes, and unfortunately, Kuriken is nailed up on the roof. You would end up atomizing him as well,” Givaras said. He looked at Rais. “As you can see, junior emissary, we are at an impasse. Matteras cannot leave the castle, and we cannot take it without destroying Kuriken. That field you see is being generated entirely by Matteras. Despite the claims of my old friend Memmion, I do not think we can win this battle very easily, even if we were to sacrifice the czar. Remember, of you all, I alone have faced something of his strength before.”
“I have a weapon much stronger than any of you,” Mother Davala said, patting the amphorae beside her. “And I’m not afraid to face that little runt.”
“I could knock down his gate from here,” Beltrex declared. He considered it for a bit. “At least dent it badly.”
“Well,” Mother Davala conceded, “it is a heavy gate.”
“Well, you are lucky that I am here then,” Rais said. “It seems like you need an emissary to negotiate a settlement.”
“What?” Memmion snapped. “Negotiate with that upstart?”
“Why not?” Rais asked. “It looks like you’re actually losing, to be honest.”
“Yeah, guys,” Maria said. “If you’ve lost the Hub and Kemet and all those weird places, won’t Matteras’s friends be on their way here soon? With like an army?”
“Winning and losing are immaterial to those of us who have lived for twenty thousand years,” Mother Davala said. “For you antlike creatures, victory and defeat are absolute. What does it matter to us, who have seen thousands of such turns? One day we win, and one day we lose. It’s all the same in the end. I’ve slept through twenty Matterases.”
“Nonetheless, losses accumulate,” Givaras said. “Thresholds are passed. And we are perhaps at a node of change. We must not sleep now. It would be a shame to wake up in a world not to our liking. Remember, Davala, that this has happened to us before.”
“Matteras has nailed Kuriken to a cross,” Memmion said. “You want to negotiate? Imagine the loss of dignatas!”
“What do I care about dignatas?” Givaras smiled. “What do any of us? Remember who we are, Memmion.”
“Matteras despises humans,” Memmion said. “What possesses you to believe he will pay any heed to an acting emissary? He’s not even the real thing…”
“Ah yes, about that,” Rais said. “My application was made under the patronage of Bahamut. I believe you djinns gathered here around this, um, siege command center are of sufficient auctoritas to ratify my full emissary status.”
“Impossible to induct you without a sitting of the Celestial Court,” Memmion said.
“There is precedence of a field promotion, in the case of dire need,” Rais said.
“Beltrex?” Givaras asked.
“Battlefield promotion?” Beltrex frowned. “He is correct. There have been rare cases of such. We are more than sufficient to enforce such an act, even in Bahamut’s absence.”
“But he hasn’t even fired a shot yet,” Memmion objected. “What the devil are we promoting him for?”
“Well, I’m offering to walk into the castle. I notice you guys are keeping a fair distance.”
“Field promotions normally occur after the heroic act.”
“There might not be enough of him left to pin a medal to afterward,” Maria pointed out.
“Fine, fine, whatever, we’ll agree provisionally,” Memmion said. He gave Maria a crafty look. “No saying what might happen to him, eh?”
“We will, of course, sign and seal the necessary paperwork before I act on your behalf,” Rais said.
“Fine time for petty legalities…” Memmion groused.
Givaras smiled. “Well, you would hardly appoint an emissary who does not understand fine print.”
“That’s not all,” Rais said. “While your ratification is extremely gratifying, I suspect it will not be enough. My dignatas, of course, is pitifully small. As emissaries go, I must rank as the lowest—”
“That’s for sure,” Memmion said.
“Well, you can hardly expect Matteras to take me seriously.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying! Even I do not wish to take you seriously,” Memmion said. “We cannot increase your dignatas overnight, however; it’s not our fault you’ve achieved so little.”
“Actually, you can. I propose that each of you extend patronage to me. I will be the sponsored emissary of the entire collective here,” Rais said.
“Preposterous!” Memmion shouted. “No human has served six masters at the same time!”
“That would make you the preeminent emissary in the world.” Mother Davala laughed. “Clever, clever boy. Can it even be done?”
“It is most unusual,” Beltrex said. “But I suspect Matteras himself has laid the precedence for this, when he conferred patronage on Dargoman. Bahamut has not formally started proceedings against Dargoman, so technically, even now, he is a man with two masters. The Creationist bloc pushed that through. Matteras can now hardly deny a further multiplication of his own logic.”
“Shall I draw up the paperwork then?” Rais asked.
“Oh, rubbish,” Memmion said. “Are we to give unlimited dignatas to this untested boy?!”
“Look, you’re sending me in to certain death,” Rais said. “If I manage to negotiate a settlement, I’ll damn well have earned the dignatas.”
“Imagine how much Matteras will hate this,” Givaras the Broken said with a laugh. “I am inclined to agree. It has been years since I had an emissary.”
“Matteras will almost certainly kill him,” Mother Davala said. “The auctoritas will return to us.”
“All right, all right, why not,” Memmion said. “If all of you are so insistent on making this idiot famous.”
“Puny-looking man,” Mother Davala said. “Let us make bets on how long he will live. I say inside twelve hours.”
“He’s a good boy, I give him two days,” Beltrex said.
“Thank you, Beltrex,” Rais said.
“Two days? That’s optimistic. He might not even survive the branding,” Givaras said.
“The what?” Rais asked.
“Our marks,” Givaras said. “Don’t you know? You’re going to be the first-ever man to carry the marks of six patron djinn. I’m sure it will be an interesting experience.” He tossed him a piece of firewood. “Clean that off. You’re going to need something to bite down on.”