Brown, Eric Read online

  Ehrin remained silent, his palms prickling with sweat. He wondered where this was leading. They had as good as given him the commission—unless they were about to cruelly withdraw it. He knew he had to tread carefully; it would be folly to jeopardise the expedition by sticking to his principles.

  He said, “I work hard building my company for the good of the people of Agstarn and the glory of the Church. I do find time, in my own way, to give thanks to the Lord for his munificence.” He looked from one official to the next—and then across at the unsmiling Elder in the corner—but there was no telling whether they had been mollified by his lies.

  Prelate Hykell lowered his gaze to the paper before him, then looked up and said, “My information is that you are engaged to be married to the daughter of Bishop Jaspariot.”

  “That is so.”

  “The bishop must be proud of his daughter’s choice of the most eligible, not to say one of the richest, young men in the land.”

  “He has not said as much,” Ehrin replied, disliking the Prelate’s imputation that the match had been made on little more than mercantile grounds.

  “I am sure he is,” Hykell went on. “However, I know that he would favour the match even more if, shall we say, you were to make a more overt display of your alleged piety.”

  Ehrin felt a tight knot of anger form in his chest, but said nothing. Was this a threat, he wondered: attend Church services for all the city to witness, or Bishop Jaspariot might have second thoughts about giving Ehrin the hand of his only daughter?

  Prelate Hykell was squaring off the sheaf of documents with a gesture that indicated the meeting was almost over. He paused, then peered over the sheaf and added, “There is one more thing, Mr Telsa. As a concomitant to the Church granting the charter to explore the western plains, we must insist that a representative of the High Council accompany you on the expedition. I hope you do not have any objections to this measure?”

  So this was the proviso that Kahran had foretold. A spy aboard the dirigible, the better to observe his godless conduct. “Of course not. An Elder would be most welcome.”

  Hykell gestured across the room, to the dour, silent personage seated on the upright chair against the wall, who inclined his head minimally.

  “Velkor Cannak,” Hykell said. “My secretary and personal assistant.”

  Cannak fixed Ehrin with a grey, unsmiling gaze. “Our collaboration will be productive, I trust,” said the Elder in a voice as dry as cinders.

  Ehrin nodded in return. “I trust so, too,” he said, but could not repress a shudder of revulsion at something about the man’s austere demeanour.

  Cannak inclined his head, as if in grudging acknowledgement of Ehrin’s sentiment. “This will not be the first expedition I have undertaken with a Telsa,” the Elder said, something like a warning note in his dry, colourless voice, “In 1265 I accompanied your father and his business partner, Kahran Shollay, to the shores of the western sea.”

  Ehrin kept emotion from his voice as he said, “Our party will make you welcome... and perhaps we might discuss that expedition, at some point.”

  Cannak made no direct reply, but said, “I will anticipate crossing swords, so to speak, with Shollay. I take it he will be accompanying you, as your business partner?”

  “I have not yet finalised the personnel,” he said, intrigued by Cannak’s choice of words. Crossing swords...

  “May the Lord’s light illuminate your footsteps,” Cannak said by way of farewell. He rose, bowed to the Prelate and the bishops, inclined his head towards Ehrin and strode from the room.

  Prelate Hykell said, “The matter is settled, then. Church lawyers will be in contact to draw up a working contract. You mentioned a putative starting date of the sixth of St Janacek’s month, just one week from today?”

  “That will give me more than enough time to make the final preparations.”

  “In that case all that remains is for me to wish you God speed. May the expedition bring glory on the Church, Agstarn and your illustrious company.”

  Ehrin nodded. “I will do my best to succeed,” he said.

  He rose, bowed and made his way from the council chamber.

  He walked along the corridor and down the wide central staircase. So the expedition would go ahead—Ehrin anticipated the adventure with excitement, after a life led in the confines of the mountains—and who knew what marvels they would find on the mysterious and little-explored plains of the west. And they would be accompanied by the stern Velkor Cannak, who had crossed swords with Kahran, and presumably with Ehrin’s father, on that first expedition. Perhaps, in time, Ehrin might even find out what exactly had occurred fifteen years ago to occasion so much rancour on both sides.

  He was still daydreaming about the voyage as he passed from the portals of the council building. The sudden appearance of a figure, emerging from the shadow of a freezing frame, startled him. It was Cannak, his fur as grey as the ancient timber and his eyes just as cold. He swooped on Ehrin and gripped his arm with a trenchant claw.

  Ehrin could only cower at the severity of the onslaught and peer timorously up at the official’s thin grey face. He noticed that the fur around Cannak’s forehead was bristling, a clear indication of his rage.

  “You are no doubt very satisfied with proceedings so far,” the Elder spat.

  “I... I have no idea what—”

  Cannak’s grip tightened. “Assume disingenuousness at your peril, Telsa. You might think you have convinced Hykell of your piety, but be warned—the Church is all-seeing and all-powerful.”

  Ehrin gathered himself and pulled his arm from Cannak’s painful custody. “And if the Church conducts all its business with the subtlety of your approach, then the Church is all-stupid.”

  Cannak’s lips thinned even further, and he barked a sudden laugh. “There is a line in the sacred texts, to the effect that the sins of the father will be perpetuated by the foolish son. I can see much of your father in you, Telsa, and I don’t like what I see.”

  Ehrin stared at the quivering Elder, considering a reply, before reasoning that the best reply of all would be to smile graciously and withdraw. He would gain nothing by further angering the old fool.

  He inclined his head. “I will see you on the sixth,” he said, and turned to go.

  “Your father was a heretic,” Cannak barked after him. “The family name is stained forever with the dishonour of his ungodliness.”

  Ehrin stopped in his tracks, and turned slowly to face the sanctimonious Elder. “The family name is one that makes Agstarn great,” he said. “My father’s beliefs, or lack of, are of no moment beside the fact of his achievements.”

  This sent the Church official into a spitting ferment of rage. Ehrin smiled and turned on his heel.

  “You deserve to meet the same end as your blasphemous father!” Cannak called by way of a parting shot. “Verily, he reaped what he sowed.”

  Ehrin strode on, then stopped. He turned. Perhaps five yards separated him from the Elder. He said, “My father died bravely working for the good of the city and the people.”

  Cannak’s response was surprising, and at the same time unsettling. He merely smiled, a self-satisfied expression foreign to such austere features.

  Not trusting himself to remain in the vicinity of the Elder, Ehrin hurried across the cobbles, strapped on his skates, and pushed off down the ice canal at speed. The image he retained of Cannak was of a tall figure standing upright before the freezing frame, as bleak as the tenets of his Church.

  He pumped his legs, working off his anger as he sped down a main boulevard and whipped around a corner into a residential district of tall mansions. The grey cloudrace overhead was darkening towards night, bringing a premature end to the short winter day, and the temperature was plummeting accordingly. Not many citizens were abroad, and even the occasional zeer beast seen on the canal was harrumphing in protest at the icy chill.

  Ehrin skated towards Sereth’s mansion, or rather the buildin
g in which she shared a penthouse suite with her father. He had planned to tell his fiancée of the good news anyway, but now he found himself in need of her affection, as if to banish the vitriol of Cannak’s words.

  A liveried doorman let him into the foyer, and removing his skates and hanging them around his neck, Ehrin hurried up the six flights of stairs to Sereth’s room. He imagined her tired after a day’s lectures at the university, curled on the divan with a steaming beaker of tisane.

  He knocked on the door and entered, eager now to tell her of the good news.

  She was standing by the window, looking out of the darkening city, and turned quickly at the sound of his entry.

  They had been together three years now, and the sight of her still quickened his pulse. She was tall and slight, her blue pelt lustrous with youth and health. Her eyes, set wide apart, gave her an expression of infinite compassion and at the same time a childlike wonder.

  He moved into her arms and stroked her cheek with his.

  “You’ve won the tender,” she said. “I can tell. You’re like a child promised the run of the sweetmeat arcade.”

  He laughed. “And that’s exactly how I feel, Ser. Can you imagine—to explore the western plain? How many people have ventured beyond the mountains?”

  Her smile was indulgent. “How many? You tell me—it’s you who always has your nose in accounts of desperate travels by footloose souls.”

  “Two dozen, maybe a few more,” Ehrin said. “Think of it, two dozen travellers in what, five thousand years of documented history?”

  She pulled him to the divan, and watched him with that mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “And perhaps there have been so few for a good reason, Ehrin the Impatient Explorer?”

  He grunted. They’d had this debate before. “We’re curious beasts,” he said. “It isn’t in our nature to remain imprisoned in this mountain fastness. The very fact that we’re running out of iron and gas from the mountains impels our outward exploration. Even your benighted Church recognises that!”

  She swiped at him. “Such blasphemy! If Prelate Hykell could hear you!”

  “My little pious bishop’s daughter,” he jibed. “You’d rather we stay in Agstarn, learn nothing of the outer world?”

  He knew she did not think this; she was too intelligent to take the isolationist view, but at the same time there remained in her a core of fear at what lay beyond.

  She stroked the fur of his cheek. “Of course not,” she said softly. “We must expand if we’re to prosper, materially and intellectually. It’s merely that...”

  He squeezed her hand. “It’s because we’re enclosed, shut off from the universe, in more than one way: the mountains enclose us, and above our heads the grey clouds hide the realms beyond.”

  She shivered. “Don’t,” she said. “The very thought...”

  “The very thought,” he said, “fills me with awe. Have I told you,” he went on, knowing that he had never mentioned it to her before, “that I dream of penetrating the sky?”

  She pulled away and looked at him. “Don’t you do that already, with your skyships?”

  He laughed. “I mean, I dream of taking a ship—an adapted ship, mind—higher than the sky, to beyond the sky, to chart whatever might lie out there.”

  Her expression flickered between indulgence and indignation. “But Ehrin, there’s nothing beyond the sky. At least, nothing that might sustain life. The Church—”

  “The Church knows absolutely nothing about the beyond! Their conjecture is merely formulated to keep the populace frightened and in their place.”

  “You dispute the idea of a platform world, floating in the grey void?”

  He said, exasperatedly, “I dispute nothing. That might very well be the case. But just as logically, any other theory is just as tenable.”

  “And you’d like to take a skyship and leave this world behind you!”

  He grinned, “Well, why not?”

  “Oh! My darling Ehrin! This is why I love you, because you’re so like an impatient child!” She attacked him, tearing off his jerkin and biting his pelt. He responded by pulling off her robe. They made love in the bedchamber, beneath the sloping roof window that looked up into the everlasting greyness.

  Later, as midnight approached, they lay in each other’s arms and stared through the thick glass. After a long silence, he whispered, “My piety was called into question at the council meeting today.”

  She started. “What?”

  “Prelate Hykell asked if I held the views of my father.”

  “I hope you lied!”

  “Of course—do you think I’d jeopardise the mission on a point of principle? Anyway, a martinet called Cannak doubted my word. He accused me of impiety to my face. Unfortunately, he’ll be accompanying us on the expedition.”

  “Cannak...” Sereth said. “My father knows him. I think they worked together. He’s a hardliner, and close to Hykell.”

  “He’s a fool,” Ehrin said. “He accosted me in the courtyard after the meeting.” He stopped, wondering whether to tell Sereth what had passed between them then. “He... he more or less told me that I deserved to die like my father.”‘

  Sereth stiffened in his arms. “You should be wary of making an enemy of a man as powerful as Cannak.”

  “He doesn’t worry me, Sereth. I... just wonder what turned him against my father.”

  “Isn’t that obvious? Your father was a disbeliever. Cannak is a fervent servant of God. The two aren’t compatible, to say the least!”

  Ehrin shook his head. “It’s more than that... They were on the ‘65 expedition together. Something happened there. My father saw something.” He told her about the letter his father had written to his mother. “I’m sure that that’s what turned Cannak so against my father.”

  After a short silence, Sereth hugged him and whispered, “Be careful, my darling. Be careful.”

  He thought about what Hykell had said about Bishop Jaspariot allowing his daughter’s hand in marriage to a disbeliever, and the implied threat of his words. He shared everything with Sereth, but this threat he would keep to himself.

  Later, he said, “There is a place on the expedition for you, if you wish to come with me. Think of the research opportunities...”

  Sereth was a linguist, whose speciality was the dialects of the remote mountain peoples. They had discussed how her research might be advanced by studying the language of the scattered tribes, which populated the western plains.

  She squeezed him. “I still don’t know, Ehrin. I want to come. I want to be with you. But the thought of leaving behind all that I know, and venturing into the unknown...”

  He silenced her with a kiss. “You have a week to think it over, okay?

  She kissed him. “I’ll think about it, Ehrin,” she said.

  In the morning Ehrin made his way to the foundry and discovered Kahran at his desk. The old man looked up, weariness in his eyes. Ehrin guessed that he had been in the office since the early hours, filling his time in the only way he knew how. Ehrin wondered if that was sad, or commendable... or perhaps both.

  Kahran said, “And was I right? The Church imposed swinging restrictions, or declared an exorbitant tax?”

  Ehrin smiled. “You were right, Kahran. But nothing as bad as that. Come upstairs. We’ll talk about it over a drink.”

  They made their way upstairs, Ehrin walking slowly behind the oldster as Kahran climbed the stairs with the painful precision of the infirm. They sat beside the semicircular window and Ehrin poured the drinks.

  He told his partner of his meeting with the Council. As soon as he mentioned Velkor Cannak’s name, the old man stiffened.

  “What did he say?”

  “He was with you in ‘65. He said you ‘crossed swords’.” Ehrin waited, then said, “Are you going to tell me about it?”

  Kahran looked up, into the younger man’s eyes. “And risk the militia finding out that you know? And risk their torturing you...” He held up his right
hand, displaying the thin fingers bereft of nails.

  “They did that? But I thought—”

  “That, and worse.”

  Ehrin winced. “And to my father?”

  Kahran nodded and took a mouthful of spirit. “I don’t want to see you suffer the same fate.”

  Ehrin felt anger swell in his chest. He said, “The proviso, Kahran—the Council are sending an agent along with us, to keep us in check.”

  The old man looked up, understanding in his eyes. “Tell me,” he said.

  Ehrin nodded. “Velkor Cannak.”