The Crystal Empire (55 page)

Ayesha nodded.

“My stepmother was ordered to accompany us. My father thought that a suitable, um, reward, for certain...but, in any event, the unhappy woman took her own life the very day we disembarked. We had no time to find anyone else we both trusted.

“Two deaths already. What is next? It has been an ill-starred voyage even thus far.”

“Yet it might have been far worse.”

The warrior moved closer to the girl, into the shelter
—
and relative secl
u
sion
—
of the lean-to. She wondered what it had been like for him, living upon the edge of the vast prairie, all alone, for so many years. She was curious. Why had he not taken a woman from among Knife Thro
w
er’s people? It did not o
c
cur to her to move away. It was not cold in this place, with the fire glowing before them, yet his closeness was a comfort much like needed warmth.

He placed his hand upon her shoulder.

She reached up to remove it, then, at the last instant, placed her own over it. Breathing became difficult; an odd exhilarating, painful sens
a
tion sang through her body. Fighting tears she could not explain, she ducked her head forward, brushing his hand with her cheek.

So Fireclaw would be the one.

He placed his other hand about her slender waist, pulled her to him. She felt his palm cover her breast, travel down the contours of her body to rest upon the inside of her thigh. His mouth found hers. Without r
e
membering how it had happened, Ayesha di
s
covered herself lying beside the giant Helvetian, helping him to remove her garments.

With something beginning to resemble desperation, she fumbled at his clothes.

Then she did feel the cold, until she was surrounded by his warmth, breat
h
ing in the smoky, animal smell of him. He possessed her body with his mouth and hands, denying himself nothing of her, as she denied him nothing. She knew little pain
—
it was, after all, her first time
—
yet he was gentle with her, languidly slow.

When it was done with, she wanted it to begin all over again.

2

“No, my Princess?” David Shulieman levered himself onto one e
l
bow. “Then tell me—
maa chalhghapar
—why you jump each time that Sedrich Fireclaw’s name is spoken?
Maa manna?
”

Mochamet al Rotshild grunted agreement.

“Perhaps it is just that our Ayesha—who grew up in the shadow of Vesuvius—now finds herself sensitive to the trembling underfoot such as we have this morning experienced.”

Both men chuckled.

The Princess Ayesha, daughter of the Caliph-in-Rome, turned her back to both of them, her face burning with embarrassed fury.

“
Maadaa qulth?
David Shulieman, you have been my lifelong me
n
tor, but now even you overstep—”

“And what of me, then, Princess?”

Mochamet al Rotshild leaned upon the cane he had walked with since first getting to his feet after the attack aboard the airship. The sound of his breathing was now less noticeable, his coloring was better, Ayesha o
b
served with a detached part of her mind, but he still hobbled like the old man he had overnight become.

“
Maadaa thureet!
What
about
you, Commodore?”

Ayesha heard the bitterness in her own voice. Even she was a little surprised.

“That my esteemed father, in his infinite kindness and wisdom, has appointed you my official keeper implies no obligation toward you upon my part!”

The Saracen captain turned to Rabbi Shulieman and shrugged. The rabbi would have repeated his gesture, had he not been half reclining. Instead, he allowed himself to roll flat upon his back once more, the ge
s
ture co
n
veying more resignation than a simple shrug.

“See here, Ayesha,
limaadaa
—”

“No, you see here, Captain! David! Both of you! Have I not jou
r
neyed in humiliating obedience to this godforsaken place at the bidding of my father? Have I not suffered every horror, every indignity short of death i
t
self, which could have been demanded of me? Have I not done my duty, perhaps even a measure more?”

Silence enjoyed a momentary reign. Neither man could refuse her the affirmative nod she demanded.

“I shall wed this Sun-King-Coyote-Shrimp of yours, as I have pro
m
ised,
lima laa?
If, of course, he wants me—damaged goods that I have b
e
come. But one thing neither of you—nor he!—shall ever have of me is the privacy of my thoughts and feelings! I shall not be interrogated about them fu
r
ther!”

She whirled with an inarticulate noise, stamping out her anger upon the carpet leading to another room of the apartments they had been a
s
signed within the Palace of the Sun.

Mochamet al Rotshild shrugged again.

With a sudden noise, the door slid open.

Owald was there, in full uniform, high-polished helmet in the crook of his arm.

“Princess”—he nodded, speaking in Helvetian, the only language they shared in common—“gentlemen, your attendance is required by the Sun. I’m to escort you to him.”

Ayesha turned in the doorway she had entered, argument forgotten, a concerned expression upon her face as she looked at David lying ban
d
aged upon the couch.

“The rabbi,” she told Owald in syllables as stiff and formal as the young man’s greeting, “is ill as yet. He can’t accompany us. Nor do I believe the Commodore—”

Owald shook his head.

“My lady, this is no request. I’m commanded to bring you before Zhu Yuan-Coyotl this minute. I’ve come prepared to meet what seem to me, anyway, to be your reasonable objections.”

He raised an armored hand, beckoning to someone in the corridor beyond the range of Ayesha’s vision, then stepped aside. There entered the room another of the soldiers, pushing a lightweight wheeled chair. Owald set his helmet aside, assisted in getting the rabbi upright. Shuli
e
man was stoic about being placed in the chair, although it was clear to Ayesha that the process pained him.

Owald straightened.

“I can have another such contrivance here within a moment, should the
Siti
Mochamet—”

“Not upon your life, boy!” Mochamet al Rotshild roared in Arabic.

He rose to his feet, albeit leaning upon his cane.

“When the day arrives I needs must become a human roller-skate, you may bury me, whether or not I am still breathing! In the name of the Me
r
ciful and Compassionate, let us go!”

The animals, Po and Sagheer, were left behind. Together they tra
v
eled the great length of the residential hall to one of the elevating cha
m
bers they had not quite become accustomed to.

Within it, Ayesha was surprised when the car passed by the level of the Sun’s audience chamber. It continued to descend many more floors than she had believed the palace possessed.

The door slid aside, permitting entrance of an odor of dampness, i
o
dine, and oiled machinery. Owald guided them down a metal-walled co
r
ridor which opened upon a vast water-floored chamber, lit by electric la
m
pions of a kind only yet speculated about at home in Europe, set high in the ceiling overhead.

“Our greetings!
Heebh ghaalah!
”

The cheerful voice was that of the Sun Incarnate, standing upon a metal-mesh walkway bordering the artificial pool which took up most of the huge room. Many strange craft lay bobbing at anchor or tied to posts along the walkway. The Sun had been inspecting one such, showing it to Fir
e
claw, who stood beside him.

Ayesha’s troubled heart—she had not seen the warrior since their a
r
rival here, not since falling into exhausted sleep and dreaming—began racing within her, and she had difficulty breathing until she gained e
m
barrassed control of herself.

The man had looked at her and looked away.

“
Charjooh! Ghaadaa min luthbhah!
Sightseeing this morning!” e
x
claimed the Sun. “Step carefully, now, this little tub’s round-bottomed and tre
a
cherous.”

David was taken from his wheeled chair, lowered onto a leather-padded seat within the boat, amidships, with Owald. Ayesha climbed down, se
t
tling upon the seat behind him, against the comforting bulk of Mochamet al Rotshild. Zhu Yuan-Coyotl—and the Helvetian warrior, his back toward her—sat up forward. The sole survivor missing from their original party, she realized as the Sun Incarnate of the Han-Meshika pushed buttons which caused the little boat to throb, was the elder Helvetian, Oln Woeck.

A startled moment came and went as a two-sectioned canopy of some ribbed, glassy substance slid up from the gunwales upon each side, clanking together overhead. Something hissed. Ayesha experienced a moment of discomfort until she swallowed.

Her ears popped.

The Sun Incarnate steered the boat away from the dock.

“Despite appearances, this is not sea-level, here.”

He waved a free hand at the black, oily water they traveled across toward the shadow-obscured far wall.

“We are many fathoms below it. That arched portal up ahead is a w
a
ter-lock.”

This portal they then entered.

Ayesha watched as heavy metal doors slid closed behind them. Inside the chamber, the water-level began rising as the Sun manipulated co
n
trols upon the console before him.

Water sloshed up above the level of the gunwales, crept up the tran
s
parent sides of the boat. After a moment of panic, she remembered her father mentioning Mughal ships which traveled under water. She a
t
tempted to relax.

At length another door opened before them. The tiny vessel scooted out into the open depths amidst a flurry of rising bubbles, into the dark, murky water of the bay.

The journey, following this alarming start, was brief and uneventful. Ayesha watched for fish, in particular the large man-eaters rumored by the Palace help to inhabit these waters, but saw nothing besides a few jelly-saucers waggling their uncertain way through the depths. She su
p
posed the noise of the engine frightened faster animals away. Sightse
e
ing was not much assisted by the fact that the water permitted but a few feet visibility before all became a gray-black fog about the boat. She wondered how the Sun could see to steer. A greenish light upon the co
n
sole lit his face from underneath. He paid it rapt attention.

As did Fireclaw, an ecstatic grin upon his face.

At last they began angling upward. The waters brightened, although they grew no clearer. Daylight broke upon them as they themselves broke the surface of the bay, making straight into a little harborlet carved out of solid rock.

Ayesha leaned back—

—and caught her breath. Towering high above them was the tallest building she had ever seen, perched upon an island which was no more than an upthrust of barren stone. She had seen this structure from a pa
l
ace window, guessing it to be half as tall, perhaps, as the Eye-of-God pyramid perched upon yet another island—not as far away as she had thought—was wide. Now she revised her estimate upward.

With a startling rumble, the transparent boat-canopy disappeared into the gunwales.

A blast of cold, wet wind struck Ayesha’s face.

An attendant waiting upon the quayside assisted with pulling David Shulieman from the boat, helped to get him seated in a chair identical to the one he had left in the submarine chamber beneath the Palace of the Sun. Overhead the sky was gray and overcast. It was cold upon the n
a
ked rock, which, as if in warning, transmitted to their feet another of the silent rolling flutters—-this one much gentler than before—which they had earl
i
er experienced.

The breeze blew in sodden, salt-laden gusts which felt like sword-thrusts. Shivering, they hurried toward uncertain shelter at the base of the tower. All save Fireclaw and the Sun, who strolled at leisure, making swooping gestures with their hands, talking about the submarine vessel they had just abandoned with reluctance.