The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (29 page)

“Knock, knock,” Gastropé said from the hallway outside.

“Come in,” Jenn told him. Gastropé split the curtain and came in, looking around. He was frowning at her bed for some reason. “What’s the matter?” Jenn asked.

“You’ve got a normal single-person bed in your cabin, as does Maelen, I noticed,” Gastropé told her.

“So?” Jenn was not following him.

“Trevin made a big deal about showing me my room and how comfortable it was, and what a nice roomy feather bed for two I had,” Gastropé said worriedly.

Jenn laughed, and he turned his head to give her an annoyed glare. “See what you get for wearing those short silk pants and that skimpy vest? She’s obviously interested in what you are showing off,” she teased him.

“What? This is standard fine fashion in Turelane. Everybody dresses like this!” Gastropé protested. “At least everyone who can afford to,” he admitted a bit more softly, privately realizing that maybe he did try to dress a bit more stylishly than some.

“Uh huh.” Jenn just shook her head. “You reap what you sow. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t have any other style of clothing; everything I own is similar to this!”

“See, regular wizards don’t have this problem; it’s hard to look too attractive in a bulky wool robe,” Jenn told him.

“Yes, and have you ever had to stand near one of them in the summer? It is not pleasant, thank you. This is summer and I want to be comfortable, not smell like a barn, and I want my arms free for casting spells,” Gastropé protested.

Jenn shrugged and started heading for the hallway. “As Master Hortwell always says, all choices carry risks!” She pulled the curtain aside. “Let’s head to the—what did they call it? The bridge?”

“Argh.” Gastropé was feeling frustrated by the situation. “Yes, that was what they called it. I have no idea why, though. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The two headed down the hallway for about 200 feet before they located the spiral staircase on their right that led to the other decks of the cloudship. Gastropé gestured for Jenn to go first; she nodded and started carefully up the winding cloud stairs.

“I think it helps if you don’t look at where you are stepping,” Gastropé advised.

“Probably,” Jenn admitted, “but looking up into the all-white spiral makes me dizzy.”

“I’m thinking going by touch would be best; treat it like it was a normal spiral staircase.”

“And then how do we know when to exit?” Jenn asked.

“Experience?” Gastropé shrugged. “I’m guessing we are going to be on this thing for some time.”

They climbed past three other floors before exiting on the top floor of the staircase. This hall was named the conning hall, and it began from the bridge at the front and ran along the top spine of the cloudship. Periodically there were ladders leading to hatches that let onto the top deck.

Jenn found it interesting that the entire ship was sealed from the outside. According to Trevin, the ship could get extremely high, higher than even aetós could breathe. In fact, it had to, to leave the Grove above its giant mountains. The cloudship, therefore, was what Trevin referred to as “pressurized.” Elrose had found this quite interesting and the wizard had made Gnorbert promise to show him how it was done.

It was funny; most of her classes with Elrose had been on sorcery, but he was also a Master Enchanter as well, and she often forgot this. Jenn had to admit, Lenamare’s school did have one of the most talented rosters of wizards of any school. Both Lenamare and Jehenna were Master Wizards, meaning they were certified Masters of Sorcery, Enchantment, Thaumaturgy, Pyromancy, Conjury and Rune Magic. Many schools did not have a single Master Wizard; having two was quite unusual. Hortwell was a Master of Conjury and Rune Magic, and Elrose a Master of Sorcery and Enchantment. Trisfelt, on the other hand, was officially a Master of Thaumaturgy yet also of Geomancy; however, geomancy, unlike pyromancy, was not recognized as an official school of magic. Rather, it was considered a sub-discipline of thaumaturgy.

It had always seemed odd that pyromancy would be its own school when aeromancy, geomancy and aquamancy were sub-disciplines of major schools of magic. From what Maelen had implied, animages treated all the elementalists equally: pyromastery, aquamastery, geomastery, aeromastery—and she had no idea what they called the study of the fifth element, spirit, or sometimes just man. She shook her head. Maybe if she ever became a Master Wizard, it might make sense, but she suspected it was more likely a political issue rather than any legitimate classification.

Of course, before she could become a Master Wizard—Jenn laughed a little at her own thoughts—she needed to master at least one school of magic; in her case, thaumaturgy. That was getting increasingly more difficult the way things were proceeding. She had not had a class in weeks, no learning assignments, no real education. Well, no formal education. She was getting an education in combat magic, demons and politics.

She supposed that, to be fair, very few students of wizardry ever had the opportunity to meet and be involved with the entire Council of Wizardry, or go on quests with the legendary Trevin D’Vils —a literal walking legend, the Enchantress of the Grove. And almost no human ever set foot in the Grove, let alone got to participate in a bacchanalia. Okay, almost no one would even know what that word meant, but everyone did know that the fae and in particular the satyrs, centaurs, nymphs and dryads threw incredible parties. She had been to one! That was, Jenn had to admit, a great story to tell people. Assuming, of course, that she lived through this insane quest to hunt down a defunct goddess.

They passed through the red curtains to come on board the bridge. “Permission to come on the bridge?” Gastropé asked the people already there. Gnorbert had told them that protocol dictated that one ask permission before coming up onto the bridge. The idea was that the bridge was the main control center for the ship and that if the situation was difficult, too many people on the deck of the bridge could get in the way. Thus, they stood inside the doorway at the base of stairs that led up to the bridge room.

“Permission granted,” replied Aêthêal, the Nimbus’s first mate. Aêthêal was a very striking, an amazingly tall woman aetós. They had been introduced to her topside before descending into the ship. She was standing next to Trevin and a tall rialto alfar in a long trench coat with brocaded sleeves. Maelen and Elrose were already on the bridge, as were numerous crewmembers in uniform.

Trevin stepped forward. “Gastropé, Jenn, may I introduce our captain, Xavier Ehéarellis.” She swept her arm back slightly to indicate the alfar in the trench coat.

Gastropé and Jenn both nodded their heads to the captain, who nodded politely back.

“A pleasure to welcome you aboard the Nimbus, my new friends.” The captain smiled politely at the two young wizards. As he said this, a deep bass bell sounded on the bridge.

“Excellent,” the captain said to Jenn and Gastropé. “You have arrived on the bridge just as we’ve reached sufficient altitude to clear the Rings.”

Aêthêal suddenly reached up above her head and pulled a hose out of a previously hidden compartment in the ceiling. The hose had what looked like a funnel on the lower end. The upper end was not visible, as it was somewhere in the compartment. She placed the funnel near her mouth and started speaking. “All hands!” Jenn jumped slightly as the first mate’s voice reverberated around them quite loudly. “We have reached Grove departure altitude. All stations are hereby elevated to Defensive Configuration 4. Prepare for departure!”

“Defensive Configuration 4?” Maelen asked Trevin.

The Enchantress smiled. “We have six levels of alert on our ships ranging from Configuration 5, which is routine operations, to 2, which is battle stations. Level 1 is in battle; 0 is abandon ship. We hope to never get to that level.” Trevin shuddered lightly. “The ship’s armoring and defensive spells are also keyed to these levels. At Configuration 5 we have no defenses raised other than some repulsion spells for birds and insects; Configuration 4 activates our base level of shielding for potentially hostile territory.”

“Exiting the Grove is going into potentially hostile territory?” Elrose asked.

Trevin chuckled. “In the days of the Anilords, we left at either Configuration 3 or 2.” She shook her head as if remembering great unpleasantness. “Today Astlan is quite safe, but remember we are multi-dimensional here so we are crossing more than just a border to Astlan; it’s a single border between the Grove and all Grove-connected realms, some of which are more hostile than Astlan.” Trevin shrugged. “And while we don’t expect any problems, you never know who might want to take a pot shot at us. Or what happens if we stumble onto… say… I don’t know, an orc hunting party on dragonback?”

“Orcs on dragons?” Gastropé croaked out.

“It happens. Obviously, dragons like mountains, and what better mountains are there than those around the Grove? Further, there are multiple tribes of orcs that use trained dragons as mounts to swoop down and ransack and pillage villagers. Nightmarish for the victims, I can assure you.” Trevin shook her head.

“Of course, we would come in at too high an altitude for them to immediately attack us, but we don’t typically maintain this altitude; we tend to go lower, since higher altitudes use up more of the ship’s reserves, and we can’t replenish breathing air and so on.” Trevin smiled and waved towards the front of the room and to a railing at the edge of the bridge’s deck. “Moving up here, you can see where we are going.” On the other side of the railing was a very large mirror, or glass lens—Jenn was not sure which, really. It looked like a large window, but given its location in the cloudship, it could not be.

Through this lens, mirror or window was a breathtaking view towards the front of the cloudship and the incredible ranges of mountains they were preparing to pass over. “I think you’ll find the view quite breathtaking. I always do.”

Jenn shook her head in awe; she had never imagined being this high up, Astlan stretching out at her feet, viewing the tops of the insane mountain ranges around the Grove. She could not even really make out much of the detail of the land below, they were so high. Was it her imagination or could she actually see the curve of the planet? It was one thing to intellectually know that your planet was a sphere despite the fact it seemed flat; it was quite another to actually see it for oneself.

“Oh, my goddess…” Gastropé murmured as he came up beside her.

Maelen made a whooshing noise. “I can See many things, but this is one I have never seen, or Seen, before.”

Elrose, standing next to Trevin, asked, “So how high are we?”

Trevin glanced over to a sidewall, where there was what appeared to be a mirror with colored writing on it. “We are currently at 61,350 feet above sea level, or 3.873 leagues; and roughly 55,000 feet above the floor of the Grove, or 3.47 leagues.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but normal clouds never get that high, do they?” Elrose asked.

Trevin smiled. “You are correct, my fellow Enchanter. The highest natural clouds, which, as a Sorcerer, you know are mainly ice particles rather than actual air, have a maximum altitude of about three leagues. However, this is no natural cloud by any means. You recall my earlier comments about pressurization and how I just mentioned that traveling at high altitudes like this requires significant resources?”

The group nodded.

“We are funneling a fair bit of mana into keeping the cloud stable at this point.” She pointed at several crew members gathered around desks with various gems and mirrors on them. “Those crew members are monitoring the mana flows, and are in constant communication with Gnorbert in the engine room.”

“Engine room?” Maelen asked. “I’m not sure I understand the term. An engine is an automaton that does work of various sorts, so how can a room be an engine?”

Trevin chuckled. “That’s the phrase for it; it is more precisely a very large room filled with a great number of different magical engines which perform the hundreds of tasks necessary for all of this”—she gestured around the cloud expansively—“to work.” She smiled and then added, “If you manage to get a look inside one of those flying ships of the Oorstemothians, you will find that they too have ‘engine rooms.’ ” Trevin had a small gleam in her eyes. “However, they have nowhere near as many engines as we have. For one thing, they use mundane materials—wood and non-ferrous metals—in their flying ships, rather than amorphous clouds.”

“That would seem a bit easier,” Elrose noted.

“True, but they power them primarily by geomancy and then use aeromastery with the sails for propulsion. This limits their altitude; they cannot get that far from the ground, and being open vessels, they cannot adjust atmospheric pressure. They have a maximum altitude of less than two leagues above whatever altitude the ground is.”

“But if the mountains rise in altitude, they could repel against that and still climb over the mountains.” Elrose pointed to the large mountains they were now passing over. “I thought you said the Oorstemothians could not scale them?”

Trevin smiled. “In theory, you would be correct, but they cannot pressurize their ships, so they would run out of air. However, perhaps they could create special suits. The bigger problem is that of propulsion up and down the mountainside. The steepness presents their method with serious problems. Their ability to climb in altitude decreases with the incline of the ground they are traveling above.” Trevin grinned with delight while explaining this. “In other words, geomantic lift works perpendicular to the ground. Steep verticals mean they are pushing away from the mountain horizontally. They can correct for that, but they lose climbing capability as the slope becomes infinite. If a mountain slope were completely vertical, up and down, they would have nothing to push off of that would take them up. Add to that the horribly unpredictable winds around such tall mountains and they need incredibly powerful aeromastery to control those winds, fill the sails and not get the ship ripped to pieces.”