Nine

"So <i>this</i> is our ship?" Julien inquired of the stout fellow who stood before the empty portal.

"Yes indeed," the man confirmed, crossing his arms and beaming up at the young lord from behind a bushy brown beard. "Beauty, ain't she?"

Julien sighed as he scanned the hallway for his younger cousin. Mana was all the way on the other end of the corridor, peering down through a window at a departing freighter. They were up on the thirty-ninth floor of Antyliken, a row of terminals reserved entirely for the business and pleasure of various lords under the Libran Alliance. Below them dozens of airships were coming and going, hundreds of people milling about.

The two travelers had arrived at Antyliken with the fourteenth hour flight announcements, their shadows tilting ever so slightly to the east. Hungry and tired, they had spent an hour in the restaurant on the second floor, replenishing and reviving themselves after their long ride. They had cut straight through the night without respite, and when they dismounted at the tower's front door Mana could barely stand from being stiff.

Now, with the mid-afternoon sun well to the west, Mana paced up and down the halls, examining every nook and cranny with great interest. Everywhere he tread, people turned to stare at him, immediately recognizing who he must be. With his father old and grayed, he was the only person alive who bore his line's unique trait, the red hair of Mana. While they were fascinated with him, he was equally fascinated with the crowds- these were people who did not have pre-formed prejudices concerning magi. A good number of people respectfully inclined their heads to him, dozens of others actually got to their knees. These were the loyal subjects of the Libran Alliance. Each man traveling through this tower had his own lord, his own king, yet each had indirectly sworn fealty to their High King, the man who sat upon the Mana Throne. Mana's father, Guardian Lord Lanto.

They did not hate Mana as those who feared his power and its proximity to their homes had, back in the town surrounding the Mana Palace. These were merchants, scholars, travelers, soldiers- men who had seen the world, men who knew more than the lies that had been passed down in Central Libra for three generations since the terrible rule of Lont al'Kondo. They respected the power that the Creator, Bane, had passed down to Mana I, and believed in the divine right of the main branch of the Mana line.

At first Mana had been befuddled by the way he was being treated. He suspected a cruel joke, yet he could not hold onto this suspicion in the face of the calm etched into the features of those nodding to him. One man, ragged and dragging a sack behind him as he dashed down the hall of the fourteenth floor, had the look of a desperate beast. Upon noticing Mana, he had stopped in his tracks, and the frantic expression on his face had become replaced with that of peace. Julien, walking at Mana's side, had noticed the young mage's wonderment and smiled to himself. Finally his kid cousin was being treated better than he'd been at home.

Now, towering over the short man who stood guard over terminal eight of the thirty-ninths floor, Julien no longer felt that satisfaction. He was agitated. Mana had wandered off, and the man who they'd been told to meet was entirely insane. There was no ship out there. Julien could see to the horizon clearly. There were the dense green forests that spread from southern Gaia through north Libra and well into Verga. Before them lay extensions of the same fields and plains that had surrounded Julien and Mana as they rode north. Snaking around hills and knolls were many small rivers, and cutting straight across the fields were the irrigation ditches, a system heavily invested in by the Guardian Lord who had reigned five generations before Lont. The land seemed like a grid from on high, a large piece of dough that had been neatly divvied up with a rectangular cookie cutter. All this, Julien could see, peering out the portal and past the empty docks.

But he saw no ship.

"Where is it?"

"What do you mean, good sir?" the fellow laughed jovially. "It's right here. Right beyond this portal. The gangplank is out and everything. We're just waiting on Lord Mana over there."

"I don't see it."

"What's there to see?" chuckled the man. Julien's hand twitched as he resisted the urge to pick up the man by his collar and toss him out into the open air where the ship ought to have been.

"The airship, man!" Even with his self-control in full swing, Julien couldn't hold back the anger in his voice.

"Captain, to you, Lord Tryn," the stout man replied sternly, cracking one bright eye open and gazing at Julien critically. "Captain Guhnss." Guhnss closed his eye and again and broadened his grin.

"I will not stand here and be lectured on my manners by some over-grown pipsqueak who thinks he can play me for a fool! All this time you've been insisting that the airship <i>Vapor</i> takes off from this terminal, yet there is no ship in sight. We were assured that it would be prepared by this time today, and if it had been delayed, that would be fine. But you keep saying that-"

"Cool it, Jul," Mana said quietly as he walked up behind the lord. "The ship's right there." Julien stopped mid-sentence and stuttered meaninglessly for a few moments before the captain spoke.

"Hahaa! Keen eye you got there, Milord," Guhnss complimented the mage. "Indeed she is."

"But, sir," questioned Mana, "do we really need such a high-level enchantment to escape notice? It's not as though we have any personal enemies, and these are times of peace."

"Can never be too sure, Milord. News is Verga City was razed two nights ago."

"Razed?!" Julien exclaimed.

"How do you have this information, Captain?" Mana asked, narrowing his eyes immediately and taking on a cold tone. "At best it's a five-day ride from Verga City to here."

"When Lord Kieku dropped by this morning to enchant the <i>Vapor</i>, he told us all about it. Amazing man, Lord Kieku. Enchantment's perfect, won't be spotted by human eyes in a hundred years! Hahahahaha!" The captain made to move towards the portal, but Julien stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Lord Lanto's Right is a mage?" Julien demanded, his voice laced with shock.

"Oh, didn't you know? Everyone here knows. Lord Kieku's been caring for the Guardian Lord for years now, always using his Light magic to ease the pains of age. He goes about here and there performing good deeds for people. A true lord the people, he is."

"He's no lord," Mana muttered, unperturbed but no more happy.

"Does it not surprise you, Mana?" Julien asked anxiously, turning to face his younger cousin.

"It's been clear to me from the start," Mana shrugged. "I've never been good at not noticing things like magical residue. It seemed like no one in the palace knew, so I never bothered to say anything. It's not like the people there would listen to me."

"Shall we board?" Guhnss asked, placing his hands on his hips and looking back and forth between the two lords, the shorter of whom stood a whole two heads taller.

"Let's," proposed Mana, grabbing Julien's left hand. "We'll discuss this later," he mouthed to his cousin.

Julien followed in contemplative silence as Guhnss led the way out onto the pier. Without hesitation, the captain skipped up an invisible walkway and disappeared.

"He must do this all the time," Julien whispered, feeling sick to the stomach. "How often does Kieku come out here and throw his magic around?" Mana shrugged, and then pointed straight out into space. Julien felt a surge of power resonate in the form of a sudden wind blowing around them, and then watched in amazement as the vague contour of the invisible ship before them appeared.

"This is the most I can do without trying to break the enchantment," Mana said. "Kieku's not just some dabbler, either. He has real power. Watch your step, Jul."

Julien walked forward hesitantly, stepping as precisely as he could on the midline between the two fuzzy gray trails leading away from the pier. Indeed, there was a gangplank. Knowing this was no more reassuring to him than the fact that Kieku could zap around the continent at approximately five times the speed of a galloping horse. He had his suspicions stemming from the incident with Mana's possessions disappearing on the morning two days before, and this new fact he'd learned did nothing to abate his morbid curiosity.

He walked carefully- very carefully- and was soon on a solid, visible deck. Looking back the way he'd come, he saw Mana walking up what appeared to be a perfectly solid wooden pathway.

"The enchantment of course doesn't effect us onboard. It'd be troublesome if we couldn't pilot the ship," Guhnss said. "Now, want to make yourself useful? Need to set a few things in place before we take off."

Still feeling resentful towards the captain, a residual feeling left over from his temporary loss of temper, he followed the man's pointing finger to a pile of rope, which he set about untangling at the captain's order. He looked about briefly as he worked, noticed the others scurrying about the deck. Broad-shouldered, tall, and impressive, the sailors who crewed the <i>Vapor</i> seemed to work with great efficiency, accomplishing tasks much like Julien's in half the time. 

Soon he was joined by Mana, who brushed his hands away and righted the ropes in seconds with a wave of a hand and a small tremor in the air. Mana hurried on to the next task that Guhnss pointed out, leaving Julien kneeling on the deck and feeling very much useless. Gazing about, he saw that the deck of this airship was not very different from that of a great battleship he'd once been on just off the eastern coast of Libra. At the time, he'd been sitting in on a meeting with various other provincial lords from the countries of the Libran Alliance, but it had been his first time on any such vessel and he remembered the feeling of awe that has resounded within him as he set foot on the deck.

Now, he felt no such awe. Though this was his first time taking a ship to the skies, it was not an amazing experience. Julien was glad that Mana was getting so much out of this, and he realized that perhaps he was simply too old to derive simple pleasures from a new thrill. He had been about Mana's age when he'd boarded that battleship.

Now, the lord of Tryn was too bogged down in his thoughts to pay much attention to the design and construction of the airship. He noted that the sails on the masts were ribbed and seemed much thinner than those he'd seen on the battleship, and that there was a large assortment of propellors and gears scattered about, but that was all. His main thoughts were focused on Verga City. Why had Kieku been there the night before Mana's departure? Who would have destroyed Verga City? Rebels? The Terran army? Neither of these seemed likely to the young lord. 

"It must have been demons or bandits." He didn't realize that he'd spoken aloud until he noticed one sailor eyeing him oddly. "Er... nothing, nothing," he assured the man, and the sailor went back to work with a shrug and a raised eyebrow.

In all his ponderings, one thing troubled Julien above all else.

Why had Kieku said nothing while at the Mana Palace the day of Mana's departure? According to the information presented by Guhnss, by that time, Verga City had been razed. By that time, Kieku should have already known about the destruction. By that time, Kieku should have told Lanto everything and suggested a change of course to Mana. At that time, Kieku was knowingly sending the two travelers to a ruined city.

Julien sprung up, unable to bear it any longer. He sought out the captain and inquired as to their heading.

"West south west, sir," Guhnss replied. "Verga City."

Julien bit his thumb in frustration and stalked off, not wanting to say anything rash to the captain without consulting first with Mana. From behind he heard the captain's yell of "Brace yourselves, boys!" And then the crunch of a lever being snapped into place. The groan as countless gears began spinning, the slow drone that arose from the madly spinning propellors. With a creak of timbers, the airship began to pull away from the dock.

Juline grabbed onto a nearby rope and hung on tight as the vessel built up speed. Within a minute it was clear of the scaffolding of the terminal and well away from the portal, trundling along in midair. With excruiciatingly slow speed, it turned to the left, pointing its nose towards the western-most branch of forest and setting its stern facing the gray mountains of Magnetia. Guhnss stood at the great steering wheel, an affair almost as tall as the captain himself, squinting into the sun. The sails caught the wind, the propellors churned, and the ship was off at a frightening speed.

"You can go down, sir," Guhnss called out to Julien over the hiss and whirr of machinery. "Won't need any hands on the deck for a while now." Looking around, Julien noticed that all the sailors had already gone below deck, Mana with them. He scrambled over to the door to the stairs, looked around once more, and went in.

The belowdecks were oddly cramped for such a huge craft. Julien figured that the engine and machinery must occupy an awful lot of room, because the main hallway in the vessel was barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. On the left side of the ship were the galleys, on the right were the crew's rooms. All the rooms had their doors wide open, and as Julien walked by, he caught glimpses of sailors playing cards and dice with eachother, reclining against furniture, some dozing. Here and there, he picked up pieces of dialogue.

"Looks like a girl."

"Guardian Heir? Phaw."

"Is that boy really so terrible a mage? Descendant of Mana? Hahaha."

They seemed in high spirits, Julien thought, as he trembled inside with rage at the disrespect. He picked up his pace, arriving at the end of the hall in a hurry. There to his right was another open door, and through it, Mana sitting on the edge of the room's one bunk.

"Jul, you came down!"

"Of course I did," Julien replied, ducking in and dropping down on the floor, back against a wall.

"Want to hear my thoughts?"

"Sure."

"No humans destroyed Verga City. That much seems clear to me. Which means that those causing problems are demons, and that our invisibility enchantment is most likely a brilliant beacon." Mana pushed himself back along the bedding, reclining against the wall behind the bunk.

"As I suspected. We're making a gigantic target of ourselves, are we not?"

"Indeed."

"Guhnss said that we're headed for Verga all the same, destruction or no destruction."

"I can't destroy the enchantment, Jul. I already tried. Several times. We're going to have to change this ship's course sooner rather than later. Preferably before we reach the Vergan border." Mana sighed, and then sat up straight, gazing down at Julien and looking him in the eye. "I have to admit, Kieku surprises me."

"Myself as well," Julien said heavily. "Never liked the fellow, but this is all too suspicious. Too shady. What was he doing in Verga City two nights ago? Why did he say nothing at all at your ceremony?"

"He did."

"He did what?" Julien asked, startled. Mana's clear blue eyes shone with realization and understanding.

"He said something. Before the party. That I'd encounter many hardships. Come to think of it, the beast was smiling as he spoke. He said to me that he wished for me to have the best of luck. Smiling. He knew that our destination was a pointless one." Mana pounded the bunk with his fist. "I should have noticed!"

"No use getting upset now, Mana. We're here on this ship, and there's no way we're getting off without a clean landing. If we can't get rid of that enchantment, all we can do is head somewhere else, right? Somewhere with a smaller chance of there being demons."

"Terra?"

"My thoughts exactly. If we head for Mist, we should be safe." Julien's gaze seemed clouded, his eyes unfocused, as he thought.

"We won't be able to persuade the captain to take us there, though. I could sense it on him as well. Kieku's magic."

"What? He went that far?"

"It would seem."

"Well then, we have no choice, do we? I trust you're up to the task of stopping any bloodshed?" Julien slid up the wall, gradually straightening his knees. His hands went to the sword hilts at his side, and he smiled grimly.

"I can do it." Mana stood and rolled up his sleeves. He flexed his fingers, and then nodded. 

"Then let's."

The two lords of the Mana line strode from their room and into the hall. Heading in the direction of the stairs they made a left at the first opportunity. There they stumbled in upon a group of four sailors, two playing dice, one watching, and one smoking a pipe while reading a book. All four looked up in unison as Julien and Mana walked in, and uniformly an expression of shock and confusion spread on their faces as Julien whipped out his twin longswords. In a flash of gestures, Mana has compressed the air in the room, and the four sailors had their faces stuck in that expression as their bodies were stopped. Julien resheathed his swords without having swung them a single time and exited the room. Mana took a minute to apologize to the immobilized men before stepping out behind his cousin.

Room after room, they repeated their routine, Julien inspiring fear and a pause in action as Mana prepared his spell. Room after room, sailors were stopped, relieved of the notion of time. They froze in place, no longer sentient beings but rather grotesque decorations. They remained as they were, be it kneeling, sitting, standing, leaning, or lying down, all in the exact state they'd been at the time that Mana wove his magic.

In ten minutes, the whole of the crew had been put out of commission.

Mana, disgusted with himself for this display of magic, yet exhilirated at the same time, headed up the stairs, Julien but one step behind. It was horrible to be doing such things to the innocent crew members, and even though it was reversible and Mana would be able to cure them later, he felt sorry for the sailors. This display of power... it was exactly as terrible a thing as the villagers of the Mana Palace believed magic to be. Yet it was also the ultimate relief for Mana. His powers, extraordinary and immense, were definitely the remnants of the powers vested in his ancestor by the Creator. Keeping them constantly contained was hard and unpleasant, and the surge felt as he wove magic, as he channeled the frightening skill within him, as he unleashed Bane's power upon these poor sailors, was that of pleasure.