Grand Vizier of Krar: Strings of Destiny

‘Prelude’

Kanand Castle, Kanand River - year NW 714

Unexpected silence closed around Praalis like fog as he reached the stable yard behind the castle. He had ridden back in haste as soon as the news reached him. Expecting smiling faces and joyful chatter, he was surprised to see the place deserted.

He leapt up the stone steps from the postern to a rear corridor of the castle, the echo of his clattering boots running away to front and back. He turned a corner into a broader passage. This was the corridor he wanted. The rich marble of its long walls and arched ceiling were usually illuminated by lanterns throughout day and night, but not now. It was dark.

His smile faltered as he strode into the shadows. Perhaps someone has arranged a surprise party, he hoped. That would explain the darkness and quiet. It would be just like Silky to do that.

Silquooay was his fiancée. They were due to be married this evening. It was news of Silky’s arrival that had brought Praalis galloping back to the castle so early in the day. She had been due yesterday. However, there had been unexpected delays on her way from Akrin, her southern homeland.

After a dozen paces Praalis heard a muffled cry. It seemed to come from the other end of the corridor. Some inner sense gave him a sharp pang of alarm.

Before his peripheral vision caught any shadow of movement, his keen hearing detected a faint whistle as the razor sharp edge of a broadsword approached his neck from behind. In that instant he kicked his legs forward and let his head fall back. The silver flash of a long blade swept across his face, just a finger’s width from the end of his nose.

Time seemed to slow.

As he fell, he launched his waist up and pressed his head forward, to protect his hips and spine from impact with the stone floor. He slapped the muscles of his forearms and palms down hard, to carry the force away from his elbows and back. His rebounding hands came to his right side, snatching his sheathed sabre. With no time to draw the blade from the scabbard, he thrust it straight up at his assailant.

Praalis saw five armed men moving to encircle him; two already above him; the others still a few paces behind. The first, off-balance from missing an easy kill, drew back as the scabbard shot up at his face and toppled over his shoulder. The second attacker, who seemed to be the leader from the look of his attire, was now chopping down from the right. His broadsword struck stone with a shuddering clang as Praalis moved with the speed that constant training had given him.

Praalis brought his sabre parallel to his body, as if in prayer, and spun right shoulder over left into the legs of his first assailant. As his right foot and left knee found the floor, he thrust his sabre at the man above him. The blade, diamond coated by a long lost art, sliced through the man’s rusty chain mail as though it were cardboard.

Now on his feet and still spinning forward, as though drawn onward by his freshly blooded sword, Praalis encountered the two men who were standing behind their falling accomplice. Waiting for their chance to strike, they were stunned by the speed of Praalis’s recovery. Neither had time to react before a single sweep of the sabre put an end to their treachery.

Praalis came to a sudden stop and filled his lungs. The leader and one other were now in front of him, moving in for a concerted attack.

I recognise you, Praalis cried accusingly, his voice shaky from anger and sudden exertion. You serve Count Prokkanix, Grand Master of the Order of Chains. What traitor let you enter the castle?

The leader scoffed, We now serve Countess Sakscren, as does our Grand Master. From now on she will be the true ruler of Krar. You and your precious line will be expunged from history. It was arrogant bluster. Praalis was the champion swordsman of his time. Now he had thwarted their ambush, they would have needed more than two swordsmen to defeat him. Both of them died before their brains had time to register Praalis’s movement.

Cries were coming from the Great Hall below. Alarm grasped Praalis like a red hot vice across his throat. The Council of Nobles, led by the Grand Vizier, had assembled there for the signing of a Compromise. This was to peacefully resolve their dispute with the weak and wayward Prince Regent and his manipulative new wife, Countess Sakscren.

When the Prince Regent had agreed the terms of the Compromise, Praalis had been elated; all his work and diplomacy over the past year seemed about to bear fruit. Silky and he had then planned their marriage to coincide with the start of the new era of peace and justice.

The nobles had come unarmed, leaving their personal retainers half an hour’s ride from the castle. Armed men had been banned from coming near the castle, except a small number of diplomatic staff employed for the day as messengers. Praalis had been one of those messengers, but he now realized that the meeting had been a ruse by Sakscren and Prokkanix to destroy the Council and the Constitution, and to seize absolute power. Armed assassins had been hidden nearby, no doubt with the connivance of Sakscren, and had infiltrated the castle once the nobles had all gathered there.

Praalis stormed along the corridor. He must see to the safety of his mother and fiancée. It was his duty to protect them first of all. Silky was his childhood sweetheart, his best friend’s younger sister, and the only daughter of the Prince of Akrin, the most senior member of Council after the old king and the Grand Vizier. Admired far and wide for her youthful beauty and quick mind, she was also greatly loved by the people for her tireless work helping the disadvantaged achieve their aspirations. Sakscren hated Silquooay even more than she despised Praalis.

As he approached Silky’s suite its silence chilled him. Again time slowed for him, as it often did when he was in battle spirit, but now the slowness was a torture of apprehension. Where was the chatter and laughter of the ladies-in-waiting? Where was the cheerful voice of Blancala, his mother, fussing around her future daughter-in-law, proud that her son was to marry one so lovely? Where was Silky’s own voice, so full of life and kindness? Her voice that could charm a smile from a crying child, call a bird to perch on her hand, and make Praalis pause and smile with joy for being the most fortunate man in the world.

For all his fear of imagined horror he was not prepared for the scene he witnessed as he passed through the doorway. He found their lifeless bodies in the chamber where they had been preparing for the wedding. He would have no chance to say goodbye, to tell them again how much he loved them and how much he would miss them.

There were signs of a fight. Three ladies-in-waiting also lay slain, having tried to defend their mistresses. They had killed one assassin with their bare hands, and yet they had then been struck down from behind.

Near Blancala lay another assassin with a long needle projecting from his head. Praalis recognised the needle as one of his mother’s distinctive set.

A third assassin had a crushed throat and broken neck, inflicted by a technique that Praalis had taught Silky after she had been threatened on a previous occasion by a suspected member of the Order of Chains. But even she could not defend herself unarmed against armed men. There had been little else that any of the women could have done surrounded by men with swords and armour.

Two soldiers came to the door. Praalis recognised them as guards employed by Sakscren. They now also wore the insignia of the Order of Chains. They raised their swords as soon as they saw Praalis.

Cowards! Praalis shouted at them. They came for him.

Praalis never let anger or despair affect the cold calculation of his swordsmanship. He leapt aside as they charged and swung his sabre through both wrists of the first assailant. As the man’s two-handed broadsword crashed to the floor, Praalis also dropped to the floor and swung his sabre through the ankles of the second assailant. He then snatched away the second man’s broadsword and ran from the room.

Tears in his eyes, he came to the grand stairway that descended to the Great Hall. He then saw murder and mayhem before him like a hideous nightmare.

Most of the Council members already lay dead. Some, including his father, were fatally wounded but still fighting on. His father had seized a sword from one of his attackers and had killed at least two. Now unarmed, he was reaching back, squeezing the throat of a man who had pierced him through the back.

Oblivious to his own safety Praalis charged down the stairs into the hall, his double-edged sabre in his right hand and the broadsword in his left. Drawing power from fury and precision from training, he cut his way through the throng, slaying or dismembering many more of Sakscren’s soldiers as he forged his way across the floor. He quickly slew his father’s assassin and cut down two others who approached. He knelt next to his father’s body, expecting the worst.

My son, his father gasped as their hands met. I … finished! Escape! Save … family … so one day peace … justice … restored! ... Take this! You … are … Grand Vizier.

Praalis felt the cold touch of a medallion pressed into his hand as his father settled back to the floor. It was the old man’s medallion of office, forged centuries ago from pure platinum by a secret process known only to the Grand Viziers and handed down from generation to generation.

Praalis reached down to lift his father.

No … dear son … I’m done. You must escape with … mother … Silky. Always carry my love with you.

At that moment Praalis felt an overwhelming need to tell his father that Silky and Blancala had been murdered, to share his grief as he had once shared all his hopes and fears as a child. Instead, he stroked his father’s brow and said slowly and soothingly, I will keep the family safe, father, and the Grand Vizier will return. Go with our love, as we will now carry your love forever. He wanted his father to go to the dark halls of eternity with hope in his heart, and not with the grief and despair that now tortured his own soul.

Despite his pain Pelundlis smiled at his son’s soothing words. Then his eyes glazed over. Grand Vizier Pelundlis Cankrar the Just passed away from the world of light but never from the mind and heart of his son.

There’s Praalis! Kill him! It was Sakscren’s shrill voice.

Praalis looked up to see that all the Council members were now dead. He saw Silky’s father nearby. He too had taken some of his assailants with him. Recalling how proud and supportive of the wedding the man had been, Praalis hoped that he had died believing that his daughter was safe.

A hundred of Sakscren’s soldiers were slowly advancing, their hesitation perhaps due to their knowledge of Praalis’s fighting prowess. None wanted to be first to attack and die.

With one last, sad look at his father, Praalis rose up and took his sabre in both hands ready to advance. Sakscren was mostly hidden behind her bodyguards but he could see Count Prokkanix, Sakscren’s chief adviser and, some said, lover. Prokkanix was undoubtedly the one responsible for planning the details and subterfuge necessary for this ambush and massacre.

Prokkanix called out mockingly, Praalis, what’s it feel like to be a loser? Did you see what we did to your precious Silky? Yes, of course you did. Now it’s your turn to die: no more Grand Viziers, ever. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Praalis thought about how many of them he might destroy before they finally killed him. He felt that he had nothing else to live for now that Silky was gone. Then he recalled his father’s last words and he was reminded of the ancient duty of the Grand Viziers, ingrained into him since childhood: bring peace and justice according to the Great Plan!

Praalis called out above the murmur and laughter in the hall. His voice was hoarse with grief, yet it silenced all others.

Remember this prophesy, Sakscren! Your evil works will bring you no joy, and you will be doomed to die by the hand of your own child. All of you! Remember that a new Grand Vizier will come, greater than any before, to restore freedom and justice, and end tyranny!

In one fluid movement Praalis flung his sabre into the air as he somersaulted through the main doors to the terrace outside, over the castle wall and into the trees five fathomes below. His sword flew thirty paces and impaled Prokkanix.

Sakscren screamed while her minions gaped. She ordered them to pursue the ‘rebel’ and kill him straight away lest he escape again. She had to repeat her order twice more in rising panic and slash her knife at those within her reach. At last she drew their attention away from Prokkanix and his two favourite hounds, now busy devouring his remains.

Ignoring bruises, cuts, broken ribs, and the tears that blurred his vision, Praalis cried out.

Farlooayah!

This had been a call, rather than a name, when the horse had been a foal. Now only one animal would answer to it; the jet black stallion Pelundlis and Blancala had given Praalis when he passed his final exams to qualify as a Quaestor in the Grand Vizier’s Office. The fastest horse on record, and still one of the fastest in the realm, Farlooayah came within the minute and bore Praalis away before Sakscren’s followers could reach their own horses.

When Praalis came near the river bank he saw that his path was blocked by regiments of the Order of Chains. They were attacking the Nobles’ retainers and, greatly outnumbering them, were pushing them back to the other side of the bridge.

We can’t reach them or help them, and we can’t escape that way, Farlooayah my friend. To charge into battle now would be certain suicide. We must wait for another time to help our people. How true it is that, once evil has been tolerated to establish itself in a realm, it can not be removed by a single brave act, but must rather be cleaned out by many hard years of patient work.

Understanding his master, Farlooayah swerved away from the river and into the woods.

Yes, my friend, we must go to the mountains, and then to the sea.

Praalis hoped that the Nobles’ retainers would have the sense to escape. Without a Council of Nobles, the Prince Regent had no rivals for control of the army, and it was already clear that he would do anything, including consent to any atrocity, that Sakscren demanded. The king was indisposed by mental illness and it now occurred to Praalis that Sakscren was probably the cause of this. She was known to dabble in poisons and drugs.

It took Praalis six months to get to the coast, four hundred leagues away in the west. He could not use the river, otherwise the speediest means of escape, for that was where Sakscren’s troops concentrated their search. He travelled through the foothills of the northernmost mountains, living on whatever wild food he could find. The land was cold, barren and deserted. However, the difficulty of the terrain also inhibited his pursuers and enabled him to evade their search parties.

In a cold and empty forest by the coast he built a small outrigger sailboat and prepared to leave his homeland. On the final day he stroked Farlooayah’s mane and spoke to him as he often did; this time in final farewell.

I can’t take you with me, my friend. Go back to Akrin where you will remember your days as a foal. Find a new rider, or live free in the hills, as you wish. Remember me! I will remember you!

He pushed his boat into the sea and boarded. Farlooayah sadly watched him from the shore.

Please go, Praalis called imploringly to the sad horse.

Farlooayah whinnied, turned and galloped off to the south.

Farewell my dear friend! Praalis called. Farlooayah paused, whinnied again and then continued south. After ten years with Praalis, Farlooayah understood him very well. They had been together in every kind of circumstance, from the extreme dangers of combat to pleasant country rides and picnics with Silky. He felt his master’s pain and would not do anything to make it worse, even if that meant parting forever. He would finish his days in the wild mountains of his birthplace but would always think of Praalis and the wonderful times they had shared.

At last Praalis set sail, his tears mixing with the salty spray as he watched his homeland and former life recede to a distant smudged line and then disappear beyond the horizon.

Goodbye Silky. You deserved so much more of life. I must press on without you. I must fulfil the Oath of the Grand Vizier. As little as that now matters to the world, it is all I have left. Perhaps one day I may be worthy of your love by playing my part in the Great Plan.

Unable to bear his sad thoughts, he drove himself to exhaustion, hauling at oars whenever sea and sail could not fully occupy him. He was careless of huge waves that flung his small craft about beyond sight of land. He believed he could never again know happiness.

Praalis searched the world for many years, seeking meaning and purpose in life. One day he found a place where the strings of destiny started to sing in harmony for him once more. For a long time that melody was too soft to be heard beyond the small things of daily life, but its power grew as it relentlessly gathered energy, waiting for the time.

1

Prom Village – 7th August, NW 800

The two pirates watched from their hiding place among the rocks at the clifftop.

I say we take them both now, the smaller one whispered harshly.

No, we have strict orders, the other snapped. I was put in charge here. We watch and wait until the time is right, when there is no chance of failure or interference. There are to be no witnesses.

They could see the two young women talking to each other some five hundred paces away, near the strange looking cottage. There was no doubt that the tall one was the specified target.

The pirates were hiding at the southern edge of a stubby promontory. It jutted out into the sea for about a third of a mile and was somewhat more than half a mile wide from north to south. The open space at the top of the promontory was almost flat, dipping no more than half a fathome in the middle near the cottage. There was a row of workshops and warehouses along the western, landward side, but the cottage was the only building actually on the promontory. The workshops and warehouses had no windows or doors overlooking the promontory, presumably because that was the direction from which storms came, although a lively stream emerged from a low opening in the largest building.

But nobody else is around to see, the smaller pirate complained.

There are people in those workshops; far too close for comfort. Wait until they go home or until we can get close enough to stop the girl calling for help when she sees us.

*

She suddenly became aware that both her hands were tense, clutching the top of a post. It was one of the posts she had erected outside her cottage to help her observe and measure the angular movement of sun, moon and stars. She quickly let go and hoped she had not pushed it out of alignment, making a mental note to check later. Then she threw her attention back to the horizon and the dark rain cloud that had unexpectedly appeared low over the sea.

Blancapaw (called ‘Blan’ by friends and family) was not overly worried about her observation post. She used it for private tuition she gave to ambitious mariners in what she called ‘Navigation Mathematics’. However, she also supplemented her income by making clothes and she had just put her new batch out to dry in the early morning sunlight. Apart from being costly and time-consuming, making clothes was not her favourite pastime. Last month’s batch had nearly been ruined by dark, greasy particles from the polluted rain. It had taken her quite a few frustrating hours cleaning up. She did not want to repeat the exercise.

As concerned as Blan was about the rain, she had not lost track of the conversation she was having with her friend Belampaw about tonight’s village concert. They were both to play lute.

If that’s all for now, Blan, I have to get back to work, Belampaw called at last.

See you tonight, Bela, Blan replied. She smiled and waved cheerily before turning back to the horizon.

Bela did not leave immediately. She stood for a moment watching her friend. There was something unusual about Blan. On second thoughts, Bela decided, there was a lot that was unusual about Blan.

Instead of taking a simple job, like Bela and others of their age group, Blan made the money she needed in a variety of small business ventures of her own: giving lessons; making clothes; entertaining at parties with lute, flute or lyre; and some amateur blacksmithing and glass blowing. Then she spent most of her free time gathering and studying books, and carrying out experiments which required yet more time spent on making apparatus of one kind or another. She already had a remarkable collection of books, ancient scrolls and artefacts; she paid mariners to seek them out for her up and down the coast, even overseas.

Now Blan was wearing her summer work clothes: a kilt down to the top of her knees; a kind of sleeveless blouse or jacket; sandals on bare feet. Of course, they were from a batch she had made herself. Bela knew that the kilt and top were close-fitting to avoid being snagged on the apparatus that Blan used for her work and experiments. That was typical of ‘logical Blan’. She seemed to be blissfully unaware that most of her customers bought her clothes not to work in but to look good … well, to be brutally honest … to attract lovers.

From a distance Blan looked so petite, like a fairy princess in a children’s story, with round face, huge light-blue eyes, and long palegold hair. Yet she was actually considerably taller than the average woman and she was fit rather than slim, although not muscular like someone who regularly lifted heavy weights.

As a joke Bela and Blan had recently measured how tall they each were. Blan was exactly one fathome in bare feet; one ‘fathome’ or ‘Earth Fathom’ being a standard measure which had been widely accepted by mariners for many years and was equal to one thousandth of a nautical mile (it replaced the older ‘fathom’ which changed its meaning from place to place and era to era). At just seventeen years of age, Blan could expect to be even taller before she reached the full glory of her womanhood. Bela was shorter by ten fingers; a ‘finger’ or ‘finger’s width’ being a standard of one hundredth of a fathome.

Bela smiled and shook her head from side to side as she departed, as ever somewhat in awe of the poise and magnetism of her unusual friend. As she left she thought she saw movement in the rocks over by the clifftop south of Blan’s cottage. She looked again more carefully but saw nothing else suspicious.

Must have been a gull or squirrel … Bela muttered as she started back to the village. Gulls were frequent visitors, and there were woods nearby where squirrels abounded. Nonetheless, she still felt uneasy. She looked around yet again.

To the west Bela could see the back walls of the buildings that passed for the industrial quarter of the village, including Kem’s Brewery from which the stream issued. The stream ran past the cottage before turning a quarter-circle into a shallow trench and then splashing over the northern clifftop to the sea below. Blan had dammed the stream at the bend to provide water for a small mill she had installed in her cottage.

Bela could also see the top part of the high sea cliff stretching away to the north. Most of the houses and shops were nestled in a shallow valley half a mile inland, below the level of the clifftop which protected the village from wind and wave.

To the east there was a panoramic view of the Great Sea.

To the south the view was partially obstructed by craggy rocks along the clifftop. Many of those rocks looked as though they had been piled there deliberately, perhaps when the usable surface of the promontory had been cleared long ago.

Again Bela thought she saw movement among the rocks. A gull suddenly flew up from behind a boulder, squawking as it did so. Bela laughed and walked to the lane on her way back to the market square.

The two men hiding in the rocks sheathed their knives and settled down again to their vigil.

2

The rain cloud came faster than Blan expected. She had to make a choice: leave the experiment she was doing, and risk something going wrong with it; or abandon her valuable washing to the polluted rain.

She ran inside to check that her bedroom window was closed to the coming storm. She had created the bedroom and washroom in the smallest section of the building before she moved in just over a year ago. The village Council, charged with the upkeep of abandoned buildings, had been happy to let her have the derelict warehouse rentfree for ten years on condition that she refurbish it and keep it presentable.

Having checked the bedroom, she went to the middle room which served as her library and what she called her ‘dry laboratory’. She closed the two picture windows on the eastern side before running back into her ‘wet laboratory’.

It was in the ‘wet laboratory’, by far the biggest room, where she had installed her mill, furnaces and work benches, and where she conducted most of her indoor experiments. It had double doors to both east and west. The windows were small and high up, for light and ventilation.

She had no time to stop her current experiment. The spigots were fully open and the piped water from the dam was powering the mill wheels. They rotated large coils of wire in opposite directions between the huge loadstones. The metal rods and discs were still connected and sparks were already flying.

This was equipment that she had brought over from her grandfather’s smithy. ‘Gra Pondar’ (as she called him) had shown her much of what he did with it and she had worked out the rest for herself. Like Pondar, Blan loved to study how things worked. She wanted to learn all she could about the forces of nature: the winds; the storms; the lightning; the movements of sea, earth and celestial bodies; and the changes in the nature of substances as they were mixed, heated or cooled. She enjoyed making useful things and seeing people use them to advantage or take delight in them. That had been her principal motivation for moving into the old warehouse where she had plenty of room for her work. By Summer Solstice, when she celebrated her birthday, she had already been living there for a year and had converted it into an attractive cottage, albeit an unconventional one.

Pondar had been missing, presumed dead, for over five years. When he disappeared he took with him the only scientific knowledge about electricity available to Blan, indeed, to the world. Nobody else seemed to know anything about it (except the obvious, that lightning could be deadly and static painful). Thereafter Blan was condemned to learn by trial and error.

After getting some painful shocks, Blan had experimented with ways of containing the sparks from the rods and discs. Eventually she found that enclosing the mill in a wire cage helped contain the sparks while she could still see what was happening. She had made panels of wire mesh on wooden frames which could be easily put up and taken down. These clipped together so the wires were interconnected and grounded. She had learnt to stay outside the cage and not to touch the wires while the mill was in operation. She was now consciously reminding herself of these safety precautions; but it would not be enough.

Blan collected the damp clothes from the drying lines and dumped them on a bench in her wet laboratory. She turned to close the double doors on the eastern side to shut out the weather; the storm arrived before she could reach them. A strong gust swept through. First one and then another panel of the wire cage broke free of their clips and started to fall.

The wire coils were spinning furiously; frighteningly fast, Blan was shocked to realise. The water flow was plentiful, yet surely not sufficient to cause this! She had tried the same experiment several times in the last few months but never with such a vigorous result.

Forced to abandon the notion of closing the doors against the gusty wind, she leapt forward to fix the falling panels back into place before the whole cage could collapse and break up. However, just as she had righted the panels, her hand brushed one of the wires in the mesh.

A sharp pain seared through her from her arm to her feet and she was thrown back as if by a heavy punch. She was aware of being propelled through the leeward doors and hitting the ground. Then she lost consciousness.

She woke within seconds. It seemed to her like many minutes.

The rain was still pounding down. The wire mesh frame was still standing, albeit smoking. The wind was still whipping the cottage in eddying gusts.

Feeling bruised and disoriented, Blan crawled back inside to recover and to examine the nasty burn on the back of her right hand.

In her last moment of unconsciousness she had dreamt of a broad landscape covered in fire. Forests were burning and hills were spewing molten rock into a strange land. The figure appeared of a tall knight in black armour, his face in deep shadow. An older woman appeared behind him, her face also in shadow. She was crowned by crystals of luminous red, and her mantle appeared to be covered in crystals which constantly changed colour like a multitude of spinning rainbows. The knight charged toward Blan, his arms thrust out threateningly. Then he seemed to stumble and the woman charged at her with hideous hatred etched in her face.

Blan’s dream vanished and was replaced by a severe headache, like a knife stabbing in pulsating thrusts through the left side of her neck and head. A necklace of flashing coloured lights hung before her blurred vision. She became aware that the ground beneath her was shuddering.

She heard a loud thump as the mill wheels crashed to the ground. Then silence as she lost consciousness again.

3

Blan! Blan!

She woke to the sound of her father’s voice. Kem had come out of the brewery and was calling her.

There was another earth tremor. Are you alright, Blan?

I’m fine! No need to worry! I just tripped over, that’s all.

She had the presence of mind to keep her voice as normal as possible, and then add, Is everything alright at the brewery? Can I help with anything?

Just a few spills and fallen barrels! Kem called. We can manage. You carry on with your work.

Blan was relieved. She did not want to explain to anyone, least of all her father, how careless she had been with the wire mesh.

After twenty minutes the flashing lights and pixelation had passed and her vision was normal again, although her head still thumped like a regiment of bass drums going to war.

She staggered to her feet to inspect the damage.

The rain had passed. Her eyes widened when she saw that the wire mesh and frames had burnt away entirely. Her washing was still clean, unlike her hair.

Her hair was no longer neatly tied above her head, as she preferred while working. It was now tangled and muddy with the foul pollution brought by the rain.

Blan’s hair had been kept long, half-way down her back, ever since she could remember. It could be a nuisance sometimes. She kept it like that because her family seemed to be proud of it. She also suspected that a sudden change of style would alarm the residents of her very conservative village. Having been brought up in the village, Blan understood the wisdom of avoiding sudden changes of behaviour or style.

Both mill wheels were lying on the floor but the apparatus was otherwise little damaged; nothing she could not fix. Then she stepped back, aghast. A chasm had opened just outside the windward doors. It reached out almost as far as the top of the sea cliff three hundred paces away. In its middle the crack was about three paces across. It narrowed toward each end. Its depth also increased from both ends until it suddenly fell away to seemingly bottomless darkness about a hundred paces from Blan’s cottage

Her first fear was that the chasm would undermine her cottage. She thought she could see some cracks in the walls. This was terrible. She had put so much work into the cottage. She did a lot of it herself, using quite a few tools and devices of her own design and making. She hired a horse and cart to move clay from a nearby quarry (for bricks) and fallen trees from the nearby woods (for timber). It had also cost her all her savings, which were now utterly exhausted pending the sale of her latest batch of clothes.

Blan crawled along the north side of the chasm to its widest point and stared down. The earth began to tremble again and stones started to fall in. She started to crawl back from the edge. The soil gave way beneath her. She rolled as she slid down and managed to put her feet first before she came to a jarring halt.

The chasm was not bottomless but Blan could see that she would have fallen a lot further had she not landed on a narrow ledge. She would have become wedged near the bottom because the crack narrowed as it became deeper.

With a mixture of fear, wonder and excitement, Blan now saw that the crack had rived through a well-defined tunnel. It passed from north to south, its roof three fathomes below ground level and its smooth stone floor two fathomes below its roof.

The floor of the northern arm of the tunnel was level with Blan’s chin, so she crawled up into that opening. There was little choice. She tried not to think about the dirt and grime that now covered her favourite suit of work clothes.

The ground was another five fathomes up. She would try that climb when her head felt better and she had recovered her energy, she thought. No one would hear her now. Nor would they look for her until she was late for the evening meal. In fine weather the villagers would eat together in the market square.

Might as well investigate a little, and hope there are no more earth tremors. She mumbled this to no one in particular, which was just as well. The only people nearby were two pirates who had just started to run toward the chasm.

The floor of the tunnel was paved with smooth flagstones and was about five paces wide. A narrow gap or drain separated the floor from the walls on each side. The walls curved slightly outward and then up and over from one side to the other in a perfect arc. They appeared to be perfectly smooth, as though they had been melted in place by whatever or whoever had made the tunnel. It occurred to Blan that the tunnel was a round hole which had been deliberately filled in at the bottom to provide a smooth, flat path with a drain on either side.

She walked into the gloom which soon surrounded her as the daylight entering from the chasm faded. Then she heard a rumble and everything went completely dark. She could smell the dust and was in no doubt that the passage behind her had just become blocked. There was now only one way to go, unless she wanted to go back and try to dig her way out.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she thought she saw a faint light further down into the tunnel. She ventured on. The smoothness of the floor gave her confidence and she quickened her pace. The tunnel continued, perfectly straight and level.

She had counted five hundred of her own paces when it became clear that the faint light she was aiming for was coming from a side tunnel or doorway on her left. When she reached it she found an archway which opened into another tunnel. It was of similar size and construction but sloped noticeably left and steeply down to a tiny star of light in the distance.

By her calculations the tunnel she entered from the chasm must have almost reached the north side of the promontory. A standard pace was exactly half a fathome and not necessarily the length of her own pace, but she still reckoned that the tunnel could not go much further. Indeed, it ended several paces further along where the floor fell away to dark depths. She had nothing with which to gauge that depth, so she turned back and followed the side tunnel toward the distant light.

After what seemed to be a very long time Blan saw that the glow resolved itself into an archway which opened into a lighted space. She could hear a deep hum coming from in front of her and below her, as if its source were buried in the rock. It was unlike any sound she had heard before. At first she thought it might be another earth tremor. However, it persisted evenly and somewhat soothingly.

It must have been an hour since she slid into the chasm when, at last, she came to the lighted archway and beheld an amazing sight.

In front of her was an enormous cavern lined with glowing crystal. Great pillars of rock marched away, in rows and columns, into the distance on her left, almost back in the direction she had come. She calculated that the side passage she had just come down passed no more than a fortieth of a circle or nine degrees south of west, so this cavern must head east.

The cavern was about sixty paces wide and twenty fathomes from floor to ceiling in the middle. It stretched away to the left so far that she could not see the end. She guessed that she had entered at the northwest corner. From her vantage point at the top of the steps leading down to the cavern floor she could see there was a similar entrance at the southwest corner.

Blan wondered if the cavern passed underneath her cottage. She made some quick calculations and decided that it probably did; about a hundred fathomes directly under it.

In contrast to the lighted walls and pillars, a long, dark crystal ran down the centre of the cavern. It was so thick that it took up most of the space between the two most central columns of pillars. They were about six paces apart. The dark crystal’s circumference, or at least the five-eighths of it that remained visible above the sand, consisted of smooth, flat facets, each running evenly down its whole length.

The whole cavern was humming and streaks of rock lightning buzzed around the walls and in the pillars, yet the central crystal remained dark and silent.

Blan did not know it then, but she had discovered the Occidental Communicor: the cavern was its Amplifer; the central crystal was its Resonor.

Her headache had faded and yet she suddenly became aware that her feet were numb. She looked down and cried out in shock. A thick, slimy tentacle had wrapped itself around her feet and was sliming its way past her ankles. The creature was like a giant snail without a shell, but it was at least three paces long and its bulging middle glowed like the cavern wall. One end now tightened its hold on Blan’s feet and ankles while the other end was reaching up for her arm.

She felt no pain, just numbness. She tried to wrench one foot away, toppled over and rolled down the steps to the floor of the cavern. As she did so the worm clung on and soon ensnared her right hand with its other tentacle-like end.

Blan was not usually given to panic. However, the slow paralysis inflicted by this worm had brought a terror she had never dreamed of. As she landed in the sandy, stony floor, her terror mounted as she rolled over another two worms of the same size. Many more were crawling around the bottom of the cavern walls and at the base of the outer pillars. Her worm was still increasing its hold on her. Her legs were both numb up to her knees; her right arm up to the elbow.

She pounded the worm as hard as she could with her left fist. It seemed to have no effect. Then her fist slid off the worm and her knuckles were gouged by something sharp and hard buried in the sand. She snatched at it and managed to take hold of a knife-like shard of broken crystal.

Using the shard as a dagger she stabbed the worm repeatedly until it let go of her arm. She persisted in stabbing the middle of the worm until it started to ooze a colourless fluid. It let go of her legs and recoiled, its tentacles withdrawing to its wounded middle.

The other two worms she had rolled over were already starting to crawl onto her numb feet. She dragged herself away to the Resonor where there were no worms. When she got there she propped herself up against its side.

Her legs and arm were covered in thick, gooey slime and she didn’t want to lose the feeling in her good arm by getting the slime on that too. She grabbed handfuls of the loose sand from around her and rubbed it quickly into the goo on her legs and right arm. The sand clumped together with the goo to form lumps which she could roll off her.

Her left hand was already beginning to feel numb by the time she had removed all the goo from her legs and other arm. Exhausted, she lay down along the bottom of the Resonor. The worms kept away, as though they were fearful of coming too close to it.

Blan fell into a deep sleep.

By the time she woke up it was already mid-afternoon. She had slept dreamlessly by the Resonor for more than five hours, although it seemed to her just a few moments. She was pleased that her left hand had recovered all feeling and her right hand was usable again, if a little numb. Her feet and lower legs were still numb and she could not stand up. The colony of worms had withdrawn to the edges of the cavern and to the pillars furthest from the Resonor. They seemed to be clinging to the parts where the rock lightning was most abundant yet keeping as far from the Resonor as possible.

Blan crabbed her way eastward along the Resonor while still sitting. She struggled to squeeze her numb legs through each of the narrow gaps where the Resonor passed between pillars. Two hours later she was exhausted again and her arms ached from the effort. However, feeling was starting to come back to her feet. She was soon able to move faster by standing and leaning against the Resonor for support.

That was when the walls of the cavern suddenly went dark, the lightning in the pillars became intense and the Resonor started to vibrate.

4

Kem was accustomed to his daughter disappearing into her laboratories, or on field trips, and not being seen again until the evening meal. However, this earth tremor really troubled him. Nothing of the sort had happened for more than five years, since Pondar, Kem’s father, had been conducting his unusual experiments in his smithy. Then, in recent months, there had been a few small tremors but nothing as strong as the one today. Kem had never been particularly interested in his father’s electrical experiments. Kem’s interest lay in brewing and, more broadly, chemistry. Nevertheless, he had some apprehension about the co-incidence of the electrical experiments and the earth tremors.

He decided to visit Blan’s cottage to see if all was well. He knew she did not want or need to be ‘watched over’. However, he and Nwarpaw still worried about her as any parents would. Something had been making him feel anxious all day, so he decided that the earth tremor was reason enough to make a surprise visit to his daughter’s home.

Kem asked his apprentice to come with him. Blan liked Bonmar and his presence would make the visit seem less parental.

Bonmar, I’m a bit worried about Blan after that tremor. It’s bound to have done some damage to that old warehouse, even though she has done everything possible to make it sound. She might need us both to help clean up. Will you come with me?

Bonmar adjusted his wooden leg and followed Kem out of the brewery.

Bonmar was the Mayor’s son. A mariner until three years ago, he became an apprentice brewer after he lost his right leg to a shark. He knew many mariners up and down the coast; useful when Kem needed special ingredients for his beer and fermented food products, or for the chemical experiments he conducted in his spare time. Bonmar also helped spread the word among mariners about Blan’s services as a teacher of Navigation Mathematics.

*

Kem and Bonmar called out for Blan. There was no answer.

Her cottage walls had now cracked in several places and they saw the mill wheels lying on the floor. They lifted these back into place. The dam was overflowing, so they opened a spigot and let the water run. They did not notice the burnt ruins of the wire mesh and frames. Nor did they stay in the cottage long enough to see the mill wheels start to spin again. They did not notice the two armed men watching them from the rocks to the south.

The chasm reaching from Blan’s cottage to the sea cliff had filled in. It quite changed the landscape, leaving a broad basin of crumbled earth nearly two fathomes deep in the middle. Fortunately, the cottage had not subsided and the dam and stream were still sound. However, there was no sign of the tunnel from which Blan had descended to the depths below. Kem and Bonmar then felt the rumble of another tremor, not as violent as before, yet enough to cause them to pause in the open for some time.

She might have gone down to the shore, Kem said at last. She often goes there.

They both headed for the top of the steps. Kem had helped Pondar cut them into the cliff wall many years ago. The sea cliff was steep, yet far from vertical; it rose from the beach at an angle of forty-five degrees.

They descended the crumbling stairway to the point, half-way down and still twenty fathomes above the sea, where they could see the whole of the narrow beach where Blan would often study the waves, tides and currents, and the debris washed up from the Great Sea. The promontory was slightly forked, the beach being in a protected cove between its two jutting ends. At each end, the cliff descended straight into the water, so the beach could only be reached by the cliff stair or from the sea. Ships could approach within two hundred paces from the beach; the rocks near the shore prevented all but the smallest boats from coming any closer.

Blan was nowhere to be seen. Kem was worried. Had she been swallowed up in the earthquake? What would he