Chapter 14 - Gray Escape

The aeroship glided its way along the gorge that divided the two vast tracts of land. The air between them caught around the cliffs, which made coasting down its entire length easy. It was one of the reasons people took this path despite the occasional floater. The walls were sheer, but green.

Waterfalls poured off the edge, fed from blue gemin far up into the mountains, and broke away into spray before vanishing as mist into the torrent below. Hugging the skyland of Bastilion Orot was a scenic detour for most. If it weren't for the constant threat of piracy, it would undoubtedly become a tourist's dream. For the crew of the Murky Prospector, this place was confining and difficult to escape from.

The ship's sails shuddered as the wind changed direction when it closed its distance with the cliffs. Alanea steadied the helm straight, after her would-be lane change. She kept her hand on the wheel, with the other on the throttle lever. The Prospector could be pulled into the sheer cliff walls at any moment. Her cloth companion circled her head and chirped high-pitched whistles when downdrafts were ahead.

"Feels like we are flying into the mouth of some creature." Edven was holding a rag stained black with soot-filled grease, but twisted it around his fingers anyway. "What's ahead of us?"

"We'll be flying right over Lilly's Land, so keep your eyes open." She adjusted the rudder slightly, and the ship corrected away from the wall of stone to their right. "I might ask everyone to stay up on deck just to keep watch. Your machine man too."

Kuthe was perched up on the cabin deck rail and hooked his claws around its wood. His tail moved in a serpentine motion with the wind as the air split around him. "There are worse places we could be, captain. At least we have room to breathe." He looked up toward the source, eclipsed partially by the overhanging stone. "Lilly's Land awaits us. We will see her banners soon."

Cowel was down on the flight deck learning against the main mast. Prism remained in his coat pocket, but was silent since their last stop. As the ship drew closer to the end of the day-long gorge passing, the stone began to warm up. He pressed his palm flat against its parcel of cloth. "We aren't at the carnival just yet." The gemstone pulsed light out once, which Cowel deciphered as Prism being skeptical.

The chasm widened out into the sky, and light once again broke across them. Ahead lay a plateau rimmed with white cliffs and a forest of trees long enough to stretch beyond their sight to the right-hand side. The other opened into a bay of sorts. At the edge of this stone bay clung the first true carnival-controlled town. It, like the last, was tiered against the cliff face, but the banners streaming in the crosswinds were brilliant, clean, and violet as if new.

Its docks jutted out on stilts braced by lattices of steel beams and timber, and were completely crowded by ships painted in red, purple, and gold; the carnival colors.

Alanea eased the engines down. "We'll dock, get an eye and ear of what's going on, and leave. If anyone asks, we're going to drink at the carnival, it's why I had the ship painted red."

Edven leaned out over the cloudside rail to peer at the docks. "The aeroina is packed." Hundreds of people crowded the plaza at the center of the platform. Many of them were wearing white cloth robes. Silver and brass gleamed within them in reflections of daylight. Their voices rolled across as they spoke in long braided cords of choric harmony. Though it was not a song or hymn, it mimicked its cadence like spoken word poetry.

Kuthe sucked air past his tongue and clicked his teeth. "dnahhh... Radiants---" It was the first time his kobald language accent showed itself since he'd negotiated in Shosoth.

The word caused Edven to frown. "euh... A pilgrimage? I guess that's good for us..."

"It's not different than a parade. For that they these zealots are in the right place." Kuthe's eyes narrowed toward the docks. "They're monks... warriors. Radiancy is never too far from something they need to fight."

The Prospector was eased up into the only clear spot Alanea could find on the platform. She had to come up into it from below, and even that was too close to the ships ahead and behind. The crewmen threw lines out to the platform. Dockhands of the port made their ties to the pier while distracted, yelling at each other in Coopracian. Carnival captains lounged at the edge of the dock, drinking stine and doing nothing to interfere. Their blades hung loose and seemed rather entertained by the bickering foreigners.

Alanea helped drop the gangplank and turned back. "Kuthe, Edven. With me." She shook her head toward Cowel and swiped her hand in a cutting motion. "Stay and watch the ship."

Cowel again swallowed his pride and stayed back. The serval companion brushed against his leg, with the verdant greenery of her tail rustling. Prism continued heating his coat from inside the pocket. He pet the feline and sat down with her on the flight deck.

"What should I call you, huh?" He preened her tail of some loose greens; it was cilantro. "Hmmm, something foresty... Twig... Sprig?" The serval sat and stared with a confused expression. "Spri---guh... That's not really feminine... How about Spri?"

"The THREAD! It binds all light! Through it, the shadow is cut away!" The platform was dense with Radiants. Concentric rings of robed monks stood around a stone plinth on top of an elaborate upholstered floatskid. One of the white robed monks lifted both arms skyward. A pendant of three icosahedrally faceted white gemin blazed at his chest. Its pure light outshone the ambient daylight. Looking directly at it burned into the eyes.

The crowd of monks thundered a mantra they repeated. "Alcoro davindani blistsne", or rather "Divinity blesses my stone." Hands rose, bearing the pendants of white gemin which were all shaped to match each other. Each monk had the stones cut differently: teardrops, spheres, intricately curved natural river rock shapes, and various properly faceted regular polyhedra.

Stinging the eyes was the collective light of these gemstones. This many white gemin in one place was a powerful force. Any person in aeroina today with an injury as minor as a bleeding hangnail wouldn't feel pain.

Edven shaded his eyes. "I can't see a damn thing."

"Don't let the chanting fool you. Every one of those pendants is a powerful weapon." Kuthe glanced across the longsword at each monk's side. "The swords are a matter of status."

Alanea kept her steps at a firm march. She held to the edges of the platform as they exited the dock. The voices of everyone strained, trying to trade over the chanting. The captain maintained a straight posture.

Kuthe was back to examining jars of herbs at various stalls. His tail flicked in irritation with the prices. Edven was pretending to look at nails, but was distracted by a trio of showgirl carnival singers. In the middle of the platform, none of the Radiants moved a hair from where they were planted. However, some of their gazes would often slide toward the Prospector's crew. This wasn't unique to them, as they did this to everyone at the platform.

One of the Radiant men not on the platform brushed up close to Alanea's shoulder as he passed by. His pale cloak swung as he suddenly halted his movement. The silver wire of the pendant around his neck was bent from an impact, and one of the three stones was missing from it. "Your ship carries many burdens, captain. What are they?"

"Cargo." Alanea didn't turn her head.

"All stones under the source glow in the light of the day, gemin or not." His eyes lingered a long time on the plush owl that hovered over her shoulder. "A rainbow does not only appear when rain falls, but also when water breaks over the cliffside's edge." He slapped the loose cloth of his robe and pulled its hood overhead. Alanea stared at him until he returned to the chorus of monks at the platform.

"They have better sight than any of us, captain." Kuthe's tail still lashed at the air in annoyance.

Alanea only continued to look down at the platform. From the deck of the ship, Cowel could see the exchange between the monk and the captain. He felt Prism strain harder, and the wrapped stone was hot to the touch. Its colors pushed through both the silk and his coat pocket. This caused him to quickly retreat to the cover provided by the cargo hold below.

A song surged forth in his mind, and for an instant, the world wavered. Cowel's vision accelerated through past the skyland and beyond to a massive ribbon of light that stretched across the heavens and all the sky of Una. It was woven in multicolored brilliance, humming and crackling with the energy of an intense beam. Prism leaned toward its direction.

"Light brings moth. Thread brings cloth."

The words were not his own, and his knees gave out, forcing him to catch his weight on a bag of rice with a gasp. Spri, who had followed him down, leapt to his side and pushed him up from the ground. The vision snapped away, and his ears reverberated with the distant chanting of the monks.

Cowel's breath returned hard as his heart beat erratically. He gripped the stone within the cloth. "I won't let them take you." He steadied himself against a crate until the worst of the vertigo faded. Out the porthole, the Radiants' chanting had changed into a deeper cadence. Some were pushing air out of their mouths like the beating of a drum, and the group swayed in coordinated unison. The plinth the monks were facing toward marked the direction of the Thread. Carnival pirates smirked at the display.

Cowel thought they might pass the day without trouble. The crew would load some beans into the cargo hold and sail before the light faded. This thought was destroyed as soon as he spotted them.

At the edge of the venue, slipping between gaps in the rings of monks moved a handful of figures with robes blacker than the soot on Edven's rags. Their hoods were pulled low and their pendants tied lumps of uncut black gemin together with gold wire. These stones drank the light around their bodies and reflected nothing. Even among the chanting of the monks, they were obvious. Some pulled their children back, carnival pirates put their hands near their blades, and the smart people sprinted away from the dock entirely.

Prism pressed so hard against his abdomen that it was going to form a bruise. The stone quivered like any other scared living thing. "No, not now..." Cowel whispered, and the stone flared brightly within his coat, shining beams of light through every small pinhole.

From the embankment steps leading further up the white stone into the city proper, Alanea had seen them too. She set down the small keg of rice wine she had been carrying and reached for her belt. Kuthe retrieved the orange gemstone from his pocket and dashed down the stairs.

Edven held his hair in his hands. "No! Not like this! Damnit!" He was about to sprint toward the ship to guard Cowel and the stone, but saw a cultist approaching up the stairs. The cultist's head followed the kobald running past him on the far side of the walkway.

The Umbrals moved through the platform with no hurry. They threaded themselves through the Radiant monks, and when they reached the open pierway near the Prospector's gangplank, one lifted his head just enough that his hood slid back. His eyes were pale and colorless, fixed on Cowel's through one cargo hold's dockside portholes.

Up the stairs on the far side of the outlet, the cultist approached the captain. His voice was soft, but was somehow artificially enhanced and carried easily over the chant. "You carry what does not belong to you. Give it to us and you may keep your lives."

Edven yelled at him as if in a bar fight with adrenaline spilling forth. "YOU THINK WE'RE JUST GOING TO HAND YOU---"

"Quiet!" Alanea snipped at him, smacking his thigh with the scabbard of her rapier.

Cowel on the ship ran up the stairs and onto the flight deck, gripping the dockside rail with his heart hammering. Prism's colors showed through his coat like the trapped flame of a candle. "They know." The thought pushed through to him from the gemstone.

The Radiants nearest to the ship had noticed this approach. While they didn't intervene with the cultists passing through them, this was not out of ignorance. Their chanting faltered in its cadence for the first time since their display started. The man leading the chant nearest to the plinth raised his arms higher. Their eyes pivoted to the black-robed invaders.

By this time, Kuthe had made it across the platform. He stepped half a pace toward a black-cloaked man with his hand and claws curled and flexing toward the sky. "These are Carnival grounds, dark acolyte."

One of the handful of Umbrals sneered. "We take what we will, lizardman." He threw back his hood and opened the body of his cloak, revealing that his pendant of raw black gemin had fused into his chest. It beat within his body, and his heart had become coal-smothered. The nearest Radiants broke their formation of chanting and stopped, breaking widely into open anger and hostility.

The priest's voice boomed across the platform with an incredible sonority. This voice, like the cultist's, was also magically amplified, but to an extreme magnitude. He pointed an accusatory finger toward the melding of his skin with the amulet. "Its existence is most profane! You knew that, and you chose to do so anyway! Heretic!"

The entire congregation of Radiants surged as one toward the Umbrals and turned the entire platform to violence within a breath. The circles of monks drew inward toward the platform edge and the Prospector. Their white cloaks opened: some brandished their blades, bare hands clasped their amulets to create beams of light from their fingertips, and others pressed their amulet into their blades to create swords of pure photon. They screamed as they changed from chants into the unified battle cry of a hundred men.

The Umbrals raised their own arms, and too, their black gemin anti-flared in their grips. Claws of spatial emptiness erupted around their hands, and lashes of tendrils and tentacles formed from the shadows underneath them, whipping outward toward the front wave of attackers. A Radiant fell into the platform. His once white robe consumed his flesh with growing calcified protrusions. Two more jumped over the gap between him and bathed him in white light to halt the growth. With a fist clenching his amulet, a monk punched the cultist down and threw his black pendant off the platform.

Radiants layered the entire pier in front of the ship, hurling themselves at the Umbral cultists with suicidal fervor. The cultists were potent, ending five lives before losing their own, but they were outnumbered twenty to one. Every Radiant seemed eager to dive themselves off the aeroina into the void below, as long as a cultist came with them.

The Carnival guards leaned against the far wall of the platform. One even clapped slowly as a cultist was dragged into the center of the pier and kicked until his face and skull became deformed. They made no move to intervene.

Alanea shouted, grabbing Edven by the shoulder. "Back to the ship! Now!"