The Beckoning Sky
This content was originally included in an issue of Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.
Main Magazine Page: The Duelist #32
Short story by J. Robert King
Long before he traveled to Rath aboard the Weatherlight, long before his fateful, final encounter with Selenia, Crovax stole away from home with his angel.
This is a story of Crovax as a young man—full of ambition and emotion—and a ship that will take him and his angel to his ultimate destiny.
Born to Greatness — Part Two
Despite his split-toed shows, torn breeches, and moth-eaten cloak, the man walked as though he owned Port City. He was clearly a rich man’s son. Under his five-day’s growth of beard was a smooth-skinned noble chin, No scars. No pox. His brown eyes glinted in the morning sun, and he looked levelly into the eyes of others—slaves, longshoremen, and nobles alike. His hands were strong from writing and riding, but smooth and uncallused, as though they had never hauled a line or hoisted a crate. One of those hands continually strayed to a tattered scarf at his neck.
“Patience, sweet Selenia,” Crovax cooed softly to the gemstone secreted at his throat. “Patience. We will be beyond Father’s men soon enough. Then I will call you forth.” Crovax lifted his eyes to the black jumble of masts and pilings at the edge of Port City. The quicksilver sky poured a steady breeze through the town, along the docks and bay, past the rock jetty, and out into the wide ocean. The sea sang softly beneath the beckoning sky. “First, passage out of Zhalfir, out of Jamuraa. Then we’ll be beyond his reach. Then we’l’ be together forever.”
Port City bustled that bright morning. Wagons jammed the wharf, Side panels dangled from hinges, straps hung in piles alongside blocked wheels, and crates rode ant-lines of dock workers into and out of ships.
Crovax had dreamed of this trip to Zhalfir and on to the world beyond for more than fifteen years, ever since he had discovered the “hag of the high parlor”—his beloved angel Selenia. He had visited her often, and thrice attempted to flee with the jewel that held her. But the nighttime jungles of Urborg were forbidding—lich-haunted and fiend-filled. Father, too, was forbidding. Years stole past. The candle-glow of youth became the fire of adulthood. Crovax grew in body and heart, while his opponents only shrank. He learned sums and commerce, fencing, acrobatics, and fisticuffs. He was ready. Armed with a bag of coin, a beggar’s disguise, a large double-edged knife from Father’s collection, and the amulet of his love, Crovax had slipped away into the humming night.
Oh, and armed with my wits, thought Crovax. And if wits are a pauper’s only purse, mine is full. Now, to use that purse to buy passage on a ship bound—anywhere.
Crovax stepped onto Port City’s boardwalk and surveyed the boats in their slips.
Brigantine and barkentines, dhows and scows, barges, feluccas, sloops, argosies—one after another, the ships disqualified themselves, until Crovax stood at the end of the boardwalk, before the last slip. In it rested a caravel…or was it a galley…or perhaps a corsair? It was the strangest ship Crovax had ever seen, at once sleek and awkward.
Its hull waslong and slim, with an ornate figurehead, a narrow bow, an odd bulge amidships, a low-slung poop, and a long, thin stern. Its sails were strange things, too, more like bat wings than sails, a pair of them jutting sideways above the deck. Its tails followed long streamlined, paths and bore fanciful adornments, and Crovax got the sense from the low drone beneath the hull that the ship had some source of power other than sails, A steamship? An artifact engine? The vessel looked as though it would steer like a concrete block and push water the whole way, but there was an aura about it—a strange scintillating air, the tingling expectancy before lightning strikes.
A stern plate bore the name Weatherlight.
Crovax strode up the gangplank and onto the ship. It had a strange deck, holystoned so thoroughly that it seemed a single expanse of wood. Solid and seamless. The wood seemed alive.
Crovax’s premonition became a gut-level certainty. I must join this crew. It is my future. It is my destiny.
The door to the captain’s quarters swung open, and a young woman emerged. Preoccupied, she studied a complex magnetic instrument of metal and glass. She was younger than Crovax, her skin and hair black and lustrous in the sunshine. Her broad shoulders bore the clear posture of command. She wore a rust-red halter, tan leggings, and low leather boots. Distracted, she kept her head averted as she spoke to someone in the cabin behind her.
“Yes, I understand! That has been the design of the guidance system. But things change, Hanna. Of all people you should know that. You have to relearn every damned system every damned month—” She stopped short, almost barging into Crovax. Her gaze rose up his ragged clothes to his sparkling eyes. “May I help you?”
Crovax smiled and blinked appreciatively. He bowed low before the woman, sweeping his hand out in a flourish before remembering his poor-man’s clothes. “I am here to join your crew,” he said simply. “I am Crovax.”
“I’m sorry.” The woman smiled not unkindly. “We already have a full crew.”
“There is much more to me than meets the eye,” Crovax said.
“There is much more to this ship than meets the eye, too,” the woman replied, glancin in exasperation at the implement in her hand. “I’m sorry. We have neither pay not quarters for another crew member.”
“I don’t need pay or quarters. To serve among you and travel with you would be payment enough.”
“Do you eat?” asked the woman dubiously.
Crovax looked down, chagrined. “Well, yes, of course. I need to keep up my strength for hard work.”
The woman seemed pleased with this response, but her eyes remained critical. “And what sort of work can you do?”
“Anything!” Crovax replied, encouraged. He clutched the amulet hidden at his throat. “I’ll do anything. Even scouring pans and emptying slops.”
The woman shook her head. “We have a cabin boy, If anything, we need experienced seaman.”
“Oh, I am experienced!” Crovax declared desperately. His mind returned to the times he overheart slaves talk about life aboard ships. “I’ve worked everything from the bilges to the tops. I’ve rowed galleys—”
“We have no oars—”
“I’ve fired harpoons—”
“We’re not a whaler—”
“I’ve grappled and boarded—”
“We’re not a pirate ship—”
“Whatever you are,” Crovax gasped in mild exasperation, “I can help.”
A voice called from the captain’s cabin. “Who are you talking to Sisay?”
The woman cupped a hand to her mouth. “No one. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“I’m not no one,” Crovax said earnestly. “I’m Crovax!”
“Yes, I know,” said Sisay. “But we don’t need a Crovax.”
“On the contrary, I think you do.”
Sisay’s patience was at an end, and her young face darkened. “What are you running from, Crovax? Are you a fugitive? Are you hunted? What dark secret has driven you here, is driving you to stand on the deck of my ship and argue with me about what it needs? What are you running from?”
“I’m not running from anything,”‘Crovax said suddeny and in saying it, he believed it. “I’m not running from anything. I’m running to everything. I have a destiny, you see? And if you can’t use a man like me, this great ship will never know the glories laid up for it!”
From the hatch emerged another crew member—a creature so massive he seemed an entire crew himself. The minotaur’s horns were broad enough to scrape the hatch’s frame as he rose through it. His bullish face, habituated to anger, was now furious, red circles visible around dark eyes. Massive hands clutched the hatchway in trembling anger, and the minotaur launched himself from the space. He rose to tower above Crovax, and hot breath gusted from his flaring nostrils.
“I have listened too long to your insolence beggar,” the minotaur growled.
“Now, Tahngarth,” Sisay scolded, “I have this in hand.”
Tahngarth cast a glance at her, but his wrath remained focused on the man, before him. “I have listened too long. I am the first mate of this vessel. Who do you think you are? Who is Crovax? What does it matter? This is no ordinary scow. This is a great ship! An extraordinary ship with an extraordinary crew. You can’t force your way aboard! Leave now, or I shall remove you!”
Crovax stood his ground against the onslaught of the minotaur’s pique, an impressive accomplishment in itself. Of course, he could have summoned Selenia from the amulet, but he was rescuing her, not the other way around. Besides, the Weatherlight had ignited a fire in his breast, and the rhetoric of destiny had taken hold of him. He had stood against Tahngarth’s ire, and now he would do even more.
“If you can remove me, I suppose I am not extraordinary enough to join the crew,” Crovax said placidly. “Otherwise—”
The minotaur growled and brought a massive fist hurtling toward the man’s face. Knuckles passed through a a space that, moments before, had contained an impudent smirk, though now it held nothing but salty air. Well-worn heels flashed away beneath the minotaur’s crouched legs as he overbalanced. Tahngarth staggered to one side, an agile Crovax scampering from beneath his hooves.
The man was on his feet in the instant before the minotaur regained his balance, and he quipped, “Of course, if you can’t get rid of me, you’ll have to let me stay. All ships have rats.”
“All ships but this one,” snarled Tahngarth, snatching his crystal sword from his belt. He roared and charged.
Crovax leapt to the ship’s rail and balanced there precariously. This feat was made all the more astonishing when the minotaur’s blade swept past, nearly slicing his legs from beneath him. Crovax lept again. The blade struck sinew, slicing cleanly—the sinew of rop, not muscle. Crovax caught the severed line and swung away from his attacker, following a shallow and lazy arc. It was impossible to keep the grin from his face as he rode so imperiously above the deck.
A similar grin filled Sisay’s face, and that of the woman beside her. Hanna stood in, the doorway of the captain’s cabin, a blond-haired and bright-skinned, woman. She and Sisay watched, bemused, as the rogue traveled away from the raging minotaur.
Tahngarth, for his part, was not smiling. “You’ll pay to replace that line!”
Crovax swung into a stay on one of the canted masts and began to climb. “I have no money, but I’d gladly work it off in trade.”
Tahngarth sheathed his crystal blade and clambered up after him, “I’ll take it out of your hide!” Despite the minotaur’s obvious physical prowess, he was as graceful in the tops as a bumblebee in a web.
Meanwhile, Crovax made quick and spiderlike progress to the tip of the mast.
“Come down, Tahngarth,” Sisay shouted. “You’re only proving his point.”
“Hire me,” Crovax called down to the group clustered on the deck, “and I can be your mate of the tops!”
Though awkward among the ropes, Tahngarth soon had the man trapped atop the mast. “I’ll wring your little neck!”
Crovax leapt from the height of the mast, landed for a moment on the tip of a spar, and rode an adjacent stay down to the rail again. He jumped to the planks. “I could also be mate of the decks.” He bowed gracefully to the amazed women, and then hurled himself into the open hatch. A hollow echo came from below. “Or, mate of the hold.”
From the mast, Tahngarth glowered down at the two women. “I will not give up until he is flung from this ship.”
“What’s the use?” Sisay said, shaking her head in chagrin. “I have the feeling he’d only wait till dark and scramble back aboard. Every ship has its rats.”
It had been a tough three days while the Weatherlight remained in harbor. Sisay assigned Crovax to empty slops and pump bilge, and the goblin cabin boy enjoyed a short shore leave. When Crovax wasn’t performing whatever menial task had been invented to occupy him, he spent his time listening to Tahngarth’s terse instruction in proper sail trim, knot tying, and all the other aspects of seamanship. Apparently the crew of the Weatherlight saw through Crovax’s lies about his seagoing prowess, but they must have glimpsed the greatness of the man beneath. The kept him on.
An now, the Weatherlight was under sail. The ship did steer like a cement block. Had he a moment to himself, Crovax might have begun to wonder if this were the wrong ship, the wrong crew for a man of destiny. It mattered little. As long as he got away from Jamuraa and Urborg, he would be happy. And Sisay had assured him the Weatherlight would soon be worlds away.
Some ten miles of our port, Tahngarth came to where Crovax toiled, cleating off lines. “Take a break,” the minotaur said. “I’ll trim the sails awhile.”
Stunned, Crovax might have stared at the bull in disbelief had he not already learned to immediately obey Tahngarth’s every utterance. He dropped the lines and trudged stuff and sore, to the bow of the ship. There, Crovax slumped down onto a broad coil of rope and released a gusty sigh. Overhead, the quicksilver sky of day was giving itself to gray twilight, and the sea stretched, green and wild, beneath a deepening gloom.
Crovax’s hand strayed to the hidden amulet. With a practiced motion, he slid a small glass stopper from beneath the gem.
Selenia emerged. The angel moved about him, whirling in gentle tendrils of magic, of beauty. White wisps slid from his shirt and coalesced in a faint, shimmering presence before him. Gray wings hung to either side of the lithe figure, and sweet, sad eyes stared out of a perfect face. Selenia’s smile was gente.
“It has been hard work, Selenia,” Crovax whispered into the sea air. “And, this isn’t exactly the perfect ship, or the perfect crew, but we are away from Urborg. And we’re together.”
She seemed to breathe in the thought, and a shimmer of pleasure moved through her gossamer form. “Release me, Love, and nothing will keep us apart.”
“Not yet, darling,” Crovax said softly. “Not until we are far away, alone and free.”
“That will be soon,” she said, though her voice was tinged with sadness. Her figure suddely dissolved into a cloud of fireflies that swirled about the man and bored him up from the coiled ropes to peer over the rail. “Behold!”
Crovax stared. The Weatherlight rode no longer on billows and sea foam, but on winds and clouds. A flying ship! There was indeed much more to it than met the eye. Ecstatic, Crovax glanced back toward the weighty world they left behind. Jamuraa was merely a flat black clot on the horizon. The sun set sullenly behind it. Taking a thrilled breath, Crovax peered ahead. The sky beckoned, darkening into night.
Rob King’s first Magic novel, Time Streams, is due out in May of 1999. The third book of the Artifact cycle, Time Streams tells of the destruction and reclamation of Urza’s Tolarian Academy and the creation of the Weatherlight.