Prologue
Through a welter of cirrus
clouds the sunlight cast blue shadows where a round yurt was nestled at the end
of the path and with a shed and fowl hut. The door of the yurt, a heavy animal
skin with the edges still furry, was thrown back and a bearded man dragged a
girl into the snow, striping her legs with a switch. “You don’t learn, Stroenuk.
We could all be killed!”
“Leave her alone, Ocliv,”
a woman called from inside. “She must obey her gift.”
“Like her mother?” Ocliv
said. “Huh, Opeil? Like the Stroenuk who was stoned and burned in the square?
Is that what you want for her? And for us?” He held a torn page before the
crying child. “No more drawings. No more dragon visions. No more images of seastone,”
mockingly, “who is the liquid center of light.”
Ocliv released the girl
and searched his pocket for a match to burn the page. “Light doesn’t penetrate seawater.
Light bounces off water just like it bounces off snow.”
An overhead noise made Ocliv
stand alert, so different from mountain thunder or the crackle of northern
lights. Opeil stepped outside shielding her eyes to glimpse a streaking light that
led to the craggy outcropping above them. The skyship, rosy in the angling
light and with a wide con-trail, shuttered and came apart before it crashed.
The nose section tumbled down the cliff, exposing the passenger compartment
where puppet-like figures jerked and bounced and finally were still.
They stared until the
noise quieted. “Didn’t see that in your visions, huh, Stroenuk?” Ocliv accused.
“Hitch the wagon.” He pushed the girl forward. “We must get there first.”
“Are survivors
possible?” Opeil asked breathlessly.
“There’ll be supplies
and shipments of jewels for their stock exchange. We must get there first.”
###
The blue and silver
wreckage smelled of cold ashes and icy metal. Jagged edges were illuminated by
the pitiless sun in the mountain air. Ocliv ducked out of the passenger
compartment carrying rucksacks like schoolgirls carry. “These are the last of
the goods,” he said. “We must go before the light fades.”
“We cannot leave the bodies,”
Opeil objected. “Others will come; maybe offer a reward.”
“For us, you think? For
the exiles who harbor a Stroenuk?”
“Alousha’s reward for
kindness.” Opeil stepped past him into the round frozen space where the dead
laid at different angles, their coats forced open and pockets emptied.
“Why do you always
counter me?” Ocliv called behind her, but stopped short when a movement near
the outcropping caught his eye. “You think to escape me?” He dropped the goods
and hurried forward drawing his long knife just as a Chinese man in fur-lined
coat and fur-trimmed cap rose in challenge. “Nu delaya!” the man shouted
brandishing a rod. “Chi cylay!’
“I don’t speak your
savannah gibberish,” Ocliv said. “And you know none of my words either. So if
you die, who’s to say?”
“Ransom! Ransom!”
another called from behind the desperate man.
Ocliv lowered his weapon.
Here was a word he understood. A boy dressed much the same as his guardian
stepped into the light. “They will pay a ransom for my safety,” the boy said in
Striiduc, accented with sharp consonant sounds.
Ocliv squinted, noting a
second guard crouching in ambush. “And who might you be?” he said to the boy
who was maybe age fourteen.
“Wan Chu, son of Ambassador Wan Su who
waits in Cochin for my arrival. You will contact him now with your plan for my
safe return.”
“Ha! Where do you think
you landed, boy? Contact him how?”
“By Stroenuk, your
dragon dreamer who can see the actions of those who dwell on the savannah as
clearly as I see you.” Wan Chu actually pronounced the word correctly as
strew-knock.
“Ha! If only her visions
were clear,” Ocliv said.
“Others will reach out
to her when they see.”
“See this?” Ocliv
indicated the wreck site. “How will they see this?”
“There is one who has
the song.” He stepped back a fraction, gesturing behind him. “Here, a dreamer
like your daughter.”
“She’s not my–”
Opeil came from the
passenger cabin, stepping past him and past the Chinese guards. On a pallet on
the snow, past the chunks of flaked ice spray from the impact, past the long
shadows and glinting sunlight that indicated day was ending; Opeil found a women
laying prone but moaning softly, covered with coats taken from the dead. Two
Striiduc gypsies squatted at her feet, maybe forced there by the Chinese. On a
nearby boulder a dark-skinned girl sat, a Putuki judging by her features,
holding her arm and with an anguished look from the pain of a dislocated
shoulder. “Where’s the Stroenuk?” she whispered through the pain.
“We saved the
ambassador’s daughter,” Wan Chu claimed loudly, desperately. “We stopped the
bleeding. Except for us, she would die.”
“The girl,” Bybiis
whispered. “Bring the girl.”
Opeil turned and
gestured past Ocliv and the Chinese guards. The child in boots and a heavy coat
approached hesitantly, picking her footholds over the unforgiving ice shards.
The two gypsies whispered together, “Stroenuk, Stroenuk.”
Bybiis gestured to draw
her near. “What is you name?”
“She is Stroenuk,” Wan
Chu said in a demanding tone.
“Your name?” Bybiis
repeated softly.
“She is Opin,” the woman
said, “daughter to my sister Opinal who was stoned and burned in the public
square. Opin is hidden here due to the shame of seeing. Her night visions—”
“Her visions will save
us,” Bybiis finished. “Opin, I need your strength. I need a little help to
reach my friends on the savannah. Will you help me?”
“It’s forbidden,” Ocliv
said.
“If she doesn’t,” Wan
Chu said, “we’ll all die.”
“I won’t die today,”
Ocliv told him.
“She can ransom us,” the
boy returned. “You’ll be richer than a Borabean king.”
Ocliv squinted, glancing
at the Chinese guards. “Richer than Rularim?”
“Richer than Daniel Chin
himself.”
Ocliv stood tall and
seemed to swagger a moment. “We can hide the goods and return for them
tomorrow. This is for Alousha’s blessing.”
Synopsis: Dr. Christopher Meenins is 800 years old and doesn't remember his past.
Accompanying him on his journey of discovery are the powerful Lady
Drasher Elizabeth Tasgneganz, the pedantic Dr. Virgil Grammario, the mysterious—and possibly alien—Linda Deemer. Christopher
is haunted by memories of alien places and of a race called the Longists. The group travels to the one
place on Earth the Longists might reappear: a remote abbey inhabited by
an order of nuns known for their mystical insights and quality brandy.
