A cave was a poor shelter by almost anyone's count, but as a shipmaster would say, "Any port in a storm." And the storm that raged outside was fierce. The wind whipped the rain so that it dove to the side almost as far as it went down. But inside the cave was dry if not completely warm. A small fire crackled by a hooded figure sitting cross legged on the floor, just enough to provide light and stave off the worst of the cold, but not large enough where the flame and its smoke would become stifling.
By the entrance to the cave was a second figure, dressed in lumpy clothes indicative of his rural ancestry, but well worn by the miles and adventures he had shared with his friend. A long shapeless coat fell just past his knees, matched only his equally shapeless leather shoes. His dress in general was a sharp contrast to the embroidered mantle of his companion.
"Hey--some kind of light!" Dyne rubbed his head as he stared out the entrance to the cave. "What do you think it was? A bird maybe?"
His friend, Ghaleon, held the hood of his mantle close to his head as he turned in Dyne's direction. "I doubt that a bird would want to be out flying in this kind of storm." His tone was calm and matter-of-fact, saying that he didn't believe his friend but that he would not be surprised to be proved otherwise either. Dyne might have been annoyed had the comment come from anyone else, but Ghaleon had always been that way.
Instead he looked wistfully up into the sky, unmindful of the strong wind that would buffet him now and again. "Yeah. I suppose..."
Leaves sailed through the air, some buoyed from the ground by the strength of the gale, others ripped from the trees at the height of its fury. In any case, many of them pelted themselves against the walls and windows of the Magic Guild of Vane. Here the storm was no better than elsewhere, and a young girl named Lemia peered out from a window with no small thought of trepidation.
"Nasty wind!" she said, trying to compose herself as she sat in her chair before an empty desk. "It'd sure be good if it stopped soon." But she rested her hands one on top of the other and curled her fingers. Waiting was never easy.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs and Lemia turned her head to see who it was just as a tired aide barreled through the door. "The ship !"
No! The aide leaned wearily against the frame of the door, trying to catch her breath, but Lemia's eyes no longer saw what was in the room. No. The ship...
The storm had subsided by the next morning, indeed had vanished without a trace. Only a few puffy white clouds hung low near the horizon and a light glistened off something high in the distance before the face of the Blue Star. Dyne folded his arms behind his head and clasped his hands, his travel sack dangling over his shoulder. He grinned as he and his companion continued their journey towards a walled canyon. They had once again embroiled themselves in a discussion of Dyne's diligence, Ghaleon arguing for more study and Dyne shrugging off his friend's urgings like so much dust.
"I don't have any magic ability anyway," he said, surveying the landscape before them, "so what's the use?"
The hooded figure beside him rapped the open page of a book with the back of a fist. "You haven't even put forth an effort," said Ghaleon. "Are you going to give up so easily? Now..."
Dyne didn't hear him. He released his hands and pointed up and ahead of them. "Hey! Now what's that?"
The two had neared the canyon and now stood on a grassy knoll overlooking the narrow path through the rock faces. The canyon was like a wall of rock that someone had taken a slender slice out of. A path wound its way through the gap, passing beneath the object at which Dyne had pointed.
It was an airship. The cloth balloon was stretched in an odd shaped framework like that of the top half of an anvil, coming to a point at the ship's prow, and the gondola beneath seemed to be made of wood, though nothing like the sort from any tree that Dyne could think of. It was too smooth, too meticulously shaped to be anything come out of the shipyards of Meribia. Propellers on either side of the balloon were idle. Not a breeze flowed through the air, and in any case, such a wind would surely not be enough to lift this craft that high into the canyon. Even now it hung there, without touching the rocky mountain sides.
"Cool! " said Dyne. He walked into the canyon up to the point where he was nearly beneath the great ship. "What a weird looking ship. I wonder what it's doing in a place like this?"
Ghaleon came beside him like a pale shadow, still wrapped in the hood of his mantle so that only his eyes were visible. He looked up at the front of the gondola where eight lamps were arranged like a flower beneath the lip of a beam of wood. The central lamp and four of its "petals" still glowed bright, but two were already dark and the last was in the midst of fading.
"Wha... How old do you think it is?" asked Dyne, still staring at the ship. "It looks like it's decades old!"
Ghaleon did not answer right away. Finally he said, "At least a hundred years I'd say..." He paused, taking an inquisitive look at the sheared stone beside the balloon. "The moss on the rock face here seems to have grown in a straight line, breaking off where the ship is trapped..." The ship had been forced in here.
"I wonder if yesterday's storm did that somehow." Dyne lightly prodded his sack with his foot where he had set it down on the ground and looked at his companion for an answer.
Ghaleon gave none, saying instead, "That airship belongs to the magic city of Vane."
Dyne immediately thought of odd cylindrical buildings, railed marble stairways; stuff he had seen in one of Ghaleon's books with lots of words and the occasional picture. "Vane?" he echoed. "Oh... That bizarre city of magic users? You're always talking about it."
He bent over and picked up his travel sack by the drawstrings. "All right if I go too?" he asked.
Ghaleon's eyes widened as Dyne had never seen them before. The mask of his mantle slipped and he jerked a hand into position to hold it securely over his face. What's the matter? wondered Dyne. He seemed genuinely surprised and perhaps even a little afraid.
But Ghaleon recovered himself quickly, though he still used his hand to hold the cloth over his face. "Forget it. I just didn't expect Vane to be of any interest to you."
Dyne clasped his hands behind his head, giving Ghaleon a smile that reflected his already sunny disposition at its best. "I said I wanted to travel and go see mysterious, unexplored places, and, hey, here we go! Let's get going! After all, you were the one who brought up the subject of Vane in the first place!"
Ghaleon remained relatively unmoved, affecting a look that Dyne knew meant that he was wondering whether or not to indulge this little man in one of his human fancies. Realizing that, Dyne pushed on. There were few places weirder than a magical city and if they were close enough that its flying ship was nearby, Ghaleon ought to at least let them take a stop by if he knew the way.
"We have to let someone know about the airship, right?" said Dyne. "Right? So which way's Vane?"
Ghaleon withdrew his hands beneath his mantle and looked skyward. "Up."
Dyne blinked, becoming excruciatingly aware of a encroaching shadow all around him. "Up?"
He turned to see a massive floating chunk of rock in the sky, so huge that it seemed a mountain all its own, turned upside down to circle Lunar at Althena's whim. And what Dyne couldn't see, was that atop the rock at its widest point the stone had been shaved flat to support a small city and a fledgling woodland around it. The shops and homes were clearly divided into different districts in a symmetrical pattern and towards the far end of the town rose up a cluster of ancient ruins upon a throne of stone. Further down, between the ruins and the city, was the mansion of the magic guild.
Lemia stood by the window of one of the mansion's many parlors, but rather than look outside, she eyed the stack of papers in her hands. A clock ticked in the wall beside her, but she paid it no notice with such intensity that her voice squelched beneath the strain. "You didn't overlook anything?" she said to her aide, the same one who had alerted her the night before.
The aide stood some distance away near the entrance to the room, her own bundle of papers clasped in front of her with both hands. Her head sank low into her shoulders. Lemia could had enough to worry about without any further complications coming her way, but the aide confirmed, "The main entrance gate was sealed as you ordered."
Lemia closed her eyes as she flexed the individual fingers of one hand. Without turning around she asked, "And so how did these outsiders enter the city, then?"
"The gate was supposed to be inoperable," said the aide, looking suitably chagrined, "but it somehow started working again. I don't understand it. I'll find out what went wrong at once."
"No, that's not necessary," said Lemia, opening her eyes. "Station some guards near at the gate below on earth." She swept past her aide, who followed her into one of Vane's great halls. "We cannot allow any more outsiders to enter Vane. They cannot come in contact with the villagers. Now, who are these outsiders who used the gate to enter the city?"
"Two men calling themselves travelers. They're asking to meet with the guildmistress."
They appeared in a shower of light emitted from the stone pentagram engraved on the circle beneath. Beyond the ring rose several pillars of stone, some with large slabs laid horizontal above two of them. A pair of the guild's numerous aides witnessed the arrival of the strangers, one of whom plopped down on a round stone beside a fallen pillar, apparently in need of a seat after his surprising journey. The other stranger looked about him with an air of caution and sadness as he reached to his cloaked face. He pulled back the hood to reveal a head with long white hair, pointed ears, and red eyes with slit shaped pupils.
A crowd began to form around the pair, gasping in either surprise or fear of the man with the white hair and strange eyes. The look of the strangers turned to confusion, perhaps even worry in the case of the white-haired one, as they surveyed the people around them.
The less prominent of the pair, a dark-haired young human, seemed perplexed and about to voice a question when Lemia arrived, trailing the aide who had approached her with the news.
"Don't show such bad manners!" she said to her aide, absorbing the parameters of the situation before she moved within hearing distance of the strangers.
The other woman clenched her hand into a fist and held it near her chest. "But-"
"Each and every one of your actions reflects upon this city's reputation!" Bad enough that a crowd had already formed about these two. This was not a good time.
Lemia moved through the crowd and proudly made eye contact with the two strangers. She swung the lower half of her right arm horizontally in front of her and brought it across her waist, palm turned up in the sign of greeting. "So glad you could come," she said. Her smile was both confident and calculated. "Welcome to the one and only floating city of magic and learning, Vane. As the guildmistress's deputy, I welcome you wholeheartedly."
"What?" asked the stranger of the two men. "No... Where is the guildmistress herself?"
Lemia's smile did not falter as she bowed her head slightly and closed her eyes. "She's away at the moment. She'll be back tomorrow morning."
The younger man rubbed the back of his head in an apologetic gesture, a less severe picture than the stern face of his companion. "Uh... um..." he mumbled. "We... We found this ship in a gorge, see, and we thought it might be yours."
Looks of shock and consternation whipped through the crowd, but Lemia remained unruffled. Her wavy blond hair bounced gaily about her head as she accepted the information. If anything, her smile seemed even brighter. "How kind of you... Well then, until the guildmistress returns, how about staying in the manor? I'll show you around."
A short while later, Dyne skipped ahead of Lemia and Ghaleon through the open streets of Vane. Foot traffic was nonexistent, but the grounds were immaculately kept, neither dirty nor claustrophobic as others cities were wont to be. The homey log cabins belonging to the village of Burg were nothing compared to this. Dyne let out a low whistle and breathed, "Cool! " He looked all around him like a newborn bird. "This is way different from my hometown..." How did they build all this?
Lemia smiled dreamily and gestured to the magnificent structures lining the streets. They were made of stone, exquisitely shaped and without cracks or seams. "Vane has come far from the little reclaimed hamlet of times past! We've erected many modern structures. The old-style buildings are so costly to keep up and lack so many conveniences besides." She looked brightly at Ghaleon, seeing if she held his interest as well as Dyne's. "Now, about the only old-styles remaining in Vane are the ruins in back of the mansion."
Ghaleon toyed with his cloak where it folded in front of his collar. "Is that so," he said, coming to a halt.
The deputy guildmistress paused alongside him, eyes somewhat lowered in a practiced look of sympathy, but she offered warmth to her apology beyond those of her words. "Please forgive the rudeness you encountered earlier. It's just that we haven't had any non-humans come to the city in nearly thirty years."
"No matter," he said, resuming their walk. "It was the same such vulgar rabble that made the magic race unwelcome in Vane in the first place. A commonplace sentiment, I see..."
"Oh." She hurried to match his pace. "There are good and bad people wherever you go! I realize that the magic race established and upheld the prosperity of ancient Vane! And I respect a member of that race such as yourself."
She flashed a smile in Ghaleon's direction, but when he only pulled his cloak tighter around him, she shot a vicious look at Dyne, who returned her glare with a look of complete ignorance. Lemia pushed her way past them both in a huff only barely restrained. Without giving them a backward glance she lifted her head and motioned to the building in front of them.
"Here we are! This is the guild mansion."
Dyne pulled Ghaleon close and glanced pointedly at him behind Lemia's back. His friend returned the look with an expression of complete surprise. He didn't think he had been overly mean to the deputy guildmistress. Humans...
The guild mansion was an inspiring affair, three stories all and precisely kept down to the cylindrical shapes of the trees lining the walkway to the front door. Hedges marked either side of the front lawn, perhaps even suggesting the beginnings of a maze, which would not be all that unusual in a city of magic users.
Lemia lead them under the arch before the front door, where Dyne rocked back on his heels and let out a low "Cool! " as he appraised the area. Ghaleon glanced at Dyne and let out a sigh.
"The guest room is right this way," said Lemia.
Dyne moved to follow when a sudden movement caught his eye. Two small children, a boy and a girl, barreled into him with enough force to elicit an exclamation of surprise. They spun away, wide-eyed and surprised as they regarded with a look of disbelief.
"Hey... You're not Daddy," said the girl.
Dyne smiled kindly as he got down on his knees. He ruffled the boy's hair and planted a kiss on the girl's forehead. "No, I'm not," he chuckled. But the children would not be mollified so easily.
"Where's Daddy?" asked the boy. "Is he still with the ship?"
"Ship?" said Dyne as the girl climbed into his lap. She tugged playfully at the collar of his coat as her brother pulled at his sleeve. "Ship..." said Dyne again. "You mean..."
"The airship!" squealed the girl, her face now pulled into an open mouthed smile.
"Your father is coming back tomorrow morning," said Lemia. She rested her hand against the frame of the wooden door, head tilted downward in solemn thought. "A message was received a little while ago. The meeting ran late, so it appears that their return will be delayed."
"He bought us these binoculars!" said the boy, pulling them out of his jacket and displaying them proudly for Dyne to see.
"To see the airship!" his sister enthused.
"The airship," murmured Dyne, eyes opening further.
One of Lemia's numerous aides appeared just as the boy started to prance around the front of the manor. She gestured with a shoving motion, palms turned outward as she herded the children off. "Hey, hey! Go home! Go home! Don't bother people while they're working!"
With a shake of her head she walked up to Lemia and whispered something to her. The two conferred in hushed tones, then with a nod the aide broke off and walked up to Ghaleon and Dyne, the latter of which looked past the aide and at Lemia with a bit of confusion.
"This way!" said the aide with a motion of her hand. "I'll show you to the guest room."
"Deputy," said Ghaleon.
Lemia turned to him, a look of fear passing briefly over her face.
"The ship," he said, "who is riding in it?"
Then Lemia's smile returned, her composure once again a painted mask. "That information is guild business. I cannot divulge it to outsiders."