Hastily Limbeck pulled out his spectacles, put them on, and looked around. He had traveled quite a distance without knowing it. The clouds were swooping down on him, the shelter of the Kicksey-Winsey was some distance away, and it would take him a long time to retrace his route among the broken coralite. The storms on Drevlin were fierce and dangerous. Limbeck could see blackened holes blown in the coralite from the deadly lightning strikes. If the lightning didn’t get him, there was no doubt that the giant hailstones would, and the Geg was just beginning to think that he wouldn’t have to worry about facing his father ever again when, turning completely around, he saw a large Something on the fast-darkening horizon.
Just what the Something was, he couldn’t tell from this distance (his spectacles were covered with water), but there was a chance that it might offer shelter from the storm. Keeping his spectacles on, knowing that he would need them to help locate the object, Limbeck tottered and stumbled over the slag heap.
Rain began pouring down, and Limbeck soon discovered he could see better without spectacles than he could with them, and pulled them off. The object was now nothing but a blur in front of him, but it was a blur that was rapidly growing larger, indicating he was getting nearer. Without his spectacles, Limbeck couldn’t see what it was, until he was actually standing right in front of it.
“A Welf ship!” he gasped.
Though he had never seen one, the Geg recognized the ship instantly from the descriptions given by those who had. Made of dragon skin stretched over wood, with huge wings that kept it soaring in the air, the ship was monstrous in both appearance and size. The magical power of the Welves kept it afloat, carrying them from the heavens to the lowly realm of the Gegs below. But this ship wasn’t flying or floating. It was lying on the ground, and Limbeck, staring at it nearsightedly through the driving rain, could have sworn—if such a thing were possible for a ship of the immortal Welves—that it was broken. Pieces of sharp wood jutted up at odd angles. The dragon skin was torn and rent, leaving gaping holes.
A bolt of lightning striking quite near him, and the resultant thunder, caused the Geg to remember his danger. Hurriedly he leapt into one of the holes that had been torn in the side of the ship.
A sickening smell made Limbeck gag.
“Ugh.” He grasped his nose with his hand. “It reminds me of the time the rat crawled up the chimney and died. I wonder what’s causing it.” The storm had settled in; the darkness inside the ship was intense. The lightning strikes were almost continuous, however, providing brief flashes of illuminating light before the ship was once again plunged into pitch-darkness. The light didn’t help Limbeck much. Nor did his spectacles, when he finally remembered to put them on. The interior of the ship was strange and made no sense to him. He couldn’t tell up from down or what was floor or wall. Objects were scattered about, but he didn’t know what they were or what they did and was reluctant to touch them. He had a fear, in the back of his mind, that if he bothered anything the strange craft might suddenly rise up and fly off with him. And though the thought of such an adventure was somewhat exciting, Limbeck knew that if his father had been mad before, he would positively foam at the mouth to hear that his son had in any way annoyed the Welves. Limbeck resolved to keep near the doorway, holding his nose, until the storm ended and he could find his way back to Het. But the whys and whats and wherefores that were continually plunging him into trouble in school began buzzing in his brain.
“I wonder what those are,” he muttered, staring at a number of fascinating-looking blurs lying scattered about on the floor just a few feet in front of him.
Cautiously he drew nearer. They didn’t look dangerous. In fact, they looked like . . .
“Books!” said Limbeck in astonishment. “Just like the ones the old clark used to teach me to read.”
Before Limbeck quite knew what was happening, the “why” was propelling him forward.
He was very near the objects and could see, with growing excitement, that they were books, when his foot struck against something that was soft and squishy. Leaning down, gagging at the foul smell, Limbeck waited for another lightning flash to show him the obstacle.
It was, he saw in horror, a bloated and decaying corpse. . . .
“Hey, wake up,” said the copper, poking Limbeck in the side. “Wombe’s the next stop.”
10
An ordinary felon on Drevlin would have been brought before his local Froman for judgment. Petty thefts, drunk—and-disorderlies, the odd brawl—these were considered to fall under the domain of the head of the defendant’s own scrift. A crime against the Kicksey-Winsey, however, was considered high treason and therefore the defendant was required to go before the High Froman. The High Froman was head of the most important scrift in Drevlin—at least that was how his clan viewed themselves and that was how other Gegs were expected to view them. It was their scrift which was in charge of the Palm—the hallowed altar where, once a month, the Welves descended from the heavens in their powerful winged dragon ships and accepted the homage of the Gegs, given in the form of holy water. In return, the Welves left behind “blessings” before they departed.
The capital city of Wombe was very modern, compared to other cities on Drevlin. Few of the original buildings constructed by the Mangers remained standing. The Kicksey-Winsey, needing to expand, had leveled and built over them, thus destroying much of the existing housing of the Gegs. Nothing daunted, the Gegs had simply moved into sections of the Kicksey-Winsey that the Kicksey-Winsey had abandoned. It was considered quite fashionable to live in the Kicksey-Winsey. The High Froman himself had a house in what had once been a holding tank.
The High Froman held court inside a building known as the Factree. A huge structure, one of the largest on Drevlin, the Factree was made of iron and corrugated steel and was, so legend had it, the birthplace of the Kicksey-Winsey. The Factree had long since been abandoned and partially demolished, the Kicksey-Winsey having fed parasitically off that which gave it birth. But here and there, standing silent and ghostly within the eerie light of the glimmerglamps, could be seen the skeleton of a clawlike arm. The Factree was a sacred and holy place to the Gegs. Not only was it the Kicksey-Winsey’s birthplace, but it was in the Factree that the Gegs’ most hallowed icon was located—the brass statue of a Manger. The statue, which was the figure of a robed and hooded man, was taller than the Gegs and considerably thinner. The face had been carved in such a way that it was shadowed by the hood. There was a suggestion of a nose, and the outlines of lips and prominent cheekbones and the rest blended into the metal. In one of its hands the Manger grasped a huge, staring eyeball. The other arm, held in a crooked position, was hinged at the elbow.
Standing on a raised dais next to the statue of the Manger was a tall overstuffed chair. It had obviously been constructed for those built along different dimensions than the Gegs, for its seat was some three Geg-feet off the floor, its back was nearly as tall as the Manger, and it was extremely narrow. This chair was the High Froman’s ceremonial sit-up-high, and he squeezed his large body into it on occasions of state. He overlapped the sides and his feet dangled well above the dais, but these minor detractions in no way reduced his dignity.