Chapter 10

Albatross

I yawned as I got out of my small cabin, the morning sun burning through the left porthole at the end of the hall. Our cabins were in the nose of the Albatross, across from the engine room. All the other amenities, what little there were, were squished together in a small second deck right underneath the engine room.

The hall continued on along the right side of the airship, the only door leading to the engine room while several portholes gave me a view of the dark ocean below, though it looked like we were flying through low-lying clouds at the moment.

My breath escaped in a cloud as I stepped into the pilot cabin. "Good morning. And see, nothing happened."

Huddled in her cloak, Sheraine gave me a bleary-eyed glare. The engine was radiating heat into the rest of the airship, and I had done my best to insulate the hull, but it was wood, and we were over a kilometer up in the sky. "Forgive me for not trusting our lives to a fork."

I checked our course and said fork. It was a wooden plug with two hooked tines that kept the wheel from turning either way. The needle on the compass had moved slightly, and looking through the front porthole, I studied the little cloth strip that served as a poor man's wind direction sensor. The wind had shifted, rather than coming from the north it now buffeted the Albatross from the northeast.

"If something goes wrong, it won't be the wheel lock that will fail us. I'm more worried about a rip in the air bag or that the engine seizes up and we'd become dependent entirely on which way the wind blows until I woke up." I unhooked the lock and turned the wheel a single spoke before engaging it again.

"Thank you for those images," Sheraine said. "Will you at least stay here and keep an eye out while I get some much-needed sleep?"

"I'm going to go over the entire airship to check everything," I promised her. "I've got faith in my work, but it does need constant vigilance, or something can go wrong."

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "If that's your attempt to reassure me, I must tell you it's not working. But I'm too tired to care much." She shuffled down the steps, passing Gemiad when she was about to come up.

"Good morning," I said to her as I called upon my power to just fix everything.

Mend the Vessel

The feedback from my power made me grimace, I hadn't expected this much wear and tear from barely a day of operation. Several of the gears had been worn down. I'd need to add extra oil to those. There were deformations in both the engine and the hull, a combination of the temperature difference and the unseasoned wood. I'd done my best, but I had no actual control over time. Meanwhile, the ropes had rubbed against the gasbag and already thinned the fabric in several places.

"Good morning," Gemiad said, holding up a fist to stifle a yawn. "Those hammocks are surprisingly comfortable, but it still took some getting used to the motions."

"I know what you mean. This was actually my first time sleeping in one as well." I peered through the left porthole on my tiptoes to try and see what was below. All I saw was a dark tapestry of golden hills and shadowed valleys.

"How long is this journey going to take?"

I turned away from the porthole and shrugged. "Hard to say, but if I'm right about the distance and our own speed, just getting there might take two weeks in total."

"Two weeks?" Gemiad frowned, looking to the side. "We'll want to ration our food in that case. We did hunt down several rabbits while you were building this, but those combined with what the Machagar family could spare for us might not be enough for three people. Not for that long."

I considered what we'd bought from those farmers. The rabbits I did know about, I'd diverted a few minutes to build a smoke rack to help preserve their catches, but she was right. "Lots of soup then."

Gemiad snorted. "You might know all about machines like these, but I know how to survive with little. We'll make stews, and we'll want to portion how much each of us gets as well. You don't need any more food than a human, right?"

I shrugged. "I don't, not if I don't return to my original shape. And I can try to do some hunting of my own."

She glanced at the wheel. "Not before both Sheraine and I know how to sail this airship of yours. If you just jump off I think she might have a heart attack."

I frowned. "I'm not one for practical jokes. I wouldn't just jump off; I'd tell you before I did something like that."

But Gemiad shook her head. "No, just forget I said anything. Let's head to the storeroom so I can get a stew brewing. You'll have to explain how all of that works, because I've never seen a kitchen like that."

"Not like I could make a traditional one," I said. "The bricks alone would make it the heaviest thing in the ship, not to mention fuel. So the copper spiral you saw is actually a pipe drawing heated air directly from the engine."

I followed her down the steps as I continued my explanation.

VVVV

The rope groaned as the wind tugged at the airship, the anchor scraping against the once melted stone of one of the towers peaking out from the waves. I sent out the other anchors, one just sank into the water, but the others hit other ruins either just above the water or below it.

"Why is it this hot? It's still winter!" Gemiad was the only one sweating, even though I'd adjusted her dress to something more suitable for the current weather.

"We've passed the equator," I said, gesturing north. "That means it's actually summer here, and because we're still close to the equator, it's also hotter. The further south we go now, the cooler it should get."

"That's normal?" I nodded, and she turned to Sheraine. "That explains that, and I already know no amount of heat bothers Ron, but why aren't you sweating? I could tell if it was some sort of weave."

"I'm only teaching you some of the basics of channeling, nothing more, child. Certainly, not the secrets only Aes Sedai know."

"It's a concentration trick," I said. I fought the smile, but couldn't quite manage it. "Similar to the state you need to connect to the Source, but it's not actually channeling." I hummed as I tried to drudge up the specifics. "You've got to breathe deep, right down into your belly, then exhale. All of it spaced out evenly while you maintain a sense of … tranquility."

"Only Aes Sedai and Ron Shen," Sheraine said to the pilot cabin's ceiling before returning her gaze to us. "I will not teach you this, Gemiad. But I will caution you that it takes training and that his summation may lack … instructions."

"But I'll stop sweating?"

"It's a mind trick, it won't stop you from getting sunburn or frostbite," I said. "But yes, if you manage it, you won't sweat in this sort of weather."

Sheraine stepped outside the pilot cabin and onto the small platform so she could look over the side. "Do you imagine we'll need to stay here long?" Fresh air streamed in from the outside, though it wasn't any cooler.

I joined her, which left little room for Gemiad, so I hopped onto the railing. "A couple of hours, maybe? Depends on how successful we'll be with fishing." Between me using miracles to clean our clothes and enough water to clean ourselves with a washcloth, the smell inside the airship wasn't too bad. But I noticed the difference now that I was outside.

"Fishing? I thought this place was what you were looking for?"

My eyebrows shot up, and I studied what little ruins I could see from here. There were two towers that were more or less intact and one that wasn't. The sea was clear, so we could see other ruins at the foot of the towers before the sea floor sloped down into the dark. Those towers had very distinct domes with a split cover in the middle, though both had been closed when disaster had befallen this part of the world.

"No, the description I have doesn't match Nol Caimaine. Those towers are observatories, they were used to study the stars and other phenomena. If I'm right, and we're actually looking at the top of what used to be a mountain, then this might be Lo'waille. It was a small city with a historic … place of learning, especially renowned for studying the stars. With the map I have, we're still two thousand miles north of our destination."

"I see. Then how do you imagine we catch these fish? We have no nets or fishing lines unless you are about to make those?"

"Well, I was thinking you and Gemiad could try to use the One Power to catch some while I go for a more primal method." Tapping an imaginary hat in a salute, I stepped off the railing and let myself plummet to the ocean. Before I touched the water, I returned to my draconic form and tucked in my wings.

I plunged down to the sea floor, which was only 10 meters beneath the surface, thanks to the ruins, which were, in turn, covered in coral. A dozen different species of fish and three kinds of crustacean shot into hiding as I plunged down. A cloud of silvery fish swarmed away, only to double back when a couple of sharks turned towards them.

I couldn't breathe underwater, and while my lungs were more efficient, I still had only ten minutes before I would have to surface to catch a breath. I propelled myself forward with my tail and pulled myself along the coral.

There was something eerie about the ruins around me, the architecture almost familiar but not quite. Maybe because of their function, maybe because they'd already been historical relics three thousand years ago. The observatory towers and their support buildings sat on what had once been a flat mesa, now I pulled myself over the edge and saw the slope going down and down into darkness.

The coral thinned out as less and less light reached those depths, but there were still ruins here and there along what was once a road zigzagging its way up the slope. Though most were just heaps of stone with some fragments of a wall still standing upright.

These were just the last remnants of what had once been a community of thousands, tens of thousands. Time and the ocean had erased everything else, any clue, any memory of what had once been, of those who had once been here.

Things would be worse once we reached the Land of the Mad Men, the disaster had never really stopped there. And I would have to accept that state of affairs for now, nothing could be solved until saidin was cleansed and I … could very well fail if I tried to do that as I was now.

I can't take on all the problems of this world. It's not my home and I won't be staying here forever. Right now, I should be selfish.

I turned around and started hunting.

VVVV

The world flashed white an instant before it roared and shook the Albatross like a toy. Sheets of water slammed against the glass while the propellers sprayed water as if they were fountains. Blinking rapidly some details returned.

The world outside was a dark, roiling mass, the sandbags on the starboard side slammed against the hull. "We need to get out of this storm!" Gemiad shouted from only a meter away, still nearly drowned out by the complaints of the Albatross and the howling storm.

"There's water coming in," Sheraine announced from the engine room. It only took me a moment to figure out from where. The engine was a hybrid using both local magic as well as the principle of a stirling engine to provide power, but given that this was an airship I'd taken the shortcut of just sourcing the cold air from the outside. "I'm using a weave to-"

Another crack and rolling thunder that I felt in my own chest drowned out the rest. "Do what you can!" The wooden wheel creaked in my grip as it fought against me. The rudders threatened to turn into sails as the wind slammed into them, one of the propeller rudders had already been torn off by a sharp gust.

"Can you bring us down again?"

I shook my head. "That won't help! Weather won't be much better and if we descend too much we might get hit by a freak wave!" The altimeter had lost its purpose as the air pressure had dropped like a stone thanks to the storm, but we weren't that high. "We're going to fly above the storm. Hold on!"

Vessel and pilot as one!

There was no time for a slow ascent. I just cut away all the ballast in one go, even as I became all too aware of all the cracks and gaps in the hull, the ropes fraying away. We shot up like a rocket. I could feel the G-forces, and Gemiad exclaimed as she fell to the floor.

Another lightning bolt seared my vision, the glass rattling a second later. But the waterfall petered out to just a shower and the altimeter was evening out. Then, one moment we were still flying through darkness, the next a bright blue sky and sunlight blazed into the Albatross.

With the sun came not warmth, but a creeping chill. We were still ascending as well, but it was finally slowing down.

"How high are we?" Gemiad asked as she got up and peered through the side porthole. Then gasped as she caught sight of the mountains of black stormclouds still raging beneath us.

"One and a half miles at least," I said. "How are you feeling?"

She blinked. "My … It hurts a little where I landed," Gemiad said, her cheeks flushing. She was also breathing deeper. "And why is it getting colder when the sun is shining?"

"It gets colder the higher we go. But you need to sit down, the air's thinner here." How high could we go before there was too little oxygen for a human? I felt fine so far, but my lungs were more efficient. If there simply wasn't enough air, I, too, could suffocate.

"Sheraine," I shouted through the speaking tube. "You need to sit down. Don't exert yourself."

"Don't worry about me, worry about this machine!"

The engine was a quiet thing, but the higher we flew the sharper the difference in temperature between the outside air rushing past and the air heated up by Sheraine's weave. And for a Stirling engine, it was that difference that got turned into energy. I felt it start to vibrate, like a racing heart, the entire ship shook in sympathy.

"It's tearing itself apart," Sheraine shouted through the speaking tube. "I can't do anything about it, there's no place for the heat to go!" Her breathing turned labored as she continued to shout.

"We need the speed! We have to get past the storm before we can descend." They hadn't even stopped ascending yet. But I could feel it. Some of the steel bolts holding the entire engine down were splintering the wood around them. One cylinder cracked as it had cycled too fast between cooling down and heating up.

Mend the Vessel

I slammed more of my power into the Albatross and felt it heal, only to have a front row seat feeling the ship tear itself apart all over again. I peered through every window available, but the hull blocked much of my view. If I'd had more time, I would have placed the pilot cabin in front at the belly of the ship, but that would have taken more time and more parts that could break down.

I glanced down at Gemiad. She breathed deep and fast, and her lips were still turning blue. We weren't climbing anymore, but staying at this altitude for long wasn't an option. I couldn't see where the storm ended, but those dark clouds were still rushing past on both our port and starboard side.

Using transmutation just to top up the oxygen content in the air aboard wasn't really an option. The hull wasn't airtight, so we'd lose it nearly as fast as I could make it. And if I just turned a lot of the nitrogen into oxygen, it would poison rather than save us.

"I'm sorry," I told Gemiad. "I got impatient, and I rushed to build this rather than taking the time to build the airship right."

"You'll. Save. Us," Gemiad gasped.

I grimaced. "It's not saving if I'm responsible for putting you in danger in the first place. And it's not the first time. Why did you come with me?"

There was only her labored breathing. I had to chance it. Fingers crossed that we would dive into a quieter part of the storm. "Because," Gemiad said. "I hate. Not know … ing. That. Kills."

I could only nod my head; I didn't trust myself enough to have a good reply. "Then, to inform you both, we're diving into the storm again," I said instead, spending more of my power to alter the ship once again.

Wood forged into steel

The ropes groaned as the frame turned to steel, only to add a hounding song when the plant fibers turned to carbon-infused iron as well. We didn't drop as fast as we'd risen, but I didn't want to add any further weight. I just had to hope the steel ropes wouldn't cut their way through the airbag. My effort pool wasn't infinite, and I would only get some back in fifteen minutes. The effort I'd spent on miracles wouldn't return until the sun rose tomorrow.

It took five minutes before we'd descended enough that I noticed a positive change in Gemiad as her breathing eased. The next moment, a dark storm cloud appeared right in front of us, and we were plunged into darkness.

Rain slammed into us, and the ship shook in the wind even as the engine calmed down. I had barely braced myself when it was already gone and sunlight streamed into the cabin. Now, I saw nothing but blue sky and white clouds ahead.

"We're through the storm," Gemiad said from right next to me.

"Looks like it."

From the belly of the ship and up the hallway came Sheraine's voice, shouting her words. "Ron, come down here. You must see this."

I hesitated, then locked the wheel and ran down the steps and the hall. A turn and another set of stairs saw me on the bottom deck. There wasn't much room down here. I couldn't stand straight without hitting my head on a beam.

I found Sheraine at the observation window at the prow of the Albatross, the biggest single piece of glass on the airship. "Did you spot another storm?"

"No, I believe we've arrived at your Land of Madness," she said, pointing at something on the horizon.

I squinted, there was a smudge of darkness on the horizon, one that resolved into ragged, black-gray teeth that dribbled glowing orange liquid down their side as we flew closer.

"A land that's never healed from the Breaking," I mumbled.