Half an hour later, Macurdy was on Vulkan again, riding down the avenue of pines, reciting what he'd seen and learned. He'd decided the King in Silver Mountain was not as bad as he'd thought.

‹He's not,› Vulkan agreed. ‹He sees things from his own viewpoint. And there was wisdom in those words that annoyed you.› He paused reflectively. ‹But he does not appreciate what Yuulith would be like, ruled by the Voitusotar. I am not sure that you and I do, fully.›

PART FOUR

War: Bloody Beginnings

Among the Voitusotar, succession to the throne is not subject to dispute. A crown prince is selected by what they term the "Soul of the Voitusotar," most often from the family of the existing Crystal Lord.

The nature of the Soul of the Voitusotar is not clear. It appears to be an aspect of the voitik hive mind, acting upon the total knowledge of the species, but having its own volition…

Talent in sorcery is not held by the Voitusotar to be the supreme virtue. It shares that honor with intelligence. Knowledge, on the other hand, is taken for granted. The hive mind is the receptacle of everything known to them, and what one knows is available to all. But understanding presents problems, as does accessing specific knowledge only vaguely identified by the seeker. And while the content of that vast repository includes decisions, it does not hold wisdom…

From: The Voitusotar by Admiral Rister Vellinghuus

(translated from the Hithmearcisc by Magister Dohns Macurdy).

23 The Language Instructor

Of the three ships sent exploring westward, fifteen years earlier, only one returned to Hithmearc. That voyage had predated voitik knowledge of sextants, and navigation had been by the sun, the pole star, and dead reckoning. But after sixty-one days and nights at sea, with winds from various quarters, and having twice been driven far off course by storms, dead reckoning had left a lot of slack.

The surviving ship had been the smallest of the three, and the one given the most northerly course. The first land she'd raised had been a high rocky coast, dark with coniferous forest, and showing no sign of habitation. She'd replenished her water supply but not her food, then explored southward. After a week, a fishing boat was sighted, then more of them, along with villages, small towns, and several cargo ships of modest size, schooner-rigged for coastal travel. Her own square sails made the Hithik vessel conspicuous, and her human skipper nervous.

Meanwhile his food supply continued to shrink, and he'd already learned that Vismearc was inhabited and civilized. All he really needed besides that were captives to take home with him, from whom Vismearcisc could be learned.

Thus he anchored one night and sent out an armed party, which captured two youths just back from tending lobster traps. With this modest but important booty, the Hithik skipper set sail for home.

Before he got there, he became involved with autumn storms, and reached home late and hungry, his vessel severely battered. One of his captives had died of a bleeding flux.

The captain had early assigned his eleven-year-old cabin boy to be the captives' tutor, and the boy showed a talent for language. By the time they'd reached Hithmearc, both tutor and captive had made major progress in speaking and understanding the other's language. And in the process, the cabin boy learned that the ylver had indeed arrived in Vismearc, and prospered. The Ylvin Coast began a day south of the captive's village.

At the voitik crown prince's order, the cabin boy remained the captive's companion. A year later, the captive died of a plague. The cabin boy then became the crown prince's personal language instructor, and indirect resource for the hive mind.

24 An Ill Wind

On the horizon, the admiral of the voitik armada could see a low coast that could only be Vismearc. But where in Vismearc? The Ylvin Coast? South of it? North of it?

The armada had clocks; clocks had long been familiar in Hithmearc. It also had sextants, courtesy of the Occult Bureau of the Nazi SS, via the Bavarian Gate. So the admiral knew rather closely where on the globe they were. But as he pointed out to the crown prince, what he didn't know was where on the globe they needed to be.

The crown prince was not, of course, surprised, but the admiral felt uncomfortable with it. He was, after all, merely human, as were all the armada's officers and crew, and one preferred not to disappoint one's voitik masters.

Minutes later, the lookout reported a small sailboat to windward, and the crown prince ordered a captive taken. The admiral had signal flags run up, and for miles astern, the vast fleet hove to. A courier schooner was sent in to pick up the boat's occupant. From him, the crown prince learned that the ylver land was "off north some'rs"-far enough, he knew no more about it. Off north was adequate.

The armada had experienced no major storm, but constant strong westerlies had seriously slowed it. The crossing had taken sixty-four days, and supplies of drinking water were seriously depleted. So instead of turning north at once, the crown prince decided to land and refill the water casks. Meanwhile the troops could go ashore. The voitar were desperate to stand on stable ground, and stop taking the antiseasickness potion provided by voitik herbalists. Prolonged use had caused chronic bowel disorders.

The flat, sandy Scrub Coast had no harbors to accommodate 304 ships. By Hithik standards it had no harbors at all. Its fishing boats and smugglers' sloops sheltered in the lee of offshore islands and sand spits. And in the tidewaters of streams, few of them large, though some could accommodate ships in their lower reaches.

Thus the armada was scattered along some ten miles of coast. Ships carrying the wasted, ramshackle cavalry horses took turns at such wharves as could accommodate a bark. Others lay in crowded anchorages, many of them aground at low tide, for there were no deep water anchorages inshore. Many lay at anchor in the open sea. Lifeboats shuttled to the beaches and back, landing troops.

The local population had fled into the sparse forest before the first anchor dropped. Only elders and the disabled remained, and they were questioned. There was, they insisted, no land route northward to the ylvin land-"the empire," they called it. A great swamp intervened.

Cavalry patrols were sent out on the more serviceable saddle mounts, seeking fodder and grain for the horses, and women for the officers. They found the country sandy, and the forage coarse. Here and there were boggy areas, mostly small, with lusty mosquito populations. Scattered along the streams were hardscrabble farms, on silty or sandy bottomlands, growing corn, squash, melons and groundnuts. But not fodder. Few owned a horse, and their cows and pigs foraged for themselves, tended by boys and young girls in no better flesh than the livestock.

The ships' crews were hard at work. Lifeboats made trip after trip up streams, carrying casks to be filled with dark and dubious water, then were rowed back to their ships. The crown prince was impatient, and soldiers were assigned to help with the rowing, which went on around the clock. The weather was hot and humid, and the oarsmen, and the men on the tackle raising the casks, sweated copiously. The breeze gave scant relief.

The next morning dawned to stronger breezes, and high thin clouds that thickened through the day. The ships' officers began to look nervously over their shoulders. Orders were shouted to hurry the work, but after a brief response, the pace slowed again. Before supper, signal flags ordered all ships secured for a storm. Spare anchors were lowered.