Thomas Gown's connection to a group of powerful wizards who lived thousands of years ago is finally revealed, and he learns that he may be able to save his world and his civilisation, along with others beyond number, from a threat that will manifest...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The Hopu was able to move much faster through a planet's atmosphere than the Jules Verne, and was cruising a couple of hundred feet above the surface of Garus less than an hour after leaving the Tharian ship.
The five Tharians had been able to stand on the deck as the ship dropped rapidly through the atmosphere, all four masts folded against the hull and a bubble of magical force coming into being around the ship to protect it from the howling gales caused by their great speed. The Hopu had slowed as they'd approached sea level, though, allowing the crew to deploy the masts and sails again, and a few moments later the Tharians had been able to see the city of Chapuk growing beneath them.
They'd seen a Garusian city before of course, in the Jules Verne's scrying mirror, and they hadn't been impressed by it then, but now they were seeing it with their own eyes and it was even uglier than they remembered. From this distance, it looked as if a monstrous child had scattered his building bricks on the ground. Thousands of bricks, all identical, and they'd just been allowed to remain where they'd fallen. Looking through a borrowed spyglass, Strong saw that each building consisted of prefabricated panels, crudely fastened together and with shutters instead of windows so that the residents had to let the wind in as well as the light.
Even the larger public buildings, schools and such, were merely collections of these wooden cubes fastened together, sometimes stacked up two or three high, and the only concession to individuality were the coatings of paint worn by some of them. They had obviously been designed to be quick and easy to build, to replace city districts destroyed in a Salemian raid. There was little attempt at decoration or ornamentation. Nothing apart from their colour to make any of the thousands of wooden cubes stand out from the others.
Probably no point wasting time and effort in prettying them up, thought Strong sadly. Why go to that effort when it might all go up in flames in the next raid? The city looked like a refugee camp, like something put up overnight to house the survivors of a natural disaster. Which was exactly what it was, thought Strong, except that they and the people of the planet Salemia were inflicting the disaster on each other, day after day, year after year. Gods! thought the Captain in horror. How long has this been going on? And why? What could possibly have happened to make the two planets hate each other so much?
The city sat astride a range of low hills, and as they passed over the hills, heading for the ocean on whose shore the city had been built, Strong got his first glimpse of its waterfront and what he saw made him gasp aloud in disgust. The other half of the city was different. Magnificent buildings of slate and stone with high towers covered with copper and gold glittering in the sunlight. Pennants fluttered in the wind, over half of which bore the design of a white hand holding a blue flower. Some of the buildings were huge, with wings and outbuildings covering several acres and reaching three or four storeys in height, their hundreds of windows reflecting the silvery sea, and their design impressed even the Beltharan Captain, who was something of a scholar of Agglemonian architecture.
