Crackling bonfires shone the beach sand, trolls walking about or sitting and drinking something from kegs, slurping loudly. Two giant zeppelins stood out above the surf like two oblong light-grey hills. One of them had been tied to stakes just two dozens footsteps away.
"Ah!" Lynette gave a gasp of astonishment at the sight of the imposing airships.
"Shhh!" Andreas warningly put his palm onto her shoulder as three monsters started a talk at the nearest bonfire.
"Have you found them?" the chieftain barked rudely, he had a black tassel on his helmet top and that distinguished him from the others.
"Not yet," one brute, an ugly creature with a long nose, replied in a strident voice but with a fearful subservient intonation.
"Idiots!!" the chieftain roared, "loafers!"
"Don't worry, lord Stetsko!" another menial, stocky and bulky, tried to pacify the fury of their ruler, "they cannot escape now! Our flotilla keeps an eye on the yacht, we will not let the Dwarf take them away!"
"Yes, really!" the first monster gave a series of nods in a fit of a servile ardour, "our boats will come here in the morning to surround the island!"
"Find them!" the chieftain uttered arrogantly, "I sense the key, it must be somewhere close at hand!"
The two menials minced away, the chieftain imperiously strode to one more group of his soldiers to order them about, only growling indistinct commands could be heard.
Lynette and Andreas wordlessly exchanged glances. He pointed at the near-by zeppelin with an expressive look, she nodded.
The gondola was designed like a marine ship deck, wooden planking and parapets. The balloon had a vast hole at its bottom with a black sooty burner fixed under it, resembling a large oil-stove, a weak flickering flame illuminating a heap of numerous barrels and kegs.
Having sneaked up, Lynette and Andreas got onto the gondola deck through the open wicket in the parapet, he helped her to climb aboard. Then they unsheathed their swords and simultaneously cut the two thick ropes the airship had been moored to the beach with. The unleashed apparatus swayed and slowly moved upwards.
"Add some hot air to the balloon, and I'll get rid of the superfluous ballast!" he asked her quietly, grabbed a keg and threw it overboard.
Lynette reached out her hand and turned the burner faucet on. The flame glared and rumbled triumphantly.
The trolls bawled and rushed to the launching zeppelin. One snarling monster jumped up, his paws clutched at the wooden banisters, but Andreas dropped another keg onto his head and knocked him down.
"Stop them!!!" the chieftain screamed somewhat hysterically and trotted towards a big long boat. His two obsequious assistants hastily followed him and bustled awkwardly putting a sail on, hampering each other in a tangle.
The bonfires, the scurrying enemies, the shore, everything was getting away becoming smaller and smaller.
"What a lumber! A kerosene engine!" Andreas came up to a ridiculous aggregate of cranks, cylinders, gear-boxes and pistons at the stern and tugged at a lever. The device sneezed, puffed with smoke, rattled but did begin to work rotating a pair of huge propellers.
Then they saw the second airship chasing them, rising and approaching to them rather quickly, ferociously howling trolls brandishing lances in its gondola.
Lynette and Andreas resumed throwing the ballast out, and that let them gain height. The hostile zeppelin appeared to be straight below. A big barrel fell onto it, fractured it and made a hole in its shell. The balloon shrivelled, steaming hot air hissed out, and the airship with whining monsters collapsed into the sea.
"Oohhh!" Lynette passed her hand over her forehead, giving a sigh of relief, "what now?"
"To the University Lighthouse, I suppose," Andreas looked around at the night sky, then clicked with a couple of switches on the engine control panel, and the zeppelin made a slow turn, "that bright constellation indicates the North."
"What if we get lost?"
"We shall not! Watch attentively!" he diminished the burner flame and led her to the gondola prow, they stood there holding at the parapet.
The stars, the sea glimmering with the moonlight, nothing more in the night expanse.
But one star gleamed somewhere far away at the very horizon line, gradually getting brighter.
"What's that?" she wondered.
"The Lighthouse!" his calm tone was reassuring.
"You must have been involved in such adventures many times," she gave him a look.
"Not considering this our trouble," he replied a little musingly, "my life is rather boring."
"Really?" she queried, "but hired guardians travel a lot and fight a lot?"
"At the sight of a Grey Knight," no pride but an ironical pity in his intonation, "robbers usually think twice before attacking. Thus, I don't have to use my sword very often. I take part in commercial trips mostly to see the world."
The aquarelle azure was insensibly lightening, and in the early morning twilight the two travellers saw a distant coast. A colossal lighthouse towered above a town of geometrically immaculate streets, rectangular buildings of white stone, even dark tiles of roofs seemed to be precisely adjusted to one another. There were no fortification walls, but a massive breakwater protected the harbour.
"We should not park our transport here, it's too large to be imperceptible," Andreas tugged at a rigging rope, a valve at the balloon top let some hot hissing air out, and the zeppelin lowered to the beach, nearly touching the water.
Hand in hand they easily jumped off onto the sand, the surf waves washed their high-boots. The empty airship rose again drifting away, and they headed for the town shone with the pink dawn.
A flagstone embankment, a long house with a dark wooden entrance door, a parquet in a corridor with high windows.
"Isn't it Andreas, one of our brilliant graduates?! together with a young lass!" a middle-aged man in a long dark-purple mantle wondered. His short brown hair wasn't turning grey yet, and his face had no particular wrinkles, but he made an impression of an intelligent and sophisticated person.
"How do you do, professor McClellan!" Andreas greeted him.
"When shall you settle down, get married and busy yourself with science, at last?" the professor shook his head, pretending a disapproval, but his eyes were benevolent.
"We have an interesting heirloom, would you take a look at it?"
"Let's talk in my study!" professor McClellan showed them the way to a vast hall with a vaulted ceiling. Lacquered wooden desks were swamped with things from different worlds and times. Rolls of antique manuscripts, a grey portable computer with some rich multicoloured text on the flat display, figured bronze candlesticks, piles of paper near a white printer. Ancient voluminous books with golden titles, digital compact disks in transparent plastic boxes on the shelves of bookcases.
"Amazing!" the professor exclaimed when Lynette gave him the key, after a short but attentive surveying he returned it to her and began to rummage on a shelf, "I have seen it, but where?.. A-ha!"
He chose a large book in a dark cover, opened it and put it onto a table, turning pages. Drawings of archers, knights, castles… and a picture of the key.
"Dryads and Elves left El Dorado and locked all its portals," Lynette read the ornate italic text, "not to fight multifarious invaders any splendid land always attracts… They descended from the Malachite Plateau and created a realm near the Ariadna City…"
