“Jalas has a good five stone on you,” Hallow pointed out. “And is a few inches taller.”
“Nonetheless, this time, I will find the third moonstone’s location. You have the others?”
“Yes.” A strange sense of reluctance claimed Hallow as he dug out of the small leather bag that hung from his belt an object wrapped in blue silk and sealed with a number of runes that glowed silver on the fabric. “I need not tell you to guard these with your life. Exodius spent an entire day on our journey to Kelos telling me just how powerful these stones are, and that’s why he split them up so they could not be used by someone who couldn’t control their power.”
Israel took the silk package and slipped it inside his jerkin. “You don’t need to tell me, but I understand why you feel driven to do so. They will not be misused, at least not by me, and I will allow no other to possess them.”
Hallow disliked letting the stones out of his possession, but knew if he was possibly going to his death, it was better that Israel have the opportunity to use them. If there was any chance of rescuing Deo and the queen, it would be worth the sacrifice.
“You are off now?” Israel asked, glancing out of an unshuttered window. “The moon is not yet up.”
“Quinn promises that Bellias Starsong will bless our journey with her presence, and much as I am loath to start at such an inauspicious time, I have learned to trust his judgement.”
“And yet you are half-Starborn,” Lord Israel said, shaking his head in mock dismay.
Hallow’s eyes widened in surprise. He could count on one finger the number of people who knew the truth about him, and yet here was Israel referring to his most well-kept secret. “I am, although I was unaware that truth was known except by one other.”
“Your wife, I presume? No, do not scowl at me—she hasn’t spilled your secrets.” He made a face. “I doubt if she’d say anything to me of her own accord. She seems to dislike me.”
“Do you wonder why?” Hallow asked, amused despite himself. “For almost a year she was under the impression you callously killed your son.”
“I didn’t.”
“No, but you did wed his betrothed.”
One of Israel’s shoulders twitched. “Deo wasn’t betrothed. He told me himself that he would wed if and when he chose, and he didn’t choose to do so at that time. Besides, the marriage to Idril was a political maneuver that lasted all of six weeks before she formally conducted the ceremony of divorce.”
“I simply offer you an explanation of why Allegria has trouble seeing you in any light but that of villain,” Hallow said mildly.
“She can see me in any light she desires so long as she can help release Deo.” Lord Israel’s gaze was particularly piercing.
Hallow, who had been granted a seat at the Council of Four Armies when he had taken over as master of Kelos, could almost feel himself being judged. He resisted the urge to square his shoulders, and instead allowed one side of his mouth to curl up into a lop-sided smile. “The subject of my ancestry aside, we will do everything that’s possible to save him. Assuming we survive the trip to Eris.” His smile faded as he thought of the danger that faced his company.
Israel continued to watch him, and showing a moment of insight, said softly, “She would not let you go alone. She is not that type of woman.”
“No, she is not,” he said with a sigh, knowing full well that whether they lived or died, Allegria would be at his side. “But it’s not devotion to me alone that drives her. She bears a burden of guilt that both Deo and the queen are in Eris.”
“She is not to blame. Deo chose his own path. I do not say I would have chosen it for him, but I understand why he decided to join his mother.” Lord Israel was looking past him again, staring sightlessly into the fire.
Hallow was silent for a few moments before saying, “I am leaving Thorn with you. He may not be able to talk to you, but he has powers of his own, and it is my hope he will be able to work some magic on Jalas that bends him to your will.”
“Any help in that regard is welcome, although I thought only the Master of Kelos could use his powers.”
“He likes to think that, but I’ve learned over the last eleven months that Thorn—annoying as he can be—is far more powerful than he lets on. Do not hesitate to ask him for assistance.”
Israel murmured something about doing so.
Despite having one Fireborn parent, Hallow did not bear the grace of Alba, and lacked the ability some Fireborn had to sense circumstances surrounding those he loved, a trait that he knew Israel bore. “Is there anything you can tell us about the queen or Deo’s situation? Are they still in peril?”
“Yes,” Israel said, closing his eyes. His fingers fisted, the knuckles growing white. “But I have faith in Dasa’s ability to protect herself. It is Deo you must concentrate on. He is too stubborn, too sure of his own abilities, and will run headlong into trouble rather than finessing his way out as any wise man would do.”
“I have ample experience with Deo’s insistence upon running, my lord,” Hallow said dryly. “Should we make it to Eris, we will find him. It won’t be easy to keep him from attacking the Harborym and their captain in order to free the queen, but we will do our best to keep him safe.”
“That’s all I ask.” Israel slid a glance toward the closed door that led to Jalas’s bedchamber. “It shouldn’t take me longer than a week to get the stone from Jalas. If your journey lasts five days, that will give you time to locate Deo before I arrive.”
It was on the tip of Hallow’s tongue to ask how Lord Israel expected to do in a week what he had yet to accomplish, but decided he didn’t want to go to his (possible) death with the idea of torture on his mind. He simply bowed and murmured that he had to find Allegria so that they could sail when Bellias was at her strongest. “You may need to placate Lady Idril some,” he warned, pausing on the way out the door. “She is mightily annoyed with me at the moment, and I suspect will wish to vent her spleen on you.”
Israel sighed. “What complaint does she have now?”
“The same one: we refuse to let her sail with us. She seems to feel that she will be left behind if she doesn’t travel with us.”
“There is nothing I would like more than to leave her here where she’s safe, but she will insist that only she can control Deo, and thus must be included in my party.” Israel’s expression eased, and he looked a bit more cheerful. “She’s welcome to vent whatever ire she has, but I’ll redirect it to her father. Safe travels, arcanist.”
Once in town, Hallow rounded up Allegria from the stable yard, where she was explaining to her mule that she couldn’t take her on the ship to Eris because of the danger.
“Don’t you give me that look,” Allegria told Buttercup when the latter bared her teeth. “There’s a very big chance we could be destroyed trying to get there, and I couldn’t live with myself…er…couldn’t rest easy in death knowing I had caused you to die as well.”
She turned to tie Buttercup to a hitching post, but the rope slid from her hands when Buttercup first reared up, then rushed past her, hoof beats clattering on the cobblestones as the mule raced down the hill toward the harbor proper.
Allegria sighed. “Can mules swim?”
“I think we’d find out if we tried to sail without her,” Hallow answered, putting his arm around Allegria to give her a squeeze. “I’m afraid, my heart, she’s made up her own mind.”
“Yes, and once Buttercup makes up her mind, there’s no way on Alba to change it. What are we going to do?”
“Take her with us, I suppose. It seems to be her preference. Luckily, Penn is not so stubborn—” The second the words were out of his mouth, Hallow became aware of warm, moist breath on the back of his neck, followed shortly by a none-too-gentle nudge that sent him stumbling forward a few steps. He turned to glare at his horse, who gazed back at him with liquid brown eyes
and a mute expression of expectation.
“No,” he told Penn sternly. “Do not listen to what Buttercup told you. You do not need to come with us and risk your life. You are a smart horse. You value life. You may not be able to sire any foals, but you have a nice retirement in a sunny pasture to look forward to, should I perish. I have made arrangements with Lord Israel to take care of you, so you will cease looking at me like a puppy denied a walk and will return to the paddock.
Penn snorted and turned his head to look in the direction that Buttercup had disappeared.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Hallow told him, and reached for the horse’s halter, but with a flick of his tail that caught Hallow dead in the face, the horse trotted off.
“You were saying?” Allegria asked when she emerged from a room in the stable used to hold tack. She held Buttercup’s bridle, blanket, and saddle in her arms.
“Nothing,” he said. After taking a moment to work through all the oaths he wanted to yell after his horse, he gave in to the inevitable by collecting Penn’s tack and following Allegria down to the ship.
“You only have yourself to blame if you drown,” he heard Allegria mutter to Buttercup, who was stationed at the narrow gangplank, scaring the porters attempt to bring supplies to the ship. “Don’t you dare even think about biting me, you ungrateful beast. Come along then. No, you cannot be afraid of the water, nor is that a monster. It’s Quinn, and he’s going to be responsible for getting your motley hide safely to Eris, so you can just stop pretending you are a shy, delicate little flower. Up you go.”
Allegria, having long experience with her mule, simply grabbed the lead and ran up the gangplank, giving Buttercup no chance to balk.
“At least you have better manners, even if you can be just as stubborn as the mule,” Hallow told Penn and led the horse onto the ship and down into the hold.
By the time the animals were bedded down, fed, and watered, Hallow and Allegria emerged to the deck to find it empty of all but Quinn and Dexia. The latter was seated cross legged drawing runes upon a long narrow cloth of grubby linen.
“What are you magicking?” Allegria asked the vanth while Hallow proceeded to the upper deck, where Quinn stood before a small table. A couple of lanterns held down a dirty bit of map, their golden glow making Hallow suddenly yearn for a warm bed and his warmer wife. It wasn’t that he feared death, but he very much wanted a long life during which he could explore all the quirkiness that made up Allegria.
“Surely you must know your way to Eris,” Hallow said to Quinn, who lifted the map from beneath the lanterns, and held it at an angle, squinting at it. He pointed to the northwest. “It’s that way.”
“I know where it is, I just wanted to set a course for the Maquet Islands instead of trying to sail directly to Eris itself.”
“Maquet Islands?” Hallow dug through his memories, but found only a faint fragment. “Where exactly are they?”
“Close enough to disrupt the charge of the storms,” Quinn answered, pointing to a tiny blotch on the map. Hallow held it closer to the lamps, and noted the blotch was actually made up of a cluster of small rocky islands vaguely shaped like an arrow.
“How can a small group of islands disturb the storms that surround Eris?” Hallow asked, his curiosity pricked. If there was any chance of improving the odds of arriving in Eris safely, he wanted to explore it more fully.
“It’s not the storms themselves that mean death to those who try to pass through them,” Quinn answered, absently tossing the map back onto the table before striding down the few steps to the main deck, where he directed the stowing of the last supplies in the hold. “It’s the electrical fluid charge contained therein. Make yourself useful, Dex, and check that the supplies are secure.”
“I’m being useful,” the small girl answered, not lifting her head from where she was now stitching what looked to Hallow’s eyes like sigils into the narrow cloth that spilled from her lap down to her feet. “Let the priest do it.”
“Where’s the crew?” Allegria asked, looking around her. “Hallow said you didn’t expect us to become sailors, not that I object to helping sail, but I know nothing about ships.”
“The crew is here,” Quinn said, making shooing motions toward Allegria, although Hallow couldn’t help but notice that he managed to ogle her upper works at the same time.
“Where?” she asked, moving toward the steps that led down to the hold.
“Here,” he said, and turned to Hallow, nodding toward the forward-most of two masts. “Shimmy up that mast and let down the upper jib, will you? Dex—”
“I’m busy!” the girl snarled and stabbed viciously into the cloth with a needle and thread that was a rusty brown, just the color of dried blood.
“This is more important,” Quinn told her.
“Oh really?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you want us to survive the trip?”
He thought for a moment, then gave a little bob of his head. “Point taken. Hallow, after you’ve set the jib, help me with the mainsail, and we’ll get out of the harbor.”
Hallow looked at the mast. He’d never had a head for heights, but now seemed like a poor time to point that out. Instead, he suffered through a hellish ten minutes during which he managed to pull himself up the rope-wrapped mast until he reached the spar. He kept his eyes firmly on the ropes while he released the small sail before gratefully—and breathlessly—making his way back to the deck.
He helped pull in the anchor, stood silently while Quinn called for the mooring lines to be released, and gazed back at the black silhouette that was the town with a mingled sense of excitement and regret. “May the blessed goddesses have mercy on us and not send us to our deaths,” he murmured before going down below decks to find Allegria.
For some reason, he felt an overwhelming need to hold her.
Chapter 12
“Ghosts.” I looked from Hallow to Quinn to the man who stood looking at me with pursed lips. “Your crew are ghosts. We have ghosts sailing the ship. Ghosts who, unless I’m mistaken, have limited amounts of time when they can interact with our world in a corporeal manner.”
“We prefer the term lost mariners,” the man told me in a voice that managed to be both ethereal and haughty at the same time.
“They are spirits, yes, but they are the spirits of sailors,” Quinn pointed out. “And since I refuse to risk any lives—other than your own—on this misbegotten journey, that’s what you’re getting. If you object, we can go back to Abet, and I will be released from your service.”
His gaze dropped to my breasts for a few seconds. I narrowed my eyes at him. “If the next words out of your mouth are that you would be very happy to service me, Hallow will turn you into a bumblepig. One with mange.”
“I will?” Hallow’s brows rose, but he must have seen the pointed look I shot his way, because he cleared his throat and tried his best to look menacing. “Er…I will. One with a particularly unpleasant chronic digestive problem, as well.”
Quinn didn’t look the least bit worried. The ghost, however—who went by the name Commander Ohare—eyed Hallow with respect. “Well? Do we turn around?”
“No, of course not,” I snapped. “But if we die because your crew goes incorporeal at the worst possible moment, then I’m so going to haunt you. And I’m sure I could convince Buttercup to join me.”
“Buttercup?”
“Her mule,” Hallow murmured in his ear.
“Blessed Bellias and all her stars…that savage biting, kicking monstrosity has a name?” Quinn asked while absently rubbing a spot on his back. “It’s your mount? I thought you brought it along as a weapon to unleash upon the Harborym.”
In the end, my worries were for naught. The crew, it turned out, took turns being on duty, so that while one group wandered the ship in translucent, faintly blue tinted forms trimming sails, winding rope, and doing a hundred
other things that were beyond the experience of Hallow and me, the others retreated to the spirit world and recharged their respective corporeal forms.
The next five days took on a fairly peaceful aspect, if the ever-present threat of making our way through the impenetrable storms of Eris was ignored. Hallow and I had a cabin to ourselves, which we made use of with such regularity that I heard Quinn ask Hallow if he’d cast some sort of spell on me.
“Yes,” I called out from where I was feeding Buttercup and mucking out the small space that was her stall. “It’s called Hallow.”
“But that’s his name,” Quinn answered, his brows furrowed in confusion. “I meant the name of the spell.”
“They’re one and the same,” I answered, wagging my own brows at Hallow, who just laughed and gave me a heated look that promised reward the next time we were alone.
That time was sooner in arriving than I expected. As soon as I had cleaned Buttercup’s stall and done the same for Penn, I emerged onto the deck to a slap in the face from the salty sting of a windstorm. “Are we there already?” I asked, suddenly panicked. My palms pricked with sweat even as I reached for the light of Kiriah Sunbringer. Hallow and I had avoided talking about the possibilities of our potential deaths, preferring instead to spend our time enjoying each other. My own thought was that if I had to die now, I’d prefer doing so having been loved to the point of insensibility, rather than worried and fearful. “Kiriah’s blessed bottom, I didn’t know we’d reach our destination so quickly.”
“These are not the storms of Eris, my heart,” Hallow reassured me from where he stood with a spyglass, his grey cloak whipping around him with the power of the wind. I wove my way over to him, slipping twice as the deck grew slick with spray. “We’re approaching Huw, the southern-most Maquet Island. Here, can you see it?”
He pulled me against his body, and I sagged in relief at the feel of him, so solid and warm. I nestled against him, grateful for the strength of his arm around me while I tried to hold the spyglass steady enough to look through it. A dark smear bobbed and disappeared in the lens, bobbed again, and then was gone. “Why are we going to an island? Are we stopping for supplies?”
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