The Master

by Louise Cooper

  She didn’t know where she was going; her one thought was to get as far away from her pursuers as she could - and as she sprang and scrabbled over the side of the third boat in the line she realised that she had reached a dead end. Ahead, a wide stretch of sea gaped menacingly; behind her, one seaman was starting to climb across the bobbing boats after her, while the others leered and shouted from the harbour wall. She was trapped.

  She turned, facing her assailant and clenching her fists, knowing she couldn’t fight but nonetheless prepared to try. But the man had stopped and was standing upright in the next dinghy, grinning broadly and unpleasantly. And then Cyllan felt the boat beneath her rock convulsively, before it began to move.

  She should have realised what they’d do - and mortification mingled with the fear she felt. But she could only cling impotently to the sides of the dinghy as the men on the jetty reached down, took hold of its mooring rope, and began to pull it, hand over hand, in to the wall.

  The dinghy bumped against the stone of the jetty, and rough fingers grabbed the collar of Cyllan’s shirt, hauling her, kicking and fighting, up on to solid ground. She sprawled on the harbour, gasped as a kick was aimed at her back, saw heavy boots closing in on her - then someone said, his voice thick with shock, ‘Straits take all of us, it’s a woman!’

  They shuffled back in chagrined confusion and she took the only chance she might have. Her muscles contracted violently and she sprang up, launching herself forward at the same time so that her captors couldn’t collect their wits before she had darted between them and was running desperately for the black safety of the alley.

  She was three paces from sanctuary when someone stepped out of the darkness to block her path and, unable to swerve, she cannoned into him. Hands locked on her arms and she swore aloud - then the oath died on her tongue as she looked up into the angrily triumphant eyes of Keridil Toln.

  ‘No!’ Cyllan twisted and might have broken away, but as she turned, a silhouette loomed behind her. Something - it looked ludicrously like an empty ale-tankard - flashed metallic in the Moonlight, but before her spinning mind could identify it, it slammed with sickening violence against her forehead and she pitched into silent, lightless nothing.

  Keridil stared down at her sprawled figure, and as the Blue Dancer’s owner made to kick Cyllan again he held up an admonitory hand.

  ‘No. Don’t do her any further harm.’

  The man glowered at him, and one of his companions spat accurately at the unconscious girl. ‘Throw her in the harbour. Best place for flotsam like that; no one’ll miss the bitch.’

  ‘I said, no.’ Keridil hadn’t wanted to flaunt his authority, but the seamen were spoiling for blood, and he pushed back his coat so that the High Initiate’s gold insignia was clearly visible at his shoulder. It took a few moments for the badge’s significance to register but when it did the sailors’ leader swore, apologised, and made the Sign of Aeoris before his own face.

  ‘This girl,’ Keridil said, staring at Cyllan dispassionately, ‘is wanted by the Circle. She’s a criminal, and a fugitive.’ He looked up. ‘I don’t think I need say any more.’

  The men, understanding, backed away a fearful pace or two, and one of them muttered something that sounded to Keridil like a charm against evil. He smiled thinly. ‘I’m sorry that I had to mislead you, but there was no time for explanation. I will, of course, compensate you for your trouble.’ He touched his belt pouch, and coins clinked pleasantly. ‘The girl won’t do you any harm, so there’s no need to fear her. I want her taken to the Margrave’s residence before she regains consciousness. That way, we’ll - ‘ And he stopped, as a low, chilling sound came ranging across the harbour from somewhere to the West, distant but carrying on the still air. A horn, ethereal, sounding a warning note.

  The seamen had all turned their heads at the eerie summons, and a good deal of the high colour drained from their faces. Keridil, who had never heard the sound before, felt his spine prickle with alarm - and then he realised that the men were all staring at him, with an awed respect in their eyes.

  ‘The White Barque … ‘ The Dancer’s master spoke in a strained whisper at the same moment that the significance of the horn sank into Keridil’s mind. He should have anticipated this - the Guardians, who shunned contact with the mainland beyond bare necessity, wouldn’t choose to bring their strange ship in from the White Isle with the eyes of every man, woman and child in ShuNhadek upon them. The dead of night would suit their ways far better, and they’d care nothing for the convenience of their passengers, however exalted.

  The horn sounded again, mournfully, and Keridil shuddered. He didn’t want to look oceanward, but the fascination was too great; and if he strained his vision to the limit, he thought - or did he merely imagine? - that he could just glimpse a nacreous shimmer far, far out on the sea; a shapeless phantasm that deceived his eyes, one moment there, the next vanished back into the dark.

  They wouldn’t hear the horn at the Margrave’s residence - word must be sent to them, and quickly. Common sense came to Keridil’s rescue, freeing him from the formless dread instilled in him by the horn and the distant ship; he turned to the Blue Dancer’s master.

  ‘I must get a message to the Margravate - ‘

  ‘It’ll be taken care of, sir.’ The seaman looked uneasy.

  He’d left word with a servant; the man had wit enough to tell his companions where to find him … Keridil nodded. ‘The Barque will put in to shore?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Not in my experience, sir.’

  He hunched his shoulders, thrusting both hands deep into the pockets of his coat. ‘Not that she’s been near the mainland for five years, since the last time they brought the women back to us … she’ll drop anchor a mile or so out.’ He licked his lips. ‘It’d be my privilege to take you to her in the Dancer, if you’d forgive the smell of fish below decks.’

  Keridil had the feeling that the man volunteered reluctantly, but he wasn’t about to refuse the offer - and besides, ten gravines or so would doubtless ease the sailor’s burden. ‘Thank you,’ he said, glancing out to sea once more and then looking quickly away. ‘I appreciate your generosity.’

  The seaman looked down at the ground, then nodded at Cyllan’s huddled, motionless figure. ‘And what of her, sir?’

  He’d forgotten Cyllan … Keridil stared at her, considering. Left at the Margravate in the care of servants, she’d either trick her way to freedom, or make telepathic contact with Tarod and summon him to her aid. He could be searching for her already and the thought of the Margrave’s defenceless household at his mercy wasn’t pleasant. There was no time for him to bind and isolate her magically; and that left one alternative.

  The High Initiate smiled. The incoming barque would take them to the one place in all the world where Chaos could have no influence. Should Tarod follow them there, he would find himself stripped of his power, helpless before the ultimate justice. And the one lure that could force him to follow was in Keridil’s hands.

  ‘Take her on board the Blue Dancer,’ he said. ‘She sails with us to the White Isle.’

  Chapter 10

  This time, there were no cheering crowds to wish them good speed. They had crossed the precarious board between the jetty and the deck of the Blue Dancer in a constrained silence broken only by the slap of water against the quay and the subdued grunts of the crew as they made ready to cast off. Now Keridil stood at the fishing boat’s rail, listening to the crack of sail and boom as the vessel tacked about ready to head for open water, and aware of the hunched, unhappy figure of Fenar Alacar a short distance away. The young High Margrave’s face was pale and tight in the darkness, his profile made harsh by the faint glow of a lantern in the wheelhouse where the skipper steered steadily on his new course. Though the others were old enough and experienced enough to hide their disquiet, they all shared the boy’s unspoken fears; even the Matriarch had ceased her complaints and sat silent and brooding in the cabin below decks.

 
; The wind strengthened suddenly, filling the sails, and Keridil felt the hull beneath his feet buck and then surge forward in a new rhythm as they cleared the harbour’s shelter and the full power of the tide took hold of them.

  Nothing now between themselves and the phantom waiting ahead in the dark; nothing but black swell and deep straits …

  As though the boy had picked up his uneasy thoughts, Keridil saw Fenar Alacar shiver suddenly and turn away from the rail. They had, as they must, left all but their closest companions behind; and though old Isyn accompanied him, the High Margrave needed more than one familiar face to bolster his courage. For a moment it looked as though Fenar was about to approach him and speak; then the boy thought better of it and instead stumbled along the deck to the dimly lit companion-hatch. He disappeared, and for a moment his footfalls clattering down the steps broke the smooth rhythm of sea and sails until they faded and were gone, leaving Keridil alone.

  He didn’t want to peer ahead into the darkness but a fascination he couldn’t fight made him turn and stare beyond the ship’s bows. And there she was … indistinct still, but closer, a white ghost of a ship rocking gently at anchor. The dark shrouded her and made it impossible to judge her size; sometimes she seemed to tower into the night murk, sometimes he thought that even the Blue Dancer might dwarf her. At her stern a cold, colourless witchlight flickered uncertainly but there was no other sign of life. She might have been something out of a disturbed dream …

  ‘Sir?’ The voice that spoke behind him was softly pitched, but Keridil started nonetheless. He turned, and saw one of the crew standing at a respectful distance, cap in hand.

  ‘Captain’s compliments, sir, to say as there’s hot mulled ale ready below, with a tot of something stronger in it to keep the cold away.’ The sailor smiled, gap-toothed and fearsome in the ragged glow from the wheelhouse. ‘Be half an hour, thereabouts, before we get where we’re going, sir.’

  His father would have called it coward’s courage …

  but in the circumstances, Keridil thought, he would also have understood.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking his chilled hands from the rail and rubbing them. ‘I’d be glad of it.’

  The mulled ale was good despite a faintly fishy flavour, and for a while the group in the cramped and primitive cabin were able to maintain a spirit that kept their private thoughts at bay. Keridil sat beside Sashka, who held his hand in a clasp that communicated how tight a hold she was keeping on her composure. He had never known her to feel fear before and the discovery touched him in a new way, awaking in him a protectiveness that lessened his own apprehension. Fenar Alacar sat hunched in a corner, gripping his cup as though it were his most precious possession, while, flanked by two handmaids, Lady Ilyaya Kimi kept up a flow of murmured and trivial conversation, seemingly unconcerned as to whether or not anyone listened.

  And in the hold, guarded by one of the captain’s men and still unconscious, was Cyllan.

  The news of her capture, when he had delivered it to his companions as they assembled at the harbour, had shocked them all. Only Fenar had questioned Keridil’s decision to carry her with them to the White Isle, arguing that it might be better simply to execute her and have done - a sentiment that echoed Keridil’s own doubts.

  The Matriarch, however, would have none of it.

  ‘The High Initiate is quite right,’ she said in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘The girl is far less important to us than the Chaos-demon she abets, and there is no better way to secure his capture. Besides,’ she added with a faint gleam of relish in her eyes, ‘the girl’s immortal soul will fare no worse in the afterlife if she suffers the rightful terror of Aeoris’s judgment before she dies.’

  Keridil had looked at Sashka, who thus far hadn’t spoken, and asked in an undertone, ‘What do you think, love?’

  Sashka met his gaze. ‘However much she suffers, it can be nothing by comparison with what she deserves.’

  For a moment she looked more malicious than he had believed her capable of being, though her expression quickly altered and he thought it must have been merely a trick of the light. And so, as Fenar’s dissent was half-hearted, Cyllan’s limp body was carried on board and dumped unceremoniously among the fish-boxes, nets and ropes below deck.

  Now, as the Blue Dancer sailed on, they had all had a respite from what lay ahead … but all too soon they felt the motion of the boat beneath them change subtly, losing rhythm, and muffled orders were shouted above their heads. Keridil tensed, hearing a moment before his companions the sound of feet heading down towards them. The cabin door opened and he saw the captain’s bulk framed in the doorway.

  ‘We’re there, sir - or at least as close as they’ll allow us to get. I’ve ordered the dory to be made ready.’

  Keridil rose, having to stoop in the low-ceilinged cabin, and saw the flicker of near-panic on Fenar Alacar’s face before the youth could get himself under control once more.

  ‘Thank you, captain.’ He glanced at his companions in turn. ‘I believe we’re all ready … ‘

  *****

  He didn’t dare look up. From his seat in the stern of the Blue Dancer’s dory, the hull of the White Barque filled his field of vision, blotting out sky and Moons and horizon like a giant fog bank. He could hear the creaking of her aeonold timbers, the ominous, rattling moan of her towering sails as they shifted and flapped with the wind.

  Everything about her was white - a dim and sickly white, making her, at close quarters, more an apparition from a ghost realm than ever she had seemed from shore. Once Keridil had looked, trying to glimpse the tip of her mainmast, but vertigo and another, less explicable feeling had swamped him and he turned away hurriedly, left only with the disturbing impression of a vast, phantasmic wing of sail and a single cold star glaring in the black sky above.

  Beside him on the dory’s damp, narrow bench seat Sashka huddled into her coat and stared at the curving floor. In front of them Fenar Alacar seemed to be shivering uncontrollably and their other companions fared little better. Only Ilyaya Kimi stared at the slowly approaching monstrosity with a peculiarly resigned calm, as though it had no power to affect her.

  The dory was nearing the White Barque’s side; a wall of white toppling out of the sky towards them. The bump as they touched the ship was inaudible against the groan of water under her hull, and Keridil jumped when, apparently from nowhere, a rope came snaking down and struck the ship’s side with a dull crack. One of the sailors who had rowed them across snatched the rope’s end and lashed it to the dory’s prow; then a shadow fell across them and Keridil looked up to see a crude sling that dangled like a hangman’s noose being lowered slowly from the barque’s deck.

  The Matriarch shifted stiffly in her seat and smiled an old, ironic smile. ‘If I read my scriptures rightly, High Initiate,’ she called back, ‘the privilege of boarding first is yours.’

  ‘Keridil - ‘ Sashka couldn’t disguise her fear and held on to his hand as he rose cautiously to his feet. He disentangled her fingers with what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze, but couldn’t bring himself to speak before stepping carefully over the seat and making his way towards the prow. As he reached it, he heard Fenar’s voice above the sea-surge, a terrified whisper.

  ‘I’ve forgotten the words - gods help me, Isyn, I’ve forgotten what it is I must say to them …”

  The High Initiate shut his eyes tightly for a moment, then grasped firm hold of the waiting sling.

  The ascent seemed an endless dream but at last a moment came when Keridil glimpsed light flaring from above, and seconds later he swung inwards to stumble free on to the deck of the White Barque. For a few seconds he was near-blinded; then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw them.

  There must have been twelve or fifteen of them, ranged in a semi-circle on the pale boards of the deck.

  The shifting sails overhead cast bizarre Moon-shadows across their motionless figures, and for an instant Keridil had the hideous sensation that these were not true men but de
ad things reanimated, old beyond reckoning and unthinkably alien. The words he had so carefully rehearsed caught in his throat - then one of the figures moved, and the spell - or at least its worst element - shattered.

  Like his fellows, the Guardians’ spokesman was dressed from head to foot in white; a sailor’s garb, though he was like no sailor Keridil had ever seen before. A seamed, milk-white face untouched by the Sun; unkempt grey hair swept back from his skull; his face utterly without expression. He looked at the High Initiate with empty eyes and Keridil had the disconcerting feeling that the Guardian either didn’t see him or deemed his presence irrelevant.

  It was his place to speak first - but the words codified in the Circle’s law-scrolls seemed very different now from when he had so carefully rehearsed them with Gyneth playing the role of Guardian. Keridil resisted an almost overwhelming compulsion to cough, and said:

  ‘Keridil Toln, High Initiate of the Circle, comes in peace and humility, and craves the sanction of the Guardians to set foot upon the White Isle.’

  The Guardian continued to gaze through him. ‘What is the High Initiate’s purpose in so doing?’

  ‘To join with the High Margrave Fenar Alacar, and the Lady Matriarch Ilyaya Kimi, in the Conclave of Three.’

  ‘By the laws of Aeoris, the Conclave of Three may be convened only when all other sanction has failed. Does the High Initiate attest that this is so?’

  Feeling as though he were taking part in some mumming drama on a plane far beyond anything earthly, Keridil replied firmly, ‘It is so.’

  Silence but for the creak of timber and sail followed his words, and Keridil sensed that the Guardian communicated with his fellows, though no obvious sign passed between them. Then, after what seemed an interminable wait, the pale man spoke again.