1633880583 (F)

by Chris Willrich

  “Race to Fiskegard!” Captain Glint commanded. “That’s our best hope for shelter!” To Gaunt and Bone he added, “We took your son there. They may have news. Now, I think you’d best get below.” He turned to Crowbeard. “You, foamreaver, have acquitted yourself well, but I’ve seen the quiver that assails you. I’ll think no less of you if you join them.”

  Crowbeard’s tone held both pride and anger. But his words were merely, “Thanks, Captain. I’ll stay.”

  Gaunt and Bone descended not a minute too soon. The calm gave way to choppy seas, then agitated seas, then mad seas, with waves half as tall as the masts. Raveneye heaved through the surge. Bone, tossed about like a rag in a dog’s mouth, heaved in other ways.

  “Sorry,” he managed to say.

  “Hang on, Bone,” Gaunt said.

  They were battered about by more shaking. Bone felt a little better now with his guts emptied. They tried to make jokes about it at first, but it was unsettling in more ways than one. “This is almost as bad,” Bone shouted, “as the time we sailed the western ocean!”

  “Was that when we sought the sleeping warrior or when we sought the ruins of the gods?”

  “I get them mixed up! Getting old! Gah—damn! What does the world have against my nose?”

  “For my part, I seem to keep bumping my head on the same spot as when I landed in the mountains!”

  He wished he could have kissed that spot, but he’d only have smacked their skulls together.

  There came a lurch greater than any before, and of a different character.

  “What?” Bone cried out to the heavens. “What?”

  “Bone! We’ve scraped something. An undersea rock formation. We must have gotten too close to the coast. We’re taking on water. Look.”

  Indeed, water was gurgling up between boards like a delicate mountain stream.

  They scrambled to find buckets, reeling their way up the gangway to the deck, screaming about a leak. Sailors joined them.

  Existence became a nightmare of bailing, illuminated at times by lightning and moonlight, punctuated by the occasional fall. Bone did not look like an acrobatic walker of rooftops anymore. He would have reiterated his hate for the Bladed Isles, but he had no time for it, if he didn’t want to feed its fish.

  Once he spied another ship. “Look!” he screamed. The others looked, and Crowbeard cursed. Bone was learning to be discouraged when Crowbeard found something to swear at.

  “Draug,” the foamreaver said.

  The ship was small and appeared sliced in twain from bow to stern, and upon its deck stood a shadowed, quivering shape, bearing a harpoon and a single, baleful red eye.

  The Draug was not approaching them but rather racing Raveneye, and its impossible ship skipped gracefully among the waves.

  Captain Glint, sounding like a man who’d seen his death, spat and commanded all aboard to hold their course or continue bailing.

  “What is it doing?” Bone heard Gaunt say.

  “It’s herding us,” Crowbeard said, “to the Draugmaw.”

  After what seemed hours, though it may have been only half of one, a cry rose up from the decks, for a man had been lost overboard.

  When the second was lost, Bone was on the deck, and just before a wave surged and claimed the hapless sailor, Bone saw the Draug raise its harpoon and point at Raveneye.

  “It’s picking us off!” Bone cried. “We have to attack it!”

  “You’re mad!” Captain Glint said. “If we can ride out the storm, we’ll escape!”

  “He is mad!” Crowbeard said. “I’ll attest! But look at that storm! We may have a choice between slow death and fast!”

  Captain Glint narrowed his eyes and grinned a grin that unsettled Bone, for all that he’d prompted it. “Run up the colors,” the captain said.

  Soon the black flag of skull and crossed meat-cleavers slapped the air, and he bellowed their intent to ram. Crossbowmen manned their weapons, and Gaunt lay ready with her bow.

  Bone, still bailing, had the notion the Draug was astonished. Contemptuous, but astonished. It raised the harpoon, and Raveneye nearly floundered, but the crew mastered the vessel and kept it bearing down at the half-ship.

  “Aim for the eye!” Gaunt called.

  Her arrow flew, and crossbow bolts followed.

  It wept like molten gold, and its shriek was like all the seabirds in the world.

  The Draug did not fall. It spread its hands, and a wind ripped the Lardermen’s flag from the mast, as a wave big as five Raveneyes blocked out the first rays of the sun.

  “Draug!” screamed Muninn Crowbeard, and off the deck he leapt, to bury his axe in the head of the shambling thing.

  The wave crashed over them all, and Raveneye floundered at last.

  Bone had only one goal. Doomed or saved, he must stay with Gaunt. He grabbed her as the surge hit.

  The force of the wave made him lose her in the dark waters. But when he resurfaced, she was nearby, as was the broken mainmast. It was she who helped him clutch it. Other hands joined theirs.

  “Is it—” he gasped. “Is it gone—”

  “Bone.”

  He looked where she looked, and a gasp went up from the survivors aboard ship, for the half-ship approached, and the shambling shape in its midst had nothing but a ruined cave for an eye. It bore down on the mast nonetheless. Crowbeard was not to be seen.

  He had his foamreaver death. Bone felt a tiny comfort at that.

  But in the next moment a shape reared up from the Draug-ship, something Bone had taken for a collection of rags, and it seized the harpoon-arm of the Draug with berserker fury.

  Muninn Crowbeard grasped the weapon with a howl of mad glee.

  His hands shook, but they drove the harpoon true, stabbing the Draug

  through the ruined cave of its eye socket. The metal burst out the back of the seaweed-covered skull, spraying an ichor like molten gold.

  It was as though the Draug’s chilling screech sliced open the clouds, for light blazed through the storm, and the sun lit the rain to dazzling streaks. The Draug seized its harpoon from Crowbeard and jabbed the foamreaver through the heart, sending him at one stroke to the halls of the valorous dead.

  But even in its victory it turned its cavernous eye-socket to starboard, as though in that blaze of sunlight even its wound could see.

  There raced another ship, a vast galleon of cedar and teak, with golden sails and a flag of black with the sign of a prism splitting light into many colors.

  The Draug hissed and shook its harpoon, and Crowbeard’s body slipped into the sea; but the monster was at last broken, and with a final defiant stare at the ruin of the Raveneye it sank with its half-ship into the frothing waves.

  Crowbeard’s corpse bobbed in the forsaken waters.

  “No, Bone,” Gaunt said, but he was already swimming, getting his arm around the body of his betrayer. Soon Gaunt was there, and others from Raveneye helped, its captain among them.

  “Hail!” Erik Glint shouted to the new vessel.

  And an answering cry went up upon the galleon’s deck, for they had seen the valor done upon the deep. Ropes were flung into the waters, and now Bone saw clearly the black, mighty mariners of faraway Kpalamaa of the savanna and jungle, come like something out of a fever dream, to their aid. And in their midst one he knew.

  “Eshe,” he said. “Eshe of the Fallen Swan. Priestess. Wanderer. Cook.”

  “Spy. We are in trouble, Bone,” Gaunt said.

  “That is for certain. But at least we’ll be dry.”

  “I had some difficulty finding you,” Eshe said as they sat with her and Captain Glint, nursing warm mugs of coffee in what Eshe called the captain’s mess. Her voice sounded amused and a trifle scolding. Bone found that he’d missed that voice. Though he did not entirely trust it.

  “Who,” gasped the captain, bundled tight in intricately woven blankets, shivering. “Who are you? What manner of ship is this?”

  “You are aboard Anansi,” Eshe
said, “a ship of the Kpalamaa Union. It’s on a journey of exploration and cultural exchange.”

  “It’s on a whatsis?”

  “They’re foamreavers, Captain, in a way,” Gaunt said. “Only with rather more foam and considerably less reave.”

  “I’ll try not to be insulted by the comparison,” Eshe said. “My people are of the Southern Semidisc, and for the past decade we’ve been exploring the North, learning what we can, trading a bit.”

  “Kpalamaa,” Glint mused. “I’ve heard of you, of course. Great power of the South. Just never expected to see one of your ships up close. This whole room is just for the captain to take meals in?” Glint looked around at the mess, with its wall hangings of maps, wooden masks, flags, spears, cutlasses.

  “Be patient with him, Eshe,” Bone said. “He just lost his ship to a Draug.”

  Captain Glint shot him a look of anger, before shutting his eyes and nodding.

  “We saw,” Eshe mused. “I don’t know how to classify such an apparition, except, of course, as ‘frightening.’”

  “It was worthy of song,” Gaunt said. “And there will be one, about Raveneye and Anansi, and Muninn, and Eshe, and Captain Glint.”

  Erik Glint smiled a little, though his hands shook, spilling coffee. “That is well said. So, Eshe. I’m grateful you’re here. But why?”

  “Allow me,” Gaunt said. “Eshe is a wandering priestess of the Swan, allowed great latitude by the Brilliant Seat. But this is just a cover for her deeper role as an agent of Kpalamaa, traveling the world hunting evils to fight and heroes to fight them.” She nodded to Eshe. “Bone revealed all this to me over time. And I think your arriving on this galleon pretty well gives it away.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Eshe said, though she smiled and sipped coffee. “My conversion to the Swan was quite sincere. And why not? Even though the goddess incarnated in one particular land—a necessary consequence of incarnation, I’d say—her message of love is universal. And, if my homeland’s government occasionally finds my ecclesiastic station useful, well, that hurts nobody. Except the evils I track down.”

  “What evil are you tracking today?” Bone spread his hands and smirked. “I am very flattered if it’s us.”

  “His name is Skrymir Hollowheart,” Eshe said.

  “The troll-jarl,” Erik Glint said. “But he’s a legend. And even if he’s not, he lives deep within the Trollberg by Jotuncrown, brewing storms, not out here on the sea near Fiskegard.”

  “No,” Eshe said, all seriousness now. “But for a time one of his targets was here. A target named Innocence Gaunt.”

  “Tell us everything,” Gaunt said.

  “I will do better than that. I will show you.”

  Anansi brought the Lardermen survivors to Fiskegard, a place looking more like a set of half-drowned, sky-lancing mountains than a proper island group. There lay one small harbor, with a fishing village called also Fiskegard. It was filled with itinerant workers from all around these parts, and the houses were fenced in by racks of drying stockfish.

  And there on the beach before the tavern called the Pickled Rat, Captain Glint burned the recovered bodies of dead Lardermen and Muninn Crowbeard. Gaunt, Bone, and Eshe watched the foamreaver funeral and raised mugs to the dead. The others drank coffee, but Bone sipped aquavit, for he figured he was entitled. It was a little like tasting the funeral fire.

  “I’ll be glad to trade you a barrel of aquavit,” said one of the proprietors beside them, a wizened, bright-eyed woman named Nan, “in return for a bunch of this Kpalamaa coffee. Seems to take a year off me, in the good way. If we can come to a fair arrangement, of course.”

  “I’ll ask Captain Nonyemeko to speak to you,” Eshe said. “Her business is the cultural exchange and trade agreements. Mine is the skullduggery.”

  “All right, then,” said Nan, nodding as her companion Freidar passed by, tending to the other patrons. “What skulls need to be dug?”

  “You say Innocence disappeared from this place?” Gaunt said.

  “Yes,” said Nan. She told the tale of his kidnapping by uldra, how Nan and Freidar failed to retrieve him, and how they followed rumors of his appearance in Oxiland. “We actually went there recently and learned he’d vanished from the basement of Saint Kringa’s. Innocence seems to have a talent for disappearing.”

  “That’s my boy,” Bone murmured.

  “I see the resemblance,” Nan said, and her voice was sad. “I am so sorry we weren’t able to keep your son safe.”

  “I am not certain anyone could,” Bone said, moved. “We’re grateful for all that you did.”

  “He is a good lad. Troubled, but his heart is good.”

  “It’s good to hear that.”

  But Gaunt said nothing as she pulled out the Chart of Tomorrows. The heavy book thumped onto the table and silenced them, as though an ominous sixth person had come to the table. Gaunt opened the book to sea-charts of central Kantenjord. She lingered over an image of the Chained Straits and frowned at red ruins marking some sunken site on the island in its midst. Intriguing, but not useful to her.

  She turned the page to an image of Fiskegard’s main island. It was intricate, displaying hills and shoals, though not any of the modern buildings. She pointed at another spot marked in red runes. “There. Does that match the site of the Pickled Rat, Nan?”

  “I think so. What’s it supposed to be, here?”

  “An old place of worship. A stave church.” She flipped to maps of Oxiland. “This is Loftsson’s holding, yes? And this spot, on the hill?”

  “A stone church,” Nan said. “Saint Kringa’s.”

  “But the notes again indicate a stave church. And it was a stave church in which I had my dream of seeing Innocence.” She flipped to a map of the Morkskag. “There.”

  “Our ancestors,” Nan said, rubbing her temples, “built old wooden shrines to the Vindir, making the foundations resemble wooden ships. Some of the shrines even held ship-graves, places where chieftains and their families and slaves were buried. It’s whispered that these first Swanlings saw something powerful in these old places and sought to top each of them with a stave church, a wooden building fashioned by Swanling shipwrights.”

  “You are saying,” Eshe said, “they sensed these were places of power, and they built structures that would keep the power intact.”

  “Yes. Perhaps they’re places where the might of the old dragons seeps through their petrified skin. Places where one can travel to strange realms.” She looked directly at Gaunt. “That is why Freidar and I built our tavern on this spot. We are practitioners of Runewalking, a magical art. We thought the energies would help us in our researches. I think they have, and that we’ve done good for this village thereby. But I am so very sorry this power helped snatch away your son.”

  “Do you know how it is done, Nan?” Gaunt took the older woman’s hand. “How to access this gateway? Please. If there is a way . . .”

  Nan’s face was solemn, but she squeezed Gaunt’s hand in return. “My husband and I have been trying to open the way since the day your son disappeared. Without success. I think the key was not knowledge but your son’s own power, and the desire of the uldra to reach out to him.”

  “I want to sleep here. Right out here where you say he disappeared. I reached him before, in the Morkskag. I must try again.”

  “Of course.”

  Eshe cleared her throat. “If it does not work, Persimmon, or even if it does, you will have my help tracking him down. Bluntly, as long as he bears this might, he is a lightning rod for any unscrupulous power. My country wants him found.”

  “And controlled?” Bone said archly.

  “And with his parents,” Eshe said, meeting his gaze. “I suspect any father would agree that’s not quite the same.”

  Nan patted Gaunt’s hand, smiled ruefully, and left to get more for the table, or so she said. She passed slowly by a line of shields.

  “But I am in earnest, you two,” Eshe said.
“I care what happens to your family, but I’m more concerned about the world. The Karvaks and the trolls are up to mischief in these isles, and I think Innocence is mixed up in it.”

  Glint cleared his throat. “I understand little of this talk of strange powers. But invaders and trolls, that I understand. If there’s a fight ahead the Lardermen are ready. We may partake of Kantenjord’s squabbles, but this sounds like a threat to us all.”

  Nan returned with mugs, and Freidar beside her. “Erik Glint speaks for us all, I think,” Nan said. “Sounds like mad, beautiful old Kantenjord needs us.”

  Bone thought of his enslavement and squeezed Gaunt’s hand. She squeezed back, and he thought she understood, at least a little.

  Kantenjord can burn, he thought. The Karvaks can hang, and Qiangguo can twist in the wind. I just want my son.

  CHAPTER 23

  CHOOSER

  Gaunt sat in the darkened tavern and dreamed. She found herself drifting above a quicksilver sea, its sky awash with brilliant stars.

  A young woman riding a narwhal swam that sea, bearing a spear. Seeing her stirred a memory, or a premonition. In this place it was difficult to tell the difference.

  She called out, “I am Persimmon Gaunt! I seek answers! Can you help me?”

  The girl laughed. “Most visitors to the Straits of Tid are terrified. Those who are not raise their weapons. You are the only one I’ve seen who responds by demanding answers.”

  Gaunt smiled. “That was not a much of an answer, you know.”

  The girl smiled herself, but it was the smile of one who was keeping a secret. She almost seemed not to have heard Gaunt. “But then, your dread weapon is gone, and you have not yet claimed your fiddle. You are betwixt and between, as is Imago Bone, who is now neither thief nor spy. I can help you—but only briefly. My substance is highly subjective at this juncture.” And indeed, her aspect rippled as though Gaunt’s breath had disturbed the reflection in a clear pond.

  Gaunt remembered something. “Alder. He said he’d met a girl riding a narwhal.”

  “I think I remember him. Or foresee him. I have chosen, or will choose him.”