“Donwayne!” she cried, and Karmana ran to herside, shocked and angry at coming so close to the vile man. Raven’s sword was in her hand and she leaned out across the water as if she might take him by his billowing cloak and drag him back to her. The Weaponmaster stood there, staring back towards the east, his eyes staring past Raven, and yet, perhaps seeing her, for there was a smile upon his face that spoke of glee and villainy. He seemed to say, “I live, you slut; your sword struck thin air. I live, and your violation is unavenged.”
“Follow!” cried Raven. “I must have his head! I must have his life!”
“No!” cried Karmana, turning on her. “He is mine! The honour of killing him is mine—you had your chance once before. Now you must leave him to me!”
Fury flooded her face, her eyes narrowed and animal-like, her breath hissing between clenched teeth. As Raven turned slowly to face her, ready to strike, to finish this arrogant tribeswoman quickly so she would never be able to frustrate her quest for revenge, so Spellbinder urged them calm. “See who stands next to him—see who is responsible for this kidnapping.”
And Raven turned, and saw, for the first time, the man who stood near to Donwayne. “Belthis,” she said softly, and her heart turned to ice.
Robed in red and white, with silver gleaming around his neck and head, Belthis was much as Raven remembered him—wizened and frail in body, yet cold and hard of look—his yellow eyes blazed across the sea and across the gap of days; his skull-like features, the wispy white beard unable to disguise the drawn and high-boned look of him, filled Raven with a sense of horror, and fear. There was no smile on his face, rather a look of puzzlement. He searched the sky, looked down at the ocean, then sniffed. He seemed distinctly unhappy.
“By the Ghost Isle,” said Spellbinder, “he senses us. He can sense the spell. No…wait…he senses something, but knows not what. Belthis is a fool, or perhaps just cold and miserable on his journey. See, he has shrugged it off. He sensed us and dismissed us.” Spellbinder grinned at Raven, “That was no magic, nor guidance Raven. That was luck.”
“All the time Belthis…” said Raven incredulously. “But what does he stand to gain? Revenge for M’rystal having kicked him out? And why this elaborate route? Why to Kragg? Oh Spellbinder, little of this makes any sense. And what is Donwayne doing with him…?” Again she stared hard at the towering hulk of the Weaponmaster, and her flesh crawled, her stomach writhed in agony and imagined pain.
“All questions will become clear,” said Spellbinder. “I have suspected that Belthis may have had a hand in this for some little while, but could not be sure. At least we know the measure of him. Once we find where he takes Krya, we can do M’rystal a service and answer an old score.”
The Altan, standing nearby, nodded readily. “I shall pay you well for that service. I shall pay you with gold, and with an eternal welcome in all the great cities of my kingdom, all previous villainy buried and forgotten.”
“We must turn about and follow the spectral vessel,” said Spellbinder as Belthis walked from the stern and vanished below decks again. The ship slipped towards the wall of mist.
Raven turned to Moonshadow, looked to where he had been on the rigging to ask him why he had cried out.
“He’s gone!” she screamed. “Moonshadow! Where are you?”
“There” cried Silver, and Raven looked over the side of the wolf ship and saw Moonshadow striking through the water in pursuit of the ghost ship. He moved as if he were powered by some unseen energy. His arms splashed, his legs kicked, and yet he swam faster than was possible with such elementary power.
“Moonshadow! The ship is untouchable!”
The strange man seemed not to hear. A single word seemed to come from him, muffled by the sea that splashed about his mouth. The word: Crugoan!
Spellbinder said, “What manner of name is that?” He seemed troubled. “It fills me with fear, and yet I know it now.”
“He pursues this thing called Crugoan,” said Raven. “That much I learned from the oracle of Uthaan. But that is all I know.”
Moonshadow had swum into the intangible hull of the ship, and floated exhausted as he realised that whatever he pursued was, for the moment, beyond his vengeance. Spellbinder guided the wolf ship towards him and Jirrem jumped overboard to haul the exhausted warrior out of the cold waters. The sail was set, and the pursuit proper began, Spellbinder keeping the ghost ship well in sight as it sailed beyond the mist, which they also left behind, and through the ranks of the Altan’s fleet.
It sailed past the narrow channel into Kragg and Raven felt a grim sense of triumph as Lifebane was completely and wholly vindicated.
No longer able to argue that Spellbinder and Raven were his enemies, M’rystal took his leave of the wolf boat and returned to his flagship.
“Follow them carefully,” he said to Raven, “for my sake, and for Krya’s sake. When you know where they are hiding, we shall plan her rescue together. Do you need men?”
“Not yet,” said Raven. “Our game, for the moment, is cat and mouse. Return to Kahrsaam before you find it has fallen to ruin.”
M’rystal laughed. “Aye, I’ve stayed away too long already. I shall be awaiting your news with impatience.”
And as the great fleet slipped away into the sea mist, the wolf boat began the pursuit proper.
Moonshadow lay below decks, thrashing and screaming. Over and over he cried the strange word. Crugoan, and nothing that Raven or Spellbinder said to him seemed to penetrate his awareness.
Raven knew that Moonshadow sought, now, the same thing as she, but had Moonshadow recognised Donwayne or Belthis as the Dark Sorcerer? She sat below decks, in the dimness of the cabin, and watched the pale-skinned man as he lived through nightmare after nightmare, and finally fell into a deep and restless slumber.
And close at hand, yet separated by wind and time…
The ocean lay clam, hazy in the brightness of a mid-afternoon sun. The great columns of rock that was Kragg rose from the waters distantly, a dark and foreboding pinnacle in the heart of the ocean. A man watched that island, and thought of the meagre, pointless life that existed upon its plateau. He smirked to think of how he had used that life, but his designed were on greater empires than the mud and stone world of that sea-farer’s stronghold.
Close-wrapped in cloak and heavy tunic, the man turned against the aft rail of the vessel and watched the ship as it gently swayed against the waves. He smelled the sour odour of sweat from the slaves who toiled with rigging, and rudder, and closer at hand he smelled the dead smell of a warrior, the dark warrior who was so useless to him now, but whose presence in the world would soon be so useful.
Motionless as those rocks of Kragg, the warrior stood on the deck and stared blindly out to sea, his mind, if mind it could be called, no doubt filled with images of dead and dying, and the wind-sound of a blade singing through flesh and bone.
Beyond those smells, and the heady stench of the sea itself, the smaller man had sensed no sign of magic, no bitter flavor of the one he hated, an whose death he desired almost as fervently as he desired power.
The ship cut the waters for the east, and the man relaxed, smug in his arrogant confidence that this part of his journey was unobserved.
Eleven
“Efficiency and pride negate each other. When they co-exist they are a weakness that can be cut like a man’s throat.”
The Books of Kharwhan
Belthis’s plan became crystal clear very quickly, but his motives for the kidnap remained obscure. Raven through revenge on M’rystal to be a most unlikely reason, but the clear thinking of the man soon became apparent.
Having kidnapped Krya, the wolf ship, specially built no doubt, had cut fast and clean to the west, outrunning all ships that had come close, but not before those ships had seen the wolf boat’s nature, Gondar’s simulacrum, and the struggling Krya aboard it. The word of Lifebane’s deed had passed swiftly around, and what merchantman was there who would follow a wolf
ship and risk piracy?
By night Belthis had sailed past the in-leading channel to Kragg; Spellbinder pointed out the signs by which he could tell that the ghost ship had sailed beyond this point by night and not by day. No one on Kragg had seen the trick, and by dawn, with Raven and the others following at a distance, they watched as the ship put into the very overhand on the northern cliffs that Raven’s boat still occupied.
A mist soon sprang up, in that time of a few days before, and the false ship again slipped out across the ocean.
No one who had seen it would have doubted that it had made for Kragg. But now it returned to the north and the east, away from Gondar’s home.
Weth all her mercenaries on board Gondar’s gift boat, Raven again took sail and followed Belthis at a distance.
“I grow weak already,” said Spellbinder as Kragg vanished behind them, lost in distance and sea haze. “We must ascertain Belthis’s destination before too long, for I cannot hold this spell more than a day or two.”
Raven sat with him, her hands stroking his face, mopping the sweat from his brow. Spellbinder grew gaunt and skeletal, almost before her eyes. His skin was pinched, went yellow and awful. His eyes became glazed, and when he took her hands in his she felt how cold they were, how shaking.
“End it now,” she urged. “He is surely making for some haven on the north coast of the Altanate, above the Irkhard river.”
Spellbinder shook his head. “I am not as ill as I look, merely weak. I know how long I can last, and until I sense danger I shall keep the ghost ship ahead of us. When my mind fails, I shall allow the forces of time to reclaim the illusion, and the spell I have gleaned from the far future.” He smiled. “It is something I am well used to. I bind spells from every age imaginable. I know the cost well, and am well used to it. Fear not, Raven. Rather, keep your warm attentions for Moonshadow. When we discover Belthis’s destination, he will want to pursue, but we must first go to the Altan.”
“I keep all my warmest attentions for Donwayne. He shall not escape me again.”
Spellbinder was troubled. “Beware ghosts,” he said. “Beware illusion. Do not commit yourself to personal revenge against a spectre.”
“I burn, Spellbinder—I burn inside. My womb burns, my heart, my flesh…I burn to rid his foul touch from me. I burn to see him dead again, properly dead.”
“Can you ever be sure that you will have killed him? Uncertainty makes all quests foolhardy.”
“Rest,” said Raven, terminating what she found to be an irritatingly logical argument.
A few hours later the ship they pursued changed course dramatically. A wind had blown up in the present world, and the wolf ship was tossed and blown to the north, hard put to keep a tack behind the ghost ship which sailed in calmer waters.
“She’s heading for Lym,” announced Moonshadow, poring hard over the maps of the eastern shore. “Had we not followed her this far we’d have imagined her put in at Salit.”
“She returns to Lym?” asked Karmana quizzically. “That makes no sense.”
“It is the last place we would have expected,” said Moonshadow. “It makes that much sense, especially since he’s had the ship’s hull painted, and flies different colours.”
Raven agreed. “But if he’s changed tack once, he can do it again.”
Spellbinder, in the next small cabin, moaned with the effort of concentration, and Raven ran to him, soothed and bathed him. He was drawn and tense, his eyes glazed and his skin a frightening parchment, cold and damp to the touch. “I cannot go on much longer,” he said.
Raven nodded grimly. “Belthis plays a cat and mouse game. There are a hundred havens north of Lym, and he will not head towards his actual destination until he is sure he has confused any watchers. You must last a little while longer. You must find the strength from somewhere.”
Spellbinder closed his eyes and shivered. The sweat burst from his face in great beads which Raven mopped up with her own sleeve.
The Sorcerer, when he spoke, sounded faint, on the verge of collapse. “We have only on advantage—Belthis does not know he is watched, and will play a casual game of change. He will soon think himself safe enough to head to his actual harbour. I suspect it will be north. Watch him hard.”
A day later the spectral ship pulled in her sail and floated awhile. Raven stood off and watched, noticing the activity aboard the other ship. Belthis ran around the deck, sniffing the air, sensing the wind. He stared into space for long moments, and Donwayne followed him, walking mechanically and powerfully, restrained by armour and muscularity from any sort of fluent motion of his body.
After a long while Raven, watching through a magnifying lens, saw Belthis smile and shake his head. He clapped Donwayne on the shoulder, and she saw the Weaponmaster’s lips move as he gave the crew instruction for a new course.
The ghost ship turned north, and sailed a course that would take them beyond Vol.
Raven followed. Fair winds, blowing in the ghost time, carried Belthis far away from them. The mercenaries cursed the calmer sky of reality that did not allow them the same speed. But overnight the situation reversed, and by the following day the ghost ship was again in sight.
And within hours the destination of Belthis and the prize he had kidnapped, was clear.
“The Ice River,” Raven told Spellbinder. “He is already past Vol, and now there is nowhere he can put ashore but the ruined city at the estuary to the river.”
“Does anyone,” gasped Spellbinder, almost lacking the strength to speak, “does anyone sense that he tricks us again?”
“No. We all sense that this is his destination.”
“Then I break the spell, thus…” and he opened his eyes, cried bizarre words and made two swift passes with his hand.
Raven sensed no difference, but a moment later Jirrem called down that the ghost ship had vanished.
Raven smiled at Spellbinder who gasped for breath and reached out for her hand. She wiped his face, and then hugged his shaking body to hers. “Well done my mysterious friend.”
“Let me sleep,” he said, “I shall soon recover.”
They turned south, then, intending to pass Vol and make harbour at Salit, before riding to M’rystal with the news. Moonshadow accepted the decision surprisingly calmly; he looked wistfully to the north, but there seemed about him the air of a man who had not departed from any personal plan by fitting into the more general pattern of things: but he regretted the loss of contact, and the fire it had given him in his soul.
Spellbinder recovered quickly, found his old strength, and colour, but he remained drawn and haggard looking for the while. In his black armour, with his sword slung from his hip, it was difficult to remember the wasted man that had trapped a moment of the past for so long, and had near died doing it.
They grouped around a map, Spellbinder and Raven, Moonshadow, Silver and Karmana. The map was detailed, showing water currents and shallows, and indicating the passable roads and trackways inland from the hazardous coast of the Altanate.
It went north, too, above Vol, to lands where the map was incompletely drawn. Between the Ice river and the Irkhard river was no-man’s-land of deep valleys and high hills, dead lakes and winding streams in whose curves nestled communities of people who claimed little allegiance to each other or to any of the major kingdoms around the Worldheart Ocean. Above the Ice river were the Frozen Peaks, impassable mountains, high and permanently capped by snow and ice. The ruined city, a vast, crumbling metropolis, standing at the river mouth, was a frightening reminder that the ice wastes of that part of the world were not to be taken lightly. The ice had once spread down from the mountains and substantially crushed the city beneath its inexorable advance. It had crushed the stubborn people too, and Raven knew that their bones would still be found there, clinging to the brickwork that they had refused to leave, so many hundreds of years before.
Beyond the Peaks was Quwhon, unmapped and unknown, a place feared by all, visited by few. There were t
hose who claimed to have been there and returned, to have seen weird and wonderful sights, and peoples and creatures. But no story was the same as any other, and it was hard to believe that they were anything more than miners’ stories, spun by the men who dug the ores form the short coastal stretch of Quwhon that lay close to a trade route to the north west. Easiest to believe was the fact that none who ventured inland from that coastline ever returned. And who would want to even try? Quwhon had nothing to offer but madness, and death.
“He will have a haven in the Frozen Peaks,” said Spellbinder. “That is where he has taken her. But see how the known river branches! He could have gone anywhere, taken any tributary.”
“But he is there,” said Raven, touching the mountains with her finger. “And M’rystal must know it soon. It will take all his resources to flush Belthis from hiding.”
“It may not,” said Spellbinder thoughtfully. “Belthis has not done this thing purely for revenge. He has something up his sleeve. It may be that he will come out of hiding before too long. In fact, he almost certainly will.”
As if in answer to his thought, at that moment there came a cry from the watch post above.
Raven ran up the short flight of steps and out on to the deck, her hand resting on her sword. She looked up to where the cry had come from and saw Arreena, suspended in the look-out slings from the tip of the mast.
“Away east,” she called. “Vol. And look at what guards it…”
Raven, closely followed by Spellbinder, raced to the starboard bulwarks and peered through distance and sea spray to where the high hills behind Vol were a welcome sight of land. The harbour and city itself appeared as a flashing, indistinct brilliance against the dun colour of the hills. But between wolf ship and port was a fleet of vessels. A blockade!
“Put inshore a way so we can see what manner of sea armada this is.”
A Time of Ghosts Page 15
