by Janny Wurts
The influx slammed across the lone spellbinder’s frail defences with the thundering force of an avalanche. He yelled, hands convulsed. Though spasmic reflex threatened him with castration, he failed to dodge the connection. Beyond any shadow of doubt, Prime Selidie now knew he and Fionn Areth were aboard Captain Feylind’s vessel.
‘Ath above!’ he gasped, shaken senseless, and bruised in a place that would not let him think. ‘Now we have trouble!’
‘Because you’ve snagged your wee hairs in your buttons?’ The brusque voice was the mate, shoved into the pack to see why his deck-hands were slacking. ‘By Dharkaron’s fell Spear, I’ll have the lot shaved! Are we a latrineful of dimwit voyeurs, or a two-masted ship trimmed under three courses of sail!’
‘Wait,’ urged the quartermaster, just culled from the wheel for the purpose of handling malcontents. ‘Look at the man’s face. Whatever’s upset him is serious!’
Dakar scarcely noticed the crowd parting around him. Pressed to the lee-rail as his knees let go under him, he caught only broken snatches of words, flung through the rush of thrown spray. Ripped by the blinding pain of his headache, he grappled to muster his talent. Someone must assay the force of the threat now attached to the hapless brig.
If he was the Evenstar’s only trained asset, he was not to have peace for his effort.
Hands grabbed his shoulder and spun him about. ‘What’s happening?’ The mate’s piercing stare raked him over, now worried. ‘What’s this I hear about meddling Koriathain?’
‘They want Fionn Areth,’ Dakar gasped in distress. ‘I fear we’re too late to forestall them.’
‘Bloodless bitches,’ the mate swore, moved to sympathy for the herder. The lad was young for his plight. However he skulked, he could never hide with a face that bore such extreme notoriety. ‘Trust me, I’d back Feylind and scuttle this hull before we strike flags in surrender. Since we’re bound to fight, we’ll fare that much better if we know how the Prime Matriarch intends to attack.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ a stripped, steely voice interjected.
Dakar jerked at the sound, head upturned toward the quarter-deck. Although he had sensed no invasive disturbance, he encountered a lean figure muffled in black, leaning into the wind at the taffrail. The barest glance awoke recognition. A moment that should have brought speechless joy gave rise to explosive remonstrance. ‘Damn your feckless hide to the nethermost pit! What in Sithaer possessed you to come here?’
‘My right of free choice,’ the arrival replied. ‘No one’s pining for a reunion, I see.’
The deck-crew stared, dumb-struck. This man’s angular features might seem, line for line, a stamped replica of the boy Feylind’s order had shut in the sail hold. Yet this was not he. The predator’s gleam that lit these green eyes had never been bred in the grass-lands.
Striding down the companionway to the main-deck, the man who was the Crown Prince of Rathain took pause. His braced stance was experienced as the brig tossed and slammed on her close-hauled course through the wave-crests. ‘The occasion’s beyond speech?’ He glanced aloft, measured the set of the sails, then smiled toward the first mate. ‘My compliments, fellow. You keep a tight ship.’ His scouring survey reached Dakar’s flushed face. ‘Not Sithaer,’ he added with irony. ‘My presence is actually the gift of Davien.’
‘Welcome to the massacre,’ the Mad Prophet said carefully. ‘We’re jammed square in the throat of a Koriani trap. Or didn’t the Betrayer bother to tell you?’
‘I am fully informed.’
That crisp tone revealed nothing. A silver-trimmed cloak, lately worn by a Sorcerer, draped over immaculate shoulders. The trial of the maze and a year in the caverns had accentuated the milk-quartz complexion. Less definable changes carried more force: the adamant clarity of a mage-trained self-awareness had been reforged to a fearfully surgical edge.
Dakar swallowed, despite himself overcome. ‘Welcome back, Arithon.’ Foolish tears made him blink. Unprompted, he answered the hanging question. ‘Fionn Areth is safe, though your friends want to wring his idiot neck on account of his uncertain loyalty.’
‘He’s locked in the sail hold, I already know. Let that problem bide, for the moment.’ Paused through a rapid, measuring glance, the Master of Shadow searched the faces of Evenstar’s astounded deck-crew. ‘Where’s Feylind?’
‘Resting, your Grace.’ The mate stirred to go, until Arithon’s gesture forestalled his impulse to roust her.
‘No titles,’ said the Master of Shadow. ‘Bring all hands on deck, now. Together, we’re going to work them like dogs. If you pray, beg for favour that we can strike sail, drop the yard-arms, and unstep the topmasts in less than an hour.’
‘We’re in for a blow?’ the mate asked, startled grim.
‘A storm like no other.’ Arithon stripped off the fine cloak. ‘This vessel’s been tagged by a Koriani sigil, and they’ve meddled. Spell-craft’s been engaged that will shortly make us a magnet for fiends.’
‘Iyats!’ howled the mate. ‘We’re hard up in a clinch! Such damnable mischief could sink us!’ He snatched for the lanyard strung at his neck, shrilled a blast on his whistle, while the crewmen at hand surged up the ratlines without need to be ordered aloft.
Arithon dumped his cloak into Dakar’s numbed grasp. ‘Stow this below.’ Through the shouted commands as the brig was braced by, and spray scattered in stinging sheets over the bowsprit, the Master of Shadow moved down the list of necessities. ‘I need you to secure water-barrels. Lay them under every strong ward you know to guard against breakage and mischance.’
‘I can’t.’ Dakar clutched the bunched wool, left utterly wretched. In stripped words he told why his talent was blunted from months of drunken sex and dissipation. ‘What else could I do? Fionn Areth showed Luhaine an offensive mistrust. We had no opening to claim free permission.’
Arithon, rapt, had grasped the sore gist. ‘Do what you can, then. I have a few theories that could grant a stay from this lash-up. The Prime Matriarch thinks you’ll be caught unaware. She doesn’t expect to have me aboard, fouling the lay of her plans.’
Dakar choked back his self-evident admonition, that Selidie Prime might instead seize her chance to trap both decoy and quarry together. ‘What will you do now?’
Arithon flung back a madcap grin, then spun toward the galley amidships. ‘Have words with the cook. Then protect the provisions. After that, if the crew has the sail rig in hand, I’ll nip down and release Fionn Areth.’
‘Not when he’s a prisoner on my brig, you won’t!’ Waked by the commotion, Feylind shot out of the stern cabin. Hair streaming, she whooped through the mate’s shouted orders, then pounced and locked her slighter, male target into a choking embrace. ‘Nor will you escape with no courtesy, this time. You owe me that much, for your absence.’
Which had been an inexcusable seventeen years; no glib word could sidestep that issue. Arithon did not try. ‘My dear, you’ve surpassed expectations. The fitness of your command is a marvel, but unless you have skills to trap plagues of iyats, you’ll hear my apologies, swimming.’ Gently firm, he began to untangle himself.
‘Fionn Areth,’ she snapped. ‘You’ll keep him penned up.’ Her hold on his wrists did not loosen.
The creature who had walked, alive, out of Kewar suffered the unwanted constraint. The depth of dimension in him was so changed, Dakar lost his breath. Shaken by insight that tingled his skin, only he glimpsed the inscrutable presence behind that unruffled composure.
‘Feylind, let go, my judgement is sound.’ Arithon smiled with no outward sign of admonishment. ‘The iyats will only feed on dissent. Leave the young man locked down, his reckless rage will endanger us. If he’s not overjoyed by my company, you’ll have to trust me to handle him.’
A squealed block, and a clatter aloft divided the captain’s attention. ‘Mind that heel-rope, you eavesdropping slackers! That mast takes so much as a scratch, coming down, you’ll be varnishing spars in retirement!’
�
��They need you,’ said Arithon. His swift peck on her cheek disengaged her taut grip. He moved straightaway to resume his stopped course, but gossip had travelled ahead of him. As he ducked the men stowing the downed topsail yard-arm, he all but collided with Talvish.
‘It is yourself!’ The lean swordsman skipped back, already braced to withstand the expected, searing rebuke. ‘However did you manage—’
Arithon cut him off. ‘Later!’ And, again, the stark change clutched the heart: that the smile on his face had no edge, only nakedly genuine pleasure.
As Dakar stood, winded, he saw that familiar, dark-haired form briefly shimmer as though scattered by light. The phenomenon was not strange to him. Ath’s adepts, and more rarely, Fellowship Sorcerers, might raise the fire of their being in the discharge of their auric fields. The trial of Kewar’s maze had done more than break the guilt that blocked Arithon’s mastery. His freed talent had soared to rare heights. A year in retreat would have let him adjust. But thrust into the pressure of intimate company, such fresh power now slipped his restraint: the expanded awareness he carried was probably just barely integrated.
With a fiend storm descending through Selidie’s sigil, that stray discharge posed the most dire liability.
Yet even as Dakar measured the threat, the luminous flare brightened, then blinded. The scene burned away in a plunging rush, as the cloak in his arms seemed to swallow his head, and he stumbled into wild prescience. In harsh clarity, he saw: Arithon’s lit form, wreathed in flame and smoke. His hand reached, imploring, to grasp Talvish, who knelt, his thin face a rictus of anguish. About his bent knees, the dead sprawled, strewn and twisted, broken by sword and by arrow. One among them still breathed. She lay, burned and battered, clutched in the clan liegeman’s streaked arms with her bloodied, blonde head cradled against his mailed shoulder.
‘Dakar!’ Hands braced him. Ripped by nausea, he looked up into Feylind’s concerned face. ‘You’re sea-sick, man. Let’s get you stowed in a berth.’
Too dazed for speech, Dakar shrugged off her support. ‘Go on. I’ll manage.’
Through his reeling, sick fear, he grabbed hold of the pin-rail. Before him, Arithon was still speaking in light-hearted reproval to Talvish. ‘Since you wouldn’t hear sense and stay with your duke, come along. I’m going to need you.’
Cat-quick in recovery, the fair man-at-arms recontained his speechless delight. He padded in stride with Arithon’s haste, then ventured his question in warning. ‘You plan to free that ungrateful yokel? Vhandon won’t take that move quietly’
‘So, we’ll see.’ Arithon’s breathless laughter broke off, as he overheard the mate’s order to run a capstan-bar aloft to secure the stowed topmast rigging. Hands cupped, he offered an instant correction. ‘Remove lines and tackle! Strip everything bare! Those iyats slip the knots and unravel the stays, anything loose is going to come down and hammer us to perdition.’
The Mad Prophet snatched his moment. Thrust between the Prince of Rathain and the sworn liegeman, and crowding the narrow companionway he demanded, ‘You can’t sing bardic threnodies and dispel them?’
A swift glance, his eyebrows raised in appraisal, the Master of Shadow replied, ‘For how long, Dakar?’
His point was self-evident: Prime Selidie’s attack was impelled through the Waystone. A focus of power sustained through a crystal would outlast the most skilled human voice. A masterbard might sing himself hoarse, then whistle until he dropped prostrate. The displaced iyats would still remain, a spell-fed plague that would descend and reap their deferred toll of havoc.
The spellbinder stayed planted in front of the deck-house, the bundled black cloak clutched too tight, and sweat sliding down his doughy features. ‘What aren’t you telling us? Speak. What else besides fiends lies in ambush?’
‘Carry on, Dakar.’ Arithon’s adamant grasp was too firm, and his eyes, starkly haunted, as he edged his way past. ‘Start safeguarding the water stores. I’ll join you as soon as I can.’
Talvish had no mind to dismiss the exchange. ‘You sighted a future?’ he murmured low-voiced, as he squeezed through in Arithon’s wake.
‘Fire. Smoke. Armed attack,’ Dakar forced out, before the back-lashing heave locked his teeth.
Yet the pace of Arithon’s orders denied the least chance for appraisal. Talvish found himself left with the cook, strapping down pots, blunting knives, and containing such hazards in lockers. The ship’s cooper was fetched, then taught to nail the lids shut in patterns that invoked protection from the cardinal elements.
‘No charm is proof against outright disaster,’ the Master of Shadow instructed. ‘Which is why, first thing, I will try for delay. That’s where the small constructs come in.’
‘You have a plan?’ the ship’s steward asked. He was curled in a cranny out of harm’s way, pasting small squares of paper to the wood scrap kept dry to kindle the stove.
‘I have chaos,’ Arithon stated in wry admission, and summed up at speed. ‘When the galley’s secured, make rounds of the forecastle. All clothing gets stripped of its buttons and laces. Boot buckles also. Jack-knives, and coins -any trove of hard objects—contain them. Nail the men’s personal sea chests shut. I don’t care who’s stashed contraband whisky. Every bottle goes overboard. No exceptions. Miss out any item that’s breakable glass, somebody risks getting blinded.’ Poised by the threshold, he finished. ‘When those billets are tagged, take them to the chart desk. Sharpen a fresh quill. If there’s a horn inkpot, leave that one.’
Belowdecks, the wallow and pitch of the hull made every small movement difficult. The shadows swung to the roll of the lamps, which had yet to be stowed or extinguished. Thumping feet overhead marked the rush of the crewmen, still scrambling to secure yards and topmasts. Arithon made his way to the sail hold. There, one hand braced for stability, he exchanged a wrist clasp greeting with Vhandon.
The staid, grey veteran cracked into a grin of unbridled happiness. ‘You’re a sight I never expected to see! We heard you’d challenged the maze under Kewar. Until now, I never believed you survived. You’re going in there?’ This last, with a nod tipped toward the locked door. ‘Well, don’t drop your guard. Your double’s a kiss-arse toady for Lysaer. Need my dagger? It’s best for close quarters.’
Arithon slipped the bar, lost into swung shadow as Evenstar ploughed through a trough. ‘My blade will suffice, since I don’t plan to draw.’ He wrenched open the door, while the gyrating lamp speared a wedge of light into darkness.
Fionn Areth, on his feet, met his nemesis face-to-face, with no more than the overheard voices as warning. He would have the first word, outraged as he was after cavalier handling and extended months of imprisonment.
A masterbard’s diction sliced through like hot steel. ‘Koriathain have cast spelled designs on this ship. Once again, you are their target. This time, do you think you can keep your steel sheathed till the heat of the crisis is over?’
‘I don’t swim,’ said the goatherd, miserably white. ‘That’s the only assurance I’ll give, since no bargain you make can be trusted.’
‘Leave his meddling hands tied,’ Vhandon bristled. ‘That way, if we sink, the fool will go down that much faster.’
‘Dead wood makes no trouble.’ Arithon reached with blurred speed and drew Vhandon’s knife. His shove spun the herder face about. A stroke sliced the fish twine that bound the crossed wrists. ‘Get above. See the cook. He has my instructions, should you care to help. If you don’t like survival, then heave yourself overboard. You’re at liberty under my sovereign word. If you hinder the crew, or endanger this ship, I’ll see you delivered to Jaelot’s justiciar, hog-tied and stripped for a burning.’
Before Fionn Areth could command his cramped limbs, or turn himself back toward the doorway, Arithon had returned his liegeman’s blade and moved off down the passage. Damnably facile aboard a ship, he scaled the deck-ladder as quickly.
Tight at his heels, and scarcely less agile, Vhandon shouted his vexed disbelief. ‘You
won’t ask me to watch him?’
‘Why bother?’ Through the work of the hull, and the bangs and thumps of hurried activity, Arithon’s contempt carried clearly. ‘Where will the man go? Poor though it is, my hospitality can’t match the speed at which Jaelot’s mayor would cut him dead on the scaffold. He’ll do his part keeping this vessel afloat. Or dive off the rail, for all that I care, and pray for the Light to come save him.’
‘Then I stay behind you,’ Vhandon declared. Emerged into daylight amidships, he back-stepped fast, as Arithon whirled and refused him.
‘A guard at my back will just pose a liability. The cook will show how the deck-lamps must be stowed. You’ll dull your weapons like every-one else and secure them inside a nailed locker.’
‘What!’ Vhandon barked. ‘You’d have me disarmed?’ Forearms folded like rock across his studded jack, he rebelled. ‘I’d sooner walk naked among starving wolves, and besides, rampaging iyats don’t kill.’
‘This plague storm’s not natural,’ Arithon contradicted. ‘These fiends have been goaded by Matriarch Selidie’s wrought sigils, then primed to cause bloodletting mischief. The perils that threaten the lives on this ship cannot be routed with weapons!’
‘You’d blunt Alithiel?’ cracked Vhandon, incredulous.
Arithon paused; shut his eyes. For one jagged moment, he fought torn composure. The reeling punch of his prismatic far-sight blurred his clear thought, and the exasperation of any well-meaning friend would just lure the fiends that much faster. ‘Vhandon. The Isaervian blades were forged to curb drake spawn. Stop arguing! You’re needed. Talvish is locking down knives as we speak. We don’t have the time to thrash out better strategy! Someone has got to start tearing down lanterns, stowing the oil, and removing the wicks!’
‘You die here for an ignorant stripling’s mad cause, far more than one ship will be foundered.’ Yet the grizzled war veteran could not stand his hard ground. That locked glance stripped him naked: the chartless depths within those green eyes outfaced all his worldly experience.
