by William King
Zamara clambered down, prised open the links of the creature’s collar and then pulled the gem and its setting out from below it. He gazed into its depths as if hypnotised by what he saw.
His jaw went slack and he licked his lips. “There are things inside this gem, thousands of things,” he said. His face looked ghastly in the red light from the gem. He shook his head as if to clear it. “We’re rich,” he said. “You could buy a kingdom with this.”
“And I will,” said a voice from the gallery. Ironic applause rang out. Looking up Kormak saw a face peering down at him. The Kraken did indeed bear a resemblance to King Aemon. Beside him were more pirates.
The crossbowmen tried to bring their weapons to bear, but arrows streaked down at them, taking them in the stomach.
“I must thank you for your help,” said the Kraken. “The Spawn Mother proved stronger than my Quan ally anticipated. Its powers worked better on the tadpoles than their parent. I confess I expected to have to re-think my plans. I had not expected such potent allies to appear. I will thank my half-brother for sending you when I claim his palace as my own.”
“We have the gem. You’re going to have to come down and get it,” said Kormak.
“It is more than a mere gem, my friend. I would not advise you to hold onto it if you value your sanity.”
“What is it?” Jonas asked.
“The Teardrop of Leviathan, lost during the ancient wars of the Elder Races. It was taken as spoils and immured here after Tritureon slew Dhagoth. It is a talisman of great magical power.”
“I assume you are not going to put it to any good use,” Kormak said.
“On the contrary, I am going to reclaim my birthright with it.”
“First you’re going to have to reclaim the gem.”
“I had hoped you would see reason. You’re outnumbered. You’re looking a bit battered and I will spare your lives if you cooperate.”
“Like you spared the lives of the people in Wood’s Edge?”
“That flyspeck village? My companion needed to feed and quite honestly I would have left the damn villagers alone if they had provided me with what I requested. They declined to do so and paid the price, as you will if you don’t see sense.”
“I fear we must reject your kind offer,” said Zamara.
“A pity.” He shrugged and tossed a black egg down into the pit. The marines dived for cover. The Kraken vaulted over the barrier. His huge cloak billowed out from his shoulders, revealing the alien armour encasing his body. It was dark and chitinous, ribbed around the chest in such a way as to make it look as if the wearer’s skeleton were on the outside. Black tubes emerged from the chestplate and flowed into veins of the Kraken’s neck. They pulsed as if feeding on his blood.
The armour bulged and flowed in odd places as the Kraken moved. It gave the impression of being alive and grafted to its owner’s body. Kormak had seen such things worn by Old Ones in the past.
The sorcerer drifted down rather than fell. A ruby ring on his left hand caught the light. Kormak had just enough time to notice this before the Kraken spoke a word of power. Clouds of inky black smoke emerged from the shattered crystal egg he had thrown. A strange peppery odour reached Kormak’s nostrils and his eyes began to sting.
“Hold your breath!” Jonas shouted. “Close your eyes!”
Kormak had already started to do so. Coughs and screams sounded around him out of the darkness. His flesh crawled in anticipation of a blade stroke. He listened as he had been taught in the fighter’s court on Aethelas, tried to sense any displacement of the air near him.
More shouts echoed round the chamber, in what sounded like Zamara’s voice. Kormak stood ready, blade in hand, eyes stinging.
The inky blackness faded. Kormak saw men on the ground, retching and choking. Jonas stood over Zamara, his mouth covered in a handkerchief, his eyes red and watering. The Kraken was nowhere to be seen, nor was the gem nor were any of his men.
“What did he do?” Zamara asked. He was coughing and looked as if was going to be sick. “What was that mist?”
“He used an alchemical gas,” said Jonas. “It obscures the vision and attacks the constitution.”
The men looked ill. Most could barely stand. A few sobbed and claimed they were blind. Kormak felt dizzy and nauseous and he had only breathed in a tiny amount of the gas. His eyes felt as if he had been staring at fire for days on end. They were in no shape for a battle.
“Something ripped the gem from my hands,” Zamara said.
“You were lucky. He could have killed you,” Jonas said.
“It might have given away his position,” said Kormak. “And I doubt his men would have done any better in the fog than we did.”
Jonas nodded. “The gas would have affected them too. It’s probably why he didn’t order them to attack us. Why risk a fight when he did not have to?”
Zamara looked pale. “Did you see the way he fell? As if he weighed less than a feather. He should not have been able to drop from that height without breaking his legs. That was sorcery indeed.”
“We have other things to worry about,” said Kormak.
Most of the lights had gone out when they were dropped or spilled.
“Pick up those lanterns,” Kormak shouted. “If we lose the light we’ll never get out of here.”
Terves lifted one of the ship’s lanterns. Other soldiers gathered the remainder.
“We need to follow him!” said Zamara. “We can’t let him get away.”
Kormak stared pointedly at the sick soldiers. Most of them lay on the ground. A few sat with their heads between their legs. One or two of them had stopped breathing entirely. “We are in no condition to fight anybody. Most of those men can barely walk.”
In truth Zamara did not look any better than his soldiers, but he cursed and ordered them to get up, get into formation. The soldiers did their best to respond. Frater Jonas moved around advising them, telling them to wash their eyes with canteen water.
Kormak went over to the cloaked form of the Black Priest. He prodded the robed form with the toe of his boot. The flesh beneath gave way in a spongy boneless fashion. He lifted the corpse by its robe and heard a gasp from Zamara and the marines. A long, greenish squid-like tentacle emerged from beneath. Suckers ran along its length. Kormak carried the body to the ramp. It felt about as heavy as an eight-year-old child. He stripped off the robes. What lay beneath was like something adapted to living on the bottom of the sea. Its flesh was cold and slimy.
It had a bulbous squid-like head. The eyes were almost human, albeit larger. A long, streamlined form stretched out from beneath the head. From where the shoulders would have been on a man two tentacles emerged. Six more emerged from the bottom of the torso. The tentacles seemed boneless, all muscle. Each of the limbs would be as strong as a constrictor snake.
The survivors of Wood’s Edge had claimed the priest had seemed to drift rather than walk. Possibly it levitated like some of the Old Ones. In death, it seemed to have lost that gift. Another thought occurred to him. Perhaps the Kraken’s strange armour granted a similar power. That would explain the slowness of the sorcerer’s descent.
Frater Jonas came over to where he stood. “It is fascinating,” he said. “I have never been so close to such a thing before. But we must go. The Kraken has a head’s start on us and we need to get out of here before we lose all illumination.”
Kormak nodded and the small party of soldiers limped from the chamber. They marched like men already beaten.
CHAPTER TEN
NOTHING OPPOSED THEM as they plodded through the benighted city. The spawn in the entrance tunnel appeared sated on their earlier victims. The Triturids seemingly had no interest in stopping them leaving. It looked as if they had fought only to prevent the ziggurat being invaded.
After long hours of marching they staggered up to the docks. The captain cursed. Frater Jonas made an Elder Sign over his breast. The soldiers looked grim.
The mast of the pirate
vessel jutted from the water. There was no sign of the Ocean’s Blade.
The bodies of the watch party floated in the river.
“Looks like the Kraken has made good his escape,” said Kormak.
“He scuttled his own ship and took ours? Why?” Jonas asked.
“It was the better ship,” said Zamara. “And he has made it very difficult for us to follow him.”
“You’re saying we’re trapped here,” said Jonas. His voice sounded as if it was about to crack.
“We can follow the river back to the coast and meet up with the fleet there,” said Kormak.
Zamara nodded. “It’s a long slow march.”
“We could build rafts,” said Kormak. “Going with the current would be quicker.”
“We’ll never catch him now.”
“He still needs to get by the Marlin and the Sea Dragon,” said Jonas.
“They’ll see the Ocean’s Blade,” said Zamara. “If he’s quick he’ll pass them and be out into the open sea before they understand what has happened. If he has any knowledge of Siderean flag code, they might not even pursue. He can tell them to wait.”
“Now we know why he took your ship,” said Kormak.
“What I’d like to know is how he managed it,” said Zamara. He sounded petulant. “We left enough men with the ship to hold of his crew.”
“My guess would be sorcery,” said Kormak.
Frater Jonas nodded agreement. “The black cloud he used against us would weaken the prize crew and give him the advantage.”
Zamara nodded his head. He looked very weary. It was not easy for a Siderean captain to lose his ship. It was going to be even harder for him as a Siderean noble to return and explain what had happened to his king. To tell the truth, Kormak thought, none of them came out of this looking well.
Zamara straightened his shoulders, and began bellowing orders to the marines. The tired soldiers straightened their shoulders and prepared to march.
By evening, bone weary, they trudged past the boundary wall of Triturek. Elves waited in the gloom beneath the trees. All their heads swivelled at once, again giving the impression that a single intelligence glared out through multiple pairs of eyes.
“Tumitha gives you greetings,” they said simultaneously.
“Greetings,” Kormak said.
“Your quest did not go well,” said the elves.
“The Kraken has what he sought although his Quan ally gave his life to get it.”
“That much is something,” said the elves.
“Much as I would like to stand and chat,” said Zamara, “I have a sorcerer to pursue.”
Kormak kept his expression neutral. Could the captain not see that if they antagonised the elves they would be going nowhere? Perhaps he did and just did not care.
“You lose no time by being civil to us,” said the elves. “We can provide you with rivercraft since you require them. We can provide you with extra arms to row them. Your enemy is our enemy.”
“Perhaps you should have remembered that when we entered the city,” said Zamara. “With your help we might have been able to stop the sorcerer.”
“It is a place we do not go. We do not wish to be tainted by it.”
“Yet you let us go in.”
“That was your choice,” said the elves. Their multiple voices were bland. “To stop you we would have had to fight you and that would have gained us nothing save the laughter of our enemy.”
“We accept your offer gratefully,” said Kormak. Before Zamara could say anything more, he looked at the captain and said, “With your aid we may yet be able to overtake our foe and regain our ship.”
Zamara remained quiet, for which Kormak was thankful.
The elvish canoes were large. Their crews worked with an eerie precision, their movements far more synchronised than any human oarsmen. They had left space in the centre of the craft for the marines and would not accept any aid with the rowing. They guided their craft swiftly with the current, moving effortlessly.
Ralan sat beside Kormak on the prow of one vessel. “So you killed the Triturid Mother in her spawning pool,” he said. “You have ended an ancient race unless a new Mother emerges. It seems you have achieved the Quan’s vengeance for them.”
Kormak’s expression was grim. “That was not the only work I did for them. I let the Kraken get what he came for.”
The elf’s green eyes turned on him. “What was that?”
Kormak described the gem. The elf’s brow crinkled into a frown. The depthless wisdom of Tumitha glittered in his eyes. “That is an ill thing.”
“What is it?”
“Your words paint a picture of an Eldrim aether matrix.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“Such crystals are a concentration of pure aether, distilled and solidified magical energy. They are sources of enormous power. They were often used as focuses for the most potent spell engines.”
“It goes without saying such an object could be useful to a sorcerer,” said Jonas.
The elves nodded. “If he knows how to tap it, it would give him the sort of power that has not been seen in a long age of this world. But only the Old Ones knew how to do that.”
Kormak said, “Human sorcerers study the works of the Old Ones. The Kraken sought this thing out over a number of years. I think it’s fair to assume he knows something about using it or why else would he seek it?”
“Then he will be a menace to all who live.”
“Unless he is stopped,” said Kormak.
The elves all nodded. “Indeed. Unless he is stopped,” they said in unison. Their gaze lingered on Kormak as if weighing whether he was the man to do it.
They smelled the sea before they saw it. There was a tang of salt in the air that warred with the scent of the forest. Gulls shrieked overhead, white dots on a blue sky.
“It would be best if we left you before the river’s mouth,” said Ralan. “I would not wish to risk a misunderstanding with the crews of your warships out yonder in that great blue desert.”
“We thank you for your aid,” Kormak said.
The elf looked at him. For once there was no suggestion of the vast presence of Tumitha behind his eyes. “It is nothing. The Great Tree wishes it were more. It troubles her to think of a mortal sorcerer walking abroad with the power of the Teardrop of Leviathan to call upon.”
“We have at least made good time,” Kormak said. The elves had paddled through day and night, tireless and able to navigate through the darkness when humans would have made camp. Enforced inactivity had given the soldiers time to sleep and to recover from the ill-effects of the Kraken’s sorcerous mist.
“The ship of your enemies is but a few hours ahead of you.”
Kormak did not need to ask how the elf knew this. Tumitha was linked to countless beasts and birds in her realm. She could borrow all of their eyes and so could the elves who served her. “We shall leave you the canoes so that you can find your way to your vessels.”
They angled towards the riverbank. No words had passed between the elves. Everything was done in the same uncanny silence. The marines looked at each other, wondering what was going on.
“We’re almost at the sea,” Kormak shouted. “They are leaving us to go on alone.”
Despite the aid the elves had given them there was an almost palpable sense of relief. The humans had been uncertain of the elves, of their inhuman endurance, of their ability to communicate with each other without speaking. They had not known whether they were allies or prisoners.
The elves pulled the canoes up to the riverbank and without a word of farewell, disappeared into the forest.
“That was odd,” said Zamara. “They are not the politest of people are they?”
“They gave us aid when we needed it,” said Kormak. “That is all the politeness I require.”
Zamara nodded and contemplated the much-diminished number of soldiers under his command. Some of them lay in the canoes still, feverish from t
heir wounds, or the effects of the gas. He wondered if they would ever recover fully.
“I am thankful to them,” said Frater Jonas. “But I will be even more grateful to get back aboard our ships and be gone from this place.”
Zamara looked at Kormak. “The Ocean’s Blade cannot have made much better time than we did. We might still catch it if we are quick.” He looked a lot more hopeful. The opportunity to erase his failure had been given to him and he seemed determined to seize it.
He marched around the soldiers, kicking them to their feet, shouting orders, telling them that soon they would have ship’s biscuit and rum. That thought got the marines back into the canoes and pulling at the oars.
Kormak sat at the back of one of the small boats. The river widened. The ocean became visible. Ahead he could see the masts of two warships. There was no sign of a third.
They rowed closer under the suspicious eyes of the crew of the Marlin. The ballista was aimed at them as were scores of crossbows. The sight of the long low elvish canoes with the green eyes painted on their prow caused disquiet.
Zamara stood on the prow with his hands upraised, giving everyone a chance to see him. Captain Dominic, the master of the Marlin shouted a halloo. A few minutes later they were scrambling up the netting on the ships side.
Zamara greeted Captain Dominic. “Have you seen the Ocean’s Blade?”
“No,” said the Marlin’s master, unease in his tone.
“She cannot have been too far ahead of us.”
“A strange mist rose over the river mouth this morning. The lookouts claimed they heard something but we could not see anything.”
Zamara cursed. Frater Jonas said, “Sorcery. The work of the Shadow.”
“You saw nothing?” said Kormak.
Dominic shook his head. “Until we saw you.”
“They could have gone anywhere,” said Jonas.
“No,” Kormak said. “The Kraken has found what he was looking for.”
“He may be returning home to Port Blood, to plot his next move,” said Frater Jonas.
“We don’t know that,” said Zamara. “He could just as easily be heading south to plunder the coasts of Siderea.”
