Dragon Hunters

by Marc Turner

  Her brother ignored the question. “When you’re finished in Dian, I want you to go to ground for a few days until the dust settles.”

  “What am I supposed to do in Dian for a few days?”

  “Ah, whatever you like, so long as it doesn’t involve the Chameleon Temple there. No one is to know you’re in the city.”

  “You haven’t told anyone I’m going?”

  Caval looked away. “The fewer people who learn about the mission, the less chance there is of a loose tongue letting something slip.”

  Karmel covered a smile. A loose tongue, indeed. The truth was, her brother didn’t want anyone knowing about her role in the operation so he could take credit for her success afterward. Not that she would let him, of course. She wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity to catch the eye not just of the emira but also of those Chameleons at the temple who when they looked at her saw only the sister of the high priest. For too long she’d lingered in her brother’s shadow.

  “I’m aware,” Caval said, “that you haven’t been properly briefed about the mission. There hasn’t been time. Veran will fill you in on the details.” He glanced across. “You’re to do as he tells you out there, understood?”

  “So long as he doesn’t—”

  “No,” Caval cut in. “You’ll do as you’re told, or we end this now.”

  End this now? If by that he meant he would stand Karmel down, he was surely bluffing, for where was he going to find a replacement at such short notice? So intense was his gaze, though, that the priestess’s retort died on her lips. She inclined her head.

  Caval studied her, then nodded in turn. “Wait here,” he said, setting off down the beach toward Veran.

  He approached the other man as if Veran were some cinderhound prone to bite—swinging round to come from one side before halting several paces away. The high priest had swapped his robes of office for a plain shirt, trousers, and cloak, yet still he cut a commanding figure beside the shorter Veran in his tattered kalabi robe. Veran did not acknowledge Caval’s presence. Instead he remained looking out to sea, his arms crossed over his chest.

  A gust of wind swept along the beach, setting Karmel’s robes flapping. She could hear the two men’s voices but not what they were saying. Caval appeared to be doing most of the talking, though. The priestess frowned. What did her brother have to say to Veran? Most likely he was giving him final instructions regarding the mission, but then why had he told Karmel to wait here?

  She had just resolved to join the two men when Caval turned and beckoned her forward.

  He came to meet her halfway down the beach. The hem of his cloak was wet from the surf. Karmel looked expectantly at Veran, but Caval did not reveal what he’d been discussing with the other man. He made to speak, then changed his mind. The silence dragged out. Karmel realized she was fiddling with the cuff of her sleeve, and she clasped her hands together to still them.

  “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?” she said.

  “Ah, will you need it?”

  “No,” she said, trying to sound confident.

  A smile touched the corners of Caval’s mouth, but it quickly faded. “Stay close to Veran. He’ll take care of you.”

  The time had come for them to part. Karmel found herself searching for something to say that would keep her brother here longer, but her mind was blank. The waves fretted at the beach. Caval watched her. For a heartbeat Karmel thought he was going to step forward and embrace her, but it was only the wind ruffling his cloak, not a movement of his body that she’d seen. His expression was hidden by the shadows of his hood. Karmel could see his eyes, though, glassy with reflected moonlight. There was something in them she did not recognize, but before she could focus on it Caval broke her gaze.

  Stepping past her, he walked up the beach toward the track.

  Her stomach churning, the priestess watched him until he reached the cliff ledge. He did not look round.

  No turning back now.

  Stones crunched beneath Karmel’s sandals as she went to join Veran. He was still staring out to sea. He could only be a few years older than Caval, but his hair was streaked with gray. There was something of the banewolf in his angular features and in the yellowish cast to his eyes.

  A wave broke cold over Karmel’s feet as she waited. “Are you hoping Dian will come to us?” she said at last.

  Veran swung to confront her. His face was thin, his cheeks hollow, but there was a strength to his gaze that made the priestess want to look away. Which made her all the more determined not to. He gestured to the boat. “Get in,” he said.

  “Since you ask so nicely.”

  Karmel climbed into the craft, wrinkling her nose at the stench of rotting fish. The boat had a mast with a single sail and a bench with a pair of banked oars. The priestess stored her pack beneath the bench before moving to the bow. Here she caught another smell—caulking. Fresh, too. No doubt it was only thing holding the boat together.

  Veran set his shoulder to the stern of the craft and pushed. Stones skittered beneath his feet. The boat shifted forward a fraction …

  And stuck.

  The priest snorted and leaned into the transom once more. Veins stood out on his forehead. Still the boat remained wedged.

  “Put your back into it,” Karmel suggested helpfully.

  There was a groan of wood. Then the craft lurched forward into the sea, flinging up a plume of spray.

  Thrown off balance, Karmel fell backward and jarred her elbows on the bottom of the boat. When she put her hands down for support, she felt the sting of a splinter in her palm. Her tension came bubbling up. Curse it all! Her first mission, and already it seemed like one indignity piled atop another. Somewhere, she suspected, Caval would be laughing. For all she knew, this whole thing—this talk of the emira plotting to remain in power, him trusting her with the assignment—could be some elaborate joke at her expense. Maybe Veran would sail round the island a couple of times and arrive back here to find her brother waiting for her, grinning.

  It was what Karmel would have done in his position.

  Veran continued to push on the transom until the waves came up to his waist. Then he placed his hands on the gunwale and sprang inside. Settling himself on the oar-bench, he unlimbered the oars and heaved upon them. The muscles of his arms knotted with each stroke. To the sound of crashing water, the boat labored out into the bay.

  Veran was facing away from Karmel, so she was spared having to endure his stare as she looked back at the shore. The sea reached white fingers onto the beach, erasing the gouge left by the boat’s keel. Karmel scanned the cliff ledge for Caval. She thought she saw a shadowy form pass in front of one of the caves in the rock face, but it must have been a trick of the light, for the figure did not reappear along the track beyond the opening.

  To Karmel’s left Olaire was visible above a rocky promontory. The Round’s dome was easy to spot, as were the beacons at the mouth of the Causeway. When the priestess searched Kalin’s Hill for the Chameleon Temple, though—it seemed oddly important that she catch a final glimpse of it—she could not make it out. As daughter to the former high priest, the temple had been her home throughout her childhood—the only home she’d ever known. She continued to look for it until the boat neared the mouth of the bay, but the darkness clung stubbornly to the hillside, and Karmel fought to shake off a premonition she would not see the temple, or her brother, again.

  Shivering, she wrapped her cloak about her shoulders.

  The noise of waves breaking on the shore faded, to be replaced by the splash of oars and the slap of water on the boat’s hull. From the direction of Olaire came the clang of a crescent-bell, indicating that somewhere in the Shallows’ flooded streets a saberfin had been sighted. Lights showed in the windows of the buildings in the Deeps, and their glow reflected off the sea in smears of watery gold. As the boat’s course took it closer to the headland, those lights disappeared behind the promontory. Soon all that remained to mark Olaire’s presen
ce was a paling of the night sky.

  Karmel realized abruptly that her buttocks were wet, and she placed her palm on the planks beneath her. The wood was damp. Rising, she spied a trickle of water running along the boards toward the bench where Veran sat.

  “We’re taking on water—”

  “Silence, girl!”

  “My name is Karmel…” the priestess began, louder than she’d intended.

  Her voice trailed off.

  Veran’s oars had gone still. He was looking to the west, to where the promontory fell away into the sea. From the other side materialized a small boat under sail, less than fifty armspans away. It was heading this way. Karmel silently swore. Someone was following them! Had the other Storm Lords found out about the mission and moved quickly to put an end to it? Even through her panic, she knew that made no sense. If it had been the Storm Lords pursuing them, would they have given chase in a craft even more wretched than Karmel’s?

  Then she noticed the crayfish baskets stacked in the boat’s stern. Just a fishing boat, she assured herself. Any moment now its owner would see them and turn aside.

  Even as the thought came to her a curse sounded across the waves, and the craft’s occupant—an Untarian male with fishbone piercings in his nose and ears—reached for the tiller. The boat’s bow swung round.

  Veran looked from the fisherman to Karmel. “Shut him up,” he said, glancing at the baldric of knives across her chest.

  The priestess stared at him. Was he serious? “Do you hear him talking?” she asked.

  Veran’s face twisted in disgust.

  Karmel’s mind struggled to keep up with what happened next. Her companion reached under the oar-bench and straightened with a throwing knife of his own in his hand. His meaning had been clear when he told her to silence the fisherman, yet a part of Karmel still hadn’t believed he would go through with it.

  He spun and threw the blade in one motion. A glittering point of silver flashed over the waves.

  Karmel didn’t see the dagger strike its target, only heard the fisherman’s choked gasp. He raised his hands to his neck, then staggered back and toppled over the gunwale, hitting the sea with a splash. The fishing boat slewed to the west, its sail falling limp.

  For a while Karmel could only gape at the man’s body in the water, aghast. He’s dead, she thought stupidly. And for what? Because he’d seen their boat? At such a distance he couldn’t have made out their faces, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have remembered them. And yet, through her shock and disquiet she found herself admiring the skill of Veran’s throw. He’d found his mark in near blackness and with the boat rocking beneath him …

  Lucky bastard.

  The priest reseated himself on the oar-bench and hauled on the oars again. “You owe me a throwing knife,” he said between strokes. His voice showed not a flicker of emotion at the fisherman’s murder.

  “What?”

  “Untarian’s blood is on your hands. I wouldn’t have had to silence him if you hadn’t bleated your name.”

  She had said it, hadn’t she? Karmel was caught between guilt and indignation, but the indignation won out. “And I wouldn’t have spoken my name if you hadn’t called me ‘girl.’ In any case, there’s no way the man would have heard. No way.”

  “Ain’t taking no chances. No witnesses, Caval said.”

  “And you don’t think questions will be asked when his body washes up on shore?”

  “Currents will take him east to Ebony Bay. We’ll be halfway to Dian before he’s found.”

  “If we haven’t sunk first,” Karmel said, eyeing the water that was pooling at the bottom of the boat.

  “Then start bailing.”

  “With what? My hands?”

  “With your Shroud-cursed mouth if I had my way,” Veran muttered.

  Karmel groped for a reply, but none came.

  A tattered banner of cloud floated across the moon, and the silvery waves faded to black. The priestess peered toward where the fisherman’s corpse would be, but she couldn’t make it out in the gloom. She swung her gaze south, hoping for a glimpse of Dian or Natilly. All she could see, though, was an empty waste of pitching water. The Dragon Gate was, what, twenty leagues from Olaire? With a favorable wind they might reach it within a dozen bells … unless Veran decided to slow their passage so they arrived unseen at nightfall tomorrow.

  Karmel took a breath and blew it out. There would be sense in that, she had to admit. A day then, probably, before she could leave behind this leaking heap of driftwood. A day before she’d be free of the stink of fish and tar.

  She cast a look at Veran’s back.

  Something told her it would feel like much longer.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE DOOR to Jambar’s quarters opened even as Senar raised a hand to knock. Inside, Jambar stood watching him with the same inane smile Senar remembered from their encounter on the roof terrace—a smile vaguely unsettling in its false sincerity.

  “Come in, Guardian.”

  Senar raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t told the old man he was coming, but then the Remnerol was a shaman, wasn’t he? Evidently he’d foreseen Senar’s arrival. It occurred to Senar that Jambar was probably the closest thing he had to a kinsman in this place, because the Remnerol homeland fell within the borders of the Erin Elalese empire. He felt no sense of fellowship to the old man, though, for the loyalty of the Remnerol clans had always been bought with the sword. Senar had done some of the buying himself. He’d lost some good friends in those campaigns.

  He followed Jambar into his chambers and found himself in a room ten paces square. There was a barred door to his right and a window on the opposite wall. To the left was a cot with a straw mattress, while in the center of the floor was a lopsided table and a chair. The room was devoid of personal adornment, as though the shaman were merely a guest. Or he thinks he might one day have to leave in a hurry.

  “Modest quarters you have here,” the Guardian said.

  “Of my own choosing. The more a man deprives himself of worldly goods, the more his own goodness grows.”

  Senar searched the Remnerol’s face for mockery but saw nothing beyond the simple smile.

  Jambar crossed to the table and sat down on the chair. On the table was a round wooden board with a silver rim. Painted on the board were white runes arranged in circles that extended outward from a large central character—an inverted cross over an ellipse. Beside the board were twenty knuckle bones. One pair of knuckles, Senar noticed, was black. One was twice the size of the others. His gaze lingered on the large pair. “I thought a Remnerol shaman used only the bones of his clansmen in his readings.”

  “Most do.”

  “Using other people’s bones increases your powers?”

  The old man nodded. “The more powerful the bones’ former owners, the greater accuracy they give to my readings. There are millions of possible futures, Guardian. Every act of every person affects what is to come. As my powers increase, I am better able to pinpoint the actions that shape those futures.”

  “And where did you find a giant’s bones?”

  “Why, in a giant’s grave, of course,” Jambar said, picking up a handful of the knuckles and placing them in a bag.

  There was a smell in the air, Senar noticed: sweat and wet hair and something else he couldn’t place. It reminded him of his own stink yesterday after ten months in a cell. “I have often wondered at the source of a shaman’s power,” he said. The Remnerol wars had given him good cause. Part of the trouble with fighting the tribes was that they always knew you were coming. There was no such thing as catching the Remnerol off guard. “All sorcery requires energy to fuel it, correct? Yet bone is dead. What energies can there be in bone for a shaman to draw on?”

  “A good question,” Jambar said. “And I would be glad to tell you the answer—after you have told me how Guardians are able to summon power from mere thought.”

  Senar made a sour face. Soon it would be no mystery. The Guardians had
protected the knowledge for centuries, but now Avallon wanted his Breakers to be trained in the Will. How long before someone yielded the secret to the Kalanese? Avallon’s shortsightedness would bring the empire to its knees.

  When he suggested as much to Jambar, though, the shaman said, “Denounce your own emperor, would you? Are you so blessed with friends here that you must look for enemies among your own kinsmen?”

  “Avallon betrayed us.”

  “Because he took the Guardians’ power before you could take his? What you resent is the fact that he won.”

  Senar bit back a retort. What did the old man know about the Sacrosanct’s business? The Guardian Council had never wanted the emperor’s power for itself. Its concern had been only to keep Avallon in check and to maintain its independence in the face of the emperor’s ever more insistent demands for allegiance. Avallon had disturbed a balance that had existed for millennia, and all in the name of his ambition. Senar kept his silence, though, knowing that his words would be wasted on the shaman.

  And that there might just be a grain of truth in the old man’s charge.

  The strange smell was becoming stronger, and the Guardian crossed to the window for some fresh air. Beyond was a courtyard much the same as the one in which he’d seen the giant execute the Untarian. In the distance he heard the murmur of the sea along with the bump of something wooden against the seawall.

  “What did you say to the emira about me? Yesterday on the terrace … Pernay said, ‘He plays you for a fool.’”

  Jambar sighed. “The chief minister dislikes me, it is true, but condemnation does not make a man evil any more than praise makes him good. I deem it a beneficial thing that people think ill of me even when I mean well. Such opposition is an aid to humility, for it shelters me from pride.”