by John Brown
Argoth descended the stair to the main deck and entered the doorway to the aft cabins. A narrow stair twisted down. Argoth descended this to the lower deck. He asked the cook where he might find a hatchet. Then, hatchet in hand, he walked past the goats, the water room, and barrels of hard bread.
This ruse was necessary. If he opened one of the foul-smelling things in the middle of the night, it would wake the whole crew, and he could not afford that. His plan required he avoid fighting as much as possible. So if he made regular visits through the day and into the night, closing one barrel and opening another, the crew would pay neither him nor the odor any mind.
He found the seafire stowed a little aft of center, a perfect spot for setting a fire. The twelve large barrels stood two high next to the fire lances. Thick ropes tied them all fast to the struts of the deck. Argoth glanced toward the bow of the ship. Ahead, under the forecastle was where the crew slept. They would probably shut the door to their quarters against this stink. And that would only make it easier for him should it come to this.
Argoth pried the bungs out of three of the barrels, releasing the strong, unhealthy vapors into the hold. He held his breath and wedged both the bungs and hatchet tightly between two crates. Then, with the first part of his plan executed, he returned to the Skir Master and fresh air.
They sailed until the New Lands disappeared behind the horizon, then the ship’s captain called for the crew to strike the sails.
The aftercastle swept back out over the water farther than any ship Argoth had ever seen. But it did so not to accommodate another mast. No, the Skir Master used that deck to work his magic.
Argoth climbed the stairs to that deck. Above him a team of four sailors stood in a row on a balance rope belaying the last of the sails to its yard. Others tied down the coils of rope: something he’d never seen done before. Soon the ship no longer leapt to the wind, but sat in the water, rolling gently with the waves.
In the middle of the aftercastle stood a railing like something you might put around a pulpit. A pace or so aft rose what looked like a huge bowl turned on its side; the mouth of the bowl faced the sea off the stern of the ship. The bowl stood taller than a man and was woven of stiff, bronze wire, but the weave wasn’t solid. It looked more like a large, dark lattice with gaps in the weave that would allow a man to slip an arm through. It glinted in the sunlight, and as Argoth approached he saw silver lines threading through the whole of it.
“Come,” said the Skir Master, standing next to the bowl. He pointed to a spot along the railing. “There is the best spot for viewing the catch.”
Argoth took a spot at the railing next to the captain. The massive Leaf stood close to the bowl to assist the Skir Master. Two of the crew stood by the other stair, holding a young boy between them.
“Captain,” said the Skir Master. “The bait.”
“Affix him,” the captain said to the two crewmen. They brought the boy to the bowl. He looked at Argoth and smiled, his eyes full of pleasure and lassitude.
He was drugged.
He stood in the trap, and when they bound him with hemp cords, he laughed in a high, little boy voice. Argoth thought of Nettle lying on the table in his workroom, his eyes brimming with tears. The sight of that boy pained him.
The Skir Master stood before the boy, poking and prodding him, inspecting him like livestock. Then he checked the bonds.
Argoth spoke aside to the captain. “I thought the practice was to use a goat or ram.”
The Skir Master answered. “Some fish fancy flies, others worms, others a bit of stinking gore. It all depends on what you’re trying to catch and what the beasts are biting.”
“Yes, Great One,” said Argoth.
The ship rolled with a large wave, and Argoth held to the rail.
An officer called to the captain from the main deck. “Everything secured, Zu.”
“Great One,” the captain said and bowed slightly to the Skir Master.
The Skir Master faced Argoth, his coat flapping in the breeze. He withdrew a large spike from his coat pocket and held it up. “Here is the spark. When I set it and quicken the weave, the bait’s essence will rise into the sky like a smoke. It will call to them like bloody chum calls to sharks.” Then he turned and inserted the spike into a slot. When it was set, he inserted a pin crossways through the end of the spike to secure it.
The boy in the bowl sagged.
In that moment Argoth told himself he was not like the Divines. There was a difference. But then the boy looked up through his drugged eyes and Argoth saw Nettle, drugged and lying on the table.
What had he done to his son?
“Can you hear it?” asked the Skir Master.
“Great One?”
“The singing.”
Argoth did not know what he meant.
He patted the great bowl. “The weave. It’s calling, singing. They all do, great and small. That is the Kain’s art-to weave the songs of power. You can hear this one if you listen carefully.”
Argoth knew that weaves thrummed when you quickened them. But singing? He closed his eyes and focused. He heard the waves slapping the hull, the creak of the rigging. Then he heard something else. Something very soft that he immediately lost. He focused, then caught it again-a chorus of winds, rising and falling in a pattern, with a deep rumble running through them. Then one voice rose above the rest. He opened his eyes in wonder.
“All living things sing,” said the Skir Master. Then he smiled, and the look in that smile was so malevolent it took Argoth aback. But as soon as it came the look was gone.
“I see,” said Argoth.
“No, you don’t.” The Skir Master gestured out over the sea. “Empty. Nothing but a few thin clouds, right?”
Argoth did not have an answer.
“It’s full,” said the Skir Master. “Teeming with life. The air, waters, heavens, and earth-teeming. The Creators let nothing go to waste. Humans see, smell, perceive almost nothing.”
“And do you see it all, Great One?” asked Argoth.
The Skir Master did not reply. Instead he reached into his coat and retrieved something made of gold. He held it out to Argoth. “Put these on.”
Argoth bowed slightly, then walked to where the Skir Master stood inside his pulpit railing.
All this time the bowl and boy had claimed Argoth’s attention. Now he saw the pulpit railing circled a large weave of bronze inlaid into the deck of the ship.
Argoth took the object from the Skir Master’s hand. It was made of two wafers of milky stone, about the diameter of duck eggs, affixed between two bows of gold. Two long hooks were attached to the points of the bows.
“Spectacles,” said the Skir Master. “Place the bow upon your nose and the hooks about your ears.”
Argoth hesitated.
“It’s wondrous,” said the captain. “I’ve looked through them myself.”
Argoth could not fathom how he might see anything through the opaque stones, but he put the spectacles on. He felt a thrumming and knew it was a weave.
“Give it some time,” said the Skir Master.
Argoth stared at the milk walls of the stones. He wondered how many other weaves were aboard this ship. For a moment he thought about looking for them. They would be a boon to the Order. But then he discarded the idea. He was going to have enough problems enthralling the Skir Master and finding out who else knew their secrets.
He stood at the railing for half an hour and then he noticed the stones begin to clear. That or he was seeing things.
“Great One?”
“Do you see them, Clansman?”
He saw a flash of something: the palest of lavenders with a yellow streak running through it. Then the milk of the stones was gone, and he saw it was not one thing, but three, no, five.
He took in his breath. There before him was a ghostly image of the ship and bowl. He could see the Skir Master and the sea. But they too were insubstantial. Mere phantoms. And clustered about the boy were cre
atures as long as one of his arms. They had attached to him like a remora attaches to a great fish.
“What are they?”
“Hoppen. Minor things.”
“I thought all skir were fearsome.”
“There are indeed skir deep in the earth, beings so frightful none dare call them. But there are also small things, playful things, curious things.”
“What are they doing?”
“Feeding on the boy’s Fire,” said the Skir Master. Then he took what looked like a brush of long horsehair, a flyswatter, and waved it amid the creatures. They scattered like fish.
Argoth lifted his spectacles. The sunlight made him squint, but he saw it wasn’t horsehair at all. Only a thin bone wrapped with leather at one end. A bone from a human forearm maybe. He replaced the spectacles and lifted them again. Only part of what the Skir Master held in his hand was visible.
“Do you see the ignorant pride of humans?” said the Skir Master. “And this is only a part. Every time we extend our ability to perceive, we find a world already there.”
A chill ran through Argoth then. All his life he had thought himself wise with lore. Wise with years. And now he realized he knew nothing. When he attacked the Skir Master this night, would it be like a little boy carrying a stick attacking a man in full armor?
Argoth lowered the spectacles back to his nose. Two of the creatures returned like magpies to carrion, hovering in the air just out of the Skir Master’s reach, their bodies undulating like sea snakes in the tide.
The wind rose sharply about Argoth, tossing his hair and wetting him with sea spray. The captain let out a slow moan, and suddenly the wind was in Argoth, passing over his bones. All about him shone a brightness, a translucent presence like the rounding of a thinly tinted glass.
The presence flowed over him and then to the bowl. Argoth gasped. It was a creature as thick as a horse but far longer, tapering and flattening at each end. It coiled one end about the bowl, the rest of its body stretching along the aftercastle and ending far out over the water. Argoth thought at first it was a giant serpent, but it had no head. No mouth. Not one eye. Along its whole length undulated thousands of bright, fine hairs half as long as he. In those hairs smaller creatures moved like band fish in the tentacles of an immense anemone.
“What is it?” Argoth asked.
“An ayten,” said the Skir Master.
The ayten inserted one of its ends into the bowl and began to feel the boy with its bright hairs.
“How they can eat both Fire and soul,” said the Skir Master, “we do not know. But when she’s finished the sacrifice will be hollow.”
The boy cried out. A soft moan that rose into a desperate keening.
Then the ayten bent that end and pressed into the bowl, engulfing the boy in its hairs. The hairs tossed and jerked as if the boy struggled within them. Then they were still. “Lords,” said Argoth in horror.
“An amazing thing,” said the captain, “isn’t it?”
Amazing was not the word Argoth would have used. When he finally found his voice, he said, “And this creature then powers the ship?”
“No,” said the Skir Master, raising his hand and pointing behind Argoth. “She does.”
Argoth turned, looked up, and the immensity of what he saw stole his breath.
Off port and high in the air flew a pale blue behemoth; it stretched hundreds of yards across, dozens deep. A mountain of a manta ray, flying toward them over the waves, its wings undulating with slow power. A multitude of other creatures whirled about it like gulls about a ship.
A fear rose in Argoth. He hadn’t felt this since he was a boy standing on the banks of a river and seeing something monstrous turning in the murky green waters at his feet.
“That,” said the Skir Master, “is Shegom.”
Argoth lifted the spectacles. He could discern nothing in the air. He replaced the spectacles, saw the behemoth dive nearer the water. He lifted the spectacles again.
The evidence of her passing was clear: the water fluttered and flattened out as if a white squall passed over it. The strip was darker than the sea about it, reflecting the sun differently. It seemed almost calm in the center, but at its edges the wind kicked up a scud of thick sea spray as it went. Argoth wondered if all dust devils and squalls he had seen were merely the effect of a passing skir.
Suddenly the squall picked up speed.
The captain braced himself. Argoth did the same and lowered his spectacles.
The creature bore down upon them. It covered the distance to the ship in only a few breaths, kicking up a huge wall of sea spray. Just before the wall broke upon the ship, the Skir Master said, “It’s a large one, my beauty. Enjoy the feast.”
The sea spray soaked Argoth, then the wind slammed into him, almost ripping him from the railing. Again, something passed over and through him, the cold literally sweeping his heart. The ship leaned with the gale.
The noise of the wind grew to a screech. He felt his spectacles almost torn from his face, then the wind lessened, and the ship rocked back.
Argoth caught his breath and turned.
Long hairs covered Shegom’s body. But along the edge of where he imagined her head would be grew a beard of whips or tentacles. She held the struggling ayten with these.
The ayten thrashed, trying to break her hold, but Shegom shook it violently, then wrapped her prey with more of the long whips.
Another thrash, then the ayten sagged. Shegom enfolded it in the hairs along her belly just underneath her front edge. Then with a gust of wind and sea spray, she rose above the ship.
“Where is the hook?”
“Hook?” asked the captain.
“Was that not the bait?”
“She’s already mine,” said the Skir Master. He gestured at a weave inlaid in the deck at his feet. “She’s long been a part of this ship.”
“But I thought your skir died on the way.”
“Of course, you did,” said the Skir Master. “That’s why I started that rumor. Tell me, Clansman.” He gestured at the bowl and Shegom. “Does your lore even touch this?”
An alarm sounded in his mind. But then the fear drained away and he felt a bit giddy. “No,” he said.
“I didn’t think so. How many are in your Grove?”
“Almost a dozen,” said Argoth.
He knew he shouldn’t be saying such things. Not with the captain standing right there. Not to the Skir Master. It was death, but… did that matter really?
“And you’re their leader?”
Again the warning. Again it drained away. The Skir Master’s ghostly shape moved toward him. Why had they ever thought they should fight against such marvelous beings? Then he realized what was happening. The Skir Master was seeking him. But how? Panic rose in him.
The spectacles. That was how he was doing this. But seekings were accompanied by bindings and torture.
Argoth raised his hand to remove the weave.
“Leave them on,” said the Skir Master.
Yes, that was wise. It would be nice to have them off, but it didn’t seem to matter much either way.
“Are you the leader?” asked the Skir Master.
Argoth tried to remember his training.
“Answer me.”
He fought against the compulsion. He needed to remove the weave. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”
“Who is?”
Argoth succeeded in reaching the weave.
“Leaf,” said the Skir Master. “I believe we’re going to have to restrain him.”
“Great One,” said Leaf. He approached Argoth. The tattoos flaring out from the man’s eyes made him look wild.
Argoth took one step back. He needed to do something, but couldn’t remember what it was.
“Stand still,” said the Skir Master.
The weave. He needed to remove it. Argoth gripped it with both hands. It took all his effort. Then he ripped it from his face. The world of sunshine and sea burst upon him. He squinted, c
ast the spectacles from him, and began to build his Fire.
He’d failed, failed before he’d even begun. Find the barrels. Burn the ship. That was his goal.
Leaf drew a cudgel. The muscles rippled in his tattooed arm.
“We need him whole,” said the Skir Master.
“I just thought I’d limit his mobility a bit,” said Leaf. Then he swung the club at Argoth’s knee.
Argoth dodged aside. He saved his knee, but the blow struck his forearm and snapped the bone.
Pain shot up his arm.
Leaf changed his grip on the cudgel and rammed it into Argoth’s gut.
Argoth doubled over.
Leaf shoved him up against the railing and held him there. Argoth tried to struggle, but Leaf held him like iron. Then he shook Argoth’s broken arm. Pain screamed through him and Argoth saw white.
“That will do,” said the Skir Master.
Something cool wrapped itself about Argoth’s neck. He felt fingers clasping it. Then his Fire was gone. He could not reach it. Could not magnify himself.
A collar. A king’s collar.
“No!” It couldn’t end this way.
“Bind him,” said the Skir Master, “and take him to my quarters.”
Leaf twisted Argoth’s arm behind his back, then grabbed a handful of Argoth’s hair and shoved him down onto the deck.
39
KORAMITE
After consuming the goats, Hunger chased the female. She was keeping to less-used roads. Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered if she had ridden on well-used ones: he still would have been able to sniff her out of the mix. Up hill, down dale he went, all the time the scent getting stronger, which meant he was getting closer. And then he found that she had separated from her horse.
Perhaps she’d been brushed off by a branch. Or it had run off on her while she’d gone to get a drink or relieve herself. Or maybe she’d run it too hard. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He was getting closer. He would have her soon.
The road he was on now wasn’t so much of a road but a wide wash for the spring rains. Only the smallest trickle of water ran down the bed of the wash now. The last stretch had been rocky. It would slow her down, but it wouldn’t slow him.
