Servant of a Dark God

by John Brown

  Trees grew thickly along the banks of the wash. Hunger raced around a bend and saw a trail split off the wash and rise up and over one of the banks. He saw one of her muddy footprints at the base of the trail. He splashed through the tiny brooklet and prepared to charge up the bank. But before he could start up the trail, he caught the stink of magic on the wind.

  He ran a few more paces and then stopped. The female had left the wash. He could smell that. He followed her trail up. The trees along the banks immediately gave way to mown oat fields. He could not see her, but he could see that the trail ran straight for some distance through the middle of the fields.

  However, the stink was weaker at the top of the bank. He descended back to the bottom of the wash. Yes, it was here. He had found that the human’s magic all had a slightly different taste to it. River’s had carried a slightly different odor from Argoth’s down in the cellar. And the scent of the burning boy had carried, yet again, a tinge of something else. He thought he recognized this one.

  He took his time, opened his mouth wide, and followed the scent a few paces up the wash. Hogan, the Koramite, had been here. And his scent had been kept in the shade from the sun. Hunger crossed the wash.

  It didn’t take him long to puzzle out what had happened. Many men on horses had come this way, traveling from the fields where the female had gone, down into the wash, and then on to a trail that led up the opposite bank.

  He’d smelled no magic on the female. He’d hoped she’d lead him to Sleth. And she had. He had a sure trail now. He would follow it. Besides, the female was on foot, which meant she’d leave a stronger trail. She wasn’t that far ahead. Maybe a mile or two. He could come back here and resume his chase later.

  He breathed in the Koramite’s scent. Yes. He would take the sure thing first.

  40

  THE THRALL OF MOKAD

  A

  rgoth lay bound on the surgeon’s table, his arm throbbing with pain. Old blood stained the wooden floor in blotchy patterns and spattered up the wall on his right. Above the blood spots hung a bone saw, pincers, a long, wicked implement he could not imagine a healthy use for, and flesh needles. To the side of the surgeon’s tools sat blue and yellow bottles of nostrums neatly arranged in a three-shelf rack.

  The Skir Master held Argoth’s thrall in one hand, the stomach holding Nettle’s Fire in the other. “Clansman?” he demanded.

  Argoth said nothing. It was treason to possess such things. If you found one, it was treason not to immediately report it. He could say nothing. He simply looked the Skir Master in his inhuman, black eyes.

  The Skir Master examined the thrall. “If I’m not mistaken, this is a pattern of the Trolumbay masters, isn’t it?” He nodded to himself. “Of course, they were destroyed centuries ago. So that means you either stole it or are the heir of a vanished glorydom.”

  The door opened and Leaf entered, moving with his deadly grace.

  The Skir Master looked over at him.

  “Great One, nothing was found among his effects or the cargo he brought on board.”

  The Skir Master shook his head. “I’m disappointed.” He looked down at the stomach. “I’d hoped there would be more like these.” He turned to Argoth. “I tasted the Fire in this stomach, Clansman. Clean, sharp-delicious. I must compliment you.”

  Argoth could not speak.

  The Skir Master turned to Leaf. “The link with the Fir-Noy has not yet matured. So send a pigeon back to him. Tell him we’ll return in a week with two full cohorts. Tell him there’s going to be a cleansing.”

  Fir-Noy?

  It was the Crab. Argoth was sure of it. But the news of the cohorts is what shocked him. It would require three or four ships to carry so many men. And even with the Skir wind, going to and from Mokad would take almost a month. The only answer was that the ships were waiting off one of the outer islands or along the coast a few days south of the settlements.

  The Skir Master seated himself close to Argoth’s head and spoke to him like a friend. “You see, the spectacles are useful, not only for partially extending sight, but also for questioning all manner of lord and lady. Yet the spectacles, while they influence, do not enthrall. They’re a tool used best with subtlety. But this rudimentary thing.” He held Argoth’s thrall up. “This will bind you quite nicely.”

  He smiled at Argoth. “You, Clansman, are going to die. As will your family.” He held up his hand. “I know you think they fled, but we foresaw that.”

  Despair welled in Argoth.

  “Disheartening, isn’t it?”

  “You are a blind fool,” said Argoth. Blind about life. Blind about everything that was important. Argoth thought of the Crab. If he were in league with the Skir Master, he could have easily hidden in the woods and moved in on Serah and the children soon after Argoth left. Argoth was going to kill that one himself.

  “I will seek every one of you and know every last one of your secrets. But it doesn’t need to be too painful. Cooperate, and I’ll make your wife comfortable. We’ll need a little agony, but I’m sure this arm,” the Skir Master prodded just below the break, sending pain shooting through Argoth’s body, “would feel better set and splinted. Tell me who killed Lumen, and I’ll help you.”

  Lumen? “I know nothing of Lumen’s death.”

  “Oh, come.”

  “We know only what his servants claimed: that he lost himself to the call of the warrens.”

  “You’re talking about the stone-wights, aren’t you? What’s in those caves?”

  Argoth hesitated. He realized there was leverage here, something he could do with this information.

  The Skir Master sighed. “I suppose you must fight. But it doesn’t matter.” He held up the thrall. “The Trolumbay patterns were crude and slow, yet for all their clumsiness they were still effective. I estimate this one will take two or three days. Two or three days and you will beg to tell me all.”

  He placed the thrall about Argoth’s neck, lifting his head and clasping it at the back.

  “I’m going to remove the king’s collar. It interferes with the working of the thrall. But do not think of escape. Your bonds are woven with wire. You will not be able to break them. Not even one as powerful as Leaf can do so.”

  Then he released the collar. Immediately Argoth felt a change and began to build his Fire.

  The Skir Master smiled. “Multiplying yourself will only multiply the effect of the thrall, Clansman. Of course, it would please me if you’d do so.”

  Argoth paused. Was he lying? He didn’t know. And that realization struck him like a hammer: the Order didn’t know.

  “Do you know how to quicken a thrall, Clansman?”

  Argoth said nothing.

  “Come, come,” said the Skir Master. “Do not be modest.”

  Argoth ignored the Skir Master. All he could think of was the fact that Nettle had given most of his life for nothing, to support a hero who had no skill.

  The Skir Master grabbed his face with two fingers and turned it so Argoth was looking at him. “Speak to me. How do you quicken a thrall?”

  “You can’t feel it thrumming?” asked Argoth.

  “Thrumming?” said the Skir Master. “You soul-eaters are so sloppy with your terminology. Weaves do not ‘thrum’; I told you before, they sing. ‘Sing’ is the right word. But that’s not quite all there is to it.” The Skir Master paused. “You haven’t ever used this, have you?”

  Argoth looked the Skir Master in the eye. He’d read the old texts. He’d quickened a variety of other weaves. This couldn’t be so very different.

  The Skir Master shook his head. He reached back and took Argoth by the nape of the neck. “It’s appalling, such ignorance.”

  Then a giddiness washed through Argoth and a door opened in his mind. Behind it stood the Skir Master. Beyond him another door opened, and Argoth perceived the Glory of Mokad. But yet another door opened behind the Glory, and Argoth perceived… something luminous, something so beautiful it took his b
reath away. A woman who consumed all thought. Then she turned and noticed him, and fear mingled with his adoration. He wanted to join her, but didn’t dare. She regarded him for one more delicious and terrible moment, then all the doors between her and him slammed shut and the force of it made him gasp.

  “And so it wakens,” said the Skir Master. He released his hold upon the thrall. “Two days to work its way into the fiber of your being.” He stood and grabbed the pincers from the wall. “We’ve found that a bit of pain in the very beginning speeds the process. Is that because it distracts the mind or stresses and weakens the body? We don’t know. All we know is that it works.” Then he wedged the large pincers under the break in Argoth’s arm and turned them so they pressed upwards.

  White flashed in Argoth’s mind. He arched his back and gritted his teeth against the pain until he could no longer contain his cries. But by that time the Skir Master had walked out and shut the door.

  ____________________

  For some time Argoth fought just to control himself. He moaned, panted, lost consciousness twice. And in the pain one thought rose and kept him from losing all hope: the barrels still sat below. Somehow he had to get to them. He had to get to them and then give the liquid inside one sweet kiss of fire.

  Argoth multiplied himself, but found he could not break the bonds, could not wriggle out of them. He couldn’t rock the table for it was nailed to the floor. And so he lay there in his sweat and pain, praying to his ancestors to help him get just one more chance.

  The Skir Master returned around midmorning. “Do you want us to splint that arm?”

  He could barely control his voice. “Yes,” he said.

  “A reasonable choice,” said the Skir Master, and he removed the pincers. He picked up a cloth from a cabinet and wiped the snot and tears from Argoth’s face. “It would be petty and pointless for anyone to expect you to choose otherwise since nothing but your comfort is lost.”

  “I don’t know who or what killed Lumen,” said Argoth.

  “We always need subjects for our experiments. In a few days I will know if you’re lying. If you are, we can put you to a great many uses. Of course, that’s after we’ve used up your wife and children.”

  “I have talents,” said Argoth. “I have connections.”

  “Your paltry talents I already possess. Your connections I will take from your mind.”

  “I’ll prove myself,” said Argoth.

  “Please,” said the Skir Master. “Your fate is set.” He felt along Argoth’s arm, then jerked the two ends out and reset the bone.

  Argoth closed his eyes against the pain. He took three deep breaths. “The seafire,” he said. “That was mine. You’ll need more than facts, more than a simple recipe to make that.”

  The Skir Master retrieved two thin slats to use in Argoth’s splint. He looked down at Argoth and said nothing.

  “I could show you how,” said Argoth. “You could let my wife and children go free.”

  “Stop it,” said the Skir Master. “I detest sniveling.”

  Argoth looked away from the Skir Master’s face. “Yes, Great One.”

  And in that moment he saw an opening, a slim one but an opening nevertheless. If he could only convince the Skir Master he was one easily turned.

  “Why did you bring this thrall aboard?”

  “To bind you, Great One. To take what we could from your mind, then destroy you to preserve our secret.”

  “Ambitious. And who is your master?”

  “Hogan, the Koramite.”

  “The one the Fir-Noy so desperately wanted a seeking for?”

  “The same.”

  “And this man of grass and earth? Who does it belong to?”

  Argoth paused. “We thought it was yours, Great One.”

  The Skir Master stood silently looking into Argoth’s eyes. “Are you telling me there is more than one murder of soul-eaters in the New Lands?”

  “I don’t know,” said Argoth.

  The Skir Master laid his hand on the break he’d just set. “A broken arm is a small thing, Clansman.”

  “I’m not lying,” said Argoth. “When you seek me you will see I tell the truth. Perhaps it is the Bone Faces. Perhaps someone else has begun to move their wizards. Perhaps that is what took Lumen in the caves.”

  The Skir Master’s gaze bored into Argoth, his tongue feeling the edge of his lips as if he were in thought. “If you are lying to me-”

  “No,” said Argoth. “No, I’m telling the truth. Why else would we risk something so stupid and foolhardy as attacking a Divine himself? Please, believe me.”

  The Skir Master gazed at him a few moments more, then he shook his head in frustration, laid the splints on Argoth’s chest, and walked out.

  He returned some time later with Leaf and two dreadmen.

  “How long would it take to mount a fire lance on this ship?” asked the Skir Master.

  Argoth thought. “A day, Great One, with a good carpenter.”

  “And the seafire below, how many lances will it support?”

  “That depends on the length of the battle and how hard the pump gang works. The distance too, for you have to force a large quantity to build the pressure that will send the fire even sixty yards.”

  “How many?” the Skir Master snapped.

  “Three,” said Argoth. “Three if they’re careful and do not waste.”

  “Three?” said the Skir Master in amazement. “I saw lances on six galleys. Are you telling me that you left the seafire for those galleys behind?”

  “No. We only supply the galleys on patrol. I dared not make great quantities. The Bone Faces sent many spies seeking to steal the seafire so that they might unlock its secrets.”

  The Skir Master’s face turned to thunder. “So you had them load the few barrels of finished product and left the component materials on the land?”

  “No,” said Argoth. “No, we have them aboard.”

  Argoth could not read the Skir Master’s face. Could the man already know his thoughts? It was impossible.

  “Splint his arm,” said the Skir Master to Leaf. “Then bring him below.”

  Leaf took Argoth’s arm matter-of-factly as if Argoth’s arm were nothing more than a spade that had come loose from its handle. Then he splinted Argoth’s arm using strips of the surgeon’s cloths. Argoth studied the flaring eye tattoos as he worked. Each eye’s tattoo was different, one sharp-edged and jagged, the other smooth, but Argoth could not read their meaning. Leaf finished, then led Argoth out to the area of the lower deck where the barrels were stored.

  The Skir Master stood, holding a covered lamp. “You’re going to teach me how to make this seafire. And then you’re going to teach my men how to use it.”

  “Yes, Great One,” said Argoth. “Thank you.”

  The Skir Master wanted four lances: two just off the prow on both sides, and two at either side of the ship’s waist.

  Three triangular sails, jibs, were rigged to lines running from the foremast to the bowsprit that stuck out over the prow. Those jibs might prove troublesome if a crew on one of the fore lances were spewing fire and the wind changed. So Argoth convinced the Skir Master to move the lances back.

  Argoth directed the carpenter and his boy for most of the day as they installed the fittings for the four lances. Three times during the day he felt an intrusion upon his mind, a constricting. He dismissed the first two as the effects of fatigue. But when the third came, he realized what it was: the thrall had begun working into him.

  When they finished the last fitting and mounted the lance, it was early evening. The sun was an hour or so from setting. Argoth leaned against the railing and stared at the sails in the orange and yellow light. The ship had two masts that were three sails high, and, with the studding sail booms rigged on both ends of each yard, three sails wide-it was such an amazing press of sail.

  He couldn’t see her, but somewhere above the sails in the clear evening sky, Shegom moved, the wake of her passi
ng creating the wind that filled the canvas.

  They moved south, at an angle to the normal winds. Argoth knew this because at the edges of Shegom’s wind, in an oval perhaps a league across, the winds clashed, kicking up a scud that blew westward.

  He imagined the clan galleys in a battle against this ship now fitted with fire lances. With Shegom above, moving hither and thither to the Skir Master’s commands, the sails of the clan galleys would be of no use. They would have to furl them and move under the power of the oarsmen. And all the while the Ardent would race about them, blown by Shegom, throwing her deadly fire at will. She’d be a wolf roving among lambs.

  Argoth knew if he followed Shim’s advice and ursurped power in the New Lands, he’d face the Ardent at sea, and she would sink anything he sent against her. She’d shut down all trade. She’d land cohorts of men on any beach she liked. And she wouldn’t be the only one. Others would be built like her. He suspected the only way to fight her would be to harness a skir and blow the fire back in her face.

  There were no Skir Masters in the Order. And he saw that the Skir Master was right: such ignorance posed an immense danger to them all.

  Are you finished?

  Argoth turned, expecting to see the Skir Master standing right behind him. But the Skir Master stood almost a ship’s length away at the rear of the after-castle. It had not been a shout, but a voice right behind him.

  Clansman?

  It was the Skir Master, a whisper almost. He could have counted it as a trick of the wind, but the Skir Master’s lips had not moved. He stood gazing at Argoth across the length of the ship.

  “We are finished,” whispered Argoth.

  Meet me in the officer’s mess, said the Skir Master in his mind.

  Argoth stood with the Skir Master at the table. Leaf sat with quill and vellum. Bowls of firewater, sulfur, and pitch lay between them.

  “You will teach me how to make the seafire,” said the Skir Master. “I must be able to replicate it before morning.”