The Black Road

by Mel Odom

  Turning from the bigger man, Cholik paced on the balcony in an effort to warm himself against the night’s chill. I knew it would come to this at some point, he told himself. This was to be expected. He let out a long, deliberate breath, letting Raithen think for a time that he’d gotten the better of him. Over his years as a priest, Cholik had found that men often made even more egregious mistakes when they’d been praised for their intelligence or their power.

  Cholik knew what real power was. It was the reason he’d come there to Tauruk’s Port to find long-buried Ransim, which had died during the Sin War that had lasted centuries as Chaos had quietly but violently warred with the Light. That war had been long ago and played out in the east, before Westmarch had become civilized or powerful. Many cities and towns had been buried during those times. Most of them, though, had been shorn of their valuables. But Ransim had been hidden from the bulk of the Sin War. Even though the general populace knew nothing of the Sin War except that battles were fought—though not because the demons and the Light warred—they’d known nothing of Ransim. The port city had been an enigma, something that shouldn’t have existed. But some of the eastern mages had chosen that place to work and hide in, and they’d left secrets behind. Dumal Lunnash’s texts had been the only source Cholik had found regarding Ransim’s whereabouts, and even that book had led only to an arduous task of gathering information about the location that was hidden in carefully constructed lies and half-truths.

  “What do you want to know, captain?” Cholik asked.

  “What you’re seeking here,” Raithen replied with no hesitation.

  “If it’s gold and jewels, you mean?” Cholik asked.

  “When I think of treasure,” Raithen said, “those are the things that I spend most of my time thinking about and wishing for.”

  Amazed at how small-minded the man was, Cholik shook his head. Wealth was only a small thing to hope for, but power—power was the true reward the priest lusted for.

  “What?” Raithen argued. “You’re too good to hope for gold and jewels? For a man who betrays his king’s coffers, you have some strange ideas.”

  “Material power is a very transitory thing,” Cholik said. “It is of finite measure. Often gone before you know it.”

  “I’ve still got some put back for a rainy day.”

  Cholik gazed up at the star-filled heavens. “Mankind is a futile embarrassment to the heavens, Captain Raithen. An imperfect vessel imperfectly made. We play at being omnipotent, knowing the potential perhaps lies within us yet will always be denied to us.”

  “We’re not talking about gold and jewels that you’re looking for, are we?” Raithen almost sounded betrayed.

  “There may be some of that,” Cholik said. “But that is not what drew me here.” He turned and gazed back at the pirate captain. “I followed the scent of power here, Captain Raithen. And I betrayed the King of Westmarch and the Zakarum Church to do it so that I could secure your ship for my own uses.”

  “Power?” Raithen shook his head in disbelief. “Give me a few feet of razor-sharp steel, and I’ll show you power.”

  Angry, Cholik gestured at the pirate captain. The priest saw waves of slight, shimmering force leap from his extended hand and streak for Raithen. The waves wrapped around the big man’s throat like steel bands and shut his breath off. In the next instant, Cholik caused the big man to be pulled from his feet. No priest could wield such a power, and it was time to let the pirate captain know he was no priest. Not anymore. Not ever again.

  “Shore!” one of the longboat crew crowed from the prow. He kept his voice pitched low so that it didn’t carry far.

  “Ship oars, boys,” Darrick ordered, lifting his own from the river water. Pulse beating quicker, thumping at his temples now, he stood and gazed at the stretch of mountain before them.

  The oars came up at once, then the sailors placed them in the center of the longboat.

  “Stern,” Darrick called as he peered at the glowing circles of light that came from lanterns or fires only a short distance ahead.

  “Sir,” Fallan responded from the longboat’s stern.

  Now that the oars no longer rowed, the longboat didn’t cut through the river water. Instead, the boat seemed to come up from the water and settle with harsh awkwardness on the current.

  “Take us to shore,” Darrick ordered, “and let’s have a look at what’s what with these damned pirates what’s taking the king’s gold. Put us off to port in a comfortable spot, if you will.”

  “Aye, sir.” Fallan used the steering oar and angled the longboat toward the left riverbank.

  The current pushed the craft backward in the water, but Darrick knew they’d lose only a few yards. What mattered most was finding a safe place to tie up so they could complete the mission Captain Tollifer had assigned them.

  “Here,” Maldrin called out, pointing toward the left bank. Despite his age, the old first mate had some of the best eyes aboard Lonesome Star. He also saw better at night.

  Darrick peered through the fog and made out the craggy riverbank. It looked bitten off, just a stubby shelf of rock sticking out from the cliffs that had been cleaved through the Hawk’s Beak Mountains as if by a gigantic ax.

  “Now, there’s an inhospitable berth if ever I’ve seen one,” Darrick commented.

  “Not if you’re a mountain goat,” Mat said.

  “A bloody mountain goat wouldn’t like that climb none,” Darrick said, measuring the steep ascent that would be left to them.

  Maldrin squinted up at the cliffs. “If we’re goin’ this way, we’re in for some climbin’.”

  “Sir,” Fallan called from the stern, “what do you want me to do?”

  “Put in to shore there, Fallan,” Darrick said. “We’ll take our chances with this bit of providence.” He smiled. “As hard as the way here is, you know the pirates won’t be expecting it none. I’ll take that, and add it to the chunk of luck we’re having here this night.”

  With expert skill, Fallan guided the longboat to shore.

  “Tomas,” Darrick said, “we’ll be having that anchor now, quick as you will.”

  The sailor muscled the stone anchor up from the middle of the longboat, steadied it on the side, then heaved it toward shore. The immense weight fell short of the shore but slapped down into shallow water. Taking up the slack, he dragged the anchor along the river bottom.

  “She’s stone below,” Tomas whispered as the rope jerked in his hands. “Not mud.”

  “Then let’s hope that you catch onto something stout,” Darrick replied. He fidgeted in the longboat, anxious to be about the dangerous business they had ahead of them. The sooner into it, the sooner out of it and back aboard Lonesome Star.

  “We’re about out of riverbank,” Maldrin commented as they drifted a few yards farther downriver.

  “Could be we’ll start the night off with a nice swim, then,” Mat replied.

  “A man will catch his death of cold in that water,” Maldrin grumped.

  “Mayhap the pirates will do for you before you wind up abed in your dotage,” Mat said. “I’m sure they’re not going to give up their prize when we come calling.”

  Darrick felt a sour twist in his stomach. The “prize” the pirates held was the biggest reason Captain Tollifer had sent Darrick and the other sailors upriver instead of bringing Lonesome Star up.

  As a general rule, the pirates who had been preying on the king’s ships out of Westmarch had left no one alive. This time, they had left a silk merchant from Lut Gholein clinging to a broken spar large enough to serve as a raft. He’d been instructed to tell the king that one of the royal nephews had been taken captive. A ransom demand, Darrick knew, was sure to follow.

  It would be the first contact the pirates had initiated with Westmarch. After all these months of successful raids against the king’s merchanters, still no one knew how they got their information about the gold shipments. However, they had left only the Lut Gholein man alive, suggesting tha
t they hadn’t wanted anyone from Westmarch to escape who might identify them.

  The anchor scraped across the stone riverbed, taking away the margin for success by steady inches. The water and the sound of the current muted the noise. Then the anchor stopped and the rope jerked taut in Tomas’s hands. Catching the rope in his callused palms, the sailor squeezed tight.

  The longboat stopped but continued to bob on the river current.

  Darrick glanced at the riverbank a little more than six feet away. “Well, we’ll make do with what we have, boys.” He glanced at Tomas. “How deep is the water?”

  Tomas checked the knots tied in the rope as the longboat strained at the anchor. “She’s drawing eight and a half feet.”

  Darrick eyed the shore. “The river must drop considerably from the edges of the cliffs.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re not in armor,” Mat said. “Though I wish I had a good shirt of chainmail to tide me through the coming fracas.”

  “You’d sink like a lightning-blasted toad if you did,” Darrick replied. “And it may not come to fighting. Mayhap we’ll nip aboard the pirate ship and rescue the youngster without rousing a ruckus.”

  “Aye,” Maldrin muttered, “an’ if ye did, it would be one of the few times I’ve seen ye do that.”

  Darrick grinned in spite of the worry that nibbled at the dark corners of his mind. “Why, Maldrin, I almost sense a challenge in your words.”

  “Make what ye will of it,” the first mate growled. “I offer advice in the best of interests, but I see that it’s seldom taken in the same spirit in which it was give. Fer all ye know, they’re in league with dead men and suchlike here.”

  The first mate’s words had a sobering effect on Darrick, reminding him that though he viewed the night’s activities as an adventure, it wasn’t a complete lark. Some pirate captains wielded magic.

  “We’re here tracking pirates,” Mat said. “Just pirates. Mortal men whose flesh cuts and bleeds.”

  “Aye,” Darrick said, ignoring the dry spot at the back of his throat that Maldrin’s words had summoned. “Just men.”

  But still, the crew had faced a ship of dead men only months ago while on patrol. The fighting then had been brutal and frightening, and it had cost lives of shipmates before the undead sailors and their ship had been sent to the bottom of the sea.

  The young commander glanced at Tomas. “We’re locked in?”

  Tomas nodded, tugging on the anchor rope. “Aye. As near as I can tell.”

  Darrick grinned. “I’d like to have a boat to come back to, Tomas. And Captain Tollifer can be right persnickety about crew losing his equipment. When we get to shore, make the longboat fast again, if you please.”

  “Aye. It will be done.”

  Grabbing his cutlass from among the weapons wrapped in the bottom of the longboat, Darrick stood with care, making sure he balanced the craft out. He took a final glance up at the tops of the cliffs. The last sentry point they’d identified lay a hundred yards back. The campfire still burned through the layers of fog overhead. He glanced ahead at the lights glowing in the distance, the clangor of ships’ rigging slapping masts reaching his ears.

  “Looks like there’s naught to be done for it, boys,” Darrick said. “We’ve got a cold swim ahead of us.” He noticed that Mat already had his sword in hand and that Maldrin had his own war hammer.

  “After you,” Mat said, waving an open hand toward the river.

  Without another word, Darrick slipped over the side of the boat and into the river. The cold water closed over him at once, taking his breath away, and he swam against the current toward the riverbank.

  TWO

  Twisting and squirming, hands flailing through the bands of invisible force that held him captive, Raithen fought against Cholik’s spell. Surprise and fear marked Raithen’s face, and Cholik knew the man realized he wasn’t facing the weak old priest he thought he’d been talking to with such disregard. The big pirate opened his mouth and struggled to speak. No words came out. At a gesture, Cholik caused Raithen to float out over the balcony’s edge and the hundred-foot drop that lay beyond. Only broken rock and the tumbled remains of the buildings that had made up Tauruk’s Port lay below. The pirate captain ceased his struggles as fear dawned on his purpling face.

  “Power has brought me to Tauruk’s Port,” Cholik grated, maintaining the magic grip, feeling the obscene pleasure that came from using such a spell, “and to Ransim buried beneath. Power such as you’ve never wielded. And none of that power will do you any good. You do not know how to wield it. The vessel for this power must be consecrated, and I mean to be that vessel. It’s something that you’ll never be able to be.” The priest opened his hand.

  Choking and gasping, Raithen floated back in and dropped to the stone-tiled floor of the balcony overlooking the river and the abandoned city. He lay back, gasping for air and holding his bruised throat with his left hand. His right hand sought the hilt of the heavy sword at his side.

  “If you pull that sword,” Cholik stated, “then I’ll promote your ship’s commander. Perhaps even your first mate. Or I could even reanimate your corpse, though I doubt your crew would be happy about the matter. But, frankly, I wouldn’t care what they thought.”

  Raithen’s hand halted. He stared up at the priest. “You need me,” he croaked.

  “Yes,” Cholik agreed. “That’s why I’ve let you live so long while we have worked together. It wasn’t pleasant or done out of a weak-willed sense of fair play.” He stepped closer to the bigger man sitting with his back against the railing.

  Purple bruising already showed in a wide swath around Raithen’s neck.

  “You’re a tool, Captain Raithen,” Cholik said. “Nothing more.”

  The big man glared up at him but said nothing. Swallowing was obviously a hard and painful effort.

  “But you are an important tool in what I am doing.” Cholik gestured again.

  Seeing the priest’s fluttering hand inscribing the mystic symbols, Raithen flinched. Then his eyes widened in surprise.

  Cholik knew it was because the man hadn’t expected to be relieved of his pain. The priest knew healing spells, but the ones that caused injury came more readily to him these days. “Please get up, Captain Raithen. If you have led someone here and the fog has obscured their presence, I want you to handle it.”

  Showing restraint and caution, Raithen climbed to his feet.

  “Do we understand each other?” As Cholik gazed into the other man’s eyes, he knew he’d made an enemy for life. It was a pity. He’d planned for the pirate captain to live longer than that.

  Aribar Raithen was called Captain Scarlet Waters by most of the Westmarch Navy. Very few people had survived his capture of a ship, and most ended up at the bottom of the Great Sea or, especially of late, in the Gulf of Westmarch.

  “Aye,” Raithen growled, but the sound wasn’t so menacing with all the hoarseness in it. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Good.” Cholik stood and looked out to the broken and gutted buildings that remained of Tauruk’s Port. He pretended not to notice as Raithen left, nor did he indicate that he heard the big pirate captain’s slight foot drag that told him Raithen had considered stabbing him in the back.

  Metal whispered coolly against leather. But this time, Cholik knew, the blade was being returned to the sheath.

  Cholik remained at the balcony and locked his knees so he wouldn’t tremble from the cold or from the exhaustion he suffered from spell use. If he’d had to expend any more energy, he thought he’d have passed out and been totally at Raithen’s mercy.

  By the Light, where has the time gone? Where has my strength gone? Gazing up at the stars burning bright against the sable night, Cholik felt old and weak. His hands were palsied now. Most of the time he maintained control of them, but on occasion he could not. When one of those uncontrollable periods arrived, he kept his hands out of sight in the folds of his robes and stayed away from others. The times always passe
d, but they were getting longer and longer.

  In Westmarch, it wouldn’t be many more years before one of the younger priests noted his growing infirmity and brought it to the senior priest’s attention. When that happened, Cholik knew he’d be shipped out from the church and placed in a hospice to help with the old and the diseased, all of them dying deaths by inches and him helping only to ease them into the grave while easing into a bed of his own. Even the thought of ending his days like that was too much.

  Tauruk’s Port, with Ransim buried beneath, the information gleaned from the sacred texts—those things Cholik viewed as his personal salvation. The dark forces he’d allied himself with the past few years willing, it would be.

  He turned his gaze from the stars to the fogbound river. The white, cottony masses roiled across the broken land forming the coastal area. Farther north, barbarian tribes would have been a problem to their discovery, but here in the deadlands far north of Westmarch and Tristram, they were safe.

  At least, Cholik mused, they were safe if Raithen’s latest excursion to take a shipload of the king’s gold fresh out of Westmarch had not brought someone back. He peered down at the layers of fog, but he could see only the tall masts of the pirate ships standing out against the highest wisps of silver-gray fog.

  Lanterns aboard those ships created pale yellow and orange nimbi and looked like fireflies in the distance. Men’s raucous voices, the voices of pirates and not the trained acolytes Cholik had handpicked over the years, called out to one another in casual disdain. They talked of women and spending the gold they’d fought for that day, unaware of the power that lay buried under the city.

  Only Raithen was becoming more curious about what they sought. The other pirates were satisfied with the gold they continued to get.

  Cholik cursed his palsied hands and the cold wind that swept over the Hawk’s Beak Mountains to the east. If only he were young, if only he’d found the sacred Vizjerei text sooner . . .