PART IV:
Zevaron’s Search
Chapter Twenty-six
TO the west, beyond the Mearas, a storm was brewing. Zevaron tasted it on the air, though as yet, only a darkening haze marred the perfect sky. Heat drenched the air, a stillness he had learned to never trust. The canvas sails of the Wave Dancer hung almost limp, and the ship, usually responsive to his hand on the tiller, moved sluggishly.
Chalil came to stand beside him, wiping sweat from his forehead. The last four years had worn hard on the pirate captain. Gray streaked his night-dark hair, and his skin was as creased and weathered as old leather.
Zevaron turned to glance at his friend and captain, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. In another decade on the Wave Dancer, he would look just as sea-worn. With his long hair tied back, his curved mustache, and his skin darkly tanned, he could easily pass for Denariyan. His command of the language would never fool a native but did well enough for outlanders.
“Curse this calm!” Zevaron said, but with good temper. “It will hold us here until the storm catches us.”
“And so?” Chalil’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the horizon, and Zevaron knew what he was thinking. Better to face a storm than a warship.
Chalil and his crew wanted no part in the ongoing naval conflict between Gelon and Isarre. War was bad for trade and worse for a pirate who depended on the availability of rich merchant ships. The situation had become even more dangerous when Gelon determined to put an end to piracy. They had paid Lord Haran’s ransom grudgingly, and then had come after Chalil with an astonishing show of force, bent on striking terror into any who dared prey upon one of their own. Two narrow escapes, achieved by luck and seamanship, had convinced Chalil to seek safer waters. So they took what was left of the treasure through the long, difficult passage via the straits of the Firelands and beyond, to the free trader haven of Pirion, and then to Denariya itself.
Chalil had been right, Zevaron thought. The sea was filled with gifts, not the least of which was forgetfulness. Zevaron had never dreamed of such countries, such rich colors, such tastes and sounds and smells. Such voluptuous women.
As part of Chalil’s crew, Zevaron had spent seasons in Denariya, even venturing into the Fever Lands for ivory and gold. The strange constellations became familiar, and he had grown accustomed to eating rice instead of wheat, to fish and fiery peppers.
Now they were embarking upon what Chalil called “a different type of thievery.” The Wave Dancer’s hold was filled with fine embroidered silk, sandalwood incense, myrrh and peppercorns, barrels of exotic wines, pots of kohl and cinnabark, rose tincture and dried mango; all goods that brought a hundred times their purchase price or more. The passage had been uneventful thus far, the Firelands Straits no worse than usual.
The wind picked up, filling the sails, and the Wave Dancer moved easily under Zevaron’s hands. They meant to travel east, then north to Gelon and the port city of Roramenth. Chalil had chosen Roramenth because it was large enough to trade in luxury goods yet not as well-garrisoned as Verenzza. Chalil might have repainted the Wave Dancer and donned the coat of an honest merchant, but there was still a bounty on his head. Even now, years later, some might recognize him.
They had stopped at the Mearas, the cluster of desolate rocky islands that formed the gateway to the Endless Sea, to trade their spices for fresh water, meat, bread, and more dried fruits. In a smoky tavern, Zevaron had listened while Tamir and Chalil bought an extra round of bitter ale and exchanged news with the crew of a ship bound out of Durinthe in Isarre. Gatacinne remained in Gelonian hands, they said, as did Valoni-Erreth, the city the Gelon built for themselves. But they were quick to add that the Isarran King still ruled in Durinthe. Ar-Cinath-Gelon, perhaps frustrated with the stalemate, had sent his son, Thessar, off to “subdue the savage nomads of Azkhantia.”
So the Gelonian prince survived Shorrenon’s attack, Zevaron thought, but said nothing.
Chalil commented that Thessar’s current mission sounded more like a punishment than an opportunity for glory.
“Ah, but if he takes any territory at all, he can return home with his honor restored,” the Isarran captain said dryly.
“Territory? From the Azkhantians? He’ll be lucky to escape with his hide,” was Omri’s comment.
There was no talk of Meklavar beyond what Zevaron already knew, that Gelon now ruled there with an iron fist, that many of the old noble families were dead or scattered.
Chalil had taken him to Denariya to prevent him from getting himself killed, that much he now understood. As long as he was half a world away, there was nothing he could do and no revenge he could seek. He had set aside those memories for a time. Now each passing hour brought him closer to Gelon and to uneasy dreams of vengeance.
“He saw that you knew the woman and aimed his words like a spear point at your heart,” Chalil had said, sure the Gelonian slave-master Haran had lied about Tsorreh’s death out of sheer malice. Could she have been taken on that first ship to Gelon and still be alive?
Now, with the Mearas behind them, Zevaron was no closer to an answer than when he had last sailed these waters. His hands clenched the tiller hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
“You’ve stood here too long,” Chalil said. “That’s what ails you. Go below, check that everything is secure.”
Zevaron did as he was told. He had learned seamanship as well as fighting and trading in the last four years, but he was not eager to be at the tiller in bad weather.
By the time Zevaron returned to deck, the storm was bearing down on them like a sea-hawk plunging to seize a fish. The waters crashed and rose. The deck heaved under his feet. He braced himself, holding fast to the railing.
The winds grew every moment in strength, sending the Wave Dancer pitching. Wind-whipped spray blanketed the view. With sail and oars, the crew struggled to keep the ship on a steady course, to turn her so that her bows were to the waves and she might ride the storm at the best angle.
Then the rain came, pelting them from behind. Waves surged higher, fresh water mixing with salt. The sea rose to meet the fury of the heavens. Ridge after ridge of gray-green water raced toward the ship. She lifted to meet them, plunging and bucking like a wild thing. The waves broke over her sides, flooding the deck. Chalil shouted orders, but the gale tore away his words.
Time swallowed them up. The day, which had begun so warm and still, grew colder by the minute. The crew rowed and climbed and spliced and cut. All the while, the sea roared about them.
Zevaron took his turn on the oars. He rowed until his muscles burned and then went numb. Thirst clawed at him. Sometimes he thought his hands shook, or perhaps it was the fury of the storm pounding the ship.
Omri thrust a cup at him. It was rainwater, somehow gathered in the confusion. The water cooled his burning throat and renewed his strength.
When Zevaron came back on deck, it took all his sea training to keep his feet. He peered through the slashing rain. Water sheeted from the sky. Waves that were more froth than water shot upward.
In the howling tempest, an immense shape took form. At first, Zevaron thought it a trick of the rain, a sea-mirage. But no, something was there, insubstantial and wavering, mist condensing against the maelstrom of white and gray. He felt the thing in the sea, as if an unknown part of him, a sense that had lain sleeping all these years, now stirred.
The water around the shape churned and boiled, adding steam to the tattered, whirling whiteness of the storm. Voices echoed on the wind. The ship’s timbers groaned.
The upper part of the figure rose above the plunging waves, human and dragon and sea-beast all in one. The massive head lifted, a mane like tangled kelp streaming over the shoulders. A crest of knobbed, interlaced coral sprang from the overhanging brow, arching over the domed skull and down the spine. The skin, what Zevaron could see of it through the foam, was green and mottled gray, patterned with pale incrustations and plated scales that shone like mother-of-pearl. Its ey
es were huge and lidless, made for peering through lightless depths.
The apparition sank down, as if gathering itself. Arms—two or three or even five, Zevaron couldn’t tell—burst from the water, lashing it to even greater heights.
O Most Holy One, if ever you loved your children, save us now!
The words poured from the innermost core of Zevaron’s heart. From the depths of his soul. An image sprang up behind his eyes, of Chalil, who had been as a father to him, of Tamir and stolid Omri. He saw them sink beneath the water, bodies like sodden petals drifting downward, drawn into the inexorable, swirling currents. In the frozen dark, they settled among the bones of monstrous benthic creatures, where no one knew their names or sang their lineage. Bereft of light, of warmth, of memory, they perished as if they had never existed, never loved, never known a moment’s joy.
The monstrous fist descended, missing the Wave Dancer and passing instead through the maelstrom. A wall of water slammed into the ship. It surged over the deck. Timbers shrieked. The prow lifted, shuddering, reaching for the light. Zevaron staggered, thrown to his knees. Then the ship began to slip downward.
Zevaron scrambled to his feet on the tilting deck. He raised his own fist, filled his lungs with fury and hurled it out.
“NO!” he screamed. “YOU SHALL NOT HAVE THEM!”
For an instant, time itself seemed to pause. Although the wind and rain continued, the sea scarcely moved, as if the waves were mere painted images. The ship hung suspended in its descent.
The immense, distorted head swung around. This time, the eyes were not blind, pallid orbs, but lit from within. Zevaron reeled under their weight. The apparition’s watery breath enveloped him. He felt its awareness, the leap of curiosity.
The thing was in his mind now, ringing through the caverns of his skull. Thoughts reverberated, overlapping and rippling, so that he could not tell which were his own and which came from this strange creature. He no longer feared for himself, the watery death it brought. He feared only for the others—his shipmates, his friends.
Once, in Tomarzha Varya, he had heard from afar the pealing of bells for some Denariyan religious celebration or other. He remembered the cacophony of sound and how it fell away at the end, leaving a single melody, so pure and clear it stirred him to tears. Now the jumble of thoughts within his mind also faded. The storm quieted. The winds shifted and the apparition before him dwindled. He no longer looked upon a grotesque colossus, half sea-dragon, half parody of a man, but upon a much smaller figure.
A waterspout of deepest blue bore the sea king up, covering the lower part of the naked form. It lifted him so that his gaze was level with Zevaron’s. The creature seemed to be standing utterly still, yet in constant motion.
He bore the aspect of a bearded man, broad of chest and heavily muscled, yet with a sleekness that reminded Zevaron of dolphins. Seaweed twisted with strands of pearls fell across his shoulders in a mane. The light around his body shimmered like opals. His eyes reflected the same radiance, but Zevaron sensed a darkness behind them, slow brooding ferocity and intelligence.
As they gazed upon one another, the storm itself fell away. One enormous hand lifted in a salute.
Hail to thee, O Khored’s heir!
Zevaron was too stunned by the thoughts reverberating through his mind to make an immediate answer.
Khored’s heir, the sea-creature called him. Zevaron could not imagine how he could have known. The te-Ketav spoke of ancient magic, of a time before time when the world was formed in Fire and Ice, Stone and Water, when light and shadow, death and life had sprung into being. He had thought the whole business mythical, unreal. Yet now, as he faced this spirit of the sea, a new understanding shivered through his bones and sang along his nerves.
“I greet you, elemental form of the sea!” Zevaron leaned over the railing, calling out in the ancient, formal tongue.
Laughter, dark as the lightless depths, bright as foam, welled up from the massive shape. Zevaron remembered the old stories where the hero gained power over his enemy by learning its true name. That much must be true. He wondered if he had offended the creature, yet what did it matter what he called it? What did it want with him?
As if sensing his thought, the sea king nodded his head. The strands of his mane and beard undulated like sea-grass. The tiny pearls woven into his hair chimed like bells.
“When the shadow of the scorpion
Dims the Golden Land
And heaven’s spear to the mountain falls,
One shall come from the sand, from the sea,
Heir to the ancient shield,
Son of a mother twice reborn,
Servant of the Frozen Fire.
Then shall the prophet weep,
And the lion lie down with the deer,
Gladness will lighten every heart,
And peace will return to the land.”
The sea king’s prophecy bore down on Zevaron as if he had suddenly slipped beneath the waves and plunged to the uttermost depths. For an eternity between one heartbeat and the next, Zevaron could only stare at the moon-pale eyes.
…from the sand, from the sea, Heir to the ancient shield…That must mean him and the Shield of Khored that was the symbol of his race.
The creature began to sink beneath the waves. In an instant, he would be gone.
“No!” Zevaron cried. “Wait! What do you see ahead for me? What must I do?”
Son of a mother twice reborn. The words echoed in his mind.
“My mother! What do you know of my mother? What does the prophecy mean?”
The prophecy, O Heir of Khored, was written at the beginning of time. Yet some turnings ago of tide and moon did pass a woman of your people, bearing your blood and the sacred treasure of your race. She spoke of kindness and the singing of the stars. I drew nigh, to taste the perfume of her words.
“Where did she go? Where set ashore?”
The waters were already closing over the immense form. Zevaron almost screamed with frustration. Then came a last ghostly whisper.
The Port of Tears.
* * *
The wind settled, a constant, easy push from the west. There was no longer need for oar power. Under Chalil’s direction, the crew began repairs. They stopped that night at a cove, a day’s sailing out of Roramenth. Zevaron went ashore and sat staring into the fire, turning over the words of the sea king.
One shall come from the sand, from the sea,
Heir to the ancient shield,
Son of a mother twice reborn…
Too close, the phrase was too agonizingly close to the facts. He was of the lineage of Khored of the Seven-Petaled Shield, and he had come to Gelon across the Sand Lands, and now over the sea. Twice reborn. Alive?
Chalil came to sit beside him. “Something troubles you. Your old enemy?”
Zevaron shook his head. He had hardly spared a thought for the brutal slave-master.
“Your mother, then. You think of her?”
“The sea king spoke to me, he made words in my mind. He said she’d passed over these waters and gone to the Port of Tears. Chalil, I can’t think. Was it all lies and fancy words?”
“A man can see and hear many things in such a storm.”
“You saw it, too. You must have!”
“I saw a water spout, and waves as high as our mast, and much rain.” Chalil’s dark eyes reflected the firelight.
“But no monster, half-fish half-man, all bedecked with seaweed and strands of pearl?”
“I saw you were nearly swept away.”
Zevaron bit off an exclamation. Had he imagined the encounter and the mystifying verse or concocted it from his own uneasy dreams, his uncertainty about his mother? Or were there certain truths that could not be seen by everyone? In the unimaginable past, had Khored lifted up the Seven-Petaled Shield, only to have the very people it would save declare they could not see it?
“Zev, you have been brooding about your mother and whether that Gelon lied about her death,
on and off these past four years,” Chalil said earnestly. “If you go on in this manner, it will drive you mad. You must put the matter to rest.”
That officer, Haran was his name, could have lied. The creature from the sea—if there even had been one—could also have lied. But something had roused inside Zevaron, a kernel of hope.
“The Port of Tears,” Zevaron repeated. “Do you know of such a place?”
“Why, lad, it was the old name for Verenzza, before the Gelon took it for their own. It was once the home of a fisher folk, but one day, or so the story goes, all the men went to sea in their reed boats, as they always did, and none returned. Some said the leviathan of the deep swallowed them up. The women waded out and watered the sea with their tears, and some say they found their husbands below, in castles of pearl and coral. For myself, it is naught but a pretty story. Most like, they starved or went away to find new husbands elsewhere. Then the Gelon built a city in that place, and through the gates pass many slaves, so once again it is a port of tears.”
* * *
They put ashore at Roramenth. Zevaron wandered through the merchant district with Tamir, looking for buyers for their cargo, although Chalil handled the actual bargaining. To Zevaron, the city was very different from Meklavar and yet the same. There were markets and shops, fountains where women dipped their buckets, and corners where old men sat drinking tea and gossiping in the sun.
Shadows lengthened and the heat of the afternoon rose like a sigh from the city. The day had gone well, bringing enthusiastic customers. Tamir suggested a drink at one of the open-air taverns, preferably one that dispensed the favors of ladies as well, and Zevaron readily agreed. He welcomed the opportunity to sit down. His feet had grown accustomed to a wooden deck, not hard stone and dirt.
They took their places around a table under a lattice awning and sipped the local brew, frothy and pleasantly bitter. At this hour, there were still plenty of people to watch. The street was broad, paved in Gelonian style with flat stones and lined with planters of flowers.
The Seven-Petaled Shield Page 36
