Storms of Destiny

by A. C. Crispin

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map of Boq’urain

  1 Jezzil

  2 Thia

  3 Khith

  4 The Road to Q’Kal

  5 Eregard

  6 Sea Changes

  7 Talis

  8 The Faces of Slavery

  9 The Prince of Dung

  10 Sparks of Rebellion

  11 The Chosen

  12 The Power Within

  13 Lessons

  14 Truth

  15 A Passage to Pela

  16 Blood Magic

  17 Bone Magic

  18 Night Excursions

  19 Abandon Ship!

  20 Seaweed and Sea Serpents

  21 Homecomings and Leave Takings

  22 Call to Arms

  23 The Battle

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This book is dedicated to

  Kathleen O’Malley,

  friend, teacher, editor, and collaborator.

  For the past twenty-seven years, she’s taught me

  more about writing than anyone else.

  Thanks, Kathy.

  Jezzil

  A gleam of westering sun pierced the dimness of the forest, turning the light from emerald to pale jade tinged with gold.

  Jezzil squinted, momentarily dazzled, then straightened in his saddle. Ahead of him lay shorter trees, scraggly underbrush, then the amber gleam of late summer crops. The cli-mate was mild, this far south. The people of Taenareth were justifiably proud of their clement winters. The young Chonao warrior regarded the vista ahead with satisfaction and a touch of relief. At last! I was beginning to think we’d have to ride through this forest until the end of time.

  His knees tightened fractionally as his hands closed on the reins. Beneath him, Falar halted as smoothly as flowing water. Jezzil raised a hand, and the horsemen behind him drew rein. The young soldier had been raised in the fertile, forested lowlands of Ktavao, and his experience with this kind of terrain had led the captain to appoint the young Chonao the lead scout for this mission—an assignment he’d now completed successfully.

  Ahead of them lay a stone fortress at the top of a hill, surrounded by a wide moat. This was their destination … the stronghold of m’Banak. Their orders were to take it before sunrise the next morning, take it by stealth, from within.

  They were the Pen Jav Dal, the Silent Ones, the elite of the Chonao forces. Their leader, the Redai of Ktavao, had led his invasionary forces across the Eastern Sea, bent on the conquest of the large, fertile isle called Taenareth. They’d landed a week ago at Fiere, then ridden north, and m’Banak was the last unfallen fortress. If they took it, the Redai’s victory would be complete.

  Gardal, Jezzil’s Amato, urged his gelding up beside the younger man, then both Chonao dismounted, leaving their mounts’ reins dangling as a signal to stay. Placing a finger to his lips, Jezzil beckoned, and they picked a soundless path through the underbrush until they were crouched at the edge of the forest, staring up at their destination.

  The stone domes of m’Banak and its slender timbered spires stood outlined against the reddening gleams of sunset. The fortress stood straight and proud, like a warrior on guard … and rightly so since m’Banak was the heart of the Taenareth defenses. The Redai, Kerezau, had beaten the island’s forces in every battle since they’d landed, but the island’s ruler had fled to this spot, the most secure in his land. A massive water channel surrounded the hill, a channel cut, some said, by sorcery. Rumor also had it that the dark waters hosted strange creatures swimming in their depths.

  “So that’s where Zajares is holed up …” Gardal muttered, half to himself. “A snug den, for an old fox.”

  Jezzil pulled off his helm, enjoying the play of breeze across his scalp, and pushed a sweaty lock of dark brown hair off his forehead. His green eyes narrowed. “It won’t be easy, getting inside, much less getting close enough to Zajares to take him out. How many troops does Intelligence say he has in there with him? How many pistols and muskets?”

  “A full company is assigned here to guard Zajares,”

  Gardal said. “But Intelligence says he’s been sending out raiding parties, preparing for a siege. So there’s no telling how many are actually in there with him. He has firearms, but his powder supply is very low. Enough for a few volleys, perhaps. Not enough for heavy artillery.” Gardal’s eyes narrowed as the grizzled Amato studied the fortress. “And it’s not like he’ll have a chance to use cannon.”

  Jezzil nodded. The information about the lack of powder came as no surprise. The Redai had cut Zajares’s supply lines weeks ago. “So he could have a hundred soldiers,” he said. “We’re outnumbered.”

  “The Pen Jav Dal often are,” Gardal pointed out, truthfully. “But a surplus of troops can work to our advantage, youngster.”

  Jezzil gave him a quizzical glance that he barely kept from being openly skeptical. “How, sir?”

  “The more of them there are to be thrown into chaos, the greater that chaos will be,” Gardal replied. “The first thing we must do is make them see what is not there.”

  “But, sir …” Jezzil struggled to phrase his question so it would not seem insubordinate. “We have no Caster with us.

  How can we create an illusion?”

  Gardal sighed, shaking his head reprovingly. “Youngster, what are they teaching you nowadays, eh? The Silent Ones can make enemies see what they want them to see, believe what we want them to believe, whether we do it by magic or by stealth and guile. Haven’t they taught you that yet?”

  Jezzil flushed at the reproof. “Of course, sir. I know that.

  It just … slipped my mind.”

  Gardal gave him a wry glance. “How many missions have you been on, youngster?”

  The scout took a deep breath. “This is my second, sir.

  Don’t worry, I’m ready for this.” He patted the pommel of his short, slightly curved sword. “By dawn, this place will be the Redai’s for the taking.”

  His officer nodded. “That’s the spirit, Risore Jezzil. You and Risore Barus come from the same Company, yes?”

  Jezzil nodded. “We do, Amato. Barus and I have known each other since our first days in ranks. He is my best friend.”

  Gardal nodded. “You both speak Taenarian? You work well together?”

  “We both speak it, sir. And we trust each other as we trust ourselves.”

  “Good. You will need that kind of trust, Risore, because I am sending the two of you in first. You will be responsible for scouting a way across that moat and into the fortress. You will locate Zajares’s quarters and determine how many men he has guarding him there. You will make recommendations as to how we can carry out our orders to assassinate Zajares and open the fortress to the Redai’s onslaught. Understood?”

  Jezzil squared his shoulders, his green eyes shining at the honor his Amato was bestowing upon him. He threw the officer his best formal salute. “Yes, Amato! I am grateful for the honor, sir!”

  Gardal returned the salute. “Ease up. You may not thank me an hour from now—that fortress won’t fall into your lap like an overripe pluma. Now get Risore Barus up here and plan your foray.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Quickly, the young man headed back through the trees to where the forty-nine members of the scouting and infiltration party were waiting. He was very conscious of the honor Gardal was giving him in allowing him to plan this raid. If he were successful, it might mean a step up in rank—possibly even a commendation from the Redai himself. The other Chonao were gathered together, having taken the opportunity to water their mounts from a tiny creek that threaded throug
h the forest. Falar had her head turned, obviously scenting the water, but still obedient to her master’s command to stay.

  The Chonao felt a surge of pride. The Chonao horses were the best in the world, and his mare was the best of the best.

  The young Risore was the fourth son of a nobleman whose vast estates included many acres given over to the raising of some of the finest horses in all of Chonao territory. Falar had been by his best stud, out of his finest brood-mare. She was not as tall and fine-boned as a Pelanese racer, but she was far more delicately built than the sturdy horses from the Chonao steppes that the other party members rode.

  With her smoky dapples, dark mane, tail, and points, she was a beauty, from her wide-set dark eyes to her small ears.

  She pricked them up upon hearing her master’s step.

  “Are you thirsty, lady?” Jezzil murmured in his southern dialect, picking up the reins. Falar whuffled, turning her head deliberately toward the water. Her master led her to the tiny stream, then slipped the bit from her mouth so she might drink freely. As the mare sniffed delicately, then began to gulp the water, her ears moving with each swallow, Jezzil beckoned Barus over. Signaling his own mount to stay, his friend joined him.

  Barus was shorter and slighter than Jezzil, with the swarthy skin of a steppes dweller. His slim, wiry build made him look almost inconsequential when at rest, but he was a master at both armed and unarmed combat; he had the quickest reflexes Jezzil had ever seen. Barus’s lank sable hair was longer than his friend’s shoulder-length, and had to be elaborately braided and pinned to fit beneath his close-fitting helm. “What’s up?” he asked quietly.

  Jezzil jerked his chin at the distant fortress. “The Amato has assigned the two of us to scout the place and help plan the attack.”

  Barus’s dark eyes lit up and his teeth flashed briefly in a broad grin. “Superb! I can hardly wait!”

  Jezzil’s mouth twitched. “Contain yourself. There are over a hundred soldiers quartered there, guarding Zajares.”

  The junior officer dismissed the thought with a flick of his left hand in a rude gesture. “We are the Silent Ones. We’ll cut their throats before they even know we’re among them.

  This is a great opportunity for us. If we do well …”

  Jezzil nodded. “My thought exactly.”

  The two scouts quickly checked their weapons and armor, abandoning their swords for the moment in favor of several knives and throwing discs of assorted sizes concealed in sheaths and holders beneath their loose-fitting tunics and trousers. Jezzil slipped a vial of poison into the holder sewn into the top of his riding boot, where it was hidden by the thick tooling on the outside calf. Gathering his shoulder-length hair in his hand, he secured it with a leather thong, then wound a coil of cutting wire around the thong so it appeared to be held by a silvery mesh clasp. He tucked the leather-bound free ends under, concealing them. His leather wrist guards could also be unwound and used as strangling cords.

  While he was doing this, the words of the training song all cadets learned in their first year of schooling, “The Arming Rhyme of the Silent Ones,” ran through his head.

  Helmet rivet solid, plates without a crack

  Body armor fastened, front and side and back

  Neck and arms and body, free to stoop or stand

  Weapons in their scabbards, ready to the hand.

  Check if blades are solid; pommel, grip, and guard

  Weapon belts all fastened? Check them quick and hard

  Jump and see what rattles. Tie and pad it fast

  Second chances never come. Fool’s luck doesn’t last!

  Check the shadow weapons, set and out of sight

  Steel and cord and poisons, stopped and fastened tight

  Skin and face all darkened, metal dulled of shine.

  What’s your ordered mission? What’s your place and time?

  What’s the secondary plan? What way in and out?

  Where’s the second rally point? What’s the hidden route?

  Feet and hands are weapons, but number one’s your head.

  Stay relaxed and use it, and you may not end up dead.

  As the final words ran through Jezzil’s mind, he slipped two ruby studs into the holes in his left earlobe. Each stud had a tiny drop of a powerful soporific coating the inside shaft, which was inserted into the thicker, outside wire. All the young Chonao had to do was twist the inner shaft free of the outer sheath, and he held a tiny, sharp, potent dart. One pinprick would be enough to fell a strong opponent in less than two minutes.

  Falar nickered softly and bunted him gently as he loosened her girth and tethered her close to a bush with succulent leaves. “I’ll be back, lady,” he told her, stroking her satiny neck for a moment. “Wait here for me. Stay.”

  Then the two scouts, clad in their traditional garb that was the color of shadow, eased out of the forest. Meadows encir-cled the hill where the fortress stood, and the two young warriors moved quickly across them until they came to the narrow fringe of trees and undergrowth that had sprung up on the bank of the moat.

  Barus and Jezzil crouched in the shadow of a scrubby oak and stared up at the fortess. The sun had set, and twilight gathered around it like a dark cloak. The spires that had appeared so proud and stately in the sunlight now looked bladelike and forbidding. The stone domes seemed to hunker down between the spires like animals hiding in burrows.

  Jezzil, who had a lively imagination that he tried sternly to ignore—too vivid an imagination was a drawback for a soldier—repressed a shiver.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Barus said, his voice barely a breath on the evening air. “We know what we’re looking for.”

  The two Chonao began a systematic search in the waning light. Each was equipped with a night lantern, should that become necessary, but both young men had excellent eyesight, and they found what they were seeking before the last light had faded away.

  A trapdoor, set into a tiny clearing, was carefully camou-flaged with cut brush that must have been replenished only yesterday. Most men would have walked past it without noticing the drooping leaves, but the Silent Ones were well-trained in ferreting out secrets. A moment’s investigation revealed the cut branches and the wooden slabs set flush with the ground.

  “No ring,” Barus said, staring down at the uncovered trapdoor with a frown.

  “Of course not,” Jezzil said. “They don’t want anyone using it to get in, they just want to make sure they can get out. ”

  “We’ll have to dig and lever it up,” Barus said. “And that’s going to make noise. I’ll give you good odds there’s a sentry down there.”

  “No doubt,” Jezzil agreed. “There’s probably another at the exit on the other side of the moat. We’ll have to take care of both of them before we can get into the fortress.”

  Barus glanced around the clearing, evaluating it as a site for an ambush. “You start digging, and I’ll take care of him when he appears.”

  Jezzil opened his mouth to protest, then shut it and shrugged.

  Barus was a better swordsman and hand-to-hand fighter than he was, even on his best day. The steppe warrior was the acknowledged champion of the troop. “Oh, very well,” he said gruffly, but he was conscious of a stab of relief. He had been in two battles and fought hard, but there was a difference in deliberately luring a man to his death by stealth, rather than killing him in open warfare. Besides, as long as the job was done, and done well, who was he to protest?

  Walking over to the concealed door, Jezzil dropped to one knee and began hacking at the dirt on the opening side with the point of his dagger. There had been little rain for weeks, so it was as hard as stone, but crumbled once it was loosened. He made no effort to disguise the scraping noises he made.

  The young Chonao had a brief moment of apprehension then; what if the sentry sent for reinforcements before coming up to investigate? But then, he thought, surely the man would want to assure himself that there wasn’t some animal up here digging. />
  His reasoning was borne out a second later when the door suddenly burst open and an armed guard catapulted himself out of the ground.

  Jezzil fell back with a half-genuine squawk of dismay, deliberately lost his footing and went sprawling onto his backside, scrabbling to put distance between himself and the guard. He had only a moment to glimpse a bared sword in the other’s hand before a dark shadow flowed across the little clearing and merged with the guard’s moving figure. The man was jerked back on his heels, and had barely time for one muted gasp before he dropped limply to the ground.

  Barus stood where the man had been, a broad smile on his face, his garroting wire swinging from his hand. Red

  droplets flowed along it. “You make a perfect decoy, my friend,” he said admiringly, extending a gauntleted hand down to help his partner to his feet. “You chose the wrong profession. You should be on the stage. I’ve never seen anyone look both stupid and scared more convincingly.”

  Jezzil chuckled hollowly as he stared down at the fallen sentry. The body gave one final twitch, then lay still.

  “We’ve got to hide him, before he’s missed,” he said.

  Barus nodded, then eyed the prone figure measuringly.

  “He’s closer to your size. Take his armor and surcoat. We’ll dump him in the moat.”

  Carefully, Jezzil turned the sentry over and began tugging at the fastenings. Barus had slipped the garroting wire in so expertly that there was little blood; only a few drops stained the top of the surcoat. Jezzil donned the armor, concealing his own weapons beneath the scout’s metal-studded leather kilt. Buckling on the short, straight Taenarith sword, he slapped the helm on his head. “How do I look?”

  Barus studied him critically. “Stay in the shadows,” he advised. “In a dim light, you’ll pass.”

  Quickly, the two scouts grabbed the stripped body and carried it down the bank of the moat. After listening for a moment, they swung it back and forth, then sent it splashing into the dark waters, where it sank with scarcely a bubble or ripple.

  “They say—” Jezzil began, only to fall silent and step back hastily as a monstrous, barely seen form slid past in the black water.