Knights of the Crown w-1

by Roland Green

  Gerik prayed for a quick end to this meeting. Synsaga was revealing much that had been suspected but little that the Istarian cared to know. Also, it would go badly if questions turned to his other kin.

  Any secrets of House Encuintras his mother had learned, she had not only carried to her grave but they would be old and dusty tales by now. Haimya was another matter. In her position as guard-maid to Lady Eskaia, she might have become a treasure of knowledge to any enemy of the house. Pirates were wont to swoop down on such treasures, and Synsaga had ships in the gulf, a mage on the mountain, and doubtless sellswords in Istar itself for such work.

  In time the meeting ended; Gerik strode out into rain that was now easing into mist. He was three steps from the door when a harsh scream sounded from high overhead. He looked upward, but clouds and night hid even the treetops, let alone what had made the sound.

  Not that he really had much doubt. Fustiar’s pet dragon was abroad again-and within days he would be going up to serve, perhaps within a ship’s length of its lair.

  It was not a thought that made for easy sleep that night.

  * * * * *

  The bulwarks amidships had been built up again to about waist height. Leaning against them, heads over the side, Pirvan and Grimsoar could whisper with little fear of being overheard. The maintop would have been even safer, but no easy explanation for climbing to it at this hour had occurred to either man.

  “Do you remember a low-built, racy-looking ship with square-rigged foremast and a lateen-rigged main?” Grimsoar asked.

  Pirvan mentally translated that from Sailor into Common. “Lateen-like our third-mizzen-mast?”

  Grimsoar guffawed. “We’ll have you talking like a sailor yet.”

  “The idea of this voyage lasting that long gives me no pleasure.”

  Grimsoar seemed about to make another jest, then shrugged. “I’m thinking of going back to sea. Which is why I noticed that ship. She also had her sails striped in green, and a deckhouse amidships. I always thought it looked like a giant wooden chamberpot.”

  Pirvan swore to push his fellow thief into something worse than a chamberpot if he went on talking in riddles.

  “So?”

  “That’s the bannership of Jemar the Fair.”

  At least that name was no riddle. “Sea barbarian, who’s done some work for the brothers?”

  “The same one. He also owes me a few favors, over the matter of his factor in Istar.”

  Pirvan assembled clues and rummaged in his memory. “The one who was found floating in the ornamental pool outside the Temple of Shinare?”

  “Nice to see that Haimya hasn’t entirely addled your wits, even if you’ve addled hers.”

  “Brother, if you mention that lady again before you have finished with this matter, I shall swim to Jemar’s ship and bore a hole in her bottom with an augur. Then, when I am captured, I shall say that you did it.”

  Grimsoar recoiled in mock horror, and nearly stumbled over a coil of rope. Pirvan laughed shortly. “Now, as you were saying …?”

  “I was using the factor to receive some of the fruits of my night work,” Grimsoar said. “I discovered that he was cheating me. Trying to recover my work, I learned that he was cheating others. Jemar was among them. I passed the word, and Jemar carried the matter on from there.”

  “To the point where the man was bobbing in the pool, his throat cut from ear to ear?”

  “Not that badly. Jemar hires better knifemen than that. But otherwise, yes.”

  “I see. So he owes you a debt, and might pay it by helping us?”

  “Again, yes. If we provide the money, he will be able to go shoreside and buy everything we need to repair the ship without going in ourselves. No one will know who he’s buying for, so they won’t even charge him more than the lawful rate. Not that the lawful rate is cheap, mind you, but-”

  “I see. What about our crew?”

  “The captain may growl about dealing with sea barbarians. If he growls too loud, Lady Eskaia will growl back. If he doesn’t stop then, the mate of the top will be captain. I don’t think the old man wants that. This stands to be his last voyage, and he wants a few extra coins to take ashore when it’s done.”

  Pirvan did not doubt his friend’s words. Grimsoar had an uncanny knack for picking up all the rumors wandering around a tavern, a marketplace, or a ship’s forecastle. Then he could sort them out into truth, or at least a useful approximation of it.

  He wondered if that made Grimsoar’s remarks about Haimya more plausible. Then he decided not to encourage the big man to talk about that, no matter what!

  * * * * *

  Gerik Ginfrayson climbed the mountain to Fustiar’s tower the next night. He had not planned to go up by night, though he did not mind the darkness concealing him. More than a few of the pirates had doubts about the wisdom of dealing with a renegade mage.

  Gerik shared every one of those doubts, and was not looking forward to spending an unknown time where he would have to keep those doubts even out of his thoughts, let alone off his lips.

  He tried to console himself that if Fustiar valued him primarily for his knowledge of the secrets of Istar’s rulers, he would be hurrying down the mountain soon after he arrived. He could not help thinking, however, that Fustiar might be disposed to send him much farther than the camp on the shore.

  It was a dry night for the Crater Gulf, so the path upward was only slippery, not half awash, let alone a stream in full spate. The four chained captives had fallen only twice, and the two sailors guarding them had lashed them only once.

  Gerik had no duties toward the prisoners or their guards. He was going up with the party merely because no one walked the path up to Fustiar’s tower at night alone, and a wise man had company even by day.

  The air grew cooler as they climbed out of the thickest jungle. Now the trees did not quite meet overhead, and Gerik saw a few stars. One of them blazed down across the sky, an omen, but of what, he could not be sure.

  A little higher, and the open sky showed the constellations of Mishakal and Zeboim. The Istarian told himself that it was only his imagination, but the eyes of Zeboim seemed to be open and gazing intently downward. Was Takhisis’s sea-gripping daughter taking an interest in Fustiar’s work on behalf of the Dark Queen?

  Now the path leveled out, and walls loomed ahead. Everyone called Fustiar’s abode his “tower,” but in fact it was a half ruined castle, which in its youth must have been as large as the citadel of a good-sized city. That youth was also so far in the past that no one knew who had built it, when, or why.

  The tales hadn’t exaggerated its size, however. The one tower still standing rose eighty feet, and the half-ruined great hall was at least half that. The hall had been roughly patched with green timber and leaf thatch, and a stairway, also new and roughly built, rose up the outside of the tower.

  These signs of human handiwork reassured Ginfrayson a trifle. At least Fustiar hadn’t conjured up a horde of ogres to build himself a palace, or chosen to levitate himself up and down from his tower whenever the whim took him. Perhaps all he was good for was simple tricks, fit to impress the ignorant, but quite incapable of doing real harm to a man hard to deceive or frighten.…

  A scream struck Gerik’s ears like an iron bar. No human throat, and no animal commonly known in nature, ever uttered that scream. (Although the animals and plants of the Crater Gulf still held surprises for pirates who had lived there ten years, let alone for newcomers like Ginfrayson). The ancient stones held the echoes and tossed them back and forth like a couple of hearty children with a ball.

  There was nothing childish in that cry either. It spoke of ages beyond human knowledge or even human imagining, stretching back to the earliest time of the gods themselves, when Paladine and Takhisis were allies instead of sworn foes.

  It spoke, indeed, of much that would have been chilling to think about on a sunny day in a crowded city square. High on a wilderness mountain, far from anyone to talk to, wi
th night hiding both friends and foes, Ginfrayson found it the most terrifying sound he had ever heard in his life.

  He also found that it reminded him of the cry he’d heard the night before, piercing the rainstorm just after he had left Synsaga’s hut. And that wasn’t even the first time he had heard a cry like that, now that he thought of it, and it was always high or far off-as though what made it wished to hide from human eyes.

  At this point he realized that the four prisoners were cowering on the ground or looking about them wildly. The guards looked as if they wished to do the same, had they not feared a panic-stricken flight by their charges. Ginfrayson forced his mind to receive messages from his eyes, and in due course they found a small gate with a bell-pull beside it.

  At least Gerik hoped it was a bell-pull. He realized as he approached the wall that his hand was shaking. If that scream came again in answer to his pull …

  For all that he had to pull five times before the bell rang, when it did, it was an almost cheery and quite ordinary, brazen tinkling. The little gate opened on well-oiled hinges, and a stocky man wearing only a loincloth and a collar of brass links set with cheap glass beads stood in the way He looked not only human, but like a slave whose master wants to impress visitors without having the money or knowledge of how to do so.

  Used to the real and wisely chosen splendors of House Encuintras, Gerik wanted to laugh, but held himself back from that particular folly.

  “You come in. These stay out,” the man said, pointing at Gerik and the guards, respectively. The prisoners apparently didn’t exist. He sounded as if he had learned Common late and even then only a few words, though Gerik could not place his accent.

  He could recognize an order when he heard one. The guards stepped back as Gerik drew’ his sword. Then he fumbled with his free hand in his purse. He didn’t know if the sailors were paid extra for guard duty, but, by Majere, they deserved a little something for not noticing that he was frightened!

  The sailors took the money and scurried down the path with a speed that Gerik envied. He wondered how long it would be before he descended the path, at any pace. Then he raised his sword and motioned toward the door. The prisoners stumbled forward. Under the almost reptilian eye of the mage’s man, Gerik followed, and the man pulled the gate shut behind them.

  The clank of the lock was a sound only a trifle less agreeable than the nightmare scream.

  Inside, darkness and stenches were Gerik’s first impressions of the mage’s lair. The darkness gradually receded as his eyes adjusted, and he saw mounds of earth, patches of weeds and grass and other patches regular enough to be gardens, flagstones, and bits and pieces of inner walls. Some of those walls had been built of stones higher than a man and longer than two or three.

  Whoever built this castle, Gerik concluded, had a quarry near at hand, unlimited slaves, or some arts more potent and less pleasant to think about than either. His pleasure at the thought of living here, perhaps among magic-twisted ghosts, shrank even further.

  “Ah, welcome,” a slurred voice said, apparently from all directions at once. Gerik did not jump or brandish his sword. He merely tried to glare back, also in all directions at once.

  The voice’s owner gave in to raucous, jeering laughter. Then he appeared out of the shadows by one wall.

  “Unchain them,” he said, motioning with his hand. That brought two more men out of the darkness, enough like the first one that they might have been cousins. However, they had no ears, and when they opened their mouths, one could see that they had no tongues.

  What else they might be missing, Gerik did not care to think. But they had swords and daggers at their belts, spears slung across their backs, and heavy keys in their hands that made quick work of the prisoners’ shackles.

  While the newcomers were at work, Gerik examined the man he presumed was Fustiar. There was no reason mages had to look like anything in particular, and it was dark besides. Yet he had the distinct impression of a village drunkard, the sort who will work just enough to keep himself in wine, but not enough to buy baths or decent clothes. The mage’s robe showed holes and patches. If it had once been light-colored, dirt and wine stains had long since darkened it.

  Fustiar took a stumbling step forward-and one of the prisoners took a long leap backward. He nearly fell, but kept his feet under him. In a moment, he was running for the far end of the castle, where the wall over a long stretch was tumbled into climbable ruins.

  Gerik wished for a bow, knew he couldn’t hit the tower with it in this darkness, and began to run. He’d covered about five steps when Fustiar raised both hands, shouted one word that Gerik had never heard (it sounded vaguely obscene), then added other words Gerik heard all too clearly.

  “Stop, you fool!”

  Gerik stopped so quickly that he nearly lost balance, sword, and dignity. He’d just regained all three when the fleeing prisoner reached the slope of tumbled blocks. He peered through the darkness as the man scrambled up with the strength and speed of desperation.

  Then, from the darkness beyond the man, monstrousness came. At least that was Gerik’s first thought. It was huge and evil, but had no shape.

  Closer to his doom, the man apparently saw more clearly. He screamed once, but a second scream was lost in a sound like an iron gate closing. Then a third scream floated down from the sky, and after that was silence, except for the rush of air churned by what could only be mighty wings.

  Gerik realized that, after all, he did not need to see what had come forth and taken the man aloft. He had seen it that day on the path.

  “So, you command a black dragon?” he said to the patch of darkness where Fustiar most likely lurked.

  The slurred voice replied from it. “He keeps order among my other servants, does he not?”

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “Do not think you-will be-spared, either, if you-rebel.”

  “All that is mine to give, I give freely to your service,” Gerik said. He thought his voice was steady. About the words he was less sure, but they came from the oath of service to House Encuintras, and if that had been good enough for his mother, it could cursed well be good enough for a drunken renegade mage!

  “All that is given, I accept.” Those words seemed less slurred. They were followed by a squelching thud. Gerik stepped forward, until he nearly stubbed his toe on the mage’s outflung foot.

  A snore floating up from the mud. It began to seem that Gerik Ginfrayson’s first service to Fustiar the Renegade would be putting the man to bed.

  His first act after that would be finding a means of escape that would not end either in the dragon’s belly or in the jungle or sea. That might be a long search, but it was one he was now determined to make.

  He had been prepared to end his betrothal to Haimya when he sailed on the voyage that ended at Crater Gulf-no longer fearing what she might say that made it easier to swear allegiance to Synsaga. Indeed, he suspected that she also would be relieved to find herself free from a betrothal that existed mostly because neither of them had been able to find a convincing argument against it.

  Haimya was an excellent woman; she would not be long in burying his memory or consoling herself with another man. He owed her nothing-except what he owed everyone, which was not to consort any longer than he had to with a renegade mage who had brought a black dragon out of dragonsleep and loosed it on the world.

  * * * * *

  Whatever Jemar the Fair considered that he owed Grimsoar One-Eye and the thieves of Istar, it was worth two boatloads of supplies in the first four days. One was barrel staves and hoops, as well as caulking material and several of Jemar’s own coopers to help Golden Cup’s crew put everything together.

  The other was spars and rope (the ship had plenty of spare sails). Like a tribe of apes fleeing a leopard, Golden Cup’s people swarmed into its battered rigging, and in a single day it began to look less battered.

  Pirvan was among the climbers. His minor hurts were long healed and he could
climb as well as any-better than most. That he was a sober man gave him only more opportunities. The crew was kept aboard, but no sailor with money in his pocket and small craft passing close to his anchored vessel would be without wine for long.

  On the fifth day, Pirvan was in the maintop, repairing the standing rigging, when a boat slid out of the mist and alongside. He took a brief look, noted that it was a barge in harbor guard colors, and returned to filing down a block that had come out of the chandler’s shop a bit oversized even for Golden Cup’s massive rigging.

  On the other side of the maintop, Haimya was feeding freshly tarred rope from a coil to two men standing on the mainyard. As before, when she was in her cabin, Eskaia had given her guards permission-indeed, orders-to join the work of the crew. Also as before, at least since the storm, Haimya worked with speed, skill, and as many words as a statue of Mishakal.

  At least she smiled from time to time, since the agreement with Jemar had been reached, and once Pirvan heard her laugh (or heard that she’d laughed, which was not quite the same thing). If he was part of her problem, of course, the less he said, the better, but if Grimsoar was wrong and she confused his silence with abandoning her now, after saving her in the storm …

  “Ahoy, the top!” Pirvan recognized the mate of the hold.

  “Maintop!”

  “Our lady’s people-haul your arses down here now! Jump if you can.”

  Pirvan looked down. The harbor guard barge was now alongside the gangway. It seemed to be fuller than the normal eight rowers could account for, and there were four or five men in the guard’s wine-colored coats and blue breeches on ship’s deck as well.

  Pirvan flung himself into the rigging and slid down, no great matter with his gloves on and the next best thing to jumping. (He would have jumped only if he’d been sure that the harbor guard men were aboard on no good business and that he could land on them.)

  Haimya came down the ratlines, more briskly than she had when first aboard but not even trying to match the thief’s pace. He was on the deck before he realized that perhaps he should have spared her dignity a trifle, not beating her so badly.