The Larion Senators e-3

by Rob Scott

  His next volley was aimed at the knots of heavy hempen cord and the wooden tackle and metal spikes bracing the cutter’s masts. Without mystical protection, the stays were easy to hit and surprisingly easy to sever. When the hawsers snapped, the reports carried like gunshots.

  The sound brought the Malakasian captain round. It took just a moment for him to realise that he was beaten and the captain and crew of the Morning Star heard him shouting orders to douse the fires and tack to safety.

  The brief engagement was over.

  On the quarterdeck, Captain Ford hooted wildly and danced like a drunken schoolboy. ‘Outstanding!’ he shouted at Sera, who took over at the helm and kept the Morning Star running north. As the gap quickly widened between them, Steven returned the captain’s excited embrace, then ran for the stern.

  Cupping his hands again, he screamed, ‘Don’t do it! You must stop now!’

  But the Malakasian magician, enraged and embarrassed, leaped high, whirled his hands above his head and cast a destructive spell at the fast-moving brig-sloop.

  Steven felt it coming, felt the air and the water around them almost flinch in anticipation, but the attack was easily deflected. Steven closed his eyes, concentrated, and felt the assault shatter, shards of magic spinning across the water. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered, fearing it was too late. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Brexan asked. She and Kellin, armed with longbows, had watched the exchange from the quarterdeck. With the danger apparently behind them, Kellin now propped hers against the rail and snaked her injured arm back into its sling.

  ‘Hopefully nothing,’ Steven said, turning to rejoin the others. ‘We’re free, and unless any other patrolling vessels we come across just happen to have a crewman who doubles as the ship’s magician, we have a dead-certain way to convince them to give up the chase.’

  ‘I heard those ropes snap,’ Kellin said. ‘They hold the masts up, don’t they?’

  ‘Not any more,’ Steven laughed, looking around for Tubbs. ‘What’s for breakfast?’

  ‘Whatever you wish,’ Tubbs replied. ‘I think this morning you’ve earned captain’s honour.’ He cocked an eyebrow at Captain Ford, who nodded.

  ‘Oh God,’ Steven sighed, ‘anything I want? I’d kill for a Western omelette, Cajun hot sauce on the side, black coffee, orange juice and a copy of the Denver Post.’

  Tubbs’ brow furrowed. ‘You’re really not from Orindale, are you, young man?’

  Steven laughed. ‘Not exactly, no. If you’ve got some fruit, I’ll have that with some bread and tecan.’

  ‘That I can do. I’ll be right back.’ Tubbs scurried off as the others turned back to their interrupted conversation.

  ‘At least we know how they tracked us overnight,’ Kellin said.

  ‘True,’ said Brexan. ‘He probably knew where we were the whole time.’

  Gilmour said, ‘That was smart of you, Steven. You didn’t use anything too resonant. That little bit of fire wasn’t more than a couple of pebbles in a pond. We should be all right.’

  ‘But it may be too late, anyway,’ Steven said, ‘not because of us, but because of him, the Malakasian. He was blasting away at us with a goddamned Howitzer. I’m worried that fool alerted Mark, hammering away like that.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Gilmour said. ‘We’ll need to be prepared for anything, just i-’

  ‘Captain!’ Kanthil had been in the rigging all morning and now, gesticulating wildly astern, he was screaming, ‘Great whoring gods, Captain, look at it!’

  ‘Did they hit something?’ Ford called, running to the stern.

  ‘No,’ Kanthil cried, distressed, ‘it’s just opened, like a hole in the ocean!’

  Partisans and crew alike leaned on the aft rail and watched as the Ravenian Sea opened and swallowed the Malakasian cutter whole.

  ‘Mother of Christ,’ Steven whispered.

  ‘That answers your question,’ Gilmour said. ‘He didn’t pinpoint our position, but he found them.’

  No one else spoke as the surface boiled white and choppy, then wrinkled back into soft swells. Nothing remained of the cutter; there were no survivors in the waves.

  ‘Brace yourselves,’ Kellin cried, looking nervously over the side. ‘We could be next.’

  Garec took her hand. It was cold and trembling. None of them had slept in two days. ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we?’

  Still staring at where the naval ship had been, Steven murmured, ‘Yes, we should be fine. Mark figures he just killed us… killed me. This ship was under attack by a powerful sorcerer with a penchant for big, showy attacks. That sorcerer was targeted and is now dead.’

  ‘So Mark thinks that was us,’ Garec said.

  ‘That’s right. Unless he sensed the orbs I was using, I guess he believes we’re just a Malakasian ship. If the table had been open, he’d have felt my deflective spells and we’d be swallowed up too, so it must have been closed until he used it to drown them.’

  ‘Nerak would have been able to sense the resonant spells that blazing idiot was hurling at us,’ Steven went on, ‘that’s why I was trying to stop him. And Mark in turn felt them, found him, opened the table-’

  ‘And ate him,’ Garec finished.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Captain Ford interrupted. ‘Do I need to worry about my boat or not?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Captain,’ Gilmour said, ‘because it would have happened already, and because Steven didn’t use any magic that Mark Jenkins would have been able to sense from this far away.’

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Well then, let’s get some breakfast and then set the watch. We could all use a few avens’ sleep.’ He turned to Sera and ordered, ‘Downwind run, sailor. Everyone else, come.’ He smiled, even at Garec. ‘Let’s get below; Tubbs will have breakfast ready in a moment, I’m sure.’

  As the others disappeared beneath the forward hatch, Gilmour motioned for Steven to join him in private.

  ‘What is it?’ Steven fought off a yawn.

  ‘I cast the deflection over you and Garec when he sent that second blast at us.’

  Steven stopped. ‘Oh shit, oh shit, Gilmour, oh shit.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Steven said, suddenly lucid. The magic began swirling again, tumbling and folding over itself in the pit of his stomach, ready to continue the fight. ‘But hold on: the air was full of noise and echoes, wasn’t it?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So maybe he didn’t get it. Maybe we were too close to the other ship and maybe he thought it was just another ripple-’ He was trying hard to convince himself that they were out of harm’s way.

  ‘We need to be wary.’

  ‘I can see why you never sleep,’ he said wryly, starting below.

  ‘It does help from time to time. And seeing as how the last occasion that I decided to get some sleep, some rutting Malakasian spy-’

  ‘Brexan says his name is Jacrys,’ Steven interrupted.

  ‘Fine, so the last time I slept, a spy called Jacrys came into camp and rammed a knife into my heart. Believe me, I’m happy to stay up late.’

  Later, tucked together inside the Morning Star’s main cabin, the company, now all fed and in dry clothes, sat around a crate of beer donated by the captain, pleased with the outcome of the morning’s encounter. Gilmour smoked ceaselessly, and after a while Kellin joined him for a pipe.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Garec said, surprised.

  ‘I don’t,’ Kellin said, ‘but Gilmour always smells so alluringly sweet, I thought I might try some.’

  ‘So that you can smell alluringly sweet, too?’ Garec asked.

  ‘I’m a woman who knows what she wants, bowman,’ she joked, winking over the pipe stem.

  Gilmour passed a beer to Brexan, who had been content to sit quietly and watch the interplay. She still felt a bit of an outsider, despite her relationship with Versen and Sallax.

  ‘Tell us about your journey, B
rexan,’ Gilmour said. ‘Garec mentioned that you were at Riverend Palace, that morning so long ago. I guess you were on the wrong side when all this started, but I’m glad you’ve seen the error of your ways and joined us.’

  Brexan gave him a thin-lipped smile. ‘You looked a bit different back then, Gilmour.’

  ‘That I did, my dear,’ the youthful Malakasian replied. ‘Over the Twinmoons, I’ve looked like a lot of things, some a good deal worse than this fellow.’

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Everyone did. I still manage to get a few surprises out of this ageing spirit.’ He thumped one temple with a knuckle.

  ‘Sallax would have wanted to know you were alive; he wanted to see you, to apologise,’ she said, sadly.

  ‘It was Nerak,’ Gilmour said, ‘it wasn’t Sallax’s doing. I would have forgiven Sallax in a heartbeat.’

  ‘I told him that.’

  ‘Thank you; I hope he believed you.’

  ‘He talked often about you, once he recovered. And from what I’ve seen recently, he and Versen were telling the truth,’ she said.

  ‘Those two always made up nice things about me,’ Gilmour teased. ‘Anything off-colour they might have spilled… well, that’s different!’

  ‘About you, too, Steven.’ She told them all about how she had ended up in Orindale, working for Nedra Daubert. She told of first meeting Versen, of being beaten by Lahp and transported to Strand-son, of Gabriel O’Reilly’s rescue and of Versen’s death in the meadow near the stream. She cried when she spoke of the big woodsman; Garec joined her. But then she was cold and economic in her description of Haden’s torture. Gilmour was fascinated at how Sallax had found her, and once again he thanked Brexan for helping the big Ronan wrestle his emotional demons.

  ‘In the end,’ she said, ‘it was really Brynne who helped him get the edge he needed to kill Carpello Jax, and to try to kill Jacrys Marseth.’

  ‘How did she help?’ Kellin asked.

  ‘Knowing she was- well, lost to him, that helped Sallax find enough anger and rage to keep focused. He’d come a long way, but he was still prone to drifting a bit. His guilt was enormous, but the wraiths had twisted it into such a knot, Sallax struggled for a long time just to see through the hazy grey of everything plaguing him at once.’ She took a long swallow of beer. ‘After discovering that Brynne had died, so much of what had been haunting him didn’t matter any longer. He wasn’t able to banish it, but he did find the strength to push through it.’

  ‘So he was back?’ Garec asked. ‘He was cured?’

  ‘No,’ Brexan said. ‘He still referred to himself as “Sallax” sometimes, but he certainly found his skills again. I watched him kill a raging Seron with just a knife, a big bastard, stinking like shit and set on killing us both. Sallax’s shoulder was damaged at the time; it was healing but still not strong enough for combat.’

  ‘How’d he do it?’ Garec asked.

  ‘One-handed,’ Brexan replied. ‘It was unbelievable.’

  Gilmour said, ‘He was tough and single-minded; there’s no question about that.’

  ‘And then we captured Carpello Jax, the shipping magnate who assaulted Brynne all those Twinmoons ago.’

  ‘And killed him?’ Steven asked, no longer surprised that such things were considered fit topics for polite conversation over drinks.

  ‘Essentially, yes.’

  ‘Tell us about Carpello Jax,’ Gilmour said. ‘Garec mentioned shipments. Do you know what they were?’

  ‘Something from Rona, bark or roots, leaves maybe. I don’t remember very well, and Carpello wasn’t articulating as clearly as he might have under other circumstances.’ She closed her eyes, trying to recall the details of that morning at the Topgallant Inn. ‘He did say that it came from the Forbidden Forest. You know, the one out beyond the Estrad River on the peninsula? My squad used to patrol there for Moons at a time.’

  ‘Something magic?’ Steven asked, ‘Gilmour, maybe that’s what you felt that day you were searching for Kantu?’

  ‘It could be,’ Gilmour said, then asked, ‘Garec, how far out on the peninsula did you and Versen go?’

  Garec thought for a bit. ‘We never tried to get to the end; that would have been asking for trouble. We only ever went in far enough to hunt and fish. Sometimes we rode for half a day, but I don’t remember ever going as far as the end. No one would try that; they’d have to be suicidal. It’s probably been five generations since any significant number of Ronans were out on that point. The odd boat runs southeast from the inlet, chasing schools of fish, but too many have been burned to the waterline by the Malakasian navy. That’s never been a secret to fishermen: stay out of those waters.’

  Steven said, ‘So, I wonder, did Prince Marek close that forest?’

  ‘About the same time he was wrapping up his takeover and establishing his occupation force in Eldarn,’ Gilmour said. ‘We were always told it was because Riverend Palace was on the other side of the river, and it was some kind of retribution for King Remond and, in turn, Prince Markon establishing the seat of Eldarni government there. We figured he wanted Riverend to crumble.’

  ‘It has,’ Garec interjected.

  ‘That’s true,’ Steven said, ‘but could he have been using that land for something else?’

  ‘Maybe growing whatever it is that Carpello Jax was shipping north to Pellia,’ Brexan said. ‘If it’s trees, they’ve had almost a thousand Twinmoons to spread and mature out there.’

  Gilmour’s cherubic face was hidden behind billowy smoke. ‘When did you kill this fellow, Brexan?’

  ‘Nedra did it,’ Brexan laughed, ‘accidentally. But I suppose it was about a half Moon ago.’

  ‘That was too early for him to have shipped whatever I sensed in that schooner heading north,’ the old magician said. ‘With him dead, do you think his shipments continued running?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Brexan said. ‘No one knows he’s dead. His employees may just think he’s missing, and I overheard a pair of bakers talking about him, saying Carpello was involved with all kinds of women – several of whom might even believe themselves to be his wife. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he frequently disappeared on business trips so he’d be away from the capital for Moons at a time.’

  ‘All right,’ Kellin said, ‘so if we assume that his shipments are some kind of magic bark or leaves or roots, and that they are bound for Pellia, who cares? What are the Malakasian people doing with that much magic?’

  ‘But they’re not really bound for Pellia. That’s just a stopover,’ Brexan said. ‘They’re loaded onto barges and shipped upriver to Prince Malagon’s palace. That much we did manage to beat out of Carpello before he died.’

  ‘A whole schooner-full?’ Steven said.

  ‘Several,’ Brexan corrected, ‘many, even from what Carpello said.’

  Gilmour paced around the small room, holding his pipe with one hand, swinging his beer bottle with the other. No one said anything; it was clear he was thinking.

  Finally, he said, ‘So Prince Marek closes Rona’s southeast peninsula. The climate’s right, so he plants something he knows he will need one day in the distant future, though he isn’t sure exactly when. Over time, and subsequent Malakasian dictators, Nerak monitors the progress of his crop, whatever it is, and as he draws ever closer to his date with destiny and the Larion spell table, his trees take over much of the landmass south and east of Riverend Palace. A few poachers slip over the river to kill a deer every now and again, but anyone caught out that far is given a tag hanging in Greentree Square. The message about their necks is easy to read: KEEP OUT. And so for nearly a thousand Twinmoons, the peninsula is essentially the prince’s personal garden.’

  ‘Keep at it, Gilmour,’ Steven said.

  ‘Generations later, Prince Malagon finds the slimiest shipper he can and hires this fellow to oversee the transport of his harvested crop from Rona to Pellia and then upriver to Welstar Palace, where it’s either stockpiled, or put
to some other use. The slimy merchant makes a few trips to Estrad Village, to get a sense of the lie of the land, shipping demands, deep water anchorage off the inlet, and on one of these trips he brutally assaults a young girl at Greentree Tavern-’

  ‘For which crime he is eventually beaten up and killed and left to drift on the outgoing tide,’ Brexan added as a quiet interruption.

  ‘And we thank you for that.’ Gilmour raised his bottle to her. ‘So what is it, and why did Prince Marek – Nerak – plant so much of it? Why did Prince Malagon – Nerak – harvest and ship so much of it? And, assuming what I encountered on that schooner was one of Carpello’s shipments, how can something that powerful be in use here in Eldarn without me or Steven or even Kantu feeling it?’

  ‘Those are the key unanswered questions.’ Garec reached for another beer, then asked, ‘Anyone else?’

  A chorus of ‘please’ and ‘just one more’ broke Gilmour’s concentration for a moment; when everyone had quietened again, the old magician was staring at Steven.

  ‘I’ve never been inside Welstar Palace,’ he said finally. ‘I have no idea what Nerak might have been doing there, what preparations he was making for the advent of his dark master’s reign. I should have gone. A thousand Twinmoons later, and I realise now that I should have gone up there and taken a look for myself.’

  ‘Gilmour,’ Steven started, ‘you can’t blame yourself for-’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ Brexan broke in. ‘I was stationed there for a while before I came to Rona. But I can’t tell you much about the palace; no one gets anywhere near it.’

  ‘How about the army?’ Gilmour asked. ‘I understand it’s massive.’

  ‘Rutters, yes! The whole of the river valley on either bank is the army encampment. When I was there last, I’d wager there were nearly two hundred thousand soldiers on the grounds and in the hills above the river. The tents are a veritable city, and the barges running up and down the Welstar River are a wonder to watch. The river is the palace’s own supply highway; a regiment of soldiers is assigned to oversee the depot along the road into Pellia and to work the docks on either bank.’