by Guy Antibes
Helen went to the door after someone knocked. Jack guessed Tanner had returned, but the patriarch stood in the doorway.
“Come in. We were just talking about you,” Helen said. “We weren’t formally introduced at Duke Hestor’s dinner back in Bartonsee. I am Helen Rafter and the fat, little weasel over there is Ozzie Quist, a powerless wizard.”
“I am Aramore Gant, first patriarch of the Corandian Church of Alderach. At least, I was until this morning. May I come in? I think we should all talk about what happened and what might happen in the future.”
Quist got to his feet. “I will fetch Tanner.”
The patriarch nodded. “I already know Tanner Simple.”
If Tanner and the patriarch knew each other, why was he so upset about saving him? Jack was confused. He sat down while Quist retrieved Tanner.
“You can sit, too,” Helen said to Aramore Gant.
Tanner slid through the door followed by the wizard.
“Yes?” Tanner said to the patriarch.
“We need to clear the air, a bit, if we are to avoid being at each other’s throats for the next two weeks,” Gant said.
“By all means,” Tanner said. “You’ll not convert me, this time or any time.”
So was that what upset Tanner? The patriarch had been working to save a lost soul? Was that why he had befriended Jack?
“I promise I won’t try to persuade any of you. I found out yesterday that the Black Finger Society is a threat to wizardry, as we know it, and worshippers of Alderach. I was told the society is accumulating all the objects of power they can get their hands on. They have identified a few hundred in the world. The Serpent’s Orb was one of them. My colleagues, the priests of Alderach, avoid using objects of power and tend to groom helpers, like Jack here. They believe their power is purer. I have recently come to the conclusion that power is power,” the patriarch said.
“So there is a schism in the church?” Tanner asked.
Gant nodded. “There is. The split is barely visible, but the lines are drawn to those who can see it coming. The Dorkansee cathedral insists that objects of power are instruments of heresy. There are plenty of local temples, churches, and cathedrals throughout Corand who rely on simple objects to heal in their remote locations. Helpers are too valuable, according to those against objects of power, to waste in villages or towns.”
“And you feel that magic should be used where it can be accessed?” Quist asked.
The patriarch nodded. “When I heard the orb had been stolen, I wanted to track it and convince the government wherever it was to capture it. So, here we are working toward the same goal. In my new thinking, I believe that it isn’t the object of power, but the wielder that commits heresy.”
“I can’t let the Serpent’s Orb go to some government. I am to deliver the orb to Fasher Tempest, not to some foreign power. It is Fasher’s, after all.”
“You have some proof of that?” Gant asked.
Jack nodded and fetched the document Fasher had given him.
The patriarch looked it over. “This might be genuine or not, but it is better than nothing at all. If we work together, I will promise to do what I can to allow you to return the orb to Fasher Tempest, who, I found, has a reputation among the healing community. I believe he can be trusted.”
“He can be,” Tanner said. Helen and Quist agreed by nodding their heads.
Jack thought for a bit. “Did you think I committed heresy when I saved you when you boarded the ship?”
“No. As I said, I have had to alter my opinion on objects of power since we met in Bartonsee. I didn’t know about the Black Finger Society then.”
“The Black Fingers have been around for a long time,” Quist said.
“I asked an exalted wizard that I know the night I arrived back in Dorkansee from my visit to Tanner’s brother, and I found that they have only recently been growing into the evil organization that they now are.”
Jack thought that was a surprising comment. He would have thought the patriarch would have known all about the threats to his church.
“New management?” Tanner asked.
Gant’s face broke into a smile, “New management? Ah. I see what you mean. I have no idea.”
“Do your minders agree with your current state of mind?” Helen asked.
“One does, and the other?” The patriarch shrugged. “We can talk of this later,” he said. “My luggage arrived, so we will not lack for monetary resources.”
“We didn’t, anyway,” Tanner said.
“Good,” Aramore Gant said, grinning and rubbing his hands. “We can talk of this later.” The patriarch bowed and left the four of them looking at each other.
~
Jack woke to pounding on the door. “Jack!” It was the patriarch’s voice, so Jack opened the door. The man had blood on the front of his robe.
“Where are you hurt?”
“Not me. My traveling companions fought each other in their cabin. Come! One of them still lives, but even my healing talents can’t save him. I have already summoned the captain.”
Helen opened the door to her room wearing something surprisingly skimpy. She saw the patriarch and gasped, returning a moment later, robed and holding onto a bare sword. Jack grabbed his wand as they followed the patriarch two decks below. Tanner was already standing in the doorway.
“Your ally died,” Simple said. “He tried to tell me something, but he was too far gone. It was a brutal fight since from the wounds neither man was an accomplished fighter. They both used short knives.”
Jack peeked around the doorframe and withdrew his head quickly. There was blood everywhere, and both men cut each other up badly. The image was burned into Jack’s mind.
The captain and the first officer arrived with two crewmen. “What happened?”
The patriarch told him of the differences of opinion, but he also expressed surprise that one of his closest aides had chosen to kill. Tanner contributed what he experienced as the last of the aides died.
“We will clean this up immediately. Is there some rite you need to follow for your priests?” the captain said.
“Burial at night,” Aramore Gant said. “I will speak a few words. If you would bring their possessions to my room, I would appreciate it.”
“I can’t guarantee I can get rid of all the blood,” the first officer told the captain.
“Whatever you can do,” the patriarch said.
Jack and Helen returned to the suite. Breakfast had already been set out. Jack wasn’t used to such service, but he would just have to get used to it during the voyage.
“So what will happen now?” Jack asked.
“Do you want to bet that Tanner will take that cabin?” Helen said with the hint of a smile.
“Two men were killed there!” Jack said. “The patriarch might have been.”
“And what are they to me?” Helen said. “I didn’t know either of them. It is always sad when a human dies, but they meant nothing to me, so I do not grieve. You shouldn’t either. Aren’t you over Derr Mason’s death?”
“Who?” Jack said. He immediately remembered that was the name of the murdered wizard. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
Helen nodded. “People die every minute of every day. We can’t think of them all. I still recall my parents’ deaths. That is something worthy of grieving.” Her words caught a bit. She did have feelings, Jack concluded, however deep they were buried.
“I must become harder?” Jack asked.
“A little bit,” Helen said. “Teenagers always have a habit of overreacting, and you are no exception.”
“Overreact,” Jack said. “I’ll remember to keep my emotions in check.”
“Do.” Helen lifted a metal cover to a bowl. “Breakfast without talking. Can you handle that?”
Jack sighed. “Yes.”
Before they finished, Quist joined them. He had already eaten with the other passengers, but had hoped there would be some extra pickings. There were.
Washing up proved to be a bit of a chore, despite the sumptuousness of the suite. Jack walked to the deck and looked at the rolling sea. He spied the captain up on the steering deck.
“Can I come up?” Jack said.
“You are welcome up here at any time, Master Winder.”
The captain had already remembered his name. Jack explained to him why they were aboard.
“Tanner Simple already told me, and I will tell you what I told him. We can’t catch The Limping Lizard, despite the ship’s name, but I do have more sail than she does, so you won’t be as far behind when you land. Is that acceptable?”
Jack nodded. “It is. Thank you.”
The captain smiled. “What is it with the patriarch’s men?”
Jack gave the captain his version of the schism in the church.
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t follow Alderach if that is what you think. Sailors have a god of their own, so I’m not concerned about the cow god.”
“Is your god angry at wizards?” Jack asked.
“No. I can be, though. From what you describe, the Black Fingers won’t respect anyone’s god.”
Jack nodded. “I don’t know for sure, but that is probably what the patriarch believes.”
“So I wish you luck, but I will end up staying out of it, other than to get you to Lajia as quickly as I can. So to do that, try to stay in your cabin when you can and don’t get in the way of my sailors. Can you do that?”
Jack knew when he was being treated like a child, but he didn’t want to antagonize the captain. “I’ll only come up for fresh air.”
“We have an understanding, then.”
Jack returned to the cabin and told Quist and Helen about his conversation with the captain.
“I am sure he tells all his passengers that. We can’t all be strolling on the deck. There are, as far as I can find out, twenty passengers—or were. Two will be leaving the ship tonight,” Quist said.
“This cabin is a little small to practice with weapons, but we will have to make do if we can’t work on deck,” Helen said. “I intend to teach you how to fight on horseback.”
Jack groaned. “I thought you forgot.”
“If I have to depend on your defending my back, I’d rather you use a sword than that little peashooter you love so much.”
“My wand doesn’t shoot peas,” Jack said.
Helen groaned. “You know what I mean, Jack.”
The door opened for Tanner. “I have agreed to sleep in the bloody cabin. The smell doesn’t faze me, not after the stuff the crew used to clean it. Quist can have his snoring to himself.”
“I don’t snore,” Quist said diffidently.
They all laughed since they had all been subjected to Quist’s night singing.
“With the patriarch’s assistants gone, what will we do with him?” Tanner asked.
“Nothing,” Helen said. “He is just another person traveling to Lajia. Despite his desires, he is not part of our group.”
Jack didn’t agree. “He has rank in Lajia that none of us have. He might be able to open a few doors for us. Do we need special permission to find Simara Khotes, for example? I think we should have him travel with us.”
“One yes out of four.”
“Two,” Quist said. “He has money, and I, for one, don’t want to rough it in a foreign country. Regardless of his religious background, he has a lot of experience with an established bureaucracy, as well, Tanner. Do you?”
“I have a lot of experience looking down the blade of my sword,” Tanner said.
“My own point,” Quist said with a smile.
“Quist makes some good points,” Helen said. “He might not want to travel with us, anyway. I say we give him the option. If he comes with us, great. If he doesn’t, great. There are reasons going both ways. We don’t have to choose one or the other. The patriarch will make his own choices.”
~
Aramore asked them to attend the burial-at-sea services for his two aides. They lined up at the railing. A platform had been set up, and the two bodies were wrapped in sailcloth with a lead ballast weight inside.
The patriarch waited until twilight disappeared and lit two flames that danced above each body. He chanted something in a language that Jack had never heard before and used his magic to push the bodies into the water. The flames plunged into the sea along with the shrouds.
“Thank you for attending with me. I shudder as I experience the loss of not having them by my side. I hope you will let me accompany you in Reoja and into the countryside. I want to make their lives worth something,” he said.
Jack thought that was an odd thing to say since one of the men had taken on the mantle of an assassin, but then priests thought differently than other men. The Raker Falls priests were definitely cut from a different cloth than the rest of the villagers, and that seemed to apply to the patriarch, as well.
Tanner and Quist joined Jack and Helen in their cabin. They were silent for a while when Quist said, “I didn’t know the patriarch was so strong.”
“How do you know how strong he is?” Jack asked.
“He stood with us, at least six paces away from the bodies, and created large flames that he was able to magically link to the bodies and then levitated them both out before he let the shrouds and the flames drop into the sea. Linking flames to anything is something most wizards can’t do.” Quist said.
“But it is still within the first three manipulations, right?”
Quist nodded. “If he is that powerful, how could we not include him in our search for the orb?”
Tanner nodded. “Once we are out and about, the patriarch will think the better of it. Just wait and see.”
Jack kept quiet. He only knew a couple aspects of the patriarch and the rest was a mystery.
~
After three days on board ship, Jack had run out of things to say to his friends. There was no village over the next hill nor a campsite to make or break down. Despite the captain’s orders, Jack found himself on deck, looking at the sea, his mind fidgeting with impatience. They had another ten days before they would put into Reoja. Jack had to do something to relieve the boredom, and the little wizardry book might have seemed small, but the words always seemed to require too much thinking for Jack’s frame of mind.
The patriarch had retreated to his cabin, coming out from time to time, but it seemed his inquisitiveness into Jack’s life had ceased. Perhaps he grieved for his lost men, but Jack couldn’t see the man wasting time like Jack had.
Quist had found a sympathetic crew member who provided him with enough alcohol to keep him happy. Helen, oddly enough, buried her face in some books that she had bought in Dorkansee. Tanner took to working out in their suite.
Jack smiled as he hugged the railing. What he needed was to something a bit naughty. Since the captain was stingy with his liquor, Jack realized he would have to make his own diversion. His hand rested on the naked part of the wand as he observed sailors climbing up and down lines.
One sailor was shimmying down, and that brought a wicked grin to Jack’s face. He took out his wand and pointed it at the line, and before the sailor reached the deck, Jack zapped a break in the line. The sailor dropped about two feet from the deck.
He tried to hold back a smile as the man stared at the cut rope and shook his head. The sailor rubbed his neck and looked up the line with a puzzled look on his face. Jack turned as he slipped his wand back in the sheath and looked back out to sea. It had been too long since he had pranked anyone, and it brought a little spark to the boredom. With ten days left to go, Jack set a goal of twenty pranks between now and when the ship docked at Reoja.
Later, Helen stalked out of her personal cabin holding an article of her underclothing. “What has happened here?” she demanded.
Tanner was sharpening a knife, and Jack was struggling with some of the dense language in his wizard manual, but both burst into laughter when she showed them all the holes in the garment.
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“There are always rats on a ship,” Tanner said, trying to hold in the laughter.
“Does Lajia have a warm climate? Should we be doing the same?” Jack said as innocently as he could.
“This is juvenile, and we only have one truly juvenile mind among us,” she glared at Jack.
“Me? You are accusing me? When would I have been able to do that? When you leave, you always make such a show of locking your cabin.”
She narrowed her eyes at Jack. “You keep saying you had a misspent youth.” She put the garment to his face. “This is misspent.”
“If the patriarch were here he would probably exclaim, ‘for all that’s holey,’” Tanner said, breaking out in laughter.
That was the crack that broke Helen. She threw the garment at him, wearing a smile and plopped down on the other chair in the room, looking at Jack. “I didn’t know you could pick locks. I will have to be more careful in the future. But I can see you won’t admit to it.”
“To what? I think I did see a huge moth flying around.”
“Yes. It flew all the way from Raker Falls,” Helen said shaking her head and locking herself back in her cabin. ‘
“How did you do that?” Tanner said.
“I can’t walk through a locked door,” Jack said. And he didn’t. Jack teleported into her cabin when she had left.
“Well, that was a bit of fun. We should have some more.”
Jack looked up at the ceiling. “Who knows what kind of strange little animals or insects crawl through the ship?”
Chapter Fourteen
~
F our days from port, the patriarch asked if they could assemble in his suite. The man looked like he had barely eaten.
“I thought we might as well begin to prepare for what lies ahead in Lajia,” Aramore Gant said. “We should start by inventorying our abilities.”
Jack raised his hand. “I am a mediocre swordsman, rising to slightly above mediocre when I use my magic sword. I have the orb seeker, and my wand can be used in a pinch. It works especially well to stir the coals of a campfire.”
“Can I see the orb seeker?” the patriarch asked.
Jack placed it on Gant’s hand. The blue disappeared. The man pursed his lips. “It is evidently keyed to you. Fasher Tempest is more adept than I thought. We will have to make sure you are protected at all times.” He returned the cube.
