‘So, Admiral,’ Ravian almost bellowed across the table, ‘from which part of Ezreen do you come?’
Engaged in trying to feed Lefia a tasty morsel from the end of a skewer, Tikuran looked around as though only just realising that there was someone else in the room.
‘What?’ he barked, and then seemed to recover his manners somewhat.
‘I’m from a small town south of Dabbar,’ the pirate said, ‘but I left there when I was still a youth.’
‘It’s a long way from Dabbar to this part of the world,’ Ravian pursued. ‘Your story must be an interesting one.’
‘Very,’ Tikuran replied dismissively, ‘remind me to tell it to you some time.’
He turned back to Lefia.
‘And who was king when you left Ezreen?’ Ravian insisted, wondering if Tikuran was telling the truth.
‘Oh, it would have been Fareed, I suppose,’ Tikuran said distractedly, before pointedly turning his shoulder again and engaging Lefia in a conversation that the Tarcun prince could not quite hear.
Their host must be either a liar or drunk, Ravian told himself. King Fareed had been Beneen’s great-grandfather and anyone who had sailed in his reign, even as a very young man, would be a hundred years old by now.
The evening wore uncomfortably on, with Ravian and Seweli largely silent witnesses to Tikuran’s continued, obvious pursuit of Lefia. To the prince’s irritation, the princess seemed to be enjoying the attention and he was becoming increasingly concerned that she might have taken too much wine. More out of desperation than manners, Ravian tried to engage Seweli in conversation, but the beautiful piratess was too distracted by goings on at the other end of the table to make any meaningful responses. Indeed, some of her glances in the direction of the flirting couple were truly poisonous, and the Tarcun began to wonder how he might be able to use her obvious resentment in his own favour.
Towards the end of the evening, a servant whispered something in Tikuran’s ear and, advising his guests that he would return soon, the pirate left the room. As Seweli had seen fit to slip out after her leader, Ravian seized the opportunity to move into their host’s chair and speak with Lefia.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed, concerned that there might be eavesdroppers just outside the dining room.
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered back.
‘You’re flirting with him,’ Ravian told her, ‘and I think you’ve had quite enough to drink!’
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ she told him angrily. ‘I’ve got him eating out of my hand.’
‘From what I saw,’ Ravian growled, ‘you seemed to be the one eating out of his hand.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she hissed back. ‘Besides, it’s not as if you’ve lacked for attention yourself since we’ve arrived.’
‘Seweli is Tikuran’s lover,’ he told her flatly, ‘and from what little she has told me, your admirer is a very dangerous man…’
He was about to warn Lefia more specifically, when the pirate couple abruptly returned and, forced back to his place with Seweli at the other end of the table, Ravian could only watch furiously as Tikuran and Lefia continued to flirt with each other.
Finally, their host rose to his feet and announced that the dinner was ended and, as Lefia willingly left the room with the pirate admiral, Ravian ground his teeth in frustration as he was escorted back to his own quarters by a servant. The door to his chambers had no sooner closed behind him however, before the prince heard the sound of a bolt being shot on the other side, and he hardly needed to try the door to confirm that he had been locked in. Furiously, he stepped out onto the balcony from where, although the hubbub from below had diminished somewhat, there were still enough lights on in the city for him to be able to make out the distant form of Sea Eagle.
It was time to act, Ravian decided.
King Postus, he was sure, was unlikely to ransom his daughter and he wasn’t altogether certain that Jeniel would pay Tikuran’s price for him either. The moment the pirate admiral realised that there would be no payment from either king, Ravian knew, his life would be worthless. By then, he knew, his men would already be either dead or pressed into service in the cutthroat navy, his ship would have been taken, and whatever intentions the Tikuran had towards Lefia would probably have been realised. He decided that he would try to get out of the palace and back to his ship, bring back a landing party, rescue Lefia, fight their way back to Sea Eagle and sail clear of the harbour. It was a crude, desperate plan with long odds against success, but, as far as he could see, they were all doomed now anyway.
Ravian had just begun to look for a way that he might climb down from his own balcony to the next one below, when he heard the bolt on his door being carefully slid back. Suspecting that Tikuran might have sent an assassin to his room, he quietly drew his sword and waited for his attacker – only to be surprised by the appearance of Seweli.
‘Come with me,’ she whispered. ‘You and your princess are both in grave danger.’
Instead of leading him downwards through the palace’s labyrinth of stairways and landings however, Seweli led him ever higher in the building until, suddenly, she turned and ducked down a narrow passageway. At the end of the dimly-lit tunnel, the piratess halted before a low, studded door and, producing a large, bronze key, she inserted it into its keyhole.
‘Beyond this door are Tikuran’s private chambers,’ she whispered. ‘He has drugged your princess and brought her here for purposes that you do not even want to think about! If you want to stop him, you must kill him now! If you succeed, I will permit you and your people to leave the Shadow City.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Ravian asked her.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she hissed. ‘The time has come to avenge my father – especially now that Tikuran seems so smitten with your pale little friend. If you are successful in killing him, I can take his place as admiral. If you fail, you will be dead, and I will say that I know nothing about how you got out of your room and found your way here. My risk is a small one against an enormous prize while you, Prince Ravian, have nothing to lose.’
Ravian knew that Seweli was right. He didn’t entirely trust the piratess but, if it was true that Lefia was at Tikuran’s mercy on the other side of the door, then he knew where his path lay.
‘Very well,’ he said, drawing his sword.
‘Remember,’ Seweli whispered, ‘he fights with the power of three.’
With that ominous warning, she turned the key and pushed the door open.
As Ravian charged into Tikuran’s dimly lit chamber, he encountered a scene that would remain vivid in his mind for the rest of his life.
Lefia, who had somehow become garbed in the diaphanous outfit of a Halay dancer, swayed before him, her bound wrists suspended above her head by a strap from the darkness overhead. Her head lolled, her eyes were closed and Ravian, aware that she had been drugged, could tell that the leather restraint was all that kept her from collapsing to the floor. Tikuran was a monstrous shadow behind Lefia, his hands frozen on her body where they had been roving moments before, and, as he looked up at the prince’s entrance, his snarl was that of a wild beast.
Ravian needed no words and felt no hesitation.
He had disliked Tikuran from the start and now the pirate had proved that his intentions towards Lefia were every bit as evil as the prince had suspected. As the pirate drew his own sword, Ravian charged, and sparks flashed in the gloom as their blades met.
Almost instantly though, Tikuran’s massive strength advantage was evident, and the prince realised that he could not hope to win a battle of brute force. Forcing himself to contain his fury and think clearly, he began to use the skills he had learned from Pinnius and Lefia – dancing away from his foe’s ferocious assault one moment, ducking beneath the sweep of his enormous blade the next. The pirate giant was as fast as he was strong however and, as the two men battled their way backwards and forwards about his chambers, Ravian only barely managed to evade
several of his opponent’s scything slashes.
The prince had hoped that Tikuran would tire, that even a man of such size and strength could not continue to swing so mighty weapon for long without slowing. After several minutes of combat however, he noticed that a strange, shimmering aura had begun to appear around the pirate, particularly around his sword. Two glowing, phantom edges had begun to trail the blade through the air, the prince realised, the sound of a deadly double echo following each of his opponent’s savage swings.
Ravian was so distracted by this peculiar phenomenon that he was slow avoiding Tikuran’s next attack, and the pirate’s sword tip lightly nicked his upper arm. Instantly, that graze was followed a deeper cut – and then a more serious slash again. The astonished prince retreated several paces and, looking down, he saw blood running from a wound that looked like the work of some sharp-clawed animal. Then, as Tikuran closed in on him again, Ravian’s scalp writhed with horror as he realised that the pirate had begun to multiply into a second and third of himself. Suddenly, Seweli’s words, ‘he fights with the power of three’, had taken on a deadly, literal significance.
His father, Jabacus, had been somewhat of a religious sceptic, despite the fact that, technically at least, Tarcus’s king was also the nation’s spiritual leader. “The gods always favour the side with the sharpest swords and the best ships” had been a saying he had often voiced privately, and his sons had largely inherited his pragmatic attitude. Now, however, Ravian was shocked to find himself locked in deadly combat with an undeniable manifestation of supernatural power, and he knew that he was a dead man if he could not end the contest before Tikuran completed his metamorphosis.
Desperately, he looked around for anything that might help him break the deadlock – and the glint of Lefia’s white metal sword, lying amongst the pile of her discarded clothing, caught his eye. The changeling pirate had now grown three separate heads, and, as they followed Ravian’s eyes and saw his intention, they roared with anger in unison.
Both combatants raced for the gleaming weapon but Ravian got there first and, wheeling about, he was able to meet Tikuran’s three-bladed attack with two of his own, the sparks flying like shooting stars as the five swords engaged. As well as three heads though, the evil giant had now possessed six arms and Ravian guessed that he had mere seconds before his foe completed his obscene transition. Using every bit of speed and skill that he had, he drew all of Tikuran’s blades to Lefia’s sword and, as his injured left arm screamed with the strain, he thrust out with his right, aiming his own weapon at the centre of the pirate’s rapidly dividing chests.
Perhaps he was lucky, or perhaps Delikas guided his hand, but Ravian felt his sword slip past the monster’s ribs and plunge deep into the cavity where he hoped its heart lay. With a horrendous, triple-throated wail, the thing that had been Tikuran staggered backwards and the prince’s sword pulled free. Instead of the gush of life’s blood the prince had expected from the gaping wound however, a stream of red fire briefly poured forth, swirling up into the darkness overhead before vanishing. Then the lifeless monstrosity it left behind crashed to the floor and, before Ravian’s disbelieving eyes, Tikuran’s second and third beings withered, shrivelled and disappeared as though they had never been.
Ravian stood, catching his breath for a few moments, his hoarse gasps the only sound in the otherwise silent room. Then, as he was about to cross to Lefia and cut her down, a sudden thought occurred to him and, sword in hand, he turned back to Tikuran’s body to do what he knew needed to be done...
There was no sign of Seweli outside Tikuran’s chambers and the palace was dark and quiet as, with Lefia over his left shoulder and with her sword naked in his right hand, Ravian stole down stairways and along hallways as he looked for the way to the courtyard. Finally locating the front entrance, he paused in the arched doorway as he considered how to deal with the two guards at the front gate. Just at that moment, a group of a dozen or so pirates, Seweli at their head, burst into the courtyard from the street outside.
‘The Tarcun is trying to escape!’ the piratess bellowed, spying him immediately. ‘Seize him!’
Ravian however, was not surprised by her treachery.
‘By whose authority do you act?’ he demanded, swinging Lefia’s sword in a slow arc around the hesitantly closing circle of cutthroats.
‘By my own!’ Seweli declared. ‘Tikuran is dead and I am the pirate admiral!’
‘But is it not he that slays the old admiral that becomes the new?’ Ravian asked.
As he had hoped, several men at the front of the circle straightened up and looked questioningly at Seweli.
‘Yes, and I killed him!’ the piratess lied. ‘Don’t listen to him men, he’s just another slippery Tarcun.’
With a murderous growl, the pirates turned back to the prince.
‘Listen you men, I killed Tikuran,’ Ravian said calmly. ‘How else could I have come by these?’
Boldly slipping Lefia’s sword into his belt beside his own, the prince pulled a bundle out of his tunic and tossed it at the pirates’ feet. The collection of tiny human skulls, woven together in a black beard familiar to all of them, landed on the cobblestones with an almost musical clatter.
‘That makes me your leader!’ he told them. ‘Take Seweli away and lock her up – I’ll deal with her later. If anybody wants me, I’ll be on my flagship.’
In the stunned silence that followed, he marched straight past the open-mouthed pirates, past the equally dumb-founded guards at the gate, and out into the street. He had taken barely ten paces towards the harbour when he heard pandemonium erupt from the courtyard behind him.
‘Stop him, you idiots!’ he heard Seweli scream. ‘He’s not even a pirate!’
‘But, if he’s the one that killed the old admiral, that doesn’t matter!’ a rough voice declared.
‘And if it does,’ another voice cried out, ‘and if Seweli here didn’t kill Tikuran, then any one of us can be admiral!’
The noise spread and grew as Ravian continued through the city, lights coming on in its houses and its inhabitants surging out into its streets in confusion. By the time the prince reached the harbour side and the welcome sight of Sea Eagle, the whole of the Shadow City was in a mighty uproar that had brought all of the swordship’s crew on deck to see what was going on. The Tarcuns stared in open-mouthed astonishment as their admiral appeared out of the night, sword in hand and scantily-clad princess draped over his shoulder.
‘Cast off and get underway immediately please, Godart,’ he ordered his dumb-struck captain as he strode across the gang plank.
‘What is happening, Your Highness?’ Lectus demanded, as Godart leaped to do his commander’s bidding and the swordship prepared to put to sea.
‘The residents of the Shadow City are in the throes of a constitutional crisis,’ Ravian informed him, gently handing Lefia’s inert form into the astonished courtier’s arms. ‘I’ve no doubt that they’ll select a new admiral in good time, but I’m hoping that that will also be time enough for us to put some distance between ourselves and this evil place.’
‘A new admiral?’ Lectus repeated. ‘By Delikas, you’re wounded! What happened to Tikuran? What has happened to this poor child?’
‘Tikuran drugged the princess to take advantage of her,’ Ravian told him, ‘and he has paid the price for his transgression.’
They rowed out into the night, Ravian and Godart both confident that, despite the darkness, they would be able to navigate the wide reef passage safely. Once clear of the lagoon, they had enough breeze to hoist the sails and, by dawn, they were well north of the pirate lair with still no sign of pursuit. Lefia, who had awoken to find herself back in her quarters on the swordship, came unsteadily onto the quarterdeck to joined Ravian, Lectus and Godart.
‘What happened last night?’ she asked the prince.
Ravian, along with the rest of the crew, had been awake all night and, although Lectus had dressed his wounds, his arm was stiff and
painful. On top of that, he was still cross with Lefia for seeming to enjoy Tikuran’s advances.
‘In your case,’ he said grumpily ‘too much wine, I would have said.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she said. ‘I must have been drugged!’
‘Well, if you were, then it certainly wasn’t by me,’ Ravian told her, ‘and it wasn’t me that dressed you in such a fetching wardrobe either.’
Lefia looked down in confusion at his words, then seemed to realise for the first time that she was wearing the revealing attire of a Halay dancer. With a small squeal, she placed her hands over her barely-covered breasts and fled below.
Ravian allowed himself a small smile, yet he was well aware that their situation was far from a happy one.
The pirates might not have sent ships in pursuit of them, but Tikuran’s promised provisioning of the swordship, had never materialised. They had little fresh food, they were desperately short of water, and he had already discussed with Godart that, when next they found a river outlet, they would be forced to head inland again to look for both.
To Ravian’s relief however, another jungle expedition proved unnecessary as, the following day, Sea Eagle’s lookout spied some square plots of cultivation on a low line of hills that had appeared behind the jungle-covered coast. Shortly thereafter, a high cape on the coast ahead came into view and the small cluster of houses upon it seemed to confirm that they were approaching an outpost of civilisation.
‘Dasena, I hope,’ Godart said, echoing Ravian’s thoughts. ‘If it is, then there should be a large bay on the northern side of the headland. The city itself lies in its northeast corner.’
Ravian's Quest Page 15
