Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  Aranthur didn’t say, I’ve put two down by myself. He was tempted, because Arnauts played this game of bragging. But it was the wrong time and Kallotronis was not likely to be easily impressed.

  “Stay ready, then,” he said.

  “Here we go,” called the captain.

  The river was choppier than the canal, and the steeply curved black bow bit into the waves of the river and the whole boat began to move like a living thing.

  “Load!” called Kallotronis.

  “I’m turning downriver,” the captain said to Aranthur, and he nodded.

  Dahlia looked across the river, almost due south.

  “I can almost see it,” she said.

  Aranthur invoked. His Aulos sight flowed over his eyes, exposing the six long arms of black sihr that crossed the river like long, low bridges of malevolence. Now he could locate them precisely.

  The captain came up beside him.

  “You have my people terrified of fire,” she said. “Please explain.”

  “I’m finished,” Aranthur explained.

  He pointed mutely at the glyph. Dahlia was kneeling by it, and even as they watched, she put saar into the pattern and it glittered like diamonds in the sun.

  A tiny thrill, like the charge of a nearby lightning bolt, passed through the deck.

  The captain’s eyes met Aranthur’s.

  “What is this? I have no time for argument. Explain.”

  “It is a sign of warding, a glyph that—”

  “I have served the priests all my life,” she shot back. “You have turned my ship into a baraka thing. Yes?” Her eyes spoke more than her words—of authority ignored, of anger. “This should have been discussed. Foreigner, do you even know what cargo this ship carries?”

  She turned and shouted an order in Masri. A long yard was going up the foremast, and then, as if the ship was an insect shedding its cocoon, the great mainmast yard was cut loose from its place. The ship was turning into the strong river current; already it was moving faster in the deep green water.

  Two sailors high above them belayed the long yard.

  The captain was watching them.

  “I bear a heavy burden. I cannot allow you to make my ship a target.”

  “Your priests and soldiers are dying over there,” Aranthur said. “We can help them—perhaps even secure a victory.”

  “Where is the young priest?” Inoques asked, and then asked it again in Masri.

  She shouted an order at the foremast, and a lateen sail dropped from the yard and filled. Instantly, the ship heeled with the wind, which blew almost straight downriver.

  “We will be forced to fight the entity across the river either way,” Aranthur asserted.

  They were perhaps five hundred paces from the first long arm of sihr.

  With a growl like distant thunder, an almost invisible line of black shot across the river and detonated in the warehouse district along the shore. Debris, and a whole man, were thrown high in the air. The concussion hit the sails, and then came the sound.

  The captain glanced at the new smoke, and then across the river at the cracked pyramid. Down at the glyph.

  Haras, the priest, came up the fore hatch. He spoke carefully to the captain, as if he feared her. She waved a tattooed arm at the glyph and then called orders to the sailors in the mainmast. They cut the yarns that held the main lateen sail, and it came down. Sailors on the deck caught its trailing lines and belayed them.

  Haras said something to the captain, with an emphasis that came through despite Aranthur’s lack of the Masri language.

  Haras glanced at Aranthur. He shrugged with genuine fatalism.

  “Qna Liras told me to follow your lead in all things, unless it meant the destruction of my charge. You know what we carry.”

  Aranthur was painfully aware that Haras meant the Black Stone, but he had no concrete idea of what it was or what it meant, save that it was a very holy relic and that the Pure had wanted it.

  The Captain looked at him again, like his father sizing up a new pig at market.

  “Very well.” She wasn’t pleased, but she was obedient. “We say, Ma t’ayyatush ‘ala fukharkum da luh ‘umrzay a’markum. Command me, foreigner.”

  Aranthur smiled as best he could.

  “I won’t know what we’re doing until we encounter the first… enemy. It’s dead ahead, about two hundred paces.”

  She didn’t blink. “I can see it,” she said icily.

  Aranthur wasn’t sure how the tattooed woman could see it if she lacked his spells, but he nodded sharply.

  He looked at Dahlia. “Ready?”

  “For what?”

  “When we cross the sihr,” he said quickly, “we shoot what we can into the arm while it is severed.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Aranthur glanced at Haras.

  “The ship itself should sever the arm,” he said to Haras. “If you can work your beads…”

  Haras grew pale. “Gods,” he spat. “Very well.”

  Aranthur wrote in his mind the red aspis four times.

  “Everyone down,” he said.

  He had no idea what was going to happen when they hit the arm. It had no corporeal being; he couldn’t imagine that the ship would “crash” into it.

  But he didn’t know. He didn’t really know anything.

  “What did she say? Ma tukktash something?” he asked Haras.

  The Masran priest gave a slight smile.

  “It is a saying in Al-Khaire. Don’t cry over the broken pot—you’ll be ending the same way.”

  “Ouch,” Aranthur said.

  The combination of wind and current threw the ship forward, so that they were accelerating downriver. The ship pitched slightly, and the deck was at a slight angle. The wind at their backs was strong. Inoques stood on her command deck, and she was singing to her ship, or so it seemed to Aranthur. His magesight was up. Suddenly he saw that she was puissant, burning with the fire of the Aulos. Her signing was rich in power—she was controlling the wind. She burned like the sun with saar. And sihr.

  He didn’t have time to think.

  “Ready!” he called.

  The Arnaut marines and the Nomadi were crouched under the bulwarks. Those with matchlocks had their matches lit. The sailors were mostly on the foredeck, lying flat.

  When the arm of sihr filled his forward vision, Aranthur put a hand on the largest kuria and ignited it. It powered the others to life, and a flash of blue-white saar raced outwards through the ship, up the masts, across the rigging, along the deck.

  The bow of the ship struck the black fog. The white fire cut it the way a sword cuts, and the black fog roiled away.

  The smallest crystal burned out, drained.

  Then the second.

  Aranthur realised that the rigging, not the ship, was doing most of the cutting of the arm, but the ship, as a giant ward, was functioning.

  “It’s too big,” Dahlia said.

  The foresail burst into flame.

  Aranthur put a hand on the ward and almost had his entire reservoir of power stripped from him. Years of dance and swordsmanship powered his flinch response, and he rolled away, breaking physical contact before all his saar was gone.

  And then they were through. Dahlia cast something green, and Jalu’d poured jade fire on the flinching arm. But Haras made his loop of beads into a metaphysikal noose, a Möbius of power, and the arm of the wraith-god thrashed in his net.

  And was taken.

  “Sophia!” Aranthur said.

  The whole severed arm of sihr began to dissipate like smoke in a high wind, caught in the net of the beads.

  Dahlia flashed him a smile. Sasan slapped Haras’ back, and the Masr priest smiled grimly.

  “I’m still fighting it,” he hissed.

  They had no more than three breaths before they struck the second arm. It was moving; Aranthur had the impression of a guiding intelligence flinching away, and then the bow and the standing rigging were rippin
g through the sihr-stuff. It was different, this time, more like a saw cutting than a sword.

  Two crystals burned out together, going steel grey. The deck was hot.

  Dahlia knelt by the ward.

  White fire played in the tops, and a sailor screamed.

  Kallotronis was laughing, and his deep, booming laugh was like a battle cry.

  The black fog was all around them, and the Arnauts began firing their carabins into the stuff. Vilna glanced at Aranthur; he nodded.

  The Nomadi fired a volley into the sihr.

  Aranthur grabbed Dahlia’s shoulder and wrenched her away from the pattern on the deck. She fell back against the mainmast.

  “The ship is too damned big,” she said between clenched teeth.

  The last crystal, the largest, burst with a pop, spraying them with fragments. One cut across Aranthur’s face like a hot knife.

  The ship burst from the cloud of sihr as the stuff began to close in around them.

  Inoques stretched her arms wide on the command deck and sang an invocation, and a web of purple-black hung over the ship—sihr and saar woven together.

  Haras was down on the deck, wrestling with something invisible.

  Jalu’d leapt onto the glyph and began to dance, singing in Safiri.

  The second severed arm was writhing, losing substance in the Aulos, bleeding as if it truly was a severed arm, but it wasn’t caught in a web, or trapped by Haras, and its thrashings were lethal.

  “Shit,” Dahlia said, and her shields flared to gold. Aranthur got all four of his aspides out. The ship flared bright white, and a titanic purple flash blinded them.

  “Now they know we’re here,” Dahlia said.

  The tattooed captain put a long-fingered, hennaed hand on the snake of sihr trapped among the beads of Haras’ working. She grunted, but the Apep-Duat was forced into the net.

  The mainsail was on fire. Aranthur didn’t need anyone to tell him that the rigging and sails were the least efficient conductors of the glyph, and were delicate in too many ways.

  Mir Jalu’d kept dancing.

  Haras raised his head and glanced at Aranthur. There was a thin cheering from the bank; the glitter of steel told a story. Some of the priests had just been freed from the combat by the destruction of the black arms.

  “I can…” Haras began, hesitantly. He was looking at Inoques. “Do not trust her!” he spat.

  “Ware!” Aranthur and Dahlia shouted together.

  Four sets of shields burned and then singed away. Aranthur was knocked to the deck. There was blood on the surface of his skin. A dozen men and women were dead or dying; one sailor had apparently been turned inside out. The deck had blood on it, and…

  “Use it!” screamed Inoques. “I can’t hold that thing alone!”

  Aranthur tried to raise a shield and watched his forming thought shredded by a black hand in his head.

  “Do it!” Aranthur shouted at the stunned priest. “Whatever it is!”

  Haras knelt by the glyph.

  A third titanic blow struck the ship. Aranthur’s shields were crushed as if they were paper. He watched the dark fog come down. Inoques alone stood, glowing with much the same purple fire as lashed them from above.

  And then her web frayed…

  Stretched…

  And holes burned through.

  Aranthur thought, Damn. I was wrong. And now we all die.

  And then, between one heartbeat and another, the entire ship was encased in darkness. But it was not the oily evil of the sihr. It was as if they were framed in highly polished black marble, cut so thin that it was almost transparent.

  Aranthur could just see Sasan, winding the lock of his puffer, Vilna, a powder horn in his hand, Dahlia, one hand on the glyph, ready to give whatever she had left. Jalu’d danced slowly, Inoques was on one knee, and Haras…

  Haras stood as if holding an immense weight.

  Aranthur experienced seeing all this, but he could not fully form a thought. Action was impossible. Time did not flow, or if it did, it flowed like honey.

  Nothing seemed to happen at all. The universe was a black marble box, held by a priest, and it endured.

  And then, in a blink, it was all back: the brilliant sun, the pitching deck, the sticky blood, the screams, the wind, the stench of burning canvas.

  Sasan knelt by Dahlia, and she raised her head and kissed him.

  “Fuck,” she croaked.

  Aranthur was getting to his feet. Aft, past the stern, a thunderstorm seemed to be playing on the middle of the river. To Aranthur’s senses, it appeared that the stumps of four arms were gathering, attempting to extrude a seventh. Now dozens of point attacks from the shore were pounding the cloud with lightning from the outside.

  Dahlia pulled herself up a rack of belaying pins.

  A crescendo of saar flashed against the black cloud and it flinched away, scuttling towards the pyramid shore.

  “That was the Black Stone, I assume,” Aranthur said to Haras, who looked as if he’d run twenty miles. He tried to wipe the blood from his face.

  Haras nodded. “Yes. It was built as a prison, but it occurred to me that it could function both ways.”

  “Brilliant,” Dahlia said.

  Inoques smiled.

  Haras shrugged.

  Aranthur sighed. “I guess my plan was a foolish plan,” he admitted.

  Sasan was watching over his shoulder as the retreat of the black fog became a rout.

  “Eh?” he said. “The pot is not yet broken.”

  The captain had new sails set in an hour. The wounded were safely stowed, the dead were wrapped in the remains of the mainsail and prepared for burial at sea. Two Arnauts, one Safian, one Nomadi, Batu, and two sailors were dead, with Omga lingering between life and death, badly burnt. Aranthur did what he could for the wounded, as he had more healing than the other casters, but it wasn’t much. Kallotronis did as much with his rough and ready medicine, and a chest of drugs that included the Black Lotus for which Masr was famous in the Megara underworld. The powerful narcotic placed the burn victims beyond pain, at least temporarily.

  “They will become habituated to the drug,” Haras said.

  “Better than roaring their lungs out in pain, boso,” snapped Kallotronis.

  “Separating a man from the Lotus can take months,” Haras said. “Or they will become Laji, lost to the world, eyes black with the stuff…”

  Kallotronis shrugged. “But alive. The other choice is death.”

  “The Lotus is a form of death.”

  “Bullshit, priest. I’ve used it and I’m still me.”

  Aranthur stepped in.

  “I think that in our current state, Centark Kallotronis has done what was best for everyone,” he said.

  “Centark. I like that.” Kallotronis grinned, his gold teeth flashing in the late afternoon light. “Here, have a wet, syr.”

  The Arnaut officer had a skin of respectable wine, and Aranthur took a long pull. Thus fortified, he went to face the captain, but her anger was gone with the heavy burden of combat, and now she was like oiled silk.

  She bowed, and then pulled back the veil on her turban so that he could see her face for the first time. Her eyes were large and brilliant, with black pupils, and her eyebrows were tattooed with minute lines of script. Her small, elegant hand was not hennaed. It was covered in the same script, but in red.

  “Antioke, syr. I understand. We must pass the Delta—I cannot go this speed amid the islands. With your permission, we touch at the first island, Dalmonna, or at Seta. This is best for wounded, and also for us. We need food and water, and perhaps even some small repairs.”

  Aranthur blinked, unsure whether he was being asked or told, and suddenly so tired that nothing made sense.

  “Captain,” he said, and then found that he’d lost the ability to speak.

  She waited politely.

  He shook his head. “Whatever you think is best. I’m… very sorry about the first half-hour. I never had a ch
ance to meet you—to discuss…” He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, very serious. “Good. That’s good. I lost three men today—good men.”

  She looked away, and he wondered what the lines of writing on her face meant. She had a strange beauty. She was as brown as the purest Byzas, but the lines of tattoos made her seem very exotic. She was as muscular as Dahlia, or even more so.

  She turned back to him, her dark eyes on his.

  “But…” she said, and then stopped. “You are dead on your feet. And nasty with blood. Swim, then go and sleep.” She reached out and touched his shoulder, and squeezed. “Are you always this thin? Eat.”

  He knew very little Masri, but one phrase he’d learned from priest-soldiers. He smiled.

  “I obey,” he said in Masri.

  Six hours later, the pitching of the ship awoke him. He got clumsily out of the hammock he had no memory of climbing into, got his feet on the deck and climbed a ladder to the main deck.

  Myr Inoques was standing by the tiller with a helmswoman and another sailor.

  “You are a sailor, I think,” she said.

  “I’m a farmer. But I’ve been on a few ships, and fishing boats.”

  She nodded, her eyes on the shadowy figure of a man in the distant bows with a lantern.

  “We are entering the Delta. It is not really the river or the sea—it’s between, like purgatory. And like purgatory, it is a very unpleasant place, unless you are a kuramax, of which there are far too many.”

  Her Byzas was better already. He guessed that she had travelled widely; she was recalling a language she had once spoken freely.

  The water of the Delta was choppier than the great river had been, and even by moonlight, Aranthur could see tiny islands, or perhaps sandbars with a tree or two on them, and floating logs.

  The man in the bow called, long and low, like a Masran priest announcing evening prayers, and the woman at the tiller turned them.

  As they turned, Aranthur could see lights—tiny oil lamps in houses—and a mud bank in moonlight, with fifty long, sinuous shapes…

  “Kuramax.” The captain put a hand on his arm and then pointed.

  “Lady,” Aranthur muttered.

  “Don’t worry, foreigner,” she said, her voice light. “I’ll protect you.”

  The helmswoman laughed. Aranthur laughed too.