Servant: The Dark God Book 1

by John D. Brown

The Skir Master turned to Leaf. “The link with the Fir-Noy has not yet matured. So send a pigeon back to him. Tell him we’ll return in a week with two full cohorts. Tell him there’s going to be a cleansing.”

  Fir-Noy?

  It was The Crab. Argoth was sure of it. But the news of the cohorts is what shocked him. It would require three or four ships to carry so many men. And even with the Skir wind, going to and from Mokad would take almost a month. The only way the Skir Master could have two cohorts was if the ships were waiting off one of the outer islands or along the coast a few days south of the settlements.

  The Skir Master seated himself close to Argoth’s head and spoke to him like a friend. “You see, the spectacles are useful, not only for partially extending sight, but also for questioning all manner of lord and lady. Yet the spectacles, while they influence, do not enthrall. They’re a tool used best with subtlety. But this rudimentary thing.” He held Argoth’s thrall up. “This will bind you quite nicely.”

  He smiled at Argoth. “You, Clansman, are going to die. As will your family. I know you think they fled, but we foresaw that.”

  Despair welled in Argoth.

  “Disheartening, isn’t it?”

  “You are a blind fool,” said Argoth. Blind about life. Blind about everything that was important. Argoth thought of The Crab. If he were in league with the Skir Master, he could have easily hidden in the woods and moved in on Serah and the children soon after Argoth left. Argoth was going to kill that one himself.

  “I will seek every one of you and know every last one of your secrets. But it doesn’t need to be too painful. Cooperate, and I’ll make your wife comfortable. We’ll need a little agony, but I’m sure this arm”—the Skir Master prodded just below the break sending pain shooting through Argoth’s body—“would feel better set and splinted. Tell me who killed Lumen, and I’ll help you.”

  Lumen? “I know nothing of Lumen’s death.”

  “Oh, come.”

  “We know only what his servants claimed: that he lost himself to the call of the warrens.”

  “You’re talking about the stone-wights, aren’t you? What’s in those caves?”

  Argoth hesitated. He realized there was leverage here, something he could do with this information.

  The Skir Master sighed. “I suppose you must fight. But it doesn’t matter.” He held up the thrall. “The Trolumbay patterns were crude and slow, yet for all their clumsiness they were still effective. I estimate this one will take two or three days. Two or three days, and you will beg to tell me all.”

  He placed the thrall about Argoth’s neck, lifting his head and clasping it at the back.

  “I’m going to remove the King’s Collar. It interferes with the working of the thrall. But do not think of escape. Your bonds are woven with wire. You will not be able to break them. Not even one as powerful as Leaf can do so.”

  Then he released the collar. Immediately Argoth felt the change, felt freedom. He began to build his Fire.

  The Skir Master smiled. “Multiplying yourself will only speed the workings of the thrall, Clansman. Of course, it would please me if you’d do so.”

  Argoth paused. Was he lying? He didn’t know. And that realization struck him like a hammer: the Order didn’t know.

  “Do you know how to quicken a thrall, Clansman?”

  Argoth said nothing.

  “Come, come,” said the Skir Master. “Do not be modest.”

  Argoth ignored the Skir Master. All he could think of was the fact that Nettle had given most of his life for nothing, to support a hero who had no skill.

  The Skir Master grabbed his face and turned it so Argoth was looking at him. “Speak to me. How do you quicken a thrall?”

  “Can’t you feel that it’s already thrumming?” asked Argoth.

  “Thrumming?” asked the Skir Master. “You soul-eaters are so sloppy with your terminology. Weaves do not ‘thrum’; I told you before: they sing. ‘Sing’ is the right word. But that’s not quite all there is to it.” The Skir Master paused. “You haven’t ever used this, have you?”

  Argoth looked the Skir Master in the eye. He’d read the old texts. He’d quickened a variety of other weaves. This couldn’t be so very different.

  The Skir Master shook his head, then reached back and took Argoth by the nape of the neck. “It’s appalling, such ignorance.”

  A giddiness washed through Argoth, and immediately a door opened in his mind. Behind it stood the Skir Master. Beyond him another door opened, and Argoth perceived the Glory of Mokad. Yet another door opened behind the Glory, and Argoth perceived . . . something luminous, something so beautiful it took his breath away. A woman who consumed all thought. Then she turned and noticed him, and fear mingled with his adoration. He wanted to join her, but didn’t dare. She regarded him for one more delicious and terrible moment, then all the doors between her and him slammed shut. The force of it made him gasp.

  “And so it wakens,” said the Skir Master. He released Argoth. “Two days to work its way into the fiber of your being. We’ve found that a bit of pain in the very beginning speeds the process. Is that because it distracts the mind or stresses and weakens the body? We don’t know. All we know is that it works.” He stood and grabbed the large pincers from the wall. Then he brought them back to Argoth. He rammed them under the break in Argoth’s arm and turned them so they pressed upwards.

  White pain flashed through Argoth. He arched his back and gritted his teeth against it until he could no longer contain his cries. But by that time the Skir Master had walked out and shut the door.

  * * *

  For some time Argoth fought just to control himself. He moaned, panted, lost consciousness twice. And in the pain one thought rose and kept him from losing all hope: the barrels still sat below. Somehow he had to get to them. He had to get to them, and then give the liquid inside one sweet kiss of fire.

  Argoth multiplied himself, but found he could not break the bonds, could not wriggle out of them. He couldn’t even rock the table for it was nailed to the floor. And so he lay there in his sweat and pain, praying to his ancestors to help him get just one chance.

  * * *

  The Skir Master returned around mid-morning. “Do you want us to splint that arm?”

  Argoth could barely control his voice. “Yes,” he said.

  “A reasonable choice,” said the Skir Master, and he removed the pincers. He picked up a cloth from a cabinet and wiped the snot and tears from Argoth’s face. “It would be petty and pointless for anyone to expect you to choose otherwise since nothing but your comfort is lost.”

  “I don’t know who or what killed Lumen,” said Argoth.

  “We always need subjects for our experiments. In a few days I will know if you’re lying. If you are, we can put you to a great many uses. Of course, that’s after we’ve used up your wife and children.”

  “I have talents,” said Argoth. “I have connections.”

  “Your paltry talents I already possess. Your connections I will take from your mind.”

  “I’ll prove myself,” said Argoth.

  “Please,” said the Skir Master. “Your fate is set.” He felt along Argoth’s arm, then jerked the two ends out and reset the bone.

  Argoth gasped and closed his eyes. He took three deep breaths. “The seafire,” he said. “That was mine. You’ll need more than facts, more than a simple recipe to make that.”

  The Skir Master retrieved two thin slats to use in Argoth’s splint. He looked down at Argoth and said nothing.

  “I could show you how,” said Argoth. “You could let my wife and children go free.”

  “Stop it,” said the Skir Master. “I detest sniveling.”

  Argoth looked away from the Skir Master’s face. “Yes, Great One.”

  And in that moment he saw an opening, a slim one but an opening nevertheless. If he could only convince the Skir Master he was one easily turned.

  “Why did you bring this thrall aboard?”

>   “To bind you, Great One. To take what we could from your mind, then destroy you to preserve our secret.”

  “Ambitious. And who is your master?”

  “Hogan, the Koramite.”

  “The one the Fir-Noy so desperately wanted a seeking for?”

  “The same.”

  “And this man of grass and earth? Who does it belong to?”

  Argoth paused. “We thought it was yours, Great One.”

  The Skir Master stood silently looking into Argoth’s eyes. “Are you telling me there is more than one murder of soul-eaters in the New Lands?”

  “I don’t know,” said Argoth.

  The Skir Master laid his hand on the break he’d just set. “A broken arm is a small thing, Clansman.”

  “I’m not lying,” said Argoth. “When you seek me, you will see I tell the truth. Perhaps it is the Bone Faces. Perhaps someone else has begun to move their wizards. Perhaps that is what took Lumen in the caves.”

  The Skir Master’s gaze bored into Argoth, his tongue feeling the edge of his lips as if he were in thought. “If you are lying to me—”

  “No,” said Argoth. “No, I’m telling the truth. Why else would we risk something so stupid and foolhardy as attacking a Divine himself? Please, believe me.”

  The Skir Master gazed at him a few moments more, and then he shook his head in frustration, laid the splints onto Argoth’s chest, and walked out.

  He returned some time later with Leaf and two dreadmen.

  “How long would it take to mount a fire lance on this ship?” asked the Skir Master.

  Argoth thought. “A day, Great One, with a good carpenter.”

  “And the seafire below, how many lances will it support?”

  “That depends on the length of the battle and how hard the pump gang works. The distance too, for you have to force a large quantity to build the pressure that will send the fire even sixty yards.”

  “How many?” the Skir Master snapped.

  “Three,” said Argoth. “Three if they’re careful and do not waste.”

  “Three?” said the Skir Master in amazement. “I saw lances on six galleys. Are you telling me that you left the seafire for those galleys behind?”

  “No. We only supply the galleys on patrol. I dared not make great quantities. The Bone Faces sent many spies seeking to steal the seafire so they might unlock its secrets.”

  The Skir Master’s face turned to thunder. “So you had them load the few barrels of finished product and left the component materials on the land?”

  “No,” said Argoth. “No, we have them aboard.”

  Argoth could not read the Skir Master’s face. Could the man already know his thoughts? It was impossible.

  “Splint his arm,” said the Skir Master to Leaf. “Then bring him below.”

  Leaf took Argoth’s arm matter-of-factly as if Argoth’s arm were nothing more than a spade that had come loose from its handle. Then he splinted Argoth’s arm using strips of the surgeon’s cloths. Argoth studied the flaring eye tattoos as he worked. Each eye’s tattoo was different, one sharp-edged and jagged, the other smooth, but Argoth could not read the meaning in the patterns. Leaf finished, then led Argoth out to the area of the lower deck where the barrels were stored.

  The Skir Master stood there holding a covered lamp. “You’re going to teach me how to make this seafire. And then you’re going to teach my men how to use it.”

  “Yes, Great One,” said Argoth. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  The Skir Master wanted four lances: two just off the prow on both sides, and two at either side of the ship’s waist.

  Three triangular sails, jibs, were rigged to lines running from the fore mast to the bowsprit that stuck out over the prow. Those jibs might prove troublesome if a crew on one of the fore lances were spewing fire and the wind changed. So Argoth convinced the Skir Master to move the lances back.

  Argoth directed the carpenter and his boy for most of the day as they installed the fittings for the four lances. Three times during the day he felt an intrusion upon his mind, a constricting. He dismissed the first two as the effects of fatigue. But when the third came, he realized what it was: the thrall had begun working into him.

  When they finished the last fitting and mounted the lance, it was early evening. The sun was an hour or so from setting. Argoth leaned against the railing and stared at the sails in the orange and yellow light. The ship had two masts that were three sails high, and, with the studdingsail booms rigged on both ends of each yard, three sails wide: such an amazing press of sail.

  He couldn’t see her, but somewhere above the sails in the clear evening sky, Shegom moved, the wake of her passing creating the wind that filled the canvas.

  They moved south, at an angle to the normal winds. Argoth knew this because at the edges of Shegom’s wind, in an oval perhaps a league across, the winds clashed, kicking up a scud that blew westward.

  He imagined the Clan galleys in a battle against this ship now fitted with fire lances. With Shegom above, moving hither and thither to the Skir Master’s commands, the sails of the Clan galleys would be of no use. They would have to furl them and move under the power of the oarsmen. And all the while the Ardent would race about them, blown by Shegom, throwing her deadly fire at will. She’d be a wolf roving among lambs.

  Argoth knew if he followed Shim’s advice and usurped power in the New Lands, he’d face the Ardent at sea, and she would sink anything he sent against her. She’d shut down all trade. She’d land cohorts of men on any beach she liked. And she wouldn’t be the only one. Others would be built like her. He suspected the only way to fight her would be to harness a Skir himself and blow the fire back in her face. But there were no Skir Masters in the Order. And he saw that the Skir Master was right: such ignorance posed an immense danger to them all.

  “Are you finished?”

  Argoth turned, expecting to see the Skir Master standing right behind him. But the Skir Master stood almost a ship’s length away at the rear of the aftercastle. It had not been a shout, but a voice right behind him.

  “Clansman?”

  It was the Skir Master, a whisper almost. He could have counted it as a trick of the wind, but the Skir Master’s lips had not moved. He stood gazing at Argoth across the length of the ship.

  “We are finished,” whispered Argoth.

  “Meet me in the officer’s mess,” said the Skir Master in his mind.

  * * *

  Argoth stood with the Skir Master at the table. Leaf sat with quill and vellum. Bowls of firewater, sulfur, and pitch lay between them. A burning candle stood off to the side.

  “You will teach me how to make the seafire,” said the Skir Master. “I must be able to replicate it before morning.”

  Argoth felt a light wave of desire wash over him. “Of course, Great One,” he said. And for the first time he meant it. The Skir Master was great. A fine man. No, not just a man. A master.

  Moments later the desire ebbed and left him standing in shock. He’d always imagined it would be more like a battle, a contest of wills. But this thrall did not batter him down; it simply turned his will traitor.

  “Well?” said the Skir Master.

  Argoth brought himself back to the task at hand. “Let us begin with the firewater, but may we open the windows? The vapors are not good to breathe.”

  The Skir Master opened the windows, letting in a small, but ineffective breeze. Then Argoth began. He told them how one gathered the firewater from black springs and distilled it. When Leaf had captured every detail on the vellum, Argoth poured a small measure into an empty bowl. He picked up a cord and held it in the candle’s flame until it ignited. Then he brought the cord over and touched it to the liquid that immediately spat to life.

  Argoth said, “Such is good for firepots, but you want something that will burn on water and cleave together like tar. For that we must add pitch from pines and terebinth trees and a fine sulfur powder. Such a mixture can be extin
guished only with great quantities of vinegar, urine, or earth.”

  He told them how to make the pitch, how to find sulfur of the right color and grind it to powder. Leaf wrote everything up, moving the pen with as much grace as he walked. But he did not write quickly and made Argoth repeat his instructions numerous times.

  An hour passed, maybe more. They moved to the process of mixing. He showed the Skir Master how he had to mix the firewater and sulfur first and wait. He showed him how he could tell this preliminary mixture was correct by the color of the flame, and the quantity of smoke. Then the Skir Master demanded to do it himself.

  Argoth walked the Skir Master through each step and admired his quick mind, the way he said aloud what he was doing as he did it.

  At one point, the Skir Master stretched as if to relieve his back, and Argoth found himself standing next to him holding a chair.

  “Perhaps you’d like to sit, Great One.”

  “No,” the Skir Master said and waved him off.

  Argoth was crestfallen. “Forgive me,” he said and replaced the chair. How could he have been so stupid as to offer a chair? Who needed chairs? Certainly not someone as strong and capable as the Skir Master.

  Argoth resolved to be silent until spoken to. He stood aside, watching the Skir Master continue with the preparations.

  Argoth suddenly realized he was in a very special position, for how many had the opportunity to stand in the presence of such a great man? How many people had the opportunity to share their talent with him?

  Argoth was among a fortunate few, and he beamed at his fortune.

  In the back of his mind a resentment and anger twisted upon itself. How dare this man take on such honors with lies? But Argoth began to admire the fine lines of the Skir Master’s hands and the thought passed.

  The Skir Master arrived at the step where he needed to measure in the pitch, but he had too much in the cup. Suddenly the Skir Master stopped.

  “No, I don’t,” said the Skir Master. “One measure. That is what you said.”

  Argoth was disoriented for a moment. Had he actually spoken those words unbidden? But Leaf looked as confused as he. Then he realized the Skir Master had heard his thoughts.