City of Jade: A Novel of Mithgar

by Dennis McKiernan

  Lost in thought, the eld buccan nodded. “Aye, for many a time, I—” Of a sudden, Arley came to himself. “Harrumph. Well, you just never know.”

  “Oh, I’ll work extra hard, Uncle Arley,” said Pipper. “I mean, I’ll try to get better at walking a coin across my knuckles—though I’ll never be as good as Bink, of course—and my filching skills need improvement, and I could get better at—”

  “Yes, yes, Pip,” said Uncle Arley, interrupting Pipper’s stream of words. “I’ll help you with all of those, and then next spring and through the summer, but especially the winter after—when the harvests are in and the common rooms are brimming with folks—it’s off to the taverns and inns in the Boskydells, where the pickings ought to be good.”

  That night, Pipper said, “Oh, won’t this be the very best?”

  Exasperated, Binkton asked, “And what thought flitted through your mind just now?”

  “That we’ll have our own coppers and silvers and perhaps even a gold or two, Bink,” said Pipper, his eyes reflecting his boundless enthusiasm.

  “About time, too,” grumped Binkton. “I mean, we’ve taken enough of Uncle Arley’s money. We need to be on our own.”

  “Uncle Arley’s money,” breathed Pipper, looking about as if to see where the eld buccan might be.

  “Oh, come on, Pip, you’re not going to bring that up again.”

  “Wull, it’s always been a myst’ry, Bink, and—”

  “And you just can’t leave it alone,” snapped Binkton. The buccan plumped his pillow and jerked his covers up around his neck. “It’s Uncle Arley’s, and I don’t care where it comes from. Now go to sleep.”

  Pipper lay quietly a moment, but then said, “But Finley Tutwillow, down in Rood, says that once every year a mysterious rider, an Outsider, a Human, no less, comes every Midsummer Day and puts a sack of coins in the Bank of Boskydells. And always about that same time, Uncle Arley says his pension’s come. What do you think that’s all about, Bink? I mean, why would some Human—?”

  Binkton’s soft snoring was all the answer that Pipper got, as was usual when he and Binkton speculated in the dark about Uncle Arley’s even darker past.

  20

  At Sail

  ELVENSHIP

  MID AUTUMN, 6E1

  In the Captain’s Lounge, Long Tom stood beside Aravan at the map table with Aylis at his other side. Nikolai and Brekk and Dokan stood across the board. Tiny Lissa sat atop the table and sipped tea from a thimble-sized mug, as Noddy poured a cup for Aylis.

  “Where we be bound, Cap’n?” asked Long Tom.

  Aravan stabbed a finger down to the chart. “Here.”

  As Lissa got to her feet and strolled across the tabletop to see, all looked, Noddy included, at where the captain’s finger touched the map.

  A great strew of specks and dots and irregular loops were scattered across where Aravan pointed, his finger resting upon one of the larger shapes.

  “Oi see,” said Long Tom. “One o’ th’ Ten Thousand Isles o’ Mordain, eh?”

  “What be we after, Kapitan?” asked Nikolai.

  “White tea,” replied Aravan.

  Lissa frowned. “White tea?”

  Aylis smiled. “Very young tea leaves plucked from the tips of the plant. ’Tis a delicate flavor, much savored in the halls of Caer Pendwyr, or so it was long past.”

  “It still is, my love,” said Aravan. “ ’Twill bring a fine price for the crew.” He glanced at Long Tom and Nikolai and added, “More than enough for all the warband and crew, e’en those who sat idle for many long moons.”

  An offended look crossed Long Tom’s face and he spluttered, “Sittin’ oidle, Cap’n? Sittin’ oidle? Oi’ll have you know we was trianin’ ’n’ piantin’ ’n’—”

  Aravan burst out laughing, as did Nikolai, and Long Tom frowned from one to the other, and then a look of enlightenment crossed his face. “Ah. Oi see. You was havin’ me on, naow, roight? Wull, y’got me good ’n’ well, y’did. Y’got me good ’n’ well.”

  There came a soft knock on the door, and Tarley stepped into the lounge. “Captain, we’re entering the Avagon, sir, and leaving the cove behind.”

  They turned on a westerly run and aimed for the distant outlet into the Weston Ocean, those waters lying some twenty-nine hundred nautical miles away as a gull would fly, but farther than that on the course the ship would run, all depending upon the wind, which blew toward the northwest at the moment, and so close-hauled the Eroean would fare.

  Still the Elvenship was at long last at sea, and throughout the day and until well after sunset much of the crew remained adeck. And as night grew deeper, the crew not on watch was reluctant to bed down, for they were at sea again and reveling in the fact.

  And the Avagon herself put on a show for them, for streaming shoals of phosphorescent fish painted the water with light to glimmer within the reflections of the myriad stars above.

  That night, for the first time in more than seven thousand years, Aravan and Aylis slept in the captain’s quarters aboard the Eroean at sea. And they made gentle love and whispered dear words to one another, for they were home at last.

  In her own quarters, Lissa and Vex slept well, the Pysk taking up residence in the tiny cabin made long past for her mother, Jinnarin, by four of the Eroean’s crew: Finch and Carly and Arlo and Rolly—carpenter, sailmaker, cooper, and tinsmith. Several times throughout the millennia, Jinnarin had told Lissa of the kindness of these men. . . .

  Belowdecks in an aft cabin given over to Jinnarin and Mage Alamar, Finch crawled back from his handiwork, ship’s carpenter that he was. “There you be, Miss Jinnarin, all done up safe and sound, and a pretty job of it, too, even if I do say so myself.” Although the man spoke to Jinnarin, his shy eyes looked everywhere but directly at her.

  “That little bulkhead panel under Alamar’s bunk, it swings both ways, letting you and your fox in and out of the passageway beyond whenever you want. These little dogs . . . well twist them this-away to latch the hatch shut should the sea want to enter, and I’ve seen it try, rushing down the corridor outside.

  “And once I fasten this wood in place . . .” Finch mounted three wide tongue-and-groove boards across the openings left behind when the right-side pair of underbunk drawers had been removed, and he tapped in slender brass nails to hold them in place. “Right. Now you’ve got your own little closed-off lady’s chamber there under the bunk for the privacy you might want, with its own door opening in and out of the passageway, and another door into this here cabin. And, cor, who could use it but you?”

  Finch got to his feet. “But as to light, well, I should think a wax taper’ll have to do, and I’ve made these dogged ports out here and in there for ventilation, wot?

  “Arlo the sailmaker is making you a bed . . . out of soft blankets. One for your fox, too.

  “And as to your very own personal needs”—Finch blushed furiously—“to wash yourself and to relieve yourself, Carly the cooper and Rolly the tinsmith be working on that very thing right even as we speak, though I be going now to help them.”

  Jinnarin smiled up at the large, humble man. “Oh, thank you, Mister Finch. Rux and I will cherish what you have done for us. And”—the Pysk swiftly stepped into the tiny chamber under the bunk and then back out again—“and my private room is simply perfect for any and all my needs.”

  Finch shuffled his feet and touched his cap, then turned and rushed from the cabin.

  Before the day was done, the carpenter, sailmaker, cooper, and tinsmith delivered to Jinnarin the things needed to furnish her wee “cabin,” all new-made to her stature: bedding for her and Rux; a tiny brass candle-stick holder, with a striker and straight shavings tipped in pitch and several spare tapers; a small washstand and diminutive tin basin, with a petite tin pitcher for water; a miniature sea chest for her clothing; and a tiny commode chair with a tin privy pot and lid.

  As all four men stood about, holding their hats and grinning, Jinnarin oohed and ahhed, saying, “Wh
y, this is better than I have at home.”

  Finch removed one of the boards of her chamber wall. “Now you arrange it like as you want it, Miss Jinnarin, and I’ll fix it so as it won’t slide about in a big blow, wot?”

  And over the next few nights, Men and Dwarves alike came to look down the passageway, hoping to see the glow of candlelight shining out through the wee window of the Lady Jinnarin’s cabin. This was especially true of Finch and Carly and Arlo and Rolly, even though they knew that she had Fairy sight and probably didn’t need the candles; still, she might burn them just to please the crew. And burn them she did, the soft yellow taperlight glimmering, and the four men would look at one another and grin and nod; at other times the tiny portal would be dark, and they would sigh. But always they would go away marveling over their Pysk.

  Rux quickly adapted to his new door, ingress and egress to his den, where his mistress also happened to live. Even so, still he spent much time belowdecks hunting, though his take for the day was one or two at most, for the fox found the ratting and mousing on the Eroean to be slim pickings when compared to that other ship he had been on. Throughout the full of the Eroean roamed Rux, becoming a familiar sight to the crew. From keelson to hold to crew’s quarters, from lower deck to locker, from the tiller wheel on the stern to its mate in the sheltered wheelhouse forward of the aft quarters, from bow to bilge ranged the fox. The fact that his hunting ground pitched and rolled and yawed, and canted starboard or larboard depending on the wind, seemed of no consequence to Rux. The only things that mattered at this juncture were rats and mice and exploring.

  And now Jinnarin’s daughter, Aylissa, occupied these same quarters—she and Vex, that is—under what was now Nikolai’s bunk. And like as not over the days and months ahead the crew would come on any excuse to the corridor outside to see if candlelight glowed out from the tiny dogged port to see if their very own Pysk was at home.

  Nine days later, they stood in the bow at the base of the stem, Aravan and Aylis and Brekk. To the south and just barely seen, like a long, dark smudge on the horizon, rose the hills of the Isle of Kistan. To the north and unseen just beyond the curve of the world lay a broad river delta marking the marge where the lands of Tugal and Vancha met. And as the hull of the Eroean sliced into the perilous waters trapped between isle to the larboard and mainland to starboard, Aravan turned to Brekk and said, “Though we enter the northern strait, until the lookouts call a sighting, the warband can be at ease.”

  Even as Brekk’s gaze swept across the horizon ahead, he grunted and nodded but otherwise said nought, for he knew that Rovers roamed the seas along the path they would take.

  Kistan, though an island, was roughly circular and vast, nearly a thousand miles long and eight hundred wide, and it sat in the Avagon Sea like a barely pulled cork east of the narrows where the indigo waters of the Avagon met the dark blue deeps of the Weston Ocean. And both to the north and south of this “stopper” lay straits where the Rovers plied their dhows and flew their maroon or crimson sails, those bloody colors deliberately chosen to strike terror into the hearts of the men of merchant ships.

  Throughout history, Kistan had been a thorn in the High King’s side, for the pirates had plagued the shipping lanes, interrupting trade and travel. Oft had forays been sallied against these looters, the High King’s fleet bearing legions to destroy the brigands. Yet to escape the blades of the kingsmen, the Rovers merely faded back into the rugged hills and dense jungles of their enormous island refuge.

  The strait to the north, down which the Eroean now sailed, formed a long throat leading in and out of the Avagon Sea, a seven-hundred-nautical-mile-long choke point, varying in width from seventy to just over eighty-five nautical miles.

  On the far side of the isle the southern strait lay between Kistan and the treacherous realm of Hyree. There the channel, though just as long, was nearly twice as wide for nigh the full of its length, yet ships from the realm of Hyree plied these waters in league with the Rovers, and together they harassed that route.

  West of the isle the two straits merged to form a three-hundred-fifty-nautical-mile run to the Weston Ocean, again choking down to a width of eighty-five nautical miles, and there did many of the Kistanian and Hyrinians lurk, for no matter whether ships came from north or south or went in the opposite direction, through those narrows between sea and ocean they all had to pass.

  And so the Eroean did enter that perilous stretch, with some one thousand nautical miles of Rover-laden lane lying before the ship. Yet the westerly breeze was off the fore, and tacking would add nigh half again to the full of the length.

  “How long will we be in these waters?” asked Brekk, never taking his gaze from the horizon.

  Aravan peered down at the furl of bow-split water, then up at the foremast wind pennant above. “When last we measured we were running at some eleven knots. And so, if the wind remains braw and steady from the west, six days at most.”

  Brekk barked a laugh. “Hai! Now I see why we should remain at ease, for to stand at full ready through the length of these straits would wear quite thin.” Brekk then glanced ’round at the Châkka warriors adeck in clusters nigh each of the ballistas, including the ones at hand. He sighed and said, “Time to have all stand down.”

  For four days they tacked along the northern channel, and not a crimson sail did they see. Aravan leaned against the taffrail and watched Aylis at the wheel, Fat Jim pointing at the mizzen wind pennant and coaching her in helmsmanship. Aravan frowned, puzzled. “Ne’er have I gone this long without seeing any Rovers whatsoever. Where might they be?”

  At his side, Long Tom shrugged, but then his features lit up. “The Dragons!” he blurted, by way of explanation.

  “Dragons?” asked Lissa, the Pysk sitting atop the compass and drinking tea from a thimble.

  Aravan glanced at Long Tom and nodded. “Ah, yes. Now I recall. It was old news in Arbalin, when thou and Bair and I and the crew didst return from the Great Swirl, or what was left of it, that is.”

  “What was old news?” asked Lissa.

  “A spring past and one, on the equinox in the High King’s year 5E1010,” said Aravan, “at the end of the Dragonstone War, the Drakes not only slew the Golden Horde and the Lakh of Hyree and the Fists of Rakka, but they burned every ship in the Argon—Kistanian, Hyrinian, even the High King’s ships . . . they did not discriminate.”

  “The Rovers were in the Argon?”

  “Aye. ’Twas said the full of the fleet of the Rovers brought the southern invaders to face the High King’s host along the banks of the Argon, and they were yet in the river when the Dragons slew all the foe, though that slaughter took place where the Red Hills meet the plains of Valon. After that great killing, the Drakes then flew east and turned their fire against the fleets.”

  Then Aravan looked at Long Tom and said, “I deem thou hast hit upon it, Tom: that’s why we’ve espied no Rovers.”

  Long Tom grinned and said, “Wull, then, Cap’n, it just moight be that we get clean through th’ striats wi’out seein’ none.”

  As the sun sank toward the horizon in late afternoon of the following day, “Sail ho!” came the cry from the lookout above.

  “Where away and what color?” shouted Long Tom.

  “Sir, a point starboard the bow. She’s lateen and scarlet.”

  Long Tom turned to Noddy. “ ’Tis a Rover, lad; sound the alert.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” Noddy began ringing the bell in the tattoo of warning. And in but moments the full of the crew spilled onto the decks, Châkka warriors to the ballistas, sailors to the sheets and halyards.

  “ ’Nother sail ho, Tom,” cried the lookout. “This one scarlet, too.”

  Aravan, along with Nikolai, came from the cabins and to the aft deck. Fat Jim puffed up after, though Wooly was manning the helm. Aylis and Aylissa, their tokko game interrupted, stood out of the way on the deck below, Vex sitting calmly at Lissa’s side in spite of the bustle all ’round. Yet Aylis held a bow in her h
ands, a quiver of arrows at her hip. Lissa, too, was armed, her tiny bow and arrows quite lethal, should any foe come within its limited range.