City of Jade: A Novel of Mithgar
Page 38
, he began an all-day slaughter. For what he now needed to do, in fact had been forced to do by that foul Dolh, was to cast a spell while in his aethyrial form, and to do that took energy beyond compare. And so he slew and slew, and tortured and flayed and sucked up the life force needed to perform the deed. But even then, even though swollen with power, he knew he might not survive the loosing of the thing he was about to set free to do his bidding, for if he could not reconfine it, the creature would come after him next.
49
City of Jade
ELVENSHIP
MID AUTUMN, 6E9
Blustery dawn came dismal.
Long Tom looked up at the flying wind pennants atop the masts and the glowering sky above, and then he turned his attention toward the swaying forest canopy in the near distance. “We be in f’r a blow, Oi think, Oi do,” he said to no one in particular.
“Aye,” replied Nikolai, raising his voice to be heard above the flapping of the luffing staysails. “You t’ink we be go lost city today?”
“Aye. The cap’n, he says y’ be, j’st as soon as th’ warband finish briakin’ their fast.”
Noddy came topside, a glum look on his face.
“Oy, naow, Noddy, y’ be all chapfallen, y’ be,” said Long Tom, when the bosun came up the stern ladder.
“Oi wanted t’ go to th’ city with th’ others,” replied Noddy.
“Wull, y’ can’t, what wi’ James all wounded and such. Oi mean, we can’t leave th’ ship wi’ no bosun.”
Nikolai nodded in agreement with Long Tom’s words, but Noddy said, “Ar, they ain’t no enemies left, what with the Mage and Trolls bein’ deaders, and the livin’ Foul Folk all run away.”
Nikolai shook his head. “Lady Aylis, last night she say she t’ink bad Mage might be Knight of Sword. If right, King of Sword still enemy. Ship might need sail.”
“Wull, that’s easy f’r you to say, Nick,” Noddy dolefully said, “ ’cause you get t’ go, while me ’n’ Long Tom have t’ stay j’st in case some runaway Rûcks ’r th’ like show up ’n’ th’ ship has t’ be moved. ’N’ wot ’r th’ chances o’ that, eh? Nought, I say. Nought.”
Nikolai smiled and said, “I tell ever’ting we see.”
“Won’t be th’ same,” grumped Noddy.
Long Tom sighed his concurrence.
As Aravan and Aylis came out onto the main deck, Aylis said, “You will need my
Nikolai leaned over to Long Tom and whispered, “Cap’n, he no win this battle.”
“Aye, he won’t,” murmured Long Tom in reply.
Aravan looked long at the jungle ahead, and then at Aylis, and then the jungle again. Finally, he said, “Fetch thy weaponry.”
Aylis smiled and said, “They’re already adeck.” She gestured to one of the crewmen, and he stepped forward to hand Aylis her bow and a full quiver of green-fletched arrows.
“I don’t think we’ll need climbing gear,” said Binkton, looking back downward as he reached the top of the ladder up from the main hold.
“We might,” came Pipper’s voice from below. “I mean, Bink, who knows what lies past that col the Foul Folk were camped in? There might be cliffs and—”
“All right. All right,” said Binkton, clambering on out. “Bring it if you wish. But, me, I just think it’s extra weight.”
Moments later Pipper emerged, a backpack strapped on. Just as his cousin did, Pipper also bore a small horn to signal the band, should there be a need.
“You’ve got your sling and plenty of bullets, right?” asked Binkton, he himself well armed with bow and arrows.
“Right,” said Pipper, patting a pocket and touching a bullet case affixed to his belt.
“Can’t be too careful, you know,” said Binkton. “As Uncle Arley says, ‘Be prepared.’ ”
“That’s why I’m bringing climbing gear,” said Pipper, a superior smile upon his face.
“Argh!” growled Binkton, shaking his head.
Brekk and Dokan and the warband emerged, twenty of whom were going on the march, while the remainder of the Dwarves would stand watch on the Eroean, all but the two wounded below.
A squad of nine armed sailors made ready to march with the warband as well—cargo handlers and other such, for they would make estimates as to hauling and lading in the event they all came upon something the captain would have them eventually stow in the holds.
“Where’s Liss?” asked Pipper, looking about.
“She and her fox have gone ahead,” said Fat Jim. “They left just a wee while ago.”
“That little sneak!” burst out Binkton. “Come on, Pip, let’s go. I don’t care if her fox is faster than us; we’ll show her what Warrow scouts can do.”
“Hold,” commanded Aravan.
As the buccen swung about, Aravan said, “I would have ye two no more than three hundred of your paces ahead of the main body. Stay alert, for we know not what lies to the fore.”
“Three hun—?” Binkton started to protest, but Pipper said, “You heard the captain. Three hundred it is.” Then he saluted and said, “Aye-aye, sir.”
And so, as the warband and sailors assembled, along with Aravan and Aylis, Binkton and Pipper started down the gangplank, Binkton grumbling, Pipper whistling a merry tune.
“One-two-three,” growled Binkton.
“What are you doing?” asked Pipper.
“Counting off three hundred bloody paces,” snapped Binkton. “Don’t want to get too far ahead, you know. Where was—? Oh, how about six-seven-eight—”
And on they went: Binkton stubbornly counting, Pipper sighing at his cousin’s unseemly behavior.
When Binkton reached the three-hundred mark, he stopped, Pipper stuttering a few steps before stopping as well. Binkton looked back toward the ship through the swaying foliage, the plants rocking in the wind. “Huah! I can see the top of the masts, but nothing else,” said Binkton. “You know, it’s quite far away.”
“Well,” said Pipper, “give me a boost and I’ll see if the warband is following.”
Binkton cupped his hands, and Pipper stepped into the finger stirrup and looked back. “Ah, they’re just now starting. And you’re right: it is quite far we’ve come.”
He turned and looked the other way. “The trees are just ahead.”
“Time to go in caution,” said Binkton, as Pipper stepped back down. Binkton lowered his voice and added, “Spread wide, but keep the path in sight.”
Binkton slipped left of the overgrown path as Pipper moved off rightward. And into the canopied forest they went. All about them, giants of the rain forest reared upward, their trunks buttressed with flanges. Banyan trees, too, huge and many-trunked, added to the interlace overhead. But the forest was not silent, for the wind caused wood to creak and vines to swing and the leaves above to whisper shssh.
Neither Pipper nor Binkton could see or hear the other, with Binkton somewhere off to the left and Pipper off to the right, and they moved stealthily onward, now and again making certain they had not strayed too far from the overgrown path.
Far behind came the warband and sailors. And Aylis said, “Even with my
“They are stealthy, my love,” said Aravan. “I think neither of us will espy them unless they deliberately make themselves visible.”
“Do you think they will remain within three hundred paces?”
Aravan laughed. “Mayhap not. Yet I gave them that command so that they would not run off completely willy-nilly.”
“Think you they would do so?”
“Pipper sometimes strikes me as impulsive, but I also would not put it past Binkton to do so just to show Lissa that he and his cousin are scouts as well.”
“Are they scouts or not?”
“I deem someday they will be very good at the task, yet I think them more valuable as two who can ge
t into places others cannot.”
“Lock picking and acts of stealth and guile, you mean?”
“Aye. After all, they were taught by one of the best.”
Binkton froze in place, for, in spite of the wind in the forest, he heard quiet movement ahead. He nocked an arrow to his bow and silently stepped behind the bole of a tree.
The stealthy movement continued to advance toward him, and Binkton envisioned a monstrous snake or dreadful jungle cat sneaking upon him. He listened, and as it drew closer he knew this was no snake, for it did not slither but stepped softly instead.
And he waited. . . .
And on it came. . . .
Until . . .
It paused on the opposite side of the trunk.
And then a voice said, “Don’t shoot. It’s just me.”
Binkton exhaled the breath he had been holding. “Lissa?”
“Of course.”
Binkton stepped ’round the tree to see the Pysk and fox. “How did you know it was—?”
“Vex told me.”
“Ah . . . yes.”
“Where’s Pipper?”
Binkton waved off to the right. “The other side of the path. Somewhere yon.”
“I’ll find him.—Or, rather, Vex will,” said Lissa.
“To tell him what?” asked Binkton. “For that matter, why are you here instead of out there?” He gestured upslope toward the hills.
“I came back to say the way ahead is clear. No one lurks in the col, though there be Troll scat and other Rûptish dung and filth. The stench is quite strong, especially to Vex. And the city lies a bit beyond.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Not in the city. Just to within sight of it. Vex seems uneasy, but just why she cannot tell me. Whatever it is, it’s not Spaunen.”
“Well, then, if there’s nothing ahead in the way of Rûcks and such, is there any need for stealth?”
“Not until you reach the city, and mayhap not even then.”
“What do you intend to do, Liss?”
“Find Pipper and tell him what I told you, then report back to the warband. Where are they, by the bye?”
Binkton gestured behind and growled, “About three hundred bloody paces back along the trace.”
“All right, then. I’ll see Pipper and then report to Aravan.”
“Tell Pip to meet me in the path. We’ll go on ahead to the city.”
Lissa frowned and started to say something, but Binkton said, “We’ll be all right.” And so she and Vex darted off toward the opposite side of the overgrown trail, while Binkton followed more slowly. When he reached the weedy way, he waited.
Some long moments later, Pipper appeared, uphill of where Binkton stood. Binkton trudged up to Pipper, and then together they went east through the dimness under the swaying forest canopy, a swirling wind below, a glum sky high above.
“And Binkton and Pipper?”
“They went on ahead, Captain,” said Lissa. “The trail is clear of Rûpt: no ambushes, no squads, or lone assassins. I think it safe, though Vex senses something ominous about the city, yet what it might be she cannot say.”
“Sniff strange smell?” asked Nikolai.
“The fact the city be dead?” asked Wilfard, one of the cargo chiefs.
Lissa frowned and shook her head. “No. It’s more like the time we went ashore at that set of islands ringing ’round the blue hole. Vex just seems uneasy.”
Aravan turned to Brekk. “Remain alert, Armsmaster.”
Brekk grunted an assent.
Aravan then glanced at Aylis.
“My
“Then let us catch up to our wandering Waerlinga,” said Aravan.
“Would you have me try to overtake them ere they reach the city, Captain? Vex is quite swift.”
Aravan shook his head. “I deem they have enough caution to be the scouts they fancy themselves to be.”
With Pipper whistling snatches of a merry melody and singing a few words between, he and Binkton strolled out from under the jungle canopy to come to the edge of a forsaken place. Pipper’s tune came to an abrupt stop, and only the groan of the wind broke the stillness.
“Whoa,” said Binkton. “Would you look at that.”
Spread out before them lay the ruins of an abandoned city, with some buildings yet standing while others lay in shambles. Cracked pave made up the streets winding among dwellings and establishments and a temple or two, and all of the structures were made of stones of various hues. Vines twined among the rock and cascaded down the sides of walls, the leaves fluttering in the moaning wind as of green waterfalls tumbling. Here and there trees had taken hold and throughout the long eras had become huge, their massive roots snaking across the streets and diving into the earth, to fracture and tilt the pavement upward, splitting the stone with an inexorable, steadily increasing pressure as the trees had grown.
“Hoy, there,” said Pipper, pointing.
Dwarfing the other structures, in the near distance ahead in what appeared to be the city center stood five towers: a central one hemmed in by four.
“The middle one looks like Lady Aylis’s statuette,” said Binkton.
“Other way about,” said Pipper.
“What now?” asked Binkton.
“It’s the other way about,” said Pipper. “Lady Aylis’s statuette looks like the tower.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“No, Bink, you said it just backwards.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
Bickering, in among the ruins they went, heading for the towers, while dark sky roiled above and the wind keened across stone and over walls and ’round corners, wailing as would a thousand ghosts lost in the cracks of time.
“Jade,” said Brekk. “This stone, all of it is jade.”
Aravan and Aylis, along with Lissa and the warband and sailors, had reached the edge of the ruins.
“The entire city is jade?” asked Lissa, even as she leaned forward and ran a hand along Vex’s neck, trying to soothe the vixen, who yet indicated that they should leave, even though she didn’t know why.
“At least this part of it is,” replied Brekk.
“But not all green,” objected Nikolai.
“Jade comes in many colors,” said Aylis. “Green, yellow, white, grey, black, orange, and even in pale violet.”
Brekk nodded his agreement.
“Speak of green,” said Nikolai, pointing.
“The tower,” breathed Lissa.
“I suspect that’s where we will find Binkton and Pipper,” said Aravan. He looked at Lissa and said, “Take point.”