Mikos spoke harshly and impatiently, “We know he’s the gods-damned Prince of Dunshor, you fool!”
While Jinian was aware he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, one of the few things almost guaranteed to make him angry was to point that out, but he ignored Mikos’s insult to ask, “What’s that got to do with anything?” He was clearly perplexed.
Naryn sighed, holding a hand up to Mikos to keep him from another outburst. “He’s hiding from assassins, Jin,” he explained. “We know who he is, and our knowledge could be dangerous to him if we told the wrong people and set his hunters on his trail.”
“You mean like the wizard he just killed?” Jinian asked. “Aren’t hunters already on his trail?” Lian had not explained how the wizard had found them nor that it was highly unusual that he could be found, so Naryn’s response that the wizard had used magic to find the prince satisfied Jinian.
Jinian then asked, “What’s the profit in killing us, then? If wizards can find him anyhow, a few sailors making sea tales about a prince being shipwrecked with us won’t make much difference.”
Naryn blinked, not having looked at it that way, and certainly not expecting that much logic—even though Lian and his close companions knew the logic was flawed, it was still a reasonable conclusion to reach—from Jinian.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Lian interjected, “and you’ve accepted me as your captain, if only in dire circumstances. I’m not about to repay your service, or dishonor Vir’s sacrifice, by killing any of you. That you know who I really am is a danger to me,” he continued, “but I have a way to ensure that I can trust you, even if we part ways.”
Naryn’s eyes narrowed this time. “And what might that be?” he asked suspiciously. The presence of two powerful mages brought to mind mental bindings or worse things.
Lian nodded toward Snog. “He knows an oath,” he said. “One I can trust you won’t break, and if you will make it, I wouldn’t have cause to fear your knowing who I am.”
“An oath?” Mikos asked in mild alarm. “What kind of oath?”
Snog grinned, showing most of his fangs. “Ye’d be swearin’ by the name o’ three of my peoples’ gods,” he said, downplaying his fluency in Dunshorian to seem more goblinish, for lack of a better word. “And if ye break it, they’ll find ya.”
Lian nodded. “When Snog says the name of his peoples’ gods, he means that you’d be swearing by those gods’ Truenames,” he explained, and the sailors all blanched. It was an old saying, said in many different tongues across Tieran in different ways, though to Lian the Rodan barbarians said it best:
Fool is he who names the gods.
Time for a carrot to go with the stick, he thought and said, “You should also keep in mind that I have no interest in salvaging Indigo Runner. The three of you stand to be her new owners, at least in part, if you can get someone interested in retrieving her and getting her masts replaced.”
Jinian blinked slowly at that thought, but it didn’t seem to interest him overmuch. Mikos and Naryn, on the other hand, went from being afraid of speaking some dark goblin deities’ Truenames to speculating about the wealth the ship represented in mere heartbeats. “You’re willing to let us keep her for ourselves?” Naryn asked, incredulous that their “captain” wasn’t interested in keeping control of the ship. None of them were officers, it was true, but owners didn’t necessarily have to be captains.
Just hauling simple cargoes along the Southron Empire’s coast would make them rich, and though some of their existing cargo would be spoiled by the time the ship eventually made port, the majority of it would still be good, so they could look forward to selling what was in Indigo Runner’s hold, as well. Lian knew it wasn’t that simple; Qan may not have owned the merchantman, her cargo, or either free and clear, and any creditors might feel the ship and the goods belonged to them instead.
However, that was a problem for another day, and he hoped to be far to the south long before it became one. “Snog and I once swore this same oath to one another,” Lian said, taking the subject back to the first matter. “It was early in our acquaintance, and I was faced with a similar situation to this one—I needed Snog, but I needed to be able to trust him, too.”
“An’ I needed t’a be able to trust his lordship would’n’a slit my throat,” Snog added. “That sword o’ his would’a done fer’t.”
Jinian won’t mean to break the oath, Gem commented to Lian along their bond, but I’m very much afraid he will break it.
Lian knew the sword was fond of the big deckhand, but her point was sound. He replied, I’ll just have to make sure that his version is something he can keep. If the other two kept quiet about who he was Jinian was unlikely to bring the hunters any closer to Lian anyhow. Besides, Lian added, he doesn’t really talk that much about the past anyhow.
Gem indicated that she took Lian’s point.
“When do we swear this oath?” Naryn asked, unhappy with the idea, but he clearly felt it was better than being a man with more knowledge than was good for him. Lian wasn’t happy that Naryn and Mikos had figured out how much danger they were in from Lian, Snog, and the others, but he wasn’t too surprised; it was a fairly obvious point.
“After we spot the ship,” Lian replied, “and before you have a chance to talk to the crewmen.”
The cook nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, then changed the subject. “If we’re going to stay here a week, we’d better try our hand at fishing.” A small stream ran down off the cliffs further east, so freshwater wasn’t going to be a problem, and if the ship came within a week, as Lian had promised, they actually had enough provisions to last that long. But Naryn’s point was a good one, and it was better not to risk a longer stay.
Lian nodded. “We need to stay close, so hunting’s out unless something finds its way onto the beach,” he said. “Fishing’s a good idea, and it’ll certainly keep our attention on the water.” Among the items they’d taken from the ship was fishing line and hooks, and there were plenty of smaller fish in the basaltic tidal pools to use as bait; in fact, some of the pools were likely to tend to some of their needs in and of themselves, Lian expected.
The group went into the cypresses of the saltmarsh a short distance, finding a small island surrounded by tall and thick reeds. They cut some of the thicker and longer ones to use as fishing poles then returned to the beach to work on rigging them up. Both Mikos and Jinian had been fishermen at some point in their lives, and they knew a lot about the craft. While both of them had worked fishing nets aboard ship, they both had often fished off of a dock or jetty, and they quickly turned the reeds into workable rods.
Lian and Snog left the others to the fishing and scaled a small outcrop of rock just east of them. The small hand-shaped formation gave them a good view down the coastline to the east, and they sat watching, taking pleasure in each other’s company without a need to speak. Snog had just lit his second pipe of tobacco—this of the variety more common to humans, liberated from the Indigo Runner’s stores—when Lord Grey spoke. “This oath you speak of,” the skull said, “does it truly invoke Truenames?”
Lian nodded. He had lost his backpack in his hasty near-tumble down a steep slope just outside of the ruined town of Whitefall, and he and Gem had been separated from the necromancer. The prince had met Snog—and both had sworn their oaths to the other—before they’d recovered Lord Grey from the necromancer Lyrial.
“A Least Truename, surely?” the skull asked.
Snog replied, “Aye, Lord Grey.” It was, in fact, only part of the Least Truename of a set of three malevolent deities the goblins called ni’ka saael’l, the Gods of the Inner Darkness, but Lian and Gem had both felt the power inherent in the harsh syllables when Lian and Snog had sung them. Least Truenames, though they contained a great deal of inherent magical power, were not actually the Truenames of the deities themselves. Instead, they were songs, words, and phrases that had become associated with the deity or deities over time, but the myst
ical tie to them was still quite strong.
Oaths sworn on even a friendly deity’s Least Truename were dangerous to break. The sort of gods Snog’s names invoked were likely to be exceptionally vengeance-minded if their Truenames were used in vain.
“Why do you ask?” Gem asked.
“Because I can utilize their oath to invoke a binding on their actions,” the necromancer replied. “It will be…difficult…to break if it’s got a Truename behind it, even a Least Truename, which will help Jinian keep his silence.
“I’m fairly certain,” the skull went on, “that one seafarer’s wild tales of the Prince of Dunshor won’t be believed and likely won’t travel far. Jinian doesn’t seem to be a particularly good storyteller, for one thing.”
Lian half-smiled in the oncoming shade of the evening. “But it’s better to be certain,” he said, saying what Lord Grey left unsaid, then sighed. “Let me think about it, Lord Grey. As I once told you, I don’t like compulsion magic.”
“A ban isn’t exactly the same as a spell to compel obedience,” Gem observed, mildly surprising Lian. “It will protect him from the possible consequences of breaking his silence, if nothing else. If some assassin like the Easterner were to overhear these tales—badly told or otherwise—Jinian could actually endanger himself, not just us, should such a one track the stories back to their source.”
Lian nodded, thinking as he nibbled on a fingernail. “You should place the ban on the other two as well, if we are going to do it that way. I doubt either of them would deliberately break an oath sworn by those names, but they’re both heavy drinkers. If they’re in their cups, gods know what they might say.”
He sighed again. “I guess I’ve made a decision already,” he said with a sardonic grin. “Snog, can you perform the magic for the oath again?”
Snog smirked as the smoke curled out around his sharp fangs. “I’m not likely to ever forget those names, my lord,” he said. “They were damned hard to learn in the first place, given their nature, but they live in my mind now.”
Lian suppressed a shudder, for the Truenames had been highly unpleasant to sing. All Truenames, and this was more true the more complete and major the name, were like mental quicksilver, hard to retain, and he had no recollection of the ones he’d used to swear his oath to Snog. He was glad that was the case because all such names of power carry some of the being’s nature within them, and he really didn’t want the Gods of the Inner Darkness taking up residence—however indirectly—in his mind.
Chapter Thirty One
“Of all of the great flying fortresses of Peloria, the greatest by far was Karielle, named after the Pelorian emperor’s favorite daughter. Far larger than the rest, it was more a citadel than a fortress, over a mile across and several hundred yards from its rounded base to the top of its spires and towers. It was capable of covering nearly a thousand miles in a single day, and from it, the mages and wyrm-serpents of the Pelorians could carry armies from its barracks to the ground at a truly remarkable rate.
“Karielle was believed to be indestructible, unassailable, to the point that the Empire flew the city-fortress across the sea into Sylvan lands, intended to be used as a base of operations against the elves, raining down destruction wherever it went. And it might have done so, had the elves not done what the Pelorians deemed impossible: unwoven the great spells that kept it aloft.”
-- “Elven High Sorcery” by Sage Alionur, c. 1572 PE
The temptation to ask Lord Grey to continue to spy on Celewyn was great, but after consulting with Gem, Lian refrained. It was clear, for one thing, that the Avani elf was capable of sensing when he was being scryed, and whoever he might really be it was important to begin building trust. The only way to do that was to give trust.
Another reason to refrain is that it wouldn’t really give Lian and Gem any information they didn’t already possess unless the Avani decided to write more messages, but it might give Lord Grey information he didn’t already possess. The man bound inside the skull was not only powerful but also incredibly intelligent. Further, he was perceptive—supernaturally perceptive—and the sword and prince didn’t want to give him any more examples of the coded writing, should Celewyn have prepared additional hidden messages.
Lian and Gem knew they were assuming the skull hadn’t noticed the code in the first place; it was subtle, but the necromancer had proven himself far subtler than most. If Celewyn knew one of Elowyn’s codes, it was likely he knew others, and Lian wanted to give the skull as few examples of these as possible. Knowing, or at least recognizing, more than one type of coded communication might not help Lord Grey decode any of them, but it might make him wary.
Warier, that is, Lian thought to Gem. Celewyn is somehow tied to Elowyn, and that’s likely to make our skull-bound friend very nervous indeed.
Especially since it’s likely that he already knows about Lord Grey, Gem replied as they stood another watch on the hand-shaped rock. This elf may know the means by which his Lordship can be compelled. Lian and Gem both felt that Lord Grey might see the Avani as either a competitor or as a direct threat to his plans, and that might bode ill for Celewyn, the skull, or even the prince and sword.
Perhaps, Lian said, glancing down at the men and goblin below. Most were asleep, as it was deep into the night, but Jinian and Snog were whittling quietly by the fire. They’d set their campsite above the high full-tide mark inland from the “sentry rock,” as Snog had called it. But you’re a threat to his plans. And that was especially true when we first met. All he had to do was to remain silent about your plight, and he’d have removed one of the biggest barriers to him becoming my closest advisor.
He wants me to take the throne back from Rishak, Lian continued. That means I’ll need allies, many of whom will be some kind of threat to him as well. He’s worked hard to get me to trust him and his motives, probably at least partially as a balance against future need.
Gem made a mental blink, not having thought about it that way before. You mean he’s trying to be as trustworthy and loyal as possible so that later, when someone advises you to be rid of him, you won’t? she asked.
Sort of, Lian replied. I’m sure he wants me to trust him for a variety of reasons, and like I told you months ago, for the most part I do trust him. He wants out of that skull, and the best way to do that is to get me on the throne with the libraries inside the Tower intact and accessible. He knows I’m going to keep my word—not that I’ve given it up to now—if I agree to help him do so.
Lian mentally sighed, taking care not to let it reach his body. We have a long way to go before we get that far, he said. Starting with finding out if Celewyn is another assassin, rather than a friend.
Gem chuckled in Lian’s mind. Knowing Elowyn, he might be both.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Celewyn kept careful watch for signs of life upon the beach, bribing several of the sailors to do the same without explaining why. He had a tremendous reserve of endurance and carried a few herbal concentrates that could extend even that if the need arose, so he was able to maintain his vigil day after day. If he didn’t find Lian before a week’s time, however, he’d have to have Wavecrest anchor for a time so he could rest; he couldn’t trust the sailors to the task of ensuring the caravel didn’t overshoot Lian’s position.
He knew that it was unlikely in the extreme that Ammon had told anyone about Celewyn or the frog or to whom those two things linked. The assassin-mage had a reputation for working alone, doing so competently, and would have trusted in his own abilities to finish off the errant prince. Unless he somehow knew about Gem or the necromancer or both, he was forced to admit. But that didn’t fit the Easterner’s behavior—he’d made haste to get to Lian, not taking time to make more preparations than were normal for a careful man like Ammon was.
Still, he begrudged every hour Wavecrest sailed along the coastline and didn’t find the boy. Celewyn’s skills would help protect Prince Lian from his enemies, and his training, augmented by Elowyn’s, wou
ld help him be effective against them when the time came. Still, we must be fairly close, he thought, having estimated that no more than three more days’ sail lay between them.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
The agony of disobedience was part of her existence, a constant companion now.
At all times, the wraith had to rein herself in lest she fly at her brother in a reckless plunge to her own destruction. It would be so easy, to give in to the queen’s command to find Lian, to strike at him once she did so; Queen Jisa’s orders had not allowed for any leeway in the wraiths’ actions. Had Radiel been a normal wraith, like the ones Lyrial had unleashed at Lian in the battle outside of Greythorn City, she’d have kept attacking Lian aboard Indigo Runner until one of them was destroyed.
She had little doubt about which of them it would have been. She’d been outmatched; she suspected that even when she and Darwyn were both attacking they had been outmatched by Gem and the necromancer Lian had bound to his service—in her mind, that the wizard served Lian of his own will was not a possibility. Nobody in their right mind would possibly serve such a loathsome individual as Lian, after all.
It was in her desire to obey the queen, however, in Radiel’s desire to uphold the intent of Her commands, that the wraith had found the willpower needed to break the queen‘s obedience bindings. It was paradoxical, but it was how Radiel had done it in the end; only by disobeying the queen could she obey Her.
It still made the wraith feel sickened. Had she still been alive and subjected to the same degree of controlling spell, the strain might have killed her. In her Undead state, however, she could weather it. Indeed, she used the strain to strengthen her hatred of Lian and her desire to take revenge upon him. (Although, even with the bindings upon her loosened almost to nothing, she couldn’t recall what she wanted revenge for. Perhaps she’d never really known.)
By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2) Page 44
