by Jean Johnson
Naturally, he made it down to the beach before his brothers did. And naturally the ship wasn’t there. Growling, Wolfer trotted to the north, toward the road on a low ridge of land that led out to the spur containing the one remaining, functional stone jetty and another leading to the water processing building. That road led past a large, rectangular, stone-lined lake and up a switchback road, which was connected to the road that led to beach and castle, forming a loop.
The western beach differed from the eastern one in that its north side had water deep enough to harbor a ship close enough to shore to offload goods directly onto a dock. The south end of the western cove had a stretch of shallow sand that turned into tide pools at the far, southern spur of the bay, suitable for shipyards. Once upon a time, there had been wooden docks and lots of buildings, as this had been a bustling port city. Now, there were only jungle-claimed remnants of stone foundations, their wooden walls and roofs long since decimated by the inexorable march of time.
Building wasn’t really the right word for it, since it was more than one structure, and was still very ornately carved . . . though temple complex had too many religious connotations. It was a large, octagonal compound holding eight octagonal buildings around the edge and one large warehouse in the center, each with columns all around the outside, eight on each side.
Most things of Katan were represented in twos, fours, and especially eights, to represent the four seasonal faces of each of their two gods: Jinga and Kata in the spring as compassionate Lover and Maiden; in the summer as protective Lord and Lady; in the autumn as nurturing Father and Mother; and in the winter as wise Sage and Crone. The great mage who had made this place long, long ago—a place of rare, permanent magic—had clearly tapped into the potent power that was the number eight in the Katani corner of the world. In other regions, it might be different, but here, eight ruled.
Shifting shape as he reached the entrance, Wolfer stepped inside the tree-surrounded compound and entered the first huge, domed building. With more water being processed with the extra people in the castle and all of the fountains opened up once more, more algae was being produced, and more salt was being compressed into purified blocks. That meant they were piling up faster.
Not nearly at the volume the original inhabitants had used, of course—that had been a whole city’s worth of water needing to be constantly purified for use. In fact, there were eight huge sluice gates in this chamber alone, where the purifying process began . . . and only one of them was open, and only by a fraction. Thankfully, the permanent magic imbued in the thousand-year-old structure guaranteed that those thick steel sluice gates were not rusted shut in any of the buildings and kept the stones of those buildings strong and solid.
The whole thing was a work of beauty. Wolfer walked around the fringe of the building to check the sluice, which his brothers had widened slightly to accommodate the water needs of the castle fountains. The constantly swirling saltwater pool was at or maybe even below sea level, depending on the tide. That was only because the processing pool was so big and deep, as big around as the building itself, minus room for a broad catwalk. The catwalk had metal ladders leading up from the water, to be used to rescue anyone who might fall into the pool while fishing for smaller sea-creatures that sometimes made it beyond the outer grille.
Those ladders and the railings bordering the holding pool were wrought with metal that occasionally echoed the ripple and scroll of a wave. Even the tiles lining the inside of the building undulated in their patterning, reminding one of the sea. As much care and detail had been crafted into the processing plant as would normally go into a Katani temple, but the feel of the place was just a little too secular and practical to be reverent.
Everything looked all right. The brothers liked to check the system regularly, even though it was spelled to keep working without much in the way of maintenance. Sometimes seaweed and driftwood got tangled in the intake grille, especially after a storm, but not this time.
Wolfer left that building and made the circuit of the other three saltwater chambers. The inspection was giving him time to calm down. There were four saltwater pools all told, though the unused three were dry as bones. They were interspersed with the other three empty buildings, where the water, after passing through a magic-laced grid built into transfer pipes running between the tanks, was separated into slightly smaller pools of fresh, desalinated water. Which wasn’t saying much, since they were still huge basins. Occupying the extra space in those chambers were two sets of ramps that came up from that enspelled, hidden latticework underground.
The water, he knew, first entered into the saltwater tanks through a grid that screened out all but the smallest forms of life—usually anything from a shrimp on up, but which sometimes missed small fish. Then it passed through one more filter to catch the life-forms that might have slipped through, just to be sure, and passed through the separator. All of the algae-plankton and excess minerals were extracted, dried, and pressed into blocks that came up one of the two sloped, polished, smooth ramps, one block simply pushing the next up without any need for extra magical or mechanical conveyance.
All of the salt came up on a second ramp, dried and compressed into huge, purified white blocks at the same time as the algae ones did. Entering the fourth of the desalination buildings, the one that was still active, Wolfer noted that Trevan and Saber were finally there.
They were using spells to lift and levitate the blocks of algae, carrying out the huge green slabs to the cart.
Normally the traders took the algae, too. When it was crumbled and mixed into the soil, it made an excellent fertilizer, since the salt had already been extracted and couldn’t harm the soil. But if the brothers were going to make the traders pay for salt, they were going to make them pay for the greenish fertilizer, too. Satisfied everything looked all right, Wolfer turned and headed for the innermost building.
In the ancient days, according to the history books in the library of the island, ships used to come every single day to pick up salt and carry it away for trade, because that much salt could be processed when all four pairs of processing tanks were going. In the past three years, they had usually made somewhere between one and two blocks each of salt and algae every day. Lately, with the fountains running and the sluice opened a little more to compensate, they were making about three of each a day, from the looks of the amount that had stacked up on the roller-lined ramps.
Entering the warehouse, Wolfer hopped up onto one of the large, flat bed, magic-propelled wagons they had made shortly into their stay, to use solely for hauling the green and white blocks around. The eight-sided warehouse in the center, with its eight-and-four sets of pillars supporting the roof, used to be filled with blocks and blocks of salt and algae, plus other warehouses elsewhere in the ancient city-port of Nightfall. Now it held dust and a couple of horseless wagons.
Pressing the pedal did nothing. Wolfer frowned down at the contraption, then extended his senses into it. All mages could sense anything that had magic, including other mages. Nothing met his questing probe.
Great. The spell has to be renewed on this one. I’ll remind Morganen to take care of it when he comes down to help. Or if not, I’ll throw him out of his tower and tell him to come down here and do it anyway. Hopping down, he crossed to the next one, and pushed down on its pedal. It lurched forward, freshly enspelled, and he quickly steered with the reins before he ran into a support column.
Even with twenty blocks of salt—and Dominor, unwittingly—traded to the Mandarites, there was still more than enough to sell to the traders. If they were willing to buy. And if they don’t buy it, we’ll send out word in the mirrors that Nightfall has salt cheaper than what the traders have been selling it for . . . and there will be some people willing to ignore the by-permission-only trading allowed by the Mage Council at the new and full of Brother Moon.
Personally, Wolfer liked the idea of throwing out the rulings of King and Council about their exile. He had liked it
when Kelly had summarily declared Nightfall a freehold by Katani-authorized admission and had then declared herself Queen of Nightfall, though Wolfer had pretended otherwise. With his newfound frustration over Alys, he was itching and ready to pick a fight with someone. Maybe, if he was lucky, the traders would get ugly about suddenly having to pay for what they had previously taken for free . . .
EIGHT
Cousins! How glad I am to see you! You remember your Uncle Donnock, don’t you?”
Wolfer blinked and looked up. He knew that name. He also knew that face. Broger of Devries’ middle brother, he recalled. He hadn’t seen as much of the man as Alys’ father, Tangor, or Broger himself, but Wolfer had met him in the past. The second-born mage had never really liked this man, though to be fair, he didn’t know him well. Still, even before his magic had manifested itself strongest in the shapechanging area, Wolfer had always felt as if his fur fluffed along his spine and his ears flattened whenever he was around this particular man.
Of course, he had always felt that way around Broger, too; only Tangor had been pleasant company, of his three uncles-in-law.
Now the dark-haired man strode down the gangplank of the trader’s docked ship, letting the Katani sailors carry down a traveling trunk for him. They set it on the dock among the chests, barrels, and crates they normally brought. Donnock’s arms were open, and a smile curved his somewhat handsome face, the sea breeze ruffling his finger-length, cropped brown hair. “I’ve come for a visit!”
Wolfer narrowed his eyes, suspicious. He might have accepted that fact, even though it was the first “visit” ever from one of their kin, by marriage or by blood, except he knew the man was liked by the eldest Devries brother . . . and that Broger of Devries had treated Alys very badly. That last part alone was enough to make Wolfer growl.
Saber was no fool, either. He found the sudden visit suspicious as well. After the “trade salt for valuable oil, and come and help enspell our holds to keep it clean” too-good-to-be-true deal of the Mandarites, he was feeling very suspicious of anything out of the ordinary. He also knew that Broger liked this living middle-born brother of his, and that Broger had not only treated Alys badly enough to make her finally run away . . . he had lied about their blood-uncle Daron being alive and holding Corvis for them pro tem.
Saber lifted his chin with a glance toward Koranen, directing the second-youngest as the most friendly of them all to greet the man, and stepped back, singing under his breath. “Evanor . . .”
I hear and am curious, O Eldest Brother,” the missing brother sang back. He was sitting with Alys and Kelly up at the castle, to give them some extra magical protection while the traders were here, as well as to help work on one of the endless household tasks the lightest-haired of them enjoyed taking care of.
“Evanor, Alys’ Uncle Donnock has come to pay us a visit. Ask her what she thinks of this.”
Evanor frowned. The three of them were in the sewing hall, working together on a larger wardrobe for their latest member; he was doing most of the cutting work, standing at the table, while the two of women were doing the stitching, Kelly at a smaller worktable, Alys at a chair half tucked into one of the window alcoves. “Alys?”
“Mm?” She looked up, a needle tucked between her lips while she measured out a length of thread and snipped it from its spool.
“Saber says your Uncle Donnock is here, on the island.”
Alys lost all of the color in her face. Evanor feared she was going to faint in her chair and took a step forward. She removed the needle from her mouth with an unsteady hand, inhaled and exhaled slowly a few times, and spoke. Tightly. “Get him off the island. Now.”
Both Evanor and Kelly blinked. The latter spoke first, her confusion evident in both voice and face. “Why do we need to kick him off the island, Alys? I’ve never even met the guy!”
Alys opened her mouth to explain, then flushed. She couldn’t, not for the largest reason. They would kick her off, too. Of any of them, she owed Wolfer the first explanation. She picked a lesser reason instead. “He’s close to Uncle Broger—the moment he realizes I’m on the island, he’ll tell Broger, and he’ll come after me.
“Please,” she added, looking at Evanor. “Don’t let him anywhere near the castle, or the water-thingy you were telling me about, where the traders go to get their salt and make their trade. Get him off this island as quickly as you can. Please.”
Evanor studied her thoughtfully, his brown eyes narrowing a moment, then nodded his blond head. He projected his voice all the way to Saber’s ears. “Brother, Alys is terrified of Donnock; she fears he will tell her uncle Broger she is here, and maybe do worse. She asks that you don’t even let him get off the boat.”
Miles away, down on the quay, Saber grimaced. Of all of them, the young woman Alys knew her kinsman the best . . . and her reply only supported his instincts that there was something distinctly hooked, netted, and landed about this “visit.” Stepping forward, he addressed his kin-in-law. “I’m afraid we cannot allow you to stay, Donnock.”
The dark brown-haired man blinked, paused as a second cart bearing a couple of the other brothers rattled onto the quay, then returned his gaze to Saber. Dannock frowned at the younger mage. “Why not?”
“It would be violating the conditions of our exile.”
The middle-aged man gave a rude noise. “I do not fear the Council! Besides, I am kin, and kin are allowed to visit.”
“Blood kin,” Wolfer growled, hearing and joining his twin in the debate. “You are not related to us by blood!”
Donnock narrowed his hazel eyes for just a moment. Then smoothed his expression into a more charming one as the youngest set of twins joined them. “I’ve come all this way; surely I can spend one night in comfort? I don’t have to stay until the traders come again in a fortnight, but I simply cannot abide staying on that ship overnight.
“Even if your castle is a falling-down ruin, I’d far rather stay there. Anything to get away from the stench of rotting fish.” He moved down the dock a little farther and peered at the eastern horizon, defined by the two ranges of mountain peaks on the fifty-mile-long island and the green saddleback due east of the bay. “I thought it was located right over there, and that it was visible from the water, but I haven’t spotted it yet.”
Saber shifted, getting himself between the man and the beach. “You cannot stay. You will have to sleep on board the ship.”
“That’s a rather hard stance, Saber,” Koranen asserted, glancing at his twin for support. As the two youngest, they hadn’t had much exposure to the man now on the dock, so he didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t stay; neither had they heard Saber’s muted, far-distant conversation with Evanor. Koranen eyed his twin. “Right, Morg?”
Morganen did not meet his twin’s gaze. Or anyone else’s.
Saber opened his mouth to explain, noted the curiosity on the older man’s face . . . and carefully spoke in Mandarite, which all of the brothers spoke, because they had drunk the rare, powerful Ultra Tongue potion. It was a tongue Donnock could not comprehend. All that was required was speaking in the lilting “accent” that the Mandarites used, and the enchanted potion did the rest.
“Our newest inhabitant is terrified he’ll tell her uncle Broger she’s here, or worse, that maybe he might do something to her himself. So he will not be allowed to stay,” Saber emphasized quietly. “I myself don’t like the way he’s insisting on seeing the castle; it makes me glad Dom created that illusion-cloaking sphere to ‘camouflage’ it, as Kelly’s people say.”
“Alys is afraid of him?” Wolfer asked his twin in a low, suspicious growl. Saber shrugged, so Wolfer sang low under his breath. “Evanor . . .”
“You howled?”
“Is our newest guest afraid of Donnock?”
“She turned ash white the moment I mentioned his name—she’s all but terrified out of her wits where he’s concerned, I’d say,” the unseen brother recited in Wolfer’s ears alone, boiling his blood with the
confession.
“Well?” Donnock asserted at the same time that Wolfer listened to his distant brother. “I’m not standing here all day! This is very poor hospitality you show to a kinsm—”
Smack! Wolfer’s fist connected with Donnock’s face, cutting off the man mid-complaint. The other man staggered back with a grunt of pain, and Wolfer closed in with another hard-struck blow. Donnock staggered back once more, throwing up his arms to protect his now-bleeding face.
“Wolfer!” Saber was shocked by his twin’s abrupt attack.
“You bastard!” the older man shouted, staggering and shoving at Wolfer’s hands, trying to get out of the range of his blows. “Croesoth—ow!—minorokh—dammit!”
Wolfer replied in Mandarite, so that his cursing, dodging, spell-attempting target wouldn’t know Alys was on the isle. “She’s terrified of him, Saber. That’s good enough for me!”
“Wolfer!” his twin snapped.
Donnock was trying to simultaneously block Wolfer’s hard, fast blows and chant some piece of protective or maybe offensive magic—but it was hard for him to get even half of the words out. His heel reached the edge of the dock, and he started to go over. Wolfer snatched out and yanked him back by a fistful of the older man’s tunic . . . and held him conveniently in place, punching him over and over with thumping jabs of his other, muscle-driven fist.
