Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion)

by James A. West

  “We’ve had enough dealings with witches of any sort,” Loro snapped.

  Rathe raised a hand for calm. “I doubt this Mother Roween is anything like Yiri.”

  “A witch is a witch,” Loro said. “They offer you a cure with one hand, while the other steals close to take her price.”

  Liamas went on as if Loro hadn’t protested. “Mother Roween gave me a tonic for curing the sickness that afflicts women with child.”

  “Fira’s not with child,” Loro said. “Unless you’ve dreamed up a plan to change that?” Since setting sail, he had gotten more suspicious of the quartermaster. Fira’s praise of Liamas only made matters worse.

  When the Prythian’s fists knotted, Rathe casually inserted himself between the two men. “Any help you can offer is welcome.”

  With his icy-blue gaze locked on Loro’s face, the Prythian seemed not to hear, and one hand began caressing the head of the short-handled battleax hanging from his belt.

  Ostre cleared his throat. “Go spill some of that brew down the girl’s throat. I don’t want my ship stinking any worse than it already does.”

  With a last glare for Loro, Liamas turned on his heel and stalked away.

  “If he touches her,” Loro warned, “I’ll put a blade in his throat.”

  Captain Ostre brushed by Rathe and caught hold of Loro’s collar. “I’ll have peace on my ship, even if that means one of you goes over the rail.” By his deep scowl, he didn’t expect his quartermaster to take that particular swim. Some of the nearby crewmen had paused in their work to watch.

  “I paid for passage,” Loro said, face flushing red in anger.

  “I’ll be sure to toss your fare in after you. Mayhap you can figure a way for that gold to warm you, once you get free of the Sedge … that’s if you get ashore. All those steel scales on your jerkin won’t help for swimming, and the Sedge is a fearsome cold bitch any time of year—but especially now.”

  Loro tensed, and Rathe began weighing the costs of defending his companion against letting Ostre toss him over the side. It was a damnable position. On the one hand, Loro was a friend, if unruly, uncouth, and wholly troublesome. On the other, there was Nesaea and her sister to think about. If Captain Ostre didn’t get them south of the White Sea before winter sank its teeth in, no one would, and that meant wintering in the Iron Marches. This far north, that also meant a long time for Nesaea’s sister to be sold in some far-off realm. Finding her would be hard enough as it was. If they delayed, it might be impossible…. Still, Loro had saved Rathe’s life more than once, and a blood debt was unbreakable.

  With a weary gust, Rathe prepared to seal his fate, but Loro suddenly relaxed and put on a big, toothy smile. “No need for a swim, Capt’n. Why, I had enough baths for ten men, while in Iceford.”

  Captain Ostre leaned in close enough that his beard swarmed over Loro’s chin. “I’ll take that as your oath.”

  “Just so,” Loro said happily. The falseness of his good cheer cracked and became a smirk, after Ostre turned away.

  Rathe gave the fat man a warning look, and Loro raised his hands in question. Rathe shook his head. He doesn’t even know he’s the one causing trouble!

  “Back to work!” Ostre roared, sending some of the gawking crewmen scrambling across the deck, and others climbing into the rigging. Ostre spun back. “Come with me,” he ordered Rathe and Loro.

  They followed him to the stern. Far below, the waters of the River Sedge swirled around the Lamprey’s rudder and came back together, thick with broken ice.

  “Another week in Iceford, and we’d not have been sailing anywhere until spring,” Ostre said. “As it is, we’ll be lucky to make it all the way to the White Sea.”

  “I have faith in you, Capt’n,” Loro said. “Besides, we seem to be breaking through easy enough.”

  Ostre snorted. “For now, the Lamprey is making good headway. More worrying is that we may have a spot of trouble waiting up ahead.”

  “How so?” Rathe asked.

  “When the watch changed at dawn, Gnat reported seeing riders on the southern bank, maybe twenty in all. They were moving fast and trying to stay out of sight.”

  Rathe glanced at the riverbank and the forest beyond. “As many trees as there are, it might be easy to mistake riding for hiding.”

  “Aye, but my brother Robere brought ill tidings before we sailed. Strange folk—outlanders—bought out his entire stock of horses the day before we set sail.”

  “Your brother ought to be happy,” Loro said, gnawing on a chunk of smoked venison taken from the pouch at his belt.

  “Robere is never happy,” Ostre said, “but he’s rarely wrong about folk.” He cast Loro a sidelong look, as if Robere had made an unkind observation about the portly warrior. “Robere was of the mind that these men were too fidgety by half, and most of ‘em couldn’t ride to save their lives.”

  “Did these strangers have the look of Prythians, but skinnier?” Rathe asked.

  Ostre shot him a wary look. “How’d you know that?”

  “I saw a few of them at the Minstrel’s Cup. One of them, a fellow named Edrik, who claimed to be a priest, tried to persuade me to help him.”

  Ostre straightened. “If you’ve brought trouble on me and my ship—”

  “If so,” Rathe interrupted, “it was not my intention.”

  Ostre rubbed his nose with a thick finger. “Be that as it may, I don’t like having a score of men trailing my ship.”

  Loro’s laughter broke the tension. “Have no worries about Edrik and his band. As you said, the river is too cold to swim, and no one on horseback is going to take a ship.”

  Ostre accepted that with a nod. “Robere also mentioned a dark fellow.” Rathe thought he did a good job of not jumping, but the captain noticed. “You’ve seen him too?”

  “Perhaps,” Rathe said slowly.

  “Robere said this fellow, dressed all in black and thin as a blade, did a fair job of staying out of sight. Says he kept feeling his chest, as if pained. After the outlanders bought their horses and left, this dark man also vanished. One moment there, the next gone.”

  Rathe could have lied, but Ostre had done right by him and the others. “I know him as the Shadowman. He chased me and Loro across the Gyntors, and all the way to Ravenhold.”

  “Ravenhold!” Ostre blurted. “There’s a dire place, and much avoided.”

  “That it is,” Loro said, working on a second piece of venison. “But we were indebted to one of those accursed monks of the Way of Knowing, and Rathe’s nothing if not prickly about keeping his word.”

  “Doesn’t seem a bad trait for a man,” Ostre said.

  Loro grinned. “Of course not.”

  “Tell me of this Shadowman,” Ostre said to Rathe.

  “He’s cunning, but I don’t see him being any more troublesome than the outlanders. Like them, he’d have to swim the river to get us.”

  Ostre’s jaw clenched. “There might be another way to harm the Lamprey.”

  “How?”

  Ostre thought a moment. “If I was to attack a ship on the River Sedge—say, by dropping fire on her—I’d do it from atop Ruan Breach.

  “What’s that?”

  “’Tis the arse end of a rocky gorge cut through by the Sedge.”

  “Nesaea never mentioned any gorges,” Rathe said.

  Ostre shrugged. “She never saw it. Ruan Breach is fast water—too fast to sail upstream. When heading up the river, ships follow the Green Bend, a slow and muddy oxbow. ‘Twas dug by the Iron Kings of old.”

  “Why not take the bend now, and avoid the gorge?”

  “We already passed the mouth. Besides that, Green Bend is flat water—in summer it’s more a mire than a river, and turns green with the slime and moss of its namesake. A month gone, Green Bend would have already begun freezing up. By now, the ice is too thick for the Lamprey to smash through.”

  Rathe considered something else. “There must be a place where you can put me and Loro ashore.”
Loro shot him a horrified look, but Rathe pressed on. “If you drop anchor, we could sneak downstream, have a peek at this Ruan Breach, see if there’s any trouble awaiting us.”

  “That’d work,” Ostre said, “but there’s no place close enough to lay anchor and wait—not with winter bearing down on us. Before you get there and back, we’d have lost more days than we can spare.”

  Loro threw up his hands in frustration. “So we can freeze solid or burn to death. Might as well let me off now, for neither choice suits me.”

  A grin split Ostre’s black beard. “My crew—with the help of Lady Nesaea—crushed the Crimson Gull, the fiercest corsair ship on two seas. A few outlanders and this shadowy bastard don’t frighten me.”

  “You might change your mind when the Lamprey starts burning,” Loro said.

  “As to that, there are ways to keep a ship safe from fire. I’ll have the crew put out barrels of salted water, and buckets to sling it.”

  “Salted water?” Rathe asked.

  “Aye. Saltwater has to get much colder than freshwater to freeze.”

  “We’ll need more than water,” Loro said.

  Ostre grinned. “I’ve a few more tricks tucked in my hold … things to make any river brigand foolish enough to attack the Lamprey wish he’d followed a different calling.”

  Chapter 12

  Sunlight glinted off the partially frozen waters of the River Sedge, but offered no warmth to those who rode the forest path on the bank of the river. While Edrik shivered uncontrollably under his cloak, the shaggy horse he sat astride was indifferent to the chill. Such would not have been the case with the sleek, fine-boned breed of horses used in Targas. Likely, the cold of the Iron Marches would kill them outright.

  This cold would kill most everything under the Shield of the Fathers. With that thought came a vision of the city of Targas. Not its crystal towers and domes glowing with golden light, but darkened, shattered, an empty shell of its former glory. That grim image helped him bear the cold, the nights sleeping rough, and the coarse manners of the deycath who inhabited the Iron Marches.

  Imagining the ugly downfall of his magnificent home also kept his mind on capturing Rathe, the man who the Oracle had foretold would spare Targas. He had thought to capture Nesaea and use Rathe’s love for her against him, but that plan had failed. When the woman was not with Rathe, she was with her friend Fira. More often than not Loro, a brutish monster of a man who seemed ever eager to haul out his sword and start chopping, was also usually about.

  That left Edrik with only one way to take Rathe. He was still struggling with the details of his strategy. A single miscalculation would not only kill his friends and the crew of the Lamprey, but Rathe himself, thus dooming Targas.

  Danlin rode abreast of Edrik, his chattering teeth rattling out a maddening tune. He had been silent since climbing out of his frosted blankets before dawn, but Edrik could tell his friend was working himself up to a tirade. Behind them plodded all but one member of their company. Like Edrik and Danlin, they sat clumsily in their saddles, bundled beneath too-thin cloaks, and utterly miserable.

  Caldio, the absent man, was scouting the river behind them, and keeping an eye on the Lamprey’s progress—there had been a moment at first light when Edrik was sure his company had been seen, so they rode as fast as they dared until out of sight. Caldio was the oldest priest of the vizien caste, and because of his slothfulness, he would never wear the blue-and-gold vestments of an essan. What he lacked in personal discipline, he more than made up for with his riding ability and eyesight. Where the others were awkward, Caldio rode as if born to it. Of his eyes, the man saw as well as a hawk by day and an owl by night. If Targas were to fall, Fathers forbid, Edrik supposed Caldio’s inborn abilities would change his fortune for the better.

  Danlin’s expected outburst came out all at once, his deep voice coming in shuddery, steaming gasps. “A curse on all those fools who thought our garments were enough to ward against this damned cold. We should have bought more clothes in Iceford.” He spat the name of the village like a curse. “If naught else, just the name Iceford should have warned those gray-headed dolts what we faced.”

  “Those ‘dolts’ are our masters, and we serve at their pleasure,” Edrik reminded Danlin. And myself. His own secret musings had been increasingly bitter of late. Save that they had found Rathe, nothing had gone the way the Oracle had suggested. Which begged, why hadn’t the Oracle given them a strategy to take Rathe, warnings about what to expect while tramping about the Iron Marches, and anything else needed to save Targas?

  “All castes of the Munam a’Dett serve the Memory and Law of our Fathers,” Danlin countered. “And as the essans are supposed to be the arbiters of the Memory and Law, is it too much to think they should have known just how blasted cold the Iron Marches are, especially since these godsforsaken lands have surrounded Targas since the first stones were laid for the Ilesma Temple!”

  “Lower your voice,” Edrik hissed, casting a nervous look over his shoulder. No one else seemed to have heard, and well they had not. Such contentious talk was the same that had led to questions about the Munam a’Dett Order, and had given rise to profane accusations against Quidan Salris’s mishandling of his and the Order’s authority. To question the will of the Munam a’Dett was not only seditious, it was high blasphemy. Edrik refused to tolerate either sin from those under his command, or from himself.

  Danlin smoothed his stony features, but looked far from chastened. “By Blood and by Water.”

  “By Blood and by Water,” Edrik repeated, adding, “and by the Fathers.”

  “Aye, them to,” Danlin agreed apathetically, and went back to chattering his teeth.

  The company kept on at a steady pace along the shadowy path for another hour, during which dark clouds began sweeping down from the north. The air felt a touch warmer, and Edrik wondered if this new round of weather would bring rain or snow, or some ungodly mix of both.

  He was still fretting over this when Caldio rejoined them. One look at his harried features was enough for Edrik to call a halt.

  “What news?” he asked, as the others clumsily maneuvered the horses around the man.

  Gulping breath and exhaling steamy plumes, Caldio pulled off his hood. Hectic blotches of color rode high on his thin cheeks, and his pallid gray eyes widened when he said, “The ship has put out her oars!”

  “They’ve used oars before,” Danlin said.

  “Yes, but now a drum drives the stroke. The Lamprey has doubled her speed!”

  “Doubled?” Edrik said, shocked.

  Danlin’s angular features seemed to melt in dismay. “What reason would they have to run so quickly?” He turned a suspicious glare on Caldio. “Did they see you?”

  “No,” Caldio said.

  “They must have, you old fool. I knew we shouldn’t have brought you along!”

  Edrik held up his hand for silence. “It doesn’t matter why the Lamprey has increased her speed. Nothing has changed, save that we must reach Ruan Breach ahead of the ship.”

  “That’s a long ride,” Danlin said. “A very long ride for the likes of us. Chances are, one or more of us will end up taking a tumble, and then where will we be?”

  Edrik bristled. “Would you abandon all hope for fear of getting hurt?”

  “A fall off a horse could kill a man,” Danlin said, earning a few uneasy nods.

  Edrik snorted. “If we fail to take Rathe, Targas and the Shield of the Fathers will fall. Should that happen, most of us will die in these godsforsaken lands. So we can plod along and let our only hope escape, or we ride as if our lives depend upon it—which, I remind you again, our lives, and the lives of all our loved ones, do depend on what we do now.”

  “Even if we get to Ruan Breach ahead of the Lamprey,” Danlin said, “what’re we supposed to do then?”

  Edrik felt his face tighten with a confident smile he had no right to wear, but was helpless to wipe away. “First to Ruan Breach. After, I’ll tell y
ou my intentions.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Sheltering within the Zanar-Sariit, Algar watched Edrik and his companions ride away. Ruan Breach. Until now, he had been unsure where these men were heading. Now that he knew, he had the impression that something larger than he had previously believed was at play, for the place he was to meet Jathen was only a few miles downstream from Ruan Breach. As to what Edrik planned to do there, Algar was in the dark as much as the man’s followers were.

  After the riders vanished around a bend, Algar carefully spoke the words that would return him to the earthly world. The Spirit Stone went cold in the center of his chest, then colder, seeming to glaze his entire body in ice. His eyes squinted down to slits and he doubled over, grinding his teeth against the torture. He endured the suffering, but instead of letting up, it went on longer than usual.

  Around him, the nomadic spirits suddenly ceased their wandering. One by one, they turned toward him. As ever, their smoky features were indistinct, but there was something in their bearing…. A prickle of dread crept down Algar’s spine, shriveling his stones. They see me! Gods, they see me!

  All at once, the pain and cold slackened, and he felt his limbs gaining substance and weight. The spirits faded from sight. A different sort of cold assailed him as he straightened, his boots sinking into frosted drifts of pine straw. He took a trembling breath and slowly let it out. Steam plumed before his eyes, telling him he had escaped Zanar-Sariit.

  He looked around, wondering if the spirits really had seen him. The necromancer who had seated the Spirit Stone into his chest had warned that while he trod the secret ground between the realms of the living and the dead, he couldn’t touch either of those worlds, nor could the beings dwelling in those realms touch or see him.

  I imagined it then … but perhaps I should adopt some caution? Prudence, after all, guided most of his actions.

  Prudence! his mother cackled in the back of his mind. He cringed, but she wasn’t finished. Is tha’ the name you’ve now given to yer cowardice? Well, m’sweet, murderin’ bastard of a boy, is it?