by Watson Davis
Gartan limped forward, not understanding the stern expression on his son’s face, not expecting this question from him, hoping that his son had listened to him, would follow his request.
The Onei broke into a cheer, calling out to him in a frenzy, chaotically screaming out “treasure,” laughing “sex,” “beer,” and “glory.”
“No, no, no!” Tethan yelled back, shaking his head back and forth, a pained expression on his face. He held out his hand for them to stop, answering, “We came here not for glory. No, not glory.”
The Onei quieted down, inching forward, curiosity on their faces. In the windows from the least damaged buildings, Shrian faces looked on, pale and uncomprehending, dark circles beneath their fear-tinged eyes.
Tethan raised up the index finger of his right hand, a mischievous grin spreading over his face. “We came here not for treasure, or raping, or killing. Well”—he pointed down at someone in the front of the crowd—“except for Simthil. He just wanted to kill a few Shrians for sport.”
The Onei laughed, and Tethan waited for their mirth to subside, chuckling himself, his left hand reaching out and grabbing one of the rigging ropes. The wind picked up, pulling at his hair, blowing into his eyes.
“No,” he yelled, quieting the merriment, “we came here because we are Onei, and no one can tell us where to go, or what to do.”
The crowd cheered, the chorus of “King’s Bane” kicking back up. Gartan relaxed, leaning back against a scorched wall.
“We are Onei.” Tethan lifted his hands up, and the crowd roared. He hollered, “We were slaves once, but now we obey no masters save ourselves: no magicians, no kings, no priests.”
The clamor of the crowd rose to a deafening level, rumbling in Gartan’s lungs.
“We are Onei!” Tethan cried, and the crowd answered back.
“The pureland kingdoms are powerful”—Tethan raised his fist—“but we are Onei and we showed them true power, true strength, and true cunning.”
Tethan smiled for a moment before grimly setting his lips, furrowing his brow, and planting his fists on his hips. He waited for the crowd’s whooping to subside. He lifted his hands to ask for quiet, a quiet he received. “But there is another people far to the south, across the sea, and an evil council rules these poor people.”
The Onei murmured, talking to each other in hushed tones. A smile crept across Gartan’s face. He crossed his arms over his chest, a sense of relief flowing through him.
“Sitting in their towers, scrying the lands of the north, this council of magicians and priests witnessed our quick defeat of these powerful Shrians.” Tethan raised his right fist, shaking it. “They wanted to show us their might, to frighten us, to drive us back to our homelands like a herd of reindeer before a shepherd, to warn us against going farther south.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “To scare us away.”
The murmur swelled to an angry growl among the ranks.
“Are we Onei?” Tethan thundered.
The clans screamed back at him, “We are Onei!”
“Who dares command us?” Tethan demanded.
“No one!” the crowd answered.
“This evil council has no respect for us. Sending a single dragon?” Tethan reached out with his right hand.
Simthil tossed a harpoon up to Tethan, and Tethan snatched it from the air. The same harpoon Gartan had thrown at the dragon and failed to slay it. The same harpoon Tethan had used to bring the dragon down.
Tethan raised the harpoon above his head, shouting, “They think a single dragon will intimidate us, send us running back to our homes to huddle by our home fires, to seek our shelter in the ice. Do you know what I say to them?”
Tethan paused, letting the crowd’s chaotic chatter rise in volume.
“Do you know what I say?” Tethan yelled at the top of his lungs to be answered in an inarticulate uproar. Tethan bellowed back at them, “We are Onei!”
The crowd cheered.
“I say we take these Shrian ships, load them up with food and the best treasures of Shria, and then we sail down to Nayen, and we knock down their gates, just like we did the gates of Shria. And we will show them that we are Onei and we have no masters!”
The crowd approved. Mitta jumped up and down with her unslung bow over her head. Simthil roared, patting his men and women on the backs and shoulders even as they pummeled his own.
Gartan clapped, grinning, hoping to Enahu, the Great Bear in the Sky, that he hadn’t made a mistake, and that Dyuh Mon could live up to his promise.
Prayers
Gartan sat on his knees in a pile of ash before an altar he’d cobbled together from pieces of debris from the wreckage of the Dancing Kestrel, a few bricks from a blasted warehouse, and charred planks from the hull of a Shrian ship. His small fire flickered, spitting out embers. He bent his neck in deference to the god of his clan in a burned-out shop, the roof and second story collapsed and devoured by the fireballs from the Shrian counter-attack, the black night sky above him, the stars flung across the sky like feed from a shepherd’s hand, or the blood from a vicious wound.
“Enahu, great Sky Bear—” Gartan paused to lick his lips, his mouth dry, “—please speak to your sister, Kyolasalan, the Lady of the Deep Waters, and ask her to stay her mighty waves and angry winds to allow our stinky Shrian ships fair passage, even though they’re not good honest longboats.”
He held a bit of a fir tree in his hand, one of the bits he’d brought from home for the journey to the lands of the Nayen and back again. He tossed it onto the fire and peered into the flames. He folded his hands together, placing them in his lap. He stilled his thoughts and counted the beats of his heart, smelling the smoke from the branch of the fir. “And if it’s not too much to ask, if you could see Tethan returned home safe and sound, I would appreciate that. He will make you as proud as he has made me.”
He shrugged, searching for something else to say to the god, but never having been particularly chatty with beings he couldn’t see, he just finished with, “Thank you.”
Gartan stood and strode out of the building onto the docks. The ships creaked in the moonlight, rising and falling with the waves. The air was still and oppressive. Beads of sweat formed on his arms and naked chest.
Simthil hopped off of the gangplank to the dock, raising his hand in recognition. “Well met, Skybear. I was looking for you.”
Gartan lifted his hands in mock surrender, a smile on his face, saying, “I’m ready to leave. I’ve said my prayers.”
“Finally,” Simthil said, rolling his eyes. “Do you think prayers saved to the last moment have a greater potency?”
“Hopefully the Great Skybear likes the sound of desperation,” Gartan said.
Simthil chuckled and walked up to stand before Gartan, looking past him at the buildings lining the docks. “But you are only one of the two I’ve been tasked by the wee Nayen admiral to find and get back to the last ship leaving.”
“Oh?” Gartan looked out across the bay. Five ships approached the exit to the sea. “The last ship?”
Simthil put his meaty hand on Gartan’s shoulder and said, “Your wife and son didn’t wait for you. They left on the Nayen ship.”
“Ah, the respect I get.” Gartan pursed his lips. “Who’s missing? Natham? Makal? There was a brothel they were fond of.”
“No, that would make sense,” Simthil said, shaking his head as he scanned the buildings behind Gartan. “The pointy-toothed Nayen mage, Dyuh Mon, he’s the one missing.”
“Oh?” Gartan turned to examine the city, aligning himself to the same direction Simthil faced. “I can help you look.”
“I was just going to walk down the dock shouting his name,” Simthil said, waving his arm. “I’m not sure what else to do.”
“You do that. I’ve got an idea where to find him,” Gartan said.
“You sure? You want me to come with you just in case some Shrian discovers their bravery? Like if you run into twenty Shrian mages?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Simthil said, waving his arms, shooing Gartan away. He put his hand to his mouth and bellowed, “Dyuh Mon!”
Gartan jogged off into a darkened alley, heading back to the palace they’d used as a hospital, as Simthil continued to bellow Dyuh Mon’s name back on the docks.
Gartan navigated through streets only somewhat familiar, with Shrians fleeing at the sight of him, diving into doors. He stopped and backtracked once, returning to a plaza with a shop he recognized, taking a different turning, and arriving at the palace he sought.
The doors stood open. He entered and climbed up the marble steps three at a time and sprinted through the hall past the room where he’d been patched up, around to the opposite side of the building, down a hallway. A flickering light beckoned him forward to an open door. The hair rose on the back of his neck.
A fire raged inside the room. The red light paraded along the walls, cavorting like the clan on a feast night dancing around the fire.
Dyuh Mon knelt in the middle of a pentacle, a candle at each point of the star, and behind each candle lay the body of a child in a pool of its own blood. Dyuh Mon rocked back and forth, chanting words almost inaudible.
Someone was crying, lots of someones, a multitude of people wailing in misery, but as if from far, far away. Another voice chanted along with Dyuh Mon, a harsh voice, a voice too deep to be human that came from the lips of a small child Dyuh Mon cradled in his arms.
Gartan froze in the door, staring, his mouth open, his axe trembling.
The small child’s eyes flew open, finding Gartan’s. A smile spread on its face even as blood spurted from its neck in rhythm with the beating of its heart, slowing as the light faded from those sparkling eyes.
All the candles’ flames died, plunging the room into darkness.
Gartan stepped back, blinking to adjust to the sudden lack of light, backing out of the room into the hall. Starlight and moonlight streamed in from the courtyard to the right.
Dyuh Mon stepped out of the chamber, dropping chunks of bone into a pouch at his belt. He spoke first in Nayen, but stopped and shifted to Shrian. “We can leave now.”
“What?” Gartan raised his axe, pointing it at the room behind the Nayen. “What was that?”
Dyuh Mon glanced behind himself, back into the dark room. He raised his eyebrows, a strangely innocent expression, peering up into Gartan’s eyes. He shrugged, saying, “A spell. Keep Council from finding. Keep safe.”
“But…” Gartan opened and closed his mouth, searching for the Shrian words, pointing with his axe for emphasis. “But the children?”
Dyuh Mon smiled, nodding, patting Gartan’s chest. “The purest souls make best sacrifices.”
Dyuh Mon took a few steps and then pulled the bones out of his pouch. He rolled them from his right hand into his left palm and nodded, a smile spreading across his face. He walked away, sauntering down the hallway back toward the stairs before stopping. He looked back at Gartan, and gesturing with his left hand, he said, “Come. We go now.”
Gartan backed away from the room, toward Dyuh Mon, and he followed the Nayen, grimacing at the sour taste in his mouth.
# # #
Gal-nya stared at her reflection in a mirror hanging on a wall covered with red and gold silk, a mirror framed in gold with inlays of intertwining dragons biting each other’s tails. She brushed her black-nailed fingertips across the line of her jaw, pleased with the ageless beauty peering back: the unblemished, unlined skin, so perfectly pale, the large black eyes, the thick black hair. Her snakelike tongue darted between her dark lips, tasting the hint of old, dried blood on them.
Behind her, six rows of books and scrolls stretched a dragon’s length, filling the hall, each row with six shelves, each shelf filled with books, book after book, broken only by the hexagonal pillars holding the arched golden ceiling. Magelights floated in the air, their light reflecting off the golden domes above.
A cleric scurried forward from one of the aisles, a book open in his hands, the stiff pages crackling. The priest bowed.
“Tin-gi, you must be quicker than that,” Gal-nya whispered.
“My Lady.” His voice quivered, and the air surrounding him tasted of fear.
Gal-nya dragged her fingernail along the edge of her lip, tearing through the flesh, relishing the pain, her tongue darting out to sample her blood. “Tell me. What have you found? What has she said of these Onei? What are they?”
“The script, Your Excellency… it is hard to understand.” The cleric bowed, the book trembling in his hands, beads of sweat falling from the tip of his nose onto the pages. “It is an ancient script and the letters seem to shift and change before my eyes.”
“Seem to?” Gal-nya turned toward him, looking down her nose at him, studying him. “The letters didn’t actually change into other words, did they?”
“No, Your Excellency, the letters just shifted a bit.” He held up the book with shaking hands, offering it to Gal-nya to see. “This is the only reference I could find, something about a northern mage’s experiments and slaves.”
Gal-nya averted her eyes, lifting her hands to shield her face, but not before seeing the letters on the pages transformed into ‘G-a-l-n-y-a!’
She squeezed her eyes closed, a shiver running down her spine, and she turned from the cleric, saying, “Tell me what it says.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.” The cleric licked his lips, bringing the book down to where he could read it. “It says… it says…”
“Yes?” Gal-nya backed further away from him, watching him, his movements. She whispered a spell, drawing power to herself, protecting herself.
“The Onei were human once, but…” He shivered, shaking his head, blinking his eyes, his breathing growing quicker.
“Tin-gi?”
He looked up at her, past her, over her head, his brow wrinkling, his voice odd, distant. “Have you heard the story about the ant and the—?”
“Maintain your focus, Tin-gi,” Gal-nya said, her voice a deep growl of warning.
“What…?” Tin-gi’s hands clamped down on the book, his knuckles turning white, but he lowered his head, eyes wide, peering down into the book. He sighed and in a calm, delicate, almost smug voice said, “What do you want to know about the Onei, Your Excellency? Ask me anything, and I will tell you truth.”
Gal-nya shrieked a phrase of magic, triggering her safety spell, and iron spikes materialized in the air above her, in the air above Tin-gi, on the other side of him, all these spikes flying toward Tin-gi.
He raised the book before his face, squeezing his eyes shut, and a few of the spikes thudded against the book, recoiling from it, bouncing off the cover of ensorcelled human skin, but most of the spikes thumped into Tin-gi’s body, perforating it in a spray of blood.
Gal-nya slid to her right, beginning another incantation, drawing on the fires of a forbidden hell.
“They’re coming for you from across the Flux Sea.” Tin-gi dropped the book to the ground, his body riddled, shredded, skin punctured, bones broken. He collapsed to his knees, an insane grin splitting his face, his head flopping to the side and his eyes completely black. In a woman’s voice, he said, “Gal, my dearest, why must you deny me? When have I lied to you? You still have your beauty.”
Gal-nya yelled the trigger, and a spray of hellfire leapt from her hands to Tin-gi’s body.
“Send a kraken to find them, if you want them that badly, but be careful not to…” Tin-gi said, his voice shrinking to a whisper as the flames consumed his body, so hot that even the iron spikes melted into puddles on the now blackened stone floor.
In the heart of the conflagration, the book lay untouched and undamaged.
Gal-nya stood with her fists clenched by her sides, panting in rage and fear, what remained of her heart thudding in a jar in a pla
ce far away.
Yut-hosa emerged from the doorway on the other side of the library, a golden mask covering her face. “Don’t tell me that’s all that’s left of Tin-gi?”
“Yes.” Gal-nya spat on the floor and edged closer to Tin-gi’s ashes, squinting at the flames now fading away, studying the ashes for movement.
Yut-hosa sighed. “He was my leading candidate for our new Librarian.”
Gal-nya snarled. “Damn that Dyuh Mon.”
# # #
Tethan stood at the prow of the ship, staring out to sea, the cloudy sky growing darker with each beat of his heart, the clouds tumbling together in the sky as the lightning flashing in the distance crept closer and closer. The ship barreled through the waves, pounding them, white spray flying up and splattering on him, the deck shuddering beneath his feet.
“Tethan?” Kalo strode up the deck to stand beside him, her right hand snapping out and snaring a rope to hold onto, and setting her feet for balance. Pitching her voice above the roar of the wind, the crashing of the waves, the rumbling thunder, she said, “You should go below. Safer down there, and you are not accustomed to this like we sailors are.”
“I am from Windhaven,” he said with a smirk, his fists on his hips. “Have you ever chased down a sea dragon in a longboat?”
“Yes, yes.” She leaned toward him, raising her voice. “I’m sure you’ve hunted really big sea dragons, but it’s going to be a rough night. We don’t want you swept over the side by a big wave.”
“Hah!” Tethan grinned at her, crossing his thick arms over his chest. “If Kyolasalan requires my presence beneath the waves, I should stay out here so she doesn’t bring the whole ship down just to capture me. Besides, it stinks down below the decks.”
A giant wave struck the ship, washing over the deck, and the whole ship yawed beneath it. Kalo’s hand lost its grip of the ropes, the weight and volume of the water dragging her across the deck. Tethan reached out with one arm, wrapping it around Kalo’s thin waist. He leapt up into the rigging, shimmying up the lines to the yard arm with the other sailors.
