by Watson Davis
# # #
Tethan sat at one end of the table in Kalo’s ship, facing the windows at the back that overlooked the docks of Tuth-Yoo. The ships—their masts a silvery blue in the moonlight—creaked in the harbor, pulling at their moorings with the rocking of the waves and the ebb of the tide. He sat with his elbows resting on the map of the coastline on top of the table. He tapped the symbol for Tuth-Yoo. “The Council know we’re right here, and Davina and Dyuh Mon can see the traces of a force moving our way.”
“We don’t have much time,” Mitta said from Tethan’s left, with Leedy squeezed in to her left. “So I’ll bring the newcomers up to speed on the plan.”
“Up to speed?” Gartan sat across the table from Tethan, leaning back in his chair, his legs sprawled out, Silmon to his left and Simthil to his right, with Davina kneeling beside Simthil working her magic on him.
“There have been discussions while you were on holiday,” Mitta said.
His blue eyes on Mitta, hard and dangerous, Gartan said, “My plans haven’t changed. The treasure I want, the treasure we came here for, is in Arenghel.”
Kalo sat to Tethan’s right with Mian-on standing behind her, Dyuh Mon in a chair to her right with Hanno tending to his wounds, a dour expression on her face.
“And how do you plan on getting this treasure out?” Mitta asked, leaning over the table on her forearms, a fierce smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Are you going to take a caravan with you to carry all of your loot back across the dunes to the shore?”
“If I have to, sure,” Gartan said, leaning onto the table, almost rising from his seat as he glared at Mitta with a wild cast to his eyes.
“With the Council army humping your leg?” Mitta snorted, leaning back, a hint of a sneer on her smiling lips. She tapped her finger on Basaliyasta. “Gal-nya’s capital is on the shore, and has the most plunder of any of the towns within striking distance. We go in, take what we want before this Council army arrives, and then we hightail it back home, laughing all the way.”
“Basaliyasta is heavily defended,” Tethan said. “Getting in and back out won’t be a sleigh ride.”
Mitta shrugged. “Easier than landing our people on the coast, having them trek across the desert, and then cart their treasure back with them.”
Kalo touched Tethan’s elbow and leaned toward him. “What are they saying?”
Tethan whispered, “Arenghel or Basaliyasta.”
Dyuh Mon reached across the table and slammed his dagger into the map. “Arenghel.”
“My map!” Kalo glared at Dyuh Mon and spoke some angry words in Nayen.
Gartan grinned, spreading his hands, tilting his head. “This is what we came here for. This will punch this Council in the nose and teach them a lesson about their lack of respect for the Onei.”
Pohmuk and Makal murmured their assent and Tayna nodded.
Kalo touched Tethan’s elbow and said, “Will you interpret this for me?”
In Onei, Tethan said, “Kalo wants to say something.”
“Who cares?” Leedy said. “She’s not one of us.”
Kalo stood and, with Tethan interpreting her words into Onei, said, “The people of Tuth-Yoo, like many of the people and lands under the Council’s control, tire of their rule, chafe against it. They welcomed us here as heroes, as someone willing to fight against their oppressors, people with the will and strength of heroes. They have helped us to repair our ships, given us food and drink, and helped heal our wounds. An army comes and the consequences of their help will be onerous, their punishments harsh. I beg you to consider staying here and defending these people.”
She nodded her head and sat back down. Tethan patted her knee under the table.
“Fine. Whatever,” Mitta said, glowering at Tethan. “Most of us want to go to Basaliyasta, so I think it’s settled.” She glanced around the table, her eyebrows raised. “Am I right?”
Leedy nodded. “The Icefangs are going to Basaliyasta.”
“The Far Wastes, as well,” Silmon added.
“You do whatever the hell your little heart tells you to do,” Gartan said. “The Skybears are going to Arenghel.”
“We shouldn’t split our forces,” Tethan said. “They’ll defeat us in detail. Our strength is in staying together.”
Kalo touched Tethan’s elbow and asked, “Have they considered my plan?”
“Um.” Tethan gulped and licked his lips. “Yes, but the thought is that we can draw the army away from Tuth-Yoo by going to Basaliyasta or Arenghel instead.”
She sighed and slumped back into her chair. Dyuh Mon leaned toward her, speaking in a steady stream of Nayen, impossible for Tethan to comprehend.
Simthil placed his thick forearms on the table and leaned forward, Davina standing up and backing away. He said, “If Gartan goes to this Arenghel place, so do I.”
“Aw, thanks,” Gartan said, smiling and patting the big man’s shoulder.
Simthil continued, “If he does find some treasure trove there that’s the source of this Council’s power, there’s no way in the deepest, darkest hell that I’m going to trust ‘the greatest treasure in the world’ to him.”
Kalo touched Tethan’s elbow once more, saying, “Dyuh Mon has something he wants said.”
Tethan held up his hand. “The Nayen mage has words to say.”
“We’ve heard enough from the damned Nayens,” Leedy said. “We’ve decided; we attack Basali-whatever. Why are we still talking?”
With Kalo whispering in his ear, Tethan said, “Dyuh Mon says that the monastery at Arenghel doesn’t have many defenders and only a narrow bridge. A large force will have problems attacking it.”
“Hah!” Leedy pointed at Gartan. “There.”
“And he suggests that most of our force attack Basaliyasta to draw the forces of Gal-nya and the focus of the Council there. With a large enough and serious enough attack, some of the guards from Arenghel will be drawn out of the monastery and sent to guard the road from Basaliyasta to Arenghel. A small force can easily make its way into Arenghel then and remove the most valuable pieces of treasure by horseback and return to the shore to be picked up.” Tethan shook his head. “I don’t like separating the forces.”
Simthil grabbed Gartan’s shoulder, saying, “We’re going to Arenghel.”
Gartan pointed at Mitta, Leedy, and Silmon, and said, “And Tethan, you’re going to Basaliyasta to protect our interests from that lot.”
# # #
The city of Basaliyasta stretched out before Tethan, the walls reaching out across the horizon with walls within those walls, and more walls within those. A dizzying collection of towers and spires reached up into the sky. A cloud of black smoke hung over the city from the normal everyday fires for cooking, for light, for heat. The sunlight fell through billowing white clouds, through the layer of smoke, and the shadows of all those spires and towers lay across the city.
The ship bobbed with the gentle waves. A pleasing breeze tugged at his hair, but Tethan glared at that city. “We will be swallowed up whole.”
“I never thought to see anything like this,” Mitta whispered. “It’s bigger than Shria. I thought the writers of books were merely tellers of wild tales, embroidering the truth. I didn’t think anything like this really existed.”
“You can read?” Tethan asked, raising his eyebrows and glancing at her.
She stepped away from him, her mouth dropping open, her face flushing and her hands closing into fists. “What did you say, you bastard?”
“Shall I order a retreat then?” Tethan asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“We are Onei.” Mitta sneered at him. “We attack. Give that order.”
Tethan turned to Kalo, who leaned on the wheel of the ship, and to Skruka, Mian-on, and two more Nayen mages standing at their braziers behind the wheel, one chanting, sweat dripping from his brow, his magic masking them and hiding the ship from sight. Kalo’s sailors clung to the masts, all the sails furled, the sailors waiting
for the command to let them drop.
“Spread the word. We attack. Now.”
Mian-on nodded and cast his spell, a flash of light, echoed by ghostly ships behind them, near invisible against the waves and sky.
“Sails down!” Kalo called out, not too loud, her command relayed by her sailors, and she pointed at Mian-on, who initiated spells he had already prepared. His magical winds rose up behind them, filling sails still falling from their yardarms, still being pulled tight as the sailors hung from the lines and secured the rigging. The ship bucked with a surge of power beneath Tethan’s feet, skimming over the choppy waves toward the opening of the main harbor of Basaliyasta. A freighter made its way out of the port.
Skruka chanted, throwing her right hand out before her as though throwing an invisible axe, her staff in her left hand, the gemstone in the top glowing yellow with flecks of red, and in front of the ship, from beyond the tip of the bowsprit, a stream of fire erupted, spraying out before the ship. Skruka fanned her hand back and forth, and the stream of fire mimicked her movements, flying out over the sea before them, the fire arching through the air and falling into the sea, until at one point, the fire merely disappeared.
“Skruka’s found one!” Tethan roared, pointing his finger to the spot where a shield hid a ship. Two mages behind him scrambled, casting spells, hurling clumps of lead and rock toward the shield in the hopes of striking the Council ship hidden behind there.
The shield faltered, the ship behind it appearing, disappearing, and appearing once more, the sailors on board leaping from the deck as the whole ship listed to starboard. Flames leapt into the sky from the burning the masts. With three holes blasted into the hull, the ship was taking on water quickly.
“Now they know we’re here,” Tethan cried out. The Onei warriors arrayed on the deck laughed, and so did Mitta, by his side.
Kalo pulled at the wheel, and the ship plowed through the opening into the harbor, where the waves were smaller. Skruka continued flinging fire before them, searching for invisible ships, more arcs of fire appearing now from the ships in their fleet.
A rock appeared from nothing, hurtling through the air toward the ship. One of the mages behind Tethan yelled magical phrases, grunting with the strain, lifting the stone above the ship and letting it fall behind them, splashing into the water.
“There!” Tethan pointed to the spot where the stone had emerged, and the earth magician stamped his feet and cast the spell to send stones of his own toward their enemy.
Skruka screamed, her body rising into the air, her arc of fire spreading out into a giant fan before them, showing several ships by the disappearance of her flames. Too many ships too close together.
“Kalo!” Tethan cried out.
Twisting the wheel, Kalo yelled, “Hold on.”
Around them, more and more ships dropped their screens, the vessels on fire, their mages dealing with other issues, with broken masts, with holed hulls.
Tethan grabbed the railing and braced himself, but Kalo sailed them between two shielded ships, their mages blasting into the fields of nothing even as fire and rocks appeared from those ships. The mages tried to turn the fire, tried to stop the stones, but they were too close.
The ship’s mizzen mast caught fire, the sail burning above his head, and two stones plowed across the deck, sending Onei warriors and Nayen sailors leaping out of the way. The two ships they passed between flickered into clear focus, both of them damaged and sinking.
“Are we visible?” Mitta asked, turning to peer back at the mages.
“No!” Mian-on answered, his eyes unfocused, sweat beading up on his forehead and dripping down onto his robes, ignoring the embers raining down on all their heads from the burning sail. “Not yet!”
To their port, a huge warship appeared, its shield flickering for a heartbeat. Kalo shouted, “Everything you’ve got.”
Tethan bellowed, “Onei! Abandon ship!”
Kalo tilted her head back and screamed, “Prepare to ram!”
Their wounded ship swept around and hurtled toward the warship, toward where it had been a heartbeat before, until the front end of the ship splintered, striking something Tethan’s senses told him was not there. The whole of the ship tilted to starboard beneath him, sailors screaming as the sudden tilt threw them into the sea.
The warship flickered into full view, looming above him, but the rear of it was broken, the hull splintered. Tethan cried out, “Time for a swim!”
He darted back to the wheel, wrapped his arms around Kalo’s waist, picked her up with his left arm, Mian-on with his right, and sprinted to the rear of the ship. He leapt over the rail into the water. “Hold your breath!”
# # #
The sun blazed overhead, the very air seeming to suck the moisture out of his skin, to dry his sweat, leaving only grit. Gartan gnawed on the leg bone of a sheep, picking at the last bits of gamey muscle clinging to it. Simthil lounged alongside him in the sand, his back against one rock, his boots resting on another, his hands folded over his belly.
Dyuh Mon sat on his knees on a rug, shielded from the sun by a rectangle of sand-colored cloth held aloft over him by some magical spell, the cloth flapping in the unhelpful breeze. His hands rested on his knees, his mouth moving, his eyes closed, whether casting a spell or praying to one god or another, Gartan didn’t know and didn’t care to know.
The sands stretched out behind them for as far as his eye could see, ending with a shimmering strip of green in the distance he couldn’t be sure was real, but in front of them the very earth dropped off in a huge crack, a canyon that seemed to extend down into some hellish realm. Only a narrow bridge spanned across that chasm, a delicate and fragile strand stretching across to a walled collection of buildings carved out of the skeleton of a mountain, the mountain now surrounded by this chasm like a bottomless moat.
“Who wants some more of this?” Nohel called out from the main part of the camp, kneeling by the bubbling pot warmed by magical flames that gave no smoke. Davina sat beside it, feeding magic into it, keeping them invisible.
“Hmm?” Simthil rolled to his feet, stretching his arms, grumbling, “I could use some more.” He glanced down at Gartan and asked, “Do you want some?”
Gartan shook his head, cracking the leg bone open. “No. Thank you.”
Simthil strode away, back to the fire, his plate in his hand. Gartan slurped the marrow from the bone.
Dyuh Mon sighed, relaxing his shoulders.
Gartan tossed the shattered bones into the sand. He looked up at Dyuh Mon. “You keep your promise to me, Dyuh Mon?”
Dyuh Mon shifted his dark eyes to Gartan’s, blinking, looking away, looking back. He nodded. He looked down at his shaking hands and clasped them together. “Yes.”
“You believe we can steal the Source?” Gartan asked, leaning back against a rock and stretching his long legs out. “Kalo doubts both this source and its power.”
“She does not know,” Dyuh Mon said, pressing his hands together, staring at them. “Source make you great king.”
“Why me?” Gartan asked.
Dyuh Mon hung his head, thinking, licking his lips. He looked up, meeting Gartan’s eyes, and he asked, “What do you love?”
“My wife, my children, my clan,” Gartan said, a smile creeping onto his face. “Anyone not trying to stab me. Well, Davina’s stabbed me ten or fifteen times so far. Thank Enahu, she has the power to heal me afterwards, and I still love her.” He laughed.
“I never love people,” Dyuh Mon said, his gaze rising, looking out toward the castle carved into the mountains. “My job, yes. Power, yes. Parents arrange marriage. Wife arrange children. No love, only duty. I empty. No heart.”
“Hmm.” Gartan grunted, wondering what he was supposed to say, whether he was not understanding something.
“One day,” Dyuh Mon continued, “a priestess contact me, just write a note and asking for some knowledge from the Library. She write again, ask me check something, read a passage,
learn a thing. Every day, I wait for message, afraid never hear from her again, afraid I would. I learn much about many things and about Source. I now full. I have heart.” Dyuh Mon stopped speaking.
Gartan shrugged. “So you love her and you trust her about the Source.”
Dyuh Mon shook his head. “Eternal Council sacrificed her to a demon.”
“So, revenge.” Gartan grinned and scratched his ass. “I understand revenge.”
“Why you?” Dyuh Mon asked, turning his eyes to Gartan, those eyes deadly serious. “You remove obstacle for me. Help me. I get Source for you. I get revenge. You get power. Fair?”
Gartan nodded, reaching out his hand. “Fair.”
Taking Gartan’s hand in his own, Dyuh Mon smiled, his lips pulling back from the filed points of his teeth, so unnatural and disconcerting. He nodded to Gartan. “Yes. I believe end of Eternal Council close at hand. You and me will end them.” He pointed out at the castle. “We end it there.”
Gartan turned his eyes to the monastery. He smiled.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Simthil said, stomping over toward them, his plate heaped with meat. “What plan are you two hatching now?”
“I was just talking to him, trying to make sure he hasn’t led us on a merry icefang chase,” Gartan said, releasing Dyuh Mon’s hand and leaning back.
# # #
“A hand here!” Tethan bobbed in the water, and Mian-on climbed up onto the pier while Tethan stabilized himself with his left hand grasping the wooden planks of the pier’s decks, his right arm around Kalo’s waist. She gasped for breath, her fingers digging into his arm, her heels kicking his leg.
The clang of steel on steel echoed through the air, with the grunts and shrieks of battle.
Datresh Brightfox appeared, dropped to his knees, and held out his hands. “Give her to me.”
Tethan twisted around, lifting Kalo up, and Datresh grabbed her beneath her arm, grunting as he leveraged her up, setting her down on the deck, a pool of water growing around her. Tethan, now free, grabbed the pier with both hands and lifted himself out of the water.
