Finally the rope wore down to several threads of individual twine, and then one. It was cut. Tyler let it drop to the floor and felt around some more. He touched some powder. Warily he scooped the dry stuff into his hands and dumped it up higher. He did this for a very long time. Then Tyler again fumbled until he found a rock-like object. He picked it up and rose to his feet, his mind still very clear, almost empty.
He was ready.
He cautiously opened his eyes and let thoughts rush through his head. Anything would do: the pain in his hand, a memory of Uncle Jarith and Derek, his fear for the lives of Irrian, Thorfinn, Haranio, Odinn, and Varkon …
“WHAT GAME ARE YOU PLAYING, AVALON? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”
Tyler waited for a little while longer, indulging in his most personal memories. Then he stopped suddenly and did his best to clear his mind again, harbouring only the most irrelevant thoughts he could imagine.
He felt the cold air of the Dhimori before he saw Him. The demon strode down the stairs and into the room. His spikes scratched the walls as He moved. The iron mask told no tales of the face beneath. Still the Dhimori clutched His great sword, now stained bright with scarlet blood. But it was obvious He could not see Tyler. The Dhimori was looking the wrong way.
Tyler smiled and snapped everything back into focus. He let his thoughts flow freely. He was standing in the cannon room beside the cannon closest to the door. Fog sifted though the smashed timber holes created by the cannon balls, shading the surroundings with wisps of weightless grey. The Dhimori swung round as He sensed Tyler’s thoughts, and He screamed. Not in Tyler mind but in the real word, using His physical lips. The sound was terrifying.
Tyler brought down the flint. The cannon exploded in a jet of heat and flame. There was nothing to stop the recoil because Tyler had cut the restraining rope. The heavy hunk of iron leapt back on its huge wheels and crashed into the Dhimori with a crunch and crack of bones, smashing Him entirely through the opposite wall, where nothing lay but the sea. There, the mighty Dhimori plummeted towards the ocean in a whirlwind of tattered robes.
Tyler gasped and fell to one knee. He was badly burnt across his neck and one side of his face. His ears roared from the sound of the cannon. Too much gunpowder. He should have at least stood further back.
He knew the Dhimori was dead. The heavy weight that had hung about his mind had been lifted. He was gone. A Dhimori could be killed, after all.
A cold hand ran across his burns. Tyler sucked in a swift breath and looked upwards.
“Tyler! Thank goodness you’re all right.”
“Haranio,” whispered Tyler, flinching from the old man’s touch while at the same time easing with relief at seeing a familiar face. “The Dhimori … He’s dead.”
Haranio stepped closer to Tyler, if that were possible, boxing him into the corner.
“I know. I know, my dear boy. I was watching you. You were very brave.”
“You were watching?”
“Oh yes, lad. Very much so.”
Something was very strange about that way Haranio was acting.
“Why aren’t you fighting with the rest?”
“Fighting?” asked Haranio blankly without comprehension.
Tyler frowned. “Haranio, are you feeling all right?”
The shamif’s hair was plastered across his face with sweat. His eyes were wild and unkind. “I’m fine!” Haranio hissed frostily, and just a little too high. “What a question to ask my dear, dear boy.”
This was not his old friend. Tyler struggled backwards until his back pressed up against the wall. Haranio took another step towards him to recover the lost distance, and he gestured wildly.
“I can see everything so clearly now. I was so uncertain.” He laughed. “But now it’s clear. Yes, yes, I know what to do.” The shamif raised his hand and stretched tense fingers inches from Tyler’s face. The old man’s skin was stained a thin shade of green.
“Haranio, you’re scaring me.”
Haranio’s skin began to stretch, to cascade slowly down his neck. Tyler regarded his friend with horror. His dream …
“Yes, yes, Tyler, my lad. Now you see me for who I really am. You almost caught me with that dream of yours. I have not known what to do, ever since you took Avalon’s Blessing …” Haranio unhooked his lower jaw so that it hung suddenly loose. “I should have killed you a long time ago. Time to mend, mend, mend. That is what I say. Yes, yesss!”
As Haranio spoke, he began to change. His body lengthened and became sickly bright green in a quick moment – the same colour as dazzling algae. His old head shrunk and grew pointed.
“No! Help!” yelled Tyler at the top of his voice.
A writhing viper was before him. The snake coiled up its scaled head and exposed its dripping, venomous teeth. The small head pulled back and struck.
The blow never landed.
A hand gripped the serpent at its neck. Varkon! His dear friend stood there in a blaze of fury. The ghatu had changed since Tyler had last seen him. No longer was he healthy, muscled, and fit. Instead his figure was stick-thin, and his skin caked with ugly bruises.
“Traitor. We trusted you, old man.”
Haranio lashed vainly in his snake form, working furiously in an attempt to slip from Varkon’s iron grip. His snake jaw extended as he bared his toxic fangs. Varkon clutched Haranio with both hands and slowly made his way over to one of the holes that had been ripped into the side of the ship.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” the ghatu growled.
The viper whipped its stringed body angrily and changed. Its body thickened and sprouted white fur; muscled legs sprang where green scales had been before, and sharp claws appeared on paws. Varkon shifted his grip quickly to hold Haranio in his raging snow lion form even more tightly than the snake before it. The snow lion roared furiously and swiped at Varkon, desperately attempting to rake and claw, to find any leverage that he could use to his advantage.
Varkon was close to his goal. His muscles bulged, and his chiselled face was set with maniacal determination. Onwards he pushed.
The lion roared.
“I’ll be your weight to the bottom,” boomed Varkon, and he leapt through the hole and out to sea, Haranio still locked in his hold.
“Varkon!” Tyler yelled. He staggered to where Varkon had leapt from and looked down at the chopping water far below.
Varkon hung to the edge of the ship. The ghatu looked so battered with exhaustion that Tyler half expected him to let go immediately.
“Varkon! Grab my arm!” Tyler wedged his body behind the wall and offered the ghatu his hand. It looked skinny and long, hardly the thing to pull up such a heavy creature.
“No, boy, I’ll only pull you down with me.”
“Varkon, trust me. I can do this.”
The ghatu looked up at Tyler for a painstaking moment. “I do trust you, child.”
The ghatu grabbed Tyler’s arm. The immense weight squeezed Tyler hard into the wall, but he didn’t let go. He pulled with all his might, with all the remaining strength left in his body. Varkon lifted up very slightly.
It was enough.
The ghatu wedged his elbow up and hoisted himself the remainder of the distance with a deep and sustained grunt of effort. Gasping, Tyler toppled backwards onto the floor. He was spent, tired beyond all immediate recall. As he lied back, he glanced out of the hole towards the sea. The fog was gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A PROMISE KEPT
They arrived in Ithrim roughly five weeks later, and what a strange five weeks they were. Thorfinn, Kol, and Odinn were dead. Their bodies had been found struck with many arrows and scarred by countless great wounds. They had fought until the end, just like Thorfinn had said, as brothers all. But they were not the only ones to die that day. Of the sixty-three sailors that had crewed The Eye of
the World from Windbreak, only fourteen were to reach their destination. These dozen or so owed their lives to the timely arrival of The Albatross’s Wing during the battle. The reinforcements had come in the darkest hour, using the burning sails of The Eye of the World as a beacon through the fog to take the enemy by surprise.
They never found The Seal or the last enemy ship; both disappeared without trace. The sailors amused themselves with stories and songs honouring the battle, imagining that even now The Seal was following its prey in an endless pursuit across the seas. Tyler thought something more sinister was probably closer to the truth.
His wounds healed well, with the exception of a raised scar that remained across his right cheek from the gunpowder burn. He feared it would never heal and, like the tattoo on his wrist and neck, become a part of who he was. To occupy himself during the remaining weeks, Tyler would walk, or rather hobble, onto the prow to spend long afternoons looking over the sea, as he used to. Sometimes he would sit silently with Varkon, valuing his companionship more than words. At other times he would talk to Irrian and learn the names of the stars, or be told tales about giant squid as long as five men that had been hauled from the fishing nets, islands made of nothing more than trees and vine, and fish that could jump from the water like birds.
Varkon had been locked in his prison cage for the entire sea journey. He was freed only when a party of enemy ghatu had made it down to the hold below The Albatross’s Wing and released him. They realised their mistake when he drove it home with cold steel. Although badly mistreated, he was not bitter about his experiences and had now earned his freedom to roam wherever he chose. Tyler wished it so, and none dared to disobey him. Although Irrian had been made captain and commander, a member of the crew would just as easily obey Tyler, the slayer of the Dhimori.
On the whole, the remainder of the voyage was sombre and difficult for everyone. There was a bad atmosphere aboard which only heightened at the funeral. The dead were draped in white sheets, weighed down with their possessions, and ceremonially tipped over the side into the sea, as was custom.
Irrian wept bitterly over his father’s body; the death of Thorfinn signified the passing of his youth. Duty now led him to replace his father, although for the moment he controlled but one ship. The Eye of the World had been abandoned because it was beyond all repair.
Ithrim was beautiful. As they approached the white city, its architecture grew ever more stunning to behold. Tall towers as sharp as needles pierced the clouds, and at their bases thousands of block-shaped houses clustered at the waterfront and sunk their faded walls into the bright water. Slender pillars rose from the sea, and among them dozens of small fishing vessels bobbed peaceably.
It must have been a strange sight to see such a wreck limp into their gleaming harbour. And yet all here was as perfect as it seemed: algae sullied many of the walls, roofs were a mess of loose tiles, walls were buckled, seagulls had covered the harbour pillars with droppings, and long and jagged foundation marked the remains of what must have been a mighty wall. Tyler guessed it was the one destroyed by Her black wave. Even the dock where The Albatross’s Wing finally slid to a stop was beset with holes and riddled by secret cracks.
Tyler took all this in as he looked down from his place at the bow, and he found his breath was shallow. The inner torment he had been suffering welled to his eyes as relief. The promise he had made to Hargill had been fulfilled against all the odds. He had reached the white city of Ithrim.
“You, there! Identify yourself.”
Tyler, Irrian, Orio, and seven other crew members were on the dock vainly attempting to adjust to the stillness of the land whilst their legs and heads still played to the swing of the ship and the dip of the sea. The Albatross’s Wing had been secured with several sturdy ropes, and it had been decided that Varkon should remain aboard until it could be explained the ghatu was not a threat.
Very little time had passed before the new arrivals were approached by ten uniformed guards marching quickly in rank. All were dressed in black clothes capped with ebony-white armour, and so they each looked like magnificent beetles. The leader of the group was easily identifiable: he wore a tall white helm sloped with a black-feathered fringe. It was he who spoke.
Irrian stood forwards. “Greetings, I am Irrian Ravenfeeder, captain of this ship. We come to Ithrim to bring precious … cargo, and ask to see the king.”
The guard blinked. “King? There has never been a king in Ithrim.” Here the man smirked. “But I believe I can take you to the Council hall, where you may wait to be heard by the court.” The captain of the guard spoke with an air of superiority, as though more air was passing through his nose than his mouth.
Irrian ignored man’s snide tone and instead bowed elegantly. “Thank you, sir.”
The guard gave a curt nod. “Not sir – captain. My name is Captain Thronton of the white guard. Now, I will only take four men, and you must give up your weapons first. The rest of your crew will stay aboard and must not leave until clearance is received. My men will remain here to see these conditions met.”
Irrian nodded and unbuckled his belt, where his sword was sheathed.
Soon they were following Captain Thronton through the city. Irrian had chosen two other sailors to accompany them: Singrid and Ellior, picked not at all for their intelligence (they were under strict direction not to speak), somewhat for their loyalty, but mostly for their size in case they met any trouble. Orio was left in charge of the ship.
Thronton marched imperiously along the cobbled streets, guiding them through the crowds as if they did not exist. It was strange to see so many people after the weeks of solitude at sea. Each person was dressed in long robes that hung just shy of the ground. They surveyed the grease-clad strangers with odd frowns and raised eyebrows. Small children followed after them through the streets, laughing and pointing with amusement and visibly recoiling when they came too close, holding their noses and waving the air about their heads dramatically. Tyler realised their party must have seemed a grubby, smelly bunch. Water had been carefully rationed, and there had certainly not been enough to allow the luxury of a shower.
Gradually the street sloped upwards, and the buildings began to thin in number, although they did not disappear completely. Grass and sculpted ponds took their place, and then the most extravagant building of all came into view. It was perched at the summit of the hill they had been climbing, and the six white towers that Tyler had seen from the ship were positioned to surround this place in an equally segmented circle. Every point of Ithrim was visible from here, even The Albatross’s Wing sitting battered in the azure harbour far below.
As they approached this most central of buildings, Tyler realised its seemingly simple design was deceiving. It became clear this was the most extraordinary architecture they had so far witnessed. Graded steps rose from every side to meet a lofty marble veranda set with slender colonnades and a domed roof. Before the steps towered five statues, each carved from a single block of marble and peering down at all who entered with severity. A colourful bird had made its nest in the ear of one of the figures depicting a giant man.
The guards stationed at the entrance wore white capes slung over their shoulders, and they each nodded to Thronton as he strode past and then through a set of wide redwood doors. The entire building was dedicated to a single room. A fountain was its centrepiece, but it was still, and its water looked unclean. Fungus thrived on the lip of the fountain bowl, and a stain drew across the marble-white floor to mark where the liquid had leaked.
Seven seats had been fixed at one side of the room. Six were draped in purple velvet and stood at equal height, but the seventh was raised above them all to occupy the most central position, and it was swathed in scarlet fabric. An occupant in resplendent clothes slouched upon this supreme seat. His short stature was made immediately obvious by the enormous back to his seat, and he seemed quite flustered at present, the s
ource of his displeasure emanating from the ceiling. Although it was beautiful, wrought from some translucent material that allowed the sun to glow through it like parchment, a small tear had been taken advantage of by a shaft of light, which jabbed eagerly through it. The short man on the high seat was squirming with discomfort as the full brunt of this light hit him directly in the face, causing him to squint.
Tyler passed people of all sorts, each subtly perfumed with musk or a sweet scent, and each clothed in complicated ribbons of pale cloth hung together with clasps of silver.
“Excuse me,” mumbled an enormous man as he lurched by. Tyler stepped quickly to one side to avoid being crushed and gazed up at the colossal person. It appeared the statue outside the hall with the bird in its ear was actually a life-sized depiction of a giant. There were several around the room, towering at least four feet above the average guest.
Thronton turned to Irrian when they were standing just below the ring of thrones. “Wait here,” he commanded before removing his helm and ascending the short flight of stairs to bow on his knee ahead the man on the red throne. Members of the court cast several curious glances at the ragged party.
“Hello!” came a cheery shout from around his knees.
After one surprised step back, Tyler found himself staring down at the dwarf. To say the least, it was strange to see such a direct, ironical opposite of the giants.
“Steady, sir!” The dwarf laughed. “The name’s Ghazan. Where about to you fellows come from?” The little man’s personality seemed almost as fiery as his red, bristling beard.
Tyler realised he was unsure how to answer such a question. “Um, well …” he started uncertainly.
Three heavy, authoritative thuds saved him. It was Thronton, bashing his ceremonial spear against the ground. The hall hushed, and the entire court turned to watch.
“Come forward,” said the man slouched on the high throne. He had made no effort to move from his initial position and looked extremely bored. Irrian, Tyler, Singrid, and Ellior performed four untidy bows. The little man nodded and waved a hand fitted with many jewels. “I hear you have brought me gifts?”
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