by Holly Lisle
The words were mine. And yet they were not. They were freighted with the rhythms of generations of previous Hawkspars, with an arrogance that did not come naturally to me, but that no doubt would as I learned the secrets of the Eyes and how to exploit them. For the moment, the Eyes and the weight of history wore me much more than the other way around.
This was what Hawkspar had said I had to avoid if I hoped to lead my comrades to freedom and find the hidden enemy of the Tonk.
I had to learn to command the Eyes.
In the meantime, though, I had careful instructions laid out by my predecessor, which went as far as she could take them.
“Shall I send word to the other oracles?”
“No. Send word to the prince. Tell him when I am made ready, I shall meet with him at the gate. Tell him also that his hope lies in pleasing me. Carry my words, Sera Onyx, fast as your legs will take you.”
In the wake of my demands, a great commotion started up. Feet scurried, water poured into a tub, women shouted everything from “Bring the robes!” to “Fetch the oracle’s bath slave!” to “Towels! And rosewater! And mint leaves fresh from the garden!”
Everyone ran. I sat on the edge of the bed, my feet barely touching the floor.
A hand reached out to take mine, led me to the bath, and helped me to undress, and step into the water. Hands other than mine washed my hair, bathed me, perfumed me, and toweled me off with alacrity and gentleness.
Women and girls I could neither see nor sense lifted my legs while they put underthings and shoes on me, allar and hakan-allar, bo-allar and rak-tabi, rayan and cepa and finally oracle’s cloak.
The tremendous weight of layers of exquisite, bejeweled fabric bore down on me. Rattling necklaces dropped around my neck, and massive headgear balanced upon my head. Swords clanked as women strapped them around both my hips, and higher notes rang out as my attendants placed daggers at my waist.
Blind I stood there, ready to take my next step, but uncertain how I was to move. I had followed instinct and Hawkspar’s instructions to that point, but had just reached something she had passed over.
“Oracle?” Redbird whispered.
“Yes?”
“May I offer you help?”
“I can’t see anything,” I told her. “I can feel the rivers of time, I can follow their flow into the future, but I haven’t the faintest idea how to find a door without stumbling to a wall and feeling my way toward it.”
“Sight, such as we have it, is tricky,” she told me under her breath. “Your mind will eventually catch the trick of it. In the meantime, though, rest your hand on my elbow, and two columns of Obsidians and a corps of drummers will take you to the front gate in style.”
It was good advice.
“We’ll do that,” I told her.
She shouted, “Obsidians, form up, two columns, weapons hidden. Half before, half behind. We’re escorting the Living Goddess to the gate.”
In such fashion, with drummers beating a threatening cadence, we went down to meet an impatient prince.
He stood at the gates, and I knew that behind him stood enough men to storm the Citadel of the Ossalenes and overrun it. I could feel the weight of his men’s stares, and catch the pressure of their whispers and their expectations in the time currents that swirled around me like a winter storm. I understood the danger these men were to my future plans and to the future of the Citadel, as well.
The prince thought he could command me. He had to learn, immediately and viscerally, that he and his men had no power in that place.
Obsidians opened the inner gate, which was wide enough to permit the passage of only one man at a time, and then only if he knelt when passing through it.
My finger beckoned, and my mouth said, “Come, O Prince, you who have traveled so far to seek my counsel. Come, and hear what I will tell you.”
I heard the movement of many men. My heart began to race. I raised my voice. “Only you, O Prince. Your soldiers are not welcome here. The Citadel is neutral ground; no military force may tread our paths unbidden.”
And then the voice of a man, big and strong and arrogant, speaking in the language of the oracles, but with strongly accented words. “You are not the Oracle of War, you girl. I know the Oracle of War, face and voice, and I would know what game she plays with me to send a snippet in her place.”
I raised an arm and smiled. “Careful, foolish prince. The last to accuse the Hawkspar Eyes of War of falsehood were oracles far more powerful than you; they died eaten by rats. I would not see you fall to their fate. I still have use for you.”
The prince seemed unworried by my threat. “Pick your targets, men,” he said.
I told the two columns of Obsidians, “Take them before they can fire. Kill every second man, disarm the survivors. Go.”
I watched what happened next through the currents of time; the Obsidians poured around me in two streams, out through the single gate before a single heart could beat a single time. The Obsidians on the walls above leapt to the ground in the same instant, dropping around the prince and his men. Their speed was inhuman, impossible. This was their magic, a clean and deadly power. They tore through Sheoua’s men like scythes through millet. A hundred men lay dead before one could loose an arrow; the remainder were rendered weaponless as the Obsidians, with the speed and efficiency of long practice, formed a chain—as a few enemy eyes finished blinking, as a few enemy hands began to realize that they were empty—and tossed them over the cliff.
All but a dozen Obsidians poured back through the doorway to resume their stances. The remainder grabbed the prince, carried him bodily through the gate, and closed and barred it behind them. They threw Prince Sheoua facedown on the stones at my feet, and resumed their places, though this time with weapons drawn.
It seemed a long time before the screaming outside the gate began. It was only an instant.
“We do not tolerate threats,” I told him, and put my foot on his head. Beneath me, he struggled to rise, and I heard blades move through the air, and a faint, frightened whimper. “You will send your surviving men back to their ships to await our signal. You will be stripped and bound, your head will be shaved, and for three days you will lie within the Oracle Tower, where you will think about the error of your manner, and the mistakes you have made. On the third day I will speak with you. What I have to say may or may not be what you wish to hear.”
The Obsidians stripped him and bound him right there, then paraded him to the small front gate. From the gate, he told his men, “Wait in the ships. For three days, wait.”
He seemed shaken and humbled by the number of dead men littering the path to the Citadel. From the cries of dismay, his men certainly were.
Aaran
The Taag av Sookyn passed out of sight of the last identifiable mark on Makkor’s chart, a small island crowned by a squat black tower. From that point on, until they could reach the places Makkor had marked as safe they road uncharted waters.
Aaran gathered the crew around him on the deck, and said, “We’re well into into the Fallen Suns. Civilization lies behind us, and both risk and reward ahead. From this point out, two men will ride the foremast higharm at all times, watching for danger. Eight marines will keep the watch, walking in pairs. Every man here will bear arms at all waking hours, and will have your weapon within arm’s reach while you sleep. With Makkor’s charts, we knew where danger lay. But in avoiding that danger, we don’t know if now we’ll sail through better waters, or worse.”
Aaran took them north as far as he dared, keeping visible islands from the Fallen Suns off their port side. But after a day, Aaran realized that he was cutting into what little time he had to get to the girl who kept crying out to him. He could feel her desperation. She needed him to hurry, she didn’t have much time. In his dreams, he saw her.
She haunted his sleep, and more and more the closer he got to her, she haunted his waking thoughts.
He had to go faster. Get to her faster. All his ambiti
on and all his goals inexplicably depended on her salvation. She was a slave, but more, somehow. The closer the Taag sailed, the more he began to suspect that she was very much more.
He sent the Taag northeast, threading his way through small outlying islands. The watches kept their stations, but the weather favored them and nothing untoward attacked. They passed an island covered by buildings black as night that gleamed in the long rays of the rising sun. The stone, polished like mirrors, reflected the water and the sky so that at times it seemed to be a mirage, and not a true city at all. But the harbor before it was busy, and Aaran kept the Taag at a distance. He could see neither familiar banners atop the masts, nor any ships of familiar build. And since he could not hope to know how an outlander ship would be received, and since the Taag needed no supplies, he and his men were safer well away.
The islands clustered closer together, and became larger. And then, still running northeast, the Taag av Sookyn reached what appeared do be a wall of land running from horizon to horizon. The track he followed with the Hagedwar led straight through it, but he could not see any harbor, any cove, any sign that he could follow his track.
Baaksa, the Tonk who had the tillers, said, “Is this where we’ll find her?”
“No,” Aaran said. “Set us due east. We go through this land.”
Baaksa said, “Cladmus says when you are the arrow that cannot hit your target, learn to make a target of the place where you fall.”
Aaran glanced sidelong at him. “Which is one of the reasons I’m not Cladmussan.”
“So you would have us sail through solid land.”
“I would have us keep on our present heading and see what reveals itself when we’re nearer it.”
Baaksa shrugged.
As they came closer to the land, it seemed to come apart. Suddenly Aaran could see long, narrow inlets running southeast. He allowed himself to slip into the Hagedwar, and for a moment he felt the path before him. The water ran shallow through some inlets, deep through others.
He had Baaksa correct course for the deepest channel. They sailed north for one bell, then straight east for half a bell, and then into the inlet and southeast.
The land pushed in close on both sides, running almost straight up. Aaran looked for movement, for buildings, for clearings. For fire. The sun was setting, and he had an uneasy feeling about this place.
Ves came to stand beside him at the prow.
“Good deep channel,” he said.
Aaran nodded.
“Makkor’s log says he came through here on a bad one. Clogged up with sandbars toward the middle. They hadn’t much draft, but even so, they hung up. And that was when they nearly didn’t make it.”
Aaran pushed away from the rail and turned to give the kor daan his full attention. “What do you mean, they almost didn’t make it?”
“It was through this chain of islands that he reported cannibals. They were well south of here, but I’ve done the calculations, and this has to be the same chain. Same land features. Same northwest-to-southeast passages between islands.”
He eyed the darkening cliffs off his port and starboard, and grimaced. No telling what lay beneath those unbroken canopies of trees.
Aaran sent one of the sailors to quietly gather all hands on deck, armed and prepared for danger.
“We have a clear channel through this passage, all the way from one end to the other,” he told them, keeping his voice low. In the darkness, all he could see was the towering bulk all around him and the glitter of the stars above. He could feel both ends of the passage, but he could not see them. The ship seemed to be sailing on a choppy lake.
To either side, the sea rolled like distant thunder against the cliffs. Over that steady roll, sound still carried on the still night air—the flap of the sails as the windmen fought to keep them full, the singing of the wind they made through the lines, the creak of boards, the movement of bare and booted feet padding across the deck.
On both sides, he could feel eyes watching their passage.
He’d felt it before, and he’d been wary. But now … well.
Cannibals.
Surely there would be no cannibals.
“Everyone is up and on deck until we get through this passage,” he said. “Every free hand bears weapons, we make no noise, all quarters watched at all time. Archers fire on any vessel that tries to approach.”
“Has someone seen something?” the Eastil marine who took up port watch asked, sounding nervous.
“No. But Ves thinks this place may be near where Makkor and his men fought off cannibals,” Aaran said.
“Cannibals.” The word whispered and hissed across the deck, chilling the warm, heavy air.
The free hands, those who were not already standing watch or sailing the ship or making the wind, took up positions.
And then they rode in silence for a long time, with the natural wind dying away to nothing and the clear sky clouding over to hide the stars by which they’d steered.
Aaran sent his tracker back to the steersman’s castle to keep them in instant communication. This was not a place where they wanted to run aground.
Behind them, a soft boom rolled like distant thunder. It died away, and in the breathless hush that followed, not a man aboard the Taag moved. At last, Aaran breathed out, sure that it was thunder.
And then, off to port, he heard a couple of patters, a soft thunk. Intentional sounds. The sounds of men.
Then silence.
Tuua had taken up a place at Aaran’s left, with the boy Eban at his left. Hands grasped hilts, archers nocked arrows, and though Aaran heard Tuua whisper, “Steady, we’ll be all right,” to the boy, not another man so much as breathed.
The ship slid forward, and nothing else happened.
Time passed. Aaran exhaled slowly.
Others around him straightened, shook out shoulders, took the pressure off hits or put bows at rest.
The Taag kept steady on her course.
Nothing. It had been nothing, Aaran thought.
And then, from the starboard side, two heavy thrums. A low, rolling, thundering boom. Short, sharp thrums, higher pitched.
This time, the port side answered with more booming.
A pause, and then the starboard side.
The port side.
The starboard side.
They were talking to each other, Aaran realized. The messages were a code, or a language.
“Did Makkor mention drums in his log?” Aaran asked.
“No,” Ves said. “Not a word about drums.”
“Perhaps these aren’t his cannibals, then,” Aaran said. Whatever the men in the hills were, though, they didn’t sound friendly.
The drums roared louder, and louder yet.
And then, in an unexpected silence, Aaran heard a sound like paddles in water.
“Ready Greton fire,” he shouted over the drumming. “Fire one globe with a breaker.”
“Ready Cap’n,” a sailor to the rear of the ship shouted.
He felt the watching all around, and he and his were blind in the darkness.
“Fire,” he shouted.
The globe of Greton fire vanished into the darkness. Aaran counted a slow five—and fire exploded well aft of the ship and high in the air. By the light of it, he saw something he wished he could have made his eyes take back. Long canoes filled with men covered the water like a blanket of ants on the march, pouring down from the hills, moving into the water. They covered the water behind the Taag. Beside it. Before it.
Aaran felt his mouth go dry. “All men aft,” he shouted. “Launch Greton fire.”
The fire from the first globe had hit a scattering of the long boats. Where it hit, it burned, whether on men, or on wood, or on water. When boats sailed through burning water, they caught fire. The air filled with screaming and the roar of war cries from those uninjured.
As the globes shot into the air and exploded, fire rained on more and more of the pursuers. Those who burned, quickly t
urned into torches. Those that had not caught fire quickly fell behind.
“Men port and starboard, arrows by volley! Men forward, catapult and chains!”
Ermyk, the kor wogan, called the volleys and kept his archers moving steadily; one line would fire and fall back, the next would step forward while the first rearmed and drew.
By the pale green blaze of Greton fire, he watched men writhe and burn and die, or leap into the water to avoid their burning boats, and catch fire in the burning water. No matter how many leapt, how many fell back, though; no matter how many died transfixed by arrows or ripped apart by the catapult shot, it wasn’t enough. More came, and more after that. They reached the Taag av Sookyn, and began to climb in swarms.
The windmen kept the wind going, the ship surged forward fast as they could send it, but the archers had to give way to swordsmen, and had to take up swords to save their own lives.
The first invaders over the sides died. And the second wave as well. But by the third wave, the attackers were putting men onto the deck, and Aaran’s marines were forced to fight one on one. Up in the rigging, the off-duty sailors still doubled as archers. The on-duty men kept sailing.
The clang of swords and knives and the screams of the injured and dying rang in his ears. He fought, sword in one hand and dagger in the other, and felt the kiss of a blade along his spine … but not one meant for him.
He fought, his men fought—all order gone, all sense of the shape of the battle vanished, with the deck slick with blood. In the darkness, by the still burning glow of Greton fire, men died beneath his feet and he stood on them to kill more.
And then, the rumble of thunder again.
In the hills to port and starboard, in the canopy of trees high above the narrow straight, the drums began to talk. Those attackers who could fled over the sides of the Taag, vanishing into the darkness.
Their boats bled away into the night.
In the east, Aaran saw a single, pale, thin line—bleak gray against black. Dawn came, and with it, open sea, the sweet, blessed openness of water without land.
