by Holly Lisle
She paused. “Her family, who doubted your commitment to Minda, were quite relieved. They used her heartbreak as an excuse to hurry her into a marriage to a man they considered more suitable. She has had a good life, and has been content with the man her parents chose for her. And all your life you have wondered if you made the right choice.”
Haakvar stood on the table across the room from her, his expression stunned. “No one knows of that.”
“I do,” Hawkspar said. “Further, I know you made the right decision. The future is not done with you, Rya Haakvar. You greatest encounter with destiny still lies before you.”
Voices clamored around the room, men who wanted, in light of this revelation, some word of their own secret pasts, and their own unknown futures.
But Hawkspar held up a hand to silence them. “My visions of the past and future are not a game, good men. I pay a price in pain, and other prices more dear, every time I push hard into the waters for one clear view. I told Haakvar what I saw because Captain Haakvar’s participation is critical to the success of the voyage we embark upon. But you are not here for your amusement. You are here to learn of the voyage before us, and why we must go forth.”
Aaran watched her, awestruck. She was magnificent as she spelled out the dangers she had told to him, as she presented to the assembled captains the risks they faced and the doom that might yet devour them all.
He wanted to think that she was his. His heart believed it wholly, and refused to be dissuaded. But as she talked flatly of the dangers before them, and of her own certain death, either as the battle raged on, or when it was won, he at last believed her. Something about the matter-of-fact manner in which she presented her case finally made him understand that the little time they would have aboard the Taag, and perhaps the time while they fought the Feegash, was all the time they would ever have.
And sad and futile as Aaran knew it was, he loved her even more.
Hawkspar
I’d seen before we even left the Taag that I would have to make a dramatic entry. I’d known I would have to spend myself freely in reading Haakvar’s past. I knew that if I did not do these things, he would abandon Aaran for the grudge he still held against him, and we would be lost before we’d even begun. Ten ships sailed with him, ten he owned besides the Ker Nagile, and without them we would have sailed with sixteen ships. Not enough. The fleet we had with us, not even half as large as the fleet Aaran had hoped to assemble, might be enough. If we were quick, fierce, and steadfast. And very lucky.
We needed them all.
So I presented my visions with every wile my predecessor had taught me. I used my voice, I used my passion, I engaged each of the captains individually by addressing some point of the future that I could see mattered to him. I brought them all into it, but the pain behind the Eyes grew as I did. It became bad, and then fierce, and then an agony so great I thought I might stop breathing right there.
But I could not quit. I could see that they needed something more from me, and though I could not discover what it was, they did not yet have it. I bore the pain and kept going.
They asked me questions about the Feegash, and about our voyage, and I sought, and they asked more, and I sought more. Behind the Eyes, the pain billowed—there were too many people, too many streams, too many places where the currents of one life conflicted with the currents of other lives. I was fighting to keep myself upright; they asked important questions and I knew we needed the answers to them. How would we find our way around the outer perimeter of Ba’afeegash? How would we hide the fleet? How would we find the man responsible for this treachery in a strange city? How would we keep harm to innocents to a minimum? What happened if we failed?
Every question mattered.
But I had not the strength to answer them all, and behind the building pain, something inside of me snapped. I toppled backward, and collapsed.
I fell into darkness. I crashed beyond knowing, into Ossal’s prison.
“I’ll have you,” he said, and I could feel him grinning. “I’ll become you.”
It was, I came to understand, the whole of his desire. Not to have me, not to use me. But to be me. To be flesh again, to be free of the darkness and the infinite nothing. If he won, he would escape, and I would remain.
32
Aaran
Aaran noticed that she was looking pale. He caught the first sheen of sweat on her forehead and on her upper lip. He saw her breathing faster and shallower. But he didn’t realize she was in real trouble until, right in the middle of a word, she collapsed.
Her whole body went limp and neither he nor Redbird were quick enough to catch her, though Redbird’s dramatic leap from floor to table—vaulting across two unsuspecting captains to get there—certainly caught the awed attention of those present.
“Get me cold water,” he shouted. One of the junior officers, who had stayed to observe, fled, and quickly returned carrying two buckets of cold water.
Aaran dipped his finger into it and licked it—it was fresh, not salt. He cupped his hand in, and sprinkled it over her face.
She didn’t move. She barely breathed. The men gathered around him, and a low murmur filled the room.
“What’s wrong with her?” Haakvar demanded.
“Did you not hear her tell you that she pays a price for using the Eyes? Or did you, perhaps, think she exaggerated her suffering to win you over? I’ve seen the hells these things put her through,” he said. “Because she needed to reassure you, because she knows how much this matters, she tore herself apart for the lot of you.”
“She won’t die now, will she?” some fool at the back asked.
Aaran looked up at him. “Do you mistake me for Jostfar, who knows such things?”
She breathed, but only faintly. Her skin, usually warm and golden brown, was cold and the color of raw wax. Sweat soaked her. She did not twitch. She did not cry out. But her muscles were locked tight, he realized, and with every fiber of her being she gave the impression of fighting desperately for her life.
He turned to Redbird. “We need to get her back to the Moonstones. Quickly.”
He scooped Hawkspar into his arms. Holding her, he could feel the tension in her body. It frightened him. This was not exhaustion. It was not pain. It was something worse, something sinister that he could not begin to guess how to reach.
Redbird stared at Hawkspar, fear clear on her face. And something else, too. Yearning? Love?
Aaran would have thought more about that, but Hawkspar suddenly gasped, and her eyes opened.
“No,” she whispered.
“Hawkspar?”
She shuddered. Inhaled slowly. “No,” she said again. “Don’t take me. I can’t leave here yet. They were asking me our safest path. Let me find it for them. Then we can return to the Taag.”
Aaran watched Haakvar, who had moved to the front of the crowd. He was staring at Hawkspar, and he looked both wary, and concerned. “Young lady,” he said at last, “you need not tear yourself to bits over this. We can wait until you feel better to give us your answer. We have time.”
And then he saw a faint smile curl at the corners of her mouth. “No,” she said. “We don’t have time at all.”
Hawkspar
“Get someone to write down what I say,” I said. “I caught glimpses of what lies ahead before I … fell. It’s … very complex.”
One of the junior officers bolted again, returning with a sheaf of paper, ink, and several pens.
I relaxed my body and sank into the flow of time. I let its current pull me a little way forward. I looked for snags and sandbars and eddies, and I found, after a time, the truest, safest channel for our needs. “Five great, busy harbors lie about the coast of Greton. You know them.” I fought to discover their names. “Gerstaggen,” I said. “Himbrellan, Forth, Yammelrud, Meggren. Five ships from the fleet must go to each, arriving one each day for five days, berthing as far as possible from each other, resupplying, and leaving within two days. No c
rew may be permitted to walk on the docks, no matter the temptation. Two ships in each group should fly under false sail—those making harbor on the second day and on the fourth. No communication must pass between any of the ships during the seven days that the resupply takes place. Even if these rules are followed, there will be some danger.”
I followed the stream deeper. “No captain of a true-sailed ship may say other than that he’s hunting slavers. The false-flagged ships may say either that they’re pursuing treasure along the Tonk coasts, or that they’re mercenaries from one of those pacified Franican nations answering a call down in the southern Tand and hoping for good pay and a good fight.”
I heard the scribe scratching quickly. I did not move out of my stream, but I let the current flow around me for a moment while he caught up.
Haakvar said, “At the moment, there are twenty-seven ships in this fleet. There may be more.”
“There will be no more,” I said, “and two of those who have joined us, Dark Fire and Wolf Bite, have resupplied recently, and must not go into harbor under any circumstances.” I could hear startled remarks from the captains of the Dark Fire and Wolf Bite, confirming that I was correct in what I saw. “They will stand well offshore at a place called the …” I had to stop and fight for the name I needed. The safe point was a sailor’s idea more than an actual location, and in the currents of time men called it by many things. I gave it my best guess. “ … the South Current Convergence Point?”
A babble of voices, then, confirming that they knew the location.
“All the ships, on safely leaving harbor, will sail there. And then we must sail north through the Gold Channel to the Brindle Sea, traveling by night and hiding along the shores by day. This is done, is it not?”
“The Gold Channel has been a pirates’ and smugglers’ haven since men first sailed the seas,” said a voice I had not heard before. “We know it well.”
“I apologize that I have no personal knowledge of these places,” I said. “It would be easier for me to be sure I was correct in all details if I did.” I did not let myself sink too deep into the current. I did not let myself feel. I stayed apart from what I saw, so that it could not reach back to me and suck me down into the dark places with Ossal again, or pitch me into the hands of the other mad wizards suspended, forever alone together, in that horrible place.
“Things become complex when we reach Askag Bay. Somewhere along the inner shore there is a Tonk trading place, a far northern hold for those who prefer the southern plains. Danaskataak?”
“I know of it.”
“It has come under attack by slavers recently, but the Tonk there were more prepared than most places. Many of them died, but they killed all the slavers, rescued the captives, and burned the slave ships to the water.”
“Good.”
“From them, you will borrow horses to ride north through the high hills to the mountains that surround Beyltaak. You will free the horses, they will return to their people, and then we will go up the mountains.”
I stopped. The currents at this point branched and branched and branched again, too many variables breaking off in too many directions for me to choose the safe, deep channel.
The scribe finished his writing and said, “I’m ready, Oracle.”
I opened my eyes. “For now, that has to be all. Beyond, events become too spread out, too small, for me to offer guidance with any accuracy.”
They thanked me. Profusely, sincerely—all of them. It was, I realized, my suffering that they had needed to see. They did not understand it, but they had to know it, and they had to believe it was real. They had no previous knowledge of oracles. But they knew magic, and that no magic came without a price. They had to see my price—and if they only saw the tiniest outward signs of the fate I faced, still, that had been enough. They would not know that I would be denied the man I loved, that my death would not be some gentle moment in which I simply ceased to be, but a horrifying descent into madness, pursued by demons who had once been men; that time itself would swallow me up and drown me in its endless surging possibilities until the currents stripped away every bit of me, and left a babbling husk oblivious to everything but the world’s pain.
They did not know.
But I did.
33
Hawkspar
The Taag was one of the ships that had to resupply. We needed fresh water most of all, but also our share of Greton fire and other war materiel. And some fresh fruit.
I sat belowdecks, not even in the passenger common, where I could be approached, but on the single, armless chair in the room I had claimed as my own, private save only for Redbird, who guarded me. With all the little girls and penitents and acolytes gone, the seru who had stayed had their own bunks, which gave them twice the storage space they’d had before, and almost none of the noise. I’d claimed the smallest room as my own—a place where I could put up a shield and keep the waters of time at bay. I felt the shadow of my future sliding close to me. I heard the lure of time itself calling to me to drown myself in its endless possibilities and find my release from struggle and pain.
Time is too beautiful, and the now is so very hard to bear.
We sailed into Meggren under our own flag. The other women and I took turns peering out the companionway hatch, trying as best we could to get the feel of the place into which we sailed.
My first impression was of smells, and of the bitter cold.
Meggren lies far south along the continent, and Aaran, who was with us, said that in early winter Meggren Harbor froze. We were there in late spring, though, so we were seeing the place on the right end of winter, hard as I found that to imagine. I felt snow on my skin, not soft and gentle flakes, but stinging, biting pellets that came down with a steady earnestness I found frightening. The men aboard, however, seemed quite happy. According to Tuua, this was like the weather back home for most of them. And that was, apparently, something they had missed. I could not fathom why.
“Meggren’s a gorgeous place,” Aaran told me. “They build mostly with wood here, but fancifully. Tall peaked roofs, and fair spires with bulbous bases. The wood is mostly pale—aged now to silver. But they’ve painted portions of their buildings in red, orange, and purple, which are the sacred colors of the people who live here. Meggren is home to the Hamdan Gretons—one of a few separate peoples who manage to occupy Greton peaceably.”
“My view is of unthinkable numbers of ships and masts and clusters of buildings, and beyond that, low, rolling land.”
“This part of Greton is nearly flat. North, it gets rougher.”
“I don’t like flat land very much.”
Aaran laughed. “You’ll develop a keen appreciation for it when we have to go trekking up into the worst mountains in the world to finish off the Feegash.”
“Perhaps.”
I did not tell him that, with the limits of my vision, flat land felt much like the sea. Directionless and bleak. He looked at the stars and knew where he was. I had no guides, and so drifted in the little wooden shell of the ship, feeling the hugeness of the vast ocean around us, before us, behind us, beneath us. Feeling the monsters of the deep gliding down there, tracking us and watching us, out of our reach but perhaps contemplating us as a light dinner between their midday and their late-night meals.
I understood now why the Oracles and the seru did not venture away from the Citadel. Walls made their world manageable. Kept it in neat borders, with a small, defined sky, a neat slice of land, a bit of harbor, some cliffs. It must have felt very cozy to someone not looking for a way to leave it. They must have felt quite safe.
I could not imagine the sea ever—not sailing the deeps, where sometimes it was water so far down that I lost the bottom, and it might have been nothing but water stretching down forever, a wet version of the sky above.
“You’d like the place if you were to go to it. The folk are decent enough, the food in the taverns and hostels is amazing, street vendors cart about hot drinks and h
ot meats that they will sell you for near nothing. They speak a reasonable version of Trade—it falls happily enough on the ear.”
“You go all these many places, and you do not worry that you are far from your own people.”
And Aaran laughed. “I’m Tonk. Even alone, we’re never far from our people, or far from Jostfar. That is one of the great joys of being Tonk.”
“I wonder if I shall ever feel that way.”
When we were assigned our dock in the deep bay, we passengers had to go belowdecks and stay there. Everyone knew that Tonks did not sail with women, and the presence of women would raise questions. Make us memorable. We did not wish to be memorable.
Belowdecks, sitting in the passenger commons, some of the seru and I fell to talking. And because the rules of the monastery no longer bound us, we fell to talking of men.
“Some of the sailors have been most kind,” Rabi, one of the Seru Moonstone, said.
Obsidian Keenyn, a tall, broad-hipped woman, said, “There is a marine named Gabaan who sits and talks with me. And we have … touched. He is most patient, and yet, I find myself wanting him to be less patient. I am so curious. And sometimes … hungry, though that does not seem the right word.”
“Gabaan seems a good man,” Rabi said. “I have seen the two of you sparring together. He has a grace about him, and he never tries to hurt you the way Sera Obsidian Dance Copper Soritotara back in the Citadel did.”
Keenyn sighed. “He sits with me at table some nights and tells me of the fights he’s been in. He’s been rescuing slaves for a long time—slavers burned most of his village. I mean his taak.”
And Rabi sighed. “They have such sad stories, most of them. Like ours, but on the other end. We were the ones taken, they the ones left behind. Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that all this time, the ones left have been looking for us?”
