"Tell them that." Crowe left his longsword where it was and grabbed a shorter cutlass, which had a nice solid hand guard to punch with, and a fairly wide blade like that of a machete. On a ship, nasty brutish and short was the best type of weapon. He didn't want to get the end of the longsword stuck in a plank or beam somewhere and thus leave himself open to being gutted.
"We should stop them boarding," Farran snapped.
"How do you suggest we do that?" Margrave asked icily.
"Prepare to repel boarders!"
It was too late anyway; the first webbed arms were appearing over the sides. The creatures were covered in repulsively slimy green scales, with spines rippling down their backs. The huge heads were split by a wide maw filled with needle-sharp teeth. Fist-sized inscrutable black eyes gazed out at the crew.
Nobody waited for the creatures to co-ordinate their attack. Crowe drew his short, machete-like cutlass and grabbed a belaying pin and leapt at them. Margrave was lunging forward right next to him, stabbing at one creature, while Crowe backhanded another in the face with the belaying pin and stabbed it in the armpit.
Its anatomy must have been different from a man's, as this didn't stop it. It leaped forward, slobbering, and Crowe sliced some of the spines from its back and kicked it in the guts. It staggered back and Crowe punched the dagger up through its jaw. It dropped at last, but another creature turned and offered him more spines, by shooting them from its back. He dropped behind some barrels just in time.
He rose again to see Farran raise his hands abruptly, the fingers curling into claws. Crowe realised what was about to happen and dove to the side just in time. A ball of crackling ice flew past his head and slammed into the nearest creature. Its scales froze and exploded into glass-like shards as it took its next step. It swung round, bleeding from a crater in its side and lunged for Margrave. The Captain fell, but Crowe intercepted the creature before it could deliver a finishing blow, his cutlass biting into the inside of its upper arm.
It fell back, screaming, and Crowe brought a fatal blow down into its neck.
The deck of the Belle was a mass of struggling bodies, but the sailors were definitely pushing the creatures back into the sea. Crowe managed to pick up another cutlass from a fallen sailor and took off a webbed and clawed hand that was slashing towards him, before slashing the creature's throat.
Leaping over the twitching body, he kicked another creature off of Margrave, who gasped for breath now that its hands were free of his throat. It rose, lunging for Crowe, but the bos'un speared it through both shoulders with a pair of daggers, and cut its throat.
"You should not be here," it hissed suddenly, through its wound.
"It speaks!" Margrave was amazed.
"Leave, while you can," the creature insisted. "Or die."
"We're not the ones who'll be dying," Farran told the thing.
The creature looked at him. "There is no escape."
"What sort of city is on this island?" Margrave asked. "Is it yours? Do your people live here?"
The creature spat black slime. "This is no city."
"What is it then?"
"It is a bridge."
"A bridge? To where?"
"To Kerberos."
All the men around instinctively looked upwards, then Crowe and Margrave looked at each other. "I'm not much of a nautical cove," Crowe began, "but I've walked across a few bridges over the years and they all have spans. Do you see a span here?"
"No."
"It will reveal itself at the appointed time," the creature burbled. "Leave or die." It stopped breathing then.
"Throw it overboard," Farran ordered. The bos'un glared at him and looked to Margrave for instruction. Margrave gave him a hurried nod, and the creature and its comrades were returned to the waters out of which they had climbed.
No-one felt much like breakfast after the fight, but they went through the motions anyway, before a party was put together to explore the island.
Though it was called the Isle of the Star, it wasn't particularly star shaped. The ground resembled plain old white rock crystal or glass, as far as Crowe could tell.
There were no diamonds or jewels on the beach either. There was nothing but more rock crystal and chunks of broken glass. There was no sign of vegetation either and the beach simply rose up into a tall central peak. The centre of the island was less a hill proper than a twisted spire, like the horn of some sea beast. If so, it was a beast that was wracked by disease. Its surface seemed to weep, as droplets and tears left trails between long-worn pustules.
It didn't look much like anything even remotely valuable. Crowe suddenly knew with a certainty that the legends had been started by people who had never been out here. The Isle of the Lump of Shapeless Glass wouldn't have brought a storyteller many tots of rum in even the most desperate dockside tavern.
"Well, Farran," Margrave said. "Is this... Is this it?" Margrave was too professional to sound as disappointed as he clearly wanted to.
"This is the Isle of the Star," Farran replied smoothly. "And it has a value."
"What value can such a place possibly have?"
"Its history, Captain Margrave. That is its value."
"You mean this may have been built by the older races? They may have left something?" Margrave asked hopefully.
"Something like that."
The bos'un picked up a chunk of knobbly glass and threw it at Farran's feet. "Is this what you call diamond?"
Farran made a placating gesture. "Diamonds don't sparkle when they're first found. They have to be cut and polished -"
"Aye, that they do," another sailor joined in. "But I've worked in a diamond mine and rough diamonds don't look like this rubbish. This is slag, not gemstones."
"Maybe the people who used to live here made jewellery and smelted gold. This could be what's left," Farran suggested. "There may yet be profit to be found elsewhere on the island."
"What people?"
"You're standing on one." Startled, the bos'un looked down, as did Crowe and saw that there was indeed a vaguely humanoid skeleton set into the translucent earth below him. "Somebody used to live here."
Something else caught Crowe's eye, on a smooth blister a few feet above. He lurched over and realised that what he was seeing wasn't on the blister, it was inside it.
The skull of some ancient beast, full of crumbling fangs, was lying on its side deep inside the rock. Crowe had seen flies trapped in amber and sold in the markets of Freiport, but he had never seen anything like this. "What it is?"
"Sea devils," a sailor muttered.
"Or Dwarves," another said.
"He's the tallest sodding dwarf I've ever seen, mate," Crowe replied. Margrave could only shake his head in wonder. "I've never seen such a creature. Whatever it is, it must be an ancient thing."
Crowe turned away in disgust, walking back towards the longboats. This place wasn't right. Not for him and not for anyone.
"Where are you going?" Farran shouted.
"Back to the ship."
"Send water and food across," Margrave said. "We may camp here tonight."
"Rather you than me."
Crowe rowed back to the Belle alone, his head buzzing with a sick and dizzy feeling. At first he thought it was still the images of the trapped bones that was making him feel strange, but as he climbed back aboard the ship he began to realise that in fact there was a literal buzzing in his ears.
It was a sound that Crowe had never heard before. No-one on board had ever heard anything like it before, and everyone was looking around them in a mixture of terror and bafflement. It was a hissing and sizzling sound, descending from the skies and filling the air. Crowe could feel it quivering in the breaths he took.
Someone pointed to the sky, and cried out: "Look!"
There were no clouds in the sky, but even the deep blue of the day was peeling itself apart, as the very air shuddered in agony. The air was tearing itself apart.
The Isle of the Star was burning, glowing from the insi
de out with the silver light of a million of the stars that twinkled in the night. In a heartbeat, it was too bright to look at. Crowe spun, trying to find a direction in which he could still see. There was a sudden silence and then Crowe felt the blinding starlight burn every muscle in his body. His hair was straining to escape from its roots and every part of him was screaming in the fire that consumed him.
There were footsteps thumping across the deck and the sound of men's' voices. Crowe blinked the water out of his eyes and tried to look over the edge of the barrel in which he sat.
A startled sailor was looking at him. Crowe didn't recognize the man. Maybe he was a pirate. More likely he was a dream, or a figment of Crowe's imagination. Perhaps he was dead and the sailor was just another soul that had joined him in Kerberos.
"Mister Farrow!" the man shouted. "I think there's a man alive here!"
More men came running at his call, but Crowe couldn't even tell what they looked like; the blackness was descending over him once more.
"If you call this alive," he heard a voice say.
CHAPTER 19
Gabriella took some time to let the story sink in. No wonder Crowe was such a troubled man, as well as troublesome, soul.
"How did your ship get back through the Stormwall?"
"I have no idea. I blacked out and when I came round, I was being... rescued."
She decided not to press the issue. There was magic involved here, and she didn't know much about magic. "You told me about the fire and how you got burned."
"It's not exactly something that would slip my mind easily."
"You never said where the fire came from."
"Of course I bloody didn't, because I don't know! That's the whole point. It was like it came from Kerberos itself. Just like that bloody sea-thing said, all right? There was a bridge between Kerberos and the Isle, and everyone in its path died."
"Except that isn't the end of the story. There was the other ship, the one that picked you up."
"The Vigilant."
"Why did you do what you did there?"
"Self-preservation, girlie. Looking after number one. They were going to try do something I really didn't want to repeat and I tried to stop them."
"You killed them to protect them?" Somehow, saying it made it almost logical, which wasn't her intention.
Crowe blinked and rubbed his forehead. "I'm not looking for forgiveness, pet. Not from you, not from anyone."
Gabriella thought long and hard before answering. "I understand."
Kesar stood on the slope of the rise upon which they had made camp and watched the glittering peak of Freedom through a spyglass.
"It's ideal," he commented to Preceptor DeBarres. "All of Kell's little friends, bottled up in there. Unless we force them out and they manage to escape into the closest settlements."
"There are no settlements nearby. They've already displaced the goblin nests, and those have been dealt with. Unless, of course, they scatter into the Sardenne."
"They would be most welcome to do that," Kesar murmured. "They may find it better than the bridge to Kerberos."
"You mentioned that a moment ago. You could try to sound more ironic."
Kesar smiled. "But it is indeed a bridge to Kerberos."
DeBarres, standing next to Kesar, looked at him disbelievingly. "What? You're not seriously telling me those heretics are going to..."
"They're going to see the light, Preceptor. It is a bridge to Kerberos, I assure you. Well, perhaps it would more accurate of me to say it is a bridge from Kerberos."
"A bridge has two ends. But not always two directions of travel."
Kesar rose and strolled towards his tent, DeBarres following. Kesar began to neaten his hair with a small comb, absent-mindedly, as he looked up towards Kerberos. "Tell me, Preceptor, do you know where magic comes from?"
"From the Lord of All, as does everything in the world." He grunted. "I know there are those who think otherwise, however."
"People don't have access to the histories that you and I, or the Anointed Lord, do."
"I'm only a soldier, Eminence. A good one, of course, but a soldier nonetheless."
"You sound very sure of yourself."
"The Lord of All gave me a particular set of skills and talents and Katherine Makennon and Eminence Voivode saw where those talents best lay." He smiled calmly, knowing it would needle Kesar. "Between three such august personages, I can't imagine they're all wrong. Can you?"
Kesar's lip curled as he gave DeBarres a cold stare.
"Mid-morning the day after tomorrow,'" Gabriella said. A light drizzle had begun and so Gabriella and Crowe had withdrawn into their tent. They squatted opposite each other on low stools, while she tried to light an oil lamp.
"Yeah, that's what Kesar said."
"Which means tomorrow now. Why be so specific?" she asked.
"I told you not to trust him, Dez. That bloke's got something up his sleeve."
"But whatever it is, it can't be military..."
Her mind was racing, and she found herself fighting against it. It was plunging headlong in a direction she didn't want to go in. "It could be something to do with -"
"Aw crap," Crowe muttered. "The bridge. Those things we met at the Isle of the Star, they knew in advance what was going to happen! Like, it was a regular thing...
"And if this place is the same."
"And it is."
"Because that would mean Kesar knows about the regular thing, yet no-one else had ever heard of it." Her voice faltered, and he knew she was beginning to get an inkling of what he was trying to get her to see.
"You told me yourself," Crowe said, "the higher you rise in the ranks of the Final Faith, the more access you get to ancient knowledge, to records written by Faith scholars over the centuries. The average person doesn't really believe that goblins really exist, but every member of the Swords knows about them. I doubt you know the complexities of the Faith's accounts as well as Eminence Kesar does, in his role as Treasurer, right? And I'd be willing to bet that somewhere in Scholten, somebody - maybe Makennon, maybe an Eminence, I don't know - that somebody knew what the Isle of the Star was, and knew what Freedom Point was, and damn well knew what was going to happen and when!"
"Right... So?"
"Joachim Foll takes a pot-shot at Rhodon and all bloody hell breaks loose. Kell and his mates in the Brotherhood are on the run, but where do they run to? Luckily Kell has a hideaway, in the form of a fancy glass mountain, out where no humans live..."
"Freedom."
"So the word spreads, the sinners and the heretics and the Brotherhood all make a bee-line for this fabulous new gaff, right? The goblins would make mincemeat of these no-hopers, but there are some good magicians in the Brotherhood. So the way is cleared out for everyone to come here."
"And in a place where they can all burn together." A chill ran down Gabriella's spine. "Only the Brothers and sinners and heretics who need to be cleansed didn't come alone. They brought their friends and families and lovers. People who have committed no heresy. All to burn together."
"If you're going to celebrate, I want nothing to do with it."
"The deaths of innocents are never a cause for celebration. Never." She shook her head. "But Kell has been sending people here for months, via the Golden Huntress..."
"He's had two years to get this place up and running."
"But how did he find out about it in the first place?"
He took several deep breaths. "Why don't we go and ask him? Where do we find a way in?"
"From the Brotherhood, of course."
The Brotherhood were everywhere in Freedom. While the women cooked and tended children and danced, the men were drilling. It wasn't just the mercenaries, either. Groups of civilian men were being enticed to join in. There was a literal series of levels to their drills, with men and boys in casual clothing trying out simple exercises on lower terraces, rising up to men in uniform leather jerkins practicing with weapons on the higher terraces
.
Crowe tried out a couple of the regimes and found it was handy for getting warmed up; he has spent too long in the saddle over the past couple of weeks and some muscles were feeling the worse for wear.
This gave him the chance to listen to what the men in training were saying. Most of them chatted about girls and booze and friends or family they had left behind, but some were too proud of their achievements here to keep their mouths shut. Soon, a well-trained man in a red robe came by the terrace on which Crowe was practicing with a short staff. The man had a Brotherhood tattoo on his forehead, of all places. Crowe could hardly believe it; the bloke obviously didn't get the secret part of a secret society.
A more disturbing thought occurred to him; perhaps the Brotherhood wanted to be less secret, impossible though it seemed. He gave the man a friendly nod. Then he spotted Gabriella beckoning for him to come over.
Goran Kell walked down the steps of the Glass Mountain, enjoying the sight spread out before him. Four men in red robes, all with Brotherhood tattoos on their foreheads, flanked him, though he was confident he didn't need them.
Chaga, on the other hand, he did need, but Chaga had never returned from Andon. Kell could guess what had happened and, for one of the few times in his life, felt a pang of sadness.
He continued on, looking over the terraces. There were plenty of pretty girls to amuse him, but for now he was more interested in the men who were being trained.
"How are they progressing?" he asked the robed man to his left.
"Quite well, considering. The Dreamweed makes them open to suggestion and the lifestyle makes them fit. They'll make good soldiers."
"They'd better." He smiled to himself. Freedom, what a joke. "There's a new Brotherhood coming and they'll spearhead it."
Gabriella wasn't crazy, of course, despite that being Crowe's first thought when she expressed an intent to get the Brotherhood to give her Kell. She wasn't mad enough to try making one of the men around here confess. She simply picked one to follow.
The Light of Heaven Page 26
