Dragons on the Sea of Night (9 page)

‘What are you doing, High Minister?' Qaylinn said. His face was dark with suspicion and anger. ‘I doubt I need remind you that the Chamber of Prayer is a holy place. And I am hardly naive enough to believe you stumbled into it by error.'

‘Oh, there was no error, sayann,' Ojime said, walking slowly and methodically toward the Rosh'hi. ‘I am here for an important and profound reason.'

‘And that is?'

The high minister was so close to Qaylinn when he pulled the knife that Qaylinn had no time to react. His mind afire, Ojime plunged the blade into the Rosh'hi's chest and, when Qaylinn did not fall, stabbed him again and again while he ground his teeth with the effort of splitting tissue, gristle and bone.

Death filled Qaylinn's eyes and he fell without a sound to the polished floor, a fountain of blood pumping with the last beats of his heart. The blood spread in a black, pristine pool at his feet. In it was reflected both slayer and victim.

Staring down at the dead man, his chest heaving, the high minister said, ‘Not every question deserves an answer, sayann.' Then, throwing the bloody knife into a corner of the chamber, he strode swiftly and purposefully out of the temple.

A frenzied knocking came upon the villa's front door in the hour of false dawn. Moichi, half-dozing with his arm around Aufeya, started up. As he strode down the dark hallway his knuckles rubbed the sleep from his eyes. It seemed weeks since he had had a decent night's repose.

He opened the door to see one of his crew and, just behind him, one of the Fe'edjinn guards Tamuk had promised to post along the perimeter of the property.

‘Cap'n!–'

‘Is this one of your men?' the guard asked crossly. ‘He claims–'

‘He's mine,' Moichi said, directing his gaze to the crewman whose face was white with anxiety. ‘What brings you–here?'

‘It is Arasomu, Cap'n. He went ashore on leave and was supposed to return to the ship for Rat Watch.'

‘Four hours ago,' Moichi said, as Aufeya came up behind him.

‘And he hasn't returned yet,' the mate said. ‘With you ashore and–'

Moichi cut him short. ‘Where was he headed, do you know?'

The crewman nodded. ‘
The Shadow Warrior
.'

‘A bad place,' the Fe'edjinn said darkly. ‘We only go there in pairs, and then only when it is necessary. It opens at midnight and closes at dawn. Women and sometimes, for the right customer, men sell themselves for an hour of bliss. It is also rumored that almost any illicit substance can be had there for a price.'

‘Where is it?' Moichi barked.

‘At the head of Red Spice Quay,' the Fe'edjinn said. ‘But I wouldn't recommend–'

But by that time Moichi had pulled the door shut and, with Aufeya at his heels, was hurrying toward the front gates.

‘Don't say I didn't warn you!' the guard called. ‘There's a murder there so often we no longer bother investigating.' But he was just as happy. With the occupants of the villa gone he sought out a soft spot beneath a date palm and slept until his relief arrived.

At the far end of Red Spice Quay, a sleek, four-masted schooner was being loaded with bolts of wool and flax, crates of livestock to be taken into the far reaches of Kintai to the north. But the head or landward end of the quay was deserted. The Shadow Warrior crouched sullenly in a narrow space between two gargantuan warehouses, shuttered and black-faced.

A single red lantern creaked as it swayed above the narrow door. The crewman, who had hurried after them huffing and puffing to keep up, cowered against the façade of one warehouse. Moichi sent him back to the
Tsubasa
with a curt order. Then, grasping the brass knob, patinated green by the salt air, he pushed roughly into the interior.

It was overly hot inside the place, as if a blast oven's white iron doors had been left open. They found themselves in a single great room with a low beamed ceiling, black with years of smoke and soot. Red lanterns lit the room in a rubiate monochrome. A scarred, metal-topped bar ran along the rear and dark mirrors everywhere reflected their moving images. But the mirrors were in shards, flecks littered across the blackened wood floor. There were great dents in the bar, as if a giant had smashed his fists upon it. The room gave onto a small, cramped dining room, littered with overturned chairs, cracked tables and splinters of crusted dishes. Behind were a filthy kitchen and toilet facilities. All were deserted. But the ovens were very hot, and the stove was lit and had obviously been on for hours. A pot of stew was burning, and Moichi took it off the flame. A flat loaf of unleavened chestnut-flour bread lay on a nearby wooden cutting board, which was otherwise dusted with crumbs.

‘By the Oruboros, what happened here? It's as if a legion of berserkers was let loose in here,' Moichi said. ‘And where is everyone?'

Aufeya looked around. ‘It's as if they all disappeared in the blink of an eye.'

‘Passing strange.' Moichi's nostrils dilated as he poked his head out of the kitchen. ‘Perhaps there is more to the Shadow Warrior than meets the eye. After all, hiding contraband would be a primary goal of any such establishment.'

But an hour's futile search revealed nothing. He returned to the toilet to relieve himself. It was a particularly squalid place that stank so badly he was convinced the privy had never been cleaned out. He held his breath while he urinated, and that was when he saw the faint outline on the wall. At first, he thought it was another crack in the soiled stucco, but as he rebuttoned his trousers he saw that the line was perfectly vertical. He stepped away from the privy and, putting the flat of one hand to one side of the line, pushed hard. Nothing happened. He pushed on the other side and part of the wall swung inward and he saw the first treads of a steep and well-worn flight of stairs.

He called for Aufeya and told her to bring a lantern. Together, they went up the stairs. On the second floor, the stink of sweat and stale sex was everywhere. They went down a narrow hallway off which were doors on either side. Peering briefly into the tiny cubicles, they observed insensate couples or, in some cases, triads, naked, sprawled together. A peculiar sweet stench filled their nostrils.

‘Opayne,' Moichi whispered. ‘I thought I caught a whiff of it downstairs.'

‘Opayne?'

‘A powerful hallucinogen that purports to transport those in the throes of sexual bliss.'

‘Now that sounds interesting,' Aufeya said.

But Moichi shook his head. ‘It is highly addictive, and sometimes fatal. The effect on the brain is highly unpredictable.'

Aufeya shuddered as they proceeded from room to room. ‘All of these people have used the drug?'

‘Undoubtedly. You or I could kick them to a pulp and they would not awaken.'

By this time, they were almost at the end of the hall. Moichi opened the door on his left.

‘But they will awaken sometime today?' Aufeya asked uneasily.

‘Chill take it!' Moichi cried, standing stiffly in the doorway.

Aufeya pushed against him to gain a look at the shadow-shrouded room, and gasped. ‘Arasomu.'

Moichi's First Mate was spread-eagled across a bed that had become a viscous lake of glistening innards that still seemed to crawl. The fecal stench was overpowering.

‘This just happened!' Moichi said hoarsely as he drew one of his twin jewel-handled dirks.

‘What happened to him?' Aufeya whispered.

It was a legitimate question. That Arasomu was dead was beyond dispute, but the method of his murder was almost beyond comprehension. Great ragged slashes had been scored vertically down his chest and abdomen so that all his ribs, fractured into shards, stuck out pinkly from the ribbons of his excoriated flesh. And, below, his viscera had been pulled out of him in a frenzy of death-lust.

‘I've seen this before,' Moichi said with such fierce emotion in his voice that Aufeya became even more alarmed.

‘Seen what before?' she said, clearly terrified.

‘He has been killed by a Makkon,' Moichi said in a voice that indicated that he could not believe what he was saying or seeing. And now he could not stop the crawling down his spine because his worst fears had been confirmed.

A horrific howling filled the room, and the shadows shuddered, dying and coming alive all at once. Moichi caught a brief glimpse of a pair of baleful eyes, their orange lambent in the semi-darkness of the quivering torchlight.

The flame was almost extinguished as the Makkon flew through the room, its bulk filling it now. Its great taloned feet crushed the bed and Arasomu with it. The thick, spiked tail thrashed from side to side, and the claws on its upper extremities were fully extended, black as obsidian, catching light and holding it, as if it could suck the living energy out of the atmosphere.

The howling came again, like a physical presence, as Moichi thrust Aufeya behind him, back toward the doorway. ‘Get out!' he shouted, as the Makkon's beak opened. Where its thick tongue should have been, ululating its unearthly battle cries, was nothing but a repulsive black stump, quivering and pulsing in mute rage.

The Makkon's forepaw shot out, grazing Moichi, spinning him around, sprawling Aufeya onto her back. Moichi spun, simultaneously slashing with the blade of his dirk. But the blade merely skidded harmlessly off the Makkon's skin, plated like armor.

The Chaos beast thrust his claw at Moichi's chest, the ebon talons shearing cured leather and metal alike. The talons closed and the Makkon pulled Moichi toward its open beak.

Moichi could sense the chill, fetid breath of the beast, and he felt as if all the oxygen were being pulled from the air. As if he were underwater, he could not breathe. Still, he struggled to gain a foothold, a place of purchase upon the plated chest of the Makkon. The beast was vulnerable in its mouth, as attested to by its lack of a tongue. Someone or something had cut it out, and even through the terror of the situation Moichi found himself wanting to meet whoever had mutilated the Makkon. He fought to bring his dirk up and over, so that he could plunge its point into the soft tissue of the Makkon's throat.

The edge of the blade caught the Makkon's lower beak, sliding along the surface, and the Makkon staggered backward, smashing a hole in the outer wall of the building. In rage, it began to squeeze the life out of Moichi, slowly, inexorably, agonizingly, its orange eyes gaining in intensity with the escalation of Moichi's pain.

Through the rent in the wall blue moonlight fused with the yellow-red torchlight tumbling over the antagonists, bathing Aufeya, and in so doing, revealing a remarkable transformation.

Where an instant before Aufeya had been, now lay a tall slender woman with the head of an ibis. She was dressed in cloth-of-gold with wings of feathers protruding from her shoulderblades. Then the light changed subtly or perhaps it was the lurching of the antagonists throwing shadows against the still-melding light sources. Whatever the case, in another instant she had become a statuesque woman with the coolly glowing skin of pearls. Her thick, twining hair was platinum flex and her eyes were cabochon rubies. Her long, curving nails were translucent sapphires and her partially revealed breasts were fire opals. Then, the light shifted again, and she was revealed as a far smaller woman with a flat face and high cheekbones. Her skin was as dusky as Moichi's, as any Iskaman or Adenese. Her eyes were the color of cobalt chips and her long hair, plaited into a single braid was the color of freshly scrubbed copper. She was clad in a curious mirrored corselet over which was a black doeskin vest. Trousers of the same material were tucked into well-worn hunting boots that came to just above her knees.

She twisted her torso so that one mirrored facet on her breasts caught the moonlight and, reaching out her hand, her long, slender fingers closed over the resulting flash of reflected light. When they opened, she was holding an odd weapon that looked like nothing more than an icicle, so clear and glistening was it. She drew back her arm and hurled it at the Makkon's shoulder. It pierced hardened skin and flesh, disappeared completely inside the beast.

The Makkon roared, arching back and, simultaneously, letting go of Moichi, who swiped at it with his dirk. Black viscous fluid, sticky as glue, drooled from the wound. Still howling, it drove through the rent in the wall, disappearing instantly into the shadows of the massed warehouses.

Moichi, head bowed, hands on his knees, gasped air into his lungs. When at last he was able to rise, he turned to Aufeya, who stood, looking as she had always looked to him. She stood with the torch raised high, far back in the doorway, safe where the moonlight could not reach her.

‘Are you all right?' she asked.

He nodded. ‘With perhaps the aid of God.'

‘The God of the Iskamen,' she said. ‘How I envy you that.'

It was an odd thing for her to say, but given the circumstances he thought no more of it. But the memory stayed and when, much later, it surfaced, he knew who had said it before: the sorceress, Sardonyx.

But by then it was far too late.

The Dai-San speaks:

If only I could make Chiisai understand, but she is only human, after all, though Bujun. I have a great and abiding kinship with the Bujun. It was their sorcery that created me; it is their secrets which invigorate me. But these are not secrets which can be passed on, like the lore of a people, from one generation to the next. I am enmeshed in secrets, now. That is my karma. But it is wearisome, sometimes, because, as with Chiisai, they distance me from all others save the Kaer'n
.

I look deep into Chiisai's eyes and I know her heart. She has joined with me many times and those couplings have been as much fierce physical contests as they have been tender mercies for her. She is the Kunshin's daughter, after all, and by definition untouchable. But I know her. She is fierce and proud and not a little bit sad. I know, too, that she is the less sad for knowing me. That is not a boast, merely fact which I can read at every moment in her eyes
.