Ferran's Map (6 page)

As she turned around, she glanced over the
side of the ship at the riverbank. She saw a pile of rotted wood
and mulch, but then something unexpected caught her attention. She
paused, her gaze traveling back. She blinked. Then squinted.
Is
that a body?
She stared harder, moving along the railing as the
ship continued upriver.

A thin, crumpled body lay among the reeds.
It was a female, covered in muck from the river, barely discernible
as human. Water lapped around the woman’s legs.

“There’s a woman!” she yelled, pointing over
the side of the railing. “Hey! There’s a woman on the
riverbank!”

The Dracians were too busy straightening out
the boat, furling and unfurling various sails, and swinging the jib
back into place to pay Sora any heed. She looked up at the crow’s
nest where Burn sat high above the ship, his head looking in the
opposite direction. She needed to get his attention, now.

Nothing else for it.
Sora cupped her
hands to her mouth and screamed, “Woman overboard!”

Two or three heads turned to look at her.
She saw Burn’s ears twitch and he looked down, leaning over the
edge of the crow’s nest. She signaled to him, then pointed over the
side of the boat.

Burn put his fingers to his lips and
whistled loudly. “Aye!” the Wolfy picked up her cry, roaring in his
deep, brassy baritone, “Woman overboard!”

The sailors looked around in confusion. Sora
waved her arms animatedly. “We need to drop anchor!
Where is
Silas?
” she called.

Then, seemingly from nowhere, Crash appeared
on deck. He strode swiftly to her side, light on his feet, swift as
a shadow. “What is it?” he asked. He gave her a quick once-over,
then his voice turned wry. “You don’t even look wet.”

Sora glared. “Not me, of course! There’s a
woman over on the banks. She looks injured.” She pointed to the
thick patch of weeds and half-rotted logs. “See her?”

Crash followed her pointing finger and
stared for a moment.

“Caprion returned,” Sora continued
impatiently. “He said there’s a village in trouble nearby and we
need to stop the ship.”

“Not our problem,” Crash grunted.

Sora growled in frustration. “What if she’s
still alive? She’ll die of exposure before long! By the four winds,
where is Silas?”

Crash let out a short breath, then stepped
onto the railing without a word. He cast her a glance as if to say,
This had better be worth it
, then leapt from the boat into
the water.

Sora gasped as he fell smoothly through the
air and entered the river with hardly a splash. Within seconds he
broke the surface of the water and swam powerfully toward shore.
The boat continued forward and she momentarily panicked. “Man
overboard!” she screamed. “Drop anchor! Hey! Stop!” She waved her
arms wildly at the Dracians on deck.

Captain Silas finally strode onto the bow.
He was a short man, as all Dracians were—only an inch or so taller
than herself. He was dressed tastefully in a starched white shirt
and long blue greatcoat with tall black boots. A leather thong tied
his silky red hair, the color of shined copper, at the base of his
neck. Dracians were usually lighthearted and mischievous, but today
he wore an irritated scowl.

“What is this about?” he demanded as he
stalked toward her.

Sora raised her chin a notch. “Caprion said
there is an abandoned village in the forest and we need to drop
anchor. Also, two of your men didn’t return with him. And…!” She
pointed to Crash’s figure in the water. “There’s a woman on the
banks. Crash jumped the railing to help her.”

The assassin reached the shallows and began
trudging through the thick mud and cattails, his black hair slick
with water. Silas saw him, paused, then looked skyward with great
exasperation.

“What a waste of a day,” he muttered. “I
should toss you all overboard!” Then he turned back to his crew,
who were waiting expectantly up on the rigging. “You heard her,
lads! Drop anchor!”

The crew scurried to obey.

He cast her an angry look. “Let’s hope the
anchor catches on something. Otherwise your assassin will have to
find his own way to the City of Crowns. And if any of my men are
missing, I’ll cut off that damned Harpy’s wings!” He turned and
stalked back to the helm.

Burn whistled twice more from the crow’s
nest as the rear anchor dropped into the water. Sora could feel its
sudden weight drag at the back of the boat. They continued to surge
forward a short ways; then the anchor caught against the bottom of
the river and the boat came to a sudden halt.

“Lock her in!” Silas roared from the wheel.
“Secure the front anchor! Raise the sails! Get off your arses and
work!”

Sora waited impatiently as the sailors
prepared a small skiff to travel ashore. Eventually, her mother and
Caprion appeared on deck, deep in conversation. When Lori saw her,
she asked immediately, “What’s this about a woman?”

Sora pointed over the side of the boat to
the nearby bank, where Crash knelt among the tall reeds next to the
still woman’s form. It was hard to tell if the woman was injured or
dead.

“Can you take us down there?” Lori asked,
turning to Caprion.

The Harpy nodded, then made a few swift
gestures with one hand, a wordless sign language that Sora had seen
him use before, though she didn’t know its significance. A white
light began to engulf her, starting at her feet and slowly working
its way up her legs. She felt a slight vibration pass over her
skin, like music with no sound. A similar light crept over Lori’s
body. Next, with a wave of his hand, Caprion lifted Lori and Sora
swiftly into the air and transported them over the side of the boat
as gently as a leaf on the wind, across the Little Rain tributary
to the far bank of the river.

Their brief flight over the river felt
terribly unnatural to Sora. She retained her sense of gravity, as
though she stood on solid ground even as the water flowed
underneath her. Her Cat’s Eye remained silent—a disturbing
sensation, since it usually responded to any sort of magic, warning
her with the sound of bells in her ear. She subconsciously touched
her left hand to the stone, gripping the necklace in her bandaged
palm.
Where are you?
she thought worriedly. She felt a
slight stirring in the back of her mind, but that was all.

Finally, they reached the tall sandbanks and
cattails where the woman’s body lay. A few yards downstream, Ferran
leapt over the narrow bow of his houseboat. He sloshed through the
shallows toward them. He was a tall man of athletic build, a few
years older than her mother, with brown hair and quick gray eyes.
Lori waved to him as he neared.

Sora went directly to Crash on shore. He
stood over the body of the woman. His eyes turned to her as she
approached, and he took a step back. “The plague,” he said
quietly.

Lori overheard him. Her mother pushed them
out of the way and made room for herself. “The plague?” she echoed,
not truly a question. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and
tied it around her mouth, then knelt next to the woman, turning her
over on her back.

The woman appeared pale and motionless, as
good as a corpse, though as Sora looked closer, she noted the
fragile rise and fall of her chest. Lori motioned for Ferran to
grab the woman’s shoulders and they dragged her out of the water,
onto the bank. She checked the woman’s pulse and breathing, her
eyes swiftly taking stock of her symptoms. “It’s the plague,” she
confirmed. “Her pulse is weak. Another hour and she’ll be
dead.”

“What is she doing out here all alone?” Sora
asked. “Was she looking for help?” No one answered, of course,
because no one knew.

Her mother checked for other injuries,
touching the woman as briefly as possible. Lori finally sat back on
her heels. “I can’t treat her here,” she said. “We’ll have to move
her back to the ship.”

“Isn’t this plague contagious?” Caprion
asked logically. “Not to sound
inhumane
,
but is that such a good idea? You would put Silas’ crew at
risk.”

The four looked at him. The Harpy stared
back expectantly. Then Crash said dryly, “On that note, where are
the missing members of Silas’ crew? I suppose something
inhumane
happened to them?”

Caprion shot him an angry glare. “We passed
over a village in the forest. It appeared abandoned, but the
Dracians wanted to investigate.”

“And they…what, disappeared?” Crash asked
sarcastically.

“We touched ground and they went off on
their own. We became separated,” Caprion replied. He became
troubled and looked at Sora. “When I found them, they were not
themselves. They became violent. Something affected their minds. I
had to leave them behind. Is this a symptom of the disease?”

Everyone in the circle seemed alarmed.

“I don’t know,” Sora admitted. She felt very
cold. “Someone has to tell Silas.”

No one seemed eager to do that.

“This woman must be from the village,”
Lorianne suggested. Her eyes returned to the prone figure on the
ground. “If we can cure her, we can find out what happened. From
what I’ve seen, deranged behavior can be a symptom of the plague,
but only in its very late stages, just before death, when the
sickness reaches the brain….” Lori chewed her lip in thought. “If
we remove the Dark God’s magic from this woman’s body, then we can
safely move her to the ship. Sora?” She turned to her daughter. “We
have need of your Cat’s Eye.”

Sora was deep in thought, pondering why the
woman appeared abandoned on the riverbanks, all alone. It seemed
strangely foreboding. The missing Dracians worried her as well. She
touched her necklace subconsciously. “I…uh, what?”

“Use your Cat’s Eye to draw out the Dark
God’s magic,” her mother repeated, and raised an eyebrow.

Sora glanced at her mother, then back to the
prone body, uncertain. “Right,” she murmured. Her four companions
watched her, waiting. She tried to prompt the necklace into action
with a surge of thought, but nothing happened. A bit of sweat broke
out on her brow.

Ferran joined their circle around the woman.
He frowned as his eyes searched Sora’s face. He, more than anyone
else there, seemed to notice her hesitation. He wore a Cat’s Eye as
well, the only other bearer she knew. Most of the stones were
destroyed after the War of the Races, tossed back into the ocean
from whence they came, deemed too dangerous to continue using after
the war. Knowledge of the stones had been forgotten over time, just
as humans had forgotten about the races, their magic and lore.

Sora hadn’t told anyone about her trouble
activating the necklace. She was hoping the issue would fade away
with time and that the necklace would return to its former self,
but it seemed like the longer she waited, the worse the problem
got.

“I’ll try,” she said quietly, and stepped
next to the body. She knelt down at the woman’s side and placed a
hand on her arm. At this point, she expected the necklace to
release a fierce jingle of bells and glow with a bright green
light. That light should flow from Sora's hand into the poisoned
body and seek out the Dark God’s taint, then draw the black energy
into itself, absorbing and nullifying its power, thus releasing the
victim from the plague. She expected that—but nothing happened.

“Um…just a minute….” she mumbled, aware of
her mother’s expectant gaze.

Suddenly, the injured woman shuddered. Her
eyes opened, showing pure white orbs rolled back into her head.
Then her pale hand whipped through the air and grabbed Sora’s arm.
Her face twisted into a terrible grimace, somewhere between a scowl
and a smile—a frenzied leer. An inhuman shriek ripped from her
throat, spittle flew from her lips, and she launched herself up off
the ground.

Sora cried out and stumbled backward, taken
by surprise. She twisted her arm and broke the woman’s grip, then
shoved her away.

The woman crawled after her, but suddenly
Ferran stood between them. He caught the diseased woman by the
neck, gripping her under the jaw, and lifted her clear off the
ground. Sora gasped, falling back onto the wet dirt of the
riverbank.

Around Ferran’s wrist, a leather cuff
glowed, with a bright red Cat’s Eye embedded in its surface. The
stone flared a crimson color, and the light spread over the woman’s
body, up her neck and over her face like a scarlet cowl. As it
entered the woman’s mouth, her jaw stretched wide. Another horrible
scream ripped from her throat. Tendrils of black smoke began to
spew from her lips as the dark curse was expelled from her body.
The Cat’s Eye drank in the toxic residue like water going down a
funnel.

Then, unexpectedly, the woman began to cough
and hack. Her body stiffened and convulsed. A black, tar-like
substance spilled from her lips, gushing down the front of her
muddy shirt. A hideous smell drifted from her body, like rotten
meat, heavy and pungent in the air. Ferran didn’t loosen his grip,
but held the woman aloft as she vomited. Finally the spasms passed,
and the woman went limp in his hands, her shirt stained dark with
phlegm.

With rigid self-control, he set the body
gently back on the ground. Then he turned to the river, a disgusted
grimace on his face. He staggered the first few steps. Sora knew
what that felt like. Usually the Cat’s Eye became energized and
jubilant after absorbing magic, but the Dark God’s power was
different. It tasted like moldy sewage water. Ferran barely reached
the river before he vomited, emptying the contents of his stomach
into the flowing current. Lori rushed to his side, a worried frown
on her face.

Sora watched the two interact—the way her
mother hovered near Ferran’s side, her hand resting on his
shoulder. Then she rubbed his back gently. Sora noted the closeness
between the two of them. It made her feel awkward. She wondered if
she should ask her mother directly about their relationship.
Later,
she thought.