Oathen (25 page)

Meena moved away to talk to Rhona, leaving
Geret alone in a small circle of empty deck space.
Just focus on
getting the longboat to Cish
, he told himself.

It wasn’t long until the
Princeling
swanned past the end of the rocky arm, putting Geret in view of
Cish’s maritime traffic. Numerous ships of various sizes plied
Shelter Bay’s broad surface.

Rhona’s caravel slowed, while the other four
ships sailed onward across the bay’s mouth. Kemsil, Rhona, Ruel,
Meena, Sanych, Geret and Salvor clambered into the longboat, and
the crew lowered it to the sea.

“Gods above protect you,” Siela called as the
longboat began to pull away under oar power.

“Fair seas and fine winds,” Rhona replied,
standing in the stern. “We’ll meet you at the rendezvous. And
Siela, if you damage my
Princeling
, I’ll personally hang
your locks from my mainmast!”

The second mate merely returned a jaunty
salute. As Rhona sat down, a chorus of Clan-whistles rose from the
Princeling
’s deck. Siela ordered the sails set once more,
and the triple-masted caravel sailed westward after the rest of the
fleet, leaving the longboat alone at the mouth of the ancient
Shanallese caldera.

~~~

Sanych pulled on her oar, tasting the dryness
of her own mouth and the sweat that trickled down her upper lip.
They had nearly twenty miles of bay to cross, and only a simple
sail and tiller, plus six oars, to get them there. Rhona controlled
the tiller, which put her facing everyone else. Sanych was
eternally grateful that she wasn’t making sugar-eyes at Geret the
whole time. In fact, she seemed entirely focused on her task, as if
she hadn’t romped with the prince at all last night.

Maybe it’s not that important to her. It
would be to me
, Sanych thought.

Kemsil’s Circuit continued to keep them
invisible to passing vessels. As time passed, and no Dzur i'Oth
attacks sank them into the harbor, everyone relaxed a little. After
the sun crossed its zenith, Rhona passed around water skins and
food. Despite the apparent invulnerability of the Circuit’s magic,
the immediacy of their situation seemed to weigh heavily on them
all. No one spoke, no one smiled, as they took a short break to eat
and drink. Dozens of weeks had passed since Sanych had set out from
Highnave with Geret, Salvor and Meena. Even longer since she had
sought Meena in the first place. The seasons had rolled past—some
more than once, due to crossing the equator—and her birthday had
come and gone unremarked during the recent weeks of storm-tossed
travel. And though they’d been striving to reach Shanal, mythic
home of the
Dire Tome
, for a very long time, its appearance
at the horizon seemed sudden after so many weeks of blue
horizons.

Sanych gripped her oar and focused on
paddling. She knew what Meena expected of her, and though it
terrified her, she was determined not to let the Shanallar down.
She knew she should take it as a comfort that she wouldn’t be alone
as she completed the task Meena had set for her, but she
couldn’t.

In mere hours, she expected to be in the
unkind hands of the enemy. Meena’s words to her during their last
planning session haunted her.

“Don’t worry; they won’t kill you.
They’ll need you alive, so they can torture you for information
about my whereabouts.”

Frik lounged against the wall of a bakery, next to a rusty
downspout dragon. In another hour, he knew, the baker would arise
and come downstairs. The aroma of fresh-baked bread would draw in
customers soon after that, and he’d need to find a new spot to
lurk. But the docks of Cish were full of excellent places for
lurking. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was finding one that
was unoccupied.

For all the plague that was striking out in
the remote country villages, the city itself was still filled to
bursting. Especially with his type. He shifted from one foot to the
other, careful not to grind the pale yellow gravel of the alleyway
underfoot and give away his presence. No one knew as well as a
lurker that their profession was cannibalistic.

Favorite targets were lurkers like him who
were giving up their night job to watch for “stealthy
infiltrators”. Sure, it paid well and came with no risk of getting
beat up by a merchant’s bodyguard, but with the amount of coin he
received every week to do nothing but watch, Frik knew something
serious was afoot besides his own game.

His eyes played over the docks that lined the
river’s wide banks, even as he kept his ears peeled. The faint
scent of sulfur reached his nose; a series of hot springs bubbled
up just upriver from the city; they were used mostly for health
excursions by the nobility or rich merchants, but sulfur was mined
nearby as well. The runoff hit the Emerald north outside the city
limits, turning the water a chartreuse hue for a distance before it
reverted to its deep, sparkling green again. The smell, though—that
persisted all the way to the sea. It amused Frik to imagine that it
came from underwater dragons, farting in the river.

Cish, like every other city, town, or rude
little village in Shanal, sported dragons as its motif of choice.
Downspouts, arches, towers, city walls, battlements, even the
lintels of simple dwellings, all had carved or painted dragons.
Wagon wheels, sword handles and tavern flagons also sported the
mythic beasts.

The oldest myths of Shanal told of a time when
dragons soared above the forests and perched unharmed on volcanoes.
But Frik didn’t see the point of idolizing a creature that had
burned down everyone’s straw huts and eaten them alive.

Not practical at all
, he thought,
eating everyone up like that. They probably went extinct because
they destroyed the human population and starved. I’d have gathered
us into pens and raised us like cattle. But then
, he told
himself,
I’d be lunch, instead of getting paid well to stand
watch.

His eyes swept to the south of the docks, out
into the bay, where the guardian stones rose from the shallow sea.
Legend held that they were ancient warriors who had stood between
Shanal and an invading enemy in the distant past, immortalized into
stone after they had defended the sandy shore.

The monoliths didn’t look like petrified
heroes to Frik. They looked like the other hard stone pillars that
jutted out here and there all over the caldera floor. These
guardian stones were the only ones that rose out of the bay,
though, and they also served as a warning to the Shanallese who
would venture into the sea. It made Frik wonder whether those he
was waiting for knew about the hazards of the soft white sand along
Shanal’s shores. If they didn’t, he’d never get paid, for they’d
never make it as far as the city.

Shelter Bay was lined with fine shifting sand,
so deep that it was regularly known to suck down animals, ships,
and people, holding them fast in its blinding white grip. Unless
they could be dug out quickly, the ships tended to work their way
out at the pleasure of the tides, but the people and animals
usually drowned when the tide came in, unless someone noticed their
distress.

The Emerald River, which had finally begun to
recede after months of unusual flooding, washed through the center
of Cish, not far from where Frik stood. It drove a deep, dark,
silty trench through the white sands of the bay, carrying fresh
water out into the sea for miles. Sailing into its mouth was the
only safe way to approach the docks, which lined its wide banks
rather than the treacherous shore. The dock district was separated
into East Bank and West Bank, and only a handful of bridges crossed
the Emerald in Cish, its widest point.

Here in East Bank, Frik had a clear view in
several directions. The bakery lay on the last street before the
river; across its cobbles numerous broad ramps and staircases led
down to the stone docks themselves. He had just decided it was time
to find that new lurking spot when an odd sight caught his
attention.

A young woman appeared out of thin air at the
top of a staircase across the street. She was swathed in a dark
cloak, but the bluish city lamps illuminated her pale skin. She
turned to her left and headed away from the sea.

Cish was a city steeped with magic, between
the odd gifted citizen and the small yet influential conclave of
wizards known as the Ochre Masks, meddling in local politics and
anything else, whenever it pleased them. But the way this girl
skulked over to the nearest wall and tried to blend against
it—unsuccessfully—made him think she had nothing to do with them.
She was exactly what he had been waiting for. He ghosted out of the
alley mouth and trailed her through the quiet of the night streets.
The occasional passersby didn’t give either of them a second
glance; those who walked at night kept to themselves lest they
invite trouble.

The young woman seemed to know where she was
going.
Meeting a contact, like they
said
. There had
been one additional instruction when he had taken this job: don’t
let them contact anyone else.

Gauging her progress, he jogged around a few
blocks and came out ahead of her. He waited in the grilled shadow
of a poultry cart next to a street lamp until she came nearly
abreast of him, then blundered into her, catching her before she
fell.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he blurted. “Are you all
right?”

“I’m fine,” she replied. Her accent wasn’t one
he’d heard before.

“Is this yours?” he asked, reaching toward her
feet. She took a step back and looked down to see what he was
picking up. He straightened toward her face, catching her jaw with
his fist. She cried out briefly, hood flying off as she staggered.
He caught her as unconsciousness overcame her, and dragged her past
the lamp and into the shadows, where he tipped a small vial against
her lips.

“Sleep deeply, blondie. I’ve a feeling you’ll
need whatever strength you’ve got for what these folk want with
you.”

At the drop-off site on a hill outside the
city, he handed her over to his employer and received an enormous
bonus of four gold cubes. The sight of so much wealth gave him
pause, but when the bald man invited him into the warm kitchen for
some ale, he set aside his concerns. The girl—for she was only a
girl, he realized, seeing her face in good light for the first
time—disappeared down a dark staircase, flung over the shoulder of
a burly man with straggly hair and a gland problem. Frik shuddered.
Relieved to be on the winning team, he tipped back a flagon of
ale.

He didn’t even feel the hair-thin needle that
injected his palm as he gripped the dragon-styled
handle.

~~~

Sanych awoke in darkness. Not the dark of
night, nor even the dark of a shuttered room. Pitch blackness
surrounded her, and for a moment she feared she’d gone
blind.

“Hello?” she blurted, waving a hand in front
of her as she sat up on cold sand. No one answered her. A throbbing
manifested in her jaw, and she groaned and pressed her hand against
the swelling.

Using both hands again, she felt her way
forward. The sounds of her shuffling didn’t travel far, and she
realized she was in a very small pit. She stood, finding the roof
painfully low. Rubbing her skull, she swiped her arm along the top
of the pit, discovering a circular hole plugged with a stone cork.
Pushing did nothing but scrape her hands.
They better open that
soon
, she worried,
or I’ll run out of air
.

The absolute absence of light pressed in on
her like fathoms of water, and she shuddered, recalling Meena’s
words to her in the rigging
. “Sanych, your gift hasn’t cracked
open yet. I have to force it. The Silver Hand told me what you’ll
be able to do, and I can’t destroy the Dire Tome without you.
Without your gift. That’s why I need to give you over to Dzur
i’Oth. Their interrogation site is centered in a pocket of magic
that’s strong enough to crack your gift. I’ll be right behind you
every step of the way. Everything will go according to
plan.”

Here in the dark pit of the enemy, a
rebellious worm of anger burrowed through her mind. “Plan all you
like, Meena. You’re not the one whose life is about to change
forever,” she muttered. Guilt followed her words swiftly though, as
she realized that it was here in Shanal, four hundred years ago,
that Meena’s life had been forever altered.

She pulled her knees against her chest for
warmth. She’d spent the last dozen weeks in the constant company of
others, and their absence made her colder. Or perhaps that was just
her fear. Her mind turned to Geret. A moment later, the reality of
his betrayal struck her like a red-hot iron, causing her to flinch
in the dark.

“Fool,” she hissed into the black air. “Both
of us, fools.”

“Are you talking to me? Or to Meena? Because
she’s not here yet,” came a voice from the far end of the pit,
startling Sanych.

She ground her teeth; of all the voices she
would have picked from among her shipboard companions, this one was
right above Geret’s, at the bottom of her list. “Rhona? You could
have said something earlier.”

“And ruin your exploration fun?” the pirate
asked, a smirk in her voice. “I thought you liked to learn new
things.”