Shadowheart (76 page)

He had already made a name for himself, not just as a fisherman but also as a warrior. Had he not been one of the first to take fire to the ships of the southerners? Had he not braved the terrors of the Old Ones more than once, landing right on the Porcupine’s doorstep as he conveyed nobility back and forth from the Mount? Now
Sealskin
was his at last. All the years of his childhood, he had dreamed of this day, keeping her always waterproof and slippery as an eel by painting and repainting her hull with pitch. And most important, all that he earned now would no longer go into his father’s great jar. He would have his own jar, and soon enough his own house. Then he would take Ena away from her brute of a father and make her his wife. When they had enough money, they would marry and he would never again have to listen to any voice except hers and the ocean’s.

He slipped out through the secret way that led from the Western Lagoon and out to the sea road to Egye-Var’s Shoulder—M’Helan’s Rock as the drylanders called it—but Rafe did not plan to go anywhere near the Drying Shed nor any other part of the island. Clan curfew was an hour gone, and the last thing Rafe needed was to get into trouble again his first night as a man. He didn’t think his father Mackel would go so far as to take
Sealskin
back—he would be reluctant to shame the clan that badly in front of his rival Turley Longfingers and the Sunset-Tide folk at the Little Moot—but Rafe knew the old man would probably be very rigorous with whatever punishment he chose instead, which almost certainly meant a beating. Rafe didn’t want another beating. So although his heart felt as full as a bellied sail, he would not be singing or cutting capers on this, his first voyage with his own boat.

The southern ships had stopped burning, although many of the floating wrecks still leaked smoke into the dawn sky. Rafe swung widely around one of them, trying to decide whether it was one of those onto which he himself had thrown spears wrapped in flaming rags. He had never done anything more exciting in his life (except perhaps for some of the things he and Ena had got up to) and still could not quite believe he had even been allowed to do such a thing. But the Skimmer clan leaders, those stodgy old fellows like Turley Back-on-Next-Year’s-Tide, had suddenly changed: a single mysterious audience with some of the Old Ones and they had become warriors. Who would ever have guessed? Rafe had asked his father several times what had changed things so, but all Mackel would tell him was: “They have reached out a hand. We are forgiven.” When he asked, “Forgiven of what?” his father had told him to shut his blowhole and go catch some fish.

But what did such things matter anyway? No matter who won this war, it meant nothing to Rafe. If he had to, he would pack up all his belongings, set Ena on
Sealskin
’s bench, and together they would paddle away somewhere else, upcoast or down. Perhaps it was time for the Ocean Lord’s folk to return to the Vuttish Islands? He and his sweetheart could surely find a deserted skerry and live out their lives there in happy solitude . . .

Musing on this and other fantasies, Rafe guided his boat in and out among the flotsam of the burned ships, looking for things to salvage. He had discovered a floating cask of southern honey this way the night before, the wood only lightly singed and the insides still protected by wax and cotton cloth, a find that had delighted his father who said he could get several silver coins for it at the least. In fact, Rafe felt sure that the goodwill caused by that discovery was why Mackel had finally told him the boat was his. Reminded of his good fortune, he patted
Sealskin
’s strong but delicate frame. The next cask of honey would be for Rafe himself to sell. Perhaps he could buy Ena a wedding necklace.

He passed through the ghost fleet and made a wide swing along the coast below the Marrinswalk headlands. The sun was coming up soon, and he knew he should not be staying out so long. Daylight would make it harder to sneak back in. He supposed he could pretend to have fallen asleep in the boat shed while cleaning
Sealskin
. He had certainly done it enough times in his youth.

Rafe’s planning was interrupted by something moving on the shore. He stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing—something tall that stood almost at the waterline and was shrouded in cloth that whipped fitfully in the freshening breeze. What was it? Some bit of useful wreckage that had floated ashore and that another scavenger had found and might be coming back for? Was that why it was covered by that tattered cloak? Did someone really think that was enough to claim it as their own?

Rafe swung his bow toward the shallows until he could not get any closer and still remain in the boat. The thing standing where the water splashed up onto the rocky strand was man-shaped, although still motionless but for the ragged, windblown cloth that covered it. Was it a statue? Or had some lonely wanderer died here, so slowly that he had remained standing? Rafe had found corpses on the beach before, most of them drowned, but others as unmarked as though they had come to such a lonely spot just to die. He had never found one still standing. A superstitious shiver went through him.

Then the figure turned.

Rafe gasped and paddled the boat back from the shore. It had been the movement of something that ived—something that stood on this lonely stretch of shore by choice.

Even as he stared, the figure slowly lifted one hand and beckoned to him. Rafe could only stare. The thing raised its arm higher and made a gesture that was broader but still stiff, as though the creature in the billowing cloak was very old or very weak. There was no question that it was gesturing at him.

“What do you want?” Rafe called. “If you value your life, don’t you meddle with me! I’ll break your pate for a laugh!”

The figure only beckoned to him again. Rafe’s curiosity began to get the better of him. He plied his oar deftly and shot closer. As his boat bobbed beneath him, he examined this apparition, or at least what little he could see of it. The stranger wore a dark, hooded robe, ragged on the edges, which covered his face, and his hands appeared to be bandaged in old, dirty bits of linen so that no skin showed. Again, a shiver of dislike passed through Rafe. The boom of the surf died down for a moment, and he could finally hear the stranger’s voice, or at least a rasp of loud breathing. It was a disturbing sound, but it proved that the creature was no ghost.

“What do you want of me?” he asked again.

Rafe could only see the faint gleam of the stranger’s eyes as he pointed to Rafe’s boat, then slowly extended his bandaged hand toward the castle in the middle of the bay. The meaning was quite clear.

“You want me . . . to take you there?” He laughed and hoped it sounded braver to the stranger than it did to him. “Are you joking, man? Why should I take you across the water? If you are a spy for the southerners, you can’t be a very good one, with your bandages and your gloomy looks—like something out of a Kerneia parade!”

The man only pointed again.

“I asked you why? Why should I?”

The hooded stranger lowered his hand. After a moment he began to fumble with the knot of his robe. Rafe decided he did not want to see what was under this creature’s cloak and began to back-paddle his boat to put a little more distance between them, but the specter was having trouble getting the robe untied. Rafe stopped and floated, paddle dripping in the air. What was this absurd creature doing?

The stranger finally succeeded in opening the knot of his cloth belt, but instead of stripping off the cloak he only pulled something out of the knot and held it up in the thin but growing dawn light, pushing it in Rafe’s direction as if to hand it to him across the distance. Rafe could only stare. It was a gold piece as big as a bull squid’s eye.

“You’re saying you want to give me that,” he said at last. Even to his own ears, he sounded a bit breathless. “To take you over to the castle. Over there.” He pointed. The cloaked figure did not nod or say anything, but thrust the coin toward him again. “Very well then, if you say so. But, remember—I have a knife!” He reached down and lifted his fish-gutter. “So don’t try anything or you’ll regret it.”

It took no little time to get the stranger into the boat. The man was crippled or at least he moved that way, with limbs that seemed stiff and brittle as icicles, but Rafe managed to get him seated on the bench at last and then took the gold. The man’s bandaged hands were filthy, but the coin itself was shiny, real, and very beautiful. Payment made, the stranger promptly lowered his chin to his chest so that his hood covered his head completely, and then seemed to sleep.

Rafe paddled hard, trying to get back before the sun rose too high above the hills. He would have to find a place to let off this rich madman, then hurry home. Of course, even if his father found out and gave him a whipping, Rafe didn’t much care—he was rich himself now. He could buy Ena not only a necklace but also the grandest dress the lagoon had ever seen, with more shells on it than there were stars in the night sky.

It was strange how the hours crawled past when your freedom had been taken. Qinnitan was realizing that she had been some sort of prisoner for much of her life, first in the Hive, although they had treated her kindly, then in the Seclusion. Finally, after one brief, heady taste of freedom in Hierosol, she had been recaptured by the monster Daikonas Vo. She had then managed to escape even him, but it seemed the gods themselves did not want her to be free, so here she sat, despite all her efforts, bravery, and sacrifice, the doomed prisoner of the world’s most dangerous madman.

She shifted, trying to find a less painful position. With her arms tied behind her back, there was no such thing as comfortable. Around her, the High Priest’s lackeys came and went, paying no more attention to Qinnitan in her cage than if she was a piece of furniture or the remains of a meal.

No
, she thought,
like a sacrificial animal
. The knowledge of her suffering was far less important to them than her place in the upcoming ritual.

But
what
upcoming ritual? What did the autarch plan for her and for poor Olin, the northern king? She had listened carefully to every word uttered in her vicinity, especially by that bloated old monster Panhyssir, but she still had no real idea what the autarch planned.

Despite her determination to say nothing, she couldn’t help letting out a moan of despair as the priests’ potion began to act. Oh, sweet honey of Nushash, here it came again—that horrible burning crackle running from her head to her tail, like a bolt of slow lightning. In her memory the stuff Panyhyssir called “Sun’s Blood” had become only another indignity of her time in the Seclusion, but now she was forced to experience again how truly vile it made her feel, the terrible thoughts it put into her head. She could feel her mouth force itself open in a silent scream, feel her fingers curling and cramping until she could no longer keep her tattered robe wrapped around her. Qinnitan perceived herself crumpling to the floor as if she observed it from a great distance, then she watched the world turn sideways and disappear into the blackness of her closed lids.

Boom
.
Boom
.
Boom
.

It was the slow throb of her own blood, the hot red river that, thanks to the priests’ potions, now mimicked the god’s own holy ichor. She could feel it moving sluggishly through her body, filling her as melted silver might fill an intricate mold, until everything that was Qinnitan-shaped had grown turgid and trembling, poured full of the deadly, exalted Sun’s Blood.

And now something in the darkness became aware of her. It did not rise up so much as it uncloaked itself, and that cloak was the darkness in which the thing lived, just as a great whalefish lived in water or a monstrous thunderstorm lived in the sky. It was too big to live—it didn’t make sense!—but at the same time she felt she understood it, almost
was
it. . . .

But the more Qinnitan felt of its monstrous, cold interest, the more terrified she became. It drew nearer, and its very presence made her ripple and spread like an oil stain—any closer and she would surely come apart! But it did come closer, and suddenly Qinnitan understood that the god-thing wanted something from her—something she had not felt before. Always, she had sensed its predatory interest as just that, as something hunting, with herself as the hapless prey, trussed and left to the mercies of this merciless thing. Now, she realized with a quite different sort of horror that it didn’t want to devour her, not in any ordinary sense. This impossible thing wanted to
use
her, to inhabit her so that it could cross the void and return to the land of the waking and the living.

Qinnitan knew she would never survive sharing her place in the world with something so powerful and uncaring—every moment it lived inside her would burn part of the real Qinnitan away. But that was exactly why they fed her the Sun’s Blood, she realized: to prepare her as a vessel for the god, to make her a more hospitable home for this hideous presence which had not walked the earth for thousands of years. And she could do nothing to stop it. When midnight came, either she or King Olin would be offered up as a shell for this dreadful thing to inhabit.