The Broken World Book One - Children of Another God (25 page)

Chanter
inclined his head. "Wish fulfilled."

"Would you like
comforts?" Yusan enquired.

Though tempted,
Chanter frowned. Something niggled him. Something was wrong. He
studied the tableau, but could not fault it. Garsh handed the
whining, wriggling boy back to his mother and regarded the Mujar
with flat, unreadable eyes. He nodded and echoed Yusan's offer, but
Chanter turned away, went to the balcony and gazed out. Stars
twinkled in the darkening sky.

Garsh scowled
and opened his mouth to comment on the Mujar's rudeness, but Yusan
gripped his arm to forestall him.

"Leave him,
Sire, Mujar are a strange race."

The King
grunted and gazed at his son. Several maids stripped Prince Mystar
of his wet nightshirt and wrapped him in blankets, towelling his
hair while he sat on the bed. A servant brought a bowl of steaming
soup, which the Queen fed to the boy. Garsh thumped Yusan on the
back.

"I'm glad I
listened to you, Yusan, you were right. You shall be rewarded
handsomely for this, but why all the ceremony?"

"I can teach
you the ways of Mujar if you wish, Sire."

Garsh glanced
at the unman. "Can we persuade him to stay?"

Yusan shook his
head. "Not for long. He may accept comforts for a while, but I
doubt he'll stay."

"What if Mystar
sickens again?"

"I doubt that
too, Sire. They say that once healed by a Mujar, people never
sicken again."

Garsh tugged
his beard. "How do they do it?"

"Nobody knows,
but, had he not wanted a favour from you, he would not have healed
the Prince."

The King eyed
the Mujar. "Why would he want a boy from my army?"

"My guess would
be that he was fulfilling another Wish, made by someone who helped
him."

"Is there any
way of holding him here?"

"You mean trap
him?"

Garsh
nodded.

Yusan
hesitated. "There are ways, but it would do you no good. You can't
make a Mujar do anything he doesn't wish to."

The King
studied the Mujar with narrowed eyes. The unman appeared to be
harkening to some distant music, his head cocked. Garsh looked over
at his soup-gobbling son, his heart growing cold. The lump of
hatred that had always been a part of him swelled, fuelled by the
aid of this worthless monkey who had made his son's life so
cheap.

Chanter tried
to make sense of the strange sensation he received, unsure of what
it was. It came faintly on Dolana, so slight that it had almost
slipped his notice, and he had to concentrate. Anxiety flared, and
he bent to place his palms on the floor, letting Dolana seep in.
Since he was not standing on the ground, it still came faintly, but
now he could almost make it out. A faraway tingle; a whisper; a
distant, almost silent clang of warning. He straightened, his brows
drawing together. Talsy!

Chanter
summoned Ashmar, raising his arms in preparation for flight even
before the rush of wind and the beating of wings transformed him.
The people cowered as a gust whipped the velvet curtains into a
billowing wave of cloth.

The Mujar
vanished, and in his place a gull stroked the air with fragile
wings, sailing out through the doors. Garsh hurried to the balcony
to gaze out and up, catching a glimpse of the white gull as it
arrowed towards the moon-silvered sea. Yusan joined him.

"Well, so much
for that," the King muttered. "Damned Mujar. My father taught me to
hate them, and now I know why."

Yusan nodded as
he watched the gull vanish into the night.

Talsy spent the
afternoon watching the captain consume several bottles of wine on
the deck of the rolling ship. If he was trying to get up the
courage to face her knife, she mused, he was not doing himself any
favours. A drunken man's reactions were far slower than a sober
one's. At sunset, she collected her plate of spicy fish stew and
decided to barricade herself in the cabin. On her way down the
steep steps, she bumped into a sailor, who apologised and stepped
aside.

In the cabin,
she dragged the desk across the room and jammed it against the door
before she sat down to eat her dinner. A minute later, a banging
came at the door, followed by the captain's demands to be let in.
She ignored them, spooning the hot stew. The banging continued, and
the door rattled under a fierce attack. A short silence fell, then
the door was pushed inwards and the desk slid across the floor. Two
husky sailors stood aside to admit the swaying captain, who slammed
the door behind him.

"Now, slut,
I've come to collect the rest of what you owe me."

Talsy put down
her plate. "I don't owe you anything. You named the price and I
paid it."

"This part goes
without saying," he said, pushing aside the desk.

Talsy reached
for her knife and found an empty sheath. Dismayed, she realised
that the sailor on the steps had taken it, and a wash of hatred
burnt through her. She jumped up and looked around for a weapon.
Her bow was unstrung in the bag, useless. The captain lunged at
her, and she skipped aside, avoiding his grasping hands. The
cramped cabin hampered her, and the captain leered, his eyes bright
with triumph. When he came at her again, she kicked him, making him
stagger with a grunt.

No weapon
offered itself to her desperate eyes as the captain scrambled after
her. He laughed as he got hold of her coat, but she twisted out of
it and he growled, throwing it down to leap at her. This time he
grabbed her arm and hung on, his fingers biting into her flesh.
With a yell of pain, she punched him, hurting her hand but making
him grunt again. He slapped her, knocking her into the wall. She
slid to the floor, stunned, and he threw himself on top of her, his
foetid breath making her gag. The cabin spun as she tried to fend
him off, her eyes watering from the blow to her head. Where was
Chanter?

The captain had
her pinned, and the fight had turned into little more than a
tussle. Up close, her blows were too puny to have any effect on the
drunken man who pulled at her clothes, and she groped for a weapon.
Her hand found a heavy wooden paperweight that had fallen from the
desk, and she brought it down on his head with all her strength.
The captain recoiled with a yell, and she wriggled from his grip.
As she struggled to her feet, he grabbed her ankles, bringing her
crashing down. Her face hit the boards hard, and blood oozed from
her nose. Stars whirled in her eyes as she tried to regain her feet
with desperate urgency. The captain laughed and flipped her onto
her back, his fingers fumbling with the laces of her shirt.

"Chanter!" she
screamed, terror clutching her gut with a cold hand.

The captain
chuckled as he pulled open her shirt and fumbled with her leggings.
She squirmed and pummelled him, kicked and smacked, but to no
avail. Remembering a trick her father had taught her, she slapped
his ears. The captain howled and clutched his head, allowing her
just enough room to wriggle free. In her desperate, muddled state,
she could find only one way out of her predicament. She turned and
hurled herself at the window. The soft lead frame gave way under
her weight, and she fell through in a shower of glass and with a
wailing scream.

The cold sea
hit her with bruising force, driving the air from her lungs as she
sank into its black depths. Thrashing, she strived to reach the
surface before her burning lungs forced her to suck in water. Salt
stung her nose as she clawed her way upwards, a red haze forming in
her eyes. The overpowering urge to breathe almost won before her
head broke the surface and she inhaled with a wail. The ship's dark
shape sailed away before Chanter's wind, and the captain's shouted
insults carried across the hissing waves.

"Now you're
fish food, you stupid slut! The sharks will feast tonight!"

Talsy kicked
against the hostile, freezing sea, the terror of the black depths
beneath her filling her with an insane urge to climb out of the
water and stand upon the waves. Foaming breakers slapped her, and
she coughed and retched. Where was Chanter? Had the Mujar really
abandoned her this time? Her father's words returned to haunt her
as she bobbed in the pitiless ocean. Mujar had no feelings. They
could not be trusted. They flew away at the first chance. Thrusting
the hateful words from her mind, she swam after the ship. She
cringed from the dark alien water below, expecting at any moment
the rough brush of a shark's skin before it made its attack, the
sharp teeth tearing her flesh.

"Chanter!" The
weakness of her cry mocked her, lost in the vast cold expanse of
the ocean, alone and afraid. The sea toyed with her, tossed her
about, waited until she opened her mouth, then slapped her in the
face with icy waves.

Real or
imagined, something flashed silver in the black depths, and she
screamed with uncontrollable terror.

"Chanter! Help
me! Chanter!"

Terror squeezed
her heart until she thought she would die of it, yet she remained
alive, filled with sickening, mind-bending dread. Old stories of
monsters and sea dragons brought visions of these beasts into her
cringing mind. She imagined that she could see them in the
blackness below her, swimming towards her, jaws agape. She should
have stayed on the ship and paid the captain's price for passage.
Anything but be left alone to die in this cold sea. Already the
ship was little more than a dot on the horizon, sailing swiftly
away.

Talsy tried to
swim after it, but the sea pushed and pummelled her, dragging her
back with watery hands. The more she kicked and stroked the dancing
ocean, the less headway she seemed to make. As she grew tired, she
appeared to become heavier, her waterlogged clothes weighing her
down. Soon, it was all she could do to keep her head above the
waves and try to breathe air between the wavelets that sprang into
her mouth and up her nose. The Mujar had abandoned her. There was
no doubt about that now, and nothing for her to do but wait to die.
With that resolve came a modicum of calm, banishing the monsters,
since it did not matter what killed her, a toothy beast or the
freezing sea. She floated, barely swimming, stared up at the stars
and tried not to dwell on what might be coming up from below.

The cold soaked
into her as time passed. Soon her legs grew numb, and she would not
know if something bit them off until the buoyancy they gave
vanished. Waves hissed past, and the wind whipped spray into her
face with cruel glee. Tiredness seeped through her, making her long
to stop swimming and let the water swallow her, drag her down into
its dark depths forever. The instinct for survival kept her head
above water, as it would until she was too weak to swim.

Chanter beat
his wings as hard and fast as he dared, frantic for more speed. His
fragile bones bent under the strain, and twinges of pain warned him
that he was pushing the limit. In a flash of Ashmar, he changed
from a gull to a swift, his scythe-shaped wings whipping the air as
he flew faster. With a flick of thought, he commanded Ashmar again,
reversing the wind so it blew from behind and speeded him further.
Yet still, it would take hours to reach her.

Chanter
increased the wind until it howled, whipping the black sea below
into a welter of frothing waves. It flashed beneath him, the speed
of his flight such that the waves passed in a blur. The urgency of
Dolana's faint warning beat at him from his memory, goading him to
greater effort. Talsy's danger was grave. If he was too late, she
would die, and he would have failed a Wish, breaking a trust sacred
to Mujar. Allowing someone under his protection to die was as bad
as killing.

Desperate
thoughts flooded his anxious mind. He should have told her that her
Wish was fulfilled after he got her out of Horran. He should have
done it after he saved her from the Kuran. Her Wish had been
fulfilled long ago, yet he had not spoken the ritual words that
released him from its onus. If he had, he could have broken clan
bond before leaving her. At least he should have warned her that he
would not be there. His decision to go ahead to Rashkar had been
the right one, for the boy Arrin was free. Had he not arrived when
he had, the Prince would have died, taking with him the chance for
the bargain he had made with the King. Still, he would have found a
way, but the opportunity had been a good one. If Talsy died,
however, he would suffer the consequences of failing a Wish. It
would haunt him for the rest of his life.

The gale that
howled around him tossed him like chaff, and his tiny wings beat
the cold air with a desperation born of dread. Spying a dot in the
sea ahead, he veered towards it. The ship wallowed in the foaming
waves, her sails shredded by his wind, listing as mighty swells
swept over her, threatening to capsize her. He swooped down to land
with a flutter on the deck. Before he could invoke the change, the
faint warning of Dolana told him that Talsy was not on board. He
took wing again, soaring above the rolling ship, where sailors
clung to ropes and railings as they fought the raging sea. Again he
commanded Ashmar to sweep him onwards, leaving the ship behind.

Talsy gasped as
the wind slashed her with driven spray and great foaming waves
washed over her, sucking her under as she struggled to keep her
head in the air. She kept her eyes closed, for the salt stung them,
and there was nothing to see but black heaving waves and the cold
glimmer of stars. A howling wind whipped the ocean into a fury,
making it almost impossible to breathe anything but water in one
form or another.

The moments
when she was underwater were calm and peaceful compared to the
turmoil above, and she was tempted to give up and sink into the
quiet depths. Why did she continue to struggle? Chanter had left
her, the ship was gone and no hope of rescue remained. Perhaps it
was the fear of death, not knowing what lay in store for her when
she let herself sink. Soon there would be no more choice. The sea
would claim its own.