The Dark Defiles (34 page)

The path went up and over in deceptively undramatic fashion, broadened as it dropped on the other side and passed almost immediately between the massive paired stumps of two pillars flanking what seemed once to have been a colonnaded gateway.

Beyond the jagged, upward jutting fangs of the pillar remnants, the uplands lay spread out below them.

“Urann’s fucking prick … and balls …”

The oath fell out of Egar’s mouth in something close to reverence.

They stared down on the remains of a city that would in its heyday have swallowed Yhelteth whole.

It carpeted the soft slopes and plains of the landscape ahead, to all intents and purposes it
was
the landscape ahead—a vast chessboard of crisscrossing boulevards and piled-up, jagged pieces of ruin, stretching out to the horizon wherever you looked. In some places, squinting hard, you could make out the defiant spike of a surviving structure, a wall or dome or tower, but it didn’t really matter, was almost beside the point. There were piles of
rubble
down there that, by Archeth’s estimate, must rise higher than the tallest towers humans ever built.

A cold, impatient wind blew at them out of the northeast, stropped at their faces, tugged at their hair, and carried particles of a fine grit that stung their eyes in sudden gusts. To Archeth, it seemed to be blowing from the far end of the world.

“Where’d our fiery dancing friend go?” asked the Dragonbane.

She looked around. No sign of the fire sprite.

“Saw it down in the street there,” volunteered Selak Chan. He pointed. “Went along that … oh no, it’s gone now. Must be behind that cracked dome thing. With the pale blue roof?”

Great.

“All right,” she said, with a glance at Egar. “This is as good a place to make camp as any, I guess. Want to call it?”

The Dragonbane frowned and squinted at the sky. “There’s a fair bit of daylight left. Might be good to make use of it, get down onto level ground. And somewhere out of this wind, if we can.”

She shrugged. It was a fair point—she’d forgotten the wind. “As you say, then.”

So they mustered up again, still without sight of the elusive fire sprite, and marched down into the ruined city.

It may range ahead or double back sometimes to check on conditions. Try to be patient when that happens; let it do its work and protect you as best it can.

But she was weary and frayed with the journey, impatient to be done with it all, and by the time she recalled the Warhelm’s warning, they were already well into the city’s shattered, silent precincts, night was in the streets with them, and it was far, far too late for warnings of any kind.

own the trackless gray-green slop and chop of ocean between the Hironish isles and the northern shores of Gergis,
Dragon’s Demise
led the makeshift flotilla in what seemed like a charmed dance. These were sea-lanes notorious among mariners for their unpredictable weather and legendary monsters from the deep. The whalers that ran north from Trelayne to pit toothpick harpoons and cord against beasts bigger than their entire vessels came back with yarns of the kraken and the merroigai, of savage, fast-moving squalls that blew up over the horizon in minutes, struck with ship-killing force and as suddenly were gone. They told tales of creeping sea mists and eyes looming over their vessels at mast-tip height in the murk, of the scrape of huge nameless things on their hulls and sudden, swamping waves out of nowhere, of weird lights in the sky and glowing fire in the deep, of heaving, breathing islands that came and went according to no known chart … 

Of this, the men aboard Ringil’s ships saw nothing at all. The skies stayed clear and navigable, the winds steady. Once or twice, there were lookout calls on approaching storm weather, but always, by the time the vessels reached any kind of intercept point, the unfriendly clouds seemed somehow to have veered, left them at worst with a few skirts of rain and some halfhearted chop.

“Toldya,” an imperial marine on second watch one night informed his companions at changeover, as they all stood around on the rear deck with the more-or-less trustworthy co-opted privateer steersman. “Heard my lord Eskiath promise plain sailing to the captain before he went to his cabin, and look—plain sailing’s what we got.”

“Yeah,” another man sniggered. “Plain enough even old gripe-guts Nyanar can handle it.”

“You belay that shit, marine.” The ranking watchman roused himself from the rail, turned to his men. “That’s an imperial nobleman you’re talking about there, and he happens to be your skipper, too.”

The offending marine shrugged. “Still couldn’t navigate his way up a whore’s crack, you ask me. Fucking riverboat captain.”

“Prefer to put your trust in some infidel outland sorcerer instead, do you?” sneered one of the retiring watch. “Where’s your holy faith, brother? Where’s your purity?”

“Hey, fuck purity. Infidel cutthroat sorcerer or not, he’s brought us this far. Given us victory over”—a jerked thumb at the silent steersman—“this pirate scum. Besides, what I hear, he’s got about as much Yhelteth blood as northerner on his mother’s side.”

“Yeah, noble house, too.” The man who’d commented on the weather nodded sagely. “Remember that speech we got from my lord Shanta on launch day?”

“Forgotten all about that. Seems like another fucking lifetime, don’t it? But yeah, that’s right. Mother’s family got driven out of Yhelteth, like three generations back or something. They were Ashnal deniers, right?”

“Well, then they were no better than infidels themselves,” snapped the pious one. “Ashnal is the Living Word, no less than any other verse in the Revelation.”

“She did look kind of southern, though. The mother. Didn’t think about it at Lanatray, but now you come to mention it. That nose, the cheekbones and all.”

“Not those cheeks I was looking at.”

Lewd snorts and chortles. A few groans.

“No, but she did, didn’t she. Looked kind of—”

“Looked kind of fuckable, you ask me. Who cares where she’s from? Arse on her like a woman half her age, that’s what counts.”

“Dream on, Nagarn. Dream’s about as close as
you’re
ever going to get to noble pussy.”

“Oh yeah, what the fuck do you know? There was this one time in Khangset—”

“Gentlemen.”

Hoarse rasp of a voice—it came from the forward corner of the deck, where the companionway steps came up from the ship’s waist below. For all that it wasn’t very loud, it cut through the scuttlebutt like a whip. The marines turned about as one. Even the steersman blinked from his focus on the horizon.

Ringil Eskiath stood propped sideways against the rail, one booted foot still resting on the last rung of the companionway. A harsh, down-curved grin held his face, but there was something huddled about the rest of him, as if beneath the cloak he wore, he’d been badly wounded; as if despite the balmy night, there was a freezing wind blowing from some unacknowledged quarter that only he could feel. The knuckles of his left hand were tight on the rail and from the hunch of his shoulder, it looked as if he was holding himself upright mostly on that grip. The scabbarded Ravensfriend showed at his right hip, over his left shoulder, like some gigantic tailor’s pin shoved diagonally through to hold him in place. Even in the kindly gleam of bandlight, he looked pale and ill.

“My lord?” said someone tentatively.

The ugly grin flexed. “You talking about my mother?”

And he fell forward, flat on his face across the decking.

H
E KNEW, VAGUELY, THAT THEY PICKED HIM UP AND BORE HIM BACK DOWN
to the door of his cabin, where it gave out onto the main deck. He heard the stifled exclamations as they peered inside and decided not to carry him in there after all. A weak smirk flitted across his face.

Could have told them that.

But the truth was he could not have done, nor could he now. He was too drained of strength to do anything other than loll in the grip of the men who held him. Even the smirk slipped off his face, let go by muscles too sapped to hang on to it any longer.

“Get him to the other end of the deck,” a voice decided. “Get his sword off, it’s dragging. One of us is going to trip on that and go arse over elbow. Someone go wake up the captain.”

He felt himself hefted higher again, carried along under the vast pale billow of sails overhead, the arch of the band and the stars … 

They laid him down on something softer than planking—later he’d discover it was one of the weave mats provided for sleeping on deck in warmer climes. They stood back and he let his head roll to the side. Along the line of the deck planks, he could make out his cabin door at the other end of the ship’s waist, still swinging gently open on its hinges. Lurid, slow-shifting lights from within, tendrils of damp mist crawling out, faint groaning. Now and then, sounds like something wet and heavy being dropped, or the scuttle of claws over stone.

He watched it incuriously, while chunks of recollection rained down in his mind like rocks flung from the wall of a city under siege. The most recent were the easiest to pick up—scratching the glyphs off the door hinges, lockplate, and jamb with his bradawl, braced against the door to hold himself up while he did it—stumbling out into the cool night air, falling over—voices,
human
voices above him on the rear deck—clinging to the companionway as he climbed, one colossally weighted boot step at a time, up toward that human sound … 

“My lord Ringil? Prophet’s breath! My lord!”

Ah.
Fucking Nyanar.

The captain of
Dragon’s Demise
stood above him, holding a dressing gown awkwardly closed across his chest. From the look of it, he’d been so mesmerized by what was happening at the door of Ringil’s cabin that he’d almost tripped over Ringil himself.

“My lord Ringil.”

“How—” It was no good, he couldn’t even hold his head up. His voice came out a breathless husk. “How far home are we?”

“Home?” Nyanar’s mouth contracted primly. “We are sailing to
Trelayne,
my lord. Under your expressed orders.”

“Yeah, what I … meant. How … much farther?”

“We should raise the Gergis coast day after tomorrow, if my calculations are correct.”

Big if.
Even his thoughts were truncated, sludgy with the effort they took. “And the … other ships?”

“With us, both of them. Visible and with us. But, my lor—”

“Good. Well done.” Gil managed a feeble nod upward. He could feel himself guttering like a spent candle. “Reef the sails. Heave to. Signal the others … do the same. I’m going across … 
Sea Eagle’s Daughter
 … soon as I’m … rested.”

“But, my lord.”

“What?”

Nyanar, pointing aghast. “What about your cabin?”

He rolled his head again, took in the lights and the crawling, moaning mist.

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That. Just … just close the door. Lock … from the outside. It’ll all … all go away by the morning.”

I
T DID, MORE OR LESS.

He woke four hours later with the first gray flush of dawn and the voices of watch changeover from the stern. Slow rocking of the ship beneath him, and he opened his eyes on the stark loom of masts with sails fully furled, like towering crucifixion platforms set against the paling sky. He moved stiffly and sat up. Found himself under a generous pile of blankets, shoved them aside and got groggily to his feet, peered out across the water.
Sea Eagle’s Daughter
and
Mayne’s Moor Blooded
both sat a couple of hundred yards off to starboard, riding the swells in the same gentle rhythm he could feel under his feet. He thought there were a few figures out on deck, peering back at him.

He saw the Ravensfriend poking out under the blankets—it seemed he’d slept with it. He gathered it up and went with leaden steps along the deck to his cabin door. Tried the door and found it locked. Right. And they’d taken the key. He was turning to find someone to ask after it, when memory shifted in his head like poorly stowed crates in a bad sea.

A small smile bent his lips.

He looked at the lock and it yielded. He heard the snap as the mechanism turned and the bolt went back. He clicked his tongue and the door opened obligingly.

Inside was a cabin and not much else.

If he squinted and slanted his gaze, he got brief flickers of blue light in corners, like threadbare curtains or cobwebs touched by a breeze; the odd gargoyle gape of something he’d rather not look at, peering out at him. But mostly the haunting he’d brought back was gone. He had one severe moment when the wood paneling on the back wall became wet limestone, an inward leaning loom of rock dripping musical droplets of water into puddles at its base—etched everywhere with glyphs that blew cold breath down his spine, and faintly overhead, the retreating scuttle of bony limbs … 

He blinked it away. Went in and propped the Ravensfriend in a corner. He was tempted to lie down on the bunk and go back to sleep for a few hours, but there were things to be done, and besides the ceiling might still drip on him if he didn’t keep an eye on it.
It will come looking for you now,
Hjel tells him on their second night camped out at the cliffs.
When you leave the Margins for your own world, bits of the possibilities in the
ikinri ‘ska
that you’ve touched will squeeze through after you. They won’t harm you, and probably not anyone else, but they can hang around like a bad smell for days if the breach is hurried. Try to plan, to slip through smoothly if you can; it keeps that shit to a minimum.

Well, he hadn’t slipped through smoothly on this occasion. He’d—

Let’s leave that alone for now, shall we, Gil?

They dropped a boat and got him across to
Sea Eagle’s Daughter
in short order. The two oarsmen who took him were marines, both faces he recognized from the assault on Ornley but could not put names to. They offered him respectful salutes as he climbed down into the boat, and kept silent on the way across, but for the rhythmic grunt of their stroke.

Rakan was waiting for him when he came up the ladder at the other side.

“My lord.” The longing in his look was almost palpable. Ringil had a flash of recall—Hjel, bent over into his lap in the tent, mouth working—and felt briefly guilty. But then it was gone. Too much else to worry about right now.

“Rakan.” He touched the other man’s arm lightly. “Good to see you again, Captain. I’ll need you to give me a good, thorough briefing when we can both grab a moment.”

Flicker of a wink. The Throne Eternal caught it and flushed visibly in the early morning light. He swallowed hard. “Yes, my lord.”

Pack it in, Gil.

“But right now, I need you to rig the block and tackle and get the Helmsman up on deck for me.”

Rakan blinked. “Anasharal, my lord?”

“The very metal motherfucker. Probably going to take half a dozen men, but we’re not going anywhere for a while, so you can spare them.” He looked around the ship’s waist. “We’ll put it over there, by the port bulwark. Upside down.”

“Yes, my lord.” Rakan saluted and went off to gather his men.

“May I ask what you intend?” The soft-over-shrieking unstable layers of the Helmsman’s voice, out of the air at his ear.

Ringil grinned like leaking blood. “Yeah, you can ask.”

Then he went over to the bulwark and hinged the gangway section open, so the space it left gaped out over the ocean beyond.