Turning Points (24 page)

So he was Spyder, a man without heritage, without a nation.

And yet, for reasons he couldn’t fully grasp, he served the Rankan emperor. Some lingering ember of loyalty still burning in his breast? Some minuscule hope of restoring the honor of the Vigeles?

It embittered him to deny his true name.

Aaliyah touched his arm, and he turned to her. Filled with a sudden need, he drew her close and pressed his head down upon her shoulder. The smell of her hair, the feathery brush of her fingers on his bare back—whether by his action or hers, his kilt fell away as their lips met. She tasted of honey and mint, sweeter and more intoxicating than the wine in his cup.

On the couch beside the table, in the open night, they made love. The soft illumination from the alabaster lamp highlighted the con-trast between their bodies and charged the air with an eroticism and sensuality that, for a time, allowed them to forget Sanctuary and danger, bitterness and fear. For a time, they had no other mission, no other purpose, but each other.

Afterward, they lay side by side watching the moon. Spyder felt Aaliyah’s breathing, the soft vibration of her body next to his. He knew that she was changing his life in a way that was both fantastical and disturbing. There was no room in his life for the feelings she stirred in him, and yet already in the short month since he’d found Aaliyah, he couldn’t imagine being apart from her.

He kissed her mouth, then rose from the couch. The sesame oil burning in the lamp was beginning to smoke, so he sprinkled a few grains of salt in it to stop the smoking. As he did so, something in the flame caught his attention. He stared with puzzlement as a blood red shadow touched the edge of the flame and slowly engulfed it, turning blacker and blacker.

Spyder jerked his gaze away and rubbed a thumb and finger over his eyelids. Then he shot a glance at the moon. It floated in the sky over the harbor, effulgent. Next, he noticed Aaliyah. She stood at the parapet, her attention riveted on the moon, her fingers curled like claws on the stone, her body rigid, and her head thrown back.

The braided flax wick in the sesame oil crackled suddenly, drawing his attention once again, and the flame was just a yellow flame. But he knew, without understanding how, that he had seen a vision of the coming eclipse in that small lamp light, and that Aaliyah had shared that vision, or at least, in her own way, that she had sensed something.

He caught her shoulders and drew her against him. Her face was a mask of panic and desperation. He studied the harbor again for the Vasalan ship, then slammed a palm down on the parapet in frustration. Though it had only been a small vision, it had to mean something!

“Prepare yourself,
Shahana
,” he said, leading her to the staircase.

“They’re here. They’ve gotten by us somehow. Now we have to find them.”

They descended to their separate apartments. Spyder quickly donned garments of black leather and threw a cloak about his shoulders. From a chest at the foot of his bed he took a double-edged sword of medium length. The scabbard, though sturdy, was unremarkable, but before he strapped it on, he grasped the hilt and exposed a few inches of the blade. The candlelight in his room gleamed on fine Enlibar steel. To this, he added a plain dagger, and closed the chest once more.

Dressed and armed, with one hand on the door, he paused and lingered beside one of the several candles that lit his room. He stared at the flame, tried to focus his attention on it in the unlikely expectation of another vision, a clearer message. It was a foolish effort: He had no powers of clairvoyance or foresight. Maybe what he’d seen on the rooftop had been a trick of light.

But Aaliyah had reacted, too. Something had plainly agitated her.

He hurried downstairs into the darkened shop and let himself out a side door into an alley that was barely wide enough for two men to pass through shoulder to shoulder. He followed it, pausing at the opening to stare both ways down Face-of-the-Moon Street. A few torches burned here and there. One burned in a sconce before the entrance to The Black Spider.

With his hood up and his cloak drawn close, Spyder moved into the street. He kept to the shadows and the dark places as he made his way down the Hill, his footsteps silent, his movements swift and stealthy. A gang of rowdy bravos passed him without so much as noticing his presence. A pair of customers stumbled arm in arm from a tavern almost into his path with no more awareness.

Once, a low animal growl caused him to pause in mid-step. With narrowed eyes, he searched the street and the darkness around him for some sign of danger, one hand going carefully to the hilt of his sword. Behind the poorly fitted shutters of a nearby shop he noted the furtive movement of faint light, a candle or perhaps a shaded lantern, which was odd at so late an hour. Thieves, he suspected, but it was no business of his.

As he neared the bottom of the Hill, he heard the rapid clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the creak of wagon wheels on rough cobbles. From the shadowed recess of an alley, he measured its approach. As it rounded a corner, the moonlight fell full upon both wagon and driver. As it passed his hiding place, Spyder leaped aboard.

The driver, Ronal, jerked hard on the reins with his left hand. At the same time, he launched a backfisted blow toward his uninvited passenger’s face. Spyder caught his arm before the blow could land.

“Such a swift ride must mean you have news,” he whispered as he settled on the buckboard beside his friend.

Ronal’s breath hissed between his teeth. “Damn it, you nearly gave me heart failure!”

“You’ve a stouter heart than ten men,” Spyder answered, letting go of Ronal’s arm. “To the point. The ring is here—I’m certain of it.”

Ronal half-turned on his seat to regard Spyder. “How do you know that?”

“I just know,” Spyder answered from beneath his hood. “A feeling.”

“You may be right,” Ronal said in a low voice. “In the Broken Mast a short time ago I overheard Markam telling a wild story. Seems there’s a ship from Inception Island anchored at the easternmost end of the harbor, and some of its sailors were claiming they saw a ghost ship last night, all black with no running lights, off their starboard side hugging the shoreline. Sailed straight up the White Foal River, they claimed, before it disappeared in the fog. Markam was laughing about it. Impossible, he said. But I thought you’d want to know.”

“Turn the wagon around,” Spyder ordered quietly. “Take the Wideway at the best pace you can manage without drawing too much attention, and head for the White Foal.”

Ronal complied. At a pace that was brisk without appearing frantic, the wagon moved back down the Hill, across the Avenue of Temples, down the Governor’s Walk and the Processional. “What’s on your mind, Spyder?” Ronal said as he worked the reins. “You’ve got
grim
on you like a pig’s got stink.”

Spyder didn’t answer. He glanced over his left shoulder at the moon high above the bay. There was no trace yet of the eclipse Ranke’s finest astrologers were predicting. And yet, there was that strange little trick with the candle flame on his rooftop. Out on the water near the pinnacles of stone called Hag’s Teeth a number of ships were anchored. Lanterns burned weakly along their rails, in their bows. They were single and double-masted sailing vessels without oar-banks like the Ilsigi trireme he had arrived on.

There had been no wind last night. How could a ship have hugged the shoreline and sailed almost unnoticed up the White Foal? The river ran deep enough, but it was full of snags and tangles, particularly for the first few miles or so inland from the mouth.

They had come to the end of the Wideway. Ronal brought the wagon to a halt, and Spyder rose, standing on the seat to study the black ribbon of water. The river ran wide, but not so swiftly as in former days. It had washed out of its old banks and spread over the land, making bogs and marshes. “There is a name for that place,” Spyder said with a sweep of his hand.

“The Swamp of Night Secrets,” Ronal answered. “An evil place, especially at night.”

Spyder climbed down from the wagon and turned slowly. Just behind them between their position and the sea were the low rooftops of Fisherman’s Row. “Steal us a boat, Ronal. A skiff, a row-boat, anything that will get us to the other side. Hurry!”

Ronal turned the wagon and slapped the reins across the horses’ backs to speed them along. Spyder watched him go, then drawing his cloak about himself, he moved into the shadow of a warehouse and turned back toward the river.

The Swamp of Night Secrets
. An evil place, Ronal called it. What better place then for a coven of Nisi witches to make their sacrifices and work their damnable magic? He clenched his fists inside his leather gloves and swore silently. It was no longer enough to thwart their rituals and destroy the Ring of Sea and Fire—that much he had promised Jamasharem. He must also save Lisoh. That he had also promised.

The sharp, feline growl of a jungle cat sounded near the river’s bank, interrupting his thoughts. He gazed in the direction of the sound, then sank deeper into the shadows and deeper into his thoughts.

The Ring of Sea and Fire.

Forty years before, two Globes of Power had been forged on Wi-zardwall in the land of the Nis, one each for the King and Queen of Night, who were the greatest warlock and witch of their day. Into those crystal orbs were poured the essences of the blackest sorcery, power magnified and amplified beyond understanding. Armed with such power, Nis looked with hungry eyes on the Rankan Empire, its neighbor.

A long and costly war followed, and though Ranke eventually prevailed, the globes were not destroyed. As with so many things arcane and magical, they made their way to Sanctuary. Here, in the slum district once called Downwind, demigods and sorcerers and vampires and their masters, the strangest of allies, finally shattered them.

Spyder sniffed the air as he looked around. Downwind—he stood now upon its very edge, recalling the tales, how for a single night following that destruction every man, woman, or child with a mote of magical talent found their abilities elevated to drastic levels as the power contained in those globes diffused through the city. Then, like fire smothered under sand, the magic went out.

Not completely, of course. Embers of power still glowed here and there. But the gods had turned away from Sanctuary. Fearful of it, some said. Wounded by it, some said. Or most likely, Spyder thought, repelled by its corruption.

The creak of wagon wheels in the quietness alerted him to Ronal’s return. The shorter man hopped down and threw back a tarp, exposing the small rowboat he’d appropriated. “I don’t feel good about stealing from honest, hard-working folks,” he grumbled as the two men together seized hold of the boat.

“Perhaps you’ll feel better about it when someone steals your wagon and team,” Spyder commented. “We’ll have to leave them here.”

Ronal frowned as they lifted the boat and carried it to the water. “And you’re a right prick for mentioning it.”

Again there came the feline cry that Spyder had heard earlier. Ronal straightened instantly. His startled eyes widened as he whirled and searched the darkness, and he gripped an oar like a club. “That came from behind us!”

Spyder gazed toward the sky again. The full moon hung directly overhead. Yet, there was a thin veil of clouds gathering over the sea, a moon-tinged grayness that had come up without warning out of nowhere. “Get in the boat,” Spyder insisted. Climbing in first, he settled himself in the bow with his eyes fixed on the far side of the White Foal.

Ronal pushed off from the bank and seated himself in the middle of the boat. Quickly, he positioned the oars in the oar-locks and dipped them into the water.

A soft splash sounded off to their right. Ronal froze at the oars to stare. Spyder calmly turned his head for a moment. “You’re nervous tonight,” he said.

Ronal resumed rowing. “Swamps and witches,” he muttered. “Witches and swamps. Why would I be nervous? This isn’t your usual business, my friend. I’ve helped you count army divisions in secret, intercepted correspondence for you, watched you seduce information from the wives of generals. This is different.”

Under Ronal’s determined strokes they moved swiftly across the White Foal. Spyder remained silent, his jaw grim, his teeth clenched. All that Ronal said was true. This was not his usual business. This was far more dangerous, perhaps beyond his talents. Ronal was not the only nervous man under the moonlight. He felt the slight breeze upon his face like an evil breath. He listened to the water dripping from the oars, to the barely audible sound of something swimming off to the right just beyond the range of his vision. He smelled the industry of Sanctuary behind him and the rot of the swamp ahead.

And crawling at the edge of his senses, something more. Already in the air, the taint of Nisi witchcraft.

“When you get to the far side, row northward against the flow. Look for a tributary or a place wide enough to allow a ship to pass or to hide.” He gripped the side of the boat until his knuckles cracked with strain and continued in a low voice. “We must stop them, Ronal. We don’t dare fail.”

Ronal shrugged as he rowed and answered with faint bravado. “It’s only a ring,” he said. “We break up their nasty little party and snatch the trinket, hopefully killing a few of the bastards as we go.”

“It’s no mere trinket we’re after,” Spyder whispered, careful now not to let his voice carry across the water. “And we don’t know the number of enemies we face. Nis dreams of reclaiming its former might, and this ring is the key to their ambitions.”

As they neared the western bank, Ronal turned the boat. Though the river lacked its former power, still there was a current, and his muscles bulged as he worked the oars. “There’s more you haven’t told me, though,” he whispered. “Something worries you.”

After a hesitation, Spyder nodded. “The ring is forged from minerals distilled from the sea, but it must also be tempered in fire.” He hesitated again. “In the fire of a burning boy with sorcerous blood in his veins.” He paused to listen again for the swimming sound that had followed them across the river. He could no longer hear it. “That sacrifice performed under a certain rare lunar eclipse on the ground where the globes were destroyed will complete their ritual.”