Tales of Golmeira- The Complete Box Set

by Marianne Ratcliffe

  Ithgol banged his fist on the bulwark. ‘Tell us what you know,’ he bellowed. ‘Or I’ll eat you for supper!’

  The woman started back in terror and then pointed south by southeast.

  ‘I dunno ’bout no island, but they’s a patch of sea yonder where boats disappear, an’ ain’t never seen n’more. Some say they’s an awful monster lives in the clouds that eats boats whole and spits ’em out. Why don’t you go see, ’stead of botherin’ us poor fisher folk?’

  ‘Sounds like a migaradon,’ Zastra remarked. ‘Perhaps we are close after all.’

  Justyn seemed to agree and signalled the convoy to continue in the direction indicated by the fisherwoman. A day later four sails were sighted, line astern, on a converging course. The convoy displayed Thorlberd’s gecko-and-hawk standard. Zastra ordered the same flag to be raised up the main mast of the Wind of Golmeira. Mata assembled the secret signal they had found amongst Dastrin’s papers and lowered the grating. The subterfuge seemed to work. The convoy reduced sail and allowed them to close. Zastra walked round the deck, giving quiet instructions to her crew as they prepared for battle with as little show as possible. The catapults stayed below decks. They wanted to capture Thorlberd’s precious cargo intact, not destroy it, at least until they knew what it was. Her crew crouched behind the bulwarks, armed and ready. Ahead of them the crew of the Darkhorse did likewise. They closed to within hailing distance of the convoy and Zastra began to feel a heavy weight pressing down on her mind, trying to control her. She resisted, drawing on her years of training. Dobery leaned over the stern of the Darkhorse, cupping his mouth with his hands.

  ‘Mindweavers!’ he called. ‘They know what we are about.’

  A shout came from the one of the two ships in the centre of the convoy. Both were fat trading vessels, designed for carrying cargo rather than speed. What are they carrying that requires such protection? The weight on Zastra’s mind increased. She sensed that more than one mindweaver was attacking her, but her mental wall held firm. She strode forward. Secrecy was no longer required.

  ‘Prepare to board,’ she cried, but one by one, her crew slumped to the ground in an unseeing daze, Ithgol among them. Only Mata and a few others were able to fight the disabling power of the mindweavers. Without sufficient hands to the ropes, the sails slackened and the helmswoman staggered and fell against the wheel, causing the Wind of Golmeira to veer sharply to port. The Darkhorse forged ahead, on a collision course with the leading cargo ship. Zastra saw Dobery and Polina standing next to each other, fixed in concentration. She guessed they were somehow protecting the crew of the Darkhorse from Thorlberd’s mindweavers.

  Zastra and Mata dragged the inert helmswoman off the wheel and set course towards the rearmost cargo ship. There were precious few of Zastra’s crew left, but they were committed now. Zastra took up a grapnel. As the bowsprit of the Wind of Golmeira ground against the hull of their target, a terrible scream rang out and the weight of the mindweavers’ probes was suddenly gone. Zastra ran along the bowsprit and sprang across to the deck of the other ship, landing so hard she stumbled. She drew back in alarm as the planking buckled and popped beneath her feet, almost as if it were alive. What in stars was going on? A piece of wood snapped up from the deck and flew past her ear. There was a roar and the crew of the Wind of Golmeira, miraculously revived, surged across the narrow gap between the ships to join her. Not a moment too soon. A pack of Kyrgs and Golmeiran sailors charged towards her. Swords and scythals clashed as the groups joined. Zastra parried a blade and struck out, noting that Ithgol had appeared at her side to protect her flank. The deck continued to shiver and break up beneath their feet. A large splinter tore up from the deck and buried itself in the stomach of one of the Kyrgs. He collapsed with a groan. Zastra found it almost impossible to keep her balance as the deck shuddered beneath her feet.

  ‘Zastra…’ A desperate plea echoed inside her mind and she knew, somehow, that it was Dobery. Ducking to avoid a swinging scythal, she lunged at a tattooed guthan. He collapsed to the floor and a gap appeared in the sea of bodies. She could see Dobery gesturing towards her from the other cargo ship, mouthing words that she could not hear. She fought her way towards him just as the hull of the ship she was on ground against Dobery’s. The old man reached towards her, his face creased in concentration.

  ‘Help me across.’

  Zastra grabbed his hand, supporting him as he slithered awkwardly across the bowsprit.

  ‘We must go below,’ he croaked. ‘Something is causing this chaos. We must stop it, else we will all perish.’

  They made for the amidships hatch which was rattling furiously against a metal padlock.

  ‘Jerenik!’ Zastra yelled. His head emerged from between a pair of Kyrginite legs. He got to his feet, colliding with a black-cloaked woman just as she fell to the deck screaming, half a plank lodged in her thigh. Dobery laid a hand on the mindweaver’s head.

  ‘It is as I feared. There is a strong mind aboard this ship, out of control. This mindweaver tried to tame it and it has broken her.’

  Another scream rose up from below. The deck was now peppered with rectangular gaps where planks had burst away from their neighbours. Another fountain of splinters shot upwards, sending them diving out of the way. Zastra grabbed Jerenik and pointed to the padlock.

  ‘Can you open it?’

  Jerenik nodded. ‘Easy. See it’s a basic padlock, I’ll use my—’

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  ‘I can’t do anything while it’s bucking around like that.’

  Zastra sat squarely on the hatch and beckoned Dobery to join her. Their combined weight was just enough to suppress the frantic movement. Jerenik soon had the padlock open. Zastra and Dobery rolled aside and the wooden grating spiralled into the air like a loose sail caught in a squall.

  ‘Good work, Jerenik,’ Zastra said. She headed below decks, her sword out in front of her. A foul stench clogged her nostrils. Behind her, Dobery clucked in disgust. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Zastra gasped in horror. Half of the underdeck was occupied by a huge metal cage, filled with bodies so closely packed they had barely room to move. Some were dead and those that were alive were emaciated and covered in dirt and open wounds. Chains bound them together.

  ‘What is this abomination?’ Dobery’s face twisted in shock.

  ‘Watch out,’ Jerenik yelled from just beneath the hatch. Two black-cloaked figures emerged from the darkness with swords drawn and Zastra’s mind was hit with a double blow. She staggered backwards.

  ‘I’ll handle them,’ cried Dobery. Zastra felt the pain lift and she easily fended off the first of the mindweavers, who proved to be unskilled with a blade. She used the hilt of her sword to knock him senseless. The second mindweaver drove towards her. Zastra swayed to one side, tripping her up. Jerenik, following behind, crashed a heavy bucket against the mindweaver’s head.

  ‘Good work, again,’ Zastra remarked.

  ‘Anything for milady Zastra,’ he returned with an elaborate bow.

  ‘Let’s see what they were protecting.’ Zastra stepped deeper into the underdeck. She tripped over the bodies of two more mindweavers, their clothes ripped to shreds, bloody cuts covering every inch of their skin. She tried not to think what might have caused such wounds. There was another cage, smaller than the first. Mournful howls came from within. Children of various ages pinned themselves back against the bars, trying to get as far as possible from a dismal figure seated in the middle. It was a young girl, on the cusp of becoming a woman. She was a dark-skinned Southlander, her head speckled with bald patches where tufts of hair had been pulled out. Shards of wood swirled in the air around her like shoaling fish. Her wild-eyed stare was fixed on a Golmeiran soldier. The terrified man was creeping towards her, a dagger trembling in his hand. The tornado of wood and splinters stopped circling and launched themselves towards him. He raised his arms protectively across his face and continued towards the girl, even as the splinters ripped his uniform and d
rew blood. The girl began to scream and the soldier’s dagger was whipped out of his hand and driven, blade first, into his chest. The man sank to the ground and the screaming subsided.

  ‘The girl,’ exclaimed Dobery. ‘She has the talent of mindmoving more powerful than any I have witnessed. She is out of control with fear and will surely destroy the ship.’

  ‘Can’t you stop her?’

  ‘I don’t know how. You’ve seen what she can do to mindweavers.’ Zastra glanced back at the dead mindweavers and their shredded robes. The wild-eyed girl flicked her head towards them, gulped in a lungful of air and began to scream again. All around them, the timbers redoubled their rattling. The ship could surely not survive much more. Some of the other children in the cage were crying, the noise merging with the creaking and cracking of the wood to create a terrible discord.

  Zastra approached the open door of the cage. The girl shrank back and the cloud of wooden splinters rose up again to form another protective tornado. The girl’s eyes were fixed in terror on Zastra’s sword. Seeing this, Zastra crouched down and placed the sword on the ground. Slowly, she removed the dagger she kept in her boot and laid it down alongside the sword.

  ‘I’m unarmed,’ she said, keeping her voice calm. ‘Don’t be afraid. We have come to help you.’ The girl shivered, but the scream receded into a whimper and the splinters flew a little less furiously.

  ‘My name is Zastra. What’s yours?’

  ‘F-freak. They call me Freak.’

  ‘Come now, what’s your real name?’

  The girl tugged uncertainly at one of her remaining clumps of hair

  ‘Orika?’ she whispered, as if she was uncertain. ‘Orika, maybe. I don’t remember. I’ve been called Freak for so long.’

  Zastra shuffled to within touching distance of the cloud of flying splinters. There was no way to get through without being cut to pieces.

  ‘Please, Orika, you are going to destroy the ship. Let me help you.’

  ‘They hurt me,’ whispered the girl. ‘They drowned me in cintara.’

  ‘Orika, I promise not to hurt you.’

  A probe slapped hard against Zastra mental wall, followed by another and then another, in a disordered barrage. It was as if someone was pounding against the door to her mind. As Zastra flinched under the onslaught, Orika’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  ‘Can’t see. You’re one of them!’ Her eyes flicked towards the dead mindweavers.

  ‘No,’ pleaded Zastra. ‘No, I’m not a mindweaver.’

  ‘Don’t… don’t believe you.’ The girl yanked so hard on a clump of hair that she pulled it out. Her breath became deep and ragged. There was a loud crack and a large fracture appeared in one of the thick timbers that made up the ship’s hull.

  Zastra knelt down. With a slow exhalation, she closed her eyes and dismantled her mental wall.

  ‘Look again, Orika. You can trust me. I shall hide nothing.’

  ‘Zastra, no!’ cried Dobery. ‘It’s too dangerous.’ But Zastra kept her defences lowered. She felt a contact, hesitant at first. Something burrowed through her mind like a living creature, drawn, as if in sympathy, to her saddest memories and thoughts. It was an extremely unpleasant sensation. An image was awakened, clear and terrible, of the event that haunted Zastra most of all. Golmer Castle, the night her parents had been murdered. Silence fell like a thick blanket. Zastra was so busy fighting against the pain of her memories, she didn’t realise that the ship’s timbers were no longer cracking. The contact with her mind was released.

  ‘They killed my mother too,’ wailed Orika. The tornado of splinters fell to the ground and Zastra was able to creep forward and take hold of the girl. Orika buried her head into Zastra’s shoulder and sobbed. An ashen face peered through the bars of the larger cage.

  ‘Zastra? Is that you?’

  The face, gaunt and dirt-streaked was familiar, but it took Zastra a moment to place it.

  ‘Kylen?’

  The Sendoran gave a weak smile.

  ‘You look pretty good for someone who’s supposed to be dead.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same for you. What’s going on here?’

  ‘They’re taking us Sendorans somewhere called Murthen Island. They’ve got Zax.’

  ‘What about these children?’ Zastra looked at the assorted faces in front of her. ‘They don’t look like Sendorans.’

  A teenage boy answered her.

  ‘We’re mindweavers,’ he said. ‘Some of us, anyway. The littluns ain’t yet, but they take blood and reckon they can tell if you’re going to be a mindweaver when you’re older. They make us drink cintara bark to try to make us stronger. Poor Orika had the most.’

  The girl shuddered in Zastra’s arms.

  ‘Murthen Island must be where Thorlberd is training the next generation of mindweavers,’ Dobery said. ‘Using the Sendorans to practice on. I never thought he could be so utterly ruthless. Can someone release these unfortunate souls?’

  He gestured towards the large cage and Jerenik set about the locks.

  ‘I’ll find out what’s going on with the others,’ offered Zastra. She left Orika in Dobery’s care and emerged onto the deck.

  ‘The two warships escaped,’ reported Mata nodding towards two sets of sails disappearing to the south. ‘We’ve taken the other transport. It’s full of Sendoran prisoners. Most of them are in a bad way. What’s going on?’

  Zastra explained the situation.

  ‘So this is the valuable cargo that Dastrin’s orders spoke of?’ Mata spat out the words. ‘It seems there is nothing Thorlberd wouldn’t stoop to, to keep himself in power.’

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Orika had inflicted so much damage that the prison ships were sinking fast. Zastra and Justyn divided the Sendorans and the children amongst their own vessels before casting off the doomed transports. Many of the Sendorans were in a terrible state, so thin that their ribcages pushed out against their skin. Their arms and legs were covered in bruises and open sores. Almost half were dead or very nearly so. The horror of being chained to their dead compatriots was etched across the face of every survivor. The Darkhorse was so full of the sick and the dying that not a single plank of the deck was visible. Tijan had refused to join Zastra’s rebellion and had been left behind on the Caralyx, so Zastra called for Yashni to be brought across from the Wind of Golmeira. She immediately took charge, calling for anyone with any experience in healing and organising volunteers before beginning to assess the most desperate cases. Justyn, Zastra and Nerika found a tiny space on the quarterdeck.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Nerika. ‘The children are deeply traumatised and there are so many Sendorans. We can barely work the ships with all of them lying around the decks.’

  There was a commotion at the side of the ship. Kylen hauled herself on board, pushing away hands offered in help. She stumbled across the deck towards them, shrugging off a large Sendoran who was trying to assist her.

  ‘We must attack Murthen Island.’ Her voice was dry and cracked. ‘They’ve got Zax. We must rescue him.’ Although she wasn’t in as bad a way as most of her compatriots, she looked barely able to stand, let alone fight.

  ‘Out of the question,’ said Justyn. ‘Look around you. We have hundreds of wounded and sick to attend to. Not to mention our torn sail and leaking hull. Only the stars know how much damage that poor mindmover has done.’

  Nerika stared at Kylen in open astonishment. ‘We know nothing about the defences of this island. It would be suicide to attack, even if we weren’t cluttered up with all these Sendorans.’

  Kylen rounded on her.

  ‘I’m sorry we’re messing up your precious deck. If you’re all too cowardly to help, then give me a ship. We’ll go ourselves. Zastra, please, won’t you help?’

  Zastra felt for Kylen, but she had to agree with the others.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kylen, but Nerika and Justyn are right. Your people are in no state to fight.’

  ‘I might
have known a Golmeiran would never help. I’ll take a boat and go myself.’

  She began to hack at the ropes holding the yacht in its cradle but the thick cords resisted her weak efforts. The large Sendoran tried to reason with her.

  ‘You too, Hylaz?’ she asked bitterly, shrugging him off and continuing with her attempts to release the yacht. Ithgol lifted her from behind, paying no heed to her feeble struggles as he carried her below. He returned a few moments later empty-handed.

  ‘I’ve locked her in Justyn’s cabin. She has a strong spirit. It would be a shame for her to die needlessly.’

  ‘You did right, Ithgol,’ said Justyn. ‘I believe she would have tried to swim to Murthen Island if you had not stopped her.’

  ‘Aye, she would at that,’ agreed Hylaz. ‘Although I don’t envy you, Kyrg, when you let her out.’

  ‘Land! On our southern beam,’ came the lookout’s cry.

  An island of yellow sandstone rose out of the sea, topped with a fortress made of the same colour stone. They would have noticed it much earlier but for the distraction of dealing with Kylen and the rescued prisoners.

  ‘That must be Murthen Island,’ Zastra said. The lookout shouted again.

  ‘There’s something in the air, heading our way,’ she cried. ‘Stars save us, it’s a migaradon!’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Nerika remarked sarcastically. ‘We’re all doomed. And for what? A ship full of idiot Sendorans who only want to kill themselves.’ She prodded Zastra. ‘Nice work, Lady Zastra.’

  Justyn shaded his eyes to look at the sky.

  ‘Laying blame won’t help us. We must try and outrun it. Migaradons dare not fly beyond sight of land. Return to your ships and make as much sail as you can. If we spread out, some of us may survive. We’ll rendezvous a hundred leagues due south of the Pyramid Isle. Good luck.’

  ‘We’ll need more than luck,’ muttered Nerika.

  Zastra and Ithgol jumped in the yacht and were quickly returned to the Wind of Golmeira. Even as the little boat was being hoisted aboard, Mata had made sail and the ship began to head westwards. The Obala was also underway and gathering speed in the opposite direction. The Darkhorse, however, was struggling. They were trying to raise a new sail and their prow was still pointing towards the migaradon. The ominous speck in the sky was larger now, clear to all. A gust of wind carried its metallic shriek through the air.