The Vastness

by Hausladen, Blake;

  Tayler and another page were waiting beside the gangway as we emerged but remained at station there instead of following. She would make captain as fast as I had, as observant as she was. I walked passed, intending to tip the brim of my hat to her as I went, but changed my mind.

  “With me Tayler,” I said before I led us up onto the aft deck.

  The helmsmen at the tillers and traverse board stood at ease, and our course remained steady across the unchanging westerly. The desk below was busy with two troops of Chaukai doing drills with spears along one side and along the other the work of smith and riggers practicing the assembly of a replacement yard. They looked like they’d have it together and back below before the end of the watch. I spotted the last king aboard, Kiel of Aneth, happily astride the foresail yard. He posed for me in the sunshine. It was unseemly behavior for the chief of sail crew, much less a newly crowned king, but it did threaten to make me smile before I turned toward the large box installed along the back rail.

  “A hand, Tayler.”

  She and Rindsfar untied the canvas cover and wet the soil with ready buckets of water to keep the wind from blowing the dark Enhedu loom overboard.

  The men upon deck and aloft kept working, but the sound of them was different. They had an eye on me and I could not blame them. The last time I’d exercised my power, I’d seized control of Geart, our friend made Hessier, and forced him to heal a half million people while I repaired their souls.

  I stepped to the box with my back toward them, still with no idea at all what I could do with the magic besides removing the grip of the Shadow. I’d done something entirely different that one day upon the Oreol Coast as sleek corsair chased after us. It has been of magic powered by the blood and soul of a dead man.

  “Make a wish, ma’am?” Tayler suggested.

  Lacking another course, I fixed in my mind the perfect wind and weather to drive our good ship forward and poured the cup into the black earth.

  The magic was sudden and light flared out from the box as though I hit a box of oil with a match. The heat coursed through me, and the crew swooned and cheered. There was no note of fear.

  Atop the forward deck, Geart’s head came around and he peered at me through the dark slit of his barbute helmet. I reach out with my baser power with the warm magic woke and shook his soul. The Hessier in him shrank back into a statuesque pose.

  I hoped for a steady blow of wind to fling us forward, but all that came was the warm glow. The crew cheering the magic all the same and I let them think it a success. I’d done nothing to shape the spill of magics. The energy of the Shadow and the Earth had been forced to combine and burned away like a pinch of coal in a fire. Without a target, the wild magic had done nothing.

  “Cover it,” I said to Tayler and moved below with Rindsfar. He stayed quiet and we finished a tally of the new provisions. We also edited my original log entry for the day with a careful spill of ink. I set to rewriting it while he used my wardroom and the last of that day to start interviewing the crew.

  I expected to join his effort the next day, but the chance never came. I was woken at first light by a call from the watch of smoke upon the horizon.

  “Smoke, ma’am,” the chief of the watch reported. “Something big is on fire.”

  King Kiel was a grim statue at his station before the foremast. We were already moving will all speed, so there was nothing more to be done until the view told us more about what troubled his lands.

  The day passed with no change to the weather, the waves, or the view, and we woke to the same great smear of smoke above Aneth. Before the noon peg, we encountered a flurry which the watch first reported as snow. It was anything but. The fat flakes were made of ash, and a peg later the appearance of Mount Amey solved the mystery.

  Its peak was gone and a solid column of ash broiled up from it.

  The crew and I looked to Kiel.

  “It’s been forty years, but Mount Amey lets go now and again. She’ll cover everything in a nice layer of ash and the farmers will be toasting to her for decades to come. You have nothing at all to fear unless you’re hiking her slopes.”

  The report of the eruption of Mt. Amey went into the log and the crew redoubled its focus on moving us south after Aden. He would be halfway across the Gulf of Havish if he was making the same speed, though I hoped the crew he stole would not give him the same speed as my well attended Kingfisher.

  The westerly turned into steady blow due north as we moved farther down the coast and we quartered into it as steady as a shooting star. The crew slept well.

  The rap of knuckles woke me before the dawn.

  “More smoke on the horizon,” Tayler reported. “Looks like another peak has erupted somewhere close along the coast. Kiel has left his post. Rindsfar begs you come up. Leave your yellows below, ma’am. The ash is coming down heavy and hot.”

  When I reached the deck, another page stood ready to take my arms. A third worked with a broom while half the crew had buckets moving up over the side. Every man had removed his crisp yellow jacket. Half were naked above the waist and the rest were in nothing but a tunica. The traverse board had been moved below. Ash covered every surface faster than they could wash it away. I could not see the mainsail yard through the torrent of gray flakes.

  One of the boys slapped his arm and slipped upon the layer of ash, and fell onto his backside. “I am sorry, ma’am. It’s getting hotter. Best stay there below the eve.”

  I’d seen enough. “Boatswain, bring us about. Best speed away from the coast.”

  Rindsfar hollered orders and my good ship was slow to respond. The ash mucked up every working element, and the men yelled against the hard pull of the ropes.

  Kiel appeared before we’d made the turn. “You must take me in. Those are my people.”

  “Chief, you cannot be on my crew and—”

  “I resign my post. Let me over the side in a longboat if nothing else. I must be ashore.”

  He’d swim if I said no. So would I in the same position.

  I took hold of his arm. “Grab a bucket and help keep the cinders from lighting the ship. I’ll make the turn back toward Sesmundi as soon as we are clear. It is the fastest you will be ashore unless you can grow wings or gills.”

  He growled, and it stung my heart. I had a ship. He had a province of nine-hundred thousand people. He took a bucket, and we darted east through that day until we got clear of the smoldering ash. When we made the turn back south the aging sunset was a hazy scrawl.

  I gathered my officers and Chaukai along the rail to hear Kiel’s thoughts on the view.

  “It must be Mount Sesson, west of Sesmundi. My grandfather had a painting of it above the fireplace in his study. It’s never blown. Look at it now. It’s like the mountain is vomiting.”

  “What of Sesmundi?” I asked, unsure of where his capital lay.

  He looked unsure. “My city may be clear of the ash fall if northerly holds. Can we make the turn?”

  “Do you know the lights along your coast?”

  He did not understand my question, and I would have insulted him for it if one of his men had not stepped forward then.

  “I do, ma’am. I used to fish the grouper here. You can see the beacon north of the city now, if you squint hard. I’ll guide you in, if you permit me.”

  I ordered it done and stood with Kiel during the long pegs of our approach. We saw no fires burning in the city as the harbor lights and street lamps came into view.

  Kiel was not the same man when an unknown yelling rose along the shore. He made no attempt to impress or humor me. He waited like a compressed copper spring, ready to leap upon whatever woe awaited him.

  We got into the barren harbor and the crew began to look to him, too. The count of ships was lean and the rows between the warehouses were deserted. A watch commander saw us and ran away as though we were the Shadow himself coming ashore to snatch his soul.

  “Corsairs,” someone screamed.

  “Bit your to
ngue, man,” Kiel shouted like a lion across the darkness. “It is I, Oenry Kiel, your king and protector.”

  The watch settled in stages, got eyes on their returned lord, and the news spread into the streets. I followed Kiel ashore and we met member the watch upon the pier.

  “Where is everyone?” Kiel asked the senior man while flakes of ash floated down around us.

  “We heard from Bessradi that you were dead. Most of the noble families have quit the city.”

  “Forget every report that has come down that damned road. Tell me of the mountains.”

  “A rumble and a bit of trouble from Sesson and Amey,” the old man said. “They’ll burp and spew like two drunken witches for a time making a mess of things, but they’ll not trouble Sesmundi while the Bergion is blowing. It’s the corsairs out of Yudyith that plagued us.”

  “The Roto are readying an attack?”

  “My lord, they struck every port along the entire coast on the 2nd of Autumn while you and the rest were in Bessradi for the Council of Lords. They have been raiding inland every day since. An envoy from Bessradi is here demanding your cousin recognize Yarik as the Exaltier. Can you sort him out, please, my lord, before he says something stupid or punches someone?”

  I said to Kiel, “It is no coincidence that the Roto struck while you were away.”

  Kiel paused. His jaw worked and his hands seemed undecided between clenching or trembled. He’d been the chief of a sail crew on a grand mission the morning before. What waited him now was a struggle with the worst of his family and all hardships promised by war against both the Yentif and the Roto.

  His eyes were closed when he said, “Call every loyal man to the square, and lock away every person in the city from the Kaaryon. Kill those that resist. I’ll deal with my cousin and the envoy personally. Give me your spear.”

  They all began to move. Kiel turned back toward me. He looked at our ship and in his head were a thousand requests. “Leave now, Soma. Aneth is a quagmire from which you would never emerge.”

  “I would leave you a troop of Chaukai guards and a healer, if you can spare you best remaining ship to take news of all of this to Barok. Tell him he must send ships. A trio of tall ships like the Kingfisher would cure you of your corsairs.”

  He nodded, Rindsfar ordered a troop ashore, and we were off.

  The city faded from view as we darted southwest and Rindsfar retrieved my traverse board from below. I called for measures and judged out speed with a study of the fading harbor lights.

  I marked our pace and heading on the board, rang the watch bell, and flipped over the peg glass. The crew did my honor and earned from our good ship all she could give.

  We reached the deep waters beyond the Gulf of Havish on the 30th of Autumn as colder winds began to challenge us. The ash-free gusts also allowed us to put back on our heavy yellow overcoats, so we were richer from the exchange.

  The days moved faster and the winds blow harder, but the mood aboard was not turned by the chill. We’d made good time, better than I’d hoped, but still we were too slow. The 35th was the day I’d estimated Aden would reach his destination. We were far from the Bermish Coast and there was no sign of him. The crew hung their heads that day as though it was their fault we’d not somehow made up Aden’s thirteen-day lead on the twenty-day voyage.

  I called my boatswain and his mates and pages to the wardroom to ask if they’d found anyone aboard with knowledge of the approaching coast.

  “The crew knows nothing of this shore, ma’am. No one aboard has been south of the Wellaze Isles.”

  “And Sikhek?”

  “We can get nothing from him. His sickness is without end. He keeps mumbling about a valley.”

  “Send our best healer to attend to him. I will hear from him tomorrow.”

  The healer spoon fed him hot broth and whispers of the blue through the night and we assembled the next morning around his cot. His condition was worse than I thought. He’d thinned and was incoherent from lack of drink and sleep. The healer was a good one, and his strong magic lit the small space with such a fiery blue light I thought for a moment my guts would start on fire.

  “Cinnabar,” Sikhek whispered over and over.

  I prodded him until he his eyes fluttered opened. I did not wait for his wakefulness to fade. “Tell me about the place Aden fled to. You called it the Priests’ Home.”

  He pulled the layers of blanket up around his neck and shivered. “You are close.”

  “We approach, yes, but have no good map. Describe where we must go.”

  I showed him the map of the Eastern Reaches, and a small wheeze of laughter shook him. “The man who commissioned this map is propagating very old lies. The bay beneath the Priest’s Home faces due north, and the peaks drawn along the coast are all wrong.”

  He tried to take hold of the map, but it was too much for him. He laid back into the cot and said, “There is a series of six peaks. Make your turn south between the 4th and the 5th. At the far end of the long “v” shaped bay there, you will find shallows where you can get out of the weather, drop anchor, and go ashore.”

  “Are there any other places we can land?”

  He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Perhaps during the short summer you could go ashore further out, but would then face a climb over those froze peaks. The only other safe way in while the winds blow is to put in at Hida or Sulma, travel the tithe road to Verd, and up the glacier. It is a very long route. The bay is your only chance.”

  His eyes closed and his sudden snoring was wet and ugly.

  “Do you trust it?” Rindsfar asked.

  “Never. Try again tomorrow to rouse him. I’d hear him say it all again.”

  They tried for several days but his sickness only worsened. I decided he was not worth any more of their magic or hot broth.

  It got colder, and on the 40th the winds began to blow hard against us. The crew got busy knocking ice from the rails, and I my good ship would not hold still enough for me to make any more entries in my log.

  16

  Dia Vesteal

  Master Aden

  The longboat came to a halt upon rocky shore and forced my tired eyes to focus.

  Aden stood as a frothy wave swatted us further up the gray beach. He tumbled backward, and the icy spray slap us all. My darling Clea shrieked from the sudden wash of mist that penetrated the careful wrapping across my aching breasts. I prayed that his skull was cleaved opened, but rose and searched our faces as though we had the will to laugh. The rowers did nothing—could do nothing while Aden’s magic gripped them. They were little more than starved skeletons, and their threadbare clothes quivered from the wrack of cold, hunger, and fear. The tall ship at anchor behind us was a wreck. No one was left aboard.

  Aden’s magic prevented me from saying goodbye to them, but I was able to turn my head away. The growl and hiss that bubbled through his broken face masked the noisy magic that killed the unfortunate men.

  Aden’s wet and happy sigh was so familiar it no longer sickened me. He’d compelled 48 men to crew the ship and had murdered them at intervals to enjoy the spill of their souls. Those touches of the Shadow had sustained him, and now he was upon a friendly shore.

  I was not surprised to find three figures waited nearby. The first was a monster of a man in a sealskin coat. The fur trim of his hood and his thick beard hid his round face. the pair with him were Hessier and they did not mind the cold. Ice hung from their earlobes like jewelry.

  “Master Aden,” the man said and offered him a hand out of the boat. “It is Burhn. Are you injured?”

  Aden ignored his offer and all but tumbled over the side. His hood blew back to reveal his punctured cheek, missing jaw, and split tongue. We’d done everything we could to kill him. We’d failed but the powdered silver dumped into his wounds kept them from healing. There was very little left of him.

  “Shadow, preserve us,” Burhn said and got his hand slapped away when he tried a second time to assist Aden up
the beach. I moved to follow him before I was compelled to do so.

  Burhn took my arm, and I did not refuse the help. “You have traveled a long way with our master, yes?”

  I stole one glance out at the once grand ship that had carried us. It yanked at its anchor as the waves smacked it. It would be driven ashore before long—murdered like all those aboard.

  Burhn arm grew ridged while he waited for my response. He needed answers and Aden was not likely to submit to question that could only be answered with nods and shakes of his tortured head.

  “Far,” I said. My voice was a foreign thing after half a season in silence. “Get us somewhere warm and I will explain.”

  The “us” drew his attention to the bundle hidden beneath my cloak. His anger and confusion gave way. He helped me across the tumble of rock toward a steep stone trail.

  “I cannot make that climb. I’ve another baby on the way.”

  “You’ll explain as we go,” he said and scooped me up into his arms.

  The man and his escort hurried after Aden. The trail made its way up to a high gray wall that spanned a narrow gully. On either side and behind it, hostile peaks of snow-covered rock stabbed at the frozen sky.

  Burhn’s anger made him short of breath.

  “We came from Edonia,” I said as preamble, and the man’s anxiety eased. “Your master fought and lost a war against us. He kidnapped me and my child and fled.”

  “The Vesteal have risen?”

  “Yes and they will kill every one of you. Your master will fear the ships coming to bring me home. The Shadow will find no shelter here from the nation that will descend upon this place. Aden’s plan to bring the world to an icy end will fail and the White Mother will be free of the Shadow.”

  “Fool. It is not getting colder. It is warming. This bay was frozen over for centuries before the Spirit of the Earth began to stir. It is She who means to burn us all. We guard against her return.”