by Rj Barker
Dontstruggledontstruggledontstruggle
But some things were beyond him. Beyond his power. Sometimes terror was stronger than sense. Sometimes the un-reality of memory stronger than the real, and the darkness in the box was overwhelming. The terror of the place it would lead too much and he wanted to scream to shout and to sing…
To sing.
To hear the song that spilled through the water and through his mind. To feel the water as no longer terror but comfort, something longed for, something desired. Something needed. The energy in his muscles bled away, the need for air receded to the back of his mind and was he drowning? He did not care. Because he was carried along by the song. By the deep, by the powerful body that propelled him through the depths and…
“Wake up!” A slap across his face. He opened his eyes. Cwell looking into his face. “You awake?” she said and he tried to answer but the words would not come, not yet. “Wake up!” She slapped him again. Harder, and this brought him fully back to life, coughing and choking. Cwell glanced over his shoulder. “Be glad he lives,” she spat into the darkness. No reply. He coughed again, threw up water onto the ground.
“You should be glad.” Narza’s voice came from the darkness and he felt more than saw Cwell’s hand go to the knife on her belt.
“I am glad I live,” he said, “and glad Narza got me through the water. And in need of both of you, so if you must weigh your tits against one another then do it when we have got the shipwife out.”
Chuckling from Cwell.
“Such belowdecks language,” she grinned. “Swim must have knocked you more off course than I thought.”
“Where are we?” said Joron.
“Deep in the hill beneath the bothy,” she said. But he already knew it, he could feel the island breathing, feel the beast deep within.
32
And They Met One Late Night
The tunnels were thin, running around the side of the island. Every so often they would come to a junction and Narza would study the wall, plainly she had left some sort of mark there but when Joron studied where she had looked he found nothing. Had no time to look more closely as Cwell pulled him on down dark tunnels.
“Not long now,” said Narza, “this will bring us out by the armouries.”
“Good,” said Cwell, “we can get you a sword.”
“All I need is my knives,” said Narza.
“If it comes down to fighting,” said Joron, “then we will never get out. Our aim is not to fight.” Cwell grinned at him.
“And if the Thirteenbern calls her guard?” Joron shook his head.
“It will not happen,” he said quietly, “the Thirteenbern will speak to no one once we have finished with her.” The two women glanced at each other, shared a smile and Joron felt a twist within him. They were killers – loyal to him and to Meas but killers. They knew neither mercy nor pity and felt little for others. But that was what he had become also, how many had died at his hand? Though when he thought of the Thirteenbern it opened such a well of anger that it burned away all thoughts of pity, for others, or for himself, and he walked down the narrow corridor, grim and committed to his purpose. They came to a door, secured by a heavy padlock on the inside. Narza produced a key. Unlocked it and looked out through the gap. Then waved them on and out into the wider corridors of the Grand Bothy, though further beneath than Joron had ever been.
“You have a key?” said Cwell. “Seems odd.”
“My lock,” said Narza, “to keep others out.” Cwell stared at her, then nodded.
“Let’s get on,” said Joron, and they moved along.
As they walked, Joron began to feel like he was high, jittery, his mind bouncing from thought to thought, his body full of energy and he knew it was the thought of action. Denied it for so long, forced to be someone else. But now he was the Black Pirate again, doing the things from the stories about him: sneaking in to a place where he was far outnumbered, only to outwit the enemy and leave triumphant. He knew those stories well, had started most of them and paid singers and strummers to spread them. All lies of course, he never knowingly went in anywhere outnumbered. He was no fool. Those who went in outnumbered eventually ran out of luck and out of life.
Even though he was fizzing, full of energy and ready for action he knew the truth. Knew the course he took, that his path most likely ended here.
“Cwell,” he said, “Narza,” and stopped. They stopped. Turned, looked to him. “Turn back, get out,” he said, “you…” and words failed him. He did not know what to say, or rather did not want to say it. But had to. The words would not be denied. “You do not need to die here.” Cwell stepped forward, looked at him.
“The sentence is passed, D’keeper,” she said, “only the day is undecided.” Then she put a hand on his arm. “I go where you go.” He glanced at Narza.
“I owe the shipwife,” she said and turned, walking along the corridor as if he had not even spoken.
Up and up they went, through a building so empty it was hard for him to believe this was the same place he had been to before. Then it had always been brimming with guards and hagpriests and Kept and Bern, all hissing and chatting and vying for power. Now it felt like a mausoleum, a memory, a place too big for the people it served.
“There should be someone here,” said Joron as they came into the main hall, where paths spiralled up around the outside to give access to the higher levels, where meetings were held, where in the day there should be hundreds of finely dressed people. Even at night he expected to see tens of them, scattered about on business they would rather stayed quiet.
“Good there is not,” said Cwell.
“No,” said Joron. “It is not good. When things change dramatically it is for a reason. Hold here,” he said. Cwell stopped. Narza slowed, then stopped. “There should be someone here,” he said again. “No one at all makes me wonder if it is a trap.” He wondered if somehow Indyl Karrad had managed to get word out, and if so what had happened to Mevans? But why would he?
“It’s always like this,” said Narza. “Busier in the day. But at night she empties it.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Every night.”
“And yet the Thirteenbern still lives?” She studied him with black eyes.
“I do not know how to get information from someone, outside of using pain,” she said.
“And you do not want to do that?”
Narza shrugged. “Do not mind it,” she said quietly. “But the mother and the daughter are more alike than not. Would need more time than I would have in one night to break either of them.”
“Then what use is this?” said Joron. “Why lead us in here?” Narza shrugged.
“Meas picked you,” she said, “and you will free her.” Then she turned and walked toward the nearest ramp, and Joron’s jittery, nervous state fell away from him, to be replaced by a fear of failure. What could he do? What would he do?
Up a level and up a level, nearer and nearer to the top where the Thirteenbern sat on her throne, held up by statues of children carved from keyshan bone.
What did he intend to do?
Up to where the one person in the entire archipelago who may have the answers sat, to the end of a quest that had seen him shed blood from storm to storm. So much blood, so many dead, so many lost.
And what when you have her back, Joron? What will happen then? What will she think of the things you have done in her name? This voice, his own in the back of his mind, was unwelcome. That question he put aside, because even if the Thirteenbern was so good as to tell him where Meas was, then he must still get his shipwife out, and he must still get her away and the entire island would be raised to stop him. Yet somewhere within him he still hoped, still believed, that it was possible.
Maybe he had heard too many of those songs sung about him to give up entirely.
Maybe they should have left Meas to her fate.
Maybe that was what she would have wished and maybe, just mayb
e, she would have the chance to tell him in person.
Oh that word.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
And then before him stood the great doors.
He took a deep breath.
“Open them,” he said. He meant it to be said proudly, but it came out a whisper. Cwell and Narza pushed the great doors open. Inside waited the great empty and dark space of the throne room. Dim lights all around it. No sign of movement, or people. He could not even see the throne in the gloom. “Wait here,” he said, still whispering. “I hope I will not be too long.”
And he stepped in, not trying to slip around the edge of the room. Walking forward through darkness toward where light bathed the throne. This, the end of the long journey, felt like the longest walk of all. At any moment he expected seaguard to boil from the hidden depths of the room.
None came, none delayed him, none stopped him.
And there she was.
Sat on her throne reading from a parchment, the carved bodies of the children beneath holding her up. He had seen her before, of course, her skin barely covered, better to show the stretches and scars of the birthings that made her the most powerful woman in the Hundred Isles. He saw her daughter in her, the same build, the same face hidden beneath her sagging flesh.
They shared so much, age could not dim them.
Yet, there was something different in Thirteenbern Gilbryn, some lessening of her, as if she were the living embodiment of the Hundred Isles, and his predations upon her domain had worn her down. In this moment, in this huge and silent place he felt that he caught a glimpse of the real woman, not the ruler but the person. Smaller than the ruler, sadder than the ruler.
She must have caught some movement in the corner of her eye, become aware someone was there, and any semblance that she may be a person like any other fled. She became what she was, the ruler of the Hundred Isles, as hard and unyielding as the black rock of Skearith’s Spine. She looked up from her reading and at where he stood, in the shadowy centre of the room where the wanelights did not reach.
“Do not skulk,” she said, in that skeer-cry voice. “Show yourself.”
He stepped forward.
What did he expect from her? Shock? Fear? Surprise? He was given none of these things. She merely nodded to herself, as if she had known he would come, as if she had expected him all along.
“Joron Twiner,” she said. He nodded. “The Black Pirate himself.”
“That is what they call me,” he said. She laughed quietly to herself.
“I had thought you more clever than to come here alone.”
“But you knew I would come?”
“Yes.” She looked at the nails on one hand. “Most thought it would be with the entire Gaunt Islands fleet at your back but I knew that, in the end, Aileen would let you down.”
“Some people value power more than their word.”
Thirteenbern Gilbryn leaned forward.
“People who have tasted power find it sweeter than any other drink, Twiner. You should know that by now.”
“I live by my word.” She sat back, nodded.
“Admirable,” she said. “Impressive, that you got here too, though you cannot expect to leave alive.”
“Most would say I would never get here at all.”
“Ey,” she said, “they would. But my daughter must have told you, a job half done is not done at all. It is for her you come, right? It is to her you gave your word?”
“Ey,” he said, but the word, at this place in this moment with everything so close, was a struggle for him to push from his mouth.
“Meas was always the best of them,” she said wistfully, then her voice hardened a little, “and though she could not admit it, always my favourite. Always given the longest leash, always given the most chances. Even after what she did.” The Thirteenbern let her head fall so she stared at the floor then laughed to herself. “Any other shipwife I would have had drowned. But not her, one more chance. She always got one more chance.” She looked up at him. “No wonder her sisters hated her so.” He listened to her words unbelieving, knowing it for lies.
“You threw her out,” he said, annoyed by the woman’s self-pity. “She was raised in a sea cave by a hagpriest who hated her.”
The Thirteenbern stood, and it was as if she pulled all she was to her – her voice became a roar, as loud as any shipwife’s in a storm.
“A thousand years and more of tradition weighed upon me, Joron Twiner!” Her words echoed around the room. She glared at him and the sound died away slowly, as if the acoustics of the building were unwilling to let anything of her loose. Then she sat back down, looking at the floor as if she regretted the outburst. “The priests cried for her blood, and yet she was my child. The ocean gave her back and still they thirsted. The Gilbryn are an old family, strong, powerful, fertile, and so a compromise was reached. She would be cast away to the hardest of lives, and if she lived then she did. And if not, then the Hag had her price.” The Thirteenbern looked up to the skies, beyond the roof of the bothy. “My firstborn, and each and every day I had to look out upon the town and know she was there, and that I, her mother, could not even touch her.”
“You are powerful.”
“Now I am, not then,” she said. “Not then. Many stood above me then. It is the curse of the young, Twiner, to look upon how the world is and think it always was. I was just a girl, sick with grief for her lost child.”
“You could have helped her.”
“You think I did not? How do you think a girl raised in a sea cave by an outcast hagpriest could attend the Grand Bothy?” She shook her head. “I loved her, Twiner. Mothers are not meant to have favourites, but I watched her fight for everything she had, watched her earn every promotion, and I loved her more than the rest for it.” She took a deep breath. “You are here because I let you be,” she said. “You think we cannot guard a bothy? Think this place need be so empty? I have been waiting for you for longer than you imagine.”
“Why? You cannot think I mean you ought but harm?” She stared at him. “There is a price that you must pay for the pain you have caused. You made hiyl poison to hunt keyshans from the bodies of your own people, from gullaime. You committed murder on a grand scale.”
She stared at him, ice-blue eyes, just like Meas. Voice cold as the far north.
“I have done what I must to protect the Hundred Isles. I do not ask forgiveness, nor understanding.”
“I would never—”
“Do the same?” She coughed out a laugh. “But you lie, Joron Twiner. You have raided and murdered. You sent back a creature you knew would poison half this town. Sentenced hundreds, maybe more, to death. Oh it was a clever ruse, to pretend you were ready to fight for the corpse, put the shipwives in a panic to get it back before you returned with more ships. They were brave too, my shipwives, thought they had some sort of plague, dropped seastays off the harbour and died on their ships while others brought the corpse into town. Our first arakeesian. More bone for the ships. We planned a grand celebration. Call me pitiless and cruel if you must, but do not pretend you are any better. You have seen what you did to Bernshulme.”
He had no answer to that.
“Ey,” he said quietly, “I have seen.”
She nodded to herself.
“I have lost what I love most, Twiner, and if death comes upon me then so be it. But I wanted you here, so I could ask one kindness, that is all.”
“A kindness?” He did not understand.
“Ey, give me it and I will not raise my voice and bring my guard running, I will let you leave this bothy, though I doubt you will ever get off the island.” Her head came up, she stared directly at him. Grinned at him. “You intend to kill me,” she said, “I see it in you. Well, I will ask anyway.” She took a deep breath. “My daughter died fighting to get her fleet out of Sleighthulme. I have heard accounts from those that fought against her, but take pity on an old woman before you send her to the Hag,
Joron Twiner, Black Pirate. Let me hear how she died, from the one who fought closest with her, not those who fought against her.”
“What?” he said, suddenly confused, off-centre.
“Tell me of her death, pirate. They say she died a coward, begging to live, and I will not believe it. Tell me the truth of it. Tell me she died a hero to her people, fighting to the last.”
“Tell you of her death?” he said, and it was as if the world spun around him. As if all he had known was turned upside down and when he spoke he stuttered over the words. “I cannot do that.”
“You will not tell me?” she sighed. “I had thought you may be above such petty cruelties.” She rubbed her forehead. “Meas would have been, and she chose you. Is it so hard to take pity? So hard to let me know the truth before you end me? It would be what she wanted.” She leaned forward, and once more he no longer saw the ruler, but saw the woman beneath her skin. “I suppose you can learn to command a ship, but you cannot learn compassion.”
“But she is not dead,” he whispered, because she could not be. She could not be. If Meas was dead then everything he had done was for nothing. All that pain and death and suffering. For nothing, and what did that make him?
“What do you mean, Twiner?” A flash in those eyes, shock. “Not dead?”
“You have her.”
“I?” Confusion. “Do you mock me?”
“No,” he said. “You took her. The force you sent after us when we took Sleighthulme, they took her…”
“No,” said the Thirteenbern. “You fought your way out and she died on the harbour. My daughter died at Sleighthulme.”
“No,” he said, “she did not die.” The Thirteenbern stood, and he saw the confusion on her face, and could not deny that she believed she spoke the truth. He saw his words had shaken the powerful and strong ruler right down to her bare feet. He could not understand, and wondered, for a moment, if after all the pain and suffering he had been through in the run-up to taking Sleighthulme he had somehow remembered the events incorrectly. Had he simply imagined what happened there. Had he wanted her to be alive so much he had lived ever since in some dream? Had the rot damaged his mind so much, and none around him dared say? Was his entire world a dream? A figment of a mind coming apart, holed and sore like his skin? But no, he glanced down at the bone spur where his leg should be. Touched the hilt of the knife at his hip. Thought of dear Dinyl, now with the Hag with all his deckchilder and crew. Thought of Brekir and every other shipwife that served with him and their crews, all as committed as he to bringing the shipwife back.