by James Duvall
For hours he lay there, clutching the scrying gem to his chest, sobbing until his throat was sore and his mouth dry and clammy. Merindi would come back, he told himself. Soon. Very soon. As soon as Sapphire woke up. They would take her things, but they would let her live. They had to let her live. She was important to someone, they must have known that. They could see him, must have heard him begging for her life.
Sullenly he regarded the empty circle. It had been nearly four hours and the gems atop the posts had not yet lit. He knew it was unlikely that they would before the next morning, but he was still hesitant to leave.
“I will be back,” the sullen dragon promised the gems, then started down the ramp. The gears on his weak leg clicked softly with each step. On most days the sound did not bother him, but today it did. It was the sound of gears and springs, the strength of metal where his strength was not enough. At the bottom of the steps he stopped, if only to make the sound stop. His strength was not enough. It was never enough. Far above, the scrying circle sat quiet and dark and he dared to wonder if it would ever light again.
The clicking resumed as he passed through the tall archway and into the hallway beyond. From the perspective of a luminarian the ceiling seemed the sky away. Stained-glass windows painted the floor tiles with colorful light in a pattern that shifted through the day and night. Dawn stopped in front of his favorite one, a depiction of the Night Warden. Of all the Seven, he was the one that was most like a luminarian, though he was much bigger. He had the body of a great beast and was purple as twilight in the winter. His wings were broad, leathery like the fire-breathers that dwelled deep in ancient mountain ranges. Deep violet fur covered the shoulders of each wing and his wolfish head was lifted high to watch over the land. His eyes were half-shut in solemnity, but in their dark orange hues, Dawn could see all the colors of a distant and dying star. His broad muzzle was tipped with misty white, bearded and always smiling. Grandfatherly, the humans would call it. He was very much like the warp singers. Protecting people in the night. All people, all souls.
“My father said you watched over people when they needed you most. Sapphire needs you tonight most of all. If you could, please, save her?”
The image did not answer back.
Chapter 15
The Captain's Honor
The Mistwood, Isla Merindi, Pendric Shard
Seven Creatures of Power the Creator set to watch over the peoples of the world.
~The Seven Songs
It had been quiet in the living room since a little before midnight. The lamps dimmed of their own accord. Timothy knew he could brighten them with a wave of his arm or so, but instead he let them think he was asleep. He was slouched into an upholstered chair, his head propped up by one arm on his forehead. Aebyn sat lion-style at his feet, watching him with concern.
“I don't know what to do,” Timothy quietly confessed. Crewman Thacker lay feverish in the guest room. Willoughby and Torvald, being the ship's first and second mate were taking turns monitoring him while the other tended to the crew.
Shortly after the grim pronouncement of Thacker's declining condition, Christopher had retired to the master bedroom without checking in on the injured man. Instead he strode to the door, turned back as though in afterthought, and reminded the crew not to remove anything from the manor that might provoke someone to follow after it. This was met with much consternation and grumbling. Timothy could see fire in Torvald's eyes.
“Will he die?” Aebyn asked in a secretive whisper.
“He might,” Timothy said, feeling macabre for even suggesting it as an eventuality. Men died. It was a fact of the world, particularly the world of airmen. Of course when pirates, thieves, and the border guard were not enough heartache, there was always the chance a bridger might come and try to incinerate you, Timothy thought darkly. Most nights he slept with a gun beneath his pillow. These nights he scarcely slept at all.
Timothy rose from his chair and strode to the window to look out at the cobalt fire in the distant darkness. The lamps glowed a little brighter for his benefit, then dimmed as though sensing his frustration with them. He had not the slightest concept how they might work. He wondered if there was even a treasure out there. Was it worth Thacker's life? But no, he couldn't think like that. He had never set out to trade lives for gold; bandits were bad luck, could have happened at any time. The Stormbreaker had been boarded twice in the past year by similar sorts of people. Both times they had been repelled, but the second had been costly. Three of the airmen were given back to the ground from whence they came.
“What are you thinking about?” Aebyn asked, cocking his head to train a bright blue eye on him.
“People we've lost,” he said, taking a deep breath and wishing he had come up with a nicer answer. Aebyn was young, it wasn't good for him to take on such a grim view of the world so early in his life.
“Are they many?”
“Five this year, including Bill. We lost three a few months back. We were carrying a load of brightstone out of the Brimwold. I thought we had been careful but you can never rely on the customer to keep quiet about these sorts of things. Someone got wind of it, sent a falcon after us, armed to the teeth. They must have thought we were traditional merchants or they would have brought more firepower. We shot it out, come up with three of our own dead, five more wounded. We did our fair share of damage though, got at least four of theirs. Turned them away. Word gets around, we haven't been bothered much since. Can't let it lull us though, memories fade. The other was an accident, new kid trying to climb up into the tops without a proper tie off. Fell from the central mast and hit the deck a foot shy of the starboard rail. Seemed okay for a few minutes, then dropped to his knees. Internal injuries; he didn't last the night.”
“I see... Are you well?” Aebyn asked, looking him up and down with worried eyes.
Timothy tried to brush it off, ran his hands through his hair and around to the back of his head, never taking his eyes off the Mistwood.
“I'll get there,” he promised. “Bill and that kid, those things happen. Sometimes a man gets knifed on his way home from the tavern just for the coins in his pocket. But those other three, they're on my hands. If we hadn't been ferrying illicit brightstones across the shardwall, there wouldn't have been a crew waiting for us on the other side and those three men wouldn't have been shot full of lead. They follow my leadership, whether I like to think so or not. I am going to have to do something about that.”
Aebyn nodded slowly. “What will you do?”
“Be a better man,” Timothy answered.
“You are a good man, I think.”
Timothy smiled at him. If only it were the truth. It could be, though, he knew. That would require changes. Serious changes. He cast a wary glance at Christopher's door. There was no escape from this life for a man like Christopher. His father's creditors would hound him for the rest of his days. He wondered if he could really part ways with his childhood friend. He wasn't sure he liked the man Christopher was becoming. He liked even less to see some of those traits in himself.
Willoughby came into the room, pausing briefly in the doorway to peer into the gloom as though concerned about waking someone. He had a bottle in his hand and an unsteady way about him. Was he drunk? That was unlike the old airmen.
“Willoughby? Is everything alright?”
At his side, Aebyn fixed a softly glowing eye on Willoughby, his raptor gaze penetrating and sharp. “What is that?” the gryphon asked in breathless wonder.
Timothy took the bottle from Willoughby, and the man promptly removed his well-worn tricorne hat and wrung it in both hands like a wet cloth. Viewing the phial up close, Timothy could see what had stirred Aebyn's interest. The phial was filled with a misty substance of bright verdant color like soft moss after a cool spring shower in the early morning hours, after the sun had come up enough as to not be colored by the shardwall. It swirled through the vessel like water, but was made of light and smoke.
�
�Captain, I think we should go,” Willoughby said, his tone grave.
“This is mist...” Timothy said, turning the phial against his palm and watching the darker greens form eddies in the pools of smokey yellow.
Willoughby nodded somberly. “There's a lot more, captain, if you reckon to my meanin'.”
“Show me.”
“It's a mistweaver's workshop. I'm sure of it,” Willoughby explained along the way. Timothy followed him to the back corner of the manor home and out into the night. A small detached building, not much larger than a garden shed, stood on the corner of the property amidst a copse of sturdy maple trees that, like the Mistwood, Timothy suspected kept their leaves all year. Lamps lit as they approached, sensing their arrival and illuminating the path always a few paces before they arrived.
“It's just like the candles in the house,” Willoughby said. “The workshop too.”
When he opened the door it was not to a darkened shed, but a well lit workspace with glass windows and a small wood-burning stove that similarly crackled to life. Dry logs cracked and popped as the fire really got going and the room rose to a comfortable temperature once the door was shut. At the center of the room was a table, clear of anything of more substance than a rack of empty phials. A writing desk was jammed into the far corner opposite the stove. Where there were not windows, shelves dominated the wall space and each was jammed to capacity with glass phials and bottles and jars. Most contained mists of green and blue, with rarer specimens of whites, yellows, and reds. One particularly ornate vessel had a brass clasp affixed to lock the cork in place and it contained a soft lavender mist. It was the only one of its variety.
“We should gather the men and go,” Willoughby said, reminding Timothy of his earlier plea.
On the writing desk Timothy found several letters. “Evelyn Thatch,” he read aloud.
“Evelyn Thatch...?” Aebyn asked.
“Never heard of her,” Willoughby said, shrugging at the gryphon. Most of the crew had grown to accept Aebyn among their number, but Willoughby had taken a particular shine to him.
“I don't think she's been here in a while,” Timothy announced. “Look, there's dust on the desk. It was the same in the kitchen.”
“I still don't like it,” Willoughby muttered. He found his way to one of the windows and warily monitored the road as though he was certain that at any moment the mistweaver might return. “Every man I ever knew that saw a mistweaver wasn't better off for it. They're touched, all of 'em. They get something dark inside of 'em, that's why they go looking for Talimor. It takes a madman to seek out the Night Warden in his own domain. He's different there, you know. He's got red eyes and a black altar and not a soul gets away unscathed. They say most that find their way into Talimor don't come back alive. They find the bodies in the woods outside of black shards, all torn up by claws as long as scythes and teeth like swords.”
“The Night Warden wouldn't kill them,” Aebyn protested, wings flapping in agitation.
“What else could do somethin' like that to a man?” Willoughby asked.
“The Ash Strider could,” Timothy answered. “Or a less legendary manticore; mountain dragons, basilisks, there are plenty of alternatives more believable than the guardian of lost souls choosing to strike down those he would otherwise protect.”
Aebyn gave a curt nod in Willoughby's direction before he skulked back to Timothy's side with ruffled feathers.
“I didn't mean anythin' by it,” Willoughby protested. “I'm just sayin' what I've been told. Besides that, everyone knows mistweavers are all wrong in the head. We don't want to be caught here by this one when she gets back. She might burn the flesh right off our bones. She already tried once!”
“She's been gone for weeks at the least,” Timothy answered. “We'll leave in the morning if Thacker's well enough to be taken back to Nothnor. If she comes around I'm sure I can get in a word or two before she has us all turning on a spit on the lawn.”
Timothy grinned wryly at Willoughby, but the old sailor only gave a halfhearted smile in return. There was no lightening his mood once his stories got into him. He would be on edge and in poor sorts until the entire crew was up and departed in the morning. Airmen and sailors had that in common; superstitious as a summer day was long. Timothy did not like it when Willoughby became all doom and gloom. It was bad for morale and it set his own thoughts ill-at-ease, though he would never admit it to another living soul. He did not think highly of Willoughby's superstitions, but not all of them were without merit. Willoughby was aged well beyond Timothy's meager years before the mast, and he had learned to trust the man's instincts when it came to sailing. There was something about seeing that wizened face etched with worry that gnawed at him from within.
When Timothy returned to the manor home he brought with him a dreary old airman and a young lighthound still feeling slighted and taking every opportunity to remind the two humans of his state of agitation. Torvald was waiting for them in the living room with a dire look about him. His eyes were glassy with fatigue and his skin pale.
“Seven preserve us, what's happened to you?” Willoughby asked, clapping the younger man on the shoulders and straightening him up so that he could look for the truth in his eyes.
“Thacker's dyin,” Torvald said soberly. “He's taken to fever. It's up two marks since my watch started. Four, maybe five turns of the glass and he'll be with the Almighty above.”
Timothy's heart sank. “Is there nothing else we can do for him? We could make a run for the city to fetch a surgeon. Aebyn could go.”
“I've stitched his wound, cleaned it best I can. It's too fast for infection. I think there might've been something on the blade what cut him. Poison or a drug of some kind. I gave him water and brandy, for the pain. If he's not dead by morning we'll want to get him back to town. Did either of you see what happened with the weapon?”
Willoughby and Timothy exchanged glances. Timothy could not remember and the blank look in Willoughby's face told him the first mate didn't either. After the skirmish Timothy had been too focused on the injured and dead to monitor what became of the battle spoils. In all likelihood the weapon was tucked into someone's belt or rusting at the bottom of the river.
“Please see that whoever has it turns it over for Thacker's sake,” Timothy asked him. “I'll make sure he gets it back or is compensated by coin. Impress upon the men that the blade might be poisoned and we'll want to provide it to the surgeon for Thacker's treatment.”
“Aye, captain,” Willoughby said, then excused himself to carry out Timothy's command.
“How are you, Torvald?” Timothy asked. Torvald simply shook his head and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I'll be better when this is over, sir.”
Timothy retired for the evening, finding his way back to the living room and slouching onto the couch. Aebyn hopped up beside him and laid down with his head against Timothy's shoulder. For a while Timothy lay awake, stroking the gryphon's furry ears and listening to the creature purr while he looked out one of the high windows at the twinkling stars. For a few hours, at least, it would be peaceful.
In the morning it was Willoughby that came to give him the bad news: Thacker died in the night. Torvald, exhausted from his efforts, had been given the only other bed in the house not already occupied by Christopher. He woke long enough to attend the funeral for Thacker and Bill. His hair was unruly and matted, and his clothing stained with blood, but no one said anything as he stood in silent reverence with the rest of the crew. Christopher too made an appearance. He said a few regretful words, scanning the crowd with the fearful eyes of a man accused. He made no attempt to justify his actions the previous night, and returned to the house after the services had concluded and four of the younger lads started filling the hole back in. In the late afternoon it was all over and the crew returned to the manor home where an ambitious young man had started a venison stew over the hearth.
Dinner was soon served and it lifted everyone's sp
irits a little. Food had a way of doing that, Timothy noticed. He liked the sense of community it fostered among the crew. Everyone came together to eat. Everyone but Christopher. Timothy thought little of it at first, Christopher often extolled the virtues of a professional distance between himself and his employees. On some level Timothy was also an employee, so found it not at all inappropriate to take meals with the rest of the crew. Near dusk it became apparent that no one had seen Christopher in quite some hours.
“Willoughby?” Timothy asked, finding his way to Willoughby in the crowded dining hall. After the meal many of the men had sat down to play cards. It would be their last chance to do so in the comfort of a roof over their head for potentially several days.
“Yes, captain?” Willoughby asked
“Have you seen Christopher?” he asked, feeling too dejected to correct the man.
“No, no sir I do not believe I have.”
“I have,” a young man by the name of Ralson interjected. “He was out front after the funeral. Told me he was going for a walk. Went back toward the Mistwood.”
Both Timothy and Willoughby sat quiet, staring at the boy in disbelief. Outside, the twilight hour was not far off.
“I'm sorry,” Ralson said contritely. “Please don't be mad. I would've said something earlier if I knew it was important.”
“Seven among us,” Willoughby swore.
“I'm going after him,” Timothy announced with Aebyn already eagerly at his side. “Willoughby, you're in charge until I get back.”
Chapter 16
Amethyst's Lullaby
Nothnor, Isla Merindi, Pendric Shard
Nearly as widely revered as the Reaper himself, the Night Warden is said to come and go along the highways by night, bringing comfort to the lost and the weary and judgment to the wicked that prey upon the weak.