“And three,” she finished, swinging Tanukke from low, into an arc that brought it up and over her head, as if she had cleaved a man in two from between his legs to the top of his skull. “Though Baraghosa has great power, so too do we.” And she looked to Longwell, who rested against the mast, one hand on his spear.
The mists on the eleventh day were no worse. Nor were the waves, breaking on the side of the ship. If anything, they softened as afternoon drew into evening—though it was difficult to say for sure, as the darkness of the fog made discerning daylight hours troublesome. The fog did seem to be shifting when the light was fading. With barely any light left at that time, though, Jasen could not ascertain if this was the case for very long.
He slept fitfully, worried that they’d overshot the isle of Baraghosa, if indeed the mist was clearing.
Then, on the twelfth day, they saw it.
26
Luukessia and Chaarland had been enormous lands, rendered small to Jasen only by a combination of his proximity to the sea and, in Luukessia’s case, a lifetime of inaccessibility. Both lands were grand things though, and he had come to understand that as both slipped out of sight, spread across the entire horizon as the Lady Vizola sailed in or away.
The isle of Baraghosa, on the other hand, was so minuscule it could fit into the port at the Aiger Cliffs with room to spare.
It rose between the tenuous mists that clutched the surface of the sea. A jagged crag of a rock, it appeared to have been hewn from the night itself. No green adorned it, not anywhere that Jasen could see; it was black like coal, or like the eyes of a scourge.
The island rose like a mountain. The base of it flared out, like the jagged petals of an onyx flower.
A crude dock was constructed where one of those jags reached out for the water.
Tethered to it was a small black boat.
So Baraghosa had arrived here first—as expected. But that he was still here—that was what caused Jasen’s stomach to tighten into a knot.
And there was only one place upon the island that Baraghosa could have gone.
Inland some way, two, perhaps three miles of semi-treacherous climbing, was a spire. Not quite as dark as the island’s small mountain, it rose like a pencil stood on its end. Heavy stones bore small, slitted holes for windows, through which Jasen supposed an archer could make a stand against an oncoming wave of enemies. There appeared to be seven floors in all, though perhaps there were more; from so far away still, it was a challenge to pick out the windows as it was, let alone accurately count them.
The top of the spire was a squat point. The building was thicker beneath it, by just a fraction. Squinting, Jasen thought he could just make out a stone barricade running around it. A walkway of some sort, he presumed.
The island bore nothing else.
So that spire—that was where they would find Baraghosa.
Burund watched. Jasen and Alixa were on the top deck with him, joined by Scourgey, who watched from beside Jasen’s hip. Her bulk leaned gently into him. He’d given her one idle pat on the head, but no more.
Huanatha, Kuura, and Longwell looked out too, on the other side of Burund. A handful of crew joined them. They arrayed upon the deck, talking in low murmurs which Jasen could not understand.
The gist, though, he could make out:
this was a cursed place—and they were both frightened and awestruck to have come here.
“You have your sorcerer,” said Burund grimly.
“Unless he has fled,” Alixa murmured.
“He won’t have,” said Jasen. To Burund, he said, “Thank you—for bringing us. For endangering yourselves.”
Burund nodded. “We are fortunate not to have incurred his wrath.” With a sidelong look, he added, “I trust that you will slay him between yourselves, and ensure a safe passage from this place too.”
“We will have his head,” Huanatha growled. “I will part it from his shoulders myself. Tanukke will be stained red with his blood.”
Longwell said, more calmly, “We will see to it that Baraghosa does not set even a foot beyond his tower ever again.”
If Burund had his doubts, he did not let on. Instead, he said, “I will wait at the dock. But do not tarry. When the evening slips to night, I will have no choice but to raise the anchor and to leave this place behind.” He finished, “We will not be back.”
A full day to slay Baraghosa.
It would, Jasen hoped, be many hours more than they needed.
The Lady Vizola crept in toward the dock. The island became only more frightful as it neared. The rock was madly twisted. It looked as though a giant had upheaved a mountain and wrung it in his fists for hundreds of years, contorting it in every direction—or, where the rock flared out into dagger-sharp jags, as though magma had been poured into the water from a great height, and cooled into rock as it sprayed and rebounded.
The dock was tiny. Baraghosa’s boat took up most of it, so the Lady Vizola had to dock edge-on to the wooden jetty.
“He is not visited often,” Kuura remarked as the ladder was thrown down.
“Nor shall he be again,” said Huanatha.
They descended, the five of them. Scourgey leapt off the boat as Jasen was clambering down the ladder. The heavy thump seemed to fill the air with a momentarily more pungent blast of that deathly scent that hung around her … although, today, Jasen barely acknowledged it. Another smell lingered in the air, like something hot and sweet and sticky had been cooked to the point of burning, and then long, long past it.
Burund looked down at them from the deck when they had all disembarked. “Good luck,” he said.
“We need no luck, Burund,” said Huanatha. And she turned, stalking down the dock and inland with no further farewell.
Kuura hesitated a moment, apparently caught between following Huanatha and bidding his shipmaster a (temporary, if all went to plan) goodbye. His shame won out; rather than addressing Burund directly, he lifted his axe and nodded at the ground, then turned and made his way down the dock.
“Till our return,” said Longwell.
Jasen and Alixa were left.
Jasen searched for words. Something about this felt very … final. But it would not be, he reminded himself. The five of them would defeat Baraghosa, and Burund would be waiting for them, atop the Lady Vizola, just a few short hours from now. Maybe as little as two! The spire would take forty, fifty minutes to reach at most. With their practice this past week, their experience in battling Baraghosa once, and Longwell at their sides, the sorcerer’s defeat would not be hard won.
Steeling himself in the certainty that they would be back, that he would see Burund again, he nodded. “See you,” he said, lifting a hand.
When he was halfway down the dock, Burund called a last warning.
“Remember: I will wait until nightfall. I will not wait past that.”
The rock was sheer. Up close, Jasen’s impression that a giant had twisted it into its malformed shape only grew. It twisted chaotically in all directions. A rough path rose up to the spire. In some places, it was smooth and their passage was simple. In others, the rock contorted dangerously, so they had to pick their steps carefully. It twisted and turned as it wound around, so if Jasen looked backward, only half the time during that first mile could he see the dock and the Lady Vizola.
After a sudden turn, hard right, the ship was blotted from sight. No matter how often Jasen looked back, the landscape did not permit it to reappear.
The spire loomed. Rising skyward like a specter, it became bigger as they gradually grew nearer.
As they did, Jasen picked out Baraghosa’s lights. They drifted around the roof of the structure, dancing lazily on a breeze softer than the sea winds blustering against his back.
As he watched those lights, the foreboding sense of dread in his stomach grew. It grew in all of their stomachs, he thought, as few words passed between them.
And then they were at its foot.
A heavy door made of d
ark wooden beams bolted together with dark steel bands stood ajar.
Longwell moved for it—
“Stop!” said Huanatha.
He paused.
“A trap has been laid,” she said.
Longwell squinted.
So too did Kuura. “How do we pass it?”
Huanatha closed her eyes. “Give me a moment.” She frowned, her look of concentration deepening over the course of a long moment.
When she opened her eyes, she said, “I will trigger it. Wait here.”
She approached tentatively.
Jasen watched with his breath held as Huanatha reached the door. Planting one hand upon its surface, she gripped Tanukke’s with the other, poised to draw it from the loop at her hip at a moment’s notice.
She pushed, and the door opened in a slow yawn …
When it would go no farther, there was silence but for the wind.
They waited.
After maybe ten seconds, Longwell grew impatient. “Time is wasting. We must—”
A gaunt, skeletal figure suddenly lurched from the darkness. Its face was long. Its eyes had clouded. Recessed into dark holes, they stared accusingly.
Its mouth hung open, jaw much too low.
Jasen shrieked—
It howled.
Longwell grappled to bring his spear around—
Huanatha was faster. “Begone, spirit,” she hissed—and Tanukke swung through the air, carving upward in a fluid swipe.
The spirit was cleaved apart—and then it vanished in a sulfurous puff.
Kuura stared. “Any … more?”
“No.” Huanatha stowed Tanukke. “We are safe of Baraghosa’s traps now.”
Alixa asked, “How did you …?”
“As I have said before,” said Huanatha, “I am a shaman.”
Longwell pursed his lips. “Magic again,” he muttered. He brushed past and into the yawning door. “Can’t get away from it, no matter how far I go.”
Jasen braced for another ghostly vision. But none came, and so the rest of them followed suit.
Stairs led up immediately to their left. These followed the outer wall, and by the look of the room immediately before them, ran alongside vast chambers that spanned the full width of each floor. Wide open except for a pair of columns rising to east and west, this bottom one was empty.
“He is above,” said Huanatha.
“Do your spirits tell you that, too?” Alixa murmured.
“They tell much,” said Huanatha, but no more.
“Ancestors, she’s like Vaste.” Longwell huffed, drawing a strange look from Huanatha. He passed, clambering up the stairs. “Hurry your footsteps. I have a debt to settle.”
“So too do I, dragoon,” Huanatha said.
“And me,” Jasen muttered.
They climbed.
Their footsteps echoed in the silence. Any hope of surprising Baraghosa vanished as the five of them, plus Scourgey, clambered up flight after flight. If not their footfalls, Baraghosa would surely hear the heavy clunking of Longwell’s armor. Jasen tried to tell himself that the element of surprise did not matter; not with another great warrior on their team, and more experience now for all of them. But his fears would not be assuaged.
Worse: that fatigue started once more to creep in. It was an old, familiar thing now—and as Jasen clambered up the fifth flight of steps, his tunic gripping to his back where he was sweating, he dimly puzzled at why he should be so exhausted so easily, now.
At the bottom of the sixth flight, purple mist rolled down the steps.
“Found you,” murmured Longwell. And without a backward look, he began mounting the steps two at a time.
Jasen swallowed against the lump in his throat.
This was it. The time had come.
Alixa reached out for him, caught his wrist. She squeezed it—to be comforting, perhaps. He was not sure; when he glanced over, she would not look at him. Instead she glared at the top of the stairs, where the purple fog was thicker. Her free hand frittered at her own belt for a dagger. A moment later, she had loosed him and was reaching for the other.
Huanatha followed Longwell—then Kuura.
Now Alixa.
Jasen and Scourgey were left.
Scourgey reached under his hand, like a dog forcing its master to pet it upon the snout.
She is with you, he thought of Huanatha saying.
It steeled him.
Gripping the hilt of his sword, he climbed, and Scourgey ascended with him, padding along at his side, all the way to the top and into the chamber.
Dense purple fog filled the chamber. It seemed to pour from a pewter pot, no larger than a tea kettle, that rested on a pedestal in the chamber’s center. A bright, pulsing glow came from it. With each pulse, it breathed out another cloud of purple mist.
And in front of it, his back to them—stood Baraghosa. One hand raised, the cane in it, he was murmuring words Jasen could not pick out.
“Baraghosa,” Longwell commanded. Leading the charge, he lifted his lance, tipping its pronged end forward. “Turn and look at me as I kill you.”
The sorcerer pivoted.
“Oh.” He looked upon them with only the faintest interest. “Visitors.”
27
Longwell stalked in, his lance raised. “We shall be the last you ever see.”
“Mm?” said Baraghosa. He barely glanced at Longwell as the dragoon crept around him to take up position on the other side of the room. So too did he ignore Huanatha and Kuura, stalking into their own places.
He had eyes only for Alixa … and Jasen.
“Hello again,” Baraghosa greeted him. “Jasen, was it?”
“Don’t you dare speak to him, you monster,” Alixa growled. She covered Jasen’s body with her own—though, half a head shorter, she did not offer much in the way of protection.
Baraghosa squinted at her. “That is not a very nice word for a child to bandy about.”
“These are no children,” Huanatha spat.
Baraghosa assessed quietly, in the purple mist enveloping him. Finally, he said, “No. Perhaps not.”
“You are a monster,” said Alixa. “A murderer.” She tightened her grip upon her daggers. “You would have murdered him if you had the chance. Just like every person you took from Terreas.”
“Terreas?” Baraghosa said distantly, as though recalling a place he might or might not have ever heard of—not a place he had buried under the rubble of a torn-apart mountain.
“You know Terreas!” Alixa shouted. “Pityr! You took him from us LAST YEAR for seed!”
“Pityr,” Baraghosa repeated.
“YES! PITYR!” Brandishing her daggers, Alixa took a step forward. “YOU TOOK HIM FROM ALL OF US. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?”
Baraghosa stared at her, blankly, before answering. “He died.”
It was so simple, and had been so obviously true … and yet it landed like a pile of bricks upon Jasen’s chest. It hit Alixa just as hard too, for she sagged backward as if struck. She made a choking sound.
Tears glazed her eyes. “You … you …”
“Yes, your friend is dead,” said Baraghosa plainly. “I assume that is why you are here.” To Jasen: “And you? What brings you back to face me again?”
“You destroyed Terreas,” Jasen said.
For all the rage he had had over these past weeks, his voice came out strangely flat.
But then, his rage had changed, had it not? That first night, on the clifftops, it had come explosively. Now it had settled into something colder. Still strong, but he could control himself now, the way he could control the swings of his blade. And control them he would—when the time was right. Not a moment sooner.
“Terreas,” Baraghosa said dimly.
“Clear your ears out, phantom,” Longwell commanded. “You know of it. You know much, don’t you?”
Baraghosa ignored him. “I am listening, child. Go on.”
Jasen swallowed. Clenched his teeth. Maybe there was
still a boiling edge to his rage. He fought to temper it, hold it back.
“You destroyed Terreas,” he repeated—slow, not only so the sorcerer comprehended it, but so his anger and his hatred did not spill out of him when he still needed to keep it at bay. “You tore open the mountain because we did not accept your deal, and buried our village.”
“You’re a MURDERER!” Alixa shrieked.
Her voice rebounded accusingly in the space.
Baraghosa blinked. “Terreas is gone?”
“Don’t play games, magician,” said Huanatha. “You know this.”
“I did not,” said Baraghosa. And he turned back to Jasen, looking—almost earnest as his eyebrows came down and he frowned at him. “You have come for me, left your lands, crossed the seas, because of that?”
“I know you did it,” Jasen said through clenched teeth.
“I did not,” Baraghosa answered.
Alixa: “LIAR!”
Scourgey growled from her ankles.
“I did not,” Baraghosa repeated. “Power over volcanoes … I have no such thing … not at the present moment, anyway …” He shook his head, as if coming back to himself. “Terreas. Gone. A shame, but no great loss there, I suppose—”
Alixa howled with rage. She lurched forward—
Jasen grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her back.
“THAT’S MY FAMILY!”
But again, Baraghosa shook his head.
“You are a vile man,” said Kuura. “A vile, despicable man.”
Baraghosa said something in Kuura’s native language—
Kuura’s mouth fell.
Huanatha spat something back.
Baraghosa only smiled.
“And you,” he said, turning to face Longwell. “You have joined this band of misfits. To what end?”
Longwell answered, “You destroyed my boat.”
“You tried to follow me.”
“You should not have tried to escape Reikonos,” Longwell rumbled back.
“Reikonos …” Baraghosa sighed. “I did no wrong there.”
A Respite From Storms Page 24