by C S Vass
The dwarf waved him off. “Of course he will. Why do you think we’re miles farther than we need to be from the shore? We’re taking precautions, but no western admiral is going to sail out here and hassle us for simply celebrating.”
“Yes, lighten up Godwin,” Robert said, his eyes rolling in his head. “It’s like the first night I met you all over again.”
“Oh?” Godwin said, his voice softening dangerously. “Tell me, Robert, what exactly do you mean by that?”
Robert had suddenly become extremely interested in the tips of his fingers and declined to meet Godwin’s eyes.
“Calm yourself, Shigata,” Tzuri-ren said. “We’re but two days from Saebyl, if that. Soon you’ll be rid of our boorish company and—what in the name of Belluziah’s butt?”
Tzuri-ren rose from his seat and looked over towards the other side of the deck, where a murmur of anxious voices had broken out over the sounds of mirth-making.
“Let me tell you about great-uncle Bertrand’s funeral,” Robert said, oblivious to the chaos that had broken out.
“Be quiet you idiot,” Godwin said. Quickly he scanned the deck for Lyra, and to his fear saw that she was over by the crowd. Without waiting for the other two, he rushed over.
“Get out of the way, you lug-heads!” Raijen roared as he pushed his way to the front. Godwin followed suit, and when he saw what had caused the attention, his heart sank.
“Vodyanoi,” a pirate muttered.
Somehow the demon had boarded the ship. Before them the vodyanoi stood on wobbly legs. It wore sopping wet robes without shoes, and was entirely indistinguishable from an old man—other than the head—which was that of a massive, bulbous toad.
The demon stumbled backwards and forwards, unused to supporting its body out of the water. “Gods, what the fuck is that?” Robert slurred.
“Get back,” Godwin hissed, shoving both Lyra and Robert behind him. “It’s confused.”
“Somebody put an arrow through its eye,” a pirate yelled.
Godwin glanced about nervously. The situation was far too unpredictable. A Vodyanoi might be reasoned with if met in isolation, in the water, on the creature’s own terms. But onboard a cog and surrounded by pirates, there was no telling what it might do.
“Everyone get back!” Godwin yelled. “Give it space! Space, you fools! Move!”
The pirates paid him no heed. They were more curious than afraid of the strange, unbalanced demon that wobbled and gasped like a mutant fish.
“I’ll take care of this,” a large pirate with a mohawk said, stepping forward.
“No,” Godwin hissed. “Don’t approach it.”
“I’ve never had frog legs that came quite like this,” the pirate laughed. “I guess there’s a first time for everything.” Drawing his sword he strode forward with confidence—but only for a moment before he was stopped dead in his tracks. The Vodyanoi had launched itself at him quick as lightning and placed its enormous mouth over the pirates head and shoulders. There was a hideous crunching sound, and next it was the pirate stumbling around like a town drunk, only he was missing the upper half of his torso.
Dead silence filled the air as blood gushed from the open wound like a geyser before the pirate fell. The vodyanoi, who appeared to need no time to chew, tilted its head back and let out a terrible frog-like shriek.
“What the devil is happening onboard my ship!” Raijen shouted. “I’ll not have it.”
Godwin had intended to attack the creature the moment after it shrieked, but he found himself momentarily paralyzed by dread. While the other pirates were focused on the demon, Godwin’s attention had turned towards the surface of the sea which was fully visible by the light of the moon. Dozens of bulbous toad heads bobbed towards the ship.
Shaking off the fear, he grabbed Jon roughly by the arm. “Frankincense!” he shouted.
“What?”
“Is there frankincense on this ship? We’ve got to get burn a ton of it! It’s our only hope”
Jon, who had also seen the army of demons that approached the ship, shook his head dumbfounded. “Frankincense? What do you think this is, a transport barge for noble women? No, we don’t have any fucking frankincense.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Robert mumbled as he fell to his knees, retching.
“What do we do?” Lyra asked, her voice flickering with panic.
Godwin looked around, desperately wracking his brain for any answer.
“What do we do?” Lyra asked again. “Gods, what do we do?”
She was answered only by a chorus of toad-like shrieks in the night.
Chapter 7
Dry, dead grass in brown-yellow clumps frosted with snow. Cold, hard ground. Cruel winds whipping hair, biting skin. Numb fingers sticky with blood. Pain and anger. A stretch of endless plain to the east. The great rolling sun watching silently, undisturbed in its blue palace. The occasional sprinkling of rain sliding uninvited down the back of the neck. Dry, dead grass in brown-yellow clumps frosted with snow.
Those would be Faela’s memories of the blur of days that followed her escape attempt. She was bound with irons so tightly that every breath was like a knife in her ribs. Rune magic had sealed her fire within her once more, but even if they hadn’t taken the trouble to bind her, she did not have the strength to reach it. Hunger thrashed inside her stomach like a child in the midst of a tantrum. She kept thinking how good it would feel to vomit, but there was nothing inside of her to come out.
It was unclear if Yaura was still alive. The Shigata had maimed and possibly killed several more of the bandits, and she had been carried away to the front of the lines. Even if she had been brought back within eyesight, Faela was struck hard in the face every time she lifted her head, so she learned to keep her eyes on the dry, dead grass that patched the hellscape they traveled.
Hers wasn’t the only mood that had soured. The bandits had also grown solemn. The nights were no longer filled with bawdy stories and raucous laughter, but rather a grim kind of quiet that one only experienced in such large numbers when the specter of death hovered nearby.
Not long afterwards, the prisoners began to die. They fell on the march and were left unattended. They wouldn’t be the first. Human remains became a common sight as they moved farther towards the heart of the terrible peninsula that was Killer’s Rest. Bones picked so clean they almost glistened in the rays of sunlight that kissed them.
One night there was a great commotion, and the bandits rushed to grab their weapons. Faela’s curiosity was peaked to the point where she managed to lift her head and see what the trouble was. A man in his middle years with waxy skin and the look of a starved rat had approached with his hands raised. Faela couldn’t make out what was being said. There was a general uproar, more excitement than had occurred since the night of her attempted escape. She thought she heard the term vampire, but couldn’t be sure.
Finally the man joined them and was given a skin of wine.
The day after that there was a new feature to the landscape. Stone columns jutted from the ground like spears. They were blackened and broken at the top as if fire from the gods themselves had smote the structures for daring to stand above the plain. They grew more common, as did the sight of ruined houses and plots of land where something other than dry, dead grass might have grown in days long past.
“We are upon the city of Mok Alatuk,” Jaraugh announced one night to the prisoners. “Within this domain, King Kark rules. You are not his subjects, as even subjects have some rights against their monarch. You are his property. Property does not argue. It does not speak. Such broken tools are quickly discarded. You will not be told again.”
The words roused something deep within Faela. It wasn’t quite anger, but rather a flicker of discontent. Something small on its own. Something that might spark into a greater fire if left exposed to the dry, dead grass that had grown over her soul.
Mok Alatuk wasn’t so much a city as it was the corpse of a city. It remi
nded Faela of a broken lobster shell that had long been abandoned and was only recently found by a new crustacean, vulnerable and desperate for whatever small protection it might find.
The architecture was essentially uniform. Grey blocks of stone formed every structure with the single exception of the broken columns and pillars that spiraled upwards, strangled by vines. The openings were exposed. There was not a hint of glass or a wooden door, though some of the larger houses had makeshift drapes or blankets that offered some privacy.
The prisoners were taken to a large, green river where they were told to wash. To Faela’s surprise, she was included in those who had been untied. For a moment she considered what nearly fifty slaves freed of their chains might do in the rush of excitement. Such thoughts crumbled as she looked at the bleak, defeated faces that surrounded her. The women solemnly let their clothes fall and walked into the icy waters without the slightest change of expression.
Faela did the same.
That night they were given food. Faela was handed a bowl of pasty brown rice smeared with something that tasted like it was once a vegetable, a smelly block of cheese she couldn’t bring herself to touch, and a cup of thin watery wine that she gulped greedily in an instant and then regretted not savoring. Then, to her surprise, she was also given a blanket.
The stars were hidden behind a wall of cloud. Even the moon wasn’t able to penetrate through the heavenly barrier. Faela thought of Kylie, the young girl who had betrayed them, and contemplated killing her in the night. It wouldn’t be hard. She was unbound, and the guards seemed unconcerned with any prospect of prisoner revolt or escape. They would never succeed against their captors in combat here in their own city, and where was there to escape to surrounded by fields of death?
The thought quickly left her. She had not fallen so low that she would stoop to the murder of children while they shook with terror on the cold plains.
Yaura was dead, she assumed. She had not seen a trace of the Shigata since they had seized her and carted her off with that bloody knife between her teeth. That would have been something for the bards and minstrels to sing of, Faela thought. But there were no bards or minstrels to keep a record of what happened there.
The next morning mounted bandits rode among the prisoners. “Strip your clothes and don these,” Jaraugh shouted as the men threw plain white dresses among the women. Faela’s was more suited to clothe an elephant than clothe her own slender frame, but she didn’t intend to argue the point. Twisting the back of the dress into a knot and tying it so that it wouldn’t trip her feet, her transformation to humble slave of the bandit King Kark was complete.
“Today you will rest,” Jaraugh shouted. “Wander not far. Stray into no homes or abodes. Every man, woman, and child in Mok Alatuk is well within their rights to kill you at a moments notice with no greater penalty than a simple fine to the King. Tomorrow, the kings of the plains will send their representatives to bid on you, and you will know your fate. Do not embarrass King Kark, or the consequences will be severe.
Faela immediately drifted away from the other slaves. She couldn’t bear to look upon those helpless, weatherbeaten women. She could see her own face in each and every one of them, and it filled her with disgust.
The cold ground of Mok Alatuk had turned her feet numb. They were such a bloody and bruised mess that she thought amputation to be more likely than not if she didn’t do something soon. This is the worst part of not having my fire, she decided. The sense of helplessness was bad. But the inability to escape the cold the way she always had been able to was far worse.
“Come, child.”
Faela turned and saw the face of a wizened old woman with a single wobbly tooth in her head. The woman was not wearing a white dress, so Faela could only assume she was of a higher rank than she was. Fearing to disobey, she approached.
The woman led her into a squat stone house where a fire blazed happily in the hearth. “Sit,” the woman said, pointing to a chair. Faela sat, and to her great shock the woman knelt before her, placed a rag into a jug of water, and began gently washing her feet.
“What are you—”
“Silent,” the old woman said. Faela gasped when the woman’s intense eyes fell upon her face. They were pure silver, just like her own. Not daring to move, Faela watched as the woman massaged feeling back into her feet with the damp rag—and oh the pain! Pain unlike anything she had ever known.
Unable to stop herself, tears rolled down Faela’s cheeks as aching waves rolled up her legs. The sight was even more of a horror than she realized. The blood had been hiding the worst of the damage, but the wounds underneath were black-green and reeked of infection.
Wondering what was going to happen to her, Faela watched as the old woman massaged unbearable agony into her feet. When at last she thought she could take no more and would try to protest, the old woman rose. Faela watched frozen in her seat as the woman took another jug of water and brought it over.
Faela thought the whole ordeal was about to be repeated, but the woman did not place the rag in the water. Instead she placed her own hands in the jug and her eyes erupted into an astonishing glow of silver light. Faela watched transfixed as the water glowed with the same color as the old woman’s eyes.
When the magic ceased, Faela started to ask “What are you—”
“Silent,” the old woman said again. She dipped the rag into the new water and began massaging Faela’s feet again. Faela recoiled, expecting a fresh round of torture, but instead she felt a soothing, opiate bliss seep into her body. It was as if everything that had just been done to her was inverted completely, and the feeling was now in exact opposition to before.
“I was born in Mok Alotuk,” the woman said. “Under the Mage. My mother served King Gerald, like her mother before her. I too served Gerald. Then Christian. Then Lee. I have served many kings. In all that time my service to even the greatest of kings was but a mockery when compared with my service to the gods of ice and shadow.”
Faela was unable to speak as pleasurable relief spread throughout her body. “The gods of ice and shadow did not make Star-blessed to serve roaming kings in the wilderness. Such gods are false idols to be spat upon with contempt. Tell me, which god blessed you?”
Faela had become so lucid that she was almost unable to speak. Realizing that she had been asked a question, she mumbled, “The Dragon.”
“God of fire, god of power,” the old woman said sleepily. “The rare god, as was said in the years of my childhood. They spoke of the Dragon often, of how he roamed the universe in clouds of fire with smoke billowing from his mouth, of how he blew life into volcanoes and drank the flames of the sun like a fish drinks water. Always a he, yet I was never so sure. When I see the Dragon in my dreams, I see a woman, beautiful and fierce, with lightning streaking her long red hair and eyes that have looked into the heart of death and smiled.”
Faela was now slipping in and out of consciousness. She hadn’t even noticed that the woman had moved past her feet, which no longer even had so much as the trace of a scar on them, and washed her whole body.
“The gods of ice and shadow did not make Star-blessed to serve roaming kings in the wilderness,” the old woman repeated as a twig snapped in the fire. “And when these false idols seal the power of the gods, lock it away from the Star-blessed, that is the worst of all blasphemies. Tell me, child, do you see the face of the Dragon? Do you see her lightening-streaked hair? Do you see the cup of life filled with sunlight?”
“I do,” Faela replied, hardly aware of what was happening.
“Drinketh of the cup, child of the Dragon. Drinketh of the cup of sunlight, so the blessing of the Dragon may return to you.”
Soothing fire cascaded over Faela’s body like lava. Her body felt formless, ethereal, an infinite void in which all the stars in heaven fell into burning with raw power.
“Good,” the old woman cooed. “Now sleep, child of the Dragon. Sleep, and when you awaken, know thy true power.”
Faela slept in that chair as an acorn sleeps under warm soil.
“There you are!”
She awoke peacefully, and immediately thought she was dead. Her pain had gone and Yaura stood before her dressed in black leather armor with ringlets of black hair falling down her back.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Yaura said. “I was beginning to think you had died on the journey.”
Sleepily, Faela’s eyes flickered open.
“Where’s the old woman?” Faela asked.
“I don’t know, and you don’t have time to worry about it.” Yaura flung a sack at the floor near Faela’s feet. She opened it and saw that it contained armor and clothing similar to what Yaura was wearing.
“Quickly, put that on.”
“Armor? I don’t think—”
“Don’t go prattling on about being a slave. I haven’t the time, and you’re no more a slave than I am a dairy-maid. Now put that on. We have an audience with King Kark.”
“An audience with the King?” Faela asked confused.
“Yes,” Yaura said, clearly exasperated. “Now come on already, we don’t have all day. And here, you’re going to want this too.”
Uncertain of what else there could be, Faela looked up and couldn’t help but smile. Yaura held out a sword to her, its ruby pommel flashing in the sunlight.
“I don’t understand. I thought they killed you.”
Faela’s mind raced as Yaura sped through the streets of the ruined city. “What, me?” Yaura asked, surprised. “No, you should know better. Shigata don’t die in places like this.”
Foolish, Faela thought. This is exactly the kind of place where Shigata die. Instead she said, “But, how come—why did they arm and armor you?”
Yaura laughed. It irritated Faela beyond measure. “Faela, these are bandits. They’re brutal thugs, much like the ones I decided to work with when I became a Shigata. They don’t begrudge courage. They don’t throw away a good sword arm. When we tried to escape, we simply made them see the value that the two of us had.”