by Giles Carwyn
Wary that this was another cruel torture by the Silver Islanders, Ossamyr moved forward on silent feet, ears straining. No one reached out to grab her, to imprison her again. She stopped at the base of the steps and squinted into the daylight. Clouds. Blue sky.
One step at a time, she climbed up and emerged into the fresh salt air. A sailor pushed a mop across the deck, looked up at her, and went back to his work without another glance. A second man stood at the top of the gangplank, about to start down, but he paused, hand on the rail, and watched her. She looked back at him, studied him. He was a broad man, short and stocky like all the Silver Islanders. His tattoos were disjointed where a thick scar cut across his biceps. For that brief instant, she thought the sailor was assigned to watch her, but he flicked a nervous glance to his right, then hastily turned and headed down the gangplank.
Ossamyr followed his gaze, clenched her teeth.
Reef stood alone at the prow of the ship, his huge shoulders hunched over, elbows on the rail. He wore no shirt, and his back and arms were covered with curly black hair. She couldn’t see his face, but she would recognize his hulking silhouette anywhere.
Ossamyr considered jumping over the rail onto the dock and making a run for it. The deck was empty, and this might be the best opportunity she would ever have to escape.
But she paused, catching a glimpse of the harbor beyond Reef. The entire city was built on pylons extending out into the protected bay. Only a few buildings perched on the steep granite mountains that rose directly out of the water, cutting ragged points toward the sky.
Slaver’s Bay. Long ago, the onetime pirate hideout had been the largest slave-trading market in the world. The city had thrived by exchanging silver for slaves, whom they worked to death mining more silver. But that was centuries ago, before the mines ran dry, before the fall of Efften. Some claimed that Efften would never have fallen if silver had kept flowing from the crags above Slaver’s Bay.
Oddly compelled, Ossamyr walked up to Reef and stopped a few paces behind him. Clearing her throat, she said, “Thank you for the clothing.”
He grunted, but he didn’t turn, and she knew immediately that he had charted her progress across the deck without looking at her. “Politeness now, is it?”
“I wanted to acknowledge a kind gesture.” Her gaze strayed to the dock. One jump. Could he stop her? But then where would she go? Run through the streets of Slaver’s Bay? Try to steal a ship? Stowaway? Ossamyr was not in any condition to run from this man.
“They said I ought to kill you.”
She stayed perfectly still.
“Not going to,” he said, his voice as dry as a wood rasp. “I’m going soft, I know. I made the same mistake with your friend. Next thing she did was wake up the Sleeper.”
“Shara?” Ossamyr asked.
Reef turned, a bear swiveling its bulk. He leaned back against the rail, once again setting his thick elbows down. His chest and arm muscles rippled as he situated himself, and his intense golden eyes considered her carefully. “I should have killed the Zelani, but there was something about her, a look in the eyes. Same as yours. Time is short, so perhaps it’s time to take a different direction.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You throw the dice, and you see what comes up. You make a choice; you live with it. So does the rest of the world.” He paused. “You are free to go.”
Hope surged within her, mingling with hot doubt. Another trick? She calmed her breathing and spoke.
“You’re just going to let me go? After everything I told you?”
Reef made a sour face. “I have heard your truth. No more damning than most. You were a child born in darkness, but you sailed beyond that horizon. That’s a feat. Not many have the strength to make that choice. It’s to be admired.”
At one time she would never have believed that someone could hear her list of crimes and shrug them away. This man knew things about her no one knew, no one would ever know, yet he said he admired her.
“You’re still a witch,” Reef continued, with a shrug. “Ignorant and arrogant, like all witches. But there is no malice in you.”
Ossamyr wasn’t sure about that, but she felt strangely calm, receiving his praise.
Reef pointed across the harbor to one of the ships. It had a gray stripe along the side, fading to pink. “Silver Spear is sailing with the tide. I’ve talked to her captain. He agreed to sell you passage back to the Blue City.”
He meant it. He was really going to let her go. Or was this some slaver’s joke? Was she hostage to the new captain the moment she stepped on board? But why dissemble? Why not just tie her up and carry her over? He’d already proven that her magic was useless against him.
“I have no money to pay,” she said.
Reef gave her a wry smile. His gaze made its way down her body to her knees, then back up to her face. “I’m sure you can arrange some sort of trade.” He shrugged. “Or deferred payment, if you wish. The man is a Gold Islander through and through, but he won’t betray you. He’ll gouge you if he can, but he’s good as his word.”
“Then that’s it? I’m free?”
“Just one thing. A favor.”
“You’re asking me for a favor?”
“An exchange, if you’d rather. For your life.”
“What do you want?”
“Tell the Blue City’s leaders what you learned here. Tell them not to trust the Sleeper they woke. He’s not what he was. And certainly don’t trust the witch from Ohohhom. She doesn’t care about anything but her twisted goal. She’ll kill anyone who gets in her way.”
Unlike Silver Islanders, of course, Ossamyr thought.
The sea breeze invigorated her, and she reached out with her magic to touch him, tried to ascertain the truth of his words. Most people could be read through their faces, but Reef was a stone wall. She needed to know. Needed to—
“Your magic won’t work on me, if you use it that way,” Reef said, his golden gaze on her.
She raised her chin. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He chuckled. “What you tried to do, just now. Do you think I’m blind?”
She clenched her jaw.
“You can’t steal from me,” he said calmly. “I’m protected from that brand of witchery. But if you’d ever learned to use your ani as it was intended, you’d find things very different.” He shook his head. “But you won’t. Your kind are all the same, so drunk on your power that you miss the small things. Problem is, the world is made up of the small things.”
Her anger burned hotter with each of his words, this ignorant, barbaric soldier, but she suddenly remembered something Shara had said:
“If your anger flares so brightly at another’s words, that’s your body’s way of fighting.”
“Fighting what?” Ossamyr had asked.
“A truth it doesn’t want to hear.”
After a long silence, Ossamyr took a deep breath, and said softly, “Tell me.”
His eyes narrowed a little as he considered her with his unsettling gaze. Finally, he said, “I could, but you won’t understand.”
“Try me.”
He shifted out of his slouch, standing up straight, flexed a stiff hand. “Very well, you shared your truth with me. I’ll share mine with you.”
Ossamyr envisioned Reef confessing all of his sins, blubbering about men he had killed, broken apart with his bare hands, women he had raped, tortured.
Ossamyr waited several moments for him to say something. Finally, she raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Tell me.”
He shook his head. “Can’t. Not here. Not with words.”
Warnings skittered through Ossamyr’s mind. “Then where?”
“The mountains.” He tipped his chin at the volcanic peaks behind the city. “At night.”
She found herself shaking her head. “No.”
He chuckled. “’Course not. You alre
ady know everything there is to know, don’t you?” He paused, and his golden eyes lost some of their intensity. He shrugged. “Good luck, then. Tell the Blue City what I said.” He walked past her.
Confused, Ossamyr watched his retreating back until he went down the gangplank and off the boat. Her gaze rose, settling on the peaks behind Slaver’s Bay. Shaking her head, she went in search of the captain Reef had mentioned.
After all of her trials, after the bloody, life-threatening altercations with the Silver Islanders over the years, Ossamyr could hardly believe that they had let her go. She kept expecting Reef to show up with a dozen men to kill her. But here she was on the Silver Spear, wind picking up, ruffling her hair, and she was ready to sail with the tide. But she kept looking back at those mountains.
“Reef tell you what they do up there?” The captain’s voice interrupted her thoughts. Since she had come aboard, the silver-haired, broken-nosed man had never strayed far from where she was. He’d offered her free passage if she shared his cabin during the journey. That wasn’t Ossamyr’s idea of “free,” and she countered with an offer of twenty silver stars when they arrived in Ohndarien.
He’d accepted grudgingly, but without a real fight. His gaze had stayed on her constantly since she’d stepped aboard, but that did not bother her. If he wanted to undress her, he would have to do it with his eyes.
This captain was not Reef, nowhere close. He was a big man, broad through the shoulders, strong and fit, but he was nowhere near Reef’s size. She’d tested him the first moment of their meeting. He was just a normal man, solid and very accessible. If she needed to, she could control him. She was not helpless on this ship.
“No,” she replied to his question. “Do you know what they do?”
“Nope.” He spat into the water. He walked up next to her, so close their shoulders almost touched. “Those Doomsayers don’t talk about it. Rumor says orgies.” He looked sidelong at her, a half smile on his face, hoping for something.
She stared at him steadily.
He cleared his throat, frowned, spat into the water again. “They’re arrogant lunatics,” he said. “As if dancing around a fire will save the world.”
“That is what they do? Dance?”
“Who knows for sure? They’re just rumors. But I never met anyone who actually saw. Two of my crew tried to sneak a peek once. Crept into them mountains after dark. Young. Dumb. Horny and invincible, like all young men.” He shrugged. “The Doomsayers dumped their bloody heads onto my deck the next morning. They said that anyone who tried to come without an invitation would be dealt with the same.” He shook his head. “None of my people have been curious since.”
“Understandable,” she said. Her gaze flicked to the mountains again. Reef had given her an invitation.
“Who cares what they do, anyway?” the captain said, frowning. He pointed, and her gaze followed. A long line of people carrying torches had begun a procession up a stone path that wound up into the mountains behind the city. “Look at ’em. Must’ve drunk too much water outta Slaver’s Bay, you ask me. They’re just fanatics, all full of some secret purpose that don’t mean nothing. And they look down their crazy noses at everybody else just trying to make a living. Look down their noses at us! Fools. We’re making the best of the world the way it is, not stuck three hundred years in the past, making war on a race that has been extinct since we did for ’em during the Fall.” He shook his head.
A strong breeze came from the west, blowing Ossamyr’s hair back. The smell of the sea reminded her of fighting waves, losing her crew, all in an effort to get past those same fanatics.
“Tide’s turning,” the captain said. “Be under way in an hour.”
She nodded, still watching the solemn procession of torches creeping up the side of the mountain. Following their path, she saw a faint glow in the distance, barely seen in the twilight.
She drew a deep breath. Brophy was safe. Brophy was free.
“How often does a ship bound for Ohndarien pass through here?” she asked, feeling almost as if someone else had spoken the words, from behind her somewhere.
“Every couple of weeks. Once a month, maybe,” the captain said.
“If I write you a letter, will you deliver it to the Zelani school in Ohndarien?”
He smiled. “Sure I will, for a price.” His smile faded then, and he frowned. “Why don’t you deliver it?”
“Because I’ve decided not to come with you.”
In another time, Ossamyr would have been fascinated by the stilt houses and the haphazard, barely functional construction of Slaver’s Bay. But the light was failing, and she didn’t know how far it was to where the Doomsayers did whatever it was they did.
It did not take her long to cross the city. The trail leading into the mountains was easy to find in the bright light of the full moon. It almost seemed as if the rest of the city pointed to it, existing only to be the beginning point to this path into the mountains.
The night was warm, but there was a chill in the air as she trod the smooth path cut into the side of the mountain. Wide-leafed trees flanked the path, letting moonlight through in dappled spots. The path was obvious, but so silent that she began to feel as if she were going the wrong way. No crickets chirped. No night animals rustled in the woods. It was as if they were all holding their breath in anticipation of what would happen at the end of the road.
After an hour of climbing, sweat beaded on her forehead, and her breath was deep and quick. The breeze that had taken the Silver Spear out to sea still blew, cooling her as she labored to get up the mountain. Her cramped legs were weaker than she originally thought.
She was nearly at the top of the pass when she rounded a corner and instantly knew she was not alone.
Her heart leapt to her throat as she saw the figures, mere shadows blending with the darkness of the boulders alongside the path. She couldn’t help thinking about severed heads tossed aboard Silver Spear. Reef had invited her, she reminded herself. But she had refused.
The men were burly like Reef, but they didn’t make a sound. It was almost as if they had wanted her to see them, and once she had, they disappeared again, slipping into the darkness behind the boulders like wisps of black fog. They wanted her to know this was a guarded place. They wanted her to know that she continued at their sufferance.
Her heart wouldn’t have been pounding so hard if she had been able to sense them with her magical sight, but like Reef, they were invisible.
Pausing in the middle of the path, she considered the lunacy of what she was doing. What if the secret ritual in these mountains was the sacrifice of one who was invited and came willingly? That would explain why he had let her go. What better way to draw her into their trap than to drop a hint about some mysterious new magic?
She stood for a long moment, waiting for the guards to reappear, waiting for some sign that she had been betrayed.
Setting her jaw, she started forward again. She crested the rise and heard distant music. A dancing orange glow emanated from the woods below. Drumming and chanting voices mingled together into an amorphous, haunting sound. It stirred her, filling her with subtle, fierce energy. She had felt this before, or almost, during her initiations with Zelani magic. It was arousing, but not the same way. This energy made her skin tingle, made her breath come faster, but it centered in her chest and belly, not in her genitals.
Making each step silent, she crept closer to the shifting light through the trees. As she drew near, her hands began vibrating with the power. Her legs were no longer tired from the climb, and she ached to break into a run, to spin, to dance. Joy spilled from her heart into every limb. She wanted to leap into the arms of someone she loved, let him hug her, spin her around.
Creeping closer, she peered into a small clearing in the trees and saw everything she desired. More than fifty Silver Islanders danced in the moonlight, weaving a chain of cavorting bodies among a dozen bonfires. They chanted, sang, beat drums. Deep male voices rumbled a throaty
base note as women’s voices rose above, spinning in and out of the rhythm like birds in flight.
Many of the half-naked dancers carried flutes or stones that they clapped together in time with the drums. They held each other, spun together, sweaty bodies sliding against one another, moving from one partner to the next.
Ossamyr swallowed and stared. Her hands itched to grasp, to grip. She wanted to strip off her dress and rush into that mass of flesh and flames, but she held back, moving off the path into the shadow of an evergreen.
The dance changed, and two lines of people intertwined, one line moving in one direction and the other line moving in the opposite direction, snaking through an elaborate pattern around the fires. Their movements were animalistic, yet somehow tender, sensual without being sexual. As the two lines passed each other, every person caressed each successive partner in turn, sharing a common ground for one instant, before moving to the next. Flesh slid across flesh, hands grasped and let go. The dancers traded smiles, kisses, and unabashed laughter as they traded partners down the line.
Ossamyr remained stunned, gripping a low-hanging branch as she watched, moved by the energy that flowed through her, moved by the overwhelming love she saw before her.
It wasn’t long before she spotted Reef. He broke from the line of dancers and spun by himself. His huge chest, arms, and tree-trunk legs were unmistakable as he danced with the flames. The man radiated joy as he swept his head and shoulders through the towering blaze, grinning like a child being tossed into the air by his father. That sight, more than any other, made Ossamyr feel like she was in a dream, awaiting day’s first light to snap her out of it.
The music grew faster, and the dancers increased their pace to match. Their breath soon came in ragged gasps. Sweat flew from their bodies and hair with every twist of their heads. Ossamyr’s fingernails dug painfully into the bark of the tree limb. Her heart beat faster, as if it had become tied to the frenetic pace of the dance. She longed to join them but held herself at bay.