As he spoke, Aiyan handed Kyric a vial of oil and the powder ball. “Ivestris must be returned to Esaiya. It has been wielded by true warriors before me, and it must be again. Only the swords which burned in the first light of Sorrin’s blade can hold the flame. Some have been lost over the years, and not so many remain in the hall of Elistar’s shield as once did. This must be done. Also, the masters of the order need to hear an account of what has happened here. I have to know if you are willing to do it.”
Kyric held the sword in front of him and removed the sheath. “I would do anything you ask of me. But what of the barrier around Esaiya? How can I pass through it by my own hand?”
“The Unknowable Forces will permit it. I know this. They will allow you to come to Esaiya if your heart truly burns for it.”
Kyric had begun wiping the blade with a dry cloth. He looked up. “How do you know?”
“Before any man can step upon Esaiya as a candidate, a knight or master of the order must agree to serve as his benefactor. I am yours, and I have been all of these days. I spoke of you to Master Zahaias — or I should say that he spoke to me. He told me that you are welcome on Esaiya, and he has promised to act as your benefactor should I be killed.”
“But I don’t know anything.”
Aiyan shook his head. “You can’t go back to hiding behind that. One of the dualities of the way is that we can never learn all that we need, yet we must act decisively with what we know. Denial of knowledge will not prevent arrogance. Pride and humility must both be overcome if you are to go forward.
“I find it endearing that you are unaware of your natural talent in the weird arts. It took me years to reach the level you’re at. With Master Zahaias for a teacher, you could go farther than any of us. But to be blunt, I don’t envy the time you will spend with him. I was never at ease in his presence. He always emits a terrible intensity.”
Kyric reached for the powder ball. “Just don’t look them in the eyes, and it’s not so bad.”
Aiyan’s voice tightened as he fought a surge of pain. “So. Will you return the sword?”
“Of course.”
“And will you stay on Esaiya as a Candidate of the Order?”
“Where else would I go?”
Aiyan motioned to the chests of spice outside the tent. “Those alone will give you enough money to live for years. And Lerica will be rich. You have other choices.”
Kyric shook his head. “I’m not sure that I do. Maybe I should consider it more seriously. But I’ve looked through his eye; I’ve seen his future. It’s as you warned me — it doesn’t take long before you’ve gone too far. Besides, could I really be with Lerica without putting her in danger?”
Aiyan didn’t answer at first. Then, “It is my hope that you could.”
Kyric finished cleaning the sword. “One more matter. What about my swordsmanship? You said I needed years more practice.”
“A . . . dispensation has been granted. But don’t worry, the masters of Esaiya would not loose you upon the world unprepared. You may, however, have to spend more time there than is usual.”
Kyric set the sword aside and unwrapped the protective leather from the ebony scabbard. He began to polish it with wood oil.
Aiyan laid down to rest. “Take Ivestris to Esaiya,” he said. “Leave the locket with me. All else is yours.”
“And if we make it to Aeva, everything is arranged with Princess Aerlyn?”
“Yes,” Aiyan said, suddenly very tired. “Tell her . . . tell her I’m sorry.”
The midday rains never came, and while Aiyan rested, several dozen Tialuccan warriors wandered down to the tent a few at a time, sitting together at a respectful distance. More and more joined them as the day went on. As the sun swung low in the west, Aiyan sat up and said to Kyric. “Here, help me get dressed.”
Kyric got the white buckskin leggings on him, then managed to slip the blue tunic over him without too much hurt. He had to stand Aiyan on his feet to get the sash right. When they came to the sword, Aiyan said, “Forget the belt, just slip it into the sash.”
When he was done, Kyric peeked out at the beach. “They’re all there.”
With one arm over Kyric’s shoulder, Aiyan was able to walk. When they stepped out of the tent, all the Tialuccans keeping watch rose together and approached them. They bowed.
“Ulendi Aku,” said one. “We have been told that you go to your death. We would hear what wisdom you have found in your time as a warrior.”
Aiyan scanned their faces. “I don’t know if I possess any wisdom.”
Another, a young one, blurted out, “Tell us what is best in life.”
Aiyan looked out to sea, then back to the crowd of warriors. “To sit beside the waters, to drink rass wine and listen to the song of the mashan. That is what is best in life.”
They walked on to the beach, and Kyric thought that they must be a sight, one man leaning on another who leaned on a crutch. Aiyan’s stride grew longer as they went, his eyes becoming sharper. He took the last few steps on his own. Those he invited stood in a semicircle. Caleem and Tonah had come in full battle armor, with their spears and shields, Ilara and Ubtarune in feathered capes and headdresses. Ellec wore a suit of solid white that Kyric had never seen before. Lerica shone in her freshly-oiled black leather.
Aiyan lowered himself to his knees, sitting back on his heels, and signaled everyone to sit as well. Ubtarune went to stand in front of him, and presented him with a huge blue and yellow feather. It had to have come from a Gavdi bird.
“This is the greatest of all our magic,” he said. “It will see that your spirit is carried on the wind.”
Aiyan nodded and placed it under his arm. Ubtarune returned to the others and sat. Aiyan waited until the disk of the sun slipped below the horizon, then suddenly he drew his sword across his locket, and blue fire leapt from the cutting edge.
The flame burned brightly in the waning light. He held the blade high, showing it in turn to each one of them, then he sheathed it and laid it on the ground. He removed his locket from the chain and opened it, placing it on the sand in front of him. The tiny blue flame flickered in the breeze.
“Thank you, my friends,” Aiyan said, his voice suddenly deep and rich. “Your presence here honors me. To the Tialucca, I say that it has been my privilege to serve. To my friend Ellec,” he looked directly at him, “I hope your return voyage brings many blessings.” He shifted his gaze to Lerica. “May you find that which will hold you in balance, Lerica Panthrum. And Kyric,” he said more softly, “know that I am proud to have been your first teacher.” He raised his head. “The Powers protect you all. Farewell.”
He bowed to them all, and to the flame. Then he spoke for the last time.
“Selai Asol.” It was an invocation in the Essian Tongue, used for creation and for unmaking.
He sat still. He bowed his head to his chest and closed his eyes. The flame went out.
“How do your people treat the remains of your fallen heroes?” King Tonah asked Kyric the next morning. They had laid Aiyan’s body in the large pavilion, and all the people of Tiah had spent the night filing past him, the incense in their hands casting a smoky haze over the place.
“The Ulendi Aku of the Tialucca,” Tonah continued, “watch for us from their tombs in the sky. All the people agree that Sir Aiyan be allowed a place among them.”
Kyric blinked. “Do you mean that your most honored dead rest inside the bird heads, uh, the totems on top of those poles?”
“They do.”
Kyric thought about it. Somehow it didn’t seem right for Aiyan. Then he had an idea.
“You honor my teacher, but I would make another choice. Let me tell you what is done in my land with our greatest heroes.”
All was ready by the end of the day. Caleem insisted on sacrificing his own boat. Ellec supplied the whale oil.
They brought Aiyan’s body to the shore where the great totem heads, the watching heroes of the Tialucca, stood on their pol
es. A pyramid of wood filled the hull of the waiting boat and they set Aiyan there, locket on his chest and the Gavdi feather in his hands. They raised the sail and set the boat on a course for the setting sun.
Kyric waited, longbow in hand and arrow nocked. Some of the Tialuccans looked at him, but he waited until the boat made it to deeper water, a couple of hundred yards out. He knew he could make the shot.
Lerica held the torch. Kyric touched the head of his arrow to it and watched the cloth catch fire. He loosed it and it found its mark. At first there was a thin trail of smoke, then the boat went up all at once, the flames roaring skyward, the smoke black against the red sun.
Kyric couldn’t help but think it was highly theatric. Aiyan would have loved it.
CHAPTER 15: Crosscurrent
They stayed in Tiah another ten days. While repairs continued to the ship’s hull, Ellec decided to make a full inspection and refit much of the rigging. This also gave him enough time to take an oxcart south and trade with the Manutu.
Kyric spent his nights in Lerica’s bed, but it wasn’t like before. She made herself small and slept with her back against the bulkhead. She got up before sunrise, as always, and when she left the cabin he would lie awake in the dark.
He spent the days in monkish solitude, carving wood and lying listlessly on the beach. At lunchtime one of Ilara’s girls would find him and redress his wound. He had hoped to spend some time with Caleem, but Caleem had become the ambassador of the Tialucca, traveling the island to speak with other clan leaders about the future of Mokkala and the spice trade. Before he left for his diplomatic tour, Kyric gave him the figurine of the whale serpent he had carved.
“So you can look at it, and know that you didn’t imagine it.”
Once Calico had been outfitted and business concluded, Ellec was anxious to depart, as if a Baskillian ship could come around the headland at any time. Kyric didn’t see any need to hurry. Back home it was still the dead of winter.
The day before they sailed, Kyric, Ellec, and Lerica were invited to one last coffee hour with King Tonah and Queen Opela. No one else was there, and the conversation was a bit stiff. Tonah asked Ellec if he would come back next year to trade again, and Ellec had to tell him that it was unlikely that he could ever return, but that he would remain hopeful. Opela presented gifts of clothing to them. A yellow sleeveless dress for Lerica, and a bright red vest for Ellec. Kyric received a pair of the pajama-like shorts.
At length, Tonah asked him, “Will you now take Sir Aiyan’s place and wield the fire sword?”
Kyric glanced at Lerica. He had been waiting until they put to sea to speak with her about this. “Before I could do that,” he said to Tonah, “I would have to train long and be tested in the fortress of the flaming blade.”
Opela looked from him to Lerica and back. “Are the two of you not promised to one another?”
“No,” said Lerica, rather quickly. “We are not promised in any way. We have . . . a kind of love for each other. That’s all.”
Opela looked disappointed. “To share love and have no promise, that is sad.”
Kyric didn’t sleep that night. Lerica spent the entire time on deck, supposedly conducting the final preparations for the voyage home. He would have liked to be the one stomping around the ship, but his leg wouldn’t permit it.
The morning came on a stiff, gusty breeze. No one had come from the town to see them off. As they fended away from the dock and raised sail, Kyric saw a large crowd gathering on the headland. Calico turned northwest, and when the ship passed the hero totems, the Tialuccans all waved, like they did when meeting a friend in the street. Kyric wondered who had taught them that Northerners waved goodbye. The ship pushed into the open sea, and he limped to the taffrail to look back. They were still waving.
That night he dined with Lerica in the cabin where Aiyan had slept. That was its true purpose in fact. Now Ellec wouldn’t have to share the captain’s cabin at mealtimes.
Lerica slashed at her fish, clearly angry, eating like it was a contest. “You never told the king if you intended to do it,” she said, “if you planned to join the Order of the Flaming Blade.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I have no idea what will happen if we make it back to Aeva. I guess we’ll just have to see how much money I end up with.” She gulped a cup of wine. “But I have to be honest,” she said, giving him the hardest look he had ever seen from her. “This trip has been a nightmare, and it’s a Goddess-damned miracle that we both lived through it. No amount of money . . . is worth what I’ve gone through.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“I mean what is your big reward, getting to go to this Castle Esaiya? Does that make it worth it for you?”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “Mokkala wasn’t a test, and Esaiya isn’t a reward.”
“What is it then?”
“My hope is that it’s sanctuary.”
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m done with this sort of thing. When all this is over, I’m quit with Uncle Ellec, and I’m quit with you too. Don’t get me wrong. I still care about you and still enjoy being with you, but even if you don’t join them, the weird is going to follow you wherever you go, and it doesn’t intend you any good. I can see that much. It wasn’t Aiyan that took us in search of that horrible slave camp. It was you and your weird dreams.”
She looked him in the eye, and it was with compassion. “You wear this dark halo, Kyric. You’re a good man, but the more good you do, the darker it gets.”
So that was it. I’m too weird even for her. It was ironic, he thought, coming from Lerica — a woman both more and less than human.
“The brighter the flame, the sharper the shadow,” he said, not looking at her.
He stirred his plate, the scent of mangos and nutmeg rising. Fresh fruit swung in bunches from every overhead on the ship. They had so much spice that Ellec told the cook he could use it in the evening meals. Kyric wasn’t the only one who had become accustomed to it.
“I wish it could be like it was when we were sailing into the unknown,” he said. “We seemed to stand outside of time. Every day was like a blank canvas waiting to be painted.”
“Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath “It’s too bad.”
Ellec decided to return by way of The Turtle. If he could find it, that would confirm his bearings and reckoning, and make his own charts far more valuable than Aiyan’s rudders. Kyric hadn’t thought of that. Elistar’s breath, this man was going to be wealthy.
The equatorial winds proved shifty once again, and it was nearly three weeks before Ellec sighted the pole star. During the days, Kyric talked to Lerica as much as ever, but he found he had little to say at the dinner table. He was aware that he had become withdrawn. He couldn’t help it. Since Aiyan’s death he had turned to introspection as a way to cope with the loss. It was like being with an old friend.
Another spontaneous party for the crew was allowed, and if the one they held when crossing the line southbound had been strained, this celebration swayed in relief. Kyric drank and danced with Lerica, not feeling the soreness in his leg after the third cup of wine. She drank more than he, and they laughed and forgot themselves, stumbling to her cabin long before the festivities ended, falling into her bunk amid giggles and making love like they had at first. So he was surprise the next day when she asked him to move back to the dining cabin.
“It’s not that we can’t ever be together again,” she said. “I just need to be alone with myself right now.”
They reached the latitude of The Turtle at the end of the fourth week. Ellec steered a course due west, thinking it might not be far away, but after a few days he decided that it had actually lain to the east, and set the ship on a northwest tack.
“Must be a crosscurrent between the island and the line,” he said. “It wasn’t so noticeable on our outbound voyage.”
The wind picked up after that, and Calico made good time, broad reac
hing with a steady breeze off her beam. Only ten days later they sighted Pygmy Island, an uninhabited piece of land off the southern tip of Terrula.
“We cannot make it to Aeva without stopping for water and fresh food,” Ellec said to Lerica and Mr. Pallan that morning as they stood on the quarterdeck. He waved Kyric over to include him as well. “From here we have the option of taking a shorter route along the west coast of Terrula. We could skirt the northeast tip of Jakavia and get to Aeva a week sooner. But that would mean putting in to one of the Jakavian colonies up the coast for resupply. They would ask questions that we wouldn’t have answers for, and we might incur some kind of official inspection. I can guarantee that any agent of the Jakavian crown who discovers our cargo will immediately impound it.”
He looked at Kyric. “Unless we had a letter of patronage from your Princess Aerlyn. They wouldn’t dare search the ship if we were acting under the authority of the state of Aeva. Is it possible that Aiyan possessed such a letter?”
Kyric went to look, curious that after so many days at sea he hadn’t gone through Aiyan’s papers. He didn’t find anything to connect him with the princess except in the book of poems Aiyan had written. The last several entries were about her. It wasn’t moon-eyed schoolboy poetry. It was good, and Kyric set the book aside for later.
He also found an untitled play. An entire play. Kyric flipped through it — it seemed to be a comedy about a noblewoman who was an identical twin for her maid. Then he came to some lines he had heard before, said by the male lead. They were the very lines Aiyan had quoted when he saw Aerlyn at the reception, comparing her to the seasons. Kyric shook his head. Tricky fellow. Aiyan had said it was from a play.
With no proof of patronage, Ellec wasn’t willing to sail into a Jakavian port. “So we will go the longer way,” he said, “and resupply in Ularra. No one there will look twice at us, but we should get in and out quickly in any case. And absolutely no one but myself will be allowed to go ashore. I will not let one slip from a drunken sailor ruin this. We’ll hold the crew at gunpoint if we must.”
Black Spice (Book 3) Page 17