by Alec Hutson
More arrows rained from the sky and the ghost apes crooned in dismay and turned to run, holding up their knobby arms as if that could protect them from the falling death. Another fell, three black-fletched arrows sprouting from its back, and then a third collapsed as a shaft embedded itself in its calf.
The ground was shaking. Cho Lin twisted around to see a line of horsemen charging the panicking ghost apes. Behind them she glimpsed a dozen archers lowering their bows.
Hooves thundered around her, tossing up snow and clumps of frozen earth. Long spears flickered down from the riders, impaling the ghost apes as they cowered or fled. Keening death-cries trailed into gurgling silence. Cho Lin could only watch in shock, her elbows in the snow propping her up, as the mounted warriors dispatched the ghost apes with practiced efficiency.
Then it was over. One of the warriors slid from his saddle, long yellow braids swinging, and with a flourish of his great ax cut off the head of the last of the whimpering monsters. More of the riders leapt down, their boots crunching heavily in the snow. They laughed, loud and boisterous. Cho Lin felt blood trickling from the stinging cuts across her back.
The first warrior to dismount loomed over her, his hands still gripping the long haft of his double-headed ax. He was young, not much older than her, and his eyes were the same blue as the northern sky.
“Who are you?” he asked in stilted Menekarian, crouching beside her to scoop up a handful of snow and rub away the ghost ape’s black blood from the curving head of his ax. She heard no challenge in his voice; just curiosity.
“I am Cho Lin,” she replied as more of the blond-braided warriors came to stand around the ax bearer. “From the Empire of Swords and Flowers.”
The warrior’s brows lifted. “Shan. Far-away place. You are spider-eater?”
That old foolishness. A few street food vendors sold barbecued spiders on skewers in trading ports and for some reason all the northern barbarians thought they were eaten at every meal.
Cho Lin climbed unsteadily to her feet, and the warrior rose with her. She tensed, but the man made no move towards her.
“I don’t eat spiders,” she said, bending over to retrieve one of her butterfly swords from where it had fallen in the snow.
Another of the warriors said something in a guttural tongue and the ax-man nodded sagely. “Ah. He says I am wrong. Not spiders. Shan eat worms.”
“Worms?” Cho Lin said, shaking her head as she also cleaned her blade. “We don’t eat worms.”
His face crinkled in confusion. “What you eat, then?”
“The same as all people,” she said as she found her other sword lying beside the headless body of one of the ghost apes. She paused for a moment as she caught sight of her eviscerated horse—the ghost apes had only swarmed it for a few moments, but still they had managed to slice open its belly, and now most of its innards were spread steaming across the snow.
“Hope you eat horse,” the warrior said, and a few of the others chuckled. So he wasn’t the only one who understood Menekarian.
“You are Skein?” she asked, turning back to the blond ax-man.
“Aye. Clan of the Stag. I am Verrigan, Gundeschkal of these men.”
It felt like the blood had stopped trickling down her back—the cuts must have been very shallow—but the burning sensation was getting stronger. She concentrated on the Nothing to keep the pain from showing in her face.
“Thank you for killing the ghost apes.”
“Ghost apes? Ah, the wraiths.” He nudged one of the corpses with his boot. “So bold to come out and eat the dead in the day. It is good we do this. Hroi hates wraiths. He will give good reward for so many… how you say…” He touched his scalp with his fingers.
“Hroi?”
“The thane of the White Worm. Now king of Nes Vaneth.” The warrior glanced around, as if suddenly realizing the strangeness of her traveling alone in the middle of this vast white wasteland. “Where you going?”
“I was chasing someone who has come through the Bones.”
“Thief?”
“No. He made me a promise and then broke it.”
The warrior’s gaze lingered on the dead woman and her child and the sprawled corpses of the ghost apes, then drifted to the jagged peaks of the mountains rearing behind her.
“Broke a promise, eh? You Shan are strange people. Promise is not worth your life.”
“I have to find him. He is a man from the south. His hair is darker than yours and he has a metal circle around his neck.”
The warrior nodded. “We met him yesterday. The skald.”
“Skald?”
“Singer. He said he can sing some of the old songs, wants to learn more. So he goes to Nes Vaneth.”
Cho Lin’s heart leapt in her chest. She knew where Jan was going now. “Then I have to go there, too.”
The warrior slung his ax across his back, slipping the haft through a leather strap so that the blades stuck out over his shoulder. “We go back now. You can come with us. My thane Kjarl want to meet you, I think.”
Another of the Skein pushed through the gathered warriors and barked something in his harsh tongue. He was the largest man Cho Lin had ever seen, almost as tall as the ghost apes had been, but while those creatures had been gaunt and thin this man was as thick around as a temple’s pillar, and muscles corded his bare arms and neck. He was holding an arrow in his huge hand, gesturing with the black-iron tip in her direction.
The blond ax-man listened for a moment and then turned to her. “Kelissan, he say it was his arrow that saved your life. Killed the wraith about to kill you. He say by the old law you are his now, you have –” his face scrunched up, as if he was straining to summon forth the right words. “– you have blood debt.”
“Tell him he has my thanks, but my life is my own.”
With a slightly pained expression Verrigan relayed this message. The giant warrior’s face clouded, and for a moment Cho Lin thought he was going to take a step towards her.
“Kelissan has the right,” the blond ax-man told her, putting his hand out to restrain the warrior. “But first we bring you to Kjarl. Then I think you are Kelissan’s thrall.”
“His thrall?”
Verrigan concentrated again for a moment. “Slave! You will be his slave. Or… maybe wife,” he said, his face brightening. “You are not ugly. Small and thin, but not ugly.”
“Take me to Nes Vaneth,” she said through gritted teeth. The pain crawling along her back was quickly eroding her patience.
Verrigan nodded, and then said something loudly in his grating language. A few moments later another of the warriors approached leading one of the Skeins’ stout, long-maned horses.
“You can ride Belishank’s horse. He is dead. But be careful, this horse throw Belishank in a fight. Not good horse.”
Cho Lin drew one of her butterfly swords and bent to slice through the straps that secured her travel bags to the corpse of her own unfortunate mount. She hefted the bag and went over to the Skein horse, taking the reins from the warrior.
She paused before she swung herself up into the saddle, her gaze on the dead mother in the snow. “What happened here?” she asked. “Who killed these people?”
Verrigan smiled at her proudly. “We did. They are the last of the Bear clan. Very lucky we find them before other hunters. Kjarl will be pleased.”
The shop’s interior was as haphazard as the outside suggested, a jumble of ancient sea chests, rickety shelving lined with jugs and battered tableware, coils of rope, and rolls of sun-bleached sail. Dust swirled and eddied in the amber light trickling down from the high slatted windows, and Keilan had to pinch his nose to keep from sneezing. He didn’t mind breathing through his mouth, as the air hung heavy and stale with the smell of old things carried in a ship’s hold for far too long. There were other, fainter traces of more exotic frag
rances layered beneath, though, as if that same hold had once contained rarer cargo: heady incense and sharp spices from faraway lands.
“Look at all this stuff, Kay,” Sella whispered, running her fingers along one of the shelves. She picked up a ceramic figurine of a wizened little man with a hole in the top of his pointed hat. “What do you think this is?” she asked, trying to peer inside.
“He once held salt, and spent his days on a mandarin’s table,” said a voice from deeper within the store, and Keilan and Sella both jumped. “And please be careful, little lady, unless you have the funds to pay for it.”
Sella placed the figurine back on the shelf with a guilty expression.
Keilan craned his neck, trying to see through the mounded clutter, but it wasn’t until he wended his way around a few large wooden displays that he finally saw an old man seated behind an ancient and gleaming desk carved completely out of ebonwood. It looked like a piece of furniture that belonged in the home of a lord or a merchant prince, not a dusty shop on an island of smugglers and old pirates. Keilan glanced back to where Sella had picked up the salt holder, wondering how the old man had seen her, and then noticed for the first time the panes of glass spaced around the ceiling, each at an angle so that the man could watch his customers from his desk. Clever.
“Are you looking for something?” the shopkeeper asked, steepling his hands in front of his face. He was obviously very old, even though his dark brown skin was as smooth as the ebonwood desk he sat behind—the hair tufting above his eyes and in a ragged line around his bald head was white as the clouds on a summer day.
“Are you Arvik?” Keilan asked, coming to stand in front of the desk. Sella hurried to join him, but in her haste she accidentally brushed against a cage hanging from the rafters. Something feathered exploded within, batting its wings against the tarnished bars and chirping indignantly, and Sella gave a little cry of fear.
“Enough, Montezamas!” barked the old man, and, incredibly, the thing inside the cage quieted.
He turned back to Keilan and spread his arms wide. “I am Arvik, proprietor of this emporium of wonders.”
Keilan glanced around skeptically at the piled sailcloth and lengths of wood, most of which looked like they had been scavenged from shipwrecks.
“My name is Keilan. I have a question, and someone thought you might have an answer.”
The bemused smile on the old man’s face collapsed. “Not a customer, then. Alas. Business has been a bit slow.” He sighed, looking out at the glimmering dust falling like snow among the ruined cityscape of his piled wares. “Who said I had answers?”
“Chalissian ri Kvin’s steward. We are guests at his manse.”
A flicker of interest appeared in the old man’s eyes. “The Bravo? I’ve never heard of him hosting guests before. And you must be talking about his hairless man, Gen of the Black Tide. What did old Gen say?”
“He said you knew my mother.”
The sly smile returned. “I suppose I’ve known many mothers. Why would I remember yours?”
“Because she was different. She had long, silver hair, and she worked for Chalissian for a time.”
The sudden change in the old man’s expression was jarring. His face hardened, his eyes narrowing as he considered Keilan anew.
“I don’t really know anything about her, though she came in a few times to buy things needed up the hill. We talked, but it was only idle chatter. The girl had an interest in old sea stories, I remember.”
Keilan hesitated, unsure how to proceed. “Gen said that after she vanished, he heard you talking one night at The Haven. That there’d been others who had come around looking for her, even before she left. You hadn’t told them anything, but you were worried they’d return once they realized you had misled them. I want to know about them.”
The old man rubbed his chin, pulling on his few long wisps of white hair. He regarded Keilan with eyes that seemed to hold a hint of uncertainty—or was it fear? Could the old shopkeeper still be afraid of whoever had been asking about Keilan’s mother more than fifteen years ago?
“You don’t want to go looking for those ones, boy,” he finally said slowly. “I know what they were—sailors tell tales of them. Most of the time they stay under the water, in their cities beneath the waves. Sometimes they come up to the surface, though, when a ship is sinking and bits and pieces of it are drifting down into the Deep. They’ll find a sailor thrashing in the water and close their cold hand around his ankle, and that touch means he will be coming down below, where their goddess waits and hungers.” The old man swallowed, and he seemed to be staring at something Keilan couldn’t see. “And very rarely, they’ll walk the sands and rocks of the islands, draped in robes that cover everything. They only come ashore when their goddess demands it. and it’s a terrible thing if you’re what they seek. Means you did something to anger them.”
Sella’s eyes were big as coins. “How do you know it was these things you saw?” she breathed softly.
The old man studied the shimmering whorls of his ebonwood desk. “Because when they came here and stood just where you’re standing and asked me in their croaking voices about the silver-haired girl, I peered into the depths of one of their cowls and I saw that what was here in my shop was more fish than man. Pale and white, with gashes in its neck. Gills, they were. The things had gills.”
The sun had almost vanished by the time they left the shop, painting a river of gold from the sea’s horizon to the docks. The few large ships at anchor in the harbor were reduced to silhouettes picked out against the brightness of the dying day. Keilan turned to start on the path leading up the hill, back towards the Bravo’s manse, but Sella pulled on his arm and he let her lead him down towards the beach. The tumult of activity that usually swirled upon the docks and around the trading posts had faded with the light; most of the sailors and merchants had retreated up the slope, to find drink and company in The Haven or one of Ven Ibras’s other taverns.
Holding his hand, Sella walked out onto the sand, almost to the edge of the surf. She shielded her eyes from the sun and stared out across the water, at the ragged line of rocks that reached out into the bay.
“Going out on the rocks with you, after a storm. Seein’ what got thrown up from the sea… those were the best times I can remember.”
Keilan gave her hand a little squeeze. “Yeah. It felt like we were explorers, finding something new. Looking for treasures.”
“Do you want to go out on these rocks? See what’s there?”
Keilan looked at her face, trying to tell if she was serious. He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure.
“You do remember those giant lizards?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m not scared. Are you?”
“A little.”
Sella brushed back a strand of blond hair that the breeze had pushed across her face. They were quiet for a while, watching the ocean lose some of its luster as the sun continued to sink.
“Will we really go back soon, Kay?”
A small boat was rowing out to where the great ships waited, a pair of sailors straining hard against the tide. Watching them made Keilan think of his father, and fishing in the bay near his village.
“Yes. Nel said we had only a few days to ask questions before the boat she booked passage with sets sail for the Kingdoms.”
Sella’s fingers tightened, squeezing his hand. “Back to Chale? And me to the farm?”
Keilan nodded. “You have to go back, Sella.”
“But I don’t want to!”
“You must,” Keilan replied, trying to sound stern.
“Please, Kay. Let me go with you. Nel isn’t much bigger than me and no one ever says she shouldn’t have come!”
Keilan turned to her, sighing. “Nel is one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever met. Do you remember how I told you about the big spiders
we fought beneath the old city? They were swarming and she was slashing with her daggers and they were falling away, dead… ”
“You said Nel protects a sorcerer in Dymoria? I can do that for you! Let her teach me how to fight!” Sella pleaded, gripping him fiercely. “I can learn!”
“Nel knows just like me that you can’t come with us. You belong with your family, at your farm.”
“No, I don’t!” Sella cried, wrenching her hand from Keilan’s. “And you know that, too. There’s nothing for me back home. We were always the two outcasts, different, and then you left and I was all alone!”
“Sella…” Keilan began, reaching out to take her hand again, but she backed away. “Sella, I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”
She sniffed, rubbing angrily at her eyes. “And what if something happened to you on your great adventure? Do you think I could forgive myself for not being there?”
“Sella…”
But she was gone, dashing back up the beach towards the path. Keilan watched her go, feeling something heavy settle in his stomach. She couldn’t come, could she? But she was right—there was nothing back home for her. He stood there on the beach, watching the horizon and considering how unfair it was that it had fallen on him to break his best friend’s heart.
By the time Keilan turned to follow Sella the only reminder of the sun was a purple glow where the black sea merged with the star-speckled sky. Lanterns had been hung on the ships in the harbor, and laughter drifted across the waves. Keilan kicked at the sand as he trudged towards the path. Perhaps Sella should leave her farm. Maybe he could bring her back to Herath somehow, convince Vhelan or another magister that she could serve in the Scholia. Would she be happier doing that? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became of what he should do. Sella could come with them on this journey, and afterwards he would find a place for her in Saltstone. It would be dangerous, and they would have to protect her. Now he just had to convince Nel.