by Jen Williams
‘What is?’ asked Estenn. Despite her misgivings she held out the lamp, bathing the Spinner in uncertain light. ‘What is coming?’
The Spinner scraped his claws against the wall, peeling away clods of clay. ‘I felt it, of course I felt it, how could I not? It draws near, and it brings with it everything I fear. The ending, and the beginning. The time of birthing.’ The Spinner drew his various limbs inwards, like a dying spider. ‘You,’ he said, and now the voice was a whisper. ‘You will destroy the cycle even as you seek to extend it. The birthing comes, and the key approaches.’
Estenn shook her head. The Spinner was raving, worse than she’d ever seen him. Had something come to the island that she wasn’t aware of? She crouched, setting the lamp down by her feet, and pressed her hands and feet to the dark soil, curling her toes so that they dug into the dirt. She knew the island like no other: it was a part of her, and she was a part of it. The scent of Euriale was wild in her nostrils, and that alien power was just below her fingertips. Without thinking about it, she began to become less, fading from view as she gave herself over to the will of the island. As ever she sensed the slow building of power. Soon, yes, it would be soon, but was there something else?
Her eyes snapped open in the near dark, and she became visible again. There was some new magic that had not been here before, at least not while she had lived on the island. It was akin to the magic here, but it was a different shape. She thought of how the Spinner had described it as a key. Slowly she stood, and became aware of the Spinner watching her.
‘No,’ he said, his voice a whisper now. ‘You mustn’t. You mustn’t.’
Ignoring him, she turned and walked back up the passage. Out in the bright daylight she met Gen, Ivy and the old man. They were watching her anxiously, although she could already see how relieved they were that the howling had stopped.
‘Gen, who has the westward patrol this afternoon?’
The woman with auburn hair stood a little straighter. ‘Anine, Emissary.’
Estenn nodded once. ‘Go and tell her to keep an extra eye on the waterways today, and for the next few days. Tell her that if she sees anything to send a runner to me immediately.’
Ivy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Emissary, you think someone is bringing a ship in?’
Estenn tipped her head to one side, sucking at a tooth. There was a shred of meat caught in it. ‘Someone is coming, yes,’ she said. ‘Or something.’
12
Frith stood on the deck of the Poison Chalice, the staff held in both hands. It was very early, and still quite dark in the canyon of the waterways, while above them the strip of dawn sky was pale pink and threaded with stained clouds.
‘We’re ready for you, Lord Frith,’ came Devinia’s voice behind him. ‘We’ve lost our fair wind now, and the currents aren’t to be trusted. It’s down to you.’
Frith nodded once, picturing the word for Force in his mind. They had practised, of course, out in the open sea, but here there were walls of sheer rock to either side, towering over the ship. A mistake here – too much force, in the wrong direction – could be disastrous. He could feel the eyes of the crew watching him, and he could feel Wydrin watching them, too, no doubt ready with a sharp word if any of them should pester him. He smiled slightly at that, and closed his eyes.
The word for Force was clear in his mind. With it, he pictured the three big masts of the Poison Chalice, festooned with sails. They surrounded him; he could hear the creaking of the wood. He had been concerned at first that he could only push the magic one way, that the force would have to be pushed directly ahead of him, as though he were physically moving it himself, but after some thought, he realised it was entirely possible to split the force into separate, flexible strands, and these he could direct wherever he liked. It was Joah’s knowledge, of course; the collective wisdom of a man who had spent his life studying the Edenier and the Edeian. He had also spent his life torturing and murdering innocent people to please his demon benefactor, but that hadn’t stopped him sharing the knowledge with Frith when he thought he could be his brother in arms. Frith frowned, trying to put that from his mind, but, as ever, he found he couldn’t leave it behind completely. Over the last few months, new knowledge had been rising to the surface; new words, new ways to combine magics, things he’d never contemplated suddenly making a strange kind of sense. It was clear that he’d picked up more than he’d originally thought during Joah’s ‘crossing session’. He did not like to think about that too closely.
‘Any time you’re ready, Lord Frith,’ said Devinia.
Sighing, Frith lifted the staff and reached out with the word. Nearly invisible tendrils of force flowed from either end, colourless but showing as a disruption in the air, like heat rising from baking stones. He directed them effortlessly, up and out and away from each other until they curled against the canvas of the sails. He was rewarded with the flat crack crack crack sound as the sails filled with his magic and a sudden shifting of the deck underfoot as the ship surged forward. He opened his eyes, and after a moment there was a ragged cheer from the crew. The Poison Chalice was moving sedately down the waterway, black cliffs passing them on either side. Devinia approached and slapped him heartily on the shoulder.
‘Good work,’ she said. ‘Keep that up, and we’ll let you know when you need to stop.’
She stepped away, already barking orders at her crew, and Wydrin appeared at his side instead. ‘How does it feel?’ she asked.
‘It is fine,’ he replied shortly, holding the word in his mind. ‘It is as I expected.’
‘Does it tire you out? How long do you think you could keep it up for?’
Frith shot her a look. ‘You doubt me?’
Wydrin grinned. The day was brightening all the time, painting her untidy hair in golden colours.
‘Devinia would wear you into the ground if she thought it would aid her. And I would prefer you to have some energy at the end of the day.’ Her smile faltered and she looked around. ‘Where is Sebastian, anyway? I thought he would come up to see this at least. I haven’t seen him since he went off to sulk last night.’
It was difficult to shrug whilst holding the heavy staff in both hands, so Frith tipped his head. ‘I do not think Sebastian is as interested in this voyage as you might hope.’
Wydrin sighed. ‘You may be right.’
Frith kept the magic up for a good couple of hours, enjoying the movement of the ship under his feet and the sense of controlling something so enormous. When eventually he insisted on a break, he staggered back a few steps as he let the word go and was surprised to find that the staff was hot to the touch. He felt light-headed too, and gratefully took the beaker of water passed to him by Kellan. Having negotiated an hour’s lunch with Devinia, he had just turned away to head below decks when he realised there were raised voices behind him. Wydrin and a short woman with dark skin were standing close together, looking with confusion at something in the shorter woman’s arms. He went over, still reeling slightly as the staff tingled in his fingers.
‘He wouldn’t just leave them there, Bernice,’ Wydrin was saying. She picked something out of the bundle the shorter woman was holding, and the sun winked off Sebastian’s enamelled badge. Frith remembered it well; it had been the only thing that had saved the big knight from the rogue Gallo’s blade.
‘I found them on the deck, half hidden by the crates,’ said Bernice. She had Sebastian’s thin summer cloak in her arms. Her brow was furrowed, and Frith could guess what she was thinking from the downward turn of her mouth. ‘We need the decks clear, and I thought it was passing strange because no crew would just leave their belongings out in the air like that, where someone might come a mischief.’ She paused, eyeing Wydrin with obvious concern. ‘They were near the guardrail, Wydrin.’
‘And you did not see Sebastian?’ asked Frith.
‘No one has seen him this morning at all,’ said Wydrin. She didn’t look worried, not yet, but she did look annoyed, which Frith knew
was only half a step away from worried for Wydrin. ‘We should go to his cabin, and—’
There was a rapid flurry of shouts from all around the ship, and to Frith’s surprise the deck under his feet lurched abruptly to one side, nearly pitching him straight into Bernice, who was much better at keeping her feet. The short woman dumped Sebastian’s belongings on the deck and ran, responding to some call Frith had missed.
‘What’s going on?’
The deck lurched back the other way, the cliffs to the right looming very close. Frith could hear splashing, too, the normally calm water crashing against the hull. The crew were all moving now, dashing across the deck. Wydrin took hold of his arm.
‘Let’s go look.’
They raced to the far side, but before they reached the guardrail something enormous crashed into it, splintering wood and throwing them back. It looked to Frith like some sort of giant orange slug, glistening with transparent slime and pocked with fleshy suckers. It stretched, the very end of it becoming long and tapered, and it slid rapidly across the deck, nosing back and forth as though blindly searching for something. Next to him, Wydrin swore loudly and drew the short sword she called Glassheart. As if sensing the danger the thing swung back towards them both, and Frith realised that it was a tentacle rather than a slug; the great bulk of it was still below the ship somewhere. He looked back the way they’d come and saw that the fleshy tentacles were all over the ship. The men and women of the crew were already attacking with swords and daggers, trying to drive it back.
‘Don’t just stand there gawping,’ Devinia had appeared behind them, both cutlasses drawn. She looked distinctly unruffled. ‘Chop the bastard thing back into the sea.’
Wydrin was ahead of her, jumping forward and bringing Glassheart down with both hands. The sword struck the tentacle with an unpleasantly meaty chop – Frith was reminded of afternoons wasted in the kitchen at Blackwood Keep, watching the cook prepare a carcass for dinner – and the rubbery flesh peeled back, weeping yellow fluid. At the same time, the ship canted sharply to one side again, this time so violently that Frith was sure they would be smashed to pieces on the rocks at the base of the cliffs. He fell into the guardrail, struggling to keep hold of the staff. Another tentacle, bigger and longer than the rest, reared up on the other side and made a spirited swipe for their central mast. There was a shrill scream from behind him and Frith turned just in time to see an unfortunate man swept over the side.
Pushing himself away from the rail, Frith tightened his grip on the staff and summoned the words for Fire and Ever. A ruby stream of flames leapt from the end of the staff, snaking up like a whip to curl around the biggest tentacle. It drew back instantly, flopping heavily against the sails before sliding back over the side. Frith turned the staff, meaning to use the flames against the next tentacle he could see, when a sharp elbow caught him in the ribs.
‘Are you trying to set fire to my bloody ship?’ Devinia gave him an outraged look. There was yellow slime on both her cutlasses.
Frith opened his mouth to retort, but the Poison Chalice rocked again and now they appeared to be sinking: the monster was trying to drag them under. He summoned the word for Cold instead, and sent a blizzard roaring across the deck to freeze two of the tentacles solid, where they promptly stuck to the deck.
‘Here.’ Devinia grabbed his arm and half dragged him to the one bit of the deck that wasn’t taken up with tentacles or frantic crew members. ‘Quickly,’ she said, ‘Fill our sails and get us moving. We must pull away from it.’
Frith looked back. Wydrin had drawn Frostling too now, and had joined three other crew members in repelling a particularly thick tentacle. He lifted the staff in both hands and summoned the Force spell, filling their sails in an instant. The Poison Chalice groaned like a ship in a storm, and the creature behind them gave a long rumbling roar, so low it set Frith’s teeth on edge.
‘That’s it,’ cried Devinia. She stood next to him, ready to defend him should any tentacles get too close. ‘Keep going!’
Frith took a deep breath, trying to ignore the chaos around him. The force surged out of him, filling every sail to breaking point. He could hear the creaking of the masts, could feel the resistance in his own arms. Around him the deck was now slippery with slime and yellow blood. There was a crash, and his face was abruptly wet with spray, but he kept his eyes ahead, focussed on the sails.
‘Ye gods and little fishes!’ Wydrin’s voice was clear over the cacophony. ‘How many arms does this thing have?’
The Poison Chalice shifted, surging forward in the water, and there came another low roar, now curiously closer than it had been. Frith heard the cries of the crew and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Next to him Devinia had turned to face the threat, and was letting fly a stream of curse words to rival her daughter’s vocabulary, but he didn’t look. He couldn’t – if he let the force pushing their sails dwindle for the smallest moment, they would have no chance of escaping the monster’s clutches.
‘Keep going!’ called Devinia again. ‘For the love of the Graces, keep going!’
There was another ear-splitting roar, followed by the corresponding screams of a few unlucky crew members, and then with a surge that to Frith seemed to almost lift them out of the water, the Poison Chalice was away. There was a huge splash to either side as their sudden speed sent waves crashing against the cliffs, and at that moment Frith did dare to glance over his shoulder. He saw something enormous boiling in the water, a burnt orange slab of glistening muscle, studded with a single wet eye and riddled with reaching arms, and then it was gone, slipping back under the turbulent water.
Estenn leaned back against the tree, lowering the eyeglass for a moment. Next to her, Anine and Gen were watching her carefully. The three of them were hidden within the treeline, and in the heavy shade their black and white faces looked stark.
‘Well, that is interesting,’ she said, striving to keep her voice level.
‘What is it?’ demanded Gen. ‘The stick produced fire, and then ice. I have never seen such, not even on Euriale.’
‘It is certainly a relic of the old days,’ said Estenn. She licked her lips, which were suddenly very dry. ‘A relic of the true days, when the gods were with us, and the Twins walked among these trees. It is, in short, exactly what I have been waiting for.’
She lifted the eyeglass again and the big ship below leapt into focus again. She could see the men and women moving rapidly across the deck. There was an older woman with wild red hair bellowing orders. She had lost sight of the white-haired man with brown skin who had wielded the strange wooden staff. She guessed he had gone below.
‘What do we do?’ asked Anine. She was quieter than her cousin, and had a tendency to wait until it was time to ask pertinent questions. ‘Do we take it?’
Estenn bit her lip, counting the men and women on the deck, and the cannon in the ship’s broadside. They looked to be well armed, and disciplined too, especially for a pirate vessel.
‘They may be too large for us,’ she said. She turned, looking up from the waterway that housed the ship to the curving path it cut through the island behind them. From their high vantage point it was possible to see parts of the trench, and there was movement there too. It seemed that the ship with the interesting passengers had company it was unaware of: a parasite travelling in their wake. Estenn smiled, feeling her heart quicken.
‘We will wait, and see,’ she told Gen and Anine. ‘I think the gods are looking to bless us again, very soon.’
13
Moments later, the crew were back to work. Devinia had them on the deck, buckets and mops in hand, swiftly washing away the yellow blood – if that’s what it was. Wydrin turned away from them with a sick feeling in her gut. As distant as Sebastian had been lately, he would not have sat idly by while the ship was under attack. With a nod to Frith, who lowered his staff and followed her, she headed below deck.
Sebastian had been assigned a narrow cabin that was just about l
ong enough for him to stretch out in, adjacent to the one she was sharing with Frith. Wydrin pushed aside the heavy red fabric that hung over the door to see an empty bunk. She hadn’t really expected anything else, but still she stood there for a moment, glaring at the empty hammock as though she could will Sebastian into appearing there.
‘He’s not here, is he?’ asked Frith at her shoulder. It wasn’t really a question.
‘What has he done?’ Her voice sounded too small to her own ears, so she cleared her throat. ‘He’s made some dodgy decisions in his time – and I can hardly criticise him for that – but to abandon the ship in the belly of Euriale.’ She stepped fully into the narrow cabin, looking around for any clues. ‘That’s stupid, even for Sebastian. Even for me.’
Frith stepped around her, and opened the long sea chest at the foot of the bunk. Inside was Sebastian’s broadsword and other small weapons, wrapped in their oilcloth.
‘He did not take these,’ said Frith. ‘Why would he leave the ship unarmed, unless he—’
‘He would not do that,’ said Wydrin, although a terrible, cold feeling was sweeping up from her feet, so suddenly that she felt almost faint with it. Could he have decided to take his own life? Could she have been so blind as to have missed such torment? When Prince Dallen had walked away from him, it had broken his heart, but she had trusted that he would come out the other side of that sadness eventually. Sebastian, always the level-headed one, always the speaker of sense. This was the sort of battle she could not win with daggers, and it frightened her badly.
‘We’ll have to go back,’ she said, meeting Frith’s eyes. ‘We’ll take one of the skiffs back the way we came. I need to know what happened.’
Devinia was not convinced. Back up on deck she stood with her arms crossed over her chest, scowling openly at Wydrin. Her hair had been bound back into a loose tail, although pieces of it had come away, framing her stern face. Her mother rarely wore a captain’s hat, preferring to wear black ribbons in her hair.