The Art of Hunting

by Alan Campbell

  She realized this a heartbeat before the dragon struck the top of Cyr’s sorcerous sphere with sickening force. It felt as if the warship had been struck by a hammer blow from the gods themselves. Masts shattered. Timbers snapped. The whole ship lurched and appeared to buckle. Cyr’s sphere fizzed and crackled with tremendous fury, but it held. And as the serpent plunged within that bubble of spitting energy, it burned – dissolving into ten million points of light.

  Ianthe watched the dragon’s remains scatter like so many embers.

  But she knew something was wrong. The ship had not righted itself after the attack, but was now listing to port at a shallow angle. She saw crewmen race to the port gunwales and peer over the side. Their expressions of concern and alarm terrified her.

  Howlish came striding forward. ‘How bad is it?’

  One of his men replied, ‘Looks like her spine is broken.’

  ‘The amplifier,’ Cyr muttered, ‘pushed the force through to the keel.’

  Howlish singled out members of his crew, barking orders as he strode the deck. ‘All teams to the bilge pumps,’ he cried. ‘Raise the mainsail. Get us to Doma if you can.’

  ‘Can we make it?’ Cyr said.

  Howlish glanced across to where the temples of Carhen Doma stood above the fuming seas, less than half a mile away. ‘We’ll make it,’ he said. ‘But this ship is lost.’

  The figure had been encased in molten lead and yet was still alive. Maskelyne’s crew stood in silence, struck dumb as it heaved itself out of the coffin and fell upon the deck, its skin and clothes still obscured by a film of grey metal. Liquid metal sloshed across the wooden boards. The figure began to convulse.

  ‘Bring helmic acid,’ Maskelyne said. ‘We need to dissolve the lead, flush it out of his lungs before it cools.’

  ‘That’ll kill him,’ Howlish remarked.

  ‘One would have expected immersion in molten metal to have accomplished that feat,’ Maskelyne replied sardonically. ‘This situation, by all appearances, lies beyond our expectations.’ He nodded to Mellor. ‘Get the acid, and plenty of water too.’

  His crewmen returned with a barrel of the caustic solution they used to clean marine deposits from trove, along with another barrel of purified seawater. Helmic acid would have taken the skin off a normal man. Yet clearly this was no normal man. They doused him with it and watched in silent awe as his flesh steamed. He bore the agony of it without a sound. It was not a quick process. But after the acid had been applied several times, enough of the dissolved lead had washed away to reveal something of the man beneath. He was stout and dark skinned with heavily muscled shoulders and arms and a neck like a bull’s. He was completely bald, and where his skin showed through the lead it was covered in tattoos.

  And then suddenly he thrust his arms out, fists clenched, and gave a terrible cry of rage. White light flickered furiously across his skin, accompanied by a ferocious crackling sound. In an instant, the rest of the lead and acid had boiled away.

  Maskelyne’s crewmen gasped.

  The man sat there naked, breathing heavily, as smoke uncurled from skin that looked as hard as old mahogany. His eyes remained closed. Every inch of his body had been inked with the sort of geometric designs favoured by Unmer Brutalist sorcerers.

  And that was an enigma.

  Maskelyne had just watched the man decreate a film of lead and acid from the surface of his body – an innate power that only the Unmer possessed. But this man was clearly not Unmer. He had the racial features of a Bahrethro Islander: his broad flat nose and strong jaw were as far removed from the Unmer’s waifish looks as one could imagine between any two men. Maskelyne had never heard of another race possessing the Unmer’s gift of decreation. Yet here he sat, not only able to vanish matter from the cosmos, but also with his body inked in geometries that indicated allegiance to the Brutalist school of sorcery.

  Evidently, the Unmer had trained him. And the Unmer never trained outsiders.

  His eyes remained closed, but he held out a hand and said a word that sounded like chirfa. Maskelyne did not recognize the language, and yet he imagined it to be a dialect of Bahrethro. Still, it was clear enough what the man desired.

  ‘Give him water,’ Maskelyne said to his crew.

  A crewman placed a ladle of fresh water into the sorcerer’s outstretched hand, which he downed at once and held out his hand for more. ‘Chirfa, chirfa.’

  ‘Jashu kaval Unmer?’ Maskelyne asked.

  The man exhaled deeply, then sniffed and opened his eyes. He regarded Maskelyne with fierce curiosity, then shook his head and replied in perfect Anean. ‘I’d rather think of myself as a bastard.’

  ‘You’re Bahrethroan, then?’ Maskelyne said.

  He nodded. ‘Half so,’ he replied. He stood up suddenly and cast his gaze around at the ship and crew. He was a head shorter than Maskelyne, indeed shorter even than most of the men present. And yet his powerful frame looked to be twice as heavy as any of them. His gaze finally rested on the coffin from which he’d come. He looked at it with marked distaste, then cricked his neck and extended one huge hand towards Maskelyne. ‘The name’s Cobul.’

  The metaphysicist shook his hand. ‘Ethan Maskelyne,’ he said. ‘And this is my ship, the Lamp. We are currently seventy degrees south in the Mare Lux confluxes. Welcome aboard, Cobul.’

  He nodded. ‘May I ask, where did you find me?’

  ‘A samal was using you as a hot-water bottle.’

  Cobul nodded, as if this merely confirmed what he already knew. ‘I owe you a great deal,’ he said. ‘I thank you, Ethan Maskelyne, and your crew, for coming to my aid.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Maskelyne said. ‘May I ask how you came to find yourself in such a . . . eh . . . predicament?’

  ‘I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘A murder.’

  ‘You were imprisoned inside that for—’ He broke off. ‘How long have you been in there?’ It had to have been decades at the very least, he thought, since that’s how long the Drowned had been bringing him keys.

  ‘What year is it?’

  ‘1447 Imperial,’ Maskelyne said.

  Cobul made a mental calculation. ‘Then I have been in the box for close to three hundred years.’

  Maskelyne raised his eyebrows. ‘Three hundred years of . . .’ He glanced at the box. ‘I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say severe discomfort, merely for witnessing a crime. One would have thought it would have been kinder just to kill you.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘May I ask who this scoundrel is?’

  ‘A god named Fiorel.’

  ‘The shape-shifter,’ Maskelyne exclaimed. ‘Cauldrons and what not, isn’t that his thing? Who did you see him murder?’

  Cobul studied him a moment. ‘Knowing that would put you at great risk.’

  ‘Because Fiorel has assumed their form?’

  ‘It was during the dragon wars,’ Cobul said. ‘After we realized the Haurstaf would defeat us, when all hope had been lost. I was a unit sorcerer with King Jonas’s Third Division. We were fleeing Losoto into the Anean foothills when our party came upon Fiorel. He appeared as a faceless man walking the trail. Jonas spoke with him all night and most of the next day. They made some kind of a deal. Fiorel gave the king the means to create ichusae. He saved our race from the Haurstaf.’

  ‘And do you know what Fiorel wanted in return?’

  ‘No, but I can guess,’ Cobul said.

  ‘Argusto Conquillas?’

  Cobul nodded. ‘The man who killed his daughter, Duna.’

  ‘Something went amiss, I take it?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Cobul admitted. ‘King Jonas consulted with the god and then sent our last bonded dragon west, presumably to deliver a message to Conquillas and Aria in Awl. That is all I know of their scheme. Later that evening I happened, by sheer chance, to witness Fiorel’s villainy.’

  Maskelyne tapped his fingers against his chin.
‘I’m guessing he murdered someone close to the king?’ he said. ‘Someone in the royal party? After all, it would do Fiorel little good to assume the form of the camp cook. He must have . . .’ Suddenly he stopped. ‘If a shape-shifter could replace anyone he chooses, then the most logical candidate would be King Jonas himself.’ He looked at Cobul.

  He nodded.

  ‘But Jonas vanished. He boarded the prison ship in Losoto, but never made it to the dungeons in Awl. The Haurstaf claimed he jumped overboard.’

  Cobul pondered this. ‘I saw Fiorel murder the king and assume his physical form,’ he said. ‘And it was in that disguise that he had me confined in that coffin and dropped into the mouth of a samal. If he vanished on the voyage to Awl, then he has clearly assumed another form and escaped. I imagine he went after Conquillas.’

  ‘Well,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Evidently something went wrong with his plan, because Conquillas is still alive.’

  Cobul frowned. ‘Alive? Are you sure?’

  Maskelyne nodded. ‘And as jovial as ever.’

  Cobul was thinking. ‘Then he has delayed his revenge for some reason. You must fill me in on all that has happened these last few centuries.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure,’ Maskelyne said. ‘But answer me one last question, please.’

  The sorcerer nodded.

  ‘Why on earth,’ Maskelyne said, ‘did the Drowned want me to come and get you? How did you convince them? What sort of deal did you make with them that their rotting minds could possibly understand?’

  Cobul had a grim expression on his face. ‘I made no deal,’ he said. ‘Until this moment I did not even know that the Drowned had acted in my interests. I imagine the truth is that they simply wanted me gone from their domain.’

  ‘Why?’

  The sorcerer looked embarrassed. ‘Presumably my screaming made them uncomfortable.’

  Captain Howlish managed, against all the odds, to run the Irillian Herald aground in shallow waters beneath the ruins of a huge stone hall. The landing had smashed her hull beyond repair and now each wave pitched her further against vicious rocks and threatened to tear her apart entirely. Howlish ordered the corbuses lowered and the lifeboat unlashed and dropped, and Cyr organized a hurried evacuation and soon they had decamped most of their provisions onto a broad ledge above the darkly surging waters.

  Night was fully upon them now and the surrounding halls and temples of Doma revealed themselves as hulking slabs of darkness briefly silhouetted against the intermittent lightning – or else as grey and crumbling façades burned into the retina. The sea hissed and the winds moaned through empty doors and windows, turning the buildings into so many monstrous throats.

  Ianthe took a gem lantern, wiped her lenses clear of brine spray and clambered up some rocks near where they’d made their camp. She soon found a doorway in one wall of the derelict hall and ventured inside. The structure held four nests – crude curved embankments of mortared stone and whalebones set against the lower walls. The air was rank with the dense musk and blood odour of the dragons. But Duke Cyr’s entropic wraiths had left nothing alive. Ianthe wandered among the scorched remains of old and young dragons, blues, greens. She had no idea how many of them had been killed in here, but it seemed to be far more than the number of dwellings would suggest. Evidently other adults had come to the aid of their neighbours’ young.

  She climbed up the edge of the nearest nest and peered down into it. All three of the eggs had been smashed open revealing the dog-sized pink foetuses within.

  It was the same story, she discovered, for the other nests.

  She sensed someone watching her and turned to see Paulus standing in the dark a short distance away.

  ‘They destroyed the eggs, too,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘You feel pity for them?’ he asked. ‘The young?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Lightning coursed across the skies, illuminating the vast hall and the broken bloody corpses within. A moment later, the ruined walls resounded with thunder.

  ‘Still no sign of your father?’ he said.

  The question took her unawares and she hesitated a moment before finally answering. ‘There are a lot of people in the world.’

  He gave a slight shrug. ‘I would understand if you didn’t want him found.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just . . .’

  He waited.

  ‘There are so many people,’ she went on. ‘More than I could ever hope to visit. And sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the visions that I see with the real world. Particularly if there are no landmarks to go by. It’s the same with the Ilena Grey, harder even . . .’

  ‘It’s a big ocean,’ he conceded. ‘And she might not even sail upon it.’

  ‘You think she could have sunk?’

  He shrugged. ‘More likely we simply haven’t found her yet.’

  ‘But what if we don’t find her? Or we can’t contact them? How will we escape?’

  ‘We have another ship, Ianthe.’

  She gave him a puzzled look. ‘What ship?’

  ‘Our wedding present. Cyr is preparing to uncork it now.’

  ‘The bottle?’ she said. ‘You mean the ship in the bottle?’ As outrageous as it seemed, she forced herself to consider it. If a great flock of wraiths had come from the first bottle, could a usable ship come from the second?

  Paulus approached her, stepping carefully over the blasted ground. ‘The bottles are not unlike ichusae,’ he said. ‘They act as doors between one place and another. Each of these four bottles accesses a different artificial universe created by Fiorel. They are far smaller and more fragile than our own cosmos. Opening the bottle unleashes whatever is stored there.’

  ‘Fiorel made those wraiths?’

  ‘And the ship, and whatever lies in the other bottles.’

  ‘But how did he know we’d need these things?’

  Paulus shrugged. ‘The gods are ancient and wise. Fiorel knew that we would pass Doma on the way to the Anean peninsula. Perhaps he anticipated my reaction and the subsequent battle.’

  Ianthe thought about this. She couldn’t see how anyone could have predicted Paulus’s violent outburst that had led to their present dilemma. No one but Paulus himself.

  ‘When the battle raged,’ he said, ‘were you ever inside me?’

  She didn’t answer at once. It had all happened so quickly. And in the chaos she had leaped from mind to mind. Had she been inside her lover at any point? ‘No,’ she said, honestly. ‘I made you a promise.’

  ‘What does it feel like?’

  ‘Like this,’ she said. ‘Like life. Except you’re carried. You are there . . . but without control. A passenger.’

  He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. ‘Do it now. Move inside me.’

  ‘I swore to you I wouldn’t.’

  He placed a hand upon her cheek. ‘I want you to,’ he said. ‘Just this once. I want to see if I can feel you inside me.’

  Ianthe shivered. She could feel his breath upon her neck. And then he pulled back and gazed into her eyes.

  She slid her mind inside his own.

  And saw herself exactly as he did – a dark-eyed girl, at once sad and fearful and breathless. ‘You are there now?’ he said. ‘Inside me?’

  She watched herself nod slowly.

  ‘You see what I see?’

  Another nod.

  ‘And feel what I feel?’

  He smiled and then leaned forward and kissed her deeply. And then he eased her back against the wall and slid his hands down her body. He lifted her dress. She felt his fingertips between her thighs, each delicious sensation coming to her through a wonderful union of both his senses and her own. He pressed hard against her. She clung to him desperately and shuddered as he pushed inside her.

  ‘How does it feel?’ he said.

  Her breaths were fast and hard against his neck. She inhaled the scent of him.

  He whispered in her ear, �
�How does it feel to fuck someone who could kill you in an instant?’

  Ianthe smiled. She drew her hands more tightly around him and pulled him deeper inside her.

  Ianthe and Paulus returned to the camp to find that Howlish’s men had erected a crude sailcloth shelter to protect them from the worst of wind and rain. The prince’s uncle, Duke Cyr, had not availed himself of this shelter. He was standing on the edge of the rock promontory, gazing out at the brooding storm-lit sea.

  He turned at their approach, and it seemed to Ianthe that he gave the young prince a questioning glance. And yet perhaps she imagined it. A degree of paranoia accompanied her racing heart. A part of her could not help but wonder how anyone gazing upon her flushed and breathless face could not instinctively know what had transpired. She had undergone a change so profound that its effect must yet radiate from her.

  ‘Success, Uncle?’ Paulus said, in an oddly flat tone that made his words sound – to Ianthe’s presently overly sensitive mind – more like a statement than a question.

  ‘I was awaiting your return. If it pleases you, I will open the rift now.’

  ‘Do it. I am growing tired of this rock.’

  The duke nodded. From his pocket he brought out the second bottle and held it up before them. It was hardly bigger than his thumb. Inside it, Ianthe could see the tiny ship floating upon a finger’s width of brine.

  The duke carried the little bottle down to the edge of the sea, where he asked Paulus to raise his gem lantern. By its light he pulled the stopper free from the bottle and peered intently at the contents. He said, ‘As I thought.’

  ‘Reflected light?’ Paulus said.

  ‘Indeed. Thankfully there’s no need to venture closer.’With that he merely set the bottle down on a rock and waved Paulus and Ianthe away.

  They clambered back up the rocks to the camp.

  ‘The ship was never in the bottle,’ Cyr said. ‘Merely the light it reflected.’ His gaze scanned the dark waters and then he stopped. ‘There,’ he said, pointing. ‘There! There it is. Yet again, Fiorel has anticipated our plight and come to our aid.’

  At first Ianthe saw nothing. But then another flicker of lightning tore across the night, and by that illumination she caught a momentary glimpse of something. A mass of faint white lines hanging over the sea? Weblike, but chaotic – without discernible shape. And then full darkness returned to swallow the vision.