The Waiting King (2018 reissue)

by Deborah Hale

  With danger so near at hand, he wanted her close so he could be certain she was all right. And so he could do whatever he must to protect her, if it came to that.

  He did not dare leave the post Gull had assigned him, or he would have gone to her at once. Instead, he made frantic plans how he would reach her and what he would do if the Han boarded Gull’s ship, or if the cutter’s sharp prow caught it broadside.

  As the latter seemed more and more likely, Rath braced for the crash. Then suddenly, the Hanish cutter veered back to its original course and the Phantom slid past.

  Rath sagged under the warm weight of his relief—so much that he almost lost his grip on the tiller. What had made the Han flinch at that last instant? Surely they did not fear a collision with Gull’s little Phantom.

  Could this be the working of his and Maura’s destiny?

  Gull soon appeared to give Rath a few answers. He fairly danced over the deck in his excitement. “Look, man, look! Slag the tiller—let it go and look!”

  He pointed past the Hanish cutter to the bulk of the Ore Fleet in the distance. Though the sun had dipped near the western horizon, it was still possible to make out what was happening to the Hanish ships. Galleys and cutters alike, they floundered as if each were caught in its own private squall. The wind blew no harder than it had all day, yet some invisible tempest churned up giant breakers that tossed the huge, heavy-laden vessels about like wood chips.

  Only the ship that had been chasing the Phantom seemed not to be ensnared... yet. Seeing the rest of the fleet in trouble must have made its crew veer away so suddenly. Now they furled sails and slowed.

  “I have heard of the warding waters.” Gull shook his head in wonder. “But never thought to see them at work with my own eyes.” He pointed toward the cutter. “The Han cannot decide whether to go to the aid of the others or hang back so they will not be caught in whatever this is.”

  Whatever this is. Those words set a chill gnawing deep in Rath’s bones—his old wariness of magic. During his travels with Maura that fear had eased as he’d come to understand how she channeled the special power of living things for modest feats of healing and defense. But he’d never seen Maura unleash anything like this. Rath hoped he never would.

  Gull appeared to have no such reservations. “The whole Ore Fleet! And to think my little Phantom lured them into it. Why this will be talked and sung of on the Dusk Coast for a hundred years!”

  Rath did not point out that last night’s storm had likely played a part as well. No harm in letting Gull savor his triumph. If the Han had not been so distracted by the Embrian vessel sailing in their midst, they might have noticed the first of their own ships running into trouble while they still had time to avoid it themselves. The little madfern missiles might have played a part, too.

  One by one the sea began to swallow the floundering Hanish vessels. What would the loss of the Ore Fleet mean for the Han and for Embria? Rath wondered. A growing shortage of weapons for the garrisons, perhaps? A whisper of crippling uncertainty among the Han that rust was beginning to erode the iron grip in which they had long held his country?

  “What will we do now?” he asked Gull.

  The captain chuckled and took the tiller from Rath. “Quit gloating, I reckon, and head for harbor.”

  He called out to his crew, “Trim those sails one last time, lads, then we’ll sleep and feast tonight in Margyle!”

  The crew seemed to fancy that idea, for they scrambled to obey Gull’s orders. Soon the Phantom sailed west in a wide arc that kept plenty of distance between it and the ravenous stretch of water that had engulfed the Ore Fleet.

  Rath headed off to find Maura. She might need his help tending those wounded men. He was also anxious to tell her what he had just witnessed and what he thought it might mean.

  He found her holding a mug to the lips of the man who’d been struck down by his fallen comrade. She had strapped his right arm close to his body with long strips of linen and bound his left leg to what looked like the handle of a mop.

  She glanced up when she heard Rath on the ladder, smiling when she saw it was him. “I hope all that cheering means we are out of danger at last.”

  Rath nodded as he sank down beside her. “Gull says we’ll sleep and feast on Margyle tonight.”

  He did not tell her about their close brush with the Hanish cutter. He would save that for later, when they had firm, dry ground beneath their feet and deadly warding waters between them and any Han who might wish them harm.

  “You should have seen what happened to the Ore Fleet.” He began to describe it. “For once, they met a force even more merciless than themselves, rot them!”

  The man with the arrow in his shoulder stirred and moaned, though his eyes did not open.

  Maura cast an anxious glance his way. “I hope the poor fellow will not waken until we’ve reached Margyle. They must have more skilled healers than I who can remove that barbed arrowhead from his flesh.”

  “Arrowhead?” The thought paralysed Rath for an instant.

  The unconscious crewman had a chunk of metal in his flesh. Metal, like the kind that had made the warding waters devour the Hanish Ore Fleet.

  “Gull!” He leaped to his feet and surged up the ladder toward the deck. “Turn back! Arrows! Metal! The warding waters!”

  Rath hurled himself up through the open hatch and staggered toward the tiller. The moment he saw Gull’s face, he could tell the captain had understood his garbled warning.

  But when a huge wave rose out of nowhere to slam across the Phantom’s bow, he also knew his warning had come too late.

  Chapter Fifteen

  RATH’S CRY OF alarm and his hurried footfall on the ladder made fear tighten around Maura’s throat. For a moment, though, she did not understand what had driven him toward the deck shouting at the top of his voice.

  Then she heard the crash of a great wave and the Phantom reeled like a fighter struck hard on the head. The sudden pitch of the ship flung her sideways on top of the unconscious man. She just managed to keep from hitting the poor fellow’s shoulder and driving the arrowhead deeper into his flesh.

  The arrowhead! Rath’s words echoed in her mind and finally made sense. Could one tiny shard of metal truly be to blame for the tempest now tearing at the Phantom?

  The injured man moved and groaned when Maura landed on top of him. “What happened? Where am I?”

  She pulled herself off him, but kept low, with her arms splayed out to brace her against the next roll of the ship. “You’re in the hold. A Hanish archer from one of the ore galleys shot you down from the rigging.”

  The other injured man spoke up, his voice a bit slurred from the pain-easing brew Maura had given him. “You might be dead, now, if I hadn’t broken your fall. Say, lady, why is the ship rocking? Are the Han ramming us?”

  The Phantom gave another great heave... and so did Maura’s belly. She rummaged in her sash for the rest of the sea grass, popped a piece in her mouth and began chewing furiously. She’d be no good to anyone huddled in a corner retching her guts out.

  “It isn’t the Han.” Maura mumbled the words around a mouthful of sea grass.

  “No.” Rath’s voice rang out from above. “It’s that arrow.”

  He climbed back down the ladder, stopping halfway and clinging to it when another huge wave lashed the ship, sending a shower of spray through the hatch. “There are more stuck into the masts and the deck. Gull has his crew scouring the ship for them now.”

  He jumped down the last few rungs, landing on his hands and knees near Maura. “Can you get this one out?”

  “I told you, I don’t—”

  Before she could finish, Rath leaned close and whispered, “If we cannot get it off the ship any other way, Gull will have this poor fellow thrown overboard!”

  She had to try, then. She could not let a man drown because he’d had the bad fortune to be shot by a Hanish arrow. Whatever she might do to prevent it, she would have to work quickly. The
ship could not take much more of this violent buffeting and still remain afloat.

  If only she had not woken the poor fellow by falling on him! Anything she did to dislodge that arrowhead was sure to cause him terrible pain. Maura shrank from that.

  “What can I do?” she asked Rath in an urgent whisper. “I have nothing sharp I can... cut it out with. Remember what Langbard said about Hanish arrows, how the barbs catch in the flesh if you try to pull them out.”

  “Push it through, then, like Langbard did for me!”

  “I don’t know how!”

  She heard voices overhead. Gull must be sending someone to fetch the wounded man.

  “You may know more than you think.” Rath clutched her hand. “Did Langbard share any of that skill with you in the passing ritual?”

  As she chided herself for not thinking of it, Maura marveled that Rath had. The passing ritual was the first stage of a journey between this life and the afterworld. When the spirit of a living person accompanied a dying one, a sharing of memories took place, so that part of the dying person would live on.

  Maura’s passing ritual with her wizard guardian had been too brief, rushed by the threat of lurking danger. But since then, she’d discovered unexpected memories of Langbard’s among her own, stirred by a chance word or experience. She had never yet tried calling upon a memory she could not be certain was even there.

  She heard someone scrambling down the ladder.

  “Hold them back,” she begged Rath. “Do not let them take him until—”

  “Do it!” cried Rath. “I know you can.”

  If only she could have half the confidence in herself that Rath had in her. Maura crawled over to the wounded man who was moaning in pain. She wished she had time to brew him a draft ease it, but that would have to wait. Another shower of cold, briny spray crashed into the hold. The boards of the hull groaned under the beating they were taking.

  “Lie still,” she bid the wounded man. “Take a deep breath and hold it.”

  She groped for the stub of the arrow shaft sticking out of his shoulder, hoping that action would unearth the memory of what she must do next. She pictured the upstairs chamber of Langbard’s cottage with Rath lying on the bed, a Hanish arrow imbedded in his arm. She pictured Langbard perched on the side of the bed, preparing to expel the arrow.

  Then, suddenly, she was Langbard, seeing the whole scene through his eyes. Knowing what he... what she must do.

  Spikeroot—that was what she needed! But did she have any left in her sash? Not knowing its use, she had once thought of emptying that pocket to store something more needful.

  The dark, wet, pitching hold of the ship seemed to recede around her. Maura heard Rath’s voice as if from a long distance, first pleading, then challenging. “I will not let you disturb the lady at her work. Gull can have my head for it, if he wants.”

  “The fish will have all our heads and the rest of our flesh too,” the crewman shouted, “if we do not throw that cursed arrow into the sea one way or the other!”

  “They want to throw me overboard!” The wounded man thrashed about, then howled in pain as he jerked the stub of the arrow shaft in Maura’s grip. “Don’t let them take me!”

  “Be still!” she ordered him, startled to hear the words came out in that tone—the one Langbard had only used on rare occasions to compel instant obedience.

  When the man froze, she turned to the one who was trying to push past Rath. “Stay back!”

  The sounds of a struggle between the two men ceased.

  A heady sense of power pulsed through her. Might the warding waters heed her if she ordered them to calm? Maura decided to save that as a last resort.

  Her fingers fumbled in her sash pocket. The spikeroot—she had not thrown it away after all! Perhaps Langbard’s slumbering memory had roused just enough to prevent her.

  Pulling out as much of the powdered root as she could hold, she held her palm to catch a few drops of water spilling through the hatch. The seawater bound with the spikeroot powder to make a thick paste that Maura packed around the wound.

  Then the words of the incantation whispered through her mind. Maura spat out the sea grass and began to chant them, hoping she could hold her gorge long enough to recite the whole spell.

  The nub of the arrow shaft began to vibrate beneath her fingers and the wounded man screamed in torment until all Maura wanted to do was jam her fingers in her ears and flee from the awful sound. She stumbled over some of the words.

  Then she felt Rath hovering behind her. “Don’t stop now!”

  He wrapped one arm around her then reached with his other hand to grip the arrow shaft. What was he doing?

  Maura chanted the spell louder, trying to drown out the man’s screams. The arrow shaft vibrated harder and harder until she feared it would shatter.

  Then something taut snapped.

  The screams choked off and the butt of the arrow shaft thrust through flesh and bone to gouge into the floorboards of the hold beneath. Maura slumped forward, gasping for breath as if she had just run many miles or hefted a weight far beyond her strength.

  Rolling the injured man out of the way, Rath pried the arrowhead from the wet wood. Then he lunged up, twisting around to shove it into the hands of the waiting crewman. “There—go! Get rid of it!”

  The man clambered up the ladder as huge waves pounded the Phantom from every direction at once. The ship’s hull quivered like the arrow shaft had. Then the unbearable tension broke with a shudder that sounded like the ocean had heaved a great sigh. A breathless, exhausted calm settled over everything.

  “Well done, aira!” Rath spun Maura around into a swift, hard embrace, with a kiss to match.

  She yielded for a sweet, delirious moment, then pushed him away with pretended annoyance. “Enough of that! Let me tend this poor man’s wound while he still has a drop of blood left in him. What a mercy he swooned when the pain became too great. I’m not sure I could have kept up much longer if he hadn’t.”

  Pulling another strip of linen from her sash, she wet it with the seawater now dripping more slowly through the hold. Then she sprinkled the damp cloth with candleflax to staunch the bleeding. While she was busy with that, Rath moved the man with broken bones to a drier part of the hold and fetched him a blanket.

  “What were you doing,” asked Maura “when you put your arm around me and grabbed hold of the arrow shaft?”

  Rath chuckled. “I remembered some wise words an old wizard once told me.”

  “Langbard said many wise things. Which one do you mean?”

  Why was she blinking back tears after all this time and everything that had happened? Was it the strange sinking of spirits that often came after danger had passed? Or was it the fleeting but intense connection she had felt with her beloved guardian while she’d worked his spell?

  Whatever provoked such intense feelings Rath seemed to sense and understand them. He made his way back to her and dropped to his haunches, raising his hand to rub up and down against her arm.

  “I did not get to hear many of Langbard’s wise sayings in the little time I knew him. But I do recall him saying, ‘Spells are all very well, but sometimes there is no substitute for a swift application of physical force.’” He imitated Langbard’s husky, resonant voice so well it made Maura laugh and sob at the same time.

  Rath brought his hand higher, to rest against her cheek. “I reckoned your spell could use some physical force to help it along. It seemed to work.”

  Maura nodded. Then a stray breeze found its way down the hatch to whisper over her damp clothes, making her shiver. “Not a moment too soon.”

  “I wonder.” Rath fetched a coarse-woven blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “If we had needed another moment, something tells me the Giver would have found it for us.”

  Beneath his wry tone, Maura heard a note of belief, tentative but sincere. Not a high-flown, zealous faith fired by witnessing marvels and doing great deeds, but a sturdy, workaday beli
ef that grew slowly over time. One that would warm a body against the cold of despair and wear well through the years.

  “Just think—” she caught his hand and gripped it tight “—if one tiny ship can bring about the destruction of the Ore Fleet, there may be hope for us to liberate Embria, after all.”

  Rath drew in a deep, slow breath. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, love. The Phantom did not sink those Hanish ships—it was the warding waters.”

  “Perhaps we will find some other great power to turn to our advantage.” At the moment, nothing seemed beyond their reach.

  Though the hold had grown too dark to see more than shadows, she could make out Rath shaking his head. “I don’t know, aira. Great powers can be dangerous things.”

  Then, more to himself than to her, he murmured, “And not only to the folks they are used against, either.”

  Just then, one of the crew called down through the hatch. “Come on up on deck, inlanders! The captain wants you.”

  “Tell your captain he can wait,” Maura called back, “until I have these men properly tended.”

  Rath smiled to himself, wondering how many of the fierce men on this ship would have the courage to delay carrying out one of Captain Gull’s orders.

  He tugged on her sleeve. “Listen.” From both wounded men came the soft, regular breathing of sleep. “You cannot do much for them now that a good rest will not do better.”

  “True.” Maura’s hand fumbled out of the darkness to find his. “I will need light to set those bones and clean that arrow wound properly. No doubt there are healers on the Islands with greater skill than I who can set them both to rights.”

  Rath hoisted her to her feet. “There may be healers better equipped than you, aira, with gardens of rare herbs and such. But I would defy any of them to do half what you have done with only that sash and whatever you could gather along the way to fill its pockets.”