Storms of Destiny

by A. C. Crispin

  “I came up when the storm broke,” she said slowly. “I knew the horse would need attention.”

  Just then the crewman hurried up with a bucket. Falar, scenting the water, nickered and moved over to drink thirstily. Talis looked over at Barus. “It is my understanding that your people take good care of your mounts.”

  The soldier nodded. “You are correct, Mistress. I will take Falar for my own string after we are finished with the traitor.”

  Talis did not permit her expression to change. She addressed her next words to Garano. “Captain, I must check with my people below to see that they are unharmed by the storm. May I be permitted to visit them?” She spread her hands wide. “They have been accused of no crime. They are guarded by warriors. In addition to being a duly appointed emissary to the Redai, I am unarmed, and a woman. What harm can it do?”

  The captain turned to look at Barus. The Chonao considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Our guests below will

  need to be fed anyway,” Barus said. “Allow her five minutes with the three of them.”

  Talis kept her expression blank, but relief made her knees even weaker. Five minutes with Master Khith is what I need!

  She followed the Chonao guard below. The man was burly, stolid, and Talis suspected he did not speak Pelanese.

  When they reached the cabin where her friends were confined, she gave her escort a wide and winning smile. “I’m so glad your leader assigned you to me. You seem like an incredibly stupid chap. Oh, and by the way, I heard that your leader fondles donkey organs,” she finished liltingly. “How perverted.”

  The man’s expression never changed. He simply smiled faintly, shrugged, then shook his head. He might be smarter than I am, and a better actor, she thought, but I don’t think so. I’m going to risk it …

  The guard unlocked the door, then opened it. Talis stepped into the tiny cabin, her nose twitching at the stench from the spilled chamber pot. Seeing her, Thia leaped up off the bunk and rushed over to her. Talis threw her arms around the other woman and, while they hugged, whispered, “Keep talking as loudly as possible in your own language while I’m speaking to Khith. Tell me all about the big storm and how scared you were.”

  Thia stepped back and burst into a high-pitched, noisy barrage of Amaranian, gesticulating, as Talis went over to look at Eregard. He gave her a wondering glance, and she mouthed, “Trust me,” careful to keep her back to the guard.

  Finally, she turned to Khith and went over to the little physician. The Hthras stood, and she bent over to give it a hug. As she nestled her face into the silky, furry skin of Khith’s neck, she said, as softly as she dared, “Master, I will be taken to meet with the Redai. I have a sharpened hairpin.

  I need you to give me something poisonous to put on the tip.”

  The Hthras tensed in her grasp, and she heard its thready voice in her ear, hard to make out over Thia’s excited decla-mation. “Mistress, I cannot. As a healer, I am pledged to save life. Not end it.”

  “Do you have something?” she hissed fiercely, clutching at the sleeves of its robe.

  “Yes, but—I cannot.”

  “But Master—” She let out an exasperated breath, and just then the guard tugged at her sleeve, indicating by gestures that it was time to go. She stepped back, holding Khith’s eyes with her own. The Hthras shook its head, its huge eyes sad. Talis scowled and turned back to face the guard.

  Moments later, when the guard had escorted her out, she continued down the narrow corridor toward the better passenger cabins. She did not go into her own cabin, though. Instead she headed for the cabin Jezzil, Eregard, and Khith had shared.

  When she reached it, she discovered it was locked, but the simple lock proved no match for her hairpins—the two un-sharpened ones. She’d learned to pick locks years ago, under the tutelage of one of Castio’s supporters who had been a transportee from a Pelanese prison.

  When the catch clicked, Talis glanced over her shoulder, then carefully entered. The small cabin boasted a porthole, so she could see Eregard’s and Jezzil’s possessions, stowed beneath each of the bunks. Just let everything be here, she thought, kneeling to find Jezzil’s duffel.

  She knew that he carried some vials of powder, and once, he had told her that the Chonao were masters with poison, and also with sleeping powders.

  Talis dug through the duffel, finding several false seams, a false bottom, and a number of hidden pockets. She was careful not to touch any of the edges of the weapons she uncovered. Finally, in one of the false seams, she located two narrow vials of powder. One powder was an ashy, pale gray.

  The other was darker, with a brownish tinge. The tiny stoppers were marked with a single letter—in Chonao script.

  Talis sat back on her heels, cursing under her breath. This is a fine bushel of beets! For a wild moment she thought about trying to capture a couple of the big rats she’d heard scurrying around the ship’s hold at night so she could test each powder, but she had nothing with which to make a trap.

  Casting her mind back, she recalled what Jezzil had talked about when they relaxed in the stable after weapons and unarmed combat lessons. They’d been grooming their horses …

  “Poisons and soporifics, both can be very useful if used at the right time,” Jezzil had said. “But you have to be careful.

  Use the wrong substance, or mix two substances, and you can have a totally different effect.” He’d glanced at her over Falar’s mane. “Some sedatives will actually cancel each other out. Some poisons, when mixed, become harmless.”

  “Damn …” she muttered now. For a moment she’d considered mixing the powders and coating the end of the hairpin, but what if that rendered one or both of them ineffective? She didn’t want to give Kerezau a good night’s sleep, she wanted that miserable, lying tyrant dead.

  Cautiously, she managed to pry out the stoppers of first one vial, then the other. Cautiously, she sniffed the ash-colored powder. It was astringent; she wrinkled her nose, but felt no illness, no sleepiness. Even more cautiously, she sniffed the other vial. This one was bitter, acrid, and left a foul taste at the back of her throat.

  Tapping the stoppers back into the vials, she sat for a long time regarding them. Which one?

  Finally she fell back on a childhood rhyme. Tapping each with her finger in turn, she intoned, “Two choices here/which one to fear?/I pick the one/that looks like fun.”

  Her questing finger had landed on the ashy colored vial.

  “Damn,” Talis whispered, then quickly secreted the ash-colored vial back into the false seam and tucked the other one into the inside pocket of her shirt. After stowing away the duffel bag, she rose, left the cabin, and relocked it.

  Now all we do is wait for the Redai, she thought grimly. It was a shock to realize that she might have only another day to live. At least I’ll die in battle, she thought. Poor Jezzil won’t even get to do that.

  After Talis left, Khith went back to trying to get out of their tiny cabin. It wasn’t proving easy. The keyhole for their door was blocked from the outside … and, of course, there was always a sentry. But Khith had developed a plan. It had discovered a burl in the wood of the cabin door, just the right size and height. If that rounded burl could be removed, the Hthras knew it would leave a nice little hole.

  Using its longish, talonlike nails, Khith had begun digging into the wood around the potential knothole. Patiently, hour after hour, it scratched softly, wearing nail after nail down to the quick in its efforts. When Eregard or Thia asked if they could help, the Hthras gazed pointedly at their small, rounded, and quite dull fingernails and silently shook its head.

  Fortunately the light in the cabin was dim, so the guard hadn’t noticed the slightly lighter color of the wood around the burl. Khith had been working for nearly a full day now, not pausing to sleep, eating only when Thia pushed food into its empty hand.

  The groove around the potential knothole was nearly deep enough now to allow Khith to pry at it with the small tube.
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br />   The Hthras worked on, stopping only when the guard brought their dinner and emptied the slop pail.

  Finally, late that night, Khith had dug a deep enough hole around the burl that it felt confident in trying to prise out the rounded chunk of wood.

  On the third try, it gave, and the rounded burl tumbled into its hand.

  It had been totally dark to human eyes in the cabin, but a faint light now shone through the new knothole. A dark lantern hung in the passageway where the guard was stationed. Khith crouched down and peered through the hole. It could see the guard standing across the narrow walkway.

  The man was slumped against the wall, thumbs hooked into the front of his belt, plainly bored and nearly dozing.

  Perfect, Khith thought.

  The Hthras had much better night-sight than any human.

  Even in the dim light streaming through the little knothole, it could assemble its weapon.

  The little tube was not quite as long as the blow-tubes the

  Hthras used for defense in the jungle, but fortunately, the distance to be covered was not great. Khith took up the plug of wax it had fashioned from the stub of the candle. It was tipped with a splinter of sharp wood prised from the deck, and the Hthras slid the makeshift dart into the end of the tube. The doctor had coated the little splinter with its most powerful soporific, a powder concealed in one of the seemingly innocuous sealed scallop shells.

  The main problem was that Khith could look to aim and could adjust the position of the tube, but not do both at the same time. The hole was too small. So the Hthras took its time, checking and rechecking the positioning of the tube in the knothole. It wanted the splinter to strike the guard on the back of his hand since the splinter wasn’t long or sturdy enough to pierce the guard’s leather breeches or tunic.

  Finally, after many cramped, tense minutes, Khith was confident that the angle and position of the little tube were correct. Keeping its hand perfectly steady, it sucked in the biggest breath its slight body could contain, placed its thin, inhuman lips against the end of the tube, and blew.

  The doctor felt the tiny dart leave the tube, hastily yanked it out of the hole, then looked for the results. The guard had opened his eyes and pulled his right hand free from his belt, as though to look at it. But before he could raise his hand, his knees buckled and then, gently, he slid down the wall and slumped there, his deep breathing rapidly growing louder, until he was snoring.

  I did it! Khith thought, feeling a surge of excitement. The Hthras took a pinch of its avundi-enhancing snuff, then stared at the door. Moments later there was a click as the latch unlatched itself.

  Khith laid a hand on the door, ready to pull it open and tiptoe out, only to stop when it heard a soft whisper. “Master Khith? What’s happening?”

  In one stride the Hthras was standing beside Thia’s narrow bunk. “Shhh …” it cautioned. “Eregard is sleeping.”

  Her voice was a bare thread of sound. “I heard the latch click.”

  “I opened the door. I must go out for a while, see to a few things. If we have to abandon ship, I want to be sure I have my physician’s bag.”

  In the darkness, the Hthras could barely see her, but it heard her quick intake of breath. “Go out? The guard—”

  “The guard is enjoying a well-deserved nap,” Khith said.

  “He will awaken in an hour or so, none the worse for his slight dereliction of duty.”

  “But if you can get out—” Khith heard the excitement in her voice. “We can escape!”

  “And leave Jezzil?” Khith asked bleakly. The thought of never seeing Jezzil again was physical pain.

  “No!” Thia’s voice scaled up.

  “Shhhh!” Khith placed a hand gently over her mouth, and as Eregard stirred and muttered in his sleep, the Hthras slid into the narrow bunk beside her. “Don’t wake Eregard.”

  “I’m sorry, Master,” she said. “But of course we can’t leave Jezzil. You can put his guard to sleep, too, can’t you?”

  “Unlikely,” Khith said. “I overheard the guards talking outside—”

  “You understood them?”

  “Jezzil has taught me a bit of his language. The Chonao guards who watch his cell are changed every two hours. He is the prized prisoner—we are merely an afterthought. And besides, if we all crept out tonight, where could we go?”

  “Steal one of the lifeboats?” she asked, plainly realizing how unlikely that scenario would be.

  “We have been blown off course and are somewhere in the Narrow Sea. Who will navigate for us?”

  She sighed, and her warm breath tickled the doctor’s ear.

  “All right. You made your point. But why are you going out?”

  “I need my bag. If I have my herbs, my potions, I can farsee tomorrow morning, try to discover where we are, how far from Pela. Doubtless the storm blew us off course, so where are we?”

  “Farsee?”

  “I will borrow the eyes of a seabird, Thia. I can do that. As soon as it is light enough to see.”

  “Oh.” She was silent a moment, then her arms slid around the Hthras’s slight form and hugged the physician tightly.

  “Be careful!”

  As her young body pressed against its own, Khith was conscious of a rush of intense physical pleasure. “I will be,”

  it assured her as it pulled away. “Shhh!”

  Hastily, the doctor got up and tiptoed out of the room, passing the snoring guard. That rush of feeling it had experienced … it had never felt anything like that before, except … except during moments with Jezzil.

  The Hthras gave itself a mental shake. Pay attention to what you’re doing! Now is not the time to obsess about either Thia or Jezzil!

  Khith could not “Cast” the illusion of invisibility as Jezzil could, but the Hthras had other ways of remaining unnoticed, using avundi to blur its image so the eye could not focus. The little physician tiptoed up ladders, then down the narrow corridors of the ship to the passenger quarters. Once inside, it retrieved its bag, stuffed with medicinal and al-chemical potions, and quickly went through it, keeping only the rare, the difficult to find and distill ingredients, those that were well-stoppered to protect them from the elements.

  It removed only one of its surgical implements … its smallest scalpel went into the pocket of the Hthras’s gray robe, along with a vial of pale pink powder.

  Carrying the bag, the Hthras went up into the chill night air. After taking a moment to locate its destination, it began to move, gliding along as silent and unnoticed as a shadow drifting across the Pride’s dark deck.

  The Pride was still heaved-to, and even at night repairs were going on. Sailors were mending sails, splicing lines, and doing other work to repair the damage from the storm.

  None of them noticed the faint haze of gray fog that passed outside the circles of light cast by their lanterns.

  Khith was searching for the ship’s fishing gear. All the ships it had ever sailed on with its father had supplemented the dried ship’s provisions with fresh caught fish, and the Pride proved no exception. The fishing nets and rods were in a large, oilcloth-covered storage box not far from Falar’s pen.

  It was the work of a moment for Khith to locate the cork fishing bobbers and detach them from the lines and nets. It stuffed the round pieces of cork into its bag, fastened the latch securely, then concealed the bag behind the fishing locker, pulling an edge of the oilcloth over it.

  After securing its bag, the Hthras went down one deck to the gunnery. The gun ports were, of course, closed, but there was sufficient light for Khith’s excellent night vision. The Pride boasted four cannon, two for each side, each securely lashed to the deck atop their wheeled gun carriages.

  The door to the tiny munitions compartment was locked, but it, too, yielded to Khith. A rack filled with pistols hung on one wall, and a rack with muskets on the other. One box held grapeshot, and another cannonballs. And there, in specially built wooden kegs that had no metal fittings, were the
casks of black powder. Twelve of them.

  Khith hefted a couple of them, experimentally, realizing that it would not be able to carry one for more than a few steps. And rolling the keg would be too noisy. For a moment it wished Jezzil were there; a human’s strength could have handled the casks easily.

  Taking a deep breath, Khith picked up a keg and managed to stagger nearly to the door of the compartment before it was forced to put the black powder down gently. It carefully edged the keg out the door, then relocked it.

  It took the doctor four tries to get the keg over to one of the starboard cannons. Panting, it gently lowered the cask.

  Carefully, Khith prised off the lid and sprinkled the pink powder from the vial onto the top of the black powder. The pink powder was its own concoction, highly flammable, even more volatile than the black powder. An avundi-generated spark would set it off nicely.

  Khith replaced the lid, tapping it down but not securing it too tightly. Then, moving with great care, it carefully positioned the powder cask beneath the cannon barrel. With a little grunting and straining, it managed to wedge the keg into the gun carriage beneath the cannon. Seeing the cannon secured in place with thick ropes, it took the scalpel and sawed a little more than halfway through each strand.

  Finally, the Hthras left the gunnery deck and crept up the ladder to the main deck. It peered cautiously out. The eastern sky was visibly lighter, which meant their guard would be rousing soon. Time for this captive to return to captivity …

  Once more inside the cramped little cabin, Khith lay down on a blanket spread on the floor. Thia was asleep again. It could hear her gentle breathing intermixed with Eregard’s snores.

  For a moment the need for sleep seemed overwhelming, but Khith fought it back, blinking hard and rubbing its eyes.

  Time to farsee.

  The spell and snuff worked just as well as it had back in the Sarsithe. Khith was able to see through the eyes of a gull, swooping amid the air currents high above the ship.

  The seagull’s eyes showed the doctor that there was another ship approaching, almost within visible range of the Pride. Khith exerted its will, and the gull dove down for a closer look at the inhabitants. What it saw made it struggle to get free of the vision.