The shouts of men loading Jordan’s ship eventually died down, and a swaying underfoot told Najia it was leaving dock. She tried talking to Ty, tried reading him, but he was a complete blank. It was like being tied to a post, as she had been several times since being enslaved.
Jordan entered. “You can let her go.” Ty’s hand fell away. Jordan pulled Najia’s collar down far enough to see the runes on her shoulder, then circled her to see the rest.
“What kind of witch are you?” he asked from behind, his fingers tracing a symbol.
“I’m just a healer.”
Jordan’s examination brought him around to her side. “I expected you to lie to me. But the next time you do so, Ty will drag you to the hold and chain you up with the others.”
She wondered what answer held the best chance of saving her life. He was studying her so intently she decided that she would try the truth. “I see the play of darkness and light in people, and I can manipulate those forces.”
“What else?”
“I can work some enchantments, particularly for people I have read, and at times I can foresee their fates,” she added.
“Whoever placed these runes on you did not know much about you. They must have drawn every one they knew. Which one actually represses your powers?”
She guided his hand. “This one over my heart.”
“What did they miss? How do you still have the power to read people? I felt you trying to get around my protection.”
“They should have drawn the symbol for ‘night’ here.” She touched her forehead.
Jordan retrieved a small bottle of grappa from a trunk, moistened a rag, and began to clean the runes off her skin. She had not expected that.
“You believe yourself safe with me?” she asked, regretting the question immediately.
“I wouldn’t be much of a marshal to the legate if I couldn’t handle one witch. Besides, if you cast any enchantments on me or my men, Ty will crush you. Did you hear that, Ty?”
Ty swiveled his head against the ceiling so he could look at her. “Ty will know. Ty will do as Jordan says. Ty will kill witch.”
“Thank you, Ty. Go on out and find a comfortable spot on deck for yourself.”
“He seems quite attached,” she said as Jordan finished scrubbing off the runes.
“In many ways he reminds me of the puppy I had when I was a boy.”
“Did your puppy grow up to be an attack dog? That’s what Ty reminds me of.”
“No, it didn’t grow up. We were starving during the second winter of plague, trade had stopped, shops were shuttered, there’d been no harvest that year. I was out scrounging . . . well, stealing food, but my father didn’t trust me to find any, and he ate my dog while I was gone. Made him scrounge for his own food after that.”
Najia was silent as Jordan poured himself a pewter goblet of wine. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Damascus. I come from a family of merchants there. Raiders attacked the procession carrying my grandmother’s body to the family tomb in the hills northwest of the city. They captured two of my sisters and youngest brother as well, and killed the rest. One of my sisters and my brother are in the hold.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t burn you.”
“They must have been more interested in money than entertainment. They sold me to the Vatican’s slavers, where burning was sure to be part of what awaited me. I was being taken to Rome when the shipment of slaves was diverted here. Was that fortunate for me, arriving here instead of Rome?”
“To be discovered. As you said, it’ll be a long voyage. Do you speak anything other than Italian and Arabic? Any that you can read?”
“Greek and French. Some bits of others.”
“Can you read Aramaic?”
“It’s close enough to Arabic that I can usually work my way through it.”
Jordan retrieved the thickest of his grimoires, the one he could not read. “Tell me what book this is.”
Gold Aramaic script flowed right to left across the black leather cover, faded but legible. “‘Sworn Book of Honorius,’” she read out loud. “There was a Greek sorcerer named Honorius, the son of Euclid the mathematician. This must be a translation of his grimoire.”
“How do you know all that?”
“As I was not born male, or the eldest daughter, or the most beautiful, I spent all my time studying. My father was a healer, and more, with a large library.”
“Married? Children?”
“No to both. I had five older sisters who needed to be married off first.”
Jordan filled another goblet with wine and handed it to her. “When you were being loaded on board, you offered to please me.”
“Yes. Do you want me to please you now?”
“It will please me if you translate this book. Do that and you can stay in my cabin.”
“You are a strange man, Marshal.”
Jordan sat at the small table, motioned for her to do the same. “It will be simpler if you call me Jordan.”
. . . . .
Najia’s olive skin, restored to health from four weeks in Jordan’s cabin, glowed faintly in the moonlight that entered through the porthole out of which her head hung. After emptying the contents of her stomach into the sea, she pulled her head back inside. The ocean had become rougher as their ship drew close to Ireland, unsettling her stomach and interrupting their evening passion. Opening the lid of the water cask, she scooped a tin cup full, rinsed her mouth, spat out the porthole, poured a small amount into her hand, and washed her face.
From the narrow bunk, Jordan watched the moonlight slide across the curves of her body. He couldn’t recall when he had spent so much time with a woman. It felt good to be here with her. All the other women he had known would be terrified by his new studies and certainly would not have been able to help with them. During their voyage toward Ireland, they had done little except study the grimoires and play—ever since that first night when she literally dragged him from the table to his bunk. He understood that she was desperately trying to attach herself to him, but it also seemed that she wanted to lose herself in passion when she could, a distraction from the questions that still hung over her.
“Tomorrow night will be the full moon,” she said, climbing back into his bunk. “Is that when we arrive?”
“Yes,” was all Jordan could say as she stroked him, restoring his erection. She straddled him, and no more was said until after she had satisfied them both.
Najia lay exhausted beside Jordan, his arm across her waist, hers on top of his. “Are you going to keep me or sell me tomorrow?” she asked.
Jordan smiled. “I believe you know the answer to that question.”
She ran her hand down the side of his face. “Perhaps my sister could join us?”
“We can’t fit anyone else in this bunk.”
“She’s a wonderful cook. You’ll need that when you return home. My young brother is good with horses. He speaks their language and would make a fine stable hand. One day he could be your horse master.”
“No,” Jordan replied. “I have plans for them.”
“I’ll let you keep me,” Najia said, her voice soft and inviting, “but only if you keep my brother and sister as well.”
“Let me?” He laughed. “I own you.”
Najia flashed Jordan a look as all softness disappeared from her body.
“You have no idea what will happen to you tomorrow if I don’t protect you,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me,” she said as she squirmed around to lie on her stomach, pushing Jordan to the edge of the bunk.
With a sigh he stood up. Opening his trunk, he rummaged through the clothes jumbled inside until he found his dagger and the bag of peaches he had stashed. Jordan sat on the bunk’s edge and examined a peach carefully. He cut away a rotten bit and dug out a small worm, flicking it at the porthole, missing. Cutting a slice of the remaining good meat, he held it out toward Najia. He knew that even
with her face buried in the blanket, she could smell the rare fruit.
She turned toward him, and he slipped the piece into her mouth. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you stay in my cabin all day. I make no promises about your siblings.” After feeding her the rest of the peach, Jordan climbed under the blanket next to Najia and slept. She did not.
8
Off the Southwest Coast of Ireland
The Next Morning
At sunrise Jordan emerged onto the deck of the cog. Common seagoing traders, cogs emphasized functionality over comfort and were inexpensive and quick to build. The design was simple: the hull was constructed with lapstrake oak planking, caulked with tarred moss that was forced into curved grooves, then covered with wooden laths and secured by forged-iron clinch nails. The single mast carried one large square sail, which made the ship easy to handle, even in rough seas, by a crew of as few as four. On the stern sat a minimal U-shaped superstructure containing three cabins: the captain’s, Jordan’s, and Prince Ruarc’s. The rest of the crew slept in a common cabin belowdecks next to a small galley and the cargo hold containing the slaves. Ty stayed on the deck.
The ship was no longer pitching and seemed to be sailing down a channel of calm that ran through the rough waves. Ruarc stood on the bowsprit chanting. Jordan could not understand the words but knew they were a poem to the wind and water. The captain stood at the wheel.
“Good morning, Captain. How long until we arrive?” asked Jordan.
“Morning, Marshal. The prince told me that if I follow this course, we’ll be through the waves by noon and at Great Skellig before twilight.”
Dary exited Ruarc’s cabin supporting his skeletal wife. Leading Eithne slowly to the rail, he dropped a blanket on the deck and helped her sit. She leaned back in the sun and closed her eyes.
Ruarc finished his poetic incantation with a flourish of his arms. Climbing down onto the deck, he walked over, picked up Eithne as if she weighed no more than a lamb, and carried her back into his cabin. Dary said nothing.
Jordan looked out at the calm, enchanted channel before him, framed by walls of thirty-foot waves on either side. Inevitably, his thoughts were drawn to the previous, doomed attempt by Rome to invade Ireland with the English—their armada had sailed across this same sea 221 years earlier. At that time the Earl of Pembroke, known as “Strongbow,” thought he could seize Ireland for the Norman king of England, Henry II, who had been gifted the entire island by an excessively optimistic pope through the Laudabiliter grant.
How exactly were the English so soundly defeated, Jordan wondered, and why had no survivors returned? This turbulent ring of water couldn’t have been the only thing that repelled them, or certainly some damaged ships and men would have made it back to England. What magic did the Irish use, or was it just the work of the Fomorians? Jordan needed to ensure that the same fate did not befall the next English armada, because he planned to be on it, so long as the legate was able to convince their unstable king to sail forth.
Dary was still brooding at the rail when Jordan approached him and asked, “Your family are descendants of Strongbow’s marshal, isn’t that so? Were there many survivors?”
“A few.” Dary did not raise his head to look at Jordan. “The Irish sold them among themselves, as slaves.”
“And none tried to escape, to return to England?”
“That’s not the way of things there. The men eventually earned their freedom, but they had already become níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil iad féin—‘more Irish than the Irish themselves.’”
“I need to hear the whole story, what happened to the fleet, before we lead a new armada back.”
“I don’t care about your invasion,” Dary snapped. “I care about what Ruarc is doing to my wife.” He walked away.
. . . . .
Jordan’s ship had passed through the wall of waves, and the sun had begun its descent when he spied the seething white flock of kittiwakes circulating on the horizon. Within minutes Great Skellig seemed to rise out of the sea like a giant jagged tooth.
Located eight miles off the southwest corner of Ireland, the treeless island had been uninhabited for more than two hundred years when it was decided that King Kellach of the Skeaghshee would be imprisoned there. A short stone pier and a few squat stone huts, beehive shaped, were the only structures on the island, remnants of a Christian monastery that had struggled to survive there, much to the amusement of the Celts. An effort that was finally abandoned in the twelfth century, leaving the rock to the kittiwakes, who survived by fastening their meager nests to its steep faces, using their droppings as cement.
Jordan felt vitalized, his senses unusually acute, more so than could be explained simply by four weeks of rest with Najia. His heightened awareness had started as soon as they entered Irish waters and had been building ever since, but there was no time to think about it now. He walked to the bow, where Ruarc stood. The captain joined them, leaving his first mate at the wheel.
“What’s the plan?” the captain asked.
“First we must get by the Fomorians,” said Ruarc.
“A type of sea faerie,” added Jordan.
“Not quite,” said Ruarc. “They are a type of Elioud, more demonic blood. They once occupied the surface of Ireland, until the Sidhe arrived and drove them into the sea at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh. Now they live in great caverns, whose entrances are accessible only from the water.”
“Yet they align with the Sidhe?” asked the captain.
“Treaties between the two races have been common,” said Ruarc. “But the ruling Sidhe clans—the Devas and Adhene—have become greedy, too much like the Celts, and the tributes they pay to bind treaties have become too small, such as the treaty to guard that rock. I have sent word to the king of the Fomorian clan who occupy these waters that in exchange for safe passage I will gift him human slaves the likes of which neither he nor any other Fomorian has seen before.”
“Did he guarantee safe passage?”
“I have not received word back,” said Ruarc calmly, “but I am hopeful.”
“If we get past the Fomorians,” Jordan said, “there’s a relatively small guard on the island itself, a few Celts and about ten Sidhe. Mostly Fire Sprites—they and the Skeaghshee hate each other. We’ll land just after nightfall.”
The captain looked up at the sky. “It’s clouding over. Without moonlight it’ll be too dark to dock at the pier.”
“Just follow my directions and you will land safely,” said Ruarc.
“Once we are docked, Ty will go ashore and retrieve the king,” added Jordan.
The captain looked over at the large figure, statuesque on the deck. “He can survive Fire Sprites?”
“Ty is a unique half-breed,” said Jordan. “Part giant, clearly, but I’ve no idea what the rest is. Whatever his parents were, the union didn’t take completely, and he was born deformed. With no magic of his own, he embodies its very opposite. He’s full of some kind of darkness that absorbs enchantments cast against him.”
A quarter mile from Great Skellig, the ship turned into the wind and dropped its sail. The setting sun disappeared behind cloud cover, creating an early dusk.
Jordan returned to his cabin to prepare to meet the Fomorian king. Certain protocols must be followed, even for the king of another race. He pulled off his plain wool tunic and put on one of red silk. His sword and dagger he moved to a silver belt. A black wool cloak trimmed with mink completed the outfit, nothing of which displayed the symbol of the Vatican.
Throughout the process Najia sat in the center of the floor, eyes closed, chanting quietly.
“Praying to your God?” Jordan finally asked, adjusting his cloak.
Najia opened her eyes. “I’m casting an enchantment of protection over my sister and little brother.”
“No enchantment will protect them if I fail to keep them from the Fomorians.”
“Then I’ll cast you an enchantment of good fortune.”
“Don’t do t
hat. Don’t do anything. If Ruarc senses any enchantments, he’ll know I’m up to something.” Jordan stroked her hair. “Just stay here and trust that I’ll do all I can.” He picked up his hat and went out on deck.
Jordan walked up to Dary and asked, “How’s your wife?”
“How do you think she is?” Anger flared in his voice.
“Why don’t you bring her out? The sea air will do her good.”
Dary glanced at Ruarc, who was standing at the starboard railing looking out at Great Skellig, then moved toward Ruarc’s cabin.
The crew led the nineteen remaining slaves up on deck. They had been stripped and their hands bound. Jordan walked among them; they shivered with cold and fear. He pointed out the two women he thought Ruarc would find most pleasing, and four others, including Najia’s sister and brother. He was careful to choose casually and not to look back at his cabin door, which he knew was open just enough for Najia to peer out.
“Take these six back down,” Jordan ordered two deckhands. “Allow them to dress, then secure them.”
“Marshal Jordan,” demanded Ruarc, rushing toward him. “What are you doing?”
“It’s not wise to show all we have to offer at the outset. We may need additional trade goods later. Thirteen is a good offer to start.”
The Last Days of Magic: A Novel Page 12