The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  Now I understood what sorcery could be, what it could give, instead of being a dark power for death and overpowering another, or a niggling series of words and incantations intended to avoid hard physical work. Maybe I understood and even sympathized for an instant with Janos Greycloak, feeling what had drawn him to magic, the same thing that had destroyed him.

  Ahead I sensed land, and then saw it as the gale raced me onward. There were ten, perhaps twenty islands, the smaller ones spread like they’d been scattered in front of the largest land mass. These were The Alastors, I knew, having seen sketchy maps of the islands the Konyans had named as The Sarzana’s refuge. As I swept across the outer skerries, I could sense, down below, men waiting, whose task was to report the first sign of our fleet.

  The magical part of me was still marveling at being able to see everything, from horizon to horizon, but the cold soldier within was reminding Captain Rali there’d be little likelihood of surprising The Sarzana, since his sentinels were well-posted. Not that I’d ever thought we’d be able to anyway, since physical sentries would be the least and most easily fooled of any of The Sarzana’s watchguards.

  His name crossing my mind made me “feel” ahead, as Gamelan had told me to do, trying to sense if there were any magical traps lying in wait. I could sense none, but wasn’t reassured. I was a fresh recruit walking along a path trying to avoid an ambush that may or may not have been set by a crafty old warrior.

  The main island rose ahead. Now it was time for me to make the second change, into a hopefully less vulnerable form.

  The wind that was me did not want to change, did not want to give up its free roaming, but my mind forced the words:

  You must change

  You must take shape

  You are now your cousin

  You are the wind’s friend

  You are flesh

  You have shape

  You have form

  You have flight.

  And it became so in a dizzying instant. Not only had I taken on physical form, and was tossed by the wind that had been me moments earlier, but there were many “me’s.” Gamelan had suggested a less noticeable disguise than that of an albatross, and I’d gone him one better. Why must I be a single bird? One creature could well be a spy, particularly if it behaved oddly. But an entire flock? He lifted his eyebrows in surprise, then chortled, and said it was time, indeed, for younger minds to take over magic. There was no reason not to at all.

  I was a flock of terns, coming in toward the shore. I suppose I ought to call myself “we,” but I notice a look of confusion from my Scribe, so will try to keep this as simple as I can. It was strange, being many creatures at the same time. I was ten, perhaps fifteen birds, with a common way of thinking, but each with her own eyes. “I” swooped low over a geo that jutted from the sea, flying past on both sides of it, and it was if I had only one pair of eyes, but eyes that could see the front, sides and back of something at the same time. Yet everything was quite normal, and I had no feeling of strangeness, nor of disorientation.

  I swooped into the sky as the flock closed on the main island. It was high-mountained, and a long, narrow bay clove the land nearly in two. I could see cities at the tip of that bay, cities guarding the gut’s portals. At the bay’s end was the island’s greatest city, which was named Ticino. Even in this near-dawn hour there were lights gleaming, and I estimated the city to be nearly as large as Isolde’s metropolis.

  The Sarzana’s fleet was anchored in the roadstead, with picket boats around them. I knew he’d have many warships, but was startled by how many there were. I tried to count them, but couldn’t, and estimated there were at least four hundred — as many as we had — and most likely more.

  I was coming closer to the anchorage and flew perhaps a thousand or so feet overhead. It looked as if most of the ships were huge galleys exactly like the Konyans sailed, and my soldier’s soul felt pleasure. The new battle tactics I’d devised might work well. There were other ships as well, anchored close inshore in another division, and I swooped closer. But somehow I couldn’t see them well. My vision was blurred in spots, just as when water’s flung unexpectedly into your face before you have time to blink, or, perhaps, when fog swirls in banks between bright sunlight.

  Something whispered, and said I shouldn’t look closer. Not yet. And no matter how I tried to “gaze” at them, the fog still hung between us.

  There was no sign of alarm below. The few sailors on the decks of the galleys went sleepily about their dawn routine. No one looked up, and if they had, all they would’ve seen was a flight of swallow-tailed gray-shaded birds overhead, no doubt looking to break their fast.

  I determined to fly closer to the city, closer to the danger that was The Sarzana’s and the Archons’ magics. But once more, my “eyes” blurred, and I couldn’t quite make out details on the ground, although I was quite close and my sharp tern’s vision let me make out a single small school of fish as it broke water. Again I felt that whisper, and it became almost a voice, a warning. Reason caught me, and sent me banking away, back down the bay.

  I’d seen nothing to give me alarm, but felt as if I were bare moments from danger. I flew in three great lazy circles, higher and higher into the sky as the sun glinted on the horizon and the shadows on the land and water below drew in on themselves. I had enough for my first scouting.

  The Sarzana’s fleet was where it’d been predicted, and was clearly ready for battle, as the Konyan Evocators had predicted. But what were these blurry patches?

  I didn’t know, but felt them to be threats. It didn’t matter. I’d done enough for one night.

  I would return.

  * * * *

  Later, my real self took a different and much more pleasant flight — with Xia. I remember coming back from the far place her lips and hands had sent me, knowing nothing, body still echoing to that great roar. I became aware, very dimly, that her head was pillowed on my stomach. I managed a grunt, incapable of more. Xia giggled.

  “You went away on me.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I’ll bet I can send you there again.” And her fingers moved. I found energy enough to pull her hand up to cradle my breasts.

  “No you can’t,” I said. “I’m a noodle. I’m a string, I’m a soggy mass of wet silk.”

  “You are silk,” she agreed, but left her hand where I’d put it. After a few moments of silence, when I almost went to sleep, she said, “Rali? What comes next?”

  “Next I try to get some sleep, you sex-mad animal.”

  “No. I mean after we kill The Sarzana?”

  “I love an optimist,” I said. “Once we kill the bear, should the roasts be larded or soaked in vinegar? There’s a bit of a task to putting this bear on the table, you know.”

  “We’ll kill him. I know that,” Xia said. “So answer my question.”

  I sat up, quite awake now. “I’ve got to go back to Orissa,” I said.

  “What about me? What about us? I can’t see me going with you as your companion, at least not for very long. I mean, I’m a Kanara. The last one.”

  “Of course I didn’t mean for you to just traipse about after me,” I said.

  “So then do you want to stay here? With me? I don’t think your barons or whatever your rulers call themselves would object, considering what you’ve done for them.”

  “No,” I said. “They wouldn’t.”

  I didn’t say anything more, but lay back, thinking. What did come next? She was a Kanara, and I was an Antero . . . and commander of the Maranon Guard as well. Being an Antero might not be that important — Amalric and our idiot brothers could handle the estates well enough. But was I through with the Guard? Was I through with being a soldier? Even more simply — was I ready to leave Orissa for good?

  “What would I do,” I wondered, “if I did come back with you?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said, and her fingers tweaked my nipple, and it rose erect. “As often as we can.”

  “
No,” I said. “I meant . . .” but let my words trail off.

  How odd. Mostly I’d been the person in charge, if that’s the right word, of my love affairs. Yet here was this eighteen-year-old starting to plan my future. I didn’t know if I liked that. I guessed that was the way royalty reasoned. At least I was being consulted in the matter, I thought wryly. But the idea of being a lapkitten didn’t call to me, although I’m sure Xia would find a position for me commanding soldiers if I wished. Noble folks always need a sword to keep their power. But still . . . but still . . .

  I took refuge in the old soldier’s way of dealing with the morrow: the hell with it. We’ll never make it off this battlefield alive anyway.

  Not that there was much left to think with anyway. Xia had found the knotted silk cord, and was coiling it into place as her other hand swept across and across, smoothing oil across my stomach.

  * * * *

  A day or so later, just at dawn, I was on deck, letting my body wake up very slowly. Sergeant Ismet was a few feet away, doing a series of muscle-stretching exercises. She finished, and joined me at the rail. The day was gorgeous, the sky offering the deepest of blue, the sun bright and welcoming. A breeze touched the crests of the low waves as our galley sped through the waters. Behind us, in our spreading wake, was the rest of our forward element and behind them, bare dots on the horizon, the main fleet.

  “Odd,” I mused aloud, “here we are, in romantic seas on a day made for a holiday, and we’re sailing into battle.”

  “I don’t know about a holiday,” Ismet said. “I could never relax seeing that haze ahead of us on the horizon, and not knowing what might be hidden in it.”

  “If you weren’t a soldier?”

  “If I weren’t a soldier,” she returned, “I’d never be here, now would I?”

  Without waiting for a response, she went on, “If the Captain will excuse me, I’ve some lazy slatterns to roust out of their hammocks who need their exercise.” And she was gone.

  I was reminded once more what a puzzlement Ismet was. She may, in my tales, sound as if she was stupid, as if she was no more than a beetle-browed goon. But this was far from the case — I’d seen her on occasion match verse with verse with poets when they recited the old lays of battle. But when it came to love-songs, or tales of the giants and fairies who supposedly walked our land before man, she knew, and wished to know, nothing at all.

  Even now, I wish I could say I understood her. But I didn’t. None of us did. Perhaps Ismet was one facet of Maranonia incarnate as I’d once fancifully wondered.

  * * * *

  The next morning Gamelan sent for me and I found him at his favorite fishing spot positively glowing with excitement.

  “Watch,” he said, soon as I arrived. He squatted on the deck, and if it wasn’t for his robes he might’ve been any old fisherman, scowling at the knotted and tangled net piled in front of him.

  He reached his hand out, palm down, and touched the net strings, then raised his hand about three inches above the net. He moved it in circles, his fingers twining, like a cuttlefish. I found it hard to watch them as they moved, then my attention was ripped away, as I saw the net-strands move of their own volition, nothing touching them, and the net itself curled and dipped, and then lay motionless, still a mass, but now with all its skeins untangled.

  The handful of sailors and Guardswomen watching cheered, but Gamelan didn’t need that to know what’d happened. He was smiling.

  “I did it as a child,” he said softly, “and I can do it now . . . My Talent is returning.”

  * * * *

  Some days later I made a another visit to the stronghold of our enemies. Knowing I needed to get closer, I created a safeguard — if I was forced to flee, it wouldn’t be as a comfortable flock of terns. I would be a swifter and more cunning creature. I’d constructed my new unguent in the proximity of two talismans — first I’d taken a bit of The Sarzana’s robe Corais had torn off and still wore as token of her hatred, and second that awful charm that was the heart of the Last Archon’s brother. Gamelan had protested mightily, but I’d not let him sway me. The mission was important, and I felt, if I moved softly, just like a tern, wary of man and jaeger, I could slip in and out without notice.

  I gave myself a full extra hour before dawn for my snooping, and there was no stirring as I swept closer to Ticino. Three times I swept over The Sarzana’s fortress-harbor. But each time I saw no more than the others; except I now realized that the “fog,” obscuring my view was magical. Although I could make nothing of the ships close inshore, I could see more of the city itself. It was huge, as I’d thought. It had few streets, but rather canals connecting buildings, villas and squares.

  In the center of the city, I saw a large squat tower. It was actually a round castle, its rim jagged with turrets and bartizans. The city squares around it were clear except for statuary, and access to the castle was via four causeways that stretched over the walls. This would be a hard fortification to storm, and hoped we could catch both The Sarzana, and the Archon in whatever form he was in, at sea, and end the long war.

  I had to see more, and the only way was to increase the power of the spell — knowing if I did so that the danger would increase as well. But it was a risk I had to take. Gathering my strength I formed an image in my mind of The Sarzana as I’d last seen him — petulant in his silks on the deck of our galley. Wary, I began the incantation. But just as I did so the mind-portrait slipped and I thought of the real and greater enemy.

  I lost hold and the image smashed into my mind of the Archon in volcano-ripped seas, blood foaming on his lips and staining his yellowing beard, and then the world spun, spun from under me. I was caught in a maelstrom and I was falling toward that castle.

  Then all was calm. I was in a vast, shadowed room, hung with tapestries and lit by tapers. I was no longer a tern, nor my flock of terns, nor was I even a woman. I was a spirit, just a presence, and I was staring at the one man in that room, just as he became aware of me. It was The Sarzana, and he sat at a table, the top of which was a large pool that shone like mercury.

  The Sarzana’s eyes gleamed. “Antero,” he hissed, but it wasn’t his voice I heard. Instead, it was that hiss I’d heard from black clouds when we first attempted a feint against Lycanth’s sea-castle. It was a serpent-hiss, and I thought I could the same foul breath, the reek of the grave and beyond.

  Rising, the Sarzana stood stalked toward me. But his motion was strange and unfamiliar. He moved not like the small man we’d rescued from Tristan, but with the long strides of another. And I knew the flesh before me was inhabited by my greatest enemy — The Archon.

  The Sarzana spoke again, with a croak. But I knew it wasn’t he who moved those lips and used that throat. He said: “You haven’t finished with Lycanth yet, Antero.”

  And then The Sarzana laughed the laugh of the Archon. “I’ve learned much,” he said, “and had I known what treasures I’d find I would have taken that journey long ago. There are worlds and worlds beyond, Antero. My brother and I could’ve seized their fruit and brought it back, and made Lycanth a power greater than it ever was, greater than either the real world of the Far Kingdoms or those child’s fables we heard before we came on them.

  “Even now, the time and the chance may be seized again,” he said. The Archon came toward me, and again he howled, as he had on the deck of Symeon’s ship, his voice screeching in rage, “The blood is paid and the battle yet joined,” and his claws taloned, as had his brother’s, but this time there was no armor of steel nor flesh between us.

  There was a moment, a bare moment, as the two monsters, for I can’t call either the Archon nor his now-slave The Sarzana men, seemed to hesitate, as if gathering strength, and in that moment I found my own and cast myself, cast my spirit away and was beyond the walls of the castle, spinning free, with a whirl of images ripping through my mind, a ferret, Gamelan’s face, the reliquary holding the Archons’ brother’s heart, even a flash of Amalric’s face, and my
mother, my dear mother. As I spun away I could feel the Archon’s tentacles stretch out for me.

  But for just an instant I was beyond them, and in that instant my mind found the words and cast them forth:

  Fly free

  Fly fast

  To sea

  Away

  Beyond

  My spirit fingers “remembered” that peregrine’s feather I’d stroked back aboard ship, and I became that falcon, darting low over the canals, wings flurrying, away, beyond, to sea. My peregrine’s soul wanted me to climb, to soar high into the sky above danger, but I, the I that was Rali Emilie Antero, knew better, and so I shot through a field of bowmen, hard across the harbor, darting this way and that as I went.

  I was but seconds beyond the galleys, and I could sense the wrath behind me, and the rage boiling forth, like hunting hounds on the scent, but I was gone. I had taken that one moment the Archon and The Sarzana had been too slow to seize.

  Near the mouth of the bay I allowed my normal spell to revert, and I was the wind, a wind blowing fast off the island, a sharp gale that was there and then gone. I thought I “saw,” far behind me, high in the heavens, a great eagle, the eagle that was the mortal enemy of the peregrine, sweeping, searching, but perhaps not. I couldn’t chance either the energy nor the possibility of leaving a trail to pay it any mind.

  I’d taken the one instant away from The Archon.

  He would not give me that luxury again.

  * * * *

  Gamelan was angry when I reported what’d happened. “The Archon’s marked you yet again, Rali,” he said. “When we come to grips with him once more, you’ll be his first target.”

  “He can but try,” I said, and immediately felt ashamed of such a subaltern’s bravado, especially when I saw Gamelan’s blind eyes fix me, and his lip lift scornfully. Before he could tell me what I already knew, that each encounter decreased my odds, I apologized for my foolishness.