Dragon Choir

by Benjamin Descovich

  The ship marked on the map was Bone Dancer’s refined sister, Near Song. She too was a shapely carrack, though her hull was painted black as night, an elegant evening gown draped across dangerous curves and cannons. The figurehead was a woman with bat wings, her hands in prayer, fangs pressing past her plump parted lips.

  The companions took cover behind a large pile of empty crates, big enough to hide Hurn crouching down. Guards watched over the workers loading the ship. They spoke with intoxicated volume, sharing crude stories and several bottles between them. The ships crew and the dock labourers worked on through the boisterous laughter.

  “Let’s try the guards at the other end,” whispered Delik.

  “Why there?” Elrin screwed his face up. “This lot are plastered.”

  “They’re shankakin.”

  “What difference does that make? Are you all best friends now?”

  That shiner had to argue with everything! Delik held his temper and watched the guards for some proof that his gut feeling was correct. The shankakin guards were not out of place because they were shankakin. Kobb had plenty of shankakin amongst his crew, but these two were different.

  “Look, they’re over attentive; guarding a gangplank that no one is using. And what do you make of that? Those lamps right beside them are out. They’ve got to be Pa’s men, but we need to be able to get there unseen.”

  “Swim?” suggested Elrin.

  “What? Drip all the way through the ship and leave a nice trail to follow. No, we need a distraction. How good are you at throwing things, Hurn?”

  “Good. Hurn can throw Delik on ship. Elrin too big, I get him half way.”

  Hurn reached for Delik.

  “Ash it Hurn! Not me.” Delik swatted the ogre’s hands. “See those guards up on the forecastle, near the edge? Think you could hit one with something?”

  “Will hit.” Hurn grunted. “Head might smash.”

  “Best if it didn’t, just go easy, eh.”

  They searched around the pile of crates for some ammunition. Delik found a basket filled with yellow melons and put one in Hurn’s sizable hand. It fit like an apple would in his own.

  “Listen carefully, Hurn. You have to wait here. If you hear trouble on board, if you hear us yelling, we’ll need your help to get out. Just smash your way through anyone that gets in your way. You understand?”

  Hurn grunted and gave Delik a solemn nod. He tested the weight of the melon, gently tossing it from one hand to the other. “Hurn throw melon now?”

  “When you’re ready, if it goes wide there are plenty mo—”

  The melon flew from Hurn’s hand in a long arc through the night. It spun through the air and smashed across the back of the guard’s head. The force of the blow toppled him over the gunwale. His friend tried to grab him, but only succeeded in dropping his bottle. With a great splash, the guard hit the water. The other drunken guards ran to find out what happened and the crew crowded around, happy for a distraction from their labour.

  Delik slapped Hurn’s arm. “Who would believe that?”

  While everyone crowded over the edge laughing and jeering at the flailing guard in the water, Delik and Elrin took up a crate each and walked by, bearing their load down the pier and up the far ramp. Delik nodded to the guards.

  They didn’t respond in kind.

  ***

  Elrin dropped the crate as the first guard seized Delik. He pulled his dagger and lunged.

  The shankakin guard dodged to the side. “Easy, son, we’re on your side.”

  Elrin slashed the dagger in front of him, keeping the guards at bay. “Delik?”

  Delik chuckled. “Why are you waving your arm about like a fool? Do what they say before we’re found out.”

  Elrin flushed with embarrassment. He had come close to stabbing one of their own men. The dagger was invisible to them, so there was no point arguing to recover his pride. Elrin relaxed his stance and allowed the guards to do their work. A hood went over his head and his hands were loosely bound behind his back. Elrin kept hold of his dagger, just in case things went sour. He hoped it still cut even if it was invisible.

  They were taken below decks, weaving through several corridors. Elrin soon became disorientated. They passed through a rowdy room smelling of stale beer and mutton. After a few more turns the drunken revelry faded behind them.

  They stopped and a fist banged on something solid, giving Elrin a start. There was a click then a quick metallic scrape.

  A phlegmy voice spat at them. “Bugger off!”

  Their hoods were removed. Delik stood beside Elrin and a sweaty faced jailer scrutinised them from behind a shutter hole in a heavy studded door.

  “This lot tried to escape,” said one of the guards. “Kobb wants ‘em locked up.”

  “There’s no bloody room! I’m full up with Jaspa’s mates. Piss off!” The jailor slid the shutter closed.

  The guard banged on the door again.

  “Kobb says to put them in Jaspa’s cell. There’s plenty of room.”

  The shutter opened. “Tell Kobb he can stick any more in his own cabin!”

  The door shook and there was a grunt and a thud. “Lord’s balls afire! In and out, in and out. I’ll be dead before I sleep.” The Jailor muttered on as keys jingled together. A moment later the lock clunked and the door swung open.

  Elrin was shoved through. He gripped the hilt of the dagger and tested his bindings. Two guards stood outside Jaspa’s cell. It was furnished with a fine upholstered chair and a small table holding a bowl of fruit. Short stacks of books and piles of scrolls accumulated in the corners. Jaspa sat cross-legged, reading a book illuminated by the dying nub of a candle. Tikis and Minni were cramped into the other cell, a quarter the size of Jaspa’s. Amber was not there.

  The fat greasy jailor shut the door and locked it behind them. With a disturbing grunt, he hefted a timber beam to bar it shut. One of their escort struck up a joking conversation with the jailor while the other forced Elrin ahead to the guards at Jaspa’s cell.

  One of Jaspa’s guards gave their escort a quick wink, half-heartedly patting Delik down. His partner was not so lax. He fingered through Elrin’s hair and slipped his palms down to his neck and shoulders.

  Elrin’s dagger came alive and thrummed in his hand, coaxing his muscles with an insistent hunger. The loose bindings fell away from his wrist and the dagger lashed out, jabbing up into the guard’s chest. The man wrapped tight fingers around Elrin’s throat, squeezing with strength enough to snap his neck. The enchanted blade jabbed up again, and again, searching for the guard’s heart, probing to server anything vital, anything to release the death grip around the young Calimskan’s neck. Time slowed, stars swam and his vision dimmed to black. With the last of his breath Elrin pushed and twisted the blade, willing it to end the guard and save his life.

  The hands around his throat went limp. Elrin gasped for air, drawing it in a rasping flurry, coughing as it inundated his lungs and brought his vision back. He swung around on the remaining guard, brandishing his blood-drenched blade, his red right hand eager to please the weapon.

  The guard threw his arms up in surrender. “No! Not me, I’m with Jaspa!”

  Delik eased forward in front of the cowering guard, reaching for Elrin’s shoulder. “It’s over lad. There now, it’s all right.” Delik pointed to the fat jailor, slumped in his chair, waiting for Nathis to guide his soul to his maker. The conversational escort stood over the rotund body, wiping his blade clean on the dead man’s tunic.

  Elrin’s blade glowed, drawing in the wet red mess from across his hand, drinking the lifeblood and unfolding a calm, warm comfort that wrapped about him.

  Delik touched his arm, easing him out of the red fog. “Lad? Where did you get that?”

  “My father.” It was all he could think of.

  “A strange blade, that one. How about you rest it in your belt for now?”

  Elrin sheathed the blade, the warmth faded as he let it go. He rushed to
Minni’s cell, clasping at the cold iron bars. “Where’s Amber? What happened?”

  Minni wrapped her hands over his, giving them a gentle squeeze. “Kobb wouldn’t have her put in a cell, she’s up in a cabin with Granny Shan. I tucked her in myself, before they took us down here. She’s got a big day ahead of her.”

  Delik slid the jailor’s key into Jaspa’s cell door and with a crisp oiled click the door swung open. Jaspa blew out the candle and shut the book, leaving the ribbon marking the page. Jaspa went to his son with open arms.

  Delik embraced his father, his face a joy of teeth and dimpled stubble. “You ready, old man?”

  “Old? Ha! I can still beat you in a wrestle.”

  “I let you get out of that pin. I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of all your admirers.”

  “Oh, that’s what it was, eh? Ona’s arse!”

  Delik clapped his hands. Keen to get moving. “Has the lock figured out which is the key?”

  “The time is upon us, Minella,” said Jaspa.

  Minni was quiet, staring up into Elrin’s eyes. Her clammy hands would not let go of his. The young man was lost in her dark eyes, his heart wound up like her wild hair. She reached forward running her caress up his arms, behind his neck. Elrin leant in and their lips met. Dizzy in bliss, he wanted to reach through and pull her close, return her embrace, but his hands continued to grip the iron bars with a nervous assurance, an anchor to ground him.

  And then it was over, all too soon. His lips wanted to feel hers again, just to make sure it was real, to taste that delicious soft pleasure.

  Minni poked her finger at his chest. “Now, can you work out what you missed?”

  Elrin grinned, dumb with heart’s blood flooding his thoughts.

  “It’s you, Elrin,” Minni caressed his flushed cheek. “You’re the Key.”

  “How could it be? I’m no sorcerer. I’m nothing.”

  “The Lock to secure us shall know the Key, eyes at sunset, heart alight.

  Death bell song stirs Choir’s wrath, false key fails dawn’s only hope.

  Hand to the Fist, Key to the Lock, captive embrace, dawning glory.”

  The prophecy was manifesting; the riddles were growing into truth, entwining tendrils around them all.

  “It’s me?”

  “This Key might break in this Lock,” grumbled Tikis from the back of the cell. “Smoothskins take strange mates.”

  Jaspa laughed. “Don’t listen to him, lad. Tikis is a little overprotective of our Minella.”

  “Come on then,” said Delik. “We can to and fro once we’ve got the choir and this bloody battle is won.”

  Minni pulled Elrin in for a parting kiss, as delicious as the first. “That’s for luck. Return safe.”

  While their escorts wrestled with the bar holding the door shut, Jaspa and Delik stripped the dead guards of their weapons. Delik found a hatchet in the fat jailor’s belt. Jaspa took a cutlass from the man Elrin had stabbed to death. They tested the weight of the weapons then swapped with each other.

  Jaspa flipped the hatchet, caught it by the handle and made several mock cuts in the air. “Now, this feels more like it.”

  Delik slung the sword belt around his waist and slid the cutlass through the leather frog. “I think you’re happy with your thirsty blade too, eh?”

  Elrin touched his father’s heirloom. “It’s kept me alive this far.”

  Their escorts waved them out the heavy door and guided them through the ship. They travelled a convoluted way up to the gun deck, avoiding the busy mess hall to climb a stairway at the stern of the ship. There they squeezed through a rear cannon port, down a rope ladder and into a waiting boat. They took the oars and rowed to an unguarded pier near Hurn’s hiding place.

  Hurn’s hulking form backed out of the shadows behind the stack of crates and snuck toward them as best as an ogre could. He managed it well. The groaning timber under the Ogre’s weight blended in with the complaining boards of every ship and walkway in the floating village. His lumbering silhouette stood out against the sleeping huts and hulks. He was a child’s nightmare, the melon in his hand a victim’s skull.

  As Hurn got to the boat, a guard on patrol emerged from between two shacks at the end of the short pier. He gave a yell, half in alarm at the monster he had discovered, half in fear of what might become of him if he tried to hinder Hurn’s progress.

  “Row! Get us away!” rasped Jaspa, his whisper as unnecessary as his command.

  Elrin heaved on the oars. “Get in the middle! Sit down, before the boat tips over. Quick!”

  Hurn had a different idea. He stepped to the middle of the boat, but instead of sitting down he twisted and threw the melon with grace unbecoming of his bulk. Hurn threw it so hard that the boat rocked and he almost fell out. The melon hurtled through the air and smashed into the guard’s head, knocking him to the creaking boards with a grim thud.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Free

  Halfway across the lagoon Elrin was exhausted and his back was cramping up. He wished for a second pair of arms at the oars and grew ever more irritated as Delik prattled on to his father. Since they were clear of Kobbton Delik and Jaspa hadn’t shut up, barely dipping their oars in. First they speculated on the logistics of dismantling Kobbton and floating it to a safe harbour each season, then they started on about the advantages of a well manned galley over a cannon-rigged Jandan galleon.

  Elrin’s fatigued chagrin caught Hurn’s attention. “Hurn Ga Kogh row now. Elrin rest.”

  Elrin pulled the oars in. “Thanks, Hurn. Should be easy for your big arms.”

  Changing positions was not so easy. Everyone clung on as the boat rocked with Hurn’s shifting mass, sloshing water over the side.

  Delik lost his balance and tipped from his seat. “What in the hells are you doing? Sit down before we’re all in the drink.”

  Hurn found his seat and the boat stabilised. Elrin couldn’t help but laugh at the awkwardness of the seemingly simple task. Jaspa laughed too, giving his son a hand off the bottom of the boat. Delik didn’t see the funny side. With Hurn at the oars the boat lurched into motion, leaping ahead with each stroke.

  Elrin rubbed the ache out of his arms. “Back there, throwing those melons. Where did you learn to do that?”

  Hurn pulled the oars, his face blank. “Slave games.”

  “Oh,” Elrin didn’t know what to say.

  “Hurn Ga Kogh not run so fast, not lift so much, not fight so good. Pelegrin keep because I throw iron ball, win him games, win him bones.”

  Delik spat over the side of the boat. “That bastard makes me sick. Why didn’t you escape before we got there? You broke your chains easy enough?”

  Hurn grunted. “Keeper dropped whip, Minni open his neck. Hurn Ga Kogh think free is not free, slave is not slave. Broken is broke.”

  Jaspa patted Hurn on the shoulder. “You’ll never take a whip from us. You’re free now.”

  Hurn shrugged it off, losing the rhythm of his stroke. “Chains of revenge, stronger than iron. Chains of family, stronger still. None here are free.”

  They all kept quiet. Hurn was right; they were all slaves to their quest. Elrin was as bound to the rebellion as they were to him. The quest to find his father had entangled him with the fight to end slavery. This band of insurrectionist misfits thought he was some prophetical Key to commanding dragons. He could no less help them than he could his own father.

  When the boat hit the shore, they dragged it up onto a small beach of pebbles mingled with treasure. Elrin scooped up a handful of gold and silver coins. They were much nicer than tabs, though Elrin had never enjoyed the fortune of holding a handful of gold tabs to compare. Age-old kings and queens stared at him in the moonlight, imprints from times long past or lands far from home. He let the strangers fall back to the beach. They had no use here.

  Jaspa lifted a canvas in the boat and revealed a stash of equipment. He passed out a backpack to each of them. Hurn’s had no hope of getti
ng over his wide shoulders, so he strapped it tight over his upper arm before hooping a long coil of rope over his chest. Jaspa attached a pouch full of shot and a sling to his belt. Delik took a sling and ammunition too. Elrin had no idea how to use one and Hurn mocked the flimsy looking missile weapons with a snort. There was nothing that suited Hurn’s massive hands; they were deadly enough.

  Once all were equipped, Jaspa led them to the forest at the base of the cliff face. It was an awkward walk up the beach of treasure. Coins, cups and other precious paraphernalia shifted under their tread, Elrin feared it would cut through his soles, but most of it was worn smooth by the elements and flattened under the weight of countless dragons. Jaspa pulled out an old folded leather square from his pack.

  “Where did you get that old hanky?” asked Delik.

  “Found it lying about in the High Temple archives.”

  Delik snorted. “Just happened across it last time you gave thanks to the Lord, eh?”

  Elrin squinted at the soft hide. “Is it a map to the Dragon Choir?”

  Jaspa nodded. “This is it. Are you ready? Are you all ready?”

  None of them were. How could they be? Jaspa had a map and a prophecy Delik had no faith in. Hurn had as good an idea of what lay ahead as any of them and he hadn’t been told much of anything. Ready or not, Elrin hoped he could work the device when they found it. Minni believed in him. Kleith believed in him. This was what he had to do.

  Elrin touched the hilt of his dagger. “Let’s go.”

  Jaspa tucked the map in his belt and drew his hatchet, hacking through the underbrush. Hurn pulled vines from up high, tearing them away and dumping great clumps of vegetation to the side. Soon they stood before the mouth of a cave, smooth on all sides and rounded like a great pipe. Jaspa pulled a torch out of Delik’s backpack. With flint, steel and tinder, he had the torch alight and held it into the cave’s dark throat.

  Hurn walked ahead, squinting and holding his hand over his eyes. “Keep torch from Hurn Ga Kogh. See good in dark.”