“So . . . they knew about me, that I was an omne?” He reached out to steady his stance as the ship bucked. “But the primus seemed so surprised when Luis told him what I was.”
Merodach smiled. “You showed up early. Strange, isn’t it, that the search for a king and an omne should end up in the same little village at the same time.” He gave Errol a penetrating look. “Too strange.”
A warning like a trickle of ice water ran down his back. “What are you trying to say?”
“No one knows who is supposed to be the next king, Errol. No one. It might be you.”
He shook his head against the temptation behind Merodach’s words. He ached for Adora with an intensity that twisted his guts and made him yearn for life. “The herbwomen said someone has to die. Liam will live. He will be a king for the ages.”
Merodach’s light-blue eyes weighed him. “Why are you so afraid to hope?”
Errol left the rail of the ship, answering over his shoulder as he walked toward the stairs leading to his cabin and the staff he’d left there. “Because there’s so much to lose.”
He spent the rest of the day on the deck, working the forms, trying to ward off the impossible longing Merodach had placed in his heart. When he fell into bed hours later, sleep took him as soon as he closed his eyes.
He woke to the sound of screaming. Hollow thumping on the deck above punctuated the high-pitched wails of dying women. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog of sleep and confusion. There were no women on the ship. He rolled to the floor and took the stairs two at a time as sailors and guards swarmed out of the quarters with him, scrambling for weapons.
The rising sun lit the port side of the ship in warm yellow light, illuminating the backs of men holding pikes arrayed along the starboard side. A scream jerked his gaze aft to see spray flying from a shape out of a nightmare. Light flashed from fangs as a sailor swung his pike to strike. The monster twisted in midair to avoid the slash, and cruel teeth clamped onto the seaman’s forearm. The thing dragged him screaming overboard. The water frothed red as other monsters gathered to share the kill.
Tek’s voice cut across the bedlam. “Get back from the rail! They be clumsy out of the water.”
Sailors and watchmen backed away, closing ranks. Errol slid his hands along the metal staff, searching for the point where it balanced in his grip as he watched the rail. The screams abated. Then without warning a monster flew over the rail, shedding a halo of mist to land in front of Errol. From the neck down it looked almost like a sea lion, though longer and narrower through the body with flippers that ended in glinting talons.
It looked at him.
Monster? What had he been thinking? The creature in front of him defied description—not human, surely not with that body, but its delicate face and luminous eyes spoke of intelligence.
Tek’s voice registered in the background of his thoughts, but he couldn’t make out the captain’s words. The creature came toward him, the woman’s face, narrow but strangely beautiful, delving, knowing him. Teeth bared, its scream like the sound of breaking glass, it lunged.
And stopped, pinned to the deck by a crossbow bolt. Merodach leapt forward, his sword striking the creature’s heart. The thing took a long time to die, thrashing against the deck, trying to free itself.
A scream jerked him from his fascination. A creature had a sailor down. Despite the sword blows, it gnawed its way up the sailor’s leg, ignoring his screams and struggles, until he stilled. Rale, brandishing a heavy cutlass, chopped through the tough neck of the monster.
“Throw the bodies of those things overboard,” Tek yelled. “They’ll not attack if they know they’re going to die.”
Two splashes hit the water, and the screaming of the creatures faded to stern. Tek turned the tiller over to the first mate and descended the quarterdeck to the waist of the ship. He barked an order toward the crow’s nest. “Noddy, keep a watch for froth.”
Gorge filled Errol’s throat as he surveyed the carnage. “What are those things?”
Tek didn’t answer, calling to a pair of hands instead. “Kagan, Weld, wrap Millon’s body for burial. We’ll lay him to rest as soon as I’m sure we’re clear of the tiamat.”
Errol had never heard the word before. “It looked . . .”
Tek sighed. “Yes, lad. It looked like a woman. That’s what make the tiamat so dangerous. They can spin and dodge a sword stroke and haul a man to his death or they can land on the deck and freeze you with a look until they rip through your guts with those teeth.”
Rale nodded. “You seem to know a lot about these things, Captain.”
Tek took no offense. “Aye. Only a pirate, or a reformed pirate, would know what lurks in these waters. Why do you think kingdom ships stick close to the shore? Magis’s barrier extends out into the ocean for a ways, it does, but outside the circle of that protection, there are dangers in the sea.”
A knot of revulsion formed in Errol’s chest. “Ferrals.”
Tek nodded. “Aye. The tiamat be an ancient corruption of the malus.” He scratched his head. “Of course, I never took the opportunity to ask a churchman. They might disagree with me.”
“I doubt it,” Rale said. “Will they attack again?”
Tek shrugged. “This time be different. The last time I sailed toward Ongol we didn’t encounter tiamat until we were on the south side of the Wash. They be much closer to Illustra than before.”
Errol understood. Rodran had died. The corrupted things on the earth and in the sea were creeping closer to Illustra, testing. How long would it be until the foul offspring of the malus realized the barrier was gone?
“Do they always scream before they attack?” Rale asked.
Tek shrugged. “I can’t say always, but the two times I’ve sailed these waters, they have.”
“Let’s hope so,” Rale said. “Otherwise you’re going to have a difficult time manning your ship, Captain.”
Tek lowered his voice. “That be why I brought extra crew and supplies. The monsters and the sea took half my men the last time I came here. I be hoping to lose less this time, but the ocean and its inhabitants be hard to tame, they do.”
Rale gave Tek a hard look. “Is this why you confessed to a nuntius before we left, Captain?”
Tek nodded. “Things be in Deas’s hand, they do, but we be swimming with the sharks now, and worse, make no mistake. I wanted Brandy to know I loved her as much as I loved the sea.”
The plainspoken finality in Tek’s voice opened a hole in Errol’s middle.
Rale brushed the captain’s admission aside. “I’ve spent a lifetime learning to judge the truth behind a man’s words, Captain Tek. The tiamat aren’t the worst of it, are they?”
Tek lowered his voice as he shook his head. “No. By the seas they are not.”
With a grumble, Tek left the tiller in the hands of the first mate and waved Errol and his captains to the lower deck and into his cabin. There they circled around a broad weathered table darkened with age and cluttered with maps and charts. Symbols and abbreviated inscriptions Errol couldn’t identify etched the parchments, and he fought the urge to take up a map and stare at it as if his reader’s talent could provide him with some interpretation.
Tek ignored the chair behind him, and the rest stood as well. Each man wore his tension in his posture, as if they might come to blows in an instant, but none seemed as taut as Rale. “I’d like to know why you saw fit to withhold this information from us until now, Captain.”
Tek, shorter than Rale by well over a hand, drew up. “Because I be captain, chosen by lot, and while we be on the water the mission be in my charge, watchmen or no.” He pointed at each of them. “Unless any of you think to guide us through these waters.”
Rale appeared to consider the idea, but at his silence Tek continued. “The last time I be in these waters, the sea spawn took a third of my men. I’d heard tales of the creatures, but the reality of them took us by surprise. Still, we passed through.”
/> The horror of the tiamat filled Errol’s mind. “Why would you ever brave this place after having heard the tales?”
Tek’s sea-green eyes caught Errol’s, and the captain’s laugh sounded like waves breaking on shore. “The rarest spices in the world don’t come from Merakh, lad. The people of the river want the world to think that, but they come from Ongol. The captain that finds a direct route to their land at the end of the world will be a rich man indeed.”
He sighed, but the smile on his face never wavered. “In those days I wanted wealth above all else. Piracy or trade was all the same before the king’s ships finally caught me and sent me to Haven.”
“You should have been hanged,” Merodach said.
Tek laughed. “Probably, but they did a rare thing at my trial. They cast lots to determine my punishment.” He shrugged. “Deas spared me, and the cast banished me. Then I found a different way.”
Rale’s voice cut across Tek’s, like a cloud obscuring the sun. “If the tiamat didn’t stop you, Captain, what did?”
Tek’s smile fled. “The maelstrom.”
The captain pronounced the word on the tip of his tongue, giving it a Soeden sound. Merodach was the only one of them who appeared to understand and nodded. Rale caught the gesture.
“Explain,” Rale commanded.
“There are areas in the gulf between Soeden and Frataland where the channel narrows,” Merodach said. “The tides collide with the snows’ runoff from the mountains, creating whirlpools. Each year, they catch some fishermen unaware.” He looked at Tek. “But those are hardly more than rowboats.”
Tek puffed. “Aye. Well, there’s a maelstrom ahead where an island off the coast of Merakh narrows the sea down to a channel, and it nearly took my ship.”
Rale shook his head. “Why not just sail around the island and avoid it altogether?”
The sea captain’s eyes widened. “Do you not think I tried? There are worse things in the deep than the tiamat. Imagine a whale corrupted by the malus, man. No ship can withstand that. No, I will not chance that deep again.”
“Then how do we get through?” Errol asked.
Tek paced his quarters. “I spent ten years in Haven considering that maelstrom, lad.” He reached up to brush his hands across a thick beam. “I built this ship with the whirlpool in mind. She’s two spans narrower across the beam, and her masts can hold more sail. The wind off the maelstrom will carry her through . . . I think.”
Errol’s stomach churned at the thought. “When will we get there?”
Tek laughed as if he hadn’t told them they might all die aboard his ship. “Ye’ll have no worry about advance notice, lad. The maelstrom be as loud as an avalanche. You can hear it two leagues away.”
Errol thought he might throw up then and there.
He awoke one morning two weeks later, sweating in the summer of the southern continent and groggy from sleep haunted by the clash of armies. As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and the ache from his temples, he realized the tumult of his dreams still pervaded his hearing like an omen of conflict. When he went on deck he discovered a small crowd at the forward rail, looking off in the distance.
Tek greeted him with a wave and a smile. Errol found the captain’s enjoyment of perilous situations unnerving. Though he liked Tek, he would have preferred a seaman who exhibited more caution.
The roar grew by the minute, though the maelstrom remained beyond their vision. How could anything be so loud? He looked over the rail, but all he could see were the distant mountains of coastal Merakh and the island just west.
“You won’t be able to see anything for a few hours yet, lad,” Tek said. “We’re still too far away, unless you want to go aloft.”
Errol’s stomach inched upward toward his throat at the offer. Tek nudged him and placed two small balls of waxed wool in his hand. “When we get nearer the whirlpool, you’ll want to use these, lad, unless you want to come through the other side deaf as an anvil.”
“Will we come through, Captain?”
Tek’s perpetual squint lessened, and his jaw worked from side to side. “You be the only one to ask me, lad. I think we will, but I be a liar if I promised it, and Deas himself knows what we may run into on the far side. From here on I be no more experienced than the greenest deckhand.”
Errol glanced aloft, saw a pair of sailors in the rigging, adding sail. “How will you pass orders to your crew?”
“You be thinking. That’s good. We’ve worked out hand signals, though the most important command has been given. The maelstrom raises a powerful wind. It should be enough to pull us through and out the other side before the whirlpool sucks us down.”
The ship seemed to lurch under his feet. “Should be?”
Tek laughed, his eyes alight. “The sea is a fickle mistress, lad.”
The roar grew throughout the day. By noon Errol was forced to squeeze the sticky wads of cloth into his ears. Swells rocked the ship with a nauseous rhythm no amount of zingiber root could alleviate. Errol looked over the aft rail, squinting in surprise. Rings of waves like ripples in a pond stood in the water. The impossibility of what he saw drove him to rub his eyes, but the standing waves remained.
He could see the maelstrom now, a giant whirlpool with a heart of black descending below the surface. Mist and wind lashed the ship as Tek took the rudder and aimed for the heart of destruction.
Tek had gone mad. He must have. The captain’s unnatural thirst for danger had finally driven him to insanity. Errol moved with the pitch and roll of the ship to claw his way aft toward the wheel. Wind whipped Tek’s hair about his face, and he roared with maniacal laughter. Errol slithered along the deck as the ship raced toward doom.
He reached the captain just as a sickening jolt threw the ship sideways with the creak of timber and fittings stressed to the breaking point. Tek threw the wheel over, his arms straining to change course. His mouth chewed curses Errol couldn’t hear as the wheel pulled back to its previous heading.
Taking the ship back toward the whirlpool.
Errol gathered his feet underneath him and made a sliding dive for Tek and the wheel. He used the wheel’s handholds to pull himself to his feet, struggling with the ship’s captain to force the ship to a new course. Slowly it moved, taking them away from the vortex.
Too slowly.
Hands covered his and Tek’s. He blinked away salt water to see Rale and Merodach straining to help, necks cording with effort.
Groaning with protest, the ship found its course and rocketed away from the maelstrom and out into eddies. Wind filled the sails, and the water gradually smoothed. Errol flopped on the deck and rubbed his aching arms. Water dripped from his hair into his eyes.
Sometime later, when the roar had died enough to permit conversation of a sort, Tek turned the wheel over to the first mate and took a seat beside Errol. “You have the makings of a sailor, lad, despite your tender stomach. You were the first to realize I needed help with the wheel. With the time you bought, we were able to hold until your friends could help force the ship to its proper path.”
Weak laughter shook Errol, threatened to pitch him into hysterics. “I thought you’d gone mad. Until the ship pitched I thought you were trying to kill us. I meant to take the wheel from you, not help you.”
Tek’s laughter drifted up to fill the sails. “It would have been a glorious end, lad, but I be wanting to see my Brandy again if I can.”
13
On the Earth
COLD AIR, CARRYING FROST, drifted down from the ring of mountains that bordered the Arryth, the broad expanse of farmland that ran the length and breadth of Gascony and extended into northern Basquon and Talia. The wind lifted Adora’s hair and brushed her forehead with winter’s caress. Barren grapevines and trees decorated the hillsides, their splayed branches resembling dark twisted bones raised in protest against another snowfall. She hated cold weather and the travel preparations it required, but she welcomed the chill like a long-absent friend. Deas was with
them, it seemed; the winter proved to be as deep as everyone in Erinon had hoped.
The winding route Liam had chosen passed through a gap in the hills of Basquon, and they descended to the town of Marinne. A low wall of red stone, more decoration than defense, surrounded the burg, and inside the gates, crowds of men—from downy-cheeked youth to grizzled grandfathers—drilled under the guidance of brazen-throated instructors. The large open area had been divided by weapons: pikes, swords, and crossbows.
They slowed to survey the crowd, and Adora pointed to a man instructing a cluster of men and boys with swords. “I know him.”
Liam followed her gesture, then nodded in confirmation and held up a hand to bring the caravan to a stop. “Nob.”
The quartermaster bobbed his head, the tufts of his red hair ruffling. “Yes, Captain?”
“How long will it take to top off the supplies?”
Nob rubbed the bald crown of his head. “It’s only been two days since we replenished them.” At a look from Liam, he shrugged. “Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to grab a few bags of beans, and the cheese is better here in the south, but that takes no more than an hour.”
“I hate beans,” Rokha muttered on Adora’s left. “Tell him to buy some decent meat.”
A hint of suspicion tickled Adora at Liam’s questioning glance. His eyes glinted knowingly beneath the cascade of blond hair. Even so, she nodded.
“See to it, Nob,” Liam said. He turned to Adora. “May I ask how you know this man, Your Highness?”
“I think you know, Captain.” She pointed to the dark-skinned Basquon. His long hair shot with gray swayed as he tapped a man on the leg and demonstrated a proper lunge. “That’s Count Rula.”
Liam’s blue eyes radiated his interest. “Yes, the captains talk of him. Five times they’ve offered him a captaincy in the watch, but he’s always refused. Indurain says he’s the finest instructor in Illustra.”
A Draw of Kings Page 13