Voyage of the Shadowmoon

by Sean McMullen

“Many ships from many kingdoms will be gathering to watch the second fire-circle,” said the shipmaster, looking at a slate. “We should not stand out among them.”

  “And Miral will be down for the second half of the night,” said Feran. “We shall row to Helion in the shell, then invert and sink it just before dawn. When the fire-circle detonates, Druskarl will go ashore. He will make for the site of the Metrologan temple. There he shall find Silverdeath, or there he shall wait until Silverdeath floats down from the sky.”

  “And if I die?” asked Druskarl.

  “Then I shall try again, myself, with an improved suit,” said Feran. “One thing we can be sure of: While Silverdeath exists, it shall be used, again and again.”

  The inland city of Baalder existed for its location, and as locations went, they did not come much better. It was where the border of the Sargolan empire and the Alear Principalities met the largely uncontrolled nomad regions, but it was also where the desert abruptly gave way to the natural defensive wall known as the Portcullis Mountains. The Sargolans had little interest in defending the city, and nobody had a reason to attack it. Trade was the only reason that Baalder was on the maps.

  Although slavery was outlawed in Sargol, a certain amount of that trade went on in Baalder. People in the border regions were always inclined to sell surplus children for the quite competitive prices that the slavers from the north paid, and D’Alik was a specialist in what he called “domestic merchandise.” On this particular trip, however, there was no merchandise of that sort on offer. Baalder had been transformed as he had never see it before. An army was streaming through.

  “Been passing through for a week now,” said his agent as he lounged beneath an awning. “Great for the suppliers of dried foods and such-like, but the slave market’s not worth a fly spot. They’re actually enforcing the laws that prohibit it.”

  “But—but … why, where are they going?” asked D’Alik, gesturing to a column of heavily laden footsoldiers who were tramping past. “There’s just five hundred miles of rough pasture mixed with real desert until you reach the Leir River.”

  “And that’s where they are bound. Word has come back that the river port of Panyor has fallen to the Sargolan vanguard, and that they are seizing every barge and boat from the Lioren Mountains. Diomeda is being blockaded, and soon it’s to be attacked. When the emperor’s forces join with the Alliance army, the Torean invaders will face the largest army Acrema has ever seen.”

  “I did not think the emperor thought so very highly of the Diomedan monarch that he would come to his aid.”

  “True, but the Toreans are said to be holding Princess Senterri, the emperor’s daughter. Mind you, the Toreans swear that windrel nomads abducted her after she left Diomeda by road … .”

  The agent’s voice seemed to fade into the distance. Senterri. Sargolan princess. Abducted by nomads. The words amounted to an opportunity so vast in scope that D’Alik felt giddy just trying to fit it into his mind.

  “ … Of course the girl is certainly dead. The Alearan princes are letting the army pass unchallenged because they are weak—”

  “Enough!” barked D’Alik. “I want an audience with the Sargolan governor. Now.”

  “The governor!” exclaimed the agent, standing up and brushing at his robes. “Ah, yes, I can try, but—”

  “Tell him I have information about Princess Senterri. Tell him that I bought her from windrel nomads. I also have her two handmaids. Their names are Perime and Dolvienne.”

  Senterri’s name was widely known, but those of her handmaids were not. Because he had known those two names, D’Alik had his audience with the governor within the hour. He said that he had recognized the princess instantly, and had bought all three girls for five hundred gold pagols and placed them in Madame Voldean’s academy for their own safety.

  Governor Roilean was less excited than D’Alik had expected. There had been many sightings of Senterri, but all had turned out to be hoaxes or wishful thinking. On the other hand, the slaver had known that Senterri had two handmaids. That was significant. He even knew their names, which the governor did not.

  “I am inclined to have you bring the girls here at your own expense,” Roilean said as the slaver knelt before his audience throne.

  “O esteemed and generous Excellency, but slavery is illegal here, on your most beautiful, rich, and fertile Sargolan soil. Whatever the truth behind the story of these girls, they will walk free, be they princess and handmaids, or be they three scullions named Senterri, Perime, and Dolvienne.”

  “Are you a gambling man?” asked the governor, who did not wish to dignify the slaver by speaking his name.

  “Esteemed and just Excellency, all commerce is a game of chance and odds.”

  “And you are a man of commerce, so the answer must be yes. Take a gamble, it can be quite exhilarating. The palpitations of uncertainty, the sharp, cool pain of loss, the soaring, glorious triumph of winning. Bring the girls here. If they are as you say, you are a richer man by one hundred thousand gold pagols. If they are but clever scullions, you lose a trifling amount and they walk free. What do you say?”

  D’Alik drew a breath that seemed to go on for longer than should have been anatomically possible while he made up his mind.

  “Esteemed and perceptive Excellency, you are a most canny judge of character. I shall indeed play your game of chance and bring the girls here, with all haste possible and no expense spared.”

  Ninth advanced on Laron with a knife, slashed the air before his face, then thrust for his throat. Laron moved one foot in a quarter circle while batting her arm aside with the back of his hand. Seizing her wrist, he twisted. She shrieked from surprise rather than pain, and dropped the knife.

  Roval called for a break. In most martial-arts academies of the region, the favored topics of conversation during rests were muscular injuries, women, and Academy politics. With Ninth present, the second was out of the question, and the third did not apply, so they generally discussed aches, sprains, massage technique, oils, anatomy, and shared stretching exercises, and advice that medicars had given them over the years on all of the foregoing topics. Today, however, the mood was somber and there was little idle talk. Roval was leaving.

  “In a single month, you have come a long way,” said Roval, “but even the basics of these arts take one at least six months to achieve competence.”

  “Will you be away long?” asked Laron.

  “Perhaps weeks, probably forever.”

  “But as you said, I have barely begun to learn your defensive fighting skills.”

  “I have given you the name of a good instructor.”

  “He lives in Scalticar!”

  “Then go there.”

  “I have studies to do here, in Diomeda.”

  “Then find a Diomedan teacher, I’m sure that will not be hard. Laron, you now know enough to drop someone of even twice your weight. That should be enough to help you escape trouble.”

  “Have you forgotten how little I weigh?”

  Further argument did not weaken Roval’s resolve. His travel pack was ready in a corner.

  “We finish with the armlock,” said Roval at last. “Ninth, you are a two-hundred-pound drunken docker who has caught Laron in an armlock and intends to remove his purse.”

  Ninth walked forward with quite a convincing swagger, seized Laron’s wrist, twisted it behind his back, and pushed a foot into the back of his knee. Laron snaked his free arm behind his back, slipped it under Ninth’s wrist, twisted until the pain forced her to release him, then twisted her arm in turn until she doubled over and he could bring his other hand down in a fist. He stopped short of striking her.

  “At this point the large and drunken docker has had his elbow snapped and is feeling very discouraged,” said Laron.

  “I am feeling very discouraged!” reported Ninth, who was in pain.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” said Laron as he eased off the pressure on her arm.

  “At this poin
t you should also be fleeing down the cobbles as fast as your legs can carry you,” chided Roval.

  “But he’s down and disabled.”

  “He’s down, but he might have friends nearby. Some people also feel pain less acutely than others, and he still has one good arm.”

  Laron let Ninth up. Roval bowed to him and declared the lesson over. As Ninth began to wind down the ladder he slung his pack over one shoulder.

  “Can’t you tell me anything about where you are going?” asked Laron. “If you don’t trust me, who do you trust?”

  “I trust those who need to know. You do not need to know. Do not try to follow me.”

  Roval’s departure was as cold and unemotional as his bearing. He merely bowed to Ninth and Laron in turn, wished them good fortune, and climbed down the ladder. Laron counted to twenty, then hurried down the ladder as well. He immediately found himself bracketed by three men. They had a vaguely familiar style of clothing.

  “I wouldn’t try following the Learned Roval, young sir,” one of them said casually.

  “And I wouldn’t try using his unarmed fighting arts on us,” said the second.

  “Because I’m his teacher, and these are my sons,” said the third, who looks to be about fifty. “Why don’t you just come to the Beer and Barnacle with us for an hour or two?”

  Zurlan exiles! Now Laron remembered where he had last seen such clothing.

  Precisely two hours later Laron emerged from the tavern, having been signed up as Magister Jialam’s new javat pupil. What Magister Jialam did not realize, however, was that Laron had deliberately lost the battle to win the war. Laron walked straight for the docks area, but did not bother to go near the piers. Instead he went to a small, stone building whose door bore the sign, MISSIONARY CENTER FOR HARLOTS, beneath which someone had scrawled, Bollocks, they both be men. Laron knocked, and was admitted by a man wearing the brown robes of a Sargolan missionary priest. When Warsovran had arrived, the Metrologan deacons had hurriedly converted their facade and clothing, but Laron had ways of finding out about nearly anything or anyone.

  “Laron, welcome,” the deacon declared warmly.

  “Horvey, such a pleasure to enter this sanctuary,” Laron replied as he entered. “How do your studies progress?”

  “Well enough. And yours?”

  “Slowly but surely.”

  By now the door had been closed behind him.

  “Worthy Laron, your presence honors this house,” Horvey said softly, with a bow.

  “Aspiring Deacon Horvey, it is this house that does me honor,” Laron now replied.

  Laron had met the deacons at the Academy, where they were fellow students. Having quickly worked out who they were, he had recruited them to his service. By assuming the guise of the only surviving Metrologan priest, Laron had gained their loyalty faster than might otherwise might have be the case. Having the ring that Terikel had given him had certainly helped in that respect. To account for his extreme youth, Laron had said that he had been ordained in haste, with some of his optional studies incomplete. This also accounted for his presence at the Academy as a student.

  “As I suspected, Deacon Horvey, Learned Roval had me detained,” said Laron.

  “No matter, he was kept in sight by some of our clients. Pellien? Pellien!”

  A woman appeared at the end of the corridor, wearing robes that featured a decolletage that reached down to the wide belt at her waist, and a skirt split from hemline to upper hip. Her breasts were unusually large and almost oblong.

  “So nostalgic, wearing the old rig once more,” she said in a husky, simpering voice.

  Laron swallowed. The muscles behind both his knees began to twitch involuntarily. What did I do when I was vampyre? he asked himself. When I was a vampyre my knees certainly did not go to jelly at the sight of so much female flesh, he recalled.

  “Well, I’d best let Pellien brief you alone,” said Deacon Horvey, slapping Laron on the shoulder. “The less I know, the less that can be tortured out of me, what?”

  Laron followed Pellien into the waiting room, on legs that had suddenly taken on the properties of warm baker’s dough.

  “And, Pellien, you behave!” called Deacon Horvey from the door. “Worthy Laron is meant to be observing celibacy.”

  “Oh, and whose celibacy is he observing?” she asked.

  Laron sat down on the end of a bench, his hands clasped in his lap. Pellien sat down, too, draping her arm along the back rest of the bench—and put a leg across Laron’s thighs.

  “Now that we are more comfortable, I have quite a brief report for you,” Pellien began, her fingers ruffling Laron’s hair. “The most handsome and impressive Learned Roval took a circuitous route from Mad Queen Sairet’s establishment to the docks.”

  “Er, queen?”

  “Former, of Diomeda.”

  “And mad? As, like, a couple of arrows short in the quiver?”

  “Yes, but not dangerously so. Returning to Roval, he boarded a ferry scoreboat and was followed by Deacon Lisgar. The brave deacon already had with him a traveler’s pack and was dressed as a pilgrim, so as not to call attention to himself. The scoreboat made the rounds of several traders, and Roval boarded a Sargolan coastal trader that was being readied for departure. Deacon Lisgar did, too. A galley boat towed the trader clear of the harbor, where it turned south. The deacon sent a brief note back to me with the master of the galleyboat. It said that although the trader was slated for the small port of Saltberry on the Lodgements Board, he had overheard Roval arranging with the shipmaster to call at a small bay on the desert coast.”

  “Do you, ah, have the note?” asked Laron, jerkily holding out one hand.

  “Why, certainly.”

  Pellien took his hand and guided it under the silk covering her left breast. With one of his fingers Laron could feel her left heart beating. With the other he could feel a rather hard nipple. After several lingering moments he also realized that he could feel a piece of paper, and he clumsily withdrew Lisgar’s note. Sickle Bay, he read. Roval had asked the shipmaster to call in at Sickle Bay. He slipped the note into his pouch.

  Interesting. Laron hastily glanced about, wondering who was mocking him. There was nobody else in the room. He blinked and shook his head. A look of surprise was passing over Pellien’s face.

  “This, ah, is good—ah, excellent—ah, wonderful—ah, work. Tracking Roval, that is. I, ah, must reward you—er, well. Very well, that is.”

  “Oh no, I no longer accept money from men. I am studying dancing under the tuition of Mad Queen Sairet. She thinks that I may get into a position in the palace.”

  Laron was sure that she could probably get into a great number of positions in the palace, and one of them might even involve dancing.

  Interesting. The word whispered itself so softly that Laron had more of an impression of remembering it being said, rather than having heard it. Pellien suddenly froze for a moment, then blinked.

  “I, ah, need to go, ah, er, that is. Soon, that is. I have to go.”

  Pellien took her leg from his lap. Laron stood up. Pellien did not let his hand go; in fact, she drew him closer.

  “Laron, you are so, so young for the study of boring, initiate books,” she said, looking at the ring that he wore.

  “I, ah, am older than I look.”

  “You must eat the right sorts of food.”

  “Ah, oddly enough, yes. Until recently, that is.”

  Deacon Horvey opened the door and peered in.

  “So, was your transaction concluded successfully?” he asked, looking suspiciously at Pellien.

  “One might say so, yes,” Laron replied weakly.

  “And is Laron in much the same state as when he entered?” he asked Pellien pointedly.

  “His virginity is alive and well, if that’s what you mean,” she said, releasing Laron’s hand and standing up. “Well, then, Worthy Laron, I am honored to have worked for you.”

  Pellien pulled at a couple of straps within
her robes, and at once the two alarmingly revealing slashes in the fabric vanished. She picked up a suncloak that Laron had been too distracted to notice until now, and in an instant her red robes were hidden beneath a mud-brick-colored layer of cotton.

  “Thank, you, ah, that is,” stammered Laron, bowing to Pellien.

  Pellien bowed slightly in turn, smiled, winked, then left without another word.

  “Remarkable woman,” said the deacon when she had gone. “She is proving to be a very talented dancer, according to Madame Sairet. Ah, but in ways of the flesh, well …”

  “Yes?”

  “She disliked harlotry, that was why she came to us, but she does enjoy seduction as such. Sometimes I get discouraged; I think that she just can’t help herself.”

  Sometimes she probably does just that, Laron concluded to himself.

  “Please remember us to the Elder when next you see her,” the deacon was saying, “and if you could ask about the possibility of our ordination we should be extremely grateful. When Deacon Lisgar returns, I shall send word to our mutual contact.”

  “Ah, thank you. I appreciate the deacon’s bravery. It really is for a good cause.”

  “Hah, I’m not such a provincial yokel as you think. I know that the Metrologans were fighting Silverdeath before Torea burned, and I suspect that us few survivors still are. Good fortune attend you, Worthy Laron. We are your loyal and dedicated servants.”

  Laron was noticing very little as he started out for the Academy, but once out of sight of the mission he noticed that a woman of about Pellien’s height and wearing the same sort of dusky suncloak was walking just ahead of him. He slowed slightly as he made to pass her. She quickened her pace slightly. It could not possibly be Pellien, she did not know which way he was going—but she might assume that he would go straight back to the Academy. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at her face. Pellien! They walked together for a while, without exchanging a word. Pellien began to slow. When she finally stopped at a street corner, so did he.

  “The, ah, my place is away up that hill,” he said, although looking down at his sandals.