Forteron let go of Feran’s hair and stood up.
“The Diomedan prince must have been making a treaty with Feran when we attacked. I managed to kill Feran just as he was putting Silverdeath on this girl, a heartbeat before Silverdeath became active. Now the thing has a dead master. Do you not agree?”
There were, of course, anomalies in this version of events. How had Silverdeath been glowing before they attacked if Feran had only tried to put it onto the girl afterward, for example? More to the point, Forteron had been armed with a boarding-spear, while Feran obviously had been killed by an ax blow. Forteron was the man’s commander, however, and the marine officer was one of the elite royal guard. He went down on one knee and bowed to Forteron.
“It was precisely like that, Your Highness.”
Forteron smiled, then they both looked at Silverdeath.
“So it cannot be commanded?” the marine asked.
“Watch. Silverdeath, I am your new master. Obey me! Silverdeath! Who is your master?”
There was no reaction at all.
“How long will it stay like that?” asked the officer.
“Until its energies run down, then it will shatter. Einsel had a theory that it could explode when that happens.”
“Like another fire-circle?”
“No, but it would be wise to move well clear.” Forteron pointed to Feran’s body. “It would also be wise to evacuate the waterside areas of Diomeda. Alert the militia, say another explosion may be about to happen. Make sure the whole city knows, say that I will keep them safe. Now, call a boat over and load the late emperor’s body aboard as well. I want it paraded through the city, then taken to the ramparts for all the marines to see. I want them to know that I rule Diomeda.”
Once they were gone, Wensomer crept back to the glowing statue that Silverdeath and Ninth had become. The energies crawling over the surface had a very unhealthy look about them. Ninth was still linked to something on some other world, and immense etheric energies were draining away through the mechanism. The strain was sure to snap something soon, even in a being as powerful as Silverdeath.
“And when you snap, what then?” Wensomer asked the glowing thing before her. “Will you take me with you? Well, if the auton girl can face death, I can, too.”
The rain was getting colder, and so was the water. What was more, Wensomer had been in the water for a long time. Silverdeath was looking more and more unsteady, flickering and changing its colors. What would happen when it finally lost its cohesion? It would probably collapse, freeing whatever etheric energy remained to it. How much would that be? Wensomer wondered. Knowing Silverdeath, probably lots and lots and lots.
Wensomer knew she had to get away, although there was no hope of that—but suddenly something was moving on the water, just at the edge of the light cast by Silverdeath. Another boat, a corrak, with a single rower. Wensomer stood up, giddy with exhaustion and drained of ether, clothed only in scraps of costume but with Feran’s ax still in her hand. She only had to kill the rower and steal the corrak. Only! After that, she had to row back across a harbor alive with boats and ships, while blinded by the fog, then find her way through a city under martial law while practically naked, to—Where? A villa that was probably still swarming with marines?
“Wensomer?” called a familiar voice with an adolescent quaver.
“Laron!” screamed Wensomer, almost collapsing with relief.
She rushed through the shallows to where he had jumped from the corrak, and she was still holding the ax as she flung her arms around him, smothering his face between her breasts.
“We were right, Silverdeath is jammed and degrading,” she managed between gasping sobs as she released Laron. “We killed Feran, me and Ninth. I chopped his neck through … almost.”
“Ninth? You?”
“I put Silverdeath onto her. Now it’s degrading, unstable. Your corrak, we can escape.”
Wensomer pulled back, drawing breath and trying to remember the exact words her rescuer had spoken to her only a few days earlier. Now, finally, it was her turn. Small, scrawny, pimply, and pigeon-chested he might be, but he was her rescuer. The magically romantic words welled up and sat ready on her tongue—then suddenly the youth went down on one knee in the shallows and took her by the hand.
“Well, I hate to admit it, but you are my brave and valorous champion,” he declared.
Wensomer snatched her hand out of his and backed away.
“Hey, I’m supposed to kiss that!” protested Laron, standing up again.
“What is this?” demanded Wensomer in a dangerously low voice as she unconsciously shifted her grip on the ax.
“You killed Feran and defeated Silverdeath.”
In the desperate scramble to incapacitate the quite monstrous weapon, Wensomer had not paused to think of herself as a hero. Laron was right, but his disappointingly unromantic way of announcing it had plunged the exhausted, filthy, shivering, and practically naked sorceress into a particularly ugly mood. Laron now realized he had probably caught her at a somewhat vulnerable moment, and in hindsight should have chosen his words with a little more care. Hoping to make amends, he hastily removed his tunic and held it out to her. Wensomer snatched it from his hand.
“Someday, someplace, you had damn well better rescue me from something,” she muttered as she put the tunic on. “Sarcastic little wretch … . Laron? Laron, what is it?”
Laron did not hear, he was staring at Silverdeath. Ninth’s head was free of the pulsing, flickering skin of metallic orange liquid! It was slowly falling away from her like quicksilver honey.
“Get that body out of his tunic,” said Wensomer, pointing to a shape in the water as they waded over. “Then prepare to paddle very, very fast.”
Ninth was beginning to slump forward by the time Silverdeath was down to her waist and glowing green, and Laron carefully steadied her without touching the rapidly failing device. Soon it was down to her thighs, and as it reached her calves and turned deep blue, Laron and Wensomer began pulling carefully. Her feet came free. For a moment Laron stood with Ninth in his arms, staring at the violet mass that was bubbling and glowing just below the surface.
“Into the corrak, and paddle!” Wensomer cried urgently. “When Silverdeath finally turns black, this will probably be a bad place to be standing.”
“Precisely what will happen?”
“Silverdeath does not quite exist, like the stuff of the circlet that holds your oracle sphere. When it collapses, all the etheric energy left to it will burst out at once, and that may be quite a bit.”
Laron paddled, and within moments they were lost in the thick fog caused by the fire-circle. Rain continued to pour down. Wensomer wrestled the unconscious Ninth into the charred, bloodstained tunic, then leaned over the side and paddled frantically with her hands.
“How far to the docks?” she panted.
“What do you mean?”
“That thing will be destroyed by an explosion, not a fire-circle. There will be a huge wave, we need to climb the beacon hill.”
“But we could be headed out to sea, for all I know.”
“What? Call yourself a navigator?”
“Well, clear the fog and give me something to navigate by!”
“How did you find Dawnlight in the fog?”
“By the glow from Silverdeath.”
Wensomer waved her hands in the air. “Then that’s the end, we’ll die!” she exclaimed. “And to think I wanted to live to a hundred, and die in bed—in company.”
“At least I charmed my way into the beds of a couple of ladies after seven centuries of longing,” said Laron, still paddling.
“‘Charmed’ them? Garbage! Lavenci was ordered to spy on you by Mother, who was working for the High Circle. Pellien is no ex-harlot, she’s the first-ever Dacostian member of the High Circle, and she’s in Diomeda to spy on Mother—and anyone else who looks suspicious.”
“You’re lying!” exclaimed Laron, his paddle frozen in mida
ir.
“Why else would they take an interest in a scrawny little privy brush like you? And while we’re telling the truth and getting ready to die, Mother had no scheme to neutralize Silverdeath. She just thought she would be a better custodian than the rest of us.”
“You’re just paying me back for what I said back at the island.”
“Yes, but I’m paying you back with the truth! You were taken in—figuratively—by Mother, and literally by Lavenci and Pellien. I’m the only honest player in Diomeda. The rest of you are rogues, fools, and bungling incompetents.”
“Why, you—What in all the moonworlds is that?”
Looming up behind them was something huge. It was also moving very fast. Oars dug into the water to the beat of an unseen drum, and an initiate at the bow was shining a brilliance-casting over the waters ahead.
“A dash galley,” said Laron. “Over the side—swim with Ninth! I’ll stay in the corrak, give them a target.”
“I’ll stay, you take her.”
“This is no time for heroics—”
“Laron, I can’t swim!”
“You can fly but you can’t swim?”
“What do you think I am, a duck?”
“Too late!”
They sat dazzled as the brilliance-casting’s beam caught the corrak.
“There, ten degrees to starboard!” called the initiate aboard the dash galley. “Another of the prince’s boats. Archers, at my word …”
Again Fortune favored Laron. Silverdeath lost its cohesion at that very moment, and the energy remaining within it was released in a micro-millisecond. The dash galley shadowed the corrak from the moment of pure, searing radiance, and it burst into flame then shattered into a mass of burning timber and bodies as a pressure wave slammed into it a heartbeat later. The thunderclap preceded a ragged wall of water that they could not escape, however. It lifted them high into the air as they clung to each other, then it was spilling in over the corrak’s sides as it flung them along.
The militia sergeant and his squad were amazed that the wave from the second explosion had not swept the entire city away, but in fact the harbor had been comparatively shallow and simply did not contain enough water to do more than swamp the docklands and a band of houses about twenty deep. Many people had been killed, but many more survived. Forteron had warned them. Everyone was saying the new ruler looked after his people, and that Forteron would be a good prince.
“Pollos, three more over there!” he called, pointing through the rain.
A woman in a tunic was leading a youth carrying a girl over his shoulders. Yes, the girl was hurt but not badly, they explained. Yes, they had been asleep when the wave hit. No, the man of the house was across the city, defending the ramparts. Yes, they did have friends they could stay with. In a moment of compassion for the thin but valiant youth, bravely staggering along under the weight of his unconscious older sister, the sergeant draped his cloak over them before setting off in search of more survivors. The moment the sergeant was out of sight Wensomer gave Laron a stinging slap across the face.
“That’s for saying I was your mother!” she snapped.
“It was the first thing that came into my mind.”
“And I’m a virgin. Well, do you really have friends who will not cash us in for whatever reward is on offer?”
“This way.”
Pellien was awoken by a heavy, insistent knocking barely a quarter of an hour after she had managed to get to sleep. She rolled from her bed, struck a flame onto the lamp’s wick, and padded to the door.
“Who is it?”
“Laron.”
“What? Why are you here?”
“Please, open up. I need help.”
“Men!” Pellien sighed, and rattled the bolt across. “Laron, this is not a good time—” she began, pulling the door open, but the soaked, scratched, bruised Laron fell straight through the doorway and into her arms.
“That’s all right, I’ve been having a bad time, too,” he mumbled.
“If it comes to that, all three of us have,” said Wensomer, dragging Ninth in from the hallway.
As it happened, Wensomer was no longer being sought by anyone. Pellien, who had only been home for half an hour, reported that Feran’s Secret Militia, the shortest-lived body of secret guardsmen in the history of the moonworlds, had already been disbanded, and its surviving members sent to the foremost defense lines on the ramparts. A pony cart was fetched for Wensomer, who returned to her villa. She was standing with her hands on her hips, surveying the remains of her front door, when Forteron arrived.
Over hot, spiced mead Wensomer explained that Feran had been so captivated by her dance that he had dragged her outside and cast Silverdeath at Dawnlight to impress her. She had become frightened when he then turned on her, so she had leaped from the balcony into the bushes below. The branches had broken her fall, but she had been badly bruised and scratched. She had seen a huge, birdlike thing leap from a tower and vanish into the night. She assumed it was the sorcerer Feran.
This was not quite the story that had been reported to Forteron by some particularly repentant marines, but he was aware that men standing before a very angry commander who was brandishing an ax at them tend to say whatever they thought he wanted to hear, rather than the truth.
“Did you know he flew here in search of you?” asked Forteron. “A street watchman said that a huge and ugly bat with etheric wings leaped from your tower just before the first fire-circle.”
“No, Your Highness. I remained hiding in a garden bower all night while the fire-circles exploded, then I gathered the courage to go home. My servants said that a squad of marines had arrived to arrest me. Apparently a second squad arrived, smashed in what was left of the front door, and arrested the first squad.”
Just as dawn was breaking, Diomeda’s self-declared prince gave Wensomer his thanks and left. Wensomer was helped upstairs by her steward, and fell face-first onto her bed and into a deep, pitch-black sleep.
Pellien dressed, chewing a few leaves of the caffin bush that she had earlier stolen from the palace kitchen, then set off for the ramparts through the rain with her nurse’s pack. She was a nurse, after all, and she suspected nurses would soon be needed there. The students of Madame Yvendel’s Academy would have to tend their own cuts, scratches, headaches, and casting burns for a while. Back in Pellien’s room, Laron heaved Ninth’s body into Pellien’s bed, lay out on the floor beside it, and fell asleep almost instantly.
Dawn was just a bleak lightening of the heavy clouds. Forteron stood at a window in his highest tower, looking west across the flooded farmland to the camp of the Alliance army. Sairet approached with two servants, one of whom was holding a tray. After a moment’s thought Sairet took the tray and dismissed both servants.
“My lord prince, you should eat,” she began.
“Again I am in control, but of what?” he said without turning.
“I have brought refreshments, Your Highness,” insisted Sairet.
Now Forteron turned. “A sharp but alluring scent,” he said, looking at the pottery bowl. “What is it?”
“Beans of the caffin bush, roasted and ground, then boiled and strained. I have mixed honey and goat’s milk into it, to take the edge off the taste.”
“And why is this better for breaking the night’s fast than honey and sun-dried dates on flatbread?”
“Because it renders you alert as well.”
Sairet took the bowl and drank a mouthful. Forteron accepted the bowl from her hand and sipped at it himself. He winced at the taste.
“Gah, this is like something a medicar would give the diseased.”
“It is prescribed for some ailments, but being worth its weight in silver does constrain its use.”
Forteron drank more, then gestured across to the Alliance army.
“The thick mud that has protected my ramparts is about to turn traitor,” he said. “My enemies have been gathering wine barges by the dozen at their island camp
s, awaiting a good depth of water on the floodplain. Silverdeath is gone. Most of my fighting ships have been scattered and dispersed as a result of last night. There are only a dozen dash galleys in the river, and the deepwater traders that survived last night’s huge wave. Most of my galleys will not be back until tomorrow, so I suspect our friends out on the floodplain will pay us a visit today.”
“They have my curse, Your Highness.”
“And you have my thanks, but fifty thousand warriors would be more useful. You were married to a Diomedan king once, I have been told.”
“He was put to death, with all of our children. I feigned madness. I danced in my dungeon cell, I danced as I was paraded through the streets in humiliation, I danced at my trial, and I danced as I was led to the headsman’s block. This cracked the nerve of the usurper, who was of a superstitious nature. I was led back to the dungeons, where I taught my jailors to dance. I was cast into the streets in rags, but watched for any sign of sedition. I danced with the windrels in the markets, and coins were showered upon me. I was given shelter by the stallholders, and in time I began to take pupils. Years passed, and the watchers grew bored with me. I even taught a few spies how to dance. By the time you invaded, I was under the patronage of the foreign merchant’s daughter, Lady Wensomer. It has been pleasant to throw off the guise of madness under Torean rule.”
“I am gratified that I have been able to discomfort the murderers of your family,” Forteron said with mechanical courtesy. “But you should have delayed your move. Your usurper’s son is about to take back Diomeda, and rumors of your sanity are sure to reach his ears.”
Forteron drained the last of caffin from the bowl, then replaced it on the tray that Sairet still held.
“Have you ever wondered why Diomeda has been so passive under your rule?” asked Sairet.
Forteron had indeed wondered about the fact but had never asked the question. He had assumed that his strategy of restraining his marines and allowing the Diomedans to go about the business of making money was partly responsible.
Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 53