Fire of the Soul

by Speer, Flora

  “Since Calia is bound to you as your companion, I ask your permission to marry her,” he said, believing that blunt speech was the best way to deal with his very determined grandmother.

  “Do you, by heaven?” Lady Elgida paused to look at him again. “May I ask why?”

  “After considerable thought,” he said, “I have come to the conclusion that in the future I will need an heir for Castle Auremont, and for Saumar Manor, too.”

  “Oh, come now, Garit; you’ve known for years that you must have an heir. You have simply been ignoring the fact because of your grief. Is an heir all you will expect of a wife?”

  “Calia is the first young woman I’ve met since Chantal died whose company I can tolerate,” he said.

  “I see. Will you be content with a wife whom you can only tolerate?” the old lady demanded with a sharpness that Garit did not like. “More importantly, since I care about Calia, will she be happy with such an arrangement?”

  “I am certain she likes me,” he said, watching Calia stroll some distance ahead of him with her hand on Durand’s arm while Mairne, just behind the pair, chattered to the silent Anders.

  “Having once enjoyed a marriage that was made for love, I would prefer that you love your wife, or at least feel some affection for her,” Lady Elgida told him. “Since you have not declared any affection for Calia, I refuse to release her. Speak to me again after we are back at Saumar.”

  “I’d rather not wait.”

  “I insist that you do. Perhaps, after a longer time in Calia’s daily company you will feel more warmly toward her. Or it’s possible that you will decide you don’t want her after all, and then you’ll be grateful to me for not allowing you to be bound together so precipitously.”

  “Waiting won’t change my mind,” Garit insisted.

  “Now you sound remarkably like a lustful young squire, rather than a full-grown and experienced man.”

  “I am not lustful,” Garit said, knowing he lied. “I am being practical.”

  “Practical, eh? I think you are still nursing a broken heart. I tell you now that you will never be whole again until you give up your hatred of Walderon. No, do not interrupt me,” Lady Elgida said, holding up a hand to prevent him from speaking. “Walderon was a wicked man, but he is dead. Nothing you do can affect him now, but he can harm you again if you allow him to continue to rule your emotions. Don’t grant him that victory, Garit.

  “As for Chantal, she will always remain in some corner of your heart as she was when last you saw her – sweet, innocent, and loving – and always nineteen years old, always untested by life, while you will grow older and mature to become the man you were meant to be.”

  “Walderon stole from her the opportunity to mature,” Garit said through clenched teeth. He hated discussing Chantal with anyone, preferring to keep her safely enshrined in his memory. Of course, his grandmother would not allow that.

  “From all I’ve heard of Chantal, and most of what I’ve heard is favorable, she would want you to be happy and to have a wife and children. And she would want you to love the woman you marry. That is why I say that for the present, you may not ask Calia to marry you.”

  When Lady Elgida reported this conversation to Calia later, she was hard pressed not to weep.

  “Thank you, my lady, for handling an embarrassing situation so well,” she said. “If only you would release me from your command that I not tell Garit whose daughter I am, then he won’t trouble you about this again. I cannot see the sense of keeping this secret from him.”

  “I will not release you,” Lady Elgida said. “I have my reasons, girl, and they are good reasons. Now, stop fretting.”

  In late afternoon, with the tide ebbing, The Kantian Queen cast off from Larak and headed west across the open sea. Calia turned her face into the wind, hoping anyone who noticed the moisture in her eyes would assume it was caused by the cold wind. In fact, she had been thinking about Garit and his wish to marry her.

  With an effort of will she squared her shoulders and told herself to have done with self-pity. She had always known that no decent man would want to wed the illegitimate daughter of an executed traitor, and she had accepted her lot, especially at Saumar Manor, where her duties offered free rein to what talents she possessed. She had been content at Saumar, until Garit appeared and broke through the barriers around her heart with a few kisses and a hasty agreement to protect his grandmother.

  His interest in her wouldn’t last. Just a few days more until they reached Kinath and the inevitable meeting with Mallory, after which Garit would begin to view her with disgust and, probably, with suspicion.

  “Here you are.” Garit joined her at the rail. After casting a hard look at her, he turned his attention to the sea.

  “Where else would I be?” She spoke lightly, thinking to make him smile.

  “From the look on your face a moment ago, I’d say you were halfway to the bottom of the sea,” he responded gravely. His hand covered hers on the rail. “I wish you would tell me what’s worrying you.”

  “And I wish you would demand that your grandmother tell you,” she snapped. “Then you’d never trouble me again.”

  “Trouble you?” His hand tightened over hers. “If you were troubled by my kisses, it was only in a pleasant way, though I do understand that an innocent young woman could be disturbed by unfamiliar feelings of passion. Is that what’s wrong?” He looked directly at her for a moment, then sighed when she averted her face.

  “No, I think not,” he said. “You are concealing some important secret. Is it my grandmother’s real reason for this precipitous voyage to Kantia? What is she planning? I’m sure you know.”

  “Will you kindly desist?” She yanked her hand away from his. “Leave me alone, Garit. Do not embrace me, not ever again. Do not kiss me, for I find your kisses offensive. Above all, ask me no questions, for I will not – I cannot – answer them. If you are so desperate for answers, then torment your grandmother, not me. I am only obeying her orders.”

  With that she turned and marched across the sloping deck to the hatchway. When she reached her cabin she slammed the door hard, startling Lady Elgida, who was sitting on her bunk reading.

  “What now?” that lady asked.

  “Garit.” Calia bit off the name as if it hurt her tongue. “He has fastened himself on me like a leech and he will not stop until he has drained me of every answer he can pry out of me and every excuse I can offer in place of the honest answers I am forbidden to provide.”

  “Do leeches pry?” Lady Elgida asked. “I thought they could only suck blood.”

  Calia glared at her, wanting to laugh at the small joke, wanting to weep again, wanting to shake the old lady for her stubbornness, and knowing she could do none of those things. She took refuge in harsh words, instead.

  “I shall be bloodless before your grandson is finished with me. In the end, he will learn what he wants to know. And then, my lady, he may despise you as well as me for keeping the truth from him.”

  After Calia stormed off the deck Garit remained at the rail while he tried to make sense of her final words. Despite what she said, he knew his kisses had not offended her. What had his grandmother said or done to—?

  Garit drew up sharply, staring at the sea ahead. Twin black sails had appeared on the western horizon. In those waters it was a sight to drive all thought of personal problems from any man’s mind. Two large ships were heading directly for The Kantian Queen, moving at remarkable speed. Their square sails flared and tautened with the wind out of the south and their banks of oars flashed in the sunlight.

  Even as Garit opened his mouth to call to Captain Pyrsig, the ship’s lookout issued a more serious warning.

  “Matarami pirate ships dead ahead!”

  Garit was already moving toward the captain. He and Durand converged on Pyrsig at the same moment.

  “How can we help?” Durand asked. “I can see we are outnumbered. What do you want us to do?”

  “We
fight,” Garit declared grimly.

  “Nay, lads.” Captain Pyrsig tilted his chin to look up at the brass wind-vane that crowned the ship’s single mast. “I’ve no taste for blood on these decks. We’ll outrun them, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “They have oarsmen, which we do not, as well as larger sails than we have,” Garit noted.

  “There’s no question they outman us,” Durand added. “But we have women to protect. We must fight.”

  “No, those are all good reasons to leave them far behind.” Captain Pyrsig shouted an order.

  His sailors had been waiting; in less time than it took Garit to understand what the order meant, the seamen raised a secondary, triangular sail that stretched from the bowsprit to the top of the mast.

  With a loud crack the wind caught the fresh canvas. The Kantian Queen heeled over so far to starboard that Garit feared the ship would capsize.

  Captain Pyrsig bellowed out another order and the new sail was adjusted. The ship straightened and leapt forward, angling away from the pursuing pirates.

  “We’re heading almost due north,” Garit protested after a glance at the sun. “The Matarami have been sailing these waters for centuries. They know the winds and the coastline, and every river where we may try to hide. They’ll follow us.”

  “Not all the way to the end of the known world,” Captain Pyrsig responded. “They seldom venture very far into the Sea of Fire And Ice, what the northerners call Fiuris Occan. They fear the ice floes and the fire that erupts from the sea.”

  “You don’t have a Chandelari pilot aboard. You cannot be planning to sail to Chandelar through the ice,” Durand exclaimed.

  “Nay, lads, only far enough north to convince those pirates that Chandelar is where I intend to go,” Captain Pyrsig said. “After nightfall they’ll most likely drop away and let us sail on to what they believe is our certain doom. ‘Tis a trick I’ve used a time or two in the past. It always worked then, so I’m trustin’ it’ll work again.”

  “Then, we’re not sailing to Chandelar?” Durand asked, sounding almost regretful.

  “Well, no, not if I can avoid it. I’ve no likin’ for a land with so vile a climate,” the captain said. “But we can sail close to the shore of Chandelar and then turn south when we sight Cape Death. If the winds are fair, we should reach Kinath in three or four days.”

  “Lady Elgida won’t be happy to have her voyage extended,” Durand remarked with a knowing look at Garit.

  “Would she rather stay on a direct course for Kinath and be slaughtered by pirates?” demanded Captain Pyrsig. “Now, ask me no more questions, my lads, for I’ve serious work to do. Garit, tell yer grandmam to stay below. No, convey my order to her to stay in her cabin, and her ladies, too, until I say it’s safe to come on deck.”

  “Oh, Garit,” Durand said, laughing, “I must go with you to hear Lady Elgida’s response to an order from a mere man.”

  “Tell her,” Captain Pyrsig said, “that if I so much as see a female foot on my deck before mornin’, I’ll toss whoever is attached to the foot overboard without askin’ questions. We’ll be tackin’ and turnin’ and the deck will pitch unexpectedly. Tell Lady Elgida I said so.”

  They sailed due north for the remainder of that day, with the Matarami ships slowly closing on them until Durand once again raised the question of fighting the pirates.

  “We won’t be able to avoid a battle,” he said to Garit. “Not if they come close enough to board us. My friend, we need to consider what to do if the women are endangered. We cannot leave them to the mercy of pirates to rape and murder.”

  Garit was about to suggest that they advise Lady Elgida to offer a large ransom should the women be captured, when a cry from the small platform high on the mast interrupted the discussion.

  “Ice ahead!” called the lookout.

  “Where?” Garit asked, looking forward. “I don’t see any ice.”

  “There.” Durand pointed to several flat slabs of white floating some distance off the starboard bow.

  “Those tiny chunks?” Garit scoffed. “They’ll never stop pirates determined on a prize. Nor even slow them,” he added.

  “Heavy ice ahead, captain,” the lookout reported.

  “That’s more like it,” Captain Pyrsig yelled back, grinning.

  The next few ice floes they encountered were much taller and larger than the first. The Kantian Queen continued to sail straight into the area of ice. More and more floes appeared, until the ship was nearly surrounded by floating ice.

  “That’ll at least slow those cursed Matarami down,” Captain Pyrsig said.

  “Perhaps you should consider slowing, too,” Garit suggested as a slab of ice large enough to hold a horse bumped against the ship’s hull.

  “Not yet,” Captain Pyrsig said. “We’ve a way to go before the pirates give up and sail home.”

  “Or turn aside to lie in wait until we try to sail south,” Durand said, his gaze on a floe that was taller than the ship’s mast.

  Fortunately, the floe drifted past The Kantian Queen without touching it. When Garit turned around to look back at the Matarami ships he noticed a change.

  “They are slowing,” he called to Captain Pyrsig.

  “Not really slowin’,” the captain responded. “They’re headin’ east, as if to sail home to Mataram.”

  “‘As if?’“ Durand repeated.

  “Aye, it’s a trick of theirs. If we look as if we’re about to turn for Kantia, they’ll be on us again quick as a heartbeat.”

  “Does that mean we have to continue northward?” Garit asked.

  “Aye, lad. It’s northward for us until the Matarami sails drop below the horizon.”

  “In spite of the ice?” Garit asked, casting a wary eye on the increasing number of floes.

  “Given a choice of ice or Matarami pirates, I’ll choose the ice every time,” Captain Pyrsig told him.

  Through the long midsummer evening, with the sun angling only slowly toward the horizon, they continued to sail due north, taking full advantage of the wind out of the south. The cold grew more intense, making Garit glad he was wearing his heavy woolen cloak.

  The ships following them never entirely disappeared. They hovered instead along the horizon, the mere shape of their sails constituting a threat.

  Anders brought bread and cheese and mugs of ale, which Garit and Durand consumed absently, their gazes shifting continually between the ever-thickening ice to the north and the pirate ships to the south.

  “Lady Elgida is growing restless,” Anders reported. “She doesn’t like being confined. I do believe only Captain Pyrsig’s threat to throw her overboard is keeping her below deck.”

  By now Captain Pyrsig had ordered crewmen to the forward rails with long poles, which they used to deflect the larger pieces of ice from the hull.

  “I can’t see the Matarami ships any longer,” Garit said, squinting at the southern horizon. “Do you suppose we really have outrun them?”

  “Let’s hope so,” Anders said. He pulled his cloak more tightly around his shoulders. “I don’t much like this northern cold. It’s worse than Kantia in wintertime.”

  “The Matarami ships are still following,” the lookout cried, his report making Garit utter a vile oath.

  “Solid ice ahead,” the lookout shouted a moment later. “That’ll stop those Matarami! And land to port, captain.”

  “What land?” Captain Pyrsig called. “Is it Cape Death?”

  “I’ve heard nothing good about that place,” Garit muttered. “It’s surrounded by reefs and underwater rocks. It was named for all the seamen who have perished trying to sail around it.”

  “Lovely,” Anders grumbled. “Either we freeze or we drown. Or else the pirates slaughter us.”

  “I see another possibility,” Durand said, pointing. “Look there.”

  “We’re beyond Cape Death, captain,” the lookout replied to Pyrsig’s question. “It’s Cape Fiur I’m seeing.”

  As if
in response to the voice from atop the mast, a flame shot skyward, illuminating the darkening sea, the now-gigantic floes of ice, and the mountainous land to port.

  “The mountains are on fire!” Anders exclaimed.

  “It’s a volcano,” Garit said. “We see before us the reasons why this is called the Sea of Fire and Ice.”

  “Fiuris Occan,” Durand murmured, “is why Chandelar has remained safe from invasion for centuries. Where are we heading now, Captain Pyrsig?”

  “West,” came the short answer. “To Tannaris.”

  “Well, well.” Durand was grinning.

  “That ought to halt the pirates,” Anders said.

  Garit remained silent. He could appreciate the sense in Captain Pyrsig’s decision. If they put into Tannaris for a day or two the pirates ought to give up the chase and go home, or head for open water and easier prizes, rather than risk sailing through the ice until The Kantian Queen showed herself again. Pyrsig had chosen the most intelligent way of dealing with the pirate menace.

  Garit sighed, knowing that despite the captain’s care for the safety of his passengers, Lady Elgida would not be pleased by the delay.

  Chapter 12

  From Garit’s point of view Captain Pyrsig sailed The Kantian Queen uncomfortably close to Cape Fiur while avoiding the underwater hazards of Cape Death. The course the captain chose required some time, but eventually he piloted his ship into a narrow bay that extended well inland. As they passed the smoking volcanic cones, Anders counted aloud.

  “Six of them,” he said, “but only the largest is actually spewing fire. What a sight.”

  “Usually only one erupts at any time,” Durand told him, “though when I was in Tannaris two years ago, three of them came to life at once. Fiery-red, molten material flowed down the mountainsides into the sea, and the sea boiled. The ground shook for days. I can understand why Captain Pyrsig has no fondness for this land. An eruption can be terrifying.”