“Aye, I know the girls. Slaving has become almost as much of a problem as…” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Need to get sailing.”
Dara bobbed her head. “There were fourteen of us on the Goose Flight.”
Fourteen? Carth had thought there might be a dozen, and saving that many would have been worth it without question. Fourteen didn’t change that, but it made her question her counting.
“What happened to the others?” she asked.
Dara looked to the floor. “We were on a slaving ship. Some get traded. Some get worse.”
Carth started to ask about what would be worse, but Guya shook his head. “I’ll get us moving as fast as this damn ship will take us.”
“I thought you said it was fast.”
“You said it was fast. I just didn’t disagree with you.”
Guya motioned for Dara to help and they started pulling the anchor.
A few shouts echoed up.
“Got to move faster, girl,” Guya said. He grunted as he worked on the anchor, dragging it from the water. “Go loosen that line,” he said, motioning toward a jib sail.
Dara did as he instructed, and when he’d gotten the anchor up, Guya hurried toward the bow and began unrolling the sails. With the wind gusting, it didn’t take long for it to catch the sails and they started coming about.
“There’s someone in the water,” Dara said.
“They’re probably thinking they can reach us,” Guya said. He unsheathed a long belt knife, and Carth wondered where he’d acquired it. When she’d left him before, he hadn’t possessed a knife like that.
Shouts from below told her that a smaller boat had reached them.
If they weren’t fast enough, they’d get boarded. Carth didn’t like the odds of them against five or six men, not when she was injured.
“Help me to the railing,” she said to Dara.
“I need her to work the lines!” Guya snapped.
“You’re the captain, but if you don’t let her do this and we get boarded—”
“What do you think the girl can do?” Guya asked as he arranged the lines. His hands had a practiced movement and ran along the rope in ways that Carth didn’t even understand. The sails snapped in the wind and the ship groaned under the sudden movement.
Something thudded against the hull.
“I think I can keep them off the ship.”
“You’re injured and unarmed,” Guya said.
“I’m never unarmed.”
She waited until Dara made her way over to her and lifted her, again noting the strength the girl possessed. When she reached the railing, Carth looked down and saw two men clinging to the planks as they scaled the hull. An empty boat bobbed in the water behind the ship and grew more distant as the ship gained speed.
There wouldn’t have been only the two men.
She’d have to find the others later.
First, she used her racing heart and reached for the A’ras magic. Awareness of it came to her slowly, but it came, pushing against the pain in her leg. Not only pushing against it, but burning, leaving her leg feeling as if it were awash in fire.
Carth almost screamed.
She directed the connection she had to the A’ras magic toward the men.
She’d never had the chance to use the A’ras magic in such a way, not so directly, and not without some sort of focus. While in Nyaesh, she’d used knives or swords, different items like that to take on the focus of the magic. Even when attacking the ship, she’d used the focus of the ship itself, something that was more substantial, but easier to do. She’d never attempted to use the magic directly on someone until now.
She released fire at the nearest man.
He screamed and lost his grip, falling into the sea with a splash.
Carth didn’t have the time to feel bad, or to think much about the fact that he might be nothing more than a sailor trying to reclaim his ship. Instead, she turned her focus to the other man. Using the magic on him was harder, partly because she’d already weakened from releasing it once, and partly because the pain throbbing in her leg made it difficult to focus.
The fire simmered away from her and reached him. Heat and then steam rose from his skin. Like the other man, he screamed and fell off the ship and into the sea.
Carth sagged against the railing.
As she did, she noted the sounds of a fight.
She turned around and saw Guya facing two men with long swords. He had only his knife but managed better than she would expect. Dara tried helping, but she was weaponless and stumbled, falling toward the nearest man.
The man tripped over her, and she rolled for his sword, separating him from it.
The man stared at the sword in Dara’s hand, a dark smile on his face. “Give it back here, girl.”
Dara backed away, and the man followed her. As she neared Carth, she dropped the sword while trying to get a better handhold.
Carth grabbed it and swung it toward the man. “You’ll have to deal with me.”
He laughed as he got to his feet. “Seeing as how you haven’t moved since I’ve been on board, I don’t think that will pose much of a problem.”
Carth pulled on the remaining shadow strength that she could reach and sent it into the sword. She wasn’t sure if it would work or whether she still had enough strength to do it, but she called upon the shadows with everything she had.
The blade sank into his ankle.
Carth released the shadows.
They crawled through him, an inky blackness that worked from his leg underneath his clothes and all the way to his neck before discoloring his face.
The man screamed, but it was muted and twisted. He fell toward the railing, writhing as he did, until he crashed overboard, splashing into the water below.
Carth looked for the other man who had come aboard, but saw Guya wiping his knife clean and sheathing it. He studied her with a strange expression.
With a sigh, she leaned back. Wind pulled at the sails, and the ship sped through the waves, rocking wildly as they raced toward the north, trying to keep ahead of the storms.
In spite of that, Carth breathed out a sigh of relief and lay back.
When her head touched the deck, she let herself relax and quickly fell into a deep slumber.
23
When Carth awoke, pain throbbed in her leg, but not as strongly as it should have. Her skin burned softly, and she realized she was drawing on the A’ras magic without really intending to do so. She tried sitting up, realizing that she was in one of the bunks. Dara or Guya must have moved her. She moved cautiously, fearful that she would still hurt. Other than the throbbing, she didn’t have the same pain as before.
Carth swung her leg off the bed, expecting to find it splinted. But she saw no sign of a splint. Running her hand along her leg, she felt for pain, anything that would suggest she remained injured, but there was none.
How long had she been out?
“I see that you’re awake.”
Dara sat near a door, leaning against the wall with her dirty brown hair dropping below her shoulders. She had cleaned her dress while Carth was out, so it now had less of the filthy appearance it had had before and looked simply dirty.
“How long has it been?” The ship rocked steadily as it sailed, and the wood occasionally groaned beneath her. She noted moisture dampening the walls and wondered how bad the storms had gotten. Guya hadn’t wanted to sail through the storms in the first place and had only done it because she had asked. What did he think now that they must be in the midst of the storms?
“Almost a week.”
Carth sat up straighter. “A week? I’ve been out a week?”
Dara stood and crossed the distance between them. “And you’ve healed so much. I thought you’d need weeks before your bones would be strong enough, but…”
Carth looked down at her leg. “But what?”
“Whatever consumed you helped, I think.”
“Consumed?” she asked
carefully.
Dara nodded. “Your skin. It went… dark… while you slept. You were so hot, like you had a fever. At first I used sponges with water to try to cool you, but that didn’t seem to work, and you seemed more comfortable when you were hot anyway.” Dara met her eyes a moment before looking away. “What are you?”
Carth swallowed. “I’m no different than you.”
“If that were true, then you’d still be lying on the bed, unable to move your leg.” She shook her head. “I should have known there was something off when you managed to swim like you did. With the break you had, you shouldn’t have been able to move your legs, let alone make a crossing like that one. You were already healing then, weren’t you?”
Carth took a breath, thinking through her answers. She might have slept for a week, but her mind still felt foggy, and she struggled coming up with the right answer. What would help her position the most?
Maybe that was the wrong way to think about it. Without Dara, she wouldn’t have survived. The slaver on the ship she’d burned would have killed her.
“I don’t know. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
“You have magic?” There was something in her voice—hope or intrigue—that carried with the question.
“I have some powers,” Carth admitted. “I’m from Ih-lash and I’ve trained in Nyaesh.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I do.”
Guya stood in the door frame. Carth hadn’t heard him coming, distracted as she was by Dara. He looked tired, and likely he was. He would have been handling the ship himself for an entire week, fighting through storms, and without anyone to give him any sort of break.
“Seems you kept more than a name from me, Carth.”
“I’ve told you most of the truth.”
“Have you?”
Carth sighed and rubbed her eyes. She bent her leg, trying to see if it would work for her, and was pleasantly surprised to note that she could flex it without too much pain. It ached, but less than it should given the type of injury she had sustained.
“Enough of the truth. Talun had at least four girls on board your ship. He worked with others, terrible men who would do terrible things.”
“Like controlling the shadows?”
Guya took a step into the room, and she realized that he held his knife unsheathed. He watched her with a dangerous glint in his eyes.
Would she be able to reach the shadows if she needed to?
What she needed here was a level of honesty. She had to tell him what she intended, and she needed him to know why she needed to return to the north, and why he had risked himself.
“There was a man from the Hjan on your ship,” she started. “They are dangerous, using strange powers—”
Guya sighed deeply. “I know about the Hjan.”
“You know?”
“I work around Asador. Occasionally that brings me to Thyr, so I know about the Hjan. They’ve made a reputation in the south, a dangerous one. I didn’t think they had reached the north.”
Carth swallowed and nodded. “They’ve reached the north. They have a way of moving… they flicker.” She shrugged. “I’ve heard another describe it as traveling. I do not think distances matter to them. I need to stop them.”
“You can stop them?” Guya asked.
“I have before. I will again.”
Guya sighed. “What have you got me mixed into, girl?” he said, slamming his knife into his sheath. He settled himself onto the bed next to her and hung his head, staring at the ground.
“They collect power, Guya. That’s why they’re in the north.”
Guya said nothing for a few moments. “You said you were of Ih-lash. That land is gone.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“You’re too young to have been from there.”
“My parents were. I think I was born in Ih-lash, but…”
“Your parents are gone.”
She nodded. “The Hjan.”
“Damn. And how did you get mixed up with the A’ras? They’re no better than the Hjan from what I hear.”
Carth almost smiled at that. Once, she would have thought the same. “The A’ras trained me.”
Guya’s breath caught. “Trained? You don’t look like what I’d expect from them.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Dark beards. Swords. Painful magic.”
Carth did smile this time. “I have painful magic. I never got the sword. And I don’t think I’ll ever grow a beard, but you never know.”
Dara laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Why do you care so much about what happens with those girls?” Guya asked.
She debated whether to answer honestly or to tell him something that might force him to help, but honesty had gotten her to this point with him. She didn’t know how Guya would react, but so far he had seemed interested in helping, not hindering her.
“There are others in the north that the Hjan fear. You talk about Ih-lash and how it was destroyed. I think the Hjan were responsible for that. They fear the shadow magic the Ih-lash could control. They weren’t able to use it themselves and they didn’t understand it, so they kill as many as they can who possess it.”
“Ih-lash is gone, girl,” he said again.
She shook her head. “Most of Ih-lash might be gone, but the remnants, people who call themselves the Reshian, remain. They still possess some of that shadow magic. The Hjan fear them, and they tried to use the A’ras to destroy them but failed. That’s where I was going when I got stranded.”
“What does this have to do with the girls?”
“There’s a power that can counter the shadow magic,” Carth said. “I don’t understand it, but I’ve seen it. There’s something… a light of sorts… that can stop the shadows.”
As she spoke, she felt a pressure against her.
She had felt it before, but it had been a while, long enough that she had begun to forget what it felt like.
Carth looked to Dara.
The girl stood with a soft glow around her.
“You have it,” she said.
“I…”
Carth stood. Her leg ached, but she held herself up and took a step toward Dara. “Where were you captured?”
“Please…”
“I’m not going to hurt you. And I don’t want the Hjan to use you.” She frowned, trying to force her mind back into motion, shaking free of the fogginess she felt. It parted slowly, and she started processing what she had seen. The ship had carried over a dozen girls. She had assumed the ship moved south, having taken the girls in the north. That was something she’d only glimpsed while living with Vera in the tavern, but what if she had been wrong? What if the ship had brought them to the north, and from the south?
“There were others taken in Odian,” Carth said. “I was there. I saw them.”
When Dara’s eyes widened slightly, she realized she had hit on the truth.
“You’re from Odian as well, aren’t you? And Ras? Did you know him?”
Her eyes widened again.
Carth thought she might answer, but Dara turned and ran from the room, leaving Carth staring after her.
“What is this?” Guya asked.
“A mistake,” Carth said, “but one I think we can fix.”
“What kind of mistake?”
She paused at the door. “The reason the Hjan want the girls is because they possess some sort of power that allows them to counter the Reshian shadow magic. That’s something they do not possess. I thought they intended to use the girls for it, but maybe they intend to take the power from them.” She started pacing, her mind racing through the possibilities. She wished she had a board to sit in front of, so that she could turn it as she played through the possibilities. Without it, she had to think through it more slowly.
How many girls did the Hjan have coming? They had the ship in port there, and they had the Spald. What if they have other
ships like them as well?
Carth didn’t have enough information to act, but how was that any different than when she’d played Tsatsun with Ras?
When she had played Ras, she had seen his tendencies. He didn’t have many, but she knew to expect that he would adjust to her strategy, and that she would have to adjust too.
Weren’t the Hjan the same?
When she had played Tsatsun placing herself in a position where she pretended to be them, hadn’t she noted how they managed to shift their strategy each time she thought she had the upper hand? And she had seen it herself, the way they had attacked quietly in the city, then moved to force the A’ras to fight the Reshian, and now… what did they do now?
That was what she had to determine.
It had something to do with the power Ras and those like him commanded, some way they had of pressing back against the darkness. What she had to determine was how.
Thankfully, she had someone with her who could help.
“How much time do we have until we get to the north?” she asked Guya, still pacing while thinking.
He rested his chin on his closed fist. “The storms are bad, Anisa. I mean, Carth. I haven’t sailed through anything quite like this before. The wind keeps forcing us west and I fight it, but with the clouds and the rain…”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure of our heading,” he said.
“But we’re still making our way north?”
“As far as I can tell, we are, but I don’t know where we’ll land. I’m afraid to sleep for more than a few minutes because if we start nearing some of the outer isles, we have to keep watch for lighthouses so we know to steer clear of rocks. If we miss the outer isles, then we’ve veered too far off course. And if we miss the north entirely…”
“What?”
“We sail blindly.” He shrugged. “Eventually the storms will pass and we’ll find our way. I don’t think we’re off course. The ship’s compass is solid work, but I wanted you to know what we might face. If we’re lucky, we’ll outrun the storms and know soon enough.”
“How soon?”
He shrugged again. “A couple of days. Longer than that and I’ll start to worry that we went too far to the west.”
Shadow Born (The Shadow Accords Book 3) Page 16