The Wayward Knights

by Roland Green

  She plucked a splinter of wood from under one fingernail, then swung her feet onto the floor, bent over, and began wringing out her hair. More water dripped from her impartially onto the floor and the bunk. Apart from the water and her old dagger on a new belt, of shells linked together with bronze wire, she wore nothing.

  Torvik was annoyed briefly, that she would spend so much time grooming herself before explaining her return from the dead. Then he remembered his mother's words: "Even the fiercest woman will groom herself when she is uneasy. Or when she wants to look her best for her chosen man. In that, we are a trifle like cats."

  What moved Mirraleen now? Torvik's heart was not to his throat; indeed, he could not have said precisely where it was. It did seem to be beating faster.

  "Welcome aboard, dear friend," he said at last. "I did not command a search for you, because I thought you might have reasons for hiding."

  "Also, because you wanted to search for me yourself," Mirraleen said. She unhooked two links of the bronze wire and hung the belt of shells on a peg, then stood up. "It is as well. I wanted to come to you with none knowing."

  At that moment, Torvik knew that he would someday tell his sons: "Remember, desire can make the nimblest tongue turn to stone." Certainly his had.

  Mirraleen stepped close, then closer still, and kissed him. Her lips tasted of honey and salt, and of something that Torvik could only compare to a summer meadow somehow blooming under the sea, with fish browsing on kelp instead of sheep on the fresh grass.

  His arms took on a life of their own. He drew Mirraleen tightly against him, without caring whether either could breathe. He was dimly aware of her hands moving, until he was clad as she.

  Then, for a long time, he did not know—or care—where he was or who he was or even if he was a person separate from Mirraleen.

  Wilthur the Brown had learned the spell he was now using under the name of the Eye of Uchuno. Whether it still deserved that name, the mage did not know. Certainly Uchuno himself (a Red Robe) would have disapproved of Wilthur's use of this scrying magic, if Uchuno had not been dead for five centuries.

  Wilthur, however, was alive. So were a good dozen or more of those who had been led by the Servants of Silence in the abduction of Torvik. Abandoned by their masters, they had fled inland, preferring death amid the magical monsters to what they suspected awaited them in the fleet.

  They would have been right, had the mage not unleashed the Eye of Uchuno. The spell needed a large amount of melted volcanic glass as its material element, but in Wilthur's new home that was as abundant as moss in a forest. Sent abroad, it took the form of a gigantic red eye that could blaze with all-consuming fire when its master wished to cease scrying and feed.

  Through the Eye Wilthur could feed on many things. Just now he wished to feed on the terror of the man whom the Eye was pursuing. The man had spent all of the previous night and all of today stumbling ever higher on the Green Mountain. Sometimes he wondered why neither animals nor plants attacked him, and once he halted and tried to drink at a stream.

  Wilthur promptly turned the stream boiling hot. The man ran off like a mad thing, and his cries nearly warned the minotaurs in their outpost. But there were only five of them now, and they wisely did not step outside Lujimar's warding spell. They had arms and food in plenty to stand off any material attack, or so they thought. Their time would come. Meanwhile, it was the time of the pursued man.

  He was a lean, scant-bearded fellow, who from his balding pate had to be older than he seemed. But he ran well, and now that he saw the cliff at his back, he seemed ready to turn and fight.

  It would be a pathetic spectacle when he did, one that Wilthur intended to prolong as much as possible. He sought fear now, as some men sought ecstasy.

  With a few syllables and a wave of his lesser staff, Wilthur brought a faint crimson glow to the crystal sphere hanging from the ceiling. It was now ready to receive, bind, and preserve the man's fear as a root cellar preserves a sack of turnips in the winter.

  Some of Wilthur's more potent spells needed fear, just as others needed blood—in amounts that no necromancer would have countenanced for a moment. But the opinion of others had not bound Wilthur even before he came to Suivinari Island, and still less here.

  On Suivinari, he was far more than man, more even than mage. Not yet a god, that he knew, but within his own borders (both physical and magical) all but immune to the gods' attacks.

  A good first step.

  The Eye began spinning a web of fire around the man, giving pain to lend savor to the fear. The man drew his knife—and the fire melted it in his hand before he could have hoped to slay himself.

  Biting his lip against the pain of his charred hand, the man strode toward the cliff, pushing his way through the web of fire as if it were gossamer. Wilthur readied a further tightening of the web, to melt the rock under the man's feet and hold him in place.

  Then the ground quivered. It was no more violent than the quivering of a crystal glass touched by a spoon. But the quivering found a fault in the cliff. The whole face of rock, higher than the mast of the tallest ship, peeled away, and the man went with it.

  The last sensation Wilthur had from the man was relief, mingled with joy at going to meet his long-dead wife again. Somehow a ghastly death had become a welcome boon. It was no work of his, Wilthur knew. And he doubted that the answer lay on the island.

  But if the earthquake came from somewhere else, how had it entered the island's defenses?

  He was ready to send the Eye scrying farther afield, when the crystal globe, ready for the dead man's fear, dropped from the ceiling. The table was stone; the crystal shattered. Wilthur saw blood start from a cut on the back of his hand, drop onto the table, and vanish as if it had fallen on sand.

  The mage was glad that no other crystal spheres were ready. Otherwise one might have sucked in and held ready his own fear.

  Torvik thought that a god might have felt as he did, if the god had taken human shape and joined with one like Mirraleen—if there were any like Mirraleen. The god would also find something missing from his life afterward, as Torvik knew he would find missing from his.

  The difference, the sailor thought, was in his favor. He would not have eternity to miss Mirraleen. A mere fifty or sixty years, and he and his memories would be dust, while she still swam sleek and fair through the seas of Krynn.

  This hardly worried him now. Indeed, very little could worry anyone in Mirraleen's arms. But something was worrying Mirraleen. She had stiffened in his embrace, then slipped entirely out of it. With the silence of a spirit, she padded across the cabin and opened the port by which she had entered.

  Torvik briefly contemplated her, as fair in some ways from behind as she was in other ways from in front. Then he decided that what made her this uneasy might have to do with the sea—and he was still Red Elf's captain.

  There was only room for one at the port, and when Mirraleen made way for Torvik, he did not know what he expected to see. Storms, monsters, portents, or Dimernesti swimming openly in their elven form among the ships?

  Instead he saw only gleaming slack tidewater, the loom of the island with the two peaks only just falling into shadow, and the lights coming of in the ships. Nothing he had not seen for a score of nights before this.

  "Can you hear it?" Mirraleen said.

  "Hear what?"

  "The—the cry of the mountains, and the sea calling back."

  Torvik knew that Mirraleen commanded magic. How else would she have healed herself of the bruises from her beating at the hands of the Servants of Silence? But this went beyond what he was ready to believe.

  Or rather, would have been ready to believe before he came to Suivinari for the second time.

  He still saw and heard nothing, however. He stepped back from the port and put an arm around Mirraleen, thinking to lead her back to the bunk. There was no such thing as "all passion spent" with Mirraleen.

  Then the night was riven by fire, sprea
ding out from the island across the water, lighting up the fleets as all three moons together could not have done. It looked as if a slit had opened in the flank of the Smoker, allowing mortal eyes to see the forges of the Abyss behind it. In the light, Mirraleen's skin took on the same hue as her hair.

  Torvik also welcomed the glow. It hid the sudden pallor of his skin, as he realized just how close the gods might be—and other powers as well, less friendly to men.

  Drums thudded and the sixteen sailors on the line hauled away. It was usually twelve on the line to hoist a fleet leader aboard, but this fleet leader was a minotaur. Even Thenvor could not have been more eloquent than Pirvan in reminding the sailors what would happen to them if any "accident" befell Zeskuk.

  Pirvan stood facing the gangway of Shield of Virtue, just aft of the mainmast. Flanking him were Gildas Aurhinius and Sir Niebar, who really did not look fit to be out of bed but was determined to second Pirvan if he died for it.

  Those who would flank Zeskuk were already standing facing Pirvan and his companions. They were Lujimar and Juiksum, and the priest looked ill at ease. Pirvan knew some of the reasons for that and suspected more.

  Standing side by side, farther aft, were Fulvura and Sir Darin. Both were fully armed, but for once their role actually matched their name. They were to observe this ceremony of welcoming Zeskuk aboard the Istaran flagship.

  Behind the observers stood Sir Hawkbrother and a young Istaran captain, at the head of a dozen guards drawn equally from Vuinlod, Istar, and the Solamnics. Torvik's sister Chuina was one of the dozen. The meeting would not only be observed, it would be guarded.

  Not that the meeting would serve much purpose, unless or until Torvik's newly-revealed connection with the Dimernesti offered an equally new way of attacking the island. Torvik had still said nothing, so while Pirvan trusted Jemar's son as much as he could trust anyone, that trust could not be evidence of coming victory.

  But Zeskuk had asked to be received aboard Shield of Virtue, if only to repay the humans for their coming aboard Cleaver for the first meeting. It was a matter of honor—and with suspicions still rife and spies probably not yet all run to ground (or fled to sea), no matter of honor could be handled too delicately.

  The drums reached a crescendo. Zeskuk in his chair rose above the railing. The sailors shifted their footing and hauled away again. The chair swung inward. In the lanterns' glow, Zeskuk looked somehow shrunken, and as pale as a minotaur could.

  That was not entirely a trick of the light. Lujimar had healed his outward injuries, but Zeskuk had refused to be abed long enough for the balance of blood and other humors to restore itself naturally, or to submit to the exhausting spells that would speed that healing.

  Darin would have done the same, out of honor. But once released from Lujimar's hands, he was under the care of Tarothin and Rynthala. They would not take no for an answer when it came to completely healing him. So Darin looked ready to fight any minotaur or any three humans on Krynn.

  It was in the last moment before Zeskuk touched the deck that the fire blazed on the flank of the Smoker.

  True to their discipline (or fear of Pirvan) the sailors did not flinch. They set Zeskuk down as gently as a baby into its cradle or an egg into straw, then they all rushed to the side, staring and pointing. A mate finally outbellowed a minotaur, driving all the sailors back to their post by the aftercastle.

  Even then, Pirvan overheard mutterings.

  "Reorx's forge is working," one man said.

  Another uttered an obscenity, coupled with the name of the dwarf's blacksmith god.

  "Hunh," a third man grunted. "I'll take Reorx seriously. The dwarves do."

  "You mean you take dwarves seriously?" That sounded like the second man.

  Yet another man said, "This is dwarf-work you'd better take seriously, before it's between your ribs. Where I come from, speaking against the dwarves is bad luck, worse than spitting into the wind."

  The threatened man made no reply. Now Pirvan led his companions to Zeskuk, and all turned toward the land.

  "That is no natural volcanic fire," Lujimar said.

  Pirvan wondered if all clerics of every folk had to study how to utter meaningless profundities. From Zeskuk's expression, he thought the same.

  "You may do anything you wish, to learn the nature of that fire," Zeskuk said. "Then tell us what it is, not what it is not."

  "Anything?" Pirvan would have sworn he heard almost youthful anticipation in Lujimar's age-deepened voice.

  "Almost anything," Zeskuk said, then added what sounded like prohibitions, in the minotaur speech, using words Pirvan did not understand. He wished Darin were within hearing—but then Darin might feel that it would be dishonorable to translate.

  The simplicity of rejecting all who were not like oneself was very real and appealing, Pirvan knew. So was drinking oneself into madness and wrecking everything in one's path. Some temptations were harmless; hatred was not one of them.

  The fire now had sea, island, and fleets so brightly illuminated that one could have read a scroll with ease. Pirvan saw Lujimar fumbling in the pouches on the vest he wore over his robes, with a look also universal to priests: the look of one who needed paper, pen, and ink, but had forgotten where he put them.

  Pirvan snapped his fingers at a sailor and ordered, "My cabin, and hurry. Bring back writing materials—everything you find. Lujimar needs them." The sailor gaped, thought better of saying anything, and ran off.

  By the time the sailor returned, the fire on the Smoker was fading, like hot coals turning dark under a light rain. Pirvan wondered if the fire was natural after all, but did not dare ask Lujimar.

  The minotaur was far too busy asking questions of everyone within hearing, and writing down every answer, whether they made sense or not.

  As the blazing light from the Smoker slowly died, Torvik noted that Mirraleen's skin now seemed to be glowing. It was as if she had soaked up the light like a sponge, and now poured it back like phosphorescent seaweed.

  As if by their own will, Torvik's hands moved, to find comtortable places on Mirraleen's skin. She looked down and laughed.

  My hands were cold," Torvik said. "This is an uncanny night."

  "So it is," she said. "But I can warm more of you than your hands." She lowered her mouth as he raised his, and for some time they were occupied warming each other.

  For some while after that, they slept. A long while, because when Torvik awoke, the first light of dawn was turning the eastern horizon a translucent green.

  Mirraleen, who had fallen asleep in his arms, was crouched on the deck, garbed again in her belt and knife, and contemplating an unrolled chart. Torvik wondered how she had come by it, then saw the picked lock on the chest opposite the bunk.

  "I need the human name for what we—I—call Quillfish Lair Reef," she said. "It is just under two leagues to the southeast of the Smoker's Tail, in a straight line. It's hard to recognize unless the wind is from the south, when there's surf over it, but—"

  Torvik sat down beside Mirraleen and they both studied the chart. It was noticeably lighter outside when they finally agreed that Quillfish Lair Reef was the same as the one humans called Yuon's Woe.

  "Be there at sunset tonight," she said. "Yourself, and enough trustworthy captains to lead—oh, a hundred picked fighters. You need not bring all the fighters, of course."

  Torvik doubted that any trustworthy captain would promise his people's service without letting the people see for themselves what was afoot. But he would face that problem when he knew whether or not it would be one.

  At last Mirraleen uncoiled gracefully and kissed Torvik, a gentle brushing of lips that seemed to content both of them. Then she squeezed through the port and plunged into the sea.

  Watching after her, Torvik saw one arm raised in farewell. Then she was gone into the morning calm, and he turned back into his cabin, to face the work of raising a band of fighters ready to befriend Dimernesti, and with those friends slip into a m
age's lair.

  Chapter 17

  It would have been as well to ride out against the enemy's supplies, on the very night of the betrothal. The weather argued eloquently for delay.

  "The roads will be too muddy for horses and just barely too solid for boats," Bertsa Wylum said. "Also, nothing will catch fire, or go on burning if we can set it alight to begin with."

  "The sentries will all be hiding with hot cider and warm peasant girls," Elderdrake put in. "We could surprise them much more easily tonight than tomorrow."

  "If we could find them at all, maybe," Gerik said. "But remember that mounted humans can't move as silently as kender. Don't take that as permission to go off and try to do the work yourself, either," he added, as a familiar smile crept across the kender's sharp features.

  "Oh, I swear to do nothing that you would not do were our positions the other way around," Elderdrake said. He started to swear by both the human and kender names of the true gods. Gerik let him run through all the ones whom kender could lawfully swear by, while thinking that Elderdrake's oath might not be as confining as one could wish.

  Were a kender to tell him to sit and wait while enemies gathered, bent on gorging themselves on the blood of those he loved, he might find some excuses for doing something else. But all the kender conducted themselves properly, and now it was the next night, and Gerik of Tirabot was walking downstairs from his chambers to ride out.

  In the courtyard outside, he could hear the horses already stamping restlessly. It had seemed a windless, overcast night when he looked out the window, rising from bed and Ellysta's last embrace.

  She walked down the stairs behind him, wearing her traveling garb and now hung about with as many pouches and bottles as Serafina. She also openly wore two daggers, and said she had others hidden in various places.