My heart sinks. I want to believe this is a variation on the old ‘look behind you’ ploy, but I know it’s not even before Valdim’s voice cuts through the rain.
‘Well, well, well. Bonnie Cochran. Fancy meeting you here.’
I twist away from his grasping hand, but exhaustion slows my reactions. An iron grip closes around my wrist, drawing me in. I slash at him with my free hand, but Valdim twists the knife away, sending it clattering across stone.
‘Let me go!’
I’m done. I know I’m done, so what harm a little defiance? The Dricheans are watching us with dispassionate interest. Damn them anyway.
He transfers his grip to my throat. ‘Should’ve come to me honest, Bonnie. Now you’ll end up like old Jac. Squeamish fool that he was.’
His remorseless black stare meets mine. I know I’m staring into death. There’s a sharp tug at my throat, and then Valdim shoves me towards the ziggurat stairway. Bronzed arms enfold me, holding me still.
‘Keep her fast,’ Valdim barks at Quezan. ‘Some things should be savoured.’
I don’t know exactly what he means by that, but the possibilities range from brutal to horrific and back. I almost don’t care. The sight of the medallion dangling lazily from Valdim’s fingers breaks my heart.
‘That’s my da’s!’
Valdim shakes his head. ‘Did him no good though, did it?’ His gaze shifts behind me. ‘Can’t you do anything about this storm?’
‘I’ve done all I can,’ rumbles Quezan.
‘Fine Warden you are.’ Valdim shakes his head in mock amusement, then spins on his heel to face the Dricheans, medallion held high. ‘Let me past, old man.’
Two spear hafts strike stone.
‘You are not worthy.’ The old man’s tone brooks no argument. It’s almost serene.
Valdim takes a step forward. ‘These are the Southern Isles. Strength is the only worthiness. Stand aside.’
The guards start forward. Valdim’s already moving. Twisting aside from a disembowelling spear thrust, he locks both hands around the shaft, drawing the Drichean towards him. There’s a sharp crunch as the guard’s knee shatters beneath Valdim’s heel. The Drichean screams, toppling into Valdim’s waiting arms. A sharp twist, and the guard’s neck snaps like a rotten bough.
The second guard roars a guttural cry, half challenge, half loss. Valdim’s sword blurs free of its scabbard. The Drichean collapses, blood spraying from a gashed throat. Valdim advances on the old man, the blade’s bloody point outstretched, medallion still hanging carelessly from his other hand.
‘I think I’m worthy, don’t you?’
The old man’s expression doesn’t waver. He reminds me of Quezan, one step removed from everything that goes on around him. ‘No.’
Valdim’s low chuckle ripples through the hissing rain. The old man’s unarmed, he’s no match for Valdim. He’s scarcely an obstacle, but Valdim’s going to kill him anyway. Just like he killed my da’.
The fire accompanying that thought burns through my weariness. I feel it gutter almost as soon as it flares, but for one glorious moment I’m more angry than tired. Anger begets strength – strength enough to twist loose and bury an elbow in Quezan’s belly. I know it’s a weak blow even as it lands, but the Warden gasps and doubles over all the same.
Looks like something finally surprised him.
Boots skidding on the wet stone, I run at Valdim. He turns too late. My shoulder slams into his chest. A heartbeat later I’m lying on my back in a puddle, breath struck from me. Stupid. Stupid. I’d have had more luck charging an oak tree.
Valdim grins. ‘You should know better, Bonnie.’
He’s right, I should. Just like I should know better than to expect the old man to help me as I just tried to help him. What does he care if a couple of outsiders kill one another? More of a surprise is that Quezan’s back to his role of impassive witness. Likely he thinks Valdim doesn’t need the help. Hard to fault that opinion, all told.
Valdim’s sword thrusts down. I roll aside, calling on my gift as I do so. Fire boils up in my blood. For once, I welcome it. If I can feel pain, I’m still alive.
Steel chinks against stone. Valdim spins on his heel, searching for my telltale outline in the rain. ‘Hiding, Bonnie? Just like dear old Jac.’
I don’t answer. He’s trying to taunt me into saying something – to give away my position. Instead, I circle clear. The fire’s burning deep. I’ve used my gift too much of late. I can feel it slipping. I need a weapon.
My eyes settle on a guard’s spear, inches from his lifeless hand. Feet away from me.
‘Old Jac, now he got himself an attack of conscience too. We both know how it worked out for him, don’t we?’
I grab the spear. It’s heavy. Reassuring. Valdim turns. He’s staring straight at me, but he’s no idea I’m there.
This one’s for you, Da’.
The moment I lunge is the same moment in which the fire in my flesh gets the better of me. I stumble, my charge faltering along with my illusion. The thrust meant for Valdim’s heart glances off a rib, ripping open his coat and gashing a bloody wound across his chest. He roars in pain, his fist clubbing at my head. It’s not a deliberate blow, more the instinctive flailing of a wounded animal, but it’s enough to knock me sprawling, head and shoulders over the ziggurat’s edge.
Valdim lurches towards me. I’ve hurt him, at least. There’s something in that. ‘Give Jac a greeting for me, will you?’
I will my body to move, but it’s had enough. I’ve put it through too much.
I glare defiantly up. ‘Hells take you.’
A sharp smile. ‘You first.’ He sweeps the sword skyward. Even now, bleeding and weary, Valdim’s a showman, performing for his tiny audience.
Lightning arcs from angry skies, striking the upraised point of Valdim’s blade. He doesn’t even have time to scream. There’s a sharp crack-hiss, then two odours wash over me – one almost sweet, the other the unmistakable stench of burnt flesh. Thunder cracks the skies. Valdim’s body teeters above me. Then the wind catches it, and the seared mass topples past me, coat blazing like a torch.
I’ve just enough presence of mind – and just barely enough coordination left – to snatch the medallion from Valdim’s lifeless fingers. Then he’s gone into the stormy darkness of the ziggurat’s slopes.
Good riddance.
I haul myself upright on quivering limbs, half-expecting another bolt of lightning to send me to join Valdim. Quezan and the old man watch me in silence, their expressions well-matched in inscrutability. Then Quezan taps his staff twice on stone, and the storm clears. Sullen clouds roll away as if they’d never been, and golden sunshine caresses the ziggurat.
I stare at Quezan, mouth agape, thoughts crashing together like waves. The good fortune of Valdim’s death now seems like anything but. If the storm was Quezan’s doing, then so was the lightning that slew Valdim, but why?
Quezan meets my gaze, then stares at the old man and tilts his head.
The old man nods. ‘She is worthy.’
He bows to Quezan, then shuffles away across the summit, walking stick tapping on stone. He begins his descent of the stairway without a backward glance, not at me, not at Quezan – not even at the bodies of his guards.
I turn the medallion over in my hands as Quezan approaches. ‘Why?’
‘You are worthy. He was not.’ He shrugs, as if nothing could be more straightforward. ‘I’m glad to have brought you here.’
‘What do you…?’ I fall silent as my thoughts catch up with my mouth. Last night. The storm that gave me cover to reach the cabin, and again to escape the Moonrunner. ‘You knew? All along, you knew?’
Quezan offers a knowing smile. The first such smile I’ve seen on his craggy features. ‘Of course. Your father would be proud.’ He gestures at the statue. ‘It is time to claim your prize, Miss Cochran.’
Bruised, sopping wet and with fire still raging beneath my skin, I stagger towards the statue. Afte
r a moment’s searching, I find an indentation on the plinth. It’s a perfect match for the medallion. As I press the disc home, there’s a rumble of distant machinery. Statue and plinth sink into the floor. A gout of dust and a dry, musty smell herald a new plinth rising in its place. A stone casket sits silent and proud where the statue once stood. I have the strangest sense that it’s waiting.
This is it. My da’s prize. My inheritance, and my revenge.
I reach out. The casket’s lid creaks back.
So many years, I’d wondered what I’d find. Gems, gold. Treasures of the Southern Ocean. But the casket contains none of these, merely a weathered fragment of parchment – a scrap of doggerel scrawled hastily by an undisciplined hand.
I sink back onto my haunches, disappointment coursing through me. ‘That’s it?’ I glare at Quezan. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me my “worthiness” is the true prize.’
He gives a tiny shake of the head. ‘No. Worthiness is not absolute. It is a vessel that must be refilled by thought and deed. Look again.’
I stifle a scowl, and do as instructed. This time, I see there are shapes beneath the scrawl. Shapes that almost look like… islands? Disappointment fades. ‘It’s a map?’
‘Part of one,’ he agrees. ‘The most sought after map in all the Southern Isles. One that points the way to the Crystal Pool.’
‘That’s a myth…’ I protest, but the response is rote, automatic. Of course the pool’s not a myth – or not just a myth, leastways. My gift proves that. The Heritor bloodlines didn’t come from nowhere. Quezan’s right. If this map truly shows the way to the Crystal Pool, it’s worth more than gold, more than a hold’s worth of gemstones.
Assuming, that is, I can find it.
Excitement builds. Possibilities. I pour over the fragment, but it’s no use. There’s nothing on there that I recognise. I need the missing portions to make sense of it. ‘So where’s the rest? The map, I mean.’
‘Prove yourself worthy once again, and I’ll lead you there.’
Just like that, I realise I’ve no idea what it was I did to prove myself worthy. Was it standing up for myself? For that wizened old Drichean? For provoking a brawl, I couldn’t win? Knowing Quezan, it could be something else entirely.
‘Again, what do you mean again? How?’
I look up, but Quezan’s gone, as if he was never there. Can’t say I’m surprised. Not with everything else. What was it he said? About worthiness being refilled by thought and deed? Cryptic nonsense typical of a Warden, but it’s all I have.
But first, what I need – what I really need – is a ship. And the Moonrunner needs a captain. I doubt the survivors’ll feel much loyalty to Valdim, not now he’s gone.
Looks like I’m not going home. Not yet.
UNCERTAIN FATES
BY
DAVID A. MCINTEE
Gurbin rested his hands on the rail next to the ship’s wheel, as he gazed at the horizon. He could almost feel his hands merge with the wood, as if he were part of the ship, and could feel its speed. Speed that wasn’t enough. Gurbin was lean and dark, with athletic limbs, and many pockets sewn into his silken garb, all secured with a fastidious bow of ribbon. His britches reached only to his knees, and his sleeves to his elbows, and his shins and feet were as bare as his forearms and hands. Long knives were strapped to all four limbs.
‘Nervous, Gurbin?’ a voice asked from behind him. It was a tall and wiry man, his leathery skin tattooed with serpentine designs. He wore a jerkin and trews of sharkskin leather, and was festooned with vials, gourds, and an albatross feather in his broad hat. Unlike Gurbin’s velvet scalp, his ponytail bunched somewhere under the back of the hat, helping to keep it wedged on in the breeze.
‘Cautious, Tomms. Tense perhaps,’ Gurbin admitted, ‘but I wouldn’t say nervous.’ He pointed to a smudge on the azure horizon off to larboard. ‘Someone’s following us.’
Tomms smiled thinly, but didn’t even look at the distant ship. ‘They’ve been following us for two nights.’
‘Do we know who they are?’
‘Who do you think?’ Tomms snorted. Gurbin couldn’t blame him; they had fled from Tlanti’s men on that last moonless night less than a week ago. She wasn’t the sort of person to let such a trespass go without a response, and she had never been known for lazy responses.
‘I hope those soldiers you hired are good at what they do, then.’
‘I only engage the best for my expeditions, Gurbin. You of all people should know that.’ Tomms beckoned Captain Pavius over. The ship’s captain was stocky, with a thick beard and fists like hams. ‘How close are we to the island?’
Pavius grunted. ‘The lookout should see it within an hour or two at most. Then we only need a couple of hours to make landfall.’
Gurbin looked in the direction of the speck on the horizon. ‘Do we have a few more hours?’
Pavius glanced skyward. ‘Depends if they have a sea or sky witch with them. If not, then absolutely, no problem. If they do, though… All bets are off.’
Tomms nodded. ‘You’d know, Gurbin; does Tlanti’s crew have a Weather Warden among them?’
Gurbin shrugged. ‘Not unless she’s hired one for the chase. Which would depend on how much time she had to prepare,’ he said.
Tomms nodded thoughtfully. ‘The equation’s simple enough, I suppose: would the time a trustworthy Warden could gain them in the pursuit outweigh the time taken to find and recruit such a person before getting underway?’
‘It’s not impossible, but probably unlikely.’
‘You mean it’s unlikely, but not impossible,’ Tomms corrected him.
‘Do you want to take the chance that she didn’t?’ Captain Pavius asked. ‘She must have known it would be in her interest.’
Tomms flashed Gurbin a grin. ‘Let’s not, and say we did.’ He turned, his eyes searching for the cabin boy, and called out to the lad. ‘Boy, go below and tell my retinue to arm.’ The boy nodded hurriedly, and dashed through a door in the sterncastle. Gurbin turned his own attention back to the ship on the horizon. Something about the persistence of the speck left him in no doubt that it was the Aerys. She was too far away to make out her ensign, but he knew what he would see if it was in range: the spider with the skull-shaped body.
* * *
Wrapped in sufficient layers of leather jerkin, teal woollen doublet, and brightly coloured cloak as proof against the stiff breeze, Tlanti stepped onto the deck of the Aerys. Above her fluttered the arachnid flag of the ship’s master, Captain Wolfram.
The Captain himself was standing by the helmsman, looking ahead at the horizon through a spyglass. He was a tall man with a forked and greying beard, and wore black trews and boots and a deep red leather doublet. There were bracers on his forearms, a blue sash around his waist, and a weather-worn leather hat with a large ostrich feather curled around the band was jammed on his head. He half-turned with a faint smile at the sound of her boots on the planks, and handed her the spyglass without being asked. Tlanti peered through it, focussing on the black smudge far ahead of the Aerys’s bowsprit. She was delighted and excited to see that Tomms’s ship seemed larger now than it had the last time she had looked through the glass. ‘When will we be within boarding range?’
‘Less than an hour; the wind has been freshening at our backs all morning. We’ll be in ballista range a little earlier.’
‘Still plenty of time for them to notice us and take action.’
He shook his head. ‘They’ll have noticed us sometime ago, unless Pavius is drunk under a table, but they won’t take action.’
‘If they have a wind or wave witch aboard—’
‘They don’t. If they did, they’d have put more distance between us. They could turn and fight, but I doubt they will. The advantage is all with us. Cowards.’
Tlanti lowered the spyglass. ‘It’s not cowardice: They won’t turn and fight, because Gurbin isn’t stupid, and neither is Tomms.’ She grinned. ‘Luckily neither are we, so that�
��s all to the good.’
* * *
‘Land ho!’ the lookout called. Tomms and Gurbin rushed across the deck to the fo’c’sle, half-a-dozen soldiers in mail-shirts and kettle helmets following. Another mail-shirted man was already at the rail, returning his breakfast to the waves. Tomms doubted it tasted any worse coming back up than it had going down.
To the naked eye, the island didn’t look that impressive – a greenish cut across a few inches of horizon, as if the sea and sky were splitting apart. Through a spyglass, it was a little more solid-looking, with thick tree cover. Tomms knew that islands didn’t generally have much of an inland; they were crescents or rings of land, with a lagoon in the centre, which made him wonder how this one could require the length of march that had been hinted at to him by various sources.
Tomms turned, to check on the position of the Aerys. She was a little further to one side, but also a little smaller, to his eye. He hoped he wasn’t imagining that. ‘They’re dropping behind,’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re pulling away—’
‘No,’ Captain Pavius corrected him, ‘They’re cutting across, stealing the wind from our sails.’ He hurled the wheel frantically around. ‘We’ll get slower and they’ll get faster. Throw in that we’ll have to slow and tack as we approach the island to avoid beaching ourselves, and they’ll have us for sure.’
‘So be it,’ Tomms snapped, ‘I believe the traditional phrase is prepare to repel boarders!’
‘That depends on whether they decide to simply sink us,’ the Captain growled back.
Tomms shook his head. ‘They won’t. There are things they want.’
‘Which,’ Gurbin added, ‘they’ll find a lot harder to get from the sea bed than from a ship that still floats.’
‘I hope nobody’s too keen on making it that hard for them,’ Pavius said, ‘but we don’t want to make it any easier either.’
Tomms regarded him icily. ‘I shouldn’t make jokes like that if I were you, Captain; it’s not good for the crew’s morale, and it’s not healthy for anyone’s confidence in your loyalty.’
Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: Tales of the Lost Isles Page 3