by Holly Lisle
The crew—especially the moriiad—didn’t like the sea’s stillness, which made them think of curses. They muttered as they went about their work, and eyed Aaran with increasing distaste.
Aaran heard some cheering when the man on high watch spotted the first land. He consulted the Makkor’s chart. Makkor and his brothers had used Bhekian measurements, which complicated the process of reading it, but if Aaran had figured out the bearing marks on the chart correctly, he ought to be bringing the ship into the first line of islands at the northeasternmost edge of the Dragon Sea.
Aaran wasn’t taking them forward based only upon the charts, of course. He also had his thread to the girl who cried out for his help.
The nature of her call had changed. When he’d first felt it, she had been small and helpless. Now, though he could still feel fear and helplessness in her, he felt other things as well. A change in her nature, the presence of darker elements, an unnerving thread of power.
He was close enough, he thought, to venture reaching out to her through the Hagedwar. He was not sure that she would know what to do when he spoke to her. He was not the most gifted in the arts of the communicators, and he could not be certain that he could make her hear him. He had the same base knowledge that anyone who studied the Hagedwar obtained. He could connect to a mind that was not shielded against him, he could speak and sometimes make himself heard. Sometimes he could hear what was said in return.
If nothing else, he thought he could let the woman know he was on his way and, from the feel of things, almost to her. He could make her feel that her rescue was not far off.
He hoped he would be able to hear her, too. He wanted reassurance. He wanted to know that the undercurrent of power he felt was some aberration, and that he was not taking his ship and everyone on it into a trap.
So before they sailed into the islands, while the wind was still gone and the sea lay like glass and the crescent moon gave what little light it could offer, he bade the windmen rest awhile, and all the crew to stand guard against anything that might approach them while they were becalmed. With that done, he retired to his cabin, wrapped himself in the Hagedwar, and followed the line to the girl.
They were not terribly far away anymore. He had promised he would come for her, and here he was, almost to her.
Within the Hagedwar, he touched her lightly with his thoughts. He connected—far better than he thought he would. Something in the magic that she had sent out, bound by a third presence he could only describe as ghostly, let his clumsy, limited communicator skills establish firm contact with her. He was stunned by it. He could feel himself as her. He could feel his chest rise in rhythm with hers, could hear what she heard, could feel something soft and silky in her hands. He couldn’t see anything. That was odd—to connect so well in other ways, yet see nothing.
She was walking somewhere, hurrying.
I’m almost to you, he said.
He felt her stop walking as her body went rigid.
Well, at least she could hear him.
Don’t be afraid, he told her. I’m coming to get you and the rest of the slaves.
I know who you are, she said. I’ve dreamed you. But you sound different in my head than I thought you would.
So do you, he told her. You sound very young.
She ignored that. When will you reach us?
If I’m judging distances correctly, I should be with you by midday tomorrow.
We’ll be dead by then, she said. The men who are coming to kill us will be here when the moon touches the horizon. If you are not here by then, nothing you can do will save us.
Men who were coming to kill them. So this wasn’t going to be a simple rescue. Was there such a thing as a simple rescue?
I have men with me, he said.
Do not think to engage our enemies in a fight. The man who comes to destroy us has five ships full of hardened warriors with him.
And Aaran had one ship with a handful of Tonk warriors, a batch of Eastil wharf rats, and a scattering of other moriiad from across the many seas. All right, then, he wouldn’t be able to march in as the conquering hero and kill off those who had come to kill her and those she wanted to save.
You must come by the back stair, she said.
He’d felt that in the pleas that she’d been sending through the water. The back stair.
The south-most harbor, and up paths cut into the face of a cliff? He had felt these things in the current of magic that bound him to her.
Yes, she said. But remember, if you are not here when the moon is at midpoint, you will find nothing but our bodies strewn across the ground. Or worse for us—for they might wish to take us captive, and we would rather die than that—you might find nothing at all.
Aaran broke off his communication with her after a final reassurance that she could depend on him, and a word to her to have her people ready.
And then, when she could no longer hear him, he settled in to worry.
He figured the distance, and the Taag av Sookyn would have to cover it at painful speeds. If they had a storm and the winds behind them, they might reach the hidden harbor on time. Or if the weary windmen could work together and give everything they had, he might still hope to bring the ship to her prize before it was too late.
But the skies were clear, not a breeze blew, and suppose he exhausted his windmen in the process of reaching the island. The Taag av Sookyn would race into the harbor and load up with rescued slaves and perhaps some treasure, and turn to get out. Only without wind or windmen, it would be dead in the water.
Only—enemies were sailing to attack her people.
They had wind, then.
Something cold shivered its way under Aaran’s skin and lodged in his gut.
The moriiad had been insisting the whole time they’d been crossing the Dragon Sea that the windless calm was unnatural. Aaran had suggested they were a superstitious lot.
But if a nearby navy was able to proceed under sail to attack the island Aaran wanted to reach, then why did they have wind when the Taag av Sookyn didn’t?
Were the moriiad right? Was the Taag av Sookyn under a curse? Was this the price he would pay for sailing a drowner ship? He had accepted the weight of guilt for taking the grave of his brethren to sea because he’d had no other choice. But in doing so, had he doomed this rescue mission, and once and for all killed any chance of finding and freeing Aashka and bringing her home?
He went on deck.
And found that circumstances had changed.
“There’s something out there, Captain,” one of the Eastils said, pointing east, where a curve of land showed over the horizon.
Aaran saw a wall of fog that rolled slowly across the glassy sea, and within it dark shapes, twisted and indistinct. He heard low rumblings, but they had nothing in common with thunder.
Ves stood with his hand on the hilt of a sword. He turned at Aaran’s approach. “You have your rest?”
“I wasn’t resting. I was communicating with the woman we’re to rescue. We have trouble ahead.”
“Trouble beside, too.”
Aaran nodded at the fog. “You have any guess what that might be?”
“Not a bit of it, Captain, nor have I any stomach to find out. Those shapes and sounds make my belly knot up.”
“Mine as well.” Aaran shouted, “Marines on deck! Both windmen, stations now and give us everything you have!” He ran back to the Tonk who’d manned the tillers. “We’ve a need to fly to our goal and away from that which pursues; I don’t want to find out what that marching fog is hiding.”
Aaran ran to the steersman’s castle and said, “Take arms. I’m going to track and steer at the same time.” He gripped one tiller in either hand, and his feet dug into the high deck that formed the back half of the roof of officers’ quarters. The sea didn’t fight him.
Tracking, riding half in and half out of the Hagedwar, he got a better feel for what was coming.
The fog rolled toward them faster. Much faste
r. And the shapes within it grew more menacing. They were alive. Big. They coiled and roiled, formed and submerged and reformed, and he couldn’t get a grasp on what they might be, but his balls tightened and his gut twisted and he knew that they weren’t friendly natives rowing out to offer girls for sex and food for trade.
The sails filled, snapping to life.
Slow at first, because it had been becalmed, the Taag av Sookyn crawled forward. It took both distance and time to build up speed. But the windmen were giving everything in them, and if the Taag av Sookyn did not leap forward like a young horse, she put her shoulders into the harness like a plowhorse who knew its business.
To the east, the tendrils of fog clawed closer, and within, Aaran began to hear screaming.
The shapes were nothing human, but the screams sounded like men tortured and begging for mercy. Those human sounds were distant and faint at first; nevertheless every hair on Aaran’s body stood up in recognition.
The sailors still on deck were up in the rigging, shifting the fansails and angling the pillar arms to catch every bit of breeze, dropping extra sheets, clinging to the lines.
Praying. He could hear a dozen languages not his own and not Trade, and most he didn’t know. But he knew the sounds of men treating with their gods. He knew fear.
Eyes open and forward, hands on the tiller, Aaran sent his own thoughts winging to Saint Ethebet, asking for courage and strong arms and strong swords should his men need them, and then to Jostfar, the one god of the Tonk, for such blessings as he could spare to those who did his work, and such protection as he could offer to those, both rescuers and captives, who needed it.
And then he returned his focus to work, for Jostfar blessed, but men pulled the load.
Aaran watched the fog rolling closer, but sliding a little to the rear of the Taag, and heard the screaming growing louder. His heart beat faster, the prow dug deeper and harder, and the sails snapped and the lines sang and the boards creaked. He gripped the tillers.
We’ll get there or we won’t, he thought. And all we can do is all we can do.
One thing was sure, though. The Taag av Sookyn would be taking a different route home than the one by which she’d arrived. Aaran swore to that.
Hawkspar
Our would-be rescuer had spoken to me. He had touched me. He had slid beneath my skin—I’d felt him there. He came for me, and I found myself giddy from his touch and shivering from his voice.
Even after he had gone, I could feel him. I had been wicked. I had let myself follow his touch back to him, and I had permitted myself the pleasure of touching him back. He was strong. Big and strong and brave. Good-hearted. Young. Reckless. Randy. He had known women, and he had enjoyed them, many of them, and I let my body feel what his had felt, and pretended for the few moments I could that he was touching me that way, doing those things to me, and that I was responding as those women had. With wantonness. With pleasure and wild abandon.
We in the Order were forbidden the touch of men, and were forbidden to think of them. As a penitent, though, I had thought of them. I had watched the princes and the kings and the mighty warriors march across our paths, and I had lusted after their powerful bodies, their muscled legs, their strong arms. They were always so mysterious, and so tempting.
Sometimes I would catch them looking at me, or at the slaves or the other penitents, and I would see the hunger in their eyes.
When I was a penitent, I was forbidden to dream, but dream I did. I was forbidden to lust, but I did that, too.
Now that I was an oracle, I was supposed to be above the lusts of the flesh. The Eyes were supposed to keep me from wanting. But they didn’t.
For those few moments that I slid beneath his skin, he was beautiful, this man Aaran who came to save me. I wriggled into his past and indulged myself; his touch was glorious, his caresses all-consuming, his smiles something to live for, his desires something to die for.
But I shut him away before I could become too enraptured. Death raced toward us, and I had much to do to keep it from catching us.
Sheoua with his battered ships and his limping crews lay on the other side of an uninhabited island only a dozen leagues from ours. I could not see him clearly. Too many layers stood between us. But I could make out his five remaining ships, and the fact that they stood at anchor while his medics treated those on board who suffered.
Prince Sheoua was moving all his injured men to one ship, and putting the healthy ones on the other four. They were going to let the one ship with its wounded stay behind in safety.
So four ships would attack us.
They would be on us quickly, choosing to attack in darkness. I wondered at their choice. Darkness favored us, because our Obsidians knew neither darkness nor light. They saw the same, always, and what they saw with their Eyes in the middle of moonless night far exceeded what archers and swordsmen with could see with eyes of flesh.
I needed to watch what he and his men intended next. I called the river of time to me, and stepped in, and pushed the current to carry me forward along the direction it would follow if we did not conquer them when they attacked us.
Sheoua did not plan to destroy the women of the Ossalene Order, I discovered. He and his many men planned to find their way through two outer walls in the Citadel that we had thought unbreachable. A visible decoy force would draw our defenders away from those two points with a loud diversion, and while the Obsidians and the Onyxes were diverted to a messy battle, two side forces would run in and grab every young woman they could find. I watched Sheoua stealing slave girls and penitents, and then those of our Order who were not primarily fighters—the Moonstones and the Granites, the Amethysts and the Rosestones.
I followed this course of time forward still farther, and saw the slaves and penitents sold to slavers or raped and killed, the seru tortured, the oracles already dead. All who remained within the walls of the Citadel, fighting, would perish.
Well, the walls they intended to breach would not be easily defended. But knowing how they planned their attack, the Obsidians who remained behind—nearly all the Obsidians from my predecessor’s part in this conspiracy, plus all those who had never known of a conspiracy—would have a significant advantage.
But I needed to give them more.
I followed path after path through the currents, following those that ended in triumph as well as those that ended in failure. Hawkspar had not been able to give me more than generalities about this last phase of my time as an Ossalene oracle.
I sought every advantage for the women I would leave behind, and when I’d catalogued them to my satisfaction, and put together what I believed would be the best possible plan, I stepped out of the waters of time. I had one final deception to carry out.
15
Hawkspar
I rang the bells in the warning sequence; I rang them loud and long, and watched through the occluding veil of stone as slaves and penitents, acolytes and seru, and eventually oracles, burst from doors and headed to the House of Holies, the only enclosed space in the Citadel that would hold every inhabitant at the same time.
When I finished, bell-deafened, I hurried to the Seru Garden. Redbird waited for me there. “All of ours are underground,” she said.
I told her, “Then join me. We must make sure that those who remain behind can save themselves.”
We ran to the House of Holies, burst through the great arched doors, and raced to the front of the grand edifice. And I took a place behind the great arching bench. My hands rested on the rails, and I said, “Listen well, for we have little time, and much to do if we would survive this night.”
I did not need to shout, or even raise my voice. The stage had been cleverly designed to carry the quietest speech from the front of the building into the wings at the sides and to the distant benches in the back. My every word would reach every listening ear.
“Prince Sheoua and the remains of his vanquished navy approach; he is intent on revenge, for he blames the Ossalene
s—and me in particular—for his defeat. I warned him that if he fought the Chevaks, he would lose; he chose to fight them anyway.”
I heard murmurs of understanding from some of the other oracles. Evidently giving good advice to people who chose not to follow it was not something only I had experienced.
“He has more fighters than we have, and he thinks to surprise us with them. If you follow my directions, however, he cannot defeat us.”
Sunspar said, “You brought this upon us.”
“I’m always pleased to know that one of our own stands in the same camp as the enemy,” I said, and now the murmurs of agreement, from both oracles and seru, reached my ears. Good. The fewer the number who actively supported Sunspar, the more would survive in what came.
“I have divided the Obsidians into four groups. All four groups have already armed and taken their places—at the point where the enemy will create a diversion to attempt to make us believe that is his point of attack, and at the three points where he will attempt secondary attacks.
“He is bringing five ships against us—four into the main harbor to our north, and one into our secret harbor in the south. He will split his forward forces into three groups, with one group attacking the main gate to the north, one group attacking the west wall, and one group attacking the east wall. The fourth group—the rear force—will attempt to swarm the long stairs and breach the back gate. My Obsidians are going to let them. We have planted explosives within the tunnels, and when the tunnels fill up with the enemy, we will light the wicks and explode them. Do not, therefore, pursue any of the enemy that enter the tunnels.”
Sunspar said, “Then that was the purpose of all your people in those tunnels over the last two days. You discovered that you’d made a mistake, and now you’re scrambling to fix it.”
I leaned harder on the wood. “Not at all. Hawkspar my predecessor found Prince Sheoua a nightmare in the making. Had he been permitted to follow his chosen course of action, everyone within our group of islands would have fallen to his growing empire—and all of us would have been raped and tortured for his amusement. That fate still awaits us if we lose. However, Hawkspar my predecessor believed that we had an obligation to protect the innocent in the lands around us; therefore, we have dealt with Prince Sheoua in a manner that has nearly destroyed his military might. When the Ossalenes have finished with him today, Sheoua will be dead, his army destroyed, and the people he had already enslaved, free.