Argent stared at the empty castellan’s seat for a long moment. “As we face a new time, it is time for a bold move on this first day of my service to Tashijan. We must not be blinded and ruled by the past and its conventions.”
He turned from the chair and faced the Council of Masters and its many hopeful faces. “If we are to be a beacon in the dark days ahead, let us look to a new path to the future.” His eyes drifted upward, past the ring of masters.
Kathryn tensed. What new treachery was afoot?
Argent’s eyes settled, turning her blood to ice. “I name my right hand this night. Rise and join me, my new castellan- Kathryn ser Vail!”
A hushed shock spread through the gallery. Kathryn felt herself falling back into her seat, but Perryl’s hand clutched her elbow, holding her steady.
“I don’t understand,” he whispered as tentative clapping arose and grew firmer. Her name was called out… then again and again.
She glanced down at Gerrod. His armored face was unreadable, but his eyes were bright with shock and worry.
She stared back toward the floor. Argent fixed her with a steely, one-eyed stare. There was no enmity there, only open invitation. He lifted his arm and beckoned.
“You must go,” Perryl urged at her shoulder.
Around her, others added the same encouragement, but more exuberantly. Kathryn found herself half-carried down the aisle to the stairs. Perryl followed, sheltering her as best he could. But once they reached the steps, she was on her own.
On numb legs, she mounted the stairs and began the long descent toward the floor. Her welcome among the master’s level was polite, but not nearly as enthusiastic. The castellan position was always filled by one of their members. She felt like some thief slipping through them.
But for the moment, they were the least of her concern. She reached the central floor. She had stood here only twice before: first when she had been granted her cloak and sword, then when she had given testimony against Tylar.
This final memory gave her pause. Did any of this have to do with Tylar, with her connection to him?
Before she could ponder it further, Argent crossed and grasped her hand in his. He leaned in close as if to kiss her, but he merely whispered, “Welcome, Kathryn… or should I say, Castellan Vail. It seems we have much to discuss.”
He led her to the seat that neighbored his, still holding her hand. Once in position, he raised their joined arms to the roar of the gathering. She searched for her friends-Perryl and Gerrod. They were lost in the masses. She was alone.
Finally, he allowed her arm to drop, giving her hand a final squeeze. She felt something hard between their palms, something he held. It was left in her grip as his hand slipped from hers.
She stared down at it. It was a balloting stone. A black balloting stone.
Kathryn knew it was the same one she had cast earlier. But in the firelight, she noticed it had been defaced. Upon its dark surface was etched a perfect circle, bisected by two perpendicular lines, all painted a flaming crimson.
The symbol of the Fiery Cross.
7
FATHOM
“We’re being hunted.”
“Have you spotted sails?” Tylar asked as he hurried after Rogger up the ladder to the open deck. It was the fourth ship they’d ridden since leaving the Summering Isles-from a deepwhaler, to a sea barge, to a limping frigate-only one step ahead of their pursuers. They’d been three days aboard the Grim Wash, a wavecrasher out of Tempest Sound.
“Not a ship,” Rogger answered as he shoved through the hatch out to the stern castle of the ship.
“What do you mean?” Tylar asked, climbing after him.
Rogger didn’t answer as he led the way to the starboard rail. Tylar craned around. The wavecrasher’s crew scrambled in the rigging, working sail lines. The black-skinned captain of the Grim Wash stood by the great wheel, flanked by a pair of steersmen at the lesser wheels. All their faces were etched in stern lines.
“Haul your arses, ya blooding bastards!” the chief mate screamed across the middeck, rousing the sailors to a quicker pace.
“What’s happening?” Tylar asked.
“See for yourself.” Rogger pointed an arm out toward the empty seas behind the ship.
Tylar shaded his eyes against the achingly blue sky. Clouds scudded in vague smudges. Sunlight glared off the rolling seas. The waters of the Meerashe Deep lay empty. “I don’t understand what-”
Then he saw it. Words died as horror iced through him.
A wide wake surged toward them, a V-shaped churn of white water, cutting through the blue swells like a sword through a sow’s belly. It was still a full reach away, but it was rapidly closing the distance. A massive pale form hummocked up momentarily, breaching between the arms of the wake, corpse bright against the blue seas. Its surface flailed with fleshy appendages and tentacles. Then it was gone again, rolling below, leaving only the wake of its passage as it flowed below the surface.
“A miiodon,” Tylar gasped out at the impossibility.
“Jelly shark,” Rogger agreed, using the more common name.
“But they don’t hunt these cold waters.” From all Tylar had been taught, miiodons lived only in the equatorial seas, below even the Summering Isles. “What’s one doing all the way up here?”
“Maybe you’d best jump in and ask ’im,” Rogger said, tugging at his beard.
Tylar felt the deck buck slightly as the wavecrasher’s speed increased. New sails snapped into the steady breeze. He watched the crew’s frantic efforts, their eyes tight with fear. Their only hope lay in outrunning the beast. The Grim Wash was not outfitted with the Chilldaldrii ice harpoons necessary to defend against such an attack. The beast would tear the ship apart, snatching free what bits of flesh it could glean with its poisoned tentacles.
“She’s diving deep!” a cry called from the crow’s nest atop the center mast.
“Below!” shouted Captain Grayl, a black-skinned Eighth-lander whose shipping-guild tattoos were bright crimson on the nape of his bulging neck. The crew obeyed their captain without hesitation, sliding down ropes and leaping to the deck. Hatches crashed open as the evacuation commenced.
The captain waved off his two steersmen. “I’ll man the wheel. Try to keep her in the wind as long as possible.”
Rogger tugged Tylar toward the open hatch, but Tylar shook free of the old thief’s grip and marched toward Captain Grayl.
“What are you doing?” Rogger asked, heeling after Tylar.
The captain noted them. “Get below!” he shouted.
“You’ll need someone to guard your back,” Tylar said, sliding free the sword he had stolen from Darjon ser Hightower.
Grayl eyed the sword, then grunted. “It’s your hide.”
Rogger stepped to Tylar’s other side and nodded to the sword. “That’ll do you little good against a jelly shark. But what about that smoky beastie of yours? Mayhap it could defend the boat.”
Tylar had already guessed that this was the reason Rogger had called him out on deck. He fingered the loose shirt that covered the black palm print centered on his chest. He sensed the savage beast lurking behind the stain. Since their escape, he had not dared attempt to call forth the black daemon… the dred ghawl.
Still he balked. On every level of his being, he feared what dwelled inside him. He remembered the crush of his fist under the torturer’s hammer, the pain as his body broke apart, crippling once again. But that was not the worst. He also sensed the bloodlust, savagery, and raw hostility in the daemon, along with a foreignness to this world that felt deeply wrong, an affront to the very existence of wind and stone, blood and flesh. And while connected by the dark umbilicus that tied palm print to beast, Tylar had felt himself drawn into that wrongness.
He was loath to feel it again… even if it meant his own death.
Past the ship’s stern, the waters remained empty. Tylar was not deluded enough to believe the miiodon had fled. It had simply dived deep, tight on
the trail of its quarry, preparing to launch its dramatic attack.
At the great wheel, the captain grumbled, “I’d give my left stone right now for an ice harpoon.”
Rogger shook his head. “You’d have a hard time making that deal. One stone doesn’t sell as well as it used to. You’d probably have to give them a matched pair.”
“Aye, I’d if I still had the other,” the captain bantered grimly, one eye on the seas behind them, one on the sail. “My first wife still has it in a glass jar on her mantel.”
“That’s why I always stick to sell-wenches,” Rogger said. “While they may lighten one’s pocket, they take little else.” The thief kept his stare fixed on Tylar, awaiting his decision.
Tylar took a deep breath. It wasn’t only his life in danger. Belowdecks hid an entire ship’s crew, with families in ports scattered across the Nine Lands.
“How…?” Tylar had to clear his throat. “How do I loose the daemon? I don’t have a hammer handy.”
Rogger kept his voice low. “I wager it takes only a single broken bone to unlock the cage that holds the beast. Like a snapped finger. It’ll break free on its own from there.”
Tylar watched the seas. Break free on its own…
“Here it comes!” the captain shouted.
Beyond the ship’s stern, a flurry of bubbles preceded the miiodon, boiling up from below as if a deep-sea volcano had opened on the ocean floor. Then it appeared, shooting straight out of the depths.
The miiodon’s roiling tentacles had fused, narrowing its form to a sleek arrow almost half the size of the Grim Wash itself. As its bulk cleared the waters, the mass of tentacles unbraided from its streamlined form and billowed out around it. Tylar had witnessed fire-sky displays exploding above nighttime festivals. This was the same-only instead of fire and lights erupting, here exploded a horror of flesh and poison.
A plume of water showered the deck as the creature sailed over the stern masts. A trailing tentacle, its footpad, struck the mast’s sailcloth. Poison burned through, allowing it to reach the mast’s wooden pole. It latched on and used this toehold to bring its bulk crashing into the middecks.
The sudden weight drove the boat deep into the waves. Seawater sloshed across all decks. Screams rose from below, echoing up through the planks. The center mast cracked with a thunderclap and went toppling sideways, a tangle of sailcloth and ropes.
Tylar fought to hold himself upright by gripping one of the lesser wheels. The captain hugged the central great wheel and kept the ship from swamping completely. It was a skilled effort. The Grim Wash bobbed back up, lolling back and forth.
But the boat could not escape its new passenger.
The miiodon lay spilled across the middle of the ship, filling the space between the stern and forecastle. It was a forest of snaking tentacles around a central mound of pale, watery flesh. A pair of black globular eyes, as large as pumpkins, gazed from deep within the translucent mass, protectively buried in the center.
Tylar felt those eyes gazing toward the trio of men. Tentacles wormed in their direction. Easy meat.
“Below!” Grayl bellowed. He waved them toward the hatch in the stern castle.
As they retreated, Rogger tossed an oil lantern at the nearest tentacle. Fire splashed across its skin.
The captain shoved the thief toward the hatch. “Fool, you’ll burn my ship to the waterline before you even warm its hide. Ice is all that can harm a jelly shark.”
Rogger glanced at Tylar, his meaning clear. Act now, or see the ship sunk.
Tylar stopped a few paces from the door. “Get the captain below,” he whispered through clenched teeth.
Rogger nodded and hurried to the hatch with Grayl.
Tylar turned his back on the pair.
Tentacles squirmed over the stern deck’s rail and roiled toward him. He smelled the bitter tang of their poison in the salty air. Channels of oily yellow venom flowed beneath translucent skin. A mere touch would melt flesh to the bone, creating a liquid feast for the tinier, sucking tendrils that fringed each tentacle.
“Skags,” he swore and sheathed his sword. He needed both hands free.
“What is the fool doing?” the captain grumbled by the hatch.
“What must be done!” Rogger answered. “Now give the boy a bit of privacy.”
Tylar heard a scuffle and assumed Rogger was forcing the stubborn captain away. It was not his concern. As a questing tentacle snaked toward him, Tylar grabbed the smallest finger of his left hand. If this didn’t work, at least he’d have his right hand, his sword hand, to fend off the miiodon’s attentions. He bent his small finger backward to the point of pain. Just one fast snap, he told himself.
“Stop!”
The sudden shout almost did the job for him, but he released his strained finger and swung around. “What in all the gods’ names are you doing up here?” Tylar barked.
Delia strained to push past Rogger, but the thief had a grip on her upper arm. Here was the source of the scuffling. The captain stood behind the pair, clearly bewildered by his strange passengers.
“Let me go, you damnable oaf!” Delia yelled, finally shaking free. Her cheeks were fetchingly rosy against her snowy skin, but now was not the moment to notice such things.
Tylar danced closer to his companions as a persistent tentacle scented his blood. Delia hurried to his side with Rogger in tow. The captain kept guard at the hatch.
“When you all didn’t come below,” Delia said in a rush, “I knew what you were going to do.”
“We have no other weapon against the jelly shark.” Tylar glanced past his shoulder to the captain, careful of his words.
Only now did the young handmaiden seem to notice the Grim Wash ’s new passenger. Her eyes widened and the rosy color fled her cheeks.
The miiodon, now settled and secure in its middeck roost, began its assault in earnest. Muscular tentacles ripped planks loose with loud pops. A foredeck hatch was torn free and flung through the air. It struck a flap of sail and tumbled into the sea. Closer, the roil of tentacles that had been sniffing over the rail of the stern deck now surged toward the gathering before the doorway.
“Get your arses down below!” the captain ordered. “I must seal this hatch.”
Rogger simply kicked the door closed in the captain’s face. “Then bolt the damn thing already!”
Delia reached a hand to Tylar’s elbow. “If you free the dred ghawl, there’s no way to bottle it back up. We don’t have any of Meeryn’s blood.”
Tylar knew this. They had traded the repostilary bearing the last of it to book passage and cover their escape. But what choice did they have now? He’d simply have to find another way to get rid of the daemon… or live with it. And living was the key point of it all.
“I have no other course,” he answered and grabbed his small finger again.
Delia kicked him in the shin. Unfortunately it wasn’t hard enough to shatter bone, but it did get his attention. “Miiodons fear icy water!”
“So we’ve been told,” Rogger said, urgency entering his voice as they were forced away from the hatch by the approach of snaking tentacles.
Tylar paused enough to listen. That was the strange part of this attack. Jelly sharks liked warm equatorial waters, not the cold of the Meerashe Deep. “What are you getting on about?”
Before Delia could answer, the sound of a hatch crashing open drew all their attention across the ship. Upon the foredeck, a lone sailor appeared with a raised sword. His eyes were wild, his gait wobbling. Drunk. It seemed some sought courage in a bottle, but found only stupidity.
He crossed to the rail that overlooked the miiodon. He cursed and shook his sword.
“Get back, man!” Tylar yelled.
The drunken sailor took his warning as encouragement and sliced at a tentacle that wandered too near. He cleaved clean through it, but he was rewarded with a spray of blood and venom to his face.
A scream tore from him as his flesh boiled and smoked. He fell to hi
s knees, blinded. He clawed at his face in agony.
Delia cried out and turned away.
She needn’t have hidden her face. The miiodon surged toward the man, sensing the blood. Appendages crested over the foredeck rail and fell upon the sailor, covering him completely. In a heartbeat, poison silenced his cries.
“At least his death bought us some deck space,” Rogger said, ever practical.
With the jelly shark distracted by its meal, only a single tentacle still probed their deck.
Tylar drew them all to the rear rail.
“Maybe now’s the time to let loose that shadowy beast of yours,” Rogger persisted.
“No,” Delia said, rising from her shock. A hand darted into her robe, searching a pocket. “There’s another way.” But her voice had dropped in timbre, her confidence in whatever drew her up here clearly waning.
Tylar touched her shoulder and spoke softly. “What is it?”
Delia’s eyes were watery with fright, but she finally freed a crystal jar from a pocket. She held it out to Tylar.
It was an empty repostilary, like the one that had borne Meeryn’s blood. But it was not blood Delia wanted.
“We need your water.”
Tylar gaped at her. “What?”
“You want the man’s piss?” Rogger echoed his confusion.
Delia shoved the glass bottle toward Tylar. “Trust me! Please!”
Confused, he accepted the repostilary and glanced to Rogger.
The thief merely shrugged. “My mama taught me never to refuse a lady.”
Shaking his head and biting back a curse, Tylar swung away. He loosened the strings to his trousers and freed himself. He held the glass jar. Never in all his trials as a Shadowknight had he even been in such a dire predicament. If the jelly shark didn’t kill him, humiliation would.
He stared down at himself, at the priceless crystal repostilary. He hated to foul such a vessel with his own water, but like a good and noble knight, he kept his aim true. The repostilary was soon filled.
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