A Painted Goddess

by Victor Gischler

  They were all worried about Alem and Maurizan. They’d all grown close, traveling together these past weeks, surviving a ship-to-ship attack from the Perranese, barely escaping from the mobs in Sherrik before the city sealed itself for siege.

  Miko had been sailing for hours, crisscrossing the area where Alem and Maurizan had gone overboard. Not a sign of them. Not a hint.

  “Tosh.”

  Tosh tore his attention from the sea and looked back at Kalli. “You see something?”

  “No,” Kalli said. “Nobody has.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s a big ocean,” Kalli said. “Miko says we barely got through that storm ourselves. He says the chances of Alem and Maurizan surviving are—”

  “Don’t.” Tosh turned away from her. “Don’t say it.”

  Silence for a moment except for the wind and the scow slicing a path across the water.

  “Okay, so what do I do?” Tosh asked. “Just leave them?”

  “You’re the boss,” Kalli said. “I just thought you might want to talk about it.”

  Tosh turned his head and saw Viriam and Lureen were watching his conversation with Kalli. Likely they’d discussed this before electing Kalli to come talk to him.

  “Maurizan still has the map,” Tosh said. “But Miko has seen it. He still knows where we’re going.”

  “She and Alem could be together if they made it to land,” Kalli said. “They might follow the map. We could find them there.”

  Tosh nodded, thinking it through. “It might be our best bet. To keep going. It’s where Alem and Maurizan would go.”

  “Yes.” Kalli was nodding too. Encouragement.

  It was what he needed to hear. It was a plan to find their lost friends instead of a decision to abandon them.

  Just the sort of lie a man could cling to.

  Shivering and wet.

  Maurizan hugged herself and shifted, gravel crunching beneath her. She was afraid to move in the pitch darkness. She sensed an open cavernous area. The place smelled dank and salty. The water’s edge was only a few feet away.

  When she’d fallen overboard during the storm, panic had seized her. She could swim but not well. The sea was something angry and immense that wanted to crash down on her and drag her to its cold depths. Never had she felt such helpless fear. She’d known she was going to die. No other scenario had been conceivable.

  Until the Fish Man.

  Even when he’d been saving her, it had seemed ridiculous. Miko’s tall tale of the Fish Man, glimpsed here and there by sailors—often drunk—skimming just below the surface of the water. It was supposed to be a legend. Nonsense. Lies.

  But the Fish Man was truth.

  He’d grabbed her in the water, swimming so incredibly fast, diving, breaking the surface again just in time for her to gulp air before plunging back below the surface. This had happened over and over again until the routine of it had numbed her. When he’d taken her down for the last time, it had been longer. Her lungs were about to burst, and she’d struggled, but the Fish Man held her with an iron grip. Just when she was desperate, about to give up on ever tasting air again, they broke the surface into total darkness. Maurizan sucked in ragged breaths as the Fish Man dragged her out of the water and dropped her on a dry patch of gravel.

  She’d heard a splash and then silence. Gone.

  Now she waited, wondering if the Fish Man would ever return. She dozed, started awake, dozed again.

  Finally there was another splash, and she held her breath, listening, waiting.

  Footsteps on the gravel. Movement.

  Her hands fell to the daggers at her belt. The Fish Man could have left her. Could have let her drown. Could have done anything. Maurizan held tight to the hilts of the daggers but didn’t draw them.

  A scraping, more movement.

  Maurizan slowly and quietly kept backing up until her back was pressed against the cavern wall.

  A sharp sound and something flared in the darkness. A spark. The sharp sound again, flint striking steel and then a bright-orange flare of light.

  And there stood the Fish Man in the glow of the lantern he was lighting.

  He wasn’t so tall. A couple of inches taller than Maurizan. The broad shoulders and thin waist of a swimmer, someone who spent a lot more time in the water than he did walking on land. Legs muscular, skin white and smooth. Hairless except for the unkempt thatch of blond on his head and another between his legs.

  She realized where she was looking and turned her head quickly, but her eyes darted back for a peek without her meaning it. “Who are you?”

  “Kristos.”

  Kristos. It seemed a strangely ordinary name for the legendary Fish Man.

  “Could you put something on, Kristos?”

  “Sorry.” He gestured at himself. “This is the best for swimming.” His accent was heavy and unfamiliar, and the words came out Dees iz bezt for sweeming.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Helva, like you,” Kristos said.

  “You don’t sound like it.”

  “I have been many years with the Moogari,” he said. “My accent is like how they talk.”

  Moogari. Terrific, thought Maurizan. Probably what they call the local cannibals.

  But so far the Fish Man hadn’t been eaten. Maybe he’d gone native.

  He turned to reach for a long stretch of dry, rough cloth hanging from a hook on the cave wall. It had a pattern on it of leaves and vines, a wrap like she’d seen natives wear in the South Sea islands. Well, in paintings anyway. She’d never been there.

  Kristos turned away from her as he tied the wrap around himself, and that’s when she saw it and gasped.

  Kristos’s head jerked back to her. “What is it?”

  “The Prime,” said the gypsy. The tattoo down his back, the ornate circle between the shoulder blades, and the runes trailing down either side of the spine.

  “You know this word?” Kristos said. “You’ve seen this tattoo before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “My mother,” Maurizan said. “And grandmother.” She’d seen Rina’s too but didn’t see any need to mention it.

  Kristos’s eyes narrowed with curiosity. “Who are you?”

  Maurizan tightened the grip on her dagger hilts. “Who are you?”

  “I saw you fall from the boat, rescued you, and brought you here,” Kristos said. “I went back to find the others, but the boat had sailed away. I have lived here a long time. You are safe here. I saved you.”

  “Thanks.” She didn’t ease the grip on her weapons.

  “When I was a child, my family and I traveled by sea from the Red City to Fyria. My father was a merchant. We were caught in a storm like you, and the ship went down. I washed ashore and the Moogari found me. I’ve been a man of the Scattered Isles ever since. What about you?” Kristos asked. “You are far from home. And you know the Prime. I think you have a story to tell, yes?”

  She nailed him with her eyes, looking him over, deciding. She let go of her daggers.

  The gypsy reached into her vest, came out with a piece of parchment. It was still damp, and she unfolded it carefully. She held it out to Kristos. “Bring the lantern closer. Look.”

  He approached slowly before leaning in to look at the map, the lantern held aloft. It took him a moment, but then his face changed as comprehension dawned.

  “I see,” he said. “I wondered when somebody would come.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Rina stared at the dagger tip an inch from her eye. She tried again and failed to tap into the spirit. Cold fear welled up in her. She was paralyzed but completely awake and aware of her situation. A prisoner of the Perranese, they’d apparently dumped her unconscious into the back of a cart, where she now sat unable to move, a foreign wizard threatening her with a dagger and worse.

  What had he called himself again? Jariko. That was it.

  “Be calm, Duchess,” Jariko said. “We are simply goin
g to have a chat, you and I.”

  Rina strained, reached with her willpower, desperately trying to touch the spirit. It was as if the spirit were covered with some greasy film, a slick barrier that prevented her from latching on. She flailed at it, dug at it, scratched it, but her grip on the spirit kept sliding away.

  “Ink magic is ancient and powerful,” Jariko said. “The secrets of it were thought by many to have faded into legend, but I crossed the Eastern Sea with an ink mage named Ankar, a brute of a man covered head to foot in tattoos. Rumor is you defeated him, although I find that hard to believe.”

  Rina barely heard the man. Outwardly, she appeared limp and lifeless, a rag doll slumped in the back of a shabby cart. Inwardly, she raged, flinging herself against the walls of her own consciousness, trying to do anything to move or blink or reach the spirit. If she could tap into the well of her own spirit, it would turn the tables. Come on, move a finger, wiggle a toe, blink. Anything!

  “For obvious reasons, a wizard cannot ink the Prime upon his own back,” Jariko said. “Not even the acrobats of the Imperial Circus are that flexible.” He chuckled, mildly pleased with his own humor. “Which means you know a wizard, and he knows the secrets of the Prime.”

  He shifted his dagger to menace the other eyeball. “There are a number of dire spells I can bring to bear, which will convince you to see things my way, but sometimes the old-fashioned ways are best. The simple idea of something pointy being inserted into one’s eye is quite appalling to most people. You probably think your eyeball will pop like an overripe piece of fruit, squirting juice everywhere. Not so. It’s actually a quite different experience altogether. Would you like to find out firsthand?”

  Jariko brought the tip of the dagger to within a hair’s width of her eyes. In her mind, Rina shrieked terror.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you questions,” Jariko said. “You will answer. It’s just that simple. If you don’t answer, well, that’s when things become complicated. I think we’d all prefer to keep things simple, don’t you? Yes, of course you do. Now, I want to know the name of the wizard who inked your Prime. I want to know where he’s located. If different wizards inked your other tattoos, I want to know the names and whereabouts of these spell casters too. I want to know the circumstances that brought you into contact with them and why it is they found you worthy of such power. I intend to be very thorough in my interrogation, so there’s no point in holding anything back.”

  Her vacant eyes stared back at him.

  Jariko turned away abruptly, anger twisting his features as he spit a string of obscenities in his own tongue.

  When he faced her again, his smile seemed strained. “The joke’s on me, I’m afraid. The potion coursing through your veins renders you temporarily paralyzed. Naturally, that would also render your tongue and mouth paralyzed. Of course you can’t answer me. Even clever fellows like me trip themselves up by overlooking something simple.”

  What was he saying? Pay attention. Calm down. Panicking isn’t getting you anywhere, girl. Rina saw two fully armored Perranese warriors standing at a respectful distance behind Jariko—likely there to rush in and help him should the mad duchess prove too much for the wizard. Obviously there could be more men behind her, but no sense worrying about maybes.

  Okay, a wizard and two soldiers. What are you going to do about them?

  “We’ve been keeping you unconscious,” Jariko continued. “The theory being that it wouldn’t occur to you to slaughter us all if you were asleep. All well and good, but then of course you can’t answer my questions that way either. The paralysis potion accomplishes more or less the same thing, but you’re conscious, so I can question you.”

  They’d chosen well how to keep her captive. Asleep she would be helpless. But Jariko was mistaken if he thought paralysis would bind her in the same way. Tapping into the spirit was an act of will. She didn’t need to move, but she did need to be conscious. Jariko might have unwittingly given her the opening she needed.

  Rina redoubled her efforts reaching, attempting to get a grip on the spirit, but it kept sliding away, so tantalizing close. She felt frustration and anger building in her and immediately tamped it down. No time. She had to focus. Eventually the wizard would get tired of his own voice.

  “It’s a matter of degree, obviously,” the wizard said. “I mean, you’re not completely paralyzed, are you? The heart must pump blood. Lungs must draw breath. You’re functioning. It’s a matter of dosage, you see.”

  Grabbing for the spirit, trying to latch on to it wasn’t working. It had always been so effortless before. She didn’t usually pay attention to how it was done; it had become second nature in the past weeks.

  “The dose I gave you will wear off very gradually,” Jariko explained. “It will be quite some time before you can move your arms and legs, but something smaller might be accomplished. If we wait a bit, you might be able to blink your eyes, and then we can have a conversation of sorts. One eyeblink for yes. Two for no. That sort of thing, if you follow me.”

  Just keep talking, you arrogant asshole.

  It was difficult to concentrate, staring directly at the dagger point. Jariko had been right. The idea of that point plunging straight into her eyeball was enough to—

  Wait. Dagger point.

  She had attempted to latch on to the spirit like she was grabbing a handful of dry grass. Of course, that was all wrong. The old wizard Weylan had called it “tapping” into the spirit. Like drying to draw ale from a large keg. So too was the spirit a deep well within her. Except now there was some sort of slimy layer over the surface, something that kept her from getting through. The effects of the potion, most likely.

  The dagger point at her eye had made her realize her mistake.

  Rina envisioned her willpower as a physical thing, long and straight like a blade. She molded it with her mind, honed it to a fine point. She put all of the willpower behind it and thrust.

  The greasy film over the well of spirit stretched, resisting. Rina summoned all of her inner strength, insistent, demanding. The sharpened point of her willpower would break through. She would not accept anything less.

  I. Am. Master. Of. Myself.

  She was vaguely aware that something distracted the wizard. Jariko turned his head at the sound of a galloping horse. The two Perranese guards drew their swords, both suddenly looking alert.

  Jariko shouted orders at them, brought the dagger up to fend off whatever was coming, and shifted just enough to block Rina’s view of what happened next.

  Bishop Hark had seen the best opportunity he was likely to get.

  He’d crept in as close to the Perranese camp as he’d dared. He’d watched, waited, and hoped. Frankly, it had seemed hopeless. Hark intended to do everything within his power to free Duchess Veraiin, but taking on hundreds of Perranese warriors seemed a poor way to go about it.

  And then, the one with the long moustache and the robes—some sort of sorcerer, probably—had, inexplicably, taken her farther from the rest of the camp. He had only two guards with him. Suddenly, the situation had become manageable.

  Although applying the word manageable to a situation that involved a wizard was dubious at best.

  Dumo always asks us to look on the bright side. This often involves inventing a bright side.

  The trick was speed. Hark was educated enough to know something about how a wizard’s spell worked. They had to say a litany of nonsense words, and if the spell were interrupted, then it would fail. So . . . kill the bloody wizard first. Simple.

  He’d raised his mace, spurred his horse, and ridden like all the underworld blood demons of Hadronetes were after him.

  Hark’s steed thundered into the small clearing, the bishop twirling his mace over his head, ready to serve up crushing death to whoever stood in his way. The old man in the robe barked orders at the soldiers, and they drew weapons, moved to take up positions between the bishop and the wizard.

  So much for killing the wizard first.
<
br />   The Perranese wore wide helms that flared outward. Probably good for defending against a rain of arrows. Terrible against anything coming from below.

  Hark rode hard at the first warrior, swinging the mace underhanded. He smashed it up into the first warrior’s chink, which shattered, teeth and blood flying, jaw cracking. The soldier dropped his weapon, staggered, and collapsed.

  The other warrior swung at him, but the sword glanced off the bishop’s thick breastplate. Hark brought the mace down onto the warrior’s helm. A metallic crunch. The warrior stepped back, shaken, and brought his sword up to fend off the next blow.

  Instead, Hark urged his horse forward, slamming into the soldier and knocking him to the ground.

  Bishop Hark leapt from his horse before the soldier could recover and brought the mace down hard on the man’s face. He smashed it nearly flat, blood spraying to either side. The warrior’s legs twitched, and then he went still.

  Hark turned back to the wizard.

  The old man in the robes had one hand lifted, a pinch of some powder between thumb and forefinger drifting away on a mild breeze. His mouth worked frantically to utter the words of some spell as precisely as possible.

  Hark sprinted for him, mace raised to stave in the man’s skull.

  Dumo, grant me the speed to engage my foe before he’s able to—

  The wizard completed the spell and pointed a bony finger at Hark.

  The wizard’s hand bucked, and a blue bolt of lightning shot out and struck the bishop in the breastplate.

  Hark went rigid, every part of him buzzing with fire, blue light crackling all around him. He trembled violently, halting steps taking him nowhere.

  He pissed himself.

  He blinked, discovered he was on his hands and knees. He tried to right himself but found his limbs in rebellion. He tingled unpleasantly all over, his hair seeming like it was straining to leave his scalp. He coughed, spit bile.

  The bishop found himself frozen like that. He couldn’t stand or move; he just shook and felt sick and knew he was going to die. With enormous effort, he slowly picked his head up, squinted at the wizard. Hark tried to focus on the man, but his vision was a blur. It looked like the wizard was raising his hands, perhaps readying another spell.